TCM Nutrition - Five Element Theory

The eastern medical theory of the five elements provides a framework which aids one in making food choices that will be most beneficial to a person at a given time. To understand how the theory relates to nutrition, one must first understand the basic categorizations of the five elements.

Essentially, there are five elements, or factors, which have an inter-relationship which must be kept in balance. The Five Elements are: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. The chart below describes some of the common categorizations which fall under each element:

While the entire chart is helpful as a diagnostic and treatment tool, it is the "tastes", "seasons" and "environment" correlations which have the strongest relationship with nutrition. Before discussing how food fits into the theory, it is important to understand how the elements relate to one another.

There are two main relationships which you must be familiar with to understand the application of the five element theory. First is the Mother-Son relationship (also known as the sheng, generation, production or creation cycle) and the Grandparent-Grandchild relationship (also known as the ke, ko or control cycle).

These are presented below:

The Generating Cycle shows that Fire, for example, helps support Earth and the Control Cycle shows that Fire controls the growth of Metal. To understand how this might be applied, take a person experiencing problems with asthma. Asthma is a Metal (Lung) condition sometimes with an underlying psychological component of grief or sadness. From a TCM perspective, Asthma may present as a phlegm-damp condition. Following the five element theory, then, we see that the Earth (Spleen) may be weak (phlegm-damp coming from poor digestion, etc.) and not supporting Metal (Lung) resulting in an Asthmatic condition.

Above is just an example to show how the theory is applied, we will continue with this example as we incorporate food into the five element theory. The chart below describes some of the common foods which serve to nourish their respective element:

Using the above chart and our previous example of Phlegm-Damp type Asthma, the five element theory would suggest that we would want to eat foods which strengthen the Metal (Lung), Earth (Spleen) and Fire (Heart) Elements. From the chart we would choose a majority of our foods from the Metal grouping and an ample selection from both the Earth and Fire categorizations until our condition changes. An example of food choices, with functions from Paul Pitchford's "Healing With Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition", would be:

In general and lacking the in-depth discussion from Paul Pitchford's text and others, for example, it is most important to eat foods which follow the basic tastes which correspond to the element that you are trying to strengthen and avoid foods which weaken it. In this case you would want to eat foods which fall into the pungent, sweet and bitter categories and avoid foods which aggravate these elements - sugar, meat and eggs.

While the information presented here is intended to provide you with the basic theory, it is important to note that there are different food groupings which come not only from differing opinions but also complexities within the theory that leave a particular food open to interpretation. Other factors which influence the grouping of a food and your food choices are:

These factors along with the categorizations are worked into a persons diagnosis and general constitution to establish food groupings which overall help to strengthen the individual. The rest of an individuals preferences such as eating organically grown foods or not, choosing to eat animal foods or not, etc. can then be factored in to decide your final food choices.