Food therapy involves using food as medicine or even as a way to maintain your pet’s good health and activity level. Foods have different properties, energies (temperature), and flavors. For example, tomatoes are more cooling and have a sour taste. Based on your pet’s activity level, personality, environment, age, and whether they have an imbalance (disease), a diet can be formulated or foods can be chosen to help fulfill their needs. This may involve creating a diet from scratch and having you cook for your pet, adding certain foods to your pet’s current diet, or changing the type of foods you feed.
There are five energies (temperatures) and five flavors in Chinese Medicine. They are listed below along with examples of foods that fall into each category.
Five Energies:
- Hot- examples are ginger, cinnamon, mutton, and venison
- Warm- examples include chicken and ginseng
- Neutral- examples include dates, potato, and pork
- Cool- examples include turkey and white fish
- Cold- examples include watermelon, banana, and crab
Five Flavors:
- Sour- examples include plum, pineapple, lemon, peach, and tomato
- Bitter- examples include rhubarb, asparagus, celery, and pork
- Sweet- examples include banana, egg, carrot, and rice
- Pungent- chives, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, and mint
- Salty- duck, ham, kelp, crab, and barley
Please contact Dr. Cara to schedule a consult to discuss your pet’s diet before making any changes or additions.