Ruminations on Digestion (Part 1: Rice is Nice)
Starting tomorrow I’m going to be doing a little stretch of sharing Chinese Medicine wisdom on the importance of digestion - the Spleen & Stomach system.
Here’s a tidbit to start:
Photo - The Spruce Eats
Clients often ask me what’s the deal with recommending white rice. Isn’t it nutritionally deficient? Isn’t brown rice better? Why, across a number of Asian countries, is “Have you eaten rice today?” a greeting, like “How are you?”
What’s the value of it?
According to Chinese Medicine, rice is a staple precisely BECAUSE it’s so “nutritionally” deficient. It’s not like they got it wrong, and thought that it was a nutrient rich food. They knew it was bland, and simple, and easy and soothing to digest. It eased the system, allowing the stomach to more easily access the nutrients in vegetables, meat, other grains. Congee, a thin rice soup, is THE staple food for infants, the elderly, and anyone convalescing, because of this easy, soothing nature.
But here’s the part I love, the paradigm shifting part. What if we set aside calculations based on calories and minerals and vitamins and enzymes and amino acids, and viewed rice through the lens of Qi? Of its vitality and life force? What if THAT is “the point” of eating rice, the value of it?
Every living thing on Earth has Qi, a force of life and energy, within it. So let’s think of food as units of Qi. If you eat a potato, you get one unit of Qi. One encapsulation of the sunshine and air and water and earth that went into producing that plant and that tuber. Wonderful. So what happens if you eat a potato sized ball of rice? You are getting - what? Hundreds? Thousands? (Okay, after saying this for YEARS I actually just Googled it - there are, wait for it - 5,000 to 15,000 grains of dry rice in a cup!!!) Anyway, you are getting a TON of rice grains. And each one is a unit of Qi. Each grain is providing you with a literal taste of the sunshine and air and water and earth that went into producing that grain. We are made of Qi. And we are, literally, made of the food that we eat.
We are the sunshine. The air. The water. The earth.
Tune in tomorrow for the shocking story of the teacher who taught that ANY food can provide us with Qi, even MacDonalds (GASP!)!!!