What are the five flavors in a nutritious diet

The five flavors often referred to in the field of nutrition and diet are generally understood to be the five flavors of sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty derived from the traditional Chinese medicine nutritional system. However, with the deepening of taste research in recent years, many nutrition scholars have proposed that fresh and light should be included in the classification. Currently, there is no completely unified conclusion in the industry.

I have been making family meals for almost five years. When I usually match three meals, I rarely worry about whether to classify them into five or seven. The core is to understand the characteristics of different flavors and just mix them. For example, last week I made a salt-control recipe for an aunt with high blood pressure. It couldn't be as bland as plain water cooking. She would definitely not be able to stick to it. So I specially added sour pickled lemons, sweet Xinjiang gray dates, and pungent turmeric to enhance the taste. I occasionally boiled some slightly bitter dandelion root water to adjust her metabolism. Even after reducing the amount of salt by two-thirds, she didn't feel uncomfortable eating. She also said her appetite was better than before.

I also talked about this classification issue when I communicated with colleagues before. The teacher who makes traditional Chinese medicine insists that the five flavors must be sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty. Speaking of umami is actually a combination of several flavors. For example, the umami of mushrooms is sweet and umami, and the umami of seafood is salty. The essence is still within the framework of the five flavors, and the traditional nutrition logic of the five flavors corresponding to the five internal organs has been used for thousands of years. There is no need to change it randomly for new concepts. But friends who work in clinical nutrition disagree, saying that modern physiology has long proven that there are receptors on the human tongue that are specialized for sensing umami taste, which are completely separate from the perception channels of the other four tastes. Nowadays, when providing dietary guidance to post-operative patients, the combination of umami flavors is discussed separately. Patients have poor appetites, and it is difficult to whet their appetites just by blending the five flavors. It is much more practical to add the umami dimension.

Actually, we also have feelings about cooking ourselves. We cook the simplest plain noodles, just add salt and sprinkle some chopped green onion. It always feels a bit boring. If we add a few dried shiitake mushrooms and cook them together, the freshness will come up all of a sudden. Even the salt can be reduced by half a spoon. This kind of real taste experience is indeed difficult to return to the original five flavors. In fact, no matter how the classification changes, everything is centered around the word "balanced". Don't be partial to a certain taste, don't be overly spicy and salty every day, and don't drink milk tea and eat sweets every day. Mix up the flavors and mix them comfortably, which is the most suitable nutritious diet for you.