On *Cow-Eats-Grass*
In 1982, in conversation in Singapore with local TCM colleagues, I shared some personal views on the relation of diet to human health — half-jokingly named the Cow-Eats-Grass theory.
The gist: in their long evolution, humans, by historical and environmental differences, developed different dietary habits — some meat-based, some plant-based; one cannot judge a diet's quality simply by how much meat it contains. Like animals: some are carnivores, some herbivores. Tiger eats meat; cow eats grass. One cannot say tiger is healthier than cow. To force the cow to eat meat would have it starve to death.
By the same reasoning, if a person's dietary structure changes drastically, health is affected.
Worth attention is the present tendency to over-emphasize meat for more nutrition — increasing the risk of illness, and during or after illness improperly increasing nutrition aggravates the illness or undermines treatment.
By my own long experience, for some illnesses, reducing animal foods aids treatment and recovery. Examples: a febrile disease with persistent high or low fever; eat blandly, vegetable-based, with diet-restriction, to help the fever break. After a febrile illness, also bland and restricted. The Neijing warns "on a febrile illness: eat meat and it returns; eat much and the residual lingers" — words to heed.
E.g., a patient with months of unbroken fever; the mother, afraid of insufficient nutrition, forced large meals of meat, fish, milk, eggs daily, until appetite was poor, the belly distended, the coating greasy and thick. Such tonifying-by-food fed the bandit with grain. Later, TCM and bland-restricted diet — one week, fever resolved, recovery.
Clinically many illnesses do well on bland diet: chronic hepatitis with stuck-up transaminase — bland helps lower it. Chronic nephritis with protein-urine lingering — vegetarian-restricted diet aids the kidney's repair. Acute and chronic renal failure with rising urea nitrogen — controlling protein intake lowers it. Hyperlipidemia with long-elevated lipids — bland helps. Leukemia and aplastic anemia with long-abnormal blood counts — bland helps. Lupus, Behçet, prone to recurrence — bland reduces symptoms and recurrences. In some malignant tumors, bland diet with treatment may reduce symptoms and prolong life. Most such cases are blood-aspect stasis-and-heat; meat helps the heat and aggravates illness — vegetarian is best. From clinic, the Cow-Eats-Grass theory has some real basis.