Episode 5: The Concept of Food Energetics

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PET | TAO Podcast.

I’m your host, Dr. Marc Smith – 20 year practicing veterinarian and co-creator of PET TAO Holistic Pet Products.

What we’re going to talk about today is this concept of – It’s somewhat of a confusing concept, and I want to kind of compare it to our Western view of food.

Then I want to explain food energetics and how food energetics can be beneficial to your pet.

In the West, the energy of food is denoted by the calorie.

The calorie is a measurement of the amount of energy required to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius.

All of these measurements and tests are done before the food ingredient ever goes into the body.

The term Food Energetics is totally different.

The term Food Energetics is an Eastern concept.

It all deals with how the food is going to exert its effects on the body after consumption and not before.

In Eastern food therapy and food energetics, there are three types of energy.

One is warm, one is cooling and one is neutral. All natural occurring foods, meats, vegetables, grains, fish, they all have one of those associated energetics.

They’re either cooling, warming or neutral.

The interesting thing is how did these ancient Eastern cultures, ever come across this concept of food energetics?

What they did is they observed.

The observed how animals act.

They observed animals’ behavior.

How food grows.

What time of year food grows best.

How you feel after you consume certain foods.

I’m sure most of you can appreciate, there’s a different feeling with you consume lemon in your water and when you don’t.

There’s a certain feeling you get, when you eat a habanero pepper, that you may not get when you eat corn.

It’s because the energetics works differently on your body.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have an older pet. He’s a ten year old lab.

You live in the south, where the heat can be relentless.

Your dog paces at night, your dog pants a lot.

Your dog has a dry, red tongue.

These are all signs of heat in your pet. Or in your dog.

With the underlying goal of being balanced, what do you think you’d feed your pet?

You’d feed your pet cooling foods.

Foods such as rabbit, fish, honey, turkey.

Food that help to energetically cool down the body.

This is a simple, straightforward way of understanding food energetics and how it contrasts with our Western view of food energy.

Let’s take another example.

Let’s say you have a dog that slobbers a lot.

A dog that has trouble getting around, or maybe a dog that walks slowly and gets better as he kind of moves around and kind of warms out of his lameness.

The energetic balance in your dog, or the energetic quality that your dog is exhibiting, is one of cool. He’s cold.

In order to re-balance your pet, you need to feed your dog warming foods.

Foods such as venison, corn, white rice.

Let’s even take it a step further.

Many of you get out of bed in the morning, and you’re hunched over in your back, and you go, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

As you move around you get better.

The reason why is because your body’s warming up.

You yourself could benefit from foods that warm you up.

Foods like venison, white rice, corn, and maybe even a little beef kidney if you can stomach it.

As you can see there’s a vastly different view of the Western concept of energy, and the Eastern concept of Food Energetics.

If you want to learn more about food energetics and how food energetics can be beneficial to your pet, then download our free e-book at www.pettao.com and educate yourself on food energetics and how Eastern food therapy can benefit and help your pet.

I will see you again next week, and if you have any other things you want me to talk about, you’re welcome to send an email and if you like what we had to talk about today on our podcast, then give us a rating on iTunes.

In the meantime, have a good week.