How food is fed can affect its yin and yang quality. When we feed our pets their wholesome raw meat diet, the meat is always raw. This is the natural state that our carnivore friends expect their food to be in. But there may be instances when, a quick stir–fry is necessary.
Let's first examine the yin and yang spectrum in terms of cooking.
Yin (cold)
⇑ Raw
| Marinated
| Blanched
| Steamed
| Poached
| Boiled
| Pressure Cooked — neutral
| Stir–Fried
| Shallow Fried
| Deep Fried
| Baked
| Barbecued
⇓ Roasted
Yang (hot)
As we can see from the chart above, raw meat is pure yin
energy while roasted is pure yang
energy.
In terms of health, a cold (yin) body leads to problems such as diarrhea while a hot (yang) body leads to problems like constipation. This is a very simple example that shows the how yin and yang have opposite affects. Ultimately, we want a balance of yin and yang in the body.
Our pets, being natural carnivores, are meant to eat raw meat. Thus their body is naturally designed to adapt to the coolness or yin energy of the raw meat. I suspect, the fact that our pets produce 15 times more hydrochloric acid in their stomach, that the strength of the acid helps to combat the coolness — but I am only guessing — the reality is that Mother Nature has it all figured out anyway and in fact, the fat our pets naturally eat may offset the coolness of the meat since fat has yang energy. But when we begin to feed commercial pet food, which is cooked, we can begin to see how the yang energy begins to increase substantially.
Dry food would be under the category of baked
while cooked meats, depending on how they are cooked, would be anywhere from stir–fry to baked. Either way, when you feed cooked meats, our pets are getting excess yang energy that they are not meant to get.
Many of the problems that plague our pets begin, as a result, of a dirty colon. One of the keys to a healthy colon is to have moisture in the colon. But when you eat foods that are high in yang energy or when your lifestyle is full of yang energy, then the heat of the yang energy begins to burn up all of the moisture in the body, including the moisture in the colon. When the moisture in the colon begins to go away, constipation begins to happen. In humans, a sore throat is connected to constipation, according to Chinese herbal medicine. As a result, in Chinese herbal medicine, the method to curing
a sore throat is to treat the constipation — a sore throat is the sign of excess yang energy as is tooth pain, mouth ulcers (canker sores), dry skin, etc. Of course, this is all very general talk but you are beginning to see how things are connected, from a Chinese herbal medicine point of view.
Now if you consider that the number reason why pets go to the vets is due to skin and coat problems, we can begin to see how the excess yang energy of commercial pet food and cooked meat diets is affecting our pets.
The study of Chinese herbal medicine is really complex and there is no way I could fully explain everything here — plus, to be honest, Chinese herbal medicine is so deep in knowledge that I too am still learning. But I still apply this knowledge to the health our pets in a very basic and often helpful way.