ABSTRACT
Chinese dietary lore is not so much a set of beliefs, but of shared social practices within which ordinary people can claim a certain expertise. Over a billion people on the mainland and many more in the Chinese diaspora have inherited knowledge about how to adjust what they eat to have different physiological effects on their bodies. Whether they believe in traditional theories or not, that inheritance means they tend to think about their food in unique ways. This chapter is dedicated to understanding how this knowledge came about historically, and to explaining the background assumptions that have informed current collective practices.
