Abstract Anxiety has become one of the defining emotions of contemporary life, yet its meanings and treatments differ profoundly across cultures. While biomedicine approaches anxiety as a neurochemical disorder to be managed through medication, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) interprets it as a disturbance of balance among qi (vital energy), xue (blood), and emotion. This study draws on more than one thousand prescriptions from The Dictionary of Chinese Medicinal Cuisine (2002) to explore how the integration of food and medicine embodies the Chinese philosophy of harmony and emotional regulation. Through a data-assisted cultural analysis, patterns of flavor, temperature, and meridian attribution are mapped to reveal a recurring “sweet–warm” paradigm – symbolizing gentleness, moderation, and relational balance. Ingredients such as longan, jujube, and lily bulb are shown to work not only pharmacologically but also as sensory metaphors for emotional care. The findings suggest that medicinal cuisine operates simultaneously as a therapeutic system and a moral-aesthetic practice, linking nourishment of the body with cultivation of the heart-mind. By bridging digital analysis and humanistic interpretation, the paper highlights how traditional Chinese health wisdom enriches current dialogues on holistic well-being, affective ecology, and the cultural sustainability of indigenous medical knowledge in the Asia-Pacific region.
Zheng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.