Our ancestors have improved the dietary life for the good health and long life for a long time. They evolved the theory called 《Yaksindongwon》 long time ago and have developed the national food from such view. It means that the medicine and food have the same origin. That is, it means that medicine and food play the same role for the health.
From such theory of the dietary life, in our national cuisine there are many therapeutic dishes such as a sweet rice dish, chopped meat on a spit and so on.
Korean edible mountain herbs’ dishes are well known to the world for their therapeutic efficacy and so they are called the therapeutic dishes. Our typical herbs are aralia shoots, anise, aster scaber, Todok, Songi mushroom and so on.
They contain many kinds of components which act as anticancer medicine, expectorant, heart stimulant and so on.
Korean cuisine has many nutritive dishes such as medical gruel, kinds of soup and so it is called cuisine for the good health and long life.
The advantage of medical gruel is that it is the combination of the dietory cure and medical cure and that it is used as the tonic medicine and nutritive supplementer.
Besides, the dishes effective for the good health and long life are Insam thick chicken soup, dog soup, sparrow dishes, and fish dishes and so on. They are peculiar in taste and effective as the dishes for the good health and long life.
The nutritive advantage of Korean cuisine is that the dishes are processed well in order to absorb all the original nutrition of ingredients as they are.
Such dishes are slices of raw fish, cooked rice wrapped in lettuce and so on. Unlike the other countries, in our cuisine there are the dishes of slices of raw beef, ones of cattle liver and so on. With the fish such as carp, trout, snakehead, octopus and so on, we prepare the sliced raw meat and eat it with the viregared red pepper paste.
The nutritive advantage of Korean cuisine is that the dishes are well assessed and cooked scientifically in order to combine the animal and plant materials rationally and maintain the balance between acid and alkali.
Such dishes are Pyongyang cold noodle, meat dumpling soup, bailed rice mixed with subsidiary articles of diet, beef stew and so on. Such dishes are the proudful ones whose animal and plant materials are combined rationally and balance between acid and alkali is well maintained.