A s a famous couplet goes,“China is endowed with rich medical-food culture; Shennongjia is given a variety of health foods.”For a long time the local people here have formed a unique dieting culture.The sweet and sour magnolia berries in summer and autumn can be taken to relieve summer heat by blending with boiled Pueraria water.The stewed chicken with gastrodia elata is a soup locals often make at home.The local people’s living habits of using local materials and supplementing their food with medicine is a vivid manifesto of their dieting culture.There are so many delicacies that integrate medicine with food.There are stewed preserved trotters,stewed bamboo rice with ginseng,crude ginseng pumpkin autumn chrysanthemum cake,medicinal Wuchang Fish,tianma stewed artichoke strips,boiled egg with arrowroot flour,dendrobe cake,mashed autumn chicken,Shennongjia stewed pork with wax gourd,coarse grain cake with mashed tofu,Jiuhu radish cake, and many others.

Gu Qingsheng,a writer,once said,“Shennongjia is gifted to develop a medical-food culture for it has a high forest coverage rate and abundant resources.In addition,many plants here can be used as herbal medicine.In the past, inconvenient transportation caused by vast mountains and dense forests made it difficult for the locals to receive medical treatment;so they formed the habits of using medicine to complement food and maintain health,which later brought out a series of medicinal food with unique local characteristics.”

膳食調(diào)理

當?shù)厝碎L期以來形成了獨特的膳食養(yǎng)生文化，“藥膳文化滿華夏，養(yǎng)生美食匯神農(nóng)”。酸甜的五味子是夏秋當季水果，解暑去暑用葛根煮水服用，天麻黨參燉雞是家家常做的補湯。一飲一食間，生動展現(xiàn)了他們就地取材、以藥輔食的生活習慣。還有吊鍋臘蹄子、人參燉竹米、地參南瓜秋菊糕、藥膳武昌魚、天麻燉洋芋條子、葛粉養(yǎng)生蛋、石斛養(yǎng)生糕、金秋雞茸、神農(nóng)架賽熊掌、粗糧餅懶豆腐、九湖蘿卜糕……一道道藥食相濟的美味，令人垂涎欲滴。

作家古清生說:“神農(nóng)架森林覆蓋率高，資源富集，林下植物多是可以入藥的道地藥材，做藥膳有得天獨厚的優(yōu)勢。過去山大林密，交通閉塞，山民看病困難，普遍形成了以藥入菜、藥養(yǎng)保健的習慣，進而形成了獨具神農(nóng)架地方特色的系列藥膳。”