The Historical Study of Korean Traditional Funtional Food

한국의 전통적 기능성 식품의 이용에 대한 역사적 고찰

Natural substances, exploited in our daily life, have been applied to drugs to treat diseases and developed to functional foods by appropriate preparations, and these foods give beneficial effects on physical activities. In this paper, the utilization of traditional functional foods was studied with refer ring to old ancient writings published in the front-end of Chosun dynasty. The utilized vegetables were march mallow, turnip, radish, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, spinach, cucumber winter buds, flesh of a cabbage, eggplant, taro, burdock, Parsley, watershield plant, crown daisy, bamboo shoots, garlic, scallion, onion, acorn, bark of a tree, white goosefoot leaf, leaf of bean, pine mushroom, bracken. yam, mugwort, tea, ginseng, peppermint, fruit of the Maximowiczia chinensis, smartweed and pepper. The utilized fruits were chestnut, Chinese date, pine nuts, walnut, gingko nut, citrus. crab apple, pear, peach, grape, pomegranate, plum, Chinese quince, fig and watermelon. The utilized cereal were rice, barley, bean, buckweat and Job's-tears. The utilized sweetenings and seasonings were honey, wheat-gluten, sugar, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar. Our ancestors had a balanced diet using the various foods, and especially had a fundamental concept of "Foods have the efficacy of a remedy".edy".uot;.