Food Energetics


wellbeing, healing and disease prevention


Reading time: 10 minutes

What is food energetics? read on or download a free copy of our Food Energetics here

“Let medicine be your food and food be your medicine” said Hippocrates, the man who is reputed to be the father of western medicine. Somehow or other we have lost this sense of the value of food just as we lost the practice of energetic medicine. In the latter part of this century we have increasingly looked to the east to replace this loss. 

Chinese medical theory states that food is like a medicine.

Why eating close to nature is the way to go.


Food can do one of two things: it can benefit the body or it can be a deficit. Ancient civilisations understood these basic principles, but over time, we seem to have hit a grey area. We’ve disconnected from the fact that food will either take your pets health where we want it to go, or the contrary.

Along with vitamin D and sleep, food is a primal source of energy. We don’t drive our car into the petrol station and fill it up with water, and in the same way, we can’t expect our pets to thrive with minimal or incorrect nourishment. But what’s more, depending on your pet’s health, the food they eat may be creating a perpetual state of poor health – especially if their gut health is compromised.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), it is believed that each animal protein or plant-based ingredient has an energy that can interact with your pet's natural energy. An imbalance could cause itchiness, food sensitivities, skin irritation, or excessive panting. The goal is to create perfect harmony for both the yin and yang energies

The foundation to finding what type of proteins your pet should be eating depends on what their energy is like. The characteristics of each of the different energies can help you understand what your pup is:


Pets with cold energies are always seeking heat. They will have cold ears, nose, back and limbs. They tend to

snuggle up in blankets and can become sluggish during the colder months. Pets with arthritis that is affected by the cold can also be categorised within this energy.


Pets with hot energies can be warm/hot to the touch. They will always be seeking cool places such as a cold floor to lay on or shade. They may exhibit red eyes, red skin, and pant at inappropriate times (not while exercising or excessive heat).

By TCM theory, feeding your pet foods that will help your pet reach a neutral state will help create balance. If your pup has a cold energy, you will want to feed foods that are warming or hot. If your pup has a hot energy, you will want to stick with cooling foods. Both pups can eat foods that are considered neutral as they won't affect balance.

In TCM, we drill down a little further to look at the energetic properties of food, finding that they fall into certain categories: warming, cooling and neutral. The simplicity of this makes it very beautiful and easy for us all to adopt and drill down on the whole premise that food is indeed medicine.

How these categories work in the body is pretty straight forward:

Cooling foods

Cooling foods aid in clearing heat and toxins from the body, and nourishing the internals. Incorporating cooling foods into your pet’s diet will help to resolve the underlying disharmony that is causing the reaction.

Warming or hot foods

Warming foods assist in raising energy of the body and the organs as they

improve circulation. Use warming foods when there is internal cold, such as pain.

Neutral foods

These foods are neither warming nor cooling, but help to maintain your pet’s overall wellbeing. They can be extremely beneficial when the digestive system is weak and needs strengthening, as they are often very easy to assimilate.

Food therapy, when combined with other approaches, can be a very effective way to treat allergies in out pets.

Here is a list of foods energies:

Cooling foods include:

Meat: rabbit, duck

Fish: cod, whitefish

Vegetables: green leafy vegetables, chard, broccoli, celery, cucumber, eggplant, seaweed, kelp, lettuce, mushroom

Fruit: apple, banana, pineapple, cranberry, kiwi, lemon, mango, orange, pear, strawberry, tangerine, watermelon

Grains: barley, buckwheat, millet, mung bean, wheat, wild rice

Miscellaneous: eggs (duck), eggs (chicken), flax seed oil, cheese, yogurt

Neutral foods include:

Meat: beef, beef liver, goose, pork liver, pork kidneys, pork trotters, quail, tripe, bison, turkey

Fish: carp, catfish, herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines, tuna,

Vegetables: beetroot, broad beans, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, green beans, peas, string beans, pumpkin, potato, shitake mushroom, yams

Fruits: papaya, pomegranate, raspberry

Grains: white rice, brown rice, lentils

Miscellaneous: yogurt cheese, cow’s milk, honey

Warming Foods include:

Meat: chicken, chicken liver, pheasant, kangaroo

Fish: mussels, prawn, anchovy

Vegetables: squash, sweet potato

Fruit: cherry, date, peach, longan

Grains: oats, sorghum, sweet/sticky rice

Nut/Seed: chestnut, coconut,

Miscellaneous: ginger, galangal, turmeric, vinegar/apple cider vinegar, molasses, goat milk

Hot Foods include:

Meat: lamb, mutton, sheep, venison

Fish: trout

Miscellaneous: cayenne, chilli

Dishy Dogs Superfood meals, Meat: Beef (neutral), Chicken and Kangaroo (warming) include:

Fish: salmon (neutral), sardines (neutral)

Vegetables: green leafy vegetables (cooling), kale (cooling), chard (cooling), broccoli (cooling), beetroot (neutral), celery (cooling), sweet potato (warming), cabbage (neutral), carrots (neutral), green beans (neutral), string beans (neutral), pumpkin (neutral)

Fruit: papaya (neutral), apple (cooling), banana (cooling), pineapple (cooling), mango (cooling), pear (cooling)

Please note: Dishy Dogs Superfood meals are balanced. The warming meats (chicken and kangaroo) are counter balanced with cooling ingredients rendering them neutral.

Dishy Dogs Superfood supplements:

Flash Fangs (cooling)

Omega Boost (cooling)

Probiotic Pet (cooling)

Colloidal Silver (neutral)

Colostrum (neutral)

Turmeric Tonic (warming)

If you are interested in welbeing, disease prevention and healing your pet, then check out Dishy Dogs range of superfood meals, supplements, bone broth and treats.

Dishy Dogs is certified “Australian Made and Owned”. Our ingredients are of the highest quality and are 100% human grade, preservative free with no added salt, sugar, flavour or colours.