Products Description
There is a type of snack product on e-commerce platforms. The product names of these products have a strong flavor of "preserving the Chinese side", such as "Qiongyu Gao", "Bazhen Gao", "Dixian Jian", "Meizi Wan", "Wusheng Gao", and "Huangjing Wan". All these product names are derived from traditional Chinese medicine dietary therapy prescriptions. For instance, "Qiongyu Gao" was first recorded in Volume One of "Hong's Collected Prescriptions", titled "Mr. Tiweng's Secret Method Qiongyu Gao". The ingredient list of the product also almost strictly replicates the selection and compatibility rules of ancient prescriptions.
This kind of typical functional snack food that is inspired by traditional Chinese medicine's dietary therapy culture in terms of craftsmanship, ingredients, compatibility and functions has no unified name in the academic field and no research literature on related concepts. To clear the name of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks is a topic worthy of attention at present.
Health-preserving food therapy prescriptions and the idea of food and medicine sharing the same origin are traditional Chinese dietary treasures. Promoting the "food therapy" concept and popularizing the idea of "preventing diseases before they occur", making good use of the reasonable and scientific ancient food therapy prescriptions and medicinal diets, and understanding the connotation and extension of traditional Chinese medicine health-preserving snacks, is conducive to merchants seizing the development opportunities brought by the Internet today. Develop snack-based health and food therapy products that better meet the consumption demands of today's Chinese people.
Ancient prescriptions with new trends, traditional Chinese medicine health snacks
In the business field, the category of "traditional Chinese medicine health snacks" is experiencing a booming development trend. Around this category, various terms such as "functional snacks", "health-preserving snacks", "traditional tonic foods", "Chinese herbal snacks", "functional snacks", "healthy snacks", "health care snacks", "instant health-preserving agricultural products", and "low-calorie and low-fat snacks" have emerged simultaneously. Naming these terms as health-preserving snacks can cause significant confusion and obstacles. Therefore, it is necessary to sort out and define "Chinese herbal health-preserving snacks". Clarifying the name of "traditional Chinese medicine health snacks" is the basis for the research on traditional Chinese medicine health snacks.
Traditional Chinese medicine health preservation snacks must meet three conditions:
The first is traditional Chinese medicine. Here, "traditional Chinese medicine" specifically refers to items that are both food and medicine. This is the core distinction between traditional Chinese medicine health snacks and functional snacks as well as health foods. The ingredients of functional snacks mainly include active polysaccharides, trace active elements, internal sweeteners (agents), peptides and proteins, functional oils, and beneficial bacteria, etc. These ingredients can enhance human physical fitness, prevent diseases, help restore health, regulate body rhythms and delay aging, etc. The ingredients of health food products include items listed in the list of food and medicine sharing the same origin, as well as other traditional Chinese medicines. It can be seen that the ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are more in line with the thinking recognized by the traditional Chinese medicine dietary therapy for health preservation that "dietary therapy is more important than medicinal treatment".
Second, most health preservation and traditional Chinese medicine health preservation snacks are derived from ancient health preservation dietary therapy prescriptions. Therefore, traditional Chinese medicine health snacks naturally possess the attribute of health preservation. In the field of traditional Chinese medicine, the definition of health preservation is a consensus, which is "a traditional Chinese health care method based on traditional Chinese medicine theory, using methods such as regulating the spirit, guiding, and seasonal dietary and medicinal nourishment." For instance, the full title of "Yam Almond Milk Candy Pills" on the Taobao platform is "Yam Almond Milk Candy Pills, Ancient Formula Handmade Herbal Pastries, Milk Snacks, 6G, 30 Pills". Among them, "Di Xian Jian" is a famous prescription for taking medicine from ancient Chinese Taoism for health preservation and cultivation, so it should be classified as a traditional Chinese medicine health snack.
The third is snacks. Snacks, also known as snack foods, Article 150 of the Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that snack foods refer to all kinds of finished products and raw materials for human consumption or drinking, as well as items that are both food and traditional Chinese medicinal materials, but do not include items for therapeutic purposes. Therefore, "Sea Dog Whip Special Tonic Capsules" do not fall under the category of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks. Its main ingredients, sea Dog Whip, Epimedium and safflower, do not fall under the category of "items that are both food and traditional Chinese medicine" as defined by the Food Safety Law. Thus, it is a health product with clear therapeutic claims.
The most significant difference between traditional Chinese medicine health snacks and functional foods mainly lies in the "health preservation" aspect. Functional foods focus on developing more natural, healthier, more effective and safer functional food additives, while traditional Chinese medicine health snacks pay more attention to restoring or improving ancient health preservation prescriptions and methods, and are deeply influenced by traditional Chinese medicine health preservation culture and traditional Chinese medicine food therapy prescriptions. Compared with functional foods, It appears more traditional and conservative. The main difference between traditional Chinese medicine health snacks and traditional Chinese medicine health food lies in the aspect of "food and medicine sharing the same origin". Traditional Chinese medicine health snacks adhere to the principle of food therapy, uphold the concept of food and medicine sharing the same origin, focus on nourishment rather than treatment, and emphasize the value of food therapy over treatment. In traditional Chinese medicine health food products, the proportion of traditional Chinese medicine components is relatively large. The therapeutic effect is more important than dietary nourishment. Under the current business environment, there are certain legal disputes. Whether traditional Chinese medicine can be used as food remains to be discussed.
To sum up, the definition of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks is as follows: Based on the theory of traditional Chinese food therapy, traditional snack products with food and medicine sharing the same origin as the main ingredients and claiming health preservation functions.
Classical recipes combined with modern technology - jointly ushering in a new era of healthy snacks
1. Classified by the dosage form of traditional dietary therapy prescriptions
According to traditional Chinese dietary therapy, the common dosage forms of ancient dietary therapy prescriptions include wine, powder, juice, dishes, soup, soups, porridge, cakes, pills, pastries, and pastes. Among them, pastes and cakes are the most common traditional Chinese medicine health snacks on e-commerce platforms nowadays.
Ointment refers to a type of preparation made by mixing fine powder of traditional Chinese medicine with the lipid matrix of animals and blending it into a semi-fluid or nearly solid substance. Solid pill preparations are spherical solid dosage forms made by adding appropriate adhesive excipients to fine powder of traditional Chinese medicine or drug extracts. It is mainly for internal use. Because it is convenient to take and has a long-lasting medicinal effect, it has a very good health-preserving and nourishing effect.
Powder refers to a powdered preparation made by crushing and mixing one drug or several drugs evenly. Powders and powders have the characteristics of long-term preservation and rapid effect. Many proven prescriptions of powders are recorded in food therapy and medical books such as "Qianjin Yifang" and "Wai Tai Mi Yao", such as Sanghua Wax Powder, Danpi Powder, and Zao Dou.
Decoction is a liquid dosage form in which Chinese herbal decoction pieces are mixed, soaked in water, then decocted, the residue is removed and the juice is obtained. In the preface to "Emergency Thousand Gold Prescriptions", it is stated: "All ancient prescriptions for treating diseases use the decoction method, and among a hundred or so, there is not a single one that uses powder." ... When a sudden illness is caused by a thief's pathogen, a decoction must be used to wash it away. That is, on the Tmall platform, with the keyword "Chinese herbal health snacks plus dosage forms", a total of over 3,000 Chinese herbal health snacks were captured. Among them, the common dosage forms of Chinese herbal health snacks on the e-commerce Tmall platform are mainly ointments, pills, and powders. The distribution is as follows: over 960 powders, over 850 ointments, over 720 pills, and over 360 juice. More than 200 pastries.
2. New dosage forms of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have been added
The snackization of health food has given rise to the comprehensive application of new food production technologies, preservation technologies and packaging technologies. Traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have also emerged as snack-like packaging variants such as small packaged pills, small bags of pastes, meal replacement pastries and broken-wall powder on the basis of traditional food therapy prescriptions. Even interesting new product styles such as lollipops, gummy candies, rice noodles and snack bars have appeared.
For instance, the nourishing snack, Black Sesame Balls, evolved from the dietary therapy formula "Hemp Balls". Due to technological and human limitations, the ancient formula had more impurities and lower cleanliness. Nowadays, "Black Sesame Balls" consciously present standardized production workshops and have developed small and independent packaging styles to ensure product safety.
In addition, new styles of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have emerged. New snack processing technologies such as ultrafine grinding, food microencapsulation, FD freeze-drying technology, and supercritical fluid extraction have been applied to the development of traditional Chinese medicine health snack products. For instance, the polygonatum odoratum powder of De Element has adopted ultrafine grinding technology, which has enhanced the dissolution rate of the effective components of Polygonatum odoratum. Supercritical extraction and ultrafine grinding technologies enhance the extraction rate of active ingredients from food and medicine components. It has played an important role in the popularization of health food snacks. According to the main therapeutic effects, in ancient dietary therapy prescriptions, common main therapeutic effects can be summarized as prolonging life, enhancing longevity, preventing aging, lightening the body, tonifying deficiency, strengthening the body, improving intelligence, improving eyesight, strengthening teeth, promoting hair growth, and fasting for health preservation, etc.
A total of 458 snacks on the JD.com platform with health-preserving pills as the keyword were collected. Their main therapeutic functions include promoting hair growth, warming the kidneys and consolidating essence, eliminating heart fire during sleep, regulating qi and blood, slimming the body, reducing dampness, losing weight and detoxifying, calming the mind and promoting sleep, and meal replacement during fasting. Among them, the most sold are traditional Chinese medicine health-preserving snacks for promoting hair growth and eliminating dampness.
Another phenomenon is that under the influence of a healthy lifestyle, traditional Chinese medicine health snacks that advocate fasting and meal replacement have become new favorites. In line with the fashionable meal replacement foods that rely on new technologies, traditional Chinese medicine health snack e-commerce enterprises have launched the claim of "snacks that won't make you gain weight", which is also a move to cater to the consumption habits of the target market.
▍ Under the e-commerce Wave - The Rejuvenation of Traditional Food Therapy
Chinese herbal health snacks are traditional snack products that are based on the theory of traditional Chinese food therapy, mainly composed of items that are both food and medicine, and have health preservation functions.
A further in-depth analysis of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks reveals a clear trend towards younger people's dietary therapy. Specifically, the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks can be positioned from the following four dimensions.
WHERE: Online
Traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are not a product of the Internet. They have existed in ancient China, but their true prosperity was the result of the efforts of e-commerce, especially after the pandemic. It has even become an important choice for people when purchasing snacks. Therefore, it can be said that the main market for traditional Chinese medicine health snacks is online, while offline, they only appear sporadically in some pharmacies and offline snack stores.
The active online scenarios for traditional Chinese medicine health snacks include major e-commerce shopping platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, NetEase Youxuan, Weidian, Youzan Mall, and the wechat business system. Among them, JD.com and Tmall are the largest in scale.
WHO: The 80s, 90s, and Z generations
According to the "White Paper on New Product Trends in the Health Food Industry" by Yicai Global, people born in the 1980s and 1990s in second-tier cities are the main consumers of health food online. Among them, the consumption willingness of women is significantly higher than that of men. The growth rate of the post-90s, post-95s and post-70s generations is strong and they have great potential, while the middle-aged generation represented by the post-75s has shown negative growth. A consumer profile of health food products was conducted, and it was found that the female consumer groups born in the 1970s and 1980s in the lower-tier markets of third-tier and wireless cities have a more obvious preference for snack-like health food products.
Traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have adopted the function of meal replacement in ancient prescriptions. For instance, black sesame pills were not only the food formula for Taoist fasting and fasting in ancient times but also items for disaster relief and famine relief. Sun Simiao listed the method of taking black sesame (Note: Black sesame is also known as black sesame or Hu Ma) and the method of taking poria paste in "Emergency Thousand Gold Prescriptions". Hu Sihui of the Yuan Dynasty also mentioned "taking Hu Ma" in "Dietary Essentials", claiming that it "can lead to longevity if taken for a long time." A fat and healthy person lives a long life.
Shitutu.com _600173823_ Black sesame seeds are placed in bowls (Enterprise commercial).jpg
Observe the title page of the black sesame Pill on the e-commerce platform. Generally, the e-commerce title has been optimized several times. Each keyword leads to the corresponding traffic. If a keyword has no traffic for a long time, it will be optimized and replaced. In the links of high-selling black sesame pills, the keywords "fasting" and "meal replacement" frequently appear, indicating that the meaning correlation between "black sesame pills" and "fasting" and "meal replacement" is very high, and they are also the characteristics that consumers pay attention to when searching for such products.
WHAT: Light health preservation
Traditional Chinese medicine health snacks fall under the category of health foods, which is beyond doubt. The biggest difference between health foods and Chinese patent medicines is that health foods emphasize dietary nourishment. Chinese patent medicines focus on treatment. In the past, snacks were often equated with "unhealthy" in people's minds, with satisfying the taste buds being more important than other functions. Today, with the improvement of people's living standards, The demand for healthy diets is increasing, and the "nourishing" and "healthy" nature of snacks is an inevitable trend. As a subcategory of health foods, traditional Chinese medicine health snacks not only have the characteristics of snack relaxation and flavor adjustment, but also have the feature of light nourishment oriented towards health.
Most of the detail pages of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks promote and advocate the ideas of "preventing diseases before they occur", the theory of "harmony between man and nature", and the theory of "Yin and Yang". This is a very distinct label and feature of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks. The light nourishing and tonic function of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks mainly stems from their ingredients and compatibility. All the ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are derived from the principle of food and medicine sharing the same origin. The state strictly stipulates that items on the list of "Both food and Medicine" can be added, while items beyond the list cannot be added.
The ingredients used in traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are basically food and medicine homologous items, which are warm, sweet and neutral in nature, and have no toxic or side effects. Among the top 50 most frequently used medicinal foods in the category of traditional Chinese medicine health snacks on Tmall, such as ointment. Honey is a flavoring ingredient and a binder. Brown sugar enhances the warm or sweet nature of the medicinal properties, while yellow wine serves as an introduction to the medicine. It is also an auxiliary material for traditional Chinese medicine in pills, powders, ointments and elixirs. In addition, lemon, loquat, walnut kernels, red adzuki beans, white hyacinth beans, red beans, snow pears, autumn pears, autumn sunflowers and raw clothes all belong to food. The rest are all items that are both food and medicine.
Meanwhile, through the analysis of the nature, taste and meridian classification of the paste-type traditional Chinese medicine health snacks, it was found that the overall application rule mainly consists of sweet-tasting herbs that are warm and neutral in nature and belong to the spleen meridian. The spleen governs transportation and transformation, serving as a vital transportation hub in the human body and the source of the transportation and transformation of qi, blood, and body fluids. Among the medicinal pastes and tonic snacks, the spleen is the most common meridian, and most of them are tonic products. The basic principles of instant paste-like traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are "sweet, gentle and tonifying" and "harmonizing and protecting the spleen and stomach". This is actually roughly equivalent to the distribution pattern of the four natures, five flavors and meridians in the health food prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine dietary therapy, which conforms to the characteristics of health food therapy prescriptions and reflects the distinct health preservation idea of "food treatment first, then medicine treatment".
▍ Conclusion
Overall, traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have the characteristics of being mainly sold online, mainly consumed by middle-aged women, meal replacement, and having a light health function.
Today's traditional Chinese medicine health snacks have, to a greater or lesser extent, been influenced by the ideas and formulas of traditional health food therapy. Therefore, the traditional dosage forms of e-commerce traditional Chinese medicine health snacks, such as powder-based traditional Chinese medicine health snacks, past-based traditional Chinese medicine health snacks, and pill-based traditional Chinese medicine health snacks, are mostly derived from classical traditional Chinese medicine dosage forms, with relatively few new dosage forms added. However, with the development of new food production and packaging technologies. Some emerging product dosage forms and packaging forms are on the rise. The efficacy claims of e-commerce traditional Chinese medicine health snacks are almost inherited from the texts of ancient health food therapy prescriptions, and have been updated in a targeted manner in combination with the life scenarios and characteristics of modern people.
Article Source: Food Biotechnology and Big Health
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