Meridians' Chinese and other Oriental specialty food items make it easy to add a healthy and tasty touch to meals. Asians have long valued seaweeds and dried mushrooms, a relatively small amount of which can turn an otherwise less than noteworthy dish into something special.

Though the connection between food and health has been firmly established for some time, in the Western world it is only relatively recently that it has been acknowledged that food can act as a drug. Food has powerful and persistant effects on our physiologies. We should take it as seriously as we do prescription medicine.

The medicinal aspects of food were recognized thousands of years ago in China. Foods have energy characteristics which may be tapped into for healing purposes. These ingredients would not have remained so popular however if they could not hold their own in the taste department as well.