Chinese Food as Medicine: Meals Built on Grain and the Seasons

What this article answers

What food as medicine means

Nourishing the body with everyday meals. Grain as the base, ingredients and cooking changed with the season

How much grain to eat

China's dietary guidelines say 200–300 g a day. Per meal, 70–100 g of uncooked rice

What to change with the season

Summer: cucumber and winter melon raw or briefly cooked. Winter: lamb with ginger, 2–4 hours at 80–95°C

How much goji and jujube to add

For chicken soup for 4 (1.5 L water): 10 g dried goji, 20 g jujube. Goji goes in for the last 10 minutes

How it differs from medicine

The Suwen says medicine attacks illness and food nourishes. This article doesn't cover health effects either

Some Chinese soup recipes list goji berries and jujubes (dried red dates) next to the chicken or pork bones. A winter lamb stew takes plenty of ginger, and summer brings dishes of cucumber and winter melon (a large, mild gourd). Flavor alone doesn’t quite explain these choices.

Food as medicine, yi shi tong yuan (医食同源), is the Chinese idea of nourishing the body with everyday meals.

Yaoshan (药膳, medicinal cuisine) is cooking built on that idea, with ingredients that also serve as herbal medicines.

This article looks at food as medicine from the eater’s side, and at what changes in how you plan meals and build the pot. It doesn’t cover the health effects of ingredients or treating illness. The Suwen, the classic of Chinese medicine this idea rests on, draws that line itself: medicine attacks illness, food nourishes the body.

Grain, season, and a light hand with herbs

Three things change in the kitchen.

What you do	Guide	Basis
Make grain the base and portion everything else around it	Grain: 200–300 g a day (uncooked weight)	“The five grains nourish” in the Suwen; China’s dietary guidelines
Change ingredients and cooking with the season	Summer: cool foods, raw. Winter: warm foods, simmered	The traditional grouping of foods as cold, cool, neutral, warm, and hot
Use medicinal ingredients sparingly, as flavor ingredients	Chicken soup for 4: 10 g goji, 20 g jujube	China’s catalog of substances used as both food and medicine; daily doses in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia

Sources: Huangdi Neijing Suwen, Zang Qi Fa Shi Lun; Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022); Chinese Pharmacopoeia, 2020 edition (references).

All three happen before you choose a dish, while you look at who is eating and what season it is and gather the ingredients.

Grain nourishes, the rest supports, says the Suwen

The Huangdi Neijing Suwen (黄帝内经素问), a classic of Chinese medicine, has a passage on how to put meals together, in the chapter Zang Qi Fa Shi Lun.

Phrase	Meaning	In the kitchen
毒薬攻邪	Medicine attacks illness	Curing illness is the job of medicine
五穀為養	Grains nourish	Make rice, wheat, and other grains the base of the meal
五果為助	Fruits assist	Add fruit on the side
五畜為益	Meats benefit	Keep meat, fish, and eggs to amounts that supplement the grain
五菜為充	Vegetables fill out	Use vegetables to fill out the number of dishes and the volume

Sources: Huangdi Neijing Suwen, Zang Qi Fa Shi Lun (references). The passage continues: combine their natures and tastes when you eat.

The passage starts with medicine, then gives grains, fruits, meats, and vegetables each their role. Food sits on the side that nourishes daily with grain at the center, not on the side that attacks illness.

Portion the day starting from grain

China’s official Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022 edition) also rest on a grain-based diet.

The 2016 edition’s heading “grains as the staple” was changed to “a wide variety, well combined.” The policy of making grain the staple stayed the same.

Grain 200–300 g a day, 50–150 g of it whole grain or beans

The amounts in the guidelines are uncooked weights.

Food	Per day (g)	Per meal (g; daily amount divided by 3)
Grains	200–300	70–100
Of which whole grains and beans (adzuki, mung, and so on)	50–150	20–50
Tubers	50–100	20–30

Sources: Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022), guideline 1 (references). Amounts are uncooked weights.

For rice, that is about 70–100 g a meal, uncooked. Replace part of the rice with brown rice, other grains, or adzuki beans, and you reach the whole-grain-and-bean amount in the table.

Vegetables, meat, and fruit come after the grain

Food	Per day (g)	Per meal (g; daily amount divided by 3)
Vegetables (half of them deeply colored)	300 or more	100 or more
Fish, poultry, eggs, and lean meat combined	120–200	40–70
Fruit	200–350	70–120

Sources: Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022), guidelines 3 and 4 (references). Amounts are uncooked weights.

Fish, meat, and eggs together come to 40–70 g a meal, about half the vegetables. A dish made of meat alone easily goes over that for one person. Mix the meat into a vegetable stir-fry, and use it to flavor the rice you eat it with.

Change ingredients with the season

Chinese tradition sorts foods into five groups by how the body feels after eating them: cold, cool, neutral, warm, and hot. This is a traditional grouping, not a nutritional effect.

Group	Examples	Season they are most used
Cold, cool	Crab, mung beans, bitter melon, tofu, cucumber, winter melon	Summer
Neutral	Rice, pork, eggs, soybeans	The base all year
Warm, hot	Chicken, jujube, lamb, ginger, chili	Autumn and winter

Sources: medicinal cuisine materials from Kagoshima University; Chinese Pharmacopoeia, 2020 edition (references).

In hot weather, use more cold and cool foods; in cold weather, more warm and hot ones. Neutral rice, pork, and eggs are the base all year.

Sources disagree on where cold ends and cool begins, or warm and hot. Some call lamb and ginger hot, others warm, and chicken is listed as warm or neutral. Rather than memorizing the groups in detail, use more watery vegetables in summer, and more lamb and strong aromatics in winter.

Change the cooking with the season

It isn’t only the ingredients that change with the season. The serving temperature differs from dish to dish too. The classic Rites of Zhou (周礼) describes the shi yi, the physician in charge of the king’s meals, and matches each dish’s serving temperature to a season.

Dish	Season it is compared to	Serving temperature
Rice	Spring	Warm
Geng (thick soups)	Summer	Hot
Jiang (fermented pastes and sauces)	Autumn	Cool
Drinks	Winter	Cold

Sources: Rites of Zhou, “Tian Guan: Shi Yi” (as read in Mayanagi 2016; references).

In winter, simmer lamb with ginger at 80–95°C for 2–4 hours

In winter, simmer lamb, a warm food, for a long time with ginger and scallion. Lamb shank or shoulder held at 80–95°C (176–203°F) for 2–4 hours turns tender as its collagen becomes gelatin. Turn off the heat when the meat comes away from the bone and the fibers separate when pressed.

Before simmering, cook the lamb for 2–3 minutes in boiling water with ginger and scallion, then throw the water out. This is chao shui (焯水), blanching. The fat and scum behind the smell of lamb leave with the water.

In summer, serve cucumber and winter melon raw or briefly cooked

In summer, toss cool foods raw, or finish them with brief cooking. Smash cucumber into pieces, draw out water with salt, then dress it with vinegar. Simmer winter melon in chicken or pork stock and turn off the heat once it turns translucent.

In the traditional explanation, cooking moves a food’s nature toward neutral. Daikon radish is cold raw, close to neutral when simmered, and makes a warm dish simmered with ginger. Eating a vegetable raw in summer and simmered in winter follows this idea.

Pair cold foods with warm aromatics

When you use a cold food, add warm ginger or scallion. Steamed crab eaten with ginger and vinegar is this pairing.

In the traditional grouping, ginger sits on the side that tempers cold. In the kitchen, it goes in as an aroma that covers the smell of crab and fish. The body side and the flavor side arrive at the same pairing.

Add medicinal ingredients by taste, below the dose

China keeps a catalog of substances traditionally used both as food and as Chinese herbal medicine.

The catalog had 87 entries in 2002 and 106 as of 2025. Goji berries, jujubes, Chinese yam, and ginger are on it. As herbal medicines, they are sold as gouqizi, dazao, and shanyao.

Goji and jujube: 10–20 g in a pot for 4

These amounts are for chicken soup. Simmer chicken carcasses or bone-in chicken, and add goji and jujube.

Ingredient	Taste and traditional group	Daily dose in the pharmacopoeia	Soup for 4 (1.5 L water)	When to add
Goji berries	Sweet, neutral	6–12 g	10 g (2.5 g per person)	About 10 minutes before turning off the heat
Jujubes (dried)	Sweet, warm	6–15 g	20 g (5 g per person)	From the start

Sources: Chinese Pharmacopoeia, 2020 edition, Part I (references). The timing is the one most common in Chinese home soup recipes.

The pharmacopoeia dose is the amount for a medicinal decoction. It isn’t a ceiling for how much can go into cooking. In cooking, use these as ingredients for sweetness and color, and keep each portion to no more than the lower end of the dose (6 g for both goji and jujube).

Goji simmered long splits its skin, falls apart, and clouds the soup. Jujubes give the sweetness of their flesh to the liquid, so add them from the start.

Check who is eating before using newly listed ingredients

Nine substances added to the catalog in 2023, including codonopsis (dangshen) and astragalus (huangqi), are not recommended for infants or pregnant or breastfeeding women. Before putting them in a family pot, check whether anyone eating falls in these groups.

If you want to use food to support someone who is unwell or has a chronic condition, talk to a doctor before adding any ingredient.

The plate’s side and the eater’s side

Among the ideas of Chinese cooking, balancing tastes and judging the dish look at the plate. Shi yang looks at the eater’s body and the season.

Idea	What it looks at	What you do in the kitchen
Wu wei tiao he (five-taste harmony)	Taste in the mouth	Remove odors, set salt as the base, choose one main taste and layer the others
Color, aroma, taste, and shape	The whole plate: eye, nose, mouth, shape	Match the color of the supporting ingredients, the timing of aromatics, and the shape of the cuts
Shi yang (this article)	The eater’s body and the season	Base meals on grain, change ingredients and cooking with the season

Ginger with crab is the same pairing in both. In wu wei tiao he it is a step to remove odor. In shi yang it is a way to pair a cold food with a warm one.

Japan picks by flavor, China by body

Every cuisine cooks with the season. What differs is how the seasonal ingredients are chosen.

Cuisine	How seasonal ingredients are chosen	What it looks like in the kitchen
Chinese	The eater’s body and the season (cold, cool, warm, hot)	Summer: cool foods raw or briefly cooked. Winter: warm foods simmered long
Japanese	How the flavor of the same ingredient changes through its season	Dishes change for the first of the season, the peak, and the tail end
Korean	A dish eaten to build strength (boyangsik)	Samgyetang, chicken soup with jujube, eaten piping hot in summer

Japanese cooks follow changes in flavor, such as the fat of bonito or the taste of spinach, to choose seasonal ingredients. Chinese cooks choose by the traditional grouping, using more cool foods in summer and more warm ones in winter.

When to adjust

When	What to do	Why
Meat dishes take over and there is little grain	Cook 70–100 g of rice (uncooked) per meal, cut meat to 40–70 g, and stir-fry it with vegetables	With grain as the base, meat becomes what flavors the rice
The summer table turns into nothing but cold dishes	Serve rice warm and soup hot, and chill only the dressed dishes	The Rites of Zhou gives each dish its own serving temperature
Sharing a pot with children or someone pregnant	Stop at goji, jujube, and ginger; leave out the ingredients added in 2023	The 9 new additions are not recommended for infants or pregnant or breastfeeding women

Common failures and fixes

Greasy soup and watery cucumber can be fixed. A strong lamb smell and goji that fell apart can only be partly saved.

Problem	Cause	Fix it now	Prevent it next time
The soup smells strongly of lamb	The lamb went in without blanching. Branched-chain fatty acids in lamb fat vaporized with the heat and left their smell in the liquid	Skim off the floating fat and scum, add 3–4 slices of ginger, and simmer 10 minutes	Cook the lamb 2–3 minutes in boiling water with ginger and scallion, throw the water out, then start simmering
The soup is greasy	Fat from the lamb melted into the liquid and floated on top, sitting heavy in the mouth	Cool the soup, lift off the fat once it sets white below 44°C (111°F), and reheat	Trim the thick fat first, and throw out the extra fat with the blanching water
The goji fell apart	Dried, shrunken goji soaked up liquid and swelled over long simmering. The heat-softened skin split, scattering flesh and seeds and clouding the soup	Leave the broken berries in the soup. Simmer fresh goji for just the last few minutes and put them on top	Add goji about 10 minutes before turning off the heat
The cucumber turned watery	The cucumber was dressed right after cutting. Salt drew water out of the cells by osmosis, and it pooled on the plate	Pour off the water and toss again with half as much dressing	Rub the cucumber with salt at 2% of its weight, leave 10 minutes, squeeze out the water, then dress it without adding more salt

Four things to remember

Food as medicine isn’t cooking that adds health effects. It is the idea of building everyday meals from grain, and changing ingredients and cooking with the season.

• Make grain the base at 200–300 g a day (uncooked), and pair fish, meat, and eggs, 40–70 g a meal combined, with vegetables.
• In summer, serve cool foods raw or briefly cooked. In winter, simmer lamb and ginger at 80–95°C (176–203°F) for 2–4 hours.
• Pair cold foods with ginger or scallion.
• In chicken soup for 4 (1.5 L water), use no more than 10 g of dried goji and 20 g of jujube, and add the goji about 10 minutes before turning off the heat.