FAQ

About Yasai Yakuzen

What is vegetable yakuzen?

Yasai Yakuzen is a way of eating that settles the body from the inside, using everyday vegetables you can buy at the supermarket. Working from the ideas of yakuzen, it chooses ingredients to suit your constitution and the season, with the aim of making daily meals both better to eat and better for you.

How should I start with Yasai Yakuzen?

Start by getting to know your own constitution. Yasai Yakuzen recommends using the constitution check to identify your type, such as qi deficiency, blood deficiency, yin deficiency, yang deficiency, phlegm-damp or blood stasis, and then bringing in the ingredients and cooking methods that suit it.

Who is Yasai Yakuzen for?

Yasai Yakuzen is a new kind of self-care through food, for anyone who feels vaguely off from day to day. It particularly suits people who want to settle both mind and body, people who are busy at work and want self-care that is simple, people who work in food or health, people interested in natural eating, vegan or plant-based diets, and people who have been curious about yakuzen and Chinese medicine but found it too daunting to start.

Yakuzen basics

What is yakuzen in the first place?

Yakuzen is a way of thinking about food that combines ingredients to suit your constitution, the season and how you feel, on the basis of Chinese medicine. It does not use special medicines; the aim is to keep the body in balance through everyday meals. Yasai Yakuzen makes that thinking easy to practise with everyday vegetables.

What are the four natures and five flavours?

The four natures and five flavours are the basic way yakuzen describes what an ingredient is like. The four natures are cold, cool, warm and hot, plus neutral for anything that leans neither way, describing the tendency to cool or warm the body. The five flavours are sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty, describing the quality of the taste. You can check the four natures and five flavours of each vegetable under vegetable benefits.

What are meridians?

Meridians show which organs in the body an ingredient is held to act on, such as the Spleen, Stomach, Liver, Kidney or Lung. An ingredient said to enter the Spleen and Stomach is held to work alongside digestion and circulation, which gives you a guide for choosing ingredients to match what is bothering you.

What is the difference between yakuzen and kampo or kampo medicine?

Yakuzen is a way of settling the body through everyday food; kampo medicine is medicine made by combining crude drugs. Both rest on Chinese medicine, but yakuzen uses no special crude drugs and can be kept up at the family table without strain. Yasai Yakuzen works mainly with everyday vegetables.

Bringing it in for your constitution and the season

How do I find out my own constitution?

Yasai Yakuzen has a constitution check that takes about three minutes. Once you know which way you lean, towards qi deficiency, blood deficiency, blood stasis and so on, it becomes easier to choose the ingredients and the way of eating that suit you. Starting with the check is what we recommend.

Are there vegetables you recommend for each season?

In yakuzen, how you feel shifts as the seasons shift, so it matters to choose ingredients to match. In summer, for example, bring in ingredients that cool the body; in winter, ones that warm it, and you can manage how you feel through the year. You can also search for seasonal vegetables from vegetable benefits.

What should I choose when I feel the cold or notice swelling?

In yakuzen, when you feel the cold the guide is to choose warm and hot ingredients held to warm the body, such as ginger and spring onion; when swelling is on your mind, choose ingredients held to move excess fluid. What suits you changes with your constitution and the season, so knowing where you are comes first.

Ingredients and cooking

What are the typical ingredients used in Yasai Yakuzen?

Yasai Yakuzen works mainly with seasonal vegetables and everyday ingredients you can pick up easily at a supermarket or greengrocer. Not special items like goji berries or kampo crude drugs, but carrot, daikon, spring onion, lotus root, shungiku and kabocha, things you can bring to the table today, which is what makes it easy to keep up. What each vegetable does in yakuzen terms is under vegetable benefits.

Do I need to get hold of special crude drugs or kampo ingredients?

No. Yasai Yakuzen works mainly with everyday vegetables from the supermarket or greengrocer rather than special items like goji berries or crude drugs. Nothing special to prepare means you can start with today's meal.

Can I use dried vegetables for yakuzen?

Yes. Dried vegetables keep their aroma and savour, and you only have to rehydrate them, which makes them easy to use and easy to keep up with. Yasai Yakuzen uses dried vegetables as a way of getting vegetables in while keeping the cooking simple.

How do I tell whether an ingredient warms or cools the body?

Yakuzen holds that each ingredient has one of the four natures: cold, cool, warm, hot or neutral. As a rule, things in season in winter and things eaten cooked tend to warm the body, while things in season in summer and things eaten raw tend to cool it. You can check the four natures and five flavours of each vegetable on the Yasai Yakuzen vegetable benefits page.

Courses and enrolment

Do I need to know about yakuzen?

The lessons explain general yakuzen knowledge, so you can take the course knowing nothing about it.

What do I get out of taking the lessons?

You can put what vegetables do to work when you cook in everyday life. If you work in food, you can also use the knowledge in recipe and product development.

Is the course a one-off purchase?

Once you buy it, you can view the course indefinitely, barring something such as the service closing.