image: Reading from left to right, the framework begins with the historical corpus and current regulatory boundaries (Sections 1–3), which define what yao shan is and what its traditional constructs may legitimately claim. It proceeds to the evidence core (Section 4): A standardised finished product, staged exposure characterisation, causal testing along defined chains, and graded human evidence. Quality, safety, and efficacy governance (Section 5) form parallel guardrails that constrain every downstream step. The framework then moves to application settings (Section 6), industrial and digital translation (Section 7), and public and international communication (Section 8), before converging on the milestone‑gated roadmap and ten priority questions (Section 9). The figure is intended as a map of dependencies rather than a catalogue of topics: Each block names the failure mode it is designed to prevent.
Credit: Food & Medicine Homology, Tsinghua University Press
Against growing global burdens of chronic disease and ageing‑related health risks, food‑as‑medicine strategies attract wide attention. Chinese medicinal cuisine (yao shan) represents a valuable empirical dietary heritage rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Published in Food & Medicine Homology on August 19, 2026, this Perspective comes from a 53‑author cross‑sector consortium covering TCM, food science, clinical medicine, nutrition and regulatory science.
“Modernising yao shan is not just retrofitting old customs with new instruments. We need a falsifiable systems‑science framework that preserves TCM internal logics while requiring repeatable modern‑day evidence,” explained Wen‑Yi Kang, corresponding author from Henan University.
The authors define yao shan as a complex dietary intervention built on legal food ingredients at realistic dietary doses. They emphasize yao shan is not an official statutory food category in China; its market rules follow the actual legal classification of each product. Classic TCM ideas including nature‑flavour theory and compatibility rules should serve as testable hypotheses instead of direct proof of effect.
For mechanistic exploration, the team suggests studying standardised finished products and tracking real‑world in‑vivo digestion and transformation. A C‑G‑M‑P (component‑matrix‑gut microbiota‑metabolite‑host phenotype) causal chain is proposed, alongside the provisional “equivalent component ensemble” hypothesis to probe bioactive substance effects. Importantly, quality, safety and efficacy form independent yet connected evidence chains: stable quality cannot prove efficacy, and efficacy does not guarantee absolute safety.
The framework supports scenarios ranging from chronic‑disease risk management and healthy ageing to precision nutrition, AI‑assisted decision‑making and cross‑cultural scientific translation. A milestone‑based four‑stage roadmap guides progress: foundational definition, evidence construction, industrial real‑world deployment, and building international standards, together with ten priority research questions. This consensus‑driven framework went through three rounds of internal review to spot unsupported assumptions and foreseeable risks, aiming to make yao‑shan research transparent, verifiable and globally comparable.
This multi‑author consensus Perspective receives support from related interdisciplinary research programs.
DOI Link:
https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2026.9420167
Article Title
Modernisation of Chinese medicinal cuisine: A paradigm shift from empirical heritage to systems science
Article Publication Date
19-Aug-2026