Bencao House
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Food as medicine

Ginseng

人参Rén Shēn

四气 Nature
Warm · 温
五味 Flavour
Sweet · Bitter
归经 Channels
Spleen · Lung · Heart
Shared-origin list
Permitted as food, 2012

Ginseng root is slightly warm, sweet and faintly bitter, and belongs to the Spleen, Lung and Heart channels. It heads the upper class of the Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE. China permits cultivated ginseng of five years or younger as a food ingredient, a rule set in 2012, and that is the only ginseng a kitchen should ever meet.

One whole dried ginseng root with its fine rootlets fanned out, photographed on warm plaster.
Panax ginseng · Cultivated root, five years or younger

Panax ginseng

四气 · Nature

  1. cold
  2. cool
  3. neutral
  4. warm
  5. hot
Warms gently

五味 · Flavour

sour
Gathers and holdsLiver
bitter
Drains and driesHeart
sweet
Fills, slows, harmonisesSpleen
pungent
Disperses and movesLung
salty
Softens and sends downKidney
归经 Channels
Spleen · Lung · Heart
Part used
Cultivated root, five years or younger
Shared-origin list
Permitted as food, 2012

In the canon

What the texts say

Ginseng is the strongest thing on this list and the one we are slowest to recommend. It heads the upper class of the Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, and it has carried a reputation ever since that has more to do with price than with pharmacology. Wild Manchurian root has sold for the cost of a car. Almost nobody needs it.

Shennong Bencao JingThe Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medicac. 200 CE

Sweet and slightly cold. It settles the spirit, quiets the soul, and brightens the eyes.

Upper class — the first of the herbs

Later authors moved it from slightly cold to warm, and the modern Chinese reading is warm. That drift is worth noticing, because it is the difference between something you might sip in August and something you would not. What did not drift is the tradition’s judgement of when it is wanted: exhaustion that has gone past ordinary tiredness — after illness, after loss of blood, after months of not stopping.

The classical picture is emergency, not maintenance. The single most famous ginseng preparation in Chinese medicine is one item on its own, given to somebody who has collapsed. That is the register this root belongs to, and the register in which the classical writers were most careful about it.

Two distinctions matter before you buy anything. First, Asian ginseng — Panax ginseng, 人参 — is warm, and American ginseng — Panax quinquefolius, 西洋参 — is cool. They are used for opposite pictures and shops sell both as “ginseng”. Second, China permits cultivated Panax ginseng of five years or less as a food, a rule set in 2012. Older and wild root is not on the food list. What is sold as a supplement in the West is frequently neither.

In a kitchen

How it is actually used

The domestic Chinese use of ginseng is small and infrequent: two or three thin slices, steamed inside something else, in the coldest part of the year, and not every day. It is a winter item and a guest item. Nothing about the Western practice of a daily capsule resembles what a Chinese household actually does.

Steamed rice congee with ginseng slices

One bowl45 minutes

2–3 slices
Cultivated Asian ginseng, sliced paper thin
60 g · ⅓ cup
Short-grain rice, rinsed
750 ml · 3 cups
Cold water
2 whole
Dried red jujubes, split
  1. Rinse the rice twice and put it in a heavy pot with the cold water. Bring it to a boil, then drop it to the lowest simmer with the lid ajar.
  2. Cook thirty minutes, stirring once near the end, until the grains have collapsed and the congee coats a spoon.
  3. Slide in the ginseng slices and the split dates for the last ten minutes only. Long boiling makes the liquid bitter and does the root no favours.
  4. Eat it warm in the morning, and eat the slices; they will be soft and faintly sweet. In China this is a winter breakfast, not a daily one.

Chinese households also steam a few slices inside a chicken, or leave them in a covered cup of hot water for twenty minutes. All three are culinary uses. None of them is a schedule, and this page does not give you one.

Who it is for

Who it suits, and who it does not

Ginseng is warm and strongly supplementing, which means it is wrong for more people than it is right for. A body that is already hot, tense and running fast does not want it — a very common Western pattern, and the reason so many first-time drinkers report a headache, a short temper and a bad night rather than any benefit at all.

Tends to suit

  • Exhaustion that sleep has stopped touching, after a long illness.
  • A voice that fades by the afternoon and breath that runs short on stairs.
  • Cold, deep tiredness in the depth of winter.
  • A pale face and a weak appetite, in someone who is genuinely depleted.

Tends not to suit

  • High blood pressure, unless the person who manages it has said otherwise.
  • Anyone taking an anticoagulant, or medication that manages blood sugar.
  • Restlessness, insomnia, a red face, or a habit of running hot.
  • Anyone already taking caffeine or a stimulant medication.
  • Pregnancy, feeding an infant, and children.

Honestly

What to know before you start

The reading

Ginseng suits some people and not others

This page describes a food. It cannot tell you whether it belongs in your week, because it knows nothing about how you sleep, eat or feel the cold. A reading does: thirty questions, one photograph of your tongue, and a document written in English by a physician licensed in China for US $39, sent within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report