[Movers & Shakers] Yi-Wen Lee, The 'Plant-Forward Chef Educator'

Movers & Shakers is a column where we profile the people making things happen in Shanghai – entrepreneurs, creatives, artists, and whoever else is influencing industries/spaces and is making things move and shake in this city.

In a city where pork fat is practically a condiment, Yi-Wen Lee has made a career out of convincing people to eat less meat.

Lee, who calls herself a "chef educator," has spent over a decade building a reputation as one of Shanghai's most persistent advocates for plant-based eating and food literacy – work that sits somewhere between public education, sustainability advocacy, and culinary creativity. In practice, that means turning locally grown spaghetti squash into pad Thai, or teaching corporate employees to batch-cook plant-based burgers instead of ordering takeout.

Her efforts have drawn recognition beyond the kitchen. In 2024, she received the AmCham Shanghai Changemaker Award. The United Nations Food Systems Summit China Action Hub named her sustainable food education work a 2021 Best Practice case for food system transformation. She has also collaborated with the Good Food Fund and the SDG2 Advocacy Hub's Chefs' Manifesto network.

Day-to-day, Lee works with regenerative farms, NGOs, chefs, and wellness practitioners, running workshops for clients like IKEA, Google, and Dior – advocating for what she calls a "plant-forward" approach to eating that connects personal health with the larger food system.

CNS: You first arrived in Shanghai more than 20 years ago. What brought you here?

YW: It was 2002 when Three on the Bund was preparing to open. That was my first job here after leaving New York, where I'd been doing marketing, events management and branding. One thing led to another, and I was recruited by a Danish jewelry company, and after that, a retail consultancy.

During the fashion days, you're going to these Michelin restaurants, fancy gastronomy places, but you didn't know about the true cost of the food – how much was imported, the carbon emissions from shipping, how much food gets wasted just to make a plate look perfect.

CNS: So how did food become the focus of your work?

In 2012, I went to this week-long program in Massachusetts at the Kushi Institute of Natural Healing, and that's when I was awakened to the connection between food and health. Soon after that, I visited a macrobiotic restaurant in Los Angeles called M Café, run by Gwyneth Paltrow's former private chef. It really opened my eyes to the plant-based world.

I thought: I've always loved food, so why not focus on the education side of food? So I began studying macrobiotics, Ayurveda, raw foods, and health coaching. Then I spent about three years traveling and learning about wellness around the world.

CNS: Why come back to Shanghai?

Impact. If you want to influence food choices at scale, you have to be somewhere large and dynamic. Shanghai is that kind of city.

Also, my roots are Chinese – I was born in Taiwan – so it felt meaningful to come back and try to contribute something here. Shanghai reminds me of New York in the years I lived there: international, fast-moving, always evolving.

CNS: You describe yourself as a "chef educator." What does that mean?

I'm not a chef in the traditional sense. I use food as a social lubricant to talk about bigger issues – food literacy, climate literacy, and health. Sometimes I run cooking workshops. Sometimes I design menus or recipes for partners. Sometimes I do talks at companies or wellness retreats.

Doctors often say, "Eat more beans, eat more vegetables, eat more whole grains." Everyone knows that eating more plants is good for you. But people don't always know how to start. That's where food education comes in.

The terminology I usually use is "plant-forward." It's more inclusive, so that more people understand it's not about going fully vegetarian. You can be a flexitarian, you can be whatever style of eating. In Asia, when it comes to diet, people tend to segregate you based on religion or faith. But it's about making good food choices to build a resilient food system – resilient meaning local, regional, seasonal, as well as biodiverse.

CNS: China has incredible agricultural diversity. What are some underrated ingredients you wish more people knew about?

Many! Sea grapes from Dalian, for example. They can replicate the texture of caviar and are full of minerals, and are way more sustainable. There are amazing mushrooms from Yunnan that can mimic scallops when marinated and pan-fried.

I also love hemp seeds. A lot of people now know about flax seeds, which are grown in China too, but hemp seeds are not really promoted. They're very versatile. They can be sprinkled on salads, made into hemp milk – they have a really nice, nutty, earthy flavor. Also, tiger nuts from Xinjiang – in Spain, they make horchata from them.

Once you start exploring the plant world, you realize there is so much diversity.

CNS: What's your take on plant-based meat products?

They're interesting, but I see them more as an occasional treat. Personally, I prefer whole foods. If you batch cook beans, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, you can make burgers yourself. You can freeze them, crumble them into salads, or turn them into wraps.

Plant-based meat substitutes are convenient and helpful for transition, but we still need to watch how processed they are.

CNS: What do you think is the biggest barrier to getting more people to adopt plant-forward eating?

Behavior change. That's the hardest, because food is such a sensitive thing. It's part of our tradition, it's part of our culture, it's what mom and dad fed us, or our grandparents fed us. There's been a lot of sustainability talks here in China, but then, a lot of the events I've attended, the food served there is not even aligned with the ethos of sustainability!

We need more conversations, dialogue, and action plans to influence the influencers: event curators, event organizers, chefs, and catering companies. The catering companies, for instance, are the ones feeding kids in schools.

CNS: If you could redesign one everyday food habit, something small but systemic, what would it be?

Adding more whole grains. Brown rice, millet, black rice, purple rice, red rice, quinoa – they're all grown here now. And this is what fuels us, the complex carbs. So it's really dangerous now when people are cutting out their carbs. But choose the complex one, not the simple type.

Restaurants usually only use millet to make xiaomizhou, but there are so many ways to enjoy millet. Millet salad can substitute flour and egg as a base for pies and tarts, or be used as a thickener for pumpkin soup instead of butter and flour. Mixing in whole grains to desserts like pudding or chocolate mousse is also a beautiful way to transform them.

CNS: If Shanghai were to meaningfully shift to healthier, more sustainable eating in the next decade, what would need to change first?

Policy would be a very big support, because China is so huge, and Shanghai being a pioneering city – if Shanghai does it, then the rest will follow. Then chefs would also feel the need to learn more about playing with food and experimenting with more plant-based ingredients.

Policy change would definitely help reduce the cost of national health insurance, too. It would save the government a lot of money if people ate right, more healthfully.

CNS: What are some markers that would tell you, "we really made a change," 5-10 years from now?

I would love to see university courses in China about food system transformation and culinary medicine. Not just a one-off workshop, but an actual curriculum. Talking about the food system, culinary medicine education, so that it becomes something that people value.

So, education. If there's no voice or amplification in this area, then people won't think about it. It's about being top of mind, like in branding and marketing. We want to position food education as top of mind, like seed planting for kids in schools, or having a protocol for working with a catering company, such as you need to have a certain amount of whole grains, a certain amount of nuts and seeds.

Food is not just nutrition. It's culture, health, climate, and community. If children learned how to grow food and cook food in school, that could change everything, because when people understand where food comes from, they value it differently.

CNS: Lastly, when you're not cooking, where do you like to eat in Shanghai?

I like O'Mills – they have wonderful quinoa, sweet potato, roasted tofu, and roasted pumpkin options. I like Eli Falafel for their hummus wraps. I like little local mom-and-pop shops as well, as long as they don't use MSG.

Yi Zuo Yi Wang (一坐一忘) is one of my favorite Yunnan restaurants. The ambiance is really nice, and you can bring your wine. I love my wine. And this one's not really a restaurant, but Biofarm is my favorite farm. One of the things they have is ambrosia sprouts – sprouts made from filtered water, so you can immediately just eat from the packet.