Lifen Yang, a university-educated entrepreneur, originally thought starting a farm would be the best route to growing healthier food. Having grown up in the countryside, however, she faced social pressure to stay in the city and put her degree to work. "People have tried so hard to advance themselves, one can't just go back to farming," she explains. So she tries a "middle way:" opening Tusheng Restaurant in Kunming, in China's Yunnan Province, where she sources most of the produce from her parents' farm. In the video below, from the food series The Perennial Plate, Yang demonstrates how she makes tofu without the usual chemicals. "The movement of eating is magical, if you really think about it," she says. "You put food in your mouth and then it becomes part of your body." 

The Perennial Plate, an ongoing travel series, writes that there is a movement growing in response to food-related scandals in China. Previously, the series documented how farmers are using 1,300-year-old techniques to grow rice in a sustainable way in Yunnan Province. The Perennial Plate was created by Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine, who also shoot and edit the episodes. Check out more episodes from the series on the Atlantic Video channel. 

For more information about The Perennial Plate, visit http://www.theperennialplate.com/.