Policy, institutional, economic, and technology trends shaping food systems.
Foodthink marks Qingming by building a “cemetery” for five articles deleted from its WeChat Official Account — detailing, one by one, why and when each vanished, from a Bianlifeng algorithm battle to a farmer’s plastic mulch film dispute — and leaving keywords to help readers find the originals.
Muyunpo was founded in 2017 by the non-profit Shuguang in Xiaojin County, Sichuan’s Jiarong Tibetan region. Villagers’ groups set their own foraging and cultivation standards, with sales surpluses returned to the community at year-end—replacing the traditional purchasing system of price-suppressing traders and farmers at the market’s mercy.
Meituan has funded environmental organisations dedicated to monitoring food-delivery plastic pollution, yet their critical voices have gradually faded. Two veteran environmental advocates compare this to the 2004 Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) case, noting that the balance of power between businesses and public-interest organisations has quietly reversed.
Old Li’s 70 mu of ecological farmland in H Province, guarded fifteen years, lies blanketed by mulch film fragments from a groundnut haulm plant 100 metres away. Spring ploughing slipping; two months of appeals yielded only two departments citing the same law yet deflecting responsibility onto each other.
Gannan herders call imported grain-fed meat “fake meat,” yet with local yak prices steadily falling since 2020 — a single adult yak fetches just over 6,000 yuan — many are forced to buy “fake meat” themselves.
Repórter Brasil built a traceability database combining satellite data and on-the-ground collaboration with indigenous communities, proving JBS was not “unable to trace” but actively used three-legged journeys to launder cattle from deforested ranches into the supply chain, ultimately prompting six major European chain supermarkets to boycott.
The National Health Commission has launched a three-year “Weight Management Year” initiative, yet modern obesity is a systemic issue shaped by food industry, takeaway and pseudo-health foods. Foodthink charts a scientific path from dietary structure through processed-food traps to natural dietary principles, beyond ‘dieting equals weight loss’ mindset.
Work vibe so heavy you can’t stomach a takeaway box; sweet soup 3–5 yuan dearer than dine-in; a rider’s hand slashed in the snow. Dozens of readers wrote down specific moments of pushing back against takeaway – from ready meals to plastic packaging, all pointing to a proper meal.
A cup of Americano squeezed to six yuan, a meat pancake to ten — traffic has become the platform’s weapon to force shops into loss-making price concessions. Pinhaofan’s cheapness is no technological innovation, but a cost borne jointly by shop owners and riders.
In 2023, The Examination and The Washington Post found that several US Registered Dietitians took money from beverage and sugar industry associations to endorse products while hiding sponsorship — and that the American Beverage Association is itself a principal sponsor of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND).
