Foodthink Says Milk, a symbol of purity and nature, is in fact an ideal breeding ground for microbes. Its propensity for rapid spoilage and decay meant that, originally, it was ill-suited for long-term storage or long-distance transport. Initially, milk was indeed a localised food, yet in today’s modern dietary system,…
Foodthink Notes Can “local vegetables” still be found at the rural markets on the outskirts of Beijing? The answer lies in the hands of those elderly farmers who still persist in saving their own seeds. After ten years of farming at the Gaia Worth Garden in the far suburbs of…
A Word from Foodthink Zha Shiyi, born in 1990, is a member of the Huayao Yi people from Shiping County, Yunnan—a “girl grown up in the village” deep in the mountains. After graduating from college, she worked for a television station before resigning in 2019 to devote herself to writing.…
Foodthink says The Atlantic salmon is known more commonly in China as ‘salmon’ (sanwenyu). Last week, we published a piece on salmon farming, ‘Is Salmon Truly “Free”?’. But what of the state of wild salmon? We may have forgotten what truly wild salmon is; they are almost impossible to find…
Foodthink Says Xibei has apologised and promised to improve, and Luo Yonghao has fallen silent; the storm over Xibei’s ready meals has subsided for now. But has the controversy truly ended? Debates and doubts regarding ready meals may resurface—what will be the next focal point? Before the public fully recognises…
Foodthink says *Eating the World: Industrial Britain, Food Systems and World Ecology* was published in 2020 by Chris Ott, a historian at Ohio State University. The book examines the shift in the British diet since 1750 alongside industrialisation: a transition from locally sourced plant-based proteins to the mass consumption of…
Foodthink Says “Stories about food are the best stories we can tell.” This is what veteran BBC journalist Dan Saladino told Foodthink during an interview at the 3rd International Conference on Agricultural Biodiversity this May. Saladino specialises in reporting on food and agriculture. Over more than a decade, he has…
The film *Nei Sha* opens with an immediate explanation of its title. On the banks of a reed bed in winter, Teacher Tang, an organic farmer, explains to a visiting professor: this is the mouth of the Yangtze River, where shifting sands have deposited over time to gradually form islands.…
For World Book Day on 23 April 2025, Foodthink has compiled a reading list recommended by our editors, authors, and peers. Although these suggestions were gathered independently, they converged instinctively on the most fundamental relationship of human existence: our connection to food, land, and the natural environment. From Bruno Latour’s…
Throughout 2024, we received a wide array of books spanning food, agriculture, ecology, sustainability, and culture—each documenting the complexities and possibilities of our world in its own way. From the hurried labourer to the modern grassland pastoralist, from the food politics behind foie gras to the diverse efforts in seed…
