Urban food life, consumption behavior, and food culture.
In this episode of Food Talk, our hosts welcome back an old friend: Shu Meng, PhD in Sociology from Cornell University. Drawing on her widely read article, “The Bigger the Fridge, the Worse the Food? The Food System in Middle-Class American Fridges”, we delve into a pressing question: why does…
Earlier this year, four years after moving to the Netherlands, my partner and I finally rented a hectare of land in Utrecht province, and I began working on my farm. Before I decided to set up a farm, I completed placements at several small organic farms in the Netherlands. During…
Nestled among the trendy restaurants and cafés on the bustling Phoenix Hui retail street along Beijing’s Eastern Third Ring Road is a greengrocer named “Jishi”. If you’ve ever walked past it, you might have been drawn in by its unpretentious shop window and displays. In this episode, we take you…
At first glance, food security might seem like a rather academic subject, but it is fundamentally tied to the dietary health and nutrition of every individual on a daily basis. I will begin by unpacking the concept itself, tracing how this comprehensive framework took shape and the key developments it…
A Note from Foodthink Our memories of our mothers often seem intertwined with food and care. Perhaps she was a gifted cook, remembering every family member’s likes and dislikes, and soothing us with nourishing meals. Perhaps she wasn’t much of a cook, yet she consistently threw herself into household chores,…
I’m Xiaomi. In December 2021, aged 26, I resigned from a civil service training company. Unsure of what kind of work I wanted to do next, I returned home to prepare for the Chinese New Year. Over the holiday period, I began to reflect on my future direction, realising that…
In 2022, Britain’s headlines were dominated by the Queen’s passing, Charles’s accession, soaring heating and electricity bills, and a revolving door of prime ministers. Yet, as the year drew to a close, another story captured the public’s attention: the “egg shortage”. For several weeks from November through December, major supermarkets…
In Europe and Japan, there is a long tradition of educating children through nature and agriculture. Every year, primary school pupils are taken by their schools into the fields to learn how to sow seeds, tend crops, and prepare food. From the classroom to the great outdoors, and from spring…
When we talk about consumer rights, what exactly are we talking about? International consumer movements typically approach consumer rights from four key perspectives: the right to safety, the right to information, the right to choose, and the right to be heard. Today, Foodthink will take food consumption—something we all rely…
I. Tang and Wen make their home in a valley threaded by a stream. The watercourse is modest, running at about half a metre deep, but it flows all year round and is even marked on maps. Heading south, it merges with several other waterways before feeding into the Ohio…
