Nutrition structures, dietary health trends, and the relationship between bodies and food.
Riders eat just twice a day, pushing through peak delivery hours on biscuits and flatbread snacks. Medical studies across multiple countries show that the dietary imbalance and chronic stress wrought by intense delivery work are driving up gig workers’ risk of depression, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Living alone, young people scroll their phones while eating. Some feel it brings companionship, some grow emptier the more they watch, and others discover that sitting down to eat properly with someone close, or cooking a meal by hand, beats any “mealtime” video.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., riding the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, has axed 3,500 FDA staff, slashed its budget by $400 million and suspended the food-testing sampling programme — hitting an agency already short-staffed and embroiled in several recent fatal food safety incidents.
Sourdough, olive oil and flaked sea salt have become the hottest items on UK supermarket shelves, behind which lies the anti-ultra-processed food movement sparked by the #UPF hashtag on TikTok. But Waitrose caters primarily to middle-class consumers, and “eating clean” is being packaged as a new consumption hierarchy.
Ten-fen school-gate ice lollies, Ah Ma’s pig’s-trotter rings from the market, and mother-steamed táo guǒ – Zhang Fulan’s most solid childhood flavours in 1990s Jieyang, Chaoshan; after snack chains and food delivery reshaped a generation’s bodies, she returned to the stove to relearn those guǒ pǐn with her mother.
The sugar industry bought off Harvard professors; Coca-Cola manipulated obesity research. For over half a century, food giants have persistently distorted nutritional science, reducing food to isolated nutrients—at the expense of Americans’ health.
On World Book Day, Foodthink brings together recommendations from its editors, authors and fellow travellers in the field — over ten books that, unbidden, converge on the most fundamental connection between people and food, land and the natural environment.
China’s registered dietitian system has no ethical guidelines on commercial endorsements, so taking ads easily becomes a purely financial choice. US Registered Dietitian (RD) Zheng Luyue interviewed peers; the traffic-integrity trade-off varies individually. Consumers can spot pseudo-science communication by identifying conflicts of interest and questioning data sources.
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.
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).
