Nutrition structures, dietary health trends, and the relationship between bodies and food.
Adding kelp and wood ear mushroom to dishes, swapping white-flour steamed buns for Shandong jianbing, and dipping oily dishes in vinegar water — these three moves helped a cook in his sixties shed 15 kg over two Spring Festivals, eating with the whole family exactly as always.
Beijing-born Liu Yang, from IT, fell for cheese while studying in France. From a small Huilongguan Farmers’ Market stall in 2009, he crafted over a dozen handmade cheeses blending French tradition with Beijing’s terroir, yet Bule Cheese Workshop faces the growth challenge of “from workshop to factory”.
From making pre-made cat food for three cats during the pandemic to always having fifteen finished meals in the freezer, Doudou turned the batch-cooking mindset into practical methods: portioning and freezing, keeping meat and vegetables separate, and sealing at low temperature.
What’s in sugar-free cola, Bingfeng and preserved plums, exactly? Sugar-substitute formulations stretch ingredient lists, and sweetness signals that can’t be relayed from gut to brain make quitting sweets even harder. Lulu, cardiovascular medicine doctoral student at Fuwai Hospital, takes us from ingredient lists to humanity’s evolving sweet tooth.
The UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy, effective from 2018, taxed manufacturers and gave them two years to reduce their sugar content; calorie intake and childhood obesity did fall, but most simply replaced free sugars with non-sugar sweeteners — which the WHO has warned also carry health risks.
The Wellcome Collection gallery in London, through more than 100 exhibits, traces milk’s century-long image-making from 19th-century “swill milk” to post-war “perfect food”, revealing how commercial interests, government rationing and nutritional promotion combined to make milk a staple of the modern table.
Shu Meng, who holds a PhD in sociology from Cornell University, and three hosts discuss the structural factors behind America’s unhealthy diet – from shopping distances and supersized packaging to comparisons with wet markets – and whether farmers’ markets and small-producer grocery shops can offer another path for dietary transformation.
Food security goes beyond national-level “grain security” – it is about whether individuals can access nutritious and safe food at any time. Nanjing’s “Vegetable Basket” Programme and its mixed-ownership wet markets offer a model for sustaining high levels of food security.
Foodthink hosts chat with food culture researcher Sun Lin about “legal, but unnecessary” food additives: soy sauce made without a single soya bean, a slice of toast containing over a dozen additives, and whether the true cost of industry replacing slow fermentation has been clearly seen.
