Foodthink’s first issue of The Alchemy of Food breaks down kombucha through 20 questions — from cultivating the mother culture and tea-to-sugar ratios to identifying mould, secondary fermentation and storage, covering the full hands-on process.
Sun Shan, farming in Canada, turned kale earning rave reviews but selling poorly at the Farmers’ market into Korean-style kimchi, building a fermentation kitchen at Chi Garden Eco Farm. Fermentation touches gut microbiota and memories of home; she shares beginner insights from chilli sauce to fermented pickled vegetables.
Inspired by Finnish immigrants carrying Viili culture in a handkerchief to America, designer Xu Xijing screen-prints the negative patterns of three natural yoghurts onto cloth, paints the positive shapes in yoghurt, and makes tiny culture containers that revive in milk—sending them to friends to keep roaming.
Kouzi arrived alone in Villain’s Valley two years ago to farm. Of over a thousand saplings, most were tuition fees; fruit flies spare barely one pumpkin in ten. Every mouthful, then, must be savoured and treasured.
After over three years in Wicked Valley, Fujian, farmer Kōuzi has reaped an entire paddy crop by hand for the first time, from transplanting to final cut. The harvest was treated as a festival: harvest meals prepared three days ahead, the first block of paddy cut between downpours.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit propelled jiàn shǒu qīng viral – prices soared, e-commerce platforms scrambled to list it, and poisoning cases outside Yunnan surged. “Toxic” and “can you eat it” are two different questions – cooking experience and “see little people” mindset won’t ship in a click.
From 1949, the Soviet government distributed 600-square-metre suburban plots to workers’ families: potatoes, vegetables and jam from the plot sustained them through long winters — and defined the summer of an entire generation.
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 cooperative’s home-brewed green plum wine was targeted by professional counterfeit hunters and its partner fined; building a processing factory far exceeds smallholders’ means. Lawyer Zhang Xueming, anthropologist Zhong Shuru and rural entrepreneur Li Jie each share their views on small-scale operators’ plight under food safety regulations.
Anthropologist Zhong Shuru, lawyer Zhang Xueming and rural entrepreneur Li Jie noted at a Foodthink and Tencent News roundtable that food safety risks arise at every stage, from cultivation to distribution. Both traceability and testing remain constrained by a lack of information; consumers must actively discern to protect their plates.