Dietary health, food safety, nutrition, and food culture.
Zhang Kai of Fenye Brewing and Xu Xin of Mars Elephant Lab use a single grain to bridge brewing and baking—from spent-grain biscuits to an Earth Day beer brewed from leftover bread from ten Beijing bakeries—reflecting the practical challenges of the local grain supply chain.
At a slaughterhouse in eastern Sichuan, over ¥100 million in investment, daily beef sales mean pre-dawn complaint barrages, lost orders over scarce back sirloin, and blood stench that won’t wash off — nineteen years of education shattered by the butchers’ flexibility.
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.
In Èrén Valley, Fujian, Farmer Kouzi has spent four years clearing wild land toward self-sufficiency, turning a gully once deemed unfit for human habitation into fields for growing and admiring. This year, the gardenias behind the house bloomed for the first time.
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 proliferation of plastic is a byproduct of the petrochemical industry seeking outlets for post-war capacity, not a carefully considered decision. In Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Susan Freinkel argues that the problem lies not with the material, but with the relationship between people and plastic.
During those years of insurance back-office work in Shenzhen, Miantuan Jingjing’s table shifted from plastic takeout containers to an electric steamer and a bowl of chicken soup noodles — until her body pressed the resignation button for her.
From 2008, Cao Xiaohong built a group-buying circle for mums in a small Hunan town via Wotu Workshop; Xiao Yunsheng has sold veg at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market for over a decade. They reflect on building producer–consumer trust, and whether it can still withstand livestreaming and drop-shipping.
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.
Guanzhong’s old-variety muskmelon Baituwa, passed down for decades by farmers saving their own seed, has now retreated from city shelves under the pressure of large-scale cultivation and e-commerce sales, glimpsed only occasionally at rural markets.
