With this post, I am adding a new feature to this blog: posts adapted from Chinese media that I believe have long-term value. This is taken from China Food News of 10-4-2024.
A supplement marketed for people who keep working late at night; combing iron and b-vitamins
Good food makes you feel good and should therefore always alleviate fatigue to a certain extent. However, in the world of functional foods, anti-fatigue food is one of major categories in China. This article summarises current thinking about fighting fatigue through nutrition in China. It offers insight in what aspects are regarded important in China and in what ways Chinese food scientists are formulating these foods and drinks.
Types of fatigue
Fatigue is mainly divided into motoric fatigue and chronic fatigue. Motoric fatigue is a phenomenon caused by the temporary decline of the body’s function caused by exercise or hard work, which can be alleviated by supplementing amino acids, traditional Chinese medicine or vitamin-like functional foods. Chronic fatigue will not be alleviated by supplementing the body’s function and rest, but is accompanied by sore throat, headache, muscle and joint pain, lack of concentration and failing memory. Symptoms such as decreased strength, repeated attacks, long duration, high incidence. The cause of the ailment is not clear, but it can be related to exercise fatigue.
According to the definition proposed by sports biochemists at the 1982 International Sports Biochemistry Academic Conference (5th), fatigue is the decrease or interruption of the physiological supply of the body and the inability to maintain or reach the expected intensity of action. So far, there are different opinions on the mechanism of motoric fatigue, and there is no very specific and accurate theory to confirm its cause. At present, there are mainly nine explanation, namely: free radical theory, mutation theory, protective inhibition theory, ion metabolism disorder theory, immune disfunction theory, endocrine mediation disorder theory, metabolite accumulation theory and energy exhaustion theory. Fatigue is actually a protective reaction of the body, to avoid life-threatening failure of the body’s functions, thus reminding athletes or workers to reduce the intensity of exercise and work to prevent damage to the body.
Pace of life
The pace of modern life is getting faster and faster. In recent years, people’s fatigue has continued to increase. The number of people with exercise fatigue is large, and the incidence of chronic fatigue is gradually increasing. Therefore, timely alleviation of exercise fatigue and attention to food therapy and health care are of great significance for the prevention of chronic fatigue. This article reports on the analysis of functional foods and ingredients that relieve exercise fatigue, hoping to analyse the characteristics and benefits of functional foods and improve people’s quality of life.
Vitamins
Enzyme systems and non-enzyme systems in the body can remove free radicals. In the enzyme system, GPX (glutathione hydrogenase) can remove lipid peroxides, SOD (superoxide dismutase) can remove peroxides and superoxide free radicals, and CAT (catalase) can remove hydrogen peroxide; non-enzyme systems include coenzyme Q, reduced glutathione, β-carotene, and vitamins C and vitamin E, etc. A variety of antioxidants in the cells of the body maintain a relatively balanced level, reduce the oxidative stress in the body, and remove large molecules such as free radicals, proteins, nuclear fermentation and protective lipids in time to protect the body from the attack by free radicals. Therefore, supplementing the body with vitamins can effectively relieve fatigue.
The more common vitamins with an anti-fatigue function are: vitamin E, vitamin C, vitamin A and vitamin B.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant, which can act on cell membranes and subcellular structural membranes to prevent free radicals from oxidising unsaturated fatty acids in biological membranes;
Vitamin C can not only provide the body with hydrogen atoms, but also help the body remove free radicals and convert oxidised glutathione into a reduced glutathione;
Vitamin A can improve the body’s antioxidant status, inhibit the production of oxygen free radicals during exercise, reduce the body’s oxidative stress damage, delay the body’s fatigue, and thus improve the body’s ability to exercise;
Vitamin B1 and vitamin B2 in the vitamin B group have anti-fatigue effects. Under vitamin B1 deficiency, the body will accumulate a large amount of lactic acid and pyruvate. Vitamin B2 in the body can participate in the oxidation and energy generation as a coenzyme in the trihydroxy acid cycle.
Amino acids
Insufficient amino acids will lead to a shortage of raw materials for the synthesis of antioxidants and antioxidant enzymes, thus increasing free radicals. For example, fat oxidation is mitochondrial oxidation of carnitine with fatty acids as the carrier. Carnitine is mainly produced in the metabolic process of methionine and lysine. It can promote the oxidation of amino acids in the two keto acid branched chain and remove excess fatty acyl CoA. When you are tired, urination will excrete a large amount of botulinum toxin and seriously weaken the body’s ability to oxidise and utilise fatty acids, resulting in fatigue. Therefore, supplementing the human body with amino acids can effectively eliminate fatigue. Also see the post on creatine in this blog.
Trace elements
Magnesium is commonly found in a variety of foods, such as fish, meat, fruits, green vegetables and peas. If people are partial or picky about food, do not like fish or meat, love a certain kind of fruit or meat, or rarely eat fruits and green vegetables, this can lead to magnesium deficiency, which will lead to fatigue. Therefore, the supplementation of magnesium is of great significance to the finicky eater.
Protein
Protein is an indispensable part of functional food and an important source of nutrition for the human body. Protein deficiency will affect the physiological regulation of the body and cause fatigue. There are many foods containing protein, such as animal protein in fish, shrimp, eggs, milk, poultry and animal meat; vegetable protein like beans, dried fruit, nuts and seeds.
There are many anti-fatigue medicinal materials in traditional Chinese medicine, such as barrenwort, pollen, ginkgo, aloe vera, gynostemma and golden root.
Barrenwort contains a large amount of MDA that can increase the SOD activity of red blood cells; pollen contains amino acids, proteins, trace elements and vitamins.
Ginkgo leaves contain diterpenolactone and flavonosides, which can remove free radicals, strengthen hypoxia resistance and improve heart and brain metabolism.
Aloe vera contains flavonoid antioxidants, a variety of amino acids and vitamins, and has a strong antioxidant ability.
Gynostemma has a wide range of pharmacological effects. The saponins it contains can improve free radical metabolism and delay the occurrence of fatigue.
Golden root contains muscle glycogen, which can improve the body’s tolerance to hypoxia.
China has a rich and long history of food therapy and health care culture. The combination of functional food and diet therapy has unique advantages in the development of functional foods. The combination of TCM with western ingredients like vitamins, trace elements, etc, can lead to a wide range of innovative foods.
The other day, we had lunch in a local restaurant in Beijing, when I saw an unknown beer on the menu: Weijixiong Craft Beer. I had to try it, obviously. The name alone is peculiar, because it resembles Beijixiong, polar beer.
It came in a can, indeed with a polar beer on the front, also indicating that is a beer with Russian flavour. Russian foods and drinks are popular in China, so that information sells.
On back you can read the ingredients:
Barley malt, wheat malt, yeast, water
So it used fewer cereals than Xibei’s craft beer that I reported on earlier, but at least it is a whole malt beer, rather than the average Chinese pilsner, that is brewed with a high ratio of unmalted grains.
Weijixiong is produced in Shandong. Another information channel claims that the production is supervised by Paulaner.
I goes well with Chinese food and it offers an attractive alternative that a restaurant can put on the menu next to the ‘safe’ choices like Yanjing or Qingdao.
One aspect of the influence of the nationalist trend (guochao) on the Chinese food and beverage industry is the innovative use of traditional ingredients. I believe this trend will continue to be a major factor for several years to come. I have posted on individual ingredients before. This post bundles the essentials of the earlier ones and adds a few ingredients that I have not yet reported on in an integrating post. You can use this information to help you localise your product.
Ingredients
A number of ingredients can be regarded as representative of Chinese food, giving it a particular flavour, colour or texture. No report could be long enough to discuss all ingredients, but I will introduce what I regard as the most influential, or phrased differently: traditional ingredients that most frequently occur in novel foods.
Products
A nation as huge as China and with a history as long as that of China is bound to have a broad range of traditional manufactured foods. They have been produced as handicraft products for ages. Some people specialized in making clothes, others in pastries. The introduction of industrial production and economies of scale affected the food industry probably even more than other industries. Industrial production lengthened the time between production and consumption, which could affect the organoleptic aspects of the food.
A related influential factor was that in certain periods in modern Chinese history, the Chinese tradition was regarded as an impediment for modernization. Some groups of people started regarding a Western lifestyle as a condition for modernization. The latest of such a period was the last decade of the 20th and the first of the 21st, when ‘mcdonaldization’ seemed to become a real challenge for the Chinese tradition. The turnaround came in the second decade of the present century.
Brands
On the marketing side, the Chinese food industry had started developing its own national brands in the course of the 20th century. This continued after the foundation of the PRC. Most of these brands found it hard to compete with foreign competitors after the latter entered China from the early 1980s. Some perished, while others were acquired by foreign investors who (sometimes deliberately) let them die a quiet death, in favour of the own international foreign brand. One spin-off of the nationalist trend was the renewed interest in these old national brands. Some Chinese investors bought up the rights to the brand to put them on the market again. The challenge for them was to redesign the product in a way that it was still acceptable to older consumers and equally so to the younger generations.
Symbols
The renewed interest in the own national tradition includes symbols used in various ages. Symbols are mainly used in the design of the packaging, but can also influence the shaping of certain products.
AOC
A large number of the products referred to above are linked to a certain region. Chinese local governments are finding out the benefits from registering an AOC status for their local products. The national government has created a such a possibility already a number of years ago, but is now taken seriously by more and more local governments. China and the EU have even signed an agreement for the mutual recognition of such designations of origin.
Syncretism
Although Western ingredients and foods are obviously not part of the Chinese tradition, Chinese food scientists regularly use them to renew traditional Chinese concepts to create syncretic novel foods. A good example can be found in my blog on ‘Chinese tiramisu’, a combination of Chinese ingredients that resembles tiramisu.
Bamboo is known worldwide as a raw material for furniture and other household items. More recently, bamboo fibre has appeared as a material for clothes. However, the relatively soft bamboo shoots are an ingredient in Chinese cuisine. Dried bamboo shoots have a bright yellow colour and tender meat. They are rich in nutrients like protein, cellulose, and amino acids. They fit the requirements of the modern consumers: low fat, low sugar and high in dietary fiber. Bamboo shoots are also rich in trace elements like calcium, phosphorus, iron, carotene, vitamins B1, B2, and C. According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), bamboo can increase appetite, prevent constipation, cool and detoxify. It is a pure natural health food that is popular among consumers. China is one of the largest producers of bamboo in the world.
Industrial processing of bamboo started in the 20th century in the form of canned bamboo shoots or packed shredded bamboo shoots.
Some regions in China are well known for high quality edible bamboo. Local governments have discovered that it is a potential money maker and started supporting the planting and processing of bamboo in their region and more recently applying for AOC status. The Tianmu Mountain region in Lin’an, Zhejiang, province is such region. Its fame dates as early as 400 years ago.
Novel foods, lyophilized bamboo juice powder and bamboo dietary fibre.
Water chestnuts are named for its chestnut-like shape. However, not only the shape, but also the taste and functions are similar to real chestnuts. The water chestnut’s skin is purple to black, the flesh is white, crisp, sweet and juicy. Even eaten raw, it makes a delicious treat. People in China’s North sometimes refer to it as ‘southern ginseng’. Water chestnut can be regarded as both fruit and vegetable. It is a popular seasonal product. The following pictures show them as you buy them and peeled.
The water chestnut is attributed medicinal qualities in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It is rich in protein, dietary fibre, carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E and trace elements such as calcium, phosphorus, potassium and magnesium, which can prevent infectious diseases and improve the quality of the body. Water chestnuts contain puchiin, which is an antimicrobial substance. It can effectively inhibit the growth of bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus and escherichia coli, and can also play a role in lowering blood pressure. Water chestnuts are used in Chinese cooking. You typically buy them raw and peel and slice them.
Like the bamboo shoots in the previous section, the processing of water chestnuts as canned food started in the 20th century.
Novel products: water chestnut drinks, water chestnut + yumberry flavoured Greek style yoghurt.
The sweet potato is a staple food. It is mostly white to yellow/orange, but there is also a purple variety. Baked sweet potatoes were sold in the streets of northern cities as a warming snack. Dried sweet potato slices are also sold as snack food.
Still, someone has found the sweet potato worth the effort of making it a branded product (AOC status). A notable company is Tianyu Tuber in Zhengzhou, Henan province. Tianyu was founded in 1993 and has grown into a company with 760 employees and four subsidiaries. The company also operates the Tianyu Sweet Potato Research Institute and the Henan Sweet Potato Starch Research Institute and helps cultivate a sweet potato test field for the China Agricultural University.
The lotus is a known as a beautiful, sometimes mystic, flower. However, several parts of the lotus plant are eaten in China. The bright green shoots hidden inside the lotus seeds are intensely bitter. They are collected, dried and used in infusions meant to clear the heat from tired bodies. They are a traditional cure for pimples and acne as well, and young girls wanting a clear complexion willingly drink the bitter brew. The seeds, however, are sweet and nutty and are eaten fresh, straight from the pod, or dried and preserved. They are rehydrated and cooked in stir-fries and in soups both sweet and savoury. The nuts are also ground into a sweet paste that is used in Chinese cakes and pastries. The most important edible parts of the lotus are the pods, eaten sliced, and roots. Traditional processed products from lotus are lotus powder and glass noodles.
One way of giving these traditional products a new image is making them into snack food by adding flavour. An example of an innovative product is Liangpin Puzi (Bestore)’s ‘spiced lotus pods’. The ingredients are: lotus pods, sugar, chili pepper, salt, chicken powder, MSG and spices.
A Chinese food ingredient less known in the Western world is the yam (Dioscorea polystachya) literally called ‘mountain medicine’ (shanyao) in Chinese. It is sometimes called Chinese potato or by its Japanese name nagaimo. Eating Chinese yam (first scrape off the hairy peel) by itself is an acquired taste. They have a slightly hot flavour, different from the heat of chili peppers. China has produced 48,189,000 mt of yams in 2019; good for 65.37% of the total global production.
Unlike most other yams, the Chinese yam can be eaten raw (grated or sliced). However, Chinese still usually cook yams, as they are much less interested in eating raw food than their eastern neighbours in Korea and Japan. The most common way to consume Chinese yams is cooking chunks of yam in rice congee. The yam adds texture to the congee, while the congee helps neutralising the sharpness of the yam. Dates are often added for their fruity sweet flavour.
Novel foods: yam is used as an ingredient in several products on the Trends page of this blog: Black sesame walnut mulberry powder, Oat meal crisps, vegetable explosion (vegetable crisps), etc.
Goji berries belong to the nightshade family, which means that they are related to potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant. China is one of the largest producer of goji and within China, the Northwestern provinces of Ningxia and Gansu are combined good for about 2/3 of the national output. The berries have been used in TCM for centuries, but interestingly. They have become popular among Chinese only recently as a result of the growing interest in goji among Western health conscious consumers.
haji (sea buckthorn; Hippophae rhamnoides) is an indigenous fruit of North China. China is good for 90% of the world output of this fruit. It has been used as an ingredient of various foods and beverages in China for some time but is still not very well known abroad.
Shaji have a high content of vitamin C, about 15 times greater than oranges. The fruit also contains high contents of carotenoids, vitamin E, amino acids, dietary minerals, β-sitosterol and polyphenols. Seabuckthorn oil is a good source for omega-7 fatty acid.
Shaji fruit can be used to make pies, jams, wines, etc. Novel products: superfine seabuckthorn powder, seabuckthorn tea, dried seabuckthorn fruits to be added to a cup of tea or glass of spirits (baijiu).
In fact, the date should be the first ingredient in this report, as it is the TCM fruit used most widely in the Chinese food and beverage industries. China is the absolute leader in the production, processing and consumption of dates. Most dates are traded and eaten in dried form, which keeps well. There are several varieties of dates, but this section mainly deals with red dates.
A number of processed foods made from dates also exist for centuries. An example is the date cake (zaogao). They are produced as regular cakes, but due to the use of fresh dates, they are not only sweet but also moist. They are a great alternative for someone in the mood for a snack between meals.
As dates are a recognized TCM ingredient, one way of designing innovative products is combining dates with other such products, e.g. ejiao, a kind of gelatine derived from donkey skin.
Other novel products from dates: Jujube Coffee, date flavoured oat meal.
Until recently, millet was known as a an old type of coarse grain, something that poor people eat. Then modern health-conscious consumers, perhaps stimulated by the interest in coarse grains in the West, started eating all kinds of ‘forgotten’ vegetables and staples again. Millet was one of those revived cereals.
It was deemed lucrative enough for a company to developed a branded millet. On February 27, 2019, nine companies were selected as members of the Shanxi Province Millet Industrial Alliance which is a 28-member organization. Several regional millet brands (AOC status) such as Changzhi millet, Yangquan millet, and Wangxiang millet, have been established in recent years, bringing greater economic benefits to local farmers. Members of Shanxi Millet Industrial Alliance are encouraged to carry out marketing campaigns like developing supermarket displays and outlets selling millet. The ingredients listed on the package are: millet, palm oil, rice, corn starch, salt, spices, MSG.
Some companies started research to investigate if millet could be used as a new ingredient for existing products. Guoba is a traditional product made from boiled rice roasted to a crisp. Sun (Shanxi province) had already developed this product as a ready-to-eat snack in the 1980s. The company has recently launched a version made from millet.
Goji is not the only Chinese superfruit in this report. The yangmei or yumberry may be less well known outside China, but is at least as important commercially. Yumberry is the commercial name for the yangmei berry, a fruit of the wax myrtle. The fruit has a high antioxidant activity and high vitamin and mineral content. Yumberries look a little bit like raspberries with a sweet-sour flavour similar to cranberry and pomegranate. because the trees have a high tolerance to pests and diseases, they are often grown organically or with few pesticides applied to them.
Juice is the obvious traditional commercial product made from yumberries, but it is also used as an ingredient. Earlier in this report, I introduced yumberry flavoured yoghurt with water chestnut pieces to add a crunch. Other novel products include: yumberry flavoured ice cream
Swiftlets, or sea swallows, build their nests from saliva, stuck to steep rocks on the seaside. They have been used in TCM for centuries. They are harvested in China, but the best quality comes from Thailand. Chinese commonly use them to aid recuperation from debilitating illnesses because of their easily digestible glycoprotein and other nutrients. Bird’s nests are usually prepared as a soup, often sweetened with rock sugar. Bird’s nests used to be only available for the affluent, but with the increase of the average income of Chinese consumers,
A few companies have tried to cash in on the high-end image of bird’s nests by developing health beverage with nests as the active ingredient.
Yanzhiwo is leading in this field. The name of the brand literally means ‘nests of swallows’, although the company has opted for Yan Palace as the English brand name. It is marketing its drinkable bird’s nests cosmetic food.
It may a surprise to find such a common product as tea in this section. However, it is a very Chinese plant, consumed as an infusion since the beginning of history and it is also used as an ingredients in various foods in recent years.
The top non-beverage version of tea is matcha powder. It is an old Chinese product that became popular in the West through Japanese matcha flavoured products. The popularity in Western pastries inspired Chinese food scientists to follow suit and of course, tea flavoured biscuits and cake appeal to Chinese who are used to drinking lots of tea.
Tianfu is a tea processor that became famous by adding various tea-flavoured foods to its product range, which it is marketing nationwide one of China’s through its own chain of stores.
Sesame is an annual herb found mainly in tropical and some temperate regions of the world. Sesame seeds are an ancient species that has been cultivated for more than 5000 years. According to legend, it was introduced to China from the Western Regions during the Western Han Dynasty. Sesame seeds are one of the main sources of edible oils in China, with an oil content of up to 45% – 63%. Sesame seeds are rich in protein and unsaturated fatty acids, which have a high nutritional value. At present, domestic sesame is mainly used for the production of sesame oil, and its processing technology mainly includes water substitution, pressing and the enzymatic process, of which water substitution method is China’s traditional sesame processing sesame oil method. The water enzymatic method is a new extraction process with good prospects.
Novel products: sesame coffee.
Again: this is only a selection of ingredients and their use in novel products. Contact Eurasia Consult for detailed information and tailor made advice.
Chinese cuisine is one of the longest surviving culinary traditions in the world. The Chinese preference for pyrotechnics has made cooked food a dietary habit passed down from generation to generation. Cooked food not only has a higher safety, but also tends to stimulate a more pleasant sensory experience due to the colour and aroma produced by heating.
Latest raw products
However, in recent years, more and more domestic brands have begun to turn around and successively launched foods with the concept of ‘raw’ (sheng 生). Luckin Coffee first launched ‘raw coconut latte’ and ‘raw cheese latte’ and quickly became an explosive series.
Luckin Coffee ads promoting products containing ‘raw coconut’. Note that the word ‘raw’ does not appear in the English text
Raw cheese here refers to the use of very young cream cheese. For most Chinese consumers, ‘cheese’ was connotated with the processed cheese that was before that moment the typical cheese for sale in Chinese supermarkets.
Entering 2023, the concept of ‘raw’ food really took off. Starbucks launched a ‘Green Coffee Series’ featuring concentrated fruit juice mixed with green bean extract.
Pepsi launched the diet soda ‘Raw Coke’. Pepsi uses the term shengshuang ciji, literally ‘raw fresh stimulating’, indicating that consumers start linking the concept of raw to that of fresh and that it has an uplifting effect.
Manner Coffee launched draft beer latte (the Chinese word for draft beer, shengpi, includes the word ‘raw’. One influencer describes his first sip of this brew as follows: ‘The first bite is a little like the barley aroma in beer, but it is not very beery, it feels more milky, and it is a good latte, I like the milky taste in this one’.
The word raw squeezed (shengzha) is highlighted in red on the bottle to indicate that it is an important feature of this product.
Development
The first ‘raw’ foods were made with raw coconut. In 2021, the concept of ‘raw coconut’ became popular with the popular series of Luckin Raw Coconut Latte. Using cold-pressed raw coconut milk as the base and using the raw extraction process, the product retains the authentic taste of coconut meat and the rich coconut aroma.
‘Raw coconut’ generally refers to coconut milk, which is made by grinding mature coconut meat mixed with coconut water or water. Using ‘raw’ to describe fruit and vegetable categories, the public will always mentally connect this with fresh and natural, coupled with the sweeter and smoother taste characteristics of coconut milk, ‘raw coconut’ is more likely to be recognized and loved in the public’s sensory cognition.
Today, the concept of raw coconut is still a popular element of beverage innovation. According to incomplete statistics, in June and July 2023 alone, there were more than ten new products featuring raw coconut as a major ingredient.
Different from the classic pairing of raw coconut latte, many coffee brands have begun to combine ‘raw coconut’ with cold brew and Americano. For example, Tim’s launched Watermelon Raw Coconut Cold Brew, which uses fresh sweet watermelon juice with rich raw coconut milk. Heytea combines seasonal honey dew melon with raw coconut milk. Weiquan combines Indonesian coconut milk with small grain oats.
In recent years, Luckin has also carried out many innovations based on the raw coconut classic series, and successively launched new products such as Ice Absorbing Raw Coconut Latte and Touching Fish Raw Coconut Latte this year. The Iced Coconut Latte enhances the coconut aroma experience in a 2.0 plant-based formula infused with Luckin’s original cooling factor, while the Touching Fish Raw Coconut Latte adds konjac to it.
Touching Fish Raw Coconut Latte; the add indicates that the product contains no fat
In addition, the concept of ‘raw pressing’ has also begun to extend from the application of fruit and vegetable raw materials to tea processing. On June 4, Uni-President launched the Uni-President Chaguowang Gaoshan Raw Green Tea, advertised as: ‘one mouthful of raw pressing, double freshness’. The product combines fresh tea with the same amount of water, crushes at cell level to obtain raw fresh tea concentrate, and adopts nitrogen sealing, 70-90 °C high-temperature tea brewing and UHT technologies to restore the original taste of freshly brewed tea.
In October last year, Luckin launched a blockbuster new Raw Cheese Latte. The product combines classic New Zealand raw cheese (referring to immature cheese) with mellow milk and espresso, retaining the cheesy and slightly salty flavour, and presenting a cheesecake-like experience with a silky texture and rich milk aroma. After the success of the ‘raw cheese’ series, Luckin has successively launched Orange Flavoured Raw Cheese Latte and Tiramisu Love Cheese this year.
Luckin’s Raw Cheese Latte; Jojo is a comic strip figure. The ad includes a pun with that name Jo dengle = jiu deng le 久等了 (sorry to let you wait so long)
Today’s ‘raw cheese’ is generally made of cheese raw materials such as cream cheese and cheddar cheese with different degrees of fermentation with milk and coconut milk. Compared to the single salty cheese flavour, raw cheese provides a stronger cheese aroma, smoother blending with the drink, and a more recognizable flavour.
In addition to the application in coffee, the concept of ‘liquid cheese’ like raw cheese has gradually been applied to milk tea and fruit tea. In December last year, the first raw cheese series was launched on Chabaidao. For the first time, raw cheese was added to milk tea, and two classic cheese flavours, imported raw cheese from New Zealand and Denmark were blended to obtain a more layered cheese aroma.
In March this 2023, Naixue launched a new series of multi-fruit pulp Domineering Cheese, focusing on ‘fresh fruit’ and ‘milk base’, combining fresh pulp with raw buttermilk and raw buttermilk and raw buttermilk jelly, presenting a more chewy and more complex flavoured milk tea experience.
Naixue’s cherry blossom cheese tea
Novel, fun, raw and wild experience
Through cooking, processed food often loses the tart taste of the raw material itself, or generates new substances during the reaction process, obtaining new flavours and nutrition.
As the consumption environment and emotional experiences of food become more personalized, people begin to pursue more particular taste experiences at different levels, and the functional and nutritional demands of products are more segmented.
The concept of unpasteurized draft beer is not uncommon in China. Compared with pasteurized beer, draft beer is not sterilized at high temperature, and generally removes the remaining yeast and impurities in beer by diatomaceous earth filtration.
The flavour and freshness of draft beer are higher than that of pasteurize beer, and the bubbles are more abundant, and it often produces a stronger sense of tartness when drinking it from a can.
Pepsi’s raw cola is based on the treatment of draft beer, using a non-heating physical sterilization method different from traditional cola sterilization, preserving the aroma of spices in cola as much as possible and reducing the decomposition of carbon dioxide in cola.
Therefore, compared to ordinary Coke, PepsiCo’s bubble experience is more powerful, more exciting, and the flavour more refreshing. After being chilled, raw cola produces a stronger sense of raw and dry mouthfeel (see the illustration above).
This concept has also migrated to other types of beverage. In June this year, Manner launched the Aranya Theatre Festival Limited Draft Beer Latte, which pairs the aroma of malt beer with rich nutty coffee, borrowing the concept of ‘draft beer’ to bring consumers a novel coffee experience.
Manner Coffee’s Draf Beer Latte
In freshly ground coffee and packaged coffee, coffee beans are roasted and ground for a stronger coffee flavour and a higher caffeine content. However, with the development of coffee categories and changes in consumer demand, consumers’ demand for coffee is not limited to supplementing energy through caffeine, for example, people who are caffeine intolerant want to get a low-caffeine drinking experience.
In May this year, Starbucks launched a new generation of ‘Starbucks Raw Coffee’ series in China, with four types: Powdered Green Coffee, Powdered Lime Raw Coffee, Magic Purple Raw Coffee, and Mangzi Lime Raw Coffee. All products in this series are light caffeine drinks, extracted from raw Arabica green beans, blended with real juice and dried fruit. The caffeine content of a single cup is about 1/3 of the same cup of Americano.
On June 13, Starbucks China launched four new raw coffee series and then launched a new frost series. Based on the original green coffee series, the product and ice cubes are whipped into a soft frost to bring a summer frost experience.
Two recent Starbucks products
Japanese origin
Tracing the origins of the application of the concept of raw food in these categories, we can see that most of them originated from the Japanese food market, where raw food is an important part of the diet.
The relatively scarce supply of raw materials and the concept of living in accordance with nature have subtly cultivated the dietary preference and food culture of Japanese consumers towards raw food. The Japanese want to maximize the natural and fresh flavour and nutritional value of the ingredients themselves, as evidenced by the traditional Japanese diet of sashimi and raw soy sauce.
Since then, the concept of raw has gradually broadened to include ‘fresh’, ‘natural’ and ‘simple’. It has become a consumer attitude.
Take for example the raw chocolate that spread from Japan to China. Raw chocolate is made by adding fresh cream and other ingredients to melted chocolate, resulting in a silky, delicate product with a soft texture. This referred to as ‘Nama Chocolate’.
‘Nama’ (written with the same character 生) corresponds to the Japanese meaning of ‘fresh’ and ‘pure’, and originally means ‘fresh chocolate’. Because fresh cream (in Japanese: 生乳油 nama gyuyu) is added to the chocolate making process, it was rendered raw chocolate in Chinese.
The raw toast that has recently become hot in China is also a new baking category that has developed rapidly in the Japanese market. The earliest research and development concept for raw toast was to provide the elderly with a soft and chewable toast, and to provide more choices for children with egg allergies. Therefore, the original raw toast recipe did not add eggs but honey. The characteristics of raw toast are soft and dense, easy to bite off and melting in the mouth. The shelf life of this raw toast is only 1-2 days, which is in line with the concept of freshness, simplicity and purity in the concept of ‘raw’, even though there is nothing raw about it.
Traditional Chinese Dairy Products introduces products that entered Chinese cuisine from minority cuisines, in particular Mongolian and Western cuisines, especially strong in Guangdong. Traditional Chinese food recreated in milk focuses on the opposite: innovative dairy products inspired by traditional Chinese foods.
Formulated Milk Beverages points out how inventive Chinese food scientists are creating milk-based products that appeal to even the most traditional Chines palate.
Protein Drinks shows that plant-based milk alternatives are not a Western invention.
Dairy is obviously a central product in the Chinese food industry. In this post, I will introduce the developments in the past 1 – 2 years prior to the date of posting. I will include background information from the above mentioned posts, so you can read this post by itself, without having to click on those links all the time.
Tradition
China is not known as a traditional dairy nation. However, milk and dairy products have been an essential ingredient of the diets of a number of ethnic minorities. These products have been introduced in Chinese cuisine in areas where they mixed with those of Han Chinese. Especially the various dairy products made by Mongolians have been known by the Han in the Northern regions of China. The following pictures shows a Mongolian woman exhibiting a number of dairy products.
Some of the better known products are: milk bean curd (naidoufu), cheese (nailao), milk curds (naigeda) Most of the Mongolian products are solid and sweetened. In this way they keep longer. The cheese, e.g., looks more like toffees in shape, texture and flavour.
When Westerners started settling in China, they introduced their dairy products and also started producing some. This was first of all for their own consumption, but several Chinese who regularly interacted with them acquired a liking for some dairy products. Yoghurt was easy to accept, as it was suitable for consumption even by people with a lactose intolerance. Sweetened condensed milk was also liked and became the first domestically produced dairy product. In some regions, in particular Guangdong whose capital has been China’s main foreign trade port for centuries, Chinese developed a number of dishes with (sweetened condensed) milk as the main ingredient. Milk tea (naicha) and fried milk (zhanai) are best known in this category.
A number of companies have developed industrial processes for producing these traditional products. No need to introduce milk tea, as this rage has been exported to several Southeast Asian countries and even to some Western nations with a large number of ethnic Chinese.
Ruiyuan Dairy (Xinjiang) is producing naigeda on an industrial scale. The company has two patents for this new process. Some of the redesigned traditional dairy products have little in common anymore with the original thing. A good example is the industrially produced naisu (‘milk crisps’) by Duoweier Bioengineering (Chifeng, Inner Mongolia). The ingredients list is quite impressive, but has nothing to do with the traditional product:
The effect of the long ingredients list is softened by the Mongolian symbols on the packaging: a girl in traditional attire pouring milk and the yurts in the background.
History
The development of the modern Chinese dairy industry can be roughly divided in three stages:
1949-1998; a period of gradual growth;
1999-2008; period of rapid growth. Since 1999, the development of China’s dairy industry has entered the “golden decade”, and the demand for dairy products increased rapidly. That of the liquid milk market grew with an average of 60% per year. However, the weak spot in the value chain was milk collection between dairy farms and the dairy processers. This led to the famous ‘melamine incident’ in 2008.
2009-present; It took a major effort for the domestic dairy industry to regain the confidence of Chinese consumers, but it succeeded a few years ago and the industry is growing reasonably well.
Current situation
Although the dairy stock is showing a continuous decline, it does not affect the milk production, because the milk per cow is increasing. China’s raw milk production reached 39.32 mln tons in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 6.77%.
Also in 2022, the per capita dairy consumption of Chinese consumers increased to 24.36 kg/ person/year, a year-on-year increase of 0.74% compared with 2021. The volume of 2015 was 21.41 kg/person/year.
Dairy is regarded as a major source of nutrition by the Chinese government. It is therefore strongly promoted. Chinese consumers also perceive milk and dairy products as a major source of nutrition, in particular for young children. Dairy is placed in the second tier in the current Chinese nutrition tree (pagoda in Chinese).
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, The total volume of dairy products in 2022 was 31.177 mln mt, up 2.84%. Liquid milk accounted for 93.79% of this volume. It was followed by milk powder, accounting for 3.23%. Half of the latter was infant formula; the other half consisting of a wide range of powders for various consumer segments. The remaining 2.98% consists of various products, like: yoghurt, butter, cheese, condensed milk, cream, ice cream, etc.
A2 milk
The Chinese market for A2 milk is growing rapidly. At a time when the birth rate is declining, A2 Milk Company reportedly does very well with double-digit growth in revenue and profit. The company’s financial report for the first half of 2023 shows that early infant milk powder sales reached NZ$ 270.7 mln, an increase of 43.5% year-on-year. Liquid milk sales in China and other Asian regions also increased by 34.6% to NZ$ 7.5 mln. Revenue from other nutritional products also increased by 83.7% to NZ$ 17.8 mln.
Culturally, Chinese are susceptible for ‘rare healthy products’. Chinese influencers are generally positive about A2 milk powder. Discussions among specialists show more varied opinions. Many experts doubt whether A2 milk is really worth the premium price.
Other milk sources
Milk comes from cows. This is so well known that the standard Chinese word for ‘milk’ is niunai ‘cow milk’. Milk from other sources is also available. Of these, goat milk is large enough to influence the total milk supply. Other sources have sprung up in recent years, which come in small quantities and have a more fancy image.
Goat milk has the image of being slightly easier to digest that cow milk. It has been around for longer in China. The main production regions, Shandong, Shaanxi and Yunnan do not form a geographic cluster. It is more a matter of local tradition than climate or geological conditions. The value of goat milk market in 2020 was RMB 10.4 billion; up 3.9% compared to 2019. Approximately 30% of the goat milk powder consumed in 2020 was imported.
Camel milk is on the rise in China, but quantities are small. China produced 18,200 mt of camel milk in 2021, a little more than in the previous year. In 2020, 11.7% was used for producing ice cream, 20.7% for camel milk powder, 8.6% for fermented products, 4.2% for others and the remaining was consumed as liquid milk.
South China produces small quantities of water buffalo milk and Inner Mongolia small quantities of horse milk.
Plant based milk
This is a big product category in China. in 2022, 22.4% of the Chinese population suffered from lactose intolerance. Vegetable protein drinks are regarded as a good alternative. The total turnover 2021 was RMB 123.4 bln, 10.47% higher than the previous year.
The nomenclature has changed with the coming and going of fashions. Protein drinks (danbai yinliao) was the first name and is still widely used. With the growing influence from the Western vogue for milk alternatives, the term nai (milk) was introduced and gained some hold. This change of term made it easier to let these products (or better, their producers) cash in on the healthy image of milk and dairy.
A broad range of plants is used to produce protein drinks: soybeans, almonds, walnuts, coconuts, peanuts, hickory, sesame, rice, oat. Soybean drinks are the oldest and remain the largest category.
China’s top dairy companies have adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them’ strategy. Mengniu and Yili, the top 2, have launched their own protein beverages recently. Yili announced its plans during a public meeting at the end of 2014. Mengniu has entered into a joint venture with US-based WhiteWave Foods Company, a leading consumer packaged food and beverage company in North America and Europe early 2013. The JV is marketing WhiteWave’s Silk brand protein drinks in China. This product is common in the US and is an affiliate of Alpro, a brand in Europe, though its positioning in China is quite unique. With its convergence of flavours, Silk’s positioning as a 100% natural solution, targeting those that are lactose intolerant, could spell success for Silk in China, especially as consumers become ever more sceptical regarding the origin, nutrition, safety and environmental impact of the food and beverages they buy.
Cheese
Cheese consumption is increasing at an incredible speed during the past few years, considering that not so long ago, almost all Chinese were abhorred about the smell of cheese. Cheese supply volume in China has surged from 140,000 mt to 270,000 mt during the period 2017-2022. This figure is expected to maintain double-digit growth, far above the world average for the coming years.
Although the average cheese consumption in China is far below many Western countries as well as Japan and Korea, it has significantly increased from 80g/person/year in 2017 to 130g/person/year in 2021. At the 2022 China Cheese Development Summit Forum, the Dairy Association of China released an action plan, proposing that the national cheese production would reach 500,000 mt by 2025. Much of the cheese sold in China is processed, but non-processed is increasing.
An interesting development is that Chinese cheese producers are focusing on developing one-bite cheese snacks, for all ages, but in particular for children. This is partly a result of the pressure of the Chinese authorities to increase dairy consumption among children. Such products include cheese sticks, cheese slices, cheese strips, etc. Cheese stick is the most popular one, which was first launched by Milkana, but was popularized by Milkground. Presently, promoted by the increasingly intensive market competition, dairy enterprises have rolled out a wide range of cheese sticks with distinctive features. Apart from various funny shapes, including ‘cheese lollies’, they are also experimenting with flavours. Here is an ad of Milkana strawberry flavoured cheese sticks.
A new cheese stick brand, Cheespirit, launched a series of innovative products on May 28, 2023: ‘Vegetable & Fruit Growing Up Cheese Sticks’. The company claims to have selected 8 kinds of ‘super vegetables and fruits’ to create high-calcium and high-VC cheese sticks, containing 3% dietary fiber. The calcium is 100% milk calcium, with a 1.8:1 calcium-phosphorus ratio. The product contains 40% whey protein, as well as algal oil DHA and various trace elements derived from vegetables and fruits, providing nutrients such as protein, dietary fibre, vitamins and other basic nutrients needed by children. It contains no preservatives. It uses two innovative two-colour-flavours: Lele orange (tomato, carrot and apple compound flavour) that contains β-carotene; and absolute purple (purple sweet potato, purple cabbage blueberry complex flavour) containing anthocyanins to help the children’s growth.
Yoghurt
Yoghurt in the broadest sense of the word (soured milk; suannai in Chinese) is the only dairy product consumed regularly by Chinese city dwellers around the founding of the PRC. As the bacteria consume most or all of the lactose, people with a lactose intolerance can eat yoghurt safely. Yoghurt was available in Beijing in clay pots with a paper lid. Milk and a culture were added to the pots, which were then kept to ferment until the yoghurt, a liquid with curds, was ready for consumption.
In the perception among Chinese consumers as well as in the promotion of dairy products, the differences between yoghurt, yoghurt drinks, fermented milk drinks, etc., is rather vague. There is a huge supply of fermented formulated dairy products. The most salient common trait is that the fermentation has lowered the lactose content, which makes the products available for a wider range of consumers. Other shared traits are that they are relatively sweet (sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners) and very often flavoured with fruit (real fruit, fruit flavours, or combinations).
Modern yoghurt production set off during the 1980s and the development of new products has never really stopped. Especially during the past decade, yoghurt has become a pet product of the Chinese dairy industry, a field in which the R&D departments could realize their wildest dreams in textures, flavours and packaging designs. One could even state that yoghurt has become a kind of fashionable product. Fads come and go and many products seem to have a very limited life span. Still, the developments in this sector contain interesting points to take away.
The nationalist trend
The renewed interest in traditional culture in China (the nationalist trend [guochao) is also reflected in the celebration of traditional holidays, like the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although dairy is regarded as a foreign food group, yoghurts have been launched in connection with traditional holidays. Yili has issued a limited edition of its Ambrosial yoghurt for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Even Beijing’s pastry maker Daoxiangcun, that is not a dairy company, has launched a one-time Dragon Boat Festival yoghurt flavoured with mooncake, the traditional pastry eaten during that festival and of which Daoxiangcun is a main supplier.
Yoghurt and milk tea
Milk tea is a vogue that reached Mainland China from Taiwan and quickly became bigger than in its home market. Young Chinese are willing to line up for hours to get a cup of their favorite milk tea. The latest stage in this fad is milk tea based coffee, i.e. coffee with all kinds of ingredients you can add to milk tea. It has even added a new word to Chinese vocabulary: milk-tea-ization (naichahua). This term is also used for various fads in the Chinese coffee scene. Soft drink maker Genki Forrest has cashed in that by launching a milk tea inspired yoghurt.
Black yoghurt
Launching black versions of existing food products is another trend in China. Black food is traditionally linked to health. Moreover, there is a small but stable group of young people interested in gothic music, including the black outfit that come with it. A number of black yoghurts have been launched during the 2020s. E.g., there is Yiming’s yoghurt coloured with inkfish ink and black sesame seeds.
New raw materials
The plant-based trend has not only reached China as well, it is booming there. There is a plant-based meat tradition in China developed by Buddhist monasteries. Buddhist monks and nuns were not allowed to eat meat, but like their European counterparts, did not want to disregard their craving for the texture and flavour of meat and fish. They developed a broad range of imitations that are still served in traditional vegetarian restaurants and restaurants operated by monasteries.
Solid yoghurt
A recent development is the launch of cubed frozen yoghurt by Yili. Yili claims that it is using a special dry freezing process developed by the space industry that retains the 100 mln lactobacillus bacteria in each cube. The probiotic used is patented by Yili.
Yoghurt candy
The step from solid yoghurt to yoghurt candy is a small one. Xinlüjia (Shantou, Fujian) produces a yoghurt candy called Old Yoghurt (Laosuannai). An interesting aspect (sales trick) is that you can heat the product first in your hand, then open it, and pull it into long shreds. That may not appeal to all people, but the manufacturer apparently believes it will attract younger consumers.
Ice cream
The developments in the Chinese ice cream market have been so rapid during the past few years, that they have been hard to follow. In this post, I will focus on a specific innovative category: savoury ice cream. Until recently, ice cream was typically a sweet to very sweet treat. Now, the most peculiar flavoured ice creams are appearing all over the country. I have selected a few representative products.
Shred meat (rousong) is a Chinese meat-based snack produced by slowly roasting meat for a long time until it is very tender, but still dry, unlike stewed meat, and then shredded. It is usually not consumed on its own, but is used as an ingredient in various foods. Here it is combined with chopped spring onions (the English says chives, but the Chinese, which I take as the original, says onions). It can work. Shred meat is traditionally used to flavour sweet-savoury pastries.
Hot and spicy
A chili flavoured variety was to be expected, so here it is. Spicy food used to be restricted to a few regions in China, but chili has become a vogue in almost the entire country. The packaging promises a lot of fire. I like chili chocolate (the mild type), so I expect to like this too.
More innovative dairy products will be developed in China in the near future. Keep an eye on this post and do not hesitate to contact me for tailor made market reports.
This healthy food brand was founded 8 years ago, but in 2023 it already had an annual income of more than RMB 1 billion. This story, from entrepreneurship clubs for students to food companies with an annual turnover of more than RMB 1 billion, started with the wrong choice of study by the founder.
Zheng Guo, founder of Unicorn
Wrong study
At the time, Zheng Guoyu chose to study computer science. ICT was then a popular field and Zheng Guoyu made his choice without in-depth knowledge of the technology. Soon after enrolling, he discovered that he wasn’t interested in it, so he joined a club that played entrepreneurship games. Unicorn (Dujiaoshou 独角兽) was one of his entrepreneurial projects in that club.
Candy
In 2015, Zheng Guoyu’s first venture was based on the touristic popularity of his hometown, Xiamen, the major port city of Fujian. He created a special e-commerce platform to sell handmade sweets and souvenirs. According to Zheng Guoyu, a turnover of almost RMB 10 million was already achieved at that time. But he didn’t have a positive cash flow and wasn’t making a profit. However, he did gain a lot of experience at that time.
Light food
From the beginning, the Unicorn brand has been positioned in the market for what is known in China as Light Food (qingshi), which is a low-calorie, low-salt, sugar-and-fat food. The first product has achieved a turnover of more than RMB 60 million in 3 years. In 2022, the revenue was more than RMB 700 million, and the revenue for 2023 is estimated at RMB 1 billion. This growth will continue. According to Zheng, what is the driving force behind this rapid success?
Beauty parlour
Zheng sees the university as a ‘beauty salon’. Young people on the university campus are starting to pay attention to their bodies and clothes, and when Zheng Guoyu himself started at the university, he and his classmates also had a need for fitness and weight control. When they got their university gym card and tried to follow the coach’s instructions to start eating healthier, they discovered that there were few products to choose from on campus.
Internet
Preparing low-fat meals yourself was not realistic, as the use of electrical appliances such as refrigerators and hotplates was prohibited in university dormitories. Zheng Guoyu and his classmates therefore chose to buy light meals over the internet. They found that the unit price of chicken breast there was between RMB 150 – 200; A very student-unfriendly price. This unmet need presented a commercial opportunity.
Small portions
Starting from their own needs, Zheng Guoyu and his classmates began to think about what light meals they would like to buy: small portions that are individually wrapped, not too expensive in price, lean but still tasty. Zheng Guoyu, who was already in the entrepreneurs’ club, started this entrepreneurial project with his team.
Outsourcing
The team has gained entrepreneurial experience by negotiating production outsourcing with factories. When they discovered that there were very few ready-to-eat chicken breast products in small packages on the market, Unicorn decided to find a factory to produce chicken breasts in small packages based on their specifications.
Unicorn’s lean chicken breast with crayfish flavour (you can compare it with the chicken breast of Dacheng on the Trends page of this blog)
Resounding success
The first product was an instant hit. In 2017, the ready-to-eat chicken breast was launched, and already in 2018 achieved a turnover of more than RMB 20 million in 2018 and RMB 60 million in 2019. It became the best-selling brand in its category on the Taobao internet store.
In-house production
When, three years after its founding, the scale of RMB 100 million was reached, Zheng and his partners thought it better to build their own factory than to continue to rely on outsourcing to multiple third-party factories. They thought it would be better not to look for external financing right away, but to finance the factory from their own income. Nor did they immediately aspire to become the market leader. Staying profitable was more important. This also applied to the promotion costs. Unicorn is active on several internet platforms, but does not invest in excessive promotional campaigns and steadily tries to build brand awareness through consistent quality.
Traditional brand
Unicorn, which was born on the internet, has been around for 8 years now, but hopes to transform itself into a ‘traditional brand’ that makes good use of the internet. According to Zheng Guoyu, China’s e-commerce platforms are about 20 years old. However, there are popular consumer brands that are 30 or 40 years old and still viable. If Unicorn would like to live to be 50 or 100 years old, the brand must also learn from the traditional brands. That means you should also be found in physical stores.
New channels
Zheng sees great opportunities for offline sales. That does require changes in the supply chain. Online sales are made in small quantities. Large batches are needed to supply stores. Also, the pricing of products has to change in order for retailers and the like to earn money from sales. According to Zheng, it may be necessary to develop new products for offline sales. “We found that in order to solve this problem, we may need to develop other products, and the net content, specifications, and taste of the products need to be adjusted,” Zheng said.
Export
The next step could be export. At the end of 2020, Unicorn set up an export company. However, it is more difficult to export food because the regulations are different in each market. The strategy chosen by Zheng is to first gain experience with the export of textile products (bedding), for which the rules are less strict, and then to move on to foodstuffs.
Comments
This entrepreneurial story also offers insight into the typical way of thinking of Chinese entrepreneurs. Whereas Western biographies of entrepreneurs usually portray the protagonist as the ‘born entrepreneur’ who knows how to realize an idea with unique strategic insight, Zheng is someone who is proud of the fact that his idea is due to a wrong choice of study and has come to fruition in a social context (the entrepreneurs’ club on campus). Where the typical Western start-up entrepreneur is willing to sacrifice everything to make a company grow quickly (quick success or failure), Zheng thinks in terms of continuous learning by keeping the company up and running for as long as possible and converting what he has learned into long-term strategy. Reverence for one’s ancestors is an old Confucian value.
Stating that China is a huge nation with a very diverse population is kicking in an open door. However, a major shift is taking place in the demography of China that is exercising significant influence on a number of markets, including food and beverage. I like to refer to it as the shift from ‘big collectivism’ to ‘specialised collectivism’. In fact, Chinese collectivism has always been smaller than in, e.g., Japan. Where Japanese copy each other’s behaviour on a massive scale, not rarely on the national level, Chinese focus on smaller groups, like: family members, people from the same neighbourhood, colleagues in the same department of their work unit, etc. Still, due to the huge Chinese population, even a small group is still enormous and therefore interesting to anyone who is (re)designing foods for the Chinese market. This post is taking a closer look at some of the more important demographic segments.
Would it be worth your effort to develop food for golfers?(read the post and find out more at the end)
Elderly
I have reported about food for the elderly in an earlier post. Here, I will provide more background information. Population is the foundation and main body of economic growth and social development, and age structure is a core determinant of population quality and population structure. It is of great significance to study the age structure of the population, especially the aging problem. China’s population aged 60 and over is about 260 million, accounting for 18.7% of the total population. Due of the importance of this consumer group, not only because of its size but also because the elderly are still held in high regard in China, the Chinese government has issued a large body of legislation for ensuring that the elderly are taken care of.
Aging society
China has entered an aging society in 2000. The average age of the population has caught up with the United States and Japan. Due to the decline in fertility rate and the increase in life expectancy, aging is an important problem faced by all countries in the world, but due to the long-term implementation of family planning policy, this problem is more urgent in China. According to the internationally accepted classification standards, when the proportion of the elderly population aged 65 and over in a country (region) exceeds 7% of the total population, or the proportion of the elderly population aged 60 and over exceeds 10% of the total population, that country (region) is regarded as having an aging society. According to the statistics of the United Nations Population Program, in 2000, the proportion of China’s population aged 60 and over exceeded 10% for the first time to reach 10.03%, and in 2002, the proportion of China’s population aged 65 and over exceeded 7% for the first time to reach 7.08%, marking that China has officially entered an aging society in 2000. In 2019, China’s population aged 65 and over reached 176 million, nearly double the 88 million in 2000, accounting for 12.6% of the total population. In 2019, the average age of China’s population reached 37.6 years old, compared with 38.9 years old, 46.7 years old, 41.7 years old and 30.0 years old in the United States, Japan, Europe and India in the same period. It is estimated that in 2030/2050, China’s population aged 60 and above will account for 24.8% – 34.6%, 65 years and above will account for 16.9% – 26.1%, and the average age of the population will reach 41.2 – 45.6 years.
Life expectancy is rising, birth rates are low, and the Chinese population is aging at an unprecedented rate. With the improvement of living standards and medical conditions, the life expectancy of the Chinese population has increased significantly, from 44 years in 1960 to 77 years in 2019, and the life expectancy of the population in some developed coastal areas is higher. The life expectancy of Shanghai’s population in 2019 was as high as 83.66 years. The Chinese birth rate in 2019 was only 10.48 per thousand, and the number of newborns was only 14.65 million, down 580,000 from 2018 and a new low in 70 years.
The policy of encouraging childbirth after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, generated the first baby boom in New China. The birth rate remained above 37% for five consecutive years. The improvement of the economy after the end of the natural disasters in 1959 – 1961 led to compensatory births, triggering the second baby boom, with more than 250 million births within 10 years, accounting for 17.6% of the total number of Chinese population at present. These two waves of baby boomers will gradually enter old age between 2010 and 2030. The rate of aging in China from 2010 to 2030 is expected to be similar to that of the most rapidly aging period in Japanese society (1990-2010). The insufficient number of newborns will accelerate the aging rate of the Chinese population.
If this rate develops, the average age of the Chinese population will reach 45.6 years old in 2050, the proportion of the population aged 14 and under will only be 14.15%, and the proportion of the population aged 65 and over will reach 26.07%, when there will be one elderly person aged 65 and above in every four Chinese.
China’s “silver economy” has broad prospects
The elderly care industry is a comprehensive industrial cluster to meet the health and happiness requirements of the elderly population. On the whole, the elderly care industry covers food, housing, care, medical treatment, finance, culture, entertainment, science and technology and other aspects, and is an industrial system that meets the multi-level needs of the elderly, from the basic living needs (housing, food, medicine, clothing) to the psychological and spiritual needs provided by (fun in life). The three pillars of China’s pension system are basic pension insurance, annuity and personal pension, of which the first pillar accounts for 85%, much higher than the 11% in the United States. According to international experience, the pension replacement rate is greater than 70% to maintain the standard of living before retirement, if it is less than 50%, the living standard will drop significantly compared with before retirement.
Chinese traditional culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism. Home care is more in line with secular concepts than welfare facilities for the elderly, so home care and community care will continue to be the mainstream of China’s pension model. Facility care will be there as well, but as an auxiliary model. From 2010 to 2018, the number of people aged 65 and over in China increased by 47.64 million, while the number of elderly care institutions increased by only 128,000 and the number of elderly care beds increased by only 4.122 million, with an average of 1,393 elderly people having an elderly care institution, the supply is far less than the market demand, and home care is more in line with China’s traditional culture.
Government support
The central authorities heavily support keeping this large segment of the population healthy. Through its Office of the National Working Committee on Aging, the government has issued a plan to organize the elderly nutrition improvement action in the country from 2022 to 2025.
The notice proposes four actions, including publicizing the nutrition and health knowledge of the elderly, strengthening nutrition intervention for the elderly, improving the ability of elderly nutrition and health services, and carrying out public welfare activities for elderly nutrition and health. Apart from the general Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Citizens, that saw an updated version this year (from the previous 2016 version), the government also issued a separate Dietary Guidelines for the Elderly and one for the very old (<80 years).
The government also organizes several campaigns for promoting healthy living and eating, like: the National Elderly Health Promotion Week, or Respect for the Elderly Month. The phrasing of the latter refers to an important trait of the Chinese policy towards promoting the health of the elderly: the duty of the young, in particular children, to see to it that their parents lead a healthy and happy life. The government rolls out the playing field, but the policies are executed by the children, where necessary assisted by government officials of various administrative levels.
The lowest administrative levels have a special role in the implementation of the national policies. Senior citizens move less easily than younger generations, so it is imperative that their care is in the hands of grass root level administrations, like communities (shequ 社区) or neighborhood commissions (jiedao 街道). These administrations include Elderly Affairs Offices (laonianban 老年办) to see that the elderly under their jurisdiction are take care of well, including their nutritional needs.
Children and local government officials go about carefully, when trying to improve the eating and drinking habits of the elderly in their care. A report published by the site Herbridge gives some interesting examples from interviews with various consumers.
The elderly may have fixed habits that are not easy to change. E.g., many stick to old habits and buy what they have bought for decades, without giving a thought to whether their bodies are still capable of digesting high sugar high fat foods.
That situation is turned around by another group of elderly. A woman who buys the groceries for her mother complains that her mother now prefers fruits and vegetables, but that she worries that this will lead to malnutrition, while her mother is already very thin. Meat and fish are still regarded as the most nutritious foods by many Chinese. While the young now like to have slim bodies (see further on in this report), most middled aged Chinese still regard a slightly protruding tummy as a sign of good health.
Then there are also people with some basic knowledge about food ingredients who try apply that insight to adjust their parents’ diet. One interviewee has bought a jar of xylitol powder to substitute the sugar jar in the family kitchen. She now sweetens foods and drinks for her mother with xylitol wherever possible.
A final example of inventive adjustment of a parent’s nutrition is a man whose father stopped liking oatmeal porridge made with milk, although he bought an expensive type of ‘smooth milk’ for his father. He then replaced the milk with unsweetened yoghurt which his father liked very much. The report does not mention if this was a case of lactose intolerance. It is still a great example of how deep present day Chinese are involved with nutrition.
The Young (?)
The ‘young’ is insufficient for denoting an age group in present day China. China has developed so rapidly during the past decades, that Chinese marketers like to divide the country’s population in cohorts named after a decade – such as the post-80, the post-90 and the post-00. Each group is characterized by a number of distinctive habits and world outlook. The post-80s were born after the end of the Cultural Revolution and have been shaped by the early years of the economic reforms that changed the lives of Chinese so profoundly. They are approaching 40 now and most of them are married and have children. They are much more affluent than their parents but are not big spenders on food, as there are so many other expenditures to worry about. A considerable part of those expenditures are for their children, the post-00s, including candy and snacks.
Single dogs
This is another category that has been introduced in an earlier post. The post-90s are young, well-educated, concentrating on their careers in corporations or their own start-up enterprises. With a few exceptions, they are all only children and have been spoiled by their parents and grandparents, as a result of which they have developed a taste for good food. Moreover, a considerable part of them are single and living by themselves. They may marry once, but they give priority to their careers. Many pursue that career outside their hometown, so also away from their school and neighbourhood friends. A modern term for these people is Single Dogs (danshengou 单身狗). Experts estimate the current number of people in the post-90 cohort at 188 million, approximately 14.1% of the Chinese population. 92 million of them were living a single life in 2021. In spite of their young age, many of the post-90s are complaining about ailments resulting from their demanding lifestyle. A 28-year old female Internet programmer is quoted as saying: “I used to buy supplements for my parents, now half of the supplements I buy are for my own consumption.”
So, what and how do the post-90s eat, besides taking supplements? Based on my own observations, they easily spend RMB 100 per person per day on food. They typically live in two-bedroom rental apartments. They have the equipment to cook but many lack the skills. They are the generation of ‘little emperors’, spoiled by their parents, who provided three meals a day, so their child could concentrate on their education. As long as they came home with top grades, the sky was the limit in regards to what their parents would do for them.
The post-90s also lack time. They are enjoying the freedom of their own apartment but are still leaving home early and returning late. They do eat fast food occasionally but they have learned to appreciate good food and they are also still Chinese, so their palates are longing for the right textures and flavours. They are conscious about good nutrition as introduced in the previous report.
The Chinese food industry is allocating considerable R&D funding to serve this cohort, which has resulted in an impressive range of ready-to-eat or semi-finished products. This is a brand-new food category in China, so there is no ready-to-use categorization of products. To cash in on this trend, food producers and retailers have started making and selling single-portion packed versions of a large spectrum of foods and drinks.
Punk diet
One of the ‘bad’ habits many of them share is staying up late, or even regularly skipping sleep altogether. A survey has shown that 44% of the 19 – 25 years cohort stay up until after midnight. In order to stay awake, they need aoyeshui (熬夜水) night owl beverages (literary: staying up all night water)’. Most of these are based on the milk tea drinks that have become so popular among young Chinese. Some also contain traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, which links these drinks to the nationalist trend (guochao 国潮).
This does not mean that the post-90s neglect their health. On the contrary, a healthy body is as important to them as I indicated in the first report. They smoke considerably less than their parents, for example. However, they want to combine healthy living with happy go living lifestyle. A term that has become fashionable among the same post-90 consumer segment is pengke yangsheng (朋克养生), or the ‘punk diet’: nutritious food presented as junk food. The choice of this term indicates that these consumers give themselves a kind of subcultural status. A concrete product type will help clarify this term and a good example food in this context is the energy bar. Energy bars are the ideal ‘punk diet’ food. They can be consumed with one hand, while the other remains functional (e.g., for moving a computer mouse). They provide energy, but are also a source of fibre and nutrients, so comforting to both your stomach and your consciousness. The Chinese name for this product, yingyangbang (营养棒), literally means: ‘nutrition stick’. You can find some examples on the Trends page of this blog. Nuts, a natural source of nutrients, form a common ingredient, but you can add whatever you want, or, better, is allowed by the local regulations. Another occasion for consuming energy bars in China is what I would like to translate as ‘après fitness’ (jianshenhou 健身后) as a parallel to après ski. The Chinese are only just starting to ski, but fitness centres are extremely popular in this age group. One recent study states that there are more than 43 million patrons of fitness centres in Chinese cities. After a tough spell on a treadmill, you need something that gives you energy without making you regain the weight that you just lost. The same study mentions energy bars as the favourite après fitness snack.
Bread as breakfast or snack
As introduced above, a long breakfast does not suit the lifestyle of the Chinese post-90s. Western style baked bread, that is easier to keep that the traditional steamed bread is more and more accepted as the ideal breakfast item. Moreover, it also makes an easy to consume between meals snack. You can take it to office and eat it again with one hand. To cater to post-90s demand for convenience, several Chinese bread suppliers have designed products consisting of two slices of bread with a filling in between. You just buy it, tear open the pack and eat it.
Liquid meals
When the pace of life is seen as becoming so hectic that you even lack time to chew, but you still want a nourishing meal, post-90s Chinese may look for something liquid. You can gulp it down, while still believing that you have ingested a little more than just calories. A traditional product ticking these boxes is congee. Instant congee has been on the market in China for several years. However, more nutritious products have appeared recently.
Children
This section concentrates on foods designed for the post-00 group, though not including babies or infants. One Chinese supplier defines the age group for its ‘children snacks’ (ertong lingshi 儿童零食) as 3 to 12 years. However delimited, this is still a huge consumer segment. The number was estimated at 159 million in 2020.
A salient feature of this segment is that these consumers usually do not buy the products themselves, but their parents, grandparents or other family members. However, they do regularly influence the selection of snack food purchased for them. Advertising therefore needs to appeal to both children and adult relatives. E.g., children like brightly colored packaging and advertisements related to their favourite cartoon figures. The adults will first look at the ingredients to see how ‘healthy’ the product is. Moreover, parents frequently exchange ideas about this on social media like Xiaohongshu or Weibo.
More light eating
Talking about health, Chinese parents are basically applying the same criteria to snack food for their children as they use for the foods they buy for themselves. In that respect, the contents of the first report apply to this category as well. Low fat, low sugar and low salt are mentioned frequently by people who discuss candy and other snacks for children.
A number of ingredients are perceived as especially important for the physical and mental health of children. We can take the popular category of soft candies (yingyang ruantang 营养软糖) as an example. Soft candies are used most often in professional literature on fortified children snack food.
White gold
Dairy, often referred to in China as the white gold, continues to have a high healthy profile among Chinese consumers and this is even stronger in the context of children. Foods made from milk, containing milk or adding an ingredient derived from milk are automatically regarded as more healthy. However, making a child drink a glass of milk is not easy and dairy based snacks offer a welcome alternative. One that became popular in 2023 is the cheese popsicle.
Women
As any society, the different likings of food between men and women have been a topic of discussion for ages. Also, some foods have been prepared specially for women for centuries. Bird’s nests are a good example. They are believed to be good for one’s complexion.
However, more recently foods have been launched in China that are positioned as typically for female consumers. Female consumers have become so valuable, that Chinese marketers are starting to talk about ‘her economy’ (ta jingji 她经济) as a separate market segment.
In the realm of snacks, fruit jellies are a product almost entirely consumed by women in China. Recently, some manufacturers have developed more exciting and healthy versions. There are now jellies with fruit chunks to increase the fruit contents up to 25%, or jellies flavoured with flowers or traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) herbs. Just to mention a few the most frequently used: Red dates or goji berries nourish qi and blood, moisturize and the complexion. Mung beans and white fungus detoxify the intestines and have an anti-aging effect. Black sesame seeds keep your hair black. This fits in with the general health trends introduced in the first report.
Female ingredients
Some ingredients are typically used in foods for women. An example of such an ingredient is peach gum. Peach gum is regarded as a beauty tonic in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It comes in the form of amber-hued crystals and is the resin of the Chinese peach tree (prunus persica). It is known for its beneficial properties on improving various skin conditions. Commonly prepared into soup-like desserts, often adding goji or dates. It is generally tasteless with a gelatine bouncy texture similar to bird’s nest. Peach gum is popular among Chinese women as it is rich in collagen.
Cosmetic food
The latest development in this trend is ‘cosmetic food’. So far, most of these are beverages fortified with collagen, like collagen yoghurt by Sanyuan.
More segments
When you put yourself to it, it will be possible to discern a few more special consumer segments. An obvious one is the ethnic segmentation. I intend to add a section about that to this post in the near future. However, Chinese marketers seem to develop a liking to this. The segments highlighted in this post are those worth considering when designing new or adapting existing foods for the Chinese market.
However, it is possible to pick out a more specific demographic group that you deem large and/or affluent enough an develop a product specially for that group. Eurasia Consult can assist you with this. We understand Chinese culture and how it affects food and drinks and we have a large database of foods available on the Chinese market.
*As for the question about Chinese golfers: unofficial reports mention more than 4 mln Chinese who play golf occasionally and about 1 mln regulars. The 2022 Chinese golf market (including everything, from golf club membership to equipment) was worth RMB 493 mln; up 4.8%.
Light eating, qingshi (轻食) has been an issue in China for some time. It includes foods that are low(er) in salt, fat and sugar, but also has broader health connotations. Moreover, it is also about eating smaller meals or portions than usual. That is not just about food but about a complete life style concept, for many also including more exercising. This is reflected by the fact that many Chinese speak of ‘light-eating-ism’ (qingshizhuyi 轻食主义).
This post starts with a description of traditional Chinese concepts about nutrition. These concepts have not only never disappeared, young Chinese show a renewed interest in this tradition. Concepts and terms in this first chapter will reappear in following reports as well.
After that introduction, I will highlight the various aspects of light eating in separate chapters, and end with a review about the future of this movement.
Embedded in an ancient tradition
Qingshi is not just a Western trend catching on in China. The ancient Chinese medical classic Huangdi Neijing, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, written during the Qin (221 BC – 207 BC) and Han (206 BC ~20 AD) periods, warned against overeating in general and consuming too much fish or meat.
Huangdi Neijing was the first systematic medical book to be published in China. It incorporated the accumulation over centuries of medical experience and observations by the Chinese herbal doctors. The theory of Chinese medicine is heavily influenced by ancient Chinese philosophy, especially that of cosmology and movement of the universe. This world outlook views that things are compassed of five elements – metal, wood, water, fire and earth – and that all material is in a process of change between the universe and the human body. Traditional Chinese Medicinal (TCM) doctors believe that each individual is both a part of the universe and a complete unit, so that a cosmic view of health was required. A well-nourished body was therefore also regarded as a condition for maintaining mental health.
Within this philosophy, phenomena are understood in terms of contradictory relations, for example, the sun versus the moon, the sky versus the earth, the day versus the night, the male versus the female and the positive versus the negative. TCM doctors analyse the physical signs and symptoms of a case by differentiating the appearances into two opposite categories, for example, into yin (阴 dark) and yang (阳bright), han (寒 cold) and re (热hot), xu (虚weak) and shi (实strong), wai (外exterior) and nei (内interior). It is thought that these extremes exist at the same time and are interchangeable, moving to the opposite extreme when conditions change; for example, water becomes air when temperature rises. This is expressed as ‘things at one extreme must go to the opposite extreme’.
Don’t think that these terms are esoteric, only known to TCM doctors who have studied for years. Most Chinese, including the young and hip, know these terms and use them regularly. E.g., a woman can warn a female friend not to eat too much of a certain food during menstruation, because it would make her diet too cold (han). Another Chinese can tell his colleague that his complexion is getting a little plump, which could indicate that his ‘spleen is too weak (pi xu)’.
The concept of a ‘balanced diet’ and ‘a complete diet’
TCM doctors pay a lot of attention to proper nourishment by selecting appropriate food in a way which is somewhat philosophical. By appropriate amounts of food was meant not too much or too little, otherwise it was thought that one health extreme or the other could result.
Huangdi Neijing provides a few recommendations for food intake: (1) Poisons (毒du) (substances to rid or destroy unwanted principles in the body) and medicines provide cure. (2) Five cereals (rice, sesame seeds, soya beans, wheat, millet) provide nourishment. (3) Five fruits (dates, plum, chestnut, apricot, peach) produce complementarity. (4) Five animals (beef, dog meat, pork, mutton, chicken) give advantage. (5) Five vegetables (marrow, chive, bean sprouts, shallot, onion) are for supplementarity. (6) If the food tastes and smells good, eat it to replenish the body’s needs.
The first quotation refers to an important aspect of the TCM view on food and nutrition: food and medicine come from the same sources (药食同源 yao shi tong yuan). The concept of du, literally meaning poison, can be confusing. In the Western perception, poising is something that makes you ill. In TCM is can be that as well, but the same substance that makes you ill can also help restoring the balance. In this sense, it resembles the Western tradition of homeopathy: curing a disease using a very thin solution of the substance that causes it.
The following four parts of the statement describe basic food groups and reflect principles, like having a variety of cereal like foods in order to nourish the body. The number ‘five’ (derived from the five fingers of a hand) does not mean a number per se, but signifies the varieties of cereal, fruit, animal and vegetable derived food. Cereals are considered basic and staple foods for nourishment Fruits are placed second because they compensate for shortages in whatever cereals provided. Animal-derived foods are perceived to be important for the human body, with its resemblance to the animal. Vegetables are regarded to provide an extended range of substances.
With the development of society, people and their circumstances change and cultural exchanges between countries include those of food and technology. Sometimes cultures integrate. Thus the food produced in the Chinese restaurants or home kitchens today will not be representative of the traditional diet, because it will have been modified to suit the taste of people in various locations and countries. However, it has been shown in the 1988 National Nutrition Survey of China, that most people living in the countryside and cities still follow traditional food patterns.
The concept of han (cold) and re (hot)
Han and re literally mean ‘cold’ and ‘hot’. However, the meanings of these essential concepts in TCM nutritional thinking are much more complex. They refer, not only to the body’s status, but also to its function, reaction and symptoms. For example, when a person has ingested cold food, (s)he may respond with related characteristics. Thus, han food may cause diarrhea and re food may cause constipation; han foods may cause nausea while re foods may cause gut problems such as heartburn. On the other hand, han food could combat constipation and re food diarrhoea. These symptoms do not relate to food temperatures, but to the relationship between food and the human body.
Whilst food is believed to provide our bodies with nourishment, the body reacts to food in different ways. For example, if a person eats too much meat, its metabolic effects through acid production may be uncomfortable. This is what is described as re (literally: hot; Westerners also speak of heartburn). Modern nutritional science concentrates on the nutrient components of foods and on the metabolism of nutrients. It rarely acknowledges that there are both nutrient and non-nutrient substances in food which might affect the body. Unripe guava may cause constipation and this may be explained by contemporary food chemistry in terms of tannic acid; this phenomenon is regarded as re in TCM nutrition. Ripened guava does not have the same effect and therefore is not considered as re.
Research has been made in China to link modern food science with TCM concepts. It has been argued that food which contains more or less cation than anion can create a situation of either han or re, although such a generalization is still difficult to accept at a point in nutrition science where the effects of any one cation or anion are recognized as complex. Most fruit and vegetables are considered as han which means that food high in dietary fiber belongs to the han category. That both han food and foods containing dietary fiber can cause ’emptying of the bowels’ is a proximation of the two streams of thought.
Water can be both han or re, depending on the mineral composition of the water, having different biological consequences. E.g., water which contained a lot of magnesium has been considered as han.
Neutral (温wen) and supplementing (补bu)
Food that is in-between han and re is considered neutral (wen) (literally meaning ‘warm’). Rice is an example of a neutral food. Wen food is usually compensated for by bu (literally meaning ‘to supplement’), to avoid nutrient insufficiency. According to TMC, wheats are slightly han, beans are neutral, most fish are neutral as well. Beef is wen, mutton is very re and pork is slightly han. Usually han food is cooked with some re food to neutralize it. For example, vegetables (a han food) are usually cooked with ginger or pepper (re foods) to neutralize them.
It is tempting to compare these TCM observations with modern food research. E.g., existing research shows that a given amount of carbohydrate or carbohydrate containing food can cause very different glycemic responses. Such contemporary nutrition science concepts may be regarded as analogous of traditional Chinese food concepts. However, this is a bridge too far for this report.
Staple vs non-staple
A traditional Chinese meal contains two parts – 饭 fan the staple food, i.e. a cereal, and the rest of the meal, referred to as ‘dishes’, 菜 cai. Cereal is the staple food in the Chinese diet and this may include rice, wheat, corn sorghum and millet, but tubers like (sweet) potatoes, taro, etc. and beans are also regarded as staples. The word cai in everyday Chinese is the same as that for vegetables, because Chinese dishes mostly contain vegetables, with other kinds of food added as supplementary ingredients. It also means ‘accompanying food’ which indicates that ‘dishes’ is only a side dish to accompany the main course – rice (in Southern China) and wheat products like noodles in the North.
Medicine and food come from the same origin
Chinese herbal medicines are part of the normal diet. Chinese scholars believe that what we eat and drink should provide all the nutrients that the body needs. Some medicinal plants may be used as part of a normal diet to maintain a healthy life.
Certain foods have preventive effects. For example, the lingzhi or reiki (the Japanese pronunciation of the same characters), a kind of mushroom and is believed to contain substances prolonging life expectancy. Liver it believed to cure night blindness, seaweeds goiter, and that black beans anaemia. However, as there was no knowledge of vitamins or minerals, the reason behind these assumptions could not be given.
Herbal medicines which were used as medicine were sometimes also cooked as food in a combined dish. They were used as bu. Ginseng and dates are popular examples. These foods or medicines used to be prescribed according to the needs of the patient or healthy person. However, in modern times some have become so popular that they are part of a regular diet. Linked to the current nationalist trend (国潮 guochao) in China, there is a noticeable increase in interest in TCM-based supplements among young affluent Chinese consumers. I will revert to that later in this report.
The Chinese authorities are regulating this use of TCM herbs as food ingredients. There is an official list of herbs and their extracts that are allowed to be used as food ingredients. TCM materials not listed are prohibited in regular foods and beverages.
Low sugar
Chinese have a sweet tooth. We all have, of course, but my first impression of Chinese food products, when I studied in China for a year in the mid-1970s, compared with their counterparts that I was used to Europe, was that they tasted significantly sweeter.
The reason for this is not much different from that in the Western nations. Sweet is an attractive flavour and sugar used to be a luxury item, so a high sugar content marked a high standard of living.
The ultimate sweet food is candy. The Chinese word tang refers to both sugar and the generic category of candy. This poses an interesting linguistic problem when you seriously start thinking about reducing sugar in food. Candy should then be an important focus product, but how do you express ‘sugar-free candy’ in Chinese? It would be something like ‘coffee-free coffee’. However, these expressions are regularly used in professional and commercial literature, so apparently Chinese can distinguish between tang = sugar and tang = candy.
Obesity
The inevitable effect of consuming sugar-heavy foods and drinks, obesity, has also become a problem in China. Among Chinese adults aged 18-69 in 2018, there were about 85 million obese people, of which 48 million were men and 37 million were women. There were 11 million more men than women. In 2004, there were only 28 million obese people in China. In other words, in just 14 years, the obesity rate in China has risen from 3.1% to 8.1%. A report from 2021 estimates that the number of obese people at 230 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%.
Children are also affected. The latest research shows that the incidence of childhood obesity in China has reached 20%. Data from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention shows that there are more than 550,000 obese people under the age of 17, and 12% of children are overweight. Apart from consuming too much sugar, part of the childhood obesity is caused by parents who still adhere to the traditional Chinese belief that a fat body is a sign of health and therefore give their children too much food, including modern manufactured foods and drinks.
Concerned consumers
This is a good point to mention that modern Chinese consumers are possibly the most ingredient conscious people in the world. Many Chinese do read ingredients lists of the foods they buy (or before they buy them) and discuss their concerns on social media and other Internet platforms. One reason for this is the experience with a number of serious food safety issues during the past decade, which has made Chinese consumers suspicious of statements about food quality from the manufacturers of those foods.
Chinese tend to take statements like ‘sugar-free’ literally. Moreover, the Chinese food industry has recently started using the term ‘zero sugar’(0 tang 0糖) to indicate sugar-free, which conveys an even more absolute feeling that the product does not contain any sugar. Many people doubt whether they can believe such a statement. The government met this suspicion with clear specifications.
Item
denomination
specification
Sugar
sugar free
<= 0.5g/100 g/ml
low sugar
<= 5g/100 g/ml
Related to this problem is the statement ‘zero calories’ (0ka 0卡) that often follows the indication ‘zero sugar’. This is even more tricky, because the energy in a food product does not only come from sugar. Articles informing consumers that sugar replacers are just that, replacing sugar, but do not mean that a food does not provide calories appear regularly in the Chinese press. Interestingly, no party in China has so far proposed to prohibit using the term ‘zero calories’ on food packaging.
Chinese doctors also point out in such publications that the use of artificial sweeteners also does not affect the chance of developing diabetes. Diabetes is big problem in China. One study states that the number of new patients increases with approximately 12.7 million p.a. The total number inf 2021 was 140 million. Another doctor points out that marketing a food like steamed bun (mantou 馒头) would be useless, because eating it would still increase the glycaemic index. We knew this already, but I am adding this to show that topics like this are discussed in the Chinese media in much more detail than in similar Western media geared to consumers.
Communities
Chinese culture is high communitarian. Chinese prefer to do whatever they do in groups of linked minded people. Many consumers concerned with the state of their own health and that of their loved ones form groups seeking to reduce sugar intake. On Xiaohongshu, an app popular with users mostly between 18 and 34, searches for phrases such as “quitting sugar (jietang戒糖),” “sugar control (kongtang控糖),” and “sugar reduction (jiantang减糖),” show tens to hundreds of thousands of results. On social media platform Douban (also known as Tik Tok), also popular among the under-35 population, forums for users wanting to quit sugar can host thousands of members. One, the “Quit Sugar Commune” established in July 2018, has over 5,000 members who “check in” each day to record their low-sugar milestones and progress toward health goals.
Celebrities have also taken up the craze. In April 2018, singer and actress Zhang Shaohan told her over 15 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese platform that can be best described as a combination of LinkedIn and Twitter, that her “secret” to staying young is a zero-sugar diet: “Highly processed sugar … is probably one of the most harmful inventions in human history,” she wrote, earning 190,000 likes and 50,000 forwards on the platform.
The National Health Commission (the former Ministry of Public Health) has also announced a goal of getting consumers to cut down their sugar intake to below 25 grams as part of the “Healthy China Initiative,” as well as updating standards for labeling sugar content on food products and restricting the sale of high-sugar foods.
Less knowledgeable manufacturers
While the large Chinese food manufacturers will have sufficiently knowledge in-house, quite a number of smaller local producers lack such knowledge. This can lead to interesting discussions on Chinese food industry online platforms. E.g., a local manufacturer of pastries (he does not provide much personal information on his personal home page, but he seems to be an elderly baker in Henan province) inquires if someone in the discussion group is familiar with sugar-free biscuits or pastries. In particular, he asks people to ‘introduce raw materials that can be used’ in such products. The first reply comes from a man with a university background (Master degree) and working in a food research institute. He answers that there are no real sugar-free biscuits or pastries, as the starch in the products are transformed into sugar by the human body. Another person (hiding his background, except for working in cereal processing) adds that you should distinguish between ‘sugar-free’ (wutang 无糖) and ‘no sucrose’ (wuzhetang 无蔗糖). The discussion continues for some time, but the above suffices to show the level of knowledge among manufacturers in China.
Sugar substitutes
A new problem is that sugar substitutes come with their own problems. Almost all substitutes are produced in China, and the country is a major producer of some. However, food additives in general have a bad name in China. China used to be food additives heaven. Ingredients lists on food packaging (if provided at all) could be quite long. I remember reading an article in Chinese newspaper entitled: ‘does ice cream really need 12 types of additives?’. This is the Chinese consumer again (see above) who actually reads such lists. Even the more natural sugar substitutes like stevia, are regarded as unnatural and therefore something you would rather not have in your food. Some of the older ones like aspartame or acesulfame-K, are linked to cancer in many publications in popular media. A report from Chinese news outlet The Paper of November 2021 warned that consumers of sugar substitutes are 14 percent more likely to experience depression. It also noted that consumption of aspartame on an empty stomach may cause a blood sugar imbalance, and erythritol can lead to gastrointestinal troubles. An article by the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission of August 2021 warned about the risks of excessive consumption of sweeteners. It suggests that low-calorie sugar substitutes don’t satisfy the brain’s sense of hunger, leading people to eat more food, which in turn increases their risk of weight gain and diabetes.
Then there is the issue of price. Using sugar substitutes come at a cost. Established in 2018, Nice Cream uses natural sugar substitutes like erythritol (rather than artificial sweeteners like aspartame), but this is expensive, and it is a part of the reason why Nice Cream products retail for up to 10 times the price of other ice creams. There is a market segment for expensive but healthy leisure foods like this, but it is relatively small.
Low fat
Unlike sugar, fat is a macro-ingredient indispensable in the human diet. In processed foods, fat adds to the flavour and texture and contributes to the satisfactory feeling consumption. We love fat, but not as a part of ourselves. While body fat is not only produced from consumed fats, consumers in more advanced markets, who start caring about their weight and health in general, first of all blame the fat in their foods.
A concurrent problem in China in this respect is the rapidly increasing ratio of meat in the Chinese diet. With the increasing spendable income, consumers can and want to buy foods that until then were regarded as luxury. Meat, in particular beef is one of such foods. The ratio of meat in the Chinese diet has almost doubled in a couple of decades. As even lean meat contains fat, this has increased the fat intake of Chinese people considerably.
Low(er) fat
Low fat as a marketing issue therefore started in China considerable earlier than the current Light Eating vogue. However, it was mainly literally lowering fat in the formulation and compensating its effect on the texture by adding additives like modified starch, emulsifiers, etc. When the Western food industry launched that ‘low sugar, low fat, low salt’ slogan, it was readily taken over by the Chinese government and therefore also by the Chinese food industry. Lowering fat was then approached in a much broader way, including e.g. substituting fat with other, more natural, ingredients.
In restaurants and home cooking, Chinese started eating more Western style salads. One of the eating habits Westerners brought to China when they started living there was eating mixed chopped raw vegetables as meals. Chinese observing this described those Westerners as ‘eating grass (chicao 吃草)’. This expression is quite flattering, as it implies eating animal feed. This attitude has changed considerably.
Zero fat (?)
After lowering fat in food was aligned with low sugar and salt, the designation zero fat (0zhifang ) also appeared on food packaging and marketing campaigns. However, as is the case with sugar, 100% fat-free is a close to impossible to reach. The Chinese government has therefore promulgated the following specifications.
Item
denomination
specification
Fat
fat free
<= 0.5g/100 g/ml
low fat
<= 3g/100 g/ml
Fat in food formulations cannot be simply replaced by ‘artificial fats’ as is the case with artificial sweeteners. I already mentioned additives like modified starch or emulsifiers to mimic the effect of fat on textures. This is technically a good solution, but adds additives, often several, to the ingredients lists on the packaging and Chinese consumers like to study those lists.
Fibre
Chinese food technologists are therefore focusing on adding more texture to foods in the shape of dietary fiber. It does not deliver the same texture, but it can replace the bulkiness of food that is delivered by fat. This has also a psychological aspect. If a food company would directly advertise with replacing meat with vegetables or coarse grains, a considerable segment of Chinese consumers would object, as it sounds like giving up on a luxury food that they now can afford. On the other hand, adding ‘dietary fibre’ (shanshi xianwei 膳食纤维) sounds fancy and modern and therefore gives a luxury feeling.
Candy
Low fat obviously is less important for manufactures of candy. One related issue linked to candy is fruit jelly made from konjac. Fruit jelly are extremely popular among Chinese children, and female consumers of all ages. They can be a source of calories, but those made from konjac are relatively better in this respect. Manufacturers of konjac-based fruit jellies therefore make sure that consumers get the message by printing it on the packaging in huge characters.
Bakery
Fat replacement is more important for producers of bakery products. Bread is an interesting item in this product group. White refined flour and food made from it were until recently regarded as a luxury products and with the increase of spending power, Chinese consumers bought more and more of it to enjoy the same delicate foods, e.g immaculately white steamed bread, like the rich. That has changed very quickly in recent years. Whole meal flower and bread, pastry, biscuits, etc., made from it are now the thing to buy by the health conscious young urban professionals.
Other, coarser, cereals than wheat or rice have also become popular (again). An example is millet (xiaomi 小米). Millet was the sustenance that Chairman Mao and the Red Army relied on to sustain them during the arduous campaigns against the Kuomintang and the invading Japanese. Millet has some of the properties we might associate with the soldiers who relied on it back in 30s and 40s. While it prefers a warm climate, it possesses the ability to adapt to other environments, as well as being remarkably drought resistant and able to survive in poor, heavily acidic or alkaline soils. The nutrients millet contains are hard to digest. However, it is rich in calcium, phosphorous, iron, carotene, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, niacin, zinc, manganese, selenium and oestrogen, amongst other things.
The Chinese food industry has also discovered chia seeds as a source of fibre that also provides protein. Other sources of fibre incorporate in bakery products are vegetables, fruits and TCM herbs. The also provide functionality. Water chestnuts, dates (jujubes) and goji berries are examples of plants that also have medicinal functionality according to TCM and are nowadays widely used to enhance food and beverage recipes.
Modernization
The most essential aspect of the production of Babao Porridge is the combination of emulsifiers and thickeners. Babao Porridge consists of a viscous liquid part and solid parts. Manufacturers need to formulate the product in such a way, that the solid parts are more or less evenly distributed over the liquid part upon opening of the can. A number of Chinese manufacturers of emulsifiers and thickeners supply products specially formulated for Babao Porridge. Industrial recipes for so called ‘low calorie Babao Porridge,’ proposed by manufacturers of ingredients use sticky rice as the macro-ingredient, where part of the rice can be replaced with pumpkin. Various combinations of fruits (dates are most popular) and nuts (including peanuts) are added. Frequently suggested micro-ingredients and additives: pumpkin powder, xylitol, oligoxylose, CMC, konjac powder, and EDTA.
Low salt
Salt is the most generally used flavoring ingredient in food all over the world. It is currently one of most dangerous food ingredients in terms of food borne diseases. Until purified salt was only available in small volumes and therefore relatively expensive, the latter was not an issue. Now that salt is available in abundance excessive use has become a global problem as well.
High intake
In China, salt intake has consistently been very high and is believed to account for 40% of all deaths. Despite various governmental campaigns since 2007, the latest estimates show that salt intake in adults still averages at 11 g/day,6 making it one of the highest intake levels in the world. Importantly, the slow progress made so far in salt reduction could be offset by the rapid increase in the consumption of processed and out-of-home foods that comes with urbanisation.
The Chinese authorities had already started a salt reduction program, when the Western ‘low sugar, low fat, low salt’ campaign reached China too. This seems to help. In the beginning, Chinese consumers were reluctant to reduce salt in home cooking (a major contribution to salt intake in China) or restaurants. Salty snacks also remained popular. In the context of Light Eating, the affluent health conscious have not at least taken the lead in salt reduction.
Regulation
As is the case with sugar and fat, zero salt (0 yan 0盐) is not really attainable. The Chinese authorities have therefore also set a number of specifications.
Item
denomination
specification
Salt
salt free
<= 5mg/100 g/ml
low salt
120mg/100 g/ml
Easier
Low salt is harder to accept by consumers, but easier to accomplish than low sugar or fat, as salt has less influence on the products texture. Chinese publications suggest a series of ways to adapt formulations to a lower salt content.
Use vegetables and fruits with stronger flavours (peppers, onions, lemons, etc);
Use spices or strong flavoured animal products like dried fish;
Use TCM herbs. These usually also have strong flavours and you can advertise with the herb’s functionality (date, cinnamon, etc);
Add ingredients with a high potassium content (black mouse ear fungus (mu’er 木耳), laver, banana, potato, etc.).
The main challenge for the authorities is the same as in most other parts of world: how to gradually wean consumers of the salty taste they are so addicted to.
Soy sauce
A special ingredient that needs highlighting here is China’s favourite savoury ingredient: soy sauce. Already in 2017, Sichuan-based Cuiwei Food launched a low salt soy sauce, produced by natural fermentation. While salt reduction is a positive development, soy sauce has always been a typical savoury seasoning product, so completely salt-free soy sauce can only succeed when marketed as general flavouring ingredient.
End note: Light Eating, fad or there to stay?
Light Eating is certainly not a fad of the day, but something that will have a long term influence on the Chinese food market in the broadest sense. As a concept has been launched a few years ago, first of all among patrons of fitness centres, who became more conscious about the long term effects of eating too much. Their income increased rapidly, but not so much their traditional eating habits. This resulted in a rapid increase of obese people in China. However, that additional income allowed them to start exercising ‘like the Westerners do’, which introduced them to regard eating salads as complete meals. Western was (and still is, although it is fading) synonymous with modern.
The movement grew with the increasing number of people who started exercising regularly and caught the attention of entrepreneurs who set up shops offering healthy (light) foods. When the Western low salt – sugar – fat concept entered China, it was linked to the Light Eating concept almost immediately, which drew the food and beverage industry into the movement as well. The academic world (medical science, food science) followed soon.
While writing this end note, I made search in the Chinese search engine Baidu with the longer term qingshizhuyi (light-eating-ism). Baidu came up with 9,170,000 web pages including this term. This indicates that the concept is a real ism, a world outlook. It will be influential for some time to come.
What could the next step be? One possibility could be ‘clean label’. The concept has caught attention in China. I indicated above that China used to be food additive heaven, but that Chinese consumers have become wary those long lists of additives. However, you can still see such lists on products marketed as ‘light’. I expect that this will become an issue of debate within the light eating movement in China soon.
This post is a summary of our continuous research of the developments in the Chinese food and beverage industries. Contact us for a larger, if needed tailor made, study, including concrete examples of Chinese products that are already on the market.
We had lunch at Xibei Youmian again and I discovered that this famous chain of restaurants serving food from China’s Northwest (Xibei means northwest) has added a craft beer of its own to its new menu list. It is produced by KDB Brewing in Fuyang, Anhui.
The product is called Oat Beer, because oat is one of the three malts used to brew this beer: barley malt, wheat malt and oat malt.
The beer has a strong body: 12.5% and more alcohol than the typical Chinese pilsner: 5%. This beer indeed has a much fuller mouthfeel than sweetish light domestic beer. The price is also a little higher. A small bottle costs you RMB 13. It is worth it, and while I am a wine drinker and usually would prefer red wine Xibei’s food, I may actually be tempted to get an Oat Beer again the next time.
Chinese New Year is on February 10 this year and regular readers of this blog know that Chinese are now preoccupied with buying stuff for the Spring Festival, the official name for Chinese New Year, and most of it will be food and drinks.
I happen to be in China at the moment to celebrate with family and friends, but obviously also to observe the latest trends. I visited Beijing’s annual New Year Fair in the Agricultural Exhibition Centre. In this post, I want to focus on the foreign influences in this year’s fair.
Russia
Russian products are by far the most important foreign foods offered on the fair. Some of them are imported, while others are produced in China, in particular in Harbin. Harbin is the home of the famous lieba, a word derived from the Russian word for bread ‘hljeb’. A big stand from Harbin also offers various Russian style sausages.
In the middle of the fair is a large space set up as a supermarket, with an entrance and an exit with the cashier. It offers a broad range of goods, including some non-food products. I am simply providing a few pictures of milk powder, chocolate, cookies, and pasta.
Australia
Australia is the second nation in terms of volume. I saw three or four stands with Australian food, in particular oatmeal.
New Zealand
There was one stand with products from New Zealand, with wine as the most visible. That was especially interesting considering that no stand offering Australian products was selling wine. A few wines were offered for exceptional low prices (for Chinese standards).
Spain
A stand promoting Spanish ham is positioned near the entrance. Interestingly the same stand is advertising with ‘pizzas with Spanish ham’.
Romania
The Romanian stand was exclusively selling wines from Romania and Moldova. The Romanian importer and his Chinese aide were selling actively, offering free tasting of several wines. On the other hand, the importer was not prepared to give special prices for the New Year, except for a 6-bottle box of the cheaper red wine.
Indonesia
Indonesia was present exclusively with coffee, including the prestigious kopi luwak.
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