How Can Today’s Young People Eat Well? | May Fourth Special Feature
We wish all young people a happy holiday!
People often say that young people are the most positive, the most energetic, the most vibrant, and the most idealistic group in society. Yet in reality, most young people are also just working people, hustling to make a living.
In this busy, fast-paced era, over the past two years Foodthink has been inviting stories from young people and engaging them on the question of how to eat well. Many have shared their own reflections and records on the question of food: some have analysed, in light of their own work situations, why they cannot break free of takeaway; some have pointed out the inherent connection between takeaway and “digital pickles” — the content one watches alongside a meal; some have sought out community canteens and small eateries tucked away in corners of the city; some have discovered that fermented foods can ease constipation; and some have reflected on the relationship between their lifestyle and the planet’s ecology through the plastic that wraps their food…
How can young people eat well? What are the dilemmas we face? How should we make a change? We have gathered these reflections and records together here. Their focus varies in scale, from the small to the large, but most touch upon phenomena and feelings that young people encounter regularly in everyday life.
Foodthink will continue to focus on how young people eat. What other eating challenges do you think young people face? Or what tips and suggestions for eating well would you like to recommend? We welcome your thoughts in the comments below. We also wish all our young friends well — may you all eat well and live well!
Why Can’t Today’s Young People Break Free of Takeaway?
China’s takeaway platforms have a user base of 535 million, with young people forming the primary force among takeaway users. But why, when it comes to eating, do young people always find it so hard to break free from takeaway? Do you face a similar dilemma?
As an editorial team that insists on never ordering takeaway, we have been deeply moved by these shared stories: for the platforms, takeaway is merely a business; but for ordinary young people struggling to make their way in society, takeaway is tightly woven into their everyday lives. What resonated most strongly with working people was that a third of our readers independently highlighted the positive correlation between ordering takeaway and work-life pressure.
At the same time, many have come to recognise ever more clearly that what keeps people trapped in the system is not only “riders’ rights issues” but also “consumer health problems caused by excessive oil and salt”. And there is the “anxiety”, “guilt”, “feeling wronged” and “a hollowness the soul cannot fill” that accompany the very act of ordering takeaway. These hidden emotions — the kind young people would rarely share with outsiders — have here been openly and earnestly expressed.
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
A Question That Has Long Troubled Working People
If you don’t order takeaway, what do you eat? This seems to be a question that has troubled working people for a long time yet has never been seriously discussed. Many have said that although at some point they no longer want to eat takeaway, constrained by a hectic work schedule, inexperienced cooking skills, or basic cooking facilities, many young people still find it impossible to break free of takeaway entirely.
Happily, the wisdom of the people is boundless. Young friends from all corners of the country have enthusiastically shared their little tips for eating well, and from these has emerged a quick, easy and economical “Secret Manual of Hearty Eating”. Some have started with small, personal changes: choosing to eat at community canteens and small eateries, designing simple, efficient recipes suited to weekday cooking, preparing ready meals at home, or trying to bring packed lunches to work. Others feel that “cooking for one person is just too much effort”, and so they take turns cooking with a buddy; and some have simply decided to grow their own vegetables, ensuring they can eat well right from the source.
How feasible are these ways of eating for you?
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
Are Digital Pickles an Antidote to Young People’s Loneliness?
On the menu of modern young people’s everyday meals, “digital pickles” — that virtual kind of food — are just as indispensable. So why do we need digital pickles?
Some readers have shared that it is precisely because they want to eat well that they need “digital pickles” to give a meal more “flavour”. Yet others have noted that “digital pickles” do not always truly help people dispel negative emotions — they may even make us overlook the inherent taste of the food itself.
A research team has already found that being engrossed in electronic devices while eating can increase total calorie intake by 15%, and may also lead to gastric dysfunction, indigestion, nutritional imbalance and other problems. Perhaps now we should, starting from the phenomenon of “digital pickles”, think seriously about what it truly means to “eat well” in a modern society where loneliness and acceleration coexist. How, then, can people actually “eat well”?
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
When Young People’s Food Is Trapped in Plastic Packaging
Young people’s everyday diets are saturated with excessive plastic packaging, which clings to food and spreads and proliferates uncontrollably. Faced with layer upon layer of plastic wound around takeaway, vegetables and pastries, and the plastic packaging of every kind of ultra-processed food, many surely grumble — but more often they simply find it incomprehensible and are left speechless: “I never wanted all this excess plastic, so why is it still there?”
For a long time, the “throwaway” lifestyle has trapped humanity and plastic in a “toxic relationship one cannot quit”. Whether plastic packaging is binned and sent on to landfills and incinerators, or scattered across mountains and seas only to travel back up the food chain to human tables, it inflicts enormous harm on both people and the natural world. In the final analysis, the answer has to be reducing plastic consumption at source.
Have you come across other examples of excessive plastic packaging? We would also welcome your tips and tricks for reusing or reducing plastic use — do share them in the comments.
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
How Long Has It Been Since You Last Visited a Wet Market?
What a wet market offers goes far beyond ingredients — it lets you feel a way of life threaded together through food as its medium, a place brimming with life and vitality.
Do you, as a young person, still visit the wet market often? Even in this age of acceleration, we have still received many experiences shared by our young readers about the wet market. Whether in a big city or a small town, whether at home or abroad, whether in the far south or the distant north, people’s lives are always intertwined with the wet market in all manner of ways.
Some believe the wet market will become the next space for the “20-Minute Theory” to take root; others maintain that it is still a place of “dirt, disorder and squalor”. Old and new perceptions overlap, yet neither seems able to tell the whole story of what a wet market truly offers. And so the wet market simply perches in some corner of the city, intertwined with the weighty business of livelihood, drawing in and breathing out the breath of everyday life.
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
When Young People Start Learning to Ferment
While we agonise over whether to cook for ourselves or head to the wet market for groceries, some young people have already started to experiment with fermentation. Fermentation is, in essence, a process of interaction between microorganisms and the surrounding material environment, brought about by human hands. It is no wonder, then, that among the many techniques of cookery, the making of fermented foods is particularly effective at sharpening one’s perception of food and the world of matter around us.
Fermentation is not merely a cooking technique — it is a way of life. Many young people see it as a new venture in eating well in the city, yet it is also deeply rooted in the terroir and traditions of every region. A pot of Northeast-style pickled cabbage may well be a student abroad’s way of missing home; sharing kombucha culture liquid is friendship carried forward; a recipe for paocai can be passed down from one generation to the next — and so, too, can the pickle brine.
Guizhou’s liquor starter and fermented sour soup, the pine-nut maltose candy of the Northeast, Kunming’s fermented eggplant pa, Shanxi’s Tounao “brain” soup, Jiangxi’s Qigao steamed rice cake, Hunan’s pickled chopped chilli … Have you tried them all? If there are other fermented foods you would like to recommend, please leave a comment below — let us keep refining this “Guide to Fermented Delicacies Across China” together.
◉ Click on the image to read more detailed discussions and shares from everyone.
Compiled by: Yuyang
Poster: Zhou Xuan, Li Ye, Kairui