America Needs Better Carbs — China Has Answers
Since Deng Xiaoping became China’s leader in the late 1970s, average family incomes have grown eight times over. To put that in perspective, if the U.S. economy grew that quickly, 2060s New York taxi drivers would be making almost $300,000 per year. The economic growth has been simply incredible.
In just 45 short years, hundreds of millions of Chinese families have been lifted out of poverty.
As you can imagine, many things have changed about China. Especially the food.
My friend’s mother would often tell me, growing up in Beijing in the ’70s, that for her family it was a delicacy to add pork lard to their rice — don’t even mention actual pork meat. Ever since this growth, however, vegetable and staple-driven diets are increasingly seen as the poor-man’s food. Filling up on carbs and soup? That’s low.
Nowadays, a full restaurant or home meal ideally includes several components. It should start with cold appetizers, liangcai 凉菜, which whet the palate and hold you over till the hot dishes, recai 热菜. These are a mix of stir-fries and steamed, fried, and boiled foods. Each dish must build off of the others, contributing complementary flavor, texture, color, and nutrition. The most important of these hot foods are called “big dishes” dacai 大菜, elaborate, expensive, and ostentatious preparations of mostly meat and seafood. Since tap water isn’t drinkable in China, soup, or tang 汤, is an essential source of hydration. Last and least are the staples.
Throughout this meal, meat is at the center of the plate.
Yet, this isn’t to say that meat-based meals are universally preferred. Many elderly, for health reasons, purposeful eat less meat, especially at nighttime. University-educated young people consume mountains of western media, and awareness over climate change and slaughterhouse conditions are driving many to adopt meatless or reduced-meat diets. As has been the case for centuries, practicing Chinese Buddhists forsake meat on the 1st and 15th of each lunar month, and many are completely vegetarian.
In major cities across China, high-end vegetarian cuisine is becoming increasingly sought out. In just the last four or five years, restaurants in Beijing, for instance, have started charging upwards of $100 for a light, delicately-plated Buddhist meal, served in a peaceful, historical-set courtyards.
While there is a clear trend towards higher meat consumption in China, so too are counter trends that continue to grow larger each year, if only more slowly.
Aside from food preferences, there are also the questions of convenience and cost, especially for breakfast and lunch. One is speed — there’s no time in the middle of the workday for a little feast. Another is economics — take the case of a migrant construction worker, who’s working 6.5 days a week, 12 hours a day, making $600/month, and paying much of that away in rent. On his salary, a $1 noodle lunch is a lot more affordable than a $3 meat or vegetable stir fry.
A lot about Chinese cuisine is changing. Yet, while so much is in flux, as once exclusive foods become increasingly ubiquitous and accessible, it would be wrong to view Chinese cuisine as simply centered around meat.
Not only did staples underpin Chinese cuisine for centuries, and have thus developed rich, regionalized diversification, they still do so today.
As Americans working in the plant food space, these traditions offer many lessons.
Consider the question of whole grain desirability.
Historically, European and Mexican cuisines have had a huge impact on American staple foods — rice, breads, pastas… Yet, doctors continue linking these and other simple staple foods — those with quick digestibility and a high glycemic index — to a myriad of wicked illnesses. At researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health write:
“Eating many high-glycemic-index foods — which cause powerful spikes in blood sugar — can lead to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and overweight. There is also preliminary work linking high-glycemic diets to age-related macular degeneration, ovulatory infertility, and colorectal cancer.”**
Americans need to eat more whole grain staple foods. Luckily, dietary preferences are already changing. From 2005–2016, rates of whole grain consumption increased by 20%*. And if current health-focused dining trends are any indication of what’s to come, eaters will continue demanding more and more healthy carbs.
The question becomes then, what will we eat?
Have you ever tasted a great whole wheat pasta? How do you complexify a German potato or a corn masa? Don’t even mention French bread and butter… It’s not to say these foods aren’t delicious. They do what they are meant to do. But they were never meant to be healthy.
Compare what we currently have to the abundance of whole grain staples in China (I can’t speak to other countries, but I’m sure many have great options, as well). Many of China’s most popular staples are indeed rice or white wheat-based. But beyond these, you have the northwest of Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai, where you can walk into any restaurant and order an unbelievably delicious oat noodles or chewy buckwheat jiaotuan jelly. If you’re in Tianjin, you can’t pass up the ubiquitous jianbingguozi, a delectable, chewy crepe made with 100% stone-ground mung bean. Outside of Tianjin, shop-owners make similar jianbing, but to cut costs will swap out mung beans for 5–7 other whole grains and pulses, which each leave their own indelible crisp, crackle, crunch. In Tibet and neighboring Yunnan, communities grow a special variety of barley, very similar to wheat but eaten whole grain, that is worked into dozens of breads and puddings.
Increasingly, these foods are no longer just niche to one region. In food courts and shopping malls across China, restaurants like Xibeiyoumiancun 西贝莜面村 — a government-supported full-service mega chain — are evangelizing oat noodles and other northwestern staples to raving fans.
What’s stopping American restauranteurs from borrowing these concepts? As a country, we want more healthy carbs, and we also LOVE Chinese food.
Moreover, early evidence suggests that other new staple concepts are already doing well. Quick service chains like Xi’an Famous Foods in New York are rapidly expanding, evangelizing new customers with vibrant flavors and an awesome bowl of noodles. Their business model is incredibly profitable (dirt-cheap noodles, a lot of flavorful sauce but little meat/veggies, and rapid-quick preparation). Though they aren’t whole grain, I can imagine a similar, complex carb-focused eatery to do just as well or better.
And there are so many of them!
What’s stopping us?
*https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db341.htm
**https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/carbohydrates-and-blood-sugar/
