Big food concept, manage "full" and "good"

In the past, people only cared about "eating enough", and a bowl of rice with some pickles was a meal; Nowadays, "health" has long been a must, and a small bowl of rice with meat and vegetarian dishes is very important. In the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle, eating a healthy diet and eating nutritious meals are crucial. Our body is like a house, diet is the cornerstone of this house, and dietary nutrition is the core of the cornerstone, which is directly related to the health of the body. At present, the people's demand for food is more diversified, and food safety has also expanded from quantity safety and quality safety to nutrition and health. Eating more securely, more nutritious and safer has become everyone's new demand.

Food quality affects people's health and life happiness index

Food is a daily necessity for everyone, and it is the basis of energy for all other activities. The World Health Organization has defined "health" as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being", and food health is closely related to physical health, mental health and social well-being.

Food safety and nutrition are the prerequisites for people's healthy life. A large number of studies have shown that the dietary patterns of different groups of people are associated with the incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other diseases; The proportion of deaths caused by endocrine diseases and malignant tumors in the total number of deaths was significantly positively correlated with the consumption of animal-derived foods and oils. The Global Burden of Disease Study shows that one of the main factors in the occurrence of disease in Chinese is unreasonable diet. According to a study published in The Lancet, high salt or sodium intake ranks first among the causes of cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases in mainland China. Therefore, advocating healthy diet and promoting food safety knowledge is also an important means to improve the health level of the whole society and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the society.

Food health is also closely related to an individual's mental health. Studies have shown that eating foods rich in minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression. In April 2024, a 180,000-person follow-up survey in the journal Nature Mental Health showed that different dietary preferences were associated with different risks of mental disorders. Picky and picky eaters can affect mood and cause malnutrition. And people who eat a balanced diet tend to show better psychological quality and better cognitive levels.

It can be seen that the quality of food affects people's health and life happiness index, and healthy and safe food will have a profound impact on people's health and sustainable social development. At this stage, the people's yearning for a better life is reflected in "eating", that is, a more abundant, diverse, nutritious and healthy food supply.

As the starting point of the food supply chain, agricultural production must establish scientific and standardized production standards and adopt safe and sustainable agricultural production models. Through the whole process of monitoring the farmland environment, pesticide use and other aspects, the quality and safety of agricultural products are ensured, and reliable raw materials are provided for subsequent processing and consumption. On the basis of ensuring basic self-sufficiency in grain and absolute food security, we should pay attention to the supply of other important agricultural products, including meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruits, and fish.

The concept of big food is an expansion and extension of the traditional concept of food security, breaking the traditional concept that food mainly comes from cultivated land, asking for calories and protein from cultivated land, grassland, forest and ocean, plants, animals and microorganisms, tapping the potential of food supply in an all-round way, and developing rich food varieties in multiple ways, including all foods that can meet human energy needs and have nutritional and health value. On this basis, to meet the diversified consumption needs of residents, comprehensively consider the resource endowment and comparative advantages of various places, promote the transformation of production mode from "what is produced and eaten" to "what is needed to produce", optimize food varieties and quality through scientific and technological innovation, and establish a diversified food supply system that adapts to supply and demand, so as to meet people's needs for healthier and more diversified food.

Changes in dietary structure require health literacy to match

From eating enough to eating well to eating healthy, as the food on the table of Chinese continues to change, the health problems associated with it are also changing.

In the past, the dietary structure of the mainland was dominated by plant foods, which were rich in dietary fiber, but the intake of cereals was excessive, the intake of animal foods was low, and milk and fruits were relatively lacking. With the continuous improvement of residents' living standards, the dietary structure has gradually changed to excessive consumption of livestock meat and oil, while coarse grains and potato foods have decreased, which can easily lead to imbalance in nutritional intake and cause new nutritional problems.

At present, unhealthy lifestyles also exist. For example, the ratio of dietary fat to energy continued to rise, and the recommended upper limit of 30% was exceeded for the first time in rural areas. The per capita daily cooking salt and oil consumption of households is much higher than the recommended value; The proportion of residents eating out is rising, and the problem of oil and salt in canteens, restaurants, and processed foods is worthy of attention. Children and adolescents often drink sugary drinks.

It can be seen that there is an essential difference between eating and eating.

Protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, water and dietary fiber are the 7 nutrients that the human body needs to consume in a balanced manner every day. Modern nutrition believes that the nutritional status of a person is like a wooden barrel surrounded by 7 wooden planks, the barrel capacity is equivalent to the healthy state, the nutrients provided by the diet determine the height of the wooden plank, and the barrel capacity depends on the height of the shortest wooden plank.

But many people still have misconceptions about healthy eating. Some refuse carbohydrate food because of the pursuit of a slender body, some think that vegetarian food is the healthiest, and some prefer big fish and meat. In fact, carbohydrates make up 50 to 65 percent of the food in healthy people, 10 to 15 percent of protein, and 20 to 30 percent of fat. If the carbohydrate content is more than 70% or less than 40%, it can pose a health risk. Similarly, animal foods provide us with high-quality protein, vitamin A and B vitamins, but are also high in fat and cholesterol.

These remind us that changes in dietary structure require matching health awareness and health literacy.

To this end, the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents are regularly revised to help residents improve their health literacy, change their nutritional health status through a balanced diet, move the threshold of prevention forward, and be the first person responsible for their own health. For healthy people, improving healthy food literacy, understanding of dietary science, and using balanced diet tools can help improve health. For overweight and obese people, it is more necessary to reduce energy, increase the intake of fruits and vegetables and high-quality protein, and maintain a healthy diet with total control.

In recent years, the "Mediterranean diet" has become popular and has become a healthy meal template for many people. In fact, the "Oriental Healthy Dietary Model" proposed in the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)" has already been a model for us.

The continent is a vast country, and different regions have different dietary representatives, among which there are many healthy dietary patterns. For example, the dietary nutrition of residents in the coastal areas of Jiangnan, Guangdong, and Fujian on the mainland is relatively good, and the main characteristics of the diet are: light cooking and less salt, diverse food, mainly grains, rich vegetables and fruits, and frequent eating of fish and shrimp and other aquatic products, soybean products, and milk. The Dietary Nutrition Survey and Chronic Disease Survey of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that the prevalence of chronic diseases such as hypertension in these areas is low, the average life expectancy, especially the healthy life expectancy, is high, and the incidence of overweight and obesity is relatively low. It was found that this model is close to the balanced dietary pattern, which is defined as the "Oriental Healthy Dietary Pattern" in the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022) and recommended. Not only in the southern region, but also in other regions, a solution to a healthy diet can be found through a reasonable combination.

The future food trend is both flavor and health

Food diversification is an inevitable requirement for a high quality of life. It has become a trend to make delicious food healthier and healthy food more delicious. And the food of the future is both flavorful and health-oriented.

What is Food for the Future? It is the development of traditional food and modern food, reflecting the change of future production methods and lifestyles, and the main task is to solve the problems of food supply and quality, food safety and nutrition, diet and spiritual enjoyment, etc., and the core content includes plant-based food, food perception, intelligent manufacturing, alternative protein, precision nutrition and food safety. From the perspective of scientific development, the future of food will be safer, more nutritious, tastier and more sustainable. As a high-tech industry, the future development trend of the food industry is a high degree of integration of food technology, biotechnology and information technology.

Flavor is a sensual enjoyment, and health is a rational pursuit. For food industry enterprises, in the process of transformation from food manufacturing to food intelligent manufacturing, there is an urgent need to cultivate new quality productivity that meets the requirements of high-quality development of the food industry, so as to build a food industry to design healthy functional products, build healthy production plants, and do a good job in the healthy food supply chain, so as to form a modern and sustainable future food industry system with high quality, high value and excellent service.

At present, there is still a shortage of nutritious and healthy food for specific groups of people in the mainland. For example, in addition to the development of infant milk powder, the R&D and production of other infant foods are not optimistic; The aging of the population in mainland China is intensifying, but the R&D and production of elderly foods suitable for the elderly are not sufficient, and the taste and texture are not targeted enough. For diabetic and gout patients who have dietary requirements, there are not many foods that truly achieve both health and flavor.

Food innovation is all-round, which first needs to form a consensus from the institutional level, further formulate and improve the development plan and policy of the health food industry, including supportive and regulatory policies, etc., to guide the whole society and the whole industry to develop in the direction of healthy food. At the same time, we will focus on strengthening food safety supervision, establishing a food supervision system that is coordinated with the healthy food system, and increasing the supervision of food production, processing and sales to protect the rights and interests of consumers. Relevant departments should also provide financial support and tax incentives to encourage enterprises to increase R&D investment and promote technological innovation and development of the health food industry.

Source: Guangming Daily