As a follow-up to yesterday’s piece, China is important when it comes to how the planet deals with too many rich people wanting to eat heaps of meat, since there are 1.4 billion Chinese and they are getting richer by the second.
“The window of a KFC in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou hosts the image of a familiar mound of golden nuggets. But this overflowing bucket sporting Colonel Sanders’ smiling face is slightly different. The bucket is green and the nuggets within it are completely meat free.
“Over the last couple of years, after many years of rising meat consumption by China’s expanding middle classes for whom eating pork every day was a luxurious sign of new financial comforts, the green shoots of a vegan meat revolution have begun to sprout. Although China still consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork, and boasts a meat market valued at $86bn (£62bn), plant-based meat substitutes are slowing carving out a place for themselves among a new generation of consumers increasingly alarmed by food crises such as coronavirus and African swine fever.”
How Chinese pork is “farmed” I’ll leave to your imagination (though it’s similar to the way most of the bacon eaten in New Zealand is farmed: imported from Spanish factory farms), so before criticising the Chinese it might be best to have a good look at the fine print next time you buy some; if it’s farmed in New Zealand, there’s a better chance the pigs weren’t tortured like they were in Spain.
“China’s most cosmopolitan cities are now home to social media groups, websites and communities dedicated to meat-free lifestyles. VegeRadar, for example, has compiled comprehensive maps of vegetarian and vegan restaurants all across China. According to a report by the Good Food Institute, China’s plant-based meat market was estimated at 6.1bn yuan (£675m) in 2018 and projected to grow between 20 and 25% annually.
“Yun Fanwei, a 25-year-old student from Shanghai, is one of a new breed of vegetarians hungry for more options. “I buy some of these fake meat products and a lot of them are pretty good. They don’t necessarily taste like meat, but it makes a nice change from tofu,” she said.”
A nice change from tofu is a pretty low bar lol.
Here’s the basic proof of how eating meats trends with wealth:
“Eating meat has been closely connected with the growing affluence of China. In the 1960s, the average Chinese person consumed 5kg of meat a year. This had shot up to 20kg by the time of former leader Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening” of the late 1970s, and to 48kg by 2015.”
Two things here: meat eating per capita rose by a factor of ten, and the population doubled too. So consumption increased by a factor of twenty.
To create this much meat, you also create all of the pandemics (including the current one—probably) we’ve seen come out of Asia in the last twenty years.
“But in 2016, as part of its pledge to bring down carbon emissions, the Chinese government outlined a plan to cut the country’s meat intake by 50%. It was a radical move, and so far very few other governments around the world have included meat consumption in their carbon-reduction plans.
“The new guidelines, which called on citizens to consume just 40-75g of meat a day, were promoted with a series of public information adverts featuring the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron. Since then there have been few other concrete steps taken, other than the president, Xi Jinping, last August launching a “clean plate campaign” aimed at reducing the “shocking and distressing” 40% of food that goes straight from Chinese dinner tables into the bin.”
Arnie and James Cameron!
“Yao admits the industry is still very small in China but he thinks meat-free substitutes will become mainstream very soon. “Chinese consumers are actively looking for more sustainable products. While the link between meat and the environment is still weak among the majority of the population, the interest is there and China learns fast.”
Yes, it does.
[Cover photo: An advertisement for plant-based products at a KFC store in Hangzhou. International and domestic chains are expanding their range of meat alternatives. VCG/Getty Images]