Food is the life of the people. From eating enough to eating well, and then eating healthy, what changes have taken place in the dietary structure of Chinese people over the decades? What is the ideal dietary pattern? How to enrich the new resources of food varieties and meet the nutritional needs of food? The "Big Food view" gives the answer to how to better protect everyone's "happiness on the tip of the tongue".

Reasonable collocation, one party soil and water to nourish one party

Ding Gangqiang, director of the Nutrition and Health Institute of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that China began to monitor the national nutrition and health situation in 1982, and the monitoring over the past 40 years shows that the food intake of the people is becoming more and more adequate and diversified, the dietary nutrition status has been significantly improved, and the proportion of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency in the population has dropped significantly. The growth retardation rate for children and adolescents aged 6-17 years dropped below 2%. However, at the same time, the rate of overweight and obesity among urban and rural residents of all age groups is rising. According to the Report on Nutrition and Chronic Diseases of Chinese Residents (2020), more than half of adult residents are overweight or obese, and the prevalence of diseases such as hypertension and diabetes among adults is also increasing.

"China's traditional dietary structure is mainly plant foods, rich in dietary fiber, the defects are excessive intake of cereals, low intake of animal foods, milk and fruit are relatively insufficient." Chang Cuiqing, vice chairman of the Chinese Nutrition Society and deputy director of the Expert Committee on the revision of Dietary guidelines, pointed out that with the continuous improvement of residents' living standards, the dietary structure has changed, gradually changing to excessive consumption of animal meat and oil, and the reduction of coarse grains and potato foods, which is easy to lead to nutritional imbalance and lead to new nutritional problems.

In recent years, the "Mediterranean diet pattern" has become a healthy diet template chased by many people, so does China have a healthy diet pattern with local characteristics?

"The study found that the diet of Jiangnan and the southeastern coastal areas, represented by Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong, is representative of the 'Eastern healthy diet model', which is close to the balanced diet model we recommend." Yang Yuexin, chairman of the Chinese Nutrition Society and director of the Expert Committee for the revision of Dietary guidelines, introduced that the main characteristics of the diet in these places are diverse foods, light and less salt, rich vegetables, fruits and soy products, fish, shrimp and aquatic products, milk every day, and residents have a high level of physical activity.

"The newly revised Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022) for the first time put forward the 'Oriental healthy diet model', with the purpose of exploring and inheriting the Chinese healthy diet culture and inheriting the dietary model that we can see and touch around us." According to Ding, this dietary pattern can help prevent nutritional deficiencies, obesity and related chronic diseases, improve life expectancy and reduce the incidence of chronic diseases.

"One side of the soil and the other side of the people, what Chinese people eat, based on land resources to arrange a reasonable diet." In Chang Cuiqing's view, in addition to the Jiangnan area, through reasonable collocation, other areas can also find a healthy diet solution.

Wide open food sources, so that the people's table more rich

According to the analysis of many experts, the connotation of the "big food concept" is more rich, which emphasizes that while ensuring food supply, it also needs to ensure the effective supply of all kinds of food such as meat, vegetables, fruits, aquatic products, etc., that is, while keeping the "rice bag", it needs to hold the "vegetable basket" and hold the "oil can" to achieve the balance of supply and demand of the whole food. Better meet the people's increasingly diversified food consumption needs.

"Forests are rich in food. They are natural granaries." Yang Zhongqi, chief expert at the Chinese Academy of Forestry, said forests have great potential for food because they contain a variety of animals, plant seeds, fruits or leaves that the human body needs. At present, the annual output value of the national understory economy, which mainly focuses on understory planting, breeding and collection, exceeds 900 billion yuan.

"For example, camellia camellia (also known as camellia camellia) belongs to the camellia family, which is a unique woody oil tree species in China. The camellia oil extracted from its seeds is clear in color and fragrant in flavor, rich in nutrition, and is the edible oil often eaten by people in the mountainous areas of southern China." Yang Zhongqi introduced that the unsaturated fatty acid content of camellia oil is as high as 90%, which is much higher than rapeseed oil, peanut oil and soybean oil. Compared with olive oil, the vitamin E content of camellia oil is twice that of olive oil, and it has high nutritional value. After nearly 10 years of promotion and planting, the national camellia area has reached 68 million mu, and an emerging camellia oil industry has been formed.