At
least since the 1960's, Americans have been praising the healthiness
of the Chinese diet. Fresh ingredients, lots of vegetables, minimal
cooking, little meat, no desserts – a great improvement over the
large slabs of fatty meat, over-cooked vegetables, and masses of
sugar which makeup the American diet. Whether scientific studies
like T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell's, The
China Study
on the health benefits of eating like the rural Chinese in 1983 or
anecdotal versions like BuWei Zhang's How
to Cook and Eat in Chinese
or Ellen
Schrecker and
John E. Schreckers' Mrs.
Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook,
we know that Chinese food is good for you (or at least much better
than American food).
In
42 years of eating Chinese food in China, I have seldom had a
bad-tasting meal. Indeed, I cannot imagine eating consistently
better tasting food. But I have seldom had a meal which was good for
me, if by such one means complex carbs, low salt, low fat, and low
sugar. Outside of Buddhist establishments in Taiwan and Hong Kong
(or doing my own cooking), a vegetarian diet is out of the question.
If Chinese food is so healthy, why is maintaining a healthy diet here
almost impossible?
In
large part, the problem is social. For much of the 20th
century, rural Chinese were taxed literally almost to death, and very
few people had enough to eat. White rice and flour, salt, fat, meat
and sugar were rationed in the cities from World War II until the
1990's, and were often totally unavailable in rural areas. A huge
portion of the north Chinese population subsisted on sorghum porridge
and picked vegetables. Middle class Chinese my age remember their
families running out of food at the end of the month.
Since
the 1980's, China's food supply issues have changed dramatically.
There are no more shortages, and no rationing, People don't
generally worry about having enough food. Restaurants are everywhere,
and unlike in the old days, they actually have almost everything on
the menu. Supermarkets, both domestic and international, are bursting
with choices. Ignoring problems with the integrity of the food
supply (melamine in the milk, sewer-skimmed oil, contaminated meat,
pesticides, etc.) food-related health problems should have vanished.
But
now that white rice and flour, salt, fat, meat and sugar are freely
available, no one will eat anything without them.
Whole
grains were always considered fit only for animals or the very poor.
One of my former teachers (Harriet Mills) was imprisoned as an
American spy in the early years of the Peoples' Republic. She told
us that she knew she was about to be released when the prison
switched her diet from whole grains to white-flour steamed bread. In
Taiwan 40 years ago, whenever I bought brown rice the shop keeper
would ask about my dog. The Manchurian-style whole-grain fried cakes
which I used to be able to get at most breakfast kiosks in Beijing
are now bought only by migrant workers in a few remaining
holes-in-the-wall. Everyone else has switched to white-flour
flatbread filled with egg and meat.
Since
whole grains are universally considered poverty food, there is no
demand for them. No self-respecting person will eat them.
Supermarkets and grocery stores don't sell them, except for a few
imported Western products at large markups. The only restaurants
which serve them are a few which specialize in expensive “peasant
banquets” catering to Chinese boomers nostalgic for their years
down on the farm during the Cultural Revolution. Outside of such
restaurants, no one would EVER serve them to someone else – the
loss of face would be extreme. The only way to avoid white rice or
white-flour is not to have any grains at all. That is socially
accepted, especially if you substitute meat and fat.
I
suspect from my neighbors' shopping bags that behind closed doors,
people still eat a vegetable-heavy diet. But no one would eat like
that in public, and even low-end restaurants go heavy on the meat and
oil. Face requires it. Except in Taiwan with Buddhist monks or nuns
at the table, I have never been able to convince a Chinese friend or
colleague to order even mostly vegetarian dishes (or more correctly,
vegetable, since there is almost always a significant admixture of
meat in mainland dishes labeled “vegetarian”). When I go out
with Americans and order all such dishes, the waitress usually
objects that the order is “too vegetarian,” and often the cook
comes out to point out where the meat dishes are on the menu. In
restaurants where I have been eating on a regular basis for several
years, I note that the amounts of meat in the vegetable dishes is
significantly greater than it was a few years ago.
Since
most people used to eat a large amount of grain with a little to
flavor it, the sauces tend to be very high sodium. Pickled beans,
pickled vegetables, or just plain salt are added to everything.
Sugar not only gets added to the sauces (at least in Shanghai), but
during the summer, meals tend to be washed down with sugary “fruit”
drinks, soda, and sweetened ice tea.
In
short, before 1980 most rural Chinese probably did eat a fairly
healthy diet, through necessity rather than choice. Today, few
Chinese do. It's popular to blame the increases in obesity, diabetes
and heart disease on Western fast foods, but the fatty pork which now
makes up 20% of the bowl of fermented soybean flavored noodles and
the sugary bottles of “fruit juice” promoted for their vitamins
probably deserve more blame than KFC and McDonalds.
