A Hot Pot of Debate

The strong smell of the famous Sichuan cooking floods into local streets, whose hot pots of chili (红辣椒) and oil boil like restless volcanoes (火山). Along with all the flavours, however, a wave of panic is in the air. Sichuan cuisine (美食) is facing a crisis.

It seems surprising to hear such concern, since Sichuan cuisine has been conquering the world and gaining considerable popularity abroad as China’s favourite out-of-home dining.

But according to some old and experienced cooks, the rapid growth has worsened the cuisine, drowning the tastes of dishes in large amounts of chili and oil with menus being narrowed to spicy (辛辣的) dishes. Many cooks now are pursuing spicier and spicier food, ignoring the great variety of the cuisine. Thus, the simplification of tastes has created a crisis, sending a strong shocking wave into the time-honoured but complex traditions. Early this year, I watched a young cook add green vegetable to Kung Pao Chicken, which should be a wonderful mix of chicken, peanuts, red chilies and spices.

However, voices from many young cooks throw light on the new demands on Sichuan cuisine in the modern time— ”There’s no survival without innovation.” They hold the view that we do have to maintain the tradition, but it’s not a display in a museum. What makes sense is that although Sichuanese cooking is classified as one of the eight great cuisines of China, its roots are quite shallow, so after over several centuries of trade and migration, outsiders brought in a variety of new ingredients and cooking techniques. These influences combined only several generations ago to create an unusually tasty cuisine.

I believe the attractiveness of Sichuan cuisine is that it’s a big melting pot. Whatever is attractive in other cuisines, it can be absorbed and adapted to Sichuan cuisine. It’s not right to judge who is right and who is wrong, but it is clear that we should preserve the essence of tradition, while meeting modern expectations as well.

One way to know how much soda people drink is to ask them.

The problem? We tend to underestimate, lie or forget what we’ve consumed.

And this is a challenge for researchers who study the links between sugar­sweetened beverages and obesity.

A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition explains a technique that could help researchers get a good measurement of sugary beverage consumption — by analyzing a piece of hair or a blood sample.

Researcher Diane O’Brien of the University of Alaska and her colleagues have used carbon isotope (同位素)analysis to develop their measuring tool. “We’re isolating the [carbon] isotope ratio in a specific molecule,” explains O’Brien. The molecule is an amino acid called alanine, which captures carbon from sugars.

It turns out that when you consume sweetened soda, slightly more of a particular kind of carbon called C­13 gets trapped in alanine and incorporated into proteins. And proteins hang around in the body much longer than sugar does. So the scientists say they can sample proteins to look for extra amounts of C­13 in alanine. People with a lot of C­13 are likely to be people who have consumed a lot of corn syrup and cane sugar.

Using this technique, O’Brien says, you can capture a longer­term picture of sugar consumption compared with urine samples — which only reveal how much sugar a person has consumed in the past day or so.

Carbon isotope analysis has helped scientists piece together ancient dietary patterns, explains Dale Schoeller of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a commentary about the study: “The use of stable isotope signatures has even provided information about the diet of Otzi aka The Iceman, the 5,000­year­old natural mummy found in the Alps in 1991.”

And he writes that he thinks the technique will be helpful for researchers studying the obesity epidemic.

“This should be a major step toward resolving the controversy over the role of caloric sweetener intake in the development of obesity,” writes Schoeller.

Rice Dumplings: a taste that is out of this world!

4 . China’ s booming coffee business has made it the second most important market for global giant Starbucks, behind only its home U.S. market. But it’s also providing fertile ground for new and innovative (勇于创新的) players catering to local preferences. One of the latest in that group is Shanghai-based chain Manner Coffee, which, together with other similar homegrown names, are reshaping the country’s coffee drinking landscape.

This year alone has seen 16 financing events in China’s coffee sector, with more than 5 billion yuan ($784 million ) pouring into the space. Even the infamous Luckin Coffee, which was removed from the Nasdaq last year after being exposed for massive fraud (欺诈), is once again attracting investors’ attention.

Dubbed (被称作) as a seller of “street coffee” priced between 10 yuan and 20 yuan per cup, equal to $ 3 or less, Manner quickly became popular among young office workers for its less expensive price and high quality.

Manner and the other up-and-comers are thriving on a China coffee market that is growing at a healthy 15% per year. After expanding slowly in its first three years, Manner’s store count rose from just eight at the end of 2018 to 194 this year, with 165 in Shanghai and the rest in Beijng, Shenzhen, Chengdu and other cities. It plans to keep expanding outside of Shanghai by opening up to 100 new stores a year.

Meanwhile, Starbucks reported its same-store sales in the Chinese market grew by just 19% in its financial third quarter, down sharply from 91% growth in the previous quarter, due in part to weak year-ago figures from stores affected during early stages of the pandemic in 2020. The company forecast that growth would slow further still in the following years.

6 . Unwrapping your shopping to find you have bought mouldy (发霉的) bread, rotten fruit and sour milk could soon become a thing of the past, thanks to the range of emerging 'active packaging' technologies. While traditional packaging simply _______ a barrier that protects food, active packaging can do a lot more. Some materials _______ with the product to improve it in some way, or provide better information on the state it is in. _______, they may absorb oxygen inside a wrapper to help prevent food spoilage or show whether potentially dangerous foods like red meat and chicken have been stored at unsafe temperatures.

One of the new breed of packaging technologies that have just gone on the market in France is a ‘time temperature indicator’. Stores where the product has already been introduced report that far fewer consumers are returning _______ food. The indicator is basically a label that _______ the temperature a package has been kept at and for how long. The label has a dark ring around a lighter circle. The central ring contains a chemical which polymerises (聚合), changing colour as it does so from _______ to dark. If the package stays cool, the reaction is slow, but increasing the temperature speeds up the polymerization. When the inner circle darkens, it means the product is no longer _______ fresh.

Smart packaging can also control the _______ of the atmosphere inside a container. For instance, the make-up of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) within packaged vegetables will influence their freshness. This can be hard to control in a sealed package, since vegetables _______ more oxygen and give off more carbon dioxide as the package gets warmer. A firm in California is trying to solve the problem with a wrapper it calls ‘Intelimer’ which changes its permeability (渗透) as the temperature changes in a way that keeps different produces at their best O2/CO2 ________.

Decay can also be ________ by controlling the environment inside a package with an ‘oxygen scavenger’(清除剂). ________, this is achieved by placing a small bag filled with iron powder in the package — any oxygen in the package is consumed by the iron as it oxidises. However, consumers don't ________ finding small bags marked ‘Don't eat in their food’, so a company in New Jersey is making a wrap that itself consumes oxygen. The ________ includes an inner layer of an oxidisable polymer (聚合物) that traps oxygen in the same way as iron.

It is predicted that between 20 and 40 per cent of all food packaging will soon be ________.