The author has other great answers in a similar structure too!
How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
251–260 of 356 posts
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ultra-processed food is "low quality food". That's because: (1) it's rich in toxins due to the industrial processing and (2) it has a poor proteins/nutrients to energy ratio. Nutrient hunger is a thing. Proteins are regulated by the brain. Micro nutrients might be regulated by the brain as well. When you eat ultra-processed food, you end up eating more food just to get the nutrients you need to live. Ultra-processed…
What toxins are these and why are they bad? The liver is quite capable at removing actual toxins and using that terminology makes you sound like a quack. (2) is a valid point, but (1) should be entirely prevented by the FDA.
Many additives and colorants used in US food are banned in Europe for example. I wouldn't go as far as to call them toxins but they're at the very least suspected to be a net negative for the human body.
But again à lot of it is a question of dosage. A bottle of coke a week might not do much, a bottle a day and it's a whole other story.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#253I was really impressed by the top answer until I read this statement. "I mean, the Chinese government has also forced Tibetans to build a massive amount of greenhouses on the Tibetan plateau. Those Tibetans have no time to go to temples for worshipping any more, instead, they have to work in the greenhouses taking care of tomatoes. This is why Dalai Lama is not so happy to hear this." What??
I'm entirely certain this is tongue-in-cheek humour playing on western stereotypes about China.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#254Another perspective on how China is able to provide enough food: - In Shanghai 96% white-collar workers have at least one disease of the "food triad" (diabetes, fatty liver, hypertension), up from ~80% in 00's. - In Beijing 26% of the whole population is overweight or obese, up from 11% in 00's. - China has the largest percentage of obese children in the World, only competing with Mexico. So there is enough food, but…
This doesn't pass the smell test. China had 1 billion people in 1982. In 1985, obesity rates among children were 0.03% for boys and 0.12% for girls. They were able to produce enough food to feed 1 billion people in the 1980s, but there were nowhere near as many obese people. Within the time period of your stats (obesity rates up ~2.5x since the 00s), China's population has grown from 1.3B to 1.386B, basically a negligible increase.
A more likely explanation is that the arrival of cars, fast food, and a middle-class lifestyle is making Chinese people obese, just as it's making Americans obese. Studies show a direct correlation between obesity rates and rates of car ownership in China.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#255Chinese farm productivity is shite, and the government knows it. It is true that the state throws absolutely colossal amount of resources on geoengineering and agriculture, yet to little effect. China is nowhere near Holland or other advanced agriculture player in calories production per unit of labour. Out of close to a 100 officials I went by through my career, I only managed to befriend two. From those two, I bare…
I don't think that calories production per unit of labour is a big concern when you don't export produce and you've got access to so much labor and a socialist economy where food prices are fixed and jobs are all but guaranteed. The Dutch have a stronger focus on produce export and a higher income per capita, so they have to be a lot more efficient in order to be competitive in the global economy.
calories per unit labour is a good measure of how advanced the agriculture tech is. Just because labour is cheap, doesn't mean it's efficient - and imagine if that labour could be spent on other things (while still maintining the output).
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also: "Some of these Uyghurs, Kazakhs are sent to the reeducation camps and they are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese and the latest drip irrigation techniques to save water and reduce costs."
As well as "Local fishermen and farmers are actually forced to learn the latest solar technology and sustainable techniques provided by professionals from the local Chinese government." I'm not sure if the author is using the term forced the same way a normal english speaker would use it.
"forced", i suspect is being used in this context to mean "not given an alternative occupation".
China has strict rules on what you can do and where you live. Think of it as a passport - a social passport, similar to a social security number. To enrol your child in school, they need this social passport. To get subsidies or to work in gov't, you need this social passport.
By threatening to take it away, the central gov't can "force" people to do what they want. It's not slavery, since there's no physical coersion (as far as i m told). But not doing it means losing out a lot of stuff - and this may even affect other people related to you (for example, your relatives). This puts social pressure from your peers and relatives to make you conform - as they may not be as willing to make sacrifices for any idealism, even if you are.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does that necessarily mean that the food is low quality or just that there are more options and many are considerably unhealthier than the more traditional options (eg. more processed foods easily available now than in the past)
Ultra-processed food is "low quality food". That's because: (1) it's rich in toxins due to the industrial processing and (2) it has a poor proteins/nutrients to energy ratio. Nutrient hunger is a thing. Proteins are regulated by the brain. Micro nutrients might be regulated by the brain as well. When you eat ultra-processed food, you end up eating more food just to get the nutrients you need to live. Ultra-processed…
None of what you or the other comment say prove the claim that China (or Mexico) offer such limited nutritional choices that they are the cause of those health conditions, as opposed to unconstrained individual choice.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re running concentration camps for a million people, on the grounds that some small number of them might end up being Islamic terrorists in the future. I don’t think paying a few people to sow discord on Reddit would be the most absurd use of resources they have.
Uyghurs who are devout Muslims impede development and are generally hostile to the Han Chinese. Redditors in America, on the other hand, literally have zero effect on China, so the party doesn't care what they think. Sowing discord might make sense, but it definitely wouldn't come in the form of defending China on internet forums.
> Uyghurs who are devout Muslims impede development and are generally hostile to the Han Chinese
i really want to know if there's any legitimate reason why the uyghurs are being imprisoned and "re-educated". Do they actually post a threat? Media coming out of both sides (US and china) are untrustworthy. The US media paints it as a nazi concentration camps. China calls it reeducation because they want more conformity and prevent civil unrest (and that sounds pretty reasonable, if the uyrghurs are really plotting etc).
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't be serious, right? I don't question any of your data or even your conclusion, but do you really think WHITE-COLLAR workers having diabetes is a proof of " food is low quality empty calories"? To me, it's more about the fact that lots of young people (or people in general) in urban area have poor lifestyle. Barely has anything to do with the lack of food quality or nutrition. And I highly doubt this phenomen…
Right. As a certified nutritionist and soon to be registered dietitian, I can be serious. :-) Diabetes or hypertension are not that much related to the lifestyle. Not as much as fitness industry wants you to think. Besides being highly genetic, diabetes is also dependent on availability of simple carbs, in case of China, is white rice of which average Chinese person eats 320g per day.
In Japan they also eat truckloads of white rice, and they are generally quite healthy.
I do not thing that being a dietician gives you much authority to comment on the cross-cultural socioeconomics of nutrition, sorry.
The claim that the Chinese are fat and unhealthy because they are force-fed empty calories remains unproven.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#260This whole post has a Factorio vibe of x->y->z, I'd read a blog from this author just breaking down infrastructure.
You should check this out. Same author. He has quality answers on Quora.
https://www.quora.com/As-a-Chinese-person-what-do-you-think-...