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McNuggetisation is coming for the Chinese diet
Tighter wallets and lifestyle changes among the young are affecting food consumption choices in China.
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McNuggetisation is the moment America hit in the 1980s, when meat ceased to be aspirational, and became sort of cheap and trashy instead, says the writer.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
David Fickling
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The story of the modern Chinese diet is one of scarcity, boom and bust. Many of the older generation still have memories of desperate penury under Mao Zedong, when history’s greatest famine left tens of millions dead and tens of millions more surviving on tree bark, leaves and vermin.
Those born in the 1970s and 1980s have a more triumphant tale to tell. In 1990, the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong. At about the same time, China became the world’s biggest consumer of meat, buoyed by rising incomes and the efficiency unleashed by allowing private enterprise into farming.
