The Californication of middle-class Chinese diets

Dai Jianjun, an organic restaurateur in the eastern city of Hangzhou, was ahead of his time. For more than 20 years, his buyers have obsessively sourced ingredients, paying farmers in Zhejiang province above-market rates not to use chemical fertilisers or pesticides. It seems to have been worth the trouble: his Dragon Well Manor restaurant has a Michelin star. He says his grandmother believed that the first rich generation buys homes, the second knows how to dress and the third knows how to eat.

As China’s almost 500 million-strong middle class – with at least US$15,000 (S$19,300) in annual disposable income – grows richer and larger, its members are changing what they put into their shopping baskets. They want to eat more healthily, safely and simply.

China’s food system is trying to keep up with their developing tastes. Farms are producing more proteins and fruit familiar in Western countries, grocers are selling more organic produce and restaurants are compiling healthier menus.

The composition of Chinese plates is changing. Although pork is king, fish and seafood together are the second most popular protein. In fact, middle-class diets appear to be turning more Californian. Salmon, blueberries and avocados are among the foods growing in popularity.

Throughout their history, Chinese often worried whether they could get enough staples, such as rice and noodles, to eat. In a nation of farmers, agriculture still employs one in five workers. It is no mean feat to feed 17 per cent of the world’s population with 9 per cent of its arable land. Accordingly, China relies on vast imports of agricultural products and the government wants to boost self-sufficiency.

Most Chinese enjoy plenty of good fare. In less than four decades, the country has gone from rationing food to reining in waistlines: more than half of its adults are now overweight or obese. Many now fret more about what exactly they are eating than whether they will get enough.

The desire to eat better is common as countries prosper. But given China’s history of food-safety problems, a dearth of trust also helps explain the shift. A scandal involving tainted milk powder that sickened more than 6,000 babies in 2008 shook the country. More recent controversies over dirty cooking oil and restaurants serving pre-made meals also ignited outrage.

To understand the Californication of middle-class diets, start by considering how demand for certain foodstuffs is changing. In 2022, government guidelines recommended salmon as a healthy source of Omega-3 for the first time. For years it was only eaten by the very rich. Now the pink, meaty flesh has grown popular across the country. An army of delivery drivers whizz cuts from grocers, specialist shops and live-streamers with sashimi-grade processing factories to the country’s growing middle class. China became the second-biggest salmon market in the world in 2026, says Sigmund Bjorgo of the Norwegian Seafood Council.

Companies such as Nordic Aqua want to catch some of the booming fish business. In aquarium-sized tanks on the edge of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, the Norwegian company is raising 8,000 tonnes of salmon each year and wants to expand to 20,000 (about four million fish) by 2030. By then, China’s salmon market could reach 300,000 tonnes annually, reckons Ragnar Joensen, the firm’s boss. Harvested in the morning, the company’s salmon can be served 300km away in Shanghai by the afternoon. With government help it is building one of the world’s largest land-based farms for Atlantic salmon at its Zhejiang facility. Its water systems should keep fish healthy even without antibiotics.

China has boosted imports and domestic production of other delicacies loved in California. Avocados and blueberries, for instance, have rocketed in popularity and plunged in price. Both the creamy fruit and a 125g punnet of the berries have fallen to about US$1, a fraction of the prices they fetched a decade ago.

The south-western province of Yunnan has become the centre of China’s blueberry- and avocado-growing. The country’s bumper crop of blueberries – the world’s biggest at nearly one million tonnes in 2025 – means the fancy fruit is becoming enjoyed by many more Chinese.

As part of the Californication process, food is also being produced in different ways. Organic items are rising in popularity. By 2024, China’s organic farming areas had doubled in size from a decade before, comprising 0.7 per cent of the country’s total farmland. Organic sales have more than tripled in the same time to US$16.7 billion in 2024 – they were up by 19 per cent from 2023 alone.

Historically, China’s rapid industrialisation and higher land prices pressured farmers to grow as much as possible in each plot, argues Chang Tianle, who runs Beijing Farmers’ Market. She says that prioritised quantity over quality.

Though still mostly for the middle class, organic produce has become cheaper as more farmers have started growing it. Alibaba’s Freshippo supermarket recently told Chinese media that it has brought the price of organic vegetables down from two to three times the price of ordinary vegetables to around one-and-a-half.

Other leading e-commerce platforms have built organic supply chains, while neighbourhood stands advertise “green” and “self-grown” produce. Farms from Shandong to Shanxi offer organic veggie boxes, taking a page from the Western playbook.

Big challenges remain. Doubters wonder whether items are truly organic in China given past soil and water pollution.

Though her sales slowly rise each year, Chang also worries that young people are under too much pressure to cook or care about quality ingredients and that the higher prices small farms need to charge would put buyers off their fare. (Some 40 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion people order food delivery.)

Others see an opportunity in making fresh and healthy meals convenient and cheap. After studying the fast-casual American chains Chipotle and Sweetgreen in graduate school, Gao Song founded Foodbowl in 2015 and tweaked his offerings to suit Chinese preferences (suspicions abound over raw salads). Business boomed after the pandemic, which he credits with making Chinese think more about their health. His customers, mostly young professionals, want the right balance of carbs, protein and fibre and a “clean” ingredient list.

The Californian shift may be welcomed by the government. Chinese people still have “very sensitive nerves” when it comes to food safety, says Han Guanghua of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. And his research suggests the public tends to blame such problems on the central government rather than local officials, so avoiding food-safety scandals is a priority.

It also helps in the battle of the bulge. In 2025, the government called rising obesity “a major public health threat”. The Communist Party wants people to go from chidebao, eating enough, to chidehao, eating well. It could all prove a delectable change.  © 2026 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.