What Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-do-chinese-dumplings-have-to-do-with-global-warming.html?_r=0

by jonathanyc • 12 years ago

54 10 12 years ago

nytimes.com

fowkswe• 12 years ago

tldr synopsis;

- China hasn't even begun to tap the market for refrigerating its food supply chain.

- Refrigeration is the major component of energy usage.

- We (Americans) are the boilerplate for Chinas refrigeration boom.

notable quotes:

...statistics translate into scenes that would concern most American food-safety inspectors. In Shanghai, for example, one large pork processor has no refrigeration system; instead, it does all its slaughtering at night, when the temperature is slightly cooler, in a massive shed with open sides to allow for a cross breeze. The freshly disemboweled pigs hang for hours in the smoggy air.

...on average, a Chinese person experiences some kind of digestive upset twice a week — a kind of low-level recurring food poisoning, much of which is probably caused by the kind of bacterial growth that could have been prevented by keeping food cold

Nearly half of everything that is grown in China rots before it even reaches the retail market.

...generating the power (whether it be electricity for warehouses or diesel fuel for trucks) that fuels the heat-exchange process, which is at the heart of any cooling system, accounts for about 80 percent of refrigeration’s global-warming impact (measured in tons of CO2) and currently consumes nearly a sixth of global electricity usage

...refrigeration in the United States has tended to merely change when the waste occurs. Americans, too, throw away 40 percent of their food, but nearly half of that waste occurs at the consumer level, meaning in retail locations and at home. “Food waste is a justification for refrigeration,”

...as for most Americans, Bloom says, home refrigerators simply “serve as cleaner, colder trash bins.”

“When I first lived in China, in 1994,” she said, “everything was dried, pickled or salted.

...optimizing the varieties of popular Chinese greens that stand up best to cold storage. If they are successful, the incredible regional variety and specificity of Chinese fruits and vegetables may soon resemble the homogeneous American produce aisle, which is often limited to three tomato varieties and five types of apple for sale, all hardy (and flavorless) enough to endure lengthy journeys and storage under refrigeration.

And the hero of the mattter:

"Still, not all Chinese people are ready to embrace the refrigeration revolution. Dai Jianjun is the 45-year-old chain-smoking chef of Longjin Caotan, a restaurant on the outskirts of Hangzhou, the scenic capital of Zhejiang province, which serves an entirely locally sourced, anti-industrial cuisine. When I asked him how he liked frozen dumplings, he took off his corduroy cap, rubbed his shaved head with both hands and finally, in a calm voice that carried a distinct undercurrent of anger, said, “If I may speak without reserve, they’re not food.”"

Shivetya• 12 years ago

and in a few years if not already India, and then... and then...

so the issue becomes, how to insure they use good refrigerants because we sure as hell cannot deny them the right to refrigeration. Sorry, your too late isn't going to work.

the only real alternative if this issue is believed to be a real problem is to reduce the CO2 cost from other sources, namely the generation of the energy used to perform refrigeration and other tasks. However even that isn't going to add up to much against the fact that more transportation is coming online in all these countries - meaning cars and trucks using fossil fuels.

so how do you get an agreement with economies who wish and will grow?

Tloewald• 12 years ago

It's a greenhouse problem just based on electricity consumption -- leaked refrigerants merely compound it.

waps• 12 years ago

There is an alternative : use technology to take control of the planet's climate.

There are a number of papers investigating various means of controlling global temperature, from ships that blast water into the athmosphere, to using bombs to put reflective particles high in the athmosphere, and others.

The advantage of this would be that such a system cannot be defeated by a single sizeable dissenter. Additionally, the big problem I would say most conservatives have with global warming policy is that it requires a global government with real authority, which they oppose (and I agree with that, freedom, democracy, transparency in government, human rights and the like are not exactly global values, rather the opposite. Any real move to a global government will worsen personal freedom, human rights, corruption and the like).

The big disadvantage is legal and moral responsibility. What if we can make the Sahara a paradise, but only if we turn France (just a random example) into a desert, or say, Norway, Sweden and Finland into frozen wastelands ? What if we analyze things and conclude that locking global temperatures at the current, very high, levels is actually desirable ? Who gets to benefit at whose cost ? Does one person's significant disadvantage justify not improving a lot of people's lives ?

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

There is an interesting bit in there about China hoping to reduce waste as a % of the food supply to sub 10% in different categories (meat, vegetables, etc). This is a critical step if they want to be able to continue feeding so many people, especially as the population ages, and there is a decline in people working agricultural jobs in China.

I think this means there are a number of logistical opportunities for tackling the chinese food market (better delivery systems, food service redefined, catering services). Whoever takes these challenges on will likely start targeting the high end of the market.

contingencies• 12 years ago

I actually skimmed this at breakfast in the International Edition and wrote it off as another cute Chinese billionaire rags-to-riches story. As I usually live in China, just south of Sichuan in Yunnan province, as a long term vegetarian I can confirm that fresh food is excellent, possibly the best in the world in terms of the volume and variety of ingredients available.

When I saw global warming in the title, it made me think of internationalism and a lesser known fact about Chinese steamed buns, or baozi (not dumplings, or jiaozi): they are actually Turkish, and they were brought to China with the Mongols. We know this from preserved cookbooks of the Yuan Dynasty.

One of my favorite parts of the day in China is jumping on the electric scooter with my wife and deciding which of the three (3) massive fresh food markets within a five minute radius we want to go to. When I say massive, I mean bigger than an average American supermarket - and it's nearly entirely all fresh food, with a few restaurants or snack vendors about the edge. Each market has different hearty breakfast vendors including at least hot soy milk, various types of noodles, beanflour porridge, other soups, fried and baked breads and pastries in both western and Chinese styles, dumplings and steamed buns. Yum.

It's kind of weird reading the comments here, because Americans don't have the same fresh food appreciation that Europeans (especially French) and Chinese have. There's this blind assumption that refrigeration is good. In China, we largely eat food that's in season. As a rule we don't maintain appetites for exotic foreign foods. In rural areas (a huge portion of China) most organic waste goes to pigs. We enjoy going to the market on a daily basis to establish a relationship with our favorite vendors and to select produce for our meals. When you walk in to a restaurant in China, it's at least as likely to have an array of vegetables and meat displayed in a vertical fridge as it is to have a printed menu. Locals 'n long-termers go straight for the ingredients. The discussion revolves more around ingredients selected and available methods of preparation than costs and frenetic worries about MSG, spicyness or latest-western-fad-diet-strategy. The number of vegetable colors in the average meal exceeds at least three, but frequently five or ten. Chinese believe it's best to drink warm drinks when eating, because they learned eons ago that cold stomachs don't sit comfortably with food.

The flip side of eating out in random places constantly is that I've had salmonella about once every two to three resident years on average. Unpleasant, for sure - but all it takes to knock on the head is an antibiotic regime and a drip... assuming it sufficiently advances to warrant hospitalization. That costs about US$25 including a night in hospital, but is even cheaper and medically equivalent options are available in rural areas.

joshwa• 12 years ago

You live in KM and you are reading Yuan Dynasty cookbooks? I'll be in town in September; we should have a beer at Salvador's (or elsewhere if that's not your thing) and talk tech and food. Email in my profile.

bane2• 12 years ago

The flip side of eating out in random places constantly is that I've had salmonella about once every two to three resident years on average.

You're doing pretty good. Almost every person who spends more than a couple weeks in China gets to be best friends with 拉肚子 [1]. And unlike lots of places where it happens when you first arrive and then you're over it, nobody ever seems to quite get acclimated enough to stop getting it every few weeks.

An old traveler's rule of thumb when in strange lands, don't eat the fresh raw vegetables and you'll cut your dealings with salmonella and other food borne diseases by some incredible percentage. Cooked, fermented or pickled will give you less trouble.

All that being said, the freshest food I've ever eaten came from Chinese kitchens. Chinese Wet Markets [2] are amazingly different than the Western equivalents (which try to maintain freshness via ice rather than keeping the food alive in tanks) and effective at providing unbelievably fresh meat, particularly seafood.

1 - http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/05/the-la-duzi-adventu...

2- http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/12/wet-markets-in-china-a...

bane2• 12 years ago

It's a good point, some thoughts:

- The Chinese government is well aware of the pending demand/supply gap in electrical production. In response the government is looking at quadrupling it's nuclear power capacity by 2020...despite having some of the largest coal reserves in the world. China has 21 nuclear power reactors at present and 28 under construction. By 2020, Chinese nuclear power generation should reach 58GWe of capacity. Long term goals are to achieve 200GWe by 2030, 400Gwe by 2050 and 1.4TW by 2100.

- China is spending unbelievable sums of money on nuclear power research, including some of the most advanced Thorium fuel cycle research available. China is set to soon become only the sixth country to build their reactor designs on the international market (CPR-1000).

- Depending on growing attitudes towards modernity, the Chinese habit is for fresh, seasonal food, similar to France. This gets rid of lots of the refrigeration requirements. Though attitudes toward modernization could shift demand towards out-of-season frozen and refrigerated foods.

- This is already happening in Korea. Koreans have a different habit, a focus on long-term preservation of vegetables via pickling and fermentation (not quite as common in China), making out-of-season foods a more normal thing. More recently, Western-style, heat and serve and frozen meals have started showing up (after decades of basically instant noodles being the only instant food you could make). And Koreans not only have massive American style refrigerators (something not as common in France or China), but also have secondary "Kimchee" refrigerators to control the fermenting process on out of season food items. More traditional foods are being reformulated to tolerate long-term freezing, so you can prepare a heat-and-serve version of a complex home-made-meal in about 10-20 minutes. There's still not an equivalent to the Marie Calendar's self-steaming meal in 4 minutes, and microwaves are not as common in Korean households, but convenience and a greater number of women entering the workforce will probably change things. Will this influence China? Maybe. The cuisine is quite different, but cultural links might move things in this direction. And yes, energy shortages in South Korea are a problem, with various government suggestions about when and how long to use the Air Conditioner and even shutting it off mid-summer in some government facilities. Korea is also in a major nuke plant construction boom.

viggity• 12 years ago

I don't need to read the article, because according to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, any headline ending in question mark, the answer is "no or nothing". If there was good enough evidence that "chinese dumplings" have an affect on "global warming", they wouldn't phrase it as a question, they'd phrase it as a statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

What Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming

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