37 replies to this topic

[shawn]

Just a question, why do Westerners eat steak (be it lamb, beef, chicken or fish) with chips, bread and top it off with wine while Chinese eat noodles or rice with meat and veggies and finish off with tea or wine? Why the difference?

[General_Zhaoyun]

Just a question, why do Westerners eat steak (be it lamb, beef, chicken or fish) with chips, bread and top it off with wine while Chinese eat noodles or rice with meat and veggies and finish off with tea or wine? Why the difference?

That's because Western food (North European in particular) tends to be based on meat rather than vegetables. In fact, westerners (esp. northern European) are generally meat eaters rather than vegetarian. This food custom originated from the fact that the agriculture in Northern and Western Europe are based on herding and poultry (Cattles, chickens, pigs) as well as cereal crops (including wheat, potato and bartley). There are not that many kinds of vegetables being planted in Europe. Wheats were used for making bread. Potato is a common food, while bartley was used for making wines.

On the other hand, in China, the major agricultural plantation include rice padi plantation, wheats (used for making noodles) as well as various kind of vegetables. Since tea was also a common plantation in China, it has become a beverage in chinese cuisine. In northern China, rice were used for making 'rice wine' and liquor was a common beverage in northern China. I would say that the general huge diversity of different type of crops/vegetables/foods being planted resulted in a greater diversity of chinese food as compared to western food.

[shawn]

Thanks, sounds logical, but in China, from Han dynasty, there were pig farmers and people raised livestock such as chickens and ducks too, and there were veggie farms too.....so the Chinese had a more balanced diet in eating meat and veggies?

[Yizheng]

I think there's no such thing as a 'western' diet. People developed food habits according to what grew in their region. People in Greece, Spain or Portugal don't have at all the same diet traditionally as people in Scandinavia, say. People in northern France had traditionally more meat and dairy products in their diet than people in southern France, who had a bigger range of vegetables. You should not mix up the generic sort of fast-food standardised diet that is creeping round the world with the actual traditional diet of all the different countries of Europe, which is very diverse from one place to another.
As for drinking tea, I think at first Europeans just didn;t have any. Later, when they got it, some made it their national drink, like in Russia, where tea is what people usually drink at home, and has over time become a big part of the national culture.

Saying there's a 'western' diet would be like saying there's an 'Asian' diet, which is nonsensical, since there is a huge range of different Asian diets, like steppe peoples have a completely different diet to peoples further south. kalmyks, say, eat practically all meat, and have a saying that 'a kalmyk does not eat grass' that is, very few vegetables in their diet.

[shunyadragon]

Just a question, why do Westerners eat steak (be it lamb, beef, chicken or fish) with chips, bread and top it off with wine while Chinese eat noodles or rice with meat and veggies and finish off with tea or wine? Why the difference?

There are differences that are interesting involving taste and smell. Chinese tend to avoid foods with strong smells like cheeses and aromatic herbs (basil, oregano, and majoram), and prefer stronger tastes, like sour vinegar, sweet, and garlic. MSG with imparts a stronger flavor is popular in China, but avoided by westerners.

When I was served Italian foods in restaurants in China they often lacked the Italian aromatic spices.

[Chen06]

There are differences that are interesting involving taste and smell. Chinese tend to avoid foods with strong smells like cheeses and aromatic herbs (basil, oregano, and majoram), and prefer stronger tastes, like sour vinegar, sweet, and garlic. MSG with imparts a stronger flavor is popular in China, but avoided by westerners.

When I was served Italian foods in restaurants in China they often lacked the Italian aromatic spices.

We use ALOT of basil and cilantro in Taiwan. Both are aromatic herbs so I would tend to disagree with you. The comment regarding stronger tastes is subjective too. Food from the South, particularly Cantonese and Teochew, feature many lightly flavored dishes that accentuate the natural flavor of the ingredient. It is a Chinese saying that fresh fish should ideally be steamed: which allows one to taste its natural flavor. Of course, Sichuan food on the other hand does rely largely on stronger tastes like chilis, garlic,etc. But, I think it depends on the region. As for MSG, Westerners avoid it because they think it causes numbness and headache. I dont feel anything and there is no proven evidence that it does so im not sure what the big deal is. Some people just have weird reactions to it. MSG is mainly used to create that 5th umami taste anyway. In Ancient China, they didnt have MSG, since it was invented by the Japanese in the 1900s I believe. So, they just used natural ingredients to create the effect. Things such as dried shrimp or seaweed/kombu can create that umami taste that you get with MSG. Its just more time consuming.

[William O'Chee]

There are differences that are interesting involving taste and smell. Chinese tend to avoid foods with strong smells like cheeses and aromatic herbs (basil, oregano, and majoram), and prefer stronger tastes, like sour vinegar, sweet, and garlic. MSG with imparts a stronger flavor is popular in China, but avoided by westerners.

When I was served Italian foods in restaurants in China they often lacked the Italian aromatic spices.

I disagree with this. Chinese cuisine is a little more complex than Western cuisine (note the difference between this and diet). It is judged on flavour, smell, texture, taset, and appearance (largely colour).

There are certain smells that Chinese cooking eschews. These are the more "fishy" smells, which are covered by herbs and spices, as well as ricce wine. Rice wine is also used as a flavour enhancer in traditional Chinese cuisine.

[changsham]

Chinese also rely far more on the texture of the food which is not so in the west. The fishy flavours are more popular in SE Asia. As a cheese lover I can assure you there is a lot of complexity in different cheeses. Perhaps more than any other single food in the world. I have tried thousands of different quality cheeses and can appreciate them all for their individual characteristics and many have the umami effect in bucket loads. This effect is more noticable in the smelly or well matured cheeses. The taste is nothing like the smell. It's a shame most Chinese have only had the oppportunity to eat processed plastic cheese which is not the real thing. I'm not surprised many don't like it for this reason. As for MSG, I don't mind it but some Chinese restaurants use far too much and is a shortcut for hasty and unskilled preperation in many dishes and is dragging down the standards of Chinese eating habits IMO. Over use will ruin peoples palates. I can tell when there too much. I get a hot flushed feeling on my face and the same for my wife.

Edited by changsham, 18 February 2009 - 09:25 PM.

[changsham]

Further, I am perplexed how the Chinese seem to like western(American) junk food as much as that gastronomic and goumandising wasteland of the USA. Full of fat, over salty, sickly sweet and full of MSG. No Fibre, flavour, texture or balance and sits like a brick in ones stomach. Formulated by chemists to make it addictive and turning people into lardbutts. This is one aspect of China's modernization that I find trully disgusting and has lowered my impression of Chinese eating habits and standards although traditional Chinese cuisine styles are my favourite. One has to witness the cashed up thundering herds who stampede to KFC, McDonalds and immitators, etc. YUK!

Edited by changsham, 18 February 2009 - 09:00 PM.

[HappyHistorian]

People living in Chinese cities tend to have a greater variety in their diets. They'll eat traditional Chinese food but also try Western foods. Fast food chains are becoming increasingly popular in Chinese cities. People living in the Chinese countryside will eat their regional delicacies. They eat the foods that are grown around their area. For example, pomelo is popular in Meizhou.

I've wondered why China doesn't produce cheese. China has a lot of cows, but the Chinese don't produce much dairy products.

Does anyone know why China doesn't produce much dairy products?

[General_Zhaoyun]

I've wondered why China doesn't produce cheese. China has a lot of cows, but the Chinese don't produce much dairy products.

Does anyone know why China doesn't produce much dairy products?

It's a misconception that China didn't produce cheese or any diary products in history. Contrary to this, China did produce a lot of diary products, including cheese (made from goat's or cow's milk) in ancient times. It's just that with the development of agriculture and farming in ancient China, it had gradually replaced cattle herding to become the main source of feeding the huge population in China. That caused the decline of herding and diary production in ancient China. Don't forget that there were many historical dynasties in China that were ruled by northern nomads, such as Age of fragmentation, Liao, Jin, Yuan etc. Many of these diary products were stable foods of the northern nomads and were introduced into China by the northern nomads.

The source at http://dtyt618-907.5...d-2585-1-1.html argued against the claim that the Chinese did not eat diary products because they lacked a certain type of acid to digest the diary product, whereas Westerners had.

In actual fact, whether the Chinese drank or not drank milk was related to the production methods of China. In the book Shishuo Xinyu 《世说新语》, Lu Ji 陆机 (a southerner) once met a northerner Yang Wuzi 羊武子. Yang Wuzi bragged to him that the northerners loved to eat Goat Cheese, whereas the south did not have. This story tell that in ancient China, the north predominantly ate diary products. The northern Song source Dongjin Menghua Lu 《东京梦华录》and Southern Song source Menglianglu 《梦粱录》 recorded that the capital of the two Song dynasties were selling milk. Milk were extracted from horses, cows, goats and even camels.

As to the reason why diary products declined later in China, it's mainly due to the development in agricultural farming. Most of the steppe, herding grounds in northern China were later turned into farming grounds. In order to feed a large population, farming was necessary. That's why when nomads ruled China, they eventually changed themselves from pastoral to sedentary lifestyles by farming. Agricultural production through farming was a more effective way to produce large quantity of food as compared to herding and poultry.

Because of the huge population and agricultural development in China, the herding production before Han and Tang dynasty began to decline, as they were not able to feed and satisfy the increasing population in ancient China. According to records in Menglianglu 《梦粱录》, the price of goat was very expensive, as goat rearing was not common. Due to this decline in herding, the habit of eating cheese gradually declined and disappeared from the Chinese.

Edited by General_Zhaoyun, 19 February 2009 - 01:48 AM.

[HappyHistorian]

Thanks GZ! I thought China would have made cheese in its vast history but I didn't know much about it until now. To my understanding, cheese is generally unpopular today in China.

[Yizheng]

Yes, like GZ said, northern nomads introduced dairy products to China. Dairy products were a normal part of Manchus' diet, and during the Qing, the Forbidden City had a special herd of cows to supply milk for palace needs. There are good local dairy products in China, especially northern China.

But another matter is that lots of people have poor tolerance to dairy products (like me), and I suppose if they were traditionally less part of the diet, people maybe never evolved the greater tolerance. Even among westerners there are people with this intolerance, though it is more common in countries where dairy products were never a big part of the diet it seems.

I don't know about MSG, i never felt any effect from it. I never heard anything bad about it in Russia. Lots of people wouldn't even know what it is.

I think in most parts of the world now, only in the countryside you see more the traditional diet, more based on what grows locally, but the urbanisation process is changing diet everywhere. It's not just the fast food boom, it's also that people's lifestyle changes, they have no time, do not cook home meals, or if they do, want to do it fast, use convenience food. I used to have a market close to my house, and then it got closed down. Now there are just some little shops selling not very good fruit and vegetables, half of it imported from all around the world. The taste is not so good. I ate Chinese pomelos in Moscow and then straight off the trees in Guangxi province, and there was a huge difference in taste. Chinese pears in Moscow have no taste, but in China I found them fresh and good.

The new urbanised, standardised convenience food culture is still in the early stage in China, and even in big cities there is still plenty of good food easily available, but all the fast food chains will spread fast. I don't think that's such a danger so long as they don't squeeze small local food places out of the market. For now, I doubt that would happen in China, there's room for everyone. But looking at the example of Moscow, the little places that sold simple local snacks have been mostly squeezed out by fastfood chains and fancy cafes.

[HappyHistorian]

The new urbanised, standardised convenience food culture is still in the early stage in China, and even in big cities there is still plenty of good food easily available, but all the fast food chains will spread fast. I don't think that's such a danger so long as they don't squeeze small local food places out of the market. For now, I doubt that would happen in China, there's room for everyone. But looking at the example of Moscow, the little places that sold simple local snacks have been mostly squeezed out by fastfood chains and fancy cafes.

I don't think fast food chains will crush small restaurants in China. China has a massive market, fast food is not to everyone's liking and traditional Chinese food is still the favourite for the majority.

[William O'Chee]

As regards dairy products, it is important to understand that for various reasons, many Chinese people are lactose intolerant. It makes it difficult for them, then, to include it in their diets.