Knowledge transfer

Related tags Food manufacturers Nutrition

China is hungry for new technologies and processes and Europe is hungry for new functional food ingredients. Is this a match made in heaven? Sue Scott investigates

The statistics are simply staggering: 8,000 functional ingredients approved for use by 400,000 food manufacturers employing 10M distributors to feed 1.3bn people who are buying in to a $12bn health food market. It's a long way from the rice and chopsticks austerity of the Mao era. Today's Beijing shopper might peddle to the local store on one of the city's 9M bikes, but he'll stop for a Starbucks and Big Mac on the way and bring back Yakult with the ginseng root.

The Chinese have burned the bamboo curtain, but having exposed themselves to the West, it's hard to know who stands to benefit.

According to Dr Jiansheng Du, an advisor to the UK's trade and industry department, which organised a mission for food manufacturers last year, China is hungry for technology and process, not products, while the strict regulatory controls governing European manufacture are a barrier to those keen to adapt the ancient remedies of the East to a functional western diet. "The Chinese have many export hurdles and a big market of their own to play with for the moment. What they want from us is mode of manufacture and safety standards," he says.

In return, Europe gets to unravel the alchemy of traditional Chinese medicine and benefit from the billions of yen being pumped into research parks the size of small towns, where thousands of white coats are intent on unpicking the science behind commonly used local ingredients with a millennia of anecdotal evidence behind them.

Among the most potent and potentially interesting to Western manufacturers are immune-boosting walnut powder, the diabetic aid bitter gourd, and blood pressure lowering hawthorn berries, not to mention the ubiquitous ugly fungi routinely used throughout Asia in the prevention and treatment of cancer, which is soon to be trialled in the UK.

"The Chinese love to eat," says Wu. "But to them food is a medicine. When they eat, they always think what is this doing for me? A recipe might have been used for 1,000 years, but now the Chinese government is pushing hard to adopt the international standards we need to study the formulation of food."

Activity is concentrated in China Agricultural University's College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, where biotechnology, nutrition and safety meet. A quick glance at the key research areas exposes a depressing catalogue of the diseases of affluence: isolation of polypeptides and dipeptides from dairy protein to reduce blood pressure; a study of pumpkins' hypoglycaemic factor to assist blood sugar regulation; extraction of polyphenols from legumes to inhibit starch digestion; and even the development of a low-GI rice. Globesity has bridged the Great Wall.

"In the past 30 years China found a way to feed itself. Now Chinese people want to eat better and they're living longer. But western diseases have come to China with western food and the government is worried," says Wu. "It wants to get back to tradition to keep the country healthy."

Nutritionists are enjoying the same media status as Europe's celebrity chefs, and are regularly rolled out on chat shows to answer viewers' dietary dilemmas. Given that the average Chinese worker has limited access to affordable pharmaceuticals, a tradition of self-medication based on food and plant extracts prevails.

Food not medicine

Ironically, it's a cultural trait that Europe has only just begun to embrace as an antidote to spiraling health service bills.

"I came away from China even more convinced that the answer to keeping people healthy lies in food, not medicine," says Paul Weeks, md of UK-based vegetarian food manufacturer Wicken Fen Foods. "We've lost the plot in the West. What the Chinese should be doing is resisting as far as possible going down the same pharmaceutical route."

Fellow mission member, Michael Taylor, operations director for Fosters Bakery, based in Barnsley, UK, agrees. Following his trip he was inspired to create prototype ginseng bread and aloe vera rolls, which have already excited interest from retailers. A pioneer of functional foods - Fosters' 250-staff bakery includes three employed full-time just on new product development - Taylor believes the Chinese dragon could breathe fire into the development of better-for-you foods in the West. "They've already got the ingredients, but we're the ideas people, the visionaries," he says.

The opportunities for knowledge transfer haven't been lost on the European Commission, either, since China began wising up to western manufacturers exploiting its "open door" policy. It recently signed a joint statement with Beijing's National Centre of Biotechnology Development promising "reciprocal scientific, technical and financial commitment" on food, biotechnology and agriculture projects. Already it is looking at partnerships in food safety, nutrition and health, and biocatalysts for food.

"Originally, China wanted investment," says Wu. "It gave manufacturers the market in order to learn from their technology. Now it is more savvy, and western companies are finding it harder."

While Europe argued over health claims on foods, China has simply banned them, insisting instead on complex lists of percentages of ingredients that sprawl over packs of every conceivable food and drink - from mineral supplements in fortified beer to aloe vera in buns.

But some have taken an inscrutable approach that appeals to Taylor at Fosters Bakery. "They believe traditional Chinese medicine works and you can put that across in a story, rather than making a health claim. There's an ancient Chinese proverb that says 'Over a long distance, you learn about the strength of your horse; over a long time, you learn about the character of your friend.'"

As far as Europe is concerned the relationship with China is just beginning and we've still got a mighty lot to learn.