In recent years, I have written about food safety several times, ranging from the lead poisoning in a Tianshui kindergarten, to the “medicated bayberries” in Fujian, and to the “Duck Leg Auntie” at Peking University. Writing again and again, I found that all problems ultimately point in the same direction: it is not that the laws are not strict enough, nor that there is a lack of supervision, but that people’s perception cannot keep up. And people’s perception is formed from childhood.
We Live in the World’s Largest Chemical Industry Nation
First, let me ask a question: how many chemicals did the generation born in the 70s and 80s see when they were children?
Back then, the most a household had was a bottle of pesticide, and if the county had a small chemical fertilizer plant, it was already considered industrial. The chemical industry was nowhere near as massive as it is today, and the number of chemical substances an ordinary person encountered in a lifetime could be counted on one hand. Therefore, it is understandable that that generation did not understand that “industrial dyes are not edible”—they simply had no such concept.
But what about Generation Z and Generation Alpha?
From the moment they were born, they have lived in the world’s largest chemical industry nation. China’s chemical production accounts for more than 40% of the global total, and its dye production accounts for more than 70% of the global total. Hundreds of thousands of tons of industrial dyes and hundreds of types of chemical intermediates circulate in the market every year. The colored playdough they played with as children, the Skittles they ate, and the highlighters they used—which of these can exist without chemistry?
Yet, our education has never taught them which of these things can be eaten, which cannot, and where the difference lies.
As a result, a bizarre picture emerges: a child born in the 2010s can watch short videos on their phone showing food being colored with industrial dyes, yet they don’t know that the substance contains lead; a university student born in the 2000s can proficiently operate a chromatograph in a laboratory, yet they don’t know that the “goose legs” at the school gate were actually made by dyeing duck legs.
This is a mismatch of eras. Our physical world has rushed into the chemical age, but our perception still lingers in the smallholder agricultural mindset of “pure nature equals safety.”
The chef at the Tianshui kindergarten mentioned earlier was, in all probability, born in the 60s or 70s. He did not understand that industrial dyes are toxic because his upbringing never taught him so. But if a Gen Z youth grows up to be a chef today and still claims not to understand, it would be inexcusable, because you have lived in this environment since childhood, and you should understand.
But the reality is, no one is teaching them the things they “should understand.”
We Have Never Had a “Food Safety Class”
Think about it, what did we learn at school when we were young?
Chemistry class taught the periodic table, biology class taught cell structures, and physics class taught Newton’s laws. But we have never learned: why can’t industrial-grade hydrogen peroxide be used to soak chicken feet? What exactly is sodium bisulfite? Why must vacuum-packed soft-boiled eggs be cooled to below 8°C within 4 hours?
During the compulsory education phase, physics, chemistry, and biology education is heavily biased toward theory and slights application. Everyone can proficiently balance chemical equations, but they do not know that putting sodium benzoate and Vitamin C together will generate benzene, a carcinogen. Everyone has learned about microorganisms, but they are unclear about what temperature is required to kill Salmonella. People do not even know that the “fresh and watery” vegetables in the wet market might be far more dangerous than the pre-prepared dishes in the supermarket freezer.
This knowledge is not “common sense.” It is a highly interdisciplinary professional field that requires the integration of four disciplines: chemical toxicology, food microbiology, food engineering, and laws and regulations. How can someone who went to learn cooking right after graduating from junior high school possibly possess this?
Yet, our educational system has never reserved a place for this kind of “food safety literacy.”
Practitioner Qualifications Are Often a Joke
Some might say: isn’t there a food practitioner exam? Chefs and cafeteria aunties all have to take it, so wouldn’t they understand once they pass?
In recent years, I have personally guided relatives in taking this kind of exam. Operated on a mobile phone, 50 questions in 20 minutes, with 80 points to pass. The questions look like this:
- Which of the following aquatic products is prohibited from being soaked in alum during processing? A. Jellyfish head B. Horseshoe crab meat C. Pufferfish liver D. Mud snail
- When making fruit juice containing Vitamin C, it is inappropriate to add? A. Potassium sorbate B. Sodium benzoate C. Nisin D. Natamycin
- Sodium bisulfite (INS 222), used as a leavening agent, can be used for curing fresh meat. (True/False)
To be honest, even for people with a background in science and engineering, it is very difficult to answer correctly without dedicated study. You expect a chef with only a junior high school education to pass it independently? It is virtually impossible. Consequently, in reality, it turns into “mutual assistance” in answering questions or exam substitution. The certificate is obtained, but what should not be understood remains misunderstood.
This kind of exam is not cultivating food safety awareness; it is creating an illusion of “compliance.”
What is even scarier is that this illusion makes managers feel that “training is well in place,” and makes practitioners feel that “anyway, the certificate is obtained,” and then no one cares about whether they “actually understand” or not.
Why Are School Cafeterias Always Serving the Same Few Dishes?
Recently, I carefully observed the menu sent out by my child’s school and found that although there are quite a few dishes, they are almost fixed every week: beef stew with potatoes, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, stir-fried green vegetables, braised pork… over and over again, just those dozen or so varieties.
This is almost identical to eating at a village banquet, always those fixed local dishes.
Obviously, this cannot be fully explained by a chef’s laziness or cost constraints alone. From a management perspective, I lean toward believing that only this way is safer.
The school cafeteria faces hundreds or thousands of children; once something goes wrong, the consequences are unimaginable. Under such circumstances, the rational choice for managers can only be to let the kitchen make only those dishes that are simple to process, less prone to spoilage, and do not involve complex ingredients. Once seafood, wild mushrooms, cold dishes, or other dishes requiring a large amount of condiments are introduced, the risk rises exponentially.
Furthermore, the knowledge level of the chefs cannot support complex operations either. You want him to make Buddha Jumps Over the Wall? He doesn’t even know what sodium bisulfite is, and you expect him to properly control the process of rehydrating sea cucumbers? It’s impossible.
Therefore, “menu ossification” is actually a form of risk-aversion wisdom—since you don’t understand it, don’t touch it.
But what does this mean? It means that the children’s diet is restricted to a tiny safe zone. They cannot eat diversified food, nor can they learn “what food carries risks” or “how to eat safely.” When they grow up, go out to eat, order takeout, or cook for themselves, they remain completely clueless.
The Fact that Pre-prepared Dishes Are Disliked Exactly Demonstrates the Absence of “Food Education”
Another interesting phenomenon is pre-prepared dishes (central kitchen meals).
In daily life, at least eight out of ten Chinese people shake their heads at pre-prepared dishes. Labels like “too many additives,” “not fresh,” and “no nutrition” are almost standard configurations. However, an counter-intuitive fact is that pre-prepared dishes from legitimate brands might be one of the safest food ingredients ordinary consumers can access.
Why? Because large factories have centralized procurement, batch-by-batch testing, HACCP systems, factory-exit inspections, and full-process traceability. The bunch of green vegetables you buy at the wet market might come from an individual farmer you don’t know; has that land exceeded heavy metal limits? Have banned pesticides been used? No one knows. On the other hand, the random inspection pass rate of pre-prepared dishes has remained stable above 99% year-round, and the non-compliance rate is far lower than that of bulk ingredients.
But ordinary people don’t care about this. What people fear about pre-prepared dishes is “industrialization,” “additives,” and “lacking freshness.”
This fear, in essence, is ignorance of food science. And this ignorance is the result of no one teaching them since childhood.
Think about it: if in primary school classrooms, there were a lesson on “how to read food ingredient lists”; in junior high school, a lesson on “why preservatives are sometimes necessary”; and in high school, a lesson on “the difference between industrial raw materials and food additives,” would everyone’s view on pre-prepared dishes be different?
The Smallholder Problem Will Dissolve Naturally, but Ignorance Won’t
There is another trend worth noting.
The current food safety dilemma largely stems from “smallholders”—scattered farmers, small workshops, and mobile vendors. They are massive in number, difficult to regulate, and face low costs for breaking the law. This problem looks very thorny, but with generational replacement, it may dissolve naturally.
Why? Because the current Generation Z will, in all probability, no longer engage in scattered agricultural production in the future.
In the generation of the 60s and 70s, many people dealt with the land all their lives. The 80s generation began to enter cities en masse for work. By the time of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they have grown up in cities since childhood and cannot even tell rice from wheat; you expect them to go back to farm the land? It’s impossible. Chinese agriculture is irreversibly moving toward scale and intensification. The number of smallholders will become fewer and fewer, and the main entities of agricultural production will gradually become cooperatives, family farms, and agricultural enterprises.
When the production end is no longer “capillary-style” smallholders but scalable entities that can be regulated, the source governance of food safety will become much easier.
But this does not mean we can sit back and do nothing.
Because smallholders will disappear, but ignorance will not. Today’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha, even if they don’t farm, still need to eat. They might become chefs, restaurant owners, food buyers, or housewives. The food safety risks they face will not disappear because smallholders disappear; only the forms will change, from “pesticide residues” to “abuse of additives,” and from “heavy metals exceeding limits” to “industrial raw materials posing as food.”
And dealing with these new forms of risk requires perception, not experience.
The Reason Western Food Safety Is Done Well Is Not Because They Understand More
I have previously compared the differences between Chinese and Western food cultures.
The core of Chinese food is “complexity”—eight major cuisines, tens of thousands of dishes, each with unique ingredients, techniques, and seasonings. This richness is a cultural treasure, but in the dimension of food safety, it brings about long processing chains, widespread non-standardized operations, and complex sources of ingredients.
The mainstream Western food culture, however, took another path—industrialization, standardization, and simplification. The daily life of ordinary families relies heavily on pre-prepared industrial finished products, such as frozen pizzas, burger patties, and bagged salads. Cooking is simply “open the package → heat → serve.” Risks are front-loaded to the industrial production line, and terminal consumers need almost no professional knowledge.
Westerners do not understand food safety better than we do; rather, their dietary pattern naturally “outsources” the risks.
But is this necessarily good? Not necessarily. Westerners are extremely ignorant about where what they eat comes from and how it is produced. Once a large enterprise has an issue, it leads to nationwide panic.
In contrast, Chinese children grow up in a complex dietary environment. If they can simultaneously receive systematic food safety education, it will instead become an advantage, because they will become a generation that truly “knows how to eat.”
What Exactly Needs to Be Instilled from Children
Returning to the main topic. I think instilling food safety from children does not mean letting primary school students memorize the Food Safety Law, nor does it mean letting them do those perverse questions from the chef exams. Instead, it means doing a few simple things:
1. The primary school phase should recognize basic risks. Schools should focus on explaining clearly to primary school students “separation of raw and cooked food,” “the importance of washing hands,” and “food cannot be kept for too long.” They should teach students how to read the production date, shelf life, and ingredient list on food packaging, and use simple experiments to demonstrate phenomena like “bacterial reproduction” (such as bread going moldy after a few days).
2. The junior high school phase should understand the relationship between chemistry and food. By junior high school, biology and chemistry courses are being learned. At this time, children should be taught “which common industrial dyes are not edible” and “what is nitrite.” They should be taught “which microorganisms easily cause food poisoning” and “what hazards may arise from refrigerator freezing,” and be guided to complete a practical assignment on “排查 (inspecting and eliminating) safety hazards in the home kitchen.”
3. The high school phase should establish a systematic understanding of food safety. By the stage of high school or secondary vocational education, students should be systematically taught China’s food safety regulatory system (laws, standards, testing, recalls), allowing them to analyze common misconceptions such as “purely natural = safe” and “additives = toxic.” Meanwhile, in-depth discussions can be held regarding the pros and cons of pre-prepared dishes, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and organic food.
This content does not actually require opening an extra class; it can be fully integrated into existing science, health, and social practice courses. The key is that someone must teach it, teach it correctly, and teach it from childhood.
The Benefits of Instilling It from Children
I try to imagine: if starting from today, primary and secondary schools across the country systematically carry out food safety education, what will it look like twenty years from now?
By then, chefs, cafeteria aunties, and restaurant owners will all be a generation that has received basic education. They will at least know that “industrial raw materials cannot enter the kitchen,” “sodium benzoate and Vitamin C cannot be used together,” and “overnight wood ear mushrooms may contain bongkrekic acid.”
By then, ordinary consumers, when obtaining a package of pre-prepared dishes, will calmly look at the ingredient list, nutritional components, and production date, instead of broad-brushing them all as “garbage.”
By then, parents and elders will no longer blindly worship “local eggs” and “free-range chickens,” but will know that “the quarantine for large-scale farming is stricter.”
More importantly, by that time, the main entities of agricultural production will have already become highly up-to-scale, and smallholders will have greatly decreased. The difficulty of source governance will drop significantly. Only when the two legs of “scale at the production end” and “perception upgrade at the consumption end” take steps forward simultaneously will food safety truly have the possibility of long-term stability.
Of course, this is just an ideal picture. In reality, the inertia of the educational system is massive, the teaching force is insufficient, and compiling textbooks takes time. But no matter how difficult, it must be done, because this is the fundamental solution.
Laws can penalize, and regulation can inspect, but both lines of defense are post-hoc. The true first line of defense is the perception of every single individual. And perception is shaped from childhood.
Regarding Food Safety, We Do Not Lack Laws; We Lack “Knowing”
Returning to the title: Food safety issues also need to be instilled from children.
It is not because it is “important,” but because other methods are almost reaching their limits.
Previously, I kept talking about how to strengthen food safety regulation and how to implement legal rules. But to be honest, current laws are already strict enough. The penalty amounts and the rules for connecting administrative penalties with criminal justice cannot be described as anything less than severe; the phrase “the strictest food safety law” has been continuously mentioned. Moreover, efforts in regulation are also very diligent, and the pass rate of daily food random inspections is very high.
But why do problems still emerge continuously? Because there is always a group of people who are not malicious, but truly do not know. They do not know that industrial dyes are toxic, they do not know that sodium bisulfite cannot be used to cure meat, and they do not know that vacuum soft-boiled eggs must be cooled down within 4 hours.
Looking at these cases in reality, in the final analysis, this is a Rashomon-style dilemma of perception.
Many people do not intend to poison others, but they fail to realize that the things they add to food themselves—which they never eat themselves—are served with a clear conscience to strangers, diners, and children; meanwhile, they themselves are also being “fed” risks of unknown origin by others in the exact same manner.
“Everyone else is using it, so I can use it too; everyone else is harmed, so being harmed doesn’t matter.” This collective numbness of “harming each other without realizing it” is the deepest root cause of food safety issues.
To change perception, the only way is to engrave these issues deeply into everyone’s mind during the educational phase in which everyone must participate.
Instilling it from children does not mean letting a few-years-old child memorize legal articles, but letting them naturally establish sensitivity to food safety, judgment regarding risks, and trust in science during their growth process.
This road is very long and may take a generation’s time. But if we don’t start, the next generation and the generation after that will still have to face the same dilemma—with a 99% pass rate on one side, and never-ending small-scale accidents and permanently depleting trust on the other.
That would be a true “deadlock.”