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Novel foods from China
A country so large, with such a large variety of cuisines, is bound to be a source of novel foods.
Food ingredients R&D activity in China seems so far to concentrate on bringing the quality of
domestic products to international level, to lower the need for imports. A worthy example is the
development of China’s first dairy culture by the Dairy Biotechnology and Engineering Institute
of the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University. Fermented dairy beverages (like Yakult) are
popular in China and the cultures are so far mainly imported.
Chinese are inventive, and have a propensity to launch a novel product much earlier than a
Western manufacturer would dare to. Chinese companies place new products in the market and
observe the reaction of the consumers. This is probably a much cheaper type of market research
than one assigned to a professional market research company. This can lead to peculiar products
like ‘sober up yoghurt’ that we saw reported once in the Chinese press. However, we have
never found it on the shelves of a supermarket.
A regulation for novel food ingredients has been in force since December 1, 2007. The
regulation broadly categorizes these into four groups. The first category is for animals, plants,
microorganisms, the second is for seldom-used ingredients aside from animals, plants,
microorganisms, while the third covers newly discovered microorganisms applied during food
processing. The fourth category covers food ingredients whose structure has been modified by
new techniques.
In this document, we are presenting a few examples of novel foods from our database. Some of
the recipes are suggested by researchers of Chinese R&D organizations, others are taken from
published handbooks, while some have been posted at Chinese BBS like websites dedicated