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This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Steve and Lai Ming.
If you've noticed your friends posting temple-style meals or plant-based hot pot online, you are not alone.
Plant-based dining has become one of China's hottest food trends.
And no, not just for vegetarians.
From students to CEOs, more people are turning to lighter, greener meals.
But why now?
Let's find out on today's show.
So plant-based dining.
There are so many names for these. plant-based dining, vegetarian, vegan?
What are the differences?
Raw veganism, fruitinarianism.
Yeah, there's a whole lot of different terms.
But I think even in 2025, it's still confusing for a lot of people.
What's the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan?
Well, vegetarians don't eat things that require an animal to die.
So they include red meat and beef and lamb and poultry, turkey, fish, things like that.
But they still eat eggs and dairy products like milk and cheese and yogurt and other things like honey.
But vegans.
You have the list of things that vegetarians don't eat, but also no animal products whatsoever.
So that does include eggs and dairy and honey and any other ingredient that comes from an animal, like gelatin, for example.
And I think, maybe a difference too.
For vegans it's often considered a lifestyle, because it's not.
It's often not just limited to food.
Vegans often make choices like avoiding other animal products in other parts of their lives, like no leather shoes, for example, or no cosmetics that were tested on animals things like that.
Well, and if we use the standards, then plant-based diet is just for this meal, I'm not eating meat.
It's by choice, and also I don't stick to this one diet option forever.
I have choices.
More flexible?
More flexible.
Okay.
So how about the situation where the plant-based food situation in China?
Because I doubt the majority of Chinese people are vegan or vegetarian, yet we do have.
A lot of people, for different reasons, choose to have a relatively greener diet in different occasions.
Well, it's a growing trend.
Over 50 million people in China now follow a vegetarian or mostly plant-based diet, according to the 2022 industry report cited by chinanewscomcn in 2024.
The industry's annual output value has surpassed 42 billion yuan, with a well-developed upstream to downstream supply chain.
Industry data cited by Hushu News in 2025 shows China's plant-based food market expanding at over 25 annually, and this is in spite of some concerns setbacks suffered by more traditional industries like hot pot, barbecue and other mainstream categories.
But don't let the trend misguide you, because as big as the vegetarian market is, we are talking about 42 billion yuan.
Right?
We just mentioned that.
But I did a little research.
The hot pot industry, according to a Xinhua News Agency report, was 617 billion yuan.
Yeah. in the year 2024.
And the 50 million people in China that follow a vegetarian or mostly plant-based diet that you mentioned.
That's about 35 of the population.
It is picking up.
If you look at the growth of the particular market, it's expanding at a really significant rate over 25.
And that reaches about 14,000 restaurants around the country. but you make a good point, Lai Ming.
It's not like...
Nine out of ten restaurants when you walk down the street in any major city are vegetarian or vegan restaurants.
There's still a niche, but a niche that's seeing out of extraordinary growth.
The thing is that in China the vegetarian cuisine world or the plant-based food world there are two types of restaurants.
One has been there for quite a long time.
It's relatively high-end, very expensive, well to my standard and you get to enjoy the kind of food that taste almost taste like meat, but they're plant-based.
Yeah, we have invented words like 素鸡, 素鸭.
Yes, yes.
素丸子.
They're veggie meat.
Vegetarian chicken, vegetarian duck, vegetarian meatballs.
And these places are not only quite high-end in the choice of food and material and ingredients, they are also quite choosy and picky and have a really good aesthetic, um design, kind of uh, let's say standard when it comes to decoration, the atmosphere.
When you enjoy your food in these kind of places, you feel like your spirit, your soul, is also quieting down a little bit, you know, in the soothing kind of atmosphere.
And the new trend these days is that we are looking at some eat all you can buffet, but all of the dishes there are vegetarian, are plant-based.
And they are quite a bargain.
You can go have a all-you-can-eat buffet, all plant-based, with only 25 yuan per person.
And the dishes are quite good.
They do not intentionally cook the vegetarian food into meat taste.
They're just regular dishes from different chinese cuisine, different ways of cooking them, but they're quite nice and also they're not uh, pre-cooked food.
That is why it's gaining popularity.
It's cheap, it's healthy and it's tasty, and occasionally you, you know, eat less meat.
Twenty five yuan, you said, that's about four dollars for a buffet.
Yeah.
Well, that's a really good step in the right direction because I think I can safely say the attitude in Canada and America towards maybe vegetarian or vegan food.
And this is unfair, is that it's expensive.
And maybe even overpriced.
They did a survey.
I found this from GreenQueen.com.
They did a survey that showed that the majority of US customers believe that vegan diets are more costly than the standard American diet, despite meat being the highest source of their spending for 70 of them, which is kind of an interesting ironic twist.
And with veganism...
You know, a long time ago in America and Western culture, there was a stigma attached to it.
Like if you were to bring up in conversation that you were a vegan or a vegetarian.
You might get some people rolling their eyes or saying like ugh.
Why?
Because it was connected to, unfairly, by the way, let me state that.
It was connected to kind of like a hippie lifestyle thing movement like animal rights activists, which is not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all.
It's just that it was a tough sell.
It was a tough sell to get people on board and for vegans and vegetarians for a long time.
It would be really challenging for them to, number one, have conversations about their dietary preferences or lifestyle preferences and, number two, Find a restaurant that was somewhat affordable and tasted good.
But those concepts, those ideas are really changing now.
Yeah.
We used to be the way. with the U.S. and Canada as well.
Vegetarian food used to be expensive, as Niu Hongling mentioned earlier, because a lot of care has to go into prepping the ingredients and even carving them into the and also cooking them into the taste and shape and the look of meaty dishes.
So also it's a niche market.
You mentioned earlier.
It's 3 of the population given, even as it is growing rapidly against other trends.
So it's a niche market.
Not a lot of people go there.
People commonly think of it as you know, let's go have some, let's go someplace nice, let's experiment with some weird stuff.
And so it's a niche market and they have to.
The supply and demand is imbalanced, so they're supposed to be expensive.
But now there is a new trend where people are just going for vegetarian and they can afford them.
And there's no trouble of making them look like real meat or tasting like real meat.
Yeah, it's easier now, isn't it, for food producers?
Yeah, and the funny thing is more and more young people are choosing this as part of their diet.
It's not that they're going vegan or going vegetarian for good.
It's more like, well...
I can have this one or two times a week.
It's healthy, it's lighter, it's better for my weight management plan.
And we see that here in China.
According to Meituan, which is a major food delivery platform here in the country, 25 to 35-year-olds make 68 of plant-based dining orders.
That does not mean that they eat only plant-based diet.
It's just, there are some plant-based diet-related restaurants and also orders, and these are made by majorly young people.
More and more young people are choosing a healthier lifestyle, a greener diet, instead of a meaty, oily diet, great and heavy, but not that healthy one.
18 to 30.
This is from Jin Hua.
18 to 35 year olds account for 83 almost 84 of wellness spending.
That averages out to about a thousand yuan, or 140 a year.
And it's not just about staying fit or going to the gym.
It reflects something a little bit deeper, perhaps about mindful living.
There was another report from McKinsey's from last year 62 of Chinese consumers now rank health as their top priority.
And that is reflected in the food industry, too.
Eating for your wellness, not just eating for the sake of eating.
Yes.
Now we have two types of vegan restaurant or vegetarian restaurant.
One, the super high-end one.
Most of them label their ingredient as organic.
And they even play harp or kung hou in their restaurants.
It's an experience.
It's an experience, yes.
And they sometimes even say that I'm running the restaurant not only well, not mainly for the purpose of earning profit.
It's to provide a Zen style experience.
So there's the high end one that you can experiment.
And now there's the relatively more affordable one, the buffet type with delicious food And also greener and lighter diet.
Do you think that this newcomer would stay in the market?
Is it a short fam that will only appear for a period of time?
And after people's let's say preferences or people's enthusiasm faded, this type of buffet would disappear.
Or is it a new thing that will stick?
I think it's here to stay.
I'm going to link two things that might not seem to go together.
But we have aging societies. around the world, right?
And China is one of those countries.
The statistics show that it's not just the Gen Zers who are into this plant-based diet.
In 2024, 310 million Chinese people, 22% of the population are age 60.
And health awareness is particularly strong among that group.
77% of that group choose plant-based plant-based diets for health reasons.
So they're already a major contributor to that market.
So that means that it's not just younger people, it's older people as well who are interested in this.
It's not just a trend.
It's people making better choices.
I'll replace the word better, more informed choices about what they want to put in their tummies.
And it includes the older generation.
And that is going to continue, in my opinion.
I'm not sure if they are making informed decisions.
I mean because vegetarian diet, if it's not carefully managed, if it's not supplemented with other vitamin intakes, then can cause health risks.
So I look at this as a temporary fad or a temporary trend, because I've seen trends in the catering industry over the past few years and they take turns.
A few years back, it was the Sichuan Chengdu Meishi, Sichuan cuisine.
You see them everywhere, the stores and the services.
And then later on, there's the Sha Xian Xiao Chi, which is from the eastern province of Fujian.
And then there was a time when we talked about huangmen jimifan, braised chicken mixed with rice.
And then a few years back, there's also the beef hot pot.
Even that has changed.
It has given way to beef hot pot with sour sauce.
So...
The thing with catering industry is they take turns.
They're never here to stay.
And so I think it's going to be temporary and people are going to move on to other, more stylish inventions or ideas.
No, I mean, all of the things that Liming has just listed, they're still here.
They are.
You can still find them in almost every city, maybe not as frequent and as common as two or three years ago, but they stayed.
They stayed as one of the choices that we can make for our meal or our lunch today.
And I think the vegetarian buffet is also here to stay, because previously one of the challenges is that the supply chain or the shipping industry, the cold chain industry, was not as advanced.
You do not really have that many choices of vegetables from different parts of the country.
And most of the vegetables vegetables are quite seasonal.
But now that situation has already changed and with the cost of shipping and also storing getting lower, it is now a possible choice for the shop owners, the restaurant owners, to open these kind of restaurants, gain a profit and provide another choice for the consumer.
It might depend on the climate and climate change, because if vegetables vegetables are seasonal and if these plant-based dishes are suddenly more expensive one particular season because of adverse weather conditions, causing the price of the vegetables to increase, that might have an impact on a restaurant that's focused mainly on vegetarian dishes.
People ultimately yeah okay, they care about what they put in their belly and there's plenty of studies to prove that.
Um, If you go vegetarian or vegan, it's a positive impact on the environment.
But at the end of the day, you've got to feed your kids.
So if it suddenly spikes for various reasons, then that might make it harder for it to be a continuing trend.
Didn't realize we're going to go there, but let's be better to the environment.
Let's go green in our lifestyle.
So in the future, we can have as many choices of food and ingredients as we are today.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's topics.
Leave us a comment or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qq.com.
And just like that, As quickly as he arrived at Round Table, he was gone.
The children asked, when will he be back?
And Mama said, nobody knows.
And until next time, keep the conversations going and the ideas flowing.
Bye, Lai Ming!
I'm Yohan with Stephen Lai Ming, and thank you for listening.
Bye-bye, everybody!
