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Paper short abstract:

In Beijing, extreme work culture gives young adults ‘sub-healthy’ bodies. Many thus turn to ‘light meals’, a trendy healthy diet catering to their medical knowledges. But biomedical knowledge is also used to debunk its efficacy, making the meal ‘not-so-healthy’ and their futures more uncertain.

Paper long abstract:

Extreme work culture in China has been heavily discussed but still persisting. Having to work for 50 hours per week, many young adults in Beijing consider their bodies as ‘not-so-healthy’ due to lack of sleep, activity, and rest. Their feelings converge with the widespread notion of ‘sub-health’, which states that most people are neither healthy nor unhealthy, but in an uncertain middle state. This uncertainty impacts both near and far futures because body collapse may happen anytime, as sudden deaths or chronic diseases.

To navigate the uncertainties, many have started eating ‘light meals’. It is a trendy diet with surging popularities, characterized by light portions, simple seasoning, and stated nutritional facts for each dish. Light meal eaters usually employ pluralistic medical knowledge to perceive its health effects; not only attracted by its more balanced nutritional facts (e.g. less carbohydrates, more fiber than typical Chinese cuisine) on the menus, they also notice relevant embodied perceptions of becoming lighter and burden-free, and desired sociocultural merits associated with lightness, all contributing to a sense of health.

However, biomedical knowledge in particular also creates more somatic uncertainties. Medical authorities (e.g. famous nutritionists) usually focus on light meals’ inaccurate nutritional descriptions, applying biomedical knowledge to debunk the meals’ efficacy and frame light meal eaters as unintelligent buyers. For many young adults, such criticism turns their healthy diet into a ‘not-so-healthy’ meal, thereby magnifies feelings of uncertainty where their ‘not-so-healthy’ bodies are constantly in need of care, but no truly effective strategies are readily available.