A journey to the Guangzhou health food expo!

This week I made the quick train trip form Zhuhai to Guangzhou to check out the 15th China International Nutrition, Health Food & Organic Products Exhibition (CINHOE). Nothing like a short and snappy name!

I must admit, I imagined walking into the exhibition halls and being met my beautiful trees, gardens and fields with organic fruits and vegetables hanging and growing in every direction, but then I was still in dreamland having got up rather early to get there for 10am!

So what did I find………well unfortunately not what I was dreaming about. In fact I don’t think I saw a single fresh vegetable there (except for the tomatoes they were giving away for free to promote the imported Greek olive oil that was lightly poured over them!). There was (as you would imagine) a large traditional Chinese medicine section with lots of strange, fossilised plant life in glass jars and the loud sound of mumbled Chinese blasting from the speaker systems as one expert after another took to the stage selling some type of new “lets make you feel like 18 again” product!

Actually, I did find a source for the infamous Maca plant, grown in the mountains of Yunnan a long with some flax seed oil producers and natural toothpaste makers. Although labelled as a “Health Food” show, most of the products were in my opinion not so healthy. There was lots of sugary drink products, suction packed animal bits a long with a fair few foreign stands selling good old imported cheese and loads of antibiotic fed meat! Oh, there was also a fair few industrial machinery companies selling all sorts of technological sorting contraptions, including my favourite “pink sausage” conveyer belt. How I so wish I had one of them in my living room!!!!

To top it all off, I was lucky enough to meet an Argentinian man who had flown all the way from south america to set up a stand selling Argentinian grains from rice and beans to barley and buckwheat. When I asked for what reason, he explained “in a few years China will run out of them so will need to buy from other countries!” I left not knowing really what to say. Was he a clever entrepreneur or a doomsday prophet? Either way time will certainly tell.

(Picture – A nice healthy fruit juice drink full of artificial flavourings, chemicals you can’t pronounce and containing absolutely no raw fruit! “BellyGoooood” for your body right!!!!)

On a more positive note, I did find one company that was rather up my street. A company based in Shenzhen had just launched an in-house hydroponic system for families to grow clean and fresh vegetables without having to leave their homes! When I first saw the lights I must admit I thought it was a device for more recreational activities (hmmm) but after checking it out and seeing how it all worked I must admit I was quite impressed. For me this is the future, taking back our power to eat what we create and to know what created it. In the future I could see these in all houses, restaurants, and offices.

If it wasn’t for the hydroponic vegetable growing systems I guess would say the show was not that great or indeed even “healthy” however, this market is in its early China days and will grow and prosper (hopefully in an “organic” way) over the coming years.