Food workers tend to the assembly line at a frozen dumpling factory in Zhengzhou, China, owned by Sanquan Food Co., the company that dominates the frozen-dumpling market in China. For most of modern history, Chinese consumers had little access to refrigeration and sought the freshest meat and produce they could find to cook at home. But the rapid rise of Chinese incomes and the availability of modern conveniences—along with demanding factory and office jobs, as well as lockdowns during the Covid pandemic—have led to booming sales of frozen foods, from traditional pork and cabbage dumplings to frozen pizzas. Though consumption in China is still less than in the United States, where ultra-processed foods comprise nearly 60 percent of adult diets and nearly 70 percent of children’s diets, the rising global overconsumption of highly processed frozen foods has consequences for global health. A growing body of research now links such diets to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and various cancers.
