Chinese dieters are chewing on baby biscuits and TCM roots to lose weight—and the trend says something about modern diet culture

CHINA: A new dieting trend is spreading among young people in China, and it has nothing to do with counting calories or cutting carbs. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), they are reaching for beef jerky, frozen buns, baby teething biscuits, and traditional Chinese medicine roots. However, they’re not doing it for their nutritional value, but for one specific quality: they are hard to chew.

The logic, as shared widely on Chinese social media, is straightforward. Tough, chewy foods keep the mouth occupied, slow down eating, and trick the brain into feeling satisfied, reducing the urge to consume more. For these dieters, taste is secondary. The harder the snack, the better.

SCMP reported that one 37-year-old netizen from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has taken to chewing dangshen, a TCM root used to strengthen the spleen and lung, as her snack of choice, telling the SCMP that it keeps her focused at work without adding to her daily calorie intake. She also uses additive-free beef jerky and sugar-free gum. Another individual shared that he spends up to two hours working through a single dog chew stick during exam periods, crediting it with alleviating anxiety and helping maintain oral hygiene.

Rediscovering traditionally hard foods

The trend has also sent young dieters on a search for regional foods historically known for their toughness. Zhoushan hard cake, a sun-dried glutinous rice cake from eastern Zhejiang province, described as “as hard as a brick” and historically preserved for military campaigns and sea fishing, has been sourced by social media users specifically for its chewing challenge. Fried rice cookies from Guangdong and pancakes from Shandong are also being rediscovered through this lens.

Some studies suggest that chewing can alleviate mental stress, while TCM principles have long advocated for thorough chewing and slow eating as beneficial for digestive health and metabolism, giving the trend a degree of scientific and traditional backing that its practitioners are quick to cite.

What this says about diet culture

The chewy snack trend is relatively benign as weight loss strategies go. That, in itself, is worth noting.

It sits alongside other approaches popular among young Chinese millennials, including low-glycaemic index foods and frozen diced meat and vegetables, which are seen as healthier alternatives to extreme restriction.

However, the trend also reflects something broader about diet culture and the lengths people will go to manage their weight without feeling like they are dieting. The appeal of a strategy that does not require willpower over hunger, but instead redirects the impulse to eat into a prolonged chewing experience. This speaks to how exhausting conventional dieting advice can be for people who, like the Guangxi netizen, describe struggling with self-control around food despite otherwise healthy habits.

At its most harmless, chewing dangshen root or working through a piece of beef jerky for twenty minutes is a creative workaround to the basic problem of feeling hungry. At its core, the image of a young person spending two hours on a dog chew stick to suppress appetite during exams reflects how deeply diet culture has embedded the idea that managing one’s body is a constant, active project..