LIU Guangwei.The positioning of Shiology —— the explicit establishment of the implicit “food knowledge system” [J]. Journal of Shanxi Agricultural University(Social Science Edition),2025,24(5):24⁃34.
LIU Guangwei.The positioning of Shiology —— the explicit establishment of the implicit “food knowledge system” [J]. Journal of Shanxi Agricultural University(Social Science Edition),2025,24(5):24⁃34. DOI: 10.13842/j.cnki.issn1671-816X.2025.05.002.
The positioning of Shiology —— the explicit establishment of the implicit “food knowledge system”
The ancient adage "Food is the paramount necessity of the people" encapsulates humanity's "Five Eating"needs: sustenance, dietary diversity, food safety, longevity through nutrition, and sustainable food systems. These “Five Eating” needs embody the "right to eat," and when such needs are not met, problems inevitably arise. Humanity has not yet solved the "Five Eating" problem as a whole, fundamentally due to the absence of a comprehensive disciplinary framework. In China, addressing the post-subsistence challenges of fulfilling people's demands for "dietary diversity, food safety, nutrition-driven longevity, and sustainable food systems" requires transcending conventional agronomy as agronomy does not encompass all the “Five Eating” dimensions. Only by establishing a discipline explicitly centered on "Shiology" can these issues be adequately addressed. Within the Catalogue of Undergraduate Programs in Regular Institutions of Higher Education (2022) issued by the Ministry of Education, there implicitly embodies a "Food-System Knowledge Framework". Spanning four disciplinary categories of agronomy, engineering, medicine, and management, it constitutes a fundamental paradigm addressing the "Five Eating” problems. This study undertakes a systematic upgrading of the implicit "Food-system knowledge system". First it expands the disciplinary scope by incorporting economics, law, natural sciences and education into the original four discipllinary categories, thereby ensuring comprehensive coverage of food-related issues. Second it constructs a "Shiology Triangle Model" with eaters (demand), food (supply), and shiorder (regulation) as the structural dimensions of the disciplinary system, thereby unifying its objectives. Third, it establishes eight disciplinary elements to endow the field with the essential attributes of modern academic disciplines, thus elevating it into an explicit and recognized discipline. Guided by the “Five Eating” needs, this research seeks to build an Interdisciplinary subject of Shiology, crossing eight academic domains, in order to address the full spectrum of food-related problems. By safeguarding the food-system interests of 8 billion people, it aspires to provide a global public good and contribute to global governance.