We are in a bustling restaurant in downtown Beijing, or it could be any Chinese city, town or village, for that matter. This evening the din of chatter mixed with soft music wafts through the warm summer's air, and the preoccupation of almost everyone seems to be matters oral: Biting, chewing and swallowing copious amounts of all kinds of food delivered to their tables.

But in one corner of the restaurant sits a young woman who periodically sips juice from a small plastic bottle or dips into a small plastic container she has brought with her in a backpack that holds lettuce, carrots and a few other vegetables.

Welcome to a new world where those who have opted to starve their bodies of the better things in life for hours or days on end can happily sit right beside their friends and acquaintances as they gorge themselves on the very same better things in life.

Such scenes would once have been rare, arising only when a person, perhaps for medical reasons, had to eschew food dished up at restaurant tables.

Most of these suffering souls, adherents to the intermittent fast, are women, but whatever the gender, they have a similar agenda: To systematically ward off the temptations of fat, salt, sugar and calories that could compromise their fasts.

In that quest they have found help from a new industry, one that will obligingly provide them with the food - either solid or liquid - that will allow them to see their task through to its successful, healthy conclusion.

In February, Jiang Taoxu, of Shanghai, quit a well-paid job in finance to set up with two partners an online company, Juice Joyce, that produces bottled cold-pressed juice.

The company began selling its products in June and says it already has 3,500 registered users and has handled more than 800 orders.

Jiang says his confidence in his company's products is born of personal experience.

When he was in finance he traveled frequently and ate irregularly, which exacted a heavy toll on his health, making him put on weight and becoming weak, he says.

In early 2013 he started intermittent fasting at weekends. He began to shed kilograms, and about six months later he felt he had much more energy, a better appetite and was generally more healthy.

Late last year he decided to take the plunge and get into the juice industry, realizing that with few cold-pressed juice products on the market he needed to act while the iron was hot.

Jiang saw the demand as a simple one: Many of those on intermittent fasts have little or no time to prepare the appropriate kind of food, and there are people who want to "cleanse" their body or simply enjoy the taste of fresh juice.

Cold-pressed juice can help rid the body of toxins and provide good nutrition that is low in calories because the juice is exposed to minimum heat and air, he says.

Reliable figures on the size of the juice market in China are hard to come by, but about 20 companies sell cold-pressed juice in the country, most in big cities, Jiang says.

There are also low-calorie foods such as salads and semi-cooked meals to keep intermittent fasters satisfied, he says.

In Beijing, Nuan10, a one-year-old online company, began selling low-calorie meal packets in April and says such meals have become its most important product category.

"We came up with the idea of producing appetizing, low-calorie meals when we saw that for some people it is difficult to rely on juice or salad when they are on a fasting diet," says He Miao, a marketing executive with the company. "And of course we realized that intermittent fasting has become very popular, too."

The meals contain meat, vegetables and fruit, and their calorie content is carefully calculated, he says.

Since May the company has sold more than 600 two-day packages, which cost about 200 yuan ($31; 28 euros).

One niche group among intermittent fasters in China is those who practice bigu, a fasting technique associated with achieving immortality in Daoism.

(China Daily European Weekly 08/21/2015 page25)