Apocalypse Foodie System: Watch Her Cook!-Chapter 58 - 54: Bad News

With a good start on the first day, Tang Yiyi’s business quickly got on track. As she cooked more dishes, she earned more points. Using these points, she exchanged for hundreds of recipes, combining business with learning to cook every day. With these recipes, her small shop would launch a new dish every day, and once released, it would be immediately snapped up by her quietly attentive customers.

Tang Yiyi looked at the ever-increasing credit points in her account and felt increasingly cheerful. However, just as she opened the Food Empire intending to select some nutritional supplements specifically designed for pregnant women, she suddenly heard the system’s flat electronic voice: "These nutritional supplements have average effects and could have toxic side effects. It’s best for the host not to use them."

Upon hearing this, Tang Yiyi’s heart tightened; this was the first time she had heard such a thing! As far as she knew, although these nutritional supplements had average effects, there had never been any reports of toxic side effects. Otherwise, the government wouldn’t have relaxed its regulation, allowing them to be bought freely.

But just now, the system had told her that these nutritional supplements have toxic side effects!

Tang Yiyi felt a sense of panic; she had initially planned to use these ordinary nutritional supplements temporarily and, if needed in the future, figure out a way to get some high-grade nutritional supplements. What if the system hadn’t warned her and she had used these supplements—what would have happened?

The more she thought about it, the more panic-stricken she became, barely managing to calm herself down: "Then what would be the consequences if these supplements were used?"

The system’s voice quickly sounded: "These nutritional supplements lack sufficient nutrients to support the normal development of the fetus, and their harmful components could damage the fetus’s genes. Without Genetic Repair Liquid, the child born will have a weaker physique and the superpower gene will not awaken."

Tang Yiyi instantly thought of many issues, like how even naturally conceived children among ordinary people rarely awaken superpowers. This is why, although the government is very favorable to pregnant women, superpower user pregnant women receive much better treatment than ordinary pregnant women!

Even if the government reimburses part of the pregnancy expenses, the remaining amount is still a huge number for many ordinary people! To save on these expenses, some have no choice but to opt for ordinary nutritional supplements with very average effects. However, the outcome of this is that the children born will have a weak constitution and cannot awaken their superpowers! 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

This is a vicious cycle!

Tang Yiyi was not foolish and quickly realized this. However, high-grade nutritional supplements are expensive, and the government simply cannot afford to cover the expenses of all pregnant women. Unless a win-win solution is found, this remains an unsolvable dilemma.

Tang Yiyi does not possess the grand sentiment of saving the world, but she knows very well that as the number of awakened superpower users decreases, human survival will become more and more challenging. As the saying goes, how can an egg remain intact when the nest is overturned; once Safe City is breached by mutant creatures, she will be unable to protect herself!

However, she has no time to worry about others now; what she cares about is, if ordinary nutritional supplements can’t be used, what will happen to the child in her womb? Does she really need to go to those black clinics with no safety assurances?

Tang Yiyi always felt some resistance toward such places; unless it was absolutely necessary, she would never pin her hopes on a black clinic. After all, though ordinary nutritional supplements are subpar, their harm is nothing compared to that of fake drugs!

After hesitating for a moment, she decided to seek help from the system: "System, do you have a solution?"

The system quickly responded: "The system database includes nutritional medicinal food specifically for pregnant women, which the host can choose to exchange."

As soon as Tang Yiyi heard the words "nutritional medicinal food," her eyes instantly lit up. A hundred years ago, the sudden apocalypse caused the loss of much data, including many recipes. Later on, as human physical abilities were divided into different levels, medicines targeted at physical abilities emerged, and some saw a business opportunity and began introducing "nutritional medicinal food."

Once "nutritional medicinal food" was introduced, it was highly praised, but its effectiveness was uneven, and in some cases, disappointing. Some "nutritional medicinal food" indeed had some therapeutic effects, yet many others, despite having no effect, also had toxic side effects that harmed the body. As incidents of this kind of "poisoning" continued to occur, the government began to pay more attention to "nutritional medicinal food."

Later, someone invented a multifunction detector capable of identifying harmful substances in food; only then did those fraudulent "nutritional medicinal foods" lose a foothold. Conversely, those that remained truly effective saw their status soar and became even more esteemed.

The Shao Family became giants in the catering industry not only because they mastered methods of handling several types of mutated beast meat but also because they mainly operated medicinal food before the apocalypse, inheriting many valuable medicinal food recipes!

Tang Yiyi grew up in the Liu Family, and she often heard Liu Pengyi and Liu Zhenlan mention "nutritional medicinal food." These two were very ambitious, always wanting to expand the restaurant, but their foundation was too shallow. Although Liu’s Restaurant had some reputation, its scale was still small, and it couldn’t establish a big research group to study methods of neutralizing the toxins in mutated beast meat, leaving them to tinker on a small scale. Without authoritative researchers and precise instruments, unless one’s luck was extraordinary, there was simply no hope of achieving results.

Left without options, the two turned their attention to "nutritional medicinal food." Unfortunately, they started too late; if they had begun decades earlier, they might have managed to obtain some medicinal food recipes. But by now, the passed-down medicinal food recipes had either been purchased by powerful catering businesses or kept by the owners for their own operations, leaving others with no chance to catch any leaks, having no choice but to put in effort to do their research!

Although the two intended to keep Tang Yiyi away from the restaurant matters, living in the same household, they would inadvertently mention a thing or two, which Tang Yiyi noted down. After learning about "nutritional medicinal food," she had gone online to research, learning not only about its development but also about how highly it was praised!

So when the system mentioned "nutritional medicinal food," Tang Yiyi’s eyes brightened, as if she had seen a massive mountain of gold!

She almost immediately opened the system panel, found the recipe page, and anxiously searched for the "nutritional medicinal food" mentioned by the system. The recipe page was densely packed with numerous recipes, but she scanned several pages without seeing the system-mentioned "nutritional medicinal food"!

Tang Yiyi was instantly frustrated and asked the system unhappily, "System, where is the nutritional medicinal food you mentioned? Why didn’t I see it?"

The next moment, she saw a pop-up window suddenly appear on the transparent system panel, with a prompt clearly written in red: "The recipe categorization feature can only be used after the system is upgraded, requiring 10,000 points. Do you want to choose to upgrade?"

Grinding her teeth, Tang Yiyi wondered if she had any other choice!