Fancy a trip to china? Visiting the Great Wall of China …………… the restaurant maybe?
Well, be careful what you eat over there …. they have recently uncovered yet another massive food scandal. This time its with illegal products and ingredients being passed off as kosher (well not kosher, but you know what I mean). This time it’s condiments and seasoning's. The very staples of Chinese cuisine and effecting both domestic (Totole and Donggu), and international brand names (including such luminaries as Maggi, Knorr, and Nestle).
The scandal has been going on for more than a decade, and includes using industrial salt not fit for human consumption, recycling by-products from other food manufacturers, and the free use of highly regulated ingredients like the artificial sweetener cyclamate.
Still of course the whole Chinese food sector has a long and dishonourable history of poisoning their customers at home and abroad …. Perhaps the worst that’s been admitted to was the baby milk scandal uncovered in 2008, that killed at least six, and poisoned many hundreds of thousands of children. In 2014, the Shanghai Husi Food Company, a meat supplier to fast food chains such as McDonalds and KFC in China, was found to be repackaging old meat.
In a similar vein, in 2015 the authorities seized 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat, some of it more than 40 years old, and last month Chinese media reported that food suppliers in the north-western city of Shanxi were treating mushrooms with hazardous chemicals, just to make them look whiter and fresher. So not exactly a safe place to eat and even buy food products from ….. I would certainly think twice outside of Beijing or Hong Kong.
The thing is that the Chinese economy has grown by stealing other people ideas, copying them and marketing them as their own. This applies to websites, where they have their ‘own’ versions EBay, Amazon, Facebook etc etc, and the same applies to motor cars, where they have often just copied the styling of cars such as Range Rover etc.
This has led to a knock-off copy cat culture, which has percolated throughout their manufacturing system. From fake apple stores to fake condiments …. You reap what you sew.
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| The Great Wall Of China .... Worth A Visit? |
Well, be careful what you eat over there …. they have recently uncovered yet another massive food scandal. This time its with illegal products and ingredients being passed off as kosher (well not kosher, but you know what I mean). This time it’s condiments and seasoning's. The very staples of Chinese cuisine and effecting both domestic (Totole and Donggu), and international brand names (including such luminaries as Maggi, Knorr, and Nestle).
The scandal has been going on for more than a decade, and includes using industrial salt not fit for human consumption, recycling by-products from other food manufacturers, and the free use of highly regulated ingredients like the artificial sweetener cyclamate.
Still of course the whole Chinese food sector has a long and dishonourable history of poisoning their customers at home and abroad …. Perhaps the worst that’s been admitted to was the baby milk scandal uncovered in 2008, that killed at least six, and poisoned many hundreds of thousands of children. In 2014, the Shanghai Husi Food Company, a meat supplier to fast food chains such as McDonalds and KFC in China, was found to be repackaging old meat.
In a similar vein, in 2015 the authorities seized 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat, some of it more than 40 years old, and last month Chinese media reported that food suppliers in the north-western city of Shanxi were treating mushrooms with hazardous chemicals, just to make them look whiter and fresher. So not exactly a safe place to eat and even buy food products from ….. I would certainly think twice outside of Beijing or Hong Kong.
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| Chinese Cuisine.... Not Always What It Appears To Be. |
The thing is that the Chinese economy has grown by stealing other people ideas, copying them and marketing them as their own. This applies to websites, where they have their ‘own’ versions EBay, Amazon, Facebook etc etc, and the same applies to motor cars, where they have often just copied the styling of cars such as Range Rover etc.
This has led to a knock-off copy cat culture, which has percolated throughout their manufacturing system. From fake apple stores to fake condiments …. You reap what you sew.
And it doesn't help that 10 mins after a Chinese meal you feel like another.
ReplyDeleteOne suspects that the food is likely to harm you only if you eat it everyday, and not once every month or so. Still its a sign of how little China is governed from the centre in reality.
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