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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: Do Chinese food scandals actually affect your eating habits?
Apple question from Ammia got me thinking about all the food scandals in China. There's actually an apple scandal just these days (which perhaps prompted Ammia's question), where orchard owners in Shandong province have been found to wrap their apples in plastic bags filled with pesticide.
But frankly, at this point, if you've lived at least a year in China, do you even care anymore? Do these news really affect your eating habits? There are just so many health issues reported, and so many unreported, that, chances are, over 50% of what you eat will have some problem anyways.
11 years 41 weeks ago in Health & Safety - China
Pesticides are used to kill plagues that will affect crops. And even if instructions for proper use are clearly shown on label, somehow many farmers here feel the "more the merrier", without considering downstream consequences. I have witnessed a local farmer using pesticides on his vegetable garden, and there was no measurements at all, just dump the pesticide bottle into sprayer, add water and start spraying.
I will not abstain from buying the things I enjoy, but do take proper precautions to insure that no traces of pesticides are left on whatever I eat. I do hand wash all fruits, vegetables, meat, etc I purchase prior to use, even submerge them in warm water for a few minutes to dissolve any residues.
Another thing is when they add questionable chemicals to the products they market, like the milk problem. Then AI refrain from using them, and now only use powder milk from Nestle made abroad, not in China.
for sure i go to stores that import food only and never eat off the streets and dont eat in most resturants
Not really, I have to not think about what I may be eating as it is.
Absolutely. I know travel and use my own eating utensils and only order drinks that are in a sealed bottle, and I never use a glass or cup provided by a restaurant. China is the fifth worst country in the world for Hepatitis.
I try to do some basic things to avoid the worst. Really though, I am pretty sure that it is just impossible to avoid every piece of tainted food or drink. Unless you saw it growing, picked and prepared then I reckon at some point it has been tainted. You just have to put that at the back of your mind. Fortunately my guts are pretty strong.
Scandinavian:
seeing it growing doesn't mean the soil isn't polluted.
China made me fully vegetarian, and it's not a joke. I used to eat very little meat several years before coming to China. I know rice, eggs and vegetable are no stranger to food scandals. But the "exposed surface" (exposure to bad/fraudulent practices) for meat is much wider. In general, meat is of lower quality to what I was used to in France. So no meat at all in China.
When they a country gives absolutely no consideration or care when preparing food for their own children, that means we should be extra careful. I closely examine food and drink 1 million times more closely than I ever did back home. Any slight offness of taste, smell or texture, i toss it.
My heart goes out to those children.
Yeah, I should have stayed in my home country and eaten horse meat burgers .
The difference is, Europe blamed Romanian gangsters for the horse meat scandal..
The Chinese blamed the Chinese for the milk scandal... Chinese.... executed. Gutter oil, many executed.
Is it really the Government's fault when thing go wrong? When people f**k up here they get a bullet to the head. They do the same in America.
But people still take the chance. Is that any Government's fault?
I suspect not. I put it down to people having more individual freedom here than they do in the west.
Yes, in a good way.
I stop eat, so I can lose weight. And keep my body clean.
But, after 5 month, I feel a bit hungry and when it's windy day, I do not like to go outside ..
Sometimes, sometimes not. I try not to read too much about food scandals because I feel that in the end I just won't eat anything. A friend once sent me an article shows photos of people in the South skinning snakes, and selling there meat as something else. I told him never to send me anything like that again. I don't want to see that sh*t. I just try to live normally and see what happens. Although during the swine and chicken flu times I try not to eat those meats.