Scared of Food From China (Not Chinese Food)

[Oliveloaf]

Am I alone in this?

I am sitting at my desk here, munching on some (relatively) yummy dry-roasted edamame, feeling smug about how healthy I am being when, I notice this horror on the label:

MADE IN CHINA

I confess. This freaks me out. I worry that there's nothing in China like our FDA. That dry roasted anything made there is dry roasted with rat dung, cricket parts, and wads of soil.
I worry that there is NOTHING like plant oversight, regular equipment cleaning schedules, or do-gooder whistle blowers.

I really don't want my food contracted out to the lowest bidder 10,000 miles away.

I recently discovered that we have at home off-brand pickles that are:

PRODUCT OF BANGALORE

This does not make me feel good, either.

Knowing what I know about Chinese-built cars, I really don't want my food mass-produced there.

Tell me I'm just being paranoid.

[OneCentStamp]

I'd have trouble eating something prepared in China. Stuff like this is just still too recent and fresh: Nasty toxic steam bun scare.

[Oliveloaf]

And I just paid $10 for two and a half pounds of lead-infused edamame.

At Christmas my daughter receive some not-exactly round, Chinese-made, unbranded gum balls, probably from Dollar General.

I wouldn't let her have them.

[Exy]

If it's any comfort, the recent peanut butter salmonella outbreak here involved American food, produced in plants that are (theoretically) inspected. In this case it's well known that they were not properly inspected, in part due to a trend towards decreased government oversight in food manufacture. So Chinese food may not be any more dangerous than anything else!

Sorry, I just discovered a blog by a food safety scientist the other day and I'm pretty much scared to eat anything anymore.

[Jaglavak]

I do not eat anything from China. The only way any food from China goes down my neck is if I don't know it's from China. For instance I have read that more than half of US honey is actually from China. It gets imported, blended with US honey, and labeled as Product of USA. I look for stuff like that, and I do keep notes. Selling poison as food just isn't all that funny.

[Exy]

PS Are dry roasted edamame different from the regular roasted "soy nuts" that you can buy? Are they tasty? I love soy nuts.

[Harmonious Discord]

I don't buy food that was made in China. I haven't for a number of years.

[Tuckerfan]

Forget the things like "adulterations" done to the food, or the use of really dangerous pesticides, the real worry is the soil content. China (and many other countries) have pretty poor environmental regulations so the soil and water crops are grown in can have all kinds of nasty chemicals in them. These get absorbed by the plants and then into you.

[tunaman]

I was watching something - I don't remember if it was The Deadliest Catch or something on Food Network - and was amazed to find out that most of the frozen Alaskan fish sold in the US is caught in Alaska, shipped to China for processing, then shipped back to the US for sale.

It simply boggles my mind that there's NOWHERE in the US (or even Canada or Mexico) that could process the fish cheaper than the Chinese can. It's somehow cheaper to catch fish in Alaska, send it 10,000 miles across the ocean to China to be cut up and vacuum sealed, then ship it back to the US.

Of course, we all know why it's cheaper to send it to China. If you ever get a chance to see a PBS documentary called China Blue (about blue jeans manufacturing in China), you really should. It's shocking, yet not preachy.

[Oliveloaf]

I saw a rather poorly-made documentary about manufacturing in China.

One of the facilities presented made, of all things, those crappy plastic bead chains people wear for Mardi Gras.

It was awful. Poor women melting the ends of strings together to form necklaces. Their fingers were burnt and swollen, and they must
perform the same, thankless, stupid action 100,000 times a week. For what? Crappy beads for drunks?

[featherlou]

I recently read a fantastic book called "Where Underpants Come From: From Checkout to Cotton Field" by Joe Bennett that traces his new underpants back from New Zealand to the cotton fields in China. It was a very good read as an overview of the manufacture of consumer goods. I don't feel too sorry for Chinese workers after reading it - yes, young people come into the cities from rural areas to work in drudge jobs in factories, but they also move from that job to a better one. It's a whole lot more complicated than just fat Westerners exploiting the Chinese poor.

And no, I don't eat food made in China if I can help it. Their country simply doesn't have the same regulations for food safety that we have.

[Hatshepsut]

Given where we live, I suspect I consume more food from China than I'd like to. But given a choice, I would generally take the product NOT from China.

A few years ago when we were living in Egypt, for a while we could not buy any cat food except products made in China. Our cats would not eat it.

Of course, they are pampered pets used to eating only high-grade products. But the STREET cats of Cairo, who dine out of dumpsters, wouldn't touch it either.

[featherlou]

Hmm, cats don't like melamine, eh? Interesting.

[evensven]

I eat food from China pretty much exclusively. =).

[Jaglavak]

Yeah, but you're super tuff.

[Oliveloaf]

PS Are dry roasted edamame different from the regular roasted "soy nuts" that you can buy? Are they tasty? I love soy nuts.

I can't say for sure, but I doubt they're any different.

I kinda like them, except for the mercury and lead.