According to CNN, some street food vendors in one neighborhood in China are making their steamed buns out of, among other things, cardboard: Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said. Gives whole new meaning to the "tastes like cardboard" comment we all often use in describing food we don't like. Someone here at Serious Eats world headquarters says that this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that pork really does make anything taste better....
Continue reading »
In the wake of all the poison product scares, NPR visits a food broker in Gurnee, Illinois, to get a firsthand view of how the ingredients in familiar grocery store items are handled. The problem occurs with cut-rate dealers, the story says: "Many say these low-end ingredient brokers are the scourge of the industry. They were behind many of the recent Chinese product scares—including poisonous toothpaste and possibly defective tires."...
Continue reading »
Ahead of next year's Summer Games, the Chinese government pledges that its food will be safe for "athletes, coaches, officials, and others" attending the events. "All the procedures involving Olympic food, including production, processing, packaging, storing and transporting will be closely monitored," Sun Wenxu, an official with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told reporters Tuesday. In a related move, the government also executed a former food and drug chief there who was found guilty of taking cash in exchange for approving six untested medicines....
Continue reading »
NPR's Morning Edition reports on the U.S. FDA's "tense dependence" on China's food imports. The piece provides a good overview of the challenges faced as food imports have increased (from $45 billion in 2003 to $64 billion three years later) while the "food" part of the FDA has decreased. The Q&A at the bottom of the page with former FDA official William Hubbard explains how melamine got through the FDA's inspection system and whether consumers should worry about imports....
Continue reading »
In an op-ed piece in today's New York Times (which is unfortunately behind the Times paywall), noted economist and op-ed page columnist Paul Krugman blames the forces of deregulation (led by the late Milton Friedman) for our new "fear of eating" brought on by the rash of foodborne illness in this country....
Continue reading »
An absolutely terrifying piece by Marian Burros in the New York Times about the obviously broken food safety system in the United States. A quote from an anguished mother whose 2 year-old daughter contracted a strain of the E. coli virus from contaminated spinach. "You live in the United States of America and this isn't going to happen. There is an assumption that everything is going to be OK, that someone must have checked this out, but it is not the case." In the past year at least three thousand people died and more than a thousand were sickened by contaminated tomatoes, lettuce, peanut butter and spinach. But the recent contamination of pet food, which has killed many animals, seems...
Continue reading »
Great tips on food safety for packed lunches, for those of you who bring your own food to work or pack lunches for others. I work from home and usually pick lunch up while I'm out walking my dog, or have something delivered, but I totally have packed lunch envy. [via YumSugar]...
Continue reading »
Eggs are getting safer, says Goody Solomon of the Washington Post: "In 2002, the last year for which numbers are available, 10 percent of reported Salmonella enteritidis outbreaks in the United States were related to eggs, compared with a spike of 80 percent in 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These days, according to the CDC, salmonella outbreaks are more likely to be caused by other foods: juices, salsa, meat, sprouts, fruits, and salads."...
Continue reading »
