mmmm so tasty but so deadly?

I still can't get over how cheap food is here, especially eating out. A decent meal, with rice, meat and vegies will only cost you about 10 yuan at the most for something fancy, and if you wanted just fried noodles or rice, the least you can pay is 5 yuan (around 80 cents). compare that to cheapest meal you can find in australia, a meat pie for $4.50? and you're laughing. Even with my low wages (by western standards) at about 166 yuan a day, food accounts for but a fraction of my daily spendings.

However, after being here for 3 months and talking to a lot of the locals, the issue of food safety starts to play on your mind. To me, chinese food is so flavoursome, but sometimes a little TOO flavoursome. i.e. too much MSG or monosodium glutamate.

I can't expressly remember everything about MSG without doing a google search, but I do know too much of the stuff in excess is not good for you. what was it, some type of cancer, gall stones, heart problems? all i know is it's not good. and you're always drinking buckets of water after a meal in a restaurant.

unlike in the west, you won't find menus proudly advertising 'we don't use msg here'. nope, if a menu in china had that plastered on the cover, first of all the chinese patron would ask 'what's that'? , and then they'd walk out after tasting the dishes.

but it's not just msg that seems to be in excess. every fried dish absolutely swims in oil, and sometime they throw in a large chunk of lard just to flavour it up. The sichuan dishes are especially, bad with their copious amount of chilli oil. but, it wouldn't taste sichuan without all that oily goodness.

they don't go lightly on the salt or sugar in many dishes either. so when you are confronted with a menu board in china, you do sometimes have to think to yourself what do i want today? an increased risk of cancer, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes? take your pick. but whatever you choose, damn it'll taste so good. I also sometimes wonder what the effect of national diet are on the population. It seems that everyone here in China (especially the students), are always so sleepy. I have this theory that someting in their diets (the msg?), or the lack of (like coffee or diary?), must cuase the chronic sleepiness.

Then theres the issue of where the prime produce is sourced from. Now I'm not sure how credible the following i'm about to tell you is, or whether its stuff reported in the mainstream media or on social networking sites like weibo (the chinese version of twitter). So take the following information with a pinch of salt. (i mean, i'm not thoroughly convinced either).
One of my students adamantly warned me to never eat at the meat skewer places along the roadside. She reckons the 'lamb' meat, is actually dog, cat, or rodent, or whatever mixture they come up with on a given day. I've had my fair share of lamb skwerers already, and no signs of trouble yet. It tastes a bit rubbery, but hey, no less than the stuff you get from doner kebabs. So i'm not sold on that one yet. Besides, you probably face more danger from all the dirt and brake dust coating the meat as the cars whoosh by.

Then she up'ed the conspiracy theory level, and told me to never eat in restaurants around the campus. First of all, she just said they frequently re-use the same batch of oil to cook stuff. Fine, i could live with that. But then she told me stories of some oil suppliers sourcing their oil from dead human bodies! Again, i wasn't really sold on that one, and I didn't believe you could get much oil out of a dead body. Another one i heard from one of the other teachers was that some people collect sewerage water and chemically extract the oil out for re-use and sale. That one seemed a bit more plausible to me. Although i don't believe all these stories, I do believe that the worse of the worse Chinese business men (or women) are capable of doing such things. I mean, if some people in this country are capable of fatally poisoning babies with baby formula, then this ain't a far stretch. anything to cut costs and make a lot of money. an unfortunate ugly side of chinese society.

I also know for a fact that many farmers and agricultrual companies use excessive and dangrerous fertilizers on their fresh produce here. It's common knowledge amongst the people. I've been told by some locals to never things like lettuce or tomatoes raw. The other thing that might make you squirm is that some farmers use 'human fertilizer' on their produce. Notice the well trodden pathway in this picture from outhouse to crops! So just make sure you thoroughly wash your fruits and vegies when you bring them home.


Finally, i've learned to never buy cheap snacks from the grocery stores. many a time i've ventured into the realm of fake looking oreos, or half price cream biscuits, and have ended up bitterly disappointed. but it's not just quality thats compromised, as i found out after trying out a cheap chocolate coated muffin. You know how chocolate is supposed to melt in your mouth after a few minutes? well long after the muffin part had disintegrated, the chocolate coating was disturbingly still present in my mouth. it ended up forming something like a piece of plastic gum, which i had to spit out. So now whenever i pick up an ultra cheap product in the shops, my health and long term survival do flash through my mind. I now end up putting it back and reaching for the oreos.