What’s the lowdown on 50嵐， Coco, and these kind of chains of tea shops? I drank a cup of 50嵐 grapefruit green tea every day for about 4 years. Would be nice to know how much of this carcinogenic shite I’ve absorbed.
Feel as you do Nuit, it’s a depressing thread, but you can’t not read it. You can’t afford not to.
What a joke this country is. Recognised by the international community? Start looking after your own people first.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Actually, I do, I’ll cry. Even though I’m sure my 3 year old son has been spared the worst of this, I’m sure he has been affected to some extent what with friends and family giving him the occasional delicious “bread”. And at school, seeing hoards of students trotting into class every day clutching their teas and sports drinks and then half way through class, auntie brings through a tray of “cakes”. The sponge roll cakes with a jam filling on Monday, cream on Tuesday, … Fuck, I’m out. Back to the UK.
There’s a good chance that both their drinks AND their desserts have had the plasticizers in them for years. See below.
The latest news (sorry, no link – I’m just typing as my wife reads local news off her iPhone): Yu Shen sold the toxic crap to some company which sold to two companies in Zhanghua which supplied ingredients for desserts or finished desserts (I’m not sure) to restaurants ranging from low to high end. Also, RTMart’s bakery (ies?) had all their stuff tested on their own initiative (good for them!) and found DEHP in their tiramisu. Carrefour has a different supplier than RTMart, for whatever that’s worth. And Costco did not proactively test because all their stuff is imported.
Alecinwonderland…uh oh. Now you’ve got me wondering about the el cheapo snacks MY 3 year old has been ingesting at preschool every single day. Just when I had convinced myself that my kids were probably pretty safe from this crap! Ugh. It’s just everywhere, isn’t it?
And I, too, am totally disgusted by the smell of “fresh bread” baking at local bakeries–it seems so unnatural. There are very few places here where I will buy bread, and all of them are “foreign”–my main supplier is Costco, which I suppose is safe. I always just thought it was a matter of different tastes, but now I’m finding out that that bread is actually dangerous. There’s a good reason I had such an aversion to it.
Will be purchasing a bread machine very soon. I make my own bread sometimes, but it’s time-consuming–a bread machine would help with that. Although now I’m concerned that any milk I use is probably full of all kinds of junk.
This. I got a bread machine a couple of years ago and haven’t bought local bread since. The bread machine product isn’t as good as “properly” made home bread, but it’s a lot better than the local junk (except for special varieties like at Wendel’s or whatever that small bakery is beside Jason’s in Tianmu), and it’s really easy. One day I’ll get around to making bread the old-fashioned way, but first I’d need to buy an oven.
(And how can such inherently aromatic places as bakeries smell so bad in this country?!)
If you buy only one loaf a week from someplace nicer like Wendell’s for about $150/loaf, the oven will pay for itself in about a year.
EDIT: Of course that’s an $8000 oven of semiprofessional quality that can hit 250C and do rustic boules and French bread with a great crust. You can drop about $3k for a smaller, cheaper new oven or $1-2 for a used one in the home appliance stores that will still make bread and pizza, in which latter case it will pay for itself in just a few months.
There’s a good chance that both their drinks AND their desserts have had the plasticizers in them for years. See below.
The latest news (sorry, no link – I’m just typing as my wife reads local news off her iPhone): Yu Shen sold the toxic crap to some company which sold to two companies in Zhanghua which supplied ingredients for desserts or finished desserts (I’m not sure) to restaurants ranging from low to high end. Also, RTMart’s bakery (ies?) had all their stuff tested on their own initiative (good for them!) and found DEHP in their tiramisu. Carrefour has a different supplier than RTMart, for whatever that’s worth. And Costco did not proactively test because all their stuff is imported.
[quote=“AmoyMama”]Alecinwonderland…uh oh. Now you’ve got me wondering about the el cheapo snacks MY 3 year old has been ingesting at preschool every single day. Just when I had convinced myself that my kids were probably pretty safe from this crap! Ugh. It’s just everywhere, isn’t it?
And I, too, am totally disgusted by the smell of “fresh bread” baking at local bakeries–it seems so unnatural. There are very few places here where I will buy bread, and all of them are “foreign”–my main supplier is Costco, which I suppose is safe. I always just thought it was a matter of different tastes, but now I’m finding out that that bread is actually dangerous. There’s a good reason I had such an aversion to it.
Will be purchasing a bread machine very soon. I make my own bread sometimes, but it’s time-consuming–a bread machine would help with that. Although now I’m concerned that any milk I use is probably full of all kinds of junk.[/quote]
Don’t let your 3 year old eat any more snacks at the school. I’m going to my son’s kindergarten tomorrow. They cook most of the food in their own kitchen, but there are some snacks that are sent in. I’m going to ask that he doesn’t eat anything coming into the school from outside until we find out the full extent to this disaster. And don’t worry about being the mafan foreigner. I also mistakenly thought that it was just a difference in tastes between our bread and Taiwanese. I’m going crazy about this.
There is a difference in taste because they put sugar in bread, here. They like sweet bread. Sweet bread generally stinks. But obviously, they put more than just sugar in it. :s
In response to Aliceinwonderland above: the Coco tea chain have got a notice saying none of their product contain DEHP, nor do they purchase any products from that dodgy company.
(Of course, I can say nothing about how trustworthy this is).
To be clear, this stuff can be in anything that needs a stable viscosity (flow ability), creaminess, … ice cream, chocolate paste, peanut butter, creams and custards … you name it.
I just read in a story in a Belgian magazine that similar stuff is used in cosmetics and that main stream companies are now looking in replacing them. Has nothing to do with the Taiwan problem but withe action groups from the US and other countries that have taken this problem serious. Our skin is an organ that absorbs this crap.
On the side:
BTW, the Taiwan scare has not yet trickled down into European media as we have had our own scare … 18 or so deaths in Germany from a new EHEC bug (new strain), probably ingested by eating sprouts. Over 1,000 people affected, sick … but now slowing down, luckily … Spain and Belgium, Holland are the worst affected economically as the Germans pointed fingers at Spanish cucumbers and tomatoes. Belgium as is Holland are major growers of these veggies (glasshouse) and saw the market collapse, millions of Euros lost. The Russians closed their borders for all European veggies until further notice. Now the Germans found out the sprouts are grown and treated locally in Germany. Today we’ll know for sure.
I always drank grapefruit green tea from 50嵐： 50lan.com.tw/news_show.php?id=39
Their website says grapefruit juice is clear, and other products are waiting to be checked. Not sure how comforting that is.
That sweet taste in Taiwan is not from sugar, sugar tastes like sugar … not some mellow sweet yucky flavor.
I know that it’s incorporated in shortening they use, hardened palm fat. Cheap, unhealthy, flavored and colored artificially. Seen it, smelled it from close by … never used it tho.
And, I noticed that lot’s of people no longer prefer sweetened bread. Bakeries in Taipei start having ‘normal’ tasting bread on their shelf, marked (sold) as western style, but still not really as we know it … they still put all kinds of stuff in it … like analog (fake) cheese and fake (made with vegetable shortening instead of cocoa butter) chocolate … but also good things as raisins and nuts, herbs.
One thing I have noticed long ago, Imei has had normal tasting breads in their range for over a decade.
Oh, they also have this (clarified) butter that’s in a tin and has a shelf life of a hundred years. Same story, crap … flavored, colored …
There’s a good chance that both their drinks AND their desserts have had the plasticizers in them for years. See below.
The latest news (sorry, no link – I’m just typing as my wife reads local news off her iPhone): Yu Shen sold the toxic crap to some company which sold to two companies in Zhanghua which supplied ingredients for desserts or finished desserts (I’m not sure) to restaurants ranging from low to high end. Also, RTMart’s bakery (ies?) had all their stuff tested on their own initiative (good for them!) and found DEHP in their tiramisu. Carrefour has a different supplier than RTMart, for whatever that’s worth. And Costco did not proactively test because all their stuff is imported.
BTW, if anyone wants to try baking their own bread, to get away from all this crap laced with plasticizers (and which will STILL be loaded with artificial ingredients like “dough conditioners”, “crust enhancers”, “aroma enhancers” etc. after the DEHP is weeded out), here are four useful links for you:
First, on Forumosa: Bake your own bread! Home oven recommendations
(I like the Dr. Goods oven available at DIY baking supply shops like the one tucked away in a residential street under and just south of the eastbound onramp to the Minquan bridge. An island-wide list of baking suppy stores is here: DIY baking supply / supplies - #47 by Dragonbones
I’ve seen “butter” for bakers here in a yellow tin, and it is most definitely not real, natural fresh butter. It has the consistency of over-hydrogenated palm oil and it STINKS. God only knows what it is. Rancid butter mixed with food coloring and hydrogenated vegetable oil, most likely. Every time I see French bread loaves with that stuff ladled on them in bakeries, I want to puke. The stuff probably has DEHP in it too.
Don’t worry, the majority will always be too busy or too lazy to make their own.
Dehydroacetic acid is the stuff I mentioned earlier in the thread, in reference to the scandal in October of 2009 involving “You & Me” brand yogurt drink, reported in the Taipei Times:
[quote]Local authorities destroyed more than 9,000 bottles of “Yuanmi” [sic] at the factory and will fine the producers between NT$30,000 (US$930) and NT$50,000 for violating the Food Sanitation Control Law (食品衛生管理法).
It appears that in December of 2002, Taiwan’s Department of Health proposed to the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures that Taiwan ban sodium dehydroacetate’s use as a food additive (I guess that’s what happened; it’s kind of hard for me to tell who’s proposing to whom in this document):
quote Sodium dehydroacaetate [sic] (C8H7O4Na) is the sodium salt of dehydroacetaic [sic] acid, and has been used in food as a preservative.
(2) In the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, sodium dehydroacaetate has been permitted to be used in cheeses, butter, cream, margarine with the amount not more than 0.5 g/kg (calculated as dehydroacetic acid) under the regulations of “Scope and Application Standards of Food Additives” since 1987.
(3) Very limited research data can be found for the toxicity evaluation on this chemical. No adequate scientific data was found to ensure that the chemical is safe to be used as a food additive. Oppositely, some data mentioned that sodium dehydroacetate may induce an experimental [color=#000080]teratogen[/color] [according to MedicineNet.com, a teratogen is “[a]ny agent that can disturb the development of an embryo or fetus”–cj].
(4) In the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, [color=#000080]sodium dehydroacetate is added illegally very often in food such as cakes, cookies and breads,[/color] according to the inspection records of the health authorities.
(5) [color=#000080]The domestic manufacturers of cheeses, butter, cream, and margarine have denoted that sodium dehydroacetate is not a necessary food additive [/color]for their products. There are some other legal alternative food additives may be used. Prohibiting the use of sodium dehydroacetate will not disturb the manufacturing.
(6) Considering the use of sodium dehydroacaetate [sic] may present a potential risk to the public health and sodium dehydroacaetate [sic] is not a necessity on technical aspect, the authority has proposed to ban the use of sodium dehydroacetate as a food additive.[/quote] baphiq.gov.tw/public/Attachm … 403671.pdf
That’s kind of confusing. However, and in any case, I don’t know whether it’s used here these days, or if it’s used, how widely it’s used, or what it’s used in.
For clarity, I think the use of the term “plastic”, is better translated “emulsifier”.
This is used in many food production processes for various effects, mostly stability.
Not all emulsifiers are bad, in fact some are quite natural, and have been used for centuries. Mayo and Hollandaise sauce are two good examples of this. Lecithin is a common emulsifier that can be derived from egg yolks, soy, and other natural sources without bad effect.
These bastards used this chemical for no other purpose than to cut cost. The CEO and board should face the death penalty for this callous crime on humanity.
That sweet taste in Taiwan is not from sugar, sugar tastes like sugar … not some mellow sweet yucky flavor.
I know that it’s incorporated in shortening they use, hardened palm fat. Cheap, unhealthy, flavored and colored artificially. Seen it, smelled it from close by … never used it tho.
[/quote]Frankly, I don’t know for sure where the smell comes from, but I do find the bread sweet in Taiwan. Whether it’s sugar, the liquid glucose they use in tea or some other chemical, I don’t know. It just tastes sweet.
Is there really such a thing as “hardened palm fat?” How can a palm tree have fat?
PS: I was always under the impression that “fat” came from animals. I just looked up the definition. Among many definitions, one of them is: “A solidified animal or vegetable oil.” Hardened palm fat would fall under that definition. Please ignore my above uneducated question.
Sorry RobinTaiwan, hardened palm kernel (pit) oil … turned into shortening … which is a fat …
… and no saddletramp, I don’t think emulsifier is a right choice of word because it’s not an emulsifier … it’s a plasticizer, and has a different function.
Emulsifiers add stability by making it possible to mix two ingredients that normally would not be mixable, water and oil for instance.
Plasticizers (not plastic) have another function (change in viscosity and hardness, smoothness, creaminess) which will add to better stability. Legally not in food.
AFAIK, I think the confusion arises from the fact that this DEHP plasticizer was illegally added TO an emulsifier which is used as a clouding agent. That doesn’t mean DEHP IS an emulsifier. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much. The point is that the scoundrels poisoned us and our children for a profit and should be dealt with FAR more harshly than is currently happening, and the government should be held accountable for this grossly inadequate response.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]The point is that the scoundrels poisoned us and our children for a profit and should be dealt with FAR more harshly than is currently happening, and the government should be held accountable for this grossly inadequate response.[/quote]That is the point. This is not handled in a way that should make us feel safe about what we are to purchase in our local stores. This got me thinking about pet food. Can you imagine what they put in that?! I also wonder about laundry detergent. Nothing feels safe.
