I didn’t eat dinner today because I honestly don’t know what to eat. Everything it seems is toxic. Vegetarian cuisine is, in theory, safe because it doesn’t use lard in the first place, but I don’t know if the guy in the kitchen is really sticking to the strict principles of vegetarianism. What are you guys doing to cope?
Nothing wrong with Lard. Skin up.
Honestly I doubt if the folks in the veggie diners are sneaking pig fat into the tofu soup. How likely is that? These ppl have a lot of integrity. Say what you like about the TWs, they’re honest. I mainly eat boiled food. I never trusted the oils here, scandal or no.
I often eat a pineapple, boiled noodles, tonic soup and carrots for a snack. If I’m still hungry, bread or purple rice. Food scandals are blessings in disguise. They might make us reevaluate our toxic diets.
According to the news, actually, basically everything is wrong with lard. Grease from leather factories? Check. Non-edible industrial use oil? You bet. Oil inteded for animal consumption? Oh it’s in there too.
I would cook if I ever had the time, but I’m usually out in the early morning and not at home until near midnight. :-/
During the previous oil scandal a month ago, over 1,000 food producers, bakeries and restaurants were affected by the use of Chang Guann oil, leading observers to believe that the number of products using Cheng I oil would still rise from the 230 mentioned on Thursday.
Several prominent food brands were again among those hit, including the Wowprime group with its restaurant brands Tasty, Famonn and Tokiya, reports said, though the group issued a statement saying that from September 11, it had been using other oils. The Bread, a bakery chain affiliated with Ting Hsin, was reportedly one of 11 food companies in Taipei City which reported the use of Cheng I oil.
Earlier, [color=#BF0000]hamburger chain Mos Burger[/color] said it had used Cheng I oil for a ten-day period last month before changing to another brand. Other producers said they had been using their own lard oil since last month to avoid getting caught up in new food safety scandals.
Raw organic vegetables are probably safe.
I was pretty annoyed this morning. Was just going to start the day with a nice glass of orange juice (鮮榨 - it had a logo of five red circles, three on the top and two on the bottom, I think), but no - Mother-in-law had emptied it all down the sink! Apparently, that company was doing dodgy things will oil etc. Not that I see how the oil had anything to do with the orange juice - which tasted a whole lot better than any of the other orange juice I’ve tasted here. Yeah, that sucks. I can’t be bothered to squeeze my own oranges either. I might just try to squeeze some lemon juice into water when I can be bothered. If it saved all those British sailors from getting scurvy on the high seas - then it might work for me too.
I’ve been trying to avoid night market stuff ever since the oil scandal kicked off, which is kind of depressing - as going to my local night market was one of my favorite things to do. It’s not as fun if you don’t buy anything.
Happiness can exist only in acceptance.
Nothing is safe. Even veg. You do recall the vegetarian restaurant scandal where vegetarian foods were contaminated with meat, don’t you?
Accept that despite 20 years of food safety issues from hoof and mouth, adulterated alcohol (that made people go blind), adulterated oil, adulterated lard, fish with over standard level of bactericide, fruit and veg with over the limit level of pesticides…etc…you cannot be sure that your food is safe. I even bet you that a large portion of organic foods sold here are faked. There is just too much money and greed involved.
I live in Japan.
come and join the bright side!
I’m not surprised at all about the milk. “All samples were found to contain metabolite of the antibiotic pyrimido Azepine . . . All samples were found to contain the plasticizer dibutyl phthalate.” At least I haven’t been drinking the stuff with estrogen and contraceptives. :discodance:
I’m thinking I should cook for myself more, and buy imported olive oil, meat, pasta etc.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”]I’m not surprised at all about the milk. “All samples were found to contain metabolite of the antibiotic pyrimido Azepine . . . All samples were found to contain the plasticizer dibutyl phthalate.” At least I haven’t been drinking the stuff with estrogen and contraceptives. :discodance:
I’m thinking I should cook for myself more, and buy imported olive oil, meat pasta etc.[/quote]
That’s what I’ve been doing. I make up and freeze a big batch of pasta sauce once a week. I eat more fruit too. Imported olive oil and butter also on my shopping list. If I eat out I try to only eat at foreign owned restos, The one thing I am going to miss is my lattes. Back to Baileys and coffees I guess.
According to the news, actually, basically everything is wrong with lard. Grease from leather factories? Check. Non-edible industrial use oil? You bet. Oil inteded for animal consumption? Oh it’s in there too.
I would cook if I ever had the time, but I’m usually out in the early morning and not at home until near midnight. :-/[/quote]
Could always go the Costco bagel and cream cheese route or milk and cereal. Maybe buy your own veggies and eat a salad for dinner or lunch. One of the other posters suggested cooking batches of stuff on the weekend and freezing it for eating during the week. Stuff like spaghetti, lasagna, casserole works well. Maybe buy Costco cheese pizza and add your own toppings. you get the idea.
[quote=“nonredneck”]
…or milk and…[/quote]
Except…milk here is fucked too.
According to the news, actually, basically everything is wrong with lard. Grease from leather factories? Check. Non-edible industrial use oil? You bet. Oil inteded for animal consumption? Oh it’s in there too.
I would cook if I ever had the time, but I’m usually out in the early morning and not at home until near midnight. :-/[/quote]
You picked up on the most pointless part of my post for your mini-lecture, Flanders. Yeah I know lard sucks. I just liked the look of the sentence “Nothing wrong with Lard.” I never ate the stuff ever. It’s pig fat. Who’d eat pig fat? I’ve been a picky eater since forever. Miles Davis was a picky eater too. He did alright. If you do the legwork you can always find healthy food. I eat in those 80 dollar tonic soup swastika places. HeShouWu or DangGui Tang.
It sucks to live in a world where everything’s poison. I don’t touch 90 percent of street food. I dare say I’m happier than the average person. Not cos I’m clever, but cos I avoid the low intensity chemical warfare as much as I can. A lot of toxins are endocrine, or serotonin disrupters. They’ll deplete serotonin, make you depressed. Then people use booze and caffeine, and sugar to overcompensate, and the spiral deepens. Toxins make humans depressed, lethargic, irritable.
Now look around.
Modern life is toxic.
For whatever my word’s worth, (and my word on this forum is s**t) Nascent Iodine helped me a LOT. It boosts immunity and makes you more robust. Cold showers put a spring in your step. MSM is a good detoxer. Those green oranges help to clear out. you can’t avoid all toxins, but you can do a lot to minimise them. Anyway, I won’t sit here giving out unsourced health advice… See Budwig, Richard Schulze, Pauling, Mark Sircus, David Brownstein, and the much maligned but Brilliant Mercola.
(Note: My iPad capitalised the word brilliant, I didn’t. But I’ll leave it their out of respect for Mercolas huge database of health info. Who cares if he Hawks pill? He has too because he gets sued all the time. Now it’s gone and capitalised Hawks.)
Cheap oils are killing people.
It’s probably safe to assume that nothing is safe.
That being said, has anyone gotten sick from this stuff? I know it ain’t great and I certainly don’t mean to downplay anything but what are the actual health effects of all this substandard food? My guess is it’s probably not shaving years off your life the way the air is.
[quote=“Xeno”]It’s probably safe to assume that nothing is safe.
That being said, has anyone gotten sick from this stuff? I know it ain’t great and I certainly don’t mean to downplay anything but what are the actual health effects of all this substandard food? My guess is it’s probably not shaving years off your life the way the air is.[/quote]
Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, fatigue, iIBS and depression rates are through the roof and rising in lots of countries. We’ve been gradually desensitised to it so we’ve come to see it as normal that large numbers of people are dropping like flies to preventable diseases. You boil frogs slowly. One little toxin is fine, our bodies are built to deal with this muck. But 10,000 toxins and you end up with a THX-1138 society.
Save it for daytime television, Dr. Oz 
There’s no question Taiwan isn’t the healthiest place to live… but I’m trying to be pragmatic here. Is tainted food as much of a public health menace as cigarette smoking, betel nut chewing, water and air pollution, gas leaks, etc.? Is it worth stressing out about or will the stress do more damage than whatever sneaks into your diet? I say avoid the worst of it and don’t worry too much about the rest. Stress will kill you first.
About people “dropping like flies”: how’s that work with the life expectancy rising year after year? You have to die of something, after all. Two reasons we tend to see an increase in certain kinds of cancer around the world: 1) better diagnostics, and 2) health care is generally improving over time (hence other causes of death are becoming less common).
Incidentally, I went looking for actual hard data and found a rather comprehensive article about cancer in Taiwan that is totally worth a look:
jjco.oxfordjournals.org/content/ … 1/S66.full
Anyway, to repeat myself, I’m not saying it’s not a big deal, but there’s only so much you can do without growing your own food or moving someplace else.
Cancer is a disease of aging primarily, your probability of getting cancer doubles every decade until about 80 or so when it levels out , according to my recollection.
Yup, no cancer in my family because we die of a heart thing.
I live in China where it’s perhaps more extreme. Aside from the ‘scandals’, the food is perceivably of poor quality. I eat well here because I buy oils and cook everything myself. There are no temptations here, like in Taiwan, though.
Hokwongwei, you DO have time, you just need to reorganise yourself and learn to cook. You’re fine now because you’re young but it’ll matter more as your body ages. Even at a basic level, you would do better with less salt and more veggies.