DEHP: Taiwan's Version of the Chinese Milk Scandal?

[bismarck]

Oh boy - just had a brainwave: do we win a prize? I mean, is there any thread on this BBS that is more polite than this one?

Nope. Sorry. This wins the Politest Thread of All Time Prize.

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And before we all forget and go back to our blissful ways...

The Consumers' Foundation (CF) warned the public Monday to be cautious when buying waffles and pancakes, as well as salted dried jellyfish, as only one out of 25 such products tested was described as "safe."

In light of a May 2009 report by the Centre for Food Safety in Hong Kong that the weekly intake of aluminum should be no more than 0.6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, the CF did a series of spot checks, focusing first on salted jellyfish, waffles and pancakes. It added that the checks will be expanded to cover other popular food items in the future.

According to the foundation, such food products often contain potassium alum or leavening agents and therefore usually contain excessive aluminum, a chemical which the CF said has a correlation with Alzheimer's disease.

The survey, conducted in March and April in Taipei and New Taipei cities, found that the aluminum levels in 15 salted jellyfish samples it checked all exceeded 500 ppm, while nine waffle and pancake items contained aluminum ranging between 100 ppm and 500 ppm.

Of all the samples tested, only the waffles sold at the Starbucks coffee shop chain showed no presence of aluminum, the CF said.

From CNA

[Belgian Pie]

Not my waffles ... they contain yeast.

[Petrichor]

I think the aluminium - Alzheimer's hypothesis was debunked a while ago.

[bismarck]

Still, I wouldn't want to be eating aluminium...

[urodacus]

I think the aluminium - Alzheimer's hypothesis was debunked a while ago.

correct.

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Question: how did it get there? Why are they making thinsg last so long? Don't we have this great delivery system, on time delivery. etc. bla-bla-bla? Don't consumers feel cheated when they get to eat goods that are months, maybe years out of date or has that become the industry's standard?

[EddieG]

Question: how did it get there? Why are they making thinsg last so long? Don't we have this great delivery system, on time delivery. etc. bla-bla-bla? Don't consumers feel cheated when they get to eat goods that are months, maybe years out of date or has that become the industry's standard?

It's because people "want" too many flavors. So there is too much crap on the shelves and it's impossible to keep track of demand.

[Petrichor]

I think with all these reports it's worth unpicking them for their trustworthiness. For a start - who are the Consumer Foundation? Are they a scientific body? Do they have research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals? Who did the research? Can the results be trusted? The fact that they're making a fuss about an Alzheimer's/aluminium correlation that was found to be a dead end for research about ten years ago rings alarm bells.

Also, potassium alum is not aluminium. Without wanting to start a vaccination debate, it reminds me of the scaremongering over mercury in vaccines. It isn't mercury in vaccines. It's a compound of mercury - either ethyl or methyl I can't remember. Compounds and elements are different things. Compounds and elements are as different as carbon dioxide and coal, literally. So ingesting potassium alum might mean you absorb aluminium or it might not. As I remember, when the aluminium/Alzheimer's correlation was being researched it was aluminium cooking pans that were the concern.

That's the problem with food safety at the moment. It's very difficult to know what to believe and who to trust, because there are many organisations which have a vested interest in scaremongering. It's also extremely difficult to assess the long term effects of anything, especially if the damage is low level and not obviously related. Maybe a particular combination of pesticides at 'safe' levels will cause 10% of the population to develop pancreatic cancer over a 15 year period? That's something that's nigh on impossible establish.

All we can do is to try to eat as healthily as possible, and pay attention to but also scrutinise reports in the media. For example, potatoes are pretty poisonous if even a little bit green or sprouting (and not just the green part). Cooking any food produces acrylamide, which is also pretty poisonous. Not many newspaper reports on those two facts. The media are always skewed towards myth-perpetuating, attention-grabbing stories, sometimes to the extent of obscuring the facts of the matter.

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What...?!

Prosecutors indicted the owner of two food companies involved in a contamination-by-plasticizer scandal Wednesday on charges of fraud and marketing poisoned food products. They recommended a jail term of 12 years for the suspect.

The prosecutors at the Shilin District Prosecutors Office also demanded that Chen A-ho of the Jin Guoo Wang Co. and Jin Ji Wang Food Co. be fined NT$10 million (US$347,000).

Aside from Chen, his eldest son Chang Yi-chih, employee Chen Hsieh-tzeng and accountant Lin Mei-hui were also indicted, and each faced a 6-year jail term plus a fine of NT$8 million, while the two companies were slapped with a fine of NT$15 million each

For all the scandal, it was just a puff-puff...