Secret Ingredients: China’s “Fake Food” | Hacker News Reader

Secret Ingredients: China’s “Fake Food”

thebeijinger.com

73 pointsokket42 comments

When people say we want a free market where government does not mess with it regulating things, they usually dream of some Ayn Randian utopia. In actuality this is what happens every time.

China in a way is more "free market" than America or Europe is. The same stuff happens in Eastern Europe and other less developed countries. So behold, the wonders of unregulated-everything. Anyone headed to the airport yet to live in this utopia? (It is only a half joke, some will actually thrive there).

Yeah sure, on paper all these places have their FDAs, EPAs, FCCs in practice they are not effective, so you do whatever you want.

One can make an argument that eventually the free market will resolve the problem, and those selling gutter oil or mystery white chemical powder as baby formula will be out of business and the true quality products will emerge. Yes, maybe, but do you want to be the failing test case who gets cancer 5 years later, just so others learn that such and such a vendor was putting benzine in their tomatoes. Are you even be able to find them 5 years later to sue them? Or even publicly shame them?

With all do respect, you should go read the definition of what a free market is; supply and demand is free from government intervention and also free from price fixing, just look at Venezeula's socialist market. . .it is failing and the people are getting by with the 'black market' that is free market. Anyhow I think you are confusing free market with government regulations; like USDA, FDA, etc etc. I am against such regulations because they are federal regulations and well it is unconstituional, but that is not to say that the states cannot provide the same services; or heck even the free market itself; say for e.g. like NON-GMO project. . .

Venezeula failed because it depended entirely on the petrol price, they put all their eggs in one basket, nothing related to their socialist polices, it would have crashed with whatever government in place, they are not even really socialist either if you ask me.

The free market without intervention is a pipe dream, the natural state of most industries is to form a monopoly to protect their interests. First you have cooperatives, then conglomerates and at some point there is no competition anymore. There is no incentive either without regulation to protect the consumer, you would just end up with a market full of fakes to get a quick buck and you could not even guarantee the safety of what you are buying, not sure I want to live in that world.

Venezuela's failure is up for debate; my point was that they are now thriving of the black market which is essentially a free market because people are providing goods (food) for the people for a higher price than that set by the government, but they are supplying what the government cannot; two things, supply and price setting. Anyhow, I do agree that a free market will essentially turn into a monopoly; but that is not to say the states cannot prevent them; A cry for a free market or its antithesis is usually made with a uniformed ideology on which the Federal Government must intervene, and that is not a free market; hence I am for a free market where the states make the laws necessary to protect its citizens, as well as quality control regulations. Because government regulation is not equivocal with state and federal government regulations, especially when one lives in a democratic republic as I do. I apologize if I come off as a cynic, I may have taken the attack on the free market a little too personal and I felt like I had to distinguish the points I just made. (edit)Spelling corrections---

* they are not even really socialist either if you ask me*

Interesting statement. It certainly will be news to the Chavistas and the 17 years they are working on the Bolivarian Revolution.

And there's plenty of money to be made by anyone who breaks ranks and sells cheaper - unless the law prevents them: http://europe.newsweek.com/raisin-laugh-supreme-court-324789...

Meanwhile, where's the evidence that such conglomerates are stable and free from competition for more than a few years, without help from the State?

Forming monopoly usually requires some kind of help from government, like patent and regulatory laws that make it harder for competitors to enter the market.

Without it fighting competition is like figthing mythical hydra: for one competitior you've driven bankrupt there are three others starting a business.

That's why big corporations are usually against free market. They prefer higly regulated economy where they can bribe politicians to alter the law in their favor.

There are plenty of products on all those government regulated markets that give you cancer. And plenty that don't, but not there.

That's because there are no regulations without someone's self-interests involved somehow. It's always about money and power.

Interestingly, each of those agencies corresponds to an instance of acknowledged market failure: the FDA exists because of information asymmetries that undermine the market for food and drugs (it's hard for consumers to know what actually goes into their food and drugs); the EPA deals with the negative externalities of pollution. And the FCC was created to deal with the potential tragedy of the commons with regard to spectrum.

The anti-regulation argument is much more convincing to me if it's put in terms of making markets effective. Effective markets have three things - thickness in potential trading opportunities, time for evaluating possible trades before needing to make a decision, and rules that make it safe to participate. Which regulations are there matters more than how many.

I imagine that the hyper-laissez faire libertarian sitting in the passenger seat of a crashing (unregulated) commercial airliner would fondly reflect on the fact that they are about to be part of an event that will transmit information to the market that will permit market participants to make an informed choice regarding their air travel options.

Unless the company covers it up somehow, and since they have a very clear profit motive...::crash::

Stories about fake food seem to be everywhere at the moment. China is the source of the most stomach-churning ones ("gutter oil" being my personal favourite - don't Google it if you're planning to eat any time soon).

But there are plenty from the USA and Europe too. Fake olive oil and truffle oil, mislabelled meat and seafood, the horse meat scandal in the UK.

If we can't rely on governments to protect us, I'm beginning to think there's a start-up opportunity for home food testing kits. Is such a thing technically possible? I guess for meat/seafood being misrepresented as a different species a DNA test would be required. But presumably there are chemical tests that can check for contaminants?

That's a great idea for a start up. You don't even need everyone to test things. Just getting a sample by brand, location etc would be enough.

I suspect you will need really inexpensive gas chromatographs to make it widespread. These are really neat tools, and I wish their acquisition and maintenance was more in reach (a used Agilent is $3K USD and goes up rapidly from there, with a more common low-end price in the $5-7K USD range).

A used HP 5890 might be 3k usd but realistically you are looking at 40k for a refurbished unit. That's what I paid for mine. You can never turn off a GC without an elaborate shutdown procedure. They consume a lot of power and require AC to be running. You need to keep a low level of gas flowing all the time.

It's about as far from accessible as one can get. I can't even imagine sample prep and...well, it's just not a viable solution. As a manufacturing principle QC should be performed in process and at the least processed state.

The tainted milk / baby formula incident is the one that most readily comes to my mind [0]. That and the soy sauce made from human hair.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

I was speaking to some chemists recently that claimed some U.S. nutritional supplements have human hair as an ingredient. They went on to mention that the hair is often sourced from China and lately has tested for higher levels of heavy metals.

I can not verify the above claim from an internet search. But does anyone know why the protein in hair might be more beneficial as a supplement than other forms of protein ?

That's a pretty common myth spread by articles like this one[0]. Wikipedia's article on Cysteine debunks it[1]:

The majority of L-cysteine is obtained industrially by hydrolysis of animal materials, such as poultry feathers or hog hair. Despite widespread belief otherwise, there is little evidence that human hair is used as a source material and its use is explicitly banned in the European Union.

Makes sense too, since ~50 billion chickens are slaughtered per year, the amount of poultry feathers available for processing probably dwarfs the amount of human available.

[0] http://www.naturalnews.com/032718_L-cysteine_commercial_brea...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine

> poultry feathers or hog hair

Yum! I'm not sure the truth is all that much less disgusting than the myth.

There is a Dutch television programme that does research on ingredients of common food products, to check where the ingredients come from. Sometimes based of speculation, but they tend to back it up with scientific research.

Here is the episode about l-cysteine (in Dutch, parts are in English, not sure if watchable from outside NL): http://keuringsdienstvanwaarde.kro.nl/seizoenen/2014/30-1187...

One of the suppliers actually confirms that human hair is being used in production, and being sold to bakeries around the world. While European bakeries claim to only use the l-cystein from animal sources, this video tends to show otherwise.

I can only say one thing about "gutter oil": WTF.

If we can't rely on governments to protect us, I'm beginning to think there's a start-up opportunity for home food testing kits.

Or a publicly funded group.

("gutter oil" being my personal favourite - don't Google it if you're planning to eat any time soon).

I'm not at all surprised that people are trying to recycle oil; the real problem here being that it's not been reprocessed sufficiently to actually be usable as new oil.

Incidently, the most common cancer for males in China is lung cancer (21%), followed by stomach cancer (19%). For females, stomach cancer is (12%).

Cancer kills about 7500 each day in China.

And according to WHO, China the hardest hit by global surge in cancer

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3643656/

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1422475/china-hardest...

http://www.wpro.who.int/china/mediacentre/releases/2015/2015...

That's a little higher than in the US where 1,500 people die each day, with 1/4 the number of people. Perhaps the US and China could cooperate on a project(s) to better treat cancer(s).

I live in Brooklyn's Chinatown and it seems a ton of people here smoke (especially men). If that's the same case back in China, it's not surprising especially because NYC has a lot of anti-smoking legislation.

Its no longer representative in fact. Tobacco usage within China has dropped radically over the last few years.

I live in China, and a lot of the food here is very honest vegetable dishes with an emphasis on freshness. People also eat a lot of fruit: it's largely a very good diet.

The highest stomach cancer incidence in the world is Korea (at almost double China's rate), followed by Mongolia (1.5x), then Japan (1.4x).

It seems that vinegar, chilli, salt, hard liquor and meat is not a recipe for longevity.

http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-specific-c...

correct, China is not the top one for stomach cancer. however, it is still at #5 out of all the countries. gutter oil, imitation egg, walnut stuffed with cement, industrial salt sold as table salt, plastic rice, etc, certainly doesn't help

http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-specific-c...

http://althealthworks.com/7943/top-10-toxic-fake-food-items-...

If you actually read the article, it says those myths are basically all bullshit.

I believe the fake eggs are a myth as real eggs would be cheaper than anything else you can cook in ways similar to real eggs.

But it is definitely contested, as this quora posts show [1]. I am inclined to believe the idea that these are eggs from unhealthy chickens or stale or frozen eggs or combinations of that.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Are-the-fake-Chinese-eggs-a-true-story...

And what about the sauces and condiments this produce is cooked and served with? That seems like a particularly ripe target for this sort of thing.

Most commonly garlic and salt.

Smoking is the reason. I was very surprised to realize that in US, there were probably more people for weed than for cigarettes.

Surprised this article didn't mention gutter oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

Made me recall this investigate report from AlJazeera where they get a chef to prepare fake noodles [1]. They compare the arduous process of producing genuine soup versus the instant recipe made possible with several banned additives which reproduce a similar taste and texture .

[1] http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2014/08/food-tho...

Slightly off topic... everyone around me knows what "Tricatel food" means, from the French film "L'aile ou la cuisse": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lxk0kxHi80&start=4171

here's a Reddit account on finding fake rice:

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/4u06wk/i_bought_fake...

it's black rice, which if you've never had it, you might've seen it in a pot or shop-packaged cup as dessert with coconut milk

> Bees in China, as in the rest of the world, have suffered a catastrophic collapse in their numbers, due to pesticide use and land clearance.

Bees are dying at higher rates, but in the US there are actually more of them due to beekeepers working to compensate.

Are they the appropriate species?

There are more than just honey bees, and beekeepers don't often encourage the other kinds. But the other kinds are important for some major crops.

(I don't remember any more details, I saw a keynote at a conference about this.)

Edit: an overview from Wired https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/

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