Text: Science Explorer
Editor|Popular Science Explorer
Recently, there has been a lot of turmoil on our people's tables.
The matter of mixing edible oil with grain storage tanker truck in the front foot has not completely subsided, and the "black technology" of potatoes and yams has exploded on the back foot.
This wave after wave of food safety problems is really overwhelming, and you have to be worried about even having a meal.
Let's talk about the potatoes first. Have you noticed that the potatoes are getting bigger and bigger?
In the past, the potatoes we ate when we were children were a little bigger than eggs, and the surface was still pitted. But now? The potatoes in the supermarket and the vegetable market are all like small breads, big and round, and the skin is as thin as paper, so smooth that it can show the shadow of a person.
Such a big change is not because our ancestors' ability to farm has suddenly grown. To put it bluntly, the current planting technology is "advanced". Some growers who are not very particular about it, in order to make the potatoes grow bigger and more abundant, actually use the "quartin". This thing sounds quite lofty, but it's actually a plant growth regulator, and to put it bluntly, it's a pesticide.
With this "mequatin", potatoes can indeed grow big and abundant, but the problem is that this thing is not very friendly to the human body. It can make people dizzy and want to vomit, and in severe cases, it may lead to pulmonary edema and even respiratory failure.
The problem with potatoes doesn't end there. In order to keep the potatoes longer, some merchants actually take a formaldehyde bath for the potatoes! You heard it right, it's the formaldehyde that is used to soak formalin. When this thing enters the human body, it can cause dizziness and fatigue at least and shock at worst.
Let's talk about yams. Yam looks quite simple, who would have thought that it would also play "black technology"? Some vendors actually use formaldehyde in order to make the yam look fresher and keep it longer. Some are even smoked with sulfur or soaked in sodium chlorate solution. After such a toss, the yam has been preserved for a long time, and it is difficult to say how long the people who can eat it can keep it.
This is not the end, just a few days ago, the Fujian Provincial Market Supervision and Administration announced the results of food safety supervision and sampling. Aluminum was found to be in the fritters, and sucralose was found to be substandard.
Not to be outdone, the dehydroacetic acid and its sodium salt in the tough tofu exceeded the standard, the aluminum residue in the handmade vermicelli exceeded the standard, and the benzoyl peroxide content in the flour exceeded the standard, and the sulfur dioxide content in the ginger powder exceeded the standard... This string of nouns sounds like a big head, let alone a stomach.
In the face of so many "black technologies", what should we ordinary people do? You can't just drink the northwest wind from now on, right? In fact, there are still some small ways.
The vegetables and fruits you buy must be washed well. Soak with vinegar, salt or baking soda and white vinegar for twenty or thirty minutes to remove a lot of pesticide residues. Secondly, peel as much as possible if you can peel it, and blanch it if you can blanch it, which can also remove a lot of harmful substances.
You have to learn to read the ingredient list. In the past, we might just look at the price when we bought something, but now we can get more eyes. The one that is listed first on the ingredient list is the one with a lot of content. If you see a bunch of chemical terms that you can't pronounce, you need to be careful.
This food safety issue also depends on the relevant departments to strengthen management. After all, the strength of our people is limited, so we can't grow and raise ourselves every meal, right? Nowadays, many people are not worried about the edible oil on the market, so they start to boil lard at home, which is certainly a solution, but it is not a long-term solution.
So many "black technologies" have climbed onto our table, in the final analysis, some illegal businesses are still disregarding the health of the people in order to make money. They may think that they can make a little more money in this way, but they don't know that it is harming the whole society, even themselves and their families.
The problem now is that these "black technologies" are often not visible at a glance. Isn't it nice to have a big and round potato? Isn't it good that yams are kept fresh and long ago? Here's the problem, it looks good on the surface, but in fact it is secretly murderous.
Therefore, this food safety problem really needs to be grasped from the source. When planting, it must be standardized, when processing, it must be strictly controlled, and when it is sold, it must be strictly supervised.
This food safety issue is really a bumpy long march. But no matter how difficult it is, we have to move forward step by step. After all, everyone has to eat, doesn't it?
I hope that one day, we can truly realize "people take food as the sky", eat at ease, eat at ease.
Resources:
Food Partner Network released a report on 2024-07-09 "16 batches of substandard food detected in Gansu, including brewed vinegar, tofu, vermicelli, etc."