5 Chinese Foods That Chemicals Made More Attractive (and More Deadly)

5 Chinese Foods That Chemicals Made More Attractive (and More Deadly)
A woman lunches on a bowl of soup noodles at a food court in Beijing on April 6, 2011. Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
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Because of criminally lax food and drug regulations, Chinese consumers risk disease or poisoning, even when doing something as simple as buying cooking oil from a supermarket or getting a vaccination for their kids.

Many restaurants and food producers in China lace their products with dangerous chemicals, as described in the following examples, from carcinogenic formaldehyde in seafood to addictive opiates in noodles.

Baking Powder—With Heavy Metal

Steamed buns are a typical feature in Chinese cuisine, and are particularly tasty right out of the pot, when they are fresh and fluffy.

To keep the buns from taking on a cardboard-like staleness, a restaurant in inland China’s Shaanxi Province found an answer in a special baking powder that could preserve the desired fluffy texture cheaply.

Steamed buns are sold for breakfast at a store in Shanghai on October 18, 2012. China said that its economy grew 7.4 percent in the third quarter of this year, slowing for a seventh straight quarter and underscoring its deepest slump since the global financial crisis. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)
Steamed buns are sold for breakfast at a store in Shanghai on October 18, 2012. China said that its economy grew 7.4 percent in the third quarter of this year, slowing for a seventh straight quarter and underscoring its deepest slump since the global financial crisis. Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images
Juliet Song
Juliet Song
Author
Juliet Song is an international correspondent exclusively covering China news for NTD. She primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus," covering U.S.-China relations, the Chinese regime's human rights abuses, and domestic unrest inside China.