Don’t eat the strawberries
These days the fruit vendors are displaying a tempting mix of strawberries, watermelons, mangoes and litchis. Eating them however is a pleasure mixed with anxiety, if not downright fear. Last week the death sentence of the former head of China’s top food and drug safety was a reminder of how food safety in this country is a work in progress, to put it mildly.
The death sentence followed after a string of scandals: poisonous toothpaste and pet food exported to the States, as well as a cough medicine killing a 100 people in Panama.
I’m getting used to a slight paranoia whenever I eat something, and so are the Chinese. Didn’t this apple have a strange, chemical taste to it? And what about this egg, who told me that the chickens are fed with weird things to make the yolks more yellow?
Three Chinese friends, independently of each other, gave me the very same advice. Funny thing is that they all leant over the table, lowered their voices and wheezed their lines like Russian agents in a Bond movie.
Friend: Listen… Don’t eat the strawberries.
Me: But they taste so good!
Friend: Yeah, well DON’T eat them! (looking over the shoulder)
You know what they DO to them? The flavour. It’s injected. Some times they spray them with god-knows-what.
I feel like I’m in a Stephen King novel where everything safe and familiar suddenly turns into your worst nightmare.
Will a stroll down the aisle in my local supermarket be my last walk?
