Worst Chinese Food Scandals They Didn't Want You to Know About

with a population of over 1.4 billion people china certainly has a lot of hungry mouths to feed but with such a drastic demand for food the lacks regulatory oversight and rampant profit seeking of the country's food industry has left chinese consumers with some stomach turning products from imitation eggs to poisoned baby formula and ancient steak let's take a look at some of china's food scandals gutter oil oh look this nice old lady is doing the neighborhood a favor by cleaning out the local sewers you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a heroic act of community care until you learn she's actually harvesting that sewage it's the main ingredient of black market gutter oil a disgusting and unhygienic product made by reusing solidified oil that's been washed down drains and into the sewers the slop is scooped out processed and combined with animal fats to produce an affordable and illegal alternative to cooking oil it's then cheaply sold onto restaurants street vendors and anyone else that won't ask too many questions about where it came from food safety experts have warned the public that this type of oil contains a harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that can cause gastrointestinal damage and even cancer but the lure of a cheap alternative meant that at its peak in 2010 almost a tenth of china's cooking oil was made from this recycled sewage as dangerous as it is the product is still used in china's restaurant industry to this day in 2020 employees of the restaurant chain xiaolong khan were arrested for selling more than two tons of gutter oil over two years from the sewers behind their restaurant i bet the news left a bad taste in their customers mouths if you need a pallet cleanser after that greasy gambit then i recommend you hit those oh so fresh looking like and subscribe buttons i put out brand new content every day and unlike that gutter oil scandal i don't recycle old material now get those gag reflexes ready as we dive back into china's worst food scandals tofu while some people have compared the stench of china's famous stinky tofu to smelly feet hot garbage or rotten meat others can't get enough of its pungent pong this traditional tofu is a chinese delicacy made by curdling soy milk pressing it into a solid block and marinating it in some fermented brine the longer it ferments the more of a pong this putrid dish gives off while some factories only let their brine sit for a few days other establishments can let it sit for up to a year its symbolic stink is usually a sign of quality but sometimes it's the sign of a soiled shortcut in 2003 a journalist for shenzhen news went undercover at an unregulated stinky tofu workshop and was told that human poo was added to the bride to make it smellier unsurprisingly the authorities shut the workshop down immediately then in 2007 china's state bureau of industry and commerce revealed that over 100 manufacturers had been using rancid water and manure to speed up the stinky production one worker even admitted to pooping in a plastic bucket so that he could save his self-produced stock cubes for the brine maybe they should think about renaming it toilet tofu bleached bean curds ever heard the phrase too good to eat in the case of china's bleached tofu scandal those words rang all too true in 2014 chinese authorities in the shangdong province seized over 11 tons of illegally made dried tofu it may have looked perfect but it turned out to be toxic it had been produced by a local gang who thought they could turn a quick book by making the tofu with the banned ingredient rhongalite it's an industrial bleaching agent often used in the printing and dyeing industry while it made the dried tofu sticks whiter and chewier the formaldehyde gas it releases during the cooking process can lead to headaches vomiting and even cancer it already sounds pretty bad but things were about to get way worse authorities feared that local markets around shangdong henan and zhangjii provinces had been sold over 110 tons of the toxic tofu that's almost the same weight as two boeing 720s fortunately the toxic effects failed to take off as no one came forward to report any illnesses talk about a close call blood-based tofu despite the name china's bright red blood tofu has never seen a drop of soya milk in its life it's one of the grislier foodstuffs to come out of this confusing culinary creation as it's made almost exclusively from coagulated duck or pig's blood it's heated with salt to conceal it into blocks which are then used in a variety of traditional soups and dishes you might already feel like you're gonna hurl but just wait till you hear this in 2013 four businessmen from the hinon province were arrested for making and selling around 530 000 pounds of poison blood tofu at local markets the operation had lined their pockets with a whopping 75 000 but at a moral cost they'd mixed it with concentrated formaldehyde which is known in its liquid form as formalin in case that isn't ringing any bells formaldehyde is a chemical with preservative qualities that's commonly used to embalm dead bodies mixing it with the blood tofu gave the product a longer shelf life and a brighter color but consuming formaldehyde can cause serious liver damage and kidney dysfunction and if it's consumed by pregnant women it can even cause deformities in their unborn babies to make matters worse the factory owner behind the scandal knew the chemical was toxic and even made a conscious effort to emit the ingredient from any blood tofu he prepared for his own family if you ask me this guy must have been a vampire i mean he consumed blood and was clearly dead inside exploding watermelons as hilarious as this concept sounds exploding watermelons were less of a joke and more of a nightmare for zhongsu province's farmers back in 2011. after a period of heavy rain 115 acres filled with unripe watermelons suddenly started to burst one farmer reported that it happened so fast at least 80 melons and his crops split open in a matter of hours while many claim they didn't know what had caused this mysterious melon massacre professor wang lang xu from nanjing university inspected the crops and discovered the root of the problem the farmers had used a plant growth stimulant called for chlorofeneron it's a legal additive that should have brought the melon harvest forward by two weeks and increased the size of the fruit by about 20 percent but it had been used too late in the cycle and when combined with the wet weather those unripe babies were sent into a growth overdrive the explosive scandal put a real spotlight on china's ill-educated farming practices with very few people wanting to buy the rest of the crop you can't exactly blame them i mean would you want a potential melon bomb pump full of chemicals in your kitchen me neither bait of pigs it's not often that you see pigs in a river although there was that one time my aunt mabel took a dip on summer vacation back in 07 but i digress but in 2013 over 16 000 pig carcasses were discovered along the shores of the hong poo river in shanxing city it became a huge concern as the huangpu is a major source of drinking water for the area's locals and the thought of decaying pig particles in your drink isn't exactly appealing mysteries surrounded the swimming swine's deadly demise until lab tests revealed that many of the pigs had been affected by a porcine circovirus this is a disease that causes breathing difficulties diarrhea and sometimes death anyone else feeling slightly triggered despite the scandalous scare it can't be transferred to humans and the water quality reportedly remained stable however xing officials claimed no epidemic had been found in the animals and that the deaths were probably caused by a bad winter if the reason really was that innocent then why were they illegally dumped like this authorities believed that the incident was linked to the country's recent crackdown on the banned sale of pork products from diseased dead pigs instead of discarding them safely it was more convenient to just dump the rotting carcasses in the local water supply instead i think we may need to change the phrase pig ignorant to pick farmer ignorant bad bottled water you may think bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water especially after that dead pig problem but in 2013 china's bottled water industry faced a serious scandal when it was revealed one company had looser water safety standards than the nation's tap water nang foo spring which once produced 21.8 percent of china's bottled water was accused by the beijing times of filtering its water to a regional safety standard rather than the national standard this regional standard called db 33-383 had last been updated in 2005 while the national regulation had been changed in 2007. the older looser guidelines stated that levels of cancer-causing elements like arsenic could be double that of the national limit similarly trace elements of a heavy metal called cadmium which can cause respiratory problems were allowed at five times the national level even though nangfu fought back against the claims with a hefty 9.7 million defamation lawsuit the damage to their reputation was already done people lost confidence in the company and the scandal cost them over 2 billion yuan in sales at the time that was about 325 million dollars i bet they wish they'd kept a lid on that one nasty fast food fast food giant starbucks kfc and mcdonald's may all look different at a brand level but their chinese branches all became part of a rotten scandal back in june 2014. a tv report exposed one of their suppliers shanghai husi food company for using expired meat in their products workers at the company's factory were secretly filmed mixing expired packages of meat and with fresh produce they even picked up meat off the dirty ground and hurled it back into production the report hit mcdonald's right in the mcnuggets and led to a 7.3 drop in asian market sales in july 2014 which dropped even further to 14.5 in august 2014 but it wasn't the only chain being supplied with the out of date meat some of kfc's restaurants and starbucks cafes had also used shanghai hoosie and big brands like papa john's pizza hut domino's burger king and even ikea used them in the past as well in the end five employees were arrested with an investigation concluding that the entire operation had been organized by the company to skimp on production costs thankfully no illnesses were ever reported that's all fine and dandy but my stomach hasn't stopped churning at the thought of those nasty mcnuggets fake hot pot hot pot is a chinese dish that is exactly what it says on the tin or in this case pot it's a large hot pot filled with a scrumptious simmering broth accompanied by various meats vegetables and sauces that you cook at your table it may sound superb but in 2015 a chinese nutritionist blew the lid off a hot pot scandal sweeping the nation it may look like he's making a hearty soup but it's more like a drug stew as you can see he doesn't add a single piece of actual food into the recipe instead he just mixes ethyl maltol capsicum hilariousin and disodium 5 ribonucleotide into boiling water which is a very sciency way of saying he thickened the water and added flavor enhancers this outrageous video was blasted over chinese media alerting the public to the drastic cost cutting methods used in some restaurants and it doesn't stop at chemical soup investigators discovered that some restaurants also added anti-malarial drugs into the hot pot concoction why because they were using rotten meat and the drugs counteracted any side effects customers might suffer from like a nasty case of diarrhea looks like the only pot these customers are going to need is the toilet not nice rice did you fall for the chinese plastic rice hoax that dominated the internet in 2016 reports at the time claimed that some of the rice being produced by china was as plastic as the baggy used to carry it home in those social media rumors may have been fake thankfully but china has had some serious trouble with its rice in the past and for a much more serious issue back in 2011 nanjing agricultural university found that 10 percent to 60 percent of rice sold at local markets in six different regions contain cadmium a highly toxic heavy metal and trace amounts the metal is mostly harmless with the legal maximum for cadmium and rice at .44 milligrams per pound but in some of the samples the researchers found five times that amount long-term exposure at these levels can lead to respiratory problems cancer and even softening of the bones this contamination crisis terrified the nation because rice is a staple of chinese cuisine with the country consuming almost 150 million tons between 2010 and 2011 but how had it gotten so bad china blamed huge human pollution sources such as mining and agriculture stemming from the country's rapid rate of industrialization they estimated 10 of the agricultural soil had been polluted with heavy metal elements contaminating as much as 12 million tons of rice and costing them more than 20 billion yuan that's 317 million dollars sounds like a high price for bad rice imitation eggs it may sound ludicrous but the urban internet legend about china producing fake eggs is no yolk since the 1990s fake eggs have reportedly appeared on chinese markets looking almost identical to the real things both inside and out but if you try frying them they let off a strong chemical smell that lets you know you've been fooled they're made by preparing a mold which is then filled with a mix of resin starch coagulant and pigments to give the egg white the right color fake yolk made of a different mix of resin and pigments is then plopped into the mold finally the entire thing is covered in a mix of paraffin wax gypsum powder and calcium carbonate to give it a realistic looking shell although they might look genuine enough to fool you there are some easy ways to tell them apart from a real egg without having to watch the chicken laid in front of you firstly fake eggs have yolks and whites that mix together a little too easily or don't mix together at all they also like the weird stringy bits around the oak called the chalaza which suspends a natural yolk inside its shell so that it doesn't break but the biggest giveaway is usually the price they can cost just 25 percent of what it takes to make a real egg so they can be sold for profit at a much lower price let's hope chyna manages to crack down on this scandal soon soy sauce shock soy sauce is a popular sodium loaded condiment that goes with everything from stir fries to fish it's usually made by combining soya beans yeast and wheat flour before being left to ferment for up to two years but over 15 years ago the hubai xinshuang bioengineering company was caught using human hair as a substitute ingredient for their soy sauce yes you heard that correctly back in 2004 these workers were secretly recorded sifting through dirty bags of hair that had been collected from barber shops salons and hospitals all over the country it was their job to remove items from the hair like cotton buds menstrual pads and even used condoms the hair was then cut up and placed in a reactor without being cleaned which processed it into a dark looking liquid the key component of this revolting liquid was its nitrogen content which could be added to other ingredients to satisfy the national soy sauce standards it was then dried and sold onto production companies as amino acid powder the process was much quicker than the two years it took to ferment authentic soy and reduce production cost by about half this story might be enough to make you want to cough up a hairball of your own but there's a small chance all isn't as it seems there were no laboratory tests done on the product in question and the reports stemmed from a single tv report based on the testimonies of a few workers so looking at all the evidence what do you think shameless sham or shocking scandal let me know in the comments plastic tapioca pearls bubble tea also known as pearl milk or boba tea is a bizarre beverage that somehow manages to be both food and drink at the same time most commonly comprised of black tea milk syrup and tapioca pearls it's become a sugary asian sensation with around 450 000 shops offering bubble tea across china alone but there's something sinister lurking at the bottom of these cups in 2019 a 14 year old girl suffering from stomach pains and blocked poop shoot was given a ct scan which revealed over 100 undigested tapioca balls blocking upper bowels now the weird part is that the ingredients of normal tapioca balls aren't radio opaque and don't show up on x-rays or ct scans that means that these balls have been made with something else it turns out that to save on costs of producing fresh tapioca some chinese manufacturers add polymer materials which is a fancy way of saying plastics to the pearls during an investigation one shop owner admitted the pearls were made at a chemical plant using things like the soles of leather shoes and old tires as far fetched as it sounds the chemical experimentation center of quingdao university tested a sample of pearls from the local market and discovered they were highly adhesive almost like glue if they're really that sticky i dread to think how long that poor 14 year old was stuck on the toilet real bad milk in 2008 china's milk industry took a sour turn after almost 300 000 infants got sick from drinking contaminated formula the milk powder being spooned into these poor babies bottles contained fatal doses of melamine a chemical compound used by manufacturers to create plastic kitchenware fertilizer and even concrete but when it's added to food products it can indicate a higher protein content something that babies need to help them grow up big and strong unfortunately test samples of this formula found nearly 5 000 times the maximum amount of melamine in the solution but this formula wouldn't just help them grow up it also helped them grow kidney stones and even suffer from kidney failure six unfortunate infants died as a result and 21 people were arrested two milk dealers zhong yujun and ging jing ping who knowingly sold almost 850 tons of the toxic milk to dairies from july 2007 to august 2008 were executed for public endangerment it then emerged that the production company called san lu knew they were selling toxic milk allowing almost a thousand tons to leave its dairies before halting production as the scale of the scandal emerged huge batches of milk were recalled from across the globe they were dumped in landfills like this one in hubei and destroyed in this case i guess there really was reason to cry over spilled milk foul fish food unfortunately it wasn't just baby milk that was found to be tainted with monstrous melamine a few months after the formula scandal emerged food inspectors in hong kong found the fish feed imported from china had also been contaminated with the toxic compound the feed had melamine levels of 14.5 milligrams per pound almost twice hong kong's legal level it may not sound like much but an accumulated doses this level is enough to cause bladder stones and cancer in the animals that consume it but how did it get into the feed to begin with while china threw some of the blame towards rogue food and feed dealers scientists pointed out that melamine was also used as a common pesticide across the country being absorbed into plants and washed into rivers meant the melamine could have come from any one of those sources used in production and the effects of runoff pollution like this have become hard to ignore in the fishing community in 2007 one hundred and ten thousand pounds of fish died in this lake and wuhan hubei province due in part to pollution then in 2013 thousands of fish washed up along a 19-mile stretch of food river and hubei killed by pollutant runoff from a nearby chemical plant so until china finds a serious pollution solution it might be best to stay away from the seafood 70s steak in 2015 chinese authorities busted a frozen meat smuggling operation that left a nostalgic taste in everyone's mouth the almost 900 ton hall contained a batch of frozen food that was older than some of the customs agents with labels dating it back to the 1970s fortunately it was stopped before it reached its destination which would have been the restaurants retailers and supermarkets of hunan province it was part of a much wider operation that cracked down on the sale of over 110 000 tons of fetted frozen meat worth approximately 500 million dollars even though meat like this is sold at much cheaper prices smugglers transporting these putrid parcels do their best to cut costs so they're often transported in non-refrigerated vehicles by the time they arrive at their destinations it's not always clear how long the meat has been stored for a day a week a month well in this case it was 45 years i know some people like an aged steak but that's just ridiculous which one of these scandals turned your stomach the most do you happen to know of any others that are even more vomit inducing than these let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching you

Channel: BE AMAZED

Views: 1,059,652

Rating: 4.8610282 out of 5

Keywords: beamazed, be amazed, top 10, chinese food, chinese government, fake food, fake eggs, strange food

Id: U3zuD15ERb8

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021