The Russell Partnership’s Weekly Nutrition Surgery

Latest China Food Scare

The latest Chinese food scare to hit the headlines is the illegal production of ‘drainage oil’ - that is, cooking oil refined from kitchen waste oil. The country’s food safety watchdog has demanded a country wide inspection of cooking oil in a bid to uncover how widespread the practice is. Reports last week in The China Daily stated that as many as one tenth of Chinese cooking oil was from this illegal drainage oil, and therefore of considerable harm to human health, as it contains the highly toxic substance ‘aflatoxin’, which is carcinogenic. “If food service providers are found to be using cooking oil from an unclear source, or if they have bought ‘drainage oil’, their operations will be immediately halted and they will be dealt with in accordance with the law,” said the order posted on the administration’s website.

China consumes around 22.5 million tons of cooking oil each year, and the China Youth Daily quoted a food scientist from Wuham Polytechnic University He Dongping, who estimated that about two to three millon tons of that is illegal cooking oil. It is of course far cheaper to refine waste oil and re-use it, rather than buying in fresh cooking oil, but the health risks are considerable. Aflatoxin is a potent carcinogen and of course, re-used cooking oil is a source of trans fats, with their well known harmful effects.

Of course this is not the first time that China’s food industry has hit the headlines for the dubious practices, and in a bid to clean up its act, at the end of March the administration issued a 2010 plan to ensure food safety, calling for more government inspections at every level of the food production chain.

Source: The Food Doctor Online