Reminds me of the China milk scandal.
Or the plastic rice.
Or the pigs painted black.
Or the fermented tofu that is just dyed.
Chinese saying: "if you can cheat, then cheat"
How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
171–180 of 200 posts
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#172Tangentially related, a friend of my wife, tried to convince her of the benefits of natural health, specifically using certain herbs as natural remedies. One that jumped out was that "turmeric cures cancer."
It's a little too neat to say that "turmeric cures cancer", but laboratory evidence does indeed show that curcumin may have anti-cancer properties. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/curcumi...
Curcumin is often classified as PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds). Keep that in mind.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That was only a few wineries though (…) The article you linked shows it was more than that and that the country’s industry was affected.
Because of the practice of blending wines into other wines. So a few criminal wineries impacted orders of magnitude more blended wine production. The distinction I was trying to draw was that unless there is a similar practice of blending for tumeric, this a systemic, widespread issue where the practice of poisoning customers has become normalized in the industry.
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Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#174The lead chromate isn't particularly dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_chromate >Despite containing both lead and hexavalent chromium, lead chromate is not particularly toxic because of its very low solubility. The LD50 for rats is only 5,000 mg/kg. Lead chromate is treated with great care in its manufacture, the main concerns being dust of the chromate precursor. "Extensive epidemiological investigat…
Well, the reference to its (purported) carcinogenity was edited away twelve days ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/118137387...
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That was only a few wineries though (…) The article you linked shows it was more than that and that the country’s industry was affected.
Because of the practice of blending wines into other wines. So a few criminal wineries impacted orders of magnitude more blended wine production. The distinction I was trying to draw was that unless there is a similar practice of blending for tumeric, this a systemic, widespread issue where the practice of poisoning customers has become normalized in the industry.
Do you have a source? I.e. on the number of criminal wineries and that the rest of the Austrian industry was unaware?
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#176How likely is the turmeric I buy in the EU to contain excess amounts of lead?
I wouldn't trust any powdered turmeric. Especially in the quantities people are consuming it these days.
Buy it fresh and grind it yourself. It tastes better that way anyway.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ”Rather a large number of things are contaminated with heavy metals” Sure, but usually it’s because products are grown in contaminated soil and “naturally” pick up traces from their environment. Pretty much all rice contains arsenic, for example, but the concentration varies significantly depending on where it’s grown and how it’s processed. The turmeric problem is different because lead has been deliberately added…
Except that pretty much no plants bioaccumulate lead. The biggest lead vector for plant-based food is the soil that hitches a ride on the outside. So peeling potatoes, carrots, beets etc and washing your other fruits and veggies is really all that is needed. It's actually a little unfortunate that no plants we know of will take up lead because this would be a way to clean up soil. Plant a lot of plant X. Pull out the…
Sunflowers and Indian mustard do bioaccumulate lead (especially with a chelating agent).
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#178Wait until you hear about what the Chinese used to do to tea exported to Europe.
If you have something interesting and relevant the post it! Clickbait title without article is not useful and pointless, not merely annoying.
A quick search would turn it up, but ok.
In the early 1800s a sir Francis John Davis traveled in China disguised as a Mandarin. He discovered that green teas prepared for export were adulterated with tumeric, prussian blue, and gypsum to give them a richer green color.
… At each pan stood a workman stirring
the tea rapidly round with his hand, having previ-
ously added a small quantity of turmeric in powder,
which of course gave the leaves a yellowish or
orange tinge ; but they were still to be made green.
For this purpose some lumps of a fine blue were
produced, together with a white substance in pow-
der, which, from the names given to them by the
workmen, as well as their appearance, were known
at once to be prussian blue and gypsum. These were
triturated finely together witha small pestle, in such
proportion as reduced the dark colour of the blue
to a light shade; and a quantity equal to a small
teaspoonful of the powder being added to the yel-
lowish leaves, these were stirred as before over the
fire, until the tea had taken the fine bloom colour of
Hyson, with very much the same scent.
…
If the tea has not highly deleterious
qualities, it can only be in consequence of the
colouring matter existing in a small proportion to
the leaf; …
See page 421—423 of https://ia800902.us.archive.org/18/items/chinesegeneral02dav...>.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#179> Yet adulterated turmeric looks like a major culprit almost everywhere, chiefly owing to poor practice in India, which produces 75% of the spice. It’s really shocking to me that in the year 2023 people could be intentionally adding lead to food products at this scale. Is this mainly due to greed and corruption? Ignorance? Distrust of modern medicine and health advice? I suppose it’s similar to the problem of people…
It is reminiscent of the Austrian antifreeze wine scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Austrian_diethylene_gly... That was only a few wineries though, and it was pretty quickly caught and harshly punished. This is apparently a whole industry where the practice of poisoning consumers with lead is normalized.
I lived in Austria for a while and have been aware of that story for a long while but it still perplexes me because I can't figure out why these idiots chose to use diethylene glycol, it was not only an irresponsible and dangerous choice but also it seems such a such a stupid one.
Di and ethylene glycol are both toxic and sweet which makes them risky chemicals to handle and store and that's been known since they were first used.
These greedy idiots should have known that. After all, they knew the chemicals were sweet and whenever the properties of di/ethylene glycol are mentioned the terms sweetness and danger/poisonous are bundled together so why didn't they know they'd likely kill their customers? (Fortunately, these days, the extremely bitter denaturant denatonium (Bitrex) is added to them stop consumption.)
Moreover, why didn't they use its closely related mate propylene glycol which is both sweet and non toxic and used in the food industry, it even has its own E number (E1521)?
The only reason I can come with is that propylene glycol isn't as sweet as its ethylene cousins. That said, it does provide that 'bulky' consistency or body that one finds in very sweet wines. BTW, PEG as it's known, is often painted onto cakes and pastries to give them that shine after baking.
Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or the carbon monoxide thing in the US (artificial colorant for supermarket meat): https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2013... (pdf) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23958645 The common thread is that consumers buy whatever they think "looks fresh", so vendors optimize for that metric. (It's the wrong metric). Efficient markets, I suppose.
>Efficient markets, I suppose. // Isn't the Capitalist notion of efficiency bound with perfect information - we'd have to legislate to make sure that consumers know the product is 'laced with poison for the appearance of freshness; packaging contains carbon monoxide (CO) a deadly gas' and then see if the customers buy more of that product. You're accusing consumers of optimising towards products _looking_ fresh, but…
The point is that perfect information isn't real. Perfect information is the spherical cow in a vacuum of economics.
The incentives are such that vendors that lie and cheat do better than the ones that don't.