Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 200 posts

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#51

Post by lqet »

pseudo0 wrote: post #25
freetime2 wrote: post #20

> 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.

> As a consequence of the scandal, a total of 27,000,000 litres of wine (corresponding to 36 million bottles or seven months' worth of Austria's total wine exports at the pre-1985 level) had to be destroyed by the West German authorities, which had confiscated or otherwise collected the wine. Doing this in an environmentally acceptable way proved challenging because DEG was incompatible with sewage treatment plants. In the end, the wine was disposed of and destroyed by being poured into the ovens of a cement plant as a cooling agent instead of water. In Austria, it was reported that the wine, mixed with other agents, was used as a road antifreeze in the particularly severe continental winter of February to March 1986.

According to the German Wikipedia, authorities in Austria first became suspicious when a small winegrower attempted to deduct large quantities of antifreeze from his taxes, although he only owned a single small tractor.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#52

Post by gruez »

bhoops wrote: post #46
vasdae wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the result of a heterogeneous, low trust society - you don't care if you are killing someone who's not like you.

This comment is ignorant at best and racist at worst imo. Food adulteration is a common practice on ALL low income countries. India has a substantial population living with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world.

>Food adulteration is a common practice on ALL low income countries.

What's the correlation between low income countries and low trust countries?

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#55

Post by AlecSchueler »

rounce wrote: post #50
vasdae wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the result of a heterogeneous, low trust society - you don't care if you are killing someone who's not like you.

Do you have a link to a source with more info about this phenomenon?

I doubt the assertion is based in anything other than conjecture.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#56

Post by Laforet »

pseudo0 wrote: post #25
freetime2 wrote: post #20

> 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.

On a related and lighter hearted note, back in the beginning of the 20th century the government of Hungary once mandated adding the pH indicator phenylphthalein to locally produced wine as a way to mark its origin for tax purposes. The compound is tasteless and clear at the acidic pH of wines, but would turn bright pink with some alkali added.

Sounds ideal right? However soon people started to complain that the wine gave them explosive diarrhea. Turns out that phenylphthalein is actually a potent laxative, just that nobody knew because it had never been given to such a large number of people in high doses. The wine were quickly withdrawn from the market and phenylphthalein remained a popular constipation medicine well into the 1980s before it was replaced by safer alternatives.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#59

Post by cheald »

underseacables wrote: post #54

Tangentially 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...

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#60

Post by perihelions »

pseudo0 wrote: post #25
freetime2 wrote: post #20

> 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.

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.

Post reply on HN