How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people • Hacker News Board

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#61

Post by hermitcrab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:41 AM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #56

pseudo0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was at an all-boys boarding school in the 70s when a bottle of phenylphthalein went missing. They shut the whole school down until it reappeared (it was left on the windowsill of a teacher's house IIRC). No idea what the culprit was intending to do with it. Put it in the tea urn and try to make the whole school shit itself to death?

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#62

Post by FrustratedMonky » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:44 AM UTC

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…

Every company has a layer of middle managers that need to meet budgets.

Basically, a layer of Eichmann's, that can be pushed into gassing people.

So adding lead to Turmeric is just one of dozens of deathly practices.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#63

Post by oska » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:47 AM UTC

The last three paragraphs read very strongly like propaganda to me, which makes me wonder if the subject (tumeric adulteration) was chosen as something to write about just to put pressure on Bangladesh's and India's current rulers.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#64

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:48 AM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #60

pseudo0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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 market isn't providing the information needed to also move away from 'purposefully laced with poison'.

I have an idea for a sort of reverse-trademark, an Origin Mark that allows a consumer to view all the inputs into a product and their geographic and legal origins. Then you can see 'this meat maker buys carbon monoxide', at least.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#65

Post by matkoniecz » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:51 AM UTC

CommanderData wrote: post #57

vjk800 wrote: post #38

How likely is the turmeric I buy in the EU to contain excess amounts of lead?

Considering a lot of our spice comes from India it's highly likely.

I hope that it is being tested, I wonder how can I check it.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#66

Post by matkoniecz » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:52 AM UTC

db48x wrote: post #58

Wait 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.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#67

Post by littlestymaar » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:54 AM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #49

littlestymaar wrote: post #35

It's not turmeric that kills, it's the unregulated market.

Its the lead

It's the lead chromate pigment that gets added because it gives a competitive advantage in terms of sales, that kills.

That's what you get when you let markets regulate themselves, and that's why regulation authorities exist. (Western countries used to have the same kind of problems of large-scale food tampering).

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#68

Post by piva00 » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:56 AM UTC

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?

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book about it, called "Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity". Even though it's the same Fukuyama who declared the end of history the book has some insights into the phenomena [1].

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1996-0...

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#69

Post by perihelions » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:56 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #64

perihelions wrote: post #60

Earlier 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…

No comment on economic theory, but on the carbon monoxide thing, the issue here isn't its toxicity, but that vendors use it to mask the color appearance of non-fresh, unhygienic meat. Naive visual assessment is wrong.

Re: How to stop adulterated turmeric from killing people

#70

Post by koolba » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:58 AM UTC

> To heighten their colour, the rhizomes from which the spice is extracted are routinely dusted with lead chromate, a neurotoxin. The practice helps explain why South Asia has the highest rates of lead poisoning in the world.

The turmeric is not to blame here. It’s the idiots that demand bright yellow food without regard to whether it is poison, and the disgusting people who manufacture said poison to meet that demand.

It’s not just turmeric either. There’s plenty of other unnecessary dyes (eg red dye 40) adulterating such foods.

As a general rule, if it’s supposed to be a home cooked meal but the colors make it look like it came out of Willy Wonka’s factory, it’s not normal.