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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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
>"A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation... As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics."
Trust is vital to maintaining healthy financial and business relationships. Contracts, loans, credit, cheques, post-paid billing, and much more all reduce friction and costs in an economy and depend on trust.
I imagine that some pesticides are also a concern, tho perhaps less acutely poisonous, of no less serious concern for good health to be avoided.
> 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 deman…
I don’t see how you can victim blame here. People absolutely should be able to pick the best looking alternative on the shelf without fear of being fed a neurotoxin. I’d like to see the argument rendered for how it’s their fault rather than the person poisoning them.
PS real turmeric looks like it came from a willy wonky factory. And you don’t deserve to be poisoned even if it didn’t.
> 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 deman…
Nobody is blaming the plant. Obviously it’s the evil people adding an adulterant to a dietary product. I don’t see how you can victim blame here. People absolutely should be able to pick the best looking alternative on the shelf without fear of being fed a neurotoxin. I’d like to see the argument rendered for how it’s their fault rather than the person poisoning them. PS real turmeric looks like it came from a willy…
> 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's the result of a heterogeneous, low trust society - you don't care if you are killing someone who's not like you.
We have already seen this during Covid. That people will not follow safety practices like wearing masks and even rioting to remove the lockdown. Was it because the rioters lived in a heterogeneous low trust society? or did they want other races/castes to suffer?. It is just ignorance and not caring about other people if it means they themselves can lead a more convenient life.
I can also point to the current situation in Delhi https://indianexpress.com/article/india/delhi-aqi-today-seve... where they had to shutdown schools due to the severe air quality. Farmers in neighboring states burn stubble (remaining crop after harvesting) to prepare for the next crop immediately. This burning moves on to delhi and causes really really bad weather every year. burning stubble is a cheap and quick way to clear the farmland, and alternatives are expensive or unfeasible (lack of access to machinery). This is greed or poverty forcing them to do these things.
And OTOH, we have the judiciary which banned fireworks for almost 5 years now in Delhi, including the time of diwali (a festival known for fireworks) as right to quality air is now recognized as a fundamental right under right to life (and dignity). Now, we have people whining that this is stepping on the right to freedom of religion of Hindus, as the court is taking away fun crackers from Hindu children in the name of "western climate change". This is ignorance. They will literally let their own family breath the polluted air on next morning of diwali, because propaganda/politics has led them to believe that this is a coordinated attack on their religion. The people who suffer are older citizens or patients with respiratory problems.
> 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…
One major factor is ignoring evidence based medicine. In India you can still commonly buy traditional medicines which have heavy metals like lead and mercury as ingredients.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?