Food Security and Food Justice

The true in China–Latiao: the memory in the younger generations

In China, there is a wide range of snacks available to the public, including different flavors of snacks.   Among them, as memories of the younger generations, Latiao, one of the most classic snacks, is different from other countries with the Chinese characteristics.  In 1990’, the Latiao firstly appeared in China, then quickly sought by the masses.  At the beginning, it was only sold in small shops, while it rapidly raised with more and more types of unexceptionable business prospects, and it spent it a few years on being admitted to a large supermarket.  Nowadays, with the development of economic globalization, more and more people prefer to choose to work in other countries.  There are also many people from other countries falling love with the Latiao when they tried to taste it.  Even on the network, there are a lot of popular catchwords about the Latiao, such as “to taste one Latiao and be calm down”, “I have the Latiao who would like to be my friend”, “bought a hundred packs of Latiao, I am just richer and wayward”, and so on, from which can be seen how much Chinese people love it.

http://t1.sinaimg.cn/picurl=http%3A%2F%2Fn.sinaimg.cn%2Fnews%2Ftransform%2F20160225%2FPbGk-fxpvysx1657385.jpg

The main raw material of the Latiao is the flour.  After adding water, salt, sugar, natural pigment and other surface, the flour was under the extruding high temperature in an extruder, then mixed with refueling, pepper, pepper and other seasonings including the preservatives whose component should be according to the Chinese food additive standard (GB2760).  And finally, it was made into noodles products, including stewed meat products.

However, in fact, since the Latiao appeared for a long time, many people have expressed concerns on their health due to production conditions of Latiao.  Indeed, according to researches about the processing of the Latiao during earlier period, there was no production license.  The most worrying is the safety issues of the Latiao, because there are a lot of food additives.  And some production firms also were exposed many time under the dirty production environments by the Chinese media.  The emergence of flaw of the Chinese regulatory authorities has resulted in a large number of sales of Latiao in urban and rural areas, with a sporadic distribution in the city, even mostly in the small traders and small shops outside of the primary schools.

http://travel.taiwan.cn/cool/201512/W020151215328446801844.jpg

The “unhealthy list”

In February, 2015, Beijing Food and Drug Administration has reissued food safety sampling information and the Latiao continued to appear in these test results.  For example, the “stupid child”, a kind of the iron Beef tendon (seasoning system of food), produced by the Jiajun food factory in Zhengzhou province, has detected out that the Sodium N-cyclohexylsulfamate was failed.  Besides, there were a total of 8 Latiao on the “unhealthy list”, involving in excessive sodium cyclamate problem during the closer 5 sampling processions of by Food and Drug Administration in Beijing.

Is there any harmful for Latiao? 

When we bought a pack of Latiao, you will find lots of oil inside.  These oils are obtained by using the oil or fried ways into the processing, because adding the grease to match would enhance the taste of Latiao.  Whereas, the quality of these oil is not easy to be monitored.  Especially for the small workshops of the Latiao’s producers, the quality of the oil for their food produced is the worthiest of public reflection.  The inferior as well as expired greases or repeated using of the oil could be carcinogenic.

It is difficult for the simply pepper to create hot tempting, which requires the food additives, such as carmine, to help.  Actually, these food additives are allowed with strict norms of the using, while it is hard to control some small workshops.

In addition, those workshops sale some small packages of Latiao, low-cost and small scale, with cheap prices, in order to ensure the profits of all aspects.  So, the production environment and the requirements of workers may not reach national standards, which could inevitably cause some security risks.

Spicy prospects

It is gratifying that the government state’s supervision of the Latiao are increasing, with the exposure of the media, and the production environment has gradually improved from the original problem of food (such as no production license, health failure, etc.) as the necessities on the large supermarkets shelves. Nowadays, these above problems may only exist in small workshops.  For regular producers, as long as the amount of food additives can be ensured no more than national standards, their production health problems could be guaranteed, and the production processing is in a strict accordance with the procedures, I believe that the Latiao still has very good of the development prospects.  After all, it is a kind of low-cost production, and the most important thing is very tasty.