If you plan to eat out in China...

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Sometimes it makes you wonder if McDonalds uses gutter oil on their fries! they probably add some cocaine in there as well!

I've always preferred Burger King fries.

Actually, USA allows the use of magnesium silicates to put in frying oil to keep the oil fresher longer/remove impurities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_trisilicate

It says in that wiki diarrhea and cramps can occur after ingesting something cooked in gutter oil. Once, at the mall, I ate an Asian fast food stand and got sick afterwards so now I am wondering about that.

I doubt very seriously if it is anything but canola oil or some kind of veggie oil. They do not use animal fat, supposedly. They did at one time though.

Makes you wonder about that cheap can of lard at the grocery store. Wonder where it comes from? It's pretty inexpensive. What is the process, exactly? Heh. What they get to make it with is probably all kinds of icky stuff from slaughter houses. Oil is not for the meek unless it is strictly veggie.

Probably just unclean hands or old meat or whatever. Or the oil was old.

Again, there is no secret Asian gutter oil conspiracy in America.

What I find odd with Asia is how the amount of trouble people go into to make fake food.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2bRgJEYQ9U[/youtube]
Fake eggs. Fake rice. Fake oil.

These things are simple staples that don't really cost much by Western standards, so to knock them off means stuff has gone awry.

To me as a Westerner it seems the amount of sheer effort and ingenuity alone it'd take to make fake food when real food is so cheap is a bit mind boggling, Why scam for such low profit margins?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6QfuIh0g[/youtube]

It's cheaper to make the fake food. People have always used fillers to make commodities like beef go farther, that's why meat loaf was invented. Even something like pasta or rice can be considered filler type material of sorts, most the time it isn't fake though, you know what it is when you see it, but it's the same sort of idea, using something that's cheaper to make a more expensive thing go farther, like when people water down booze. Even ethanol can be thought of as similar, more cheap filler. Fillers are everywhere all over the world. Sometimes people will leave out the main ingredient and just use the filler, that's when it becomes fake

Some ingredients can be just as expensive and someone might make something out of it just to be artsy, it's not exactly the same concept. Chefs will do that to draw people in and be thought of as creative.

I doubt there's an Asian conspiracy across the world to implement this gutter oil in all restaurants but it really is best to be on guard since this oil isn't just these mom and pop factories in countries like China, but major corporations. That's really kinda scary and yes gutter oil could very well make it all over the world if these global companies are involved in relabeling. To them, it's just recycled cooking oil. It could even be in stores, probably sold as lard though. It shouldn't be in vegetable or other plant based oils, at least, I hope not, but who who knows? Oil is dubious. These major processors are taking oil that is supposed to be sold to make soap, fuel, makeup and other non edible items and selling it for human consumption because they can make more money and if they can make more money and no one is stopping them, you can bet it probably happens more than you realize. It's just human nature to make as much money possible.

If someone wants to earn a few brownie points they can go around to various grocery stores, buy bottles of various oils and brands. take them to a chemist to have them tested just to see what's inside, even the really cheap ones. Most likely, they are all plant based but it never hurts to check just to be sure. Brands like Crisco I don't worry about but what about the cheap bottles of generic oil?

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 02 Nov 2013, 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Also most olive oil is made from olives from Northern Africa and labelled as either Spanish olive oil or Italian oil.

Very good nutritional profile. Impressive.

Also, just so you guys know, if you still care about your dignity and whatnot (I don't) you should probably check your bread and food packaging labels for l-cystine. Most l-cystine is actually manufactured from human hair, usually in China or India, and it's put in dough to make it softer. Some l-cystine is not manufactured this way, and instead derived from hog fur or duck feathers, but human hair is the most efficient way to get it, so it's used most. There is some artificially produced vegetarian l-cystine, but it costs 3x more than the alternative and is rarely used.

There are a lot of fake foods going about in China... from the commonly found concrete-filled walnuts, to these highly questionable 'steamed dumplings' -

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kea87ILzOpQ[/youtube]

Even if Chinese foods aren't fake, they can often be quite... unusual.... from the perspective of other nations.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8r5nVfcSvE[/youtube]

Of course it's only sensible to understand Chinese well enough to know what you're ordering in restaurants in China.... and to be cautious regarding food sold from a street stall.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb20RAip3l0[/youtube]


You might want to be wary of Chinese beverages also... whether drunk in China, or bought as imports within other countries.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxg2ewhRsy8[/youtube]

And well, there's also this kind of thing....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_4yY-i56-I[/youtube]

I mean, if the watermelons hadn't exploded they could have gone straight to market, and been eaten... with perhaps consequences for the person eating them...


And well, this too...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPmI32EUg7M[/youtube]

and as for rice... well...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw65n3ajZu4[/youtube]


It's not just China of course, which has problems with questionable edible items.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT-dLoxl7o8[/youtube]

Kind of reminds me of this joke [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dwqqrLPF5s[/youtube] But then it make you wonder if you bought coke from china if they actually go pee pee in your coke!

Sometimes food does remind me of cardboard boxes. This makes me question do we really know what's in our food? It's made in a factory somewhere so we can only pray they don't put some kind of filler like cardboard in there. Cardboard, refined flour, not much difference there.'
So, next time you have that graham cracker that kinda reminds you of cardboard, just think, there could be a reason.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEHKz7QstTE[/youtube]

Well, people often do buy pre-used waste cooking oil from restaurants for recycling as gutter oil.
However, since it's illegal only open criminals would have the nerve to ask restaurants for such oil.... and only criminal restaurants would agree to get on board with such an arrangement.

That's a very risky business, so instead many people attempt to recover pre-used oil via the sewerage system.

http://world.time.com/2011/09/13/china-cracks-down-on-gutter-oil-a-substance-even-worse-than-its-name/

Or, it can be made from decaying animal fat refuse (gathered in a similar way, or obtained cheaply from slaughter houses) -

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/04/03/chinese-gutter-oil-attains-new-level-of-gross/

Considering that the ingredients are either very cheap or free... and the costs involved in processing the oil are very low.... this is seen by many criminal gangs and some individuals as a legitimate way to make a lot of easy money.

A lot of times you don't even need to pay for the oil, just offer to take it off the restaurant's hands for free. It saves the restaurant from having to pay someone to haul it away.

If companies and individuals stuck to selling it for fuel or cosmetics, it would just be recycling although I don't want to buy the cosmetics, especially if they contain formaldehyde. No thank you.

These gatherers are doing a service to the environment, so I see nothing wrong in them gathering it. It's what these unscrupulous types do that turn it into cooking oil that are causing the problems.

Oil from animal fat is always risky anyway. If you buy that, you are taking your chances, along with consuming sausages, hot dogs, luncheon meat, or anything made from the refuse. It's just ground up bone, noses and eyes that have been left on the slaughterhouses' floor.

Chinese restaurants aren't typically paying people to haul the stuff away.
That's why so much of it is found tipped into the sewers.... it's as easy for the restaurant to access as anybody else.

It's also likely that they might be caught up in legal proceedings if Shady Sam (who they just gave a ton of oil to) turns out to be an oil recycling criminal.

I know that I wouldn't get involved with that if I were a restaurant owner in China, unless I was being offered a bit of money for taking the risk.