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Shanghai Hairy Crabs (2005-12-10)

Now is the season for Shanghai hairy crabs.  KL surprised me the other night by bringing home a couple.  But I think they would be the only two Shanghai crabs I'd be eating this year.

The endless reports about fake foods (including these crabs) are a little worrying.  Numerous Hong Kong news reports with pictures obtained from undercover reporters have revealed a host of fake food makers concorting anything and everything from soy sauce to infant milk powder.  I've seen cannery workers in mainland China turning rotten brownish peaches into "fresh-looking" bright yellow ones before they are canned, maggot-infested meat into sausages, and rotten vegetables into preserved dishes, all of which involve the use of heavy chemicals and banned substances.  It is one thing for unscrupulous Chinese to make fake food to scam money, but to use harmful chemicals and carcinogens blatantly in the manufacturing process is downright heartless. (Babies and clueless consumers have died resulting from fake food ingestion.) 

To make matters worse, name brands products such as sauces, rice (banned coloring is used to whiten yellowed expired rice), Shiaoxin wine, and rice vermicilli are the target of fake food manufacturers.  Their label-copying and packaging technique is so good that the fake products using harmful chemicals and dubious ingredients are indiscernable from the authentic ones by your average consumers.  So paying premium prices for a good brand is no guarantee you are buying quality and safe-to-consume products.

The chance of those imported crabs not being the real thing might be lower here in Tokyo than in China, but I've long since stopped stocking my kitchen with any China-made products, so why stop at the crabs?


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