Recently, at least 200 people, mostly children, were taken to hospitals after suffering from food poisoning at a birthday party for a boy all of two, in Bulacan. Two children died from food poisoning at a school in Tuguegarao City. Two more children died while undergoing treatment in hospital. Forty-one pupils mostly all of five to seven and three teachers were treated in hospital, having eaten the noodles cooked by a teacher and sold at the school canteen. The teacher had put three spoons of ingredient she believed to be iodised salt while preparing the noodles. The ingredient turned out to be oxalic, an element in bleaching solutions. Too, roughly 400 teachers suffered from food poisoning in Batangas. The teachers from a conference were served adobo believed to be the cause of the poisoning, by a catering service.
Is food poisoning inevitable? Why does it happen every so often these days? Why is it so, that a lot of Filipinos are surprisingly ignorant about their food? Is the reason for this that the people have little knowledge of food safety? Or, perhaps, they don't check their food ingredients for wholesomeness before they start? The use-by-date, they don't know that the look and the smell are excellent indicators that the item has not spoiled? They thaw foods at room temperature? Perhaps, they don't keep dirty preparation activities well away from clean or cooked food? Perhaps, they share utensils, plates, and chopping boards between dirty operations and clean cooked food? In between handling raw and cooked foods, perhaps, they don't wash utensils such as tongs, knives, and chopping boards with hot soapy water? Or, perhaps, they don't make sure that utensils and equipment are always clean? Don't they wash hands thoroughly before preparation, after going to the toilet, and after handling pets and raw food?
Who should be expected to shoulder all the blame for this problem? I'm afraid our government have rather neglected their roles in ensuring that all the foods we eat are safe. And I don’t want to believe that our authorities are lazy and unreliable.
For one, some products are dishonestly retailed in the market. Some don’t have proper labels or have erroneous tags. Well, for me, labelling is an important practice in the food processing chain and should not be disregarded. Understandably, the label is the first point of contact between a shopper and the manufacturer. With a proper label, we categorise one product from another and also we can make a decision over which product to buy. The label is then the most important promotion tool for a product. It should be striking while at the same time being instructive. A dirty, disorganised, disorderly label will not help to sell a product, but this must not be true to an ignorant Filipino, or even to an educated one. That is because most of us trust our government that whatever is sold at well-known supermarket they are safe to use. See, had the oxalic had a proper label, it could have not been used by the teacher.
This problem on labelling products was shown on GMA’s Imbestigador, the most famous TV programme in the Philippines for its courage and reliability. Some products were confiscated by the police to prevent them from selling them, but that was very marginal. In consequence, nonetheless, I can say that this problem in the Philippines is widespread, affecting all of us. But we seem blind to this problem. Our government agency has not ever done a national survey looking at the cleanliness of restaurants or factories, until now.
By the way, have you looked at labels lately? You might be shocked to see the government agency approved unnecessary additives such as aspartame, monosodium glutamate (MSG), artificial colourings and flavourings, yeast, yeast extract, cottonseed oil, canola oil, and the list goes on and on! Perhaps, you have not noticed it because your understanding of or information about it is limited. Or, I don't know, you must be very busy or unquestioning.
MSG, astonishingly, paves the way to Alzheimer's disease. It does permanent brain damage! Haven't you ever speculated why a lot of children today can't learn in school, and why they have so many learning and behavioural problems today? This is why it is hidden under other terms, so we the public, won’t know what we are unsuspectingly putting into our body! Beware, MSG is present in some lunch meats, hotdogs, bacon, sausage, and flavoured boxed foods.
Why we can't even buy a stick of gum or a tin of soup without these poisons added to it! All processed foods, cake mixes, crackers, bread, and even pet foods are overloaded with these poisonous killers! Aspartame causes brain dysfunction. Aeroplane pilots have been known to have brain seizures while flying, after drinking a can of diet soda!
Cottonseed oil and canola oil, we seem like blissfully ignorant about this, are not meant for human consumption. They're low-cost, that’s why a lot of businesses use them even with their being unsafe. They can cause stroke or heart attacks, as both oils cause the blood to become a sticky substance. That's like gumming up your car engine with cement, as opposed to good, clean oil. But of course adverts deceive us into thinking they are health-giving even though they are poisoning us subtly.
It's no secret anymore that our government have used their citizens as experimental guinea pigs for many, many years, and still do.
It is virtually impossible to go to the food shops today and find any food pure without some additives added.
Try to find some children today that know what true foods and their real taste are. You can't. They had all been, as if, programmed from young on, and that includes the young mothers of today, who think a ‘meal’ is running to Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, PizzaHut, McDonald's, Wendy’s, KFC, or Burger King.
These are not only unwholesome 'foods' but dangerous as well! Look at all the heart attacks that are now happening to the young people: my workfellow’s friend dropped dead at work! Teens’ blood pressure today is that of octogenarians! It's all due to our diet of fast foods. No one knows what a homemade dinner is anymore! No one cooks anymore! And if they do, they use artificial ingredients such as tamarind, onion, garlic, chicken, or beef granules. Then, my grandmother would use natural vinegar, but this vinegar is not available at local shops anymore even in places in which a lot of coconut trees grow abundantly. So, what choice do we have? Certainly, the vinegar made of acetic acid is the only one we can have these days. I hope that tests of the vinegar won't show that it has a high level of toxicity.
Even preserved vegetables are ‘flavour enhanced’ and nothing can change those ‘programmed’ taste buds, once they're formed. It begins with baby foods, and that unsocial thirst-quencher called 'soda.' That junk can kill us, I’ve realised! If you could only see what it does to your intestines, you'd never touch this toxic again!
But what can we expect? These new young parents today are a product of government foods and chemicals. That's why we must call them (yourselves/ourselves) ‘The Chemical Generation.’ They might not be keen on eating or drinking food without artificial colouring, which has been linked to hyperactivity. So, many brands offer fun coloured food, which is toxic to the body. This is found in many juices, fruit chews, fruit bars, children’s cereals, and snacks. Haven’t you noticed this?
‘We think fast food is equivalent to pornography, nutritionally speaking,’ said Steve Elbert.
Anyway, do you still trust the government's BFAD with your life? Lately, it has scrutinised some imported Taiwanese sports drinks, fruit juices, and soft drinks that Taipei said may contain unwarranted amounts of DEHP, colourless viscous liquid soluble in oil, but not in water, possessing good plasticising properties. Taiwan issued a major recall of products, including more than 460,000 bottles of sports drinks and fruit juice, over doubts they contained the chemical widely used in manufacturing vinyl merchandises. Taipei warned Manila that DEHP could have been dishonestly added to food products that were exported to the Philippines.
It means that there could be other foodstuffs in the market, which are unsafe to put away. Is the organisation rife with bribery and corruption, too? Why were these products allowed to enter the Philippines market? Does BFAD follow very strict guidelines on the inspection of these products? Well, evidently….
A probe by Philippine food-quality authority must be implemented strictly to find out whether products such as meat, baby milk powder, rice, flour, biscuits, seafood, soy sauce, and sweets are contaminated by the likes of industrial oils, acid, cancer-causing chemicals and other hazardous ingredients. They must be as good as their word. We all know that regulations are in place but the enforcements are pretty nonexistence.
Once, the former health secretary Esperanza Cabral ordered that the English warning 'no therapeutic claims' be changed to the Filipino 'hindi ito gamot.' We, the public, have a right to expect truthful statements and opinions from politicians. Dr Cabral did an admirable job in telling every Filipino that some products are potentially dangerous.
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny, said Thomas Jefferson.
I hope that in our community we can have an occasion at which people that have great knowledge of food poisoning (and foods) will meet in order to discuss this problem.
‘No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes,’ said Paulo Coelho, one of my favourite novelists. But I think a lot of companies have got no conscience at all about selling us unhealthy foods. For me, the bottom line of everything is takings – money, don’t you think? This simply shows how important corporate welfare to our government and the corporations themselves is.
In another country, certain pomegranate juice products deceived consumers with dishonest labels and ingredients as revealed by a new consumer guide. I think this is in the cards, to happen in this country, too. Or, possibly, has been happening already.
I think it’s high time this country had consumer health advocates, food safety leaders, and serious food politics. Let’s not wait that diseases caused by the food we eat, in this country will reach epidemic proportions. Following the food poisoning cases and the news of our sick friends or neighbours, we Filipinos need to be extra cautious and sensible.
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