Chinese Ingredients Are Everywhere In The Food We Eat
I was on another basketball sojourn last weekend. We headed down to Hamilton where the Wallaceburg Airhawks were involved with a youth basketball tournament. On the Saturday night of the tournament my brother and sister-in-law took the family out to a fine restaurant in Burlington. It was a wonderful time both for the family camaraderie and the food. For this farm boy it was like “food Disneyland”. I’ve rarely been to a restaurant with such variety.
Of course it can be a bit daunting when you’re effectively at a buffet with all kinds of exotic dishes. In many ways you need a culinary degree to fully appreciate it. It’s like magic. Canadians take their food completely for granted; never doubting the fridges, grocery stores and restaurants will be full tomorrow.
It is a real success story, one that is increasingly filled through foreign sources. Even with global warming, Canada is still too cold to grow oranges, lemons and the other assorted tropical fruits we’ve learned to enjoy. However, it is getting even more complex than the occasional orange or lemon. Take my restaurant experience Saturday night. Many of the food items ready for me to eat there were made of exotic ingredients not traditionally available in Canada.
Of course that has caused some controversy among the food chattering class. With China becoming the world’s supplier for consumer goods, what is not so widely known is the number of food ingredients, which are reaching our shores and turning up in Canadian food products.
For some of you I’m sure you’d say, “Who cares.” As long as my soufflé tastes good that’s all that matters. However, it’s not as simple as that. While I have a vested interest in eating “everything Canadian”, I realize that cannot always be done. However, when food ingredients come in from “offshore”, Canadians must realize that what they are eating is not necessarily what it seems. There is just too much water under the bridge to think otherwise.
You might consider the April 27, 2007 CBC News report on Canada’s food inspection system that I chronicled once before in this column. Here it is.
“Canada’s food inspectors have issued border lookouts for vegetable proteins coming from China to prevent melamine — a chemical used to make plastics — from contaminating the human food chain, CBC News has learned.
Inspectors will seize wheat gluten, soy proteins, corn glutens and rice proteins from China — ingredients already found to contain melamine and other contaminants in hundreds of pet-food products. The proteins are destined for human food.
Melamine, also used to make fertilizer, was blamed for the deaths of a number of cats and dogs in North America and making hundreds of pets ill.
Vegetable proteins are impossible to avoid. They’re found in everything from baby formula to pizza dough and wieners. Canadian manufacturers do not have to declare what country the ingredients come from.” (CBC News April 27)
In 2008 the pet food scare with regard to Chinese food imports still has resonance. Take the American food chain Trader Joe’s recent decision to ban some of their Chinese food products starting in April 2008. The following is a direct quote from Julie Schmit’s article, “Trader Joe’s To Exclude Some Food Imports from China” published February 10th in USA Today newspaper.
“By April 1, Trader Joe’s will phase out single-ingredient Chinese imports such as garlic, frozen organic spinach, ginger and edamame, a green soybean, says spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki. The ban doesn’t include products with ingredients from China, a leading source of vitamins and minerals used in many processed foods. Trader Joe’s says the products it bought from China were safe. But “our customers have voiced their concerns about products from this region, and we have listened,” Mochizuki said.” (Julie Schmit USA Today)
Rewind to the summer of 2007. Every Civic holiday weekend I host a barbecue with my graduate school friends. This past year we had a delightful surprise when an old (relative speaking) college buddy dropped in with his partner. They had been to Detroit for the weekend and it worked out perfectly to drop back through Dresden. As we munched down sweet corn from my farm they explained to me they had been to Trader Joe’s in Detroit. For whatever reason they could no longer get their favourite vanilla extract in Toronto. Needless to say they got it at Trader Joe’s in Detroit and I’m sure their gourmet meal hobby is that much better for it.
It begs the question, was the vanilla from China? I dunno. However, for whatever reason Trader Joe’s carried it because it was important to them. However, even the perception of Chinese impropriety has led Trader Joe’s to ban some Chinese food imports. That’s how touchy the American public has become to food imports from China.
How about Canada? Well, we’ll see. The bottom line is Chinese food imports are everywhere in our food system. Ever had the apple juice from Tim Hortons? Do you think that’s from Ontario’s Beaver Valley? Think again. All I know is that meal last Saturday night in Burlington was second to none. If a few Chinese food ingredients were in the mix, this time I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.