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Cheap food! At what cost?

Havaianu

I've traveled and lived in countries, with similar conditions to Vietnam, thought I've never been to Vietnam but (still) planning to retire there. I make a point of eating where the plain folk eat.
Food safety has been a subject that keeps popping up while researching.
I'm not even talking about the sanitary conditions of street food but where does the raw products come from.
Not to my surprise they come from China!
YES a lot of them cheap veggies come from China laced with tons of herbicides and pesticides.
I can already hear the not so's screaming to their hearts content.
Take the case of Da Lat potatoes, 25,000 a kilo, from China 10,000 and to 12,000 vnd a kilo, @Binh Dien wholesale, where they prominently show the country of origin.
Now a street seller, produce or food, faced with that choice, which do you think they will chose?
Chopsticks, made in China and disposable, 30,000 to 50,000 vnd for 5 to 10 kilos. That will buy about 6 VN made chopsticks.
Supposedly Chinese potatoes disappeared from HCMC.
While Da Lat is destroying tons of potatoes contaminated with pesticides 16 times above limit, HCMC's other agro market Thu Duc sells 30 tons of potatoes daily but 20 of those tons come from China.
When a newspaper asked a produce vendor about Chinese potatoes her response was that she only sold Da Lat potatoes because her potatoes were covered in red soil. Just dust the Chinese potatoes with red Da Lat soil and voilà you can charge not just 10,000 a kilo but as much as 25,000 per kilo. Never mind that that seller possibly bought from one of the wholesale markets where the origin of the potatoes was clearly posted.
Its already not a very healthy situation as far as Vietnamese produce, mass die off of fish, bay turning color and killing 100% of farmed fish,etc., that who needs to compound the problem by eating toxic imported food?
One solution is to buy directly from the wholesale markets like Binh Dien where you can buy cheaper, fresher and local.

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ralphnhatrang

You are correct. It's a nation wide worry.

Yogi007

They've even got fake rice & fake eggs now.

Yogi's wondering what a fake chicken looks like. ???

It's a funny old world out there.

Bazza139

Careful Yogi

We teach best what we most need to learn...

khanh44

For someone that has never been to Vietnam you sure know where to get your food.

Avoid pig blood. Tiet canh I think it's called. My wife refuses to eat pork meat.

They don't have food inspectors per say and suing is a foreign language. No accountability is it any wonder eating the right food is like winning the Vietnamese lottery.

Guest2023

Ask any doctor here about the chronic diseases that occur in VN, food safety is very low in priority, wearing clothes to protect from the sun is much higher in priority.

I have had intestinal worms from eating on the street, it's not much fun but easily treated.

Thaiger

highest liver cancer rates in the world-  only explicable due to herbicide/ insecticide/ sewer oil etc

THIGV

Thaiger wrote:

highest liver cancer rates in the world-  only explicable due to herbicide/ insecticide/ sewer oil etc


A more likely cause is the high rate of Hepatitis B.  Infection often causes liver cancer later in life.  It could however come back to cheap food.  Hep A is usually spread through food while Hep B usually requires direct contact but the virus can live outside the body for about 7-8 hours.  An infected cook with a small cut could spread the disease.