Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Recycled Oil Used As New

We all love our hawker food. The fried banana, yam, sweet potatoes, chicken, popiah, yau char kuey, yong tau foo and everything else that are fried. Basically everything could be deep fried. Oil is essential to assist with the cooking and if you have not read about food oxidation from deep frying, you might want to read this here first.
While there is nothing really wrong as long a balanced diet are consumed and a certain "sinful food" days are set aside to reward or to allow the taste bud a little of something different, care must be taken on what are actually consumed.
It is already difficult enough to eat clean, now, unscrupulous traders are recycling used oil.
Yeap. The oil that you can buy from supermarket or hypermarket at RM1/kg or less than RM2/kg could potentially be recycled oil.
From Here
You see, the recent hooha about some certain shop that offers cheaper food to help combat rising standard of living, that has caused up to 13 food to be removed from the shelf and re-checked by lab has sort of raised some eye brow. The owner has claimed that the food that they sell were "not in compliance" but does not mean "un-safe" for consumption. While it is a thin fine line, literally and legally speaking, do tell me frankly, what does not in compliance and un-safe meant?
For me, they meant the same. When something is not in compliance, it also meant it breached acceptable standard, which meant it is unsafe to an extend - especially applicable for food that we put into our mouth and system.
Further to the report in the paper above, the National Poison Centre warned about using the same oil even twice. Oil, exposed to heat, changes in constituent and that is how MARGARINE and all SPREADABLE VEGETABLE FATS are made. While something can sound as healthy as OLIVE OIL Spread, truth is the oil has been exposed to prolonged heat to "solidify" it up. Same way how Transfat are made. There are the same artery clogging, cancer causing properties that we potentially takes in everyday.
From Here
Now, do you all see why i am a proponent of healthy eating? Think twice of eating those fried stuff by the road side or in some establishment. Just take a peep at the oil they use to fry these food and you will be instantly turned off. If it doesn't - then i guess you are just asking for it!

2 comments:

  1. Great post! Not easy to resist all those delicious deep fried crispy foods haizzz... if I really want, I have to fry myself. Then throw away the oil after that!

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  2. It is often a challenge. Sometimes, we think so long to get that liters of cooking oil, debating if we should be paying RM2 more for a better one.

    It has been olive and grapeseed oil for me. Frying is kept to minimum or at low heat.

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