Last year, Caroline Smith Dewaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees and stated, “We see the pet food recall as a warning sign for the government that they need to do more to protect the food supply. It could easily happen to an ingredient used in human food as well.” Now, 17 months later, the warning sounds more like a prediction.

• Chinese milk powder contaminated with melamine sickens 1,253 babies. Times Online.
• Tainted Chinese Milk Kills Second Child. CNN.
• China Finds Banned Chemical at Baby Milk Powder Factory Linked to Sanlu. Forbes.

One incidence of melamine contamination may be an “isolated incident. However, we now have two data points. A trend, perhaps? This time, we don’t have to search for melamine on Google to figure out what it is.

In a prior post on melamine contamination, a reader suggested that I look at Zhou Qing’s What Kind of God: A Survey of the Current Safety of China’s Food. The translated excerpts made my stomach turn. I will never view Chinese food the same way again, and neither will you.

I usually use Pearl River Bridge soy sauce. However, because I have been busy as of late, I had to send others to shop for groceries in my place. As a result, we have started to venture into other brands of foodstuffs, like Haday Superior Light Soy Sauce. Not being familiar with this brand, I took a quick glance at the ingredients as saw some familiar ingredients and some foreign.

I understand water, soy beans, wheat flour, salt, and sugar. That’s the plain English ingredients. Yeast extract may sound like yeast, but it isn’t. Instead, yeast extract contains glutamic acids, and is used as a flavoring like monosodium glutamate (MSG). Next up is Disodium 5′-Inosinate and Disodium 5′-Guanylate. These are flavor enhancers used with glutamates (from the yeast extract) to create 鲜味 in Chinese cooking. Finally, sodium benzoate is a common food preservative.

Next time I am at the grocery store, I have to see if the Pearl River Bridge brand contains the same ingredients.