Stories like these are in the news here just about every day:

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/09/content_12297017.htm

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/10/content_12299388.htm

I brought this up with some Chinese people and got more than I wanted to hear.
It would seem that eating anything outside is a roulette shot at best.

All restaurants supposedly use horrid million-times reused oil. I have myself seen some oil deliveries, and it was a nasty-looking black semi-liquid in filthy repurposed plastic barrels.
I worked at Arthur Treachers' back in the States, and even there we'd change the oil like once a month (just kept adding). Granted, the owner was a Korean cheapskate, and a Jehovah's Witness to boot.
I heard that some of the restaurants supposedly use grease that poor people scoop up floating in gutters. One guy said that he'd seen one of these specialists going at it with his scoop.

Fruit (bananas, melons, among others) being picked unripened, then injected with chemicals to make them look ripe, but not go bad as fast as they normally would.

Same with meat, full of chemicals to keep it from going bad. Not hard to believe; a lot of restaurants keep a lot of their food outside fridges, and very few seem to have freezers.

Rice bleached and scented with more poisonous goodies.

And my beloved huoguo. Heard this from people including former staff – the "tang" they pour into the hotpot is laced with chemicals so bad they make the brain-lesion-inducing MSG look like Wild Oats' organic GojiBerry juice.

SO.

Share your stories. What have you heard, what do you believe, what do you do or not do, eat or not eat in this land of omnipresent chemicals.

Haha, the top ad banner on those China Daily articles is from ChemChina, their proud slogan being "Life needs Chemicals".
Talk about synergy.

If you're in advertising, go drink a guo-ful of hotpot tang right now.

I see them use a lot of unrefined rapeseed oil from local farmers. It is dark brown and thick looking.
It has not had a lot of that nasty natural stuff taken out and so in not clear. They say that some of it is even organic, whatever that means it can't be any good, shock horror.

If you see the stories nearly everyday, they have probably been recycled.

Yes a lot of bad things happen in China. Not all food is safe. But that is still a small percentage of the whole. These 'horror stories' are exactly that. Hence them doing the rounds.

I saw a show on tv abut how they make fake eggs. It is nothing but 100% chemicals. Even the shell is created from chemical. They are half the price of real eggs and are widely sold throughout China.

Best is not to know what's in the food. TIC after all so there are less regulations about what you can put in and how to handle food that is to be eaten.

There will always be drug dealers and other illicit trades - as evidenced by the rampant trade in the USA. In China - the death penalty is reserved for specific intentional crimes - hopefully intentional fraud in the food chain is one of them.

Most Chinese know it's safer (not safe, just safer) to eat at home than to dine out. China's had these problems for well over 10 years - as the country becomes more sophisticated, so does the fraud.

Back in Canada I once read the "ingredients" list on a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was a list of nothing but chemicals - not even flour. Seems like the problems in the food industry are not just restricted to China.

Methinks the drug trade flourishes here in China just as much as the United States. Given the fact that nearly the entirety of Asia is supplied with all manner of illicit drugs by areas not far from us, it wouldn't be an entirely ridiculous statement.

That being said, why are there always so many apologists?

Yes, our foods have tons of chemicals in the West. Find a food that doesn't. If you're fortunate enough to live off an entirely organic diet, good for you. Most of us can't.

In addition, we have organizations like the FDA, and while they aren't perfect, and I'm sure some of you internet sleuths could find a dozen articles about why the FDA sucks, it's still leagues ahead of anything China has going on right now.

Yes, we had similar things going on in the United States 100 years ago, and probably even sooner. Our food distribution regulation didn't even really start working until the 50s. However, that was the 1950s, when scientific technology wasn't really all that sophisticated, and people's concept of what was good for you was a healthy habit of one pack of Lucky Strikes a day and a stiff drink in the evenings. The fact that these people are producing eggs (I saw the story too) entirely out of chemicals shows how well they grasp what they're doing, but insist on selling harmful additives anyway.

Next, I'll expect someone to pull out the argument, "but, but, they've only been developing for thirty years!" I don't care. Stop treating these people like children, these food producers and farmers know exactly what they're doing, going after the almighty RMB and getting as much as they can without a speck of concern for the health of their people.

The fact that in this day and age people are cooking food with oil scooped out of the sewers is atrocious.

I'd rather eat a krispy kreme doughnut than barbecue on the corner any day.

Hey - did you guys read about the Chinese Olympian who had her medals stripped because she tested positive for banned substances? Apparently, she ate pork laced with banned additives? Probably another great reason to buy Australian?

That veggies and meats in China look pretty but are far away from beeing good quality is no news.

There are enough places now selling organic vegetables, an easy way to avoid unhealthy chemicals.

And for meat? I only eat imported Australian meat or no meat at all.
I guess mostly everybody knows about food quality here in China. Just people care differently about it. Most people I know just dont care. They eat everything without questioning it.

But this is not different than any other country I know.

But it would be so easy to avoid most of it. Buy fresh organic vegetables and cook with it. Healthy, better tasting and not much more expensive than non organic products.

Plenty of horror stories about the excesses in food malpractice. Probably the most horrifying thing I've read here is advocating the death penalty for fraud. 'Fraud' is deception for 'financial or personal gain'. If a death results then a different charge is brought. Even then, I have never seen the logic in 'killing = bad', 'state killing (which is ALWAYS intentional) = good', especially when there is no evidence whatever that capital punishment acts as a deterrent.