The secret to choosing Tet food: the more white the brighter the easier it is to

Fresh noodles, chicken legs, lotus and tubers are white and eye-catching, but potentially impregnated with toxic chemicals.

In the face of high demand for food preparation for the Lunar New Year, doctors in Ho Chi Minh City advised housewives to be careful about unusual white foods.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Pham Khanh Phong Lan, head of HCM City's Food Safety Department, people often bring the "fresh white food" mentality, then choose the bright ones because they think the white is fresher, however This is wrong thinking again.

Pure white chicken feet hide the ability to be bleached because this is not the white color of chicken feet.(Photo: Thien Chuong).

"In fact, many foods are ivory-white like vermicelli, chicken legs, banana stalks, and they don't look white, but when they appear on the counter they sell white to unusual and this white is fresh. This shows that they must be treated with chemicals , " Lan said.

In Ho Chi Minh City for many years, authorities have continuously discovered the status of chemical foods to have fresh colors. The foods in the bright white group can be made with chemicals including fresh vermicelli, banana stalks (banana flower), kohlrabi, lotus leaf, cow leaves, pig's heart, pig ears, snow-legged chicken mushroom bones, pig skin, pickled bamboo shoots .

The Food Safety Board of Ho Chi Minh City has also discovered 2 tons of unidentified pig heart, stinking in the bleach tanks and at a facility in District 12. The owner admitted to use substances bleaching to clean dirty and black products, then sell as food.

Previously in Ho Chi Minh City, a survey once recorded that up to 80% of samples of lotus, spinach, chicken feet, snow mushrooms in bleached markets and cafes are industrial chemical oxygen before finished product processing. The authorities also identified two of the white powders that some food soaking sites are sodium sulphite (Na ₂ SO ₃ ) and sodium hyposulfite (Na ₂ S2O ₃ ) which are harmful to health.

Also in Ho Chi Minh City, many samples of vermicelli, bread soup, and cake, after testing also detected the presence of optical whiteners. Of which 5 of 9 vermicelli samples, 100% of sample cakes, wet cakes and soup cakes, 3 of 4 samples of noodle cake, containing fluorescent whitening agent.