Did you think you were safe because you avoided Nestle products? Well, the Swiss food giant is not the only one caught selling contaminated products. American companies are being caught all the time (and others may be avoiding detection).
We recently learned that some fruit which claimed to be from Greece was actually imported from Egypt. That fruit did not meet Romania’s safety requirements, nor Greece’s, nor that of Egypt. (It still was probably safer to eat than the average American soft drink is to drink, but we expect fruit to be a lot better.)
Anyway, in an article entitled, ‘US cusomters can now say “The Rock owes me money” after class action settlement’ the Independent let us know that yet another American energy drink had deceptive ingredients. Health food, for the most part, is real food, not processed garbage like “energy” drinks. Humans were not created in a laboratory, and we can get all the nutrients we need from food that grows in nature, plants and animals. We don’t need production plants, I mean plants like those you find in the produce section at a supermarket, or at your local greengrocer, or at a farmer’s market.
Perhaps the food at the farmer’s market is the best, as it is locally grown. If you can’t reach one of those, organic foods tend to pass the most tests.
But, we all thought we could trust the Rock to bring us good food, right? Well, ZOA drinks claimed not to have preservatives while they did. They had extra chemicals in ZOA drinks may not be as dangerous as some recalled products, but they do raise concern over the honesty (and therefore safety) of American brands sold in the European Union and economic zone.
To be fair, it is difficult to distribute a drink worldwide from a small bottling plant without preservatives. It is extremely expensive to produce a global brand of food or drinks, with set ingredients, if you use natural ingredients.
We might have heard the story that Coca Cola was banned in India because it refused to list its full list of ingredients. Do those who create, market and sell these drinks even know what is in them?
From now on, I would suggest that people buy a “fresh” instead of a “suc” when they order a beverage.
When it is a product that is meant to be healthy, like fruit or an energy drink, it makes the news. But who is testing the purity of “junk” food and tobacco and alcohol consumed in Romania?
It is difficult to find information here. Even in its pure form, tobacco contains harmful chemicals. Individual batches are not tested often enough for illegal additives because people think smokers are aware of the health risks anyway. But I don’t think smokers want to be smoking additional, illegal chemicals, that they could be passing on to their loved ones and their pets.
Well, according to a short film we saw, some non-drinkers can test positive to being above the legal limit of alcohol by breathing in. Pe Aripile Vinului tells the story of a village boy with dreams that get ruined by a drunk with alcohol on his breath who speaks to him on the bus. (At least, that’s our interpretation. He could also have tested positive because he refused to pay a bribe.)
According to Psychology Today, this effect isn’t limited to fiction. The second hand effects of smoking means that even those who do not smoke could experience the harmful effects.
More work needs to be done to ensure that tobacco sold on the Romanian market is not laced with poisons or more powerful drugs like fentynol. With all the contaminations being found in foods these days, it is unlikely that something like tobacco which goes through the same production processes is free of impurities.