CHOPSTICKS
1. As Nguyen Van Ninh needles his chopsticks through a steaming bowl of Vietnam’s famous noodle soup, he knows it could be spiked with formaldehyde. But the thought of slurping up the same chemical used to preserve corpses isn’t enough to deter him. “I think if we don’t see those chemicals being put in the food with our own eyes, then we can just smack our lips and pretend that there are no chemicals in the food,” he said, devouring a 20-cent bowl of ‘pho’ on a busy Hanoi sidewalk. “Why worry about it?” While the discovery of tainted imports from China has shocked Westerners, food safety has long been a problem in much of Asia, where enforcement is lax and food poisoning deaths are not unusual.
2. Hot weather, lack of refrigeration and demand for the cheap street food drive vendors and producers to find inexpensive—and often dangerous—ways to preserve their products. Formaldehyde has long been used to lengthen the shelf life of rice noodles and tofu in some Asian countries, even though it can cause liver, nerve and kidney damage. The chemical, often used in embalming, was found a few years ago in seven of 10 pho noodle factories in Hanoi. Borax, found in everything from detergent to fibreglass, is also commonly used to preserve fish and meats in Indonesia and elsewhere. Farmers often spray their produce with banned pesticides such as DDT.
3. “The people who do this want to make money. And if they’re stupid and greedy, this is a bad combination,” said Gerald Moy, a food safety expert at the World Health Organisation in Geneva. Fish containing pufferfish toxins, drug-laced frozen eel and juice spiked with harmful dyes were among other unsafe products shipped to the US. Diethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting thickening agent also used in antifreeze, has been blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in Panama after the chemical was imported from China and mixed into cough syrup and other medicines.
4. The US Food and Drug Administration has halted all shipments of Chinese toothpaste to test for the same chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.
Word-Meanings
Para I. 1. Chopsticks (noun): the pair of tapered sticks used for eating 2. Steaming (adjective): hot and giving off steam 3. Bowl (noun): around deep dish 4. Spiked (of a beverage) containing alcohol or drugs often without informing those who partake it 5. Slurping (verb): eating or drinking with a loud sucking sound 6. Deter (verb): prohibit 7. Smack (verb): to close and open lips to produce a sharp sound, often as a sign of relish 8. Devouring (verb): eating quickly and hungrily 9. Tainted (adjective): infected 10. Lax (adjective): careless 11. Corpses (noun): dead bodies 12. Enforcement (noun): implementation of rules
Para 2. 1. Damage (noun): injury, loss 2. Embalming (noun): preserving 3. Banned (adjective): prohibited 4. Shelf life (noun): useful life of product 5. Produce (noun): agricultural products
Para 3. 1. Stupid (adjective): foolish 2. Eel (noun): a type of fish 3. Antifreeze (noun): a liquid used in the radiator of an internal combustion engine to lower the freezing point of the cooling medium
Para 4. 1. Halted (verb): stopped 2. Shipment (noun): something that is transported by ship 3. reportedly (adverb): according to the reported rumour
Questions:
1. Choose the correct option:
(a) Which of the following factors drives people to not care about the lives of other people?
(i) Religion (ii) Money
(iii) Political set-up (iv) Lax laws and money
(b) Diethylene glycol killed at least ………… in Panama.
(i) 48 people (ii) 49 people
(iii) 54 people (iv) 51 people
(c) What can prevent deaths invited by chemically laced eatables?
(i) Public awareness (iii) Vigilant public and strict laws
(ii) Strict laws (iv) Import ban
(d) In which part of the world is the enforcement of laws lax?
(i) Europe (ii) Asia
(iii) Africa (iv) America
(e) Find the correct word for ‘eating quickly’:
(i) slurping (ii) chewing
(iii) devouring (iv) digesting
(f) The thing which is infected means the thing which is
(i) rotten (ii) damaged
(iii) spiked (iv) tainted
2.Answer the following questions briefly:
(a) With what substance are noodles generally spiked?
(b) Why do we pretend that there are no chemicals in eatables?
(c) Why is Asia facing a problem of tainted food?
(d) Why do vendors adopt inexpensive and dangerous ways to preserve products in Asia?
(e) Find a word for the underlined word from the passage and re-write the sentence ‘drinking soup (with a sucking sound)’.
(f) Add a prefix to the word ‘expensive’ to make another word opposite in meaning to it.
Answers:
1. (a) iv (b) iv (c) iii (d) ii (e) iii (f) iv
2.(a) Noodles are generally spiked with formaldehyde, a very dangerous chemical usually used to preserve corpses.
(b) It is because we have not seen the chemicals being added to eatables and, moreover, we simply care for the flavours which the chemicals impart.
(c) Since the enforcement of laws to check the addition of banned substances to eatables is almost lax in Asia, the problem of tainted food is very common there.
(d) Hot weather, lack of proper refrigeration and demand for cheap roadside foods make vendors in Asia adopt inexpensive and dangerous ways to preserve food.
(e) slurping the soup
(f) inexpensive
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