Chinese Food Scandals That You Won't Believe

With a population of over 1.4 billion people, China certainly has a lot of hungry mouths to feed. But with such a drastic demand for food, the lax regulatory oversight and rampant profit seeking of the country’s food industry has left Chinese consumers with some stomach turning products. From imitation eggs to poisoned baby formula and ancient steak, let’s discuss some of China’s food scandals!

Gutter Oil

If you look at this nice old lady in the footage below, you might imagine that she must be doing the neighborhood a favor by cleaning out the local sewers, right?

The Making Of 'Gutter Oil' by Radio Free Asia

You’d be forgiven for thinking that is a heroic act of community care, until you learn she’s actually harvesting that sewage. It’s the main ingredient of black market "Gutter Oil", a disgusting and unhygienic product made by reusing solidified oil that’s been washed down drains and into the sewers.

The slop is scooped out, processed, and combined with animal fats to produce an affordable and illegal alternative to cooking oil. It’s then cheaply sold onto restaurants, street vendors, and anyone else that won’t ask too many questions about where it came from.

Food safety experts have warned the public that that type of oil contains a harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that can cause gastrointestinal damage, and even cancer! But the lure of a cheap alternative meant that at its peak in 2010 almost a tenth of China’s cooking oil was made from that recycled sewage!

As dangerous as it is, the product is still used in China’s restaurant industry to this day. In 2020, Employees of restaurant chain Xiaolongkan were arrested for selling more than two tons of gutter oil over two years from the sewers behind their restaurant! The news probably left a bad taste in their customers' mouths.

Stinky Tofu

While some people have compared the stench of China’s famous stinky tofu to smelly feet, hot garbage, or rotten meat, others can’t get enough of its pungent pong! That traditional tofu is a Chinese delicacy made by curdling soya milk, pressing it into a solid block, and marinating it in a fermented brine.

The longer it ferments, the more of a pong that putrid dish gives off! While some factories only let their brine sit for a few days, other establishments can let it sit for up to a year! Its symbolic stink is usually a sign of quality, but sometimes it’s the sign of a soiled shortcut.

In 2003, a journalist for Shenzhen News went undercover at an unregulated stinky tofu workshop, and was told that human poo was added to the brine to make it smellier. Unsurprisingly, the authorities shut the workshop down immediately.

Then in 2007 China’s State Bureau of Industry and Commerce revealed that over 100 manufacturers had been using rancid water and manure to speed up the stinky production! One worker even admitted to pooping in a plastic bucket so that he could save his self produced stock cubes for the brine. Maybe they should think about renaming it toilet tofu?

Bleached Tofu Scandal

Ever heard the phrase “too good to eat”? In the case of China’s bleached tofu scandal, those words rang all too true. In 2014, Chinese authorities in Shandong province seized over 11 tons of illegally made dried tofu. It may have looked perfect, but it turned out to be toxic!

It had been produced by a local gang who thought they could turn a quick buck by making the tofu with the banned ingredient Rongalite. It’s an industrial bleaching agent often used in the printing and dying industry. While it made the dried tofu sticks whiter and chewier, the formaldehyde gas it releases during the cooking process can lead to headaches, vomiting, and even cancer!

It already sounds pretty bad, but things were about to get way worse. Authorities feared that local markets around Shandong, Henan and Jiangxi provinces had been sold over 110 tons of the toxic tofu, that’s almost the same weight as two Boeing 720’s! Fortunately, the toxic effects failed to take off as no one came forward to report any illness’.

Blood Tofu

Despite the name, China’s bright red Blood Tofu has never seen a drop of soya milk in its life! It’s one of the grizzlier foodstuffs to come out of that confusing culinary creation, as it’s made almost exclusively from coagulated duck or pigs blood! It’s heated with salt to congeal it into blocks which are then used in a variety of traditional soups and dishes.

In 2013, four businessmen from Henan province were arrested for making and selling around 530,000 lbs of poisoned blood tofu at local markets. The operation had lined their pockets with a whopping $75,000, but at a moral cost! They’d mixed it with concentrated formaldehyde, which is known in its liquid form as formalin.

In case that isn’t ringing any bells, formaldehyde is a chemical with preservative qualities that’s commonly used to embalm dead bodies! Mixing it with the blood tofu gave the product a longer shelf life and a brighter color.

But consuming formaldehyde can cause serious liver damage and kidney dysfunction. And if it’s consumed by pregnant women, it can even cause deformities in their unborn babies! To make matters worse, the factory owner behind the scandal knew the chemical was toxic and even made a conscious effort to emit the ingredient from any blood tofu he prepared for his own family.

Exploding Watermelons

As hilarious as this concept sounds, exploding watermelons were less of a joke and more of a nightmare for Jiangsu province’s farmers back in 2011. After a period of heavy rain, 115 acres filled with unripe watermelons suddenly started to burst! One farmer reported that it happened so fast, at least 80 melons in his crop split open in a matter of hours!

While many claimed they didn’t know what had caused that mysterious melon massacre, Professor Wang Liangju from Nanjing University inspected the crops and discovered the root of the problem. The farmers had used a plant growth stimulant called forchlorfenuron.

Exploding Watermelons, Latest Food Scandal in China by funny guy

It’s a legal additive that should have brought the melon harvest forward by two weeks and increased the size of the fruit by about 20%! But it had been used too late in the cycle, and when combined with the wet weather those unripe babies were sent into a growth overdrive! The explosive scandal put a real spotlight on China’s ill-educated farming practices, with very few people wanting to buy the rest of the crop.

Dead Pigs Found In Rivers

It’s not often that you see pigs in a river. But in 2013, over 16,000 pig carcasses were discovered along the shores of the Huangpu river in Jiaxing city. It became a huge concern, as the Huangpu is a major source of drinking water for the area’s locals. And the thought of decaying pig particles in your drink isn’t exactly appealing!

Mystery surrounded the swimming swine’s deadly demise, until lab tests revealed that many of the pigs had been affected by Porcine Circovirus. That is a disease that causes breathing difficulties, diarrhea, and sometimes death. Despite the scandalous scare, it can’t be transferred to humans, and the water quality reportedly remained stable.

However, Jiaxing officials claimed no epidemic had been found in the animals, and that the deaths were probably caused by a bad winter. If the reason really was that innocent, then why were they illegally dumped like that?

Authorities believe that the incident was linked to the countries recent crackdown on the banned sale of pork products from diseased, dead pigs. Instead of discarding them safely, it was more convenient to just dump the rotting carcasses in the local water supply instead.

Bad Bottled Water

You may think bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water especially after that dead pig problem! But in 2013, China’s bottled water industry faced a serious scandal when it was revealed one company had looser water safety standards than the nations tap water!

Nongfu Spring, which once produced 21.8% of China’s bottled water, was accused by the Beijing Times of filtering its water to a regional safety standard, rather than the national standard. That regional standard, called DB33/383, had last been updated in 2005, while the national regulation had been changed in 2007!

The older, looser guidelines stated that levels of cancer causing elements like arsenic could be double that of the national limit! Similarly, trace elements of a heavy metal called cadmium which can cause respiratory problems were allowed at five times the national level!

Even though Nongfu fought back against the claims with a hefty $9.7 million defamation lawsuit, the damage to their reputation was already done. People lost confidence in the company, and the scandal cost them over 2 billion yuan in sales at the time, that was about $325 million!

Fast Food Scandals

Fast food giants Starbucks, KFC, and McDonalds may all look different at a brand level, but their Chinese branches all became part of a rotten scandal back in June 2014. A TV report exposed one of their suppliers, Shanghai Husi Food Company, for using expired meat in their products!

Workers at the company’s factory were secretly filmed mixing expired packages of meat in with fresh produce. They even picked up meat off the dirty ground and hurled it back into production!

China's tainted food scandal hits U.S. companies by Arirang News

The report hit McDonald’s right in the McNuggets and led to a 7.3% drop in Asian market sales in July 2014, which dropped even further to 14.5% in August 2014! But it wasn’t the only chain being supplied with the out of date meat. Some of KFC’s restaurants and Starbucks’ cafes had also used Shanghai Husi. And big brands like Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Burger King, and even IKEA used them in the past as well.

In the end, five employees were arrested, with an investigation concluding that the entire operation had been organized by the company to skimp on production costs. Thankfully, no illness’ were ever reported. That’s all fine and dandy, but my stomach hasn’t stopped churning at the thought of those nasty McNuggets!

Fake Hotpot Scandal

Hot pot is a Chinese dish that is exactly what it says on the tin or in our next case, pot! It’s a large hot pot filled with a scrumptious, simmering broth, accompanied by various meats, vegetables, and sauces that you cook at your table.

It may sound soup-erb, but in 2015 a Chinese nutritionist blew the lid off a hot pot scandal sweeping the nation. He didn’t add a single piece of actual food into the recipe! Instead, he just mixes ethyl maltol, capsicum oleoresin, and disodium 5’-ribonucleotide into boiling water, which is a very scientific way of saying he thickened the water and added flavor enhancers!

That outrageous video was blasted over Chinese media, alerting the public to the drastic cost cutting methods used in some restaurants. And it doesn’t stop at chemical soup! Investigators discovered that some restaurants also added antimalarial drugs into the hot pot concoction.

Why? Because they were using rotten meat, and the drugs counteracted any side effects customers might suffer from, like a nasty case of diarrhea! Looks like the only pot those customers are going to need is the toilet!

Cadmium Rice

Did you fall for the "Chinese plastic rice" hoax that dominated the internet in 2016? Reports at the time claimed that some of the rice being produced by China was as plastic as the bag you used to carry it home in. Those social media rumors may have been fake thankfully, but China has had some serious trouble with its rice in the past, and for a much more serious issue.

Back in 2011, Nanjing Agricultural University found that 10% to 60% of rice sold at local markets in six different regions contained cadmium, a highly toxic heavy metal. In trace amounts the metal is mostly harmless, with the legal maximum for cadmium in rice at .44 mg per lb.

But in some of the samples the researchers found five times that amount! Long term exposure at those levels can lead to respiratory problems, cancer, and even softening of the bones! That contamination crisis terrified the nation because rice is a staple of Chinese cuisine, with the country consuming almost 150 million tons between 2010 and 2011.

But how had it gotten so bad? China blamed huge human pollution sources, such as mining and agriculture, stemming from the countries rapid rate of industrialization. They estimated 10% of the agricultural soil had been polluted with heavy metal elements, contaminating as much as 12 million tons of rice, and costing them more than 20 billion yuan that’s $317 million!

Fake Eggs

It might sound ludicrous, but the urban internet legend about China producing fake eggs is no joke! Since the 1990’s, fake eggs have reportedly appeared on Chinese markets, looking almost identical to the real things both inside and out. But if you try frying them, they let off a strong chemical smell that lets you know you’ve been fooled!

They’re made by preparing a mold, which is then filled with a mix of resin, starch, coagulant, and pigments to give the egg white the right color. A fake yolk, made of a different mix of resin and pigments, is then plopped into the mold. Finally, the entire thing is covered in a mix of paraffin wax, gypsum powder, and calcium carbonate to give it a realistic looking shell.

Plastic Egg... China making Plastic Egg.. Saw after purchase the egg.. by Let's Know

Although they might look genuine enough to fool you, there are some easy ways to tell them apart from a real egg without having to watch the chicken lay it in front of you. Firstly, fake eggs have yolks and whites that mix together a little too easily, or don’t mix together at all.

They also lack the weird stringy bits around the yolk called the chalaza, which suspends a natural yolk inside its shell so that it doesn’t break. But the biggest give away is usually the price! They can cost just 25% of what it takes to make a real egg, so they can be sold for profit at a much lower price.

Human Hair In Soy Sauce

Soy sauce is a popular, sodium loaded condiment that goes with everything from stir fry’s to fish. It’s usually made by combining soya beans, yeast, and wheat flour before being left to ferment for up to two years! But 20 years ago, the Hubei Xinshengyuan Bio Engineering Company was caught using human hair as a substitute ingredient for their soy sauce!

Back in 2004, those workers were secretly recorded sifting through dirty bags of hair that had been collected from barbershops, salons, and hospitals all over the country. It was their job to remove items from the hair like cotton buds, menstrual pads, and even used condoms. The hair was then cut up and placed in a reactor, without being cleaned, which processed it into a dark looking liquid.

The key component of that revolting liquid was its nitrogen content, which could be added to other ingredients to satisfy the national soy sauce standards. It was then dried and sold onto production companies as "amino acid powder". The process was much quicker than the two years it took to ferment authentic soy, and reduced production costs by about half!

That story might be enough to make you want to cough up a hairball of your own, but there’s a small chance all isn’t as it seems. There were no laboratory tests done on the product in question, and the report stemmed from a single TV report based on the testimonies of a few workers.

Plastic Tapioca Pearls

Bubble tea, also known as pearl milk tea or boba tea, is a bizarre beverage that somehow manages to be both food and drink at the same time! Most commonly comprised of black tea, milk, syrup, and tapioca pearls, it’s become a sugary Asian sensation with around 450,000 shops offering bubble tea across China alone!

But there’s something sinister lurking at the bottom of those cups. In 2019, a 14 year old girl suffering from stomach pains and constipation was given a CT scan, which revealed over 100 undigested tapioca balls blocking up her bowels!

The weird part is that the ingredients of normal tapioca balls aren’t radiopaque, and don’t show up on X-Rays or CT scans. That means that those balls have been made with something else! It turns out that, to save on costs of producing fresh tapioca some Chinese manufacturers add "polymer materials", which is a fancy way of saying plastics to the pearls!

During an investigation, one shop owner admitted the pearls were made at a chemical plant, using things like the soles of leather shoes and old tires! As farfetched as it sounds, the Chemical Experimentation Centre of Qingdao University tested a sample of pearls from the local market, and discovered they were highly adhesive almost like glue!

Tainted Milk

In 2008, China’s milk industry took a sour turn after almost 300,000 infants got sick from drinking contaminated formula. The milk powder being spooned into those poor babies bottles contained fatal doses of melamine, a chemical compound used by manufacturers to create plastic kitchenware, fertilizer, and even concrete!

But when it’s added to food products, it can indicate a higher protein content, something that babies need to help them grow up big and strong! Unfortunately, test samples of that formula found nearly 5000 times the maximum amount of melamine in the solution.

But that formula wouldn’t just help them grow up, it’d also help them grow kidneys stones, and even suffer from kidney failure! Six unfortunate infants died as a result, and 21 people were arrested. Two milk dealers, Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, who knowingly sold almost 850 tons of the toxic milk to dairies from July 2007 to August 2008, were executed for public endangerment.

It then emerged that the production company, called Sanlu, knew they were selling toxic milk, allowing almost 1000 tons to leave its dairies before halting production. As the scale of the scandal emerged, huge batches of milk were recalled from across the globe. They were dumped in different landfills and destroyed.

Tainted Fish Feed

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just baby milk that was found to be tainted with monstrous melamine. A few months after the formula scandal emerged, food inspectors in Hong Kong found the fish feed imported from China had also been contaminated with the toxic compound!

The feed had melamine levels of 14.5 milligrams per pound, almost twice Hong Kong’s legal level! It may not sound like much, but in accumulated doses that level is enough to cause bladder stones and cancer in the animals that consume it. But how did it get into the feed to begin with?

While China threw some of the blame towards rogue food and feed dealers, scientists pointed out that melamine was also used as a common pesticide across the country! Being absorbed into plants and washed into rivers meant the melamine could have come from anyone of those sources used in production.

And the effects of run off pollution like that have become hard to ignore in the fishing community. In 2007, 110,000 lbs of fish died in that lake in Wuhan, Hubei province, due in part to pollution. Then in 2013 thousands of fish washed up along a 19 mile stretch of Fu River in Hubei, killed by pollutant run off from a nearby chemical plant. So, until China finds a serious pollution solution, it might be best to stay away from the seafood!

Rotting Meat From The 1970s Seized By Chinese Customs

In 2015, Chinese authorities busted a frozen meat smuggling operation that left a nostalgic taste in everyone’s mouths. The almost 900 ton haul contained a batch of frozen food that was older than some of the customs agents, with labels dating it back to the 1970’s!

Fortunately, it was stopped before it reached its destination, which would have been the restaurants, retailers, and supermarkets of Hunan province. It was part of a much wider operation that cracked down on the sale of over 110,000 tons of fetid frozen meat, worth approximately $500 million.

Decades-old smuggled meat seized in C China by New China TV

Even though meat like that is sold at much cheaper prices, smugglers transporting those putrid parcels do their best to cut costs, so they’re often transported in non-refrigerated vehicles. By the time they arrive at their destinations, it’s not always clear how long the meat has been stored for. A day? A week? A month? Well, in this case, it was 45 years! I know some people like an aged steak, but that’s just ridiculous!

If you were amazed at these Chinese food scandals, you might want to read about weird things that only happen in China. Thanks for reading!