Saturday 24 September 2016

Food pollution.

I have just heard a voice on the radio describing the contents of a take away....amongst the food were small amounts of rat droppings and earwigs!
This reminded me of an evening when I was pregnant for the first time so we are going back into the mists of time.
My husband having spent the day with his mother had brought me a treat home with him...he knew I enjoyed Chinese food and in those days we lacked the ingredients and spices to make anything really good at home...
I was delighted with the chow mein and tucked in with gusto...
There at the bottom was a still wriggling little worm...
I had no time to do a proper identification of the species....I threw up.
I continued to throw up for some time...
My husband clearly thought I was being abit picky!
I asked him not to bring me any "treats" again.
By this time I was being ungrateful as well as picky...
This morning...the whole scene replayed as I listened to the shocking news that it's still happening!
Living here any sort of take away is out of the question but the alternative is to buy ready meals from the supermarkets.
This I have been doing since losing my husband...spending hours cooking for one person seems silly.....so I don't do it!
I shall examine my meals fairly closely now I've been transported back in time to the sixties.
My husbands joke that the little worms were added protein still makes me feel a little nauseous if I allow it into my brain...
I wish I'd not heard this mornings description of what can be found in takeaways....but I can't unhear it so I may have to do a bit of cooking this weekend....
It won't harm me!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2 comments:

Ray Barnes said...

On my bucket list of things I had never done (after John's death), was ordering a takeaway. I am so glad to say it is still on the list.....and will probably stay there.

UKViewer said...

I suspect that this will cause us to check out the hygiene ratings on takeaway premises published by our local councils.

I know that in our Church context (we provide lunches and refreshments from our Church Hall) we are inspected by the Food Hygiene people at the council and rated each time.

Thankfully we pass with flying colours, each time. But we ensure that we keep on top of things, with periodic deep cleans and at the moment are fund raising to upgrade the kitchen to modern standards (last done 10 years ago). Things change all of the time, and the subject of training for those involved rises. You can do the training on line, for free on the government web site, so that makes it easy to do, but actually getting people to do it can be problematic - but resistance is futile (as someone said) and eventually, people see the sense of it all.

In my Army Career I was trained in Environmental Health and I can still remember the horror stories of when it goes wrong - which can include serious disease or even death. And, new bacteria makes the risks of infection or cross infection a risk - so high standards of personal hygiene are necessary.

If something is found in food that we purchase, we need to complain noisily to the business and local authority - we shouldn't just shrug it off and put it down to experience. It's our responsibility to protect others from those who don't take such responsibilities seriously.