Tuesday, September 23, 2008

NO MILK TODAY!

Phew!Holiday ends so fast and before you knew it, it ended!

But what worries me greatly is the food all babies,toddlers and kids associate with- their milk! With ever increasing numbers of babies being sicked, the latest figure added up to 53000 children sickened with tainted milk and with several deaths reported I have decided to research on this phenomena to update all mothers what caused these lovely bouncy baby to be sick. to quote from 'Doctors 2008 blog':

Mixing Melamine and Milk

If you think that only milk and milk products with only Chinese names are contaminated with melamine, the results released by the Center For Food Safety of Hong Kong as reported by China Daily yesterday raised the possibility that the practice may be more widespread.

Of 65 different brands tested, one contained melamine at a level of 1.4 ppm(parts per million), the safety limit being 6.3 mg per kg body weight per day. While the level detected is below the safety limit, it was enough for the authorities to have it removed from the shelves. However, to allay concerns, this product, named as Nestle Dairy Farm Pure Milk (Catering Use Only), was actually manufactured on the Chinese mainland.

The recent outbreak in mainland China was reported widely in the media the last 2 weeks and to date, 53,000 babies are affected, 13,000 hospitalised and 4 have died , and counting..

Melamine - the high content of nitrogen(blue dots) are similar to that of amino-acids which make up protein

Melamine is used in making plastics and is loaded with nitrogen molecules. Because of the high nitrogen content, this makes milk products appear to have a higher protein count as the current methods of measuring protein are based on measuring the nitrogen content alone. Health experts say that ingesting small amounts does no harm, but sustained use especially in babies and children can cause kidney stones and renal failure, as melamine is insoluble in the human body and tends to deposit itself in the kidneys which cannot remove it from the system via the urine.

But why add melamine in the first place? This allows milk to be diluted with water by the unscrupulous and the greedy to give more volume. The ‘protein’ levels are then built up back by adding the protein substitute (melamine).

A burning issue is that, while the NZ government raised this issue as early as March this year, no action was taken by the Chinese government. One of the reasons quoted by some newspapers was that the Chinese government had issued a 21-point plan to all journalists covering the Olympics to avoid taboo subjects, including food safety issues (point 8). A sort of news censorship to put the Beijing Olympics in a spotless stage. I guess I should add the melamine issue as an addition to my series of earlier posts on “Beijing Olympics Face Major Health Issues”…. :-(unquote.