Consumer Council finds doughnuts are loaded with trans-fats

Anyone with doubts that doughnuts are fattening has had them removed by the Consumer Council.

The watchdog found in tests that doughnuts were loaded with trans-fats that could cause obesity and even lead to serious health problems such as heart disease.

Tests done jointly by the council and the Centre for Food Safety found that one doughnut contained as much as 2.2 grams of the fats, exceeding the World Health Organisation's recommended limit for a full day's intake. Two other popular sweet treats were found to contain high levels of the fats.

A traditional lo por beng (wife cake) from the Wing Wah cake shop had 1.7 grams per 100 grams and a Garden Company's vanilla-flavoured cream wafer 1.3.

The council said that a person eating one piece of wife cake would consume close to 60 per cent of the recommended daily intake of fats.

Lawmaker Fred Li Wah-ming, the Democratic Party's consumer affairs spokesman, urged food manufacturers to use non-hydrogenated oils as substitutes and advised the public to eat less crispy and fried food.

Mr Li did not see a big difference in the taste of foods made with non-hydrogenated oils, and said there were no excuses for manufacturers not to use healthier substitutes.

The fatty doughnut sample was from Krispy Kreme and was found to have 4.7 grams of trans-fat per 100 grams, while two other doughnut samples from Arome Bakery and A-1 Bakery had considerably less - 0.25 grams and 0.46 grams respectively.

Anne Fung Yu-kei, a principal medical officer at the Centre for Food Safety, said there was a wide variation in the level of trans-fats in food products.

Dr Fung said trans-fats could affect the heart and increase the risk of coronary disease.

Ambrose Ho, chairman of publicity and the community relations committee of the council, advised food manufacturers to avoid using hydrogenated vegetable oils in their products and develop methods to reduce trans-fats content. Seven samples were found to have variations in their nutrition labelling which might be misleading to consumers.

The Centre for Food Safety has sent warning letters to these distributors and manufacturers told them to change the labels within two weeks.

Companies like using trans-fats in their foods because they are easy to use, inexpensive to produce and last a long time.

A spokeswoman for Wing Wah said the company was aware of the health concerns and would continue to study possible substitutes. The Garden Company said it had identified some replacements but needed to study quality control and make sure the product still tasted good. Krispy Kreme had no comment.

A total of 85 food products, including those from bakeries, ready-to-eat savouries, instant noodles, soups, milk products, mayonnaise, chocolate spreads, peanut butters and chocolate, were tested. Eighty-one were found to contain trans-fats.

The council and the Centre for Food Safety also did tests last October on 80 food products, in which cream-filled bread was found to contain the highest level of trans-fats with 1.8 grams per 100 grams.

SCMP. May 15, 2008.

Why did so many new buildings fail?

'Some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth'

In a sea of mud, tree limbs and rocks at what used to be Beichuan county's only high school, an old four-storey building is incongruously marooned.
Some roof tiles are broken, but otherwise, there is no obvious damage.

"That's where I studied more than 30 years ago," said a 50-year-old man, who gave his surname as Wang. He graduated in 1977.

Mr Wang has been glued to the rubble for more than 40 hours, waiting for a miracle to bring back his daughter, Wang Xiaolan, who was on the first floor of the new school building when Monday's quake struck.

More than 80 per cent of concrete structures in Beichuan - 34km from the quake epicentre - collapsed, and only four out of every 10 people survived. "She's probably dead," a dazed Mr Wang said in a toneless voice. "They've been pulling out bodies, and some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth within a couple of minutes."

The building where Wang Xiaolan, a 23-year-old English teacher, was conducting a class with first-year high school students was built in 2004. It is one of the three buildings on the campus that tumbled into piles of rubble.

"All of them were built after 2000," Mr Wang said. "It's strange that the old buildings remained intact but new ones collapsed."

The only other concrete structure left standing is a four-storey residential building 100 metres away. Brown flower pots still sit on a small balcony on its top floor.

"That was built in the 1970s for school teachers," Mr Wang said. "The quality of the architecture - from the frame, steel, cement to bricks - everything, was much better back then."

As buildings came crashing down, questions are being asked whether corruption and shoddy construction are to blame for such a heavy toll.

Victims' families have started pointing fingers at local officials who are suspected of pocketing money budgeted for construction and at private real estate companies that had saved money by cutting corners on the project. When Premier Wen Jiabao was inspecting the township on Tuesday, Mr Wang was among the crowd, gripped by an urge to heckle him about the so-called tofu projects.

But he shook his hand instead, without saying anything. "I still can't get my head around it. My daughter was eating dinner with me on Sunday night, but the next day she's gone for good. How could that happen?"

Liu Yongzhi, 32, a worker at the Dongfeng Steam Turbine Plant, said he would ask Mr Wen why most public buildings in his town of Hanwang - 60km east of the epicentre - had toppled. The factory imploded into two metres of rubble, he said.

"It sounds unbelievable, but we were one of the top three steam turbine makers in the country," he said. "It vanished within a couple of seconds." Two schools affiliated with the factory were also destroyed, leaving 200 children buried.

A seven-storey, modern building in the township of 20,000 - which served as major entertainment spot for local cadres - also imploded, Mr Liu said. Several senior officials playing cards in a tea house on the second floor were killed.

Mr Liu's home - a single-family tiled house he built himself - withstood the quake.

"I laid down a really solid foundation for my place," he said. "There's not a single crack."

SCMP. May 16, 2008.

X-Files (2008)

The very first trailer for The X-Files: I Want to Believe has finally arrived! The buzz for this movie is definitely going to pick up with this trailer. It really doesn't reveal much, but still the perfect amount to start up discussion surrounding what the heck actually happens. Was that Daniel Craig I saw? No, it was just Callum Keith Rennie… I have a good feeling most of this movie is going to be centered around that frozen lake that the FBI is searching on. Doesn't it seem like Mulder and Scully are standing there at the end when they both turn and look at "something"? Hey X-Files fans makes sure you take a look at this trailer and chime in with your thoughts below! Are you excited to finally see Mulder and Scully return?

Thanks to IGN for debuting the trailer while we wait for the official site, XFiles.com, to update with their own high definition version for everyone to enjoy.

Watch the first trailer for The X-Files: I Want to Believe at Firstshowing.net

Thousands perish in quake

About 8,500 people were confirmed killed - with the death toll expected to keep climbing - after an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale rocked Sichuan and affected more than a dozen other provinces yesterday.
The quake struck at 2.28pm in Wenchuan county, less than 100km from the Sichuan capital of Chengdu , in what was the strongest to strike the mainland in more than three decades.

The tremor was felt in 16 provinces and municipalities including Beijing and Shanghai, according to the China Earthquake Administration. It was also felt in Hong Kong, and as far away as Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan.

Last time the mainland was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.8 was in July 1976 when more than 270,000 peopled died in the northern city of Tangshan , Hebei province .

In Sichuan, 8,533 people have been confirmed dead. In Beichuan county alone, 3,000 to 5,000 people were believed to have been killed and more than 10,000 injured, Xinhua reported.

Nearly 900 students in Juyuan township in the city of Dujiangyan, about 100km south from Wenchuan, were buried and feared dead after their school building collapsed in the quake. At least 50 of them were confirmed dead last night.

In nearby Shifang city, hundreds of people where buried when buildings at two chemical plants fell down, triggering the leakage of over 80 tonnes of liquid ammonia which forced about 6,000 residents to abandon their homes, the State Administration of Work Safety said, without providing casualty figures.

In Wenchuan county, at least 15 people were killed and 160 were injured, the local government said. Accurate casualty figures are hard to collect due to severed communications and transport links.

Outside Sichuan, preliminary official estimates put the death toll at 61 in Shaanxi , 48 in Gansu , 50 in Chongqing and one in Yunnan . Stampedes were reported in some primary and middle schools in Gansu.

Xiong Xuesong, a 35-year-old engineer, said he felt the first real panic in his life when quake struck while he was shopping in a four-storey Chengdu supermarket among 400 or so shoppers.

"Suddenly the building swayed. The floor became soft. Tiles fell off from walls and goods from shelves. Seconds later, some people started to scream. All this happened in one or two minutes. But it seemed to be much longer," Mr Xiong said. "We found our way out with the help of shop staff. Hundreds of people were already standing in the street, talking about the earthquake. It was not until then I realised it was a quake."

Mr Xiong said there were no warnings before the quake and people were not told how long the aftershocks might continue.

A total of 313 aftershocks shook Sichuan in the three hours after the quake, provincial authorities said.

The disaster will test Beijing's emergency response system and relief efforts for the third time this year, following the blizzards in January and February which caused overwhelming transport chaos and a train crash in Shandong last month that killed 72.

President Hu Jintao ordered "all-out efforts" to save quake victims, while Premier Wen Jiabao arrived at Chengdu to direct the rescue work.

CCTV footage showed Mr Wen on a plane to Sichuan, calling officials to go to the front line to serve the people. "It is an especially severe earthquake disaster. The most important things are calm, confidence, courage and strong leadership," he said.

The Chengdu Military Area Command mobilised 5,000 troops and armed police to help disaster efforts in Wenchuan.

Tian Yixiang, an officer with the emergency office of the PLA, told Xinhua the troops would help local authorities assess the situation and carry out relief work.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms prevented helicopters from flying into the hardest-hit areas, and the China Meteorological Administration warned that disaster relief efforts would be hampered by bad weather over the next three days.

Mobile phone services in Sichuan and Shaanxi were affected by the earthquake, and fixed-line services were cut in some areas of Sichuan and Gansu.

The Three Gorges Dam was not affected by the quake, an official said.

SCMP. May 13, 2008.

Mentos + Diet Coke = Explosion

From Gizmodo:

Giz reader Robert Woodhead combined two things that I just can't seem to get sick of seeing: Stuffing Mentos into Diet Coke bottles and the super-slow-mo action of Casio's EX-F1 camera to create this stunningly beautiful video.
Woodhead compensated for the 1200fps' paltry 336x96 frame size by stitching four different Mentos tests together, and the results are awesome. Globs, ribbons and rings of Coke that are impossible to track in real time come to life when seen in slow-motion.

[A+] Food labelling boils down to public health

Dear students,

The introduction of food labelling legislation has caused some public discussions. If you have been to supermarkets recently, you might have seen labels stating that certain products may vanish later due to the new food labelling policy. What is it all about? This SCMP article written by an Ex-Co member Bernard Chan can give you some ideas about the whole issue.

Regards,
Mr. Fu


Five years ago, the government decided to introduce mandatory nutritional labelling on packaged food. Consumer and health groups wanted a strict system installed quickly. Food importers and retailers resisted it. Officials got a broad consensus for a labelling system detailing levels of carbohydrate, saturated fat, cholesterol and other nutrients.
As it stands, the proposed labelling scheme does not apply to items that sell fewer than 30,000 units a year. They do not need to show any nutrition information at all. This is to ensure that the cost of testing and labelling does not drive these products off the shelves.

However, this exemption does not apply to products making certain health-related claims. The reason is that a claim alone can be a misleading marketing tool. A "sugar-free" product might have worrying levels of fat or salt.

This seemingly minor point has become a battleground, with trade interests arguing that up to 15,000 products - many of them supposedly "healthier" and popular among western and other minorities - may vanish from shop shelves. The 15,000 could well be a big exaggeration. The lobby has done a good job of presenting the issue as one of consumer rights and freedoms, but ultimately their priority is profit.
I am getting e-mails and calls from expatriate mothers and other people scared that Hong Kong will "ban" favourite products at the end of this month. They are victims of scaremongering.

There is, in any case, a two-year grace period before the new rules take effect. Market forces mean thousands of retail lines come and go every year, and most products have alternatives - look at the different brands of cornflakes.

People with allergies and other diet- sensitive conditions are worried that some niche products, like wheat- or dairy-free items, will disappear. However, the new system would not apply to them. Provided the labels do not make specific nutrition claims like "low fat", such items, if sold in small volumes, will not be affected.

A broader criticism of the proposed system is that imported products from the US or Europe already provide nutritional information, so must we reinvent the wheel?

The sticking points are highly technical. The US and Canada measure nutrients per serving, while other places do it per 100 grams. Some allow tiny quantities of nutrients to be rounded down to zero. The food trade complains that Hong Kong's proposed system is "unique", but so are all systems. Offering loopholes (like allowing a simple disclaimer sticker) for some imported goods could open loopholes for locally made foods, making the whole system pointless.

As chairman of the Legislative Council subcommittee on food and drugs considering the proposed nutrition labelling scheme, I spent a lot of this week listening to these arguments. At times, I wonder if everyone is exaggerating their case. For example, I have heard both camps claim that diabetics will suffer if the other side gets its way.

To me, the bottom line is health. We are facing rising levels of heart disease, obesity and cancer, largely because of what we eat. With health-care costs rising, the government has a duty to make sure consumers understand what their diet choices might mean in the long run. They must also ensure that manufacturers do not mislead people into thinking, for example, that a highly processed snack is healthy just because it is "low" in this or has "added" that.

I freely admit to being a bit of a health freak. But, if consumers want convenience, variety and 50 flavours, we should not bash the food industry for delivering them. Consumers must, ultimately, educate themselves and take responsibility for their own choices. But they cannot do that without adequate labelling.

Bernard Chan is a member of the Executive Council and a legislator representing the insurance functional constituency

SCMP. May 11, 2008.