M&Melamine

So here I am sitting in Jakarta, snacking out of a packet of peanut M&M's. I recently discovered them at a shop and longing for tastes of home have been indulging a little bit. When an e-mail from a friend here in Indonesia pops into my in-box with the subject "If you have these at home DON'T eat them!" attached is a list of foods to throw out. All these foods have been tainted by milk products from China where Melamine was added in the processing of the milk in order to add protein to milk that is diluted. Essentially milk producers are cheating. They blame rising fuel prices and tightening margins. As they justify their behavior more and more children in China fall ill, some reports stating as many as 53,000, and many die from eating tainted milk and baby formula. As I pop one more melts in your mouth not in your hand, taste of American goodness into my mouth I read the list and there it is... M&M's.


But noooo, these can't be made in china? I scour the package written in about a dozen different languages, I peel back the Bahasa Indonesian label that has been stuck to the package presumably to meet some sort of national standard and underneath it find the words... "MADE IN CHINA". I remember once buying and American flag for the 4th of July and finding those words on the flag and laughing at the irony. But as the last M&M was melting in my mouth, I wasn't enjoying the irony anymore. Spit, spit, spit!

I already have food stats pretty well plugged into my head as far as calories, protein, fiber, iron, calcium etc... Call me lazy, but I don't want to have to think about my food in more detail than this. I don't want to have to look at the back of the package and guess what all those "other" ingredients are (Asia is notorious for adding MSG to any and everything) or look at where it is made then look up that country's social, environmental and regulatory record. And what about Mars? At what level are they responsible or will they "these were produced by subsidiary X for subsidiary Y" us to death, just as the Chinese dairies justified their actions with fuel prices and profit margins?

Oh forget it! I think I will go eat an apple... grown without pesticides, but sometimes with pests (ie worms), without wax but always dirty, individually wrapped in a little Styrofoam net to prevent bruising (but probably very bad for the birds) and imported from Japan. Japan's apple farmers are suffering from rising fuel prices as well... they have tightening margins... hmmm... I think I will just go eat an apple and not think about it.