吃的难题....老外在中国

一位大约20年前曾在中国学习过的朋友告诉我，他父亲来中国时，除了白煮蛋什么都不吃。无论早餐、中餐还是晚餐，他都只是一个鸡蛋解决。这位父亲对自己周围的食品全不信任，尤其是农产品，因为当时人们都说中国普遍使用未经处理的生活污水浇庄稼。

当这位朋友向我说起这件事时，我们都对他父亲的损失乐不可支。虽然这看似是件极端反应过度的荒唐之举，但在中国，要确定你和家人能吃什么可不是轻松的事。难就难在你搞不清楚什么食品是安全的，什么不安全；不知道合理关注健康和神经过敏之间的界限在哪里。

在中国，你花很少的钱就能像个皇帝一样享用各种美食，这里食品品种繁多、供应充足。从家骑车10分钟，我就能到附近一个小村子里采购蔬菜和水果，小贩们常常把运货的拖拉机一停，就地做起生意来。就算买很多，花费也难得超过5美元，除非你买从南方运过来的热带水果。虽然这样的采购让我很开心，但我也不禁疑心起到那里买东西是否安全和明智来。我还怀疑我们是否对饮食问题有足够的重视，从家里阿姨为我们烧的排骨到我上周六招待客人的烤鸡，甚而至于我们在中国各处餐馆里享用过的一道道美食，细想之下似乎都难保安全。

最近，有关中国出口美国的某些食品据查受到污染的新闻成了人们谈论的一个热点话题。实际上，并非只有外国人才关注食品安全问题。中国当地媒体就跟踪报导过在咸鸭蛋里发现违禁添加剂苏丹红的事，还有报导说，去年夏天北京有160人在食用福寿螺后发生食物中毒。官方媒体新华社最近报导，中国政府即将实施一项加强食品和药品安全管理的五年规划。

不过，我的顽固本性使我对那些负面报导大多充耳不闻，还是固守自己的老习惯，那样我会觉得很舒服。毕竟，美国也存在食品安全问题，去年秋天的大肠杆菌疫情就曾使数百名美国人染病。我对有些人在自己该吃些什么方面花费太多心思一直不以为然，因此在饮食问题上也从无禁忌。我在选择食品时喜欢把决定权交给嘴巴、肚子和心理感觉，而不是大脑。但目前看来，食品安全已经日益成为一个我无法回避的问题，这一点从日常生活中就能察觉。

在中国生活的一些外国人尽量不喝中国啤酒，因为几年前在一些中国啤酒中发现了甲醛。这个问题现在似乎已经解决了，中国名牌青岛啤酒以及北京人爱喝的燕京啤酒的生产厂家都否认在酿酒过程中使用了甲醛。虽然有些人觉得还是小心为妙，但我从未放弃25美分一瓶的中国啤酒带给我的享受。

但我确实已决定不再喝中国本地产的牛奶了，因为一位从事中国乳品行业咨询工作的朋友去年对我说，中国的牛奶问题太多，他家现在只喝从澳大利亚和新西兰进口的超高温消毒牛奶。自那以后我们家也这样做了，不过我们现在也会购买几种中国名牌牛奶，据说它们的质量较有保证。

我还在考虑是否要全部或部分改吃有机食品，北京有几个地方卖这类食品。它们比普通食品要贵很多，但至少你在北京能够买到，而在中国其他地方就不一定有这个条件了。

居住在深圳的美国人查理•金鲍尔(Charlie Kimball)一直在为寻找有机食品而发愁，当地一家沃尔玛超市曾短暂出售过这类食品。而对金鲍尔和他的日本妻子来说，有机食品断货只不过是他们在饮食问题上碰到的又一件倒霉事而已。

金鲍尔说：“大约四、五个月前，我在香港媒体看到一则报导说，深圳的一种鱼已被禁止输港，原因是有污染。”他说，两天后他在深圳本地媒体也看到了这条消息，这让他们对海鲜也彻底丧失了安全感，他们一直很喜欢吃，可现在谁知道里面都有些什么不安全的东西。

听到这话，我开始觉得以前没有更关心食品问题是个错误，因此开始向一些我看重的美食家们征询意见，想看看他们如何看待这个问题。我首先给Lisa Minder-Wu打了电话，她是一位在北京住了13年的美国人，她的果园餐厅(Orchard)是我最喜爱的餐馆之一。她自己在温室里种植绿叶蔬菜和香草，还有一个大果园，里面种植有机水果。我知道她是提倡新鲜的有机食品的，因此预计她可能会提醒我重视食品安全，没想到她对大多数人担心的食品安全问题却并不怎么在意。

Lisa对我说，如果你从那些小贩手里买了少量种植的蔬菜水果，只要仔细清洗，也不会有什么大问题，人们对中国食品的担心是过虑了。她说：“人们往往错误地认为中国所有的东西都不好。我认为在美国小镇超市里常见的那些东西并不新鲜，它们大多食之无味，可能也含有大量农药成分。”

而美籍华人Lejen Chen却不这么看。这位单太太贝谷面包房(Mrs. Shanen's Bagels)的老板娘与她在北京土生土长的丈夫单恩是北京有机食品消费圈子里的核心人物。

Lejen Chen对我说，虽然中国的食品存在很多问题，但这也是个全世界普遍存在的问题。对她来说，不是要在进口和国产食品之间作选择，而是要选择那些以可持续方式生产的有机农产品，远离那些以工业化方式生产的农产品。

她只买有机猪肉；她从不吃鸡肉，因为对质量信不过。她和丈夫当初创办有机农场只是为了满足他们自己和餐馆的需要，不过，农场的规模现在正越来越大。这对夫妇本周刚收获了他们的头茬麦子，接下来就可以自己加工有机面粉了。

初次参观他们的农场我就动了成为其会员的念头，虽然每年的会员费要高达1000美元。几位有机食品专家都向我夸赞这家农场，他们还向我介绍了其他几处生产有机食品地方，并介绍了一些他们以可持续方式进行农业生产的项目。中国的食品安全情况似乎或多或少正在好转。

为了对这一问题能有更多了解，我给一位多年来一直向中国农业部门提供咨询的美国农业专家打了电话。这位专家在从事帮助中国农业生产达到西方标准的工作。

他对我说：“我对这类问题的回答取决于我的心情，还有我是否想让什么人(包括我自己)为我们所有人作出的决定感到后悔，包括是否该在这里生活。”他家里不吃鱼，用他的话说，一看到餐桌上的鱼，他就会联想起鱼塘的污浊环境。

他对中国的农产品及农业水源的清洁问题感到担心。他大多只购买进口的家禽，认为这类家禽的药物残留会少些。他一般不买加工食品，尤其是中国工厂加工的食品，因为这里的质量控制和监督工作更糟糕。

不过，他和家人还是吃了很多中国出产的水果、蔬菜和肉类。毕竟，我们两人都觉得，如果你认为一个地方什么东西都不能吃，那你还能住在这样的地方吗？

显然，有关中国的食品安全问题并没有一个明确答案。朋友们对我说，许多问题争来争去最后都得不出明确答案，其实，哪些问题值得争论都没人能说清楚。

Alan Paul
----------------(英版)

Balancing Food Safety With Eating Enjoyment


A friend who studied in China almost 20 years ago told me that his father refused to eat anything other than hard-boiled eggs when he came for a visit. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, he peeled and ate an egg. He didn't trust any of the food around him, particularly fearing produce because of the then-said-to-be-widespread practice of fertilizing crops with untreated human sewage.

When my friend told me that story, we had a good laugh at his fathers' expense. It still seems like an absurdly extreme overreaction, but deciding what to eat and feed your family in China is no laughing matter. It is not easy to decipher what is safe and what is not, or where to draw the line that crosses from healthy concern to obsessive neurosis.

You can eat like a king very cheaply here and there is an abundance of great and different food available. I can ride my bike 10 minutes to a small village and fill up bags with fruits and vegetables from small local vendors, often selling from the back of tractors. You have to try hard to spend more than five dollars, aiming for tropical fruit 'imported' from Southern China. It's an experience I enjoy on every level and yet I have begun to question the wisdom and safety of it. I also wonder if we give enough thought to our entire diet, from the spare ribs our ayi cooks to the chicken I barbecued and served guests last Saturday and including the many great restaurant meals we have enjoyed all over China.

Contaminated Chinese food products imported to the U.S. have been in the news lately. And it's not just foreigners who are concerned. Local news reports have followed cases of people ingesting banned red Sudan die in salted red-yolk eggs, and 160 Beijing residents were poisoned last summer after eating snails. The state Xinhua news agency recently reported that the government is launching a five-year plan for food and drug safety administration.

Still, my gut instinct is to stick my head in the sand and continue with my habits, which make me quite happy. After all, it's not like there are no concerns in America, as witnessed by the E coli outbreak that sickened hundreds of people last fall. I also have always been impatient with people who spend too much time obsessing over what they're ingesting, which is why I could never maintain a kosher, vegan, Atkins or other strictly proscribed diet. I like to lead with my mouth, belly and heart rather than my head. But it feels more and more like food safety is something I simply have to confront. And it's not like I needed the headlines to know that.

Some expats avoid drinking Chinese beer because it was found to contain formaldehyde a few years ago. That problem has apparently been solved, and national brew TsingTao and Beijing favorite Yanjing have both denied using the stuff in their brewing process. Some people don't like to take chances, but l have not given up my 25-cent liter bottles.

I did, however, decide to pass on local milk after a friend who was here advising the fast-growing dairy industry last year told me that there were enough problems that he served his own family UHT milk from Australia and New Zealand. We have done the same ever since and we now also have the option of several premium local brands said to have better quality control.

I have also contemplated switching wholly or partially to organic produce, which is available from several places in Beijing. You pay quite a premium but at least we have the option, which is not available to people living in other parts of China.

Charlie Kimball, an American living in Shenzhen, has struggled to find organic produce, which was briefly available at a local Wal-Mart. Its disappearance was just another food setback for Mr. Kimball and his Japanese wife.

'Four or five months ago I saw a note in the Hong Kong press that they had barred shipment of a particular type of fish from Shenzhen because it was contaminated,' says Mr. Kimball. 'Two days later, I saw the announcement here. That was the final straw for us in terms of buying seafood, which we really like; you just don't know what is in it.'

I was starting to feel bad that I wasn't more cautious about what we ate so I sought out the opinions of some food people I respect to see how they were feeling. I first called Lisa Minder-Wu, an American who has lived in Beijing for 13 years and owns the Orchard, one of my favorite restaurants. She grows her own greens and herbs in greenhouses and tends a large orchard of fruit trees in an organic manner (they can't be certifiably organic because of their previous stewardship). I know her to be an advocate of fresh, organic food and expected her to sound the alarm but she was largely dismissive of most peoples' food concerns.

'I think if you shop from small producers and clean things carefully, the local produce is very good and concerns about the food here are overblown,' she told me. 'People often wrongly assume anything Chinese is bad. I think American produce commonly found in small-town supermarkets is not fresh, usually tasteless and probably drenched in pesticides.'

Lejen Chen has a somewhat different take. The Chinese-American is the owner of Mrs. Shanen's Bagels bakery and restaurant. She and her Beijing-native husband Shan En are at the center of the city's organic food community.

'There are a lot of problems with food in China, but it's a universal problem too,' Ms. Chen told me. 'For me, the choice is not between imported and Chinese products but in favor of organic, sustainable agriculture over conventional industrial agriculture.'

She only buys organic pork and won't eat chicken because she doesn't trust it. She and Mr. Shan have started their own organic farm, a project launched largely to feed her family and service her restaurant but which keeps expanding. They harvested their first wheat crop this week, allowing them to begin milling their own organic flour.

A visit to the farm had me contemplating a membership, even at the very high cost of about $1000 U.S. per year. Several organic experts toured the farm with me and they told me about other places where one can get organic produce and new sustainable agriculture ventures they are launching. Things seem to be changing here for the better, at least on the margins.

Hoping to shed some more light onto this murky situation, I called an American agricultural expert who has consulted with Chinese farms for years, to help bring them up to Western standards.

'My answers to these types of questions depend on the mood I'm in and whether or not I want to put anyone -- myself included -- on a guilt trip for the decisions we all make, including that to live here,' he told me. His family won't eat fish, he said: 'When I see fish on a table I wonder what polluted body of water he came from.'

He worries about the cleanliness of local produce and the farmers' water sources. He mostly buys poultry from exporters because he thinks they have less drug residue. He tries to avoid processed food in general, but he's especially leery about anything made in a Chinese factory, where there is less quality control and inspection.

Still, he and his family eat plenty of Chinese meat, fruits and vegetables. After all, we both agreed, you really shouldn't live in a place if you don't feel you can eat anything there.

Obviously, the clarity I craved doesn't really exist. 'There are a lot of questions you can debate, with no clear answers,' my friend told me. 'Actually, it's not even clear which ones are worth debating.'

Alan Paul

--------------http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20070608/exp173205.asp?source=special

[无忌哥哥]

关键还是生活太好，可选的太多，让他们过过困难日子，啥都吃了。

[cchere]

二十年前中国人用大粪浇菜，最有机。