The Food Surgeon Strikes Again and Poppy Problems

The Lempert Report
March 16, 2016

Here’s what’s happening this week in Food News!

The Food Surgeon strikes again

Forget the millions and millions of food how tos, food hacks, New Product Reviews, like our own, and recipe videos on YouTube. The Food Surgeons YouTube Channel has made it official – YouTube is all things food. With over 1.2 million views, an unidentified “food surgeon” carefully dissects a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup by removing the top layer of chocolate, then puts it between the two   Oreo chocolate cookies, after the crème filling has been removed. The surgeon then puts the Oreo’s crème filling inside the Reeses and takes a bite, seemingly discarding the new Oreo Peanut Butter combo. And you were concerned about genetic modification?

Poppy Problems

A bastion of food folklore is that Chinese foods are addictive and that once you consume them, your hunger comes right back. Well, in Beijing, 36 restaurants are being investigated for using poppy capsules as seasoning. Poppy seeds have long come under pressure in random employee drug screenings, as even having a bagel, muffin or rye bread that contains poppy seeds could trigger a positive reading. Poppy seed is an oilseed from the opium poppy, and harvested from dried seedpods, which contain very low levels of opiates. 

These restaurants went one step further – and broke the law – by using a poppy capsule made from the dried pericarp of the ripe fruit of an opium poppy plant, with more than 20 types of alkaloids, including those found in morphine and cocaine, according to an AP report. These capsules may be used in Chinese medicine, but is illegal in food preparation. But in China the rules are different. Transporting, buying, selling, storing or using poppy capsules in food can result in a fine of up to 3,000 renminbi, or $455.