Fast food, fast poisoning
Lina Mahmoud takes the lid off fast food
As the pace of modern life increases -- longer working and study hours, increased travel time -- people are turning to fast food options that fit their budget. "I know that fast food is unhealthy and polluted but what can I do? I spend most of the day away from home," Ahmed Ali, student of Mass Communications at Cairo University, told Al-Ahram Weekly while eating a liver sandwich for which he had paid the princely sum of 50 piastres. He explained that although he could pay 10 times that amount to buy a healthy meal, he said all fast food was unhealthy so he decided on the cheapest option.
One popular venue is the wheeled metal and glass trolleys, selling one Egyptian version of fast food: sausage and liver sandwiches. Each of these trolleys usually sports a cooker, plastic plates, some vegetables, oil, liver and sausage; some also have a few cans of corned beef and eggs, all of which remain exposed to the polluting atmosphere of the busy downtown streets for the entire day.
Hamdi Eid, 40, owns one of these trolleys or "vatrinah" -- literally window-shop -- as he prefers to call it. The label on the liver he sells shows that it has been imported from the US at a cost of LE15 per kilo. The information sheet also mentions that the meat should be kept frozen at -18 degrees celsius. Now, however, it is noon, the ambient temperature is around 40 degrees celsius in the shade, and Eid has no refrigerator. He washes his dishes once a day in a nearby bucket because he has no access to running water. "The supervisors from the Ministry of Health always check my trolley and find everything in order," he says proudly.
The Egyptian Institute for Toxicology at Ain Shams University deals with a large number of food poisoning cases on a daily basis. "Sixty per cent of the patients are children who have eaten food sold by street vendors. That percentage is higher in the summer," said Dr Mohamed Amr, director of the institute. The institute deals with an average of 500,000 poisoning cases per year, of which 5,000 are fatal food poisoning cases.
Mohamed El-Khalili is waiting in the toxicology clinic for treatment. He has just eaten a fried chicken sandwich from one of Egypt's famous fast food chains. "As soon as I ate the sandwich I got a terrible stomach ache," he recounted. He was given a saline solution to help him expel the poisoned food from his stomach. But this experience will not stop him eating fast food. "I have no time to cook," he lamented.
The Weekly went to the Egyptian fast food restaurant thought to be responsible for poisoning El-Khalili to interview the manager, who preferred to remain anonymous "Our food is healthy and clean. Our chicken and meat is from animals slaughtered according to Islamic Shari'a," he said. He also added that inspectors from the Ministry of Health visit his restaurant every 15 days, and sometimes turn up unexpectedly between those times. But he refused to let the Weekly into kitchen.
In an American-owned fast-food restaurant, however, we were allowed to inspect the kitchen. We found all of the food, including the bread, uncovered. The manager said he was aware that the general public was somewhat wary about his food, but he commented that, "we teach our sales staff to be nice to the customers and assure them that our food is healthy and clean." And while he said he was confident about the safety of the food produced in his kitchen, the restaurant manager informed him by phone to cut short his interview with the Weekly.
Moving on to a famous fuul and ta'ameyya restaurant, the Weekly was again allowed into the kitchen, where the manager boasted that the restaurant was "for tourists and very clean". Large black cauldrons of oil were maintained at a high temperature, but the day's supply of bread was lying on the floor.
Six ministries are responsible for monitoring home grown and imported food -- the ministry of health and population, ministry of agriculture, ministry of supply, ministry of industry, the ministry of foreign trade and the ministry of tourism. Both the ministry of Health and the Ministry of Supply - refused to be interviewed for this article. Coordination between this myriad of responsible authorities is complex and often it is unclear who is ultimatly responsible for the quality of fast food.
However, the local papers are always reporting on the activities of these authorities in clamping down on sub-standard food. Only recently a well known fast food restaurant was reportedly closed down because a large amount of expired meat, chicken and liver were found in the kitchen. In Alexandria, inspection campaings organised by the Ministry of Health and covering 2053 restaurants showed that most use colour additives to cover the taste of rotten fuul and only a few weeks ago rotten meat was found at a fast food restaurant in Zamalek.
Dr Amr believes that both Egyptian fast food and its Western counterpart, fried chicken and hamburgers, are very dangerous. "Fuul is cooked in the central garbage furnaces of Cairo to save money on fuel," he said. As well as this, he continued, most fast food kitchens are infested with mice and insects. He criticised the health authorities, saying they do not play enough of a regulatory role. "The state inspector is usually a poor and hungry man. Two sandwiches are enough to keep him quiet," concluded Dr Amr.
Fast food is not only unsafe, but also unhealthy. Dr Mervat El-Rafe'i warned about the dangers of additives, which are not only dangerous in themselves but may also be added to disguise the taste of decayed food. "Food colouring is frequently used in the place of traditional spices to colour rice, chicken, meat and even fuul," she added. She also lamented lack of food labelling in Egypt, which is a basic consumer right.
An average take-away meal consists of 40 per cent fat, is high in salt and refined carbohydrates (sugar). "Fast food contains a lot of salt and fat and causes obesity and high blood pressure. The daily recommended allowance of salt is seven grammes per day and a single fast-food meal contains between 12 and 15 grammes of salt, and that's before the consumer adds salt before eating," El- Rafe'i said. She said that an average meal from KFC or McDonald's contains more than the recommended daily allowance of salt, and the maximum recommended daily allowance of saturated fats.
Last year's World Health Organisation (WHO) annual report found that 60 per cent of deaths internationally are "clearly related to changes in dietary patterns and increased consumption of processed fatty, salty and sugary foods". High blood pressure is said to cause more deaths worldwide than tobacco consumption -- 7 million compared with 5 million.
Of the approximate 1,500 million global cases of diarrhoea annually -- which result in the deaths of 3 million children under five years of age, mainly in developing countries -- an estimated 70 per cent are said to have been caused by contaminated food.
Food is recognised as an important vehicle in the spread of cholera and other forms of diarrhoea, which contribute substantially to malnutrition. Food-borne parasitic diseases are also a major public health problem. Food-borne trematodes, for instance, affect 40 million people, and more than 10 per cent of the world's population is at risk of infection.
The report also states that the global incidences of food borne disease are difficult to estimate, but it has been reported that in the year 2000 alone 2.1 million people died as a result of diarrhoeal diseases. A large proportion of these cases can be attributed to contaminated food and drinking water.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 November 2003 (Issue No. 663)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/663/fe2.htm