May 11, 2013

Dutch government mapping the Chinese grey market for baby formula

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Branko Collin @ 11:47 pm

Chinese expatriates have been buying up large amounts of Dutch baby formula and shipping it to their families in China for the past few years.

After the melamine scares of 2008 and later, it appears that Chinese parents no longer trust the formula from their own brands, even if it is made by Dutch manufacturers. Apparently there is a scarcity of baby formula in the Randstad region. Not just the Netherlands but also Germany, the UK, Australia and New Zealand suffer from Chinese bulk purchases, Gelderlander wrote last week.

Manufacturers and supermarkets have asked Minister Sharon Dijksma of Economic Affairs to interfere, NRC says. Dijksma has asked the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority to study the grey market. Producers of formula have promised to increase production in the meantime.

According to retail expert Paul Moers the shortage of formula in Dutch supermarkets is not because of Chinese parents buying all the product. Moers says according to Gelderlander that Nestlé, Nutricia and Unilever can simply make more money by selling to Asian countries:

“Multinationals are focussed too much on profit. How can it be that the Netherlands, where the product is made, has a shortage of baby formula? Doing business should also be based on morality and ethics.” Moers used be a manager for Unilever in Asia.

See also: Chinese buying up Dutch baby milk powder (RNW, 2010)

(Photo of a poster protesting Nutricia by Martijn van Exel, some rights reserved)

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April 11, 2013

Cooking with weed becomes fashionable and mainstream

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:16 pm

Well-known snack bar Manneken Pis on the Damrak, the first main street any tourist sees when they exit Amsterdam Central Station to walk towards the Palace, has started offering fries with a marijuana sauce as of today. Weed is usually quite pungent in food, which is why people put it in creamy or buttery substances, as it is not the easiest thing to cook with or digest for that matter. Yes, it can provide a very decent, slow buzz, thanks for asking.

Also in weed-related cooking, Dutch clothing company FreshCotton got the Arnold Amsterdam agency to produce a drug-based cookbook to promote the new range of Stüssy Amsterdam tees. “The cookbook, which references Amsterdam’s tolerance towards narcotics, demonstrates how to create dishes (very short video) using high-end ingredients and drugs – like marijuana and magic mushrooms – that can be legally obtained in the Netherlands.” It also contains some men’s fashion.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, www.campaignlive.co.uk)

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March 27, 2013

Top chef snubs Michelin to make normal food

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

It’s not the first time a restaurant decides to send back a Michelin star, but this time a two-starred restaurant has decided to do it.

Top chef Ron Blaauw has decided to toss aside his two Michelin stars from his eponymous Amsterdam establishment on the Sophialaan and offer simpler dishes at normal prices. “Sixteen appetizers, four kinds of bread, a water menu, etc., there just no need for all that anymore.”

The restaurant will be renamed Ron’s Gastrobar with maximum prices of 15 euro for main courses. If that’s not trendsetting, I don’t know what is. Oh and nom nom nom.

(Link: www.at5, Photo by FotoosVanRobin, some rights reserved)

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March 20, 2013

Talking junk food won’t stop anyone from eating meat

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:01 am
fries1

Much like the scary warnings on cigarette packs, this short film by Dutch director Louis van Zwol made for Mercy for Animals, an American non-profit animal rights organisation that promotes vegetarianism, probably won’t dissuade anyone from eating meat.

However, the idea of your junk food (they could have used a proper steak, no?) telling you their war stories is far fetched, but well made. In this case, a Dutch frikandel that apparently speaks British English and looks like they smoke two packs a day just doesn’t want to be eaten. To me it’s junk food nobody should eat anyways, not a decent cut of meat whose worthiness could be argued by an Argentinian. It would be like using fries to make a point, instead of a healthy salad.

I’ve recently started to eat less meat for sports reasons and the best way to get me to continue to do that is to give me nice recipes, restaurant tips and a tomato plant for my balcony this summer, not silly films aimed at waspy male students that can’t be bothered to feed themselves properly before going out binge drinking.

I challenge any filmmaker of these kinds of films to make a film without using gross and graphic pictures as a shock tactic. Would you dissuade girls from getting pregnant by using graphic footage of childbirth? I doubt it.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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March 6, 2013

Taking the guesswork out of expiration dates

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 6:34 pm

Expiration dates on food are just a guideline. Sometimes, things like milk are bad from the get-go, while tinned products seem to last for years. However, we don’t really know, as most of us make sure nothing green is growing on our food or sniff it to make sure it smells alright.

But wouldn’t it be great to have the guesswork taken out of the equation? The Eindhoven University of Technology is working on doing just that using a plastic analogue-digital converter, or plastic chip. The cost of having these chips on food are less than a euro cent and could also be used for other expiration date sensitive goods such as medicine.

One of the researchers on this project says food can be monitored already using standard silicon chips, but that is too expensive, about 10 euro cent, which is too much for a one euro item. That is why they are using plastic, as the chips can be applied directly to packaging. And apparently, the chips use some very complex mathematics to make sure they work properly.

(Link: opmerkelijk.nieuws.nl, Photo of Orange juice – expiration date by viZZZual.com, some rights reserved)

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February 28, 2013

Chinese chef caged, beaten and exploited as a slave

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:35 pm

A 52-year-old female Chinese restaurant owner and four other suspects are being prosecuted on human trafficking charges for having exploited a Chinese chef forced to work in restaurants in Amsterdam and Arnhem.

“The victim was intimidated and had to work under miserable conditions. He was not allowed to visit a doctor and had to sleep in a cage in an Amsterdam restaurant under video surveillance.” He also worked for long hours for almost no pay, and his bank account was plundered.

Many human trafficking victims in the Netherlands are women brought to work in the sex industry, but a broader type of exploitation is apparently on the rise.

(Link: www.expatica.com, Photo of dumplings by filipe.garcia, some rights reserved)

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February 7, 2013

Hotel chef finds pearl in oyster

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

Dutch chef Jacco Beck who works at Hotel Sanadome in Nijmegen found a pearl in an oyster, 7.7 mm in diameter and worth an estimated 1000 euro. The good news is, he can keep it. According to a representative of the fishing authorities, the chance of finding a pearl is 1 out of 35,000. The five-year-old oyster came from the Grevelingen lake in Zeeland where a pearl of this diameter has never been found.

(Link: www.bnr.nl, Photo of pearl by Amboo who, some rights reserved)

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February 5, 2013

Lab-grown meat a success, cooking it up is on hold

Filed under: Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:04 pm

A year ago we told you about a lab in Maastricht that was growing synthetic meat, which was really expensive to make and should have been ready to grill in the fall of 2012.

The long-awaited lab-grown meat is now a reality, but researcher Mark Post wants to have at least two pieces of meat before he does any grilling, which again could take many more months. The goal is to have the two pieces of meat prepared by English chef Heston Blumenthal, owner of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck in the UK who is very much into molecular-level cooking.

(Link: opmerkelijk.nieuws.nl)

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January 21, 2013

Fireman saves 65 coffee containers by putting foot in ship’s leak

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 9:18 am

Last Friday a diver of the Schoonhoven fire department saved millions of Dutch people a few jittery hours when he put his foot against the wall of a ship carrying coffee to stop water from flowing in.

The captain of the river boat Salamanca had noticed on Thursday evening that his boat, which was moored to the quay, was suddenly deeper in the water, Schuttevaer reports. When the fire brigade arrived the engine room was already flooded by a metre. The boat was moved to another location where fire trucks could get near it.

The hole turned out to measure about 5 by 2 centimetres. One of the divers who had entered the engine room to place the suction tube plugged the hole temporarily by placing his foot on it.

The Salamanca was transporting 65 containers filled with coffee. It is unknown how the boat sprung a leak.

The Dutch are among the most enthusiastic coffee drinkers in the world, consuming 8.4 kilograms per person a year. Only the Scandinavians drink more.

(Photo by Vitaly Volkov, some rights reserved)

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December 30, 2012

Baker faints over prestigious ‘oliebol’ test

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

Baker Willy Olink from Maarsen near Utrecht has won this year’s Oliebollentest, held as always by newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

The jury said of Olink’s products: “An oliebol that you keep eating. You go back for seconds.” Second place was Rotterdam’s Richard Visser who had won the year before and who has won eight times in the 20 editions the test has seen.

Joop van de Weerdt, owner of an oliebol stand in Schiedam near Rotterdam, fainted when the test panel came to collect its bag of samples. He was rushed to the hospital, but was back to work the next day. Store manager Claudia van der Kroon told AD: “We had not been tested for a couple of years, so I figure it must have been the nerves. Joop is a man with an enormous passion for his trade.”

Oliebollen are deepfried dumplings often containing raisins or currants that are served at fun fairs and during New Year’s Eve. The American doughnut is said to stem from the oliebol.

Not everybody was happy with AD’s test. Bianca de Caluwé from Oost-Souburg came in last: “‘I do not understand this. The judgement is incredibly harsh but meaningless. Four years ago I was the best of Zeeland and I haven’t changed my recipe.”

Frank van Haperen from Goes, also in Zeeland, even refused to participate. The baker was not happy with the way juries described his balls in the past years: “They call them ‘pig feed’ or ‘leather'”, he told the local newspaper PZC. “I am out.”

(Photo by Rool Paap, some rights reserved)

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