Health Food Stall Inspectors should check process rather than stall cleanliness

I find it quite appalling whenever I visit a hawker stall and queuing for quite a while, to find that the hawker that often produce the tastiest food oft have the most unhygienic process.

This statement is rather sweeping but quite true nonetheless. The need for speed to satisfy the insatiable hungry masses coupled with the need to save here and there, on cheap utensils and equally appalling food processes is what we have to contend with.

However, we have health food inspectors.

So, health food inspectors, pse when checking and dishing out “hygiene award” to hawker, pse do not just check if the stall is spanking clean. It could mean too much insecticide present that could be hazardous to the public health. Instead, try to focus on the preparation of food and packaging as suggested below:

a. Only fine hawkers who persist to use PLASTIC plates to scoops fried food in the hot burning wok. This often happens when the hawker is cooking fried kuai teow (flat rice noodles) or mee goreng. You can find this is almost all hawker centres. I tried suggesting to a famous hawker stall selling fried at Causeway Point to use a stainless steel plate instead due to the high heat involved, he merely smiled. Well I guess he is only a worker and the smile perhaps sum up the indifference here. After all most of the people here are like wandering nomads liken to a confluence of cultures where everybody simply peter off into ignominy with time. So, health food inspector, pse do your job and impose strict punishment for use of non-compliance utensils during the cooking process.

b. Only fine hawkers who persist to put sizzling hot fried food onto styrofoam boxes. This is very apparent at a nasi lemak stall in Lorong Ah Soo where you can actually see the mold of the fried fish or chicken wing in the very styrofoam box that you consume awhile later. In our need-for-speed world, packet lunches appear to the increasing norm.

If you say that consumers have the right to choose, then think again. Yes, but the health cost would be quite exorbitant to to the government unless we are talking about the less ethical confounding confluence of health packages, medical insurances and health products companies awaiting at the sideline to join into this “health” fray.

So health food inspector, pse do your job. Dirty stalls may give us a diarrhea or two, but molten plastic is surely something much nastier….. and tastier?

Cheers

Mikey