September 29, 2008

Melamine on Formula Milk and Food Products

On these days we’re all here shocked by the news from BPOM (Indonesian Food & Drugs Administration) about possibility of melamine in some baby’s formula milk and food products from China. Yesterday they announced many brands of milk and food products that were contaminated by melamine. You know, some of them are famous brands and kids’ favorite foods.
Maybe some of you had already known by the news that last week 13.000 babies in China were seriously ill, having suffered acute kidney failure, with several fatalities, among those given formula milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.

What’s melamine then? Is it the same with the plastic equipments we had at our kitchen? After reading at papers and browsing at the internet, I’ll try to inform you about it.

Melamine I meant here is an organic compound (C3H6N6) which contained 60% nitrogen and usually used for making plastic, glue and fertilizer. The plastic from melamine –because of its heating persistence- used widely in many kitchen equipments. So… melamine we complained here is different from melamine plastic equipments we had at our kitchen.

Based on the WHO’s site, the mixing of melamine in milk started from shuffle pure milk with water at the milk supplier place to get more and more milk. The effect of this dilution would lower the protein content in milk. Because of the milk based factory usually check the protein levels by determining its nitrogen content, so before the supplier send the ‘dilution milk’ to those factories, they add melamine to make its nitrogen content get higher, artificially inflate the reading of protein levels.

The very dangerous thing here is… since melamine is not an element that needs to add on food and drug then the BPOM or FDA never has a standard for checking melamine content on foods/drugs. Isn’t that scary ?? On animals melamine has a carcinogen characteristic then can you imagine what the effect with babies and kids?

So, be careful when you buy snacks or formula milks for your kids, especially those brands from China.. I think now it’s better and healthier to make homemade snack or food for our kids. It’s time to back to basic, back to our traditional homemade recipes....

2 comments:

Mom Knows Everything said...

I saw that on the news. Scary!!!

ellen said...

Yes, it is scary and my heart breaks for those families and those little babies. It is just not o.k.

You asked a question about my camera. I am honored, Henny, as I really, truly do not know what I am doing..trying to learn. I recently got a new camera: a Canon Rebel and I really love it..I just need a good teacher. Take care and thanks as always for stopping by. Best to you, e.