Those crispy banana fritters

Everybody loves those crispy fried banana fritters or crispy fried chicken. But after having heard so much about the plastic myth or fact from so many sources that nowadays whenever I eat those fried fritters I make sure that I have my own home made fritters rather than those sold at hawker stalls or shops. All sort of stories have been told. Drinking straws thrown into cooking oil, plastic bags with the cooking oil thrown straight into the frying pans, rafia strings into cooking oil...so scared to hear those stories because you are not only eating the fritters but also the plastic which they claim will make the fried food crisper.

Thanks to Borneo Post which did a lengthy experiment with 7 samples of different ingredients with the sample No 7 fried with cooking oil mixed with plastic. The result is all goes soggy even the one with plastic after half a day. Looking at their experiment,as a science teacher, I am thinking about the variables they are using in this experiment. are they using the same type of cooking oil for all the seven experiments? Are the oil heated to the same temperature as we know the hotness of the oil determines the crispiness or sogginess of the food. The conclusion of their experiment when I read between the lines is " plastics cannot be used in frying food because after frying the plastic smell is very strong and the food looks very plastic too"

My personal point of view is how much plastic was used ? Most probably they use too much plastic for just one piece of banana fritters since they know way ahead that they are not going to eat the one fried in plastic and they don't want to waste any food or oil. For those commercial sellers they probably just need a bit of plastic like drinking straws or rafia strings to get the desired effects. Moreover the sellers used the oil is repeatedly. Sometimes we even see the oil looking as black tar!!

After reading the article, I still will not buy any fritters sold in shops and hawker stalls. I remember during the last chang ( rice dumpling ) festival, my good friend offered me a chang wrapped with rafia string, I rejected the chang from her because I am imagining what type of chemical reaction has taken place when that chang wrapped with rafia string is boiled for 4 hours and where has the colouring of the rafia string gone to during that long process of boiling???



Maybe I was thinking too much as a science teacher........