In the past ten years, we have often heard and seen many news reports about “sulfur-fumigated poisonous food”. Many people are worried about this. So, are all foods poisonous as long as sulfur powder is added during the processing?
At present, sulfur, as a bleaching agent and preservative, can be used in the processing of 6 types of foods such as dried fruits, preserved fruits, dried vegetables, surface-treated fresh edible fungi and algae, sugar and konjac flour.
What we need to pay attention to is that in fact, in the process of making smoked food and Chinese medicinal materials, it is allowed to use an appropriate amount of sulfur product powder. However, it should be noted that the premise of using sulfur product powder is that food-grade sulfur product powder must be used and the dosage should be strictly limited. If industrial or agricultural sulphur product powder is used, the consequences are disastrous.
Why is it necessary to use food grade sulphur product powder instead of adding industrial or agricultural special sulphur product powder? In fact, the answer is very simple. Food-grade sulfur product powder is made after very strict processing and purification. Unlike industrial sulfur product powder, which contains a lot of heavy metal elements including arsenic. If the human body absorbs it due to the destruction of the redox capacity of the cells, the normal metabolism of the cells will be affected, and it will cause damage to different tissues or organs and body obstacles, and even lead to extreme cases of poisoning and death.
The reason why there is a lot of food poisoning caused by sulfur fumigation is because the price of food grade and industrial sulfur is quite different. In order to save money, some black-hearted merchants will use industrial sulfur to fumigate food. Instruments and equipment are used to detect whether industrial sulfur or food sulfur is used, so merchants will exploit loopholes.
To sum up, it is possible to add an appropriate amount of food-grade sulphur product powder in the food production process, but never use industrial sulphur powder or agricultural sulphur product powder.