A RANDOM inspection by food safety authorities has found that a lot of food made with flour contained excessive traces of aluminum in local restaurants.
The city market supervision administration tested 696 samples of food made with flour, 28 percent of which contained excessive traces of aluminum, Shenzhen Evening News reported.
Steamed buns made in some restaurants even had aluminum residue nine times the national standard which stipulates there should be no more than 100 milligrams of aluminum per kilogram.
Eateries that failed the tests included the popular Maojia and Haizhucheng restaurants.
The excess aluminum was caused by using too much baking powder, which contained aluminum, the paper said.
Although aluminum-free baking powder was available on the market, few people used it because of higher expense and demand for a higher level of cooking skills, the paper said.
Director of the biotechnology department at Shenzhen Polytechnic, Huo Weiqiang, said long-term consumption of food containing excessive aluminum would have a negative effect on the brain.
Huo said older people, children and pregnant women were more vulnerable to excessive aluminum. (Li Hao)
