FOOD
Preserved plums too sweet
The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday said that 38 percent of the preserved plums on the market contain concentrations of artificial sweeteners above the legal limit and warned consumers of the harm that the excessive consumption of artificial sweeteners can cause to the human body. The report said that the makers of preserved plums may have used excessive amounts of artificial sweeteners because they are cheaper than sugar, the price of which has been rising in recent years. Of the 24 products tested by the foundation, nine (38 percent) had illegal amounts of sweeteners. The inspection also checked for potential contaminants and heavy metals, but did not find any such contamination in the preserved plums that were tested. The foundation advised consumers to carefully read the ingredient lists of products and choose products with low amounts of additives to maintain their dietary daily at a healthy level.
CULTURE
Israel promotes its wine
Israel’s representative to Taiwan, Simona Halperin, yesterday introduced her country’s wine-producing culture at an event in Taipei to promote Israeli wine. Halperin gave a presentation on the history of wine production in Israel, which dates back thousands of years, and through photographs showed the progress of wine production from ancient wine presses to modern wineries. One of the photos depicted a father and his child pressing grapes in the method used in ancient times. The event was the first local promotion of Carmel Winery wine, founded in 1882 and currently the largest winery in Israel. A Taiwanese food company is now Carmel’s local importer and the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei expressed hoped that this will give Israeli wine a higher profile.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching