Top Pot Bakery (胖達人), a well-known bakery chain that advertises that it uses natural ingredients, yesterday apologized for using flavoring essences in its baked goods and promised to pay refunds to customers after a Taipei City Government inspection of the ingredients used by the firm.
Swamped by reporters in front of one of the chain’s stores in Taipei, general manager Benson Hsu (徐志鴻) bowed to apologize for using artificial ingredients and said the company has pulled 21 baked products off its shelves.
He said stores would refund customers with receipts.
Photo: CNA
“We apologize for misleading customers [with the advertisements]. However, the ingredients we used are edible flavoring essences and are not a danger to health,” he said.
While acknowledging that the firm used artificial ingredients in its products, Hsu blamed a supplier for claiming that the ingredients were natural and said the company would consider filing a lawsuit against the supplier.
The bakery became popular after it opened its first store last year, appealing to those wishing to eat only natural ingredients. Promotions by celebrities such as Dee Hsu (徐熙娣, better known as Little S), drew crowds to the stores.
The controversy over the ingredients used at the bakery chain began earlier this week when a Hong Kong blogger posted an article accusing the chain of lying to customers because it had used artificial ingredients in its products.
Taipei’s Department of Health inspected the bakery’s Zhongxiao Store on Thursday night and discovered nine edible flavoring essences, including blueberry and chocolate, in the factory on the second floor.
MISLEADING CUSTOMERS
Taipei Food and Drug Office official Chiu Hsiu-yi (邱秀儀) said using edible artificial ingredients in the bakery did not violate regulations, but that the bakery had violated articles 28 and 45 of the Food Sanitation Act (食品衛生管理法) for running deceptive and misleading advertisements, which could lead to a fine of up to NT$200,000 (US$6,685).
Taipei’s Department of Health later yesterday fined the bakery NT$180,000 for violating the Food Sanitation Act.
Taipei Department of Legal Affairs Commissioner Tsai Li-wen (蔡立文) said the bakery had also violated the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) and the Consumer Protection Act (消費者保護法) by failing to ensure that the products were produced as advertised. The bakery could face a fine of up to NT$25 million if it fails to correct the situation, Tsai said.
Taipei City Ombudsman Pan Hung-cheng (潘宏政) said the city government has asked the bakery to pay full refunds to customers with receipts.
Hsu said the company would follow the city government’s instructions and announce its refund policy after negotiations with the city government to be held next week.
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