I've never heard anything negative about Chinese or Mexican food.  We eat it all the time.

I know what you mean about many Americans being clean freaks.  Germs didn't kill us when we were growing up.  They're not going to kill the kids now.  Yes, American kids have more problems because we're bleaching everything, we're killing all the germs, and they build no tolerance or immunity.

Nothing wrong with soap and water.  All that antibacterial stuff is not necessary.  My daughter used to go to a school where the teacher made them use that on their hands several times a day.  Her hands became so raw, red and chapped that she'd cry as she was trying to fall asleep at night.  Everything I tried to put on them to soothe it only burned.  That was way worse than a few germs that do no harm!  It took months to heal.

I'm Chinese America and I was offended by that post too :/ I think America is pretty dirty (restaurant-wise). I saw a documentary on how workers were dealing with food behind the kitchen and also how a maid was cleaning stuff in a hotel and an upscale hotel at that! Grossed me out. We're also responsible for bringing diseases to other countries are we not? And vice versa...

agreed. americans are insane.

It's not the germs.  It's the melamine, lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. that's been found in Chinese products.  The baby formula scare?  It wasn't germs.  It was melamine, the same poison that caused the dog-food scare last year.  Eating imported packaged foods would not really be a germ issue.  It's those other things people are worried about.

And there are fat Chinese people.  Apparently, obesity is becoming an epidemic in China as well.  And because there are so many Chinese people, it could become a HUGE problem.

I think maybe you need to educate yourself a little more before you go attacking everyone else's opinions.

Complete double standard:

In Russia, microwaves are banned. They have been proven multiple times to be very harmful to public health. And yet nearly everything in America is prepared by such means, or picked up through a drive thru menu. 0.o

Also, few countries put so much insistance on meat consumption, which also leads to health problems. In America, this is the norm.

Not to mention, you do not want to know how many insects, rat hair, and rat feces winds up in processed foods- mainly peanut butter. 0.o

These are only a few of the examples I take off the top of my head.

LMAO. I think the "clean" movement is what killed the "farm" movement...and look how that hurt us, less people growing organic food which means a help in increases of corporate farms which're much more likely to produce foods that'll undermine your immune system or kill you (in the extreme cases of them realizing something's wrong too late because the farmers are not spending one on one time with their plants and animals..and neither are the how many hands they hire).

I'm a farm girl. Country is the only place I'd ever want to live. If I was paranoid of germs and dirt, I couldn't live out here.
 You can't be a hundred percent germ free. Not ever.
Attempting to be so brings problems. And these people who try to do just that in the cities aren't even thinking about what pollution and chemicles does the body (to the brain and lungs especially!).

It's just another side effect of living blindly, really. Not really putting a coupla minutes' thought into things as they really should. Reactionary decisions, sometimes fear-based ones at that.

People forget that our body NEEDS germs and dirt in order to be able to protect us once something particularly nasty DOES come along. And anyway, it's not just bigger badder germs that our bad habits have created...but bigger badder pests as well.
 2008 was unofficially the year when fleas and lice became more resistant against treatment to get rid of them. No one I knew managed to kill them...and like I said, we're country out here, we've been killing them for years.

There is always going to outbreaks of unhealthy foods, but to try and categorize it to just one or two cultures is just plain dumb.  Plus, Chinese and Mexican food is really yummy!

"Ever see a fat Chinese person?  That's what I thought."
Yes.. I've seen many?

Why are you not supposed to drink water from mexico?

I work in a hospital and we use anti bacterial soap, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes

T_T
Chinese and Mexican cosmetics/foodstuffs/etc. can be contaminated with heavy metals and industrial chemicals because they don't have as strict laws there about industrial hygiene and foods safety. But you could say the same about products that come from India or Peru... and generally any developing country is going to be considerably "dirtier" than an developed nation.

There's nothing wrong with the US's obsession with hygiene, only that stuff like the FDA allowing antibiotics like triclosan be put in any soaps/body washes/etc happens too much over here. If only normal cleaning products were available, we wouldn't be stregthening our germs. Personally I use only biodegradable stuff and often pull out the vinegar & coarse salt for scrubbing.

@LadyLibellule@xanga -  She addressed the non-germ issues in some American food as well, so I think she's aware that it's not all just about germs. The germ issue was brought up as a rebuttal to the comment left on the other blog. Please read more carefully. Also, yes, there are fat Chinese people--but like Kash said part of that is due to the growing abundance of American fast food chains. Traditional Chinese staple is a lot like that of Japan's (consisting mostly of rice, fish, poultry...and not so much red meat), hence why Asian people are *typically* shorter and slimmer. Of course, there are exceptions just like any other country.

Oh my gosh, thank you.  Seeing all the ninth graders in the low-level elective I'm taking use Germ-X before EVERYTHING is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.  One tried to make me use it before picking up a cupcake I was going to eat.  If someone doesn't speak up about this issue more, we're going to have a really terrible next generation, medically.

And I went to China, also.  The food was DELICIOUS.  Especially any time we used hot pots.  :D

I see your point, I've travelled to China as well. However, I'm going to side with people that would boycott Chinese and Mexican foods because of the high lack of regulation in those particular countries (mainly an FDA-equivalent). I'm not saying American foods don't have mishaps, such as E.coli breakouts in spinach or mad-cow diseased beef, but if word breaks out the batch was contaminated, there are recalls and news reports and postings in the grocery store. Chinese mishaps? The process for recalling or realizing the harmful products takes longer.

Again, the lack of FDA-equivalent really makes China mass-developed products less-trustworthy. And if parents are protective of their children and want to use handiwipes, then so be it, it's better than losing your child to a slim chance of  bacterial infection.