What should I eat this Tet?

(Baonghean) - While I was slurping and finishing my instant noodles, my mother called:

- Your friend is coming home this Tet, what food does he crave so I can send him?

- Mom, can you send me some beef jerky? I bought it, mom. Homemade beef jerky isn't as good as the one from the store!

- No means no, do you know that beef jerky in stores is made from rotten meat, marinated with chemicals and dyes, and can cause cancer if eaten?

- Then mom send you floss?

- My family has been avoiding pork lately. People just caught 2 tons of rotten pork!

I had no choice but to say: Then instant noodles. As soon as I finished speaking, my mother gave me a lecture about how 100% of instant noodles samples from domestic and foreign countries that have been tested contain substances that cause kidney stones. Just eating them seems to cause so many problems!

In fact, Vietnam has never been famous for food hygiene and safety, so let's face it honestly. Foreigners coming to Vietnam cannot help but be "culture shocked" by the rudimentary eateries built right next to dusty traffic and even litter. The "stomach shock" is probably even stronger, when a foreign friend of mine once had diarrhea until his whole body was full after just one time eating at a sidewalk restaurant. Since then, perhaps foreign tourists coming to Vietnam have all listed stomach pain medicine and digestive aids as the most important items. To be honest, Vietnamese people like me who have traveled far away have often been chased by diarrhea, let alone foreigners.

Saying this is not to boycott Vietnamese cuisine. Because objectively speaking, conditions in Vietnam do not allow for demanding strict standards like those in foreign countries. Differences in income, prices, living standards, and above all, differences right from the production and market management stages: All of these things make up the characteristics of goods in developing countries in general and Vietnam in particular. To put it simply, "you get what you pay for", "cheap is bad", it is easy to understand. But the problem is that, even when people are willing to spend a lot of money, they still cannot find a source of supply that meets the standards of the demand side. That is why many people with good conditions still complain that they do not know what to play, what to buy, what to eat to be worth the money they spend in Vietnam.

That's just saying, but how can we live without eating? As my friends in Vietnam often joke, "Eating will kill you, not eating will kill you, so let's eat and die for fun." That doesn't mean we agree with or support unethical production and trading behavior, but rather "live with the flood". To solve this phenomenon, there needs to be interaction between both buyers and sellers. Sellers and producers need to do business with integrity and conscience, because after all, they are consumers in another link of the economy. If they can cheat and cheat today, how can they not become victims of other unethical traders tomorrow? On the buyer's side, don't be greedy for cheap goods, don't be greedy for small immediate profits while forgetting the big benefits of your own health, your family's health, and further, the health of the general economy. The role of control, regulation and orientation of course belongs to the competent authorities. The problem becomes a triangle problem without one corner, which becomes an unsolvable puzzle.

Back to the conversation between me and my mother (and the bowl of noodles!), when my mother warned me not to eat instant noodles, I realized an obvious truth like any other international student: instant noodles were, are, and will be indispensable to our survival. I don’t know how many cubic meters of gravel I have accumulated in the past 20 years of my life, since I learned to eat instant noodles until now, which is also a way of accumulating to prepare for the plan to build a house in the future. What kind of house? It must be a tomb, if the food hygiene and safety situation in our country does not improve at all. But the burning question right before my eyes is: What will we eat this Tet?

Hai Trieu