This is a true story (from my friend). Mum said my uncle saw it in Tunjang (Kedah) and the pasar malam in Titi Chai Kangar (Perlis) where goreng pisang was sold on afternoons. The hawker added a plastic drinking straw into a wok of hot oil and let it melt completely before he started to fry some bananas in the bubbling oil. This is why some fried bananas and ubi are so crispy... for hours...!! My uncle asked the hawker about this, but the hawker did not answer him. When my uncle told my mum about this, they realised this is how the hawkers ensure that fried food stays crispy for their customers. My mum said that in Thailand, they do the same thing to keep fried ikan bilis and fried onions crispy, even if left in the open for hours!!
Another time, I was with my family in Cameron Highlands. It was 3:00 pm and we were hanging around the market area, where there were several hawker stalls. At one of them, there was a big wok of boiling oil with an empty plastic bottle floating in it and slowly melting. At first I thought it had fallen into the oil accidentally, but then I saw a little girl, about 7-years old, holding a pair of chopsticks and stirring the bottle around in the hot oil. I realised, Oh my God... these people were using melted plastic to fry food, so that the fried snacks would not turn soft when it cooled down later.
Please forward to all your friends... DO NOT EAT CRISPY FRIED SNACKS from the hawkers!! Even if you don't see them melting the plastic in oil, they might have added the plastic a few hours before. After all, they keep the black oil for next day's frying as well, to save cost on cooking oil.
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WANT longer-lasting crispiness in your food? Just add plastic. No this isn't a page from Psychotic Cooking 101.
Causing a stir of late are unsubstantiated reports that some hawkers in Malaysia are adding plastic straws and bottles into boiling oil and frying it with their snacks, which then remain extra crispy for several hours.
But Singaporeans fearing such bizarre, cancerous culinary calamities could happen here need not get steamed up.
Scientists say that adding melted plastic to a dish to give it extra crunch is pointless as it would not work.
And health authorities here assure that checks have not turned up any examples of such health hazards.
Malaysian paper The New Straits Times had cited 'witnesses' as seeing a goreng pisang (banana fritters) seller in Johor Baru throwing a plastic bottle into boiling oil, and frying it with his snacks. Apparently the hawker said his customers are fine with it and the new recipe is popular with other hawkers.
The report was picked up by Singapore papers, and while some sceptics scoffed, others were alarmed.
Housewife Alice Kang, 60, was so horrified that she warned her family members to avoid deep-fried foods when eating out.
She said: 'You never know if local hawkers are doing the same. Even if they throw in a straw, it can be harmful. So it's just better to avoid it totally.'
The starch fact is this: Goreng pisang's crispy crust is due to a chemical reaction between starch and proteins in the flour-coated food. And Dr Ludger Paul Stubbs, senior research fellow at the Agency For Science, Technology And Research (A*star), said: 'The same effect is certainly not possible with plastics.'
A*star senior scientist Chen Zhikuan said that plastics, when thrown into hot frying oil, can soften and melt, but it also degrades into 'mainly aromatic compounds which may contain cancer-causing substances'.
Dr Stubbs added: 'What can be said with certainty is that none of these degradation products would be beneficial in the frying process. Deep-fried plastic or anything deep-fried together with plastic should not be consumed due to possible health risks.'
General practitioner and popular food blogger Leslie Tay agrees: 'When PVC burns, it releases dioxins which can cause lower fertility rates, neurological problems (and) cancers.'
A spokesman for the National Environment Agency (NEA), which governs licensing for all food and beverages retailers, said: 'We have not come across such harmful practices being used by local food operators.'
The agency conducts routine hygiene checks on the food retailing industry, and an operator found guilty of non-compliance with regulations can be fined up to $2,000, and may have his licence suspended or revoked.
Local goreng pisang seller Corlinn Lim, 46, owner of the popular Lim Kee banana fritters at Maxwell food centre, said the stir over stirred plastic is 'ridiculous'. Every hawker has his own special recipe for preparing the same dish, he said, but as for adding something like plastic, there is no such practice in Singapore.
He also pointed out that the strict hygiene standards and checks here will ensure it does not happen.
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