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A five-minute primer on  an issue making headlines

As of yesterday,  441 people had come down with food poisoning after eating contaminated poon choi - a traditional Lunar New Year dish -  bought from the same place in Yuen Long. Just days before, there was a government warning about the dangers of eating, undercooking or incorrectly storing poon choi.

Looks like that warning didn't work too well

In fairness, it's a risky dish, with its huge variety of ingredients - such as  seafood, meat and vegetables - all in the same bowl. If you're buying it, you need to pick it up an hour before you eat it, because this is not an ideal dish to store. Cooking it is difficult because different ingredients cook at different temperatures.

I think I'll stick to a nice, simple hotpot

The hotpot can also be a hotbed of nasties. A government warning says: 'Some hotpot ingredients, including shellfish, seafood and meat, are high-risk foods because they may contain pathogens and viruses such as Vibrio parahaemolyticus,  norovirus, hepatitis A virus and Staphylococcus aureus.'

I have no idea what most of those are, but they sound terrifying

There have been simpler  warnings. Everyone's favourite seems to be  the advice about buying live chickens: 'Do not blow at their bottoms'. Or, as those more sensitive souls at the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department put it,  'do not blow their vent'.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but why would anyone blow a chicken's ... vent?

We wondered that too. A spokeswoman at the Health Department  says it's a 'tradition' among  older shoppers who blow at the chicken's feathers to reveal the bird's cloaca (bottom, vent, whatever) which apparently reveals to those sharp-eyed shoppers how 'fleshy' the chicken really is.

So, no poon choi, hotpot or chicken. How about fish?

That's fine, as long as you don't worry too much about ciguatoxin-ridden coral-reef fish and the accompanying limb numbness, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Not to mention the malachite green scare that swept through Hong Kong last year.

This is putting me off my dim sum

I'm afraid  even yum cha can be dangerous to your health, according to another government health warning. Obviously, pan-fried and deep-fried dim sum  are high in fat, but even steamed dishes like beancurd  and   beef balls can send your cholesterol rocketing. Before you dive into a healthy-sounding mango sago pudding with pomelo for solace, the government also warns that this and several other popular desserts are high in saturated fats, so keep that sweet tooth at bay. Happy dining!



Poon choi punishment