People in the city are always on the run, with too little time to even prepare a decent meal. In Guangzhou it is common to see housewives lining up at supermarkets' cooked food counters every evening to get dishes to take home.
The prepared food, ranging from fried chicken wings and roasted duck to steamed bread and pickled vegetables, are convenient for busy city dwellers, but hygiene is often a serious problem.
In September, a Guangzhou Consumer Council (GCC) inspection found that only 27 per cent of the cooked meat products met the council's hygiene standards, while 61 per cent of dim sum was up to standard.
The council tested 26 cooked meat samples and 18 kinds of dim sum during the inspection and discovered that most food was contaminated with bacteria such as E coli and contained excessive additives and colouring.
But most Guangzhou citizens did not seem to be well informed about the news.
'I haven't heard about it,' said Zhao Bixia, a saleslady at Trust-Mart, a large supermarket chain with more than 100 branches on the mainland. She added it would be 'terrible' if it was true because she often bought cooked meats.
