Would anybody be upset if the Chinese (or anybody else) brought their own food to London in 2012? (or Vancouver in 2010). I doubt it.
If US athletes want to bring their own food, let them. It's no big deal. On the otherhand, to suggest that the food the Chinese will serve at the Olympics village has better than a remote chance of being contanimated is ridiculous. If it is, many more athletes from all over the world will be tested positive or poisoned. Maybe someone thinks only US athletes will get it? Who is paranoid and overly sensitive?
I EXACTLY understand your point and reject it. Your whole thoery is that the stakes are too high so the Chinese won't screw it up. Okay. That requires you to trust that they'll get it right. What have the Chinese done to earn that trust? This is the same Chinese that are CURRENTLY squashing uprisings with violence and actively arresting all news sources so nobody will hear about it. They also censor the Internet into the entire country so citizens can't read/write about it. If I'm an athlete, my confidence level in what the Chinese government tells me is less than 100%. As such, I'm not risking the 300,000 laps I've put around a track in my lifetime on your "THEORY" that the Chinese will get this right. If you were an Olympic hopeful and understood the sacrifices you've made to get there, then maybe I'd be more sympothetic to your position. But as an ex-athlete myself, I'd be scared to death that all my hard work could be PERMANENTLY trashed by one unintentional mistake from a country who has a LONG record of making HUGE mistakes.
I don't care much for Chinese's policy regarding Tibet and other things either but what does it have to do with food at the Olympics? Heck, everyone knows China is a communist country with all kind of problems, yet we do business with them to the tune of hundred of billions of $. Either someone thought they can trust the Chinese enough or they are making a buck on your blood. Just tell it like it is. We don't like the Chinese, we will boycott them to the end of the world or until our own interest is damaged, whichever comes first.
Wow, your weird way of thinking to link unrelated issues together is hilarious. I hope you are just trying to be funny here.
Unrelated? The Chinese government is assuring you that the food is safe and hasn't been grown with any banned substances ...when we KNOW much of the meat in China is grown with (Olympic) banned substances. What has the Chinese government done in the past year alone that would assure you that they've resolved a problem that is rampant in their country? Those issues couldn't be MORE related. The Chinese are highly secrative, routinly cover-up problems and show little regard for health concerns. Those are all 3 PROVEN facts. ...but yet you all feel they'll get right this time? Based on what record? If you feel that China is gonna come out of this with an unblemished record during the Olympics, you are VERY trusting. Me ...not so much. ...esp. not if it's MY livlihood at stake.
Here is a picture of the olympic sailing waters. It's covered in algae ...which this type often grows in waters where sewage is dumped into. Yet another case where the government has NO regard to human health concerns. http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2008/07/olympic-sailing.html
The stuff is so thick you can walk out on it -- the Chinese swear they can get rid of it in time for the games, but most on the scene are very unsure of that claim.
If you guys think the food issues and algae problems are interesting, let's thrown in a possible plague of locusts. This issue can't be blamed on the government. Heh heh, I can't stop laughing after reading this. It reminds me of the bugs that swarmed the Yankees pitchers in last year's playoffs. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a03s5CcVl6w0 http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/3/155130/9283 Olympic trials: The locusts of control A locust swarm worries Chinese officials ahead of Olympics Posted by Sara Barz at 12:40 PM on 04 Jul 2008 Officials in the Northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia have mobilized 33,000 people to stop a swarm of locusts 267 miles outside of Beijing. Concerned that the locust swarm may descend on Beijing during the Olympic Games, the regional government has set aside 4 million yuan for pesticides and large-scale spraying machinery. As of July 2, the swarm had infested 5,000 square miles. "The larvae are in the hatching stage in the counties and cities near Beijing, Gao Wenyuan, of the Inner Mongolia's grassland office, told the Xinhua news agency, as reported by Bloomberg. "The plague is becoming more apparent." Yesterday Xinhua reported (Google English translation) that the regional government has 200 tons of pesticides in reserve, four aircraft, 50 new large-scale aerosol sprayers, and thousands of small-scale sprayers to combat the locusts. "We are aware and we're coordinating with the relevant authorities to look into the issue," said Sun Weide, a Beijing Games organizing committee spokesman, in the Bloomberg article. Abnormal weather has played a silent role in the biblical tide of catastrophes to plague China in the run-up to the Olympics. Warmer than average weather in Southern China, combined with stormy seas and "nutrient-rich" waters gave rise to the algae bloom in the bay of Qingdao.
If I was better maybe so but I've been on business trips and have gotten ill too from food in the US. My point is that US food isn't necessarily going to be safer than what the PRC is providing the athlete's village. People act like the athlete's are getting street food from Beijing. As others have pointed out the PRC is being super careful about what goes to the athlete's village. I still believe this is severely overreacting and it could be resolved to everyone's satisfaction by just having US nutrionists for the team inspect the food in Beijing than hauling over your own. Given that the FDA hasn't pinpointed where the latest salmonella outbreak in the US is from this will be very ironic if a US athlete gets sick from US food in Beijing.
The problem is that the US agriculture pioneered putting hormones into feedstock to improve meat and dairy yields. Just because the food is coming from the US doesn't mean that its not going to be hormone free. Personally if I was concerned about hormones I would take the special food that the PRC is raising for the athlete's village over what I get at Safeway.
Are you sure? I'm betting there will be many English and Canadians who feel it is a slight that the Chinese, those guys with all the pollution and buns made from cardboard, don't think their food is good enough for them. Anyway given the fears of mad cow and hoof and mouth disease in the UK it seems to me the PRC could make as much of an argument as the US is for bringing their own food. Personally I'm not up on boiled lamb or poutine but I would say it would be just as foolish for the Chinese Olympic team to bring their own food to England or BC.
Sorry for the multiple posts in this thread but did want to address this. Send a US nutritional inspection team to Beijing and check the food that is going to the athlete's village. Now how do you know the food you buy at Kroger isn't grown with banned substances? The FDA can't pin down exactly what is infecting almost a 1000 Americans with salmonella and given FDA cutbacks problems like this are likely to happen more than less here. My point is that the food from the US might not be safer. I'm a frequent critic of the PRC government but I think this reasoning fails to consider why the PRC government quashes dissent or keeps health problems quiet. The PRC is very concerned about keeping face and public demonstration or health problems are an embarrasment that they think it is better to cover up. Given that the Olympics is on an internationatl scale with a ton of media it will be impossible for them to cover up something like feeding athletes tainted food. The last thing the PRC wants is a huge embarrassment regarding the Olympics and as such they are taking every precaution they can to prevent that. They aren't going to feed the athletes haphazardly when the scandal over that would not just humiliate the PRC but possibly destablize the government given how much money, national prestige and outright hardship the people of Beijing have put into the Olympics.
How are you people forgeting that a Chinnese olympic meadlist tested positive for steroids believed to be from tainted pork. The guy just got banned for life. I don't care what propaganda the PRC says regarding thier food. One positive test is one to many.
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Though was he eating the food that is going to the olympic village? Is there any possibility that he was taking steroids for a competitive advantage and blaming it on food? I have to admit to not being incredibly knowledgeable about that case but it seems to be based on speculation.
I'm not sure why you feel so strongly about this particular topic. It's simply human biology that people's gut fauna are going to react differently to differently prepared food, espcially in a part of the world with imperfect sanitation. Athletes overseeing their nutritional needs to prevent this is the smart thing to do given the myriad of things that can go wrong on the Olympics - look at Tyson Gay, he's the fastest 200m runner in the world and he slipped today, and he's out. There's simply too much money and time invested in the Olympics for athletes to stop overseeing their nutrition when they get there. PS - I don't think anybody in England or Canada would care much - they tend to be a lot less insecure and hypersensitive about this kind of thing than the chinese.
