Forget MSG, Guangzhou restaurants criticised for adding poppy seeds to make food addictive

Two restaurants in Guangzhou, Guangdong province were found to be lacing their food with addictive poppy seed powder to keep customers coming back for more, Yancheng Evening News reports. 

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials in Guangdong checked 70 restaurants last year, and found two that were using sachets containing poppy seed powder to give their food an extra morphine kick.

Both restaurants were fined 50,000 yuan and given a formal warning. Since May of this year it has been illegal to add poppy powder to food regardless of amount. 

In 2012, inspectors in Jiangsu found that 10 percent of hotpot soup bases contained poppy seeds. According to the Epoch Times, merchants in Beijing sell the seeds for 450 yuan per jin (approx. 1.1 lb). Noodle shops and barbecue stands are reportedly the biggest buyers of the addictive additive. 

Poppy seeds can cause a false positive for opiates in a drug test. A traveler to the United Arab Emirates was arrested for drugs possession after airport police found poppy seeds on his clothes. 

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