The Consumer Council and Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) co-tested forty samples of soups, seasonings, condiments, and snacks for their contents of colouring matter and potassium. All samples pass the standard of testing colouring matter, meanwhile, four samples are found to contain high levels of potassium. Consumers are advised to pay attention when eating these kinds of foods, and to adopt a healthy diet.
The food test examines five kinds of colouring matters, including Sudan Red, which is prohibited from using in food products in Macao, and all samples tested meet the requirement.
Among the forty tested samples, almost half of them are found to contain over 10,000mg/kg of potassium, the highest amount of potassium found is 170,000 mg/kg in one of the seasonings product. Soups, seasonings, condiments, and snacks are the most common categories of food to contain large amount of potassium. In most of these samples, the potassium contained in one portion exceeds the daily limit of 2,000 mg suggested by the World Health Organization.
Consumers are suggested to control their portions when eating these kinds of food, to adopt a healthy diet, and to avoid eating the mentioned categories of food for long periods of time to prevent over intake of potassium, which may be harmful to health.
The current test on soups, seasonings, condiments, and snacks is now available in issues no. 282 Consumer Report.
Over 3 billion people are now using the interest service and online consumption has become a major trend, consumer protection in this field has also become an important issue. The Consumers International and China Consumers Association have announced ‘Building a Digital World Consumers Can Trust’ and ‘Network Integrity, Worry-free Consumption’ as their annual themes respectively, the latest Consumer Report includes a feature on how the CI and CCA plan to protect consumers online. The Consumer Council also reminds consumers through its ‘Consumer Alert’ about choosing parcel collection services on the market.
The Consumer Report also features a meeting held earlier between the Council, Macao Goldsmiths Chamber (Associação das Ouriversarias de Macau) and representatives of goldsmiths and jewelers from Hong Kong.
Consumer Report is now available free of charge at the Council (Av. Horta e Costa, N.º 26, Edf. Clementina Ho), and the service counter of the Council at Macao SAR Government Service Centre (Rua Nova da Areia Preta, Nº52), Public Information Centre at Vicky Plaza, libraries, and bookstores. Consumers may also access the magazine online on the Council’s official website (http://www.consumer.gov.mo) and WeChat official account.
For enquiry, please call 8988-9315.