Protect traditional ways of cooking

Comment on "Duck chain 'unaware' of oil recycling" (China Daily, May 28)

I agree that Quanjude, a famous restaurant chain in China, and the government should pay more attention to the use of recycled oil. Quanjude should keep an eye on their waste oil to avoid it being recycled.

The government should also be stricter on food hygiene supervision.

However, although it sounds scary to reuse animal fat as oil in the kitchen, cooking with animal fat is a Chinese tradition.

For example, people use pork fat to fry vegetables as well as putting it into some Chinese desserts to make it taste better.

Nowadays people prefer to have a healthier diet. However, it would be a loss to abandon some of these old traditions.

Maybe both the restaurant and the government can take some steps to protect traditional cooking methods as well as people's health. For example, instead of using the animal fat collected from the oven, another kind of animal fat that goes through stricter quality control processes can be used.

Tristan, via e-mail

Readers' comments are welcome. Please send your e-mail to opinion@chinadaily.com.cn or letters@chinadaily.com.cn or to the individual columnists. China Daily reserves the right to edit all letters. Thank you.

(China Daily 06/08/2012 page9)