RECALL ALERT: Toxic Milk in Japanese Snacks

Lovers of Japanese snacks beware!

Marudai Food Co. just recalled 5 of its snack products, due to fears that they were made with tainted milk. The Chinese-produced milk may contain traces of melamine, a toxin known to cause kidney stones in infants.

It’s been a bad few weeks for the Chinese diary industry. In addition to exporting questionable fresh milk to Japan, it was revealed on Sept. 9 that the Chinese diary producer Yili Industrial Co. had been supplying infants with contaminated powdered milk. Apparently, suppliers to companies like Yili Industrial put melamine in their milk to make it appear more protein-heavy.

These sketchy health standards have provoked nearby countries to outlaw Chinese milk. In fact, several African governments just banned Chinese diary products, after roughly 52,000 Chinese infants were poisoned with melamine-tainted formula.

So folks, if you happen to have one of Marudai Food’s 5 recalled snacks lying around the house (”Cream Panda,” “Matcha Azuki Milk Man,” “Gratin Crepe Corn,” “Kakuni Pao” and “Mocchiri Niku Man”) DO NOT let your infant daughter gnaw on them! Believe me, her kidneys will thank you.

Snacks Come to Life in Japan: Part 1

All kinds of things come to life in cartoons and we don’t think twice. Walking, talking animals – that’s so normal it’s boring. Sponges that wear pants, whatever.

Food is usually food, though, even in cartoons. In this country, that is. But not in Japan.

Anpanman: he’s your classic superhero. He wears a cape, he fights for truth, justice and the Japanese way. And… he’s a bread roll with sweet bean paste inside: An Pan.

It’s a traditional Japanese snack, starring in a traditional genre of popular culture. Maybe that makes perfect sense. Hmm. I’ll think about it and get back to you.

His friends are other types of bread – plain sliced white bread, buns filled with melon or curry – as well as humans, who, I guess, see nothing odd about the situation.

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Asian Snack Review: Kinoko no Yama and Crunky Biscuits

One evening recently I was overcome with a craving for a chocolate chip cookie. There were none in the house, but I remembered I had a stash of snacks from the Japanese market that I’d hidden away so as not to eat all of them at once. There were two kinds of cookies that combined chocolate with non-chocolate cookie, so I decided it was time to give them a try.

Kinoko no Yama are very cute. The name means mountain mushrooms, and I don’t know about the mountain part, but they do look like mushrooms. I am sure they would be great for decorating a cake in a woodland theme with mushrooms and - toads, maybe?

But as far as eating…. Since the cap of the mushroom is solid milk chocolate with a little cookie-stick stuck in it, the chocolate would have to be really great and.… OK, I am crazy about nearly everything Japanese. But when you think of a great chocolate-making country, you think of Switzerland or Belgium, not Japan. Unfortunately, there is a reason for this. I like the idea of these cookies, but the chocolate is just not good enough to make them worthwhile.

But, never fear: I had another possibility:

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Snack Review: Cream Collon

Our friends over at Candy Addict have mentioned Collon, but apparently were afraid to actually try it. But hey, I’ve eaten coconut-flavored maggots for this site. It takes a lot more than a funny name to frighten me off.

Collon is not a candy, it’s more of a filled cookie. My theory is that the name relates to some more innocent English word like ‘cone’ or ‘crown’ which has been transliterated into Japanese and then back, not entirely successfully. They seem like a sort of mini-interpretation of a common Japanese baked good which is a cone-shaped bread/pastry roll with cream in it.

I admit, I tried the vanilla flavor rather than that chocolate. Without a brown filling, the association to the more unfortunate English word is a lot weaker.

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