You Are What (We Let) You Eat

New York City cracks down on foods popular within its apparently too bustling immigrant community.

On a bustling stretch of Manhattan's Chinatown, Bor Kee Food Market has been caught selling unidentified red meat and mysterious fish paste, which is used in Asian recipes.

Down the street at Dahing Seafood Market, inspectors have found frogs being sold from an unapproved source. And next door, authorities spotted crates of turtles and a large tub of bullfrogs being sold without proper invoices.

Inside Kam Lun Food Products in Queens, inspectors discovered questionable turtles and frogs and a clue: "Label on animal boxes states China Air Cargo," the inspector wrote in his report.

"That's a no-no because there is absolutely no monitoring of the standards in these places," said Dr. Philip Tierno, author of "The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter," and director of clinical microbiology at New York University Medical Center. "It's subject to the vagaries of whoever is processing the food. Who's watching?"

Singed chicken was also common in these ethnic enclaves. This is chicken that has been singed with fire to remove any excess feathers or stems from a bird. Singed chicken is prohibited because it appears cooked.

Dr. Phil, you suck. And I'll go out on a limb and say that the people selling the products are doing so because there's a market for it among the city's immigrant communities -- people who obviously can identify the red meat, and to whom the red paste doesn't pose any mystery, and people who know that the chicken is singed -- not cooked. Because they fucking want it that way.

More here from the NY Post. More from the meme here.