Posted on 09/25/2014 7:35:07 AM PDT by Olog-hai
A Chinese noodle shop owner has admitted to lacing his wares with opium poppy seeds in an apparent effort to keep customers coming back, it’s reported.
The use of the unusual ingredient—used to make opium—at the restaurant in Yan’an, in Shaanxi province, came to light after one of its clients tested positive in a routine urine test by traffic police, despite insisting he’d never touched drugs, the Xi’an Evening News reports. Suspecting the noodle shop he’d eaten at a few hours before the test might be to blame, the customer, Liu Juyou, persuaded relatives to frequent the shop as well and submit themselves to drugs tests. They also tested positive. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
You think all those dirty, ugly food stands and convenience stores in our inner cities are serving Michelle Obama healthy treats?
My understanding is you can test positive for opiates by eating a poppy-seed bagel.
Coke-suey?
MSG is cheaper.
Yes, but what was in the fortune cookies?
BTW:
When I was in flight school, the hangar had a lunch bar in one of the rooms on the hangar deck. They served the best sandwich that had a poppy-seed bun. That was, until students popped on the urinalysis that we had monthly. No more poppy-seed bun sandwiches.
Man those sandwiches were good...
“You’ve gotta try these noodles. They are absolutely addictive!”
Were they really lowfat?
Hey in my hometown the Chinese restaurant was closed for cats in the freezer. I’ll take the opium anytime.
I used to handle the initial drug screening for a small service sector company. This was late 90’s - early 2000’s, so things may have changed a bit, but the way it was explained to me when I would talk to our lab, it went something like this:
The basic tests - urine, hair follicle, saliva - can test positive for a particular drug due to consumption of a non-illegal drug substance or a particular medical condition. Consuming enough poppy seeds can probably make you test positive for opiates, just as amoxicilin or diabetes can, in a few cases, test false positive for cocaine use. Such things are rare, but they do happen once in a while. That’s why we also called/considered these tests as “presumptive”.
Whenever we had an applicant test positive on the presumptive test, we had the lab do a follow-up test with a GCMS (gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer). These tests look at the substance at the molecular level, and can distinguish between the opioid-like compounds in poppy seeds and say, heroin. These tests are more expensive, but done properly, there’s no fooling them.
For what it’s worth they don’t make opium from seeds.
It’s from the latex that drips out of the seed head when it’s sliced.
Don’t let information interfer with a sensational headline though.
The she became menopausal.
Why the positive test for opiates then?
Other articles note the restaurant owner crushing the seeds and using extracts rather than serving them whole in the noodle paste.
You won’t get high from eating poppy seeds, not even a lot of them - there is poppy seed filling for pastries and you could eat several ounces of it and not get high.
And poppy seeds are expensive, compared to wheat or rice, so you couldn’t put a lot them in your noodle dough and make a profit.
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