Chinese elementary school mixes lead-based paint into school lunches, sending hundreds to the hospital

Not The Bee ^ | July 25, 2025 | Mister Retrops

[Red Badger]

The complaints MAHA has about artificial food colorings in the U.S. food industry don't even compare to the Chinese, at least not to Peixin Kindergarten in northwest China, which substituted lead-based paint for food coloring.

Apparently, they tried regular food coloring but didn't think the colors were bright enough.

According to Sky News,

A total of 233 out of 251 children had unhealthy [lead] levels and 201 needed to be hospitalized, said local authorities.

Two food samples were seized and both had lead levels 2000 times higher than the legal safe limit.

The principal apparently wanted to attract more students to the school and thought that brightly colored food would do the trick.

However, food-safe food coloring just didn't have the pizazz he was looking for, so he had the chefs order some paint online to add to the food, never mind that it was clearly marked "not for consumption."

When kids started to get sick, he allegedly also handed out some well-placed bribes to keep the whole thing hush-hush, which has led to the arrest of 17 people involved in the cover-up, including school personnel, 10 government officials, and the head of the local hospital.

And if you need any more reasons to distrust products coming out of China, consider that lead-based paint has been banned in the U.S. since 1978.

While lead poisoning is dangerous at any age, causing memory loss and kidney disease, it's particularly harmful in children as it can cause permanent mental impairment.

These poor kids will likely never fully recover from what these evil people did to them.

[John Leland 1789]

“It was Melamine and they put the same poison in some people food over there.”

That is correct. We were living in Shanghai at the time. Melamine is a plastic found in household items such as plastic dining plates and drinking cups.

Dairy producers were being castigated for the low protein levels.

Someone in the Dairy industry discovered that melamine, available in a fine powder in the pre-manufacturing state, when mixed into milk, would cause a false reading of protein at a higher level.

Then hospitals began to treat an unusually high number of children suffering from kidney stones, and intestinal blockages. The cause? melamine.

We had always been purchasing milk in long storage life box packaging from Australia, imported into China.

We received notices at our door from the Shanghai health authorities warning of Chinese dairy products containing "a foreign substance."

[Flaming Conservative]

It would be great if all the cheap junk dishware and utensils could be tested for poisons, because I do not trust the Chinese as far as I can throw an elephant.

[GingisK]

Their inability to grasp risks or their apathy toward them is a massive liability in even simple decisions.

In China, this would be caused by abject ignorance. School cafeteria workers would have never been exposed to technical material of any kind.

[dljordan]

“Think it may have been baby formula.”

Yep.

[Red Badger]