Ethylene Oxide on Lucky Me Products

Who doesn’t love Lucky Me pancit canton and noodles? Majority of Filipinos consume this food product like it’s their most favorite thing.

Some make it as their snacks, or cooked it to a different kind of dishes, and it’s always included on different relief packs donations when there are calamities that’s happening around the country.

Title: Ethylen Oxide on 
Lucky Me Products 
Published Date: July 09, 2022
Author: alykavinsky 

But a recent controversy shows when some European countries (Ireland and France) releases a safety and health advisory regarding Lucky Me products, that they’ve detected “Ethylene Oxide” as one of its ingredients which is harmful to our body.

So what is Ethylene Oxide, and why do we need to be informative about this matter?

“Ethylene Oxide is a flammable colorless gas with a sweet odor. It is used primarily to produce other chemicals, including antifreeze. In smaller amounts, ethylene oxide is used as a pesticide and a sterilizing agent.” — source Google

It is also linked into a lot of other serious matters like abortion, nerve damage, peripheral paralysis, muscle weakness, and impaired thinking and memory. Exposure to Ethylene Oxide may leads to headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, breathing difficulty, drowsiness, weakness, exhaustion, eye and skin burns, frostbite, and reproductive effects. And it also increases the risks on lymphoid cancer and breast cancer for females.

Ethylene Oxide is usually use by hospitals to sterilize their surgical equipments because it can kill bacteria and fungi.

And according to National Cancer Institute, Ethylene Oxide is highly explosive and reactive that it has the ability to damage DNA and makes it an effective sterilizing agent but is also account to cancer causing-activity.

It’s obvious indeed how harmful it is to our body. But Monde Nissin, the company label of Lucky Me Philippines, releases a statement recently (see the photo below) and denied the controversy regarding Ethylene Oxide on the said product. You may read it here.

This issue about Ethylene Oxide are actually detected not here in the Philippines, but in Thailand. And the Food and Safety Authority of Ireland are asking to recall a one batch of Lucky Me products that has a batch code “Best Before Date 20/07/2022”. Because according to the said Food and Safety Authority, Ethylene Oxide is not authorized for use in those food sold in EU countries.

And despite of the fact that this controversy didn’t happen here in our country, it will surely affects its business because of the panic that the news has given. And although accidentally intake of Ethylene Oxide doesn’t have an acute risk immediately, if continues consumption has happened, health issues on our body will surely occurred over a long period of time.

Good thing is that, I don’t really fancy eating Lucky Me products. I barely eaten this one, just because I really don’t like most of its flavors.

I think the highest risk when we will talk about those who consumed it often, are those people in the lower class. They’ve eaten this one a lot because aside from being easy to cook, it’s something that their money can afford. In my opinion though, it’s our responsibility to be observant on what we are eating, like checking a product content and its health benefits and risks before consuming something. And although most of the industries are not really honest when it comes to indicating or labeling a certain ingredients on most of their products, it’s still better to get yourself be informed than to just take the risks on something you know nothing about or doesn’t aware about.

Well then, better to be luckily alive, than to stop consuming lucky me products for the mean time.

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Hello there. I just saw this one on the news this morning, and I thought of sharing something about it just to let everyone be a little informative with this issue that’s currently happening. See you next time, alright?