Do you like prawns? Then maybe you should read this...

Southern Vietnam is hot and sticky at any time, but the humid air inside the Huong family's hut, perched on a prawn-pond dyke in the Mekong Delta, is almost unbearable. 

The single room is rank with chemicals: we cough and sneeze when we enter. 

There's an acrid dust all over the mud floor, which makes you worry for little Huong Thi Mai, a seven-year-old girl who is sitting on the bed near the door watching her parents work.

(...)

Modernity, for Mr Huong, appears to be chiefly measured in chemicals. I count 13 different pots, jars and sacks of these in the hut, and he eagerly talks me through them.

He's particularly keen on a compound called 'Super Star' - the Vietnamese print on the label says it 'intensifies the metabolism to help prawns grow fat'. He learnt about this additive on a course run by the Vietnamese government at a local fishery training centre.

(...)

The label has familiar words from stock-cube packets: aspartic acid, glutamic acid and taurine, which is the key element of the energy drink Red Bull. Then there is Vitamix, 'to make prawns grow faster', Calphorax 'to help the shell thicken and give better colour' and Vin Superclear 'to kill pests, viruses and smells'. On top of all this is a seasoning of antibiotics. Full story...

See also:

• Very strange flavours at Yokohama's Ice Cream Festival!!!!
• China's tainted milk scandal hits Cadbury ...
• What on earth is slow food?