Third World living — while it offers significant benefits over more expensive developed Western countries, including, ironically, more freedom in some respects — it also comes with significant pitfalls.
Exhibit A: fake cooking oil at your local supermarket.
Via South China Morning Post, June 26, 2025 (emphasis added):
Vietnam’s food safety authorities have issued a nationwide public health warning following a local police bust of a large counterfeit oil operation secretly selling animal-feed oil as cooking oil to restaurants, factories and food producers across the country.
Police in Hung Yen province raided the Nhat Minh Food Production and Import-Export Company on Tuesday. It was allegedly repackaging imported animal feed-grade vegetable oil under the Ofood brand and selling it as cooking oil…
“This fake cooking oil threatens public health,” an official with Vietnam’s Department of Food Safety said on Wednesday.
As animal-feed oil is often unrefined, it is not safe for human consumption and can cause poisoning, organ damage, toxin build-up and increased risk of chronic diseases if taken over a long period.
Over the past three years, the criminal network raked in an estimated 8.2 trillion dong (US$3.14 million) in revenue selling the popular Ofood cooking oil, state broadcaster Vietnam Television reported.
Anything for a quick buck — even organ damage in victims.
The wanton recklessness with human life for profit, in my view, is due to one of two ultimate reasons, or a combination thereof: a cultural indifference to life (this is the case in mainland China for sure) or desperate poverty.
In my gold-standard expat memoir, which comes highly recommended (by me), I cover similar scams at length.
Related: My Gold-Standard Expat Memoir: Back and Better Than Ever With the Second Edition
All apologies for the shameless plug.
What’s truly remarkable is how little profit margin could motivate such a scam: how does a scammer find or produce a substance that is so much cheaper than cooking-grade vegetable oil as to render such a scam worthwhile? After all, bottom-of-the-barrel economic efficiency is the whole selling point for these rancid, industrial food products rather than traditional oils like ghee or coconut oil in the first place.
A decade ago, with parallels to the fake oil scandal, Vietnamese authorities raided a coffee production plant and discovered that the powdered coffee it produced was overwhelmingly comprised of soybeans, corn, and chemicals to the tune of 90%.
Via VNExpress, 2015 (translated from original Vietnamese, emphasis added):
The dirty coffee production facility in Dak Lak was discovered by police to use up to 90% soybeans, cornstarch and chemicals.
On January 20, Lieutenant Colonel Le Ton Cuong - Deputy Director of the Environmental Police Department of Dak Lak province - said the unit was consolidating documents to transfer competent authorities to handle underground coffee production facilities, not ensuring food hygiene and safety in village 14, Hoa Khanh commune, Buon Ma Thuot city…
“To produce powdered coffee sold on the market, this facility uses up to 90% processed ingredients such as soybeans and corn along with many chemicals. In the immediate future, we have taken samples for testing, if there is a violation, we will destroy all processed and processed coffee, Colonel Cuong said.
Related: Existential Angst in 'Nam (50 Years Late)
Virtually at all times, one learns living in these places to keep one’s head on a swivel, ready to encounter and parry scams — getting into taxis in which the driver pretends his meter his broken so he can charge you 3x the market fare, perusing street markets littered with knock-offs, liaising with overly strangers on the street, waiting for the punchline, which is you giving them money for whatever purpose.
Constant vigilance begins to seriously grate on one’s nerves over time, engendering resentment and cynicism if you let it.
The inspiration for this article was a most excellent and insightful X post by @kunley_drukpa — which I highly recommend giving a look-see — examining the “low trust society” and its deleterious psychological impacts, both on the natives and, in particular, on expats coming from high-trust societies (to the extent those still exist) of the West.
HOW SOCIAL TRUST IS ERODED - A VISIT TO INDIA 🇮🇳
— ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 (@kunley_drukpa) March 7, 2025
🧵 A few years ago now I spent some time in India. One of the more lasting impressions I have from that period was the degree to which the low trust environment there (of a kind) wore me down mentally and transformed my attitude… pic.twitter.com/xo3kevY09M
The hemorrhaging of trust, in my view, has been one of the least-appreciated negative social effects of the last twenty years or so of non-stop government lies and cultural decay in the United States and the West as a whole, beginning perhaps with Waco all the way through COVID and beyond; cultures simply can’t thrive without high social trust across all sectors, and it seems we’re in the middle of learning that lesson the hard way.
