VietNamNet Bridge – Facebook users have highlighted growing concerns over what they claim is plastic rice.

Facebooker says the rice has an unnatural burning smell

A Vietnamese Facebook user claimed that there were some plastic grains mixed into his rice bag. He said these grains looked different as they were more transparent. In the video clip, the rice was put in a pan and after a while, they became sticky, blackened and gave off a burning smell.

"I heard about rice made from plastic and other substances before but didn't think it was real," he said. "Now I don't know what we ate."

Some people have shared his concerns, but other people have actually criticised the person for publicising the issue, bizarrely claiming this would affect the reputation of Vietnamese rice farmers,

In August, another person posted photos of her fried rice that look like melting plastic on their Facebook page.

Melting fried rice

Dr. Nguyen Duy Thinh from the Institute of Biotechnology and Food Technology at Hanoi University of Technology said that maybe the rice was spoiled. He denied fake rice claims, saying that it's easy to detect plastic rice and plastic would melt at high temperature.

"It's expensive to produce fake rice, the cost can be dozens of times higher than producing normal rice. That begs the question of why someone would want to do that," he said. "It's normal to have some grains with different colour. Plastic rice doesn’t exist. Sellers can only mix rice with something else to create a fragrant aroma."

Representatives of Vietnam Food Administration said the rumours of plastic rice spread in 2011-2012 but had proved to be untrue. The VFA said it will investigate the claims.

DTriNews