The vicious cycle of high rental costs of foodstalls

Photo courtesy of Jaevus

Not all Singaporeans can afford the time and luxury to prepare home-cooked food. Most of the time, they will order or “dabao” packed meals from food centres and “zhi char” stalls. The more health conscious Singapores tend to frown on eating outside, claiming that the food is not healthy.

Thus, I decided to put such health conscious claims to the test. I observed the cooking patterns of up to 10 food stalls. What I noticed is that the hawker tended to recycle the used oil after one round of cooking. Some oil when exposed to high heat can produce toxic compounds. Thus, if such are recycled again and again, the amount of toxic compounds will accumulate. Prolonged consumptions of such burnt oils can result in health problems such as atherosclerosis, inflammatory joint disease and development of birth defects.

When further queried why the choice of recycling the oil, these hawkers pointed out that the rental costs for the food stalls were sky-high and thus, they had to cut corners in order to maximize their profits. I didn’t further investigate what other areas did the hawkers cut corners at which will affect the healthiness of their prepared food.

The irony of the situation is that for the short-term, the authorities tasked with pricing of the rentals fees for the food stalls will collect a substantial sum from these hawkers. These fees go into the left pockets of the government. However, in future, those who suffer ill-health will tax the healthcare system, and at the end of the day, the money will come out of the government’s right pockets. A bit like gaining in the short-term but only to lose out in the long-term.

When we talk of preventive medicine, it involves measures at the policy formulation, implementation and execution level. For instance, a drive to encourage hawkers to prepare healthy food can involve incentive schemes such as rental credits, in which hawkers are given perks such as discounts in rents if they have a healthier method of preparing their food.

However, given the current situation, perhaps the only alternative is to watch out for one’s health either by dining at more expensive but healthy eateries such as Subway*, or preparing home-cooked food and cutting down on consuming food from hawkers who did not prepare them the healthy way. But for those who continue to dine at such outlets (affected by high rental costs) because they cannot really afford to dine at more healthy but expensive outlets, they are at risk of being sucked into this vicious cycle initially created by the high rental costs which go into the government’s coffers initially, only to be expended when the consumption results in future health problems.

*This article is not intended as an advertisement for Subway.