Delicacy is no longer a piece of cake

It's no longer a case of the longer the shelf life the higher the price. That was true of moon cakes until last year. Rules have changed, so have perceptions. The norm this year is, the shorter the shelf life the higher the price. Some supermarkets are even promoting their products through slogans such as "our moon cakes go off soon".

The new Food Additives Usage Standards implemented last year banned 27 food additives. The new rules allow the use of only 10 kinds of milder additives in moon cakes. More importantly, they stipulate the ceilings for the use of additives. As a result, the shelf life of moon cakes, representative of Mid-Autumn Festival, has been reduced from 120 to 60 days this year.

Moon cakes with a shorter shelf life should be good news for consumers. A woman in Chongqing, for example, reportedly found a dust-covered packet of moon cakes in her storeroom last year. Their tender crust and fillings looked no different from the fresh ones. The only difference was they were made in 2003, which means moon cakes with stronger additives can actually be stored and sold a year or two later with consumers tasting little or no difference.