For those who dont want to read the entire article:

Tl;dr they ordered paint NOT FOR CONSUMPTION and it was approved by upper management. Proceeded to dilute the paint and add it to food to make food look more apetizing. Paint ended up with lead content.

Specific to your last paragraph. A quick search pulled up a bunch of crap websites so Wikipedia it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint.

Looks like a good chunk of the world doesn't ban/regulate the use. China does. Like Europe, Canada, and other richer nations, exceptions are made for things like art and industrial practices. Even if lead paint is "banned" you may still be able to get it.

The story seems weird to me.

What kind of paint are they putting on food that wouldn't be at least weird tasting?

And why do you actually care if the kids eat the food, to the level of trying to adulterate it? Isn't it enough from a legal perspective to provide food?

I could see painting sample dishes to photograph for their advertising, to flimflam parents who are actually paying for the service, and then people might complain the actual meal is less vibrant, with far less risk and ongoing cost.

This is a remarkable combination of cunning and stupid.

JFC.

I read "Chinese kindergarten owner given life sentence" and assumed it would be something like child labor laws, but it was so much worse. What a piece of human trash. I don't understand how anyone's brain can justify hurting the most vulnerable and innocent parts of the population.

They added paint to the food to make it look better. Eye for an eye, poison those who poisoned the children. Anyone who commits bad acts against children deserves what’s coming to them.

Why is there still lead in the paint?

I safely add paint to my food all the time now because we don’t use lead here anymore. It wasn’t always this way though, as a child, I had plenty of lead in my painted food. I turned out just fine

I don't understand people that do this.

I thought this was going to be about too many kids licking walls, not painted food.