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How we're scammed into eating phony food
- Tomte 10y agoAccording to https://www.teekampagne.de/en/tea/darjeeling-tea/only-accept-genuine-darjeeling https://www.teekampagne.de/en/tea/darjeeling-tea/only-accept... the Tea Board of India estimates that about 40000 tons of Darjeeling are sold all over the world. But only 10000 tons of tea are produced in Darjeeling.
- mavelikara 10y agoI am not certain about this, but I think Sri Lanka is one of the largest exporters of Darjeeling Tea.
- Tomte 10y agoIt cannot be, that's the point. If Sri Lanka exports tea as "Darjeeling", it's automatically fake.
- blowski 10y agoIndeed, it has a GI tag meaning it has to be grown in a specific location to be called Darjeeling. Like Champagne, Parma ham, etc.
- yitchelle 10y agoSurely, it is just the name that is different. If we can call the tea leaves by their botanical name, would that make it more correct?
- Symbiote 10y agoIt is, indeed, just the name. But it's also only the name that means I know what Pepsi is. You can find products sold in European supermarkets labelled, for example, as "Stilton-style blue cheese". Or "Cola drink".
- ascagnel_ 10y agoOr any other generic name, like sparkling wine vs. Champegne.
- evgen 10y agoSure, just like how maize grown outside of the Americas is 'fake' and all of those tomatoes that posters upthread have been raving about are 'fake'. There is a difference between a varietal which a region was initially known for (and which early trading used as a tag for that varietal) and something which can at least make a minor claim regarding the region producing some flavour component which makes it unique. Are all French wines 'fake' since the rootstock all came over from the US? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight]
- wodenokoto 10y agoIt's not fake tea, it's fake darjeeling as darjeeling, just like champagne denotes an area where the crops were grown, not where the crops originated.
- dagw 10y agoDarjeeling is a region in India. So darjeeling tea is like champagne in that if it isn't from that region it isn't actually Darjeeling.
- derefr 10y agoBut is tea distinguished by its terroir (like wine), or is it just a matter of cultivars (like bananas)? I.e. is Sri Lankan "Darjeeling" blind-taste-test-equivalent to Darjeeling from Darjeeling? I can support a concept of "growing regions" for foods where the growing region matters; but otherwise, it's just bald monopolism.
- pyrale 10y agoIt's brand, simply. If you produce Coca Cola in a pepsi factory, does it matter ? The fact is, for many of these products, formal brand recognition did not exist back when the production tradition started. Therefore, when you buy Gouda, or Roquefort, or Bordeaux wine, you buy with the understanding that you're buying the real deal, but there's no brand per se. With the development of mass consumption and international trade, Europe has started protecting these products with protected origin recognition. On the other hand, the US has much more brand protection on their strong exports, because they emerged much later. And consequently, they have laws very protective of brands, but don't recognize Europe's protected goods. You see it as natural because you were raised in that culture, but for many european people, US food practices would be considered similar to accepting fake iphones, mcD's or Coca-Cola. Within the framework of international trade agreements, this becomes a source of problems, ofc ; because accepting one side's or the other's definition would mean culling the opposite industry.
- derefr 10y agoBrands and growing regions are both "natural kinds", insofar as they're both things you would expect to evolve from many businesses selling a (complex) commodity from the same region, sometimes competing, sometimes colluding. They both make sense, and can both be used together. But they shouldn't be conflated. Brands are organizational signifiers. They speak of privately-held organizational knowledge and experience brought-to-bear. A growing region, meanwhile, is a signifier for natural local factors of the region that defy replication. Anyone operating an organization in that region will reap some of the benefits of that region; even Starbucks coffee beans, if grown in Brazil, would contain some Brazilian terroir. IP rights protect brands, because brands are inherently rivalrous things that can be bought and protected at the organizational level, like other IP rights. IP rights do not protect growing regions, because growing regions are not inherently rivalrous; anyone can "sneak into" the appropriate region (buying up land previously used for non-growing purposes, etc.) and found a new organization with a claim to the growing region. But sometimes, "growing regions" are also (secretly) the results of colluding organizations of humans, rather than natural factors. Champagne isn't bubbly because of anything the Champagne area of France does to it. It's a long-standing agreement between the organizations that operate in the region to make it that way. And that is a brand. But it's a brand that exists on the "wrong level", so to speak; it's a brand held in a sort of commons that any organization is free to enter. Nobody has stewardship over such a brand. It makes perfect sense for Champagne to be a brand—but it makes no sense for Champagne the growing region to be the brand. It would be much more sensible to have the brand exist at the human level: to call together all the organizations that are currently dubbed "Champagne growers", and tell them that they now own equity stakes in a trust that in turn owns the IP rights to the trademark "champagne." --- > US food practices would be considered similar to accepting fake iphones, mcD's or Coca-Cola Ah, but I would accept those things! If, and only if, they were structurally identical to the real ones. "Ghost shift" products[1] are indistinguishable from the real thing—because they are the real thing. They're produced in the same factories, by the same people, with the same raw inputs. It's just that they're not being produced toward the revenue of the contracted client who submitted the production spec. So they're "knock-offs." But they're structurally identical. I think most people, if told that they could either buy an iPhone; or buy a "myPhone" that's made of all the same components in the same layout with the same tolerances as a real iPhonee (and, as such, runs iOS just fine), but for $200 less... would leap to buy the "myPhone." Everyone who wasn't, in fact, paying a premium for the Veblen-good nature of an expensive-product-as-status-symbol, would take the myPhone. "Knock-off" has a negative connotation because many things can't be knocked off perfectly. But many other things can. The whole issue with media piracy is the fact that digital media can be knocked off perfectly. Many inorganic products (Coca-Cola) can be spectroscopically picked apart and cloned (though likely using an original, white-box-engineered process) to tolerances where nobody can discern the two. And organic products often have enough intra-batch variation that even with identical cultivars, differences in terroir between two crops grown half-way across the world from one-another can't be picked out from the noise of the inherent peculiarities of each individual specimen. Growing regions are important precisely in the cases where knock-offs of things from that region won't have the qualities that the "authentic" things from that region have. That's the situation where knowing the growing region of the thing gives you useful information to influence your purchase. Otherwise, growing regions are just misbehaving, wrong-level brands—and leaky abstractions, as can be seen in the Italian olive-oil example. [1] http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/01/8375455/index.htm http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive... --- And one more thought: Growing regions are becoming outmoded, displaced by brands. Have you tried to buy an apple lately? There are now[2] a thousand "varieties" of apple, different at every store—because those "varieties" are now simply the brands of apple-growers, instead of cultivars of apple or even growing regions for apples. [2] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/27/410085320/episode-627-the-miracle-apple http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/27/410085320/episo...
- mirimir 10y agoUS restaurants need not list ingredients. But is it illegal for them to lie? That's an honest question.
- el_benhameen 10y agoIn some places, yes. A few sushi spots around here were fined for using not-lobster in their lobster dishes: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-fake-lobster-roll-20151209-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-fake-lobster-r...
- fludlight 10y agoEight restaurants paid a total of $19k. That's not a very strong deterrent.
- mirimir 10y agoAn FDA FAQ tells me:[0] > Inspections and licensing of restaurants and grocery stores are typically handled by local and county health departments. However, FDA serves as a scientific and technical consultant to state and local regulatory agencies by publishing the FDA Food Code, which sets forth model provisions for keeping food safe in restaurant, cafeteria, and institutional food operations. Most states adopt these model provisions as legal requirements applicable to restaurants and food-service establishments within their jurisdictions. Looking at Food Code 2013, I don't see anything about ingredient listing for restaurant food. But I do see this at p 102:[1] > 3-601.12 Honestly Presented. > (A) FOOD shall be offered for human consumption in a way that does not mislead or misinform the CONSUMER. > (B) FOOD or COLOR ADDITIVES, colored overwraps, or lights may not be used to misrepresent the true appearance, color, or quality of a FOOD. [0] http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194244.htm http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194244.ht... [1] http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/RetailFoodProtection/FoodCode/default.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/RetailFoodProtect...
- tempodox 10y agoIs there even any definition of what “keeping food safe” actually means? And it still would mean nothing as long as those standards aren't being enforced.
- 55555 10y agoFood is actually a surprisingly good market for counterfeit goods, because the evidence gets eaten.
- litzer 10y agoThis article is all about how the "evidence" is around us in the stores we shop at and restaurants we go to.
- 55555 10y agoRight. I just meant that if you sell a counterfeit painting that could come back to bite you twenty years later. But sell tilapia as red snapper for a week, then wait a month, and you should be in the clear.
- cyberferret 10y agoI am surprised this isn't more commonly known. Locally (Australia), there has been recent furore over the 'blueberries' in most foods (including blueberry muffins etc.) not actually being blueberries, but a bluey chemical gel. Also, a local delicacy, the Barramundi fish is commonly replaced in restaurants with the cheaper, imported, less tasty, commercially raised Nile perch. Same with prawns, where beautiful sea fresh King prawns are being replaced with poor sample raised in Vietnamese sewerage farms. I believe by law now restaurants and shops have to show the actual name of the fish, plus whether it is local or imported.
- rukuu001 10y agoAdditionally, most Australians (don't know about the rest of the world) have never eaten an actual scallop. Mostly they're discs hole-punched from skate wings (a skate's a bit like a stingray)
- toomanybeersies 10y agoHere in New Zealand, most of the time when I get scallops they have the orange egg-sac bit still attached. Is that not the case in Aus?
- rukuu001 10y agoSometimes the anonymous white discs will have a bit sliced almost off and coloured with orange food dye. Often not. You'll see genuine (imported) scallops at markets occasionally, but it's years and years since I saw a restaurant serve the real thing.
- elbrownos 10y agoIn the UK, most scampi (a crustacean) is actually monkfish tail.
- sjwright 10y agoAustralian. Citation please?
- Negitivefrags 10y agoI'm glad that this article is about actual fraud rather than the much more common (and less interesting) "Processed food isn't real food" type hysteria that is much more prevalent these days.
- Capt-RogerOver 10y agoIt is more common because that problem is much more widespread and ultimately much more dangerous for the health of the victims.
- hueving 10y agoWhen you cook something on your stove, it becomes "processed food". If you have an aversion towards anything you hear is 'processed food', you are basically a chump.
- emp_zealoth 10y agoThe problem is industrial food is usually made with industrial grade additives: Monosodium glutamate, modified palm oil, various stabilisers, buckets of sugar, etc - I would list more, but I literally threw away the worst offender I had on hand (Pre-made meal-in-a-jar)
- vkou 10y agoHow is MSG an industrial grade additive? There's a lot of it in tomatoes.
- lorenzhs 10y agoIt occurs naturally in many foods (at varying concentrations), but that doesn't mean we have to smother everything else in it. It makes snacks harder to resist, which is why industry likes it. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Its current usage basically encourages unhealthy eating habits.
- lucaspiller 10y agoNot quite the same, but earlier this year I was working in Italy for a few months. I went back to the UK last week and it really surprised me how poor the quality of food is there. I don't mean in restaurants, but the actual ingredients you get in supermarkets. In Italy you can go into even the cheapest supermarkets and get tomatoes that smell like actual tomatoes, where as in the UK they just have no smell. Even tomatoes supposedly grown in Italy were the same (I guess they keep the good ones for themselves).
- kevindeasis 10y agoI went to Italy once and it opened my eyes on how I should have higher standards on what I eat, when I come back home Edit: english
- collyw 10y agoEating out in the UK is all about the location. if a restaurant is trendy people will go. In Spain people go for the food. There are often queues outside restaurants in which the surrounding look terrible (chairs that look like they are taken from a school 40 years ago). Spanish people understand food in a way that most Brits don't.
- chadcmulligan 10y agoyes I always look for restaurants that look a bit crappy but full of people. You know the food must be worth it.
- cylinder 10y agoSame situation in NYC. Great location, trendy expensive interior decor? Prepare to be disappointed unless the cost is $300pp.
- bloaf 10y agoSpeaking of Italy, I was a little surprised the article mentioned olive oil, but not basalmic vinegar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/balsamic-vinegar-fraud_n_5459425.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/balsamic-vinegar-fr...
- baddox 10y agoThe author recommends a few labels from food-certifying organizations, but can't food sellers or manufacturers just slap a logo on there too? Or do these food-certifying organizations' aggressively litigate for misuse of their labels?
- manmal 10y agoAt least in Austria, it is like you say - nobody would dare doing this, as this would make them liable. For no really good reason at all, because people probanly cannot distinguish a trusted certificate from a made-up one anyway.
- dgacmu 10y agoThey do - quite aggressively. It lets the localized producers sell at quite a markup, and a lot of the GI/DOC designations are protected at the level of international treaties. http://www.gourmetretailer.com/top-story-profiles___trends-parmigiano_reggiano_consorzio_and_rienzi_and_sons_settle_lawsuit-3991.html http://www.gourmetretailer.com/top-story-profiles___trends-p... WIPO and WTO handle a lot of them: http://www.wipo.int/geo_indications/en/ http://www.wipo.int/geo_indications/en/ They seem to be more effective because there's a very direct cost/benefit to the GI-protected producers when people infringe. IANAL, but I suspect that because it's a WIPO/WTO treaty issue, it's also probably easier to prosecute than a very generic claim that someone is mislabeling "white tuna", again because the incentives are aligned for producer to show that they're being damaged by the forgery.
- jjcm 10y agoIs there an app or a site that tracks brands and tests their claims of what's in their food? I'm always curious especially when buying olive oil if what I'm buying is actually real. I think the biggest issue is consumers have no way of knowing what's actually in the food they eat. If the information were readily available it'd be much harder to push food substitutes.
- alphabetam 10y agoIn Italy, a bottle of proper extra-virgin olive oil is roughly 10 euros per liter. If you're paying less than that, it's not real.
- cel1ne 10y agoThat seems a bit too much. In Greece, when you buy unlabelled bottles (dark green and sooo tasty) directly at a farmer's you pay about 8€. And that's probably a tourist-price. I imagine that price is even lower when produced industrially, here austrian supermarkets you pay 3-5€ per bottle.
- derefr 10y agoAh, but that's only a one-directional test. Cheap oil is obviously not olive oil, but that doesn't help you choose in the supermarket aisle if the expensive oil is also not olive oil. (And, in fact, the expensive oil being the fake is rather the whole point: the Italian Mafia wants to sell something cheap as something expensive and capture the margin; there's no point in just selling something cheap as something cheap.)
- csydas 10y agoNot really, and I can't say I blame them - the amount of work, resources, and various research fields you'd need in order to maintain such a database would be pretty big. Plus, it seems like it'd be a legal nightmare, even if the site was in the right 100% of the time legally and scientifically. Basically, as much as I would like something like that, it seems to me that the cost would be too great to maintain well and the necesary knowledge for the site to have would also be great. Even if they relied on volunteer research, it's still a lot to aggregate, and also probably easily subverted with UPC updates, brand switching, and consumer apathy. Plus, I'm' not entirely sure that it would have the intended effect of making people demand higher quality food. I'm trying to find the report, but I recall reading that after being on a diet of canned and other low quality foods for a long time, a person can become averse to fresh foods, preferring the taste of the lower quality foods just because it's what they're mentally used to - a peach tastes like "this" (canned in syrup), not like a fresh peach. Spinach is "bad" because it's slimy and has no texture (frozen spinach), not like good fresh and tasty spinach. Given how used we are to the olive oils and fish and such, I do wonder if we'd have the otherworldly experience or if we'd more wonder why our olive oil has a weird taste and why our sushi tastes different.
- dbcooper 10y agoFrom a 2011 UC Davis* report on extra-virgin olive oil sold in California: http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211finalreduced.pdf http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211fi... >Of the five top-selling imported “extra virgin” olive oil brands in the United States, 73 percent of the samples failed the IOC sensory standards for extra virgin olive oils analyzed by two IOC-accredited sensory panels. The failure rate ranged from a high of 94 percent to a low of 56 percent depending on the brand and the panel. None of the Australian and California samples failed both sensory panels, while 11 percent of the top-selling premium Italian brand samples failed the two panels. Sensory defects are indicators that these samples are oxidized, of poor quality, and/or adulterated with cheaper refined oils. *"We are grateful to Corto Olive, California Olive Ranch, and the California Olive Oil Council for their financial support of this research."
- joshu 10y agoHas anyone ever sent anything to a lab to be examined? How would I get started For the escolar example, would we need to do genetic testing or is there something cheaper?
- sampo 10y ago> would we need to do genetic testing or is there something cheaper? I would assume that DNA sequencing services are pretty cheap nowadays. You would need to understand basic genetics to be able to request them to sequence sites that suit your needs, and then you would need to interpret the results yourself when you get the data. 23andme does a pretty comprehensive profile for $199, and to figure out the species of a fish, much less sequencing would be needed.
- joshu 10y ago23andme does SNPs, not large scale sequencing. I don't think it knows what to do without a library. I have actually researched full genome sequencing. That is why I asked if there was a cheaper way to do it.
- sampo 10y agoYou need nothing like full genome sequencing to figure out the species of a sample. Just sequencing some mitochondrial D-loop and cytochrome regions will do. I am not sure exactly, but we're talking some hundreds or some thousands of base pairs only.
- marcoperaza 10y ago>As with so much regarding food safety, the USDA, which makes the rules, and the FDA, which is meant to enforce them, are nowhere to be found. These institutions routinely cite cost-cutting and low staff. Hmm. Maybe the better solution is to give consumers legal standing, with massive punitive damages, to sue restaurants to mislabeling food. Even better, make it a strict liability tort (i.e. no need to prove intent or negligence) if the restaurant is notified but doesn't clean up their act. Also, let the restaurants sue up the supply chain. I bet that after the first restaurant or supplier loses a multi-million dollar lawsuit for pretending to serve Kobe beef or white tuna, the problem will solve itself.
- venomsnake 10y agoMost of that mislabeling is legal. Unless there is standard set by the USDA/FDA marketing has free reign. I can totally call my salmon "purplefin tuna"
- marcoperaza 10y agoI'm skeptical, but if so, it sounds like another aspect of the law that needs to be changed. Definitions can be tricky, but the difficulty in drawing an exact line doesn't necessarily matter. There will be plenty of cases where the line has clearly been crossed. And sure, give the defendant the benefit of the doubt in those cases where it's a close call.
- TheCoelacanth 10y agoWhat stops it from being fraud?
- venomsnake 10y ago> That Kobe is probably Wagyu, a cheaper, passable cut, Olmsted says. I am not sure if something is lost in translation between the article and the books' authors, but that is rubbish. Kobe beef is PDO (which US is not participating internationally), so you can cure ham at home, and call it "best original prosciutto". Wagyu is a breed of cattle. And depending on the produces/sourcing it may even surpass the beef from Kobe (which also comes from Wagyu animals) in quality. There is nothing that prevents US farmer or Australian one of producing the best beef in the world. Or the best wine, best cured meats, best beer, best cheese, best whatever. Some people try to capitalize by falsely designating their products as coming from regions that have put centuries into perfecting products. That says nothing about the quality of the underlying product - it depends on the producer. Kobe beef - for USDA and the like means nothing. You can call your beef Kobe, Kube, Kombe, Kombat, Kohinoor and it will be all the same as long as it is beef. In the other parts of the world Kobe beef means well - beef produced in Kobe, in a specific way that is of certain quality.
- ctphipps 10y agoI'm always surprised the Japanese (or more specifically the Japan National Wagyu Registration Association) don't kick up a fuss about the name 'Wagyu' being used for the name of the breed (no matter where it is raised) and not the origin of the meat. 'Wagyu' in Japanese literally means 'Japanese Cow'. I wonder what it would take to name an existing cattle breed 'US Beef', send breeding stock to somewhere with lots of land and cheap labor and starting a new domestically raised 'US Beef' industry.
- venomsnake 10y agoI think that trademark dilution is in place. Also it is tricky - if it comes to mean Japanese (as the territory), I will just put some third rate cattle on the disputed islands under Russian administration and it will become as Wagyu as they come. Personally I think they decided to take smaller slice of much bigger pie - if the world gets a taste for Wagyu - there will be a lot of money in the business. And as long as they make sure they are providing among the best stuff - they will always be able to sell everything with a premium.
- fractallyte 10y agoRegarding Italian food, it's important to be aware of how widespread illegal dumping of toxic waste is affecting food production in that country: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-mob-made-southen-italy-a-toxic-wasteland-0000555-v22n1 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-mob-made-southen-italy-a-...
- dzuc 10y agohttp://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-colors-we-eat http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-colors-we-eat seems relevant in how this goes unquestioned for the most part
- polskibus 10y agoThat's why EU people are protesting against TTIP. We're worried that the lower standards that are common in USA, will prevail, and any resistance will be trampled in private arbitrage courts.
- foota 10y agoSorry, but that doesn't make sense to me, why would the quality of food there decrease?
- gambiting 10y agoBecause in the EU there are laws that say that if something is labeled as virgin olive oil, it has to be olive oil and nothing else. Greek Yoghurt has to be made in Greece and nowhere else. Lobster meat has to be lobster meat, and Kobe beef absolutely has to be Kobe beef. TTIP basically(in extreme simplification) says that if something is allowed in US it should be allowed in any other signatory country - which would obviously lower our standards as they are much higher than those in US.
- culturestate 10y agoThis is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"
- coreyp_1 10y agoWow! Can I blame this for my obesity?
- zeofig 10y agoYou legitimately can (combined with other, related, avenues of blame). Of course, doing so won't remove your obesity.
- manmal 10y agoWhat good is blame? You can focus on what you know is good for you and improve your health little by little. Blame might keep you from doing that.
- internaut 10y agoSometimes it really could be a conspiracy. http://imgur.com/W7AcUDV http://imgur.com/W7AcUDV Medieval peasants ate 4000 - 5000 calories per day. As late as the 40s, it was recommended that people eat 3000 calories per day and many men ate 4000 calories per day. Now it is recommended we eat 2250 calories per day. Neither of the first two groups are known for being fat. Actually the opposite. They look amazing in photos, all of them. This is despite many of them eating low quality foods and insane amounts of fats and sweets. Gluttony is not new. Fat people everywhere is new. So the number of calories we've been absorbing has steadily decreased over time. It is all physical activity that accounts for the discrepancy? I'm not confident that is the case. It sounds wrong to me because although I accept that our grandparents were far more physically active than we are it is known that exercise burns calories at a low rate. Exercise has always been a bad way to lose weight. It has always been easier to lose weight by eating less. You could skip the gym for two days by neglecting to eat half a mars bar. I wonder whether there is some other systemic affect at work. Like the temperature is warmer outside so we burn less calories just living. I'm sure that's probably wrong, I'm just offering up that there may be some alternative explanation than the conventional one. Here's another one. Our brains use most calories. Maybe we're using them in less energy intensive ways than we used to. Maybe our brains actually use up more energy when engaged in physical activity for an actual purpose i.e. not mindlessly zoned out on a treadmill and that is a hidden multiplier affect. Now I'm going to make a sandwich because I'm hungry.
- nimos 10y agoI've always been frustrated by the lack of government involvement in situations like this. Not specific to food but businesses in general. I leave my car parked for an hour past when I'm supposed to - harming no one really - and I get a ticket. Meanwhile blatant fraud gets ignored?
- tempodox 10y agoFerengistan in all its disgusting purity. The profit (or avoiding-cost) motive always prevails.
- throwaway049 10y agoEnforcement of parking rules by low paid workers should more than pay for itself. Prosecuting food fraud is more expensive for the government, and unlikely to be an election issue.
- vacri 10y agoThe article conflates the problem of "the physical item is a bait-and-switch" with the problem of "same thing made the same way, just not in the geographical location with the name". If the only thing that differentiates two food items is the name of the location in which one was made, then that's just pure food wank.
- dmos62 10y agoWell it's not as simple as that, because if for example a given wine is produced a few kilometers from the Bordeaux region for example, it's probably similar in quality and you can consider yourself a wise consumer for finding it. However, if it's made in a very different place, the conditions might be different, and tradition will most likely be different, so protected designations of origin (PDOs) make sense in certain markets.
- spc476 10y agoNot always. An onion marketed as a Vidalia onion can only come from Vidalia, Georgia (and a few counties around it [1]). Vidalia onions are different because of the soil used to grow them; they are sweeter and milder than normal onions (and if you take seedling Vidalia onion plants elsewhere, you'll end up with regular onions). Now, does this make Vidalia onions a different food from onions? I don't know. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion#Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion#Legislation
- yitchelle 10y agoThis story reminds me of the episode on This American Life on doppelgangers, specifically on Calamari Rings. A warning, if you like Calamri Rings, ignorance is bliss. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/doppelgangers http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/d...
- neopallium 10y agoCompanies using fake advertising need to be held accountable. I have seen and heard about so much fake advertising, that I don't really even care what the label says anymore. How hard would it be to create easy to use testing kits? (like home water tests for heavy metals) If we could create test kits to help identify heavy metals, peanut oil, or other bad additives. Then that would help consumers to identify fake food. I don't know how hard it would be to make kits like this, but it seems there is a market for it.
- tomdell 10y agoCan we trust the factual accuracy of this article? It was written for the New York Post, which is a tabloid. It has posted misinformation before. http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgrace.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_new_york_posts_disgrace.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post
- andy_ppp 10y agoEndless deregulation makes people lots of money but is exactly why Europe should never sign TTIP.
- jnefbebyby 10y agosee this Tim & Eric song for more information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Re6pZri8Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Re6pZri8Gw
- Hockenbrizzle 10y agoCan anybody comment on how well food is regulated in Canada? Since moving from the US to the EU I've definitely noticed a difference in food quality. I'll soon be moving to Quebec so I would be interested to hear if Canada is more like the US or EU in this respect.
- alxv 10y agoDuring the winter, most fresh vegetables in Canada are imported from Mexico and the US. These are mostly breed for shelf life and usually bland. In the summer, local fruit and vegetable can be quite tasty if you know where to shop. The public markets of Montreal are very good (http://www.marchespublics-mtl.com/ http://www.marchespublics-mtl.com/). You can also subscribe to get weekly organic baskets from local farms during the harvest season (http://www.paniersbio.org/en/ http://www.paniersbio.org/en/).
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- nibs 10y agoI will add that for products with nutrition labels, label claims are way stricter in Canada. In the USA, a label claim such as 200mg of Caffiene or 200mg of Sodium must be true at the best before date in order to be valid, but there is no tollerance for how far outside of it the product is when fresh. So 200mg of caffiene could actually mean 400mg of caffiene, with a five year shelf life, so that as the caffiee degrades, the product stays on the shelf long enough to sell, and is still 200mg at expiry. In Canada, a product must be within a percentage of claim value (5-10%) at all times, so things are much more likely to contain what they say they contain in the amount they say they contain it. Further, many products are pre-market regulated (supplements/fortified foods) and/or regulators are on-site full time (meat and some cheese processing) as opposed to the US where there is mostly post-market regulation (ie. a complaint is followed up by an inspector).
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y agoThis article is so over the top that it borders on parody. Start with the title: "Everything we love to eat is a scam". I can provide lots of counter examples to that statement. Other statements with my comments "After reading it you’ll want to be fed intravenously for the rest of your life." - Look up total intraparenteral nutrition and see if you would prefer that to eating. "Escolar is so toxic that it’s been banned in Japan for 40 years, but not in the US, where the profit motive dominates public safety. In fact, escolar is secretly one of the top-selling fish in America.". - By toxic the author means causes diarrhea due to unabsorbed oils/waxes. Also when we you hear that a lot of people are eating a lot of very toxic food, the food either is not very toxic or else not widely consumed. "These fake foods produce shallow, flat, one-dimensional tastes, while the real things are akin to discovering other galaxies, other universes — taste levels most of us have never experienced." - I can imagine Galileo realizing that discovering the moons of Jupiter pailed in comparison to eating real Parmigiano cheese. "Imagine if half the time you pulled into a gas station, you were filling your tank with dirty water instead of gasoline,” Olmsted writes. “That’s the story with seafood.”" - Zero calorie seafood, I never knew? "Perhaps most surprising of all: discount big-box stores such as Costco, Trader Joe’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Walmart are as stringent with their standards as Whole Foods." - In my opinion, the more "hipster" a food establishment is, the less likely that they are really taking care of the food basics. When was the last time you heard of a large-scale McDonalds food poisoning incident? How about Chipotle? This is one of those genres where books try to convince people that the sky is falling. In reality, we have never had such abundant, safe food in the history of humanity. Other than the people who truly have food allergies, the vast majority of people are really unaffected by any of these "revelations". In addition, especially for seafood, the substitutions are probably more ecologically sustainable. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/
- m_mueller 10y ago> By toxic the author means causes diarrhea due to unabsorbed oils/waxes. Oh, I see. No problem then, move along. > Zero calorie seafood, I never knew? Reading favourably before going into a rant is an important skill to have. If you try it, you'll see that the article has a good point with fake seafood, past the somewhat ridiculous comparison. > In reality, we have never had such abundant, safe food in the history of humanity. The US has also slipped to 27th place in life expectancy. So is everything good enough now? Should we never innovate again, because "look how bad people had it in the past"?
- poutrathor 10y agoshutterstock picture to illustrate article about fake food. Irony at its best.
- poutrathor 10y agoShutterstock photo to illustrate an article promoting a book warning us about fake food. Best kind of irony.
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- pipio21 10y agoFood in the US is sh*t. There are great things in the US and UK( from where it comes from), but food is so wrong there. I lived some years in Japan, I enjoyed the food. China, not so much, but is is so big you can find anything, they have gastronomical culture that is different and you have to get used to new flavors. The US totally lacks gastronomical culture. Everything is about money, and quantity. As an Spanish that lives in Germany I am so worried about TTIP and Americans telling us(Europeans) what to eat. Their way of eating is making a big part of the population obese with arteries clogged.
- venomsnake 10y agoA nation of 300 000 000, spanning 4-5 time-zones, 5-6 climate ones and not a single person with functioning taste buds ... what a tragedy /s The blandification and sugarification in the supermarket isles does not represent everything a territory has to offer in the culinary department.
- kwhitefoot 10y agoBut does have a tremendous effect on the food. Of course you can get good food in the US I have been to many restaurants that were both good in an absolute sense and good value. But you know that there is something wrong when children say "I can't eat this it's too sweet" which is what happened to me when I took my family with me to North Carolina for an extended business trip. In the supermarkets almost everything you can buy is heavily sweetened and seems to be designed for the most childish of tastes.
- evgen 10y agoThe problem here is that you do not know how to shop or find a decent restaurant. I can find truly bad food anywhere in the world, the US does not have any sort of monopoly on this.
- hvidgaard 10y agoLook at the other way around. It's possible to find good food if you know good food and keep looking. That is a problem when people grow up with that, they rarely know good food, thus they cannot find it. I can guarantee you, take an average family in the US, make proper food for them for 6 months, and then server a meal that they used to eat. They will find it bland, too salty, and too sweet.
- somberi 10y agoI live between NYC and Bangalore, India. The taste and freshness of vegetables and fruits in India is way more than what is available from Fairway in NYC. Some of it could be attributed to the broken cold storage (and hence most perishables come from around Bangalore). I normally buy Spinach (and other Indian greens) from the lady outside a small community park. "No Agathi (type of green) today? What happened?" She grins widely "Went to the movies yesterday. Did not pluck them." To me this is fresh :) I use the prices of vegetables swing wildly as a proxy for freshness. Tomatoes swung between 10Rs to 80Rs a Kg in a matter of days and is now around 15Rs a Kg. It is hard on the farmer, no doubt, but it also shows how local demand and supply is.
- iamshs 10y agoI moved from Edmonton, Canada to Goulburn Valley, Australia: the foodbowl of Australia; and the difference in food is just astonishing. The first time I had a bite of the salad here, I was mesmerized. Right back to the childhood spent in Punjab, India. Nothing beats onions, guavas, coriander, mandarins, olive oil, plums and the berries from the garden. The earth is golden here. The biggest difference is the vegetable and the weather here. Else, I miss Canada and especially the Rockies. Btw I wouldn't trust most vegetables in India. You don't know the source of water and if they have been injected by oxytocin. My grandfather owns a big farm and grew vegetables (never laced them though). BTW NorthEast India has good quality produce too.
- teolemon 10y agoWe're trying to end this. Open Food Facts is an open, collaborative effort to try to make more sense of food and food packagings. A bit like Wikipedia, but for food. Using smartphones, you can scan any food item and get detailed and structured data about what you're about to buy/eat. If the item is not yet in the database, you can help by taking a picture, so that next time there will be detailed facts. You can peruse it at http://world.openfoodfacts.org http://world.openfoodfacts.org We have Apps for Android (http://android.openfoodfacts.org http://android.openfoodfacts.org) iPhone (http://ios.openfoodfacts.org http://ios.openfoodfacts.org) Windows Phone (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/openfoodfacts/9nblggh0dkqr https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/openfoodfacts/9nb...) It's Open Data, so feel free to use the API in your apps and let your users contribute to end this (OdBL licence) Also, we're looking for volunteer contributors and developers from all over the world to: - translate it to more languages - add food from your fridge - enhance the apps and web version
- rasur 10y agoThis is an awesome idea and I have just signed up & contributed already.
- tirant 10y agoUnfortunately, if you care about food, you will be buying almost everything unpackaged, so no barcode to scan. But indeed, it's a good initiative.
- ep103 10y agoWait, how does your website take care of this problem? I clicked on a few items, and it just seemed to list the ingredients and nutritional information.
- teolemon 10y agoWe list labels and claims, and enable calculations like calorie average on a food category, nutritional score calculations, and many other things. We try to make it easier to read, decypher and compare food info. Was there a feature you were expecting ?
- Shivetya 10y agoOkay, I have to ask. Which brand of Olive Oil that can be found in US stores is actually olive oil? Is there a good resource for finding real foods? Outside that stamp which might only exist for CA originated oil I don't see a good indication in the article.
- stephenr 10y agoI see a lot of Americans claiming that respecting origin naming laws is "stupid". Im guessing this is partly the general "disrupt" mentality At work, and partly because based on your bread, beer and cheese, you clearly have long ago "evolved" to have no tastebuds. Having seen what Americans insist on calling pizza, I can't imagine what you lot would do to other foods.
- twoodfin 10y agoOf all the foods to call out, you choose pizza?? Name any pizza joint outside of Naples, and I bet I can find half a dozen in the US that have a superior take on the style.
- stephenr 10y agoPizza is a good key here in my mind because if you consider what americans call 'deep dish' pizza - the rest of the world calls that a flan/quiche/tart/pie. And then there is the insistence on calling all pizzas, 'pizza pie'. Pizza and Pie are two different foods, with very little in common besides dough and an oven. > superior take on the style. Im sure there are people who would tell me the same about american beer, or american cheese, or american bread, or any other food. I'm sure there will be people who claim american-style Thai food is better than authentic Thai food. I've been to a few countries, and literally the only food I've found that is consistently the same experience is Indian food. However, even taking that into account, America somehow manages to make its own 'versions' of food just so much worse compared to the rest of the world. The obsession with quantity, and the ridiculous use of corn syrup probably plays a factor here.
- epimetheus 10y ago> american beer Is superior to almost all other beer, aside from a few outliers, such as the stuff the Trappist monks produce. It's all subjective though, because what you (general you) think tastes good, tastes like watered down swill to my taste buds, or just nasty (Czech beer for instance). Our cheeses are rather good too, though not the pre-packed brand name stuff. Really, the thing is, the US is huge, and there are a lot of mom and pop, or small time businesses that are local or regional. People come visit here, go to a chain store, and think that Kraft is the only cheese we sell, or see Budweiser and think that's the only swill we make. No, craft beers here blow all of your brand name beers away, hands down. (all IMO, of course)
- apecat 10y agoHere's a thing on food science from The New York Times from three years ago I keep referring to. Long but really good read. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary... In the context of new developments of food replacements from the internet (Soylent etc), you can't help but see a tragic waste in how food science has spent all this time on addicting snacks, cynically geared towards heavy consumers. When I think about this emotionally and feel like oversimplifying, I can't help but to lump this in as a part of the James Howard Kunstleresque argument of how Western Civilization wasted much of the potential of the "good growth period" of global capitalism on completely unsustainable living conditions (suburbia etc).
- pvaldes 10y agoThe article is filled with mistakes and misunderstandings or maybe this guy eats in really terrible places: Spanish people weren't buying "fake olive oil" when poisoned. This was canola oil, was advertised as canola oil, and everybody in Spain can spot the difference among the wine and cider or between the cheapest olive oil and other vegetable oils. All this paragraph is false, including the “No one is checking, Olmsted writes". Not, Your salmon is most probably true salmon, because to use fake salmon is a mess when the true species is breeded in farms since decades, is relatively cheap, can be found easily in your market, and its origin can be tracked easily by the tag. There is only an "acceptable" substitute to salmon available, and is rainbow trout feeded with carothenes; smaller and more expensive to produce for farmers than true salmon. This is like to say that your coke bottle is probably faked because in the restaurant somebody could refill it with other thing of equal value or more expensive. Yes, I must admit that milk is basically a cheap imitation currently, and there is a lot of things that must improve in tracking fisheries and marine species, but spreading fears and saying that nobody is surveying this is not correct. You have the NOAA for example, blatantly ignored in the article.
- Fej 10y agoWhat's the deal with milk?
- pvaldes 10y agoEach country is different, and some have still real milk, but the product was kidnapped many years ago by enterprises and EU regulations and is worse each year. The "whole milk" of today is equal as the advertised as "ultra-mega-skimmed milk" only a few years ago. Yes, people like it, because everybody likes water. When I was child, we drank real milk, directly from the cow and just boiled. Is a totally different product, with lots of fat. Milk today has the same flavor as sucking a whitewashed wall.
- bitherd 10y agoThe cheap imported rape seed oil blamed for the Spanish epidemic was probably a cover-up, it was actually pesticides being used in the cultivation of tomatoes. ( Posted earlier today here on HN: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/aug/25/research.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/aug/25/research.h...)
- wtbob 10y ago> Perhaps most surprising of all: discount big-box stores such as Costco, Trader Joe’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Walmart are as stringent with their standards as Whole Foods. That's not really all that surprising: they are large enterprises and have the economies of scale to ensure that they are selling authentic food. What I'd like to see is police resources directed away from the War on Some Drugs and towards this sort of fraud, which is an actual crime with actual victims.
- leroy_masochist 10y agoMy family raises grass-fed beef and sadly, this article is spot-on when it comes to the lack of consistency with that product. We know of farmers who go to cattle auctions and buy the cheapest steers they can find -- often sick and/or emaciated ones coming from farms in financial distress -- then fatten them up on grain while giving them pasture to forage, and sell it as grass-fed at farmer's markets. Just install a pretty girl in a tank top and a Realtree baseball cap at your booth and it all goes off without a hitch. A good rule of thumb is that 1 acre of grass supports 1 head of herd. When you go to the farmer's market, ask the people selling you beef what their herd size is and how many acres they have under pasture. They should know these numbers cold. They should be ready to talk your ear off about how much of a pain in the ass haying is. They should know how calving is going and how many calves they've lost this year. It is very possible, easy in fact, to raise animals (or vegetables) in toxic conditions and turn around and sell into farmers' markets. If you want clean food the answer is simple; buy into CSAs with farms run by people you trust. They should be willing to let you come to the farm, walk around, ask questions. Many of the best farms are not certified organic because they smartly use stuff like potash that is cheaper, makes better vegetables, and ecologically way better than organic equivalents when used in the right amounts. I find it interesting that much of the discussion on this thread has centered on enforced standards. There has never been good enforcement of governmentally-sanctioned standards pertaining to high quality farm produce in the US. Certain private organizations are OK but the people administering them tend to be assholes so that results in a lot of farms (including ours) doing things the right way and selling to people who trust us, without getting formal certification.
- stephenr 10y ago> There has never been good enforcement of governmentally-sanctioned standards pertaining to high quality farm produce in the US. I'm not sure what your intended meaning was here, but don't make the common american mistake of assuming if ($americanThing === TERRIBLE) { $anywhereThing = TERRIBLE; }
- leroy_masochist 10y agoNot sure if English is your first language, but the meaning of the sentence you quoted is straightforward, so I'm not sure why you're extrapolating American chauvinism from what I wrote. The scope of my comments is explicitly limited to the US. FWIW, European enforcement is supposed to be much better but that's outside of my firsthand domain knowledge.
- eximius 10y agoSo, so many of our problems are caused by profit motivated people poisoning the well for themselves and others. It is truly a shame that our culture is so motivated by money over doing the right thing. edit: Also, this article makes it sound exhausting to buy real food. :(
- fhood 10y agoBelieve it or not, it is possible to make good food in the US for cheap, despite what the article says. I was lucky enough to be raised by two people who took cooking very very seriously (and to be fair we did buy olive oil from some family friends who owned a farm in Greece). Point being that I have eaten all across Asia, Europe, and the Americas and very few restaurants produce food better than what I get when I go home. I suppose that it may be easier to find good ingredients in rural areas (local produce, seafood bought off the dock as the water-men brought it in etc..), such as the one where I grew up, but if you are paying $350 for fake Kobe in NY than you are more interested in the price of your food than the flavor anyway.
- rileymat2 10y agoSome people have a bad reaction to escolar, but it does taste really good. Well worth the risk.
- undersuit 10y agoYes, I went to a sushi restaurant that was honest enough to list it on their menu. I only ordered one piece because I was aware of the reported digestion issues, but it was delicious and I had no distress later on.
- JasonCEC 10y agoMy company[1] builds machine learning and AI based quality control and production optimization for food manufacturing... Would consumers be interested in a food verification service? For the most part, we don't / wouldn't deal in food-safety, but we could do things like verify the age and provenience of wine, or the terroir of coffee. Discuss here or shoot me an email[2]! [1] www.Gastrograph.com [2] jasonCEO [at] ^
- studentrob 10y agoI start sneezing whenever I eat processed food. I think it's an allergy to preservatives. There's no test for that. I first noticed it about 5 years ago. After eating Subway, I always got sneezy, and also after drinking beer. I had an allergy test but nothing came up positive. After years of trial and error, I'm pretty confident when I see a fake juice, condiment, or something commonly canned like olives that I will have a reaction if I eat it. I should be a food taster for health nuts
- sogen 10y agoCarls Jr sent me to the hospital, twice. Had an horrible allergy to their cheese. I can eat other cheese fine.
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