7 ms·

Detect Food Adulteration with Easy Home Tests

206 points by ijidak 3y ago

fransje26 3y ago
The fact that there is a need for these tests to exist make me deeply, deeply sad. On the other hand, it is a good reminder of the simple things we take for granted. And I, for sure, am very grateful of the luck I have to be living in a part of the world with "strong" consumer protection. People always tend to complain about regulations, but this is an excellent case in point of why they are needed in the first place. No, my tea will not have metal shavings. And my milk will not be adulterated with detergents. Or my spices laced with lead for color.. (Not that I am under any illusion that some of the products sold here do not contain chemicals known by manufacturers to be unsafe..)
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Not as much concerning on an health side, but you’ll probably find adulterated honey in supermarkets all around the world, especially in processed foods
  - rob74 3y ago
    Unfortunately you can't use the sugar-in-honey tests on this page if the honey is already integrated in processed foods. At least with most processed foods - I might just try these on one of those yogurts where you have separate honey (?) to pour into it. Then again, if it's not "real" honey, they have an obligation to mention that in the ingredients list, so looking at that should be enough... But yeah, I was also thinking "if people really have to do these tests themselves, something is going seriously wrong".
    - aziaziazi 3y ago
      Even those who make that kind of food may not know : > Of the 320 batches of honey tested by the Joint Research Centre, the Commission's official laboratory, 147 were found to be fraudulent https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/03/24/nearly-half-the-honey-imported-into-europe-is-fake_6020473_114.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/03/24/nea...
  - grepfru_it 3y ago
    Honey, olive oil, and maple syrup are probably the most counterfeited food products
    - fransje26 3y ago
      As I was mentioning in an other reply, it's funny when you know that China exports a lot more honey (1.5x if I remember correctly) than what they produce. In a documentary they were interviewing a honey fraud specialist from the French authorities, and he was basically explaining that the laboratories they were using in China to counterfeit their honeys were more advanced than the labs they had at their disposal, which themselves were not far from state-of-the art. Initially they started looking at water content. Then, once the Chinese had adapted, they looked at water and sugar content. When that was not enough, they had to start analyzing the sugar compositions. The next step was to add pollen by weight, then by type. And now they had to analyze the honeys with mass spectrometers which was extremely costly.
      - saint_fiasco 3y ago
        At a certain point we should just admit that Chinese bootleggers make better honey than the bees. After all, it has the correct amount of water and sugar, the correct sugar composition, the correct pollen, and it all has to be cheaper than real bees otherwise they wouldn't bother.
        throwawaymobule 3y ago
        As long as it's called something else, that's fine. This is France we're talking about here though, so food progeny is a thing they take quite seriously.
        aziaziazi 3y ago
        I second this. There’s also the nutritional side. Food makes you happy but it also keeps you healthy and honey is a nutriments bomb. Not sure about the industrial ersatz.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  The problem is unlike developed countries where corporations are involved in these shenanigans, in the case of India it is usually common tradesmen who are involved in adulteration. Because they operate in an unregulated environment (which is often a matter of pride, “small business” and all that good stuff) it is difficult for the government to step in.
  - pirate787 3y ago
    It has less to do with the regulatory environment and more to do with cultures that are accepting of corruption. Government regulators are often part of the corruption in weak cultures.
    - njanirudh 3y ago
      Do you actually believe that US is not accepting of corruption and is not a weak culture? For a country that is insanely rich, it’s sad to see poor and middle class being screwed over at every turn of their lives. Pharma , healthcare, crony capitalism, bank crisis , false flag wars … the list goes on. The reality is that poor countries have to cut corners due to lack of resources and people turn their blind eye because “something is better than nothing”.
- gareve 3y ago
  In the US, lead was found in Tumeric
  - genjii931 3y ago
    Wasn't that lead-contained Turmeric from Bangladesh>
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  You are not safe as you think, if you eat stuff coming from exotic places. And at least in Europe we eat tons of stuff coming from all over the world, I can't imagine US is different. Also, ie in case of turmeric, imagine you eat at restaurant food that you may not even realize has some in the gravy via using a premade spice blend with it, which is using turmeric imported in bulk box from Netherlands, which has been repackaged 'from various sources' if they even bother to mention that. And how often do you think the test are made? Every box, every batch, every month, every factory/farm etc? 'Strong consumer protection' is rather 'some protection', but there ain't power on Earth currently able to fully protect you even from these basic things. And then as you mention we can go into dodgy but still legal chemicals that will be banned in next decade or two, ie these days literally everything is contaminated by some form of PFAS everywhere. Ignorance is sometimes a true bliss
- roncesvalles 3y ago
  A lot of what you buy in first world supermarkets is directly white-labeled from third world countries. I wouldn't bank on the brand on the label having stringent and regular inspection processes, or any at all. The only thing you can be sure of is that your milk and produce aren't adulterated.
  - fransje26 3y ago
    In some (most?) EU countries they do have fairly stringent checks. Of course the quantities coming in from outside the EU are immense, but to protect their market from unfair competition not complying with EU regulation they have strong intensives to have fairly regular inspections.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Here is an example of something that passed that shouldn't have https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avocado-oil-rancid-or-mixed-other-oils https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avo...
  - fransje26 3y ago
    Here in Europe there are some shenanigans with extra virgin olive oil. In the best case, they are adding lower-grade olive oils in the extra virgin oil, or completely mislabeling virgin oil and lampante oil as extra-virgin. In the worst case, especially with oil coming from outside of the EU, they can mix it with other oils, like palm oil. Honey is also problematic, with China exporting about 1.5 time more honey than what they actually produce.. Sometimes a dutch trader also mislabels Romanian horse meat as beef.
- thatguy0900 3y ago
  People will put literal poison into food supply's if it sells a little more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhN-o2ame-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhN-o2ame-4
  - fransje26 3y ago
    Which was the driver behind the bread act of 1757. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Bread_Act_1757 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Bread_Act_1757
aziaziazi 3y ago
> differentiation of common salt and iodised salt Is there any drawback with iodised salt? This is the only test that use “differentiation” instead of “detection”, not sure if that’s related Also love the simplicity of “detection of iron filling in tea leaves”: use a magnet!
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Not only is there no drawback, in India iodised salt is mandatory. I'm guessing the language is because common salt lacks processing instead of having something adulterating it and is perfectly safe on its own. Some fancy salts, like Himalayan rock salt, are not usually available iodised.
  - itronitron 3y ago
    If you're adding salt to a fermentation vessel then you wouldn't want it to be iodized since the iodine will harm the bacteria responsible for fermentation.
    - lagolinguini 3y ago
      IIRC you can still buy iodine free salt, you just can’t advertise it as table salt. It has to be explicitly advertised as pickling salt or rock salt or the like. This is the case in many countries, not just India. It is arguably one of the most successful public health initiatives ever.
      - sidewndr46 3y ago
        same was as in the US it is possible to get "ethanol", which is just alcohol that can't be legally consumed. One of my chemistry professors explained that their records keeping for "ethanol" was actually more much more strict than the actual hazardous substances they had in the lab.
        lagolinguini 3y ago
pieter_mj 3y ago
see related/occasion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693
vixen99 3y ago
Olive oil consumption in India is rising and numerous reports say that already in the US and Europe up to 60-80% of olive oil is not what it says on the bottle; in other words it's a fraud. Given that olive oil has a proportion of fatty acids in common with vegetable oils, sharp practice detection appears to demand a fully fledged laboratory. Many of us who love olive oil would give a lot for a home test. None of the ones I've seen to date seem to be reliable. I guess it's best to pay over the odds and assume it's not worth the supplier's time and money to adulterate a product already commanding a high price.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Taste it! Especially if as you say you 'love olive oil', I don't understand - if you can't tell if it's adulterated with a 'flavourless' vegetable oil from taste, then what is it you love about olive over vegetable oil (or what are you worried about missing when it tastes good)? Its higher price, or its lower smoke point?
  - detourdog 3y ago
    It's an oil for cooking with the best "health profile". If you need to push the smoke point use light olive oil. I use olive oil for everything and make do with the smoke point. I would like to be able to buy olive oil. The light olive oils have less flavor...
    - OJFord 3y ago
      I don't think that's the commenter I replied to's concern though, given the 'love' for it and description of 'similar fatty acids' to vegetable. I didn't mean that lower smoke point is a show-stopper, just that all else being equal a higher one is objectively better, as is a lower price.
      - detourdog 3y ago
        I understood that I just don't think all things are equal and the smoke point was a red herring. I'm sorry it's the kind of HN comment I regret making. I just see pedantry on a detail I feel privileged to contemplate.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
fooker 3y ago
If you’re in the US and think you’re safe from this, think again. The reason we don’t hear much about it is because of the near absence of preventive care for middle class/poor people. So things only get caught when they have escalated to serious issues not traceable to the thousand paper cuts contributing to it.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Rich people eat food too.
  - fooker 3y ago
    There is a large difference between Whole Foods and the reseller stores which buy about to expire items from the larger stores.
moffkalast 3y ago
> Detection of water in milk To quote Ron Swanson, isn't skimmed milk just water that's lying about being milk anyway?
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Skimmed milk is not watered-down milk though; skimmed milk is centrifuged to spin the fat out, but they don't add water; skimmed milk is naturally emulsified, adding water means it's no longer as emulsified, hence the test.
mdek 3y ago
HN thread yesterday about lead contamination of Turmeric in Bangladesh and the government's response to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693
TrueSlacker0 3y ago
This states it's for India but I have pretty little faith in the US also. I operate a beverage production plant (alcoholic and non) and finally got an actual ingredient and process inspection during our 8th year. We passed with only a few suggested changes but I was asking the inspector (who was a state inspector employed by health and human services inspecting for the fda) what would happen if we failed. They said basically nothing would happen, they would work with us to correct the issue and we had up to a year(if I remember the timeline correctly) to fix it before fines begin. They mentioned an unnamed place in another major city nearby that had rodents running on the food conveyers for multiple inspections yet they keep operating and just pay the fines rather than fix the issue. They mentioned they were close to shutting them down but it had been going on for far longer than a year. This was around early 2019 so pre COVID. I would only expect their inspections are even less frequent now like the rest of the gov agencies we deal with.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  from what I understand rodents arent really adulterant? It's when people decide to do something like put melamine in milk that it becomes an issue
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    It's almost impossible to detect an adulterant unless you know what adulterant you're looking for. There are an awful lot of possible adulterants out there too. Therefore, testing is a bit of a losing game. Instead, developed nations like the US require record keeping (ie. you need to keep a list of suppliers for each batch, and sometimes samples of each batch), and the court system allows someone to sue for a lot of money after the fact if a poisonous adulterant was found. The risk of being sued is what keeps most food safe.
    - htss2013 3y ago
      What exactly are you referring to about suing for a lot of money if an adulterant is found? Is there a specific law that specifies damages? Because if not, it probably falls into the same civil framework as everything else where the amount of money sought has to be proven as proportional to damages. Unless it severely sickened you, it'd be difficult to quantifiably prove the damage that sawdust caused you.

206 points by ijidak 3y ago

The fact that there is a need for these tests to exist make me deeply, deeply sad. On the other hand, it is a good reminder of the simple things we take for granted. And I, for sure, am very grateful of the luck I have to be living in a part of the world with "strong" consumer protection. People always tend to complain about regulations, but this is an excellent case in point of why they are needed in the first place. No, my tea will not have metal shavings. And my milk will not be adulterated with detergents. Or my spices laced with lead for color.. (Not that I am under any illusion that some of the products sold here do not contain chemicals known by manufacturers to be unsafe..)

aziaziazi 3y ago
Not as much concerning on an health side, but you’ll probably find adulterated honey in supermarkets all around the world, especially in processed foods
- rob74 3y ago
  Unfortunately you can't use the sugar-in-honey tests on this page if the honey is already integrated in processed foods. At least with most processed foods - I might just try these on one of those yogurts where you have separate honey (?) to pour into it. Then again, if it's not "real" honey, they have an obligation to mention that in the ingredients list, so looking at that should be enough... But yeah, I was also thinking "if people really have to do these tests themselves, something is going seriously wrong".
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    Even those who make that kind of food may not know : > Of the 320 batches of honey tested by the Joint Research Centre, the Commission's official laboratory, 147 were found to be fraudulent https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/03/24/nearly-half-the-honey-imported-into-europe-is-fake_6020473_114.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/03/24/nea...
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  Honey, olive oil, and maple syrup are probably the most counterfeited food products
  - fransje26 3y ago
    As I was mentioning in an other reply, it's funny when you know that China exports a lot more honey (1.5x if I remember correctly) than what they produce. In a documentary they were interviewing a honey fraud specialist from the French authorities, and he was basically explaining that the laboratories they were using in China to counterfeit their honeys were more advanced than the labs they had at their disposal, which themselves were not far from state-of-the art. Initially they started looking at water content. Then, once the Chinese had adapted, they looked at water and sugar content. When that was not enough, they had to start analyzing the sugar compositions. The next step was to add pollen by weight, then by type. And now they had to analyze the honeys with mass spectrometers which was extremely costly.
    - saint_fiasco 3y ago
      At a certain point we should just admit that Chinese bootleggers make better honey than the bees. After all, it has the correct amount of water and sugar, the correct sugar composition, the correct pollen, and it all has to be cheaper than real bees otherwise they wouldn't bother.
      - throwawaymobule 3y ago
        As long as it's called something else, that's fine. This is France we're talking about here though, so food progeny is a thing they take quite seriously.
        aziaziazi 3y ago
        I second this. There’s also the nutritional side. Food makes you happy but it also keeps you healthy and honey is a nutriments bomb. Not sure about the industrial ersatz.
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
The problem is unlike developed countries where corporations are involved in these shenanigans, in the case of India it is usually common tradesmen who are involved in adulteration. Because they operate in an unregulated environment (which is often a matter of pride, “small business” and all that good stuff) it is difficult for the government to step in.
- pirate787 3y ago
  It has less to do with the regulatory environment and more to do with cultures that are accepting of corruption. Government regulators are often part of the corruption in weak cultures.
  - njanirudh 3y ago
    Do you actually believe that US is not accepting of corruption and is not a weak culture? For a country that is insanely rich, it’s sad to see poor and middle class being screwed over at every turn of their lives. Pharma , healthcare, crony capitalism, bank crisis , false flag wars … the list goes on. The reality is that poor countries have to cut corners due to lack of resources and people turn their blind eye because “something is better than nothing”.
gareve 3y ago
In the US, lead was found in Tumeric
- genjii931 3y ago
  Wasn't that lead-contained Turmeric from Bangladesh>
saiya-jin 3y ago
You are not safe as you think, if you eat stuff coming from exotic places. And at least in Europe we eat tons of stuff coming from all over the world, I can't imagine US is different. Also, ie in case of turmeric, imagine you eat at restaurant food that you may not even realize has some in the gravy via using a premade spice blend with it, which is using turmeric imported in bulk box from Netherlands, which has been repackaged 'from various sources' if they even bother to mention that. And how often do you think the test are made? Every box, every batch, every month, every factory/farm etc? 'Strong consumer protection' is rather 'some protection', but there ain't power on Earth currently able to fully protect you even from these basic things. And then as you mention we can go into dodgy but still legal chemicals that will be banned in next decade or two, ie these days literally everything is contaminated by some form of PFAS everywhere. Ignorance is sometimes a true bliss
roncesvalles 3y ago
A lot of what you buy in first world supermarkets is directly white-labeled from third world countries. I wouldn't bank on the brand on the label having stringent and regular inspection processes, or any at all. The only thing you can be sure of is that your milk and produce aren't adulterated.
- fransje26 3y ago
  In some (most?) EU countries they do have fairly stringent checks. Of course the quantities coming in from outside the EU are immense, but to protect their market from unfair competition not complying with EU regulation they have strong intensives to have fairly regular inspections.
renewiltord 3y ago
Here is an example of something that passed that shouldn't have https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avocado-oil-rancid-or-mixed-other-oils https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avo...
- fransje26 3y ago
  Here in Europe there are some shenanigans with extra virgin olive oil. In the best case, they are adding lower-grade olive oils in the extra virgin oil, or completely mislabeling virgin oil and lampante oil as extra-virgin. In the worst case, especially with oil coming from outside of the EU, they can mix it with other oils, like palm oil. Honey is also problematic, with China exporting about 1.5 time more honey than what they actually produce.. Sometimes a dutch trader also mislabels Romanian horse meat as beef.
thatguy0900 3y ago
People will put literal poison into food supply's if it sells a little more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhN-o2ame-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhN-o2ame-4
- fransje26 3y ago
  Which was the driver behind the bread act of 1757. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Bread_Act_1757 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Bread_Act_1757

aziaziazi 3y ago

> differentiation of common salt and iodised salt Is there any drawback with iodised salt? This is the only test that use “differentiation” instead of “detection”, not sure if that’s related Also love the simplicity of “detection of iron filling in tea leaves”: use a magnet!

HWR_14 3y ago
Not only is there no drawback, in India iodised salt is mandatory. I'm guessing the language is because common salt lacks processing instead of having something adulterating it and is perfectly safe on its own. Some fancy salts, like Himalayan rock salt, are not usually available iodised.
- itronitron 3y ago
  If you're adding salt to a fermentation vessel then you wouldn't want it to be iodized since the iodine will harm the bacteria responsible for fermentation.
  - lagolinguini 3y ago
    IIRC you can still buy iodine free salt, you just can’t advertise it as table salt. It has to be explicitly advertised as pickling salt or rock salt or the like. This is the case in many countries, not just India. It is arguably one of the most successful public health initiatives ever.
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      same was as in the US it is possible to get "ethanol", which is just alcohol that can't be legally consumed. One of my chemistry professors explained that their records keeping for "ethanol" was actually more much more strict than the actual hazardous substances they had in the lab.
      - lagolinguini 3y ago

pieter_mj 3y ago

see related/occasion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693

vixen99 3y ago

Olive oil consumption in India is rising and numerous reports say that already in the US and Europe up to 60-80% of olive oil is not what it says on the bottle; in other words it's a fraud. Given that olive oil has a proportion of fatty acids in common with vegetable oils, sharp practice detection appears to demand a fully fledged laboratory. Many of us who love olive oil would give a lot for a home test. None of the ones I've seen to date seem to be reliable. I guess it's best to pay over the odds and assume it's not worth the supplier's time and money to adulterate a product already commanding a high price.

OJFord 3y ago
Taste it! Especially if as you say you 'love olive oil', I don't understand - if you can't tell if it's adulterated with a 'flavourless' vegetable oil from taste, then what is it you love about olive over vegetable oil (or what are you worried about missing when it tastes good)? Its higher price, or its lower smoke point?
- detourdog 3y ago
  It's an oil for cooking with the best "health profile". If you need to push the smoke point use light olive oil. I use olive oil for everything and make do with the smoke point. I would like to be able to buy olive oil. The light olive oils have less flavor...
  - OJFord 3y ago
    I don't think that's the commenter I replied to's concern though, given the 'love' for it and description of 'similar fatty acids' to vegetable. I didn't mean that lower smoke point is a show-stopper, just that all else being equal a higher one is objectively better, as is a lower price.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      I understood that I just don't think all things are equal and the smoke point was a red herring. I'm sorry it's the kind of HN comment I regret making. I just see pedantry on a detail I feel privileged to contemplate.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

fooker 3y ago

If you’re in the US and think you’re safe from this, think again. The reason we don’t hear much about it is because of the near absence of preventive care for middle class/poor people. So things only get caught when they have escalated to serious issues not traceable to the thousand paper cuts contributing to it.

hgsgm 3y ago
Rich people eat food too.
- fooker 3y ago
  There is a large difference between Whole Foods and the reseller stores which buy about to expire items from the larger stores.

moffkalast 3y ago

> Detection of water in milk To quote Ron Swanson, isn't skimmed milk just water that's lying about being milk anyway?

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Skimmed milk is not watered-down milk though; skimmed milk is centrifuged to spin the fat out, but they don't add water; skimmed milk is naturally emulsified, adding water means it's no longer as emulsified, hence the test.

mdek 3y ago

HN thread yesterday about lead contamination of Turmeric in Bangladesh and the government's response to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36481693

TrueSlacker0 3y ago

This states it's for India but I have pretty little faith in the US also. I operate a beverage production plant (alcoholic and non) and finally got an actual ingredient and process inspection during our 8th year. We passed with only a few suggested changes but I was asking the inspector (who was a state inspector employed by health and human services inspecting for the fda) what would happen if we failed. They said basically nothing would happen, they would work with us to correct the issue and we had up to a year(if I remember the timeline correctly) to fix it before fines begin. They mentioned an unnamed place in another major city nearby that had rodents running on the food conveyers for multiple inspections yet they keep operating and just pay the fines rather than fix the issue. They mentioned they were close to shutting them down but it had been going on for far longer than a year. This was around early 2019 so pre COVID. I would only expect their inspections are even less frequent now like the rest of the gov agencies we deal with.

sidewndr46 3y ago
from what I understand rodents arent really adulterant? It's when people decide to do something like put melamine in milk that it becomes an issue
- londons_explore 3y ago
  It's almost impossible to detect an adulterant unless you know what adulterant you're looking for. There are an awful lot of possible adulterants out there too. Therefore, testing is a bit of a losing game. Instead, developed nations like the US require record keeping (ie. you need to keep a list of suppliers for each batch, and sometimes samples of each batch), and the court system allows someone to sue for a lot of money after the fact if a poisonous adulterant was found. The risk of being sued is what keeps most food safe.
  - htss2013 3y ago
    What exactly are you referring to about suing for a lot of money if an adulterant is found? Is there a specific law that specifies damages? Because if not, it probably falls into the same civil framework as everything else where the amount of money sought has to be proven as proportional to damages. Unless it severely sickened you, it'd be difficult to quantifiably prove the damage that sawdust caused you.