
How we're scammed into eating phony food - apsec112
http://nypost.com/2016/07/10/the-truth-behind-how-were-scammed-into-eating-phony-food/
======
leroy_masochist
My 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.

~~~
cylinder
I only buy grass fed beef from Australia, and lamb from New Zealand.

~~~
joshontheweb
The best steak I've ever had in my life was at Rockpool in Melbourne. It has
ruined me. I can't really order steak and enjoy it anywhere else anymore.

~~~
cylinder
Hah, I will have to try it. They carry Wagyu steaks from a notable local
Victorian farmer, right?

~~~
joshontheweb
I dont know actually. Just go and get the grain fed. You wont regret it. Also
their mac and cheese is pretty amazing. Really everything is.

------
teolemon
We'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/9nb...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/store/apps/openfoodfacts/9nblggh0dkqr))

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

~~~
ep103
Wait, 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
We 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 ?

~~~
zymhan
How does this address the issue of, say, one type of fish being sold as
another?

------
lucaspiller
Not 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).

~~~
Jerry2
Another scam is extra virgin olive oil. Almost all of the ev-olive oils that
you buy at supermarkets in the US are fake [0]. It's basically lower-grade
olive or vegetable oil with some added green chlorophyl for color. UK
supermarkets aren't faring much better [1]. It's all due to mafia control of
the oil markets in Italy. 60 Minutes did a report on it recently and they even
tested oils for fakes [2]. It's extremely difficult to tell if your ev-olive
oil is fake without chromatography/spectroscopy equipment but some people try
[3].

[0] [http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-
fraud/](http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/)

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11988...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11988947/Italian-
companies-investigated-for-passing-off-ordinary-olive-oil-as-extra-
virgin.html)

[2] [http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/mafia-olive-
oi...](http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/mafia-olive-oil-
on-60-minutes/50203)

[3] [http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-tell-if-your-olive-oil-
fake/](http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-tell-if-your-olive-oil-fake/)

~~~
derefr
What's the cheapest way to get guaranteed-real EV olive oil? Are there known-
good brands (perhaps ones produced entirely outside of Italy?)

Or, if you cared about "authentic Italian" olive oil, perhaps for personal or
restaurant use (i.e. not for resale): how much would it cost (in the US) to
just buy bulk Italian _olives_ , and then press them yourself?

~~~
mikekchar
I know this is crazy, but you can taste it :-) Of course, most people don't
know what olive oil should taste like, but it really has a wide flavour range.
Buy a selection of small bottles and simply taste them (possibly with some
nice bread and a little salt if you don't like drinking oil straight up).

I highly recommend trying olive oil from other countries as well. It's really
an eye opener. Once you get some experience it's pretty easy to spot good
olive oil. It's a bit like beer. Some people love American lite beer (and more
power to them), but if you compare an all malt lager with a single variety
noble hop to a light beer with 30% rice/corn and a mishmash of 8 nondescript
hops (or isomerised hop extract) it doesn't require a discerning palette to
detect the difference.

Interestingly, I have been wondering for about 10 years now about how
ridiculously cheap balsamic vinegar has shown up in the super market. Buy a
bottle of 30 year old balsamico and compare it to the cheap stuff and I
suspect you will wonder (like me), "Is this really balsamic vinegar???"

~~~
LoSboccacc
Yeah it's like going to Greece and eat a ripe cucumber. Even in italy they
sell watery, acidic stuff that would never comare to the real thing. I've
never eaten one again anywhere else in the world.

~~~
hvidgaard
To be fair, most contries have good cucumbers, if you buy them in season. The
last part is the important part.

------
Tomte
According to [https://www.teekampagne.de/en/tea/darjeeling-tea/only-
accept...](https://www.teekampagne.de/en/tea/darjeeling-tea/only-accept-
genuine-darjeeling) 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
I am not certain about this, but I think Sri Lanka is one of the largest
exporters of Darjeeling Tea.

~~~
Tomte
It cannot be, that's the point.

If Sri Lanka exports tea as "Darjeeling", it's automatically fake.

~~~
yitchelle
Surely, 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
It 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".

------
polskibus
That'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
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me, why would the quality of food there
decrease?

~~~
gambiting
Because 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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Greek Yoghurt has to be made in Greece and nowhere else.

This is a really stupid regulation though. It's just protectionism for Greece,
like the regulation that you can't call it "champagne" unless the grapes were
grown in Champagne, France. There is no reason to expect this; consider
Cheddar cheese, Peking duck, French toast, and Hamburgers.

~~~
Dutchie
No it's not just protectionism. If I buy Bleu d'Auvergne (it's a French
cheese) in the Netherlands, I want to be sure I get the real deal, as a
consumer.

~~~
mac01021
But what if someone outside France is able to produce equivalent cheese using
the same formula? Why do you care where it's from?

~~~
Dutchie
In this particular case, as with the Champagne example, the name of the
product indicates its origin. Bleu d'Auvergne means "Blue from Auvergne" (a
region in France), where blue is short for "blue cheese".

If someone outside of France (Auvergne, more specifically) can concoct a
product with similar quality, let them label and market it under their own
name.

If you fork an open source project, wouldn't it be convenient to come up with
a new name for your project?

~~~
mac01021
But presumably there is more than one brand of Blue d'Avergne? I'm not
suggesting one should be able to steal the trademarks of any of those brands.

And if someone from a different place makes a product that is compositionally
identical then probably their ability to market it will depend on the
customer's recognition that it is exactly the same thing.

~~~
jinglebells
You're confusing brand/trademark with origin labelling. A farmers market will
inevitably have multiple cheeses created by different producers, all of which
may be labelled "Blue d'Avergne".

Yeah, brands do happen, I bought a cheese labelled "Blue style cheese" the
other day because it was cheaper and may have been made in Poland to the same
process.

------
dbcooper
From a 2011 UC Davis* report on extra-virgin olive oil sold in California:

[http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211fi...](http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211finalreduced.pdf)

>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."

------
cyberferret
I 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
Additionally, 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
Here 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
Sometimes 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.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This 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
> 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"?

~~~
savanaly
>So is everything good enough now? Should we never innovate again, because
"look how bad people had it in the past"?

I don't think the guy you're responding to said we should never innovate
again, just that the level headed response to today's food situation in the
United States is not to declare there is an apocalypse, which is what the
article is doing.

~~~
m_mueller
Tbh. I'm a bit confused by this reaction. When we had the horse meat scandal
in Europe, it was a huge, in the news for weeks. If this article is right, it
seems like this sort of scam is almost the norm in the US, and people don't
really seem to care. In the countries I'm most familiar with (Western Europe,
Japan), if a restaurant turns out to be feeding you a cheap substitution for
what they advertise, they are _done for_. Even big chains like Mac Donalds
aren't safe, as they had to painfully recognise in July 2014 [1] following a
meat scandal. Their sales went down a third for about a year, resulting in
quite a substantial operative loss. If potentially dangerous fake olive oil or
Tuna doesn't cause a huge media outcry in the US, what will?

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-scandals-push-mcdonalds-
jap...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-scandals-push-mcdonalds-japan-into-
loss-1423121899)

------
wtbob
> 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.

------
pipio21
Food 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
A 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
But 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.

~~~
chris_7
You need to shop around the outside of the store - that's where the
vegetables, fish, milk, yogurt (unsweetened greek/skyr), and eggs typically
are, with a stop-by in the flour/sugar/etc. aisle when you run out of those.

Alternatively, speciality stores - vegetable markets or farmer's markets,
Asian/Mexican markets, etc., buy bread from a bakery, not a supermarket aisle.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Why should I have to try so hard to find good food? Why isn't it there in the
supermarkets? Presumably because the customers are at least willing to buy the
junk that is there.

------
pvaldes
The 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.

~~~
bitherd
The 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.h...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/aug/25/research.highereducation))

~~~
pvaldes
A lot of conspirative theories arose of course, but the oficial version was
that some oil destined to industrial uses was imported from French to Spain
and sold door-to-door as edible oil by some unscrupulous sellers.

The case was not repeated since that, so tomato pesticides aren't really a
strong candidate. A lot of the tomatoes eaten in Germany, Holland and other
European countries are from Spain (and pass strict quality tests in those
countries) and nobody developped the same symptoms ever. Tomato production
created a new type of spanish landscape in fact, that we call "the sea of
plastic".

In my family we use exclusively olive oil for all. In any case, I will love to
taste the sazanqua oil, that is the equivalent to an olive tree for japanese
and is reputed also as excelent. Have somebody tried it?

------
stephenr
I 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.

~~~
csolo93
Oh come on, I'm tired of hearing about US beer from people that don't drink
real US beer. Yeah, the domestic big seller beers like Budweiser are pretty
crap, but there is an incredible craft beer scene. Look at brewers like
Stillwater and Dark Horse, or even bigger ones like Sierra Nevada. Even
European brewers like Evil Twin now have US based breweries.

~~~
stephenr
Other countries have excellent small-scale beer producers too. But some of
them also have quite good mass-produced beers too, which is my entire point.

Like someone else, you're trying to compare American small-scale products
against mass-produced international goods, as if other countries don't also
have very good small-scale producers.

------
somberi
I 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
I 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.

------
55555
Food is actually a surprisingly good market for counterfeit goods, because the
evidence gets eaten.

~~~
litzer
This article is all about how the "evidence" is around us in the stores we
shop at and restaurants we go to.

~~~
55555
Right. 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.

------
neopallium
Companies 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.

------
apecat
Here'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...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-
extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html)

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).

------
jjcm
Is 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
In 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.

~~~
derefr
Ah, 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.)

------
Negitivefrags
I'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
It is more common because that problem is much more widespread and ultimately
much more dangerous for the health of the victims.

~~~
hueving
When 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
The 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)

~~~
marcoperaza
I'm glad you bring up MSG because it's a great example of something that's
been repeatedly proven harmless but people still irrationally fear. It also
occurs naturally in large amounts in many foods.

People are stupid when it comes to food. It's probably an evolutionary thing,
from back when heeding food lore from other people could mean the difference
between life and death.

~~~
emp_zealoth
I have severe acidic reflux - I can pretty quickly tell when something is
laden with MSG - I literally start gushing acid within few hours. Also the
issue is of amount - some processed foods just go nuts

------
studentrob
I 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
Carls Jr sent me to the hospital, twice. Had an horrible allergy to their
cheese.

I can eat other cheese fine.

------
marcoperaza
> _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
Most 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
I'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.

------
fractallyte
Regarding 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-...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-mob-made-southen-italy-a-
toxic-wasteland-0000555-v22n1)

------
andy_ppp
Endless deregulation makes people lots of money but is exactly why Europe
should never sign TTIP.

------
JasonCEC
My 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] ^

------
nimos
I'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?

~~~
throwaway049
Enforcement 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.

------
fhood
Believe 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.

------
baddox
The 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?

~~~
dgacmu
They 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-p...](http://www.gourmetretailer.com/top-story-
profiles___trends-
parmigiano_reggiano_consorzio_and_rienzi_and_sons_settle_lawsuit-3991.html)

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.

------
mirimir
US restaurants need not list ingredients. But is it illegal for them to lie?
That's an honest question.

~~~
el_benhameen
In 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-r...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-fake-
lobster-roll-20151209-story.html)

~~~
mirimir
An 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.ht...](http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194244.htm)

[1]
[http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/RetailFoodProtect...](http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/RetailFoodProtection/FoodCode/default.htm)

~~~
tempodox
Is 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.

~~~
mirimir
I get the sense that it's mostly about foodborne illness.

One could search the CFR, but I'm not up for that today.

------
joshu
Has 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
> _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
23andme 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
You 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.

------
yitchelle
This 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/d...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/484/doppelgangers)

~~~
jshelly
That illustration of the pig is priceless

~~~
yitchelle
I believe you can purchase that illustration as a print for wall decoration
purposes. It will be quite a conversation starter.

------
Hockenbrizzle
Can 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
During 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/)).

------
Shivetya
Okay, 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.

------
eximius
So, 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. :(

------
dzuc
[http://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

------
jnefbebyby
see this Tim & Eric song for more information
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Re6pZri8Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Re6pZri8Gw)

------
coreyp_1
Wow! Can I blame this for my obesity?

~~~
internaut
Sometimes 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.

~~~
lsc
>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 don't want to call you out for exaggerating, but you are approaching
exaggeration by orders of magnitude. A mars bar is under 300 calories.

For me? a 6', 210lb man? bicycling for one hour at 14-16MPH is gonna burn well
north of 900 kcals. (Note, this is completely reasonable at my fitness level,
though I _need_ to carry water; I'll consume a litre during that time period,
and judging from the condition of my clothing, excrete it from my skin;
without it I make it about 20 minutes and then slow to 8mph. As far as I can
tell, if you are carrying around as much spare weight as I am, there's no
reason to use gels or really worry about eating extra before or during the
ride; but the water is essential to performance.)

Check out some numbers for walking:

[http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburnedwalking.htm](http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburnedwalking.htm)

My point here is just that cardio is a real thing. And it takes time and
effort and sweat, (oh my god, the sweat) but it is a real thing, and one of
the interesting bits is that the fatter you are, the more you burn doing any
cardio activity.

I'd bet money that the increased caloric intake of our ancestors is entirely
explained by their increased physical activity.

~~~
internaut
> I don't want to call you out for exaggerating, but you are approaching
> exaggeration by orders of magnitude. A mars bar is under 300 calories.

I was making a general point. It is easier to stop eating than to lose weight
by exercise. Much easier. Also mars bars have been undergoing food inflation.
It's another sinister conspiracy we can actually prove is real. They used to
be about 1/3 bigger. The world around you seems a little darker now doesn't
it.

> For me? a 6', 210lb man? bicycling for one hour at 14-16MPH is gonna burn
> well north of 900 kcals.

I should warn you that those machine counters are kind of optimistic. The
human body is really good at holding onto calories. We walk and run very
efficiently, I think we may even be the most efficient at long distance
running in the animal kingdom.

I'm not trying to stop you running or cycling around. I approve of it. It is
very good for your health even if it doesn't lose many calories. I think there
is also a multiplier affect indirectly coming from exercise in that it
elevates mood and this makes you less likely to binge on food. It is however
probably not the calories you burned per se that are causing you to lose
weight, not unless you're the 1% that actually exercise seriously and
continually.

Maybe this is subjective. I don't consider 500 calories a lot of food, but to
me it's a significant amount of running. A mouthful of food vs half an hour on
a treadmill.

> I'd bet money that the increased caloric intake of our ancestors is entirely
> explained by their increased physical activity.

I'm not denying our ancestors were very much more physically active than we
are. Probably that accounts for at least half the results despite us also
eating half or less of the calories we used to.

I think there could be confounding factors. Like a slightly warmer world would
presumably mean the inhabitants burn less calories on an ongoing basis. Less
obvious factors could invisibly add 50 or 100 calories per day and that would
add up over time.

By the way I am not fat! This isn't an attempt to avoid guilt :)

~~~
lsc
>I was making a general point. It is easier to stop eating than to lose weight
by exercise. Much easier.

Now, I've been overweight on and off for much of my adult life, and... that
hasn't been my experience. In my experience, if I want to stop _gaining_ I
need to cut out sweets and sodas, and that takes some effort and will, but I
feel okay replacing my mountain dew with carbonated water and tea. I would
classify that as 'easy' \- but it doesn't make me lose weight, it just stops
the expansion.

My experience has been that I feel... pretty bad if I try to cut beyond just
skipping the sweets, the sodas and maybe the fries. I mean, I do lose weight
without serious calorie-burning activities, but focus completely goes out the
window, and I end up feeling really lethargic, and I become kitten-weak. It's
quite possible that this is due to me not balancing the food I do eat
correctly, or something of that nature, but the point is that nearly every
time I've lost weight through caloric restriction, I stopped because I didn't
like the side effects rather than any failure of will

I mean, maybe you are right; my lethargy actually makes it easier to not eat
than to eat, but I don't get anything else done, either. I _have_ successfully
gotten down to a normal BMI this way, but if that's how being thin feels, I
don't really see the point.

Exercise, on the other hand, generally makes me feel better on all fronts
right away. I mean, it's still hard for me to stick with it, but when I stop
it's always pretty clearly me being a flake or just not setting aside the time
or properly prioritizing it, rather than the negative effects that significant
caloric restriction seem to have. For me, when I stop exercising, it's nearly
always clearly a failure of will. Last time, it was that they shut down my
bike path for resurfacing. But I was feeling pretty good; I could take some
time off... and yeah, that's how you get fat. That, and allowing myself to eat
the incredibly good employer-provided sweets.

I have also gotten down to a normal BMI through exercise and avoiding sweets,
and it feels great.

(there are injuries that will throw me off, too; but that's why I bicycle or
eliptical rather than running; I ran a lot when I was thin, but as a fat
person, trying to run enough to stress the cardiovascular system properly
usually resulted in minor injuries that prevented me from running often enough
to get into shape. On the bicycle and the eliptical, the limits are my will,
my time, and my cardiovascular system.)

>I should warn you that those machine counters are kind of optimistic. The
human body is really good at holding onto calories. We walk and run very
efficiently, I think we may even be the most efficient at long distance
running in the animal kingdom.

I was going off of [http://www.bicycling.com/training/weight-loss/cycling-
calori...](http://www.bicycling.com/training/weight-loss/cycling-calories-
burned-calculator) -

In theory, you can put a floor on how many calories you are burning, because
you can measure the output. On bicycles, often this is done with strain gauges
in the rear freehub, but the idea is that you can put a floor on it;
thermodynamics says that you are putting out at least that much energy. Of
course, then you can argue about how efficient your body is... and if you
really believe that man is an incredibly efficient machine, well, you probably
have not seen me engage in any sort of sport.

>Maybe this is subjective. I don't consider 500 calories a lot of food, but to
me it's a significant amount of running. A mouthful of food vs half an hour on
a treadmill.

well, 500 calories most of the way to a pretty good burger, if you skip the
cheese, fries and mayo. I mean, I'm not saying it's a huge meal or anything,
but it's not just a mouthful. Double that, and I think one hour on the
eliptical while watching silly action movies is totally doable, and you've got
a fully loaded fat-man double-burger with bacon and cheese. (I've still gotta
skip the fries if I want to lose weight, but I get to eat the burger, which is
the best part.)

yeah. I guess I don't really see a half an hour on a treadmill as a huge
amount of gym time. I personally have a goal of 5 hours a week of intense
(read: I'm dripping with perspiration) cardio every week. And if I keep that
up for any period of time, and manage to avoid sweets? I lose weight. And
doing any of that at all makes me feel better, even if I fail to meet the goal
(which, as evidenced by my current 14 stone weight, has been the case rather
more often than not lately.)

Of course, everyone is different and your body probably responds differently
than my body does to all of these things. Certainly, if your point is that a
half an hour at the gym three times a week probably isn't going to move your
BMI very much, I agree, though it is likely to make you a somewhat healthier
fat person.

~~~
internaut
> In my experience, if I want to stop gaining I need to cut out sweets and
> sodas, and that takes some effort and will, but I feel okay replacing my
> mountain dew with carbonated water and tea.

I do the exact same thing! I get absurdly cheap sparkling water and leave it
chill in fridge. Sometimes I add crystal light lemon or cherry.

> I have successfully gotten down to a normal BMI this way, but if that's how
> being thin feels, I don't really see the point.

Sure but a chocolate bar just tastes incredible if you haven't had one for a
long time. I think sweets are much harder to kick than fats.

> I ran a lot when I was thin, but as a fat person, trying to run enough to
> stress the cardiovascular system properly usually resulted in minor injuries
> that prevented me from running often enough to get into shape

Don't bother running! Walking is shown in study after study to make you more
creative. Better yet walk in a forest (maybe you saw the plant research
thread?). A mysterious journey in the brain happens when physically walking.

> if you really believe that man is an incredibly efficient machine, well, you
> probably have not seen me engage in any sort of sport.

Take a look at hurling. It's like a sport found in Harry Potter but without
broomsticks.

I think it is worth improving physical coordination abilities. You might be
bad at it but improving in weak areas should improve seemingly unrelated areas
in your brain. Even if it didn't, you will live longer.

> I personally have a goal of 5 hours a week of intense (read: I'm dripping
> with perspiration) cardio every week.

Trust me, you're the 1%. Your gym's existence depends on the fact.

------
rileymat2
Some people have a bad reaction to escolar, but it does taste really good.
Well worth the risk.

~~~
undersuit
Yes, 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.

------
venomsnake
> 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
I'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
I 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.

------
vacri
The 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.

~~~
spc476
Not 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)

------
poutrathor
shutterstock picture to illustrate article about fake food. Irony at its best.

------
poutrathor
Shutterstock photo to illustrate an article promoting a book warning us about
fake food. Best kind of irony.

------
tomdell
Can 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)

