Care for some wood pulp on your 'sketti'?
Enjoy a hot lentil latte?
Sipping a dirty chloroform-tini?
When it comes to these culinary fake outs, the joke's on you!
You've probably suspected that the "Parmesan cheese" that comes in a can and doesn't have
to be refrigerated might not actually be Parmesan cheese.
And depending on which brand you buy, you might be right.
Back in 2016, Bloomberg News reported that Castle Cheese Inc. was plumping up its cans
of so-called 100% real Parmesan cheese with ... wait for it ... wood pulp.
As you might know, goats can eat wood pulp, so technically it could be described as food.
But you're not a goat.
"That's shocking."
"That's disgusting."
Here's the thing: The Castle Cheese wood pulp appeared in the form of cellulose, which is
commonly used as an anti-clumping agent in food.
But content shouldn't exceed 2% to 4%, and it can't be added just to bump up the weight
— and therefore profit — to the product.
The company's 100% Parmesan also didn't contain any Parmesan.
Instead, they used cheaper cheeses like white cheddar and mozzarella.
For most of us, white fish just looks like white fish.
And we count on grocery store labeling to tell us what we're buying.
But seafood suppliers know this, and that's why they sometimes get away with mislabeling
a cheaper piece of fish as something more expensive.
After all, once it's fried up and drenched in lemon juice, even a professional chef might
not be able to identify it.
According to conservation organization Oceana, roughly 21% of commercially available fish
isn't correctly labeled.
This means when you drop $32 per pound on what you think is Chilean sea bass, you might
actually be buying tilapia, which sells for less than $10 a pound.
Now you know you can just pick up the tilapia, ditch the packaging, and call it whatever
you want.
Speaking of not being able to pinpoint proteins, there's a good chance you can't tell the difference
between beef and horse meat, either.
Let's just think back to 2012 and 2013, when the fine people of Britain were eating hamburgers
that were 29% horse meat.
And that had been going on for at least 10 months and possibly up to five years, according
to The Guardian.
"Umm."
The culprit?
Anglo-Irish Beef Processors, which wasn't just a backyard operation.
It was Europe's beef processing behemoth.
Some of Britain's biggest grocery store chains, including Tesco and Aldi, sold the horse burgers,
which were made with meat from up to 40 different suppliers.
And just in case that isn't gross enough, the supplier responsible for adding at least
some of the horse meat was also mixing it with previously frozen beef that was so spoiled
it was green.
Mmm…
Anyone else craving a nice juicy burger right about now?
Olive oil has a distinct scent and flavor.
But when you're comparing olive oil with extra-virgin olive oil, things get a little more complicated.
You also might not be able to tell if your bottle has been diluted with, say, canola oil.
That's not just a problem because no one wants to spend $17.99 on a bottle of fake EVOO,
it's also because many people choose olive oil for its heart-healthy benefits.
There was a lot of noise about fake olive oil around 2015.
But we've since learned that most of the olive oil sold in the United States is genuine.
But there are still some isolated incidents of fake EVOO intended for U.S. consumption.
As Reuters reported in 2017, the literal mafia was labeling olive oil pulp — the stuff
that's leftover after the olives are pressed — as "extra virgin" and exporting it to
the States.
Read your labels, buy from trusted sources, and nobody gets hurt.
Capisce?
The first time you bought saffron, you were probably surprised to open up that tiny $20
jar and find that you needed a magnifying glass to locate the threads.
Pound for pound, saffron is the most expensive spice in the world.
And if you actually wanted to buy a whole pound of it, you're gonna have to shell out
around $1,500.
And that's just for the cheap stuff.
But at any price point, you want to know that you're buying saffron rather than something
like, say, corn silk that's been dyed red.
"We have sort of a problem here."
Saffron is expensive because it's incredibly labor intensive to harvest; each flower has
only three stigmas, and they must be hand-picked.
So it's actually not that shocking that this particular spice is frequently adulterated.
Real saffron is sometimes mixed with corn silk threads or coconut filaments and red dye.
But sometimes the product doesn't contain any saffron at all.
According to Business Insider, Spain reported in 2010 that it exported 190,000 kilograms
of saffron.
But Spanish farmers said they only harvested around 1,500 kilograms.
Something's a little spicy about that math.
Turmeric comes from the root of the plant, so it's a little easier to harvest than saffron.
But it still gives food that sought-after bright yellow color.
But — surprise!
Turmeric gets adulterated, too.
According to natural food retailer Zizira, manufacturers sometimes add dyes like metanil
yellow and sudan red to give it an even brighter yellow color.
They might also mix it with other roots like cassava — which is poisonous in its uncooked
form — or related species like white ginger and wild turmeric.
In some parts of the world, turmeric has even been mixed with lead chromate , which has
a bright yellow color and can also cause lead poisoning.
So really, if you want your food to be yellow, maybe just go with yellow food coloring instead.
If you've ever bought dollar store honey, you were probably shocked at the price compared
to a Whole Foods or Erewhon.
Look a little closer at the label, though, and you'll see why.
You're likely buying something called "blend syrup" — which you just thought was honey
because it came dressed up as a cute little plastic bear.
Blend syrup doesn't even list honey as the first ingredient.
Number one is corn syrup, and number two is honey.
But at least the manufacturer is being clear-ish on the label.
Still, in other cases, the 100% honey you thought you were buying isn't anything close.
It's basically blend syrup without the honesty.
According to Insider, honey is the third-most faked food in the world.
In 2013, Wired UK reported that American honey is quite often doctored with corn or rice
syrup and might even be flavored with unrefined sugar.
Unfortunately, there's plenty of evidence that this type of honey is still being sold
in the U.S. and Canada.
Kobe beef is prized for its heavy marbling, which makes it incredibly tender, flavorful,
and expensive.
If you order Kobe steak in a restaurant, you can expect to pay around $200 for 4 ounces
of meat.
Naturally, this makes this Wagyu variety big business for American restaurants.
But here's the rub: Some American restaurants are playing fast and loose with their definitions.
In 2009, the Miami New Times reported that some of the steaks sold as Kobe beef in Miami
restaurants weren't technically Kobe.
In order to qualify for that name, the cattle must be born and raised in the Hyogo Prefecture
in Japan.
It was kind of like buying "champagne" that's not from, y'know, Champagne.
"$126 worth of beef!
Y'all not worthy."
Evidently, some restaurants claimed ignorance when it came to labeling requirements for
Kobe beef.
And on the surface, it might seem like a superficial distinction.
But Kobe beef comes from a specific breed of cattle and must meet certain requirements.
It's also closely tracked so that its limited supply can be authenticated.
If you're finding discount Kobe beef, it's probably not the real deal.
Americans love coffee.
So what would you say if you learned that your favorite cup isn't 100% Arabica or even
100% coffee?
According to a 2020 study published in the journal Foods, coffee is often mixed not just
with barley and other grains but also with nuts, legumes, and "other vegetables."
Some grounds might even be adulterated with much less-edible things like husks and twigs.
And this particular problem will probably get worse as climate change reduces the acreage
suitable for coffee growing.
Studies predict a shrinkage of around 50 percent by 2050.
In the short term, you can make sure you're getting 100% coffee by buying only whole beans,
which can't be manipulated in the same way as the pre-ground stuff.
But either way, it's still pretty tough to know whether it's 100% Arabica or Arabica
plus something else.
Enjoy your overpriced orange mocha frappuccino while you still can.
One day soon it may be more lentil than latte.
Most of the doctored food that reaches the United States and other countries isn't likely
to make you sick or kill you.
And though obviously economically motivated, food fraud excuses can range from doing whatever
it takes to stay in business to an endless greed for money.
Typically, though, there isn't anything willfully malicious regarding food adulteration apart
from the obvious desire to pocket more of your hard earned cash.
"Don't do it, kid."
Sometimes, though, products are mixed with things that can truly harm you.
And though these kinds of adulterations are indeed done with profit in mind, there's also
a much more sinister element to them: money over human lives.
In 2013, the BBC warned British Christmas shoppers to use caution when buying certain
types of alcohol — particularly vodka.
The warning was based on a doubling of the amount of fake vodka that was seized by the
government that year, some of which contained antifreeze, industrial alcohol, and chloroform.
Yes, it's that stuff they use in the movies to instantly knock a person out.
Of course, it doesn't really work like that, but long-term exposure might lead to cancer.
Typically, adulterated vodka is a lot cheaper.
But thrifty shoppers probably won't be thinking of their cosmo-tini causing long-term health
problems like blindness, nerve damage, or even death.
If you buy free-range, pasture-raised, or grass-fed products, you pay a premium for
animals that have been raised in humane conditions.
All of us just have to trust that the products we buy actually are what they say they are,
on the label.
Unfortunately, there can be a disconnect between what consumers think of as "humane" and what
industrial producers think is "humane."
Sometimes, the problem isn't even a matter of ignoring the rules.
It's just that regulations don't really work the way we think they should.
For example, in 2019 a company called Nellie's Free Range Eggs — which sold its product
in a carton featuring a charming young child pictured in a green pasture with chickens
— faced a lawsuit that alleged the company actually kept its hens in sheds.
And that each bird had just over one square foot in which to go free-range.
"It just seems so unsanitary."
Nellie's argued that their hens were, in fact, free-range according to the law, which only
requires chickens to have access to the outdoors for at least six hours a day, according to
JD Supra.
The court disagreed, mostly because even if Nellie's eggs were technically free-range
according to the law, their website implied they were much more free range than the legal standard.
Just as it's hard to know based on the package what "free-range" really entails, it's also
difficult to determine whether the food you're eating is really organic or non-GMO.
Most consumers think "organic" means "grown without pesticides" — but it does not.
Organic farmers can use pesticides as long as they are derived from natural sources like
pyrethrins, which come from some chrysanthemum flowers.
Still, according to the CDC, even those aren't totally harmless, considering that high exposure
can cause dizziness, convulsions and blacking out.
"Are you on drugs?"
Organic crops can also become contaminated by pesticides that drift over from other farms.
So the presence of synthetic pesticide residue on an organic tomato may or may not mean it
hasn't been grown organically.
But organic foods aren't routinely tested for the presence of synthetic pesticide residue,
and therein lies the problem.
Even if most organic farmers play by the rules, any time you have a high-demand, high-value
product that looks exactly like a cheaper one, you're going to have brands passing that
lower-value product off as the expensive one.
In 2019, a Missouri farmer was accused of selling $142 million worth of organic grain
— the majority of which wasn't actually organic — over several years.
He later admitted to the scheme and was convicted after pleading guilty to a single count of
wire fraud.