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How we're scammed into eating phony food

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Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#61

Post by mikekchar »

derefr wrote: post #48
Jerry2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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???"

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#63

Post by zzen »

foota wrote: post #40
polskibus wrote: post #38

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.

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

Because currently the USDA and FDA equivalents in EU actually work, and the laws that require food inspections are stricter. The worry is that TTIP market access policies will force uniform, lowest-common-denominator rules, eliminating european food QA policies.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#64

Post by DasIch »

culturestate wrote: post #51
gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"

If you can't increase the number of tests, increase the punishment and let it affect the entire chain from supermarket to producer. You want being found guilty of a violation to be a nightmare scenario that will end people's careers and entire companies.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#65

Post by lsc »

internaut wrote: post #37
coreyp_1 wrote: post #2

Wow! Can I blame this for my obesity?

Sometimes it really could be a conspiracy. 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 d…

>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

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.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#66

Post by zzen »

culturestate wrote: post #51
gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"

Look, as somebody that's lived many years in Europe and in US, the situation is incomparable. I don't know why - either you have crappy laws, or you have crappy enforcement. If you read the article, it claims both. The FDA has super-low requirements to do anything - and manages to do even less than required to.

The european market is significantly bigger than US one (380m people) but manages to have much better labeling standards.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#67

Post by hueving »

Jerry2 wrote: post #46
lucaspiller wrote: post #9

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 tom…

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…

>It's difficult to tell if your ev-olive oil is fake without chromatography/spectroscopy equipment but some people try

Sorry if I'm asking something obvious, but if it's that difficult to tell, what is the downside of using a fake?

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#68

Post by kbart »

culturestate wrote: post #51
gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"

EU does enforce food safety and labeling laws quite well. That might be because every EU country has its own FDA equivalent that provisions much smaller market. Sure, incidents happen, but fake food is nowhere such widespread in EU than USA.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#69

Post by Qantourisc »

misja111 wrote: post #33
lucaspiller wrote: post #9

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 tom…

The problem with tomatoes and many other vegetables and fruits is, that they don't grow in the UK so they have to be imported. If they would be imported only when they were as ripe and tasty as the ones you saw in Italy, they would be rotten by the time they arrived in your supermarket in the UK. So, they are harvested when they are not quite ripe. They will ripen a bit more during transport but they will never have…

They could also come from greenhouses, where they are typically grown on something that resembles cotton balls and nutrients, no ground involved. When I see tomatoes grown like that, I always think of them as tomatoes on life support. Also there are different tomatoes species, I could certainly see one using faster and more water-holding tomatoes.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#70

Post by yitchelle »

Tomte wrote: post #34
mavelikara wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not certain about this, but I think Sri Lanka is one of the largest exporters of Darjeeling Tea.

It cannot be, that's the point. If Sri Lanka exports tea as "Darjeeling", it's automatically fake.

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?
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