441–450 of 475 posts
Food is actually a surprisingly good market for counterfeit goods, because the evidence gets eaten.
This article is all about how the "evidence" is around us in the stores we shop at and restaurants we go to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 buy Greek olive oil. I didn't do any serious research, but it tastes much better than Italian or Spanish counterparts bought locally. I've been to Greece and what I tasted there, wasn't much different from what I buy back home, so I suppose it's a real deal. EDIT: I live in Europe, so it might be different in USA.
[1] http://www.npr.org/2015/07/16/423605233/greeces-lost-olive-o...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
4 euros per liter is crazy. In the US, even the cheapest crappy olive oil is $20/liter
Check out Costco. Their brand is not only cheap, but one of the few that are real. The price went up since 2010, but it is still around $10/l. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-things-you-should-buy-at-costc...
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…
There's a great guide to buy olive oil on the site here: http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/great-oil/how-to-buy-great-ol...
Sigona's Market at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA has an olive oil bar. They offer the best, pure varieties harvested from different regions around the world including California. California oils are harvested and pressed in the fall, so I think they become available in spring-summer. In the fall and winter you can get southern hemisphere oils that are fresher. Sigona's keeps the olive oil in barrels and only bottles at the last minute so it's as fresh as possible.
The Olive Press at Jacuzzi Vineyards in Sonoma is the one place I know that is pressing their own oil and you can bottle it right when it's freshest. http://www.jacuzziwines.com/theolivepress
I got these two places from the Truth in Olive Oil, so for others in US you should be able to check on the site to see what places near you have high quality olive oil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. You can only say whether it riskier or not than other types of food or breeding. In the case of GMOs, it has been shown to be no less risky than conventional or mutagenic breeding. "we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail" Except that with genetic engineering, we know precisely what they do. Ironically previous ways of chan…
>You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. Ultimately, this. You can test for very, very small numbers, but you can't test for zero. This is why, for example, even though lead has no biological function, extremely small "acceptable levels" are specified in regulations rather than simply saying zero lead. You can prove that, for example, lead levels in the air are less than 0.15 µg/m^3, or that they ar…
Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences, by virtue of the fact that is has coexisted in its environmental niche for a while. The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that.
As Taleb has pointed out, our standards for danger should match the risk/reward involved. (E.g., we're ok with fast-tracking unproven cancer treatments because the alternative is death. Likewise, we have high standards for a common cold treatment because the alternative is inconvenience.) Unfortunately, we have no backup plan for the planet, so we must be extra careful with what we introduce to it.
To me, saying we don't need more stringent standards for GMOs is like saying we can definitely burn $X billion more oil reserves and not worry about global warming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tomatoes are something of a passion of mine. The problems are exactly what you describe, with ensuring that transport will not ruin the fruit. Another facet is not only that the tomatoes are picked unripe, but also that the varieties that are grown are ones which optimize for being able to withstand long transport times as well as for uniformity. Consumers as a group like uniform, smooth, red-colored tomatoes, and th…
What I'm wondering about is when the tomatoes are picked, can't we artificially let the tomato think it is still on the plant? E.g., by applying nutrients through the stem, and using artificial lighting? Or why don't we ship the whole plant? :)
Ship the whole plant...and then send it back to grow more tomatoes? I'm not sure about production-scale tomato farming, but in my garden, the same tomato plant will continue to grow fruit, and you don't want to uproot it just for the fruit currently on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I'm wondering about is when the tomatoes are picked, can't we artificially let the tomato think it is still on the plant? E.g., by applying nutrients through the stem, and using artificial lighting? Or why don't we ship the whole plant? :)
> Or why don't we ship the whole plant? :) Ship the whole plant...and then send it back to grow more tomatoes? I'm not sure about production-scale tomato farming, but in my garden, the same tomato plant will continue to grow fruit, and you don't want to uproot it just for the fruit currently on it.
But surely, there will be some customers willing to pay for ripe "Italian" tomatoes, I suppose (?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't with labels per se. Sure, informed choice is best and all. But people are asking for GMO labels not because of a need to exercise informed choice - the campaigning is done because of irrational fears of GMO. Call it asking for an OK-ish thing for very wrong reasons. And DHMO in this context means the GMO fear makes about as much sense as DHMO fear. People are afraid because it sounds "chemically".
If you the GMO products are consistently 15% cheaper (thanks to better yields and lower waste they are promising) and routinely labeled organic (thanks to the promised reduction in pesticides requirements), consumers will be attracted to it. If GMOs have nothing to offer, why would the consumer want them, harmful or not?
Except they won't be, because "organic" doesn't involve less pesticides - it often involves more pesticides but of a more "natural" flavour. It may have started from the desire of some consumers to buy food that's made locally and with a more pre-industrial feel to it (because they believe it's healthier), but now it's just a way to milk people who have strong opinions about food.
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…