Food Fraud

After reading a brief but terrifying article online somewhere, I read "Real Food, Fake Food" by Larry Olmsted.  There was a queue of twenty-two people ahead of me at the local library requesting this book, so it was more than a month before I got my hands on it.  It was well-worth the wait.  I will never, ever order fish at a restaurant again.

Here are the useful takeaways if you don't have time to read the whole book.

Parmesan Cheese

• "Parmesan" is not a generic type of cheese, but a very specific name for the real thing, properly called Parmigiano-Reggiano, from Parma, Italy.  Growing up a food heathen, I had no idea.  It is known as the "King of Cheeses" for good reason, which none of us who are used to the horrible Kraft imitation product can appreciate.  
• Kraft "Parmesan" products typically contain 4% cellulose (wood pulp), and some other brands as much as 7.8%.
• Price point alone is no indication of authenticity; even fakes can cost a bundle.  High end restaurants are often as guilty as neighborhood grocery chains.
• If you want the real thing, the actual Parmesan from Parma which has been subject to incredibly strict quality controls, look for the full name "Parmigiano-Reggiano," the "Made in Italy" stamp, and the PDO seal (Protected Designation of Origin).  Another dead giveaway is the pin-dot pattern on the rind.  These are buffed off any wheels that fail to make the cut, like tattoos off a washed out gangster. 

Seafood

• Not for the faint of heart, seafood is the worst offender when it comes to food fraud.  Enforcement is almost non-existent, penalties are light, profits are huge.
• Oceana found fraud in 58% of retail outlets and 39% of restaurants in New York City alone, including 100% of sushi restaurants tested.  Think about that the next time you want to eat raw mystery fish.
• If you order white tuna, you are going to get something completely different 94% of the time.  Most commonly it is escolar, nicknamed "Ex-Lax fish" for the variety of unpleasant digestive effects it can have.  It has been documented to cause waves of food poisonings, has been banned in Japan, and was briefly banned by the FDA in the 1990s.  Now escolar is the best selling and most widely-served fish in the USA, despite the fact that almost no one has ever heard of it. 
• Forget grouper or red snapper.  Unless you see the whole fish with the head on, they are almost never real.
• The other most common impostor is Cambodian ponga, a Asian catfish which is usually farmed with dangerous farming practices, often using unapproved or banned antibiotics and other drugs.  You've probably encountered it wearing a name-tag which read "American catfish," or "sole," or "flouder," or "cod." 
• If you're pregnant, avoid fish altogether.  You have no way of knowing if your low-mercury fish is actually a high-mercury fish in disguise.  It happens a lot.
• In one of the worst examples of dangerous fish fraud, a couple in Chicago unwittingly poisoned themselves in 2007 with "monkfish" which turned out to be pufferfish.  Fortunately, they survived.
• Be very suspicious of unremarkable white fish fillets.  They could be almost anything.
• Transshipment to obscure the true country of origin is a widespread problem.  For instance, when seafood from China is banned, exports from neighboring countries like Thailand and Indonesia suddenly suspiciously increase.
• Thailand supplies the majority of the shrimp consumed in America, mostly from drug-laced shrimp farms, some of which are manned with slave labor acquired by human trafficking.  In many cases, these farms have been built at the complete expense of the mangrove habitat so important to those regions.
• Stick with domestic wild-caught shrimp.  It is the gold standard in the rest of the world, which is why so much of it is exported while we American idiots eat imported slave-produced crap shrimp from Thailand.
• Farmed salmon are routinely fed artificial dyes to make them pink, because they have not had the benefit of having krill in their diet.  This artificial color tends to leak out when you cook it.
• Fish farming is illegal in Alaska, so if you can verify Alaska as the true origin of any seafood product, you're getting the good stuff.
• If you order lobster, make sure it is a whole lobster.  Otherwise, your lobster roll or lobster linguine or lobster taco is more likely to contain "langostino," a large prawn (or sometimes a crab) the FDA quietly allowed to be called "langostino lobster" at the request of Rubio's Restaurants, Inc. in 2005.  Red Lobster and Long John Silver's gleefully jumped on that bandwagon, much to the chagrin of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council.  Worse, sometimes your "langostino lobster" is neither lobster nor even langostino, but cheap and overabundant Chinese crawfish which are subject to huge anti-dumping tariffs precisely because no one wants them.  A double-whammy.
• Scallops are often saturated with water and phosphates to make them bigger, whiter, and heavier, making them tasteless and sad.  The practice is so common that "dry scallops" sell for a higher price, but even they aren't completely "dry," only saturated up to the legal limit.  Look for scallops that are ivory, not white.
• Domestic catfish are the only ones that may legally be called catfish, and farmed domestic catfish is actually one of the safer fish options around.
• Look for third-party certifications, for instance the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for wild-caught fish, and Global Aquaculture Alliance's Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) for farmed.  Also good to see are the Gulf Wild seal and the Gulf of Maine Responsibly Harvested certification.  
• Buy American whenever possible.  This country actually has some of the highest standards of seafood production in the world.
• Order whole fish at restaurants, or don't order fish at all.  Restaurants routinely fake fish.
• Label terms like "fresh," "natural," and "organic" have no legal definition in this context.  "Sushi grade" and "sashimi grade" are equally meaningless. 
• The retail leaders in seafood accountability are Whole Foods and (less predictably) big box stores like Walmart, Costco, and BJ's.

Olive and Truffle Oils

• Olive oil is highly perishable, more like fruit juice than oil, with a very limited optimal shelf life.  The majority of the olive oil on the market is rancid.
• There are three grades of olive oil, extra virgin, virgin, and the dregs, also called "lamp oil."  Of course, all producers love to label their product "Extra Virgin" regardless of quality.
• The most common methods of olive oil fraud are diluting it with other oils (such as sunflower or soybean), or diluting it with lower grade olive oils (usually chemically refined, which negates the touted health benefits).  Often peanut oil is used, an obvious problem for people with allergies. 
• Carryover, the practice of diluting fresh extra virgin oil with the previous year's (now rancid) "extra virgin" oil, is widespread.
• Spain, not Italy, is currently the worlds largest olive oil producer.
• While very good olive oil is made in Italy, the majority of "Italian" extra virgin olive oil we see in this country is bad.  Italy has a hard time making enough of the good stuff to supply its own domestic demand, but Italian exporters saw an opportunity to exploit the country's reputation for quality.  They regularly buy up large quantities of inferior olive oil from many different countries so they can bottle it, stamp "Product of Italy" on it, and sell it to Americans who don't know any better.  Leave it on the shelf.
• You get real extra virgin olive oil in restaurants less than half of the time.
• Pompeian brand is bad news; it almost always fails quality checks.
• "100% Extra Virgin" means nothing.  There is almost no enforcement of quality checks.
• The USDA's standards for extra virgin olive oil are more permissive than they should be, but the majority of available brands still fail when tested.
• California has the strictest quality standards in the US, so Californian olive oils are a better bet than most.
• Don't ever buy plain "olive oil" unless you plan on oiling your bicycle with it.  It is that "lamp oil" which has been chemically refined to make it barely edible and mixed with very small amounts of virgin or extra virgin oil.  Steer clear of "Pure Olive Oil;" it doth protest too much, if you know what I mean.
• Australia currently leads the world in extra virgin olive oil quality standards, and has banned confusing terms like "premium," "super," "light," and "pure."  
• "Cold-pressed" or "first cold press" are more often than not meaningless phrases to pretty up the bottle.  The majority of olives are processed by centrifuge today.
• Regarding truffle oil, the only thing to say about it is that it is always completely fake.  There is no real truffle oil, not only because it would be prohibitively expensive, but because the truffle flavor doesn't carry well into oil.  It's every bit as genuine as artificial vanilla flavor.  Just leave it.

Some real food comes from some very distinct places and are subject to rigorous standards, especially if they are named after that place.  These labels are your friends.

Kobe Beef

• There is almost no genuine Kobe beef anywhere in the USA.  The USDA banned all import of Japanese beef in 2001 due to concerns about mad cow disease.  The ban was lifted in 2006, reinstated in 2010, lifted in 2012.  Even though the ban is lifted, only a minuscule amount of the genuine article is imported each year, and then only to a very select few high-end restaurants, NEVER to individual consumers.  Despite this, alleged Kobe beef seems to be everywhere.
• Real Kobe beef is so saturated with fat that it is only served in tiny portions, and resembles butter more than steak.  Real Kobe beef would NEVER be made into steaks, burgers, sliders, or hot dogs because they would be gross.  Don't pay extra for common domestic beef masquerading as Kobe.
• Wagyu beef is trickier, with a very wobbly definition everywhere but in Japan.  Could be good, could be crap.

Champagne

• Real Champagne comes from Champagne, France, and nowhere else.  The traditional quality standards give new meaning to the word rigid.  Everything else is just sparkling wine and not worth a Champagne price tag.
• There is no such thing as a red Champagne.
• Real Champagne gets bubbles from natural fermentation in the bottle, not from injected carbon dioxide.
• In 2006, the USA finally granted some legal protection to region-specific wines which had a long and inglorious tradition of counterfeiting in America, including (among others) Champagne, port, Burgundy, Chablis, sherry, sauternes, and Madeira.  The catch was that all the offending wineries which preexisted the agreement were grandfathered in.  So, nothing really changed.
• Korbel is probably one of the worst offenders, and their product isn't great.  Don't buy it.

Imitation Cheese

• If you want good domestic cheese, look for the ones that aren't pretending to be cheese specific to somewhere else.  That list includes but is not limited to Parmesan, Gruyere, Emmental (Swiss), feta, Asiago, Meunster (the real thing is Munster), provolone, fontina, and Gorgonzola.  There have been some long legal battles fought over these names, fought on this end mostly by Kraft.  No surprise there.
• Any real cheese should only have a few ingredients, mainly milk, salt, and rennet, maybe some enzymes and spices.  The rest are probably more accurately "cheese products."

Grass-fed Beef

• The only thing beef requires to be called "grass-fed" is to be fed grass at least once during its lifetime.  Even feedlot cattle eat grass at least once when they are very young.
• It has been common practice for a long time to "finish" otherwise completely grass-fed cattle on grain before market, negating many of the health benefits.
• Look for the "100% Grass Fed" label, one of the few the USDA still enforces, requiring an optional process verification.  It means all grass all the time.
• The label "Natural" can be put on even the worst example of feedlot beef because it refers to the minimal processing, not the quality of the animal.  The term "naturally raised," however, has been defined by the USDA to mean no antibiotics, no growth promotants, and no feeding of animal byproducts, but not necessarily completely grass-fed. 
• The terms "pasture raised," "pasture finished," "no additives," "no animal by-products," "free range," "free roaming," "green fed," "humane," and "pesticide free" are not defined or enforced, and are often false.
• Buy bison when you can.  That market hasn't been exploited yet.  There are no such thing as bison feed lots.

Miscellaneous

• Honey is often fake, often adulterated, sometimes toxic, and often transshipped from suspect countries.
• Some honeys are left with pollen in, others are ultra-filtered.  Incidentally, ultra-filtering removes the pollen which is the only thing that can identify the honey's origin.  
• A lot of extremely suspect Chinese honey is ultra-filtered and transshipped through places like India.  Chinese honey is often heavily cut with corn syrup.  Sometimes, the bees are fed corn syrup.  Often it is contaminated with drugs like chloramphenicol, which can lead to a potentially fatal bone marrow disorder.  Chinese honey is specifically banned for import into the USA because of its abysmal quality, but it gets in anyhow, just like Chinese seafood.
• The FDA created voluntary grades for honey, Grade A, Grade B, and Grade C.  Because they are voluntary and completely unenforced, they mean nothing.  What admit that it's Grade C when you can get away with calling it Grade A?
• Manuka honey, made exclusively in New Zealand, is rarely real when you encounter it in the rest of the world. 
• Avoid supermarket brand honey and buy local.
• Coffee has problems, but I don't drink it, so I didn't pay much attention.
• Most fruit juice is mostly apple juice no matter what the flavor, and most of the apple juice in America comes from contaminated Chinese apple juice concentrates. 
• Many juice additives are not required to be disclosed on the label.  For orange juice, this can include lemon juice, high-fructose corn syrup, mandarin juice, grapefruit juice, paprika extract, and beet sugar.  Apple juice has a long list as well.
• Supermarket tomatoes have been bred for durability in shipping, not for flavor.  They are picked green and gassed with ethylene to "ripen" them for sale.  What I did not know is that the ethylene triggers only a reddening response, not any actual ripening.  As a country, we're used to eating red green tomatoes.  Look for vine ripened local tomatoes or grow your own.
• Ethylene gassing is also used to allow bananas to ship safely.  While the practice isn't exactly unhealthy, we would apparently be blown away by the flavor of a tree-ripened banana.
• Maple syrup shares many of the same problems as honey.  Most maple flavored products don't contain any maple syrup at all, but apparently some combination of high-fructose corn syrup and/or maltodextrin, fenugreek and anise.

Be ye warned.

SHOP HERE: Zingerman's mail order.  It's the good stuff.

Purple Potatoes

I've decided that our diet of baked chicken and steamed broccoli is boring.  In order to remedy that, without straying too far off budget, I've started looking for some more interesting dinner selections.  First up, purple potatoes.

We found them in the little organic market where we got the Chestal cough syrup.  They all looked pretty old and neglected, and some were well into the process of growing legs long enough to walk away.  We picked out three of the youngest looking ones.  Apparently purple potatoes taste just like regular white potatoes, but have more antioxidants and are therefore healthier.  I ask you, why aren't these more common?  Probably because they're purple.  Whatever.

We had purple mashed potatoes with pink salt.  It felt like a Dr. Seuss kind of evening.

Summer Sweets

I have a few new favorite treats that will help get us through a hot summer without tons of guilt.  I am loving the mainstream trend of all natural.  If I can find the good stuff at Food Lion, so much the better. We live so close I could walk there, if I weren't afraid the goodies would melt on the way home.

Talenti gelato is my new preferred "ice cream."  It tastes fabulous and has an extremely short list of ingredients.  We haven't tried the mint yet; it just had the prettiest picture.  We have tried the double dark chocolate, coconut, sea salt caramel, and coffee chocolate chip.  Here's the label for the coconut.

Fabulous, no?  We will be buying more of this stuff in the future.

I thought our popsicle days were over, but these are awesome!  I was afraid they would be watery and heathy-tasting, but they aren't.  They are the best popsicles I've ever had, and only 70 calories each.  If you're too lazy to make your own (like me), these are the next best thing.

Sunday Splurge: The Cookie Cake

As part of our new resolution to eat healthy and be fit, we've decided to stop settling for cheap calories during the week in favor of a nice dessert on Sundays.  This week's selection was the Pepperidge Farm Cookie Cake.

Quite frankly, I would rather have had the cookies.  It was damp, spongey, cold, and surprisingly bland under the excessive sugar and cheap icing.  It was basically a wet chocolate chip cookie pumped full of air.  You end up with an insulin rush without the satisfaction of feeling like you've had something worth the trouble.

So, if you're thinking about trying it, don't.  You deserve better.  There was a Milano variety, but I think we'll give that one a miss as well.

Better luck next week, I guess.

Best Pin Yet

So far, this is the most practical thing I've learned from Pinterest.  It totally works.

I kept promising Dave I'd have hard-boiled eggs on hand for healthy snacks, but I never could seem to drum up the enthusiasm to take time out of my day for the finicky cook time and all those weird tips for getting the shells to come off easier.  This is SO MUCH BETTER.  I've done it three times within a week already.

Use older eggs; they give up the shell with less of a fight.  Just put them in a muffin tin (without water).  Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes for perfectly "boiled" eggs with yellow yolks.  If you prefer your yolks gray and powdery, leave them in for 30 minutes.  Give them a quick ice water bath afterward, and you're done.

Food Fraud

Ok, this obviously has me mad enough to stop what I'm doing and blog.  I could rant and quote, but I think the video does a good job of summing it up.  (I've been catching up on my Nightline.)

Like stems in your ground black pepper?  How about lawn grass in your tea bags?  Do you think your 100% lemon juice isn't just sugar water?  Is your pure extra virgin olive oil actually what it claims to be?  Soybean oil is a pet peeve of mine, and I've been trying very diligently to avoid it, so it really burns me up that they deliberately put it in my olive oil.  I think I'll go back to buying the expensive obscure option, along with whole lemons and peppercorns.

Oh, and I'm throwing out our generic brand paprika.

Burritos

Have you noticed how few frozen dinners come with conventional oven instructions?  Nevertheless, I refuse to capitulate to the cultural tyranny of the microwave.

I never thought I would like burritos because I never thought I would like beans.  I still don't like beans, but somehow mixed up with meat, cheese, and salsa, they aren't too bad.  We may be eating quite a few of them before this kitchen fiasco gets worked out.  If the budget runs out, we'll be stuck with cereal.  Dry cereal.

Free Onions!

Here are my scallion stubs in various stages of regrowth.  So exciting!  Can't have much of a garden in an apartment, but these are easy.

Quick and Easy: Lemon Pepper Pork with Scallions and Peas

This is my current favorite recipe.  What my favorites always seem to have in common is that they are cheap, easy, and don't require hours of prep.

Ingredients:

• pork (I like the boneless country-style ribs because they're both affordable and tasty.)
• lemon pepper (Find a brand without MSG.)
• scallions
• frozen peas
• light olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Place pork, lightly coated in olive oil, in a baking dish.  Cover the top of the pork with lemon pepper.  Bake for 20 minutes per pound.  While the pork is baking, let the frozen peas thaw in a bowl of cold water.  With about 10 minutes cook time left for the pork, cut up the scallions and fry them in a generous amount of olive oil.  Strain the peas and add them to the cooked onions and oil; salt to taste.

Not bad for budget food.  The scallions drown the peas in mild oniony goodness to help endear them to those who might not be huge fans.  Also gluten-free and dairy-free.

Gluten-Free for the Heck of It?

On Monday, ABC Nightline ran a segment about the "gluten-free by choice" craze among this year's Olympians.  Apparently they "just feel better" when they go off gluten.  They say some benefits of the diet can include weight loss, feeling more energized, fewer aches and pains, and better sleep.  However, advocates of an elective gluten-free lifestyle admit there is currently no medical studies or literature to confirm these benefits.

That's not new to me.  While dealing with my fertility issues, I was told by several specialists that there wasn't much they could do for me because there was no medical literature on my condition.  Great.  We'll just move on without the literature.

During the discussion, the inevitable question was raised: were there any risks associated with a gluten-free diet?  The news crew even went to far as to suggest an elective gluten-free diet "could be dangerous."  Dr. Peter Green of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University was in the hot seat, and I eagerly awaited his explanation.  "A gluten-free diet is not entirely healthy," he said.  "Often it lacks fiber, and the manufacturers of wheat flour fortify wheat flour with vitamins and minerals."

. . . Seriously?  Is that it?  Eat more vegetables and take a multivitamin.  Problem solved.

I'm assuming the news crew didn't edit out juicier bits, and if that's the worst that can be said for going gluten-free I just might try it.  My sister is gluten-free for medical reasons.  We have already cut out pasta and most bread products because my husband and I are trying to lose at least twenty pounds each.  We already avoid processed food because of my newly-informed aversion to MSG, dangerous unsaturated fats, and carcinogenic preservatives.  It shouldn't be too much of a lifestyle adjustment.

So, with apparently nothing to lose, I will try a gluten-free diet for two weeks starting Monday.  If it can help me get through a night without at least three stress dreams, I'll be happy.

Easy No-Bake Cookies

I use old fashioned oats and all natural peanut butter, but there's really nothing you can do to fudge the Nutella (pun intended).  It's a quick and easy fix when there's no time to deal with a lot of ingredients.  Shoot, don't even bother making individual cookies; tastes just as good straight out of a bowl.

When the Husband Goes Shopping

The husband, being the extremely caring and helpful guy that he is, often volunteers to run to the store to "pick up a few things" if I don't feel particularly excited about doing it myself.  Unfortunately, when that happens I forfeit all right to police what food items are actually introduced into the home environment.  A few days ago, I walked into the kitchen and discovered a contraband variety of cereal which would never have ventured into my shopping cart sitting brazenly on my countertop.

Now, there is apparently a blog post pending about some of the problems created by the the culture of extended adolescence our country enjoys.  Krave cereal is something I would have grouped under that same heading.  It actually wasn't very surprising, as we had seen those vaguely disturbing commercials quite recently.  I'll admit I tried a bowl or two, but I didn't find it all that spectacular.  However, the husband likes it, and I suppose we must all have our vices.  Truth be told, I'm glad he hasn't completely lost touch with his inner child.

Newest Addiction

My long-time readers may recall my depression-induced addiction to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups two years ago.  The good news is that after putting myself through a domestic rehab program called Don't Buy Any, I have fully recovered.  The bad news is that I have just discovered a replacement.

I've been much more picky about cereal recently in my quest to avoid overly processed food and those two supremely evil ingredients, high fructose corn syrup and vegetable oil.  Barbara's brand usually fills the bill.  I had to settle for the corn-based Puffins because the store was fresh out of the Original Shredded Oats.  I almost picked up the Cinnamon Puffins, but upon closer inspection they were found to contain "expeller pressed high oleic oil (canola and/or sunflower)."  My aversion to suspicious vegetable oils carried the day, and the peanut butter variety was the winner, containing only nine ingredients.

I expected them to be kind of ho-hum natural, like the shredded oats.  That is absolutely not the case.  Dry, they taste like a corn chip collided with a peanut butter cookie.  I'm anxious to find out if they improve when paired with almond milk, but in the meantime popcorn now has some competition for the title of favorite movie snack.