E24: What is Food Fraud?
The food version of oregano weed
Hi hello it’s me it’s DPo!
Apologizes for my lil’ hiatus. Turns out cooking at a restaurant, moving, and personal stuff can be very life consuming. But we’re bacccckkkkkk and better than ever. I promise to finish the decaf edition sometime soon. But alas, another rabbit hole temporarily stole my heart.
Today we’re going deep into the world of food fraud. I erm, can’t say I knew how big of a problem this was, but boiii it is a very real thing.
It’s another one of those topics that makes you distrust and question straight up everything a la Kate Middleton. I’m starting to sense a trend in my interests. But nonetheless, I think it’s an important one for us wannabe educated consumers.
There’s a high likelihood you’ll feel like this by the end. But I promise it’s worth it… maybe.
Let’s dig in!!!
Wtf is food fraud you ask?
Remember when you thought you were buying weed back in high school but it turned out to be oregano?
That’s sorta kinda like food fraud, but the weed version.
Now imagine that same not-weed-oregano turned out to be a mix of oregano and shredded olive tree leaves, but your dealer who bought it thought it was just oregano.
We got ourselves a good ole pot-pourri (hehe)… And a classic case of food fraud (Source).
Said in a more hinged way: Food fraud is when we’re conned into thinking food is something it’s not... and someone else is making money off of it. Like your dealer. Or a food manufacturer or supplier.
You might also hear food fraud called Economically Motivated Adulteration (EMA).
That’s the FDAs fancy way of labeling it (Source). More specifically, they define it as when some intentionally:
Leaves, takes out, or substitutes a valuable ingredient or part of a food.
Examples:
Mostly economic, not crazy harmful: Something marketed as pure oregano, even though it also has olive trees mixed in to minimize cost and *~no one will know anyways, not even a dealer*~
Economic and pretty crazy harmful: Verr recently, lead chromate was added to cinnamon to bulk up it’s weight and color. This ended up in a kids cinnamon apple pouch product and ~500 kids reported lead poisoning.
Adds a substance to a food to make it appear better or of greater value.
Examples:
Economic and plain gnarly: Who remembers that lil horse meat scandal back in 2013? They mixed in horse meat with ground meat. nbd.
The wikipedia page about this scandal features a picture of a horse with the caption, “horse in a field next to the mountains” (lol, but also disturbing):
Mostly economic: Another classic case of this type of fraud is honey or olive oil adulteration. The good ole, “Our honey is 100% pure honey (except actually it’s partially made from corn syrup).” or “100% olive oil (with a touch of canola).”
It’s also fraud when… it contains poisonous ingredients, unsanitary ones, color additives, or even noncompliant/unsanitary transportation practices (Source).
I found this chart helpful in showing some of the bigger cases of fraud alongside their costs.
You scared yet???? Want more examples????? This article sufficiently terrified me.
So yes, food fraud is a very real thing! It’s said to impact 1% of our global food industry. It also costs us somewhere between $10-40 billion a year (Source).
That means for every 99 banana breads you eat, 1 of them is actually this:
None of this is new though.
Some *~historical*~ background.
Back in early late 19th and 20th century we had the perfect storm of zero regulations, a growth of mass manufacturing, and a whole bunch of bad actors.
Ahhh the good ole days.
When I tell you some crazy shit was going on, it’s almost an understatement. It was straight up the wild wild west of food fraud.
I’m talking rats in our sausages. Calf brains as cream. Maybe a sprinkle of tuberculosis mixed in there too (source).
400,000 infants a year were dying from formaldehyde laced milk. That’s the chemical used to preserve bodies or the smell you may fondly remember when you pulled out that frog to dissect in 7th grade (source). Actually they used formaldehyde in tons of places. Preserving rotting meats too! Who knew it could be both so versatile and extremely toxic.
When you need a bedtime bottle that’ll really do the trick, look for Formaldi milk!
Of course no one knew they were eating rat-laced-sausages or formaldehyde milk, nor were they advertising it as such.
This seemed to go on for a while, until a few key players rallied enough public attention to get laws put in place.
Maybe you remember the name Upton Sinclair? He famously published the “Jungle” which was originally a book on socialism, but had 15 pages in there that exposed some of the crazy things that were happening in the food production world. Turns out, that’s the only part of the book that stuck. Peeps were rightfully grossed out and it started to set into motion some momentum on getting laws put into place.
But then came our big daddy protagonist, aka the “Father of the FDA”: Dr. Harvey Wiley.
He brilliantly put together the “Poison Control Squad” a group of everyday humans who ate preservative filled foods and waited to see if they’d die (source). For real.
I guess that did the trick. By 1906 the Pure Food and Drugs Act, aka the OG FDA, was born. Since then, we’ve continued to put even more laws in place to protect consumers.
If you want an even deeper dive, I’d highly recommend this episode from Stuff You Should Know.
How the FDA protects us now.
First off, let’s remember that no matter what the FDA does, there will always be sly muthafuckas who will find ways to cheat the system.
But the FDA is still trying to regulate, despite the h8ers. The reality is that a lot regulations are reactive, based on when things go wrong.
We can’t know people are going to adulterate saffron with synthetic dyes or plant stems til someone does it and gets caught (source). We also can’t predict that China is going to dilute honey with corn syrup (which passed the older detection tests) and then import in bulk, undercutting the US honey prices and effectively destroying the industry in 1 fell swoop (source). Yep, this happened. We also can’t predict that Melamine, a toxic compound, would be added to raw milk, impacting 300,000 infants in China and killing 6 (source). This very unfortunately also happened.
Like I said, sly muthafuckas.
Some of these cases (cough cough the melamine milk) led to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which aimed to put in systems to support food safety at a global level. Other cases of adulteration, like honey, lead to better testing to detect fraud, and labeling requirements.
Now layer in the reality of our very-global-food system. Ingredients are coming from straight up all over the world. Trying to trace, monitor and detect fraud is literally a puzzle. Srsly, the FDA actually uses a puzzle analogy on their website:
Lol, the OG blockchain. *cringes*
But really, could blockchain be helpful here? *cringes, but considers it*
The FDA is trying to bring more preventative measures, as you can tell by their puzzle pieces. But it doesn’t always translate into perfect results.
For example, the FDA has set inspection targets of overseas manufacturers, but keep on falling short of them (source).
The other challenge is that a lot of players in the supply chain are also responsible for enforcing these laws, like importers or manufacturers. In the recent lead-tainted applesauce fiasco, the FDA stated:
So erm, who’s fault is it anyway? This is how I imagine everyone feels:
I don’t think all of this info should leave us hopeless and totally distrusting of the system. But it’s definitely a messy world out there.
DPo, how do you avoid fraud? Idk, but here’s how I’m trying.
I found it helpful to approach risk based on the likelihood of it happening. I can’t predict everything that’s gonna happen, but there are some well-known fraud categories that we can all be mindful around:
My general perspective is to avoid really cheap foods in each of these. Actually I’m just avoiding cheap foods in general. It’s not to say that cheap foods are intrinsically adulterated or bad, but I’d assume they might have a higher chance of it.
After all, adulteration usually happens to lower the cost of goods. I probably won’t buy saffron at a dollar store, even if the price is right. It’s not that I’m scared I’ll die, but I’d rather pay more and buy from somewhere that makes traceability a priority.
I think this is also a good opportunity to put our money into companies that are trying to keep food *~pure~* or are just plain honest about their sourcing and quality assurance practices.
I realize this isn’t possible for everyone, but when possible, this would be my advice.
A great example of this is honey. Here’s a brand which was ~10$ more than another one, but was incredibly explicit about their practices:
Again, not saying other honey brands are bad. When it comes to honey specifically, manufacturers are required by the FDA to note if they’ve added any other sweeteners on the label (because of the whole dilution thing that happened). But that doesn’t guarantee that the bees themselves weren’t fed sugar to boost production, for example. In my head, every hand that it passes through means a higher risk of risky business.
That risk may not be a big deal to you though. And we can’t forget about taste, another really important component. You got your preferences boo. Do you.
When it comes to olive oil….
This could be it’s own edition. And maybe I’ll finally go into that vortex. This world goes deep. You’ll find a lot of chatter about whether or not you’re buying “extra virgin”, but really when it comes to adulteration, we’re more concerned about other non-olive-oil-thangs being added.
In my research, I found this guide to be useful for shoppers curious about the topic.
Notifying consumers when stuff goes wrong.
Lastly, I want to point out that just because you’re taking steps to prevent getting duped, it’s actually pretty hard to know if you have been a victim.
Let’s say you bought a big pack of those contaminated applesauce pouches and didn’t read the news about the recall. To my knowledge, no one is calling you to let you know. In fact, the FDA says this to consumers who bought the pouches:
Helpful, realllll helpful. What are the chances that I find the FDAs website on the recall before hearing about it on the news??? This part sort of bums me out. You could be sitting on a recalled product and not know???
I wonder what is the best way to notify consumers and who is responsible for this? Grocery stores?
As a Whole Foods shopper, I noticed that my Amazon account also tracks everything I’ve bought. I can imagine this being really useful in the case of a recall. They can just email me directly with the info.
Maybe there are other communication tools in place - if you know of any listservs, lmk. I’m increasingly more skeptical of everything I consume and I’d love to be notified of my exposure to salmonella.
What I’m cooking
*avoids cinnamon, beef, and pretty much everything else*
Topping off Edition 25 (wow already???) with a toast I find myself eating on repeat. Simply toast, cream cheese and jam. Delicious and most definitely not nutritious.
Missed you all more than you know! Feels good to be chuckling to myself and getting weird in the confines of my 10248 tabs.
Also, tell me everything you know about fraud!!
DPo
Shoutout to Dane Jones for her editing and insights on food law. I’m coming to realize being an educated consumer requires 1/1000 of the knowledge of a food lawyer.