Food Fraud Is Everywhere : A Lot of Froth and No Cream

I don't really like to terrify anyone.  That's why we read--to reduce fear, not cause it to go nuclear.  But anywhere you go on the web, you'll find fear.  That's because fear sells.   We pay attention when someone calls out "Fire!" or "Watch out!" So internet articles try to scare us.  Here's a frightening tale from Well and Good.   Terrifying is in the title of its article, "File this under Terrifying Food News of the Day: a new Time cover story says food fraud is everywhere from your morning cup of Joe to the fish you’re eating for dinner (especially the fish you’re eating for dinner)."

Because of my experience with literature, my mind immediately goes to the Friar Laurence scene in Act II, iii of Romeo and Juliet who shares with his audience the fact that there are both good and bad to every element in nature as in people.  

I must up-fill this osier cage of ours 

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. 

The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb. 

And from her womb children of divers kind 

We sucking on her natural bosom find 

Many for many virtues excellent, 

None but for some and yet all different. 

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies. 

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: 

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live 

But to the earth some special good doth give, 

Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use 

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: 

Virtue itself turns to vice, being misapplied; 

And vice sometimes by action dignified. 

Within the infant rind of this small flower 

Poison hath residence and medicine power: 

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; 

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 

Two such opposed kings encamp them still 

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will . . . .

The author from WellandGood defines her thesis, "Food fraud happens when you think you’re consuming one thing, but it’s really something else, or it includes unsuspecting ingredients."

Okay.  Yes, there is fraud in every industry, and the food industry is no different.  But a choice in any industry, regardless of the industry, involves a benefits/cost ratio. We like our time and we get convenient fast food sometimes precisely because we prefer the extra timed saved by grabbing a pastrami sandwich at the local drive-thru. 

So from that definition, she turns her focus on coffee.

In the case of coffee, the news magazine says that a coffee shortage has led manufacturers to use fillers like wheat, soybeans, rice, brown sugar, starch syrup, and twigs.  Yep, twigs.  This is according to a report released by the American Chemical Society (it should be noted that all of the coffee came from Brazil), which also states that 70 percent of the world's coffee supply is in danger because of climate change.  So don't expect this problem to go away soon.  

So, wait, that hot black coffee I am getting at Denny's or Starbucks is made with other ingredients, is made with wheat?  Well, she doesn't say.  Plus, if coffee is getting diluted it may be in part to market demand, like the health-food industry that might be pressing for coffee with less acidity.  I don't know but I think that sometimes changes in a product are driven by market requests.  She doesn't identify any specific offenders, no names are offered.  Just a general statement to the fact that it is happening.  But how do we know she knows?  Are we to hang on her every word because she's a GMO guru?  Instead of citing a specific offender, our valiant author cites instead a study, or in her case a report, "a report released by the American Chemical Society."  Well what interest, and by interest I mean economic interest, does the American Chemical Society have in identifying offenders?  How do they gain?  Or whom does their report benefit?  The article doesn't say, and so she doesn't say.  And before she does say anything further about coffee, she turns to other instances of diluted food sources, like olive oil. 

Other foods Time warns about? Olive oil (which is often diluted with other oils) and honey (sometimes cut with corn syrup or fructose syrup).

So now with these two instances, she wants to know if we're freaking out.  "Freaking out?" But that's just used to set up her solution.  What is her solution?  An association

Luckily the National Coffee Association is at work on the coffee fraud front, formulating tests to ensure coffee imported to the USA is pure. In the meantime, be an educated buyer. Manufacturers that have gone through the painstaking process of acquiring the non-GMO butterfly stamp are most likely to have a strict eye on their goods from start to finish (and you can search by brand on the Non-GMO Project’s site).

So after not citing a specific offender, after citing only a study and then an association that regulates such offenses and offenders, with no specifics on that type of regulation, and not going the extra mile in her own report, she calls upon the reader to go "the extra step and [do] your research . . . ," reminding us that our efforts will ensure our safety but that it make us feel good about what we're putting in our bodies., ". . . it will make you feel good about what you’re putting in your body, which ultimately, makes for a more enjoyable meal."

And that's where she ends her point(s).  Her point is quite diluted.  

Want more tips on how to know what’s safe to eat? Michael Pollen has some advice. Plus, have you heard about the whole debate about eating avocado pits?