Despite laws, customers are often still cheated at restaurants
and grocery stores. Let’s uncover some deceptive practices in
the modern food industry, beginning with the merely shady
and working up to the outright criminal.Lying by Telling the Truth
It’s common for food packaging to mislead customers
without actually lying. For example, cereal might say
“MAPLE” or “VANILLA” in huge letters, then say “simulated
flavor” in teensy tiny letters. Such labels are tricky, but
customers won’t be fooled if they read the box carefully.
(Ingredients lists are usually accurate.)
Many products make claims that are completely true
but also totally misleading. For example, bottled water may
claim to be “gluten free” or “non-GMO.” Those claims are
true for allwater, including your tap water at home. It’s
misleading for the same reason to label pork or chicken in
the U.S. or Canada as “hormone free.” Allof our pork and
chicken is hormone free by law.Stretching the Truth
Recently at dinner I asked my kids to examine the label of
our container of “100% Parmesan.” The package boasts of a
“taste that’s 100% real, 100% parmesan.” However, “parme-
san cheese” is not the only listed ingredient!The product also
contains cellulose powder (and a preservative). Cellulose is
a common food additive made from plants such as corn cobs
or wood. It freaks people out to hear there may be wood in
their cheese, but cellulose is perfectly safe. (We can’t digest
cellulose, but it acts as dietary fiber. Cellulose occurs natu-
rally in fruits and vegetables.) It’s commonly added to
grated parmesan products to prevent clumping. However,
it’s also common to deceptively include far more cellulose
than necessary because it’s cheaper than cheese.
That “100% Parmesan” label really means “100% of the
cheese portionof the ingredients is parmesan.” But even
this is true only in the U.S. and Canada. This label would
be fraudulent under the laws of Europe, where authentic
parmesan can only be made in the Parma region of Italy
using a traditional process and ingredients. North American
grated “parmesan” is not the same cheese.
Similarly, most North American sushi lovers have never
tasted genuine wasabi. The spicy green paste that typically
comes with sushi is an artificially colored imitation made
from horseradish.Staying Ahead of the Law
Food companies are always inventing new ways to make
money—sometimes through trickery. New kinds of decep-
tion may be legal for years before laws can catch up.Consider the common practice of injecting uncooked
chicken with a brine of salt water and protein. The chicken
industry says that this “brining” or “plumping” is a normal
part of the meat packing process and makes chicken juicier
and tastier for customers. However, adding water also in-
creases the size and weight of chicken meat. Customers are
fooled into paying chicken prices for nearly worthless water.
In South Africa, for example, investigators found that some
chicken was inflated with up to 50 percent water! This was an
outrageous level of cheating. In 2019, South Africa passed a
new law: chicken may not be “plumped” by more than 15
percent brine, and brining must be clearly stated on the label.
(Many countries have passed similar laws. In the U.S., any
amount of brining must be declared on the label.)Criminal Food Fraud
Many parts of our food supply are tightly controlled and
reliable. However, criminal food fraud still does happen.
Amazingly, fraud is most common in some of the same areas
that plagued the Romans, including spices, wine, and honey.
It’s still easy to illegally mix spices with cheaper plants
without anyone noticing. For example, recent tests have
found that a quarter of dried oregano sold in the United King-
dom and the U.S. is mixed with cheaper plants. Another DNA
study found that a third of herbal teas included plant materials
not listed on the label. As the scientist who led the tea tests
pointed out, “As a consumer, there is no easy way to look at a
bunch of dried twigs and tell what they are.”
Most alcohol products are authentic. However, daring
criminals can make fortunes selling counterfeit wines. Italian
police busted one ring of wine fraudsters in January 2020.
The crooks blended bad wine, sugar, water, and flavorings to
fake over a million liters of supposedly high quality wine.
Other wine frauds target wealthy wine collectors. One
scammer made millions selling counterfeit bottles of super-
rare old wines. He was eventually caught and sent to prison.
Olive oil is expensive, and it “can easily be diluted or
substituted with cheaper oil,” warns the Canadian Food In-
spection Agency (CFIA). One third of samples tested by the
agency in 2006 failed. Some were blended with cheaper oils
such as canola. In the U.S.A., a 2010 study found that 69
percent of supposedly top quality imported “extra virgin”
olive oil was actually lower quality. Police in many countries
have busted olive growers, oil sellers, and criminal gangs for
olive oil fraud schemes.
Honey is still fraudulently adulterated with cheaper
sugars, just as it has been for centuries. The CFIA tested 240
suspicious honey samples in 2018. Every tested sample of
Canadian honey was authentic, but 22 percent of imported
honey was mixed with sugar. Honey fraud is big business.
In 2008, U.S. federal agents broke up an 80 million dollar
scheme to sell banned and adulterated Chinese honey in the
U.S.A.72JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 54 (3232)Food Fraud Today