The Nature of FraudIt’s a huge job to feed everyone in a society.
The food supply in any large modern coun-
try is almost unimaginably complicated. It’s
unfortunate but true that things sometimes go
wrong in any complicated system.
It can be dangerous
when accidents happen
in the food supply. Mod-
ern countries have ways
to fix food mistakes, such
as removing meat from
stores when tests show it
could make people sick. Food
safety is an important topic, but we aren’t
going to talk much about mistakes today. Our
topic is deliberate “food fraud.”
“Fraud” is when somebody uses a dirty trick
to get something (usually money) from some-
one else. We have a lot of words for this kind
of trickery—“scam,” “swindle,” “rip of” and so
on—because fraud happens a lot. It’s as old as
civilization. As long as greed and dishonestyexist, there will always be schemes to cheat
people out of money.
For example, some dishonest sellers try
to get away with giving customers less than
the promised amount of
something. This kind
of fraud is risky. If
someone checks the
count or measure-
ment, the cheater
might get caught.
It’s safer for scammers to
use tricks that are harder to detect. One is
to take something cheap and disguise it as
something expensive. There’s little risk if
customers can’t tell the diference. For
example, scammers might sell fake
“antiques” that look old but are actually
brand new. There are sneaky fake
versions of practically every kind of
product. Sadly for our supper, that
definitely includes food!JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 54 (3232)PUBLISHER AND
EDITORINCHIEF
Pat Linse
CO-PUBLISHER
Michael Shermer
EDITOR ANDWRITER
Daniel Loxton
CONTRIBUTORS:
Pat Linse
is the creator of
and Editor in Chief
of JUNIORSKEPTIC.
She wrote many of
the early issues.
Jim W. W. Smith
is a cartoonist
and CGI illustrator
who works
regularly with
Daniel Loxton
on JUNIORSKEPTIC
and a variety of
book projects
for kids.
Daniel Loxton
is the Editor of
JUNIORSKEPTIC,
and writes and
illustrates most is2
sues. Daniel is the
author of Evolu
tion: How We and
All Living Things
Came to Be.
This Issue’s Cover
features artwork by
Daniel Loxton.
Hello!
Let’s find out!
Everybody eats food. Along with air, water, and shelter,
food is a basic human need. Food is the most important thing we
buy, and we can’t choose not to. We can’t survive without food!Almost no one in our culture is able to grow or forage for all of
their own food. Even people who live on farms still buy ingredients
for cooking and baking. Foods such as flour, sugar, and cheese need
to be processed. Other foods come from far away places, such as
tropical fruit, seafood, salt, spices, coffee, or tea. That means we
have to rely on products sold in stores. But what happens when
people sell food that isn’t what it’s supposed to be?