Part 6: Food Fraud: Based on the book “Metabolical”
There are six examples of food fraud that reached your restaurant’s or grocery store’s shelves without your knowledge: Dilution/adulteration. Something is added to the food to disguise or extend it. Milk is a common vehicle. In 2019 in India, milk was determined to have lower fat levels than advertised because the cows are inadequately fed. Another dilution is olive oil; it’s estimated that up to 80 percent of Italian virgin olive oil is neither Italian nor virgin. Substitution. It’s common for restaurants or food stands to substitute something of lesser value in an attempt to reap a higher profit. Vendors in New York City got caught selling beef gyros or goat gyros advertised as lamb; this occurs more frequently when the meat is shredded and mixed together. Another common substitution occurs in fish sales, where one study demonstrated that 21 percent of the fish underwent substitution, and that one out of every three establishments visited sold substituted seafood. Fish substitution is more likely to occur in restaurants (26 percent) than at grocery stores (12 percent). A common substitution occurs when tilapia (containing red dye), which costs $3.51 per pound, is swapped out for snapper, which costs about $15 per pound. Of the species tested, sea bass and snapper had the highest rates of mislabeling (55 percent and 42 percent, respectively). Much of the substituted seafood is labeled as a local favorite, while the truth is it may have been flown from halfway around the world. Intentional contamination/concealment. A famous international case occurred in 2008, where melamine was found in infant formula and other dairy products. In China, the milk was being diluted by dairy producers so more of it could be sold. The dilution decreased the amount of protein in milk, so the dairy producer replaced the natural milk protein with melamine, a nitrogen-rich compound used to make kitchen countertops. When ingested, melamine causes kidney stones and kidney failure. The melamine in milk killed six infants and sickened over 300,000 people in China, but dairy products laced with melamine were exported around the world and made it to our shores. Luckily no one in the US died. Another example is Parmesan cheese. In 2012, cellulose, a by-product of wood digestion, was added to several brands; in fact, one brand didn’t even have any cheese in the product at all. Country of origin. Many food items are prized because they come from unique places. But what if that place isn’t so unique? For instance, beer-battered pollock might come fresh from the waters of Alaska, or it might come frozen from a basin in China. More likely, the reason for this kind of fraud is to avoid paying duty on imported goods, such as alcohol. Organic. You might think that buying organic would save you from fraud. You would be wrong. The markup on organic is enormous, anywhere from 25 percent for avocados to 65 percent for milk. Furthermore, there’s a clear economic impetus to mark individual items as organic, as the only way to be caught is through laboratory analysis. One fraudster netted $142 million for faking organic on the label, and then spent his ill-gotten gains on Las Vegas casinos and sexual escapades. He eventually committed suicide rather than go to jail. Counterfeiting. Perhaps the most brazen of all food fraud occurs in the luxury space. Finding out that some high rollers were duped by the counterfeiting of rare wines and scotches may give you a moment of schadenfreude satisfaction, but this is a very alarming issue. If they can do that with something under that much scrutiny, imagine what they can do to you. In the meantime, what can you, the consumer, do to protect your health and your wallet from food fraud? It’s tough to say. But there are three precepts to remember: The more ingredients, the more risk (e.g., salted peanuts have three ingredients, Oreos have eleven ingredients). Avoid highly processed food. Buying organic may decrease your risk for cancer, but it increases the risk of fraud because fraudsters focus on organic due to the higher profit margin. Buy from the supplier directly (e.g., the farmer or the farmer’s market). Fewer middlemen mean fewer entities jacking up the price and people to hide behind, as well as more direct and face-to-face responsibility to the consumer. Distracting away from the real problem. We have the data to demonstrate that processed food is a primary causative factor for diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, and tooth decay; correlative for cancer, dementia, hypertension, addiction to other substances, and depression; as well as plausible for autoimmune disease and anxiety. But when the food industry addresses these issues in public, they only refer to the “obesity epidemic.” Until about 2010, they ignored the problem entirely, deflecting the issue back to the consumer and using the tobacco industry meme of “personal responsibility.” When they couldn’t deny culpability any longer, they chose to divert the public health conversation specifically toward obesity, for two reasons: because for them and the dietitians, it’s still all about calories, and the public still believes it. Knowledge. Can you trust the food industry to tell you when something is healthy or not? People have no idea what they’re eating. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 gave us our current food label, which was supposed to provide information to the consumer of what’s in the food, but of course says nothing about what’s been done to render it poisonous. The food label is currently unintelligible in part because the industry skirts the rules. What the public needs to know (protect the liver, feed the gut) is what’s been done to the food—but that’s exactly the information that’s withheld. Access. With 74 percent of foods in the supermarket containing added sugar, it has become almost unavoidable that you will, knowingly or unknowingly, consume contaminated food in your daily life. Processed foods are quick, easy, and have permeated workplaces, gyms, schools, and your refrigerator. People in poor neighborhoods live in “food deserts,” without access to Real Food because grocery stores are hard to come by. But the problem of food deserts becomes magnified when those same areas are rife with fast food outlets and convenience stores that provide only processed items (because of shelf life and depreciation). Sometimes these are called “food swamps,” the density of which predicts obesity and chronic disease in poor populations even better than food deserts. And why not? You can drown in a swamp faster than you can starve in a desert. Affordability. Assuming one wants to buy healthy food and has access to it, they have to be able to afford it. Analysis of the cost of food demonstrated that Real Food (fresh produce, eggs, and meat) was twice as expensive as processed food (Cheetos and Pop-Tarts) in 2002, and increased by 17 cents per pound of food per year over the next decade, as compared with processed food, which only increased 7 cents per pound per year. However, the cost of obesity to the individual ends up much higher. The amount of money that they pay directly for healthcare is double that of a person of normal weight. Furthermore, if you’re working three jobs and have kids, then you need something quick and easy. Affordability is coming from a place of privilege not just in cost of food, but in time for menu planning, etc. It’s one of many social justice issues—if you don’t have the time or the money to procure and prepare Real Food, what options do you have? And the processed food industry has positioned itself to perfectly fill the gap. Cheap food seems like a no-brainer—but not really. Externalities. The belief that your actions can’t harm anyone else needs reconsideration. For example, if you smoke, you not only hurt yourself, you hurt your employer, as the cost to that employer is $5,816 per year just to carry you. The cost to employers as a result of the obesity epidemic adds an extra $2,751 per employee. There are double the workers who are obese (45 percent) as there are smokers (23 percent)—never mind the costs of the diseases of metabolic syndrome. The medical costs of chronic metabolic disease due to processed food consumption will cause a doubling of social network costs in the next decade. In the US, Medicare will be bankrupt by 2029 and Social Security will be bankrupt by 2034, bankrupting healthcare systems around the world. There’s the additional burden of diet-related harm experienced by children who are especially vulnerable to poor diet at critical developmental stages. No label, packaging, or jingle can make an ultra-processed food healthy. Furthermore, you can’t make processed food healthy by adding supplements. Conversely, Real Food, which is universally healthy, doesn’t even have a label on which to make a structure-function or health claim. Most important it’s not what’s in the food that matters; it’s what’s been done to the food that counts. None of that is on the Nutrition Facts label. Processed food kills people (eventually). Processed food kills pocketbooks (eventually). Processed food kills budgets (eventually). Processed food kills the planet (eventually). It’s a slow process, even glacial, but we know it’s happening—or at least some of us do. Others of us keep doing it anyway because it’s mindless, seemingly cheap, convenient, tasty, and most of all, addictive. It turns out, most people think that deciding what to make for dinner and then buying the ingredients is an enormous hassle. They want what is good for their household, but trying to pick out food based on health and ingredients is impossible, and the inadequacy of our current food label becomes overwhelming. They don’t know how to read packaging (wonder why—because there’s nothing on the label that’s worth reading?), and they certainly don’t know how to make food choices based on it. When they enter the supermarket, it’s like walking into the opium den with a cacophony of voices on the endcaps of the aisles, shrieking “buy me.” They fall prey to the siren songs of the tortilla chips, soft drinks, and cookies. Here are the seven shopping rules to abide by, even before you walk into the store (or order online), that will keep you from stepping on any of the landmines the store has placed in your way. Don’t go shopping hungry. Shop the edges of the supermarket. If you’ve gone into the aisles, you’ve gone off the rails. If a product is on the endcap of the aisle, the company paid to have it placed there. Don’t be a stooge. Any food that has a logo you’ve heard of or any food with a Nutrition Facts label has been processed. If a product lists a structure-function claim on the package, don’t buy it. Example: any food that says low-fat or no trans-fats is poison, because something else is in there instead. If it doesn’t say whole grain, it isn’t. And even if it does say whole grain, it probably isn’t. If the carbohydrate to fiber ratio is greater than 10 to 1, don’t buy it. If any form of sugar is one of the first three ingredients, it’s a dessert. Change your grocery buying habits. If you have a local butcher or produce store, shop there—your choices are limited to the healthy stuff. Unfortunately, so many convenience stores around the country don’t sell fresh produce, so go to the proprietor and tell them what you want. You’ll also have to change your mindset about food and money. One way or another, you’re going to pay. You can either pay the farmer or the doctor—which would you prefer? Make a conscious choice.
