Are We Part Of The Problem?

Until we accept that some things need to be reassuringly expensive, that we’re prepared to pay for quality – even if that means we eat something less often – and that the choices we make really matter then the next food scandal will be just around the corner. And we’ll all be complicit in it.
https://intersect.com/stories/0b8DSw6St8pF

Curious on thoughts..

The olive oil scam, what you need to know and wish you didn't know:

Read more:
http://www.peak-health-now.com/olive-oil-scams.html

Extra-virgin olive oil wasn't created until stainless steel milling techniques were introduced in the 1960s and '70s. The technology allowed people to make much more refined olive oil.

"In the past, the technology that had been used had been used really by the Romans," says Mueller. "You grounded the olives with stone mills [and] you crushed them with presses."

The introduction of stainless steel milling techniques has allowed manufacturers to make more complex and flavorful extra-virgin olive oils, he says. But the process is also incredibly expensive — it costs a lot to properly store and mill extra-virgin olive oil. Mueller says that's why some people blend extra-virgin olive oil with lower-grade, lower-priced products.

"Naturally the honest people are getting terribly undercut," he says. "There's a huge unfair advantage in favor of the bad stuff. At the same time, consumers are being defrauded of the health and culinary benefits of great olive oil."
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/12/143154180/losing-virginity-olive-oils-scandalous-industry

For example, a report produced in 2010 by UC-Davis found that more than two thirds of common brands of extra virgin olive oil being sold in California were nothing of the sort.

Sellers of inaccurately labeled oil included one of the biggest names in grocery retailing in the US, though there's no suggestion the store chain knew of the deception.

In fact, of the dozens of stores whose sales were analyzed, only six were selling the genuine product.

There are actually hundreds of varieties of olives but only a few main classifications for olive oil, including:

Read more: http://www.scambusters.org/oliveoilscam.html

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The olive oil scandal is but one example of what I mean by posting the original topic:

"Until we accept that some things need to be reassuringly expensive, that we’re prepared to pay for quality – even if that means we eat something less often – and that the choices we make really matter then the next food scandal will be just around the corner. And we’ll all be complicit in it."

Any more thoughts?

another one with fish..

Our findings are in line with those from other recent studies showing that 20 to 25 percent of seafood around the world is mislabeled.

It's impossible to determine where species substitution and mislabeling occur—fish pass through many hands from hook to cook. After harvesters farm or catch seafood, they ice it or flash-freeze it. Sometimes they transfer their catch to larger vessels, where the fish might be mixed with other species. The fish may be processed at sea or shipped to foreign or domestic facilities where it's prepared for distribution.

Processing at sea, which includes removing heads and guts, slows spoilage but can make species more difficult to identify, as can breading or sauces that seafood-preparation facilities might add. When sending fish and shellfish to retailers, suppliers must note their country of origin and whether they were wild or farm-raised. (Prepared fish products such as fish sticks aren't subject to that rule.)

Unscrupulous people may try to falsify documentation or hide illegally caught fish with legally captured ones, according to a report released last May by Oceana, an international organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. They could commingle species and try to sell the lot as the highest-priced species. As a result, mislabeled fish could end up in stores and restaurants. "The likelihood of being caught is so low, there's no incentive to play by the rules," says Margot Stiles, a marine scientist at Oceana.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/december/food/fake-fish/overview/index.htm

I offer this in the cheeriest of tones: For me the problem is one of time and interest; if that makes me complicit, there's really nothing I can do about it. Knowing about something and not doing a whole lot does not make me guilty of anything. If it did, I'd have a farmful of rescue dogs and cats, street people, family members, and the like. I wouldn't use cell phones, I'd grow all my own food, I would walk everywhere, I'd refuse to work for smokers, I'd probably boycott my own country so I could avoid its electricity, water, and gas offered by all the cheating monopolies... I guess this list could go on forever.

As it is, I'll probably get some deadly disease or brain damage from foods and cell phones and god knows what. But I'm too damned busy working to survive and dealing with the daily challenges of life to give a crap.

(Oh, and if mixed in with the dioxin in our "real" mozzarella are bits and pieces of the gangsters that were involved with the dumping, I have to say they taste pretty good...)

So let's say you're willing to pay extra for the real deal olive oil "extra virgin, first pressing" (which is kind of a laughable terminology)....how do you know you're getting what you pay for?
Any clue?

HelperGuy wrote:I offer this in the cheeriest of tones: For me the problem is one of time and interest; if that makes me complicit, there's really nothing I can do about it. Knowing about something and not doing a whole lot does not make me guilty of anything. If it did, I'd have a farmful of rescue dogs and cats, street people, family members, and the like. I wouldn't use cell phones, I'd grow all my own food, I would walk everywhere, I'd refuse to work for smokers, I'd probably boycott my own country so I could avoid its electricity, water, and gas offered by all the cheating monopolies... I guess this list could go on forever.

As it is, I'll probably get some deadly disease or brain damage from foods and cell phones and god knows what. But I'm too damned busy working to survive and dealing with the daily challenges of life to give a crap.

(Oh, and if mixed in with the dioxin in our "real" mozzarella are bits and pieces of the gangsters that were involved with the dumping, I have to say they taste pretty good...)

Hah hah hah, great post. I concur completely. However, as you so eloquently pointed out, one must survive. Pick your battles.

gringal wrote:So let's say you're willing to pay extra for the real deal olive oil "extra virgin, first pressing" (which is kind of a laughable terminology)....how do you know you're getting what you pay for?
Any clue?

That's right! You have NO idea of what you're getting. There is no truth anymore. AND, we're pretty much talking about buying from corporations.

Which reminds me. . .recently I got a doozie of a glutening from a bowl of "GLUTEN FREE" Rice Chex. No doubt it came from that. I wrote General Mills and received a form letter telling me how sorry they were for my "inconvenience". So I wrote back and listed all the "inconveniences"/symptoms I was dealing with. They sent another form letter asking some routine questions about the box of cereal then asked. . .. . . . . . . ready? Wait for it. . . . . . . . . . . . "What gluten can you not have?"

TR writes:
That's right! You have NO idea of what you're getting. There is no truth anymore. AND, we're pretty much talking about buying from corporations.

Well, since "we´re" pretty much talking about corporations, let´s expand the subject. Where we live half the year in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, just about everybody is a cheat who will lie to you, the consumer, without hesitation. You must be evere alert and are on your own. The most prestigious producer of "purified" water, a very famous international company, sold seriously contaminated drinking water there and made countless people quite ill, some dangerously so.

The community rastro, selling meat products to retailers ranging from mom-and-pop neighborhood retail meat outlets to the most prestigious meat markets in town was selling tainted meat in the most expensive retail markets and the off-putting corner stores as well. They did this for a long period of time until exposed by the municipality. Disgustingly tainted meat butchered and stored in utterly filthy conditions often mixed with other more wholesome cuts to disguise the deceit.

You consume "organic" produce down there and, at times, plan on consuming produce grown in human or pig feces and those waste products can kill you, especially when you consume such ground hugging produce and fruits as cilentro and strawberries .

When the warm spring breezy weather arrives in March in Chiapas for a couple of months, the human waste products widely found in fields and forests where many poor people deficate daily as they have no toilets or even outhouses, dry up and become bacteria infested dust in the air so one can become deathly ill just by breathing so the approach of the magnificent spring there is generally dreaded by folks at large as a time of widespread digestive illnesses.

And, keep in mind I am speaking here of sanitary conditions in the highlands at 7,000 plus feet, not in the tropical jungles.

It sure is a noce place to live if you don´t mind occasional digestive problems, parasites and inconveniences such as typhoid fever.

Corporations my ass.

Hound Dog

Chiapas not withstanding Bubba, you are right. I had not looked at the OPs link.

I will amend my comment to say: There is no truth anymore. AND, we're pretty much talking about buying from ANYONE.

[quote="Trailrunner"]Chiapas not withstanding Bubba, you are right. I had not looked at the OPs link.

I will amend my comment to say: There is no truth anymore. AND, we're pretty much talking about buying from ANYONE.[/quote]

Right on, TR. As we both know, if you want to live in Mexico as we surely do, you´re on your own. I gaze at cracks in sidewalks much more attentively these days, after 12 years here, than I did in San Francisco for 40 years where I might have had some recourse for municipal ineptitude in the courts. We must also remember that it was Safeway in California that was mixing in "green" meat with fresh meat for hamburger for years before having been caught at what had become their standard practice. Actually, that may have made a superior burger - who knows.

Once you get used to the fact that Big Brother may not be there to make things right, you get used to self-reliance and that is good for us all in the long run.

Hound Dog

Bill Maher takes on GMO's, horse meat and other topics related to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rbTXd41vwvQ

I'd be content if they just enforced truth in labeling. Then it's up to the consumer to decide if they want to ingest the contents. That would include alcoholic beverages, some of which have additives you might not believe.

Probably never happen.

"Here's one they weren't expecting — meat pies with no meat.

When officials in Iceland began hearing about horsemeat being secreted into beef products around Europe, they decided to run tests to ensure the same thing wasn't happening in Iceland.

Icelandic meat inspector Kjartan Hreinsson says his team didn't find any horsemeat, but one brand of locally produced beef pie left it stumped: it contained no meat at all.

"That was the peculiar thing," Hreinsson said in a telephone interview Friday. "It was labelled as beef pie, so it should be beef pie."

Hreinsson said it appeared to be some kind of vegetable matter. He said the mystery pie was traced to a firm in western Iceland and the case had been handed to municipal authorities."