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For the love of real food: Five of the most commonly faked foods, and how to avoid them

Mercury-laden tilefish passed off as red snapper, "100 per cent Parmesan" cut with wood pulp. Fake foods are rampant, and an affront to good taste

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Mercury-laden tilefish passed off as red snapper, “100 per cent Parmesan” cut with wood pulp, fast food lobster rolls seriously lacking in lobster.

As journalist Larry Olmsted suggests in his new book, Real Food/Fake Food (Algonquin Books, 2016), food fraud is rampant. When it comes to many commonplace items, what you think you’re buying is simply not what you’re getting.

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“Michigan State University’s Food Fraud Initiative (FFI) estimates fraud at nearly fifty billion dollars annually. That’s twice the entire world market for coffee, the single most valuable agricultural commodity,” he writes.

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Fake food can be damaging to our health and the environment. And, as AP’s ‘Seafood from Slaves’ investigation last year brought to light, tainted food can take a human toll as well.

Algonquin Books
Algonquin Books

It represents economic fraud; we’re being cheated by counterfeiters at the expense of artisans around the world who make real food according to venerable tradition.

“But real food also tastes better,” Olmsted says.

“And once you see it being made and taste it, you’re not going to want to eat anything else.”

Olmsted takes an in-depth look at shockingly common food-industry deceptions in Real Food/Fake Food. But, as a food lover, his focus is decidedly on the former.

He knows the joys of eating real Parmigiano-Reggiano, authentic Kobe beef, and genuine extra virgin olive oil.

“As I continued going places like Parma (Italy), Japan, the Gulf of Mexico coast, Mississippi and Florida – places where a lot of real food is produced – I realized that it’s about the real food, which is the only reason why there is fake food,” he says.

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“There are fake Rolex watches but not Timex; high value items are counterfeited. And I just kept my faith in the real food. That’s why there’s a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano on the cover. And I use more olive oil than I used to because I learned how good olive oil is when it’s good.”

Extra virgin olive oil is prized for its health benefits and distinctive flavour. It has such a long history of being adulterated, Olmsted says, that many people won’t have ever tasted the good stuff.

“We could easily change that (in the U.S.) by inspecting it more and I cite Canada (in the book) where they stepped up the government analysis of the supermarket olive oil in 2006, and in less than three years, the samples that failed dropped from 47 per cent to 11 per cent.

“I’ve had people in the food industry tell me, ‘Nobody is checking. Of course people are going to cheat.’ And it doesn’t take a whole lot of checking to discourage that. I think Canada is statistical proof that we can quickly improve the quality of the food supply just by paying attention to it.”

Prosciutto di Parma
Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/GettyImages Photo by Giuseppe Cacace /AFP/GettyImages

Gourmet Italian foods – extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma – are especially likely to be faked.

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In Canada in particular, it can be difficult to tell if you’re buying Prosciutto di Parma (Parma ham), one of the world’s highest quality hams, or an imitation.

The real Prosciutto di Parma is made – where else – in Parma, Italy.

According to the Consorzio responsible for assuring its quality, there are just four ingredients: Italian pork leg, sea salt, air, and time.

It’s an all-natural product free from additives such as colourings and preservatives, the process rooted in craftsmanship and tradition.

This delicacy has, as Olmsted puts it, “a colourful labelling history in Canada.”

Maple Leaf Meats trademarked the name “Prosciutto di Parma” in 1971, forcing actual Parma ham makers to sell their product as “Original Ham” in Canada until a trade agreement was reached in 2013.

“Both the actual Parma producers and Maple Leaf Meats can now sell Prosciutto di Parma, real and fake, in Canada,” Olmsted writes.

Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Kobe beef, a traditional Japanese product renowned for its fine marbling, appears on restaurant menus across North America. If you’ve ordered it anywhere else in Canada but at chef Antonio Park’s Montreal establishments (Park, Park Market and Lavanderia), you’ve been had.

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Park is the only chef in Canada officially licensed to import and serve real Japanese Kobe beef, a license he’s held since 2015.

“The quantity of Kobe beef being made is not increasing. There are roughly 3,000-head of cattle a year, which is like the size of one mid-size farm in Texas or Alberta,” Olmsted says.

“And of that, 90 per cent stays in Japan. What little is exported – you’re talking 300 animals – the countries that get the most are Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong (China). So the amount available, it’s not like 50 restaurants can ever serve it in the U.S., yet hundreds have it on the menu.”

Allison Olmsted
Allison Olmsted

In Real Food/Fake Food, Olmsted also delves into seafood, which is the most frequently faked food that North Americans buy. The industry, Olmsted writes, is “rife with fraud, substitution, and adulteration.”

One reason that seafood is the worst category for food fakery, he says, is that it’s so diverse, consisting of thousands of species. This isn’t the case for other animal proteins such as poultry, which is available in a handful of different breeds. Another is that so much of it is imported.

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“The supply chain is super convoluted but also, we are fairly disconnected from the source of our food. And that’s especially true when it comes to seafood because everybody knows what a pig, or a chicken or a cow looks like,” he says.

“But very few (North) Americans know what a whole red snapper looks like as opposed to a sea bream. I certainly couldn’t identify an orange roughy in a store. And if you don’t know what it looks like, it’s really easy to be cheated.”

Take red snapper for instance, which is the most widely mislabelled fish according to a report by the conservation group Oceana. Actual red snapper, a premium fish, represented less than six per cent of the sample.

Fish passed off as red snapper – such as tilefish (which is also used in place of halibut) – presents specific health concerns for children, pregnant women and others due to its high mercury content, Olmsted writes. When so much of our seafood is mislabelled, avoiding specific species becomes impossible.

Additionally, he says, we’ve become spoiled for choice in Canada and the U.S. Formerly special-occasion foods such as shrimp and sushi have become commonplace items available at convenience stores and all-you-can-eat buffets.

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“As these foods become more popular, I think they get dumbed-down. But also, the reason we have all-you-can-eat $9.99 shrimp is the advent of shrimp farming, which in turn produces a lot of lower quality, suspect shrimp,” he says.

“So I think if you just roll the clock back a little in your head and say, ‘When I eat shrimp, I want it to be good. If I eat beef, I want it to be good.’ It’s unrealistic for us to expect that we should be eating these things every day, all the time.”

FIVE OF THE MOST COMMONLY FAKED FOODS

“The Michigan State University Food Fraud Initiative puts out a list of the ten most adulterated foods in the world and the staples – coffee, honey, and juice – always make that list,” Olmsted says. “However, they’re more prone to fraud in some countries than they are in the U.S. and Canada.”

Here’s a look at five of the most fraudulent foods and drinks, and Olmsted’s tips on how to shop better.

OLIVE OIL

Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images
Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

If you’re choosing olive oil solely by geography, Olmsted recommends Australia or Chile.

Australian olive oil producers have the highest standards in the world. “And more important than the fact that they have a higher standard is that they rigorously enforce it, which is not really done in a lot of the rest of the world,” he says.

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He emphasizes that there is still fantastic olive oil being made in Europe but it’s more difficult to find in North America.

“If I go to Italy, I always bring back olive oil. And some people would say Greece makes the best olive oil in the world. Greece has a lot of infrastructure, marketing, and distribution issues so it’s just not widely available here,” Olmsted says.

Taste is the best indicator of quality so sample before buying, if you can.

Olive oil is extremely perishable. Olmsted recommends buying only as much as you plan to use within six weeks.

Harvest date is important, as olives start to deteriorate when they are picked. Olmsted says it should be less than a year earlier. He recommends ignoring the much more prevalent but “meaningless ‘best by’ or ‘bottled on’ dates.”

CHEESE

Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

If you know what to look for, real cheese is easy to spot.

When shopping for the King of Cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Olmsted recommends looking for the full name (rather than the misleading Parmesan), the PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) seal, and if it says “Made in Italy,” you should be good to go.

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Serious Eats, a good food website, unilaterally did this taste test of domestic Parmesan cheeses in an effort to find a cheaper substitute for Parmigiano-Reggiano, and they concluded that you just couldn’t do it,” Olmsted says.

“There was no other product that made sense: that was as good or significantly cheaper to warrant using.”

For cheese in general, look at the ingredient listing. Actual cheese contains recognizable ingredients, and few of them.

Geographically indicated cheeses, such as feta, Munster, and Gruyère, should only come from Greece, France, and Switzerland, respectively. These three cheeses in particular, Olmsted says, are frequently faked.

HONEY

rvbox/Getty Images
rvbox/Getty Images

Honey is the third most faked food in the world, and the subject of the largest food fraud in U.S. history – an incident that netted US$80 million, Olmsted writes.

Honey is commonly thinned with less expensive, but still edible, sweeteners – beet sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar have all been used in the past – as the FDA told USA Today.

“That’s not the case with chloramphenicol, a powerful antibiotic that can lead to a potentially fatal bone marrow disorder, the reason the drug is not approved for food use in the United States. But it is a common contaminant in adulterated Chinese honey,” Olmsted writes.

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The fact that Chinese honey is banned for import into the U.S. didn’t stop a German honey distributor from relabelling and transshipping it, some of it fake, for seven years.

Fortunately, it’s easy to buy real honey. “By simply avoiding big supermarket brands and buying it from someone who makes it locally, you should be safe,” Olmsted writes.

COFFEE

stargatechris/Getty Images
stargatechris/Getty Images

According to the Michigan State University FFI’s list, coffee is the fifth most faked product in the world.

“Coffee in particular has a long history of fraud and adulteration,” Olmsted says. “But it’s a pretty easy one for consumers to get around… buy whole beans.”

Grind them yourself, and you’ll be sure to get real coffee – rather than coffee grounds cut with sawdust, ground acorns and roasted corn, as a recent U.S. congressional investigation found.

Now you know you have real coffee, but are those actual Jamaican Blue Mountain beans that you paid $93.25 per pound for?

“There’s no way that you can tell whether it actually came from Jamaica or whether it came from Hawaii or whether it came from Nicaragua. So that’s where the fraud in coffee is, is more of an economic fraud where you’re not getting the quality of the bean you paid for,” he says.

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FISH

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“While sushi is statistically the worst offender, there is good reason to be dubious about seafood of almost every description, raw or cooked, shellfish or fin fish,” Olmsted writes.

He cites a study of New York City seafood conducted by Oceana, which found that 100 per cent of sushi restaurants sampled served fake fish. Additionally, “Oceana found fraud in 58 per cent of retail outlets and 39 per cent of restaurants.”

What can you do? Buy wild caught, Olmsted says (with minor exceptions, “mainly domestically farmed catfish and globally farmed mussels, oysters, and clams”). And shop at big-box stores (Walmart, Costco), which he says have more leverage to hold producers and suppliers to a higher standard.

Eating out? Olmsted recommends avoiding “the most commonly substituted fish: order white tuna or red snapper, and you will almost always get something fake.”

Ask the waitstaff where the restaurant gets its fish and seafood from.

“If they don’t have an immediate, informed answer, it’s very suspect because a restaurant has to know where it’s buying those products if they’re really selling them,” Olmsted says.

“The more consumers ask questions and demand the truth, the more they’re going to get it.”

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