It’s In There

It’s In There was Originally Posted on January 17, 2013 by lavarock

There used to be a TV commercial for spaghetti sauce which questioned many ingredients to which the answer was “It’s in there”.

My weekly issue of “Food Manufacturing” talks about a food issue. A few quotes follow, taken out of context:

An Irish meat processor recalled 10 million burgers Wednesday from supermarkets across Ireland and Britain amid fears that many could contain horsemeat, a discovery that poses no danger to public health but threatens to undermine the beef business central to Ireland’s rural economy.

In 2011, for example, a DNA study by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found that three-quarters of fish labeled as cod in Irish fast-food outlets was actually one of several more cheaply sourced fishes, including pollock, hake or haddock.

In that case, Irish investigators traced the problem to a single 15-employee factory that made animal feed from stale bread, dough and candy — and was allowing engine oil, the dioxin source, to get into the mix.

So you almost can’t trust the list of ingredients on a product. Sometimes it is the way they are listed and your ability to delve into reality. For example, many pet food products say they contain all sorts of meat, yet their listing by weight is “before cooking”; cooking which takes out a large percentage of the weight.

Remember the McDonalds Quarter Pounder, which finally had to be suffixed with (before cooking) when people complained the small meat patty was NOT a quarter pound. Some meats have their weights inflated with extra liquid before cooking.

Then there is the case with products such as wheat. There are various names for a product and they are all used in the same ingredient panel. Wheat, flour and gluten are all wheat. Then add in some rice and barley and their namesakes and you have a grain product, not a meat product.

You may also see this is human foods. There will be perhaps a pasta product and a sauce. The pasta has wheat, the sauce contains gluten, the spices might contain some wheat, and soon. It may be listed in 6 different places as part of ingredients and when you add it all together, a massive amount of wheat.

We have the same issue with out Kona Coffee. Outside the state people can call almost anything “Kona” because the blenders kept the growers from trademarking the name “Kona” knowing they would not be able to hoodwink the public.

Because they use the name “Kona” in their company name, means the state cannot force them to remove that from the label. Thus a company could call themselves “The KONA Company” and their coffee could sell as 100% Arabica, grown in the islands, etc and hot even be from America.

The decade old problem of Kona Blends still exists. A Kona Blend sold in Hawaii must be labeled as such with the percentage of Kona in the bag. The other coffee, 90% can come from anywhere, even china, Vietnam or who knows where.

The ability of a company to be able to use a name like Kona on their product, to encourage people to think it contains that product, it a crime in my book, especially when 90% of the product is not what is on the label.

Don’t think it is just coffee. I went to Costco and bought a Cranberry Drink Cocktail. I guess I should have looked closer and realized that cocktails are BLENDED. Well this product did contain cranberry juice, but it was the THIRD ingredient behind juices such as apple and grape. Should Cranberry be allowed to be listed on the front when other juices and water are in more plentiful amounts?

So when you buy products, don’t just take the labels word for it. I encourage you to ask “What’s in there?”.