Opinion
Updated
When we buy food, we take it on faith that the product matches the label. Recent revelations that many honey products may be adulterated have left many questioning this trust.
While the impacted producers are still disputing the results of the report, this scandal highlights a bigger issue costing industry and consumers billions and potentially putting consumers at risk — food fraud.What is food fraud?
Food fraud is essentially the sale of an inferior product represented as a more valuable one.This could be through substitution, dilution, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, ingredients or packaging.
Because it is designed to be undetected, it is difficult to know the true reach of food fraud, but the potential profits and complexities of the modern food supply chain mean it is likely becoming more common.
What foods are at risk?
High-value and high-demand foods are particularly at risk of counterfeiting. Brands known for quality may be targeted with fake labelling and branding.
Certain labels like "organic" and "free-range" will attract a premium price, but origins can be difficult to trace, resulting in fraudulent use of these labels.
Fish may be marketed as a more expensive species, taking advantage of the fact that the average person might not be able to tell the difference.
Processed and mixed products are easy to fake or mix with cheaper substances.
Dilution is a common method of fraud for liquid products. Honey can be diluted with cheaper sugar syrups like sugar cane or rice syrup.
Similarly, olive oil can be diluted with cheaper oils such as sunflower or olive pomace oil (the oil from the olive oil pressing waste).
Juice can be diluted with water and added sugars, and have colours or flavours added to make them appear more concentrated.
Solid produce may be bulked with cheaper materials to increase its weight, and therefore its value. In 2016 it was revealed that some shredded cheese had cellulose added to it.
Tea, coffee and spices can have other plants material added to the mix.
What's the harm?
The substitutes aren't always harmful — after all, that wouldn't be good for the fraudsters' business model. But, they may have different nutrient profiles and biological properties to the original product.
Often, it would be completely legal to add these products to food, provided they were labelled correctly. Otherwise, the consumers may be purchasing and paying a premium for a perceived health benefit that isn't there.
Sometimes the added product is harmful. In 2008, milk from China had melamine added to it to increase the protein content and to conceal the fact that it had been diluted. This led to multiple deaths and thousands of cases of kidney disease.
People with food allergies and intolerances may be particularly at risk from food fraud. If a product isn't as labelled, then the allergen warnings and ingredients list can't be trusted either.
Testing for food fraud
Detecting food fraud relies on testing. As new tests are developed we get better at detecting frauds, but the fraudsters will always be looking for new ways to dupe those tests.The current test for fake honey looks at the plant sources of the sugars; most flowers bees feed on produce sugars using the "C3" pathway.
Cane sugar or corn syrup, commonly used to dilute honey, are "C4" sugars, so this is what official bodies test for. But, rice, beet and wheat syrups all come from C3 plants, so these still pass the common tests.
The recent report used nuclear magnetic resonance testing, a newer more sensitive method that can fingerprint all the molecules in products.
Newer technology will help fight food fraud in the future. These include tracers and edible inks that can be used to tag foods, biomarkers, DNA fingerprinting, and black-chain surveillance of supply chains.
While it might seem alarming to hear reports of fake and adulterated foods, this might actually be a good thing, because it means testing and surveillance is working.
How to protect yourself against fraud
- Check labels for country of origin.
If a product is Australian made, from Australian ingredients, then they are subject to our standards and regulations. When ingredients or products are imported the food chain becomes more complicated and difficult to trace.
The honeys implicated in the latest scandal were all blends of Australian and imported honey.
- Shop with trusted retailers.
Buy whole foods — whole spices or blocks of cheese are more difficult to fake or cut with other products.
- If you think something is wrong with a product, report it.
Emma Beckett is a postdoctoral fellow in human molecular nutrition in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle.
No comments:
Post a Comment