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Comment by undersuit | Hacker News Reader

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’”

One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and pork, chocolate and flavored vegetable oil.

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Fake eggs in China was the one that really astounded me!

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/06/how-to-make-a-rotten-egg...

Citing an anonymous source, the paper outlined how the fakes were made: prepare a mould, then mix the right amounts of resin, starch, coagulant and pigments to make egg white. Sodium alginate, extracted from brown algae, gives the egg white the wanted viscosity. Then add the fake egg yolk, a different mix of resin and pigments. Once the proper shape is achieved, an amalgamate of paraffin wax, gypsum powder and calcium carbonate makes for a credible shell.

Ethics aside, I just don’t see how that’s cheaper than a real egg. That’s a lot of process and materials, mostly time consuming to pull off.

There might be con-artist idealists after all.

It sort of makes one stick with whole ingredients. If you want flour that is relatively bug free, grind your own wheat. No packaged goods. Certainly shrinks one's choices but it might be the right thing to do to encourage more transparent suppliers.

Are bugs in flour really that big of a health concern?

It makes it difficult to calculate one's protein intake.

I guess it depends on the person. For example, flour is currently allowed 150 insect filth/fragments per 100 grams [1]. Your reaction will vary to this information but mine is to try to forget this information as soon as possible because I love bread and I am not ready to get a wheat grinder (though I have seen a nice portable one in a Mormon household that I will probably purchase one day). Similarly, in Montreal, it was recently discovered that turkey sausages were mostly chicken and 'pure beef' sausages were made of horse meat [2]. A certain fish that looks like mackerel (edit: served as albacore) and is served as such in some places causes significant gastric discomfort if consumed in a large portion [3].

Food adulteration is a big deal and was much worse when regulation was loose/non-existent. My point was that whole ingredients (such as wheat berries) are a reasonable approach to self empowerment in terms of controlling what you put in your body. It is in my opinion more doable than running one's own farm or some such.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels

[2]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/sausage-science-1.4234568

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

My reaction to the insect in flour info is "yay more proteins". Why would one try to avoid it? I mean on a scientific level.

Well, if only it was insects. It says insect filth and parts without specifying the proportion. People say 'yum' when they hear beef but it is a rare person who will have the same reaction to dung. Edit: also, if it was just insects, which it isn't, these insects are hardly likely to be the clean and sanitized crickets that are sold as flour.

Cooking is chemistry, enough adulterants in your flour would affect the final product. That's why there are different flours for different uses.

Also why are the bugs in the grain? Were they alive, or did they die in the grain after being doused with a pesticide somewhere in the mill and now you're eating pesticide too(besides the pesticide residue normally allowed on grains from spraying on the fields).

We didn't evolve to eat sterile food products free of all possible foreign organisms and wastes. It's far from clear that it's healthy to create such conditions artificially.

>calamari and pork

I think that's an urban legend

It is an urban legend. It takes FAR too much effort to mask the flavour to make it a cost-effective substitute.

It's like the "McDonald's hamburger is really red meal worm" or "KFC is really genetically engineered boneless chicken monsters" myths.

This American Life undertook a relatively serious investigation of this question (calamari 'rings' as pork rectum) and they basically came away with "inconclusive":

https://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/do...

I can't listen to it right now (I will later, because TAL is great), but did they do a blind taste test? I wish I could remember where I found it, but some curious foodies tried it and the pork rectum had a... let's call it "distinct" flavour that was unpleasant and difficult to mask.

yes they did. they were able to mask it. they also had some less masked but thought it would just be perceived as off squid.

There was an NPR story that dug way into this myth. And while they weren't able to track down any actual suppliers of pig bung, they did make their own pig bung Calimari supplied by a local butcher. IIRC, the blind taste testers all preferred the pig bung over the real deal, and they all considered themselves to be Calimari "snobs."

I guess you're right[1]. The thought of the substitution wasn't really stopping me from eating calamari, it's more about how do I not get ripped off by unscrupulous merchants?

[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/imitation-calamari-...

And bacon. Around 9 out of 10 products in the bacon section are actually 'Manufactured Meat Product'. I'm in Australia which usually has quite strong consumer protections, but being able to call it bacon is misleading. Only looking at the ingredients list gives it away.

This is a big problem in the USA, but much of Europe is far stricter about food labeling.

No joke, a big thing I noticed the first time I went outside America was, "Holy shit, the food is real." No matter where I go, I find cheap food that's simply better quality than anything that's even mid-range in the US. It's especially noticeable with snacks/junk food, where everything in America is some odd artificial flavor that tastes nothing like what it claims to be, while (particularly in Japan) things taste exactly like what they claim to be and often are made from those exact ingredients.

Agree with the exception of mainland China where processed food is even more race to the bottom than in the US. Recommend that you assume food served on internal flights is inedible and plan accordingly.

Don't buy heavily processed food in mainland China. The fresh food is amazingly fresh. I'm visiting my family in China right now, and love going to the market every morning.

I agree on the airplane food. Take a high speed rail if at all possible!

>calamari and pork

What?? Since when do they do that? What parts of pork have a calamari texture? I've literally never heard of that before

The idea is that the final part of the digestive system of pigs and squid tentacles have similar texture and appearance and the flavor can be similar, but so far there are no reported instances of the switch in meat sources happening.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14981406

> scallops and stingray

Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

> calamari and pork

Again, nothing alike.

> chocolate and flavored vegetable oil

Chocolate contains more elements than just cocoa butter, so you can't just replace it with vegetable oil. I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

> Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

They are frequently substituted, cut out in little circles, and sold as "scallops". It is legal to do so (in the US.) The poster is complaining about mislabeling.

Frequently where? I believe this is yet another urban legend. The meat looks different.

Here in Australia. A lot of people just aren't familiar enough with the real thing to know the difference.

And the taste is totally different

This was elevated to meme status by a mention in Jaws, but neither the FDA or the National Fisheries Institute are buying it.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-09-29/entertainment/...

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39179/are-cheap...

"It is legal to do so (in the US.)"

How is that possible? Isn't that plain lying? Can't you sue such company? As an European, I can't comprehend that. If something is labelled "scallops" it must be real scallops or else you would get sanctioned immediately after somebody finds out it's not and fills a complain. If substitutes are used, it must be labeled as "scallops flavored" or smth.

https://www.today.com/food/chocoholics-sour-new-hersheys-for...

> I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

You should come to Poland. :-(

It's referred to as 'compound chocolate' [1]. It's done because to make paletable chocolate you need to add a greater porportion of cocoa butter than is in cocoa beans themselves. This makes the cocoa butter more expensive than the cocoa solids/powder. To save money low end chocolate replaces some or all of the cocoa butter with other oils, and uses chemicals to doctor up the chocolate to create something with roughly the same experience.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_chocolate

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