Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Not only does this mean the customer overpays, but the fish that end up on the plate are often ones you wouldn't want to eat in the first place. Escolar, which often shows up instead of tuna, contains histamines that can cause very disturbing side effects...

Escolar is delicious, and I'd be disappointed to learn that the "white tuna" I was getting was albacore (blech). Also: I don't think histamines have anything to do with the GI side effects of overconsuming escolar.

The whole article is pretty weak. "Stay away" from artificial vanilla, it says, but then: Cooks Illustrated triangle-tested this with panels and found that in baked goods, artificial vanilla is actually what you want. Your cinnamon is... cassia! Look for real Ceylon cinnamon on the label! Why? Who's to say?

The idea that you need to buy milk from local farms, or switch to nut milk, to avoid detergents is especially funny. I think they're just writing this stuff to grab attention, not because they have any insight into food counterfeiting. Belle Cushing was one year out of Brown when Conde asked her to put this together; I assume the research was a series of Google queries.

It's annoying because there really are interesting (and problematic!) counterfeiting issues. I'm terrified of supermarket olive oil. Too bad Conde has no better advice than to find a "tasting bar".

I once bought a whole 6-8 inch block of dry-ice frozen escolar from some online sushi website and it caused some diarrhea (though not in any really bad way like an upset stomach—it just really lubricated your bowels). Also you'd have to eat a lot of it in one sitting. I read that it was due to indigestible oils, not histamines though.

Yeah, you need to be careful with escolar; a piece or two of nigiri is all I'd risk with it. But the reason you have to be careful with it is that, in addition to being indigestible, it's very delicious. It's something you'd want to eat a bunch of! If this article had any credibility, I'd say it's ironic that the only places I've ever had escolar served as escolar are Michelin-starred.

Publications have been trying to scare people with "counterfeit white tuna" for decades.

Oh boy I ate like a 3x5x2 inch chunk in one sitting that day. Needless to say I did shit my pants.

I guess what bugs me about this is that to me, if you're ordering "white tuna", escolar is the thing you want, not albacore. Albacore belongs in a can. It's not "counterfeit" so much as oddly-named.

I don't think its just escolar that does this. I'm a huge fan of salmon and if I eat too much this also happens.

I don’t think i’ve ever gotten this from salmon and I’ve eaten equivalent amounts of raw salmon before. However extremely greasy foods do cause a reaction down under for me so it could have been salmon belly or fatty salmon that you had too much of.

Check the origin of olive oil. If it's Tunisia, you're good. We've been exporting olive oil for 3000 years. It's all hand picked and pressed in the 12 hours following the harvest, the process has been mastered for generations. And "extra virgin" is the normal quality over here, we don't have lesser than that

I am sure that Tunisian olive oil is delicious (I've been to Morocco where it was also great, but not Tunisia - yet!) The problem for anyone who isn't there in person is not knowing if it's been mixed with less-delicious oil from somewhere else while it was being shipped. Here in the US I tend to stick to oil from California, which is less likely to have been tampered with (since it didn't travel as far, or pass through as many hands).

I think this is mostly FUD. Olive oil gets botteled, sealed and branded before getting shipped to USA. When it's sold in bulk, you will find origins other than Tunisia on the bottle. Olive oil is like wine, every territory has it's own flavour. I'm sure some people will like the taste of Californian olive oil, while others will like the Tunisian olive oil

Yes, that makes sense, if it was shipped in the bottle it should be fine I'm sure.

I have some Tunisian olive oil that I enjoy very much, and I am interested in learning more about it, but with respect, there's no reason presented why Tunisians or the Tunisian name would be less involved in counterfeiting that Greeks, Italians, Californians, etc.

Because we only produce olive oil in Tunisia and actually import other types of oil. It does not make sense economically to mix it with something that's not cheaper.

There is also nothing preventing intermediate distributors outside Tunisia from blending and repackaging that oil with cheaper oils. Or from such scoundrels from outright lying about the country of origin.

No one has come up with an unbreakable or unforgeable supply chain for these goods, which is why counterfeiting is still such a problem.

Checks out. Organic Tunisian olive oil in one liter glass bottles is all I buy, all the way up here in Finland, and it's both the highest quality and cheapest, oddly enough.

Ironically, the parent comment has much less research than the article. For example,

> I don't think histamines have anything to do with the GI side effects of overconsuming escolar.

'I don't think'? That's it? Are you an expert? They didn't even say anything about excess consumption (not generally required for allergic reactions) in the part you quoted, so that seems like a strawperson.

> I assume the research was a series of Google queries.

At least the comment is honest about its sources.

There's literally a name for the GI illness escolar causes: keriorrhea. It's caused by the indigestibility of wax ester-containing oils in the muscle tissue of the fish; it's a phenomenon similar to those "fat-free-fat" potato chips they used to sell. The "histamine" thing is a reference (the author doesn't know it) to a problem (scombroid poisoning) caused by improper storage of many different kinds of fish, not just escolar --- tuna and amberjack cause it too. Scombroid poisoning happens because, above a certain temperature, histadine in the fish flesh is enzymatically converted to histamine.

Happy to help! Would have been happy to help the author of this bad article, too. Oh, well.

To piggyback off of your comment on escolar, the article's description of toothfish being passed off as Chilean sea bass is also rather misleading. "Chilean sea bass" is just a marketing term for toothfish, which means they're the same thing. All Chilean sea bass is a type of toothfish, but the article makes it sound like there may be a way to get 'real' Chilean sea bass.

according to the research I just did, escolar is not toothfish; "Chilean seabass" is Patagonian toothfish.

Exactly, that was annoying, Chilean sea bass ain't nothing but a way to market toothfish.

I'm assuming the histamines thing is referring to scombroid poisoning which happens in escolar as well as other types of fish when it's not properly stored before eating.

https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/scombroid/index.html

This counterfeits food article is lazyily researched clickbait.

Yeah, "stay away from imported milk powder", what, all of it? My country is pretty damn proud of the milk powder we export, it's good stuff. But let's not discuss the environmental cost a massive switch to dairying has inflicted.

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