Is That Chocolate Really Chocolate? And Other Fun Food Frauds
We had the horsemeat scandal in Europe. Then a fake vodka -- high levels of methanol and bleach -- was produced and sold in England. Even good chocolate and olive oil are adulterated these days. Are we really eating what we think we are? A story in today's New York Times points out that investigators "have uncovered thousands of frauds, raising fresh questions about regulatory oversight as criminals offer bargain-hunting shoppers cheap versions of everyday products, including counterfeit chocolate and adulterated olive oil, Jacob’s Creek wine and even Bollinger Champagne." “Around the world, food fraud is an epidemic — in every single country where food is produced or grown, food fraud is occurring,” Mitchell Weinberg, president and chief executive of Inscatech, a company that advises on food security, told The New York Times. “Just about every single ingredient that has even a moderate economic value is potentially vulnerable to fraud.” Even scarier, "many...