food mislabeling

Food mislabeling is an issue that's been in the news a lot recently. This post isn't about horse meat though. It's about something less important but it does say a lot about the attitude of retailers. Yesterday I went to Borough Market in London. I wanted to see what it looks like now all the building work has been completed. I also wanted to buy a few things, like blood oranges.

Blood oranges come from southern Italy and Spain and are available at some markets now. They have a different colour and taste from the usual oranges. There are different cultivars, the Moro being the best flavoured. There are several places in Borough Market where blood oranges are sold. The first one I came to didn't label the blood oranges on display with the name of the cultivar. I picked up two and asked the assistant at the till if she knew what the variety is. She didn't know.

The next place I went to I could see that the name on the box was Moro. This was the tiny lettering that the grower puts on the box that the fruit are transported in. Again, there was nothing that the seller put on his label to say what cultivar it is.

The third place I went to was the biggest of the fruit and vegetable sellers. It is called Turnips. There were a number of boxes of blood oranges, and they had placed on top of them a laminated information sheet. This sheet was all about the Moro cultivar. So I assumed they were all Moro. Until I looked on the box and it said Tarocco. So what are they, Moro or Tarocco? I think what they do is to put the same information sheet on their blood oranges, irrespective of what cultivar they are.

Bear in mind that what they say about Borough Market and similar places is that if you're not sure then you can ask the vendor and they will tell you all about the produce that they are selling. All the people working there were busy, but if I had asked I would probably have got the same response as at the first place.

It's not important if someone like me can't get my Moro blood oranges. In fact, I can get them, elsewhere. What is important is that even at somewhere like Borough Market they can't even be bothered to get their labeling right. I can't work out if they are stupid or if they think we are stupid. Another thing I don't like is when I ask for something, they tell me it's out of season, even when I know it is available elsewhere.

I've been getting my Moro blood oranges at 4 for £1 from Berwick Street market in Soho. So they're not some kind of expensive item that ordinary people can't afford.

I've got 3 more examples of casual labeling, all from Sainsbury's. A couple of years ago I bought a cheap camellia plant. It was labeled as the variety Debbie, a variety that I am familiar with and I like the form of it's flowers. It's in flower now, for the first time, but it's definitely not Debbie. It was quite cheap to buy, and if they had said that it could be any variety, or if they said it was had pink flowers, I might still have bought it. But I don't like being told that it is one thing and then finding it is something else.

I was in the bakery section of Sainsbury's recently and there were 4 round loaves in a basket. They all looked exactly the same, they all had the same packaging, but 2 were labeled 'sourdough' and 2 were labeled with a fancy French name that I didn't recognise. I think that they were just all the same.

In some of the bigger Sainsbury's they have a café. I like their filter coffee. But if I ask for filter coffee, one of 3 things happens. They either pour some coffee out of a vacuum flask. This seems to taste the best. Or they have a machine with a tap. Or they use a similar method as when they're making latte or cappuccino. I think this is technically called an Americano. I don't mind so much but I would like to know what I'm getting.

blood oranges

horse meat, burgers, asthma, eczema and salt

Listening to the radio yesterday evening proved to be very infomative about the food that we eat. I turned on to Radio 4 at 9 pm and heard the news. It said that horse meat has been found in burgers, including Tesco burgers. This is up to a third of the meat in burgers being horse meat.

I think I heard someone mention 'cross contamination'. This is not cross contamination, this is systematic fraud. Horse meat is intended for pet food and is unfit for human consumption. Horse meat in itself is not a bad meat to eat, but you need to understand that meat that is intended for human consumption is handled according to certain standards, including hygiene standards, and meat that is intended for pet food is handled with much lower standards. Horse meat is not intended for human food, and will have been handled to much lower standards. And don't think it is just horse muscle tissue that is in burgers. It's going to be lots of stuff, including the genitals. Officials have said that human health is not in danger, but how do they know that?

It's not surprising so many people have become vegetarians. They must be glad they did.

The irony is that most people would not eat a cow's heart. And yet they eat cow's heart every day in their burgers. If I was in a restaurant in France and cow's heart was on the menu, I might have some. If horse meat was on the menu, I might have some. If I thought it was quality meat and not something that died riddled with disease and has spent a week in a skip outside an abbatoir because it was originally intended for pet food.

I don't eat cow's heart or horse meat because I don't eat burgers. Yet I wouldn't turn up my nose at cow's heart or horse meat. Most people would turn their nose up at them, yet they eat them every day in burgers.

After the news was the Inside Health programme. They talked about a few things, but most interesting to me was the research linking junk food to asthma and eczema, and experts talking about salt and all the uses that salt is put to in junk food. I was aware that excessive salt intake leads to heart attacks and strokes, and I was aware that most of the salt that people get is from junk food. I wasn't aware that salt is used to bind to polyphosphates in meat and fish products to create a jell that binds them. Without lots of salt they would just fall apart.

Bon Appétit!


My Lidl Pony

 I found this on a forum:-

Horse is a perfectly edible meat, but plays no part in the legitimate meat processing routes in the UK or Ireland - so where was this horse meat from and how can anyone be sure that it was slaughtered and stored in accordance with current regulations?

he or she makes a number of important points below:-

• where were the horses from?
• were the horses healthy or did they die of old age or disease?
• were they slaughtered in accordance with regulations?
• was the resultant meat stored at the correct temperatures in accordance with regulations?
• was it cheap knock-off past its use-by date horse meat from a country where horse meat is eaten?

If anything was not done properly with the last four points it could mean that there are public health concerns due to the risks associated with contaminated meat.