Great piece chef and you are right! With fish we are often also told it's line caught, fresh but it is frozen or it's from a fish farm. I became vegan years ago and rely a lot on some of the ingredients you mention here. When I eat out, I ask detailed questions and it is hard to come by good olive oil. Best is to buy from a local producer if you can get to know one and pay a little extra. Not easy... Years ago I read how Italy and Spain bought olive oil from Greece and relabelled it after adding drops of it to their crop in order to get to call it extra virgin olive oil. In Italy, some producers fake the prosciutto ham... The other day I was at michelin star chef's street food restaurant in a food market and the chef declared they cook with a mix of oils and soybean oil is one of them. Rapeseed oil is in everything almost that we buy. But as a customer at a restaurant or supermarket, we need to make demands and not buy stuff like that. If we don't they'll keep feeding us unhealthy cheap stuff.
Oddly enough, yesterday a friend of mine gifted me a vegan product to try called Shicken. It was labeled as a Teriyaki kabab skewer, I was immediately suspicious so I went to their website to find an ingredient list, and low and behold within the first four ingredients was Rapeseed Oil. Disgusting! This is a product that I most likely would never buy in the first place, but to see it marketed as a healthy vegan product was disturbing.
Importing a product from one country and labeling it as if it was from another is a problem, in the US meat can be labeled as Made in USA but researchers have found that often the live animal will be imported from another country, usually Brazil, and then slaughtered here in the US. The animal wasn't born or raised here under our regulations but somehow can be labeled as Made in USA just because it was slaughtered and processed here. I'm sorry but that doesn't mean that it is American meat. It these loopholes that make it hard to really understand what you are buying if your shopping at a major supermarket and not a local producer.
You are right and you raise so many important points but there’s no education really, just marketing. I went to a rapeseed oil demo a few years ago and it was marketed as the healthiest oil at this food festival and I was like hang on a second this isn’t right… scary. You find rapeseed oil in so many products even where it’s not needed. Same with soy which also is marketed as healthy. As for the meat that’s suspicious. It’s not only about how the animal was raised and treated etc, which is very important, but at the end of the day, animals that are travelling far also affects the quality. But does it not go back to marketing? A customer would more likely buy a made in America piece of meat, believing it is of certain standard than knowing it’s come from abroad. We find that in Europe, where for instance a product will have a statement it’s from various European countries. Honey’s like that for example. Bees don’t mix up their honey with other countries that’s another thing. Anyways, I was happy to read this and earlier I saw another article about plant based milks and how several people opposed to the rapeseed oil being added on in them. Thanks again for this, chef.
Our KM used to rail about fake foods all the time. I think we talked about particular fish we sold too, where tilapia or cod were usually the fakers standing in for way more expensive fish. I might have heard this about some kind of shellfish, too, like fake scallops that were actually whitefish or something. I don't think the scallops we got were fake, just to be clear, but that there were fake ones out there made of fish chunks.
I have definitely heard of using skate or even surimi to fake scallops, or shark meat cut into circles and soaked in lye water to give it that authentic bivalve look and taste.
I knew it was bad, but seeing it in this perspective, yuck! We all know that many foods on the market today simply do not have the flavor they used to have. And to me, seems like this is becoming more and more widespread. So disappointing.
Great piece chef and you are right! With fish we are often also told it's line caught, fresh but it is frozen or it's from a fish farm. I became vegan years ago and rely a lot on some of the ingredients you mention here. When I eat out, I ask detailed questions and it is hard to come by good olive oil. Best is to buy from a local producer if you can get to know one and pay a little extra. Not easy... Years ago I read how Italy and Spain bought olive oil from Greece and relabelled it after adding drops of it to their crop in order to get to call it extra virgin olive oil. In Italy, some producers fake the prosciutto ham... The other day I was at michelin star chef's street food restaurant in a food market and the chef declared they cook with a mix of oils and soybean oil is one of them. Rapeseed oil is in everything almost that we buy. But as a customer at a restaurant or supermarket, we need to make demands and not buy stuff like that. If we don't they'll keep feeding us unhealthy cheap stuff.
Oddly enough, yesterday a friend of mine gifted me a vegan product to try called Shicken. It was labeled as a Teriyaki kabab skewer, I was immediately suspicious so I went to their website to find an ingredient list, and low and behold within the first four ingredients was Rapeseed Oil. Disgusting! This is a product that I most likely would never buy in the first place, but to see it marketed as a healthy vegan product was disturbing.
Importing a product from one country and labeling it as if it was from another is a problem, in the US meat can be labeled as Made in USA but researchers have found that often the live animal will be imported from another country, usually Brazil, and then slaughtered here in the US. The animal wasn't born or raised here under our regulations but somehow can be labeled as Made in USA just because it was slaughtered and processed here. I'm sorry but that doesn't mean that it is American meat. It these loopholes that make it hard to really understand what you are buying if your shopping at a major supermarket and not a local producer.
You are right and you raise so many important points but there’s no education really, just marketing. I went to a rapeseed oil demo a few years ago and it was marketed as the healthiest oil at this food festival and I was like hang on a second this isn’t right… scary. You find rapeseed oil in so many products even where it’s not needed. Same with soy which also is marketed as healthy. As for the meat that’s suspicious. It’s not only about how the animal was raised and treated etc, which is very important, but at the end of the day, animals that are travelling far also affects the quality. But does it not go back to marketing? A customer would more likely buy a made in America piece of meat, believing it is of certain standard than knowing it’s come from abroad. We find that in Europe, where for instance a product will have a statement it’s from various European countries. Honey’s like that for example. Bees don’t mix up their honey with other countries that’s another thing. Anyways, I was happy to read this and earlier I saw another article about plant based milks and how several people opposed to the rapeseed oil being added on in them. Thanks again for this, chef.
Our KM used to rail about fake foods all the time. I think we talked about particular fish we sold too, where tilapia or cod were usually the fakers standing in for way more expensive fish. I might have heard this about some kind of shellfish, too, like fake scallops that were actually whitefish or something. I don't think the scallops we got were fake, just to be clear, but that there were fake ones out there made of fish chunks.
I have definitely heard of using skate or even surimi to fake scallops, or shark meat cut into circles and soaked in lye water to give it that authentic bivalve look and taste.
Shameful, but I get why folks do it.
I knew it was bad, but seeing it in this perspective, yuck! We all know that many foods on the market today simply do not have the flavor they used to have. And to me, seems like this is becoming more and more widespread. So disappointing.