Imported Fish Puts Americans at Risk

Fish is supposed to be one of the healthiest foods you can eat. It is generally lean, nutrient rich, and contains valuable omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to have numerous health benefits.  Unfortunately our seafood often contains many things that are less desirable. We are importing an increasingly large amount of our fish and other seafood and, unbeknownst to many Americans, much of this seafood is contaminated with antibiotics and toxic chemicals.  The harm of these substances far outweighs the potential benefits of eating fish. Our tax dollars are supposed to give us a government that ensures our safety, but our current system is failing us.

Americans currently import more than 90 percent of the seafood they consume, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects less than 2 percent of the fish, shrimp, and other seafood products that enter our country from overseas. There is no way for American consumers to detect when contaminated seafood finds its way to our dinner table at home or onto our plate at a restaurant. This means that we must rely on the fact that the supply chain for the food we eat is safe, and the evidence shows that it is far from it.

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“Big business loves big government” soda shop owner doesn’t carry coke or pepsi. Also explains how dumb it is to use corn syrup instead of sugar.

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it)

Red meat chemical ‘damages heart’, say US scientists

A chemical found in red meat helps explain why eating too much steak, mince and bacon is bad for the heart say US scientists.

A study in the journal Nature Medicine showed that carnitine in red meat was broken down by bacteria in the gut.

This kicked off a chain of events which resulted in higher levels of cholesterol and an increased risk of heart disease.

Dieticians warned there may be a risk to people taking carnitine supplements.

There has been a wealth of studies suggesting that regularly eating red meat may be damaging to health.

In the UK, the government recommends eating no more than 70g of red or processed meat a day – the equivalent of two slices of bacon.

Saturated fat and the way processed meat is preserved are thought to contribute to heart problems. However, this was not thought to be the whole story.

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Prosecutors crack ‘systematic egg fraud’

It would seem that millions of eggs had been sold under false pretences over the last few years, exploiting the willingness of some customers to pay extra for produce from more humanely kept birds.

Prosecutors in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, told Der Spiegel magazine they were investigating around 150 firms in that state and around 50 elsewhere. Frauke Wilken, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office told the magazine that initial investigations had begun in the autumn of 2011, and had revealed ever more suspect operations.

“The suspicion is that this is a case of systematic fraud. It is no minor matter – it would be deception of consumers,” said Christian Mayer, the new Lower Saxony agriculture minister.

He said if the suspicions were proven, he would move to withdraw operation licenses from the relevant farms.

Those under suspicion were largely conventional farms, but some organic farms were also affected.

Chickens and their eggs can only be described as free-range if each animal has access to at least four square metres of space, while the description organic, or “bio” in German, requires further specific conditions.

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Survey Finds That Fish Are Often Not What Label Says

SEATTLE — Many Europeans are fretting these days over horse meat, and whether it might have adulterated their shepherd’s pie. Over here, it’s all about the red snapper.

That tempting seafood delight glistening on the ice at the market, or sizzling at the restaurant table in its aromatic jacket of garlic and ginger? It may not be at all what you think, or indeed even close, according to a big new study of fish bought and genetically tested in 12 parts of the country — in restaurants, markets and sushi bars — by a nonprofit ocean protection group, Oceana.

In the 120 samples labeled red snapper and bought for testing nationwide, for example, 28 different species of fish were found, including 17 that were not even in the snapper family, according to the study, which was released Thursday.

The study also contained surprises about where consumers were most likely to be misled — sushi bars topped the list in every city studied — while grocery stores were most likely to be selling fish honestly. Restaurants ranked in the middle.

Part of the problem, said the study’s chief author, Kimberly Warner, is that there are quite simply a lot of fish in the sea, and many of them look alike. Over all, the study found that about one-third of the 1,215 fish samples bought, from 2010 to 2012, were mislabeled.

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Food Manufacturers are Fraudulently Diluting High-Quality Food with Inferior Quality Junk

In a predictable trend, food manufacturers are fraudulently diluting high-quality food with inferior quality items.

As ABC News reports:

A new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

“Food products are not always what they purport to be,” Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

In addition, 70% of all ground beef  was found to contain “pink slime”.

Butchers use “meat glue” to create “bigger” cuts of beef, chicken, lamb and fish, even though it leads to much higher levels of food poisoning:

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Hunt’s Manages To Sneak High-Fructose Corn Syrup Back Into Its Ketchup After 2 Years Without

More than two years ago, trumpets sounded, the clouds parted and ConAgra Food announced its Hunt’s Ketchup would now (drumroll, please) be free of high-fructose corn syrup. Then just today, the Consumerist gang was tossing around news bits when we realized that somehow, Hunt’s slipped that HFCS back into ketchup, with much less to do and trumpeting — months ago.

We pride ourselves on being ever-vigilant, and are bolstered by tons of tips from you, our dear readers. So we were pretty shocked to discover that there hasn’t been much coverage of this return to HFCS, which happened back in May or June of 2012 (as noted by the  World-Herald in Omaha).

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Gatorade pulls ingredient linked to flame retardant

Brominated vegetable oil, a synthetic chemical that has been patented in Europe as a flame retardant, will no longer double as an ingredient in Gatorade sports drinks.

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade owner PepsiCo Inc., said the company has been considering the move for more than a year, working on a way to take out the ingredient without affecting the flavor of the drink.

A recent petition on Change.org to drop the chemical – which has more than 200,000 supporters – did not inspire the decision, Carter said, though she acknowledged that consumer feedback was the main impetus.

In the petition, posted by Sarah Kavanagh of Hattiesburg, Miss., “BVO” is described as banned in Japan and the European Union.

The effort quotes a Scientific American article suggesting that “BVO could be building up in human tissues” and that studies on mice have shown “reproductive and behavioral problems” linked to large doses of the chemical.

The reformulated Gatorade flavors “will start rolling out in the next few months,” Carter said.

There’s no hard date for the launch because “we’re not recalling Gatorade,” she said. “We don’t think our products are unsafe. We don’t think there are health or safety risks.”

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U.S. allows chemicals in food that are illegal elsewhere

When Gatorade fan Sarah Kavanagh learned that her favorite drink contains an emulsifier banned in other countries over health concerns, she was taken aback.

“I was shocked that they’d put their consumers at risk like that and that the FDA would allow something like that to be put in products,” said the Mississippi 15-year-old, who launched a petition in November asking Gatorade to remove the ingredient, called brominated vegetable oil, or BVO.

The petition, which has attracted more than 200,000 supporters on change.org, notes that the ingredient shares an element — bromine — with some flame retardants used in furniture and plastics. Some studies on BVO indicate it can build up in fatty tissues and cause reproductive and behavioral problems in rodents.

It’s illegal to use the chemical as a food additive in the European Union India, Nepal, Canada, Brazil and Japan. Other ingredients that are allowed in American food but not in other countries include certain artificial colors and additives to flour.

Why the difference? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration would not provide a representative for an interview, but in past statements to the media and on its website the agency has presented a variety of reasons for allowing controversial chemicals in food, ranging from a lack of resources for research to assurances that the substances are safe in small doses.

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Study finds unsafe mercury levels in 84 percent of all fish

(CBS News) A new study from the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine found that 84 percent of fish have unsafe levels of mercury. That poses a health risk for humans, exceeding the guidelines for eating certain kinds of fish more than once a month.

Reducing mercury pollution is on the agenda of the United Nations conference this week in Geneva, where delegations are expected to put the finishing touches on a treaty backed by the United States.

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