Horsing around with food labels



And the specials today are...
(credit: mpmedia)

If you listen to the news in the UK, you can't have helped hearing about the "horse burger" scandal. The story is that horse meat was found in frozen beef burgers on sale at a major UK supermarket. There has been a major reaction from the press, but I think the details bear a closer look.

In many parts of Europe, particularly in Italy and the baltics, horse meat is a common food and many locals wouldn't think twice about eating it. As an example, the photo next to this article is of the "daily specials" menu from a restaurant in Verona, Italy. Not only is there a horse meat dish, but do you see that dish with donkey sauce? Yep, that's exactly what you think it is. And this restaurant menu is fairly common.

I didn't go inside the restaurant, by the way.

There are all kinds of cultural traditions and history that cause us to eat some kinds of meat but not others. This changes as you go around the world. If you took those supermarket "beef" burgers to (say) Northern Italy or Slovenia, and labelled them correctly as horse burgers, they'd be snapped up by shoppers.

There have been previous cases of horse meat turning up unannounced in UK food, as in this case from 2003 (opens in new window) where it was found in cooked meats.

The more worrying story today, similar to 2003, is that horse meat found its way into a product labelled as something else, and no-one really knows how or why yet. Many food producers are proud that they can trace the ingredients for their products right back to where they came from. Computerisation and automated machinery make this process automatic. But it seems that someone can still put the wrong label on a box, or tamper with the computer system, and others further along the supply chain won't always check. Of course, we don't know that's what happened with the frozen burgers, but that's where I'd put my money.

A recent TV news report showed that the horse meat came from Romania, and was clearly identifiable as horse meat when it left. It was then traded through at least 3 other companies, each in a different country, and somewhere along the way it was put through a mincer and mixed with beef mince. From that point, even a trained eye might have difficulty spotting something amiss. Horse meat is a fraction of the price of beef, so replacing one with the other could be very profitable.

There are checks that can be done with food. There should be a paper trail from a specific animal all the way to the batch of burgers or lasagnes it ended up in. And with horse meat, we can at least do DNA tests to detect its' presence - although if the paper trail has been messed up, you may still not be able to know how a horse ended up in a beef burger, only that it has.

But none of this matters to the average person until something scandalous happens. We might mutter about not really knowing what's in cheap food, but we buy it anyway. We're conditioned to look at the packaging that food comes in, and the price we have to pay at the till. We're not very good at looking at what's in our food or where it comes from. Even when we do, we probably don't know all the labelling tricks - like the fact that a ready meal labelled "made in UK" can contain meat from Romania. We trust brand names and we trust supermarkets, even though they're often faceless corporations. We don't check what they're doing until something goes wrong. Then we realise that we've actually lost any reliable way of checking for ourselves, and have to rely on government authorities to hold an investigation.

Some supermarkets and manufacturers are better than others. As a slightly different example, a bag of salted peanuts I recently bought was labelled "Made in UK - peanuts from Nicaragua". Another supermarket's peanuts just said "Packed in UK". Both meet legal requirements, and are probably exactly the same peanuts from the same supplier.

A relative of mine has escaped all the meat labelling problems. She buys meat from a local farm shop, where the farmer knows where the meat came from - because either his family or a nearby farmer reared the animals themselves. And the price is roughly the same as the supermarkets because she buys in bulk direct from the farmer (she freezes what she can't use straight away).

What we do know - and the thing to take comfort in - is that horse meat is safe to eat, as evidenced by the tens of thousands (or more probably millions) of people who eat it every day in other countries. But if one good thing comes out of this "crisis" (as some branches of the media call it), I hope that food labelling becomes more honest and transparent.

How to have a happy eco-friendly Christmas

As the festive season approaches, many people are buying presents, planning food, and arranging parties. But is there a way to enjoy the celebrations while minimising the impact on the environment?

I think there is. Here are some suggestions.

Don't overbuy presents
Let's face it, we've all done it. And we've had someone do it to us, maybe without realising. It results in that familiar guilty feeling that someone has splashed out on you, while you only got them something relatively small. And whether you're young or old, some of those extra presents always seem to end up unwanted or unused - which is a real waste! So:

  - Have a present list and pass it to family and friends
  - Agree a spending limit with others. People are often more receptive to this than you would think. And it means people can concentrate on the real value of the present and not just how much it cost or how many items they've bought.
  - When you go out shopping, know what you're buying and for who. Ask for present ideas if you're unsure.
  - Try giving gifts that are a bit more personal and don't involve buying new stuff. For example, offering an evening babysitting, or offering to cook a meal. You can write the details on paper and present them in an envelope if you want to give something on Christmas day.

Party Planning
Disposable plates and cutlery make for easy clean-up, but they're not so good for the environment. There are more environmentally friendly alternatives to paper and plastic that are made from plant fibres with minimal processing. But the best way is to use tableware that you can wash in a dishwasher and re-use.

Full of food?
It's difficult to estimate how much food and drink your guests will want, and how much they will bring along themselves. If you've got leftovers at the end of the evening, suggest that everyone takes something home with them (and perhaps something different from what they brought).

Or why not prolong the festivities? Before throwing away the remains of the food, find out if you can freeze or refrigerate it and use it up over a few days or more. Search the Internet and you will find information on preserving all sorts of food easily and safely. And I mean all sorts - for example, did you know that you can freeze some types of cheese?

So, in conclusion...
Be good to others, to yourself, and to the environment. But most of all, have a great time. See you in 2013!

Legs or breasts?

As someone who doesn't eat much meat (although I'm not a vegetarian), I'm intrigued by some of the issues posed by the farming and meat industries. Things like: if most chicken products are made with chicken breast, what happens to the rest of the meat?

The answer came to me on a recent television programme about cheap food and animal welfare. Some of the chicken thighs and legs make it onto our dinner tables, or in the summer months, onto our barbecues. Some of the other meat from the chicken goes into chicken mince and chicken burgers. But most of it doesn't.

Meanwhile, over in the Far East, cheaper cuts of meat are standard fare in some countries. For example, when I was in Japan a few years ago, I noticed that restaurants had chicken gizzards, cock's combs and chicken skin on the menu. One restaurant had chicken escalopes, but they were made from chicken skin with a thin layer of meat attached. There were no chicken breast products. If you consider that Japan is one of the more wealthy Far Eastern countries, you can see that their choice of chicken meat is a matter of tradition rather than price.

I should tell you that it's not the same in every country; for example, I've had fantastic street food in Malaysia that was made with chicken breast. Things are certainly different between countries.

But I was surprised to learn that we eat so many chicken breasts in Europe that we can't supply them from our own farms. Guess what happens?

Yes, we take the breast from our chicken, and sometimes the thighs and legs. Then we send the rest of the meat and skin off to the Far East. In exchange, they send us the breast meat from their chickens.

Bits of chicken are travelling back and forth all over the world, right now. There is a global trade in chicken parts.

But cheap chicken breast on the dinner table, or in our sandwiches, comes at a cost. The big problem is that animal welfare standards in some Far East countries are far worse than the minimum legal standard in Europe. Apparently, Thailand have been criticised for this, and they are a major exporter of chicken products to the UK. But you won't find this fact mentioned prominently on the packaging.

It can help to check where your chicken comes from; as I mentioned, meat that comes from somewhere in Europe has come from farms that maintain minimum standards of animal welfare. Although some intensive farms are still pretty poor, they could be a lot worse.

The other thing to check is how the chicken was reared. If you buy a Freedom Food chicken, for example, then the chicken is raised to the RSPCA's minimum standards. It may still be intensively farmed (and less than ideal in my opinion), but it gives a balance between animal welfare and the price tag. But if you can afford it (which isn't always possible, I know) then free range or organic chicken is better.

The only problem is that the "higher welfare" products aren't often available as convenience foods. You'll struggle to find free-range chicken burgers in the supermarket, or even organic chicken breast in most local butchers shops. You might have to buy and cook a whole chicken, but this can end up cheaper in the long run if you split up the cuts of meat and freeze them for later use. Not sure how to do that? Google.

I was brought up next door to a mixed dairy and arable farm that diversified into other livestock. I know that things have changed in the farming industry over the years. Not all of the changes have been for the better, in my opinion, and some farmers have been forced to do what they have to, to feed their own families. But the ultimate power to change this is with the consumer.

How bad are bananas?

I have to admit, I don't actually like bananas. But I've just bought a book called "How bad are bananas? (the carbon footprint of everything)". And it contains far more than just musings on bendy-shaped yellow fruit.

Bananas galore!
Image: Martin Wiesheu

The author, Mike Berners-Lee, meausres carbon footprints for a living. While it's not an exact science, he does at least explain how he arrived at his figures, and is very careful with some of his results that contradict popular wisdom.

I even found the answers to the hand drier versus paper towel debate and the fruit juice dilemma :

• Using two paper towels is equivalent to using an electric hand drier. Surprisingly, there is no difference in the energy used, even though the paper towels are usually transported by truck. So if you can get away with using a single paper towel, that's the more environmentally friendly option. However, even this is trumped by a cyclonic hand drier, like the Dyson Airblade, which wins hands down.

• Fresh juice seems to beat concentrated juice. Oranges are usually transported by boat, which is fairly efficient. However, creating fruit juice concentrate uses lots of energy. So despite the fact that concentrates are made to reduce the volume and weight of the juice, so it can be transported more easily, it doesn't translate into less energy being used overall. It just means that a single boat can carry more.

I found some other surprising facts about transportation that I hadn't considered. For example, a bottle of wine imported from New Zealand to the UK could have a lower carbon footprint than one from Italy. Products from within Europe tend to be transported by road, whereas the New Zealand wine will arrive on a boat. So even though Italy is closer to the UK, it's the mode of transport that makes the biggest difference. The concept of "food miles" is beginning to look a bit suspect to me now.

By the way, the same logic applies to bananas too. They may come from far away, but they usually arrive by boat.

Which begs the question, why don't we ship more freight by sea and waterway?

Photo by Martin Wiesheu, CC-BY-SA licence, obtained via http://www.flickr.com/photos/49325640@N00/3768818

In Transition

I've just finished watching a documentary film called In Transition. It's about communities that are trying to become less dependent on oil, and products made from it.

I thought it was worth mentioning, because unlike many films of this genre, it manages to do this without any hysteria or evangelism. Sure, some of the people interviewed are die-hard environmentalists. But most of the people are just ordinary folks trying to make a small change, and in the process, making new friends in their local neighbourhood. Like the chef who proudly announces that all the ingredients for his dishes come from within a 50 mile radius of his kitchen, and he personally knows the farmer who supplied the meat.

There were a few technical terms in the film that weren't explained fully (I'm guessing there probably wasn't enough time). So if phrases like "Peak Oil" don't mean much to you, then you might not get the most out of the film. It's still worth watching though. There's a different film that explains these terms in a wonderfully simple way, which I'll share in a future post.

Here are some great quotes from the film that I couldn't help noting down:

 - In the US, a carrot travels an average of 1838 miles in order to reach the dinner table.

 - In the UK, 50 percent of all vegetables and 95 percent of fruit come from overseas. There are crops like garlic that we could grow in the UK, but instead we import them from China and other countries.

 - In England, 142,000 acres of orchards have been cut down in the last 100 years (I've noticed myself that even in the British apple season, we import apples from overseas).

All of this means a lot of transportation, which invariably uses oil. A consultant presenting the issues to a local council meeting summed up the problem: "We're moving from a time when our consumption of fossil fuels - be it oil or gas - is the key factor in our economic success, our sense of wellbeing, our personal prowess; to a time when our dependency on fossil fuels is our degree of vulnerability".

Despite this, I thought the film ended without any definite conclusions. However, there was an invitation for viewers to send in their own stories on video for use in a sequel.

You can now watch the film online for free, in the window below, or via Vimeo.Grab a mug of tea first - it runs for about 50 minutes.


In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.

Marketing Uncovered: Food Labels

Image credit: Ralf Roletschek

In the latest instalment of Marketing Uncovered articles, I decided to explore some of the ethics around food labelling and advertising claims.

Here, as always, is a run down of my pet hate marketing phrases, together with what I think they really mean.

No added sugar
This just means that the product hasn't been sweetened with sugar. But if it's a sweet product, and it's a processed food (eg. a soft drink), then it has to get its sweetness from somewhere. Sometimes manufacturers use fruit juice concentrate, which is really a sneaky way to use fruit sugar instead of normal sugar. However, for the most part, I find that "no added sugar" usually means "contains artificial sweeteners". Also, because sugar is a natural preservative, removing it can mean that products like soft drinks need stronger artificial preservatives to compensate. So "no added sugar" doesn't necessarily mean "better for you".

Real ingredients
This doesn't necessarily mean you're eating a hand-made product, or one that only uses natural ingredients. Going from the products I've seen using this claim, it currently seems to mean that natural or close to natural ingredients are used. This might include "nature identical" ingredients, for example, a strawberry flavour that is made in a factory, but is almost identical to the natural substance in real strawberries. But as I haven't been able to find an official definition of "real ingredients", it's really anyone's guess as to how tomorrow's products will use this phrase.

85% Fat Free
Regular readers will have already worked this one out. It means that the product contains 15% fat. In other words, when you look at the nutrition information on the back of the pack, you will see that there is 15g of fat per 100g - fairly high. Thankfully, recent industry changes in the UK mean that there are now controls over the use of phrases like "fat free". But it still serves as a useful illustration.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm the one in the supermarket looking at ingredient labels. At least they have tight regulation, and they have to disclose most (but not all) of the contents. I find it a great way to dispel the marketing spin, but only if I have one of those rare ingredients: time!

Image: Bilder im Supermarkt by Ralf Roletschek, CC-BY-SA licence, obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

The Endless Summer

Fresh vegetables at a street market
Image: Biswarup Ganguly

Everyone knows about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables. But did you know that choosing the wrong ones could have an impact on your wallet, your wellbeing, and the environment?

The phrase "Endless Summer" was coined some years ago, to explain how it's always summer in some part of the world. This makes it possible to have fruit and vegetables on sale all year round, no matter whether they're in season or not. Thanks to an Endless Summer, they are always in season somewhere, and can be transported to store shelves anywhere in the world.

As you'd imagine, the environmental impact can be huge, especially if goods have to be kept refrigerated on the journey. And by the time they reach the store shelves, they're already a few days old and have lost some of their nutrients.

Of course, someone has to pay for the transport costs too. That would be you. Well volunteered!

The way around this? Look for produce that's grown in your home country, or at least close to it. Ideally, try to buy from local producers or farmers markets. If there's a poor harvest (which still happens even in developed countries) the local outlets will still have small amounts of local produce. The supermarkets, however, have to buy in bulk and will often buy abroad instead. The supermarket may be cheaper in this case, but don't forget that there is still a cost to the environment.

Even better than all this is to grow your own vegetables. It's easy (no, really it is), and you can start with a plant pot or grow bag on your patio or balcony.

We might not be able to make the summer last all year, but we can make food choices that have a feel-good factor.

Image: Vegetables by Biswarup Ganguly, CC-BY licence, obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

Can you dig it?

I hated gardening when I was a youngster. My parents lived in a house with a large garden, and grew their own fruit and vegetables. I was given my own corner for planting, but I hated weeding and hated waiting for things to grow.

Not much has changed. The wife and I have our own house and garden, but still the old bugbear about weeds and waiting. But we're more aware of the benefits of growing your own fruit and vegetables, and they're certainly worth the effort.

We don't have a greenhouse. We don't have any special expertise, other than the advice our parents give us, and what it says on the seed packets. We don't have a big garden area, and we have probably some of the worst soil to work with (heavy clay).

But if we can grow tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes and purple broccoli, then anyone can! Some things we've learned are:

 - not much grows in heavy clay soil, and it's very difficult to improve it. You'll know if you've got some if it sticks together in large clumps when you dig it, and it tends to crack in hot, dry weather. Growing things is a hit and miss affair, but...

 - old buckets, plastic bins and washing-up bowls are great for planting veggies. We clean them thoroughly, drill some holes in the bottom for drainage, then fill with two-thirds topsoil, one-third organic compost, and some "fish blood and bone" mix. All are available from a garden centre. You can even decorate the outside if you're feeling arty!

 - slugs can be kept at bay by burying old glass jars in the ground, so they are flush with the soil. Then fill them with beer. Slugs love the ale, but they get drunk, fall into the jar, and drown!

Hopefully I'll be able to show some of our gardening results later in the year. But for the moment, here's a photo of some of our plants that are well on their way to the dinner table.

Seedlings. From left to right: parsnip, bell pepper, potato, broccoli, carrot
(Photo: mpmedia)