What's in your food?

The recent taint in pet food caused by the chemical melamine raises some interesting questions about the American food supply. With more raw materials and ingredients coming from overseas, how do we know what's safe?

The pet food scare was caused by an apparently common Chinese practice of putting melanine in animal feed to mimic an increase in protein. The melanine has no nutritional value itself, but it does increase the nitrogen level in feed which is used as a proxy for protein when the food is tested for quality. In other words, it's cheating. In no sense of the word could melanine be considered food:

Wikipedia: Melamine is...combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a very durable thermosetting plastic, and of melamine foam, a polymeric cleaning product. The end products include countertops, fabrics, glues and flame retardants.

Problems with contaminated feed aren't the only danger. Adulterated Chinese chemicals being used in pharmaceuticals caused several dozen deaths in Panama when the materials were used in cough syrup. The Chinese manufacturers, interested in boosting the bottom line, first replaced pharmaceutical quality glycerin - a sugar alcohol - with industrial grade material - used in smokeless gunpowder and as a lubricant - and then substituted another chemical entirely. The substitute, diethylene glycol, is not intended for human consumption:

The syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze.

The behavior of the Chinese manufacturers mimics that of American food processors a hundred years ago, before Upton Sinclair's The Jungle generated momentum for the Pure Food and Drug Act and the beginning of government safeguards over the food supply. The challenge now is that these regulations govern American made products and do not sufficiently shield Americans from adulterated substances produced overseas:

The tainted ingredients were not caught at the borders because with the growing volume of food and food ingredient imports, only 1 to 2 percent of these imports are inspected, let alone tested for foreign matter like melamine. (emphasis mine)

Not only does the Food and Drug Administration inspect far fewer imports (1%) than the USDA does meat imports (16%), the FDA lacks another crucial safeguard:

The FDA also doesn't require that exporting countries have safety systems equivalent to those in the USA. The USDA does that for countries that export meat and poultry, and the Government Accountability Office — the investigative arm of Congress — has said for at least a decade that the FDA should, too.

In addition, the FDA has actually reduced its inspection of foreign foods in recent years as it has cut back on inspection staff. This despite evidence that imports probably need inspection more than domestic food:

A 2003 FDA study found pesticide violations in 6.1% of imported foods sampled vs. 2.4% of domestic foods. It has not been updated. Several years earlier, the FDA found salmonella and shigella, which can cause dysentery, in 4% of imported fruits and vegetables vs. 1.1% of domestic products.

If you think the FDA should consider doing a bit more to ensure food safety, write your representative or your senator. You can also learn more about food safety from the folks at Kansas State University, who tell you: "don't eat poop."

Chocolate: What's in a name?

From the "what does the FDA do again?" category comes news of the FDA considering changing the definition of chocolate. Unbeknownst to me - but perhaps knownst to you - chocolate is defined by a combination of very specific ingredients. Many pseudo chocolates ("chocolate" bunnies at Easter, apparently) don't make the grade.

The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow these not-quite-chocolates to be labeled as "chocolate," instead of "chocolatey" or "chocolate-flavored." On the other side, some purists are telling the FDA to get its "Hands off my chocolate!" Here's a few excerpts from the opponent's LA Times opinion piece, starting with the definition of real chocolate:

It's all basically made the same way: cacao pods are fermented and then roasted and ground into a fine paste that can be separated into two components: cacao solids (commonly called cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. Each chocolatier uses different proportions but generally blends sugar, cocoa solids and cocoa butter plus the optional ingredients — emulsifiers, flavors (typically vanilla) and milk solids (to make milk chocolate) — and molds that into a chocolate bar.

So what will change?

The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter [most likely because vegetable oil costs one-third the cocoa butter price]...

...It may be cocoa powder that gives chocolate its taste, but it is the cocoa butter that gives it that inimitable texture. It is one of the rare, naturally occurring vegetable fats that is solid at room temperature and melts as it hits body temperature — that is to say, it melts in your mouth. Cocoa butter also protects the antioxidant properties of the cocoa solids and gives well-made chocolate its excellent shelf life. (emphasis mine)

The Chocolate Defender sums up the reason for preserving the pure definition:

I'd say we've already demonstrated our preference for true chocolate. That's why real chocolate outsells fake chocolate. Nine of the 10 bestselling U.S. chocolate candies are made with the real stuff. M&Ms, Hershey Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups — all real chocolate. Butterfinger is the outlier. (emphasis mine)

Here's my question. Did people knowingly select these items because they are made with real chocolate, or did they simply prefer the taste/texture experience? In other words, who shops for chocolate by looking for real "chocolate"?

You can get full coverage of the unwrapping* chocolate saga via the Candy Blog.

*Sorry, I love puns.

When the health of a hamburger trumps your own

The Washington Post has the story on cefquinome, a powerful, recently-developed antibiotic that "belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defenses against several serious human infections." With increasing numbers of bacteria developing antibiotic resistance, it might make sense to judiciously use this drug to treat the most serious human cases of E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and salmonella.

Or, if you're the government agency responsible for drug administration (FDA), you're on the verge of approving it for cattle. This decision notwithstanding that a) there are a number of existing, effective treatments for pneumonia in cattle and b) cefquinome represents the only drug in the medical arsenal against several highly resistant infections and c) that antibiotic use in livestock and poultry - typically done prophylactically - has consistently been linked with the transference of resistant bacteria to humans.

It will bring peace of mind the next time I have a hamburger, as the antibiotic-resistant E. coli twists my bowels, that the cow that provided it was spared pneumonia on its way to the slaughterhouse.