Mercury-laden tilefish passed off as red snapper, “100 per cent Parmesan” cut with wood pulp, fast food lobster rolls seriously lacking in lobster. As journalist Larry Olmsted suggests in his new book, Real Food/Fake Food (Algonquin Books, 2016), food fraud is rampant. When it comes to many commonplace items, what you think you’re buying is simply not what you’re getting. “Michigan State University’s Food Fraud Initiative (FFI) estimates fraud at nearly fifty billion dollars annually. That’s twice the entire world market for coffee, the single most valuable agricultural commodity,” he writes. Fake food can be damaging to our health and the environment. And, as AP’s ‘Seafood from Slaves’ investigation last year brought to light, tainted food can take a human toll as well. It represents economic fraud; we’re being cheated by counterfeiters at the expense of artisans around the world who make real food according to venerable tradition. “But real food also tastes better,” Olmsted says. “And once you see it being made and taste it, you’re not going to want to eat anything else.” Olmsted takes an in-depth look at shockingly common food-industry deceptions in Real Food/Fake Food. But, as a food lover, his focus is decidedly on the former. He knows the joys of eating real Parmigiano-Reggiano, authentic Kobe beef, and genuine extra virgin olive oil. “As I continued going places like Parma (Italy), Japan, the Gulf of Mexico coast, Mississippi and Florida – places where a lot of real food is produced – I realized that it’s about the real food, which is the only reason why there is fake food,” he says. “There are fake Rolex watches but not Timex; high value items are counterfeited. And I just kept my faith in the real food. That’s why there’s a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano on the cover. And I use more olive oil than I used to because I learned how good olive oil is when it’s good.” Extra virgin olive oil is prized for its health benefits and distinctive flavour. It has such a long history of being adulterated, Olmsted says, that many people won’t have ever tasted the good stuff. “We could easily change that (in the U.S.) by inspecting it more and I cite Canada (in the book) where they stepped up the government analysis of the supermarket olive oil in 2006, and in less than three years, the samples that failed dropped from 47 per cent to 11 per cent. “I’ve had people in the food industry tell me, ‘Nobody is checking. Of course people are going to cheat.’ And it doesn’t take a whole lot of checking to discourage that. I think Canada is statistical proof that we can quickly improve the quality of the food supply just by paying attention to it.” Gourmet Italian foods – extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma – are especially likely to be faked. In Canada in particular, it can be difficult to tell if you’re buying Prosciutto di Parma (Parma ham), one of the world’s highest quality hams, or an imitation.

The real Prosciutto di Parma is made – where else – in Parma, Italy. According to the Consorzio responsible for assuring its quality, there are just four ingredients: Italian pork leg, sea salt, air, and time. It’s an all-natural product free from additives such as colourings and preservatives, the process rooted in craftsmanship and tradition. This delicacy has, as Olmsted puts it, “a colourful labelling history in Canada.” Maple Leaf Meats trademarked the name “Prosciutto di Parma” in 1971, forcing actual Parma ham makers to sell their product as “Original Ham” in Canada until a trade agreement was reached in 2013. “Both the actual Parma producers and Maple Leaf Meats can now sell Prosciutto di Parma, real and fake, in Canada,” Olmsted writes. Kobe beef, a traditional Japanese product renowned for its fine marbling, appears on restaurant menus across North America. If you’ve ordered it anywhere else in Canada but at chef Antonio Park’s Montreal establishments (Park, Park Market and Lavanderia), you’ve been had. Park is the only chef in Canada officially licensed to import and serve real Japanese Kobe beef, a license he’s held since 2015. “The quantity of Kobe beef being made is not increasing. There are roughly 3,000-head of cattle a year, which is like the size of one mid-size farm in Texas or Alberta,” Olmsted says. “And of that, 90 per cent stays in Japan. What little is exported – you’re talking 300 animals – the countries that get the most are Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong (China). So the amount available, it’s not like 50 restaurants can ever serve it in the U.S., yet hundreds have it on the menu.” In Real Food/Fake Food, Olmsted also delves into seafood, which is the most frequently faked food that North Americans buy. The industry, Olmsted writes, is “rife with fraud, substitution, and adulteration.” One reason that seafood is the worst category for food fakery, he says, is that it’s so diverse, consisting of thousands of species. This isn’t the case for other animal proteins such as poultry, which is available in a handful of different breeds. Another is that so much of it is imported. “The supply chain is super convoluted but also, we are fairly disconnected from the source of our food. And that’s especially true when it comes to seafood because everybody knows what a pig, or a chicken or a cow looks like,” he says. “But very few (North) Americans know what a whole red snapper looks like as opposed to a sea bream. I certainly couldn’t identify an orange roughy in a store. And if you don’t know what it looks like, it’s really easy to be cheated.” Take red snapper for instance, which is the most widely mislabelled fish according to a report by the conservation group Oceana. Actual red snapper, a premium fish, represented less than six per cent of the sample. Fish passed off as red snapper – such as tilefish (which is also used in place of halibut) – presents specific health concerns for children, pregnant women and others due to its high mercury content, Olmsted writes. When so much of our seafood is mislabelled, avoiding specific species becomes impossible.

Additionally, he says, we’ve become spoiled for choice in Canada and the U.S. Formerly special-occasion foods such as shrimp and sushi have become commonplace items available at convenience stores and all-you-can-eat buffets. “As these foods become more popular, I think they get dumbed-down. But also, the reason we have all-you-can-eat $9.99 shrimp is the advent of shrimp farming, which in turn produces a lot of lower quality, suspect shrimp,” he says. “So I think if you just roll the clock back a little in your head and say, ‘When I eat shrimp, I want it to be good. If I eat beef, I want it to be good.’ It’s unrealistic for us to expect that we should be eating these things every day, all the time.” FIVE OF THE MOST COMMONLY FAKED FOODS “The Michigan State University Food Fraud Initiative puts out a list of the ten most adulterated foods in the world and the staples – coffee, honey, and juice – always make that list,” Olmsted says. “However, they’re more prone to fraud in some countries than they are in the U.S. and Canada.” Here’s a look at five of the most fraudulent foods and drinks, and Olmsted’s tips on how to shop better. OLIVE OIL If you’re choosing olive oil solely by geography, Olmsted recommends Australia or Chile. Australian olive oil producers have the highest standards in the world. “And more important than the fact that they have a higher standard is that they rigorously enforce it, which is not really done in a lot of the rest of the world,” he says. He emphasizes that there is still fantastic olive oil being made in Europe but it’s more difficult to find in North America. “If I go to Italy, I always bring back olive oil. And some people would say Greece makes the best olive oil in the world. Greece has a lot of infrastructure, marketing, and distribution issues so it’s just not widely available here,” Olmsted says. Taste is the best indicator of quality so sample before buying, if you can. Olive oil is extremely perishable. Olmsted recommends buying only as much as you plan to use within six weeks. Harvest date is important, as olives start to deteriorate when they are picked. Olmsted says it should be less than a year earlier. He recommends ignoring the much more prevalent but “meaningless ‘best by’ or ‘bottled on’ dates.” CHEESE If you know what to look for, real cheese is easy to spot. When shopping for the King of Cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Olmsted recommends looking for the full name (rather than the misleading Parmesan), the PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) seal, and if it says “Made in Italy,” you should be good to go. “Serious Eats, a good food website, unilaterally did this taste test of domestic Parmesan cheeses in an effort to find a cheaper substitute for Parmigiano-Reggiano, and they concluded that you just couldn’t do it,” Olmsted says. “There was no other product that made sense: that was as good or significantly cheaper to warrant using.”