Mislabeled Foods Find Their Way To Diner's Tables- The Nyt Notices ...

[Takala]

that their readers have a "Fish problem."

Yes, "every one of the 16 sushi bars investigated (in New York City) sold the researchers mislabeled fish. In all, 39% of the seafood from 81 grocery stores and restaurants was not what the establishment claimed it was."

When I clicked on this title, I thought for a second that just maybe this would be an exposé on unlabeled allergens in foods and medications. Like gluten. No such luck. Catch the last paragraph. Sound familiar, all of you who've tried getting a prescription filled recently, or attempted to purchase an OTC nostrum and had to decipher and confirm the ingredient list ?

"Still, most people do not want to arrive at a restaurant armed with an advanced degree and the phone numbers to regulatory agencies. “Unfortunately, what something like this does is turn people off to eating out,” Mr. Colicchio said. “People stop going to restaurants because they think they are getting ripped off.” "

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It wasn't catfish, it was..... tilapia !

Have you ever eaten both of them ? They're both mild, white fish, and both are frequently farm-raised for the table. Is this a crisis ? Only in your pocketbook, because you get charged in the restaurant for the more expensive version that was swapped out.

The excuse given by the FDA spokesperson for this situation, was that there are so many different types of fish in the sea, it would be impossible for the average consumer to tell them apart. Sort of implying, that if only the taste buds were more sophisticated, they would be getting enough complaints to make it a regulatory issue. For example, according to the article, Long John Silver's and Red Lobster can sell a crustacean called "langostino" and call it LOBSTER. And the FDA is okay with this !

Think about that. There are also so many drugs available now, and so many different suppliers, and yet we are told that "they" really cannot be sure where the source of the filler ingredients comes from, if you have a medical need to avoid the wheat family of grains. There are no rules currently on mandatory labeling of gluten in medications.

It's nice that the NYTimes finally bothered to notice the mislabeled sushi problem. Maybe soon they can step it up a notch, to notice the mislabeled gluten problem. That mislabeled gluten problem which could trigger an auto immune disease attack, costing the celiac or gluten-free consumer many lost days of productivity due to illness, because they couldn't figure out if a prescription was safe for them, or not. This is also a consumer trust issue, and a wastefulness issue of time and effort having to be expended before purchase. And this brings up another point. If the regulatory bureaucracy is saying that it is too complicated to keep track of the fillers and binders with any degree of certainty, how can we be sure that the meds they're selling really contain the active ingredients in the correct dosage ?