How do you know the product you’re eating contains what the label says it does? asks Wendy Knowler.
The reality is you can’t know for sure, not unless you have the food tested in an accredited laboratory, and few of us have the money, time or inclination to do that.
So we trust. And every now and then we have reason to wonder how often that trust is abused, most spectacularly a few years ago when a disturbing percentage of processed meat products bought in butcheries across the country were found by Stellenbosch University food scientists to be mislabelled, one of them containing donkey meat.
If you have concerns about a product’s label claims, you can ask the nonprofit group Topic (Testing of Products Initiated by Consumers) to have it tested.
The group reported that Futurelife Crunch Smart Food cereal’s “non-GMO” label claim had been confirmed by independent laboratory tests.
About a year ago, Topic investigated the “sugar-free” and “gluten-free” claims of Freedom Bakery in Bergvliet, Cape Town. By the time their lab tests were done, bakery owner Natasha Mandiringa had removed the claims from her product labels after customer queries, but was still verbally claiming her products were free from sugar and gluten to those who asked, and continues to do so.
Topic sent a chickpea and banana loaf for gluten testing and a lemon meringue tart for sugar testing at separate laboratories.
The tart was found to comprise 33.7% sucrose; a product may only be labelled sugar-free if it contains no more than 0.5% sugar…..
Read more here: Beware of food fraud – Times LIVE
TOPIC is a consumer-led organisation that tests the authenticity of product labels.
Mislabelling and food fraud in South Africa are rife. It is estimated that more than a third of products on our shelves are falsely labelled. For most small retailers, testing products is not an option because they don’t have the resources.
You can NOMINATE a product for testing by going to www.topicsa.org.za and clicking on the #Nominate link or by sending a mail to info[at]topicsa.org.za.
The tragically funniest quote from the video occurs after the narrator says that scientists were recently able to take the genes from bug killing bacteria and cross them with the genes of corn to make the corn pest resistant and that some people think that it is unnatural. He says; “But, by genetically combining two organisms that’s 200% natural!”