Fooled Foodie
Someone Has Baited, Someone Has Switched, Let’s Have
A Look At The…
Moksh Gauri & Deetya Gambhir, AIS Pushp Vihar, XII D
It is late in the evening and starvation trickles your belly, so you addictively scroll online for food when you are beguiled by a captivating photo of a mouth-watering food item. You wish for it to be transported to you…but wait! That’s not even edible. Huh? Congratulations! Out of a pool of billions, you have become the newest prey of the food industry that shows you one thing and gives the taste of something else.
Chemical cocktails
Adulteration is the act of intentionally substituting, or adding substances to alter its proposed value, and its major motive of earning quick profits has been dilapidating the served food industry for decades. Case in point – glucose syrup being sold in the name of honey, palm oil substituting coconut oil etc. Hazardous chemicals are used for ripening fruits to keep them looking fresh, low-cost textile dyes used to draw customers’ attention, fishes’ body preserved with formalin to cover up internal decomposition, and many others. Not just low-level harm, this adulteration business has costed us lives as well. A prominent one is the China Gutter Oil Scandal in 2013, where a cooking oil made from restaurant sewer refuse and rotten animal fat was sold to restaurants, causing more than 294,000 deaths and 50,000 hospitalisations. In India, too, the FSSAI analysed nearly 3.7 lakh food samples, with 90,473 of them being found to be ‘non-conforming’. The Spanish olive oil scandal, where industrial rapeseed oil was contaminated with aniline to form ‘olive oil’, and killed 10,000 people. The labels might lie, but the aftermath does not.
Mismatch makers
The flawless pizza slice, baked to perfection as the cheese slides off its thick fluffy crust with yummy toppings…mmmm! Giving into the temptation, you order it, but when delivered, all you find is a wrecked piece of flour! Once a simple method to promote food, ads have now turned to deception to rope in customers – the cheese is actually glue, cold drinks are mixed with glycerin to give them fizz, melted chocolate is anything but a chemical found in laundry detergent, so on and so forth. It is all a game of stylists, photographers, good lights, and food (whether it is edible or not is not of importance!). In 2023 alone, the FSSAI marked more than 490 cases of misleading ads; from Bournvita being called out for ‘inadequate’ claims to Nature Fresh’s ‘professional best fry premium frying oil’ being called ‘inadequately substantiated’, from Budweiser’s ad being ‘misleading by implication’ to Horlicks making fake claims. Jo dikhta hai vo bikta hai, but is it true that what we see is really what we consume?
Plastic porridge
Though food has fooled us a lot, there have been times when it wasn’t so acidic to our tummy. ‘Food is an art’ some say, and Japan agrees, as they mould plastic to mimic the food customers, which further prompts them to order. It definitely sounds appetising as Sampuru (Japanese word for ‘sample’) aka the fake food industry in Japan – 45 something years old – now stands to be worth 90 million USD. Starting out as a prank by a husband who fooled his wife with a wax omelette, it has now evolved into a promotional tool by imitating the actual dish with liquid PVC plastic, baking, airbrushing, and painting. With Asian items like tempura, yakitori, or ramen to Western populars like hamburgers, spaghetti, or pizza, this imitation costs almost ten times the real food they represent. But with their benefits of dissolving language barriers, providing visual attractions, and sneaking a peek into the culture of the place, Sampuru is an art that is not put in museums but rather in restaurant windows to tempt customers. Plastic has never ever tasted so fantastic, we reckon.
So, the next time you are looking at food, look again, and then again, before you decide to dig in.