The global food supply chain generally delivers products that are safe to drink and eat, but every so often there are some stories about unscrupulous distributors who try to sell knockoff items that aren’t exactly what they say they are. The infamous 2008 scandal in China is probably the scariest example where melamine was added to infant formula to make it look like the milk had a higher protein content. Less dangerous tricks involve deceptive food labeling practices, and it can be extremely difficult to detect food fraud when it’s not so egregious. Here are just a few links on identifying authentic foods.

• Olive oil from Italy might not be as virgin as you might think. One estimate says 69% of olive oil sold in the US may be doctored — diluted with cheaper oils or otherwise adulterated. [url]
• Natural organic flavorings (eg. vanilla, cinnamon oil, anise oil) can be more expensive than chemically synthesized additives, but it’s usually not that hard to tell the difference. Natural oils contain ambient levels of carbon-14 atoms, whereas artificial flavorings made from petroleum distillates contain no trace amounts of this radioactive isotope of carbon. [url]
• If you drink bottled water that says the water is straight from a natural spring, how does anyone really know if they didn’t just filter some tap water and bottle it? The isotopic composition of water can indicate the authenticity, but how often do you test your hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios…. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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