Editor's letter: Of Swedish meatballs and fake fish

last updated 8 January 2015

The news is thick with food scandal. The world’s most famous Swedish meatballs, those sold to bleary-eyed shoppers at Ikea, were found to contain horsemeat at outlets in 14 European countries (see News: The week at a glance). Organic eggs in Germany turn out to have been laid by battery hens fattened on distinctly non-organic feed (see Best columns: Europe). At least it’s happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Or is it? A new study using DNA analysis has found that “seafood fraud” is rampant on our shores (see Noted). One frequent stand-in for what sushi restaurants call “tuna” is actually a cheaper, oily fish called escolar, which can give you explosive diarrhea. And the odds that you’ll get real red snapper in a restaurant or at the supermarket are about one in 16, or roughly the same as Gonzaga University’s chances of winning this month’s NCAA men’s basketball championship.

It’s all enough to make the health-conscious consumer consider going vegan—until you actually take a closer look at what’s going on in the friendly world of plants. As disgusted as we may be about fake fish, horsemeat, or the now-banished “pink slime” that until recently juiced up our hamburgers, there’s no evidence anybody died from the aesthetic horror of eating something icky. In fact, the deadliest U.S. food scandals in recent years have centered on salmonella, E. coli, and other microbial infections of cantaloupe, peanuts, spinach, and green onions. Bean sprouts, the crunchy granola of the vegetable world, are among the foodstuffs most prone to bacterial contamination. Perhaps the only sane response is to eat less of everything—except chocolate.

James Graff