The UAE's Fat Problem - The Super Sized Soda Ban

(Photo credit: marsmet491)

The UAE's Federal National Council has announced steps to ban super-sized sodas in the country. The decision comes as part of a two-day session in which representatives discussed and brainstormed ideas in the educational and healthcare sectors, a discussion that took place alongside a much-publicised public consultation over social media.

The move is a fantastic idea and to be lauded - others have tried but failed to implement the measure. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has spearheaded a long legal battle to implement a super-sized soda ban, a fight that continues even as I write this.

It's a step in the right direction, but when you look at the journey ahead, even so big a step seems like a very small thing indeed. The UAE has a problem - and at its core is one small word. It's actually what I do as a day job and so I get a tad frustrated by it all.

It's awareness. Nothing more, nothing less.

The UAE is a young country, sometimes still painfully young. Its people have grown up in one of the most dynamic, fast-changing and evolving environments in the world. It's one of the most diverse collections of humans on earth - I'm shocked we aren't surrounded by thousands of anthropologists studying the place - with probably the world's wackiest demographics and societal challenges so great even trying to think about them deeply provokes brain skitter. One of the many, many products of that youth is an almost complete lack of food education and a culture of enjoying the plenty we have today - because within living memory there wasn't plenty, but scarcity here.

It's not helped by food producers and importers. Crisps fried in palm oil are the norm here, usually sprinkled liberally with MSG and 'Sunset yellow' - and other egregious dyes. The market leading brand of potato chip is fried in palm oil, a saturated fat. You can't throw a stone without hitting a fast food joint - each worse than the last. These have evolved very nicely to suit local culture and provide fun evening environments for the whole family - which of course gorges itself on processed meats fried in cheap fats (more palm oil!) and then slapped in highly processed buns to be served with processed french fries, flavouring coated onion rings or *shudder* curly marinated potato chips. Let alone the super-sweet sodas, shakes, doughnuts and ice cream sundaes on offer.

And, as anyone who read yesterday's post (or any of my posts passim on the topic of what's in our food) will know, being aware of what you're eating isn't always easy because food producers can be obfuscatory and even mendacious in the way they present foods to us.

The Khaleeji palate is fond of creamy cheeses, fried foods, dry biscuits and sweets. Cake shops sell highly processed confections slathered in artificial colourings and pumped with polyfilla-like artificial creams. And most of the locally sold brands of those dry biscuits are baked using, wait for it, palm oil.

Alongside this, we have a love of cookery and entertainment. The consumption of cooking oil by the average Emirati family is something to be seen to be believed - you can see the trolleys being lugged around Carrefours and the Co-Op. Demijohns of oil, pot noodles and worse things than that lurk in there.

I'm not being holier-than-thou here - I'm not saying anyone else is better. The UK in the 1970s and 80s was a paradise of processed foods, sweeteners and fats. It's not even particularly healthy there in these at least marginally more enlightened days. And the States. Oh, wow, the States. In any case, I'd probably know more about eating habits here than there these days.

But I am being realistic. There's a problem here - and at its heart is the fact the average consumer is totally unaware of what they are eating and there's nobody interested in making them aware because they are making a great deal of money by feeding the appetites of the nation. There are relatively few healthy alternatives - and when people don't know they're paying an insidious price for those burger meals, fried treats and creamy sauces zinging with 'E's, they're hardly going to opt for those 'no fun' healthy choices in any case.

So yes, great step FNC. But someone needs to get serious about letting consumers make more informed choices for themselves and, crucially, for their children.

I, for one, would be only too happy to help...

(PS Yes, I know there are expats who eat unhealthily too.)

(PPS The UAE can take some solace in the fact it isn't the world's fattest nation. Strangely enough that gong doesn't belong to America, but our next door neighbours, Qatar.)

What's In My Food? Chicken Rib Meat Special!

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I occasionally do a post where I look at the content of some piece of food or other. Today, still reeling from the various horsemeat and food adulteration scandals, we hear that Ikea has recalled batches of chocolate cake from stores in 23 countries after samples were found to contain faecal bacteria. Yummy!

As I pointed out in this here post, we have accepted a dangerous principle here - that they're putting stuff in our food without us knowing what it is. It's a short step from 'improving' a natural product to 'adulterating' it. The industrialised production of food is all very well, but its when the principle of cutting corners becomes enshrined in business' approach to processing, you get horses or poo in your food. Or ground up bones.

One great example of this is chicken 'rib meat'. Take, for instance, the ingredients of a McDonald's Crispy Chicken Fillet:

Crispy Chicken Fillet: Chicken breast fillet with rib meat, water, seasoning [sugar, salt, sodium phosphates, modified tapioca starch, spice, autolyzed yeast extract, carrageenan, natural (vegetable and botanical source) and artificial flavors, maltodextrin, sunflower lecithin, gum arabic]. Battered and breaded with: bleached wheat flour, water, wheat flour, sugar, salt, food starch-modified, yellow corn flour, leavening (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium bicarbonate), wheat gluten, spices, corn starch, dextrose, xanthan gum, extractives of paprika. CONTAINS: WHEAT. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.

Quite apart from containing an awful lot of scary-looking chemicals, the list begs the question, what IS 'rib meat'? You won't get far by Googling it - in fact, you'll get a highly mendacious article titled "What's really in that chicken nugget?' penned by the US National Chicken Council that avers, "Rib meat is simply a natural extension of the breast meat. It is NOT an additive or a filler."

Ah, no. Rib meat is, in fact, MSM - or mechanically separated meat. Also known as 'white slime'. The meat and bone from an already-stripped carcass are pushed through a sieve under high pressure and the resulting bone-enhanced white gloop can be moulded into star shapes or whatever you fancy - dinosaur shapes, from the example photographed above. McDonalds labels its chicken nuggets as containing 'White boneless chicken', which may or may not be another way of saying 'rib meat' which is, of course, another way of saying 'Mechanically Separated Meat' or even, more deliciously, 'meat slurry'.

Interestingly, there would appear to be a regulatory requirement to label MSM as such in ingredients lists, but the regulations aren't global, aren't easy to understand and, obviously from the above example, aren't being adhered to. A certain amount of ground-up bone is permissible in MSM, typically about 3% - and pieces no larger than 0.5mm. That's the US regulation. The EU and other bodies will have their own versions.

And yes, Dimethylpolysiloxane is what it sounds like. They're putting silicone in your food.

Ikea Meatballs - More Horsing Around

The latest retailer to fall under the hooves of horsegate is Swedish low cost furniture company Ikea. Funny, isn't it, how this is hitting low cost brands so hard? It seems like wherever there's been excessive pressure to cut costs and the presence of 'white label' food processors in the supply chain, a little whinny can be heard.

Interestingly, Ikea's UAE website doesn't have any information relating to the recall (at the time of writing), although Ikea's Swedish site does have a flash that points to a press release detailing the recall - Ikea says it tested its food products two weeks ago for horse DNA but that a fresh test has come up with the goods and so they have recalled the product. All fair and good.

Oddly, the company identified as being at the heart of the adulteration of Ikea's iconic meatballs, Swedish food processor, Familjen Dafgård, has made no changes to its website apart from posting a press announcement (with no links from the home page) on its otherwise moribund 'press releases' section - there are two other releases on there, one from 2011 and one from 2012. The company's statement, in Swedish only but brought to you by the marvel and occasional strangeness that is Google Translate. In its entirety, is as follows:

We have received information from a Czech laboratory that a party meatballs may contain traces of horse meat.
Current batch has been closed and we are investigating the situation.
We perform ongoing extensive own DNA analysis. We continue our sampling to investigate the situation.
We will further test results within the next few days and can provide more information in the case.

(my bold)

You'd be forgiven for thinking that's not really the hottest of responses. It's certainly very sparse indeed compared to Ikea's much more comprehensive and informative recall announcement. Amusingly, as the eagle-eyed among you may already have spotted from the website grab above, the Familjen Dafgård website still flashes up pictures of the company's delicious meatballs. Mmmm!

This company is in what we in the business call a PR crisis. It is the subject of global media attention and is potentially responsible for sickening and letting down tens of thousands of consumers across Europe as well as dropping Ikea, a major customer, in the dung. The only reason I'm saying potentially is because some media outlets have stopped short of naming the company as specifically responsible at this stage, although the New York Times (linked above) does name it. The doubts over its Ikea products have to cast doubts over  the company's other products, including the lovely lasagne that is such a prominent feature of its home page. We all know what's in cheap lasagne these days, don't we kids? Yup, "Newmarket Steak"!

'Within the next few days' simply isn't an option any more. You need to react with blinding speed, get as much information as you can out there and keep it flowing. If you have a website, you need to update it fast with consumer information. Ideally, you would already have developed 'dark sites' for potential crises, however notionally unthinkable, and then work on managing your response to consumer concern with all the resources at your disposal. Dark sites are ready-made webpages that you can cut to immediately

Even without a 'dark site' Your website needs to change to meet the circumstances. Joyfully promoting  meat balls on the homepage when your meat ball products have been recalled from stores around Europe is not what you'd call smart.

You need to get to the truth as quickly as possible, show that you're interested and committed to that process and share as much as you sensibly (and responsibly) can as it surfaces. You need to establish clear lines of communication for media and consumers alike and ensure that you have a statement of your position out as quickly as possible - ideally using multiple media platforms.

You need to find out what went wrong, fast. And then you need to fix it. And tell people how you've fixed it. Because needing a few days to investigate your supply chain in the current environment is really something of a worry. You've had weeks of notice that something's wrong out there. You look incredibly complacent as a result.

You don't need to do all this to minimise the immediate impact of the crisis and media coverage. You do this because today is the first day of your long road back to regaining consumer trust and confidence. Sticking your fingers in your ear and shouting lalalala does not, I submit, do this.

And, by the way, in the current environment, any company that is involved in the manufacture, sale or distribution of foodstuffs (and, yes, I'm including hotels and restaurants) that doesn't have a comprehensive crisis plan in place that includes digital platforms at the heart of the plan is simply totally insane.

Food Adultery

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I must start by recommending you read this article in the New York Times, "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food", It's long, but very readable indeed. Don't worry about me, I can wait 'till you're back.

Done? Scary wasn't it? I loved one quote from a Coke executive outlining his sales problem: “How can we drive more ounces into more bodies more often?” The whole idea of an industry focused on that problem, using complex food science, packaging and marketing based on psychology all focused on a single trigger in us all, the need to consume food and drink. Not just meeting that need, but driving it, extending it and blowing it up beyond any reasonable limit.

The result has not only been the creation of a fat, bloated nation (Luke commented a few posts ago about the irony of a world where the poor are fat and the rich are thin, which does rather take one aback) with a massive diabetes problem, but the creation of a society which has come to accept, even expect, the adulteration of food by companies.

And then Europe gets all bleeding heart about horsemeat? Look at the practices the food industry has evolved in the pursuit of competitive advantage, the ways in which food is already twisted out of all reasonable expectation of its remaining pure, natural and healthy. Pink slime is the tip of an iceberg of people getting sick from bacterial diseases contracted from deep-injected steak marinades, minced up bonemeal and water-injection making cheap meat heavier and practices such as MSM - mechanically separated meat. We're not even starting to explore hydrogenated fats, trans-fats, HFCS and the myriad other creepy crawlies companies are 'driving' into consumers.

In fact, it is one of these delightful industrial processes that lies behind horsemeatgate - desinewed meat. This is a low pressure bone stripping process that gets the shreds of meat off slaughtered animal bones, resulting in the production of a mince-like substance that can be easily turned into ground meat processed foods such as, oh I don't know, lasagne, burgers or cottage pies. The European Commission banned the use of the process in beef and lamb, although it can be used in poultry and pork as long as it's labelled as MSM (mechanically separated meat).

The result was to give added impetus to the search for cheap meat by processors. We're in a recession, don't forget, so the pressure's on for those 'value' lines of food to outstrip each other, cheaper foods always come at a price - added sugar, extra filler, lots of salt and MSG to bring flavour back to food that's been leached of flavour by processing. And buyers presented with a cheaper beef mince aren't going to look the gift horse in the mouth. Because there are managers assessing their performance, directors aiming to outsell competitors and grow market share for shareholders to be satisfied with their dividends.

It's actually a very short hop from packing cheap fats, salt and sugars into foods designed for maximal shelf-life, scientifically optimised 'mouth feel' and hitting consumers' 'bliss point' to packing horsemeat into beef meals. We've accepted the fundamental principle - that we'll tolerate foods that are not what they seem to be on the packaging (blueberry muffin, anyone?). The question now is only how far companies will go in their mendacity. I suspect I know the answer - and it's not horsemeat.