Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to How Americans Are Tricked Into Buying Fake Food" video.

  1. An experience in food fraud I have seen, was a number of years ago at a large central city market in Melbourne Australia. This is a very popular market for various goods, but my main purpose was to buy fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish/seafood. My time to visit this market was Saturdays and combined with other shopping in the Central business area. As a result my visit for fresh market goods/produce was often delayed later In the day, as the market closed mid afternoon for meat, seafood, vegetables and fruit. As a result some traders were also discounting/special deals to clear stock before closing for the day. Fruit at times for example a box of mandarines/oranges/cherries, etc for a few dollars rather than a dollar per kg. The Seafod reduced as low as half earlier prices, though equally that late what you really wanted already sold out. That however is a product not normally well suited to return into cold storage, as spoiling too easily so high priority to sell out stock if at all possible, refreezing is not advisable on seafood. The meat stalls also offer great discounts especially on large bulk hunks of beef, pork, lamb , goat. A lot of time you could get say a beef rump of 5 to 10kg for 2/3rd earlier price, though some with only 10% to 20% reduction. Same on pork or lamb. Chickens half price, other items I bought were for my dog feeding like ox tongue or heart, liver and similar. It was a surprise to see the cheating clearly on display as a meat stall was observed for that discounted sale time, pushing a large hollow needle into a big hunk of beef, while pumping water into the meat. Thereby pushing the total meat mass up. Thereby increasing the final price by having higher, significant higher, weight due to contained water. So with reduced price per kg, they merchant quite possibly still received same profit, or feasibly higher profit on the meat. Further what evidence is there that the meat sold was not so treated even at normal price times, and was just being topped up. Do we the customer notice the extra red leakage from that meat. Realistically are sold meat is hung for some time prior to sale at retail, there should be no blood dripping from any meat , no significant liquid from the hung meat anymore. How often have had meat that flows in juices when unpacked? Does it not suggest boosted weight by water loading the meat, that should be moist but not dripping. Chickens that unpacked and up ended run significant juices out, along with excess internal junk that should not remain on a cleaned plucked item? How about cut steaks, displayed in rich red form on a display tray, often falsely reddened by red light tubes added to the display cabinet lighting. But on purchase they pull and pack your purchase from a rear not so clearly visible tray at rear closer to the server. That when unpacked at home have a more brown colour than the rich red nice meat that you thought to be buying? Bought packed fruits at a supermarket and on unpacking several internal to package items being severely bruised or even mouldy/rotting? Boughtseveral identical items, even checking "best before date" of items on the shelf,and taking say half dozen, not looking each specific item, at home finding that two or three are actually weeks past due date? Here shops are required to not sell beyond due date or sell clearly marked down price with clear expiry highlighted. Though shops generally do not sell such just trash it. Rarely donate to charity food services. Some things like chocolate, lollies, cookies, canned/jars might be on special sale. Milk is discounted by the due date though I find that is good for many days past due date, with one exception a container some shopper dumped around the store so not kept cool all the time, but returned to chilled display. I had one a few months back that opened two days before expiry date was going off by taste. It was drained down the waste. Honey is one that I find us often faked by added sugar. Pure honey by my experience remains quite liquid at normal indoor temperatures, not low like below freezing, but many honey containers after a a month or two are are solidifying and crystallising . Yes you can reliquify in warm water, but it is indicative of sugar loading by my experience. Last year I bought some special honey, "Leatherwood" honey, meaning harvested in an area with mainly 'Leartherwood' Eucaluptus tree blossoms, a Australian tree variety in southern and Tasmania areas, for bees to gather the nectar. It sells for a premium price due the excellent distinct flavour . However I temporary honey selling merchant stand at my local shopping centre, had it at good price, so I bought three small buckets about 1/2 litre each. Believed it genuine pure honey as many small private bee keeping people do so sometimes sell their annual product like that. Well not so good as less than a month later starting merely two weeks after purchase the honey was solidifying. I would suggest it was massively loaded by cane sugar, which is readily and cheaply available in Australia from huge cane harvests in Queensland. It is sadly a "Buyer beware" situation, that mostly the consumer has no real chance to avoid much food fraud. In Australia and New Zealand we have for years had severe problems with baby formula. NOT DUE TO BAD QUALITY QUITE THE OPPOSITE! China has had a series of scandals on baby formula, with various serious adulteration and contamination problems. Intentional mixing in Melanine powder, that actually caused several baby deaths and ultimate jailing and from memory even some executions of the business operators. Melanine of course is used to manufacture kitchen goods like plates, bowls and cups, a form of synthetic plastic to loosely describe it. Our stores were being stripped of available baby formula produce, leaving store shelves empty and mothers unable to locally buy sufficient to feed their young children. The available deliveries from manufacturer to stores and store sales stock were being hoarded by people, mostly Chinese but anyone else too, buying all they could get repacking and shipping it to China to relatives and greedy traders for huge profits. The local baby formula very much in demand in China, by parents for their babies distrusting local Chinese products. Selling for up to 10 times the Australian, NZ retail value, there was huge profit. Stores and supermarkets took to restricting number of items a person could buy, say two per shopping trip and limiting shelf stock quantity put out more periodically only, to make waiting times for hoarders a difficulty. Well these hoarders were now arranging teams of people who one after another bought the limit, left to other nearby stores/supermarkets and/or returned to the same store repeatedly or later times of the same day thereby purchasing dozens to hundreds of containers per day. Whole shipments, semi-trailer loads were redirected to be packed to large containers to be trans shipped. Manufacturers were increasing production to capacity levels and still the shortages continued. Australia Postal operations were being over taxed by the number of parcels with baby formula being mailed to China. Nothing illegal so could not be stopped by any legal proceedings. Manufacturers started being careful about abnormal size orders from previous unknown and non shop/supermarket ordering systems, but again nothing to stop orders, just slow handling of clearly trans shipping based orders. One city shop was detected ordering several hundred times the past several years sale volumes, and observed moving delivered stock from one truck straight to another. They were put on limited delivery schedule but nothing could be done to refuse supply. Fortunately the critical times have eased, increased volume of manufacture direct export to China has made sufficient stock for local people secured needs. Still observed by me, are 'Asians' pushing three or four supermarket trolleys full of several brands of baby formula to the checkout. So I assume there is still profiteering or direct family supply shipping to China today. A case of good quality product highly in demand in a place with unsatisfactory, unsafe equivalent goods. Food safety organisations are left without sufficient powers to really assure us the consumer safety from food fraudsters. Often the entire chain of supply deny guilt in detected cases, and getting to catch the crooks with sufficient evidence after detection is hard. All seem to point at others, all covering up their own practices really quickly. We the consumer are left the suckers in this.
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