CBC Marketplace was looking for a family to include in one of their episodes on “Food Secrets”; savvy shoppers, which I’d like to think I am. I try to cook healthy meals for my family and am constantly reading about the food industry and where my food is coming from.

We filmed the segment at a Toronto grocery store and later in my home (link to the episode is below). What I didn’t know before the shoot were the details of the show; I only knew that the show topic was about food labels specifically on meat and fish.

We’ve been so concerned about reading the labels on packaged foods – looking for sodium content, trans fats, sugars, saturated fats, for example, that I’ve overlooked paying closer attention to the meat we buy.

Like I said, I thought I was pretty well-educated on what we eat but I didn’t expect to learn what I did:

Beef

I had no idea that meat at your local supermarket could be tenderized, which can be a problem because the process can contaminate beef with E. Coli, a serious bacteria that could make you really sick. Cuts of meat run through a machine that punctures them with needles or blades to break the connective tissue and often a marinade is also added.  Some E. coli outbreaks have been attributed to mechanically tenderized beef.

The problem is the meat may not be labeled as having been tenderized and if you don’t cook the beef to a certain temperature, the possibility for contamination can be high. If you cook a steak less than medium well, you could be in serious trouble.

So are all meats in the supermarket tenderized? How would we know? I haven’t thought twice about whether the meat I’m buying has been tenderized – my assumption would be that it has not been. And the fact that it could be but not properly labeled makes me angry. If I want to tenderize my meat, I’ll do it myself!

Chicken

In Canada, growth hormones are given to beef cattle (not dairy cattle). There are no growth hormones used in poultry or pork production.

Antibiotics, however, are used more often in poultry, pork and fish that are being raised for human consumption. This website says that antibiotics may also be sprayed on fruit and given to honey bees.

Domestic and imported foods are tested for food safety by The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to make sure that antibiotic and hormone levels are safe for humans. Who decides what is a safe level? Health Canada. Being featured in a show like Marketplace, Health Canada should be doing much more than simply sending a statement promising to do something in the future.

I’ve been aware of the issues with chickens and how they are raised and fed and have heard stories where chickens are ready to be eaten after only several weeks because they are fed day and night with fatty grains and pumped with antibiotics.

The problem is, the more antibiotics they are given, the more we become immune to antibiotics and ‘superbugs’ cannot be treated by regular antibiotics.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. declared that certain superbugs are nothing less than a “nightmare.”

Fish

Is wild salmon actually wild? Is trout really trout? The show revealed that the fish you are actually buying at the supermarket may not be the fish you think you’re taking home. You might be paying more to buy wild Pacific fish but instead labs showed that it was farmed Atlantic. Other sample test results showed that one fish label ended up being a completely different fish, and in one case, a rare fish that isn’t supposed to be caught for human consumption.

Recent studies showed that 20 to 25 percent of seafood around the world is mislabelled. The problem is the Canadian health inspection doesn’t have anything in place to ensure that labels are accurate.

I know that wild fish is better but never would think that the local wild fish I’m buying could indeed be farmed from another country!

Deli

Think you’re getting nitrate-free deli? Think again. Some brands are using “cultured celery extract” which makes you think that the ingredient is “naturally occurring” when it’s a nice term for a nitrate. So that bacon and deli that you thought was nitrate free (a cancer-causing agent), is not after all.

My initial thought was, cultured celery extract is a natural source of nitrite so they use celery extract instead because celery has naturally occurring nitrates. But nutrition expert Dr. Yoni Freedhoff says “for all intents and purposes it is bio-chemically identical.”

We know that deli meats and bacon should be consumed as a treat – but even then you think you’re buying nitrate free when really, a clever name is quite deceiving!

 

All of this makes me question even further what is really in our food. My suggestion? Pay even more attention to what you’re buying and read the labels. Buy your meat from a local farm that you trust and make sure it’s grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free, buy free range free run chickens and organic local vegetables. I don’t know if it’s completely free from preservatives but at least it’s a better choice than other options out there.

Here is the link to the CBC Marketplace “Food Secrets” episode.