What You See - It Isn't Always What You Get, Is It?

[weinoo]

Since I'm a big fan of crab cakes (I had a couple of them last night at Dino's, in Cleveland Park, that were excellent - and 100% Maryland crab), it hardly comes as a surprise to me that the majority of Maryland crab cakes are not made with Maryland blue crabs at all...this article in the Washington City Paper blog discusses the situation in depth:

The little-known truth is that our region’s signature dish is rarely regional. More than 43 million pounds of crab meat are imported into Maryland each year, but the Maryland crab meat industry only produces about 700,000 pounds. That means less than 2 percent is from Maryland. The rest is shipped in from Venezuela, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Gulf Coast.

Seems like Maryland is a style of crab cake, rather than an indicator of where the crab comes from. A marketing tool, if you will.

Since I've known this for quite some time, I avoid crab cakes unless I specifically can trust the provenance of the product.

Does this bother you?

And what other products are fooling us?

[mkayahara]

This, of course, is why systems like AOC and PDO get invented.

I don't think it bothers me in the abstract, as long as no one is trying to pass off imported crab as Maryland crab.

[weinoo]

This, of course, is why systems like AOC and PDO get invented.

I don't think it bothers me in the abstract, as long as no one is trying to pass off imported crab as Maryland crab.

I think from the article, while they aren't actually out on the street like carny barkers screaming: "Maryland crab cakes," unsuspecting consumers are probably thinking that's what they're getting.

[HungryC]

Not news to Gulf Coast dwellers...live Louisiana crabs have been trucked to the Chesapeake area for decades; our picked crabmeat is shipped all over the country. S'okay, Gulf crabs are every bit as good as Chesapeake, and are the exact same species (Callinectes sapidus rathbun). I avoid the imported, pasteurized stuff, but LA/TX/MS/AL crabs are fine by me.

I always thought of "Maryland crabcakes" as a style indicator, rather than an indicator of provenance. You occasionally see "Maryland style crabcakes" on menus in Louisiana....

[Marie-Ora]

My brother used to work as a chef. Once, while he was still in training, he was apprenticed (and therefore obliged to shut up) at a very upmarket restaurant that specialized in fish. More often than not, the fish they actually served was not the species they had on the menu (and charged plenty for). Most guests couldn't tell the difference, but they occasionally got someone who knew better.

Another thing they did was to fill up empty bottles of really expensive wine with cheaper plonk (and I'm talking box wine and a funnel). They would usually pull this after the table was onto their second or third bottle - in the 6 months he worked there, not one person picked this up. To this day he insists on watching every bottle of wine being opened in front of him.

[slkinsey]

Next you'll be telling me that Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't from Kentucky chickens!

[Katie Meadow]

Worse. It isn't chicken.

[weinoo]

Next you'll be telling me that Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't from Kentucky chickens!

You see, this is exactly what I'm saying.

[janeer]

As someone who teaches ethics, I love this discussion.

[Catherine Iino]

In a Connecticut supermarket, I bought a bag of "Vidalia onions" labeled "Locally Grown." Turns out "Locally Grown" is the brand, and they were grown in Ohio or someplace. We're getting pretty meta here, since Vidalia is in neither Connecticut nor Ohio.

[Chris Hennes]

Turns out "Locally Grown" is the brand, and they were grown in Ohio or someplace.

Genius.

[AAQuesada]

Turns out "Locally Grown" is the brand, and they were grown in Ohio or someplace.

Genius.

LOL!! I can top that

I worked at a restaurant that served a brand of relish called "hommade"

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Doesn't this come back to pink slime? And the whole honest food debate?

Since we're discussing this, is there any standard in North America that properly defines how much chocolate has to be in chocolate bars? I'll admit that I'm terribly spoiled when it comes to this, but last time I was up north I picked up a Cadbury "chocolate" bar that tasted more of wax than chocolate and I was so disgusted that I actually tried to return it. Turns out that while in Ecuador the bar must contain at least 50% cocoa solids to be called chocolate (anything less, and they have to be labeled "chocolate-flavoured candy"), in Canada there's no such standard.

[Marie-Ora]

Next you'll be telling me that Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't from Kentucky chickens!

EVERYBODY knows they are really inbred mutant, headless creatures with no feet that double in size every other day. Or something like that....... Whatever they are, I'm too scared to eat them. Won't eat MacDonalds either after I heard the 'pure beef' included 'pure beef hide and hair', 'pure beef hooves', and other parts of 'the beef' that the cow was the least proud of

Edited June 21, 2012 by Marie-Ora (log)

[weinoo]

Doesn't this come back to pink slime? And the whole honest food debate?

No to the first part. Sure to the second.

With pink slime, consumers aren't being told that. With Maryland crab cakes, they're being, depending on who you talk to, misled as to the potential for the crab itself being from Maryland.

[haresfur]

Personally, I'd be more worried about whether it was a blue crab or some other species than about where it came from. But I suppose there could be some issues of freshness, contamination, or environmental damage that relate to the where, rather than the what.

[pastrygirl]

Since we're discussing this, is there any standard in North America that properly defines how much chocolate has to be in chocolate bars? I'll admit that I'm terribly spoiled when it comes to this, but last time I was up north I picked up a Cadbury "chocolate" bar that tasted more of wax than chocolate and I was so disgusted that I actually tried to return it. Turns out that while in Ecuador the bar must contain at least 50% cocoa solids to be called chocolate (anything less, and they have to be labeled "chocolate-flavoured candy"), in Canada there's no such standard.

I believe it does have to be real chocolate with real cocoa butter to be labeled as such (despite much lobbying by Hershey's). If vegetable oils are subbed it gets labeled chocolate flavored. Most milk chocolate is below 50% anyway. Is that not considered chocolate in Ecuador?

[Panaderia Canadiense]

I believe it does have to be real chocolate with real cocoa butter to be labeled as such (despite much lobbying by Hershey's). If vegetable oils are subbed it gets labeled chocolate flavored. Most milk chocolate is below 50% anyway. Is that not considered chocolate in Ecuador?

Milk chocolate in Ecuador has to be labeled as "Milk Chocolate" (well, Chocolate de Leche), to set it apart from the "true" chocolates and to clearly state the role of milk solids in the bar's makeup. It's not considered to be in the same class as the higher cocoa bars. It's worth it to consider that the most common chocolate in most Ecuadorian pantries are round disks called "mother" which in the 90% cocoa solids range - this is the standard for preparing drinking chocolate, and is dissolved in hot milk and then sweetened by each person individually at the table.

This said, a couple of Ecuadorian companies produce really stellar milk chocolates that are over 50% cocoa solids - Caoni 55% cocoa milk chocolate with cracked macadamia nuts is the bar that comes to mind. Despite the fact that they could label that bar as true chocolate, they market it as milk (IMHO justified, it's far creamier than their plain-jane 55).

But something like a Mars bar, or a Nestle Crunch? They're labeled as chocolate-flavoured candy bars in Spanish, and they must be coming from Canada because the English on the packages just calls them chocolate bars....