Food labels don't tell whole story of where ingredients originate
timesargus.com
That loaf of Sara Lee bread on the grocery shelf was made with flour from U.S. wheat. But the Illinois-based food giant uses honey and vitamin supplements from China.
While Paul Newman's daughter uses California figs in cookies made by her organic food company, she turns to Mexico and Austria for other ingredients.
And even though a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman described Crest toothpaste as "a truly American product," it uses additives from China and Finland.
Recent reports of tainted imports from China have focused new attention on a little-known trend: In today's global economy, more food items are being produced in this country with some ingredients from other lands. But the FDA inspects less than 1 percent of all food imports — and that means consumers must trust food makers to guarantee the safety of their products.
"It's not just the stuff that says 'Made in China.' It's the stuff in the stuff that says 'Made in the USA,"' said Elisa Odabashian of Consumers Union, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine.
You may not know it from the label. Food makers aren't required to disclose the source of what goes into most products. Some major food makers won't even talk about it. Campbell's and Kraft use ingredients from around the world, although representatives there refused to say which countries supply them.
"We don't want to be the poster child" for an article about imported ingredients, said Campbell's spokesman John Faulkner.
Indeed, most European countries have high standards, say industry experts. And not all Chinese products are of poor quality, said Peter Kovacs, a former executive with several national food companies who now owns a food-ingredient consulting business.
The lure of lower prices has led some American firms to accept lower-quality imports, Kovacs added. But he said most major food companies are rigorous about checking the ingredients they import, even if the government is not.
To understand why so many American products are a composite of ingredients from around the world, one need look no further than three products found on most any household shelf: a tube of toothpaste, a bag of cookies and a loaf of bread.
In making a simple loaf of bread, the bakers at Sara Lee must look to multiple sources for some standard ingredients, said company spokesman Mark Goldman.
"You cannot meet consumer demand, and meet the demands of a growing business, without finding multiple sources for your ingredients," he said.
While Kovacs said lower costs are often a reason for buying overseas, food makers also say they obtain ingredients from other countries because they can't find sufficient quantities in the United States.
As an example, Goldman said, "It's impossible to meet the demand for honey without (buying it) outside the United States."
Like other major U.S. firms, Sara Lee also looks to China for the B vitamins — thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid — and iron that are commonly used to enrich wheat flour.
Manufacturers also look overseas for other types of ingredients.
When the people at Newman's Own Organics began planning to make an organic fig cookie, said Chief Executive Peter Meehan, they had difficulty finding certain ingredients that met organic standards.
Take corn syrup. Many organic goodies are made without it, but Meehan said the company's Fig Newmans cookies taste better when they use a small amount of corn syrup to maintain the flavor and moisture of the cookie "jacket" that wraps around the fruit filling.
"We tried all sorts of other syrups" that didn't work as well, he said. But despite the huge amounts of corn grown in the United States, Meehan said, he couldn't find a domestic source that was guaranteed free of genetically modified organisms.
The corn syrup in Fig Newmans comes from Austria.
To assure quality, Newman's Own Organics visits its suppliers' processing plants. The company also contracts with an independent firm that inspects and grades each production facility.
Even the manufacturer of all-American Crest toothpaste does not use all U.S. ingredients.
Crest toothpastes are all produced in North America, said Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Tonia Elrod. The "vast majority" of ingredients come from the United States, including many from P&G's own chemical division, she said. But the company obtains some of its hydrated silica — a mild abrasive used in many toothpastes — from Finland. It imports some of the sweetener known as sodium saccharin from China.
"Our products and ingredients undergo rigorous evaluation," Elrod said, adding that the company follows voluntary manufacturing standards developed by the FDA and industry. |
