超市鲜为人知的20个秘密！

Supermarket secrets: 20 things their ads won’t tell you

06 May 2007 By Jennifer O’Connell             Sunday Business Post

1 - Babies weaned on jarred food sold in supermarkets are being trained to have a sweeter palate.

Few baby-food manufacturers supplying Europe add sucrose to their products these days - they know that parents are much too smart and nutritionally aware for that. But the use of concentrated fruits and the manufacturing process turns those harmless looking baby jars into very sweet offerings indeed.

Though the label reassures parents that the contents include only pure fruit and fruit concentrates, a 213ml jar of junior baby food apple and blueberry contains 33g of sugars - which is about the same as 11 sugar cubes.


The process that keeps fruits like pear and banana ripe on the shelf for months and months just serves to reinforce this sweetness. The fruit is cooked once, jarred, and then cooked again in the jar under pressure at a temperature of at least 121 degrees for 40 minutes - sterilising the fruit so that it stays fresh for months, and effectively caramelising it in the process.

All of which means that by the time they’re old enough to express a view on it, children have become passionate advocates of the sugar-laden, supermarket sold alternatives to mum’s home cooking.

And the food industry has been predictably slow to surrender this sugar-coated stranglehold on the next generation of little consumers.

The permitted level of sugar in baby food products is 30 per cent; recent proposals to cut this to 10 per cent as part of the global fight against obesity were blocked by the EU and the US.

2 - ‘Use-by’ labels are regularly - and legally - switched several times before the produce hits the shelf of your local supermarket.

The practice of switching labels to extend the life of food is perfectly legal, so long as it is done within the ‘‘recognised shelf life of the product’’, says the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

In 2004, the British FSA investigated claims by Which? magazine that labels on chicken were being switched up to 20 times before they hit supermarket shelves.

It found evidence of relabelling, but concluded that it was only done during the recognised shelf-life period.

3 – Six bottles for the price of five, 40 per cent off this, 25 per cent off that.

Around two thirds of the wine we buy is now sold on promotion, with supermarket wine shops often boasting more discount stickers than a Moore Street stall. But just how ‘special’ are these offers?

The Guardian’s wine writer Victoria Moore recently launched an investigation into wine promotions and found that they aren’t always what they seem. She claims that the ‘original’, higher, price is often artificially concocted with a view to supermarkets selling the wine at that price for the shortest time legally allowable, before slashing the price and offering an impressive discount which is - you guessed it - all the wine was worth to begin with.

In Ireland, the legislation is a little tighter, so while supermarkets here can’t afford to inflate prices in the same way, it’s safe to conclude that they must be enjoying a healthy margin on any wine they can afford to offer at a 50 per cent discount.

‘‘Any bottle that you can buy at two for the price of one is a wine that you probably won’t want to buy if they were selling four for that price,” says The Sunday Business Post’s wine critic, Tomas Clancy. ‘‘Oddly enough, you never see bottles of Margaux, Lafite or Latour on a three bottles for the price of two offer.”

Some supermarkets are better than others, and there are bargains to be had in all supermarkets (for example, in bin end sales), but the message is to trust your palate - and don’t be blinded by the discount sticker.

4 - Do you want a divorce with that litre of milk?

In Britain, Tesco is now selling DIY divorce and wills packages from its Tesco Legal store. For just £14.99 or ?22, you can buy a Separation and Divorce kit, which is legally binding in England and Wales (and get 14 Clubcard points in the process), while the store’s best-seller is a £9.99 or ?14.66 Power of Attorney kit.

In Ireland, its offerings are so far confined to food, petrol, clothes, books, CDs, appliances, jewellery, diets and insurance policies.

Tesco mobile phones are on their way.

5 - Three thousand miles is the average distance travelled by your food before it hits the supermarket shelf.

6 - Some of the ‘Irish’ labelled chicken fillets sold in supermarkets are about as Irish as coconut milk.

According to the Department of Health, supermarkets regularly buy in meat products (other than beef) from outside the EU, make some ‘substantial transformation’ to them in the form of a sprinkling of spice or breadcrumbs, and relabel them as ‘Irish’ with local brand names and even health marks. This is all perfectly legal, but is it ethical?

In the meat section of one Irish supermarket, for example, one half of a fridge is filled with chicken fillets clearly labelled ‘100 per cent Irish chicken’.

The ingredients read ‘100 per cent Irish chicken breast’ and the name and location of the producer - a farmer in County Monaghan - is given on the front of the pack.

Sitting right next to them, in the other half of the same fridge, are more chicken breasts, this time covered in a sauce and labelled ‘Whole Irish deboned chicken with ginger and chilli and lime marinade.’ There’s no sticker touting the product’s 100 per cent Irishness, and no name given for the farmer who produced it.

So are they both ‘Irish’, or is one - or both - of them ‘100 per cent Irish’? And what’s the difference anyway?

It’s the kind of question which could tie a whole army of constitutional lawyers up in knots for weeks, and for busy shoppers, it’s probably a semantic too far.

7 - Smell anything funny in the fruit and veg aisle?

No? Didn’t think so. That’s because the fruit and veg on display has likely undergone what author of the supermarket expose, Shopped, Joanna Blythman, describes as a bizarre kind of ‘beauty pageant’ designed to make the produce look more attractive to consumers, give it the longest shelf life possible and, in the process, inadvertently strips it of any flavour or scent.

Ribbed, angular or misshapen tomatoes, for example, will be rejected, as will tomatoes with slightly chewy skin, ones with a colour of 0,1, 2 or 7 on the supermarkets’ colour chart, and tomatoes at different colour stages in the same box.

8 - Ever wondered why spinach only comes in bags?

Leaf spinach is one of the few vegetables that defies attempts by supermarkets to extend its shelf life.

Left to its own devices, it’ll look tired after a couple of days.

Supermarkets have simply stopped stocking it loose and sell it in bags, in a modified atmosphere (known as Modified Atmosphere Packaging, or MAP) that extends its shelf life by up to 50 per cent and strips it of every last vestige of taste.

9 - If you need a vitamin fix, steer clear of prewashed vegetables and ‘freshly’ prepared fruit salad.

Those alluring cubes of melon and pineapple that come ready-washed and chopped in neat little containers might not be the healthy lunch option they seem.

Most fruit and veg sold this way, from broccoli florets to mango slices, come in MAPs, or ‘pillow packs’.

Typically in MAP, the oxygen is reduced from 21 per cent to 3 per cent and the CO2 levels correspondingly raised. This slows any visible deterioration or discolouring. Great technology, it’s just a shame about the side effects.

The British Journal of Nutrition carried out a study which showed that MAPping strips vegetables of vitamin C, vitamin E, polyphenols and other micro-nutrients.

Research published by Which? magazine found that sliced chilled runner beans, for example, contain 89 per cent less vitamin C than their just-harvested brethren.

10 - When is a chicken fillet not really a chicken fillet?

When it’s a) 70 per cent chicken; b) 54 per cent chicken, or c) 43 per cent chicken?

The answer is: none of the above - at least if the chiller or freezer cabinet in your local supermarket is an indication.

According to the Irish Food Safety Promotions Board ‘‘it is not illegal to process chicken fillets by adding water and other ingredients, provided that these ingredients are approved and clearly stated on the label of pre-packed products, in addition to the added water content.

The percentage of meat content must also be accurately labelled.”

11 - Why did the chicken cross the continents?

This extract from a 2005 report by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland describes in stomach-churning detail the journey in 2001 of 400 million chicken breasts from Thailand and Brazil into European wholesale catering establishments, and from there into some of the prepared chicken dishes sold in restaurants and supermarkets.

‘‘On import, European processors tumble or inject defrosted imported chicken fillets with water and binding agents such as animal proteins (derived from a variety of different sources, including gelatine, blood, whey protein, spray-dried beef and pork protein, some of which may be mechanically recovered).

‘‘The chicken breasts are packed into boxes and frozen prior to distribution throughout the EU, including ROI and NI. These fillets are then sold into wholesale catering suppliers at a lower price than normal unprocessed chicken fillets.

‘‘The cyclical freezing and defrosting of such fillets does not contravene food safety, provided that it is done in a controlled manner. The issue of ‘freshness’ also arises as fillets with added ingredients that have been frozen and refrozen at different stages in the food chain may be sold in establishments as ‘fresh chicken’.”

Higher taxes slowed down the trade in chicken from Brazil and Thailand after 2001, but in 2005, the World Trade Organisation outlawed these tariffs.

12 - One in four euro spent on food or household goods in Ireland is spent at Tesco, but the retailer won’t disclose its Irish profits.

13 - The chilly truth about refrigerated ready meals.

Thousands of time-poor consumers are opting to buy chilled ready meals over their frozen alternatives in the expectation that they’re doing something better for their family.

Not so, say experts from the British Food Standards Agency to author Joanna Blythman.

Compared with frozen foods, many chilled, prepared foods come loaded with additives.

And you don’t necessarily get what you pay for - ironically, the more upmarket-looking, aspirational versions are often the worst offenders.

14 - Fancy a quick ham sandwich? Read this first

Now you’re avoiding chilled ready meals and prepared salads, slinging the ingredients for a ham sandwich into your shopping trolley might seem like a quick and healthy lunch option.

Not necessarily. Sliced white pans have fallen out of fashion with the health-conscious, but industrial wholemeal loaves - 70 per cent of which are bought in supermarkets - aren’t much better.

An analysis of the label shows they’re pumped full of water, yeast and chemicals to stop the bread going mouldy and help it hold more water, hard fat to stick it all together and salt to compensate for the lack of taste. And according to research published in July 2005 by Britain’s Pesticides Residues Committee, wholemeal bread contains more pesticide residues than any other type.

If you’re planning to use a butter substitute, you might be wise to avoid ‘cholesterol-lowering’ spreads. The label on one such spread carries a warning that the product shouldn’t be consumed by pregnant or breastfeeding women.

That’s because of the much-vaunted plant sterols, which are potential hormonal disrupters and can reduce the consumption of some vitamins. Yet these spreads were found separated from the butter on one supermarket shelf by the heading ‘‘healthier options’’.

Finally, Felicity Lawrence, consumer journalist and author of Not On the Label, has shed light on the manufacture of ‘‘formed’’ ham and, worse, ‘‘reformed’’ ham, which is guaranteed to put you off hang sangers for life. Much supermarket ham sold today is, she claims, formed or reformed ham.

‘‘Formed ham is muscle meat from the leg bones. It is chopped and passed under needles which inject it with a solution of water, sugars, preservatives, flavourings and other additives, or put into a giant machine resembling a cement mixer and mixed with a similar solution. The process dissolves an amino acid called myosin, so the meat becomes sticky and, when put into moulds, comes out looking like a whole piece of meat. If the ham is to be presented as a traditional cut, a layer of fat is stuck round the edge of the mould to make it look as though it has been cut off a whole leg.”

‘Reformed’ ham is made through basically the same process, but includes scraps left over from using formed ham - in other words, the gunge that collects at the bottom of the machine.

15 - A homemade shepherd’s pie contains about six ingredients. A supermarket alternative may have up to 60.

An own-brand sweet and sour chicken dish on sale in the chilled cabinet of one Irish supermarket chain has over 70 ingredients.

‘Cooked chicken’ accounts for just 20 per cent of it.

And even the chicken itself has more than 20 ingredients - five of them E numbers.

16 - If Tesco were a country, it would be the 54th richest in the world.

It’s one of a handful of supermarkets that controls much of what the world eats.

In Australia, two companies, Woolworths and Coles, sell a third of all food consumed.

In the US, Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, controls 20 per cent of a $450 billion market.

In Britain, the so-called ‘big four’ sell 75 per cent of the country’s groceries, with Tesco alone controlling 30 per cent of the market.

17 - Bangladeshi workers making Tesco t-shirts earn 7 cent an hour.

A recent report by the charity Action Aid also found that women supplying British supermarkets with cashew nuts are earning just 44 cent a day for work that exposes their hands to corrosive acids.

Tesco said it acknowledged that conditions in developing countries were ‘‘difficult’’, but added that trade was the best route out of poverty.

18 - In 1980, the average meal took one hour to prepare; now it takes 20 minutes.

It is predicted that this figure will shrink to eight minutes by 2010.

19 - Supermarket chaplains, nail-bars and even in-store weddings could all soon be part of the shopping experience.

Wal-Mart, which owns the Asda chain of stores, attributes its success to a policy of low prices, selling non-food items, and what it calls ‘retailtainment’.

In Britain, this has translated to offering customers the services of an in-store chaplain or their local MP.

There are actors working as greeters, nail bars, singles nights and Asda has even hosted a wedding in one of its British stories.

Asda is opening three stores in the North and is believed to be looking for the site for its first store south of the border.

20 - Fancy yourself as an ethical shopper? Well don’t clap yourself on the back just yet.Many organic brands marketed as if they are small, independent, benevolent firms are actually owned by trans-nationals.

They include Seeds of Change, bought by Mars in 1997 ; Green & Black’s , snapped up by Cadbury Schweppes in 2005; and Back to Nature, held since 2003 by Kraft, which is a subsidiary of Altria, the company that owns tobacco giant Philip Morris.