I live in a seafood town and one of the largest seafood distributers and one of the oldest restaurants were discovered to be in cahoots while marketing tilapia and other cheap fish as grouper and red snapper, charging 3 to 5 times the actual amount that should have been charged. They were both charged an undisclosed fine (rumours say it was only 10-15 thousand dollars). No one was held acrually legally accountable and allegedly the restaurant and seafood distributer are still doing it.
@@arcturuslight_ dude there are some people who dont believe im lactose intolerant and i live in a country where actually most of the population is lactose intolerant...
@@arcturuslight_most people won’t outright accuse you of lying, but there are definitely those who will give you looks or wont respect your food boundaries
This is all great for the big companies but if I had a corn allergy it'd be really nice if there was a way for /me/ to know whether my honey is going to kill me
@@cassieoz1702the vast majority of counterfeit honey is coming from a huge network of companies in Asia. I think the series on Netflix called Rotten has an episode about it. Highly recommend that series!
As someone with a TON of food allergies and intolerances, this type of sh*t ruins my life. Sometimes I have a reaction and I have NO WAY of tracking down where it even came from. It’s disheartening AF. ☹️
Lol yeah.While I don't have a ton of food allergies like you, I just have one but it's rare - Alpha Gal Syndrome. It doesn't have anything to do with that online Alpha/Beta/Sigma personality bs, rather what it does do is make me allergic to a sugar found inside the bodies of most mammals. I can still be around mammals (so I don't react from, say, petting my cat or kissing my partner), I just can't eat them. People think I'm lying about it and I'm just a picky vegan or whatever and that I should just be a little tougher. I've had several people assualt me in the past this way (I did press charges a couple times) because they thought that it would be ok and it would be a funny prank to slip a little beef broth or real bacon bits into my food, and then were shocked when I started reacting and 911 was called. I live in the US and the only way I could afford the hospital visits is by suing the person and/or resturant who did this to me in the first place and making them pay (literally, lol) instead. Edit: Typo
Ain't no way they will increase the punishment/enforcement for tackling crimes that could disrupt the economy, its all a cost benefit analysis, and the benefits of chasing these types of crimes aren't bigger than just letting it be and only applying some fines here and there.
i just did a 6 week lab in my bio101 class where we were DNA barcoding sushi samples from a local restaurant!! most of them were correctly labeled but all the flying fish roe was actually capelin roe :C
Chef sets the flying fish out, turns around to grab a knife or something, turns back, where's the fish? Did it swim away? Did it walk? You figure it out as you enjoy your capelin roe. We reserve the right to make substitutions at this restaurant.
This assumes 2 things. First, you're assuming that the FDA is good and effective at their job. And second, that private certification can't do it as well as or better than the FDA or other government agency. I'm not sure that either of these two assumptions are valid.
@@macsnafuthe FDA is effective. Could be better (need more inspectors), but we have come very far with food and medicine safety in the last 100 years. Private certs are only really effective when the victims of fraud are other companies since individual people don't have much power without a government to back them up.
I used to work at a small seafood chain in GA that would deliberately sell many fish as other fish like this. The worst offender was grouper - they would use swai instead and sell it for grouper prices. Most people couldn't tell the difference, but occasionally we'd get people who could tell the difference and our managers would try to gaslight them into thinking they were out of their minds to question it. It was so scummy. The family that owned it were also horrible people who abused and exploited all of us. I ended up permanently disabled because of them. I still throw them a big ol' bird whenever I pass one of their restaurants 😂
the fish one is a nightmare for me (allergies). i can eat a lot of fish, but some really common ones can make me super sick. already i have to deal with restaurants listing anything fish-like as 'fish' with no specific type given, but straight up lying about what kind of fish it is is so much worse
Honey is legally counterfitted in the USA. Only 25% of a honey product has to be actual honey, the other 75% can be high fructose corn syrup to legally be classified as honey.
I mean...majority of the other world would argue that similar legal counterfitting is the fact, that you can call american made cheese parmesan or sparkling wine champagne... Food safety laws seems to be much looser in USA than for example in EU in most categories, unfortunately...
Food counterfeiters are given a slap on the wrist when caught and it's a multi billion dollar industry. They make way more than the fine, so they just relabel and keep doing it. 😊
When counterfeiters don't have to give back their ill-gotten gains when caught, and the fines are noticeably lower than what was gained, the punishment isn't really a punishment or a fine; it's just another bit of overhead to add to the rest.
I'm guessing that if there is no real maple syrup in a bottle, it's not allowed to even have that word on the label in Canada anymore. It's called things like table syrup.
7:22 Yes. Yes they do *when Vanillin and other aromatics are being used* And yes, we do find excuses to use aromatic metalworking liquids even when other often cheaper fluids will work better. Usually the cheaper better working chemical is keosine or naptha. 😒. We really try not to use that stuff. Because of the smell. We tell the big bosses and monied clients its because its a fire hazard but it is because of the smell and resulting headaches.
The thumbnail took me by surprise because I've tried using olive oil as a replacement for lamp oil; It didn't work. Now I'm wondering if the site I read it from was up to something. 🤔
Olive oil *will work* for lamp oil, but it must be pre-heated before it will burn! You need a metal olive-oil lamp. I used to have one, they work pretty well to create light... but... Warning: within a few hours, everything around the lamp will smell, taste, and feel as though you had been throwing olive oil around everywhere. A small amount of olive oil will vaporize without burning, then condense and deposit on every nearby surface.
For those who want their vanilla to be proper vanilla extract and don't have an isotope ratio mass spectrometer to test theirs in, you can make it yourself, you just need to plan ahead. Like at least 6 months ahead. (oh, and if you're a recovering alcoholic who feels they need to avoid being around alcohol...this is not a solution for you.) Vanilla beans aren't sold at most major grocery stores, but you can certainly order them online, or pick them up at the kind of grocery store that specializes in the rare and fancy niche foods that big stores don't carry, if you have access to such a store. You'll need a sealable container - ideally the kind with a clamped-down lid, since you'll want to keep the lid on very tight for a while. And you'll need some alcohol - a really bland vodka or something like Everclear is best for a pure vanilla flavour (anything that's basically just alcohol and water and is 40% or more (or maybe a bit less - I've only done it with 40% abv vodka.). Any kind of hard alcohol will do the job, so if you want to experiment with mixing your favourite whiskey or brandy with vanilla, that's entirely viable, and I've seen claims that some flavour combinations work really well...but you will be adding your beverage's flavour to the vanilla, and that will in turn change how the vanilla alters the flavour of your end product. Once you've got your beans, your sealable container, and your alcohol, you're ready for the next step: Cut the beans down the middle lengthways - you're looking to open up access to the interior of the bean. Cut them to length such that they fit in your sealable container, if they won't fit (you might want at least a couple of inches of room above that). Clean out your container - it doesn't have to be 100% sterile because we're using intense amounts of alcohol, that's gonna kill anything that's left, but...we're gonna be leaving this to sit for *a while* so caution is generally wise. Put the vanilla beans in, then pour your chosen alcohol in such that the beans are fully submerged. Seal it up with just a bit of air at the top, and shake/swirl your container a bit. Put it in the cupboard for 6 months to a year. (Swirling it occasionally will help a bit, but you don't need to do it much. Just be patient. After 6 months have passed, open it up and smell it. You'll either get a smell with some alcohol and a lot of vanilla smell, or something gross - probably the former. If it's the latter...congratulations on growing a vial of mould, don't consume anything from that container. If it's the former, it's vanilla extract. The professionally made stuff uses an industrial process to speed up the extraction process, so it'll taste a *bit* different - fortunately vanilla isn't quite as delicate as olive oil, so the industrial extraction process doesn't ruin it the way it does with olive oil. But...the stuff you make at home will definitely be real vanilla extract, you're just doing it the old fashioned way. (And don't worry about the alcohol content - most of what you make with vanilla extract uses very small quantities and any heat process will evaporate the alcohol out of it anyway. It's no different from using cooking wine in things.)
you can make real honey not crystalize by pasteurizing it and maybe another process but that removes a lot of the taste and might decrease the beneficial compounds in it as it might break down from the heat. Americans seem to generally not like crystallized honey but in other parts of the world it's normal, in Europe we can buy runny honey but it's usually not as tasty, at least for me. There are also certain special honey types harvested later in the year that crystalizes at a lower temp than room temp so it will naturally stay liquid inside your house
Nope the crystallisation of honey depends on the flowers the bees visited. Honey from rapeseed crystallizes, while honey from Robinie/Akazie trees keeps liquid.
@@kayliecarlino3030 Awesome Socks Club is a subscription service that delivers socks with fun designs every month. It is owned by The Vlog Brothers, John and Hank Green, who also own the company that runs Sci Show.
if the punishment is only fines against non-human constructs (companies) that are controlled by (gasp) humans. then that's not a real deterrent, just a cost of doing lucrative business.
It's almost as if the way we organize the whole economy is incredible wasteful and cruel for no other reason than to enrich an ever shrinking circle of billionaires who believe they were chosen by God to lead us hordes of simpletons because we wouldn't know what's best for ourselves anyways.
Minor correction: sturgeon and paddlefish are not closely related, they're in different families and shared their last common ancestor 184 million years ago.
I am a biological artificial maple detector. When I was 11 and going into 7th grade, I started to get sick every Wednesday. Throwing up sick. Now, if I even smell artificial maple, I get queasy. My wife was and my roommate is diabetic. My wife - before we got married - was on a weight lost thing and she had picked up maple flavoring. I had told her years before about what it does to me, but she had never seen it in action. She asked me to sniff it. I took just a whiff. She told me that even with her poor vision, and no color vision, she could see that my face went pale.
I find this incredibly interesting. Thanks for sharing! I don't have any cool reason other than having pretty good taste buds I guess but I can always tell too, with that and honey vs the imitations.
Im a biological fresh fruit detector I’m allergic to pollen found in many fruits and vegetables but the pollen is broken down by heat so I can detect if fruit is actually fresh or if something contains fresh fruit juice by if it makes my mouth itchy or not
Subbing escolar for tuna is unfortunate--even if you don't have allergies the fish has an indigestible oil that will uh...come out liberally. I've seen sushi restaurants even label it as "white tuna" openly.
Vanilin is a weird one: - There are absolutely no differences in taste between artificial and natural vanillin - Artificial vanillin absolutely 100% is safe for consumption - Artificial vanillin is cheaper - Artificial vanillin production has a negligible environmental impact And yet, people continue to waste money on "real" vanillin. 😐
Two points: - There is a great deal more in natural vanilla extract than just vanillin. The two products do indeed taste different, with the natural extract being more complex. - Artificial vanilla extract is actually superior for most baked goods, because it has a higher concentration of vanillin and therefore a more intense flavor in the finished product. For this reason, I keep and use both. Anything that will be heated gets the cheaper artificial stuff, and anything that will remain cold gets the more complex natural (usually homemade) stuff.
My biggest issue with the whole olive oil "Scam" is that 1. Legit extra virgin olive oil is super expensive and incredibly hard to get, and 2. Not all knock offs are bad, some are exactly the same as the legit kind, it's just not made in the right part of the world. There really needs to be a 3rd category here, a "technically the same, but from a different part of the world".
Fantastic! So... when can we buy our very own scientist at the store to help us figure out all details whenw e buy everything? I know adopting a scientist is hard work, got to feed it, give it a bath and take them out twice a day, no worries!
A while back I did the vanilla extract hack by ordering vanilla beans and dropping them into a bottle of cheap vodka. When it got about three quarters of the way down I added some dollar store vanillin to give a stronger flavor. A little goes a long way.
Fair trade is also a good option, cuz if it gets found out they were committing fraud, they’d lose their free trade license (which ultimately gives more than swapping olive oil for lamp oil would give them)
THANK YOU for not using the heavyset girl to narrate this. Her voice is so unpleasant to listen to. I’ve been subbed since in the beginning and I’m so grateful for you diversifying the hosts so we can escape from the bad ones haha.
Niba!! It's been a real joy seeing you flourish as a SciShow host this year, I hope we'll get to spend many, many hours learning new and occasionally bizarre things with you in the new year. Wishing all the SciShow team, and all the Nerd Fighters in the comments, a wonderful Christmas if you hold it, and a wonderful couple of weeks if you don't. As always, it's been a real joy to spend time with you all in 2024.
i'm not usually one to do this (especially on science videos!) but that outfit is amazing the lines, the details, the red that works so well with the purple hair and the earrings are just icing on the cake!
One of the more cynical realities of this type of fraud is that if a small producer fakes it, it's likely the fines will bankrupt him - in the case of maple syrup, that means if they have any licenses of maple - as production is extremely harshly regulated - those licenses will be taken and sold, usually to a big player. That's justice as far as it goes, but if one of those big agri-companies does the same thing, usually the fines don't even cost as much as the profit they made by breaking the law. Similar circumstances exist in most industries - in the 2008 bank crisis, sure one or two financial firms went under, but aside from that the only ones who suffered were the regular folks - the ones who had been defrauded by the banks unethical & criminal behavior - while the big banks got bailed out and their executives got huge bonuses despite the fact it was illegal to use the bail out money in that regard. Some executive were prosecuted, but once again their fines were less than their profits. If we can't get our gov't's to punish these large multi-national companies, the transfer of wealth that the richest 1% have been orchestrating will continue and in the not too distant future they will steal every bit of wealth every one else has - or near enough to that as to make no difference. We're well on our way there already, where the 300 richest people have more wealth than the 4 billion (yes, BILLION!) poorest people in the world combined. There's a reason why that fellow who, let's say, "cast out" a certain health industry executive was not seen as the bad guy by a majority of the public. Not saying that's right, but . . .
I am glad that I don’t buy any meat or animal products anymore. There is rarely any food that I buy that I need to worry about. Only chocolate is a worry because so many brands add dairy and don’t write it on the ingredient list. Lots of people have been hospitalized due to this. Normally callbacks happen. Still scares me.
I found a cheaper test for honey. Buy the honey container that's mostly crystallized! Corn syrup won't crystallize like honey does. Of course none of these things would be wrong if they weren't trying to pass them off as something they're not. If the label says "honey sauce" or "honey syrup", then it's not pure honey, but some kind of blend.
In a slightly different vein, the demand for kopi luwak, one of the world's most expensive coffee varieties has led to the practice of keeping civets in cages and feeding them a diet of mainly coffee berries. This is problematic for a number of reasons. The poor treatment and welfare of these animals is significant. Civets are wild animals that require a diverse diet and space to roam, which is not possible in cages. The practice of feeding captive population a diet almost exclusively of peaberries can lead to health problems in the civets due to their restricted diet, as well as the poor living conditions experienced. Farmed or in this case, caged animals are more susceptible to disease. Greed and the profit motive leads to these inhumane practices.
Cool that there is finally a scientific way to detect olive oil fraud. But, if lower quality olive oil, like olive lamp oil, was mixed with EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) from the same orchard, would that be detectable? I think that would pass the DNA tests.
to get around dna testing for olive oil they just have to cut it with "slightly slutty olive oil". since people can't pre-taste a sealed bottle they just have to go on the promise of the label 😞
Whenever I see an article like this and they mention that it is historic, I am reminded of the Bible story where Jesus advocated for this with the dilution of wine and fish.
so many comments about how they have allergies and the substitute might be better. It really just goes to show they could still be selling some of these products if they were just honest about the ingredients, lol
Tuna often is higher in bio-accumulated mercury than some other fish, so some of the tuna fakes might be safer than tuna itself if they are from fish lower on the food chain. Personally I don't eat tuna. In part because of the mercury content, and in part because I just don't like the taste or smell of it.
Synthetic Vanilla is organically and molecularly identical to natural vanilla. Its really easy to grow the "extract" in a lab, and is in every way indistinguishable from the stuff harvested from a plant. Ultimately its just a chemical reaction, and if we understand the process well enough we can engineer it at mass production scale, which is great for something as useful and high demand as vanilla that is also quite rare and special in the natural world. Its like worrying that your water is synthetic lab made water from hydrogen and oxygen gases being mixed in tubes and not collected directly out of aquifers or rivers.
This isn't about synthetically derived chemicals, this is about people using a completely different ingredient than what's on the label. Selling a completely different fish and calling it tuna could end very poorly for some people, unlike synthetic vs. natural vanilla.
I live in a seafood town and one of the largest seafood distributers and one of the oldest restaurants were discovered to be in cahoots while marketing tilapia and other cheap fish as grouper and red snapper, charging 3 to 5 times the actual amount that should have been charged. They were both charged an undisclosed fine (rumours say it was only 10-15 thousand dollars). No one was held acrually legally accountable and allegedly the restaurant and seafood distributer are still doing it.
Well pretty sure the fine was not even a quarter of the profits they earned so no wonder they would keep doing it
Reiteration should be punished 10x times harshly, in a compound way: 10x, 100x, 1000x, etc
10-15k "fine" for them to be able to make more than 10-15k
Yeah, let's not act like capitalism dosen't find it attractive.
Name please
as someone with multiple anaphylactic allergies, this is terrifying... especially since people like to gaslight me out of some of them
How the hell are there still people not believing in allergies when they are so common now?
@@arcturuslight_ it shouldn't come off as a surprise when there's still flat earthers and other ignorant people out there
@@arcturuslight_ dude there are some people who dont believe im lactose intolerant and i live in a country where actually most of the population is lactose intolerant...
@@arcturuslight_most people won’t outright accuse you of lying, but there are definitely those who will give you looks or wont respect your food boundaries
and anaphylactic allergies are a really expensive harmful thing for people to try to gaslight.
This is all great for the big companies but if I had a corn allergy it'd be really nice if there was a way for /me/ to know whether my honey is going to kill me
Most of the world doesn't have high-fructose-corn-syrup. My understanding was that Europe's problem 'imported honey' was from USA
@@cassieoz1702the vast majority of counterfeit honey is coming from a huge network of companies in Asia. I think the series on Netflix called Rotten has an episode about it. Highly recommend that series!
Isnt high fructose corn syrup in everything in the USA? Will it actually trigger your allergy?
@@cassieoz1702 Most of the world and most of the food produced for the world are not the same thing.
@@popdogfoolThis person doesn't have a corn allergy because that isn't a thing. They said "if I had."
As someone with a TON of food allergies and intolerances, this type of sh*t ruins my life. Sometimes I have a reaction and I have NO WAY of tracking down where it even came from. It’s disheartening AF. ☹️
Weak
Saaaaaaame
Lol yeah.While I don't have a ton of food allergies like you, I just have one but it's rare - Alpha Gal Syndrome. It doesn't have anything to do with that online Alpha/Beta/Sigma personality bs, rather what it does do is make me allergic to a sugar found inside the bodies of most mammals. I can still be around mammals (so I don't react from, say, petting my cat or kissing my partner), I just can't eat them. People think I'm lying about it and I'm just a picky vegan or whatever and that I should just be a little tougher. I've had several people assualt me in the past this way (I did press charges a couple times) because they thought that it would be ok and it would be a funny prank to slip a little beef broth or real bacon bits into my food, and then were shocked when I started reacting and 911 was called. I live in the US and the only way I could afford the hospital visits is by suing the person and/or resturant who did this to me in the first place and making them pay (literally, lol) instead. Edit: Typo
Why so weak?
Of course you do. I bet you still wear a mask too? Have you got your attention quota for today?
They really need to increase consequences and/or enforcement because clearly a lot of people still think it's worth doing.
Crime doesn't pay... unless said crime is white collar and makes A LOT of money.
@@derekstein6193 And it's going to get worse in the next few years.
Ain't no way they will increase the punishment/enforcement for tackling crimes that could disrupt the economy, its all a cost benefit analysis, and the benefits of chasing these types of crimes aren't bigger than just letting it be and only applying some fines here and there.
Unfortunately the next four years will result in a large spike of preventable deaths in the US.
This is a nightmare for allergies / intolerances.
Intolerances*
I was caught by the science intrigue, reeled in by the devastating fashion sense, and slain by the puns. Excellence, as always!
i just did a 6 week lab in my bio101 class where we were DNA barcoding sushi samples from a local restaurant!! most of them were correctly labeled but all the flying fish roe was actually capelin roe :C
I could not cut open and kill a beautiful flying fish to take its eggs but at least it is not endangered.
@@snowmiaow yeah this is a happy ending fraud story XD
Chef sets the flying fish out, turns around to grab a knife or something, turns back, where's the fish? Did it swim away? Did it walk? You figure it out as you enjoy your capelin roe. We reserve the right to make substitutions at this restaurant.
What school is that?
@@snowmiaowThat is absolutely not how flying fish roe is harvested.
Turns out that Extra Virgin Olive Oil was actually very experienced and rather cynical.
This is why an active FDA is so important. Watch what happens to the FDA in the next year.
Ditto with the USDA, OSHA and health inspectors.
Republicans want us to be sicker so that private insurance companies will make more money, which they then give the GOP a chunk of.
@@Royce-fw1du the FDA is considered way behind now, not sure why
This assumes 2 things. First, you're assuming that the FDA is good and effective at their job. And second, that private certification can't do it as well as or better than the FDA or other government agency. I'm not sure that either of these two assumptions are valid.
@@macsnafuthe FDA is effective. Could be better (need more inspectors), but we have come very far with food and medicine safety in the last 100 years. Private certs are only really effective when the victims of fraud are other companies since individual people don't have much power without a government to back them up.
I used to work at a small seafood chain in GA that would deliberately sell many fish as other fish like this. The worst offender was grouper - they would use swai instead and sell it for grouper prices. Most people couldn't tell the difference, but occasionally we'd get people who could tell the difference and our managers would try to gaslight them into thinking they were out of their minds to question it. It was so scummy. The family that owned it were also horrible people who abused and exploited all of us. I ended up permanently disabled because of them. I still throw them a big ol' bird whenever I pass one of their restaurants 😂
the fish one is a nightmare for me (allergies). i can eat a lot of fish, but some really common ones can make me super sick. already i have to deal with restaurants listing anything fish-like as 'fish' with no specific type given, but straight up lying about what kind of fish it is is so much worse
10 bucks says that many if not all of the big companies do the same scams, they just don't get caught usually
Honey is legally counterfitted in the USA. Only 25% of a honey product has to be actual honey, the other 75% can be high fructose corn syrup to legally be classified as honey.
That's a shitty legislation....
I mean...majority of the other world would argue that similar legal counterfitting is the fact, that you can call american made cheese parmesan or sparkling wine champagne...
Food safety laws seems to be much looser in USA than for example in EU in most categories, unfortunately...
Woo lobbying
legal counterfeits through legal bribes
@@jankoset7766***sigh*** I’m going to be that person. *counterfeiting
I knew that food counterfeiting was a thing, just never realized how widespread it was. Also, love the outfit Niba!
Food counterfeiters are given a slap on the wrist when caught and it's a multi billion dollar industry. They make way more than the fine, so they just relabel and keep doing it. 😊
When counterfeiters don't have to give back their ill-gotten gains when caught, and the fines are noticeably lower than what was gained, the punishment isn't really a punishment or a fine; it's just another bit of overhead to add to the rest.
Oh yeah, let me pull out my DNA bar coder to make sure my honey and Olive oil is legit.
lamp oil? rope? bombs?
Its yours my friend! As long as you have enough rubies
Sorry Link, I can't give credit.
Come back when you're a little, mm, richer.
I'm guessing that if there is no real maple syrup in a bottle, it's not allowed to even have that word on the label in Canada anymore. It's called things like table syrup.
The science stuff is great, but consumers need ways to sus out the fakes that are cheap and easy.
7:22
Yes. Yes they do *when Vanillin and other aromatics are being used*
And yes, we do find excuses to use aromatic metalworking liquids even when other often cheaper fluids will work better. Usually the cheaper better working chemical is keosine or naptha. 😒. We really try not to use that stuff. Because of the smell.
We tell the big bosses and monied clients its because its a fire hazard but it is because of the smell and resulting headaches.
Respect lol
The thumbnail took me by surprise because I've tried using olive oil as a replacement for lamp oil; It didn't work. Now I'm wondering if the site I read it from was up to something. 🤔
Olive oil *will work* for lamp oil, but it must be pre-heated before it will burn! You need a metal olive-oil lamp. I used to have one, they work pretty well to create light... but... Warning: within a few hours, everything around the lamp will smell, taste, and feel as though you had been throwing olive oil around everywhere. A small amount of olive oil will vaporize without burning, then condense and deposit on every nearby surface.
do our thumbnails look different? I see sushi
it can't be overstated how much film heated olive oil can create on surfaces 😢
@@xZpsychox the thumbnails change sometimes
Interesting@@ProfessorJayTee
governments are also a problem allowing 60% olive oil for example to be legally advertised as 100% in some contries
What *_I'D_* like to know is why the USA doesn't consider corn syrup on tomato ketchup to be food fraud. 🙄
Ooh, I wish y’all included saffron. Often faked for crazy profit margins
Yes! Probably one of the most faked foods out there.
For those who want their vanilla to be proper vanilla extract and don't have an isotope ratio mass spectrometer to test theirs in, you can make it yourself, you just need to plan ahead. Like at least 6 months ahead. (oh, and if you're a recovering alcoholic who feels they need to avoid being around alcohol...this is not a solution for you.)
Vanilla beans aren't sold at most major grocery stores, but you can certainly order them online, or pick them up at the kind of grocery store that specializes in the rare and fancy niche foods that big stores don't carry, if you have access to such a store. You'll need a sealable container - ideally the kind with a clamped-down lid, since you'll want to keep the lid on very tight for a while. And you'll need some alcohol - a really bland vodka or something like Everclear is best for a pure vanilla flavour (anything that's basically just alcohol and water and is 40% or more (or maybe a bit less - I've only done it with 40% abv vodka.). Any kind of hard alcohol will do the job, so if you want to experiment with mixing your favourite whiskey or brandy with vanilla, that's entirely viable, and I've seen claims that some flavour combinations work really well...but you will be adding your beverage's flavour to the vanilla, and that will in turn change how the vanilla alters the flavour of your end product. Once you've got your beans, your sealable container, and your alcohol, you're ready for the next step:
Cut the beans down the middle lengthways - you're looking to open up access to the interior of the bean. Cut them to length such that they fit in your sealable container, if they won't fit (you might want at least a couple of inches of room above that). Clean out your container - it doesn't have to be 100% sterile because we're using intense amounts of alcohol, that's gonna kill anything that's left, but...we're gonna be leaving this to sit for *a while* so caution is generally wise. Put the vanilla beans in, then pour your chosen alcohol in such that the beans are fully submerged. Seal it up with just a bit of air at the top, and shake/swirl your container a bit. Put it in the cupboard for 6 months to a year. (Swirling it occasionally will help a bit, but you don't need to do it much. Just be patient.
After 6 months have passed, open it up and smell it. You'll either get a smell with some alcohol and a lot of vanilla smell, or something gross - probably the former. If it's the latter...congratulations on growing a vial of mould, don't consume anything from that container. If it's the former, it's vanilla extract.
The professionally made stuff uses an industrial process to speed up the extraction process, so it'll taste a *bit* different - fortunately vanilla isn't quite as delicate as olive oil, so the industrial extraction process doesn't ruin it the way it does with olive oil. But...the stuff you make at home will definitely be real vanilla extract, you're just doing it the old fashioned way.
(And don't worry about the alcohol content - most of what you make with vanilla extract uses very small quantities and any heat process will evaporate the alcohol out of it anyway. It's no different from using cooking wine in things.)
Honey with corn syrup doesn't crystalize when it's cold. Real honey will harden. That's the cheapest way
you can make real honey not crystalize by pasteurizing it and maybe another process but that removes a lot of the taste and might decrease the beneficial compounds in it as it might break down from the heat. Americans seem to generally not like crystallized honey but in other parts of the world it's normal, in Europe we can buy runny honey but it's usually not as tasty, at least for me. There are also certain special honey types harvested later in the year that crystalizes at a lower temp than room temp so it will naturally stay liquid inside your house
Honey will also just crystallise over time for example
Nope the crystallisation of honey depends on the flowers the bees visited.
Honey from rapeseed crystallizes, while honey from Robinie/Akazie trees keeps liquid.
Really enjoying Niba's hosting lately
I am very luck to live in a rural area where I can get both honey and maple syrup created locally. As in, one can go see where it comes from!
it felt odd seeing a sock add not for the awsome socks club
Hhh? Right over my head
@@kayliecarlino3030 Awesome Socks Club is a subscription service that delivers socks with fun designs every month. It is owned by The Vlog Brothers, John and Hank Green, who also own the company that runs Sci Show.
yea that was confusing xD
Remember when you see “whitefish” bring sold, it can be one or a blend of up to 60 species of fish.
if the punishment is only fines against non-human constructs (companies) that are controlled by (gasp) humans. then that's not a real deterrent, just a cost of doing lucrative business.
It's almost as if the way we organize the whole economy is incredible wasteful and cruel for no other reason than to enrich an ever shrinking circle of billionaires who believe they were chosen by God to lead us hordes of simpletons because we wouldn't know what's best for ourselves anyways.
It could be if the Fines were made larger than the theoretical profits of Fraud.
Minor correction: sturgeon and paddlefish are not closely related, they're in different families and shared their last common ancestor 184 million years ago.
I am a biological artificial maple detector. When I was 11 and going into 7th grade, I started to get sick every Wednesday. Throwing up sick. Now, if I even smell artificial maple, I get queasy. My wife was and my roommate is diabetic. My wife - before we got married - was on a weight lost thing and she had picked up maple flavoring. I had told her years before about what it does to me, but she had never seen it in action. She asked me to sniff it. I took just a whiff. She told me that even with her poor vision, and no color vision, she could see that my face went pale.
I find this incredibly interesting. Thanks for sharing! I don't have any cool reason other than having pretty good taste buds I guess but I can always tell too, with that and honey vs the imitations.
My BF is similar with Asiago cheese. Can't slip it past him.
Im a biological fresh fruit detector I’m allergic to pollen found in many fruits and vegetables but the pollen is broken down by heat so I can detect if fruit is actually fresh or if something contains fresh fruit juice by if it makes my mouth itchy or not
@@nothanks9503 Wow! Setting aside the unenviable discomfort, *that* is an impressive and useful trait to have!
@@Kittra.kaibyo Yeah I think it’s because my ancestors were from a frozen wasteland and only at jam and jelly and stuff
Subbing escolar for tuna is unfortunate--even if you don't have allergies the fish has an indigestible oil that will uh...come out liberally.
I've seen sushi restaurants even label it as "white tuna" openly.
It's time for a separate US government agency that only does food.
Similar to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Canada.
Vanilin is a weird one:
- There are absolutely no differences in taste between artificial and natural vanillin
- Artificial vanillin absolutely 100% is safe for consumption
- Artificial vanillin is cheaper
- Artificial vanillin production has a negligible environmental impact
And yet, people continue to waste money on "real" vanillin.
😐
Two points:
- There is a great deal more in natural vanilla extract than just vanillin. The two products do indeed taste different, with the natural extract being more complex.
- Artificial vanilla extract is actually superior for most baked goods, because it has a higher concentration of vanillin and therefore a more intense flavor in the finished product.
For this reason, I keep and use both. Anything that will be heated gets the cheaper artificial stuff, and anything that will remain cold gets the more complex natural (usually homemade) stuff.
At least we're still safe from kinder eggs.
My biggest issue with the whole olive oil "Scam" is that 1. Legit extra virgin olive oil is super expensive and incredibly hard to get, and 2. Not all knock offs are bad, some are exactly the same as the legit kind, it's just not made in the right part of the world. There really needs to be a 3rd category here, a "technically the same, but from a different part of the world".
Science actually can’t solve greed
Can study it and suggest solutions. But it's not science's job to do anything about it.
Science and religion are a friendly Tom and Jerry on that problem.
@@bryb2644 Religion is all about greed, even when it says it isn't. Science studies it, but isn't about it.
Fantastic! So... when can we buy our very own scientist at the store to help us figure out all details whenw e buy everything?
I know adopting a scientist is hard work, got to feed it, give it a bath and take them out twice a day, no worries!
I love that mass spectrometry is commonplace enough a ton of places actually have one
Do Hank and John run Sci Show? I was just surprised the ad was for socks other than their awesome socks club.
Yeah, Hank founded the company that also owns PBS Eons, journey to the microcosmos, and a few others.
This is one of those crimes that runs the whole gamut from relatively harmless to outright lethal, depending on the circumstances.
Thanks for the heads up on the food scammers Niba
I live in New England, where punched Skate has often been passed of as sea scallops to tourists. Most of us from the area know the difference..
American wasabi is big for that
We love Bombas!! ❤
A while back I did the vanilla extract hack by ordering vanilla beans and dropping them into a bottle of cheap vodka. When it got about three quarters of the way down I added some dollar store vanillin to give a stronger flavor. A little goes a long way.
That's why I pay extra for single source olive oil, from California, it's reassuring it hasn't been adulterated
Fair trade is also a good option, cuz if it gets found out they were committing fraud, they’d lose their free trade license (which ultimately gives more than swapping olive oil for lamp oil would give them)
THANK YOU for not using the heavyset girl to narrate this. Her voice is so unpleasant to listen to. I’ve been subbed since in the beginning and I’m so grateful for you diversifying the hosts so we can escape from the bad ones haha.
The heavyset female*
Niba!! It's been a real joy seeing you flourish as a SciShow host this year, I hope we'll get to spend many, many hours learning new and occasionally bizarre things with you in the new year. Wishing all the SciShow team, and all the Nerd Fighters in the comments, a wonderful Christmas if you hold it, and a wonderful couple of weeks if you don't. As always, it's been a real joy to spend time with you all in 2024.
Idk who this new host is, but I love your vibe, you dress like kinda like a vampire and I'm down with it ❤
@@swflracingbro get out of here
I'm confused. How does 'Maple falling' have to do with syrup? Syrup is a spring thing
I'm fine with beet juice. At least it's not cadmium red.
i'm not usually one to do this (especially on science videos!) but that outfit is amazing
the lines, the details, the red that works so well with the purple hair
and the earrings are just icing on the cake!
Thank god i never bought olive oil , i make it every year here in croatia with my family. Even with a few threes you have enough for whole year.
You should trademark the name "Three Trees "
@@SayAhh 😂 You made my day, with the "Three Trees" comment. Very Good Sir!
One of the more cynical realities of this type of fraud is that if a small producer fakes it, it's likely the fines will bankrupt him - in the case of maple syrup, that means if they have any licenses of maple - as production is extremely harshly regulated - those licenses will be taken and sold, usually to a big player. That's justice as far as it goes, but if one of those big agri-companies does the same thing, usually the fines don't even cost as much as the profit they made by breaking the law. Similar circumstances exist in most industries - in the 2008 bank crisis, sure one or two financial firms went under, but aside from that the only ones who suffered were the regular folks - the ones who had been defrauded by the banks unethical & criminal behavior - while the big banks got bailed out and their executives got huge bonuses despite the fact it was illegal to use the bail out money in that regard. Some executive were prosecuted, but once again their fines were less than their profits. If we can't get our gov't's to punish these large multi-national companies, the transfer of wealth that the richest 1% have been orchestrating will continue and in the not too distant future they will steal every bit of wealth every one else has - or near enough to that as to make no difference. We're well on our way there already, where the 300 richest people have more wealth than the 4 billion (yes, BILLION!) poorest people in the world combined. There's a reason why that fellow who, let's say, "cast out" a certain health industry executive was not seen as the bad guy by a majority of the public. Not saying that's right, but . . .
I am glad that I don’t buy any meat or animal products anymore. There is rarely any food that I buy that I need to worry about. Only chocolate is a worry because so many brands add dairy and don’t write it on the ingredient list. Lots of people have been hospitalized due to this. Normally callbacks happen. Still scares me.
I found a cheaper test for honey. Buy the honey container that's mostly crystallized! Corn syrup won't crystallize like honey does.
Of course none of these things would be wrong if they weren't trying to pass them off as something they're not. If the label says "honey sauce" or "honey syrup", then it's not pure honey, but some kind of blend.
In a slightly different vein, the demand for kopi luwak, one of the world's most expensive coffee varieties has led to the practice of keeping civets in cages and feeding them a diet of mainly coffee berries. This is problematic for a number of reasons. The poor treatment and welfare of these animals is significant. Civets are wild animals that require a diverse diet and space to roam, which is not possible in cages.
The practice of feeding captive population a diet almost exclusively of peaberries can lead to health problems in the civets due to their restricted diet, as well as the poor living conditions experienced. Farmed or in this case, caged animals are more susceptible to disease.
Greed and the profit motive leads to these inhumane practices.
I ALWAYS check my vanilla in my Isotope ratio mass spectrometer before I use it
Cool that there is finally a scientific way to detect olive oil fraud. But, if lower quality olive oil, like olive lamp oil, was mixed with EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) from the same orchard, would that be detectable? I think that would pass the DNA tests.
No way would I ever buy those overpriced socks. How can I trust a scammer?
Most olive oil these days is cut with other types of oils and still labeled olive oil.
Food fraud? Like oat milk?
7:00 Are there a lot of vanillin villains?
My GF's parents live close to a vanillin factory. You get really tired of the smell after a while...
Reminds me so much of the story behind the Austrian Wine Poisoning situation
The Laos one too
Most of this has been going on for decades.
to get around dna testing for olive oil they just have to cut it with "slightly slutty olive oil". since people can't pre-taste a sealed bottle they just have to go on the promise of the label 😞
Honey is pretty easy to tell apart from fructose addled ripoffs, honey is unlikely to remain sticky when you rub it between your fingers.
Corn syrup laced honey also won't crystallize. If your honey goes solid, it's legit.
Thank you for the advice SciShow.
You left off saffron, It's a real problem how one can't even get real saffron in the US
There was a test done on some kebab meat from kebabery in Leeds. The meat was "unknown"...mmm unknown meat!
If you watch your mercury intake, or watch your unethical harvested food intake, you're better off not eating the last real bluefin tuna
I like this new hostess! 👍🏻
Huh, here's for more food transparency! :)
Ehh a cheap fish with beet juice beats all the toxic compounds in our food
Whenever I see an article like this and they mention that it is historic, I am reminded of the Bible story where Jesus advocated for this with the dilution of wine and fish.
Wait, Bombas?! What about awesome dock club?
how does any of that help me? I know about it but it's still sold and I can't tell, except when it comes to high quality expensive honey.
sounds like we need to redefine labeling and packaging standards...
Bone apple tea
so many comments about how they have allergies and the substitute might be better. It really just goes to show they could still be selling some of these products if they were just honest about the ingredients, lol
Vanillin actually tastes better in blind tests
Lamp Oil? Rope? Bombs?
Seems really messed up to kill a fish just to eat its eggs.
Modern cavier farming doesn't usually kill the fish. They're given c- sections.
Sturgeon meat is eaten.
Yeah, no thanks.
Ikura (salmon roe) doesn't have that problem.
You did not say that vanilla flaver also comes from glands near bum of animals. Commonly used.... just a thought.😂
Foodcrime?
Like when my sister makes her Choking Hazard Curry?
Scallops are easy.. a real scallops muscle is vertical.. skate wing muscle runs horizontally and skate is close in taste and texture
Tuna often is higher in bio-accumulated mercury than some other fish, so some of the tuna fakes might be safer than tuna itself if they are from fish lower on the food chain. Personally I don't eat tuna. In part because of the mercury content, and in part because I just don't like the taste or smell of it.
Looks like an akatsuki dress :D
Food crimes are not punished hard enough. Usually it is just some fines undoing the illegal profit.
This whole episode was like
Tasty treat :)
Or is it? :/
There's a test for that :)
Scishow advertising socks that are not "Awesome"?!
I am shocked
Good!
Synthetic Vanilla is organically and molecularly identical to natural vanilla. Its really easy to grow the "extract" in a lab, and is in every way indistinguishable from the stuff harvested from a plant. Ultimately its just a chemical reaction, and if we understand the process well enough we can engineer it at mass production scale, which is great for something as useful and high demand as vanilla that is also quite rare and special in the natural world.
Its like worrying that your water is synthetic lab made water from hydrogen and oxygen gases being mixed in tubes and not collected directly out of aquifers or rivers.
This isn't about synthetically derived chemicals, this is about people using a completely different ingredient than what's on the label. Selling a completely different fish and calling it tuna could end very poorly for some people, unlike synthetic vs. natural vanilla.
I am so sorry to all US citizens who will have to deal with an even further defunded FDA in the future.
lol
I miss Sci sho space yo