You just can't be too careful when you go shopping these days. Even when you think you're getting a safe, wholesome 100% pure product it can turn out that you are being mislead by deceptive labeling and dishonest manufacturers.
According to Lydia Mulvany reporting for Bloomberg Business, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration paid a surprise visit to Castle Cheese in Slippery Rock, PA in 2012. They discovered that the company was doctoring its "100% real Parmesan cheese" with cut rate substitutes and such fillers as wood pulp. Turns out that they weren't the only ones either.
Some grated Parmesan suppliers have been mislabeling products by filling them with too much cellulose, a common anti-clumping agent made from wood pulp, or using cheaper cheddar, instead of real Romano. Cellulose is a safe additive, so the government says. And an acceptable level in a product is 2-4%, according to Dean Sommer, a cheese technologist at the Center for Dairy Research in Madison, Wisconsin. But an independent lab tested Everyday Essential 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese manufactured by Jewel-Osco and found that 8.8% of the product was cellulose, while Wal-Mart's brand, Great Value, registered 7.8%, veritable Kraft brand's Parmesan had 3.8% and Whole Foods 365 store label tested at 0.3%.
But back to Castle Cheese...According to the FDA's report, "no Parmesan cheese was used to manufacture" the Market Pantry brand 100% grated Parmesan Cheese, sold at Target Corporation stores. Instead there was a mixture of Swiss, mozzarella, white cheddar and cellulose. And the problem is wide spread throughout the industry. DariConcepts, a Springfield, Missouri cheese maker that's a subsidiary of Dairy Farmers of America, said on its website that in a test of 28 brands, only one-third of label claims about protein levels in grated Parmesan were accurate. The bottom line is that many cheese manufacturers distridute adulterated products because it saves them money.
Tomorrow: More on the battle for real cheese.
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