Lin Chen/Wen
The domestic edible oil market is an industry in which the head brand occupies the vast majority of the share, but there is no shortage of new entrants in this industry. What makes old money and upstarts go together is usually their obsession with ingredients and reference standards.
"Can you find vegetable oils with cholesterol?" Oil and fat scholar He Zi made such a rhetorical question to the financial network Sankei in response to the phenomenon of labeling 0 grams of cholesterol in a variety of edible oils.
In the eyes of many scholars in the field of food science, similar publicity operations such as labeling cholesterol as 0, refusing to blend a single pure oil, and competing with each other on the 1% low erucic acid standard are either nutritionally meaningful or just marketing gimmicks.
Pure oil is no more noble than blending oil, and antioxidant addition is not the original sin
The "king" of the condiment industry, Haitian Flavor Industry, entered the edible oil field online last week, leading the way with soybean oil and corn germ oil. Interestingly, the visual core part of the packaging of both products is the slogan of "only one pure oil, refuse to blend".
Image source: Screenshot of Haitian Tmall flagship store
Caijing Network Sankei consulted shop customer service, the so-called blending refers to different oil blends, and does this mean that Haitian believes that a single pure oil is better than a blended oil? Customer service directly stated that a single pure oil is safer than a blended oil.
"It's just coming in to attract people's eyes." Oil and fat scholar He Zi commented to the financial network Sankei, "There is no difference between the health of a single pure oil and a blended oil. If it is a prepared oil, the nutrition will be richer. There is no more noble term for pure oil. ”
Caijing Network Also sent an inquiry letter to the Secretary Office of the Board of Directors of Haitian, consulting whether the blending essence of blended oil is a kind of "collusion" in Haitian's view. Will Haitian not launch blending oil products in the future? However, no response was ever received.
In fact, the focus of Haitian's publicity is also on the non-added antioxidants marked under the packaging of the two edible oils. And that's not a new narrative.
Image source: Screenshot of Fulinmen Tmall flagship store
The product detail page of COFCO Fulinmen Peanut Oil 5L/Barreled Household Edible Oil sold in the Flagship Store of Fulinmen Tmall mentions that "reject additives to escort health". However, peanut original aromatic blended oil in the same store is labeled to contain the additive tert-butyl hydroquinone.
According to this, the financial network asked Forlinmen that if the additive is not conducive to health, does the addition of terbutyl hydroquinone to the blended oil mean that the safety of the product is flawed? If the additive is added within a reasonable range, there is no compliance problem, is There a suspicion of demonizing the additive? Why are values not consistent within the brand? However, as of press time, no response has been received.
For the compliance of antioxidants, He Zi pointed out to the financial network that food additives can be added as long as they meet the relevant standard limits of GB2760. Therefore, products with added antioxidants are not substandard products.
Vegetable oil label cholesterol is more than 0 is a gimmick, rapeseed oil talks about thioside is a transfer of flowers and elderberry
If pure oil and blending oil, antioxidants or not is only a technical route dispute, then the cholesterol and thiosides in vegetable oil can almost be called "out of nothing" misleading information.
Caijing Found in a Tmall search that Yihai Kerry's Arowana, Orchid Flower, Ori Vera, and Duoli, a subsidiary of Jiage Group, marked cholesterol 0 grams in the ingredient list of many of its vegetable oil products.
Image source: Screenshot of Duoli Tmall flagship store
But several professionals, including He Zi and food science expert Li Hong, scoffed at it. "Can you find vegetable oils with cholesterol?" The above-mentioned expert asked the financial network Sankei rhetorically. Both indicate that cholesterol is usually only found in animal foods, and that plants themselves do not contain cholesterol.
Wang Cheng, a scholar who has studied the field of plant protein for many years, told The Finance and Economics Network that according to the GB7718-2011 General Rules for Prepackaged Food Labeling, enterprises should not use false and exaggerated, misunderstanding or deceptive words to introduce food, and should not mislead consumers to confuse a certain nature of food with another product. Therefore, writing 0 grams of cholesterol on the vegetable oil label implies that there is no one and that there is something contained in other countries. Think of it as a marketing gimmick.
Liu Lan, an expert who has tracked the dynamics of the grain and oil field for many years, interpreted it from another angle, revealing that the edible oil industry has not actually advocated such labeling. Because although in principle plants do not contain cholesterol, if the company labels it with 0, it will actually put itself in a passive position.
"After all, cholesterol itself is not a bad thing, you can't say that no is good, people also need a little cholesterol, but too much is not enough." "From a technical point of view, there is no technology in the production process to 'remove' cholesterol, and even if there is a point, there is no need to rule it out. From the perspective of hard standards, there is no cholesterol index in the relevant standards of vegetable oil. It is purely the enterprise painting snake and over-publicizing. ”
Wei Jianxiao, a lawyer at Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, also believes that this situation is similar to labeling yourself as non-GMO in a category without genetically modified products. Due to the misleading of consumers who do not understand the industry, it affects the purchasing behavior of consumers, resulting in the consequences of unfair competition for other brands in the industry.
Also "transferring flowers" is the "thioside" indicator of rapeseed oil. Caijing Network found in the official flagship store of Daodao All Day Cat that the detail page of its double low-pressure rapeseed oil products sold highlighted that its thioside was less than 30 micromoles / g, saying that it was based on the GB 1536 national standard.
Image source: Daodao all-day cat flagship store
However, after checking GB/T 1536-2004, caijing network did not find a reference value for thioside. Liu Lan told the financial network Sankei that in layman's terms, thioside is a kind of choking nose and volatile taste in the process of rapeseed oil processing and production, which has nothing to do with consumers when they cook vegetables themselves.
He Zi revealed to the financial network that the so-called double low rapeseed oil refers to low urtic acid and low sulfur glycosides, but thiosides are in the cake meal, not in the oil. Thioside is not a requirement for oil.
For example, the double low rapeseed agricultural industry standard NY/T: 1795-2009 stipulates that the erucic acid content of the fatty acids in the oil in rapeseed is not more than 5.0%, and the thioside content in the cake meal is not more than 45.0umol/g rapeseed, which can be called double-low rapeseed.
Caijing Sent the above questions to the mailbox of the Secretary of the Board of Directors of Daodao, but did not get a response.
There may be no nutritional differences in the low erucic acid scale, and the high oleic acid benchmark is yet to be clarified
In fact, there are many more ways for edible oil brands to make a fuss about standards. The financial network found that the above-mentioned Daodao full product mentioned that it was based on the national standard, and the erucic acid content was less than 3%. However, in the official flagship store of Luhua Tmall, the product detail page of low-canola oil with low erucic acid indicates that the product's erucic acid is less than 2%. It also said that it follows the international standards recommended by the WHO and FAO.
Why follow the same market with two different values? Are international standards that seem more stringent than "loose" national standards? In this regard, some experts, including Liu Lan and He Zi, believe that the concept of hypocrecyc acid was first proposed by overseas countries such as Canada. The standard is 5%. At that time, rapeseed oil, as a popular variety in the Yangtze River Basin, was usually about 20% of the high erucic acid.
"But there has been no clear evidence that people in the Yangtze River Basin have had a particularly high number of heart disease cases because they eat canola oil." Of course, in theory, we should also go to low erucic acid. Liu Lan said, "Later, we followed the international standard to set the standard at 5%, but others lowered it to 3%, or even to 2%. But in fact, 3% or 5% is not inedible, they are all healthy. ”
For the national standard of rapeseed oil from mandatory standard to recommended standard, He Zi said that the erucic acid content is related to the variety, has nothing to do with processing, 2% and 3% are basically no difference in nutrition, and it makes no sense to tangle this value.
However, another scholar in the field of grain and oil, Zhao Bi, believes that the conversion to recommended standards is due to the difficulty of current domestic technology. It reveals that laboratories may be able to achieve 1% or even 0% erucic acid content, but industrial production is difficult to even average 5%. For the products marked with 2% in the current label, the suspicion is that the rapeseed variety used is imported. However, the financial network Sankei sent the above speculation to Lu Hua, and did not get an explanation.
Image source: Screenshot of Luhua Tmall flagship store
"In fact, double-low rapeseed oil is less talked about, and now it is more popular to have high oleic acid." Zhao Bi introduced to the financial network Sankei. However, according to the GB/T 1536-2004 standard, the oleic acid reference range of the low canola oil itself is 51%-70%, and the oleic acid content of Luhua product is 55%-70%, which claims to have the advantage of high oleic acid in the slogan.
"55% is not as high as oleic acid." Zhao Bi and Liu Lan both made such a judgment to the financial network Sankei, and this is not just the right
The values are within the standard interval. According to the two, the national standard for high oleic acid rapeseed oil is being finalized, which will probably be presented at a benchmark of 70% or 72%, and those who do not meet the standard are ordinary rapeseed oil, and if they violate the publicity, they may be fined. It also said the industry hopes to combine the standards for rapeseed oil and high-oleic rapeseed oil by 2026.
Perhaps, the "unclear" terminology publicity on the edible oil packaging needs more practitioners to have a sense of kindness before a more explicit normative document is introduced.
(It is the request of the interviewee that Li Hong, Wang Cheng, Liu Lan, Zhao Bi, and He Zi are pseudonyms)