Many producers decide to aim their products at children as the customers. First of all they count on packaging design – variety of colour, playfulness and presentation of characters from children's films. None of these is prohibited by law…
Since the first trading people have found ways how to achieve higher profit. Ground rice was added to sugar, soil to cocoa, ground brick to paprika… Today in the period of analytical methods of excellence that can detect “almost anything”, it is not easy for the producers if they want to knowingly mislead the consumers by using cheap raw materials or undeclared substitutes. This year, inspections in the Czech Republic have found more than 1000 cases of this kind.
There is no retail chain in the Czech market that would not offer goods under their own label. What is the cause? In most Czech customers, price is still the most important criterion for purchase. If we compare common prices of branded products and private labels, the price difference can be up to around 10 CZK. However, the reason may not be in using materials of lower quality or cheating with the product basic ingredient. Actually, packaging and saving advertising and marketing costs play an important role in private labels.
Definite rules to label origin of food will be set in the second half of the next year. Marian Jurečka, the minister of agriculture, proposed a mark with Czech flag that will define Czech origin better.
Fruit tea full of fruit? Certainly yes while looking at the packaging. However, after reading the ingredients it is evident that the product contains aromas instead of expected fruit…
The issue also relates to other food commodities that are often aromatized. They are fruit beverages, flavoured milk drinks, yoghurts or cereal mixtures. Thanks to image features on packaging, consumers expect that the product contains real fruit ingredients or, at least, natural substances gained from fruit intended for aromatizing.
Adulteration of fish, wine and honey is one of the most frequent. The issue of food adulteration is all around.
