FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

That Stuff in Your Spice Cabinet Ain't Oregano

Consumer watchdog organization Which? analyzed 78 samples of dried oregano, purchased in retail shops across the UK and Ireland. And it turns out that a quarter of those samples contained matter that was simply not oregano.

Of all the things to mistrust in our kitchens, herbs and spices rarely make the cut. Pre-cut melon? Quarantine it. Take-out meat? Hope to God that it isn't rat.

OK, maybe things aren't quite that bad. But a new study out of the UK might make you look askance at those little bottles in your spice cabinet.

Consumer watchdog organization Which? analyzed 78 samples of dried oregano, purchased in retail shops across the UK and Ireland. And it turns out that a quarter of those samples, analyzed using mass spectrometry, contained matter that was simply not oregano.

Advertisement

READ: You Might Want to Rethink That Late Night Lamb Kebab

So, what was in it? According to the study, olive leaves, myrtle leaves, and cistus leaves comprised between 30 and 70 percent of product.

Sure, a bunch of filler is hardly reason to worry about your health. (In fact, cistus is used by some folk medicine practitioners in Eastern Morocco to treat diarrhea. So, you know, there's that.) The real problem is the insecurity of the food supply chain. If olive leaves can pass for oregano, what's stopping unscrupulous spice suppliers from loading their goods up with even cheaper adulterants that may be allergens or even toxic?

"Clearly we have identified a major problem and it may well reflect issues with other herbs and spices that enter the British Isles through complex supply chains," said study lead Professor Chris Elliott in a statement. "Much better controls are needed to protect the consumer from purchasing heavily contaminated products."

Students of food fraud will recall that Elliot was tapped by the UK government last year to investigate weaknesses in the nation's food supply network—perhaps most alarmingly that just two out of ten lamb curries purchased from North Yorkshire takeaways contained actual lamb.

For its part, Which? is demanding that the UK government and its food safety bodies to take a firmer stance against food fraud. "It's impossible for any shopper to tell, without the help of scientists, what herbs they're actually buying," said Richard Lloyd, the organization's executive director.

The downside? Even if you do get your hands on, say, some piquant Tellicherry peppercorns that are free from fraudulent additives, there's a not-insignificant chance that the rest of your spice cabinet is crawling with salmonella, too.