2. Kobe Beef Doesn’t Really Exist
Seasoned carnivores know that Kobe beef is just about the cream of the crop, if you can afford it. The Japanese Wagyu cattle it comes from are raised with a very direct set of rules, followed with the kind of strict meticulousness you’d expect from a country where making a cup of tea is an hour-long ritual.
Luckily, the international market has made Kobe beef pretty widely available. Nowadays, many restaurants keep Kobe on the menu, and many a well-equipped meat purveyor is able to get his hands on a chunk every now and then. And as the markets open, the prices plummet — these days, you can totally enjoy a delicious Kobe burger for the relatively measly price of $81.
“Here’s your wrong burger with a side order of french lies. Enjoy!”
Say, ever wonder where all this sudden, delicious Kobe influx comes from?
The Horror:
Nowhere, that’s where. Every single restaurant and beef purveyor boasting Kobe beef is lying its ass off. You have never had real Kobe beef. Not in the U.S., not in Europe, not in Australia. Unless you actually flew to Japan and specifically sought it out, you haven’t had a shadow of a chance to even sniff a Kobe steak.
Nope, doesn’t count.
In fact, the strict rules that apply to Kobe production aren’t in compliance with U.S. legislation, which technically makes the meat more or less illegal stateside. And there is precious little Kobe beef to go around — so it doesn’t. With the exception of Macau, for some reason, Kobe beef is exclusive to Japan, and even there it can be a bastard to find.
So wait, what are they actually feeding us when we pick “Kobe” off the menu? Whatever the hell they want. The term “Kobe beef” is only subject to regulation within Japan, so for the rest of us, it can legally apply to anything that doesn’t violate the “beef” part of the description.
“That’ll be a million dollars.”
When you buy something labeled “Kobe beef,” it’s likely that you’re actually buying something with a vague explanation, like it’s prepared “in the style” of a Kobe steak, which probably isn’t enough to warrant the $80 price tag, unless you’re one of those creepy Japanophiles.
1. Your Olive Oil Is Fake, Thanks to the Mob
Even though it’s basically just fat, olive oil is one of those fabled “good fats” that sounds like “healthy cigarettes,” except that the folks at Harvard will even tell you that olive oil can prevent heart disease and generally help you live longer. It’s such a shame that you may never actually get to try the stuff, thanks to a shadowy global conspiracy that exists purely to keep it away from you.
The Horror:
As crazy as it sounds, olive oil piracy is one of the Italian Mafia’s most lucrative enterprises, to the extent that it appears that most olive oil on the market is either greatly diluted or completely forged by a massive shadow industry that involves major names such as Bertolli.
They’ve been at it for a while, too — Joe Profaci, said to be one of the real-life dons who inspired the character of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, was known by the moniker of “The Olive Oil King.” But evidence suggests that olive oil racketeering has been a major problem in the world for centuries. Hell, the ancient Sumerians had a fraud squad for shady olive oil peddlers.
Today, the stuff that is pawned off to us as quality olive oil is often just a tiny amount of the real thing, mixed with up to 80 percent of ordinary, less than healthy, cheap as muck sunflower oil. That is, if you’re getting any olive oil at all. In fact, we’re so used olive oil that apparently food connoisseurs reject the real stuff because it tastes fake to them.
But why would anyone bother? It’s freaking olive oil. How much money can there be in it when you can get a bottle for a few bucks at the grocery store? It turns out that, profit-wise, shady olive oil is comparable to cocaine trafficking. If anything, the reality would have really changed the atmosphere of the Godfather movies.
