Two New Zealand teenagers humbled GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s biggest food companies:
Their school science experiment found that [GlaxoSmithKline’s] ready-to-drink Ribena contained almost no trace of vitamin C.
Students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo tested the blackcurrant cordial against rival brands to test their hypothesis that cheaper brands were less healthy.
Instead, their tests found that the Ribena contained a tiny amount of vitamin C, while another brand’s orange juice drink contained almost four times more. . . .
GSK said the girls had tested the wrong product, and it was concentrated syrup which had four times the vitamin C of oranges. But when the commerce commission investigated, it found that although blackcurrants have more vitamin C than oranges, the same was not true of Ribena. It also said ready-to-drink Ribena contained no detectable level of vitamin C.
The students used iodine titration to determine Vitamin C levels. Why had the students managed to see something important that the food giant overlooked? My guess is that an unusual processing step (e.g., high storage temperature) destroyed the Vitamin C and those who knew about the anomaly didn’t want to consider the possibility that it had done damage. The possibility that someone outside the company might notice didn’t occur to them. Just as those who mislabel fish in New York restaurants and markets never realized that two students could uncover their deception. I found that the omega-3 in a Chinese brand of flaxseed oil was probably destroyed before it got to me.
I’m curious about what you’re doing/did in Beijing now to try to get something that might really be flaxseed oil high in Omega 3s.
Kevin, I bought a lot of flaxseed oil in America and dragged it here. (Literally dragged it. The duffel bag was too heavy to carry.)
I was afraid of that :
My effort to put in an emoticon seems to have truncated this. Thanks for the info. Do you try to keep it refrigerated, or aren’t you worried about deterioration?
For me, the purchase of a Kindle has greatly lowered the weight of my luggage when I go to China. I guess flaxseed oil can now take the place of print…
Yes, I try to keep it refrigerated.
I have a bottle of flaxseed oil that has been continuously refrigerated since I bought it, including one week in an ice chest in 2005 while I drove cross-country. Its expiration date says November 2001. (Not a joke.) I wonder if it would be useful to anybody for research on deterioration rates or something.