This one should be easy enough to sort out. DNA and all that.
The Irish court decision on Subway's bread was actually a bit trickier, link after the jump.
From the WaPo via the Seattle Times, January 27:
Subway describes its tuna sandwich as “freshly baked bread” layered with “flaked tuna blended with creamy mayo then topped with your choice of crisp, fresh veggies.” It’s a description designed to activate the saliva glands — and separate you from your money.
It’s also fiction, at least partially, according to a recent lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint alleges the ingredient billed as “tuna” for the chain’s sandwiches and wraps contains absolutely no tuna.
A representative of Subway said the claims are without merit. Not only is its tuna the real deal, the company says, but it’s wild-caught, too.
The star ingredient, according to the lawsuit, is “made from anything but tuna.” Based on independent lab tests of “multiple samples” taken from Subway locations in California, the “tuna” is “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna,” according to the complaint. Shalini Dogra, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, declined to say exactly what ingredients the lab tests revealed.
“We found that the ingredients were not tuna and not fish,” the attorney said in an email to The Washington Post.
Two plaintiffs are identified in the complaint: Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin, both residents of Alameda County in the Bay Area. But attorneys for Dhanowa and Amin hope to get their claim certified as a class action, which could open the case up to thousands of Subway customers in California who purchased tuna sandwiches and wraps after Jan. 21, 2017....
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On the something's fishy beat:
"Blockchain Could Help Restaurants Make Sure the Seafood You Order Is Actually What Lands on Your Plate"I vaguely recall this story from a couple years ago. Something about cats and preventing diarrhea or something. It seemed to be one of the few uses of blockchain tech that actually made sense.
Take a look at this from Futurism and I'll see if I can find a post with felines and gastric distress.
Fish Fraud....
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And the ins-and-outs of bread in Ireland:
"Pain, brioche, and the language of taxation"
We made mention of the Irish court ruling as the outro from another post on Irish Whiskey:
And in other news from Ireland, from The Journal.ie:
Subway sandwiches contain 'too much sugar' to legally be considered bread, Supreme Court rules
The sugar is equal to 10% of the weight of the flour which probably caramelizes nicely but puts the stuff near the range of confection.
And here's a language lesson from Canadian econ blog Worthwhile Canadian Initiative:
Ireland's Supreme Court recently ruled that the buns Subway uses in its sandwiches contain too much sugar to be considered "bread", and are thus subject to Value Added Tax (VAT). The decision lead to headlines and discussion along the lines of "Irish High Court Rules Subway’s Sandwich Bread Is Not Legally Bread" or "Ireland declares that Subway’s bread is basically cake". The emphasis was on how "confused" and "bizarre" the entire debate was, and the cost and arbitrary nature of distinctions made in tax legislation: "Having moral distinctions between foodstuffs in your tax regulations turns out to be an awfully expensive thing".
Yet the discussion of whether or not Subway buns are bread is only confused and bizarre in English, with our barren culinary language. In French, the discussion would not seem peculiar. French distinguishes between three broad categories of baked goods: unsweetened bread is "pain", sweetened bread (often made with eggs and milk) is "brioche", and cake is "gâteau." Hence the expression "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" is (somewhat misleadingly) translated as "let them eat cake", because there is no English word for sweetened bread.
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