90% of vinegar suffers from "matching door"

These days, the news that 90% of the vinegar on the market is a blending has received much attention. The production of blended vinegar can be completed in one day, which has not only caused the worries of consumers, but also some supermarkets have taken action. Shanxi produced vinegar and began to take off.

9 into vinegar is blending?

Recently, media reports said that about 3.3 million tons of vinegar are consumed annually throughout the year, of which about 90% are blended with vinegar. Wang Jianzhong, vice president of the Vinegar Industry Association of Shanxi Province, revealed the alarming news: The true sense of Shanxi's old vinegar on the market is less than 5%. Wang Jianzhong said, “There are two kinds of blending vinegar, one is glacial acetic acid blending, and the other is additive with antiseptic additive of sodium benzoate, 95% of additives are added, no added preservatives, pure brewed 6-degree vinegar not much."

Some Shanxi vinegar is labeled with additives. Most of the vinegars on the market are marked with brewing words. For example, Zhenjiang's Hengshun vinegar is marked as “brewing vinegar, solid state fermentation”. Raw materials include: water, glutinous rice, wheat bran, white granulated sugar, edible salt. A type of Taiyuan-original bagged Shanxi vinegar is also labeled as brewing vinegar. The list of ingredients includes: water, sorghum, corn, bran, barley, peas, and salt. And the product standard numbers marked by both are: GB18187, a mandatory national standard for brewing vinegar. The difference is that the Hengshun vinegar logo also states that the product does not add preservatives, and the latter lists the three food additives contained: caramel color, sodium benzoate, sucralose.

It is understood that one of the biggest highlights of the new national standard of Shanxi Vinegar Vinegar is to adjust the total acid content from the previous 4.5 degrees to 6 degrees, because such old vinegar can not add any preservatives and cancel the shelf life. Shanxi aged vinegar can be at room temperature. , long-term storage and consumption in a cool environment.

In response to the dispute over the safety of vinegar in the domestic market, many food experts stated that the blended vinegar is based on brewing vinegar. As long as it is added according to the standard, there is no safety problem.

Some experts said that the current detection methods are difficult to distinguish between brewing vinegar and blending vinegar, the current national standards are still not perfect, it is necessary to establish a reasonable new vinegar industry standard.

What is the difference between blended vinegar and brewed vinegar?

Dr. Lu Wei is a researcher at a food institute in Beijing and has been researching Chinese traditional fermented vinegar for many years.

Lu Hao introduced that according to national standards, there are two types of vinegar, one is brewing vinegar, and the other is vinegar blending. Blending vinegar is a seasoning vinegar made by mixing vinegar and food additives. Among them, the proportion of brewing vinegar should not be less than 50%. The former has been brewing for a long time, the process is complicated, and it cannot meet the market demand. However, the country also has requirements for blending vinegar, in which the content of brewing vinegar must not be less than 50%.

In addition to acetic acid, brewing vinegar also contains a variety of organic acids such as lactic acid, as well as some nutrients introduced into the raw materials and nutrients that are degraded. The blended vinegar in the lactic acid and other organic acid nutrient content is less, more acid.

Professor Bao Ping of the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University stated that some mature vinegar must be fermented for half a year. Blending vinegar is a simple blending process. The process is much different and the cost is much lower.

According to the standard production can rest assured that eating blended vinegar can not eat?

Lu Hao said that many consumers feel that “blending” is not good. In fact, this is a misunderstanding. Some traditional fermented foods, such as soy sauce, vinegar, and white wine, are integrated in the production process to ensure the uniformity of product quality. Just a normal process.

Lu Wei said that because blending vinegar is not entirely brewing vinegar, so the issue of shelf life issues, it is necessary to add preservatives, but as long as the strict accordance with national standards to add, not exceeding the scope of use, there is no safety problem.

Lu Wei revealed that at the moment, whether it is blending vinegar or brewing vinegar, vinegar without preservatives is hard to find. Therefore, “there is no standard for sodium benzoate to determine whether it is a standard for brewing vinegar.”

Ji Baoping said that blending is a normal method, blending vinegar is completely edible, and the country also has relevant standards for blending vinegar.

Lu Wei said that there are indeed some manufacturers using glacial acetic acid to directly blend edible vinegar. This does not comply with China's provisions for the production of blended vinegar. Industrial acetic acid is not a raw material for food and it is an illegal additive and certainly has a safety hazard to the human body.

Lu Hao said that consumers are best to buy regular manufacturers of well-known products in large supermarkets, and now more stringent food safety monitoring, the greater the company, relatively speaking, the more assured product quality.

Are there no clear criteria for distinguishing blended vinegar from brewed vinegar?

According to Lu Wei’s introduction, national standards do not have a good way of distinguishing between brewing vinegar and blending vinegar. Therefore, "Shanxi vinegar blending door" actually exposed the loopholes in the vinegar industry's national standards.

Together with the Beijing Food Safety Monitoring Center, they had purchased a variety of edible vinegar from supermarkets and farmers' markets, conducted research and research on detection methods, and hoped to find a method for judging brewing vinegar and blending vinegar, but it was difficult to put the two together. Differentiate.

However, according to their tests, some manufacturers are concerned that consumers are resistant to blending vinegar, so they are also referred to as brewing vinegar in the blended vinegar products.

At the end of May this year, the China Condiment Association organized a seminar on the revision of blended vinegar product standards. The relevant departments, testing organizations, etc. had held a standard seminar on edible vinegar. Some people proposed a method of differentiation, but the method was still immature. The data is not perfect, and the cost of testing is high. It remains to be determined how to detect and how to add it to the standard. However, due to the high cost of testing, it fails to do so.

Lu Wei said that this requires the government to increase investment, production, research, research and testing units to work together to establish new and appropriate standards.

Ji Baoping said that in fact, the blending of vinegar or brewing vinegar itself is not a serious problem, but the business must be made clear to the people to consume, the relevant state departments can design the relevant product description label, affixed to the vinegar packaging, easy for consumers Differentiate brewing vinegar and blending vinegar.

Response • Wang Jianzhong's "95% blending of vinegar is a misunderstanding." This is a misinterpretation of an interview with my reporter who is not familiar with the industry and speaks to me. Yesterday, Wang Jianzhong said in a telephone interview with this reporter: At the time, I was not interviewed by the “Vice Chairperson of the Shanxi Vinegar Industry Association”. Instead, I was interviewed as “Shanxi Gold Vinegar Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Chairman”; more importantly, the content reported by the media was fundamental. Not what I mean, I mean that more than 95% of vinegar in Shanxi is added with sodium benzoate, a food additive allowed by the country.

According to reports, Wang Jianzhong introduced that blended vinegar is also divided into two types, one is glacial acetic acid blending, the other is adding sodium benzoate as a preservative, adding additives to account for 95%, adding no preservatives, and 6 degrees of pure brewing. There is little old vinegar, which accounts for less than 5% of the market.

"The use of glacial acetic acid blended vinegar is not allowed. No such blending is currently found in Shanxi," said Wang Jianzhong. "Shanxi vinaigrette" does not require any preservatives due to its special process. It is the root of Shanxi's old vinegar. However, “Shanxi Vinegar” or “Shanxi Vinegar” is not the case. Because they do not meet the relevant production standards of “Shanxi Vinegar”, they do not reach a certain degree of acidity, they are prone to deterioration, so it is necessary to add sodium benzoate for preservation. According to regulations, this is required on the packaging of the product to label the added preservative ingredients.

"And the addition of this preservative is universal in all major vinegar factories in the country," Wang Jianzhong emphasized: Shanxi's old vinegar without added preservatives has a market share of about 5%. In addition, some of the products on the market that use the Shanxi Vinegar flag are not made in Shanxi.

Shanxi Quality Supervision Center:

On August 6, the Shanxi Provincial Food Quality Supervision and Inspection Center released information that the old vinegar products produced in Shanxi are safe and reliable, and there is no phenomenon of abuse of antiseptics beyond the scope or limit, and it can be safely eaten.

Shanxi local media quoted the person in charge of the Shanxi Bureau of Quality Supervision as saying: Shanxi Province has been certified as "Shanxi vulgar vinegar," the logo are brewing production, the current domestic market marked "Shanxi vinegar" or "old Shanxi vinegar," the words Vinegar products are not all produced by Shanxi enterprises.

Going out of the vinegar blending door, Shanxi Chen vinegar, which required concrete action to fall into the “complementation door”, undoubtedly set off a disturbance on the dining table. At this time, the public needs to be calm and rational, and the departments concerned need to act and respond.

In the field of food safety, "complementing the door" has been successively staged, and some well-known brands have become very disreputable.

KFC's "alcohol milk" was originally made from soy milk powder. The "bone soup" of Ajisen Ramen was a blend of soup and water. More amazing news came from the mouth of Wang Jianzhong, vice chairman of Shanxi Vinegar Industry Association. The true sense of the sale of Shanxi's old vinegar is less than 5%. Consumers usually drink the essence of vinegar blending. In this regard, the relevant departments in Shanxi Province responded quickly: The old vinegar produced in Shanxi Province was safe and reliable, there was no additional preservatives, and abuse of preservatives was exceeded in excess of or exceeding the limit and it was safe to eat.

There is a saying that it is true that it cannot be fake. Vinegar was included in the “Opening of the Seven Things” and was purchased and used by thousands of people. Once there is a problem, the harm will be enormous, and the probability of its exposure will inevitably be extremely high. Regardless of who broke the news or "protectors," they all pointed out the same problem: The phenomenon of counterfeiting Shanxi's old vinegar was on the market.

After many rounds of popular science food problems, people now have such common sense: However, what is added in large quantities is often low-cost, fast-turning, high-profit, high-endangered gadgets such as industrial alcohol and melamine. The blending of old vinegar is the same. According to reports, the regular liquid vinegar brewing cycle is about 28 days, Shanxi vinegar needs two or three months or even a year, and the use of glacial acetic acid or vinegar blending does not require fermentation, as long as one day or even shorter time can be completed production From one month to one day, the production cost and product quality can be imagined as shrinking. What's more, in order to reduce costs and gain more profits, it is not even necessary to consume acetic acid.

If the unscrupulous merchant's blending behavior dilutes its own moral blood, because it is profitable and the temptation is too great, then the current regulatory mechanism also objectively causes a situation of emptiness. First, counterfeiters have the opportunity to clean the ball. In 2000, the national standard stipulated that the preparation of vinegar must be based on brewing vinegar, mixed with acetic acid and food additives. Although at the same time adding a “sweeping spell”: companies in the production of vinegar can not use industrial acetic acid. However, driven by interests, some unscrupulous companies will come to "selective enforcement" to produce legal vinegar dumplings and cover up their illegal use of industrial glacial acetic acid.

Second, regulators may be helpless in the face of counterfeiting. Although there are so-called standards for the preparation of vinegar, and there are prohibitions against the use of industrial acetic acid, they have become "toothless tigers." Because, under the current technical means and testing capabilities, it is impossible to determine whether the blending ratio is in line with the standard, and whether the blended industrial glacial acetic acid can not be found. This is also where people worry about the vinegar blending issue.

Shanxi vinegar caught in the "complementation door" undoubtedly set off a disturbance on the table. At this time, the public needs to be calm and rational, and the departments concerned need to act and respond. How serious is the counterfeiting ratio and how serious the blending issue is, and it is urgent to conduct in-depth investigations and evidence collection to analyze and control the deep problems in the production and operation of the vinegar industry. At the same time, relevant information shall be made public in a timely manner and the public shall be accountable sincerely and responsibly.

Tips:

There are four points to identify authentic vinegar:
1, see if you hang a cup. After the qualified Shanxi aged vinegar is poured into the bowl, it will gently turn around and there will be a thin layer of vinegar on it. If not, it is not.
2, smell pungent. The smell of Shanxi's old vinegar should be sour. If it smells pungent, it is not.
3, whether there is a fragrant nose, if you do not smell it is not.
The simplest way is to look at the ingredients. As long as there is sodium benzoate, it can be concluded that it is not mature vinegar.