The truffle industry is a scam

It exists in Italy and France, who cash in on the point of origin of truffles, but it's a total free-for-all in Croatia where truffles can be had for remarkably cheap by contrast in Istria.

I'm told when everything was shut down in 2020 they were practically giving them away in Croatia since the prices collapsed without anything but a small local demand to sustain it, and how Italian vendors were finding ways to cross and take the excess supply to artificially maintain the prices and avoid arbitrage, now this is all speculative and needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but I know from personal experience from running a kitchen in Istria that black truffles late into the winter season can be had for a pittance than whatever can be found out of season in the Spring/Summer/Fall because most local restaurants are closed and the hassle of exporting them is often not worth the trouble of just offloading them despite EU membership (this was in 2013 when it had just joined).

In many ways I think this will be one of the few Industry's to benefit from Schengen the most now that Croatia is entering it in 2023, before you had to wait in a rather long line to cross, but now a quick trip 1-2 hour round trip from Koper or Triste (all with decent plane/train options) can be the only thing that is required to take advantage of this price arbitrage in the Winter and then pass them off as Italian and a significant markup.

You can likely pay a Croatian to negotiate and settle a price with the vendor and then have them drive/bus to Italy or Slovenia for less than what it takes to buy locally despite the high fuel prices right now because of this markup--which to me is reminiscent of how it was cheaper to import grain from Egypt and bake the bread than it was to have a local do so in Rome during the height of the empire.

It was a surprisingly decent flick.

It’s expensive because you need a huge amount of land, it only produces for a few weeks, and you can have years with almost no production. The cartel was created to protect producers against those huge variation of supply from years to years.

Alice: I'm telling you, there is gas everywhere! This place is about to blow!

Bob: I have been up and down the block three times, and the sniffer is not picking up a thing.

Right, they were accumulating propane on the floor of the garage!

Then they got the generator running and KABLOOEY!!! The garage burned to the ground. Dad and the neighbor both ended up in the burn ward of the hospital!!

Lesson: Be careful with propane!!

The good news: They didn't burn and sink his boat and have to swim.

Speaking as an American who lived in France for several years in many different cities both metropolitan et d'outre-mer, from Paris to Entre-Deux and everywhere in-between, I can tell you that a lot of how French people feel about food in their own country stems largely from aspect blindness, and a lot of how Americans feel about food in France stems largely from never actually living there. France has the same flavors and foods available as everywhere else in roughly the same proportion if you spend the time looking.

There are differences of course. The US has many more different varieties of every kind of produce. In Paris you find "an apple" or "a lettuce", while in the US you have to choose between 10 different varieties side-by-side. On the flip side, France has many more varieties of pureed pork generally available.

Similar to why people might knowingly buy knock-off "designer" items.

That started to change in the 1970s and 80s but that still tended to be focused on specific ingredients (which have producers advertising them heavily) with the same expectation that they’re available year round everywhere. There were whole campaigns promoting things like Angus beef as a premium ingredient rather than the more easily produced but less flavorful breed it actually is.

Truffle derivatives fit well into that: toss some “truffle salt” or oil onto the same hamburger or French fries you were serving last week and it’s now $10 more expensive. The truffle products don’t need to be local or in season, so anyone can do that. Plus since the flavor change is quite modest most of your customers will consider buying it.

You'd stop working if the clientele saw you are not trustworthy.

Edit:

What you will see in the frontpage of the "Truffle Dogs University" in Roddi - http://www.universitadeicanidatartufo.it/prodotti.htm - is relevant: you will see the picture of a guy in front of the products. He "puts his face on it" - that is his reputation at implicit stake -, and he is proud. That is the normal standard. Also notice one important thing: «Available for /small/ shipments» - the goods are in limited quantity (fake ones could be produced ad libitum).

As if just breading and killing animals is not sick enough, there's foie gras.

Finally it's being banned in more and more countries.

https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/02/08/what-is-foie-gras...

I find it bizarre that here on HN someone advertises it, albeit in parenthesis...

(Edit: no it's not, it's indicum, see below. In the OP, the former is described as very mild but somewhat prized; the latter as tasteless, cheap, used for appearance (& perhaps in combination with synthetic flavouring) only.)

1. there are real truffles that in his opinion are much better than the artificial flavor (fair)

2. the food industry is deceptive about real vs artificial truffle flavor (fair)

3. the artificial flavor is harmful because it is derived from petroleum (silly)

The problem with the article is that 1 is interesting but just, like, your opinion man, and also like a thousand dollars. And 2 is business as usual. So if you want people not to just say “Sure, but I personally really like artificial truffle flavor” (which I did, several times, while reading) you need to convince them there’s something sinister about it that there isn’t about, say, artificial watermelon flavor. But 3 is a huge miss.

Real truffles taste almost nothing like the fake truffle flavor you seem to get in most dishes. I think you made a great comparison to fake watermelon flavor vs. the real thing. It's only in the vague ballpark.

I now will have a truffle dish if it's done at a very high end establishment that deals with those ingredients on a consistent basis. I still absolutely cannot stand the fake stuff (like truffle fries) to this day.

I'll agree that an actual truffle, with all the fabulous fungus intact, is going to give a completely different experience.

But if the claim is that the truffle-extracted compound is somehow different from the oil-extracted compound, that's a lie equivalent to claiming Real Truffles are flavoring your truffle fries.

If the article were just "truffles are more than this one chemical compound, and you're being lied to about truffle flavoring on your fries," I would have commented differently (or maybe not at all.) But the article is too busy being elitist to make a reasonable argument like "truffles are more than this one chemical compound..."

You don't have to be an English major to see that I didn't claim they are.

> ... the industrial cleaner used is claimed to be safe.

Did you miss the point that it was a food ingredient before it was a cleaner? Kind of like discovering (theoretically) that corn meal scours better than Comet - of course we'll switch to corn meal! No one wants Accidental Comet lunch, we can eliminate that purchase altogether, and we can get a bigger quantity discount on corn meal!

> ...it's a much more complex thing that this one compound

Indeed! But I'm discussing the article's specific claims about the smelly compound.

It reminds me that in the USA there are rules for what constitutes a bourbon whiskey. You can make and enjoy other types of whiskey, just don't call them Bourbon.

There's also Jack Daniel's, from what I remember they actually pass the requirements to be a Bourbon, but the company chooses not to label it that way. That's also fine!

What wouldn't be fine is a whiskey calling itself rum or vodka, because when I buy one I don't expect to get the other.

I would caveat that with: First people should ALL work in the hospitality and service Industry.

You will be shocked if you think this is the most egregious thing you will find in the culinary Industry.

Honestly, after what the Industry like since COVID, I hope it collapses and people just start to eat healthier at home, in the US the Industry has been consolidated by Corpos who could get millions in PPP and didn't have to pay it back and low interest rates to win a battle of attrition against the smaller spots who relied on word to muth and higher QC/QA to justify those high prices that the public feel entitled to complain about despite not knowing the mechanics of getting a kitchen to function let alone turn a profit.

It's sad... I really thought prior to COVID we were making serious inroads in educating the American population to something that most in Asia and Europe is pretty normalized: food culture.

As a cook that has worked in and ran kitchens in both Europe and N. America the fact that most people think that what is in those atrocious bottles (truffle oil) resembles anything like a black truffle underscores what I mean.

Most people in the US freak out when they see a vein in their shrimp let alone a head, whereas when you're in Spain the best part of a tapas bar is when the numbers are thin and the patrons still drinking get the good stuff like 'gambas' and you can suck the heads after having been served countless olives, patatas bravas or various bread with stuff plates with your drinks.

Personally speaking, I don't really think black truffles are that great and I've worked with quite a lot of them over the years, it mainly benefits a lot from it's marketing more than it's actual flavour.

The perfume it gives does enhance a dish, which makes it good to garnish as a table service option, but the taste is rather unremarkable to me, at best it's like having good biodynamicly grown garlic. White truffles are far more aromatic, and just keeping them in rice is enough to brighten up a rissoto, but also suffers from the 'too Earthy' category for most people's palettes unless they are trying to impress people who gravitate towards high end ingredients or are actually coming for that as the highlight of their meals while it's in season, which is an incredibly small percentage of patrons.

I do like to think that sim-flavors will eventually get their own seat at the taste at the table but there is still correlation between interest in the prototype taste and the sims.

However I do like organic raspberry for example, synth raspberry is meh.

But what is constitutes outright lying? Some would assume that the word "truffles" on its own means the genuine article. Others would say they are telling the truth if they state that it is not the real thing in the small print. It wouldn't surprise me if someone tried to trademark Real Truffles for their substitute. All would claim that they are telling the truth, never mind deny they are not outright lying. Technically, they are correct.

Deception is not a good business practice, even in the slightest. It is the sign of someone who is solely interested in short term gain, rather than establishing a lasting institution.

Imitation vanilla is labeled imitation vanilla. Not a secret that it's not made from actual vanilla.

I'm surprised honey hasn't come up here more. The majority of honey in the US contains very little actual honey, but the ingredients list just says "pure filtered honey". If you've ever had real honey, it's night and day. If you want a cheaper honey substitute, that's fine. If a company is labeling a cheaper honey substitute as "pure filtered honey", that's not fine.

Synthetic vanillin is delicious.

I've read that there is a compound in cilantro that we can taste that is untastable to other people. I've noticed that finally chopped and/or cooked cilantro is not anywhere near as strong. So it must be some volatile chemical. Once I was able to clearly identify the taste, I started noticing other tastes in raw vegetables that went away after fine-chopping and cooking. For the most part, I find raw vegetables almost inedible, especially things like bell peppers. But cooked up, they are completely fine.

I also noticed that, if I try to push through eating many raw vegetables, I start to have an allergic reaction on my tongue. This is especially true for cilantro, basil, celery, and to a lesser extent carrots and tomatoes. Again, cooked is no problem.

I'm my mind, they're all linked. Some uniqueness of my tongue genetics makes me susceptible to one or more certain chemicals that others can tolerate. And my tongue is trying to tell me it's bad for me.

Regarding your excellent summary: If only there was a GPT-3 equivalent Chrome extension to automatically do this for me!

It's the same compound that's found in the truffle. We found somewhere else to extract it, but we don't make it from scratch.

I suppose, then, truffles are just artificially flavored.

Food scarcity is one of the first, classic things human technology has improved through agriculture, and it's reasonable to think it will do the same thing to the high cost of truffles, and indeed the demand will incentivize people to try and reward those that finally succeed at it. If that's bad, then my question is why should truffles be expensive forever?

1. Put real truffles in some kind of oil (olive, canola, etc)

2. Put synthetic truffle flavor (commonly derived from petroleum) in oil

The point of this article is that most of what you buy and are served is #2 marketed as #1.

It's explained right there in the wikipedia article you link to.

I don't know if I'm a supertaster though, I've always thought my sense of smell and taste to be below average.

But the author (glumly) counters this: so many consumers of truffle receive the substitute which isn't quite as good, and they think that's the true taste of truffles, but it isn't. So they walk away from the experience thinking they've experienced the taste of truffles, but they really haven't.

If the truffle substitutes were exactly as good, then your point would hold, but in the case of truffles, at least according to the author, the substitutes don't have the same taste or aroma, or may be truffle but a less palatable species.

Oh my. The point of food is to be healthy.

And I don't agree that even vanilla extract from pods tastes like vanilla pods. I don't know a way to get the flavour of pods without using pods.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipteryx_odorata

Are you sure you're not thinking of vanilla "essence", which is mostly synthetic vanillin?

I can definitely taste the difference between essence and extract. Essence is much simpler, while extract has another hundred vanilla compounds in it.

It is a good philosophical question, if in a 10,000 years people would still link the strawberry flavour with an actual strawberry, especially if advertising companies slowly tweak the image of a strawberry to look more appetising.

You are likely to get much better deals if you can buy locally in a truffle growing region.

There are shitty people in the world. They'll steal the catalytic converter right off your Prius. And yes, dogs do get stolen:

https://frenchbulldog.nyc/french-bulldog-theft/