233 | Nerding out on chocolate |

Plus, resources you may have missed

Apr 06, 2026

This is The Rotten Apple, an inside view on food fraud and food safety for professionals, policy-makers and purveyors. Subscribe for insights, latest news and emerging trends straight to your inbox each Monday.

Subscribe to The Rotten Apple

Work-free zone
Nerding out on techy chocolate
Your supplements are a lie
Resources you may have missed

🎧 Listen 🎧

Hi!

Welcome to Issue 233 of The Rotten Apple. Today is a holiday in many countries, including mine, so I am departing from our usual format this week.

This week’s issue is a no-work zone.

Instead of the usual four sections, I’ve shared some food-related articles and videos I’ve enjoyed in recent months, plus links to resources you may have missed.

I’ll catch you up on the food safety and food fraud news next week so you don’t miss a thing.

Karen

P.S. Thank you to 👏👏 Simione 👏👏 for becoming a paid subscriber. Need more info about paid subscriptions?

Learn more

Resources you may have missed

If you’re new here, thanks for joining us. Every week I share actionable articles, news to keep you up to date and links to helpful resources for food professionals.

Every month I create a special report, guidance document or downloadable to help you do better at your job and save you time.

Here’s what you may have missed:

Consider upgrading your account for the full experience.

What I’m reading

Because it’s a holiday today in my country, here is a collection of articles that caught my eye in the last quarter and that I thought you might enjoy.

🥕 The two farms in Senegal that supply many of the UK’s vegetables | BBC This well-researched and fascinating article illustrates the topic of international food trade through the fascinating story of two industrial-scale vegetable farms that were carved out of the African bush by French and British business owners in the 2000s.

🧪 The evolving science of pathogen persistence in food processing environments | New Food Magazine This article is an intelligent look at pathogen persistence, an issue that’s increasingly being understood as an important contributor to many long-duration foodborne illness outbreaks. It addresses biofilms and hygienic design and their roles in outbreaks and recalls.

📉 The High Costs of Saving Money: How Overzealous Capital Controls Undermine Food Safety, Worker Safety, and Plant Performance | Food-Safety.com Is deferring spending on capital works in your food factory, putting consumers at risk? Almost certainly, says Bonna J. Cannon, Founder of Bonnafide LLC.

“Food safety failures rarely come from a single failed test or bad batch. More often, they are the inevitable outcome of years of known risk, deferred repairs, tolerated workarounds, and a culture that treats safety improvements as optional overhead. I put it plainly: pay now, or pay many, many times over later.” Bonna J. Cannon in Food Safety Mag

🌾Breaking the Myth: The Competitive World of Grain Trading | Commodity Conversations - an insider’s view of grain trading, a sector that is highly competitive, often misunderstood, and constantly changing.

What I’m watching

Nerdy chocolate biotech

This Easter I’ve been nerding out on chocolate biotech, specifically cell-cultured chocolate. Spoiler alert: it’s not going to replace farmed cocoa any time soon.

This video explains traditional cocoa growing systems as well as the science behind the ‘lab-grown’ chocolate that had tabloid media outlets freaking out earlier this year. It also includes a sensible discussion about just how far away from commercialisation of lab-grown chocolate we really are.

It’s 7:26 mins long and totally safe for work.

More like this:

California Cultured co-founder and CEO Alan Perlstein shows the process of making lab-grown chocolate | YouTube (5:23)

Nerding out on supplements

Herbal supplements. If you’ve been with me for more than a hot minute, you’ll know that they feature very often in my food fraud roundups.

Lots of reasons for that, of course….

There’s the high cost of the ingredients, complex supply chains, powder and liquid forms that make adulteration easy, a patchy regulatory framework across the globe and minimal enforcement in many places.

Perhaps worst of all, even the most diligent herbal supplement manufacturers can have their products faked by criminals who sell the fakes on marketplaces like Amazon, making profits by illegally trading on the value of ‘real’ brands.

Last month, reader Tom Sostaric of Chromatech Scientific shared a link to an exposé of herbal supplements, in which scientists from the show “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” teamed up with the University College London to test a range of supplements purchased in the United Kingdom to see if they were true to label.

Safe to say the results were not good.

BBC Two - Trust Me, I'm a Doctor, Series 3, Episode 1 - Do herbal supplements contain what they say on the label? (Not available in all locations)

More like this:

How to find all your paid goodies

The Rotten Apple is more than a newsletter. It’s a learning community.

🎯 My goal is to help you become 30% better at your job, with at least 100X return on investment through articles, training sessions, resources, tools, and downloadables.

Ready to join?

I made a special webpage with links to all the exclusive content I create and publish just for paying subscribers, including…

Food fraud news returns next week

🍏 That’s all for this week,

I’m off to the lab with a cacao bean and a fluffy bunny. Bye!

The Rotten Apple

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?