HOW MUCH “KOBE BEEF” IS SOMETHING ELSE?

In December 2016, a 2-year-old boy was brought to a medical clinic in Kobe, Japan. Both of his eyes were swollen shut, he was having trouble breathing, and a short time later he was unconscious. The diagnosis was obvious to the doctors: The child had suffered a severe allergic reaction and was in anaphylactic shock. The strange part of the matter: While the child was known to be allergic to milk, eggs, and wheat, shortly before his attack he had only eaten some steak in a restaurant. Therefore what could have triggered the allergic reaction? An examination of the meat revealed that milk protein had been incorporated into it during processing. But why? To understand the explanation it is important to know that Japanese diners have long preferred their beef to be visibly marbled with fat. The best example of this is Wagyu beef, and the best variety of it is known as Kobe beef. Its production is strictly regulated in Japan: Genetic testing is mandatory, and only the finest animals are bred for their offspring. Because the supply is limited and the meat expensive, the food industry hatched a clever plan in the 1980s: They started counterfeiting “Wagyu” steaks and selling these cuts of meat to restaurants. The meat was actually from old dairy cows and had been “enhanced” with the kind of fat emulsion that’s usually used in dietary supplements. These mixtures contain emulsifiers such as esters of fatty acids, special combinations of amino acids, and oftentimes sodium caseinate—a compound derived from the casein found in the milk of mammals. It improves the texture of the meat, making cheap cuts appear to be the high-quality, perfectly marbled steaks. The counterfeiters have become so skilled in these techniques that even the experts can sometimes not detect the deception. Linguistically Wagyu simply means “Japanese (wa) cow (gyu).” Originally these cows were draft animals selected for the physical endurance required in agriculture. The marbling that’s so sought after today comes from the animals’ abundance of intramuscular fat cells.