Mooncakes are only 6 taels. The gift box weighs 3 catties. “Handmade” and “Private House” mooncakes flood the circle of friends
When to bid farewell to gimmicks and excessive packaging of moon cakes
● "The moon cake is only 6 taels, and the gift box weighs 3 catties." "It's a pity to keep it out of use." "The box is beautiful and the moon cakes are unpalatable." In the past few years, over-packing of moon cakes has always been criticized by consumers.
● The "Five Nos" homemade handmade mooncakes in WeChat Moments, without supervision, neither food safety nor consumers' right to know can be guaranteed
● The so-called "sugar-free" moon cakes have no scientific basis and no reasonable standards.
In clinical practice, many patients blindly eat "sugar-free" mooncakes, which leads to increased blood sugar and blood pressure and aggravation of the disease.
□ Our reporter Zhao Li
□ Intern Li Zhuhong
At the time of the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon cake consumer market is heating up again, and the annual "moon cake war" kicked off.
According to the characteristics of the moon cake market in the past four years, reporters from the Rule of Law Daily conducted investigations on moon cake packaging, purchasing, and "private house" moon cakes.
Packaging is more popular
Logos spawn high-priced purchasing chains
"The moon cake is only 6 taels, and the gift box weighs 3 catties." "It's a pity to keep it out of use." "The box is beautiful and the moon cakes are unpalatable." In the past few years, the excessive packaging of moon cakes has always been criticized by consumers.
A reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" found that under the general environment of "strict economy and anti-waste", this year's mooncakes "slim" and "light outfit" styles have become marketing points for many businesses.
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily visited some large shopping malls and supermarkets in Chaoyang District and Fengtai District, Beijing, and found that on the packaging, many merchants gave mooncake packages of different specifications for consumers to choose.
For example, some merchants have launched a gift box with 6 moon cakes priced at more than 200 yuan, and also launched bulk moon cakes with a price of less than 30 yuan; some merchants divide the packaging into hardcover and simple packaging. The moon cake gift box still uses a hard-shelled wide carton, while the simple moon cake gift box is a smaller soft box with a much lighter weight.
Purchasing moon cakes in different packages according to needs also meets the holiday consumption needs of different people.
However, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily noticed in some large shopping malls that compared to the number of bulk mooncakes, large mooncake gift boxes on the shelves are still the first choice of some consumers.
A shopping guide who works in Chaoyang Joy City, Beijing, said that she bought mooncakes at her counter recently. “Most of them were bought as gifts, and they were bought in this gift box, although there were only 8 mooncakes in it. But it’s well packaged and shows high grade."
The moon cake gift box referred to by the shopping guide has a red hard tote bag with a beautiful pattern on the outside.
Inside the tote bag is a rectangular packing box tied with a red ribbon bow. The inside of the packing box is made of a layer of red velvet, with 8 moon cakes placed symmetrically up and down.
Many universities in Beijing also sell mooncakes in cafeterias, triggering a wave of panic buying.
It is understood that many colleges and universities have already stopped booking within a week or even ten days before the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The staff at the Beiyuan canteen window of Communication University of China told the reporter of "Rules of Law Daily": "In recent days, students often ask me if I can order mooncake gift boxes, but there are too many appointments."
Han Li, a graduate student who just enrolled in a university in Beijing this year, wanted to buy a gift box with the school logo for her parents and friends during the Mid-Autumn Festival. It looks very high-end, but she doesn’t know that you need to make an online appointment to buy this kind of moon cake gift box. ".
There are many students who have the same idea as Han Li.
A reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" learned that at present, some college canteens still sell moon cakes in bulk every day, but many students have given up buying moon cakes in bulk because they cannot buy gift boxes.
This kind of thinking has led to a new "business" in the university-high-priced packaging.
According to Han Li, in the WeChat Moments of the school campus assistants, people often ask to purchase mooncake gift boxes for a fee. “Most of these kind of Moments copywriting is'urgent'! Pay for the mooncake gift boxes with the school logo, or not The moon cakes are packaged in pure gift boxes, which can be charged at a high price and can be increased."
High-end moon cake shopping becomes popular
The price is high
It is worth noting that the way consumers buy moon cakes has also changed this year.
Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, online mooncake sales are extremely hot.
The person in charge of Suning Buying said that in September, after the moon cakes officially started to sell, the sales increased by 156% year-on-year. The daily sales of moon cakes of multiple brands exceeded 10,000 boxes, reaching a maximum of about 60,000 boxes.
Despite the impact of the epidemic, as in previous years, the phenomenon of overseas purchasing "premium" mooncakes still exists.
For example, a certain Hong Kong brand custard mooncake is a variety that people rush to buy every year, and the price on Taobao has reached 8 yuan for a total of 478 yuan.
LadyM's moon cake gift box this year has been fired to 658 yuan, and the Hong Kong version is even as high as 900 yuan, but there are only 6 moon cakes in the gift box.
However, even if the price is high, the result may be "worry."
Beijing citizen Shen Le ordered two boxes of custard mooncakes at a price of 320 yuan per box at an overseas agent through WeChat, but the taste was not the same as before, "not enough milk."
These two boxes of moon cakes made Shen Le "like sitting on pins and needles." She dared not let her family eat them. She was worried about eating problems, but she had no place to tell the truth.
"The most weird or foolish fake I have ever seen is the most famous custard mooncake in a hotel in Hong Kong. There is no formed egg yolk in the genuine filling, but some fakes are directly made into egg yolk mooncakes. The price of mooncakes is generally around 200 yuan per box, which is truly "cheap but no good products."" said Xiao Zheng, who has been in the purchasing circle for many years.
If they buy "suspected" counterfeit mooncakes, many consumers told the reporter of the Rule of Law Daily that they are generally "at a loss."
Each brand of mooncakes is different. The basic food quality supervision department cannot measure the authenticity of such mooncakes. A box of mooncakes is not worth identifying the place of origin. Some of them are thrown away, and some are complained on WeChat. Most consumers have nowhere to complain and suffer dumb losses.
In this regard, industry insiders said that consumers must take a cautious attitude towards such direct transactions in WeChat Moments. First of all, before the transaction, consumers have a certain understanding of the goods they want to buy and the operators, and know the quality of the products. Secondly, it is necessary to confirm whether the operator has the corresponding sales qualifications and whether he is an authorized agent. If the food is sold, it depends on whether the operator has obtained a food circulation permit.
Hidden dangers of handmade mooncakes in private houses
Lack of food safety and hygiene
In recent years, more and more small businesses have sold mooncakes in WeChat Moments under the name of "handmade" and "private house".
These "Private House" moon cakes have many types, including matcha, red beans, cranberries, egg yolk meat floss, custard liquid and other new flavors that are different from the traditional ones, and they like to promote "handmade", "no additives", and "real materials". To attract customers to buy.
But are these private moon cakes really fresh?
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily found that some merchants bought ready-made mooncake fillings.
The owner of a private bakery shop surnamed Sun said frankly: “Make your own fillings and then bake them. The daily shipment volume is too low and the cost is too high. It’s not worth it. Taobao has a large number of wholesale mooncake fillings with many flavors. Just buy it and stuff it into the mooncake crust, which is much more convenient."
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily conducted a search on Taobao with "moon cake fillings" as the key word. Sure enough, many flavors of fillings appeared, including red bean paste, lotus paste filling, blueberry cheese filling, traditional nut filling, purple potato filling, etc. .
The price of these fillings varies from three to four yuan per catty, and the price is tens of yuan.
Judging from the production information of these fillings, most of them have production licenses and are produced by some small food companies. Only a few are labeled as "private formula" unlabeled products.
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily noted that most of the merchants who sell "handmade moon cakes in private houses" on WeChat Moments claim "purely handmade, no additions."
For example, homemade Cantonese-style mooncakes produced by "Mama’s hand-baked" claim to "reject additives and preservatives"; homemade low-oil, sugar-free Cantonese-style five-nut and no-additive mooncakes from "Jiaomou Baking Workshop", claiming " Purely handmade, 100% without additives".
"Private shopkeepers advertise that their handmade mooncakes do not contain any food additives in order to attract consumers to buy them. If the shopkeeper adds food additives during the processing process, and because of personal processing conditions, the amount added is arbitrary, but there is a safety risk "Hu Feng, who runs a cake shop in the Majiapu area of Fengtai District, Beijing, said that in order to reduce costs, some manufacturers purchase cyclamate instead of sugar.
According to industry insiders, some so-called private moon cakes are actually not "homemade."
As consumers trust the “no additions” of private houses, some manufacturers mass-produce them and send them to the next shop in batches, and the next shop sells them on WeChat or WeChat stores under the banner of “private houses”.
In May 2015, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China and the National Standardization Administration of China issued a new version of the GB/T19855-2015 "Moon Cake" standard, which has been implemented since December 1, 2015.
According to relevant standards, the moon cake package should clearly indicate the full name and detailed address of the manufacturer, the product execution standard number, the hygiene license number, the ingredient list and the net content, the production date and the shelf life.
However, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily found that the homemade mooncakes sold by some micro-businesses and online stores were hardly labeled.
Sun Juanjuan, a special researcher at the Food Safety and Rule of Law Research Center of the Chinese Law Society, once said that the potential safety hazards of this type of private moon cakes are mainly caused by the opacity of the production process and the lack of supervision.
Due to the concealment of production, consumers cannot know the source of raw materials, the sanitary conditions of the processing process, the health of the production personnel, and whether the safety of packaging materials meets the basic requirements for ensuring food safety.
However, the "Five Nos" homemade handmade mooncakes in WeChat Moments cannot be guaranteed without supervision, whether it is food safety or informed choice.
Health and health mooncakes change
Sugar-free moon cakes are not really sugar-free
In the world of mooncakes, which has more and more flavors, there was a wave of "healthcare" mooncakes and "sugar-free" mooncakes last year. These mooncakes fit people's ideas of health preservation.
The store tried every means to make the original high-oil and high-sugar mooncakes sound more "healthy". For example, the bird's nest mooncakes that can nourish the skin, the Pu'er mooncakes that can lower the three heights, and the angelica mooncakes that can replenish the vitality.
The State Food and Drug Administration issued a special warning on the consumption of Mid-Autumn Mooncake last year, stating that it had never approved "health-care mooncakes". These mooncakes cannot guarantee the efficacy they advertise and remind citizens not to be fooled.
So are these "healthy" mooncakes and "sugar-free" mooncakes still there this year?
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily conducted searches on multiple shopping platforms using "health" moon cakes and "health" moon cakes as keywords, but none of them found any products.
But when searching for bird's nest moon cakes and Pu'er moon cakes, some products popped up.
This kind of moon cakes do not have the words "health care" or "health care" in the title, but only carry words such as "bird's nest" and "puer".
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily contacted a shop with the highest sales volume of bird’s nest mooncakes on the e-commerce platform. The customer service said that their mooncakes are about 60g, and they are guaranteed to contain 10g of finished bird’s nest. The remaining ingredients are flour, oil, and sesame that are commonly used in making mooncakes. , Sugar and other materials.
As early as 2002, the former Ministry of Health put forward clear requirements for the raw materials of health food, and classified related items: the first category is items that are both food and medicine, that is, "medicine and food items", such as yam. There are about 100 kinds of, red bean, ginger, chrysanthemum, almond, lily, honey, etc., which can be added as food; the second category is items that can be used in health food, such as cordyceps, ginseng, aloe, panax notoginseng, angelica, red Flowers, American ginseng, etc. cannot be used as food additives.
Bird's nest and Pu'er are "medicine and food dual-purpose items" that can be added to moon cakes.
However, panax notoginseng and angelica cannot be added to moon cakes.
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily searched for angelica mooncakes and American ginseng mooncakes on multiple shopping platforms, but found no related products.
However, in addition to bird's nest, many merchants also put ingredients such as abalone into moon cakes, which are labeled as high-end health preservation, and the prices are not cheap.
"The health benefits of these ingredients themselves are controversial, and the prices on the market are ridiculously high. Adding mooncakes to mooncakes will certainly not account for a large proportion. The so-called health mooncakes are actually a marketing gimmick for merchants." Yang Shu, who works as a teacher, said that health preservation requires long-term persistence to be effective. Even if the mooncake filling contains health-preserving ingredients that can nourish blood, nourish skin, and maintain health, the content is limited. In addition, mooncakes are seasonal foods, and consumers eat mooncakes. Long-term, so it is impossible to achieve the effect of health maintenance.
However, although some moon cakes no longer carry the word "health" on the surface, they will have a complicated and long name that hides the word "health".
For example, there is a store selling a "×× Grape Soft Moon Healthy Mooncake 80g×5 Cantonese-style pulpy low-sugar middle-aged and elderly health-preserving handmade mooncakes".
According to the relevant requirements of the national food nutrition labeling standard "General Principles of Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods", if a food label claims "sugar-free", it means that the sugar content per 100g or 100ml cannot exceed 0.5g.
The internationally accepted concept is that sugar-free foods cannot add sucrose and sugar derived from starch hydrolysates, including glucose, maltose, fructose, starch syrup, glucose syrup, fructose syrup, etc.
But it must contain substitutes corresponding to sugars, generally sugar alcohols or oligosaccharides and other sweeteners that can replace sucrose that do not increase blood sugar are used.
At the same time, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily searched for "sugar-free moon cakes" on the e-commerce platform and found that the gimmicks of the merchants were "healthier without sucrose, don't let this Mid-Autumn Festival leave regrets", "no saccharin is suitable for middle-aged and elderly diabetic people.
In one of the online stores, the merchant declared that it was free of saccharin and sugar alcohol, and it was specially designed for middle-aged and elderly diabetic patients.
In the evaluation, many people left messages "Buy for grandpa with diabetes", "Dad has high blood sugar, I hope he can eat it." A reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" asked customer service whether diabetic patients can eat, and the respondent replied that the food was all food without added sucrose. It is made of sugar substitutes such as xylitol, which is not easily absorbed and digested by the human body. It tastes slightly sweet and can be eaten by people with diabetes.
Some nutrition experts pointed out that the so-called "sugar-free" moon cakes have no scientific basis and no reasonable standards.
In clinical practice, many patients blindly eat "sugar-free" mooncakes, which leads to increased blood sugar and blood pressure and worsens.