A wholesale grocer is recalling nearly 145,000 pounds of ready-to-eat bologna due to misbranding of ingredients, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The recalled products, sold under various names by Gaiser’s European Style Provisions Inc., were mislabeled: some packages of Fancy Bologna listed only pork but actually contained beef and chicken, while Babushka’s Recipe Chicken Bologna included undeclared pork.
While the federal officials don’t anticipate adverse health effects from the items produced between March 20 and June 20, the misbranding raises the question of what, exactly, is bologna?
Northeastern University food policy expert Darin Detwiler unpacks the mystery behind this lunchtime staple, explaining to Northeastern Global News how bologna is made — and how it became a fixture in American sandwiches.
American-style bologna draws as its inspiration mortadella, a cold cut traditionally associated with Bologna, Italy.
Popular since the Renaissance, mortadella consists of ground-up, heat-cured pork and fat cubes sometimes seasoned with peppercorns and pistachios and encased like a sausage for easy slicing.
The American version, often called baloney, tends to be highly processed, Detwiler says.
The Oscar Meyer version’s packaging says it contains such ingredients as corn syrup, potassium chloride, sodium phosphates, sodium ascorbate and sodium nitrate.
In the U.S., bologna “is typically made from a finely ground, emulsified blend of meats — often including pork, beef, chicken or turkey — along with non-meat ingredients such as fat, water, spices and curing agents,” Detwiler says.
“It’s produced in large batches and often contains lower-cost meat trimmings or less premium cuts, making it economically efficient but also labeling sensitive,” he says.
Bologna was the subject of a very successful advertising jingle that debuted 51 years ago, and it seems to have remained in our heads ever since, Detwiler says.
“Like many kids growing up in America, I could sing the Oscar Meyer jingle without hesitation: “My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R.’”
“It was catchy. Memorable. A brilliant piece of brand marketing,” Detwiler says.
It also didn’t hurt that the more sophisticated Italian version, mortadella, was banned from import into the U.S. from 1967 until 2000. Mortadella is coming out of the culinary shadows, however. The late chef Anthony Bourdain even included a grilled cheese mortadella sandwich in a 2016 cookbook.
“Because different varieties of bologna can be produced along the same lines, and because formulations often include potential allergens like milk or soy, there’s an elevated risk of mislabeling if ingredients change or packaging is mishandled,” Detwiler says.
Although the bologna recall is not associated with contamination by toxins or well-known allergens, the USDA is advising consumers with the recalled items in their fridge to throw them out or return them to the store where they were purchased for a refund.
In this case, the only things that stand to be hurt are the wholesaler and retailers’ bottom line due to returned products, bad publicity and lost sales, Detwiler says.