Sales of fake foods is a very profitable trade. In today’s market, the worth of counterfeit goods in circulation is valued at about $653 billion annually in the United States of America alone.
Funny part is that even the most regular food you trust with everything can be fake and thin might be shocked by the quality of the package’s content.
In a lot of cases, it is pretty easy for you to recognize a phoney product. Because The Foodtian cares so much about you and your health, we would like you to read further so you can identify the foods that are commonly faked.
Green peas
Don’t be shocked that green peas can be faked. These seeds are not as simple as they look, these guys can be easily faked.
To make counterfeit green peas, the makers combine snow peas, soybeans, sodium metabisulfite, colourant, and snow peas. Sodium metabisulfite is prohibited in many countries due to its high risk of the development of metabolism issues and cancer.
How can I avoid buying a fake?
It is best to purchase your green peas from the manufacturer you trust the most (sometimes you may be wrong though). The manufacturer must point to the region of the peas production.
Also, if the peas are too green to be true, then they shouldn’t go anywhere near your food. It only means that the manufacturer has added some colour to the peas which are unsafe.
Eggs
This is shocking but true. Eggs are considered one of the most nutritious foods in the world, and they should be natural. So how come there are counterfeit?
Well, according to the Chinese ministry of health, there are fake eggs, and they contain lots of harmful ingredients like sodium alginate, benzoic acid, and many other dangerous things. The thing is, any part of the Egg can be fake, right from the eggshell to the yolk.
This issue is prevalent mostly in Asian countries, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful if you live outside Asia.
Eggs that are fake usually have rough shells, and you can avoid them by simply not purchasing an egg with a rough shell or one that is obviously larger in size the normal eggs.
If the shell of your eggs look normal then you must look out for the colour of the yolk. If the egg yolk is too yellow, then it must be one of the fakes.
Noodles
In 2010, a discovery was made that large quantity of fake noodles are manufactured in China. The noodles are made with poisonous additives and rotten grains.
Some noodles are even made from plastic and because of the tasty sauce fast-food companies make to go with the noodles, you may never discover the taste flaw.
However, if you tried to eat a string of noodle without the sauce, you will find it easy to tell the fake from real noodles. To avoid fake noodles, you just have to stay away from fast-food noodles or just avoid noodles generally.
Apples
So Apples are my favorite fruit but they too can be fake surprisingly. Well, it’s not as of the apples themselves are synthetic, they are real but they get injected with dangerous additives.
The apples are grown with some harmful chemicals that make them too good to be true when you see them.
And to extend their shelf life and keep them looking fresh for exportation, they are waxed. For these reasons, eating apples is a huge risk and many of us take that risk everyday.
How to avoid buying a fake?
Those apples that look too shiny, too red or green, or too round, are likely to be one of the fake ones. Purchase only apples that do not look like they were photoshopped to perfection.
Cod fish
Some researchers from University College in Dublin discovered that 90% of smoked cod fishes in the market was mislabeled and was, in fact, a totally different fish specie.
Funny enough, the researchers did not find out why such error is made or who is responsible for them. Most likely, the fishes get misidentified as cod fish in the very initial stages — at the harbor.
How can you avoid buying a fake?
There is no foolproof way to tell cod from other fish species unless of course, you are a fish expert.
Cinnamon
You love cinnamon? then there is a chance that your life will never be the same after reading this article. What you have always thought was cinnamon is in fact not the real thing, it is cassia.
Cassia is the cheaper alternative to the popular spice that is sold around the globe as cinnamon. It has a totally different smell, and most vital is the fact that it is dangerous for your health ( this is because the flavoring contained in cassia may cause migraines).
In order to make real cinnamon, it is vital that producers use the bark that only grows in Sri Lanka and Western India. Cassia, on the other hand is produced from trees that grow in Vietnam, Indonesia, and China.
How to avoid purchasing a fake?
Usually (which is almost 100%of the time), a real cinnamon will posses Cinnamomum verum on its container While cassia has Cinnamomum aromaticum.
Real cinnamon is not difficult to break, looks like parchment, and it is very light. Cassia on the flip side is very rigid and also is bright brown in colour.
Blueberries
Oh blueberries made the list too. The Consumer Wellness Center in the United States of America conducted a research of foods that supposedly contained blueberries and the results are terrible and scary. Most of these foods did not contain anything close to blueberries.
What they contained was a combination of colorants, starch, hydrogenated oil, and flavoring. A huge amount of fakes are in the market because everyone considers blueberries to be super foods and the demand is very high.
How to avoid purchasing a fake?
Take your time to read through the ingredients. If you notice that a product contains the colorant indigo carmine (E132), what that means is that there are real blueberries in there.
Whipped cream
I have never really been a fan of whipped cream, so when I saw this, I had my “AHA! ” moment. Some manufacturers are so skilled that they do not even require cream to create…. cream.
Back in 1966, American chemist William Mitchell created a replacement for our beloved whipped cream that consisted of corn syrup, coconut oil, a thickening agent, and natural flavoring.
Yes, it must contain milk, but it only contained very little of it. We agree, this “whipped cream” has its unique merit: it looks really and it is the easiest to work with if you are an unskilled chef. However, experts can tell the difference right away.
Ways to avoid purchasing a fake?
Check the ingredients to be sure they do not include sugar and vegetable fats.
Scallops
If you are good with foods like this then you must already know that a scallop is an extremely expensive delicacy and only a people know what it actually looks like.
This explains why there are too many dishonest manufacturers who make use of minced fish, seahorse, stingray meat, and even shark meat to make scallops.
Sometimes, in some bad restaurants, snow fungus is used in place of scallops as a salad ingredient and unknowing customers just eat.
How to avoid buying a fake scallops?
The only way you can get a 100 % genuine scallop is its the shell. As you must have guessed there is absolutely no way anyone can replace or fake it in the shell. Frozen scallops should look a light pink color or at worst a beige color.
Caviar
This is not exactly shocking because allot of people must have suspected. Any ways, what you need to know is that caviar is faked more than any other food in the market.
Dishonest manufacturers are all over the place and they fake different types of caviar, for instance, pike caviar is colored and sold as black caviar and the flying fish caviar is sold as something totally different.
Experts have revealed that it is very difficult to tell the variation between genuine caviar and fake caviar simply through their taste. It has been revealed that 2/3 of all the caviar sold in Europe is counterfeit.
Red caviar the most faked one of all the cavier in the market. Fake red caviar is a mix of fish soup, mix of gelatin, colorant, and oil. You can get caviar made of seaweed, but it usually costs too little that it becomes unlikely that anyone would assume it was genuine red caviar.
How can you avoid buying a fake?
Original black caviar is noting close to perfect: all of its pieces are a in different sizes. Flying fish caviar, on the other hand is a little bigger than capelin.
If you buy red caviar and it is sticky, does not pop well, or it smells a lot like fish, it is unfortunate that you have wasted money in buying fake caviar.
Meat glue
Most manufacturers who are greedy do not approve of getting rid of waste This is because the more waste they produce, the more money they lose.
For this specific reason, the chemists invented a hack which manufacturers see as a great thing called transglutaminase, also known as meat glue.
This invention is what many manufacturers use to glue hundreds of meat pieces together to create something that looks exactly like a perfect steak. But transglutaminase is not healthy for consumption.
Despite the fact that this thing is an organic component (it is produced in both humans and animals), when we use too much of it, there is a risk of a digestive disorders, allergic reactions, coeliac disease which is an autoimmune disorder that disrupts the absorption of fats, calcium, vitamins, and iron.
How to avoid buying the fake?
Buy your meat and other farm-produced foods only from manufacturers that you trust, and avoid buying frozen foods. Glued meat is very easy to differentiate from real meat because the lines on them never look natural.
Meat for burgers
There are several documentaries on the internet that warn against buying burgers because of the meat used in making them.
In the 21st century, the famous burger meat is not just minced meat as we have been conditioned to believe. There are big companies that work tooth and nail on creating meat alternatives and they are making huge progress.
In 2016, the company Impossible Foods revealed to the world a beef replacement which was created from starch, genetically modified yeast, and textured wheat (can you believe that?).
It is really difficult to tell this fake “meat” from actual meat, and it is even more difficult to do so when you are munching on a burger. Apart from that, most burger meats are often made of soy and other beans send they manage to taste much better than real life meat.
How to avoid buying the fake inf one?
The answer to that question is an obvious one: make your burgers in your kitchen seems resist the temptation to eat fast food.
Smoked foods
If you do not live in Africa, the chances of getting naturally smoked foods is very slim. Natural smoking is a no doubt a long and difficult process, this explains why manufacturers now opt for the so-called liquid smoke.
Also you must know that smoked foods are not in anyway good for your health, and you should not buy or consume them more often than one or two times per month.
There is still no proof that liquid smoke can be considered dangerous for your health, however, if you eat too much of it, you could suffer from food poisoning.
How to avoid buying fake smoked food?
Smoked meat and fish must appear dry and not very bright. Pay attention to the color of the surface as the color must not have any dark or light spots (it must be an even color).
How often do you spot fake food? we want to know all about it so please share your experience in the comment section below.
