11 Of The Most Faked Foods In The World | Big Business | Business Insider

Hate to break it to you, but your truffle oil wasn't made from truffles. Your vanilla extract? Well, that's probably just a lab-made derivative of crude oil. And your shaker of Parmesan cheese? It probably has wood pulp inside.

You might feel the companies behind these food products are using deceptive packaging — but it's legal. However, there's a whole other level of trickery that's completely illegal: food fraud. That's when criminals bottle up corn syrup and call it 100% honey, or when they pass off cheap mozzarella as pure Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Globally, the fraudulent food industry could be worth $40 billion. It hurts legitimate producers, funds criminal activities, and can even harm consumers. We head around the world to uncover how producers get away with food deception and how we can spot the real stuff.

0:00 Intro
1:08 Truffles
3:44 Maple Syrup
5:19 Wasabi
7:42 Parmesan Cheese
11:15 Vanilla
12:58 Caviar
14:40 Honey
17:30 Olive Oil
20:04 Wagyu Beef
22:20 Coffee
24:05 Saffron
25:58 How criminals get away with selling fakes

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11 Of The Most Faked Foods In The World | Big Business | Insider Business

[Arqan]

My Grandfather is a hobbyist beekeeper. He generally has around 18 to 20 active beehives and specializes in raspberry honey, as there are large raspberry fields nearby. The honey his bees produce is unlike any other I have ever tried. It's almost as if you took the smell of a blooming raspberry garden and closed it in a jar. His bees produce around 300-350kg of that honey every year and it goes for around ~20$/kg, so it's really quite expensive. But it sells out so quickly, people make reservations 2 years in advance. It's completely worth it though - the taste is amazing and it will never spoil unless you contaminate the jar.

Every summer I spend a weekend or two helping him maintain the apiary and it's such a relaxing experience. Over the last 10 years I got stung maybe a dozen times and I don't even bother with protective clothing. Bees really are precious critters and need to be protected.

[tinybullfrog]

As a person with severe allergies, the fact that the label can lie is probably the scariest part of this for me.

[nsemgpg]

Biggest problem is that misleading labels are legal.

[Munchbyte-goblin]

the point about people not buying cheap crap would help, the problem with this is so many people have to buy cheap just to survive, they can't afford to choose.

[alg]

Love that companies can just get away with literally false advertising and illegal practices with 0 consequences because of money

[Livlifetaistdeth]

Anyone buying a Parmigiano shaker thinking it's real Parmigiano cheese has much bigger problems than believing their cheese is really authentic Parmigiano cheese.

[tegycwh]

They used to use pigs to sniff out truffles. Most don't know pigs have an excellent sense of smell. Pigs have 1, 113 olfactory receptor genes compared to an average of 811 in dogs, which can contribute to how well they detect odors. So, why the change? Pigs would sniff it out then eat it. 😃

[Burgemeesterr]

1. Truffles 2. Maple Syrup 3. Wasabi 4. Parmesan Cheese 5. Vanilla 6. Caviar 7. Honey 8. Olive oil 9. Wagyu beef 10. Coffee 11. Saffron 👍🏻🙏🏻

[MrYfrank]

I remember years ago I started only buying peanut butter that contained peanuts.
Family laughed at me.
I didn't think expecting my peanut butter to be made from peanuts was unreasonable.

[manuelsanchez]

My mom was received a rare gift of authentic extra concentrated Dominican vanilla.
It had no fillers and processed and produced in a way that it's natural sugars prevented it from going bad if fridged,
the thing was so highly concentrated if you pour more than one or two drops into the milkshake blender it was too much flavor!

I grew up with it, It lasted 10 years in my fridge, I'll probably never actually taste real vanilla ever again.

[youngorel]

my husband always says “i’m too poor to buy cheap things” and it’s so true! spending 3x the price on a decent honey or cheese, but guaranteeing the real thing, is really not spending much when you’re thinking about sustaining your body with the right things.

[seamstressajm]

I started making my own chocolate fudge sauce because all the store brands are now using high fructose corn syrup. The Aldi brand was the last one to cave. When I started buying it a few years ago, it listed just sugar, but now it has HFCS in the ingredients. I look at all labels now to avoid that ingredient in my diet. I think it’s one of major causes of the mass obesity in our country.

[josealfonsocontretas]

Yes blame the consumer, it's all their fault, because they buy the stuff that's allowed to be sold to them. Let's not talk about the "alleged" corruption that allows the fake and poisoned food to be on store shelfs.

[brenan]

Can i just take a moment to thank the editors for their music choice? Its so refreshing to hear JAZZ (even library music jazz) over that horrible free use garbage muzak techno that all over travelogs, tutorials vids, etc. Praise the music supervisor for Business Insider's editing team for making your short form magazine pieces not sound repulsive.

[tuluva]

My professor quoted a line from Nepal, it says if you have no food on your table you have one problem but if you have food on the table you have thousands. This thing really hit me hard.

[randomgirl]

I hated "cheese" most of my life, until I was 19 and someone gave my dad authentic parmegiano reggiano. Everyone else said it tasted bad and I didn't want it to go to waste so I tried it. Omg. Changed my life. I actually do like cheese. Just not the processed kind. It's life changing

[offlineable]

I honestly don't mind imitation products as long as they taste good and won't hurt me, but I DO mind is being lied to and potentially poisoned by greedy companies.

[ritmok]

5:30 "Well, you've never had good sushi and you've never had real wasabi" lol, priceless!

[Mumble]

My family looks at me like I'm clinically insane for reading ingredient labels. "Most people don't look at food labels" well, maybe most people Should.

[taniasalu]

I discovered, by accident, our family farm in Croatia grew truffles. We were talking about porcini's, which grow there in that tegion, and my father mentioned 'we grow those other mushrooms too, you know the ones pigs go crazy for.' He said they used to let the pigs dig them up and eat them because nobody in the family liked those black 'smelly' mushrooms. The look on his face was priceless, after I explained just what they were, and their monetary value.