Fake ingredients, deceptive labeling, cheaper food substitutes-sounds like something you’d expect from a fast food meal, right? Turns out, you could encounter food fraud with many of the everyday items you toss into your grocery cart.
That’s because inferior-and sometimes unhealthy-ingredients in our food has reached an all-time high, according to researchers at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP). In the last two years, the USP added nearly 800 items to their food fraud database. Everything from lemon juice to olive oil to seafood could be a big phony, based on their findings.
Pomegranate Juice
This antioxidant-rich juice has been touted as heart-healthy, but it’s also expensive. To get around that, some manufacturers have been caught diluting it with water, sugar or cheaper grape or pear juice. In fact, there have been instances where pomegranate juice doesn’t even have a lot of real juice in it.
Olive Oil
Some oils, extra virgin olive oil in particular, have been caught in the food fraud act. They can be diluted or substituted with cheaper oils to mimic the real thing, so you may not be getting what you’re paying for.
Lemon Juice
Like other fruit juices, lemon juice can be sold as fresh or from concentrate (which can be diluted with water). But even lemon juice labeled as 100 percent pure has been found to contain citric acid. “It’s available as a chemical, and it’s very cheap,” notes Markus Lipp, Ph.D., senior director for Food Standards at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention. “The lemons are the most expensive ingredient, and sometimes only 10 to 30 percent is real juice, so manufacturers make three times as much money this way.”
Saffron
This expensive spice is frequently reported to be adulterated with cheaper ingredients that are dyed to look like saffron. Not only are you wasting your money, but some of these fraudulent blends may not be fit for human consumption, according to Lipp.
Coffee
The issue isn’t with whole bean coffee because it’s easier to recognize and know if the beans have proper form and color. “But with ground coffee, it can easily be adulterated and hard to tell what exactly is in that brown powder,” says Lipp. There have been reports of roasted chicory seeds, for example, being used as a filler. This is something that could cause allergies in unsuspecting java junkies.
Tea
Would you ever sip tea made from your front lawn? You might be and not even know it, especially if you don’t use loose leaf tea that you can see. According to the USP, tea has been found to contain lawn grass and other fern leaves. Not exactly what we’re hoping for when we curl up with a mug in the morning.
Tuna
Tuna and other white fish, such as butterfish, have been caught in the “real” food lie. Tuna has been found to contain escolar-a cheaper, oily fish that is banned in Italy and Japan. Escolar has a high content of waxy esters that are likely to cause food poisoning called gempylotoxism or gempylid fish poisoning, according to the USP.
Jams
To make your jam look more natural, manufacturers have been caught adding clouding agents outside the U.S., such as plasticizer Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and other related phthalates, in place of the more expensive palm oil. These banned toxins have been linked to cancer and developmental problems in children.
Honey
To make a cheaper product, honey is often adulterated with a lesser quality honey. In some cases, honey has contained other sweeteners such as sucrose, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.
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