Pumpkin Puree
Parmesan Cheese
Kobe Beef
Fish
In 2013 I actually wrote an article about this for Digital Journal about fish mislabeling. At the time it was ⅓ of fish in grocery stores and sushi restaurants were being passed off as other types of fish.
This can be problematic because of the mercury levels in specific types of fish. There is a Do Not Eat list of types of fish that are too dangerous to eat
Olive Oil
Extra virgin olive is high-quality olives mashed into a paste and pressed to express its oil that is then bottled. But’s likely that that’s not what your getting. It’s estimated that 80% of the olive oil people are getting is either low-quality olive oil, mixed olive oil from older harvests and low-quality oils, or ranid oil.
Why? Because the FDA doesn’t actually regulate olive oil. There are no rules to stop these brands from lying to you on their labels. Some olive oil producers are working to get the FED to set standards for calling olive oil extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil, and just plain old olive oil. But, for now there’s bupkis to ensure you’re getting what you’re paying for. Because EVOO is more expensive than the just plain old oo.
For now, here are some of the companies to watch for. Check your cupboards because you probably have one of these on your shelf which means you paid an inflated price for garbage olive oil.
Mezzetta
Pompeian
Mazola
Primadonna
Sasso
Colavita
Antica Badia
Whole Foods
Felippo Berio
Safeway
Coricelli
Bertolli
Also, bottled in Italy doesn’t mean made in Italy. You could be getting olive oil from olives grown in other Mediterranean countries, which are from lower quality olives. If your olive oil isn’t grown, produced, or made it Italy, but bottled in Italy, it’s probably not what you think it is.
Honey
If you have a local honey farmer, you really should be kissing their bee-suited asses. Because apparently honey is the 3rd most faked food in the U.S. Yep…
So, there’s manuka honey, which is produced in New Zealand. But since, it extremely hard to differentiate from regular old orange pollen honey or clover honey.
Excerpted from Forbes:“The position of the American Beekeeping Federation is that real honey must have pollen, but lots of other domestic honey producers disagree and ultrafilter theirs to remove the pollen, which helps keeps the product from crystallizing.
One legitimate fear is that countries like China use the ultra-filtration or ultra-purification processes to mask the origin of the honey, which is then transshipped [sent to an intermediate country and relabeled as a product of that country to disguise its real origin] and sometimes mixed with a small amount of pollinated honey, from say India, to throw off testers. Sometimes Chinese honey is cut with much cheaper corn syrup or fructose syrup to enhance profit margins, and sometimes Chinese producers even feed corn syrup to the bees to get it into the honey more “naturally.” The importation of Chinese honey was specifically banned because it is so often adulterated.
The American Beekeeping Federation is the industry group representing U.S. producers of non-ultrafiltered honey. They petitioned the FDA to create a “standard of identity” for honey
the FDA summarily denied this request. While it told the federation that it shared their “concerns about adulterated and misbranded honey,” regulators chose to defer to Webster’s, literally, citing the dictionary’s definition as adequate: “a thick, sweet, syrupy substance that bees make as food from the nectar of flowers and store in honeycombs.”
One legitimate fear is that countries like China use the ultra-filtration or ultra-purification processes to mask the origin of the honey, which is then transshipped [sent to an intermediate country and relabeled as a product of that country to disguise its real origin] and sometimes mixed with a small amount of pollinated honey, from say India, to throw off testers. Sometimes Chinese honey is cut with much cheaper corn syrup or fructose syrup to enhance profit margins, and sometimes Chinese producers even feed corn syrup to the bees to get it into the honey more “naturally.” The importation of Chinese honey was specifically banned because it is so often adulterated.
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