As much as 10% of the food you encounter in supermarkets and restaurants may not be what you think it is.
Many of the food items you might think of as basic staples represent the leading categories for fraudulent or counterfeit food. Ground coffee and bagged tea may contain leaves, twigs, sawdust, or cereals. Juices frequently aren't made of what they're advertised to be.
So how do you avoid buying bogus versions of the food you want?
Larry Olmsted, author of the new book "Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do about It," has a simple piece of advice for anyone that's concerned:
"The biggest sort of overarching tip is just try to buy the food as close as you can to the whole form— as in intact — as you can," he tells Tech Insider.
Whole bean coffee can't contain the same non-coffee filler materials that might be found in the pre-ground stuff. In 2013, certain samples of "beef" sold in Europe were found to be 80%-100% horse meat — but the horse was ending up in pre-made "beef" lasagnas, not in much more easily identifiable steaks. Cheap lobster rolls or lobster ravioli aren't likely to be filled with the real thing, but you know what you're getting with a whole lobster. If you buy whole fruit instead of juice, you'll get the real flavor that you want and it's a healthier way to go.
Of course, this one tip doesn't always help with something like extra-virgin olive oil, which is often full of lower quality oil, sometimes not even from olives. It doesn't help distinguish real honey from fake stuff filled with corn syrup.
But in those cases, Olmsted recommends looking for trusted local producers (in the case of honey) or in the case of something like olive oil, seals of approval from respected organizations like the California Olive Oil Council, the Extra Virgin Alliance, or UNAPROL.
There's tons of delicious food out there. If you stick to the whole versions of it or look for trusted sources, you'll be able to get the best of it.
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