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

[Music] it takes over 40 gallons of sap to make just one jug of real maple syrup that's why one of these bottles can cost ten dollars and grocery stores are flooded with imitation syrups that don't have any maple sap at all in fact tons of expensive Foods we love eating might not be the real thing including Wasabi vanilla and truffle oil the main reason why this happens is it's all about money some of this is legal as long as products that aren't the real deal disclose it on the packaging even if it's a bit sneaky [Music] but often it's illegal with entire criminal Rings Behind These counterfeit Foods globally the fraudulent food industry could be worth 40 billion dollars the sort of least end of it you're getting ripped off at the worst end you're literally getting poisoned so how did fake food take over our grocery stores restaurants and kitchens and how do counterfeiters get away with it we travel around the world to learn how to spot the real stuff [Music] first up truffles hate to break it to you but your 15 truffle fries don't have any truffle on them what is called truffle oil is entirely uh made in a laboratory it has nothing to do with mushrooms real truffles are pricey and rare and they need specific conditions to grow usually in places like Italy and France or here in the UK truffles are always found with trees and that and they have the right type of trees um the under the ground the the Truffle is just the fruiting body so in accordance with an apple we used to train pigs to find the fungi but now mostly dogs do the sniffing good boy thank you see who's told since they're still in the ground so do I want to take it out of the ground or not it all depends if it's ripe if it's unripe there's no point in in having it so the nose comes into play and we actually sniff the ground for it yeah that's a nice one [Music] yeah that's probably a 70 80 grams once the Truffle is out of the ground the is ticking it's just sort of slowly going to degrade over time people have learned how to farm truffles successfully about eighty percent of the black truffles we consume are now cultivated but it can still take as long as six years to grow them and most attempts to farm the most expensive white truffles have failed which is why they're so pricey and often counterfeited his truffles are hunted in the wild and delivered in label as bags it's easy for fraudsters to swap them out for cheaper ones without getting caught [Music] but truffle oil might be the trickiest it's usually just Olive or sunflower oil with a touch of a synthetic compound derived from petroleum called 2-4 dithia pentane it contains the same aromatic component of foot odor that's why you get that earthy taste and can sometimes smell gas anything with a truffle flavor added to it is is really problematic truffle is not a product that lends itself to being either made in oil or steeped in oil you can tell it's artificial when you see words like truffle flavoring or Aroma On A package the most foolproof though see it shaved right in front of you it should look like a truffle look like a mushroom product [Music] maple syrup is another tricky case one food fraud lawyer we spoke to estimated as much as half of what's labeled a hundred percent maple syrup might be fake real maple syrup is tapped from trees Canada produces 85 percent of the world's rail Supply but the US set production records in 2022 thanks to Brands like Snap Jack out of Vermont the company's steam Heats its sap then machines filter and bottle the syrup usually within six hours it takes about 44 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of real maple syrup which is why real maple syrup can cost about six times more than pancake syrup the imitation kind is often a mix of corn syrup high fructose corn syrup caramel color and added flavorings this kind of syrup isn't illegal and you can tell it's not real maple when you see words like pancake syrup or table syrup on the label while the authentic kind will say a hundred percent or pure and have just maple syrup on the ingredients list foreign but there's a more nefarious kind of syrup fraud the FDA says companies have previously bottled up fake syrup labeled it 100 real syrup and pocketed the profits and that's illegal in that case it might be best to look at the consistency real syrup is often thinner than fake corn-based syrups Wasabi is probably the most widely faked food on our list it's estimated only one percent of American Wasabi and five percent of Japanese Wasabi is real most of it is actually a mixture of horseradish a sweetener and a food starch it's just funny to me when people say like I love Wasabi I Love Sushi here and I'm thinking like well you've never had good sushi and you've never had any Wasabi but you know the FDA doesn't have specific guidelines for the term Wasabi so only its rules on labeling would apply as long as the ingredients list is accurate it's legal to label something prepared Wasabi even if it's just horseradish not gonna make you sick to eat it just doesn't taste as good Rio Wasabi is related to tea veggies like horseradish cabbage or broccoli but it can cost nearly 30 times more for one there's way more demand than Supply [Music] Wasabi is surprisingly rare it's considered the hardest plane to farm commercially in the world it grows naturally along Japanese Mountain Springs where the temperatures are mild and there's enough shade and gravel soil the Wasabi company based in the UK is the first commercial grower in Europe the company has recreated the conditions of Japan but it still takes 18 months before the plant is ready for harvesting the harvesting will be done by hand and then it's a laborious process to break it apart the whole plant and then clean up the rhizomes there's no machine that's going to going to help you pull this out of the ground and trim it up fit for the sushi camp [Music] this is a stem and we get our special grater which has very very fine teeth and you can see that it doesn't have a um any holes on the back we're not after really grating the Wasabi we're after pasting thank you this can cost 319 dollars per kilo and if you're not seeing it great and fresh in front of you then it's very unlikely it's fresh wasabi so what does real Wasabi look and taste like it should be chunkier and have a gritty texture whereas horseradish based Wasabi will be smooth and the real stuff actually doesn't have as spicy of a kick it's more subtle [Music] another victim to confusing labeling Parmesan cheese there are only about 300 dairies in the entire world that are certified to produce authentic Parmigiano-Reggiano and they're under strict regulations it can only be made in one region of Italy called Emilia romagna oh this is the sole place in the world that has all three bacteria needed to give parm its distinct taste cheese Masters combine day old skim and fresh milk they add whey in rennet then they split the milk into curds the mixture cooks for five minutes to kill off bacteria and to settle the curds at the bottom of the vat what's left is a massive 220 pound curd cheese makers dump it into molds and add stencils to identify the cheese is authentic the wheel heads to brining to form a rind and then a huge aging room it takes at least one year of Aging for it to develop these crunchy crystals their buildups of amino acids and they hold the Cheese's Umami taste but some will stay here for up to a decade the longer they mature the more crystals form and the more valuable they become one wheel can cost well over a thousand dollars but other countries have different laws in the US you can legally call something parmesan without following the strict Italian rules for Parmigiano-Reggiano for example American Farm can be aged for only 10 months whereas in Italy at least a year is required but grated cheese is even further from the real thing in the U. S producers are allowed to mix in fillers like rice flour or cellulose commonly obtained from wood pulp they're used to keep the grains from sticking together the center for dairy research suggests keeping cellulose levels between two and four percent but the problem is companies aren't required to list the percentages of these fillers and often no one's checking in 2016 Bloomberg reported Walmart's Great Value 100 parmesan had 7. 8 cellulose nearly double the suggested limit some 50 lawsuits were filed alleging the labeling was misleading but a judge dismissed them all but there's a more nefarious kind of parm fraud were criminals label counterfeit cheese as real Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano estimates put these illegal sales at 2 billion dollars each year phony cheeses are hurting the real parmigiano industry in Italy they lose market share and and value half the people in Palmer's life depends upon the Parma ham or parmesan cheese industry and so there's a big impetus to protect that so while you're standing in the cheese aisle how do you make sure you're grabbing the authentic parm well first maybe don't buy those shakers each chunk of the wheel will have a part of the words Parmigiano-Reggiano spelled out in dots it'll also have a protected designation of origin or dop label real parmesan cheese from Italy is readily available almost any Supermarket certainly any cheese shop sometimes it's cheaper than some of the fake versions the other towel is taste Parmigiano-Reggiano depending on the age will have those crystals a pack of fruity and nutty flavor foreign just like parmesan vanilla can have some confusing labeling it's estimated just one percent of all vanilla products in the world are real most of the legit stuff comes from Madagascar where Farmers Colony orchids by hand the beans are boiled and sun-dried at a processing facility workers hand massage each pod to release the chemical vanillin the beans then soak in a mixture of alcohol and water to make the extract [Music] the whole thing is laborious and expensive so in the U.

S many Brands sell imitation versions using lab made vanillin it's either derived from petroleum or from compounds found in clove oil wood and bark and that's legal as long as artificial flavoring is listed on the package but it could be more dangerous in other countries in 2008 in Mexico some products labeled as vanilla were found to be made from the beans of a Tonka tree a completely different plant they contained a toxic substance called coumarin that's banned in the U. S and is dangerous for people on blood thinners these illegal products were sold all over the Americas so how can you tell what's real many vanilla products like ice cream and cookies get away with using the imitation stuff by just saying natural flavoring on the ingredients list the real stuff will list vanilla bean extratives also take a look and a whiff in this test we did the authentic vanilla smelled much stronger of alcohol and it was much cloudier than the fake stuff caviar the most expensive fish eggs out there can also mean big payouts for fraudsters in the U. S federal agents have busted multiple criminal operations for fraudulent caviar it's often counterfeited because it's so difficult to harvest one of America's only caviar Farms is Raising Beluga which has some of the priciest eggs on the market a single kilogram can sell for a whopping 24 thousand dollars caviar is made from the row or the eggs of sturgeons which are critically endangered it takes 10 years before a surgeon is ready to have its row harvested producers remove the egg Sac from the dead fish and rub it over a metal grate salting the eggs is especially difficult because workers don't want to pop any of them a two ounce jar goes for 175 dollars at a shop in New York City those high prices tempt criminal counterfeiters who often come from China or Vietnam they make fake caviar from the eggs of Cheaper fish or the label low-grade caviar as a fancier imported kind so they can charge more which is hard to catch I certainly cannot look at a bunch of fish eggs and tell whether there are expensive fish eggs or not expensive fish eggs so if you're going to spend hundreds on a tiny jar you want to make sure it's the real deal right well you can use the hot water test real caviar will harden in hot water as the proteins cook but fake caviar will dissolve knockoff row might look dull and take irregular shapes while authentic caviar will be uniformly sized and have a glossy shine to it fake honey is even more widespread a third of what's traded internationally is adulterated or completely fake I feel it's the biggest secret food fraud that has ever been perpetrated globally I really do real honey needs a perfect combination of Nature and patience bees do most of the work beekeepers have to be careful not to disturb the natural process they suit up with a face mask and full body coverings to protect from stings this smoker calms the bees so they can easily remove honeycomb frames beekeepers scrape the wax that keeps the honey in each cell finally a centrifuge spins the frames pushing the honey out of the Combs but globally there is more honey being sold than the world's bees are capable of making only counterfeits containing little to no real honey can explain that difference dupes are made up of high fructose corn syrup and other cheap syrups like glucose rice cane or beet you don't have to go to all the hard work of the beekeeping and you know all of that lengthy process you just get maybe some honey and some other honey from somewhere else you blend it together you add some sugars many experts say the fake honey often comes from China the biggest honey exporter on the planet fraudsters in China Market Sugar syrups that will outsmart lab tests if added to Honey or they'll filter out all the pollen making it impossible to trace this stuff that's being shipped out of China technically isn't even honey you're looking at that honey going through so many pairs of hands so there are many many opportunities for it to be bulked out with cheaper sugars in 2013 the U.

S justice department busted two American Honey importers in one of the biggest food fraud cases in U. S history in what's now called honeygate they routed sham Chinese Honey laced with antibiotics through other countries to avoid import fees both had to pay millions in fines but Sarah does have a few tips first avoid any label with the word blend the very active processing honey that damages honey irreparably even if they're not adding anything they're corrupting that honey and they're making it worthless just a worthless jar of sugars she says your best bet is to buy raw honey from a local producer at a nearby farmers market and be willing to pay a little bit more if you're going for the cheap end of the market you're going to get an awful lot of fraudulently produced honey olive oil also tops our list of frequently faked Foods authentic extra virgin olive oil has to be freshly squeezed from ripe olives [Music] most come from farms in Spain Italy or Greece like this Cooperative Farm in antiguera Spain the largest olive oil producer in the world workers Harvest olives from November to January using these vibrating machines that shake the fruit loose they dump the olives into big trailers waiting to head to factories this one can process thousands of Olives an hour first washing off any dirt [Music] extra virgin olive oil is the least processed kind out there using no heat or chemicals the machines grind the olives into a thick paste and then spin it massive decanters press it out of the mush [Music] the factory pumps the oil into storage and finally into bottles this is one of the most expensive cooking oils in the world something for over ten dollars a 17 ounce bottle man it's easy to imitate so criminal Rings making fake oil have thrived since ancient Rome some fill up these bottles with cheap soybean or vegetable oil others mix in lower grade olive oil but still label it as extra virgin the light in the supermarket you can't some are so organized they have their own Supply chains from farms to bottling facilities like this ring in Italy that europol busted so how do you know what you're buying is real extra virgin says virgin if it just says olive oil if it says olive oil blend if it says light olive oil it's not an olive oil that I would buy you don't want to buy anything that's not extra virgin they don't leave those words off on purpose right plus if it's three dollars a bottle Larry says it's too good to be true the Press on date is also important European oils are harvested in the fall and winter so if you're buying a Spanish olive oil in August it's nearly a year old Larry says it starts losing flavor after a year or two so you never want to press on date that's more than two years old you could also smell it real olive oil has a fruity and grassy smell if it smells like nothing or it's rancid there's a good chance it's not real [Music] this is real wagyu beef but what's popping up on menus across the U. S probably isn't wagyu literally means Japanese cow and it refers to four main breeds the Japanese government tightly regulates how these cows are raised to control the quality of their meat a popular type of wagyu is Kobe beef which comes from the area around Kobe Japan the steers or castrated bowls are fed a strict diet of rice and corn Foodies love their meat for its tenderness sweetness and distinct marbling as of 2019 a pound of wagyuk costs up to two hundred dollars the cows themselves could sell for as much as thirty thousand that can be more than 10 times the price of Black Angus Cattle in Japan only exports a few thousand tons a year so wagyu in American restaurants isn't always up to Japanese standards most of the wagyu cattle in the U.

S have also been bred with other heartier breeds that can handle environments like the dry heat of Texas so their meat isn't 100 wagyu according to USDA rules wagyu cows only need to have one parent with at least 93. 7 wagyu genetics so they could have as little as 46.