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.
Luv bees and hope your family can continue this important and wholesome hobby, people today have to start supporting home grown, untainted (real) food! Thanks for telling us of your honey!
What u2 are doing is obviously very important for the buyers, another aspect is the bees showing condition of the environment. Majority of honey sold in eastern and central EU countries is a "mix of honey from EU countries", that normally means something is wrong with it. I got two jars where ~50% of such honey evaporated when stored properly in a closed jar, beside not crystallizing properly and tasting too sweet. Inspections always find fake honey but nothing is done.
A core problem is allowing terms such as "artificial flavor" and "natural flavor" as "ingredients" (and all their variations). A flavor, whether artificial or real, is NOT an ingredient - it is a property of an ingredient. Edit: I originally used the terms "artificial flavoring" and "natural flavoring", but a couple of comments pointed out that "flavoring" is not "flavor". So, I changed "flavoring" to "flavor" to be more grammatically consistent with the rest of the comment. However, "flavoring" _is_ also used in ingredients lists, and is just as wrong.
One thing I have a problem with in ingredients nowadays is if you have a hard time pronouncing the f****** word it should definitely not be in the ingredients list
Worse are the all the fake sugars out there it's lethal to people and promoted as healthy for diabetic people what rubbish, or to lose weight when it does the opposite. What's worse is if all the damn products out there causing the issues we have would stop using corn syrup sugar and instead use actual real sugar.
That's a horrible argument,@@darkenedpsynoid. Nomenclature can quickly become very technical without being dangerous. For example 2-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-5,7-dihydroxy-3-[(2R,3S,4R,5R)-3,4,5-trihydroxyoxan-2-yl]oxychromen-4-one which is a common polyphenol found in apples.
I combat this fear buy not outsourcing my control of food preparation to any 3rd party. I make sure to buy the expensive brand of olive oil because I'm allergic to soy and sunflower oils. I figure if it's expensive, it's probably legit. I also buy whole foods and make my own dishes from them.
Same here. The day I found out olive oil could be mixed with soy oil was absolutely horrifying. And knowing now that honey can be mixed with corn syrup- It makes a lot of sense all of a sudden why I'd sometimes get sick after eating honey or using olive oil. Doing research helps... But sometimes, you have no way of knowing.
@@CosmicEternityCDjust make sure you’re getting extra virgin olive oil from one country source, it’s more expensive but it’s honestly the only cooking oil safe to consume anyway. And with honey just get raw unfiltered. It’s more expensive also but taste great and has no additives. It’s literally collected directly from the honeycomb and bottled
Probably from the illegal Nazi mandated vaccines that caused most of your problems. Only in Nazi fascist Corp owned weak divided aMErika of lies. Now mask up and obey slaves. LMFAO Operation Papererclip aMErika ?
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.
@@eduardochavacano sure the video is a little about those pretentious people, but don't miss the main problem, companies being allowed poison people because of "regulations". Capitalism.
A chemist finds ways to cheaply replicate hydrocarbons and the liberals lose their minds because it’s not “organic”, even though that’s the scientific definition of organic
I was once given a jar of homemade honey by a customer of mine. He had a huge garden, full of many beautiful varieties of flower, and the honey the bees made from them had a wonderful, floral aroma. There really is no substitute for the real thing.
I bought natural honey from my friend's brother in law who is a small producer. What I remember, the stock is not always available for sale. The aroma, taste and viscosity are not the same for different bottles.
@@laurac5451I honestly enjoy the fake table syrup, but yeah it tastes very different from real maple syrup. Lots of people I know are in the same boat as you. They love the real stuff and hate the fake stuff.
It amazes me how society believes lies behind industry. I recently finished book called The 23 Former Doctor Truths by Lauren Clark. She explained her career thoughts perfectly!
And the FDA (US) is so corrupt they'd rather remove country of origin labeling and not require GM disclosure, because big business profit. Wish we could segregate this agency... Let them focus on their grossly profitable drug industry while another one who cares regulates our food industry. But as if that'll ever happen.
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
It hugely depends on where you live. I personally live in the Netherlands and cheese is our staple food. Sure we have a lot of cheap cheese and personally I find most of them just bad and plastic-like of texture. I get my cheese from the local farmer or cheese shop and boy oh boy does it taste different once you get your hands on the real stuff. But the fun thing is americans can even commit murder for the cheapest of plastic cheeses. When I go to the states I always bring a few cheeses with me, including the cheap stuff, so once they confessed to commit murder for the cheap stuff I will pull out the aged stuff and the farmer stuff. I usually bring around 1 kilo (2 lbs) with me, but once people realize the quality they do some quick math and consider me rich, bring over 100 dollars worth of cheese while I only paid 15-20 euro in total.
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.
@@secondary2nd That's not a bad thing though. Mineral (including iron) deficiency is a very common problem, mainly because people don't care enough to manage their mineral intake. Food fortification (artificially add nutrient to food) is one of the way WHO recommends to combat this problem.
@@cjay2Obviously imitation products can be terrible, but I simply don't see the value in something like real beluga caviar. If even experts struggle to tell the difference between real sturgeon eggs and an "inferior" product then why bother paying the enormous premium?
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.
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.
It's really easy to make your own vanilla! You gotta find real vanilla beans but you can find them in specially ingredient shops! Lots of videos on TH-cam in how to make it
wow. (what a deeply stupid lie.) HOW was this "extra concentrated" labelled that she KNEW it "had no fillers"? or that it wasn't "processed or produced in a way that it's natural sugars prevented it from going bad if fridged"? was this in the mail, this "extra concentrated" Dominican vanilla? or was it in person? inquiring minds need to know.
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.
The grocery store in the last city I lived in, had a peanut butter grinder in the store. Was great to just take a couple cups of peanuts and making your own peanut butter, and they didn't really charge much more than the peanuts themselves, so it was actually cheaper than getting a classic jar.
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.
@@LuseGoose nah, we don't farm the land anymore. And my relatives are a bit too old to be wandering the forest looking for fungi. Every now and then some will go hiking and find them but they're not sold off, just eaten.
How about the look on YOUR face when he described wild black truffles so flippantly. Interesting story. You've probably enjoyed some fabulous fungi back on your family's land in the old country.
@@JoelDiNicolol I did get treated to fresh porcini's after a day of hunting near the village of Rogi. They're called varganji there and were made into a thick stew. And yes, dollar signs did disappear before my eyes when I heard only the pigs got to enjoy those 'smelly' black mushrooms!
I am so envious when i see those who seek truffles as an occupation handling a nice-sized black one. I'm glad for you that you had the opportunity to experience hunting them with your family on the old farm. Priceless. @@taniasalu2405
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.
Fake parmesan isn't worse for you than real parmesan. You're not "sustaining your body with the right things" when you're buying the real thing, it just tastes slightly better
The worst part isn’t even the fact that it is literally fraud, but that committing the fraud hurts the industries that actually makes the real stuff, thus stunting their potential growth and the global supply of the authentic products. :/
The weirdest thing about the whole fake syrup thing is how they managed to convince all of us that syrup tastes like pure sugar. I had REAL maple syrup for the first time a few years ago and had no idea it tasted so different
It tastes different but I wouldn't write it off as not tasting like sugar. Sugar is perhaps the most prominent ingredient in most people's diet. Either through processed grain breakfast cereal, soda pop, ice cream and an endless list of processed assortments. Literally everything we buy and eat from the grocery store has added sugar. Your taste buds have become accustomed to the taste profile. And while maple syrup do have its distinct taste, it isn't too far from regular sugar when incorporated into recipes. I've taken to using maple syrup in my coffee and you know, it doesn't taste that different from the white powdery stuff. I only notice it on my grocery bill.
Same. Real maple syrup has a very distinct taste that I had never seen in any fake syrup. Also I thought it was common sense to people that most of the syrup in super markets is not real maple syrup
I've had both, and sure I can taste the difference. But who cares? The knockoff stuff is close enough and more importantly is affordable for the average consumer in a way that authentic maple syrup would not be if that became the only available product.
Anyone buying a Parmigiano shaker thinking it's real Parmigiano cheese has much bigger problems than believing their cheese is really authentic Parmigiano cheese.
@@omagochgood and important distinction. You can buy real grated pamiggiano reggiano, but it will almost always be either freshly grated or frozen. It won’t be sitting at room temperature on a shelf
Pretty much all the seven deadly sins are at play rn and are only getting stronger and worse as time passes but greed has always been the worst and most biggest of the 7. It's the one on top because money consumes everything and is everywhere and yeah. Lust is probably the 2nd worst one cuz people always make everything sexual like movies, tv, games, literature, art, music,and etc. Then I'd say sloth/laziness takes the cake at 3rd place as people nowadays have gotten lazier and have some sort of technology or industrial machine or whatever do something for them or people buy takeout instead of getting it themselves which makes them lazy or how people stop working and don't like to work even when they are at work. All the 7 sins are happening and there's really nothing anyone can do about it except for as individuals try not do give in to most of them. I mean sure us as humans all sin practically everyday even without meaning to as we are only human but it's easy to avoid something's of course we as humans just don't try hard enough which in turn circles back around to sloth/laziness we don't try hard enough cuz we dont want to or were too tired or some other lame excuses. Me myself personally I've never really considered myself to be all that greedy or money hungry I mean sure I'm poor money wise and I NEED money to survive and have been poor my whole life but I've never cared all that much for it as much as WANTs go unlike big corporations, companies, name brands, and the government and stuff. To me it's just not what's important in life and money isn't the only thing greed can apply to it's also just an action of not wanting to share your food or have something all to yourself or wanting large amounts and always wanting more of something and never having enough or being fulfilled or satisfied enough is what greed can be which greed can also co-exist and intermingle with Gluttony because it's also about never having enough never being satisfied/being greedy wanting more which could mean buying random items at stores and always consuming and buying or eating to much food and becoming fat and obese it all boils down to obsession and self control and most evil people don't have that they can never get enough to fill the void. I just don't get all the hassle and interest in being greedy let alone about money and I'll never get it. Or power and control either which government and humans tend to care about as well. People should care about God, love-familial, marriage/partner wise, and friendship and also pets, the earth and taking care of it and stuff and seeing it's beauty, learning lessons and knowledge growing as people and so on. People gotta learn that at the end of the day when they die at whatever age their taken at depending on their fate in life that when they die they can't take all this money or this power and control and possessions with them at the end of it all so they need to learn to drop it and not obsess over it so much. All we can really do is hope that some people see the truth but not everyone will. Also I've never really been all that gluttonous either because i usually eat till I'm full and even if I do enjoy food I never tend to overeat. Although I may be gluttonous in shopping for clothes tho. But I never let these consume me to often but overall the majority of humanity is screwed because we all give into temptations of all these 7 sins even without meaning to.
It seems to me that a core problem of the US food industry is ambigous labeling because of non-existing regulation. What an easy problem to fix, such a shame.
Well, that's what happens when so many americans have an irrational fear of "big government", but then let their big government cave to corporations. Propaganda has made americans think that regulations and social welfare = big government when the fact is big government really means giving welfare tax dollars to billionaires. Americans are totally OK with that. In bizzarro land, that = small government.
The ambiguous labeling comes from being required to label. They obfuscate by using catchwords like “natural”-well Poison ivy is natural also, but I wouldn’t put it in my mouth. And anything that says “and other flavors” is hiding something. Add to all that, the size of printing on the labels now make them almost impossible to read!
I swear everything has just become so exhausting. No matter how known the deception is, we’re still left to foot the bill. The way that costs have gone up, this is an even more painful truth.
What's allowed in our food in the US should be criminal. The revolving door of "experts" from the food manufacturing industries, healthcare, and the FDA is laughable and sickening at the same time. Reading labels is all on you at this point. Even then you can't be certain that you are getting is real and safe
I'm allergic to PEG it's in a ton of things, and the FDA allows for companies to not mention it, if it's under a certain amount.. though even a little bit causes my blood pressure to drop and heart palpitations..
@@allesasmart Propyl ethylene Glycol, basically antifreeze.. it's used to lower the freezing point of foods in the USA and also in a lot of drugs.. Covid vaccine.. Robitussin, and many, many more.. It's banned in other countries.. but not in the USA
IF you entered agriculture course in University, this is a question that will sometimes pop in your head. "This stuff is extremely hard to cultivate. how the hell can we meet demands of hundreds of tonnes of that product in a month or year ?" I tried asking my teachers and professors and this video is pretty much what they said.
Food fraud is a sneaky and widespread issue that affects both consumers and legitimate producers. While some deceptive practices may skirt legal boundaries, others, like food fraud, are outright illegal and pose serious risks. It's astonishing to think that what we assume to be premium ingredients could be cheap substitutes, harming both the integrity of the food industry and the health of consumers. The scale of this problem is staggering, with the global food fraud industry estimated at a whopping $40 billion. Not only does it undermine the hard work of honest producers, but it also fuels criminal activities and jeopardizes consumer trust. However, shedding light on these deceitful practices is crucial. By understanding how food deception operates and learning to identify genuine products, we can empower ourselves to make informed choices and support ethical producers.
As a Vermonter, I would rather die than consume imitation syrup. Fun fact: Vermont is the only state in the US where Ihop serves real syrup because it's illegal to label anything as "maple" if it doesn't contain pure maple syrup.
nice, I have purchased some real maple syrup from canada but will look for vermont now. Its shockingly better, even more so than the difference in real honey and store bought.
@@T0tenkampf My gf is from Alabama and had only ever had fake syrup before meeting me, which had led her to believe she hated maple syrup. I introduced her to REAL syrup and it has changed her life xD I like Grade A syrup (which is what you'll commonly find in stores) but if you can find Vermont Fancy grade (aka: Golden and Delicate), it's really worth a try!
Outside of the places that produce it, real maple syrup is often prohibitively expensive, and even when we visited northern New York state it was still expensive.
I know many people don't have this ability, but most farmers markets have a "bee guy" or gal who sells high quality honey. A maple syrup farmer as well is pretty common. Support your local people if you want real products, and you'll get some quality stuff. :)
Yeah you can also get some cut down stuff from them too. Look at Moonshine and how badly it can be from locals. Local does not guarantied to be all that it should be.
I would support my local apiarist who lives across the street from me if he wasn't a total retard lobbying for the protection of invasive Brazilian pepper, which produces mountains of honey that is absolutely disgusting.
Yes choose local. One of India's leading Dietician always recommends eating locally available food on daily basis. Once in a while you can taste global products (which usually needs lots of preservatives & processing).
I've once had the opportunity to get freshly harvested natural honey. The guy who gave it to me found a really large beehive in the jungle and bottled half of the honey. He had enough to give away to the whole neighborhood AND their guests. Really really different texture from all the fake honey found in supermarkets.
SURE HE FOUND THE LARGE BEEHIVE🤨,you mean he may have stolen the honey from a bee harvester that places the bee hives in the forest. There are many thieves stealing honey from beekeepers. Sometimes other beekeepers May steal. I’ll give them the benefit of doubt that this person didn’t steal the honey! Just saying!
Not defending fraudsters but when you bottle 100s of thousands of a product. They usually mix different batches together to achieve one base taste. Minute Maid orange juice…. If you look how it’s manufactured it’s both amazing and concerning.
Most honey found in supermarkets contains little, if any, honey. I buy mine from an organic market that buys it from a local farm. Nothing in it but honey.
petroleum derived ingredients aren't dangerous. theyre only bad when not refined fully (and that does happen so it can still be a risk). it depends on the manufacturer
@@lewis0705 yeah sure lmao. Margarine is so healthy. Let's base our diet off synthetic garbage made from crude oil or its byproducts instead of real whole foods, that can never go wrong
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. 😃
Huh really I didn't know that was real I thought that was just something pigs did in like Stardew Valley (a farming videogame btw). Pigs in the game tend to sniff truffles out and lay them out for you when you come back to get them in the game so that's interesting that it's a real thing. So if they have a great sense of smell, can they smell better than a dog or worse? 🤔
As a Greek (who has olive trees ) i will say that extra vergin olive oil has a realy nice aroma that when you smell it you will think : man that smells is so good that i want to drink it right now. Most of the oils you will find at supermarkets smells awful.
Unpopular opinion: Supermarket extra virgin olive oil isn't that bad. Probably hugely depends on the supermarket though. The supermarkets in my area sell extra virgin olive oil that's actually pretty good. The only olive oil better than this was a special small-batch oil I got from a guy in Greece.
@@geneticallymodified7775 meaning you have never had olive oil from the newly pressed batch in Toscana , as in Montalcino for instance..You have so much to learn and so much joy before you, if you get there before the WEF and WHO ruin all our food, as they have been doing for some years now.
The trouble is, olive oil is sold all over the world, in every town in every store every day of the year. There just are not that many olive trees anywhere. But people can be so easily fooled.
@josephreinhart8712 why joseph... just... why...? Is life so horrible you can't enjoy the artistry, everything has to be through the lens of "activism." That's a terrible existence... who hurt you??? Tell me who hurt you! I'll make'um pay!!!
@@krypton1982 I am sorry. I identify as a married person, so you and me? It isn't going to work. I don't want another terrible experience, so I am just going to pass of your emotional invitation.
@@krypton1982 ...as he asks, "Why!? Why do you insist that criminals perp crimes!? Why!?" Dude. Because they are criminals. Butt pirates, reading books in kindergarten, are still butt pirates. The butts are just...smaller and taste more like chicken.
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.
@@wittysass3812 That's not a possibility in a lot of places in the US. A lot of people live in food deserts so when they do their shopping they have to buy ultra-processed foods that won't expire until the next time they can visit the store again.
@@Digital111 most people live within a reasonable distance from a Walmart or similar grocery store, and then on top of that we have this invention called a refrigerator that keeps your food edible for quite some time. It’s complete nonsense what you’re saying.
@@wittysass3812 Did you even read my comment? I was talking about "Food deserts". Not everyone drives or can afford to. Not everyone is privileged enough like you to have a handy store nearby and access to reliable transport to said store... I suggest you read on "Food deserts" and I'll go read on that intriguing "refrigerator" device you just mentioned.
As an American Professional Chef of 10 years experience I learned a lot from this, I already knew about the fakeness of vanilla and wagyu products, but I had no idea how fake honey and olive oil was, or how to detect fake parmesan from the real thing. Very informative video with verifiable evidence.
@@dismurrart6648Fake olive oil has been going on for centuries with the Mafia taking the lead. Even I already knew about that. While not technically "fake," the quality of all olive oil is inversely proportional to the amount of shelf space in the grocery stores.
The fake oils are kinda disturbing mainly because of how bad food sensitivities can be. My digestion is wrecked I can't do soy, corn, canola oils but olive oil is good except I fear the fakes. Which is why I wont budge on getting the pricy oils from an authentic brand to be sure its real.
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.
@@lewis0705 By seeing your comment i understand that you have a less capable brain as compared to an average human being. If you don't understand what someone said please ask them to repeat it or clarify it, Thanks
This is why I check labels so much, but companies that lie get away with fines, and that's just the cost of doing business for them. My mother went to Mexico several times, buying bottles of what she thought was vanilla extract at roadside stands. I kept telling her that it probably wasn't real and could be toxic, but she refused to believe me and kept doing it.
The thing is also: I'm sure many people would love to be able to pay attention to this instead of the price tag. But fact is, that a lot of people can't afford to do that and are stuck with these potentially harmfull products. Especially something as basic as Honey or Coffee.
You call honey and coffee basic but they have been luxury products for most of their history. If you want something cheaper than honey buy syrups instead.
@tapwater424 I'm talking about today. Coffee and Honey are readily available almost everywhere. Plus if you're going to mention syrups: One of the main compounds of syrup is sugar. Sugar was also a big time luxury product, that only the richest could afford.
@@tapwater424poorer people are the ones working laborious and most times dead end jobs because they aren't afforded certain opportunities in America; these are the people who are more likely to want things like coffee because they get up at 4 a.m. to work the checkout at Walmart for 12 hours or honey for their tea because their sick from stress and overworking but your attitude screams that you don't think poor people should be alloted the opportunity to have those types of products just because they're poor? The FDA should be making stricter laws and cracking down on these things because if they did it would make the healthy and authentic stuff more readily available and thus cheaper and healthier for consumers. It isn't the consumer's fault that they're being tricked and often times forced into buying harmful foods due to their economic status and they deserve the opportunity to have access to foods that aren't made to trick them.
@@hopsymopsy8352 Your logic is flawed. I think if you are low income, you should be seeking out nutricious foods that you can afford. High priced items like extra virgin olive oil, truffles, and caviar should not even be on your radar. As far as "needing" coffee or honey because you work a shit job at Walmart is ridiculous. There are other, more economical products that can be used to maintain health. I don't know anyone at my job (I work one of those shit jobs) who is using honey because they are stressed or overworked. Most of my co-workers PREFER cheap junk food from KFC or McDonald's. Fact is, luxury foods ARE FOR THE RICH. Regular folks have to stick to regular food and just do some research to choose what's most nutricious for their income level.
As someone who's from quebec (where most maple syrup is made), its actually harder to find fake maple syrup. I'm very happy for having lived here because I have indulged in the flavourful joy of it since childhood, so I love sharing it with family and friends that come from the US when they haven't had the real stuff before, seeing their faces light up makes me happy. It's damn delicious.
I'm from Saskatchewan, and while I don't think it's hard to find fake syrup here in the grocery stores, I didn't have any until I was like forty (well, unless I had it as a kid, and just can't rember), and, blech, is it ever gross. It doesn't taste right at all. I don't know, maybe real syrup is more common here in SK than in places like the US, even though it's not like SK is some big maple-syrup-making province.
Yup agree. I went to Quebec the first time in 2016 and had maple syrup there and was like “oh wow, that’s different”… I even came back with a can of it haha
It's not just counterfeiters that are a problem with food purity, many so called reputable companies are also guilty of bulking out their products with cheap ingredients but still claiming 100% purity. Coffee and chocolate manufacturers are two that come to mind and there are many more.
@@kateapple1 I believe that too and if there's any real extraction happening is from the very hard and green fruit which it means is fully loaded with chemicals produced by the plant to protect its baby - the avocado- and repell animals to eat so the benefits to humans sounds to me a hard thing to believe
I live in Sweden so have a bit less issues with fake food as the EU is very strict with food safety and additives etc. But that said, I'm still buying local whenever possible, like honey for example, I live in a small town and have beekeepers both in the town and in the more rural areas outside the town itself, the bees they keep are buzzing around their nearby areas minding their own business and keeping things polinated while producing really amazing honey and there's a huge difference even between the town bees and the rural bees and even different hives of the rural bees as some of them are in forest environment and some aren't. I personally prefer buying honey from the beekeeper a few streets away from where I live if I find that honey in the grocery store down the street, if I can't find that honey (it's small scale after all so limited amounts available) I buy honey from the rural beekeeper as they have more bees and hence can provide more honey so their honey is almost always available to buy. The reason I prefer the honey from near my home is because the more foresty honey has a much stronger taste (due to what plants the bees have access to) and I feel it can be a bit much in a cup of tea or on a toast, while the in-town honey is more light in flavor as the bees making it are mostly visiting flowerbeds and fruit trees. The more rural honey is really good and I've tasted the different honey types from that beekeeper side by side on farmers market type events here in town. It's truly fascinating how REAL honey varies depending on the surrounding where the bees buzz around, both taste and color of the honey can vary greatly depending on if it's bees focused on forest, farmland or bees visiting people's gardens.
I‘m German and I’m always thankful for the EU‘s relatively strict rules for food. And the opportunity to import products from the countries of origin without paying unbelievable amounts. I always buy olive oil from a family in Italy and balsamic from another family in Modena. Honey is available from a lot of beekeepers locally here as well, sometimes it‘s just not the season and you have to wait a bit. Which is ok. A lot of Americans don’t even know what the real food is and have never had it in their entire life.
The real issue is population and television/internet. We all want food and we all see and get recipes and there is no way to get the entire world with the real quality food, especially the rare stuff like parmesean cheese, truffles, olive oils, maple syrup, caviar, etc....
@@BoydofZINJ I don’t think this is the main issue. We have Parmesan in Europe with the label D.O.P in supermarkets available. Same goes for balsamic, honey etc. It‘s also possible to get these foods in Japan or Korea. The reason why the real foods are not available in the US is pure corporate greed and the relatively low value of food in America‘s mentality.
@@BoydofZINJ Well ok, maybe they overranked (forgot the right word), but if anyone wants to taste these foods but can't find the real ones cheap, maybe we all should make fakes safe for those people and probably themselves?
Exactly like these people in the video can afford the real stuff but a mother and a father with three kids or single parents etc struggling to make ends meet is not going break their paycheck on a real bottle of olive oil or real honey or high quality real syrup. I've been eating Mrs Butterworth or Log cabin or even the generic syrup from supermarket ever since I've been alive and that's fine with me.
And they are not getting paid enough to make the real stuff. They want to get wealthy by producing fake stuff. They can't buy yachts and send children to Harvard by making honest products. So, if you want the real thing is up to you to step your game up, spend countless currency on a higher education. Get a higher paying job so that every producer can live lavishly.
Youre just missing the point of the video. The point isnt that there shouldn’t be cheap alternatives it’s that they shouldn’t try to trick people through labels. Some of these fakes werent even cheaper 💀
@@sergiomercado4859 I mean one of the main conclusions of the video is saying to just buy more expensive products because they're more likely to be real; the example of some fakes being expensive is a non issue because it's not even close to the majority of fake products at all. That sounds pretty backwards when pay hasn't increased at all in recent decades while prices keep skyrocketing... The point of what individual consumers can do is still exactly the same, poor people will continue to buy cheaper things because it's all they can afford, whether it's fake or not. Richer people will buy up, fake or not. No individual person can do anything about phony labels and false advertising, that's up to legislation. Nobody said anything about cheap alternatives not existing anymore, it's that there would be no need for them to exist if your average person got paid a livable wage. I'd wager that most people aren't technically being deceived at all, they know exactly what they are buying is fake crap but it's literally all they can afford. Nobody goes buying cheap top-ramen thinking it's giving them an authentic ramen experience.
@@sergiomercado4859 the lady discussing honey really seemed to be pushing hard for "pay more for honey or we'll go out of business" because lets face it, buying honey at the farmers market is not "affordable" by most families. The cheap squeeze bottle at walmart from China is though. The beekeepers need to streamline their process or just deal with the fact that some consumers are just fine with low quality honey. I personally don't see much of a difference.
You absolutely can legislate this problem away. Every increase in sentencing laws raises the cost of these counterfeit products. RISK is taken into consideration, it is priced in. The higher the risk, the higher the price. Once the counterfeit stuff is double the price of the real stuff, the counterfeit product is completely uncompetative with the real stuff.
I am from Brazil and live in a “coffee town”. I don’t work with it, but I know a lot about it (everyone here knows one or two things about coffee). My piece of advice is: buy the whole bean and ground it at home. You still don’t know if you are buying great coffee or normal coffee, but it’s 100% coffee.
I was shopping with one of my roommates one day, and she bought the bear jar that said 100% honey. She said she only gets REAL honey, so I flipped the jar and read the back ‘clover extract, and corn syrup.’ I told her “If the honey has no crystals in it; it’s definitely not honey.”
As a beekeeper I can tell you that freshly harvested honey will have no crystals. Crystallization won't start until about 8 months later. Plus store bought honey that has been pasteurized is just not worth paying for even if it is pure honey because all the health benefits have been destroyed. For the couple bucks more (I sell 1 lb of honey for $10) go to your local beekeeper. I don't make money from selling honey if you offset it with my costs, I keep bees because I love the hobby. And the bees!
I will say on the coffee end of things, I used to work for Starbucks at one of the plants in the U.S. the main warehouse could fit (3) 747 airplanes inside. The whole place was insanely clean and organized. Coffee beans were separated by country of origin upon arrival and constantly tested for contaminations. There is a library of every run of coffee product produced up to the last 3 years. Constant checks for product defects. The facility could even recycle its own air and filter it for up to something like 6 hours. It was one of the cleanest and most professional places I ever worked.
The Germans, I understand ,put a tax on any processed coffee imported into Germany. By processed, I mean, for example, roasted beans. So just imagine the impact - discouraging beneficiation in poor growing countries.
@@phillipsugwas I’m not entirely sure of every aspect of these coffee plantations, I know the beans are bagged after being sun dried (I don’t know if this is considered processed or not) but I am certain the dried beans are not roasted beans when leaving their country of origin. The process is more involved than many realize. Almost immediately after being roasted the beans need to go into an airtight sealed bag with a plastic valve for relief gases to escape (coffee beans actually release gasses for a short time after roasting) but if you let oxygen get back into the bag the beans will oxidize and go stale fairly quickly. All the machines involved are very expensive and maintenance intensive. Roasters, bag constructor, bagging machine, packaging machine, conveyer belts, ect. So usually coffee beans are roasted when they arrive at whatever region that has this equipment. (Last time I checked) There are 5 plants in the U.S. I think 3 dotted around Europe, and 1 in china. From there it’s distributed to consumers. So realistically Germany isn’t hurting the poorer countries by imposing the import tax, but a wealthier nation that already paid the plantation owners. (Not saying the workers at these plantations are paid very well because they probably are not. Although in the case of Starbucks they do try to work with plantation owners to pay their workers higher wages. In the end the plantation owners still don’t pay that well cause the owners tend to pocket a decent amount of the cash Starbucks gives them… not to mention Starbucks itself makes huge profit off the raw beans they receive. The economics are complicated but the field workers are the ones that are really screwed in the end… Starbucks itself though pays its workers amazing wages with plenty of benefits.
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.
@@aminahussain8690 Well sure, but I mostly meant that we live in a time where we rely on outside sources for ALL of our food needs in today's world and you can't really trust any of them.
As a beekeeper I understand what they’re talking about when they say you have to have patience. I don’t really get much honey but when I do, it’s wonderful when I sell it to my customers and they tell me that it is the best honey that they’ve ever tasted. I didn’t even know that China was the largest producer of Honey in the world
Sad affair wasn't honey imports from China banned because they were exporting 3rd grade honey cut with HFCS into America trying to destroy our domestic honey industry? So the egg heads in D.C. passed a law no imports from china...problem solved right? WRONG...China sells this fake frankin honey all over the Globe to countries who have importation privileges. It's labeled as import from, Brazil, Canada, Eastern Europe, turkey, and people pay top dollar for Chinese dung honey....good job america 😢...support your local beekeeper & gunfighter😉👌
Honestly, I don't think the caviar scam is that bad. As said, Sturgeons are endangered, most are on the brink of extinction, I think switching to the fish eggs from another more common fish is a great solution. As long as the customer isn't physically harmed and aware of what they are buying, I see no problem.
Are you all daft or did you spaz out in parts of the video? The problem is not and never has been people selling fish eggs of a different species, it's selling fish eggs of a different species and labeling it as caviar - when caviar comes exclusively from sturgeons. What you think of harvesting caviar from sturgeons is irrelevant here, the point is selling one thing while labeling it as another to leech off the market value of that something.
@@evonne315I think most of it is farmed anyway, but yeah there's a reason they're endangered and it's because they're taking millions of eggs and chowing down that could have made thousands more breeding sturgeon, it's pretty fucked
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.
I read food label. In the USA food is marked but it is up to you to learn about it and it is not that hard to get yourself better educated on this. But most American just care about the taste and really do not care but to blame other when they body finally say enough.
That's true! I'm still in uni but they taught us that food labels are there and regulated by law to give consumers freedom in making "informed" choice on what they should eat.
my family looks at me the same way. weird to me people are not concerned about what they are eating some stuff is literally created in a lab no reason to eat that crap.
Yeah almost everything has high fructose corn syrup anymore.. people look at me like I'm crazy for spending 10$ on a bottle of legit BBQ sauce.. its always, "I could get 5 bottles of Baby Rays for that price, yuk yuk yuk".. yeah well you can take those 5 bottles of heartburn and dump-em down the drain cause I wont touch the garbage anymore.
For such a consumer driven society it's remarkable how bad the American consumer protection laws are. You would think the balance of power would be more in the consumers favour. It must be a nightmare trying to buy food there if the labelling is so deceptive.
100 years ago companies could get away with having animal feces in meat products and most bread was mixed with sawdust. Things are aren’t perfect now sure, but for the most part we regulate the market from the worst elements
@@masond7573as a usda employee that works in farm country, "organic" is mostly a marketing ploy, and it is usually terrible for soil erosion because they have to till heavily to keep weeds down.
The funny thing is, American consumers are more likely to freak out over things that actually don't matter in food than to care about the things that do. For example freaking out over something being "organic" when it has no measurable affect on health or taste, but they still go for the "organic" processed food when they would have been better off going for the normal fresh fruits and veggies.
Those in control of the medical industry is also in control of our food. In the US they want us sick, obese, and diseased so they make money from birth to death.
As you can see in the video, wasabi in tubes is almost always "fake," but this is almost common knowledge for Japanese and is even indicated on the package, so I was very surprised to see it mentioned here. Japanese people also usually buy Wasabi in tubes at supermarkets. Even in Japan, it is not very common to find "real" Wasabi (of course, there are places where it is available).
Considering the real one coming from a stem of a plant that required 18 months to fully growth and some specific conditions of its place of planting, the 'real' one is rare and expensive for sure
They did say that only 1 percent of Wasabi is real Wasabi. So ya.... My take is if its that rare then its not for everyone and its ok to have something REAL thats more readily available
Is this really important? I think the world will survive without these ridiculous expensive items and ingredients, truffles, waggle beef caviar etc. etc.
i work with a community garden that harvests local olives every year and gets them pressed to sell in their small shop, after having tasted truly fresh, real olive oil its insane how much more flavourful and delicious it is compared to the cheap stuff.
Near where I live, there's a company that grows olive trees and processes their own oil. I am very far from being a connoisseur and I use olive oil rather seldom, but even I can tell the difference between their product and the mass-produced stuff in the grocery stores.
Thank you for producing this episode. Hindsight is 20-20, but objectively speaking there should be no surprise in any of the motives behind the counterfeiting and fraud. Human nature is instant gratification, there is NO WAY to short cut any highly intensive and high labour processes
I think imitation is fine if it is labeled as such. My thing is the dangerous ingredients issue. My Sister-In-Law is allergic to many things and peanuts are the big one. Peanut oil is the worst for her and if it was hidden in something or was not disclosed properly as an ingredient, she would have a very bad reaction.
Yeah, agree with that. As long as it's labelled correctly, it's okay and also legal. Problems are those illegal ones that put on fake labels to pass off as the real deal.
My son is allergic to peanuts (and cashews and pistachios). but Research has shown that refined peanut oil will not cause allergic reactions for the overwhelming majority of people who are allergic to peanuts and if anyone does suffer a reaction it is likely to be mild. However, unrefined (crude) peanut oil is more likely to cause symptoms. Double unlucky for her sorry to hear.
Something being fake isn’t that big of an issue if the consumer doesn’t care. Imitation vanilla works just fine for most culinary uses and wasabi being mostly horseradish is a commonly known fact. Tell a Japanese person that their wasabi is fake and they’ll just shrug. The producers care because products being real is a major selling point. The rich will buy anything if it’s rare enough. The real concern for the average consumer should be food safety, and at this point it’s not really the additives they should be worried about. Most additives that will outright kill you are outlawed, what’s more dangerous is all the salt, sugar and fat in food nowadays. Vanillin won’t kill you but eat enough sugar and you will die. There’s also other additives that’ll kill you slowly or rarely that the FDA approves but the common stuff is more dangerous with how prevalent they are.
Dangerous additives not being regulated is a major concern for fake foods, and most non-pure food, usually. Even fungicides in fish and herbicides on plants, with antibiotics affecting our hormone production in beef and chicken should be on a top priority list to watch out for. Wonder where the uptick in cancer comes from, bell curve lining up precisely with how commercial markets for food developed and increased in demand, among other things. There isn't a magical cancer fairy that sprinkles you with cancer dust while you sleep, randomly; it comes [at least mostly] from a genetic disposition affected by things we put into our bodies, that affect how our bodies cellular functions like repair work. That's what cancer is at its core - abnormal cell growth. What ruins the ability for cells in the body to properly function? Obviously is either chemicals we are exposed to, or things we put in our bodies. Hell, even chemicals usually get put in our bodies to cause cancer, like someone working or living at/near a chemical plant, a commonly reported finding.
@@joz534 What am I selling exactly? I start off by saying that you can buy fake vanilla and wasabi instead of the more expensive real stuff. I also say the people selling you food only care about their stuff being real because they can sell it for more to anyone who can afford caring. And if it’s that you think I’m saying fake food being sold for the same price as real food is a good thing, no I obviously don’t. I have common sense. I’m only selling ideas and you’re not forced to buy them.
It is important to appreciate the awareness and concern expressed regarding the state of food regulations in the US. The sentiment that what is allowed in our food should be criminal reflects a genuine desire for higher standards and greater transparency in the food industry. The recognition of the revolving door between experts from food manufacturing industries, healthcare, and the FDA highlights the need for unbiased oversight and regulation. The call to action to read labels and take personal responsibility for food choices demonstrates a proactive approach to ensuring the safety and authenticity of the food we consume. This appreciation note acknowledges the importance of consumer awareness and the ongoing need for improvements in food regulations to protect public health.
Regarding olive oil, the EU regulation for when an oil is considered “extra virgin” is its acidity level. Greek oils are less acidic than Italian and Spanish oils in general. Most producers will mix oils from various producers in order to obtain the highest allowed acidity level for the oil to still be considered “extra virgin”. A farmer told me this and I’ve found that Greek-produced extra virgin olive oils are much more likely to be of higher quality (grassy, fruity, greener) than the blended Italian and Spanish varieties
Why are Greek oils less acidic in general? Has it something to do with the soil they're grown in? Because not only Spain and Italy blend in different producers' oils into one single shelf-brand. That's how the olive oil industry tends to operate also in Greece, Turkey, Portugal, etc.
@@renatopinto3186 Simply relaying the words of the (british-greek) farmer I spoke to, so I wouldn't know if it's a truth cut in marble. I'm sure Greece also has its fair share of industrial producers, but it's my impression that there are way more local and non-industrial producers, particularly in rural areas, with the pressing being done at local community mills. On the other hand non-blended oils from Spain and Italy seems more likely to be sold with 'single estate' labels, thus pushing the product and the price into the specialty/luxury market. I guess it also speaks to the way the food industry is much more protected and capitalised in Italy and Spain as compared to Greece ...
If extra virgin olive oil is characterised by that level of acidity, it probably means that it can reach it by using just olives, without the need of blending it. Of course the British-Greek farmer will tell you that his oil is better...
@@lotsoflemonisback thank you for the reply. From what I know acidity can be influenced by a number of things, including ripeness and damage to olives' skin (weather, basically). Which makes me wonder if Greek producers have some special way of organizing their plantations or subsequent processing. It's also a bit unclear to me if an extra virgin is synonymous with less processing. If so, it would make sense, as you suggest, for more archaic methods to yield oils which retain better properties. Tho, from personal experience, here in Portugal, greener and fruitier home-made oils tend to be more acidic (edit: sour, actually) than the distilled golden premiums at the supermarket.
When we lived in the country, my parents processed their own honey. After moving, they sourced honey from local producers. If you want real, you often have to make your own, or have reliable suppliers.
You're definitely confusing the cause and the consequence, here. As long as people will keep buying them, other people will still produce them and stores will still sell them. That's how it works. You have a power: stop consuming bad products. Your vote, your control, is where you put your money. You're the final consumer, you're the one responsible for this - not corporations. Corporations give you whatever you'll buy as long as you keep on buying it. Perhaps not you personally, but "you", the consumer, people like you. And me, to an extent (for wasabi for sure, as there is very little choice, but not for the other products), but I live in EU, and EU strongly regulates this kind of things, we generally have better food products than in US and anything that's produced in Europe is controlled and protected, recipes included. So, for now (emphasis on that "for now"), we're eating alright and our salaries correspond to the produce we can buy and want to buy. I'm French, if I want truffles, I ask my family, or I go to the farm. We get very decent parmiggiano straight from Italy, we get regional olive oil produced in Provence, we get real vanilla cultivated in Madagascar and Reunion Island, you can't sell fake maple syrup and call it maple syrup, that'd be straight up illegal... So I guess your other power is demanding regulations to your government. But get the causal link right: the consumer buys the bad thing, so the corporations produce the bad thing. Stop consuming it, and evil corp will quit making it. ;)
The majority of people on the planet cannot afford to eat premium ingredients, and will likely never have the opportunity to try the premium to know what they taste like. As long as there is demand for the taste (especially from people who are either looking to cut costs or don't particularly care if their ingredient is premium for a certain recipe), imitation products at a fraction of the price of a real thing will always exist.
And as long as people keep buying it, they'll keep selling it. True, the "fake foods" problem isn't going away anytime soon, but we have the choice of seeking out the real foods, if we can afford them. Personally, I want and am willing to pay for the real stuff.
The product labels - at least in Germany - clearly state what's inside. People are not too lazy to read, they simply don't care. They don't need real Wasabi. Green colored horseradish does its job, too. The taste is similar and it's cheaper. This spring I have visited a Wasabi farm in Japan near Matsumoto. The way it's cultivated is extreme. Wasabi is a plant that is only native to Japan. Some other countries cultivate it, too. But why flying Wasabi all around the world if horseradish is cultivated in many countries, even in Germany? Plus, since Wasabi is so complex to cultivate, the worldwide need of Wasabi could never be satisfied.
when i worked in a kitchen, the chef didnt realise the oil was truffel oil and used it to roast potatos, the whole kitchen smelled like a gas leak and was evacuated. safe to say, it must have been the fake oil
Fake (cheaper alternative) food is only a problem when it masquerades as the real thing. So long as it's obviously a different product and has its true ingredients clearly listed, im totally cool with it. As a Canadian, table/pancake syrup is a decent example of this where I live. Everyone here knows the difference and knows exactly what they're buying. Nobody that's lived here for more than a few years buys and consumes table syrup thinking it's real maple syrup. Many still buy table syrup though because it's cheaper and plenty of people don't mind the taste.
Yep spot on there, agree pretty much entirely there. While pure maple syrup is good, sometimes its a bit too strong and the 'fake' stuff is a lot cheaper and still tastes good enough.
Why are you okay with consuming fake, artificial chemicals that were never made to be processed & consumed by humans to begin with? - That's a genuine question. I did some research on artificially flavoured maple syrup (table syrup) & found that it's biggest ingredients are corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, cellulose gum stablisers, preservers including 6 sulfiting agents (the main one being sulfur dioxide which is a gaseous air pollutant that's a major part of our fine particle pollution) - the thing that was so like, outrageous? was I had to do so much reading about those ingredients & why they're used. So like, yeah, you're going to pay $3.47(approx) at Walmart/Target/Instacart for Pearl Milling Co. for a bottle of syrups, water, stablisers, preservers, silfiting agents that are pollutants - or $14.99(approx) at Costco or $17.29 at WholeFoods for organic maple syrup. That's it. That's the only, singular ingredient. 100% do whatever with you & your body, if you're okay with consuming things that you have no idea what it is, where it comes from, what the chemicals are; that's on you, I just would like a different perspective on why, you know?
@@SaltyBottoms I don't disagree with any of your points but at the end of the day most of it just comes to cost. It's kind of a cop-out answer but saving $5-10 here or there does add up, especially when you don't make a ton of money. Another big thing, at least personally, is for some items you don't really care for the quality as much as long as it's not like actually poison. For me maple syrup or ketchup is in that category while something like Donair meat, eggs or like honey. I try to get something of decent quality. I'll never go cheap on items like these and would just forego buying entirely instead of buying something of low quality. Compared to something like maple syrup or ketchup I don't really care as much for quality there as it doesn't impact me anywhere near as much.
@@SaltyBottoms "artificial chemicals that were never made to be processed & consumed by humans to begin with?" That doesn't mean much. There are so many variables at play here, that something new and artificial could potentially be far safer and healthier, or it could kill you. It depends on the specific situation. Just because something is a new technique, doesn't mean it is bad though. Some of these old techniques for processing foods are pretty weird themselves. Like think about what making cheese entails. That doesn't really seem like a natural way to make food, but we are okay with it just because we been doing it for a long time?
I wouldn't say it is only a problem when it masquerades as the real thing. In places like the US, that is mostly true. Though there are places where the fakes can make you sick, and with how connected the world is there is risk of them being shipped into the country from time to time.
We have a small Olive farm in Northern California and produce our own EVOO… Our biggest expense is the “Hand Harvesting”, no machines to shake the trees because the machine would cost as much as our whole property cost and we only have 85 trees on our property. Depending on the year, we produce as much as 10 to 14 gallons of oil a year, so far… Most of Our trees are now about 10 yrs old and they are predominately Arbequina Olives, which are Spanish Olives that are grown for their oil. By the time we pay for harvesting, milling and then bottle it plus label, a 17 oz bottle will cost me, to produce at least $10.00 just to break even. So when big huge farms, who own the mills and use equipment to harvest trees. It is much cheaper for a large company in Europe to produce EVOO than a small family owned farm in Nor Cal to make any money. But it is a true labor of Love and the end product is off the charts incredible and so very healthy for you. We also note on the label when our fruit is harvested/milled (same day) and then when we bottle, which can sometimes be months after the milling because we Do Not filter our oil, it naturally filters via gravity. We do often bottle a few gallons after the milling and it’s called “Olio Nuovo”- New Oil which has a shorter life because it has not been filtered. The flavor is much more stronger and full of a brighter flavor. It’s amazing. So buy from small family owned farms and stay healthier!
The only issue is those that cannot afford the "real" thing, but still want the (insert product here). My wife and I personally buy from "a guy" (a bread guy, a honey guy, a lamb guy, etc), but not everyone has the financial flexibility to do so, and the cheap prices of the fake items appeal to those who cant afford it. *shrugs shoulders*
I wonder why this comment is not much higher rated. Many people knowingly buy cheaper imitation just to taste even the imitated product simply because they can't afford to buy the real deal. Not everyone has a connoisseur palate to taste the original and is satisfied with imitation as long as the price is right.
In the honey business, sugar water is fed to bee's to increase the honey production. The honey produced this way has a pretty bland flavour and is very watery, but since its dirt cheap to produce it's usually mixed into normal honey to increase volume of production. There is a high chance that most people that haven't bought honey straight from a producer have never tasted real honey in their lives
Yes, there are 5 tiers of honey (1) >50% corn / rice syrup + cheap (2) honey + artificial flavoring (2) Honey from bees fed fructose / sucralose syrup (3) Blends of refined honey from multiple farms with various flower sources (4) Refined single flower source honey (eg. Japanese Acacia) (5) Unfiltered and unrefined raw honey 90% of honey in grocery stores are (1) or (2). In rare occasion stores carry (3) on the very top-shelf. (4) is what you find in specialty / artisan shops and (5) you can get from a local honeybee farmer.
I have nothing against imitation versions of food, if they are properly disclosed as such and are safe for consumption. It allows the flavors of the food to reach those who aren't as well off and can't spend $13 for a bottle of maple syrup.
Well I can afford maple syrup but to thin compared to corn syrup. I can't be concerned about the supposed health problems to corn syrup. We don't live or die based upon it. Corn syrup doesn't control my destiny.... 🤣 Personally I think I'd rather just have biscuits and gravy, that I make myself. I just wished every liquid in the store wasn't pasteurized 🤦♂️
then why not call it imitation -- the way imitation vanilla was called.. Maybe people deserve a death sentence for the partially added peanut oil in what is labeled as pure olive oil, lethal to a young person with peanut allergy, because a mandatory vaccine contained an ingredient not listed by the AMA.
Anybody else notice, or maybe i should say shocked to learn that truffles are more expensive then high quality weed these days I mean, i 100% knew they werent cheap but that price blew me away
I remember when I was young, my mom and I would often make our own faux maple syrup at home using a mixture of water, sugar, and maple extract because it was affordable and we liked the flavor well enough. To this day if a bottle of "100% Maple Syrup" behaves like that faux maple syrup my mom and I used to make back in the day I instantly get suspicious
Regarding the bit with the Tonka beans, Tonka has actually historically been used as a vanilla flavoring in many European countries, so it's not actually that fraudulent; it's about as misleading as artificial vanilla flavor is.
I wonder how much fake honey I ate until my sister bought hives and started getting the most amazing honey. It tastes different with each season, depending on what is flowering at the time, but always delicious.🍯🐝
My mom used to warn us about fake and harmful products in food. She learned this many years ago in college. Imagine a college teaching the dangers of fake vs real anything today.
Sometimes I wish videos like these would actually change the way we think about buying products, but for most authentic stuff we simply can't afford it. That is exactly where the fakes strike.
In reference to the truffle oil, I agree to a point. There are many fakes when it comes to truffle oil, however, when using a truffle shaver, you always have this tiny edge left over. We would mince those tiny pieces and create infused oil with those remnants. Infused oils though have a short shelf life can get the last bit of life out of something following initial usage.
Thank you for this. I'm coming to this video right after the truffle video that Ethan Chlebowski did, and he made the point that black summer truffles are used alongside artificial white truffle flavoring. It isn't fake, it's imitation. Glad other people are well informed.
Her thing at the very end about putting the fake honey on your hair and face... I could maybe see real honey being good for that, but it seems like the fake stuff wouldn't be beneficial, beauty-wise.
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.
Luv bees and hope your family can continue this important and wholesome hobby, people today have to start supporting home grown, untainted (real) food! Thanks for telling us of your honey!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
What u2 are doing is obviously very important for the buyers, another aspect is the bees showing condition of the environment. Majority of honey sold in eastern and central EU countries is a "mix of honey from EU countries", that normally means something is wrong with it. I got two jars where ~50% of such honey evaporated when stored properly in a closed jar, beside not crystallizing properly and tasting too sweet. Inspections always find fake honey but nothing is done.
OMG, Raspberry honey is my favorite. Having a difficult time finding raw, unpasteurized Raspberry honey here in Maine.
Watching honey bees come and go from their hives calms my soul.
I ❤🐝🐝🐝🐝
A core problem is allowing terms such as "artificial flavor" and "natural flavor" as "ingredients" (and all their variations). A flavor, whether artificial or real, is NOT an ingredient - it is a property of an ingredient.
Edit:
I originally used the terms "artificial flavoring" and "natural flavoring", but a couple of comments pointed out that "flavoring" is not "flavor". So, I changed "flavoring" to "flavor" to be more grammatically consistent with the rest of the comment. However, "flavoring" _is_ also used in ingredients lists, and is just as wrong.
Exactly
Preach......
One thing I have a problem with in ingredients nowadays is if you have a hard time pronouncing the f****** word it should definitely not be in the ingredients list
Worse are the all the fake sugars out there it's lethal to people and promoted as healthy for diabetic people what rubbish, or to lose weight when it does the opposite. What's worse is if all the damn products out there causing the issues we have would stop using corn syrup sugar and instead use actual real sugar.
That's a horrible argument,@@darkenedpsynoid. Nomenclature can quickly become very technical without being dangerous. For example 2-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-5,7-dihydroxy-3-[(2R,3S,4R,5R)-3,4,5-trihydroxyoxan-2-yl]oxychromen-4-one which is a common polyphenol found in apples.
As a person with severe allergies, the fact that the label can lie is probably the scariest part of this for me.
I combat this fear buy not outsourcing my control of food preparation to any 3rd party. I make sure to buy the expensive brand of olive oil because I'm allergic to soy and sunflower oils. I figure if it's expensive, it's probably legit. I also buy whole foods and make my own dishes from them.
Same here. The day I found out olive oil could be mixed with soy oil was absolutely horrifying. And knowing now that honey can be mixed with corn syrup- It makes a lot of sense all of a sudden why I'd sometimes get sick after eating honey or using olive oil. Doing research helps... But sometimes, you have no way of knowing.
@@CosmicEternityCDjust make sure you’re getting extra virgin olive oil from one country source, it’s more expensive but it’s honestly the only cooking oil safe to consume anyway. And with honey just get raw unfiltered. It’s more expensive also but taste great and has no additives. It’s literally collected directly from the honeycomb and bottled
Probably from the illegal Nazi mandated vaccines that caused most of your problems. Only in Nazi fascist Corp owned weak divided aMErika of lies. Now mask up and obey slaves. LMFAO Operation Papererclip aMErika ?
liemakers do not care about that part. Only money counts.
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 👍🏻🙏🏻
I refuse to believe in a God but you are doing God's work with this. Long arse video. 👍
@@JD-hx7ydit kinda has chapters
@@madcornman7012😂😂😂😂
the hero we don’t deserve
i produce biolgoical olive oil,, its so good,,
like in ancient times,, but you ahve to consume it it starts loosing porpeerties after one year.
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.
Pretentious people who think they need Fungus oil on French Fries.
@@eduardochavacano sure the video is a little about those pretentious people, but don't miss the main problem, companies being allowed poison people because of "regulations". Capitalism.
If the chinese stopped eating shark fin soup then no one would be cutting the fins off sharks & throwing the live bodies back.
A chemist finds ways to cheaply replicate hydrocarbons and the liberals lose their minds because it’s not “organic”, even though that’s the scientific definition of organic
caveat emptor has been a valid standard even before written history.
Love that companies can just get away with literally false advertising and illegal practices with 0 consequences because of money
Of course. Rich gotta rich. 💪😎✌️ Poor gotta serve and suffer.
We paid a lot of taxes and government agencies don't do their work fine. It's disgusting!
Capitalism is organized crime, attack wealth
Buyers need to take some accountability and read the ingredients list. It literally says: artificial truffle flavor.
You don’t read the ingredients it’s on you
I was once given a jar of homemade honey by a customer of mine. He had a huge garden, full of many beautiful varieties of flower, and the honey the bees made from them had a wonderful, floral aroma. There really is no substitute for the real thing.
I buy real maple syrup because I hate the corn syrup masquerading as maple flavored syrup
I bought natural honey from my friend's brother in law who is a small producer. What I remember, the stock is not always available for sale. The aroma, taste and viscosity are not the same for different bottles.
It’s readily available in my neck of the woods. I know of three backyard producers within a 2 mile radius.
$20 a quart.
@@laurac5451I honestly enjoy the fake table syrup, but yeah it tastes very different from real maple syrup.
Lots of people I know are in the same boat as you. They love the real stuff and hate the fake stuff.
Bottled Spring water.... thats a firehose tap filling your stuff
It amazes me how society believes lies behind industry. I recently finished book called The 23 Former Doctor Truths by Lauren Clark. She explained her career thoughts perfectly!
Thank you for sharing that with us
Yea finished it. Such an amazing book also recommending it
Advertising is forbidden
Botted comment? the author of the book has been outed as a fraud so many times, very sketchy
Scammer detected, report the comment
Biggest problem is that misleading labels are legal.
Biggest problem is people are too stupid to have awareness and media competence
This just this.
Because the politicians and regulators are corrupt.
And the FDA (US) is so corrupt they'd rather remove country of origin labeling and not require GM disclosure, because big business profit.
Wish we could segregate this agency... Let them focus on their grossly profitable drug industry while another one who cares regulates our food industry. But as if that'll ever happen.
Yeah, companies lie and manipulate us.
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
All cheese is processed.
@@herekittykitty9324 hes talking about the ingredients. Some are made of milk some of water and powders and chemicals
@@herekittykitty9324 You think you are being clever but you aren't.
It hugely depends on where you live. I personally live in the Netherlands and cheese is our staple food.
Sure we have a lot of cheap cheese and personally I find most of them just bad and plastic-like of texture. I get my cheese from the local farmer or cheese shop and boy oh boy does it taste different once you get your hands on the real stuff.
But the fun thing is americans can even commit murder for the cheapest of plastic cheeses. When I go to the states I always bring a few cheeses with me, including the cheap stuff, so once they confessed to commit murder for the cheap stuff I will pull out the aged stuff and the farmer stuff. I usually bring around 1 kilo (2 lbs) with me, but once people realize the quality they do some quick math and consider me rich, bring over 100 dollars worth of cheese while I only paid 15-20 euro in total.
@@Nikki_the_G Are you saying someone has to be clever to know all cheese is processed? Smh.
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.
Also nutrition value, I remember some cereal company add iron directly to cheat the nutritional value(not sure if it’s true or not)
@@secondary2nd That's not a bad thing though. Mineral (including iron) deficiency is a very common problem, mainly because people don't care enough to manage their mineral intake. Food fortification (artificially add nutrient to food) is one of the way WHO recommends to combat this problem.
Great. You continue to eat your imitation products.
@@cjay2Obviously imitation products can be terrible, but I simply don't see the value in something like real beluga caviar. If even experts struggle to tell the difference between real sturgeon eggs and an "inferior" product then why bother paying the enormous premium?
Yap. Same with the vaccine scam enforcement and enormous vaccine injury statistics.
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.
Hip-hop is worse then garbage auzak techno.
The glazing is crazy 😭🙏
right but was it 100% REAL Jazz? 😂
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.
It's really easy to make your own vanilla! You gotta find real vanilla beans but you can find them in specially ingredient shops! Lots of videos on TH-cam in how to make it
@@Cat-ic3df up
@@Cat-ic3dfdoesn’t it take months?
You can harvest eggs without killing fish
wow. (what a deeply stupid lie.)
HOW was this "extra concentrated" labelled that she KNEW it "had no fillers"? or that it wasn't "processed or produced in a way that it's natural sugars prevented it from going bad if fridged"?
was this in the mail, this "extra concentrated" Dominican vanilla?
or was it in person?
inquiring minds need to know.
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.
That contains ONLY peanuts
Cool story bro
The grocery store in the last city I lived in, had a peanut butter grinder in the store. Was great to just take a couple cups of peanuts and making your own peanut butter, and they didn't really charge much more than the peanuts themselves, so it was actually cheaper than getting a classic jar.
@BarryPiper - read a jar of peanut butter from a major manufacturer.
If you are lucky, peanuts will be one of many ingredients.
4 ingredients? and you eat that sht? @@BarryPiper
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.
They sell them now?
@@LuseGoose nah, we don't farm the land anymore. And my relatives are a bit too old to be wandering the forest looking for fungi. Every now and then some will go hiking and find them but they're not sold off, just eaten.
How about the look on YOUR face when he described wild black truffles so flippantly. Interesting story. You've probably enjoyed some fabulous fungi back on your family's land in the old country.
@@JoelDiNicolol I did get treated to fresh porcini's after a day of hunting near the village of Rogi. They're called varganji there and were made into a thick stew. And yes, dollar signs did disappear before my eyes when I heard only the pigs got to enjoy those 'smelly' black mushrooms!
I am so envious when i see those who seek truffles as an occupation handling a nice-sized black one. I'm glad for you that you had the opportunity to experience hunting them with your family on the old farm. Priceless. @@taniasalu2405
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.
This sounds like someone that would say "I get by comfortably"
Said no one who was actually poor
Very true! You'll end up paying back the rest in doctor bills if you buy the cheap stuff, and feel worse overall.
Fake parmesan isn't worse for you than real parmesan. You're not "sustaining your body with the right things" when you're buying the real thing, it just tastes slightly better
The worst part isn’t even the fact that it is literally fraud, but that committing the fraud hurts the industries that actually makes the real stuff, thus stunting their potential growth and the global supply of the authentic products. :/
People want cheap stuff.
Keep people living in poverty so they only buy the cheap imitations :(
Fake cheese is still cheese
I think the bigger issue is the totally unknown health impact of these adulterated products.
@@magdalenam363 victim mindset
The weirdest thing about the whole fake syrup thing is how they managed to convince all of us that syrup tastes like pure sugar. I had REAL maple syrup for the first time a few years ago and had no idea it tasted so different
It tastes different but I wouldn't write it off as not tasting like sugar. Sugar is perhaps the most prominent ingredient in most people's diet. Either through processed grain breakfast cereal, soda pop, ice cream and an endless list of processed assortments. Literally everything we buy and eat from the grocery store has added sugar. Your taste buds have become accustomed to the taste profile. And while maple syrup do have its distinct taste, it isn't too far from regular sugar when incorporated into recipes. I've taken to using maple syrup in my coffee and you know, it doesn't taste that different from the white powdery stuff. I only notice it on my grocery bill.
Same. Real maple syrup has a very distinct taste that I had never seen in any fake syrup. Also I thought it was common sense to people that most of the syrup in super markets is not real maple syrup
Maple candy is usually real, I think. That creaminess requires no additives--it just happens when you reduce the syrup.. Amazing.
I've had both, and sure I can taste the difference. But who cares? The knockoff stuff is close enough and more importantly is affordable for the average consumer in a way that authentic maple syrup would not be if that became the only available product.
Maple syrup can also vary a lot in taste. Like, golden is very different from dark.
This is another reason why I love Australia. We have the strictest food safety and labelling laws in the world. ☺️
Anyone buying a Parmigiano shaker thinking it's real Parmigiano cheese has much bigger problems than believing their cheese is really authentic Parmigiano cheese.
Any powdered "cheese" is merely cheese FOOD. Fake, fake, fake.
Unless if it's actually dried powdered cheese, but if you're buying that, then you know what you're getting. The grated stuff is another beast.
@@aerialbugsmasherSOYLENT CHEESE
@@omagochgood and important distinction. You can buy real grated pamiggiano reggiano, but it will almost always be either freshly grated or frozen. It won’t be sitting at room temperature on a shelf
Maybe people dont care about cheese as much as you.
Pretty much why ‘Greed’ is among the seven deadly sins. It’s literally destroyed humanity.
Amen!!!!
Pretty much all the seven deadly sins are at play rn and are only getting stronger and worse as time passes but greed has always been the worst and most biggest of the 7. It's the one on top because money consumes everything and is everywhere and yeah. Lust is probably the 2nd worst one cuz people always make everything sexual like movies, tv, games, literature, art, music,and etc. Then I'd say sloth/laziness takes the cake at 3rd place as people nowadays have gotten lazier and have some sort of technology or industrial machine or whatever do something for them or people buy takeout instead of getting it themselves which makes them lazy or how people stop working and don't like to work even when they are at work. All the 7 sins are happening and there's really nothing anyone can do about it except for as individuals try not do give in to most of them. I mean sure us as humans all sin practically everyday even without meaning to as we are only human but it's easy to avoid something's of course we as humans just don't try hard enough which in turn circles back around to sloth/laziness we don't try hard enough cuz we dont want to or were too tired or some other lame excuses. Me myself personally I've never really considered myself to be all that greedy or money hungry I mean sure I'm poor money wise and I NEED money to survive and have been poor my whole life but I've never cared all that much for it as much as WANTs go unlike big corporations, companies, name brands, and the government and stuff. To me it's just not what's important in life and money isn't the only thing greed can apply to it's also just an action of not wanting to share your food or have something all to yourself or wanting large amounts and always wanting more of something and never having enough or being fulfilled or satisfied enough is what greed can be which greed can also co-exist and intermingle with Gluttony because it's also about never having enough never being satisfied/being greedy wanting more which could mean buying random items at stores and always consuming and buying or eating to much food and becoming fat and obese it all boils down to obsession and self control and most evil people don't have that they can never get enough to fill the void. I just don't get all the hassle and interest in being greedy let alone about money and I'll never get it. Or power and control either which government and humans tend to care about as well. People should care about God, love-familial, marriage/partner wise, and friendship and also pets, the earth and taking care of it and stuff and seeing it's beauty, learning lessons and knowledge growing as people and so on. People gotta learn that at the end of the day when they die at whatever age their taken at depending on their fate in life that when they die they can't take all this money or this power and control and possessions with them at the end of it all so they need to learn to drop it and not obsess over it so much. All we can really do is hope that some people see the truth but not everyone will. Also I've never really been all that gluttonous either because i usually eat till I'm full and even if I do enjoy food I never tend to overeat. Although I may be gluttonous in shopping for clothes tho. But I never let these consume me to often but overall the majority of humanity is screwed because we all give into temptations of all these 7 sins even without meaning to.
@@VintageVirgo2002are you ok? You should be getting a nutcheck!😂
Amen !!!!❤❤
It seems to me that a core problem of the US food industry is ambigous labeling because of non-existing regulation. What an easy problem to fix, such a shame.
I think the regulations are there. It's just that the FDA doesn't do anything to enforce the regulations, they just take money to look the other way.
Well, that's what happens when so many americans have an irrational fear of "big government", but then let their big government cave to corporations. Propaganda has made americans think that regulations and social welfare = big government when the fact is big government really means giving welfare tax dollars to billionaires. Americans are totally OK with that. In bizzarro land, that = small government.
I believe the cat. There are regulations but it boils down to the enforcement. However, these "fakes" thrive because of the consumers.
I'd vote for this; and for a real food enforcement agency. Hell, they could be LAFE - Label And Food Enforcement.
The ambiguous labeling comes from being required to label. They obfuscate by using catchwords like “natural”-well Poison ivy is natural also, but I wouldn’t put it in my mouth. And anything that says “and other flavors” is hiding something. Add to all that, the size of printing on the labels now make them almost impossible to read!
Sarah, the woman who talks about honey, seems so genuine, charismatic and beautiful!
I swear everything has just become so exhausting. No matter how known the deception is, we’re still left to foot the bill. The way that costs have gone up, this is an even more painful truth.
The prices are so high and the mental effort it takes to read every dang label is so exhausting
I’m annoyed tbh
mafia has absolute control.
@@faithbresciani9425the yuka app helps a bit
they don't even regulate meth anymore - like how am I supposed to know if it is ok to smoke
What's allowed in our food in the US should be criminal. The revolving door of "experts" from the food manufacturing industries, healthcare, and the FDA is laughable and sickening at the same time. Reading labels is all on you at this point. Even then you can't be certain that you are getting is real and safe
Agreed. I was looking at getting some cottage cheese. Blew my mind that it had titanium dioxide listed as an ingredient.
Heard "China" a lot
I'm allergic to PEG it's in a ton of things, and the FDA allows for companies to not mention it, if it's under a certain amount.. though even a little bit causes my blood pressure to drop and heart palpitations..
@@rustbeltrobclassic2512 what is PEG?
@@allesasmart Propyl ethylene Glycol, basically antifreeze.. it's used to lower the freezing point of foods in the USA and also in a lot of drugs.. Covid vaccine.. Robitussin, and many, many more.. It's banned in other countries.. but not in the USA
IF you entered agriculture course in University, this is a question that will sometimes pop in your head.
"This stuff is extremely hard to cultivate. how the hell can we meet demands of hundreds of tonnes of that product in a month or year ?"
I tried asking my teachers and professors and this video is pretty much what they said.
I’ve never taken an agricultural course but have wondered the same thing…
@deyaniraletusworktogether Me too, the same way I used to wonder, about Santa Claus.
Food fraud is a sneaky and widespread issue that affects both consumers and legitimate producers. While some deceptive practices may skirt legal boundaries, others, like food fraud, are outright illegal and pose serious risks. It's astonishing to think that what we assume to be premium ingredients could be cheap substitutes, harming both the integrity of the food industry and the health of consumers.
The scale of this problem is staggering, with the global food fraud industry estimated at a whopping $40 billion. Not only does it undermine the hard work of honest producers, but it also fuels criminal activities and jeopardizes consumer trust.
However, shedding light on these deceitful practices is crucial. By understanding how food deception operates and learning to identify genuine products, we can empower ourselves to make informed choices and support ethical producers.
As a Vermonter, I would rather die than consume imitation syrup. Fun fact: Vermont is the only state in the US where Ihop serves real syrup because it's illegal to label anything as "maple" if it doesn't contain pure maple syrup.
nice, I have purchased some real maple syrup from canada but will look for vermont now. Its shockingly better, even more so than the difference in real honey and store bought.
@@T0tenkampf My gf is from Alabama and had only ever had fake syrup before meeting me, which had led her to believe she hated maple syrup. I introduced her to REAL syrup and it has changed her life xD
I like Grade A syrup (which is what you'll commonly find in stores) but if you can find Vermont Fancy grade (aka: Golden and Delicate), it's really worth a try!
I wish more states would pass that law.
Outside of the places that produce it, real maple syrup is often prohibitively expensive, and even when we visited northern New York state it was still expensive.
Do you do zelle? I'm stuck in Washington state..lol. Maybe we do some tradezies😂
I know many people don't have this ability, but most farmers markets have a "bee guy" or gal who sells high quality honey. A maple syrup farmer as well is pretty common. Support your local people if you want real products, and you'll get some quality stuff. :)
Yeah you can also get some cut down stuff from them too. Look at Moonshine and how badly it can be from locals. Local does not guarantied to be all that it should be.
I would support my local apiarist who lives across the street from me if he wasn't a total retard lobbying for the protection of invasive Brazilian pepper, which produces mountains of honey that is absolutely disgusting.
Yes choose local. One of India's leading Dietician always recommends eating locally available food on daily basis. Once in a while you can taste global products (which usually needs lots of preservatives & processing).
there is a documentary about that too, you will be surprised what you will see
My farmers market has 3 honey vendors right next to each other lol
I've once had the opportunity to get freshly harvested natural honey. The guy who gave it to me found a really large beehive in the jungle and bottled half of the honey. He had enough to give away to the whole neighborhood AND their guests. Really really different texture from all the fake honey found in supermarkets.
SURE HE FOUND THE LARGE BEEHIVE🤨,you mean he may have stolen the honey from a bee harvester that places the bee hives in the forest. There are many thieves stealing honey from beekeepers. Sometimes other beekeepers May steal. I’ll give them the benefit of doubt that this person didn’t steal the honey! Just saying!
Not defending fraudsters but when you bottle 100s of thousands of a product. They usually mix different batches together to achieve one base taste. Minute Maid orange juice…. If you look how it’s manufactured it’s both amazing and concerning.
@marcr1333 how did you get from honey to orange juice?
Random much?
Using it as an example of course.
Most honey found in supermarkets contains little, if any, honey.
I buy mine from an organic market that buys it from a local farm. Nothing in it but honey.
I love when I stumble on interesting and useful information. Well done. I am now subscribed to this channel!
What is for dinner tonight honey?
- Petroleum
😂
Yep. It's getting bad, even fake foods are expensive.
petroleum derived ingredients aren't dangerous. theyre only bad when not refined fully (and that does happen so it can still be a risk). it depends on the manufacturer
That sounds delicious with a side of cellulose.
@@lewis0705 yeah sure lmao. Margarine is so healthy. Let's base our diet off synthetic garbage made from crude oil or its byproducts instead of real whole foods, that can never go wrong
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. 😃
Pigs are very intelligent. Better than dogs. Pig and truffles reminds me of a good japanese animation called dr stone. It has 3 seasons.
Huh really I didn't know that was real I thought that was just something pigs did in like Stardew Valley (a farming videogame btw). Pigs in the game tend to sniff truffles out and lay them out for you when you come back to get them in the game so that's interesting that it's a real thing. So if they have a great sense of smell, can they smell better than a dog or worse? 🤔
Walking a pig just looks ridiculous
well pigs are harder to control then domesticated dogs
@@PerplexityRivals so are cats but people still love them and they are popular 🤷
As a Greek (who has olive trees ) i will say that extra vergin olive oil has a realy nice aroma that when you smell it you will think : man that smells is so good that i want to drink it right now. Most of the oils you will find at supermarkets smells awful.
Smell is subjective
Unpopular opinion: Supermarket extra virgin olive oil isn't that bad. Probably hugely depends on the supermarket though. The supermarkets in my area sell extra virgin olive oil that's actually pretty good. The only olive oil better than this was a special small-batch oil I got from a guy in Greece.
@@geneticallymodified7775 meaning you have never had olive oil from the newly pressed batch in Toscana , as in Montalcino for instance..You have so much to learn and so much joy before you, if you get there before the WEF and WHO ruin all our food, as they have been doing for some years now.
The trouble is, olive oil is sold all over the world, in every town in every store every day of the year. There just are not that many olive trees anywhere. But people can be so easily fooled.
@@Gilvids No its not. Do you like to smell shit?
What a great story! Very very well done... no politics, no bias, just straight journalism. Top tier reporting!!! Outstanding!
They don't NEED to say that criminal food production is done by criminals, do they?
@josephreinhart8712 why joseph... just... why...?
Is life so horrible you can't enjoy the artistry, everything has to be through the lens of "activism." That's a terrible existence... who hurt you??? Tell me who hurt you! I'll make'um pay!!!
@@krypton1982 I am sorry. I identify as a married person, so you and me? It isn't going to work. I don't want another terrible experience, so I am just going to pass of your emotional invitation.
@josephreinhart8712 "...Strangers in the night exchanging glances
Wondering in the night..."
@@krypton1982 ...as he asks, "Why!? Why do you insist that criminals perp crimes!? Why!?"
Dude.
Because they are criminals. Butt pirates, reading books in kindergarten, are still butt pirates. The butts are just...smaller and taste more like chicken.
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.
the other problem is cheap crap sold at the same price (or more) then the original product
Or just buy whole foods, affordable and they have no label. Problem solved
@@wittysass3812 That's not a possibility in a lot of places in the US.
A lot of people live in food deserts so when they do their shopping they have to buy ultra-processed foods that won't expire until the next time they can visit the store again.
@@Digital111 most people live within a reasonable distance from a Walmart or similar grocery store, and then on top of that we have this invention called a refrigerator that keeps your food edible for quite some time. It’s complete nonsense what you’re saying.
@@wittysass3812 Did you even read my comment? I was talking about "Food deserts".
Not everyone drives or can afford to. Not everyone is privileged enough like you to have a handy store nearby and access to reliable transport to said store... I suggest you read on "Food deserts" and I'll go read on that intriguing "refrigerator" device you just mentioned.
As an American Professional Chef of 10 years experience I learned a lot from this, I already knew about the fakeness of vanilla and wagyu products, but I had no idea how fake honey and olive oil was, or how to detect fake parmesan from the real thing. Very informative video with verifiable evidence.
The olive oil con is actually a huge revenue stream for the Italian mafia too. It's genuinely wild
@@dismurrart6648Fake olive oil has been going on for centuries with the Mafia taking the lead. Even I already knew about that. While not technically "fake," the quality of all olive oil is inversely proportional to the amount of shelf space in the grocery stores.
Doesn't real parmesan also have the Italian seal/stamp on it's packaging?
The fake oils are kinda disturbing mainly because of how bad food sensitivities can be. My digestion is wrecked I can't do soy, corn, canola oils but olive oil is good except I fear the fakes. Which is why I wont budge on getting the pricy oils from an authentic brand to be sure its real.
@Sloth-ru5vm Thats disgusting
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.
Wow, that quote’s quite profound. Thanks for sharing.
Huh, i think i get it but it isn't...... Hmm, life changing
why does that hit you hard? are you gonna stop eating food because it limits the amount of problems you have? lmao
@@lewis0705 By seeing your comment i understand that you have a less capable brain as compared to an average human being. If you don't understand what someone said please ask them to repeat it or clarify it, Thanks
@@lewis0705 This is the most stupidest thing someone said to me in weeks. Congratulations
This is why I check labels so much, but companies that lie get away with fines, and that's just the cost of doing business for them.
My mother went to Mexico several times, buying bottles of what she thought was vanilla extract at roadside stands. I kept telling her that it probably wasn't real and could be toxic, but she refused to believe me and kept doing it.
Imagine what she fed you
The thing is also: I'm sure many people would love to be able to pay attention to this instead of the price tag. But fact is, that a lot of people can't afford to do that and are stuck with these potentially harmfull products. Especially something as basic as Honey or Coffee.
You call honey and coffee basic but they have been luxury products for most of their history. If you want something cheaper than honey buy syrups instead.
@tapwater424 I'm talking about today. Coffee and Honey are readily available almost everywhere. Plus if you're going to mention syrups: One of the main compounds of syrup is sugar. Sugar was also a big time luxury product, that only the richest could afford.
@@ShadowClone1989 which is why I wouldn't be shocked if I ordered a sugar barrel for 2 goat skins and a brick in 1782 and it was filled with saw dust.
@@tapwater424poorer people are the ones working laborious and most times dead end jobs because they aren't afforded certain opportunities in America; these are the people who are more likely to want things like coffee because they get up at 4 a.m. to work the checkout at Walmart for 12 hours or honey for their tea because their sick from stress and overworking but your attitude screams that you don't think poor people should be alloted the opportunity to have those types of products just because they're poor? The FDA should be making stricter laws and cracking down on these things because if they did it would make the healthy and authentic stuff more readily available and thus cheaper and healthier for consumers. It isn't the consumer's fault that they're being tricked and often times forced into buying harmful foods due to their economic status and they deserve the opportunity to have access to foods that aren't made to trick them.
@@hopsymopsy8352 Your logic is flawed. I think if you are low income, you should be seeking out nutricious foods that you can afford. High priced items like extra virgin olive oil, truffles, and caviar should not even be on your radar. As far as "needing" coffee or honey because you work a shit job at Walmart is ridiculous. There are other, more economical products that can be used to maintain health. I don't know anyone at my job (I work one of those shit jobs) who is using honey because they are stressed or overworked. Most of my co-workers PREFER cheap junk food from KFC or McDonald's. Fact is, luxury foods ARE FOR THE RICH. Regular folks have to stick to regular food and just do some research to choose what's most nutricious for their income level.
As someone who's from quebec (where most maple syrup is made), its actually harder to find fake maple syrup. I'm very happy for having lived here because I have indulged in the flavourful joy of it since childhood, so I love sharing it with family and friends that come from the US when they haven't had the real stuff before, seeing their faces light up makes me happy. It's damn delicious.
Same here, but I'm from New England of the USA. We too make real maple syrup and it's not hard to find and not that expensive.
Came here to say this. I'm from Maine, and there are more options for real maple syrup in the grocery than fake syrup.
I'm from Saskatchewan, and while I don't think it's hard to find fake syrup here in the grocery stores, I didn't have any until I was like forty (well, unless I had it as a kid, and just can't rember), and, blech, is it ever gross. It doesn't taste right at all.
I don't know, maybe real syrup is more common here in SK than in places like the US, even though it's not like SK is some big maple-syrup-making province.
Yup agree. I went to Quebec the first time in 2016 and had maple syrup there and was like “oh wow, that’s different”… I even came back with a can of it haha
Artificially flavoured corn syrup. Delish.
It's not just counterfeiters that are a problem with food purity, many so called reputable companies are also guilty of bulking out their products with cheap ingredients but still claiming 100% purity. Coffee and chocolate manufacturers are two that come to mind and there are many more.
Very well said
SPICES! Oh my God it drives me nuts when I turn around a spice container and 97% of it is filler like sawdust!
Also, I’ve heard that there’s legitimately no such thing as avocado oil seeing as how avocado seeds don’t grind down to make oil
@@kateapple1 I believe that too and if there's any real extraction happening is from the very hard and green fruit which it means is fully loaded with chemicals produced by the plant to protect its baby - the avocado- and repell animals to eat so the benefits to humans sounds to me a hard thing to believe
@@kateapple1 It is a real thing though, avocado oil is extracted from its pulp and not from its seeds (as you said correctly).
I live in Sweden so have a bit less issues with fake food as the EU is very strict with food safety and additives etc. But that said, I'm still buying local whenever possible, like honey for example, I live in a small town and have beekeepers both in the town and in the more rural areas outside the town itself, the bees they keep are buzzing around their nearby areas minding their own business and keeping things polinated while producing really amazing honey and there's a huge difference even between the town bees and the rural bees and even different hives of the rural bees as some of them are in forest environment and some aren't. I personally prefer buying honey from the beekeeper a few streets away from where I live if I find that honey in the grocery store down the street, if I can't find that honey (it's small scale after all so limited amounts available) I buy honey from the rural beekeeper as they have more bees and hence can provide more honey so their honey is almost always available to buy. The reason I prefer the honey from near my home is because the more foresty honey has a much stronger taste (due to what plants the bees have access to) and I feel it can be a bit much in a cup of tea or on a toast, while the in-town honey is more light in flavor as the bees making it are mostly visiting flowerbeds and fruit trees. The more rural honey is really good and I've tasted the different honey types from that beekeeper side by side on farmers market type events here in town. It's truly fascinating how REAL honey varies depending on the surrounding where the bees buzz around, both taste and color of the honey can vary greatly depending on if it's bees focused on forest, farmland or bees visiting people's gardens.
I‘m German and I’m always thankful for the EU‘s relatively strict rules for food. And the opportunity to import products from the countries of origin without paying unbelievable amounts. I always buy olive oil from a family in Italy and balsamic from another family in Modena. Honey is available from a lot of beekeepers locally here as well, sometimes it‘s just not the season and you have to wait a bit. Which is ok. A lot of Americans don’t even know what the real food is and have never had it in their entire life.
Couldn't agree more! ❤️🇪🇺🇨🇿
The real issue is population and television/internet. We all want food and we all see and get recipes and there is no way to get the entire world with the real quality food, especially the rare stuff like parmesean cheese, truffles, olive oils, maple syrup, caviar, etc....
@@BoydofZINJ I don’t think this is the main issue. We have Parmesan in Europe with the label D.O.P in supermarkets available. Same goes for balsamic, honey etc. It‘s also possible to get these foods in Japan or Korea. The reason why the real foods are not available in the US is pure corporate greed and the relatively low value of food in America‘s mentality.
@@BoydofZINJ Well ok, maybe they overranked (forgot the right word), but if anyone wants to taste these foods but can't find the real ones cheap, maybe we all should make fakes safe for those people and probably themselves?
“The food we eat is the only drug everybody takes every day” sums it out perfectly.
Anorexic people:
Drug addicts
exactly
@@chip4039 exactly
I love how your mind works 😂😂
The problem isn’t not wanting to buy the fake stuff, it’s not getting paid enough to afford the real stuff
Exactly like these people in the video can afford the real stuff but a mother and a father with three kids or single parents etc struggling to make ends meet is not going break their paycheck on a real bottle of olive oil or real honey or high quality real syrup.
I've been eating Mrs Butterworth or Log cabin or even the generic syrup from supermarket ever since I've been alive and that's fine with me.
And they are not getting paid enough to make the real stuff. They want to get wealthy by producing fake stuff. They can't buy yachts and send children to Harvard by making honest products. So, if you want the real thing is up to you to step your game up, spend countless currency on a higher education. Get a higher paying job so that every producer can live lavishly.
Youre just missing the point of the video. The point isnt that there shouldn’t be cheap alternatives it’s that they shouldn’t try to trick people through labels. Some of these fakes werent even cheaper 💀
@@sergiomercado4859 I mean one of the main conclusions of the video is saying to just buy more expensive products because they're more likely to be real; the example of some fakes being expensive is a non issue because it's not even close to the majority of fake products at all. That sounds pretty backwards when pay hasn't increased at all in recent decades while prices keep skyrocketing... The point of what individual consumers can do is still exactly the same, poor people will continue to buy cheaper things because it's all they can afford, whether it's fake or not. Richer people will buy up, fake or not. No individual person can do anything about phony labels and false advertising, that's up to legislation. Nobody said anything about cheap alternatives not existing anymore, it's that there would be no need for them to exist if your average person got paid a livable wage. I'd wager that most people aren't technically being deceived at all, they know exactly what they are buying is fake crap but it's literally all they can afford. Nobody goes buying cheap top-ramen thinking it's giving them an authentic ramen experience.
@@sergiomercado4859 the lady discussing honey really seemed to be pushing hard for "pay more for honey or we'll go out of business" because lets face it, buying honey at the farmers market is not "affordable" by most families. The cheap squeeze bottle at walmart from China is though. The beekeepers need to streamline their process or just deal with the fact that some consumers are just fine with low quality honey. I personally don't see much of a difference.
I often comment on this channel even if I have nothing to say. This way I'll support this channel
You absolutely can legislate this problem away. Every increase in sentencing laws raises the cost of these counterfeit products. RISK is taken into consideration, it is priced in. The higher the risk, the higher the price. Once the counterfeit stuff is double the price of the real stuff, the counterfeit product is completely uncompetative with the real stuff.
I am from Brazil and live in a “coffee town”. I don’t work with it, but I know a lot about it (everyone here knows one or two things about coffee).
My piece of advice is: buy the whole bean and ground it at home. You still don’t know if you are buying great coffee or normal coffee, but it’s 100% coffee.
Stays fresh much longer when it’s in bean form too.
a lot of conveyor asbestos so shake in the wind
Buy beans, and also, let the taste decide what you think it's worth
I was shopping with one of my roommates one day, and she bought the bear jar that said 100% honey. She said she only gets REAL honey, so I flipped the jar and read the back ‘clover extract, and corn syrup.’ I told her “If the honey has no crystals in it; it’s definitely not honey.”
But the bear is so cute!
@@Sashazur nah, that bear wants you to die from diabetes. That bear isn’t environmentally friendly at all unlike the natural ones either.
What even is clover extract?
okay I googled it but it still baffles me
As a beekeeper I can tell you that freshly harvested honey will have no crystals. Crystallization won't start until about 8 months later. Plus store bought honey that has been pasteurized is just not worth paying for even if it is pure honey because all the health benefits have been destroyed. For the couple bucks more (I sell 1 lb of honey for $10) go to your local beekeeper. I don't make money from selling honey if you offset it with my costs, I keep bees because I love the hobby. And the bees!
@@chuckt7636 May God bless you, sir.
We can't even afford counterfeit groceries. 😂
I will say on the coffee end of things, I used to work for Starbucks at one of the plants in the U.S. the main warehouse could fit (3) 747 airplanes inside. The whole place was insanely clean and organized. Coffee beans were separated by country of origin upon arrival and constantly tested for contaminations. There is a library of every run of coffee product produced up to the last 3 years. Constant checks for product defects. The facility could even recycle its own air and filter it for up to something like 6 hours. It was one of the cleanest and most professional places I ever worked.
The Germans, I understand ,put a tax on any processed coffee imported into Germany. By processed, I mean, for example, roasted beans. So just imagine the impact - discouraging beneficiation in poor growing countries.
@@phillipsugwas I’m not entirely sure of every aspect of these coffee plantations, I know the beans are bagged after being sun dried (I don’t know if this is considered processed or not) but I am certain the dried beans are not roasted beans when leaving their country of origin. The process is more involved than many realize. Almost immediately after being roasted the beans need to go into an airtight sealed bag with a plastic valve for relief gases to escape (coffee beans actually release gasses for a short time after roasting) but if you let oxygen get back into the bag the beans will oxidize and go stale fairly quickly. All the machines involved are very expensive and maintenance intensive.
Roasters, bag constructor, bagging machine, packaging machine, conveyer belts, ect. So usually coffee beans are roasted when they arrive at whatever region that has this equipment. (Last time I checked) There are 5 plants in the U.S. I think 3 dotted around Europe, and 1 in china. From there it’s distributed to consumers. So realistically Germany isn’t hurting the poorer countries by imposing the import tax, but a wealthier nation that already paid the plantation owners. (Not saying the workers at these plantations are paid very well because they probably are not. Although in the case of Starbucks they do try to work with plantation owners to pay their workers higher wages. In the end the plantation owners still don’t pay that well cause the owners tend to pocket a decent amount of the cash Starbucks gives them… not to mention Starbucks itself makes huge profit off the raw beans they receive. The economics are complicated but the field workers are the ones that are really screwed in the end… Starbucks itself though pays its workers amazing wages with plenty of benefits.
Not any more. Starbucks is the worst for moldy beans.
Why do they produce the worst tasting coffee & most off putting blends if they’re so ahead?
could all very well be but I still refuse to pay their insane prices for a cup of coffee.
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.
Eating too much is the cause of obesity. Don't be a goddamned pig. Exercise restraint.
Amen!!!!!!!
Please stop making you and loved ones sick. Google the proper human diet.
That and the fact the meat industry puts steroids and growth hormones in all the feed, and that comes right through to the consumer
Doesn’t matter if you use sugar granules it’s not much better
This kind of thing pushes me closer and closer to growing my own food. You just can't trust large organizations to do anything honestly anymore.
I would want to believe seeds would be organic!
you never could. victorian bakers would mix in chalk with the flour and the poor obviously didn't question it.
@@aminahussain8690 Well sure, but I mostly meant that we live in a time where we rely on outside sources for ALL of our food needs in today's world and you can't really trust any of them.
@@GruppeSechs yeah agreed. sprechst du Deutsch?
Good luck growing truffles, coffee and wagyu beef 😅
چقدرباحالبودخلیجالبودیدنیبود👏👏👏👍👍👍❤️❤️❤️🪯🔄🕎✋️✌️⚘️🥰🥰🥰
As a beekeeper I understand what they’re talking about when they say you have to have patience. I don’t really get much honey but when I do, it’s wonderful when I sell it to my customers and they tell me that it is the best honey that they’ve ever tasted. I didn’t even know that China was the largest producer of Honey in the world
Sad affair wasn't honey imports from China banned because they were exporting 3rd grade honey cut with HFCS into America trying to destroy our domestic honey industry? So the egg heads in D.C. passed a law no imports from china...problem solved right? WRONG...China sells this fake frankin honey all over the Globe to countries who have importation privileges. It's labeled as import from, Brazil, Canada, Eastern Europe, turkey, and people pay top dollar for Chinese dung honey....good job america 😢...support your local beekeeper & gunfighter😉👌
We only buy honey from local bee keepers. These types of videos are so helpful
i’m scared to watch but ima watch
Me too!😂
Honestly, I don't think the caviar scam is that bad. As said, Sturgeons are endangered, most are on the brink of extinction, I think switching to the fish eggs from another more common fish is a great solution. As long as the customer isn't physically harmed and aware of what they are buying, I see no problem.
Legit Chinese guy talkin there
Im shocked thier allowed to harvest from an animal in danger.
Are you all daft or did you spaz out in parts of the video? The problem is not and never has been people selling fish eggs of a different species, it's selling fish eggs of a different species and labeling it as caviar - when caviar comes exclusively from sturgeons. What you think of harvesting caviar from sturgeons is irrelevant here, the point is selling one thing while labeling it as another to leech off the market value of that something.
@@evonne315I think most of it is farmed anyway, but yeah there's a reason they're endangered and it's because they're taking millions of eggs and chowing down that could have made thousands more breeding sturgeon, it's pretty fucked
conservation is key
This video really hit home. I love Cheese Wiz and Smeat but learned the hard way not to enjoy the fake off brands😱
The fact that label itself can be deceiving is mind boggling
Maracuja left the chat.
I noticed last decade labels show no nutrients anymore. Cereal, green beans, nada. Why??
It's not amazing to me because our government banks on our illnesses and REAL FOOD doesn't need a label we just don't like real food
Have you ever left your house before???????
In the European Union we have laws against that, so with a little knowledge of french history, maybe you could too^^
5:30 "Well, you've never had good sushi and you've never had real wasabi" lol, priceless!
Snob
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.
I read food label. In the USA food is marked but it is up to you to learn about it and it is not that hard to get yourself better educated on this. But most American just care about the taste and really do not care but to blame other when they body finally say enough.
That's true! I'm still in uni but they taught us that food labels are there and regulated by law to give consumers freedom in making "informed" choice on what they should eat.
my family looks at me the same way. weird to me people are not concerned about what they are eating some stuff is literally created in a lab no reason to eat that crap.
Yeah almost everything has high fructose corn syrup anymore.. people look at me like I'm crazy for spending 10$ on a bottle of legit BBQ sauce.. its always, "I could get 5 bottles of Baby Rays for that price, yuk yuk yuk".. yeah well you can take those 5 bottles of heartburn and dump-em down the drain cause I wont touch the garbage anymore.
You mean the chemical labels that you need a magnifying glass for...
Very informative and educational
For such a consumer driven society it's remarkable how bad the American consumer protection laws are. You would think the balance of power would be more in the consumers favour. It must be a nightmare trying to buy food there if the labelling is so deceptive.
It is. Why do you think a significant portion of our country is obese? Actually fresh, organic, and healthy food is expensive for many Americans too.
100 years ago companies could get away with having animal feces in meat products and most bread was mixed with sawdust. Things are aren’t perfect now sure, but for the most part we regulate the market from the worst elements
@@masond7573as a usda employee that works in farm country, "organic" is mostly a marketing ploy, and it is usually terrible for soil erosion because they have to till heavily to keep weeds down.
The funny thing is, American consumers are more likely to freak out over things that actually don't matter in food than to care about the things that do. For example freaking out over something being "organic" when it has no measurable affect on health or taste, but they still go for the "organic" processed food when they would have been better off going for the normal fresh fruits and veggies.
Those in control of the medical industry is also in control of our food. In the US they want us sick, obese, and diseased so they make money from birth to death.
As you can see in the video, wasabi in tubes is almost always "fake," but this is almost common knowledge for Japanese and is even indicated on the package, so I was very surprised to see it mentioned here.
Japanese people also usually buy Wasabi in tubes at supermarkets.
Even in Japan, it is not very common to find "real" Wasabi (of course, there are places where it is available).
Real wasabi is super expensive isn’t it?
Considering the real one coming from a stem of a plant that required 18 months to fully growth and some specific conditions of its place of planting, the 'real' one is rare and expensive for sure
They did say that only 1 percent of Wasabi is real Wasabi. So ya.... My take is if its that rare then its not for everyone and its ok to have something REAL thats more readily available
Is this really important? I think the world will survive without these ridiculous expensive items and ingredients, truffles, waggle beef caviar etc. etc.
@@keithburton3713 it's not, for most of us, but, you know there's always idiots in this world
i work with a community garden that harvests local olives every year and gets them pressed to sell in their small shop, after having tasted truly fresh, real olive oil its insane how much more flavourful and delicious it is compared to the cheap stuff.
Near where I live, there's a company that grows olive trees and processes their own oil. I am very far from being a connoisseur and I use olive oil rather seldom, but even I can tell the difference between their product and the mass-produced stuff in the grocery stores.
PRICE IN THE LABOUR and it would be UNECONOMICAL AS A BUSINESS.
It is a hard thing to ignore, once your eyes are opened. Thanks for all that you do
Thank you for producing this episode.
Hindsight is 20-20, but objectively speaking there should be no surprise in any of the motives behind the counterfeiting and fraud. Human nature is instant gratification, there is NO WAY to short cut any highly intensive and high labour processes
I think imitation is fine if it is labeled as such. My thing is the dangerous ingredients issue. My Sister-In-Law is allergic to many things and peanuts are the big one. Peanut oil is the worst for her and if it was hidden in something or was not disclosed properly as an ingredient, she would have a very bad reaction.
Yeah, agree with that. As long as it's labelled correctly, it's okay and also legal. Problems are those illegal ones that put on fake labels to pass off as the real deal.
My son is allergic to peanuts (and cashews and pistachios). but Research has shown that refined peanut oil will not cause allergic reactions for the overwhelming majority of people who are allergic to peanuts and if anyone does suffer a reaction it is likely to be mild. However, unrefined (crude) peanut oil is more likely to cause symptoms. Double unlucky for her sorry to hear.
This is just shameful. Disgusting what greed has done to us. How far we’ve come just to lose everything…
Very informative. Cheers!
Never been more glad that my father-in-law keeps bees.
Something being fake isn’t that big of an issue if the consumer doesn’t care. Imitation vanilla works just fine for most culinary uses and wasabi being mostly horseradish is a commonly known fact. Tell a Japanese person that their wasabi is fake and they’ll just shrug. The producers care because products being real is a major selling point. The rich will buy anything if it’s rare enough. The real concern for the average consumer should be food safety, and at this point it’s not really the additives they should be worried about. Most additives that will outright kill you are outlawed, what’s more dangerous is all the salt, sugar and fat in food nowadays. Vanillin won’t kill you but eat enough sugar and you will die. There’s also other additives that’ll kill you slowly or rarely that the FDA approves but the common stuff is more dangerous with how prevalent they are.
Dangerous additives not being regulated is a major concern for fake foods, and most non-pure food, usually. Even fungicides in fish and herbicides on plants, with antibiotics affecting our hormone production in beef and chicken should be on a top priority list to watch out for. Wonder where the uptick in cancer comes from, bell curve lining up precisely with how commercial markets for food developed and increased in demand, among other things.
There isn't a magical cancer fairy that sprinkles you with cancer dust while you sleep, randomly; it comes [at least mostly] from a genetic disposition affected by things we put into our bodies, that affect how our bodies cellular functions like repair work. That's what cancer is at its core - abnormal cell growth. What ruins the ability for cells in the body to properly function? Obviously is either chemicals we are exposed to, or things we put in our bodies. Hell, even chemicals usually get put in our bodies to cause cancer, like someone working or living at/near a chemical plant, a commonly reported finding.
This really feels like advertisment for overpirced stuff.
@@joz534 What am I selling exactly? I start off by saying that you can buy fake vanilla and wasabi instead of the more expensive real stuff. I also say the people selling you food only care about their stuff being real because they can sell it for more to anyone who can afford caring. And if it’s that you think I’m saying fake food being sold for the same price as real food is a good thing, no I obviously don’t. I have common sense. I’m only selling ideas and you’re not forced to buy them.
It is important to appreciate the awareness and concern expressed regarding the state of food regulations in the US. The sentiment that what is allowed in our food should be criminal reflects a genuine desire for higher standards and greater transparency in the food industry. The recognition of the revolving door between experts from food manufacturing industries, healthcare, and the FDA highlights the need for unbiased oversight and regulation. The call to action to read labels and take personal responsibility for food choices demonstrates a proactive approach to ensuring the safety and authenticity of the food we consume. This appreciation note acknowledges the importance of consumer awareness and the ongoing need for improvements in food regulations to protect public health.
yo this video was fricking sick!!! I can't believe that so many foods are faked!!!
Regarding olive oil, the EU regulation for when an oil is considered “extra virgin” is its acidity level. Greek oils are less acidic than Italian and Spanish oils in general. Most producers will mix oils from various producers in order to obtain the highest allowed acidity level for the oil to still be considered “extra virgin”. A farmer told me this and I’ve found that Greek-produced extra virgin olive oils are much more likely to be of higher quality (grassy, fruity, greener) than the blended Italian and Spanish varieties
Why are Greek oils less acidic in general? Has it something to do with the soil they're grown in? Because not only Spain and Italy blend in different producers' oils into one single shelf-brand. That's how the olive oil industry tends to operate also in Greece, Turkey, Portugal, etc.
@@renatopinto3186 Simply relaying the words of the (british-greek) farmer I spoke to, so I wouldn't know if it's a truth cut in marble. I'm sure Greece also has its fair share of industrial producers, but it's my impression that there are way more local and non-industrial producers, particularly in rural areas, with the pressing being done at local community mills. On the other hand non-blended oils from Spain and Italy seems more likely to be sold with 'single estate' labels, thus pushing the product and the price into the specialty/luxury market. I guess it also speaks to the way the food industry is much more protected and capitalised in Italy and Spain as compared to Greece ...
If extra virgin olive oil is characterised by that level of acidity, it probably means that it can reach it by using just olives, without the need of blending it. Of course the British-Greek farmer will tell you that his oil is better...
@@lotsoflemonisback thank you for the reply. From what I know acidity can be influenced by a number of things, including ripeness and damage to olives' skin (weather, basically). Which makes me wonder if Greek producers have some special way of organizing their plantations or subsequent processing. It's also a bit unclear to me if an extra virgin is synonymous with less processing. If so, it would make sense, as you suggest, for more archaic methods to yield oils which retain better properties. Tho, from personal experience, here in Portugal, greener and fruitier home-made oils tend to be more acidic (edit: sour, actually) than the distilled golden premiums at the supermarket.
When we lived in the country, my parents processed their own honey. After moving, they sourced honey from local producers. If you want real, you often have to make your own, or have reliable suppliers.
100% agree. We always get honey from a local beekeeper. We know the stuff he sells is legit and we never looked back to grocery store honey.
Not even remotely true.
This "fake" problem isn't going away any time soon. As long as stores keep selling these products, people will keep buying them.
Because people always want to save money, but jeopardise their health with doing so..
You're definitely confusing the cause and the consequence, here. As long as people will keep buying them, other people will still produce them and stores will still sell them. That's how it works.
You have a power: stop consuming bad products. Your vote, your control, is where you put your money. You're the final consumer, you're the one responsible for this - not corporations. Corporations give you whatever you'll buy as long as you keep on buying it. Perhaps not you personally, but "you", the consumer, people like you.
And me, to an extent (for wasabi for sure, as there is very little choice, but not for the other products), but I live in EU, and EU strongly regulates this kind of things, we generally have better food products than in US and anything that's produced in Europe is controlled and protected, recipes included. So, for now (emphasis on that "for now"), we're eating alright and our salaries correspond to the produce we can buy and want to buy. I'm French, if I want truffles, I ask my family, or I go to the farm. We get very decent parmiggiano straight from Italy, we get regional olive oil produced in Provence, we get real vanilla cultivated in Madagascar and Reunion Island, you can't sell fake maple syrup and call it maple syrup, that'd be straight up illegal...
So I guess your other power is demanding regulations to your government.
But get the causal link right: the consumer buys the bad thing, so the corporations produce the bad thing. Stop consuming it, and evil corp will quit making it. ;)
The majority of people on the planet cannot afford to eat premium ingredients, and will likely never have the opportunity to try the premium to know what they taste like.
As long as there is demand for the taste (especially from people who are either looking to cut costs or don't particularly care if their ingredient is premium for a certain recipe), imitation products at a fraction of the price of a real thing will always exist.
And as long as people keep buying it, they'll keep selling it. True, the "fake foods" problem isn't going away anytime soon, but we have the choice of seeking out the real foods, if we can afford them. Personally, I want and am willing to pay for the real stuff.
The product labels - at least in Germany - clearly state what's inside. People are not too lazy to read, they simply don't care. They don't need real Wasabi. Green colored horseradish does its job, too. The taste is similar and it's cheaper.
This spring I have visited a Wasabi farm in Japan near Matsumoto. The way it's cultivated is extreme. Wasabi is a plant that is only native to Japan. Some other countries cultivate it, too. But why flying Wasabi all around the world if horseradish is cultivated in many countries, even in Germany? Plus, since Wasabi is so complex to cultivate, the worldwide need of Wasabi could never be satisfied.
Very informative! Thank you!
when i worked in a kitchen, the chef didnt realise the oil was truffel oil and used it to roast potatos, the whole kitchen smelled like a gas leak and was evacuated. safe to say, it must have been the fake oil
Fake (cheaper alternative) food is only a problem when it masquerades as the real thing. So long as it's obviously a different product and has its true ingredients clearly listed, im totally cool with it.
As a Canadian, table/pancake syrup is a decent example of this where I live. Everyone here knows the difference and knows exactly what they're buying. Nobody that's lived here for more than a few years buys and consumes table syrup thinking it's real maple syrup. Many still buy table syrup though because it's cheaper and plenty of people don't mind the taste.
Yep spot on there, agree pretty much entirely there. While pure maple syrup is good, sometimes its a bit too strong and the 'fake' stuff is a lot cheaper and still tastes good enough.
Why are you okay with consuming fake, artificial chemicals that were never made to be processed & consumed by humans to begin with? - That's a genuine question.
I did some research on artificially flavoured maple syrup (table syrup) & found that it's biggest ingredients are corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, cellulose gum stablisers, preservers including 6 sulfiting agents (the main one being sulfur dioxide which is a gaseous air pollutant that's a major part of our fine particle pollution) - the thing that was so like, outrageous? was I had to do so much reading about those ingredients & why they're used.
So like, yeah, you're going to pay $3.47(approx) at Walmart/Target/Instacart for Pearl Milling Co. for a bottle of syrups, water, stablisers, preservers, silfiting agents that are pollutants - or $14.99(approx) at Costco or $17.29 at WholeFoods for organic maple syrup. That's it. That's the only, singular ingredient.
100% do whatever with you & your body, if you're okay with consuming things that you have no idea what it is, where it comes from, what the chemicals are; that's on you, I just would like a different perspective on why, you know?
@@SaltyBottoms I don't disagree with any of your points but at the end of the day most of it just comes to cost. It's kind of a cop-out answer but saving $5-10 here or there does add up, especially when you don't make a ton of money.
Another big thing, at least personally, is for some items you don't really care for the quality as much as long as it's not like actually poison. For me maple syrup or ketchup is in that category while something like Donair meat, eggs or like honey. I try to get something of decent quality. I'll never go cheap on items like these and would just forego buying entirely instead of buying something of low quality. Compared to something like maple syrup or ketchup I don't really care as much for quality there as it doesn't impact me anywhere near as much.
@@SaltyBottoms "artificial chemicals that were never made to be processed & consumed by humans to begin with?" That doesn't mean much. There are so many variables at play here, that something new and artificial could potentially be far safer and healthier, or it could kill you. It depends on the specific situation. Just because something is a new technique, doesn't mean it is bad though. Some of these old techniques for processing foods are pretty weird themselves. Like think about what making cheese entails. That doesn't really seem like a natural way to make food, but we are okay with it just because we been doing it for a long time?
I wouldn't say it is only a problem when it masquerades as the real thing. In places like the US, that is mostly true. Though there are places where the fakes can make you sick, and with how connected the world is there is risk of them being shipped into the country from time to time.
We have a small Olive farm in Northern California and produce our own EVOO… Our biggest expense is the “Hand Harvesting”, no machines to shake the trees because the machine would cost as much as our whole property cost and we only have 85 trees on our property. Depending on the year, we produce as much as 10 to 14 gallons of oil a year, so far… Most of Our trees are now about 10 yrs old and they are predominately Arbequina Olives, which are Spanish Olives that are grown for their oil. By the time we pay for harvesting, milling and then bottle it plus label, a 17 oz bottle will cost me, to produce at least $10.00 just to break even. So when big huge farms, who own the mills and use equipment to harvest trees. It is much cheaper for a large company in Europe to produce EVOO than a small family owned farm in Nor Cal to make any money. But it is a true labor of Love and the end product is off the charts incredible and so very healthy for you. We also note on the label when our fruit is harvested/milled (same day) and then when we bottle, which can sometimes be months after the milling because we Do Not filter our oil, it naturally filters via gravity. We do often bottle a few gallons after the milling and it’s called “Olio Nuovo”- New Oil which has a shorter life because it has not been filtered. The flavor is much more stronger and full of a brighter flavor. It’s amazing. So buy from small family owned farms and stay healthier!
Thank you for the video, it was well researched, and informative
The only issue is those that cannot afford the "real" thing, but still want the (insert product here). My wife and I personally buy from "a guy" (a bread guy, a honey guy, a lamb guy, etc), but not everyone has the financial flexibility to do so, and the cheap prices of the fake items appeal to those who cant afford it. *shrugs shoulders*
I wonder why this comment is not much higher rated. Many people knowingly buy cheaper imitation just to taste even the imitated product simply because they can't afford to buy the real deal. Not everyone has a connoisseur palate to taste the original and is satisfied with imitation as long as the price is right.
In the honey business, sugar water is fed to bee's to increase the honey production. The honey produced this way has a pretty bland flavour and is very watery, but since its dirt cheap to produce it's usually mixed into normal honey to increase volume of production. There is a high chance that most people that haven't bought honey straight from a producer have never tasted real honey in their lives
BS. You can't feed enough sugar water to bees during honey making season. It is added after the honey is extracted.
Yes, there are 5 tiers of honey
(1) >50% corn / rice syrup + cheap (2) honey + artificial flavoring
(2) Honey from bees fed fructose / sucralose syrup
(3) Blends of refined honey from multiple farms with various flower sources
(4) Refined single flower source honey (eg. Japanese Acacia)
(5) Unfiltered and unrefined raw honey
90% of honey in grocery stores are (1) or (2). In rare occasion stores carry (3) on the very top-shelf. (4) is what you find in specialty / artisan shops and (5) you can get from a local honeybee farmer.
I never buy honey in shops. Only from beekeepers. And now i have my own bees :)
Oh my god no way. Thanks for informing us about this.
Such a ridiculous process. Why can't they just grow a variety of flowers near those bees to just make normal honey??
I have nothing against imitation versions of food, if they are properly disclosed as such and are safe for consumption. It allows the flavors of the food to reach those who aren't as well off and can't spend $13 for a bottle of maple syrup.
EXACTLY
Well I can afford maple syrup but to thin compared to corn syrup. I can't be concerned about the supposed health problems to corn syrup. We don't live or die based upon it. Corn syrup doesn't control my destiny.... 🤣 Personally I think I'd rather just have biscuits and gravy, that I make myself. I just wished every liquid in the store wasn't pasteurized 🤦♂️
then why not call it imitation -- the way imitation vanilla was called.. Maybe people deserve a death sentence for the partially added peanut oil in what is labeled as pure olive oil, lethal to a young person with peanut allergy, because a mandatory vaccine contained an ingredient not listed by the AMA.
well, big IF..
n that’s why those people are unhealthy and live in food deserts
Anybody else notice, or maybe i should say shocked to learn that truffles are more expensive then high quality weed these days
I mean, i 100% knew they werent cheap but that price blew me away
I remember when I was young, my mom and I would often make our own faux maple syrup at home using a mixture of water, sugar, and maple extract because it was affordable and we liked the flavor well enough. To this day if a bottle of "100% Maple Syrup" behaves like that faux maple syrup my mom and I used to make back in the day I instantly get suspicious
Regarding the bit with the Tonka beans, Tonka has actually historically been used as a vanilla flavoring in many European countries, so it's not actually that fraudulent; it's about as misleading as artificial vanilla flavor is.
I wonder how much fake honey I ate until my sister bought hives and started getting the most amazing honey. It tastes different with each season, depending on what is flowering at the time, but always delicious.🍯🐝
Giving the benefits of the importance of the most faked foods to health would have been wonderful.
imagine being in a massive crime organization just to make fake olive oil
My mom used to warn us about fake and harmful products in food. She learned this many years ago in college. Imagine a college teaching the dangers of fake vs real anything today.
I actually have to watch this video for college and then write something about it lol
Colleges can't even figure out what a male or female is. They're doomed.
Colleges do still teach that if it's important to the field your heading into. That's how everything in college works.
@@captaincake4331 how did this happen
@@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman Satan.
Sometimes I wish videos like these would actually change the way we think about buying products, but for most authentic stuff we simply can't afford it. That is exactly where the fakes strike.
Really appreciate this thank you
In reference to the truffle oil, I agree to a point. There are many fakes when it comes to truffle oil, however, when using a truffle shaver, you always have this tiny edge left over. We would mince those tiny pieces and create infused oil with those remnants. Infused oils though have a short shelf life can get the last bit of life out of something following initial usage.
Thank you for this. I'm coming to this video right after the truffle video that Ethan Chlebowski did, and he made the point that black summer truffles are used alongside artificial white truffle flavoring. It isn't fake, it's imitation. Glad other people are well informed.
Thank you for making this video. Very informative. I had no idea about most of them.
Oh no there goes my Chemical Truffle Potato Chips. Thanks a lot ! Lol. Great report.
If the chemical tastes good and doesn't kill you, then why not eat it. Most things are chemicals anyway.
*Great documentary!*
The Honey lady is very funny. Rubbish Honey! LOL
Her thing at the very end about putting the fake honey on your hair and face... I could maybe see real honey being good for that, but it seems like the fake stuff wouldn't be beneficial, beauty-wise.
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