Food Fraud: Most Common Food Fakes

Your favorite cabernet or chardonnay probably isn't cause for concern, but it is important to buy wines from producers and manufacturers you trust. A scandal back in the mid-1980s drew the public's attention to the very serious problem of finding diethylene glycol in wines. Diethylene glycol is a clear, sweet, odorless liquid that can be toxic at high levels, and may be easy to confuse with other colorless, sweet (but harmless) liquids commonly used or added to wines and other foods. Since the '80s, no large-scale discovery of wine containing this toxic substance has been noted. Less physically harmful, but still insidious, are cases when cheap wine has been passed off as a more expensive variety (or even a collectible) with counterfeit labels, or wines made to seem more complex or aged than they really are with the addition of other juices, colorings, and spices.

Coffee is another easy item to fake, if it's already ground or processed before making its way to your local store shelves. Chicory, roasted corn, malt, or glucose — all common additives — are not harmful or cause for concern, but they're not coffee either, and will affect the flavor of your brew.

Tip: Buy coffee in its whole bean form and grind it at home, as it's more difficult to hide unwanted ingredients in this less processed form.

Honey is an amazing product, used as a sweetener for centuries but also touted for its considerable health benefits. Aside from the purported perks of buying local (some claim it helps calm allergies), there's another reason to buy from beekeepers or farmers in your area: some imported honeys, particularly those from Asia, have been known to be contaminated with toxic substances like lead or even with antibiotics. There's also a good chance that many honeys on U.S. store shelves contain high fructose corn syrup or other additives that mimic honey's sweet flavor but aren't the real thing.

Tip: To make sure you're getting pure, untainted honey and all the health benefits that go with it, try to buy from local farmers or beekeepers that you know and trust.

Much like honey, maple syrup is an expensive product to produce — unlike many other widely available products, real maple syrup must still be tapped from trees and made in the old-fashioned way. The higher price tag on pure maple syrup (compared to "pancake syrup" or other cheaper alternatives) accounts for the added time, expertise, and labor that goes into every bottle of the real thing. But watch out, because if you're not careful you may end up paying top dollar for an inferior product, cut with glucose, sorghum, or corn. Because maple syrup varies greatly in color — depending on when during the season the sap was harvested — and because even boiled down cane sugar or other sugar syrups have a similar appearance, maple syrup is an easy product to tamper with or fake. As with honey, sticking to a brand you're familiar with or a producer you know and trust is a good way to ensure you're getting an authentic, fully pure product.

An expensive spice, saffron accounts for about 5 percent of all food fraud cases, and other spices and similar goods (like vanilla extracts) also sometimes contain fradulent ingredients. Though not harmful, the spice sold as pure saffron can contain other parts of the crocus flower — parts that lack the distinctive color and aroma of pure saffron, and therefore don't really serve their intended purpose in the kitchen. A home cook in the U.K. was so concerned about the quality of saffron available for purchase that he spent his own money to purchase large quantities of the spice and have it tested by area laboratories. The resulting reports showed that some brands claiming their product was "top quality" actually contained as little as 10 percent saffron, the rest of the product being other flower parts that had been dyed to look like the real thing.

Arsenic isn't something you expect to find in your food. But it has been found in fruit juices, most often in apple juice. According to the FDA, organic arsenic can be found in some soil and ground water. Thus, small amounts of the substance can show up in foods grown in that soil or fed with that water. It has long been stated that the kind of arsenic most often found in apple juice is organic (naturally occurring in nature, and less harmful) rather than inorganic (manmade and more harmful to the body), though more recent headlines have called that into question.

The good news? Most apple juices contain only trace amounts of the substance. But because ingredients used in juices can be imported from countries with different agricultural standards, and may use pesticides that contain arsenic, it may be worth the extra expense to buy organic juices or to buy locally-made products.

Milk certainly isn't one of the most harmful foods in our collection, but it is still one of the most often adulterated ingredients, according to the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention's recently launched Food Fraud Database. Milk products have been found to include everything from mainly benign ingredients like cane sugar to bovine whey protein to melamine. The latter is used in many applications, depending on its form, but can be toxic if ingested or inhaled, causing damage to the kidneys, bladder, and reproductive sysytems. Melamine-tainted milk drew a lot of attention in 2008 after the much-publicized scandal in China, where it was used to make diluted milk appear to have a normal or higher-than-usual protein content and keep consumers from noticing the difference.

Really good real cheese is a thing of beauty — a rich food that can be savory, salty, sweet, creamy, or sharp. But what about those words you see scattered all over your supermarket, like "cheese food" or "cheese product?" Many of the cheese products and imitation cheeses found in supermarkets are labeled as such because they don't contain the milkfat or moisture content that would allow them to be judged by the same standards as pure cheese. They may contain little actual cheese and a lot of other things, like vegetable oil, food colorings, milk protein concentrate, and additivies like maltodextrin, potassium sorbate, and sodium phosphate. If you're looking for the real thing, read labels carefully, as these kinds of cheese products cannot legally be labeled simply as "cheese."

Fish isn't what we'd call faked — if it looks like a fish, it's probably a fish. But do you really know your snappers from your striped bass, or the difference between a farmed or a wild-caught salmon by its appearance? Many of us try to be picky about what species of seafood we buy, for environmental, health, or other reasons. But if you think you're buying grouper and you're actually given orange roughy (which is higher in mercury, and should be avoided by children and pregnant women), how can you hope to make educated choices?

Tip: Buy whole fish, instead of pre-cut filets, as it's harder for purveyors to pass off one species as another.