7 Cases When We Get a Fake Instead of Our Favorite Food

Sometimes the foods that we buy in supermarkets can turn out to be not what we expected. Some manufacturers are dishonest and will try to sell us things that only look like natural foods but in reality, they are fake.

We at Bright Side decided to help our readers avoid being deceived and made a list of foods that have been found to be fake really often. Read carefully and see if you’ve made these mistakes in the past.

1. Red caviar

It’s not that difficult to identify a fake product:

• A container made of glass is way better than a can. So, always buy caviar in a glass container.
• A grain of caviar is actually an egg. So, it shouldn’t look like a sphere. In the middle, you should be able to see fat and a fetus. If you don’t see anything like that, the caviar is fake.

2. Soy sauce

Natural soy sauce is tasty and healthy and the fake version can be really dangerous. You can tell a fake one from a real one in a store. Here are some basic rules:

• Ingredients. The more components and taste enhancers there are, the faster you should put the bottle back on the shelf. In order to make natural soy sauce, you need water, soybeans, salt, and wheat.
• Color. In many cases, natural soy sauce is brown or light brown. A dark liquid that looks more like a syrup probably has nothing to do with soy sauce. On the other hand, there is no one single recipe for all Asian countries.
• Price. Making soy sauce is a long process. High-quality soy sauce isn’t cheap.

3. Pastries with natural food coloring

Always read the list of ingredients when buying pastries. For example, if a scone is labeled “tomato,” its list of ingredients should include tomatoes.

If the list of ingredients is okay but the color looks strange, it’s best to not buy this product. Good pastries are not supposed to look as if they were dipped into a bucket of paint.

4. Locally produced chicken

Here are some common myths about chicken:

1. High-quality chicken has yellowish skin.

The truth:

• Manufacturers can feed chickens with corn or special food with supplements to get the “right” color.
• A more simple way is to just paint the skin with turmeric.

2. High-quality chicken is small and takes a long time to boil.

The truth:

• The weight and the amount of meat depend on the breed. It doesn’t matter what the breed is as long as it was raised in the right conditions.

3. The body of the “right” chicken smells like burned skin because the feathers are burned off.

The truth:

• It depends on the production method. Any chicken feathers can be burned or not.

What you can do:

• Find a good farmer you trust.
• Stop eating chicken and eat more rabbit and turkey meat.
• Buy chicken in good supermarkets that have a good reputation.

5. Dogwood dry tomatoes

Cherry dogwood is really easy to fake using cherry tomatoes. Be alert if you see cheap dogwood in a supermarket — the price is a very important marker. The taste of cherry tomatoes is not that much different from dogwood, especially if your brain thinks you are eating the latter.

But it’s also not hard to tell genuine dogwood from cherry tomatoes:

• They look different (pay attention to the photos above). Dogwood can have a different shape and color (it depends on the kind) but they still look different from cherry tomatoes.
• The pit is different. Dogwood has one big pit inside and dry cherry tomatoes have a lot of small seeds inside.

6. Healthy dry fruit

Dried fruits are not supposed to look attractive. But this way, not many people will want to buy them. This is why many manufacturers use sulfur dioxide to make them more appealing. The “right” dried fruit is not shiny and doesn’t have a beautiful color.

Brightness is not the only aspect you should take into account. It’s great if you know in advance what the natural fruit looks like. For example, the kumquat in the photo above never look this green.

The less access bacteria have to the inside of the fruit, the better. This is why you should choose dried fruit that is intact.

7. Macaron

Macaron is a sweet meringue-based confection from France. The main ingredients are almond flour, sugar, egg yolk. Macarons can’t be cheap because almond flour is really expensive.

Some manufacturers exploit the image of this popular dessert in order to sell its cheaper version. And these manufacturers use peanut flour instead of almond flour but use the same name, because not everyone is ready to spend a lot of money on this tiny dessert.

And also, there is a thing called macaroon. This dessert also contains almond flour but they look more like cookies.

Bonus: Fake eyes on fish

In Kuwait, one of the seafood street markets was shut down after it was discovered that the staff used plastic eyes to make their fish look fresher. A customer noticed an eye slipping off of a fish and took the photo you see above, which then went viral.

Have you ever bought fake food? Tell us about your experience in the comment section below.