Contaminated Chicken, Fake Honey, And Other Horrible Food Industry Secrets

The truth is, many grocery store shelves and restaurant menus are filled with phonies, deceptions and imitations. Prepare your emotions, because these food industry lies are about as disturbing as it gets.

Your Honey is Fake – Unless Bees Make Corn Syrup Now

Honey is toted around in the health community as a “natural sweetener” and a “white sugar alternative,” but most commercial honeys are not as natural as you think. What store-bought honey really has in its deceptive packaging is loads of cheap corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, a far cry from any sugar alternative a health conscious individual would be interested in.

According to a 2011 investigation conducted by Food Safety News, 75% of honey sold in the U.S. is NOT pure honey. Try to buy honey from local beekeepers, look for honey that is ethically produced, and avoid products that are sweetened with “honey.” More often than not, the “honey” in your grocery store is just sugar, sugar and more sugar.

Your Spices/Seasonings Are Fake

Yes, even your spices and seasonings are sprinkled lies. Many manufacturers have started producing a soy imitation product that takes a lot less time to make than actual soy sauce and has a longer shelf life. Faux soy sauce consists of hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, caramel coloring, salt and corn syrup. Drizzle THAT on your sushi!

Saffron, an expensive spice, is often 10% saffron and 90% random ground-up plant bits or worse, saffron-flavored gelatin. Question the purity and quality of this spice. Many phonies on the market lack the color and aroma of true saffron.

Your Chicken is Oozing With Weird Liquids – Do We Even Know What Chicken Tastes Like Anymore?

Can we really call what’s on our plates chicken? For decades, our tasty chicken has been infused with a bunch of disturbing substances including beef and pork waste, chicken stock, brine and “flavor enhancers.”

Why is this happening? To give consumers a juicy chicken to enjoy! It’s called plumping and it’s been a standard practice in chicken production since the ‘70s. These foreign liquids make up an astounding 30% of the chicken’s weight, and chickens are priced by the pound!

Plumping can quadruple the sodium levels in meat and the worst part about all of this is that it’s extremely hard to avoid. Chickens can be labelled as a completely natural product whether they are 100% chicken or not.

Your Meat is Many Meats Glued Together

Have you heard of transglutaminase? Feel free to call it “meat glue” instead. The food industry uses meat glue to bind tiny bits of meat scraps together into one big slab of meat for you to consume.

The main issue with meat glue is that many consumers don’t know that meat-glued products are what they are buying. Your steak may be made from a dozen cows, making it impossible to track the source of any food poisoning you might receive. Transglutaminase doesn’t even have to be listed as an ingredient in the meat!

Meat glue, made of pig and cow blood, can be used on any meat, chicken and seafood included.

Your Salmon is Dyed Pink

Salmon are one of the fish that swim upstream to lay their eggs. However, the salmon that you’re consuming has most likely been born and raised in cramped, overcrowded salmon farms. Since the salmon can’t move around very much in these spaces, and are restricted to a diet of aquarium pellets, the salmon that is produced is not pink at all. It’s gray!

As a result, the food industry dyes salmon pink by infusing coloring agents in the pellets the salmon consume. Most of the Atlantic salmon in grocery stores are farmed and dyed.

A lot of other common foods are dyed too: wheat bread is often dyed darker with brown sugar or molasses to make it appear more healthy. Cheddar cheese is dyed an orange hue to maintain color consistency in cheese products.

You’ve Probably Never Tried Kobe Beef. Who Knows What You Really Ate

Unless you’ve actually flown to Japan, you have never tried Kobe beef. The strict rules that apply to Kobe production aren’t in compliance with U.S. legislation, which makes the meat illegal in America.

Kobe beef is so rare, that it’s not a good that Japan exports. So, whatever is labelled “Kobe beef” on restaurant menus and in grocery stores is just regular beef. Save your money.

Your Olive Oil is Fake

Most olive oils on the market are greatly diluted or completely forged. What we’re most likely buying contains a tiny amount of olive oil and 80% plain old sunflower, canola and vegetable oil. It’s an easy to get away with, profitable scheme that has existed for centuries, and is still going strong.

Try to buy olive oil locally, and be prepared to spend a little more for the real stuff.