Cream-phantom
Sour cream is one of the most popular fermented milk products, so it needs to be produced on a truly industrial scale, which means that quantity absorbs quality. Animal fat is replaced with vegetable fat, milk protein is replaced with soy protein, all this is supplemented with flavoring food additives – and for sale! But in fact, real sour cream should be made from cream and sourdough.
Dissolve a teaspoon of sour cream in a glass of boiling water: if the sour cream is completely dissolved, it is real, if a precipitate has fallen out, it is a fake.
Seaweed caviar
It would seem that it is difficult to fake eggs. And yet … Fake caviar is made from seaweed.
The fake caviar tastes like gelatin, the real one has a slight bitterness. When consumed, a fake is chewed, a natural one bursts. Pay attention to the date of manufacture of the product: the best caviar is packaged from July to September (at this time, salmon fish spawn, so it is less likely that the manufacturer has “enriched” the product with preservatives). And at home, the authenticity of caviar can be determined by throwing an egg into a container with boiling water. If, when the protein is rolled up, a white plume remains in the water (while the egg itself will be intact), then this is real caviar, but if the egg loses its shape and begins to dissolve in water, it is a fake.
Olive oil: quality by smell
It is believed that olive oil counterfeiting is one of the most lucrative businesses of the Italian mafia. And all because manufacturers often strongly dilute this product with cheap raw materials or simply slip in an outright imitation (cheap (in every sense) vegetable oils from Tunisia, Morocco, Greece and Spain are taken as the basis for “olive oil”.
There are no clear criteria for the quality of the oil: too much depends on the variety, but still pay attention to the smell and taste: real olive oil gives off a slight tinge of spices, having a tart smell with herbaceous notes.
Glue meat
Meat glue (or transglutamine) is pork or beef thrombin (an enzyme of the blood coagulation system), which is actively used by manufacturers for gluing meat products. It’s simple: why throw out the scraps and leftovers of meat products when whole pieces of meat can be glued from them and sold at the appropriate price?
Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine meat from glue at home, “by eye” or taste. Try to buy meat products from trusted places.
Carcinogenic soy sauce
In high-quality production, soy is steamed, mixed with flour from fried barley or wheat grains, salted and a long fermentation period is started, which lasts from 40 days to 2-3 years. Unscrupulous manufacturers reduce the entire process in time to several weeks, thanks to the technology of accelerated protein breakdown. As a result, the sauce does not have time to mature and acquire the desired taste, color, smell, and this leads to the fact that various preservatives are added to the product. Today, most soy sauces contain a carcinogen (a substance that increases the likelihood of cancer) – chloropropanol.
When choosing soy sauce, pay attention to the composition, it should contain only 4 components: water, soybeans, wheat and salt. The taste of the original is delicate, delicate with a slight sweetness and rich aftertaste, while the fake has a pungent chemical odor, bitter and salty on the palate. Natural soy sauce should be transparent, reddish brown in color, and fake should be deep dark, similar to syrup.
Smoked fish made from liquid smoke
Competent and high-quality smoking of large volumes of fish takes time, and producers, in a highly competitive environment, of course, are in a hurry. As a result, they came up with the idea of smoking fish in a very simple way – in liquid smoke … in one of the strongest carcinogens banned in many countries of the world. To do this, it is enough to add 0,5 tablespoons of salt and 2 g of liquid smoke to 50 liters of water, dip the fish there and leave it in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
In the section of real smoked fish, the meat and fat are yellowish, and in the section of fake, there is almost no fat release, and the color of the meat is like that of a simple herring. Therefore, before buying, if possible, ask the seller to cut the fish.
Pollen-free honey
Most of the honey market players buy honey in China, which is not a high quality product. In order to mask the origin of the product, the pollen is filtered out. Therefore, to be honest, it is extremely difficult to call such a substance even honey, and even more so a useful product. In addition, beekeepers can feed bees with sugar syrup, processing which insects make artificial honey that does not contain vitamins and biologically active substances.
High-quality honey has a pleasant subtle smell, fake honey is either odorless or overly cloying. In terms of consistency, real honey should be viscous, not liquid. If you dissolve honey in water (1: 2), then the real one will be slightly cloudy or with a rainbow play of colors. You can also add a few drops of iodine tincture to the honey solution: if you see a blue color appearing when combined, it means that the product contains starch or flour.