Hungarian Store Shelves Filled With Fake Food

Vegetable fat, dairy by-products, and several more raw materials are found in fake food, which have harmful effects on the human body in large quantities. Sandwich topping, fresh cream, or cocoa mass instead of chocolate – they are all fake products. Although they are cheaper and not much different in taste, we’d better consider what we buy to eat.

It has probably happened at least once to each of us that we put some fake milk, or sour cream-like product in our shopping cart which has nothing to do with milk at all or pizza topping which isn’t even in the remotest kinship with cheese. But how is this possible? How do these products end up in our basket? Penzcentrum.hu has collected some foodstuff this kind and examined in what aspects do they differ from original commodities.

Legal counterfeit

We often meet food counterfeits and at the same time we might not even know that they actually are fake food. They are cheaper but are not worth it in the long run. These counterfeits are lower quality and cheaper, versions of particular products and also often harmful to health. We can consider them as adulterated food since they are made of raw materials different from the original products. However, according to current regulations, original and “fake” food cannot be sold under the same name, so if the original component is replaced with vegetable fat, the producers have to indicate that. This is how sour cream becomes farm cream.

Due to the National College for Anti-counterfeiting, there are numerous examples for counterfeiting in everyday life: for instance if something is produced of expired materials, or when a cheap product is sold in a packing which is similar to its expensive counterpart. Further examples are the use of unauthorized components (like the red pepper scandal was a few years ago when the spice was mixed with minimum), or when foreign products are sold as if they were Hungarian ones. In many cases, only official controls shed light on these frauds, but they often get to the shelves of department stores. Besides these, the College regards chocolate or dairy products which contain vegetable fat as falsification, as well as the sugaring of honey. However, if they are sold under different yet similar names to the originals, they are not considered illegal.

These are called food imitations: products which have similar names as the original ones, but their components are replaced with other raw materials. Most abuses happen with dairy products, for example cheese or sour cream-like commodities or fake milk. There are also meat product imitations, with which we don’t necessarily get what we believe. For instance, liverwurst contains only 20 percent liver in the best case.

The problem is that these products mislead consumers, who can easily low-quality imitation food accidentally, instead of real foodstuff if they only pay attention to the prices and the packaging. The biological value of the nutrition doesn’t gain on to the original with the intake of these products, meaning the nutrient content is utilized only to a lesser extent. If we buy a lot of foodstuff because of their cheapness which contain vegetable fat, our diet becomes one-sided, which is harmful to our health.