5 Examples of When You Might Not Know What You Are Eating

When we buy food at the grocery store, many of us expect to get what we think we’re paying for.

But, as it turns out, our food isn’t always what we think it is. From the horse meat scandal that is currently rocking the United Kingdom — to the widespread realization that the ground beef sold in many U.S. markets is actually a mix of bits of meat, fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and ammonia dubbed “pink slime” — consumers are continually shown just how at the mercy of industrial food conglomerates we truly are when we go to the grocery store.

Here are a few examples that have shown us sometimes our food isn’t really what we think it is.

Food 1: Olive Oil

Would you be surprised, for example, to find out that an astonishing 70 percent of the extra virgin olive oil for sale on the market today is potentially watered down with other types of oils and enhancers to give it the flavor and appearance of olive oil?

In December 2011, two Spanish businessmen were sentenced to two years in prison each for selling fake olive oil that was 70-80 percent sunflower oil. An Italian ring involving 60 people and the closure of 90 olive farms and olive oil processing plants was shut down back in 2008.

The Guardian reported:

Most alarmingly, a study last year by researchers at the University of California, Davis and the Australian Oils Research Laboratory concluded that as much as 69% of imported European olive oil (and a far smaller proportion of native Californian) sold as extra virgin in the delicatessens and grocery stores on the US west coast wasn’t what it claimed to be.

It would seem fake or adulterated olive oil is more common than not. This means many olive oils you find in your grocery store could be laced with genetically modified oil and other random stuff so you’ll think you are getting what you paid for.

The issue with olive oil goes way deeper than many realize. Tom Mueller, author of Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil first blew the lid on the olive oil scandal through a New Yorker exposé. Mueller is described as “The world’s expert on olive oil and olive oil fraud — a story of globalization, deception, and crime in the food industry from ancient times to the present, and a powerful indictment of today’s lax protections against fake and even toxic food products in the United States.”

According to the Guardian, extra virgin is still the way to go, since other categories of olive oil labeled simply “pure”, “light” oil, straight up “olive oil” or “olive pomace oil” — have been chemically altered. In fact, The North American Olive Oil Association, is currently suing Kangadis Food saying it falsely labeled its Capatriti brand as olive oil instead of olive pomace oil — a fat residue extracted from olive skins and pits using chemical solvents such as the jet fuel additive hexane.

For more information on how to know if you are buying real olive oil, visit Truth in Olive Oil.com.

Food 2: Tuna

In one of the largest seafood fraud investigations ever conducted, conservation group Oceana found that 59 percent — more than half— of tuna is mislabeled and comprised of fish the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) once banned for human consumption.

Oceana DNA tested 1,215 seafood samples from 674 retail outlets across 21 states. After a two year investigation, it was revealed that 33 percent of fish products were not labeled correctly according to FDA guidelines.

Sushi sellers were the worst offenders, but the fake fish was found everywhere. As Anthony Gucciardi from Natural Society reported:

A whopping 84 percent of ‘white tuna’ was actually escolar, the snake mackerel fish that causes oily anal leakage and was banned by the FDA until 1992. It is still banned in Japan, Italy, and requires warning labels regarding the leaky discharge in Canada, Sweden, and Denmark.

But at least it’s still fish, right?

I’m sure that thought makes all those people who spend hours in the bathroom with horrible digestive problems after they eat a can of so-called tuna feel so much better about it.

We at Truthstream have also pointed out that you have to read the labels just to know if a can that says, “Tuna in water” on the front is really only just tuna packed in water.

We found at least three examples (and stopped after it made us sad) where tuna is packed in a “vegetable broth” that includes soy. No further information is given, so whether or not that soy vegetable broth is genetically modified is anyone’s guess. Considering the majority of soybeans grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, the odds aren’t too good.

Food 3: Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice

Ever wonder why bottled orange juice at the store, even the “not from concentrate” kind, has a consistent taste from bottle to bottle, no matter what time of year you buy it? No matter where it comes from? If you buy PepsiCo’s Tropicana brand, it’s going to taste like Tropicana; if you buy Coca Cola’s Simply Orange or Minute Maid brands, they will taste the same regardless of when or where they are produced.

Don’t let the “not from concentrate” tag fool you. Read this description slowly and follow the way companies play on semantics: “squeezed from fresh oranges”.

That isn’t the same at all as “freshly squeezed orange juice,” now is it?

As Food Renegade reports, in reality, orange juice is squeezed into large vats where it the oxygen is removed. That way it can be stored up to a year. This process, however, essentially leaves us with big vats of tasteless juice. The solution? Let’s find out:

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature.

Adding chemically altered flavor packs from orange byproducts kinda takes the sheen off the phrase “100% pure and natural” plastered on the side of many grocery store orange juice cartons, doesn’t it? One California woman is currently suing PepsiCo for its Tropicana orange juice in a federal court on the grounds that such marketing claims found on the juice’s packaging are false advertising.

Bloomberg actually reported that Coke’s Simply Orange and Minute Maid brands are made via an algorithm. Using something called the ‘Black Book’, revenue analytics consultant and Coke’s juice architect Bob Cross says orange juice, “is definitely one of the most complex applications of business analytics. It requires analyzing up to 1 quintillion decision variables to consistently deliver the optimal blend, despite the whims of Mother Nature.”

Mmm. Yummy. Want real orange juice? You might want to squeeze it yourself.

Food 4: Honey

For real honey, local is the way to go.

Have you ever heard of “honey laundering“? Apparently supply and demand are out of whack here in America, and thus, China has been supplying a large amount of the honey needed to meet demand. Unfortunately, that so-called honey has been cut with all kinds of junk, not the least of which is corn syrup and water. Investigations found cheap Chinese honey also contained antibiotics and pesticides, among other lovely niceties.

On top of the issues with the actual ingredients, all this low-grade honey was negatively impacting the economy. The cheap honey was so cheap, it was driving down prices so American producers making actual real honey couldn’t compete. To avoid tariffs, Chinese producers were caught shipping their “honey” to a third country where the product was further watered down and switched to different containers before being imported to the U.S.

In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged two domestic honey processors and five individuals involved with federal crimes regarding honey laundering:

Honey Holding, doing business as Honey Solutions, of Baytown, Texas, and Groeb Farms Inc., of Onsted, Mich. – two of the nation’s largest honey suppliers – have both entered into deferred prosecution agreements with the government. Honey Holding has agreed to pay $1 million and Groeb Farms has agreed to pay $2 million in fines.

It may even come to us in a cute little plastic bears, but a recent Food Safety News study found that up to 75 percent of honey sold to us in grocery stores does not contain any pollen whatsoever — so by definition, it isn’t even really honey anyway.

Truthstream Media even found straight up “artificial honey” for sale: among the variety of honey products on the grocery store shelf in the video below was an artificial imitation honey promoted by a prominent diabetes organization. The concoction contained several dangerous ingredients including artificial sweetener acesulfame K and maltitol syrup (manufactured from corn starch, a likely genetically modified ingredient), some of which could be particularly problematic for the very diabetics the product was marketed towards.

Food 5: Bread

One of the most processed foods out there is bread.

As Natural News has reported, many commercial baked goods in stores are made with a non-essential amino acid L-cysteine to speed it through the industrial process.

While that might not sound like much, it’s where this L-cysteine comes from that might shock and/or disgust you: human hair. The Health Ranger reports:

The hair is dissolved in acid and L-cysteine is isolated through a chemical process, then packaged and shipped off to commercial bread producers. Besides human hair, other sources of L-cysteine include chicken feathers, duck feathers, cow horns and petroleum byproducts.

Guess that’s good for recycling, but nothing about what he just said makes me want to eat bread any time soon. A lot of the hair that winds up in bread reportedly gets swept up from barbershop floors.

That’s almost as bad as the fact that the castoreum used to make artificial vanilla flavoring comes from the anal secretions of a beaver. I couldn’t make that up if I tried. (I guess real vanilla flavoring is too expensive??)

Moreover, gluten intolerance has become a sudden and spreading food allergen, potentially deadly for those plagued by Celiac disease. This clip from a 1960 Department of Agriculture video leaves us wondering if perhaps the modified practices of “creating” food have played a role:

Just because something is edible — does that automatically mean it can and should be defined as food? The distinction is pretty important and one seemingly forgotten these days.

Kraft Foods is currently involved in a lawsuit over the allegation that its packaging is misleading customers to believe the food inside is more wholesome than it really is. In a motion to dismiss, Kraft’s lawyers have said that promotional statements such as “wholesome,” “sensible,” and “smart” are too vague to prove or disprove, and thus are officially “puffery” that is not actionable by law. Sounds legit to me!

Common sense and logic seemingly go out the window when it comes to food packaging and industrial food practices. Thus, consumers cannot approach the grocery store with the same common sense and logic and expect to get what they pay for. We have to be extra vigilant when we buy food if we really care to know what we are eating.

Melissa Melton is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com, where this article first appeared. She is an experienced researcher, graphic artist and investigative journalist with a passion for liberty and a dedication to truth. Her aim is to expose the New World Order for what it is — a prison for the human soul from which we must break free.