According to The United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) consumers need to be wary about food frauds lurking at supermarkets and grocery stores. Many everyday items we buy like milk, fish, honey, and coffee may be tampered with.

But, what exactly is food fraud?

“Food fraud means that somebody adds something or replaces a perfectly safe ingredient with essentially something unknown,” Markus Lipp, senior director of food standards at USP, says. This replacement is illegal, but could go undetected.

“Any risks, hazards, or problems that occur will only depend on how knowledgable and ethical the person who committed that fraud is,” Lipp says. “If they think it’s safe but in fact it’s not safe, then everyone else will suffer the consequence.”

An independent study by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention shows that the packaged food that you buy at the grocery stores may be loaded with fillers and are not what they seem.

I recommend that you buy fresh, whole, organic foods to make sure that you’re getting what you actually paying for. Reading your ingredient labels also may help to identify those filler.

Here’s a link to the study: Food Fraud Database: Seafood, Clouding Agents and Lemon Juice as Foods Vulnerable to Fraud

To view the slide show of some 10 items and the fillers possibly used in them click here: The Daily Meal