The Washington Post recently reported that species substitution is a growing crime in the food industry. This is when you pay a premium price for red snapper, but instead you get Asian catfish or tilapia. Most people cannot tell the difference once the fish has been cut into fillets. When the fish is breaded or prepared in a manner that makes it hard to do a visual inspection, your chances of being able to tell the kind of fish is practically zero. Government agencies have to use DNA sequencing to catch the crooks. The ordinary consumer does not even know that he or she has been fooled.
Food manufacturers have also found it profitable to advertise low calorie or fat-free products that are not really low in calories or fat-free. These products usually have better profit margins than products that do not make such claims. You have to have a sharp eye and know how to read the food product labels to keep from getting cheated.
Have you ever compared the taste of "organic" lettuce to conventional lettuce? Can you really taste the difference? The chances are that nobody can really tell the difference between the two except through the label. But can you trust the label? Did somebody just call it "organic" and increase the price, or is it really organic? You have to trust, and hope that the claim is true. You cannot really know for sure unless you have a chemical laboratory that can test for pesticide residues, or unless you can monitor the fields where the lettuce is grown and oversee the delivery from the field to your table. We can be fooled easily because we do not have the resources necessary to verify the claims.
