9 Foods That Aren't Food

"Everything in moderation" is usually pretty sound advice, but let's face it: Some things you should just not put in your mouth. From artificial flavors and colors to words you'd need an advanced degree in chemistry to pronounce, there are thousands of ingredients making their way into your food that are simply not, strictly speaking, food. (For more on that, see Prevention contributor and bestselling author Mark Bittman's piece for us about how to eat.)
Bottom line: Even though you can buy these 19 foods at the grocery store doesn't mean you should. Find out how many ingredients it takes to make a fake blueberry—and see what else made our list, to find out what should stay off of yours.

1. Blueberries That Aren't Blueberries
What goes best with fake maple syrup? Fraudulent pancakes, of course. Read the tiny print that says “with imitation blueberries”, and you'll be dying to hear how to fake a fruit. Here’s the secret: take some dextrose, fractionated palm kernel oil, flour, citric acid, cellulose gum, maltodextrin, artificial flavors, two types of blue, one part red, and you’re set.

Ingredients: Enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, may contain malted barley flour), imitation blueberry pieces (dextrose, fractionated palm kernel oil, enriched flour [wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], citric acid, cellulose gum, maltodextrin, artificial flavor, red 40, blue 1, blue 2), sugar, soy flour, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum sulfate), canola or soybean oil, dextrose, salt, mono-diglycerides, guar gum, artificial flavor.

 

2. Cheese That Isn't Cheese

Cheese faking is an art nearly as popular as cheesemaking. All kinds of brands make not-cheese, but the classic is Easy Cheese. This “pasteurized cheese snack” is full of fillers, oil, and emulsifiers. The ingredients are so un-cheeselike that lobbyers tried to force Kraft to call its cheese products “embalmed cheese” -- but the government settled on “processed cheese,” according to the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cheese of the World.

Ingredients: Whey, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes), canola oil, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, milk, contains less than 2% of sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, salt, calcium phosphate, lactic acid, sodium alginate, autolyzed yeast extract, sorbic acid as a preservative, cheese culture, enzymes, apocarotenal (color), annatto (color).

 

3. Chocolate That's Not Chocolate

A chocolate chip cookie, by any other name, is a total red flag. See chocolate-chip-flavored cookies. Why is it called "flavored"? To be called chocolate, the FDA requires that a food contain cocoa butter, and these use cheaper vegetable oils as substitutes. And yes -- that partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil is code for trans fat. Better bake your own. (Try our recipe for guilt-free chocolate chip cookies made with whole-wheat flour.)

Ingredients: Enriched flour bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), sugar, chocolate flavored chips (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, cocoa processed with alkali, dextrose, soy lecithin), partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, water, contains 2% or less of: molasses, wheat protein isolate, baking powder (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate), salt, eggs, artificial flavor, nonfat milk.

4. Ice Cream That's Not Ice Cream

Gone are the good ol' days of ice cream. Now, we're forced to shovel down spoonfuls of Frozen Dairy Dessert, which can't legally be called ice cream without containing at least 10% milk fat, according to this depressing New York Times lament of ice cream lost. What Breyer's Extra Creamy Vanilla Frozen Dairy Dessert (phew) does contain is plenty of corn syrup, gums, and whey.

Ingredients: Milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream, whey, mono and diglycerides, carob bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, natural flavor, annatto (for color), vitamin A palmitate, Tara gum.

 

5. Tea That's Not Tea

Tea=tea+water. It's the easiest recipe on earth, yet companies so often seem to lose sight of what they're brewing. See SoBe, a PepsiCo company, that manages to cram 11 ingredients and no less than five weird extracts into their green tea. All in all, that's 21 grams of sugar and zero green tea—in our book, an extract does not a green tea make.

Ingredients: Filtered water, sugar, natural flavor, citric acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), green tea extract, caramel color, Reb A (purified stevia extract), guarana seed extract, panax ginseng root extract, rose hips extract.

6. Potatoes That Aren't Potatoes

Meet the mashed-potato-in-a-box, whose first ingredient is, thankfully, potatoes. (Dehydrated potato flakes, to be exact.) But they also come with preservatives, emulsifiers, flavorings, and even trans fat. At that point, good luck trying to convince anyone of potato-realness.

Ingredients: Potato flakes (sodium bisulfite, BHA, and citric acid added to protect color and flavor), contains 2% or less of: Monoglycerides, partially   hydrogenated cottonseed oil, natural flavor, sodium acid pyrophosphate, butteroil.

 

7. Peanut Butter That's Not Peanut Butter

Peanut-flavored sugar oil doesn't have quite the same ring, but it's far more accurate a name than this honey roast peanut butter from Peter Pan. What shouldn't contain added sugar has at least two types, plus partially hydrogenated oil (code for trans fat).

Ingredients: Peanut butter [roasted peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed), molasses, salt, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil], sugar, and honey.

 

8. Butter That's Not Butter

Serve this on your popcorn and you'll have people believing it's not butter in no time. "Butter" spray is as artificial as it gets.

Ingredients: Water, soybean oil, salt, sweet cream buttermilk, xanthan gum, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, lactic acid, (potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA) used to protect quality, natural and artificial flavor, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color).

9. Eggs That Aren't Eggs

Eggs are one ingredient. But substituting them takes 20. Thankfully, eggs top the ingredient list, but it goes downhill from there: the very next ingredient is a proprietary blend of “natural flavor” to conjure up egginess.

Ingredients: Egg whites (99%), less than 1% of the following: natural flavor, color (includes beta carotene), spices, salt, onion powder, vegetable gums (xanthan gum, guar gum). Vitamins and minerals: calcium (sulfate), iron (ferric phosphate), vitamin E (alpha tocopherol acetate), zinc (sulfate), calcium pantothenate, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B1 (thiamine mononitrate), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B12, folic acid, vitamin D3, biotin.

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