That olive oil you use to dress your salads is probably not the real McCoy. To cut costs, producers may cut olive oil with cheaper soybean, sunflower or peanut oils, which can be deadly to anyone who’s allergic. What’s worse, you won’t see these ingredients on the label.

Olmsted suggests looking for the international EVA and UNAPROL labels to make sure your EVOO is the real deal. [Photo: Getty/dulezidar]

Seafood is one of the biggest culprits in the counterfeit food circle, says Olmsted.

“Imagine if half the time you pulled into a gas station, you were filling your tank with dirty water instead of gasoline,” Olmsted writes. “That’s the story with seafood.”

According to Olmsted, red snapper is almost always fake – it’s usually tilapia or tilefish. [Photo: Getty/wholden]

That salmon on your nigiri may not have come from the ocean. A report by conservation group Oceanea found that almost half of salmon labelled “wild-caught” in restaurants and grocery stores was actually farmed.

Farmed salmon tend to be grey, so farmers add pink colouring to give them a fresher appearance. [Photo: Getty/StagnantLife]

Beware when ordering white tuna or butterfish. Olmsted estimates that the chances of you getting the white tuna you ordered in a typical sushi restaurant are zero, as in never. Instead, escolar is often substituted for the milky white fish.

According to Health Canada, Escolar “can naturally contain approximately 20 per cent by weight of an indigestible oil made up of high amounts of wax esters.”

Escolar has been banned in Japan due to its potential side effects, but Health Canada maintains that escolar “does not pose a health risk to consumers” and “continues to allow escolar to be sold on the Canadian market.” [Photo: yelp.com]

If you’ve shelled out on a marbled Kobe beef steak, chances are you were actually eating wagyu, a cheaper cut of beef. Authentic Kobe beef comes specifically from the Tajima breed of Black cattle, that’s been bred and raised in Kobe, a city in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture.

Only 3,000 heads of certified beef cattle are sold each year and only five places in Canada have been certified by the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association to sell the real deal. Of the five, three are restaurants - Kyuzo in Vancouver and Park and Lavanderia Restaurants in Montreal. The other two are wholesalers in Ontario and Richmond, B.C.

The label “grass-fed beef” unfortunately doesn’t mean your meat is safe from antibiotics and chemicals.

The USDA revoked its approval process for the use of the label “grass-fed” in January. According to Olmsted, that label now simply means the cow’s main diet was grass instead of corn and it can still be raised in an industrial feed and pumped with drugs. [Photo: Getty/Creative RF]

That tub of grated parmesan cheese you picked up at the grocery store contains more than just cheese. An FDA investigation revealed that some dairy products, despite being labelled “100 per cent parmesan,” had polymers and wood pulp in them.

To ensure what you’re eating is the real thing, Olmsted recommends people look for products that’s named after the region it’s produced. For example, Parmigiano-Reggiano gets its name from the region Parma which has produced this cheese for over 400 years. Look out for the name and that it’s been “imported from Italy.” [Photo: Getty/Westend61]