The Balsamico you see in the supermarket is red wine vinegar with added sugar and flavourings. The real stuff it fermented, it's closer to whisky than vinegar.

Cider should be made from pulped apples, sadly it is all too common for it to be made from commercial apple syrups. These are ultra-processed mixes of sugar from various apples. The production process removes the aromatics, so those have to be re-added.

Chinese pine-nuts are far more common than the real Italian pine nuts. They taste nothing like the real thing because they come from a different species of tree.

I've come to the conclusion that anything you buy at a supermarket or chain store is basically fake rubbish. If you want the real thing you need to go visit farm shops at the source.

And come up with a good estimate for their production capacity vs sales...

Because the genuine article isn't always cheap to make, but it shouldn't have to compete with imitation products that are disguising themselves as it with no way for consumers to know the difference.

The problem is US-based companies fraudulently representing sugar syrup as honey. Would it make a difference if they called locally produced sugar syrup “Tennessee Honey”?

The use of Vietnamese syrup over domestic syrup is irrelevant to the overall fraud.

Come again?[1][2]

> it takes an NMR machine to know differently

Does it really?[3]

[1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-...

[2] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html

[3] http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=produc...

"Divisions may detain, without physical examination, the specified products from the firms listed in the Red List of this import alert."

Presumably they're not detaining every batch?

The fact that the import alert has been in place for 7 years suggests -- unless there's further clarifying data about numbers of stops and such -- that it's still a problem, that fake "honey" is being imported?

Per [3], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 "Study and validity of 13C stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis by mass spectrometry and 2H site-specific natural isotopic fractionation by nuclear magnetic resonance isotopic measurements to characterize and control the authenticity of honey." it looks like they use SNIF-NMR and SCIRA-MS (magnetic resonance and mass-spectroscopy) in determining authenticity of honey?

This, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authentic..., is quite intersting on the topic.

I wasn't prepared to spend $15 to buy AOAC Official Method 991.41 but the above ResearchGate linked study suggested "honey" could have up to 7% corn syrup and still pass that test. Later (p.8) they summarise:

>"While the study showed that some 73% of commercial honeys analysed were classified as pure according to AOAC criteria10,11,16 and previous studies8,12,13,15,17–20 it is entirely possible this overestimated the actual number of pure honeys. This is because honey is sometimes adulterated using C-3 sugars, such as those from sugar beet7. It is unfortunate that the methods used here cannot detect this form of adulteration61. Consequently, detection of adulteration of this nature remains a challenge7.In addition to C-3 sugars, other adulterants in honey are difficult to detect due to the development of new and more sophisticated practices and lack of officially accepted analytical techniques. The use of EA-IRMS (Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) is the only official detection method for addition of C-4 sugar in honey42. This study also relied on a number of AOAC criteria10,11,16 to determine if honey samples were pure. As shown in Table 1, 65% (17 of 26) of samples classified as adulterated did not meet the δ13Ch-p and the C-4 sugar criteria; 9 samples also failed to meet the relevant criterion for δ13Choney<−23.5‰10. While the C-4 sugar criterion is considered robust and has broad application, the AOAC 998.1211 method does identify that a small percentage of genuine pure honeys fall outside of the accepted criterion for non-adulterated honey (≤7%)." (ibid)

Or the "Christmas markets". Hahaha. What a scam.