5 “Foods” that are NOT food

You go to the grocery store to shop for food and assume that what you are buying is food because it's edible, but all it takes is a quick read of ingredients on labels to see that some of the food we are buying is not really food. It's more like something that has been made in a lab, dare I say it…it's franken-food.

Now I'm not trying to be an alarmist and freak you out, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that "food" items conjured in a lab by scientists are not what your body was meant to eat.

Read more ¿Qué más?: 7 Fun & healthy food swaps to conquer your cravings

I'm going to present you with five things we call "food" that are NOT actually food–and you can actually switch them out with real food so easily. Imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, but when it comes to food just go for the real stuff or abstain all together.

Image via Thinkstock

Fake peanut butter

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peterpanpb.com

If we are talking about a peanut allergy, then by all means stay away from peanut butter. But if you are bringing what you think is peanut butter into your home make sure it actually is. The ingredients in the peanut butter in my home read: Peanuts, salt. That's it. But other peanut butters may not be so simple. See the example below.

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

Fake Mayo

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Amazon

Real mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil, egg yolk, and vinegar or lemon juice.

__Ingredients
__Water, soybean oil, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, modified cornstarch, sugar, eggs, salt, natural flavor, mustard flour, potassium sorbate as a preservative, paprika, spice, dried garlic.

Fake butter

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icantbelieveitsnotbutter.com

If it's not butter you guys, well, it's just not butter. Butter contains cream and salt (if it's salted butter), the stuff that tries to pass as sprayable butter contains a lot more as you can see below.

__Ingredients
__Water, Liquid Soybean Oil, Salt, Sweet Cream Buttermilk, Xanthan Gum, Soy Lecithin, Polysorbate 60, Lactic Acid, (Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Calcium Disodium EDTA) as Preservatives, Artificial Flavor, Colored with Beta Carotene, Vitamin A (Palmitate).

Fake maple syrup

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mrsbutterworths.com

Maple syrup is made out of 100 percent maple syrup. Fake maple syrup is a lot more creative as you can see from the list of ingredients below.

__Ingredients
__High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, salt, cellulose gum, molasses, potassium sorbate (preservative), sodium hexametaphosphate, citric acid, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors.

Fake bacon

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Amazon

You could add real crumbled bacon to your salad or you could add the weird ingredients in fake "bacon" bits below to your salad.

__Ingredients
__Defatted Soy Flour, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Water, Salt, Sugar, Artificial and Natural Flavor, Red 40 and Other Color Added, Soy Sauce (Water, Wheat, Soybeans, Salt), Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (Corn, Soy, Wheat).