12 Foods you never knew were actually fake

I hate to say this, but sometimes something cheesy is going on with your cheese. There are countless of cheese snacks that actually contain more fillers and oils than fresh wholesome ingredients. If the label reads "processed" or includes preservatives that are difficult to pronounce then it's most likely fake.

This fact actually hurts my heart a little more than the rest because I'm a huge ice cream lover. Who isn't, right? Turns out, there are a ton of brands that make ice cream with less than 10% of milk fat. Instead, they use bi-products like whey and gum. Yuck!

Buying the pre-made muffin box mix is convenient and fuss-free, but be careful about the ones that include fruits. You could be eating imitation berries instead of the real deal. If you see colors and strange numbers next to the ingredients then your best bet is to stay away and mix in your own fresh fruit.

I hate to beat it to you, but there are fake egg products out there. Eggs that come pre-mixed or in powder form usually have a much longer shelf life, which means they're packed with more preservatives and unnatural ingredients.

Mash potatoes is a dinner staple in many homes. The flakiness comes about when looking at the boxed dehydrated instant mixes. The ingredients read potato flakes, but that's code for processed ingredients that are mixed together to taste like potato. No thanks!

Ice tea is refreshing and delicious. The scary part is that sometimes it's difficult telling the fake stuff from the real. There are countless of bottled ice teas that include more flavor extracts and corn syrup than actual tea.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

Most people that bite into a hot dog know they aren't getting 100% real meat, but they're still staples eaten at sport games and BBQs. Hot dogs contain some fat and meat trimmings, but a big chunk of the rest is sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrite. Those don't sound very natural.