Substitute food

Substitute foods are foods that look and taste similar to another, but are made up of different ingredients. The word food substitute or surrogate is used occasionally . This is to be distinguished from inedible food imitation , e.g. B. Shokuhin-Sanpuru . In the English-speaking world, the term Ersatz good is used for the German term replacement food , with the help of the German word Ersatz .

Hunger bread during the Leningrad blockade in 1944 made from goose foot seeds and bran , deep-fried with lubricating oil

The reason for substitute food was the lack of availability in times of need. A classic example is margarine as a butter substitute. Substitute foods were of great importance in the First World War . The main motive today is usually a cost saving in the production, ie the substitute food is cheaper than the classic food. Consumer protection associations and the media also use the terms food plagiarism or food counterfeiting and mean the use of substitute materials with marginal identification on the label. However, this term is also used for the imitation of the design or a registered design of branded products, i.e. product piracy in the food sector.

In the GDR, various substitutes were offered to cover up delivery bottlenecks : a pork cheek (fat cheek) is also a substitute for a chop.

There are also reasons that lie with the consumer, for example food intolerance , vegetarianism or veganism .

Often the originals are precisely defined in the Food Act and are conceptually protected so that no designations are chosen that could confuse the consumer with the real product. The EC regulation 1898/87 provides for the protection of terms for milk, whey, cream, butter, buttermilk, cheese, yoghurt and kefir. Exceptions are traditional terms such as coconut milk , cocoa and peanut butter . Soy products do not come under these exemption regulations.

Section 11 of the LFGB generally prohibits the placing of counterfeit or inferior food on the market without sufficient identification. Soy products may therefore not be placed on the market if it is suggested that these could be the protected terms mentioned above.

Examples

Potato rationing Pirmasens 1917, turnip winter

• Turnip - potato -Ersatz, etc. in the form of very thin soup
• Hunger bread - This is how bread baked in times of need is called. Sometimes the scarce flour was stretched from the usual main types of grain , sometimes completely replaced.
• Muckefuck - coffee substitute without caffeine, mostly made from grain
• Cheese substitute - mixture of animal and / or vegetable fats, partly with emulsifiers, colorings and flavors
• Formed meat - leftover meat that is pressed into larger pieces of meat. Also pizza ham , an imitation ham made from pieces of meat, embedded in a starch gel
• Surimi - similar to molded meat, but made from leftover fish
• German caviar - colored roe from the sea ​​hare
• Chocolate substitute - Schlager-Süßtafel , Creck and other products that do not have the cocoa content prescribed by the cocoa ordinance
• Margarine - an industrially produced butter substitute made from vegetable and sometimes animal fats.
• The honey substitute - such as invert sugar (mainly of invert sugar produced honey substitute) or agave
• Plockwurst (including garlic salami) is mostly as a substitute for salami on the pizza used
• Milk substitute , e.g. B. Soy drinks - a vegetable substitute for cow's milk
• Cream substitute
• Meat substitute , e.g. B. Seitan (wheat protein), textured soy or Quorn (mushroom ferment)
• Sausage substitute - with a vegetarian (e.g. with chicken egg or milk protein) or vegan recipe
• Aquafaba - protein substitute for egg whites , made-up word for the soaking water of chickpeas or other legumes.
• Milei - egg substitute made from milk components

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://de.bab.la/woerterbuch/deutsch-englisch/ Ersatzlebensmittel
2. ↑ https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html/pp/906
3. ↑ Hamburg Consumer Center: List of food plagiarism ( Memento from October 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/lebensmittelfaelschungen-maschinenoel-im-olivenoel-1.2726282-3
5. ↑ Food design: Paula vs. Flecki
6. ↑ Wolfgang Frede (Ed.): Pocket book for food chemists. 2nd Edition. Springer, 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-28198-6 , pp. 461 .
7. ^ Hans-Dieter Belitz , Werner Grosch , Peter Schieberle : Textbook of food chemistry . 6th completely revised edition. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-73201-3 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-73202-0 .
8. ↑ Wolfgang Frede (Ed.): Pocket book for food chemists. 2nd Edition. Springer, 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-28198-6 , pp. 678 .