This year, the global food market revenue stands at around 9.36 trillion US dollars. For comparison, Germany’s entire economy is valued at “just” $4.4 trillion. What’s more, it’s estimated that the figure should continuously increase between 2023 and 2028 by 38.46 percent and reach $12.97 trillion.

But big money brings tough competition, and businesses may try all sorts of tactics to get an edge.

Interested in the practices of this sector, Reddit user Lilyxrx made a post on the platform, asking everyone, “What’s a secret the food industry doesn’t want you to know?” Turns out, many more wanted to know, too. As of now, the post has 4.6K upvotes and 3.5K comments. Here are some of the most interesting ones.

#1

Well – I work at Dominos, and we are kept afloat by the people who don’t coupon and pay full menu price. You people are the unsung heroes of labor.

Image credits: LoweeLL

#2

the organic industry is a f*****g scam.

there are levels to this s**t, and yes, you can purchase food that is grown and/or sourced more ethically than other options, but don’t kid yourself. it was most likely still grown on a factory farm, and chemicals were used, etc. etc. just different chemicals.

and a lot of it comes from china. no s**t.

Image credits: cubs_070816

#3

King crab and Maine lobster prices that restaurants pay are cheaper than they have been since even before the pandemic, yet we still charge more than ever before

Image credits: dserf420

#4

Many of the cooks making your food are high and/or drunk.

Image credits: Dont_ban_me_bro_108

#5

Buffalo wings are not made of buffalo, they’re made of chicken.

Buffalo don’t even have wings.

Image credits: AutisticPenguin2

#6

The meatballs at IKEA are made of children who haven’t been picked up by their parents in the play area.

Image credits: blabla123455789

#7

Chef here. It’s salt and fat. If you have a question about anything it’s salt and fat.

Image credits: LongRest

#8

The “natural flavors” are just big jugs of glycerin with hyper concentrated flavoring in it. Banana flavoring is fairly flammable.

Source: Worked in food manufacturing

Image credits: irony_in_the_UK

#9

Beekeeper checking in – there is no such thing as organic honey. I do not treat my bees with chemicals, but I have no idea where they get their nectar. A bee can fly up to three miles from a hive to get nectar. It is virtually impossible to guarantee they have not gotten nectar from a chemically treated source.

Image credits: toad__warrior

#10

I’m a trucker who hauls mostly refrigerated freight. I pick up at a lot of slaughterhouses. You really, really don’t want to know what those places are like; let alone the conditions at feedlots or CAFOs.

Image credits: TruckerBiscuit

#11

When I worked at a mass production bakery the chocolate for the chocolate covered doughnuts came in giant frozen blocks of 4×4 peices and contained no actual chocolate what so over. When unfrozen it was like some sort of nasty smelling paraffin wax that I would break up with a hammer and place into a melter that would then pour over the doughnuts.

Image credits: gil_beard

#12

They’re making BANK windfall record profits right now under the guise of “inflation” and “supply issues”. 

Image credits: lancert

#13

Unless it’s a health conscious food joint you’re eating at, the food we serve is designed for maximum taste. It’s either dense with fat and sugar, or fat and salt . E.g. Those mashed potatoes you like? Made with cream, butter, and salt. The quiche? made on cream, not milk. Etc, etc.

Image credits: petuniasweetpea

#14

German chocolate cake isn’t from Germany.

Image credits: mst3k_42

#15

The trick to good fried rice is old rice. It has to dry out for a bit in the fridge.

Image credits: TwoFingersWhiskey

#16

A lot of the processed cheese and cream cheese is all the same recipe we just switch the labels and packaging for the different brands we run. Source: I work in a cheese factory in a company that services 75% of America’s domestic market

Image credits: anon5678903276

#17

Pringles (and baked Lays/similar) are made of rehydrated and compressed rejected/excess parts of potatoes that go into regular chips. I learned that from my dietician at work and thought that was odd. I still like them over regular chips.

Image credits: bluesasaurusrex

#18

You technically can’t get addicted to sugar, but sugar dependence is very real and can give you similar withdrawal symptoms to caffiene withdrawal. Your brain gets dopamine when you eat sugar, which means that most companies put as much sugar in their products as they can get away with so you feel good by eating them.

Image credits: Tingcat

#19

Ooh I got one. Lots of manufacturing places nowadays are trying to push for “less than daily” sanitation. You heard that right. They want to use these machines all day long, not clean them overnight, and start up like normal the next day.

Currently working in a place that just started this practice. USDA is on board with it, they only care that the product tests well for culture counts before it’s shipped off.

So when you have stuff in your fridge and it seems to expire faster than it used to it’s probably because you got some 2 day old room temperature product mixed in with the fresh stuff.

#20

The reason orange juice tastes consistently the same year round, even though it’s a crop harvested once a year, is because citrus oils and citrus flavor are added back to different batches and blended all together. Similar to how whiskey is blended from multiple barrels to make it consistent.

The difference is that even though extra stuff is added back into the OJ, it doesn’t need to be labeled because the flavors contain all ingredients from oranges (FTNF-from the named fruit) so the FDA doesn’t mandate labeling additional ingredients.

#21

Subway- if it’s 12 inches or 11 inches, you’re getting the same amount of bread. Sometimes we’re just too lazy to stretch the bread

#22

The reason restaurant food tastes better than what you make at home is probably because it was drowned in butter or oil.

Also MSG is in nearly everything. Totally safe and delicious. And it definitely isn’t what is giving you a migraine. The fact you ate 4000 calories and 3 times your daily salt intake is probably what gave you the headache.

Image credits: Greylings

#23

It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s not common knowledge either.

Except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of the product’s safety and are not required by Federal law. Phrases like “Best by [ date ]” or “Sell by” or “Use by” aren’t regulated or required, and they are not (outside of baby formula) a statement of safety.

Manufacturers would rather have you throw out product, wasting it, and buying more, than stockpiling. So they put “best by” or “use by” dates even on non-perishible items like *salt*.

#24

The American FDA takes food additive safety claims from corporations at face value. If a corporation has done internal testing and says it’s safe the FDA approves it. In the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc if a corporation wants to get an additive approved, the governments have their own food labs. They will take your testing procedures/results and then do their own testing to see if they think your additives are safe, and then approve or deny accordingly. Same goes for medicines in farm animals. Canada won’t allow BGH (bovine growth hormone) as it shows up in the milk. America gets angry because they can’t sell dairy to Canada and the EU but we have rules banning widespread use of Antibiotics and hormones in farm animals. If you are ever travelling outside of America, pick up some food products off the shelf that look like the American brands and read the ingredients list. It’s probably half as long. I’ll let you work out that obesity epidemic cause for yourselves.

#25

I was a young lad working at Church’s Fried Chicken during the summer, many years ago. The owner refused to throw out chicken that had already gone bad; to the point where you’d gag if you smell them. Apparently if you batter them bad boys up and deep fry them, the rancid smell goes away. His customers never knew they were eating spoiled chicken.

#26

Do you live in the rural US? Congrats! 90% of the menu at every restaurant in your city is provided in various forms of premade from US Foods. This is especially true for your small/local/family business restaurants.

Edit: adding Sysco, Sygma, McLane, PFG, Labatt, MBM, and Affiliated Foods so that people stop filling my inbox.

The point I was trying to make is that the “authentic” food is often factory made. That 10% number I provided is wiggle room for menu specialties. But for desert and appetizers, don’t have high expectations.

I work at a hospital. People joke about hospital cafeteria food. Then they turn around and buy the same item (both provided by one of the companies above) that they scoffed at from a local restaurant for 3-4 times the price.

#27

Dragon fruit isn’t an exotic Asian fruit. It’s a cactus fruit, and as such are native to the Americas and can even be grown in the US.

Image credits: ferretmonkey

#28

At least up until the pandemic hit, there is a 100% chance that you’ve eaten at a restaurant where 1 or 2 of the people directly handling your food were legitimately sick enough that they should have stayed home, but they had to come in to work anyway because they couldn’t get their shift covered and they can’t get a doctor’s note without insurance or the money for a copay.

#29

That fancy dessert you bought at an expensive sitdown place was purchased frozen, warmed up, and sprinkled with chocolate to make it look like they made it themselves.

#30

Most large chain restaurants have a roach problem. I’ve been in the business for over 15 years. Of course, it’s kept to a minimum, but they’re always present.

#31

The amount of sugar that goes into costco bakery products is absurd, especially the apple pie. That being said; Costco does not f**k around when it comes to food safety. Every area that is responsible for producing food is most likely cleaner than a white room for producing computer parts. There are virtually zero roaches, we found one in the bakery once and shut it down until the exterminator did his thing that very night. Someone returned a package of dinner rolls because their child had bit into one and a sharp piece of metal was in it, within less than 2 minutes every manager in the building was doing an investigation that led all the way up to the regional manager and his boss for several hours and determined that it had come off of a piece of machinery before it reached our location. We throw away rotisserie chickens if they have left (even for a few minutes) the shelf and someone tries to put it back.

#32

I’ve worked in a few pizza places and they all made their sauce in a trash can. It was never used for trash but it still was a trash can…

#33

the inside of ice machines are covered in mold unless cleaned regularly. in the many different restaurants I worked in, exactly 1 cleaned the inside of their ice machine on a regular basis.

#34

I used to work in a sliced bread factory. The amount of bread that gets thrown in the trash for being just a little overcooked after a mechanical failure is astonishing. I always thought they should give it to homeless shelters something like that

#35

Had a lady tell me that she doesn’t eat ketchup. When I asked her why she said that she was once the safety manager at a Heinz factory. Her job was to test for contamination of the batches. She said an alarm would go off when the levels got too high, and she would have to go and test the batch with a test strip. She said that no matter what the strip showed she would turn off the alarm and tell them to continue. She said she watched all kinds of s**t go in the batch. Spiders, bugs, etc.

#36

I never order scrambled eggs anymore from breakfast places. Almost all the time scrambled eggs come from a huge bucket full of pre whipped “eggs”. You can’t get an over hard or sunny side with bucket eggs.

#37

Everything on the Mexican menu uses the same ingredients. Just built it different and give it a different name

Tortillas
Cheese
Salsa
Beans
Rice
Meat

Tacos, burrito, chilaquiles, tostada, chimichanga

It’s all the same thing!

* written by a Mexican cook

#38

Many meats are ‘constructed’ by using an enzyme transaminadase that links muscle proteins together – its used to make chicken nuggets and many chicken patties – but it’s also used to make beef ‘steaks’ for even the best restaurants – they are ‘gluing’ bits together

#39

Cows make milk not because they are cows but because they are mothers

#40

Organic means nothing. Same with all natural. They are marketing terms.

#41

Alot of cooking is just the reheating of prep and Chef Mike (the microwave) gets used alot more than you think.

#42

Olive Garden makes all their necessary pastas for the whole day from 8-10am every morning. Partially cooked. So when an order comes through, they grab a serving of the needed pasta style and flash cook them in hot water. Also, it’s just the brand, Barilla.

#43

Castorium is from a beaver’s b******e, and it is used to make artificial raspberry flavor. (ETA) It can also used for strawberry and vanilla

#44

When you order “Shrimp fried rice” there isn’t actually a shrimp frying the rice.

#45

The secret is that they can tell us all their secrets and we still eat it because we are lazy, short-term-thinking f***s.

#46

Fancy restaurants’ regular food tastes so good because it’s DROWNED in butter and MSG. I dishwashed at a fancy seafood/steakhouse on the water and an average serving of asparagus had about a quarter stick of butter in it. People always asked what their “trick” with the asparagus was.

#47

most meat you buy in stores is packed with water and additives that add taste so you won’t notice that it’s all water. most meat shrinks when you fry it, the more shrinkage the more water was in the product in the beginning.

#48

Five Guys- not really a secret but everything was fresh as could be, we did not have a freezer at all only the fridge. Every morning the burgers were rolled into balls and weighed to make sure all were the same. Bread made fresh from local factories. Potatoes straight from Idaho or Washington. Freshly cut and washed 3 times to remove the starch before being cooked. All veggies were labled by date for freshness. Honestly probably one of the cleanest places ive worked at.

Also at the register every single person would ask why it was so expensive but proceeded to buy it anyway. As if I could change the price for them.

#49

That all vodka is nothing more than pure grain alcohol cut to proof with water. Source: was lab tech in an alcohol plant. We made everything from Walgreens vodka to Smirnoff vodka. The only difference was the bottle and label.

#50

Every packaged and processed item you purchase is actively being worked on to be made cheaper, less nutritious or less flavorful. It’s the curse of “continuous improvement”. All it’s doing is making what once was a decent quality food item way worse for you and more expensive.

#51

The apples you are buying from the produce department are anywhere from 9-14 months old.

#52

When you give back a pack of ketchup to the restaurant because you didn’t use it, they thank you and smile and then they throw it out because you’re probably a weirdo who injected bleach into the ketchup pack.

#53

Daily Specials are just the food that’s about to go bad

#54

Farm animals lead absolutely terrible lives.

#55

Shrimps is bugs.

#56

A lot of fast food places’ medium size is the same as their large size

#57

Wendy’s reheats their chilli from the previous day.My coworker told me,it was his first job.

#58

Diet, not exercise, is the main factor in determining weight gain/loss

#59

Your local health dept is probably overworked and understaffed. You should take an active role in evaluating if the restaurant is up to your standards.

#60

If you don’t see a kitchen, those pastries at the café are frozen in the back. Made fresh, sure, but frozen once they arrive and thaw in the cold case/fridge every night.

That said, most people can’t tell the difference once it’s heated up.

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