WASHINGTON – Some of our favorite foods might not actually be what the label says, USA Today reports.

Fake food has become big news of late, especially in foreign countries like China, which had food companies adding melamine to baby, dairy and pet foods.

While U.S.-produced foods with dangerous additives are rare, some producers have been caught practicing “economic adulteration” — padding, thinning or substituting something less expensive for its more costly counterpart.

What foods are most likely to experience “economic adulteration”? Here are the top contenders.

Seafood is the food most often faked. For instance, in 2005-06, Consumer Reports found that of the 23 tested examples of salmon fillets labeled wild-caught, only 10 were the real deal; the rest were farmed. The University of North Carolina discovered in 2004 that 77 percent of fish sold as red snapper was another fish entirely, mostly tilapia.

Olive oil has become a must-have for gourmet cooks, with Americans consuming approximately 575 million pounds of it in 2008, according to the North American Olive Oil Association. Of that number, 63 percent was the higher-grade extra virgin olive oil — which is one of the most frequently faked food products, according to Martin Stutsman, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s consumer safety officer for edible oils.

While there are no national numbers on the prevalence of fake olive oil, Connecticut started testing the stuff in 2007. “We were coming across a lot of products labeled as extra-virgin olive oil that contained up to 90 percent soybean oil,” said Jerry Farrell Jr., Connecticut’s commissioner of consumer protection.

Honey can be easily counterfeited. “If you can substitute a less expensive source of sugar for the expensive one, you can save some money and gain market share,” said Stutsman.

Maple syrup also can be adulterated. Counterfeiters dilute the sap, boiled-down from sugar maple trees, with sugar or water to try “to get more bang for the buck,” said Kristin Haas, food-safety director in Vermont’s Agency for Agriculture, Food and Markets.