With all the variety of goods and discounts, we try to buy what we need, whether it be food, cosmetics, or household appliances, as profitably as possible for ourselves. And we feel happy when we manage to save at the same time. But if you knew how the things you use are made, would you just as passionately want to own them?

Unsightly facts, after which we took a fresh look at everyday products and things

The main thing is that it looks attractive and the price suits it. Meanwhile, sometimes it is worth at least a little idea of what happens to the product before it is on the counter.

As it turns out, everything is not as rosy as it seems when you see a product beautifully packaged or served on the table. Because its origin is sometimes very unattractive, which, of course, the consumer can learn about. But we at Bemorepanda, thanks to Reddit users, found out something and are now sharing it with you. And then you decide for yourself what to do with this knowledge. And finally, you will find a bonus of ingredients in favor of orite products that can both surprise and scare you.

1. About garlic. “It reminds me of a documentary series that my father used to watch. The garlic industry is a hell of a lot darker than most people might think. I don't remember everything, but apparently, many Chinese companies that sell garlic to restaurants overseas use prison labor.

These prisoners must peel the garlic entirely by hand, without any tools. Several prisoners were missing nails. If I remember correctly, one man said he had a friend who had to resort to dental help because he had no pins left.

They work unimaginably grueling shifts, during which they must meet their daily quota or face the consequences. They are paid very little if anything at all. They all seemed so unhappy. The show is Rotten, and you can find it on Netflix." — foxglove37 / Reddit.

2. Salted cucumbers. I'm a forklift mechanic, and one of our customers is Mrs. Klein's Pickles. They use concrete outdoor vats for marinating, with no coating on top.

One day, when I was in service, I decided to go up to a small platform where workers stirred the mixture.

When I looked into the first vat, I saw a dead cat, some dead rats, and more bugs than I could count. I almost threw up right there. So far, I have not eaten a single pickled cucumber and will never eat Mrs. Klein's products again." — sober gophers / Reddit

3. “Vodka. Most types of vodka of different price segments are made from the same raw material. I work at an industrial distillery where we produce millions of gallons of high-purity ethanol from corn. We have clients in the beverage industry who dilute our product to 80% or so, pass it through a filter and bottle it for sale. These firms sell their products at prices ranging from $8 to $50 per liter. And do you know what the main difference is? The more expensive a bottle of vodka, the more “beautiful” it is. — AndJuan247 / Reddit

4. “Fruit juices. Freshly squeezed juices don't seem to be all that fresh. A friend whose family owns a mango orchard told me that almost all juice producers buy old fruit leftovers from warehouses, which are then processed into a smooth mass. Further. — Curious_pari / Reddit

5. “Grain. My job is to fumigate the grains with the colorless, poisonous gas phosphine. Wheat, barley, and oats are susceptible to infection by the red flour beetle and weevil.

We are talking about kilograms of insects in a 600-ton bunker. I treat the grain with a particular gas so that the insects die. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove dead pests from the grain, so they end up in the mill, and then they go to bake our bread.” — jtown82 / Reddit.

6. “Coffee and cockroaches are connected…” – demonardvark / Reddit

“For those who don’t know, this happens to coffee because large piles of coffee beans in warehouses and sheds are infested with cockroaches. According to entomologist Douglas Emlen, it’s impossible to remove them completely. So they are ground together with the coffee beans.” — reddit.com

7. “Liquid hand soap. That's ¼ soap and ¾ water. The production uses a special pump and mixer to turn the mixture into a soapy solution. Plus, thoughtful packaging visually increases the volume of goods. You end up paying the same amount as you would for a whole bar of soap, but you are only buying a quarter of it.” — Crapulousmumblecrust / Reddit

8. “Food from the grocery store. Even “fresh” products can end up stale on the shelves. I worked as an assembler in a grocery warehouse that serves seven states.

Everything in our warehouse was unsterile and dirty. But the floor was littered with rotting fallen lettuce leaves, which turned into a stinking slurry. The bed was concrete smeared with jacking oil, tire debris, and other dirt.

The worst thing is that. Many employees lifted these products and put them in boxes. The salary of employees in the picking warehouses depends on the number of packed containers.

Do you want to ask if someone cleans the floor in the warehouses? Wash, but very rarely. So always wash vegetables and fruits, even if the seller says they are washed and organic. — Muninwing / Reddit

9. “Fast food milkshakes. I used to work at a fast food place, and they used to put a mixture in the milkshake that had already curdled and sometimes had mold in it.” — Suyefuji / Reddit

10. Toilet water. Many perfumes are made from the musk glands of animals (musk deer, muskrat, musky duck). They are killed to get them, and it is unpleasant. In addition, some vanilla flavors use a liquid that is released from the base of the beaver's tail." — DudeGuyVR / Reddit

"These products are costly, and both castoreum (a specific odorous secret produced by beavers) and ambergris are used in high-end perfumes." — Waystone / Reddit.

11. Viscose. Clothing made from viscose (an artificial fiber obtained by processing natural cellulose) could be more environmentally friendly. It turned out that the production of viscose creates tons of waste, which is very, very harmful to the environment.” — greetindsfromsaturn / Reddit

12. “Fruit smoothies. People think they're getting their daily dose of fruit, but it's mostly ice, yogurt and high-sugar juice, and just a few pieces of hard fruit." — throwaway36295224 / Reddit

13. "Jelly is a meat product masquerading as dessert."

This applies to anything containing gelatin (gummy bears, etc.) - knockoutroundtwo / Reddit.

14. Phones. People will still buy phones, but the world urgently needs modern gadgets made from materials that do not harm anyone. Why? And so that enslaved children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not involved in hard work for cobalt extraction.

Miners can be as young as four years old, paid as little as ten cents an hour (US equivalent), and work 12-hour days, all to extract cobalt (60% of the world's reserves), which is needed to make batteries." — WapperDude/Reddit.

15. “Tropical fruits! After Spain ceded control of its territories in South America, the US invaded several districts in South America to secure access to the Panama Canal and farmland suitable for confiscation and sale to fruit companies. People were killed, dictators were supported, railroads were built, and mangoes were exported.

These banana wars were some of the most egregious acts of US imperialism since Manifest Destiny ("Manifest Destiny" is the term used to describe the widespread belief in the mid-19th century that the United States had a special mission to expand westward). Many of these countries have not yet recovered economically.” — reddit.com

16. “Turkey bacon. It's marketed as a healthier alternative to bacon, but it's a terrible extruded meat product. It's a greasy and unhealthy breakfast food that's worse than a hot dog." —down blanket/Reddit

17. “Fish sauce. The basis for many Thai dishes. The fish is fermented for six months with salt until it becomes a thick slurry. It is then filtered and then stored in containers for years.” — f0nluva / Reddit

18. “About sausage. Anyone who loves sausage should not know how it is made. Otherwise, you won't be able to eat it anymore." — deuxclydion/Reddit

19. “Mica products. I watched a documentary about mica mines in areas where there is usually child labor, and the interviewer asked one girl about her work. She told me how her sister died in the mine and that she works underground daily. Mica is found in almost all cosmetics. — hi_im_a_coffeeholic / Reddit

20. “Batteries for electric vehicles. , and cobalt is a vital component in electric vehicle batteries. However, companies like Tesla are trying to find a way to produce cobalt-free batteries, but no solution has yet been found.” – KingDexter34 / Reddit

21. “Food in a restaurant. As a former waiter, I can say that most people would be shocked at the way their food is prepared and the lack of quality/effort that goes into it. I'm not talking about fine, expensive cuisine because I have never worked in these establishments. I mean inexpensive mass restaurants and cafes. Usually, in such places, cheap low, quality food is used. Watch the movie "Big Grub" in an ordinary, inexpensive chain restaurant. There's a lot of truth in it." — bcjc78 / Reddit

22. “Silk. The extraction of raw silk begins with the cultivation of silkworms on mulberry leaves. As soon as the worms begin to pupate in their cocoons, they are dissolved in boiling water…” — dreadedxalchemy / Reddit

23. “Fake art paintings. Some copyrighted (signed) works of art are fake. I used to work in an art printing house, where we made copies of images by some famous artists.

We were forced to learn all the artists' signatures, and we signed the paintings by hand. We even had special printers that could imitate signatures (by the way, to comply with the law, we also put a warning in small print on the paintings that these were not authentic autographs).

But customers only saw this text after buying. I am sure that most buyers would never have bought the engravings if they knew their signatures were not original. – Dr_Edge_ATX / Reddit

24. “Meat in stores. I worked in 2 different meat departments in 2 grocery stores. is about to go bad. This marinade hides how bad the meat looks and beats off the smell. — Mroder1 / Reddit

"Color of meat. The characteristic bright red color of the meat is the result of treatment with carbon monoxides and food colorings such as Red No. 40 and lycopene extract. ANY red meat is a SCAM." — reddit.com

25. “Inexpensive motorhomes. They are not very high quality and modern. Everything is securely fixed. All supposedly "trendy and new" electronics are outdated and inefficient. Manufacturers use the cheapest materials, and all motorhomes are built in 8 hours. House for rest and travel on wheels. For 8 hours?! Are you seriously?!" — Leftydude777 / Reddit

“When you get into a relatively new and relatively expensive van and touch something, it all feels pretty damn cheap. How do you like the furniture? Cheap chipboard with plastic cladding. The sofa cushions seem stuffed with 20-year-old soft toys. The bathroom door seems to be about to break if you touch it. The list goes on and on. I don’t understand how everything can be so expensive and at the same time seem so cheap.” — sharp/Reddit

26. “Parmesan cheese. An essential ingredient in its production is abomasum (part of the stomach of a young calf, lamb, or kid, in which the enzyme renin is produced). — MasterMirror92 / Reddit

"There's a 'ParmesanGate' video online about the fake parmesan market - it turns out only cows in Italy have the right bacteria, which then gets into their milk, which is used to make real parmesan cheese." — reddit.com

27. "Gelatin." — fundyfisher/Reddit

“Imagine a giant vat filled with thousands of pigskins (or cattle skins) being boiled. The protein is separated from the skin, cleaned, and deodorized. It turns out gelatin. The rest is thrown away. By the way, all this is cooked with bones and tendons. Including sometimes fish is added to the vat. ” — fundyfisher/Reddit

28. “Energy drinks. I worked in a bottling plant. Beverage tanks are never properly cleaned until a build-up affects the taste. Although cleaning the tank is not necessary. The fact is that energy drinks are so acidic and chemical that bacteria and mold do not form in drinks.” — 1skepticalguy/Reddit

29. “Crab chips. First, boil the crabs. This creates a lot of foam on top of the boiling water. It is separated, pressed into shavings, and dried. This is what chips are made from. After I found out about this, I stopped eating them.” — bulwix/Reddit

30. “Wine. . But not only grapes get into the mixer, but also branches, leaves, insects and even mice, etc.” — control / Reddit

31. “Syrup for cocktails. Boil equal parts sugar and water. Let cool. The syrup is ready. — literally step back / Reddit

32. “Citric acid. Most citric acid is produced from fungi of the genus Penicillium. Now I don’t want to eat all the products where there is this acid. ” — LilaInTheMaya / Reddit

33. “Palm oil. After I learned the history of palm plantations to produce palm oil, I made it my mission to cut it out of my life completely.” Junduk / Reddit

“Palm oil is the leading cause of massive deforestation around the world. The most significant production volume falls in South America and Southeast Asia (Indonesia). There are moratoriums on new palm oil plantations, but companies get around this issue by paying criminals to set forest fires so that companies can buy land where the forest used to be for a penny.

Deforestation destroys the habitat of animals such as orangutans and tigers. And all the fires in the forest are also the burning of peat. Peat is, in fact, forest debris, which contains a vast amount of CO2. By burning it, we quickly release all this CO2 into the atmosphere.

Worst of all, the plantations are only good for one or two cycles, then the land is essentially abandoned, and new plantations are created. I believe palm oil production is the most significant environmental disaster in history.” - delayed registration / Reddit.

The victory of the former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in the presidential elections in Ukraine came as a surprise to many. At the same time, there were serious prerequisites for this.

When Zelensky appeared, many had the hope that he would become exactly the new word in politics. Allegedly, this is the blank slate from which you can start a new policy. Moreover, many watched the series `Servant of the People '' and saw in Zelensky’s character the image of an ideal president.

Many believed that Zelensky, who was not politically sophisticated, would not repeat the mistakes of his predecessors. Plus, voting for Zelensky in the second round was a protest. It was a verdict on Petro Poroshenko and his era. Zelensky was such an anti-Poroshenko. In general, there were many explanations.

You can read below more interesting facts.

1. As a child, he lived for 4 years in the city of Erdenet in Mongolia, where his mother worked as an engineer, and his father, a scientist, participated in the construction of a mining and processing plant. 

2. Zelensky's father, Alexander Semenovich, is a Doctor of Technical Sciences, since 1995 the head of the Department of Informatics and Information Technology of the Krivoy Rog Institute of Economics.

3. At the age of 16, Vladimir won a grant for free education in Israel, but did not go abroad because his father was against it. Zelensky received his higher education at the Faculty of Law of a branch of the Kiev National Economic University named after Hetman. He did not work in his specialty. 

4. He received his first widespread fame in the Club of the Cheerful and Resourceful (KVN) as a member of the student team. 

5. In 1997, Zelensky created the 95th Quarter team (named after one of the districts of Krivoy Rog). Zelensky was the captain and the author of most of the numbers.

6. In 1998-2003, the 95th Quarter team regularly performed in the Higher League of KVN and constantly toured in Russia and the CIS countries. After a conflict with the leadership of the Club in 2003, Zelensky and the team left KVN. 

7. For the first time the TV show "Evening Quarter" appeared in 2005 on the Ukrainian TV channel "Inter". During 2010-2012, Zelensky twice, intermittently, served as the general producer of Inter. 

8. He left his post, referring to the creative plans of Kvartal 95. To date, Vladimir Zelensky has starred, or was both an actor and producer, in more than 10 full-length feature films.

In 2017, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine registered the Servant of the People party, which a year later nominated Volodymyr Zelensky as a presidential candidate. 

9. The name of the party repeats the name of the film in which the actor played the main role - the president of the country.

10. Previously, Zelensky had not played roles in Ukrainian. In 2017, in an interview, he said that he began to study the Ukrainian language with a tutor.

11. In 2016, during a festival in Jurmala (Latvia), in one of the performances of the Kvartal 95 band, Zelensky called Ukraine a “beggar”, as well as an “actress of a German film for adults”, who is “ready to accept any amount (credits - KR) with any sides." 

12. This caused outrage, and subsequently the showman explained in his post on Facebook that he meant power, and not the country as a whole. 

13. In January 2018, another scandal unfolded around the Kvartal 95 studio, during which the actors were accused of homophobia. 

14. This happened because of one of the humorous numbers in their New Year's concert, where sexual minorities were ridiculed. The number was shown in the New Year's edition of "Evening Quarter", aired on the Ukrainian TV channel "1 + 1" on December 31, 2017. 

15. Subsequently, the studio withdrew the video of the joke from public access and publicly apologized to representatives of sexual minorities for this joke, noting that the authors "did not intend to offend anyone."

16. On New Year's Eve from December 31, 2018 to January 1, 2019, instead of the traditional greeting of the President of Ukraine, Zelensky's greeting was first heard on the 1 + 1 TV channel, in which he announced his candidacy for the presidential election. 

17. Petro Poroshenko's greeting was broadcast already in the first minutes of January 1, 2019 after Zelensky's speech. Subsequently, Zelensky himself suggested that his statement of intent to run for president was shown instead of the traditional New Year's speech by the President of Ukraine due to a "technical error." However, later "1 + 1", responding to a request from Radio Liberty, reported that there were no technical errors on New Year's Eve.

18. Vladimir Zelensky was born in Krivoy Rog in a Jewish family. His father Alexander Zelensky is a doctor of technical sciences, since 1995 he has been the head of the Department of Informatics and Information Technologies of the Kryvyi Rih Economic Institute. Mother - Rimma Vladimirovna Zelenskaya - engineer.

19. In the senior year of the school, Vladimir won a grant for free education in Israel, but did not go abroad because his father was against it. Zelensky received his higher education at the Faculty of Law of a branch of the Kiev National Economic University named after Hetman. He did not work in his specialty.

20. In his student years, Zelensky became very interested in KVN, where he received his first popularity. In 1997, Zelensky created the 95th Quarter team (named after one of the districts of Krivoy Rog). Zelensky was the captain and the author of most of the numbers.

21. For the next five years, KVN became the main thing in Zelensky's life, he took part in the Major League games and actively toured the CIS. However, in 2003, after a scandal with the leadership of KVN, the Zelensky team stopped working with them.

22. In 2005, the author's program of Zelensky and his colleagues from Kvartal 95, Evening Quarter, appeared on the screens of Ukrainian television.

23. Also, Zelensky's production center begins to shoot films, where the comedian himself is actively filming. To date, Vladimir Zelensky has starred, or was both an actor and producer, in more than 10 full-length feature films.

24. In 2015, the series Servant of the People was released, in which Zelensky played the main role of the history teacher Vasily Goloborodok, who became the president of Ukraine. In 2017, Zelensky registered the political party of the same name with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.

25. On New Year's Eve 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky announces that he will run for President of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on everyone to join in compiling his election program. “We will write my program together with you. We will write together with the people, the whole country, then we will find ways to solve all problems, and then we will bring them to life,” Zelensky promised in his video message.

26. On March 31, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky won the most votes in the first round of the presidential election - 30.24%, getting into the second round together with the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko.

27. On April 21, 2019, in the second round of the presidential election, Vladimir Zelensky gained almost three times more votes than Petro Poroshenko.

28. Vladimir Zelensky is married and has two children: daughter Alexandra and son Kirill. His wife Olena Zelenskaya, the first lady of Ukraine, is active in public activities and popularizes Ukraine abroad. In Ukraine, she began to change the diet in school canteens. Zelenskaya also actively uses Ukrainian fashion as a way of cultural diplomacy.

29. Despite the growth of 166 centimeters, in his school years he was engaged in Greco-Roman wrestling and weightlifting and even earned the first category in the barbell.

30. He received a law degree at the Krivoy Rog Economic Institute, but did not work in his specialty, as he became interested in the stage early.

31. Vladimir Zelensky met his wife Elena at school. They started dating in high school, and legalized relations after 7 years.

32. At the turn of the nineties and zero, the Zelensky Kvartal-95 team actively participated in KVN. In 2003, Alexander Maslyakov invited Vladimir to stay in Moscow as the editor of KVN, but on the condition that he would leave his comrades for this. Then the future president of Ukraine decided to return to his homeland.

33. Kvartal-95 became more successful than Comedy Club

34. At the end of 2003, the Ukrainian channel 1 + 1 offered the 95th quarter to give concerts around the country with the brightest numbers of the team, and since 2005, the satirical show Evening Quarter started on the Inter channel, authored by Zelensky. It became so successful that it overtook Russian KVN and Comedy Club in terms of popularity among Ukrainian viewers.

35. The show with the participation of Zelensky overtook the President's New Year's address in ratings

36. By the time of participation in the show "Dancing with the Stars", Zelensky's rating in his homeland was simply going through the roof. The TV show gathered a record number of viewers at the screens - 87.57 percent of the total TV audience, and the final gala concert surpassed even the president's New Year's address in ratings.

37. In the series and feature film Servant of the People, Zelensky played a teacher who nominates himself for election and becomes the president of Ukraine. It should be noted that the lawyers of Kvartal-95 registered the political party Servant of the People back in 2017, Sputnik news agency reports.

38. Vladimir Zelensky is sometimes very distracted, often forgets where certain things are, and is constantly looking for them, his wife Elena Zelenskaya said in an interview with the Apostrophe portal.

39. “He does not know where everything is, he is constantly looking for everything. Previously, he didn’t have the keys to the apartment at all, and only last year we gave them to him ... Now he is looking for these keys every day, ”Zelenskaya admitted.

40. She also noted Volodymyr Zelensky's honesty, purposefulness, and decency. She does not imagine that a husband could offend a woman or yell at a child.

41. Ukrainian TV presenter Valery Zhidkov claims that Zelensky once helped save the life of his mother-in-law, who was refused hospitalization by an ambulance.

“He immediately connected, started calling someone, and finally got through to the person who eventually helped us,” says Zhidkov.

41. Zelensky supported Euromaidan and spoke to its participants. In the war in Donbass, he supported the actions of the Ukrainian army, donated one million hryvnias (about 2.41 million rubles) for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In his speeches, Kvartal-95 began to ridicule Russian politicians and residents of Russia, the DPR and the LPR.

42. At the same time, Zelensky began to have difficulties in Russia. The show “Evening Quarter” was canceled on Russian television, and in February 2015, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, at the request of the deputy of the Moscow municipal district of Yakimanka Dmitry Zakharov, began checking information about funding by Zelensky, as well as other Ukrainian cultural figures of the Ukrainian security forces.

43. At the same time, Zelensky opposed the ban on Russian cultural figures from entering Ukraine and sharply criticized the initiative of the SBU to ban the TV series “Matchmakers” (produced by “Kvartal-95”) on the territory of Ukraine.

44. At the end of 2018, he launched a flash mob in which he reacted to the actions of the MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Oleg Barn. The latter obscenely sent a journalist in response to a question about button-pressing in the Verkhovna Rada. Zelensky "from representatives" of the media also sent a deputy.

45. In an interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon, the showman said that he had no business in Russia, and he stopped all business contacts with the Russian Federation in 2014. But already in mid-January 2019, journalists from the Scheme program of Radio Liberty found Zelensky’s film business in Russia.

46. Zelensky has two children.

47. He received a legal education at the Krivoy Rog Economic Institute of the Kiev National Economic University. Never worked in his specialty.

48. In 2006, Zelensky won the Ukrainian TV project Dancing with the Stars. In 2011, he became the co-host of Philip Kirkorov in the Russian version of the show "X-Factor" - "Factor A". In 2013, he hosted the musical show “I Want V VIA Gru”.

49. As a child, he had a rather low voice, because of which the boy was very worried, but at some point he realized that this feature was his trump card.

50. Zelensky's height is 166 centimeters. He was engaged in weightlifting, earned the first category in the barbell, but then he quit: he was afraid that he would not grow up.