The Polygot Vegetarian puts the truffle trade under the microscope:
These days, restaurants and frozen entrees offer dishes like mac-n-cheese that are truffled, that is, made with truffle oil. The LA food critic Jonathan Gold called truffle oil, "the ketchup of the middle class" and a judge on a recent Chopped proposed that it should be incinerated. In 2003, Jeffrey Steingarten wrote a piece for Vogue provocatively titled, "Does truffle oil have anything to do with truffles at all?" … He methodically samples various truffle-derived or -named products. The best he can be say is that some are worse than others. Mostly, truffle oil is vegetable oil with 2,4 dithiapentane (or, if you prefer, bis(methylthio)methane) added. And since natural or naturale is not a controlled designation, saying that does not mean anything about how the oil was made.
Earlier this year, "60 Minutes" did an expose on the black market arising from the high demand.
The Dish 