Faked Eggs

In China they even make fake eggs and sell them to people to eat, according to a report in the Internet Journal of Toxicology

HT

[Jay Tea]

Your link looks to be out HP

[mags]

Wow, that seems like a lot of trouble to go through to reproduce something a chicken makes without much more than a little feed.

Only in a country where labor costs are next to nothing could manufacturing eggs by hand be cheaper than keeping chickens.

[Eddylizard]

The chickens fed on coloured feed sounds plausible.

The completely artificial eggs just sound like too much work. Given the number of ingredients and the effort involved would it actually work out cheaper to knock up a batch of these things than to keep chickens?

Originally Posted by Jay Tea

Your link looks to be out HP

All fixed now, Cheers.

Here's another link with the production process

HT

[Richard W]

Suddenly I'm going to be scared to eat anything when I go to China...! Mind you, I pretty much was anyway...

[Gibbie]

Ok wait, is this being reported anywhere mainstream? The only google hits I'm getting on it are blogs. And that article no longer appears on the website that previously hosted it. The author is part of "Queers Network Research." I'm calling shenanigans.

I've found other articles from the same author including "Vegetable-borne poisoning", "Hair soy sauce: a revolting alternative to the conventional" and "Deadly cooking oil." Nothing at all on "Queers Network Research." The domain leads to an ad page.

It simply doesn't make sense to create chemical based eggs. It's easier to keep a chicken than to go through all that hassle.

Gibbie

Suppose one went through the trouble of making a "fake egg" using the recipe in the OP, and decided to eat it. What would it taste like, and would one really get sick off it?

- Pseudo_Croat

[pinqy]

The link with the production process says that the whole thing might be a hoax.

pinqy

[Joostik]

Originally Posted by Gibbie

And that article no longer appears on the website that previously hosted it.

If it actually hosted it previously. If you compare their current index with the version hosted on Archive.org, you'll see all three articles (another one about soy-sauce made from human hair has also been discussed on the old board) by Alexander Tse-Yan Lee are missing.

Either they were removed by the journal after finding out they were duped or they were put in the Web.archive version as a joke.

The articles are definitely more sensationalistic than anything else found there. It's difficult to imagine any serious journal would accept them, so how reliable is Archive.org?

[James G]

Originally Posted by Joostik

The articles are definitely more sensationalistic than anything else found there. It's difficult to imagine any serious journal would accept them, so how reliable is Archive.org?

Well I don't think the wayback machine doctors its archives if thats what you are suggesting.

[Joostik]

Apart from a Weight-Loss Diary Mr. Lee seems to have written more articles on food and public health in China, such as Substandard milk powder and "big headed" babies and From inter-governmental conflicts to administrative and political incompetence: a summary report of the streptococcus suis outbreak in Sichuan, People Republic of China

As far as the sources are concerned, this report relies on newspapers, news bulletins and periodicals in both Chinese and English languages, collected between the period of July 25 (when the Chinese officials first notified the media) and August 10 (until times when no more new case was reported). Because the Chinese government has not released all the reports about the Streptococcus suis outbreak in Sichuan, these news materials give us valuable information about the scale, patterns and impacts of the crisis as well as the responses of the Chinese national and provincial authorities and of the Hong Kong. All these details are unavailable in any other sources, and it is these issues that throw light on the successes and failures of the public health surveillance in China and Hong Kong.

In other words: no original research, just newspaper clippings. If Mr. Lee exists and is not a student prank, then he is a journalist and not a scientist.

Um..why would you even go through the trouble of that? Kind of sick, if you ask me.