- [Narrator] In recent years,
China has impressed the world with its rapid technological advancements with strides in quantum computing and successfully growing plants on the dark side of the moon, but there's another side
to Chinese ingenuity, that you might not have heard of. Over the last decade, reports of counterfeit
food have been soaring, that's right, criminals
are making a killing, sometimes literally by selling cheap and dangerous
imitations of everyday foods. Since the Chinese economy opened up to the global market in 1978, their government has struggled
to enforce safety regulations on all these new private enterprises. The really scary thing,
it could happen here too. Coming up are 10 Chinese
foods that might kill you and how to spot them. (electronic video game music) - Amazing! - [Narrator] Number 10, concrete walnuts. First a fake food that's
easy to spot, walnuts! Picture it, you're walking
through a Chinese farmers' market and spot a stall selling fresh
walnuts still in the shell. You take your purchase home,
where you crack open the shells and find rocks, that's right, it's not unusual for
unscrupulous street vendors to maximize their profits
by opening the shells, removing the edible walnut kernels and replacing them with concrete pebbles, they then glue the shell back together and sell the fake nuts to
unsuspecting customers. Not only would the
concrete break your teeth, if you ate one by mistake, but there's no telling what
else might be in there. This trick doubles vendors' profits, they sell both the nut and the worthless, cement-filled shells and since the walnuts are sold by weight, the heavy, concrete-filled
shells quickly add up. So if you're in China and
feel like buying some walnuts, the fake variety can usually be spotted by a subtle line of glue
on the shell's exterior and maybe crack open a few
to try, before you buy, no honest vendor would mind. Number nine, industrial salt. Not even the seasonings are safe. Market traders in China have been caught trying to pass off flour
and ground-up, dried mud as black and white pepper, but at least that won't kill you. The fake salt in China can hurt more than just
your blood pressure, that's because restaurants
and counterfeiters alike have been known to use industrial salt as a cheaper alternative to table salt. Although they look similar, the two are by no means interchangeable, industrial salt is typically
used for cleaning machinery or for manufacturing products
like paper, bleach and tires, unlike normal table salt, the industrial variety causes cancer and damages the liver and
kidneys, when consumed by humans. If the salt you're
eating tastes suspicious, it's probably worth raising a complaint, but because government
regulations are looser in China, counterfeiters and opportunists can get away with tricking customers into eating these often dangerous fakes. Number eight, rotten rice noodles. It's lunchtime, you're
starving and you can't wait to dig into a big plate of rotten food? Well, that's what you might get if you go to the wrong
restaurant on holiday in China. When most people find rotting food, their first instinct is to dump it out, but some enterprising Chinese
factories have found a way to profit from their rotten grain by using it to make rice noodles. Regular rice noodles are made
from a simple combination of ground rice flour and water, but the fake variety
requires a bit of processing to disguise the rotting smell and imitate the color of fresh noodles. They take spoiled rice and other grains, often the stuff earmarked for animal feed, bleach it and mix it in sulfur dioxide and other chemical additives. Those are going to need a lot of MSG to make that taste good. Number seven, fake peas. Next up is the seemingly
innocent green pea. In 2010 in the Central
Chinese city of Changsha, local officials became suspicious
of some of the vegetables being sold at a local farmers' market, members of the public had reported that even after boiling
them for 20 minutes, the peas were still rock hard, even worse, the water had
turned a bright shade of green. It turns out these green imposters were actually old, dried
snow peas and soy beans, that had been soaked in
a toxic blend of food dye and sodium metabisulfite,
a bleach-like preservative to make them appear plump and fresh. The green colorant that
blends off the fake peas is illegal for use with food,
because it can cause cancer, not that that stopped these criminals. Hey, at least now you have a good excuse not to eat your vegetables. Number six, bogus beef. You might have tried some of
those tofu beef alternatives, that your vegan friend swears
tastes just like real meat, well, the Chinese version
is a little bit different. On more than one occasion, Chinese police have caught criminal rings passing off unadulterated pork as beef, pound for pound beef is
more expensive than pork, so they're able to turn a quick profit. In one instance in the
Northern province of Shanxi, authorities confiscated
20,000 kilograms of pork, which had been soaked in paraffin wax, industrial salts and
other deadly chemicals, so the meat would look like beef. Not only is the meat dangerous to consume, but there are also religious and ethical implications to consider, 20 million Muslims live in China and their Islamic faith prohibits
them from consuming pork, so if any of them unwittingly
ate the fake beef, they've violated their religious
rules against their will. Those vegan hotdogs don't sound
so bad after all, do they? Number five, phony honey. Honey is chock full of vitamins,
enzymes and antioxidants, it's full of energy and can
give your immune system a boost, well, real honey does anyway. The adulterated version is cut
with sugar water, corn syrup and often contains unauthorized pesticides that should never go anywhere
near a bowl of porridge. Shockingly in some instances, this fake honey has made its
way onto American shelves, because it was imported
from China with fake labels. In a dramatic case of honey-laundering, two American firms, Honey
Solutions and Groeb Farms were caught deliberately
importing $2 million worth of mislabeled honey into the USA. To try and avoid detection, the suspicious Chinese-made
honey was routed through Vietnam to try to disguise its origins, but the counterfeit honey traffickers found themselves in a sticky situation, when the FDA caught them red-handed, now that's what I call a sting operation. Because both versions are so sweet, it can be difficult for regular consumers to tell the real deal from the fake stuff, the best way to make
sure you're not paying for glorified sugar water,
instead of natural honey? Buy raw, local honey, so you
can trace where it came from and avoid buying the stuff in bulk off unknown Amazon or Ebay sellers. Number four, duck blood. Now you might wonder
why anyone would bother to counterfeit something as
unappetizing as duck blood, well, this is China, remember. In Jiangsu province on
the Eastern seaboard, duck blood soup is a sought after delicacy prized for its delicious
taste and silken texture. To make the soup, duck blood is heated, until it congeals into a
consistency similar to tofu. As unappetizing as real duck blood sounds to most American and European palates, it's definitely preferable
to the counterfeit version one enterprising criminal cooked up, he bought vats of cheap
cow and sheep blood from a local slaughterhouse and boiled it in his
home, until it congealed. While that in itself is
dishonest and illegal, the worst was the formaldehyde
added to preserve the blood, a dangerous chemical that can easily kill, if consumed in high enough doses. When the police raided his house, they found him surrounded by animal parts hunched over a boiling pan in a room officials described as
overflowing with blood, wow! Number three, fake rice. This is another bizarre
attempt to produce something that's already cheap
even cheaper, fake rice. If you're lucky, the
fake rice you've bought is made from lots of tiny
pieces of rolled up paper, unappetizing? Yes. Lacking any kind of nutrition? Yes. Toxic? Well, no, I guess not. But if you're unlucky in
China and other Asian nations, you might end up buying the stuff that's made from synthetic resin shaped into individual rice grains. Synthetic resin is just plastic and can be produced incredible cheaply during the recycling process. The Korea Times reported
that eating three bowls of this fake plastic rice is the equivalent of eating
an entire grocery bag. The smart criminals mix in
real rice grains with fake ones to make it much harder for
you to notice something is off and there have been reports of fake rice being exported to countries
as far away as Nigeria. One easy way to tell the difference is to fry the uncooked rice and
if it goes brown, it's real, but if it melts and smells
like, ugh, burning plastic, get rid of it immediately. Number two, rat kebab. Street food is always a bit risky, no matter what country you're in and we've all heard stories of people ordering the wrong thing
from a fast food truck and spending the next
six hours on the toilet. In China, you have another
thing to worry about, the very real possibility
that the delicious looking piece of barbecue meat you've
ordered is actually rat. Street food markets
are a big deal in China and no evening out on the town is complete without a fistful of spicy,
barbecued lamb on a stick. Worryingly there have
been multiple reports of Chinese street vendors
and occasionally restaurants trying to pass off rat meat
to unsuspecting consumers as pork, chicken or lamb. Rat meat is cheaper, but
it could also be filled with disease, salmonella
and the Plague for instance, yes, that Plague and because surprise health
department inspections aren't quite as common in China, it can be hard for officials
to crack down on criminals, in one instance, as many as 63 people were implicated in the rat meat scandal, they use gelatin, pigments and nitrates to make rat, fox and mink
meat to resemble lamb. Similar examples of food
fraud include one instance in Shanxi province in February 2003, when one vendor was caught selling lamb so heavily laced with pesticides,
that it killed someone. Compared to that, rat meat
doesn't sound too bad. Now before we get back to number one, let's take a moment to check out a couple of honorable mentions. At the end of your meal,
you'll need something to wash down all that rat
meat and plastic rice, right? Well, there are plenty
of fake beverages too, counterfeiters in China have
passed off regular tap water as mineral water by just
sticking on fake labels. If you're lucky, the water
won't have microscopic bacteria or parasites hiding inside and if you ever order a
glass of wine in China, be doubly sure you get what you pay for, criminals have been
known to create fake wine by combining expired fruit
juice and raw alcohol to try and mimic the
taste of a vintage red. If you're not a wine connoisseur, you might not even be able
to tell the difference, until you get sick that is. So maybe take a moment to reconsider, before you splurge on
that $200 bottle of vino. So with our thirst satisfied,
it's time to reveal the most shocking Chinese fake foodstuff, number one, toxic wax eggs. Yep, you heard me right, unless you see the chicken
lay them with your own eyes, you could be purchasing
deadly imitation eggs. Reports state the fake variety is made from using
gelatine and food coloring along with other harmful chemicals you definitely should not be eating. A mold of paraffin wax
and calcium carbonate is used to form the eggshell, which is then filled with fake egg whites concocted out of resin, starch, algae extracts and coagulants. The yolk is made from a rubbery resin mixed with pigments and alum, a gelatinous and toxic compound, if you crack one open, it'll look pretty similar
to a hard boiled egg, but with a weird jelly texture and something distinctly strange about it. Eating these chemicals has been found to cause dementia and other health issues, so these eggs are a real concern. But I've got to hand it to the criminals, they're definitely creative. So how do you tell a
real egg from a fake one? Real eggs have a slight smell and normal imperfections
and freckles on the shells, fake eggs are unnaturally
smooth and even shaped and they're also missing
the thick membrane lining you'll find just under the shell. These criminals will do
anything to make a quick buck and they don't care if they
harm people along the way. Are you worried about fake food becoming a problem in your home country? What do you think should be done to stop this from happening? Let me know in the
comment section down below and thanks for watching. (light melodic music)
