I anticipated a low key evening at the nail salon and was especially eager to paint my nails Red Baroness Shellac for the holidays. A nail tech and I exchanged casual conversation about holiday plans. I asked him about his life in China and his adjustment into the United States. I disclosed my plan to relocate to Suzhou in 2017 with my fiancé. We talked about the culture between men and women, opinions about Americans, if the smog was truly as bad as was reported in the news.

“Too many people and no way to feed them. My family in China live on fake food. You buy an egg, only it isn’t an egg.”

What could he possibly mean by fake eggs?

“It’s like plastic. They put something in the egg and it becomes very dense. But nothing about the egg is natural."

Curious how I would prevent myself from ingesting fake eggs, I further researched it as a paranoid vegetarian. What I found was alarming! Fake eggs are made entirely of chemicals.

A plastered mold shaped like an egg is dipped into a transparent coagulating agent which replicates the egg white. The smaller plastered mold, shaped as the yolk, is dipped into a deeper yellow coagulating agent and combined with the bottom half of the egg shaped mold. The egg (for lack a of a better term) is dipped into the transparent mystery mixture once more to finalize the shape. It must be covered with a wax and plaster mixture to form the white shell exterior.

I observed a Chinese family cracking open a boiled egg and the result is like rubber! The look and feel of the exterior is that of a real egg. The look of the yolk is deceiving, but the touch is artificial and much stickier. Time Magazine and The New York Times have investigated the process further.

Markets under scrutiny allow customers to analyze their eggs under a lamp to prevent the purchase of fake eggs. Under light, an egg should depict its two separate parts, yolk and egg white, with red veins scattered throughout. Chemically produced eggs are one solid, murky color under light. Other types of produce and meat products are found to be chemically engineered using similar plastered molds and scattered throughout the poorest markets in China. To make lettuce, coagulated green plastic is molded and rolled into a cabbage ball. When cut down the middle, the resemblance to cabbage is remarkable.

The authorities cannot stop the production of fake food or intercept the purchase of fake food. The dangerous fake food products in groceries stores will exist as long as poor people in China remain uninformed about it.