Faked foods: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

CEBU, Philippines - Today is Lesson 101 about fake, imitation, substitute or man-made foods.

The Good

Top on my list is man-made beef. For us to enjoy a burger or steak, we have to sacrifice cattle for food. Now this may no longer be necessary. Science has made it possible to remove stem cells from an anesthetized animal and grow these muscles in a laboratory, and from one single muscle, about nine tons of meat can be theoretically produced.

Dr. Mark Post said that the burger patty took two months to grow in the lab and cost about $330,000. Expensive, yes, but once mass produced prices will drop drastically and make everyone happy, including all animal rights activists. The same lab can be used to make man-made shark fins, which means no more sharks will have to be killed and tourists in Malapascua, Daanbantayan can enjoy viewing all the thresher sharks. 

Meanwhile, substitutes are available, like artificial shark fins made from mung bean starch, gelatin and other chemicals which give the shark fins its characteristic mucilaginous appearance. Anyway, "40 percent of all shark fins eaten in China are actually faked."

One of the imitation food products that have been widely patronized is imitation crab meat. Also called crab sticks or "surimi," it is made from white fish flesh (Alaska Pollock) and assembled to look like the meat of the leg of the Japanese spider crab. People know it is not real crab meat but eat it anyway

The Bad

It looks like an egg, it feels like an egg and it can even taste like an egg. Be prepared for the onslaught of the fake or imitation chicken eggs (http://eagad.com/chinas-top-fake-foods/)! Made from chemicals like alginic acid, calcium chloride, potassium alum, gelatin and others, an imitation egg is coated with false eggshell made with calcium carbonate. It is said that the cooked fake egg yolk will bounce like a bouncing check and "long-term consumption of man-made eggs can lead to memory loss and dementia." That's definitely bad! Visit this website and you will learn a lot more.

There are also fake or imitation beef prime cuts made from cheap meat trimmings to which meat glue (transglutaminase or TG) is applied and the mixture is molded into a more expensive prime cut. The bad thing about this is the misleading of consumers to pay top dollar for glued bits of trash meat. Bacterial contamination of "meat glued steak is hundreds of times higher than a solid piece of steak." Potentially, food poisoning can result because the side of the meat with the bacteria is now inside - and your steak is cooked medium rare!

The Ugly

Some caution regarding fake food is necessary because some of the items can really be very ugly, and you have been given sufficient warning to continue, excuse me, to read this article with caution and all photos were sourced from the Internet.

In the 70s, there was a pork scare in Metro Manila because the owner of a piggery in Marikina was also the owner of a nearby funeral home. For two weeks, no pork could get sold until the stories died down. Six months ago, there were reports of siopao sold in Metro Manila filled with cardboard mash (soaked in caustic soda to soften it) with pork flavorings and pork fat. I really do not know which is worst - the fake lamb meat or fake chicken made from rats (www.thecontroversialfiles.net/2013/05/chinas-top-9-fake-foods.html)?

It can really be ugly when people die because what they ate or drunk killed them. Faked liquor has killed 170 people in India in 2011, because someone forgot his Chemistry that in distillation, the toxic alcohol (methanol) boils earlier at

64.6 °C compared to regular alcohol (ethanol at 80°C). Experienced bootleg producers throw away the first two or three bottles of alcohol.

By the way, have you seen the movie "Soylent Green"? (FREEMAN)