Counterfeit eggs in China

If you have read the Straits Times a few days ago, you would have seen a report on how some people in China are using chemicals to make counterfeit eggs. These fake eggs look exactly like the real ones and the total cost of making each of them is only one-tenth the price of a real egg. These are the steps to make a fake egg:

information from http://www.weirdasianews.com/2007/05/04/chinas-10-steps-to-make-a-fake-egg/

And a video to show the actual process:

The process used to create the spherical yolk and egg white is actually a technique commonly used in molecular gastronomy to make little spheres which are liquid in the centre, and have a thin jelly layer outside.  I have tried this item of molecular gastronomy, and saw the chefs making the spheres with mango juice. What the chefs do is to dissolve some sodium alginate (or what is known as sodium alga acid in the flowchart given above) in fruit juice, then drip drops of the mixture into a solution of calcium ions. The calcium ions will react with the alginate to form a thin membrane, enveloping the fruit juice in it and forming a small ball. This is the exact reaction the counterfeiter in the video carried out when he was swirling the orange sphere around in the colourless liquid in the mould. While chemicals such as sodium alginate and calcium chloride are not harmful to the human body, I can't say the same about some of the rest of the chemicals the counterfeiters use to make the eggs.