FALSE: This video does not show a fake, man-made egg

A video circulating on Instagram features voices of a man and a woman talking in Cantonese over footage of two hands cracking open an egg. The voices describe the egg’s various parts and claim it is fake and man-made.

Tags on the post as well as users’ comments imply the “fake egg” was made in mainland China. The claim is false because the components the people in the video say are evidence of a “fake egg” are actually natural constituents of an egg.

The video seems to have been posted on Facebook originally but was removed. It was then reposted on Instagram where there have been more than 36,000 views and some users are posting anti-China comments.

In the video, the male voice asserts that the presence of some twisted membrane and a small disc-like “unknown substance” attached to the yolk proves that the egg is fake. He also argues that the white membrane sticking to the shell is actually paper.

Such claims are not grounded in scientific reality.

In the anatomy of a normal chicken egg, the coiled membrane is called chalaza, which serves to keep the yolk centered in the egg. As for the disc-like “unknown substance,” that is also a normal part of the egg called the germinal disk or blastoderm, where the sperm would fertilize the egg nucleus and the embryo would develop.

As for the white membrane attached to the inner shell, it is composed of the outer and inner membrane. Made partially of keratin, the membranes are strong and serve to protect the egg from bacterial infection.

These “fake egg” scares are not new. Different versions have been circulating for years on the internet even in mainland China.

For example, CCTV conducted an investigation on a video appearing to depict factory workers molding artificial eggs. They concluded that the factory in the video manufactured toy eggs instead of edible artificial eggs.