The secret to knowing the fake Swallow Birds Nest

Bird's nest or Salanganes'Nest is a kind of food, pharmaceutical extremely valuable with many different effects on human health, so the demand for oats on the market today. , combined with high economic value, the nest has been faked a lot, sold everywhere. This article, I will tell you way to identify the most simple and accurate artificial nest you can apply when buying oats to avoid buying counterfeit goods.

1. Adding salt, sugar or other agents to increase weight

Through our survey, we found that the majority of Swallow Birds Nest available for sale are glazed with either salt, sugar or other additives to increase weight, often up to 40%. Imagine you pay $100 for 100g of nests but in reality you only get 60% of real nest while the remaining 40% is sugar. That means you pay $40 for 40g sugar!!! Just when you thought you got a good deal, you are actually paying more for the same amount of authentic Swallow Birds Nest. Not only that, the unknown additives used in the making of fake Swallow Birds Nest could be carcinogens. Moreover, these unknown mixture of Swallow Birds Nest are highly susceptible to pathogenic bacteria and molds that could seriously damage your health.

*** How to tell:

+ Pure authentic Swallow Birds Nest: if you were to lick it, it would be tasteless, similar to licking a rice noddle. When you pick it up, it is light, brittle, and inflexible (even when exposed to air for a long time). It is prone to fracture even to light touches.

+ Swallow Birds Nest glazed with salt, sugar or other additives:

– Break off a small piece and chew it, you will find it sweet (or salty). Sometime you can even taste the sweetness or saltiness by just licking the Swallow Birds Nest, especially when large amount s of additives were used. Another way to detect fake Swallow Birds Nest is to taste the water that was used to soak the Swallow Birds Nest in. If the water become sweet or salty then the Swallow Birds Nest were tampered with.

– The glazed Swallow Birds Nest are usually more flexible because the additives make the strands soft and bendy. These fake nests are highly susceptible to pathogenic bacteria and molds. They will often darken with prolonged exposure to air. This change in color is indicative of the Swallow Birds Nest was glazed with some type of sweetener. In addition, the fake nests become iridescent under shining lights.

The secret to knowing the fake Swallow Birds Nest

2. Red Nests

There are usually 3 categories of fake red Swallow Birds Nest:

– Normal food coloring -> easily detectable upon soaking in water as the dye will leak out of the Swallow Birds Nest

– Industrial dyes -> hard to detect as the dyes won’t leak when soaked in water

– Chemical reactions turning Swallow Birds Nest from white to red. This is when Swallow Birds Nests are put in the manure/compost pit, which contains NH3. Under the proper conditions, a chemical reaction will occur changing the Swallow Birds Nest from white to red.

When done properly (UNCOMMON), even though the Swallow Birds Nest changed from red to white, the quality remains unchanged meaning these red nests have no additional nutritional values unlike the authentic red Swallow Birds Nest made naturally by the swiftlets in sea caves. However, the price difference is significant. Authentic red Swallow Birds Nest are priced 5-10x more than the white couterparts. Moreover, when incubated in the manure or compost pit, Swallow Birds Nest can become contaminated with nitrite, which increases the risk of cancer upon prolonged consumption.

Nowadays, the market is flooded with these fake red Swallow Birds Nest, often very cheap to attract uninformed customers. We found that some stores even give 20g free samples of red Swallow Birds Nest with purchase of 100g white ones. How is that possible when red Swallow Birds Nest worth 10x the price of the white ones? Be a smart consumer! Think twice before spending your hard-earned money buying toxins that could be detrimental to your health.

*** How to tell:

Authentic red Swallow Birds Nest carries the essence of the sea. Any one who has ever been to the ocean knows that the ocean air smells different. It has that distinct smell of the water, salt, sun and sand. Authentic red Swallow Birds Nest has that same smell because it was exposed to the same elements. It has to be soak for a long time (2-3 hours) to become soft and the recommended cooking time is 2-3 hours compared to 30-45 minutes for the house Swallow Birds Nest.

3. Fresh Swallow Birds Nest

Fresh Swallow Birds Nest are ones that have been soaked in water to clean out the debris but have NOT been through the drying stages. Hence, fresh Swallow Birds Nest contain a large amount of water, ie weight of Swallow Birds Nest and plus weight of water. It’s impossible to assess whether you get a good deal as it’s very difficult to know how much water fresh Swallow Birds Nest contains.

There are rumors that fresh Swallow Birds Nest is better than dried ones. That is NOT true. When it comes to nutritional value, fresh and dried Swallow Birds Nest are the same. Smaller produces do not have adequate equipment for drying Swallow Birds Nest so they spread such rumors for their benefits. And as we mentioned earlier, the customer usually lose when buying fresh Swallow Birds Nest as it is nearly impossible to determine the amount of water inside. One way to check is to dry fresh Swallow Birds Nest with fans then you can determine how much you actually pay for Swallow Birds Nest vs water. Be an informed consumer and don’t pay for water!