Your Latest WTF Answered: How Soy Sauce is Made from Human Hair

[jmowreader]

Jeeze, talk about there really being Soylent Green...

In recent days, we've learned that adulteration of animal feed with melamine is a common Chinese practice because melamine assays as protein on standard laboratory tests--the "amine" suffix on this shit isn't there by accident.

We also learned that some Chinese "food" product manufacturers make soy sauce from human hair. What the hell?

Turns out...

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2004/11/20041117p2g00m0dm999000c.html

that this is actually a very old process--it originated in World War II. The flavor of soy sauce comes from the amino acids found in soybeans, and the same amino acids are in human hair.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/hair_made_soy_sauce_an_update/

Now this shit gets disgusting. Take a dose of antiemetic and read on...

Some outfit in China's Hubei Province was producing an amino acid powder using "the latest technologies in bioengineering." Turns out that the "latest technologies in bioengineering" involved buying human hair from barbershops and hospitals (complete with medical waste) and mixing it with powerful, carcinogenic chemicals to extract the proteins from it. They then sold it to soy sauce makers who added industrial sodium hydroxide for flavor, industrial hydrochloric acid to neutralize the industrial lye, and various spices to neutralize the taste of the industrial chemicals, then selling it as "Hongshuai Soy Sauce," which due to its low price and good flavor became popular in foodservice operations.

Oh yeah: the amino acid powder is rich in l-cysteine, a protein that improves the texture of baked goods, so bakers were buying it too.

You'll enjoy this too: the press members investigating the human-hair soy sauce asked the technicians who made it if they bought it themselves. None of the people who made this would eat it.

And yes, the Chinese government has banned this product's manufacture.

You ever get the feeling that Smokey Yunick is the patron saint of the Chinese food industry? "Well, nobody said I couldn't put industrial waste in food."

[Demeter]

1. Thanks for the Excellent Research

I love this site and (most of) the people on it!

[GeorgeGist]

2. Soy sauce might be ...

a great hair conditioner.

[KittyWampus]

3. Is this somewhat related to the concept of feeding dead cow scraps to cows?

you know, the process that lead to Mad Cow Disease?

[Jcrowley]

4. K&R

[blueworld]

5. Ah...First world vs. Third world

I thought all humans struggled to improve their circumstances; health, nutrition, education, security - Maslow's pyramid, remember?

So US society, after achieving most of these goals, with the help of governmental infrastructure & safety laws & inspections & stuff...

outsources half of our jobs & apparently half our food supply to countries that haven't achieved the "common welfare" yet that we have!

God Bless Free-market capitalism without an equal playing field! Profit rules!

Imagine what those Chinese workers get to eat? :patriot:

[hunter]

6. Smokey Yunick, for the non Popular Science / NASCAR crowd...

As with most successful racers, Yunick was a master of the gray area straddling the rules. Perhaps his most famous exploit was his #13 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle, driven by Curtis Turner. The car was so much faster than the competition during testing that they were certain that cheating was involved; some sort of aerodynamic enhancement was strongly suspected, but the car's profile seemed to be entirely stock, as the rules required. It was eventually discovered that what Yunick had built was an exact 7/8 scale replica of the production car. Since then, NASCAR has required each race car's roof, hood, and trunk to fit templates representing the production car's exact profile.

Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot coils of 2-inch diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons<1> to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten",<2> and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.

Yunick also used such innovations as offset chassis, raised floors, roof spoilers, nitrous oxide injection, and other modifications often within the letter of the rule-book, if not the spirit. "All those other guys were cheatin' 10 times worse than us," Yunick wrote in his autobiography, "so it was just self-defense." Yunick's success was also due to his expertise in the aerodynamics of racing cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

[bleedingheart]

7. you realize that a lot of maple syrup is made from wood pulp?

I knew a biochemist who told me that unless the syrup on the bottle specifically states it is Maple Syrup...it may very well have been "cooked" using enzymes and wood pulp...

[Cameron27]

13. NO!

Not maple syrup:cry:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Vanilla extract is made from sawdust.

Here's another disturbing thought. Do you know where vegetables come from? Nope. Not the grocery store. They come out of the ground. That's right, out of dirt. And do you know what they put on the dirt? Poop. That's right, vegetables are made out of poop.

Eww.

[MLFerrell]

9. More reason to stick to Kikkoman...

My local Asian grocery is about to lose a large portion of my patronage!

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Yeah, but maybe that's the problem- it's really KikkoMAN.

Reminds me of that twilight zone about "To Serve Man"...

[Karenina]

10. This stuff is the tip of the iceberg.

Mass poisonings are a regular occurence in China...

[loudsue]

14. That's true, Karenina, and I'm wondering why congress isn't doing something.

The dog & cat food poisoning, turns out to be human food poisoning, too, now we've got soy sauce poisoning. Earlier today I read about Wal-Fart recalling chinese cat fish....poison, again.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!! RIGHT NOW!! And you're not hearing this HUGE outcry from our congresscritters!???

The repervliCONS have fucking RUINED our country. And now the Chinese are poisoning us in masses! And they're trying to keep us all worried about Al Qaida?

For all those fucking freeptards out there, who are so busy calling Dems "communists"...you'd think for a minute they'd stop to consider that the Chinese they keep supporting by buying at Wal-Mart ARE communists, and we're sending ALL our money and businesses over to China so they can frikkin' poison us and our four-legged friends!

:wtf: What in the hell????

:kick::kick::kick:

[Karenina]

15. Congress will do NOTHING until they hear

SIRENS AND KLAXONS and SEE The People outside with torches and pitchforks...

[loudsue]

18. Hmmm....

torches & pitchforks? I'm packed & ready!!

:kick::kick::kick:

[KamaAina]

11. Watch out for cheap imitations made from rugs.

:P

[shanti]

12. wait, it gets better!

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/27/soy_sauce_made_from_.html

Tracy says: "This article is about cheap soya sauce that is being manufactured in the East as an alternative to the original. The 'secret ingrediant' is amino acid syryp, a concoction consisting of 'human hair ... gathered from salon, barbershop and hospitals around the country' which is then filtered to remove unhygenic matarials such as '... condom, used hospital cottons, used menstrual cycle pad, used syringe ...' The Chinese government has banned the production of this kind of soy sauce, although not the production of amino acid syryp." Link


:puke:

[Dragonbreathp9d]

16. I actually find that kind of interesting

[Enraged_Ape]

17. Well, there really is nothing left to say except...

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[LiberalEsto]

19. Chicken feathers used for animal feed

I wrote an article about this a few years ago for Gas Technology magazine.*Winter 2002 issue)

Here's an excerpt:

"Specialized flash-drying processes using cleanburning
natural gas are starting to catch on
among a number of industries as a way to reduce
waste streams and create marketable products
from materials that would otherwise be hauled, at
huge costs, to landfills.
An Australian company, AKT, is seeking to enter
the American waste-reprocessing market with its
flash-drying system.
“Natural gas is the fuel of choice (for flash drying)
because it is readily available and you don’t
need to have on-site storage for it,” says Lyle
Olson, senior engineer at Roseville, MN-based
Sebesta Blomberg & Associates, Inc. The engineering
consulting firm recently was selected by
AKT International Pty. Ltd., an Australian manufacturer
of flash-drying systems, as its engineering
company of record to install their AKT-KIX dryers
in the United States. AKT has more than 200 flashdryer
installations worldwide.
In addition, two U.S. manufacturers of flashdrying
equipment—International Technology
Systems, Inc. (ITS) and Scott Equipment,
Inc.—report successful installations both here and
abroad at firms that reprocess waste materials
such as poultry feathers and soybean sludge into
profitable products that improve their bottom lines.
“We’re creating more and more waste stream (in
the world),” says Bill Luker, director of research for
ITS in Houlton, WI, which manufactures the Agitated
Air Dryer (AgA). “Companies have got to
find some way of getting rid of the waste. By processing
it into a usable product, they don’t have
to pay the costs of disposal, and they don’t harm
the environment.”
Poultry feathers, which are almost 100% protein
but can’t be digested by animals, were once
hauled to landfills at great expense to chicken
processors, Luker says. Now they can be
hydrolyzed (cooked under steam) and dried to
make a useful additive for animal feed.
“They (chicken processors) get a good feed additive
worth quite a bit of money,” Luker reports.
Central Byproducts, a Minnesota firm, reduced
its energy costs after switching from a rotary drum
dryer to an AgA flashdryer for feather reprocessing.
In addition, the shorter drying time resulted in
less degradation of the material, Luker adds."



Yummy.:puke:

[Honeycombe8]

20. Oh...my....God. That's disgusting. I'll never consume Soy Sauce again.

Can't we eat ANYTHING with secure knowledge that it's made safely and not in some disgusting or unsafe way?

[Karenina]

21. Not unless you grow it or know who did.

And THAT'S a FACT.

[1620rock]

22. Well, hair is pure protein, God only knows whats in hot dogs.

[Lisa]

23. there are organic varieties made here in North America ... I'll be getting those

Personally, the more I find out about food safety in China, the more concerned I am about importing food from there. It sounds like how things used to be like in Europe and North America during the Victorian era -- people putting chalk dust, or worse, in milk to make it look whiter and conceal the rancid taste. Back before we had food safety laws, health inspections, and consumer safety advocates. (The same things that corporations are trying to circumvent today, saying they are "big government" and "hysterical" ....)

[Warren DeMontague]

25. "Soy Sauce"

Now it's a sentence in Spanish, too.

[nam78_two]

26. ...

I just had vegetarian sushi for dinner :puke:...
I know it isn't the same brand etc. but have a visceral reaction...

[Hekate]

27. Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle" in 1906, which nauseated people into new food safety laws

The deregulation-mad Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration have set food safety back at least a full century.

Hekate