After reading this guide, you will always be buying only 100% pure bird’s nest.

Here are the 7 most reliable method to tell if you have purchased a genuine or fake bird’s nest.

1. Transparency

A  real bird nest looks semi transparent while a fake bird nest will not be transparent at all, some may even appear to have a reflective surface from the chemicals applied onto it.

2. Fragility

Real bird nest are very fragile and breaks into small specks or dust-sized pieces if dropped. A fake bird nest will break into large chunks. 

3. Shape and Appearance

Real bird’s nest have no distinctive shape, occasionally you may also be able to spot small feathers stuck within the fibres. Whereas for fake bird’s best, it has a bumpy surface and look identically uniform  and sometimes with slight smell of medication.

4. Absorbitivty

It is a common practise to soak bird’s nest for a couple of hours before cooking it. The real bird’s nest will bloat to about twice its original size while a fake bird nest will show no significant growth in size. There may even be foreign particle appearing after soaking a fake bird nest. 

5. Coloring

After soaking the bird’s nest, a genuine bird nest will have its water clear throughout the soaking process while the fake bird nest will shown signs of decoloring into the water due to artificial coloring.

6. Foams

Place the bird nest in a bowl of water and stir it, real bird’s nest will cause foam to appear on the surface of the water while the water remains clear throughout. A fake bird’s nest will not show any foam on the water surface, the water will instead become murky and clouded. 

7. Structural Observation Under Microscope
Use a microscope if you have one to see the patterns of the bird nest’s fibre. A pure bird nest will look unevenly structured while a fake bird nest will look coarsely distributed and transparent (neater fibres).