White clay advertised as food additive

A white clay typically used as a raw material to make pottery in China is being advertised online as "edible earth".

A shop owner on Taobao, one of China's most popular e-commerce sites, recommends mixing 20 grams of kaolin powder with 50 gm of melted chocolate and freezing it for a few minutes to make a desert. Another recipe suggests covering cooked potatoes with a mixture of kaolin and water and baking them until the clay layer dries.

The Taobao shop sells the imported earth at 297.50 yuan ($46) for a 750-gm bag.