What's inside Ikea's "wood" ?

Recently one of my neighbours asked me if I could cut down some wood for her as she wanted to install some shelves in an alcove in her living room so they needed to be a specific size. 
The wood that she gave me to cut was from Ikea from a range of theirs called Linnmon which is designed to be used as a desk or table.  It's incredible cheap to buy - each of these shelves costs just £10 and for aother £10 you can get 4x legs at £2.50 each to make a table.
I think a lot of people expect, and by the way this is also what my neighbour expected, that this is a solid piece of material, but this is very light weight and I have a feeling I know what's inside, but I thought I'd film this so that you guys can find out what's inside with me.
First I need to remove the shrink wrap.  And then I can use my tablesaw to make the cuts.
So here's what's inside, 120mm of chipboard on each of the short lengths of the shelf.  This gives the piece it's rigidity and also provides something reasonably solid to screw the legs in to.
The top and bottom of the shelf is hardboard - the top has a white plastic laminated to the chipboard and the bottom is just hardboard.
And then in the middle of the shelf, it's kind of 90% air and 10% cardboard.
So this wasn't a huge surprise to me, but it might be to some of you watching.
Here's my opinion on the materials used here.  For a lot of people, this will be absolutely fine. Even the inner cardboard core with the hardboard on each side is actually pretty strong - it's strong enough to take my weight if I was to stand on it, but I'm not going to do that because these shelves belong to my neightbour, but the cardboard grid on the inside actually provides quite a bit of strength - if you think of it as if it's a bed of nails - you wouldn't want to lay down on one nail, or 2 or 3, because that's going to be pretty painful.  Now you might not want to lay on a bed of nails either - but the reason that the nails would support you rather than piercing your skin is because of the combined support of all of the nails together.  If the centre of the Ikea shelf was just a few pieces of cardboard in a grid, the shelf is going to fail.  Having said that, if you were to clamp a monitor arm to the back of one of these shelves, you're probably going to see some stress marks in the shelf, and over time it might end up giving way to the pressure
What would be more of a concern for me is actually the idea of using legs screwed in to the chipboard.  There are no apron rails or supporting frame tieing the legs together for structural support like you would see on a traditional table.  And chipboard really doesn't hold screws very well anyway, even a fast growing softwood like spruce would have provided a much better fixing to screw in to.  With screw in to chipboard, if you drag this table around a few times those screws are going to work their way loose, and the table is going to end up being junk.  But for £20, most people aren't going to expect a table like the Linnmon to last anyway.
So should we feel angry at Ikea for this?  Ikea are giving consumers what they want - cheap things that aren't designed to last, on a huge scale. And if they weren't doing it, someone else would be.  And many others already are.
Ikea also do what they do in a socially responsible way, they have been named as one of the world's most ethical companies, and they use wood sourced from responsibly managed forests
And there are benefits of using inexpensive, composite materials in furniture.  Cardboard is recycleable, and chipboard is made with up to 70% recycled material, so fewer trees are chopped down.  Chipboard also doesn't expand or contract like solid wood does, so it's more stable and stays flat over time. And it's less expensive than solid wood, so cheaper for the consumer.
We live in a mostly disposable society.  We live in an age when most people no longer take their shoes to have new soles fitted, or be re-heeled - they just buy a new pair and throw the old ones away.
The downside ofcourse is that independent furniture makers and woodworkers find it more and more difficult to price their work while offering the kind of value that modern day consumers expect when buying from companies like Ikea.  For example, if I made a simple coffee table and it took me let's say 15 hours for example, even at minimum wage which in the UK is 7.83 per hour - that's £117, and then there's the cost of materials which could be another lets say £60 on top of that.
And that's without accounting for overheads like the cost of running a workshop, tools, consumables, sales and listing costs, delivery costs, etc. And then the tax man will want his 20% of any profit you make too.  Unfortunately, most people aren't prepared to pay that kind of money for a coffee table when they can pick up a Lack coffee table for £16.  Or even a solid wood table like this one for £80. 
Fortunately, there are still people out there who are prepared to pay for hand made, custom or one of a kind furniture - but finding and reaching those people isn't easy either.