# More tales of hideous things found in food. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 2, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773 "2006-03-02T16:43:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/21 "2006-03-02T19:41:39Z")
This is not nearly as gross, but still, the woman it happened to was pretty squicked out. She got soup from a local eatery, and the inside lining of the lid was cut from a poster with pen marks on it. ---
**Author:** ![SnakesCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4af34b/32.png) [@SnakesCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakesCatLady)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/22 "2006-03-02T19:49:18Z")
> [@NailBunny](#): > > I’m not sure if this counts, since it was my fault, but it’s just so dang impressive! > > I was drinking a soda and driving along the freeway w/some friends, stopped at a rest area and foolishly left my soda on top of the car. Came out of the restroom, took a big ol’ swig of soda…strange…there seemed to be a large, pokey thing in my mouth. I spit out a **LIVE YELLOW JACKET** onto the pavement, where it stood up, fanned its wings and flew away. > > I don’t know why it didn’t sting me. It was probably as surprised as I was. :eek: I took a drink from a wine cooler I had left sitting down for a few minutes, and felt the little bastards feet on the inside of my lip seconds before he stung me. On the inside of my upper lip. I was swollen all the way to my nose and looked like a duck. ---
**Author:** ![Faruiza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@Faruiza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faruiza)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/23 "2006-03-02T20:25:54Z")
_yurk_ This reminds me of a bar I used to go to in Fullerton when I lived there a few years ago… This place was a dive. With a capital “D” But it was the only place that had karaoke, which was fun, and the drinks were cheap, and the people that owned the place loved my husband and I. They got into the business of making dinners a couple of nights a week, and while it wasn’t a place for the unadventurous to tread, seemed to be doing better business because of it. I never ventured that far, but whatever. The place just wasn’t CLEAN, you know? It was an old dive bar. Some of the corners in the place hadn’t seen a cleaning of any kind since Nixon was president. Anyway, this has nothing to do with food. For some reason, I have a habit of drinking any liquid handed to me with a straw in it through the straw. Even a little cocktail stirring straw, which may be the only thing that saved me. I got my drink, sat down, and proceeded to try and take a sip through the cocktail straw. I got a little liquid, and then the flow stopped. I figured that some ice got stuck to the bottom of the straw, as tends to happen when a drink is fresh…so without looking, I tapped the straw, put it back in the drink and tried to take another sip. Well this time I sucked on that straw hard enough to dislodge some of whatever was blocking it, so I swallowed the liquid I DID get, along with some unidentifiable solid, took the end of the straw out of the drink to investigate, and there, my friends…was ONE HALF of a small cockroach sticking out of the end. It didn’t register at first what I was looking at. Nope. It couldn’t be. I gingerly removed the solid from the end of the straw onto a napkin to further examine just what it was I was dealing with here. And then it happened. You know that feeling of sheer panic when you’ve realized that you’ve passed a point of no return into your emminent demise, and the survival instinct begins to sound a lot in your head like a crowd screaming with only one person in that crowd screaming directly in your ear instructions for prolonging preservation of your temple? Yeah. Alarm bells and piercing whine like the Luftwaffe were on their way in for an attack on Los Angeles. :eek: I climbed over a friend to get out of the booth, ran to the bathroom just in time to contain the personal protien spill (con cucaracha!!) and silence the noise in my head. Good times. ---
**Author:** ![Faruiza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@Faruiza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faruiza)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/24 "2006-03-02T20:28:16Z")
[QUOTE=Faruiza] _yurk_ \ loved my husband and I. [QUOTE] \*my husband and me. :smack: I’m sorry. Let’s chalk that and all the other errors up to the horror of the memory of a half consumed cockroach. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/25 "2006-03-02T20:39:36Z")
This happened a few years ago. I had acquired three or four ears of corn for some summer backyard BBQ action. After grilling them in their natural wrapper, I let them cool for a few minutes. Then I proceeded to the shucking. The first one was fine. But when I took hold of the silky end of the second, and yanked, I was showered with a few dozen crispy mealworm-looking things. They had taken up residence under the tight leaves, munching the kernels, only to find themselves cooked on my grill, until freed by my shucking. They were golden brown; I cannot say whether or not they were delicious. I couldn’t bring myself to continue unwrapping. ---
**Author:** ![Sal\_Ammoniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/26 "2006-03-02T20:46:34Z")
The other year I found a nail (as in “hammer and…”, not as in fingernail) in a slice of bread. As an adulterant, a nail is not as bad as a cockroach. But still, you wonder how it got in there. ---
**Author:** ![HeadNinja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b4bc9f/32.png) [@HeadNinja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeadNinja)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/27 "2006-03-02T21:52:14Z")
My grandmother survived World War II as a farmer in Italy. She had to eat things dogs would throw away. Because of this she has a unique relationship with food. Nothing ever gets thrown away. I spent countless hours of my childhood at her house and gibed had some strange ideas about food. For instance: until I was twelve I always expected potato chips to be soggy and tasting of old sock. The first time I bought my own bag of Lays was a revelation. Crunchy, potatoey goodness. But this story isn’t about potatoes. This is about raisins. I loved raisins. Raisins in chocolate, raisins in peanut butter, or raisins all by their lonesome. It was the perfect snacking food. Was. I was about eight when the incident happened. I was searching through my grandmother’s pantry for some snack. I skipped the hazelnuts, the biscotti, and the chocolate chips because I was on a mission. I wanted raisins. And at the back of grandma’s fifties steel pantry was a box of Sunmaid. The fact that it looked like no other box of Sunmaid I had ever eaten should have been a clue, but I knew nothing of marketing. I grabbed my box of raisins headed for the back yard. I snacked as I went. They were especially juicy. Suspiciously juicy. And then I left my grandma’s night dark house and went into the sun. And I looked at the raisins. And all I saw were wrinkled raisins. I think my sanity held for about 15 seconds. Because it took about that long to realize that the wrinkles moved. Waved actually. Hundreds of tiny black worms were wriggling in the raisins. It was like the sea at night, boiling with eels. I threw the box. I threw up. I didn’t eat raisins for another ten years. Grandma, should you read this, know that I still love you. ---
**Author:** ![Wnabtokio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Wnabtokio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wnabtokio)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/28 "2006-03-02T22:56:46Z")
> [@Amazon Floozy Goddess](#): > > Maybe I should tape the worm to the letter? > > Or better yet: dump all the worm husks into said envelope, so when they open it, worms fly everywhere like organic confetti? Please don’t do that. I know you’re grossed out, but the person opening the envelope is not the person that caused the problem. Trust me, I speak from experience and from being covered in things randomly. But you should totally contact them. That’s just nasty. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/29 "2006-03-02T23:12:17Z")
> [@Amazon Floozy Goddess](#): > > Now my worms don’t seem so bad. Seriously, compared to reading my typos, eating worms is nuthin’. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/30 "2006-03-02T23:57:10Z")
> [@Wnabtokio](#): > > Please don’t do that. Don’t back out now! If it protects your ethics, mark the envelope: “Enclosure: Worms, dead, lots.” You could also address it to the CEO. ---
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/31 "2006-03-03T00:01:59Z")
I once found a hollow irregular pentagon of mold in a container of baked beans. Well, actually it was only after the beans were left in the fridge for six months. ---
**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/32 "2006-03-03T00:26:32Z")
> [@HeadNinja](#): > > I grabbed my box of raisins headed for the back yard. I snacked as I went. They were especially juicy. Suspiciously juicy. > > And then I left my grandma’s night dark house and went into the sun. And I looked at the raisins. And all I saw were wrinkled raisins. I think my sanity held for about 15 seconds. Because it took about that long to realize that the wrinkles moved. Waved actually. Hundreds of tiny black worms were wriggling in the raisins. It was like the sea at night, boiling with eels. I’m told that when I was young, I did not distinguish between the raisins that come from the red box and the raisins that sit on windowsils and doorsills…you know…the ones with legs and wings that bake in the sun… Once I put some popcorn in my air popper and whirled the thing on and wandered away to get the cat (she likes watching the whirring and popping, its interesting _and_ scary). I come back with feline and notice there is no popping. We wait. The cat gets bored and leaves. I notice that it is hot, and whirring…and the chaff blew off, but…wait…the chaff is _moving!_ I am eternally grateful that popcorn with holes eaten into it by little white bugs doesn’t pop. Then there was the summer that little brown ants moved into the pantry…You didn’t eat _anything_ that you didn’t poke, prod, sift, and inspect. ---
**Author:** ![Greywolf73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d9b06d/32.png) [@Greywolf73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greywolf73)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/33 "2006-03-03T00:36:06Z")
> [@Wnabtokio](#): > > Trust me, I speak from experience and from being covered in things randomly. Now that’s a phrase that begs for more details. 😃 I once found a thick, yellowing fingernail in a can of pork n beans. In fact, upon closer inspection it seemed look more like a toenail. I didn’t look at it long enough to determine for sure though. ---
**Author:** ![Greywolf73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d9b06d/32.png) [@Greywolf73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greywolf73)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/34 "2006-03-03T00:38:33Z")
> [@Greywolf73](#): > > In fact, upon closer inspection it seemed look more like a toenail. :smack: It looked _more like_ a toenail. No idea where that “seemed” came from. See? The whole experience scarred me so badly, I’m commiting random grammar errors years later. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/35 "2006-03-03T00:41:56Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Don’t back out now! If it protects your ethics, mark the envelope: > “Enclosure: Worms, dead, lots.” Not food, but I feel moved to share a funny story I am reminded of. My friend had a fly problem in her office. Tons of flies, and repeated calls to maintenance to do something about them yielded nothing. Finally, she collected a bunch of dead flies from the windowsill, stuck them in an envelope, and _mailed it to maintenance in the interoffice mail_. Loved it. ---
**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/36 "2006-03-03T01:14:04Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > Not food, but I feel moved to share a funny story I am reminded of. > > My friend had a fly problem in her office. Tons of flies, and repeated calls to maintenance to do something about them yielded nothing. Finally, she collected a bunch of dead flies from the windowsill, stuck them in an envelope, and _mailed it to maintenance in the interoffice mail_. > > Loved it. Where I used to work, the Terminix guy insisted there was no way we actually had cockroaches. I took to catching 'em, putting 'em in WhirlPak bags, and vacuum sealing 'em for display in the ‘bug book’ where we noted bug sightings. Interesting fact: vacuum sealer set on 6=dead cockroach, vacuum sealer set on 3=cockroach squirming in a very tight place. Helpful tip: place something heavy (like crucible tongs) over the opening so the roach can’t make a run for it when the vacuum starts up. Cruel truth: The office staff doesn’t like it when you ask whether to file your new pet under “c” for cockroach, or “b” for bug. ---
**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/37 "2006-03-03T01:20:50Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > Not food, but I feel moved to share a funny story I am reminded of. > > My friend had a fly problem in her office. Tons of flies, and repeated calls to maintenance to do something about them yielded nothing. Finally, she collected a bunch of dead flies from the windowsill, stuck them in an envelope, and _mailed it to maintenance in the interoffice mail_. > > Loved it. Where I used to work, the Terminix guy insisted there was no way we actually had cockroaches. I took to catching 'em, putting 'em in WhirlPak bags, and vacuum sealing 'em for display in the ‘bug book’ where we noted bug sightings. Interesting fact: vacuum sealer set on 6=dead cockroach, vacuum sealer set on 3=cockroach squirming in a very tight place. Helpful tip: place something heavy (like crucible tongs) over the opening so the roach can’t make a run for it when the vacuum starts up. Cruel truth: The office staff doesn’t like it when you ask whether to file your new pet under “c” for cockroach, or “b” for bug. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/38 "2006-03-03T01:33:30Z")
Where I used to work we had one of those catering trucks that stopped by every day at lunch. We called it the Gut Wagon. A coworker bit into a burger and found a used band-aid that had slipped off someone’s finger. Yum. ---
**Author:** ![Tikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/39 "2006-03-03T02:07:20Z")
Eeeeewwww!!! That Band-Aid story was the only one to squick me out. About a month ago, I bought some store-baked bread. It was good but about halfway though it, I noticed a little dark spot in a slice. Next one also had a dark straight line of about a half inch in it. On both sides. Next one too. Skip one maybe and then rinse an repeat. They were all near the bottom and lined up in a way that suggested someone had stabbed the loaf with a dirty knife a few times before putting the dough in a pan (stab wounds down) and baking it. Someone must have had a bad day. I just hope it doesn’t happen often. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773/40 "2006-03-03T07:49:02Z")
Not exactly _in_ the food, but I was eating an Italian ice once and I put the little wooden spoon down on an outdoor table for a minute. After picking the spoon back up and scraping at the ice, I expected to fill my mouth with the sweet taste of sugary lemon. Instead, I felt this slimy, moist, and unnervingly solid & warm _thing_. To my utter horror, I pulled the spoon out of mouth to find that a slug had crawled onto the back of it. I did what any normal human would do and bolted up from the table, spitting on the ground and clawing at my tongue with my fingers while jumping & shrieking. It took several hours for the taste of that to fully dissipate. (That slime is really nasty.) Every time I had an ice for years after that I would compulsively check the spoon before using it. In a similar vein to a previous story, I was in elementary school drinking my apple juice in its cardboard container, through a straw, when suddenly the flow stopped. This surprised me, as the box was still heavy. I kept sucking and nothing came through so, keeping my tongue on the straw to keep the suction, I pulled the straw from the box and stuck to the bottom of it was this _huge_ pale yellow blob of something that looked both gelatinous & furry. That turned me off apple juice for life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-tales-of-hideous-things-found-in-food/346773.md?page=3)