I've heard it said - even said it myself, that you are what you eat. But recent news has me thinking that the phrase is backwards. The amended version, you eat what you are.
First there was the Wendy’s issue. Okay, that turned out to be a hoax..but it got the ball rolling. It is as though every employee who is working at a food company wants to get in on the action – so to speak.
The last two stories involving human parts and food were pretty interesting.
The first was when someone found a slice of skin on his chicken sandwich…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7628784/
He bit into something chewy, removed it from his mouth, and saw that it had fingerprints. Let me rephrase that… it was fingerprints. The funniest part of the story is that authorities returned to the restaurant to investigate. The manager comes out to meet them…with a bandage on his hand. Case closed!
It turns out he got a little carried away while slicing lettuce. Or a little of him got carried away – in the lettuce bowl. He realized right away that he had cut part of his finger off but instead of tossing the lettuce, he simply sterilized the machine and surrounding area and carted the lettuce to the food preparation area.
This next one is even tastier – juicy – meaty
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7714408/
Turns out a happy customer took his frozen yogurt home. He was scooping it out and found the finger. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell what it was, so HE PUT IT INTO HIS MOUTH TO CLEAN THE YOGURT OFF IT SO HE COULD SEE WHAT IT WAS!!!! Let that sink in for a moment.... He willingly placed the finger in his mouth and was sucking and licking – cleaning it off!
His tongue had to be rolling that finger around – moving it around his mouth. No, you have to really think about it to get the effect. If you’ve got some small carrots lying around, cover them up with ranch dressing and then put it into your mouth and clean the dressing off. The human mouth and tongue are amazingly adept at moving food around and basically, that is what this guy was doing…to a finger…a dismembered finger…
Here are his words…
“I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat. So I said, ’OK, well, I’ll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is.”’
Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn’t identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water — and “just started screaming.”
I love the “to make it a treat.” Can you imagine. I mean, I think it’s gross when I take a sip of ice tea believing my wife had diet coke in her glass. Can you imagine having your mind all set on a candy treat but instead you get a finger!
What is curious about the Wendy’s story that was a hoax and this most recent ice-cream based story is that Wendy’s offered free ice cream to “lure” customers back after the bad PR of the finger incident. No really, here’s the story.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7593511/
I can just imagine the Wendy's PR folks weeping..
It kind of makes you wonder what other items could make it into ice cream without you knowing it. Hmm?? This isn’t even hard – it doesn’t really take much imagination at all. Think about rocky road. You have marshmallows and nuts. Hard and soft items, chewy and crunchy. That leaves it wide open.
What I wonder about is what we’ve all eaten, completely on accident, over the course of our life. If body parts are falling into food prep this frequently, don’t you imagine that some of it makes it past our discerning pallets?
Are we all unwitting cannibals?
Chew on that for awhile…
