There's nothing in the world that can sour a meal faster than finding something in it that doesn't belong. We're not talking about errant streaks of pepper or onions on a burger that you clearly ordered with NO onions, but things that aren't even food in the first place! These tales may turn your stomach!
“I’ll Never Trust Fast Food Again”
“The last time I ventured solo through a drive through fast food place was honestly 16 years ago because of this incident. I ordered curly fries, and as I was driving away, I reached into the bag while my eyes were still on the road, bit into one and crunched down on a BITE OF POOP! It tasted just like my baby’s diapers smell. I had to pull over and vomit out my door.
I haven’t ordered curly fries since nor do I trust fast food today.
That Chicken Nugget Wasn’t So Cute Anymore
“I was about 10–12. It was Christmas and us kids had gotten chicken nuggets as a lunch. I saw a really funny shaped one that was tiny and cute so I ate it. It was hard inside and squirted juice so I spit it out on the floor. It was a freaking chicken head.”
He Wasn’t The Only One Eating That Snack
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“One day, I was eating a granola bar. It was more crumbly than I’d expected and it wasn’t as tasty as I’d thought it would be.
I was about half through it when I noticed a dozen or so mini worms munching away near the opposite end.
I then noticed that the other end of the bar was far more solid and shinier looking than the end I’d eaten.
That’s right… the end I’d eaten was actually what remained after the maggots had had their fill. Granola flavored maggot droppings.”
“I Never Ate A Soup My Mother Made Again”
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“Oh my yes. I’ll go with the one that scarred me for life.
When we lived on ‘the farm,’ which was a 40-acre lot in the backwoods of Arkansas, we were dirt poor. Dad had been disabled while working for the state of California (where we came from), and someone who didn’t like him reported him as being able to work. So, his disability payments were cut off. Mom worked a part time job for minimum wage, and that was all we had to survive on.
The farm had a mobile home, a great big hole with a cement foundation for an underground house (we stopped building it when the money ran out, never did get finished), and a small pig house and yard, made of junk wood that the sawmill had discarded.
We ended up selling all the pigs, except for one small piglet, to help make ends meet. He was a cute little pink thing. We called him Arnold, after the pig on Green Acres. We were kind of an ornery bunch as kids. My brother thought it was funny to get one of dad’s beers and give it to the piglet. And he loved it. Man, that pig loved beer. He could actually pick the can up with his teeth and chug it. He’d drink so much that he’d get drunk, and forget how to use his front legs – he’d scoot around with his legs splayed out until he sobered up, snorting up a storm.
Long story short, Arnold grew up and became pork and bacon. He’d gotten kind of mean (probably the alcoholism) and attacked the neighbor’s cow, so no one was really upset about it. Now remember that we were dirt poor, but mom never let us go hungry. One day, after I thought all of the pig was already gone, mom made some soup.
We’re all sitting around to eat, and I stirred my soup. And up from the bottom comes part of good old Arnold’s nose.
That was too much. I told no one. I did, however, feign sickness, and never ate a soup my mother cooked again.”
She Bit Off More Than She Could Chew
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“Instead of going to my favorite Chinese restaurant, I got a takeout order at a different restaurant closer to my home. I had eaten one egg roll and had about two bites left of the second when I bit down on something extremely hard. I spit into a napkin the food I’d been trying to chew. To my shock and horror, I found a human tooth, a molar to be exact and it didn’t belong to me! I am someone that cannot force myself to vomit, but I sure did try. I was mortified to say the least.
I immediately called my local Health Department to report my findings. They asked me to save the tooth for them. The H.D manager came for the tooth and told me he would investigate. A few days later, he called to tell me he went to the restaurant to follow up. Their report was that the tooth didn’t belong to anyone there, and the only explanation they had to offer was that the egg roll filling is purchased pre-made and then put together at the restaurant, so it must’ve come from the filing company.
Needless to say, I will not eat from that restaurant again. If only I’d driven the 10 minutes across town to my favorite Chinese restaurant. There’s something to be said about consumer brand loyalty!”
“My Mother Suddenly Started Making Retching Noises”
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“I was with my mother when she found something disgusting in her food.
This was in one of the nicest restaurants in our small Ohio town. They had the most wonderful chef’s salad on their menu and it was called The Shrimp Louie.
My best friend and I went to lunch there at least once a month with our mothers, who were also very good friends, and we always ordered The Shrimp Louie, which was loaded with shrimp.
One day, about halfway through our salads, my mother suddenly put a napkin to her mouth and started making retching sounds. Of course, the rest of us turned to see what in the world was the matter.
Mama reached into her napkin and pulled out a used Bandaid and dropped it on the tablecloth, still making her retching sounds.
Inside, you could see a yellow-ish stain in the middle of the Bandaid’s gauze pad. ‘Oh my God,’ we said in unison, ‘That’s pus!’
Needless to say, no one finished their salad. When management found out, they were horrified and apologetic.
Our salads were on the house…”
“How The Heck Do You Get The Taste Of Rust Out Of Your Mouth?”
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“I was once at a birthday party for my kid neighbor when I was about 12. It was a whole neighborhood thing, and it was kind of a mix birthday/end of summer party, and everyone was asked to bring food.
Being the unsupervised 12-year-old I was, I had more than enough brownies, chocolate chip cookies, mini cupcakes and whatever other desserts I could find. I was just running around the house, playing with the other kids in the bouncy house, and running laps to pick up more desserts.
At one point, I took a little break to enjoy a brownie. I sat on a chair by the woman who apparently had made them, and we chatted for a little bit.
For some reason, the brownie started tasting funky. Like, not at all how a brownie should taste. Almost like…metal. But I didn’t really think much of it, so I popped the rest of it in my mouth. HUGE mistake. I bit down, full force, on a nail. Not a fingernail, although that might just have been better. Nope, a nail that you use to stick things in a wall, or the kind you step on and get tetanus.
I remember having a few thoughts:
1. How the heck do I get out of this awkward situation sitting next to the woman that put nails in her brownies?
2. Why the heck did this woman put a nail in her brownies?
3. How the heck do you get the taste of rust out of your mouth?
I live in the suburbs, and it was a children’s party, so the place was soccer mom central. There was no escape. My plan was to keep chatting with the woman, fake a cough, and take the nail out of my mouth.
Sadly, I’m not as slick as I like to think I am, and she saw. She said, and I will never forget this, ‘Oh honey! You found the nail! I was trying to hang up a painting in my kitchen earlier, and I just simply could not get it into the wall! I lost the nail, but I guess it fell into the brownies. Silly me, I never realized. Hand it here, honey, I still have to hang up that painting.’
I gave her an awkward laugh and a, ‘See you later,’ and got away from that crazy woman. She recently moved away, but from that point on, every time she saw me, she would give me the type of smile that said she had a secret no one else knew about. Talk about creepy.”
She’s Got Bad Luck With The School Cafeteria
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“The first time I ate a calzone in my school, I was enjoying it completely and it was very tasty, but I suddenly started choking with something that was stuck in my throat. So I started coughing as hard as I could to get it out, only to pull a long hair out of my mouth. I just looked at my calzone and I got an urge to puke. I threw it in the trash, cursed the girl that sold me the calzone and walked out the cafeteria, angry as a lynx.
The second time, I found snot in my calzone. It happened 2 years ago. I walked into the cafeteria as normal and asked for a calzone. After one bite, I realized that something was wrong, so I opened the calzone to find it. I just ran to the toilet and forced myself to spit out that last bite and it took me 10 good minutes to achieve that. I then walked to the cafeteria, took the calzone and threw it in the trash while, in a very angry tone, telling the woman that she or anyone that likes to pick his/hers nose should avoid doing that above the food. It was the last time I ate a calzone in my school.
But I still didn’t learn my lesson and continue to eat other items at the cafeteria. One day, I get a sandwich and I found a spider that God knows how managed to end up in a sandwich. I have arachnophobia so I am not a fan of spiders and as soon as I saw his little legs moving I threw my sandwich on the floor and just ran to my classroom, cursing at the cafeteria all the way there. That incident was the last straw and since then, I avoid the cafeteria completely.”
That’s Not On The List Of 11 Herbs And Spice
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“I was telling my friend about how KFC is one of the worst fast food chains. I had ordered some fried chicken a few days ago and what I got was a tray of chicken sitting in a quarter inch layer of oil. I am quite sure the server forgot to strain the oil. I thought that was disgusting.
But what my friend told me about KFC made me cringe. This probably happened maybe 15–20 years ago. Her grandparents had ordered fried chicken, but what they got was fried pieces of chicken — with a fried rat. Eww, right? Somehow a dead rat went into the flour and was unknowingly fried and served to a customer.
Fortunately, they did notice it before they were about to eat.
Doesn’t seem finger lickin’ good’ anymore, right?”
She Thought The Ham Had Just Gone Bad, But It Was Even Worse Than That
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“This was about 5 years ago. To set the context, back then I was a competitive swimmer, training twice a day, about 80km a week, plus cardio, weights…the whole thing. This meant that I was ALWAYS hungry. Time permitting, I would eat breakfast before and after morning training, then a snack sandwich at mid-morning, then a small lunch, then a larger lunch, then an afternoon snack, and finally dinner after night training.
At the same time, I was also a full-time engineering student. For this, sometimes I could not find a time slot for lunch before practice.
On this particular day, I had back-to-back-to-back classes from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, and had to go straight to training which was far from school and started at 4:30 pm. Luckily, when I got there, I was the first to arrive. This gave me time to stop by the bakery in the pool complex and order myself a pastelito de jamón—a ham pastry.
I started eating and noticed a strange taste, kind of as if the ham had gone bad. I didn’t really pay much attention to it as I was famished—I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast—and in a hurry to get to the gym before my coach arrived. I kept eating; one bite, then another, and another. Approximately halfway through my pastelito, for no particular reason, I decided to take a look at it.
My pastelito was filled with fly worms; there were more fly worms in it than ham. They seemed to be crawling out of the pastelito, fighting each other to get out in the war of a million fly worms. The worst part was realizing that I had already eaten half my pastelito, so I started gagging and coughing out all the ham and worms out of my mouth.
I went to the toilet and tried to force myself to throw up with my finger, but I couldn’t (I have been resisting vomiting all my life, so it is really difficult for me to do it even when in need). I spent my whole training with the acutest stomach ache just from thinking of the disgusting incident.”
A Box Of Chocolates Is Like Life, You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get
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“To this day I’m not sure if it was a crime, black magic or the most disgusting coincidence.
I was a kid and it was my friend’s mom’s birthday. We went to the grocery store (big, well maintained) to buy a box of chocolates for her.
We weren’t in the room when she opened the actual chocolate box, only the wrapping and suddenly we heard her shrieking and screaming for us as if we did something bad.
The box was full of insects!
I’m talking earthworms, moths, bugs, you name it – this was obviously not natural, like if there had been a couple of maggots. How the heck does an earthworm get into a box of chocolates and what does it want in there?
We quickly convinced her that it wasn’t a disgusting prank by us and that was that. Sadly, I don’t remember much of the aftermath, this wasn’t in the US so she didn’t sue them for millions or anything. I think she got a coupon for another box of chocolate in the mail after complaining.
I will never forget what it looked like though, it was a scene from Hades with all the different insects stuffed behind the plastic crawling over each other and the moldy chocolate.
Never really liked chocolate in a box, after that.
I think the most likely explanation is that it was human made, either to extort or harm the business, or by a deranged individual. Too many different, adult specimens to have spontaneously formed inside the plastic wrap.”
A Glass Of Red Wine Is Usually Supposed To Be Relaxing
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“Okay, so a few months ago I was super excited because I had a weekend off, which never happens for me. Working in a restaurant, ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ means nothing to me, so this particular weekend was definitely cause for celebration.
I got off work Friday and pick up my favorite sweet wine. That night my housemates and I went out back and drank by our fire pit. The hangout session finished, and I didn’t finish my wine (another night of wine, yay!), so I put it on the counter and went to bed.
Next day, I get called into work on my day off, but I only had to work until 8 pm, so why not? I worked that shift and daydream about a glass of my sweet, red wine with a couple ice cubes. Yum.
Finally, I got off work and settled on my couch with my best friend. I cracked open her preferred bottle of Bud Light. I got my glass and we sat to watch tv and smoke hookah. As we’re sipping and conversing, my throats started to feel itchy. Cough. Cough. I kept sipping. Slowly, of course, to savor the richness and all that. Then I felt something in my mouth. It’s probably a part of the cork that fell into my bottle, I always do that. I kept sipping.
It wasn’t until I got to the last few sips that I thought I should maybe pull some of the cork out of the bottle so I can further enjoy it. I’m a genius, I know. I picked up my glass and, for the first time I really looked at it. My stomach flipped. I saw that where the red had stained the glass, sprinkled all around the perimeter were about 100 dead fruit flies.
I had drunk the whole glass, leaving maybe a sip and a half before I realized there were hundreds of dead fruit flies.
I sat up quickly, thinking critically about what I had just consumed. My friend noticed my sudden alertness and I wordlessly handed her the glass. As she worked out what had happened to me I decided I had only one option, which was to get them out of my system as soon as possible. With incredible ease, I was able to upchuck everything in my system.
I have not drunk red wine since that night and find it incredibly unappealing.”
Cereal Was Ruined For Him Twice
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“We lived a comfortable, upper middle class life in a rather large home, but one thing we’ve always had a problem with was ants and mice. Ironically, it was our cat that brought live mice into our home, and ever since then it’s been infested!
This means it is common to find mouse droppings in our bowls, so we take special care to wash them before use. To anyone else, it might ruin their appetite, but for us, it’s no biggie.
When I was 7 or 8, I would keep finding ants in my cereal. This was disgusting to me, and consequently, I boycotted cereal for about 5 years.
So when I started eating cereal again, you can imagine I was suspicious of what creatures would float up from the milk. I was not terribly excited to eat the cereal, but it tasted good, and I was lazy. So I let my guard down, and started paying less attention while eating.
One day, I was eating cereal again, and as always, I was reading the highly fascinating writing on the cereal box. By chance, I happened to look down into my bowl, and I sure didn’t expect to find, floating on the milk, mouse poop!
What made this worse was that the cereal was already over half eaten. Undoubtedly, I had consumed A LOT of mouse poop- there were at least five or six droppings floating in the milk! Not to mention, mice had been scurrying in the open cereal box for who knows how long! I’d take 10 dead ants any day!
I was rattled, to say the least. Needless to say, my aversion to cereal resumed.”
“We Still Order From There, But I Don’t Get The Duck Anymore”
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“My family had ordered from a certain Chinese shop for a number of years every Thursday night, it was sort of a tradition.
The owners knew us well and always supplied us loyal customers with free prawn crackers, fortune cookies or spring rolls with every order. During the weeks before Chinese New Year they would gift us calendars, those lucky cats and other trinkets. The same with us at Christmas as we usually sent them cards and a little present. It was a nice relationship we had going on.
Well one Thursday, about 5 years ago, we ordered from the owners’ niece and her husband who were looking after the shop while the owners were visiting family back in China. No problem, they’re all incredible cooks and we had ordered from the niece before.
We all get home and plate up, tucking into our usuals, for me it was some crispy shredded duck and pancakes with hoisin sauce and shredded cucumber. Amazing as always…until I bite into my duck pancake and found a fingernail clipping.
I immediately spat it out and told my family, searching through the rest of my food. I found around six more.
I was horrified.
We drove back to the shop and presented the ‘extras’ we had received and the woman nearly had a breakdown. She could not understand how on earth they had gotten in there.
She calls her husband up front, shows him the nail clippings and suddenly he gets a very sheepish look on his face. He proceeds to tell her that earlier he had been clipping his nails when the shop was empty and he had been putting the clippings into one of the take away trays. He apologized profusely saying he completely forgot to throw the tray away and that his wife must of used it thinking it was clean.
The woman was sending an evil glare to him looking like she wanted to whack her husband into the next century. She was crying about how she ruined her auntie’s shop.
But of course we knew her aunt and she was a lovely person. It was a mistake, an idiotic mistake on their half but a mistake nonetheless. They gave us a full refund and another free order of food, but funnily enough we weren’t that hungry anymore.
Still, to this day, we still order from that shop, but I don’t get the duck anymore.”
That’ll Teach Him Not To Filch Bread
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“I used to work in a really nice, small UK engineering firm. The office was in a former coaching house in the English countryside. Nowhere to go for lunch, so we got bread delivered daily, a cheese delivery by a local cheesemonger once a week, and they’d also get salad ingredients in so we could make our own sandwiches and salads for lunch. It was amazing. The bread delivery every morning was always particularly eagerly awaited – a couple of brown and a couple of white loaves, crusty on the outside and STILL WARM from the oven at time of delivery to us. We weren’t supposed to dig in before lunchtime, but the smell was so delicious, some of us greedier ones often just couldn’t resist.
So this particular morning, a colleague and I cut into the brown loaf, putting great slices of fresh cold butter on it and wolfing it down secretly in the office kitchen. We’d get told off later. On the third slice, there was something odd in the middle of it. It was part of a large bandage with a rather disgusting looking bloody bit in the middle. Looked like one of the bakers had had an injured finger while kneading the dough?!?
At any rate, this cured me of wolfing down illicit slices of fresh bread in the morning!”
