The Grossest Things People Found in Their Food

This list was inspired by Grace Goldstein, who found a dead lizard in the bag of kale she bought from Trader Joe’s. She put the bag in her freezer, to keep the lizard preserved until she could figure out what to do with it. In a statement, Trader Joe’s said: “We are committed to providing customers with great products of the highest quality and are currently working with our vendor to look into and address the matter.”

Now, lest you think Grace should stop whining and just eat the lizard in her kale salad, eating lizards do pose health risks, including bacterial infection and diseases like trichinosis — which is a nasty roundworm infection that causes diarrhea, abdominal cramps, muscle pain, and fever.

So, yeah. Lizard in the salad? Gross — but maybe not as gross as McDonald’s long-standing condom problem. Back in the 90s, multiple men sued McDonald’s claiming their Big Mac’s contained unwrapped condoms. The franchise owners denied any wrongdoing and claimed that these men had placed condoms in the Big Mac’s afterward in an attempt to extort money.

Now, lest you think all of these people should stop whining and just eat the condoms they’re finding, ingesting condoms can be very bad for you, as the recent hysteria over the non-existent Condom Snorting Challenge has indicated. So, if you do find a condom, used or otherwise, in your Big Mac – best to put it aside.

But if you do swallow a condom, you might want to wash it down with some refreshing Mountain Dew. Unless that Mountain Dew has a mouse in it.

Ronald Ball claims that in 2008, he became violently ill from drinking Mountain Dew that had a dead mouse in the can. PepsiCo defended itself, saying that a dead mouse would have dissolved into a jelly-like substance had it really been stuck in a can of Mountain Dew for so long. And a Fact Check by Snopes found that this is true! The naturally acidity of Mountain Dew would have broken down the mouse’s bones and it would have been more jelly-like in the can instead of a fully formed dead mouse.

In 2005, a man named Clarence Stowers says he found a severed finger in the custard he bought from Kohl’s Frozen Custard Shop, but nobody disputed that his discovery was legit. According to the custard shop, a 23-year-old employee accidentally cut off his finger while working with the machine that dispenses the custard (and then the finger fell away and they couldn’t find it).

Now, lest you think Clarence should stop whining and just eat the severed finger… he did! He told the local news: “I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream … to make it a treat. I said, ‘God, this ain’t no nut!’ So I came in here to the kitchen and rinsed it off with water and realized it was a human finger and I just started screaming.”

He sued Kohl’s Custard for psychological trauma, seeking over $10,000 in damages. And since it was evidence, he wouldn’t return the finger so the employee could get it reattached.

Finally, we’ll end with the story of Ken Wieczerza, who found a bloody bandage on his Pizza Hut pizza. Ken, fortunately, was actually really cool about this. He didn’t want to sue or hurt Pizza Hut — he just wanted them to pay to get the blood tested for diseases, but Pizza Hut didn’t respond!

I guess for Pizza Hut, all press is good press — even if that press is a bandage that was literally pressed into a pizza.

What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever found in your food? Let us know in the comments below.

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