(There were so many good answers to this I thought I would put it at the top for some Monday morning reading. You may want to eat breakfast first.)
What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever accidentally eaten?
I once made some hot chocolate that comes in those envelopes. I wasn’t really paying attention and poured the boiling water in it, stirred, and then took a sip when it had cooled off a bit. The little marshmallows had sort of a weird consistency and it took me a second to realize that I don’t drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. I looked into the cup and saw dead maggots floating in my cocoa. And yes, my fear of powdered cocoa persists to this day.
Ok Cynics, open up and share. Best story gets an envelope of Swiss Miss hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Comments
78 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.i had a burrito from la salsa which i later discovered had purple mop strands in it.
I was about 8 and sick in bed and asked mom for a glass of water. She stuck a straw into a glass next to my bed that had some clear liquid in it. I took a gulp and mainlined some rubbing alcohol down my throat (apparently dad used it earlier to cool me off to reduce my fever). I hacked it up and mom has felt guilty ever since.
I had unexpected guests one night and I hurriedly stashed half a panful of Hamburger Helper in the oven to hide it. And forgot it. A week later my sister happened to stop by in the evening, and saw what she thought was leftovers from that night’s dinner. She still can’t bear the thought of Hamburger Helper decades later.
This may not count as “gross,” but it was particularly disturbing…
When I was elementary school age, I had a taco salad from Taco Bell. As I chewed, some of it seemed more crunchy than a tortilla shell should be. I spit a mouthful into a napkin and saw (to my mother’s horror) small chunks of broken glass. I had eaten a few bites and my mouth was scratched, but not bleeding or anything. It kept me away from Taco Bell for over a decade.
Cat meat. We were getting street food in Shekou, China, and my friend orders about 20 different kababs. I started eating, but couldn’t figure out what it was, so I asked her – her reply was “meow meow”…
Of course the stuff I have eaten intentionally could be considered unappealing – stir-fried crickets/roaches/waterbugs in Thailand (I love the chili-lemon oil they coat them with), scorpions in Beijing, I tried dog meat (can’t recommend it), and the piéce de resistance was the still warm gall bladder of a freshly killed 6-foot king snake served in snake wine (snake wine is a Chinese delicacy that is made from soaking chinese moonshine in hundreds of dead snakes – good for man they say).
well I acidentally drank worm juice in some Top Ramen once, but the worst was drinking some milk when my teeth crunched on something that wiggled its legs against my tongue. I never found out what it was because I spit it out so far I couldn’t find it later. So, of course, my imagination runs wild,,,,
Oh yeah, once I made some tea out of some loose tobacco, thinking it
was some peppermint leaves. When it had cooled down I took a nice big sip and OhMyGod it was hot and stinky and blechhhhh!
When I was a kid and lived in Korea right after the war, we used to have to strain our rice and flour for bugs, and pick through the tins of raisins for worms. None of us children could ever eat raisins again.
Oh god. That’s the peak. Wriggling legs cannot be beaten.
I’ve always been paranoid about this sort of thing, so i’ve been mindful of what I eat.
Recently I chugged a carton of apple juice from concentrate, and got a fat mouthful of something fleshy. Spat it into the sink; obviously some inadequately mixed apple powder, but with the appearance of egg yolk and the consistency of semi-developed chicken foetus.
Only other thing I can remember properly is a chinese buffet I visited a few weeks ago in Amsterdam. Mistake in itself, but these little sesame-seasoned nugget things were going down a treat with their plum sauce, though I couldn’t figure out why they had such a mushy consistency for meat. Tried one with no sauce. They were eggs, and eggs make me vomit.
There’s something lingering in the periphery of my memory, something truly horrifying. I think it’s been repressed, because it’s an impression of a truly affecting mouthful, but with no clear shape. I’m going to stop reading these in case any of them remind me and i’m forced to go and open my wrists.
My mom ordered fried chicken gizzards from a popular gas station in town. It was when she bit into it that she bout broke her teeth. Turned out it was a metal nut. While it did mildly shock her, it didn’t deter her (or any of us, for that matter) from continuing to eat there (my sister worked there and brought home leftover food they cooked, delicious stuff).
As for my gross eating experience, nothing in particular pops up in mind.
Just curious, James–where in the country (US I assume) do they serve fried chicken gizzards in gas stations? I’ve never run across that.
(A national motorcycle club I’m in has an annual national rally where they (we) chip in and fly a European member “across the pond”, put him on a bike, and tour the US with him. Local cuisines are a focus, and I can’t think of a more tailor-made dish for some poor unsuspecting Belgian dude than fried chicken gizzards.)
Thinking it was a bite-sized bar of white chocolate – I definitely chomped into some hotel soap when I was about 6. Haven’t been a fan of white chocolate since.
Wow, there are a lot of great stories here. Does the ingestion of bugs while on a motorcycle count? Nothing big, I don’t think, just numerous gnats and things.
By the way, the one here most likely to be dangerous, as far as I can tell (raw pork notwithstanding) is the ashtray water. According to Andrew Weil in “From Chocolate to Morphine,” there is enough nicotine in one cigar to kill several people, and it’s water-extractable. The only reason smoking doesn’t kill us immediately is because a lot of the nicotine burns up.
When I was three I was crawling under the bed and wondered why there was a pile of gooey chocolate on the carpet. I stuck my finger in it, scooped a little up and ate it. It was cat diarrhea. Thirty years later I vaguely remember the taste. Nothing else tastes that bad!
Not me, but these delicious storiesdo bring a certain incedent to mind. In my Junior year of high school, I had a young, newly married teacher for Biology. His wife was due about 2 months before the school year ended. He told the class about how he made a deal with his wife’s doctor to keep his wife’s placenta. He figured that if it could make his wife feel better after childbirth, that it would prettymuch turn him into Superman. He tells us that he grilled and ate it much like a steak, but that it was too chewy for his tastes. Only a Biology teacher.
Lana,
If you’ve ever seen the movie Diner, you’ll understand why that’s not where I thought that story was going.
Iced tea. There some sort of… small white worms in it. I don’t know what they were. I can’t drink it without gagging. (badly)
Wow these stories are insane. I used to be traumatized by mine but now I don’t feel so bad. I once ate a hamburger that had hair in it. I pulled the hair out of my mouth and I could feel it coming out of my throat too. Ugghh. I still hate hair today.
Today at B.K.
I ordered the chicken fries.
Oh god, my stomach.
When we were little, my kid sister and I weren’t allowed to chew gum. So when she saw a piece of pink gum that somebody had thrown on the ground at our kindergarten school, she must have thought “hey lucky me!” and stuck it in her mouth. That’s already gross enough-but then she was only about three. What’s really gross is… it turned out not to be gum at all, but pink plasticine that somebody had steped on!!! Yuuuuckkk!!
Myself, I bit a red apple and saw half a worm. And the same thing with a tinned artichoke. Can’t eat either to this day.
grossest thing i’ve ever eaten. it was sort of an accident i guess. we had a friend over that was eating turtles (the chocolates) and he was talking and a big piece fell out of his mouth onto our carpet, i was eating chocolate too and was on the ground near where his chocolate fell out of his mouth. absent mindedly i picked up his discarded chocolate and popped it into my mouth. eugh. another time i ate a strawberry that tasted like a mothball and it gave me hives after… weird…
I’m one of the chicks from the cup video. I win.
My wife packed my lunch one day. Sandwich, Capri Sun, ziplock bag of chips, Red Delicious apple.
I was doing field service on Macintosh PCs, was required to eat on the road many times. Sandwich went down no trouble. Got the straw into the Capri sun while driving (not recommended). Drank, the juice a bit. Grabbed the apple. No white film on it – good – the wife had washed it. I bit into it. 65 MPH on an interstate… I didn’t look at the apple, I just bit. Red Delicious…. not my favorite, but it will do. Then I looked at the apple. I see 1/2 of the store label on the skin. The other half was on its way down my gullet.
Oh well.
to think of a couple..
a piece of starfish that had been preserved in formaldehyde (tasted like the worst seafood ever)
photo developer (not much taste.. salty..)
a stawberry with a worm in it
one of those prepackaged otis spunkmeyer muffins.. it had a taste of battery acid..
and to the guy that asked about the fried chicken gizzards from gas stations? come to the south.. particularly around the area where the tip of florida meets the tail of alabama. they also offer livers. blegh.
In Taiwan — what looked like a choclate color jelly kind of thing – turned out to be cooked Duck blood
When I was 10 I was seeing the sights in Washington D.C. My dad got me a blue slushie from a guy with a vender cart. When I was almost finished I saw a dead frozen hornet at the bottom of the cup. My dad offered to go demand another one but I passed.
Probably the same year when I was dying easter eggs in the kitchen I also poured myself a glass of soda. There’s a picture of me in our photo album moments before I chugged half of the blue dye. After the first giant gulp went down I realized what it was and sprayed the second gulp all over the kitchen.
My dad has been on adkins for years so he makes all his own desserts. One day he was looking around his office and found some of these bon bons he had made in a baggie. He assumed he had taken them out of his lunch one day and just didn’t eat them, so he popped on in his mouth and ate it whole. The second one he bit in half first only to find the creamy center had been replaced with fuzzy mold.
One time I went to make a pot of mac n cheese and I saw weird stuff floating in the pot. I took it off the burner to get a better look and it was about a dozen silverfish. (I think we only have those here in Florida) http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing/images/DK1018_1.jpg
We have silverfish in SoCal as well.
The food in the gas station is a Southern thing. There is a company called “Chester Chicken” that they sell out of a lot of filling stations down here. The smell is horrible and will completely coat your clothes and hair within in minutes of stepping in to the station.
Not gross, but disturbing (and potentially very dangerous).
My friend and I went to Subway and when we sat down, for some reason she decided to open her sandwich and look inside. In the bun were her choice of meats, etc.- and on top, a 7 or 8 inch-long knife with an orange handle (it was a 12-inch sub). It was the most bizarre thing. She never even mentioned it to the employees- she just pulled it out, stuck it in her backpack, and kept it, but it could have been a seriously awful experience if she had bitten down on it.