Hoax Museum Blog: Food

Hot dog eating champ faking an injury? — Takeru Kobayashi, six-time world record hot dog eater, is claiming to have a jaw injury which may hamper his competition today at Nathan's Famous in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. Some think the champ is faking, playing head games with Joey Chestnut, who beat Kobayashi's record of 59 1/2 franks and buns two weeks ago. The two are the favorites in this year's event at Nathan's.

Would Kobayashi really pull such a stunt, potentially tarnishing the great sport of competitive eating?

As an aside, this article I'm linking to refers to the governing body as the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). I thought I had read that they changed their name to Major League Eating recently. I'll have to check.

Scandal in professional gluttony?

Okay, I checked. From Wikipedia:

The IFOCE, which first established eating as a sport in the 1990s, has recently launched Major League Eating to serve as an umbrella for competitive eating worldwide while also providing a recognized brand for licensing of t-shirts and other products. The Major League Eating website, www.majorleagueeating.com, is considered the most dynamic website in this sport. It features videos of contests and eaters and offers a complete online community similar to MySpace, for eating fans.

UPDATE: Sore jaw or not, Kobayashi lost to Joey Chestnut, meaning the Mustard Yellow Belt has returned to American, where it belongs, damn it! NO ONE outeats us. USA! USA!

Snake Head Found in Beans — Here's something to add to my list of Gross Things Found in Food. Philadelphia resident Earl Hartman was sitting down at home to enjoy some green beans and chicken, when he noticed something unusual in his beans. It wasn't a green bean. It was a snake head.

This seems to be a legitimate case of something odd that found its way into a can of green beans. Seneca Foods, the company that cans the beans, admits that a snake head could have found its way into the beans. Earl Hartman says: Hartman isn't suing, which also adds to the probability that the snake head is a legitimate find.

While visiting Sedona, Arizona I once tried rattlesnake. It was okay. But I wouldn't want to find a rattlesnake head in my canned veggies. (via Art of the Prank)

Did Jefferson Invent Macaroni and Cheese? — Rumor has it that Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, could include, among his many other accomplishments, inventing macaroni and cheese (one of my favorite foods). The wikipedia entry for mac and cheese mentions this rumor: I don't know how old this rumor is. I found references to it in newspapers from the 1990s, but not earlier. But needless to say, the rumor is incorrect. Jefferson does appear to have served macaroni and cheese at the White House, however he definitely didn't invent the dish.

Jack MacLaughlin sheds some light on Jefferson's relationship to Macaroni in his book Jefferson and Monticello: the biography of a Builder: So it seems that Jefferson may have served pasta and cheese, but when he did the recipe was already in wide use in Europe. Marlena Spieler, author of Macaroni and Cheese, writes that: So there you have it. No one knows exactly who invented mac and cheese, but it wasn't Jefferson, though he seems to have been a fan of it.

Fake Wedding Cakes — I've heard of renting wedding dresses, but I'd never heard of renting the wedding cake. But apparently renting fake wedding cakes is becoming increasingly popular. Here's how it works: It seems like a sensible idea to me. Though, of course, another option would be simply not to have such an expensive wedding if you can't afford it. I'm constantly amazed at the obscene amounts of money some people spend on their weddings. My wife and I had a very simple, low-key wedding, though we did splurge on an Elvis-shaped groom's cake (real, not fake).

Breast-Milk Cheese — Le Petit Singly (it's a French-language website, but here's a translated version) claims to be a French farm that specializes in producing cheese out of "the mother's milk of woman." According to the blurb on their site, they've been doing this since 1947. They say that the breast-milk cheese has a caramel color and has a hint of hazelnut taste.

Of course, I think it would be technically possible to make cheese out of breast milk. (Although this woman in Indonesia reports that she tried to use her own breast milk to make some cheese and failed. Link via The Stranger. But she was doing it on her stove top. I think if a commercial producer really put their mind to it, they would have better success.)

I actually briefly discussed this question in Hippo Eats Dwarf, in the context of debunking a site that claimed to produce cheese from lactating rats. I wrote that, "The problem is that the cheese's flavor is influenced by whatever the milk producer eats. So you would want vegetarian milk donors, unless you like cheese that tastes like rotting milk."

The Le Petit Singly site mentions nothing, that I can find, about the diet of the female milk donors. This is one sign that it's a hoax. Another sign is the ads they have on their site, and the fact that it's hosted on a lycos account. A real company would presumably at least shell out the $20 to get their own domain name. (via Why Travel To France)

Update: Looks like Le Petit Singly does discuss the diet of the milk donors. (Thanks, penny!) But I still think it's a hoax.

Chinese Killer Bananas — Back in 2000 an email rumor was going around here in the U.S. warning of bananas infected by a flesh-eating bacteria. The rumor read, in part, that: Because of this rumor, the Centers for Disease Control had to issue a warning assuring everyone that no shipments of killer bananas had ever arrived from Costa Rica, or anywhere else in the world.

It now looks like a variant of the killer-banana rumor has popped up in China. The BBC reports that: The Chinese Health Ministry has issued a statement, assuring everyone that there is no truth to the banana rumor and noting that, "There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence."

Whac-a-mole vs. Guacamole — I came across an interesting question asked to a reporter in the Charlotte Observer. Actually, I initially thought it was a really stupid question, but part of the answer surprised me. The question was: Like I said, I thought it was a stupid question. Just because the two words end in "mole," that doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. And sure enough, the reporter, Jeff Elder, confirmed that the name "Whac-a-mole" is not, in any way, derived from the word guacamole. He called up Michael Lane, chief financial officer of Bob's Space Racers of Daytona Beach, Fla., makers of Whac-a-Mole. Lane said, "The name origin in English is a short way to describe the action of play."

But the weird part of the answer is that Guaca-mole is a trademarked name for the game in Spain, Mexico, and other Spanish-speaking countries. "The reason for this name, Lane says, is that pronunciation in Spanish is very similar for Whac-a-Mole and Guaca-Mole." So the two words are linked, in a roundabout way.

I say Whac-a-mole with three syllables and Guacamole with four syllables (pronouncing the "e" on the end), but I'm guessing Spanish speakers must pronounce Whac-a-mole with four syllables. And if you say it in this way, it can sound a lot like Guacamole.

No-Poop Dog Food — A Dutch company called Energique claims to have developed a type of dog food that has the pleasant side effect of drastically reducing what comes out the other end. Basically, the company claims that if you feed your dog this stuff, your dog will barely poop at all: An Ananova article gives some more details: "They claim remaining 10% comes out the other end as a smell-free dry pellet that can be picked up by hand in a tissue. According to research by the University of Utrecht, a dog will normally need to go three times a day, but with Energique it only needs to go once a week."

This strikes me as a very odd claim. If true, could it possibly be healthy for the dog? I would imagine that the total surface area of a food has a lot to do with how much of it can get digested. For instance, a powder would probably get digested more fully than a chunk of meat. But is the one necessarily healthier than the other, just because more of it is getting digested?

The amount of poop a dog produces would almost seem to be a function of how much it eats. Surely if you feed your dog tons of this Energique food, it's still going to excrete most of it.

Quick Links: Fake Gucci Advertisement Fools Newspaper, etc. —
Fake Gucci Advertisemant Fools Newspaper
A man in Switzerland phoned a national newspaper and managed to get them to run a two-page advertisement showing himself posing beside a bottle of Gucci perfume. He told the newspaper he was a representative for the company, and told them to send the 60,000 Swiss Frank bill to Gucci.
Forum thread here.
(Thanks, Carlotta.)

Shark with ‘Webbed Feet’ Caught
A Malaysian fisherman recently caught what appeared to be a shark with webbed feet. The 1.7kg shark was given to a worker at the Malaysian Fisheries Development Board in Penang. When she noticed the feet, she gave it back to the fisherman, who threw it back into the sea.
(Thanks, Richard.)

Homer Simpson Appears on Pizza
With a hopeful-sounding minimum bid of $100, the seller from Kentucky has yet to garner a single taker for his piece of half-eaten pizza with the image of Homer Simpson on it.
(Thanks, Andy.)

Quick Links: Flying Bananas, etc. —
Toilet doubles as goldfish aquarium
Link submitted by Big Gary (the deputy curator in charge of fish) who notes, "Yet another way to torture goldfish ..."

Man cooks eggs on floor
"experts are investigating but have still not discovered why the floor of his home is so hot." Just a thought, but they might want to check if everything is okay in the apartment below him.

Banana tree predicts Lotto numbers
"They rub a mixture of powder and water on the tree's trunk, then wait to see what number the solution resembles as it dries." Probably works as well as any method of picking numbers.

Giant banana to fly over Texas
"A Montreal artist is planning to float a gigantic yellow banana in geostationary orbit above Texas next year." All hail the Flying Banana Monster.

Bride's joke ends wedding ceremony
"a bride in Austria jokingly answered "no" instead of "yes"... the official performing the civil wedding promptly broke off the ceremony." I guess wedding ceremonies are like going through security at the airport -- no joking allowed.

Cheddarvision — According to the BBC, an association of cheesemakers from Somerset have come up with a new and innovative marketing campaign for the die-hard cheese lovers amongst us.

The new cheddarvision webcam is set up so that customers can watch their cheese maturing over the course of a year. The feed was reportedly started on the first day of 2007, but the site had been running for several days before that, and the counter has now reached 10 days.

So, is it legitimate? Difficult to say. The West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers does seem to be a real organisation, and yes, they produce cheese. As to the webcam, that's more difficult to say. Cheese isn't the most mobile of subject matter, and it's nigh impossible to tell whether it is a current web feed or just looped footage. Or, indeed, a photograph.
(Thanks, Dave.)

UPDATE 2/4/07: It is clear now that this is a real web feed. Here is a time lapse video of months 0-3.
(Thanks, Beasjt.)

Quick Links: Pig-Tossing, etc. — Pig-Tossing
A number of incidents involving animal throwing have been reported in West Point, Miss., leading one to the conclusion that the sport is the new fad for those to whom cow-tipping is just too passé.

Mayor of Lebanon Sends Chain Letter
The Mayor of Lebanon was not available to comment after he discovered that the Make-A-Wish chain letter that he sent to 33 other businessmen was a hoax.

Woman Sues Over Fake Avocado Dip
A Los Angeles woman has filed a lawsuit against Kraft, claiming that what they label as guacamole... well, isn't.

Wife Fattening — Over at the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, a clip was posted from the 1960s "shock-umentary" Mondo Cane (meaning "World of Dogs"). The film was a collection of all kinds of examples of bizarre human behavior from around the world. In this scene the Melanesian custom of wife fattening is shown. The narration (in spanish in the clip) says: There's been some discussion over at the Athanasius Kircher Society about whether this is real. As far as I can tell, it is. The maker of Mondo Cane was accused of staging footage, and taking customs wildly out of context, but most of the material was true. After all, there's no shortage of bizarre human behaviors in the world. And, as far as I know, Melanesian culture did, in the past, include the custom of wife fattening. The BBC has an article about wife-fattening in current day Mauritania. Different part of the world, but same idea. Warning: the clip shows some bare-breasted island women, in case that's a problem for anyone at work or elsewhere. Nothing you wouldn't see on the National Geographic channel, however.

Rat Salad — Todd Haley, a Dallas Cowboys assistant coach, issued a lawsuit against McDonalds on Thursday. He alleges that his wife and au pair found a dead rat in their take-away salad this June.

The story goes that, on June 5th, Christine Haley and Kathryn Kelley ordered $14 of food, including the salad. They drove home, where they both ate some of the salad before uncovering a young, dead rat (pictured right, the rat has been digitally coloured to show up as blue).

The rat was determined to be a ‘roof rat’, a breed which live in the rafters and can pass on such diseases as bubonic plague and endemic typhus. The two women say they are haunted by this knowledge and fear they may have caught a disease. Mrs Haley was breastfeeding at the time, and switched to formula milk in case she passed illness to her child. She claims this caused her mental anguish.


Tod Haley and the two women are suing the restaurant, the franchise owner and KLB Group for a minimum of $1.7 million in physical and mental pain and anguish.

(Thanks, Charybdis.)

Finger Found in Subway Sandwich — Only 50 miles away from where the infamous Wendy's chili finger hoax was perpetrated last year, a woman has found what appears to be a finger in her Subway sandwich.

Health inspectors did not find that any staff had lost a digit, but the half-inch piece has been sent to a lab for testing.

A spokesman for Subway has said the company won't comment until the investigation is completed. He says, however: "The Subway restaurant chain takes every customer comment seriously. We don't know what the foreign object is yet."

Has the U.S. Banned Vegemite? — Disturbing news reports are leaking out of Australia. Apparently U.S. customs has banned the importation of Vegemite into the United States. What will Aussies living here do without their favorite food? The Sunday Times reports: GeelongInfo.com also corroborates this story, reporting that one of their reporters was stopped while crossing from Canada into the US, and the border guards demanded to know if they were carrying Vegemite: But some are skeptical. Cerebral Soup reports finding no mention of such a ban on any US government site, except for a single mention of some vegemite coming from the UK being banned.

My theory is that Drop Bears are somehow responsible for the ban, since as everyone knows, one of the only defenses against a drop bear is to spread vegemite behind your ears. With no Vegemite in the US, we'll all be defenseless when they launch their attack.

UPDATE: The FDA have said that they have not banned vegemite. The refused batches from the UK were stopped for: "labeling problems (lack of ingredient list), suspected presence of a color additive not approved for use in food in the United States, and lack of registration of facilities and filing of processes for a low-acid canned food."

(Thanks, Nathan and Tom.)

Quick Links: False Lobster, etc. — False Lobster
Maine Senator Olympia Snowe is lobbying to remove the pelagic crab known as "langostino lobster" from restaurant menus in Maine.

Pine Cone 'Help' Hoax
A careful 'help' was spelt out in pine cones at a junction of two roads in Oregon, complete with an arrow pointing out into the woods. After a nine-person, six-hour search, it was deemed to be a hoax.

Quick Links: Eating Sand, etc. —
Woman eats 1.5kg of sand daily
Ram Rati, 80, credits her good health to her sand-eating habit. I'm amazed she's still alive if she really eats that every day. Sounds to me like she may have the eating disorder pica.

A case of gnome-icide
Store causes controversy by selling "stabbed" gnomes. "Shelly Oldfield, of Wakefield, was shopping with her elderly mother at Tong Garden Centre, Bradford, when they stumbled across the lifeless bodies – on sale for £9.99 each – and raised the alarm."

Hamster grounds airplane
A plane is forced to land to search for a passenger's escaped hamster. Big Gary notes: "New terrorist weapon-- hamsters."

Telepathic Chiropractor loses his license
James Burda claimed that "he possessed the power to heal clients via techniques he dubbed "Bahlaqeem Vina" and "Bahlaqeem Jaqem," made-up terms that he said described his ability to go back in time to the date of an injury and realign bones and joints using telekinetic vibration." Now he's lost his chiropractor's license. (But do chiropractor's even need a license to practice?) Check out his website if you're interested in how to do a Vibrational Vina on your weyzic.

Viagra Fish
Tiny Ayrai Kunchu fish have become all the rage in India, thanks to a rumor spread by fishermen that the fish have a Viagra-like effect (i.e. they cure impotence). However, "While it is believed that the fish can cure male impotency, those who sell it are not able to say what quantity of the fish must be consumed to achieve the Viagra-like effect." Sounds like the perfect recipe for a scam. If it's not working, they'll tell you it's because you need to eat even more.

Quick Links: Police Threaten Arrest Over Gnome, etc. — Police Threaten Arrest Over Gnome
Police are unamused by Gordon MacKillop's glowing garden gnome. Apparently it is offensive to his neighbours.

Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad
A joke site that has pretty much what the title suggests.

Priest Confesses to Madonna Threat
"A 63-year-old Dutch priest has confessed to calling in a phony bomb threat last week before a pair of Madonna concerts in Amsterdam in a last-ditch effort to stop the singer from staging her mock-crucifixion act, officials said Friday."

Infants-Blood — Infants-Blood is a website that claims: "Our uncompromising approach to quality means we offer simply the best infant's blood on the market today. Independent lab analysis proves it. And your taste buds will know the difference! "

They offer products in a number of categories - Bath & Beauty, Health & Nutrition, Premium Blood and Virgin's Blood.

It's pretty obviously a joke website. There are some wonderful quotes on it, including:

The 'Did You Know?' section is pretty funny, too.

For anyone who is still concerned, it's worth noting that if you attempt to log in or 'view cart', you (unsurprisingly) get a page that says: Due to overwhelming customer response, we are currently experiencing extremely high traffic. Online ordering is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience.
To place an order, please contact one of our Customer Care Specialists at
[email protected].
We appreciate your business and thank you for letting us serve all your baby-blood-related needs. Please accept our apologies and a complimentary pint of fresh Virgin's Blood.