Mmm, oh yeah…good point about the juice. Well, that’s why we have a juicer! We do our own. Tastes sooo much better, and it’s so much better for you.
You’ll get your chance to be a farmer, yet! I can see you with a very large plot in NZ. In the meantime, do you have your own garden where you live now? I LOVED having one last summer! I was always in awe of being able to step outside and in minutes be eating a salad! And all we had was a strip at the side of the house. Very low maintenance; I mean, it all took care of itself. We grew tomatoes, lettuce, celery, onions, and cucumbers. This summer we’re plotting a piece of the backyard!
I’ve heard tales that the World health organization is pushing governments to ban people from growing their own foods due to the bacteria concerns. I guess they think it’s best that we all eat irradiated foods that have had all the enzymes and nutrients fried out of them.
GRRRR! Already natural supplements are harder for us to obtain. Watch me grow my own garden anyway, even if it comes to them banning growing our own food. I can’t think of anything more blatantly agenda-based. The idea of it seems right out of a movie.
Canada is the only G7 country that won’t allow the sale of raw milk (you can drink it but you can’t sell it).
She shocked me because she totally agreed with it, saying that the government shouldn’t allow it because it isn’t safe etc. etc.
So I said to her, “well, the government doesn’t seem to have any problems collecting tax money on cigarettes, alcohol, fast food and so forth – and we *know* these all kill people or make them sick – seems a bit hypocritical to me.”
I mean, we’ve been drinking raw milk a lot longer than pasteurized stuff. Many people think that pasteurization is more important to kill off what we introduce from our mega dairies than anything that’s in the product itself…
Well, when natural foods are outlawed, only outlaws will have natural foods, right?
but. this, uh “story” is filled with misspellings. suspicious grammar. McDonald’s wasn’t even spelled right. looks like fakery. Actually, the very short span of time I spent on the source site looks like it specializes in bad writing and photoshop trickery.
One misspelling in an article is bad, but more than one? Click away, far, far away….
French panic: You raise a good point. I noticed the bad grammar and spelling, too. Though I have to say, I don’t read our town paper, the Intelligencer, which is also notorious for misspellings and bad grammar; I have seen “mall” spelled incorrectly, let alone McDonald’s. Sometimes small-town papers are sketchy at best.
PS. I’m not doubting you. But I have to admit the site is entertaining.
The $100,000 wouldn’t surprise me if the story is real. I’m amazing at what people sue each other over. How would finding a chicken head in your food worth $100K???
I’ve gotta side with french panic here.
The initial shock-value of this picture is nice, but it was probably made just for fun.
1. McDonald’s doesn’t even manufacture boxes like that. The 20 pc nugget box is smaller, and the story claimed it was from a happy meal.
2. If you analyze the first photo manipulation, there’s Photoshop residue around the red McDonald’s logo.
3. The box itself looks suspiciously like a Kentucky Fried Chicken box.
4. The chicken head she’s holding looks like it was originally a chicken leg, with the textures mapped and merged to a separate photo of a chicken head.
5. The story is not written from the mother’s perspective and suspiciously makes her sound like a mindless fat pig.
6. There’s too many unimportant details (such as what the mother ordered, etc) just like what you’d find in your typical forwarded email.
7. Like was mentioned, there’s lots of spelling errors from the word despite (dispite?) to McDonald’s (MacDonald’s).
8. This would have made national news. Even when a small restaurant serves up even a piece of fried rat, we hear about it.
@ Alex: that last bit is what made me suspicious of the story, but as you said, it is really amazing what people will sue over, and for how much. Sick, really.
@ Cirellio: My god, man, you really picked that apart. I feel utterly ashamed now for having even posted it, and am considering deleting the post altogether because now I’m embarrassed! It was supposed to be funny, but I will admit I didn’t know for certain it wasn’t real. Guess I had better act more like an editor even when I’m not working!
The unimportant details didn’t flag my suspicion, other than to further prove the writer was not good at his or her craft. Again, our Belleville paper is not too far off from that type of writing, including the perspective issue you mentioned, which also didn’t really catch my attention.
PS. How on earth did you know that about the boxes? Are you a frequent fast food eater?
Don’t delete it Steph! The discussion has been fun, and isn’t that what it is all about?
The bottom line is, this *could* have happened, right? Even though the chicken in your McNuggets is mechanically deboned by being blasted off the bones and forced through a fine metal screen with high pressure steam. Yum yum!
And the truth is that – while we’re not likely to see a chicken head in our food – what we won’t see is much more dangerous e.g. e.coli, lysteria, botulism etc.
All things considered, I’d rather find a chicken head…
PS-> I know what the McDonald’s packaging looks like because, well, I just remember that kind of stuff. That and I live in the middle of a city where litter of all kind migrates with the wind.
Snopes.com is a pretty good website for debunking urban legends. I looked up the chickenhead nugget story, and apparently the jury is still out. They’re still investigating to see whether this is real or not. I’ve googled other new sites, which claim it’s true.
The allegedly happened in 2000. And the box was a bit bigger than the normal nugget box, because McD’s was apparently promoting chicken wings at the time.
Anyway, vegetarians still risk getting screwed with the foods out there. Ecoli on tomatoes or lettuce. Botulims in carrot juice (like Brett said). Or how about the present peanut recall?
I think the safest thing is to forage for nuts and berries on our own.
I’m thinking of switching to Soylent Green myself. Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow are okay, but Soylent Green is much more nutritious, being made from high-energy plankton and all…
(Yeah, yeah, I know what Charlton Heston said, but he was delirious, you see…)
Hey Friar, thanks for that research! Very interesting that there are claims it’s real.
You’re right about veggies still getting screwed, but not like that. At least you can’t see botulism! At least it’s not going to be a dead animal! (Maybe a worm, though. I’ve seen quite a few of those. Blech!!)
PS. I don’t do peanuts.
@ Brett: I’ve never seen the movie, but I’d like to read the book! (PS. I don’t know what Heston said!)
Friar: Foraging can be dangerous, too. On a camping trip a few years back, Colin got really sick after eating what he was sure was a blueberry! Algonquin is full of blueberries, and we’ve picked many containers. I guess the plants on the island at Lake of Two Rivers aren’t the same…whoops!
You have to know your stuff. Didn’t the guy from Into the Wild die of eating a poisonous mushroom or something?
The guy got cut off from civilization (a fast-running river from snow-melt prevented him from getting back). He starved to death (they speculate he got poisoned by eating wild tubers).
The aftermath of the book showed if he had done his research, he’d have found a winch-cable downstream that would have allowed him to cross the river (IF he had bothered to get a map of the area). I think the guy was kind of a tortured-intellectual idiot (He did all kinds of stupid things…like not having proper boots and camping supplies..etc.).
Steph,
This is hysterical! Don’t you dare delete it! If it’s fake (which I assume it is), the Photoshopping alone merits attention.
@Friar & Steph: So funny that you bring up Into the Wild. It’s one of my husband’s favorite books, and we saw the movie just this past weekend. Such beautiful scenery for such a dark story (wouldn’t you love to hike that area?).
Anyway, I agree with Friar completely: I couldn’t really get into the movie because I didn’t like the main character. Not only was he completely unprepared for his adventure, he was a bit pompous and hypocritical. Wouldn’t you at least take a survival course before venturing in the Alaskan wild?
I’ve hiked in that area….it’s fantanstic!!!. The town of Healy, Alaska is right next to Denali National Park, I’ve stayed there. The spot where Alex was found wasn’t that far away from a major highway.
Jon Krakauer, the author, leaves it up to the reader to decide if Alex was a hero following his dream, or just an unstable kid who was stupid and unprepared. I think the latter. But it was still a great book.
I know I’ve read in the paper about rat meat being served up before. Yucky!
Somebody once told me I reminded her of Alex from Into the Wild.
I didn’t know who Alex was at the time so I figured it was a compliment
But now that I know the story … Alex put his family through hell for selfish reasons. And yeah, he was unprepared for the wild. Not a hero.
I told her:
“There are a few similarities between me and the main character, but he chose a different path than I….
Though his intentions were pure, I felt like he was self-destructive and didn’t really end up helping anybody. In all actuality, he hurt a lot of people with his actions. And I don’t think I could totally abandon materialism quite like him ”
@Friar: I should’ve known you’ve been to Alaska! You hike the coolest places. After we saw the movie, my husband told me that I should read the book — he liked it much better than the film (isn’t that usually the way?).
@cirellio: That could be a compliment … it just depends on what she meant by the comparison. I totally agree with your assessment of the character. “Self-destructive” is a great way to describe him. (And you will NEVER see me eating the game he ate. Yuck!)
@Rebecca
Have you read “Into Thin Air” by the same author? It’s about the disastrous expedition up Mt. Everest in 1996. John Krakauer was on the climbing team, as a reporter. I’m not a climber myself…but it was a great read.
Eric: not at all! I wasn’t feeling so well when I saw the picture, either!
Friar and Rebecca: Both those books, but more Into Thin Air, were bestsellers. Into Thin Air was on the list forever and ever. I haven’t read it yet, but I mean to.
Hey, just dip it in Honey Mustard sauce and chow down
Food safety is always a concern of mine as a parent, whether we’re eating flora or fauna. Remember the Bolthouse Farms Carrot Juice botulism thing?
(Friar had a bottle of that in his fridge when that happened!)
Makes me want to be a farmer, I tell you… at least then if I want to eat McHeads, it’s up to me…
Mmm, oh yeah…good point about the juice. Well, that’s why we have a juicer! We do our own.
Tastes sooo much better, and it’s so much better for you.
You’ll get your chance to be a farmer, yet! I can see you with a very large plot in NZ. In the meantime, do you have your own garden where you live now? I LOVED having one last summer! I was always in awe of being able to step outside and in minutes be eating a salad! And all we had was a strip at the side of the house. Very low maintenance; I mean, it all took care of itself. We grew tomatoes, lettuce, celery, onions, and cucumbers. This summer we’re plotting a piece of the backyard!
Of course, it doesn’t matter whether it is meat or veg, it’s the preparation (though meat does seem to have more problems…)
We did tomatoes last year, and I want to do more this year. I think it will be up to me though – I’m the only one who wants to expand it!
I’ve heard tales that the World health organization is pushing governments to ban people from growing their own foods due to the bacteria concerns. I guess they think it’s best that we all eat irradiated foods that have had all the enzymes and nutrients fried out of them.
GRRRR! Already natural supplements are harder for us to obtain. Watch me grow my own garden anyway, even if it comes to them banning growing our own food. I can’t think of anything more blatantly agenda-based. The idea of it seems right out of a movie.
The WHO can go you know where… sounds to me like they might be getting “donations” from certain companies if they are saying that.
I had a conversation with a co-worker about a week ago that shocked me, mostly because she grows a garden of her own. I mentioned the case that’s in court right now about raw milk http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090127/raw_milk_090127/20090127 and how I didn’t think it made sense.
Canada is the only G7 country that won’t allow the sale of raw milk (you can drink it but you can’t sell it).
She shocked me because she totally agreed with it, saying that the government shouldn’t allow it because it isn’t safe etc. etc.
So I said to her, “well, the government doesn’t seem to have any problems collecting tax money on cigarettes, alcohol, fast food and so forth – and we *know* these all kill people or make them sick – seems a bit hypocritical to me.”
I mean, we’ve been drinking raw milk a lot longer than pasteurized stuff. Many people think that pasteurization is more important to kill off what we introduce from our mega dairies than anything that’s in the product itself…
Well, when natural foods are outlawed, only outlaws will have natural foods, right?
Ewwww. I feel sick.
but. this, uh “story” is filled with misspellings. suspicious grammar. McDonald’s wasn’t even spelled right. looks like fakery. Actually, the very short span of time I spent on the source site looks like it specializes in bad writing and photoshop trickery.
One misspelling in an article is bad, but more than one? Click away, far, far away….
French panic: You raise a good point. I noticed the bad grammar and spelling, too. Though I have to say, I don’t read our town paper, the Intelligencer, which is also notorious for misspellings and bad grammar; I have seen “mall” spelled incorrectly, let alone McDonald’s. Sometimes small-town papers are sketchy at best.
PS. I’m not doubting you. But I have to admit the site is entertaining.
Yikes! I come back to a new format and fried chicken head. You are like a crazy teen throwing a party when the adults are away.
BrettHead: hmmm…maybe because I never did that when I was actually a teen. My parents never went ANYWHERE (without us, that is)!
The $100,000 wouldn’t surprise me if the story is real. I’m amazing at what people sue each other over. How would finding a chicken head in your food worth $100K???
I’ve gotta side with french panic here.
The initial shock-value of this picture is nice, but it was probably made just for fun.
1. McDonald’s doesn’t even manufacture boxes like that. The 20 pc nugget box is smaller, and the story claimed it was from a happy meal.
2. If you analyze the first photo manipulation, there’s Photoshop residue around the red McDonald’s logo.
3. The box itself looks suspiciously like a Kentucky Fried Chicken box.
4. The chicken head she’s holding looks like it was originally a chicken leg, with the textures mapped and merged to a separate photo of a chicken head.
5. The story is not written from the mother’s perspective and suspiciously makes her sound like a mindless fat pig.
6. There’s too many unimportant details (such as what the mother ordered, etc) just like what you’d find in your typical forwarded email.
7. Like was mentioned, there’s lots of spelling errors from the word despite (dispite?) to McDonald’s (MacDonald’s).
8. This would have made national news. Even when a small restaurant serves up even a piece of fried rat, we hear about it.
@ Alex: that last bit is what made me suspicious of the story, but as you said, it is really amazing what people will sue over, and for how much. Sick, really.
@ Cirellio: My god, man, you really picked that apart. I feel utterly ashamed now for having even posted it, and am considering deleting the post altogether because now I’m embarrassed! It was supposed to be funny, but I will admit I didn’t know for certain it wasn’t real. Guess I had better act more like an editor even when I’m not working!
The unimportant details didn’t flag my suspicion, other than to further prove the writer was not good at his or her craft. Again, our Belleville paper is not too far off from that type of writing, including the perspective issue you mentioned, which also didn’t really catch my attention.
PS. How on earth did you know that about the boxes? Are you a frequent fast food eater?
The site is called Slightly Warped. I wonder now if that has double meaning?
Don’t delete it Steph! The discussion has been fun, and isn’t that what it is all about?
The bottom line is, this *could* have happened, right? Even though the chicken in your McNuggets is mechanically deboned by being blasted off the bones and forced through a fine metal screen with high pressure steam. Yum yum!
And the truth is that – while we’re not likely to see a chicken head in our food – what we won’t see is much more dangerous e.g. e.coli, lysteria, botulism etc.
All things considered, I’d rather find a chicken head…
eep! Don’t feel embarrassed! And don’t delete it… Brett’s right.
^__^;;
Sorry, I tend to approach everything with a healthy amount of skepticism.
PS-> I know what the McDonald’s packaging looks like because, well, I just remember that kind of stuff. That and I live in the middle of a city where litter of all kind migrates with the wind.
Snopes.com is a pretty good website for debunking urban legends. I looked up the chickenhead nugget story, and apparently the jury is still out. They’re still investigating to see whether this is real or not. I’ve googled other new sites, which claim it’s true.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/friedrat.asp
The allegedly happened in 2000. And the box was a bit bigger than the normal nugget box, because McD’s was apparently promoting chicken wings at the time.
Anyway, vegetarians still risk getting screwed with the foods out there. Ecoli on tomatoes or lettuce. Botulims in carrot juice (like Brett said). Or how about the present peanut recall?
I think the safest thing is to forage for nuts and berries on our own.
I’m thinking of switching to Soylent Green myself. Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow are okay, but Soylent Green is much more nutritious, being made from high-energy plankton and all…
(Yeah, yeah, I know what Charlton Heston said, but he was delirious, you see…)
Hey Friar, thanks for that research! Very interesting that there are claims it’s real.
You’re right about veggies still getting screwed, but not like that. At least you can’t see botulism! At least it’s not going to be a dead animal! (Maybe a worm, though. I’ve seen quite a few of those. Blech!!)
PS. I don’t do peanuts.
@ Brett: I’ve never seen the movie, but I’d like to read the book! (PS. I don’t know what Heston said!)
Friar: Foraging can be dangerous, too. On a camping trip a few years back, Colin got really sick after eating what he was sure was a blueberry! Algonquin is full of blueberries, and we’ve picked many containers. I guess the plants on the island at Lake of Two Rivers aren’t the same…whoops!
You have to know your stuff. Didn’t the guy from Into the Wild die of eating a poisonous mushroom or something?
“Soylent Green is people! We’ve got to stop them somehow!”
For you see… we are what we eat… we eat what we are… in the future anyway
@Steph
Did you read that book “Into the Wild”?
The guy got cut off from civilization (a fast-running river from snow-melt prevented him from getting back). He starved to death (they speculate he got poisoned by eating wild tubers).
The aftermath of the book showed if he had done his research, he’d have found a winch-cable downstream that would have allowed him to cross the river (IF he had bothered to get a map of the area). I think the guy was kind of a tortured-intellectual idiot (He did all kinds of stupid things…like not having proper boots and camping supplies..etc.).
Steph,
This is hysterical! Don’t you dare delete it! If it’s fake (which I assume it is), the Photoshopping alone merits attention.
@Friar & Steph: So funny that you bring up Into the Wild. It’s one of my husband’s favorite books, and we saw the movie just this past weekend. Such beautiful scenery for such a dark story (wouldn’t you love to hike that area?).
Anyway, I agree with Friar completely: I couldn’t really get into the movie because I didn’t like the main character. Not only was he completely unprepared for his adventure, he was a bit pompous and hypocritical. Wouldn’t you at least take a survival course before venturing in the Alaskan wild?
@Rebecca
I’ve hiked in that area….it’s fantanstic!!!. The town of Healy, Alaska is right next to Denali National Park, I’ve stayed there. The spot where Alex was found wasn’t that far away from a major highway.
Jon Krakauer, the author, leaves it up to the reader to decide if Alex was a hero following his dream, or just an unstable kid who was stupid and unprepared. I think the latter. But it was still a great book.
I know I’ve read in the paper about rat meat being served up before. Yucky!
”
Somebody once told me I reminded her of Alex from Into the Wild.
I didn’t know who Alex was at the time so I figured it was a compliment
But now that I know the story … Alex put his family through hell for selfish reasons. And yeah, he was unprepared for the wild. Not a hero.
I told her:
“There are a few similarities between me and the main character, but he chose a different path than I….
Though his intentions were pure, I felt like he was self-destructive and didn’t really end up helping anybody. In all actuality, he hurt a lot of people with his actions. And I don’t think I could totally abandon materialism quite like him
@Friar: I should’ve known you’ve been to Alaska! You hike the coolest places. After we saw the movie, my husband told me that I should read the book — he liked it much better than the film (isn’t that usually the way?).
@cirellio: That could be a compliment … it just depends on what she meant by the comparison.
I totally agree with your assessment of the character. “Self-destructive” is a great way to describe him. (And you will NEVER see me eating the game he ate. Yuck!)
@Rebecca
Have you read “Into Thin Air” by the same author? It’s about the disastrous expedition up Mt. Everest in 1996. John Krakauer was on the climbing team, as a reporter. I’m not a climber myself…but it was a great read.
Sorry guys, will answer your comments soon. Busy lately!!
Thanks, now I know my gag reflexes are still working properly.
@Friar – I haven’t read Into Thin Air, but my husbands has–and he raves about it! Not sure how uplifting it will be, but I’ll give it a read.
Didn’t mean to scare you with that last comment!
Eric: not at all! I wasn’t feeling so well when I saw the picture, either!
Friar and Rebecca: Both those books, but more Into Thin Air, were bestsellers. Into Thin Air was on the list forever and ever. I haven’t read it yet, but I mean to.