Hoax Museum Blog: Food

Arômes Artificiels — The latest scandal in the world of French gourmet cuisine: the use of artificial bottled flavors (aka arômes artificiels) to substitute for high-end ingredients such as truffles, wild mushroom, caviar, prawn, crab, shallot, scallop, saffron, and even wine. The London Times reports: Many of these aromes can be purchased at chefsimon.com. Their pictures of the flavorings, such as the artificial wine powder, are kind of interesting. But their product page also bears the warning: USONS SANS ABUSER! (Let us use without abusing!)

Frog Salad — A few days ago a Burger King restaurant in the Netherlands debuted a new dish: frog salad. The first customer of this dish, a 23-year-old woman named Astrid Roek, had not realized what she had ordered. ABC News reports: So just to clarify: Burger King hadn't intended for the frog to get in the salad, but somehow it got there anyway. They're not really serving Frog Salad. (Though that item might go over well in France.) The question is, did the woman put the frog there, or was it Burger King's fault? It sounds like BK is taking the blame for this incident. Given the frequency of these gross-stuff-found-in-food stories, I think I'll soon need to devote a separate page to them. (Thanks to Stephen for the link.)

The Extreme Cuisine of Chef Kaz Yamamoto — Todd emailed me a link to this Phoenix New Times article about rogue chef "Kaz" Yamamoto, whose specialty is creating dishes from "meat, game and vegetation that's considered off limits, immoral or even illegal." We're talking about dishes such as Tenderloin of Bichon Frise, monkey brain stew, Arizona saguaro cactus salad, Yosemite brown bear, rhino genitals, giraffe tongue, Sea World sea lion (supposedly obtained by bribing a Sea World employee), etc. Yamamoto even claims to serve human flesh, obtained by paying Mexican immigrants a handsome sum for their kidney, arm, or leg. These delicacies are all served to a rich and powerful clientele who have a taste for forbidden food.


As Todd points out, this sounds a bit farfetched (and very reminiscent of the plot of The Freshman), but then again the Phoenix New Times is a real, credible paper. So why would they be making all this up? The answer is that the Phoenix New Times occasionally likes to print hoax stories. Back in 2004 I posted about their article on human taxidermy, which described a company that offered freeze-drying of corpses as an alternative to burial or cremation. (You could stand freeze-dried Grandma in the corner of your living room.) Human taxidermy was a hoax, and so is the extreme cuisine of Kaz Yamamoto. Clues (besides the outlandish nature of the article itself) are the photoshopped pictures (such as the one of Yamamoto cutting down a protected saguaro cactus) and the "Details" box which reads "Special Reports: As If. . .".

Love Spud — A rare heart-shaped potato has been found by Linda Greene of Moon Township, Pa. She found it in a sack of potatoes back in February and emailed the Idaho Potato Commission about it in March. For some reason it's only making headlines now. What makes the discovery of the potato strange is that irregularly shaped potatoes are supposed to be removed during the sorting process and used for french fries. The potato commission president said: "I would guarantee someone saw it and thought, 'This is cool, we'll let this go through.'... Typically, unique shapes will go into processing _ dehydrated or cut up into french fries." To those who suggest the love spud is a plant (pun intended), being used by the commission to drum up publicity, the commission president says, "We didn't plant it. We'll have to start sorting for heart-shaped potatoes." (Thanks to Big Gary for the story)

Inflatable Pub — Speaking of fake Irish bars, now it's possible to have an instant fake British pub, anywhere you like. It's advertised as "the Worlds first fully functioning Mobile Inflatable Pub." This comes from the same people who brought us the world's first inflatable church. Ideally it should come with a bartender who fakes a British accent.

Human-Flavored Rum — This could be the next big thing: Soylent Green Human-Flavored Rum. Reuters reports: You could prepare a dinner starting with human-flavored tofu, seasoned with some human-hair soy sauce (and a little bit of bread made from human hair as a sidedish), and then wash it all down with this human-flavored rum. Yum! (Thanks to Big Gary for the link.)

Update: As Joe points out in the comments, this story sounds an awful lot like the tapping the admiral legend, which involves Admiral Nelson's body being preserved in a cask of rum while at sea, and the cask slowly being drained by sailors on the voyage home. World Wide Words points out that: "Jan Harald Brunvand, the American academic who has made a lifelong study of such legends, has told versions in one of his books, including a related one dating back six hundred years about some tomb robbers in Egypt. Other tales tell of containers holding similarly preserved bodies of monkeys or apes that spring a leak on their way from Africa to museums; the leaking spirits are consumed with a gusto that turns to horror when the truth of the situation emerges." So given the relatively flaky source on the Reuters story (a Hungarian website), it's probable that whoever runs the Hungarian website got taken in by an urban legend, and then Reuters in turn was taken in by it.

Finger Served To Diner — Taking a cue from Wendy's (see gross things found in food, TGI Friday's served a diner a piece of a human finger. Except in this case the finger piece really did get on the customer's plate as a result of a kitchen mishap, not because the customer put it there himself. Apparently one of the kitchen workers had sliced off a bit of his finger by mistake, and while everyone was rushing to help him, no one noticed that the finger piece had landed on a plate of food, which was then served to a customer. The customer noticed right away. But it doesn't look like the diner will be able to make millions off of this, because the police told him it wasn't a criminal matter. (Thanks to Big Gary for the link.)

In related news, the suspects in the 2004 Cracker Barrel Soup Mouse case (also described in my post about gross things found in food) have been convicted on felony charges of conspiracy to commit extortion because of their demand that Cracker Barrel pay them $500,000 after they falsely claimed to have found a mouse in their soup while dining there.

Casu Marzu (aka Maggot Cheese) — Thanks to Mark Holah (aka Rennet) for bringing the Sardinian specialty known as Casu Marzu to my attention. Casu Marzu is a type of pecorino cheese infested with thousands of wriggling maggots. If the maggots are still wriggling, then it's okay to eat (if you have a strong stomach). If the maggots aren't wriggling, that means the cheese has become toxic. The wikipedia entry for Casu Marzu is so bizarre, that you'd swear it has to be a joke:

Derived from Pecorino Sardo, casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider to be decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly, Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called "lagrima") seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as transparent, white worms, about 8 mm (1/3 inch) long. When disturbed, the larvae can jump for distances up to 15 cm (6 inches), prompting recommendations of eye protection for those eating the cheese. Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.

However, Casu Marzu is quite real. It's been described in a number of newspapers and magazines including The Wall Street Journal and Bon Appetit. Taras Grescoe recently wrote about it in The Devil's Picnic: A Tour of Everything the Governments of the World Don't Want You to Try.

Apparently Casu Marzu isn't even the most disgusting food Sardinians eat. According to a 2004 article in Australian Magazine, that honor goes to 'tordi':

These are small, 10cm-long songbirds that feed on the island's plentiful myrtle berries. They are netted and poached, then served cold, three or four at a time, garnished with myrtle leaves. Their eyes are black, haunting, their necks spindly. They look like a plateful of baby dinosaurs. You are supposed to eat them whole - everything but the beak - in a few crunches.

If one is going to try some Casu Marzu, I think the perfect drink to wash it down would be some Army Worm Wine.

Microwaved Water Kills Plants — I've posted before about theories that microwaved food is bad for you, but this is slightly different. Some guy has posted pictures of his granddaughter's science fair project in which she tested the effect microwaved water would have on a plant. The result: the plant died. (Yes, the water had been cooled before she watered the plant with it.) But the plant given water that had been boiled on a stove did just fine. So what does this prove? That microwaved water is toxic? Not necessarily. The guy notes:

We have seen a number of comments on this, such as what was the water in the microwave boiled in. The thinking is that maybe some leaching took place if it was in plastic. It was boiled in a plastic cup, so this could be a possibility. Also it was not a double blind experiment, so she knew which was which when watering them. On top of that she was wanting the microwaved ones to do poorly, and although most scientists would dismiss the idea, it is possible that her thoughts toward each plant had an effect as well. Bottom line is, the results are interesting, and duplicate the results that others have reported (try Googling '"microwaved water" plants') more experiments need to be done with better controls and as a double blind study. But this was a simple 6th grade science fair project, and was never intended to be anything more than that. The plants were genetically identical, they were produced from graphs from the same parent plant, so that variable can be eliminated.

Intriguingly, the Straight Dope (a source I usually trust) has written an article about the controversy over microwave cooking, and he notes that scientists actually do not fully understand the chemical changes that take place when food is microwaved, and so there may indeed be some kind of "microwave effect." He notes a 1992 Stanford study that found microwaving breast milk mysteriously reduces its infection-fighting properties, as well as studies that have found that microwaves can accelerate certain chemical reactions. He writes: "'One suggestion,' a bunch of chemists wrote recently, 'is that this is some form of 'ponderomotive' driving force that arises when high frequency electric fields modulate ionic currents near interfaces with abrupt differences in ion mobility.'" He doesn't attempt to explain this theory.

I would repeat the girl's experiment myself, but everything I try to grow mysteriously dies, so there wouldn't be much point. (via The Greener Side)

Boston Couple Eats Glass — When I was in elementary school, I often heard a rumor that if you ate chalk you could fake the symptoms of being sick, and thus not have to go to school. I never tried it, but this couple seems to have taken the same idea and advanced it a step further:

A couple has been charged with filing fraudulent insurance claims that said they had eaten glass found in their food at restaurants, hotels and grocery stores, federal prosecutors said... The couple used aliases, false Social Security numbers and identity cards, and in some cases, had eaten glass intentionally to support their insurance claims, prosecutors said. The glass did not come from the food they had bought, prosecutors said.

On the other hand, this couple could also suffer from hyalophagia, a medical disorder characterized by the eating of glass. (Thanks to Joe Littrell for the link)

$150 McDonald Sandwich — You've probably heard of the $250 Neiman Marcus Cookie. Now comes word of a $150 McDonald Sandwich. Yes, it's real, but it's not a sandwich from the fast-food McDonalds. It's being sold at Selfridges, a UK department store, and it's named after Scott McDonald, the executive chef at the store. Obviously the name is a little tongue-in-cheek. The sandwich is supposedly worth $150 "because of the Wagyu beef that makes up most of the filling... the 595-gram sandwich comprises 24-hour fermented sour dough bread, spread with a foie gras-flavoured mayonnaise. It also contains Brie de Meaux, considered one of Europe's finest cheeses, English cherry tomatoes and rocket, plus roasted peppers." The BBC has a picture of it.

The Boonville Beer — I've found another beer to add to my list of hoax-themed beers: Boonville Beer. Its label shows a picture of a bear with antlers. I was having a bottle of this beer (the outmeal stout) out on the patio this afternoon, saw the antlered bear, and got curious. A quick internet search revealed that the creature isn't actually a bear. The Anderson Valley Brewing Company website explains:

It's not a bear. Bears don't have antlers. Of course not. Who ever heard of such a thing? It is, however, a BEER. The Legendary Boonville Beer to be exact. Barkley, by name, who could be considered a cross between a bear and a deer (thus a beer). Barkley and his brethren are often seen about Anderson Valley by lovers of truly fine beers (especially if they've had a few).

The beer itself was pretty good, though I usually prefer stouts that have more of a chocolate flavor.

Dorset Naga: The Hottest Chili In The World — A British mail-order chili firm, Peppers by Post, claims that it has developed the hottest chili in the world. Its website states:

We – Michael and Joy Michaud – grow chillies and sell them by mail order to customers throughout Great Britain... One of the items in our catalogue is Dorset Naga, an exceptionally hot variety that we developed from a Bangladeshi chilli known as Naga Morich. In 2005 we collected a sample of this chilli, and had it tested for heat by two laboratories in the USA. The result, measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), were astounding: taking an average of the two, Dorset Naga came in at 923,000 SHU. To put this figure in context, the Guinness world record for the hottest chilli is currently held by Red Savina, which was once measured at 577,000 SHU... This makes Dorset Naga more than 50% hotter than Red Savina, and clearly a contender for the title ‘hottest chilli in the world’.

The rest of the website is full of facts and information about the Dorset Naga, making me inclined to believe that what they say is true: that the Dorset Naga really is the hottest chili in the world. But here's the catch. The news about the Dorset Naga appeared in many newspapers on April 1. The April 1st United Press International article notes:

They said they even have to wear gloves when they harvest the seeds. "Most people don't cook with it; they just have it near to them when they eat," said Aktar Miha, of the Indis Bangladeshi restaurant in Bournemouth, England. "If you don't know what you are doing it could blow your head off."

That kind of sounds like they're joking. Nevertheless, I don't think the Dorset Naga is a joke. But real or not, I don't plan to ever try this stuff. I like my taste buds too much to do that to them.

Buying Strawberries Out of Season Kills Hippos — A story about the threat to hippos posed by consumers buying strawberries out of season appeared in a few papers last week. Because of the story's proximity to April Fool's Day, it seemed like it might have been a joke, but apparently it wasn't. The reasoning behind the warning is that Kenya is a major supplier of strawberries to Europe. But in order to keep up with the demand for year-round strawberries, Kenyan farmers are draining Lake Naivasha, which is home to thousands of hippos. So if you buy fresh strawberries in the middle of winter, you may end up causing the death of a hippo in Kenya. Dr. Harper, of the University of Leicester notes:

"Almost everybody in Europe who has eaten Kenyan beans or Kenyan strawberries, and gazed at Kenyan roses, has bought Naivasha water. It will become a turgid, smelly pond with impoverished communities eking out a living along bare shores."

Just something to feel guilty about as you enjoy your strawberries and cream.

Fake Irish Pubs — Perfectly timed for St. Patrick's Day, Austin Kelley has an interesting article in Slate.com about the faux Irish pub revolution... i.e. how Irish pubs slapped together with off-the-shelf charm and quaintness have been popping up in cities all over the world. The term I've heard to describe this phenomenon (which Kelley doesn't mention) is To Irishise, meaning to transform a bar, with the help of interior design specialists, into a fake Irish pub. Kelley traces the roots of this phenomenon back to 1991, when Dublin-based IPCo started to aggressively export the "Irish Pub Concept" around the world. Nowadays would-be Irish pub owners can choose from a variety of pre-packaged styles: the "Country Cottage," the "Gaelic," the "Traditional Pub Shop," or the "Brewery":

IPCo will assemble your chosen pub in Ireland. Then they'll bring the whole thing to your space and set it up. All you have to do is some basic prep, and voilà! Ireland arrives in Dubai. (IPCo has built several pubs and a mock village there.)

The irony here, as Kelley points out, is that Ireland is exporting a kind of quaintness that never quite existed in Ireland itself... but these very same pre-packaged Irish pubs are now being built in Ireland itself, alongside (and often crowding out) the real, authentic Irish pubs. The fake replaces the real.

But I have to admit that I'm guilty of frequenting some fake Irish pubs here in San Diego. After all, the decor may be fake, but the Guinness and boxty and corned beef still taste pretty good.

Related Posts:
Dec. 7, 2003: Plastic Turkeys and Ploughman Lunches

The Tongue Map — One of the many catalogs I receive is the Wine Enthusiast. On the inside cover of the catalog I received last week is a description of Symphony Stemware wine glasses which are supposedly "designed and shaped to enhance the best characteristics of every wine." Accompanying this claim is a map of the tongue with the following caption:

"The specially designed shape of each glass directs the flow of wine to the proper areas of your palate, emphasizing a wine's best qualities and creating a balanced taste for maximum enjoyment."

Symphony isn't the only company to use a tongue map to promote their glasses. Riedel uses the same gimmick in their marketing. The thing is, from what I understand, the tongue map is a completely bogus idea. The tongue is not divided into taste regions. And even if it were, no glass is going to be able to direct flavors to one specific area of the tongue.

An article from the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine ("Shattered Myths" by Daniel Zwerdling... I can't find a link to it), tackled the tongue-map myth at some length and thoroughly debunked it:

"The tongue map? That old saw?" scoffs Linda Bartoshuk when I reach her at her laboratory at the Yale Univerity School of Medicine. Bartoshuk has done landmark studies on how people taste. "No, no. There isn't any 'tongue map.'"
Wait a minute: When you sip Pinot Noir from the correct Riedel glass, won't it maximize the fruit flavors by rushing the wine to the "sweet" zone on the tip of your tongue? When you serve a Chardonnay with too much fruit, won't the correct glass balance the flavors by directing the wine to the "acid" spots near the middle? "Nope," Bartoshuk laughs. "It's wrong." She and other scientists have proved that you can taste salty, sweet, and bitter everywhere on the tongue where there are taste buds. "Your brain doesn't care where taste is coming from in your mouth," Bartoshuk says. "And researchers have known this for thirty years."

The Wikipedia article on taste buds also debunks the idea of the tongue map: "Contrary to popular understanding, taste is not experienced on different parts of the tongue. The 'tongue map myth' was based on a mistranslation of a German paper that was written in 1901 by a Harvard psychologist. Though there are small differences in sensation, which can be measured with highly specific instruments, all taste buds can respond to all types of taste."

Pastry Burgers — Apparently some men feel self-conscious about eating pastries in public, fearing that chowing down on confectioneries doesn't look very manly. Mamido's burgers, a restaurant in Japan, has the solution. It disguises pastries as fast food. Treehugger reports:

The "bun" is actually a sponge cake, the "patty" inside is chocolate cream, and the "pickles" are kiwis. The deep-fried fish burger, meanwhile, priced at ¥440 ($3.70), features a banana shaped like a fish fillet in sponge cake. It is topped with "tartar sauce," which is actually fresh cream. And the gratin burger, also at ¥440, is a sandwich with a cream cheese and fruit filling. The side dishes are equally ingenious. The French fries look like the real thing but are actually custard cream covered in starch powder and deep-fried.

I have no problem eating pastry in public, but I'd gladly eat some of this fast-food/pastry as well.

Ayds Weight-Loss Candy — On Google video there are a couple of commercials from the early 80s touting a weight-loss product called Ayds. (An Ayds radio commercial can be heard here.) The name of the product is so unfortunate, that it makes the ads sound like Saturday Night Live skits, with lines such as: "Ayds helps you control your appetite so you lose weight... Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?... Ayds helps you lose weight safely and effectively!"

However, the ads are totally real, as was the product. Many of you might even remember it (though I don't). Ayds was an appetite-suppressant candy that came in chocolate, butterscotch and caramel flavors. During the 70s it was one of the top-selling weight-loss products. But then along came AIDS. In 1983 Time Magazine reported retailers as saying that "the disease is not hurting the product... Ayds sales have never been better." However, by 1988 the Associated Press was reporting that Ayds sales were down 50 percent, because of the similarity between its name and AIDS. This prompted the maker of the candy to change its name to Diet Ayds. The AP reported "Dep chairman Robert Berglass told the AP the company wanted to soften the name without completely changing it and losing identification. Sales were moving back up, he said, but he was reluctant to predict a full recovery." Evidently the candy didn't make a recovery, but I can't find any record of exactly when it ceased being sold.

Fake Guinness Scam — I'm a big fan of Guinness (Murphy's and Beamish as well), so this news report from Africa of a Guinness counterfeiting scam caught my eye. Three men have been charged with producing fake Guinness and selling it to bars in Nigeria. (From what I've heard, Guinness is incredibly popular in Nigeria.) The way they created the phony Guinness was what I found interesting:

They further explained that they buy the original product of Wilmot Stout [a cheap beer] from a depot located in Zuba in large quantity and with that they proceed to their factory where they start by first washing the empty Guinness bottles with the omo and water. After washing all the bottles, they then begin to open the original Wilmot Stout and empty into the already washed Guinness bottles and immediately use the fabricated cork machine to cork firmly so that it does not go flat. When that is done, they arrange the bottles into the crates and distribute to their customers.

I had imagined them brewing up fake Guinness in home-brew kits, but simply pouring a cheap bottled stout into a Guinness bottle is obviously much simpler. Bottled stout tends to be rather dense and not highly carbonated, so this would have aided their deception.

White House Valentine’s Day Dinner — For Valentine's Day my wife and I went to a restaurant called Green Tomato and had a great meal which included ravioli in a mustard cream sauce, green tomato soup, and chicken stuffed with mascarpone and spinach. But apparently, if this picture which is going around can be believed, the Valentine's Day dinner at the White House was quite a bit fancier than what I had. I don't see any good reason why this White House menu shouldn't be real. After all, the White House does employ a master chef. But it is possible that someone created this menu as a kind of fantasy meal. I checked out the White House website, but unfortunately no dinner menus were posted there. (via Martini Republic)