Hoax Museum Blog: Food

Holy Bottled Water — This is an odd marketing gimmick. This company is selling Holy Bottled Water. Of course, the label could easily be mistakenly read as Holy Water Bottled. But it's not holy water (in the sense of water that's been blessed by a priest). It's just regular old bottled water. The closest they come to explaining why their water is holy is this cryptic claim:

From the River of Living Water flows 'Holy Bottled Water Inc.' Produced by man under the inspiration of God.

They also make the strange claim that "WATER IS TWICE AS VALUABLE AS OIL" (as if that should make you want to buy their water), but wouldn't that depend on the type of oil? (via J-Walk)

Powdered Alcohol — I've posted before about chewy vodka bars, which are real not real (I included them as a question on my April Fool's Day test), although chewable rice wine is real. But now a German company is going a step further by making powdered alcohol, which it's marketing to teenagers. From an article in Deutsche Welle:

The powder inside contains alcohol, and a lot of it -- about 4.8 percent by volume. That is the equivalent of one to one-and-a-half glasses of liquor. The product is called subyou, manufactured by a company in North Rhine-Westphalia, and is marketed squarely at teenagers with slogans like "taste for not much dough" and "gets a good buzz going." Add the powder to cold water, and consumers have an alcoholic drink containing either vodka or rum.

I find it pretty bizarre that it's possible to convert alcohol into a powdered form, but apparently this product is real. Word of this began to spread on the internet a couple of months ago (though I only become aware of it this week), and a posting on Gizmodo.com (which sounds believable to me, as a non-scientist) comfirms that it is possible, in theory, to create powdered alcohol. The trick seems to be to mix it with sugar first:

subyou could be say 95% filler (sugar?) which has been mixed with a small amount of ethanol (your link suggests 4.8% ethanol by volume). Given that this amount of alcohol, even if one were to eat the powder straight, is only 9.6 proof “alcohol”, I’m skeptical that it’s as powerful as the website would like us to believe.

But even if this stuff is real, I can't imagine powdered rum tastes anything like the real thing.

Glowing Pork Chops — A few Australian consumers have apparently opened their refrigerator and discovered that their pork chops are glowing. This has caused concerns about radioactive contamination. To allay these fears, the New South Wales food authority issued a statement assuring everyone that the glowing is caused by a harmless bacteria called Pseudomonas fluorescens:

"The Food Authority understands that many people would be alarmed to discover their food glowing in the fridge, but we can assure NSW consumers that the bacteria responsible is totally harmless if consumed," Mr Davey said.
"Pseudomonas fluorescens is normally present on meat and seafood at low levels and proper cooking kills it.
"And while most of us would understandably be shocked to see our food glowing, it is important to remember that the micro-organism responsible for the glow is not known to cause food poisoning."

This is the first I've ever heard of glowing meat, but the food authority's explanation sounds logical. I don't think radiated food would glow unless it was so radioactive as to be instantly lethal.

Salmon-Flavored Soda — Just in time for Thanksgiving, Jones Soda is debuting salmon-flavored soda. It's a publicity stunt, but it's real. They boast that "When you smell it, it's got that smoked salmon aroma." Yum. Just what I want my soda to smell like. They've also got other thanksgiving-themed sodas that come together in a holiday pack: Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto, Cranberry Sauce, Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing, Pumpkin Pie, Broccoli Casserole, Corn on the Cob, and Pecan Pie. You won't have to eat dinner at all. Just sample sodas all night. (Thanks to Big Gary for the link.)

Hydra High Energy H2O — The makers of Hydra High Energy H2O claim that most people in the world are chronically dehydrated. In fact, they claim that even people who are drinking up to half their body weight in water every day, are still dehydrated. They offer their product as the cure for this problem. They state that it "dramatically increases intra-cellular hydration – by an average of more than 22%"

So what makes Hydra H2O more hydrating than normal water? Well, according to the Hydra H2O website, normal water is comprised of large "H2O cluster aggregates" that have difficulty passing through the walls of cells. Hydra H2O, on the other hand, has been transformed via a proprietary process to become "micro-clustered." This micro-clustered water can pass more easily through cell walls, and thus hydrates the body more effectively. In fact, Hydra H2O is so potent that all you need do is mix two capfuls of it with one gallon of normal water "to make one gallon of super-hydrating Hydra Hi-Energy H20."

So what exactly is the secret proprietary process that transforms normal water into micro-clustered Hydra H2O? As far as I can tell, the secret is that they shake the water. However, they're not about to put it this plainly. Instead, they say that they use a "proprietary process of motion." They also note some mumbo jumbo about the use of "electromagnetic influences" and "pulsating vortexes."

In other words, my guess is that, except for its price tag, Hydra H2O is exactly the same as normal (shaken) water.

Peanut Butter Slices — This really shouldn't surprise me, but for some reason it does. A company has developed peanut butter slices that come in packs (similar to packs of sliced cheese). I'm not sure how they made the peanut butter rigid enough, and non-sticky enough, that it could be formed into a plastic-wrapped slice. But somehow they did. I'd be worried that whatever they did to it would affect the taste. No word on whether anyone has developed sliced jam. [Update: they have; see the comments below.] I think if you're going to eat sliced peanut butter, you naturally should have it on Sara Lee's crustless bread. It would be the perfect meal for anyone too lazy to do anything on their own. (Thanks to Kathy for giving me a heads up about this product)

Plastic Pumpkin Carving — The newest thing for Halloween is fake pumpkins. Made out of polyurethane foam, they can be carved just like the real thing. But don't try to eat the seeds. A guy quoted about this issue in the Loudoun Times-Mirror notes that: "There's something wrong with society if people start carving plastic pumpkins." I don't think I have anything to add to that statement. The article also notes that once you've carved your foam pumpkin, it wouldn't be wise to light it up with a candle. You need to use a flashlight.

Marzipan Babies — I'm a big fan of Marzipan. In fact, I've made several pilgrimages to Lübeck, home of Niederegger, makers of the best marzipan in the world (in my opinion). So I was intrigued by these pictures of tiny babies supposedly made out of marzipan. I don't see why one couldn't make lifelike dolls out of marzipan, but that's not the case with these dolls. They're actually made by the artist Camille Allen out of polymer clay or resin, and they're not edible. Still, in the past it was apparently possible to buy jelly babies, as well as chocolate babies. So why not marzipan babies? (via Strong Chemistry)

Killing Fields Cafe — If you've ever wondered what it would be like to subsist on a starvation diet, such as the kind millions of people endured during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, now you have your chance. A restaurant has recently opened in Phnom Penh called the "Khmer Rouge Experience Cafe." It serves up the kind of watery gruel people actually ate in the killing fields, with a "'theme menu' of salted rice-water, followed by corn mixed with water and leaves, and dove eggs and tea." To round out the ambiance, "the waitresses are barefoot and clad in the black pajamas and red-white scarves of the guerrillas. Speakers blare out tunes celebrating the 1975 toppling of U.S.-backed president General Lon Nol and the walls are adorned with the baskets, hoes and spades Pol Pot hoped would power his jungle-clad south-east Asian homeland to communist prosperity." This place could give Rainforest Cafe a run for its money.

Actually, the Khmer Rouge Cafe seems like yet another example of Reality Tourism, in which the idea is to offer tourists grim reality, instead of fun and comfort. Other examples include an amusement park planned for outside Berlin where people will experience life under communism, and a camp in Croatia where tourists get to find out what life in a communist-era hard-labor camp would have been like.

Searing Meat Seals in Its Juices (and other food myths) — I know a lot of people who swear by the notion that you have to sear meat "to seal in its juices." But I've always thought the idea was a bit far-fetched (though I agree that meat is best cooked hot and fast), so it pleased me to read, in a review of Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, that most food experts agree that it is indeed an urban legend that searing meat will seal in its juices. About.com's barbeque expert agrees:

By definition, searing is to cook something hot and fast to brown the surface and to seal in the juices. Yet many of the leading cooking experts agree that searing does not seal in juices. Frankly the idea that you can somehow melt the surface of the meat into a material that holds in all the juices seems a little strange to me. But whether you believe searing seals in juices or not, a great cut of meat needs hot, dry heat to caramelize or brown the surface to give it that great flavor.

The same review of Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food lists a number of other food myths. For instance:

MSG Causes Headaches (aka Chinese Restaurant Syndrome): "Jeffery Steingarten, food editor of the Vogue in New York, debunked this myth pretty comprehensively. Given the widespread use of MSG in China, he asked why weren’t there a billion Chinese people with headaches? He then went around relentlessly researching the theory in his characteristically thorough way, and came to the conclusion that MSG, taken in normal quantities, was perfectly safe." (I know many people who swear they get headaches after eating MSG, so I'm reluctant to accept this as an urban legend. But some quick research reveals that a controlled study at Harvard University also concluded that MSG in food doesn't cause headaches.)

Croissants were invented during the 1529 Siege of Vienna, when a baker who foiled a Turkish plan to breach the city's walls was rewarded by being given a royal licence to produce crescent-shaped pastries: "Davidson debunks this romantic legend and informs us that in fact, the first reference to croissants did not appear until 1891, more than two centuries after the siege of Vienna."

In the Middle Ages spices were used to mask the flavor of spoiled meat: "Davison cites Gillian Riley to rubbish the notion... Indeed, in pre-refrigeration days, we had assumed that the role of spices and heavy sauces was to conceal the fact that meat had spoiled. Riley makes the valid point that in those days, spices were far too expensive to be used for this purpose."

Chop Suey was invented by a Chinese restaurant in California which threw together odds and ends ('chop suey' in Chinese) as a meal for drunken miners: "according to Anderson, quoted by Davidson, chop suey is a local dish from Toisan, a rural district south of Canton. In Cantonese, its name is tsap seui, meaning 'miscellaneous scraps'."

Mentos + Soda = Explosion — Given the urban legend about kids eating pop rocks and soda, and then having their stomachs explode, I wouldn't have believed that mixing Mentos and soda could cause such a violent reaction. But after watching the video posted on WLTX's website, I do. (You need Windows Media Player to view it, and I had to click the "Trouble Viewing" button to make it work.) To summarize what the video shows, three Mentos are dropped into a bottle of soda, causing a geyser of soda to shoot up about three or four feet high out of the bottle. This really makes me wonder what would happen if you drank a can of soda and then downed a pack of Mentos. Personally I'm not planning to find out. I'm sure it wouldn't kill you, but I imagine it would fizz up into your throat and nose. WLTX provides this scientific explanation for the phenomenon:

Mentos contains a chemical known as ARABIC GUM (this is the ingredient that makes the mint "chewy"). This ingredient causes the surface tension of the water molecules to break even more easily, releasing more carbon dioxide gas at an astounding rate! .....The gas causes pressure to rapidly build inside the bottle which thrusts the soda upwards in a wonderful fountain-like BLAST!

Cheese Can Cause Nightmares — At last I can return to my nocturnal cheese-eating ways, now that I know eating the stuff won't cause me nightmares... Actually I had never heard any rumor associating cheese with nightmares, but apparently researchers at The Dairy Council had, because they designed an experiment to disprove the fallacy. With the help of 200 volunteers they determined "cheese may actually help you have a good night's sleep." But stay away from Stilton, which caused an uptick in odd and vivid dreams. Cheddar made people dream about Jordan and Johnny Depp (which sounds to me like nightmare material).

Gross Candy — The Strange New Products blog has word of two new gross faux foods. First there's Harry Potter's Cockroach Clusters from Cap Candy. "The juicy gummy underbelly is covered with a crunchy candy shell, just like real cockroach wings." Yum. I definitely have to try some of those. Then there's ABC Gum. The ABC stands for "Already Been Chewed." "ABC Bubble Gum is a brand new novelty bubble gum that has been formed to look exactly like a piece of gum that's ALREADY BEEN CHEWED!!" I would love to offer that to unsuspecting guests.

Kangaroo Testicle Hoax — The organizers of the world testicle-cooking championship in Serbia were all prepared for the arrival of Nigel Bevan, Australia's leading kangaroo testicle cook. They even had a supply of kangaroo testicles on hand, ready for him to cook up into a delicious dish. But Bevan never showed up. It's hard to tell from the text of the article, but it seems to imply that Nigel Bevan, master kangaroo testicle chef, is real enough, but that some prankster was pretending to be him. However, a google search turns up no references to a testicle cook named Nigel Bevan (except for the references made in this article itself).

Hypnosis Diet — CNN reports that the latest weight-loss fad to sweep the country is the Hypnosis Diet. Therapists place hypnotic suggestions in their patients' minds, telling them to "picture themselves in a relaxing place whenever they feel the impulse to overeat." (Hopefully their relaxing place isn't a donut store.) I was going to chalk up whatever effect this therapy might have to the power of suggestion, but I guess that's the whole point.

Hey, if it helps some people, that's great. But I'd assume it would work best on highly suggestible people. I wonder if the hypnosis therapists have ever considered taking a cue from Elizabeth Loftus and tried hypnotically implanting fake memories to help their patients lose weight.

Kidsbeer — I suppose it's no worse than candy cigarettes, or Shirley Temples, but it just seems kind of weird. It's 'Kidsbeer', now being sold in Japan. It looks like beer, but it's not. It's really just a yellow-colored cola beverage that comes in a brown bottle. So kids can drink it and pretend to be beer-guzzling adults. It's marketed with the slogan: "Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink."

Pismo Beach, Faux Clam Capital of California — This week's edition of the LA Times Magazine includes an article about various small towns in California that claim to be capitals for various types of food, such as Gilroy 'the garlic capital of the world', or Yuba City 'the prune capital of the U.S.' The article includes this description of Pismo Beach, which claims to be the clam capital of California:

Call it the ultimate bait and switch. The clams disappeared from this thriving seaside town, almost exactly halfway between San Francisco and L.A., about 30 years ago. Over-clamming tourists and gorging sea otters did the dirty deed. But did the city fathers of this middle-class destination resort promptly notify the governor, alert the media, then shift their promotional emphasis to, say, the annual profusion of monarch butterflies?
No way. They began importing clams from the East Coast and elsewhere, erected a few diversionary clam sculptures, kept their annual two-day Clam Festival on the fall calendar and certainly didn't discourage citizens from continuing with their clam-themed motels and seafood restaurants. You can either (1) protest this blatant hokum by patronizing nearby Avila Beach or San Luis Obispo, or (2) go along happily with the hoax by stopping at bistros such as Brad's, the Cracked Crab and Splash Cafe for some of the best clam chowder this side of--oh, never mind.

Fake Memories Fight Flab — Here's an ingenious way to lose weight: give yourself false memories to trick yourself into believing that you actually hate all the food you love. This technique is being pioneered by memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, of UC Irvine:

In her latest work, her team convinced volunteers that they had been sick after eating strawberry ice cream as a child. Loftus and her colleagues gave 228 undergraduate students questionnaires about food. The volunteers subsequently received feedback on their questionnaires that suggested they had had an unpleasant experience related to food in the past. The researchers told them this conclusion had been generated by a sophisticated computer program. A control group of 107 received no feedback.
It was found that 41 per cent of the first group took on the false childhood memory and were more averse to eating strawberry ice cream afterwards.

All my life I've hated fish because of an unpleasant childhood memory of my German grandfather gouging out the eyeball of a fish at the dinner table and eating it (in Germany they eat all parts of the fish). But what if this memory is a false one? I could become a fish lover. Though I wonder if it's possible to give people fake good memories of food. Or does the memory trick only work in a negative way?

Fruit Salad Tree Hoax — 94-year-old Harry Tomlinson was amazed when his apple tree began to grow plums and blackberries, as well as apples. The 'fruit salad' tree generated some media interest, but horticulturalists took one look at the tree and saw that the plums and blackberries had simply been pasted on. The identity of the hoaxer remains unknown (assuming that it wasn't Mr. Tomlinson himself).

I believe that there are real varieties of 'fruit salad' trees, which I've posted about before. They're created by grafting different types of trees together. However, another horticultural mystery that I once posted about--the orange that grew inside of an apple-- remains unsolved.

Update: Here's an article about the 'fruit salad' tree before it was debunked. I like the explanation that one horticulturalist attempted to provide to explain the fruity anomaly: "One explanation is the tree may have developed some kind of fungal condition which can produce what are known as pocket plums which are actually apples. As for blackberries, I am sorry but it shouldn't happen."

Where Is Toby? — First there was Save Toby, a site on which some guy (whose name apparently is Bion) threatened to eat his pet rabbit if he hasn't received $50,000 by June 30 (apparently he's already raised almost $30,000, which is pretty amazing, if true). Now there's Where Is Toby, on which one of Bion's friends offers to expose Bion's full contact information... for $5,000. I guess this will appeal to rabbit rights activists who want to send Bion hate mail. A while back someone also had a Cook Toby site up, but that now appears to be gone. However, Screw Toby is still up. (Thanks to David Emery for giving me a heads up about this).