Hoax Museum Blog: Food

Cheesy Jesus — Behold the power of Cheesus! Cheesus Industries manufactures and sells "premium quality, religious-themed cheese sculptures." That would be statues of Jesus made out of cheese. Of course, there's nothing to stop someone making a statue of Jesus out of cheese and selling it, but in this case there's no way to buy what Cheesus Industries claims to be producing. In reality, Cheesus Industries appears to be a satirical promotional tool for the 'cheesy' lounge singer Richard Cheese.

Suspicious Soy Sauce — I've often heard tales about all the weird, disgusting things that get thrown into hot dogs and chicken nuggets during the manufacturing process... but soy sauce! I always figured that would simply be sauce made from soy beans. Turns out I was wrong. Over in China they're cracking down on companies that are surreptitiously manufacturing soy sauce from human hair. Watch our for sauce that's described on the label as being 'blended,' because that means it's not really made from soy. It's made from people!!

Diet Holy Water — If you're feeling a little sinful, wash away your sins with some Diet Holy Water. Now, I don't think this is a hoax in the sense that this stuff isn't really for sale. Instead I'm linking to it because it seems like a marketing effort that has tongue firmly in cheek.

Plastic Turkeys and Ploughman Lunches — The Guardian has an editorial piece about Bush's recent Turkey-gate scandal (the photo-op in Iraq with the inedible turkey). But Mark Lawson, the author of the article, points out that the bread-and-cheese pub food known as a ploughman's lunch is also a bit of a fake. Ploughman's lunches "claimed to link yuppies in pubs to their ancestors who toiled on the soil" but the seemingly traditional lunch was actually "an invention of the contemporary advertising and catering trades." I've enjoyed quite a few ploughman's lunches, and I never knew that.

Trophy Turkey — It turns out that the turkey President Bush was proudly holding on his recent visit with the troops in Iraq wasn't for eating. It's what's known as a 'Trophy Turkey': one that is just for decoration, not for consumption. I guess it wouldn't have looked as good for the cameras for Bush to walk around holding the slices of processed turkey meat that the soldiers really got.

The Great Chili Scandal — People are up in arms about the Great Chili Scandal. The scandal occurred at the 37th annual Original Terlingua International Frank X. Tolbert-Wick Fowler Memorial Championship Chili Cook-Off, which is like the superbowl of Chili Cook-offs. Don Eastep won first place this year. Problem is that Don hadn't actually cooked any of his own chili. His brother Terry had dropped out of the contest at the last minute, so Don posed as his brother and took his place. But instead of cooking something of his own, Don simply walked around and took one spoonful of chili from each of the 80 contestants. Then he mixed these eighty spoonfuls together in a bowl and handed that in as his entry. Much to his surprise, he won first place. He immediately admitted what he had done, and the trophy was taken away. But everyone is still riled up about the whole thing. They're calling Don a 'chili terrorist.'

Condom in the Clam Chowder — This woman claims that she was happily eating her clam chowder at a restaurant in Irvine, CA when to her horror she discovered a condom floating in it. Actually, she discovered the condom by biting down on it. Incessant vomiting followed. The restaurant, meanwhile, is denying any responsibility, so the woman has filed a lawsuit, which will commence Jan. 12, 2004. It seems obvious that someone is lying here, but it's basically the woman's word against the word of the restaurant managers.

Mint Rubbing — Check out the wonders of the Romanian Mint Rubbing Association. (Thanks to t.m.Enzo for the link).

Edible Outdoor Gear — Here's a strange hoax website (sent in by Stuart Jacobson). It's Eastern Active Technologies (EAT), retailers of edible outdoor gear and equipment. Now when you set off on a weekend hiking trip, laden down with tent, sleeping bag, and backpack, you can return completely empty handed... and well fed.

Ninja Burger — Ninja Burger: The world's predominant undergound ninja-run fast food delivery service

Dehydrated Water — Buy Dehydrated Water: It's compact, lightweight, and easy to store

Prank-Themed Beers — I was at the beer store recently and I was pleased to discover some beers with prankish themes. First there was the aptly named Pranqster from North Coast Brewing. This was a great beer with a very fruity taste. High marks. Next I stumbled upon The Three Stooges Beer. I had to get it just for the label, but it turned out to have a pretty mediocre flavor. Not bad, but nothing special either. Of course, the king of all hoaxy/prankish beers would be Olde Frothingslosh, the beer so light that the foam floats on the bottom, which I've never had a chance to buy or taste.

Is that food real or plastic? — Sometimes plastic display food, like you often find in Japanese restaurants, can look awfully real. This website has a shockwave test that challenges you to separate photos of real food from the plastic stuff. The pictures are too small to really make a good decision, but it's a neat idea. (why they felt the need to design the test in shockwave, I can't figure out. HTML would have worked perfectly well for something this simple, and when viewing it with Safari it crashed my browser).

The Crop Circle/Beer Connection — Some new crop circles in Devon may be inspired by a potent new beer.

To Serve Rabbit — This has gotten a lot of attention. A LiveJournal user, Siamang, posted an entry about how his pet rabbit Grendel died. So (he claimed) he decided to skin and eat his beloved pet. After all, burying or cremating him seemed so impersonal. This was accompanied by pictures of Grendel both alive and served up on a plate. Predictably, the entry got a huge response. But it seems that Siamang wasn't being entirely honest. In a separate journal entry he refuses to say whether his story is true or false. He plays very coy, writing that online journals "can be fact or fiction and are almost always an extremely subjective hybrid of the two." In other words, the story probably isn't true. A lot of people have pointed out that what he claims is rabbit meat looks an awful lot like chicken.

  


Grendel before... and Grendel after

Outhouse Springs Water — Stuart Elliott, in today's edition of his NY Times email newsletter, writes about a hoax product that recently became a real product. It goes by the name Outhouse Springs water. This brand of bottled water was dreamed up by an advertising agency that wanted to gauge how effective outdoor billboard ads could be. So they put 40 billboards advertising the fictitious Outhouse Springs Water up around Charleston, South Carolina. The billboards sported slogans such as "It's #1, not #2!" People definitely noticed the ads and actually started asking for the stuff at retailers. Demand became so intense that the ad agency eventually made a deal with a bottled-water company to produce a limited run of Outhouse Springs Water. It's on sale now at Piggly Wiggly's in Charleston. This product reminds me of Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale.

Meat Shakes — Here's a new hoax website: meatshake.com. It claims to be the homepage of the MeatShake Corporation, operators of the Meat Shake chain of fast food restaurants. You guessed it, MeatShake offers meat lovers the chance to quench their carnivorous appetites with ham, beef, and turkey shakes. Let there be no doubt. This is meat put in a blender and sipped through a straw. Their corporate vision is simple, "Meat. Lots of Meat." (Thanks to Jeff Whealton for pointing the site out to me).

In reality, the MeatShake website is the creation of a band from Long Beach called Ugly Duckling. Their latest album, "Taste The Secret," tells the story of the MeatShake restaurant and it's battles against the rival chain Veggie Hut. The three members of the band claim to have met while working at a MeatShake restaurant.

Need more proof that MeatShake is a hoax? Well, if you examine the images on the site, you'll discover that whoever created them forgot to change the hidden preview file attached to the images, and this preview file shows what the images looked like before they were photoshopped. Thus, we discover that:


  

The Meat Shake sign (left) was originally a sign for Champion Burgers (right)

  

and the Meat Shake store with a 'Taste the Secret' banner (left), is actually an abandoned store with a 'For Lease' sign (right).

The Naked Chef — An email going around claims to contain, as an attachment, the next cookbook by Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). It's actually just a mock-up, containing recipes from his previous book. But I'm bummed that I haven't received this email yet.

Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale — A visitor (Bill Graham) informed me of a memorable hoax that I missed: Ye Olde Frothingsloth Pale Stale Ale. Frothingslosh is a unique beer that's so light that the beer actually floats on top of the foam. It all started out as a running joke on Rege Cordic's Pittsburgh radio show in the 1950s. He made up all kinds of joke ads for this fictitious beer and invented slogans such as "A whale of an ale for the pale stale male" and "Hi dittom dottom, the foam is on the bottom." But the Olde Frothingsloth concept became so popular, that eventually it caught the attention of the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. who started selling small runs of Olde Frothingsloth for special occasions such as Christmas and holidays. Of course, the beer being sold was really just Iron City Beer repackaged with Olde Frothingslosh labels, but the labels themselves were so outrageous that they instantly became prized among beer can collectors. The most popular cans were those that featured Miss Olde Frothingslosh, Fatima Yechburgh (pictured below), the supposed winner of the Frothingslosh Beauty Contest. Fatima was described as a resident of a small town near Pittsburgh. When not studying arc welding, she enjoyed soap carving, arm wrestling, sky diving, and ballet. I believe that the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. still occasionally produces small runs of Olde Frothingslosh. I'd love to try some.

Poland Spring Water — This is disappointing. Poland Spring water turns out not to be spring water at all, just highly treated groundwater. Nestle is being sued for false advertising. I used to drink Poland Spring all the time before I moved out to California.