Hoax Museum Blog: Food

$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)

Stevie Starr, Professional Regurgitator — Stevie Starr calls himself a professional regurgitator. He's been doing his act for a long time, and is quite famous. (He's appeared on shows such as Jay Leno and Ripley's Believe it or Not.) But I just became aware of him through a video of one of his performances on Google Video, and I'm at a complete loss to explain how he does what he does.

His performance includes some of the following tricks: He swallows sugar, followed by a glass of water, and then regurgitates the sugar, completely dry. He swallows a live goldfish and regurgitates that a minute later, still living. (As he does this, he mentions the urban legend about goldfish having 5-second memories.) Reportedly he's also able to swallow a (miniature) rubik's cube and bring it back up — solved. (Though the Rubik's cube trick isn't shown in the google video.)

I can't find anyone on the web who has a decent explanation for how Starr is able to do all this. Obviously he has a genuine talent with his stomach. An article about him in the Amherst Student reports that:

he was born in a children’s home in Scotland, where he lived for the first 19 years of his life. When little Stevie was four years old, he discovered this unique talent by swallowing his lunch money and realizing he could bring it right back up. Thus, a freak of nature was born.

But this doesn't explain how he can swallow sugar, followed by water, and bring the sugar up dry. Or the trick with the rubik's cube. Does he have a second stomach, or something like that? To do the rubik's cube trick I assume he must have swallowed a solved rubik's cube before the show. But like I said, I'm pretty much baffled.

Incidentally, history is full of famous vomiters, so Stevie Starr evidently isn't the only one who has ever had this talent. In 1621 there was the case of the nail-vomiting Boy of Bilston (who had been trained by a priest to simulate the symptoms of being bewitched). This was followed in 1642 by Catharina Geisslerin, "the toad-vomiting woman of Germany," who, as you might guess, had a talent for vomiting up toads. In 1694 there was Theodorus Döderlein, who vomited up twenty-one newts and four frogs. (I'm getting this info from Clifford Pickover's The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits.) Pickover also reports that there have been cases of compulsive swallowers who don't later regurgitate what they swallow, including one guy in 1985 who had "53 toothbrushes, 2 razors, 2 telescopic aerials, and 150 handles of disposable razors" removed from his stomach.

Bogus Vintage Wine — The Washington Post reports on a growing problem in the vintage wine business: bogus vintage wines. Apparently many collectors who shell out thousands of dollars for a rare bottle of wine are discovering that what they bought is a fake:

"The cloud of shame over the last 10 years has been the market for counterfeit trophy wine." Sutcliffe [head of the international wine department at Sotheby's] said there was a psychological block to dealing with the problem because real vintage wine makers in Europe prefer to ignore what is going on as they are afraid of being tarnished with the same brush. "Asian (buyers) tend to ignore the problem because they don't want to lose face, but in America they are waking up to it."

Unfortunately the article doesn't discuss how people discover they've got a bogus vintage wine. Do they taste it and realize that it's plonk? Personally, I doubt I would be able to tell the difference (which is why I'm not a wine collector... though I enjoy wine).

How To Cook An Egg With Two Cell Phones — No, it's not possible to cook an egg with two cell phones. At least, not by using the method outlined on wymsey.co.uk. The instructions basically boil down to this: place an egg between two phones, use one phone to call the other, and then wait for radio signals to cook the egg. Wymsey notes that cooking time:

very much depends on the power output of your mobile phone. For instance, a pair of mobiles each with 2 Watts of transmitter output will take three minutes to boil a large free range egg. Check your user manual and remember that cooking time will be proportional to the inverse square of the output power for a given distance from egg to phone.

As I said, this method definitely won't work (though I wouldn't rule out there being some kind of MacGyver way to cook an egg involving highly polished cellphones and reflected sunlight). What should be noted, however, is that Wymsey never intended anyone to believe it would work. The instructions are a joke. A lot of sites (including, surprisingly, Boing Boing) don't seem to have realized this. (Isn't the name Wymsey a giveaway?) The Wymsey site (which chronicles the goings-on in the fictional village of Wymsey) was created by Charlie Ivermee back in 1998, and he wrote the egg article in 2000. In an interview with Gelf Magazine he explains why he wrote the article:

“It was 6 years ago but I seem to recall that there was a lot of concern about people's brains getting fried and being from a radio/electronics background I found it all rather silly. So I thought I'd add to the silliness.”

Iran Renames Danish Pastries — A news service called AKI (Adnkronos International) is reporting that Iran has decided to rename Danish pastries "Mohammedan" pastries. It notes that "The name change recalls when some Americans started calling French fries, 'Freedom fries' to protest France's opposition to the United States-led invasion of Iraq."

I wouldn't put it past the Iranian government to do this, but what I'm not sure about is whether Danish pastries are actually referred to as Danish pastries in Farsi. Perhaps they use the English term. Also, it seems odd that AFI is the only news source reporting this. A search on lexis-nexis and Google news pulls up nothing else. However, the London Evening Standard is reporting that "Danish pastries and butter were being cleared off supermarket shelves in Saudi Arabia." So if people are willing to clear Danish pastries from supermarkets, why not rename them also? I'm leaning towards believing it's true.

Insect Candy — Paul Farrington emailed me with a question about the HOTLIX Insect Candy Company: "The site looks real, the products look real, there are no obvious giveaways except the sheer unbelievable grotesqueness of the very concept! What’s your take?" Well, my take is that the insect candy is definitely real, though I've never ordered any of it and submitted it to an entomologist for confirmation. (Nor do I plan to.) But there's no reason to believe the candy wouldn't be real. After all, insects are eaten in many cultures. It's only Westerners who are squeamish about eating them. A recent article in the Smithsonian's Zoogoer magazine discusses insects as food, pointing out that honey is nothing more than "bee vomit," and even notes the existence of the HOTLIX Insect Candy Company:

Although people worldwide have been enjoying edible insects since ancient times, their value—in terms of both nutrition and conservation—is often overlooked by the modern Western world...
An estimated 2,000 insect species are consumed around the world, and people do not just eat insects, they relish them as delicacies. In Africa, caterpillars and winged termites are fried and eaten as roadside snacks (after wings, legs, and bristles are removed, of course), and often considered tastier than meat. Grasshoppers and bee larvae seasoned with soy sauce are favorites in Japan, where pricey canned insects are also available. Papua New Guinea is known for its nutty-flavored sago grubs (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus papuanus or R. bilineatus), beetle larvae that inhabit dead sago palm trees and are honored at annual festivals...
Specialty food shops in Europe have started to sell insects imported from Africa. Even a U.S. company, Hotlix, sells various lollipops with embedded insects, chocolate-covered cockroaches, grubs, slugs, and grasshoppers, and mealworms in barbeque, cheddar cheese, and Mexican flavors.

Bloody Sundae — A Delaware woman alleges that the hot fudge sundae her son was served at a local McDonald's was topped with a special sauce: human blood. The restaurant owner disputes this, claiming the red stuff was simply strawberry syrup:

According to court documents, Jara bought food, including four hot fudge sundaes, at the restaurant's drive-thru window on Dec. 30, 2004.
Her son, now 13, dug into his sundae and "recognized the taste of blood and, upon careful inspection, noted a red substance on the side of the sundae cup as well as mixed into his ice cream," the lawsuit claims. Jara then went into the store and spoke to a swing manager [Joshua Ferrell], who confirmed that it was blood, according to the lawsuit... Michael Meoli, owner of the McDonald's franchise, said the claims are unfounded, and that strawberry syrup probably had clogged the sundae machine. Ferrell, who no longer works at the restaurant, should not have said the substance was blood, Meoli said. "What is he, a botanist? No, he's a 21-year-old assistant manager who saw her screaming in the lobby and said 'whatever you say lady.'"

A botanist? And how could the kid know it tasted like blood, if it was mixed in with ice cream? That sounds fishy to me. Anyway, the bloody sundae does not appear to have been saved, so it's a case of the woman's word against the restaurant owner's word. But the lawyers, I imagine, are extracting their usual pound of flesh from both sides. (via Hometown Tales)

Restaurant That Serves TV Dinners — Daniel Folk writes in with this question: I was watching TV not too long ago and saw a little advertisement about a restaurant in New York that only has TV dinners (Swanson, Lean Cuisine, etc...) on their menu. Supposedly it is a real upscale restaurant and these TV dinners are outrageously priced ($40 - $50). I tried to do a quick Google search for this restaurant but with no success. Have you heard about this restaurant and do you know the name of it?

I've never heard of such a thing (nor has my wife, who's a devoted viewer of the Food TV channel), and I couldn't find anything in a Google search either. Honestly, it sounds like an urban legend. After all, why would someone want to go to a restaurant and pay $40 for a frozen TV dinner? But on the other hand, there are restaurants out there with weird gimmicks (such as that restaurant where meals are served in total darkness), so I wouldn't say that it's definitely not real. Anyone heard of such a place?

Update: Maegan found a restaurant called Ike, located on Second Avenue in the East Village, that serves Swanson's TV dinners, at twice the price you'd pay for them in the store ($6, though not $40-$50). So I've changed the status on this to 'Real'. (It should also be noted that the restaurant doesn't only serve TV dinners.)

It’s Homemade! — I find this a bit hard to believe. According to this news report "Almost a third of young Britons have passed off a ready-made meal as their own creation in order to impress someone, according to a survey by the Department of Health on Monday." Sure, it's common to joke that something is homemade when it's not, but usually it's easy to tell the difference between ready-made and homemade. The same survey also found that "one in 10 had never cooked a proper meal for themselves because they 'don't know how'." I find that easier to believe.

Condom in a Hazelnut — Brian Geist was sitting at home on New Year's Eve enjoying some hazelnuts. But there was a strange surprise in one of them: a condom. As his wife reported to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent (may require registration):

"My husband cracked open a hazelnut and a condom popped out. He couldn't believe it. He just sort of sat there and stared at it and he said, 'You wouldn't believe what I found in this nut," Geist said Tuesday. She assumed he might have been talking about a bug. But it turned out to be a bright-yellow condom, still rolled up, she said.

The nuts were bought at a local Wal-Mart Supercenter. The Wal-Mart spokesperson had no clue what to make of the incident. Meanwhile, the police chief noted that he was aware of condoms being sold inside plastic walnuts, though the nut in this case wasn't plastic. The Wal-Mart spokesperson, and a pr representative for the nut company both "expressed surprise at a condom being able to fit into the relatively small shell of a hazelnut. Geist agreed it was a tight fit. She said her husband speculates that the shell had been cut in half and glued back together. Meisner [the police chief], who didn't see signs of sawing or gluing, said he doesn't doubt the Geists' story. Geist said it's not something she could have concocted if she tried. 'It's so bizarre, I'm not clever enough to make up something that crazy,' she said."

I don't suppose there's any way of getting a condom inside a hazelnut without breaking the nut open first. So if it was a prank, someone went to quite a bit of trouble to pull it off. And the Geists aren't threatening to sue, so it's hard to see what motive they would have for making up the story. (Unless they just wanted to get their name in the paper.) Very weird. Maybe a mad scientist has genetically engineered condom-growing nuts.

iPod or Meat — A Hawaiian news station has reported the touching tale of a boy who received a video iPod for Christmas. At least, he received the video iPod box. When he opened the box he found, to his disappointment, only a piece of meat inside of it. His mother, who bought the gift for him at Wal-Mart, where she works, had no idea how the meat could have gotten inside the box, and she's asking the store to give her an iPod instead of the meat. There are two possibilities here. Either the mother is pulling some kind of scam, or a prankster thief got to the iPod while it was in the store and replaced it with a piece of meat. Gizmodo reports hearing from an insider source that claims the latter to be the case (an unknown prankster thief was at work). According to this anonymous source, Wal-Mart investigators have found two other units with meat in them, and an ex-employee is suspected of the tampering. But since Gizmodo's source is unnamed, it's not fully credible.