Skip to main contentGENTLE READERS,
It is said that Halloween came to be circa 1500 BC, when the frisky Celts of Ireland took to playing food pranks on each other. Around the caldrons of bubbling trouble the young lads and lasses would gather to spook each other with steaming bowls of feral cat and cockroach consommé. In an attempt to find edibles clean and pure, the little rascals would dart from cottage to cottage begging for something good to eat. After the roasted lamb shanks were proven to be arrowhead-free, the feast of Halloween would commence.
Now, if you sniffed out some fabrication in the above paragraph, you are the next contestant to play Scary Food Stories--True or False! Read the following grotesque/frightening tales and try to pick out which ones are true and which ones false. Fun for the whole family!
1) If you've been feeling feverish and have noticed a skin rash, you might just have the flu. But, if you've got those symptoms and you've eaten a banana in the past two or three days you could have necrotizing fasciitis, a.k.a. the dreaded flesh-eating bacteria! A large batch of this fruit from Costa Rica has been infected with this deadly disease and may have come to a supermarket near you. Beware, beware! True or False?
2) A young man sat in a local maison du grub hungrily awaiting his scrambled eggs. When they arrived, he noticed they were sprinkled liberally with pepper. Well, pepper never killed anyone, he thought. Just as he was about to dig in, he noticed the pepper flakes had tiny little legs! The waitress apologized torrentially, speculating that the ants must have been attracted to the rice in the salt shaker and climbed right in. The frightened, yet still hungry, diner garnered a free meal out of the terrifying experience. True or False?
3) A new product called Could It Be Butter? debuted at the Northwest Women's Show last weekend. This pliant substance is made from vegetable oil and low-fat sweet cream buttermilk. It contains no cholesterol. "We want consumers to know without a doubt that Could It Be Butter? is a margarine that they can absolutely use in baking and cooking with outstanding results," says Jim Jasso, a CIBB sales manager. True or False?
4) Every Halloween, the ghouls and ghoulettes at Dots (2521 SE Clinton St., 235-0203) let it be known that should you find freaky things in your fries, you get your fries for free. This is an evening where plenty o' plastic spiders are found suckling shoestring potatoes. True or False?
5) When Kentucky Fried Chicken shortened its name to KFC, it wasn't just to make its name easier to say for the new American intelligentsia. No, the Colonel turned to initials because Johnny Law told him he had to. See, the mad scientists down in Kentucky have brewed up a new species that's more meaty, but it sure ain't poultry proper. Since there isn't real chicken in Kentucky Fried Chicken, the company had to change its name. True or False?
The answers
The Answers:
1) Silly Rabbit, necrotizing fasciitis can't live on bananas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement responding to this Internet hoax, stating, "FDA and CDC agree that the bacteria cannot survive long on the surface of a banana." This one is FALSE.
2) Miss Dish knows the fellow to whom this happened. He's a trustworthy sort. This gets the TRUE stamp. Also, there's a maple-syrup story Miss D. will tell you sometime.
3) Sad but TRUE.
4) So TRUE, funny how it seems; always in time, but never in line for dreams. Get yer taters.
5) Urban folklorist David Emory interviewed Michael Tierney, KFC's director of public affairs, for a piece about this FALSE hoax on About.com. When asked if KFC uses mutant chickens, Tierney said, "Of course not. Any thinking adult would know it's absolutely absurd." According to KFC's customer-service reps, KFC is easier to say and, since it doesn't actually spell out the word "fried," is less of a turn-off for calorie-counters and cholesterol-phobes.
WWeek 2015