7 Ridiculous Food Myths That Simply Don’t Add Up (But People Still Believe)

Why is chocolate milk brown? Surely, it's not simply because someone added chocolate flavoring to regular milk. One myth suggests that the brown color is used to hide blood and pus from milk produced by sick cows. However, one dairy farmer points out that this would require entirely separate trucks and equipment to handle bloody milk, making it a much more costly process than simply discarding the milk as regulations dictate.

While blood can sometimes be found in milk, it is deemed unsafe for human consumption. Bonus: You can even find a photo of blood-tainted milk that was mistakenly circulated as what milk looks like “before it’s whitened.”

One related myth claims that milk (whether chocolate or regular) is filled with pus. For instance, PETA points to a regulation they say permits a certain number of “pus cells” per liter. The truth here is that the FDA sets a limit of 750,000 somatic cells per milliliter of milk (or 750 million per liter). However, these cells are somatic cells, which are body cells from the cow, including milk-producing and immune cells. These somatic cells are naturally present in healthy milk, including human breast milk; they are not pus cells.

That being said, cows with mastitis (a udder infection) may have higher somatic cell counts in their milk than healthy cows, which is why high cell counts are not allowed. Milk from cows with mastitis is not sold for consumption due to its unpleasant taste and rapid spoilage.

In 1991, the restaurant chain known as Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded itself to simply 'KFC,' dropping the 'fried' to create a shorter, more modern name and to shift focus away from just their fried chicken menu. In other words, it was your typical corporate rebranding strategy.

Afterward, a rumor emerged suggesting that KFC’s chicken drumsticks came from a lab-grown creature with six legs and no head. This 'mutant' was allegedly fed a nutrient slurry, and the rumor made its way to Snopes around the same time 'The Matrix' was released.

Aside from the fact that their menu continued to feature the word 'chicken,' one obvious clue that this rumor is false is that scientists have yet to figure out how to produce lab-grown meat affordably. The process still requires an expensive animal-derived serum and, as of 2018, costs thousands of dollars per burger to produce.

Sometimes, we’re so eager to believe a bizarre food myth that we forget how actual food behaves. For thousands of years, the Quechua people have been making jerky from llama meat, but if you dry out a McDonald’s patty, it somehow turns into a shocking example of how many “chemicals” or “preservatives” must be present in fast food meals.

The same thing happens with the bun: Toast some bread and it dries out into croutons, crunchy breadsticks, or crackers—unless the bread came from a restaurant selling low-cost burgers, in which case it becomes an example of how fast food isn’t “real food.” We have a detailed analysis of non-rotting burgers here, where we conclude that this myth is just a whole lot of nothing.

What’s actually in a McDonald’s burger? The usual assumption is that it’s filled with disgusting ingredients. But oh, the ingredients list says it’s 100% beef? It must be some sort of trick.

One urban myth claims that the burgers come from a supplier called '100% Beef,' which supposedly sells burger-like products made from anything other than beef. Ground beef is made from less-desirable cuts of meat, but it’s typically sirloin trimmings, not eyeballs. In reality, it's much more profitable for a meat supplier to sell cow eyeballs to scientific labs than to turn them into burgers. The same goes for earthworms, which are also rumored to be part of McDonald's burgers. Worm meat is not produced anywhere near the volume of beef and is significantly more expensive.

This one is almost a rite of passage: as a child, you’re served sweet, fruity Jell-O without giving a second thought to its ingredients. Then you find out that its key component is gelatin, and gelatin comes from animals?!

That much is true. Gelatin is derived from collagen, which is a major protein found in connective tissue. This tissue is present in numerous parts of an animal’s (or even a human’s!) body, including areas that aren’t usually sold as meat.

But no, it’s not made from hooves. While hooves contain some collagen, they are mostly composed of keratin. Gelatin is actually made from skins and bones, primarily from pigs and cows. If that’s still unappealing, feel free to pass your leftover Jell-O to me.

Taco Bell is lucky enough to stand at the intersection of two targets of urban legends: It’s a fast-food chain serving meat, and it serves food associated with Latinx cultures. (Xenophobic food-related urban legends are a whole genre unto themselves.) The same kinds of things people say about McDonald’s burgers have also been said about Taco Bell’s seasoned ground beef, but there’s more.

One lawsuit alleged that the chain’s taco beef was only 36% beef, leading us to speculate what the hell is in the other 64%. (About the only plausible answer would be meat from other animals, or mayyybe textured vegetable protein (TVP). If you’ve ever tried to make chili with TVP, you’ll know it’s not a great substitute.) The lawsuit was eventually dropped, and Taco Bell’s recipe turns out to be beef with a bunch of pretty normal seasonings. There’s soybean oil in the sauce, oat flour to thicken it, nutritional yeast, garlic, and so on.

Another myth is that Taco Bell’s taco beef contains horse meat. This, again, has a kernel of truth: Taco Bells in the United Kingdom were once found to be using meat from a supplier that included “more than 1%” horse meat in the mix. The meat was recalled. (The same supplier had sold the meat to IKEA, too, by the way.) Taco Bells in the U.S. do not use European suppliers, so this was never an issue here.

Every now and then, a fast food worker will post some aspect of their job on TikTok (or whatever is the dominant platform of the time) and some small corner of the teenage internet will absolutely lose their shit.

In one recent edition of this frenzy, people are scandalized that KFC’s mashed potatoes are not lovingly mashed from actual potatoes in the store; the potatoes are mashed at a factory, dehydrated, and reconstituted before serving. Before that, it was Taco Bell’s refried beans, which arrive at the store as dehydrated pellets. You can buy boxed mashed potatoes and instant refried beans at the grocery store, people. They’re fine.