Image via Complex Original
Urban legends are modern forms of folklore and mythology that keep the magic alive in this dreary, knowledge-saturated world. For a second, you can believe that a large-footed hairy ape man exists in our backyard or that a woman weeping blood will climb out of our mirrors and kill us. Just for a second.
Considering that they're about things we put in our bodies, food urban legends are especially terrifying. That may be why we're so susceptible to actually believing them. Because, well, you never know. Better safe than sorry, and all of that jive. Check out these food urban legends you actually thought were true and see if you're more of a sucker than you thought. Hint: You probably are.
10. Tootsie Pops
Urban legend highlight: Find the Indian and get a free lollipop
Believability rating: 3
The elusive Indian on the Tootsie Pop wrapper was kind of like trying to find Orion's Belt. It's in the sky all the time, but hard to find if you don't know where to look. According to the legend, if you found the star-shooting Native American on your wrapper, you'd get a free Tootsie pop. The rumor has been floating around since the 1930s, and kids have been sauntering into candy stores looking for an extra sugar rush since. The company used to answer inquiries about the free Tootsie Pops, but eventually created a story about a lollipop checking Indian chief who puts his "stamp" of it approval on certain lollipops. Unfortunately, the only thing that we can look forward to getting for "free" is a mountain of wrappers and three to five cavities.
9. Gerber Baby Food
Urban legend highlight: $500 bond litigation
Believability rating: 3
If you were born between the years of 1985 and 1997, your parents might have been entrapped in an Internet and fax hoax that was passed around more efficiently than a chain-mail with a promise of riches and/or love. According to the false claims, Gerber Products Co. promised a $500 savings bond for children born in America between the aforementioned years. No such promise was actually made by the company, but because of e-mails circulating Gerber received a quarter million phone calls and over a million letters. What the company deemed a "misinformation" lawsuit quickly turned into a scam when many tried to capitalize on the news. Many people were duped by this scam, with some even sending their children's birth certificates and social security info to the claimant. Most of all the babies in the last batch of "eligible" kinds will be going into college soon and realize how measly $500 is in the grand scheme of things.
8. Watermelon seeds
Urban legend highlight: Grows in your stomach
Believability rating: 1
Parents tell their children awful lies, but one of the worst fibs kids hear growing up is that anything with a seed will grow inside their stomach. The most popular fruit this story gets told about is watermelon. But, contrary to every single white lie Grandma told, there is no soil in your stomach so a watermelon seed can't plant itself to grow inside of you. Even if the watermelon seeds did "plant" themselves, your stomach acid would kill the seedling and its melon-y remains would be dropped through your stool, and into the toilet where the little watermelon seed will be flushed away. Sorry to break your dreams, kids.
7. Gum
Urban legend highlight: Stays in your stomach for seven years
Believability rating: 3
If gum really stayed in the human stomach when swallowed, every elementary school student who snuck gum into class and then had to swallow it to hide their contraband would have to get their stomach pumped of strawberry Bubble Yum or fat, juicy pieces of Bazooka. The human body is super good at digestion and while it can't tolerate the synthetic stickiness of gum, the small intestine takes that load and then it all gets emptied later—generally in one piece. That's because gum is made up of a bunch of rubbery, indigestible chemicals that the body doesn't want to assimilate, so it will push it out. Unfortunately, not in the form of the ultimate rectal bubble.
6. Halloween candy
Urban legend highlight: Laced with heroin
Believability rating: 5
Has anyone actually ever met someone who was poisoned by heroin in Halloween candy? No. Just no. That urban legend has been going on forever, but actual reports of these incidents rarely, if ever, make the news. The few times it has happened have not been due to strangers with candy but because of people like a batshit crazy father in 1974 who poisoned his 8-year-old son with cyanide Pixy Stix trying to make a claim on some life insurance. Another kid in Detroit accidentally ate his uncle's heroin and his family put the drug on his Halloween candy to cover up their drug possession. A razor or a sharp object stuck in your Milky Way? Way more likely. Watch where you stick those teeth.
5. Twinkies
Urban legend highlight: The immortal snack food
Believability rating: 4
The Ancient Egyptians used to put honey in their catacombs because it lasts forever while obese Americans are likely to horde Twinkies for the day those Ancient Egyptians rise as Annunaki alien zombies and try to eat some measly Westernized brains. Despite what you've heard about Twinkies being able to last forever, that's just not true. Modern Twinkies only have a shelf life of about 45 days, which is actually double the shelf life they had in 2012. Without butter, milk, and eggs in Twinkies, they can last exceedingly longer than cakes with those ingredients and not appear like they are rotting, but that doesn't mean you should eat a Twinkie over the age of one and half months. That Twinkie hidden in the Apocalypse Box is likely staying intact thanks to hardcore preservatives, much like the heavily-botoxed faces of half the female actresses in Hollywood.
4. Diet Coke and Mentos
Urban legend highlight: Can explode in your stomach and kill you
Believability rating: 2
Mentos might be the freshmaker, but according to this urban legend they are also the "death maker." In 2006, two children from Brazil apparently died from ingesting Mentos and Coke simultaneously. Stoner experiments have proven that dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke can make it erupt like a junior high science fair volcano. Diet Coke makes the biggest geyser, with aspartame lowering the surface tension in the soda and making it erupt more impressively. While everyone warned against the dangers of such a combination, no one actually had any real evidence that these children passed on from a deadly, bubbly reaction. However, there is also no evidence that they didn't, so it might just be safer to walk around dehydrated with bad breath. Just saying.
3. Vodka soaked tampons
Urban legend highlight: They get sorority girls super wasted
Believability rating: 4
Like the stuff of sorority girl fantasies, booze-soaked tampons were either invented as some sort of twisted way to haze a bunch of teenage girls and make them do the most humiliating thing possible or a super unsafe way underage girls could "smuggle" booze into a club. The alcohol allegedly soaks through the vaginal membranes and into the bloodstream, inducing a contact buzz, keeping the alcohol from swimming in your stomach and causing you to puke, and giving you no trace of booze on your breath. Despite the strange logic that this should somehow work, it purportedly doesn't. A tampon can only hold about 1.5oz of liquid, and by the time it soaks all that up, it's virtually impossible for it to stay inside the vagina. Not only that, it really burns. Weirdos online claim that it works, but recommend an alcohol enema instead. This, however, can possibly kill you from alcohol poisoning so it's probably best to imbibe the good old fashioned discreet way—with gin. In a cocktail.
2. Kentucky Fried Chicken
Urban legend highlight: Made with mutant "chickens"
Believability rating: 0
Deep fried nuggets of chicken-filled gold, popcorn chicken was the thing for kids of the '90s—until rumors permeated the grease-filled air about Kentucky Fried Chicken not being made with actual "chicken." Allegedly, KFC do not call themselves Kentucky Fried Chicken because there is no actual chicken in their food. Instead its mutant chicken-textured organisms that are kept alive with tubes. They don't have beaks or feathers like regular chickens and basically have no bones so they are just plump and juicy money-makers who don't squawk or take up space. The truth is KFC is actual chicken. KFC's ingredient list clearly states chicken. Can we stop talking about this now?
1. Pop rocks and soda
Urban legend highlight: The death of Little Mikey
Believability rating: 2
In '70s and '80s schoolyards, Pop Rocks were about as tantalizing and illicit as the ubiquitous crack rocks of the time. Parents and teachers hated those explosive little sugar nuggets that burned cavities in the teeth of their children. When the urban legend of Little Mikey dying from Pop Rocks and Coke came about, it gave schools enough ammo to ban those saliva-induced killers. According to the urban legend, the Life cereal commercial star was killed by a deadly chemical reaction between the carbonated corrosives of Coke and the snappy candy. Kids were told they were in danger of dying from suffocation or an exploded stomach from the mixture of carbon dioxide. But, the truth is, no known person has ever died from Pop Rocks-induced combustion. Candy maker General Mills tried hard to dispel that rumor by putting out full page ads in newspapers and sending tens of thousands of letters out to school principals. And the kid who played Little Mikey? Still very much alive.