Hilarious Headlines: October 2013 – April 2014

As regular readers will know, the daily perusal of  the food industry news is one of the requirements of my job (and I’m using that term very loosely). Anyway, here’s a few of the luminous gems that made the headlines over the last few months:

Uplifting  Ice Cream Created for Secret Celeb (Foodmanufacture.co.uk, 14 Apr 2014)

A British ice cream company has concocted some champagne-flavoured ice cream laced with Viagra (25mg per serving, if you need to know). This exciting treat was commissioned by an unnamed A-lister celeb, for the purpose of livening up one of his house parties.

Must have been one of the Hughs… either Grant or “The Hef”. The latter is probably no longer capable of consuming anything not suited to travelling through a straw.

I guess a sticky end was pretty much guaranteed, though maybe not necessarily a happy one….

I wonder if this gave them the idea:

Painkillers In Ice Cream: Tesco Pulls More Products  (The Grocer, 18 November 2013)

This UK supermarket giant was forced to swiftly withdraw a rash of its own-brand ice cream products, including chocolate & nut ice cream cones, after the discovery that they contained paracetamol-codeine tablets.

Chocolate ice cream REALLY DOES take your pain away, and now you know how!

And we’re not yet done with drugs:

South Korean Police Net Ring Smuggling Diet Pills Containing Human Flesh (foodnavigator-asia.com, 29 Oct 2013)

To summarise: Two enterprising female Chinese students purchased 3,000 diet pills and 500 detox pills via a Chinese website with the intention of flogging them in South Korea. The South Korean police intercepted the package, analysed its contents and found that the pills consisted of bits of people, spiced up with a cocktail of illegal drugs.

Meanwhile in Europe, people got their knickers in a twist about some horse meat in their burgers.

You’re probably ready for a drink by now:

UK Drinker Strikes Foster’s Gold… Finds 50 Dead Flies In Bottle (beveragedaily.com, 21 Oct 2013)

A guy apparently drank two bottles of this very well-known beer brand, which, so he said, “neither tasted nor looked right”, before he found the insects sloshing around in the third bottle.

I must confess, I’m just a bit biased when it comes to people getting themselves all worked up about weird stuff they supposedly found in their food/drink. When I worked for a McDonald’s supplier company many moons ago, I remember a complaint from a woman, for example, who had allegedly chipped a tooth on a stone contained in her apple pie. We sent the offending pebble, which she had duly posted to us, off for analysis. It turned out to be the silly cow’s own dental filling. I can’t help but wonder about what’s really at the bottom of the aforementioned Tesco painkiller ice cream debacle…!

Anyway, our Lord Of The Flies responsible for this cracking headline reportedly bought those beer bottles in Asda and then sold the story to the Daily Mail. I don’t think either of these details added much credibility to this case…  [If you’re an US reader, Asda is essentially Wal-Mart, and the Daily Mail is but half a peg above the National Enquirer].

I’ve another amusing booze story for you:

“We Hope He’d Be Proud” (Foodnavigator.com, 08 November 2013)

Bulmers, a big British cider manufacturer [Americans take note: Cider in the UK is an ALCOHOLIC drink, NOT an apple juice!] launched an ad campaign using the image below, supposedly depicting the father of Bulmers founders Percy and Fred Bulmer, who had given his sons a loan to help them start their company:

“We hope he’d be proud that they used his money wisely”, the ad read…

Unfortunately, they used the wrong picture. The stern looking dude above is actually  Christian Huges, a teetotal(!) Methodist Minister from Wales. Ouch!

Hold onto your seats for a trip to nerdland:

Scientists Working On Lettuce-Based Electric Wires For Computers (business-standard.com, 27 Feb 2013

A researcher at the University of West England created ‘bio wires’ from lettuce seedlings, and he believes that “it may be possible to incorporate plant wires into bio-hybrid self-growing circuits”. He does does, however, envisage “some challenges” before this ingenious invention becomes commercially viable:

Stand back in awe!

Next week, I expect, he’s going to solve the global energy crisis with potato batteries. If he doesn’t stick his granny’s knitting needles into a socket first.

And talking of revolutionary novelties…

Could Cheese-Chocolate Put Spain On The Chocolatier Map? (Foodnavigator.com, 17 November 2013)

Not even Stephen King, The Grand Master Of Horror, has managed to think up something quite as spine chillingly grotesque as this: A Spanish chocolate manufacturer has decided that amalgamating cheese and olive oil with chocolate would help the country surpass Belgium and Switzerland in the gourmet confectionery stakes.

Stick to ham, you blummin’ idiots!!! And don’t even think about putting that into chocolate…

If you’re overcome by the ardent desire to bash your head against a brick wall right now, this is so much better:

Man Smashes Walnuts Using Head, Breaks Record (freshplaza.com, 25 March 2014)

155 walnuts in one minute… have no words… just click here to watch the (short) vid…

Tesco, please send him all your ice cream!

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 Hungry for more? Here are the two previous Hilarious Headlines posts:

• Hilarious Headlines July 2013
• Hilarious Headlines August/September 2013