VIDEO: Hair in Food
This is part one in a four parts storytelling series, all involving incidents from my food industry career that involve finding things in the food, which didn’t belong in the food. These stories are going to get progressively worse as I go along…I’m going to start with an easy one though. Today I’m going to tell two stories about finding hair in food.
Hair is probably the most common thing that gets into food. When it comes to commercial food preparation, you must have your hair tied back and covered at all times. Watch the video above to hear my two stories.
GIVEAWAY
For this series, I’m going to do one giveaway whose winner will be determined at the end of the month. I’ll be giving away my entire set of silicone molds. These things are heat resistant so you can bake with them or use them to mold chocolates or flowers. They are awesome.
Amazon Links
Large Silicone Mold
Medium Silicone Mold
Small Silicone Mold
This giveaway is open to anyone in the world. To enter to win, leave a comment below any one of this or the next three videos. Tell me your stories about finding stuff in food. If you have more than one story to share, just leave do one per week because I’ll be covering this topic for the next three weeks and you’ll have more than one opportunity to enter. If you have a really gross story, I’d suggest saving it till the end, when I do my really gross story so people who can’t stomach the gross stories can avoid them altogether. Whoever shares what I feel is the best story during the course of this video series will win the prize.
Here is a quick update on my progress with work: I’m taking a break from the gingerbread house masterclass to complete a new bakery business book that I’m due to release soon. Based on your feedback from a few weeks ago, I’ve been adding in some extra material so it’s taking a little bit more time than I thought. I’m very excited about this manuscript! I think it’s going to be a great tool for those of you who are in business. I’ll give you some previews of it starting next week.
New to Wicked Goodies? Start *HERE*
125 Building Blocks For Your Bakery Business
I love your stories! They are so funny, but SO helpful! I had a gross little experience just yesterday. I was making buttercream and had just turned on my mixer and I thought I saw something. It was so quick that I was unsure. I immediately stopped the mixer. I thought I saw a speck of black, so I looked and looked, muttering, “what was that?” l know I saw something.” I kept looking all around the bowl.
Sure enough, there it was! A tiny little bug, a gnat I think. It had dive bombed right into my mixing bowl! Omg! It was stuck in the buttercream, wings struggling to get out. Oh gross!!! Even though it was tiny, it was still a big! I was so mad, but I was also thankful that I had seen it! Just imagine if I hadn’t. It would have either been found in the cake or worse yet, pulverized in the mixer and gone undetected! Either way, gross. If found, it would have been terrible for my business. Certainly not my fault, but that day it was easy to see how such a thing could happen.
It cost me a batch of buttercream, but it was worth it!
These kind of stories make me so happy to live in a country where the food safety laws and food safety inspectors are super-strict!
Everyone handling food (even when you work as a store clerk) has to have a food hygiene certificate and every premise is suprise-inspected pretty much yearly.
My husband and I went to a restaurant and he found hair in his food – it was OBVIOUS it wasn’t mine or his but when the manager came over he said that must be your hair. My husband said it was obvious it wasn’t his own hair. The manager just kind of shrugged and walked away. He didn’t comp our meal or WORSE even apologize! Needless to say we asked for our check and paid since we would never feel comfortable just leaving and then never went back! But … before we left my husband did go and talk to the manager and tell him what he needed to hear. LOL.
Went out to Outback with my husband and daughter. She orders a caesar salad with her steak. Starts eating it and notices a plastic shard sticking into a piece of lettuce. Calls the server over and he basically shrugs and says it’s probably just a piece of plastic utensil, something they used to mix the salad. Not gross really but wish they wouldn’t have handled it like they did.
My husband and I want to way to a city for our anniversary in the state that we lived. It’s a very popular area called door County Wisconsin. One morning for breakfast we asked around where was the best place to go have a home-cooked breakfast. Several people suggested this particular restaurant, so that’s where we ended up going. He ordered his breakfast and I ordered my breakfast, and when I started eating my food I found not one but FOUR hairs in different portions of my eggs. I was SO grossed out! I called the manager over and they comped my breakfast and then proceeded to give me a coupon to come back for another breakfast at another time. I explain to them that I had no desire to take the coupon because I would not be coming back to the restaurant. I could have handled 1 hair, but 4? Nope!
Eyelash in my milk at a restaurant when I was pregnant and nauseous and could only drink milk without thinking about vomiting
Hair in food doesn’t gross me out as much as it did when I was younger. It happens. And hair is probably among the least disgusting things you might find. That said, my hair in food story involves my own hair and my work as a cake decorator. I have long hair that is always tied up when working. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, loose hairs will stick to my clothing, waiting for the right moment to pounce. That must have been the case when I was using a clay extruder to make a fondant rope. As the fondant came out, it twirled in an unusual and unexpected way. I continued extruding and that’s when I noticed that a long hair – MY long hair – was being extruded with the fondant! How the heck did it get in there??? Since that day, I go over my entire body with a lint roller after I tie up my hair. About 50% of the time, the roller will collect at least one stray hair!
Lol I enjoyed your story. But if the average person eats 40lbs I think I’ve eaten at least 80 or more . I’m a hairstylist for about 25 years. And every time we took a break hair fell off or clothes. I got grossed out at first but then realized that was going to be my life from the day I started beauty college. Then another time was I went to McDonald’s and bought a Big Mac. I always have the habit of lifting the bums to check and adjust before a bite . There on the lettuce sat a big ball of hair and trash. Took it back they apologize and gave me a fresh one . So now everywhere I go I double check my food.
Many, many, many years ago I was having lunch with a friend in an upscale Chinese restaurant, (insert cringing here for the many depths this can go…). As I am eating I look down and see what appears to be movement in my food, as in my food has a slight wiggle to it. Using my fork I begin to uncover, food bit by food bit, the source of the shimmy. Dear gawd, I found… I would stop reading now if you ever want to eat Chinese again…, I’ll wait. I found the better part of the back half, not whole, but the back half of a roach, winding down with a non-rhythmic twitch. My unidentifiable pitch and the frantic frenzy in my eyes summoned the waiter. His smile continued as he straightened his clip on bow tie, until our friend let out one final kick from his chorus line gone jagged. The waiter brought the manager over to survey. The manager shrugged as he straightened his clip on bow tie. It was then that my friend noticed that there were a few frantic “Rockettes” inching up the wall that our table was against, their brown “tuxes” contrasting the white linen tablecloth, apparently late to the party. Needless to say, lunch was over. The manager would only comp my food since my friend’s lunch seemed unscathed. Wait, what? And yes, the smiling, clip on bow tie straightening waiter did ask if I wanted the rest of my lunch “to go”.
Great video! I have found living things inside a pastry from a bakery. Maggots no less. Horrifying to say the least. Have never eaten that type of pastry ever again.
My story happened when I was quite young. We had gone to a dine in restaurant and ordered. While eating the veggies one of us noticed a shard of the steel can that they came in on the plate. The can opener had cut of a little piece of the can and it was served with the veggies. I do remember my father mentioning it to the server. I don’t remember the outcome.
When I was a child we had gone to an all you can eat buffet and daddy was eating some canned greens and bit down on somethitsharp…it was a piece of a can. We are free that day.
When my very soon to be son-in-law was just a mere boyfriend that my daughter had been seeing for over a year, he, she and my other adult children, spouses and boyfriends were all over for a family dinner all cooked by me. Now, I know that finding hair in food is gross and even if I find my own hair on my own plate I find it disgusting, but how was I to act when this soon to be son-in-law who we were trying to impress (and hold on to)picked up a hair that was obviously mine from a piece of shnitzl that he was about to put in his mouth???? I wanted to bury myself in the spicy red ketchup that was on the table and he probably did too. Hey he wanted to impress us as much as we wanted to impress him! A word was never mentioned about this. He very elegantly quietly lifted up the light brown strand, left it on his napkin that he folded over and continued to devour the shnitzl. No one else seemed to notice other than me and since that day my hair is always covered in a scarf whenever I cook or bake.
Well, this is about something NOT found in food. I was working in a supermarket bakery where they actually mixed the flour, water etc. and made most of their own bread. My assistant manager, a female, finished making the bread, French, Italian, hogie rolls etc., when she noticed one of her false nails was missing ! She did NOT scrap everything, just hoped for the best. I’m sure someone had a nasty surprise in their loaf of bread !!!
I have worked in the bakery business for 25 years. It wasn’t until I started working for a grocery store bakery that I had someone return a cake because of something being in it that shouldn’t have been there. A customer brought back a cake that had a permanent marker inside. This grocery chain purchased all of their cakes frozen. We only frosted them. Somewhere in the baking process, the marker fell in. Hard to explain to the customer. Many apologies, returned money plus another free cake. Lucky for us the customer was trusting enough to give us a second chance.
My gross food story isn’t really my story it was for my husband. He had gone to a Dairy Queen while I was pregnant to pick me up something to eat. He brought back a foot-long hotdog for both of us. And when he bit into his hotdog and pulled away from his mouth it was a very long red hair in the hotdog. He was so upset that he took it all the way back over there and he could see the girl standing behind the counter with the long hair where it probably came from. Needless to say we never ate there again.
I used to get lunch from salad bar at store across from the doctor’s office I was working at. First bad move was probably getting tuna salad. Went back to office and then sitting at my desk and eating, discovered a broken red painted fingernail. I want to vomit all over again.
Unfortunately, I was involved in a similar situation. I went to lunch with a colleague and she did the same thing. She is a weave wearer and she pulled a long black coarse hair right on top of the plate. The waitress challenged her saying that she believed it was her hair. I sat there dumbfounded and said nothing, even though I witnessed what she had done. Although I asked her not to do it, she continued with her scam. The server called over the manager who acquiesced and comped the meal. I am embarrassed to say that to this day, I regret sitting there and not opening my mouth.
Ok, so this is my story. When I was 18 I was working at Kinkos and I was out getting lunch at Burger King. I got a burger and took it back to work to eat it there. So when I was eating it i chewed something hard, guess what it was a peace wood chip. So since then I haven’t been to Burger King again.
Although that was a little gross still enjoyed it.