Pet Peeve and Phobia Rolled Into One

Hair in food is the worst.

I don't care if I have just scrubbed my scalp with Lysol and coated my hair in a gallon of Purell to literally watch the hair float gently from my own head and lightly land on my dish and even onto a portion of the plate that has little to no food on it. I DON'T CARE.*

Stolen from here but is a stock photo of some sort? WHY.

Yesterday I watched helplessly as a strand of my own hair landed on my chicken cacciatore when I was no more than halfway done with the dish. Into the trash it went. 

Would YOU want this to touch your food? I think not.

I was reminded of this tragic event just now when I noticed a stray hair on my hand as I reached for my cake pop and yelped "NO!" --I did this. I yelped, with my office door open, terrified that my dessert enjoying experience would be ruined by my own dead cell buildup.

It's okay, guys. I saved it. That was a close one.

*I am gagging while I write this. :shiver:


EDIT: So I just read through the link where I stole the hairy plate image from. I guess ingesting hair is not really a health hazard. UNLESS YOU INGEST AN ENTIRE HEAD'S WORTH. How is that even a point you need to make?

• "The only real scenario in which hair would pose a threat, she continues, is if you ate a whole head’s worth. Large quantities of the stuff can do to your digestion what it does to your shower drain. Ingesting that much could make long clumps of hair, called trichobezoars, form in your stomach and cause abdominal pain and other symptoms."

AHHHH SHOWER DRAIN BELLY. GROSS GROSS GROSS.

It goes on to further scare the ever-loving-shit out of me:

• The truth is, you might have eaten hair today. Food manufacturers use L-cysteine, an amino acid in keratin, to stabilize dough and perk up the taste buds that detect salty, savory flavors. Although some factories derive their L-cysteine synthetically or from duck feathers, others get it from human hair. It’s clean, though, thanks to the fact that the manufacturers who use human hair boil it in hydrochloric acid to extract the L-cysteine from the keratin.

So, now whenever I eat a non-homemade baked good (first they take away my Twinkies, then they make me fear my ZebraCakes!?) I am going to be chanting "please be duck, please be duck, please be duck..." between each bite. LOVELY! Also, seriously guys, THINK OF THE VEGANS! Does human hair fall under their umbrella of no-eat-foods? I would think so...

 And then, just to end on a happy note:

• The FDA has set many standards for what it defines as “natural or unavoidable defects” in foods, but hair doesn’t make the list. And if you think that’s icky, there might be something even worse in your spaghetti; the FDA also okays up to two maggots per can of tomatoes.

THANKS, POPULAR SCIENCE. I'm going to go cower in the corner now.