In 2005 Anna Ayala bought a friend's severed finger, simmered in it chili, then planted it in a bowl of chili at her local Wendy's in hopes of a financial windfall.
Ayala served her time and has been talking about how she hatched her scam. While she might have put far more thought and effort into getting an unintended ingredient into her chili, this certainly wasn't the only case where something vile found its way onto the dinner plate.
Top Five Worst Things People Found in Their Food (Not Counting the Chili Finger)
5. The Juanita's Menudo Finger Brothers Freddie and Phillip Ureno of California set the stage for the Wendy's finger chili fifteen years prior. They claimed to find a human finger in a can of Juanita menudo. Panic ensued. Recalls were issued. Lots of food was thrown away, until it was realized that the finger was really a piece of cow stomach, which was supposed to be in the soup. The material looked enough like a finger to make the brothers see dollar signs.
4. Possible Penis in Orca Potency Fruit Punch In 2001 Juan Sanchez-Marchez, a Coloradan, found what looked to be three inches of severed penis in a bottle of Orca Potency Fruit Punch. It took an FDA forensics lab to ascertain that although it looked positively pornographic, the punch interloper was actually an unfortunately shaped mold formation, caused by a faulty bottle-cap seal.
3. Frog in Canned Peas It's not easy being green. Nor is it easy when you find dead little green frog in a can of peas. A Kansas man accidentally nuked the critter in 2003.
