You know fast food is bad. Bad for your body. Bad for your soul. But it’s usually of the “so bad it’s good” variety. And as long as you aren’t eating it for every meal, what’s the harm, right? Wrong.
A viral Reddit thread recently posted by user Caseykins asked fast-food employees, “What’s one item on your respective chain’s menu that you will absolutely not eat under any circumstances?” Oh, boy, did they sound off. Thousands of them. What they said is the stuff of your junk food nightmares.
We’ve whittled their observations down to the 10 worst offenders, but if you want to really gross yourself out, have a scroll through the whole conversation. You’ll never look at fast food the same way again – and you definitely won’t want to eat it.
Cover Photo: snapphoto (Getty Images)
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Fast Foods to Avoid
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Baked Potato
"Never. Ever. Ever. Eat a baked potato after 4 PM. We stop making them after lunch, unless there’s a rush at dinner where we use the last of them and need to make more. Otherwise, it would be left in the warmer going soft and brown. We were told that if a baked potato was passable enough that a customer might not notice it was basically mush on the inside, we just cover it in toppings so there were no visual cues that it was gross and nasty." — celticsolstice
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Blizzard
“There are a lot of blizzard flavors and the ingredients just sit in metal bins behind the counter. Obviously items like strawberry cheesecake don't get ordered very often, and I remember the first time I saw it getting low the stuff at the bottom was moldy.” — throw_away_TX
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Chicken Sandwich
"Nobody ever fucking orders the chicken sandwich, so if you do, it's probably been sitting in a warmer tray for an hour or two. We just can't afford to throw out the old ones all the time, but have to keep some on hand. It will probably be hard and dry, and we probably won't give you a refund." — Vanilla_Neko
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Chili
"The chili is old dried-out burgers mashed up, microwaved in water, then mixed in with chili mix. I will not eat it knowing where the meat came from." — Gnidlaps-94
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Fish Filet Sandwich
"The main thing that was nasty was the fish sandwich, for a few reasons. 1) The thing just smelled foul. It was a frozen patty of fish that we’d dunk in the fryer for like four minutes, and then attempt to not vomit when we pulled it out because of the smell. 2) The tartar sauce. The tartar sauce sat in a container that was ‘cooled’ by the the larger tray it was in. This didn’t really cool it though, so it was usually room temp. Since few people ordered the tartar sauce, the top layer would quickly turn this greenish-brown color, which doesn’t sound that gross but it would turn FAST. 3) The fish patties tended to sit in the warmer for pretty much forever." — gravity_sledding_
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Gravy
“Shit smelled like dog food and looked like glue.” — shadeplant
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Ham (On Pizza)
“Worked at pizza hut done time ago and the ham would turn this disgusting gray color within a day or opening the package. You just couldn't tell if it had been opened 24 his ago or 2 weeks ago. But, during cooking it returned to pink which always weirded me out.” — Fusorfodder
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Meatballs
“Meatballs are heated from frozen in a microwave then left to sit in a bath of hot water to keep warm. Supposed to be thrown out after four hours but I would sometimes start a shift and see the bag i made yesterday still sitting there on slow days.” — mightbebrucewillis
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Chicken Pot Pie
"The chicken pot pie was made with old chicken from three to four days ago when we froze it. Nasty, and we wouldn’t make more pot pies unless we ran out." — Seahawks101777
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Soft Serve
"I was a shift supervisor at a fast food place and years later, I still refuse to eat anything with ice cream in it. The machine we had was always covered in mold and spoiled cream, while the owner's 'fix' was to scrape off a layer of mold and spray some Clorox on it." — Prannke
