My siblings and I decided to have some KFC for lunch today, and I remembered this story I heard before: that KFC had renamed itself thus (from “Kentucky Fried Chicken”) because they were not using real chickens anymore, instead substituting genetically-engineered chicken-organisms. These “chickens” were allegedly bred to be larger, have smaller bones (for more meat), no feathers, and weren’t really living in a sense – they were just creatures in a vegetable-like state, grown for the slaughter. In other words, they were engineered to reduce costs for the company while serving up huge fried chicken servings.

For a while there, I actually believed this one – I mean, yeah, I don’t see any KFC branches with the entire name spelled out anymore. And they do have pretty big chicken parts compared to the ones we buy from the market, don’t they? Plus, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to imagine the big evil corporation having crazy practices like breeding chickens especially made to be cooked.

So I did a quick search, and found this on Snopes.com – they debunk everything that the urban legend states. No, KFC didn’t shorten its name because it wasn’t using real chicken anymore. According to Snopes, the name was shortened to de-emphasize “chicken,” as KFC was expanding its menu, and “fried,” which has increasingly become tied with negative connotations. Philippine ad campaigns for KFC have also used the slogan “Kapag Fried Chicken” (roughly translated, “If you want fried chicken”), which is a play on the initials of the restaurant chain. Even typing in www.kentuckyfriedchicken.com redirects you to the KFC site.

The main point that totally debunked the legend for me though, was that the sheer amount of chickens being sold would mean that KFC (part of the Yum! Brands group, which also owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut restaurant chains) will have to source their raw products from other suppliers, and not grow everything on their own. There are more details on the Snopes.com site, along with other urban legends (mostly American, though) which they discuss, sort of like the MythBusters of old urban legends.

This little episode got me thinking why a lot of these urban legends get passed on. I realized that there are a lot of common misconceptions that fuel the lives of these legends. A more recent example is from an e-mail forwarded to me quite a number of times (apparently, it is also local to the Philippines; I did quick searches and most top hits turned out to be Philippine-related websites). Thankfully, it has stopped circulating, but it still pops up every once in a while, and I think it’s a simple enough example to discuss. Do bear with the… unsavory nature of the story.

The story goes that someone was at a quick service/fast food restaurant, and his soda tasted funky. After inspecting the straw he used, the customer found that “there were a lot of tiny black round things that looked like eggs.” After further investigation, the customer, along with the restaurant staff, discover that the entire case of straws had the same “tiny black things.” Said protagonist then vows to check the straws every time he eats out, and claims that most of the establishments had the same problem, also proclaiming that the darker the colors of the straw, the more “eggs” were found. Black straws were the extreme case, as the e-mail mentions that cockroaches live, or hatch eggs and excrete “in the dark places.” The e-mail ends with a small table with “research results,” naming some of the top quick service restaurants as the main culprits, with only the biggest foreign burger chain and a big coffee chain safe from the accusations. It ends with a note that claims “80% or more restaurants in the malls use red or black colored straws.”

Dubious statistics aside, the other details of the story are begging to be criticized. An internet search, or a look at elementary science textbooks (or stock knowledge) will tell you that roaches lay eggs in one huge case, and do not spread them out. So, the black things were probably NOT eggs. Waste perhaps? Common sense will tell you, however, that a normal roach wouldn’t usually fit in a straw, and why would they choose to go inside a straw just to excrete waste? Even if the story were true, I highly doubt that roaches would also bother choosing to live in a storage crate with black straws over one with red or white straws – seeing as they are nocturnal and prefer the dark (the only point that the e-mail got right about the insects), they probably wouldn’t be too concerned with the color of their habitat. The very thought of bugs in the crates that your straws come in should be enough for most people to stop using the straws, but this story was just a bit too over the top – if ever there would be black things in your straw, it would most probably be dirt.

Despite the holes in the story, I’ve seen this story forwarded to me countless times and re-posted in a lot of blogs and journals. I guess the scares of dirty restaurants are a huge fear in a lot of people (Snopes has an entire section on it), enough for a lot to blindly believe everything they read on the web without bothering to check if the story is even plausible.

Like the earlier KFC urban legend, these stories are nothing more than the products of bored (and quite creative) minds. I do believe that we would be better off if everyone who received a story like this started thinking a bit more, and do their part to inspect the veracity of the claims. After all, there’s enough spam in my inbox as it is.