From Old Yogurt to Insect-Spray Sandwiches, These Stories Prove You Can't Eat at Everybody's House

We all have horror stories about eating over someone’s house as a kid and trying something new and strange or eating something that made us never want to eat anywhere but home again. And an AskReddit thread is full of stories that prove you can’t eat at everybody’s house, though it has very little to do with being picky about certain foods.

The stories range from eating something spoiled at a grandparent's house (personally, I’m still dealing with that minefield at my in-laws’ home) to dealing with pet hair on food at a work potluck. And each story further proves that it can be absolutely awful to eat at some homes or to eat the meals prepared by other people.

I’ve dealt with my fair share of odd or expired food at other people’s houses. Hey, I grew up in the '90s and early 2000s, when most parents did the bare minimum. But, unlike one redditor, I never had the displeasure of eating food seasoned with expired paprika that had dead “weevils mixed in” that you could see on top.

Sometimes, though, it’s just about the food being weird rather than it being dangerous to eat.

“When I was a young kid, I stayed over at a friend's place, and his mom made veal or something with raisins in the meat somehow,” someone commented. ”It was so nasty I never forgot it.”

And there are times when you are at the utter mercy of not knowing you’re eating or drinking something awful until it’s too late.

When someone shared that they drank a cup of coffee that they discovered had a Band-Aid in it, another user replied, “Something similar happened to me, but it was a cigarette butt and crusted ash at the bottom of my juice. I drank almost all of it before I noticed.”

One user shared that they once noticed their nieces and nephews “going to town on some yogurts” at their grandma’s house. But when the redditor realized that the yogurt containers had Rugrats characters on them, alarm bells went off. However, somehow, no one got sick.

“The yogurts expired in 1997. It was too late,” the redditor wrote. “But, no one got sick, and they smelled fresh, so go preservatives, I guess.”

Another user shared that their grandma never washed dishes using soap. Instead, apparently, she just used water to clean the dishes and the redditor’s dad even kept tabs on the dish soap to see if they were right. It got to the point where they had to secretly wash the dishes for her.

Someone else shared that they believe their own grandma’s inability to throw away food past expiration dates or to look twice at moldy cheese might come from the fact that she lived through the Great Depression. Still, her ideas on food made it difficult for the redditor as a kid.

“Whether it was ramen with moths floating on top, or chunky milk in my cereal, it just scarred me for life,” they wrote in the AskReddit thread. “Dinner at her house was always a fight. Not eating her food was not an option.”

And in yet another grandma’s kitchen horror story, someone else shared that their dad prepared sandwiches on a countertop that their grandma had sprayed with fly trap spray. As a result, the sandwiches tasted just like the chemicals.

While it’s clearly dangerous to eat at other people’s houses, sometimes the call is really coming from inside the house. Or, you know, from inside the family.