We've all seen one of those comedic films or cartoons where one of the characters intends to eat something delicious and accidentally grabs something gross or inedible instead.
And surely at least a few of us have reached for the cookies and grabbed out of the box of dog biscuits next to it instead.
But some of us have accidentally eaten some truly disgusting things, and we may never be the same after reading some of these stories.
Redditor thestonefree asked:
"What's the worst thing you have accidentally eaten?"
Does This Still Count as "Stir-Fry"?
"I had been driving across the country for days without sleep, and my girlfriend wanted me to stop by some buffet restaurant she used to go to with her family."
"I put a variety of items on my plate without much thought, she walked off, and I didn't know where she went."
"So, instead of wandering around to find her, I sat at our table and proceeded to dig in as it had been several hours since I had last eaten. I noticed people were looking at me funny and seemed disgusted (especially the waitress), but I was too tired and hungry to care."
"After eating a couple of surprisingly bland and cold vegetables, I decided to chow down on what I had mistaken for dessert and realized I was eating frozen raw meat. It was a build-your-own stir-fry restaurant, and you were supposed to take your plate to get fried up, but I had no idea until my girlfriend came back with her plate..."
- SteveDeFacto
Those Weren't Raisins
"40 years ago, I ate Raisin Bran for breakfast one day, and it was stale and chewy. I ate it anyway."
"When I got to the bottom of the bowl, I noticed that it was full of maggots. I ran to the bathroom to vomit. I never ate Raisin Bran again."
- BulletDodger
A Taste for Space Travel
"When I was about 14 (1990), I was at my friend's house. He was talking about how he had just visited the space museum."
"He went to the bathroom and I saw he had some astronaut ice cream on his desk. I took a bite. It was horrible."
"When he came back, he informed me that was a piece of the shuttle heat shield."
- Whitworth
Enough Said
"Have you ever heard of a spit cup?"
"Yeah..."
- xipisiw577
Never Eat the Crumbs Again
"I ate the leftover crumbs of a bag of chips. They were kind of chewy and weird tasting. My dad put his toenail clippings in there."
- nadoba1473
Bad-Smelling Cookies
"My cat p**sed on a plate of cookies, and I figured it out the hard way."
- Breadfan69
Inconsistent Milk
"One time, I poured a glass of milk and it looked fine. I took a swig of milk, and it was fine, but then I took a second drink and got a big curd of congealed milk."
- matt-sikes
Traveling Bugs
"Bugs. So many bugs. Been riding motorcycles for the better part of 40 years. I've tasted many bugs from Pennsylvania to California. Louisiana has some real nasty tasting ones."
- khreper
Smoked Sprite
"I once drank from a large McDonald's soda cup (through the straw with the lid on), and the remnants of some Sprite and about 10 cigarettes and their ashes came up. My mom never smoked in the car again."
- xipisiw577
Not Easter Candy
"A robin's egg."
"I was a child, it was small and blue, and I thought it was candy. I felt SUPER guilty thinking that I killed a poor baby bird and it was only later that I realized the egg was already a goner when it ended up on the ground."
"Also, the egg was still white and yolk, I think I would be messed up to this day if it was a little birdy."
- mkicon
Stopped Up Gardening Hose
"Just a few days ago, I was trying to join two different kinds of tubing for a garden pond project and used super glue because that's what I had lying around."
"But no water came out, so to see if it was clogged, I sucked on it. Got a wad of still-uncured super glue stuck to the roof of my mouth and tooth. Luckily I didn't swallow it. It was weird but it just came off after a while, no permanent damage."
"It seemed extremely clever up until the moment it happened, upon which it seemed phenomenally stupid."
- msty2k
Faux Mashed Potatoes
"I ate pure hardened fat in the fridge thinking it was mashed potatoes."
"It took me three bites before I figured out my mistake."
- vaplex759
"Wh-why did you bite more than once?"
- MSRX-78-2
"Literally blind optimism, lol (laughing out loud). I thought ‘These are the weirdest textured mashed potatoes ever'... and then ’wow, there’s, like, no flavor’…"
- vaplex759
"WHY DID YOU BITE A THIRD TIME!?"
- MSRX-78-2
"I think I had too many tabs open in my brain while I was doing it."
- vaplex759
"That’s probably the best answer."
- MSRX-78-2
Caramel "Apples"
"You guys know caramel apples? Well, I ate a caramel onion. Some a-hole made them and put them on the counter as a prank. Fricking nasty."
- xayep54383
Angry Chips
"A bee. I was eating chips at recess and a bee flew into my chip bag and I didn’t realize."
"I put my hand in my chip bag, grabbed some chips, and a bee was mixed in with them and it stung the crap out of my tongue. 10/10 don’t recommend eating a bee."
- CanadianMuaxo
Chewing Something Else Instead
"I ate a fly in the ice at the bottom of my drink last week. I realized what it was just as I bit down to chew the ice. Horrifying."
- Taste_The__Rainbow
We are nothing short of unwell after reading these accounts of things that have accidentally been eaten.
From having too many tabs open in our brains to not realizing that there's an infestation in our home, these Redditors had no shortage of nightmare fuel to share.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images