The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the further removed we become both from food production and preparation. These days many of us rarely have time even to prepare our own meals, let alone grow them, so we depend on others for almost everything we put into our stomachs. We buy, prepare, and serve; or pick up from the takeout; placing our faith in an army of nameless food production workers. We trust them to do right by us.

But what if those others we're depending on aren't doing their jobs properly? What if bad things get into our food out of their negligence or, worse, their malevolence? Given our reliance upon total strangers (and also our underlying guilt over abdicating to others a task we should be performing for ourselves), it's no wonder our common horror tales about contaminated food are many and varied.