Claim: A food writer lapsed into a butter-induced coma after consuming 413 Red Lobster biscuits.
Example: [The Mirror, June 2013]
A food writer trying to beat a restaurant’s customer record of scoffing hundreds of butter-rich cakes failed — and slipped into a COMA.
He was rushed to hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, after consuming
Doctors confirm that he slipped into a coma shortly after being admitted into the emergency room.
[Rest of article here.]
Origins: This item about food writer Kevin Shalin, who supposedly slipped into a coma after consuming
Apparently none of those news outlets found the tale of a man who reportedly ate
all in one sitting, then lapsed into a coma caused by "butter from the biscuits blocking signals coming from [his] brain" until doctors "drained approximately
A minimal amount of checking would have revealed the source of this story to be a
The Globe and Mail, at least, published a correction which included comments from the spoof article's author:
"I think people are extremely gullible. It's kind of sad actually that that many people thought it was a real story." "I like to throw some underlying message behind just about everything I write," he said. "Obviously Americans are overeaters and I think that's always just kind of the big joke," he said, "and so I kind of wanted to say, 'Well how can I take that aspect of it to the extreme?'"
"I'm just kind of surprised," Greg Henderson, the author of the Rock City Times article, said.
The Rock City Times then satirized the issue with a follow-up article entitled "British Tabloid The Daily Mirror Outsources Writing to Arkansas Satire News Sites":
The Daily Mirror expects to complete the full transition to the new writers by the end of the month. They did acknowledge that some of the stories may seem far fetched, like a man eating
The British tabloid The Daily Mirror announced this weekend that they will begin outsourcing the bulk of their content writing to satire news sites based out of Arkansas. The move comes as the tabloid faces declining viewership and poor journalism standards from existing staff.
Last updated: 25 June 2013