I've lost count when it comes to the amount of times lettuce has been marked hazardous. And I love lettuce.
Like, what is happening on these Midwest farms that lettuce is being poisoned before it's shipped out to feed the nation?
Everytime that recall occurs I clutch my pearls and run to my fridge to inventory. For me food recalls are the worst.
You never know if you're already in danger.
Though it maybe harrowing to hear, Redditoru/Pristine-Tomorrow710asked:
What were the scariest product recalls in history?
Car recalls always get me too. That is nightmare, suspense movie nonsense right there. That has to be a collective huge fear right? You're driving along and then SURPRISE... the brakes give out. And it's the manufacturer's fault. I smell a lawsuit.
Poke Bad
Kiss My Ass Pokemon GIFGiphy"I've a strange fascination with product recalls and I have yet to see anyone mention the Burger King pokeballs that could suffocate young children by getting suction-stuck over the mouth and nose. I think it occurred a bit before my time but is a famous case."
Dotted
"I think Aqua Dots were a kids toy that were covered in some chemical that would cause coma or seizures if swallowed."
- Njabachi
"Was it 1,4 BDO? That's the only chem I know of that metabolizes into GHB, besides GBL. Would be really odd to have that as a coating on a kids toy, I guess I could see it from the manufacturing process though since it is used as an industrial solvent."
Killing the Sick
"Therac 25 radiation therapy machine.
Several cancer patients died of radiation poisoning."
"Yep was about to comment I remembered that name from my ethics in tech class I took freshman year. Was crazy how many times people have lost their lives due to upper management not caring about techs complaints."
Lift Death
"How about the one where the elevators were made to go into the basement when a fault was determined and all human interaction locked out e.g. the elevator could not be moved or opened or anything.
Sounds reasonable, right? You don't want people opening the elevator and maybe letting in a hot rush of fire, or continuing to use the elevator when the building is on fire."
"Well, unless the fault is flooding. In the basement.
Then you're in a coffin, slowly filling up with water, trying furiously to do something, anything to avoid drowning.
And failing."
On the Inside
Jacki Weaver Dancing GIF by PomsGiphy"A friend of mine had his artificial hip recalled. He got hit by a drunk driver and spent a year recovering and learning how to walk again. Then, about six months after he was back to normal he had to start all over again, because the hip was releasing toxic metals into his body and had to be replaced."
I can't imagine a body part recalled. As if the surgery to replace what needed saving wasn't bad enough, now you have to do it again? And you may all ready be poisoned from the first round? Thank God for liquor.
The Pill
Season 8 Nbc GIF by The OfficeGiphy"That Tylenol/cyanide thing was kinda scary because they couldn't fully pinpoint where exactly the tampering had occurred until a bit later into the process."
"At least one (I think maybe even 3?) of the victims ended up being a "copycat" that thought they could get away with it"
"Wiki link which probably corrects almost all of what I've said, haha."
People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know
North American Delivery
"One of the scariest was actually something that wasn't recalled. The Federal Pacific electrical panels are breaker panels that where installed in houses for decades in North America and had a breaker failure rate of around 60%. That means 60% of the breakers they made wouldn't trip at the required currents or at all, causing massive fire hazards. If you have a Federal Pacific panel have it replaced before it burns down the property."
In the Dark
"I don't think it was ever recalled because I think it took place in the early 1900s, but there were clocks that used radioactive paint (it had radium) in order to get it to glow in the dark. A lot of the workers (and who knows how many others) ended up getting really sick due to the continued exposure to the radium."
Faulty Latch
"Infant and child car seats can either be the pinnacle of safety or death traps. You only find out which after the recall."
"The latch keeping my baby sister buckled to her car seat completely unlatched when we got rear ended. Luckily she only suffered a cut on her ear that required stitches. Got a nice little settlement from that. Don't remember the brand, I was probably 6 at the time."
Bad Deploy
episode 12 airbags GIFGiphy"Airbags. I worked with a company that made these. Shrapnel from the exploded airbag would come flying at you while you are in an accident. Gruesome way to add insult to injury."
It's Everywhere!!
"Asbestos had some pretty big implications after they realized the health risks associated. It was used in EVERYTHING. Some places used it and the buildings couldn't be cleaned so they had to be leveled or demolished or left to rot if they couldn't afford it."
Kaboom!
"The exploding Pintos are still the classic case. Especially when the internal memos came to light saying that it would be cheaper to settle a few wrongful death lawsuits than to fix the defective gas tanks. The Ford Pinto was a small cheap automobile produced in the USA from 1971 to 1978."
"Pintos produced in Canada to higher safety standards did not have the same problem, of exploding into flames when hit from behind at speeds as slow as 5 mph.)"
"Twenty-seven people died in Pinto fires and countless others suffered serious burns."
Tragedy
"The 2008 baby formula recall in China. Some company officials tried to boost the protein level of a brand of baby formula by adding melamine. 6 babies died and over 50k were hospitalized. 2 of the perpetrators were executed but it ruined the public's trust in the authorities because they were too lax in their inspections. It was a huge tragic fiasco, just for greed. My wife is Chinese and she would ship baby formula from Canada over there regularly for years as her cousins had kids."
Big Beefs
"British Beef during the BSE crisis. I found out fairly recently I'm not allowed to donate blood outside of the UK because I may have been exposed to contaminated beef as a child."
"There is a very real possibility that I and many others my age will suddenly come down with vCJD (a neurological disease that starts with dementia and usually ends in death) at some point in the future as there is a genetic type that can remain asymptomatic for decades after exposure."
Don't Explore
Send It Top Gear GIF by MotorTrendGiphy"Not sure how many of you would remember, but the tires on old Ford Explorers would randomly explode after a certain number of miles."
"The thing is, because early SUV's had a super high center of gravity, when the tire exploded, the Explorer would immediately flip over. This typically happen at 60+ mph, and those things were not safe to begin with."
"The old new reports are wild."
The Helper
"Thalidomide."
"My mum had a brain tumour and after all other treatment was exhausted (surgery, chemo and radiotherapy) she was given thalidomide. It helped kill off the nerves feeding the tumour. It gave her a few extra months but she died about a year after her original diagnosis."
"There's a picture on the tablet of a pregnant woman with a line through it if I remember correctly. I don't know if they are still using it for treating brain tumours. This was just over ten years ago. Good that something so bad has gone on to actually help people."
Allergens
"Not a single recall, but how frequent recalls are for products containing food allergens. Every time it happens it means that enough people came near to a horrifying death of anaphylaxis in an emergency room that someone noticed and found the source of the allergen-contaminant."
Baby Wheels
"When they recalled my son's stroller but the company didn't bother to contact me even though I filled out the little postcard and mailed it. I only found out after he fell out of it (he wasn't seriously injured, thank God.)."
Save Timmy
fox sports 1 win GIFGiphy"Lawn darts. Out with the family trying to play a game have a good time next thing you know little Timmy is impaled."
Truth Sucks
"The Dalkon Shield. It wasn't even recalled, which is the scary part. It was an IUD introduced in the early 70s that was ineffective as hell, and caused many deaths and permanent health problems. The makers knew almost immediately that it had these issues, and fought it in court once they were revealed and over 250,000 people were suing them. The cases led to an overall distrust in IUDs in the US, and that industry still hasn't recovered."
"ETA: they tried to make long term plan once they knew they were ineffective by selling them to the US government to distribute in Third World nations for "population control", which is a whole nother level of messed up. The "Behind the B**tards" podcast just did an episode about it."
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the air was recalled. It basically has been already. We are all really just surviving on a wing and a prayer. I'm gonna go grab some vodka and lettuce.
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.