The study was only conducted on mice, not people. The mice were fed a diet in which 60% of the calories came from fat. All the mice gained weight, but the ones that were also given a "a large daily dose of resveratrol" had " all the pleasures of gluttony but paid none of the price" and lived just as well, physically and mentally, as the mice on healthy diets did.

The only problem is not that the study was conducted on mice, but the dose of resveratrol that they were given. One litre of red wine contains 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol. "A 150-pound person would need to drink from 1,500 to 3,000 bottles of red wine a day" to get the same dose as the mice, 24-mg per kg of body weight. Smaller amounts would have a positive, but correspondingly weaker, effect, but since the results are no confirmed on humans yet, limiting yourself to an extra glass of wine is probably still a better idea than having an extra bottle.

There are many instances of non-food items being found in food, far more than the ones we have mentioned here, but did you know that there are dedicated task forces employed by restaurant chains to investigate claims?

When something unfortunate happens in the kitchen, restaurants don't want it to affect the customers' overall experience. If it does, they want to offer a settlement ASAP to show their good will and to keep the story out of the new, if at all possible. Usually employees can verify an incident, as can delivery records, etc. This option is often coupled with a non-disclosure agreement, which means that far fewer incidents make the papers than really happen.

Some of the stories make it into the papers regardless of what the restaurant tries to do and, not infrequently, they inspire copycats. The copycats attempt to plant things in their food and defraud the restaurants, so for every incident that is reported, the company's investigators are called in. Eyewitness testimony and scientific evidence can prove an incident to be fake, as it was in the case with the mouse "found" in soup at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. In these cases, no settlement is offered (though the offenders in this particular example bizarrely tried to get the restaurant to pay them to not admit they tried to defraud them) and the scammers end up serving time.

The incidents are unfortunate, but a finger in your food isn't a crime unless you planted it there. Otherwise, it's just bad PR.

A mouse was found in a UK ready-made meal. To be more specific, only the head of the rodent was actually in the meal and the rest of the body was presumably lost during processing. After purchasing the microwaveable curry at an Asada market in England, the pregnant Tricia Rankin only ate two bites before she spotted the head. She told reporters that she threw up all night as a result of the incident. The company, which is owned by Wal-Mart, has issued an apology to the woman and assured her that they would issue "an appropriate amount of compensation" after the product has been tested. I wonder if she will receive more "compensation" if they find other bits of the mouse in the meal. As far as value per piece, I strongly feel that the head of the mouse is the most traumatic bit to encounter, followed by the tail.

A woman in Tennessee claims that her 89-year old mother found a mouse in a can of Campbell's Bean and Bacon soup. Campbell's representatives say that they would like to examine the mouse and the can in question, both of which have been stored by the family who made the allegations. The company says that it is unlikely that a mouse could have gotten into the very rigidly monitored packaging system at their plant. Casting further doubts on the legitimacy of the claim is the fact that the woman's mother reportedly ate some of the soup before noticing that there was a mouse in the can.

To give you an idea of the sizes, though the article does not specifically state what size can of soup the woman purchased, a regular sized can of Campbell's soup is 10.5-ounces and an adult mouse is about 1-ounce. The woman must have been eating directly from the can, as she would mostly likely have seen the mouse (if it was, in fact, in the can) had she decanted the soup.