'Border' Patrol Needed in Long Island

TACO-RRHEA Bell

In what's clearly an effort to one-up NYC's pending ban on trans fats, health officials on Long Island have ordered eight Taco Bells to shut down while they investigate an E. coli outbreak that has sickened more than a dozen people—right on the heels of a (maybe related) E. coli outbreak in New Jersey that has sickened at least 15 people. While officials have yet to suss out the exact source of the bacteria, this is hardly the first time a mainstream American fast-food joint has come under attack for questionable sanitation practices, as illustrated by this rundown of the alleged health transgressions of our nation's finest purveyors of Big Macs, Chalupas, and buckets of assorted fryin's.

• A girl claims a taco she ate from Taco Bell contained a cockroach that eventually got into her inner lip and laid eggs, causing her jaw to swell up (false).

• A 60 Minutes investigation in the 1970s concluded that McDonalds uses ground-up worm meat in their hamburgers (false).

• A Virginia woman opened up a container of McDonalds chicken wings, only to find a deep-fried chicken head (true).