‘What are you feeding us?’: Atlanta woman buys Foster Farms corn dogs. Then her son takes a bite—and hits something ‘inedible’

An Atlanta mother is swearing off Foster Farms after discovering something disturbing inside a box of corn dogs she bought for her family.

Amanda Marie Hawk (@amandamariehawk) holds up a partially eaten corn dog. She reveals what can only be described as a severely misshapen “hot dog” inside the breading. Her video has amassed more than 500,000 views.

The “meat” has large, irregular holes running through the length of it, giving it a porous appearance. Trypophobes, beware.

“Foster Farms. What is this?” Hawk demands, first holding up the skin-colored hot dog. “What is this deformed, disgusting hot dog that’s inside these corn dogs?”

She then shows her audience a dog that she sliced in half.

“This is inedible, disgusting, smells terrible,” Hawk says. She says it wasn’t an isolated issue. In fact, every single corn dog in the package had the same problem.

“They’re not expired. They’ve got a year to go,” she says.

She tells her audience her son had already taken a bite before she noticed anything wrong. “What are you feeding us? My child bit into this,” Hawk says. “Thank God he didn’t chip a tooth.”

Though Hawk describes the corn dog as “inedible,” it’s unclear from the video alone what caused the unusual texture or if there was a hard object inside the meat.

The experience was enough to convince her to stop buying from Foster Farms altogether. “This is absolutely disgusting,” she says at the end of her video. “Never again will I be purchasing any of your products [or] recommending them to my family and friends. This is actually absurd. Thank you.”

‘What the heck?’

In the comment section, viewers were equally disturbed by the holes running through the hot dog. Many questioned why the hot dog looked that way.

“Why was it hollow inside? What the heck? Why is it shaped like that? Colored like that? Oh myyyyy” one person wrote.

Another couldn’t get over the interior appearance of the dogs, writing: “Ew the HOLESSS EW EW EW.”

One woman wrote that she had experienced the same thing just the day before: “I cooked these yesterday, and mine were the same way!!!! Absolutely disgusting!!!”

One commenter even made an unverified allegation about the company’s facilities.

“My brother works for a pest control company … He visits Foster Farms … He stopped buying Foster Farms ever since his first visit. Told us to stop buying them years ago,” they wrote.

The commenter did not provide evidence to support their allegation, and it is unclear what facilities they were referring to.

What are Foster Farms corn dogs made of?

According to Foster Farms’ website, its Honey Crunchy Corn Dogs contain chicken franks made with mechanically separated chicken, water, salt, and various seasonings and preservatives.

The franks are coated in a cornmeal-based batter and sold frozen. The company does not indicate that its hot dogs should have internal cavities like the ones seen in Hawk’s video. But the dogs on the packaging and website don’t resemble the ones Hawk purchased.

Anecdotally, Foster Farms corn dog eaters have run into the same issue as Hawk in the past. A Reddit post from 2023 on the r/Costco subreddit featured an image of a Foster Farms Jumbo corn dog cut lengthwise. It contained similar holes.

“The darker portion feels a bit hard (almost like plastic) as opposed to the normal part,” they wrote in the caption, which tracks with Hawk’s worrying about her son chipping a tooth.

Several commenters voiced similar experiences, with one user writing: “I’ve noticed this too. [Oven-baked] and microwaved. There was sometimes a weird hard piece in the middle. Almost seemed like a stringy vein or something…Definitely a weird texture.”

“I know I’m late to the party, but it seems the quality of Foster Farms corndogs has gone downhill,” another wrote. “Lately when I cook them the cornmeal batter is split open when I take it out of the oven.”

What should you do if you find something unusual in your food?

Consumers who discover a suspected foreign object or other problem in a meat product can report it to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. The agency recommends customers keep the original packaging, any uneaten food, and any foreign objects found in the packaging. Complaints can be submitted online or through the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-674-6854.

This story is republished with permission. It originally appeared on Subplot News.