Another great list from Cracked.com, reminding us that some things just don’t need improving.  I could never figure out the colored ketchup–squirting green or purple ooze on french fries just would make me want to puke.    And #6 brings me back to the Ranch Whole Chicken in a can that we used to sell on ad all the time at Longs, we’d move 25-50 cases of the stuff.  I never had the guts to actually open one and look inside, and after the pictures below I’m glad I didn’t…

Remember the days when cheeseburgers didn’t come in cans and hardboiled eggs weren’t available in a handy, easy-to-slice log?

You probably do, and in fact probably thought you were still living in those days right now. But don’t worry! The future of food is here. The horrible, horrible future.

So now you can enjoy foods like…

#9. Egg Loaf

Let’s start with breakfast, and with some nice elongated freak eggs. OK, what kind of animal is dropping loaf-shaped eggs? Snakes?

We don’t think so. That means some Japanese company (don’t act up, you KNOW they’re Japanese) boiled a bunch of eggs, built elaborate machines to separate the yolks from the whites, and then built another machine to combine those yolks and whites into a goddamned egg loaf.

Then again, Japan is kind of a weird place.

That’s a best case scenario. We can’t guarantee there are actual eggs involved, but there are definitely machines involved. Photographic evidence is below.

This product isn’t generally available stateside, since Western customers tend to dislike food served with unadulterated horror. It’s our loss; just think about all those times you had a recipe that called for eight chicken’s worth of boiled egg slices.

When a ton of  egg slices are called for, why not just invent a machine to take the shell off of eggs? That probably already exists. Then you could just go into business selling pre-shelled hard boiled eggs or something. Why’s it gotta be a loaf, Japan? Tell us. TELL US DAMN YOU!!

#8. Sprayable Pancake Batter

So you’ve got your instant tube of unnatural eggs, but what to eat with it? Thanks to the miracle of instant pancake mix, enjoying a big stack of flap jacks has never been easier. Just open the contents of the package, add water, stir like your very life depends on it and just like that, you have a bunch of batter ready for the cooking. But this entry is not about that.

No, sometimes you’re in a rush and, as easy as instant pancake mix has made things, you still don’t have time to slave over a hot stove hooking up a tasty breakfast. To address this issue, at some point, somebody invented microwavable pancakes. But we’re not here to talk about that, either.

Nor will we talk about the miracle of microwaveable, pancake-wrapped sausage.

No, we’re here to talk about Sprayable Pancake Batter. Otherwise known as “Organic Batter Blaster,” which would be a perfect name if food products acted in porn, this product tackles the time shortage issue by eliminating the already pretty damn easy preparation process.

“I can’t believe what a fool I once was.”

This product actually claims to be for “people who traditionally skip breakfast because they don’t have time to make pancakes.” Who the hell is pounding nothing but pancakes for breakfast or, more tragically, going hungry because they can’t? Nobody has time for pancakes before work, that’s why God made granola bars and pseudoephedrine.

Rounding out our breakfast…

#7. Carbonated Yogurt

Carbonated yogurt? That’s the kind of shit you’d expect astronauts to eat as a last resort when supplies are low and a Donner Party mentality is starting to creep in. When General Mills introduced this heinous product, they couldn’t even bring themselves to call it yogurt. Instead, it was called Go-Gurt Fizzix, which, we presume, roughly approximates the sounds your stomach makes in the moments after consuming the stuff and just prior to hanging a food rope in your toilet.

Fizzix is also the sound that pre-empts most headsplosions.

Fizzix infused yogurt with a carbonated fizz was marketed to “on the go” kids. Listen parents, if your kids are so “on the go” that their calcium needs can only be fulfilled by a pouch of yogurt with soda bubbles in it, they’re probably selling meth. Sit them down with a Yoplait and a law enforcement official, and straighten that shit out.

But, by all accounts, the kids love the stuff and, surprisingly, the carbonated yogurt contains roughly the same nutritional benefits as the old boring plastic container stuff. We believe this is the latest in the long line of cultural abominations meant to make everyone over 15 feel old.

Damn kids, with their Hannah Montana and their carbonated yogurt.

So what’s for lunch?

#6. A Whole Chicken… in a Can

Sure, you could head down to the supermarket, pick up a whole chicken, throw it in the oven for a couple of hours and enjoy a delightful meal. If you’re lazy, you can probably even find that whole chicken fully cooked and ready to eat. But where do you turn when you want the obnoxious carving duties that come with a whole chicken, only coupled with the very real threat of salmonella poisoning? Whole Chicken in a Can, that’s where.

That was originally the slogan, but it doesn’t fit on the can.

While this frightening delicacy doesn’t come with giblets, the makers do encourage you to scoop out the mucus discharge it’s stored in to make a “delicious” gravy. We’re afraid that gravy-slash-afterbirth is pictured below.

Congealed? Yes. Sentient and/or evil? Possibly. Delicious? No.

All right, maybe we should strike “whole chicken” from the list of foods that should be canned. Maybe we can substitute a…

#5. Cheeseburger in a Can

The question of what to do when the intense craving for a cheeseburger overcomes you while you’re trapped in your office cubicle has plagued man for centuries. But fret not, because the answer has arrived. What’s that you say? “Drive to a burger joint on your lunch break”? Wrong answer, jerkstore! You took the bus to work! You know what else you took to work? A cheeseburger in a can.

But the picture up there doesn’t look bad at all. You may also note that it looks way bigger than the can that it supposedly hatched from. That’s because, as you probably already figured, in real life it looks more like this…

Make ours a double, please! Holy shit, we’ve seen shotgun wounds that look more like a cheeseburger than this thing.

“No.” – Cracked.com Photo Research Department

We’re not sure if that green spot is a pickle or the beginning of a virus that is destined to obliterate humanity as we know it.

With all of the horrificness that this thing brings to the table, you’d think it would at least have the decency to be cheap. You’d be wrong. This aggressive display of sub-value menu taste will set you back damn near six bucks. And you don’t even get fries or a drink. But you will probably get explosive diarrhea.

“What? No. A thousand times no.” – Cracked Photo Research Department

And honestly, if you’ve just ingested a cheeseburger in a can, getting that thing out of you as quickly as possible is definitely the desired outcome.

So what could we eat with this thing to just make our whole meal a freak show? How about…

#4. Funky Fries

Here is something you would think the board of directors wouldn’t want to hear when you’re trying to pitch a new food product:

“Simply put, they’re not what a potato is supposed to be.”

But you’d be wrong, because that’s how H.J. Heinz decided to market Funky Fries, and somebody fucking went for it.

Sexy: Something else potatoes aren’t supposed to be.

In case you’re the type of square cat that needs to be told, Funky Fries are french fries that come in a variety of flavors like chocolate, cinnamon, sour cream and blue. Yes, blue. As that’s not an actual flavor, we’re going to venture a guess and say they either tasted like wintergreen, blueberry or engine coolant.

Hmmm… better find something to dip them in, then. How about…

#3. Colored Ketchup

A few years ago Heinz decided that the few people in the world still not eating ketchup must be objecting to the awful tomato-red color. So, they started cranking out ketchup in a horrifying green. And purple. And pink. And orange. And blue.

Appetizing.

It worked for a while because kids tend to go apeshit over anything that makes their parents uneasy, and it was the closest they could come to eating paint without waking up in the hospital.

So what’s for dessert?

#2. Infused Fruit

Always looking to improve nature’s mistakes, science realized that the fatal flaw of fruit is that it tastes like fruit. Their mission to correct this started with the “Grapple”, an apple that they have modified to taste like grape (by injecting grape flavoring into it somehow).

But leave it to the Japanese to find other, more terrifying applications for such technology, which is why you can buy fruit that’s been infused with a variety of other tastes, such as the white chocolate-infused strawberries pictured below. The process sucks the chocolate into the pores of the fruit, turning the guts of the berry in to a pinkish-white, stringy, chocolaty substance.

Pinkish-white, stringy; just like Swaim.

They also claim to have an apple infused with red wine, which means they may be on the cusp of tapping into the massively lucrative undercover alcoholic market who have been waiting all their lives for a vodka-infused banana they can bring to work.

That baby is gonna be plastered.

So what do we serve all of this on? How about…

#1. Edible Plates

Have you ever been so hungry, so insanely famished that, after devouring your dinner, you’ve chomped down on the dinner plate?

Neither have we, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. Not anymore, anyway. Welcome to the 21st century, where the green movement has taken eating to a whole new level with the creation of edible plates.

Edible plates are made from cassava, a versatile plant which can be used to feed animals, treat malaria, diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome and, apparently, to make cookware easier to consume.

What a great plant. It does so many good things.

Oh, and it can also cause paralysis of the legs if not processed correctly. But that’s just a few less steps that will be treading on Mother Earth, right Moonbeam?

More like Casshole-ava.

Now, some of you are thinking that we already have things like taco salads where you “eat the plate” made of fried tortilla. So what’s the problem?

Well, in those cases the edible bowl is sitting on another plate, the way food is meant to. This thing, on the other hand, is going to sit directly on your filthy table where, just hours earlier, your roommate just snorted cocaine and then had sex without your knowledge. Then you’re going to eat it.

The plate, not your coked-up roommate.

This means you’ll need another plate under this one to protect it from whatever filthy surface you’re eating on. And if that plate is edible then you’ll need yet another to protect that one, creating an endless stack of plates that will inevitably lead to madness.