"This Fell out of My Burger" — Man Finds What He Believes Is a Tapeworm in His Food
Aug. 21 2023, Updated 2:27 p.m. ET
There are certain risks you take when you eat food that you have not prepared yourself. And while tapeworms may be low on the possibility scale on that list, you could still ingest or come into contact with one. Because that's exactly what happened to one man on TikTok, whose username is @kingkoda888 and whose real name is Daniel Bond.
He shared a video in which he briefly explains in a dubbed voiceover that he found a small white object that "fell out of [his] burger." He shows the object in his video and it's clear that, as the white half inch-long thing moves, it's not the mayonnaise that Daniel initially mistook it for.
If you're the type of person who flies to the comments on TikTok (ahem, like me), then you'd see that literally everyone is concerned for this guy's well-being after he either consumed part of a tapeworm or now has an egg or two growing inside of him.
The whole thing is almost enough to make you want to swear off fast food or restaurant burgers altogether. But I did say almost, because that's a strong stance. Even if the guy has a legit tapeworm inside of him now.
A man might have found a tapeworm in his burger.
In his short TikTok, Daniel shows what looks like a wiggling white tapeworm that he either spit out or pulled from his mouth and placed on the side of a portable charger in his car. He asks, "What is this?" after he says it was in his burger, clearly unbeknownst to him. It's unclear if Daniel finished the rest of the burger or how much he ate up until this point, but, uh, the video is not for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached.
People are telling the guy to seek medical advice after he may have eaten part of a tapeworm.
The comments under the video are full of concerns from strangers urging the TikTok user to go to the hospital, if only to make sure he's OK. One user commented, "A not fully intact tapeworm… man must have ate the other half." Another wrote, "There's only one thing worse than finding a tapeworm in your burger and that's finding half a tapeworm in your burger."
I mean, they're not wrong. And, while Daniel didn't share a follow-up video to let people know that a tapeworm hasn't grown 80 feet inside of his intestines, it's still entirely possible that the white wiggling worm from his burger was indeed a tapeworm that can be deadly if left untreated.
And, as one TikTok user put it in their comment, "in the off chance is it a different parasite," the so-called tapeworm could be even more dangerous inside of the guy. Other users are urging Daniel to "sue" or "lawyer up." But honestly, I'm just concerned about his intestines at this point.
Tapeworms can cause digestive issues and in some severe cases, trouble with organs like the liver or heart if tapeworms invade those areas. While that's not always the case, this could be fairly serious.
It could also be a pinworm.
A tapeworm is what most people have jumped to in regards to the little white thing that came out of the burger, but it could also be a pinworm. According to WebMD, tapeworms are flat and look more like ribbons than actual worms. Pinworms, on the other hand, are often less than an inch long. And from the looks of the TikTok user's burger interloper in the video, pinworm may be more accurate than actual tapeworm.
Pinworms can cause stomach pain and infections in some individuals. Either way, I sincerely hope this guy got himself checked out. Because whether he chomped down on that thing or not, it came dangerously close to his insides at one point.
