Just when you thought the world couldn't get any weirder, an unusual menu item at SeaWorld will have you wondering if you landed in the Upside Down from Stranger Things.
Most people love a good cheeseburger but not when the cheese comes in syringe form. A Redditor posted a photo in the r/Anticonsumption subreddit of just that: $15 "cheese" burgers at SeaWorld Orlando with syringes full of hot liquid cheese served on the side.
As they say, the truth really is stranger than fiction. Apparently, the bison burger was a returning favorite as part of SeaWorld Orlando's Christmas Celebration, but the syringe of cheddar cheese doesn't exactly scream Christmas festivities. It seems more like a Halloween food, but some SeaWorld fans seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.
Aside from providing a bizarre method of adding cheese to a burger, the syringes produce a lot of unnecessary plastic waste. Millions of people visit SeaWorld locations every year, and while they don't all come at Christmastime, thousands still flock to the parks over the holiday break.
Clearly, enough of them order the bison burger for SeaWorld to keep it on the menu, adding to the roughly 500 million tons of plastic produced each year worldwide.
According to Our World in Data, more than 1-2 million metric tons (about 2.2-4.4 billion pounds) of plastic waste ends up in the oceans, while 19 million metric tons (almost 42 billion pounds) leak into the environment. Not to mention, plastic production and disposal accounts for about 3% of global planet-warming pollution, mostly from converting fossil fuels into plastic.
While it's nearly impossible to entirely avoid plastic, we can drastically reduce our consumption of the harmful material by making a few simple changes, such as by ditching plastic food containers for reusable options like silicone and switching to powdered soap and detergent without plastic packaging.
Most people in the comments on the burger photo weren't too eager to try it.
"Hi. Yes I'd like a medical syringe of American cheese in liquid form. I find this appetizing to insert into my burger," one person said sarcastically.
"Please tell me this is fake? The question mark indicates how horrified I [am] at the prospects of this being real," another added.
Someone else had no idea what to make of the strange food item, writing: "What in the Jesus H. Ronald McDonald-Reagan rootin tootin deep fried American h*** is that? We've reached a new low somehow."
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