Food Theory: The Conspiracy that ENDED Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

welcome to kfc, can i interest you in our classic spicy sea sandwich or a six piece kf wing combo, maybe a 12 piece bucket of fc fc, do you mean

fried

chicken

? We can't use those words here you can't use the words

fried

or

chicken

in a restaurant that's literally called

kentucky

fried chicken it's kfc now it's okay kfc please keep the acronym approved or you'll piss them off who are they what the fuck is going on here you mean fried hello internet welcome to

food

theory

, which we will now see change the name to ft shoot, that actually gets confusing with film

theory

. foot foot foot I'll tell you what we're going to spit out some shorter name options here on our end and anyway I'll get back to you on that today I want to talk about something I came across earlier this year while doing research for our crossover weekend KFC three-way or should I say KFC crossover weekend nominated by Streamy, everyone thought I was crazy but it worked.

What I found was a

conspiracy

, the supposedly real reason the restaurant is world famous. The Kentucky fried chicken chain officially changed to its acronym KFC in the '90s. On the surface, it may seem like there's not much to theorize here. I mean, being called KFC is just a simple business decision. It's short. It's catchy. No. It could be possible. be easier to spell and was also already a well-known nickname for the restaurant by the time the restaurant began changing its name around 1991, the international pancake house had already successfully rebranded itself as ihop howard johnson was adopting its nickname hojo, it seemed natural that Kentucky fried chicken would follow that same trend at least until a chain letter appeared that sparked a full-blown

conspiracy

theory that persists to this day, that's right, theorists, there is a little and Annoying rumor floating around that KFC didn't actually change their name voluntarily, but rather the government forced the company to change because what they serve doesn't qualify as chicken, which then they supposedly serve well?

According to the theory, mutants, featherless chicken-like creatures, raised in a lab and genetically engineered to have more meat than Honestly, real chicken, how could I not do a

food

theory episode about this now? Unsurprisingly, the restaurant strongly denied all of this from the beginning in February 1991. Kyle Craig, president of KFC US, explained to Bloomberg that the name change was entirely his decision and was simply a way to minimize the effects of the word fried not only because it has unhealthy connotations but also because it undermined the company's efforts to expand its menu beyond fried foods to things like grilled chicken salads, wraps, etc.

It makes sense at the time that America was at the height of its low-fat craze and fried foods were public enemy number one because of the way the effectiveness of the quote-unquote low-fat trend or I guess I should say the inefficiency is a food. The theory for another day, no doubt, but as reasonable as it may seem for a restaurant in the early '90s to avoid the word fried, the mutant chicken theory is what caught everyone's attention because, of course, that's how it was and it managed to stick. for three decades later. Wow, by the '90s, actually three decades ago, my brain says yes, but my obsession with gigapets says no, so today, theorists, we'll finally get to that Kentucky Fried truth.

What was the real reason KFC shortened its name? Was it the restaurant's choice or was it them? forced to change it, is there really a conspiracy at play here? Look, I admit, I really want there to be a genetically modified chicken conspiracy, like I'm borderline needing this to happen, but I promise to be as objective as possible even though I'm literally salivating right now at the prospect of a mutant chicken KFC miniature and uh, since we're going to review other people's theories in today's episode, I think you know what that means, it's time for you to leave your theories in the comments below, I'll pick my favorites in the next episode of morty now so let's travel back in time to the year 1991 when the strings of letters roamed the earth for those of you who don't remember the strings of letters i offer you this advice cherish your youth and never lose your sense of wonder Basically, chain letters were viral content for a pre-internet society, someone would physically mail a letter to a group of people and that letter would ask the recipient to make copies of the letter and physically mail it to a group of others people who knew that, in theory, the letter would spread like wildfire and reach a large number of people.

Obviously, it wasn't always like this. Not every chain letter will end up going viral, just like not every YouTube video will end up going viral. waiting for my 2010 audition for musical hairspray to catch fire guys, however, there was one chain letter in particular about Kfc's name change that did echo the letter, which has evolved throughout over the years in the form of emails and social media posts. A University of New Hampshire study has uncovered a sinister secret: The government forced Kentucky Fried Chicken to remove the word chicken from its menu and advertising because the meat it served could not legally be called chicken.

The letter claimed to cite that they actually used genetically engineered organisms. These so-called chickens are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients to their structure. They have no beak or feathers and their bone structure is dramatically reduced to be able to get more meat from them. Well, so no. I'll even try to pull this out for dramatic effect. Everything in this letter, everything is unverified or demonstrably false. On the one hand, the University of New Hampshire denies the existence of any study of this type. On the other hand, KFC advertisements and commercials from this era still use the word chicken, freely enjoy the original recipe for spicy wings or extra tasty crispy chicken and for modern KFC advertisements it seems that the classic Kentucky fried chicken nomenclature is of back in full force and even if we overlook all that evidence, it's really hard to imagine that KFC can pull it off.

Of producing mutant chickens on that scale, for one thing, the chicken genome wasn't sequenced until the mid-2000s, meaning KFC would have been hard-pressed to alter its chickens other than selectively breeding them for traits. desired, and even if kfc had increased their own chickens, which they don't buy, they buy them from thousands of independent farmers, but even if they raised some kind of lab-grown mutant chickens in their own facility somewhere, we would have to believe that KFC managed to keep the entire conspiracy a secret for 30 years and not only that, but when the government finds out about this outrageously cruel operation, instead of asking KFC to stop, all they did was ask KFC to refrain. to use the word chicken in his name and as payment for this incredibly kind slap. the doll kfc turns around and continues to use the word chicken on their menu in ads anyway, i mean, i went into this mutant chicken theory with an open heart and a mind wrapped in tin foil, the whole government he said we couldn't use the word chicken and also our geneticists at kfc are literally decades ahead of any other scientist in the world, it's just a bridge too far, even for me sadly this is going to be marked as 100 theories certified false .

I was hoping there was something rational based on facts. The reason this theory keeps resurfacing, but nothing more than misinformation that keeps finding new audiences to fool, so it's true, the truth about KFC's name change is to get rid of the word "well fried" It's not as quick as a boring, scrumptious business decision. because there's another more recent theory floating around what's interesting about this one, aside from the fact that it's 100 Mutant Free, is that it claims that the name change came about not because KFC was banned from using the word fried or chicken, But because the company was not allowed to use the word

kentucky

as explained by mashed.com quote in 1990, the community of kentucky registered their name, which meant that if kfc continued to use their original name, they would have to pay licensing fees and not were willing to comply with this, they chose to change the company name to KFC, an acronym that many people were already using and apparently KFC was not alone in this, according to the website Taste of Home, even the Kentucky Derby changed its nickname, the run for the roses, to avoid this licensing fee.

And as the website Snopes explains in 2006, the restaurant's estate reached an undisclosed settlement, at which point the restaurant began using its original Kentucky Fried Chicken name once again. Now this is a theory that Goldilocks Matpat may be behind the fried theory, a little too boring. the chicken theory is too spicy, but this kentucky theory is spot on, plus a ton of very prominent websites like harvard business review southern living yahoo mash taste of house all of them have cited the original snopes article or just it have been regurgitated as truth so I know this has to be solid but we decided to do our due diligence and investigate if the state of Kentucky actually registered his name in the early 90's and if you didn't know we were left holding empty and we couldn't.

We also found no evidence of the alleged 2006 deal between the state of Kentucky and KFC, but we thought yes, there were explanations for this, perhaps the trademark language was simply lost to time or locked away in a database that randos like me on the Internet we don't have it. access, but all hope was not lost because the kentucky derby material was very easy to verify, all we had to do was dig up some old television broadcasts where they avoid using the word kentucky in the kentucky derby, but then we found the abc sports broadcast. since 1990 and this is what we find today the wide world of ABC sports presents the 116th edition of the Kentucky Derby.

Okay, they weren't afraid to use it there, but maybe the license fee kicked in the following year when ABC Sports presents the first leg. of the chrysler triple crown challenge the kentucky derby the year after that abc team world sports coverage of the kentucky derby so at this point my faith in the internet is shattered does this mean i spy on the verification website most famous data in the world? just serve us a bunch of 90s chain letter style misinformation, well not exactly, but a lot of these other websites let me explain what happened. Most people know Snopes as a site that confirms or refutes rumors and misinformation on the web. often labels it true or false and provides sources to support the conclusion, but snopes also has other, more nuanced fact-checking ratings in its arsenal, such as mostly true, unproven, or labeled satire, and if you check the rating of Fact check his KFC name change article from January 2000, you'll notice it's classified as Lost Legends.

Now I'm going to go ahead and say that the vast majority of sites that cited this snopes article focused on the wrong acronym, they were so focused on finding an interesting story about kfc that they didn't realize that this article is part of the repository by lost legends t-r-o-l-l troll troll content is different from almost everything else you find on snopes lost legends the content is not true and is not designed to be according to snopes, it is int

ended

to be a lesson in the fallacy of authority Fake news that publishes misinformation with the rating of lost legends is essentially snopes' way of reminding us to carefully consider and verify everything we consume on the Internet, even the content of a fact-checking website. and to be fair, the misinformation they put out about KFC's name change worked wonders.

Several major websites were caught with their hand in the old chicken bucket. The story that KFC changed its name because Kentucky got a trademark is nothing more than a big fat troll, and yet that snopes article was cited as a credible source in many other articles that allowed misinformation to spread unchecked. restrictions as if it were a 90s era chain letter, but I'm not sure snopes' efforts worked in the grand scheme of things, surely someone who is diligent enough to track down the original source of This urban legend will eventually stumble across the Snopes article and understand what the Lost Legends rating means, but it definitely feels like he's preaching to the choir while the people whoThey lazily spread misinformation without facts. check are the exact people who will probably never investigate the lost legends tag, so while the snopes article really helps draw attention to the prevalence of misinformation by doing so, they are also putting actual misinformation out into the universe, untold numbers of people encountered this. second hand history on yahoo mash, harvard business review and many other websites, not all of those people will watch this video or trace the story to the snopes page, taking the time to read about what the repository of lost legends is all about . so i would like to humbly submit to the fine folks at snopes that their lost legends label is generally somewhat detrimental to their important cause of spreading true information on the internet, so in the absence of evidence from contrary theorists, i I tend to believe in KFC.

This one, believe it or not, they just wanted to use an easier-to-remember nickname that would help you navigate the low-fat craze of the '90s, so that's not the most exciting way to end a food theory episode, but I hope that has helped. to put an end to two of KFC's most annoying conspiracies, so I have to say that if any of you theorists have inside information on the whole mutant chicken thing, definitely let me know. I want to think I want that miniature mutant chicken, but hey, I want to give a big thanks to trade cafe the sponsor of today's episode trade lets you explore the best coffee from the best roasters in the country your quiz matches you with your own personal coffee selection which is then shipped directly from the roastery with maximum freshness with the trade.

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Thanks again to Trade. We greatly appreciate your sponsorship. Jason greatly appreciates his coffee and all the theorists. That's why he remembers that everything is just a theory, a theory of food, bon appetite.