Consumers cannot expect boneless chicken wings to actually be free of bones, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting claims by a restaurant patron who suffered serious medical complications from getting a bone stuck in his throat.
Michael Berkheimer was dining with his wife and friends at a wing joint in Hamilton, Ohio, and had ordered the usual — boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce — when he felt a bite-size piece of meat go down the wrong way. Three days later, feverish and unable to keep food down, Berkeimer went to the emergency room, where a doctor discovered a long, thin bone that had torn his esophagus and caused an infection.
…
In a 4-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said Thursday that “boneless wings” refers to a cooking style, and that Berkheimer should’ve been on guard against bones since it’s common knowledge that chickens have bones. The high court sided with lower courts that had dismissed Berkheimer’s suit.
“Decaf coffee”
It actually has 300000mg of caffeine
“It’s well known that coffee has caffeine in it. Skill issue.”
Decaf does actually still have caffeine, just normally like 97% less.
Which, I guess is like the boneless wings having 97% less bones, now in convinient needle shaped shards
On a bit of a tangent, I’m Finnish and recently (as in the past year or two) there’s been Coke and Pepsi which literally say “caffeine-free” on the side. Not “decaffeinated”, but “caffeine-free”.
I think there’s been some sort of innovation in decaffenation or someone’s come up with a flavour/essence which replaces the ingredient with caffeine in it.
Decaf definitely has caffeine, as I’ve completely without caffeine at several points for several months (even avoiding chocolate mostly) and a “decaffeinated” beverage still made me clearly stimulated. A clear caffeine high.
NileRed has a nice video on him trying to decaf redbull and while he does succeed in extracting caffeine from it, he thinks it’s not even half he gets out. Ofc industrial systems are more effective, but it shows how difficult the process is to perfect. https://youtu.be/oY8tz1paj6o
Calm down there Panera.
Would this logic extend to products labeled “alcohol-free”?
“Everyone knows beer has alcohol in it.”
I’d be more worried about a product claiming it has no peanuts in it now.
Anything less than 0.5%abv, I think. (Unless, non-alcoholic is classed different)
I wouldn’t know about US regulations. Just annoyed by laws which allow corporations to more or less straight up lie, be they in my country or not.
I’m pretty sure alc-free here in Finland is at most like 0.1%, low-alc (as in not counted as a regulated alcoholic beverage in regards to laws) is anything 2.9% and under.
I think part of it is that you honestly can’t say anything is “x” free. As long as the company has done due diligence and there is as little as possible then I’m ok with it.
If it’s used as a get out of jail card for bad practice then I’m against it.
True. The suffix -free has had so much liberal (not the party) use that when manufacturers use it, it now just means there isn’t enough for most people to detect/respond to it.
Now if someone none the wiser with an allergy or particularly strong sensitivity to something were to try that something, they get a trip to the ER.
About the limits in the US. Meandering through a store during a heat wave, I saw that the upper limit appears to be half a percent. Meaning you still could get buzzed ,just would be peeing more; a lot more.
https://oneclubsober.com/beer-articles/can-you-buy-non-alcoholic-beer-under-21/
So amazingly stupid. The conservative justic’s “logic” here is a case-study in failing upwards. He tries to say that “nobody would think that chicken fingers are actual fingers.” Like, chicken fingers is a colloquial name, and is not the same as a fuckin descriptor adjective. He might as well say that dairy-free ice cream can have dairy in it, because “no reasonable person would think ice cream wouldn’t have dairy in it.”
what a joke. This brought to you by the same supreme court that has ruled against the will of Ohio voters who voted for an anti-gerrymandering bill, just to have a republican led commission drag it’s feet, presenting identical maps, and instead of allowing the usage of an actual fair map, they just threw the baby out with bathwater, leaving in place the terrible gerrymandered maps that heavily favor republicans till 2030.
Just another reason I’ll never move back to my home state. conservatives ruined it.
can’t wait for this to apply to gluten free, sugar free, nut free products. people can die from this shit.
under new supreme court ruling, if you sell boneless chicken with bones, you aren’t wrong, just an asshole
Not even an asshole, just an ineffective cook
you aren’t wrong, just an asshole
I don’t know why but it reminds me of an American friend I had who couldn’t beleive we didn’t have limits on the amount maggots/maggots eggs allowed in fruit juice.
They refused to drink any fruit juice here until it had to be explained to them that the reason that there’s no acceptable limit on maggots/maggots eggs in our fruit juice is because ANY amount of maggot is over the acceptable amount.
Not their fault of course. We only know what we’re used to.
I’m gonna assume this is one of the Project 2025 legislations
Its getting where courts at every level are running contrary to logic and justice.
Courts have become infested with conservatives.
What is the difference between chicken nuggets and boneless wings? The article mentions that boneless wings are ‘of course’ nuggets of breast meat.
I wonder if they’d have agreed that nuggets can have bones too?
Usually a boneless wing is a chunk of meat, with identifiable meat fibers and such. Just a breaded and fried chunk of breast. Whereas chicken nuggets are usually made from ground chicken, often molded into a few different shapes.
Interesting thanks!
So they’re allowed to call them wings when it is chicken breast?
Oh boy. Wait until you learn that drumsticks are passed off as “wings” too!
The Ohio Supreme Court’s decision to allow chicken wings advertised as ‘boneless’ to contain bones warrants an examination of the principles underlying voluntary exchanges and the protection of consumer rights. When individuals engage in transactions, the terms and descriptions presented are expected to be accurate, fostering trust and informed decision-making. An advertisement promising ‘boneless’ wings that includes bones disrupts this trust, introducing an element of deception.
For a marketplace to function effectively, it is essential that representations made in the course of business transactions are truthful. Consumers rely on these representations to make choices that align with their preferences and expectations. If these expectations are systematically violated, the very foundation of voluntary exchange is compromised.
Thus, the court’s role in addressing such issues is to ensure that the transactional environment remains transparent and honest. By upholding standards against misleading advertisements, the court helps maintain the integrity of voluntary exchanges, allowing individuals to engage in transactions free from coercion and deceit.
You can’t expect the new car you purchased to be new.
Alas that is true.
You have the right to spend money and consume! What other rights could you possibly want, poor person?
/s
Yeah another reason why conservatives are shit at governing. Always making terrible decisions because there is no critical thinking involved.
Slavery is freedom. War is peace. Boneless pizza can now have bones.
I want to go where the pizzalo roam
Since pizza was classed a vegetable, all bets are off.
So what then is the difference between the boneless chicken wing cooking style and normal chicken wing cooking style? If it starts with “take a piece of chicken meat without any bones”, then what stops this line of argument from saying that it doesn’t matter how well they follow the recipe and thus restaurants can serve whatever they want to meet any order and then just say “we were following the (name of food) cooking style, not promising that, and are just bad at following that style or made up our own version”?
On a related note, how are judges determined to be qualified to make any decision? Are they supposed to be fair and intelligent, or just do their best to judge things in a fair and intelligent style?
That said, there was a bit of a fluke involved to have the bone go down the wrong way and also him not even notice for a few days. IMO in a proper decision, the restaurant shouldn’t have been fully liable for this incident, though they should have had some liability for that bone. And then some of that liability might be passed on to whoever provided them with the “boneless” chicken meat.
On one hand, I accept that a boneless chicken wing has a tiny chance of containing some amount of bone, and can see where suing a restaurant over it, even if you injure yourself eating it, is a bit frivolous. Boneless chicken wings did come from a chicken with bones in it, and it’s weird to complain that the chicken wasn’t made into completely homogeneous pink slime before being turned into a nugget…
I don’t understand, however, how this made it to the state Supreme Court, resulting in this decision, which seemingly allows restaurants to outright lie about what they are serving.
It would be trivial and inexpensive to use an x-ray to check for bones and fragments.
Did the restaurant just screw up the order, or was this some process deficiency with the deboner?
A child probably got killed or maimed cleaning the deboning machines in the slaughterhouse, and we can’t have that affecting profits!
yes, customer got boned at a restaurant and in court
Boneless chicken isn’t just deboned, it’s shredded and mashed. Since it’s basically manufacturing chicken, there is a guaranteed nonzero margin of error. It’s the correct ruling, there’s no way any company could guarantee the complete absence of bones that were mixed in with the ingredients. I’m more surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
I don’t know what the boneless tender machine looks like, but no process is 100% effective, so it’s entirely possible for a bit of bone to make it through. Usually, that’s acceptable, because you find it while chewing and remove it. In this case, it was a dangerously-shaped piece of bone, and it ended up in his respiratory system and caused significant illness.
Honestly, I’m not sure that he has a case, since it really is acceptable for some bone to be present. That it ended up poorly for him isn’t really the company’s fault.
In an ideal system, his medical costs would be covered by universal healthcare, and he wouldn’t have to worry about paying bills or losing his job while out sick through no fault of his own. He shouldn’t need to sue for those costs. (And if he’s just looking for a payday lawsuit, then fuck that guy and his lawyer.)
The bone was nearly 1.5 inches long. It wasn’t just a bit of bone. It was basically the size of some bone-in wings.
Here I was hoping it’d be about using bonemeal in shit like nuggies or hot dogs. RIP.
