Why I Hate Vienna Sausages

No thanks

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents

We've currently got a newsroom game going on where our producer Weston has been hiding two small cans of Vienna Sausages in either mine or my co-anchor Jalah's things.  To be fair, we've done the same to him.  I'm also guilty in being the person who brought the cans of meat into the building in the first place.

My friend Chris willed them to me when he moved from the area recently.  He did that because I HATE Vienna Sausages.  If anyone from Libby's is reading this, it really has nothing to do with your product and I'm sorry for my strong dislike.  Please allow me to tell the story behind my disdain...  Oh before I do, this may be a little too graphic for some of you, so you might want to stop reading and skip to the YouTube clip near the end of this post.

I was in the second grade, and a classmate had eaten Vienna Sausages for lunch.  Up until that point, I'd never had them, and I had no aversion to them either.  Then, after recess and being out running around, we were settling back into our afternoon studies, when his stomach sounded like the wounded triceratops in Jurassic Park.  It wasn't long before he had lost his lunch right beside my desk.  Mixed in with all the puke, there were chunks of undigested Vienna Sausages.  

Dare Day
I'm eating it, kinda...

This happened more than 30 years ago and yet that image is still burned in my brain.  I never had any interest in eating the product after that.  I thought I never would have to until a few years ago on "Dare Day" my co-anchor Emily challenged me to eat a Vienna Sausage LIVE on the air.  I didn't know this was coming, and took just a small bite.  It's not the taste that bothers me, well it kinda is, but more importantly it's that image of them swimming in bile and mucus on the brown carpeted floor of Mrs. Morrow's second grade classroom that prevents me from ever enjoying the snack.

So the game of hide the Vienna Sausages will likely continue.  If you're wondering, they were already expired when I got them, so we chose to not donate them to a food pantry, although I have to wonder does canned meat ever really go bad?