Wait, Children Can Legally Drink Nonalcoholic Beer?

Apr 06, 2024

By Li Goldstein

Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed the mystery of Lana Del Rey working a shift at a Waffle House in Alabama.

If you’ve ever innocently pondered whether children can or should drink nonalcoholic beer, fret not: Kristen Bell has the answer. The actress told Kelly Clarkson this week that her kids, ages eight and nine, like the taste of it and order it at restaurants. (It all seems like a personal family decision that shouldn’t be subject to the court of public opinion, particularly taking into account the context that Bell’s husband, Dax Shepard, is a recovering alcoholic.)

Also this week, Taco Bell, which recently won a legal battle against the trademark on Taco Tuesday, has found itself the defendant in another one. A federal class action suit is alleging that the chain misrepresents the amount of beef in its beloved Crunchwrap Supreme—to my anecdotal knowledge, this allegation is most certainly true but also not surprising? TikTokers are going viral for chucking jars and bottles down flights of stairs and watching them smash and spill their guts. Lastly, a Canadian couple absolutely shattered the less-known Guinness World Record for “longest habanero kiss.”

Here’s what’s happening in food moments on the internet this week.

The thing I loved most about going to church as a kid in Australia was being able to take a big, boozy sip from a rusting chalice filled with “the blood of Christ.” (My mom bribed me to go with the promise of a post-homily pile of fish and chips, but joke’s on her: I would have done it for the gulp alone.) Drinking alcohol was a feral experience but made me feel like a badass adult, which is why I can hard relate to actress Kristen Bell’s kids, aged eight and nine, who apparently love ordering themselves a frosty beer at restaurants. But relax: It’s nonalcoholic, and it’s also not my business (as a 32-year-old-child) to comment on anyone’s parenting decisions. The internet obviously went into “I know best” mode this week: Some people were calling the drink “beer-flavored seltzer” (no biggie) while others simply “would never” corrupt their children with such malted evils. But less obvious was the legal answer: Wait, can underage Americans buy and drink low- or no-alcohol beers? At the federal level youths under the age of 21 can slam NA bevs—yup, even the ones that might contain “less than 0.5% ABV.” But, like one’s taste for mayonnaise (go off, NOLA), these things vary wildly state by state. Yet another thing parents have to figure out on their own! For the adults in the room, I’m rating this fizzy-ass time to be alive a 4.7/5 distressing. —Ali Francis, staff writer

Taco Bell is caught in a class action lawsuit for allegedly misrepresenting the amount of beef it includes in some of its menu items. Anyone who’s ordered a Crunchwrap Supreme, Grande Crunchwrap, Vegan Crunchwrap, Mexican Pizza, or Veggie Mexican Pizza (yes, it’s a lot of items) in New York since July 31, 2020, may find themselves served by the suit. A customer named Frank Siragusa filed the suit after ordering a Mexican Pizza in Ridgewood, Queens, and claimed to notice little beef in comparison to the ads. This whole debacle reminds me of that viral Subway lawsuit back in 2013 when the chain was accused of serving $5 footlongs that apparently weren’t 12 inches in length. Meanwhile, the internet has been going off with “expectation versus reality” photos of Taco Bell orders. All this still isn’t going to stop me from ordering my go-to Crunchwrap combo any time soon, though. 2/5 distressing. —Julia Duarte, designer

There is a corner of TikTok I absolutely cannot look away from: videos of bottles being rolled down the stairs. As is the case with most content on the internet, no one asked for this, but these videos have accumulated millions upon millions of views under one account alone. And what started as a simple trend has now evolved into: rolling bottles down the stairs and into spikes ASMR (!), rolling bottles within bottles down big stairs outside ASMR (!!), and rolling bottles within bottles down a ramp into what appears to be a medieval torture device ASMR (!!!). Just when you think it can’t get any more intense, you stumble upon a video of someone sending bottles down the stairs into spikes with the help of a treadmill belt going at full speed. It really makes you wonder: What’s cleanup like? How do these people keep ants away? What’s it like to come home from the grocery store to find your neighbor doing this? And why not gift the bottle of wine to a friend instead of rolling it down the stairs? These videos probably don’t warrant this much thought, but clearly I’m getting older because these are the questions I ask myself as I lie awake at night, scrolling TikTok until videos featuring Succession characters as bottles rolling down the stairs ASMR lull me to sleep. 5/5 distressing because these videos are only going to get more violent (and someone could get hurt). —Esra Erol, senior social media manager

I've always wondered how they determine the categories for the Guinness Book of World Records. Could I, for instance, hold the record for most little treats eaten in a one-year period? According to the Guinness World Records website, the feat has to be measurable, able to be standardized, verifiable, and based on just one variable. Apparently those boxes were all checked when a couple of Canadians broke the world record for longest habanero kiss—that is, eating a habanero and then kissing each other for fifteen minutes straight. Congratulations, et cetera, but I'm having a hard time imagining anything besides the crowd of people that were forced to watch two people kiss for a full fifteen minutes. It's gotta be dead silent, right? No one's making small talk during a record breaking. And there must have been at least minor squelching coming from the record-breakers' intermingled mouths. All in all, it feels like it would be a very cursed environment. I'm rating this one a spicy, sweaty 4.2/5 distressing. —Sam Stone, staff writer