The spicy chicken sandwich served in the cafeteria is some students’ favorite dish. But for sophomore Max Chernoff, the chicken sandwich he ate on Jan. 14 was far less than excellent. 

On that fateful Friday, Chernoff unwrapped his foil-covered sandwich, and bit into what resembled a  worm. Chernoff found himself, as most of us would, outraged and utterly disgusted.

“I bit into it, I pulled it out, and I noticed a thing hanging out,” recalled Chernoff, who spit out the piece that was in his mouth and saw the other half embedded in his chicken sandwich. When he showed the cafeteria staff, they told him it was another part of the chicken and promptly threw it away. After going to the teacher on lunch duty, lunch security, and even the administration, Chernoff was redirected back to the cafeteria to talk to the cafeteria manager, Dalwhidls Sohi. She offered him another sandwich, but he “politely said, ‘No, thank you,’ and walked out.”

Sohi and the other cafeteria staff members believe the so-called worm was a different part of the chicken – gristle, to be exact. “I told you kids, it was just that little piece of white gristle in a chicken breast,” one server stated, adding that the notion of the object being a worm is “just ridiculous.” 

According to Encarta World English Dictionary, gristle is defined as an “inedible part of meat; tough cartilage, especially in meat prepared for eating.” So there is a chance the unknown substance Chernoff bit into was actually a strip of cartilage.

However, witnesses like Varun Chunduru claim the object had segments, characteristic of a type of worm called annelids. Chunduru is quite sure the object was, in fact, a worm. “I should know, I was in honors biology last year,” he said. 

Ms. Jessica Cardosi, an honors biology teacher, was startled by the fact that the “worm” was embedded inside the meat. “Interesting…if it was in the chicken, it could have been a parasite – but I don’t know much about chicken farming,” Cardosi said.

Chernoff has a nice way of summing it up – “Whether it was a worm or a piece of chicken, it shouldn’t be inside [the sandwich.]”