It doesn’t seem that long ago that practically every family owned a minivan – it was the quintessential American family car… But it looks like all of that is about to change. As more and more people turn to SUVs, is the minivan going to become redundant? Let’s look at why so many American families are making the swap.

The Anniversary

The news of declining minivan sales comes in the 35th anniversary since the New York Times described them as “the hot cars coming out of Detroit” back in 1984. While there had been various types of minivan vehicle before that time period, it wasn’t really until the 1980s that people started to sit up and take notice. They were deemed to be the perfect family car, thanks to the sheer amount of space. The year 2000 was the best year for minivans, with a whopping 1.4 million units were sold. However, since then, it seems as though this style of vehicle has been on the decline.

Soccer Mom

One reason it’s believed that people are turning away from owning a minivan is due to the ‘soccer mom image’ that comes with them. These vehicles tend to be synonymous with your typical suburban family, and it seems as though Americans are keen to shy away from that image. A Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) seems to be a far more popular choice for those who want to shake off the shackles of the ‘soccer mom’ vibe. This also ties in with the declining birth rate and movement toward city life for a lot of Americans. Who needs a minivan when you’ve just for one or two children?

A Nation In Love

Another huge factor that people are avoiding minivans is simply due to the rising popularity of SUVs. It seems as though we can’t get enough of the SUV, especially as they’re easier to get around in and seem to suit the changing needs of the consumer. It’s believed that 50% of all U.S. vehicle sales are SUVs, which is a huge increase from the 31% market share it had in 2009.

Between 2009 and 2019, minivan sales have dropped from 4% to just 2.6% in America, and vehicle manufacturers are responding accordingly. Plenty of them are turning their attention to the more covetable SUVs and dumping their minivans for good… Is this the end?

When our meals are served with things like decomposed reptiles, chicken intestines, or even broken nails, things start to take a dark turn. This may ruin your appetite. Read at your own risk!

While enjoying their meal in Santa Fe Casino Grand Cafe, a Redditor came across a rather nasty surprise. It seems like their vegetable mix had a larvae worm crawling all over it. When they complained about this to the authorities, they didn’t pay attention to him. Baffled by their ignorance, the customer posted a negative review on social media.

Had you seen this little creature in a petri dish, you would not feel intimidated at all. After all, the round eyes paired with its small stature do very little to scare.

This is actually Cymothoa exigua, commonly known as a tongue-eating louse. A parasitic isopod by nature, these pests enter fishes through their gills before eating the animal from the inside. So, you can imagine the panic when an innocent buyer detected a louse in their tuna. News spread like wildfire and soon everyone knew about the dangerous vermin.

After seeing this, you might never want to sink your teeth into a popsicle again. The limbs of the amphibian stick out like a sore thumb, taking on a grayish-green hue due to the reduced temperature.

Whoever took this picture definitely bit a big chunk of the ice cream before realizing what they were putting in their mouth. Frogs are a popular delicacy in some countries thanks to their smooth and lean meat. However, this should not be the way someone first tastes it.

If you’re arachnophobic, look away right now! We guarantee that you won’t look at meat and potatoes the same ever again. The worst part about this picture is how the spider is not fully disintegrated but a few of its limbs are missing, which means that a part of it was infused with the dish.

The color and shape of the insect are a giveaway. So, the person should have been able to notice this immediately, but could they turn back time and not even eat the dish? No.

Costco is a household name in America. With its cheap prices and wide range of products, this supermarket has become indispensable to life for many. An unaware mother picked up a packet of prewashed spinach at the San Jose Costco.

The following night, she opened the packaging hoping to use the vegetables. Instead of fresh, leafy veggies, she was greeted by a furry and very deceased rodent. From the looks of it, the mouse drowned there. So, it sat on the spinach filling up on water during rinsing.

The English cannot get enough of Indian food. Cate Barrett, an Englishwoman who once felt this way no longer craves Indian dishes as much as she used to. She picked up a jar of tikka masala sauce one day at the store — planning on making a rich, thick curry the following night.

When she used the sauce in her chicken, it felt significantly lumpy. Upon closer observation, she saw a tail and whiskers, courtesy of a deceased rodent. The manager of the grocery chain apologized and promised to investigate the matter.

When dieticians ask people to consume more greens in their daily diet, they certainly don’t mean this. Imagine being all pumped to maintain a healthier lifestyle, forcing yourself to be okay with bland, monotonous salads — and finding a deceased frog in it!

Hidden well between the bits of lettuce and rings of eggs, the lifeless amphibian was the star of the Pret a Manger salad. Sadly for him, the story of the Princess and the Frog didn’t turn out to be true.

People who are comfortable using fake nails in their daily life deserve credit for the immense patience they have. After all, maneuvering anything with six-inch-long nails is no easy feat.

If you’ve ever worn fake nails for a time, then you’ll be familiar with the struggle of losing a nail and having no clue where it fell off. For a chef, it happened to be right in the middle of a batch of fries they later served to a customer. Such a pretty nail, though.

When you try to maintain strict hygiene standards in your restaurant, it backfires in the worst way possible. People have managed to lose rings, nails, and even watches while preparing food — but never has anyone lost an entire glove! How is that even possible?

The victim of the glove salad was bewildered by the plastic presence in their food. They were worried about where the glove had been and whether the hand that had been in it was clean or not. @ChickenLickenSA had some serious explaining to do!

This probably is not the worst one on the list because both of these elements are edible. However, finding shrimp tails in your breakfast cereal is not the ideal way to start the day.

The umami, crunchy flavor of the shrimp would not pair well with milk. If Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares were alive, they themselves would have been dumbfounded by the situation because there’s no scenario in which shrimp bits could end up in breakfast cereal. We are cringing at the mere thought of this flavor combo.

Sometimes gross, other times life-threatening, these not-so-yummy contaminants are more than enough to ruin your appetite. While deceased animals would give you food poisoning, a blade in your food would grant you an instantaneous demise. Would you not be terrified if you found a razor in your food?

Not only could it cut your tongue and mouth, but it could cause mortal danger if inhaled. Incidents like this make us believe that “food safety tests” are actually a hoax. If not, how could they not detect a blade inside?

Unlike most of the entries on this list, this one is a story of how a careless human interrupted the life of an innocent slime snail. It was just minding its own business inside a raspberry, filling up on the juicy fruit when a person decided to take a chunk out of it.

One bite later, they realized that the raspberry was more than what meets the eye. Disgusted, the person snapped a picture, threw the berry away, and vowed never to eat raspberries again.

Similar to ladybugs in appearance, the rosary pea is a flowering plant belonging to the beam family, Fabaceae. Rosary pears are rich in Abrin, a natural poison found in the plant’s seed. Symptoms of poisoning include vomiting, nausea, liver failure, convulsions, and often, an untimely demise.

A Redditor found these poisonous little buds in their cooked spaghetti. As the sauce was canned, we are curious as to how that even got in there. The average person is not acquainted with these peas. The more you know, the better.

Over the years, KFC has gotten into some pretty big scandals about their food preparation and safety. From cockroach infestation in kitchens to serving questionable meats claiming them to be chicken, these claims just get more wild with time.

This, however, is not the worst thing to have come out of the KFC kitchen. Their big chicken buckets are known to be a crowd-pleaser, but would the crowd be pleased upon finding a chicken kidney in their bucket? Debatable. The well-coated intestines could pass for a regular cut of meat.

Did you know that in some parts of the world they eat every part of the chicken? That means nothing gets left behind, not even the gonads. Americans are not used to that.

Most people would gag at the sight of giblets. Needless to say, when someone found a piece of chicken lung in their rotisserie chicken, they were utterly disgusted. At first, they could not figure out what it was. One post on social media and another Redditor pointed out that the skin-like bit came from the bird’s lungs.

Every other major fast-food chain in the US has a scandal every other month. While infamous for their questionable antics and dishes, Chick-fil-A gets away with it all because their food does taste quite decent. However, nobody will be shocked the next time another customer finds something weird in their food.

This time it was a seashell — a weird “seafood” in the middle of a chicken salad. The customer reported it with a caption and “#disappointed.” To be honest, you ordered from Chick-fil-A. What did you expect?

This reminds us of the video of the child running and a woman asking him to show her what is in his hand. He responds, “A knife!” and the woman screams before running after him.

It’s beyond us how the employee baked a six-inch serrated knife into the bread. John Agnesini was munching on a Subway sandwich when the knife got stuck between his teeth. He was lucky it was the handle, not the blade. Fortunately for the employee, Agnesini let the matter slide after a $20,000 settlement.

Gummies — stretchy, chewy pieces of goodness that are the perfect middle ground between jellies and candies. A packet of Life Savers Gummies Sours yielded a fruity mass. The customer mentioned how it tasted rotten. Gummy candy is simply a mixture of sugar, water, and gelatin.

The gel strength of gelatin depends on its concentration. It gets harder with more concentration. That being said, we’re yet to see a case where the gummy turned into a piece of actual rock. The color helped it blend well with the edible gummies.

Ants are naturally drawn to all things sweet. Leave a container of honey open for too long and you might just be the proud parent of a brand new ant colony after two hours.

This is why it’s not surprising how a woman’s son found an ant floating inside a package of Popeye’s Honey. Many of us have consumed ants from time to time without noticing it. It just gets gross once you think of all the places the ant must have traveled to.

The farmer of these green beans had just about had it with the pesky snakes slithering everywhere. Tired of their antics, the farmer decided to teach the snake clan a lesson.

What better way to do that than chopping up one of these slimy reptiles and adding it to the packaged green beans! Due to its patterned skin, the pieces of the snake are easy to find. However, people are not used to finding reptiles in their veggies, so the girl may have struggled with recognizing it at first.

The production process of any food product is lengthy. Mass-produced foods are generally made in machines that operate 24/7 without human interference. Of course, you wouldn’t expect machines to add animals to your food.

That only happens when humans are involved. Having said that, oftentimes, people find traces of the manufacturing factory within the finished products. In this case, it was a harmless plastic chip. The person who found this in their package of raspberries assumed it would have something to do with the production process.

Most of us know the value of pearls in today’s market. These rare objects are found hidden with the shells of mollusks. Interesting fact — mussels are not the only animals that produce pearls.

Lobsters can produce pearls as well, and a user on Reddit managed to find one. This is a rather rare occurrence as lobsters are not known to produce pearls. Although low in monetary value, a lobster pearl has research importance in science. It’s significantly smaller in size and less shiny.

If you thought it could not get worse than the Whole Foods asparagus-water thing, here’s a total doozy! Jorge Fuentes, a Boston resident, found a live Black Widow spider in a package of Anthony’s red seedless grapes he had bought from the local supermarket.

The man suspected something was wrong when the inside of the package was filled with spider webs. While the bite of a Black Widow is rarely harmful, the neurotoxic venom is known to be painful and can cause vomiting, muscle cramps, and dizziness.

Premier Food’s bread has been in so many scandals that we question the sanity of anyone who still purchases this bread. Seriously, look up the number of times customers have complained about finding sketchy items inside the loaves — you will be shocked!

In 2009, a man named Stephen Forse found a deceased mouse embedded into the bread. Sadly, by the time he realized this, he had already consumed a few slices. The details are rather graphic. Just know that the company was fined over $7,500 for it.

Very few things beat the terror of seeing roaches running around in a kitchen. A worthy opponent is finding one in your meal. Redditor LinkBoyJ posted a photo of a half-eaten hash brown from McDonald’s. The reason he had stopped feasting on the dish was that there was roach inside it.

Don’t worry too much, though! He mentioned that he was able to avail the breakfast coupon for this meal, a good trade-off! Another Redditor user commented that the server probably saw the roach but decided to plate it anyway.

Fred DeNegri knew something was off with his Pepsi. The texture was thick and slimy. A resident of Florida, DeNegri decided to check it out. He tipped the can over and inspected the liquid to find a glob of “pink linguining” slipping out.

What followed was a “dark stuff,” similar to the “jellylike substance,” which apparently was a result of carrion marination in the drinks. The FDA and Poison Control were contacted, the contents of the can were analyzed, and they concluded that the foreign matter was a toad or frog.

This is another testament to the fact that Three Musketeers bars are better than Milky Way. At least nobody ever found a tooth in their Musketeers bar. A lady from Texas will always remember to steer clear of candy bars. In 2010, she found a human tooth after chewing on a Milky Way.

She told the press that she bit down on something while enjoying her Milky Way. These chocolates don’t have any sort of nuts in them, leading her to investigate what she had bitten.

A resident of Santa Maria, Lorenzo Gomez picked up his lunch at a drive-thru of McDonald’s on a Tuesday. Famished, he popped a handful of french fries in his mouth and immediately noted how the texture was off.

He spat it out and realized that he had bitten down on a Band-Aid. When he reached out to McDonald’s, they tried to deflect the matter. However, after his complaint went viral on social media, the manager and employee apologized and gave him a $25 gift card as compensation.

The New York Times made a report in 1986 that shook the food industry. A Brooklyn resident was feeding her infant Gerber baby food when she noticed he kept spitting it out.

Confused by his behavior, she decided to do further inspection. There was a shard of glass in the baby food and it had injured her son. Complaints poured in from 30 states with people claiming they found the same. However, the FDA did not issue a recall for the products as they thought nothing could be done.

In 2008, a hot topic in Australia was the bitter fight between a family of five and a large tourist pub in Sydney when the family claimed the chefs served them fecal matter in the form of gelato.

Apparently, the row started because the family had complained about the loud music, claiming they could not watch a football match. The Australian food minister Ian Macdonald later confirmed that the chocolate gelato did contain traces of frozen feces. It goes without saying that the couple became “violently ill” after tasting it.

In 2011, New Yorker Ken Wieczerza was enjoying his large Pizza Hut Supreme Pizza. It was not long before his pleasure turned into disgust. A blood-stained bandage came under his teeth and he was completely taken aback. Baked into the crust, the bandage seemed to have been used by someone to cover a rather bloody wound.

The restaurant ignored his claims so he went to the media. Pizza Hub issued a public statement challenging his claims. Crisis-management firms cited this as an example of how to not handle a situation.

Steak isn’t for everybody. What many people assume is blood is actually myoglobin, a protein compound that gives the meat its red color. However, in this case, blood was directly involved.

In 2009, Axel Sanz-Claus was visiting New York when he ordered a filet mignon worth $40 at the Bull and Bear Restaurant in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He claims that the moment he bit into the meat, his mouth was filled with a used menstrual hygiene product. A doctor in a nearby hospital later confirmed his doubts.

When you think of the typical TGI Friday’s, what are the first things to pop into your head? The overly fatty 1,600-calorie burgers? Or maybe the after-work gang relaxing a little?

Jack Pendleton got the shortest end of the stick when he found a reptile’s deceased body in chunks in a side of broccoli. This happened in 2009 and became the talk of the town. Funnily enough, when Pendleton gave a view of the reptile head to the waiter, the man started to gag.

McDonald’s is not the only burger chain in the world that offers sudden surprises in their meals. December of 2010, US Army Staff Sergeant Clark Bartholomew reported that he had sustained an injury on his tongue due to a needle that was tucked inside a Triple Stacker in the Hawaii branch of Burger King.

The story only worsens as Bartholomew had to spend six days in the hospital after this. Doctors even found another needle in his intestines. He sued the fast-food chain for “extreme physical harm.”

After seeing this, people who disliked blue cheese will truly start to hate this unique milky good. In the year 2014, an Englishwoman found a human tooth deep inside a block of cheek she had purchased from a big UK grocery chain, Sainsbury’s.

The story was a matter of investigation at this point since she had mentioned that she had visited the dentist the day before but the tooth was not hers. The grocery chain promised to inspect the matter.