A persistent rumour claims that Kentucky Fried Chicken shortened
its official name to 'KFC' because genetic manipulation had supposedly
made the meat used to no longer be legally classifiable as chicken.
This is patently ridiculous, as scrutiny of the menu in any
KFC—or, for that matter, the quote in Twiin's writeup elsewhere
on this page—shows that their chicken is indeed referred to as
chicken, repeatedly and with no legalistic quibbling. Yet, the rumour
persists; like the absurdist supposed description of life in the
1500's, like the infamous Good Times virus hoax, like the supposed
speech by Kurt Vonnegut, like
the saccharine e-mail forward attributed to George
Carlin, like any number of jokes that become folklore through quiet
removal of inconvenient plausibility-destroying details, this
dandelion-hardy rumour stands as testament to the extraordinary
credulity of human beings.
Oh, and as for the Colonel's secret recipe, William Poundstone in
his book Big Secrets found Original Recipe chicken to contain
eight and only eight ingredients: chicken (of course), cooking oil,
skim milk, eggs, flour, salt, black pepper, and MSG. No matter—even if you made an exact duplicate
of their chicken, they'd still outsell you on name
recognition alone.