NBC reports that El Pato Salsa Picante has been withdrawn from the American market because tests found it was contaminated with lead. El Pato is just one of several Mexican salsa brands that contain the poisonous substance, according to scientists at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Of course, there’s no way lead is the only nasty in these little bottles. And sure enough — buried in footnotes at the bottom of the report — are the Pocho Ocho OTHER sketchy substances in Mexican hot sauce:
8. The average Cholula bottle contains 10 micrograms per deciliter of the “Bacillus Botas Picudas”, an organic pathogen thought to be behind the craving for pointy boots.
7. Habaneros chiles may be the top ingredient in El Yucateco Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero, but lurking at the bottom of the list are 8.8 micrograms per deciliter of “Barba Habanera,” said to be a homeopathic solution of hair scraped from Comrade Fidel’s razor.
6. Valentina Hot Sauce, according to the report, is sweetened with crushed overstock/unsold little candy valentine hearts. The side effects of this ingredient are said to include copius weeping for lost loves, seeing your ex everywhere and late-night bootie calls.
5. Bufalo Chipotle Mexican Hot Sauce contains trace amounts of actual buffalo, and not the good parts. Think “variety meats” like lips and cheeks, livers and lungs — buffalo chorizo style.
4. Caribbean Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero had no barba, but contained microscopic flecks of Carribbean flotsam and jetsam, including sunken Cuban boat people’s rafts, Haitian voudoun artifacts and traces of Bajan souse.
3. Guanajuato iSalsa, from one of the startups in Mexico’s burgeoning Silicio Barrio, contains traces of two of the Guanajuato region’s traditional agricultural exports, guano, and, of course, juato.
2. Tests of Pico Pica revealed a previously-undisclosed ingredient, also with the initals “PP.” Bottles of this salsa had a small amount of gas dissolved in the salsa, identified by UNLV only as puro pedo.
And the numero uno sketchy substance found in Mexican hot sauces is…
Tapatio may contain up to 40% Huy Fong Sriracha.