A Texas man bit into a Whataburger chicken strip on his birthday, and what he found inside made him gag on camera

A Texas man’s birthday lunch took an unexpected turn when he bit into a Whataburger chicken strip and discovered it was green on the inside, and the clip of his reaction has since drawn wide attention online. According to the Daily Dot, the man, who posts as @choppedbylee, captioned his video by telling Whataburger to “count yo days” since the discovery happened on his own birthday.

He showed the pigmented chicken to his followers, visibly gagging as he asked what the green coloring was and why it was there, despite the strip appearing fully cooked. Commenters largely sided with him, with several urging him to seek compensation for what they called “rotten chicken.” Others pointed to a more specific explanation: an account on X posted a breakdown attributing the coloring to something called green muscle disease.

The condition itself isn’t contagious. It typically develops when a bird’s wing muscle gets overworked from repeated flapping, cutting off adequate blood supply to that tissue, a problem that tends to crop up specifically in the fast-growing broiler chickens raised for meat.

Other users identified it as green muscle disease, though one claim needed correcting

That same account also claimed eating chicken with this kind of green pigment was FDA-approved, though that framing isn’t quite right. Traditional chicken meat isn’t primarily regulated by the FDA at all; oversight instead falls under the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a USDA agency whose own guidance notes that color alone doesn’t determine whether cooked poultry is safe.

That distinction didn’t do much to ease viewers’ concerns. One commenter tied it to another recent food-safety scare, writing, “And recently Popeyes chicken in Houston had a condom fried into the chicken. I’m not getting chicken again ***.” That comparison tracks with an actual case that made headlines recently, when a Texas man said he found a condom fried into his Popeyes chicken, a case that involved police and an on-camera confrontation with restaurant staff.

Another suggested a different course of action: “Don’t toss it out but keep it and call a lawyer and sue. That’s so nasty.” A third kept it simple: “Call the county health department.” As for how often this actually happens, industry research suggests it’s still fairly uncommon, even if it’s become somewhat more frequent.

According to The Poultry Site, the number of birds affected by green muscle disease remains small relative to the total volume processed each year, though the rate has been trending upward as broilers are bred to reach heavier weights faster. The condition is also typically caught and trimmed away during processing before it ever reaches a store or restaurant. As of this writing, Whataburger hasn’t weighed in publicly on what happened or on the chicken’s condition.

Skepticism about the clip itself also picked up steam, with a number of viewers suggesting it looked AI-generated. The creator addressed that directly in a follow-up video, saying, “This is real; I ain’t ever been the type to post fake content.” He backed that up with a photo of his receipt showing a purchase timestamped July 31, 2026, at 1:36 p.m., a detail he noted lined up with when he’d originally posted the clip.

On the legal question one commenter raised, the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. According to Lawyers.com, a disappointing or unappetizing meal generally isn’t enough on its own to support a claim; most successful cases involve either a genuine foreign object or an actual physical injury or illness, neither of which applies to a naturally occurring, USDA-recognized condition like this one.