Eating fast food is always kind of a gamble. From its level of freshness to unexpected ingredients, there’s always a chance that the meal you order won’t exactly be the meal you get.
For one woman, this point was driven home in the most subtly weird way. In a viral TikTok with over 5 million views, Itsazyo (@itsazyo) holds a Taco Bell burrito up to the camera.
What Was On This Taco Bell Burrito?
The song “Danger! High Voltage” plays (complete with a Taco Bell shout-out) in the background. Itsazyo angles the burrito so the upper portion of it is visible. A couple of bite marks are in frame. Nothing unexpected.
However, just below the chomp is a small, blue, capital letter “A.”
If there’s any confusion about what the internet is looking at, the creator has added text to the screen: “Tacobell why is there an ‘A’ on my burrito?”
The letterform is the blue tone of a ballpoint pen, but it looks perfect: like it was printed or stamped onto the snack. Is it a secret message, or an internal memo?
Actually, the most likely answer is in the comments. User Ginger Momma to Santiago (santiagos.mommy) explains, “I work at Taco Bell. Sometimes I be pulling out tortillas that have the stamping.” She’s included a photo of a flour tortilla that has two lines of backwards text on it.
That’s the open date information. Batch-specific details that often indicate the “best by” and “sell by” dates.
Is It Safe To Eat Ink?
But how does that information get from the package onto a Taco Bell tortilla? Ink migration.
It’s a real concern for chemists, printers, and brand executives. “Ink migration is the transfer or bleed-through of ink substances from the packaging material into consumer goods such as food, medicines or health and beauty products,” explains the site The Inktank.
Typically, it occurs when moisture, often via condensation, softens the ink and it transfers to the food. Diffusion is the way the printed area passes through the packaging material and onto the food. In this case, it was probably dampness in the tortilla that got trapped by the plastic wrap. And while it’s probably not wholly unsafe to consume a small bit of migrated ink, the rules about food-adjacent ink in America are complicated. This is because they’re based more on the material the ink is printed on, not concerns of edibility.
It just might be safer to just not eat the unexpected “A”-ddition to your meal.
‘Pretty Little Liars’ Jokes Dominate The Comments
In the comments, it doesn’t take long for users to correlate the “A” on the Mexican favorite to the mysterious “A” in “Pretty Little Liars.” The show, which ran from 2010-2017, followed a group of high school friends as their clique falls apart. Central to the show was an unknown antagonist who knew all of the friends’ unsavory secrets. This person would communicate via threatening messages, signing them “A.”
Users couldn’t resist the urge to write their own messages.
“Extra guac won’t cover up what you did. Funny how your burrito came with a side of guilt. Read the wrapper again—you might find more than today’s special. Bon appetite. -A,” Hal (@hal04120) wrote.
Then Kylie Howell (kylietrishelle) gets in on the mystery: “Funny how you stopped at Taco Bell on the way home. Almost like you needed time to come up with a story. Too bad I already know the truth. -A.”
While Mia (amia_denyse) is a little more subtle about the whole thing, asking, “Do you and another person know a secret by any chance?”
It seems in this instance, the “A” was a mystery, inside an enigma, wrapped in a burrito.
BroBible reached out to Itsazyo via TikTok direct message and with a comment on the video. We reached out to Taco Bell via the listed media email.