Funistrada does not exist. It is an imaginary food name invented by the U.S. armed forces to see if the participants of written food surveys were paying attention to the questions or just answering randomly. In a 1974 survey, respondents ranked funistrada higher than eggplant, instant coffee, apricot pie, Harvard beets, canned lima beans, grilled bologna, and cranberry juice. Two other imaginary foods fared less well—buttered ermal and braised trake. Given that funistrada is a nonce word, it has no real etymology; we might conjecture, however, that the word is a fusion of syllables taken from the names Annette Fum’cello—always a favourite of military personnel—and Erik Estrada—that manly embodiment of the 1970s.