One of the highlights of eating at a Chinese restaurant is receiving your fortune cookie at the end of the meal. People have their own superstitious ways of picking a cookie but they are often shocked when they find the inside of the cookie to be empty.

No fortune

It's easy to be taken aback when you open a fortune cookie and find nothing inside. Many people ponder what this oddity means. Some take the absence of a fortune to mean they have no fortune--that they will die or be harmed.

Unknown Fortune

Other people believe that an empty fortune cookie means that their future is undecided. Such people are less alarmed by the lack of a paper fortune inside a cookie.

It Can Happen to Anyone

If you get one an empty fortune cookie, keep in mind that it can happen to anyone. In fact, it happened to the Dalai Lama at a Chinese restaurant in New York City, according to the "New York Mumble." Reportedly, he simply got up and asked for a new cookie, and he received a fortune the second time around.

Superstitions

Many Chinese people believe you should not eat the cookie that contained no fortune. Like the Dalai Lama, you may ask for a new one and eat that cookie, but most believe it's best to throw away the cookie without the paper fortune.

Cookie Production

Fortune cookies are made by people. A random piece of paper is placed onto hot dough and immediately shaped before the dough hardens. It's a very fast process, and most likely, the paper was forgotten or fell out before the dough hardened. It's merely by chance that you happened to receive a cookie that ended up empty due to human error.

Source:

The New York Mumble

SF Chinatown Fortune Cookie

Beware of Food Poisoning. lol😊

You don't have a future. Get out. Run - very fast. Before they realize that you were the one who found...THE FORTUNE COOKIE OF DEATH. It's no joke - I got it once and a week later I was dead.