If you are what you eat…

Escamoles are the eggs of the giant black Liometopum ant.

The eggs have the consistency of cottage cheese. The most popular way to eat them is in a taco with guacamole, while being fucking insane.

best served with guatemalan insanity peppers.

on casu marzu:

Its translucent larvae are able to jump about 6 inches into the air, making this the only cheese that requires eye protection while eating. The taste is strong enough to burn the tongue, and the larvae themselves pass through the stomach undigested, sometimes surviving long enough to breed in the intestine, where they attempt to bore through the walls, causing vomiting and bloody diarrhea.

ok, I call BS on that last part. the ADULT fly is the one that is able to reproduce, not the larvae.

If the larvae cause any intestinal damage at all (again, highly doubtful) I would claim it to be more likely some form of allergic reaction.

I can understand a list of subjectively repulsive foods being of interest, but seeing so much BS listed along with is even more unappetizing than the listed foods.

(This is a friend of a friend story (FoF).) FoF are visiting an African country (no idea which one; this would have been c.20 years ago). One night in the restaurant, some diners at one table were having (baby?) monkey. As served, it was squatting and looked just like a cooked infant.

HIV/AIDS is thought to have entered the human population from people butchering and eating chimpanzees and sooty mangabees.

The lesson here is not to eat your close relatives.

I don't think I could eat an ape without feeling vaguely cannibalistic. But who knows, maybe it is a cultural thing.

On Lukefisk - it really taste awful. Essentially it is fish prepared in Draino, and that is how it tastes. Maybe I did not have the right kind, but the one time I tasted it I was told in advance that it was authentic, and did not care for it. Don't think that is just psychological or appearance. (I love sweet pickled herring which is similar in appearence, but not in flavor.)

Ichthyic

Well, from the wikipedia page:

issues have been raised with casu marzu:

* Anecdotal reports of allergic reactions.
* A risk of the decomposition advancing to a toxic state. (Folk wisdom in Sardinia holds that the presence of still-living larvae are an assurance that this has not yet happened.)
* Risk of enteric myiasis: intestinal larval infection. Piophila casei larvae can pass through the stomach alive (human stomach acids do not usually kill them) and take up residency for some period of time in the intestines, where they can cause serious lesions as they attempt to bore through the intestinal walls. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea.

All the same, though, I think I'll stay far away from the foods on that list...

I read that last sentence as "...you'll have to hold a gnu to my head..."

Essentially it is fish prepared in Draino, and that is how it tastes.

the lye is used as a softening agent, it is completely rinsed away before serving. It might be disgusting tasting to some, but it positively ISN'T dangerous.

btw, how is using lye as a food preparatory agent any different than using acids?

ever drink coke or pepsi?

full of acid.

I swear, there was so much BS in that list, wholly added by the author himself, it's THAT that should have made most here sick to their stomach.

including PZ, for that matter, who fails to even notice apparently.

there are far better listings of international foods out there that actually do justice to what the foods actually are and how they are prepared. to focus on this bit of drivel is ridiculous.

I didn't think the sheep's head was all that weird. Cooked head is, after all, the ancestor of barbeque and pulled meats. It's the presentation that needs some work. I wouldn't have any aversion to the ant's eggs, either, and think lutefisk is less weird than the ant's eggs.

As for everything else on that list? Hell no.

* Risk of enteric myiasis: intestinal larval infection. Piophila casei larvae can pass through the stomach alive (human stomach acids do not usually kill them) and take up residency for some period of time in the intestines, where they can cause serious lesions as they attempt to bore through the intestinal walls. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea.

no reproduction though, duh.

did you bother to find the primary source for that, btw?

people have been eating that cheese in Sardinia for hundreds of years, the risk must be infinitesimally small, if what wiki reports is even accurate, as it often is not.

I think the first time I heard about casu marzu was a long comment thread on the old Pharyngula discussing a new cosmological theory based on small bits of cheese as the fundamental building block of the universe. As much as I like stinky cheese, I had no desire to try it then and none now.

Whatever Ichthyic. Wikipedia is a scholarly reference tool filled with erudite and informed discussions on human sexuality and relevant articles on ninja ranks in Naruto, and I'm sick of everyone badmouthing it.

(Links are very likely NSFW).

I love cheese, and I'm very upset at the utterly stupid and arbitrary cheese regulation in the US that prevents me from getting good cheese.

I will eat cheese made with cheese mites.

I will never eat casu marzu.

You guys do know that article's on the website for Cracked magazine, right? The magazine that's like Mad's Daisy-Duke-shorts wearin', trailer-trash cousin with bad nasal habits?

In other words, here, I have a moose hatchery full of industrial-strength road salt for you to swallow the "drivel" with, okay...?

I strongly recommend live-just-born-mice dip (in a sweet/sour sauce).
I had these in a Baba-Nonya restaurant in Malacca (Malaysia) and it was really delicious, a bit scary first when the bowl arrived on the table, filled with these moving little humid pink embryo looking things.

Try it, you'll like it.

The magazine that's like Mad's Daisy-Duke-shorts wearin', trailer-trash cousin with bad nasal habits

so, uh, how does that make it not drivel, exactly?

if you're trying to say it's parody or satire, then it stinks even worse than lutefisk, and again makes one wonder why PZ even took note of it.

Yes, an advantage of living in France is the abundance of seriously good cheeses. The FDA's insanity hasn't invaded. Nor is there any reason to even consider maggot cheese, despite there apparently being a (somewhat different) version made just over the border in Piemonte (Piedmont).

I saw an episode of No Reservations where Tony Bourdain and his chef friends devoured a cooked sheeps' head.

And if you prefer to get your disgusting food lore from somewhere other than Cracked, you may as well start at Steve, Don't Eat It!

Man, people are cranky lately.

Yes, I noticed the source -- it's prominently displayed right at the top of the page, and Zooillogix stated it, too. Lighten up! This was not a serious post about exotic cuisine!

Oh, it's so nice to be a VEGETARIAN!!!! Give me mac and cheese (the dairy kind) any day.

SG

When I was in Thailand last month I found a stall selling bugs. I almost, *almost* tried some, but didn't get the chance. O the lament!

But I did buy a catfish-on-a-stick from a street vendor while drunk. It was goooood.

Yes, I noticed the source -- it's prominently displayed right at the top of the page, and Zooillogix stated it, too. Lighten up! This was not a serious post about exotic cuisine!

the post repeats a LOT of commonly held misconceptions about the foods listed. parody or not, you shouldn't have let it slide without comment, so I took the liberty.

cranky?

hardly.

I use much more invectives than just "drivel" when I'm cranky.

The escamole sounds good. I'm going to see if I can find some.

I also call bullshit on the "maggots ate my intestine" bit. I've eaten maggots (don't ask) and they died and got digested like anything else I've ever rammed down my gullet.

I'd try anything on that list (well, I've tried lutefisk and it was pretty bleh) because I'm curious about food. I've eaten head before, too. Settle down at the back.

I really wanted to try balut when I was in the Philippines, it is a standard street food, but we only ever seemed to pass a vendor some time just after a meal. The local advise is to shut your eyes, because it tastes good, but looks rank.
I plan to try it next visit though!

negentropy, I think I might be exporting a lot of entropy after eating a bowl full of cute little writhing pink mouse embryos dipped in spicy cocktail sauce. Can't wait for your Schroedinger's cat recipe. Yum! I might like that even more.

When I was younger and stupider I watched the movie "Faces of Death". The only scene that I recall was the one where a group of people eat the brains of a monkey, while it's still alive. I will not comment upon the morality of such a thing, except to say that it was more disgusting than anything on that list. It is also one of the reasons that I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years. Balut has yet again reaffirmed the rightness of that choice.

OTOH I do not begrudge anyone their own dietary choices. I am not a "fundamentalist vegetarian". To each his/her own. May you enjoy your food choices and be healthy.

#26, you can get Schrödinger's cat (this one is 100% dead though) in the QINGPING Market in GuangZhou (China). They also have Jars of human female Hemoroïds for sale, delicious in oyster sauce stir fry.

We ate lutfisk around christmas every year.

It's not super pleasant, but it's not super unpleasant.

Honestly, I'll take a little fishy pudding made with lye (and then soaked for a week in water before it's cooked) over pretty much any food that is Still Alive and Moving!

And I was generally amused by the article.

Pacha, the sheep's head, is very common all over the Mediterranean, and a delicacy in Greece where I lived for many years. If you like lamb, you'll love it. The face muscles have a more delicate lamb taste than other lamb body parts, the eyes just taste like oysters of lambness, and in texture the brain is essentially the foie gras of lamb. Yes, when your meal stares back at you it can be unnerving. But the taste is delicious.

OK, this has halfway blown Steve, Don't Eat It! out of the water (only half because they didn't document eating these things). The fake ads were pretty funny, though.

(The prior Steve link was broken by a trailing "%20rel=", hopefully this one will do better.)

The Casu Marzu might make a good "alien delicacy" for Star Trek or suchlike -- or better yet, have some human get their revenge on the aliens! ("Yes, gentlebeing, this is a genuine ancient delicacy from Old Earth!") The mouse wine is tame compared to some of the Chinese "health tonics" I've heard about -- at least there's only one screwy thing in there!

Pacha, balut, and even escamoles are pretty much par for human omnivory (hey, nothing's moving! ;-) ), and of course lutefisk is a standing joke....

You can get balut in the USA, at least in the San Francisco Bay area.

Don't eyeballs get kinda chewy when they're boiled? I'm asking in all sincerity.

Oh, about that lye: part of the standard pretzel-making process, IIRC, is boiling them in lye water before baking. Seems to me that cooking the fish in lye might be a close analogue to making ceviche, which is cooking fish in acid: lemon and/or lime juice and/or vinegar. Except I suspect ceviche tastes better because even vinegar tastes better than lye. (I admit bias: I really like ceviche. Wish I had some right now.)

#28, Nothing like a jar of human female hemoroids as a side dish to a well done 100% dead Schroedinger's cat, though I'm not too sure about the oyster sauce. Do they stir fry them in Preperation H? That must really sizzle.

I have had the honor of eating the eye of a whole roasted lamb, once. My Greek neighbors used to roast a lamb for Easter back in the days when you could actually do such a thing in Brooklyn. Maybe 1974 or so. It was done on a spit over a grill made from half of a 55 gallon drum filled with charcoal. They roasted it all day, my friend Aggie ( short for Agamemnon) would be there turning the spit most of the day. I would spend time helping him, so that when it was time for the feast I got one of the eyes.

It was a sort of salty/smoky taste and kind of crunchy as well. I forced myself not to puke, as I liked Aggie's family and figured it would not look good for him if I threw up during dinner. The Ouzo that they gave me to wash it down helped. Nothing like the taste of eye and liquorice to celebrate Zombie Day.

Oh come on, lutefisk made the list and natto didn't??? I mean really, something favored by people who think mashed potatoes are "just a little on the spicy side" outscores slimy rotten soybean? I'ze disgested.

My hosts in Japan fed me natto. 'Twas a bit pungent. But not bad.

I've had natto. Seems to me to just be unpressed tempeh. I think they both taste good.

Is Natto much different from Soy Sauce?

For some reason, it looks pretty tasty to me.

Still, I was a little surprised to hear that Mimolette, one of my all-time favorite cheeses, gets some of its flavor from the fermentation action of cheese mites. Go figure.

You can get balut in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood, and as many people already mentioned, lutefisk is standard Minnesotan holiday fare. Casu marzu doesn't sound completely appetizing, but I'd give it a try...

When I was younger and stupider I watched the movie "Faces of Death". The only scene that I recall was the one where a group of people eat the brains of a monkey, while it's still alive.

That scene was faked.

#37: I haven't had natto, but I've lately been frying up some tempeh, and I have to admit, raw tempeh looks pretty scary. When they tell you to fry it with soy sauce, that's not just for taste, it hides much of the appearance.

I believe seen Casu Marzu or at least one of its french variants close up, in a US restaurant. (Some of the french cheeses may keep their rinds for a long time, letting cheese mites and even fly maggots add taste. Cheezus!) Presented in a tree casket with legs to convenient height, so guests could check it and its freshness out on their way to the table. Except that it didn't smell too fresh. :-P

Seems to me that cooking the fish in lye might be a close analogue to making ceviche, which is cooking fish in acid: lemon and/or lime juice and/or vinegar. Except I suspect ceviche tastes better because even vinegar tastes better than lye.

Not much of lye taste, the lye is a process to recover the fish to digestible state after preservation. At least when it was originally invented; the fish was originally preserved by sun drying. IIRC the lye is completely removed by cooking in water, or at least the fish doesn't taste much of anything. The sauce adds taste.

I can't eat it myself, as it in most realizations has the consistency and taste of cotton wad. The sauce and spices doesn't do it for me. My father was introduced to this as a part of the yule dinner, and loves it. OTOH my father has long since lost most of his taste, while I have [ahem] refined [/ahem] taste buds. :-P

As I understand it lute fish is a (rather late, I think) invention in the long series of food preservation techniques you find in winter climates. You had to come up with methods to preserve the food from when you could get it. Salting, drying as pemmican or lute fish, preserving in vinegar, fermentation of fish, and possibly other techniques that people stumbled on.

(Self-fermentation of fish is the most interesting IMO, since the enzymes that do the process is from the fish itself, IIRC the bones in the head. Someone must have accidentally fermented instead of salt preserved a can of fish, and found out that it was still edible and even enjoyably spicy. Despite the somewhat... unique... smell.)

Isn't lye a base, not acid? I would be wary of soap-fish.
Ant eggs are acceptable, if they really have a good texture.
Fertilized eggs...look rank, would not really want to try. Also that French dish with a wild bird drowned in cognac and fried in batter.
Now, pacha is a different story. If you come to Bulgaria and order a dish of pacha, you will get something nasty-ish, but different: pork in jelly, spiced with garlic. Is nice and edible, only if the pig's hairs have been properly removed. It's jellified rinds and ears. Crunchy and a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Now, the Iranian version- quite OK, don't know why is in weird foods. Meat can be quite tender, and if you are not squeamish, well, brraaaaains.

Olives are processed with lye (sodium hydroxide...a base). No big deal there.

Insects are best avoided in Thailand (they're often killed with pesticides).

Balut tastes like an ordinary hard-boiled egg, even with the feathers.

The Thai "self-fermenting fish" (bplah-ra)is usually hit hard with salt at some point, killing the parasites and bacteria. Mostly.

Live monkeys are still served up in Hong Kong on special tables with clamps. The locals are quite aware of the scene that animal rights folks can make, so it's rare to find non-Asians in these joints.

I didn't realize how immunized from American/European culinary squeamishness I've become in my years in Thailand. I can walk out on the soi right now and find half of the repellent goodies mentioned above in 30 minutes. And a lot more. Horseshoe crab eggs, 6 different insects (including ant eggs), cow penis, eels, 3 different varieties of fermented/ing fish, horse urine eggs, 100-year eggs, fish head soup, stuff cooked in bile........

And squid, of course.

correctly prepared lutefisk is depressingly bland. i've had it, but wouldn't have it again; i prefer my food to actually taste of something.

i don't get the fear of pacha. i mean, it's just boiled mutton, right? get over the infantile terror of skulls, every mammal's got one. (i'd skip the eyeball, myself, though. i may be just weird that way.)

i've heard of balut turning up in the U.S., but i suspect you have to be born and raised in the Philippines to want any part of that. i wasn't, so the Filipinos can have my share too. oh, and i flat out refuse to eat anything that's got anything to do with insects --- because some things just plain are worse than starvation.

I think people ought to be able to eat what they like, but duck fetus ? These are near-term (near-hatch) animals, i.e. with a fully developed nervous system. Now imagine yourself enclosed in an egg shell, being thrown into boiling water until you die.
Does anyone know whether this is legal in the States ? It would seem to me to be a huge animal welfare issue.

I've had more of these than I expected.

Pacha is just lamb that hasn't been prepared in a way to disguise the fact that you're eating an animal. I'm not a huge fan of lamb, but what I had was actually quite good; lamb cheeks are better than much of the rest of the animal.
Lutefisk is ... bland. I guess the preservation process makes for a good story, but the end result just isn't very interesting food.
I really knew little about escamoles when I had it. "This is really good, but if I tell you what it is, you won't eat it. Now eat it!" Ah, being pressured into ingesting unknown substances; that's what friends are for. But, he was right. It actually is pretty good, especially with guacamole.
I just couldn't get into balut. I think its a cultural thing. I think it tastes like a hard boiled egg with a somewhat off-putting texture. Based on its popularity, I guess I'm just missing something.

The mice wine is new to me, although hardly surprising. People the world over put strange things in their alcohol. It probably doesn't taste much different from other rice wine. And casu marzu ... I'll have to pass. I don't have the palate for the really extreme cheeses to begin with, and I can't see how fly larvae are going to change my mind.

Still, 4/6 isn't bad.

I'm from Mexico and let's just say that escamoles are pretty softcore when it comes to mexican cuisine. Other arthropod delicacies include "Gusanos de Maguey", literally, Maguey (the plant where tequila comes from) worms (as in maggots). The same one you would find in a bottle of mezcal is more usually fried and salted. Then there's actually a personal favourite of mine, "chapulines" or grasshoppers (I'm not joking when I say the big ones are delicious) they're toasted and coated with chili.

Then, of course, is the fact that in mexico, people eat the entire cow/bull, yes, literally everything. Among the body parts consumed in tacos: eyes and tongue, intestines, stomach, brains. Blood is made into a soup, skin into a snack. And if you're still thinking "how could they eat ALL the bovine? a word of caution about "criadillas": it's a euphemism for (it's true): "Bull testicles".

Santiago, when i hear about cultures eating the entire animal, it's always the skeleton i have to wonder about. were you being that literal?

Insects are best avoided in Thailand (they're often killed with pesticides).

Thanks, good to know. (Not that I was too tempted, anyway. Most insects are too small to remove the icky parts.)

The Thai "self-fermenting fish" (bplah-ra)is usually hit hard with salt at some point, killing the parasites and bacteria. Mostly.

Ah, another example outside Scandinavia. The way we avoid bacteria is by fermenting them in the tin cans they are sold in.

Dunno about parasites, but they will have precious little oxygen to survive on during the weeks the process is ongoing. You have to open the pressurized cans under water, to avoid getting liquid spray on you. (And coincidentally avoiding the worst of the smell.)

I see the recident Swede has weight in with tales of surströmming.

I'll just add that boiled sheepshead is a delicacy on the Faroe Islands too (pretty far removed from the Med).

The Inuit have delightful specialities too, I'm told. Sealseye doesn't really compare, I guess, but they do enjoy guillemots fermented in their own fat by being sown into a sealskin and buried for a while.

(Oh, and 'rotten' cheese is a big hit in Denmark too. The more mites the better. -- Sadly, I'm one of those people who "think mash is a bit on the spicy side". Perhaps I should try the lutefisk.)

And squid, of course.

really?

when I was doing research on damselfish out on Catalina Island (off the So Cal coast), we often caught fresh squid for the BBQ.

little lime and garlic, bit of butter...

delicious.

Thanks, good to know. (Not that I was too tempted, anyway. Most insects are too small to remove the icky parts.)

Well, the usual treatment is to fry the grasshoppers, waterbugs, scorpions, etc. The guts disappear in the process, so you're often left with nothing more than a crispy exoskeleton.

Westerners might think these Thais are primitive or have no other choices, but they enjoy the "ick" factor too. The classic example is "goong ten" or "dancing shrimp"...live shrimp doused with lime and spices. It would make sense to serve them in a bowl, but they're served on a plate. Cuz you want to see them jump off the plate onto the table.

My girlfriend and I watch these American reality shows and sneer at the squeamishness of the contestants. Better yet would be a Discovery survivalist documentary, where you're supposed to admire the courage of a dude who fried rats to get by.

Squid...the vendor pushes a special cart down the street. The critters hang from clips. The usual treatment is to let them dry in the sun for a day before grilling them...I think it makes them all the gamier. Definitely delicious.

#50: Soup bones!

The list forgot tempeh bongkrek (i.e. coconut tempeh) -- it's vegetarian fugu. If it's improperly made, it becomes saturated with a couple of major toxins, including one called bongkrekic acid that acts as an ATP inhibitor.

Yeah. ATP inhibitor. I will be avoiding that.

Torbjörn on surströmming:

The way we avoid bacteria is by fermenting them in the tin cans they are sold in.

The fermentation process of surströmming is not a very good way to "avoid bacteria"! :) Only certain types of bacteria.

ngong:

Well, the usual treatment is to fry the grasshoppers, waterbugs, scorpions, etc. The guts disappear in the process,

Or at least may be sanitary. Okay, makes sense.

Westerners might think these Thais are primitive or have no other choices, but they enjoy the "ick" factor too.

I have assumed that the largest motivating factor to eat live or stinky food is the feeling of bravery.

With such exceptions as large insect larvae, that apparently are pretty good and healthy food after nicking their heads off.

windy:

Only certain types of bacteria.

Probably true. Fermentation by bacteria makes the food so acid that disease bacteria in general are absent. I'm not sure how fermentation by enzymes work.

I believe seen Casu Marzu or at least one of its french variants close up, in a US restaurant. (Some of the french cheeses may keep their rinds for a long time, letting cheese mites and even fly maggots add taste. Cheezus!) Presented in a tree casket with legs to convenient height, so guests could check it and its freshness out on their way to the table. Except that it didn't smell too fresh. :-P

Seems to me that cooking the fish in lye might be a close analogue to making ceviche, which is cooking fish in acid: lemon and/or lime juice and/or vinegar. Except I suspect ceviche tastes better because even vinegar tastes better than lye.

Not much of lye taste, the lye is a process to recover the fish to digestible state after preservation. At least when it was originally invented; the fish was originally preserved by sun drying. IIRC the lye is completely removed by cooking in water, or at least the fish doesn't taste much of anything. The sauce adds taste.

I can't eat it myself, as it in most realizations has the consistency and taste of cotton wad. The sauce and spices doesn't do it for me. My father was introduced to this as a part of the yule dinner, and loves it. OTOH my father has long since lost most of his taste, while I have [ahem] refined [/ahem] taste buds. :-P

As I understand it lute fish is a (rather late, I think) invention in the long series of food preservation techniques you find in winter climates. You had to come up with methods to preserve the food from when you could get it. Salting, drying as pemmican or lute fish, preserving in vinegar, fermentation of fish, and possibly other techniques that people stumbled on.

(Self-fermentation of fish is the most interesting IMO, since the enzymes that do the process is from the fish itself, IIRC the bones in the head. Someone must have accidentally fermented instead of salt preserved a can of fish, and found out that it was still edible and even enjoyably spicy. Despite the somewhat... unique... smell.)

Insects are best avoided in Thailand (they're often killed with pesticides).

Thanks, good to know. (Not that I was too tempted, anyway. Most insects are too small to remove the icky parts.)

The Thai "self-fermenting fish" (bplah-ra)is usually hit hard with salt at some point, killing the parasites and bacteria. Mostly.

Ah, another example outside Scandinavia. The way we avoid bacteria is by fermenting them in the tin cans they are sold in.

Dunno about parasites, but they will have precious little oxygen to survive on during the weeks the process is ongoing. You have to open the pressurized cans under water, to avoid getting liquid spray on you. (And coincidentally avoiding the worst of the smell.)

ngong:

Well, the usual treatment is to fry the grasshoppers, waterbugs, scorpions, etc. The guts disappear in the process,

Or at least may be sanitary. Okay, makes sense.

Westerners might think these Thais are primitive or have no other choices, but they enjoy the "ick" factor too.

I have assumed that the largest motivating factor to eat live or stinky food is the feeling of bravery.

With such exceptions as large insect larvae, that apparently are pretty good and healthy food after nicking their heads off.

windy:

Only certain types of bacteria.

Probably true. Fermentation by bacteria makes the food so acid that disease bacteria in general are absent. I'm not sure how fermentation by enzymes work.