101 AWFUL FOOD FACTS

Awful Food Facts

1.


A rat restaurant in China sells rat and snake soup, rat kebabs, steamed rat with rice and crispy fried rat.


2.


A restaurant in Changsha, China, offers food cooked in human breast milk.


3.


A restaurant in Osaka, Japan, serves whale ice-cream made from the blubber of the minke whale.


4.


A restaurant in Pennsylvania, USA, offers a hamburger that weighs 4 kilograms (9 pounds). No one has yet managed to finish one.


5.


A stew eaten at a funeral in Stone-Age Wales was made from shellfish, eels, mice, frogs, toads, shrews and snakes.

6.

A traditional dish in London is eels boiled and served cold in jelly.

7.

Alligator kebabs are popular in southern Louisiana, USA.

8.

Ambuyat, eaten in Brunei, is made from pulp from the sago palm, stewed in water for several hours.The same mixture is made to stick the roof on a house! Also in Brunei, the sago worm which lives inside rotting sago palms is often cooked and eaten.

9.

An eighteenth-century recipe for making an enormous egg suggests sewing 20 egg yolks into an animal bladder, then dropping it into another animal bladder filled with 20 egg whites and boiling it all together.

10.

An international contest to find the best recipe for cooking earthworms included entries of stews, salads and soups but was won by a recipe for applesauce surprise cake. Guess what the surprise was…

11.

An omelette costing $1000 (£530) and called the Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata was sold by a restaurant in New York. It contains a whole lobster and 280 grams (10 ounces) of caviar, as well as eggs, cream, potato and whiskey.

12.

Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all gave condemned prisoners a last meal.

13.

Another way of cooking snakes in Texas – cut the head off, skin and gut it, poke a stick into the neck, wrap the snake loosely around the stick and roast over a camp fire.

14.

Argentinian Gauchos keep a piece of beef under their saddles so that it is pummelled until tender as they ride around all day. It's said that the dish steak tartar came from Mongolian warriors doing the same and then eating the steak raw.

15.

As early as the ninth century, the Basques of Spain hunted whales, and whale tongue was considered a great delicacy.

16.

Aztecs gave people who were to be human sacrifices many last meals – they fattened them up for up to a year.

17.

Baby mouse wine, from China, is a bottle of wine packed with baby mice, to add flavour.

18.

Bedouin people cook a camel's hump by burying it underground and lighting a fire over the top of it. When they dig it up and eat it, the top is cooked, but the bottom still mostly raw and bloody.

19.

Biltong is favoured as a snack by rugby supporters in South Africa. It's dried strips of any meat – elephant, eland, antelope…

20.

Cibreo is an Italian dish that consists of the cooked combs from roosters.

21.

Cinemas in Colombia serve paper cones filled with giant fried or toasted ants.

22.

Condemned prisoners are traditionally allowed a delicious last meal. In some US states, it's not actually their last meal, but is served a day or two before the execution and is called a ‘special meal'.

23.

Crispy fried duck or chicken feet are a delicacy in China. In the USA, whole chicken feet are sometimes pickled or made into soup.

24.

Drunken shrimps, served in China, are live shrimps swimming in a bowl of rice wine. The idea is to catch them with chopsticks and bite the heads off.

25.

Durian is a fruit the size of a football, covered in spikes, that smells like rotting meat. It's supposed to taste good, though!

26.

During the First World War, Germany suffered such food shortages that people ate dogs and horses, and even the kangaroos from the zoos!

27.

During the Second World War, people in the UK were urged by the government to make the most of wild foods, and were given recipes for cooking roast squirrel, rook casserole, stewed starlings and baked sparrows.

28.

Eels are sold live in markets around the world and killed just before cooking – or before putting in the bag to go home, if you don't want the bag wriggling all the way.

29.

Eskimos have been known to make seagull wine – put a seagull in a bottle of water, wait for it to go off – drink!

30.

Flavors of icecream available in Japan include octopus, ox tongue, cactus, chicken wing and crab.

31.

Fried chicken cartilage is served as a bar snack in Japan.

32.

Henry V of England once held a Christmas feast at which the menu included carps' tongues, roasted dolphin and flowers set in jelly.

33.

Honey is bee vomit. Bees drink nectar from flowers which they turn into honey before sicking it back up to store in the hive.

34.

Iguanas are a popular and free food in Central America – they can often be caught in backyards.

35.

In 1919, a tidal wave of treacle swept through Boston, USA. A storage tank burst, spilling 7.5 million litres (2 million gallons) of it into the streets. It poured over houses, knocking them down, in a wave two storeys high.

36.

In 1971, a man found the head of a mouse in a bar of chocolate.

37.

In both Sicily and Japan, people eat the raw roe (eggs) of sea urchins.

38.

In Canada, deep-fried cod tongues are a popular dish.

39.

In China and Japan, sheets of dried jellyfish are sold for soaking and turning back into slimy jellyfish ready for cooking.

40.

In China, people eat jellied ducks' blood.

41.

In Fiji, people starve a pig for a week, then feed it veal when it is very hungry. A few hours later, they kill the pig and remove the half-digested veal, which they cook and eat.

42.

In France, calves' eyes are soaked in water, then boiled and stuffed and finally deep fried in breadcrumbs.

43.

In Georgia, there is a price limit of $20 on the last meal a prisoner can order (2004 price limit).

44.

In Hungary, scrambled eggs are fried up with the blood from a freshly slaughtered pig.

45.

In India, ants are roasted, ground to a paste and served as chutney.

46.

In Indonesia, deep fried monkey toes are eaten by sucking the meat straight off the bone.

47.

In Japan, the blowfish is a delicacy, even though it contains a poison gland which, if not properly removed, kills anyone who eats it.

48.

In Madagascar, people make a stew from tomatoes and zebras.

49.

In Nepal,Tibet and parts of China, black tea is served with yak butter – butter made from yak milk.

50.

In Ness, Scotland, people kill young gannets – a type of sea bird – to eat. The claws are the most highly prized part.

51.

In Newfoundland, Canada, seal flipper pie is a traditional dish for the end of a seal hunt.

52.

In Nicaragua, turtle eggs are eaten raw – slit the leathery skin, add some hot sauce and suck out the gunk.

53.

In Northern Australia, children often eat green ants. Pick them up, squish the head so they don't nibble you, and bite off the body.

54.

In Sardinia, cheese is left in the sun for flies to lay their egg in.When the maggots hatch, the swarming mass is spread on bread and eaten.

55.

In Slovenia, people still raise and fatten dormice, ready to stew.

56.

In Sweden and Norway, roast reindeer is a national dish.

57.

In Sweden, people make dumplings from flour, reindeer blood and salt.

58.

In Texas, there's an annual rattle-snake round-up.What to do with all the rattle snakes? Skin them, gut them, cut them into chunks, cover in batter and deep fry.

59.

In the Japanese countryside, salamanders and skinks are grilled on sticks and served with lettuce.

60.

In the Masai Mara in Africa people drink blood drained from the neck of a live animal with a straw, mixed up with milk.

61.

In the Philippines, chicken heads may be made into stew or barbecued whole.

62.

In the Philippines, the eyes are considered the tastiest part of a steamed fish. Suck out the gloop and spit out the hard cornea.

63.

In the Samoan Islands, the intestines of sea cucumbers are sold in jars, steeped in sea water. The sea cucumber is a slithery, tube-like animal and not a cucumber at all. When it's cooked, it is called a sea slug.

64.

In the southern USA, squirrel brains are cooked still in the head. You then crack the skull and scoop the brains out with fingers and fork.

65.

In the UK, game – wild animals and birds shot in the fields – is often hung until it is ‘high', which means it is hung up on a hook until it is starting to go off.

66.

In Wales, rook pie was considered a tasty way to get rid of a bird that might otherwise eat the crops.

67.

Jack Fuller was buried in a pyramid in Sussex, England, in 1811. It's said by local people that inside it he is seated at a table with a roast chicken and a bottle of port.

68.

Jellyfish are eaten dried and salted in some parts of the world. And in the Gilbert Islands, jellyfish ovaries are served fried.

69.

Many cheap meat products such as sausages and burgers are made from ‘mechanically recovered meat' which consists of a meat slurry collected from washing bones and mincing up parts of the dead animal that aren't used for anything else.

70.

Mar mite, a favourite English spread for toast, is made with the left-over yeasty sludge from brewing beer.

71.

McDonald's in Hong Kong sells a sweetcorn pie in a sweet pie crust, the same as the apple pies in the west.

72.

Most US states don't allow alcohol or tobacco in a prisoner's last meal.

73.

Nutria are a large rodent that live some of the time in the water. They are a pest in Louisiana, where local authorities are encouraging people to eat them – with little success, as they don't taste too good.

74.

Odd crisp flavours available around the world include octopus, seaweed, banana, and sour cream and squid.

75.

Oellebroed is a Danish soup make from stale rye bread soaked in water, then boiled with beer and sugar and served with cream. It's possible to buy instant oellebroed powder – just add water.

76.

Pruno is a ‘wine' made by American prisoners from a mixture of fruit, sugar cubes, water and tomato ketchup left to fester in a bin bag for a week. In some prisons, pruno causes so many discipline problems that fruit has been banned.

77.

P'tcha is an east European Jewish food made by stewing calves' feet until they turn to jelly.

78.

Raake orret is eaten in Norway. Trout caught in a fresh water stream are stored in salted water with a little sugar and kept in a cool place, such as the garage, for months before eating.

79.

Raw, pickled jellyfish are eaten in the Samoan Islands.

80.

Roman banquets often featured hummingbirds cooked in walnut shells and roasted stuffed dormice, sometimes rolled in honey and poppy seeds. The Romans even had farms producing dormice because they were so popular.

81.

Slimy green stuff that looks like mucus is supposedly the best part of a lobster or crayfish. It's found in the head. Some Americans eat the main part of the lobster meat and then suck the head to get the gunge out.

82.

Small songbirds cooked and eaten whole have been so popular in Italy that many types have been wiped out completely.

83.

Snake wine in China is a very potent alcoholic drink, spiced with juice from the gall bladder of a live snake.

84.

Some Arctic explorers have been poisoned by eating polar bear liver. The polar bear eats so much fish that fatal levels of Vitamin D collect in its liver.

85.

Some prisoners have big appetites. Richard Beavers, executed in Texas in 1994, ate for his last meal: 6 pieces of French toast with butter and syrup, 6 barbecued spare ribs, 6 pieces of bacon (burnt), 4 scrambled eggs, 5 sausage patties, French fries with ketchup, 3 slices of cheese, 2 pieces of yellow cake with chocolate fudge icing and 4 cartons of milk.

86.

Spam is a luncheon meat used as a filling for sandwiches.At a Spam-cooking contest, one contestant made Spam-chip cookies!

87.

Stink-heads are a traditional Alaskan dish. Fish heads – often from salmon – are buried in pits lined with moss for a few weeks or months until rotten. They are then kneaded like pastry to mix up all the parts and eaten.

88.

The alcoholic drink mescal has a cactus maggot preserved in the bottle.

89.

The Chinese eat monster barnacles the size of an adult's fist.

90.

The Chinese make a soup from the swim bladder of fish. It's the organ that helps fish to stay at the right depth and upright in the water, and is rather spongy.

91.

The Insect Club, a restaurant in the USA, serves only dishes made with insects. The menu includes cricket pizza, insect chocolates and ‘insects in a blanket' – crickets, mealworms and blue cheese in puff pastry.

92.

The reproductive organs of sea urchins are eaten raw in many parts of the world, including Japan, Chile and France.

93.

The Roman emperor Nero kept a ‘glutton' – an Egyptian slave who ate everything he was given to eat, including human flesh.

94.

The Russian Jewish dish kishke is made by stuffing a chicken skin with flour, butter and spices and boiling it in chicken stock. Dry it out, then cut it into slices as a snack.

95.

The Spanish eat the cheese cabrales when it is ‘con gusano' – crawling with live maggots.

96.

The street markets of Indonesia sell whole, smoked bats.

97.

The town of Bunol, in Spain, has an annual tomato fight when up to 25,000 people throw around 100 tonnes (220,000 pounds) of tomatoes at each other. The streets can be flooded up to 30 centimetres (12 inches) deep with juice.

98.

Think cabbage is horrid? In Korea, it is sometimes buried in clay pots with salt for many months before it's eaten – this dish is called kimchi, and is served with most meals.

99.

To make especially tender beef, the Japanese shut cattle in the dark, feed them beer and employ special cattle masseurs to massage them by hand three times a day.

100.

Tradition tells that the French cheese Roquefort was discovered when a shepherd abandoned his lunch in a cave to chase a pretty girl he saw outside.When he came back months later the cheese had gone mouldy but still tasted good.

101.

Yeast are tiny fungi (mould), present in bread, beer and wine.The yeast eat sugar in the ingredients, making the gas which forms the bubbles in beer and wine and the holes in bread.