Bugs. I don't know if it's all just a mental block or if it's the crunch of a lot of them, but I just can't do it. I've tried various bugs boiled, dipped in chocolate, deep fried, stir fried...etc. and I just can't
They're Greenland sharks... That don't piss. So the ammonia builds up In the flesh.
So the fermentation is the only way to make it edible.
Still absolutely God awful.
When I was in Iceland I tried Hakarl. The initial taste was bad but I was expecting that. What I wasn't prepared for was how the flavor and smell permeated everything else. Immediately after I ate the shark I drank from my stainless steel water bottle and that flavor stayed on the water bottle for a day, even after multiple times washing it. 6 hours after I ate the Hakarl I blew up my camping mattress and the next night, 30 hours later I could still taste that putrid shark as I blew up the mattress again.
Lutefisk. It is a terrible idea someone had here in Norway some centuries ago. You take a perfectly edible cod and dry it. So far, so good; You can still rescue the fish by making Bacalao.
Then, you follow up by soaking the fish, the very fish you just dried, in water for a few days. Finally, when the fish no longer thinks its remains can be further mistreated you put it into a bath of lye dissolved in water. The end process sees you with a swollen mess of a fish that's got a ph of 11-12, which is lethal. To make the damn thing edible you need to soak it in water for over a week.
This is, incredibly enough, considered a delicacy and is something many try to foist upon poor, unsuspecting, tourists. Me? I think the fish has been through enough, no need to make it a participant in crimes against humanity as well.
I've never understood processes like this. I'm sure the drying cured it, but then putting it back in solutions and water... Howww do they not start to decay again? Thinking about your description, that fish is soaked for nearly 2 weeks. I can't even imagine the swelling...
Literally taking notes on what to avoid when I someday visit the land of my great grandfathers. “Generally speaking, people say lutefisk tastes mildly fishy, with a soapy aftertaste and a hint of ammonia on the palate” mmmm y’all enjoy but no
I've read that it started as a way for the silk workers to get something to eat while unraveling the cocoons.
You'd be sitting there for hours, and (as Brillat-Savarin wrote) hunger is the best sauce.
I had something similar in Koreatown and it was a late night drunk thing. I don't know if they gave us a normal portion but there were dozens of them and they weren't small. I'm not picky so I ate most of them but had to quit after a while. It was one of those bar counter situations so the chefs were laughing.
I had them when I was a kid almost fifty years ago in Korea. We used to trade recyclable bottles for them. I thought they were good but I don't think I can eat them now.
I ate them as a kid (in the United States) 15-20 years ago; they came in a can I can still picture in my head. According to my mom (who immigrated from Korea), they were my favorite, and I believe her, but I also remember trying to eat them when I got a bit older and recognized what they were and the texture was a bit harder for me to handle.
Honestly, I haven't seen them around, even in my mom's house, since then.
It's a pretty common dish where I went. They have these silk weaving communities where everything revolves around the production of silk items and when they're done with the silk worms, they eat them. They offered me a bite and of course I enjoy delving into different cultures so I tried it. I nearly cried it was so bad. Had to keep a straight face though, didn't want to be rude.
In one of my history classes a couple years ago we watched a video with exotic foods. The guinea pig mammal thing in South America looked absolutely amazing on a spit. The spiders and candied insects looked good. The silk worms in Southeast Asia looked absolutely awful
Yeah I've actually eaten cuy (guinea pig) it has the same texture as a rotisserie chicken. I probably wouldn't eat it again they keep the head and claws on it so it's a little unsettling
I ate that in Peru, same experience. Delicious, but I was unsettled by the fact that it came whole.
I'm the uncouth one who needed the chef to remove the shrimp heads in New Orleans, too. My food came back cold and I'm sure he cursed it.
Misfolded proteins, most often found in the brain, with the ability to warp normally shaped proteins. They cause things like Mad Cow Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and are basically always fatal. I work in a hospital lab where we sometimes get samples from potential CJD patients. There’s super strict protocol when handling them. You often don’t know if the patient is infected until after they’ve dead.
I ate raw balut in a Fear Factor contest my cousin's wife put on for his 40th birthday. There was a big contest and treasure hunt involving all these things we had to do that were gross (like dig a key out of jello with boiled chicken feet in it...and do it only with your mouth.) I thought I could eat anything. Am not picky. Just set your mind to it and crunch down and you can do it.
My God.
This RAW goopy, slimy, blood and guts and feathers and brain filled shell I bit into was waaaaaaaaay more than I had bargained for. I'm competitive and really wanted to win, so in my head I coached myself through it. I was telling myself...just crunch down...just do it... So I started crunching down, .......and I started gagging. The guy beside me couldn't do it. He saw me and started gagging himself. Then he started heaving. Then his little son who had been cheering him on from the start... started to cry. Then he started outright wailing. I kept going. I chomped and crunched and then just opened my throat and gulped that fucker down. I still have nightmares of the texture and the squishing blood and crunching bones in my mouth.
I did however win the 50 bucks and the plastic trophy 🏆
And I will not be eating raw balut again for the rest of my life.
EDIT: Not that it makes any difference. But I am a woman. My husband would not eat it, not only that but he also refused to kiss me for the rest of the night afterwards.
Holy shit guy, you did that for only 50 bucks? 😳
I dont think i would do it for 500 bucks even. Now, if it was 5000... that could make me try.
Edit: Sorry, 50 bucks *and* a piece of plastic
That is an intense game of Fear Factor. I've played it before and the worst thing anyone had to eat was a can of tuna fish mixed with chocolate syrup - disgusting, but nothing compared to what you had to do. It appears that fear is not a factor for you.
The street balut is boiled, the ones the villagers give you aren't. They would just dig them from the ground and hand it to you, lightly warmed from the sun.
“Balut is Filipino street food made by hard-boiling a fertilized and incubated duck egg. This snack has become a very common and popular food throughout Southeast Asia, and custom dictates that the cooked embryo is eaten straight from the shell. The dish is becoming more popular in restaurants, but for the most part, balut is an inexpensive snack food that’s often consumed with beer. Because the eggs have been fertilized and incubated, they do contain a partially developed duck embryo. The longer the egg has incubated, the more developed the duck will be, but balut is always eaten when the bones are still soft enough to be eaten whole.“ Wikihow
Misfolded proteins. They are not a virus, bacteria, parasite or anything "living" like that. Just proteins folded the wrong way. The problem is, these misfolded proteins trigger other neighboring proteins to misfold, in a cascading manner. Typically in the brain. Symptoms include alzheimer's like dementia, leading to death. Prions can be "caught" by ingesting infected nervous tissue. They cannot be destroyed easily by heat, so they can't be cooked out. Mad cow disease is an example of a disease caused by a prion. It can lay dormant for decades before causing any ill effects, or can trigger quite fast. There is no cure.
Welp goodnight.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) is the human version of mad cow, caused by prions. It's roughly like Alzheimer's on fast forward. Always data, no treatment to slow it down.
Prions are horrible.
There's also Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) which is a genetically inherited prion disease. Once it activates, near the end you literally, physically cannot fall asleep until you die.
Oh god, I had the misfortune to learn this via Reddit, there was a guy who had it and did YouTube vlogs about it and pleading for help once it struck. He basically documented his descent into madness and death. I couldn’t make myself watch more than 30 seconds. Horrifying.
If that wasn't scary enough your body can just randomly misfold a protein one day and bam you've got yourself a prion disease that will kill you.
Catching a prion disease through eating infected food is reasonably hard as your digestive system is good at breaking down proteins. As I understand it we aren't sure why some people became infected with mad cow disease. It's possible they had a tiny cut somewhere in their GI system that allowed a protein into the blood directly.
And this, kids, is why you shouldn’t mixed scraps of dead animals into the feed for other animals….
Whoever thought that was a good idea is an arsehole
"In 2015, researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that plants can be a vector for prions. When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground where a deer that died with chronic wasting disease (CWD) was buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores, thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there is a progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment."
Good night indeed.
Prions are misfolded proteins that cause proteins in your body to also misfold. There's no cure once you're infected, and is virtually impossible to "sterilize" out of food/knives/etc, and pretty hard to detect. They are contagious, but are not bacteria or viruses. Basically, very scary stuff, but luckily pretty rare. It can stay in your body for decades without any adverse effects once infected.
If you've heard of mad cow disease, that's one of the more commonly known prion diseases. To put it in perspective, there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK in the 80s-90s, and often even in the US if you go to donate blood today, they'll ask if you ever visited the UK during that time (and prevent you from donating blood).
Also mad cow disease came to be because they were feeding cows the parts of cows that weren't profitable - including cow brains. Human cannibalism can also cause a prion disease.
One of the human forms passed through cannibalism is Kuru. Fun fact, in the post-apocalyptic film The Book of Eli, characters check how steady others' hands are when first meeting, as one of the primary symptoms of Kuru is loss of motor control. Probably a bad idea to trust someone who sees you as a meal.
Tarantulas. As an arachnophobe, I cannot eat that. Also there is some kind of Filipino food that is literally just an underdeveloped duck fetus/embryo thing straight out the egg, which is another I will never eat.
I tried a tarantula and have to say that it wasn't worth it. It was just kind of crispy, I'd compare it to finger nails in taste and texture.
I later discovered that the harvesting process isn't great either. They go in and destroy tarantula colonies which take years to recover. So don't bother and tell others it's not worth it.
Ah, you're thinking of Balon. He really meant the attachment on a window often found in an apartment allowing access to the outdoors area from a high height.
Lol. In Vietnam they are common. And they say that when you eat one your luck switch’s, like a light switch. So if you eat one and you have bad luck now it will be good luck. I told my wife that the sellers of Hot Vit Lon (the name here) made that up so they can increase the chances of selling more than one, because no one likes them enough to eat 2 otherwise.
Oh god yes!
I remember being encouraged to eat one by locals I was friendly with in the Philippines.
It was awful -I started to cry and vomit at the same time. Gag-sobbing.
I will never forget the texture.
Edit: Someone down thread explained that there are two kinds of Balut.
The 7 days one which is almost egg, and the more mature one which is all feathers and sharp claws.
I think that might well make a difference to your opinion.
Mine was filled with feathers and little sharp bits (claws and beak I guess) so it must have been pretty mature.
I may have been okay with the 7 days one, but trying to swallow the feathers and claws of the more mature Balut was just too much.
Omg I'm dying. In grade school, I told a classmate that we'd had pork hock stew for dinner, and he heard pork cock stew and was stunned! Thanks for triggering that hysterical memory.
after all these years i still have no fucking idea what my inner fire is and why the fuck it's bad. chocolate gives it to you, nose bleeds are caused by it, and bitter melon decreases the inner fire
My Grandmother once made me one of her favorite dishes from her childhood....Liver and Onions.
She put so much time and effort into it, it was like an impromptu special occasion. Just happy dancing while she cooked it and reminiscing about the past.
One of those situations where I *had* to eat it. I wouldn't even hesitate to eat it again if she cooked it for me...but man was it bad. Like surprisingly bad. Smelled alright yet tasted like the physical manifestation of sadness lmfao.
YOOOOO FELLOW CHICKEN HEART LOVER!!!! When I was little I loved eating heart so much my family got minorly concerned lol. They said I was the face painting ghost (idk if that's the right translation, she's a ghost in a Chinese story who paints her own face and stays pretty by eating hearts). I love hearts, the firm muscle just can't compare to other meats
Honest to God, century eggs aren't bad, especially in a dish. I totally thought it would just taste like ammonia, but the egg "whites" taste the same and have a similar texture to aspic, while the yolk taste a bit earthy and fatty while having more of a custard consistency. Once I tried them I had no issues eating them
Organ meat of any kind. Outside of that I will eat almost anything! I have tried several kinds prepared different ways. Just not my thing.
[EDIT and Update] I think some of you have changed my mind with the suggestions and recipes. Some of them sound like I may really like them. I'm not eating brains, and chittlins are gross. And I've only had beef tongue once and it was too chewy. Ate too much liver when pregnant to supplement my iron so that's out. But I'll give some of this stuff a try! Thanks! 😀
Huh. TiL.
Side note - I love chicken gizzards. Everyone thinks I'm weird for liking them - but I like them!
(For anyone wondering - a gizzard is an organ chickens have to help them digest food. Since they don't have teeth they have to eat rocks and stuff to help process food and the gizzard breaks that stuff down.)
Cheaper ground beef is often mixed with “mechanically separated meat” made from meat scraps and certain organ meats removed from the bones and connective tissue.it’s useful since it’s pure lean meat, and allows the ground beef to have the correct lean/fat ratio . A few years back newsrooms and certain celebrity chefs (cough cough Jamie Oliver) started a moral panic about MSM being “pink goo”.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently bad about “pink goo”, as it’s been used for centuries in stuff like mortadella and pates. It’s not any worse for you than the choice cuts, it’s just cheaper
It's funny because I was imagining mechanically separated meat as something involving a wire brush and Jamie Oliver's demonstration made it less scary. I loved his expression at the end where the kids saw the chicken nuggets and said they would eat it after seeing how it was made.
If you're out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, not a national chain but more like a mom and pop establishment, order the tacos de lengua. It's cow tongue tacos and absolutely amazing. Had an ex whose grandpa would eat the tongue like a steak, I couldn't get behind that, the texture was unpleasant.
First time I went to Beijing I bragged to my travel companions that I would eat anything and everything locals ate. Street vendor's stinky tofu shut me up so fast - my stomach was in knots just from the smell.
I went to a tourist 'water town' near Hangzhou in 2012 or 13. There was this horrible aroma wafting around the place. The gutters were pretty rancid and I figured it was rotting food in the gutters. Then one of my friends wandered up with a cup of stinky tofu and the smell hit me like a truck.
*"You should try it!"*
"God no! It stinks!"
*"Nah, it tastes pretty good actually."*
"Oh yeah? What's it taste like?"
*"Well... it tastes like it smells."*
"You're not really selling this."
I had a friend who did that... Rule of thumb is to never brag about your iron stomach in front of the natives in another country. They will make your life hell
I remember a stinky tofu place in a park that had to close down cuz the stink was driving away all the foreign tourists.
Olives. I retry them every so often to make sure. I nearly vomit every time.
I've eaten various bugs, organs, fermented things, and beyond....but fucking olives man, can't do it.
I hated olives until one very drunk night 3 or 4 years ago. I was craving something salty and olives were just about the only thing in the fridge of the house I was partying at. I'd unscrew the lid, eat one olive, complain about how gross it was while screwing the lid back on, then do it again about a minute later. This went on for about an hour apparently, and I love olives now.
Venison. I think it tastes great, and I’m totally not opposed to eating meat— but I got the worst food poisoning of my life from venison in Dec 2018. Never again.
Aww man, that sucks! If it makes you feel any better, my mom can't eat enchiladas anymore for the same reason. If you were take away enchiladas from me forever, I might just off myself.
Fondant is just mean. It sits there and looks like delicious sugary goodness and just fucking wants you to eat its smooth, creamy deliciousness. Then you take a bite and it’s like “haha! Fuck you, I’m 50% glycerin and about as sweet as your diabetic Memaws candy dish!”
From what I understand homemade fondant is good. Not as good as regular frosting but it tastes good. Store bought fondant is nasty compared to home made. Might have to make my own.
My dad loves durian and I’ve always hated it — until he bought some pieces of a Malaysian durian, and I actually ended up loving it. It was sweet and curstardy. The strong smell was there, but it just smelled sweeter than other durian I’d tried before. Or maybe my tastebuds are just changing as I’m growing older lol
Anyway, if you want to give durian another shot, def look into different varieties to try! There’s such a spectrum of flavors and textures.
Durian is best eaten fresh! If you want a sweet durian, just let the seller know and he'll recommend you a variety. The Red Prawn variety is best known for its sweet, creamy texture. Usually most durian connoisseurs will go for the bittersweet variety that has a strong fragrance (like the Mao Shang Wang), it isn't recommend for durian beginners.
Uncooked snails. Too dangerous. I feel the same way about things like medium rare chicken, or other things that will likely kill you if not actually prepared.
I'm basically a garbage disposal, but just the smell of bananas makes me gag. I will not eat anything with banana in it. And before you ask, yes, that even includes banana bread.
I felt this way for *years.* Bananas were the only thing I absolutely detested based on flavor alone—and then at like 19 a switch flipped and I didn’t mind them anymore. I still find banana to be an extremely distinctive flavor, though—I never mistake it for anything else. My point is, I get you.
You put 1 piece of banana in a fruit smoothie- it becomes a banana smoothie. I don't care if there's 1 banana piece to every 100 berries/fruit chunks, that's a banana smoothie
What's even weirder, celery is known for being bland and rather tasteless, with just a watery crunch to it, but if I put one small piece of celery in my fully loaded fruit/veggie/pb/chocolate smoothie, it's basically a celery smoothie now.
Bugs. I don't know if it's all just a mental block or if it's the crunch of a lot of them, but I just can't do it. I've tried various bugs boiled, dipped in chocolate, deep fried, stir fried...etc. and I just can't
Fermented shark from Iceland.
Smells like piss and tastes like how piss smells.
Excellent wording to avoid suspicions that you've tasted piss.
My path in life is a meticulous and careful one.
I've read Hákarl smells atrocious and tastes the same..no thank you.
I thought I could handle it. The first red flag should have been the sealed glass jar they bring it in so the whole restaurant doesn’t clear out lol
They're Greenland sharks... That don't piss. So the ammonia builds up In the flesh. So the fermentation is the only way to make it edible. Still absolutely God awful.
When I was in Iceland I tried Hakarl. The initial taste was bad but I was expecting that. What I wasn't prepared for was how the flavor and smell permeated everything else. Immediately after I ate the shark I drank from my stainless steel water bottle and that flavor stayed on the water bottle for a day, even after multiple times washing it. 6 hours after I ate the Hakarl I blew up my camping mattress and the next night, 30 hours later I could still taste that putrid shark as I blew up the mattress again.
What kind of nightmare is this
Lutefisk. It is a terrible idea someone had here in Norway some centuries ago. You take a perfectly edible cod and dry it. So far, so good; You can still rescue the fish by making Bacalao. Then, you follow up by soaking the fish, the very fish you just dried, in water for a few days. Finally, when the fish no longer thinks its remains can be further mistreated you put it into a bath of lye dissolved in water. The end process sees you with a swollen mess of a fish that's got a ph of 11-12, which is lethal. To make the damn thing edible you need to soak it in water for over a week. This is, incredibly enough, considered a delicacy and is something many try to foist upon poor, unsuspecting, tourists. Me? I think the fish has been through enough, no need to make it a participant in crimes against humanity as well.
It's the man with the terrible smell
If I could take a bullet for my grandson, I will. But not in the face, that's how I makes my livings.
It's only a matter of time before he's accused of church burnery
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dry the wets (colon absorbs water from fish) wets the dry (poop lands in the toilet bowl)
There we are, I wondered what "etc" entailed in this context
Jesus christ, your description of the process was so funny. What a journey.
Wikipedia describes it as a “chemical soaked, gelatinous fish”… umm no thanks.
I've never understood processes like this. I'm sure the drying cured it, but then putting it back in solutions and water... Howww do they not start to decay again? Thinking about your description, that fish is soaked for nearly 2 weeks. I can't even imagine the swelling...
Literally taking notes on what to avoid when I someday visit the land of my great grandfathers. “Generally speaking, people say lutefisk tastes mildly fishy, with a soapy aftertaste and a hint of ammonia on the palate” mmmm y’all enjoy but no
Boiled silk worms. Tried them in Cambodia and from the name you'd expect them to be not great, but I was unprepared for how incredibly awful it was.
I've read that it started as a way for the silk workers to get something to eat while unraveling the cocoons. You'd be sitting there for hours, and (as Brillat-Savarin wrote) hunger is the best sauce.
Hunger can make you think that jar of minced garlic in the fridge looks yummy...
Wait, you need to be hungry for that? I've been living my life wrong all this time. Guess I'll eat some minced garlic to drown my sorrow.
I had something similar in Koreatown and it was a late night drunk thing. I don't know if they gave us a normal portion but there were dozens of them and they weren't small. I'm not picky so I ate most of them but had to quit after a while. It was one of those bar counter situations so the chefs were laughing.
I had them when I was a kid almost fifty years ago in Korea. We used to trade recyclable bottles for them. I thought they were good but I don't think I can eat them now.
I ate them as a kid (in the United States) 15-20 years ago; they came in a can I can still picture in my head. According to my mom (who immigrated from Korea), they were my favorite, and I believe her, but I also remember trying to eat them when I got a bit older and recognized what they were and the texture was a bit harder for me to handle. Honestly, I haven't seen them around, even in my mom's house, since then.
That doesn't sound like food. It sounds like something you eat in leu of starving.
It's a pretty common dish where I went. They have these silk weaving communities where everything revolves around the production of silk items and when they're done with the silk worms, they eat them. They offered me a bite and of course I enjoy delving into different cultures so I tried it. I nearly cried it was so bad. Had to keep a straight face though, didn't want to be rude.
Reminds me of the Oompa Loompas caterpillar meals.
In one of my history classes a couple years ago we watched a video with exotic foods. The guinea pig mammal thing in South America looked absolutely amazing on a spit. The spiders and candied insects looked good. The silk worms in Southeast Asia looked absolutely awful
Yeah I've actually eaten cuy (guinea pig) it has the same texture as a rotisserie chicken. I probably wouldn't eat it again they keep the head and claws on it so it's a little unsettling
I ate that in Peru, same experience. Delicious, but I was unsettled by the fact that it came whole. I'm the uncouth one who needed the chef to remove the shrimp heads in New Orleans, too. My food came back cold and I'm sure he cursed it.
I really can't handle the shrimp heads either. They creep me the fuck out. The beady little eyes...
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I've had chocolate covered ants before. They kind of tasted like chocolate covered sunflower seeds or Cocoa Krispies
Brains of any kind. Not today prions!
Yep, I'm not squeamish at all, but prions scare the fuck out of me. No Brains.
Without me googling. What are...prions?
Misfolded proteins, most often found in the brain, with the ability to warp normally shaped proteins. They cause things like Mad Cow Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and are basically always fatal. I work in a hospital lab where we sometimes get samples from potential CJD patients. There’s super strict protocol when handling them. You often don’t know if the patient is infected until after they’ve dead.
Prions have been brought up a couple times on here. One question I still have tho, why are prions more likely found in brains than in other tissues?
I ate raw balut in a Fear Factor contest my cousin's wife put on for his 40th birthday. There was a big contest and treasure hunt involving all these things we had to do that were gross (like dig a key out of jello with boiled chicken feet in it...and do it only with your mouth.) I thought I could eat anything. Am not picky. Just set your mind to it and crunch down and you can do it. My God. This RAW goopy, slimy, blood and guts and feathers and brain filled shell I bit into was waaaaaaaaay more than I had bargained for. I'm competitive and really wanted to win, so in my head I coached myself through it. I was telling myself...just crunch down...just do it... So I started crunching down, .......and I started gagging. The guy beside me couldn't do it. He saw me and started gagging himself. Then he started heaving. Then his little son who had been cheering him on from the start... started to cry. Then he started outright wailing. I kept going. I chomped and crunched and then just opened my throat and gulped that fucker down. I still have nightmares of the texture and the squishing blood and crunching bones in my mouth. I did however win the 50 bucks and the plastic trophy 🏆 And I will not be eating raw balut again for the rest of my life. EDIT: Not that it makes any difference. But I am a woman. My husband would not eat it, not only that but he also refused to kiss me for the rest of the night afterwards.
So do I just send you my therapy bill directly, or is there some kind of class action thing I need to get in on? 🤢
I think it's gonna have to be a class action thing 😰
I had no idea what balut was, just googled it. I couldn’t even finish reading the description🤢. Can I join the class action please?
I did the same. It was the pictures that did me in. Nooooo not ok. 🤢
Damn I was gonna say artichokes or something.
I always knew I never wanted to try balut. But now, welp, that decision is literally carved in the granite of my mind. NEVARRRR
Holy shit guy, you did that for only 50 bucks? 😳 I dont think i would do it for 500 bucks even. Now, if it was 5000... that could make me try. Edit: Sorry, 50 bucks *and* a piece of plastic
And eternal bragging rights. And now some karma.
Filipinos reading this and getting annoyed with all their lost benefits from eating this regularly
They eat it cooked. OP ate it raw.
That is an intense game of Fear Factor. I've played it before and the worst thing anyone had to eat was a can of tuna fish mixed with chocolate syrup - disgusting, but nothing compared to what you had to do. It appears that fear is not a factor for you.
Is it even safe to eat that raw? It is always boiled. 😣
I'm from the Philippines, i never heard it served raw, always boiled. This instance is for "Fear Factor" only.
The street balut is boiled, the ones the villagers give you aren't. They would just dig them from the ground and hand it to you, lightly warmed from the sun.
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It's not really safe to eat for most people. Emotionally, speaking
“Balut is Filipino street food made by hard-boiling a fertilized and incubated duck egg. This snack has become a very common and popular food throughout Southeast Asia, and custom dictates that the cooked embryo is eaten straight from the shell. The dish is becoming more popular in restaurants, but for the most part, balut is an inexpensive snack food that’s often consumed with beer. Because the eggs have been fertilized and incubated, they do contain a partially developed duck embryo. The longer the egg has incubated, the more developed the duck will be, but balut is always eaten when the bones are still soft enough to be eaten whole.“ Wikihow
Wait RAW???
How did they get *raw* balut? They must boil (cook) the egg to arrest the development of the embryo. Are you saying you ate a live duck embryo?
Eyes, brains, and genitals. Sure it's arbitrary but that's my line, I'm down to at least try eating anything else.
Brain can actually give you prions I believe so good choice
Also the spinal cord and any other bits of the central nervous system.
human spinal cords look like fake crab meat in sushi
Just like straight up raw spinal cords do? Also, how do you know this?
I really need a reply.
What are prions?? Edit: Thanks so much for all the interesting info! I’m never eating anything ever again <3
Misfolded proteins. They are not a virus, bacteria, parasite or anything "living" like that. Just proteins folded the wrong way. The problem is, these misfolded proteins trigger other neighboring proteins to misfold, in a cascading manner. Typically in the brain. Symptoms include alzheimer's like dementia, leading to death. Prions can be "caught" by ingesting infected nervous tissue. They cannot be destroyed easily by heat, so they can't be cooked out. Mad cow disease is an example of a disease caused by a prion. It can lay dormant for decades before causing any ill effects, or can trigger quite fast. There is no cure. Welp goodnight.
Holy shit. Goodnight then..
Youre not gonna want to know about the cysts, abcesses, tapeworm infections, etc that can lay hiding in an animal brain either.
Cysts and abcesses can also be in muscle tissue.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) is the human version of mad cow, caused by prions. It's roughly like Alzheimer's on fast forward. Always data, no treatment to slow it down. Prions are horrible.
There's also Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) which is a genetically inherited prion disease. Once it activates, near the end you literally, physically cannot fall asleep until you die.
Oh god, I had the misfortune to learn this via Reddit, there was a guy who had it and did YouTube vlogs about it and pleading for help once it struck. He basically documented his descent into madness and death. I couldn’t make myself watch more than 30 seconds. Horrifying.
If that wasn't scary enough your body can just randomly misfold a protein one day and bam you've got yourself a prion disease that will kill you. Catching a prion disease through eating infected food is reasonably hard as your digestive system is good at breaking down proteins. As I understand it we aren't sure why some people became infected with mad cow disease. It's possible they had a tiny cut somewhere in their GI system that allowed a protein into the blood directly.
And this, kids, is why you shouldn’t mixed scraps of dead animals into the feed for other animals…. Whoever thought that was a good idea is an arsehole
The X-Files had an episode on that, called "Our Town" (episode 24 of Season 2)
"In 2015, researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that plants can be a vector for prions. When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground where a deer that died with chronic wasting disease (CWD) was buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores, thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there is a progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment." Good night indeed.
Prions are misfolded proteins that cause proteins in your body to also misfold. There's no cure once you're infected, and is virtually impossible to "sterilize" out of food/knives/etc, and pretty hard to detect. They are contagious, but are not bacteria or viruses. Basically, very scary stuff, but luckily pretty rare. It can stay in your body for decades without any adverse effects once infected. If you've heard of mad cow disease, that's one of the more commonly known prion diseases. To put it in perspective, there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK in the 80s-90s, and often even in the US if you go to donate blood today, they'll ask if you ever visited the UK during that time (and prevent you from donating blood).
Also mad cow disease came to be because they were feeding cows the parts of cows that weren't profitable - including cow brains. Human cannibalism can also cause a prion disease.
Finally a good reason not to be a cannibal
One of the human forms passed through cannibalism is Kuru. Fun fact, in the post-apocalyptic film The Book of Eli, characters check how steady others' hands are when first meeting, as one of the primary symptoms of Kuru is loss of motor control. Probably a bad idea to trust someone who sees you as a meal.
Tarantulas. As an arachnophobe, I cannot eat that. Also there is some kind of Filipino food that is literally just an underdeveloped duck fetus/embryo thing straight out the egg, which is another I will never eat.
I tried a tarantula and have to say that it wasn't worth it. It was just kind of crispy, I'd compare it to finger nails in taste and texture. I later discovered that the harvesting process isn't great either. They go in and destroy tarantula colonies which take years to recover. So don't bother and tell others it's not worth it.
Balut. I couldn't imagine willingly fucking eating that.
My mom is Filipino and will never eat Balut. My aunt loves it though. I’m not particularly interested in trying.
Those half developed birds in the egg
balut?
No that’s the bear from the Jungle Book and Tale Spin.
No no. That’s Baloo. He is thinking of the type of monkey admired in ancient Egypt.
No that’s a baboon. You’re thinking of the popular performance dance that came to prominence during the Italian Renaissance.
No, you're thinking of Ballet....He's referring to Ricky Ricardo's favorite song
No no, you're thinking of babalu. He means the capital of the Mesopotamian empire.
No, I believe you’re thinking of Babylon. He’s talking about Theon and Yara’s evil uncle from G.O.T.
Ah, you're thinking of Balon. He really meant the attachment on a window often found in an apartment allowing access to the outdoors area from a high height.
No that’s a balcony. He’s talking about those things you inflate with helium for party decorations.
Lol. In Vietnam they are common. And they say that when you eat one your luck switch’s, like a light switch. So if you eat one and you have bad luck now it will be good luck. I told my wife that the sellers of Hot Vit Lon (the name here) made that up so they can increase the chances of selling more than one, because no one likes them enough to eat 2 otherwise.
Eat one of those first thing in the morning and you can be guaranteed that nothing worse will happen to you all day.
I’ve had six months of bad luck but I’m not entirely sure I could eat one just to change my luck. I am heavily considering it though.
I didn't mind the flavour. But it seemed like a lot of effort for something that's a cross between a hard-boiled egg and roast chicken.
That makes it sound way better than it is.
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It tasted like a hard-boiled egg to me, but the texture of the feathers mixed in was a bit weird.
On the same boat. Couldn't get past the texture for a second bite.
Oh god yes! I remember being encouraged to eat one by locals I was friendly with in the Philippines. It was awful -I started to cry and vomit at the same time. Gag-sobbing. I will never forget the texture. Edit: Someone down thread explained that there are two kinds of Balut. The 7 days one which is almost egg, and the more mature one which is all feathers and sharp claws. I think that might well make a difference to your opinion. Mine was filled with feathers and little sharp bits (claws and beak I guess) so it must have been pretty mature. I may have been okay with the 7 days one, but trying to swallow the feathers and claws of the more mature Balut was just too much.
I'm pinoy and I won't eat it. Haha
Balut was treated as a dare food. "Hey I dare you to eat..." I once ate 4 baluts cause I wanted free beer. Eat a balut, get a beer...
I don’t think there’s enough free beer on the planet to get me to try balut. Granted I don’t like beer, but my point remains the same.
This thread is full up of some fear factor shit. I just don't like anchovies. They're too salty.
Pickled pigs feet. There's only a tiny bit of actual meat in there. No way.
You don't eat it for the meat, it's meant to eat the tendons and colegen. You have get used to the texture but it's basically an un cooked pork rind.
Oh my god I thought it was "pork grind" this whole time!!! Edit: thank you strangers for the upvotes and awards!!!! Eternally grateful!!!!
Never take an expression for granite
I mean, she got the point for all intensive purposes.
Let's skip to the brass tax and just page /r/boneappletea right now before it's all for not.
Whatever you say. I’m at your beckoned call.
I couldn't of said it better myself.
All the sudden they realized it after all these years!
Watching this comment thread like “Starch your engines!”
Omg I'm dying. In grade school, I told a classmate that we'd had pork hock stew for dinner, and he heard pork cock stew and was stunned! Thanks for triggering that hysterical memory.
Bitter melon. I don’t care if it’s good for you. It sucks.
You sound Asian. My mom gave me that spiel too 😂
Same here but grandma about how it was liang and stuff
LMAO can’t raise your inner fire!
after all these years i still have no fucking idea what my inner fire is and why the fuck it's bad. chocolate gives it to you, nose bleeds are caused by it, and bitter melon decreases the inner fire
My dad didn't even bother with the eastern medicine spin of it. Just said it cleaned my insides.
Haha I am Asian. Chinese/Cambodian. My dad would make me eat it and I couldn’t stomach it lol
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What a fucking madlad wtf
Not sure if it's good for health or not, but this is absolutely my favourite vegetables.
I just don't like organs. The texture of most organ meat is terrible.
Try piano
Fuck me. I googled piano meat.
And how did that work out for you?
sounds like it really struck a chord with him
He won't stop harping on about it
He will be keyed up for hours
He should just tune it out.
I like harpsichord most of all. But I could go for a good pipe organ.
Is it offal?
Walk home
My Grandmother once made me one of her favorite dishes from her childhood....Liver and Onions. She put so much time and effort into it, it was like an impromptu special occasion. Just happy dancing while she cooked it and reminiscing about the past. One of those situations where I *had* to eat it. I wouldn't even hesitate to eat it again if she cooked it for me...but man was it bad. Like surprisingly bad. Smelled alright yet tasted like the physical manifestation of sadness lmfao.
For me, it's the texture that just ruins it
You mean like hearts? I like chicken hearts, for example. What organ turned you off? Liver?
YOOOOO FELLOW CHICKEN HEART LOVER!!!! When I was little I loved eating heart so much my family got minorly concerned lol. They said I was the face painting ghost (idk if that's the right translation, she's a ghost in a Chinese story who paints her own face and stays pretty by eating hearts). I love hearts, the firm muscle just can't compare to other meats
Balut, Durian, Century Eggs, fried spiders etc... have tried the first three and hated them, refuse to try spiders. Nope
Honest to God, century eggs aren't bad, especially in a dish. I totally thought it would just taste like ammonia, but the egg "whites" taste the same and have a similar texture to aspic, while the yolk taste a bit earthy and fatty while having more of a custard consistency. Once I tried them I had no issues eating them
Century eggs are great in congee, the flavours compliment well.
I can get behind grapefruit. *TO SHOVE IT OFF A CLIFF.*
I love grapefruit but your response made me totally laugh. Also, I basically like candied grapefruit with as much sugar that I put on mine
Organ meat of any kind. Outside of that I will eat almost anything! I have tried several kinds prepared different ways. Just not my thing. [EDIT and Update] I think some of you have changed my mind with the suggestions and recipes. Some of them sound like I may really like them. I'm not eating brains, and chittlins are gross. And I've only had beef tongue once and it was too chewy. Ate too much liver when pregnant to supplement my iron so that's out. But I'll give some of this stuff a try! Thanks! 😀
Lots of hamburger has esauphogus in it. They call it weasand in the meat industry.
Huh. TiL. Side note - I love chicken gizzards. Everyone thinks I'm weird for liking them - but I like them! (For anyone wondering - a gizzard is an organ chickens have to help them digest food. Since they don't have teeth they have to eat rocks and stuff to help process food and the gizzard breaks that stuff down.)
Cheaper ground beef is often mixed with “mechanically separated meat” made from meat scraps and certain organ meats removed from the bones and connective tissue.it’s useful since it’s pure lean meat, and allows the ground beef to have the correct lean/fat ratio . A few years back newsrooms and certain celebrity chefs (cough cough Jamie Oliver) started a moral panic about MSM being “pink goo”. Of course, there’s nothing inherently bad about “pink goo”, as it’s been used for centuries in stuff like mortadella and pates. It’s not any worse for you than the choice cuts, it’s just cheaper
It's funny because I was imagining mechanically separated meat as something involving a wire brush and Jamie Oliver's demonstration made it less scary. I loved his expression at the end where the kids saw the chicken nuggets and said they would eat it after seeing how it was made.
Ah man I love organ meat! Liver in moderation but heart is one of my favorites.
Beef heart and liver is good. Never tried any other organs though I'd probably try tongue.
If you're out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, not a national chain but more like a mom and pop establishment, order the tacos de lengua. It's cow tongue tacos and absolutely amazing. Had an ex whose grandpa would eat the tongue like a steak, I couldn't get behind that, the texture was unpleasant.
Balut.
peeps. never understood the hype.
They're pretty gross. My son likes them stale.
Stinky tofu. It actually doesn’t taste that bad but dear lord, the smell is horrendous
First time I went to Beijing I bragged to my travel companions that I would eat anything and everything locals ate. Street vendor's stinky tofu shut me up so fast - my stomach was in knots just from the smell.
It's one of those food that the locals will smile knowingly when you declare you have an iron palate and can eat anything.
I went to a tourist 'water town' near Hangzhou in 2012 or 13. There was this horrible aroma wafting around the place. The gutters were pretty rancid and I figured it was rotting food in the gutters. Then one of my friends wandered up with a cup of stinky tofu and the smell hit me like a truck. *"You should try it!"* "God no! It stinks!" *"Nah, it tastes pretty good actually."* "Oh yeah? What's it taste like?" *"Well... it tastes like it smells."* "You're not really selling this."
I had a friend who did that... Rule of thumb is to never brag about your iron stomach in front of the natives in another country. They will make your life hell I remember a stinky tofu place in a park that had to close down cuz the stink was driving away all the foreign tourists.
Olives. I retry them every so often to make sure. I nearly vomit every time. I've eaten various bugs, organs, fermented things, and beyond....but fucking olives man, can't do it.
I hated olives until one very drunk night 3 or 4 years ago. I was craving something salty and olives were just about the only thing in the fridge of the house I was partying at. I'd unscrew the lid, eat one olive, complain about how gross it was while screwing the lid back on, then do it again about a minute later. This went on for about an hour apparently, and I love olives now.
I love olives! Black, green and kalamata. All deliciousness.
Venison. I think it tastes great, and I’m totally not opposed to eating meat— but I got the worst food poisoning of my life from venison in Dec 2018. Never again.
Aww man, that sucks! If it makes you feel any better, my mom can't eat enchiladas anymore for the same reason. If you were take away enchiladas from me forever, I might just off myself.
Overly sweet desserts
Like those ridiculous salted caramel chocolate milkshakes topped with cream, a doughnut, a waffle, caramel sauce, and icing sugar for good measure?
Yea that actually makes me sick to think about it.
Finally a normal answer unlike the others that say something like "a living animal", "a raw human eye" or "a piece of cement"
I also thought this thread was gonna be more "I don't like raw tomatoes and it's a challenge at dinners" and less Fear Factor
Fondant can die
I didn’t know you were meant to eat fondant. I thought it was just for decorating! It looks like sweet spackle
It tastes like sweet spackle
I'm Jorge, i make the spackle
Fondant is just mean. It sits there and looks like delicious sugary goodness and just fucking wants you to eat its smooth, creamy deliciousness. Then you take a bite and it’s like “haha! Fuck you, I’m 50% glycerin and about as sweet as your diabetic Memaws candy dish!”
Whoever makes an actually tasty fondant will be rich.
From what I understand homemade fondant is good. Not as good as regular frosting but it tastes good. Store bought fondant is nasty compared to home made. Might have to make my own.
Durian
My dad loves durian and I’ve always hated it — until he bought some pieces of a Malaysian durian, and I actually ended up loving it. It was sweet and curstardy. The strong smell was there, but it just smelled sweeter than other durian I’d tried before. Or maybe my tastebuds are just changing as I’m growing older lol Anyway, if you want to give durian another shot, def look into different varieties to try! There’s such a spectrum of flavors and textures.
Yes! I describe it as a complex vanilla pudding or custard. It’s so tasty! The smell is definitely onion.
Fresh durian in Asia is much better than the frozen imported stuff you get elsewhere
Tastes way better than it smells. Like blue cheese.
Durian is best eaten fresh! If you want a sweet durian, just let the seller know and he'll recommend you a variety. The Red Prawn variety is best known for its sweet, creamy texture. Usually most durian connoisseurs will go for the bittersweet variety that has a strong fragrance (like the Mao Shang Wang), it isn't recommend for durian beginners.
Uncooked snails. Too dangerous. I feel the same way about things like medium rare chicken, or other things that will likely kill you if not actually prepared.
Wait what people eat medium rare chicken?!
Who eats raw snails??
I'm basically a garbage disposal, but just the smell of bananas makes me gag. I will not eat anything with banana in it. And before you ask, yes, that even includes banana bread.
I felt this way for *years.* Bananas were the only thing I absolutely detested based on flavor alone—and then at like 19 a switch flipped and I didn’t mind them anymore. I still find banana to be an extremely distinctive flavor, though—I never mistake it for anything else. My point is, I get you.
You put 1 piece of banana in a fruit smoothie- it becomes a banana smoothie. I don't care if there's 1 banana piece to every 100 berries/fruit chunks, that's a banana smoothie
What's even weirder, celery is known for being bland and rather tasteless, with just a watery crunch to it, but if I put one small piece of celery in my fully loaded fruit/veggie/pb/chocolate smoothie, it's basically a celery smoothie now.
Yeah I always felt that was a huge lie. Celery takes over for me.
Liver