Thursday 18 October 2007

Nauseating Foodstuffs

“Do not think of elephants. “
OK so – you did, obviously. Well, what if I said “Do not go to this site.”
You might – so I won’t give you the address until the end and then you can decide.
Or, if you do, please visit it on an empty stomach, without any food around, and preferably with a bag into which you can vomit. The problem is, having been there I think I’ve just become a vulcan – or do I mean vegan. The site advertises itself as the six most terrifying foodstuffs – actually it should say the six most nauseating.
Ant’s eggs I can cope with. And, in my scale of yuck, sheep’s heads are only fairly unpleasant compared to gutting your own mackerel. Lye fish – a Scandinavian speciality of fish in corrosive chemicals – is probably no worse than half the instant meals you can buy in Tesco.
But they get worse, Casu Marzu, a Sardinian delicacy, is a sheep' milk cheese that has been deliberately infested by the "cheese fly. “The result is a maggot-ridden, weeping stink bomb in an advanced state of decomposition. 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.”
But the horror of horror is Balut, enjoyed in Cambodia, the Philippines, "and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand. You can spot the vendors because of their glowing red eyes, and the faint, otherworldly sound of children screaming."
What are Balut – simply boiled eggs. Well, not quite ‘simply’ – they are duck eggs that have been incubated and then boiled alive just before hatching. Each little description of the food is followed up by a note on the chances of it selling in the USA – Here is what the author had to say about Balut – Danger of this turning up in America:
Actually, marketed properly, these eggs could be a damn good motivator. When you've looked death in the face at breakfast time, what the hell else can the day throw at you?
Just in case you want to go there the site address is
http://www.cracked.com/article_14979_6-most-terrifying-foods-in-world.html
(By the way, the site contains strong language – but that is nothing to the strong stomach you are going to need.... Enjoy your breakfast. I’d stick to the home-made organic muesli if I were you.)

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