Disgusting Food Museum: Photos of the most disgusting food in the world (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES)
Just what makes a food disgusting? It's a subjective thing. Some cultures celebrate birthdays with cake, and others by eating raw, fermented birds.
The Disgusting Food Museum has been making the rounds recently, including a trip to Los Angeles. Those looking to brave the extraordinary sights and smells and yes, tastes, can do so at its flagship location in Malmö, Sweden through September 1, 2019. The museum asks its visitors to "challenge their notions of what is and what isn't edible."
We'll start with a familiar one: Jell-o salad. This recipe comes from the United States. Though this dish has fallen out of fashion, you can still find recipes for this dessert salad in many mid-century American cookbooks.
Century eggs
Despite the name, these eggs are only preserved in an alkaline salt mixture for weeks or months, depending on the methodology. The egg white is said to have a salty flavor and a jelly-like texture.
Natto
In Japan, this sticky dish can be found on some breakfast tables. It's made from fermented soybeans and has a pungent odor.
Spicy rabbit heads
In Chengdu, the capital city of China's Sichuan province, rabbit heads are coated in seasoning so spicy that diners wear gloves to handle them. Sucking out the brain is part of the "fun" of eating this delicacy.
Haggis
This Scottish fare features sheep organs, minced with onions and oatmeal, stuffed into a sheep stomach and cooked. More modern recipes substitute a synthetic casing for the traditional stomach.
Hákarl and Brennivín
If you find yourself at a gathering of family or friends in Iceland, you may come face to face with this pairing — fermented shark meat and an 80-proof schnapps lovingly nicknamed "Black Death."
Rocky Mountain oysters
These Rocky Mountain oysters aren't really oysters at all. To make this dish, bull testicles are peeled, pounded flat and deep fried.
Sheep eyeball juice
In Mongolia, some people believe that drinking a glass of tomato or carrot juice garnished with a sheep's eyeball is a quick fix for headache.
Cuy
In Andean South America, guinea pigs called cuy are raised for their meat. These rodents were a significant source of meat before cattle were introduced to the region.
Casu marzu
This traditional Sardinian sheep's milk cheese is filled with live insect larvae. The name literally means "rotten cheese."
Fruit bat
In Guam, fruit bats were hunted so extensively for their meat that they are now listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The CDC recommends that travelers avoid eating bats and other "bushmeat," which can transmit animal diseases to humans.
Balut
This popular Filipino street food is made by boiling a developing duck embryo in the shell.
Kale pache
Also known as khash, this dish, made from boiled sheep or cow parts — the head, feet and stomach, for example —is popular in many countries in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Su callu sardu
This Sardinian cheese is made from the stomach of a baby goat filled with its mother's milk. The stomach is tied with twine and aged for two to four months.
Bull penis
Grilled bull penis is a popular cut of meat at some Korean barbecue restaurants, even in the United States.
Frog juice bar
In Andean South America, skinned, cooked frogs are blended into a smoothie-like beverage with local plants like coca, maca and chia. The drink is believed to give imbibers an energy boost.
Mopane worms
This caterpillar is an important source of protein for many rural people in southern Africa. The worms are often served fried with garlic and tomato. They can also be eaten raw.
Mouse wine
Baby mice, a maximum of three days old, are drowned in rice wine. In China and Korea, some believe drinking this concoction will cure just about any ailment.
Kumis
In Russia and Central Asia, mare's milk is fermented and sold as a fizzy beverage. Like with kombucha, the fermentation process gives the milk a slightly sour taste and low alcohol content.
Surströmming
Because the odor of this lightly salted, pickled Baltic herring is so pungent, it's almost always eaten outside. Every year in late August, there is a surströmming festival in northern Sweden.
Dog meat
Dog meat is still eaten in some regions of Vietnam, China, South Korea and Nigeria.
Durian
This thorny, tropical fruit has such an intense odor that it has been banned from many hotels and public transit cars in Southeast Asia.
Époisses
This cheese from the Burgundy region of France is among the cheeses featured in the museum's "Altar of Stinky Cheese."
Kiviak
Whole little auk birds, beaks and feathers included, are fermented in a seal skin for three months. After fermentation, the bird meat is eaten raw. Inuit families in Greenland consider this dish to be festive, and it's often served at celebrations.
Escargot
You've probably heard of this popular French hors d'oeuvre. It's made from snails, traditionally cooked in a garlic butter, chicken stock or wine.
Factory farming
According to the museum, this pig statue is a statement on factory farming and the antibiotics used in some parts of the livestock industry.
Farmed beef
America loves its beef, but the museum? Not so much. To the curators (and some scholars), the way some beef is farmed is an environmental threat.
Garum
This isn't maple syrup. It's a fermented fish sauce that traces its origins back to ancient Greece and Rome.
Licorice
Many people around the world hate the flavor of black licorice. To others, it's a dessert treat.
Lobster
Three hundred years ago, lobster was so readily available in North America, it was used as prison food. No one in high society would eat something so pedestrian. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that lobster began shedding its negative reputation.
Root beer
A quick Google search will illustrate just how unpopular root beer is outside of the United States. As museum curator Samuel West explained to CNN, "If you give root beer to a Swede they will spit it out and say it tastes like toothpaste."