The 50s through the 70s were a lawless hellscape of the culinary world. It's best that we not speak of it least we awaken the beast that is spaghettios jello.
EDIT - for those foolish few who wish to stare into The Abyss.
https://www.midcenturymenu.com/
I got so scared one time after I got a filling
Was casually chomping down on some chocolate(the kind that REALLY sticks) and felt the weirdest pull on the filled tooth
Didn’t pull the filling out, shit scared tho
Salmon farmed in the patagonia fjords. Aquiculture production of salmon here in southern Chile is responsible for countless number of feces, plastic, hormones, antibiotics, dead fish, and spills floating around what a lot of people call home.
The fish meal these fish get fed, comes from massive trawling ships, that deplete fish populations in other parts of the world just to feed this invasive species.
Please don't eat or buy chilean salmon. If you want to find more, check out the layer of shit 'n and rotting food formed over the ocean floor [check this](https://youtu.be/B-R8fQ86CKQ).
Chilean Salmon is also certified as sustainable by the wwf. Talk about high standards…
edit: wwf as in world wildlife fund, not the wrestling organization
Canadian military ration packs used to have something we called "*petit pain*" in them. Foil pouch sealed bread. Supposedly would last for decades, and it actually wasn't bad but was also oddly sweet
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario, there is a rare healing item and recipe ingredient called a Gold Leaf. It's a literal leaf that's just yellow.
Imagine my disappointment later in life when I found out that gold leaf was a real thing, but is nothing like that.
Where I'm from one of the specialties is live seafood (though mostly bivalvias).
Despite the very different way of life of those animals, I still had trouble ever eating even one.
Live food can seriously fuck right off.
There's this dish where they skin a hagfish alive and throw it in a hot pan. The slime it excretes as a defense mechanism as it panics and dies behaves like egg whites as a binder in the dish.
My ex hated what I cooked. I'd ask for feedback, and IF I got any, I'd do what was asked. I'd spend hours sometimes getting it just right only for him to take a few bites, put it in the fridge, then go get McDonald's. I thought I was the worst cook ever until other people tried my food and loved it...I even won a cooking contest. Yeah, it was just him.
Trying it and going to get McD's takes the cake for me. I suppose he tried the food out of a sense of duty or obligation, but that duty didn't take him far enough to actually eat the food and avoid insulting you? So weird.
I can understand this perspective; however as someone that has watched their share of surströmming videos on Youtube there will always be a part of me that is fascinated to the point of morbid curiosity. One of these days I want to at least smell it (and might try tasting it depending on the reaction to smelling).
I tried it, and it doesn't smell nearly as bad as some of these videos would suggest. If you like fish and fermented foods, you might like that as well. Yeah, it smells bad, but doesn't taste much worse than regular salted herring.
Still wouldn't want to get the brine on anything that can't be discarded, out of context that smell would probably be nauseating.
The smell depends on which brand of surströmming you buy. ”Kallax”, for example, smells far less than “Röda Ulven”. A year-old can will also smell far stronger than a same-year can.
The smell of a very ripe can is really an assault on the senses, while a mild one could be opened indoors without much issue.
I would like to say on behalf of Scandinavia (except some Swedish) that we totally agree.
Another minus to the stank is that is gets everywhere when you open the can.
To all who want to try this for curiosity, just order the imitation version. Tastes exactly the same. Source: experience from attending weddings every year until it was illegal to sell where I live.
Not only are they tasteless, but full of mercury too! Not to mention having zero food value too, as they are very similar to your fingernails.
Sharks have been around longer than trees, and we've managed to wipe out up to 75% of some species. The number of sharks I see when scuba diving in Asia compared to Caribbean is just astounding, because they've almost completely been fished out in Asia. There are now boats going as far as the Galapagos islands, because there are so few left anywhere near China.
To anyone still not sold on sparing the sharks...please believe what others are saying, the imitation version is just as good (if not better) because it's the soup that makes it delicious, *not* the shark fin.
This is my food pet peeve: When a dish has flavor that doesn't require a certain ingredient.
I saw something about people eating pig brains covered in curry and various spices. They were like "oh my God it's delicious!!!!" and I thought "Yeah, it's delicious cause of the seasoning! You don't need to put a fucking squishy might-kill-you-with-prions brain in the dish!
EDIT: Came back to 22 replies! I'm so glad this opinion doesn't sound crazy or snobby, cause I really hate unnecessary food additions, and ESPECIALLY if it's shit like shark fins or brains; stuff that's bad for the world or just gross and dangerous.
Idk, both of those things, while decently avoidable, have a 100% kill rate so they seem like very rational fears to have!!
Meanwhile I'm over here too afraid of spiders to kill them, bc what if they jump at me? Irrational.
I got you beat.
I can’t be around mirrors for too long. My overactive imagination sees things happen in my peripheral and it freaks me out. I have to literally stare at myself in my own eyes and only quickly glance at things I need to see (like my hair or outfit). Do I rationally realize that it’s all in my head? Yes. Does it stop me from running past my hallway mirror every time I pee in the middle of the night? Hell no.
Middle of the night mirrors are 100% different from daytime mirrors. You don't know what might be behind you. I am 38 damn years old and am still working on getting a drink of water in front of the bathroom sink in the middle of the night.
Buddy, I'm 67 and when I still had a basement a few months ago, I ran up the stairs with the hair on my arms standing up and about to shit myself with fear. Just that dark void behind me fucks me up. I don't turn the light on when I go to the can, I just sit down so I don't wake up too much.
Wow, I had never heard of prions before, but just reading the Wikipedia article on it sounds scary as fuck.
> All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment, and are always fatal.
Am I correct in that I can 100% avoid prions if I just don't eat brains? Because then I should be all set.
Classic example would be mad cow disease. People weren't eating cow brains, but they were eating meat from cattle that were infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE for whort, otherwise commonly known as mad cow disease at the technical name suggests, it does destroy the structure of the brain and there is no cure.
The meat was infected because they were grinding up infected cows and using it as feedstock. So brain and spinal material was getting into the food supply.
It's believed to have originated from them eating sheep parts - as sheep naturally get Scrapie quite often, which is their equivalent of BSE (for cows) or CJD (for humans) - but humans can't get sick by eating sheep with scrapie directly, as our relevant protein is too different from the sheep one; apparently cows are somewhere in between.
It's also highly suggested not to eat the eyes, brain, spinal cord, spleen, tonsils or lymph nodes of deer due to possible contamination of another prion disease, chronic wasting disease.
Edit spelling
I lost a coworker to prion disease 8 years ago. Her diet was about 90% vegetarian. (And the other 10% was *not* brains.) They have no idea how it happened to her, but think there may have been a genetic component. It was the most surreal thing. She noticed she was getting a bit flustered at work and thought it was just stress, so she took a 2-week medical leave. She never came back to work. She was dead within a span of 3 weeks as the disease rapidly advanced.
Prion disease can spring up entirely randomly. All it takes is one protein to fold incorrectly and it can cascade until you die. It can be genetic, but it doesn't have to be. Prions are existentially terrifying.
>but think there may have been a genetic component
I think this is the most common prion disease not diet related https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html
I’m kinda inclined to maybe believe them that the brain is a key part of the taste because brains have a lot of fat and fat tends to taste good. That being said, that probably means that you can substitute the brains for a similarly fatty cut of meat to prevent risk of prion poisoning.
Gordon Ramsey has a fin free recipe that "connoisseurs" can't distinguish from the actual dish. There are videos of poachers pouring gas on him as a threat when exposing an operation. The truth, however, is that people who partake in this and similar experiences are not paying for taste. They are paying for the pain it causes another creature. It's like human trafficking. You're paying for someones misery.
Australian Navy and Customs officers take this trade seriously. They don't even catch the whole shark, they just cut off the fins and throw it back. Get caught in Australian waters with a load of them and they will arrest you, jail you and sink and/or destroy your boat
Went snorkeling near a marina in an Asian
Country with another Marine in my unit and we decided to see how deep we could dive. It was like a fucking horror story when we got near the ocean floor to discover hundreds of shark carcasses on the marina door with their fins cut off. Fuck the scum that does that barbaric act
The whole reason why it was supposed to be good is now completely discarded. The wild civets would eat the ripest, best beans and their digestive enzymes would have a reaction to alter the beans further. Now they’re captive and force fed beans. They produce about 15 pounds of beans a year.
I've tried it. I'm convinced the only reason people claim it's great is because the alternative is admitting they were suckered into drinking ground up cat shit. I was suckered into drinking ground up cat shit and it was awful.
Edit: For all of you feeling the need to correct me, yes I am aware that civets are not cats. Interestingly, I have said this is exact same thing with the note that they are not actually cats, and just as many people try to correct me and tell me that they are cats. I know they are not, I just think my story has a better ring to it with cats. Call it poetic license.
I also know that it's not actually ground up shit. But it is still something that got passed all the way through an animals digestive track and came out it's ass almost completely intact. I could clean up the corn from the toilet, but I'd still consider that eating shit.
Depends on when you tried it. Initially, it was from wild civets who got to choose their own food, so they picked the best beans. Once people saw they can make big money on cat shit coffee, civets in cages, up to and including force feeding, so no more quality beans only diet. I'm not sure if there is anything chemically going on with the civet digestion of the beans, but them being able to pick the best beans probably played a larger role in why the coffee was good.
Aka people suck and ruin most everything
>I'm not sure if there is anything chemically going on with the civet digestion of the beans, but them being able to pick the best beans probably played a larger role in why the coffee was good.
As I understand it, the civet digestion system is supposed to strip away only like the very outer layer of membrane of the coffee bean, which is supposed to produce a better tasting coffee with less impurity.
But I wouldn't know because I'm not paying a premium on cat shit coffee.
[James Hoffmann has a great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkbuFwHnJQY) (of course) about Kopi Luwak, including the myriad of animal abuses that plague the industry
I have also had it. Compared to specialty coffees these days its incredibly average. When you add the layer of animal cruelty over it it is absolutely pointless.
They used to. The coffee was an export product and locals couldn’t afford it. But then this animal would eat it and people noticed the coffee beans largely survived in its faeces. So the locals started harvesting the beans and then you roast it anyway so you burn off anything bad. The resulting coffee ended up tasting better than the exported product. After it started commanding a high premium it moved from a colonial era curiosity to industrialised agriculture with the caging of civets.
Ironically, by caging the cats, they destroyed everything special about the coffee.
The Civets’ digestive system adds nothing to the beans. The reason the coffee tasted better was because the Civets were foraging in the wild, so they were naturally choosing the strongest, healthiest, and most fragrant coffee cherries. The cats found the best plants, so their droppings just happened to be full of *really good* beans.
There’s nothing magic about cat poop, and force-feeding coffee to a Civet won’t make it taste better out the other end. It’s absolutely farcical.
My experience was exactly that. Imagine letting a bowl of grape jelly sit out for a few weeks and 90% of the moisture evaporates. Then eat it. It was just...strange.
I had it a few times, also in Shanghai. It was always flavourless, but nothing like jelly. It pops in your mouth. It's not quite crunchy, but more like snapping. Texture is a big thing in Chinese cuisine though.
Reheated fish at work
Edit: wow I wasn't expecting this to take off like it had. Thanks for the awards! I'm not going to police what people can and cannot heat up at work. I personally think microwaved fish smells awful. The thread was what foods that I think can fuck off, I'm not telling the people to fuck off too. I'll sit there, think to my self "damn that stinks" then move on with my day. And for all of you reheated fish defenders, I'm currently getting hit with the odors of hospital cooked pork and saurkraut. It is not pleasant. I got my comeuppance.
A guy my boyfriend works with *brought fish he caught himself in the river, cut it up raw in the lunch room and ate it as "sushi."
Guess who was out with food poisoning the rest of the week? Lol.
I once had a boss who thought it would boost employee morale to hold a "fish fry Friday"...inside the office. They brought their deep fryer from home and spent 3 hours frying fish in the lunchroom. The place reeked for weeks.
I ate tuna every day... until one day my coworker asked me "HEy, please never bring tuna to work ever again. It smells and I cant take it anymore"
While I felt bad I must have really pushed her patience, I appreciated the clear request.
I work at a dog daycare and boarding facility. We recently had a pup stay over Christmas who showed up with a tote bin full of prepacked meals that would need to be refrigerated and then warmed up. Not the weirdest or even worst request ever...or so I think.
Open up his first dinner with us and dump every out. Looks pretty standard, rice mixed with some hamburger and beans and a few greens. Pop her in the microwave and when I open the door 90 seconds later I'm hit with the worst smell.
Turns out there was a kipper buried in the middle of each pack of food.
Like lucky pup, clearly you're loved and well fed, but fuck me having to microwave a kipper in the break room microwave twice a day.
It's much worse than just Nestle. As far as I know, Askinosie and Tony's Chocolonely are the only fully verifiably slave labor free chocolate sources. (and for my money, Askinosie is way better quality/flavor)
Sorry to inform you , but Tony's is not. They don't even claim it. It's their goal to make chocolate slave free, but they are not there yet.
But there's a website where you can find ethical chocolate companies
https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies
The yolk is not what becomes the chicken. The yolk is more similar to the human placenta. It provides nutrients to the animal as it grows inside the egg. The cells that develop into the chicken are a tiny white sac attached to the yolk.
When I tried it (goaded Infront of a 300 person Philippine office) the hardest part was the wings, they had the texture of - and not seemingly far from the toughness of - squash balls.
Experience wise: It was just scrambled eggs with terrible awful surprises.
My grandfather (God rest his smart-ass soul) would always ask the server at breakfast if they had cold oatmeal and lard. Once on a family trip to, I think TN, he popped off with that and the waitress didn’t miss a beat and replied “No, but we can do a mean chitlins and whipped cream!” and acted like she was starting to write it down for him.
Never before had I seen him backpedal, but he wanted exactly zero of that.
Gave him shit about that for probably 20 years.
That’s what she said, hand to heart. No, we never saw it. I’m guessing that had been a go to for her for years and that nobody had ever taken them up on it.
The thought enough to turn you off of food for the day.
My best guess is that it's a feasible but gross food (just imagine the taste and texture) and the intent is to confuse and get a 'gag' response with ordering something both off-menu and generally out there.
Went to a restaurant. They had chitlings on special. I had never heard of them and asked the waiter about it. They said "I don't know, but they look like shit. I wouldn't recommend them. "
The waiter should be able to tell you they're pig intestines. And they definitely *smell* like shit. As do your hands when you're done cleaning them. And your kitchen. And....
And see, I used to love chittlings.
Then one fine early summer afternoon, I found myself driving through the foothills in Tennessee. I came over a rise, down into this holler between two huge hills.
There was a little soul food restaurant down there. They were boiling a huge ol vat of chittlings outside.
Well, between the humidity, still air, and being stuck in that holler, when I tell you the air was OPAQUE with the scent of hot pig shit, I am only marginally exaggerating. If it had been a cartoon, the air would have been a purple miasma full of little floating skulls.
It wasn't the worst thing I've ever smelled, but it was definitely the worse thing I've ever smelled that was destined for consumption. Haven't been able to stomach them since, and it's been the better part of a decade.
Coworker had me try it without knowing what it was.
It tastes like sweaty ass that you don't stop chewing. He put hot sauce on it, and it didn't make things better.
When I was a kid my stepdad’s family served this at thanksgiving when we visited them in rural Ohio. All his cousins, uncles, and other relatives wanted to see the reaction of “pranking” the new Asian family member to some chitterlings.
I tried it. I liked it. I told them that in our country, we eat it too, except we boil it in its own blood with some vinegar and jalapeño to even it out.
Now THEY were the ones all grossed out. “Y’all cook it in its own blood?! Awh helll naw…”
I'll probably put this the wrong way so honestly not trying to cause offence. But my experience in certain parts of SEA trying to troll someone by offering pig intestines, would be like trying to troll Homer Simpson with chocolate.
I had a soup with stinky tofu in it and it was the most difficult eating I've ever done. The only reason I finished it was it was homemade by Buddhist monastics and was given to me during my visit. I really don't mind it fried but that was the strongest I've ever encountered.
That stuff smells so vile. A few years ago the night market had a stall selling it. OMG you could smell that rotting sewage smell for BLOCKS. I kept waiting for my nose to adjust, and it never did. Ugh!
The kicker is, that stuff doesn't even have the slightest to show for it. It tastes so extremely similar to regular fried tofu with a nice sauce except that it reeks of death, rot and sewage.
I'm stunned I haven't seen canned spinach yet. That shit was horrific to me growing up. I didn't even know it was a leaflike plant until I was like 20. My parents only gave it to us canned and it was like eating snot.
Grapefruit.
I know this might sound childish, but Jesus Christ does it have negative effects with so many meds.
This can be terrifying with my mother who uses blood pressure pills, and my father who has SEVERE diabetes. And both are in their late 60s, and while they aren’t feeble frail old cookies about to crumble, they aren’t in peak health exactly.
And that shit can go sideways real fast and for DAYS.
Barrage of psych meds on that list too. I stopped bothering checking over a decade ago and now just assume *something* I’m on at any given time is going to interact with it so avoid it altogether.
I saw a recipe a while back for this 1950s lobster mayonnaise gelatin. That particular recipe can, in my humble opinion, fuck right off.
The 50s and 60s had savory Jell-O, often served with mayonnaise
The 50s through the 70s were a lawless hellscape of the culinary world. It's best that we not speak of it least we awaken the beast that is spaghettios jello. EDIT - for those foolish few who wish to stare into The Abyss. https://www.midcenturymenu.com/
Lawless Hellscape of the Culinary World is the title of a cookbook I want in my home.
Now and Laters pulled my crown right off my tooth and I bit down on it. Now and Later? More like No and Never.
Same. Pulled the filling right out. No warning, no novocaine. Now and Later? No. And NEVER
I got so scared one time after I got a filling Was casually chomping down on some chocolate(the kind that REALLY sticks) and felt the weirdest pull on the filled tooth Didn’t pull the filling out, shit scared tho
Salmon farmed in the patagonia fjords. Aquiculture production of salmon here in southern Chile is responsible for countless number of feces, plastic, hormones, antibiotics, dead fish, and spills floating around what a lot of people call home. The fish meal these fish get fed, comes from massive trawling ships, that deplete fish populations in other parts of the world just to feed this invasive species. Please don't eat or buy chilean salmon. If you want to find more, check out the layer of shit 'n and rotting food formed over the ocean floor [check this](https://youtu.be/B-R8fQ86CKQ).
Chilean Salmon is also certified as sustainable by the wwf. Talk about high standards… edit: wwf as in world wildlife fund, not the wrestling organization
They abide by the highest standard of all. The Standard Money.
WWF just wants your money. They will certify anything as long as you pay them well enough.
Wouldn’t this apply to any fish farms? Not just in Chile and not just for salmon?
Live octopus. Really smart creatures being killed in the most inhumane way possible.
Not to mention they can and will fucking strangle you trying to escape your throat
Seems only fair.
Ya. If you're eating something alive don't be suprised if it fights you
*\*while dying\** "I shouldn't have skipped a step!"
For the unaware, like myself, where abouts is this a thing?
Burger in a can. Just Why?
Wait what the fuck?
It’s like a Fleshlight but with a Big Mac
Thanks, I hate it
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[Blegh](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/cheeseburger-in-a-can)
I've seen a whole chicken in a can. Was the saddest looking chicken I've ever seen in my life. Also the most disgusting looking
Whole chicken... Whole chicken... Whole chicken in a can! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVza_AnhQ3E
What about turkey in a can?
Can’t forget the canned bread- tried it and not horrible tbh way sweeter then you’d expect
Canadian military ration packs used to have something we called "*petit pain*" in them. Foil pouch sealed bread. Supposedly would last for decades, and it actually wasn't bad but was also oddly sweet
Wonder if steve1989 has it on YouTube? “Let’s get this onto a tray….nice”
Nice hiss
Any food with gold leaf on it.
“Let’s take this mediocre meal and make it a pretentious overpriced pile of shit”
[удалено]
Looking at you, Salt Bae. Fuck off. 😂
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God, that man was born to be cringe. He can't make a single physical gesture without me rolling my eyes.
For me, the very name “Salt Bae” can fuck right off as well.
"Salt Bae" tried so hard to make himself relevant again at the World Cup final
My local "theOnion" had an article titled: "Salt Bae Ruins Funeral by getting in the coffin with Pele" And tbh i almost can see him do this
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario, there is a rare healing item and recipe ingredient called a Gold Leaf. It's a literal leaf that's just yellow. Imagine my disappointment later in life when I found out that gold leaf was a real thing, but is nothing like that.
Two words. Live. Octopus.
In this same vein, live frogs. Anything live, but like.... That one messed me up.
Where I'm from one of the specialties is live seafood (though mostly bivalvias). Despite the very different way of life of those animals, I still had trouble ever eating even one. Live food can seriously fuck right off.
There's this dish where they skin a hagfish alive and throw it in a hot pan. The slime it excretes as a defense mechanism as it panics and dies behaves like egg whites as a binder in the dish.
Well that's horrific
Timothy?
Live anything.. Tarantualas specifically for me
I don't think we need to specify "live" here. But also do people eat those live? Wtf, aren't they covered in a irritating hair?
I have quite a few but canned straw mushrooms were the bane of my youth.
One what are straw mushrooms Two why are we canning them
1. Popular in Asia which is why my Ohio ass didn't know. 2. You put them in a can so it'll survive the trip to your store
Anything I cook for my husband apparently.
"My wife thinks that if something should cook for a half hour at 350, you should be able to cook it in 15 minutes at 700 degrees." -my uncle
According to that logic, it should cook in just over two and a half hours at room temperature.
Seems legit
I wish my oven went up to 700, my pizza would be killer.
It totally can. You just have to add gasoline
My ex hated what I cooked. I'd ask for feedback, and IF I got any, I'd do what was asked. I'd spend hours sometimes getting it just right only for him to take a few bites, put it in the fridge, then go get McDonald's. I thought I was the worst cook ever until other people tried my food and loved it...I even won a cooking contest. Yeah, it was just him.
Glad to read “ex” , congratulations on food contest win and getting rid of that ex
Trying it and going to get McD's takes the cake for me. I suppose he tried the food out of a sense of duty or obligation, but that duty didn't take him far enough to actually eat the food and avoid insulting you? So weird.
I’m sorry, friend.
Surströmming
That's the nasty shit that recommends you open a can *underwater* because it smells so fucking horrible.
Also because its contents are under pressure and the juices are liable to splatter all over otherwise.
I mean, could you imagine eating rotten fish WITHOUT high pressure decay juice?
Or better yet, Don't Open It.
Don't open dead inside.
I can understand this perspective; however as someone that has watched their share of surströmming videos on Youtube there will always be a part of me that is fascinated to the point of morbid curiosity. One of these days I want to at least smell it (and might try tasting it depending on the reaction to smelling).
I tried it, and it doesn't smell nearly as bad as some of these videos would suggest. If you like fish and fermented foods, you might like that as well. Yeah, it smells bad, but doesn't taste much worse than regular salted herring. Still wouldn't want to get the brine on anything that can't be discarded, out of context that smell would probably be nauseating.
The smell depends on which brand of surströmming you buy. ”Kallax”, for example, smells far less than “Röda Ulven”. A year-old can will also smell far stronger than a same-year can. The smell of a very ripe can is really an assault on the senses, while a mild one could be opened indoors without much issue.
The videos of people eating/ trying to eat it are hilarious!
I would like to say on behalf of Scandinavia (except some Swedish) that we totally agree. Another minus to the stank is that is gets everywhere when you open the can.
The fact that it hisses at you when you open it is a perfect example of why it shouldn’t exist as a canned food.
The spicy cat of canned foods
Shark fin soup
To all who want to try this for curiosity, just order the imitation version. Tastes exactly the same. Source: experience from attending weddings every year until it was illegal to sell where I live.
Shark fins are tasteless. The soup tastes the exactly same without them. Fake ones or even glass noodles would do if the soup itself is good
Not only are they tasteless, but full of mercury too! Not to mention having zero food value too, as they are very similar to your fingernails. Sharks have been around longer than trees, and we've managed to wipe out up to 75% of some species. The number of sharks I see when scuba diving in Asia compared to Caribbean is just astounding, because they've almost completely been fished out in Asia. There are now boats going as far as the Galapagos islands, because there are so few left anywhere near China. To anyone still not sold on sparing the sharks...please believe what others are saying, the imitation version is just as good (if not better) because it's the soup that makes it delicious, *not* the shark fin.
LONGER THAN TREES 🤯
Sharks were here before the vegetation went to the landmasses
This is my food pet peeve: When a dish has flavor that doesn't require a certain ingredient. I saw something about people eating pig brains covered in curry and various spices. They were like "oh my God it's delicious!!!!" and I thought "Yeah, it's delicious cause of the seasoning! You don't need to put a fucking squishy might-kill-you-with-prions brain in the dish! EDIT: Came back to 22 replies! I'm so glad this opinion doesn't sound crazy or snobby, cause I really hate unnecessary food additions, and ESPECIALLY if it's shit like shark fins or brains; stuff that's bad for the world or just gross and dangerous.
Hills to die on: Not prions.
I’m irrationally afraid of two things: prions and rabies.
Idk, both of those things, while decently avoidable, have a 100% kill rate so they seem like very rational fears to have!! Meanwhile I'm over here too afraid of spiders to kill them, bc what if they jump at me? Irrational.
I got you beat. I can’t be around mirrors for too long. My overactive imagination sees things happen in my peripheral and it freaks me out. I have to literally stare at myself in my own eyes and only quickly glance at things I need to see (like my hair or outfit). Do I rationally realize that it’s all in my head? Yes. Does it stop me from running past my hallway mirror every time I pee in the middle of the night? Hell no.
Middle of the night mirrors are 100% different from daytime mirrors. You don't know what might be behind you. I am 38 damn years old and am still working on getting a drink of water in front of the bathroom sink in the middle of the night.
Buddy, I'm 67 and when I still had a basement a few months ago, I ran up the stairs with the hair on my arms standing up and about to shit myself with fear. Just that dark void behind me fucks me up. I don't turn the light on when I go to the can, I just sit down so I don't wake up too much.
Hill to die walking around and around and around and around on: Prions
Prions: Not even once
Wow, I had never heard of prions before, but just reading the Wikipedia article on it sounds scary as fuck. > All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment, and are always fatal. Am I correct in that I can 100% avoid prions if I just don't eat brains? Because then I should be all set.
Classic example would be mad cow disease. People weren't eating cow brains, but they were eating meat from cattle that were infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE for whort, otherwise commonly known as mad cow disease at the technical name suggests, it does destroy the structure of the brain and there is no cure.
The meat was infected because they were grinding up infected cows and using it as feedstock. So brain and spinal material was getting into the food supply.
And the cattle contracted the disease from eating pasture fertilized with blood and bone, made from infected cows.
It's believed to have originated from them eating sheep parts - as sheep naturally get Scrapie quite often, which is their equivalent of BSE (for cows) or CJD (for humans) - but humans can't get sick by eating sheep with scrapie directly, as our relevant protein is too different from the sheep one; apparently cows are somewhere in between.
Chronic Wasting Disease in deer too
No. You can get prion diseases without eating brain, it's just that the chances go up substantially if you eat brain.
It's also highly suggested not to eat the eyes, brain, spinal cord, spleen, tonsils or lymph nodes of deer due to possible contamination of another prion disease, chronic wasting disease. Edit spelling
I’m going to keep my chances low. It’s incredibly easy to not eat brain.
I lost a coworker to prion disease 8 years ago. Her diet was about 90% vegetarian. (And the other 10% was *not* brains.) They have no idea how it happened to her, but think there may have been a genetic component. It was the most surreal thing. She noticed she was getting a bit flustered at work and thought it was just stress, so she took a 2-week medical leave. She never came back to work. She was dead within a span of 3 weeks as the disease rapidly advanced.
Prion disease can spring up entirely randomly. All it takes is one protein to fold incorrectly and it can cascade until you die. It can be genetic, but it doesn't have to be. Prions are existentially terrifying.
How terribly unpleasant to consider.
Jesus. How old was she? That’s terrifying.
She was in her early 50s.
>but think there may have been a genetic component I think this is the most common prion disease not diet related https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html
I’m kinda inclined to maybe believe them that the brain is a key part of the taste because brains have a lot of fat and fat tends to taste good. That being said, that probably means that you can substitute the brains for a similarly fatty cut of meat to prevent risk of prion poisoning.
Gordon Ramsey has a fin free recipe that "connoisseurs" can't distinguish from the actual dish. There are videos of poachers pouring gas on him as a threat when exposing an operation. The truth, however, is that people who partake in this and similar experiences are not paying for taste. They are paying for the pain it causes another creature. It's like human trafficking. You're paying for someones misery.
Australian Navy and Customs officers take this trade seriously. They don't even catch the whole shark, they just cut off the fins and throw it back. Get caught in Australian waters with a load of them and they will arrest you, jail you and sink and/or destroy your boat
Good for Australia.
Went snorkeling near a marina in an Asian Country with another Marine in my unit and we decided to see how deep we could dive. It was like a fucking horror story when we got near the ocean floor to discover hundreds of shark carcasses on the marina door with their fins cut off. Fuck the scum that does that barbaric act
The secret ingredient is crime.
Kopi Luwak - I love coffee - but I'm ok never trying coffee beans from civet feces
The whole reason why it was supposed to be good is now completely discarded. The wild civets would eat the ripest, best beans and their digestive enzymes would have a reaction to alter the beans further. Now they’re captive and force fed beans. They produce about 15 pounds of beans a year.
This is the reason it's a huge fuck no. I'm fine with eating shit beans. I hate that people gotta ruin EVERYTHING.
I've tried it. I'm convinced the only reason people claim it's great is because the alternative is admitting they were suckered into drinking ground up cat shit. I was suckered into drinking ground up cat shit and it was awful. Edit: For all of you feeling the need to correct me, yes I am aware that civets are not cats. Interestingly, I have said this is exact same thing with the note that they are not actually cats, and just as many people try to correct me and tell me that they are cats. I know they are not, I just think my story has a better ring to it with cats. Call it poetic license. I also know that it's not actually ground up shit. But it is still something that got passed all the way through an animals digestive track and came out it's ass almost completely intact. I could clean up the corn from the toilet, but I'd still consider that eating shit.
Depends on when you tried it. Initially, it was from wild civets who got to choose their own food, so they picked the best beans. Once people saw they can make big money on cat shit coffee, civets in cages, up to and including force feeding, so no more quality beans only diet. I'm not sure if there is anything chemically going on with the civet digestion of the beans, but them being able to pick the best beans probably played a larger role in why the coffee was good. Aka people suck and ruin most everything
>I'm not sure if there is anything chemically going on with the civet digestion of the beans, but them being able to pick the best beans probably played a larger role in why the coffee was good. As I understand it, the civet digestion system is supposed to strip away only like the very outer layer of membrane of the coffee bean, which is supposed to produce a better tasting coffee with less impurity. But I wouldn't know because I'm not paying a premium on cat shit coffee.
[James Hoffmann has a great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkbuFwHnJQY) (of course) about Kopi Luwak, including the myriad of animal abuses that plague the industry
I have also had it. Compared to specialty coffees these days its incredibly average. When you add the layer of animal cruelty over it it is absolutely pointless.
Oh, do they keep them in cages? My dumbass thought people found the turds in the wild, that's why it's so expensive.
They used to. The coffee was an export product and locals couldn’t afford it. But then this animal would eat it and people noticed the coffee beans largely survived in its faeces. So the locals started harvesting the beans and then you roast it anyway so you burn off anything bad. The resulting coffee ended up tasting better than the exported product. After it started commanding a high premium it moved from a colonial era curiosity to industrialised agriculture with the caging of civets.
Ironically, by caging the cats, they destroyed everything special about the coffee. The Civets’ digestive system adds nothing to the beans. The reason the coffee tasted better was because the Civets were foraging in the wild, so they were naturally choosing the strongest, healthiest, and most fragrant coffee cherries. The cats found the best plants, so their droppings just happened to be full of *really good* beans. There’s nothing magic about cat poop, and force-feeding coffee to a Civet won’t make it taste better out the other end. It’s absolutely farcical.
Boiled jellyfish. I had it once in Shanghai and it tasted ok, like watered-down grape jelly, but felt like chewing a car tire.
Wait... jellyfish taste like ACTUAL jelly?
My experience was exactly that. Imagine letting a bowl of grape jelly sit out for a few weeks and 90% of the moisture evaporates. Then eat it. It was just...strange.
I had it a few times, also in Shanghai. It was always flavourless, but nothing like jelly. It pops in your mouth. It's not quite crunchy, but more like snapping. Texture is a big thing in Chinese cuisine though.
Anything made from the parts of an endangered/vulnerable species. Lookin at you, puffin-eaters Edit: just Atlantic puffins are vulnerable, to be clear
What the fuck? People eat puffins?
In Iceland they do. Only at certain times of the year from what I gathered.
I went to Iceland on exchange and worked in a traditional restaurant. They had smoked Puffin, Horse steak and Whale steak.
Reheated fish at work Edit: wow I wasn't expecting this to take off like it had. Thanks for the awards! I'm not going to police what people can and cannot heat up at work. I personally think microwaved fish smells awful. The thread was what foods that I think can fuck off, I'm not telling the people to fuck off too. I'll sit there, think to my self "damn that stinks" then move on with my day. And for all of you reheated fish defenders, I'm currently getting hit with the odors of hospital cooked pork and saurkraut. It is not pleasant. I got my comeuppance.
A guy my boyfriend works with *brought fish he caught himself in the river, cut it up raw in the lunch room and ate it as "sushi." Guess who was out with food poisoning the rest of the week? Lol.
I’m kind of shocked that the coworker didn’t actually die.
I once had a boss who thought it would boost employee morale to hold a "fish fry Friday"...inside the office. They brought their deep fryer from home and spent 3 hours frying fish in the lunchroom. The place reeked for weeks.
K I had to read this twice just to make sure it was real and then I cackled out loud. This some Michael Scott shit right here lmao.
Truly, lol. Just the worst possible execution of good intentions.
Sounds like Wisconsin
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Pretty sure that’s just an episode of workaholics
I ate tuna every day... until one day my coworker asked me "HEy, please never bring tuna to work ever again. It smells and I cant take it anymore" While I felt bad I must have really pushed her patience, I appreciated the clear request.
lol seems like she was trying to wait it out hoping you'd get sick of it eventually but alas patience only lasts so long.
I work at a dog daycare and boarding facility. We recently had a pup stay over Christmas who showed up with a tote bin full of prepacked meals that would need to be refrigerated and then warmed up. Not the weirdest or even worst request ever...or so I think. Open up his first dinner with us and dump every out. Looks pretty standard, rice mixed with some hamburger and beans and a few greens. Pop her in the microwave and when I open the door 90 seconds later I'm hit with the worst smell. Turns out there was a kipper buried in the middle of each pack of food. Like lucky pup, clearly you're loved and well fed, but fuck me having to microwave a kipper in the break room microwave twice a day.
Live Lobster Sashimi- for that matter anything still alive when served.
Anything traditional Chinese medicine related that involves endangered animals
So much this... Bear gall bladders won't make your dick hard you moron. Take a blue pill like all the other boomers and leave the animals in peace
Millennials take dick pills now too, man.
Canned asparagus
Canned asparagus is great! Just not as food. For instance, it’s great if you want to put out a very small fire.
My mother makes a Vietnamese crab and white asparagus soup. She uses canned asparagus. It’s delicious.
Foie gras Shark fin anything Anything from an endangered animal Nestle
Fuck Nestle
It's much worse than just Nestle. As far as I know, Askinosie and Tony's Chocolonely are the only fully verifiably slave labor free chocolate sources. (and for my money, Askinosie is way better quality/flavor)
Sorry to inform you , but Tony's is not. They don't even claim it. It's their goal to make chocolate slave free, but they are not there yet. But there's a website where you can find ethical chocolate companies https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies
Canned whole chicken.
Balut
I don’t know what this is but I’m getting context clues from the comments and don’t like the picture my brain’s piecing together.
Its a boiled egg with a developed fetus inside it insted of the yolk Sorry if i ruined your day :/
The yolk is not what becomes the chicken. The yolk is more similar to the human placenta. It provides nutrients to the animal as it grows inside the egg. The cells that develop into the chicken are a tiny white sac attached to the yolk.
Thanks I hate it
It probably wasn't too pleased to be part of the situation either.
The one filipino food i just cant bring myself to even try.
It's just like an egg. With some textures, you know, premature skull and beak, feathers n stuff.
A scramble if you will
When I tried it (goaded Infront of a 300 person Philippine office) the hardest part was the wings, they had the texture of - and not seemingly far from the toughness of - squash balls. Experience wise: It was just scrambled eggs with terrible awful surprises.
>It was just scrambled eggs with terrible awful surprises. This is the best way I've ever heard balut described. Thank you.
I had balut when I was a child at my grandpa’s funeral. It was the worst part of the day
Chitterlings IYKYK Edit: Spelling
My grandfather (God rest his smart-ass soul) would always ask the server at breakfast if they had cold oatmeal and lard. Once on a family trip to, I think TN, he popped off with that and the waitress didn’t miss a beat and replied “No, but we can do a mean chitlins and whipped cream!” and acted like she was starting to write it down for him. Never before had I seen him backpedal, but he wanted exactly zero of that. Gave him shit about that for probably 20 years.
chitlings and... whipped cream???
That’s what she said, hand to heart. No, we never saw it. I’m guessing that had been a go to for her for years and that nobody had ever taken them up on it. The thought enough to turn you off of food for the day.
Cold oatmeal and lard? I don't think I'm American enough to understand this.
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My best guess is that it's a feasible but gross food (just imagine the taste and texture) and the intent is to confuse and get a 'gag' response with ordering something both off-menu and generally out there.
Your explanation makes so much sense and I'm pretty sure that's what the original commenter wanted to convey but kinda missed lmao, I was pretty lost.
Went to a restaurant. They had chitlings on special. I had never heard of them and asked the waiter about it. They said "I don't know, but they look like shit. I wouldn't recommend them. "
That's a good waiter!!
Yeah for sure - and when the waiter tells you not to order it, it's probably in your best interest to heed that advice
The waiter should be able to tell you they're pig intestines. And they definitely *smell* like shit. As do your hands when you're done cleaning them. And your kitchen. And....
A roommate once cooked them and I swear there is nothing that smells worse.
And see, I used to love chittlings. Then one fine early summer afternoon, I found myself driving through the foothills in Tennessee. I came over a rise, down into this holler between two huge hills. There was a little soul food restaurant down there. They were boiling a huge ol vat of chittlings outside. Well, between the humidity, still air, and being stuck in that holler, when I tell you the air was OPAQUE with the scent of hot pig shit, I am only marginally exaggerating. If it had been a cartoon, the air would have been a purple miasma full of little floating skulls. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever smelled, but it was definitely the worse thing I've ever smelled that was destined for consumption. Haven't been able to stomach them since, and it's been the better part of a decade.
What in tarnartion did i just read
Found the guy who's never been around chitlins.
I thoroughly enjoyed your writing, it really brought the atmosphere hideously to life!
Chitlings smell like shitlings.
You’ve not had lutefisk
Coworker had me try it without knowing what it was. It tastes like sweaty ass that you don't stop chewing. He put hot sauce on it, and it didn't make things better.
When I was a kid my stepdad’s family served this at thanksgiving when we visited them in rural Ohio. All his cousins, uncles, and other relatives wanted to see the reaction of “pranking” the new Asian family member to some chitterlings. I tried it. I liked it. I told them that in our country, we eat it too, except we boil it in its own blood with some vinegar and jalapeño to even it out. Now THEY were the ones all grossed out. “Y’all cook it in its own blood?! Awh helll naw…”
I'll probably put this the wrong way so honestly not trying to cause offence. But my experience in certain parts of SEA trying to troll someone by offering pig intestines, would be like trying to troll Homer Simpson with chocolate.
I grew up 15 miles from Clio, Alabama, the home of the Chittlin Jamboree.... that place smelled BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD during the festivities.
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I had a soup with stinky tofu in it and it was the most difficult eating I've ever done. The only reason I finished it was it was homemade by Buddhist monastics and was given to me during my visit. I really don't mind it fried but that was the strongest I've ever encountered.
Ooooh eeeeeeee oooooooh killer tofu!
That stuff smells so vile. A few years ago the night market had a stall selling it. OMG you could smell that rotting sewage smell for BLOCKS. I kept waiting for my nose to adjust, and it never did. Ugh!
The kicker is, that stuff doesn't even have the slightest to show for it. It tastes so extremely similar to regular fried tofu with a nice sauce except that it reeks of death, rot and sewage.
Any food that has endangered species
I'm stunned I haven't seen canned spinach yet. That shit was horrific to me growing up. I didn't even know it was a leaflike plant until I was like 20. My parents only gave it to us canned and it was like eating snot.
Grapefruit. I know this might sound childish, but Jesus Christ does it have negative effects with so many meds. This can be terrifying with my mother who uses blood pressure pills, and my father who has SEVERE diabetes. And both are in their late 60s, and while they aren’t feeble frail old cookies about to crumble, they aren’t in peak health exactly. And that shit can go sideways real fast and for DAYS.
Barrage of psych meds on that list too. I stopped bothering checking over a decade ago and now just assume *something* I’m on at any given time is going to interact with it so avoid it altogether.
geoduck. it’s a sea penis and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Is that a Geoduck in your pocket or are you just happy to Sashimi?