Grossopedia: A Startling Collection of Repulsive Trivia You Won’t Want to Know!

Everything in Moderation—Even Fly Larvae

Swear you’ll never eat a bug? Chances are you already have—hundreds of them! The U.S. government allows 30 insect parts for every 100 grams of peanut butter. Similar legal amounts of accidental ingredients apply to all processed food. (Hey, everybody makes mistakes!). The Food and Drug Administration Defect Levels Handbook lists all this stuff as passable, in moderation: mold, insect infestation, rodent hairs, worms, excrement, fly eggs, and maggots. So don’t worry about a stray rat hair dropping in on your Fluffernutter; there are bugs aplenty put in food on purpose. (chapulines (#ua0023bc3-29e2-48e5-a588-a3a72f6f96b6))

Did You Know?On average, most of us swallow about a pound of insect parts every year.

Champagne and Fish Eggs

Caviar—the go-to disgusting food for various dares and challenges—are fish eggs: unpasteurized sturgeon roe to be exact. Is it the fact that they’re uncooked that’s repulsive? Or maybe it’s just the visual—kind of like how one ant alone is fine, but hundreds teeming around the dropped lollipop is horrid. A Japanese company sells edible fake caviar that is pretty convincing. Help endangered fish populations: eat more fake caviar!

Mmmm...Civet Droppings

Forget Sumatra, when it comes to quality coffee, civet droppings are all the rage. The beans are called Kopi Luwak, but don’t let the name fool you. They come from the backsides of civets (In the Know (#ulink_a702caac-01b6-5c6f-b3f8-a9ebdcfbe071)). And don’t worry, they’re fermented by the time they’re dropped off. You can pay up to $600 per pound for these partially digested berries. According to the New York Times, they are reported to be “smooth, chocolaty, and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.”

IN THE KNOW

Civet: a generally nocturnal animal found in Southeast Asia that resembles a cat (called “toddycats” in the U.K.).

The Bone Truth

You may know that Worcestershire sauce contains anchovies, but why stop there? The fish’s bones are also thrown in for good measure. (As far as we can tell, anchovies themselves don’t even need bones. Why they feel compelled to bring them along to the Worcestershire sauce is anybody’s guess.)

A Single Scoop Will Do

Rainy summers in England led to this innovative cozy cone as an alternative to traditional frozen treats served from ice-cream trucks. Aunt Bessie’s “Mash Van” tours the U.K., serving up a familiar combo with a twist: mashed potatoes, sausages, and peas inside a cone traditionally reserved for ice cream. Instead of dinner for dessert, why not try it the other way around?

Tails, You Die

A fugu fish (also known as a puffer fish or blowfish) is sometimes toxic, but that doesn’t hurt its reputation as a delicacy in Japan and, increasingly, in the United States. Its effect on approximately 300 unlucky people a year, however, is rather indelicate. Victims croak—and we don’t mean imitate the sound a frog makes. Instead, consumers get snuffed out, breathe their last breath, hit the junkyard, land in their final resting place. After eating this fish, some people go swim with it.

From a consumer advisory on the Food and Drug Administration’s website: “The liver, gonads (ovaries and testes), intestines, and skin of some puffer fish contain the toxins tetrodotoxin and/or saxitoxin. These toxins are 1,200 times more deadly than the poison cyanide and can affect a person’s central nervous system. There are no known antidotes for these toxins. Puffer fish must be cleaned and prepared properly so the organs containing the toxins are carefully removed and do not cross-contaminate the flesh of the fish. These toxins cannot be destroyed by cooking or freezing.”

Hmm. We think that puts puffer fish pretty safely in the “not worth it” category when it comes to extreme eating.

Biting Back

If mosquito season is making you hungry, you’re not alone. Marc Dennis, founder of Insects Are Food, believes that mealworm French fries and chocolate-dipped crickets are examples of “what sushi was two decades ago”—rather exotic, but about to go mainstream. As defined on his website, “entomophagy” is the practice of eating insects, including tarantulas and centipedes. Dennis believes a bug diet is nutritional, sustainable, and delicious and simply requires changing preconceived Western mindsets about what constitutes a meal, given that eating insects is common practice the world over.

Did You Know?There’s a popular dish in Nepal made from bee pupae. It’s called bakuti and tastes like nuts. Sometimes you feel like bakuti, sometimes you don’t.

Grubby Grub

Need some inspiration for your newfound love of entomophagy (Biting Back (#ulink_205f5f5d-976c-5f96-865c-de3eecf6e78e))? Get into the practice of eating insects with The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook: 33 ways to cook grasshoppers, ants, water bugs, spiders, centipedes, and their kin, by David George Gordon. One online reviewer originally bought it as a prank but ended up enjoying the recipes. I wonder what dinner guests say? “I’ll have the thigh. No the other thigh. No the other thigh.” Bugs for Lunch by Margery Facklam and Sylvia Long is a rhyming picture book on the subject just for kids.

Did You Know?The Insect Club in Washington, DC is now gone, but it once served up some really fine mealworms. (Don’t worry—they tasted like chicken.)

Odd Combos

Sometimes preferred foods alone aren’t inherently gross, but the combination of unlikely flavors is not everyone’s cup of vinegar tea. Need some unusual snack ideas?

(We found people who liked each one of the above specialized blends; though no one person could honestly say he or she liked all of them. Do you?)

How about:

• Peanut butter and mayo

• Beans and chocolate

• Pickles and peanut butter

• Popcorn and mustard

• Ketchup on pancakes

WORLD’S STRANGEST ICE CREAM FLAVORS:

• Cold sweat

• Caviar

• Spaghetti and cheese

• Lobster

• Guinness

• Horse

• Sea slug

• Bacon and egg

• Wasabi

• Avocado

(To the makers of the above concoctions—Guys, you’re kind of missing the entire point! If we wanted something that tasted like an avocado, we’d eat an avocado! Not ice cream. This reminds me of the Saturday Night Live sketch, where the actors are eating ice cream that tastes like yogurt and keep saying, “I can’t believe it’s not yogurt!” How would you sell the stuff on the list above? “I can’t believe it’s not lobster! Twice the fat! Twice the calories! And half the taste.”)

Did You Know?The Japanese eat ice cream made with squid ink. At least you know you’re getting the real thing! (Oops—cancel that. You can’t be sure you’re getting squid. Turns out the ink is sometimes extracted from its cousin the cuttlefish.)

You Look Lovely, but You Smell Awful!

Hair dye in a box for $10 is a modern invention. Years ago, changing your hair color was quite a process. A hairdresser slave in ancient Rome used these items in various combinations for their fickle masters’ tresses: rotten leeches, squid ink, pigeon droppings, bile, and human pee.

Just a Hint of Swine

How about a little bonbon post dinner on your trip to Madrid? Just steer clear of Mantecado de Artesania—along with wheat flour, sugar, and cinnamon, the special after-tapas treat serves up the delectable taste of...pork butter—a fat commonly used for desserts in the land of the sun. You planned to make a pig of yourself at dessert time, not consume one.

“a corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.”