Get a FREE one year podcast - What's the Grossest food you ever ate?

LOL

Gross food, huh?

How about a Roma pepperoni pizza, at $1 @ pie, back in the day.

Or ...

at McD's ... filet o'fish with too much tartar sauce

at Burger King ... O'Rings

at Wendy's ... that square burger

at Taco Bell ... the ... hey wait!  Everything's great at TacoBell because its marketing department RULES!  I love the ads, radio, television, internet.  Taco Bell has it going on.  The most recent one that REALLY impressed me was about the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet.

1. Coupon - Taco Bell Drive-Thru DietDrive-Thru-Diet® is not a weight-loss program. For a healthier lifestyle, pay attention to total calorie and fat intake and regular exercise. ...
   static.tacobell.com/drivethrudiet/coupon.html - Cached
2. Taco Bell's Counterintuitive Diet - ABC NewsIn most American households at least one person started the New Year with the resolution to get healthier and lose weight. Millions began diets.
   abcnews.go.com › Money

About that FABulous marketing at Taco Bell:

"The fine print says this menu is not a weight-loss program. That makes the fact they call it the Drive-Thru-Diet a little misleading, but consistent from a chain whose "Fiesta Taco Salad," with 770 calories and 41 grams of fat, is the worst thing on the menu."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/taco-bells-counterintuitive-diet/story?id...

A bee....baked up nicely in a frozen apple pie bought at the supermarket. I wouldn't recommend bees as  a part of the daily diet.

Probably the grossest things I've ever eaten  are out of sight and  out of mind. Like urine in milk. When I worked in a dairy for a short time, the automatic milkers sucked up urine/feces  from the gutters when cows kicked them off. The urine went into the milk vat and was duely pasturized and homogenized. Feces were filtered out.

When cows are hand-milked, as in small dairy operations,  that doesn't happen.

The Real Recipe for packaged pudding....add cow urine and milk flavored with a feces bath,. Stir frequently,  bring to a full boil, chill and enjoy.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

I had rattlesnake for lunch but nothing gross about that. In survival training we were supposed to eat some gross bugs and such but I always cheated. You can go a long time without eating so consuming a slug was never big on my list of accomplishments.

Some Norwegian food could raise the dead, Lutefisk just one of many.

Kimchi is gross to me but my friend loves it.

Eating my wife's placenta was out there but made sense at the time.

I guess for me the grossest thing would be green tripe which I feed my dogs. It is the unwashed stomach of a cow (All organic, grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free). My dogs love it, me. not so much.

Tofu

Roasted goat head.  My hosts picked out the eyeballs and brain.

Worst food?

Eating rice and curry with my fingers, while sitting on the floor of a filthy office in Holland, at about two in the morning. This after being thrown around by a boat off the Dutch coast.

Others were eating the same, while some (not me) were smoking dubious substances.

Felt sick for two days, and not from the boat trip!

-Nigel-
Webmaster

Many years ago I ate some large chunks of the Vietnam War, and it's still digesting.

Rocky Mountain Oysters, though I ate them in Kansas City.

Recipe http://www.chow.com/recipes/12893-rocky-mountain-oysters

I've had those.  They reminded me of deep fried mushrooms.  I'd eat them again.

The first thing that comes to mind is the time my father tricked me into eating some squid at a nice authentic asian restaurant. I remember it being rubbery, slimy, gritty, chewy and just not happening! :) - Jacob Dean

I've managed to avoid anything worse than school dinners. :)

That new KFC Double Down sandwich qualifies as gross.

In Portland there's a place called Saylor's Country Kitchen which offers a 72 oz. steak for free to anyone who can eat the entire meal within one hour... I can't say I know anyone who has tried....

*Since 1948 the 72 oz. Top Sirloin Dinner has been served free to anyone who can eat the entire steak and trimmings within one hour. Because of the extra preparation time required inour kitchen, we ask that all attempts be limited to weekdays only, before 9:00 p.m.

I once watched....... someone eating at a White Castle.

Turned my stomach.

-Nigel-
Webmaster

About 30 yrs. ago while on a date, I made the mistake of letting the girl order the appetisers. Much to my dismay she ordered escargot. I ate them as if I had been eating them all of my life and managed to fake enjoying them.

My first mistake was taking her to a restaurant which had escargot on the menu.

Louise,

I think you've asked for two things:

1) what's a gross "fast food idea"?

"The 5 Grossest American Fast Food Ideas."

I think PeeWee wins in this category (though, I've been looking for a chicken wing on a stick to lap him)

2) what's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?

Heh.  Probably Thom's got that one wrapped up, but I thought the description of mass milk production sort of made me glad I've become a water drinker.

Really, probably the grossest thing I've ever eaten was dirt, with a spoon, back in the day before I knew that it might not make so much sense  (on the one hand) or that, in fact, I was filling my body with its essential minerals (on the other)  I remember that 4-year-old event every Ash Wednesday.

I've taught a bit of this, or that, but I don't think I'm a school teacher.

It's a fun contest, and I think there are two types of foods that are possible.  Just sharing, Louise.

Hope things work out great for the Thom works.

When we were kids we ate grasshoppers, which allegedly tasted like fries when fried, not true they still tasted like grasshoppers, bloody awful. Same with mopani worms, couldn't get my head around that either.

Camel was pretty bad as well, boil it for 12 hours, cook it for another 12, and then chew it for a further 12.

reminds me of Lion King, when ... they were eating grubs.

Tastes like chicken. 

Hakuna Matata

I know what's different and out of the ordinary. However, I don't know what constitutes "gross". 

I've eaten:

1. Breaded and fried 17 year cicadas

2. BBQ'ed eel

3. Alligator tail

4. Rattlesnake

5. Rocky Mountain Oysters, (bull testicles)

6. Calf brain

7. Beef tongue

OK - after thinking about it some more...

...Jell-O

Gawd awful stuff. The texture is slimy and gelatinous. It brings to mind, (at least my mind), gnawing on a blood clot.

If someone were to offer me $1K to chew on and swallow a chunk of Jell-o I would have give it some serious thought. And odds are I would say, "Keep your money because I honestly do not think I could chew on it much less keep it down."

I have eaten some really bizarre foods in my life, but hands down the grossest item I have ever eaten was a circus peanut.  Not to be confused with a real nut.

My second item would have to be a piece of Velveeta cheese. 

Funny thing is both are "foods" I haven't eaten since I was a child. But I learned early on that no matter what something looked like, how bright, orange, and smooth, even call it a peanut or cheese, but if you add enough chemicals, it too is disgusting.

Pickled pigs feet.

In undergrad I had only been a vegetarian a few years, and was just getting so I was cooking on my own. I splurged on some fresh veggies to stir fry with rice and feta cheese. Instead of real feta cheese I decided to try the dish with the fake cheese stuff you find in the vegan section next to produce.

Long story short, it ruined my veggies. The texture of the fake feta was like rubber, and did not blend into the veggies or rice at all. It a left metallic, acrid taste which crept along the sides of your tongue and came around to the back of your throat making you want to gag. 

But because I had less than $200 a month to spend on food or anything outside of college, I made myself eat it. It took me days. I remember the only thing I had that could mask the taste at all was a combination of duck sauce and Chinese mustard.

The moral is that there are a lot of good vegetarian/vegan substitutes... but cheese isn't one of them.  :P

Octopus ... YUK... had it, hate it, damn  it i can still taste it PETOOWIEE 

Rotten Fish.

Some friends and I were at a local restaurant in my home town in Ohio on a Friday all you can eat fish fry in about 1776. We were proud of how much we could throw back at these all you can eat buffetts so we were really pigging out. I guess they though we had eaten all we could eat for $4.99 or whatever it was because the next round of fried fish they brought out to us was decidedly rotten. It worked for them because after one bite we left. Looking back I gues in todays environment we probably would think of sueing instaed of just leaving.

It was truely gross.

Choclate covered insects in mexico and mystery meat during my grade school days way way back.

At the home of some ladies I went to on a first appointment sales call.  They offered me breakfast - eggs, catfish and what I thought was cornbread.  It wasn't - it was fried catfish eggs.  And when I told my hostesses how gross they were, they said, "Yeah, we don't like them either, but our husbands make us cook them!"  The joke was on me!  

For Pickled Pigs feet.  You have to dip the meat in mustard.  I ate them all the time when I was a kid and loved them.  These days, they are too fatty for me.

Christmas cheesecake made by a friend down on the farm in rural Minnesota, made on the same breadboard as a few stray maggots.  Just one look, that's all it took!

I lived in Spain in the 70's and would go out to my friend's home in a little town in Toledo province.  His family treated me as another son in their home and his mother took great pains in cooking me wonderful foods.

On one trip, she made a big pot of hare - not hair - not rabbit - those leggy, wild things that ran through the fields.  It was awful!  Dark, gamey, stringy meat that I couldn't even stand to smell.

The whole family sat around watching me eat, so I just smiled and swallowed.

Lee

I've probably eaten a lot of things that people would think are gross...calved brains, sea urchin, Korean spicy tripe soup, etc. I have had the experience of traveling to many different countries. And, early on, my parents taught me totry anything at least once.

So I have to say, while I've eaten many strange things, I didn't really find any of them gross. I guiess I'm the all-time omnivore! LOL!

    A lot of people in America would sadly find all of your gross food submissions as fine dining choices! How about eating canned snails as a punishment for failing to meet a sales quota? I nearly threw  up over this 'eating" experience!

Care for a little milk with that?! 

Thom Hartmann's producer here...  Some of the grossest "foods" I've ever eaten would include 1 (and only 1) raw oyster, beef tongue, steak & kidney pie (before I knew that tongue & kidneys really meant a cow's tongue & kidneys!), liver and onions followed by raisin pie (thanks Dad!) and raw eel sushi...not all in one sitting of course.  However, the one that takes the cake so to speak had to be...a fly.  As a kid, I was addicted to Nestle's Quick...the chocolate drink...the more chocolately the better!  I'd pile in spoonful after spoonful until I had amassed a thick, brown sludge at the bottom of the glass.  One day I made my special beverage, set it down and walked away for a minute.  When I came back I finished drinking the liquid and was just about to enjoy the delicious muddy syrup at the bottom when I noticed something unusual...the chocolatey goo seemed to have more body than usual...not to mention legs...I ran to the sink and spit it out and was horrified to find...a fly!!!  Rather, pieces of one...ugh...I still shudder at the thought.  I got over the whole Nestle's Quik thing then and there too ;-) 

Those things are horrifying.  Haven't had one in years, thank you very much.

Other than the discovery of "free protein" as mentioned above by shawnt56, I have to say that a lot of the things listed are just what you dislike, but pretty tasty stuff.

Of course, we should all remember the basic thesis of MAN EATING BUGS,  a book about diet choices and why people who love termites are repelled by eating grasshoppers, and vise versa.  Culture makes different food OK and not, and it is a lot more than not eating your neighbors' pets.

I am personally not going to give Sea Cucumber another chance.  Of all the sushi choices I have explored, it is just about the only one that I catalog as "gross."  I don't like avocado straight, but mixed in it works.  I have learned to like good olives, as opposed to everything I met as a kid.  And the school lunch steam trays have all the horror of food made into torture.

I grew up hating ravioli thanks to Chef Boyardi.  Then I tasted it at the Union Hotel in Occidental CA.  Velveeta is the perfect metaphor for industrial food.  I have been served stuff on planes that does not qualify as food, but makes the gross list without challenge.

Everyone ought to hate spoiled food.  Industrial shelf life food product is the gross standard for the American supermarket and junk food stores.

One thing that is so disgusting that I will not touch it is head cheese.  I have an Amish distant cousin that used to make it.  I saw it made when I was a kid and was scarred for life.

Another "food" item I encountered was green hotdogs on the first day of school in junior high.  Turns out they were left over from the year before and had gone bad.  I did not set foot in that cafeteria for the rest of the school year.

I ate fish eyeballs at a Japanese restaurant on a dare once. Plucked 'em out with chopsticks and down they went! Seemed a little spicy, but I didn't chew on them....... much. 

The grossest thing I ever ate also has an incredibly offensive name, for Americans that is. While dining at a nice restaurant in the UK, I saw "Faggots and Mushy Peas" on the menu. Being adventuresome, I odered it and came to learn that Faggots are chopped chicken gizzards, lightly cooked and wrapped in cabbage leaves. Blekkkk! (Oh and the mushy peas are just that, highly overcooked peas.) The British have great museums, music and beer but lousy weather, tennis players and food!

pickles and orange juice taken simultaneously.

Dominos "Brooklyn Style" pizza.

It was very late at night and I was in a Chinese restaurant deep in seattle's Chinatown with my qigong teacher Dr. Wang, and a few dozen of his friends, most of whom didn't speak English. I didn't speak Chinese. One of Dr. Wang's friends- a rather playful-looking woman- said, "You must order this. Very special. Very good for you." So I did. When my dish came, everyone at our table- and a few people at adjoining tables, who had apparently been told that it was time to see what the American student is made of, watched closely as I used my chopsticks to put some of it in my mouth. A very distinct feeling came over me as I started chewing it. I'm trying to think what to compare it to. Was it like lighting a gallon of gasoline and swallowing it? No, not really, because while I don't believe that I have swallowed any flaming gasoline, I am quite sure that what I ate was hotter than that. A lot hotter. The waitress leaned over and looked at me with a big smile on her face. "You like?" I gestured that I was going to need quite a few more napkins to mop up at least some of the sweat that was flowing into my eyes and off the tip of my nose and my chin and onto the plate that still held quite a bit more of the unidentified deep-fried substance. Everyone in the entire restaurant laughed. One of my teacher's friends said, "Student David, you should not waste food, there is more on your plate! Then you must guess what it is!" So I dipped my chopsticks into the stuff and took a bigger bite. Then another and another. Within a few minutes my plate was empty and I was visualizing Dr. Wang giving me acupuncture anesthesia while I got an emergency stomach transplant on the floor of the restaurant. Dr. Wang took pity on me and gave me another food, saying, "This will cure the hot." And amazingly enough, it did. Sort of. Then they all wanted to know if I could guess what I had eaten. "Well, I would have to say that it was hot peppers," I said. "Yes, sure," said Dr. Wang, "everyone knows that, but what else?" "I don't really know, I couldn't taste anything else." Turned out it was pig's intestine. Other than an excruciating episode the next day that you don't need to hear about, I survived the experience. The next time I went out to eat with Dr. Wang, someone said, "Give him the same thing as before!" Not wanting to appear to be a cultural and culinary wimp, I said, "Yes, that was good, but so mild. This time could you put some hot peppers in it?" But Dr. Wang took pity on me, and said, "Eat rice, David. Rice and green stir-fry vegetables for your liver." I thought to myself, "You say it's for my liver, but my stomach thanks you!"   

Some people (tourists) call it gross, but Holland's traditional snack salted raw herring with raw onions (usually served on rye bread).

I think it's delicious though.

The grossest thing I ever ate was my last hot lunch in grade school.  Already probably too much information, but here goes.  I had gotten the beef stew, served on those institutional green plastic trays with the little carton of luke warm milk.  As I was eating the stew, I noticed a lot of small brown "peas" and some long very very thin shreads of meat or fiber or something.  Things came into clarity when one of the threads twitched, and I realized I had been eating a nest of those spiders we called grandaddy longlegs.  Some were still alive.  I had an "exorcist moment", and that spawned all those around me to join in, just like a Monty Python movie,  with plenty of screaming and crying had by all.

The worst part was they were going to suspend me for three days, for making the whole lunch room loose it, but at my mothers pleadings they just sent me home for the rest of the day.  I sure could have used those three days....