12476. Food Facts

Cow's tongue is often sold with the salivary glands – the parts that make spit – ready for boiling. The tongue can weigh up to 2.3 kilograms (5 pounds).

12477. Food Facts

In Europe, some people make blood pudding from the blood of a pig or cow mixed with rice, milk and sugar and then baked.

12478. Food Facts

To make the expensive pate de foie gras, geese are forcibly fattened with grain so that their liver swells to many times its natural size.

12479. Food Facts

In England, lampreys – a fierce fish that looks like an eel – are traditionally cooked in a sauce flavoured with their own blood.

12480. Food Facts

In Central and South America, iguana meat is highly prized.

12481. Food Facts

The French cervela sausage is made with the brains of pigs.

12482. Food Facts

Roast dog is sold on the streets of Vietnam.The back half of the dog comes with the tail intact.

12483. Food Facts

Caviar is the eggs of the sturgeon fish. It is so valuable that an operation is sometimes used to remove the eggs without harming the fish, which then goes on to make more eggs. Previously, the fish was gutted while still alive so that the eggs could be as fresh as possible.

12484. Food Facts

Mealworms – golden-coloured larvae that eat grain – are farmed in the USA and sold live in pots of bran for cooking. The bran is for the meal-worm to eat while they are waiting, as otherwise they will eat each other.

12485. Food Facts

Sheep's eyeballs are eaten in some Arab countries of North Africa.

12486. Food Facts

Birds nest soup is a delicacy in China. It's made from the nests of a special variety of swift that builds its nest from dried strands of its own spit.The nest is soaked in water to soften it, then any sticks and feathers are removed before it is made into a gluey, sticky soup.

12487. Food Facts

In China, bear paws are roasted in clay – the fur comes off with the dried clay when they are done.

12488. Food Facts

In France, rats found in wine cellars were sometimes cooked in a sauce flavoured with red wine, over a fire of burning wine barrels.

12489. Food Facts

In the 1800s, naturalist Frank Buckland served meals such as mice on toast, roasted parrots and stewed sea slug. He tried to make soup from an elephant's trunk, but even after several days' cooking it was still too chewy.

12490. Food Facts

The Aztec dish tlacatalalli was a stew made from corn and human beings.

12491. Food Facts

Once, at a Roman banquet, a slave stabbed the stomach of a roast boar to release a flock of live thrushes.

12492. Food Facts

In Texas, armadillos are sometimes roasted in their shells, stuffed with carrots, apples and potatoes.

12493. Food Facts

The Akoa pygmy tribe eat elephant meat with a serving of live maggots.

12494. Food Facts

Truffles are a kind of fungus that grow underground in forests in Europe.Truffle hunters use pigs to smell them out. The best truffles are extremely valuable.

12495. Food Facts

In the Middle Ages, a peacock was often roasted with its feathers on.The skin was inflated first to stop the feathers burning, and then pierced when the bird was cooked so that it appeared as though it were alive when served.

12496. Food Facts

Some Amazonian tribes used to make a soup with the ground bones of their dead relatives.

12497. Food Facts

US Airforce pilot, Captain Scott O'Grady, was shot down over Bosnia in 1995 and survived for six days eating only ants.

12498. Food Facts

In 1135, King Henry I of England died from eating too many lampreys – a kind of eel that sucks its victims to death.

12499. Food Facts

In some countries where people don't have food processors or forks, mothers chew up food to put into their babies' mouths.

12500. Food Facts

Some Jewish people eat the braised udder of a cow.

12501. Food Facts

Worms steamed whole in a jelly are a tasty treat in China.

12502. Food Facts

In Vietnam, cobra hearts are a common snack. They can be eaten raw, even still beating, with a small glass of cobra blood or dropped into a glass of rice wine. The kidney is often included as an extra titbit.

12503. Food Facts

The oldest surviving piece of chewing gum is 9,000 years old.

12504. Food Facts

Eel skin is so hard to remove that some people pull it off with pliers.

12505. Food Facts

Camels' feet are cooked in a light stock and served with vinaigrette. Only the feet of young camels are considered tasty.

12506. Food Facts

Camel feet can also be cooked in camel milk.

12507. Food Facts

The Scottish dish haggis is made by cutting up the heart, lungs, liver and small intestine of a calf or sheep and cooking it with suet, oatmeal, onions and herbs in the animal's stomach.

12508. Food Facts

Australian aborigines like to eat witchetty grubs – the larvae of the ghost moth – raw and wriggling. Or they can be barbecued on wire for a couple of minutes, like a kebab.

12509. Food Facts

The original recipe for baked beans included bear fat and maple syrup.

12510. Food Facts

A restaurant in England recently offered snail porridge on its menu.

12511. Food Facts

In China, sharks' fin soup is made from the salted, sun-dried fins of sharks. It is like a bowl of glue, as the fin contains a lot of gelatine.

12512. Food Facts

People in ancient China ate mice as a delicacy.

12513. Food Facts

Roman feasts sometimes included the popular delicacy flamingo tongues.

12514. Food Facts

In the Faroe Islands, a favourite dish is puffin stuffed with rhubarb.

12515. Food Facts

In China, eggs are buried underground until they go exceptionally bad and are then sold and eaten as ‘hundredyear- old' eggs. In fact, they are about two years old. The yolks turn green and the whites turn grey or black.

12516. Food Facts

For his last meal, murderer Victor Feguer chose a single olive.

12517. Food Facts

The Air Force Survival Manual issued to US airmen explains which bugs to eat in an emergency for maximum taste and nutrition.

12518. Food Facts

The last meal of Oklahoma Bomber Timothy McVeigh was almost a litre (2 pints) of mint choc-chip ice-cream.

12519. Food Facts

Honey found in ancient Egyptian tombs has been tasted by archaeologists and found to be edible still, after thousands of years.

12520. Food Facts

If you eat too many carrots, you will turn orange.

12521. Food Facts

Fried crickets are a favourite food in China.

12522. Food Facts

The Japanese make natto by leaving soy beans to rot in straw until slimy and sticky – and very smelly.

12523. Food Facts

Some Amazonian people eat omelettes made from tarantula eggs.

12524. Food Facts

Iowa State University's Department of Entomology has published recipes for cooking with insects, including banana worm bread, crackers and cheese dip with candied crickets and mealworm fried rice.

12525. Food Facts

Australian supermarkets sell tins of witchetty grub soup.

Fact
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