12471. Food Facts

Soft ice-cream of the type sold in ice-cream vans is given its slithery smoothness by an extract of seaweed.

12472. Food Facts

Baby eels, called elvers, are eaten in parts of Europe, including east England. They are very thin, so lots are cooked, tangled together like spaghetti.

12473. Food Facts

Orangutan lips used to be a delicacy in Vietnam.

12474. Food Facts

In Mexico, the alcoholic drink tequila is often served with a worm in the glass – the worm should be swallowed whole with the drink.

12475. Food Facts

Romany people in Europe, and poor peasants, used to cook wild hedgehogs by rolling them in mud and baking them in the embers of a fire. When the mud dries, the spines can be peeled off with the mud.

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.

Fact
The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.      .. More >>