Things you eat that are not socially acceptable to eat

Nails

Halloween candy found on the ground.

I ate dog once

I had shark fin once.

guinea pig

Horse sashimi.

^^^wasn't that Col. Potter's expletive-of-choice on M*A*S*H?

I would probably eat a plate of just roasted chicken skin

otm

Seinfeld chose the wrong kind of skin single

Candy corn.

my boogers

maraschino cherry stems

I love candy corn

me too, had some yesterday

An entire goddam bag of chips

liked candy corn when I tried it, weirdly it is not among the US imports at any supermarket here.

absolutely love Kandy Korn

i really really don't like it

Love candy corn, but really only Brach’s. Others don’t quite hit the balance of waxiness to sugar.

Candy corn is great in small amounts (one handful, not a whole bag).

I buy one bag every October, it lasts however long it lasts, and that’s that.

I don't even what it is, other than a Captain Beefheart song.

I would probably eat a plate of just roasted chicken skin

― brimstead, Sunday, November 30, 2025 12:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf)

otm

Well then you know that it’s yellow and orange candy that tastes good. Beefheart otm.

Okay, gotta ask: what was dog like?

I vaguely recall that Beefheart is referring to a Philip K Dick book as well as the candy?

xp

Okay, gotta ask: what was dog like?

― Cow_Art, Sunday, November 30, 2025 2:29 PM

woof!

About once a year I open a can of Spam(tm) and fry up a slice of it to go with my eggs and toast each morning until it's gone -- usually about six slices to a can. It's too salty, but I don't mind.

Found my review of dog hotpot (NB this is nearly 20 years ago and I would never eat dog now)

The meat itself was pretty good. The texture was like beef, but not quite as tough, and quickly softening. The flavour, under the tofu, was surprisingly mild. I’d been told to expect a strong, bitter taste, but it just wasn’t there. It was just like eating a nice piece of beef, but leaner and more tender, and with more small bones. The ginger in the sauce complimented the meat perfectly. The meat came right off the bone and tasted very good – mild, sweet and delicious. The ex and I polished it off in no time.

i was in a region of Japan when i was 18 where horse meat is a delicacy unbeknownst to me at the time. Dinnertime comes and I order a plate of sushi. One of the nigiris was a lot tougher and chewier than fish. I ate it and the next day my dear asshole dad told me what it was. I hadn't eat meat knowingly for about years at that point.
It isn't/wasn't socially acceptable to me, but mb it would be for a majority of people?

Used to eat donkey fairly regularly when I visited cities in Hebei like Baoding and Shijiazhuang - there's a picture here but it usually looked a lot better than this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_burger

The off menu thing to do with Harold's Chicken here is make a skin sandwich

I've had horse in Japan and Iceland and it was delicious both times and I'd order it again no problem. I've also had raw pork in Japan and many years ago tried whale (yeah yeah judge away). It was all very delicious.

God bless a Brach's reference.

I love the grasshoppers (chapulines) that you can sometimes get with dishes originating in Oaxaca, Mexico. I've noticed that dining companions don't always appreciate the sight of them though.

I had some chapulines on a Oaxaca visit, they were pretty tasty and crispy. Though a couple times was enough, I didn't rush out to get them every day. The massive bins of them in the mercados is quite a sight.

https://live.staticflickr.com/4891/46666185971_07dcee42f4_h.jpg

1 lb. bag of twizzlers

i ate a fried cow udder once but it did not feel socially unacceptable because it was served from a street vendor who clearly was not out there serving weird unacceptable foods. it was just weird *for me*

it was very rubbery

once i ate an entire pineapple by myself
that's not socially acceptable and definitely not recommended if you want to keep your digestive system functioning normally

Me last year:

https://i.imgur.com/EC2206j.jpeg

i accept it

I can't believe how much negative feedback I get from people in the US when I tell them how much I adored eating haggis and black pudding. It's not like it's a huge step from any other sausage, pâté, or Braunschweiger or whatever. Most people I know who grew up in the midwest grew up eating Spam, hot dogs, Liverwurst, or baloney, and most people enjoy those, don't they?

In terms of taste and texture black pudding is fairly unadventurous, think the reaction is just to the idea of it. Haggis too, though it is a little stranger-tasting I guess. We had it once a few years ago and since then it's been my older son's favourite food, no joke.

This stuff is genuinely weird in terms of both taste and texture, and took me years to get used to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_blood_curd

lol as a lifelong mostly-non-meat-eater I accidentally ordered and ate blood sausages in Spain. tbh they were pretty good.

i've had blood sausage and it was fine. haggis a little less appealing, on paper, but it's still mince right? i've always been more offput by stuff like shellfish and lobster where you are eating Recognizable Parts and those are much more accepted

i guess eating bone-in chicken pieces is just as much that but i'm even more acclimated to it

Tofurkey has such an undeservedly bad reputation, but is very good.

lamb brain
pig brain
cow brain

brain, brain what is brain/

i ate a brain once at a special dinner with John Cale! i won tickets because i begged Sound Opinions to give them to me and threatened to send myself to the special dinner in a box a la The Gift if i couldn't go. :)

had kinda forgotten about that
weird times

I had haggis on Orkney Mainland, it was fine

Early on in the pandemic I bought live sea urchins from the back of a van and had to clean them myself which was wild.

I've had cow brain a few times but never pig or lamb. A lot of these things don't really seem like the thing they are when cooked in whatever style. I love kidneys tho the stink of piss when you prepare them can be a little unpleasant.

I would say offal is fairly socially acceptable to eat tho? Even some of the more determined vegetarians or vegans I know seem to think meat eaters should eat the whole animal, like on principle if not advocating slaughter themselves.

Foie gras I guess is the really unacceptable one here. Have had it and it tastes amazing but it's not a thing I commonly eat. Tho prob will have it again sometime.

In terms of less commonly found options, I was in Brussels a few weeks ago and the restaurant I went to had cow udder on the menu, but also a main course of cow testicles. I was curious I have to admit, but I'd eaten there before and I really wanted to have a different dish that I'd had like a year ago, as its memory lived on. (Not cos it was a cow penis.)

rocky mountain oysters

Peanut butter and a dollop of ketchup on Ritz Crackers.

I used to eat handfuls of candy corn all the time, but diabetes and a paucity of original teeth put the kibosh on that. I figure once I'm on my deathbed, I'll send myself out with a sugar binge.

the stink of piss when you prepare them can be a little unpleasant

there's a moment in Ulysses where Bloom pokes a frying kidney and it emits a faint whiff of piss

I bought some salty black licorice this weekend and forgot how much it tastes like pee as well

It's not so bad once they're cooking, more when you take them out of their packaging, raw. Don't do it with a hangover imo.

I'm just not into offal in general... not judgement of those who like it, but I'd probably rather eat Triscuits than offal

i really love it. it's sort of like seafood to me in that you don't get to eat it every day or very often, and it's quite rich and feels fancy. but unlike seafood it's not expensive.

yeah, most decent taco trucks have quite an assortment of guts

amazing on triscuits too

The thing about horse meat is that it’s actively delicious. In particular, I like Icelandic pony— which is likely even less “socially acceptable” because these are gorgeous and intelligent animals. When ground, it has the unctiousness of beef, but the delicate lightness of fowl (imagine the complimentary opposite to duck).

I’ve also eaten raw chicken liver, fish sperm sacs, sheep testicles, hákarl— of which hákarl was legit delicious, would eat again; the rest can fuck off.

I am always ravenous for uni and if chapulín (grasshoppers) are on the menu I’ll always order it

^^^^^ thread winner ^^^^^^

my little icelandic pony
served with a shot of applejack brandy

My local supermarkets serve a clientele that is almost entirely white middle class and they do not sell any kind of offal or other socially unacceptable foods. I often wish there were an Asian or Latin American grocery within a couple of miles of where I live, but no, I'd have to drive at least 7 or 8 miles, with no easy or direct route. Not worth it just to buy lamb kidneys, or whole squid, or calf tongue.

i love me some lengua tacos

is there an online option? i find my local butchers have offal but more on a sort of ad hoc basis, tho i guess i could ask them to order or keep things for me. but the online butcher allows me to look at these more unusual things and plan a bit more. this has helped me to learn how to cook them or make sure i had other necessary ingredients for doing so. i don't always like having to look at a counter in a small butcher's shop and make a decision about what to buy there and then, tho with some stuff i now sort of know loosely what to do with them so don't need a plan quite as often.

xpost

a buddy brought a big old cow heart to an outdoor BBQ a couple years back... he professed to love them but I think he did it to shock everyone

I had a bite but don't really remember much about it, kinda chewy maybe?

I got a deer heart from a hunter relative and made chili with it adding some beef for fat/flavor.

you could generally pass off heart as steak i think, when chopped up and grilled.

xpost

a buddy brought a big old cow heart to an outdoor BBQ a couple years back... he professed to love them but I think he did it to shock everyone

As ILM aptly demonstrates, some people love Beefheart much more than others do.

Entire apples, including the core

Think I've mentioned this before but a friend used to eat peanuts with shell in their entirety. I tried it and it wasn't bad, just needed to chew more. As a kid I used to eat sunflower seeds shell and all because it was too much hassle to remove the shell.

good source of fiber I guess

Shrimp tails fall into this category for me, especially when I was younger. Didn't know any better.

I've eaten head-on shrimp before when the shells are very thin and lightly fried. Obviously it was acceptable where I was eating it.

yeah when fried it can be easy enough to eat the shells.

hell yes to uni

used to eat chicken/beef heart skewers on the street in Peru (called anticuchos), so good

we get lamb kidneys from the local supermarket, think lamb in general is much more available in the UK.

When I'm in London I'll sometimes go to a butcher in Chinatown where I buy beef shin and chicken hearts.

chicken hearts are really good, either on skewers or deep fried.

I've had lambs brains on toast - my dad used to make them with bechamel sauce over them. I think I liked the bechamel more than anything else, I recall the texture as kinda mealy otherwise. Brains/kidneys/liver used to be a very common food in aus in the 70s as I guess a hangover of the brits/the war/ration mindset, but its less so nowadays.

People stinkeye me for getting veal, so that maybe?

Applebees

my mom used to make liver & onions all the time back then, I haven't even seen the dish in decades

I just bought chicken hearts and gizzards this weekend for a pasta sauce.

the one thing that creeps me out (as a fallen vegetarian who is now an opportunivore) is gelatin, I just can't with that one. I will go to great lengths to use alternates.

Grew up eating on the regular: liver and bacon (great combo), steak and kidney pie/pudding (ok, not my favorite), black pudding (delicious).

I just bought chicken hearts and gizzards this weekend for a pasta sauce.

I saw a recipe on YT recently that used blitzed chicken livers for bolognese. Something about adding extra richness/umami? Can't recall which youtuber it was. Probably Kenji or someone.

raw bacon microwaved for 30 second

does that work?

before one of my grandfathers moved into an assisted living facility, he was just eating whatever he felt like because my grandmother had passed away and he was, we will say, young at heart

he bought a lot of that microwave-ready pre-cooked bacon product and didn't have the presence of mind to cover it in the microwave. my parents confiscated and disposed of the microwave after a while, because it was exactly the horrorshow you would expect

I think he was living off microwave bacon and mountain dew

It works if by “works” you mean “tastes amazing”

As a kid I was overcorrecting for all the brittle bark-like burnt bacon that seemed to be de rigeuer at the time

living off microwave bacon and mountain dew

oh yeah, life goes on,
Long after the thrill of living has gone

Kangaroo

I mean, it is socially acceptable here (Australia). Have experienced non-aussies get a bit weird about it

Had some emu, snake, crocodile etc. too but that was back in primary school and I don't see a future where I eat any of those creatures again

If you're ever in Toronto let me recommend the finest liver and onions I've ever tasted (the foie de veau at Le Paradis, 25 CAD). I lived in that neighbourhood for a year and I definitely saw some ""positive"" effects of living in the neighbourhood primarily occupied by retirees-- primarily that the average clientele were on fixed incomes, and the average clientele would not hesitate to complain if something disappointed their expectations. That is to say, the majority of all establishments around there are cheaper than you'd expect and of higher quality than you'd expect

Oh I've also tasted whale and puffin, both while in Iceland. Both are disgusting. I love chicken hearts on a skewer (who doesn't?) and sheep brains and sweetbreads, but none of those seem "socially unacceptable", they're just delicious foods that are perhaps not for squeamish people

I have a friend who ate lion once. She's defensive about it, so I never say much when she tells the story, but I find it more horrifying than any of the stuff on this thread.

meow

it's the ciiiircle of liiiife

Oh I've also tasted whale and puffin, both while in Iceland. Both are disgusting.

Crying emoji

I had reindeer in Helsinki. It had the taste and consistency of stew beef.

I have a friend who ate lion once

My cousin's husband is a now-retired California wild land firefighter with CDF... he had a story about encountering a fresh roadkill mountain lion while out with his crew. They knew it was a fresh kill because they had just driven that road a half hour earlier. So they retrieved the carcass and called Dept of Fish & Wildlife to see if they wanted it. The reply was: only the head, as the teeth can tell the cat's age etc.

So back at the station they filleted the thigh or something and grilled it on the BBQ.. he said it wasn't that bad or gamey, almost like a white meat. I asked if he would eat it again and he said no, they just wanted to try some to trip out on it

I think chicken heart yakitori was probably the least enjoyable thing I actually got all the way down my gullet in Fukuoka when I was there a couple years back. But I also suspect we just hit up the wrong street food stall because there were a bunch of us and we had to resort to the least busy spot by the river. Canal? River. IDK. Go Softbank Hawks, that’s what’s important.

I’ve really been trying to figure out my real answer to this thread and my difficulty in doing so has led me to the conclusion that I’m generally squeamish at this age and also not venturing out into places where people serve up weird-ass shit. I ate fried alligator in a salad once. Wasn’t impressed.

Oh right, I used to catch and eat raw flying insects back in high school as a way to freak people out. But now I can walk three blocks from my house and get grasshopper and ant tacos from an authentic Mexican joint that recently opened up.

I think a fly threw into the back of my throat today

Flew

I ate alligator the last time I was in New Orleans. (Tasted like chicken.)

I have had liver from several species, prepared different ways, and disliked it every time. A few years ago I had sweetbreads at a French restaurant; they tasted too much like liver to please me.

I like well-braised beef, chicken, and turkey hearts and gizzards, and I miss being able to buy lamb hearts at my neighborhood Safeway.

This thread is making me wonder if food is the last cultural area where it's relatively easy to shock. Can't raise many eyebrows with death metal or video nasties in 2025, but offal still got that juice.

When I was a young kid, my mom would by large packs of ground beef from the grocery store and then break them down into smaller portions to freeze. While she was doing this, I would grab finger fulls of raw ground beef from the styrofoam tray and eat them. It tasted great and as I started to do this more and more, my mom got wise and told me I couldn't do it anymore.

I had alligator, which was not very good, kind of fatty and rubbery. I had rattlesnake sausage, which was great, though not wildly different from other sausages.

On the offal in ragu thing, it's basically an essential imo. Of course it's still nice without it but it's so much better with it.

oh right I wanted to link this immortal thread

insect sushi, insects as food (don't click if you're squeamish)

Checked out the ingredients of some bologna we were handing out at the food pantry the other day, and first on the list was "mechanically separated chicken," which was specific enough to give all of us pause.

Had some bugs in Mexico, they tasted fine. Iirc they were smokey? Had tandoori kangaroo at an Indian restaurant in Sydney once. Don't have a problem with but never crave sweetbreads. Once was at a fancy restaurant that served lamb brains on a tasting menu. We were dubious, so asked them if they were any good, and they looked at us like we were idiots and said "yeah, of course they are, why else would we serve them?" Fair enough, but they were nothing notable at best and gross at worst and we would never eat them again. Like melted flavorless marshmallows.

A friend of mine had a British father. My friend and his brother would always ask "what's for dinner?" and the dad would jokingly say "pig feet." Then one day he actually did serve pickled trotters and apparently my friend and his brother just immediately started crying.

Mechanically separated meat has been used in certain meat and meat products, such as hot dogs and bologna sausage,[2] since the late 1960s.

Sounds about right. Still about as unappetizing as they could make it sound.

I once toured the Vienna Beef factory here (so, hot dogs) and it wasn't bad. Part of the PR of it I assume was putting to rest the notion of big chunks of mystery meat being dumped into a shredder.

Tell me more about offal in ragu

I’ve made ragu a hundred times and never truly achieved something mindblowing but as soon as I saw “offal in ragu” I suddenly realized that it might be missing something liverish or kidneyish

When I was a teen, and into college, I had a weird phagia where I wanted to chew staples. Not fresh clean staples. Not rusty scary staples. Just, like, staples that’d been on a bulletin board for a couple days

And I would cruise the hallways at school and pretend to be reading a notice on a bulletin board and I’d use my nails to remove a staple (a lower one, usually) and then, furtively, I’d check to see no one was looking and I’d pop it in my mouth.

I would toy with it between the tip of my tongue and my front teeth. Then, entirely in my mouth, I’d fold the legs inward. Then I’d bend the entire length in half so it was a neat bundle of metal twigs. Then I’d spit it out into a water fountain. The whole experience would take anywhere from two to five minutes.

This was such a compulsion for me that I recall going to bulletin boards and seeing them obviously “picked over” from my behaviour the previous week, all the posters and notices hanging by two staples only

I sometimes have dreams about eating metal, but that's it

I was in a band with a woman who I caught eating paper. Like, a strip of paper out of her notebook. I was shocked and impressed and I told her about my staple eating so she didn’t feel alone in her weirdness

Oh I still take the labels off of apples and peppers, those little plastic markers that have the produce code on them? Those get eaten to this day. I always eat them while I’m doing the chopping

Maybe this is the thread where it’s revealed I have a major oral disorder and nobody else in the world does these things

I was in a band with a woman who I caught eating paper.

https://i.ibb.co/d0KVTvQf/how-do-we-feel-about-i-think-you-should-leave-v0-okie2v4z9mwd1.jpg

I have eaten paper - like the ragged edge when you tear out something from a spiral notebook.

Also upthread: shrimp shells and peanut shells, I eat 'em. Cellulose isn't food but it aids digestion; yer grampaw called it roughage.

I've had alligator and brains but Inl don't seek out oddness for its own sake.

paper eating... finally this thread has begun to soar

In high school I had a sip of the fluid inside of a Magic 8-Ball and I would not recommend it.

i wrap my boogers in paper sometimes for a special treat. j/k

i also straighten / bend small metal things in my mouth, mostly paperclips. and gnaw on ballpoint pen lids until they come apart, mostly bic. much satisfaction in removing the strapped-in little nubbin at the top.

I sometimes have dreams about eating metal, but that's it

― challopvious (sleeve), Tuesday, 2 December 2025 17:00 (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This guy followed his dreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito

The section on awards had me crying with laughter.

I've dreamed about eating glass too, which I'm sure people actually do somehow

I regularly eat packs of Taco Bell hot sauces by themselves.

I also eat Ketchup packets.

at the AMC near me, for a long time, they had cups of jalapenos that were free that they left in the popcorn stations and I would brag them and eat pickled jalapenos by themselves in the theater until my friend begged me to stop because she could smell them so heavily.

they pulled them and made them 25 cents a cup and made you get them from the concessions and I'm 99% sure it was because of me.

I used to destroy wooden pencils in elementary school, I was like a beaver on those things

ugh i can't take pencil smell, no idea how i'd progress to taste

strong sense memory of the taste of pencils eugh

erasers too

and that little metal thing that held the erasers. electric!

we didn't have tik tok back then, daring each other to eat various school supplies was all we had in those days of austerity

definitely ate Play-Doh

green was best

Look if we’re opening it up to chewing

no i swallowed that shit

that's what she said

Ok but are ppl swallowing staples and pen lids

You’d probably enjoy the new stranger things chips ahoy.

how do you think the Staples Singers got their name

There needed to be a marketing response to the Office Depot singers

I didn’t like chewing pencils or pens or erasers. Never did never have.

I still like chewing (and swallowing) the little plastic shitheads that connect to the pricetags of thrift store sweaters. The ones that are a flat rectangle on one end and a tiny cylinder on the other. I crush the cylinder with my front teeth and crush the rectangle with my molars

Lol i remember a kid at school relentlessly chewing on a ballpoint pen and ending up with a smear of ink down his chin.

I can imagine that inside piece containing the ink is pretty satisfying to gnaw in.

*gnaw on

https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lypdt7Q1cg1qacm3zo1_r2_500.gifv

Duh why do you think they're called staple foods

Tell me more about offal in ragu

I’ve made ragu a hundred times and never truly achieved something mindblowing but as soon as I saw “offal in ragu” I suddenly realized that it might be missing something liverish or kidneyish

maybe start here as gateway drug: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/dec/03/rachel-roddy-fettuccine-with-chicken-liver-ragu-recipe

after that i would google around and you'll find like kenji, james beard, i think maybe hazan and others even have ragu recipes with liver in them. quite often it's added at the end or blitzed. you get a really nice kind of bass note from it.

Yeah and the recipe I was thinking of was this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_IdAevyMY

First time I had foie gras was tucked into a burger without my knowledge. A foodie friend made it and the wife and I were flipping out over how good the burger was and THEN she told us the secret. It was so fucking good I couldn’t be mad about it.

I'd just like to publicly state that I'm not really into the truffle flavor.. truffle oil, truffle potato chips etc. It just kinda has a BO vibe. Maybe I need to try some different truffles

are you opposed to strongly aromatic cheeses,too? i've never had a real truffle but would definitely be into trying in a dish

Funky cheese: gimme. I've never had an authentic truffle, but remember a "truffle-infused" oil that tasted more like pine needles.

Haven't read the whole thread so excuse me if there are repetitions.
- Andouillette and other delicacies from Lyon
- Whale steak in Iceland
- Also tried the chapulines (ie. locusts), and possibly from that same stall in Oaxaca
- Mopani worms (ie. caterpillars)
- Ostrich burger is very good meat
- Of course frog legs in my childhood, snails, horse meat
- Chicken livers / hearts / gizzards
- Kapenta fish (ie. tiny sardines you eat whole)

Nothing really bizarre though. I like fruit / vegetables skins in general. As a child, I would collect the tomato skins discarded by others. If I find a fresh mango, I've learnt that eating it with the skin is delicious.

chewing gum

I have dreams about swallowing chewing gum all the time. Not sure what that means.

Imagining host Steve Harvey revealing: BOOGERS…OFFAL…GUM…

Ostrich burger is very good meat

Yes. Why unacceptable?

there was a brand of paste i enjoyed tasting on occasion in elementary school.

ha I was just thinking abt library paste

Add some jalapeño for a spicier paste

pâté is literally "paste"

Library pesto

Ate plenty of beef paste sandwiches as a kid.

I at loads of weird stuff in China, from regular stuff like chicken feet and "stinky tofu" to specialist meats like dog, donkey and snake, and oddities that people don't usually eat like fried silkworm pupae and scorpions. When I asked Chinese people what weird food we ate in the west they would say blue cheese and live oysters - I think most people I know have tried both of those, and when you think about it, both are pretty odd.

We had some kind of party where I worked, and had a few people from Taiwan in plant. One of them got some of a blue cheese ball on a chip and before I could warn him he ate it. His eyes bugged open and he ran to the restroom to spit it out (and rinse his mouth out, I presume).

I've eaten donkey sausage in Italy. I think a lot of salami has donkey in it.