{"id":187935,"date":"2018-11-02T00:17:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T04:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=187935"},"modified":"2018-11-02T00:17:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T04:17:46","slug":"gag-rotting-fish-maggots-menu-disgusting-food-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/11\/02\/gag-rotting-fish-maggots-menu-disgusting-food-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Gag! Rotting fish, maggots on menu at Disgusting Food Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
FILE: Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden. (Photo<\/a>: Disgusting Food Museum\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MALMO, Sweden \u2014 Sheep eyeball juice. Bull testicles. Maggot-infested cheese. American root beer.<\/p>\n

These are among the items considered palatable or even regarded as delicacies in some cultures that the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden is serving up.<\/p>\n

The temporary museum, which opened Wednesday, clearly braced for revolted visitors to gag at the foods on display, most of which can be smelled or tasted. Tickets came in the form of vomit bags.<\/p>\n

Curator Samuel West said the exhibition is meant to entertain, but also to convey a thought-provoking message: what is considered appetizing or repulsive is learned and can change. He hopes visitors will be encouraged to try more sustainable food products that are being developed or marketed, like insects and lab-grown meat.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisgust is one of the six fundamental human emotions, and the evolutionary function of disgust is to help us to avoid foods that might be dangerous, that are contaminated, toxic, gone off,\u201d West said. \u201cDisgust is hardwired as an emotion but what we find disgusting is culturally learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of exploring gross food came to him with awareness that the \u201csingle most impactful way we can impact the environment is by eating less meat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s an exhibition that asks visitors to challenge their notions of what is disgusting and what is delicious, and the aim is to get people to understand there is no objective measure of disgust,\u201d West said. \u201cFor some, the revelation might be that ‘maybe insects aren’t as disgusting as I thought.\u201d’<\/p>\n

The 80 food items in the museum’s exhibit include a bull’s penis, frog smoothies from Peru, a wine made of baby mice that is consumed in China and Korea, and Sweden’s \u201csurstromming,\u201d an infamously putrid fermented herring.<\/p>\n

Visitors are also introduced to \u201cbalut,\u201d partially developed duck fetuses that are boiled inside the egg and eaten straight from the shell in the Philippines, as well as \u201ccasu marzu,\u201d a Sardinian pecorino cheese infested by maggots.<\/p>\n

Also included are items many Western visitors might not consider disgusting at all. Swedish visitors are surprised to find salty licorice, popular in Sweden but perceived as disgusting to many others.<\/p>\n

American foods on display include Jell-O salad, made of gelatin and typically fruit; canned pork brains with milk gravy; and root beer, a sweet soft drink which Swedes say tastes like toothpaste.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that by turning the lens onto ourselves, on Swedish or American food culture, we are saying, ‘We treat everyone the same,\u201d’ West said.<\/p>\n

West said he has managed only to sample about half of the more exotic collected consumables. Asked if he ever vomited while preparing the exhibition, he said, \u201cEvery day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the delicacies are so smelly they are kept in glass jars. At a museum preview last week, people took tentative sniffs of the displays before recoiling with grimaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal food in the museum setting can be a problem,\u201d said Andreas Ahrens, museum director and curator. \u201cYou have to change things pretty regularly. You have to make sure that it doesn’t start to rot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as West put it: \u201cYou can’t leave bull testicles out for too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

West, a clinical psychologist and researcher from California, was also the creator of the Museum of Failure, a successful showcase of products that failed with consumers. It also opened in Sweden and will be shown soon in Shanghai.<\/p>\n

Hakan Jonsson, a Lund University ethnology professor who helped with research for the exhibition, said notions of what people find delicious and disgusting are already changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of big groups in (the) Western world are all of a sudden thinking ‘Meat has become disgusting, something that I could never put into my mouth,\u201d’ he said. \u201cAnd that is something quite new in the history here, where something considered as being normal, and prestigious, being the thing that you were aiming for Sunday, and all of a sudden that had become a matter of disgust for many people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Disgusting Food Museum is scheduled to run until Jan. 27, 2019, at the Slagthuset MMX in Malmo.<\/p>\n

Museum organizers said the museum shop offers a selection of \u201cunusual\u201d drinks and snacks and promise a restaurant operating in the building is \u201cnot disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MALMO, Sweden \u2014 Sheep eyeball juice. Bull testicles. Maggot-infested cheese. American root beer. These are among the items considered palatable …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":187937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","category-travel","mauthors-aleksandar-ljubojevic","mauthors-vanessa-gera","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}