When we consider our food, we rarely give it too much thought, and in fact, we sometimes note how ordinary it may be. However, there are some foods so unusual, and in fact horrific that they may simply remove any trace of an appetite. While past Listverse entries looked at some undoubtedly bizarre foods, this riveting account takes culinary cringing to an entirely new level. We will look at poisonous shark meat, neurotoxic fruits, and Bullfrog salad….

A previous list covered the dangers of Greenland Sharks to humans, including Inuit hunters who may be turned over in their Kayaks. However, a more subtle risk is posed by Greenland Sharks – to your palate, and health. Greenland Sharks lack the ability to urinate, causing massive amounts of ammonia and trimethyl oxide to instead be processed through the tissues of these sharks. The ever enterprising Greenland natives have devised a traditional meal known as Harkal, which is basically aged shark flesh. Not only is the smell of the shark flesh nearly unbearable, but the consumer faces potential organ strain, intoxication and sickness from the poisons still present in the flesh.

Kivaq is an extremely stomach straining and in fact dangerous food that completely tops any other bird based dish. The Icelandic heritage food known as Kivaq consists of the fermented (some might say decomposed) corpses of small marine birds related to puffins—murres, and gulls. The birds are captured with hunting nets, and sewn into aged sealskins before being buried underground for up to three years. The birds slowly marinate in seal oil in the cold arctic tundra. The resulting meal, when finally dug up, is not only somewhat repulsive, but in fact, may be deadly due to the potential for botulism. A famous research biologist’s last meal was Kivaq.

The African Bullfrog is disturbing to consider but it is classified as a delicacy in the African country of Namibia. However, bullfrog flesh is infused with the potent toxin known as Oshiketakata, which may lead to kidney failure, muscle damage and even death. Recommendations for processing the fickle frog meal include lining a pot with special wooden planks, which supposedly “neutralize” the toxin. The poison levels are reputed to be lower at certain times of year, which make the food acceptable to the brave, or maybe foolhardy, if combined with the wood planks. We cannot guarantee that the consumer will not croak….

There are some foods which simply defy the imagination. Possibly the most counterintuitive food is Asian Bat soup, which contains an entire bat placed in a soup bowl after boiling with chicken broth. The bat is dissected with a knife and fork, and the broth is then eaten with a spoon, along with the innards of the bat. Hair is present in the dish, along with the membranes of the bat’s wings. The dish is rather delicious, but we are forced to conclude that it is very unappetizing to see an entire bat floating in front of us. The bats are also capable of carrying a number of human transmissible diseases, and the practice is considered unsustainable by many conservation organizations.

Star Fruit is the most seductive and innocent looking food on this list. While other dishes may be complex or disturbing, Star Fruit is simply beautiful. The Asian plant contains five huge ridges, which form perfect stars when the plant is served sliced crossways. After eating this plant, you may begin to see stars in your head due to the neurotoxins contain in the “fruit”. Star fruit also contains massive quantities of Oxalic acid, the same poison found in Rhubarb leaves. Star fruit may therefor strike down those with weak kidneys, leading to death in some notable cases. The author has personally sampled and prepared Star Fruit. The “bite” of the plant and sense that it was not meant to be eaten were strongly experienced.

A number of exotic Japanese and Korean restaurants, including those seeking to appeal to western tourists are offering sushi that is not only raw, but partially alive. Miniature Octopus are brought into the sushi bars alive, and are quickly chopped in two pieces, leaving the writhing, reflex operated tentacles to be served on a plate with soy dip. Because the animal is an invertebrate with a partially de-centralized nervous system, the tentacles continue to grap, coil and squeeze as they are consumed. In several unfortunate and eerie cases, death has resulted from the disembodied tentacles conspiring to block the airways of diners.

The sturgeon eggs known as caviar are a popular dish in Russia, while Escargot, or snails are a popular French Dish. Extreme delicacy entrepreneurs are popularizing a new dish known as “snail caviar“, which consists of the raw eggs of land snails themselves. The eggs are placed on hardboiled quail eggs, or served alongside roast vegetables and exotic salads. Coming neatly packaged in little tins, there is a catch to this marvelous condiment, which carries the taste of fresh Earth. The eggs cannot be cooked, and deaths have been documented from the consumption of raw snails infected with brain parasites.

In the Southwestern US, Rattlesnakes are not only feared, but they are raised as food by specialty suppliers. Proponents of “rattler rations” note that snake flesh is biologically similar to Chicken, due to the reptilian ancestry of birds. It is a surprisingly Southwestern dish that makes a trip to the desert very….authentic…In southeast Asia, eateries are actively marketing their own snake snacks in the form of actual snake burgers, made from cobras and other snakes. Because Snakes are venomous, rather than poisonous, it is perfectly safe to eat snake flesh itself, as the toxin is not distributed through the tissues. After filleting and frying, you would never know you were not eating beef or chicken.

The insides of the digestive, reproductive and nervous system of certain animals forms the basis of some grotesque, but surprisingly popular dishes. A number of dishes feature the stomach linings, intestinal sections and even testicles of cows and sheep. The “trimmings” must be carefully cleaned due to the sometimes questionable body parts involved, but can be surprisingly flavorful to the strong-stomached diner. The lamb testicles are among the most popular, and are served breaded, while bull testes come marinated in sauce. In Europe, a most distressing food known as “chitterlings” may be served. The content is nothing less than pig intestines. Sheep’s heads and fish eyes also appear on “nose to tail” menus….Risks of deadly parasite infections have led to stronger regulations on the consumption of entrails and sheep heads.

Telling someone to “eat crow” is not exactly far-fetched, or even insulting if you are in Lithuania. Crow Pie is a traditional bird based dish derived from the meat of Carrion Crows. The birds are hunted at a fairly young age, and cooked at a high heat in oil before being served on a plate of roast vegetables. The meat is rumored to act as an aphrodisiac, and ostensibly is used to “manage” crow numbers. Crows have served as a traditional component of Lithuanian food, but consumption declined sharply during Soviet occupation of the country. Crow hunters are pleased to re-vitalize the dish, and have driven hundreds of kilometers in pursuit of crow flocks. Concerns have been raised over the possibility of contracting diseases from these scavengers. Crow is not considered Kosher or Halal for these reasons.

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Abuse: A woman has almost nothing but Red Bull for months.

A New Zealand woman had some extra weight after a pregnancy and really wanted to shed those pounds quickly, so she did what any reasonable person would do, she started consuming almost exclusively Red Bull. She drank it mostly to suppress her appetite, but of course it also gave her energy without her needing to eat food. While the diet is very bad for her and has given her health problems, including a stroke, she did manage to lose a lot of weight very quickly. Apparently she really didn’t mean to consciously go on the diet, it just kind of happened.

Abuse: A girl decides to eat only carrots in an attempt to turn orange.

A girl wanted to win an argument with her roommates: she believed that eating lots of carrots could give you Carotenemia, and her roommates disagreed with her. She wanted to prove to her roommates that you don’t have to get a fake tan to look like an Oompa Loompa, you can just eat lots of carrots. So she went on a diet of only carrots and carrot juice. This diet is extremely bad for you, the orange skin itself is not thought to be harmful, and does eventually go away, but you will be throwing the nutrients in your system way out of balance.

Abuse: Nothing but beer and water for Lent.

An Iowan decided to try something totally new for Lent, and that new plan was to drink only beer and water for the entire period. The man brews his own beer at home and is fascinated by a group of Bavarian monks who had a beer they called “liquid bread.” Supposedly they would drink it during Lent because they were not allowed food. The man claimed he was trying to make a point about the history that booze has with Christianity, but more likely he just found a really good excuse to drink a lot all through Lent. Undoubtedly he spent the majority of the fasting period half comatose.

Abuse: Woman drinks ten liters of coke a day.

After an autopsy a coroner in New Zealand pronounced that a woman’s death was mainly due to her drinking roughly 10 liters of Coca Cola a day. Her friends also said that she smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, and hardly ate. While it may be somewhat amusing that Coca Cola is trying to deny that their product had anything to do with it, they may just be trying to avoid a lawsuit. And we can hardly blame them, lawsuits are popular these days and you cannot really blame this on Coca Cola—the real culprit here is a lack of self control and a family that did not get the woman the help she needed.

Abuse: Twinkie Diet.

A man wanted to prove that there aren’t really good or bad calories, at least when it comes to weight loss, so he devised a totally sane plan to get to the bottom of the question. He ate nothing but Twinkies and the occasional Doritos, Oreos and cereal. However, he kept the actual caloric content really low. It turns out that his theory held up, and he did lose weight. Unfortunately for him, however, just because you lose weight eating nothing but junk food doesn’t mean it isn’t bad for you. The key takeaway here should be that if you want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer carbohydrates and move more, not that you should binge on Twinkies.

Abuse: A girl in the UK eats almost nothing but chocolate.

A girl in the UK eats almost nothing but chocolate, ever. Her parents try to excuse it by saying that she simply “has a food phobia”. While supposedly she is currently in good health, it seems very unlikely that good health will continue if a habit of almost nothing but chocolate continues long term. They say she “eats 15 squares of cooking chocolate and 10 chocolate fingers every morning”. It seems she also eats the same thing for lunch and will occasionally have rice krispies for dinner, but not unless they are completely slathered in melted chocolate. The only other thing she occasionally eats is the occasional small bag of Wotsists.

Abuse: Mother allows daughter to eat almost nothing but Chicken McNuggets for 15 years.

Stacey from the UK had to be admitted to the hospital after collapsing at work. It turned out that she has trouble breathing, Anemia and other issues, most likely due to her diet. You see, when she was young she tasted chicken nuggets, and—being spoiled—refused to eat anything else. Her mother made a few halfhearted attempts to get her daughter to eat something else, but gave up. Her daughter is approaching adulthood and has hardly ever eaten anything besides chicken nuggets. Although the doctors say that if she keeps up this diet, it is going to kill her very young, Stacey refuses to give up the diet, she just doesn’t feel she can eat anything else.

Abuse: Parents nearly kill child with Vegan Diet.

A pair of parents in Queens nearly killed their infant, through negligence. And by negligence, we mean that they refused to breast feed it or give it any milk or dairy products. In fact, all they allowed the baby were fruits, veggies and legumes. In other words, they had already turned their infant child into a vegan. They consider “Veganism”, to be like a religion to them. The two parents were sentenced to five to twenty five years, because the judge felt that they should simply have understood that a baby is too young for a vegan diet and needs better nutrition.

Abuse: Man has liposuction, uses the fat to fry meatballs for his friends.

An artist known for shock art had a liposuction operation recently. As an artistic statement he used the body fat to make meatballs and served them to his friends. He felt that because it was art it wasn’t actually cannibalism. But this is not Evaristti’s first ridiculous attempt to get attention. He has also dyed an iceberg with red paint and challenged people to press blend when he had live fish in a blender. We can’t help but feel that he might do better in a room with four padded walls.

Abuse: Dutch TV personalities eat each other’s flesh on air.

Two Dutch TV show hosts were struggling to come up with something that would make people pay attention to them, and after much soul searching decided that the best way would be to eat each other. They had a surgeon remove parts of buttocks and stomach. They then had a chef cook their own flesh and serve it to them complete with side dishes. While many people have claimed that it was a hoax, the hosts insist that it was indeed completely real, and even show people the scars to prove it. It isn’t completely unsurprising for these two, either. Previously, the same network dealt with controversy over a program where people who were sick competed to see which one would win a lifesaving organ.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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As the name suggests, the humble cat is the main carrier of Cat Scratch Disease. Transmitted through a scratch or bite, symptoms including painful regional and lymph node swelling and papules, which typically appear within one to two weeks of infection—although they can take up to to eight weeks to manifest. The majority of cases resolve themselves over time and do not require medical treatment with antibiotics, although in individuals with weak or compromised immune systems, such as children and sufferers of HIV, treatment is essential to prevent abscesses, pneumonia and even comas.

Endemic only to Australia, barmah forest virus is a non-fatal mosquito borne pathogen which is closely related to the equally non-fatal, but more common, ross river virus. The majority of individuals who contract barmah forest virus demonstrate no symptoms whatsoever, but in those who do the virus manifests itself within two weeks with a mild fever, headaches, lethargy, rashes and painful arthritis and swelling—particularly of the wrists and ankles. All of these symptoms, barring arthritis which can continue for up to six months or more, resolve themselves without treatment within a couple of weeks. Although relatively harmless, in susceptible individuals barmah forest virus has been known to cause Guillain–Barré syndrome or kidney inflammation, both of which can be fatal.

Carried almost predominately by sheep, orf is contracted when the virus comes into contact with cuts or abrasions on the skin. If normal wound infections procedures are followed, medical care should be unnecessary as there are no major complications which can arise from the disease. The main symptoms of orf are red papules or lesions at the site of infection.

With varying infection rates worldwide, Bang’s disease, or brucellosis, is a bacterial disease commonly contracted through the consumption of unsterilized and contaminated milk or meat from infected cattle, sheep, pigs or goats. It may also be contracted through cuts which come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected animal. Symptoms arise within one month and initially include flu like symptoms such as fever, headaches, back and joint pain as well as fatigue. If left untreated Bang’s disease can lead to heart infection and liver abscess—both of which can lead to death—and also lasting symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. In pregnant women the disease can also cause miscarriages and birth defects.

Unlike many of the entries on this list, cryptosporidiosis can not only be frequently transmitted from animal to humans, but also from human to human. All infections result from the consumption of contaminated food or water. With an incubation period of up to ten days, the cryptosporidiosis parasite lives within the intestines of it’s host and can cause acute symptoms in the majority of patients, which can last up to two weeks. Symptoms include stomach cramps, vomiting, nausea, fever and dehydration. Treatments often target the symptoms rather the the parasite itself, and as long as one remains hydrated there should be few, if any, major complications. In patients with a compromised immune system, however, hospitalization is often required to prevent death from chronic dehydration.

Caught from contact with the infected feces of dogs, cats and foxes, toxocariasis is a parasite whose eggs can remain dormant within a host for up to two years before hatching. Once born, toxocariasis typically takes up residence in the intestines and cause moderate headaches, coughs and stomach cramps as well as a high fever should the parasite decide to relocate to an individuals organs. In rare cases the pathogen may infect the hosts eyes, leading to blurry vision and severe irritation, which if left untreated can lead to permanent blindness.

Probably the most well known entry on this list, rabies is of particular interest today as it’s no longer considered a total death sentence. Contracted through the bites and cuts from infected animals, rabies has an unpredictable incubation period followed by a rapid onset of destructive neurological symptoms, which eventually lead to death as the virus induces brain dysfunction. However in recent years the so called ‘Milwaukee Protocol’ has rose to prominence by saving around 8% of unvaccinated patients it has been used upon. That may seem low, but for a virus that once had a 100% mortality rate it is promising. During the Milwaukee protocol a patient with rabies is forcibly put into a drug induced coma and provided with high doses of antivirals. How exactly this technique works is unknown, although it is thought that by shutting down large portions of the brain it both prevents the brain dysfunction which typically kills, as well as providing more time for an individuals immune system to combat the virus.

Native to North America, Pahvant Vally Plague, or tulaermia, is a potentially fatal bacterial disease primarily transmitted from rabbits to humans via ticks and lice. One can also contract the disease by consuming contaminated food or water, or handling infected animal corpses. With an average incubation period of three to five days, many who have been infected are often surprised by the rapid onset of debilitating symptoms, which generally include a high fever, severe headaches, extreme weakness, lethargy, diarrhea, arthritis, chills, swollen lymph nodes and eyes as well as ulcers within the mouth or on the skin. Pahvent Vally Plague is considered a medical emergency which requires immediate treatment with antibiotics to prevent death from either dehydration, pneumonia or suffocation—resulting from respiratory depression caused by pahvant valley plague.

The severest form of leishmaniasis, black fever is a parasitic disease contracted from female sand fly bites in tropical and temperate regions of the globe. Infecting up to half a million people annually, and killing an estimated 50,000 of those, black fever is the deadliest human parasite known to man after malaria. With a untreated mortality rate of 100%, black fever’s symptoms are similar to to that of malaria—which often leads to a fatal misdiagnosis. Patients experience a high fever, blackening of the skin, ulcers, weakness, fatigue and anemia as well as spleen and liver enlargement. If left untreated black fever generally begins to attack the hosts immune system, which leaves the individual open to opportunistic infectious agents—many of which can cause pneumonia leading to death.

With a single colony hypothetically able to infect the entire human race, Q Fever is considered one of the most infectious agents known to man, as only a single Q Fever bacterium is required to be present for an individual to contract the disease. Although rarely transmitted from human to human (predominantly via sexual contact), the pathogen is far more commonly passed from livestock and domestic mammals to humans through contact with their bodily fluids—including milk, excrement and semen (There is a high rate of Q Fever amongst zoosexuals and zoophilies). Symptoms typically take up to three weeks to manifest and include, amongst others, a high fever, photophobia, extreme headaches and excessive sweating. Although there is a high risk of complications, including life threatening pneumonia and hepatitis, swift treatment with powerful antibiotics leads to a survival rate of over 90%. Antibiotic treatment for Q Fever typically has to be continued for months, or even years if necessary, as every single bacterium has to be eliminated fro the body to prevent relapse. There is typically less then a thousand Q Fever cases worldwide per year, and there is little threat of the bacteria mutating into something more powerful. Despite this, Q Fever is classified as a Class B bioterror agent due to it’s infectious and incapacitating nature.

Honorable Mentions: Anthrax, Avian Flu, Bovine TB, Cholera, Cowpox, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Dengue fever, Ebola, HIV, Plauge, Salmonellosis, SARS (Debatable), Streptococcus Suis, Swine Flu, Typhus, West Nile Virus, Yellow Fever, Leprosy.

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Misconception: French Fries originate in France.

French Fries are incredibly popular all over the world, but the origin really wasn’t French. While the French have tried to claim them in the past, the truth is that they were invented by the Belgians. While they were invented in Belgium, and still quite popular there, some of the folklore around them is a little fantastic. The stories say that some Belgians would often fry very small fish, and when they had no fish, they would make potatoes in the shape of small fish instead. The story may sound a little fantastic, but all good folk tales do.

Misconception: Chimichangas are a Mexican food.

Many people would name Chimichangas if you asked them to name Mexican foods, but they aren’t really a Mexican food at all. The truth is that Chimichangas would fit more in the category of “Tex-Mex”. However, this deep fried burrito does not originate from Texas either. According to recent developments, it is likely that the state of Arizona invented the Chimichanga, and they have been considering making it the state food.

Misconception: Egg rolls are a Chinese food.

The Egg Roll that we eat in many parts of the western world isn’t really all that much like the most similar Chinese food. The egg rolls westerners know was created by Chinese immigrants to America who were using what they had on hand to make something that would still seem like theirs, but was meant to appeal to Americans. However, the thick hard-shelled egg rolls are nothing like the actual spring rolls that you will find in Hong Kong or elsewhere in China. Spring rolls are much more delicate and light, while western egg rolls are much more like deep fried dough stuffed with lettuce and tiny shrimp.

Misconception: Nachos are a Mexican food.

While nachos were originally invented by a Mexican, they were made to satisfy the appetites of visitors from the USA, out of spare ingredients that were lying around. The man who invented them was known by the name “Ignacio”, which is where the name nacho comes from. A man named Frank Liberto eventually starting selling them at stadiums and the rest was history. They have now become a wildly popular concession food. The nachos often seen in western stadiums today are made with a strange cheese concoction invented by Liberto that would stay good longer and not need to get hot to melt. Basically, Liberto invented mutant cheese sauce.

Misconception: Sushi rolls are commonly eaten in Japan.

Most westerners think of sushi rolls whenever asked about Japanese food, however, the truth is that sushi is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is among those who are trying to emulate Japanese culture. Many Japanese people, just for starters, feel a little bit intimidated when they head down to the sushi bar. More importantly, however, sushi is rarely eaten in Japan. Less than a quarter of Japanese surveyed even ate sushi a couple of times a month or more, sushi is simply a meal usually reserved for an important event. And Japanese people would rarely eat the kind of rolls westerners are used to. What they usually eat is called nigiri and consists of a long piece of fish with a big ball of rice wrapped around it using seaweed.

Misconception: Spaghetti and Meatballs are from Italy.

When asked about foods that come from Italy, many people would think of Spaghetti and Meatballs before anything else, but Spaghetti and Meatballs is not a dish of Italian origin. While it was invented by Italians, they were immigrants in North America. But more to the point, in Italy Spaghetti and Meatballs is not on the menu, and not really something they serve. On the rare occasions that pasta and meatballs are even involved in the same dish, they are definitely not served together.

Misconception: Croissants originate in France.

Many people are under the impression that croissants were invented in France, some westerners even say it with a faux French accent in an attempt to sound sophisticated (in English it is pronounced “cruh-sont”. However, the croissant is believed to have actually come from something called the kipferl. While there are many conflicting stories about how the croissant came to be, most believe that it was by an Austrian man. Legend says the man was an artillery officer from Austria who decided to open up shop in neighboring France, and that after introducing the kipferl the croissant eventually followed.

Misconception: Crab Rangoon is a dish of Chinese origin.

Crab Rangoon for those who don’t know, is a cream cheese filled, deep fried wanton, with crab meat in it. It has enjoyed considerable popularity in the western world, but as you might have guessed, isn’t really Chinese at all. Rather, it fits into that dubious category of “Chinese-American Cuisine”. The main reason why this dish doesn’t make any sense as Chinese is that cheese in generally, especially cream cheese, is seldom eaten in China. Also, while the dish may sound good now, keep in mind that the crab meat inside is rarely actually crab meat. Much crab Rangoon only carries imitation crab meat, and some recipes call for it especially.

Misconception: Pizza is Italian.

While Italian’s do have their own version of pizza, it is nothing like what many in America would expect it to be. And the legends of who invented pizza, and where and how are very murky. However, it is important to note the differences between the two styles of pizzas. In America, pizza is generally slathered in tomato sauce with seasonings, topped with a ton of cheese and then heaped with toppings. However, in Italy, pizza is a much more exquisite creation that might disappointment American food cravings. They don’t always involve tomato sauce—some opting instead for fresh tomatoes— and frequently include fresh herbs and vegetables, some mozzarella and olive oil. While both dishes have the same name, they are strikingly different.

Misconception: Corned Beef and Cabbage is the national dish of Ireland.

With St. Patrick’s Day recently behind us, millions around the world may have eaten corned beef and cabbage in honor of the Patron Saint of Ireland. However, corned beef and cabbage really isn’t all that popular amongst the Irish, and it certainly isn’t the national dish. While Ireland doesn’t really have an official national dish, some believe that the most popular would be a bacon joint, likely served with potatoes and maybe vegetables. There are, however, many different great Irish foods. The key point is that there really isn’t any one national food of Ireland, and Corned Beef isn’t even all that Irish.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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Though it comprises just 0.2% of the United States population, the state of Alaska accounts for 50% of its food-related botulism poisoning. Most cases are related to the eating of native food dishes. Arctic explorers gave accounts of entire villages dying of botulism poisoning from eating contaminated meat. Prior to the 1960s when education programs taught Native Alaskans how to identify the early symptoms of botulism, so as to receive the antitoxin in time, the death rate for those who contracted the disease was more than 50%.

Most people today think of botulism as “Botox” injections used for cosmetic application for wrinkles. Droves of celebrities now have their faces permanently frozen by repeated injections of detoxified botulism. But botulism is an ancient and deadly food poison caused by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria. The bacteria creates a toxin in the body which can cause muscle paralysis, breathing difficulties, loss of sensation to the skin, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, paralysis, and death.

In July 2002 two people from a Yup’ik village in western Alaska came across the remains of a beached beluga whale that appeared to have died in the spring. They cut the tail fluke into pieces, and put the pieces in sealable plastic bags. They then shared the whale meat with family and friends. Within days of eating the whale meat, a local physician reported three suspected cases of botulism poisoning. A total of eight Alaskan Natives were confirmed to have botulism and they were treated successfully with antitoxin, No one died.

In one of the strangest cases of recent food poisoning, 13 people in China were hospitalized after eating snake. However, it was not the snake that (directly) caused them to become ill. It was what the snakes had eaten. The snakes had eaten frogs, which had been fed clenbuterol. All 13 people had eaten snake on September 1 and 2, 2010 at a local restaurant and had developed symptoms such as flushing, headache, chest tightness, palpitations, trembling, etc. These are common symptoms of clenbuterol poisoning. The cooking of the snake was not enough to rid it of residual clenbuterol that had built up from ingesting the contaminated frogs. Clenbuterol is approved for use as a bronchodilator for asthma patients and is also used by athletes as a performance-enhancing drug. Though it is prohibited, Clenbuterol can be added to animal feeds to obtain leaner meat. The frogs had been “juiced”, fed to the snakes, and the snakes poisoned the humans.

“Pruno” is prison lingo for “hooch” or any kind of homebrew made from whatever prisoners can lay their hands on. Some fruit, water, and sugar and “pruno!”, you have yourself a party! But sometimes you just can’t get any fruit, so if not, potatoes will do just fine. As in the case of a group of 2006 Utah prison inmates who laid their hands on weeks old baked potatoes for their pruno batch. Unfortunately for the prisoners, Clostridium botulinum bacteria which causes botulism, likes to live on the roots of potatoes. Eight prisoners developed botulism when they all drank the same pruno batch made from the potatoes. All developed classic symptoms of botulism poisoning—difficulty swallowing, vomiting, double vision and muscle weakness. Several had to be put on ventilators. One inmate who was spared took one sip of the pruno and spit it out it was so foul tasting.

Just two cyanide-contaminated grapes caused a nation wide “grape scare” in the United States in 1989. On March 2, 1989 an individual called the US Embassy in Santiago Chile and warned that some fruit being exported to the United States and Japan had been poisoned with cyanide. The terrorist claimed this was done to draw attention to the plight of the poor in his country. US officials took the threat seriously. Only seven years before, the United States had been rocked by the Tylenol scare when cyanide contaminated Tylenol led to the deaths of several people and all of the Tylenol in the country was recalled. The US FDA launched the most intensive food safety investigation in its history to determine if there was a threat to the American food supply.

Seasonal export of fruit is the second largest export industry in Chile. Thousands of tons of fruit are shipped from Chile and to ports around the world. Some of the grapes that arrived at the port in Philadelphia, PA appeared suspicious and were tested. Two grapes were found to contain a small level of cyanide. Based on these tests, the US FDA warned the public not to eat grapes and banned the import of fruit from Chile. This caused a “grape scare” in which Americans refused to buy or eat grapes. However, the FDA ban only lasted a few days and fruit from Chile was allowed to return to American ports and grocery stores. But in that time it is estimated Chile lost upwards of $330 million in exports. This caused a second crisis—this time a diplomatic one, when the government of Chile accused the United States of over reacting or even, deliberately tampering with the grapes.

Food safety organizations and agencies around the world test for contamination and sometimes they find it before mass outbreaks of disease or illness occur. Once such case occurred in 2004 when the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) detected, during routine food testing, the contamination of egg custard with lead. The health authorities determined the lead was in a shipment of corn (maize) imported into the country and then made into about 100 tons of cornflour. The cornflour was thus contaminated with lead when it was used in the making of other products. Some of the contaminated cornflour was shipped to Australia and Fiji and New Zealand authorities notified these countries of the danger. Products made with the cornflour were recalled.

The NZFSA traced the lead contamination to specific ship, the MV Athena which, in 2003, had hauled lead concentrate between ports in Australia. It then went to China to pick up a shipment of maize and carried the maize in the same compartment as that used to hold the lead concentrate. Obviously, the ships crew never cleaned the compartment, thus the maize became cross contaminated with lead.

Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), is an endocrine disruptor and suspected of being a human carcinogen. PBB’s are one of just six substances—along with lead and mercury—banned by the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances. They were also behind one of the largest agricultural disasters in the history of the United States. In 1973 this manmade chemical, used as a fire-retardant, was mistakenly put into cattle feed, sold, and fed to animals across the state of Michigan. Before the mistake was discovered thousands of cattle and other animals would be destroyed, farmers would march on the state capital and dump the carcasses of their dead cows on the capital steps, and thousands of people would eat the PBB-contaminated milk and meat.

It all began at a company called Michigan Chemical which made both the PBB (sold as a fire retardant under the trade name FireMaster), and magnesium oxide, a cattle feed supplement under the trade name NutriMaster (a great example of non-confusing product naming). Somehow by mistake, 10-20 of the fifty-pound bags of PBB made it to the Michigan Farm Bureau Services operation where it was added to the cattle feed instead of the NutriMaster. The PBB-contaminated feed went to farmers all around the state of Michigan. Quickly, after being fed the PBB-contaminated feed, the cows began to grow weak and their hides grew thick “like an elephant”. Veterinarians were puzzled and had no idea what was causing the outbreak of a mysterious disease in cattle all over the state. After nine months, the source of the contamination was identified, but not before 500 farms were quarantined and not allowed to sell milk and thousands of cows were destroyed along with 1.5 million chickens and thousands of pigs, sheep and rabbits.

Today, people who ate the contaminated food feel it is probably the source of elevated cancer rates they feel are taking place all around the state. All across the state, people who live near pits where the contaminated animals were buried fear their water is contaminated with the PBB leaching out of the pits.

In the days before the widespread use of air-conditioning in homes, summer months were often times too hot for cooking of meals. On July 2, 1971, a couple in Westchester County, New York decided it was too hot so they went for a meal of Bon Vivant brand vichyssoise soup. Vichyssoise soup is often served cold and the couple ate the soup right out of the can. It tasted bad so they did not finish the soup, but it was already too late. The soup was contaminated with botulism. The man was dead within a day and the wife poisoned and paralyzed by the botulism toxin. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public warning and recalled all cans of the Bon Vivant vichyssoise soup, 5 more cans were found to contain the botulinum toxin. The FDA shut down the Bon Vivant plant and recalled all of their products. Because Bon Vivant also made generic “store brands” of soup as well as their own brand name products, people not only stopped buying Bon Vivant soup, they stopped buying any kind of soup at all. A full “soup-panic” was underway in the US. The incident destroyed consumer confidence in Bon Vivant and it soon went into bankruptcy.

One of the largest public health crises and mass food poisoning events occurred in 1971 when seed grain, meant to be planted and used as seeds, was instead used as food. The seed grain had been treated with a fungicide, highly toxic methyl mercury.

The seed grain was shipped to Iraq late in the growing season of 1971 from suppliers in Mexico and the USA. The mercury-treated seed was dyed red as a warming not to eat it, but the Iraqi’s did not know this. In addition, the red dye would wash off, but not the mercury. The bags containing the seeds were labeled in Spanish and English the rural inhabitants of Iraq could not read. The Iraqi’s either did not understand or chose to ignore the skull and crossbones warnings on the bags. The confusion led some to believe it was food, and not seed.

Those who ate the seed suffered muscle paralysis, numbness, loss of vision, and other symptoms typical of mercury poisoning. People were exposed to the mercury when they used the seed in making bread, when they ground the seed and breathed in the dust, and when they fed the seed to animals and then ate the animals. People began to fall ill and die in late 1971 and into 1972. All total it is estimated that at least 650 died from eating or being exposed to the mercury-contaminated seed, but some believe the true number could be ten times that. An estimated 10,000 people suffered permanent brain damage from the mercury.

The story of how more than 200 people in 1858 Bradford England became poisoned by arsenic (20 would die) is an amazing one but which illustrates the need to protect the public with laws to regulate and punish the adulteration of food and drink.

William Hardaker better known as “Humbug Billy” sold sweets at the Green Market in Bradford. He purchased his sweets from Joseph Neal who made them himself. The sweets or “lozenges” were peppermint “humbugs” which were supposed to be made using peppermint oil, sugar, and gum. However, to save money, Neal and others who made sweets at that time would insert instead an inert material they called “daft” instead of the sugar. Daft could be almost anything, plaster of Paris, limestone, and all manner of appetizing replacements.

For this batch of lozenges, Neal sent a lodger by the name of James Archer to his druggist, a man by the name of Charles Hodgson, to collect his “daft”. Archer, not being familiar with the finer points of daft collection, by chance came to the druggist on a day when Mr. Hodgson was to ill to wait on him. So instead of the knowledgeable daft man—Hodgson, Archer met a daft-challenged replacement, a Mr. William Goddard. Unsure of where to locate the daft in the store, Goodard asked Hodgson who said it could be found in a cask in the corner of the store. Goddard found the cask and sold Archer 12 pounds of what he though was “daft” but what was in fact arsenic trioxide.

Archer returned to Neal with the arsenic trioxide who gave it to his experienced sweet maker James Appleton. Appleton mixed 12 pounds of arsenic trioxide with 40 pounds of sugar and made the lozenges. He thought the finished product looked odd and so did Humbug Billy who demanded a reduced price. Humbug Billy soon became ill himself from eating the arsenic lozenges, but not before he sold enough of them to make over 200 people sick and kill 20 of them. Authorities eventually traced the line of the dead and sick back to Humbug Billy and his sweet stand. After testing, the lozenges were found to have between 0.7 and 1 gram of arsenic (a half a gram is lethal).

The event contributed to the passage of the Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom and legislation regulating the adulteration of foodstuffs.

What happened in Pont Saint-Esprit France on August 16, 1951? Over sixty years later, we still do not know the truth. What is known is that on that day over 250 residents of this small French village were overcome with hallucinations and madness, which resulted in 7 deaths and 50 people being sent to asylums. Authorities claimed it was a mass-poisoning event caused by a food borne illness, probably ergot poisoning of rye bread. Ergot is a type of psychedelic fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that can naturally occur in rye. Once eaten, the alkaloids produced by the fungus can cause hallucinogenic effects.

There is no doubt the people were experiencing severe hallucinations. Victims recalled feeling as though “serpents were coiling up my arms”, that “they were on fire”, and that they were “shrinking”. Some victims threw themselves out windows, others injured themselves by trying to claw and cut out insects they believed were inside their bodies. People were put into straightjackets and chained to beds.

The ergot poisoning explanation is one of several possible causes of this mass hallucinogenic event including exposure to mercury, nitrogen trichloride, or other fungi. However the explanation that may make the most sense is the town people were deliberately dosed with a hallucinogenic substance—LSD. In his fantastic book on the history of the secret LSD program operated by the CIA called “A Terrible Mistake”, author Hank Albarelli puts forth a convincing series of arguments, backed by declassified documents, suggesting the CIA was behind the Pont-Saint-Esprit event.

A CIA scientist named Frank Olson traveled to this little town not long before the event happened. Olson was one of the CIA scientists involved in “MKULTRA”, the secret LSD experiments conducted by CIA operatives and doctors, on unsuspecting victims. Some of the evidence Albarelli found included a document referencing Olson and Pont-Saint-Esprit which was ordered to be “buried” by David Belin. Belin was the executive director of the US government commission investigating CIA misdeeds in 1975. Another declassified report was of an interview with a representative of the Sandoz Chemical Company in Switzerland. In 1951, the Sandoz pharmaceutical plant was not only located a few hundred miles from Pont-Saint-Esprit, it was also the only laboratory in the world, at that time, manufacturing LSD. The Sandoz representative admitted, “The Pont-Saint-Esprit ‘secret’ is that it was not the bread at all… It was not grain ergot.”

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Ammonium sulfate, an inorganic salt that is known for its popular use as a fertilizer, is an ingredient that is actively added to the dough mix by many bread producers. Your favorite sub will never taste the same after realizing that this lovely ingredient is used to produce more nitrogen for the yeast, creating fluffy airy bread. The more you feel like expelling air after your bready meal, the more ammonium sulfate is likely to have been added. The same stuff is used in combination with caramel to turn the bread brown. Create a stronger bond with your potted plants and share your lunch!

If the previous mystery ingredient did not make you throw up, this one will. You thought you played it safe by not getting your fertilizer sub from Subway, you went to get a bagel instead. Play Russian Roulette with your stomach and appetite and chance a bagel with duck feathers or human hair as an ingredient. You’ll never know which of the two tasty additives you will end up with, but if cystine or L-cysteine dough conditioner is an ingredient, it’s there! Many kosher bready foods contain just a spoonful of hair. Enjoy your meal!

Many food producers add just a sprinkling of silica (or silicon dioxide) to their frozen pizzas. Of course there is absolutely no reason to question the nutritional value or the amazing taste of a spoonful of beach sand, but the real reason why its used, is to stop frozen products from clumping together. The sand also hardens the pizza, kind of in the same way that its used in concrete mixtures. Why sand is used and not something slightly more OK life flour, is totally beyond me. Taco Bell just likes it this way. So does Wendy when she makes her chili.

When chewing gum, you and your favorite sheep share more than your jaw movements. The gum base with which your favorite piece of gum was produced is made of the oil derived from sheep wool, called lanolin. Of course most ingredient lists will call it gum base, probably because it sounds a little bit better than ‘ we squeezed 70% of your gum from pooped on sheep skin’. Let’s stay with the gum idea and explore the other ingredients. Carminic acid is a natural red food coloring. So natural that the beetles that it comes from were crushed and boiled to excrete the nice shade of pink that you are chewing on. Their little friend, the lac beetle, made your piece of gum shiny. Bubble gum anyone?

Your trusted can of sliced or whole mushrooms contains an amazing number of maggots. You get at least 20 maggots or more for free with each 100 grams of drained mushrooms! They can be maggots of any size! Now who would think that? Maggots don’t like to be lonely and are joined by an average of at least 75 mites. It seems that you always get a bargain these days. There is no need for active couponing, if you know where to look you will always get something thrown in for free!

You may get an additional surprise with your fresh fish. In frozen fish the nematode worms and larvae are still there but dead, eating fresh fish can leave you with some new friends in your stomach but don’t worry, these worms will only be around for 5 to 7 days. To make eating fish a little more exciting, you can also treat yourself to another catch of the day: a tapeworm infestation. These can literally stick around in your intestines for a couple of years and may grow to a healthy length. Salmon and cod fish are popular hosts.

Do you enjoy a spoonful of white sugar in your coffee and drink the beverage from a bone China cup? Double whammy! Bone ash is used to make your sugar whiter than snow. This cheap component is a result from drying, burning and grinding animal bones. Think again if you want a vegetarian cup of tea. Oddly, bone meal (ground bones) are an often used ingredient in vegetarian multivitamin tablets.

As soon as the McRib hits the junk food shelves people are bouncing off to buy this sandwich in stacks. You may feel like you could do with some wheatgrass shots afterwards as you have basically ingested every little bit of special meat that a pig has to offer, the restructured meat recipe contains mainly heart and tongue particles. But the bonus ingredient is azodicarbonamide, used to create foam plastics. So the next time you can’t join in with a yoga session because you haven’t got a mat, get your McRib out.

Many household staples such as a jar of peanut butter, contain a surprising amount of little dead critters. A jar of peanut butter containing 18 ounces of butter, contains an average 145 bug parts from various species. Apparently it is normal for a bag of peanuts to attract rodents, you get at least 5 rodent hairs for free in your jar too! I won’t mention the average 125 milligrams of grit, that’s peanuts.

If you are buying non organic milk, or enjoy coffee beverages with added milk, you can bet that you are drinking pure clone juice. The FDA doesn’t think that labeling milk from cloned cows feasting on cloned food is a big deal. They’re a bit worried that you may be spooked out by the fact that you are drinking milk from a Frankenstein cow and eventually will stop buying the stuff.

If you really feel like living on the edge after all these tasty treats, it’s time to buy a bag of raspberry flavored sweets, containing castoreum. We have mentioned this before on Listverse but its omission here (as a reminder) would be sinful. Bever anal glands have never tasted this good! These glands are removed, expressed and processed to enhance that very special raspberry flavor that can only be found in nature. Treat yourself on a bum day!

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But when the animal you’re about to eat is still alive when you bite into it, that’s a pretty different story altogether. Below are ten examples of animals that are prepared and consumed alive. Be warned—some of the entries can be quite graphic.

Sannakji is a dish served in Korea, and probably the most well known item on this list through videos that have circulated online. Usually seasoned with sesame seeds and sesame oil, the main component of sannakji is nakji, which is a small octopus. The tentacles are usually cut from the live octopus and brought straight out to the customer, although sometimes it is served whole.

The main “appeal” of this dish is that when chewed, the tentacles are still wriggling. But because of this, the suction cups on the tentacles are still active also, and so they can become stuck in the throat of whoever’s eating it.

Going into the sea to collect your own sea urchins and eating them straight away has become a popular practice in Italy, where they call them Ricci di Mare. Since the edible part—the roe—is on the inside of the sea urchin, there is a special tool to open them up—though it can also be done with a scissors.

They can be eaten with a spoon, although many people prefer to lick them out with their tongues. But given the extremely spiky nature of sea urchins, you’d want to be careful when ingesting them.

Odori Ebi is a type of sashimi that contains a baby shrimp. The shrimp has its shell removed, and sometimes its head as well. These can be deep fried and served alongside the rest of the shrimp, which is still moving its legs and antennae while being eaten. The shrimp can be dipped in the alcoholic drink sake to intoxicate it and make it easier to eat. It only dies, finally, when being chewed. Odori Ebi is quite expensive to order in a restaurant, because to serve the shrimp alive, it must be prepared quickly and skillfully.

Drunken shrimp is similar to the last entry, but with a few differences. Firstly, it comes from China, not Japan, and is not always served live. But when it is, it is always served in a bowl of Baijiu, a drink with about forty to sixty percent alcohol content.

Another main difference is the size of the portions: this recipe involves full grown shrimp, rather than infants. Furthermore, there would usually be around ten of them served, making this more of a main course as opposed to Odori Ebi, of which many people would eat a single serving.

By far the biggest difference is that the shrimp are far more active. They jump around, trying to escape, and the consumer has to catch it and stuff it in his mouth before it gets away. They can even carry on moving after being swallowed—provided you haven’t chewed them to death. Charming.

Noma, based primarily in Copenhagen (although it has recently become a pop-up restaurant across the globe) has ranked as the best restaurant in the world for three years now, so it’s not all that surprising to find that they have some innovative ideas.

Unfortunately, one of these ideas is their salad—their ant salad. They serve a salad crawling with ants, which are chilled so that they move slower, and which are supposed to taste like lemongrass. Chilled or not, the fact remains that there are ants crawling all over your lettuce leaves. Plenty of cultures consume insects, true—but not many of these cultures charge over $300 for an insect salad.

If, for some reason, you want to try this, I’d suggest that you simply pour some sugar in the back yard. Much more cost effective.

Casu Marzu is a traditional Sardinian cheese made from sheep’s milk. Now obviously milk isn’t an animal, so you must be wondering what this is eaten with. Well the answer is, in my opinion, the most disgusting one so far: maggots.

The cheese is brought to a stage that some consider to be decomposition. Larvae of the cheese fly (Piophila casei) are brought to the cheese to help break down its fat. They eat through the cheese, making it soften, and seep a liquid known as lagrima (teardrop). While some people remove the maggots before consumption, many people consume the cheese maggots and all. When doing so, people are advised to cover their eyes, as the maggots can leap out in an attempt to escape.

This one is relatively famous, as the video of it being made caused quite a stir last summer. For this dish, a frog is kept in the kitchen until somebody orders the frog sashimi, at which point it is taken out and sliced open on a cold platter. The sashimi bits are taken off, and then the rest of the frog is simmered to make a soup.

Presumably, if you’re ordering this dish you have no qualms about watching a frog be disemboweled alive in front of you and then cooked for your culinary pleasure—but as disturbing as that would be for most people, it doesn’t end there. For the dish contains, of all things, the still-beating heart of the frog. No matter the taste, there is definitely something more than a little demented about that.

Also a type of sashimi, ikizukuri means “prepared alive”, and is a fish dish. Generally, as with lobster, there is a large tank in the restaurant where patrons can go up and choose the fish they want to eat. That alone is objectionable enough for many people, but ikizukuri goes a lot farther than lobster in the cruelty department.

When the fish is selected, the chef will gut it and serve it almost immediately. What sets it apart from other entries in this list is that the point of ikizukuri is for the chef to slice off a few pieces of fish, but leave the whole thing largely intact. Not only that, but the bits that are cut off are to be done in such a way that the person eating it can see the fish’s heart beating and mouth moving while they eat it.

It’s almost as if this is a secret conspiracy to try and guilt-trip people into becoming vegetarians.

We’re probably all familiar with the concept of ying and yang, which in this case refers to “dead and alive fish”. It is pretty similar to the last dish—with one major difference. While ikizukuri is gutted, chopped up, and served alive, ying yang yu is completely deep fried, except for the still-attached head.

It is served with sweet and sour sauce, with the fish still completely alive and the head still moving. It is prepared extremely quickly, with care not to damage the internal organs, so that the fish can remain alive for a full thirty minutes. The reason these live dishes became so popular was so restaurants could boast about how fresh their food was. In more recent years, this dish has caused a lot of controversy, but it is still quite popular among some people.

The reason I chose to place this as the number one entry is because it’s a much less extreme way to wind down the list, and also because most people who eat oysters don’t even realize that they’re alive at the time (to be fair, it’s often difficult to tell).

Oysters are generally served live because they deteriorate much faster than most other animals when dead. When their shells are cracked open, they can survive for a significant amount of time. It is only when the flesh is actually separated from the shells that they begin to die; this is why oysters are almost always sucked directly out of their shells. So while this is much less extreme than most of the other entries, it is a lot more common. It is quite likely that many of you will have eaten oysters without knowing this—and it probably won’t be too long until you’re offered them again.

Simon is a twenty-two-year-old university student who likes to adhere to Irish stereotypes, such as drinking and loving the potato. You can follow him on twitter ( @simongireland), or like his extremely long tongue on Facebook to see if he can break the world record.

The post 10 Animals That People Eat Alive appeared first on Listverse.

There’s nothing wrong with eating horse meat: it’s disgusting, sure, but it’s also a very lean and nutritious meat. But if you were to buy something that advertised itself as “beef” and found that you were actually eating scabby ground-up Romanian horses and donkeys—you’d probably flip your lid.

Which is exactly what people in England did when they found out that local supermarkets had been inadvertently stocking products in which horse meat had been used as a substitute for beef. Then again, considering what British people normally eat, they probably got off easy.

Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Bart goes and lives in a French vineyard and discovers that the evil Frenchmen who live there are lacing their wine with anti-freeze? Well, it was based on a true story—in Austria.

By lacing the wine with diethylene glycol (a common ingredient in anti-freeze), wine makers were able to make up for a poor growing season of sub-par grapes, since seasoned wine lovers apparently preferred the taste of poison to sour grapes. Though no deaths were reported, the wine industry in the area was crippled—and when government officials poured thousands of gallons of the poison down into the sewers, they killed a bunch of fish in a neighboring town. Proof, if any be necessary, that fish just can’t handle their drink.

Even during the height of prohibition, people still managed to get drunk, and probably enjoyed it more than if they had been allowed to do so. A popular method of the time was to drink certain alcohol-based medical tonics, diluted with whatever mixer they had on hand.

Jamaica Jake was one such tonic: though marketed as a headache cure, it for some reason had a seventy percent alcohol content. The supplier, in an attempt to keep up with demand and cut costs, laced the tonic with tri-orthocresyl phosphate, which caused paralysis in thousands of people drinking the product. Back in those days, it seems that you didn’t need to test the stuff designed to make people feel better.

In China, so-called “gutter oil” is exactly what it sounds like: it’s oil that has been scooped out of the gutter or sewer to be reused. Far from being used in shady, back-alley kitchens, the oil has reportedly been found in such unlikely products as antibiotics. The demand for the oil grew so lucrative that some people opted to make it themselves by rendering decomposing animal fat and organs. And they call America the land of opportunity.

Elixir sulfanilamide was an improperly prepared medicine that poisoned and killed nearly one hundred people. By improperly prepared, we mean that the chemist who made it chocked it full of diethylene glycol, which already sounds pretty damn dangerous if you ask us. But he then crammed in loads of raspberry flavoring, after which the pharmaceutical company said, “yeah, that’ll sell” and put it on shelves.

When people started dying in horrible pain, fingers were pointed—and when asked if he’d accept any culpability for the deaths, the the owner of the company basically said “no.” The chemist who mixed it, on the other hand, committed suicide—which kind of lends itself to the theory that it was perhaps somebody’s fault.

Selling horse under the label of “beef” is one thing—but this next story would be genius if it wasn’t so disgusting. A Swedish company, upon noticing the unusual moistness of their latest beef delivery, decided to test it and discovered that they’d actually been sent pork that had been dyed red to make it look like beef.

Along with the obvious threat of contamination by injecting the meat with chemicals, it’s also worth noting that there’s a significant part of the population that can’t eat pork for religious reasons. Which means that it’s a very real possibility that a less-than-honest company out there may have actually sent someone to hell. Do we even have the ability to prosecute someone for that?

Though people were able to get nice and drunk during prohibition, it’s important to note that the government didn’t want them to. Which is presumably why they allegedly poisoned the hell out of as much alcohol as they could lay their hands on.

Known as the “chemist’s war of prohibition,” the era reportedly saw alcohol laced with everything from kerosene to mercury—an act which is said to have led to the deaths of around ten thousand people. People back then didn’t have an addiction to alcohol—they had a commitment to it.

Rotting meat is probably one of the most off-putting things under the sun. But it seems that where some people see disease, other people see dollar signs.

The story goes that in Britain, just after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, gangs bought up thousands upon thousands of diseased carcasses on the cheap. Then they simply cut off the nasty bits (like cancerous growths and weeping abscesses)—and as soon as they had reasonably acceptable-looking cuts of meat, they’d dip them in salt and bleach, then sell them on. The buyer is unknown, but Ronald McDonald sure does look pretty pleased with himself lately.

Lean meat powder is a banned chemical used in animal raising that you probably shouldn’t consume, mainly because it makes people violently ill when they eat the meat of whatever animal on which it was used.

In China (where else?) it was noted that hundreds of pigs were contaminated with this substance, which could have been incredibly dangerous for anyone consuming it. Especially if that person decided to order pork soup from a particularly cheap, gutter-oil-buying restaurant. Then again, that’s not the worst thing they’ve done to food in China—not by a long shot:

The stuff we shove down the throats of babies is very heavily regulated, because people like babies and generally don’t want them to die. Which is why this story of contaminated milk powder is China is particularly harrowing.

Thought it’s not clear if the melamine present in the powder was included deliberately, what is certain is that the company selling it knew months beforehand but decided not to tell anyone. Thousands of babies were affected; somebody had refused to think of the children.

Feel free to follow Karl on Twitter and if you’re so inclined you can read more things he’s written on his own website.

The post 10 Disgusting Things Done to Food and Drink appeared first on Listverse.

In most jobs, screwing up big time means losing a client, back-chatting a customer or accidentally emailing your MLP/Jersey Shore slash fiction to the entire board of directors. If you work in a hospital or pharmacy, chances are it means something a lot worse.

Take the case of pregnant Mareena Silva. After visiting her pharmacist for some antibiotics, she took one only to realize she’d just swallowed a home-abortion drug. Luckily her unborn kid survived. Others haven’t got off so lightly: Amy Francis went into a UK hospital to have a kidney removed, only to die when the surgeon set about extracting her liver. In Italy a mix up between an oxygen and anesthetic tube wound up killing eight people, while an Australian hospital tagged an elderly woman as a middle-aged man, killed her with the wrong prescription then tried to cover it up. According to the Institute of Medicine, mistakes kill around 44,000 US patients a year—a terrifying number that becomes even worse when you realize it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every single day.

Just like politics, the medical profession comes with perks. And by perks I mean ‘bribes’. Seriously: just last year GSK were whacked with a $3bn fine for giving doctors kickbacks to promote their products. And we’re not talking a measly few bucks here and there—doctors who went along for the ride could expect to be flown to five star hotels in places like Bermuda and treated to luxury daytrips while there. Nor was this a one-off: in 2011, Johnson and Johnson was caught throwing money at Greek doctors in an evident misunderstanding of South-European economics, while drug supergiant Pfizer may have even bribed the Chinese government. Currently, at least another four major Pharma companies are facing trial for similar offences—including some of the biggest names in the business.

Most businesses have some aspect of performance-related pay. After all, targets speed up productivity, get lazy asses in gear and improve performance. What’s not to like?

Well, according to this story, government-imposed targets at one UK hospital were so damaging they were actually killing patients. By piling pressure on doctors and managers to achieve unrealistic goals, bosses were simply ensuring patient safety took a back seat—with predictable consequences. In 2008, a Royal College of Nursing survey concluded 78% of nurses felt patient care was compromised by the need to hit these impossible figures, with a further 93% saying they felt under ‘undue pressure’. If there’s one person in your life you really don’t want stressed out to the point of distraction, it’s the one who’s meant to be saving it.

When we get a virus or an infection, most of us go to our doctor, get a fistful of antibiotics and knock it on the head. Simple.

Only it really isn’t. See, antibiotics aren’t big money-spinners, meaning those bribe-factories up there aren’t interested in investing in new ones. Then you have an utterly terrifying phenomenon known as ‘antibiotic resistance’. Put simply, the super-fast process of evolution in bacteria allows strains with resistance to certain drugs to multiply until nearly all of them are immune. Then we’re in trouble: all those nasty Victorian illnesses we thought we wiped out a century or so ago might come back with a vengeance. Already, gonorrhoea and E-coli are shrugging off antibiotics like it ain’t no thang and it might be about to get a whole lot worse. Gee, thanks Darwin.

We all know the scene: the patient lies on the hospital bed, near death’s door. The doctor quietly asks if they would like to try a new ‘experimental’ drug that, though untested, just might work. The tired patient nods. After all, it couldn’t possibly make them worse.

Uh, yeah, about that – turns out there’s a big difference between ending your life in hopeless misery and hopeless agony. In a wide-ranging study, the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that less than a third of experimental drugs had a beneficial effect on the patient, while two thirds resulted in at least one severe or life-threatening side effect. You may be dying anyway, but taking these drugs is more likely to speed the process up than save your life.

We like to think of surgery as a last resort, something hospitals do only when they have to. The idea of someone knocking us out and digging around inside our body for no discernible reason is more than many of us can bear. So look away now.

One report found that 4,000 women a year are opened up to treat benign breast tumors that would never have harmed them in the first place. Given the trauma that often results from such invasive surgery, those numbers aren’t great. If you think that’s bad, wait till you hear about (ex) Dr Ian Paterson: according to this story, he stands accused of opening up and mutilating 450 women because psychosis, that’s why. Equally depressing is this recent story on a Kentucky hospital being sued by 400 patients for performing surgery with the sole intention of raking in the subsequent insurance payouts.

What could possibly be worse than needless surgery? How about neglect so bad it borders on abuse?

A recent report into deaths in UK hospitals found so many instances of death-by-neglect it would be impossible to list them all here. One 22 year old, Kane Gorry, managed to die of thirst in his bed after staff refused to give him water; a thought so awful it could only be topped by the knowledge that 110 others suffered a similar fate last year, while another 43 starved to death. Let me repeat that these are people in hospitals, in developed nations, under supposedly round the clock care. Then there’s the systematic ill-treatment of elderly patients—ranging from bullying to harassment to outright abuse—with complaints totaling over 36,000 in 2012 alone. Keep in mind these are up-to-date figures—meaning that, in 2013, thousands of scumbags still look at vulnerable people in their care, and can think of nothing but hurting them.

Even when not being actively neglectful, some doctors endanger patients through sheer laziness. Long Island North Shore University Hospital was found a few years back to have a hand washing rate of ten percent. Keep in mind we’ve known since 1847 that by washing their hands, doctors can reduce basically all of the death. Wait, it gets worse. According to a report, hundreds of doctors and nurses are neglecting to check routine things like patient blood pressure, either because they forget, or simply can’t be assed. Things have gotten so bad where basic care is concerned, that doctors in a Worcestershire hospital were forced to prescribe tap water just to make sure the nurses bothered to give patients the fluid they needed to survive. I would go on, but honestly some of these stories are just too depressing.

As we all know from hospital dramas and endless reruns of M*A*S*H, sometimes there’s just no way to save a patient. They might be brain dead, in a coma from which they’ll never recover or otherwise impossible to save—and taking up much needed beds. With a heavy heart, doctors consult the family then pull the switch, knowing they did the best they could.

Except for the times they totally didn’t. According to a very scary UK story, some hospitals are pushing patients onto a ‘path for death’ designed to help the terminally ill before they’re ready for it. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, six doctors claimed this procedure was sometimes used to reduce strain on hospital resources, meaning there are medical professionals who put their downtime watching House above their duty to save your life. One disabled member of the UK House of Lords was even told by doctors on a hospital visit that she ‘wouldn’t want to be resuscitated’—something most of us would probably rather decide for ourselves.

After all that, it’s easy to forget that not every doctor is a cross between Jack Kevorkian and Genghis Khan. Some just happen to be genuinely decent people who want nothing more than to help patients. Too bad the rest of their profession is stopping them.

Thanks to things called gagging orders, doctors are often restrained from speaking out against colleagues or hospitals—even if the seats of said hospital are literally dripping in blood. In some states it’s even worse: according to this story, NY doctors are now asking patients to sign these orders—meaning the bozo who endangers your life can take you to court if you try to warn anyone.

But what about those doctors who speak out anyway? Yeah, most of them get their asses handed to them. Out of 26 whistleblowers surveyed in that link, 13 reported significant stress-related illnesses, while 8 lost everything. Of the 2 who managed to cling to their careers, both claimed that—were they given the chance to do it over again—they’d just take the damned bribe. Dr Stephen Bolsin was the only person to speak out against a Bristol hospital that was systematically killing children and was hounded out the country for his effort. Simply put, the system not only doesn’t reward whistleblowers, it actively destroys them, meaning fewer come forward and we remain at risk. Good luck not thinking about that next time you go for a check-up.

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Fact: Chocolate farmers are basically slaves.

As we mentioned, many of us enjoy chocolate every day. Unfortunately, we are about to make you feel really guilty about it. Have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? Most of it comes from the labor of children, it is believed that in Africa alone, somewhere in the range of 56–72 million children work on chocolate farms. These children are often tricked into working or sold into slavery outright and end up living out their lives working on these farms for the profit of others. The children who have it better live on bananas and corn paste. The unlucky ones are regularly flogged like animals.

One child interviewed said that he was tricked into believing he would be earning money to help his family, but that the closest he gets to compensation are the days he is not beaten with a bicycle chain or the branch from a Cacao tree. The child has never even had occasion to try the food he spends his life slaving away to produce. Some would suggest that we buy Fair Trade, the problem is that Fair Trade does little if anything to help.

Fact: Many chocolate confections only contain a very small percentage of actual chocolate.

According to Hershey there is no standard in the United States for Dark Chocolate, however, there are standards for Milk Chocolate and Semisweet chocolate. In some countries the standards are different. The UK is said to have slightly higher chocolate contents in most of their confections. In the USA, however, Milk Chocolate only has to contain about ten percent chocolate liquor, whereas Semisweet chocolate has to contain at least thirty-five percent chocolate liquor. Milk chocolate, which has slightly different rules, must contain at least twenty percent Cocoa Butter.

Fact: Milk chocolate is a fairly recent invention.

Dark chocolate has gained popularity in recent years; however, it is still not nearly as popular as the milk variety. We are often exposed to semisweet chocolate when baking delicious cookies, but milk chocolate is still by far the most popular. The interesting thing about it is that milk chocolate wasn’t even invented until 1875. The first European invention in regards to chocolate involved removing about half of the Cocoa Butter, then crushing what remained and mixing it with salts to mitigate the bitter taste, this was known as Dutch Cocoa. Milk chocolate was discovered by taking this powder and mixing it with sweetened condensed milk, which had recently been invented by a man named Nestle. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Fact: The Aztecs and Maya’s used chocolate as currency.

The history of chocolate pretty much begins with the Mayans. Cacao beans were so valuable to them that they were used as currency. It is said that ten beans could buy a rabbit, or even a prostitute. And one hundred beans were enough to buy a slave, though slavery in those days was a much different institution in many ways. When the Aztecs came along they adopted these traditions and continued using cacao beans as currency. People would buy everything from livestock, to food and tools with the beans and some people actually created counterfeit beans using clay. Generally only the richer people drank chocolate regularly though, because drinking your money is expensive.

Fact: Chocolate is high in antioxidants and is actually really good for you.

Recent research has shown that chocolate contains flavonoids. The particular flavonoids contained in chocolate are called flavonols and procyanidins, which are good for your heart and assist in preventing the onset of cancer. However, it is important to note that the higher the chocolate content the better it is for you, some studies have shown that only dark chocolate really give you a significant boost in antioxidants in moderate doses. Researchers found that dark chocolate was great for reducing blood pressure, but that washing it down with milk, even if you didn’t eat milk chocolate, would mess with the beneficial effects.

Fact: Chocolate doesn’t just contain caffeine but also a lesser known drug called Theobromine.

Chocolate contains a higher portion of Theobromine than anything in nature. Theobromine is similar to Caffeine, but it has a milder stimulant effect. Some preliminary research has shown that it may also be helpful for suppressing coughs. While Theobromine has long been used to treat issues such as blood pressure, and is being tested for its use in fighting cancer, you can have too much of a good thing. At high levels Theobromine can cause poisoning, though animals and the elderly are more susceptible to this. A healthy person would have to eat a lot of chocolate before they would be in any danger.

Fact: The Aztec rulers drank tens of cups of hot chocolate a day.

The opulent Aztec rulers and higher class drank a ton of hot chocolate; Montezuma himself was reported to have drunk about fifty cups of chocolate a day. While a normal cup of chocolate wouldn’t contain too much caffeine, the chocolate the Aztecs drank was extremely dark, combine that with the sheer intake and he must have been incredibly wired. What is truly fascinating though is that they did not drink hot chocolate, they drank it cold. They did not drink it with sugar, and it was actually the Spaniards who first added sugar to the drink. The Aztecs would pour the mixture back and forth from pitchers until it got really foamy and believed the foam was the best part.

Fact: The chocolate manufacturing companies tried to get approval to call a substitute real chocolate.

A few years ago in a move that had chocolate lovers up in arms, the American chocolate manufacturers tried to petition for approval from the FDA to replace cocoa butter with Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil and call it chocolate. This sort of move is something you would expect to see in a bad move, but a spokeswoman from Nestle actually tried to claim that it was okay because consumers didn’t really know what they wanted and didn’t understand things like “manufacturing efficiencies” and “technical improvements”. While the FDA chose not to agree to the demands of the chocolate industry, it is incredible that they even entertained the petition at all.

Fact: The world is facing a serious chocolate shortage.

The world is facing a chocolate shortage due to serious diseases that are affecting trees in Latin America where much of the worlds cacao is produced. Not only that but the demand for chocolate is increasing all the time, which makes keeping enough supply to satisfy people extremely difficult. Luckily, the diseases that are affecting chocolate production have not spread to Africa. However, these shortages still could lead to eventual price increases if the farmers are unable to get the diseases under control. While Africa has not had diseases, they have dealt with some droughts recently, which made matters even worse.

Fact: The biggest chocolate bar ever created weighed almost six tons.

In September, 2011, a chocolate bar was created that weighed close to twelve thousand pounds. The bar required roughly seventeen hundred pounds of cocoa butter and about fourteen hundred pounds of chocolate liquor. The bar is supposed to tour around the country in an effort to get kids to “think big” and “eat smart”. We aren’t sure exactly how a gigantic confection will help kids eat smart. More recently in England, the record was broken with an even bigger chocolate bar. The bar took more than fifty people to make and was inspired by the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Fortunately, all of that chocolate is not going to go to waste. This particular bar is slated to be broken up into pieces and sold, with the proceeds all going to charity.

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