Finnish startup Solar Foods has come up with a way to produce a protein-rich food called Solein from electricity, water and air, by using an environment-friendly process similar to brewing beer.

Described as the world’s most environmentally friendly protein, Solein is is made by applying electricity to water to release bubbles of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Living microbes are then added to the liquid to feed on the carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles and produce the Solein, which is then dried to make the powder. It’a natural fermentation process similar to beer brewing, but it requires a special reactor that reportedly resembles a hurricane lantern. The dried Solein has a protein content of 50 percent and looks and tastes just like wheat flour. It can be used in all kinds of diets and can be 3D-printed for added texture.

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A Maryland man trying to raise awareness about the confusing nature of expiration dates on consumer products ate expired food for a whole year and lived to tell the tale.

Scott Nash got the idea for his unusual experiment began three years ago, when he did something most of us wouldn’t even consider – he ate a yogurt that was six months past his expiration date. The “staunch environmentalist” and owner of MOM’s Organic Market, a D.C.-are grocery store chain, had forgotten the yogurt in the fridge of his old cabin in Virginia in the Spring and only found it again when returned in the Fall. By that time it was already half a year past its expiration date, but that didn’t stop him from mixing it with his smoothie and chugging it down. It didn’t taste funny and he didn’t experience any health problems after consuming it. That got him thinking about the way companies use expiration dates nowadays.

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A small food stall chain in Taiwan has been raising eyebrows due to the shape of its pancake pops. Instead of the usual round design their delicious creations are shaped like whole roasted chickens.

Walking past a YesMade food stall, you’d think it was selling miniature rotisserie chickens, but the Taiwanese fast food chain actually specializes in pancake pops. They are made from the same batter as regular pancakes, but they just happen to look like perfectly roasted chickens. YesMade achieves this illusion thanks to their custom-made pancake iron, which features small chicken-shaped molds. As you can imagine, the unique shape of their delicious creations has made YesMade a huge hit on Instagram.

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If you’re looking for the ultimate instagrammable coffee, you’ll have a tough time finding something cooler than Sweet Little Rain. That’s an odd name for a cup of coffee, but once you see it in action, you’ll realize it makes perfect sense.

Mellower Coffee, a Chinese coffee shop chain headquartered in Shanghai, owes much of its popularity to its gimmicky Sweet Little Rain, a large cup of Americano coffee served with a fluffy cloud of cotton coffee hanging over it. The steam rises up from the hot coffee melting the cotton candy and causing it to slowly rain down into the cup in the form of sweet sugar droplets.  At around $9 per serving, Sweet Little Rain isn’t the cheapest cup of coffee money can buy, but if you’re looking to impress your Instagram followers, it’s definitely worth it.

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In most places around the world, people are taught that eating raw meat is bad for them due to the high risk of contacting parasites and harmful bacteria, but in Ethiopia raw meat is a popular delicacy.

Walking through the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, it’s not uncommon to see groups of people gathered around restaurant tables feasting on chunks of raw beef or goat meat. Although particularly popular on holidays or various celebrations, like weddings, a lot of people consume raw meat virtually every day. They will tell you that raw meat is a hearty meal that energizes them and refreshes their bodies, as for the risks associated with eating uncooked meat, which include exposure to tapeworms and dangerous bacteria like salmonella and E-coli, most just choose to ignore them.

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A restaurant in the Italian town of Castelfranco Veneto has come up with an ingenious way to get a leg up on the competition – treating guests to a unique dish called “fried air”.

Nicola Dinato, the head chef at Feva Restaurant wanted to capture the essence of being outdoors and breathing fresh air in an dish aptly called “aria fritta” or “fried air”. The name is a tad misleading, as the crispy treats are actually made of tapioca skin that’s first baked and then deep fried. However, there’s some air involved in the cooking process as well, or at least a component of it – ozone. After the tapioca skin is baked and fried, it is infused with ozone for 10 minutes, which gives the treats a special perfume. After the special infusion, the crispy fried air is placed on a bed of cotton candy, which Dinato hopes will remind patrons of clouds.

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Apples are generally red, green, yellow or a combination of the three, but if the right geographical conditions are met, they can apparently grow dark purple, almost black, as well. These rare apples are called Black Diamond and they are currently only grown in the mountains of Tibet.

Black Diamond apples are a breed of Hua Niu apples (also known as Chinese Red Delicious) that get their unique dark purple color from the geographical conditions of Nyingchi, in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The 50-hectare orchard set up her by Chinese company Dandong Tianluo Sheng Nong E-Commerce Trade Co., Ltd. has an elevation of 3100 meters above sea level, making it the ideal place to grow these intriguing fruit. The temperature differences between day and night are significant, and the fruits get a lot of sunlight and ultraviolet light which causes their skin to go from the characteristic deep red of Hua Niu apples, to dark purple.

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A cheese maker from the Emmental region of Switzerland has been experimenting with various musical genres to see if they can make his cheese taste better.

Since September, cheese maker Beat Wampfler has been blasting musical masterpieces by legends such as Led Zeppelin and A Tribe Called Quest to his wheels of Emmental cheese, hoping to prove that music can influence the development, characteristics and, most importantly, the flavor of the cheese. He is convinced that humidity, temperature and nutrients are not the only things that can have an impact on the taste of cheese, and that sounds, ultrasounds and music can make an impact on flavor as well.

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Pinhead’s Pizza, a popular pizza place in Dublin, Ireland, is offering fans of the Italian delicacy the chance to fill their bellies and their pockets at the same time. Anyone who can finish their 32-inch pizza and down two milkshakes in under 32 minutes is guaranteed a prize of 500 euros.

When Anthony Kelly, the owner of Pinhead’s Pizza, put the 32-inch pie on the menu of his restaurant in 2015, it didn’t really have a name and was simply called “Ireland’s largest pizza. Since then, he settled on a proper name for it – The Notorious Pizza – a fitting one considering that no one has been able to finish one, although many have tried. In the beginning, Kelly offered challengers a voucher for 50 euros plus the pizza for free if they managed to finish the whole thing and wash it down with two milkshakes in under 32 minutes. Since then, he has become so confident that his challenge is unbeatable that he is offering a 500 euros prize to anyone who beats it.

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Ningen, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, attracted a lot of media attention over the last two weeks for giving patrons the chance to order the last meals requested by infamous death row inmates before their execution.

The controversial eatery was opened by a Japanese art collective called Chim↑Pom and for two weeks served the last meals of infamous American criminals like armed robber and double-murderer Gary Mark Gilmore, Judy Buonoano, Florida’s “Black Widow”, or real-life killer clown John Wayne Gacy.

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Angulas, the Spanish word for baby eels is one of Spain’s most expensive foods, but no one seems to understand why. They hardly have any taste at all, their texture is best described as slimy and they look like limp worms on a plate. So why are people paying hundreds of euros to eat angulas at expensive restaurants?

Legend has it that in the past angulas were used as fodder for chickens and pigs, and there is historical evidence that they were once a staple food of the working class in northern Spain. But today they sell for astronomical prices of up to 1,000 euros ($1,150) per kilo, so only the richest of the rich can afford them. So what happened? Well, scarcity definitely played a big part in their surprising transformation. River dams, the general degradation of the environment and overfishing have seriously affected the baby eel population, and the rarer they got the more expensive they became. They may not taste like anything, but apparently many people like to act like snobs every once in a while, so they pay a premium to enjoy a food that most people can’t afford.

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Mike Roman, a teacher from New Jersey, recently got his five minutes in the internet spotlight after coming on a podcast to discuss his unusual eating habits. The 41-year-old claims to have eaten pizza at least once a day for the last 37 years.

Roman’s longtime love affair with pizza began at age 3 or 4 (he doesn’t remember exactly), when his mother introduced him to the Italian dish for the first time. He apparently loved it so much that he kept asking for more every day until his parents finally gave in and stopped trying to convince him eat other foods as well. He has been eating pizza at least once a day ever since, all through his childhood, teenage years and into adulthood. Mike has reportedly eaten pizza for all three meals of his life, for many years, but he recently started switching between pizza and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. He still has pizza for dinner every day, though.

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Because to their thick, finger-like trunks and their eerie claw-like feet, the gooseneck barnacles growing on the rocks of Portugal’s most south-western coastline are known as Lucifer’s Fingers. They are sometimes referred to as the truffles of the sea, both because of their rarity and high price, but also because of how hard and risky they are to harvest.

Restaurants in Portugal and Spain charge up to $115 for a plate of Lucifer’s Fingers, which may sound sound outrageously expensive two some people, but is justified by their rarity and the dangers barnacle hunters expose themselves to when harvesting them. Lucifer’s Fingers, or percebes, cannot be farmed and only thrive on the on rocks in the ocean intertidal zone, where crashing waves provide them with plankton. This makes them notoriously dangerous to harvest, with hunters risking getting crushed against the rocks by crashing waves, or being rendered unconscious by the impact and drowning. The lucky ones escape with broken limbs or severe abrasions.

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Chemotherapy has many nasty side effects, and one that patients often find particularly frustrating is dysgeusia. This side effect causes food and drink to taste bland, bitter, or metallic. Now, a Prague based cancer advocacy group has come up with a solution to that problem – a non-alcoholic beer called Mama Beer.

Mamma Beer has been formulated to help breast cancer patients overcome the symptoms of dysgeusia. Its flavor profile has been engineered to make it taste good to those undergoing chemotherapy, but in addition to it’s great taste, the beer also contains a range of vitamins and minerals that have been known to help people deal with cancer treatment. 

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If you’re a vegetarian who is curious about or misses the taste of smoked ham, you’ll be pleased to learn that there’s an interesting substitute you can try.

Will Horowitz, owner of Ducks Eatery in East Village, NYC, has caused an Internet sensation with his new “smoked ham” which actually consists not of meat, but a whole watermelon. At first glance, Will’s creation looks entirely like meat, complete with scoring and charring. And even when you cut into it, the middle has red “flesh”, reminiscent of a rare steak. But the taste is something different; while the initial taste is a salty, meaty one, it quickly transforms into sweetness, especially as you get closer into the center of the faux ham.

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