Rob Rhinehart, a 24-year-old software engineer from Atlanta, has been living on a liquid diet for the past three months and says he has never felt better. He has combined all the nutrients he needs in a shake-like drink named Soylent which allegedly contains just a third of the calories and no toxins or cancer-causing substances.

You might be tempted to believe that Rob switched from solid foods to Soylent to lose weight, but that’s only one of his reasons. After realizing he was spending around 2 hours every day cooking food, the young software engineer decided something had to be done to make eating and all the work it involves less time-consuming. Conventional food was also affecting his finances and physical strength, so being the experimental person he is he started looking for a better alternative to common food. Reading biology books made him think that the cells of the human body don’t really know the difference between nutrients from a carrot and those from a powder, so he started scouring the Internet for every essential nutrient in powdered form. Soon, his kitchen looked more like a chemistry lab in which he experimented with various quantities of powders until he found the mix that worked for him. For the past three months he has lived on Soylent alone, and says he has noticed a massive boost to my focus, stamina, physique, and free time.

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Georgi Readman, an 18-year-old teenager from the Island of Wight, England survives only on cheap instant noodles, because she is afraid to eat other foods. The young hairdressing student goes through about 30 miles of noodles every year.

Georgi Readman got hooked on instant noodles when she was just five years old, after watching her older brother eat them, but they became her only source of nutrition after suffering a case of severe food poisoning at age eight. From that point on she couldn’t bring herself to eat any fruits or vegetables, and only occasionally diversified her diet with small bits of potatoes and chicken. Whenever she goes out shopping, Georgi’s mom always stocks up on 11p (¢16) packs of M Savers chicken noodles, because that’s the only brand she’s sure her daughter will eat. Any other kind of noodles might have green bits in them, so she would have to sieve them first. “I always fancy noodles and could easily eat two packets at once. I’ve even eaten them dry and uncooked before,” Readman says. She has always been a fussy eater, but ever since her food poisoning as a child, Georgi claims she goes into a panic, sweats and starts heaving whenever she tries to swallow any fruits or vegetables.

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The voracious Japanese giant hornet has a quarter-inch stinger that pumps out venom containing an enzyme so strong that it can literally dissolve human tissue. The sting of a giant hornet causes excruciating pain, yet some people are willing to endure a few stings while trying to capture them to make a special kind of shouchuu (Japanese liquor similar to vodka).

A person stung by a Japanese giant hornet who doesn’t receive proper treatment soon thereafter can die from an allergic reaction to the venom. About 40 deaths related to giant hornet stings are recorded every year. But this doesn’t seem to scare fans of shouchuu from risking their lives trying to capture the main ingredient of a bizarre alcoholic drink. It’s a rare concoction that isn’t usually commercially available in shops, but a team of RocketNews24 reporters traveled to Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture in search of a huntsman who catches hornets and leaves them to ferment in alcohol for three years. According to their reports, fermented wasp shouchuu has an unappetizing muddy-brown color and smells a bit like rotting flesh. If you’re wondering about the taste of this unusual drink, it’s apparently a lot like that of regular shouchuu, but with a salty aftertaste that comes from the wasps poison. In conclusion, it looks disgusting, it stinks and it tastes really bad, so why would anyone want to drink this home-made fermented hornet brew? Well, for the health-related benefits, of course. The venom-infused liquor is said to make the skin more beautiful, boost recovery from fatigue and prevent “lifestyle disease” (whatever that is).

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If your idea of a perfect meal is garlic, garlic and more garlic, The Stinking Rose restaurant should definitely be on your itinerary the next time you’re in San Francisco. Their motto – “we season our garlic with food” – says about everything you need to know about this place.

Located in the Italian North Beach district of San Francisco, The Stinking Rose is probably not the best place to go on a first date, at least not if you plan on getting to first base. The garlic-centered restaurant prides itself on serving over 3,000 pounds of the pungent seasoning every month, so you can expect almost every dish served here to be literally covered in it. It does have a few garlic-free foods on its Vampire Fare menu, for “those finding the herb’s folklore and aroma more appealing than its taste”, but if you’re not a fan of the culinary treat, there’s really no point in visiting. On the other hand, if you are a garlic enthusiast, all you have to do is “follow your nose” and it will lead you to the door of The Stinking Rose restaurant, on Columbus Avenue. As soon as you walk in, you’re greeted by the unmistakable smell of garlic and a gallery of garlic-inspired memorabilia covering the ceiling and walls of this unique establishment. Colorful garlic characters, a mechanical miniature garlic factory and the world’s longest garlic braid featuring 2,635 bulbs of garlic are just some of the whimsical decorations you can expect to find inside The Stinking Rose.

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Jason Barber, a farmer from Dorset, England, has spent three years creating the world’s first milk vodka. Now, his Black Cow label is the poison of choice for celebrities like Elizabeth Hurley and James Bond star Daniel Craig.

47-year-old Jason Barber, a sixth generation farmer, got the idea for his pure cow milk vodka after watching a TV documentary on Tuva, a small Siberian republic where people make vodka from yak milk. Intrigued by the idea, he set out to make his own, from the milk of the 250 cows on his farm in Beaminster, Dorset. It took him three long years to perfect the process, but the final result is nothing short of impressive, according to food and drink experts. Barber starts out by separating the milk into curds and whey. He uses the former to make cheese, while the latter is fermented into beer, using special yeast, to convert the sugar into alcohol. After being distilled, the milk beer goes through a special blending process. The resulting vodka is triple-filtered and hand-bottled. Made from fresh whole milk Black Cow vodka is apparently an exceptionally smooth drink with a distinct creamy character.

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It’s called the Saltdean Sizzler, and according to recent tests performed by the Warwick University, it’s three times hotter than the world’s strongest chili and even police pepper spray. That makes it the spiciest pizza on Earth.

The world’s hottest pizza was created by Paul Brayshaw, of Paul’s Pizza, in Saltdean, England, a self-confessed spicy food fanatic and fan of the Man vs Food TV show. After opening his own pizza place, Paul decided to include a challenge on the menu, and stared working on the hottest pizza he could make. He used one of the strongest chilies on the planet – the ghost chili – and spiced it up even more with a special chili paste with chili extract. The 32-year-old father of two says the Saltdean Sizzler starts out as a regular pizza, with a homemade dough base, regular Italian tomato and herb sauce and fresh mozzarella, but turns into a world of pain after he adds his killer sauce. Apparently it even changes from a nice “red tomato color” to an “evil black/red”. Ever since he put it on the menu last year, Paul has sold over 1,300 Saltdean Sizzlers, but only eight men and one woman have managed to eat all six slices of the 10-inch pizza. That’s just 0.1% of challengers.

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32-year-old Brian Manowitz, better known as the Vegan Black Metal Chef, has one of the most unusual cooking shows on the internet. Dressed in his vinyl Armor of Death and boasting a KISS-inspired face paint mask, he cooks all kinds of delicious vegan meals to the sound of black metal.

Manowitz, a freelance sound engineer from Orlando, has been a vegan for the last 13 years. He’s also a big fan of black metal music, so he decided to combine both of his passions into a unique and entertaining project known as Vegan Black Metal Chef. He set up a site where he posts recipes and photos of his delicious cooking, but it was his YouTube channel that brought him worldwide fame a couple of years ago. Brian’s videos always open to the sound thunderous drums and distorted guitar riffs, and show him in his dark dungeon-like kitchen decorated with leather-bound cabinets, medieval chopping tools and spooky candles, as he explains how to prepare vegan dishes with a crackly voice. All vegetables are “butchered” with his collection of awesome knives, or smashed with a mace, and cooked on a pentagram stove altar. “You can’t summon the essence of Satan into your food without the pentagrams,” Manowitz says.

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If you feel regular coffee isn’t strong enough to keep you awake and focused through the day, you might want to try a big cup of Death Wish. It’s advertised as the world’s strongest coffee and allegedly has 200% more caffeine that the average dark roast.

The name isn’t too encouraging for the faint-of-heart, but if you’re not too put off by it and the skull-and-bones logo on the pack, Death Wish may just become the best friend you could hope for. Upstate New York roaster Death Wish Coffee claims they have found a highly caffeinated bean that gives coffee that full Arabica flavor and double the buzz. The creators of this powerful roast explain that while Arabica coffee is smoother and more flavorful than the harsher Robusta variety, it also has a much lower caffeine content. Also, dark roast coffee is weaker than a light roast, because the longer you “cook” it, the more caffeine is pulled out. So while you’re favorite cup of joe might be strong in flavor, it probably has a very low caffeine content. After 5 years of having to tell sleepy customers who asked for a cup of their strongest coffee that their strongest tasting roasts were actually very low in caffeine, the makers of Death Wish went on a mission to find a special kind of coffee bean that had the full flavor of dark-roasted Arabica and the highest caffeine content possible. It seems they were successful.

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I never would have imagined humans would one day be eating spray paint, and yet here we are…Food Finish is the world’s first edible spray paint, and according to its German manufacturer, it’s a great way to add some strange color to your food.

People have been eating strange things for a long time. There’s this woman in Ukraine who enjoys eating sand, another girl who savors soap bars, and even someone who likes to eat sponge, but spray paint is definitely something new. And apparently it doesn’t fall into the weird category because it was actually designed to be consumed and it’s totally safe. German-based producer The Deli Garage Food Cooperative says its ethanol-based edible spray paints are tasteless and odorless, and can be applied on any kind of food to make it look better. Food Finish is available in four different colors – gold, silver, blue and red – and has to be applied in layers in order to achieve that perfect effect. “I love it when it’s not only our cars which have a metallic finish but also our tomatoes,” Deli Garage project manager Kaya-Line Knust said. “It’s great when you see not only a steak on a plate, but a gold-plated one!” Yeah, who needs all those healthy-looking colors when you can go for gold, right?

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China has long had a reputation for making counterfeit goods, but the practice in recent years the practice has been getting really extreme. After news reports of fake eggs and fake beek made of pork, it seems concrete-filled walnuts are the latest invention of ingenious Chinese food counterfeiters.

There’s a set of photos making the rounds on the Internet these days, but even though they recently went viral, they were actually released a year ago. They show a bunch of normal-looking walnuts that when cracked open reveal a very hard filling – concrete pebbles. According to Ministry of Tofu, these fake walnuts were bought by a certain Mr. Li, last February, from a street vendor in Zhengzou, Henan province. When he got home and started cracking them, he noticed that instead of a meaty seed, many were actually filled with concrete pebbles wrapped in tissue. But Li’s case is not an isolated one. Apparently, many Chinese walnut vendors try to maximize their profits by carefully cracking open the hard shell, taking out the nutmeat, replacing it with concrete and tissue so it doesn’t make a strange noise, and gluing it shut. This way they can sell the nuts and the seeds separately.

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Nothing says “I love you” like your detailed mug rendered in delicious chocolate. At least that’s what the Japanese at 3D-printing firm KS Design Lab and FabCafe, in Tokyo, are hoping you’ll think, as they offer patrons the chance to “chocolatize” their faces as gifts for Valentine’s Day.

Valenntine’s is big business in Japan. As we previously reported, a lot of Japanese chocolate companies record half their annual sales in the days before the romantic holiday. In the Land of the Rising Sun, only women offer gifts to men, usually in the form of chocolate sweets. Trying to stand out from the competition, 3D-printing firm KS Design Lab and Tokyo’s FabCafe, in the Shibuya district, have teamed up to offer a very original service to a group of women attending their workshop – 3D printed models of their faces in chocolate, to be given as presents on Valentine’s Day. Some of you may find them oishii (delicious), but I think they qualify more as kimoi (creepy). “We were brainstorming together about how the 3D-printing technology could appeal to consumers, when we hit on the idea of Valentine’s Day chocolates,” PR rep. Kazue Nakata explained.

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Combining two of women’s favorite things in the world, chocolate and shoes, Texas chocolatier Andrea Pedrazza creates what can only be considered the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for the ladies – chocolate high-heels.

The two weeks before Valentine’s Day is the busiest time of the year for Dallas-based chocolate shop CocoAndre. I’m sure there are other great places to buy tasty chocolate in D-Town, but only here can men find the most delicious designer shoes at a fraction of the price. Master chocolatier Andrea Pedrazza pours the brown goodness into plastic high-heel molds and decorates them with gourmet ingredients to make them look as realistic as possible. Unsurprisingly, her most popular creations are chocolate Christian Louboutin shoes which sell for $35. To recreate the designer’s signature red soles, the food artist uses red ganache. Available styles include simple colors, zebra or cheetah print and polka dots, so men wanting to gift their wives with their favorite shoes for cheap are bound to find something they like.

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Members of New York’s exclusive Explorers Club get together once a year at the Waldorf Astoria hotel to enjoy some of the most unusual dishes ever conceived. From live tarantulas to juicy cow eyeballs, the menu of the Annual Gala of the Explorers Club features everything you’ve never wanted to put in your mouth. A fair warning – make sure you’re reading this and especially watching the video, on an empty stomach.

The annual gala dinner of the Explorers Club is no dainty affair.It’s a black tie event, but that’s about it as far as niceties are concerned. As you’re about to see for yourself, guests of this bizarre dinner gleefully sink their teeth into live tarantulas, tear the heads off exotic roaches, nib on succulent cow’s eyeballs and snack on battered monkey’s hands. Not really the kind of things ordinary people usually get dressed up for, but then again, Explorers aren’t exactly ordinary. These are people who have traversed the Earth in various expeditions of exploration, who love to discover new and fascinating things, even when it comes to food. This annual gala gives most of them a chance to try obscure dishes, even if they aren’t the most appetizing in the world.

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While most chefs work hard to make sure no dirt winds up in their food, at French restaurant Ne Quittez Pas, in Tokyo, Japan, dirt is actually used as a key ingredient.

Mind you, this isn’t just any kind of dirt. It’s a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, that’s actually been tested for safety, but it’s still the thing most people use to grow plants in. So how did dirt wind up on the menu of this respectable venue? Apparently, Chef Toshio Tanabe once won a cooking competition with his signature dirt sauce, and from that point on he put together an entire menu based on the unusual ingredient. Now the restaurant is offering dishes priced as high as $110 with Kanuma dirt in them.

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A Seattle-based woman by the name of Beautiful Existence (her legal name) has set a very strange challenge for herself this year – she plans to eat food and drink beverages only from Starbucks for all of 2013.

No, she’s not addicted to Starbucks products. Beautiful Existence just likes to set year-long challenges for herself. For example, in 2011, she only bought stuff from Goodwill stores. But there’s more to it than that. Beautiful wants to document the experience on her blog and show the world how communities benefit from Starbucks. “The company pays good benefits for part-time workers. That’s where my money is going,” she says. “We’re really lucky and I would say actually spoiled as Americans because we have all these different eating options,” Existence adds. “You go to all these other countries and they don’t have these luxuries. Really? Is it really going to be that hard for one year of my life to limit my menu? We’ll find out.”

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