Life in the slums of Manila can be incredibly difficult, and putting food on the table every day is a big challenge. That’s what makes “pagpag” so popular. This Tarong term usually refers to the dust one shakes out of clothing or carpets, but in the slums it means meat picked out of the landfill, cleaned and recooked into cheap meals.

Pagpag has long been a staple of Filipino slum cuisine, but in recent years it has also become a lucrative business both for landfill scavengers and small restaurant owners who buy the discarded meat at cheap prices and recycle it into various dishes. Scavengers who were previously only interested in recyclable metal and plastic now focus on leftover and expired food coming in from fast-food chains and supermarkets, scouring for it alongside feral cats and rats, packaging it in plastic bags and selling it for a small profit.

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Kipposhi, a restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, has seen its popularity skyrocket recently, after photos of its bright blue ramen soup started going viral on social media platforms like Instagram.

Blue soup doesn’t really sound like the most appetising dish, but that hasn’t stopped people from flocking to Kipposhi, a ramen restaurant located in the heart of Tokyo, to give its famous Clear Chicken Soup ‘Blue’ a try, or at least take a photo of it to post on social media. It all started in January of 2017, when Mr Kozuimi, the owner of Kipposhi and creator of the unique blue ramen, posted a photo of his invention on Instagram. It went viral almost instantly, becoming a social media sensation, and putting the relatively new ramen restaurant on the map of must-visit Tokyo attractions.

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Meet Lulwa, also known as the ‘Million Dollar Bride’, a 120 kilogram-wedding cake shaped like a life-size Arabian bride. “She” was created by Debbie Wingham, ‘the world’s most expensive designer’, and showcased at the 2018 Dubai Bride Show, in the UAE.

Wingham is the creator of some of the most expensive objects of desire in history, including a $16 million shoe, a $4.8 million black diamond dress, and the world’s most expensive wedding cake which was valued at a staggering $67 million. With an estimated value of “only” $1 million, the designer’s latest work, the Million Dollar Bride cake was one of her most affordable projects yet. But what the cake lacked in financial value, it certainly made up in style and realism.

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Sometimes, when you tuck into your favorite meal, you may go, “Wow, I could eat nothing else for the rest of my days!” Could you really? What if you never, ever get to taste anything else? This might be the case with Micah Gabriel Masson Lopez – a two-year-old boy from Montreal, Canada who lives only on peaches.He suffers from a serious condition called food-protein induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES), which causes a severe allergy to virtually any food other than peaches.

Little Micah has hardly ever had a pain-free day. In addition to FPIES, he suffers from an immunodeficiency called DiGeorge syndrome and a rare genetic condition known as 15Q13.3 micro-duplication. Every month, his parents have to take him to nine different specialists, and the medical costs are taking a heavy toll. So is the cost of ensuring a steady supply of peaches, which can be a problem to find off-season in Quebec. His parents are so desperate that they have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money that will help them with all the expenses.

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An Israeli start-up has introduced an intriguing potential solution to world hunger – fruit fly larvae. The company, Flying SpArk, co-founded by Eran Gronich and Yoram Yerushalmi in 2014, uses fruit fly larvae to make a protein powder (in regular and low-fat varieties) and oil, both of which are odorless and flavorless. These products can then be used to make everything from substitute meat patties to pasta, cereal, and even bread.

Fruit flies have a lifespan of only six days but multiply up to 15 times in that time, making them easy and cheap to farm and harvest. There is virtually no waste created in the process, as all parts of the larvae are used. This gives them an edge over conventional protein sources like poultry or cattle, but also over insects like grasshoppers or crickets, because they have no legs, wings, antennas or eyes. And while, Flying SpArk doesn’t believe its fruit fly powder can completely replace meat, the company hopes that by becoming a part of human diet, it can at least reduce our negative impact on the environment.

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People have been losing their minds over the pumpkin pie created by Simon Davies, the chef at Chicago’s Alinea restaurant, and for good reason. It looks like jell-o on a pie crust, but he insists that it’s an actual pumpkin pie, just not the kind we’re all used to.

Davies posted the first photo of his bizarre crystal-clear pumpkin pie in late September, and people have been talking about it ever since. The general reaction can be described as a mix of surprise, confusion and anger, as people try to wrap their hands around this pumpkin pie that sort of looks like the traditional Thanksgiving dessert, but is totally different, at the same time. Most of them just can’t accept that it’s not simple jell-o on a buttery pie crust, but a condensed distillation of actual pumpkin pie filling that tastes like the real thing.

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Arctic Apple is the world’s first genetically engineered apple that doesn’t turn brown after being cut or bruised. It was developed by Canadian company Okanagan Specialty Fruits and is already being sold in select grocery stores.

When the cells of conventional apples are damaged, such as when they are cut, bitten into or bruised, an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO) initiates a chemical reaction that turns the flesh of the fruit brown. Some apple varieties brown faster than others, while others have a lower degree of browning, due to varying levels of PPO, but the Arctic Apple is the world’s first non-browning apple. Its flesh will retain its fresh, appealing color even days after being sliced, which Okanagan Specialty Fruits claims will increase apple consumption and decrease food waste.

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The vast majority of nutritionists claim that, if you want to lose weight, fast food is among the first things you should cut from your diet, but one man recently proved that you can actually eat pizza every single day and still maintain a healthy figure.

Brian Northrup, aka “Lord of Pizza” set out to prove that you can still lose weight while eating your favorite foods, by eating one medium Domino’s pizza every day for a 367 consecutive days. The New Jersey native documented the whole project on his Instagram page, posting photos of every pizza he ordered, and on YouTube where he posted videos of himself eating them. At the end of the year-long experiment, Northrup had lost about five pounds and was in tip-top shape. How did he do it? Well, the pizza fan claims that he just burned the extra calories by working out.

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Soon after launching her cake design business seven years ago, Maggie Austin was already producing edible works of art for Hollywood parties, royal weddings and even White House Christmas celebrations, and looking at her portfolio, it’s not hard to see why. Her designs, especially the incredibly realistic edible flower decorations, are beyond everything I’ve ever seen.

At first glance, Austin’s flowers look 100% real. In fact, the level of realism is such that no matter how long you stare at them, it’s hard to believe that they are actually hand-made edible decorations created with sugar, waffle paper and food coloring. From simple roses an hydrangeas to her signature peonies, it seems like there’s no flower that ballerina-turned cake designer Maggie Austin can’t reproduce.

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Ever since Nestlé introduced white chocolate, 80 years ago, chocolate has been available in only three main varieties – dark, milk and white. Well, it’s apparently time to add a fourth type to the list – Ruby pink chocolate.

Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest based cocoa processor, has apparently spent the last 13 years trying to produce naturally pink chocolate out of ruby cocoa beans. This cocoa variety grows in different parts of the world, including Ecuador, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast, but the Swiss company is the first to actually convert it into pink chocolate, through a sophisticated process.

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They say you shouldn’t drink and drive, but one meat shop in Irvinestown, Northern Ireland, wants to make “don’t eat and drive” a thing too. It has recently launched a line of sausages infused with popular alcoholic drinks, including vodka and Red bull, or dark rum and orange soda.

Maguire Meats owner Keelan Maguire says that he came  up with the idea for alcohol-infused sausages while talking with his team about new products for the summer barbecue season. Alcohol just seemed like the craziest idea, so they went with that. They launched their vodka and Red Bull bangers last week, and since they were an instant hit, they just added a Captain Morgan rum and Club Orange soda sausage to their line. They’re both selling like crazy, according to Maguire.

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Researchers at the Biotherapy Development Research Center Co. in Kanazawa, Japan, have come with a 100%-natural solution to the age-old problem of melting ice-cream. By using polyphenol found in strawberry, they can keep a popsicle from melting for hours, on a hot summer day.

Believe it or not, the secret ingredient for “unmeltable” ice-cream was discovered by mistake. The Kanazawa research center had asked a local pastry chef to create new confectionery using strawberry polyphenol, in an attempt to find new uses for strawberries not good enough to be sold as fresh fruit. However, the chef later reported that  that “dairy cream solidified instantly when strawberry polyphenol was added”. That made it redundant in confectionery, but researchers at the center realized that polyphenol could be used to make ice-cream melt a lot slower.

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Tyrion Lannister isn’t just one of the most beloved characters on HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones”, he is also the inspiration behind one of the most expensive cakes ever made – a 70-pound work of art showing the Halfman sitting on the Iron Throne.

The Broadway Bakery, in Dubai, recently celebrated the new season of “Game of Thrones” by creating an incredibly detailed cake featuring everyone’s favorite imp, Tyrion Lannister. Made primarily of sugar paste and fondant, the edible masterpiece stands four feet tall and weighs a whopping 70 pounds, making it large enough to feed a crowd of 100 – 120 people. But who, apart from his sister Cersei, would have the heart to take a knife to this realistic model of Tyrion?

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If anyone ever puts together a list of the world’s most unappetizing dishes that actually taste great, they should definitely consider this version of the popular fish and chips cooked in an activated charcoal batter. It looks like a scorched stick, but reportedly tastes amazing.

Activated charcoal is commonly used in cosmetic products and toothpaste, for its ability to trap toxins in its micro-pores and clean the body, but people have also been using it as an eye-catching food ingredient for a few years now. Back in 2014, we wrote about a jet black Cheddar cheese that got its unique coloring from activated charcoal, and last year, black ice-cream almost broke the internet after photos of it went viral on Instagram and Twitter. Now, a cafe in Melbourne, Australia is getting its five minutes of internet fame for combining the classic fish and chips with activated charcoal to create one of the least appealing dishes in history.

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Most people have never even seen, let alone tasted, white strawberries, but they’ve been a staple of the Japanese luxury fruit market for years. The Asian country actually has several varieties of white strawberries, among which the White Jewel, or Shiroi Houseki stands out as the rarest and most expensive.

White Jewel strawberries were created four years ago, by Yasuhito Teshima, and his farm in Japan’s Saga Prefecture remains the only one in the world that produces this unique fruit. Teshima-san claims he spent years cross-breeding different types of strawberries and perfecting his growing technique in order to come up with a large strawberry that was white both on the inside and the outside.

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