London-based GABA Labs is working on a type of synthetic alcohol called ‘Alcarelle’ which reportedly provides the relaxing effects of alcohol without hangovers, balance deficiencies or any of its other negative side effects.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid, aka GABA, is a neurotransmitter that blocks certain signals in the brain, thus producing a calming effect. When alcohol reaches the brain, it binds to GABA receptors and produces the same effects, relaxing and calming people down. The problem with alcohol is that it also has other negative side effects, like hangover, movement difficulties, speaking and thinking problems, etc.  GABA Labs is currently working on a type of synthetic alcohol called Alcarelle that is supposed to provide all the positive effects of alcohol consumption, but none of the bad ones.

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An Iranian man claims he stopped consuming food one day in 2006 and has relied solely on sweetened fizzy drinks for energy ever since.

58-year-old Gholamreza Ardeshiri claims that the mere sight of food makes him nauseous and that he has been surviving on water and fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola for the last 17 years. It all started one night in 2006, when he woke up with a strange feeling in his mouth, one that he just couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many doctors he visited. In the end, he decided to shun food permanently and has been living a perfectly normal life ever since. His family doesn’t eat in front of him, because just seeing them makes him sick, and he gets all his energy from carbonated drinks. He drinks three large bottles of soda per day and insists that he never feels hungry.

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A popular Japanese hotel has been forced to issue a public apology after it was reported that employees at its cafe fermented a citrus drink by using the bacteria on their own hands.

The AWA Nishiizu Hotel in Numazu, Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, has come under fire for putting its clients’ health at risk by breaking basic hygiene rules. On April 23rd, the popular TV show ‘Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle‘ showcased how much Japan’s travel trends have changed in Japan by featuring a ‘health’ drink sold by a hotel cafe in Shizuoka. The orange concoction kept in large plastic jars was apparently a syrup made with squeezed summer mandarins and sugar, but the secret ingredient that set it apart from similar drinks was the fermentation process. According to an interviewed employee, the syrup was fermented with the help of bacteria indigenous to the human hand, so they would just stick their hands in the jar and stir it…

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Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla recently unveiled an unexpected new product for its loyal client base – GigaBier, a special brew that comes in bottles inspired by its unreleased Cybertruck.

GigaBier was originally revealed in October 2021, to celebrate the inauguration of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin. That grand opening was delayed for over 260 days due to environmental activists and permit problems, and so was the new beer. Things slowly got back on track, and Musk’s popular automotive company recently made its special “cyberhops” beer available to the masses. The beers come in packs of three, bottled in glossy black bottles with sharp edges that emulate the sharp shapes of the Tesla Cybertruck. One pack of three 330ml bottles costs a whopping 89 euros ($98).

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Neuzeller Klosterbräu, a brewery in eastern Germany, claims to have devised a way to create a powdered beer that, when mixed with water, tasted almost exactly like the original liquid beverage.

The global beer industry is massive, but it’s also one of the least efficient in the world. Transporting large quantities of beer bottled in heavy glass bottles all over the world is expensive, but what if you didn’t have to? What if some of the world’s most famous breweries could just ship their products overseas in powdered form, and the company on the receiving end would just have to add water to it? German brewery Neuzeller Klosterbräu claims to have come up with a process to create any type of beer in powdered form, alcohol and carbonation included. All anyone has to do is add water and they are left with a regular beer.

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Chu-hi-cha is the name of a new type of tea discovered by a Japanese researcher at Kyoto University. It involves brewing the droppings of caterpillars that have feasted on various plants.

Tsuyoshi Maruoka came up with the idea of caterpillar tea during graduate studies at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Agriculture, while researching the mysterious relationship between insects and plants. One day, a senior brought 50 gypsy moth larvae into the lab and told Maruoka that they were a souvenir. He didn’t really know what to do with them at first, but he eventually decided to at least keep them alive until he could decide, so he picked some leaves from a nearby cherry tree and fed them to the caterpillars. When cleaning the droppings left by the critters, he noticed that they had a pleasantly fragrant smell and was almost instantly inspired to brew them into tea.

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Kupi Khop is a unique type of coffee served in an upside-down glass on a glass plate and sipped through a straw. For obvious reasons, it’s also known as Indonesian upside-down coffee.

If you ever find yourself on the West Coast of Aceh, in Indonesia, you owe it to yourself to enjoy a Kupi Khop coffee. The unique serving method alone makes it worth a try, as even if you don’t enjoy coffee, you can at least share it on Instagram or on whatever other socials you prefer. Kupi Khop consists of coarsely ground robusta coffee brewed in a glass that is then turned upside down on a glass saucer. A plastic straw is then used to gradually extract the coffee from the glass without it spilling uncontrollably.

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A Japanese beverage company launched a controversial dumpling-flavored soda that many are calling the worst soft drink ever created.

Gyoza traditional pan-fried dumplings are a staple of Japanese cuisine, but they are also the inspiration for one of the world’s most bizarre refreshments. “Gyoza cider”, or “Gyoza soda”, as some Japanese news outlets have been calling this abomination, is the creation of Nagai Garden, a refreshments company based in the city of Nikko, Japan’s Tochigi Prefecture. Originally launched in 2019, gyoza cider has been making news headlines and going viral on social media ever since, due to its unusually faithful dumpling taste.

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If you don’t like the watery texture of water, you may want to try to keep yourself hydrated with some water jelly, a new hit summer product from Japan.

I’m too old to spend time on TikTok, but every once in a while I deep dive down a rabbit hole only to find the craziest things imaginable. The latest such experience lead me to a short clip of someone buying a bottle of water from a Japanese vending machine. Only the water doesn’t flow as you’d expect; instead, it comes out as jelly, which apparently makes sense, since it’s something called water jelly. You can drink it right out of the bottle, eat it with a spoon, or top it with fruit and enjoy it as a refreshing treat.

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An Icelandic brewery has been getting a lot of attention because of its newest creation – a holiday beer that tastes like green peas and pickled red cabbage – which has been selling like crazy.

Ora jólabjór, the beer that has taken Iceland by storm, is brewed by RVK Brewing in a modest Rejkiavik brewery with an annual capacity of 50,000 liters. Master brewer Valgeir Valgeirsson had already made beer from unusual ingredients like seaweed or even dried fish, so when he received a call from preserved vegetable company Ora about a possible collaboration, he welcomed the challenge. Traditionally used as a side dish for smoked lamb leg and potatoes at Christmas, the preserved peas and pickled cabbage proved an excellent brewing ingredient, as the first batch of the unusual beer sold out in just six hours.

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When it comes to “spicy” liquor, you’ll have a tough time finding something hotter than this crazy combination of overproof rum infused with the world’s hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper.

The World’s Hottest Shot comes in a deceptively small and harmless-looking 45ml bottle that you can just pour in a shot glass and gulp in one go. But before you do that, you should know that this is no ordinary drink. Not only is the rum overproof (over 63% alcohol by volume), but it also has also been infused with Carolina Reaper peppers for at least three months. The result is a barely stomachable concoction that is almost guaranteed to make you gag, sweat and scream in agony as you wait for the fire inside you to stop burning.

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If you’re not into liquors, they probably all taste bad to you, but there’s a particular liquor that everyone agrees tastes horrible. It’s called malört and, over the years, it has been compared to battery acid, pesticide and gasoline.

Although Jeppson’s Malört is most often associated with the American city of Chicago, its true roots are in Sweden, where where “malört” is the word for wormwood, the key ingredient in this ghastly spirit. Wormwood is a notoriously bitter herb known for its ability to kill stomach worms and other parasites. The Swedes started infusing it in alcohol and using it as medicine for digestive problems in the 15th century, and it reached US shores with the first Swedish immigrants. The awful taste didn’t appeal to many, so it’s no wonder that malört faded into obscurity pretty much everywhere, except Chicago. For some reason, people here not only accepted its horrible aroma, they actually embraced it.

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Jacu Bird Coffee is one of the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee varieties. It is made from coffee cherries ingested, digested and excreted by Jacu birds.

At around 50 hectares, the Camocim Estate is one of the smallest coffee plantations in Brazil, but it still manages to rake it quite a nice profit thanks to a very unique and sought-after type of coffee. It all started in the early 2000s, when Henrique Sloper de Araújo woke up to find that his precious plantations had been overrun by Jacu birds, an endangered, pheasant-like bird species, protected in Brazil. They weren’t known to be coffee cherry fans, but they seemed to love de Araújo’s organic coffee. But they were going to pay him back for the meal in the most unusual way.

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If you thought Coca Cola Vanilla was weird soft drink, the flavors developed by Shizuoka Prefecture-based company Kimura Beverage will probably blow your mind.

When it comes to new and completely unexplored soft drink flavors, Kimura Beverage is considered somewhat of a pioneer in Japan. Remember, this is the same country where limited edition flavors for popular soft drinks – like sakura Pepsi or Coca Cola Apple – are pretty much the norm. What sets Kimura apart from any other drinks company is the originality of their flavors, which range from pickled plums to fish eggs and potato chips.

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Onion hardly seems like the best vegetable to base a soft drink on, but Onionade doesn’t contain the kind of onion you’re used to, but a new type that not only doesn’t make you cry when you chop it, but it unusually sweet as well.

Back in 2016 we reported on one of the most interesting inventions to come out of Japan in the past few years – a tear-free onion named “Smile Ball”. Developed over a period of 14 years by scientists at House Foods Group, Smile Ball onions release almost no tear-inducing compounds when chopped or eaten raw, and have a much sweeter taste than regular onions. Available in Japanese grocery stores for the past two years, Smile Balls have been marketed mainly as tear-free alternatives to the common onion, but now its producers want to promote the vegetable’s sweetness and pleasant flavor as well. And what better way to do that than by producing an onion-based drink called Onionade?

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