Inspired by 17th century German monks who allegedly survived on a rich beer called doppelbock during Lent, an Ohio man has embarked on a 46-day beer diet, dropping all solid food until Easter Sunday.

Many Christians choose not to consume beer during Lent, as a way of abstaining for something they find pleasurable, but Dell Hall, the director of sales at Fifty West Brewing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, is doing the exact opposite. On March 6th, he embarked on a 46-day beer diet, dropping all solid food and getting his nutrients only from beer and vitamin supplements. Although he admits the first few days were rough, Hall claims he now feels amazing and is 25 pounds lighter than when he started.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

A small batch honey producer in Oita Prefecture, Japan, recently sparked controversy online after it was reported that it sells a product aptly called Honey with Hornets, which actually contain a giant dead hornet suspended in the sweet liquid.

While the decision to put a dead hornet inside a jar of honey can definitely be called questionable, even more so is the fact that the giant Japanese hornets are actually placed inside the jar while still alive and left to drown in the viscous liquid. According to an article on SoraNews24, the hornets, which are known natural enemies of bees, are captured alive by beekeepers while trying to encroach on the bees’ territory to be used as macabre decorations for the company’s jars of honey.

Read More »

Pablo’s Escoburgers, a Melbourne  fast-food restaurant named after infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, has been slammed for its controversial name and the fact that it serves one of its burgers with a line of white powder on top and a rolled fake dollar bill.

The backlash against Pablo’s Escoburgers started on Wednesday, when the pop-up eatery uploaded a photo of its “The Patron Burger” on Facebook, with a caption that read “infamous patron burger that people are lining up for”. It featured an otherwise delicious burger with a line of fine white powder on top and a fake rolled up $100 bill stuck into the top bun. That white powder turned out to be garlic powder, but a lot of people found the reference to snorting cocaine very offensive. The fact that other photos showed a small plastic bag with more garlic powder and a spoon, which allegedly come with The Patron Burger, only made things worse.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

Food waste is one the greatest challenges of our time, and fruits and vegetables are particularly problematic, as an estimated 52% of harvests go bad before reaching consumers. But one Malaysian company claims to have come up with a simple and effective solution to this problem – a tiny sticker that keeps fruits from spoiling for up to two weeks.

You’ve probably seen stickers on fruits before, but not like the ones created by Stixfresh. Those common stickers are used solely to provide consumers with information about the grower and how the fruit was grown, but Stixfresh has a completely different purpose. It contains a special, all-natural formula that slows down the ripening process, keeping the fruit fresh and juicy for much longer.

Read More »

Khai Ho, 38-year-old self-described breatharian from Birkenhead, in the UK, claims he can last up to three months at a time on only 100 calories per week, surviving only on air, sunlight and the occasional mint leaves.

Ho, who works as a pizza deliveryman, claims that he has never taken much interest in food, constantly refusing his mother’s meals as a child, but only started giving up food completely over long periods of time four years ago, with the help of Hindu meditation. He says can last up to three months without consuming any kind of food, apart from some mint leaves to help with bitter taste in his mouth, and drinking water only rarely, sometimes just once per week. Apparently, meditation helps him absorb all the nutrients he needs from thin air and sunlight.

The 38-year-old breathrian said that before turning to meditation, he would eat normal food once every three or four days, but now doesn’t need to do that because he gets necessary nutrients from sunlight and can even absorb moisture from the air around him. He admits that most people think his crazy for fasting for months at a time, but claims that some consider him “incredible at the same time.

Read More »

A talented food artist from Japan has getting a lot of attention on Instagram for her ability to turn plates into delicious works of art by painting them with melted chocolate.

Most parents often tell their children not to play with their food, but if the melted chocolate of Japanese artist Norico are any indication, playing with your food can lead to some spectacular results. Using only her fingers and some basic kitchen utensils, Norico can painting anything from portraits of Japanese celebrities and popular cartoon characters, to abstract geometric motifs and wedding reception messages. The ephemeral nature of her art allows Norico to experiment at her heart;s desire, and in her Instagram and YouTube videos she often cleans her unusual canvas several times after creating some exceptional painting and start all over again.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

A personal trainer on a quest to stop his 27-year-old obese client from “eating himself to death” has been distributing posters to local takeaway places instructing them not to serve him.

Every year, Mike Hind, a successful personal trainer from Middlesbrough, in the UK, takes on a client for free and tries to turn their life around in one year. Hind was named the best personal trainer in the UK last year, so he gets thousands of applications for his yearly giveaway, but this year he chose a 27-year-old man named Dibsy, after seeing him and his mom at his gym’s diner. He weighs 560 pounds (254 kg) and recently experienced heart problems that put him in the hospital for a week. The doctor’s verdict was very clear – ‘diet or die – and upon hearing his story, personal trainer Mike Hind decided to take him under his wing for a year. One of the first things the trainer did to help his new client was get him banned at local takeaway restaurants.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »