How adventurous are you? Have you ever wanted to travel to other countries? If you do get to go to new places you may find out that people around the world eat different foods than you are used to eating.  Would you eat a bug or a spider or fruit that smells like a dead animal? Would you try eating something that could kill you if it were still alive? Let’s explore some foods from around the world that may make some people say, “Yum,” and others exclaim, “EWW!”. 

Asia offers a number of these culinary surprises. While in Japan you may get offered some puffer fish or Fugu. You may be thinking fish is not so strange, but puffers are very poisonous. A small amount of their poison can kill you. In Taiwan you can order crispy fried duck tongues. The people of Cambodia may offer you a freshly fried or grilled tarantula. Would you eat a spider? Maybe you would be brave enough to eat a fruit that smells like poop. It is liked by a lot of people, but Durian is so stinky many restaurants refuse to serve it.

Europe has 44 different countries and each one has food that is culturally significant. In Romania you will be able to eat Creier Pane, or fried pig brains. Norway, Sweden and Finland eat lutefisk. To make lutefisk, dried out fish is soaked in lye. Lye is poisonous by the way. After the fish is soaked in lye its soaked in water for two or three days to get all the poison out. I hear it is very stinky. Some countries in Europe eat snails. In Greece the name of the popular snail dish is called Saligaria Bourbourista. I ate this once in Greece. I loved it, until my cousin told me what I was eating.

If you travel from North America to the southernmost tip of South America you may get a chance to eat a variety of strange dishes. Turtle soup, alligator, rattlesnake, moose, bear and beaver may be on the menu in North America. In the Andes Mountain region Guinea pigs are not pets, but raised on farms for dinner and in the Amazon Rainforest you can eat ants, grubs and even piranha. Not wanting to be outdone by Romania and their fried pig brains, how about trying some Llama brains in Bolivia?