Category:
Food

Inhale Your Food

Any food that you can turn into a soup, you can inhale using "Le Whaf." It makes the experience of eating strongly resemble taking drags on cigarettes.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jun 19, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Food

Eating Wood—the latest advance

I've posted before about the centuries-old scientific dream of using sawdust to feed the world. So the latest effort in this vein caught my eye. A Virginia Tech researcher has figured out a way to enzymatically transform indigestible cellulose into edible starch. The science seems sound. The only problem is that the process is too expensive for commercial production. But it's a start!

The article points out that most of us are eating wood (or cellulose) already. It's a common additive in the fast-food industry. But it's indigestible, so people couldn't survive on it. Its purpose is to add texture, or "mouth feel."

Let Them Eat Wood! (If It's Turned Into Starch)
opb.org

In a study published this spring with colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Zhang explains a process he developed to transform solid cellulose — which could come from wood, grass or crop residue (like corn husks) — into a carbohydrate called amylose. The process is a form of synthetic biology and relies on enzymes to break down the cellulose into smaller units and then restitch the molecules into starch. That means the final, edible food product — a powder that Zhang says tastes sweet — is completely synthetic but resembles other complex carbohydrates like corn starch.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jun 06, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Food, Science

Life in America:  1961







A semi-random slice across the weirdness of history. The first of an occasional series.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Jun 03, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Customs, Food, Sports, Advertising, 1960s

Decorated Urinal Cakes

Urinal cakes given makeovers to look like real cakes. From the Carmichael Collective.





Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 02, 2013 - Comments (2)
Category: Food, Hygiene, Body Fluids

The Central Park Wildman

Steve Brill, the "Wildman" of Central Park, aka "The Man Who Ate Manhattan," is an expert on edible wild plants. He began leading foraging tours of Central Park in the early 1980s, teaching people what plants growing wild in the park they could and couldn't eat.


Of course, the park police weren't going to stand for this. In 1986, two undercover rangers tagged along on his tour and arrested him at the end of it. The official charge was misdemeanor criminal mischief. He became famous as the only person ever arrested for eating a dandelion.

The charges were soon dropped, and the park then hired him to lead the same tour.

Steve is still going strong. He's got a website, an app, and he's still conducting his tour. It gets 5 stars on yelp.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jun 01, 2013 - Comments (1)
Category: Food, 1980s

Follies of the Madmen #205

Posted By: Paul - Wed May 22, 2013 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, 1960s

The Hunger Show, 1969

Back in October 1969, a group of "antipopulation protesters" staged a "hunger show" (aka "starve-in") outside of San Francisco. The plan was to inflate a 100x100-foot plastic pillow, inside of which 300 of them would spend a week without food, only water. As they sat there, feeling hungry, they would have to watch "slides of pork chops and peas and carrots" and listen to taped sounds of restaurant noises. Also, sandwiches would be taped to the exterior of the plastic pillow, and non-participants outside would stage a pie-eating contest.

Participants were free to leave the pillow at any time, "but they can't return — they've died."

Organizer Stephanie Mills offered a slightly cryptic explanation of the goal of the protest: "People are just being too chicken, too chicken for their own good. We've got to encourage them not to be chicken."

The hunger show lasted half a week. Then it started to rain so they gave it up, saying, "We came here to suffer from hunger, not exposure."


[Pacific Stars & Stripes - Oct 9, 1969]

Posted By: Alex - Tue May 21, 2013 - Comments (3)
Category: Food, 1960s

The Immortal Burger

David Whipple says he bought a McDonald's hamburger back in 1999, but instead of eating it, he kept it to see how long it would take to decompose. Fourteen years later, and the thing remains basically the same. It's free of mold and fungus and doesn't even smell bad. Only the pickle decomposed. [franchise.net.au]

Posted By: Alex - Sat May 04, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Junk Food

Boiled Sheep Head

Here's some news from Iceland (via News of Iceland). Minister of Foreign Affairs Össur Skarphedinsson declared that the boiled sheep head he was served at a recent meeting of the Social Democratic Alliance was among "the best boiled sheep heads I have ever had. They stuck to my gum as proper heads should do."

His only minor criticism was that "the head could have been more fermented. We, from the West fjords, prefer our sheep heads so fermented that we can drink the eye out of the eye socket."

If I ever find myself in Iceland, I may pass on this particular delicacy. I just don't think I could bring myself to drink fermented eye of sheep out of the eye socket. More info about this Icelandic delicacy can be found at wikipedia.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 24, 2013 - Comments (3)
Category: Food

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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