As a Registered, Certified Korean™, I have eaten more disgusting things than you can count, more spicy things than you can count, and more delicious things than you can count. The food I most abhor(but can eat a bowlful of anyways, because I'm like that) is a Korean soup composed of spinach, and the inside of a cow's stomach and small intestine. Notice the difference: the insides only. As in, half-digested grass.
What kinds of food repulses you?
Hello, Curuinor, my name is milum and I live in the southeastern part of the United States and we all eat hog jowls, possum, chitlins, and grits; but the folks over in Mississippi and down in Lousiana eat worse. They have a saying, they say, "what floats is boat and what moves is food" but being taciturn they rarely say their old saying.
However we don't eat hunting dogs (except in emergencies), we worship them. And yes, you are welcome for thanking us for saving South Korea from the commies.
What are the strange names of the strange foods that you eat?
When my wife was pregnant she ate this stuff called "White Jellied Fungus." It looks a lot like mucous. I also do not like kidneys which my wife loves. (I love livers, though.) And there's this thing my father in law used to eat that I think was a sea cucumber or a sea slug or something...that was probably the grossest thing i ever put in my mouth.
Hmm, I like liver, blood sausage, and chicken feet (though goose feet are better). I've eaten horse meat and liked it. I love Korean food, especially the little side dishes that accompany the meal. Kimchi, those tiny dried fishes, and even the agar with fish sauce. While I like the small tripes in Vietnamese pho, I've never much cared for the larger tripes that my grandmother cooked and my family all seemed to love. But most of all, as a linguist, I love the Korean writing system, hangul. King Sejong the Great and his band of experts did a great job. Welcome aboard, Curuinor.
Likely candidate: beef ice cream
I've not come up against any food that repulsed me Curuinor.
There are things that I've tasted that I didn't like, but I'm pretty game to taste anything once. Well, four times actually. I find it usually takes four times to be sure that your really dislike something.
Sushi is something I can skip, for example. I know it is very fashionable, and many people like it, but it does absolutely nothing for me. I've had it five times to date, since people keep telling me, "oh, it's just because you've been to a bad sushi place - you have to come with me to MY sushi place and you'll see it's great" But nope - still don't like it.
Our whole family loves sushi. It's a big reward for our family to go to a sushi place.
The way you feel about sushi is how I feel about okra (and religion for that matter). Especially being from a southerly direction, people are incredulous when you tell them you don't like okra. "Oh, you just haven't had it the right way." Don't like sweet potato pie either, or plain old sweet potatoes.
Okra? Is that the white, runny, pasty stuff you get for breakfast? It's got little round lumps in it.
EDIT: Sorry, I just realized it's "grits" I was thinking about. I'll have to go look up okra.
Grits I love. Okra is God's gift to the garden slug. I'm sure it's what slugs eat to get their texture and mucous coating.
Fal: Slightly OT but at the urging of my eclectic No. 1 Son Lee, at age 75 I deigned to sample sushi. It is delicious. However, still don't eat it as I'm too old to conquer my preconceptions
But still haven't tried beef ice cream
>>> I'm sure it's what slugs eat to get their texture and mucous coating.
HA! Well, I see somebody isn't going to be publishing any "For the love of Okra" books very soon.
Your point does bring up one interesting little question though... When did you get to taste the texture of a garden slug ?
In my youth, I was much more adventurous in my culinary experiments.
I heard they eat slugs in Oregon. That's from the guy in the office adjacent mine at work. I hope he's yanking my chain.
I can't imagine slugs are that much different than snails; and many people eat snails. I think it's the garlic butter.
When I was in Japan, I tried something called natto, a fermented bean curd dish. I still shudder to remember the taste and the texture of it. I'm usually pretty tolerant of new and strange dishes, but that one really grossed me out.
I haven't tried natto, but I have had something that Cantonese Chinese call stinky tofu in English. Rather good I thought. Also forgot to mention durian fruit which tastes great but smells awful.
Most disgusting stuff I ever ate would have to be raw celery. Eeewww!!! Yuck!! Yuck!! Yuck!!
I heard they eat slugs in Oregon In my childhood days, I once heard from my mother that there were people in our village who put sugar on slugs, that liquefied them, and they slurped the resulting syrup against cough.
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I heard they eat slugs in Oregon In my childhood days, I once heard from my mother that there were people in our village who put sugar on slugs, that liquefied them, and they slurped the resulting syrup against cough.
May not be a cure for a cough, but that would surely prevent me from revealing I had a cough!!
They have slugs in Switzerland?! But it's so ... clean! (Nice to see your fonts again, Weissbier -- where ya been?)
I guess the grossest thing I ever ate was haggis. I had to try it, nobless oblige, being part Scots.
Huhu grubs look like oversized maggots found in decomposing trees.
But when cooked taste like peanut butter.
wild kiwis
Huhu grubs look like oversized maggots ...taste like peanut butter. See, now, me, I'd just buy myself a jar of peanut butter if I had a hankering for it.
I can well understand. When I was there I consumed mainly those dishes like tempura that most Americans like; though once in a while I diverged into something as far out as squid
Squid rings can be found at most takeaways or fish'n'chip shops. Paua fritters, pineapple fritters, But a disturbing trend in suburbian auckland is deep fried battered mars bars. Now hows that for fine kwisine?
deep fried battered mars barsI've heard
it started in Scotland.
haggis
I've eaten haggis, and it wasn't bad.
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deep fried battered mars bars
I've heard it started in Scotland.
the discussion tab on this wikipage is a fine example of everything that's wrong with wiki.
Can you transcribe the conversation? I'm taking an enforced wikibreak by hostfile.
I am also from the South and I share TheFallibleFiend's distaste for okra. I don't like the flavor and I don't like the texture. I do like sweet potatoes though. I grew up not eating grits because my parents don't like them, but when I had cheese grits for the first time in North Carolina (as part of a delicious dish called shrimp & grits) I loved them.
I don't like liver. For one thing, cow liver smells like human liver and so it reminds me of autopsies. I had jerk chicken once in a Caribbean restaurant and it had a slight hint of wintergreen in it that reminded me of gross anatomy class. (They add some wintergreen to the formalin these days.) I was unable to finish the dish despite a valiant effort. Sushi doesn't bother me, but it tastes bland and I have never understood what the fuss is all about.
The only way I like okra is a slice of it that's about a sixteenth of an inch thick, nestled inside at least an inch of deep-fried batter.
Hey, Olly--how come your site lists pistachio ice cream in with things like fish eyes, cicada, and venison tongue (one of which resided in our freezer one year)?
Paradoxically, in our neighborhood we get pistachio flavor only in spumoni, where however chocolate and strawberry aren't among my faves and therefore, Olly and Jackie (or for that matter, anybody else who cares about such weighty matters), if you have any pull with Stater Bros, Albertson's, and possibly Von's, I urge you to Fwd this message to appropriate authorities in CA's Victor Valley
During a stay in Scotland, I was also served haggis. The hosts were clearly expecting at least a discreet recoil. But I found nothing especially revolting in it, no more than in the Sicilian "focacce".
I can top all of youse. I ate my mother's cooking until I ran away from home at the age of 16. Actually I walked because I was too weak to run. I was 68 inches tall and weighed 91 pounds, and the doctor said I only weighed that much because I was a bit big-boned.
Mom never met a recipe that she could not and did not ruin. The happiest day of her life was the day she got a microwave oven so she could ruin food faster. I would have loved any of the foods listed above, no matter how outlandish. She even tried to fry frog eggs once! It's too bad she's not alive, she could make a fortune cooking for Kirstie Allie.
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Hey, Olly--how come your site lists pistachio ice cream in with things like fish eyes, cicada, and venison tongue?
Dunno Jackie, pistachio ice cream isn't all that big a deal down here not when you can have goody goody gum drops and hokey pokey. But it's the Freaky Native Sushi and the Bee bum juice thats got me thinking.
TFallF-
While diving off Koh Chang, Aramis touched two large, live examples of that ocean-dwelling cucumber thing, but has never wanted to bite on one. Thanks for vindicating that reluctance.
Tried haggis once also but found it simply
offal .
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...people keep telling me, "oh, it's just because you've been to a bad sushi place - you have to come with me to MY sushi place and you'll see it's great"...
There are some among us who want to take a fire hose to such oafs. 
Here is an excerpt from an obscure, unpublished work:
Now, liver is one of those healthy things to eat, but is supposed to taste bad. Unlike other things, liver continued to taste bad even as I got old. But there is just no reason to wreck the flavor of anything on purpose, such as by adding cilantro or cumin. “Oh, it’s good” may have been an adequately convincing argument for things like turnip greens, but it does not cut the mustard [of course that had to get in] in the spice world. There is no way starving people anywhere in the world would be thankful for that stuff. I have found I am not the only one to think cilantro is vile, so do not put it in my soup thinking it is just my imagination. Also remember that cumin tastes like dirt. Anyone who thinks to ask, “How do you know what dirt tastes like?” must never have been four years old. Finally, I call on backing from the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 4.3, it says, “Ye shall not eat any abominable thing.” Obviously that also applies to Yeti and Sasquatch, even without cilantro.
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Tried haggis once also but found it simply offal .
I wish I'd said that. 
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Now, liver is one of those healthy things to eat, but is supposed to taste bad. Unlike other things, liver continued to taste bad even as I got old.
Well, there's some folks think celery tastes good. Ya just can't reason with some folks.
Actually almost all organ meats are not good for you, liver being especially so. The liver filters poison out of the blood stream and IIRC some of the poisons are stored in perpetuity. So when you eat the liver you are eating stored poisons.
And the cholesterol levels in most organs!!! To die for.
Liver isn't good for you?? Aww...I like chopped liver with fried onions.
How come they tell you to eat liver to get iron, then?
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What kinds of food repulses you?
The men have already made a nice summary of it, and I've been repulsed. It took me a week to consider a reply and now I do because it's after all just a matter of prejudice.
So I add the black and yellow striped caterpillars my African friends get imported from central Africa as a delicacy. I can't get over that alarming colour combination. And in spite of their efforts to make me try one I did not. Cowardness for sure. After all they are just like shrimp (I do eat) without the scale and legs.They just bake them in a frying pan like shrimp.
But those black and yellos stripes ! 
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But there is just no reason to wreck the flavor of anything on purpose, such as by adding cilantro or cumin...I have found I am not the only one to think cilantro is vile, so do not put it in my soup thinking it is just my imagination.
There is a bug which exudes a smell like cilantro. Of course if you have, like my husband, met the bug first, you will always have a tendency to think cilantro smells (and tastes) like bugs.
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Actually almost all organ meats are not good for you, liver being especially so. The liver filters poison out of the blood stream and IIRC some of the poisons are stored in perpetuity. So when you eat the liver you are eating stored poisons.
Yeah, yeah. They say that about everything that tastes good.
Am I recalling correctly a news story several years ago about some people who got stranded while dogsledding, ate the liver of a dogs that had died, and it killed them? (Though I believe they'd eaten it raw.)
C a t e r p i l l a r s ?! Horrors! And I thought it was awful when our African people bring these big messes of greens that reek (and taste of) fish...
No bugs--or ANY raw meat for this chick, thank you.
I would think it was vitamin A poisoning, because arctic predators have high concentrations of it.
Anyways, I've eaten butterflies and cocoons. They both taste disturbingly crunchy.
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No bugs--or ANY raw meat for this chick, thank you.
Lovely caterpillar, Jackie.(yeh,that's them allright!) I know about those greens too , which they usuallly cook with a dried sort of catfish. I like that. You know we eat raw salted herring as a national delicacy ? I love it. The Africans abhor raw herring equal to my disgust of their caterpilllars.
Curuinor , what an interesting way to put : "they taste disturbingly crunchy". Does that mean nice or not? Is crunchy not rather a quality of the texture in stead of of the taste?
Elisabeth, (c?) silantro or choriander, when I first met with those leaves I was repulsed by the heavy smell of what I thought was dirty dishwashing cloth. But that became quickly a favorite herb. The fastest aquired taste I remember.
Bugs. I guess if we lived in places where there would be a protein shortage we would quickly adept to the taste of bugs. And I would close my eyes on the black and the yellow. Or get to like them.
O.K. a Sunday dubble. Just a little story I think belongs here:
Our lifelong best friend, Walter, he hated fish with a serious hate. He couln't stand the smell of it. Somewhere fish on a friendly dinner? He would say :"Count me out!". Then came our turn to feed the friends,Walter included. Everyone knew he hated fish, because he always had to let that be known, even though he knew we all knew.
That day I thought: "see if I can trick Walter". I prepared a mediterranian dish, some ratatouille based on tomatoes, onions, garlic and mixed vegetables, the French mish-mash. We all enjoyed the southern stew and then Walter said : "Hm, nice, hm, yes, very nice. What's in it?"
"Fish Walter" I said, "fresh tuna fish".
"WWOOOOOOOOOOOOOhh !" . Walter went and we all roared with laughter.
"Well" , he said to work out his embarrassment , " I thought it was chicken , Gosh, hm, ït did taste a bit like chicken, no?"
"Yeh, chicken from the sea, Walter" someone said and we laughed again..
Ever since we kept it like that .' Chicken from the sea'.
Not that we necessarily trust purveyors of the product on matters etymological but here's what
Chicken of the Sea has top say about the matter.
The lovely AnnaS and I will sometimes refer to chicken as tuna of the barnyard.
Funny!Walter's taste was right then. To me it tasted like tuna .The Mermaid site is interesting. First recipe I found would go on my list of repulsive: Tuna and
marmelade on toast. But there's more, thanks!
Yes, understood, Chicken
of the Sea. (prepositions hopeless for a foreigner)
In the sixties, back when I styled myself into either a latter day beatnik or a new wave hippie, I ate bugs. It wasn't protein that I was seeking it was attention. Listen humans, I said, you must transcend your petty conventions and become like me...supermen!
No one listened so I ate bugs to get their attention. It worked pretty well, I got attention but none of the girls would kiss me. I didn't care. I was on a mission. I was showing society the folly of entrenched social behavior.
Most of all I ate cockroaches (they proved to be the most dramatic, the trick being to first pull off the wings). Then one night three of the girls who wouldn't kiss me and I were sitting in a booth at Ed Salem's Ice Cream Bar having sodas and a small green moth landed on our table so I ate it. Big mistake.
I turned green. Nature had endowded the little moth with a most effective defense mechanism. Teen-age boys who ate them didn't die they just suffered agonies hereto unknown to their breed, and they, like me, lived to tell others as I am telling you -- Don't eat little green moths, they taste terrible.
Vivid coloration means either poison or bad taste. Don't eat things with vivid coloration.
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Vivid coloration means either poison or bad taste. Don't eat things with vivid coloration.
..or maybe they just look like something that tastes bad or is toxic, as the viceroy butterfly mimics the evil-tasting monarch. But it's a really good rule. Except when applied to M & M s .
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Vivid coloration means either poison or bad taste. Don't eat things with vivid coloration.
Except when applied to M & M s .
---->
Or when applied to vegetable and floral items. The nasturtium and the squash flowers, rose and pansy are lovely of taste,non toxic and of a very vivid colouring.
But when I eat those I feel more barbaric than when I eat fish or chicken. 
Hast tried peanut butter on it? [But beware certain brands.]
Moths of any colour always seem a bit too dusty to eat.
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In the sixties, back when I styled myself into either a latter day beatnik or a new wave hippie, I ate bugs. Most of all I ate cockroaches
In the sixties, many people smoked roaches. But that is another thing entirely.
P.S. "I never inhaled"
frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
My food rules boil down to
1) it has to be dead.
2) it has to be FOOD not just a dare or "let's see how dumb the tourist is"
other than that I'll try it and either like it or not. I quite liked chocolate covered grasshoppers. Kind of crunchy and honey tasting.
it has to be dead
What! No oysters?
What about chopped-up octopus legs? They're quite dead but their metabolic functions can last quite a long time— up to 10 or so hours. Which means that they still squirm.
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1) it has to be dead.
I quite liked chocolate covered grasshoppers. Kind of crunchy and honey tasting.
Have you verified how dead they were under that chocolate covering?
ICK!!!!!!!!! NO food that moves, for me, tyvm! Hubby fried up some freshly-killed frog legs once; they contorted in the skillet*, and I screamed.
*That is just...wrong!
By the time you cook the oysters (don't like the taste raw) and octopus (pulpo Gallejo, mmmmmmm) they're dead.
I am reminded of the Star Trek episode where number 1 was on temporary duty to a Klingon station. His first experience in the chow hall he is given a plate of some good-awful worm-like substance and he looks at it with revulsion. The Klingons are all set to laugh (or whatever it is that Klingons do) at his wimpiness when he says, "I can't eat this. It's not even alive."