I was thinking of all the things that people consume, for whatever reason. And realized how COMPLETELY INSANE humans are about what qualifies as food. So now I want to compile a list of things that are, somehow, food, but no one in there right mind should have eaten in the first place.
Naturally, standard plant and animal fare, things we learned to eat before becoming our sentient selves, doesn't really count per se.
1. Chocolate... for those who have never eaten a cocoa bean, it looks, smells, and tastes a lot like tree bark. I can understand that someone would try one, fruit is fruit, after all. But to consider it enough of a food that it'd be refined into something edible, who'd have thunk it?
2. Cheese... ok, someone decided to eat the solid portion of spoiled milk. Essentially congealed fat and bacterial agents are the only ingredients in cheese. Again, someone decided to eat this.
3. "Bird's Nest"... in the philippenes, there's a relatively rare bird that builds nests in mountains. They make these nests out of their own spit, they live in them, and then people come along and take these nests and EAT THEM in a soup. It's considered a delicacy, and has been for centuries. It's near impossible to reach these nests on purpose, with proper climbing gear. Yet some pre-european natives did it, then (instead of eating the birds), chose to eat their nest. Which, appearantly, was good.
4. Honey... speaking of gross, at least the above example was made by a vertabrate. WE discovered that the slime coating an insect hive (and a DANGEROUS insect at that) is edible. And good. Despite having bugs crawl in it and eat in, and for that matter excrete it.
5. Mushrooms... generally speaking, humans don't think too highly of eating fungus that grows on animal excrement. Yet, the mushrooms on any standard pizza are raised that way.
So, any thoughts? Or, for that matter, similarly warped examples of human eating habits that just seem wrong.