The Big Book of Gross Stuff

by Bart King

  In a word, yes!

  A tarantula can be barbecued or roasted on the coals of a fire in a large leaf. After it’s cooked, you apparently just sort of break through the skin and pull the meat out like you would for a crab. Those in the know say it tastes like shrimp, not chicken. Of course, these are the same people who are using the tarantula’s fangs for toothpicks. (Like I said, they’re insane.)

  Meat Gardens

  This idea is sooo weird. There are science labs that can “grow” meat in test tubes. This offers a way to eat meat without killing an animal! The idea is that people could grow their own meat at home. Also called “engineered meat,” it can be designed to taste like beef or pork . . . or anything else! According to Toronto’s Globe and Mail, before a person goes to bed, he/she would “throw starter cells and a package of growth medium into the (coffeemaker–size) meat maker and wake up to harvest-fresh sausage for breakfast.”

  I just told someone about this, and he said, “Meat from a meat-maker? Gross!” (But how is getting meat the “old-fashioned way” any less gross?)

  It Takes Guts

  I’m pretty sure that for every organ inside a pig or cow, there’s a human somewhere who will eat it. Lung? Stomach? Pancreas? Bring it on!

  Maybe the most common way to eat animal guts is in sausage. Sausages are mostly made up of ground meats. And what keeps the ground meat from falling apart is the skin wrapped around the sausage. This skin is usually a pig, cow, or sheep intestine. Pretty weird, huh? Poop used to go through that animal intestine, and now the animal’s intestine goes though your intestine! Of course, there is a substitute sausage skin that’s made from a digestible plastic. But I’m not sure that’s any less gross!

  Since we’re talking about people eating meat, I think we can agree that animals should be cared for thoughtfully and slaughtered in a quick, humane way. And that’s why foie gras has been outlawed in some parts of the world. It’s a paste made from the swollen livers of ducks or geese. But to get the livers tasting the “right” way, a foie gras rancher grabs a duck and shoves a funnel down its throat. This funnel goes all the way to the animal’s stomach. Then the animal is force-fed (or force-gorged) to digest more food than it would ever eat naturally.

  This process is so disgusting, food celebrity Anthony Bourdain almost blew chunks when he watched a French duck being fed like this. And after eating foie gras and taking a car ride home, he DID throw up. Spectacularly!

  As bad as it is, I think foie gras might be tied for grossness with Scotland’s haggis. The poet Robert Burns described this dish as “gushing entrails”—and he was trying to be nice! To make it, get a sheep’s stomach and fill it with oatmeal, fat, and a sheep’s cut-up liver, esophagus, heart, lungs, and brain. Then let it simmer for four hours, and pour Scotch whiskey over the whole thing. But this is not take-out food: a shipment of haggis was once not allowed into the United States because it was considered “unfit” for humans to eat!

  Let’s Find Out More!

  Learn about sweetmeats. How sweet are they? Keep a trash can nearby in case you get sickened by where sweetmeats come from.

  Pee Pies and Poop

  Hey, I just realized something: your kidneys (p. 45) filter your pee. This means they are constantly filled with urine. So why, oh why, do people eat kidneys? There are even kidney pies that are considered delicacies! I don’t know about you, but any pie that smells like pee is not for me. (Alexandre Dumas—author of The Three Musketeers—even wrote a famous French cookbook in which he stated that kidneys are best when they still have a whiff of urine about them!)

  As for poop, humans generally avoid eating it. (Thank goodness!) But there have been exceptions. (Dang it!) Native Americans of the American Southwest were known to sort through animal and human poop looking for certain prized undigested grains and seeds. These would then be removed, cleaned, roasted, ground, and eaten.

  This process of getting food from poop was called the “Second Harvest.”

  Plenty of other people have eaten poop too, usually out of the belief that it was good for them. For instance, it’s reported that Martin Luther (1483–1546) enthusiastically ate a spoonful of his own poop each day. Now that’s a hearty breakfast!

  Professional Face-Stuffers

  It’s not only what we eat that can be gross, but also how we eat it. For instance, consider the International Federation of Competitive Eating. This group puts on events in which a professional eater like Joey Chestnut can stuff sixty-six hot dogs down his throat in twelve minutes.

  If you’ve ever watched this kind of eating before, you know that it’s definitely gross. And since there are already WAY too many people in the world eating way too much food, do we really want to encourage more of the same?

  Instead, we should be fans of the group that puts on “air-eating championships.” This is a lot like playing air guitar. But instead of pulling out an imaginary guitar, contestants eat imaginary food! Ironically, the winner of the first air-eating competition later turned out to be an air-bulimic! (“I pretended to throw up,” he said. “It was a pretend cry for help.”)

  Cannibalism

  Think about this: people eat almost all primates, including chimpanzees. (In Africa, chimps fall under the category of something called “bush meat.”)

  I’m amazed that humans eat primates at all. It seems SO wrong. Did you know that chimpanzees have 98 percent of the same genetic code as humans? That means eating a chimp would be 98 percent cannibalism!

  I just asked my wife if she would eat a chimpanzee. Her reply: “If I was in Africa and I was hungry and it was legal, sure. I’d eat a chimpanzee.”

  This was a surprise! “But would you eat a person?” was my next question.

  “If it had enough seasoning,” was her answer.

  Apparently, I need to keep lots of groceries in the house.

  Dead Men Tell No Tales . . . And They’re So Tender!

  “Tender as a dead man” is a phrase still sometimes heard on the South Pacific island of Fiji. (But my travel agent says there haven’t been any cannibals there for a long time.)

  Cannibals have been around for a very long time in a whole lot of places. There’s historical evidence of cannibalism on all of the continents (except Antarctica). There are bones of human ancestors in Spain from 800,000 years ago that show signs of people eating people. And cannibalism may explain what happened to the Neanderthals. This species of human disappeared about 35,000 years ago. (You know, they’re the ones with receding foreheads and prominent brow ridges. No, not your gym teacher!)

  Recent evidence suggests that modern humans (that’s us) ate them! Neanderthal bones have been found bearing the same marks that were left on deer carcasses by our ancestors.

  There are some famous stories about cannibalism in the modern age. You probably already know about the eighty-seven pioneers who were stranded at Donner Pass in 1846. Forty of them got eaten! And of course, there are the astronauts stranded on Mars who ate each other in 2092. But you may not have heard of Alfred Packer. He was a prospector looking for gold in Colorado who was trapped by a blizzard along with some other miners.

  Packer survived by eating his colleagues. At his trial, the judge who sentenced Packer to thirty years in jail said, “You are a low-down, depraved son-of-a-[gun]. There were only seven Democrats in Hindale County, and you ate five of them!”

  In the twenty-first century, we seem to have left cannibalism behind. But odd echoes remain! For example, an animal-rights organization came up with an idea to sell George Clooney–flavored tofu. The idea was that they would use the sweat from Clooney’s gym towel to flavor some bean curd. They even came up with a name for it: CloFu.

  None was ever made, though. As for George Clooney’s response, he said, “As a mammal, I’m offended.”

  But if you think that’s bad, then listen to this: a man named Mark Nuckols invented a human-flavored tofu called Hufu. The bean curd’s flavor was based on what cannibals described humans as tastin
g like. The Hufu motto: It’s the healthy human-flesh alternative.

  * * *

  [16] (Answers: 1. h 2. b 3. d 4. c 5. e 6. a 7. f 8. g 9. j 10. i

  [17] Dang it, I couldn’t resist. It turns out that humans have been eating hamsters and gerbils (!) for thousands of years. Apparently, those little plastic hamster balls aren’t much of a defense against a hungry caveman.

  Kicking the Bucket

  It’s a tragedy, but death is a fruit that all of us must take a bite from someday.

  Man, I am so poetic! And at one time I would have been brave, too. That’s because lots of people used to avoid talking (or even thinking!) much about death. But this all changed when a new force entered our culture. It’s a force so powerful, it has been able to sweep aside our old prejudices while allowing us to look at death more closely.

  Yes, I’m talking about the CSI television shows. (All twenty of them!) The success of CSI has made it okay for people of all ages to consider death. (Especially if murder is involved!) And maybe this isn’t a bad thing. After all, although it’s the biggest cliché of all time, death is part of life. So why not learn more about it? And since death is such a deadly serious topic, my theory is that while learning about it, we have to joke about it. The only other option is crying!

  Hanging Around

  In 1634, a man named John Bartendale was hanged for more than thirty minutes before being buried. Later that day, a person passing Bartendale’s grave saw the earth on it moving. The brave soul dug out the still-living executed man! Bartendale’s profession was a “piper,” and between his strong neck and big lungs, he’d survived! A judge later ruled that since Bartendale had already been executed, he had paid his penalty and was free to go.

  Joking about death is sometimes called “gallows humor” or “black humor.” Here’s an example: An elderly man was dying at home when he smelled an apple pie baking. He loved apple pie! He managed to get out of bed and stagger into the kitchen, and there it was—delicious! The old man was reaching for the pie when his wife yelled, “Keep away! That’s for your funeral.”

  Anyway, CSI has taught me a lot. For example, I now know there are special schools that provide in-depth classes for police officers and advisors who investigate death scenes. Just outside of Austin, Texas, is an “outdoor composition research facility.” This is a place where dead human bodies are left outdoors in the sun and rain for various lengths of time. Students then study the body’s decomposition. This helps them make informed decisions later in their careers!

  What’s So Scary About Dead People?

  In the Indian city of Ahmadabad is a place called the New Lucky Restaurant. This business was founded in the 1950s in an unusual spot: a cemetery! Inside the restaurant are several gravestones, but the customers don’t care. One local professor explained it this way: “Graveyards in India are never scary places. We don’t have a literature of horror stories so we don’t have much fear of ghosts.”

  Along with funeral home workers, these future CSI officers are “death professionals,” and they are trained to notice certain things. For example, they might notice that a dead body has more than one color. That’s because blood settles, so whatever the body’s position, any part that’s elevated will look paler.

  The corpse will probably be in a state of rigor mortis by the time the professionals get there. That is, once the person’s blood stops circulating, the body’s muscles freeze up, making the “stiff” stiff. Rigor mortis starts at the body’s head and then works its way down the body. It’s sort of weird, though; rigor mortis can “freeze” a person’s face into an expression even though the rest of the body is still limber! But after forty-eight hours, rigor mortis wears off entirely.

  Stiff or not, a new dead body is usually called “fresh.” Let’s learn how it gets stale!

  What Happens When? A Not-Very-Fun Fun Primer!

  Right after a person dies, he or she starts to decay fairly quickly. The first thing that happens is that the body’s cells break down. Their own enzymes digest them, which is actually pretty handy. In fact, I know this is supposed to be gross, but it seems so perfectly natural!

  As the cells break down, the bacteria that is naturally inside the body helps out the decay process by eating it. The whole body is a smorgasbord, and everything must go! And as those bacteria eat, they make gas—just like when you’re alive.

  But the problem with a corpse is that it can’t use belches or flatulence to get rid of that gas. So the body starts to inflate. Bloated corpses usually get big in the gut area because that’s where most of the bacteria are.

  This gassy, bloated period goes on for about a week.

  If the body is left out in the open, some bugs and other small creatures will be attracted to it. Flies will lay eggs in any of the body’s wet orifices. Flies never just lay one egg when they can lay a hundred instead. The fly larvae are called maggots, and they will start eating the body’s decaying flesh. Maggots look like rice kernels that are moving around, and when a bunch of them start eating, they apparently sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies after milk is poured on them. (Seriously.)

  Just like adult flies, maggots don’t have teeth. To eat, they spit up digestive juice on their food. Then they drink the liquefied leftovers.

  Special flesh-eating beetles also show up to chow down on the body’s skin and muscle tissue. Known as dermestid beetles, these bugs are ALL business. If a dead body is on a wool rug, these beetles and their larvae will eat the body down to the bone, and then eat the rug for dessert! While this sounds disgusting, we should be thankful for the job maggots and carnivorous beetles do! It’s also nice that they almost always stick to eating dead tissue. (Every once in a while, a fly will sneak up a living person’s nose to lay eggs. The affected person won’t know what’s happening until he feels something moving up there. He might blow his nose and find maggots mixed with the mucus. Then it’s time to call a doctor FAST because maggots can eat through a nose pretty quickly.)

  After it stops bloating, a decaying body can get down to the business of liquefying. Yep, if you leave it to its own devices, most of the human body will dissolve and melt away. It’s actually a good system. (You just don’t want to be around when it happens!)

  Since you’ll probably never smell a decaying human, writer Mary Roach researched it for you. She says a dead person smells “sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat.”

  Extra Credit: Can you guess one good reason why the tradition of bringing aromatic flowers to a funeral began?

  By the way, anything near a decomposing body will get soaked with body liquid. That’s why CSI officers know that the earth around a murder victim is important. How much gushy stuff has absorbed into it? Answering this question helps tell how long the body’s been there. It also helps the investigator decide if he should throw his shoes away.

  First, the body’s guts and lungs start turning to liquid. Luckily, as these internal organs decompose, they do so under the privacy of whatever skin is still hanging on. (Of course, the bacteria inside the body cause the skin over the belly to start turning green two days after death, so don’t look too closely.)

  As for the brain, it’s well protected inside the skull. But because it’s pretty soft, it will start leaking out the body’s ears, nose, and mouth. (People who suffer head injuries, like boxers and middle-school teachers, sometimes have their brains liquefied while still alive. A doctor who performed autopsies on boxers who died in the ring found that their brains were as goopy as toothpaste.)

  6While decomposition goes on, the bones and teeth of a person stay intact. They’re going to be around for a good long time. But without the connecting tendons and muscles, nobody’s skeleton stays in one piece!

  What I’ve described is what happens during a body’s natural decomposition. But you know humans . . . they like their births natural and their deaths unnatural!

  Let me give you an example by using cats. In ancient Egypt, dead phar
aohs were dried, stuffed, and wrapped up as mummies. But the pharaohs wanted to have company in the afterlife, so they had their servants killed, dried out, stuffed, and mummified as well.

  Oh, and they wanted their cats to be with them too. Lots of cats! They didn’t have anything against cats. In fact, they liked felines so much that they wanted to have lots of them as pets in the afterlife. Try guessing the number of Egyptian cats that were made into mummies. Millions and millions and millions! So many cat mummies have been found in Egypt, massive piles of them were ground up in the nineteenth century and turned into fertilizer.

  Funeral Arrangements

  On different continents and at different times, death has been viewed . . . differently. But in general, the idea has been to honor people who die, and to try to keep their memory alive. In the African Congo, the Banziri tribe was known to honor the dead by placing the body over a fire. Pots were placed under the burning body to catch the melting oils and dripping fat.