Beetles taste like apples, wasps taste like pine nuts and worms taste like fried bacon.

As experienced by a Marine Corp Matthew.

For some of you this will fall squarely into the “useless information” category. But for some of you more adventurous eaters, you can consider this his culinary review of “interesting” and food.

Mathew spent a large portion of his life in the Marine Corp where he was deployed overseas for most of his time. Since the Marines, He had the opportunity to travel all over the world for his work. You don’t really know him well, but to say he will try anything once is an understatement. He will go out of his way to eat local cuisine. He calls this “total cultural immersion”. For example, when he was in Korea it took him 6 weeks to convince a local vendor to allow him to taste one of their local delicacies….dog meat. Please understand that he is a dog lover and breeder, and that they have been eating dog from before the time of Christ. It’s part of their heritage…and he wanted to experience it.

He had the opportunity to sample delicacies in many parts of the world. Some of it turned his stomach, but it was all “interesting” and for the most part extremely healthy. Below are some highlights that he has discovered:

Beetles taste like apples

Wasps taste like pine nuts

Worms (earthworms) taste like bacon

Cow brain tastes like tofu

Turtle blood tastes like a bad margarita

Cobra venom tastes like aspirin – not recommended in large quantities

Pigeon tastes like alligator

Alligator tastes like chicken

Opossum tastes like greasy garbage

Rat tastes like….rat

Grubs taste like bread (sourdough)

Kopi Luwak (look it up) tastes like chocolate coffee and is not worth the cost

Rotten duck eggs (Balut in the Philippines) taste like death – worst thing I have ever eaten

Algae tastes like spinach

Silk worm larva taste like beer nuts

Duck feet taste like chicken feet but with more meat

Cat tastes like grey

Dog tastes like a mix between pork and beef

Whale tastes like beef

Camel tastes like pork

Crickets taste like cheese nips

There are tons more that he could list. If you can get past the initial thought of eating something “unusual” you will find that the rest of the world has pretty tasty food. To make it even better, most of the food is very low in fat and high in nutrients. Most of the world does not ruin their food with lots of processed additives.

So how about you guys? Can you add to the list? Surely he is not the only adventurous eater here.