Snacking: It may be our dietary downfall. Human caloric intake has increased by so much in the last few decades that we're on a one-way path to global obesity of "Wall-E"-like proportions. Having some problems putting down the chips and candy bars? Print this article out and stock up on these ten downright disgusting snack foods from around the world -- your curbed appetite will thank you later.
Chocolat de Tomato
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Chocolat de Tomato]()
Japan has a reputation for pushing the snack food envelope way beyond the limits of good taste. Once you get past the shelves of fish-flavored chips, though, you can run across some really weird stuff. Meet "Chocolat de Tomato," which is exactly what it sounds like: a white chocolate bar made by the redoubtable Meiji company that fuses in the unmistakable flavor of freeze-dried tomatoes. Pairing fruit (and yes, tomatoes are fruits) with chocolate is fairly common, but the end result here is a grotesque abomination of flavor that tastes more like toddler vomit.
Pumpkin Spice Pringles
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles]()
Pringles on their own are an atrocity. Invented in 1967, the hyperbolic paraboloid of oval baked potato rounds (made on a machine designed by sci-fi legend Gene Wolfe) are a poor parody of real potato chips, and they're legally not even allowed to be called "chips." So what could make them worse? The addition of really disgusting flavors. Manufacturer Procter & Gamble started out with the classics -- barbecue, salt and vinegar -- but in the 2000s they started getting sassy with "seasonal" flavors. The absolute worst came in 2012, when they produced a line of "Pumpkin Spice" Pringles, combining the ubiquitous autumn latte additive with their starchy, dry not-chips to produce a truly bad snack.
Balut
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Balut]()
The cuisine of the Philippines is an unusual one, fusing cultural influences from Asia and Europe into a funky stew. One of the absolute most disgusting things they eat, though, is the snack known as balut. How to make and eat Balut? First, get a fertilized duck egg. Boil it, in the shell, about 18 days after it's laid. Then crack it open and chomp down on the fetal bird in a broth made from its amniotic sac. Just looking at the damn thing is nauseating, and tasting it isn't much better.
S'mores Covered Bacon
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, S'mores Covered Bacon]()
We could do a whole article just on awful baseball stadium food. The good old days of hot dogs and peanuts in the shell are behind us, and now sports team owners are looking to rake in more concessions money by turning out high-calorie nonsense with high price tags. Some of these treats are actually pretty tasty, but the nadir of the trend probably came with the New York Mets's 2015 offerings, most notably the "s'mores-covered bacon on a stick". Bacon is delicious, s'mores are awesome, but when you put them together you get a disturbing sweet, salty turd log. Foul ball.
Hákarl
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Hakari, Hákari]()
Many of the snacks on this list come from Asia, but the cuisine of Europe's frozen north serves up its share of horrors as well. Hákarl is a traditional Icelandic snack or light meal consisting of cubed pieces of Greenland shark that have been allowed to ferment over a period of several months. The flesh of this shark is actually poisonous when fresh, so letting it stew in its own juices removes that toxin, leaving the meat with a pungent ammonia odor. After it rots, it's hung out to dry for several weeks before serving; the end result -- typically served canape-style on a toothpick -- is one of the most disgusting foods on Earth.
Crab Cream Gratin Pizza Doritos
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Pizza-la, crab cream gratin pizza Doritos]()
One thing Japan really loves to do is come up with new flavors for traditional snack foods. Doritos, which for decades did just fine with Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch flavors, has seen a bevy of disgusting additions overseas. One of the absolute worst came when Frito-Lay paired with popular chain restaurant Pizza-La to make Crab Cream Gratin Pizza Doritos. Pizza and tortilla chips alone isn't such an awful idea, but when you throw in an overwhelmingly fishy smell, tons of white cheese powder and actual chunks of corn, you have a culinary abomination that should not appear on this earth.
Gravy Candy
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Gravy Candy]()
The novelty-loving minds at Seattle's Archie McPhee are notorious for creating some seriously bizarre foods, but nothing hits the disgust scale quite like their gravy-flavored hard candy. First released in 2013 leading up to the Thanksgiving season, the treats deliver a solid punch of fatty, salty umami flavor. Did you ever go over to an old lady's house and see that she had a crystal bowl of hard candies all stuck together and covered with dust? Gravy flavoring is the only thing that could make that experience worse.
Garlic Chocolate
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Black Power Garlic Chocolate]()
Back to Japan for another perversion of the holy institution of chocolate. Mixing in savory flavors is a time-honored tradition -- think salty pretzels or peanut butter -- but we draw the line at garlic. Candy manufacturer Takko Shoji debuted their "Black Power" garlic chocolate in 2008, and it's a disturbing treat indeed. Not content to just grind up garlic and mix it into a chocolate bar, Takko Shoji instead took whole cloves of black garlic, let them ferment until they were nice and squishy, then coated them with chocolate and a dusting of cocoa powder. The resultant truffle was a thing that should have never seen the light of day.
Fried Tarantula
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Fried Tarantula]()
In the United States, we kind of take the processed food industry for granted. No matter where you go, you're likely to find Little Debbie products and they'll all taste the same. But in less-developed nations -- like, say, Cambodia -- snacks are a little more ground-level; literally, regarding one of the nation's most beloved crunchy treats. Tarantula spiders are a popular street food in Phnom Penh, fried to a crisp and coated with caramelized sugar. Arachnids and lobsters are close biological relatives, so maybe that'll make this scary snack go down easier for you.
Spicy Sticks
![The World's Most Disgusting Snacks, Spicy Sticks]()
On the surface, one of China's most popular snack foods doesn't sound like it would be so bad. Spicy Sticks are rods of fried wheat gluten rolled in hot oil and sold for just a dime a pack, making them a commonly seen snack in schools and among the working class. Although they're not super-delicious, the reason that Spicy Sticks close out this list is because of their toxic side effects. Allegedly produced in a filthy, ramshackle factory with no care for health code, people who have eaten Spicy Sticks report brutal bouts of diarrhea and stomach ailments, and one little girl even showed up with a ring of festering sores around her mouth -- now that'll make you lose your appetite.
In other delectable weirdness: Strange Movie Theater Snacks from Around The World; 5 Snacks You're Eating Wrong
Chocolat de Tomato
Japan has a reputation for pushing the snack food envelope way beyond the limits of good taste. Once you get past the shelves of fish-flavored chips, though, you can run across some really weird stuff. Meet "Chocolat de Tomato," which is exactly what it sounds like: a white chocolate bar made by the redoubtable Meiji company that fuses in the unmistakable flavor of freeze-dried tomatoes. Pairing fruit (and yes, tomatoes are fruits) with chocolate is fairly common, but the end result here is a grotesque abomination of flavor that tastes more like toddler vomit.
Pumpkin Spice Pringles
Pringles on their own are an atrocity. Invented in 1967, the hyperbolic paraboloid of oval baked potato rounds (made on a machine designed by sci-fi legend Gene Wolfe) are a poor parody of real potato chips, and they're legally not even allowed to be called "chips." So what could make them worse? The addition of really disgusting flavors. Manufacturer Procter & Gamble started out with the classics -- barbecue, salt and vinegar -- but in the 2000s they started getting sassy with "seasonal" flavors. The absolute worst came in 2012, when they produced a line of "Pumpkin Spice" Pringles, combining the ubiquitous autumn latte additive with their starchy, dry not-chips to produce a truly bad snack.
Balut
The cuisine of the Philippines is an unusual one, fusing cultural influences from Asia and Europe into a funky stew. One of the absolute most disgusting things they eat, though, is the snack known as balut. How to make and eat Balut? First, get a fertilized duck egg. Boil it, in the shell, about 18 days after it's laid. Then crack it open and chomp down on the fetal bird in a broth made from its amniotic sac. Just looking at the damn thing is nauseating, and tasting it isn't much better.
S'mores Covered Bacon
We could do a whole article just on awful baseball stadium food. The good old days of hot dogs and peanuts in the shell are behind us, and now sports team owners are looking to rake in more concessions money by turning out high-calorie nonsense with high price tags. Some of these treats are actually pretty tasty, but the nadir of the trend probably came with the New York Mets's 2015 offerings, most notably the "s'mores-covered bacon on a stick". Bacon is delicious, s'mores are awesome, but when you put them together you get a disturbing sweet, salty turd log. Foul ball.
Hákarl
Many of the snacks on this list come from Asia, but the cuisine of Europe's frozen north serves up its share of horrors as well. Hákarl is a traditional Icelandic snack or light meal consisting of cubed pieces of Greenland shark that have been allowed to ferment over a period of several months. The flesh of this shark is actually poisonous when fresh, so letting it stew in its own juices removes that toxin, leaving the meat with a pungent ammonia odor. After it rots, it's hung out to dry for several weeks before serving; the end result -- typically served canape-style on a toothpick -- is one of the most disgusting foods on Earth.
Crab Cream Gratin Pizza Doritos
One thing Japan really loves to do is come up with new flavors for traditional snack foods. Doritos, which for decades did just fine with Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch flavors, has seen a bevy of disgusting additions overseas. One of the absolute worst came when Frito-Lay paired with popular chain restaurant Pizza-La to make Crab Cream Gratin Pizza Doritos. Pizza and tortilla chips alone isn't such an awful idea, but when you throw in an overwhelmingly fishy smell, tons of white cheese powder and actual chunks of corn, you have a culinary abomination that should not appear on this earth.
Gravy Candy
The novelty-loving minds at Seattle's Archie McPhee are notorious for creating some seriously bizarre foods, but nothing hits the disgust scale quite like their gravy-flavored hard candy. First released in 2013 leading up to the Thanksgiving season, the treats deliver a solid punch of fatty, salty umami flavor. Did you ever go over to an old lady's house and see that she had a crystal bowl of hard candies all stuck together and covered with dust? Gravy flavoring is the only thing that could make that experience worse.
Garlic Chocolate
Back to Japan for another perversion of the holy institution of chocolate. Mixing in savory flavors is a time-honored tradition -- think salty pretzels or peanut butter -- but we draw the line at garlic. Candy manufacturer Takko Shoji debuted their "Black Power" garlic chocolate in 2008, and it's a disturbing treat indeed. Not content to just grind up garlic and mix it into a chocolate bar, Takko Shoji instead took whole cloves of black garlic, let them ferment until they were nice and squishy, then coated them with chocolate and a dusting of cocoa powder. The resultant truffle was a thing that should have never seen the light of day.
Fried Tarantula
In the United States, we kind of take the processed food industry for granted. No matter where you go, you're likely to find Little Debbie products and they'll all taste the same. But in less-developed nations -- like, say, Cambodia -- snacks are a little more ground-level; literally, regarding one of the nation's most beloved crunchy treats. Tarantula spiders are a popular street food in Phnom Penh, fried to a crisp and coated with caramelized sugar. Arachnids and lobsters are close biological relatives, so maybe that'll make this scary snack go down easier for you.
Spicy Sticks
On the surface, one of China's most popular snack foods doesn't sound like it would be so bad. Spicy Sticks are rods of fried wheat gluten rolled in hot oil and sold for just a dime a pack, making them a commonly seen snack in schools and among the working class. Although they're not super-delicious, the reason that Spicy Sticks close out this list is because of their toxic side effects. Allegedly produced in a filthy, ramshackle factory with no care for health code, people who have eaten Spicy Sticks report brutal bouts of diarrhea and stomach ailments, and one little girl even showed up with a ring of festering sores around her mouth -- now that'll make you lose your appetite.
In other delectable weirdness: Strange Movie Theater Snacks from Around The World; 5 Snacks You're Eating Wrong