Weird Foods People Actually Eat

From fermented foods to unusual delicacies, discover how culture shapes what humans consider normal to eat.

ScrollFacts  ·  Food  ·  Culture  ·  Global Traditions  ·  7–9 min read

What you consider "normal" to eat says everything about where you grew up — and nothing about what's actually edible. A French person might wince at the thought of eating insects, while someone from rural Mexico might find escargot perfectly acceptable. Food is one of the most culturally loaded aspects of human life, and the line between "delicacy" and "disgusting" is drawn entirely by geography, tradition, and upbringing.

So let's take a global tour through some of the most unusual, eyebrow-raising, and surprisingly beloved foods that real people eat every single day. Spoiler: someone out there thinks your favourite snack is equally bizarre.

01 — Hákarl: Iceland's Fermented Shark

If you think aged cheese smells strong, you have never encountered hákarl. This Icelandic national dish is Greenlandic shark that has been buried underground, allowed to ferment for months, then hung to dry for several more. The result is a pungent, ammonia-rich delicacy that even the late Anthony Bourdain described as the single worst, most disgusting thing he had ever eaten.

But for Icelanders, hákarl is a proud piece of culinary heritage stretching back to the Viking Age. Fresh Greenlandic shark is actually toxic to humans due to its high levels of uric acid — fermentation neutralises those toxins, making it (technically) safe to eat. It is served in small cubes, usually alongside a shot of Brennivín schnapps. The alcohol helps. A lot.

02 — Century Eggs: China's Preserved Powerhouse

Despite the name, century eggs are not actually a hundred years old. They are typically preserved for a few weeks to a few months using a curing mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls. The white transforms into a dark, translucent jelly; the yolk becomes a creamy, greenish-grey centre.

The flavour is intensely rich, complex, and deeply savoury — slightly sulphurous, faintly ammoniated, and utterly unlike any egg you have tasted in the West. In China, century eggs are enjoyed as a standalone appetiser, sliced over silken tofu, or stirred into congee. They are comfort food, celebration food, and everyday ingredient all at once. Once you get past the striking appearance, many adventurous eaters find them genuinely delicious.

03 — Balut: The Philippines' Beloved Street Food

Balut is a fertilised duck egg containing a partially developed embryo, boiled and eaten straight from the shell. Sold by street vendors across the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia, it is typically enjoyed as a late-night snack with a cold beer and a pinch of salt.

"The experience is layered: first you sip the warm broth from the shell, then eat the egg white, and finally the embryo itself — soft bones, feathers and all, depending on the stage of development."

The taste is often described as a richer, gamier version of a hard-boiled egg — deeply savoury and satisfying. For millions of people, balut is not a fear-factor challenge. It is Tuesday night.

04 — Surströmming: Sweden's Infamous Fermented Herring

Surströmming is so powerfully odorous that it has been banned on many airlines and in apartment buildings across Sweden. The canned fermented Baltic herring continues fermenting after canning, meaning tins are often visibly bulging by the time they reach shop shelves.

Opening a can outdoors is considered not just polite, but mandatory. The smell — a layered assault of rotten eggs, vinegar, and something indefinably marine — is legendary. Yet surströmming is a cherished tradition in northern Sweden, eaten at special August harvest parties called surströmmingsskivan. Served on tunnbröd flatbread with boiled potatoes, onion, and sour cream, devotees insist the taste is far milder than the smell suggests.

05 — Casu Martzu: Sardinia's Living Cheese

Casu martzu takes aged cheese to an extreme that would make most food safety inspectors faint. This Sardinian sheep's milk cheese is intentionally infested with live insect larvae — the maggots of the cheese fly Piophila casei — which decompose the fat within the cheese, creating an extremely soft, almost liquid texture.

The cheese must be eaten while the maggots are still alive. The flavour is intensely sharp and pungent, far beyond any standard pecorino. Casu martzu is technically illegal to sell in Italy under EU food safety law — which has only deepened its status as a prized underground delicacy on the island of Sardinia.

06 — Fried Insects: A Global Protein Source

Eating insects is not weird. By population, it is one of the most normal things in the world. An estimated two billion people consume insects as a regular part of their diet across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Grasshoppers (chapulines) are a beloved street snack in Oaxaca, Mexico. Silkworm pupae (beondegi) are sold from street carts in South Korea. Fried tarantulas are a crunchy delicacy in Cambodia.

Insects are extraordinarily nutritious — packed with protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals — often with a far lower environmental footprint than conventional livestock. The Western world's insect aversion is largely a cultural quirk, not a nutritional or logical one. As sustainable food movements grow, edible insects are increasingly appearing on Western menus and supermarket shelves.

07 — Kiviak: Greenland's Fermented Seabird Feast

If hákarl and surströmming sound mild, meet kiviak. This traditional Greenlandic dish involves stuffing around 400 to 500 small seabirds — little auks — inside a hollowed-out seal carcass, sewing it shut, weighing it down with stones, and leaving it to ferment for 18 months.

The birds ferment whole inside the seal's natural fat and preservatives. Eaten during winter celebrations, diners bite into the birds and consume the partially liquified, deeply fermented interior. Kiviak is rare and precious — deeply tied to Inuit survival traditions and the extraordinary ingenuity required to preserve nutrition through brutal Arctic winters.

08 — Natto: Japan's Sticky, Pungent Fermented Beans

Natto is made from soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis bacteria, producing a sticky, stringy dish with an intensely aromatic smell that divides even people within Japan itself. The flavour is simultaneously earthy, salty, and bracingly funky. The texture resembles a web of mucilage that stretches between your chopsticks.

Despite being polarising, natto is eaten daily by millions of Japanese people — typically for breakfast over rice, mixed with soy sauce and mustard. It is exceptionally nutritious, rich in protein, vitamin K2, and beneficial probiotic bacteria. Natto is one of those foods that tends to require repeated exposure before appreciation sets in. But those who love it, genuinely love it.

Why Do People Eat These Foods?

Every food on this list has a story rooted in necessity, ecology, tradition, or brilliant preservation ingenuity. Before refrigeration, fermentation was survival technology. Before global supply chains, eating insects was both efficient and sustainable. Before modern medicine, certain foods provided nutrients available nowhere else.

Culture teaches us what to find delicious and what to find disgusting from the moment we are born. The "weird" foods of one culture are the comfort foods of another. This is not relativism — it is simply the truth of how human taste works.

The more we travel, the more curiously we eat, and the more we engage with food traditions outside our own bubble, the more we discover that the boundaries of "normal" are astonishingly flexible. And that, arguably, is one of the most exciting things about being human.