One of the city’s most unusual museums is located in the middle of Berlin, where everything revolves around the topic of disgust. The Disgusting Food Museum Berlin wants to show visitors the world of disgust in all its different facets. And who knows, maybe you’ll find out that not everything is disgusting after all…
What is disgust?
Disgust is a basic human emotion and occurs in all cultures worldwide. Disgust is an emotion and expresses extreme aversion to certain things. Disgust does not only have to refer to taste, it can also include aversion to, for example, smells, consistencies or behaviours.
All that really matters is that each person has their own feelings of disgust, whose reaction in the body can also vary in intensity. In contrast to other, less strong forms of aversion, disgust sometimes manifests itself through strong physical reactions such as nausea and vomiting, sweating, falling blood pressure and even fainting.
Scientifically, disgust is not only considered an affect, but also an instinct. It is innate, influenced by socialisation and also serves to prevent disease. Research has not yet fully deciphered the topic of disgust.
Visit to the exhibition
Before visiting the exhibition at the Disgusting Food Museum Berlin, every visitor should be aware that things are shown that can cause disgust. The visit is not suitable for everyone and anyone who can claim to be very sensitive to visual stimuli and smells should think twice before going there.
With its exhibition, the museum does not want to pillory things from other regions and cultures that are labelled with the “disgust factor” in our country. Rather, it wants to show that there are comparable things in our world. Let’s take two types of cheese as an example, both of which come from Europe:
Casu Marzu and Würchwitzer mite cheese
Casu Marzu is a cheese from Italy (Sardinia). The loaf of cheese is cut open and placed in the open air. Cheese flies then lay their eggs there. Maggots develop, which break down the fat of the cheese with their enzyme and whose excrement becomes part of the cheese.
You can see a cheese with its live maggots in the Disgusting Food Museum Berlin. (The cheese is put into the refrigerator every evening, the maggots are stored separately and only put back into the cheese the next day).
The consumption of the cheese is banned in the EU. The maggots that also crawl into the cheese could survive in the human body and damage the intestinal walls.
Würchwitz mite cheese comes from Saxony-Anhalt and is traditionally produced in Zeitz. The dried and moulded low-fat curd is matured with small mites in a wooden box for over 3 months. The mite saliva ferments the raw cheese and gives it a salty taste. Even though you can’t see the mites on the cheese with the naked eye, they live on the cheese too. The cheese is eaten with the mites.
Which cheese now counts as disgusting food – I think the Casu Marzu is more likely to make museum visitors uncomfortable, as you can see the maggots crawling large and clearly over the cheese here. But is it therefore more disgusting than the cheese with small, barely visible and living mites? Certainly a matter of opinion.
View of the Disgusting Food exhibits
The exhibition is divided into product groups, starting with drinks and ending with sweet products. In addition to some short explanations at the exhibits, video sequences (for example about animal husbandry and the torture of animals) are shown, you can take a smell sample at some places and from mid-May 2022 the audio guide “Sound of Disgust” will accompany you through the exhibition.
A side note: Of course, the museum takes care to handle the food as sustainably as possible. Some exhibits are not displayed as originals because of their short shelf life, but consist of almost genuine copies made of durable material. Other foods are kept refrigerated at night and keep for a very long time. If I hadn’t been told in some places that there was no original there, I wouldn’t have noticed.
The variety of different exhibits is astonishing and I would like to present only a few here. In the process, the question arose for me with each exhibit: “Does this have a disgust factor for me? What is disgusting about it and why do I think so?”
Mouse wine from China
Babymäuse in Reiswein
Facts:
very young, still hairless baby mice are drowned and placed in rice wine
the wine matures for 1 year
is said to be a remedy for asthma and liver diseases
is said to taste of rotten animal and slightly of petrol and to have a foul smell
My disgust factor:
Fortunately, I didn’t have to smell or taste anything, so I could look at the exhibit quite calmly. It is somewhat reminiscent of exhibits from animal anatomy. However, the idea of having to drink this wine makes me feel more than a little queasy.
Mongolian Mary
Schafaugäpfel in Tomatensaft
Facts:
pickled shafa apples in tomato juice
dates back to the time of Genghis Khan
Traditional remedy for alcohol hangover
My disgust factor:
An exhibit in the Disgusting Food Museum Berlin that is quite demanding on my disgusting sensibilities. I’ll gladly forgo the home remedy and cure my next hangover on my own.
Egg liqueur
Straußen Eierlikör
Facts:
Extremely popular in Germany, almost belongs on the coffee table on festive days.
Consistency is reminiscent of gravy or slime
As there is always something left in the glasses, licking them out is part of the pleasure
My disgust factor:
I wouldn’t say no to Egg liqueur on chocolate ice cream or eggnog in a dessert/cake. I absolutely hate to drink it warm and then still in combination with cream/milk. In my eyes and for my taste, it’s just disgusting.
Berliner Schnitzel
Kuheuter – Berliner Schnitzel
Facts:
Not so long ago, the Berliner Schnitzel was the inexpensive schnitzel variant, a “poor people’s meal”.
made from cow udder
the udder is boiled in salted water for 3 hours, then sliced, breaded and fried
today the cow udder is a very expensive meat
My disgust factor:
The meat itself didn’t look much different to me than other raw meat. I cannot judge whether it tastes good, but I would try it without bias.
Locusts
Heuschrecken
Facts:
roasted, smoked, dried edible
tastes sweet and crunchy
very high in protein
My disgust factor:
I like it and could imagine incorporating it into our meal plan on a regular basis.
Kit Kat
Kit Kat aus aller Welt
Facts:
the well-known chocolate bar is also sold in Japan
in addition to the European flavours, the flavours wasabi, soy sauce, green tea and purple sweet potato are also offered
My disgust factor:
Well, if it tastes good! Whether I necessarily want to enjoy soy sauce or potato flavour with chocolate, I don’t know. But why not try it…
Visit to the Tasting Bar
Anyone who feels like overcoming their disgust at the end of their visit to the exhibition can pay a visit to the Tasting Bar. Here you have the opportunity to taste certified foodstuffs that have not yet found their way into every menu and are also associated with feelings of disgust by many visitors.
During my visit to the Disgusting Food Museum Berlin, there were:
Buffalo worms
Mealworms
Crickets
Salt crickets
June beetles
June beetle larvae / Superworms
on the menu. In addition, one could try two different spice pastes and a Turkish beetroot drink.
Before and after trying out the food, I could observe the most varied reactions of other museum visitors. From “no way” to “tastes quite good” to spitting it out in the “spit bag” (known as a K…. bag from the plane) given to me at the entrance, everything was there.
I had never eaten worms or bugs before and was really excited about my taste experience. Important for me – nothing crawled! The animals were either dried or roasted and this quickly explained the taste and also the slight crunch when I bit into them. The dried worms were bland, tasteless and the roasted animals had a slightly smoky tart taste. All in all, I was surprised and not disgusted.
As a liquorice lover, tasting the salted liquorice from Iceland was a bit of a highlight. What, according to the museum staff, evokes a feeling of disgust in most visitors, tasted really good to me. Taste can be so different!
Final thought
As already explained, the feeling of disgust is different for each person and is caused by a wide variety of stimuli. There are museum visitors who go through the exhibition “looking” for disgust, others do not even manage to look at the first exhibit without the rising feeling. That’s why I can only speak of my sensations during the visit. I liked it. I got a different view of some things in the Disgusting Food Museum Berlin and had new experiences.
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