The “Disgusting Food Museum” in Malmo, Sweden | Hacker News Reader

The “Disgusting Food Museum” in Malmo, Sweden

washingtonpost.com

22 pointspetethomas9 comments

I find it very surprising that balut made him vomit, it pretty much tastes like a standard chicken/duck non-fertilized egg with a different texture. Not that I necessarily enjoyed it, but with salt, its not terrible. Hakarl is bad, but I barely think that counts, in the sense that I don't think it was EVER meant to taste pleasing. I find any foods containing extremely high levels of ammonia to be generally off putting, but maybe in the future that flavor profile will be like hops in beer today and hipsters will chase after it and put it in everything. /shrug.

Also from another angle, if the point of the museum is to remove the "otherization" aspect from food, why even call it the "disgusting food"? Obviously anyone who connotates the exhibit with the items inside will be going in with a specific bias.

My personal thoughts are that a majority of "disgusting" items are generally grouped into categories broadly being: fermented, processed (sausages/spam), organ meat, or "creatively made" (ortolan, casu marzu). Just call it a food museum and subdivide it by the above categories, and remove the dumb culture differentiation.

The very article that they reference with Anthony Bourdain has a part that criticizes the notion of overly closely tying a food to a specific nation/culture. If you want to get rid of these sorts of biases, don't even bother tying the item to an identity, just show it and make it "normal" seeming.

... "why even call it the "disgusting food"? Obviously anyone who connotates the exhibit with the items inside will be going in with a specific bias." Well, isn't that what they are trying to challenge? The 'whys' of disgusting food. I think it's an appropriate name considering that these items are usually presented as disgusting in the general public. So by giving it the name Disgusting Food Museum they create a mindset for the visitor that is saying 'you're now entering a museum of food you'll find disgusting', and then making the visitor quesiton that mindset; Why do they find Surstromming or Balut disgusting? You can't ask yourself such questions unless you think those dishes are disgusting in the first place. Why do you think chocolate is disgusting? Well, uh, I don't.

It tends to be Texture, rather than Taste that makes most peope hate some foods.

I disagree however with seeking to divorce the food with the culture. The amount of understanding between cultures by sharing food is huge. Food implies 100s of things about the person and the community that produced it. I agree that we shouln't over-emphasize the strageness of it, but many have borderline fetish for the new, unusual, exotic. That human nature will always bring styles and tastes together, while preserving a positive group identity. We are, for better or worse, wired for tribalism. I think embracing that nature and optimising for it seems better than pretending its not there.

After watching a few videos of people trying surströmming, I figured they might feature it in the museum, and sure enough.

It's interesting to me that foods like that, that have an incredibly pungent/aggressive smell or presence are just naturally enjoyed by others.

I guess my brain still wants to believe that when something is that "bad" that everyone else will experience the same thing, though that's clearly not true.

I was in Slagthuset the other day, it’s a surprisingly lovely building on the inside and well suited to a museum display. Not sure I’ll be visiting this one though.

I have to disagree on the rotten shark, it really isn't that bad. It's not (even close to) good or anything, but it's not absolutely horrid either. Tried here: http://islenskibarinn.is/net/

This guy created the museum of failure. I really hope he consulted Stephen Pile, who wrote The Book of Heroic Failures (possibly the funniest book of all time).

Here's a link[1] without paywall.

I'm from Malmö and I just learned about this thing through HN.

1. https://www.thelocal.se/20180926/disgusting-food-museum-to-o...

Even with the 'facebook redirect' trick.. the paywall prevents me from viewing this article. -_-

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