Gross food - is it more nutritious ?!

Most cultures have high nutrient food that to my cultural "norms" is really gross. Que for deep fried scorpions, beetles etc.

However European culture has some rather unappetizing ones. For instance as a kid we were totally grossed out when we had tongues for dinner. I don't know if it was the thought of it, or the taste as I was 6 yrs old. I do remember being grossed out by heart one time, though ox tail wasn't so bad and nor was eel. What was truly revolting was some brain stew that we had one time. I never remember seeing the brain bits nor what it looked like in the stew..... so it could have been a Calvin and Hobbs joke by my father on me.


Anyway stumbled across a site that has a mixture of western style gross recipes combined with fun gross ones. I like the Swamp Water Punch With the Floating Arm of Death. With stuff like this I could get into Halloween.

But seriously they have some recipes that made me realize my perceptions of historic western culture we not quite right.

In the past all parts of the animal was also used, depending on (a) how hungry or (b) how poor you would have been. Check out these recipes: three variations of how to cook cows lung. Not into lung - well try cows udder ! Sliced and crumbed like thin meat. I'm sure you could adapt jellied moose nose. Totally grossed out yet? There is much worse on the list!

It got me thinking about (a) how monotonous my diet is compared to what it could be and (b) how much nutritious food is lost through only eating the "meat" bits. I'm sure that these body parts would have different nutrients than a steak or a chicken breast.