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Bizarre Food Fair: Weird To Americans, Delicacy To Others

I walked into the Mathers Museum at Indiana University expecting to see a bunch of undergraduates shuffling their feet and looking uncomfortable around some durian fruit.

How wrong I was!

Students from the IU Anthropology Department's "Bizarre Food" course, taught by Dr. Sonya Atalay, presented information and materials on a wide variety of bizarre foods and food practices from around the world, including dining on road kill, miracle fruit that changes your taste buds, bugs of all sorts, Noni, 21-day old duck embryos, cow water, kava, and more! These students were engaging and knew their topic very well. It was evident they worked hard on their projects and were eager to tell everyone what they had learned.

Some of the groups had items to taste (I highly recommend the sweet aloe), while others had brochures or recipe cards.

Kava Root

Cow Water

Balut

Road Kill

Noni (aka The Survival Fruit)