Camel spiders, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and bull testicles are not what most people eat during their average day. However, these are only some of the foods participants were forced to eat on the television show Fear Factor.
Could you pass the test and put mind over matter, or more specifically, texture? Whether that texture is feathers, hearts, or thick blood, students were given the chance to test their ability to stomach strange foods at the Far East Fear Factor, an event held by the Asian Student Association ( ASA ). The foods they presented were not as frightening as those seen on the television series, but they were still unusual to anyone who has never veered from traditional American cuisine.
Foods were prepared by smaller groups under the ASA umbrella, such as the Korean Student Society ( KSS ), the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association ( CUSA ), the Filipino Student Association (FSA), and the Hmong Student Association (HAS).
The homemade foods prepared by these groups included beef intestines, silkworm larvae, chicken hearts, pork blood stew, bitter melon with shrimp paste, fertilized duck embryo, and spicy papaya salad.
Most of the food at the event, though exotic in nature, at least looked familiar. The beef intestines looked like open-centered pieces of sausage, while the chicken hearts looked similar to a type of olive or other brownish-green vegetable.
Other dishes, however, were unlike anything most students had seen before. The pork blood stew had a thick, lumpy consistency and a deep brown color. The fertilized duck embryo in particular was given focus for its unique nature. The FSA provided pictures to show how the egg looked inside and is formed. The entirety of the baby duck could be seen with the feathers and limbs forming, yet a yolk was also present.
“[The pork blood soup] really doesn’t taste that bad,” Nicole Watkins, president of the FSA, said. “You just have to get past the texture.”
Sherise DeLeon , the vice president of FSA, said the fertilized duck embryo was not bad either.
“It’s weird because you can feel the feathers [of the bird] in your mouth, but that’s really the only strange thing about it,” DeLeon said. “Other than that it just tastes like an egg.”
The ASA plans to make the Far East Fear Factor an annual event and hopes to hold it on Halloween next year.
Jim Nguyen a freshman in civil engineering eats the spicy papaya salad at the Asian Food Fear Factor. Photo by Tejas Umbarkar
