Britain's recent horsemeat scandal has worried many meat eaters and reportedly almost two thirds of British shoppers no longer trust the food industry.
According to report in Daily Star, only 37% people still trust shops and restaurants to provide food that is safe to eat.
"The shocking finding comes despite there being no evidence as yet that the horsemeat concerned poses any risk to human health," industry magazine The Grocer said.
Though horsemeat may be taboo in the UK but elsewhere, from Italy to Mexico to Japan, it is a regular on the menu. It is high in iron and often recommended to pregnant women, children and the anaemic.
Well, all over the world, people are known to consume some of the strangest things imaginable.
Urine-soaked eggs are a popular springtime snack for residents of China's coastal Zhejiang province. Young boys, preferably below the age of 10, douse the eggs with urine collected from primary school toilets. Popularly known as "virgin boy eggs", it takes nearly an entire day to marinate them. The raw eggs are soaked and then boiled in a pot of wee. Gradually, the shells of the hard-boiled eggs crack allowing the egg white to absorb the urine for hours. Fresh urine is poured in at intervals and the temperature is strictly controlled to keep the eggs from overcooking. This snack is believed to have medicinal properties, allegedly easing aches in waists, legs and joints, increasing stamina and immunity from heatstroke.
Take a look at the most strange, repelling and extremely disgusting foot items around the world...
A contestant holds the contents of a fertilized duck egg known as balut during the first annual balut eating contest in New York, August 25, 2012. The winner consumed 18 eggs which contain fertilized duck embryos, commonly sold as street food in the Philippines, during the five minute eating contest.ReutersMealworm quiches are seen at the Rijn IJssel school for chefs in Wageningen January 12, 2011. All you need to do to save the rainforest, improve your diet, better your health, cut global carbon emissions and slash your food budget is eat bugs. Mealworm quiche, grasshopper springrolls and cuisine made from other creepy crawlies is the answer to the global food crisis, shrinking land and water resources and climate-changing carbon emissions, Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis says. To attract more insect-eaters, Van Huis and his team of scientists at Wageningen have worked with a local cooking school to produce a cookbook and suitable recipes.ReutersBottles of snake wine are displayed at a restaurant at Le Mat, dubbed "Snake Village", some 10 km (6 miles) east of Hanoi May 9, 2007. Le Mat, a village of new houses, old shanty homes, winding alleys and ancient temples with Chinese-style roofs, is known for consuming snake meat as well as using the serpents for medicinal purposes and its supposed qualities as an aphrodisiac for men.ReutersA girl looks at a pot of regular hard-boiled eggs, next to a pot of hard-boiled eggs cooked in boys' urine in Dongyang, Zhejiang province March 26, 2012. It's the end of a school day in the eastern Chinese city of Dongyang, and eager parents collect their children after a hectic day of primary school. But that's just the start of busy times for dozens of egg vendors across the city, deep in coastal Zhejiang province, who ready themselves to cook up a unique springtime snack favoured by local residents. Picture taken March 26, 2012.ReutersSan Smey, 4, eats a piece of roasted rat in the provincial town of Battambang, 290 km (181 miles) northwest of the capital Phnom Penh February 19, 2004.ReutersAn indigenous Miskito woman sells turtle meat at a town market in Puerto Cabezas, along Nicaragua's Caribbean coast August 25, 2010. Around five hundred turtles are sold for food per month in the port. The going rate for turtle meat is approximately $1.10 per pound. Picture taken August 25, 2010.ReutersBertha Piranes drops a skinned frog into a blender to make a drink at a market in San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, August 16, 2006. The drink, popular with working-class Peruvians, is believed to cure illnesses ranging from fatigue to sexual impotency.ReutersA Chinese woman eats from an ox and dog penis dish at the Guolizhuang "strength in the pot" penis restaurant in China's capital Beijing March 3, 2006. The restaurant offers more than 30 types of animal penises served in a Chinese hotpot style. [According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, the penis of certain animals is full of nutrients which brings men energy. And because it contains gelatine albumen, it is said to have excellent cosmetic effects for women, especially beneficial for the skin.]ReutersSlaughtered rats are displayed for sale at the market of Canh Nau village, 40 km (25 miles) west of Hanoi December 25, 2011. Canh Nau is known as rat meat village where people eat rats as well as other kinds of meat from animals such as pigs, cows and chickens. One kilogram of slaughtered rats costs 80,000 dong ($3.80). Rats were eaten as a result of poverty in the past but now they are eaten at the end of every month of the lunar calendar as a special dish and local media reported that an average of a hundred kilograms of rat are sold at the village per dayReutersA worker holds cobra meat after the snakes have been stripped of their skins, at a Chinese restaurant in the ancient city of Yogyakarta April 1, 2011. Snake hunters catch about 1,000 cobras from Yogyakarta, Central Java and East Java provinces each week to harvest their meat for burgers, priced at 10,000 rupiah ($1.15) each, as well as satay and other dishes. Some customers said they believe cobra meat can cure skin diseases and asthma, and increase sexual virility.Reuters
