Disgusting Food Museum aims to gross-out, educate

Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The proprietor of Sweden's new Disgusting Food Museum said he wants visitors to think about what makes some foods less appetizing than others.

The museum, which is scheduled to open Oct. 29 in Malmo, aims to assault the senses with various smelly and strange foods including fermented shark meat, bull penis, bird's nest soup, ant larvae, roasted guinea pig and maggot cheese.

"I want people to question what they find disgusting and realize that disgust is always in the eye of the beholder," museum founder Samuel West told The Washington Post. "We usually find things we're not familiar with disgusting, versus things that we grow up with and are familiar with are not disgusting, regardless of what it is."

West, who also founded Sweden's Museum of Failure, said the museum aims to have foods representing a variety of world cultures, so visitors might be surprised to find some foods they consider normal back home represented as "disgusting."

"We try to treat everybody the same, and that's what I thought was interesting when we were working on it -- directing that lens back toward us," West said.

He said he hopes people will consider what makes a food "disgusting" and how such biases are created.

"Is it really that disgusting to eat a grasshopper or locust when you eat bacon? Or is it really disgusting to eat guinea pigs when you eat regular beef?" West said.