go to Upworthy

Everything You Need to Know About Cooking with Blood

The Nordic Food Lab's innovative approaches to a culinarily neglected ingredient

Back in 2008, renowned Danish chef René Redzepi and restaurateur Claus Meyer, now known to foodies as the masterminds behind the four-time world’s best restaurant Noma, opened a peculiar test kitchen in Copenhagen. The Nordic Food Lab, as they called it, was a space for chefs to experiment with the weird, new, and taboo in a way they never could in a working kitchen. Ever since, they’ve scored headlines with reports on cooking with fermented grasshoppers, pheasant essence, and even beaver anal glands. But perhaps no report they’ve issued has garnered as much attention and consternation as the one released this January by then-Food Lab intern Elisabeth Paul on how to substitute blood for eggs.

Blood-based cooking has certainly been a part of Western cuisine since the time of ancient Greece, when blood sausages were mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey. And in all likelihood, people have used animal blood for sausages, soups, pastes, or drinks since the first animal slaughter. But sometime in recent history, we forgot how to use blood. The ingredient grew so taboo that even Scottish chef Nick Nairn vomited on television at the site of a bowl of cooking blood.

Keep Reading Show less
blood denmark rene redzepi food and drink
Food

What We Can Learn From Traditional Arctic Diets

On the benefits of fermented blubber and the joys of drinking reindeer blood

"Two Waiting for Seal," Inuit art in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. Image by Mike Beauregard via Flickr

Up in the arctic, life struggles to thrive. A rocky and frigid landscape supporting little more than meager shrubs, grasses, and some berries in the summer, it’s proven too hostile for more than a few animal species that have specially evolved to polar environs. Yet despite the harsh conditions, thousands of years ago human beings managed to etch out a life for themselves in the snows. These peoples’ ability to live in these regions is mostly due to a diet that to most of us seems narrow and anemic, but in truth has proven itself one of the most robust and healthy in the world.

Keep Reading Show less
community global health food and drink health
Food

The Absurd History Of The Intermicronational Olympic Games

The Olympic movement for self-declared satirical nations is dead

Image via The Republic of Molossia

While the Rio Olympics—despite a Zika scare, last-minute construction, and a steroids scandal—avoided predictions of disaster this summer, another global sporting event quietly failed to materialize: the Intermicronational Olympics.

Keep Reading Show less
Sports

What Americans Can Learn From the New Dutch Dietary Guidelines

It’s time to incorporate sustainability issues into the way we eat as a country.

Image by Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons

Last month the Voedingscentrum, the Netherland’s state-funded nutrition authority, issued an aggressive new set of national dietary guidelines. This is the first time the nation’s official food program has been updated since 2004 and it will be used by many Dutch health providers and nutritionists. They’re pretty similar to most other national dietary guidelines, but the regimen sets itself apart by placing hardline consumption limits on meat and animal products.

Keep Reading Show less
agriculture sustainability food and drink
Articles

Why the Homeless Need Their Pets

According to a new study, those on the street and their animal companions are better off together.

Image by Alan Light via Flickr

It’s not uncommon for people passing a homeless person with a dog on the street to voice sympathy for the animal and derision for the human. Often based on the assumption that a homeless individual is just using a pet for warmth or to guilt people into giving them money, it’s easy to argue that people who can’t take care of themselves could be subjecting animals to deprivation and risk. This skepticism is so baked into society that some people apparently consider it acceptable to cut the leashes of homeless people’s animals as they sleep, taking them to a better life. Authorities regularly sweep homeless camps, picking up animals, or grill homeless people for proof of animal ownership they may not have and few pet owners would ever keep on their person.

Keep Reading Show less
cities communities neighborhoods pets
Articles

Don’t F*ck With Our Eagles

Everyone knows that eagles are awesome. But someone or something is killing our national birds.

Image by Petr Kratochvil via publicdomainpictures.net

Despite fanfare over the webcammed birth of two baby bald eagle in the U.S. National Arboretum last weekend (the first born there in over 50 years) it’s been a shitty month for our national bird. On February 20, locals in Federalsburg, Maryland, found 13 bald eagles dead in one of the largest die-offs of these awesome creatures in recent memory. Then, this past Saturday and Sunday, folks around Dagsboro, Delaware, just 30 miles away, found several more dead and injured birds. Three of the birds discovered there are recovering, but five have died, and locals reported that others flying away seemed disoriented, leading some to suspect they could be dangerously ill.

Keep Reading Show less
animals environment
Articles