Rotting fish, maggots on museum menu

MALMO, Sweden - Sheep eyeball juice. Bull testicles. Maggot-infested cheese. American root beer.

These are among the items considered palatable or even regarded as delicacies in some cultures that the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden, is serving up.

The temporary museum, opened on Wednesday, clearly braced for revolted visitors to gag at the foods on display, most of which can be smelled or tasted. Tickets came in the form of vomit bags.

Curator Samuel West said the exhibition is meant to entertain, but also to convey a thought-provoking message: What is considered appetizing or repulsive is learned and can change. He hopes visitors will be encouraged to try more sustainable food products that are being developed or marketed, like insects and lab-grown meat.

"Disgust is one of the six fundamental human emotions, and the evolutionary function of disgust is to help us to avoid foods that might be dangerous, that are contaminated, toxic, gone off," West said. "Disgust is hardwired as an emotion but what we find disgusting is culturally learned."

The 80 food items in the exhibit include a bull's penis, frog smoothies from Peru and Sweden's "surstromming", an infamously putrid fermented herring.

Visitors are also introduced to "balut", partially developed duck fetuses that are boiled inside the egg and eaten straight from the shell in the Philippines, as well as "casu marzu", a Sardinian pecorino cheese infested by maggots.

The museum was scheduled to run until Jan 27.

Associated Press