The global food supply chain is significantly more complicated than it was a few generations ago. Some of it is due to technological progress, but sometimes it’s due to greed and/or pollution. Eliminating waste and making food processes as efficient as possible sounds like a admirable goal, but the food products created at the end of the day should be appetizing… and, more importantly, safe to eat. If you’re not too squeamish, check out these links on food that might churn your stomach.

• Fermented sausages (aka fuet) can be delicious, but what if the bacteria used to make them came from baby poop? Spanish scientists collected some diapers and isolated some Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium samples from the fecal matter, and then they made some yummy (and healthier!?) sausages with the microbes. [url]
• Gutter oil is created from animal fats and cooking oil waste (collected from sewer drains), and the resulting recycled cooking oil — along with toxins and carcinogens — can end up in small restaurants and food trucks in China. The gutter oil industry has reportedly existed for over a decade, and there are estimates that as much as 10% of the cooking oil sold in China is gutter oil. [url]
• French beekeepers were wondering why their honey was a strange blue-green color that looked really unnatural. The likely culprit for the blue-green honey was processing waste that came from an M&M chocolate factory producing bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown candy shells. The resulting honey didn’t taste much different, but it wasn’t a product that could be sold. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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