What's the absolute worst thing you ever ate?

Tamarind.

Tamarind is...it's the Anti-food Equation. Nothing can taste worse than tamarind. I bought some because I had heard how unbelievably bad it tasted and I still wasn't ready. You cannot grasp the true form of tamarind.

Imagine biting into some gummy candy that's a scary blood red jelly-brick. You chew for a moment...the taste certainly isn't good, but it isn't as bad asOHGODGETITOUTOFME!

But you can't..because it sticks. It entrenches itself gleefully in your teeth (if you listen carefully you can hear it giggling) and only then does the horriblendous sweet/sour taste hit in full force, violating your mouth with it's foulness. Water? Tamarind laughs at water. You gotta scrape that shit out by hand and even then you can't get all of it, as the remnants of it hang on for dear life as they circle-jerk onto your tastebuds.

Fun bit of trivia; in parts of Asia, it was said that those who fall asleep under tamarind trees would be dragged off to hell by demons. Doesn't surprise me one bit.

edited 16th Dec '10 7:16:08 PM by SleetWintergreen

Oatmeal.

I cannot make it through more than a couple spoonfuls of oatmeal without feeling sick. It looks like and has the consistency of vomit.

Papaya has neither, but it has the scent of vomit.

edited 16th Dec '10 7:11:25 PM by melloncollie

Coleslaw. It smells like sour vomit and tastes like sour vomit.

I also had the misfortune of finding out my taste buds are not cilantro-compatible when I had a cilantro stuffed spring roll at a Thai restaurant. It was like eating something stuffed with soap shavings.

Tamarind chutney is nice with samosas.

And I hate tomatoes and I don't know why. I've just never been able to stand the taste of them.

I once had a salad with a vinaigrette dressing that had pomegranate seeds sprinkled in it. I take a bite, break open a pomegranate seed in my mouth, and suddenly my mouth was filled with a taste so akin to bile that it actually made me throw up in my mouth a little. Disgusting as hell.

^^ Same here with the cilantro, though I only learned about it after mom had made an entire pot of soup filled with it.

edited 16th Dec '10 8:13:42 PM by Dec

^^ It's the smell. Walking by the tomato aisle in a grocery store makes me nauseous.

I don't find cole slaw vomit-like, strangely. Maybe because vomit is generally warm and not fibrous.

Human flesh. My friends thought it was funny. I didn't.

...ewww...

Oh my god, a fractal!

The stuff they make you drink before an endoscope.

Ughh, one time on a camping trip we were going to have baking powder biscuits...except someone in our crew accidentally grabbed baking soda. Imagine eating a handful of flour, but instead of just being dry and powdery and not tasting like anything, it's dry and powdery and sour and bitter.

There's also baking cocoa, which I was sure would taste like hot chocolate mix. It...does not. Trust me. In fact, it tasted a lot like the baking soda.

I'm sure I've eaten something worse, but those are the two that come most readily to mind.

Personally I always thought tapioca pudding was the most vomit-like of all foods. Bleh.

edited 16th Dec '10 10:40:58 PM by deathjavu

Do spoiled foods count? How about unripe fruit?

Funny, I actually like tamarind, tapioca, and baking cocoa (in moderation, and not in combination). I guess my sense of taste is a bit odd.

For that matter, I like most of the foods people have listed here.

edited 16th Dec '10 11:13:56 PM by Enthryn

The most awful thing I've tasted this year was a grapefruit. I can't understand how people can eat those things. The worst thing I've ever drank was a tea made from dried flowers we call "miodatki", it was so bitter and disgusting, it's just impossible to describe.

edited 17th Dec '10 12:20:36 AM by fanty

Wasabi.

...Dear GOD.

Chitterling sausages.

Basically imagine a suasage skin filled with meat that was considered too bad to go into a normal sausage without being ground up. I had it once when I was very young in France, thinking it would be normal sausage. I was wrong, oh so very VERY wrong.

Sülze.

We had that in Kindergarten and no one liked it. Imagine the leftovers of whatever animal, the stuff you normally throw away, put through a meatgrinder and put in jelly. It looked nothing like that picture from The Other Wiki. I still can't understand how anyone thought that children would eat that.

@Judecca: details, please!

edited 17th Dec '10 6:40:53 AM by ZheToralf

There's also baking cocoa, which I was sure would taste like hot chocolate mix. It...does not. Trust me. In fact, it tasted a lot like the baking soda.

That's because it has no sugar or milk in it, or powdered versions thereof. It tastes a lot better once you're not eating something akin to powdered %100 dark chocolate.

I kinda like wasabi, if only in very small amounts on sushi. Eating a whole chunk of it, however...

Sauerkraut. Not only makes me upchuck, I have to leave the house.

Unless spoiled foods count. There was that time I left a container of spaghetti and cheese on my car dashboard all day, and when I returned after work, I decided I was hungry and... didn't make it home.

Little Faw: "I am currently in a public swimming pool and I hunger for ice cream! What is that, bubble-gum flavor? What could possibly go wrong?"

...

I still get a little sick just thinking about it.

One of my friends in high school made pancakes for breakfast after a sleepover.

I think she poured some cement in the batter. Didn't taste like very much, but it was hideously grainy and lumpy, like eating chalk in cake form. At least most of the foods listed here have some sort of flavor.

I want to say turkey burgers but I'd be wrong since I know I've tried worse things but usually blanked them out of my mind. Among the ones I do remember was a kind of casserole.

As a German, i must say that i find Sauerkraut very tasty. Of course, it depends on how its made. Was it really really sour? (Believe it of not, there are people who put a lot of sugar in Sauerkraut) Then again, if you don't like sour things....

Salty licorice. Although

The stuff they make you drink before an endoscope.

takes a not so distant second.

Unless spoiled foods count.

Oh, that reminds me: never drink buttermilk. Ever.