From the land that gave the world strawberry Cheetos and octopus soda, we now have spaghetti popsicles! The Japanese brand Gari-Gari Kun (Crunchy Crunchy Boy) already has popsicles in what we’d consider traditional flavors: orange, grape, pineapple, and has offered some odd limited edition flavors in the past, like bean paste and corn stew.

The spaghetti popsicle contains bits of "tomato jelly" in a "Neapolitan" flavored ice cream.

The flavor is even surprising for Japan, with some people online actually doubting that this is a real product! It certainly seems to be, and here are two more looks at the ice cream's ad—if anything, to let this all sink in.

Okay, I was almost on board with frozen spaghetti, but apparently its a tomato-flavored ice cream, which I don’t do. The limited edition flavor goes on sale March 24th.  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: jun_127)

On his birthday, Photojojo founder Amit Gupta's coworkers surprised him with the best cake ever: a trick cake with pizza inside! - via Pleated Jeans

Though the internet's own "Om nom nom nom" is inexplicably missing, this nifty comic of the International Sounds of Eating by James Chapman of Champmangamo (previously on Neatorama) is still pure blogging candy to me!

In this panel, Chapman explains that the sound of eating of "chomp" to English-speakers have various foreign language equivalents (cross-linguistic onomatopoeias, if you want to be technical), including "paku paku" in Japanese, "chrup chrup" in Polish, "nyam" in Korean, "miam" in French - and my favorite, "mampf" in German.

If your language is not in the comic, do tell us what eating sounds like in your native tongue.

(Photo: The Staggering Ox)

The Clubfoot sandwich is an ingenious approach to sandwich design. I don't know who invented it, but the Clubfoot is trademarked by The Saggering Ox, a restaurant chain in the American northwest with most locations in Montana.

The chefs bake loaves in whole tin cans, then hollow out the centers. They then fill the cavities with different ingredients. Beyond that, the preparation process is mysterious. Staggering Ox employees have to sign non-disclosure agreements in order to prevent details from becoming widely known.

The ingredients added to the Clubfeet, however, are public knowledge. The Nuke is composed of ham, turkey and roast beef as well as cheddar, Swiss and provolone cheeses. The Saint Helens erupts with 5 different meats and 5 different cheeses.

I'd love to eat a Reuben sandwich made this way.

-via reddit

In 1993, motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen published Chicken Soup for the Soul, a collection of true stories to inspire hope in readers. The premise of the title is that a good story is an emotional comfort food, like chicken soup is to many Americans when they feel ill.

The book was a runaway bestseller. The two men founded a publishing company to produce numerous sequels and branded products, such as dog food and crossword puzzles.

Inevitably, it would be time to make actual chicken soup branded as Chicken Soup for the Soul. Jennifer, a reader at The Impulsive Buy, spotted these packages of it at a Brookshire's.

-via Foodbeast

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People love Oreo cookies, and they’re the best-selling cookie in the United States. So what makes them so adorable, so delicious and the go-to choice for cookie lovers nationwide?

Well, you won’t find any of those answers in this video entitled “How It’s Unmade- Oreo Cookies” by Jerk Circle, but you will discover how powerful wizards aid in the deconstruction of Oreo knockoffs, in huge factories built for the sole purpose of stripping those delicious discs of goodness down to their core ingredients.

It’s definitely not an episode of “How It’s Made” played in reverse with a new narration track, and the wizard element alone should prove it’s a true story!

(Barely NSFW due to language)

-Via TDW

As we found out this morning, Lucky Charms cereal is 50 years old. Can you believe it? It was the first ever breakfast cereal with marshmallows.

It all began with a bowl of Cheerios and a couple of circus peanuts. Those were the base ingredients that John Holahan, vice president of General Mills, opted to experiment with when he and his team were given six months to create a new brand of cereal that would be a hit with kids.

Holahan’s research took him to the grocery store, which is where the oat cereal-plus-sugar combo occurred to him. It may not seem like a revolutionary recipe by today’s breakfast cereal standards, but it was back then: Lucky Charms became the first marshmallow cereal.

In those 50 years, it appears that the cereal has gone through many incarnations of the tiny marshmallows they call “marbits.” I had no idea- I only remember stars, hearts, moons, and clovers. Multicolored marshmallows? Olympic symbols? There have been 65 different marbits over the years, each described in a timeline at mental_floss.

(Image Via Shutterstock)

The five second rule is one of those schoolyard myths that seems to make no sense as you learn more about germs and bacteria, but as it turns out the playground talk was true- if you pick food up off the ground within five seconds it’s (relatively) safe to eat.

Students from Aston University in Birmingham, England, led by microbiology professor Anthony Hilton, conducted a study that focused on how E. Coli and Staphylococcus aureus are transferred to many different foods from many different floor types.

They found that "time is a significant factor in the transfer of bacteria from a floor surface to a piece of food", meaning it often takes longer than five seconds for the bacteria to adhere to the food.

A note by Professor Hilton:

Consuming food dropped on the floor still carries an infection risk as it very much depends on which bacteria are present on the floor at the time; however the findings of this study will bring some light relief to those who have been employing the five-second rule for years, despite a general consensus that it is purely a myth.

-Via Gizmodo

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What are some typical--or at least stereotypical--breakfasts eaten across the globe? BuzzFeed shows us breakfasts from 17 nations. They include the United States, though with some missing elements.

I've long wanted to try an English full breakfast. The Brazilian breakfast shown in the video looks tasty, too. What would you like to try?

-via That's Nerdalicious!

Jorge Rosado has two passions: getting ripped at the gym and making obscenely decadent pancakes. No, really! His Instagram account Fitness_IQ has pictures of atrocious pancake dishes and himself at the gym in a physical condition that you would not expect for someone who produces such meals.

It's this breakfast treat pictured above that caught my attention. All it needs is to be deep fried for extra nutrients.

-via The Vulgar Chef

Caitlin Levin and Henry Hargreaves, who brought us Deep Fried Gadgets and Gingerbread Galleries, now have created a series of maps of places all over the world made of food!

In this series we have taken many of the iconic foods of countries and continents and turned them into physical maps. While we know that tomatoes originally came from the Andes in South America,  Italy has become the tomato king. These maps show how food has traveled the globe - transforming and becoming a part of the cultural identity of that place. Who doesn't know the saying "throw some shrimp on the barbie" and not think of Australia? Who goes to France without eating bread and cheese?  And who makes a Brazilian caipirinha without a fistful of limes?

These maps are a playful representation of our interpretation of food from around the world, painstakingly created with real unadulterated food.  This project speaks to the universality of how food unites people, brings us together and starts conversation -  just as we hope these beautiful maps will do too.

Continue reading to see more maps, and some behind-the-scenes photographs of their creation.

The Reuben sandwich is the world's greatest sandwich. It is heaven between two slices of bread, which is perhaps why my French Toast Reuben Nutella Elvis Sandwich was such a hit.

The finest Reuben that I've eaten was about 15 years ago at a now-defunct restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama known as The Oven. It was naughtily served on pumpernickel, not rye, and was roughly the size of a regulation football. It is a precious memory that I shall carry with me for the rest of my life. Reubens are great and this was the greatest among them.

There is one problem challenge to eating a Reuben. A well-made Reuben will inevitably spill out its contents as you eat it. Eating a Reuben is messy. So Nick Chipman of Dude Foods devised this brilliant variation.

Because it's served in a cone, Nick's Reuben sandwich makes less of a mess. He made the cone by pressing rye bread around a cone form, then baking the bread in an oven for 10 minutes. Then Nick filled it with the traditional ingredients of a Reuben: corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Thousand Island salad dressing.

(Photo: Woodley Wonder Works)

I can answer with an unhesitating yes, but apparently some people are wary of the idea. The acclaimed Chef Edward Lee has developed an obsession with pig milk. To his knowledge, there is little history of modern Americans consuming pig milk, largely because full-grown sows are dangerous. In an interview with Modern Farmer, Lee explained, ". . . if you get kicked by a goat, you’ll get bruised. Get hit by a 250-lb. sow, you’re dead."

Still, Lee is persistent. He's trying to develop a method to sooth lactating sows and get close without startling them. He's fresh tasted pig milk. Lee says that it's tasty:

Yes, a bit. It was very viscous, warm, tart. It doesn’t taste that different from cows milk straight out the teat. Most milk tastes gamey when raw. It’s after pasteurization that the real flavor comes out. All the subtleties come out when you make cheese with it. Reducing it and itensifying it and concentrating the flavors. That’s when you notice the differences.

I look forward to trying the cheese that he develops.

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This video is from NPR’s series Click to Enlarge, but in this case, you must heat to enlarge, because we’re popping popcorn! Get an up close look inside to see what makes a popcorn kernel pop, and afterward, we examine what the edible stuff looks like under a microscope. After watching this, you might want to get out the big kettle and pop some yourself. You know you want some. Oh right, nowadays you do it in the microwave. How to pop corn properly in a heavy kettle is a lesson for another day. -via Daily of the Day

Image: John Cisna

Move over, Jared - there's a new fast food diet in town!

Meet John Cisna, a high school science teacher in Colo, Iowa, who lost weight and gained fame by eating only at McDonald's. In his new book My McDonald's Diet, Cisna explained that he lost 56 pounds, shaved a total of 21 inches off his chest, waist and hips, and lowered his cholesterol by eating only at the fast food chain.

Cisna's McDonald's diet will end on March 15, and he told TODAY, "It's kind of scary to realize that in nine days, I'll have spent half a year of my life eating nothing but McDonald's. I'm not bored of the food, but I am missing other foods. I am craving seafood. In fact, my first night when I am done with this, I'm going to have some shrimp and some scallops and some salmon. Maybe some asparagus on a bed of rice pilaf." [More McFacts About McDonald's]

What? Missing seafood? Didn't he know he could have the Filet-O-Fish?

Turns out, Cisna wasn't the first person who tried the McDonald's Diet. Back in 2008, we covered the story of Chris Coleson, who lost 86 pounds eating nothing but food at the Golden Arches. And if you thought that's impressive, check out the story of Kansas State University professor Mark Haub who lost 27 pounds eating only Twinkies.