A disgusting and smelly museum invites us to reflect on disgust in Berlin

A cow urine drink, cocktails that mix vodka with the beating heart of a snake, cobra and a fermented wine made from baby mice are some of the foods on display at the Museum from the Disgusting Food Museum in Berlin.

The tour begins with a gift of a paper bag for vomiting, which has already been used by at least 50 people since the museum opened in 2021, Steffen Beyer, a curator of the exhibition, told EFE.

The collection of disgusting foods represents many cultures from around the world, which consider these foods medicinal, spiritual and in some cases aphrodisiac.

The display cases contain cooked or fried organs and in some cases replicas of different animal parts, such as the penis or testicles of bulls, which are popular in China.

At the entrance of the museum you can see the message: “Disgust is contextual. Disgust is cultural. We like the foods we grew up with, but ideas about disgust can change over time.”

The tour then continues to a clean and bright space that gives the impression of being both a laboratory and a prestigious art gallery. Inside the central display case is the so-called Cazu Marzu, a Pecorino cheese from Sardinia with a hole in the centre filled with live worms.

Beyer added that what people are looking for when they visit the museum is a “shocking effect”but they consider it to be more about learning something about individual disgust and, in some way, about how it works in other cultures.“how you feel disgust or when (something) disgusts you”, said.

The experience also requires the main senses of its visitors.

Throughout the exhibition, videos are shown that allow you to see different preparation processes, for example, how in Vietnam the heart of a cobra is removed to be served in a glass with vodka and the blood it sheds in the process.

It is also possible to smell different jars with pieces of cheese or fish inside them, one of which stores a piece of one of the most stinking sharks in the world.

Finally, the exhibition offers a series of fried insects, spreads and drinks such as horse sperm or cow urine, to stimulate the taste of its visitors.

An evolutionary mechanism

The museum’s researchers say disgust’s evolutionary function is to help us avoid disease and spoiled food.

In addition, they have identified seven categories of disgust that are related to food, followed by illness or contamination of a product, the body and its fluids, mutilation or deformity, behaviors that we associate with animals, inappropriate sexual behaviors, and moral infractions.

But as universal as the feeling of disgust is, the stimulus that provokes it is individual and relative in nature.

“Ideas about disgust change over time. Two hundred years ago, lobster was so undesirable that it was only served to prisoners and slaves. Today, lobster is a delicious luxury,” argues a text that accompanies the exhibition.

The museum also starts from the idea that the planet cannot currently sustain meat production, and that therefore humans must consider alternative sources of protein, such as insects and meat grown in laboratories.

In this sense, it raises the question of whether a change in our perception of disgust could help us adopt the ecologically sustainable foods of the future.