A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy has tragically lost his eyesight to a nutrient-poor junk food diet that caused his optic nerves to atrophy beyond any hope of reversal.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently documented the case of a 12-year-old boy suffering from autism who ultimately went blind because of a junk food diet based mostly on burgers, fries, ranch dressing, donuts, and boxes of sugary juice. The boy had been diagnosed with autism and suffered from an extreme phobia of certain food textures, so his parents found it impossible to introduce vital nutrients into his diet. Earlier this year, the unnamed boy began experiencing vision problems in the hours of the morning and in the evening, but his eyesight was fairly normal during the day. However, his vision started degrading at a rapid pace, and in six weeks’ time he could only move around if his parents helped him navigate obstacles. Then, one night, he woke up screaming that he couldn’t see.

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A new snack served on the streets of Chengdu, in China, has been getting a lot of attention because of its unusual appearance; it looks like a lump of black human hair.

Fa Cai or Fat Choy is a type of dried cynobacterium that has long been a part of Chinese cuisine. It grows mostly in dry and barren desert areas such as Gansu, Shaanxi, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia in China, and is processed by air-drying immediately after harvesting. Because of its dark, filiform shape, it is commonly known as the “hair vegetable”. Fa Cay – scientific name Nostoc flagelliforme – is most often served as black vermicelli in a variety of broths and soups, and served on New Year’s Eve for good luck, because its Cantonese name sounds very similar to the phrase “struck it rich”. However, the dark treat recently went viral as a new street snack that makes it seem like you’re eating human hair.

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Sokusekisai Oyama, aka Japan’s Instant Ramen King, has made a lucrative career out of eating instant noodles at least once a day for over three decades.

Instant noodles, better known as cup noodles in Japan, are a big deal in the land of the rising sun. There are literally hundreds of different types, from the cheap variants you can find at your local grocery store to gourmet versions with actual toppings like dehydrated meat and vegetables. They are by far the most popular instant meal in Japan and virtually everyone loves them, but no one loves them as much as Sokusekisai Oyama, the man known as the ‘Instant Ramen King’. A former illustrator with a degree in engineering, Oyama gave up his career to dedicate himself to what he loved most – eating noodles and becoming a professional cup noodle critic. The 65-year-old man claims he has eaten at least one serving of instant noodles and a total of over 10,000 cups of noodles over the lainst 30 years.

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Nguyen Vu Hoang Anh, one of Vietnam’s most talented and creative cake artists, has become known for his signature cakes shaped as miniature aristocratic dresses, complete with tiny creases and folds.

34-year-old Nguyen Vu Hoang Anh has long been known as one of the best cake artists in Vietnam, but while his stunningly realistic fondant flowers and flawless tiered cakes have always been impressive, it was his signature aristocratic dress cake that earned him a lot of attention and praise on social media. Made using a layered sponge cake base held together with buttercream and chocolate, the insanely detailed cakes are covered with a layer of colored fondant hand-molded into the shape of European-style aristocratic dresses inspired by the Baroque era.

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A Vietnamese restaurant recently went viral for launching a new dish – bubble tea beef noodles – in a bid to take advantage of the popularity of tapioca pearl milk tea.

There is no questioning the crazy popularity of bubble tea not only in Asia, but around the world. There is just something about the tapioca pearl-infused milk tea that has most people coming back for more, so it’s easy to understand why many businesses try to tap into this popularity to attract new business. The latest example is Yu Tang, a Vietnamese restaurant based in Hanoi that recently launched a new dish that combines milk tea, tapioca pearls, thick noodles and slices of cooked beef. Inspired by Taiwan’s popular milk hot pot, the new dish has been drawing a lot of attention online.

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Kinmemai Premium is a selection of hand-picked artisanal rice that holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s most expensive rice ($109 per kilogram).

Rice is one of the most nutritious yet affordable foods on Earth, but if you’re looking for an exceptional selection of some of the world’s best rice varieties, look no further than Kinmemai Premium. Produced by Japan’s Toyo Rice Corporation, this exclusive rice selection features hand-picked grains from five varieties of award-winning Japanese rice varieties flavor-aged for six months using the company’s proprietary rice-buffing technology developed over 17 years ago. Kinmemay Premium rice is said to have superior nutritional values compared to conventional rice, as well as a delicious nutty flavor. The grains themselves also look like tiny diamonds thanks to the patented polishing process that removes only the inedible wax layer.

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Photos of white-yolk boiled eggs have gone viral on Japanese social media, with thousands of people asking whether they are real or just digitally altered.

It all started with an X (Twitter) post by Tsuda Junko, the editor-in-chief of the online magazine Design no Hikidashi, featuring a photo of a boiled egg cut in half. It doesn’t sound like the most exciting post ever, but it ended up going viral for a very intriguing reason – the cooked yolk was about as white as the egg white around it. Junko himself expressed his astonishment, claiming he had heard about this variety of Okinawa eggs with white yolk but never imagined it could be this white.

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Boost Noodle is a new type of Japanese instant ramen designed to be consumed with one hand by simply sucking the contents out of a small pouch.

Instant ramen is probably the most convenient food money can buy, but one Japanese company has found a way to make it even easier to eat. Nippon Ham recently launched Boost Noodle, a type of hearty pork ramen designed for gamers who want to curb their hunger without having to take a break from what they love most. Boost Noodle ramen comes in a convenient plastic pouch and can be consumed with one hand, by simply sucking out the contents. Boost Noodle consists of a special type of yam noodles, chashu pork, menma (fermented bamboo shoots), and a mix of pork stock and seafood broths. Each pack of Boost Noodle also contains 35 milligrams of caffeine.

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The world is full of stinky cheeses, but according to a team of researchers from Cranfield University, France’s Vieux Boulogne is the stinkiest of them all.

Limburger, Munster, Epoisses de Bourgogne, or Brie de Meaux are only some of the cheeses famous as much for their pungent aroma as for their taste, but the unofficial title of world’s stinkiest cheese goes to a French delicacy called Vieux Boulogne. Two decades ago, scientists at Cranfield University north of London tested 15 of the world’s stinkiest cheeses to determine which of them had the worst smell. They used human sniffers as well as a computer-linked ‘electronic nose’ to rank the odor of the cheeses and determined that Vieux Boulogne was by far the stinkiest.

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Goon Ten, or Dancing Shrimp, is a popular Thai street food made with live freshwater shrimp that jumps off the plate when marinated alive.

A bunch of small, translucent shrimp trying to wiggle their way out of being eaten alive doesn’t sound like the most appetizing meal, but in Northern Thailand, it’s actually all the rage. Usually sold from double-basket carts, goon ten consists of live freshwater shrimp wriggling in a spicy marinade of ground chili, lime juice, fish sauce, mint, sliced shallots, and lemongrass. It is most often served with a variety of sticky rice. Often described as one of the freshest foods money can buy, dancing shrimp salad will literally jump off the plate, as the live critters try to escape the spicy marinade. It sounds barbaric to eat such a dish in this day and age, but most of those who have tried it were blown away by its texture and complex flavor combination.

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If you thought pineapple-topped Hawaiian pizza was a culinary crime, wait until you hear about Sweden’s take on the Italian staple, a pie topped with curry, pineapple, and banana.

Sweden’s fascination with bananas is well documented, but that doesn’t really explain the culinary oddity known as Tropicana Pizza or simply Swedish Pizza. No one knows exactly who came up with the idea for this unusual pizza, but according to a 2017 tweet by the Curators of Sweden, an X (Twitter) account created by the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden, Tropicana pizza was already known as the “most Swedish pizza there is”. For some reason, many Swedes find the combination of curry, pineapple, and banana paired with the smoky, savory flavor of smoked ham irresistible, making banana-topped pizza one of the most popular pizzas in Sweden.

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Beithir Fire, the world’s strongest beer, comes with a warning label urging consumers ‘not to exceed 35ml in one sitting’ because of the incredibly high alcohol content.

All alcoholic drinks should be consumed in moderation, but that goes double for extreme concoctions like Beithir Fire, a beer so strong it reportedly makes your tongue go numb. Rated at 75% ABV (Alcohol By Volume), this Scottish-style barley ale is brewed for two months and then blended with pure Scottish spirit before undergoing fermentation and triple filtration to remove all impurities. Launched in 2021 by Scotland’s 88Brewery, Beithir Fire quickly achieved legendary status because of its extreme alcohol content. It is still one of the most intriguing beers in the world, but its creators caution daredevils to drink at most 35ml in one sitting to avoid intoxication and potential health problems.

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Polmard, a small farm in Saint Mihiel, France, produces the world’s most exclusive meat using a process called hibernation. It allows the meat to be stored and cured for up to 15 years with no loss of quality.

Alexandre Polmard is a sixth-generation farmer, breeder, and butcher in a family that has been producing beef cuts since 1846. However, the business rose to prominence in the 1990s, after Alexandre’s grandfather and father invented a new and revolutionary meat treatment they dubbed ‘hibernation’. Cold air is blown at speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour over the meat in a -43 C environment at the farm’s state-of-the-art laboratory in Saint Mihiel and this allows the meat to be cured for over a decade, with no loss of quality. If anything, the longer the curing time, the higher the quality, and the price, with one kilogram of 15-year-old hibernated rib steak selling for an eye-watering $3,200.

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Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does, so this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market.

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Spring onions and coffee definitely don’t sound made for each other, but spring onion-infused lattes are apparently all the rage in China these days.

A simple search for the #springonionlatte hashtag on TikTok or Instragram will yield dozens of photos and videos with scallion-topped latte cups. They first went viral last month, when multiple Asian publications covered the unusual drink, calling it one of the most surprising combinations ever attempted. Apparently, to make a good green onion latte, you first have to mash a few green onions in the cup, then add ice, milk, and coffee, before finally topping it off with lots of chopped green onions, because why not?

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