A high-school in the Chinese city of Shangqiu, Henan Province, recently attracted criticism for removing cafeteria chairs to motivate student to eat faster and dedicate more time to their studies.

Students returning from their summer break were shocked to learn that they would have to start eating standing up after their school’s administrators decided to remove the chairs and benches to deter students from lingering around after finishing their meal. A spokesperson for the Shangqiu school told reporters that management also plans to implement assigned spots for each student to stand in, to further discourage them from wasting time instead of studying.

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Goûte is a strange-looking spoon-like product that allegedly enhances the taste of certain foods by emulating the experience of licking your fingers. It was designed to replace regular spoons when enjoying creamy foods like yogurt, chocolate mouse or honey.

Goûte was created by Michel / Fabian, a design company that aims to rethink people’s relationship with food by designing eating utensils inspired by science and art. Founders Dr. Andreas Fabian, of Buckinghamshire New University, and Charles Michel, artist, food scientist and former Michelin-star chef, believe that conventional cutlery is only designed with functional purposes in mind, so they set out to create eating utensils that also “enrich the sensual pleasures of eating.” Goûte, for example, was designed to resemble a human finger, so using it to enjoy  delicious creamy foods enhances their taste by recreating the experience of licking your fingers, without leaving them feeling sticky or greasy.

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Technology is seeping into everything, even restaurant tableware. Quince, a Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco has recently swapped ol’ fashioned porcelain plates with Apple iPads for a couple of its most popular dishes.

Restaurants have been using tablets instead of classic menus for years now, and some have even introduced app-powered ordering and payment options, but until not too long ago, plating seemed to be immune to this high-tech trend. They’re feeling the heat now, though, as more and more restaurants swap them out for futuristic tablet-based dishes, in an effort to attracts tech aficionados with and appetite for fine cuisine.

The latest to join the exclusive restaurants where tablet plating is actually a thing is Quince, a San Francisco eatery run by Michael and Lindsey Tusk. They are serving a dish called ‘A Dog in Search of Gold’ on an Apple iPad that’s playing a video of a dog hunting for truffles. If you’re wondering about the connection, the dish is composed of white truffle croquettes. And in case you’re not into truffles, Quince also serves frog legs on top of iPads playing videos of frogs in a pond.

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They say junk food can kill you. But then you get to hear stories of people who eat nothing else and are doing just fine. Like this one guy who has been eating pizza exclusively for the past 25 years. Dan, a 38-year-old woodworker from Maryland, hates veggies so much that he won’t even use them as pizza toppings. The only spice he can tolerate on his pizza is oregano.

“I’m not just talking about a slice of pizza every day,” he said in an interview. “I usually eat an entire 14” pizza, and I only eat cheese pizza. I never get sick of it. If I go to one pizza shop or another brand, it’s like eating a completely different meal.” Dan made his bizarre food choice when he was just 15 years old. That’s when he decided to go vegetarian for ‘ethical reasons’. “I still loved the taste of meat, and I still love it to this day, but due to my beliefs, I gave it up. That was about 23 years ago. I also hate vegetables.”

My guess is that Dan’s body can metabolize food like crazy. How else can a person eat just pizza (essentially bread and cheese) for years and still stay so slim? But Dan’s weight is no indicator of his health. The man suffers from type 1 diabetes and his blood sugar drops quite frequently. It gets so bad at times that he blacks out on the kitchen floor in his underwear. One time, he blacked out while driving his new car home.

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Manju Dharra, a 25-year-old Indian woman, hasn’t had a bite to eat since she was born. For the past two-and-a-half decades she has been surviving on a liquid diet consisting of milk, tea, buttermilk and water.

Manju is from a small town called Sonipat, located near India’s capital, New Delhi. She suffers from a rare condition called achalasia – a failure of smooth muscle fibers to relax. Because of this, the cardiac sphincter muscle (that closes the opening from the gullet to the stomach to prevent acid reflux) does not open at all. So food cannot pass into the stomach and the gullet is blocked. The result – violent vomiting if she ever tries to eat anything solid.

“If I eat something then I throw up and I feel very, very bad. Now I feel fear when I look at solid food,” said Manju. Her mother, Bhagwati Dharra, added: “She only takes fluids like milk, tea, water, and sometimes juice. Mostly she takes milk, tea, buttermilk, water. If she eats solid food, she faces the problem of vomiting suddenly.”

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I’m not sure why, but some of the strangest trends seem to emerge from South Korea. The latest one is dinner porn – people watching other people stuffing themselves with food. The Korean term for it is ‘mok-bang’, which roughly translates as ‘dinner broadcast’.

The dinner porn stars of South Korea film themselves eating copious amounts of food. They also provide moaning noises and a running commentary of their meals. The entire event is live-streamed and the protagonists end up making serious money.

Mok-bang isn’t about people eating a plate or two of food. We’re talking about humongous portions here. Like this one ‘broadcast jockey’ who calls herself The Diva. Consultant by day and food-porn star by night, this beautiful glutton wolfs down two medium pizzas, or 30 fried eggs and a box of crab legs, or five packets of instant noodles in one go. One night, she ate 12 beef patties, 12 fried eggs, three servings of spicy pork kimchi soup and a salad.

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At the request of students who wanted to avoid lunchtime socializing, Japanese universities in Kyoto and Kobe have replaced regular tables with so-called “lonely seats” featuring 50-cm dividers in the middle.

In most cultures, going to lunch with friends or co-workers is a great way to take your mind off the job and relax, but it seems that’s exactly what the students at Kyoto University are trying to avoid. They are busy people who don’t always have time to sit around and make small talk with their peers, so in order to avoid this kind of uncomfortable situations, they’ve asked the university for a practical solution. There are always empty tables where they could eat their meals in peace, but according to one 22-year old engineering student “If you are sitting at a big table by yourself it’s like you don’t have any friends and that is embarrassing.” So to solve this predicament, the university replaced the regular cafeteria tables with “bocchi seki” or “lonely seats” that have an opaque divider across the middle so the person on the other side can’t see you slurping your noodles or engage in a conversation.

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Moms are always complaining about how their kids won’t swallow food. But here’s one person whose mother probably had no such problem. In fact, her struggles were probably the opposite – trying to make him stop! Today, Shoenice22 is making use of his unique talent –being able to eat anything, literally – to entertain people and become a YouTube celebrity. Oh, and also stop world hunger.

In the real world, ‘Shoenice22’ is known as Chris Schewe. He is aware that a lot of people think he’s a complete idiot, but he disagrees. “They’re wrong,” he says. “I’m a professional idiot.” Shoenice isn’t bothered by that though, he thinks it’s really the best, because he’s living in a time when he can really do whatever he wants, even stupid things, and become famous for it. And famous, he is! Chris’s channel is one of the most popular on YouTube, where he has over 200,000 subscribers, and some of his videos get more hits than a lot of those posted by real-life celebrities . But what could possibly be so entertaining about a man putting random stuff in his mouth and swallowing it? BBs from a BB gun, an entire bottle of balsamic vinegar, painter’s caulk, or an entire can of Crisco are just some of the bizarre “treats’ he’s eaten so far. It’s revolting and sometime even repulsive to see him trying to finish his “meals” while trying to hold it all down. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who felt seriously nauseous after watching his performances, and yet, a lot of people love watching Shoenice do his thing. Because the truth is, there’s more to him than meets the eye.

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Let’s face it, many of us do it for free, but Washington University, in St. Louis, will gladly pay participants in its new study $3,500 to eat fast food for a period of three months.

I tell you, job offers don’t get much better than this. A top American university is conducting a study on obesity and asking participants to gain weight during a period of three months. In order to properly motivate them to fill their bellies with various types of fast food, researchers have decided to reward them with a check of $3,500 for the three months of heavy eating. The only real requirement is people who participate in the study must gain at least 5% their starting weight, before the three months are over. Considering they’re all allowed to eat whatever kinds of junk food they like multiple times a day, I don’t think that’s going to be  much of a problem.

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Around 1,500 people showed up at the Bottle Inn pub, in Marshwood, Dorset, to see 61 contestants compete in the 2010 edition of the annual Nettle Eating World Championships.

The history of this bizarre eating competition can be traced back to the mid 1980s, when local farmers started the ‘Longest Stinging Nettle’ competition, to see who could grow the longest stem of nettles. Things went along just fine, until 1989, when Alex Williams presented a 15ft 6inches-long nettle, and claimed that if anyone could find a stem longer than his, he would it, As luck would have it, an American actually found a 16ft-long nettle, and Mr. Williams kept his word. From there on in, the competition evolved into the competitive eating challenge we now know as the Nettle Eating World Championships.

On June 19th, competitors were each served two-feet-long stinging nettle stalks, from which they had to pluck and eat the leaves. After an hour of eating, the bare stalks were measured and contestants who ate the most nettles, named winners.

In the men’s competition, first time participant Sam Cunningham managed to eat a whopping 74ft of stinging nettles, and claimed the title of king of the 2010 Nettle Eating World Championships. In the women’s contest, Laura Revell managed to consume 40ft of nettle, and win the title of champion.

Photos by REUTERS/Chris Helgren via Daylife

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