18 People Recall The Worst Thing They’ve Eaten Out Of Politeness

I am actually the one who made the horrible meal. When I was around 8, I decided I wanted my Mom to relax while I cooked her dinner and did the dishes.

I made way over-cooked spaghetti with a plain can of diced tomatoes that I added water to because I thought that is how sauce worked. Finished it off with every seasoning herb we owned plus some ketchup because the sauce looked a little too much like water and oh, heck some mustard, mayo, and any sauce I saw in the fridge because she liked all those things!

My Mom took her first bite, smiled through it, told me how much she enjoyed not having to cook then ate every freaking bite on her plate. She told me much later on that she ate the dinner I made her because she didn’t want to discourage me from taking initiative and trying new things. She also later told me it was the most god-awful thing she had ever eaten in her life.

My beloved but very elderly gram-in-law made chocolate chip cookies in which she messed up the sugar and salt AND mistook the dried black beans in her cupboard for chocolate chips. Ohhhhh dear.

A girl I dated was trying to impress me, so she tried to make green curry. She added too much curry paste and we both sat there sweating and crying.

I came home from school one day and was hungry and told my mother that and she told me there were blueberry muffins.

So I took one and when I took a bite it was the dryest most flavorless thing I’ve ever eaten. So as to not upset my mother I ate it and when I came back my mom was laughing.

I asked what was funny and she told me they were a friend of hers muffins and my brother spit them out when he tried it. So basically I got pranked by my mom

My grandpa made sushi. With tuna, rhubarb, yellow mustard, seaweed, and undercooked rice. Watched me eat it to make sure I got a taste of each ingredient. The entire time I ate it, I thought “this tough bastard made it through the beaches of Normandy, eat the sushi and smile”

When my sister was 5, she had my mom, friend and I sit for her tea party.

She made us drinks.

I asked her what she gave us and she said it was water and sparkle perfume.

Was working in China. They had a big celebratory banquet for us. They served a local delicacy – “sea worms.” It was a white tube that when immersed in near-freezing water essentially dissolved into a gelatinous lump. Think fish-flavored jello, with just a hint of residual gristle. Ugh. Had to eat several servings while downing shots of Maotai.

Chitlins (chitterlings). My husband begged me to try it. It’s his favorite dish. I tried a small bite. It tasted like straight shit. Straight fermented shit. I told my friend about my experience and she insisted it just wasn’t prepared right and I needed to try hers.

I went to her house and saw that she prepares hers with green peppers and onions. I was reluctant but hopeful. I took a bite. It tasted like straight fermented shit with a side of green peppers and onions. I was nice and I took TWO bites but I couldn’t stomach anymore.

My ex-sister-in-law’s spinach casserole. My daughter puked it up into their heat vent and I had to clean it out.

My husband’s grandma made us a “miso soup” that was almost black from teriyaki and soy sauce in it. All of the vegetables in it were slimy and overcooked. It so barely resembled miso that the next day I made some regular miso for myself and she was offended that I didn’t eat the “perfectly good” leftovers. I was all confused until my husband whispered to me that she thought the abomination she served us was miso soup.

My girlfriend in college wanted to be nice to my roommate and me because she often ate over at our apartment, so she was to cook dinner one night. Teriyaki steak.

Somewhere along the line, she got tbsp and cup mixed up and added 3/4 cup of salt. Pretty sure we were nearing the LD50 of salt for a human, but I ate as much as I could and drank as much water as I could for the next few days…

An undercooked potato, garlic, feta, and chopped meat package in aluminum foil. It was supposed to be a Greek dish. We all got sick.

This one’s actually kinda funny.

My grandma died right before Christmas. We all got together for the holiday and my aunt was understandably still taking it really hard. She’d made something she called “vanilla angel food pudding cake.”
It was in a shallow casserole dish. The top layer was whipped cream and cookie crumble. The middle layer was vanilla pudding. The bottom layer was crumbled angel food cake… soaked to the top in a massive pool of bourbon. The cake was floating in the bourbon. We’d later found out she’d mixed even more bourbon into the pudding layer.

She didn’t tell anyone it was alcoholic so we all got scoops assuming it was a syrup or something. My cousin was the first to bite into it and had to run to the trash can to vomit as soon as it got in her mouth. Another person got a forkful near their nose and freaked out and yelled in shock. Cue my aunt beginning to completely meltdown about how she’s trying so hard she got the recipe from a friend and it’s not THAT much alcohol and grandma was such a good cook she would’ve helped her etc like full-blown about to lose it. The cousin that vomited tried to claim it was something else while the yeller tried to play off that they saw a bug across the room.

Everyone else was sufficiently guilted into eating at least some of what they’d scooped onto their plates. That shit was physically painful to eat. Everything burned. Looking around the table you would’ve thought we were all downing spoonfuls of wasabi. I was 19 but I guess my parents were more worried about my aunt than me getting underaged sloshed on pudding but about halfway through my portion they found a discreet way to dump my plate. The whole place reeked a couple of minutes after we dug into the “pudding” too so it was this awful inescapable sensory overload of bourbon.

I went to Kenya on a college trip. For the first week we were there we built a kitchen into a school. Every day my buddy and I would joke about this goat at the school and his big it’s nuts were.

Well fast forward and the last day we were there the school put on a feast, eating corn, beans and kale (grown at the school) with goat meat.
The local elders came by at the end to show their appreciation. My teacher (who was from Kenya) got up and said “the elders have prepared a delicacy, it is somewhat of an insult to not eat what they present you”
Bam here came the karma buss.

Now I enjoy fried Rocky Mountain oysters, however what they served was a barely boiled got ball. I tore off a sizable chunk like a champ, I will NEVER forget the rubbery texture, or the ultra gamy taste, but I ate it like I was honored for even being offered.

Sea snails with my Vietnamese friend. I paid for it when I tried to pull it out with my teeth instead of using the little toothpick. Since it is in a spiral inside the shell, it snapped out of the shell and sprung forth, bouncing off my face and onto the table, leaving my face covered in fishy-smelling, briny seawater. I would have run straight to the bathroom, but I was temporarily brinded.

Was visiting Guatemala, and this old lady invited us to dinner. In this country, it’s extremely rude to not eat what was placed before you.

Unfortunately, this lady served us a vegetable soup with some meat in it that tasted like the chicken broth from hell. She didn’t eat with us, as she was being polite or something. She didn’t even talk to us during dinner.

We took a taste and nearly wanted to puke. However, due to the country’s customs, we decided to eat it. We barely could get through it. We ate about 3/4 of it and then mentioned we were just full. We both retched later on that night. It was so nasty!

Ran into the lady later in the week walking down the street, and she apologized to us. Apparently, the chicken was rotten and she only took one bite. She then chastised us for not telling her.

Sometimes it’s frustrating not knowing all the ins and outs of different customs!

Back in the late 1970s, I was sent from California to a rural Maryland town for a 6 months job assignment. I was used to the wide variety of very fresh vegetables grown within a couple of hours of my city. In that rural Maryland town, I rarely saw what I would consider good fresh vegetables, except for a very short season when farmers markets had local produce. I really missed my good veggies.

I rented part of a house that had been converted to apartments. The nice elderly couple next door had a huge vegetable garden, consisting primarily of green beans. I used to lust after those beans.

One day, Mrs. Neighbor saw me outside and invited me to join them later in the day for a barbecue. “We are going to have the first of our own green beans.” I could hardly wait. I was so-o-o looking forward to those beans.
Mr. Neighbor barbecued and Mrs. Neighbor plated the food in the kitchen. With great pride, she handed me a plate containing an incinerated steak and a bunch of gray tubes. “We like our green beans best after they’ve been canned.”

Yep. She had home-canned the green beans, then cooked them, Southern style, for a hour or so with a chunk of ham. I looked at my plate. I looked over at all those crisp, vibrant beans still on the plants. I looked back at my plate.

I never knew I possessed such good acting ability.

My wife’s cooking. When we first got married. I do the cooking now. I think that was her plan all along.