Hello World Have You Ever Tasted Balut?

“Have you ever tasted Balut?” or “Do you eat Balut?”.  These are my common questions to foreigners and Filipinos living in a foreign country every time I come across them in the web or in person and the response is always a hit.  Actually the reactions of foreigners are always synonymous to “horrifying”

I have several amusing stories talking about Balut to non-Filipinos and all of them never fail to humor me.  Here’s one chat conversation I had with my foreign cyber employer after thanking him for a merit.

Me: hey boss thanks for the merit appreciate it much.
Boss: no problem. wazzup?
Me: not much. we’re eating balut & thot of sending u some
Boss: oh wow thanks for the thots! what’s balut?
Me: it’s better seen and eaten than describe so pls wait till u see it
Boss: hmn don’t trust u when u say things like that. pls don’t make me google it
Me: pls don’t google it
Boss:  just a sec
Me: oh no u r definitely googling it. I said pls don’t
Boss: back
Boss: pls don’t send me that balut or I’ll cancel your merit
Me: 

Well who wouldn’t be scared of Balut?  Try looking it from search engines (eg: Google) and you will find these facts:

1. Image


2. Definition:
“A balut is a fertilized duck embryo that is boiled alive and eaten in the shell”.
As far as everybody knows anything that is “boiled alive and eaten” is not only horrifying but also gross.
3. It falls under these food categories:

• 10 Weird Foods in the World
• Top 10 Most Gross & Disgusting Food
• The 6 Most Terrifying Food in the World
• The five most disgusting food ever

4.  It is always one of the “Fear Factor” food along with spiders and insects.
5.  YouTube has LOTS of videos titled “How to Eat Balut”. 
Again, as far as everybody knows anything that has lots of “how to“ is difficult and strange.
6. Food bloggers described it as:

• Superman has his kryptonite and I have balut.
• a delicacy infamous in Filipino culture that can put a crippling chill in the spine of grown men almost as quickly as talk of "aswang"
• Balut is the culinary heart of darkness
• culturally complex cuisine
• Balut will haunt you after you ingest it, It stays with you forever
• a jack in the box kind of food

While the world treat Balut with all the “eews” and the “yikes”, for Filipinos Balut is simply: 

• a popular and affordable street food
• always available especially during night time, just wait for someone in the street to shout a sing-song “Baluuuuut"
• is protein rich and a good aphrodisiac
• is eaten the way Americans normally eat hotdogs or kids to ice cream

Balut is complex looking but actually a simple good food. Once tasted, no one said it tasted bad or it's bad for the health.  I guess that's just how Filipinos are that is why we are most identified with Balut. The world can't help but love us once they get to know us.

Baluuuuut!.... Baluuuuut!


*Photo from Google images