93 Fun Facts About Forbidden Foods

Which of these fish fails the kosher test for want of scales?

Catfish have no scales at all, and kosher law admits only fish with both fins and scales, the same rule that takes every kind of shellfish off the menu.

Which two major religions forbid eating pork outright?

Judaism and Islam both forbid pork, in Leviticus 11 and in the Quran, which allows one exception: a person driven by necessity to eat forbidden food commits no sin.

Why do many Jains avoid root vegetables such as potatoes, onions and garlic?

Harvesting them harms tiny organisms in the soil and kills the whole plant, and Jain teaching adds that a single bulb or tuber is itself home to countless souls.

What common food combination is strictly prohibited in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut)?

Meat and dairy products may not share a meal, a pot or a plate, so observant kitchens keep two sets of dishes and many Jews wait hours after meat before eating dairy.

Which Jewish festival bans leavened bread and other risen grain foods from the home?

Passover bars chametz, leavened grain, in memory of the Israelites who fled Egypt too fast for their dough to rise, so families clear every crumb from the house beforehand.

Which roe-prized fish is non-kosher for most Orthodox authorities because its scales can't be removed cleanly?

Sturgeon carry bony plates that can't be removed without cutting into the skin, so most Orthodox rabbis bar the fish and its prized roe, while many Conservative rabbis permit it.

In a kosher kitchen, what term marks neutral foods such as eggs, fruit and fish?

Pareve foods belong to neither side of the kosher kitchen's great divide, so they suit any meal; even so, Orthodox custom keeps fish, itself pareve, off a plate of meat.

In Islam, what is the term for foods that are permissible to eat?

Halal means 'permissible' in Arabic, the opposite of haram, and the Quran goes on to declare the food of Jews and Christians lawful for Muslims to eat.

What process does kosher butchery use to remove the blood from meat?

Salting, or melicha: the meat soaks in water for half an hour, sits under a layer of salt for an hour to draw out the blood, and is then rinsed clean.

A 2008 rabbinical ruling found which long-necked animal, and its milk, eligible to be considered kosher?

The giraffe: in 2008 Israeli veterinarians and rabbis examined a Safari Ramat Gan giraffe and found its milk curdles, the rabbinic test that confirmed the animal's kosher status.

In Jewish dietary law, which two signs make a land mammal such as a cow kosher?

Cud-chewing and split hooves are both demanded by Leviticus 11, which is why cows and sheep pass while the pig, with the right hooves but no cud, does not.

Alongside meat, fish, eggs and alcohol, which sweet food is strictly prohibited in the Jain diet?

Honey is forbidden because taking it from the hive is seen as violence against the bees, and observant Jains will not even trade in it.

Which of these animals' milk is forbidden under Jewish kosher law, because the animal itself fails one of the two signs?

The camel passes only one of the Torah's two tests for a kosher mammal, so its meat and its milk are both barred to observant Jews, though Islam permits them.

Which large ocean fish splits kosher authorities because it has scales when young but sheds them as an adult?

Swordfish lose their scales as they mature, so most Orthodox rabbis rule them out, while the Conservative movement accepts the fish as kosher.

Why can't Kinder Surprise eggs legally be sold in the US?

A toy is sealed inside the candy, and a 1938 food law bans sweets with a non-food object embedded in them; the FDA's worry is that a child may choke on it unawares.

Which cooking oil, a staple of Bengali and North Indian kitchens, can't be sold as food in the US?

Mustard oil pressed from the seed is rich in erucic acid, linked to heart lesions in test animals, so the FDA blocks it as food and bottles are often labelled for topical use only.

Casu martzu, a Sardinian sheep's cheese banned from sale on health grounds, contains what?

Live fly maggots: cheese flies lay their eggs in the pecorino and the larvae digest it into a soft, creamy paste, which some Sardinians eat with the maggots still wriggling.

French law defines foie gras as the liver of a duck or goose fattened by what process?

Gavage, force-feeding through a tube, is written into French law's definition of foie gras; the practice goes back to the ancient Egyptians, who fattened migrating geese the same way.

Which Caribbean fruit, famously paired with saltfish, can cause deadly 'vomiting sickness' if eaten unripe?

Ackee is safe only after the pod ripens and splits open; the unripe flesh holds hypoglycin, a toxin that sends blood sugar crashing.

Jamaica's national fruit has a scientific name honouring which naval captain, who took it to Kew in 1793?

William Bligh, whose crew had mutinied on HMS Bounty four years earlier, carried the fruit to Kew Gardens, and botanists named its genus Blighia in his honour.

French gourmands traditionally eat the ortolan bunting with what over their heads?

A napkin: diners drape it over their heads, a ritual said either to trap the bird's aroma or to hide the shame of eating a songbird whole.

Before cooking, ortolans are traditionally drowned in which spirit?

Armagnac: the fattened songbirds are drowned in the Gascon brandy, then roasted and eaten whole in a single mouthful, bones and all.

Which French president, dying of cancer, ate ortolan at his final New Year's Eve feast in 1995?

François Mitterrand, his appetite ruined by cancer, still saved room for the roasted songbird that night, and he died eight days later.

The FDA banned sassafras oil from mass-produced foods in 1960, killing off its use in which drink?

Root beer took its flavour from sassafras root bark until the FDA barred the oil over its main component, safrole; makers switched to safrole-free extract or artificial flavouring.

In 2012, China's government pledged to ban shark fin soup from what?

Official banquets: China's government said in 2012 that shark fin would leave its receptions within three years, after a campaign against the soup fronted by basketball star Yao Ming.

The sale of chewing gum has been illegal in which country since 1992?

Singapore banned the sale of chewing gum in January 1992 after vandals jammed MRT train door sensors with it; medicinal gum was allowed again from 2004.

The EU banned jelly mini-cups after choking deaths linked to which gelling agent?

Konjac gel does not melt in the mouth as gelatin does, so a swallowed mini-cup could lodge in a child's throat; the FDA issued warnings in 2001 and the EU banned the sweets.

Which luxury food did the US ban importing in 2005 because its source is critically endangered?

Beluga caviar: in 2005 the US Fish and Wildlife Service banned imports from the Caspian and Black Sea basins, where overfishing for the roe had left the fish critically endangered.

Iceland's fermented delicacy hákarl is made from which species, whose fresh flesh is poisonous?

The Greenland shark: its fresh flesh is laced with urea and trimethylamine oxide, so the meat is buried to ferment for six to twelve weeks, then hung to dry for months.

Which celebrity chef rated fermented shark 'the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing' ever eaten?

Anthony Bourdain got off lightly beside Gordon Ramsay, who vomited into a bucket after one bite on The F Word while his guest James May calmly kept his down.

In 2006, airlines including British Airways and Air France banned cans of Sweden's surströmming as potentially what?

Explosive: the airlines classed the pressurised cans of fermenting fish as a safety risk, while producers called the ban 'culturally illiterate' and the exploding tin a myth.

Surströmming is made from which fish?

Baltic herring, strömming in Swedish, is salted just enough to stop it rotting and then left to ferment for at least six months, which gives the fish its notorious smell.

Which of these countries bans poppy seeds, a common bread topping, as a drug-control measure?

Saudi Arabia bans poppy seeds for drug-control reasons, as do several Gulf neighbours, and India's customs service warns travellers heading there not to pack khas khas from their own kitchens.

Why do many hotels and public transport systems in Southeast Asia ban the durian fruit?

Its smell lingers for days, which is why hotels and transit systems turn the fruit away, even as fans across the region hail it as the 'king of fruits'.

Absinthe was banned in the US by 1915 over fears about a compound from which herb?

Wormwood contains thujone, which was blamed for the madness called absinthism; later research disproved the link, and the drink has been made legal again in many of the countries that banned it.

Absinthe, the 'green fairy' of Parisian cafés, was first produced commercially in the 1790s in which neighbouring country?

Switzerland: by legend the recipe came from a French doctor in the village of Couvet, where distilling began in 1797; in 1805 the Pernod family opened a distillery across the border in France.

In 1987 the FDA banned the sale of raw milk for human consumption under what condition?

Across state borders: the 1987 rule bars raw milk from interstate commerce, leaving each state to decide whether it may be sold within its own borders.

Which UK nation has banned the sale of raw drinking milk since 1983?

Scotland banned raw cow's milk for drinking in 1983 after a spate of deaths linked to it, and widened the ban to milk from all other farm animals in 2006.

Serving which part of the fugu pufferfish, thought to be its tastiest, was banned in Japan in 1984?

The liver, or kimo, was prized as the tastiest part but holds the heaviest dose of tetrodotoxin, so Japan barred restaurants from serving it in 1984.

Fugu's tetrodotoxin paralyses its victims by blocking nerve channels for which ion?

Sodium: tetrodotoxin plugs voltage-gated sodium channels in nerve and muscle, so the victim is paralysed while fully conscious; there is no antidote, only ventilation until the toxin clears.

Which haggis ingredient has kept UK imports of the dish out of the US since 1971?

Sheep's lung makes up a tenth or more of a traditional haggis, and US rules bar all livestock lungs from human food, so the real thing has been shut out since 1971.

Which country was the first to cap industrially produced trans fats in food, with a law passed in 2003?

Denmark limited industrial trans fats to 2% of the fats and oils in any food, a cap strict enough to all but remove them from the Danish diet.

Which ingredient, once the main source of artificial trans fat in US food, lost FDA safe status in 2015?

Partially hydrogenated oils were ruled no longer 'generally recognized as safe', and makers had until June 2018 to drop them from most foods, a step the FDA expected to prevent thousands of heart attacks a year.

Which religious movement follows the 'ital' diet, which shuns pork, alcohol and, for the strictest, added salt?

Rastafari cooks keep food 'ital', natural and unprocessed, because the diet is meant to build life energy; many shun meat altogether, and strict kitchens leave out salt.

Which 1971 US law stopped mustangs being rounded up and sold for pet food?

The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act passed Congress unanimously after 'Wild Horse Annie' Johnston rallied schoolchildren to write in against the roundups.

Which ingredient kept Red Bull off the French market until the food agency relented in 2008?

Taurine was the sticking point: France's food agency withheld approval, a taurine-free version went on sale there instead, and the original was cleared in 2008 when no health risk could be proven.

Edible bird's nests, the basis of bird's nest soup, are made from what?

Solidified swiftlet saliva: the bird builds the nest from strands of its own spit, which harden into a cup on a cave wall and turn gelatinous in soup.

Which US state prohibits both the production and the sale of foie gras?

California's ban has survived years in court: a federal judge struck down the sales ban in 2015, putting foie gras back on menus, and an appeals court upheld the law in 2017.

Where did councillors vote in 2019 to ban foie gras from restaurants, starting years of court battles?

New York City passed the ban in 2019, but two upstate duck farms sued and the state called it an unreasonable restriction on them; the fight was still running through the courts in 2026.

In 1943 the wartime US government briefly banned the sale of what?

Sliced bread was banned from 18 January 1943, but the order proved so unpopular that the food administrator scrapped it on 8 March, admitting the savings were smaller than expected.

Which country banned margarine outright from 1886 to 1948, pausing only for a wartime dairy shortage?

Canada's Supreme Court lifted the ban in the 1948 Margarine Reference, but provinces could still stop makers colouring it like butter, and Quebec kept its margarine white until 2008.

A 1592 London decree let bakers sell which spiced treat only at burials, at Christmas and on Good Friday?

Hot cross buns: under Elizabeth I the London Clerk of Markets limited spiced buns to those three occasions, and a baker caught selling them on any other day had to give the lot to the poor.

Congress passed the Volstead Act enforcing US Prohibition over which president's veto?

Woodrow Wilson's veto was overridden within two days in October 1919, and when he left office he moved his own stock of wine and spirits to his new Washington home.

Which president was in office when the Twenty-first Amendment ended Prohibition?

Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed a law legalising beer months earlier, and he proclaimed Prohibition over on the evening in December 1933 that Utah's convention cast the deciding vote.

Which country became the first in the world to ban cultivated (lab-grown) meat?

Italy's parliament passed the ban in November 2023, with fines of up to €60,000; the government called it a defence of Italian food tradition against 'synthetic' meat.

The first lab-grown meat ever sold to diners, at a restaurant in 2020, was a cultivated version of which meat?

Chicken: US start-up Eat Just's cultured chicken bites went on the menu at a restaurant called 1880 in December 2020, weeks after local regulators became the first anywhere to approve such meat.

Which US state was first to make manufacturing and selling cultivated meat a criminal offence?

Florida: Governor Ron DeSantis signed the ban on 1 May 2024, making the manufacture or sale of cultivated meat a second-degree misdemeanour; Upside Foods sued in August 2024 to overturn it.

In 2013 the FDA detained a ton of French Mimolette cheese because of what on its rind?

Mites: cheese mites are put on Mimolette's rind on purpose to develop its flavour, but the FDA called them an allergen and held the wheels at the border for months.

In 1511, a religious court banned coffee as a dangerous stimulant in which holy city?

Mecca's ban did not hold: a sultan's order later overturned it, and coffeehouses went on to become centres of public life across the Islamic world.

Which German-speaking king campaigned against coffee in 1777, worried about the cost of importing it?

Frederick the Great of Prussia: his 1777 manifesto scolded subjects for drinking coffee rather than beer, and in 1781 he made roasting a royal monopoly policed by 'coffee sniffers'.

Which artificial sweetener lost US food approval in 1969 after rat bladder-cancer studies?

Cyclamate was pulled from the GRAS list in October 1969 after rats fed it developed bladder tumours, and the FDA banned it from all foods in 1970; the EU permits it.

Which sweetener carried a mandatory US cancer warning label from 1977 until 2000?

Saccharin: the FDA tried to ban it in 1977, Congress ordered a warning label instead, and the label was dropped in 2000 once the tumours proved to arise in a way peculiar to rats.

Which food dye did the FDA ban from all foods and ingested drugs in January 2025?

Red No. 3, known chemically as erythrosine, had been barred from cosmetics since 1990 under the Delaney Clause, the same anti-carcinogen rule the FDA invoked for the 2025 food ban.

Which citrus-soda emulsifier did the FDA ban, effective August 2024?

Brominated vegetable oil kept citrus flavouring from floating to the top of sodas; the FDA struck it from its safe list back in 1970 yet allowed limited use for another half-century.

Which whitening additive, coded E171, did the EU ban from food in 2022?

Titanium dioxide: the EU withdrew E171's approval in 2022 after its food-safety agency said it could no longer rule out that the particles damage DNA.

Which sandwich chain dropped the 'yoga mat chemical' azodicarbonamide from its bread in 2014 after a blogger's campaign?

Subway acted after 'Food Babe' blogger Vani Hari publicised that the dough conditioner also puts the spring in yoga mats and shoe soles; the additive is not allowed in EU bread at all.

Since 1989, Europe has banned imports of beef from cattle raised with what?

Growth hormones stayed approved for US cattle, so Washington took the ban to the WTO, which in 1999 let it impose retaliatory tariffs worth $116.8 million a year on EU goods.

Fresh mangosteens were illegal to import into the US until 2007 because of which pest?

Asian fruit fly: USDA barred fresh mangosteens as a fruit-fly host until 2007, when irradiated fruit from Thailand was allowed in; the first arrivals sold at steep prices in New York specialty stores.

A 2011 'Marmite ban' scare in one Nordic country really concerned rules on what?

Added vitamins: the country requires approval for foods fortified with vitamins or minerals, and Marmite's importer had never obtained it; the food authority later said the spread was never banned.

Which country's parliament voted in 2024 to outlaw the dog meat trade from 2027?

South Korea gave dog farmers and restaurants a three-year grace period to close or change trade; the stew boshintang had already fallen out of favour with younger diners.

New Zealand is among the countries that have banned cooks from plunging which live animal into boiling water?

Lobster: scientists argue that crustaceans may well feel pain, so such laws require the animal to be stunned or killed outright before it goes into the pot.

Which US city banned foie gras from its restaurants in 2006, only to repeal the ban two years later?

Chicago was the first US city to outlaw the dish, but chefs got round the rule by handing foie gras out 'free' with other orders, and the council repealed it in 2008.

Which country got Coca-Cola back in 2012, after some 60 years without it, when US sanctions were suspended?

Myanmar, also known as Burma, was opening up after decades of military rule, and rival PepsiCo announced its own return that same year.

Which Pacific ceremonial drink was banned or restricted by many countries in 2002?

Kava: reports of liver damage tied to kava extract pills set off the 2002 bans, but the WHO later judged the traditional water-based drink low-risk and a German court overturned its ban in 2014.

What happens to the cocaine removed from the coca leaves that flavour Coca-Cola?

Sold for medical use: a New Jersey plant, the only US firm licensed to import coca leaf, strips out the cocaine for a drug maker and sends Coca-Cola the cocaine-free extract.

As of 2012, which two countries were the only ones where Coca-Cola was not officially sold?

Cuba and North Korea are both under US trade embargoes, so Coca-Cola cannot officially do business in either, although the drink still slips in unofficially.

Where is capybara meat a Lenten favourite thanks to a claimed Catholic dispensation?

Venezuela: by legend the Church once classed the capybara, a rodent that spends much of its life in water, alongside fish, so its salted meat became a Lenten tradition.

Which part of the beaver could medieval Catholics eat on meatless Lenten Fridays?

Its tail: the Church treated the beaver as part fish, so the scaly tail could be eaten on fast days, which made beaver tails a prized Lenten dish.

Followers of which ancient Greek thinker were famous for refusing to eat beans?

Pythagoras: his followers shunned beans, a taboo that ancient writers such as Aristotle linked to Hades and to the return of souls to earth.

France banned potato cultivation in 1748 partly because the tuber was said to cause what?

Leprosy: the 1748 ban rested on the belief that potatoes caused it; Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who had eaten them as a prisoner of war, got the Paris Faculty of Medicine to declare them edible in 1772.

Which mayor's 2012 cap on sugary drinks over 16 ounces was thrown out by his state's highest court?

Michael Bloomberg's cap never took effect: a lower court blocked it in 2013, and in 2014 the top court ruled that his appointed health board had overstepped its authority.

Which people's assembly adopted Christianity around 1000 AD on condition they could keep eating horse meat?

Icelanders left the choice to their lawspeaker Thorgeir, who lay under his cloak for a day and a night before ruling for baptism, with horse meat and secret pagan rites still allowed.

Which country was the first in the EU to report horse meat in 'beef' products in 2013?

Ireland: the Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced on 15 January 2013 that burgers sold by Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and others contained horse DNA; some Findus lasagne later tested up to 100% horse.

Before a 2009 import ban, which Australian game meat was widely used in Russia's cheap luncheon meats?

Kangaroo meat, all of it harvested from wild animals, went into Russian sausages and luncheon meats until Moscow suspended imports in 2009.

Which sperm-whale secretion, once prized as a food flavouring and perfume fixative, is illegal to trade in the US?

Ambergris forms in the whale's gut around the beaks of the squid it eats and can drift for years before washing ashore; US law bans trade in it as a product of an endangered species.

The LDS Word of Wisdom bans tea and coffee under which two-word scriptural phrase?

'Hot drinks', in Doctrine and Covenants 89:9: church leaders from Hyrum Smith onward read the phrase as tea and coffee, and the church teaches that temperature is beside the point.

The Sikh code of conduct forbids 'kutha' meat, meaning meat that was what?

Ritually slaughtered: Guru Gobind Singh rejected killing an animal in God's name as empty ritual, so Sikhs who eat meat choose jhatka, an animal dispatched with a single stroke.

Which of these is among the ‘five pungent spices’ Chinese Buddhist monks avoid?

Asafoetida joins garlic and three kinds of onion on the list, which Mahayana sutras ban because such strong-smelling plants are said to excite the senses.

Which products did the EU's top court bar in 2017 from using the name 'milk'?

Plant-based foods lost when German firm TofuTown defended names like 'Tofu Butter': the court said dairy terms belong to animal milk, however clearly the label shows a plant origin.

Which French cheese, traditionally made from raw milk, ripens too briefly to be sold in that form in the US?

Camembert de Normandie ripens for as little as three weeks, far short of the 60 days US rules demand of raw-milk cheese, so American shops stock pasteurised versions.

Which North Atlantic archipelago banned all alcohol sales from 1907 until 1992?

The Faroe Islands outlawed the sale of alcohol in 1907 and kept the law until 1992, though from 1928 islanders could import limited amounts from abroad for their own use.

During US Prohibition, wine could still be legally obtained for what purpose?

Religious services: sacramental wine stayed legal, and enrolments at churches and synagogues duly rose as some Americans discovered a sudden need for it.

Which English king tried to suppress coffeehouses as haunts of the ‘idle and disaffected’?

Charles II's proclamation of 29 December 1675 accused coffeehouses of spreading 'false, malicious and scandalous reports'; the outcry was such that he withdrew it within a fortnight.