15 Foods We Wouldn’t Miss If They Disappeared Tomorrow

Everyone has foods they love and foods they would happily never see again. This list is firmly in the second category.

Some of these are traditional dishes with real history behind them. Others are novelty foods, viral creations, imitators, or ideas that seem designed mostly to make people ask, “Who thought of this?” Taste is personal, so no judgment if one of these is your favorite. But we still have questions about the whole chicken in a can.

The Fool’s Gold Loaf was created at the Colorado Mine Company, a long-closed restaurant in Glendale, Colorado, and became famous because Elvis Presley loved it. The basic construction was gloriously excessive: a hollowed loaf of bread, a full pound of bacon, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly or preserves. Accounts differ on whether the original filling used grape jelly or blueberry preserves, but the Elvis connection is not in dispute. In 1976, Presley famously flew to Denver after hours to get a batch delivered to his plane. A normal peanut butter and jelly sandwich apparently was not going to cut it.

There is cheese, there is funky cheese, and then there is casu marzu. This traditional Sardinian sheep’s-milk cheese is deliberately ripened with the larvae of the cheese fly, Piophila casei. The larvae break down the cheese as they feed, producing the famously soft texture. Casu marzu is recognized as a traditional Italian food product, but its production and marketing have been prohibited in the European Union because the finished cheese contains live insect larvae and does not comply with applicable food-safety rules. That has not erased the tradition, but it does make finding a legally marketed wheel considerably more complicated than picking up some cheddar.

Yes, the whole chicken in a can is real. Sweet Sue still sells a 50-ounce version containing a fully cooked chicken without giblets, packed with water and salt. The ingredient list is almost impressively straightforward: chicken, water, and salt. The presentation is another matter. Once chilled and removed from the can, you are confronted with exactly what the label promised: an entire cooked bird shaped by its stay inside a metal cylinder. Convenient? Technically. Appetizing? We will let you make that call.

Pork brains with milk gravy are also exactly what the label says. Rose currently sells the canned product with pork brains, milk, water, cornstarch, salt, and sodium nitrite. The nutrition label is enough to make you blink: a 2-ounce serving lists 1,125 milligrams of cholesterol, or 375% of the current Daily Value. If you were looking for a gentle introduction to organ meat, this may not be it.

Hákarl is not a stunt food at all. It is a traditional Icelandic food made by fermenting and drying Greenland shark, and versions of it have been produced for centuries. Fresh Greenland shark is not suitable to eat without processing because of naturally occurring compounds in its flesh. In a modern study by Icelandic food researchers, fresh and frozen shark meat fermented for eight and seven weeks, respectively, and was then dried for five weeks. The finished product is famous for its strong ammonia-like aroma and is commonly served in small pieces, sometimes alongside Icelandic brennivín. Historically important? Absolutely. An easy first bite for tourists? Not especially.

If you have had pure maple syrup next to ordinary pancake syrup, you already know they are different products. Under U.S. regulations, maple syrup is made from concentrated maple sap or maple sugar derived from that sap. “Pancake syrup,” on the other hand, is a broader category that can use other sweeteners, flavorings, colors, and stabilizers. Pearl Milling Company’s Original Syrup, for example, currently lists corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup as its first two ingredients, along with caramel color and natural and artificial flavor. It will sweeten a stack of pancakes just fine. We are still choosing the maple syrup.

Truffle oil gets accused of being fake so often that the criticism has become part of its reputation, but the truth is a little more complicated. Some products contain real truffle, while others rely heavily on added flavor compounds. Studies of commercial truffle-flavored oils have found 2,4-dithiapentane, an aroma compound associated with truffles, in many samples and have also found inconsistencies between labeling and chemical profiles. None of that means every bottle is fraudulent. It does mean that a splash of “truffle oil” is not necessarily the same experience as shaving a fresh truffle over pasta. Not even close.

Novelty soda makers have proved that almost anything can be carbonated if you are committed enough. Rocket Fizz sells flavors including Ranch Dressing and Sweet Corn, while its stores have also carried oddball creations such as bacon-flavored soda. These are real soft drinks, not abandoned ideas from a brainstorming meeting. We respect the dedication. We are also perfectly comfortable continuing to drink root beer.

A good cheeseburger does not need much explaining. Beef, cheese, a bun, and a few toppings have been doing the job for a long time. Then there are stunt burgers stacked with multiple oversized patties, piles of toppings, and enough food to require structural engineering. Some are built as eating challenges, some are made for social media, and some are apparently created because nobody in the kitchen was willing to say, “That is probably enough.” Bigger can be fun. It does not automatically make the burger better.

Rainbow bagels became one of the defining viral foods of the mid-2010s, although the idea itself was older. Brooklyn baker Scot Rossillo had reportedly been making multicolored bagels for years before The Bagel Store’s Rainbow Bagel exploded on social media around 2015 and 2016. Rossillo’s version was slightly sweet with a hint of vanilla and was often paired with equally colorful Funfetti-style cream cheese, so it was not simply a plain bagel wearing food coloring. The Bagel Store eventually closed in 2022, but rainbow bagels had already escaped into the wider world. We cannot put that toothpaste back in the tube.

“Hand salad” sounds like a joke someone made at lunch, but Bon Appétit really published a recipe under that name in 2017. Hand Salad With Yogurt-Lemon Dressing is essentially sturdy romaine leaves served with a garlicky yogurt dip and meant to be eaten with your hands. Is it technically food? Of course. Is “lettuce and dip” a perfectly understandable description of the same concept? Also yes.

Imitation crab is usually made from surimi, a processed seafood paste made from mild white fish, often Alaska pollock. Depending on the product, the fish can be blended with ingredients such as starch, egg white, salt, flavorings, stabilizers, and color before being shaped and cooked to resemble crab meat. Recipes vary considerably by manufacturer, and some products even contain crab extract or other shellfish ingredients. So imitation crab is still real seafood. It is just not necessarily the crab leg it is dressed up to resemble.

Stargazy pie gets a pass on history alone. The traditional Cornish dish is closely associated with the fishing village of Mousehole and Tom Bawcock’s Eve, celebrated on December 23. The pie traditionally features pilchards beneath a pastry crust, with recipes also incorporating ingredients such as eggs and potatoes. Its unmistakable feature is the fish heads poking through the top so they appear to be gazing at the stars. It looks bizarre if you have never seen one, but this is not a modern viral-food stunt. It is a genuine piece of Cornish food tradition.

Traditional hummus is a savory Middle Eastern dish built around chickpeas and tahini, usually with lemon juice, salt, and often garlic and olive oil. Chocolate hummus takes the chickpea base in a completely different direction, adding ingredients such as cocoa and sweetener to turn it into a dessert dip. Is that illegal? Obviously not. Is it traditional hummus in anything but the broadest sense? Also no. Sometimes a chickpea just wants to be a chickpea.

Fast-food “secret menus” used to live mostly on social media, where customers shared custom combinations and gave them unofficial names. The idea became so popular that the chains eventually joined in. McDonald’s officially promoted fan-inspired menu hacks in the United States in 2022, and Starbucks made its own Secret Menu official in the Starbucks app in July 2025. Customizing a drink or stacking one sandwich inside another can be fun, but once a corporation puts the “secret” menu in its app, we may have stretched the definition of secret about as far as it can go. Either way, the trend has earned its place among history’s biggest food fads.