50 Unsettling Cursed Food Pics That Might Make You Lose Your Appetite

There are plenty of ways that food can be blessed. If you’re visiting your parents and they make some delicious mac and cheese that tastes like childhood with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert, that’s a blessed meal. 

If you share a comforting bowl of ramen with your best friend while catching up on each other’s lives, that food is definitely blessed. And, of course, if you take communion at church, that bread is considered to be blessed as well. But when it comes to cursed food on the internet, there are various definitions that fit the bill too. 

Online, cursed food might include a toilet full of baked beans, an ice cream sundae with hot dogs instead of bananas, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on slices of lunch meat instead of bread or a pizza that’s been baking in the oven for about 9 hours longer than it should have been. Cursed food is bizarre, confusing, entertaining and stomach-churning. And we can’t seem to get enough of it!

One era of food that is considered to be particularly cursed is 1970s cuisine. Somehow, everything was ending up in gelatin, regardless of whether the dish was sweet or savory, and magazines popularized the most unsettling recipes. And according to Junkee, part of the reason for this is because people wanted their meals to look like centerpieces or pieces of artwork, rather than simply the ingredients that they were.

Although the trends have changed, we still love viewing beautifully plated or mouthwateringly delicious looking photos of food. I mean, why else would so many people post photos of their meals on their Instagram stories for friends to marvel at? After all, the phone eats first. But after gorgeous photos of food became incredibly popular, the pendulum started to swing in the other direction. And now, cursed food has taken over almost just as much space on the internet as gorgeous photos of pasta and fluffy pastries. 

When we talk about cursed food, though, we often forget that what we eat actually does have the power to make us extremely ill. Nobody wants to think about the risk of food poisoning when chowing down on a steak that costs $30 or while diving into a creamy bowl of hummus. But the reality is that each year, there are about 48 million cases of foodborne illness reported in the United States. And about 128,000 people end up in the hospital due to a meal that betrayed them.

When it comes to what turns regular food into a cursed dish that could send someone to the emergency room, FoodSafety.org notes that bacteria and viruses, parasites, molds, toxins, contaminants and allergens are the biggest dangers we have to worry about. There are also certain people who are particularly at risk, such as pregnant women, children under the age of 5, adults over the age of 65 and people with compromised immune systems. So if you or a loved one falls into one of those groups, you better make sure to be careful when feeding them!  

While we can all end up with an upset tummy from time to time due to pouring a little too much hot sauce on our tacos or eating leftovers that probably should have been thrown away the day before, it’s important to be aware of the symptoms of food poisoning. If you’re experiencing an upset stomach, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever or dehydration, it might be time to seek medical attention. Unfortunately, severe food poisoning can sometimes even cause long-term health issues, so it’s better to be safe than sorry if you’re unsure about going to the hospital.