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The world’s 10 worst foods have been named and shamed – featuring one UK classic

Food website TasteAtlas has named the planet’s ‘worst’ cuisines, and one British wartime delight makes the cut

Annie McNamee
Written by
Annie McNamee
Contributor, Time Out London and UK
Jellied eels in a dish
Photograph: Shutterstock
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We need food. It literally sustains us and allows us to stay alive, but more than that, it’s delicious. Well, some of it is.

As much as we all love a really great meal, there’s few fates worse than having to eat your least favourite food. Maybe it’s brussels sprouts, maybe it’s mushrooms, or maybe it’s jellied eels.

Jellied eels is a real, edible foodstuff which dates back to the 1700s and was actually quite popular in the UK a few years ago. By a few years ago, we do of course mean several generations. Swings and roundabouts.

TasteAtlas, which recently included Scottish and English in their roundups of the world’s 100 best cuisines, has come out with a new list: the world’s 100 worst foods, and jellied eels have made the cut.

But let’s back up a bit. How were these foods chosen? Well, roughly 600,000 responses were received from the publications readership, each rating different dishes based on whether or not they enjoyed them. Basically, you had to be very widely disliked to make it onto this list.

Jellied eels, which are made by boiling chopped eels and then leaving them to cool in some herbs, which is ‘when the fish would produce their own gelatin, and a soft, transparent jelly would form on the cut pieces’ leaving you with something that is, despite all odds, not poisonous. TasteAtlas describe the texture as ‘delicate and soft’, and the taste as ‘mild’ and ‘slightly salty’. Yum.

In fact, Time Out London food editor Leonie Cooper has positive things to say about eels: ‘The fact that oysters are considered a delicacy but jellied eels are branded ludicrously rank, inedible or worse seems unfair to us. Though both are sloppy and reminiscent of gulping down a mouthful of seawater, oysters seem to have left eels behind. We call for a rebrand and justice for jellied eels in 2025.’

You can still buy jellied eels from supermarkets and some specialist fishmongers if you fancy the nostalgia trip/bushtucker trial. If you want to find out what is worse than fishy-gelatin, you can have a look at TasteAtlas’ complete roundup here.

Eating in the UK

There are some stellar burgers in the UK – especially in the capital – and some which have been nominated for a national award. We’ve uncovered some secret foodie locations that you might not have thought of, and we have lists of the best restaurants in the country, as well as our picks for the most romantic places to eat in Britain. 

ICYMI: How to get half-price discounts on millions of rail tickets this week

Plus: These are the UK’s best places to live in 2025, according to science

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