If you’ve been around the Bored Panda block for a while, this likely isn’t your first encounter with unsettling, disgusting or all around frightening food photos. We’ve seen cursed foods, chaotic foods, “wreckless eating,” reasons to skip out on potlucks for the rest of your life and more. But that’s the beauty of being a culinary master (or at least a culinary creative), you’ll never run out of new ideas for how to spice up your food’s life!

This Facebook page dedicated to questionable photos of food never fails to surprise and captivate viewers. It’s only been around since 2017 but has already amassed an impressive 481k followers. The page is constantly sharing new memes, unsettling images and hilarious photos featuring food and has even created an “emotional support group” as well, where members can “support one another for the emotional damage [the page inflicts] on a daily basis.”

I love eating a delicious meal as much as the next person, and I often spend more time than I’d like to admit salivating over gorgeous food accounts on Instagram and searching for new ideas of what to cook for dinner. But I can’t help but find it bizarre that there are two very popular extremes when it comes to food content online: photos that immediately make you hungry and those that send your appetite running away into hiding.

Cursed food pics have become a fascinating phenomenon online. These can range from low-quality images of meals people actually eat (but did not display on their plates the way an influencer or restaurant would) to gag-worthy photos of raw meat in ice cream cones and hot dogs in cake. Accounts and groups dedicated to sharing upsetting images of food have taken the internet by storm. So much so that Anna Samson at Vice actually did a deep dive investigating why Instagram is so ravenous for disgusting images of food.  

Samson notes that “for as long as humans have walked the Earth, we’ve been fascinated by gross stuff,” so it should be no surprise that disgusting food is something we enjoy too. Well, enjoy looking at. Some of the most popular trends among gross food pics online are anything to do with hot dogs, hot dog water, putting unexpected food items in gelatin, putting any food items in places they shouldn’t be, any form of raw meat and bizarre combinations of sweet and savory foods, such as shrimp on top of a chocolate chip cookie.  

As far as why we can’t get enough of these unsettling and unappetizing food photos, Samson points out that they might be a way of rejecting the flawless, edited photos that we so often see on social media. She notes that sharing, and taking, these pictures can be a way of calling out the superficial aesthetics and values often found online. In a way, posting terrible photos of food is like being an anti-food influencer. Most of us don’t eat off of perfectly plated dishes at every meal, and it’s ridiculous when content creators want to pretend that they didn’t meticulously plan the pics being posted of their food. 

The idea of disgusting food going viral on social media is being discussed more and more, and Emma Beddington at The Guardian also dipped her toe into the topic earlier this year. Beddington sought to find out what the goal of gross food on TikTok is: “to eat, provoke – or arouse?” First, she points out that TikTok has a host of food trends circulating at any moment. Blended baked oats, baked feta pasta and “magic shell” yogurt bowls are just a few that have been popular in recent years. But there are always more absurd videos out there too. “There’s a whole genre of sponsored-by-diabetes content, where beautiful, young, slim women combine terrifying quantities of marshmallows, sweets, chocolate, butter, cereal, pre-prepared cookie dough and the like into ‘incredible’ desserts that should be illegal,” Beddington writes.

Some of the most unappetizing atrocities Beddington has come across on TikTok recently include “tacos” made by boiling beef, eggs and cheese in a bag of Doritos, boiling chips to make “mashed potatoes,” baking dry ramen in the oven with tomato sauce and cheese and blending up dry pasta then adding raw eggs to make “fresh pasta.” As ridiculous as these combinations sound, they are often eaten unironically, which brings up another great point: what one man finds utterly disgusting, another might actually make for dinner.