Like calamari? Make sure you're getting the real thing and not ...

Pig Rectum.

Yup. From a link on Jennifer Fulwiler's website.

And I used to like calamari.

Though it has a shape and texture similar to the real thing, its component parts are decidedly different. While calamari comes from squid, the replica is supposedly made of hog rectum, otherwise known as "bung."

The irony is not lost on Ben Calhoun, one of the show's producers, and ring-leader of the segment, who notes:

In restaurants everywhere, right this second, people are squeezing lemon wedges over crispy, golden, rings, dipping the rings into marinara sauce, and they're eating hog rectum. Now they're chewing -- satisfied and deeply clueless. It's payback for our blissful ignorance about where our food comes from and how it gets to us.

Mark Wheeler, an employee with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) -- the department tasked with ensuring the correct labeling and packaging of our nation's meat products -- told The Huffington Post he wasn't aware of any products specifically labeled as "imitation calamari." If it does exist, and is derived from a hog's rectum, he said it would have to be clearly identified as such.

So I'm thinking to myself, "how do you tell the difference? The smell? Ha ha.

Yup again.

However, Wheeler did note that pig intestines are edible and are more commonly referred to as "pork chitterlings," a product the USDA notes has a "pungent odor" when boiled and a texture similar to (you guessed it) calamari.

Yuk.

Comments

[MR]

Think I'll have to scratch that off the appetizer list from now on. Thanks Tom.