Bento boxes are the Japanese equivalent of a sack lunch, and the contents of these portable lunch containers range from freshly prepared meals to last night's leftovers.

But those foodies who put the same amount of love into the preparation of a bento box as they would any other meal turn bentos into a work of edible art.

今日の旦那さん弁当。 ＊ 朝からじめじめ〜 髪の毛ボーボーになるから湿気どっか行ってー！ ＊ ＊ #お弁当#曲げわっぱ#キャラ弁#デコ弁#旦那弁当#ぶぶあられ#おにぎり#おむすび#ロカリクッキング#kaumo#ミニオンズ#スチュワート#髪型違ったかな#湿気でボーボーなスチュワートって事で

A post shared by しあん (@kinakobun) on May 25, 2016 at 6:37pm PDT

Japanese Instagrammer @kinakobun makes fantastic and colorful bento boxes inspired by pop culture for her husband, including characters like the Minions, Totoro and Japanese mascots like Kumamon.

今日の旦那さん弁当。 久しぶりにおにぎりでキャラ弁 ＊ 初めてくまモン作りました。 熊本に祈りを込めて。 ＊ ＊ #お弁当#曲げわっぱ#キャラ弁#デコ弁#旦那弁当#ぶぶあられ#おにぎり#おむすび#くまモン#くまモン弁当#くまモン頑張れ絵#ロカリクッキング#kaumo#prayforkyusyu#prayforkumamoto

A post shared by しあん (@kinakobun) on Apr 17, 2016 at 6:30pm PDT

Her colorful bento boxes are so cool looking her husband must be the envy of his fellow employees!

今日の旦那さん弁当。 ＊ けろけろけろっぴと薔薇ハムと言う、何とも変な組み合わせ（笑） 昔けろっぴが大好きで、色んなグッズ持ってました。 最近昔のキャラが復活してるのかな？ タキシードサムとかも可愛くて好きだったなぁ。 ＊ お弁当に使ってるカラフルな粒々とお花の材料をよく聞かれます。 何度か書いてますが、また書かせて下さいね。 粒々はぶぶあられで、ネットで購入してます。 ＊ お花はスライスチーズやビアハムなどを型抜きして作ってます。 型抜きに関してはシュガークラフト用の物を使用しています ＊ ＊ #お弁当#曲げわっぱ#キャラ弁#デコ弁#旦那弁当#ぶぶあられ#おにぎり#おむすび#ロカリクッキング#kaumo#サンリオ#けろけろけろっぴ#サンリオ弁当

A post shared by しあん (@kinakobun) on May 17, 2016 at 6:16pm PDT

See Japanese Instagrammer's Bentos For Her Husband Takes Packed Lunches To A New Level here

The restaurant Industry Kitchen NYC already makes the world's most expensive pizza. Now they've introduced a new menu item called Pop Candy Land Pizza, although people are calling it "unicorn pizza." You can see that it's colorful, but you'll be glad to hear that it does not try to combine classic pizza flavors with candy. This pizza is a large rainbow sugar cookie topped with cream cheese frosting, sprinkles, Pop Rocks, and cotton candy. My teeth hurt just thinking about it.

Unicorn pizza exists and it's basically a giant sugar cookie covered in fluffy cotton candy #cosmobites

A post shared by Danielle Tullo (@danielletullo) on Jun 8, 2017 at 9:02am PDT

What's even stranger is that Industry Kitchen NYC doesn't list it under "desserts," but rather under "pizza" in their menu. Would you try a slice? -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Danielle Tullo)

Domino's Pizza used to be obsessed with delivering pizzas hotter and faster than any other pizza chain, and they would have won the Pizza Wars in the 80s and 90s too if it weren't for that pesky Noid.

But there's one delivery element Domino's overlooked in their fight to become the fastest- the two-story toss. Pizza pies are tossed while they're being made, so why not toss them up to the customer when they're done? (NSFW language)

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I hope that customer didn't order extra cheese...

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader.

(Image credit: Kim Traynor)

Back in the 1950s, the BRI's future food historian, Jeff Cheek, took a trip to Scotland while on one of his clandestine missions with the CIA. (He won't tell us why he was there.) But he did write this story of haggis for us- the origin, the tradition, and the elusive hunt for a wee, wee beastie.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

Scotland has given the world many gifts: plaid, golf, the poetry of Robert Burns, and Scotch whisky. They have also offered us their national dish -haggis- but there are few takers… once they find out what haggis is made of. It is the offal (the waste parts) of a slaughtered sheep, minced and then boiled in a sheep's stomach. The dish and name most likely came from the Vikings- the Swedes have a similar dish, hagga, but they use choice cuts of meat to make it. The frugal Scottish farmers, however, wasted nothing, so instead of discarding the lungs, heart, and liver, they used these along with homegrown oats to make haggis. And the Scots have revered it for centuries.

In his "Address to Haggis," 18th-century poet Robert Burns called the dish "the Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race." And it has become a Scottish tradition to serve haggis on Burns Night, January 25th, to celebrate the poet's birthday. Loyal Scotsmen are also supposed to eat haggis on November 30, St. Andrew's Day, to honor Scotland's patron saint.

Many people prefer Nutella to peanut butter, jam or plain butter on bread, and I've known a couple or three people who really go gaga for the stuff, eating it up by the jar as a staple in their pantry.  

But given the sweet, chocolaty and deliciously hazelnutty taste of Nutella I've always thought it must be terrible for you and contain very few hazelnuts - and I was right on both counts.

Redditor MrFlow shared this eye opening image originally created by the Consumer Center in Hamburg, Germany that clearly reveals what actually goes into each jar of Nutella.

And although this graphic shows a jar of Nutella is about half sugar the information on the label indicates it might contain even more sugar than that:

While Nutella contains just five ingredients (palm oil, cocoa, hazelnuts, skimmed milk powder, and sugar), a whopping half of the stuff is sugar.

According to its nutritional label, a jar of Nutella has 21 grams of sugar per 37 grams of spread (two tablespoons), meaning that in reality more than half is sugar. Much of the rest is palm oil — solid fat some claim causes cancer.

Peanut butter wins again!

-Via Daily Mail

National Doughnut Day is upon us! The holiday is set for the first Friday in June every year. The history of Doughnut Day is interesting: it was first celebrated in 1938 as a "thank you" to volunteers of the Salvation Army who handed out doughnuts to soldiers fighting in World war I.    

Many national doughnut chains are giving away freebies today. Unfortunately, there are no national doughnut outlets in my hometown. Those doughnuts are sold through the local groceries. But if you live in a larger city, check out the list of freebies at Uproxx. 

Look at this beautiful candy! Each piece looks like an antique glass paperweight with a rose blossom inside.  Gregory Cohen of Lofty Pursuits (previously at Neatorama) shows us how they are made. While this batch of candy is cherry-flavored, later batches produced rose-flavored candies.

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A lot of work goes into these, so I don't think you'll be making them at home. But while we watch the magic unfold, Cohen keeps us entertained by talking about everything under the sun. You can buy the candy at Public Displays of Confection. -via Laughing Squid

Nothing like a little Nutella on your burrito, right? Yeah, while most pregnant woman don't really have over-the-top pregnancy cravings, the ice cream and pickles craving does strike a handful of ladies. Over on Buzzfeed, you can read some of the strangest pregnancy cravings you could even imagine -like pickles stuffed with grape jelly, vanilla ice cream topped with pulled pork and even the outrageous sweet & savory pasta on Elf. 

Check out the full list of crazy things woman have craved while pregnant over on Buzzfeed

It's hard for new fast food chains to compete with the big names who have cemented their control of cities across America, and even Kenny Rogers couldn't compete with the big chicken chains- his chain of Kenny Rogers' Roasters officially closed for business in 2011.

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But many failed fast food chains have found success overseas, because these American exports are popular around the world and the market isn't saturated in Asia or Europe like it is here in the U.S.

Kenny Rogers' Roasters was sold to a Malaysian firm in 2008 and has since become so big they now have 400 locations worldwide (more than they ever had in the U.S.), and they just opened their first restaurant in India.

Read The Surprising Resilience Of Failed Fast Food Chains at Atlas Obscura

This recipe makes bread that looks like crusty balls of molten lava! But that's just the appearance. It's really just tasty bread that you can use for sandwiches, burgers, or hot rolls for dinner. These rolls are not quite as "hot" as they appear. It's an illusion from Helen Die, aka Tye Lombardi.

When I make this in Hell, I like to roll my dough in the deep pits of sulfur and soul dust and cook them in the hot brimstone vents.  Unfortunately, as you are mortal and have neither access to soul dust or brimstone vents, I’ve had to make a few adjustments to the recipe for you.

The inside is standard bread dough from your favorite mix, colored red. The crust is what makes the magic. Get the recipe and instructions at the Necro-Nom-Nom-Nomicon. Bone appetite!

The San DiegoFair doesn't start until June 2, but journalists already got a sneak peak of some of the amazingly strange snacks that will be offered this year at a media preview last week. Naturally, the legendary Chicken Charlie's was there in full force, this year offering a Krispy Kreme ice cream chicken sandwich that features fried chicken, ice cream inside a Krispy Kreme donut all topped with syrup and Fruity Pebbles.

But while we expect strange things from Chicken Charlies, some of the more outrageous treats were far more surprising -like the ninja pizza cupcakes that feature tomato spice cake, caramel marscapone buttercream and candied pepperoni.

And while fried octopus might not be that outrageous, the decoration for this display advertising the seafood snack is all too entertaining.

You can check out more of the bizarro foods at the fair over at KPBS

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It's funny how many "raw food" fanatics out there don't actually know what their favorite natural foods look like in their raw form, and thereby would probably walk right past dates or artichokes if they were out foraging.

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Many of the "organic" foods you buy in stores go through quite a bit of processing before being sold, which totally makes sense from a consumer standpoint- considering this is what rice looks like before it's harvested.

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But if you truly want to call yourself an organic foods expert you should be able to identify this very popular yet quite obscure food. Here's a hint- it goes great with sushi.

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That's right- it's wasabi! Won't your raw food fan friends be wowed when you show them what wasabi looks before being harvested?

See Here's What Some Popular Foods Really Look Like Before They're Harvested here

If you believe a burger is made up of a ground beef patty and two buns, then you might just consider these burger monstrosities pure blasphemy. But if you like extreme food creations you might consider these to be right up your alley. Some of these are pretty simple concepts that most people might be open to -like the Hawaiian burger with pineapple and ham on it, but others ask the diner to keep a very open mind -like the bogan burger that features steak, chicken schnitzel, a potato cake, bacon, egg, cheese, onion and even a slice of beet. No matter how brave you are though, I somehow doubt you'll be willing to try the beyond outrageous garbage burger that has over 20 ingredients, including five cheeses, peanut butter, peppers, marinara sauce, ice cream hot fudge and a cherry on top (read all the 20 ridiculous ingredients here).

Thanks to Food Republic for the great infographic.

You know where facehuggers come from, don't you? From xenomorph eggs, of course! We can skip the middleman and just ingest the eggs first without all that face-hugging unpleasantness, when the eggs are made of cake.

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Rosanna Pansino of Nerdy Nummies shows us how to recreate the eggs from the Alien movie series in delicious mint chocolate cake. This would be perfect for that Alien marathon party you've planned to prepare your crew for the new movie Alien: Covenant. Just don't blame us when they want to re-emerge from your chest. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The latest hipster food obsession is the "avolatte," a latte (which is a fancy term for coffee with milk) served in an avocado shell. Developed at the Truman Cafe in Melbourne, the idea has spread through the internet and around the world, pretty much instantly.

It appears to be an eco-friendly way to add a bit of avocado flavor to the drink, but not everyone likes the idea. Personally, I do not like avocado, and I do like having a handle on my coffee cup. -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: ozeatingwa)