Bonny Wolf, NPR commentator and author of the book "Talking With My Mouth Full"
@ National Harbor
Q:What's your favorite food TV show or host?
A:"I like 'Top Chef.' They're serious about food, and have personality."
He Ate What?: The Foulest Things on 'Man vs. Wild,' Season 2
THE CONCEPT OF being lost has some peculiar hold over pop culture. Peter Pan has his tribe of Lost Boys; Daniel Defoe wrote a classic piece of literature in "Robinson Crusoe;" Brooke Shields got '80s teenagers all in a dither when she was nakey during most of "The Blue Lagoon"; and "Survivor" and "Lost" have become two of the most popular shows on TV today.
But everybody eventually wants to go home, and Bear Grylls is probably the man to get you there. The star of the Discovery Channel's "Man vs. Wild" series, former United Kingdom Special Forces soldier Grylls roughs it up in various spots across the globe, doing everything (and pretty much anything) in order to survive and showing viewers what to do if they're one day lost in the Andes or Panama or Alaska or something.
Has Grylls consumed his own pee? Yup. Could he drink other things' pee? Done that, too.
There was some controversy a few years ago about the validity of all the nasty crap Grylls claims to do. The Daily Mail printed a series of articles that showed Grylls gets a lot more help from his crew than the show originally admitted; as a result, Grylls now explains when he gets help from crew members or other local people in order to do one of his crazy tasks.
The show is now in its third season in the United States, with the second season coming out on DVD on Jan. 13. Read on to squirm at our list of the top five foulest things Grylls did in order to survive during his show's second season.
TESTICLES: IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER
Compared to what Grylls does in this first episode in the Sahara Desert -- such as eating a camel spider and a scorpion and wrapping his own pee-soaked T-shirt around his head to keep cool -- Matthew McConaughey's 2005 film "Sahara" seems pretty lame. Seriously, could you ever see pretty boy McConaughey eating raw goat's testicles? We didn't think so. And the best part of it all is the look on Grylls' face when accepting the freshly cut testicles from the member of the local Berber tribe -- a barely concealed "What the hell did I get myself into?" look as he bites into warm goat genitalia.
CAMEL FAT: THE NEW LARD
Want a cool, refreshing glass of water? Well, such luxuries don't exist in the Sahara -- so Grylls has to disembowel a dead camel for water instead, attempting to find some in the camel's stomach. But that's not even the grossest part: Instead, it's when Grylls decides to cut off a piece of "pure camel fat" and give it a taste does the whole scenario seem vomit-inducing. And, lo and behold, Grylls empties his insides after that little delicacy -- all before climbing into the camel's dead carcass as a shelter for the night. We'd rather he just stayed at a hotel like the Daily Mail claimed, honestly.
MOSQUITO LARVAE: A QUICK BITE
In Siberia, one of the most viciously cold places on Earth, Grylls has to find sustenance as the temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees. But what lives in a frozen tundra? Basically nothing, except for hibernating mosquito larvae ... and he eats the squiggly little buggers. Unsurprisingly, it's not enjoyable (it doesn't really seem like something even Andrew Zimmerman of the Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" could pretend to like eating), either for Grylls or anyone watching him.
YAK'S BLOOD: LAP IT UP
After surviving one night in Siberia, Grylls travels in the second episode of the two-part mini-series to the Sanyan Mountains, where he encounters a group of yak herders in the Tuvan tribe. Their little survival tip to him: Drink fresh yak's blood, it's delicious! The image of Grylls' blood-covered face alternately grinning for the camera and attempting not to throw up everywhere is straight out of every faux-vampire's image of their dream job.
THE GRUB
That nasty thing, which Grylls chomps on with a most revolted look on his face, will haunt our nightmares forever.
Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
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Addison Road
Bear Grylls is nothing more than an actor who is willing to do his own stunts and eat gross thing to add a gag factor to his show. He ridiculously over dramatizes everything including the things he eats by intentionally chewing with his mouth open and trying to get stuff to ooze down his chin. Many of these things aren’t nearly as bad as he makes it seem and many of them have been staged. Discovery has included a convenient disclaimer to the show stating that “some situations are presented” so that Bear won’t have to actually admit when the crew has given him an animal to kill or provide him with a prop to use. Think about it, this is the guy who wrapped a steak in a badger skin so he could pretend to eat road kill, do you honestly believe that was actually pee he was drinking from his canteen just because he made a squeamish face afterwards? Remember he’s little more than an actor, pretending is his job. And please stop referring to him as being former Special Forces; he was a reservist in the Territorial Army. This is just one of many, many exaggerations and intentional misconceptions such as the ridiculous notion that he is a survival expert. Survival experts actually know how to make simple snares and start fires without a ferro rod. Bear can’t do either of these things as is evidenced by what we see on his show. Survival experts are very comfortable in the wilderness, Bear Grylls appears to be, and constantly tells us he is, on the verge of death at every turn and in every situation. Judging by the way he acts and the things he says it seems obvious that if he didn’t have a 9 man support team with him at all times and a road or waiting helicopter within a 5 minute walk he’d probably curl up in a ball and be paralyzed by fright.
By Backcountry , Posted January 12, 2009 1:21 PM