Trigger warning: This video is gross. Like, really, really gross.
If you don't like gross things, you probably shouldn't watch it. But once you start watching it, it's really hard to look away.
At first glance, "Cooking with your mouth" sounds like some kind of crazy life hack — like cooking salmon in a dishwasher. 98.6 degree-slow-cooking in our mouths? Is that even possible? As a survival tactic, maybe?
But no, it's somehow worse than that. The video should really be called "Chopping up ingredients with your mouth and then spitting them out in a bowl," because, well, that's exactly what it is. And yes, it does remind us of a mother bird regurgitating food into her baby bird's mouth.
This piece of visual art was created by Nathan Ceddia, an Australian-born artist who’s based in both Berlin and London. He posted his now viral creation to YouTube in December, just before Christmas.
In the video, an actress who introduces herself as "Riva Godfree" (her real name Iska Lupton) prepares a "Christmas turkey" inside her mouth. She chews up produce, bread, butter, and yes, even a raw egg, spews out the finely chopped food into a glass bowl, mixes it all up with her hands, and wedges the saliva-saturated stuffing into the deep cavity of a raw turkey. Fortunately, she does not put the bird into her mouth.
In the video's opening, the actress-cook claims that she's going to make the dish using "only [her] mouth," but thankfully, that's not entirely true. The turkey does end up going into the oven.
We know what you're thinking: OK, that's nasty, but it's gotta be a joke. But we're sorry to say that it's not.
The artist told Vice's MUNCHIES that it is 100 percent not a joke. Ceddia, who clearly has a fascination with food (one of his projects involves bare bottoms sitting on beautifully decorated cakes), said he got the idea from "countless" stories he'd heard from his friends and family injuring themselves while cooking.
"The kitchen is meant to be a safe environment where people can comfortably express their creativity," he told MUNCHIES. "I myself love cooking but I’m not so fond of knives, and the thought of chopping off a finger frightens the hell out of me.”
But chewing up raw ingredients, sloshing them around in your mouth and spitting them out doesn't seem any safer. Not only does it remind us of the dangerous chew-and-spit eating disorder, but if you're sick, you could spread your illness to your guests. And even if you're not swallowing the raw eggs, you probably shouldn't be gurgling them either since you may risk getting a food borne illness.
Please, please do not try this at home. We beg of you. But if you just can't resist, please don't serve your regurgitated food to your family or friends. You are not a bird. Don't act like one.