World's Most Pointless Food: Bird’s Saliva Nest Soup

In sea-side caves in parts of Asia, most notably Indonesia and Thailand, there is a species of swift, a bird, that regurgitates protein-laden mucus and fashions it into a nest. It's been doing it for thousands of years, so unsurprisingly someone at some point happened by and said to themselves 'Yeah, I'd eat that.' These days, a kilo of nests can fetch thousands of dollars, with price reflecting supposed quality, because eating a bad batch of bird mucus would just be gross. There are two slight variations on the origin story of this, the most pointless of foods.

World's Most Pointless Food: Bird’s Saliva Nest Soup

In the first version there was once an emperor who was ancient, wise, kind, powerful and really good at volleyball. He was also quite the gourmand, and was constantly in search of new foods to sample. One day, a devoted servant made him a soup out of this Bird’s Saliva Nest. He tried it, said something to the tune of 'Eh, it's pretty good I guess', and the people rejoiced by chowing down on any Bird’s Saliva Nest they could get their hands on.

 The second version involves another ancient emperor who was neither wise nor kind, but made up for it by being vicious and crazy. He too was quite the gourmand and always had servants out in search of new foods. All his cooks who failed to deliver to his exacting standards of originality and tastefulness were swiftly (and presumably tastefully) executed. One such cook, completely out of ideas but not wanting to end up like his predecessor, came across these nests one day and just tossed one into a soup as a last resort. He fearfully delivered the soup to his emperor who tried it, but then declared this Bird’s Saliva Nest soup to be boring, just like plain old regular soup. Seeing his life flash before his eyes, the cook took this opportunity to frantically ad-lib any health benefits he could lay his mind on. To this, the emperor replied 'Oh. Why didn't you say so?' The emperor finished his soup, sighed contentedly and then declared, based on his expansive knowledge of nutrition, that the Bird’s Saliva Nest soup did indeed have health benefits. But because the emperor was, classically speaking, a dick, he went and had everyone else who knew about this miracle food, other than the cook, killed in order to protect the knowledge. From then on, the cook would give the nesting cave's location to other servants who would go and get the nests only to be killed on their return.

 World's Most Pointless Food: Bird’s Saliva Nest Soup 

 And really, not a whole lot has changed since then. Harvesting the nests is still ridiculously dangerous work, done in the darkness of caves, hundreds of feet in the air, supported only with rickety bamboo scaffolds, slippery with accumulated bird crap. Falls are common – some figures put the risk of work-related death at 1 in 60. It's hard to tell though. The ridiculous amount of money to be had from nests forces most Bird’s Saliva Nest businesses to keep an extremely low profile. They don't want to give away the location of their caves for fear of poachers and they don't want to open up their collecting teams (which always include armed guards) to bandit attacks. And it totally happens. Groups of people have literally entered into open gunfights over these freaking Bird’s Saliva Nests. In Thailand in the 1990s, for instance, one such clash left 29 people dead. And it's not a problem that can be solved with open access either. Indonesia's Berau district tried that once, and never again. When they opened a cave to the public, the public wasted absolutely no time in going completely nuts – murder and robbery became the order of the day.

These days, a system has emerged:

Bird’s Saliva Nest businesses bid against each other for the rights to harvest certain caves, and harvest they do. As you can imagine, tearing down a nest every time it makes one can get discouraging for the bird, and most swifts will give up after two or three attempts a year at starting a family, which isn't great news for the population of the species. Whittling away at the population of an animal isn't anything new though. What's slightly more intriguing in this often happens in national parks. So just how much damage is being done to the Swift populations here? Who knows. When government forestry officials come by to do their job, they're flat out told to piss off. However, the guards are somewhat less considerate to locals, tourists and any other passer by, and are known for having a tendency to shoot people on sight, simply for accidentally drifting a bit too close to their cave islands.

So what's it all about then?

What's the deal with the actual food? That bird phlegm must taste incredible, and those health benefits must be amazing, right? Well, that depends on who you ask. Purveyors of Bird’s Saliva Nest are insistent that it's definitely good for you. Of course, it has a rejuvenating, anti-aging effect (because honestly, what miracle food doesn't?) and it has a whole set of other benefits, each more impressively vague than the last, culminating with “Previous clinical researches have concluded that Bird’s Saliva Nest has a sweet and calm character.” Oh good. Clinically shown to have a sweet and calm character. Maybe the next phase of this “clinical researches” can be dedicated to establishing whether adding tomato to a sandwich makes the bread feel insecure. The one thing all Bird’s Saliva Nest vendors agree on is that the stuff is definitely good for the libido... which would be slightly more impressive if there was a single ancient Chinese remedy that wasn't meant to improve your sex life. 

Ok, let's set aside the semi-literate Bird’s Saliva Nest hawkers, and instead see what people have actually concluded about the health benefits of Bird’s Saliva Nest. Well, so far, they've concluded that Bird’s Saliva Nests definitely exist, either do or do not have health benefits, and may or may not kill you. Applying a swift dose of common sense, one can safely assume that even if the stuff did have health benefits, one would need to knock back about a dozen bowls of this stuff a day, and given how much it costs, that's a tall order. And even if you do, it's not like you're going to enjoy your meal. At best, the nests "taste of nothing whatsoever." At worst, they probably taste like a feathery urinal. People die for it, it's outrageously expensive, it has no proven health benefits and it is one of the more objectively nasty foods out there. It has absolutely nothing going for it. It truly is the world's post pointless food. A more informative person than I, however, might have mentioned that most nests these days come from fairly safe and sustainable bird houses, but you'll have to find that person and get them to mention it, because I didn't.