Heston Blumenthal Uses Tampons To Cleanse His Palate

Heston Blumenthal has always been known to push culinary boundaries, but his use of tampons as palate cleansers is perhaps one of his weirder suggestions. In a food diary for the Guardian, Blumenthal describes their culinary use:

Lunch at the lab: yoghurt and tampons. We were testing the effect of certain foods and how they coat the palate for an interactive presentation. The tampon dries the saliva out between spoonfuls, so you can identify how the tongue perceives flavour. It did work, but I wonder how it will go down.

Blumenthal elaborates further in a separate Guardian interview:

"If you have a spoonful of ice-cream then put a tampon on the tongue for a couple of minutes, when you eat the ice-cream again the taste will be richer. It's certainly not something I would do for culinary enjoyment purposes, but it's an interesting way to explore the taste receptors in our mouth."

While Blumenthal is not actually planning to serve tampons at any of his restaurants, we've got to wonder if we're being too quick to judge. We're not rushing to the bathroom to get a clean tampon, but almost any woman can attest to the effective absorbency of one.

Watch how it works below: