Fancy a delicious cow-blood snack with your beer?

Forget crisps and peanuts, they’re so passé — at least in Belarus…

Bars in Belarus are now being urged to stock snacks with hematogen, which is made with cow blood.

Yuri, a bar-owner in the capital Minsk, got a visit from the local health department imploring him to stock the snacks. The official letter he received lamented a “low take-up” in the Belarusian capital of goods produced by the Ekzon state-run health supplement company. The organisation “recommends that at least three types of hematogen bar, as well as rosehip and rowan berry syrup, should be displayed for sale on the counter”.

While sweetened hematogen bars, containing a sterilised cow-blood extract, were a staple for children during the Soviet era, Yuri is not entirely convinced that today’s bar-goers will be quite so enthusiastic.

“Today we suggest you try a vanilla hematogen bar with your beer. Or how about a pina colada made with coconut hematogen? We also have an exclusive range of rosehip syrup cocktails. They must be having a laugh,” he remarked in a statement to the Onliner news site.

The online news source got in touch with the Minsk health department, which didn’t seem to see anything peculiar about the situation.

“What’s wrong? If you stock chocolate bars, why not hematogen,” said one spokesperson.

Will you be enjoying some hematogen down the pub tonight?

Source: BBC