“Naked and Afraid” contestant, Sarah Barnett bravely chomped on a blood-oozing leech during Sunday’s episode of the Discovery Channel hit.
The stomach-turning video clip, teased by TMZ, showed Barnett chomping down on a leech that was filled with her blood. She admitted this wasn’t a delicacy she’d be seeking when she was back home, but the lack of food in South Africa’s Black Hills was becoming too much for her to bear.
The camera zoomed in as she touched the leech and blood oozed out of it. She tossed it in her mouth, chewed, and gulped it down. “It was full of blood in the middle,” she told her partner, Sam Strong. “My blood, I guess, so it’s not as bad.”
Barnett offered Strong some of her freshly caught blood-suckers, but despite his hunger, he declined to chomp down on the worms.
The video clip showed the moments leading up to the leeches being eaten, and it was clear that Barnett had to work herself up for the new menu item she had never tried before.
Barnett was wading through murky water when she felt something on her leg. She looked down and began frantically trying to remove a leech that had painfully latched on to her and had already begun sucking her blood. She struggled with it for a few moments before finally releasing the leech from her leg. She then found another – and another. She put the slimy leeches into a wad of grass and mud she had in her hand and clasped her hand tightly around them.
“I guess we’re having leeches for dinner tonight,” she said.
The reality television show contestant then seemingly tried to convince herself to take the drastic step of actually ingesting the creatures that had been sucking blood out of her leg moments prior.
“They are just like a slug, essentially,” she said
“Which is protein – like people eat snails all over the world, right – escargot.”
Barnett went on to say, “I never thought I’d be trying to find leeches to eat, this is a new one.”
“This is like a blutwurst sausage,” she said. (RELATED: Video Shows Reality Show Contestant With Ticks On His Genitalia)
She later explained what led her to decide to eat the leeches.
“I’m just full-on survival feed-me mode,” Barnett said.