Food Facts P2
- Ketchup was created for use as a drug, not as a condiment.
- The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
- Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
- The 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.
- The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
- The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year.
- Eskimo ice cream is neither icy, or creamy.
- A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.
- You’ll eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime. Wow.
- The average American/Canadian drinks about 600 sodas a year.
- Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, in 1918, by Charles Jung.
- Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
- Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight.
- Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
- Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
- Iceland consumes more Coca-cola per capita than any other nation.
- Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.
- Only food that does not spoil: honey
- Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
- The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
- A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
- Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
- In Japan meat from the ‘Fugu’ or spiny puffer fish is considered a rare delicacy, however the liver and intestines contain a powerful neuro-toxin and the slightest contamination during preparation can be deadly. Restaurants who serve fugu must have ‘Fugu certified’ chefs. In Japan about one hundred people on average die annually from fugu poisoning.
- celery requires more calories to eat and digest than it contains.
- cherries are a member of the rose family.
- corn always has an even number of ears.
- corn makes up about 8% of the weight in a box of corn flakes.
- eggplants are actually fruits, and classified botanically as berries.
- honey is the only edible food for humans that will never go bad.
- lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
- orange does not rhyme with any other word.
- peanuts are legumes and not a tree nut.
- peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.
- pear is a fruit that ripens from the inside out.
- strawberries are the only fruit which has its seeds on its outer skin.
- Worcestershire Sauce: Is made from dissolved fish (Anchovy). I’ve used it for years and never knew.
- Refried Beans: Only fried once. The name is a mistaken translation of frijoles refritos which means well fried.
- Peanuts: Dynamite is made partly of peanuts. Peanut oil is used to make glycerol which is used to make nitroglycerin. Peanuts, by the way, are legumes, not nuts.
- Coconut: Coconut water can be used in an emergency as a substitute for blood plasma.
- Coca-Cola: Was originally green.
- Mushroom: One in Oregon covers over three square miles and is still growing.
- Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a herb that takes its name from the Greek war hero Achilles and is considered an important herb for the treatment of wounds.
- bananas were noted by Arab traders as small, about the size of a man’s finger, and so called them banan, which means fingertips in Arabic. The banana plant is the world’s largest herb and is often mistaken for a tree, but it does not have a woody trunk or boughs.
- Dijon mustard originated in 1856, when Jean Naigeon of Dijon substituted verjuice, the acidic green juice of not-quite-ripe grapes, for vinegar in the traditional mustard recipe.
- french yellow mustard was created by Robert Timothy French and debuted at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair as a cream salad mustard; this very mild mustard is coloured bright yellow by the inclusion of turmeric.
- hot mustards refers to the mustards which have been prepared in such a way to bring out the natural hotness created by the myrosinase and two sulfur compounds, myrosin and sinigrin, that are naturally present in mustard seeds. When mustard seeds are crushed and mixed with cold water, these compounds break down to form a volatile oil which vaporizes to produce the hot sensation one experiences when consuming hot mustards. The hotness of mustard dissipates with time and if the mustard is exposed to heat in cooking
- mustard is an emulsifier which can stabilize a mixture of two or more unblendable liquids such as oil and water; added to Hollandaise sauce, mustard can reduce the possibility of curdling.
- Almonds are a member of the peach family.
- Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.
- During an average person’s life, they will consume about 60,000 pounds of food.
- Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
- Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
- The world’s largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.
- Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
- Coca-cola was originally green.
- The world’s oldest piece of chewing gums is 9000 years old.
- It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
- They have square watermelons in Japan. They stack better.
- Cream does not weigh as much as milk.
- brain freeze was invented in 1994 by 7-Eleven to explain the pain one feels when drinking a Slurpee too fast. The medical term is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.
- almonds are a member of the peach family.
- Americans eat approximately 10kg of tomatoes yearly, over half of which is in the form of catsup and tomato sauce.
- apple is made up of 25% air, which is why they float.
- apple seed contains cyanide.
- apples, onions, and potatoes all have the same taste. Try this: Pinch your nose and take a bite out of each.
- asparagus contains a sulfur-containing compound called methyl mercaptan as well as the amino acid asparagine which when metabolized in the digestive tract causes urine to have have a strong odour.
