- Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
- Honey is believed to be the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found to still be edible.
- Cheese closes the stomach and should always be served at the end of a meal.
- Peanuts are salted in the shell by boiling them in a heavily salted solution, then allowing them to dry.
- The canning process for herring was developed in Sardinia, which is why canned herrings are better known as sardines.
- A quarter of raw potato placed in each shoe at night will keep the leather soft and the shoes smelling fresh and clean.
- Pineapples are classified as berries.
- Milk is actually considered to be a food and not a beverage.
- The
table fork was introduced into England in 1601. Until then people would
eat with their knives, spoons or fingers. When Queen Elizabeth first
used a fork, the clergy went ballistic. They felt it was an insult to
God not to touch meat with one’s fingers.
- The
Mai Tai cocktail was created in 1945 by Victor Bergeron, the genius of
rum, also known as Trader Vic. The drink got its name when he served it
to two friends from Tahiti, who exclaimed “Maitai roa ae!,” which in
Tahitian means “Out of this world – the best!”
- Before
Columbus, Europe had never tasted cord, potatoes, tomatoes, red
peppers, sweet potatoes, tapioca, chocolate, pumpkins, squash, coconuts,
pineapples, strawberries, and much more. Why? All these food items are native to America.
- The cashew nut in its natural state contains poisonous oil. Roasting removes the oil and makes the nuts safe to eat.
- Although
explorers brought potatoes back from the New World in the early 1500s,
Europeans were afraid to eat them for fear that the spuds would give
them leprosy. It wasn’t until Louis XVI, who was looking
for a cheap food source for his starving subjects, served them at the
royal table that people were convinced potatoes were safe to eat.
- In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was believed to be an aphrodisiac.
- There is no alcohol left in food that’s cooked with wine. The alcohol evaporates at 172 degrees Fahrenheit.
- The strawberry is the only agricultural product that bears its seeds on the outside.
- It takes, on average, 345 squirts from a cow’s udder to yield one gallon of milk.
- Ever
wonder how Swiss cheese is made? As the cheese ferments, a bacterial
action generates gas. As the gas is liberated, it bubbles through the
cheese, leaving all those holes.
- Cheese is the oldest of all man-made foods.
- The white part of an egg is called the glair
Did you know a packet of crisps takes 3 days to digest?
If you put a tooth in a glass of coke overnight, the sugar in the drink will make the tooth completely dissolve.
Carrots taste sweeter after they’ve been cooked.
Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
The first breakfast cereal ever produced was Shredded Wheat.
If you are cold you are more likely to be hungry because you use energy to keep warm.
70% of your body is water.
It takes 3500 calories to make a pound of fat.
The smaller the berry the sweeter the taste.
Popcorn has been around for 6000 years.
There are 1200 varieties of watermelon.
50 years ago Cheerios were called Cheerioats.
In New Zealand there are approximately 40 million sheep and only 4 million people meaning sheep outnumber people 10 to 1!
Ketchup and Tomato Sauce account for approximately half of all tomatoes eaten.
Taiwan's top selling pizza is a seafood delight with onions, peas, squid, shrimp and crab topping the pizza pie.
The average person could go without food for a month, but only for a week without water.
The first fruit to be eaten on the moon was a peach.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Apples are made up of 25% air, that is why they float.
Apple seed contains cyanide.
Avocado has the highest protein and oil content of all fruits, but most of this is the healthier unsaturated type.
Black-eyed peas are really beans.
Black pepper is the most popular spice in the world.
Butter and margarine are similar in calories, the difference is that butter is higher in saturated fats, while margarine generally has more unsaturated fats.
Capsaicin, which makes hot peppers "hot" to the human mouth, is best neutralized by casein, the main protein found in milk.
Chili heat is measured in Scoville units, named after the pharmacist Thomas Scoville.
Carrots were originally purple in colour, changing in the 17th Century to orange with newer varieties.
Celery requires more calories to eat and digest than it contains.
Cherries are a member of the rose family.
Chocolate is a particularly good source of magnesium, potassium and calcium. It also has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
On the down side chocolate contains caffeine and has a high fat level.
Coffee is the most recognized smell in the world.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
Doughnuts were orginally made of raised dough with a nut in the centre.
Eggs contain most of the recognised vitamins with the exception of vitamin C.
Eggplants are actually fruits, and classified botanically as berries.
Fish consumption may be more than brain food but also help protect your eyes from age-related macular degeneration, a potential cause of blindness.
The Himalayan gogi berry contains, weight for weight, more iron than steak, more beta carotene than carrots, more Vitamin C than oranges.
Honey is the only edible food for humans that will never go bad.
Margarine was first called Butterine in England when it was introduced.
Orange does not rhyme with any other word.
Peanuts caqn be one of the ingredients in dynamite.
Pear is a fruit that ripens from the inside out.
Pizza toppings of squid are the most popular variety in Japan.
Sandwiches are named after John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-92), for whom beef was placed between 2 sliced pieces of bread so that he could stay at the gambling table without interruptions for meals.
Soup has its origin as a word from 'sop' or 'sup', meaning the slice of bread on which the broth was poured.
Soy flour and soya flour are richer in calcium and iron than wheat flour, gluten-free and high in protein.
Soy flour is ground from raw soybeans; soya flour from lightly toasted soybeans.
Strawberries are the only fruit which has its seeds on its outer skin.
Swiss cheese ferments with bacteria generating gas which bubbles through the cheese leaving holes; cheese-makers call them "eyes."
The herb Thyme's most active ingredient is thymol, the antibacterial ingredient found in mouthwashes and Vicks Vaporub.
White chocolate is not a true chocolate because it contains no chocolate liquor, instead its made of sugar, cocoa butter, milk solids, lecithin and vanilla.
White shelled eggs are produced by hens with white feathers and earlobes while brown eggs are produced by hens with red feathers and earlobes; the colour has no relationship to the nutritional quality or taste of the eggs.
There are more chickens in the world than people!
Over the last half a century food production actually increased faster than population.
The onion is named after a Latin word meaning large pearl.
During a lifetime the average person eats about 35 tons of food.
In France, people eat approximately 500,000,000 snails per year.
Within 2 hours of standing in daylight, milk loses between half and two-thirds of its vitamin B content.
Watermelons are 97% water, whilst lettuce 97%, tomatoes 95%, carrots 90%, and bread 30%.
Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, a substance our bodies convert into vitamin A.
When an egg floats in water, it is “off” and should not be eaten. As eggs age, gases build up inside the shell making it more buoyant. This is the best way to test whether an egg has gone rotten without having to break open the shell, risking the foul odor escaping.
Approximately 44 million tons of bananas are produced annually, compared to more than 60 million tomatoes. Apples are the third most popular (36 million tons), then oranges (34 million tons) and watermelons (22 million tons).
Coca-cola was originally green in colour.
Eggplants are actually fruits, and classified botanically as berries.
Fish consumption may be brain food, but also help protect your eyes from age-related macular degeneration, a potential cause of blindness.
Flamingos owe their pink or reddish colour to the rich sources of carotenoid pigments in the algae and small crustaceans that they eat.
Fortune cookies are not Chinese, they were invented in Los Angeles around 1920.
Lettuce is the only vegetable or fruit which is not sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh.
Pineapple is the international symbol of hospitality.
Pizza originated in the early 1700's in Naples, Italy.
A raisin in a glass of champagne will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Tomatoes used to be considered poisonous.
Wrigley's gum was the first product to have a bar code.
An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine.
Chocolate is the number one flavour in the world, beating vanilla and banana by 3-to-1.
Over 90% of all fish caught are caught in the northern hemisphere.
