{"id":12486,"date":"2018-12-10T16:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/?p=12486"},"modified":"2025-02-15T17:48:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T17:48:05","slug":"brussel-sprouts-facts","status":"publish","type":[],"link":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/brussel-sprouts-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Funky Facts About Brussels Sprouts"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every year since a very young age, many of us are forced to sit down and eat the Brussels sprout – a vegetable almost every child and even a lot of adults detest.\n
But why do we hate them so much?\n
Is it simply the way they are cooked, or something scientific that causes our sheer hatred of the sprout?\n
Here we’re going to look at 10 facts about this green wonder from energy to genetics, and much more!\n
Would you believe there is actually a genetic reason why you and your family may love sprouts whilst your partner and in-laws hate the little green gaseous bombs?\n
It\u2019s all down to a gene: TAS2R38 which controls whether we taste the chemical PTC.\n
This is the chemical responsible for the taste of bitterness.\n
Usually this hideous chemical isn’t found in the human diet thankfully, but it does exist in sprouts and other such foods.\n
After this gene was founded in the 1930’s, the founder conducted an experiment to see if people possessed the gene.\n
He could (with a great amount of success) identify those who had it or not simply on whether they were related, proving this is genetically affected.\n
Although the gene was found in the 1930’s, the specific gene wasn\u2019t actually identified until 2003.\n
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As with anything in the world these days, there are a range of world records dedicated to the Brussels sprout.\n
Did you know that in 2008, a Swedish man named Linus Urbanec achieved the stomach-churning record of consuming 31 sprouts in 60 seconds!\n
With each having to be skewered and swallowed individually, he achieved the title of “the most sprouts consumed in 1 minute.”\n
In 2013, in the U.K. town of Redditch, the sprout played a huge part in making up the “world\u2019s largest Christmas dinner.”\n Weighing in at over 21lb (9.5kg), this Christmas lunch was constructed at the Duck Inn and used 25 sprouts – over 6 recommended servings of sprouts!\n When it comes to the U.S., the annual production stands at a staggering 32,000 tons with the largest producer of the sprout being California, followed by Washington and New York.\n If you look over at Europe, they blow the U.S. production out of the water, with a whopping 82,000 tons being produced in the European-market leading nation of the Netherlands alone.\n In 2017, due to abnormal temperatures, the sprouts plants in the U.K. soared upward and outward producing so-called “monster sprouts”.\n These monster sprouts were over twice as large, weighing in at an average of 35g each compared to the normal 15g!\n Children across the U.K. rejoiced at the thought of bigger sprouts on their lunches, of course.\n As all good cooks know, boiling the sprout to within an inch of its life leaves it gray, sodden and generally unpleasant smell, but where does the smell come from?\n Simply put: it’s sulfur. But more specifically, the smell is actually caused by the compound glucosinolate sinigrin which contains sulfur.\n Sprouts on a school dinner were by far the worst for their awful smell.\nBrussels Sprout Production\n
Bad Smell and Taste\n
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