\nFood facts are not something you really think about when eating your favorite meal, but we do!\n
Food can either be a nutritious meal or a guilty pleasure! We all have our weaknesses when it comes to what we like to eat.\n
Some of those foods, whether they’re healthy or not, have interesting facts about them that you would never have guessed or thought of.\n
For example, did you know that ranch dressing is dyed? You’d be surprised to find out what it’s dyed with!\n
Find out the reason why crackers have holes in them and the actual origin of American cheese – hint: it’s not from America.\n
Whatever your taste, these interesting food facts will amaze and enlighten you, so without further ado, here are the top 100 random facts about food!\n
\n
The early recipes of pound cake called for one pound of butter, one pound of eggs, and one pound of sugar.\n
That\u2019s a huge cake!\n
\n
Real wasabi is challenging to make and expensive.\n
As an alternative, most wasabi for sale is colored horseradish with flavorings.\n
\n
That\u2019s because it takes 72 hours to make, and it can only be made in your home by 3 Italian chefs.\n
The pizza is topped with 3 types of caviar, bufala mozzarella, lobster from Norway and Cilento, and pink Australian sea salt.\n
\n
One ingredient in ranch is titanium dioxide which is used to make it look whiter.\n
It\u2019s the same ingredient that is used in sunscreen and paint for coloring.\n
\n
It sounds like a crazy amount, but the ground beef used to make burgers, both in fast food places and grocery stores, is made of a collection of muscle tissues.\n
\n
Yep, the same wax that is used on cars, carnauba wax, is the same type of wax that is used to give gummy candy a glossy sheen.\n
Not sure how I feel about that!\n
\n
If you ingest nutmeg in large doses, it works like a hallucinogen due to a natural compound called myristicin.\n
It has mind-altering effects if taken in large doses.\n
\n
During the baking process, if the crackers have holes in them, it prevents air bubbles from ruining the product.\n
\n
Back in the early 1800s, people thought tomatoes had medicinal qualities.\n
One doctor claimed they could treat diarrhea and indigestion, so he made a recipe for a type of tomato ketchup which then became a pill.\n
\n
Its name is deceiving because white chocolate doesn\u2019t have any components of regular chocolate.\n It\u2019s really just a mixture of sugar, milk, vanilla, lecithin, and cocoa butter.\n Wild salmon is naturally pink because of all the shrimp they eat.\n Meanwhile, farm-raised salmon have a different diet and end up being white.\n However, they are fed specific plant pigments to get the same hue as wild salmon.\n A common red food dye, carminic acid, is made from the crushed bodies of a beetle called the Dactylopius coccus.\n This acid is used in maraschino cherries, strawberry and raspberry flavored candy, and lipstick.\n Acid is the biggest cause of tooth decay, not sugar!\n Crackers tend to stick to your teeth which ends up being a breeding ground for bacteria.\n There\u2019s a chemical in chili peppers called capsaicin that tricks your mouth into feeling like it\u2019s being burned – that\u2019s why spicy food hurts.\n The pain is all in your head!\n Processed cheese is thought of as an American product, but it was actually invented in Switzerland.\n It was created by Waltz Gerber and Fritz Stettler in 1911 to lengthen the shelf-life before it was shipped overseas.\n Until 2013, beer and other alcohol under 10% ABV was classified as a soft drink!\n Until then, and even still today, it was common for people to drink beer in the streets and parks as commonly as you would see soda.\n In fact, it\u2019s stolen so much it has its own percentage! About 4% of all cheese made around the globe ends up stolen.\n There\u2019s even a black market for cheese!\n Nutella is so popular, 25% of all hazelnuts end up in a jar!\n Since they\u2019re in such high demand, some universities are trying to grow them in labs in order to negate global shortages.\n An astronaut snuck a sandwich on his spacecraft for a 6-hour mission.\n When he took the sandwich out in zero-gravity, it started falling apart and he had to put it away before crumbs compromised the spaceship.\n Researchers had an experiment to see how people\u2019s drinking habits changed based on the music that was playing.\n Loud music seemed to make people drink more, and faster.\n As the Aztecs started dominating Mesoamerica, they also loved cocoa beans which couldn\u2019t be grown in their civilization.\n They had to rely on the Mayans and traded cocoa beans with them as a system of money.\n Chocolate isn’t the weirdest thing that’s been used as currency in the past either… potato mashers?\n That equates to 75 McDonald’s hamburgers sold every second, every day, or 6.5 million hamburgers each day!\n Peanuts have an oil that is used as an ingredient while making glycerol, which is a main component of nitroglycerin.\n Water can\u2019t expire – but the bottle it\u2019s in can. Plastic bottles will eventually start leaking chemicals into the water.\n It won\u2019t make the water harmful to drink, but it will make it taste less fresh.\n You may also like these 10 health benefits of drinking water.\n Getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth is annoying sure, but to have an irrational fear of it happening is next level.\n But there\u2019s a phobia for everything and this common occurrence is no exception.\n Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth!\n Although Hawaii consumed the most Spam per capita than any other state, it was invented in Minnesota.\n There\u2019s even a spam museum in Minnesota!\n When bees collect nectar, they drink it and keep it in their \u201cstomach.\u201d\n Once they\u2019re back at the hive, they regurgitate the nectar into the hive.\n The famous Three Musketeers candy bar originally had vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate flavors in one!\n However, during World War II, they changed to only chocolate due to rations.\n As colorful as they are, you\u2019d think they were flavored accordingly! But no, all Froot Loops are all the same flavor.\n It\u2019s a heavily debated topic – exactly how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?\n It can take anywhere from 144 to 411 licks. However, one study conducted determined the average was 364 licks!\n Radishes specifically were because they helped with infectious diseases!\n Pufferfish is a delicacy in Japan, but if it\u2019s prepared wrong, it can kill the person eating it.\n They are only called French fries because they are French cut.\n Although the inside is the best part and we\u2019re always excited to get a solid bite of that fluffy goodness, it\u2019s actually vegetable shortening!\n Technically, berries only have seeds on the inside, a rule which is obviously broken by strawberries!\n The name comes from early explorers.\n When they saw pineapples for the first time, they thought they looked like pine cones which is how the fruit got its name!\n There are a few ideas of where this popular recipe came from.\n One suggests Ruth Wakefield, the creator of chocolate chip cookies, ran out of nuts for ice cream cookies and used chocolate instead.\n Others suggest chocolate chunks accidentally fell into the mixer, but the true story has never been confirmed.\n When King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples, they wanted a change from their fancy food and asked for pizza, which was food for the poor back then.\n The queen loved the mozzarella pizza so much that it ended up being named after her.\n Thomas Jefferson is responsible for bringing the first macaroni machine over to the U.S. after spending time in France.\n He was also the one who introduced mac and cheese to Americans!\n Although we typically only see white cauliflower, it actually has purple, orange, and green varieties.\n Orange and purple cauliflowers have higher antioxidants!\n Raw lima beans have lethal amounts of cyanide in them.\n But, if you cook them thoroughly, you\u2019ll be just fine!\n Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are the same things – along with sanagali, ceci beans, chana, and bengal gram.\n Additionally, they come in red, black, brown, and pale yellow.\n That said, it would be pretty hard for you to not get what you wanted! A local delicacy in some parts of South Africa may taste like popcorn, but it’s far from it.\n This South African “popcorn” is actually termites or ants that have been roasted to crispy perfection!\n With the main ingredient being grapes, you\u2019d think this would be a no-brainer.\n However, some common ingredients in wine are milk protein, egg white, gelatin, and fish bladder protein.\n It\u2019s not quite as drastic as it originally sounds…\n However, studies have shown that people who drink one or more artificially sweetened drinks per day were almost three times more likely to develop dementia.\n If you\u2019re reading up on the nutritional label to see if it fits into your diet, it\u2019s organized by the ingredients that are used the most.\n So if you need a good power bar for the gym and you see sugar at the top of the list, it\u2019s time to find another source of protein!\n If you need to test the freshness of your eggs, put them in a glass of cold water. The fresher the egg, the faster it will fall to the bottom!\n Any eggs that float should be thrown out.\n It\u2019s no secret Americans drink a lot of coffee, but it\u2019s the number one source where they get their antioxidants.\n Antioxidants help fight aging and heart disease, but coffee doesn\u2019t really have that many of them – we just drink so much of it!\n You may also like these 10 surprising health benefits of drinking coffee.\n If you want to test how ripe your cranberries are, drop them on the ground!\n Cranberries are nature\u2019s bouncy ball – even farmers use this technique to see if their cranberries are ready for shipment!\n The details are debated, but the general story is that in 1905, an 11-year-old kid left a mixture of soda and water outside in a cup overnight.\n It froze, and he ate it in the morning.\n He originally called it an \u201cEpsicle\u201d (his last name was Epperson).\n When he later had kids, they started calling it \u201cPop’s Sicle\u201d and the new name was born.\n One expensive delicacy of China is Bird\u2019s nest soup which is made from rare bird\u2019s nests created from the saliva of small swiftlets.\n They have been used in China for over four centuries.\n By FDA standards, there\u2019s an allowance for the level of traces of bugs that could be in your food.\n For example, chocolate can have no more than 60 insect fragments per 100 grams.\n Peanut butter can\u2019t have more than 30 insects per 100 grams.\n If you chew on roasted coffee beans, it can help prevent the bacteria that cause bad breath.\n Drinking coffee helps too, it\u2019s just less effective.\n Although it tastes like a lemon-lime soda, orange juice is third on the list of ingredients, just behind carbonated water and high fructose corn syrup.\n Considered to be Mexican food, chimichangas actually originated from Tucson, Arizona.\n The name was coined in the \u201950s by a cook who was trying not to curse in front of kids.\n Altitude changes your body chemistry, making certain flavors taste different than how they taste when you\u2019re on the ground.\n Cellulose, a derivative of wood pulp, is often used to make many things, including rayon fabric and paper. Turns out, it’s also used to make some shredded cheese!\n While not digestible by humans, it does actually act as a fantastic source of dietary fiber! The reason it’s in cheese, though, is that it acts as a filler to keep shredded cheese from clumping together and is approved as safe by the FDA.\n Our genes are comprised of 3 billion building blocks which are surprisingly un-unique.\n From this, 60% of our genes are identical to that of a banana; however, the other 40% is different enough to make us who we are!\n Pizza Hut\u2019s salad bar was popular way before kale became a trend back in the early 2010s.\n They used it as a garnish for its salad bars – it wasn’t even for eating!\n Figs are actually inverted flowers with a unique pollination process requiring wasps instead of bees.\n Female wasps lay their eggs in male figs that we don\u2019t eat, but sometimes the wasp will accidentally enter a female fig, which is a deadly mistake.\n The wasp dies inside and ends up decomposing inside the fig.\n Sure we all know celery is high in water, but who knew potatoes were only 15% behind them!\n Technically, you could juice a potato, but I don\u2019t think anyone wants that.\n Chili peppers weren\u2019t introduced to India until the 15th century, but they were a hit.\n These days, they not only eat and grow more than anyone else, but this is where you\u2019ll find some of the spiciest peppers such as the bhut jolokia.\n During the Revolutionary War, the Americans would avoid sandwiches due to their association and origin in Britain.\n Clearly, that has changed today, after a 2014 study found that 49% of Americans over 20 eat one sandwich every day.\n Pule cheese is made from donkey milk at one location in Serbia.\n One pound of discounted Pule was sold for $576 per pound, but the normal cost is over $1,000 per pound!\n Although Turkish coffee is popular, tea is the bigger of the staples. Per capita, Turks drink almost 7 pounds of tea every year.\n Even England doesn\u2019t drink that much!\n Another surprising statistic here – each person drinks about 2.5 cups of coffee every day.\n Finland and Sweden trail behind them at 1.8 and 1.3 cups.\n Popcorn is the go-to movie snack for Americans, and it\u2019s easy to assume everyone else does this too.\n However, in Colombia, dried ants are the popular option.\n Meanwhile in Korea, the snack of choice is dried cuttlefish, and in China, they eat dried salted plums.\n Brown sugar is no less refined than white sugar.\n The only difference is the fact that some of the molasses that gets removed in the refining process, is added back in.\n German chocolate cake was invented by a Texan who used \u201cGerman\u2019s Chocolate\u201d which is simply baking chocolate named after the creator, Sam German.\n It\u2019s all in the name!\n It\u2019s weird to think that my insides are glowing whenever I have a gin and tonic, but it\u2019s true!\n Quinine is the component of tonic water which is what causes the glow.\n Bear with us for a second, as this does actually make sense. Under kosher supervision, any salt can be kosher. But not all salt can be kosher salt. \n The reason this is curing is because this type of salt’s name is confusing. It really should be called koshering salt; kosher salt is a specific size of salt that’s used to make meat kosher.\n According to Jewish dietary guidelines, to make meat kosher, you need to sit it in salt as it removes the blood.\n Although people tend to think it\u2019s the same thing with a different name, that\u2019s not the case.\n Cilantro is the plant\u2019s leaves and stems, while coriander is the name of the dried seeds.\n Jam is made with fruit, which is why it\u2019s so chunky. Meanwhile, jelly is made with fruit juice.\n An easy way to tell the difference between jelly and jam is that jelly will spread evenly, while jam will tend to be a little lumpy.\n The state nut of Alabama is the pecan.\n It\u2019s such a big deal, there\u2019s a state pecan festival every year with carnival rides, country music, and a western show. All revolving around pecans!\n Per capita, Indians only consume 7 pounds of meat per person per year. That\u2019s less than I eat in a week!\n This is a great excuse to use to eat junk food and save money, but our bodies don\u2019t like it so much!\n Per ounce, nutritious food costs up to 10 times more than junk food.\n Just like blood plasma, coconut water has levels of high sodium and low potassium.\n It should only be used in absolute emergencies, because adverse effects may be fever, headaches, itchiness, or aching sensations.\n Although we think of these as a Chinese food staple, fortune cookies are from an entirely different continent!\n They were invented in the early 1900s in San Francisco.\n Breast milk is the only single food that provides all the nutrients that our bodies need.\n Adults could survive off of this as well, provided they receive enough of it.\n You wouldn\u2019t think you\u2019d need anything to keep your food cold in the arctic, but it\u2019s exactly the opposite!\n In order to prevent food from freezing, Eskimos need refrigerators to keep it from getting too cold.\n One month of eating fast food can cause significant changes to your liver due to the amount of fat and saturated fats.\n These changes in liver enzymes are similar to the effects of hepatitis.\n So much so, that it could cover The Great Wall of China 8 times, you could circle the world 1.8 times, and the amount weighs the same as the Empire State Building.\n Although we may be accustomed to burgers, goat meat accounts for 70% of the red meat eaten globally!\n This is great news because goats are better for you and the environment.\n Since 2015, if you don\u2019t compost your food waste and compostable paper, businesses will be fined $50 per dumpster and just $1 for single-family homes.\n Norman Borlaug developed new strains of crops which yielded 4 times as much food.\n He is said to have saved the lives of over a billion people!\n In spite of its struggles with droughts, California is also one of the leading irrigation water users in the U.S. – probably to supply all of the food it grows!\n Specifically, on August 10, 2015, NASA astronauts sampled red romaine lettuce that was growing in a specially designed chamber.\n The fact that food can now be grown in space means we can explore space for longer without running out of food supplies.\n Specifically, a whopping 40% of produce grown is never sold just because it\u2019s too ugly.\n Because consumers won\u2019t buy imperfect fruits or veggies, grocery stores, in turn, refuse to stock them.\n High-frequency sounds to enhance the sweetness in food, while low frequencies bring out the bitterness.\n An inmate on death row requested a ridiculous meal costing hundreds of dollars. He then ate none of it because \u201che wasn\u2019t hungry\u201d.\n After this, the state legislators asked to end the tradition of allowing inmates to request their final meal.\n Coming in at a whopping 200 pounds per person every year, Australians take first place, but are still closely followed by Americans.\n Each year, Americans consume enough peanut butter to coat the floor of the Grand Canyon – 500 million pounds to be exact!\n There are around 15,000 restaurants in the U.K., with most of them being in major cities, specifically London.\n And while they serve Indian food, most of the owners are of Bangladesh descent.\n Until Christopher Columbus started the worldwide spread of plants and seeds, there were no oranges in Florida and no bananas in Ecuador.\n Not only this, but there were no potatoes in Ireland, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii – the list goes on!\n Depending on how you serve something, it can scientifically change your perception of taste.\nFarmed salmon is dyed pink.\n
\nThe red food dye for Skittles is made from boiled beetles.\n
\nCrackers are worse for your teeth than sugar.\n
\nPeppers don\u2019t actually burn your mouth.\n
\nAmerican cheese is not American.\n
\nRussia took a long time to classify beer as being alcoholic.\n
\nCheese is the most stolen food in the world.\n
\nOne in four hazelnuts ends up in Nutella.\n
\nA corned beef sandwich was smuggled into space.\n
\nCertain music can make you drink faster.\n
\nChocolate has been used as a currency in ancient civilizations of Mexico and South America.\n
\nMcDonald’s sells 2.5 billion hamburgers every year.\n
\nYou can find peanuts in dynamite.\n
\nExpiration dates on bottled water have nothing to do with the water.\n
\nSome people are scared of peanut butter.\n
\nSpam wasn\u2019t invented in Hawaii.\n
\nHoney is bee vomit.\n
\nThe Three Musketeers doesn\u2019t live up to its name.\n
\nFroot Loops are all the same flavor.\n
\nThere\u2019s no answer to how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop.\n
\nIn ancient Egyptian days, radishes, onions, and garlic were given to workers as wages.\n
\nIn Japan, chefs have to train for over two years in order to qualify to serve pufferfish.\n
\nFrench fries originated in Belgium, not France!\n
\nTwinkie cream isn\u2019t cream at all.\n
\nStrawberries are not berries.\n
\nPineapples have no relation to pine.\n
\nNo one knows the origin of chocolate chip cookies.\n
\nMargherita pizza is named after a queen.\n
\nThomas Jefferson made pasta popular in the U.S.\n
\nCauliflower comes in multiple colors.\n
\nLima beans are deadly.\n
\nChickpeas have more names than you think.\n
\nNot all popcorn in South Africa is what you think it is.\n
\nNot all wine is vegan.\n
\nSweet drinks can cause dementia.\n
\nNutrition labels are in order.\n
\nBad eggs will float.\n
\nCoffee is the main source of antioxidants for Americans.\n
\nRipe cranberries will bounce.\n
\nPopsicles were invented by accident.\n
\nBird saliva is a delicacy in China.\n
\nFood is allowed to contain some amount of insects.\n
\nCoffee beans can help eliminate bad breath.\n
\nMountain Dew contains orange juice.\n
\nChimichanga means \u201cthingamajig\u201d.\n
\nFood tastes different when you\u2019re flying.\n
\nThere\u2019s wood pulp in shredded cheese.\n
\nHumans’ DNA is 60% the same as bananas.\n
\nPizza Hut used to be the nation\u2019s biggest purchaser of kale.\n
\nFigs can contain dead wasps.\n
\nPotatoes are 80% water.\n
\nIndia produces, consumes, and exports the most chili peppers in the world.\n
\n49% of Americans over 20 eat a sandwich every day.\n
\nSerbia hosts the most costly cheese.\n
\nTurkey consumes the most tea per person.\n
\nThe Netherlands drinks the most coffee per person.\n
\nPopcorn at the movies isn\u2019t universal.\n
\nBrown sugar is no different than white sugar.\n
\nGerman chocolate cake has nothing to do with Germany.\n
\nTonic water glows in the dark.\n
\nKosher salt is kosher, but that\u2019s not why it\u2019s called kosher.\n
\nCoriander and cilantro are not the same things.\n
\nThere\u2019s a small difference between jelly and jam.\n
\nAlabama\u2019s state nut is famous.\n
\nIndia has the lowest meat consumption in the world.\n
\nNutritious food is more expensive than junk food.\n
\nIn an emergency, coconut water can be used for blood plasma.\n
\nFortune cookies are not Chinese.\n
\nYou could survive only by drinking breast milk.\n
\nEskimos use refrigerators to stop their food from freezing.\n
\nEating fast food regularly has the same impact on the liver as hepatitis.\n
\nA ridiculous amount of Nutella is sold every year.\n
\nGoat meat is the most popular meat.\n
\nThrowing food away is illegal in Seattle.\n
\nOne of the most influential men in history was an agricultural scientist.\n
\nCalifornia is the world’s 5th largest supplier of food.\n
\nAstronauts ate food grown in space for the first time in 2015.\n
\nSome produce in the U.S. is too ugly to sell.\n
\nSound can influence the taste of your food.\n
\nDeath row inmates in Texas don’t get to pick their last meal.\n
\nAustralians eat the most meat.\n
\nAmericans eat millions of pounds of peanut butter.\n
\nThere are more Indian restaurants in London than in Mumbai or Delhi.\n
\nThe Columbian Exchange changed the course of food.\n
\nHot chocolate tastes better out of an orange cup.\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n