• Americans buy 2.7 billion packages of breakfast cereal each year. If laid end to end, the empty boxes would stretch to the moon and back.
• The largest pumpkin pie ever made was over 5ft in diameter and weighed over 350lb.
• Smarties were launched as Chocolate Beans in 1937 by Rowntree of York. They were originally priced at 2d. (less than 1p). They were renamed Smarties and packed in the familiar tube one year later. A tube now sells for about 35p.
• More than ten million turkeys are eaten in Britain every Christmas – with nine out of ten people having it for dinner.
• The ONLY cure for a hangover is to drink alcohol. The most effective is champagne because it gets into the blood stream fastest. Warning: only one drink is needed to do the trick.
• In the 13th century, Europeans baptized children with beer.
• Weekend beer drinkers in Dublin consume 9,800 pints an hour between 5.30 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. on Monday.
• The cereal industry uses 816 million pounds of sugar per year, enough to coat each and every American with more than three pounds of sugar. The cereal with the highest amount of sugar per serving is Smacks, which is 53 per cent sugar.
• The largest egg ever had five yolks and was 31cm around the long axis.
• In the 1820s, a temperance movement tried to ban coffee and nearly succeeded.
• Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.
• At one time, pumpkins were recommended for the removal of freckles and curing snakebites.
• When production of Smarties resumed after World War II, they were made with plain chocolate because of the shortage of milk.
• Henry VIII was the first British king to eat turkey at Christmas but Edward VII made it fashionable.
• Acorns were used as a coffee substitute during the American Civil War.
• Boiled eggs are the most popular way to eat eggs in Britain, followed by scrambled and fried.
• Chocolate was used as medicine during the 18th century. It was believed that chocolate could cure a stomach ache.
• Twenty-five per cent of the fish you eat are raised on fish farms.
• Each year, Americans use enough foam peanuts to fill ten 85-storey buildings.
• Laws forbidding the sale of fizzy drinks on Sunday prompted William Garwood to invent the ice-cream sundae in Illinois, in 1875.
• McDonald’s and Burger King sugar-coat their fries so they will turn golden brown.
• The world’s deadliest mushroom is the Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap. The five different poisons contained in the mushroom cause diarrhoea and vomiting within six to 12 hours of ingestion. This is followed by damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system – and finally, in the majority of cases, coma and death.
• In an authentic Chinese meal, the last course is soup because it allows the roast duck entrée to ‘swim’ towards digestion.
• When potatoes first appeared in Europe in the 17th century, it was thought that they were disgusting, and they were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America, eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person’s life.
• Since Hindus don’t eat beef, the McDonald’s in New Delhi makes its burgers with mutton.
• Liquorice can raise your blood pressure.
• The largest item on any menu in the world is roast camel, sometimes served at Bedouin wedding feasts. The camel is stuffed with a sheep’s carcass, which is stuffed with chickens, which are stuffed with fish, which are stuffed with eggs.
• The world’s most expensive coffee, at $130 a pound, is called Kopi Luwak. It is in the droppings of a type of marsupial that eats only the very best coffee beans. Plantation workers track them and scoop their precious droppings.
• Large doses of coffee can be lethal. Ten grams, or 100 cups over four hours, can kill the average human.
• Lime Jell-o gives off the same brain waves as adult males.
• When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 mph.
• A survey of international travellers revealed that the best restaurants in the world are in Paris. Second place was awarded to Rome, and third place went to Hong Kong.
• There are more than 30,000 diets on public record.
• There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo.
• A lion was the symbol for Dr Pepper’s earliest ad campaign, used with the slogan ‘King of Beverages’.
• From 1941 until 1950, violet was part of the colour mixture for M&M’s plain chocolates, but was replaced by tan.
• The pumpkin has been known to develop roots whose total length reached 82,000 ft (24,994 m) – more than 15 miles (24 km).
• Chocolate manufacturers use 40 per cent of the world’s almonds and 20 per cent of the world’s peanuts.
• In 1938, a comic strip was used to advertise Pepsi-Cola. It was titled ‘Pepsi and Pete’.
• Of about 350 million cans of chicken noodle soup are sold annually in the United States, 60 per cent are purchased during the cold and flu season. January is the top-selling month of the year.
• Official guidelines allow whole pepper to be sold with up to 1 per cent of the volume made up of rodent droppings.
• Centuries ago, men were told that the evil effects of coffee would make them sterile; women were cautioned to avoid caffeine unless they wanted to be barren.
• ‘Okonomiyaki’ is considered to be Japan’s answer to pizza. It consists of a pot-pourri of grilled vegetables, noodles, and meat or seafood, placed between two pancake-like layers of fried batter.
• In 1954, US food company General Mills introduced Trix breakfast cereal. The new cereal, a huge hit with kids, was 46.6 per cent sugar.
• Olive oil is made only from green olives. Nearly the entire production of green olives grown in Italy is converted into olive oil.
• ‘Colonial goose’ is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.
• ‘Poached egg’ means ‘egg-in-a-bag’ from the French word ‘poche’. When an egg is poached, the white of the egg forms a pocket around the yolk, hence the name.
• In Alaska’s Matanuska Valley, the long hours of sunlight are used by some farmers to grow giant vegetables. One such farmer grew a 100lb (45kg) cabbage.
• ‘Grunt’ and ‘slump’ are two names that refer to a fruit dessert with a biscuit topping.
• ‘Sherbet’ is Australian slang for beer.
• ‘Baby-cut’ carrots aren’t baby carrots. They’re actually full-sized ones peeled and ground down to size.
• The US magazine Cook’s Illustrated conducted blind-taste testings of vanillas and was surprised to find that, in baked goods, expensive, aromatic vanillas performed almost exactly the same as the cheaper brands of real vanilla. The differences virtually disappeared during cooking.
• On the Italian Riviera in Viareggio, there is a culinary tradition that a good soup must always contain one stone from the sea. This stems from the days when an Italian fisherman’s catch was scooped up in nets; fish and stones frequently ended up together in the same cooking pot.
• In 1996, US company Gerber introduced Chicken Alfredo as one of its new flavours of baby food.
• In a traditional French restaurant kitchen, a Garde Manger is the person responsible for the preparation of cold foods.
• In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse flesh was considered a great delicacy.
• Once an orange is squeezed or cut, the vitamin C dissipates quickly. After only eight hours at room temperature or a scant 24 hours in the refrigerator, there is a 20 per cent vitamin C loss.
• You would have to eat 11lb (5kg) of potatoes to put on 1lb (0.45kg) of weight – a potato has no more calories than an apple.
• One of the fattiest fishes is salmon: 4 oz (about 112 g) contains 9 g of fat.
• Oysters were a major part of life in New York in the late 1800s. They were eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner; they were pickled, stewed, baked, roasted, fried, scalloped and used in soups, patties and puddings. Oystering in New York supported large numbers of families, and oyster theft was a prevalent problem.
• One tablespoon of most brands of ketchup contains 4 g of sugar, 15 calories and 190 g of sodium. There is no fat in ketchup and processed red tomatoes are supposed to be a good source of lycopene, which may reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases.
• In ancient Greece, where the mouse was sacred to Apollo, mice were sometimes devoured by temple priests.
• The chocolate-and-hazelnut spread Nutella is virtually unknown in America.
• The custom of serving a slice of lemon with fish dates back to the Middle Ages. It was believed that if a person accidentally swallowed a fish bone, the lemon juice would dissolve it.
• The darker the olive, the higher the oil content.
• The dessert parfait’s name comes from the French word for ‘perfect’.
• Only men were allowed to eat at the first self-service restaurant, The Exchange Buffet, in New York in 1885.
• The drink Ovaltine was originally named ‘Ovomaltine’, but it changed due to a clerical error when the manufacturer registered the name.
• Peanut oil is used for underwater cooking in submarines because it does not smoke unless heated above 450°F (232°C).
• It takes a ton of water to make 1lb of refined sugar.
• The first product with a barcode to be scanned at a checkout was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
• Lemons have more sugar than oranges.
• Some horticulturists suspect that the banana was the Earth’s first fruit. Banana plants have been in cultivation throughout recorded history. One of the first records dates back to Alexander the Great’s conquest of India, where he discovered bananas in 327 BC.
• Carrots produce more distilled spirit than potatoes.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• Ninety-five per cent of the USA’s entire lemon crop is produced in California and Arizona.
• Banana plants are the largest plants on Earth without a woody stem. They are actually giant herbs of the same family as lilies, orchids and palms.
• A common drink among Tibetans is Butter Tea, made out of butter, salt and brick tea.
• A 1kg packet of sugar will contain about 5 million grains of sugar.
• In a Washington study of dieters, one glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100 per cent of the participants.
• The Ancient Greeks called carrots Karoto.
• Lack of water is the main trigger of daytime fatigue.
• Americans consumed more than 20 billion hot dogs in 2000.
• Tobacconists in France used to put a carrot in their bins to keep their tobacco from drying out.
• An egg that is fresh will sink in water, but a stale one won’t.
• As bananas ripen, the starch in the fruit turns to sugar. Therefore, the riper the banana the sweeter it will taste.
• Black pepper is the most popular spice in the world.
• Carrot flowers are also called Birds’ Nest, Bees’ Nest and the Devil’s Plague.
• Britons eat over 22,000 tonnes of chips a week.
• Chewing on gum while cutting onions can help prevent a person from producing tears.
• Americans consumed over 3.1 billion pounds of chocolate in 2001, which is almost half of the total world’s production.
• The carrot belongs to the family Umbelliferae. The cultivated variety is classified as Daucus carota, variety sativa.
• Both of the words in Daucus carota mean orange.
• Dandelion root can be roasted and ground as a coffee substitute.
• Germany produces more than 5,000 varieties of beer and has about 1,300 breweries.
• Goat meat contains up to 45 per cent less saturated fat than chicken meat.
• Honey is used sometimes for antifreeze mixtures and in the centre of golf balls.
• Macadamia nuts are not sold in their shells because it takes 300lb per square inch of pressure to break the shell.
• Olives which grow on trees were first cultivated 5,000 years ago in Syria.
• A cluster of bananas is called a hand and consists of 10 to 20 fruits known as fingers.
• The word ‘banan’ is Arabic for finger.
• A 1.5oz milk chocolate bar has only 220 calories.
• A 1.75oz serving of potato chips has 230 calories.
• A recent study indicates that, when men crave food, they tend to crave fat and salt. When women crave food, they tend to desire chocolate.
• American and Russian space flights have always included chocolate.
• American chocolate manufacturers use about 1.5 billion liters of milk, which is only surpassed by the cheese and ice cream industries.
• A typical American eats 28 pigs in their lifetime.
• Bananas are one of the few fruits that ripen best off the plant. If left on the plant, the fruit splits open and the pulp has a ‘cottony’ texture and flavour. Even in tropical growing areas, bananas for domestic consumption are cut green and stored in moist, shady places to ripen slowly.
• The classic Bugs Bunny carrot is the Danvers type.
• It’s a myth that Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots – he simply didn’t like them.
• Aztec emperor Montezuma drank 50 golden goblets of hot chocolate every day. It was thick, dyed red and flavoured with chilli peppers.
• A honeybee must tap 2 million flowers to make 1lb of honey.
• In 1516 Friar Tomas sailed to the Caribbean from Europe bringing banana roots to plant in the rich fertile soil of the tropics, thus first introducing the banana to America. They were not officially introduced to the American public until the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.
• Americans spend approximately $25 billion each year on beer.
• Holtville, California dubs itself the ‘carrot capital of the world’ and has an annual festival, now in its 55th year.
• An etiquette writer of the 1840s advised, ‘Ladies may wipe their lips on the tablecloth, but not blow their noses on it.’
• Bananas are perennial crops that are grown and harvested year round. The banana plant does not grow from a seed but rather from a rhizome or bulb. Each fleshy bulb will sprout new shoots year after year.
• Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour, invented in 1889, was the first ready-mix food to be sold commercially.
• Americans spent an estimated $267 billion dining out in 1993.
• There are 100 to 150mg of caffeine in an 8oz cup of brewed coffee, 10mg in a 6oz cup of cocoa, 5 to 10mg in 1oz of bittersweet chocolate, and 5mg in 1oz of milk chocolate.
• California’s Frank Epperson invented the Popsicle in 1905 when he was 11 years old.
• Capsaicin, which makes peppers ‘hot’ to the human mouth, is best neutralized by casein, the main protein found in milk.
• China’s Beijing Duck Restaurant can seat 9,000 people at one time.
• Bananas have no fat, cholesterol or sodium.
• During the Alaskan Klondike gold rush (1897–98), potatoes were practically worth their weight in gold. They were so valued for their vitamin C content that miners traded gold for them.
• The carrot is a member of the parsley family along with celery, parsnip, fennel, dill and coriander.
• During World War II, bakers in the United States were ordered to stop selling sliced bread for the duration of the war on 18 January 1943. Only whole loaves were made available to the public. It was never explained how this action helped the war effort.
• Fortune cookies were invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodle maker.
• In Eastern Africa, you can buy banana beer, brewed from bananas.
• Goulash, a beef soup, originated in Hungary in the 19th century.
• To make haggis, the national dish of Scotland, take the heart, liver, lungs and small intestine of a calf or sheep, boil them in the stomach of the animal, season with salt, pepper and onions, add suet and oatmeal.
• Hostess Twinkies were invented in 1931 by James Dewar, manager of Continental Bakeries’ Chicago factory. He envisioned the product as a way of using the company’s thousands of shortcake pans, which were otherwise employed only during the strawberry season. Originally called ‘Little Shortcake Fingers’, they were renamed ‘Twinkie Fingers’, and finally ‘Twinkies’.
• Carrot oil is used for flavouring and in perfumery. An extract of carrots was used to colour oleos (margarine) during the fats rationing that took place during World War II.
• In 1860, Godey’s Lady’s Book advised US women to cook tomatoes for at least 3 hours.
• In 1926, when a Los Angeles restaurant owner with the all-American name of Bob Cobb was looking for a way to use up leftovers, he threw together some avocado, celery, tomato, chives, watercress, hard-boiled eggs, chicken, bacon and Roquefort cheese, and named it after himself: a Cobb salad.
• Rice needs more water to grow than any other crop.
• In Southeast Asia, the banana leaf is used to wrap food, giving it a unique flavour and aroma.
• In 1976, the first eight Jelly Belly® flavours were launched: Orange, Green Apple, Root Beer, Very Cherry, Lemon, Cream Soda, Grape and Liquorice.
• In 1990, Bill Carson of Arrington, Tennessee, grew the largest watermelon at 262lb.
• Astronaut John Glenn ate the first meal in space when he enjoyed pureed apple sauce squeezed from a tube aboard Friendship 7 in 1962.
• The Greeks thought that carrots cured venereal disease while the Arab cultures thought it a possible aphrodisiac.
• In the United States, 1lb of potato chips costs 200 times more than 1lb of potatoes.
• Mayonnaise is said to be the invention of the French chef of the Duke de Richelieu in 1756. While the Duke was defeating the British at Port Mahon, his chef was creating a victory feast that included a sauce made of cream and eggs. When the chef realized that there was no cream in the kitchen, he improvized by substituting olive oil for the cream. A new culinary masterpiece was born, and the chef named it ‘Mahonnaise’ in honour of the Duke’s victory.
• Mushrooms have no chlorophyll so they don’t need sunshine to grow and thrive. Some of the earliest commercial mushroom farms were set up in caves in France during the reign of King Louis XIV (1638–1715).
• In Scotland, the Sunday before Michaelmas, 29 September, is called Carrot Sunday.
• India is by far the largest world producer of bananas, growing 16.5 million tonnes in 2002, followed by Brazil, which produced 6.5 million tonnes in 2002. To the Indians, the flower from the banana tree is sacred. During religious and important ceremonies such as weddings, banana flowers are tied around the head, as they believe this will bring good luck.
• Nabisco’s Oreos are the world’s best-selling brand of cookie at a rate of 6 billion each year. The first Oreo was sold in 1912.
• Americans eat 18 per cent more vegetables today than they did in 1970.
• Per capita, the Irish consume more chocolate than Americans, Swedes, Danes, French and Italians.
• Persians first began using coloured eggs to celebrate spring in 3,000 BC and 13th century Macedonians were the first Christians on record to use coloured eggs in Easter celebrations. Crusaders returning from the Middle East spread the custom of colouring eggs, and Europeans began to use them to celebrate Easter and other warm-weather holidays.
• On average, a baby in the United States will eat 15lb of cereal in their first year of life.
• The hottest chilli in the world is the Habanero.
• The Americans know the wild carrot as ‘Queen Anne’s Lace’, ‘Rattlesnake Weed’ and ‘American Carrot’.
• Pine, spruce or other evergreen wood should never be used in barbecues. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.
• Rice is the staple food of more than one-half of the world’s population.
• In 1995, KFC sold 11 pieces of chicken for every man, woman and child in the US.
• Refried beans aren’t really what they seem. Although their name seems like a reasonable translation of the Spanish frijoles refritos, the fact is that these beans aren’t fried twice. In Spanish, refritos literally means ‘well-fried’, not ‘re-fried’.
• Americans consumed over 3.1 billion pounds of chocolate in 2001, which is almost half of the total world’s production.
• A hard-boiled egg will spin. An uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not.
• Research shows that only 43 per cent of homemade dinners served in the US include vegetables.
• Saffron, made from the dried stamens of cultivated crocus flowers, is the most expensive cooking spice.
• Sliced bread was introduced under the Wonder Bread label in 1930.