Yum, not many things are better in life than sitting down to a delicious fulfilling meal. It gives you a feeling of satisfaction that is hardly matched in life. But just how much do you know about the food that you eat? I bet that there is a lot that you don’t know, so here are 14 fascinating food facts to whet your appetite.
1 Sucralose As An Artificial Sweetener Was Discovered By Accident
Sucralose is an artificial sweetener that has found commercial success due to it’s many favourable characteristics over other low calorie sweeteners. As is often the case many items or products that we use every day have been discovered by pure accident. Sometimes these discoveries can be of benefit to people, such as the microwave, sometimes they will, when used for sinister purposes, lead to destruction, as was the case with gunpowder. Thankfully sucralose doesn’t have any sinister uses, and its discovery was an absolute accident.
Sucralose was discovered by scientists from Tate & Lyle, a British based agribusiness, who were working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at Queen Elizabeth College. They were researching ways to use sucrose and its synthetic derivatives. One of the researchers, Phandis, was told to test a chlorinated sugar compound, but he thought he was told to taste it. Luckily for Phandis he found the compound to be exceptionally sweet, and not harmful.
Tate & Lyle patented sucralose as an artificial sweetener in 1976.
2 Spin An Egg To Tell If It Is Hard Boiled
If you want to tell if an egg is hard boiled or still raw one of the best tests you can do is to spin it. If it spins easily and comes to an easy stop it is hrad boiled. If it is wobbly, hard to spin or stop it is still raw. The reason for this is because the liquid inside the egg does not spin as fast as the shell. This difference in spinning between the shell and its liquid contents makes the egg difficult to spin. When it is hard boiled the contents of the egg are uniform from shell to the middle, so a consistent spin and easy stop can occur.
3 Strawberries Are Not A Berry
Prepare to have your mind blown. The delicious little fleshy fruit known as a strawberry is not a berry at all. It is actually an aggregate fruit which means it forms from a flower that has many ovaries. Berries form from single ovary flowers, which means strawberries are not berries at all. But…
4 Bananas And Water Melons Are Berries
We have just read that strawberries are not berries at all, however there are some fruits that you would not think are berries, but are. As we have previously read, for a fruit to be a berry it must form from a single ovary. Some fruits that are berries include bananas, watermelons, tomatoes avocados and even coffee.
5 Gummy Bears May Contain Mad Cow Disease
Yummy yummy gummy bears. The popular gelatin confectionery that is shaped like a little bear and comes in a variety of different colors. But what if we told you they could also possibly come with something else, something rather sinister? This may just make you think twice when next biting into the sweet little delight. There is a small concern that the gelatin could harbor prions such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease or the human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The USFDA and other worldwide organisations regard the risk of the candy containing any traces of BSE as minimal provided the correct precautions are followed during its production. Nonetheless, the risk is still there.
Another neat trick you can perform with gummy bears is to place them into a container of water for a day or two. You will notice that they will swell in size, probably as much as 300 to 400 percent.
6 Robots Have Been Invented To Taste Wine
We have read that there is a robot that can simulate giving birth and now there is this. Japanese engineers have developed a robot that is capable of distinguishing the difference between 30 varieties of grape. The reason for its development is to try and stop fraudulent bottling which not only rips off the customer who may be paying for something they are not actually getting and also damages the reputation of the brand.
7 In Water Diet Coke Floats While Regular Coke Sinks
In a regular can of Coke there are nearly 11 teaspoons of sugar. Diet coke has an artificial sweetener in place of regular sugar. The artificial sweetener is hundreds of times sweeter per unit than regular sugar. The sugar in regular coke is denser which makes it sink.
Don’t believe us? Watch the video then try it yourself.
8 You Can Swallow Gum
Have you heard the tale that if you swallow gum it takes 7 years to digest? It is not true. Gum just can’t be broken down like other foods by your saliva and digestive system. If you swallow gum it will just pass like any other food, except it will most likely remain intact.
9 Square Watermelons Are Grown In Japan
You have probably heard by now that they sell square watermelons in Japan. But do you know how they grow them? It’s quite simple really. All they do is grow them in a glass cube and they take the shape of the cube. They have been growing them in Japan for 30 years now, but they are an expensive high end product.
10 Nearly All Carrots Were Purple
Did you know that before the 17th century carrots were purple? In the late 16th century Dutch farmers took mutated strains of the regular purple carrot, which were yellow and white, and developed an orange carrot. They did this because the emblem of the house of carrots was also orange. The now regular orange carrot is sweeter and has more flesh than the purple variety.
11 Live Shrimp Is A Delicacy That Is Served In Copenhagen Restuarant
The usual way in which you eat a shrimp is to first have it cooked in at least boiling water or by frying it. And lets fact it, the finished product, even when only cooked with little more preparation, is simply delicious. But one restaurant in Copenhagen takes this tasty little creature and turn the entire process of eating it on its head. They eat them raw and wriggling.
Could you do this? There is a restaurant in Copenhagen that actually serves live shrimp. You take the live, still moving shrimp that has been flavored and eat it whole. Some people will peel the shrimp while it is still alive.
12 We Only Eat About 1% Of All Corn Grown
Only about 1% of all corn that is grown is eaten as corn. The rest is snuck into our food supply such as sweeteners and animal food. If it isn’t used in a modified fashion for other foods, it is used as an alternative fuel supply, such as in ethanol fuels.
Talking about eating corn.
13 Popcorn Was Served At The First Thanks Giving
Every year in the US and Canada celebrations are held around the countries for thanks giving. It is a tradition to serve turkey as it was the main meal served at the first Thanks Giving in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. But did you know that the native Indians also brought other food with them that is probably as popular, if not more popular than turkey? On the first Thanks Giving day in 1621 popcorn was served for the first time to Europeans.
In 1492 natives in the West Indies tried to sell popcorn to Christopher Columbus. It wasn’t until nearly 130 years later that the first Europeans got to taste popcorn for the first time. And it seemed to stick. So, the question now is should popcorn be served on Thanks Giving day?
14 Grapes Explode In A Microwave
We do not recommend you try this at home, but it is your life. If you put grapes into a microwave they will explode. The reason they explode is because they contain a lot of water. The microwaves heat the water and they will pop, much like popcorn, but only is the stem is still attached. If the stem is not attached it will let out a stream of steam. If you place two grapes close together in a microwave with the stem holes facing each other they will spark and you can even get a plasma arc.
