the culinary history of the region is quite fascinating i'll just have a glass of milk
the culinary arts have been around possibly as long as we have but it hasn't always looked
the same as it does right now so here are 15 mind-blowing facts about food history want to
broaden your cultural horizons oh no thank you the moon munchies this astronaut food isn't too bad
if you've ever wondered what the brave astronauts who first stepped on the moon
ate it actually wasn't much different to what you might eat on a sunday morning while the food
was freeze-dried and packaged up for space neil armstrong and buzz aldrin had a meal of bacon
peaches sugar cookies pineapple grapefruit juice and coffee after their first steps on the moon hey
guys guess who's back from space surprisingly this isn't the first time the american breakfast staple
of bacon has made its way into the great vacuum of space eating bacon on missions actually has a
long history at nasa first making an appearance in the meal kits of the apollo missions so next time
you grab a strip of bacon just remember it's the breakfast of astronauts potato patch protectors
so i hate potato the chili hides the potato while spaniards have always found the potato to be a
hot ticket item the french weren't quite as keen on the idea of these little spuds
believing that potatoes caused leprosy the french parliament even banned potatoes in 1748 so when
antoine augustine parmentier discovered the potato was actually as nutritious as it was delicious
he wanted to bring the vegetable into the french diet the problem was that the french absolutely
despised potatoes and no matter what parmentier did frenchmen still refuse to eat the spuds
so parmentier did what any intelligent person would do he relied on human greed to get the
job done i'm something of a scientist myself he planted an entire farm of potatoes and
hired guards for it but specifically told them to let people steal the potatoes thinking that the
vegetable was a valuable item the french actually began stealing potatoes and cooking with them
now potatoes are a staple in french cuisine but it's funny to think that wasn't always the case
a baguette spiteful cousin get away from my brain it's strange to think that the traditional italian
bread of ciabatta was only invented in 1982 but it's even weirder when you know the only reason it
exists is pure spite you see it all started with a savvy businessman named arnaldo cavallari and the
overwhelming popularity of the french baguette with so many baguettes being imported from
france to make sandwiches cavallari was scared his bakery would fail from the lack of sales
bankruptcy instead of letting the french win cavallari decided to make his own take on the
baguette and sell it as a traditional italian staple his version of the baguette began to soar
in popularity and is now what we know as ciabatta it's funny to think that such a staple of italian
baking is less than 40 years old black gold now i come here for gold black pepper has a long history
as the king of spices all around the world i mean the romans the greeks and the chinese claimed its
medicinal properties were miraculous and it was even used as a currency once upon a time it's just
worth it this was all largely because black pepper mostly came from india so moving such big amounts
of it to the western world required hundreds of thousands of laboring men in a time where a lot
of spice was actually more valuable than precious metals black pepper was actually nicknamed black
gold and used as currency or collateral in a lot of business negotiations around the world in these
times people would give up their gold for a bit of black pepper impossible to imagine isn't it
a three-pronged defiance of god wow fork me did you know that forks were banned for a whopping
400 years because they were sought to cause the plague well that's just a small part of
the fork's shockingly controversial history the upper classes of the middle east commonly used
forks but when they were brought to europe by maria byzantine's marriage to venetian royalty
it caused a scandal that's not how we do it man up until this point in history europeans had been
using just their hands to eat food as they claimed that god had given them all the tools they needed
of course maria had grown up thinking that eating with your hands was dirty and for the poor so she
refused to accept this part of the nation culture when maria died of the plague the venetians blamed
it on her use of the fork they claimed that god had seen her vanity and struck her down for it
from then on using forks was seen as an utter defiance of god it took hundreds of years and
royal marriages for the fork to be acceptable to eat with again greek gods and waffle irons
the waffle iron it's turned against us if you think your waffle iron is something you can't
possibly live without you will be happy to know that the ancient greeks thought the same though it
was heated by a fire and not an outlet the ancient greeks used two metal plates similar to our waffle
irons of today to make their own version stop bidding on my waffle iron the greek waffles were
perhaps closer to what we'd call a wafer nowadays but the process and batter were actually really
similar a batter of flour and water was poured into a metal plate with a wooden handle then
an identical plate was placed on top of the first squashing the batter until it cooked ending up in
the recognizable shape of a wafer these creations soon made their way into europe and evolved into
the waffles and waffle irons we enjoy today the pearl of democracy now come and i shall teach you
of democracy while the ancient greeks might be famous for their waffle irons and democracy you
should also know that they used the shells of an oyster much more than they used the pearls in fact
the pearls of oysters were pretty much discarded the ancient greeks loved to eat their oysters but
the shells didn't exactly go to waste instead of chucking their oyster shells the ancient greeks
would use them they would scratch votes into the shells and put them all in a pile making the vote
secret and setting the basis of the democracy we enjoy today this democracy your democracy the word
ostracize which means to cast someone out actually has its roots in the greek word for oyster austria
due to the ancient greeks these votes often resulted in someone being kicked out of the city
or society they were in so to be sent into exile meant being ostracized a sweet spending habit
chocolate we don't often think of chocolate as anything but a sweet treat but the ancient mayans
and aztecs had a different idea actually cacao beans were seen as an integral and important part
of mesoamerican religion culture art politics and even their economy yes you heard me right in the
old days of mesoamerica cacao beans were used as currency when the beans were made into chocolate
such a treat was only available to the higher class citizens oh oh my heavens were peasants
never take another chocolate bar or piece of chocolate for granted because once upon a time
it could have bought you your next week of dinners death by chocolate dangerous stuff inside speaking
of our sweet friend chocolate did you know that it almost killed sir winston churchill in world
war ii there was an assassination plot to kill mr churchill in which chocolate played an essential
role don't believe us well here's some more information on the matter nazi bomb makers
had actually managed to make small explosives and coat them with a thin layer of rich dark chocolate
using nazi spies that were hidden within the ranks of the british military the chocolate
bars were smuggled into the uk and the plan to assassinate the prime minister began to unfold
uh-oh i guess we shouldn't have made him eat it luckily the plan was sniffed out by mi5 agents and
finally uncovered and foiled by the chief of mi5 all of the booby-trapped desserts were destroyed
before they can even hope to reach churchill talk about a decadent plot the truth about pasta
from china all the way from china we may famously attribute pasta to the italians but did you know
that it might actually be chinese shocking i know the famous italian marco polo spent several years
in china and actually brought noodles back from the asian country introducing them to the italians
something new is born but anyone who's had italian spaghetti and chinese noodles will know that they
are not one and the same while some believe that the introduction of the chinese noodle into italy
inspired the making of pasta other food historians argue that pasta was already a budding cuisine
before marco polo made his trip back either way both options are delicious and we're glad
they came to be colors of the carrot is it a wide variety of colors colors if you ask anyone
nowadays what color a carrot is they'll say orange but if you asked anyone the same thing before the
16th century they'd tell you a different story in fact the orange color of carrots is a genetic
mutation before the 16th century carrots came in yellow white or purple but almost never orange
while fighting for dutch independence dutch farmers actually began to purposefully breed only
orange carrots as a tribute to william of orange i'm a garrett orange carrot slowly
took over the market and here we are today with the mostly orange carrots on our farms
crazy to think that dutch politics gave the carrot its iconic appearance
it's clearer in hindsight no ketchup no ketchup ketchup is often called tomato ketchup because
when ketchup was first invented it actually wasn't made from tomatoes the signature condiment
actually has its roots in china where it was made from mainly fish entrails in fact when tomatoes
were first brought to europe from south america the europeans were suspicious of the round red
fruit what is this fruit you see tomatoes were classified as part of the deadly nightshade family
and were thought to be extremely poisonous as ketchups made from everything from oysters to
mushrooms and even peaches became popular 1812 brought forth the introduction of the tomato
ketchup we know today other types of ketchup sort of fizzled out of popularity leaving only
our beloved tomato ketchup left standing liberty cabbage sauerkraut that is good though you may
have never heard of liberty cabbage you may know it by another name does sauerkraut ring any bells
yeah i thought it might during the early years of world war one the perception of germany began
to change in the american media this caused a certain discourse in the united states because
well they loved their sauerkraut but even the name of the food was very german sounds american but
probably isn't but americans didn't stop eating their sauerkraut oh no they wouldn't dream of it
instead the americans renamed sauerkraut liberty cabbage for some time because of course changing
the name of the food definitely changed its origin right ancient egypt worshiped gods cats and onions
we've talked about the ancient greeks the middle east china and many more ancient
cultures but we haven't touched on how ancient egypt one of the most advanced ancient societies
worshipped onions yes you've heard that right onions just like shrek compared his own layers
to those of an onion the ancient egyptians saw the layers of an onion as a reflection of the eternity
of their soul's existence vulgars are like onions as such onions and onion flowers are found
all over corpses from ancient egypt using them as a basis of many religious ceremonies and funerals
the paintings of various onions can be seen along with the hieroglyphs and coating the tombs of
important pharaohs do you think if we pray to an onion we won't cry the next time we cut into one
won't hurt to try an appealing alternative want to cut up a banana without peeling it while wartime
was an existentially hard time for a lot of reasons the british felt that the lack of bananas
was a particularly painful blow due to missing one of their favorite fruits the united kingdom of the
1940s fought against the rationing of the banana with their own solution the mock banana as the war
raged around them imported foods were minimized as much as possible and the much beloved banana was
found missing from many shelves across the country no one quite knows who's behind the first mock
banana recipe but the idea swept the nation and created a legend that's lasted until today it's
phenomenal the mock banana recipe was one that turned sweet parsnips into a mash that somewhat
tasted like banana with the aid of a whole lot of sugar so if you ever can't find bananas at your
local supermarket i guess you could always try wandering over to the parsnip section find another
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