• How much of a watermelon is actually water?
What foods have you eating bugs and oil byproducts?
Here are 10 things you DON’T need to know about your food, but you’ll be happy you
do.
10 – Pound Cake is Named Appropriately • The reason it’s called pound cake is
because of its original recipe.
• That recipe called for a pound each of eggs, butter, sugar and flour.
No other ingredients – just those.
• The four-pound cake was massive, but that’s okay - the idea was for the four-pound cake
to feed multiple families in an entire neighbourhood. 9 – Banana Slipping is Real
• In 2001, Great Britain recorded over 300 occasions of what are officially known as
“banana-related incidents.”
• It’s exactly what you hope it is.
Most of those are, in fact, incidents of people slipping on banana peels.
• It doesn’t seem like the trend is going anywhere – in 2012, a city hall worker was
paid 4 thousand pounds in a settlement with his employer for slipping on a banana peel
at work.
8 – Watermelons are Actually Water • True to their names, watermelons are made
of 92 percent water, which is a big part of why they’re so heavy.
• Another six percent of them is sugar, which means that 98 percent of a watermelon
is literally just sugar water.
Maybe that’s why they taste so good.
• Bonus fact!
In China, watermelon rinds are cooked and eaten as a vegetable.
They can be stir-fried, stewed, or pickled. 7 – Wasabi isn’t Wasabi
• You know that green paste that comes on the corner of your sushi plate, and it kinda
burns your nose when you eat it?
• We generally call that stuff “wasabi,” but it isn’t.
Wasabi only grows in certain regions of Japan, and is difficult and expensive to grow and
process.
• Worldwide demand for Wasabi far outpaces its supply, so whatever wasabi you think you’ve
eaten is most likely just horseradish with green food coloring.
6 – Tea Bags Were an Accident • While the idea of storing tea in little
paper bags dates back to 7th century China, the concept of the modern tea bag was the
result of a misunderstanding in the early 20th century.
• Thomas Sullivan owned a coffee and tea shipping company in New York, and he had the
bright idea to ship out samples of his products in little silk bags.
• He had intended for people to take the tea out of the bags when they got them, but
they found it easier to just steep the tea in the breathable fabric as-is, and several
asked for more shipments exactly like that.
• However, the rectangular paper tea bag we know today wasn’t invented until 1944.
5 – You Eat Bugs All the Time • Do you like Skittles?
The red ones especially?
• Well, hopefully you like bugs.
Cochineal and carmine are two types of food coloring derived from ground-up tropical insects,
and they’re used in everything from candy to fruit juice to shampoo.
• You may find that horrifying, but it’s better than the alternative – many other
red food dyes are made from oil and coal byproducts.
At least bugs have some nutritional value.
4 – Ranch Dressing So White • Ever wonder what makes ranch dressing
white?
Of course not!
It just IS white.
We don’t know any different.
• But just in case you were wondering, it’s titanium dioxide, a substance also used to
make sunscreen and paint look whiter.
• Don’t worry, though.
They tested the stuff extensively before putting it in your food.
You’d probably drown in ranch dressing before you ate enough of it for it to kill you.
3 – Heinz’ “57 Varieties” Means Literally Nothing
• It’s a popular myth that Heinz, one of the biggest food processing companies in
America, started advertising “57 Varieties” because they, at the time, offered 57 products.
• Actually, it has nothing to do with that.
Or anything.
Heinz offered over 60 products when Henry John Heinz came up with the “57 varieties”
slogan in 1896.
• So what is the significance of the number 57?
Basically, Heinz saw a sign one day advertising 21 different styles of shoes.
He thought that was a good marketing statement.
• So he thought for a while, and figured he liked the sound of the number 57.
So that’s what he used.
That’s literally it.
It doesn’t mean anything.
• There are no actual varieties of anything.
He just thought it sounded cool, so he attached it to all of his products for no reason at
all, and it’s still there 120 years later.
2 – A Group of Bananas is Called a Hand • When you see groups of bananas at your
local grocery store, you probably refer to them as “bunches.”
• Like, “hey, we should grab a bunch of bananas and sue our employer after we slip
on the peel!
• A bunch of bananas is a real thing, but that actually refers to the large group of
bananas that grows on a tree, like this.
• What you think of as a “bunch” of bananas is more accurately called a “hand”
of bananas.
Naturally, if you break one off and have a single banana, that’s known as a finger.
1 – Pretzels are Crossed Because of the Catholic Church
• Today, observing Lent tends to be sort of a trendy thing, with fairly lenient rules.
But in 7th century Italy, it was the most serious of business.
• All types of meat, eggs, and dairy were prohibited, and so a treat of twisted, baked
dough gained popularity, as it required only water, flour and salt.
• Monks would hand out the treats to their pupils as a reward when they recited their
prayers correctly.
The twisted shape is meant to look like crossed arms – the correct posture for prayer at
the time.
• As pretzels gained popularity, the religious symbolism grew stronger – people assumed
the three holes basically represented the Holy Trinity.
What’s your weirdest food fact?
Share with us in the comments below, and we’ll pin you right up to the top if you impress
us.