Food

• Milk chocolate was invented by Daniel Peter, who sold the concept to his neighbor Henri Nestlé.
• An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine.
• Forks, mostly being two-tined, used to known as “split spoons.”
• TIP is the acronym for “To Insure Promptness.”
• The world’s oldest existing eateries are the Stiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg, Austria – which was started as a monastery and had a tavern for travelers by 803 AD – and an eatery which opened in Kai-Feng, China in 1153.
• Coffee is the seed of a cherry from the tree genus Coffea.
• Melba toast is named after Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931).
• Three quarters of fish caught are eaten – the rest is used to make things such as glue, soap, margarine and fertilizer.
• The world’s most expensive jam (jelly) is Confiture de groseilles. It is a redcurrant jam (jelly) from a 14th century recipe made in the tiny French town of Bar-Le-Duc.
• In September 1999 Dustin Philips of the US set a Guinness World Record by drinking a 400 ml (14-oz) bottle of tomato sauce through a straw in 33 seconds.
• To make one kilo of honey bees have to visit 4 million flowers, traveling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
• Botanically speaking, the banana is a herb and the tomato is a fruit.
• Bananas are the world’s most popular fruit after tomatoes. In western countries, they could account for 3% of a grocer’s total sales.
• Bananas consistently are the number one compliant of grocery shoppers. Most people complain when bananas are overripe or even freckled. The fact is that spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.
• The scientific term for the common tomato is lycopersicon lycopersicum, which means “wolf peach.”
• There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
• The can opener was invented 48 years after cans were introduced.
• In the Middle Ages, sugar was a treasured luxury costing 9 times as much as milk.
• Of the more than $50 billion worth of diet products sold every year, almost $20 billion are spent on imitation fats and sugar substitutes.
• Over 90% of all fish caught are caught in the northern hemisphere.
• Wine is sold in tinted bottles because wine spoils when exposed to light.
• Approximately one billion snails are served in restaurants annually.
• Vitamin A is known to prevent “night blindness,” and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. One carrot provides more than 200% of recommended daily intake of Vitamin A.
• Carrots have zero fat contente.
• Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
• The first European to encounter tea was the Portuguese Jesuit Jasper de Cruz in 1560.
• Ice tea was introduced in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis.
• The tea bag was introduced in 1908 by Thomas Sullivan of New York.
• An onion, apple and potato all have the same taste. The differences in flavor are caused by their smell.
• Americans eat twice as much meat as Europeans, gobbling up some 50kg (110 lb) per capita.
• Meat production causes 1/5 of global greenhouse gases.
• The tall chef’s hat is called a toque.
• Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta, Georgia by Dr. John S. Pemberton in 1886.
• Pepsi-Cola was invented by Caleb Bradham in 1890 as “Brad’s Drink” as a digestive aid and energy booster. In was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898.
• The first diet soft drink, called the “No-Cal Beverage” was launched in 1952.
• Aluminum cans were introduced in 1957 and two years later the first diet cola was sold.
• The pull-ring tab was invented in 1962 and the re-sealable top in 1965.
• Annually, France exports some 140 million bottles of champagne but keep 180 million bottles for local consumption.
• Plastic bottles were first used for soft drinks in 1970.
• China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year. 25 million trees are chopped down to make ‘em sticks.
• Chocolate is the number one foodstuff flavor in the world, beating vanilla and banana by 3-to-1.
• Watermelons are 97% water, lettuce 97%, tomatoes 95%, carrots 90%, and bread 30%.

 

Source: didyouknow.org