Christmas for many is all about preparing to eat, eating, then wishing you hadn’t eaten quite so much.
To celebrate the growing obesity* crisis that is December, here are some food facts:
- Apples are made of 25% air, which is why they float. They also have more stimulant than caffeine. And I’ve been feeding them to my children.
- Avocado has the highest protein and oil content of all fruits (I didn’t say they’d be interesting facts). They are also poisonous to birds (okay, that is interesting).
- Carrots were originally purple in colour, changing in the 17th Century to orange, through new varieties.
- The most expensive coffee in the world comes from civet poop. Not sure what a civet is, but if it poops, I’m not drinking the coffee.
- Celery requires more calories to eat and digest than it contains.
- Cherries are a member of the rose family. Asparagus is a member of the lily family. Food doesn’t know its place.
- The largest food item on a menu is roast camel. I wonder if that would be enough for my family this Christmas?
- Corn always has an even number of ears. It only makes up about 8% of the weight in a box of corn flakes.
- Worcestershire sauce is made from dissolved fish. Ewwwwwwww!
- Honey is the only edible food for humans that will never go bad. A jar of honey that was 2000 years old was eaten safely.
- Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries. Strawberries have more vitamin C than oranges. Strawberries knock citrus fruits on their – ahem – backsides.
- Coconut water can be used (in emergencies) as a substitute for blood plasma.
- Peanuts are an ingredient in dynamite.
- Pear is a fruit that ripens from the inside out.
- During a lifetime the average person eats about 35 tonnes of food. 70% of that at Christmas time.
Source: the internet, so they must be true.
*See what I did there?
Do you have an interesting food fact to share?
The Laughing Housewife 
I now think we will simply have vegemite sandwiches on Christmas day – it would be a hell of a lot simpler!
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That’s for sure!
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Another one for you: Peanuts are not actually nuts; their legumes. I know this because my boyfriend is allergic to peanuts, but not other nuts. People who are allergic to, say, Hazelnuts tend to be allergic to other nuts as well, but peanut-allergy sufferers tend to be fine with other nuts because peanuts are not actually nuts. (And now I’ve come full circle).
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That is truly interesting, if a little convoluted 😀
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Convoluted – good word 😀
And I just realised I wrote “their legumes”. Grrr, I mean “they’re”, of course. One of my pet hates, and then I go and get it wrong myself!
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I let it slide because you are fairly new here. Any future slip-ups and the penalty is to send me a box of Maltesers for each one.
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We will be eating lamb for Christmas dinner as we know where it has been reared. I might even have been keeping an eye on its welfare at times.
Interesting food fact – buttercups are poisonous to guinea pigs so I have to be careful what local grass I cut for ours. They can’t have any grass at the moment as it is covered in frost and snow. Sally
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That is interesting! You don’t think of flowers as being poisonous.
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So if you want to get slim, eat raw celery all day.
We’re organizing a team Christmas dinner – Carolyn will be cooking my capon here, folllowed by her year-old Christmas Pudding after a starter from Annette. I made the Christmas cake in October and shall be almond-pasting it soon. Aren’t I being spoiled?
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You are! It will be lovely. How many of you?
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Almost any food is better with avocados. (We’ve been brainwashed by the Mexicans.)
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I have never eaten avocado. I heard it was fattening.
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You have been missing out BIG TIME!
(The slimmest period of my life was in Australia, 1987-8 and I consumed a lot of avocados. )
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Great post!! Bring on Peanuts!
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So when your sons bring home the ‘Birds’, you will be serving Avocado! (Must warn them!)
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ummmm , eggs send me running to the ladies room, hehehe
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TMI 😀
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I think the civet coffee might be a joke on you. Anyway, a civet is a cat similar to a skunk. Phew! The celery fact is true, they say. Still, if you eat a pound of celery, you’ll gain a pound. Plants are classed in families they don’t really seem to belong to, because of the shape of their flowers. It’s like some scientist said you and I are in the same family because your face resembles that of my cousin. Actually, we are both in the family of man. In botany, supposedly, given the right specs, the rose and the cherry could cross-polinate. They don’t because of flowering times not coinciding. Worcestershire (Woozie) sauce comes from England. Sorry. Honey is amazing in that it can heal wounds. However it can have a few cells of botulism (or is it salmonella?) which will not harm us but make it unfit for infants. I gave my infants honey all the time, though. Thanks for this list. I thoroughly enjoyed it! 🙂
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I can tell by the way you thoroughly dissected it 😀
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Civet coffee is coffee which has been through the intestinal tract of the civet. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/19/civet-coffee-abuse-campaigners
rather distressing really.
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you have to be careful with honey and babies, because of the botulism risk
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/botulism.html
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Some interesting facts in this list of yours…you never cease to amaze.
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What’s amazing is how easy it is to lift things from the internet 😀
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It seems to me that the fruit are very confused in the order of how things ought to be. Worcestershire sauce was a mistake, the two men tried to copy an Asian sauce to serve to their British clients and they initial batch tasted awful so they put away somewhere and it was two years later when they rediscovered it and found it to be wonderful.
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Now that IS interesting.
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Don’t think I would have tried the 2,000 year old honey. Remember the line from the old song: “I gave my love a cherry that had no stone…” “A cherry when its blooming, it has no stone.” Cherry blosssoms look just like the wild rose blooms. I love plant facts.
Chocolate is also a stimulent and poisonous to dogs and birds. Dianne
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I knew that about dogs but not birds. Not that it ever occurred to me to feed chocolate to a bird, but I suppose they pick up dropped bits in the street.
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Interesting, Tilly.
Now for another interesting fact having nothing to do with food. Did you know that on your blog page, if you put your cursor on the left side the snow falls to the left, on the right side the snow falls to the right? Just another facet of your magical blog.
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Thank you for pointing that out, Al. Since you mentioned it, I’ve noticed that every other WordPresser with snow is also doing it. There’s no honour among bloggers 😉
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Some scary food facts. I hope you’re not right about Worcestershire sauce. 😦 I love it.
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It was on the internet so it must be true 😉
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The ingredients of a traditional bottle of Worcestershire sauce sold in the UK as “The Original & Genuine Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce” are malt vinegar (from barley), spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, garlic, spice, and flavouring.[9] The “spice, and flavouring” is believed to include cloves, soy sauce, lemons, pickles and peppers.[9] Notes from the 1800s were found by company accountant Brian Keogh dumped in a skip, which he rescued. The documents are to be placed on display at the Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum.[10] [9] Apart from distribution for its home market, Lea & Perrins supplies this recipe in concentrate form to be bottled abroad.[9] Wiki
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Yes, the Lea and Perrins is my favourite brand. Thanks for all the info. 🙂
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I quite fancy a purple carrot…
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Well it takes all sorts 😉
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This laughing housewife is in a state of mental crisis — she moved to the left, then she moved to the right. She ditched yellow, found new love in (green/blue), then she went all over the Christmas red. Now the snowflakes are shouting at you. Oh I’m so short-sighted, I can’t deal with the colour contrast! God please help the laughing housewife to remain calm to restore her senses. Please Santa send the laughing housewife some maltesers to keep her on the ground. I must say she’s been truly good throughout the year.
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Thank you for being my advocate, Janet 😀
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A civet is a small mammal like a weasel. Just thought you might want to know. Don’t know why anyone would want to drink coffee that came out of anything’ poop chute, but it takes all kinds to make a world!
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You got that right.
‘poop chute’ – brilliant! 😀
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Brilliant facts… if all true, I just learned a bunch of great, new stuff… Ta love!
😆 😎
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Oh, so that’s what its called there? Civet? Yes, Civet Coffee (Kopi Luwak) is for now the most expensive coffee. But, now someone is developing a more expensive coffee, which is Kopi Kancil (kancil is somewhat a little deer, and yes, the coffee beans are taken out from their poop :P). I’ve never tried one, but they say it tastes delicious, which makes me curious 😉 (one cup for me, please!).
Coconut water is very-very-very beneficial. I threw out my antibiotics and drank coconut water everyday. I recovered from child labour much-much faster (this was my second son) :).
Yes, the army and red cross here use coconut water as an intravenous in emergencies 😀 (I was in the teenage red cross in highschool).
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Never heard that about coconut water. Fascinating. I think it’s sad that we have lost the art of natural medicine. Modern medicine is fantastic, but it would be good to use natural remedies as well.
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Apples have more stimulant than caffeine? Heck yeah, that’s called sugar!
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