Food Facts (35 pics)
The seeds of stone fruits contain deadly cyanide.
This includes the seeds of everything from apricots, cherries, and plums to peaches, mangoes, and nectarines. You should avoid eating them, and you should definitely avoid eating them crushed.
The only difference between Pepsi and Coke is that Pepsi is made with citric acid while Coke is not.
Maybe that explains why Pepsi is known to have a more citrusy taste, compared to Coke's more syrupy taste??
Mountain Dew is largely orange juice.
Orange juice is one of Mountain Dew's three main ingredients, along with carbonated water and high fructose corn syrup.
Cranberries grow in marshes, not on trees.
More than 50% of the world's cranberries are grown in Wisconsin — and you can watch a video of the harvesting process here.
And asparagus grows straight outta the ground.
All varieties: green, white, purple.
The white gunk that comes out of cooked salmon isn't fat — it's protein.
It's easy to mistake the foamy white paste as fat, but it's actually a harmless protein called albumin.
Experts agree you usually don't need to wash chicken before you cook it.
In fact, everyone we spoke to — including a USDA rep, a germ expert, and a prominent NYC chef — discouraged the practice. Lots of people do it, but it can often be more harmful than helpful.
Out of all the popular alcoholic drinks, red wine makes you the sleepiest.
That's according to a study by British Medical Journal, which surveyed 29,000 people about how they felt (energized, relaxed, sexy, confident, tired, aggressive, ill, restless, tearful) after drinking various types of alcohol.
Take 5 bars are filled with Reese's peanut butter.
Yep! This popular chocolate bar is made using the filling of another popular chocolate.
The filling in Kit Kats is made with broken Kit Kats.
Call it chocolate cannibalism. Kit Kats that get damaged during production are repurposed as the inside of future Kit Kats.
European chocolate generally tastes better because it's required by law to have a higher percentage of milk fats and dry milk solids.
European chocolate requires a minimum of at least 14% dry milk solids. In the US, the minimum is 12%. European chocolate is also slightly richer because it's required to have at least 3.5% milk fat. In the US, the minimum is 3.39%.
Hershey's chocolate gets its unique flavor from butyric acid — an acid that makes chocolate last longer on shelves but gives it a "tangy" flavor that many Europeans find totally off-putting.
If you grew up with Hershey's, there's a high chance you've never noticed the flavor that many people abroad find totally repulsive.
Potatoes are mostly water.
Specifically, they're said to be 80% water and 20% solid.
A few years ago, Nabisco redesigned its iconic animal crackers box cover after receiving criticism from PETA.
Before 2018, when the design change occurred, the animals on the box were caged.
Butter can be stored outside the fridge for up to ten days.
Despite the popular opinion that butter should be stored in the fridge, various health authorities actually say it's perfectly fine to store it on your kitchen counter — as long as your room temperature doesn't drop below 68°F.
The cookies that the Cookie Monster enjoys on Sesame Street are actually painted rice cakes.
That's because if the producers used real cookies, the oil from the cookies might have damaged the muppets, according to Sesame Street Unpaved.
The word "cookie" comes from the Dutch "koekje," meaning little cake.
The word, along with the cookies, was imported by Dutch settlers to North America.
You won't actually find many fortune cookies in mainland China.
Here's even more proof that the concept of Chinese fortune cookies is exclusively American in origin and popularity: When Wonton Foods, Inc., America's largest manufacturer of fortune cookies, tried to expand its business to China, the company found that the idea didn't translate, as unsuspecting diners often accidentally ate their fortunes.
Parmesan cheese contains an almost negligible amount of lactose.
A serving of Parmesan cheese contains less than 1 gram of lactose per serving, making it lactose-free by some accounts.
Flamin' Hot Cheetos were invented by a janitor who worked at the Frito-Lay plant.
Richard Montañez, who worked in the Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga, California when he had the idea, is now a PepsiCo executive.
According to the FDA, you should never double-dip.
Especially in the age of Covid-19, when we're all too aware of what can happen when an asymptomatic carrier spreads germs, it's probably best to put dip on your own plate and double-dip to your heart's content.
Drinking milk a few days after its past-due date is probably fine.
According to the FDA, it might be more of a taste issue than a safety issue. That's only as long as you're not part of an immunocompromised population (elderly people, pregnant women, and young children would fall into that category), and if your milk is just a few days past its expiration date.
It's perfectly fine to drink a glass of water that's been left out overnight.
It might taste weird but water itself has no ingredients that would make it go bad.
You know those loofahs you used to lather yourself with in the shower? They're actually grown in gourds.
They're not manufactured in large loofah-making plants, or picked from the sea. Loofahs are, as hard as it might be to believe, all natural.
President John Adams — who lived to 90 years old — drank about a quarter pint of cider every morning.
"I continue my practice of drinking a Jill of Cyder in the Morning and find no ill but some good Effect," he wrote in his diary. A "gill" of cider, by the way, refers to about four ounces, or a quarter pint.
The white spots on an old piece of chocolate are just fat blooms — not mold.
The chocolate might feel a little brittle, and it might be covered in white spots, but don't worry — this white films occurs when cocoa butter fats separate from cocoa.
All fruit and vegetables should be washed before eating.
Unless it's marked as pre-washed, all your produce should get a thorough rinse before being cooked. And to be honest, even if it is marked as pre-washed, I'd give it an extra rinse since consuming any fresh produce means taking a tiny risk.
La Croix produces its flavors by heating the skins or rinds of fruits.
That's basically the secret behind its "essence," aka the one ingredient in every La Croix can besides water. More specifically, a Wall Street Journal article describes the chemical as vapors that are “captured, condensed and eventually sold by the 55-gallon barrel.”
Straight whiskey is actually clear — and gets its color from the oak barrels in which it's aged.
On the other hand, Scotch Whisky is sometimes mixed with caramel coloring.
Pineapples take two to three years to grow.
Generally, a pineapple takes 24 months to go from propagation to fruiting. It can then take even longer to actually ripen.
And by the way, did you know a single pineapple is actually made up of up to 200 flowers that bloomed and formed a single mass?
A pineapple is actually made up tons of flowers that have joined together to bloom and create something called a "multiple fruit." It's kind of beautiful. Figs and breadfruit are other examples of a multiple fruit.
Milk helps you eat spicy foods because capsaicin (a compound in chili peppers) is fat-soluble.
Another thing to note is that capsaicin is not water soluble, meaning that drinking water won't help as much as coating your mouth with literally anything fatty, like milk, ice cream, or even olive oil.
Cellulose is a common ingredient in foods like shredded cheese and cereal.
"There's actually cellulose in all kinds of foods. Basically, anything that is labeled ‘added fiber' probably has cellulose in it," said Jaydee Hanson, Policy Director at the Center for Food Safety.
Bananas looked very different before humans domesticated them into the sweet, peelable fruits they now are.
The bananas humans eat were bred from seedless mutants that were occasionally produced from wild-type bananas.
Green Haribo gummy bears are actually strawberry-flavored in the U.S. — and apple-flavored in the UK and Germany.
"Our Goldbears have five flavors – strawberry (green), raspberry (red), lemon (yellow), orange (orange) and pineapple (white). In Germany/U.K., the flavors include strawberry (light red), raspberry (darker red), lemon (yellow), orange (orange), pineapple (white) and apple (green)," a Haribo representative said.
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