40 Interesting Facts About Food That You Probably Did Not Know?
Interesting facts about food and nutrition
Food has a big role in our lives today, it is a source of pleasure, social status, religious significance and above all a tool to survive. What we select to eat, how we prepare it or how we sense the food is directly influenced by our individual cultural inheritance.
Sense of taste and smell starts before we are born
The sense of taste and smell, which are composed of receptors and nerve fibers, are necessary to train in order to be able to function in the best way. The first encounter of humans with different tastes starts before we are born. The child while is still in the womb, through amniotic fluid inhales the smells of food consumed by the mother. After the arrival in the world, a child during breastfeeding practices gulp taste as through breast milk meets certain aromas and tastes. The children easily accept the foods that the mother regularly consumes during breastfeeding. They are very tasty for them because they get used to their flavor. Therefore, mothers who want their children to eat fruits, vegetables and other healthy and nutritious foods must also consume this kind of food during pregnancy and lactation periods.
Sunlight influences directly on our love of food
The love of food is associated with sunlight, which was an important factor in the evolution of man. It affects appetite, secretion of hormones, the normal rhythm of the sleep and mood. Sunlight stimulates the secretion of the hormone called serotonin (contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness). During day brain secretes a larger amount of this hormone, and at night it turns into melatonin (hormone that regulates sleep and wakefulness). When there is no sunlight, the body tries to compensate for that lack of substances that inflict pleasure: caffeine and sugar that we consume during the day stimulate the secretion of serotonin, while alcohol stimulates its production in the evening. That’s why we drink coffee in the morning, beer in the evening, but during the Christmas holidays, when the days are shorter, we crave for cookies and drink mulled wine.
The food culture is basis for proper eating
Nowadays, a healthy diet is associated with our wish to be thin, therefore healthy. The food culture has completely changed. Sociologists believes that today, due to changes in our society, we feed ourselves completely different than before. Great choice of product that is available to us in every market leads us to the unhealthy food, so we get into a vicious cycle of overeating with constant feel of hunger. In order to develop a culture of healthy eating, scientists believe, is not required to undergo on special diets, but to see the social and emotional aspects that affect nutrition. Food culture encompasses the concepts of cuisines, and food system and includes the fundamental understandings that a group has about food.
Some fact about food that we probably did not know.
- In order to make one kilogram of honey, bees must visit four million flowers, or a distance to fly around the planet four times.
- After tomato, banana is the most popular fruit in the world.
- There are more than 10,000 kinds of tomatoes.
- If eaten in large quantities, nutmeg can cause hallucinations.
- During the Middle Ages, sugar was a luxury food, nine times more expensive than milk.
- More than 90% of caught fish catches in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Wine is sold in tinted bottles because it spoils when exposed to light.
- Annual worldwide people eat up about a billion snails.
- All 13 minerals necessary to humans can be found in alcoholic beverages.
- Ketchup in the 19th century used as a cure for diarrhea, among others.
- It is believed that tea was accidentally discovered tea Chinese emperor in 2737 BC, when the wind brought the leaves into a pot of boiling water.
- Americans eat twice as much meat than Europeans, even more than fifty pounds per person per year.
- The French export 140 million bottles of champagne, and for local use they produce an additional 180 million bottles.
- It is known that vitamin A prevents “night blindness,” and carrots are rich in it. One carrot contains more than 200% of the recommended daily intake of this vitamin.
- Onions, apples and potatoes have the same taste. The differences that we feel are caused by their individual scents.
- Apples float because contain 25% air.
- Cabbage contains 91% water.
- For digesting celery takes more calories than it contain.
- Corn always has an odd number of grains.
- Honey is the only food that will never spoil.
- Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
- Ortharexia nervosa is an eating disorder when people are obsessed with eating healthy food.
- Swallowing one teaspoon of sugar without liquids usually helps to get rid of hiccups.
- Fear of cooking is a recognized phobia called Mageirocophobia.
- Tea bags were designed by Thomas Sullivan in 1908 in New York.
- In South Africa, termites and ants are often roasted and eaten handfuls, like popcorn.
- Pearls melt in vinegar.
- Ancient Greeks chewed a rubbery substance called “mastic” that originates from the bark of a tree.
- The fear of vegetables is called lahanophobija.
- In the US, lettuce is second most popular vegetables.
- The average person eats about four pounds of grapes during the year.
- In the world there are about 7,000 varieties of apples.
- Apples, pears, cherries and strawberries are members of the rose family.
- Tomatoes are called vegetables even though it is a fruit.
- When the cranberries are ripped, they bounce like a rubber ball.
- If you want to speed pineapple ripening to eat it as soon as possible, then you can do so by turning it upside down, on its leaves.
- Pumpkin comes from Mexico, where he appeared before some 9000 years.
- Consuming large amounts of beets makes your urine pink.
- If you bite a wooden spoon while chopping onions your eyes will not tear.
- Each pineapple plant produces only one pineapple per year.