FOOD, glorious food
Fascinating Facts about what we eat

As the ice age ended, Eurasia had many plants that could be used for farming. Also, the region was home to large mammals that could be domesticated, such as cattle that could be used for meat and milk, and horses and elephants which were used for transportation and fighting.

The Black Death followed a period of population growth in Europe which, combined with two years of cold weather and torrential rains that wiped out grain crops, resulted in a shortage of food for humans and rats. This caused people and animals to crowd in cities, providing an optimal environment for Plague.

Animal crackers are cookies that were imported to the U.S. from England in the 1800s. P.T. Barnum had boxes designed with a circus theme and a string handle so they could be hung on a Christmas tree.

The Planters Peanut Company mascot, Mr. Peanut, was created during a contest for schoolchildren in 1916.

Dynamite contains peanuts.

It takes 3650 peanuts to fill a 5-pound container of peanut butter. Half of all edible peanuts consumed in the US are used to make peanut butter.

George Washington Carver developed 300 derivative products from peanuts.

Pie got its name from the magpie, because the bird collects bits and pieces for her nest, just as pies assemble various ingredients under one crust.

Coleslaw comes from Dutch settlers in New York, who made raw cabbage (kool) into salad (sla).

In 1982, sales of Reese's Pieces increased 85% after appearing in the movie E.T.

Apples are part of the rose family.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

Corn dextrin, a common thickener used in junk food, is also the glue on envelopes and postage stamps.

The brand name Jelly Belly was created in 1982 after Nancy Reagan made a much-publicized quip about her husband's 20-pound weight gain.

A single chocolate chip provides enough energy to a human being to walk 150 feet.

Mexico introduced chocolate, corn, and chilies to the world.

In 1873, James  and Gilbert founded Ganong Bros. Limited in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. In 1884 the partnership was dissolved: James expanded into a successful soap production and Gilbert maintained the candy company known as Ganong Brothers. The fourth generation of Ganongs still runs the candy business, which was the first in North America to wrap a candy bar. They also created the first heart-shaped boxes for Valentine chocolates.

When a chocolate bar melted in Percy L. Spencer's pocket as he stood in front of a magnetron, this man who never finished elementary school invented the microwave oven.

In 1876, Milton Hershey started a candy company in Philadelphia, but it failed six years later. At the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, he got hooked on chocolate and bought some German candy-making machinery and had it shipped back to Pennsylvania. After much experimentation, Hershey figured out the formula for making milk chocolate-a secret process known only to the Swiss at the time. He started the Hershey Chocolate Company and the rest is history.

On May 8, 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Styth Pemberton invented the flavor syrup for Coca-Cola. He was  a Confederate veteran turned pharmacist who wanted to replace morphine and alcohol dependency among war wounded. Cocaine was considered a kinder, gentler addiction. The popular beverage was originally green. For years, his recipe remained a secret. It was quietly published in 1979 in the Atlanta Constitution-Journal but went unnoticed. It has two parts. The first includes “fluid extract of coca,” citric acid, caffeine, sugar, water, lime juice, vanilla, and caramel. The second, called “7X,” includes alcohol, orange oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, coriander, neroli, and cinnamon. The company claims this recipe is not accurate, and maintains that the original formula is still locked in their vaults.

7-Up started as a hangover cure in the roaring twenties: SEVEN in the morning, time to get UP.

Jello was created by carpenter and cough syrup manufacturer, Pearle B. Wait. He and his wife May added strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon flavoring to the powder and gave the product its present name in 1897. Unable to successfully market their concoction, in 1899 the Waits sold the business to a neighbor, Orator Francis Woodward, for $450. Even Woodward struggled to sell the powdered product. Beginning in 1902, to raise awareness, Woodward's Genesee Pure Food Company placed advertisements in the Ladies' Home Journal proclaiming Jell-O to be "America's Most Famous Dessert." Jell-O remained a minor success until 1904, when Genesee Pure Food Company sent enormous numbers of salesmen out into the field to distribute free Jell-O cookbooks, a pioneering marketing tactic at the time.

It is believed that the original potato chip recipe was created by chef George Crum at a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY. Fed up with a customer who continued to send his fried potatoes back with the complaint that they were too thick and soggy, Crum decided to slice the potatoes so thinly that they could not be eaten with a fork. The customer was delighted, and the chips became a regular item on the lodge's menu.

Fortune cookies were actually invented in America (not China), in 1918, by Charles Jung.

June 4 is National Donut Day, created in 1938 as a fundraiser for the Chicago Salvation Army in honor of the women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I.

Brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in 1940 and introduced the “Speedee Service System,” establishing the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. Ray Kroc, a mixer salesman, recognized the idea’s potential and partnered with the brothers. Kroc opened his first McDonald’s franchise in Illinois in 1955 and later bought out the McDonald brothers.

The banana is the largest plant on earth without a woody stem. 

Pepsi originally contained pepsin, which gave the soft drink its name. 

During the Middle Ages, sugar was considered a luxury and cost nine times as much as milk.  

Carrots were originally purple. Dutch botanists developed an orange carrot to celebrate the Dutch Royal Family, the House of Orange.

All coffee is grown within 1,000 miles of the equator.

Coffee is the second-biggest traded commodity after oil.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

Coca-cola was developed by a Confederate veteran turned pharmacist to replace morphine and alcohol dependency among war wounded. Cocaine was considered a kinder, gentler addiction. The popular beverage was originally green.

7-Up started as a hangover cure in the roaring twenties seven in the morning, time to get up.

Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.  

Corn was instrumental in turning nomad tribes to agrarian societies. Early Native Americans are responsible for breeding the hardy ancestor of the corn we now eat today. Corn can be grown in a variety of climates and can be used in a variety of ways. The corn cob first reached Europe when Columbus brought it back with him to Spain after his trip to the Americas. Native Americans taught settlers the basics on how to plant the crop and cultivate it. Early settlers in America might not have survived if it hadn't been for corn. Even now, it's the most widely grown crop in America.

In 1903, Richard Hellmann arrived in the U.S. from Germany and within two short years he and his wife would revolutionize the world of mayonnaise. Hellmann's wife supposedly created a mayo sauce that was a prize feature at Hellmann's deli in New York City. By 1912, Hellmann was selling the "blue ribbon" jar by the crate load. On the other side of the country, Best Foods was creating a popular mayonnaise following in California. In 1932 the two companies merged and an enduring and delicious mayonnaise empire was born.

Americans have been fascinated by cotton candy. The fluffy pink stuff, originally called fairy floss, is a common sight at fairs, baseball games and circuses. Nashville candy makers John C. Wharton and William Morris are believed to have patented the first electric cotton candy machine in 1897. The machine was perfect for collecting the delicate cottony strands onto paper sticks or into bags. It worked by utilizing centrifugal force to spin and melt the sugar through holes in a screen, where the fibers could be collected on the other side. The two candy makers put their invention to the test during the St. Louis World Fair and were greeted with throngs of curious fairgoers. The machine was soon produced in mass quantities because it was portable, the process was novel, and the appeal was widespread. Cotton candy became the perfect fair food.

As far back as the 1400s Italians delighted in making spun sugar desserts by hand. The method was laborious and involved melting the sugar, then using a fork to make strings of sugar over an upside down bowl. After the sugar dried, they were able to gather the fibers and serve them as desert. Even up through the 18th century European confectioners made spun sugar webs painted in gold and sugar nests for Easter eggs. The skill required made this primitive cotton candy too expensive for the masses.

The St. Louis Fair of 1904 saw many other innovations.  Richard Blechynden, the head of the commission, watched world's fair goers pass by his elaborate tea house as the sweltering temperatures made hot beverages unpalatable. Driven to increase the market for Indian black tea in the States, he hit upon the idea of not only serving it iced and, perhaps more importantly, giving it away for free. His booth was soon the most popular at the fair.

Because it was illegal in 1899 to serve soda water on Sundays, Edward C. Berners of Berners' Soda Fountain in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, skipped the soda and gave his customer a bowl of ice cream with syrup. The Chicago Tribune credits Berners with inventing the sundae, but another town makes a compelling argument that in fact Chester C. Platt was the inventor. Ithaca, N.Y., has written evidence that a "Cherry Sunday" was created and being sold by 1892: an advertisement in the town paper for such. For sure, Chester C. Platt, co-owner of Platt & Colt Pharmacy, topped vanilla ice cream with cherry syrup and cherries. "Strawberry Sundays" and "Chocolate Sundays" were soon to follow. There's another claim, that  because buying ice cream on Sundays was illegal in Ohio (considered frivolous and luxurious) ice cream vendors would put fruit on top of the ice cream to make it more nutritious, creating the ice cream sundae.

           Archaeologists have determined that the very wise ancient Greeks were among the first Europeans to chew recreationally. A resin produced from a small shrub that grows along the Mediterranean, called mastiche, was the ancient version of Juicy Fruit. The resin was collected, boiled and then chewed by the Greeks. Recent discoveries in northern European bogs also point to the harvesting of mastiche and more resin chewing in Germany and Scandinavia, as early as the Middle Stone Age.
         Across the Atlantic, ancient Mayans chewed sap from sapodilla trees, while North American tribes did the same with the sap from spruce trees. Americans retained a strong interest in chewing, and by 1848 John B. Curtis marketed the first commercial chewing gum in Maine. State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum was quickly followed by other flavored gums.
         On Dec. 28, 1869 William F. Semple of Mount Vernon, Ohio, received the first U.S. patent for "a new and improved Chewing-Gum." Semple wanted to include rubber with this new chewing gum, but he made sure to note this would be a non-vulcanized compound.
         The true turning point in the evolution of chewing gum came in 1888, when the Thomas Adams Gum Co. introduced the first vending machine to sell gum in a New York City subway station. Both the "tutti-fruity" flavor and the machine itself were a hit. Other rival companies popped up shortly thereafter. In Chicago, William Wrigley Jr. began manufacturing gum in 1892. The Lotta and Vassar flavors are lost to history, but with the introduction of Juicy Fruit and Spearmint in 1893, Wrigley changed the world of mastication. In 1899, Franklin V. Canning created the Dentyne gum brand in New York.
         The idea for a "bubble" gum first appeared in 1906 under the brand name "Blibber-Blubber." Unfortunately for gum lovers, "blibber" never made it to the market. Chewers across America had to wait until 1928 for the first bubble gum to be sold in stores. It was an accident! Walter Diemer, who was an accountant at the Fleer Chewing Gum Co. in Philadelphia, had been fooling around with chewing gum recipes in his spare time when a batch seemed oddly stretchy and less sticky than others. The formula was a hit, becoming "Double Bubble" bubble gum. Diemer, who was 23 years old at the time, never received royalties for his creation. He said he didn't care, and he remained at Fleer until 1985. According to the British newspaper the Guardian, "After his first wife died in 1990, Diemer rode a big tricycle around his Pennsylvania retirement village and gave bubble gum to children."

Walter Anderson quit his job as a fry cook in Wichita, Kan., and founded the hamburger chain White Castle. For the most part, ground beef was still considered a necessary but unappealing evil in early 20th century. Anderson took it upon himself to revise the image of the hamburger. He set up a clean shop with public demonstrations and large discounts. Within 10 years, White Castle had revived the image of the hamburger and pioneered the fast-food restaurant franchise. From there the hamburger took off.

Fettuccini Alfredo was created in 1914 by Roman chef Alfredo Di Lelio, whose wife had recently lost her appetite after giving birth to their first son. In 1927, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford began a long list of celebrities to flocked to Alfredo's, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, and Bob Hope. His son took over the restaurant in 1959, and in 1978 a longtime friend created a partnership to open the first Alfredo's in New York. This was followed by restaurants at the EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World, and in Miami Beach.

The first commercial pretzel bakery in the U.S. was established in 1861 in Litiz, Penn., where it still operates today as Julius Sturgis' Pretzle Bakery. According to the Sturgis legend, the company recipe was a gift from a grateful traveling hobo who received a warm meal and friendly welcome from Julius Sturgis himself back in 1851. Sturgis' snack was a huge success, and pretzel factories soon began blooming across Pennsylvania and the U.S. In 1933, the Reading Pretzel Machinery Co. introduced the first automatic pretzel-twisting machine, and the pretzel business was off and running.