Random Bizarre Food Facts That Will Make You Rethink Your Eating Habits (15 items)

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  (#1) The Popsicle Was Originally Invented By A Boy Who Was 11

  The Popsicle™ was invented by an 11-year-old boy in San Francisco in 1905. His name was Frank Epperson and he left a cup of powdered soda, water, and a stirring stick on the porch during a very cold winter. Epperson didn't remember the cup until after the cold weather had already frozen over his soda. When he discovered it the next morning, he did what any curious boy would do: he licked it. Thus, the Popsicle™ was invented.

  For eighteen years, Epperson sold the dessert around his neighborhood exclusively. He decided to expand his market in 1923 and debuted his popsicle at a park in Alameda, CA, and people loved it. He originally called it an "Epsicle," naming the food after his own stupid childhood mistake, but his kids called it "Pop's 'sicle," and they eventually convinced him to change the name to Popsicle™. 
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  (#2) Ranch dressing

  • Food

  If you love dipping just about anything into ranch dressing, then you should probably know that a lot of it contains some of the same stuff used to make sunscreen and paint. You wouldn't expect there to be titanium in your Ranch dressing, but it's in there. Titanium dioxide is used to whiten most ranch dressing, and it's also used to whiten things like sunscreen and paint. 

  Some studies have found that titanium dioxide may cause some toxicity in the brain, and has properties that are potentially cancerous. Titanium dioxide is also used in a lot of candy, mayonnaise, and cosmetics. It's used pretty regularly in lipstick and paper as well. 
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  (#3) Mustard Seeds Are 'Eye Of Newt'

  At this point, it's ubiquitous to have a witch character brewing some kind of evil potion and include an "eye of newt." Your entire childhood, you probably thought that eye of newt was an actual eye from an actual newt. It's actually not. As it turns out, witches wanted to deter people from also practicing witchcraft, so they gave all these fairly common herbs and spices real gross names on purpose. That is how the mustard seed, a common ingredient, came to be known as the eye of newt. The first place to use this name for the mustard seed was in Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

  Here's a breakdown of some more herbs and spices that might have other, more witch-like names: 

  • Toe of Frog = Buttercup (the flower)
  • Adders Fork = Adders-Tongue (an adder is a snake, but an adders-tongue is just a leafy plant)
  • Tongue of Dog = Houndstongue (another flower)
  • Wool of Bat = Holly Leaves (like at Christmas!)
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  (#4) Lobster

  • Family

  So this is how delicate and impressionable people are as consumers: prior to the American Revolution, dockworkers went on strike because they were burdened with the damning act of eating lobster more than three times per week. Some people even had a clause in their contract that they would not eat lobster more than twice every week. They even served lobsters in prison and the inmates hated it. A single tear for them, please.

  So how did the lobster go from being a peasant food to a delicacy? The North American lobster, at some point, was so plentiful that people actually used it as garden fertilizer. People were so ashamed to eat this peasant food that they would bury the shells, instead of throwing them away, so their neighbors wouldn't know. Lobsters weren't adopted as a popular food until the mid-19th century, when the "lobster smack" was invented to keep them fresh (a kind of boat used to transport live lobsters). People were then able to develop a taste for lobster by the mid-20th century, and now they're the fanciest thing you can eat that isn't caviar. 
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  (#5) Some People Think That This Phobia From A Peanuts Comic Strip Is Real

  Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip invented a fake phobia called "arachibutyrophobia," which is the "fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth." It is not considered a real phobia, as Schulz literally made it up. The root, "arachis," comes from the Latin word for "peanut," while the "butryum" is Latin for "butter." You pronounce it as, "are-ack-ee-but-tir-o-phobia." 
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  (#6) Wasabi

  The wasabi you know and love is a lie. Most wasabi you'll find is mostly horseradish, which is why it's so spicy. If you go to your local Japanese market, they should have some fresh Wasabi that you can buy and then grate up into a paste, using a special wasabi grater called an "oroshigane." It's actually quite difficult to find real wasabi in the states. It's extremely difficult to cultivate, making it rare and pretty darn expensive. 

  If you try it, it's not the crazy hit of spice that you're used to. Real wasabi has a much more muted herbal and radish flavor that adds to the sushi. It's definitely more of a texture-based taste than the nose explosion you're used to. If you can find the good stuff, give it a try. It's different. 
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  (#7) Apple

  • Food

  The American apple was never meant to be eaten. It was brought over to Jamestown for one reason: cider. People loved cider. And because they loved it so much, they would have it with every meal (with some diluted glasses of cider for the kids, so that they wouldn't get too drunk at the dinner table). They drank cider mainly because it was safer to drink than any nearby water sources. So, most people grew their own apples. One man with 2,500 apple trees claimed that his trees were more valuable than 15,000 pounds of tobacco. This is how much people loved cider. 

  And then, Thomas Jefferson went to France where he was given "Ralls Benet" apple cuttings for him to grow in the US, which he then gave to a nursery in Virginia. The result was a "better" apple that people suddenly started just eating. It was nowhere near the sweetness of the apples you eat today. Japanese scientists crossed the Ralls Benet apple with the Red Delicious, and the result was what people call the popular "Fuji" apple.  
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  (#8) The Same Plant Gives You Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Kale And Other Superfoods

  The Brassica is a genus of plants that gives an incredible amount of foods that most kids don't like, such as cauliflower, broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and collard greens (just to name a few). It's rich in vitamin C and contains some properties that can actually prevent cancer (sulforaphane, selenium, and 3’-diindolylmethane). 
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  (#9) Chocolate

  • Food

  The Aztecs couldn't grow cacao leaves, but boy, did they love chocolate. In fact, they loved chocolate so much that the cacao plant alone became an important commodity. Aztec rulers even accepted cacao as "tribute," which was an early form of taxes. They would demand cacao of their conquered peoples and of ordinary citizens for the "tribute" owed to the rulers. 
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  (#10) Grape

  • Food

  That's right. The average person in America consumes eight pounds of grapes each year. That's approximately 26 servings of grapes per year. That's kind of a lot of grapes. So either you're not eating enough grapes, everyone else eats more grapes than you thought they did, or there are some people who are simply going HAM on grapes.
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  (#11) Every Second, McDonald's Sells 75 Burgers

  By the time you're done reading this, McDonald's will have sold at least 2,000 burgers. They sell a whopping 75 burgers every second. That's 4,500 per minute, which amounts to about 27,000 every hour, and 2.36 billion burgers every year. 

  Which is probably why they stopped counting.

  Every time you eat at McDonald's just make sure to remember that you are contributing to that number, and then look around you and realize that everyone in the same room as you is also contributing to that number. Think about this often. 
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  (#12) Balsamic vinegar

  • Food

  The healthy alternative to ranch and Italian dressing is usually a hint of balsamic vinegar. However, you've probably never had real balsamic vinegar unless you're super rich, because a good batch of the dressing can cost around $400. According to a connoisseur over at Fine Cooking, there are a few different kinds of balsamic vinegar out there, and they taste more like wine than vinegar.

  A proper balsamic vinegar has to be aged for twelve years. But the US has no legal standards for the identify of a balsamic vinegar, so there are at least five different kinds in every supermarket, each less authentic than the last. This means that both the imported kind and the domestic kind are a mere approximation of what the real deal tastes like. 
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  (#13) Roses Are Closer To Fruits Than You Think

  Yes, the beautiful yet thorny flower is actually related to fruits. Roses belong to the Rosaceae family, which also includes flowering plants that produce fruits and nuts. Some foods that are part of the rose family are apples, almonds, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. The wide breadth of fruits, berries, and nuts make the rose family one of those economically important plant families on the planet. 
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  (#14) Sweet potato

  • Food

  Those "yams" you pick out at the supermarket are probably sweet potatoes. It's a common misnomer to call them yams, yet nobody calls yams sweet potatoes. If it's orange, and looks a lot like the kind of potato you're used to, then it's probably a sweet potato. If it has dark, bark-like skin, and is starchy on the inside, like a potato, then it is very likely a yam. Some have red or purple interiors.

  There are roughly 200 varieties of yams and none of them grow in the US, so it is very likely that when you go out to get yams, you're not getting yams, but sweet potatoes. 
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  (#15) Canola Oil Is Short For Canadian Oil

  Believe it or not, Canola oil is actually short for "Canada" and "Oil." During World War II, the import of rapeseed oil to North America was blocked. Rapeseed oil was used as fuel for steam engines and ships, so demand started increasing. The Rapeseed Association of Canada started producing more oil and expanded their research into the seed. 

  Eventually, they created an edible rapeseed oil. They decided to name it "Canola oil" by compounding Canada to "Can" and adding "ola" (which is derived from the Latin oleum for oil) at the end to mirror other popular oils on the market like "Mazola." 

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