10 utterly surprising food facts

Sometimes you come across facts that leave you absolutely stunned… Hilarious tidbits, unappetizing bits of trivia, things you can share at parties; we love them!

Check out this list and marvel with us at amazing inventions and peculiar things that, in many cases, turned out extremely well. For example, do you know how Nutella came about?!

Honey doesn’t spoil

Amazing, right? We are talking about honey in a store-bought jar with nothing else added. Because it is a pure form of sugar that contains almost no water in its natural state, it is not a good breeding ground for bacteria and other microorganisms that cause spoilage. The sugars can crystallize, though, but placing the jar in a layer of hot water for a while will help. And in the microwave without the lid? From personal experience and a huge scare, I know you need to check very carefully that there is no metal in the label, such as gold or silver lettering or borders!

An oyster lives until the moment it comes loose from its shell

Knocking back half a dozen with a chilled glass of white? Delicious! But know that these shellfish only die when the little muscle holding them in place is severed. And that’s a good thing, because a dead oyster can contain countless bacteria that can make you ill. So there should never be too much time between loosening the oysters and slurping them down.

Nutella was invented out of necessity during World War II

When food was rationed and there were, of course, major shortages, cocoa was especially hard to come by. Even immediately after the war, cocoa and chocolate were not easy to obtain. That’s why Pietro Ferrero came up with a recipe using ground hazelnuts, sugar and just a little of the exclusive cocoa. In 1946, the hazelnut spread was officially brought to market by the then newly established Ferrero company.

A yellow bell pepper is not a fully ripened red one

Nor is an orange one a half-ripe yellow one… All bell pepper colors come from different types of seeds and are therefore not one and the same plant. Not all green bell peppers are automatically young red ones, although red peppers do start out green. But those from certain green pepper plants start green and stay green, no matter how long you wait. Red bell peppers are often more expensive than others because they have to remain protected on the plant for longer to turn fully red.

Other animals (including mammals) don’t like spicy food

With one exception: a special species of Chinese shrew. Otherwise: just us folks. It is an almost exclusively human kind of masochism to eat plants that clearly want to be left alone in nature, just to feel that rush of victory over pain. Every single time. What mainly distinguishes us from other mammals, according to Yale researcher Dr. Paul Bloom? We like Tabasco.

Farmed salmon is pink because of coloring agents, and they get pellets

Because consumers would probably leave whitish salmon on the shelf in the supermarket’s refrigerated section, farmed salmon—which accounts for around sixty percent of salmon consumption worldwide—is given a red powder in its feed, making the fish ‘flush’ pink. This is not entirely unnatural, however. In the wild, the fish eat shrimp, which in turn have eaten algae that produce a substance called astaxanthin, making the shrimp the first pink link in this food chain. The same goes for (wild) salmon and flamingos! They are pink because they eat shrimp too. The substance can also be synthetically produced from petroleum, and that is added to the farmed fish’s feed. That feed consists of pellets, primarily containing soy, some ground-up fish and, of course, that red powder.

The inventor of the Pringles can was buried in one

In 1966 (!), Fredric Baur invented the Pringles can for food company Procter&Gamble; that’s how long those chips have been around. Although people were initially not enthusiastic about chips that were all exactly the same, it would eventually become a huge success, and the can is recognizable all over the world. Baur was so proud that, before his death in 2008, he firmly stated that his final wish was to have his ashes buried in a Pringles can. Which flavor? According to his children, only one was appropriate: Original.

The tea bag exists because of an incredible coincidence

We wrote about this before, but it truly belongs on this list: Thomas Sullivan wanted to send tea sample packs to potential customers, intending for them to brew the tea loose. He carefully put it in small silk bags but did not include clear instructions. So they promptly dumped the entire bag into hot water, and thus the tea bag was born.

Those holes in your crackers aren’t decorative

A fan of crackers with cheese at drinks parties? (Who isn’t?!) Or have you ever kept a child who starts complaining about dinner around five in the afternoon sweet with a packet of mini crackers, “Look, sweetheart, this whole pack is just for you”? There’s a good chance you’ve never stopped to think about the hole pattern in them, or assumed it was purely decorative. It isn’t. The dough is perforated before baking so the steam can escape and too many air bubbles don’t form. Cracker makers also understand that people prefer their crackers as flat as possible, so all those Johma salads and Chaource don’t immediately slide off.

McDonald’s fries really did taste different in the past

A child of the ’70s/’80s and already a fan of the fries back then? Have you always wondered why everything seemed different in the past? In McDonald’s case, that’s true, although we are not necessarily saying it was better back then. In 1990, McDonald’s began frying its fries in vegetable oil, replacing the beef fat it had used until then—which, on such a large scale worldwide, was naturally a positive development.

Also read:

• Italian police seize Prosecco Pringles
• Food inventions, part two
• The big yellow M doesn’t stand for the Mac