Food Trivia and Facts : Did you know?

• • The inventor was Frank Epperson who, in 1905, left a mixture of powdered soda and water out on the porch, which contained a stir stick. That night, temperatures in San Francisco reached record low temperature. When he woke the next morning, he discovered that it had frozen to the stir stick, creating a fruit flavored ice treat that he named the Popsicle. 18 years later he patented it and called it the Popsicle. 
•  Microwave cooking was discovered accidentally, when a chocolate bar melted in someone’s pocket 
•  This is very true and very scary – imagine what it was doing to his leg! The fact is, 
•  Percy LeBaron Spencer of the Raytheon Company was walking past a radar tube and he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. He then tested popcorn in front of the tube (surely turning up the power and standing out of the beam), and it quickly popped all over the room. He is (obviously) known as the inventor of the Microwave oven. 
•  Dynamite is made with peanuts .Peanut oil can be processed to produce glycerol, which can be used to make nitroglycerin, one of the constituents of dynamite. Note however, there are other processes that can be used to make dynamite without using peanuts at all. 
• Coconut water can be used (in emergencies) as a substitute for blood plasma.  The reason for this is that coconut water (the water found in coconuts – not to be  confused with coconut milk, which comes from the flesh of the coconut) is sterile and has an ideal pH level. Coconut water is liquid endosperm – it surrounds the embryo and provides nutrition. 
•  Milk chocolate was invented by Daniel Peter, who sold the concept to his neighbour Henri Nestl. 
•  An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine. • Forks, mostly being two-tined, used to known as "split spoons." 
•  TIP is the acronym for "To Insure Promptness." 
•  The world's oldest existing eateries are the Stiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg, Austria - which was started as a monestary and had a tavern for travellers by 803 AD - and an eatery  which opened in Kai-Feng, China in 1153. 
•  Coffee is the seed of a cherry from the tree genus Coffea 
•  Melba toast is named after Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931). 
•  Three quarters of fish caught are eaten - the rest is used to make things such as glue, soap, margarine and fertilizer. 
• The world's most expensive jam (jelly) is Confiture de groselles. It is a redcurrant jam (jelly) from a 14th century recipe made in the tiny French town of Bar-Le-Duc. 
•  In September 1999 Dustin Philips of the US set a Guinness World Record by drinking a 400 ml (14-oz) bottle of tomato sauce through a straw in 33 seconds. 
• To make one kilo of honey bees have to visit 4 million flowers, traveling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth. 
•  Botanically speaking, the banana is a herb and the tomato is a fruit.
•  Bananas are the world's most popular fruit after tomatoes. In western countries, they  could account for 3% of a grocer's total sales.Bananas consistently are the number one compliant of grocery shoppers. Most people complain when bananas are overripe or even freckled. The fact is that spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.Approximately 44 million tons of bananas are produced annually, compared to more than 60 million tomatoes.