Have you ever popped open a Snapple and learned something new? We poured over Snapple’s Real Facts and discovered a bounty of interesting food-related facts worth sharing starting with this mind-boggling Real Fact #62: The average lifespan of a taste bud is 10 days.
#452: There are approximately 9,000 taste buds on your tongue.
#833: Children have more taste buds than adults.
#820: Relative to size, the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.
#60: The tongue is the fastest healing part of the body.
#834: Right handed people tend to chew food on the right side and lefties chew on the left.
#54: The average smell weighs 760 nanograms.
#67: There are 18 different animal shapes in the animal cracker zoo.
#259: The original recipe for chocolate contained chili powder instead of sugar.
#484: Rinsing bacon under cold water before frying can reduce the amount it shrinks by almost 50%.
#227: Tsiology is anything written about tea.
#209: The largest pumpkin ever grown weighed 1,061 lbs.
#265: 90% of all garlic consumed in the U.S. comes from Gilroy, CA.
#236: Cows give more milk when they listen to music.
#470: Dairy cows drink up to 50 gallons of water per day.
#340: There is an underground mushroom in Oregon that measures 3.5 miles across.
#730: The fear of vegetables is called lachanophobia.
#839: A cucumber consists of 95% water.
#20: Broccoli is the only vegetable that is also a flower.
#210: 1.3 billion pounds of peanuts are produced in Georgia each year.
#362: “Arachibutlphobia” is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
#109: Smelling apples and/or bananas can help you lose weight.
#836: Pomology is the study of fruit.
#387: A banana is a giant herb.
#393: Wipe the leaves of your plants with the soft inside of a banana skin to bring up shine and remove dust.
#370: Heat, not sunlight, ripens tomatoes.
#21: Almonds are part of the peach family.
#458: Fresh cranberries can be bounced like a rubber ball.
#64: Strawberries contain more vitamin C than oranges.
#136: Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
#718: On average a strawberry has 200 seeds on it.
#724: A pineapple is neither an apple or a pine. It is, in fact, a large berry.
#345: The popsicle was invented in 1905 by an 11-year-old boy.
#841: The most popular ice cream flavor is vanilla.
#489: To keep an ice cream cone from dripping, stuff a miniature marshmallow into the bottom of the cone.
#490: To take lumps out of a bag of sugar, place it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
#289: In 1908, the first lollipop-making machine started in New Haven, CT.
#339: There are more doughnut shops per capita in Canada than in any other country.
#257: The first food eaten in space by a U.S. astronaut was applesauce.
#844: One lump of sugar is equivalent to three feet of sugar cane.
#138: Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows coffee.
#135: A single coffee tree produces only about a pound of coffee beans per year.
#268: One lemon tree will produce about 1,500 lemons a year.
#274: All lemons are harvested by hand.
#402: Christopher Columbus brought the first lemon seeds to America.
#342: California and Arizona grow approximately 95% of the fresh lemons in the U.S.
#385: Lemons are more acidic than vinegar.
#427: Lemons ripen after you pick them, but oranges do not.
#845: A lemon contains more sugar than a strawberry.
#285: In ancient Rome, lemons were used as an antidote to all poisons.
#250: Mongolians invented lemonade around 1299 A.D.
#302: Ketchup was once sold as a medicine.
#306: In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was considered an aphrodisiac.
#244: The watermelon seed-spitting world record is about 70 feet.
#365: The oil in cashews helps prevent tooth decay.
#496: To clean paint off your hands, use olive oil – it softens the pain and makes it easy to remove.
#327: Chewing gum was invented in New York City in 1870 by Thomas Adams.
#28: Chewing gum while peeling onions will prevent you from crying.
#99: You burn 20 calories an hour chewing gum.
#364: Borbrygmi is the noise that your stomach makes when you are hungry.
#892: The can opener was invented 48 years after the can.
#270: Colors like red, yellow and orange make you hungry.
#271: Dim lights reduce your appetite.
#893: Jack-O-Lanterns were originally made out of turnips.
#989: To make one pound of honey, a honeybee must tap about two million flowers.
#366: The center of some golf balls contain honey.
#411: Lifejackets used to be filled with sunflower seeds for flotation.
#381: Baboons were once trained by Egyptians to wait on tables.
#686: A Pelican can hold more food in its beak than its belly.
#751: Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.
#408: Panda bears eat up to 16 hours a day.
#682: The giant panda can eat up to 83 lbs of bamboo a day.
#413: The T-Rex’s closest living relative is the chicken.
#416: Many butterflies and moths are able to taste with their feet.
#937: Squirrels lose more than half of the nuts they hide.
#203: Atlantic salmon are capable of leaping 15 feet high.
#166: Before mercury, brandy was used to fill thermometers.
#199: The largest cheesecake ever made weighed 57,508 lbs.
#880: The Venus flytrap can eat a whole cheeseburger.
Given our locale in the beautiful Bay Area, we loved these ones about SF, too:
#181: The first jukebox was located in San Francisco in 1899.
#23: The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monument.
#799: The official color of California’s Golden Gate Bridge is International Orange.
Which new fact are you going to tell someone about?
