Little known facts about food

This is something I found in Chambers, so…. Special thanks goes to u/DeepFriedCrispbread for majority of the compilation. <br><br>1. Potatoes contain enough complex compounds to create chloroform, which can knock you out essentially. (you need a fuckton of potatoes though to create that much chloroform)<br>2. Spinach contains a ridiculously high amount of iron, which is why popeye got strong after eating it.<br>3. The reason why omelette turns green is because the heat causes the iron to get released from the eggs, which then turns it green.<br>4. If you drink raw milk from a cow, youll be able to taste the food the cow ate, which is why milk from grain fed cows tastes so different from milk from grass fed cows.<br>5. Salt doesn't make water boil faster, it only makes the water boil at a higher temperature. <br>6. Ketchup used to be homemade medicine consisting of mushrooms, turpentine and tomato. Seriously, people used to have a ketchup bottle on the medicine cabinet and eat a spoonful of it whenever they needed it.<br>7. Apples are related to roses, they're both in the rose family.<br>8. The reason why you shouldnt squeeze the juice out of the lemon directly into your food/drink is because the little white stuff in the skin is extremely bitter, and it will all come out if you squeeze the lemon too much. You should ALWAYS roll the lemon on the counter with your full weight before squeezing it, because this will release just the right amount of juice without the bitter stuff coming out.<br>9. The reason why sometimes when youre cutting an onion you dont cry and sometimes it feels like the onion is trying to kill you is because some onions contain a much higher amount of certain compounds than others. These compounds are released into the air as you cut the onion, which irritates your eyes and makes you cry. The best way to avoid this is to cut the onion under cold running water, or to point a fan at your face while cutting the onion. You can also chill the onion in the fridge for half an hour before cutting it, which makes the compounds less potent.<br>10. Carrots used to be a strong predictor of wealth in medieval Europe, because even though they were extremely cheap, they were bright orange, which was the most expensive colour to produce artificially (because of the lack of good dye at the time), and so having bright orange carrots meant that you had enough money to wear orange clothes.<br>11. Beets can be used as a natural red food colouring, as well as a natural red dying agent, because all the colouring in beets is contained in the water you boil them in. If you boil beets in water and then throw out the beets, the water will be this beautiful deep red colour, and if you drink it, you might end up having red piss. This is completely harmless and temporary. <br>12. If you let an egg age long enough, you can just squeeze the contents of the egg out of the broken end of the egg shell. (About 3-4 months)<br>13. If you boil a bunch of different vegetables in the same pot of water, some of them will turn yellow/orange, some green and some blue. This is because some of them contain more carotenoids (like aubergine and carrots), while others contain more chlorophyl, which is blue. The reason why we dont see chlorophyl as blue is because most plants have more carotenoids in them than chlorophyl, which overpowers the effects of the blue.<br>14. The reason why celery is so crunchy is because it contains a ridiculous amount of hollow cells, kind of like Styrofoam. If you burn celery, it will leave a residue that is almost exactly like Styrofoam.<br>15. If you boil celery in water, the water will turn blue. This is because celery contains compounds that get released into the water when boiled, and they react with the chlorophyl in the water to create a blue pigment.<br>16. Cilantro contains a bunch of compounds that some people are extremely sensitive to, which makes it taste like soap for them. This is extremely common, and its because the compounds in cilantro are similar to the compounds in soap, and the people that are sensitive to it have working OR6A2 receptors in their mouth. This is why people that hate cilantro swear its the worst thing in the world.<br>17. Cinnamon is made from the inner bark of the cinnamon tree, which is dried. If you roll the cinnamon bark into a tight roll before drying it, you get the cinnamon sticks you see in most supermarkets. If you just dry the bark in a sheet instead of rolling it up, you get ground cinnamon, which is just the dried sheets pounded into tiny pieces.<br>18. Pepper is made by picking the peppercorn berries before theyre ripe and then either allowing them to ferment naturally, or by pickling them in brine. This is why peppercorns naturally float, because theyre essentially pickled berries.<br>19. The reason why you should never drink milk straight from the carton is because the carton is essentially a breeding ground for bacteria. All the bacteria from your mouth enters the carton when you drink from it, where it begins to breed at an insane rate. If you then allow the carton to sit in the fridge for 3-4 days, it will essentially turn into a bacteria smoothie, which is why cartons of milk have such a low shelf life compared to bottles.<br>20. The average water molecule will circulate through every ocean, every river, every lake and every organism on earth in less than 3 years. Essentially, a water molecule from the ocean can be in your tap water in less than 3 years from now.