Test Your Strange Food Facts IQ
What vegetable burns more calories than it contains?
Celery
has about 6 calories per stalk. But your body burns more calories than
that in the digestion process. It's not actually the chewing and
crunching, but the digestion of the high amount of cellulose in your
stomach that burns the calories.
What common bagel topping can show up as an opiate in drug tests?
Poppy
seeds are related closely enough to opium poppies that they can show up
in a urine test as an opiate like heroin or morphine. The level is
generally considered too low to be considered a "true positive" and most
drug testing companies discount these results. However, just to be on
the safe side, the federal prison system has banned its inmates from
eating poppy seeds. And in case you were wondering, you could pretty
much eat your weight in poppy seeds and not get high.
Which U.S. state eats more ice cream per capita than any other?
Despite living in one of the coldest states in the Union, Alaskans eat twice as much ice cream as any other state.
- What are the food additives cochineal and carminic acid made from?
These
scientific terms found in the ingredient lists of many foods,
beverages, and cosmetics are fancy names for a red food coloring
developed by the Aztecs, made of dried powdered beetles native to
Central and South America. While their origins may be less than
appetizing, they are perfectly safe to eat.
What do the letters in the canned meat product SPAM stand for?
Salted
Porky Anonymous Meat? Guess again. Originally it stood for SP iced h AM
, named in a contest, where the winner was awarded the princely sum of
$100. The people at Hormel Foods say that while it does include ham and
spices, it doesn't begin to describe the product that is SPAM, and now
maintain that SPAM stands merely for SPAM.
- Joe Wilkes, Team Beachbody Newsletter
