There are many interesting tidbits about food. Let us read some important, informational, fun facts about the food we commonly eat.

Coffee:

The rarest coffee is found in Indonesia and is called as Kopi Luwak. It costs $300 for a pound.

To prepare one pound roasted coffee, it takes about 20,000 coffee cherries.

Tomatoes:

On average every year each American consumes 22 pounds tomatoes.

Over half of the total tomato consumption is Tomato ketchup and sauce.

Rice:

There are more than 15,000 rice varieties present all over the world.

Cabbage:

The entire cabbage has 91 percent water content in it.

Milk:

On an average an American drinks 25 gallons milk in a year.

88 percent of the milk constitutes water whereas just 12 percent of it has a food value.

A family of four people in America consumes around 6000 pounds of food per year.

Bananas:

A banana is considered to be a great body builder. It helps in tissue building. A single banana if consumed each day will provide better health and in turn save a lot of money.

Never keep them in refrigerator.

Green bananas: cook and eat it has raw starch like potatoes.

Partially yellow bananas: cook as a dessert or as a vegetable.

Yellow banana: eat raw, can get digested now.

Yellow banana having brown freckles: best time to eat. Highest nutrition and can be digested by people with weak digestion.

Brown with yellow freckles: can’t be eaten raw. Can use in banana and bread recipes.

Miscellaneous:

In the year 1977, Americans consumed way more than 7.5 billion quarts popcorn.

Fifty gallons maple sap produces a single gallon maple sugar.

Do you know what Hushpuppies are? They are made up of small pieces of cornmeal batter that are fried and are mostly used in southern traditions. Years ago, hungry dogs were fed with fried batter, after the pieces finished the owner use to stop the dogs calling "Hush, puppies" and this is how they got their name.

Every day a bird consumes food weighing half the weight of its body. Imagine a 50 pound weighing child eating 25 pounds food daily!

In the US, farmers use about 1.5 billion pounds pesticides and half of it is in the food they eat, while just one percent of food shipment is tested. In fact, even the apple growers use around 24 types of pesticides on apples. Imagine the intake of pesticide we take each day.

Now, aren’t these facts interesting?

To understand what or rather who Vegans are, one must know the meaning of Veganism. Veganism is a form of vegetarian diet that excludes eggs, meat, dairy products, or any other kind of ingredient derived from animals. Therefore, a person following such a diet is said to be Vegan.

There are vegans who even deny food that is processed through animal products, most commonly, white sugar and a few wines. They even discard the products made of animals such as leather, wool or fur. Strong discussions are still on, on considering whether certain products such as Honey are vegan or not.

Nowadays, our diet is loaded with animal- derived products and ingredients. Most of the times we don’t realize how much we are dependent on such food items. In that case renouncing such food items from our daily diet is a tough challenge. Thus, it is very important to know what can be had as a vegan diet.

Vegan diet thus constitutes of grains, legumes, beans, fruits and vegetables. There is huge variety of dishes that can be prepared using these foods items. There are substitutes too that are available in the market so that you can be a vegan and still can gorge on hot dogs, mayonnaise, cheese and ice creams.

If you are on the way to become a vegan then you can either directly stop the eating the above mentioned food products or you can even be a vegetarian first and then later on skip eggs and dairy products, which ever suits you best.

There are a number of factors within a ‘vegetarian’ diet which can or cannot be consumed by certain kinds of vegans. Lets have a quick look at these factors below:

• A Vegan is allowed to eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, dairy products, poultry, and eggs.
• A Lacto-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds and dairy products. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, poultry, and eggs.
• An Ovo-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds and eggs. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, poultry, and dairy products.
• A Lactoovo-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, eggs and dairy products. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish and poultry.
• A Semi-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, eggs, shellfish, fish and poultry and dairy products. He eschews meat.

So, based on this, one can see that even within vegetarians and vegans, there are many different things that one can and cannot eat. At the end of the day it is a personal choice made by one depending on the philosophy one believes in. Also, many a times, such food choices are made by people for health reasons.

It is a widely known fact that organic food costs us a little extra as compared to the intensively farmed and heavily sprayed chemical food. It can always be considered as a better option as compared to the farm grown food. It has more minerals, vitamins, enzymes and most importantly tastes better than the farm produced food. It is devoid of any kind of pesticides, insecticides fertilizers other artificial additives, colorings, flavorings and preservatives that are toxic for the human body. However, in recent times the cost of organic food has grown more than the normally available food in the shops. There are many reasons for this increase in price and can be easily explained by focusing on certain important factors.

The production of these types of foods or products is very limited and thus does not satiate the demand. In addition, the total cost involved in the production process of organic foods are also higher due to greater labor inputs on small and less quantity or output units. After the initial process of harvesting, processing, transportation and marketing of comparatively small or large volume of organic food ultimately results in comparatively higher price of the final food item.

This clearly indicates that due to the less amount of organically food grown, the demand and the cost in the market are divided over a final small quantity of output produced by these farms. Besides this, many of these food products are not chemically enhanced and their growth is not hormone induced. They take a longer amount of time (compared to the typical food products available in the market) to actually grow and become worthy of being sold. Ultimately their growth cycle is larger and their costs are divided over a smaller number of outputs.

Nevertheless, in past few years with the growing awareness and increasing demand for organic food and its products, sincere steps have been taken by the government. Steps have been implemented and in many places strategy to execute new methodologies and technological innovations are in already in process to reduce the costs required to produce, process, distribute, and market the organic products.

The various other factors that play an important role in the high value of the organic food are:

• Environmental protection and enhancement
• High standards for the animal welfare

All these hidden factors have influenced the price of the organic food products and resulted in making them rate higher than their traditional counterparts.

If you are considering a career in the culinary arts, organic food is a great way to treat those who consume your food well.