Are you looking for some of the interesting facts about food or culinary? If your answer is yes, then here are some of the most amusing facts you must know. Share these facts and impress your friends.

Ice Cream

Ice cream is a Chinese food item. Marco Polo the famous explorer when returned to Italy, from China in the year 1295, he actually brought a well known recipe called “Milk Ice” among many other things. However, later Europeans substituted cream for the milk, and voila. Since then, ice cream has been a major hit.

Generally, the United States actually consumes on an average 48 pints of ice cream per person, per year. This is usually more than any other country in the world.

On an average, it takes 50 licks to polish off a single-scoop ice cream cone.

Pizza

The word pizza was originally spelt as “pitsa”.

Most pizza is ordered during the weather forecast or TV programs. Adding to this, the delivery folks also report that women, perhaps not surprisingly, are better tippers!

Generally, Americans consume or eat almost 350 slices of pizza each second.

Chilies

The color of a chili is no indication of its spiciness, but what matters is its size. Generally, it is important to note that the smaller the chilie pepper, the hotter it is.

Near about 140 varieties of chilies peppers are alone grown in Mexico alone.

Chilies play a very important role in making foods safer. They help in reducing the harmful bacteria on foods.

Potato

The potato is one of the most important non-cereal crops in the world, and considered as the fourth most important crop overall.

Irish were the first to eat potato. They were first introduced to Britain and Ireland in the late 1500s. It didn’t get popular immediately; many people actually held potato responsible for diseases as it was not talked about in the Bible.

Chips made of potato were first invented by a North American Indian named as George Crum

In the United States, if we compare the price between a pound of potato chips and potato, generally prices of potato chips is almost two hundred times extra than potatoes.

Miscellaneous

The flavor that is commonly associated with bubble gum all across the world is a mixture of wintergreen, vanilla and cassia, a form of cinnamon.

Cheddar is the most consumed and widely purchased cheese in the world.

Research shows that dark chocolate very similar to the red wine actually contains considerable amounts of flavonoid phenolics which in turn may be very helpful in lowering the risk of heart disease.

Today these foods are so common that it is really hard to imagine life without it. However, when these interesting facts were first brought into notice, it was considered as a myth, but slowly it turns out to be real. This list is just to give you an idea about some of the most important trivia that is related to about food and culinary items.

To understand Meals, Ready-to-Eat better let’s imagine you prepared a meal and then kept it in a roasting hot warehouse. Later on you dropped it from an airplane and rolled it on mud and left it open for vermin and bugs. Now, thinking of eating this food after three years. Tell you what if it is MRE (Meals, Ready-to-Eat), nothing will happen to it. After years of deep intense research and thoughtful product development MRE or Meals, Ready-to-Eat has evolved as an excellent operational ration all over the world.

The US military has become the finest-fed fighting force of the present times. In early 1980s, the military officials were fed with canned meals and Combat Individual or C ration and eventually these got replaced by much more standardized operational ration called the MRE. With advancing time the operational rations are required to be more adequate in terms of nutrition and health and yet should be highly mobile and flexibly packaged for combat situations. Meals, Ready-to-Eat, is an answer to such a call. The organized food facility is replaced by MRE operational ration which is then fed to the Marines and Soldiers. 

However, these MRE courses were not quite pleasant and palatable. The meal did fulfill the body requirements of nutrients and sustain the health keeping the soldiers fit yet, it earned a lot of bad names too, for instance, "Mr. E" ( like mystery), "Meals, Rarely Edible", "Meals Rejected by Everyone", "Meals Rejected by the Enemy", "Meal, Ready to Excrete", "Morsels, Regurgitated, Eviscerated", and "Materials Resembling Edibles". The individual meals also got some funny names, like the frankfurters that came in sealed packets of four were called "the four fingers of death".

With time the quality of MRE has definitely improved but the nicknames the food earned still are popular. It is also popularly known as "Three Lies for the Price of One"; which means it isn’t a Meal, isn’t Ready, and no one can Eat it.

MRE also had a low level of dietary fiber in it. It caused constipation and thus was also referred as "Meals Refusing to Exit", or "Meals Refusing to Excrete", and even as "Massive Rectal Expulsions". Although the ration did contain a higher than the standard vegetable content which can facilitate excretion.

In 2007, three gourmet chefs were called to taste the 18 packets of MRE meal. On a scale from 1 to 10 they rated MRE as 5.7. Since then steps are taken in order to improve the quality of the food. Year 2009 saw the introduction of food items like corn bread and buffalo chicken. By the year 2010 much improvement is on its way.