A lot of people consider eating one of their favorite pastimes. And, really, who wouldn’t? There are so many good food items that you can find that the crime is not eating them. But many people who claim that they love to eat just go through it without really taking stock of their passion for eating and actually learning about food.
Consider this the first lesson about food. Below are some strange facts about food. Some may be surprising, others disgusting, but all of them are interesting.
• Here’s a no-brainer – food that is healthy is actually more expensive than junk food, in fact, it is ten times more expensive. That’s one reason why more people are unhealthy these days, the cost of eating healthy is just getting too expensive. To make this realization more painful, for every dollar you spend on food, 81 cents actually goes to marketing, manufacturing and the packaging. Only 19 cents actually goes to the edible stuff – what you eat.
• If you think that any manufactured food you’re eating is one hundred percent sanitary, think again. The FDA actually has ‘leg room’ for the inclusion of contaminants in food. For example, that cinnamon powder you love to put in your baked goods? The addition of one milligram of animal waste (that’s poop for you) per pound is considered acceptable. Berries can carry up to four insect larvae per 100 grams, up to 20 percent of moldy pineapple can be included in canned pineapple, and up to 1250 insect fragments per 10 grams of oregano is considered safe. You’ll never look at an pineapple upside down cake the same way ever again.
• We love to tell our children to eat their fruits and vegetables because it is packed with nutrients. But recent studies show that the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are dropping. This means you need to eat more servings of fruits and vegetables to get the same amount of nutrients your grandparents were getting from fewer servings.
• Chicken is the choice of many people who want to get rid of fat in their diet. But studies reveal that the chickens produced today have 266 percent more fat compared to chickens forty years ago. As a result of this, chickens today also have 33 percent less protein. In a couple of decades, licking butter may be healthier than eating chicken.
• Milk has always had this image of being one of the healthiest substances on earth. So it’s an alarming fact that cow’s milk may in fact be now dangerous. The main culprit is the food that are given to cows. Cow feed now contains recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST. It’s a hormone that induces cows to produce more milk. With this hormone, a single cow can double her production of milk (from 10,000 pounds a year to an astounding 20,000 yearly). Unfortunately, rBST has been linked to many types of cancers, among them breast, colon and prostate cancers. So do be careful when taking milk. There are now manufacturers that make rBST-free milk.