Archive for category Food Facts
Archibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter
Posted by marvin in Food Facts on October 4, 2009
peanut butter
We may have heard lots of people with lots of intriguing phobias, but seldom would we know that there are persons who are phobic of peanut butter. If you haven’t figured it out by now, arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
So what makes peanut butter so sticky? One source says that peanut butter’s high-protein content pulls the moisture out of you mouth. That’s why a peanut butter sandwich sticks to the roof of your mouth.
That may be true, but a dry turkey sandwich sticks to the roof of your mouth just as bad as a peanut butter sandwich does. A plain cheese sandwich is even worse since there is nothing to provide lubrication. Another theory about sandwiches sticking to the roof of your mouth has to do with squeezing the air out from between the food and the roof of your mouth, sort of like the vacuum caused by a wetted rubber plug. If this is true, bread, which contains lots of small air cells, would be particularly bad, but peanut butter by itself wouldn’t be likely to cause sticking.
No matter what causes a peanut butter sandwich to stick, the good thing is that we can add all sorts of things to prevent sticking. With so many different things to complement peanut butter, from grape jelly to bananas, there’s no need to fear the peanut butter sandwich. One sandwich, attributed to Hubert Humphrey, has peanut butter, bologna, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side.
So what’s your favorite peanut butter sandwich combination?
The food industry spends $40 billion on advertising food every year
Posted by davincicook in Food Facts on August 25, 2009
The heaviest advertising comes from American global brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Pepsi. Coca-Cola spends $1.5 billion advertising every year, making it and McDonald’s the two most globally recognized brands. About a quarter of this is spent in the USA, of course, but in recent years Coca-Cola and the other food giants like Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Mars have been targeting the ex-Soviet countries with a vengeance.
Source: 101 FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT FOOD, Farndon
Shiitake mushrooms have anti-cancer properties
Posted by davincicook in Food Facts on July 6, 2009
shiitake
The relationship between good health and a diet rich in mushrooms came to the attention of modern science when health researchers noticed that people who eat mushrooms seem to be healthier than other people. In Japan, for example, scientists discovered fewer incidences of cancer in shiitake- growing regions .
Assuming that people who lived in these regions ate the shiitake mushroom often, scientists wanted to see whether shiitake had anticancer properties. They ran many tests on shiitake and discovered lentinan, the third most widely prescribed anticancer drug in the world.
Why Mushrooms are’nt green
Posted by davincicook in Food Facts on June 26, 2009
shiitake
Mushrooms are not green like many other plants because they do not contain chlorophyll, the green pigment associated with photosynthesis. In spring and summer, the most abundant substance in leaves is chlorophyll, which gives them their green color. Chlorophyll is essential for photosynthesis, the process which converts the energy of sunlight into sugar.
Sun-light is also necessary for the synthesis of chlorophyll itself. During summer when the days are long and sunlight is plentiful, chlorophyll is synthesizedi n a steady, abundant supply, so that throughout the season then leaves remain green.
SOURCE: Healing Mushrooms, Effective Treatments for Today’s Illnesses
