Coffee

I love coffee so I went in search of interesting facts that I didn't know about coffee. I hope you will find some of them interesting, too.

Did you know:

~Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, with oil being the first?

~Dark roasted coffee has less caffeine because caffeine is burned out as the beans are roasted?

~There are approximately 24,000 coffee shops across the USA?

~Coffee was the first food to be freeze-dried?

~Hawaii is the only U.S. State to grow coffee?

~Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day?

Considering that nine ounces is considered a cup, how many cups per day do you contribute to that 400 million?

Olestra

Fat free potato chips! Sounds wonderful, right? Not really.

In 1998, Frito-Lay introduced fat free potato and tortilla chips made with olestra, a chemical substitute for fat that adds no fat, calories, or cholesterol to the products it is used in. However, olestra cannot be absorbed by the human body and it also inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and minerals.

These fat free chips came with a warning from the FDA that olestra can cause abdominal cramping and loose stools (anal leakage). That right there was reason enough for me to never touch them. I knew people who did eat them and the general consensus was that if you ate them in moderation, there were little to no effects. If you ate the whole bag at once, though, you were going to pay.

In 2003, the FDA ruled that the warning label was no longer necessary, saying that studies showed there were no side effects from olestra. Olestra is still used today in some “light” foods, such as Light Pringles. You still won't get me to try it. 

Bananas

In my introductory post, I promised to tell you why bananas are picked at night. It was a question I had pondered, but had never researched. There are actually two reasons why bananas are picked at night. The first is that light starts the ripening process. For bananas that are sold commercially, it is best for them to be as green as possible when they get to the store. Since they continue ripening after being picked, the stores don't want loads of ripe bananas that will go bad before they are purchased. 
The second reason that bananas are picked at night is that they are grown in very hot climates. Picking bananas at night offers the banana pickers some relief from the sun and heat. 

In closing, I leave you with a question. What do you consider the perfect ripeness of a banana?

Flour tortillas and pie crust

Flour tortillas and pie crust. What do they have in common, you might ask? A reader (thank you, Tim) posed a question asking why the taste and texture are so different from each other, considering they have basically the same ingredients. Indeed, they do have similar ingredients-flour, salt, shortening or lard, baking powder, and water for tortillas; flour, salt, shortening or butter, and water for pie crust. Two notable differences between the two are the baking powder in the tortillas and the temperature of the ingredients. Warm water for the tortillas; ice cold water and cold butter or shortening for the pie crust. Baking powder makes dough rise, hence the fluffy tortillas. As far as the different water temperatures, I speculate that it reacts with the other ingredients differently, resulting in a more dense texture for the pie crust, and a softer texture for the tortillas.

So there is my opinion on the matter. I hope you have enjoyed this installment of fun and interesting facts about food that you never knew you wanted to know.

Facts about pistachio shells

Pistachio shells used to be red. Many of you won't remember this, but eating pistachios used to mean that you ended up with hands that were stained red.

So what's the story here? Well, before 1979, the U.S. imported the majority of its pistachios from the Middle East. When the pistachios were harvested, they weren't immediately dried and this caused water stains to appear on the shells. These stains were thought to be unappealing, so the nuts were dyed red to cover the stains. 

In 1979, the U.S. placed an embargo on Iranian pistachios, which gave U.S. pistachio growers a chance to get in on the market.  The U.S. growers used a different harvesting process, which resulted in the pistachios being dried right away. No water stains meant no dye needed. 

So there you have it. The first food fact that you never knew you wanted to know.