Hippo was the main ingredient of the first soup

Discover how many snails do French eat every year, what is the Worcestershire sauce and what can you make out of peanuts.

Every day the media relates various tips on nutrition, new discoveries, diets and the like. However, there is still lots of interesting information that many people are generally unfamiliar with. We bring you some of it:
- Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.

- Onion was named after the Latin word meaning a large pearl.

- Half of the world's population lives mainly on rice.

- The average person consumes about 35 tons of food during their lifetime.

- Ice cream comes from China and it was brought to Europe by Marco Polo.

- In France, 500,000,000 snails are eaten every year.

- A gallon of drinking water contains about 100,000 bacteria.

- Skimmed milk contains as much of calcium as a whole.

- Frozen vegetables are sometimes healthier than the fresh, especially if the fresh stayed at a room temperature.

- Supposedly Giacomo Casanova consumed chocolate before the conquest of women - due to its aphrodisiac abilities.

- After the milk is exposed to sun light for two hours, it loses between half and two thirds of its vitamin B content.

- If one of the sources of your vitamin C is meat or beans, the body will make a better use of iron.

- Peanuts are used to manufacture dynamite – peanut butter oil is transformed into glycerol, which is later processed into nitroglycerin, one of the ingredients of dynamite.

- Worcestershire sauce is created by dissolving anchovies in vinegar, until the anchovies melt completely, including bones.

- The first soup that was ever made contained hippo

- The remains of fast food restaurants were found even in the ruins of ancient cities. Even the ancient Greeks loved fast food. The only thing that is new is a mass production, standard menus and fast food recipes.

- Wieners were first made in China

- In the Middle Ages, the fish was traditionally served with a slice of lemon, because it was thought that the lemon juice degraded all accidentally swallowed bones.

Meat

Untill the year 1300 the word ‘meat’ referred to all solid foods, while the word ‘drink’ was used for all the liquid foods. Around the same year the word ‘meat’ was increasingly used to mark the animal flesh used for food. Shortly afterwards, when the meat of animals become a significant part of the English diet, this term got its present meaning.

Alcohol in cooking

Contrary to what most people believe, and this includes many professionals, beer, wine or other alcoholic beverages used in preparation of the food remain after cooking process is done and they do not evaporate.

100 percent of alcohol remains in the dishes that are immediately consumed. Leave the dishes overnight, and the alcohol content will be reduced to about 70 percent. Boiled dishes will contain about 85 percent of the original alcohol and the open-flame preparation will preserve about 75 percent. Alcohol concentration decreases significantly only after 2.5 hours of cooking when only 5 percent remains.

Fork

Spain and Italy were the first countries that adopted the use of table fork. It happened in the 16th century, almost one hundred years before it was first used in France.