Startling things you never knew about the stuff you swallow.

Ø Amazing Fact #1

 The most expensive coffee in the world is brewed from beans partially digested and defecated by the Asian palm civet. The world’s most expensive coffee, kopi luwak (literally, “civet coffee”) is brewed from coffee beans that have been eaten and partially digested by the Asian palm civet, a catlike wild animal. The beans are harvested from the droppings of the civet and washed, and can be brewed into an aromatic coffee renowned for its low bitterness and excellent flavor.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #2  Common bananas are all genetically identical, because they come from trees that have been cloned for decades. Have you ever noticed that while there are a plethora of varieties of nearly all common fruits such as apples, oranges and peaches, each banana seems identical to every other?

 

Ø Amazing Fact #3 U.S. law grants the Coca-Cola Company a unique exemption to import coca leaves while prohibiting anyone else from importing what might otherwise become a popular super food. Coca leaves have been chewed and consumed as tea for thousands of years in the high Andes. They are rich in many essential nutrients; they ease respiratory and digestive distress and are a natural stimulant and painkiller. Indigenous tradition and scientific studies have both confirmed that in their natural form, the leaves are completely safe and non-addictive—it takes intensive processing and toxic chemical ingredients to produce cocaine.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #4 The common bread ingredient L-cysteine is derived from human hair. If you read the ingredients label on a loaf of bread, you will usually find an ingredient named L-cysteine. It is a non-essential amino acid added to many baked goods as a dough conditioner in order to speed industrial processing. It’s usually not added directly to flour intended for home use.  While some L-cysteine is directly synthesized in laboratories, most of it is extracted from a cheap and abundant natural protein source: human hair. The hair is dissolved in acid and L-cysteine is isolated through a chemical process. Other sources of L-cysteine include chicken feathers, duck feathers, cow horns and petroleum byproducts.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #5 Chicken McNuggets contain an industrial chemical. According to the McDonald’s Corporation, its famous Chicken McNuggets are made with ingredients including sodium phosphates, “partially hydrogenated soybean oil and cottonseed oil with mono -and diglycerides,” sodium acid pyrophosphate, ammonium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, “hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness” and “Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.”

Ø Amazing Fact #6 The seed inside a peach contains an almond-like nut which holds a potent anti-cancer medicine called laetrile. Peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and almonds are all closely related fruit trees with very similar pits. In all these fruits, the pit must be broken open to reveal the almond-shaped (and sized) kernel within. In fact, this is what almonds actually are: the kernel within the pit of the fruit of the almond tree!

 

Ø Amazing Fact #7 “Confectioner’s glaze”—a common coating on candies and pills—is made from the bodily excretions of an Asian beetle. Confectioner’s glaze, also called pharmaceutical glaze, resinous glaze, pure food glaze and natural glaze, is a common ingredient in candies and pills. By any name, it’s the same ingredient as shellac, the chemical that they sell in hardware stores and that is used for sealing and varnishing wood floors (and used to be used in electronics). Shellac is actually a chemical secreted by female lac bugs (Laccifer lacca), a type of “scale insect,” in order to form sheltering tunnels as they travel along the outside of trees. It is extracted for industrial use by scraping bark, bugs and tunnels off of trees in Asian forests and into canvas tubes. The tubes are then heated over a flame until the shellac melts and seeps out of the canvas, after which it is dried into flakes for sale. Before use in food or as varnish, the shellac must be re-dissolved in denatured alcohol. Instead of shellac, some food producers use a corn protein called zein.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #8  One of the world’s most expensive food items is made from bird saliva. For more than 400 years, bird’s nest soup has long been one of the most expensive foods in the world, and even today a single bowl of it costs between $30 and $100. You can’t just make it out of any bird’s nest. Only the edible nest of the cave swift let will do, a nest made entirely out of the bird’s saliva. These nests are high in calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium. They are hard when harvested, but partially dissolve into a more jelly-like consistency when boiled into soup.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #9 Microwave popcorn gives off a toxic, lung-damaging gas when cooked. You might be reassured to learn that the buttery flavor in microwave popcorn typically comes from a chemical actually found in butter, but you shouldn’t be. This chemical, called diacetyl, is so toxic that it commonly destroys the lungs of workers in microwave popcorn factories, afflicting them with the crippling and irreversible disease known as bronchiolitis obliterans. Bronchiolitis obliterans is so rare outside of this context that it has become more commonly known as “popcorn lung,” after the primary cause of the disease.

 

Ø Amazing Fact #10 Rosemary oils can be used as a natural meat preservative. It works better than chemical additives. Although some people already use the popular herb rosemary for seasoning their meat, this combination may become more common in the near future as food manufacturers respond to consumer demand for more natural products. Currently, two of the most common additives used to preserve meat are BHT and BHA. But studies have linked BHA with cancer and BHT with hyperactivity, causing some consumers to avoid products containing them.

- UZMA SIDDIQUI

M.Sc (1^ST SEM)

INSTITUTE OF FOOD TECHNOLOGY