All About Food Trivia Facts

Test your knowledge about foods. What popular nut, for instance, contains a poisonous oil? And, where does tapioca come from?

The peanut, in actuality, is a member of the bean and pea family.

(Speaking of nuts, an easy way to remove the meat from almonds, Brazil nuts, hickory nuts, pecans, and walnuts whole is to put the nuts in boiling water for three to five minutes. Remove them from the water, and cool before cracking.)

You’ll be surprised to know that a raw potato placed in each shoe at night will keep the leather soft and the shoes smelling fresh and clean.

In 1893 the United States Supreme Court decreed the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. Any plant or part of a plant generally eaten as part of the main course of a meal is a vegetable. Any plant or part of a plant generally eaten as an appetizer, a dessert, or out of the hand is a fruit.

Potatoes are a vegetable — unless, of course, they are made into potato chips and used for dips. Then they are, by law, a fruit.

Tomatoes are fruits in a salad, but when cooked in a stew – a vegetable. (Pssst . . . technically, a tomato is a type of berry.)

Do you know where tapioca comes from? It is the starch derived from the roots of a poisonous plant known as bitter cassava.

The elegant fig was once the staple food of slaves in Greece and Rome. Today they are still known throughout the Middle East as “the poor man’s food.”

Raw cashews contain poisonous oils. The plant is closely related to poison ivy and poison sumac. The nut is rendered harmless — and tasty! — through the process of roasting.

As ridiculous as it sounds, the banana tree isn’t really a tree; it is a herb.

Rice paper is not made from rice. It is made from the pith of a small tree that grows in Taiwan.

What do you call the results of a mash consisting of 85 percent corn, 12 percent malt, and 3 percent rye, which also includes juniper berries, coriander seeds? Gin.