Interesting Facts About Food and Diet

The staple food of the Kanembu, a tribe living on the shores of Lake Chad in Africa, is Algae. The Kanembu harvest a common variety known as Spirulina from the lake, dry it on the sand, mix it up into a spicy cake, and eat it with tomatoes and chili peppers.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Consumption of green and yellow vegetables has decreased 6.3 pounds a year per person since the late 1940s. The use of cereal and flour products has dropped about 30 pounds a year per person, and Consumption of noncitrus fruits has declined at about the same rate. The only fruits whose rate of consumption has increased since World War I are citrus fruits.

The Bible mentions Salt more than thirty times.

Apples are more efficient than coffee at keeping people awake in the morning.

On average, a pound of potato Chips cost two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.

Eighteen ounces of an average Cola drink contain as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

Though most people think of Salt as a seasoning, only 5 out of every 100 pounds produced each year go to the dinner table The rest is used for such diverse purposes as packing meat, building roads, feeding livestock, tanning leather, and manufacturing glass, soap, ash, and washing compounds.

The nutritional value of squash and pumpkin Seeds improves with age. These Seeds are among the few foods that increase in nutritive value as they decompose. According to tests made at the Massachusetts Experimental Station, squash and pumpkin Seeds stored for more than five months show a marked increase in protein content.

On the average, each American Consumes 117 pounds of potatoes, 116 pounds of beef, 100 pounds of fresh vegetables, 80 pounds of fresh fruit, and 286 eggs per year.

Half the foods eaten throughout the world today were developed by Farmers in the Andes Mountains. Potatoes, maize, sweet potatoes, squash, all varieties of beans, peanuts, manioc, cashews, pineapples, chocolate, avocados, tomatoes, peppers, papayas, strawberries, mulberries, and many other foods were first grown in this region.

In ancient China and certain parts of India, Mouse flesh was considered a great delicacy. In ancient Greece, where the Mouse was sacred to Apollo, Mice were sometimes devoured by temple priests.

According to a report issued by the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, improved Nutrition would cut the national health bill by approximately one third. The committee also claims that a diet composed of 10 percent protein, 10 percent fat, and 80 percent complex carbohydrates (plus exercise done in moderation) could save 98 percent of those who die of heart disease every year.

Rennet, a common substance used to curdle milk and make cheese, is taken from the inner lining of the fourth stomach of a calf.

There are 15,000 different kinds of Rice.

Rice is the chief food for half the people of the world.

In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was believed to be an aphrodisiac.

After the "Popeye" comic strip started in 1931, spinach consumption went up by thirty-three percent in the United States.

Refined Sugar is the only food known that provides calories but no nutrition. About 100 pounds of Sugar are eaten per person each year in America, and only 36 percent of it is taken directly. The rest is "hidden" in commercially sweetened and prepared foods like ketchup, baby food, canned fruits, and cereals. Children, it is estimated, consume 3 to 4 pounds of refined Sugar a week.

Among many native tribes in South Africa, Termites are roasted to a nutlike consistency and eaten by the handful, like party snacks. It might also be noted that at certain specialty food shops in the United States and Europe, the connoisseur of exotic delicacies can purchase such treats as chocolate covered ants, candied bees, and pickled bull's scrotum.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat more than 22 pounds of Tomatoes every year. More than half this amount is eaten in the form of ketchup and Tomato sauce.

Everyone knows about Vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Few are aware that there are also Vitamin K (promotes proper liver function and vitality), Vitamin T (helpful in treating anemia), Vitamin H (also called biotin), and Vitamin U (promotes healing of ulcers).

In ancient Rome it was considered a sin to eat the flesh of a Woodpecker.

source: ioframe.com

Interesting Facts About Geography

Travelers to La Paz, Bolivia, often become ill the moment they arrive in the city, Why? La Paz is 11,900 feet above sea level, the highest metropolis in the world. People with ailing hearts or bronchial problems are warned to stay away, and even those in perfect health usually cannot avoid some illness resulting from the Altitude.

Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.

The states of Arizona and Hawaii have never adopted Daylight Savings Time, Neither has Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or American Samoa.

Before 1903 Panama was part of South America. After 1903 it was part of North America. This was due to an arbitrary Decision of the Panamanian government, which in 1903, after staging the last of fifty revolutions (perhaps a record in itself) against its parent country, Colombia, gained its freedom, both to dissociate itself from Colombia and to Decide which continent it wished to be part of. After less than a year's consideration, the government Decided that the country should be North American, and so it has remained ever since.

Juneau, Alaska, has a greater Land Area than any other city in the Western Hemisphere. In 1977 the main city and outlying districts were consolidated, making Juneau officially 3,108 square miles in size. Of this area, 1476 square miles are dry land, 928 are an icecap, and 704 comprise water. Compare this 3,108 square miles with other large cities Jacksonville. Florida, traditionally considered the largest American city, has an Area of 840 square miles. Houston, Texas, boasts 450, Los Angeles 455, and New York City 320.

Of the twenty-five highest Mountains on earth, nineteen are in the Himalayas.

The highest Mountain in all the British Isles, Ben Nevis in western Scotland, is only 4,406 feet high. In many other countries a "Mountain" of this size would be considered something less than a large hill.

The needle of a compass does not point directly north. It points either a little to the east or a little to the west, not enough to make any difference to the average hiker. The difference is known to navigators as the "variation of the compass," and they take it into consideration when making critical geographical calculations. The phenomenon is due to the fact that the magnetic north and south poles do not coincide with the geographic north and south poles.

On a clear day one can see five states from atop the Empire State Building in New York City: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

The nation of Bangladesh covers approximately the same land area as the state of Wisconsin. Yet it ranks eighth in Population among all the world's countries.

In 1867, when Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska, one of the most resource-rich areas in the world, for the unbelievably low price of $7.2 million, he was showered with abuse by the American people and was almost forced to resign. Newspapers dubbed the acquisition "Seward's Icebox ... .. Walrussia," and "Icebergia." Seward, however, stood by his decision and named the country Alakshah, which means "great country" in the Aleut language.

If the Nile River were stretched across the United States, it would run just about from New York to Los Angeles.

There is only one River in the world that has its source near the equator and from there flows into a temperate zone: the Nile For some little understood reason, the flow of most Rivers is in the opposite direction.

Alaska has a Sand desert with Dunes over 100 feet high. It is located along the flatlands of the Kobuk River in the northwestern part of the state.

Canada, the second largest country in the world (3,851,809 square miles), could fit into the largest country, the Soviet Union (8,647,250 square miles) more than twice.

source: ioframe.com

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Interesting Facts about Animals

• The Poison Arrow frog has enough poison to kill 2,200 people.
• Emus can't walk backwards.
• A group of ravens is called a murder.
• A group of bears is called a sleuth.
• Twelve or more cows is called a flink.
• A baby oyster is called a spat.
• Penguins are the only bird that can leap into the air like porpoises.
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• India has 50 million monkeys.
• By some unknown means, an iguana can end its own life.
• Americans spend around $3 billion for cat and dog food a year.
• Pigs can cover a mile in 7.5 minutes when running at top speed.
• A mule won't sink in quicksand but a donkey will.
• The shell constitutes 12 percent of an egg's weight.
• Some fleas have split penises like a Y shape
• A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
• A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
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• More people are killed annually by donkeys than in airplane crashes.
• Animal breeders in Russia once claimed to have bred sheep with blue wool.
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• When a horned toad is angry, it squirts blood from its eyes.
• The typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year.
• The ostrich has a 46-foot long small intestine.
• A scallop has 35 blue eyes.
• Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
• Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.
• The average garden-variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
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• A goldfish has a memory span of 3 seconds.
• A swan is the only bird with a penis
• The left leg of a chicken in more tender than the right one.
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• The only dog that doesn't have a pink tongue is the chow.
• A squid has 10 tentacles.
• A snail's reproductive organs are in its head.
• A group of owls is called a parliament.
• An elephant can be pregnant for up to 2 years
• Chickens can't swallow while they are upside down.
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• Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 liter bottles.
• Cows can have regional accents
• The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
• Zebras can't see the color orange.
• The smartest dogs are the Jack Russell Terrier and Scottish Border collie.Dumbest: Afgan hound.
• A rat can go without water longer than a camel can.
• The fat molecules in goat milk are 5 times smaller than thosefound in cow milk. It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to breakdown as opposed tothe hour that it takes to break down cow milk.
• There are more insects in ten square feet of a rain forest than there arepeople in Manhattan.
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• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
• Bulls are color blind.
• A cow's only sweat glands are in its nose.
• Mosquitoes have 47 teeth.
• A domestic cat can frighten a black bear to climb a tree.
• In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.
• US Secret Service sniffer dogs are put up in five-star hotels during overseas presidential visits.

source: ioframe.com

Interesting Facts About Water

• 50 billions of plastic water bottles per year are put into landfills?
• … human body consists at 75% (on average) of water?
• … it is necessary to drink at least 2 litres of pure water every day to feel good?
• … water helps you look good due to its exceptional characteristics?
• … water is the main component in the process of weight loss?
• … BARRIER cartridges were tested by the UL to filter 95 gallons of water from the tap due to the formulation of the filter elements and filters more than twice the capacity of other competing brands so you can save your money if buying BARRIER production?
• … 1 BARRIER cartridge is equal to 760 16 oz. bottles of water?
• … to refill water bottles can help the environment by reducing landfill waste?

source: barrier.ru

50 Interesting Facts

1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

5. The Mercedes-Benz motto is “Das Beste oder Nichts” meaning “the best or nothing”.

6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.

7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

11. Dalmatians are born without spots.

12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

13. The ‘v’ in the name of a court case does not stand for ‘versus’, but for ‘and’ (in civil proceedings) or ‘against’ (in criminal proceedings).

14. Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.

15. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.

16. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.

17. Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.

18. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.

19. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.

20. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

21. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

22. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.

23. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.

24. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.

25. The lion that roars in the MGM logo is named Volney.

26. Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.

27. Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.

28. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

29. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.

30. There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

31. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

32. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.

33. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.

34. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

35. Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.

36. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.

37. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.

38. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it
is smiling).

39. Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”

40. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.

41. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

42. The average person laughs 13 times a day.

43. Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are:Mizaru(See no evil), Mikazaru(Hear no evil), and Mazaru(Speak no evil)

44. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

45. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

46. Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.

47. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

48. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

49. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause.

50. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!!

Source: hemmy.net

Interesting Facts About Diseases

Ninety percent of all teenagers suffer from some form of acne.

A woman's arthritic pains will almost always disappear as soon as she becomes pregnant. No one knows why.

A study at the Harvard School of Public Health revealed that women who drink one or more cups of coffee a day are two and a half times more likely to get bladder cancer than women who drink no coffee.

One cannot catch cold at the North Pole in winter. Neither can one contract the flu, nor most of the ailments transmitted viruses and germs. The winter temperature is so low in this part of the world that none of the standard disease causing Micro-organisms can survive.

The chances of an American woman gettinq breast cancer depend on a number of variables. For a woman whose sister's mother, or daughter has developed cancer in both breasts the chances are five to three against, however, if one of these relatives developed cancer before reaching menopase the odds are fifty-fifty. Women with the lowest chances of getting breast cancer are those whose ovaries have been removed before the age of thirty five. Chances are almost as good for a woman who has had a child before the age of eighteen.

Teenagers are 50 percent more susceptible to colds than people over fifty.

Every year some 10,000 infants in the United States die from a mysterious ailment known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), or Crib Death. Most of these children have been put to bed hours before their death, seemingly in perfect health. All die without a trace of struggle. As yet no one has been able to explain the cause of these deaths.

Diabetes was the third leading cause of death by disease in America. It has increased 50 percent since 1965, and today affects at least 15 million people.

In 1971, at Memorial Hospital in New York City, a woman weighing less than 100 pounds ran a fever of 114 degrees and survived without brain damage or physiological after effects.

There is a strange and terrible disease known as bulimia in which the victim develops a ravenous, insatiable appetite. A woman observed in St. Bartholomew's Hospital in nineteenthcentury London is recorded to have consumed three loaves of bread every day, along with three pounds of steak, large quantities of vegetables, a pound of cereal, and twenty glasses of water. An American doctor named Smith, reporting in the Medical and Surgical Reporter in Philadelphia, mentioned an even stranger case, that of a boy who ate continuously for fifteen hours every day and who had eight or nine bowel movements each evening. In one year this boy's weight increased from 105 to 284 pounds, and it was steadily increasing by about a half-pound a day. Despite his prodigious intake of food, the boy constantly complained of hunger. Another unpleasant ailment akin to this one is polydipsia, or constant thirst. Medical records mention a three-year-old child who drank two pailfuls of water every day. Sir M. MacKenzie, a British doctor, cited the case of a woman who drank four pailfuls of water a day and who once, appearing before a scientific commission, drank 14 quarts of water in ten hours, passed 10 quarts of urine, and continued to complain of thirst.

Two out of three adults in America have hemorrhoids.

The rate of hypertension is twice as high among blacks as whites in the United States, the rate of hypertension among men living in Vermont is also twice the national average, Women of all races are afflicted by this disorder far less than men.

A condition known as hypertrophy (enlargement) of the tongue can sometimes reach such extremes that the tongue becomes too large for the mouth and protrudes over the chin, reaching down as far as the chest. This extraordinary enlargement may cause deformity of the teeth and jaw, and may even cause the sufferer to choke on his or her own tongue.

In 1918 and 1919 a world epidemic of simple Influenza killed 20 million people in the United States and Europe.

Men are twice as likely to contract leprosy as women.

Medical studies show that members of the Seventh-Day Adventist church, even those living in heavily polluted areas, have 1,000 percent less lung cancer than members of the general population. Moreover, SeventhDay Adventists have appreciably lower rates of other cancers and of respiratory diseases, 40 percent less coronary trouble, and scarcely a quarter the amount of tooth decay found in the general population.

Neuritis and neuralgia are not diseases. They are nerve pains related to disease. In fact, when a pain is identified as neuralgia, it is often because the exact cause is not known Neural differs from neuritis in that neuralgia pains come in paroxysms, while neuritis is more constant and even. Thus sciatica is a kind of neuralgia and a toothache a kind of neuritis

Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

Each year more than 300,000 American teenagers become afflicted with some form of venereal disease.

Interesting Facts About Death

After the great ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky died, doctors cut open and examined his feet. They wanted to find out whether his foot bones were different from those of ordinary men, thinking that his bone structure might account for his ability to perform the extraordinary leaps for which he had been famous. The autopsy, however, revealed nothing unusual.

When an Australian Bushman died, his body was lowered into a grave where a special kind of gravedigger awaited it. This person's job was to slice up the corpse and hand out bits of the flesh to the mourners. The order in which the relatives partook of the feast was strictly prescribed. A mother ate from her children, and children from their mother, A man could eat his sister's husband and his brother's wife. A father, however, could not eat his children, nor children their father.

Coconuts kill more people in the world than sharks do. Approximately 150 people are killed each year by coconuts.

Carl Panzram (murderer of twenty-three people) said---"I wish the whole human race had one neck and I had my hands on it!", before he died.

Edgar Allan Poe felt like saying-- "Lord have mercy on my poor soul..." before dying.

Henry Ward Beecher (when asked on his deathbed if he could raise his arm),--- "Well, high enough to hit you, Doctor."

John Keats said, "I feel the flowers growing over me."...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remarked-"Please close the window." before his death.

Ludwig van Beethoven said, "Applaud, friends, the comedy is finished..." then he died.

Henry IV of France (1553-1610) was exhumed nearly two hundred years after his death so that a death mask of his face could be made.

Under the proper conditions of moisture and heat, the flesh of a buried body will turn to soap. Known as adipocere, this strange substance is a chemical much like baking soda mixed with fat (and thus almost identical in composition to soap) and is called ''grave wax'' by undertakers. For years the corpse of William von Ellenbogen, a soldier whose body turned to adipocere after he was killed in the Revolutionary War, was on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

Hypoxemia is a general term for inadequate oxygenation of the blood and cellular tissue. After the heart has stopped beating, for whatever reason, the body's tissues are no longer supplied with life-giving oxygen. Their essential metabolic processes then cease, and death ensues. Each year man, woman, and child dies of Hypoxemia.

Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

In a churchyard near Cardiff, Wales, one can read the following inscription: "Here lieth the body of William Edwards of Cacreg, who departed this life 24th February, Anno Domini 1668, age one hundred and sixty-eight."

In ancient Egypt, when a rich man was mummified his heart was removed from his body and a heart-shaped stone carving of a dung beetle was put in its place.

The National Academy of Engineering estimates that 15,000 deaths each year are directly attributable to air pollution. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health estimates that many of the 100,000 people who die each year from occupational exposure die as a result of hazardous air quality at work.

The body of Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who conquered Peru in the sixteenth century, was embalmed with special herbs after his death and preserved in the cathedral in the main square of Lima. His body can still be viewed today, displayed in a glass casket.

In medieval Japan, it was believed that there was a single hair somewhere on the tail of a cat that could Restore Life to a dead person. For this reason cats were brought into the room of a dying person and placed next to his or her bed. As a last resort, relatives sometimes had the dying person pluck a single hair from the cat's tail in the hope that this one would prove to be the magic strand.

It is impossible to commit suicide by holding one's breath. At worst, the person who tries this will eventually lose consciousness. The lungs will then start to breathe again automatically.

Since its completion in 1937, more than 600 people have committed suicide by jumping off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Nearly 5,000 Americans under the age of twenty-four commit suicide successfuly yearly. An additional 100,000 tried to. Ninety percent of all suicides are females.

source: ioframe.com