Interesting Food Facts

When it comes to food, it’s not odd that there would be some interesting facts concerning it given it’s been around for a very long.

So we thought we’d share with you a few facts about food that we think are interesting to know. You could share these facts at the dinner table.

Fruit before the colour

If anyone ever asks you what came first, the colour or the fruit, you can say that fruit orange was the first to come before the colour. The English word orange actually comes from the Spanish word naranja. They dropped the first “N” and, over time, the word transformed into orange. 

The colour namesake then eventually emerged due to the fact that orange’s actually had an orange colour. Before they associated the colour with the fruit, the English speaking world actually used the word “geoluhread” as the descriptive word for the colour orange.

Dinner used to be the first meal of the day

Back in older times, there used to be two meals – dinner and supper. Dinner was actually had in the middle of the day, making it the first meal, and supper was had at night before bed. Dinner was the big meal whereas supper was much more a snack.

However, over time, more meals were introduced into the day, causing dinner to be pushed later and later into the day. Instead of renaming dinner, it kept its name to symbolise the largest meal of the day. For most countries, though, dinner is now had at night and has essentially replaced supper.

The Baker’s Dozen

The origins of the baker’s dozen are actually quite violent and relates to the fact when providing people with a certain number of goods (such as loaves of bread), coming up short could often be punished in very violent ways. So say someone asked for 10 loaves of bread and you gave them 9, you could be in big trouble.

This was solidified in 13th century England when laws were officially placed to punish anyone who short-changed a customer. Thus when someone asked for a dozen of something, the baker would give them thirteen to ensure they had given them one more than required rather than giving them less and paying a severe price for it.

Purple carrots

Believe it or not, orange carrots never used to be the popular colour they are now. Before the 17th century rolled around, most carrots were actually purple, with an occasional mutant strain of white or yellow carrots growing.

What happened, though, was Dutch growers began taking the white and yellow strains of carrots and began growing them in the late 16th century. These then developed into the orange carrots during the 17th century into what we have today. Nowadays, you can occasionally find the classic purple carrots. They’re much thinner and their taste varies from sweet to unpleasant.

Have any interesting food facts you’d like to mention? Share them with us in the comments below.