180_Is Honey Really Bee Vomit?...And Other Funny Food Facts

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 180

Is Honey Really Bee Vomit?…and Other Funny Food Facts

In case you haven’t noticed, life has no standardized rules. How we are prepared to meet the world as adults depends mostly on how we are raised as kids and our family background. 

But at least we have certain basic skills such as how to drive, where to get food and how to find and pay for the various services needed to meet our daily needs. But what we are taught changes over time because societal norms change. What children are taught today is totally different from 50 years ago.

And one good example is where your food comes from and how it is produced. So, if you want to know some interesting and funny facts, then join me for E180 Is Honey Really Bee Vomit?..and Other Funny Food Facts. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E180 Is  Honey Really Bee Vomit?… and Other Interesting Food Facts. 

First on the agenda is the sustainability question of the week.

Sustainability question of the week

Can you list at least 6 common sustainability practices that you can start today? 

Good news story of the week

I think most people are aware of the impact on the environment of our meat production. And part of the impact is related to the grain that is fed to livestock. Nearly 40% of the grain produced globally is fed to livestock. The grain in the US alone that is fed to livestock is sufficient to feed 800 million people. But, one company in the UK may have found at least a partial solution to that. 

You have heard me talk before about the benefits of insect proteins either used as a replacement for meat, or used in protein bars or otherwise processed into snack foods. But, one UK start up has come up with a way to integrate insect proteins into feeding livestock. 

The company Entocycle uses bugs to replace corn, soy, and fishmeal as a high-quality animal feed to pigs and chickens. This works simply because they have a different digestive system relative to cows. And if foraging naturally, insects likely would have made up a good portion of their diet anyway. 

Entocycle’s London facility raises thousands of black soldier fly larvae that are turned into feed for pigs and chickens. This species of fly will eat almost any wasted food which is another bonus for environmental waste management. There is the potential to divert food scraps from going to the landfill and instead becoming food for the flies.

Additionally, several studies have proven that the supplementation of black soldier fly larvae to pigs improvement growth performance and meat quality. 

Fly larvae production is quick and cheap. Additional, black soldier flies are a non-disease, non-pest species found all over the world. 

So, a round of applause this week to Entocycle to making another sustainable step forward.  

Now let’s jump right into this weeks episode. 

When I first graduated veterinary school I truly had limited experience and exposure in this field because I had only worked in one hospital. A few years after graduation I realized I needed to broaden my perspective. I gave up full time employment and  I started doing locum work around Colorado, which meant taking shorter term jobs with different hospitals. Eventually that transitioned into working between multiple states and countries. 

At the height of trying to broaden my perspective, I was on a plane 57 times in one year. This was when I realized that getting on a plane had become akin to doing laundry. It was routine, mundane, and just another thing I had to do to get by in life. Making small talk while sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger was more annoying than not. And I got to the point where I never admitted what I did for a living. 

However, this boredom was occasionally punctuated by a very interesting person or just an entertaining experience. On one trip I sat next to an older gentleman who turned out to be the dean of the dental college in Phoenix, Arizona. We had a short conversation about our personal professions and moved onto talking about life, family, and fun. 

On another trip I had a long layover in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you have never been there it is my favorite airport because it has really large nice rocking chairs by the windows with a pianist playing music in the background. Turns out I sat next to a woman who was a commercial airline pilot. Again, we made passing comments about our personal professions and moved on to just having a nice conversation. 

On another trip my flight got canceled and I ended up yet again trying to sleep on the floor of the airport while waiting for a connecting flight. My attempt to find a quiet place to sleep was interrupted by a much older gentleman and a woman I presumed to be his daughter. They were having a loud conversation in German and judging from their accent I presumed they were Jewish. After what seemed an eternity they shut up and went to sleep. 

When I opened my eyes a few hours later I made direct eye contact with this older German man. I said to him “I was not counting on spending the night on the floor.” He replied “At least you were not sleeping on the floor of a prison camp.” When he immediately got up and walked away I realized I had truly missed the opportunity to have a great conversation. 

And what do all of these experiences have in common? 

We all have a different origin and a different perspective. Our backgrounds and values influence how we perceive the world and even the people around us. Sometimes we are left on our own to make up whatever we want because there are no standardized rules about life. No play book. It becomes even more confusing at times because societal norms are constantly changing. What children are taught today is completely different from 50 years ago. 

But it also makes us forget and overlook things as I did. We develop tunnel vision. And this causes us to miss important opportunities that could affect our lives.  But this also emphasizes the fact that many of us have a limited perspective on the world. We get comfortable with where we are in life, how we live, what we do, and the choices we make. We get to the point to where we don’t think much about how we live. 

For example, most of us go to the supermarket and never have the first thought concerning the origin of our food. I think that our lack of perspective has a lot to do with present day societal norms which has a tendency to completely disengage us from the natural world.

In the 1850s,  64% of the population lived on farms. But by the 1950s is was only 16%. And at present day, only 2% of our population enjoys the farm life. This certainly accounts for the total lack of any sort of agricultural education among a great deal of our population especially children.  

For example, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy paid for an online survey of people all over the country. The results are rather surprising. 

Seven percent of Americans, approximately 16.4 million adults, believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. The truth is that it is only milk, sugar, and cocoa powder. But truly it is surprising that these numbers aren’t even higher than they are given the general lack of agricultural education. 

A different study funded by the Department of Agriculture found that nearly 1 in 5 adults did not know that hamburgers are made from beef. But that same study found that many more people had a total lack of knowledge concerning basic farm facts. They had no idea how big US farms were or even what animals ate. Many did not know where food was grown or how it even gets to the supermarket. Or in the case of chocolate milk, a good percentage of people do not even know what is in it. 

Another group of researchers interviewed fourth, fifth and sixth graders in California to assess their knowledge about basic food facts. More than half of them did not know that pickles were made from cucumbers. Forty percent did not know hamburgers came from cows and thirty percent did not know that cheese was made from milk. 

Furthermore, most children knew the names of common foods in their raw form and that food was grown in gardens but most did not know how things grown on the farm became common foods. But this lack of knowledge extends far beyond our children and some researchers think that such ignorance about our food systems is completely logical. 

Our lack of knowledge about our food seemed to develop right along with the industrialization of our food systems.  By the mid 1800s more and more people were moving into cities and fewer people were involved in food production and processing. Increased improvements in food processing, manufacturing, storage and transportation, made it possible to ship foods in different forms and over great distances. 

Consequently, in a relatively short period of time, the distance from farm to kitchen was completely transformed. It was no longer a short walk down a garden path. It was now a convoluted 2,000 mile trip involving tractors, trains, ships, airplanes and big rigs all guzzling large amounts of fossil fuels. 

At present there is nothing in our educational framework that teaches children where food actually comes from except for the store. Many people experience food as simply an industrial product that has no resemblance of the original animal or plant. 

Most people can’t even imagine the origin of boxed cereals, shrink wrapped hotdogs, or even the noodles that they eat. Some do not even know that a French fry comes from a potato. Furthermore, the USDA says that orange juice is the most common “fruit” in America and French fries and chips are among the top vegetables that we consume. 

Now you may be wondering why is this important. There is actually a very valid reason. But before I move onto that I want to entertain you a little bit over some very interesting and funny random food facts including the truth about bee vomit.

1) A pickle is not necessarily a pickle.

Pickling is the process of using an acidic brine to preserve food. The process has been used as a means of food preservation for thousands of years. Whenever food is pickled the end product is referred to as “a pickle.”

2) No one knows for sure when pickled cucumbers were referred to as “pickles.” None the less, pickles are made from cucumbers. 

3) French fries are actually Belgian fries and they do come from potatoes. 

Although this topic is debated, most people believe that the practice of frying strips of potatoes started in Belgium and were called “les frites.” It is believed they were mislabeled as “French fries” by American serviceman coming to Belgium after WWI. They were named that after the French language that was spoken in the Walloon region of Belgium.  

4) Most of our sugar does not come from sugar cane. Approximately 55% of the sugar we see in our supermarkets comes from sugar beets. After harvesting the beets are cleaned, sliced, boiled in water. The resulting liquid is  filtered for crystallization and turned into sugar

5) ”Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was a marketing slogan. 

It was actually morally frowned upon to eat breakfast until about the 17th century. Queen Elizabeth’s fondness for the meal boosted the popularity of breakfast among Europeans. 

But the start of the pro-breakfast movement among Americans was the marketing slogan “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” This was coined in the 19th century by James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg to sell more of their newly invented breakfast cereal which was corn flakes.  

6) Pound cake got its name from the recipe. 

This is because early recipes called for one pound of butter, one pound of eggs, one pound of flour and one pound of sugar. The first recipe appeared in a cookbook in 1795. 

7) Ranch dressing is dyed in order to make it white. The most common dye used is titanium dioxide, which is the same dye that is used in paint and in sunscreen to make it white. It is also used in multiple other food products to produce a more vibrant color. 

Titanium dioxide was linked to cancer in laboratory rats and is now banned in several European countries. However, it is still on the market in the US. 

8) Fruit flavored snacks look shiny because of car wax. That’s right. They are coated with carnauba wax which is the same type of wax used on cars. 

9) White chocolate isn’t chocolate at all. 

It is a mixture of sugar, milk, vanilla, lecithin, and cocoa butter. It does not contain chocolate at all. 

10) Tomatoes were first thought to be toxic, then they we thought to be medicinal. 

In the late 19th century tomatoes were called the “poison apple.” That was later debunked. Studies have now shown that tomatoes actually have several health benefits, including reducing inflammation, boosting your immune system, and lowering cholesterol.

11) Chickpeas and almonds contain almost as much protein as steak. 

That’s right, 100 g of steak contains approximately 25 grams of protein. The same amount of chickpeas contains 21 g and almonds contain 28 grams of protein. 

12) Pineapples got their name from pinecones. 

When early explorers first saw pineapples, they thought they looked like pine cones. That is how they got their name. And pineapples do not grow on trees. They grow as a low shrub and it takes almost 34 months for them to mature. 

13) Fruit Loops are all the same flavor. All those different colors mean nothing at all. Due to different production methods used in the UK, the company misleadingly sold the idea that each individual loop color was a different flavor.

14) There is a Spam museum in Minnesota

SPAM was invented in Austin, Minnesota by Jay Hormel, using some left over meat. SPAM was often served to GIs during WWII in Hawaii. By the end of the war it was adopted into local culture. Hawaiians now consume 7 million cans of SPAM per year. 

But there is a 14,000 square foot SPAM museum in Austin, Minnesota. 

15) Artificial sweeteners can cause dementia. 

If you drink one or more artificially sweetened drinks per day, such as soda, you are three times more likely to develop dementia. It is also associated with insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease and stroke. 

So, if you are cutting calories by using artificial sweeteners, it may be better to cut down on sweeteners altogether. 

16) Peanuts can be found in dynamite. Peanuts have an oil that is used in make glycerol, which is the main ingredient in nitroglycerin. 

17) Bottled water doesn’t expire but the bottle does. Once water is bottled, it doesn’t go bad so to speak. But eventually the bottle it is in start to break down and leach chemicals into the water. 

18) Cauliflower comes in multiple colors. 

Did you know that not all cauliflower is white. There are also green and purple varieties, which have a higher concentration of antioxidants.

19) Insect parts are allowed to be in your food. 

By FDA standards, there is an allowance for the amount of bug parts in your food. For example, chocolate can have no more that 60 insect fragment per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have put to 30 insects per 100 grams. 

20) The most disliked vegetable in the world is one of the best you can eat. 

Top of the list for the most disliked vegetables in the world are Brussel sprouts, Artichoke, Celery, and even cabbage. However, Brussel sprouts are packed with vitamins and minerals including vitamin C and K. They also have few calories, no fat, no cholesterol and are full of powerful antioxidants. 

I highly recommend cooking them stovetop and caramelize them with spices, butter and olive oil. If my mother had cooked them like this when I was a kid I would have loved them from the start. 

21) German chocolate cake did not originate in Germany. 

It was an invention of a Texas homemaker in the 1950s, in particular Dallas, Texas. The name originated from Sam German, the man who invented the baking chocolate bar for Baker’s Chocolate Company. 

22) Nearly 40% of all produce grown in the US is thrown away because it is ugly. 

If it is not aesthetically pleasing it never reaches to supermarket. People perceive it as being inferior and lacking nutrition so people do not buy it. Next time you go to the supermarket you can get some screaming deals if you are willing to embrace the ugly

23) Is honey really bee vomit? 

Technically, no it is not. Honey bees collect nectar in their crop, which is a small pouch used for storage. It is not the stomach. That nectar is mixed with pollen to form a pellet which clings to their back legs. It is then transported to the hive and scrapped off using their other legs. 

24) We share a surprising amount of genetic similarity to a number of things. 

-Our genetic make up is 96% similar to a chimpanzee

-60% of our DNA is identical to a chicken

-60 of our DNA is similar to a banana

So what exactly is the point of all of this? 

Nearly 50% of us never or rarely seek any information about where our food was grown or how is was produced. There are 50,000 edible plants in the world yet only 15 of them provide 90% of the worlds energy intake. Furthermore rice, corn and wheat make up 2/3 of that caloric intake.  

To this day, much of the public remains completely disengaged about where their food comes from or are misinformed about how it is made. This lack of knowledge actually produces a significant problem.   Food affects our lives on every level. Additionally, our consumer choices and our agriculture practices will set the course of our collective future in several different ways. 

To make the matter more difficult, more and more of us have transitioned to an urban environment which disconnects us from the natural world even more. Furthermore, the proliferation of online content makes it difficult to separate valid nutritional information from fads and fraud. Big business pushes ideas that aren’t always scientifically based but rather intended to promote their own products. 

But as the world continues to contend with energy and resource conservation it is more important than ever to recognize how we can use our limited resources as well as what we waste along the way. 

Most surveys show that more than 50% of us are willing to pay more for food that has less of an environmental impact. That’s fantastic. However, consumers first need to know how food is produced before they can take action. And at the end of the day, if we are not properly informed about our food how can we possibly learn to eat healthy and make sustainable choices. Furthermore, these lessons are critical for children to learn how to eat healthy. Remember knowledge is power and without it how can we make informed decisions. 

Okay, let’ start wrapping up by answering the sustainability question of the week.  

Name 6 different sustainable practices that you can start doing today.

I am going to rapid fire a few things here because the list is long: 

Reduce your water usage, reduce your waste production, start composting, go paperless, change the lights in your house, use renewable energy, use natural cleaning products, go plastic free, start recycling, plant a garden, avoid disposable items and especially single use plastics.

And there are plenty more.  

Now, I started off this episode with relating a few stories about some of my travel experiences. I had truly gotten to the point that I needed to do things differently because I was losing my objectivity. 

Sometimes a small little epiphany can change everything. So starting tomorrow, change something that you are doing. Take a different way to work. Turn left instead of right when you go out the door. Be extra nice. You might make a new friend. Try some different food. Help someone across the street. You never know what just might happen. 

And one last thing before I go. Lyndon Johnson once said, “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose. 

Well folks, that’s about it for this week. But before I go, just a reminder that I have completely redesigned the home page for the podcast. If you go there you can download a cheat sheet with 200 sustainability questions and answers completely free. So please take advantage of that resource. 

Until next week, the next time you add nutmeg to a recipe, it is a hallucinogen, crackers have holes in them for a reason, and the next time you order up that fast food burger think about the fact that it could contain meat from a hundred different cows. 

This is your host Patrick signing off. Until next week always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.