▲More than one billion pizzas are delivered in the US every year, with Super Bowl Sunday leading the pack.

▲Four out of five children recognize the McDonald's logo by the time they are three years old, which is before some of them know their own names.

▲Americans love their burgers, hot dogs, and tacos. Thanks to globalization and, let’s face it, Hollywood, most of America’s favorite foods have become popular all around the world. But do we know just how popular they are? Check out these interesting facts you probably didn’t know about junk food.

▲Junk food alters the brain activity in a way similar to drugs, like cocaine and heroin.

▲Chick-fil-A sells more than 1.64 billion chicken nuggets every year. That would be more than five nuggets for each person in the US.

▲In 1979, Daniel White told the judge he killed San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk because of all the Twinkies, candy bars, and cupcakes he’d been eating, which messed up with his brain. This strategy became known as the “Twinkie defense,” and was outlawed by Congress 1981.

▲Americans eat 13 billion hamburgers every year, enough to circle the earth more than 32 times.

▲Chicken meat is not the first ingredient on the ingredient list of chicken nuggets. Rather, the main ingredients are fat, epithelium, bone, and nerve and connective tissue.

▲Eating fast food on a daily basis has the same impact on the liver as hepatitis, particularly French fries, fried chicken, and onion rings.

▲A fast-food hamburger can contain meat from hundreds, or even thousands, of different cattle.

▲Pizza Hut goes through more than 300 million lbs (136 million kg) of cheese per year. That’s equivalent to 750 blue whales. That’s right, the largest animal to ever live times 750 every year.

▲Gelatin, the ingredient behind the Jell-O jiggle, comes from collagen, which is often collected from animal skins. The gelatin in desserts, for example, is derived from pig skin.

▲This red food coloring used in Skittles, Good n' Plenty, and ice creams is extracted from boiling cochineal bugs. Ironically, the bugs produce carminic acid to keep predators away.

▲The shiny covering around jelly beans is called shellac, a product derived from the secretions of the female Kerria lacca, an insect native to Thailand.

▲The term “junk food” was first used in the 1950s, but didn’t become popular until a couple of decades later when the song ‘Junk Food Junkie’ by Larry Groce reached the top of the charts in 1976.

▲The pound cake gets its name because its original recipe called for one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.

▲Tootsie Rolls, named after its creator Leo Hirshfield’s daughter Clara (whose nickname was Tootsie), were placed in soldiers’ ration kits in World War II because they could survive various weather conditions.

▲The average American consumes 22 tsps of sugar every day, most of which are in the form of high-fructose corn syrup served in soft drinks and candy bars.

▲Cracker Jack, which originated in Chicago, was the first product to use hidden prizes in its bags to attract children to their food.

▲The average American eats more than four lbs (1.8 kg) of potato chips a year.

▲Women are more likely than men to pull their Oreo cookies apart before eating them.

▲An 11-year old boy named Frank Epperson from Oakland, CA is responsible for (accidentally) inventing the popsicle in 1905, after he left cup of soda mix outside overnight with the stick he used to stir it with.

▲Since its debut in 1912, Nabisco has sold more than 450 billion Oreo cookies, enough to reach the moon and back five times.

▲About 10,000 lbs (4,535 kg) of potatoes go into making just 2,500 lbs (1,134 kg) of potato chips.

▲Originally named “penny cups,” Reese's makes enough Peanut Butter Cups to feed one cup to everybody in the US, Africa, Europe, Japan, Australia, India, and China combined.

▲After vanilla, mint chocolate chip and cookies and cream are America’s most popular ice cream flavors.

▲The word "Pepsi" comes from the word "dyspepsia," which means indigestion. The drink’s creator, Caleb Bradham, believed that the drink would aid with digestion.

▲More than two billion popsicles are sold every year.

▲Americans eat more than 4.5 billion tacos a year. That’s enough to stretch 490,000 mi (788,579 km), which would also be to the moon and back.

▲

Americans eat more than 20 billion hot dogs a year, or 70 hot dogs per person.

Amazing, unbelievable facts about junk food

Can you guess how much cheese Pizza Hut uses in any given year?

22/07/24 por StarsInsider

FOOD Meals

Americans love their burgers, hot dogs, and tacos. Thanks to globalization and, let’s face it, Hollywood, most of America’s favorite foods have become popular all around the world. But do we know just how popular they are? Check out these interesting facts you probably didn’t know about junk food.