It’s always a joy to stumble across new and silly food facts as I take my daily stroll through the huge inter-web-universe of food industry news. Here are my favourites from the last few weeks:
In Japan you can purchase sake-flavoured KitKats containing 0.8% alcohol. Because sake and milk chocolate have always seemed like a great match…?
Pink peppercorns are the berries of a Peruvian tree and not genetically related to other types of peppercorns, despite the fact that green, white and black pepper all comes from the same flowering vine (Piper nigrum). Green peppercorns are unripe berries, black peppercorns are dried berries and white peppercorns have had their dark outer husks removed prior to drying.
The famous fried chicken chain KFC plans to release flavoured nail polish that you can lick. It has made two flavours available for market testing in Hong Kong and residents of that city can choose which will go into production; Hot & Spicy or Original. This is not a prank; they really have developed chicken flavoured, lickable nail polish. And it comes in two colours.
Watermelons looked really weird in the 17th century. And probably didn’t taste that great. This painting by Giovanni Stanchi from around 1650 is of a watermelon of the day. Who says genetic engineering is a modern-day phenomenon; we have been doing it for centuries.
Animals known as bearcats or binturong in South East Asia have popcorn flavoured urine. Researchers confirmed this by squeezing 33 sedated binturongs, which are about the size of raccoons, to obtain samples for chemical testing. Yes; squeezing. The researchers published a paper in the prestigious journal Science of Nature which prompted one journalist to be tempted by the unfortunate pun ‘passing the popcorn’.