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Amazing Fact #1
The most
expensive coffee in the world is brewed from beans partially
digested and defecated by the Asian palm civet. The world’s most
expensive coffee, kopi luwak (literally, “civet coffee”) is
brewed from coffee beans that have been eaten and partially
digested by the Asian palm civet, a catlike wild animal. The
beans are harvested from the droppings of the civet and washed,
and can be brewed into an aromatic coffee renowned for its low
bitterness and excellent flavor.
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Amazing Fact #2
Common
bananas are all genetically identical, because they come from
trees that have been cloned for decades. Have you ever noticed
that while there are a plethora of varieties of nearly all
common fruits such as apples, oranges and peaches, each banana
seems identical to every other?
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Amazing Fact #3
U.S. law
grants the Coca-Cola Company a unique exemption to import coca
leaves while prohibiting anyone else from importing what might
otherwise become a popular super food. Coca leaves have been
chewed and consumed as tea for thousands of years in the high
Andes. They are rich in many essential nutrients; they ease
respiratory and digestive distress and are a natural stimulant
and painkiller. Indigenous tradition and scientific studies have
both confirmed that in their natural form, the leaves are
completely safe and non-addictive—it takes intensive processing
and toxic chemical ingredients to produce cocaine.
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Amazing Fact #4
The common
bread ingredient L-cysteine is derived from human hair. If you
read the ingredients label on a loaf of bread, you will usually
find an ingredient named L-cysteine. It is a non-essential amino
acid added to many baked goods as a dough conditioner in order
to speed industrial processing. It’s usually not added directly
to flour intended for home use. While some L-cysteine is
directly synthesized in laboratories, most of it is extracted
from a cheap and abundant natural protein source: human hair.
The hair is dissolved in acid and L-cysteine is isolated through
a chemical process. Other sources of L-cysteine include chicken
feathers, duck feathers, cow horns and petroleum byproducts.
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Amazing Fact #5
Chicken
McNuggets contain an industrial chemical. According to the
McDonald’s Corporation, its famous Chicken McNuggets are made
with ingredients including sodium phosphates, “partially
hydrogenated soybean oil and cottonseed oil with mono -and
diglycerides,” sodium acid pyrophosphate, ammonium bicarbonate,
monocalcium phosphate, “hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and
citric acid added to preserve freshness” and
“Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.”
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Amazing Fact #6
The seed inside a peach contains an almond-like nut which holds
a potent anti-cancer medicine called laetrile. Peaches,
nectarines, plums, apricots and almonds are all closely related
fruit trees with very similar pits. In all these fruits, the pit
must be broken open to reveal the almond-shaped (and sized)
kernel within. In fact, this is what almonds actually are: the
kernel within the pit of the fruit of the almond tree!
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Amazing Fact #7
“Confectioner’s glaze”—a common coating on candies and pills—is
made from the bodily excretions of an Asian beetle.
Confectioner’s glaze, also called pharmaceutical glaze, resinous
glaze, pure food glaze and natural glaze, is a common ingredient
in candies and pills. By any name, it’s the same ingredient as
shellac, the chemical that they sell in hardware stores and that
is used for sealing and varnishing wood floors (and used to be
used in electronics). Shellac is actually a chemical secreted by
female lac bugs (Laccifer lacca), a type of “scale insect,” in
order to form sheltering tunnels as they travel along the
outside of trees. It is extracted for industrial use by scraping
bark, bugs and tunnels off of trees in Asian forests and into
canvas tubes. The tubes are then heated over a flame until the
shellac melts and seeps out of the canvas, after which it is
dried into flakes for sale. Before use in food or as varnish,
the shellac must be re-dissolved in denatured alcohol. Instead
of shellac, some food producers use a corn protein called zein.
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Amazing Fact #8
One of the world’s most expensive food items is made from bird
saliva. For more than 400 years, bird’s nest soup has long been
one of the most expensive foods in the world, and even today a
single bowl of it costs between $30 and $100. You can’t just
make it out of any bird’s nest. Only the edible nest of the cave
swift let will do, a nest made entirely out of the bird’s
saliva. These nests are high in calcium, iron, magnesium and
potassium. They are hard when harvested, but partially dissolve
into a more jelly-like consistency when boiled into soup.
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Amazing Fact #9
Microwave popcorn gives off a toxic, lung-damaging gas when
cooked. You might be reassured to learn that the buttery flavor
in microwave popcorn typically comes from a chemical actually
found in butter, but you shouldn’t be. This chemical, called
diacetyl, is so toxic that it commonly destroys the lungs of
workers in microwave popcorn factories, afflicting them with the
crippling and irreversible disease known as bronchiolitis
obliterans. Bronchiolitis obliterans is so rare outside of this
context that it has become more commonly known as “popcorn
lung,” after the primary cause of the disease.
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Amazing Fact #10
Rosemary oils can be used as a natural meat preservative. It
works better than chemical additives. Although some people
already use the popular herb rosemary for seasoning their meat,
this combination may become more common in the near future as
food manufacturers respond to consumer demand for more natural
products. Currently, two of the most common additives used to
preserve meat are BHT and BHA. But studies have linked BHA with
cancer and BHT with hyperactivity, causing some consumers to
avoid products containing them.