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Food and drink: Know-it-all food stuff

Impress your pals at dinner parties, with apologies to Harper’s Index

Number of oysters New Zealanders eat on average each year: 100,000,000

Population of New Zealand: 4.1 million

Number of times Koreans wash their rice before cooking: 4

Number of varieties of seaweed or laver found around the shores of Korea and Japan: 1,000

Average amount of salted and dried cod that each Portuguese resident eats a year: 100 pounds

Colour many Chileans paint their kitchens to keep flies away: Deep blue

Number of years corn has been cultivated in Mexico: 7,000

Number of hours the main Mexican meal of the day, the comida , unfolds over: two or three hours, usually between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Time the evening meal is usually served in Spain: 10 p.m. or later

Amount of milk in the typical diet in mainland China: 0

Amount of time Chinese thousand year eggs are usually stored: 6 to 10 weeks

Age of a fork found in China that pre-dates chopsticks: 4,600 years

Number of distinct, separate dishes in Chinese cuisine: 80,000

Number of separate recipes for egg dishes that can be found in Larousse Gastronomique : 282

Number of sauces France's "King of Chefs" Marie-Antoine Carême categorized in French cuisine: More than 200

Number of hams the gastronome Brillat-Savarin claimed he could cook down to a bottle of sauce "no bigger than your thumb": 50

Number of hours a Japanese ramen cook will boil pork for soup broth: nine

Number of distinct regional cuisines in France: 12

Years that hardy young Frenchwomen ( filles du roi ) arrived in New France in Canada, each with "an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, two barrels of salted meat and 11 crowns": late 1600s

Number of ethnocultural groups with their own culture and cuisine now living in Canada: More than 100

Rank of Canada's per capita egg consumption in the world in 1928: first

Average annual per capita egg consumption in France in 1790, 1938 and 1964: five dozen, 12 dozen and 19 dozen respectively

Increase in the weight of the average egg from 1850 to 1999: From 1.8 to 2.1 ounces

Number of varieties of wheat known: About 30,000

Number of years ago that spelt was grown in what is now southern Germany: 6,000 years

Amount of grapes needed to make one cup/250 ml of balsamic vinegar: 70 lb/36 kg

Number of kinds of common vinegars: seven (wine vinegars; cider vinegars; fruit vinegars, including pineapple and coconut; malt vinegars; Asian vinegars; white vinegars; distilled vinegars)

Average acetic level of North American vinegars: five per cent. Wine vinegars may be as high as seven per cent, Japanese rice vinegars four per cent, and black Chinese vinegars as low as two per cent.

Time when Western Europeans first encountered sugar: 11th century during the Crusades to the Holy Land

Year when the first large shipment of sugar came to England: 1319

First European uses of sugar: as a flavouring and a medicine

Ratio of the sucrose content of the average sugar cane: 15 per cent

Year a Prussian chemist used brandy to extract juice from white beets to make beet sugar: 1747

Amount of worldwide sugar production that beet sugar now accounts for: 30 per cent

Proportion that fructose is sweeter than table sugar: 20 per cent

Average annual per capita consumption of bananas and plantains worldwide: 30 lb/14 kg

Number of "fingers" of individual fruit that may be found on one "hand" or cluster of bananas: 300

Maximum weight of a single banana or plantain: 2 lb/900 gm

Average ratio of vitamin C contained in guavas: 1 gm/100 gm of fruit

Number of separate seedless fruitlets that fuse together to form a single pineapple fruit: 100-200

Percentage of breadfruit that is starch, by weight: 65 per cent

Percentage of food budgets devoted to the purchase of bread in King René of Italy's properties in 1457: a minimum of 32 per cent for overseers and a maximum of 52 per cent for shepherds

Percentage of food budgets devoted to the purchase of wine in King René of Italy's properties in 1457: a minimum of 28 per cent for overseers and a maximum of 34 per cent for shepherds

Ratio that the price of the most expensive meat (veal) and the price of the cheapest meat (pork) exceeded that of the best quality wheat flour in 14th century Florence: 2.5 times and 2 times, respectively

Ratio that the price of meat exceeds that of flour today: 10 to 15 times

Percentage increase in sales of functional foods with supposed health benefits in Western Europe 2004-07, vs. increase in sales of packaged foods: 10.2 per cent vs. 6.3 per cent respectively

Percentage increase in sales of "gut health" foods in the U.S. 2002-07, vs. overall foods sales growth: 15.8 per cent vs. 2.9 per cent respectively

Predicted increase in annual sales of functional foods worldwide by 2013 vs. sales in 2007: 64 per cent increase to $128 billion

Rank of Nestlé as world food company: No. 1

Percentage of total business that bottled water constitutes for Nestlé: 10 per cent

Percentage that sales of Nestlé products containing "functional" ingredients increased per year 2004-07: 23.7 per cent

Amount Nestlé has increased its research budget for functional foods from 1998 to today: doubled

Year that Nestlé started working on technology for Nespresso, an almost instant espresso made from a little capsule of coffee: 1970

Ratio of Nestlé sales that are in its home market, compared to Kraft's: two per cent vs. 60 per cent

Number of flavours of its trademark line of instant coffees Nestlé makes to satisfy its global customers: 500

 

Sources: You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions by Thelma Barer-Stein; On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee; Food: A Culinary History edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari; The Economist , Oct. 31, 2009

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who figures she spends 1 per cent of her food budget on bread.