Surprising food facts

We love fun food facts!

Here’s some surprising facts we’ve discovered about our favourite fruit and veg.

1. You may think kiwi fruit is from New Zealand but they’re actually from China and are known there as the Chinese Gooseberry.
2. Dragon fruit is sweet and crunchy, with a flavour that’s like a cross between kiwi and pear. The plant is actually a type of cactus!
3. Lime juice is so acidic it will dissolve concrete.
4. Protip for getting the most juice from a lemon: before juicing, roll a room-temperature lemon under your palm to break down the cells inside the fruit that hold liquid. You should get 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice per fruit.
5. In Latin, apricot means “precious”.
6. This unusual looking veg (above) is actually a purple and white striped eggplant, known as ‘graffiti eggplant’. It’s best cooked in stews, baked dishes or with pasta.
7. Red capsicums are more mature than green, orange or yellow capsicums. They have a sweet, almost fruity taste making them perfect for tossing into salads.
8. Peaches are a member of the rose family.
9. An ear or cob of corn is actually part of the flower and an individual kernel is a seed.
10. Also: corn will always have an even number of rows on each cob.
11. The colour of the head of cauliflower depends on the variety – the most common type of cauliflower is white, but it can be also purchased in green, orange, brown, yellow and even purple!
12. Okra seeds can be roasted and ground to form a caffeine-free substitute for coffee.
13. Okra isn’t actually a vegetable, it’s an edible flowering plant in the mallow family.
14. Beetroot can be made into a wine that tastes similar to port.
15. Iceberg lettuce got its name from growers in the 1920s who shipped their lettuce covered with crushed ice. When the lettuce reached its destination, it resembled icebergs, hence the name.
16. You can grow a pineapple plant by twisting the crown off, allowing it to dry for 2-3 days, and then planting it.
17. When you buy truss tomatoes, keep them attached as they keep ripening in the fruit bowl, drawing nutrients from the stem.
18. The Dapple Dandy Pluot Plum is a cross between a plum and an apricot, hence the name: PLUm + apricOT. With a distinctive pale green and yellow skin with red mottling, it has a spicy plum and apricot flavour.
19. Medjool dates are a type of tree fruit.
20. Banana plants are not trees, they are a type of herb.
21. A cluster of bananas is called a hand.
22. More songs have been written about bananas than about any other fruit.
23. Eggplants aren’t really vegetables, they’re berries.
24. The Paw Paw is also classed as a berry.
25. The rambutan is native to the Malay-Indonesian region and has a leathery skin with soft spines and a white, translucent flesh that resembles the lychee in taste and texture. The rambutan is a sweet and sometimes sour grape.

• fruit
• healthy
• veg