Wisdom Disconnect: September 22, 2010

Hot like Johnny Depp: The Naga jolokia was certified by Guinness World Records as being 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. It is generally recognized as the world’s hottest pepper.

Because eight is better than four: Tarantula is commonly eaten in Cambodia in a town called Skuon. Hundreds of these furry arachnids are hunted, cooked and sold every day.

Multipurpose: Vinegar is handy to have around. It can be used in recipes, as a cleaning agent, to relieve itchy skin, to kill weeds and more.

He eats like a monkey: As part of a BBC experiment, volunteers ate a three-day rotating menu of fruits, vegetables, nuts and honey for 12 days. They ate about five kilograms of food per person per day. In other words, for these 12 days, the volunteers ate like zoo apes. At the end of the 12 days, volunteers had decreased their cholesterol and blood pressure and lost weight.

Not for haemophobics: Pig’s blood is consumed in Hungary. It is often fried with onions or eggs.

Use a scale: One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. The average American eats about 1,500 pounds of food a year.

Go veg to reduce your carbon footprint: There are more vegetarians in India than in the rest of the world combined. In 2006, a Hindu newspaper reported that 40 per cent of the population (that’s 399 million people) are vegetarians. The high number of vegetarians in India is in large part due to class and religious reasons.

A wise man once said: “In corn, I think I’ve found the key to the American food chain. If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald’s meal, virtually all the carbon in it —and what we eat is mostly carbon —comes from corn.” –Michael Pollan