- Your brain is about 2% of your total body weight but uses 20% of your body’s energy.

- The energy used by the brain is enough to light a 25 watt bulb.

- More electrical impulses are generated in one day by a single human brain than by all the telephones in the world.

- How much does human brain think? 70,000 is the number of thoughts that it is estimated the human brain produces on an average day.

- After age 30, the brain shrinks a quarter of a percent (0.25%) in mass each year.

- Albert Einsteins brain weighed 1,230 grams (2.71 lbs), significantly less then the human average of 1,300g to 1,400g (3 lbs).

- Each year Americans consume 50 billion aspirin tablets or 15.5 million tons.

- 89.06 is the percentage of people who report normally writing with their right hand, 10.6% with their left and 0.34% with either hand.

(resource:  brainhealthandpuzzles .com)

1) What is the most popular type of home-baked cookie?

Sugar

Chocolate Chip

Oatmeal Raisin

2) When baking at home, which of these is NOT an explanation for tough, hard cookies?

Too much butter

Too much flour

Overmixing

3) Which cookie was invented first?

Animal Cracker

Oreo

Fig Newton

4) Which cookie is traditionally used to make the layered dessert, “Tirimisu”?

Shortbread

Lady Fingers

Nilla Wafers

5) What does the word “Biscotti” mean?

Cream Dough

Cooked Twice

Sweet Cookie

6) What type of cookie is traditionally made with egg whites and ground almonds or coconut?

Snickerdoodles

Fortune Cookies

Macaroons

7) What brand uses animated elves in its advertising campaigns?

Keebler

Pepperidge farm

Nabisco

Where were fortune cookies invented?

Mexico

Japan

China

9) Why is gingerbread dough perfect for constructing houses?

The cookies stick together right out of the oven

The cookies hold their shape when baked

The dough contains a small amount of cement mix

10) Mexican wedding cookies, aka Russian tea cakes, and Pecan Butterballs, are sprinkled with what before serving?

Cocoa Powder

Confectioner’s Sugar

Cinnamon

ANSWERS:

1) Chocolate Chip

More than 50% of cookies baked at home are of the chocolate chip variety. Chocolate chip cookies were invented at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts by proprietor Ruth Wakefield around 1930.

2) Too Much Butter

If you add too much flour to the dough or overmix the batter before baking, the result will likely be a hard, tough cookie. Adding too much butter to the dough will result in a greasy cookie.

3)Animal Cracker

The first animal crackers were produced in the United States by Stauffer’s Biscuit Company in 1871. Nabisco’s Barnum’s circus version hit the market in 1902. The modern version of the Fig Newton was created in 1891 and is named for the city of Newton, Massachusetts. And lastly, the Oreo cookie was invented in 1912. All three of these cookies are currently produced by Nabisco.

4)Lady Fingers

Ladyfingers are used in tiramisu because the cookies so readily absorb the sweet syrup and liqueur used to make the traditional Italian dessert. These delicate cookies are made from sponge cake batter that’s been piped into long, finger-shaped cookies and dusted with sugar before baking.

5) Cooked Twice

While Italians use the word “biscotti” to refer to all types of cookies, Americans think of “biscotti” as the long, dry cookies that are served with hot drinks for dunking. The name is derived from “bis,” meaning twice, and “cotto,” meaning cooked. Baking the cookies twice results in their hard, crumbly texture.

6) Macaroons

These dense, moist cookies were traditionally made with egg whites, sugar, and almond paste, but in North America, they are often made with shredded coconut instead of almond paste. Italian Jews adopted this cookie for Passover, because the chewy sweets have no flour or leavening.

7) Keebler

The Keebler elves, led by Ernie the Elf, became the mascots of the Keebler Company in 1968. The elves worked in the Hollow Tree Bakery, creating “uncommonly good” products in their “magical oven.”

Japan

The Japanese have been making their original version of fortune cookies since the late 1800s. Some speculate that Japanese immigrants who owned Chinese-American chop suey restaurants in California in the 1950s introduced these folded cookies to the American dining public.

9) They keep their shape when baked

Gingerbread cookies contain a fragrant mix of molasses, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The cookies hold their shape when baked, making them ideal for gingerbread houses. You can measure and cut the dough, and be assured the pieces will be the same size and shape when they come out of the oven.

10) Confectioner’s (powdered) Sugar

These buttery shortbread cookies incorporate ground nuts in the dough and are always sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar, giving them a festive, snowy appearance.

Quiz by Delish’s Sara Schwartz

Feast

The Fact: The largest food item on a menu is roast camel

The camel is stuffed with a sheep’s carcass, which is stuffed with chickens, which are stuffed with fish, which are stuffed with eggs. This feast is sometimes featured in Bedouin weddings.

Soup

The Fact: The first soup was made of hippopotamus

The earliest archeological evidence for the consumption of soup dates back to 6000 BC, and it was hippopotamus soup!

Worcestershire Sauce

The Fact: Worcestershire sauce is made from dissolved fish

Worcestershire sauce, the popular English sauce, is made from dissolved anchovies. The anchovies are soaked in vinegar until they have completely melted. The sauce contains the bones and all.

Popsicle

The Fact: The Popsicle was invented by an 11 year who kept it secret for 18 years.

The inventor was Frank Epperson who, in 1905, left a mixture of powdered soda and water out on the porch, which contained a stir stick. That night, temperatures in San Francisco reached record low temperature. When he woke the next morning, he discovered that it had frozen to the stir stick, creating a fruit flavored ice treat that he named the epsicle. 18 years later he patented it and called it the Popsicle.

Microwaves

The Fact: Microwave cooking was discovered accidentally, when a chocolate bar melted in someone’s pocket

This is very true and very scary – imagine what it was doing to his leg! The fact is, Percy LeBaron Spencer of the Raytheon Company was walking past a radar tube and he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. He then tested popcorn in front of the tube (surely turning up the power and standing out of the beam), and it quickly popped all over the room. He is (obviously) known as the inventor of the Microwave oven.

Coconut Water

The Fact: Coconut water can be used (in emergencies) as a substitute for blood plasma.

The reason for this is that coconut water (the water found in coconuts – not to be confused with coconut milk, which comes from the flesh of the coconut) is sterile and has an ideal pH level. Coconut water is liquid endosperm – it surrounds the embryo and provides nutrition.

Ketchup was sold in the 1830′s as medicine.

A sneeze travels out of your mouth at over 100 mph!

Coca-Cola was originally green.

The longest sausage made in Australia was 11 kilometers (6.9 miles) long.

An average woman consumes approximately 20 kg of lipstick in her life.

Seaweed is used to thicken ice cream.

Bubble gum and fairy floss were invented by dentists.

Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.

The can opener was invented 48 years after cans were introduced.

China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year and 25 million trees are chopped down to make ‘em.

A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Sweden is the largest spender on ketchup.

Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

There are more coffee drug (caffeine) addicts in the US than drug addicts of any other kind.

Americans, on average, eat 18 acres of pizza every single day.

The first bar code was used on Wrigleys gum.

There are more bacteria in your mouth than the human population of the U.S.A. and Canada combined.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

In a year, your heart can beat up to 40,000,000 times!

The only “real” food that U.S. Astronauts are allowed to take into space is pecan nuts.

Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.

Chocolate contains the same chemical, phenyl ethylamine that your brain produces when you fall in love.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

Einstein couldn’t speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.

Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics (aka brain disorder).

Heroin used to be a cough medicine for children. A German company (Bayer) registered heroin as a trademark.

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

Left handed people live slightly shorter lives than right handed people.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

In the 1800′s, people believed that gin could cure stomach problems.

McDonalds calls frequent buyers of their food heavy users.

Americans ate eight million more orders of french fries and almost six million more hamburgers this year compared to last.

22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.

Consuming chocolate was once considered a sin during the 16th and 17th century.

Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine when it was initially introduced.

Acorns were used as a coffee substitute during the American Civil War.

Overview

Eating healthy foods as part of a balanced diet can help you to sustain health and reduce your risks of chronic diseases. Healthy foods can be fun to prepare and eat, especially when you learn about facts that make the food more exciting to consume. Consult your doctor or nutritionist about your health and diet and the nutritional content of the foods you eat.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes can help you see in the dark. Sweet potatoes contain a high amount of vitamin A, a nutrient that is vital for eyesight and night vision. A ½ cup serving of baked sweet potato has 961 mcg of retinol activity equivalent, the international standard measure for vitamin A. Retinol is a substance related to vitamin A that is more easily absorbed into your body than beta carotene or other precursors of vitamin A. After eating and digesting sweet potato, your blood transports retinol to the retina, where it is involved in producing a visual pigment called rhodopsin, which is part of rod cells in your eyes that enable you to have night vision. A dietary deficiency of vitamin A can increase your risk of night blindness.

Honey

Honey is a sweet and delicious health food that may also soothe your cough and respiratory infection. Research by scientists at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey and published in “Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine” in 2007 compared honey, honey flavored cough medicine called dextromethorphan, and no treatment in children with upper respiratory tract infections and symptoms of coughing. The research results demonstrated that honey given 30 minutes before bedtime is the most effective treatment for symptomatic relief of nocturnal cough and sleep difficulty. Nonetheless, you should not feed honey to children under 1 year of age because of possible exposure to botulism, a rare and serious form of food poisoning.

Tomatoes

Eating tomatoes with meat can enhance the health of your red blood cells. This is because tomatoes contain vitamin C, a nutrient that stimulates intestinal absorption of iron, a mineral in meat that is involved in red blood cell formation in your body. Red blood cells have an iron-containing compound called hemoglobin, a substance that carries oxygen from your lungs to the cells throughout your body.

(Article resource: www .livestrong.com)