• Though botanically the tomato is a fruit, it was declared a vegetable by the Supreme Court in 1893. Despite the efforts of David Stockman, a Reagan official, ketchup never shared the same vegetable classification as its main ingredient.

• The tomato hasn’t always had an easy time. In colonial America, folklore had it that consumption of a tomato (considered poisonous) would turn your blood into acid. Instead, the colonists grew tomatoes purely for decoration until Thomas Jefferson allegedly debunked the myth.

• Other cultures have always loved the tomato, including the French name, who called it pomme d’amore, or “apple of love.” Love a tomato because tomatoes love you: they can even fight cancer, thanks to lycopene.

• A giant tomato fight like the Festival de la Tomatina might be fun, but you would not want to get hit by one of these giant tomatoes.

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• Milk must do a body good since it’s the first thing any of us drink! But let’s learn more about this dairy delight by which we also get cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and most especially, cheese.

• Milk’s history mixes with alcohol on more than one occasion. Louis Pasteur was helping students attempt to ferment beetroot when he discovered the process that would become known as “pasteurizing,” or sterilizing substances.

• But why choose between milk and beer when you can have both as Bilk or in a White Russian, a la The Big Lebowski?

• Milk can also be used as a substitute for alcohol such as in celebration – just ask nay NASCAR fan! Winners of the Indy 500 have a tradition of drinking milk after their victory, a practice that has gone on since 1956.

• Sports Illustrated even ranked milk #1 as the sports world coolest and healthiest prize.

• Got Milk? The slogan started in 1993 and marketers began featuring celebrities in the print campaign. Boasting 90% awareness in the United States, the pithy trademark has been licensed out to dolls and toys and been the brunt of many a well-recognized parody.

• When the price of glass went up, paper milk cartons were in high demand. John Van Wormer, a toy manufacturer, applied for a milk carton patent in 1915, but the familiar tetrahedral shape was developed in the 1940s. The idea was to use the least amount of packaging possible, and lead to the ubiquitous brick-shaped carton of today with the gabled tops.

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• Possibly derived from the Love German “muffe” or the Old French “moflet,” this “soft tender,” “little cake” lives up to its storied origins. Frank Zappa loves muffins so much he called his in-house recording studio the “Utility Muffin Research Kitchen,” and named one of his children Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa.

• To knife or not to knife? That is the question – and Miss Manners has the answer … sort of. As she tells it, bread may be broken any way deemed necessary at the scene, although one English muffins are indeed cut horizontally whilst other muffins remain vertically cut apart.

• Muffins have leant their name to the wrong side of fashion. The New York Times‘ William Safire comments on the term “muffin top” as meaning “the unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight pants.” (I hope you weren’t eating a muffin as you contemplated this scene). Discussion of the muffin-top can be lucrative for the weight-loss business as well. The UK’s Daily Express even claims half of British women have fallen victim to these bodily rolls.

• Of course, Seinfeld made the concept of the muffin top versus the muffin stump popular. “Top of the Muffin to you!”

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• Though the origins of the doughnut are lost in history, the making of the modern doughnut can be traced back to World War I and the Salvation Army. With troops weary and hungry after 36 consecutive days of rain in France, the Salvation Army gals mixed scrap ingredients and fried them in helmets. Sanitary? Maybe not, but a success? Most definitely.

• Before you ask, according to Bartleby, both doughnut and donut are indeed acceptable spellings.

• If you bake them, they will come: one study shows our brains are trained to “light up” at the sight of doughnuts. (Of course the choice was between a doughnut and a screwdriver – the tool, er, not the drink – so the jury is still out on that one).

• Still, it seems that primitive creatures (from Homer Simpson on up) do have a particular predilection for the sugary sweet – Florida officials once attempted to lure a mystery animal (either “Big Foot” or a “big orange ball of fur”) by offering doughnuts.

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• It seems we at mental_floss are engaging in a Peep-a-thon this week, but who can blame us? The sugar rush is too wondrous to overcome! Here are some more facts and figures regarding this favored Easter season delight:

• Ancient Egyptians were the first to enjoy a gooey treat now called “marshmallow” as early as 2000 BC. Marshmallow was made from the mallow plant (Athaea officinalis) that grows wild in marshes (creative naming!) native to Asia and Europe, and has since been naturalized in America.

• Marshmallows were introduced and popularized in the United States in the early 1900s, with the particular marshmallow affectation known as the Easter Peep being “born” in 1953.

• Peeps were originally made by hand, which took 27 hours (requiring setting overnight). Today it takes six minutes to create one Peeps chick.

• Why Peeps for Easter? Peeps may not have much to do with Jesus, but they do have a lot in common with Spring.

• In fact, Peeps have been the #1 non-chocolate Easter candy in the U.S. for more than a decade. Yellow is America’s best selling color of Peep chicks and bunnies.

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• The Washington Post had this to say about the toothpick, which I really think says it all: “A satirist once described a fictitious journal, titled ‘History’s Splendid Splinter,’ which was devoted to scholarly essays on the wooden toothpick’s ‘role in social history, patterns of forestry, and the evolving technology of toothpick manufacture.’ Henry Petroski, who quotes this dig at minutiae-obsessed pedants, gets the joke but refutes it, insisting that even the most insignificant objects can reward our close attention with new revelations.”

• “The toothpick was first used in the United States at the Union Oyster House. Enterprising Charles Forster of Maine first imported the picks from South America.” That fact that, “to promote his new business he hired Harvard boys to dine at the Union Oyster House and ask for toothpicks,” proves that everything is about marketing!

• This little wooden tool can have many other uses – Madame de Lafayette utilized a toothpick (and watery pine soot) to write a biography while imprisoned during the French Revolution.

• From the Annals of Too Much Time: Amazing toothpick sculptures plus a video. Truly “the essence of patience.”

• Check out this patent for a tongue toothpick from 1923 that looks exceptionally painful.

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Cheddar is one of the two most popular varieties of cheese in the United States (the other being Mozzarella). Let Sesame Street show you how it’s made, then scroll down here to learn more about this dairy delight (and note, of course, the name of the most excellent variety featured above).

• Forget sweet dreams – try cheese dreams! The British Cheese Board conducted a study of dreams and cheese, and found (among other things) that not only does eating cheese before bed not give you nightmares, a significant number of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities.

• Let them eat cheese! In 1982, Reagan gave away 30 million lbs of surplus processed cheddar cheese to the needy. The history of Presidents and cheese goes back even further (no pun intended): Andrew Jackson once served a wheel of cheese at a party weighing 1,400 lbs that was consumed in a mere two hours, but still managed to make the White House smell of cheese for weeks.

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• No snappy title this week – so far I can’t think of anything that rhymes with pretzel nor makes sense as a pun. Anyone? In any case, besides being an awkward rhyming tool, “a pretzel is a bread pastry of German origin, that has the shape of a three looped knot or twisted braid. Pretzels are either soft or hard. Hard pretzels have evolved into a variety of shapes from knotted loops to straight “pretzel sticks” (called “Salzstangen” in German, Ropi in Hungarian). The pretzel dough is made from wheat flour, water, sugar and yeast, sprinkled with coarse salt.” For more history, check it out here.

• Don’t play with your food – but do use it for fashion (featuring Stanley Stellar’s Pretzel Decolette and Cheez Doodle Choker).

• Preztels, though often considered a cheap snack, must cost more to manufacture than we think. In the case of major airlines … no more pretzels? (lack of pretzels here and here also).
Additionally, General Mills cut costs last year by reducing the number pretzel shapes in Chex Mix.

• Behold! A Pretzel amusement park ride. The track looks more akin to an amoeba, but either way it would probably make me dizzy.
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According to the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, the core meaning of the word pie (or piece) in Celtic and later medieval Latin was twofold: a morsel which could be eaten with the fingers and which also contained some type of filling – in short, a pastry envelope. The ease by which these treats could be made in a simple medieval kitchen caused the pie to be an important part of British cooking. Of course, pie is enjoyed all over the world, and its place of origin is most often determined by its shape – from Spanish empanandas to turnovers to, yes, the Pop Tart!

• Like pretty much everything it seems, pie has it’s own day. Created by the American Pie Council, January 23rd has been earmarked National Pie Day (not to be confused with March 14th, also a Pi Day)

• Would it be a true Dietribes without the mention of an eating competition? As far as pie-eating goes, one of the most famous (and the most disastrous) pie-eating contests imaginable has to be the “Complete and Total Barf-A-Rama” from the iconic film Stand By Me.

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Described as a “weedy Cinderella” by some and a “queen of a salad plants” by others, it is nevertheless the most common salad vegetable and somehow part of my daily consumption. Let us learn more about this leafy green:

• A primitive, but edible, ancestor of the lettuce plant has been enjoyed as far back as ancient Egypt. Lettuce has only continued to gain popularity even since. In fact, consumption is at an all-time high, which is good news for these guys (I think).

• From the History of Food, “Modern types of lettuce include iceberg and Batavia (more popular in Europe). Romaine lettuce has long leaves in a loaf-shaped head. Butterhead lettuce is quite small with oily, soft textured leaves. Red and green lead lettuces form no head and have leaves with a variety of shapes.”

• Iceberg lettuce was first introduced in 1894 by W. Atlee Burpee Seed Co. Because of its firm ball shape it shipped well, and got its nickname from the way it was shipped on crushed ice (of course). Apparently, this variety can also make for a tasty and comforting snack, which may account for the 22 lbs of iceberg lettuce Americans eat on average per year.

• Strangely, you can also consume what’s known as Sea Lettuce – a type of algae that looks like romaine and has a spicy taste. Just cut it from a rock or catch it as it floats by … although you should probably stay clear of polluted waters.

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