Sugar Coated Fries, Sex on Biscuits(??) and Other Stories.

Is there any ice cream in fast food shakes? Probably not. Is there sugar in fast food french fries? Almost certainly yes. Then Burger King President Donald Smith acknowledged in an interview that BK's fries were sprayed with a sugar solution before being shipped to outlets. He added that this causes the fries to caramelise as they cook and produces the golden brown colour customers expect. Without it the fries would be an unattractive white colour. He also believes that McDonalds sugar coat their fries too.

Speaking of McDonalds, what is this secret sauce all about? It looks, and tastes, like french dressing, though it contains chopped solids. These appear to be chopped pickles. It seems to be mayonnaise based, so typically it would contain vegetable oil, vinegar, water and egg yolk. Since it is red, it most probably has tomato paste in it. McDonalds may well say the sauce recipe is secret, but it appears to be Thousand Island Dressing. The colour is very similar to Kraft's product of that name. Kraft's list of ingredients is; Soybean Oil, water, sugar, tomato paste, chopped pickles, vinegar, egg yolk, salt, mustard, flour, dehydrated onion, preservatives and natural flavour. Everything considered, McDonalds sauce is probably just standard Thousand Island Dressing.

The Dry-Roasted Peanut Story.

Marketing gurus would have us believe that dry-roasted peanuts are less fattening than normal roasted peanuts. Some sellers even convinced us that they are a diet aid. But labels cant lie. A look on the packaging tells a different story. Comparing Planter's Cocktail peanuts with Planter's Dry-Roasted peanuts we find a scant 10 calories difference between them, barely worth considering unless you are a real diet freak. So what about salt free peanuts? Planter's salt free dry-roasted peanuts have exactly the same calories as plain ole roasted peanuts. So don't expect to lose much weight using dry-roasted peanuts as a diet aid!

Sex On Crackers.

Sounds like some crazy game, or maybe a hip-hop song, but this was a real theory once. The theory went that Nabisco's Ritz crackers had the word SEX, in capital letters, baked onto the cracker surface. These were apparently discovered by subliminal advertising guru Wilson Bryan Key. He finds about 12 instances on both the top and the bottom of the cracker. He suggested staring at them for a minute or so to see the words, (stare at anything for a minute and you will see what you want to see, and maybe some things you don't.... Ed.). Key theorises that the crackers are created in special molds and that they were made this way to make people associate this brand of crackers with sex. Other people theorise that Key is the one that is crackers. You decide.

Pink Peppercorns.

Many people, especially those into nouvelle cuisine pay big money for so called pink peppercorns. These peppercorns are actually a scarlet colour and have a pungent-bitter flavour. They are also mildly toxic, causing chest congestion, headaches, nausea and haemorrhoids among other symptoms. (ouch...Ed.). The price is justified because of where they come from, the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The peppercorns are harvested there by French companies, shipped back to France for processing and then sent to other countries around the world. They are sold freeze dried, in bulk or bottled in vinegar or brine. Black pepper is the fruit of a vine, white pepper simply black pepper with the skin removed. Pink peppercorns are not related to them at all. They come from an unrelated tree, Schinus terebinthifolius. This tree is related however to poison ivy, which explains its unpleasant effects on some people. But, here's the rub. The tree also grows in the southern United States, and is even considered a weed in some places, dotting the roadside and, by some estimates, thousands of acres across Florida. No one seems to have hit upon the idea to sell the peppercorns off these tress , and so people who order food with pink peppercorns in fancy restaurants are paying big bucks for a Florida weed.

Well, that's it for food stuff. Got a story of your own? Share it with us here. We hope you enjoyed your trip to the world of food secrets.

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