13 food facts that will make you question everything you thought you knew

red bell pepper
Red bell peppers are the same as yellow and green bell peppers— they're just in different stages of development.
Flickr/Liz West

How much do you really know about the food you eat? Although you may be happy to munch on bananas or nibble on white chocolate, chances are you're not super familiar with where they come from or what they're made of.

Now's your chance to learn more with these 13 strange and fascinating facts that will change the way you think about your favorite foods.

Oysters are alive when you eat them.

oysters from Galway Ireland
Dead oysters can actually make you sick.

Raw oysters need to be served straight out of the ocean in order to prevent them from going bad. That freshness means that they're generally still alive when you're digesting them. And believe it or not, you want it that way — dead oysters can harbor large amounts of bacteria that can make you sick.  

Bananas are actually berries, but strawberries and raspberries aren't.

Bananas meet the qualifications.
Mike Mozart/Flickr

For a fruit to be considered a berry, it needs to have several seeds on the inside and be derived from a single flower with one ovary. Following that criteria, bananas fall into the berry family while strawberries and raspberries don't, according to Stanford University. 


bell peppers
It's not always the same vegetable.
Flickr/Melvin "Buddy" Baker

You might have thought that green, yellow, and red bell peppers were all grown separately, given their different looks and tastes. But then again you may have also heard that all colored peppers are the exact same vegetable, just at different stages of development. So what's true? 

Well, it turns out these veggies are not always the same plant. Though some green peppers are unripe red peppers, green, yellow, orange, and red peppers are all unique plants with their own seeds.

Sliced bread was once banned from the United States.

Sliced white bread
The convenience was missed.
Gamzova Olga/Shutterstock

In 1943, the US banned the production of sliced bread as a wartime cost-cutting measure. Its disappearance from shelves did not go over well with Americans, who were already used to the convenience of pre-sliced loaves.

After two months of public ire, the ban was lifted, with the New York Times announcing, "Sliced Bread Put Back on Sale; Housewives' Thumbs Safe Again."

White chocolate isn't actually chocolate.

white chocolate
There are no chocolate solids.

Despite its name, white chocolate doesn't actually contain any real chocolate components. According to Bon Appetit, the item is made up of a blend of sugar, milk products, vanilla, lecithin, and cocoa butter — no chocolate solids.

Pizza Hut was once the largest wholesale purchaser of kale.

Pizza Hut
They used it as garnish on salad bars.
Flickr/Kevork Djansezian

Before the kale craze took off in 2012, it wasn't a very popular item for purchase among chains. According to NPR, Pizza Hut used to be the biggest buyer of the product — and even then, it was only to use the kale as a garnish on salad bars.

Pringles once filed a lawsuit claiming it wasn't a potato chip.

The lawsuit decided they are potato chips.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In 2009, Procter & Gamble UK filed a lawsuit arguing that Pringles — which contain potato flour, corn, rice, and wheat — aren't potato chips, but are actually "savory snacks." Why? Potato products, unlike most foods in Britain, aren't exempt from value-added tax.

The court disagreed, ruling that Pringles is indeed a chip and leaving P&G with over $160 million in owed taxes, according to the New York Times.

Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower all come from the same plant.

cooking brussels sprouts
They're different varieties of the same species of plant.
Flickr / Rainer Stropek

It turns out a bunch of your favorite green vegetables — including all of the ones mentioned above, along with kale, collard greens, and more — are each different varieties of a single magical species of plant: Brassica oleracea.

Pound cake got its name from the original recipe.

pound cake
The recipe required a pound of each ingredient.

Ever wondered where pound cake got its name? According to POPSUGAR, the original recipe for the cake, which originated in Europe in the early 18th century, required a pound of each of its ingredients — flour, butter, eggs, and sugar.


Apples, pears, and plums are actually part of the rose family.

Cherries are also part of this family.

Several popular fruits are members of rose family, known as Rosaceae. Apples, pears, and plums are among them, as are apricots, cherries, and raspberries.

Grape-Nuts isn't made of either grapes or nuts.

grape nuts
There are no grapes.

The main ingredients of Grape-Nuts cereal are whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, salt, and dried yeast — not an actual grape or nut to be found. So where did the name come from? Apparently, that mystery has yet to be resolved.

Lots of shredded cheeses and cereals contain cellulose (aka wood pulp).

shredded cheese
It has small amounts of sawdust.

As Eater reports, cellulose, which is essentially sawdust, is often used in various shredded cheese products and cereals to prevent them from clumping.  

Peanut butter can be turned into diamonds.

peanut butter
Peanut butter contains high levels of carbon.

You don't need to dig for diamonds — just turn to your pantry. Thanks to the high levels of carbon it contains, scientists in Germany say peanut butter can be mixed with carbon dioxide to form diamonds.

As Popular Mechanic outlines, the process involves extracting oxygen from the carbon dioxide, leaving behind carbon that turns into diamonds when subjected to intense pressure.

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