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Representative image of a person cutting a cake

There are a few types of people who always show up around the dining room table when the birthday cake arrives. There's the dutiful person who is nice enough to volunteer to cut and serve the cake for everyone. There's the person who begs for the piece with the most frosting. Then there's the person who wants as little frosting as possible.

There's also the party-goer who asks for the little sliver of cake and the guy who has no problem taking a slice as big as his head. Let's not forget the cake pusher whose job it is to make sure you take some extra slices home. "Please take some home so I don't eat it," they beg, patting their tummy.

Making everyone happy during the ceremonial cake cutting is no easy task.

birthdays, birthday cake, life hacks, hacks, how to cut a birthday cake A group gathers around a birthday cakeImage via Canva

But now, a game-changing video on TikTok has completely changed the cake-cutting conversation. It eliminates the cake server, long knife, serving plates, spatula, and replaces it with joyous anarchy.

A TikTok video with over 460,000 likes shows a family celebrating a woman's 20th birthday, and after she blows out the candles, each person takes out a wine glass and scoops up a mound of cake.

It's an easy, streamlined way to make sure everyone gets what they want without having to bother anyone to cut and distribute the pieces. Everyone gets to grab the slice they like and in the amount they desire, without having to negotiate.

It's also a fun way to do things as a group. It would be savage to have a bunch of people scooping up cake with spoons, but with wine glasses, it's fancy.

The only drawback is that this technique really favors the pro-frosting constituency.

@theroseperiod

Happy 20th birthday to my Jules!#twenty#fyp#birthdaycake#wineglasses#tiktokmom

Duff Goldman, "Ace of Cakes" star and executive chef of the Baltimore-based Charm City Cakes shop, told Bustle the idea is genius. "Each person can come in with their own cup and get their own serving — it's a nice communal experience where each person can interact with the cake and each other," he said.

"This is a game-changer," one person said on TikTok.

"This is blowing my mind. Why have I never thought of this?" said another woman, who called it "genius."

"A cake hack that I can get behind," another added. "I will never eat cake another way."

The cake hack is a great idea, but one has to be sure that the cake is at room temperature. This could get downright dangerous if used on an ice cream cake or one with a hard filling. Also, you probably want to avoid using super-expensive Tiffany wine glasses that could easily shatter or eating out of the glass with metal utensils.

Ok, TikTokkers that hack was brilliant, your next challenge is to figure out how to eat pie with a wine glass.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Kids in South Korea sometimes get served lobster tails with school lunch.

School lunch in the United States has a complicated history. While many of us who grew up in the 80s or 90s are nostalgic for some of the menu items we remember fondly (rectangle pizza, anyone?), some of the serving choices were bizarre. We really grew up with someone handing us a tray of pizza, french fries, chocolate milk, and soggy green beans every morning at 10:30am.

The offerings have improved somewhat over the years, but everything's still so... beige. The main choices are typically pizza, chicken nuggets, or some form of questionable ground beef like burgers or meatloaf. Some people are stunned when they find out that school lunches from around the world can look very different.

A photo of lunch served at a school in South Korea recently went viral and had everyone's mouth watering.

A user on Reddit posted the photos to r/pics where they immediately racked up over 17,000 upvotes.

The colors on the tray stick out immediately, most notably the noodles covered in creamy red sauce. But it's really the stuffed lobster tail that's the star of this particular tray; potentially lobster thermidor.

You expect to see some cultural differences in the food offerings in different countries. Korean food is inherently different than American food in a number of ways. But Americans love lobster! Yet can you imagine American schools serving lobster tail to kids under any circumstances?

Take a look at the mouth-watering spread here:

from pics

The response from mostly-American users was fascinating. Some were in awe while others rightly pointed out why a lunch like this would never fly in the USA.

One of the main sentiments was that school lunches in other countries often put ours to utter shame:

"I used to teach in Korea and the lunches were always amazing, the beef and quails egg stew was a constant highlight."

"I studied in Korea for 6 months on uni exchange. The food at the uni cafeteria looked just like this, and was 10/10. My private room at the uni lodge was $500USD for the WHOLE semester, and included unlimited food."

"I live in Spain and my kid's school invited the parents to taste lunch one day. It was fantastic. Also, at the end of each month they share a calendar of the meals that will be served during the next one, day by day. They're all balanced, and prepared with proximity food. They prepare specific meals for every kid with allergies/intolerances/any kind of dietary restriction, e.g. restrictions related to religion. They also share a list of dinner suggestions - again, for the whole month - so you have ideas for dinners that are healthy, easy, cheap, and tasty for kids. It's a public school."

"I am from a third world country where many public schools lack a ton of funding and even we have better more healthy lunches than the slop that’s given to US students. I know because I went to school in the US and also in my home country."

"America hates its f*cking kids. It will always mistreat them and deny them opportunities."

"Lobster as a school lunch??? I need to go back to elementary school... I'll quit work for education and a lunch like that!"

school lunch, food, school, kids, nutrition, health, elementary school, politics, government, FDA Now here's a balanced and nutritious meal. Giphy

Others, while impressed with the selection, had their doubts about if American schools could ever adopt something like this:

"This lunch is orders of magnitude better then US school lunches. And most American kids would utterly hate it."

"American kids have no palette! It’s all chicken nuggets and mac & cheese! ... I know some kids that would starve rather than try anything on that tray."

Some pointed out that those metal chopsticks would likely be used as a weapon almost immediately, and discontinued ASAP.

Americans, as a whole, have a dreadful diet devoid of enough nutrition and it causes catastrophic health problems in the longterm. For clues as to why, you can look at what we feed our kids — and why.


school lunch, food, school, kids, nutrition, health, elementary school, politics, government, FDA It's normal for kids to be picky eaters. When it continues into adulthood, it can be a root cause of health problems. Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

No, most American kids probably wouldn't like lobster tail. But there is a lot that goes into how our palette develops that might help explain it.

For starters, fresh produce and lean proteins are extremely expensive in America. It's far more cost-effective to pump people full of cheap, empty calories and sugar. School lunch used to be cooked fresh every day in the schools before major government budget cuts forced districts to more heavily on lean on frozen or reheated options. Kids get used to chicken nuggies all day every day from a young age!

The irony is that school lunches in American, while not overly exciting, at least meet some basic nutritional guidelines. But they're not free for everyone, and even kids who qualify for free or reduced lunch may not end up participating due to stigma or red-tape. When parents on a shoestring budget have to buy their own lunch supplies, things can get a lot worse than meatloaf and green beans. We all knew a few kids in school who had Pop Tarts for lunch every day. To be fair, we were all jealous at the time.

And finally, Americans sure love to get fired up about our "right" to eat like crap. When Michelle Obama tried to clean up the school lunch program, she ran into massive pushback. RFK Jr. wants to do his own version of it, and we'll see how that goes.

The viral photo from South Korea shows what might be possible with a few key cultural and political shifts. Treating feeding our kids more like "preventive medicine" versus a cost to manage would definitely be a start.

This article originally appeared in May.

Canva Photos

Many of our favorite everyday foods have extremely strange origins.

Have you ever stopped to think why we eat the things we eat? Some of it seems natural, of course, like an apple growing from a tree. At some point in history, someone picked one, took a bite, and realized it was delicious.

Hunting and eating animals is similar. It's part of our DNA, even if you choose not to partake, and you can easily trace the path from early hunter-gatherers to packaged chicken nuggets.

But at some point, humans started getting really creative. We picked coffee cherries, removed the seeds, and brewed them into a dark and bitter drink–why?! We smushed up grapes and let them sit around for a while and then drank their juices. We decided to try consuming cow's milk that had gone really, really sour.

Whose ideas was it to try these things? Fascinatingly, many of our favorite foods, even the things we eat everyday, were the result of necessity or pure accidents. Here are some of the weirdest yet most interesting food origin stories.

1. Cheese & Yogurt


food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Cheese is essentially just spoiled milk! Photo by David Foodphototasty on Unsplash

We know that cheese and yogurt both come from milk, often cow's milk. We also know that milk goes bad extremely quickly and disgustingly. So how did we bridge that gap and come to discover these two amazing foods?

According to the National Historic Cheesemaking Center Museum (in Wisconsin; where else?) cheesemaking dates back thousands of years to Greek mythology and the ancient Egyptians. It's said that milk was often stored in containers made from the stomachs of animals. The only downside of stomach containers is that they contained an enzyme called rennet that triggers coagulation in the milk, allowing it to separate into curds and whey.

Those Greeks and Egyptians must have been mighty surprised when the curds, in particular, turned out to be absolutely delicious. The BBC writes, however, that this accidental process was probably first discovered in the Middle East and Central Asia.

2. Wine

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining It must have been fun to discover old grapes turned into wine. Photo by Lefteris kallergis on Unsplash

Today, the winemaking process is pretty complex, so much so that some people consider it an art. Or, at the very least, a craft of the highest order.

I've always been curious how we ever came up with the idea that we could get drunk off of grapes, long before the days of perfectly pruned vines and aged-oak barrels. Turns out, the story is not that dissimilar to the origins of cheesemaking, except it goes back even further. Humanity's natural desire for a good party is apparently one of our most ancient traditions!

Early humans would forage large quantities of fruit like grapes and berries. The ones at the bottom, naturally, would get smushed and likely not be eaten for a while. They would have time to ferment, creating an alcohol-like substance, that must have been pretty pleasurable for anyone willing to go digging around at the bottom of the fruit pile.

Beer has a similar origin story, only instead of fruit, it was grains for bread that were left out too long and began to ferment.

3. Coffee

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Coffee fruit was making the goats a little too happy. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Coffee is definitely one of the weirder things that we consume. The coffee beans we're used to seeing do not appear exposed in the wild—they're actually tucked away inside something called a coffee cherry. Each cherry contains two seeds, or coffee beans.

The story goes that an Ethiopian goat herder in the year 850 (give or take) noticed that whenever his goats ate the cherries, they would become energetic, playful, and just plain happier. Kaldi, the herder, is credited with being one of the first to forage the cherries. At first, the leaves were used to make tea, and then the berries were eaten directly to get the happy-energy effects. It wasn't until a few centuries later that the beans were made into a beverage for the first time.

4. Tikka Masala

I absolutely love getting Indian food whenever possible and, like a lot of Americans, I adore Chicken Tikka Masala. But I never knew that it was created out of necessity as recently as the 1970s.

The widely accepted legend has it that a Glasgow chef named Ali Ahmed Aslam served a customer some chicken tikka one night and found the patron to be very hard to please. The man insisted that the chicken was too dry. So Aslam scoured the kitchen and whipped up a special sauce made of yogurt and tomato, which helped keep the chicken moist.

Pretty quickly, chicken tikka masala became famous across the globe. The Bristorian writes, "it is widely represented as the quintessential Indian dish despite its origin in the United Kingdom."

5. Tomatoes

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until very recently. Photo by Huzeyfe Turan on Unsplash

It doesn't seem surprising at first that most cultures around the world regularly eat tomatoes, with a few exceptions. They grow in the ground and look beautiful. It's not shocking that someone bit into one at some point in history and decided we should all get to enjoy them.

But what is surprising is that, in the Western world at least, tomatoes didn't catch on for a long time. Even in Italy, which is practically synonymous with the tomato, Italians didn't really eat them widely until the 19th century. That's because tomatoes were long thought to be poisonous, a member of the nightshade family which contains many toxic plants.

One story claims that a man named Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson ate tomato after tomato in front of a crowd in New Jersey to prove to the world they were safe. It's probably not a true story, but it's fun to imagine.

6. Tea

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Tea is one of civilization's most ancient drinks. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Tea, like coffee, seems odd when you really think about it. Boiling dried up leaves and herbs in water? Whose bright idea was that?

It turns out, it was an Emperor's idea! Tea is truly one of the most ancient beverages, and legend has it that Chinese emperor Shen Nung accidentally discovered the delectable drink in 2737 BC. He was supposedly sitting under a tree while his servant boiled him some drinking water, a common practice at the time. Some leaves are said to have fallen in from the Camellia sinensis tree, which gave the brew a pleasant aroma.

Shen Nung tasted it and was impressed, while also finding that it made him feel great. Tea was initially considered medicinal and didn't become a daily drink until much later.

7. French fries

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Fried potatoes began as a replacement for fried fish. Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Despite the name, French fries are said to have initially been discovered in Belgium.

In the 1600s, villagers near one of the country's rivers would catch fish to try. Fried fish was an incredibly popular treat, but in the winter months, the river would freeze and catching fish would become impossible.

Out of necessity, they tried cutting up potatoes into a similar shape and frying those, instead. The result was delicious! When American soldiers came through the area during World War I, word spread quickly for obvious reasons.

8. Potato chips

The accidental invention of potato chips is a direct offshoot of French fries, so it deserves a spot on this list.

Some 250 years after the invention of fries, the story goes that a chef named George Crum had another difficult customer on his hands. (Seeing a pattern here?) The man was unhappy that his French fries were too soggy and thick.

Smithsonian Magazine writes, "Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced some potatoes as slenderly as he could, fried them to a crisp and sent them out to Vanderbilt as a prank. Rather than take the gesture as an insult, Vanderbilt was overjoyed."

They were called Saratoga Chips at first, a reference to their birthplace of Saratoga, New York. Experts say the potato chip may have officially been invented before this famous showdown, but George Crum undoubtedly helped popularize the snack.

9. Popsicles

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining An 11-year-old accidentally invented popsicles. Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

The official Popsicle brand itself says the frozen treat was invented by an 11-year-old boy in 1905.

Frank Epperson allegedly left a cup of soda, complete with a stick for stirring, outside on a cold night and was chagrinned to later find it frozen. However, one lick and he was convinced—frozen meant delicious! Young Frank named the treat after himself: "The Episcle."

An entrepreneurial little bugger, Epperson perfected the popsicle and began selling them around local beaches before patenting the pops in 1924.

10. Cheetos/cheese puffs/cheese curls

food, food history, origins of food, history, funny, fun facts, eating, culture, nutrition, taste, dining Cheetos and cheese puffs have a fascinating accidental origin. Photo by Ryan Quintal on Unsplash

I've always been curious about cheese curls, which are one of my all-time favorite snacks. What even is a cheese puff? The potato chip, though unique, makes sense: It's a deep fried, thin slice of potato. Cheetos and cheese curls are just so far from anything found in nature it boggles the mind how they might have been invented.

Well, boggle no more! In 1935, cheese puffs were accidentally invented in a factory that made animal feed. Corn was ground in a grinder to make the feed, but when it came time to clean the machine, the workers fed moist corn through. The resulting waste product was airy, puffy blobs of corn that would fall to the ground.

A worker named Edward Wilson decided to try some and found them utterly delicious, and thus named them Korn Kurls.

11. Worcestershire sauce

I love a good happy accident almost as much as I love Worcestershire sauce on my burgers and steaks. Luckily, this story has both.

In 1835, drug store owners John Lea and William Perrins were asked to recreate a sauce a local baron had tried during a visit to India. Their creation was an utter failure, smelling horribly and tasting worse. So they hid the batch they created in the basement and forgot about it for nearly two years.

According to Great British Chefs, "When they rediscovered it, it had aged well, turning into the fermented, umami-packed sauce we use today."

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Food energy is real energy, and it can be measured as such.

About ten years ago I started working out for the first time in my life, and with it, paying attention to the food I put in my body for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I never knew much before that about calories, other than the tired "2000 a day" guideline. I could hardly tell you about macronutrients, or how much protein an active person should get. And so, later in my life, I had quite an education.

But there's still a lot that I don't know, apparently, because it wasn't until very recently that I learned where calories come from; or rather, how they're tallied up for inclusion on a food label. Of course, I am familiar with the idea that you can always count up the different ingredients in a meal and their known nutritional values. For example, if you're baking, it's easy to find out the calories in one cup of flour, a tablespoon of sugar, and so on.

But how are the calories in base foods even calculated? And furthermore, how do we know for sure how much protein, fat, or carbs are in certain foods?

It "blew" my mind when I learned that food scientists have a fascinating process for determining the amount of energy contained in different foods. It involves a strange machine called a "bomb calorimeter."


food, nutrition, calories, healthy eating, protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals, eating, science, food science An old bomb calorimeter from the 1960sSeth/Flickr

We all know that food gives us energy, but you've likely never thought of food energy in the same terms as the other different forms of energy like lights, heat, electricity, etc. I know I had never thought of it like energy energy.

But that's exactly what it is, and calories are a very specific measure of that energy.

So in order to determine how many calories are in a certain food, ingredient, or meal — get this — scientists literally blow it up and measure the results of the explosion.

How cool is that!?

In the video below, scientists from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University show the fascinating process from start to finish.

In the experiment, the team prepares a Christmas dinner plate of turkey, gravy, and potatoes. The first step to determining the calories in the meal is to "homogenize it" or blend it into smithereens, destroying any large chunks and turning the meal into a smooth, near-liquid. Yum!

"Then, over the course of three days we slowly remove all the moisture from it in a freeze drier," says Dr. Sue Roberts. Imagine turning that gooey slop into something similar to the consistency of astronaut food.

The dried samples are then compressed into extremely dense pellets about the size of a Tums antacid.

Now here comes the Parr 6200 "bomb" calorimeter. The very precisely measured pellet-ized portion of the original dinner is put into a chamber and lowered into some water inside the machine. An electrical charge is then applied to the food to "explode it."

Why the water? The calorimeter is able to measure the exact temperature of the water before and after the food explosion. When you look at the actual definition of a calorie, which according to Merriam-Webster is: "the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius," it all starts to make sense. Take the temperature of the water after the explosion and you can determine exactly how much energy was contained in the food pellet based on the temperature increase. Amazing!


- YouTube www.youtube.com

The calorimeter first came about in the 1800s. Even then, our understand of heat, energy, and food science was extremely limited.

As recently as the 1700s, scientists generally believed heat was made of some kind of weightless gas, which they called "caloric."

The theory was disproven in 1799 when Sir Humphrey Davy, an English chemist, rubbed two pieces of ice together in a vacuum (which contains no air or gas) and was able to generate friction heat, thus melting the ice. It was roughly around the same time that Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Simon de la Place developed the first calorimeter.

Calorimeters, and the Calorie itself, weren't regularly used for food until the late 1800s.

As cool as it is (and it is extremely cool) exploding food in a bomb calorimeter isn't the most common practice today.

Frankly, it's usually not necessary when you can estimate nutritional values in other ways. More common today is the Atwater System, which estimates calories based on the nutritional breakdown of a food item as such:

  • Four kcals (calories) for one gram of protein
  • Four kcals for one gram of carbohydrates
  • Nine kcals for one gram of fat
  • Seven kcals for one gram of alcohol
All of these elements can be tested and measured in different, fascinating ways. Protein is counted by measuring the nitrogen released from food after putting it through some an artificial digestive process. Fats are measured by weighing the food, then stripping the fats away with ether, and weighing it again.

Carbs are the most complicated and thus are often measured by subtracting the percentage of proteins and fats. The remainders, by definition, should be carbohydrates.

food, nutrition, calories, healthy eating, protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals, eating, science, food science This food is on FIRE! Giphy

And, of course, bomb calorimeters have lots of different uses besides determining the calories in the newest line of flavored Doritos. They can be used to test the energy potential of alternative fuels, find more efficient animal feeds, and analyze samples of oil or coal for their potency.

Understanding this process kind of changes the way I look at food. You can't really see the energy in a bag of chips, let's say, but maybe you can imagine the way it might heat a pot of water if it exploded! It makes the numbers on the back of a nutritional label a little more tangible and real, and can maybe lead to more mindful and intuitive eating practices.

Ultimately, though, there is so much more to food than the calories it contains. There are the nutrients, like the proteins, carbs, and fats — the micronutrients like vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. Some people like to know as little as possible about the inner workings of our food and focus purely on their enjoyment of the making, eating, and sharing. But if you're like me, you like to know the science behind food production, and how and why food powers our bodies the way it does. That's all part of the fun.