On July 21, a giant menu is dedicated to National Junk Food Day. Every year, this day allows us to indulge in foods that we don’t usually include in our daily diet.
Junk food, by definition, is usually high in fat, sugar, salt, and calories and very little nutritional value.
- 1800s – With the advent of packaged foods in the late 1800s, junk food entered American life. However, home-cooked meals remained the norm for several more decades.
- 1860 – The first fish and chip shop opens at Tommyfield Market in Oldham, England.
- 1896 – Berlin-based Max Sielaff invents the first vending machine that serves simple food and beverages.
- 1902 – Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart introduce a vending machine, and with it, fast food, to New York City.
- 1912 – More than 450 billion Oreo cookies have been sold worldwide since their introduction in 1912. That’s enough to reach the moon and back 5 times.
- 1920s – Junk food became a regular part of the American diet during the 1920s, but it was television advertising after World War II that made junk food more ubiquitous and nutritionists concerned.
- 1920s – The Twinkie got its name after bakery manager Jimmy Dewar saw an advertisement for the “Twinkle Toe Shoe Company” while traveling in St. Louis in the 1920s. The cake became the best-selling cake in the United States after World War II and has appeared in many films such as Ghostbusters (1984), Grease (1978), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).
- 1921 – The world’s first fast food restaurant was invented in the United States in 1921, in the form of White Castle, and the popularity of fast food has continued to grow exponentially ever since.
- 1937 – Vernon Rudolph launches the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts doughnut and coffee chain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
- (1945–After World War II, the junk food industry booms. The population eats out more and travels more. The industry is ready to produce products at a faster pace.
- 1953 – McDonald’s opens its first franchise.
- 1960s – The term “junk food” was first used in the 1960s, but was popularized in the following decade when the song “Junk Food Junkie” reached the top of the charts in 1976.
- 1970s: Junk food has gained a reputation, and one not unlike that of Michael Jacobson, a microbiologist who coined the term “junk food.” Jacobson set out to curb our appetite for the sugar-, salt-, and preservative-laden foods that Americans are consuming at an alarming rate.
- Americans eat 13 billion hamburgers a year, enough to circle the Earth more than 32 times.
- A single fast food hamburger can contain meat from hundreds, if not thousands, of different cattle.
- Four out of five children recognize the McDonald’s logo before the age of three – even before some of them know their own names.
- Expectant mothers who eat junk food during pregnancy increase the risk that their children will also eat unhealthy foods.
- Chick-fil-A sells more than 1.64 billion chicken nuggets each year. That’s more than 5 nuggets per person in the United States.
- Chicken meat is not the main ingredient in chicken nuggets. The main ingredients are instead fat, epithelium, bones, nerves and connective tissue.
- Eating junk food regularly has the same impact on the liver as hepatitis. French fries, fried chicken and onion rings are particularly harmful.
- The number of jars of Nutella sold in a year could cover the Great Wall of China eight times
- The shiny coating that surrounds the gummies is called shellac, and comes from the secretions of the female Kerria lacca, an insect native to Thailand.
- The creamy center of a Twinkie is not made of cream, but primarily of Crisco, a vegetable fat.
- Women are more likely than men to separate their Oreo cookies before eating them.
- Each year, Reese’s makes enough Peanut Butter Cups to feed everyone in the United States, Africa, Europe, Japan, Australia, India and China.
- Ironically, cotton candy was invented by a dentist with the help of a candy maker. They marketed it as “cotton candy.”
- On average, it takes about 364 hits to reach the center of a Tootsie Pop.
- The word “PEZ” is derived from the German word for peppermint, “PfeffErminZ.”
- The word “Pepsi” comes from the word “dyspepsia,” which means indigestion. Caleb Bradham, the soda’s creator, believed that the drink aided digestion.
- Hershey’s Makes a Million Miles of Twizzlers Every Year
- Each year, Americans buy nearly $2 billion worth of Easter candy, including 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies, 16 billion gummies and 700 million Peeps marshmallows.
- Corn dextrin, a thickener commonly used in junk foods, is also the glue in envelopes and postage stamps.
- If we put them end to end, all the candy made in one year would go around the Earth 5.7 times.
- If you put your kids in front of children’s shows on Saturday mornings, about 80% of the ads they’ll see will be for junk food loaded with sugar.
- Ranch dressing is colored. One of the ingredients in ranch dressing is titanium dioxide which is used to make it look whiter. This is the same ingredient that is used in sunscreens and paints for coloring.
- Fruity treats shine with car wax. Carnauba wax, used for cars, is the same type of wax used to give gummies a glossy shine.
Sources:
National Holiday Calendar
Fact finder
KMMS AM
Just fun facts
The site of facts
National Today
