14 Food Facts That'll Totally Fuck With Your Mind

The different colors of Froot Loops all taste the same. THE SAME.

1. Twinkies changed their flavor because of WWII.

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Twinkies were originally banana-flavored, but bananas started being rationed after WWII broke out. As a result, the recipe was changed to the creme filling we know today.

2. The different colors of Froot Loops all taste the same.

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No matter the color, they all have the same flavoring...and that flavoring is "froot." So those childhood memories of thinking you liked the red ones best are lies. LIES.

3. Tomato ketchup is allowed by the USDA to have as many as 30 fruit fly eggs in it.

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All foods have to pass certain safety and quality standards set by the USDA. However, there's a decent chance that you've still eaten plenty of bugs. Ketchup can contain up to 30 fruit fly eggs, while blueberries can have two maggots per 100 berries.

4. A red pepper has more vitamin C than an orange.

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People always think of oranges and other citrus fruits as vitamin C superfoods, but a red bell pepper has more vitamin C than an orange does. So next time you have a cold, you might want some red pepper soup instead of orange juice.

5. Figs contain digested wasps.

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Certain types of figs are pollinated by female wasps, who attempt to lay their eggs inside. In the figs that we eat, the wasps usually die before laying eggs, and the fig then breaks down the wasp into protein. So while you won't find any wasp bits intact inside a fig, there was a wasp in there at some point.

6. Only about 1% or 2% of the corn that's harvested each year is edible for humans.

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There are basically two types of corn that US farmers grow: sweet corn and field corn. Sweet corn is the stuff we eat, but it's only about 1% of the corn grown. The other 99% is field corn, which has hard kernels and is used mostly as livestock feed and for corn-based products like ethanol.

7. The five-second rule is not a thing.

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If you drop a piece of food on the floor and leave it there for five seconds, that's plenty of time for bacteria to climb on board. Science has proven it. It'll have less bacteria than a piece of food left for, say, a full minute, but you're definitely still eating floor microbes. Sorry.

8. Baby carrots aren't grown small. They're just regular carrots.

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Yeah, turns out that baby carrots are just regular carrots that have been shaved down so they're smaller.

9. Double-dipping doesn't contaminate food any more than single-dipping does.

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That's according to the science of the Mythbusters. People will still think you're gross, though.

10. That "fresh-squeezed" orange juice from the grocery store is artificially flavored.

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The flavor of orange juice is diminished as part of the bottling and preservation process, so orange juice companies reportedly dress up the flavor with "orange essence and oils" created by flavor and fragrance companies.

11. McDonald's intentionally created four shapes of chicken nugget, and all chicken nuggets come in one of those four shapes.

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The four shapes, which are pressed with cookie cutters, are called the bell, boot, bone, and ball. The company said that "three [shapes] would've been too few," but "five would've been, like, wacky."

12. This is what the inside of a Cup Noodles looks like.

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Supposedly this is to allow room for the noodles to expand. Still feels like we're being tricked, though.

13. Honey never goes bad. Ever.

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Thanks to a combination of fortuitous properties — such as lack of water and presence of hydrogen peroxide — honey never spoils. Jars of honey were excavated from Egyptian tombs and were found to be perfectly intact and edible.

14. Cap'n Crunch ISN'T EVEN A CAPTAIN.

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He's COMMANDER Crunch.