101 Facts You Should Know About Food

101

Know

Facts

You Should

About

Food

John Farndon

One-third of all the fruit and vegetables we eat contains pesticide residuces 80% of 10-year-old American girls diet Blueberries may be more effective than drugs in protecting against heart disease

101 Facts

You Should Know About

Food

John Farndon

ICON BOOKS

Published in the UK in 2007 by Icon Books Ltd, The Old Dairy, Brook Road, Thriplow, Cambridge SG8 7RG email: info@iconbooks.co.uk www.iconbooks.co.uk Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, 3 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AU or their agents Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW Published in Australia in 2007 by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065 Distributed in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2YE ISBN-10: 1-84046-767-3 ISBN-13: 978-1840467-67-3 Text copyright

© 2007 John Farndon

The author has asserted his moral rights. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting by Wayzgoose Printed and bound in the UK by Bookmarque

Contents

Introduction 1. The food industry annually spends over £10.5 billion on chemicals to add to food and alter it 2. The largest modern fishing trawler drags a net twice the size of the Millennium Dome in London 3. The contents of the average British shopping trolley travel 95,000 miles to get there 4. One in three kids born in America in 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes 5. The smell of raspberry comes from the interaction of over 300 different chemicals 6. It takes 5,000 litres of water to make 1kg of cheese, 20,000 litres to grow 1kg of coffee, and 100,000 litres to produce 1kg of hamburger beef 7. McDonald’s gives away over 1.5 billion toys every year 8. In just ten years, Vietnam has...