As you read today’s entry, consider your memories of food. What are your best memories? Can you see the food in your mind? Can you smell it or taste it? Close your eyes and savor the memory – how does it make you feel? If you could have one thing to eat right now, be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner, what would it be? And would you share your favorite food with a friend?
Read on to learn more about where some of our more interesting victuals come from and how they were discovered.
Celebrating honey
The current issue 
of Brain Aerobics Weekly honors Honey Month with both a trivia quiz and a discussion topic. Here’s a little history: Scientists believe that bees originated millions of years ago in Africa, and migrated from there. Beekeeping has been practiced for thousands of years, spreading through ancient Egypt – where citizens could even pay their taxes in honey – and the Roman Empire. An apiary dating from the 10th Century BCE was discovered in Israel. Europeans brought them to the New World in the 1600s. But I learned the most about bees from brief videos on YouTube. Try these:
- How honey is made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpcpn5NX62c
- Show me the honey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjuIvRXqQHM&feature=related
- How bees develop in the hive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSk_ev1eZec&feature=fvw
And this one on how bees communicate by dancing: http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-bee.html.
Celebrating waffles
September 5 – 11 is Waffle Week so get out your waffle iron and get ready to celebrate. Waffles originated in medieval Europe as wafers, but the first American patent on a waffle iron made for a yeast batter was issued in 1869. The coming weekend marks the 55th anniversary of the first Waffle House in an Atlanta suburb. Since then, Waffle House restaurants throughout the U.S. have served about 500 million waffles, more than a billion each of hashbrowns and grits orders, 1.5 billion eggs and close to 1 billion cups of 
coffee. Per minute, they serve:
- 159 Waffles
- 136 Cups of Coffee
- 117 Orders of Grits
- 204 Orders of Hashbrowns
- 368 Strips of Bacon
- 115 Sausage Patties
Hungry yet?
And while we’re on the subject of food . . .
There’s an old saying, “It was a brave man who ate the first oyster.” The same might be said of the first human who overcame a hive of angry bees to sample honey. And yet, it seems that humans are bent on experimenting with foods. Time Magazine had a brief article this week called “Sparking Spuds,” which noted that Japanese researchers found that when they zapped potatoes with a jolt of electricity, it boosted their anti-oxidant levels, 
“potentially providing a new way to make them more nutritious.” Apparently the electricity mimics environmental stresses that have the same effect. Who could have guessed that a stressed potato was a healthier potato for humans?
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