49 Fun Facts About Junk Food

Legend says cook George Crum invented potato chips in 1853 in which New York resort town?

Saratoga Springs: the tale has Crum frying paper-thin slices to spite a fussy Cornelius Vanderbilt, who in fact spent that summer touring Europe.

The saddle shape of a Pringles chip is known mathematically as what?

A hyperbolic paraboloid. P&G chemist Fredric Baur shaped the chip and designed its can, and when he died in 2008 his family buried some of his ashes in one.

Pringles' maker persuaded a London judge in 2008 that they weren't really potato crisps, winning exemption from what?

Sales tax: VAT applies to potato crisps but to few other foods, so P&G stressed that Pringles are only 42% potato. The Court of Appeal reversed the ruling in 2009.

Doritos are said to have been born in the early 1960s at a restaurant inside which theme park?

Disneyland: the story goes that its Casa de Fritos restaurant fried leftover tortillas instead of binning them, and Frito-Lay launched the chips nationally in 1966.

Which cheesy snack did Fritos creator Charles Elmer Doolin invent in 1948?

Cheetos. Their Flamin' Hot spin-off came from a team at Frito-Lay's Texas headquarters in 1989, though a former janitor's claim to have invented it later became a film.

Wartime rationing of which fruit forced Twinkies to swap their original cream filling for vanilla?

Bananas. Twinkies were launched in 1930 as banana-cream cakes, and the stand-in vanilla filling sold so well that the company never switched back after the war.

Twinkies are rumoured to last for decades, but what was their maximum shelf life until late 2012?

26 days. Cakes good for 45 days reached shops on November 1, 2012, two weeks before Hostess shut its bakeries, and the new owners kept the longer-lasting version.

Which pharmacist invented Coca-Cola in Atlanta in 1886?

John Pemberton had been selling a coca wine, and when Atlanta brought in prohibition he reworked it without the alcohol; his bookkeeper named the result and penned its script logo.

After New Coke flopped in 1985, the original formula returned as Coca-Cola what?

Coca-Cola Classic. The sweeter recipe had beaten the old one in taste tests, but drinkers deluged the company with angry calls and letters, one addressed to 'Chief Dodo', until it gave in after 79 days.

Which soft drink was first sold as 'Brad's Drink' at a North Carolina drugstore in the 1890s?

Pepsi. Its inventor renamed it Pepsi-Cola in 1898 and signed up hundreds of bottlers, only to lose the company to bankruptcy after wild swings in the price of his main ingredient.

Dr Pepper was created in the 1880s at a drugstore soda fountain in which Texas city?

Customers at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store originally ordered it by asking for 'a Waco'.

Which citrus soda's name was 19th-century slang for moonshine?

Mountain Dew. Knoxville bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman made the lemon-lime drink as a mixer for liquor and jokingly gave it the bootleggers' nickname, with a barefoot hillbilly on the label.

Red Bull was adapted from Krating Daeng, an energy tonic invented in 1976 in which country?

Thailand. Austrian marketer Dietrich Mateschitz found the tonic eased his jet lag on a business trip, partnered with its inventor, a former duck farmer, and reworked it for the West.

Which powdered drink mix, invented in the town of Hastings, is Nebraska's official soft drink?

Kool-Aid. Edwin Perkins had been selling a bottled syrup called Fruit Smack, and he dried it to a powder because the glass bottles were heavy, leaked and broke in transit.

Which convenience store chain licensed the Icee machine in the 1960s and sold the frozen drink under its own name?

7-Eleven sold it as the Slurpee. The machine came from a Kansas Dairy Queen owner whose soda fountain broke, so he served bottles half-frozen from the freezer and customers loved them.

Which US state has long eaten the most Spam per person?

Hawaii. The canned meat caught on there during World War II and never left, turning up today as musubi, a slice on a block of rice wrapped in seaweed.

Which company introduced Spam in 1937?

Hormel got the name from actor Ken Daigneau, the brother of one of its executives; it is widely read as 'spiced ham', though the company says only a few insiders know for sure.

Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles in 1958 and Cup Noodles in 1971 as founder of which company?

Nissin. Ando got the idea from watching hungry people queue in the cold for ramen in postwar Osaka, and perfected his dried noodles in a shed behind his house.

Which country ate the most instant noodles in 2025, about 43 billion servings?

China, counted with Hong Kong, ate about a third of the world's 124 billion servings, while Japan, where the noodles were invented, ranked only fifth.

Nutella was launched in 1964 by which Italian company?

Ferrero. With cocoa scarce and costly after the war, Pietro Ferrero stretched it with local hazelnuts, first as a foil-wrapped loaf cut with a knife, and the later spreadable version became Nutella.

Krispy Kreme opened its first store in 1937 in which North Carolina city?

Winston-Salem. Vernon Rudolph set out as a wholesaler, but the smell of fresh doughnuts drew so many callers that he cut a hole in the bakery wall and sold them through a window.

New England sea captain Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented which snack shape with a tin pepper box?

The ring doughnut. Gregory said the doughnuts of his day stayed raw in the middle, so he cut the middle out, making what he called the first doughnut hole ever seen by mortal eyes.

Which 1908 song gave Cracker Jack free publicity in its chorus?

Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Lyricist Jack Norworth said he scribbled it on the subway after spotting a sign for a game, though by his own account he had never been to one.

How much did Charles Elmer Doolin pay in 1932 for the recipe and equipment that became Fritos?

$100 bought the recipe, a converted potato ricer and a handful of retail accounts from Gustavo Olguin, a soccer coach who was selling up to go home to Mexico.

Which snack is Ignacio Anaya said to have improvised for a group of US officers' wives when the cook couldn't be found?

Nachos. Anaya, nicknamed Nacho, melted cheese over fried tortilla pieces with a slice of jalapeño at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, and the dish took his name.

Which snack on a stick did the Fletcher brothers bring to the State Fair of Texas in the early 1940s?

The corn dog. The Fletchers sold theirs as Corny Dogs, but Oregon's Pronto Pup makes a rival claim, and food historians say nobody knows who really dipped the first one.

The deep-fried Mars bar first made headlines in 1995 at a chip shop in which country?

Scotland. Two doctors who suspected the snack was an urban myth surveyed the country's chip shops in 2004 and found more than a fifth of them selling it.

Pop-Tarts were rushed to market in 1964 by Kellogg's to beat a rival product from which company?

Post announced its 'Country Squares' too early; Kellogg's built its version in four months, and frosting that survived the toaster arrived in 1967.

Which humor columnist showed in the early 1990s that a strawberry Pop-Tart stuck in a toaster would shoot out flames?

Dave Barry. A Texas professor then repeated his stunt as a mock experiment and reported flames up to 18 inches high from a single pastry.

Which cheese cracker did Dayton's Green & Green Company launch in 1921?

Cheez-It. The name meant nothing to shoppers at first, so the makers pitched it as a 'baked rarebit': melted cheese on toast, shrunk into a cracker that would keep.

A popcorn kernel explodes when heat builds pressure from which substance trapped inside its hull?

Water. A drop sealed inside each kernel flashes to steam, the pressure bursts the tough hull, and the soft starch puffs out to dozens of times its size.

World War II rationing of which ingredient sent Americans' popcorn eating soaring?

Sugar. With candy in short supply, Americans turned to popcorn, already a Depression favourite at 5 to 10 cents a bag.

Which US president, a former envoy to Paris, kept a recipe for potatoes 'deep-fried while raw, in small slices'?

Thomas Jefferson spent five years in France and had the enslaved James Hemings trained there as a chef; the recipe survives in a note in his own hand.

Which fast-food staple is Cornell food scientist Robert C. Baker credited with developing, long before McDonald's sold it?

The chicken nugget. Baker's team worked out how to keep the coating on through freezing and frying, then published the method in a free Cornell bulletin in 1963 without patenting it.

The Big Mac was created in 1967 by franchisee Jim Delligatti near which Pennsylvania city?

Pittsburgh. McDonald's bosses feared a 45-cent burger would clutter the menu and scare off customers used to paying 18 cents, so they let Delligatti test it at a single store, in Uniontown.

Which publication has run the Big Mac Index, a burger-price guide to currency values, since 1986?

The Economist meant it as a lighthearted way to make exchange-rate theory digestible, never as a precise gauge, yet it now appears in economics textbooks and dozens of academic studies.

Which president took up jelly beans to quit smoking and had 7,000 pounds of them shipped in for his inauguration?

Ronald Reagan started on them as governor of California, kept a jar on the table at Cabinet meetings, and once wrote that his team could hardly make a decision without passing it round.

Which chain, founded in Wichita in 1921, is generally regarded as the first fast-food hamburger chain?

White Castle. At a time when many Americans distrusted ground beef, its founders put staff in spotless uniforms and paper hats and made every stand cook the same burger the same way.

The first known Girl Scout cookie sale was held in 1917 by a troop in Muskogee, in which state?

Oklahoma. The Muskogee girls baked the cookies at home and sold them in their high school cafeteria to fund troop activities, five years before the Scouts' magazine printed a recipe for troops to follow.

In which city did Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield open their first ice cream parlour in 1978?

Burlington, Vermont. Neither founder was a trained ice-cream maker: they had learned the trade from a $5 correspondence course run by Penn State's creamery.

Which frozen treat is Frank Epperson said to have invented at age 11 by leaving a drink and its stirrer out overnight?

The Popsicle. Epperson patented it in 1924 as the Epsicle, but went broke and sold the rights to the Joe Lowe Company, saying later: 'I haven't been the same since.'

Which slogan did Lay's introduce for its potato chips?

Betcha can't eat just one arrived soon after Lay's 1961 merger with Frito, the deal that turned a Southern favourite into America's first national potato chip brand.

Which country brought in the first national package of junk-food warning labels, kids' advertising limits and school sales bans in 2016?

Chile. Researchers who tracked household shopping found that purchases of drinks carrying the new warnings fell markedly once the law took effect.

Which country introduced what was billed as the world's first 'fat tax' in 2011, only to scrap it a year later?

Denmark taxed butter, meat and anything else over 2.3% saturated fat, then dropped the levy after food prices rose and Danes began crossing into Germany to stock up.

Which candy began in 1927 Vienna as a peppermint marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking?

PEZ. Its first dispensers were shaped like cigarette lighters; the cartoon heads arrived only in the 1950s, when the company turned its sights on American children.

Which candy was dogged by a playground rumour that it killed the 'Mikey' kid from Life cereal ads when mixed with soda?

Pop Rocks. General Foods fought back in 1979 with full-page newspaper ads vouching for the candy's safety, and the actor who played Mikey grew up alive and well.

Ruth Wakefield is credited with creating the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s at which Massachusetts inn?

The Toll House Inn. In 1939 Wakefield let Nestlé print her recipe on its chocolate wrappers, supposedly for a single dollar and, it is said, free chocolate for life.

Which US senator led the 1970s committee whose Dietary Goals told Americans to cut back on fat?

George McGovern's committee had been set up in 1968 to investigate hunger and malnutrition, and only later turned to the opposite problem: Americans eating too much.

A 2010 Scripps Research study found that rats gorging on junk food showed brain changes like those caused by which drug?

Cocaine, and heroin too. The rats kept eating bacon and cheesecake even when they expected electric shocks, and all but starved for two weeks when offered only healthy food.