Cocktail conversation starters

To help you keep up on your random food facts — and since Jonathan Lipnicki and fact-based toilet paper are sadly obsolete — Fat City would like to point you in the direction of Learn Something Every Day.

The Web site’s raison d’etre is to supply the world with a quirky illustration and a single fact each morning. Many of the facts are about food.

For example, apparently humans share about 50 percent of our DNA with bananas — I’m not sure whether that says a lot for bananas and not a lot about mankind. The average person will consume 35 tons of food in his or her lifetime, which means the average Kansas Citian will likely nail down 20 tons of barbecue.

The fact for November 1 noted that ketchup was considered medicinal in 1830 (it was — and still is — the cure for eating hot dogs). It’s fun to read the Internet equivalent of a Snapple bottle cap, and acquiring the kind of information that everybody should know in case of a lull in conversation or a sudden appearance on Jeopardy.  

[Image via Flickr: dion gillard]