25 Interesting Facts About Meat – Part 1 of 4

Here are 25 Interesting Facts About Meat. This is part 1 of our 4 part series. So stay tuned as we will publishing more facts about meats in the coming days.

1-5 Interesting Facts About Meat

1. Upscale steakhouses use dry-aged beef where the beef is hung on a rack to dry for several weeks. This process evaporates moisture in the muscles and promotes enzymatic breakdown of connective tissue which together yields a very flavorful meat. – Source

2. Any “Kobe” beef purchased outside of Japan or China is fake. Actual Kobe beef must be raised in specific parts of Japan, and it is illegal to export it anywhere other than China. – Source

3. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef Company wanted to test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease. At a cost of about half a million dollars, Creekstone built a testing lab, the first inside a U. S. meat packing plant, and hired the necessary personnel. In 2004, the US Department of Agriculture, refused to sell Creekstone enough testing kits to test all of its cows. – Source

4. Beef jerky is so expensive because the beef is bought by the pound, and the jerky loses 3/4ths of that weight in the smoking process. – Source

5. The pilot of Gemini 3, John Young, was reprimanded for smuggling a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft. – Source

6-10 Interesting Facts About Meat

6. Some companies package beef in a carbon monoxide atmosphere to keep the meat looking pink or “fresh” up to one full year. This only affects the color though; the meat still spoils normally – Source

7. English words for livestock (cow, sheep, chicken) are Germanic-based and the words for meats (beef, mutton, poultry) are French-based. This is because the people who raised the animals were Anglo-Saxon peasants and the people who ate them were Norman aristocrats. – Source

8. The reason why breakfast isn’t served all day at McDonald’s is mainly because the grill temperature required to cook beef patties is significantly different from the temperature at which eggs are cooked. – Source

9. McDonald’s cooked their fries in 93% beef fat (tallow) until 1990, when they switched to vegetable oil. – Source

10. 2013 is the first year in recorded history where consumption of fish has surpassed beef. – Source

11-15 Interesting Facts About Meat

11. Burger King sells a $200 burger that is made with wagyu beef, white truffles, Pata Negra ham and crystal champagne onion straws. The burger is only sold once per week in London and proceeds from the sale goes to a London charity. – Source

12. Vladimir The Great, Prince of Kiev, considered converting from Paganism to Islam. He sent envoys to study Islam, but upon hearing that Islam forbade alcohol and pork, he got baptized. – Source

13. The French eat four times more butter, 60% more cheese and nearly three times more pork than the rest of the world. – Source

14. The McRib is only sold when pork prices are low. – Source

15. In 2014, a 125-lb woman won the Wing Bowl XXII eating contest (record 363 chicken wings). The next day, she won the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival (5 lbs of bacon in 3 min), after winning the IHOP Pancake Bowl (59 pancakes). The next day, she conquered the Adam Emenecker Challenge by eating 5 lbs of barbecue. – Source

16-20 Interesting Facts About Meat

16. A survey conducted by Smithfield showed that 65% of Americans would support bacon as their “national food.”- Source

17. The two oldest cats on record lived to 38 and 34 years old. Both were owned by the same owner and lived off a diet of bacon, eggs, broccoli and coffee. – Source

18. According to researchers at Newcastle University, a bacon sandwich can cure a hangover. – Source

19. Ernest Hemingway was a fantastic cook famed for his pan-fried hamburgers and bacon wrapped trout. – Source

20. There is a hostage negotiation strategy called “Bringing Home the Bacon” where negotiators fry bacon outside of the hostage area, making the hostage taker hungry from the smell and more willing to negotiate. – Source

21-25 Interesting Facts About Meat

21. Bacon and eggs were not considered breakfast foods until the 1920s, when Sigmund Freud’s nephew was hired by a packing company to create a marketing campaign to increase bacon sales. – Source

22. Elvis Presley once flew from Memphis to Denver and back to eat the Fool’s Gold Loaf: a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of jelly, and a pound of bacon. – Source

23. British, American and Canadian bacon rashers each have their own distinct look and are cut from different parts of the pig. – Source

24. First meal eaten on the moon was bacon (technically, freeze dried bacon cubes). – Source

25. Christmas ham, originally a pagan tradition, was endorsed by the Catholic Church as a test of truthful conversion from Judaism. – Source