Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Fun facts about popcorn

Everyone knows and loves popcorn, but here are some fun facts about one of America's favorite snacks that you may not know. For as little as 13 cents, you can enjoy more than 3 quarts of popcorn.

It's no surprise Americans will consume nearly 16 billion quarts of this naturally fun snack this year. That's 59 quarts per man, woman and child!

Did you know?

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world's largest popcorn bag was filled in 5 hours and was 784 cubic feet.

If you made a trail of popcorn from New York City to LA you would need more than 352,028,160 popped kernels!

Anthropologists found popcorn kernels more than 3,000 years old in an Arizona cave and when tested with heat, the kernels still popped!

According to American movie theater managers, more popcorn is sold during the showing of scary movies.

In the 1920s popcorn was banned at most movie theaters because it was considered too noisy!

In 1945, Percy Spencer discovered that when popcorn was placed under microwave energy, it popped; this led to many experiments with other foods, and ultimately led to the birth of the microwave oven!

During World War II, sugar was sent overseas for American troops. As a result, the States experienced a shortage of sugar needed for the production of candy. Because of this unusual situation, Americans consumed three times as much popcorn as usual!

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, home of the Minnesota Vikings, could hold an estimated 60 million bags of popped microwave popcorn! That's 840 million cups of popcorn!

"Popability" is popcorn lingo that refers to the percentage of kernels that pop.

Yellow popcorn and white popcorn taste different; yellow tastes nutty and is crunchier, white popcorn tastes slightly sweet and is crispier.

For more information on popcorn, visit www.popcorn.org or call toll-free 1-877-POPALOT.

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