Oklahoma’s State Fruit is…the Watermelon? (Facts about Food Friday)

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Facts about Food Friday

If this were a tomato we were talking about, I would understand. A tomato fits some characteristics of both a vegetable and a fruit, and we tend to use it for either general purpose, so there’s some confusion.

But the watermelon? Yes, I did my research. Yes, I know that there are some claims like how it’s part of the cucumber family, and therefore, could be considered a vegetable… But come on.

Even if it were 100% vegetable, I would say the vast majority of people think of it as a fruit. Maybe the vast majority of people are completely wrong even, but when you name your state vegetable as being the watermelon, you’re the one who looks stupid… Ah well. We probably didn’t have that high hopes for you anyway, Oklahoma. ;)

7 Up wasn’t always so easy to remember (Fun Facts about Food)

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Facts about Food Friday

Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda

That’s about what the original developer thought would be an appropriate name for people to have to say every time they wanted his lemon-lime drink.

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Until 1950, like a lot of other sodas that weren’t purely sweet drinks, it also had a mood stabilizing drug (lithium citrate) in it. Given the obesity epidemic, maybe we should go back to the time where sodas were considered medications instead of constant kid drinks. ;)

Wyngz – The cool way to say “not wings” (Fun facts about food Friday)

DiGiorno Pizza and Boneless Wyngz* - Wyngz means that there's no real wing meat in it and it's just different parts of the chicken in nugget shapes

Facts about Food Friday

I really hate when people spell things with a ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ anyway, but apparently this is a real thing now – A government issued mandate that requires food manufacturers to label certain types of food this way.

So basically, “wyngz” are any chicken products that are sort of shaped like chicken wings, but aren’t actually wings at all. In fact, this is the ONLY misspelling that’s allowed and it has to be exactly this way with both the ‘y’ and the ‘z’ in order to be legal.

Not only that, but there is an entire list of very specific details that must be followed:

  • The chicken used in said “chicken product” has to be white meat
  • “Wyngz” has to be in the same color font and not hidden inconspicuously
  • Here’s where we start getting specific – The smallest letter in the name can be no smaller than one-third the size of the largest letter used in ‘wyngz’. Get out your rulers, folks!
  • It also has to state that it’s not wing meat (or isn’t ‘just’ wing meat), such as “contains breast meat and wing meat,” and has to be linked by an asterisk next to “wyngz,” pointing people to a more specific description of what they may or may not want to eat now.

Box of fake chicken wings with wyngz spelling to show that they're not real.

Digiorno is doing it right on their boxes there.

And actually, they’re going one step farther by trying to make this sound like a great thing. If you go to their website, they explain that the reason for the “fancy spelling” is “Because they’re not wings. They’re even better!”

/facepalm

Really, I think this one sums up the new “spelling” quite nicely:

 

 A picture of a real chicken with the right spelling of "chicken" and "wings." A picture of a cartoon/fake chicken dancing with ridiculous spellings "Chikynz" and "Wyngz*"

 

(Gah! My spell check was really angry at me for this post of “wyngz,” ha!)