Food Facts & Tasty Trivia Bits

Food Facts

The greatest expenses that face the average American household are housing, transportation, and food, with better than ten percent of that expense going for grocery purchases. This week Tidbits decided to look into some of the common food products we purchase and where we buy them. We came up with some juicy facts and tasty trivia bits you should find interesting, so follow along and get your brain ready for information overload!

MEAT FACTS

• The most popular items served for dinner are chicken, and sandwiches. The most popular side dish served with sandwiches is chips. The most popular side dish with chicken is vegetables, followed by potatoes, salad, and bread (in order).

• How does a butcher accurately label the fat content of meat? By using an X-ray machine such as the Anyl-Ray Fat Analyzer, which sends X-rays through cylindrical tubes that each contain 13 pounds of ground beef. Meat absorbs the gamma rays, but fat does not, and the machine analyses the amount of gamma rays that are not absorbed and calculates the percentage of fat.

• Although there are 60 meat packers in the U.S., just four of them, Tyson, Cargill, National, and JBS USA, control 80% of the American market for meat. A large meat packer may process up to 30,000 cattle per day.

• Read more interesting food facts in this week's online edition: issuu.com/valleybits