Interesting Facts

Lachanophobia is a fear of vegetables. (The reason this came up was there have been a couple of news stories on people suffering from this condition in the UK. According to the Mail Online, students Vicki Larrieux and Abi Stroud cannot eat their five a day because they suffer from panic attacks at the merest sight of a sprout or a pea, and what is worse The Metro reports that Dee Vyas developed the phobia after being made to eat greens as a child.  Why is it worse than the other two? She's a vegetarian! Seemingly, she lives off sweets and crisps. I think a bit of cognitive therapy would come in handy here.)  

Aubergines were originally called "vatinganah" in Sanskrit, which means literally ‘fart, go away.’ Original Photo by Irene Kightley   CC by SA 2.0 (From Sanskrit, the word and the fruit travelled, morphed into Persian as badingan, then into Arabic as al-badhinjan.  The Spanish borrowed the term thinking that the Arabic definite article "al" was part of the word, so it went into the Catalan language as alberginia, where the French later picked it up as aubergine, and the English borrowed the word in the late 1700s. 1794, from Fr. aubergine, "fruit of the eggplant" (Solanum esculentum), dim. of auberge "a kind of peach," variant of alberge, from Sp. alberchigo "apricot" [OED]. Klein derives the French word from Catalan alberginera, from Arabic al-badinjan"the eggplant," from Pers. badin-gan, from Skt. vatin-ganah. So aubergine really means "fart go away". Americans know it as an eggplant, which IMHO isn...

More cannabis is grown in Scotland than vegetables. (Every year up to £100m of cannabis is grown in Scotland. Of the 111 cannabis farms discovered 100% were in domestic properties and 94% of those were in the buy-to-let market. Personally I prefer carrots.)

The European Union has scrapped rules on fruit and vegetable size. (Twenty-six fruits and vegetables are now free to grow their own way. But ten — including peaches, pears and tomatoes — still have to watch the scales. I shall look forward to funny shaped carrots going back on the shelf.)

According to a survey for the Health Food Manufacturers' Association, two-thirds of Britons mistakenly think that eating chips, roasties and mashed potato contributes to their five-a-day recommendation. (The 5-a-day campaign aims to highlight the healthier benefits of eating more fruit and vegetables. The idea being that you should eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. Of course the kind of fruit and veg you eat does matter, and I don't think a packet of crisps counts.)

Eating lots of carrots will turn the pigment in your skin orange. (Carotenaemia is the presence in blood of the yellow pigment carotene from excessive intake of carrots or other vegetables or fruit containing the pigment, which results in increased serum carotenoids. Strangely carotene is the same substance that makes leaves turn orange in the autumn. But you would have to eat a silly amount of carrots, and eating them in moderation will help your eyes!)