Food Facts for Kids

Food around the World

Our Fun Food Facts for Kids will show you lots of interesting and fun facts on famous food from around the world. Here we tell you about amazing food records and share some fun and easy-to-make recipes from around the world.

Here you will read about the most popular dishes in the different countries and learn awesome food facts to impress your family and friends.

Our section with our kids' favourite recipes from around the world will make your mouth water and your tummy rumble. So stay put and bookmark our ever expanding section of fascinating food facts for kids, well, not only for kids, really!

Fun Food Facts for Kids

For our Country Food Guides see our special pages here:

Christmas Food around the world

More will follow soon.

Amazing Food Facts for Kids

To follow soon:

avocados
rice
pasta
coffee

Fascinating Food Records

Chocolate

Chocolate is made from cocoa beans that grow as fruits of the cocoa tree.

The indigenous people in South America have used cocoa beans as food for more than 3,000 years. The Aztecs ground the dried beans to a powder and made a delicious drink by mixing the cocoa powder with water and herbs. Later the drink was sweetened with honey or sugar and today sweetened cocoa powder is mainly mixed with milk. In 2018, cocoa is grown in more than 35 countries. Most cocoa beans are produced by the Ivory Coast.

Milk chocolate was invented by Henri Nestle of Switzerland in 1875. Different countries have different tastes, as the British enjoy milk chocolate the most, while American prefer chocolate candy bars!

Tomatoes

Tomatina - image by Iakov Filimanov/Shutterstock.com

The largest tomato weighed 3.51 kg/ 7lb 12oz according to the Guiness Book of World Records. That is as heavy as eight cans of coke and weighs actually almost as much as two 2-litre bottles of soda!

Tomatoes are thought to originate from Peru in South America.

In Spain, the annual tomato festival 'Tomatina' is celebrated every year in August. There people throw tomatoes at each other for fun. Read more about Spain here.

Hot Dogs

In the USA, baseball fans gobble up 26 million hot dogs every baseball season!

Some say, hot dogs, which are sausage rolls, were first created and sold by Germans living in the USA as early 1890. In Germany and Austria, long thin sausages were popular for a long time already.

Hot dogs are usually eaten topped with sauces. Most people choose mustard as topping on their hot dog while children usually prefer to eat them with tomato ketchup.

Bananas

Bananas grow on plants that are up to 5 m/ 16 ft tall. There are more than 1,000 species of bananas. Banana plants can yield fruit all year round.

The biggest banana producers are China, India and South America. The world's biggest importing country is the USA with 25%.

A banana consists to over 75% of water and is rich in vitamins and minerals such as potassium. Bananas are very low in fat and low in fibre.

Did you know that bananas float when you put them in a bowl of water. Go on and try it. Other fruit that float are apples, watermelons, strawberries and lemons.

Liquorice

These popular sweets originally were made with the extract from the roots of the liquorice plant. However, liquorice is not only available in form of black strings today, but, especially in Asia, they sell these sweets in all colours but mainly as red strings. Liquorice comes also with strawberry, cherry or raspberry flavour.

Another fun food record: The longest string of liquorice ever made, measured 244 metres/ 800 ft!

Most liquorice sweets or candy contain loads of sugar, thus they are not considered to have benefits for your health. However, some people swear liquorice can help to ease the pain of a sore throat.

In the Nordic countries such as Norway and Denmark, people prefer to eat salty liquorice.

Popcorn

Corn was grown already 9,000 years ago in Mexico. IN 2012, archaeologist found the evidence that popcorn was eaten already by native Americans in Peru more than 5,000 years ago.

Popcorn is made with maize/corn kernels that 'explode' when the kernels are heated over fire or on a stove. A temperature of about 180°C/ 355°F must be reached to make the kernels pop. Then each kernel puffs to more than 20 times its original size!

Did you know that Mexicans enjoy to munch their popcorn with hot jalapeño sauce? Americans usually prefer to snack on popcorn with salt and butter and Germans eat them sprinkled with sugar.

Food Facts for Kids
Fun Food Records

In 2011, Gary Eccles from the UK ate 258 baked beans in five minutes. That would not be that difficult as such, however... he picked the baked beans with a cocktail stick! Well, we could try this... but then this would be really testing our patience. And we definitely wouldn't manage in five minutes!

In 2013, Alfrie Binnie from the UK sorted 30 jelly beans by colour in 40 seconds - with chopsticks! Sounds like a fun game!

In 2015, Cherry Yoshitake managed to eat 71 baked beans in a minute - picked out of a bowl with a chopstick. - Try to beat this ;-)

Food Facts for Kids | Fun Food Quiz

1. Do you know which country is famous for the yummy guacamole dip or sauce?

2. Which country's specialty dish is fried mopane worms?

3. Where does pasta come from?

4. Where do people eat pastel de choclo?

5. Name three fruits that float when put in water

Answers:

Mexico
South Africa
Italy - Pasta was eaten even before Marco Polo returned from his travels and introduced Asian noodles to the Italians
Chile
Bananas, apples, watermelons, strawberries, lemons

Food Facts for Kids | Resources

Guinness Book of Records. "World Records: Food." GuinnessWorldRecords. Last accessed 19 September 2024
Smithsonian Institute. "Ancient Popcorn discovered in Peru." Smithsonian. 20 January 2012. Last accessed 19 September 2024
Svenia Lohner. "Exploring the 'pop' in popcorn." Scientific American. 18 August 2016. Last accessed 19 September 2024
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. "Banana Facts and Figures." FAO. Last accessed 19 September 2024
European Cocoa Association. "Cocoa Story." ECA. Last accessed 19 September 2024