Mental Floss

Can You Tell Food Fact From Food Fiction?

See if you can figure out which of these food product facts are about real people—and which are mere invention.
Bymentalfloss .com|
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Dr Pepper), ahmad agung wijayanto/Shutterstock (question marks)

You might not be aware that the popular frozen sandwich Uncrustables were invented back in the 1960s, when engineers at NASA wanted to develop an astronaut snack that wouldn’t leak its contents into delicate instruments. The solution: Crimp around the bread, sealing the peanut butter and jelly inside.

If you find that story hard to believe, congratulations: We just made it up. Now see if you can separate the fact from the fiction in how these consumer food brands came to be in the quiz below.

Food brands often have peculiar origins. Lucky Charms hit shelves in 1964 after General Mills employee John Holohan experimented with Cheerios and chopped-up bits of circus peanuts. Love Pez? The tiny candies were originally developed by Eduard Haas III to help people quit smoking by giving them something to chew on. (Pez comes from the German word for peppermint, pfefferminz: Haas took the first, middle, and last letter.)

As for Uncrustables: They were actually developed by two suburban couples in North Dakota in the 1990s after their kids pleaded for crustless sandwiches. Clever? Yes. Astronauts? No.

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