The Ultimate Food Trivia Challenge – Yum But Why?
Welcome to our first-ever trivia episode! We had SO much fun putting this together, and we think you’re going to love playing along. Whether you’re in the car, at the dinner table, or just hanging out, grab your family and see how many questions you can answer correctly!
What’s Inside This Episode?
This special episode features four different trivia rounds that will test everything you know about food – from fruits and veggies to food myths and surprising facts. The best part? We challenged each other with questions we hadn’t seen before, so our reactions are totally genuine!
🥕 Round 1: Fruit & Veggie Mystery
We give you clues, and you guess the food! From spicy peppers to underground vegetables, can you figure out what we’re describing?
🍫 Round 2: Quick-Fire Trivia & Jokes
Fast-paced questions covering everything from chocolate chip cookies to the world’s longest noodle. Plus, we’ve got food jokes that will make you groan and giggle!
🍕 Round 3: This or That
Compare and contrast! Which country eats more chocolate? What came first – ice cream or popsicles? You might be surprised by the answers!
🦃 Round 4: True or False Food Myths
Time to bust some food myths! We tackle common beliefs about turkey, eggs, swimming, and more. How many myths have you been believing?
10 Mind-Blowing Facts from This Episode
Here are some of our favorite facts that we learned while researching this episode:
- Cranberries can bounce! They’re sometimes called “bounceberries,” and farmers actually test their quality by seeing if they bounce over barriers. Fresh, ripe cranberries have air pockets that make them bouncy like tiny balls!
- Orange carrots are a Dutch invention. Carrots used to be purple, white, and yellow! Orange varieties were developed in the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. You can still find rainbow carrots at some farmers markets!
- Swiss people eat DOUBLE the chocolate Americans do. Switzerland averages 22 pounds per person per year, while the US eats about 11 pounds. Time to catch up, America!
- The popsicle was invented by an 11-year-old. In 1905, Frank Epperson accidentally left a cup of soda mix with a stirring stick outside on a cold night. It froze, and he later patented his creation – originally called an “Epsicle”!
- Potatoes have “eyes” that can grow new plants. Those little bumps on potatoes are actually buds. If you plant a potato piece with an eye, it will grow a whole new potato plant!
- Lettuce is part of the sunflower family. Who knew?! Despite looking nothing like a sunflower, lettuce belongs to the same botanical family.
- The turkey-tryptophan myth is FALSE. Turkey does have tryptophan, but so do chicken, beef, and cheese – sometimes even more! The real reason you feel sleepy after Thanksgiving is because you ate SO MUCH FOOD, and your body sends extra blood to your stomach to digest it all.
- Honey never expires. Archaeologists found 3,000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs that was still perfectly edible! Honey is too acidic and has too little water for bacteria to grow, plus bees add enzymes that create hydrogen peroxide – a natural preservative.
- A bunch of bananas is called a “hand.” And a single banana is called a “finger”! This makes so much sense when you think about it.
- Americans eat 350 slices of pizza PER SECOND. That’s about 3 billion pizzas per year in the US alone! While pizza was invented in Naples, Italy in the late 1700s, Americans have definitely made it our own.
The Food Jokes That Made Us Laugh (and Groan)
We couldn’t resist including some food jokes in this episode! Here are a few of our favorites:
Q: What is a taxi driver’s favorite kind of vegetable?
A: Cab-bage!
Q: What do you call a dinosaur that eats its veggies?
A: A Broccolisaurus!
Q: What do you call a raspberry playing the guitar?
A: A jam session!
Q: What did the apple skin say to the apple?
A: I’ve got you covered!
Got any food jokes to share with us? Send them our way – we might feature them in a future episode!
Food Myths: BUSTED!
One of our favorite parts of this episode was debunking common food myths. Here’s what we learned:
❌ MYTH: Eating turkey makes you sleepy because of tryptophan
THE TRUTH: Turkey has tryptophan, but so do many other foods! The real culprit is eating a HUGE meal. Your body sends extra blood to your stomach for digestion, which makes you tired.
❌ MYTH: Brown eggs are healthier than white eggs
THE TRUTH: The only difference is the breed of chicken! White chickens lay white eggs, brown chickens lay brown eggs. Some chickens even lay blue and green eggs! The nutrition inside is the same.
❌ MYTH: You can’t swim after eating – you’ll get cramps!
THE TRUTH: This is completely FALSE! There’s no scientific evidence that eating before swimming causes dangerous cramps. You might feel uncomfortable with a super full stomach, but you won’t be in danger.
✅ TRUE: Double-dipping really does spread germs!
THE SCIENCE: A Clemson University study found that double-dipping transfers thousands of bacteria from your mouth to the dip. Thicker dips like salsa get fewer bacteria than thinner ones like cheese dip. So… maybe get your own plate!
✅ TRUE: Cranberries bounce when they’re ripe!
THE SCIENCE: Fresh cranberries have air pockets inside that make them bouncy. Farmers use this to test quality – they drop cranberries over barriers, and only the ones that bounce are considered good quality.
Try This at Home: Family Food Trivia Night
Want to extend the fun? Here are some ideas for hosting your own food trivia night:
Setup Ideas:
- Divide into teams (kids vs. adults is always fun!)
- Create different categories like we did
- Use our episode as inspiration and create your own questions
- Make it a weekly tradition during family dinner
Question Ideas to Get You Started:
- What’s your family’s favorite food and why?
- Can you name 10 fruits that start with different letters?
- What’s the weirdest food combination that actually tastes good?
- Which came first: the waffle or the waffle iron?
- What food can you name that’s the same in every language?
Make It Interactive:
- Do taste tests with blindfolds
- Try the cranberry bounce test
- See if anyone can identify foods by smell alone
- Create food riddles based on family favorites
Your Challenge This Week
Here’s what we want YOU to do:
Pick ONE food fact from this episode and share it with someone at dinner tonight. See if they believe you! Some of these facts are so surprising that people might not think they’re true.
Bonus Challenge: Make up your own three-clue food riddle and test it on your family. Can they guess what food you’re describing?
Share your results with us on social media using #YumButWhy – we’d love to hear which facts surprised your family the most!
Episode Resources
Want to learn more about the topics we covered? Here are some resources:
Websites:
- Exploratorium’s Science of Cooking – Interactive food science experiments
- KidsHealth: Learning About Food – Nutrition and food facts for kids
- National Geographic Kids: Food – Articles about food from around the world
More Fun Food Facts:
- Smithsonian Magazine’s food articles
- The Food Timeline (foodtimeline.org) – History of foods
- Your local library’s cooking and food science section
What Topics Should We Cover Next?
We had SO much fun making this trivia episode! Should we do more? Send us your ideas through our website contact form or on social media.
Keep exploring, keep tasting, and keep asking “Yum, but why?”
Have a food question you’d like us to explore? A trivia topic you want to hear? Send us your suggestions! We love hearing from our listeners and your ideas often inspire our best episodes.
Yum But Why? 
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