Are you normal or weird?

I've always identified as weird. I would couch it in terms like "charmingly weird" or "delightfully eccentric," but I came down firmly on the weird side of the spectrum.

At least, I did in public. Secretly, I thought of myself as perfectly normal, and it was the people who weren't like me who were genuinely strange.

What about you?

Let me put it this way. Would you rather learn weird facts about food, or would you prefer ordinary facts?

I thought so.

To satisfy that — let's call it unusual — side of your curiosity, here are some facts I recently learned about food that are … surprising.

Technically, bananas are berries. So are watermelons and cucumbers. However, strawberries are not, and neither are cherries, which are considered stone fruits or drupes.

Meanwhile, pistachios aren't nuts, they are fruit. And while we're at it, almonds are seeds, not nuts.

Bananas are curved because they hang down when they grow, but they curve up to seek the sun. And they do not grow on trees. They actually grow on herbaceous plants, which are plants that do not have wood and die off down to the ground every year before regrowing.

Do you know what else doesn't grow on trees? Pineapples. Pineapples grow just a few inches off the ground on a plant that can only produce one pineapple at a time — and it takes around two years to grow one.

Kumyz, a popular alcoholic drink in Kyrgyzstan, is made from fermented horse milk. Even people who live there usually try to dissuade non-natives from attempting to drink it. It only takes a day to make, but apparently the main ingredient can be difficult to obtain. According to a 2003 book, "It takes considerable skill to milk a mare."

Cotton candy was created by a dentist.

Carrots were originally purple, white or yellow, not orange. Dutch farmers began cross-breeding them in the 17th century until they became an enticing bright orange. No one knows for certain why they did this, but one popular theory is they wanted to honor the royal family, the House of Orange.

One out of every four hazelnuts grown throughout the world is used to make Nutella.

Tomatoes are fruit, but according to an 1893 unanimous decision by the Supreme Court they should actually be considered vegetables, at least for the sake of tariffs, imports and customs.

Applesauce was the first food eaten in space. John Glenn had it as a snack on his 1962 flight as the first American to orbit the Earth. Thirty-three years later, potatoes became the first food grown in space.

Lemons float. Limes do not. The difference is in the thickness of the peel. Lemon peels are thicker than lime because they have more air pockets, which cause buoyancy. Oranges float for the same reason.

Rotten eggs also float. Eggs that tilt or stand upright in water, but do not float, are older but are still safe to eat.

True wasabi is considered the hardest plant to grow and is therefore one of the most expensive to cultivate. What is served instead at an estimated 95% of Japanese restaurants around the world is a combination of European horseradish (which is related to wasabi), mustard and food coloring.

There are more than 7,500 varieties of apples and more than 350 shapes of pasta.

Every day, almost half of all Americans eat a sandwich.

Flamingos are pink for the same reason salmon is pink: They both eat small crustaceans (brine shrimp for flamingos, shrimp and krill for salmon) that eat smaller things that contain carotenoids, which turn them pink.

The first known vending machine, created in the first century, dispensed holy water in churches. People could put in a coin and the machine would pour out a specified amount of holy water.

As of 2021, the items stolen most often from grocery stores were baby formula, meat and seafood, cheese, spirits and wines, cosmetics, over-the-counter medicine and frozen items.

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