Food firsts

by Nicola Shepherd

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A ticklish taste of obscure food trivia.

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Ten things you really don't need to know about food and drink:

1. When the first McDonald's hamburger restaurant opened in Kuwait in 1994 the queue at the drive-thru was 15,000 people and seven miles long.
2. Tea was first sold in this country in the seventeenth century in coffee houses.
3. The first Indian curry restaurant opened in Manchester in 1965.
4. Surrey University has just appointed its first Professor�of airline food.
5. Food was first irradiated in America in the 1950s.
6. Chhana, a staple of Bengali food, was introduced to Bengal by the Portuguese.
7. The smaller the bubbles in champagne the better its quality.
8. Food loses some of its taste at high altitudes.
9. Sugar only became universally available in 1850.
10. The first talking food labels were introduced on to Heinz ketchup bottles as a marketing experiment in 1999 with audible messages such as 'Quiet please, tomatoes meeting inside' and '14 billion french fries can't be wrong.' They are now back by popular demand for a three-month period and only available in America.