Fun Facts for Fast-Food Fanatics

We all scream for ice cream, but Eric Spitznagel would do almost anything for cookies, candy, cereal, coffee, cola, doughnuts and gum, or so it would seem from reading his new book, “The Junk Food Companion” (Dutton). A few fun facts from his guide to eating badly:

1. Name of the first commercial chocolate bar sold in the United States.

2. Number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll.

3. Person who once said, “Health food may be good for the conscience, but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.”

4. Soda pop that once used the slogan, “Man on the move, doing a man’s kind of thing, building a man’s kind of thirst.”

5. Elvis Presley’s last meal.

6. Type of cookie most likely to cause tooth decay.

7. Rate at which fast-food hamburgers are eaten.

8. Year in which a Belgian factory introduced the world’s first French fry-flavored chewing gum.

9. Number of years a swallowed piece of chewing gum will stay in the digestive tract.

10. Birthplace of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

Answers: 1. Surfin’; 2. 1,634; 3. Robert Redford; 4. Pepsi; 5. six chocolate chip cookies; 6. oatmeal; 7. 145 per second, globally; 8. 1983; 9. seven; 10. the Bronx.