Foreign Policy featured an article that took a look at “how food explains the world.” Some of the interesting points include:

• China keeps a strategic pork reserve in case there’s ever a shortage.
• Investor Anthony Ward is sometimes called “Willy Wonka” because he controls 7% of the world’s production of cocoa beans. He believes that continued problems in Africa will drive up the price of the key ingredient behind chocolate.
• Israel and Lebanon are locked in a battle that has raged for several years with no end in sight. The battle is for the record for the biggest batch of hummus.
• In South Korea the prime minister was forced to intervene as a threatening financial crisis loomed. Did the government have to bail out the banks? The insurance companies? The auto manufacturers? Nope, in South Korea the government had to bail out the cabbage industry. A dish made with those cabbages is so important that the South Korean space agency thought it was worth their time to launch it into space.

Click here to read more about the role that mobile phones play in the distribution of food aid, the newest diet recommended by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the (alleged) role that KFC played in the Egyptian uprisings.

Source: Foreign Policy

Via: World’s Strangest