Most Popcorn Eaten in Home

LANSING - Mar 3/05 - MFB -- Approximately 70% of popcorn sold is eaten in the home and about 30% outside the home, according to the Popcorn Board. Unpopped popcorn accounts for about 90% of sales for home consumption.

Processors consider the maximum expansion ratio for good popcorn to be between 35-to-1 and 38- to-1. However, some of today's improved hybrids will expand more than 40 times.

Archaeologists have uncovered proof that popcorn had been around long before the Europeans arrived in the New World. Excavations in the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico turned up popcorn ears nearly 5,600 years old, according to radio-carbon tests. In tombs on the east coast of Peru, researchers uncovered 1,000-year-old grains of popcorn so well preserved they still pop.

Popcorn's ability to pop lies in the fact that the kernels contain a small amount of water stored in a circle of soft starch inside the hard outer casing. When heated, the water expands, creating pressure within, until eventually the casing gives way and the kernels explode and pop. This allows the water to escape as steam and turns the kernels inside out.

Copyright (c) 2005 Michigan Farm Bureau