Macadamia is the world’s most expensive nut. Native to eastern Australia and Indonesian Sulawesi, this nut is extremely hard to crack (it requires pressure of about 300 psi or 2000 kPa). Due to rather complicated production, the nut sells for 30-40 dollars per kilo on the international markets.

Spice Saffron, which is the stamens of the saffron crocus, has built a reputation for being more expensive than gold. Its high price stems from the labor input: only about 6 pounds (2,7 kilo) of saffron can be produced from each acre (0,4 hectare) of land, so the price per kilo goes as high as $6000.

Garlic is a member of the onion family that has been used throughout the history of many cultures for both culinary and medicinal purposes. It is believed that garlic originates from Central Asia.

Garlic is known for its distinctive odor, and researches believe that this odor evolved as a defensive mechanism to protect the plant from birds, insects, and worms. Garlic is sometimes grown among flowers or vegetables to protect them from being attacked by pests.

Garlic emits sharp flavor only when it is broken by chopping, chewing, or crushing, due to the chemicals created when the plant's cells are damaged. When eaten in considerable quantity, garlic may be strongly evident for up to about 8 hours in both the eater’s breath and sweat. This is because garlic's strong smelling sulfur compounds are metabolized forming allyl methyl sulfide that cannot be digested and is passed into the blood.

Pizza is an Italian word that meant originally "cake, tart, pie". There may be a connection with Greek pitta (cake, pie). The word came in use in American English in 1930s.

The home of pizza is Naples. By the late 18th century the poor no longer considered tomato poisonous and it was added to their regular diet. The yeast-baseв bread with tomato soon gained popularity and became a tourist attraction.

The pizza now known as Margherita was first baked in 1889 by pizzaiolo (the technical term for a pizza chef) Raffaele Esposito for the visit of Umberto I, King of Italy, and his wife, Queen Margherita di Savoia. The pizza had the colors of the Italian flag (green basil leaves, white mozzarella, and red tomatoes).

Pizza was introduced to America by the Italians in the latter half of the 19th century.

Watermelon is native to the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. Egyptians left the fruits in the tombs of pharaohs to nourish their departed in the afterlife.

It is believed that the watermelon made its way to North America with African slaves through the Atlantic Ocean.

In the English dictionary the word "watermelon" first appeared in 1615.

In the 1940s, Charles Fredric Andrus, an agricultural researcher of Charleston, US, developed the first oval-shaped watermelon with hard rind called later Charleston Gray. This made this kind of watermelon easy to stack and ship, and because of its high adaptability it could be grown in many regions.

Japanese farmers found a way to grow the watermelons that are even more easier to stack and store. Using the glass boxes as receptacles, they grow cubic watermelons.

Caviar comes from sturgeon, the most valuable fish of the world. Of twenty five species and sub-species of sturgeons only three species produce caviar, all living in the Caspian Sea: beluga, osetra and sevruga. The best and most delicious (and costliest) is caviar from beluga sturgeons that swim in the Caspian Sea.

Beluga usually weighs between 75-100 kilograms and is 2 meters long. It produces about 20 kilograms of caviar, and has a life expectancy of about 100 years.

To extract caviar in a quality fit for consumption, the fish should always be cut alive, for even in the couple of hours after the fish dies the outer skin of the roe loosens thus making further processing impossible. Well-run processing plants now perform a kind of Cesarean section after which the fish goes back into the river with her belly sewn up. And next year it is good for the same operation again.