Random Famous Foods Discovered by Accident (16 items)

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  (#6) Cheese puffs

  In the 1930s, the Flakall Company in Wisconsin had a machine that crushed grains to make feed for livestock, and corn kernels were used to reduce clogging. Somehow, the machine’s heat made the corn kernels puffy as they fell from the machine as waste. Edward Wilson literally picked up these ribbons from the ground, added seasoning... and you know what they say, one machine’s trash is another man’s treasure. Now, more than 100 companies produce different variants of cheese puffs.
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  (#13) Corn Flakes Weren't Supposed to Flake - but They Were Supposed to Stop Masturbation

  In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg were searching for healthy wholesome foods that fit their strict vegetarian diet as Seventh Day Adventists. The forgotten, musty, boiled wheat left out for too long wasn’t a part of their plan, though. But they went for it anyway, and tried to make sheets of dough out of the old, dry wheat. When the wheat came out as flakes, the brothers toasted them.

  The toasted flakes became popular among Dr. Kellogg’s patients in the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, so they experimented with other materials, including corn. In 2015, the company saw a revenue of $13.53 billion.

  Even stranger, Dr. Kellogg originally touted the cereal as a way to decrease sexual passion and curb masturbation.
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  (#3) Chocolate Chip Cookies

  Ruth Wakefield, a lodge owner, ran out of baker's chocolate when she was supposed to bake chocolate cookies for her guests. So she went with her instinct and grabbed a bag of Nestle’s chocolate morsels, assuming that they would melt and blend with the cookie dough.

  Well, we can thank fate that she was wrong, and so the first batch of chocolate chip cookies was born. It wasn’t long before people started to come over to her Massachusetts lodge just for the cookies. Nestle embraced its involvement in the happy accident by featuring variations of Ruth’s original cookie recipe on the back of its products' bags for years.
  
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  (#8) Coffee

  A popular legend has it that the first to enjoy the magical effects of coffee was a goat. One day, hundreds of years ago, Kaldi, an Ethiopian goatherd, noticed a change in the behavior of his goats. Kaldi observed that the goats were being unusually cheerful and energetic, so he followed them around. Turns out, the goats had been devouring the beans and leaves of a particular tree. Curious, Kaldi consumed some of them, too, and also gave some to a monk that was having trouble staying awake throughout prayers. The monks loved the new drink because of its galvanizing effect and good taste.
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  (#12) Beer

  If it wasn’t for the Mesopotamians’ misfortune more than 3,000 years ago, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our favorite beers today. At first, the Mesopotamians hated it when their grains, which they had been storing to produce bread, became damp, causing the grains to ferment into a liquid. But hey, why settle for bread when you can have beer? As for now, beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage. 
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  (#11) Worcestershire sauce

  Chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins made an Indian sauce recipe ordered by an aristocrat who used to be Governor of Bengal in the colonial era of the 1800s. The pair made an extra jar for themselves, but when they tasted it, the two chemists didn’t like the mixture because it was too strong.

  The extra bottle of sauce was forgotten for about two years, until one day Lea and Perrins decided to re-taste it. To their surprise, the flavor had mellowed and gotten much better. The sauce became Worcester’s most famous product.

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