Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1: So I was listening to an old Ezra client podcast
Speaker 1: this week and it was about burnout and how email
Speaker 1: and other constant work communications can lead to fatigue, which
Speaker 1: is fascinating. But in this conversation he makes this aside
Speaker 1: to this professor he's talking to, and he mentions he's
Speaker 1: gotten really into weightlifting recently, and one of the things
Speaker 1: he says is that there are all these things you
Speaker 1: don't know as an amateur at the gym, and if
Speaker 1: you're a serious weightlifter, you should be eating gummy bears
Speaker 1: after a.
Speaker 2: Workout, gummy bears, Like are there special gunning bears for training?
Speaker 2: Are we just talking regular gummy bears?
Speaker 1: Regular gummy bears? And So I looked this up immediately
Speaker 1: after I heard it, and the funny thing is I
Speaker 1: had just come back from playing sports, and as soon
Speaker 1: as I heard that, I didn't need any convincing. I
Speaker 1: just like belged to the bodega around the corner from
Speaker 1: my house and bought gummy bears and shoved them into
Speaker 1: my face for my muscles.
Speaker 2: Which by the way, is the right way to eat them?
Speaker 2: There are two ways to eat gummy bears. You either
Speaker 2: eat two at a time, both of the same color,
Speaker 2: one on each side of the mouth, or you just
Speaker 2: take a handful and you just push as many as
Speaker 2: you ca there. But anyway, is there any truth to that? Like,
Speaker 2: do gummy bears actually help with recovery? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized this, but apparently it's pretty well known
Speaker 1: among athletes, and so I found this article in Swimmer's
Speaker 1: World which explains how, after working out with the fibers
Speaker 1: in your muscles, get these miniature tears, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing because that's how you grow stronger, and they
Speaker 1: refer to it as a microtrauma, which alerts your body
Speaker 1: that you need nutrients, particularly amino acids, to repair them.
Speaker 1: But because repairing these muscles requires energy, gummy bears and
Speaker 1: other high glycemic carbohydrates with dextros or alt dextrin, they
Speaker 1: provide this quick hit of sugar to kickstart replenishing what's
Speaker 1: been lost, And because your body is still sort of
Speaker 1: using energy from the workout, the sugar gets put to
Speaker 1: use immediately and it doesn't get stored as fat.
Speaker 2: I now know exactly why you chose to do this episode, like,
Speaker 2: this is total permission for you to eat gummy bears
Speaker 2: as long as you've done like a little bit of exercise.
Speaker 2: This is awesome. I know.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna do like a single jumping jack and
Speaker 1: tell my family I've got to go to the store
Speaker 1: to get some gummy bears sot on. It did make
Speaker 1: me wonder what other surprises are gummy bears hiding, And
Speaker 1: that's what today's episode is all about.
Speaker 2: Hey there, podcat listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend Mangesh Hot Ticketter and sitting behind that great big
Speaker 2: booth and Mango. This one took me a minute. Dylan
Speaker 2: is going much deeper with his cuts right now. So
Speaker 2: he's got a rolling pin. He's got a pie sitting
Speaker 2: off to the side. It took me a second to
Speaker 2: see that. And he's wearing an apron. I was like,
Speaker 2: what is he doing? And then he put on the
Speaker 2: bear ears. He's Grammy Gummy from one of the greatest
Speaker 2: cartoons of all time, The Adventures of Gum Years. Did
Speaker 2: you watch that show as a kid? Yeah, of course,
Speaker 2: so good. Anyway, well done, Dylan. That's our trusted producer,
Speaker 2: Dylan Fagan over there, all right, Mango. So I know
Speaker 2: for a fact that we've been friends for a very
Speaker 2: long time, and then almost every time you've had a
Speaker 2: big essay to write or a big assignment in college,
Speaker 2: you'd go to the convenience store right there on campus
Speaker 2: and you'd get some gummy candy. Am I right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's totally embarrassing, but I think it's
Speaker 1: because I don't like writing, or at least I don't
Speaker 1: like starting writing. So I love research, I love thinking
Speaker 1: about ideas, collecting facts talking about them, but writing a
Speaker 1: paper always feels so overwhelming to me, And somehow, having
Speaker 1: a treat while doing it feels like I'm rewarding myself
Speaker 1: for starting, which is ridiculous but also weirdly. Gummy candies
Speaker 1: are something that remind me of my dad. Like before
Speaker 1: I would travel to various high school events, whether it
Speaker 1: was for like science Olympics or soccer tournaments or jazz
Speaker 1: band competitions or whatever, my dad would always sneak a
Speaker 1: little bag of Harrybo gummy bears in my backpack. Is
Speaker 1: a treat and somehow it was kind of like this,
Speaker 1: like good luck charm, and I think it's a mix
Speaker 1: of all of that that keeps me loving gummies.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. It's such a great story. I
Speaker 2: actually don't think I knew that right. Well, it's interesting
Speaker 2: to look at candy and emotions, just sort of the
Speaker 2: connection there. Like, obviously there's no shortage of anecdotal evidence
Speaker 2: of people eating ice cream or chocolate as a treat
Speaker 2: just for a pick me up. But you know, one
Speaker 2: of the things I was fascinated by was Sweden's relationship
Speaker 2: to gummy candies. There's this New Yorker piece from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: It's called how to Eat Candy Like a Swedish Person,
Speaker 2: and in it the writer talks about how people in
Speaker 2: Nordic countries are crazy for gummies. So, according to the article,
Speaker 2: the government ran this study and it showed that Swedes
Speaker 2: eat more candy per year per capita than the citizens
Speaker 2: of any other country. And it's not close. It's more
Speaker 2: than thirty pounds per person. So it's incredible how much
Speaker 2: candy that they eat. And part of it is because
Speaker 2: every Saturday people like to go out and they buy
Speaker 2: this bag of sweet treats. Isn't that awesome? They do
Speaker 2: this every Saturday, I think so. Like according to the piece,
Speaker 2: people trudge out to the store every Saturday they get
Speaker 2: themselves something. I think it's pronounced lord AC's goddess and
Speaker 2: it means Saturday candy. And it's because in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forties the Swedish government performed all these tests on the
Speaker 2: hazards of consuming too many sweets, and so when they
Speaker 2: realized that eating this candy was adding the nation's teeth,
Speaker 2: they actually urge citizens to limit their intake. But because
Speaker 2: they knew total abstinence would get them nowhere, they had
Speaker 2: this suggestion. They said, consume as much candy as you'd like,
Speaker 2: but only on one day a week. And that's how
Speaker 2: this Saturday tradition of going to the store and getting
Speaker 2: yourself a big bag of pick and mix. That that's
Speaker 2: how this all began. And the article goes on to
Speaker 2: explain that the country almost treats it like self care
Speaker 2: because in Sweden it gets really dark in the winters,
Speaker 2: as we know, and people rely on things like sugar
Speaker 2: to get through the season. And it's also why the
Speaker 2: country drinks so much coffee per capita Anyway, the thing
Speaker 2: I liked most in the article is this bit where
Speaker 2: a friend of the journalist relays that when you look
Speaker 2: at each person's candy bag, it almost reflects their state
Speaker 2: of mind and like what they need to get through
Speaker 2: the day or through that week.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that that you can look, like at
Speaker 1: a bag of Swedish fish and various candies that someone's pulled,
Speaker 1: and I almost see it as like an individualized prescription
Speaker 1: for bringing them a little joy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. You would see all
Speaker 2: twenty seven varieties of reeses in the mix with my
Speaker 2: candy each week, and I don't know, I guess understand
Speaker 2: how I was feeling. But anyway, where do you want
Speaker 2: to begin with your first factor of the day here?
Speaker 1: So I think we should talk about the history of
Speaker 1: gummy bears and gummy worms and things like that. But
Speaker 1: before we do, I want to talk about this one
Speaker 1: fact because it's really sweet. So you know, I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with the Cornell Food Lab and the way they do
Speaker 1: all sorts of food innovations and food science studies.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I was actually thinking about this not too
Speaker 2: long ago. I was remembering back at Mental Floss. You
Speaker 2: always wanted to do this story about how they'd added
Speaker 2: caffeine to breakfast. Heereal, I guess for people who didn't
Speaker 2: like coffee, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it isn't just that, like, there are innovations
Speaker 1: in ice cream and snacks. Made me actually wonder whether
Speaker 1: I should go into food science at one point because
Speaker 1: it just felt so Willy Wonka ish. But they also
Speaker 1: do a lot of psychology and marketing studies. Actually, my
Speaker 1: favorite study, and this is an aside, but it had
Speaker 1: to do with cereal boxes and they analyzed all these
Speaker 1: cereal blocks is the sugary ones for kids, and on
Speaker 1: the packaging they noticed that often the cartoon characters or
Speaker 1: mascots are drawn looking down to catch the eyes of
Speaker 1: children in the grocery aisle, which is crazy and so devious,
Speaker 1: but apparently it's a big marketing point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but back to my fact.
Speaker 1: So, one of the things you think about when you
Speaker 1: think about COVID or the lockdown is how many experiences
Speaker 1: kids missed out on. You know, you think about like
Speaker 1: prom or playing in tournaments or getting to go to
Speaker 1: graduations or whatever. And one of the things Cornell's paper
Speaker 1: writes about is that the freshmen at Cornell, who were
Speaker 1: food science majors, got to knock out a lot of
Speaker 1: their chemistry lessons, but they didn't get the joy of
Speaker 1: experimenting in the lab. And that's because the kids got
Speaker 1: sent home midway through their semester in March. And so
Speaker 1: this professor, Julie Goddard, who taught the intro class, made
Speaker 1: this promise to the students of that freshman class that
Speaker 1: she would figure out some way to make it up
Speaker 1: to them. And exactly one thousand days later, which I
Speaker 1: guess is the anniverse, when they got sent home as freshmen,
Speaker 1: she had a big makeup lab where all these seniors
Speaker 1: got to make gummy worms from scratch before they graduated.
Speaker 1: And I just love that making gummy worms is kind
Speaker 1: of a prerequisite for graduating in this course. But also
Speaker 1: how this professor worked behind the scenes to make it happen.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really cool, all right, So why don't we
Speaker 2: get into the history of gummy bears. So the story
Speaker 2: goes back to a gentleman named Hans Regal, and this
Speaker 2: comes from Bonapetite, who wrote a story sort of a
Speaker 2: brief history of gummy bears. So in nineteen twenty, Hans
Speaker 2: is a factory worker in this confection factory and he's
Speaker 2: sick of this dead end job, so he started experimenting
Speaker 2: at home with a gummy candy of sorts. Now, gummy
Speaker 2: candies have been popular prior to this. You've got things
Speaker 2: like Turkish Delight, Japanese rice candies, and there are things
Speaker 2: like jelly babies and gum drops in England that pre
Speaker 2: date Regals candies. But you know, he's trying to come
Speaker 2: up with something new, and he comes up with this
Speaker 2: really satisfying mixture, and then he puts his candies in
Speaker 2: a delightful mold, these long, thin dancing bears that resemble
Speaker 2: the circus bears that kids love. And in the beginning,
Speaker 2: he makes his candies at home and his wife delivers
Speaker 2: them around town by bicycle, and he calls the company Harribo,
Speaker 2: which is a combination of the first two letters from
Speaker 2: Hans Regal and Bond, the German town that he's from.
Speaker 2: And by the time World War two begins, he's grown
Speaker 2: the company pretty significantly. He's got like four hundred employees
Speaker 2: working for him, and he's producing ten tons of candy
Speaker 2: every single day. So his dancing bears, as they're known
Speaker 2: are this massive success. Now, Gummy Bears do have a
Speaker 2: dark legacy, like Regal ends up fighting with the Nazis
Speaker 2: and dies in the war, and the company goes through
Speaker 2: some rough times. But after the war, his sons kind
Speaker 2: of rebuild the business from scratch and by nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: they're really back on their feet. They've also transformed the candies.
Speaker 2: The bears have become squattier and smushier and even cutered
Speaker 2: in order to attract the kids, and they get renamed
Speaker 2: Little Gummy Bears, and the candy gets distributed across Europe.
Speaker 1: And so up until this point, Gummy Bears haven't really
Speaker 1: hit the US market.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Gummy Bears actually only
Speaker 2: came to the US in nineteen eighty one. It makes
Speaker 2: me glad that we weren't borrown long before that, because
Speaker 2: it's just really, really sad. And that's because most of
Speaker 2: the early demand for Gummy Bears was created by kids
Speaker 2: who'd been exposed to the candies from either their German
Speaker 2: language teachers who had brought back packages from Europe or
Speaker 2: from soldiers who had been stationed abroad and then brought
Speaker 2: some of these candies home. But once they enter the
Speaker 2: US market, gummies take off immediately, Jellybelly, the company that
Speaker 2: makes jellybean, starts making their own gummy candies, and then
Speaker 2: Trolley and other German companies enter the US market, and
Speaker 2: before long gummies are one of the most popular candies
Speaker 2: in the US. Of course, Harribo continue to maintain their
Speaker 2: defence and today they produce one hundred million gold bears
Speaker 2: every single day. And while people like Warren Buffett have
Speaker 2: made offers to buy out the company, Harribo insists it
Speaker 2: wants to continue being family run.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. So one of the things I was
Speaker 1: curious about was how we moved from gummy bears to
Speaker 1: gummy worms. And most of this research comes from a
Speaker 1: wonderful newsletter that I like called Snackstack. It's run by
Speaker 1: this author we've actually had on the program, Doug Mack,
Speaker 1: and in it he explains that German manufacturers were making
Speaker 1: gummies of all sorts of zoo animal shapes starting in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, but in nineteen eighty one, Trolley introduced
Speaker 1: something called gummy squiggles. These are the original gummy worms,
Speaker 1: and unlike something like gummy bears, which were designed to
Speaker 1: evoke this sense of fun. These gummy candies were intended
Speaker 1: to create what the author refers to us quote delight
Speaker 1: by way of low risk disgust. So apparently Trolley did
Speaker 1: some market research and realize that American consumers are open
Speaker 1: to products that feel weird but aren't actually abnormal in
Speaker 1: terms of flavors, and I guess the theory proved correct.
Speaker 1: In fact, Mack points to this article from the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal in nineteen eighty four where this Minnesota deli
Speaker 1: owner talks about how this new gross candy is selling
Speaker 1: like crazy. Apparently he was selling hundreds of pounds of
Speaker 1: gummy worms a week, and in the article he says, quote,
Speaker 1: I know one guy who uses them as a calling card.
Speaker 1: He's a medical equipment salesman. So I guess all sorts
Speaker 1: of people were impressed by the novelty. Anyway, the worms
Speaker 1: become a gateway candy for Americans to even more disgusting candies.
Speaker 1: Gummy rats take off in Chicago in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: apparently become the second best selling candies in that city
Speaker 1: for a period, and it launches a category of candies
Speaker 1: that the author refers to as quote creates that will
Speaker 1: alarm your parents, and not just because of their sugar content,
Speaker 1: which means everything from gummy bacon to roadkill gummy to.
Speaker 2: Fake toxic waste candy to all.
Speaker 1: The extreme candies that exist on the market today.
Speaker 2: You know, I've always been into like different and weird candies,
Speaker 2: but there's something about gummies where like there's a certain
Speaker 2: number of acceptable animals and sizes that they can take
Speaker 2: the form of, like gummy bears, gummy worms, other small gummies.
Speaker 2: But for some reason, I don't know who's buying these,
Speaker 2: like life size gummy rats and gummy pythons. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know I talked earlier about loving to take as
Speaker 2: many gummy bears and cramming them into my mouth as
Speaker 2: much as I can, But actually there's something off about
Speaker 2: it when it feels like they're actually the size of
Speaker 2: a snake you can wear around your neck. Like it's
Speaker 2: just so gross to me or is it just me?
Speaker 2: Or you like this too?
Speaker 1: It is so gross? Like I love when gummy candy
Speaker 1: is bite sized, but not like like it has to
Speaker 1: be bite sized for a human, not an alligator.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, so I know I mentioned this at
Speaker 2: the top of the show. Of course, you remember the
Speaker 2: Saturday Morning cartoon Adventures of Gummy Bears.
Speaker 1: I love that Dylan referenced them. But also that theme song, right,
Speaker 1: they're bouncing here and there and everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he carefully can't go too far with it, fair
Speaker 2: usemego so, but yes, it is a fantastic song. But
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of our younger listeners have no
Speaker 2: idea what you're talking about was Starting in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: Disney launched a Saturday morning cartoon called Adventures of the
Speaker 2: Gummy Bears. It was this super popular show with kids
Speaker 2: of our generation, and the plotline was basically like the Smurfs.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting about this knockoff is that Disney had
Speaker 2: said previously they weren't interested in televised animation, Like the
Speaker 2: company thought in themselves as purests, you know, they didn't
Speaker 2: really want to mess with cheap TV. But the CEO
Speaker 2: at the time, Michael Eisner, decided that Disney really needed
Speaker 2: to experiment in the space, and he was super protective
Speaker 2: of Mickey Mouse and the original ip they had, so
Speaker 2: he wanted to pick a whole new set of characters
Speaker 2: to introduce to audiences, and he suggested Gummy Bears because
Speaker 2: he knew kids were obsessed with eating gummy bears, and
Speaker 2: also gummy bears were in the public domain, so we
Speaker 2: didn't have to worry about licensing the characters from anyone else.
Speaker 2: So anyway, according to mental Loss, there are two fascinating
Speaker 2: things about this one. At the time, apparently, Saturday Morning
Speaker 2: cartoons were dominated by anthropomorphic bears, from the Berenstein Bears
Speaker 2: to the care Bears to the bear like animated Adventures
Speaker 2: of Ewoks, and so the gummy bears fit right in.
Speaker 2: They were an easy entry into the space. For whatever reason.
Speaker 2: I never thought about it, but we were so into
Speaker 2: cartoon bears when we were kids. But the other thing
Speaker 2: that's interesting is that Disney wanted to do this on
Speaker 2: the cheap. They really saw this as an experiment and
Speaker 2: they didn't want to invest too much money. So it's
Speaker 2: one of the first animations where they outsourced the work
Speaker 2: to a studio in Japan, and they end up creating
Speaker 2: this really heavy dialogue driven plot so that there isn't
Speaker 2: that much animation to do, and it isn't long before
Speaker 2: outsourcing becomes a trend in animation. Anyway, the gummy bear
Speaker 2: experiment was so successful that it actually kickstarted this renaissance
Speaker 2: and Disney animation on the small screen, So things like
Speaker 2: Doug tails Ooh and Tailspin Chip Anddale Rescue Rangers, Dark
Speaker 2: Wing Duck. I mean, I'm just kidding. I gotta watch
Speaker 2: all of these after this episode. They all exist because
Speaker 2: they were writing on the code tales of the Gummy Bears.
Speaker 2: I did not know that before this episode.
Speaker 1: I love that they were trying to limit the action
Speaker 1: scenes and just focusing on dialogue so that they didn't
Speaker 1: have to animate that much. Like I feel like I
Speaker 1: have to go back and watch how talkie these shows are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like I really did so.
Speaker 1: I know I just talked about gummy worms and gross
Speaker 1: scummy candies, but I can't get off the topic. I
Speaker 1: was also curious about sour candies and how we got
Speaker 1: into this world of extreme sour patch kids and things
Speaker 1: like that, and NPR has this interesting take on the genre.
Speaker 1: So apparently sour candies have a pretty long history, much
Speaker 1: longer than i'd realized. Back in the Victorian days, we
Speaker 1: had acid which were kind of a predecessor to lemonheads.
Speaker 1: But NPR connects gross candies to Halloween, and according to
Speaker 1: food historian Samira Kahwah in her book Candy, A Century
Speaker 1: of Panic and Pleasure. Back in the nineteen thirties, Halloween
Speaker 1: treats tended to be homemade goods, right like you think
Speaker 1: about brownies or cookies or pieces of fruit that people
Speaker 1: used to hand out. But in the nineteen fifties, when
Speaker 1: all these urban legends started about people putting razors and
Speaker 1: apples and poisoning things, people moved to buying prepackaged goods
Speaker 1: and it just felt safer to hand out candy. And manufacturers,
Speaker 1: of course, were very excited about this. They took advantage
Speaker 1: and they started connecting weird and scary candies to the holidays.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty four, the atomic Fireball, you know, those
Speaker 1: super hot cinnamon candies, they come out, which also happens
Speaker 1: to be the same year that the US detonates their
Speaker 1: first hydrogen bond. It's all over headlines and TV, but
Speaker 1: somehow it becomes this weird thing that's exciting for kids
Speaker 1: to have in their mouth. And of course, lemonheads come
Speaker 1: out in nineteen sixty two. These start playing up the
Speaker 1: puckery taste of citric acid. But what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: the next entry to this sort of extra sour, extreme
Speaker 1: spicy candy is Warheads, and that doesn't happen until nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, but it's thanks to a guy named Peter Dijeger.
Speaker 1: Yeager actually has a connection to gummy bears. He was
Speaker 1: an importer in the US and he had made a
Speaker 1: ton of money on importing gummy bears, and he was
Speaker 1: looking for the next big candy sensation in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties and he tries this sour candy from Japan. He
Speaker 1: tells Wired Magazine it was so sour that most people
Speaker 1: would take it out of their mouth, immediately throw it
Speaker 1: in the waste basket and be angry at you. You
Speaker 1: thought you'd have an enemy for life. So anyway, Dieger
Speaker 1: travels across Asia looking for sour candies and he goes
Speaker 1: to various locales and he finds the sourrest of them
Speaker 1: all in Taiwan, and kind of playing off the atomic fireball,
Speaker 1: he calls it the warhead.
Speaker 2: Now Wired Magazine.
Speaker 1: Actually does an analysis warheads to figure out how they
Speaker 1: are so tar, and it comes down to something called
Speaker 1: malic acid, which in smaller doses you can find in
Speaker 1: Granny Smith apples. But there's this researcher named Paul Rosen,
Speaker 1: who NPR talked to. He's a psychologist at the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania, and he calls this phenomena of challenging candy
Speaker 1: quote benign masochism, which he defines as seemingly unpleasant things
Speaker 1: we love to do, including watching horror movies or crying
Speaker 1: at sad songs. They also talked to another psychologist, Rachel
Speaker 1: Hurst of Brown University, who explained that part of the
Speaker 1: pleasure of gross candy is that it gives kids the
Speaker 1: opportunity to probe the boundaries of what adults find repulsive
Speaker 1: while also mildly scandalizing their parents. And she kind of
Speaker 1: likens the phenomena to pop rocks, which is that you
Speaker 1: know they're all right eating by yourself, but the joy
Speaker 1: is really in getting other people to try it and
Speaker 1: watching their reactions, because gross candy is both meant to
Speaker 1: be dis gusted and shared.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great way to look at it. And
Speaker 2: I love that term benign masochism, which I guess tells
Speaker 2: us why gummy candies got paired with extreme sour flavors. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it isn't.
Speaker 1: Just sour flavors. Apparently, there's also an extremely spicy gummy
Speaker 1: bear on the market. It's called Little Nitro. I was
Speaker 1: repulsed until you said the name of it, and now
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 2: To try it.
Speaker 1: It's just one tiny red gummy bear who I think
Speaker 1: has a flamethrower on his chest, and he's in this package.
Speaker 1: It's just the one bear featured surrounded by flames and
Speaker 1: a flammable sign. But apparently the gummy bear is nine
Speaker 1: hundred times hotter than a jalapeno pepper, which I think
Speaker 1: moves it from benign masochism to like just playing massacreism. Yeah, anyway, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't quite get that. Although I don't know if
Speaker 2: you remember this, I do love an atomic fireball. I
Speaker 2: always have to have one sort of candy addiction at
Speaker 2: a time. And there was a time when my family
Speaker 2: intervened because I was ordering, you know, atomic fireballs by
Speaker 2: the bucket. I mean it was just it was too much.
Speaker 2: But they are delicious.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love atomic fireballs, and I also love that.
Speaker 1: There was like a nuclear science magazine, right the Atomic Bulletin,
Speaker 1: and their candy was the fireball, and they would anytime
Speaker 1: someone wrote for the magazine, they'd send them a fireball
Speaker 1: in the middle.
Speaker 2: I love that. And actually you may know the of course,
Speaker 2: the the co host of two of our most popular shows,
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know and ridiculous history.
Speaker 2: Mister Ben Bolan himself knows. I'm a big fan. And
Speaker 2: back when we were all in the Atlanta office together,
Speaker 2: every once in a while, I'd show up and there'd
Speaker 2: be a couple of fireballs on my desk, and I
Speaker 2: always knew they were left by by then. So yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, Well, I know we've got a couple more
Speaker 2: facts to share about gummy bears. Why don't we take
Speaker 2: a quick break.
Speaker 1: First, welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking
Speaker 1: all things gummy bears. So will I know it's time
Speaker 1: for your last fact. But there's also something I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention about sour candies that I didn't get to
Speaker 1: and I think it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: All right, go for it.
Speaker 1: That author Doug Mack, the one who created the Snackstack newsletter,
Speaker 1: has a bit about warheads as well, and he makes
Speaker 1: a point in his article that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of ways to be disgusted, but the way the reaction
Speaker 1: manifests in our bodies, like the physiological response and the
Speaker 1: facial expression is really consistent and shared across all cultures,
Speaker 1: which is something I'd never thought about. Apparently, the ways
Speaker 1: we cringe as we're eating while sucking on a warhead
Speaker 1: is the same the world over, And he cites this
Speaker 1: book by this author, Rachel Hurtz where she talks about
Speaker 1: how even people who've been blind since birth actually make
Speaker 1: the same face of disgust as cited people like, We're
Speaker 1: not mimicking someone else's response, it's just how our face
Speaker 1: cringes in reaction to super sour things. And also the
Speaker 1: delight of it.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, Like I'd never thought about that before,
Speaker 2: the fact that somebody that wasn't able to see somebody
Speaker 2: else's reactions would actually be making the same facial expressions.
Speaker 2: That's super interesting.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to talk about for your
Speaker 1: last fact?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, last year there was this huge surge
Speaker 2: on Reddit of people who were stunned to realize that
Speaker 2: the green gummy bears and the packet of Haribo are
Speaker 2: actually strawberry flavored, which is just so weird. So I
Speaker 2: guess for years people have just been eating these gummies
Speaker 2: and just assume they were lime flavored, even though it's
Speaker 2: written on the packet, and so I was wondering how
Speaker 2: it is that so many people couldn't discern the taste.
Speaker 2: So I decided to look into this. Now I know.
Speaker 2: We did an episode of Part Time Genus on flavor
Speaker 2: a long long time ago, and it was really fun
Speaker 2: to do that, and in it we discussed so much
Speaker 2: of how your sense of taste comes from your sense
Speaker 2: of smell well, and even how things like sound can
Speaker 2: affect your sense of taste, like listening to chickens cluck
Speaker 2: when you're eating ice cream makes you taste the eggs
Speaker 2: in the dessert. But one thing that's funny is that
Speaker 2: our eyes also play a role in the flavor as well.
Speaker 2: The site Candy Bouquet talks about an experiment where people
Speaker 2: were handed clear gummies and even though the gummies had
Speaker 2: various fruit flavors, people perceive the clear gummies as flavorless
Speaker 2: when they ate them.
Speaker 1: That's really wild, like people couldn't taste the flavor.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the participants recognized that the gummy
Speaker 2: bears were sweet, but beyond that, they couldn't figure out
Speaker 2: what fruit the gummies resembled. But I think it might
Speaker 2: also be because the gummy flavors are notoriously tricky. So
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, the journal Perception printed a study that
Speaker 2: found it took healthy adults eight seconds of chewing. This
Speaker 2: is on average for a person to decipher of flavor,
Speaker 2: and even then, twenty three percent of the participants guessed wrong.
Speaker 2: So in summary, we like gummies even though we have
Speaker 2: no clue what flavor was chewing on.
Speaker 1: That's really funny. I feel like kids are always like
Speaker 1: fighting over red gummy bears and green gummy bears. But
Speaker 1: if that studies accurate, they can't tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like you said, unless they're super tasters
Speaker 2: or something like that. It makes me question my own
Speaker 2: practice of having to eat the two colors at the
Speaker 2: same time. And so I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 2: why it is that we're like that, but it's interesting anyway.
Speaker 2: What fact do you want to close with?
Speaker 1: So one thing I didn't realize is that different countries
Speaker 1: have different interests in how chewy their gummies are. Like,
Speaker 1: it didn't even occur to me, but there's a piece
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic called quote Americans don't really like to chew,
Speaker 1: which is all about how the US market is more
Speaker 1: interested in softer gummy candies, but Asian markets like cheurier textures,
Speaker 1: and the article cites how culturally, like East Asian cuisine
Speaker 1: has been more interested in different textures that are chewy,
Speaker 1: like things like the tapioca and bubble tea, or fish eggs,
Speaker 1: or like grass jelly and even things like mochi. Right like,
Speaker 1: they have this chewy texture and it's been popular for
Speaker 1: a long time abroad, and it's only really now slowly
Speaker 1: working its way into the US market. But it isn't
Speaker 1: just that Asians who've noticed this. Apparently for years European
Speaker 1: gummy makers have manufactured softer gummies for the US market. Well,
Speaker 1: the ones distributed in Europe are cheerier. But back to Japan.
Speaker 1: One of the things the Atlantic article points out is
Speaker 1: that gummies are very popular with adults now, and the
Speaker 1: hottest trend in Japan is ultra chewy gummies where packages
Speaker 1: say things like high elasticity or hard or crunchy as
Speaker 1: part of the sales pitch. In fact, one Tokyo based
Speaker 1: company start creating gummies that are extra chewy because they
Speaker 1: believe that when people are frustrated, hard gummies help people
Speaker 1: deal with the stress of modern life, and they're especially
Speaker 1: marketed to men in this hyper masculine packaging as stress relief,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, it's really funny, just this idea
Speaker 1: of making gummies seem ultra men.
Speaker 2: It's true, but I guess it gets back to your
Speaker 2: weightlifting comment from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. But the other thing I learned
Speaker 1: while looking into this is that Japan is very invested
Speaker 1: in their gummy candy culture. So in this article I
Speaker 1: read in the Spokesman Review, this Japanese dentist and professor
Speaker 1: talked about how gummies are good at improving saliva secretion
Speaker 1: and muscle strength in the mouth. So there's actually going
Speaker 1: to be a push for gummies marketed at the elderly,
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. Also, there's apparently a japan Gummy
Speaker 1: association and they have been recommending different ways for adults
Speaker 1: to enjoy gummies, and one of the things they are
Speaker 1: heavily recommending is almost treating gummy candies like fruit. So
Speaker 1: they've promoted this recipe for making a lemon flavored spritzer
Speaker 1: by microwaving your lemon flavored gummies, chopping them up, and
Speaker 1: mixing them with ice.
Speaker 2: And soda water.
Speaker 1: They also talk about skewering ham with citrus based gummies
Speaker 1: and cheese and treating it almost like caupraisee style, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced, but I don't know, I try it once.
Speaker 1: And also I love that this Japan Gummy Association is
Speaker 1: like trying to get the word out about getting people
Speaker 1: to eat more gummies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is that is pretty fantastic. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: it's your turn to choose. Who do you think deserves
Speaker 2: this week's trophy? Mango.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think most of the facts I was
Speaker 1: kind of expecting, like being around the gummy topic, but
Speaker 1: the fact that you brought Disney's Gummy Bears into this,
Speaker 1: and the fact that those cartoons were like the catalyst
Speaker 1: for all these other cartoons that I watched in middle school, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just so insane to me. I think you've got
Speaker 1: to get this week's trophy.
Speaker 2: Such a good cartoon. All right, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: My mom is going to be so proud, and it
Speaker 2: really sort of defends all the cartoon watching I did
Speaker 2: at that stage in life. But that's it for this
Speaker 2: week's part Time Genius will be back next week with
Speaker 2: a whole new episode. Now. Remember we're always scouting for
Speaker 2: great facts and ideas. You know, the topics you want
Speaker 2: to hear about on the show, So be sure to
Speaker 2: hit us up. Ptgenius Moms at gmail dot com. That
Speaker 2: goes straight to our moms. They get every single message.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they lecture us, sometimes they give us a little
Speaker 2: bit of advice, but they really enjoy hearing from you guys,
Speaker 2: and they always pass them along. That's it for this
Speaker 2: week's episode from Dylan, Mary Mango and Me. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongastikler
Speaker 1: and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
Speaker 1: media support from Sasha Gay Trustee Dara Potts and buy
Speaker 1: Me Shory. For more podcast from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.