Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that? Well, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like I've been reading over the past few years about
Speaker 1: all these ways that airlines are trying to save money,
Speaker 1: and it feels like every month you'll see some new
Speaker 1: way that they're trying to save a few bucks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was actually just thinking about this last week, and
Speaker 1: it's so weird how much the industry has changed. Like
Speaker 1: if you look at those ads from the fifties, Pan
Speaker 1: m and whoever used to serve these big meals with steaks,
Speaker 1: and they'd have pianos on board, and they've had these
Speaker 1: like free flowing cocktails, and every ad was about luxury
Speaker 1: and people having a party. And now it's definitely not
Speaker 1: a party, certainly not with a piano or they're really
Speaker 1: pianos some of these planes. Yeah, definitely, that's unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: was reading about some mothers and one of the most
Speaker 1: legendary cost cutting measures came with salads. At least it's
Speaker 1: legendary in the business world if you're looking at various
Speaker 1: case studies, and this guy, Robert Crandell, he was the
Speaker 1: head of American Airlines in the nineteen eighties. He was
Speaker 1: looking for different ways to cut expenses. So he thought,
Speaker 1: what if I removed just one olive from every dinner
Speaker 1: salad I served my passengers. It was thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: would anybody even notice this, And so, hoping they wouldn't,
Speaker 1: he made the change, and the effect rippled out and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't seem like they would save this much money
Speaker 1: from it. But American Airlines saved forty thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: making this one little change, and in today's money, that's
Speaker 1: actually about a hundred thousand dollars. And it kind of
Speaker 1: makes you wonder, though, why didn't he just take away
Speaker 1: two olives? Because obviously, like taking away two olives would
Speaker 1: have started a riot, You're probably right. Instead, they just
Speaker 1: took away our leg room. That's God's good point. Well,
Speaker 1: May is National Salad months. So for today's nine Things,
Speaker 1: we're digging into a whole bowl full of weird and
Speaker 1: funny salad facts. So let's dive in a podcast. Listeners,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and
Speaker 1: sitting behind the soundproof glass wearing a T shirt that
Speaker 1: says you don't make friends with salad. That's our friends
Speaker 1: and producer Tristan McNeil. I like how he was hiding
Speaker 1: it at first, and then he took off the hoodie
Speaker 1: to reveal the big surprise. You know, I love that
Speaker 1: joke so much, and it's obviously like a Simpsons gag.
Speaker 1: If you're a Simstons fan, you know that. But I
Speaker 1: was reading about that, and uh, there's this episode where
Speaker 1: you know, Lisa's Asselmer like, why don't you offer some
Speaker 1: non meat options at a party? And Homer says, you
Speaker 1: don't make friends with salad, and then Bart goes, you
Speaker 1: don't make friends with salad. You don't make friends with salad,
Speaker 1: and they make this congo line and they just go endlessly.
Speaker 1: They go like through the room, they go out of
Speaker 1: the room, they come back into the room, and then
Speaker 1: it just goes on just like never stops. And I
Speaker 1: was actually reading about that gag online and I saw
Speaker 1: the writers say they were trying to create a joke
Speaker 1: that was funny and then went on for so long
Speaker 1: it became annoying and not funny, and then long enough
Speaker 1: there went back to being funny again. It's true, it
Speaker 1: kind of does accomplish that, and and now it's made
Speaker 1: its way to Tristan shirt. Well, as we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: on the show, Maya's National Salad Month, and oddly, I
Speaker 1: don't know who declared it National salad Month. It's it's
Speaker 1: referenced everywhere from Smithsonian to cooking magazines, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of hard to PenPoint the creator. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that too, and I think maybe the Association
Speaker 1: for Dressings and Sauces might be responsible. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna sell more dressing if everyone's eating salad. But
Speaker 1: what's stranger to me is that it's also National Hogie
Speaker 1: Day this month. It's like, yeah, May fifth, and it's
Speaker 1: almost like the HOGI makers looked at the calendar and thought,
Speaker 1: you know, people are going to need a cheat day.
Speaker 1: So so Sinco de Mayo is the same as National
Speaker 1: Hogy Day. Yeah, I guess that's pretty big. Wow, who knew? Well,
Speaker 1: it's actually it's kind of weird. They didn't try to
Speaker 1: grab their own Hogi month. I feel like hoagies are
Speaker 1: worthy of an entire month. But all right, well, I
Speaker 1: kicked off today's nine things without sacrificing. Just one olive
Speaker 1: can save your business. So what's first salad fact of
Speaker 1: the day? How about a fact about McDonald's. So I'm
Speaker 1: actually guessing most people aren't flocking to McDonald's for their salads.
Speaker 1: But according to CNBC, Mickey D's Kale Caesar isn't exactly
Speaker 1: a healthy option. And while the ads say keep calm
Speaker 1: Caesar on and talk up the nutrient rich lettuce blends
Speaker 1: of baby kale, the numbers actually tell the different stories.
Speaker 1: So the salads are seven thirty calories and four hundred
Speaker 1: milligrams assault with each one, and that's actually slightly worse
Speaker 1: than a double Big Mac, which has just six d
Speaker 1: eighty calories and milligrams assault. Waits, he're saying of the
Speaker 1: two of those, that the double Big Mac is the
Speaker 1: healthy option. Yeah, it's also the vegetarian option, right right, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I think not going to McDonald's is the
Speaker 1: healthy option. But reminds me of that story and uh, Paris,
Speaker 1: I Love you, but you bring me down, which is
Speaker 1: this really wonderful memoir. But the author was in shock
Speaker 1: at how pre Asians eat McDonald's for lunch, because they
Speaker 1: eat it in a typically French way to actually start
Speaker 1: with like a chicken nugget course. Then then they'll have
Speaker 1: like a big mac or two Big Max, and then
Speaker 1: they'll follow it with a salad course, and then they'll
Speaker 1: finish with a coffee and possibly dessert. And I know
Speaker 1: the average meal at a French McDonald's is supposed to
Speaker 1: be like twice or thrice the cost of what it
Speaker 1: is here that is unbelievable. And it's funny to think
Speaker 1: how different the McDonald's Kale Caesar is from the original
Speaker 1: Caesar salad, which was invented by Caesar Cardini. I read
Speaker 1: this account from Julia Child where she talked about the
Speaker 1: experience of ordering the salad at Cardini's restaurant. Actually, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read the quote from it. It says
Speaker 1: one of my early remembrances of restaurant life was going
Speaker 1: to Tijuana in n Or nineteen twenty six with my parents,
Speaker 1: who were wildly excited that they should finally launch at
Speaker 1: Caesar's restaurant. Tiajuana, just south of the Mexican border from
Speaker 1: San Diego, was flourishing them in the prohibition era. Of course,
Speaker 1: word spread about Tijuana and the good life, and about
Speaker 1: Caesar Cardini's restaurant and about Caesar's salads. My parents, of
Speaker 1: course ordered the salad Caesar self rolled the big card
Speaker 1: up to the table, tossed the romaine in a great
Speaker 1: wooden bowl. And I wish I could say I remembered
Speaker 1: his every move, but I don't. The only thing I
Speaker 1: see again clearly is the eggs. I can see him
Speaker 1: break two eggs over that romaine and roll them in
Speaker 1: the greens, going all creamy as the eggs float over them.
Speaker 1: Two eggs and a salad to one minute coddled eggs
Speaker 1: and garlic flavored crutons and grated parmesan cheese. It was
Speaker 1: a sensation of a salad from coast to coast, and
Speaker 1: there were even rumblings of its success in Europe. That's
Speaker 1: really awesome. It's so awesome to think of like a
Speaker 1: young Julia child with their parents just being floored by
Speaker 1: this production. Yeah. Yeah, and and and it's like how
Speaker 1: chefs at a fancy Mexican restaurant make table side guacamole
Speaker 1: for you. It almost makes you want to order a salad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So here here's the story I read in
Speaker 1: Atlas obscure as news site. It's called gastroid Scura and
Speaker 1: it's all food related. Ends really good, but they mentioned
Speaker 1: this Burmese salad, which sounds amazing to me. It's called
Speaker 1: a lape and it's made from fermented tea leaves along
Speaker 1: with rock cabbage, lime, finally sliced garlic, green chili, fresh tomatoes,
Speaker 1: sesame seeds, and peanuts, and I think it has some
Speaker 1: other spices in there too. But the description from a
Speaker 1: New York Times reviewers is that it's deeply savory and
Speaker 1: strangely addictive. So you know already that has me and
Speaker 1: I do love Burmese food. But the key here is
Speaker 1: the tea leaves, and I'm curious off Starbucks will actually
Speaker 1: start serving these as morning salads or if people trade
Speaker 1: out their breakfast cereal routines for them, because the tea
Speaker 1: actually makes the salad highly caffeinated, and in fact, that
Speaker 1: same Times reviewers said that the leaves contain quote enough
Speaker 1: caffeine to twang the nerves like a harp. It actually
Speaker 1: kind of feels like a salad for like adrenaline junkies
Speaker 1: or Wall Street execs or something. It does sound like
Speaker 1: a weird salad, but but actually caffeinated salad. Well, it
Speaker 1: may sound like a novelty. We've actually been making them
Speaker 1: stateside here for a while. Really, I haven't heard of this. Well,
Speaker 1: this came out of my research and looking up some
Speaker 1: of those gross and amazing jello salads. You know, people
Speaker 1: used to bring these to like church potlocks and dinner
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. I follow a Twitter account that
Speaker 1: has tons of these, and I just love seeing pictures
Speaker 1: of like hard boiled eggs and olives and tuna fish
Speaker 1: like celery jellos. It's it's just so good. It is
Speaker 1: amazing but also disgusting. But I mean, there are tons
Speaker 1: of those nineteen fifties recipes, but one I'd never heard
Speaker 1: of is called coke salad. And this comes from Mental
Speaker 1: Flaws and apparently it's the crown jewel of jello salad recipes. Basically,
Speaker 1: a coke salad is a fizzy jellow fruit salad that's
Speaker 1: made with a mix of cherries, pineapple juice, and coke,
Speaker 1: all cooked up with flavored jellata and if you're up
Speaker 1: for the Midwestern variation, just add some dollops of cream
Speaker 1: cheese on the top. Is disgusting, awesome. It's almost weird
Speaker 1: that you're allowed to call it a salad. It feels
Speaker 1: like you shouldn't be. But because it's not. So here's
Speaker 1: something I hadn't read before, and that comes from that
Speaker 1: incredible quiz show q I, and it's the perfect come
Speaker 1: down after you're done doing some coke salad, I guess.
Speaker 1: But it's a wild lettuce or something that's called Luktuca seiola,
Speaker 1: and the plant, which was also known as prickly lettuce,
Speaker 1: was apparently grown for medicinal purposes, and partially it has
Speaker 1: this like milksap that has these sleep inducing properties. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of this before, but the Romans would eat
Speaker 1: a salad course at the end of dinner with this
Speaker 1: lettuce and you know, kind of the way the French do,
Speaker 1: but this was specifically as a sleep aid and that
Speaker 1: way you could rest and digest. And apparently over the years,
Speaker 1: both the bitter taste of the wild lettuce and also
Speaker 1: those sleep inducing qualities were bred out of the lettuce.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't before Peter Rabbit got involved, so I
Speaker 1: haven't read the original Peter Rabbit Tails in a while.
Speaker 1: But in the early from feasting on so much sleep
Speaker 1: inducing lettuce, that Mopsy and Flopsy and the whole lot
Speaker 1: of them all got caught by Farmer McGregor and just
Speaker 1: narrowly escaped getting put in the pie. Remember this, But
Speaker 1: I really hope someone brings back this sleep inducing lettuce,
Speaker 1: just because I'd love to see people after like a
Speaker 1: long night of drinking and partying and just wanting to
Speaker 1: go to sleep, reaching into the back of their fridges
Speaker 1: and just taking a bite out of a head of lettuce.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that would be just such a
Speaker 1: great scene. Well, hopefully that dream will come through one day.
Speaker 1: But all right, well here's a quick fact. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun. Did you know you can actually buy
Speaker 1: a fruit salad tree? So I don't know what that means. Well,
Speaker 1: they're basically the same as when you can't choose a
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal, so you get that variety pack. Nurseries sell
Speaker 1: these young saplings with different fruits grafted onto one tree.
Speaker 1: So you can get a stone fruit salad tree, for example,
Speaker 1: and you'll get peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots or peach cots
Speaker 1: on there. You can get another one that's called a
Speaker 1: citrus tree that has limes and lemons, tangelos, oranges, grape
Speaker 1: fruit and mandarin's all growing on the single tree. It's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, and that's amazing. So I've heard of people
Speaker 1: like grafting trees like that together over time. But the
Speaker 1: fact that you buy them as saplings, you know, or
Speaker 1: small fruit salad trees, that's that's pretty incredible. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can actually do this with apple trees as well, so
Speaker 1: you get all sorts of apples all growing on one tree.
Speaker 1: And it's both actually really pretty to look at but
Speaker 1: fun that you can make these little peach and plum
Speaker 1: fruit salads without having to walk, you know, all the
Speaker 1: way over to another tree. Just kind of safe sometimes
Speaker 1: second location. Yeah, Well, for those of you listening, don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere, because you've got a few more salad facts
Speaker 1: for you for first quick break. Welcome back to Part
Speaker 1: time Genius. We're talking salads in honor of National Salad Bund.
Speaker 1: So I feel like every time you say the word salad,
Speaker 1: I just think of how eat it. Zimmerman at the
Speaker 1: Hairpin found all those stock photos of women laughing alone
Speaker 1: eating salad, and I don't know how she picked up
Speaker 1: on the trend, but it is so absurd, and once
Speaker 1: you notice, you really can't stop seeing photos of women
Speaker 1: just like laughing, eating alone needing their salad. Is really amazing.
Speaker 1: A little bizarre. All right, So what's your last factor
Speaker 1: of the day. I'm gonna be so I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about a study out of Iowa State
Speaker 1: that's kind of terrific. And this took place in two thirteen,
Speaker 1: so it's a few years old now, but it was
Speaker 1: conducted at a Y m C A camp and basically,
Speaker 1: instead of telling kids what to eat, the researchers used
Speaker 1: this digital screen to show an image of a bright,
Speaker 1: fresh salad and then they just have it rotate on
Speaker 1: the screen. And there was a salad bar in the cafeteria,
Speaker 1: but there were also plenty of other camp options, you know,
Speaker 1: hot dogs and sloppy joes and tacos. But these kids
Speaker 1: started serving themselves more salad after seeing this digital version,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the scientists were surprised to see that
Speaker 1: the digital display had the most effect on hungry boys.
Speaker 1: They actually served themselves fift more salad when they encountered
Speaker 1: the display. Wow, that is pretty amazing. I'm curious, So
Speaker 1: does it matter if the image is digital? Does it
Speaker 1: have to be digital or would like a paper ad
Speaker 1: work just as well? Yeah? I wondered the same thing,
Speaker 1: and apparently it has to be digital. The scientists tried
Speaker 1: paper and static versions, but as the salads got more
Speaker 1: and more realistic looking, and as the scientists added motion
Speaker 1: for some reason, that's when the hungry kids really took
Speaker 1: the bait. And of course, after seeing the results of
Speaker 1: that study, Burger King immediately adopted the technology into their
Speaker 1: billboards and ads and got people to eat whoppers. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty good fact, and it's amazing you can convince
Speaker 1: hungry kids to eat salads over tacos. But I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna like this last fact. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of cucumbers? Straight nurse? So this sounds like a fake
Speaker 1: product or some sort of get risk scheme. I thought
Speaker 1: that too, But they actually are a real thing. So cucumbers,
Speaker 1: or cowcumbers as they were originally called, They used to
Speaker 1: be super wayward and curvy, but that made them hard
Speaker 1: to slice up for sandwiches, and that really annoyed this
Speaker 1: guy named George Stevenson. So Stevenson is also the inventor
Speaker 1: of a number of things like a miner's lamp. He
Speaker 1: also built the first railway to use steam engines, and
Speaker 1: he was very ritated by these curvy cucumbers, so he
Speaker 1: decided to invent this cucumber straightener, and it's basically just
Speaker 1: this kind of this phallic looking glass tube that you
Speaker 1: put over the cucumber so it grows contained within the
Speaker 1: shape of the tube. And people went crazy for these things.
Speaker 1: You can find all these ads and Victorian publications for
Speaker 1: these cucumber straighteners, and there's actually one from James Phillips
Speaker 1: and Company where the ad just says cucumber glasses made
Speaker 1: to any length twelve inches, sixteen inches, twenty inches, four inches.
Speaker 1: Those are a lot of inches. Gives you so many
Speaker 1: different options. But what's funny is that they're not exactly
Speaker 1: outdated either. And apparently Disney makes cucumber straighteners that shape
Speaker 1: the veggie so that when they cut a cucumber for
Speaker 1: their salads, every slice comes out and Micky shaped. That's
Speaker 1: pretty wonderful. And I do love that George Stevenson has
Speaker 1: all these important inventions, and then he really should be
Speaker 1: remembered for this key car definitely the biggest one. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think you do take the trophy with that fact. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, and thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow. M