Speaker 1: Hello everybody. It's Josh and for this week's select, I
Speaker 1: chose are surprisingly Interesting. June two thousand seventeen episode on
Speaker 1: food fads. This episode has everything you're looking for in
Speaker 1: a food fads episode, TV Dinners, Oprah, and Thrills, Chills, spills.
Speaker 1: It's an odd good episode, so I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark
Speaker 1: with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland and Frank
Speaker 1: the Chair. Oh Frank, it's been there the whole time.
Speaker 1: You just keep quiet mostly mostly. Yeah. I don't have
Speaker 1: my hat on today though, so I know what gives
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, I'm growing the hair out,
Speaker 1: so I thought i'd just let it flow. I noticed
Speaker 1: it looks good. Why are you growing it out? I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just sort of started happening. Then I
Speaker 1: was like, my brother's got good hair, is longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to be more like him. Plus I
Speaker 1: can't have a butt cut with short hair. Yeah. Plus
Speaker 1: I mean I've had the same short, spiky hair for
Speaker 1: like fifteen years. Time to mix it up. I know, man,
Speaker 1: when I started growing mine out, I was like, what
Speaker 1: am I doing? What's with this cube ball crap? I'm
Speaker 1: so tired of all this. Let me just see what
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, with a what's that quarterback's name?
Speaker 1: Joe with Eisman? No Joe no? Uh, Terry Bradshaw, No,
Speaker 1: you know the one, Randall Cunningham. No, Tom Brady, tom Brady.
Speaker 1: Despite your harassment, I still figured it out. What about
Speaker 1: Tom Brady? He want his hair? I have his hair, buddy.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I do me and Tom Brady? Now,
Speaker 1: uh chuh? Yes. Did you grow up on TV dinners
Speaker 1: at all? Really? No? My mom is wasn't is a
Speaker 1: great cook, so she wouldn't have that. I see, I see, Wow,
Speaker 1: well I did. I grew up on TV dinners and
Speaker 1: usually when a TV dinner appeared. Seriously, you did miss out.
Speaker 1: They were pretty amazing when you're like six seven years old.
Speaker 1: I've had them when you were six or seven. No,
Speaker 1: I had them like in college. Okay, so so okay,
Speaker 1: So you understand the magic of a TV dinner, right? Sure? Alright,
Speaker 1: imagine that as like a six year old. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was magical. All of your foods and like a
Speaker 1: different little compartment. Nie just staring at you, waiting, like
Speaker 1: just just wait, just wait, buddy. Um, when you're six,
Speaker 1: it's just even better. And when I was six, if
Speaker 1: I would get a TV dinner, it meant that my
Speaker 1: parents were like going to do something right. They were
Speaker 1: going to play bridge or something like that. So it
Speaker 1: was like a special night and like I probably exactly right.
Speaker 1: I'd probably get to stay up late, or there'd be
Speaker 1: some babysitter or whatever. Um, it was always just kind
Speaker 1: of a special thing when TV dinners made an appearance.
Speaker 1: My parents never did anything together. They never like, they
Speaker 1: never played cards or no. Man, I rarely had babysitters.
Speaker 1: I rarely. I don't remember having babysitters. There was always
Speaker 1: one of them there. Yeah, maybe they didn't trust you,
Speaker 1: that they didn't like each other. They may have really
Speaker 1: enjoyed key parties well plus yeah you never know, Um
Speaker 1: I had I have a sister that's six years older though,
Speaker 1: so ter Yeah, but they still didn't do a lot
Speaker 1: I can remember. I can literally just think of a
Speaker 1: few times they like went to an olibaan Newton John
Speaker 1: concert once. Uh. They've got a pretty good track record
Speaker 1: so far, and my mom wentnt saw Elvis but not
Speaker 1: with my dad. Wow. Uh on that last tour or
Speaker 1: two man, the uh I think they call that the
Speaker 1: jumpsuit Integrity Tour. They hold on, let me catch my breath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't put an undignified ending, Yeah they didn't. They
Speaker 1: didn't do much stuff together, so I didn't get a
Speaker 1: lot of TV dinners. I didn't get a lot of Hey,
Speaker 1: there's just throw it in and warm it up. My
Speaker 1: mom was kind of yeah, always cooking for us. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: my mom cooked a lot too. But now that I'm
Speaker 1: older and looked back, I'm like us pretty convenient meal.
Speaker 1: Like you know, she was an e R nurse for
Speaker 1: pete sake, a weird hours and stuff. Um, but she
Speaker 1: was a great mom. She raised me very well, as
Speaker 1: everybody knows. It's a well known fact. So with TV
Speaker 1: Dinners in particular, though, I have a certain amount of
Speaker 1: nostalgia for him, But apparently like America as a whole
Speaker 1: has a bit of nostalgia for TV dinners. There's a
Speaker 1: TV dinner the Smithsonian, for Pete's sake, and that's like
Speaker 1: America's greatest repository of nostalgia for sure, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should take people on a delightful
Speaker 1: tour of the history of this wonder of TV dinners.
Speaker 1: Yeah you sound like you're I'm not so sure. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I am sure. I was just joking around. Was trying
Speaker 1: to set it up as some you know, magical experience
Speaker 1: that everyone's about to have. But I feel like that's
Speaker 1: ingrained in it. So as the story goes, Uh, Swanson
Speaker 1: ce A Swanson and Sons was and is a leader
Speaker 1: in the frozen food industry. And um, whether or not
Speaker 1: this is legend, who knows, but it's a great story.
Speaker 1: Was that uh one Thanksgiving they had too much turkey
Speaker 1: on their hands Post Thanksgiving to the tune of something
Speaker 1: like two fifty tons of turkey that they didn't sell
Speaker 1: they overestimate, which is so sad, you know, yeah for
Speaker 1: those nothing. Uh yeah, like we so wanted to give
Speaker 1: our life as a meal right now, we're just on
Speaker 1: a train. Well, yeah, that's what they did. So the
Speaker 1: story goes, they had about they loaded it, they couldn't
Speaker 1: store it. They didn't none of room and no freezer
Speaker 1: room to store all this turkey, So they put it
Speaker 1: on a frozen train or a refrigerated train car as
Speaker 1: a polar express, it's called in the industry. And the
Speaker 1: trick to this thing is is in order for that
Speaker 1: train to stay refrigerated, it's gotta keep moving. And so
Speaker 1: they basically we're just running this turkey all over the
Speaker 1: country to keep it frozen and cold. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: that one movie UM set in the future with Tilda Switten,
Speaker 1: where like the train never stops, societies on the train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like that, but with frozen turkeys. That's a good movie.
Speaker 1: So it's like that cross between that and Speed. Yes,
Speaker 1: Like so if the train ever stops, it's in a
Speaker 1: lose refrigeration, the losers refrigeration, the turkeys all go bad.
Speaker 1: So there's this remember that Simpsons which one when Homer
Speaker 1: is trying to describe or think of the name of
Speaker 1: the movie Speed. He's like, it's about a about a bus.
Speaker 1: If it's speed goes down and it can't speed up.
Speaker 1: And he says it like that many times, and he goes,
Speaker 1: I think it's called the bus that wouldn't slow down
Speaker 1: or that couldn't slow down. Yeah, I remember that very
Speaker 1: funny line. Um, but this is real life. Chuck, this
Speaker 1: wasn't a cartoon or a joke. Half a million pounds
Speaker 1: of turkey on a train and if it's topped it
Speaker 1: would spoil Simpsons. No, the idea that this actually happened,
Speaker 1: it's so insane to me. So apparently the Swanson brothers
Speaker 1: Clark and um, what was the other brothers, Gilbert Gilbert.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say Clark and Gable, but Clark and
Speaker 1: Gilbert Swanson said, all right, employ ease, we need you
Speaker 1: to put your heads together and come up with an idea.
Speaker 1: So they had again this is the legend, they had
Speaker 1: an employee contest where um, whoever could come up with
Speaker 1: what to do with all this turkey, I guess would
Speaker 1: just be the employee of the month or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And all the while this contest is going on in
Speaker 1: the Swanson company, there's a train out there in the
Speaker 1: United States of America just circling endlessly because it can't
Speaker 1: stop or else the turkeys will go bad until this
Speaker 1: Winton wins. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a salesman named
Speaker 1: Jerry Thomas g E r R Y, not like our
Speaker 1: own j E R I right, which no one ever gets. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: this is the party, I will get He traveled from
Speaker 1: Nebraska to Pittsburgh to where Pan American Airways had their
Speaker 1: kitchens because they were testing uh single compartment uh foil
Speaker 1: tray meals that they would serve to people. And I
Speaker 1: guess he couldn't envision what that might look like unless
Speaker 1: he went there in person, right and steal one. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was a single compartment right. So basically
Speaker 1: it was just a tray that you put a bunch
Speaker 1: of food on. There were like different compartments in the tray,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I gotta get my hands on one
Speaker 1: of these, right, this is innovation. Yeah. I don't understand
Speaker 1: that either, which is why his story smells a little
Speaker 1: fishy to me. Um. But this, this guy, Jerry Thomas,
Speaker 1: is the He's he's known as the inventor basically of
Speaker 1: the TV dinner. Right. So he comes back to the
Speaker 1: Swanson brothers and says, I got it. I've I've driven
Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh back home, h to wherever the Swanson company
Speaker 1: is located. Where am I? He famously said, Um, And
Speaker 1: he said, and I've added two more compartments into this trace,
Speaker 1: the three compartment trade. And I drew two lines I
Speaker 1: know what to do with the turkey. Now we're gonna
Speaker 1: basically sell it as a frozen Thanksgiving dinner. And they
Speaker 1: said your employee of the month, Jerry. Yeah. They say, look,
Speaker 1: you got your your potatoes and gravy here, you got
Speaker 1: your peas here, you got your turkey here. None of
Speaker 1: it touches each other. I'm a genius. I'm Jerry Thomas.
Speaker 1: So this coalesce with the another UH craze, which was television,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen fifty three there were thirty three million
Speaker 1: households with televisions, and um, it was really I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been other people that had been doing this before.
Speaker 1: Quaker State Foods UH in ninety nine had something in
Speaker 1: the supermarket of frozen meal called under Geez, I know,
Speaker 1: the most the most one, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: the most one of the most offensive brand names ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one eyed Eskimo label. That's that's terrible. So they
Speaker 1: were selling those in supermarkets. And then in previous to that,
Speaker 1: even UH the Strato plates from Maxim were being served
Speaker 1: on airplanes, but not as a retail food. So it
Speaker 1: had been done before. So the creation of the TV dinner, well, wait,
Speaker 1: don't don't don't leave out Jack Fisher. Who Jack Fisher?
Speaker 1: Oh right, what was that one called frigid dinners? Yes,
Speaker 1: but they're the most depressing meal ever because they were
Speaker 1: served in bars. Yeah, they're serving in a bar, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have to leave to go home to eat dinner.
Speaker 1: You could just stay and keep drinking. Oh man, there
Speaker 1: were some bars in l A in Los Felis when
Speaker 1: I lived there that around two am, the Tomali guy
Speaker 1: would come around, So okay, that's different. Oh dude, it
Speaker 1: was the best. I mean, they were legit handmade to
Speaker 1: Molly's and at one was the perfect time to be
Speaker 1: dropping into the drawing room, you know. Oh anyway, the
Speaker 1: creation of the TV dinner was not so much that
Speaker 1: it was a brand new thing, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was a marketing success story because the TV they thought,
Speaker 1: if we can build a sing around the television, then
Speaker 1: we've got something on our hands. Right. That was the
Speaker 1: key the TV making it a TV dinner, right, because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it was like, hey, everybody loves TV.
Speaker 1: Plus this is something I didn't realize. It added a
Speaker 1: certain amount of like cashe to the TV dinner because
Speaker 1: if you had a TV dinner. It meant that you
Speaker 1: had a TV. And if you had a TV, you
Speaker 1: were probably upper middle class at the time, right, So
Speaker 1: the idea of having a TV or a dinner to
Speaker 1: go with your TV really appealed to two Americans. And
Speaker 1: even to this day it was such a great marketing coup.
Speaker 1: I guess that um people still call these, and like
Speaker 1: almost any frozen entree or frozen meal, a TV dinner.
Speaker 1: Even though it was two when Swanson stopped calling their
Speaker 1: products that they still made the products, they just stopped
Speaker 1: calling them TV dinners. Every everybody else kept calling them
Speaker 1: TV dinner. Yeah, you were eating these in the eighties,
Speaker 1: like twenty years after they that brand went away, still
Speaker 1: calling TV dinners and eating them on TV trays. This
Speaker 1: is another thing you possed out on Chuck, did you have?
Speaker 1: So that was the whole The whole point of the
Speaker 1: TV tray was it was a foldable individual table that
Speaker 1: you would open up in front of yourself and eat
Speaker 1: your TV dinner on while you were sitting on the couch,
Speaker 1: so you could watch TV most efficiently while you were
Speaker 1: eating dinner. And now they call that the coffee table.
Speaker 1: You just stoop over a little bit right, or the
Speaker 1: sink eating over the sink. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: That's a depressing way to eat. So these are actually
Speaker 1: called that was the brand, Swanson's TV brand, frozen Dinner.
Speaker 1: And there they're big concept with the box. If you
Speaker 1: look it up on on the internet. Was it looked
Speaker 1: like it was designed like a little television the box
Speaker 1: was it the t The dinner itself was like the
Speaker 1: screen on the screen and then it had the little
Speaker 1: dials on the bottom left and right corner and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it look like a little TV right. And
Speaker 1: it was ninety eight cents in nineteen fifty four, and
Speaker 1: they sold a ton of them. Yeah, they apparently um
Speaker 1: so again, remember all this came from a bunch of
Speaker 1: turkey that was about to spoil. So Swanson start to
Speaker 1: an industry. Swanson ordered like five thousand of them initially
Speaker 1: to be made, and they hired a small battalion of
Speaker 1: of um ladies in aprons and ice cream scoops and
Speaker 1: spatchel is to assemble these things, right, and they just
Speaker 1: had them go right down the assembly line and they
Speaker 1: sold five thousand just almost immediately, and apparently in the
Speaker 1: first year um that they were sold they sold like
Speaker 1: ten million of them. So they came out with them
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, and by the end of the
Speaker 1: first full year of production, which I guess would be nine,
Speaker 1: they'd sold ten million of them. So they went from
Speaker 1: initially ordering five thousand of them to selling ten million
Speaker 1: of them in a year, so that it just hit
Speaker 1: America just right, you know. Well, yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: at a time where women were starting to want kind
Speaker 1: of re enter the workforce. Gave them time that they
Speaker 1: could still get that hot meal on the table, because
Speaker 1: that was their job back then, right right. It gave
Speaker 1: women a really great opportunity to provide a stark contrast
Speaker 1: to the your husband's mother. Yeah. Yeah, Apparently there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of men who were like, this isn't good enough.
Speaker 1: I want my wife to cook from scratch like my mom.
Speaker 1: Dr Freud, And if they could be like my mom
Speaker 1: in a lot of other ways, that'd be awesome. Would
Speaker 1: it kill her to wear a hairnut? Yeah, So apparently
Speaker 1: it didn't delight all men because they weren't on board,
Speaker 1: but would have killer to just me up in a diaper.
Speaker 1: We should do an episode on that sometime. That's the thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought about san Freud, but on men wearing diapers
Speaker 1: as adults. Yeah, it's for like I think it's called
Speaker 1: diaper play for sex play, but but it's it's diaper centric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do a podcast on that just that. Well,
Speaker 1: we can include it in like maybe a fetish one,
Speaker 1: how about that? All right? Okay, Wow, that took a
Speaker 1: weird turn, all of this, it really did. Uh geez,
Speaker 1: you got anything else on TV Dinners? That's a good
Speaker 1: way to end it, I think. Nope. Shall we take
Speaker 1: a break? Yep? All right, I'm gonna go change my
Speaker 1: diaper and we'll talk about gelatin right after this. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you were saying that um in the last one, that uh,
Speaker 1: that the TV dinner hit just right and struck struck
Speaker 1: America in part because women were starting to enter the workforce, right,
Speaker 1: and that was partially the results of World War Two.
Speaker 1: World War two also changed things as far as food
Speaker 1: and food consumption and food packaging goes, and that apparently
Speaker 1: at the end of World War Two there were a
Speaker 1: lot of companies that had gone all in into supplying
Speaker 1: the troops food. And we're making pretty great money. But
Speaker 1: apparently we're basically caught with a large amount of supply.
Speaker 1: Um when the war ended, and they said, well, if
Speaker 1: we don't figure out a way to get non wartime America,
Speaker 1: the regular American consumer to buy this stuff, we're going
Speaker 1: to go out of business. Were over extended basically, and
Speaker 1: so food companies, I guess, individually and on the whole,
Speaker 1: taught America to basically eat what had prior to that
Speaker 1: point being considered field rations like spam. If you remember
Speaker 1: that podcast that kind of was where that whole movement
Speaker 1: was born. Yep, spam, condensed soup, um, dehydrated stuff, freeze,
Speaker 1: dried stuff, like. All of this came out of basically
Speaker 1: an overstock of World War two food supplies that were
Speaker 1: intended for troops and we're kind of repackaged and rearranged
Speaker 1: to be served to the American consumer. And part of
Speaker 1: that also was that same thing that TV Dinner struck,
Speaker 1: which which was convenient. You know, like, hey, your your
Speaker 1: husband still wants a meal and your your family still
Speaker 1: expects you to be the one to to cook for him. Um,
Speaker 1: but now you have to work. So what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Well, we have we have something helpful for you,
Speaker 1: and it's called convenience food. And one of the big
Speaker 1: convenience foods that came out of the post war era.
Speaker 1: But really it started to gather steam before then was gelatin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically jello as the name brand, but gelatine. The word
Speaker 1: is from Latin gelatas, meaning jellied froze. And uh. It
Speaker 1: was first used in Egypt, but it was really first
Speaker 1: used in cooking in France. And um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think most people know this by now, but if you don't, Um,
Speaker 1: gelatine is as a protein and it's uh it's produced
Speaker 1: from collagen from boiling animal bones, yeah, or hoofs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's a it's glutinous basically, and it can go
Speaker 1: one of two ways, I think, depending on what you
Speaker 1: do with it. You can turn it into glue or
Speaker 1: you can turn it into food. That's never a good start, no,
Speaker 1: it really you know. Yeah. And a guy from the
Speaker 1: I think the seventeenth century in France, what was his name, Peppin,
Speaker 1: someone Peppin, Dennis Poppine, who may or may not be
Speaker 1: related to Jacques Pepin. It was great and French. He's
Speaker 1: also a cook. Um. He was the first person to
Speaker 1: mention it in writing. I believe, Uh, and then it
Speaker 1: just kind of sat there for a while until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, when I guess people were aware of gelatine
Speaker 1: and that you could use it as a food, but
Speaker 1: it was extraordinarily gourmet, like the average person was not
Speaker 1: making jello at home. It was very time consuming. You
Speaker 1: had to start from scratch and boil animal bones to
Speaker 1: start the process of gelatine. It was the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of how we think of gelatine today, which is instantaneous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteenth century, um, there this guy named
Speaker 1: Peter Cooper uh figured out a way to turn gelatine
Speaker 1: into a powder form, a dehydrated gelatine powder. Um, and
Speaker 1: it went absolutely nowhere for fifty years. And I was
Speaker 1: surprised to find this out. I knew gelatine was pretty old,
Speaker 1: but it's it's interesting how it's just kind of moved
Speaker 1: along in these very slow little fits and starts, like
Speaker 1: no one would give up on it. No, it was interesting,
Speaker 1: which is weird because it's really disgusting if you think
Speaker 1: about it. It should have been given up on, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it never was. It's a very bizarre invention. It
Speaker 1: almost makes you feel like there was some sort of
Speaker 1: divine hand guiding gelatine along in its progress. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: later on in eut named Charles Knox, uh kind of
Speaker 1: revolutionized things when he found came up with a process
Speaker 1: that resulted in a dried sheet of gelatine, and he
Speaker 1: hired salesman to go door to door to show women like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can add liquid to these sheets. You can make desserts,
Speaker 1: you can make aspects, which is a really gross word.
Speaker 1: I think it is. It's not it's pretty. It's a
Speaker 1: gross thing. It's a savory gelatine. Yeah, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. But uh. A couple of years later, Rose Knox,
Speaker 1: which was that his wife, I guess yes, published a
Speaker 1: book called Dainty Dessert Hurts, which is a book of recipes,
Speaker 1: and things were kind of moving along a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: Then there was a cough syrup company in New York
Speaker 1: called Pearl Pearl b wait is that what it's called?
Speaker 1: Pearl way? W W A I T. But they weren't
Speaker 1: so much cough syrups. So he said, all right, let's
Speaker 1: get into the food business. And uh, the wife, whose
Speaker 1: name was May, said, you know, let me add some
Speaker 1: fruit syrups to this stuff. And actually she's the one
Speaker 1: who named it Jello. She came up with that name,
Speaker 1: but they didn't succeed either, and sold that to their neighbor.
Speaker 1: Uh Francis, is that the whole name? Or Tor Francis
Speaker 1: Woodward for four hundred and fifty bucks. This person purchased
Speaker 1: the name in name brand Jello, right, and he almost
Speaker 1: fell victim to the curse of Jello as well. Right.
Speaker 1: He could do nothing with it either, um despite some
Speaker 1: early attempts. He apparently tried to sell it to his
Speaker 1: supervisor at work for thirty five bucks even though he
Speaker 1: paid four and fifty to it for it. So at
Speaker 1: some point I guess he decided to give it another
Speaker 1: go and he hired a bunch of traveling salesman, sent
Speaker 1: them out to fairs, community gatherings, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and said, teach the people how to make the jello.
Speaker 1: And this time it started to stick. Actually, Jello, Jello
Speaker 1: kind of um hit at just the right time. Finally,
Speaker 1: I should say, the world was finally ready for Jello.
Speaker 1: Part of it had to do with, um, refrigeration, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, once you know, refrigeration is key for jello,
Speaker 1: as we all know, right, And once those technologies were developed,
Speaker 1: it kind of Uh well, it formed literally, it all
Speaker 1: congealed and figuratively. Uh. And then once advertising started taking over,
Speaker 1: like in the mid nineteen thirties, uh, General foods Um
Speaker 1: had a very famous radio ad from Jack Binny, the
Speaker 1: j E L l O tag, which really kind of
Speaker 1: helped push things along as well. Yeah, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that at some point they started dabbling with with other flavors.
Speaker 1: I think originally they tried strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon, right, um.
Speaker 1: And then they tried chocolate and they they apparently chocolate
Speaker 1: didn't go over very well, so they released no. First
Speaker 1: they just released it as chocolate jello. That's pretty awful.
Speaker 1: And then they thought, oh, maybe we should add milk
Speaker 1: instead of water, and that's when they came up with
Speaker 1: jello pudding and they re released chocolate and that that
Speaker 1: spurred like a whole pudding line, including something I grew
Speaker 1: up on, which was butterscotch jello pudding. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that was so good, except you you couldn't. You had
Speaker 1: to get the skin off. The skin was no good,
Speaker 1: But everything under the skin was great. What was the skin?
Speaker 1: It was just like a on top. It was a
Speaker 1: very it was the tougher layer on top. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you just scraped it off, you had some nice
Speaker 1: pudding underneath. Emily still loves the uh the brown, the
Speaker 1: chocolate jello pudding. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. She'll make a
Speaker 1: parfait like you know, a little a little putting, a
Speaker 1: little whipped cream, little pudding, little whipped cream. She knows
Speaker 1: how to live. She does. It's a special night that
Speaker 1: happens about three times a year, and I'm like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: fight time. Uh So in the nineteen fifties, uh, supposedly
Speaker 1: the jello shot with alcohol was invented by uh, this
Speaker 1: really interesting guy named Tom Larer, who, um, he was
Speaker 1: a mathematician and a singer songwriter who I looked into him.
Speaker 1: He did song parodies about math and chemistry. I guess
Speaker 1: he was like the Jonathan Colton of his day as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell. And he was also in
Speaker 1: the army and to get around alcohol restrictions. As the
Speaker 1: story goes, he claims he invented the jello shot, which
Speaker 1: I've never had. Uh what, I've never had a jello shot? Wow,
Speaker 1: Well you're not missing much of a pretty gross well jello.
Speaker 1: I can't stand jello well even if you do, even
Speaker 1: if you like or or ambivalent to jello, it's it's
Speaker 1: just gross. Does it taste like, yeah, it's or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's a very obnoxious taste you're supposed to use, Like
Speaker 1: I think you're a place half of the water with
Speaker 1: whatever liquor you're using. Usually people use vodka. It really
Speaker 1: just stands out in a in a noxious way. By
Speaker 1: the way, Tom Larra, I thought that name sounded familiar.
Speaker 1: He um, he is pretty great. He wrote this one
Speaker 1: um song called The Old Dope Peddler and two Chains. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: you know the rapper two Chains from Atlanta? No, yes
Speaker 1: you do? Oh wait was he our guy? Was he
Speaker 1: the guy that judged that? No? Man? Who was that guy?
Speaker 1: That was young Jock? Right now? Two Chains is he's huge? Man. Um.
Speaker 1: He did a song where he sampled the Old Dope
Speaker 1: Peddler and he, I guess wrote to Tom Laird to
Speaker 1: ask for permission to sample it. Tom Lair had this
Speaker 1: awesome famous response, So just read up on that. What
Speaker 1: was did he let him use it? Yes? Oh great,
Speaker 1: So he's the opposite of Don Henley and probably every
Speaker 1: single way Yeah yeah, uh but jello shots, Yes, jello
Speaker 1: shots are gross. So jello is speeding along. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's taking over America. Um. And then they decided to
Speaker 1: come out with these savory lines and it became uh
Speaker 1: and this was this post World War two thing that
Speaker 1: you were talking about when UM, I guess they did what.
Speaker 1: There was this great article you sent making and eating
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties most nauseating jello soaked recipes from collector
Speaker 1: Yeah Hunter Hunter Oatmund Stanford, and uh they did this
Speaker 1: interview and um with Ruth Clark. Yeah, Ruth Clark. Basically
Speaker 1: it's a really good interview and she talks about kind
Speaker 1: of this savory movement that took over, and not only
Speaker 1: with jello, but the fact that it was a time
Speaker 1: in America where and if you look back, it's so
Speaker 1: great to look back at these old ads and these
Speaker 1: old recipe books that it was a time where you
Speaker 1: would the goal was to have a dinner party with
Speaker 1: this big, flashy, uh experimental and unique centerpiece food centerpiece
Speaker 1: made of jello, well, jell all kinds of things. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the hot dog tree right yeah, there and
Speaker 1: there there. It could be a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what Ruth Clark does she recreates
Speaker 1: this stuff right, and her poor husband has to eat it. Um.
Speaker 1: But a lot of those things were jello molds, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the reason why jello molds were so
Speaker 1: weird and so popular is because Jello put so much
Speaker 1: time and effort into publishing cookbooks. And the whole point
Speaker 1: was all of these food companies wanted, like all of
Speaker 1: their products to to be your entire meal, So they
Speaker 1: were putting these these random part like products that the
Speaker 1: food company made into some really weird configurations, and they
Speaker 1: came up with some very odd jello molds in the
Speaker 1: fifties or sixties. Such a sad culinary time it was.
Speaker 1: But the Ruth Clark makes a good point that that
Speaker 1: to the people at that time, like a really well
Speaker 1: thought out, fancy jello mold was as a centerpiece of
Speaker 1: your table, was like the pinnacle of classiness. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about like a shaped mold with like uh
Speaker 1: lamb shank and asparagus inside of jello. A savory jello
Speaker 1: that's like celery flavored. You're lucky if it was savory.
Speaker 1: The lime jello is one of the most abused jello
Speaker 1: flavors of all time. People would put tuna and stuff
Speaker 1: in with the lime jello. There's one called Perfection Salad
Speaker 1: that's cold slaw inside of law, I'm jello. And what
Speaker 1: Ruth Clark pointed out was that gelatine apparently preserves food
Speaker 1: really well, and and that cole slaw that would have
Speaker 1: otherwise been inedible and running after day three was still
Speaker 1: like crunchy after day five when it was put inside
Speaker 1: of a jello mold, so still gross. Yeah. There's actually
Speaker 1: a great BuzzFeed article, um if you want to get
Speaker 1: an idea of what people were doing in the fifties, sixties,
Speaker 1: and seventies with jello molds. It's called seventeen Horrifying Lee
Speaker 1: Disgusting Retro Gelatine recipes, and they are gross. Man like
Speaker 1: cottage cheese and salmon mold. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: hate jello. Oh Man's like you're waking nightmare. I didn't
Speaker 1: even look through it. You sent it to me, and
Speaker 1: that's scrolled about halfway through and just deleted through my
Speaker 1: computer out the window. The best one I see is
Speaker 1: lime cheese salad. It's it's lime jello mixed with cottage
Speaker 1: cheese and then into the center of the jello mold.
Speaker 1: You put a seafood salad, Oh my god, sour krout mold.
Speaker 1: It just goes on and on. But it was a
Speaker 1: weird time. And again Ruth Clark has a bunch of theories.
Speaker 1: She said she can't really answer exactly why jello molds
Speaker 1: were as big as they are, but she posits that, uh,
Speaker 1: part of it was this idea that there were all
Speaker 1: these companies trying to get you to use their products,
Speaker 1: and these were just monstrosities that they came up with,
Speaker 1: and people fell for it, like can salmon, can tuna
Speaker 1: in jello? Right, Oh my god, So that's jello molds. Man, Uh,
Speaker 1: where do you want to head next? Let's go to
Speaker 1: the crock pot. All right, Dot, that was a crock
Speaker 1: pot travel. So first of all, I have a croc
Speaker 1: pot the same here and um as yours. Actually croc
Speaker 1: Pot are using it as a proprietary eponym. I don't
Speaker 1: think it is a croc Pot brand pot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a slocaler um and I'd forget to use it a lot,
Speaker 1: But when I remember, I'll go in a little crock
Speaker 1: pot binge where I'll cook, you know, a few meals
Speaker 1: over the course of a few weeks in a croc pot,
Speaker 1: and they're still great if you know how to how
Speaker 1: to use it and how to spice things up, for sure.
Speaker 1: You know, apparently at first people didn't know because if
Speaker 1: you're cooking a recipe, say, um, it's like simmering, say
Speaker 1: like a beef stew on the stovetop, that simmering action
Speaker 1: that it's going undergoing, it does something different to the
Speaker 1: recipe than a croc pot does, even though it's the
Speaker 1: exact same recipe. Um. And so at first, when crock
Speaker 1: pots came out, it was first introduced by rival back
Speaker 1: in when crock pots first came out, um, they people
Speaker 1: were like, this is this This dinner that it's making
Speaker 1: is really gross. It doesn't taste very good. It's bland,
Speaker 1: and yet they still didn't stop using or buying crock pots. Well,
Speaker 1: food was more bland back then. Well we're talking the seventies,
Speaker 1: So by the seventies, I think it was people were
Speaker 1: using more spices than before. I think it was more bland,
Speaker 1: and like the forties and maybe the fifties. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that one, yeah, you're probably right, But that one article
Speaker 1: we read said, you know, like an old recipe for
Speaker 1: chili would have like a teaspoon of chili powder or something,
Speaker 1: and it's like all the food just sucked because they
Speaker 1: didn't realize, like, no, man, you dump a bunch of
Speaker 1: that junk in there. So well, you were saying. Back
Speaker 1: in the forties or fifties when TV Dinners really hit,
Speaker 1: moms were starting to enter the work force in one
Speaker 1: moms were really into the workforce. And so the idea
Speaker 1: of having a crock pot where you could make this
Speaker 1: meal in a one pot in the morning, throw it
Speaker 1: all in there, turn it on, and then come home
Speaker 1: at the end of the day and dinner was ready
Speaker 1: and you still went to work and got everything you
Speaker 1: needed to get done done was so attractive that just that,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it made these meals that did
Speaker 1: not taste like they should um, people were still, like
Speaker 1: I said, they were still buying the crock pots, and
Speaker 1: instead they started to look around to find tips for
Speaker 1: how to make these things taste better. And actually, a
Speaker 1: woman named what was her name, Mabel, Yeah, Mabel Hoffman,
Speaker 1: Mabel Hoffman stepped into the fray and said, peace piece, children,
Speaker 1: I've got this covered. Listen up. Yeah. She wrote a
Speaker 1: book called The Crockery cookery or crockery cookery. No, the
Speaker 1: and uh it was a huge, huge hit, was the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller. I believe she went on to
Speaker 1: sell about six million copies of this thing. And UM,
Speaker 1: I don't even think we've said that, you know, we
Speaker 1: said we you throw the food in there and cook
Speaker 1: it all day. But the whole idea is that you
Speaker 1: put a kind of a tight fitting lid on there
Speaker 1: and it and it cooks at a very very low
Speaker 1: heat all day long, right, and then when you when
Speaker 1: you get home from work eight hours later or something
Speaker 1: like that, it will it will be done. You just
Speaker 1: serve and smile. Yeah, And thanks to Crockery Cookery. UM,
Speaker 1: the crock pot uh in nineteen seventy one or two
Speaker 1: million bucks in ten million, seventy three, twenty three million,
Speaker 1: and then eventually peaking in nineteen seventy five at ninety
Speaker 1: three million dollars worth of croc pots being sold. It
Speaker 1: was a genuine legit craze food craze and supposedly croc
Speaker 1: pot cookery. The book was UM America's sixth best selling
Speaker 1: cookbook ever. Right, so this was like a legitimate craze.
Speaker 1: Crock Pot cooking was a legitimate craze, but again there
Speaker 1: was something compared to the same recipes on the stovetop
Speaker 1: as compared to a croc pot um, there was something.
Speaker 1: It was the flavor was just disappointing. So what Mabel
Speaker 1: Hoffman did was on a very tight deadline um create
Speaker 1: from scratch a book, I guess, the world's first cookbook
Speaker 1: of slow cooker rest piece. And she did it in
Speaker 1: her own kitchen with like twenty crock pots going all
Speaker 1: day every day. She had to testing all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and she figured out some of the keys to crock
Speaker 1: pot cooking, which was, like, you want to use way
Speaker 1: less liquid um then you would use like on the
Speaker 1: stovetop because you have a lot less um evaporation. The
Speaker 1: crock pot keeps it in there, which is one reason
Speaker 1: why meat is so so tender in a croc pot
Speaker 1: or slow cooker um because it just recirculates the the
Speaker 1: moisture rather than allowing it to just evaporate. Right. And
Speaker 1: then another thing she came up with was that when
Speaker 1: you um, when you use herbs into the recipe, you
Speaker 1: want to reserve some of them for right before the
Speaker 1: things finished cooking, so you can add it like a
Speaker 1: pop of fresh flavor. So once she figured this out,
Speaker 1: crock pots just took off even more. Yeah, so she
Speaker 1: was they were selling a bunch of crock pots, she
Speaker 1: was selling a bunch of cookbooks. Uh. And eventually she
Speaker 1: would said, hey, I really was into something here. So
Speaker 1: she wrote deep frye cookery, chocolate cookery. Uh, and these
Speaker 1: are um seventy seven like kind of all in a
Speaker 1: row crape cookery, and then eventually healthy healthy crockery cookery
Speaker 1: and um. The person he who interviewed her later in
Speaker 1: life said that she was just this really great lady,
Speaker 1: very humble, and was super upfront about the fact that
Speaker 1: she like, hey, I hit something at the right time
Speaker 1: with the right book, and it just sort of I
Speaker 1: kind of fell into this and it's been just like
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing for my life. Yeah, it's really neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she sounds like a pretty cool person. So what's your
Speaker 1: what's your crock pot recipe? Oh, jeez, I don't know
Speaker 1: it's your favorite thing to cook? But usually some sort
Speaker 1: of like beef. Yeah, it's just does such a such
Speaker 1: a good job, like making a roast or something, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I that's usually what I'm cooking. When I
Speaker 1: cook in the crock pot? Is is beef all right?
Speaker 1: Josh's crock pot beef crock pot surprise right with aspect
Speaker 1: You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
Speaker 1: break and we'll finish up with a bit interesting bit
Speaker 1: on oat brand, So Chuck, Yes, we finally arrived. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna go forward a few years. Blue the way
Speaker 1: Back machine is in the shop. This is why I'm
Speaker 1: having to do it to the eighties man an oat brand. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know that we differ on the interesting nous of
Speaker 1: this one. I'm just fascinated by it. I really yeah, man,
Speaker 1: because it's got it all. It's like, um, it's got
Speaker 1: the eighties. Um. Do you remember that snl the famous
Speaker 1: snl um add colon for colon blow that was based
Speaker 1: on this came out of this this trend. Um has
Speaker 1: to do with studies, studies that contradict those studies. Um,
Speaker 1: bad science reporting the whole thing. I love it, Oh brand,
Speaker 1: It's very important. So there was this huge trend in
Speaker 1: the eighties where anything that had to do with O
Speaker 1: brand you could sell a million units of a minute. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: so much so that there was a article from Tulsa
Speaker 1: World that um said that there are no I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The l A Times article from said that they were
Speaker 1: over like three hundred different items available in grocery stores
Speaker 1: at the time that touted on its label the fact
Speaker 1: that it had oprand and people were not uts for it.
Speaker 1: Yes they were. And this is uh largely due to
Speaker 1: some studies that came out that said that brand was
Speaker 1: kind of a miracle food for lowering cholesterol, right, And
Speaker 1: that was like back in the late seventies, and and
Speaker 1: I guess Quaker Oats took notice of those studies and
Speaker 1: they released a thing called Mother's Oh Brand, but they
Speaker 1: sent it straight to the hippies at the health food
Speaker 1: store and just and didn't do anything about They just
Speaker 1: released a product and that was that. And then Kellogg's
Speaker 1: came along and said, hey, you know what, what if
Speaker 1: we start telling people that are food can basically prevent cancer?
Speaker 1: Can we do that? And the lawyers said no, and
Speaker 1: the president of Kelloggs said, well, we're doing it anyway.
Speaker 1: Who's going to stop us? Reagan? And Reagan said no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to stop you. That was a good Reagan,
Speaker 1: thank you, And so they said, um, okay, well, you
Speaker 1: eat our cereal and it will reduce cancer. And nothing happened.
Speaker 1: There was no blowback, despite the fact that this had
Speaker 1: been illegal for nearly a century. And then Quaker Oats
Speaker 1: partnered with Chicago's Northwestern University and Linda van horn In
Speaker 1: because they had a similar study about o brand cutting cholesterol. Right,
Speaker 1: so they're starting to say, well, Kelley didn't get in trouble,
Speaker 1: let's try this ourselves. And they went out and they
Speaker 1: hired Wilfred Brimley. Remember his ads. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: told the story about working with him. Oh yeah, wasn't
Speaker 1: he like the antithesis of what his his persona was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the word got around they were like this, you know,
Speaker 1: just maybe a short day, because that's how it goes
Speaker 1: with them sometimes it's so funny, and I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think we wrapped it about half day because he
Speaker 1: was just like, I'm done, I'm cantankerous. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: when the cameras were rolling, he he told everybody that
Speaker 1: eating quicker opra and was the right thing to do
Speaker 1: and it would cut your cholesterol, that's right. And then
Speaker 1: this book came out, so things are starting to build
Speaker 1: here for opra and this book came out called The
Speaker 1: Eight Week Cholesterol Cure by a guy named Robert E. Kowalski,
Speaker 1: and it chronicled his the decline of his l d
Speaker 1: L the bad cholesterol UM, just from eating an O
Speaker 1: brand diet. And that book became extraordinarily popular. Supposedly it
Speaker 1: was the the one of the greatest selling self help
Speaker 1: health books of all time. It just took off. And
Speaker 1: then yet another thing happened, and this was the thing.
Speaker 1: This is like where the peak began the UM. I
Speaker 1: think the Journal of the American Medical Association April published
Speaker 1: a study from the University of Maryland where these researchers
Speaker 1: found that, yeah, eating O brand could really significantly lower
Speaker 1: your cholesterol, and not only that, it does it for
Speaker 1: a six of the price of the expensive cholesterol lowering drugs.
Speaker 1: That's right, and people ate even more OAT brand, That's right.
Speaker 1: The trend is developing, can you see it. I think
Speaker 1: it's fully developed at this point. So everybody's going OPR
Speaker 1: and crazy. And one of the big things that UM
Speaker 1: that they were doing was eating OPR and muffins. But
Speaker 1: these opra and muffins were like loaded with fat and
Speaker 1: butter and eggs, and so they weren't actually doing anything
Speaker 1: to lower their cholesterol because the effects would be counteracted. Suckers, right.
Speaker 1: But in the in the meantime, people were still having fun,
Speaker 1: eating lots of muffins and pretending they were really healthy.
Speaker 1: And then this Harvard study came out and it basically said,
Speaker 1: you know what, Um, you're all fools, you're dummies. You
Speaker 1: know how it lowers your cholesterol because it keeps you
Speaker 1: from eating bacon and eggs. That's how you chumps. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: And then that study itself was was attacked because they
Speaker 1: only studied twenty people, um, which is not much of
Speaker 1: a study. It isn't and the people who were on
Speaker 1: the opran diet were eating more fat than the control group.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible study, almost like they wanted to
Speaker 1: take Opran down a peg and it worked really well. Basically,
Speaker 1: the science reporting in major newspapers and the news services
Speaker 1: reported that Oprand was the greatest thing ever, and then
Speaker 1: they suddenly turned on it and said Oprand is nothing,
Speaker 1: and everybody dropped Oprand and that if if you read
Speaker 1: this stuff today, it's true, oprand really does lower cholesterol. Um,
Speaker 1: but he just got overhyped because of the eighties. That's
Speaker 1: the eighties for you. That's food fads. Man, You got
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Man? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about food fads, you
Speaker 1: can type those words into the search bar at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com said search bar. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: much though, so you may want to just look elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But still, uh. Since I said that, it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail, I'm gonna call this MS response, and
Speaker 1: I would like to say that we got many, many
Speaker 1: great responses from our MS episode. A lot of warm
Speaker 1: thought from people about my friend Billy and just uh,
Speaker 1: it's just really great people with MS, people who had
Speaker 1: people in their family. We heard from doctors and nurses,
Speaker 1: and that's just ended up being a really good episode.
Speaker 1: So we appreciate that feedback. But this is from anonymous listener. Hey,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to your show for a couple of
Speaker 1: years now. I want to thank you for making my
Speaker 1: commute more engaging. Listened to the show on MS am
Speaker 1: I right home and like to commend you for how
Speaker 1: well you handled the topic. I was diagnosed a few
Speaker 1: years ago at nineteen. Uh. Luckily my diagnosis was quick
Speaker 1: due to the severity of my first relapse, and I
Speaker 1: feel like your podcast would have helped me understanding cope
Speaker 1: with the diagnosis and more constructive manner than my initially
Speaker 1: trying to self destruct. Since then, I'm continually UH learning
Speaker 1: about the latest research in history. I love that you
Speaker 1: discussed uh Ledwina and Augustus dis Day, as a lot
Speaker 1: of the time they don't come up in the mainstream
Speaker 1: discourse of MS. Didn't really know any history until I
Speaker 1: wrote an undergrad history paper on MS last year and
Speaker 1: found reading through bits of death Day's journal to be
Speaker 1: the closest I've ever felt with a historical person. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that many tend to keep their diagnosis a secret.
Speaker 1: I'll admit that with me, it's a need to know basis,
Speaker 1: and I rarely openly talk about it outside of family, friends,
Speaker 1: in the support system, and my support system, mainly because
Speaker 1: of the stigma of the disease and that the assumptions
Speaker 1: circulating MS tend to negatively alter people's perceptions of myself
Speaker 1: as an individual. Have had people approach me when I
Speaker 1: start limping thanks to fatigue and a permanently numb foot,
Speaker 1: but I'll rush it off and tell them there's nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about, or it's an old injury. However, I
Speaker 1: think with time it's getting easier to talk about thanks
Speaker 1: to resources like your podcast that are well researched and accurate.
Speaker 1: I cringe whenever someone tells me there's an easy homeopathic
Speaker 1: solution to my ailments, and sometimes I struggle with discussing
Speaker 1: MS in an accessible way that doesn't solely rely on
Speaker 1: the clinical pathological understanding of it. And I will be
Speaker 1: sure in the future to redirect people to this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing and uh, we said
Speaker 1: we keep this anonymous because this person was close. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this person said, you know, that's great that you read it.
Speaker 1: But if if they're keeping it quiet for now, we
Speaker 1: don't want to, you know, broadcast the nage. Sure. Yeah, nice,
Speaker 1: So thank you Anonymous. Yeah, thanks a nonymus. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, like anonymous did,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us that s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know, or at Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant on Facebook. You can send us both an email. Uh.
Speaker 1: We promised to be confidential at Stuff podcast at House
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot com and has always joined us at at
Speaker 1: home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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