Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Here cool Quickset, Jello tang, pop rocks. These are the
Speaker 1: packaged foods that shaped and were shaped by generations of
Speaker 1: Americans coming of age in the nineteen sixties to the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, and they were all invented by one guy,
Speaker 1: William A. Mitchell, a research chemist who's thirty five year
Speaker 1: career at General Foods Corporation coincided with America's mid century
Speaker 1: fascination with convenience foods. One Marv Rudolph worked with Mitchell
Speaker 1: for six years at the company. In an interview with
Speaker 1: Great Big Story, he said Bill was the inventor at
Speaker 1: General Foods. He knew what amplified flavors, what colors to
Speaker 1: use to make something more attractive. If you had a problem,
Speaker 1: he was the guy to go to. Management tried to
Speaker 1: promote Bill many times, but he said, no, just keep
Speaker 1: me in my lab. It's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Mitchell was awarded more than seventy patents for foods he
Speaker 1: invented while working there, but his success was not a given.
Speaker 1: He was almost killed in an explosion before he ever
Speaker 1: had a chance to concoct some of the world's favorite
Speaker 1: junk foods. Born to a Minnesota farm family in nineteen eleven, A.
Speaker 1: Mitchell was no stranger to hard work. His father died
Speaker 1: while he was still an elementary school, so Mitchell harvested
Speaker 1: peas and beans for area farmers to help supplement the
Speaker 1: family income. By the time he was a teenager, Mitchell's
Speaker 1: family had relocated to Colorado, where he earned money by
Speaker 1: trapping muskrats and harvesting melons. During high school, he worked
Speaker 1: an overnight shift operating the sugar crystallization tanks at the
Speaker 1: American Beach Sugar Company, and after a shift frequently caught
Speaker 1: a scant two hours of sleep. Before classes began, A
Speaker 1: Mitchell worked as a carpenter to pay his way through
Speaker 1: undergrad in Nebraska. Went on to earn a master's degree
Speaker 1: in chemistry from the University of Nebraska, then stepped into
Speaker 1: a research chemist role at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Not long after he started working there, a laboratory explosion
Speaker 1: from heating a cracked beaker of alcohol left him with
Speaker 1: second and third degree burns over eighty percent of his body.
Speaker 1: After months of recovery, he returned to the lab, this
Speaker 1: time as a research chemist at General Foods Corporation in
Speaker 1: White Plains, New York, where he would spend the next
Speaker 1: thirty five years inventing one unique convenience food after another.
Speaker 1: One of Mitchell's first food stuff inventions was a replacement
Speaker 1: for tapioca, a staple that helped quell the hunger of
Speaker 1: American forces fighting in World War Two. To combat a
Speaker 1: shortage of naturally occurring tapioca, which is a starch extracted
Speaker 1: from the cassava plant, Mitchell developed a tapioca adjacent product
Speaker 1: derived from the starches of more readily available grains and gelatine,
Speaker 1: which soldiers nicknamed Mitchell's mud. In nineteen fifty seven, he
Speaker 1: went on to create a powdered drink that would eventually
Speaker 1: wind up in space tang. A tang was composed primarily
Speaker 1: of sugar with a bit of vitamin C and some
Speaker 1: additives thrown in a When mixed with water, it turns
Speaker 1: into a bright tangerine colored drink that tastes strongly of oranges.
Speaker 1: Although sales of the drink powder were initially lackluster, it
Speaker 1: captured the imagination and taste buds of many Americans when
Speaker 1: it went into orbit. A tang was used in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two to make the water more palatable for astronaut
Speaker 1: John Glenn's Mercury space flight. It masked the metallic flavor
Speaker 1: of the stored liquid. Tang was subsequently brought a board
Speaker 1: more space flights, and by the time the Apollo eight
Speaker 1: mission was televised in nineteen sixty eight, a tang was
Speaker 1: the major sponsor of ABC's space launch broadcast, though astronaut
Speaker 1: Buzz Aldron much later admitted and I quote tang sucks.
Speaker 1: Even as Tang was taking American shopping list by storm,
Speaker 1: Mitchell had set his sights on food inventions that would
Speaker 1: make meal preparation faster and easier for home cooks. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, he patented a quick set form of
Speaker 1: cello that could be made with cold water rather than hot,
Speaker 1: saving a step and a bunch of setting time, and
Speaker 1: just a few months after that, Mitchell came up with Coolwhip,
Speaker 1: the first freezer safe non dairy whipped cream. Unlike dairy
Speaker 1: cream whipped into a foam which would collapse or even
Speaker 1: separate if it freezes, a cool whip is stabilized so
Speaker 1: it can be stored frozen, making it easier to ship
Speaker 1: and saving consumers from the labor involved in making fresh
Speaker 1: whipped cream. Cool Whip also starred in many recipes of
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, like flag cake and Mississippi Mudpie. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: coolwhip does include some milk and cream, as American consumers
Speaker 1: tastes have swung away from artificiality, though of course we
Speaker 1: still like to save time. Perhaps mitchell most endearing invention
Speaker 1: was pop rocks from nineteen fifty six. It came about
Speaker 1: when he was experimenting with ways to add carbonation to
Speaker 1: powdered kool aid. The carbonated drink mix didn't quite work
Speaker 1: as hoped, so Mitchell gave up on it. But twenty
Speaker 1: years later another scientist tweaked the formula and the result
Speaker 1: was the explosive candy called pop rocks that crackles and
Speaker 1: fizzles inside your mouth. By the way, contrary to the
Speaker 1: popular myth, consuming pop rocks along with soda won't make
Speaker 1: your stomach explode. General Foods had to take out full
Speaker 1: page ads in newspapers in the nineteen seventies to refute
Speaker 1: that claim. But it was this commitment to the science
Speaker 1: of discovery and his willingness to fail that made Mitchell's
Speaker 1: career accomplishments so enduring. Take for example, his efforts to
Speaker 1: create dry alcohol by mixing wet alcohol with an intensely
Speaker 1: processed absorbent starch called multodextron. It didn't work out, but
Speaker 1: each discovery was a learning experience that informed his future efforts.
Speaker 1: For the article, this episode is based on how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Spoke with Claire Conagan, who's the associate director of content
Speaker 1: at Data Essential of food and beverage market research and
Speaker 1: intelligence platform. She said pop Rocks was an attempt at
Speaker 1: instant soda that found a different purpose. Tang was made
Speaker 1: to simulate fresh orange juice via flavor crystals, making it
Speaker 1: easier to transport and longer to store. A cool whip
Speaker 1: was made to ease the handwhipping cream process for people
Speaker 1: and to allow it to be stored frozen. They all
Speaker 1: remain nostalgic today and are often reintroduced to new generations
Speaker 1: by their parents or grandparents who are nostalgic or appreciate
Speaker 1: the convenience. Mitchell retired from General Foods in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: and he passed away in two thousand and four, a
Speaker 1: father of seven who was married for sixty years, and
Speaker 1: whose daughter Cheryl, became a food scientist too. He was
Speaker 1: remembered in his obituary as a devoted, stimulating, and loving parent.
Speaker 1: Of course, he's also remembered, even if not always by name,
Speaker 1: by the millions of consumers who have startled their taste
Speaker 1: buds with pop rocks or pretended they were an astronaut
Speaker 1: while drinking tang. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Meet the Man who invented Poolwhip, Tang and pop Rocks
Speaker 1: on Housteworks dot com, written by Laurel Dove. Brainstuff is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.