Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark
Speaker 1: with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Rolling, and Frank
Speaker 1: the Chair. Oh Frank, he's been here the whole time.
Speaker 1: He just keeps 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 my note, I was like, what
Speaker 1: am I doing? What's with this? Cube? All? Crap? I'm
Speaker 1: so tired of all this. Let me just see what
Speaker 1: what it looks like, you know, with a what's that
Speaker 1: quarterback's name? Joe Eisman No, no, Terry Bradshaw, No, you
Speaker 1: 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 chuck. Yes, did you grow up on TV dinners
Speaker 1: at all? No? Really no. My mom is was and
Speaker 1: is a great cook, so she wouldn't have that. I see,
Speaker 1: I see. Wow, Well I did. I grew up on
Speaker 1: TV dinners, and usually when a TV dinner appeared, Seriously,
Speaker 1: you did miss out. They were pretty amazing when you're
Speaker 1: like six, seven years old. I've had them when you
Speaker 1: were six or seven. No, I had them like in college. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so okay, so you understand the magic of a
Speaker 1: TV dinner, right, sure? Alright? Imagine that as like a
Speaker 1: six year old. It was magical. All of your foods
Speaker 1: in like a different little compartment, Brownie just staring at you,
Speaker 1: waiting like just just wait, just wait, buddy. Um when
Speaker 1: you're six, it's just even better. And when I was six,
Speaker 1: if I would get a TV dinner, it meant that
Speaker 1: my parents were like going to do something right, they
Speaker 1: were going to play bridge or something like that. So
Speaker 1: it was like a special night, like I probably exactly,
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 really I don't remember having baby sitters. There was
Speaker 1: always one of them there. Yeah, maybe they didn't trust you,
Speaker 1: they didn't like each other. They may have really enjoyed
Speaker 1: key parties well plus yeah you never know, Um I
Speaker 1: had Uh. I have a sister that's six years older though,
Speaker 1: so Yeah. But they still didn't do a lot of
Speaker 1: I think I remember. I can literally just think of
Speaker 1: a few times. They like went to an Olivia Newton
Speaker 1: John concert once. Uh, they've got a pretty good track
Speaker 1: record so far, and my mom went and saw Elvis,
Speaker 1: but not with my dad. Wow. On that last tour
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 look back, I'm like us pretty convenient meal.
Speaker 1: Like you know, she was an e R nurse for
Speaker 1: PiZZ sake, weird hours and stuff. Um, but she was
Speaker 1: a great mom. She raised me very well, as everybody knows.
Speaker 1: It's a well known fact. So with TV dinners in particular, though,
Speaker 1: I have a certain amount of nostalgia forum, but apparently
Speaker 1: like America as a whole has a bit of nostalgia
Speaker 1: for TV dinners. There's a TV dinner in the Smithsonian,
Speaker 1: for peze sake, and that's like America's greatest repository of
Speaker 1: nostalgia for you know. Yeah, So I think we should
Speaker 1: take people on a delightful tour of the history of
Speaker 1: this wonder of TV dinners. You sound like you're I'm
Speaker 1: not so sure. No, no, no, I am sure. I
Speaker 1: was just joking around, trying to set it up as
Speaker 1: some you know, magical experien everyone's about to have, But
Speaker 1: I feel like that's ingrained in it. So as the
Speaker 1: story goes, uh, Swanson ce A Swanson and Sons was
Speaker 1: and is a leader in the frozen food industry, and um,
Speaker 1: whether or not this is legend, who knows, but it's
Speaker 1: a great story. Was that uh one Thanksgiving they had
Speaker 1: too much turkey on their hands post Thanksgiving to the
Speaker 1: tune of something like two fifty tons of turkey that
Speaker 1: they didn't sell they which is so sad, you know,
Speaker 1: yeah for those Uh yeah, like we so wanted to
Speaker 1: give our life as a meal. 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 refriger rated train car
Speaker 1: as a polar express it's called in the industry. And
Speaker 1: the trick to this thing is is in order for
Speaker 1: that train to stay refrigerator, it's gotta keep moving. And
Speaker 1: so they basically we're just running this turkey all over
Speaker 1: the country to keep it frozen and cold. Right, It's
Speaker 1: like that one movie UM set in the future with
Speaker 1: Tilda Switten where like the train never stops societies on
Speaker 1: the train. Yeah, that's like that, but with frozen turkeys.
Speaker 1: That's a good movie. So it's like that cross between
Speaker 1: that and Speed. Yes, like so if the train ever stops,
Speaker 1: it's gonna lose refrigeration, the losers refrigeration, the turkeys all
Speaker 1: go bad. So there's this remember that Simpsons which one
Speaker 1: when Homer is trying to describe or think of the
Speaker 1: name of the movie Speed. He's like, it's about a
Speaker 1: about a bus if it's speed goes down and it
Speaker 1: can't speed up. And he says it like that many times,
Speaker 1: and he goes, I think it's called the bus that
Speaker 1: wouldn't slow down or that couldn't slow down. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember that one very funny line. Um, but this is
Speaker 1: real life, Chuck. This wasn't a cartoon or a joke.
Speaker 1: Half a million pounds of turkey on a train and
Speaker 1: if if it's topped it would spoil. No, the idea
Speaker 1: that this actually happened, it's so insane to me. So
Speaker 1: apparently the Swanson brothers Clark and um, what was the
Speaker 1: other brothers, Gilbert Gilbert. I wanted to say Clark and Gable,
Speaker 1: but Clark from Gilbert Swanson said all right, employees, we
Speaker 1: need you to put your heads together and come up
Speaker 1: with an idea. So they had, again this is the legend,
Speaker 1: they had an employee contest where, um, whoever could come
Speaker 1: up with what to do with all this turkey I
Speaker 1: guess would just be the employee of the month or
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. And all the while this contest
Speaker 1: is going on in the Swanson company, there's a training
Speaker 1: out there are in the United States of America, just
Speaker 1: circling endlessly because it can't stop or else the turkeys
Speaker 1: will go bad until this Winton wins. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there was a salesman named Jerry Thomas g E r
Speaker 1: R Y, not like our own j E R I right,
Speaker 1: which no one ever gets. Right, Um, this is the
Speaker 1: party I don't get. He traveled from Nebraska to Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: to where Pan American Airways had their kitchens because they
Speaker 1: were testing uh single compartment uh foil tray meals that
Speaker 1: they would serve to people. And I guess he couldn't
Speaker 1: envision what that might look like unless he went there
Speaker 1: in person, right and steal one. Well yeah, so that yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was a single compartment right, So basically it
Speaker 1: was just a trade that you put a bunch of
Speaker 1: food on. There were like different compartments in the trade,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I gotta get my hands on one
Speaker 1: of the 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, uh 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 trade.
Speaker 1: So now it's a three compartment trade. And I through
Speaker 1: two lines and then I know what to do with
Speaker 1: the turkey. Now we're gonna basically sell it as a
Speaker 1: frozen Thanksgiving dinner. And they said your employee of the month, Jerry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They say, look, you got your your potatoes and gravy here,
Speaker 1: you get your peas here, you got your turkey here.
Speaker 1: None of it touches each other. I'm a genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Jerry Thomas. So this coalesced with the another uh craze,
Speaker 1: which was television, and in nineteen fifty three there were
Speaker 1: thirty three million households with televisions, and um, it was
Speaker 1: really I mean, there have been other people that had
Speaker 1: been doing this before. Quaker State Foods UH in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine had something in the supermarket of frozen meal
Speaker 1: called under Geez the most the most one of the
Speaker 1: I don't want to say the most one of the
Speaker 1: most offensive brand names ever. Yeah, the one eyed Eskimo label. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's terrible. So they were stelling those in supermarkets.
Speaker 1: And then in previous to that, even UH the Strato
Speaker 1: plates from Maxim were being served on airplanes, but not
Speaker 1: as a retail food, so it had been done before.
Speaker 1: So the creation of the TV dinner well wait, don't
Speaker 1: don't don't leave out Jack Fisher, who Jack? Sure? Oh
Speaker 1: all 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 and 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. They were legit handmade to Molly's and
Speaker 1: at one was the perfect time to be dropping into
Speaker 1: the drawing room, you know. Anyway, the creation of the
Speaker 1: TV dinner was not so much that it was a
Speaker 1: brand new thing, but it was. It was a marketing
Speaker 1: success story because the TV they thought, if we can
Speaker 1: build a sing around the television, then we've got something
Speaker 1: in our hands. That was the key the TV making
Speaker 1: it a TV dinner, right, because all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, everybody loves TV. Plus, this is
Speaker 1: something I didn't realize. It added a certain amount of
Speaker 1: like cashe to the TV dinner because if you had
Speaker 1: a TV dinner, it meant that you had a TV.
Speaker 1: And if you had a TV, you were probably upper
Speaker 1: middle class at the time, right, So the idea of
Speaker 1: having a TV or a dinner to go with your
Speaker 1: TV really appealed to Americans, And even to this day
Speaker 1: it was such a great marketing coup. I guess that
Speaker 1: um people still call these and like almost any frozen
Speaker 1: entree or frozen meal, a TV dinner, even though it
Speaker 1: was nineteen six two when Swanson stopped calling their products
Speaker 1: that they still made the products, they just stopped calling
Speaker 1: them TV dinners. Every everybody else kept calling them TV dinner.
Speaker 1: You were eating these in the eighties, like twenty years
Speaker 1: after they that brand went away, still calling the TV
Speaker 1: dinners and eating them on TV trades. This is another
Speaker 1: thing you pissed out on, Chuck did you have? So
Speaker 1: that was the whole the whole point of a TV
Speaker 1: tray was it was a foldable individual table that you
Speaker 1: would open up in front of yourself and eat your
Speaker 1: TV dinner on while you're sitting on the couch, so
Speaker 1: you could watch TV most efficiently while you were eating dinner.
Speaker 1: And now they call that the coffee table. You just
Speaker 1: stoop over a little bit, right, or the sink? What
Speaker 1: 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 old television? The box was
Speaker 1: it the t The dinner itself was like the screen
Speaker 1: on the screen and then it had the little dials
Speaker 1: on the bottom left and right corner, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it look like a little TV. It was ninety eight
Speaker 1: cents in n and they sold a ton of them, yeah,
Speaker 1: they apparently. Um So again, remember all this came from
Speaker 1: a bunch of turkey that was about to spoil. So
Speaker 1: Swanson ordered start to an industry. Swanson ordered like five
Speaker 1: thousand of them initially to be made, and they hired
Speaker 1: a small battalion of of um ladies in aprons and
Speaker 1: ice cream scoops and spatchel is to assemble these things, right,
Speaker 1: and they just had them go right down the assembly line,
Speaker 1: and they sold five thousand just almost immediately. And apparently
Speaker 1: in the first year um that they were sold, they
Speaker 1: sold like ten million of them. So they came out
Speaker 1: with them in nineteen fifty four and by the the
Speaker 1: end of the first full year of production, which I
Speaker 1: guess would be nineteen fifty five, they'd sold ten million
Speaker 1: of them. So they went from initially ordering five thousand
Speaker 1: of them to selling ten million of them in a year.
Speaker 1: So they it just hit America just right, you know. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was at a time where women were starting
Speaker 1: to u kind of re enter the workforce, gave them
Speaker 1: time that they could still get that hot meal on
Speaker 1: the table, because that was their job back then, right right.
Speaker 1: It gave women a really great opportunity to provide a
Speaker 1: stark contrast to the your husband's mother. Yeah. Yeah, Apparently
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of men who were like, this
Speaker 1: isn't good enough. I want my wife to cook from
Speaker 1: scratch like my mom. Dr Freud, And if they could
Speaker 1: be like my mom in a lot of other ways,
Speaker 1: that'd be awesome. Would it killer to wear a hairnet? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So apparently it didn't delight all men because they weren't
Speaker 1: on board. But would killer to just me up in
Speaker 1: a diaper? We should do an episode on that sometime.
Speaker 1: That's a thing. Oh, I'll talk you about san Freud,
Speaker 1: but on men wearing diapers as adults. Yeah, it's for
Speaker 1: like I think it's called diaper play for sex play,
Speaker 1: but but it's it's diaper centric. Yeah, we should do
Speaker 1: a podcast on that just that. Well, if we can
Speaker 1: include it in like maybe a fetish one, how about that?
Speaker 1: All right? Okay, Wow, that's a weird turn all of
Speaker 1: the time. Really did uh geez, you got anything else
Speaker 1: on TV Dinners. That's a good way to end it.
Speaker 1: I think, nope. Uh, should we take a break? Yep,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna go change my diaper. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about gelatin right after this. So, Chuck, you were saying
Speaker 1: that um in the last one, that uh, that the
Speaker 1: TV dinner hit just right and struck struck America in
Speaker 1: part because women were starting to enter the workforce, right,
Speaker 1: and that was partially the result 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 been 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 that was gelatine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically Jello as the name brand, but uh, gelatine, the
Speaker 1: word is from Latin gelatas, meaning jellied froze, and uh
Speaker 1: it was first used in Egypt, but it was really
Speaker 1: first used in cooking in France, and um, you know
Speaker 1: I think most people know this by now, but if
Speaker 1: you don't, Um, gelatine is as a protein and it's
Speaker 1: uh it's produced from collagen from boiling animal bones, yeah
Speaker 1: or hoofs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a it's glutinous basically,
Speaker 1: and it can go one of two ways, I think,
Speaker 1: depending on what you do with it. You can turn
Speaker 1: it into glue or you can turn it into food.
Speaker 1: That's never a good start, no, it really you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And a guy from the I think the seventeenth century
Speaker 1: in France, what was his name, Peppin someone Peppin, Dennis
Speaker 1: Poppin right, who may or may not be related to
Speaker 1: Jacques Pepin. It was great and French. He's also a cook. Um.
Speaker 1: He was the first person to mention it in writing,
Speaker 1: I believe, uh. And then it just kind of sat
Speaker 1: there for a while until the nineteenth century, when I
Speaker 1: guess people were aware of gelatine and that you could
Speaker 1: use it as a food, but it was extraordinarily gourmet,
Speaker 1: like the average person was not making jello at home.
Speaker 1: It was very time consuming. You you had to start
Speaker 1: from scratch and boil animal bones to start the process
Speaker 1: of gelatine. It was the exact opposite of how we
Speaker 1: think of gelatine today, which is instantaneous. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, um, there there this guy named Peter
Speaker 1: Cooper uh figured out a way to turn gelatine into
Speaker 1: a powder form, a dehydrated gelatine powder. Um, and it
Speaker 1: went absolutely nowhere for fifty years. And I was surprised
Speaker 1: 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, which is weird
Speaker 1: because it's really disgusting if you think about it. It
Speaker 1: should have been given up on. Yeah, and it never was.
Speaker 1: It's a very bizarre in vention. It almost makes you
Speaker 1: feel like there was some sort of divine hand guiding
Speaker 1: gelatine along in its progress. Yeah. So, later on in
Speaker 1: eight got named Charles Knox uh kind of revolutionized things
Speaker 1: when he found came up with a process that resulted
Speaker 1: in a dried sheet of gelatine, and he hired salesman
Speaker 1: 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 Desserts, which is a book of recipes,
Speaker 1: and uh, things were kind of moving along a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: Then in there was a cough syrup company in New
Speaker 1: York called Pearl H Pearl B wait is that what
Speaker 1: it's called? Pearl okay? W W A I T. But
Speaker 1: they weren't selling much cough syrups, and he said, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the food business. And uh, the wife,
Speaker 1: whose name was May, said, you know, let me add
Speaker 1: some fruit syrups to this stuff. And actually she's the
Speaker 1: one 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 to Francis Woodward, Yes,
Speaker 1: for four hundred and fifty bucks. Uh. This person purchased
Speaker 1: the name and 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 hundred and fifty to it for it. So
Speaker 1: at some point I guess he decided to give it
Speaker 1: another go, and he hired a bunch of traveling salesman
Speaker 1: sent them out to fairs, community gatherings, that kind of uff,
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, uh
Speaker 1: the j E L l O tag, which really kind
Speaker 1: of helped push things along as well. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: noticed that at some point they started dabbling with with
Speaker 1: other flavors. I think originally they tried strawberry, raspberry, orange,
Speaker 1: and lemon, right um, And then they tried chocolate it
Speaker 1: and they they apparently chocolate didn't go over very well,
Speaker 1: so they were no. First they just released it as
Speaker 1: chocolate jello. That's pretty awful. And then they thought, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we should add milk instead of water, and that's
Speaker 1: when they came up with jello pudding, and they re
Speaker 1: released chocolate and that that spurred like a whole pudding line,
Speaker 1: including something I grew up on, which was butterscotch jello pudding.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, that was so good, except you you couldn't.
Speaker 1: You had to get the skin off. The skin was
Speaker 1: no good, But everything under the skin was great. What's
Speaker 1: the skin? It was just like a on top. It
Speaker 1: was a very it was the tougher layer on top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you just scraped it off, you had some
Speaker 1: nice pudding underneath. Emily still loves the 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, a little pudding, little whipped cream. She
Speaker 1: knows how to live she does. It's a special night
Speaker 1: they have is about three times a year, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, it's time. Uh So in the nineteen fifties, uh,
Speaker 1: supposedly the jello shot with alcohol was invented by uh,
Speaker 1: this really interesting guy named Tom Lair who Um he's
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 the 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 tequila jello
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's a very obnoxious taste. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: use like I think you're a place half of the
Speaker 1: water with whatever liquor you're using. Usually people use vodka.
Speaker 1: It really just stands out in a in a noxious way.
Speaker 1: By 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? Yes you do?
Speaker 1: Oh wait was he our guy? Was he the guy
Speaker 1: that judged that? No? No? Oh, man, who was that guy?
Speaker 1: That was young Jock? Right? No? Two Chains is he's
Speaker 1: huge man. Um. He did a song where he sampled
Speaker 1: the Old Dope Peddler and he, I guess wrote to
Speaker 1: Tom Laird to ask for permission to sample, and Tom
Speaker 1: Lair had this awesome famous response. So just read up
Speaker 1: on that. What was did he let him use it? Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh great. So he's the opposite of Don Henley and
Speaker 1: probably every single way yeah yeah, uh but jello shots,
Speaker 1: jello 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. Yeah, Hunter
Speaker 1: Hunter Oatman Stanford and uh, they did this interview and
Speaker 1: um with Ruth Clark. Yeah, Ruth Clark. Basically it's a
Speaker 1: really good interview and she talks about kind of this
Speaker 1: savory movement that took over, and not only with Jello,
Speaker 1: but the fact that it was a time in America
Speaker 1: where and if you look back, it's so great to
Speaker 1: look back at these old ads and these old recipe
Speaker 1: books that it was a time where you would the
Speaker 1: goal was to have a dinner party with this big, flashy, uh,
Speaker 1: experimental and unique centerpiece food centerpiece made of jello. Well,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. We're talking about the hot dog
Speaker 1: tree right yeah, there and there there. It could be
Speaker 1: a lot of different stuff, And I think that's what
Speaker 1: Ruth Clark does. She recreates this stuff right, and her
Speaker 1: poor husband has to eat it. Um. But a lot
Speaker 1: of those things were Jello molds. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the reason why jello molds were so weird and so
Speaker 1: popular is because Jello put so much time and effort
Speaker 1: into publishing cookbooks. And the whole point was all of
Speaker 1: these food companies wanted, like all of their products to
Speaker 1: to be your entire meal. So they were putting these
Speaker 1: these random parts like products that the food company made
Speaker 1: into some really weird configurations, and they came up with
Speaker 1: some very odd jello molds in the fifties or sixties.
Speaker 1: Such a sad culinary time it was. But the Ruth
Speaker 1: Clark makes a good point that that to the people
Speaker 1: at that time, like a really well thought out, fancy
Speaker 1: jello mold was as a centerpiece of your table was
Speaker 1: like the pinnacle of classiness. Yeah, but we're talking about
Speaker 1: like a shaped mold with like uh lamb shank and
Speaker 1: asparagus inside of jello. A savory jello that's like celery flavored.
Speaker 1: You're lucky if it was savory. The lime jello was
Speaker 1: one of the most abused jello flavors of all time.
Speaker 1: People would put tuna and stuff in with the lime jello.
Speaker 1: There's one called Perfection salad that's cold slaw inside of
Speaker 1: lime jello. And what Ruth Clark pointed out was that
Speaker 1: gelatin apparently preserves food really well, and and that cole
Speaker 1: slaw that would have otherwise been inedible and running after
Speaker 1: day three was still like crunchy after day five. When
Speaker 1: it was put inside of a jello mold. Still gross. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's actually a great BuzzFeed article, um if you want
Speaker 1: to get an idea of what people were doing in
Speaker 1: the fifties, sixties, and seventies with jello molds. It's called
Speaker 1: seventeen Horrifying, lee disgusting retro Gelatin recipes and they are gross.
Speaker 1: Man like cottage cheese and salmon mold. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I hate jello oh man, like you're waking nightmare.
Speaker 1: I didn't even look through it. You sent it to
Speaker 1: me and that scrolled about halfway through and just deleted
Speaker 1: through my computer out the window. The best one I
Speaker 1: see is lime cheese salad. It's it's lime jello mixed
Speaker 1: with cottage cheese and then into the center of the
Speaker 1: jello mold you put a seafood salad. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: sour kraut mold. It just goes on and on. But
Speaker 1: it was a weird time and again. Ruth Clark has
Speaker 1: a bunch of theories. She said she can't really answer
Speaker 1: exactly why jello molds were as big as they are,
Speaker 1: but she posits that, uh, part of it was this
Speaker 1: idea that there were all these companies trying to get
Speaker 1: you to use their products. And these were just monstos
Speaker 1: cities that they came up with, and people fell for it.
Speaker 1: Uh like can salmon, can tuna in jell o? Right,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, so that's jello olds Man. Uh, where
Speaker 1: do you want to head next? Let's go to the
Speaker 1: crock pot. All right, do a little that was a
Speaker 1: crock pot travel. So first of all, I have a
Speaker 1: croc pot the same here, and um, it's yours. Actually
Speaker 1: croc Pot are using it as a proprietary eponym. I
Speaker 1: don't think it is a croc Pot brand pot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a slow cooker, um, and I'd forget to use
Speaker 1: it a lot, but when I remember, I'll go in
Speaker 1: a little crock pot binge where I'll cook, you know,
Speaker 1: a few meals over the course of a few weeks
Speaker 1: in a croc pot and they're still great if you
Speaker 1: know how to how to use it and how to
Speaker 1: spice things up for sure. You know. Apparently at first
Speaker 1: people didn't know because if you're cooking a recipe, say, um,
Speaker 1: it's like simmering, say like a beef stew on the stovetop,
Speaker 1: that simmering action that it's going undergoing it does something
Speaker 1: different to the recipe than a croc pot does, even
Speaker 1: though it's the exact same recipe. Um. And so at
Speaker 1: first when croc pots came out, it was first introduced
Speaker 1: by rival. Back in when croc pots first came out, um,
Speaker 1: they people were like, this is this this dinner that
Speaker 1: it's making is really gross. It doesn't taste very good.
Speaker 1: It's bland, and yet they still didn't stop using or
Speaker 1: buying croc pots. Well, food was more bland back then.
Speaker 1: Well we're talking the seventies, so by the seventies, I
Speaker 1: think it was the people were using more spices than before.
Speaker 1: I think it was more bland, and like the forties
Speaker 1: and maybe the fifties. Yeah, but that one, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: probably right, But that one article we read said, you know,
Speaker 1: like an old recipe for chili would have like a
Speaker 1: teaspoon of chili powder or something, and it's like all
Speaker 1: the food just sucked because they didn't realize like, no, man,
Speaker 1: you dump a bunch of that junk in there. So well,
Speaker 1: you were saying back in the forties or fifties, when
Speaker 1: TV dinners really hit, moms were starting to enter the
Speaker 1: work force. In nine moms were really into the workforce.
Speaker 1: And so the idea of having a crock pot where
Speaker 1: you could make this meal in a one pot in
Speaker 1: the morning, throw it all in there, turn it on,
Speaker 1: and then come home at the end of the day
Speaker 1: and dinner was ready and you still went to work
Speaker 1: and got everything you needed to get done done was
Speaker 1: so attractive that just that despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: made these meals that did not taste like they should, um,
Speaker 1: people were still, like I said, they were still buying
Speaker 1: the crock pots and instead they started to look around
Speaker 1: to find tips for how to make these things taste better.
Speaker 1: And actually a woman named what was her name, Mabel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mabel Hoffman, Mabel Hoffman, stepped into the fray and said,
Speaker 1: piece piece, children, I've got this covered. Listen up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book called The Crockery Cookery or Crockery
Speaker 1: Cookery No the and uh it was a huge, huge hit,
Speaker 1: was the New York Times bestseller. I believe she went
Speaker 1: on to sell about six million copies of this thing.
Speaker 1: And um, I don't even think we've said that, you know,
Speaker 1: we said we you throw the food in there and
Speaker 1: cook it all day. But the whole idea is that
Speaker 1: you put a kind of a tight fitting lid on
Speaker 1: there and it and it cooks at a very very
Speaker 1: low heat all day long. Right, and then when you
Speaker 1: when you get home from work eight hours later or
Speaker 1: something like that, it will it will be done, and
Speaker 1: you just 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 and seventy two, ten million, seventy three, twenty
Speaker 1: three million, and then eventually peeking in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: at nine three million dollar urs worth of croc pots
Speaker 1: being sold. It was a genuine, legit craze, food craze
Speaker 1: and supposedly crock pot cookery. The book was UM America's
Speaker 1: sixth best selling cookbook ever. Right, so this was like
Speaker 1: a legitimate craze. Crock Pot cooking was a legitimate craze.
Speaker 1: But again there was something compared to the same recipes
Speaker 1: on the stovetop as compared to a croc pot. Um,
Speaker 1: there was something. It was the flavor was just disappointing.
Speaker 1: So what Mabel Hoffman did was on a very tight
Speaker 1: deadline UM create from scratch a book, I guess, the
Speaker 1: world's first cookbook of slow cooker recipes, and she did
Speaker 1: it in her own kitchen with like twenty croc pots
Speaker 1: going all day every day. She had to testing all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and she figured out some of the keys
Speaker 1: to crock pot cooking, which was, like, you want to
Speaker 1: use way less liquid um thing you would use like
Speaker 1: on the stovetop, because you have a lot less um evaporation.
Speaker 1: The crock pot keeps sit in there, which is one
Speaker 1: reason why meat is so so tender, and a croc
Speaker 1: pot or slow cooker um because it just recirculates the
Speaker 1: the moisture rather than allowing it to just evaporate. Right.
Speaker 1: And then another thing she came up with was that
Speaker 1: when you um, when you use herbs into the recipe,
Speaker 1: you want to reserve some of them for right before
Speaker 1: the things finished cooking, so you can add it like
Speaker 1: a pop of fresh flavor. Yes. So once she figured
Speaker 1: this out, crock pots just took off even more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she was they were selling a bunch of crock pots,
Speaker 1: she was selling a bunch of cookbooks. Uh. And eventually
Speaker 1: she would said, hey, I really was onto something here.
Speaker 1: So she wrote Deep Prye Cookery, Chocolate Cookery. Uh, and
Speaker 1: these are seventy nine, um, seventy seven, like kind of
Speaker 1: all in a row crape cookery and then eventually uh healthy,
Speaker 1: healthy crockery cookery and um. The person you who interviewed
Speaker 1: her later in life said that she was just this
Speaker 1: really great lady, very humble, and was super upfront about
Speaker 1: the fact that she like, hey, I hit something at
Speaker 1: the right time with the right book, and it just
Speaker 1: sort of I kind of fell into this and it's
Speaker 1: been just like a wonderful thing for my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really neat. Yeah, she sounds like a pretty cool person.
Speaker 1: So what's your what's your crock pot recipe? Oh? Jeez,
Speaker 1: I don't know it's your favorite thing to cook, but
Speaker 1: usually some sort of like beef. Yeah, it just does
Speaker 1: such a such a good job, like making a roast
Speaker 1: or something, you know. Um, but yeah, I that's usually
Speaker 1: what I'm cooking when I cook in a crock pot.
Speaker 1: Is is beef? All right? Josh's croc pot beef croc
Speaker 1: pot surprise right with aspect? Uh, you want to take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a break and we'll finish
Speaker 1: up with a bit interesting bit on oat brand so chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: we finally arrived We're just gonna go forward a few
Speaker 1: years Blue the way Back Machine is in the shop.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm having to do it to the
Speaker 1: eighties man an oat Brand. Yes, I know that we
Speaker 1: differ on the interestingness of this one. I'm just fascinated
Speaker 1: by it. I really am, man, because it's got it all.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, it's got the eighties. Um. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that snl the famous snl um add colon for
Speaker 1: colon blow that was based on this came out of
Speaker 1: this this trend. Um has to do with studies, studies
Speaker 1: that contradict those studies. Um, bad science reporting the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I love it, oats oh brand. It's very important. So
Speaker 1: there was this huge trend in the eighties where anything
Speaker 1: that had to do with oprand you could sell a
Speaker 1: million units of a minute. Yes, um. So much so
Speaker 1: that there was a article from Tulsa World that UM
Speaker 1: said that there were no I'm sorry, the l A
Speaker 1: Times article from said that they were over like three
Speaker 1: different items available in grocery stores at the time that
Speaker 1: touted on its label the fact that it had oprand
Speaker 1: and people were nuts for it. Yes they were. And
Speaker 1: this is uh largely due to some studies that came
Speaker 1: out that said that brand was kind of a miracle
Speaker 1: food for lowering cholesterol, right, And that was like back
Speaker 1: in the late seventies, and and I guess Quaker Oats
Speaker 1: took notice of those studies and they released a thing
Speaker 1: called Mother's opran but they sent it straight to the
Speaker 1: hippies at the health food store and just and didn't
Speaker 1: do anything about They just released a product and that
Speaker 1: was that. And then Kellogg's came along and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, what if we start telling people that
Speaker 1: are food can basically prevent cancer? Can we do that?
Speaker 1: And the lawyers said no, And the president of Kelloggs said, well,
Speaker 1: we're doing it anyway. Who's gonna stop us, Reagan? And
Speaker 1: Reagan said no, I'm not gonna stop you, Reagan, thank you.
Speaker 1: And so they said, um, okay, well you eat our
Speaker 1: cereal and it will reduce cancer. And nothing happened. There
Speaker 1: was no blowback, despite the fact that this has been
Speaker 1: illegal for nearly a century. And then Quaker Oats partnered
Speaker 1: with Chicago's Northwestern University and Linda Van horn In because
Speaker 1: they had a similar study about brand cutting cholesterol. Right,
Speaker 1: so they're starting to say, well, Kelleg 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, it
Speaker 1: wasn't 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 him 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 L,
Speaker 1: the bad cholesterol um just from eating an opra and diet.
Speaker 1: And that book became extraordinarily popular, supposedly was the the
Speaker 1: one of the greatest selling self help health books of
Speaker 1: all time. It just took off. Yeah, and then yet
Speaker 1: another thing happened, and this was the thing. This is
Speaker 1: like where the peak began the UM. I think the
Speaker 1: Journal of the American Medical Association April published a study
Speaker 1: from the University of Maryland where these researchers found that, yeah,
Speaker 1: eating oprand could really significantly lower your cholesterol, and not
Speaker 1: only that, it does it for a six of the
Speaker 1: price of the expensive cholesterol lowering drugs. That's right, and
Speaker 1: people ate even more oat brand That's right. The trend
Speaker 1: is developing, can you see it. I think it's fully
Speaker 1: developed at this point. So everybody's going opran crazy. And
Speaker 1: one of the big things that UM that they were
Speaker 1: doing was eating Oprand muffins. But these opra and muffins
Speaker 1: were like loaded with fat and butter and eggs, and
Speaker 1: so they weren't actually doing anything to lower their cholesterol
Speaker 1: because the effects would be counteracted, right, But in the
Speaker 1: in the meantime, people were still having fun eating lots
Speaker 1: of muffins and pretending they were really healthy. And then
Speaker 1: this Harvard study came out and it basically said, you
Speaker 1: know what, UM, you're all fools, You're dummies. You know
Speaker 1: how it lowers your cholesterol because it keeps you from
Speaker 1: eating bacon and eggs. That's how you chumps. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and then that study itself was attacked because they only
Speaker 1: studied twenty people, um, which is not much of a study.
Speaker 1: It isn't and the people who were on the Opran
Speaker 1: diet were eating more fat than the control group. It
Speaker 1: was a terrible study, almost like they wanted to take
Speaker 1: Oprand down a peg and it worked really well. It's
Speaker 1: basically the um science. Reporting in major newspapers and the
Speaker 1: news services reported that Oprand was the greatest thing ever,
Speaker 1: and then they suddenly turned on it and said Opran
Speaker 1: is nothing, and everybody dropped Opran and the if if
Speaker 1: you read the stuff today, it's true Oprand really does
Speaker 1: lower cholesterol. Um, but he just got overhyped because of
Speaker 1: the eighties. That's the eighties for you. That's food fads. Man,
Speaker 1: You got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Man? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about food fans, you
Speaker 1: can type those words into the search part how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com search bar. You're not gonna get much, though,
Speaker 1: so you may want to just look elsewhere. But still, uh,
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this m S response, and I would
Speaker 1: like to say that we got many, many, oh great
Speaker 1: responses from our MS episode. A lot of warm thoughts
Speaker 1: from people about my friend Billy and just uh it
Speaker 1: was 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 handle 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 in a more constructive manner than my
Speaker 1: initially trying to self destruct. Since then, I'm continually uh
Speaker 1: learning about the latest research in history. I love that
Speaker 1: you discussed uh Ledwina and Augustus death Day as a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, they don't come up in the
Speaker 1: mainstream discourse of MS. Didn't really know any history until
Speaker 1: I wrote an undergrad history paper on MS last year
Speaker 1: and found reading through bits of death Day's journal to
Speaker 1: be the closest I've ever felt with a historical person.
Speaker 1: You 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 assumption
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 podcasts 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. Yeah, this person said,
Speaker 1: you know, that's great that you read it. But uh,
Speaker 1: if if they're keeping it quiet for now, we don't
Speaker 1: want to you know, broadcast the names. Yeah nice, so
Speaker 1: okay anonymous? Yeah, thanks anonymous. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, like anonymous did, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us. Yeah, I guess i'd be anonymous. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm at josh um Clark and at s Y s
Speaker 1: K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash Stuff you Should Know or at Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant on Facebook. You can send us both an email. Uh.
Speaker 1: We promised to be confidential at Stuff podcast, at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: is it how Stuff Works dot com