Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm lorn vogel Bomb, and it's time we talked about
Speaker 1: movie theater popcorn. That's salty siren of the cinema. You
Speaker 1: come without nutrition labels and sizes that defy sensibility. We
Speaker 1: consume you in the dark. You're inadvertently vegan and gluten free,
Speaker 1: but that still doesn't mean you're good for us. So
Speaker 1: what the heck are you made of? Anyway? Meet movie
Speaker 1: theater popcorns. Two main ingredients after popcorn, of course, flavor
Speaker 1: call and butter flavored topping. Let's break those down. Flavor
Speaker 1: Call is a proprietary seasoned powder that goes on the
Speaker 1: corn before it's popped. It contains only four ingredients, superfine salt,
Speaker 1: artificial flavor, and two synthetic yellow dyes that helped give
Speaker 1: the popcorn it's violently yellow buttery ish color. Butter can
Speaker 1: naturally be yellow because of a pigment and vitamin called
Speaker 1: beta carotene that's found in the fresh grass that dairy
Speaker 1: cows are sub times fed, or butter can be dyed
Speaker 1: that color when cows are fat other things. Flavor Call
Speaker 1: has zero calories and zero fat carbs and protein, but
Speaker 1: being mostly salt, it packs a wallop in the sodium department.
Speaker 1: One teaspoon contains a hundred and sixteen percent of your
Speaker 1: recommended daily intake of sodium based on the average two
Speaker 1: thousand calorie per day diet, and depending on the recipe
Speaker 1: and the machine being used, you'd get about a third
Speaker 1: of a teaspoon in a small popcorn, So heads up
Speaker 1: if you're monitoring your sodium consumption. Next up that butter
Speaker 1: flavored topping, which is what gets squirted out in pumps
Speaker 1: if you ask for it. Warning betrayal alert. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have any butter in it at all. What it does
Speaker 1: contain is partially hydrogenated soybean oil, which is a trans
Speaker 1: fat that falls into the category of bad fat. These
Speaker 1: types of fats have been linked to heart disease and
Speaker 1: other cardiovascular problems. The topping also has some beta carotene
Speaker 1: that pigment I just mentioned. Beta caroteen helps add to
Speaker 1: the buttery color and can, by the way, either be
Speaker 1: naturally derived from plants or made in a lab. That's
Speaker 1: the difference between it being labeled a natural versus an
Speaker 1: artificial color. The topping also has tertiary butal hydroquinone or
Speaker 1: tbh q, which is a synthetic preservative that keeps oils
Speaker 1: from becoming rancid as they sit. And polydimethyl silazane or
Speaker 1: p d MS, which is a silicone based chemical that
Speaker 1: prevents foaming in hot oil. It's also been preliminarily shown
Speaker 1: to help hair cells grow when applied topically, but that's
Speaker 1: a different episode. Don't rub butter flavored topping on your scalp.
Speaker 1: The final ingredient, the one that gives movie theater popcorn.
Speaker 1: It's irresistible taste. Buttery flavoring, a non dairy mystery chemical
Speaker 1: that mimics the taste of butter. This and the artificial
Speaker 1: flavoring and flavor call are industry secrets, but they're probably
Speaker 1: one of a few lab synthesized molecules that taste and
Speaker 1: smell like butter. Diaceetyal as a to in a SETL
Speaker 1: propionyl or similar Those first two that I mentioned are
Speaker 1: compounds that are naturally created in old fashioned cultured butter
Speaker 1: by the friendly lactic acid bacteria that helps solidify cream
Speaker 1: into butter. Butter flavor is basically a tasty byproduct sort
Speaker 1: of like with beta carotene. These compounds can be naturally
Speaker 1: derived from farmed bacteria or synthesized in a lab. They'll
Speaker 1: make that butter flavored topping taste almost like the real thing.
Speaker 1: The real slap in the face, though, is that movie
Speaker 1: theater butter flavored topping has twenty more calories per tablespoon
Speaker 1: than real butter. So if you're a large bucket of
Speaker 1: plain popcorn is about one thousand calories with just the
Speaker 1: flavor call seasoning on it, and you choose to add
Speaker 1: a minimum of three tablespoons of buttery topping, or as
Speaker 1: much as six if you opt for a squirt in
Speaker 1: the middle and a scort on the top, the large
Speaker 1: bucket you nauch on while watching the latest blockbuster could
Speaker 1: be more than two thousand calories. It definitely means that
Speaker 1: movie theater popcorn is a treat. Everything in moderation. Oh
Speaker 1: and a side note about diocetle, one of those butter
Speaker 1: flavor compounds. You may have heard that it causes health problems.
Speaker 1: That is a real thing, but the story got sort
Speaker 1: of sensationalized. Factory workers who breathe in a whole lot
Speaker 1: of dioceetle do have an increased risk of a particular
Speaker 1: type of lung disease, and one guy who was popping
Speaker 1: two to three bags per day for a number of
Speaker 1: years successfully sued a bunch of microwave popcorn producers after
Speaker 1: contracting that disease. But there's no known risk in eating
Speaker 1: this artificial flavor or in breathing in the amount you'd
Speaker 1: a realized from popping a bag of popcorn in your
Speaker 1: microwave every now and then, and the Flavor Call brand
Speaker 1: has come out as being dioceetle free. Good news for
Speaker 1: movie theater popcorn. Do watch out for it as an
Speaker 1: ingredient in vape liquid though. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Carrie Tato and me and produced by Tyler Clang for
Speaker 1: I Heeart Media. And how Stuff Works from one of
Speaker 1: this and lots of other fresh hot topics, visit our
Speaker 1: home planet, how Stuff Works dot com