September 1, 2026 • 31 mins
What can't gummy candies do? From helping kids gross out their parents (thank you gummi worms!), to helping Disney revive their animation division (Adventures of Gummy Bears was a catalyst!), to aiding senior citizens in regaining jaw strength (seriously!), these little treats have a big story to tell.
This episode originally aired on September 12, 2024.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part-Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what, Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
What's up, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So I was listening to an old Ezra Klein podcast
this week, and it was about burnout and how email
and other constant work communications can lead to fatigue, which
is fascinating. But in this conversation, he makes this aside
to this professor he's talking to, and he mentions he's
gotten really into weightlifting recently. And one of the things
(00:35):
he says is that there are all these things you
don't know as an amateur at the gym. And if
you're a serious weightlifter... You should be eating gummy bears
after a workout.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Gummy bears? Like are there special gummy bears for training
or are we just talking regular gummy bears?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Regular gummy bears. And so I looked this up immediately
after I heard it. And the funny thing is I
had just come back from playing sports. And as soon
as I heard that I didn't need any convincing, I
just like beeline to the bodega around the corner from
my house and bought gummy bears and shoved them into
my face for my muscles.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Which, by the way, is the right way to eat them.
There are two ways to eat gummy bears. You either
eat two at a time, both of the same color,
one on each side of the mouth, or you just
take a handful and you just push as many as
you can. Anyway, is there any truth to that? Like,
do gummy bears actually help with recovery?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, I hadn't realized this, but apparently it's pretty well
known among athletes. And so I found this article in
Swimmer's World, which explains how after working out, the fibers
in your muscles get these miniature tears, which is a
good thing because that's how you grow stronger. And they
refer to it as a microtrauma, which alerts your body
that you need nutrients, particularly amino acids, to repair them.
(01:51):
But because repairing these muscles requires energy, Gummy bears and
other high glycemic carbohydrates with dextrose or maltodextrin, they provide
this quick hit of sugar to kickstart replenishing what's been lost.
And because your body is still sort of using energy
from the workout, the sugar gets put to use immediately
and it doesn't get stored as fat.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I now know exactly why you chose to do this episode.
Like this is total permission for you to eat gummy
bears as long as you've done like a little bit
of exercise. This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I know. Now I'm going to do like a single
jumping jack and tell my family I've got to go
to the store to get some gummy bears.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Spot on.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It did make me wonder, what other surprises are gummy
bears hiding? And that's what today's episode is all about.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Hey there, podcast listeners. Welcome to Part-Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson.
And as always, I'm joined by my good friend, Mangesh
Hot Ticketer. And sitting behind that great big booth, and Mango,
this one took me a minute. Dylan is going much
deeper with his cuts right now. So he's got a
rolling pin. He's got a pie sitting off to the side.
It took me a second to see that. And he's
(03:19):
wearing an apron. I was like, what is he doing?
And then he put on the bear ears, he's Grammy
Gummy from one of the greatest cartoons of all time,
The Adventures of Gummy Bears. Did you watch that show
as a kid?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So good. Anyway, well done, Dylan. That's our trusted producer,
Dylan Fagan over there. All right, Mango. So I know
for a fact that we've been friends for a very
long time and that almost every time You've had a
big essay to write or a big assignment in college.
You'd go to the convenience store right there on campus
and you'd get some gummy candy. Am I right?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, I know it's totally embarrassing, but I think it's
because I don't like writing or at least I don't
like starting writing. So I love research. I love thinking
about ideas, collecting facts, talking about them. But writing a
paper always feels so overwhelming to me. And somehow having
a treat while doing it feels like I'm rewarding myself
for starting, which is ridiculous. But also, weirdly, gummy candies
(04:19):
are something that remind me of my dad. Before I
would travel to various high school events, whether it was
for Science Olympics or soccer tournaments or jazz band competitions
or whatever, my dad would always sneak a little bag
of Haribo gummy bears into my backpack as a treat.
And somehow it was kind of like this good luck charm.
And I think it's a mix of all of that
(04:39):
that keeps me loving gummies.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh, I love that. It's such a great story. I
actually don't think I knew that. All right, well, it's
interesting to look at candy and emotions, just sort of
the connection there. Like, obviously, there's no shortage of anecdotal
evidence of people eating ice cream or chocolate as a
treat just for a pick-me-up. But, you know, one of
the things I was fascinated by was Sweden's relationship to
(05:01):
gummy candies. There's this New Yorker piece from 2018. It's
called How to Eat Candy Like a Swedish Person. And
in it, the writer talks about how people in Nordic
countries are crazy for gummies. So according to the article,
the government ran this study, and it showed that Swedes
eat more candy per year per capita than the citizens
of any other country. And it's not close. It's more
(05:24):
than 30 pounds per person. So it's incredible how much
candy that they eat. And part of it is because
every Saturday, people like to go out and they buy
this bag of sweet treats. Isn't that awesome?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
They do this every Saturday?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I think so. Like, according to the piece, people trudge
out to the store every Saturday. They get themselves something,
I think it's pronounced Lord Ag's Goddess, and it means
Saturday candy. And it's because in the 1940s, the Swedish
government performed all these tests on the hazards of consuming
too many sweets. And so when they realized that eating
this candy was rotting the nation's teeth, they actually urged
(06:02):
citizens to limit their intake. But because they knew total
abstinence would get them nowhere, they had this suggestion. They said,
consume as much candy as you'd like, but only on
one day a week. And that's how this Saturday tradition
of going to the store and getting yourself a big
bag of pick and mix, that's how this all began.
(06:22):
And the article goes on to explain that the country
almost treats it like self-care. Because in Sweden, it gets
really dark in the winters, as we know, and people
rely on things like sugar to get through the season.
And It's also why the country drinks so much coffee
per capita. Anyway, the thing I liked most in the
article is this bit where a friend of the journalist
relays that when you look at each person's candy bag,
(06:45):
it almost reflects their state of mind and like what
they need to get through the day or through that week.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh, I love that. That you can look like at
a bag of Swedish fish and various candies that someone's
pulled and almost see it as like an individualized prescription
for bringing them a little joy.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's pretty cool. You would see all
27 varieties of Reese's in the mix with my candy
each week. And I don't know, I guess understand how
I was feeling. But anyway, where do you want to
begin with your first fact of the day here?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So I think we should talk about the history of
gummy bears and gummy worms and things like that. But
before we do, I want to talk about this one
fact because it's really sweet. So, you know, I'm obsessed
with the Cornell Food Lab and the way they do
all sorts of food innovations and food science studies, right?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, I was actually thinking about this not too long ago.
I was remembering back at Mental Floss, you always wanted
to do this story about how they'd added caffeine to
breakfast cereal, I guess for people who didn't like coffee, right?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, and it isn't just that. Their innovations in ice
cream and snacks made me actually wonder whether I should
go into food science at one point because it just
felt so Willy Wonka-ish. But they also do a lot
of psychology and marketing studies. Actually, my favorite study, and
this is an aside, but it had to do with
cereal boxes. And they analyzed all these cereal boxes, the
(08:01):
sugary ones for kids. And on the packaging, they noticed
that often the cartoon characters or mascots are drawn looking
down to catch the eyes of children in the grocery aisle.
Which is crazy and so devious, but apparently it's a
big marketing ploy. Yeah. But back to my fact. So
one of the things you think about when you think
about COVID or the lockdown is how many experiences kids
(08:23):
missed out on. You know, you think about like prom
or playing in tournaments or getting to go to graduations
or whatever. And one of the things Cornell's paper writes
about is that the freshmen at Cornell who were food
science majors were got to knock out a lot of
their chemistry lessons, but they didn't get the joy of
experimenting in the lab. And that's because the kids got
(08:44):
sent home midway through their semester in March. And so
this professor, Julie Goddard, who taught the intro class, made
this promise to the students of that freshman class that
she would figure out some way to make it up
to them. And exactly 1,000 days later, which I guess
is the anniversary of when they got sent home as freshmen,
she had a big makeup lab where all these seniors
(09:04):
got to make gummy worms from scratch before they graduated.
And I just love that making gummy worms is kind
of a prerequisite for graduating in this course, but also
how this professor worked behind the scenes to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Oh, that's really cool. All right. So why don't we
get into the history of gummy bears? So the story
goes back to a gentleman named Hans Riegel, and this
comes from Bon Appetit, who wrote a story, sort of
a brief history of gummy bears. So in 1920, Hans
is a factory worker in this confection factory, and he's
sick of this dead-end job, so he started experimenting at
(09:40):
home with a gummy candy of sorts. Now, gummy candies
had been popular prior to this. You've got things like
Turkish Delight, Japanese rice candies, and there are things like
Jelly Babies and Gumdrops in England that predate Riegel's candies.
But he's trying to come up with something new, and
he comes up with this really satisfying chewy mixture. And
(10:01):
then he puts his candies in a delightful mold, these long, thin,
dancing bears that resemble the circus bears that kids love.
And in the beginning, he makes his candies at home,
and his wife delivers them around town by bicycle, and
he calls the company Haribo. which is a combination of
the first two letters from Hans, Riegel, and Bonn, the
(10:23):
German town that he's from. And by the time World
War II begins, he's grown the company pretty significantly. He's
got like 400 employees working for him, and he's producing
10 tons of candy every single day. So his dancing bears,
as they're known, are this massive success. Now, gummy bears
do have a dark legacy, like Riegel ends up fighting
(10:44):
with the Nazis and dies in the war, and The
company goes through some rough times. But after the war,
his sons kind of rebuild the business from scratch. And
by 1960, they're really back on their feet. They've also
transformed the candies. The bears have become sort of squattier
and smooshier and even cuter in order to attract the kids.
(11:05):
And they get renamed Little Gummy Bears. And the candy
gets distributed across Europe.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And so up until this point, gummy bears haven't really
hit the U.S. market. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, that's right. Gummy bears actually only came to the U.S.
in 1981. It makes me glad that we weren't born
long before that because that's just really, really sad. And
that's because most of the early demand for gummy bears
was created by kids who'd been exposed to the candies
from either their German language teachers who had brought back
packages from Europe or from soldiers who had been stationed
(11:37):
abroad and then brought some of these candies home. But
once they enter the U.S. market, gummies take off immediately.
Jelly Belly, the company that makes jelly beans, starts making
their own gummy candies. And then Trolley and other German
companies enter the U.S. market. And before long, gummies are
one of the most popular candies in the U.S. Of course,
(11:58):
Haribo continued to maintain their dominance. And today, they produce
100 million gold bears every single day. And while people
like Warren Buffett have made offers to buy out the company,
Haribo insists it wants to continue being family-run.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
That's pretty interesting. So one of the things I was
curious about was how we moved from gummy bears to
gummy worms. And most of this research comes from a
wonderful newsletter that I like called Snack Stack. It's run
by this author we've actually had on the program, Doug Mack.
And in it, he explains that German manufacturers were making
(12:33):
gummies of all sorts of zoo animal shapes starting in
the 1960s. But in 1981, Trolley introduced something called gummy squiggles.
These are the original gummy worms. And unlike something like
gummy bears, which were designed to evoke this sense of fun,
these gummy candies were intended to create what the author
refers to as, quote, delight by way of low-risk disgust.
(12:56):
So apparently Trolley did some market research and realized that
American consumers are open to products that feel weird, but
aren't actually abnormal in terms of flavors. And I guess
the theory proved correct that In fact, Mac points to
this article from the Wall Street Journal in 1984, where
this Minnesota deli owner talks about how this new gross
(13:17):
candy is selling like crazy. Apparently, he was selling hundreds
of pounds of gummy worms a week. And in the article,
he says, quote, I know one guy who uses them
as a calling card. He's a medical equipment salesman. So
I guess all sorts of people were impressed by the novelty. Yeah. Anyway,
the worms become a gateway candy for Americans to even
(13:38):
more disgusting candies. Gummy rats take off in Chicago in 1986,
apparently become the second best-selling candies in that city for
a period. And it launches a category of candies that
the author refers to as, quote, treats that will alarm
your parents and not just because of their sugar content.
Which means everything from gummy bacon to roadkill gummies to
(14:00):
fake toxic waste candy to... all the extreme candies that
exist on the market today.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You know, I've always been into like different and weird candies,
but there's something about gummies where like there's a certain
number of acceptable animals and sizes that they can take
the form of. Like gummy bears, gummy worms, other small gummies.
But for some reason, I don't know who's buying these
like life-size gummy rats and gummy pythons. I mean, I
(14:27):
know I talked earlier about loving to take as many
gummy bears as and cramming them into my mouth as
much as I can. But actually there's something off about
it when it feels like they're actually the size of
a snake you can wear around your neck. Like it's
just so gross to me. Is it just me or
are you like this too?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It is so gross. Like I love when gummy candy
is bite-sized, but not like, like it has to be
bite-sized for a human, not an alligator. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So I know I mentioned this at the top of
the show. Of course, you remember the Saturday morning cartoon
Adventures of Gummy Bears.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I love that Dylan referenced them, but also that theme song, right?
They're bouncing here and there and everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, be careful. You can't go too far with it.
Fair use, Mango. So, but yes, it is a fantastic song. But,
you know, a lot of our younger listeners have no
idea what you're talking about. But starting in 1985, Disney
launched a Saturday morning cartoon called Adventures of the Gummy Bears.
It was this super popular show with kids of our
generation that And the plotline was basically like the Smurfs.
(15:29):
But what's interesting about this knockoff is that Disney had
said previously they weren't interested in televised animation. Like the
company thought of themselves as purists. You know, they didn't
really want to mess with cheap TV. But the CEO
at the time, Michael Eisner, decided that Disney really needed
to experiment in the space. And he was super protective
(15:49):
of Mickey Mouse and the original IP they had, so
he wanted to pick a whole new set of characters
to introduce to audiences. And he suggested gummy bears, because
he knew kids were obsessed with eating gummy bears. And also,
gummy bears were in the public domain, so he didn't
have to worry about licensing the characters from anyone else.
So anyway, according to Mental Floss, there are two fascinating
(16:11):
things about this.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
One.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
At the time, apparently, Saturday morning cartoons were dominated by
anthropomorphic bears. From the Berenstain Bears to the Care Bears
to the bear-like animated adventures of Ewoks. And so the
gummy bears fit right in. They were an easy entry
into the space. For whatever reason, I never thought about it.
But we were so into cartoon bears when we were kids.
(16:35):
But the other thing that's interesting is that Disney wanted
to do this on the cheap. They really saw this
as an experiment and they didn't want to invest too
much money. So it's one of the first animations where
they outsource the work to a studio in Japan. And
they end up creating this really heavy dialogue-driven plot so
that there isn't that much animation to do. And it
(16:56):
isn't long before outsourcing becomes a trend in animation. Anyway,
the gummy bear experiment was so successful that it actually
kick-started this renaissance in Disney animation on the small screen.
So things like Duck Tales, ooh, and Tailspin, Chippendale Rescue Rangers,
Darkwing Duck. I mean, I'm just kidding. I gotta watch
all of these after this episode. They all exist because
(17:18):
they were riding on the coattails of the gummy bears.
I did not know that before this episode.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I love that they were trying to limit the action
scenes and just focusing on dialogue so that they didn't
have to animate that much. I feel like I have
to go back and watch how talky these shows are.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, they got really deep.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So I know I just talked about gummy worms and
gross gummy candies, but I can't get off the topic.
I was also curious about sour candies and how we
got into this world of extreme sour patch kids and
things like that. And NPR has this interesting take on
the genre. So apparently sour candies have a pretty long history,
much longer than I'd realized. Back in the Victorian days,
(17:59):
we had acid drops, which were kind of a predecessor
to lemon heads. But NPR connects gross candies to Halloween.
And according to food historian Samira Kawash in her book,
A Century of Panic and Pleasure, back in the 1930s,
Halloween treats tended to be homemade goods, right? Like you
think about brownies or cookies or pieces of fruit that
(18:20):
people used to hand out. But in the 1950s, when
all these urban legends started about people putting razors and
apples and poisoning things, people moved to buying pre-packaged goods.
And it just felt safer to hand out candy. And manufacturers,
of course, were very excited about this. They took advantage
and they started connecting weird and scary candies to the holidays.
(18:42):
In 1954, the Atomic Fireball, you know, those super hot
cinnamon candies, they come out, which also happens to be
the same year that the U.S. detonates their first hydrogen bomb.
It's all over headlines and TV, but somehow it becomes
this weird thing that's exciting for kids to have in
their mouth. And of course, Lemonheads come out in 1962.
(19:04):
These start playing up the puckery taste of citric acid.
But what's interesting is that the next entry to this
sort of extra sour or extreme spicy candy is Warheads.
And that doesn't happen until 1993. But it's thanks to
a guy named Peter de Jaeger. Jaeger actually has a
connection to gummy bears. He was an importer in the U.S.
(19:25):
and he had made a ton of money on importing
gummy bears. And he was looking for the next big
candy sensation in the 1990s. And he tries this sour
candy from Japan. He tells Wired magazine, it was so
sour that most people would take it out of their
mouth immediately. Throw it in the wastebasket and be angry
at you. You thought you'd have an enemy for life.
(19:46):
So anyway, Diego traveled. across Asia looking for sour candies
and he goes to various locales and he finds the
sourest of them all in Taiwan. And kind of playing
off the atomic fireball, he calls it the warhead. Now,
Wired Magazine actually does an analysis of warheads to figure
out how they are so tart. And it comes down
(20:07):
to something called malic acid, which in smaller doses you
can find in Granny Smith apples. But there's this researcher
named Paul Rosen, who NPR talked to. He's a psychologist
at the University of Pennsylvania. And he calls this phenomena
of challenging candy, quote, benign masochism, which he defines as
seemingly unpleasant things we love to do, including watching horror
(20:29):
movies or crying at sad songs. They also talked to
another psychologist, Rachel Hurst of Brown University, who explained that
part of the pleasure of gross candy is that it
gives kids the opportunity to probe the boundaries of what
adults find repulsive while also mildly scandalizing their parents. Mm-hmm.
And she kind of likens the phenomena to Pop Rocks,
(20:50):
which is that, you know, they're all right eating by yourself,
but the joy is really in getting other people to
try it and watching their reactions because gross candy is
both meant to be discussed and shared.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That's a great way to look at it. And I
love that term benign masochism, which I guess tells us
why gummy candies got paired with extreme sour flavors.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, but it isn't just sour flavors. Apparently, there's also
an extremely spicy gummy bear on the market. It's called
Lil Nitro.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I was repulsed until you said the name of it,
and now I want to try it.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's just one tiny red gummy bear who I think
has a flamethrower on his chest. And he's in this package.
It's just the one bear featured, surrounded by flames and
a flammable sign. But apparently the gummy bear is 900
times hotter than a jalapeno pepper, which I think moves
it from benign masochism to just plain masochism. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I don't quite get that. Although I don't know
if you remember this. I do love an atomic fireball.
I always have to have one sort of candy addiction
at a time. And there was a time when my
family intervened because I was ordering, you know, atomic fireballs
by the bucket.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I mean, it was just it was too much, but
they are they are delicious. I mean, I love atomic
fireballs and I also love that. There was like a
nuclear science magazine, right? The Atomic Bulletin. And their candy
was the fireball. Anytime someone wrote for the magazine, they'd
send them a fireball in the mail along with a check.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And actually, you may know, of course, the co-host of
two of our most popular shows, Stuff They Don't Want
You to Know and Ridiculous History, Mr. Ben Bolin himself
knows I'm a big fan. And back when we were
all in the Atlanta office together... Every once in a
while I'd show up and there'd be a couple fireballs
on my desk and I always knew they were left
by Ben.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So that's pretty great. That's so sweet. Ben's the best. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
All right. Well, I know we've got a couple more
facts to share about gummy bears, but why don't we
take a quick break first?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So Welcome back to Part-Time Genius, where we're talking all-thing
gummy bears. So, Will, I know it's time for your
last fact, but there's also something I wanted to mention
(23:15):
about sour candies that I didn't get to, and I
think it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
All right, go for it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That author, Doug Mack, the one who created the Snack
Stack newsletter, has a bit about warheads as well. And
he makes a point in his article that There are
a lot of ways to be disgusted, but the way
the reaction manifests in our bodies, like the physiological response
and the facial expression, is really consistent and shared across
(23:40):
all cultures, which is something I'd never thought about. Apparently,
the ways we cringe as we're eating while sucking on
a warhead is the same the world over. And he
cites this book by this author, Rachel Hertz, where she
talks about how Even people who've been blind since birth
actually make the same face of disgust as sighted people.
Like we're not mimicking someone else's response. It's just how
(24:03):
our face cringes in reaction to super sour things and
also the delight of it.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
That's really interesting. Like I'd never thought about that before.
The fact that somebody that wasn't able to see somebody
else's reactions would actually be making the same facial expressions.
That's super interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So what do you want to talk about for your
last fact?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All right. Well, last year, there was this huge surge
on Reddit of people who were stunned to realize that
the green gummy bears in the packet of Haribo are
actually strawberry flavored, which is just so weird. So I
guess for years, people have just been eating these gummies
and just assume they were lime flavored, even though it's
written on the packet. And so I was wondering how
(24:43):
it is that so many people couldn't discern the taste.
So I decided to look into this. Now, I know
we did an episode of Part-Time Genius on flavor a long,
long time ago, and it was really fun to do that.
And in it, we discussed so much of how your
sense of taste comes from your sense of smell, and
even how things like sound can affect your sense of taste.
(25:03):
Like listening to chickens cluck when you're eating ice cream
makes you taste the eggs in the dessert. But one
thing that's funny is that our eyes also play a
role in the flavor as well. The site Candy Bouquet
talks about an experiment where people were handed clear gummies.
And even though the gummies had various fruit flavors, people
perceived the clear gummies as flavorless when they ate them.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's really wild. Like, people couldn't taste the flavor?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I mean, I guess the participants recognized that the gummy
bears were sweet. But beyond that, they couldn't figure out
what fruit the gummies resembled. But I think it might
also be because the gummy flavors are notoriously tricky. So
in 2018, the journal Perception printed a study that found
it took healthy adults eight seconds of chewing... This is
on average for a person to decipher a flavor. And
(25:52):
even then, 23% of the participants guessed wrong. So in summary,
we like gummies even though we have no clue what
flavor we're chewing on.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That's really funny. I feel like kids are always like
fighting over red gummy bears and green gummy bears. But
if that study is accurate, they can't tell the difference. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
You know, like you said, unless they're super tasters or
something like that, it makes me question my own practice
of having to eat the two colors at the same time.
And so I don't know. I don't know why it
is that we're like that, but it's interesting. Anyway, what
fact do you want to close with?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So one thing I didn't realize is that different countries
have different interests in how chewy their gummies are. Like
it didn't even occur to me, but there's a piece
in the Atlantic called, quote, Americans don't really like to chew,
which is all about how the U.S. market is more
interested in softer gummy candies. But Asian markets like chewier textures.
(26:47):
And the article cites how culturally like East Asian cuisine
has been more interested in different textures that are chewy,
like things like the tapioca and bubble tea or fish
eggs or like grass jellies and even things like mochi. Right.
Like they have this chewy texture and it's been popular
for a long time abroad. And it's only really now
(27:08):
slowly working its way into the U.S. market.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
But.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It isn't just that Asians who've noticed this. Apparently for years,
European gummy makers have manufactured softer gummies for the U.S. market,
while the ones distributed in Europe are chewier. But back
to Japan, one of the things the Atlantic article points
out is that gummies are very popular with adults now.
And the hottest trend in Japan is ultra-chewy gummies, where
(27:33):
packages say things like high elasticity or hard or crunchy
as part of the sales pitch. In fact, one Tokyo-based
company started creating gummies that are extra chewy because they
believe that when people are frustrated, hard gummies help people
deal with the stress of modern life. And they're especially
marketed to men in this hyper-masculine packaging as stress relief,
(27:55):
which is, you know, it's really funny. Just this idea
of making gummies seem ultra-manly.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
It's true, but I guess it gets back to your
weightlifting comment from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, I guess so. But the other thing I learned
while looking into this is that Japan is very invested
in their gummy candy culture. So in this article I
read in the Spokesman Review, this Japanese dentist and professor
talked about how gummies are good at improving saliva secretion
and muscle strength in the mouth. So there's actually going
to be a push for gummies marketed at the elderly,
(28:26):
which is pretty interesting. Also, there's apparently a Japan Gummy Association,
and they have been recommending different ways for adults to
enjoy gummies. And one of the things they are heavily
recommending is almost treating gummy candies like fruit. So they've
promoted this recipe for making a lemon-flavored spritzer by microwaving
(28:47):
your lemon-flavored gummies, chopping them up, and mixing them with
ice and soda water. So weird. Also talk about skewering
ham with citrus based gummies and cheese and treating it
almost like caprese style. Yeah, I'm not convinced, but I
don't know. I try it once. And also, I love
that this Japan Gummy Association is like trying to get
(29:10):
the word out about getting people to eat more gummies.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, that is that is pretty fantastic. All right. Well,
it's your turn to choose. Who do you think deserves
this week's trophy, Mango?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I mean, I think. Most of the facts I was
kind of expecting, like being around the gummy topic. But
the fact that you brought Disney's gummy bears into this
and the fact that those cartoons were like the catalyst
for all these other cartoons that I watched in middle school,
like it's just so insane to me. I think you've
got to get this week's. trophy.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Such a good cartoon. All right. Well, thank you so much.
My mom is going to be so proud and it
really sort of defends all the cartoon watching I did
at that stage in life. But that's it for this
week's Part-Time Genius. We'll be back next week with a
whole new episode. Now, remember, we're always scouting for great
facts and ideas, you know, the topics you want to
hear about on the show. So be sure to hit
(30:00):
us up, ptgeniusmoms at gmail.com. That goes straight to our moms.
They get every single message. Sometimes they lecture us. Sometimes
they give us a little bit of advice, but they
really enjoy hearing from you guys and they always pass
them along. That's it for this week's episode from Dylan, Mary, Mango,
and me. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Part-Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This
show is hosted by Will Pearson and me, Mange Shetikler,
and researched by our good pal, Mary Phillips Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Allie Perry, with social
(30:54):
media support from Sasha Gay Trusty, Dara Potts, and Vaini Shorin.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part-Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what, Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
What's up, Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So I was listening to an old Ezra Klein podcast
this week, and it was about burnout and how email
and other constant work communications can lead to fatigue, which
is fascinating. But in this conversation, he makes this aside
to this professor he's talking to, and he mentions he's
gotten really into weightlifting recently. And one of the things
(00:35):
he says is that there are all these things you
don't know as an amateur at the gym. And if
you're a serious weightlifter... You should be eating gummy bears
after a workout.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Gummy bears? Like are there special gummy bears for training
or are we just talking regular gummy bears?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Regular gummy bears. And so I looked this up immediately
after I heard it. And the funny thing is I
had just come back from playing sports. And as soon
as I heard that I didn't need any convincing, I
just like beeline to the bodega around the corner from
my house and bought gummy bears and shoved them into
my face for my muscles.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Which, by the way, is the right way to eat them.
There are two ways to eat gummy bears. You either
eat two at a time, both of the same color,
one on each side of the mouth, or you just
take a handful and you just push as many as
you can. Anyway, is there any truth to that? Like,
do gummy bears actually help with recovery?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, I hadn't realized this, but apparently it's pretty well
known among athletes. And so I found this article in
Swimmer's World, which explains how after working out, the fibers
in your muscles get these miniature tears, which is a
good thing because that's how you grow stronger. And they
refer to it as a microtrauma, which alerts your body
that you need nutrients, particularly amino acids, to repair them.
(01:51):
But because repairing these muscles requires energy, Gummy bears and
other high glycemic carbohydrates with dextrose or maltodextrin, they provide
this quick hit of sugar to kickstart replenishing what's been lost.
And because your body is still sort of using energy
from the workout, the sugar gets put to use immediately
and it doesn't get stored as fat.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I now know exactly why you chose to do this episode.
Like this is total permission for you to eat gummy
bears as long as you've done like a little bit
of exercise. This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I know. Now I'm going to do like a single
jumping jack and tell my family I've got to go
to the store to get some gummy bears.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Spot on.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It did make me wonder, what other surprises are gummy
bears hiding? And that's what today's episode is all about.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Hey there, podcast listeners. Welcome to Part-Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson.
And as always, I'm joined by my good friend, Mangesh
Hot Ticketer. And sitting behind that great big booth, and Mango,
this one took me a minute. Dylan is going much
deeper with his cuts right now. So he's got a
rolling pin. He's got a pie sitting off to the side.
It took me a second to see that. And he's
(03:19):
wearing an apron. I was like, what is he doing?
And then he put on the bear ears, he's Grammy
Gummy from one of the greatest cartoons of all time,
The Adventures of Gummy Bears. Did you watch that show
as a kid?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So good. Anyway, well done, Dylan. That's our trusted producer,
Dylan Fagan over there. All right, Mango. So I know
for a fact that we've been friends for a very
long time and that almost every time You've had a
big essay to write or a big assignment in college.
You'd go to the convenience store right there on campus
and you'd get some gummy candy. Am I right?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, I know it's totally embarrassing, but I think it's
because I don't like writing or at least I don't
like starting writing. So I love research. I love thinking
about ideas, collecting facts, talking about them. But writing a
paper always feels so overwhelming to me. And somehow having
a treat while doing it feels like I'm rewarding myself
for starting, which is ridiculous. But also, weirdly, gummy candies
(04:19):
are something that remind me of my dad. Before I
would travel to various high school events, whether it was
for Science Olympics or soccer tournaments or jazz band competitions
or whatever, my dad would always sneak a little bag
of Haribo gummy bears into my backpack as a treat.
And somehow it was kind of like this good luck charm.
And I think it's a mix of all of that
(04:39):
that keeps me loving gummies.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh, I love that. It's such a great story. I
actually don't think I knew that. All right, well, it's
interesting to look at candy and emotions, just sort of
the connection there. Like, obviously, there's no shortage of anecdotal
evidence of people eating ice cream or chocolate as a
treat just for a pick-me-up. But, you know, one of
the things I was fascinated by was Sweden's relationship to
(05:01):
gummy candies. There's this New Yorker piece from 2018. It's
called How to Eat Candy Like a Swedish Person. And
in it, the writer talks about how people in Nordic
countries are crazy for gummies. So according to the article,
the government ran this study, and it showed that Swedes
eat more candy per year per capita than the citizens
of any other country. And it's not close. It's more
(05:24):
than 30 pounds per person. So it's incredible how much
candy that they eat. And part of it is because
every Saturday, people like to go out and they buy
this bag of sweet treats. Isn't that awesome?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
They do this every Saturday?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I think so. Like, according to the piece, people trudge
out to the store every Saturday. They get themselves something,
I think it's pronounced Lord Ag's Goddess, and it means
Saturday candy. And it's because in the 1940s, the Swedish
government performed all these tests on the hazards of consuming
too many sweets. And so when they realized that eating
this candy was rotting the nation's teeth, they actually urged
(06:02):
citizens to limit their intake. But because they knew total
abstinence would get them nowhere, they had this suggestion. They said,
consume as much candy as you'd like, but only on
one day a week. And that's how this Saturday tradition
of going to the store and getting yourself a big
bag of pick and mix, that's how this all began.
(06:22):
And the article goes on to explain that the country
almost treats it like self-care. Because in Sweden, it gets
really dark in the winters, as we know, and people
rely on things like sugar to get through the season.
And It's also why the country drinks so much coffee
per capita. Anyway, the thing I liked most in the
article is this bit where a friend of the journalist
relays that when you look at each person's candy bag,
(06:45):
it almost reflects their state of mind and like what
they need to get through the day or through that week.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh, I love that. That you can look like at
a bag of Swedish fish and various candies that someone's
pulled and almost see it as like an individualized prescription
for bringing them a little joy.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's pretty cool. You would see all
27 varieties of Reese's in the mix with my candy
each week. And I don't know, I guess understand how
I was feeling. But anyway, where do you want to
begin with your first fact of the day here?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So I think we should talk about the history of
gummy bears and gummy worms and things like that. But
before we do, I want to talk about this one
fact because it's really sweet. So, you know, I'm obsessed
with the Cornell Food Lab and the way they do
all sorts of food innovations and food science studies, right?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, I was actually thinking about this not too long ago.
I was remembering back at Mental Floss, you always wanted
to do this story about how they'd added caffeine to
breakfast cereal, I guess for people who didn't like coffee, right?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, and it isn't just that. Their innovations in ice
cream and snacks made me actually wonder whether I should
go into food science at one point because it just
felt so Willy Wonka-ish. But they also do a lot
of psychology and marketing studies. Actually, my favorite study, and
this is an aside, but it had to do with
cereal boxes. And they analyzed all these cereal boxes, the
(08:01):
sugary ones for kids. And on the packaging, they noticed
that often the cartoon characters or mascots are drawn looking
down to catch the eyes of children in the grocery aisle.
Which is crazy and so devious, but apparently it's a
big marketing ploy. Yeah. But back to my fact. So
one of the things you think about when you think
about COVID or the lockdown is how many experiences kids
(08:23):
missed out on. You know, you think about like prom
or playing in tournaments or getting to go to graduations
or whatever. And one of the things Cornell's paper writes
about is that the freshmen at Cornell who were food
science majors were got to knock out a lot of
their chemistry lessons, but they didn't get the joy of
experimenting in the lab. And that's because the kids got
(08:44):
sent home midway through their semester in March. And so
this professor, Julie Goddard, who taught the intro class, made
this promise to the students of that freshman class that
she would figure out some way to make it up
to them. And exactly 1,000 days later, which I guess
is the anniversary of when they got sent home as freshmen,
she had a big makeup lab where all these seniors
(09:04):
got to make gummy worms from scratch before they graduated.
And I just love that making gummy worms is kind
of a prerequisite for graduating in this course, but also
how this professor worked behind the scenes to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Oh, that's really cool. All right. So why don't we
get into the history of gummy bears? So the story
goes back to a gentleman named Hans Riegel, and this
comes from Bon Appetit, who wrote a story, sort of
a brief history of gummy bears. So in 1920, Hans
is a factory worker in this confection factory, and he's
sick of this dead-end job, so he started experimenting at
(09:40):
home with a gummy candy of sorts. Now, gummy candies
had been popular prior to this. You've got things like
Turkish Delight, Japanese rice candies, and there are things like
Jelly Babies and Gumdrops in England that predate Riegel's candies.
But he's trying to come up with something new, and
he comes up with this really satisfying chewy mixture. And
(10:01):
then he puts his candies in a delightful mold, these long, thin,
dancing bears that resemble the circus bears that kids love.
And in the beginning, he makes his candies at home,
and his wife delivers them around town by bicycle, and
he calls the company Haribo. which is a combination of
the first two letters from Hans, Riegel, and Bonn, the
(10:23):
German town that he's from. And by the time World
War II begins, he's grown the company pretty significantly. He's
got like 400 employees working for him, and he's producing
10 tons of candy every single day. So his dancing bears,
as they're known, are this massive success. Now, gummy bears
do have a dark legacy, like Riegel ends up fighting
(10:44):
with the Nazis and dies in the war, and The
company goes through some rough times. But after the war,
his sons kind of rebuild the business from scratch. And
by 1960, they're really back on their feet. They've also
transformed the candies. The bears have become sort of squattier
and smooshier and even cuter in order to attract the kids.
(11:05):
And they get renamed Little Gummy Bears. And the candy
gets distributed across Europe.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And so up until this point, gummy bears haven't really
hit the U.S. market. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, that's right. Gummy bears actually only came to the U.S.
in 1981. It makes me glad that we weren't born
long before that because that's just really, really sad. And
that's because most of the early demand for gummy bears
was created by kids who'd been exposed to the candies
from either their German language teachers who had brought back
packages from Europe or from soldiers who had been stationed
(11:37):
abroad and then brought some of these candies home. But
once they enter the U.S. market, gummies take off immediately.
Jelly Belly, the company that makes jelly beans, starts making
their own gummy candies. And then Trolley and other German
companies enter the U.S. market. And before long, gummies are
one of the most popular candies in the U.S. Of course,
(11:58):
Haribo continued to maintain their dominance. And today, they produce
100 million gold bears every single day. And while people
like Warren Buffett have made offers to buy out the company,
Haribo insists it wants to continue being family-run.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
That's pretty interesting. So one of the things I was
curious about was how we moved from gummy bears to
gummy worms. And most of this research comes from a
wonderful newsletter that I like called Snack Stack. It's run
by this author we've actually had on the program, Doug Mack.
And in it, he explains that German manufacturers were making
(12:33):
gummies of all sorts of zoo animal shapes starting in
the 1960s. But in 1981, Trolley introduced something called gummy squiggles.
These are the original gummy worms. And unlike something like
gummy bears, which were designed to evoke this sense of fun,
these gummy candies were intended to create what the author
refers to as, quote, delight by way of low-risk disgust.
(12:56):
So apparently Trolley did some market research and realized that
American consumers are open to products that feel weird, but
aren't actually abnormal in terms of flavors. And I guess
the theory proved correct that In fact, Mac points to
this article from the Wall Street Journal in 1984, where
this Minnesota deli owner talks about how this new gross
(13:17):
candy is selling like crazy. Apparently, he was selling hundreds
of pounds of gummy worms a week. And in the article,
he says, quote, I know one guy who uses them
as a calling card. He's a medical equipment salesman. So
I guess all sorts of people were impressed by the novelty. Yeah. Anyway,
the worms become a gateway candy for Americans to even
(13:38):
more disgusting candies. Gummy rats take off in Chicago in 1986,
apparently become the second best-selling candies in that city for
a period. And it launches a category of candies that
the author refers to as, quote, treats that will alarm
your parents and not just because of their sugar content.
Which means everything from gummy bacon to roadkill gummies to
(14:00):
fake toxic waste candy to... all the extreme candies that
exist on the market today.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You know, I've always been into like different and weird candies,
but there's something about gummies where like there's a certain
number of acceptable animals and sizes that they can take
the form of. Like gummy bears, gummy worms, other small gummies.
But for some reason, I don't know who's buying these
like life-size gummy rats and gummy pythons. I mean, I
(14:27):
know I talked earlier about loving to take as many
gummy bears as and cramming them into my mouth as
much as I can. But actually there's something off about
it when it feels like they're actually the size of
a snake you can wear around your neck. Like it's
just so gross to me. Is it just me or
are you like this too?
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It is so gross. Like I love when gummy candy
is bite-sized, but not like, like it has to be
bite-sized for a human, not an alligator. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So I know I mentioned this at the top of
the show. Of course, you remember the Saturday morning cartoon
Adventures of Gummy Bears.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I love that Dylan referenced them, but also that theme song, right?
They're bouncing here and there and everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, be careful. You can't go too far with it.
Fair use, Mango. So, but yes, it is a fantastic song. But,
you know, a lot of our younger listeners have no
idea what you're talking about. But starting in 1985, Disney
launched a Saturday morning cartoon called Adventures of the Gummy Bears.
It was this super popular show with kids of our
generation that And the plotline was basically like the Smurfs.
(15:29):
But what's interesting about this knockoff is that Disney had
said previously they weren't interested in televised animation. Like the
company thought of themselves as purists. You know, they didn't
really want to mess with cheap TV. But the CEO
at the time, Michael Eisner, decided that Disney really needed
to experiment in the space. And he was super protective
(15:49):
of Mickey Mouse and the original IP they had, so
he wanted to pick a whole new set of characters
to introduce to audiences. And he suggested gummy bears, because
he knew kids were obsessed with eating gummy bears. And also,
gummy bears were in the public domain, so he didn't
have to worry about licensing the characters from anyone else.
So anyway, according to Mental Floss, there are two fascinating
(16:11):
things about this.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
One.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
At the time, apparently, Saturday morning cartoons were dominated by
anthropomorphic bears. From the Berenstain Bears to the Care Bears
to the bear-like animated adventures of Ewoks. And so the
gummy bears fit right in. They were an easy entry
into the space. For whatever reason, I never thought about it.
But we were so into cartoon bears when we were kids.
(16:35):
But the other thing that's interesting is that Disney wanted
to do this on the cheap. They really saw this
as an experiment and they didn't want to invest too
much money. So it's one of the first animations where
they outsource the work to a studio in Japan. And
they end up creating this really heavy dialogue-driven plot so
that there isn't that much animation to do. And it
(16:56):
isn't long before outsourcing becomes a trend in animation. Anyway,
the gummy bear experiment was so successful that it actually
kick-started this renaissance in Disney animation on the small screen.
So things like Duck Tales, ooh, and Tailspin, Chippendale Rescue Rangers,
Darkwing Duck. I mean, I'm just kidding. I gotta watch
all of these after this episode. They all exist because
(17:18):
they were riding on the coattails of the gummy bears.
I did not know that before this episode.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I love that they were trying to limit the action
scenes and just focusing on dialogue so that they didn't
have to animate that much. I feel like I have
to go back and watch how talky these shows are.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, yeah, they got really deep.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So I know I just talked about gummy worms and
gross gummy candies, but I can't get off the topic.
I was also curious about sour candies and how we
got into this world of extreme sour patch kids and
things like that. And NPR has this interesting take on
the genre. So apparently sour candies have a pretty long history,
much longer than I'd realized. Back in the Victorian days,
(17:59):
we had acid drops, which were kind of a predecessor
to lemon heads. But NPR connects gross candies to Halloween.
And according to food historian Samira Kawash in her book,
A Century of Panic and Pleasure, back in the 1930s,
Halloween treats tended to be homemade goods, right? Like you
think about brownies or cookies or pieces of fruit that
(18:20):
people used to hand out. But in the 1950s, when
all these urban legends started about people putting razors and
apples and poisoning things, people moved to buying pre-packaged goods.
And it just felt safer to hand out candy. And manufacturers,
of course, were very excited about this. They took advantage
and they started connecting weird and scary candies to the holidays.
(18:42):
In 1954, the Atomic Fireball, you know, those super hot
cinnamon candies, they come out, which also happens to be
the same year that the U.S. detonates their first hydrogen bomb.
It's all over headlines and TV, but somehow it becomes
this weird thing that's exciting for kids to have in
their mouth. And of course, Lemonheads come out in 1962.
(19:04):
These start playing up the puckery taste of citric acid.
But what's interesting is that the next entry to this
sort of extra sour or extreme spicy candy is Warheads.
And that doesn't happen until 1993. But it's thanks to
a guy named Peter de Jaeger. Jaeger actually has a
connection to gummy bears. He was an importer in the U.S.
(19:25):
and he had made a ton of money on importing
gummy bears. And he was looking for the next big
candy sensation in the 1990s. And he tries this sour
candy from Japan. He tells Wired magazine, it was so
sour that most people would take it out of their
mouth immediately. Throw it in the wastebasket and be angry
at you. You thought you'd have an enemy for life.
(19:46):
So anyway, Diego traveled. across Asia looking for sour candies
and he goes to various locales and he finds the
sourest of them all in Taiwan. And kind of playing
off the atomic fireball, he calls it the warhead. Now,
Wired Magazine actually does an analysis of warheads to figure
out how they are so tart. And it comes down
(20:07):
to something called malic acid, which in smaller doses you
can find in Granny Smith apples. But there's this researcher
named Paul Rosen, who NPR talked to. He's a psychologist
at the University of Pennsylvania. And he calls this phenomena
of challenging candy, quote, benign masochism, which he defines as
seemingly unpleasant things we love to do, including watching horror
(20:29):
movies or crying at sad songs. They also talked to
another psychologist, Rachel Hurst of Brown University, who explained that
part of the pleasure of gross candy is that it
gives kids the opportunity to probe the boundaries of what
adults find repulsive while also mildly scandalizing their parents. Mm-hmm.
And she kind of likens the phenomena to Pop Rocks,
(20:50):
which is that, you know, they're all right eating by yourself,
but the joy is really in getting other people to
try it and watching their reactions because gross candy is
both meant to be discussed and shared.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
That's a great way to look at it. And I
love that term benign masochism, which I guess tells us
why gummy candies got paired with extreme sour flavors.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, but it isn't just sour flavors. Apparently, there's also
an extremely spicy gummy bear on the market. It's called
Lil Nitro.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I was repulsed until you said the name of it,
and now I want to try it.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's just one tiny red gummy bear who I think
has a flamethrower on his chest. And he's in this package.
It's just the one bear featured, surrounded by flames and
a flammable sign. But apparently the gummy bear is 900
times hotter than a jalapeno pepper, which I think moves
it from benign masochism to just plain masochism. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I don't quite get that. Although I don't know
if you remember this. I do love an atomic fireball.
I always have to have one sort of candy addiction
at a time. And there was a time when my
family intervened because I was ordering, you know, atomic fireballs
by the bucket.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I mean, it was just it was too much, but
they are they are delicious. I mean, I love atomic
fireballs and I also love that. There was like a
nuclear science magazine, right? The Atomic Bulletin. And their candy
was the fireball. Anytime someone wrote for the magazine, they'd
send them a fireball in the mail along with a check.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And actually, you may know, of course, the co-host of
two of our most popular shows, Stuff They Don't Want
You to Know and Ridiculous History, Mr. Ben Bolin himself
knows I'm a big fan. And back when we were
all in the Atlanta office together... Every once in a
while I'd show up and there'd be a couple fireballs
on my desk and I always knew they were left
by Ben.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So that's pretty great. That's so sweet. Ben's the best. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
All right. Well, I know we've got a couple more
facts to share about gummy bears, but why don't we
take a quick break first?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So Welcome back to Part-Time Genius, where we're talking all-thing
gummy bears. So, Will, I know it's time for your
last fact, but there's also something I wanted to mention
(23:15):
about sour candies that I didn't get to, and I
think it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
All right, go for it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That author, Doug Mack, the one who created the Snack
Stack newsletter, has a bit about warheads as well. And
he makes a point in his article that There are
a lot of ways to be disgusted, but the way
the reaction manifests in our bodies, like the physiological response
and the facial expression, is really consistent and shared across
(23:40):
all cultures, which is something I'd never thought about. Apparently,
the ways we cringe as we're eating while sucking on
a warhead is the same the world over. And he
cites this book by this author, Rachel Hertz, where she
talks about how Even people who've been blind since birth
actually make the same face of disgust as sighted people.
Like we're not mimicking someone else's response. It's just how
(24:03):
our face cringes in reaction to super sour things and
also the delight of it.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
That's really interesting. Like I'd never thought about that before.
The fact that somebody that wasn't able to see somebody
else's reactions would actually be making the same facial expressions.
That's super interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So what do you want to talk about for your
last fact?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All right. Well, last year, there was this huge surge
on Reddit of people who were stunned to realize that
the green gummy bears in the packet of Haribo are
actually strawberry flavored, which is just so weird. So I
guess for years, people have just been eating these gummies
and just assume they were lime flavored, even though it's
written on the packet. And so I was wondering how
(24:43):
it is that so many people couldn't discern the taste.
So I decided to look into this. Now, I know
we did an episode of Part-Time Genius on flavor a long,
long time ago, and it was really fun to do that.
And in it, we discussed so much of how your
sense of taste comes from your sense of smell, and
even how things like sound can affect your sense of taste.
(25:03):
Like listening to chickens cluck when you're eating ice cream
makes you taste the eggs in the dessert. But one
thing that's funny is that our eyes also play a
role in the flavor as well. The site Candy Bouquet
talks about an experiment where people were handed clear gummies.
And even though the gummies had various fruit flavors, people
perceived the clear gummies as flavorless when they ate them.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's really wild. Like, people couldn't taste the flavor?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I mean, I guess the participants recognized that the gummy
bears were sweet. But beyond that, they couldn't figure out
what fruit the gummies resembled. But I think it might
also be because the gummy flavors are notoriously tricky. So
in 2018, the journal Perception printed a study that found
it took healthy adults eight seconds of chewing... This is
on average for a person to decipher a flavor. And
(25:52):
even then, 23% of the participants guessed wrong. So in summary,
we like gummies even though we have no clue what
flavor we're chewing on.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That's really funny. I feel like kids are always like
fighting over red gummy bears and green gummy bears. But
if that study is accurate, they can't tell the difference. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
You know, like you said, unless they're super tasters or
something like that, it makes me question my own practice
of having to eat the two colors at the same time.
And so I don't know. I don't know why it
is that we're like that, but it's interesting. Anyway, what
fact do you want to close with?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So one thing I didn't realize is that different countries
have different interests in how chewy their gummies are. Like
it didn't even occur to me, but there's a piece
in the Atlantic called, quote, Americans don't really like to chew,
which is all about how the U.S. market is more
interested in softer gummy candies. But Asian markets like chewier textures.
(26:47):
And the article cites how culturally like East Asian cuisine
has been more interested in different textures that are chewy,
like things like the tapioca and bubble tea or fish
eggs or like grass jellies and even things like mochi. Right.
Like they have this chewy texture and it's been popular
for a long time abroad. And it's only really now
(27:08):
slowly working its way into the U.S. market.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
But.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It isn't just that Asians who've noticed this. Apparently for years,
European gummy makers have manufactured softer gummies for the U.S. market,
while the ones distributed in Europe are chewier. But back
to Japan, one of the things the Atlantic article points
out is that gummies are very popular with adults now.
And the hottest trend in Japan is ultra-chewy gummies, where
(27:33):
packages say things like high elasticity or hard or crunchy
as part of the sales pitch. In fact, one Tokyo-based
company started creating gummies that are extra chewy because they
believe that when people are frustrated, hard gummies help people
deal with the stress of modern life. And they're especially
marketed to men in this hyper-masculine packaging as stress relief,
(27:55):
which is, you know, it's really funny. Just this idea
of making gummies seem ultra-manly.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
It's true, but I guess it gets back to your
weightlifting comment from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, I guess so. But the other thing I learned
while looking into this is that Japan is very invested
in their gummy candy culture. So in this article I
read in the Spokesman Review, this Japanese dentist and professor
talked about how gummies are good at improving saliva secretion
and muscle strength in the mouth. So there's actually going
to be a push for gummies marketed at the elderly,
(28:26):
which is pretty interesting. Also, there's apparently a Japan Gummy Association,
and they have been recommending different ways for adults to
enjoy gummies. And one of the things they are heavily
recommending is almost treating gummy candies like fruit. So they've
promoted this recipe for making a lemon-flavored spritzer by microwaving
(28:47):
your lemon-flavored gummies, chopping them up, and mixing them with
ice and soda water. So weird. Also talk about skewering
ham with citrus based gummies and cheese and treating it
almost like caprese style. Yeah, I'm not convinced, but I
don't know. I try it once. And also, I love
that this Japan Gummy Association is like trying to get
(29:10):
the word out about getting people to eat more gummies.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, that is that is pretty fantastic. All right. Well,
it's your turn to choose. Who do you think deserves
this week's trophy, Mango?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I mean, I think. Most of the facts I was
kind of expecting, like being around the gummy topic. But
the fact that you brought Disney's gummy bears into this
and the fact that those cartoons were like the catalyst
for all these other cartoons that I watched in middle school,
like it's just so insane to me. I think you've
got to get this week's. trophy.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Such a good cartoon. All right. Well, thank you so much.
My mom is going to be so proud and it
really sort of defends all the cartoon watching I did
at that stage in life. But that's it for this
week's Part-Time Genius. We'll be back next week with a
whole new episode. Now, remember, we're always scouting for great
facts and ideas, you know, the topics you want to
hear about on the show. So be sure to hit
(30:00):
us up, ptgeniusmoms at gmail.com. That goes straight to our moms.
They get every single message. Sometimes they lecture us. Sometimes
they give us a little bit of advice, but they
really enjoy hearing from you guys and they always pass
them along. That's it for this week's episode from Dylan, Mary, Mango,
and me. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Part-Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This
show is hosted by Will Pearson and me, Mange Shetikler,
and researched by our good pal, Mary Phillips Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Allie Perry, with social
(30:54):
media support from Sasha Gay Trusty, Dara Potts, and Vaini Shorin.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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