August 29, 2018 • 39 mins
Cheetos and other cheesy puffed-corn snacks are miracles of modern science and marketing. Anney and Lauren dig into the fortuitously fab history (and making of) cheese puffs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm an Eries and
I'm Lauren vocal Bam, and today we're talking about Cheetos
and other cheese puffs, cheese poofs, whatever you want to
call him. I did keep calling them cheesy poofs. That's
from South Park, as we learned in the fictional trivia thing.
I mean also from watching the show. But I think
that's why it's been on my mind. Yes, there's a
(00:32):
lot of things to say about cheetahs. There is that.
This episode was inspired by our super producer Dylan and
his cheeto genius. Um. He eats cheetos chopsticks. It keeps
everything nice and clean and neat. He's doing it currently,
he is right this very moment, and it is delightful. Yes,
So I want to start out with a question. Do
(00:52):
you know the game and Jack in the Box? I
believe we've played it in in line for rides at
Disney World. That was heads up, okay, okay, sorry man.
We did get a lot of enjoyment out of that.
But I am familiar with the game Check in the Box.
It's like a series of games, um, but you play
it usually on your phone with other people in the
(01:13):
room and all the phones connect to the TV, and
there's one that is sort of like a March Madness
brackets thing where people vote to determine what being in
the bracket should advance. And one of the competitions or
questions is um around the sexiest mascot, and Chester of
(01:33):
the Cheetos always wins. No contest, no one votes for
anyone else, And I've pondered it sometimes I'm like, I mean,
I suppose, you know, as Chester himself might say, it's
not easy being cheesy. No, we we know every time
(01:55):
we record um, we know the battle. Also, another rule
thing I wanted to mention is supproad Dissilda Dad's. The
taste of loneliness is the parody brand on a thirty rock.
That's what Liz Lemon eats when she's sad or you know,
upset are just in general because she's usually pretty. Oh yeah,
Baseline a little bit, a little bit upset at people. Yeah,
(02:18):
I love it, I love it, but all right, Cheetos,
what is it? Cheetos are a name brand of cheese puffs,
which are a snack made of puffed corn dough that's
either baked or fried and then coated in either dehydrated
cheese or a cheese flavored powder. Cheese fla poder flavored powder. Yes,
(02:41):
depending on your level of actual cheese in there. Um,
there's certain marketing restrictions on what you can actually call something.
I love it. Yeah. Um. Cheese puffs, by the way,
here are are not to be confused with are um,
which are French pastry puff bites that are made with
just an impressive amount of greer cheese and are so delicious.
(03:01):
Sometimes they come stuffed with things. Oh indeed. Yeah, it's
like cheese flavored too, and it's just so good. Anyway, Yes,
we must move on. We we do this a whole
whole other episode about puff pastry at some point in
the future. I'm a little bit intimidated by it in
a baking and a sign standpoint, but we're going to
(03:21):
come back to it. Meanwhile, Cheetos, Yeah, how they're made
is great. I'm really excited about this because they're because
they're basically a different form of popcorn. What I couldn't
be more on board. You start, you start, um the
cheeto process with three simple ingredients and one kind of
(03:43):
complicated one. Um corn meal, water, oil, and flavor coating.
Flavor coating. The flavor coating will come back to later. Um.
But okay, so did you listen to or perhaps if
you're Annie and sitting across from me, participate in our
popcorn episode. Just listen to it on repeat. It I
hand over heart streaming of what could be all right
(04:08):
if you if you did listen, or if you listen
every night. Um, you might remember that corn kernels contain
a mix of proteins and starches that, when heated with
a little bit of moisture under pressure, will gelatinize. M Yeah,
they turned into this kind of kind of fun goo.
If you release the pressure, the goo will rapidly expand
(04:30):
into a foam that cools at room temperature into a
solid fluff. A kernel of popcorn. It's own little pressure
cooker when it's heated up. But when you've got corn meal,
you've got to provide the pressure along with the temperature
in order to create this puffing scenario. So therefore, cheese
puffs are extruded. Extrusion is a scary sounding word, but
(04:54):
but it just means that you've you've got a machine
that lets you push dough through a tube with a
die or a mold on the end to to create
different shapes like a like a Plato machine. Oh yeah, um,
Except in this case, your Plato machine is filled with
corn meal and just a little bit of water, and
it heats this mixture up to just about the boiling
point of water. And there's this screw on the inside
(05:16):
of the pipe that shears the hot corn meal against
the sides of the tube, creating enough pressure that the
water boils and the corn meal gelatinizes. So when when
it goes through that die at the end into the
relatively cool and low pressure environment that we call normal air,
the goo expands into foam and cools to a solid
(05:37):
and a split second, And the shape of the dye
and the way that you cut the dough as it
comes out will determine the shape of your cheese puff.
And I'm actually somehow downplaying how completely rad this is.
Um that the machine is moving fast enough and at
high enough pressure that when the puffs come out, they
actually fly three ft through the air and hit the
(06:00):
net or cage that that drops them down onto a
belt to go on through the rest of the process.
Your video of this so badly, yes, Um, But we're
not done yet. There's more yes, there's more for flavor
and crunch, and to reduce the amount of moisture left
in the puffs. You know you don't want a saggy cheeto. Um.
(06:20):
The puffs will move through either a fryer or an oven.
Cheetos are generally fried, um, unless they say baked on
the package, and then they're probably baked yeah weird. Um.
Then they're ready for flavor. They'll either be spritsed with
oil and then tossed with dry seasonings, or, in the
case of Cheetos, sent into this tumbler drum that simultaneously
(06:42):
tosses them and also sprays them with this pre mixed
oil plus seasonings kind of stuff. Um. This drum is
called a flavor reel. By the way, our favorite R
E L flavor reel. M hmm. I love everything about
this the the the coated puffs are allowed to dry out,
(07:03):
and they're packaged, and the entire process of creating this
packaged product takes like less than twenty minutes. I have
some kind of weird desire to just like stand in
from the net and be pelted with That is slightly strange,
but I want to be in like a beekeeping soup
(07:26):
I don't know what this says about me, Lauren, I
don't know. I can't deny that it sounds delightful. I
just want to spread wire arms wack and just receive
received the corn puff goodness. Yeah. As wacky as it
all is, it is this highly scientific process. You you like,
have to get the just the right moisture content in
(07:47):
the original corn meal itself, and also once you add
the water, and also throughout the whole process and also
when you're packaging it. Um Chinos has an in house
lab that analyzes the chemical composition of their product once
every thirty minutes wow, and then once every four hours,
a panel of four tasters will inspect a sample, comparing
it to reference Cheetos that are flown in by the
(08:10):
powers that be? Is so scientific, fantastic reference Cheetos? Who
gets to be the tasters? Is this like a job
you change for your whole life? I think it is
a rocky theme is planning and you're like dinner eating Cheetos.
I didn't ask. There's no one that I could ask,
if you know? Right in yes please. There's also a
(08:32):
recipe for making your own up on splendid table. It
involves steaming tapioca and corn flower dough for an hour,
dehydrating pieces of it for up to ten hours, and
then deep frying them. I was almost scared to link
this because I feel like you're gonna go do it. Yeah, yeah,
(08:53):
and I suspect it will go well for me, but
you know, I won't know until I try exactly like
a very gesture in terms of nutrition. Mm hmm. Well,
baked baked cheese puffs aren't too bad for you, um,
but the fried ones uh, nutritionally speaking, you know, they're
(09:17):
they're mostly oil and simple carbohydrates. You know, it's just
fat and like the specific type of sugars that carb
sugars that they get you like a little bit high. Oh,
I mean not like high high, but but they just
they just perked you up real quick, okay. Um, So
it's a very pleasurable thing to eat, um, along with salt,
(09:38):
which you know also gives you a little bit of
it that's delicious. Um. Some of the other ingredients listed
on your typical cheese puff package are vitamins and minerals
uh that actually get leached from the corn meal during
processing and thus are added back in so that your
snack isn't like completely nutritionally void, So that's nice. Yeah,
um but what But what I'm saying is that you know,
(09:59):
they feel like a treat, and they should be treated
as treats, treated as a treat all right around the world.
There are all kinds of brands of cheese puffs, like
Twisties and what's it's, but the leading brand of cheese puffs, um,
I keep wanting to call them cheesy proofs is Friedo
Lays Cheetos, which boasted four billion in annual sales in
(10:24):
and to make a year's supply of Cheetos, PepsiCo needs
five thousand cows to get the eleven million gallons of milk.
That's two thousand, two hundred gallons per cow to make
the ten million pounds of cheddar cheese for that cheesy powder.
More and how that cheese powder is made. In the
middle of our history section, yeah, twenty two countries produced Cheetos,
(10:45):
making all kinds of flavors, from pepsi to peanut butter.
Jillists did a rather in depth look into the serving
sizes of nine types of chips snack things and found
that Cheetos regularly gives customers more than the serving size
on the back indicates one hundred and eighty nine is
(11:06):
what it probably says in the back, but what you're
more likely to get is something closer to two thirty
seven and a half um. And che Does was declared
the value winner of all of the others at point
zero zero eight dollar, so I guess sense per chip uh. Interestingly,
baby boomers are the first generation whose intake of snacks
(11:29):
did not decline as they hit middle age, but increased.
Interesting indeed, I think it has something to do with
our snack habits overall. Probably is sometimes known as the
year of the Cheeto. It appeared in loads of fast
food items like case that eats, burritos are as, the
coating on chicken tenders, the scientific marvel that is Burger
(11:53):
King's Mac, and Cheetos. They were hailed as the new Torito,
which I love that because I don't what that means.
What war is peace? I don't know. Nothing makes sense anymore,
but the Cheeto. Speaking of making sense or not. As
(12:17):
a very perhaps a surprising history, it does. And we
will get into that just as soon as we get
back from a quick break for a word from our sponsor.
(12:37):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you alright.
So we owe our thanks for cheese curls cheese puffs
poofs to an animal feed manufacturer in Wisconsin. Animal feed,
animal feed. Mm hmm yep. I'm not gonna explain were.
(13:00):
I'm gonna let you wonder about it. Perfect. No, I
have to explain everything because I love it. Um. Okay.
So when this manufacturer was making the feed, um grinder
flaked the corn, and in order to clean the grinder,
workers would feed the machine damp corn, which made these
poofy corn things a k corn puffs. One of the
(13:23):
employees took them home and dried them out, and when
he didn't die, uh, he found the flavor and texture
quite pleasing actually, and he suggested that the company sell
them for human consumption under the name corn Curls with ks,
which they did after changing the name of the company
to you know shake. The history of you know, animal feed. Yeah,
(13:46):
we're an animal feed company, but now we're feeding you humans.
The Elmer Candy Corporation lays claim to creating the first
cheese curl the cheesee as well, and the cheese doodle.
Cheese with the Z was a popular snack produced in
New York, and it came onto the scene in the fifties.
But when it comes to Cheetos, they were the invention
(14:09):
of Ce Doulin in nineteen. Dolan was born in Kansas City, Kansas,
in nineteen but his family moved to Texas when he
was quite young. His father was an inventor, and the
young Duelan worked at his father's auto repair shop and
the confectionery that the family owned. He was looking for
(14:29):
a new snack and he responded to an ad in
the San Antonio Express for a fried cornship recipe and
adapted potato ricer. And that's not all nineteen retail accounts too,
and Dulan got all of this for a cool one
hundred bucks. Then massa was pushed through the ricer and
(14:50):
then snapped into ribbons and fried in oil. These chips
um were named Friedo's and the Friedo compan and he
got it start. It grew relatively quickly, five plants by
and they made other snacks as well. Friedo wasn't the
only thing. Dulan was behind innovations and practices like store
(15:11):
door delivery are or having the company's salespeople doing the
stocking of their product um clip wrecks Who's behind that.
He experimented with canned foods and dis toes and fast food,
opening one of the first text mex fast food places
in the country and the first place in Dallas to
have a microwave, as it was called at the time
(15:34):
radar range. He came up with cup shaped fried tortilla shelves.
Another thing he did was invest in Disneyland in its
early stages. When it opened in nineteen fifty five, Disneyland
featured a restaurant of Doolan's called Costa to free Do.
Kind of ironically, I guess he was a big health
(15:54):
nut and kept up to date with health advancements and trends,
and he tried to translate that into his products. He
went on to join the Texas Department of Agriculture, which
later developed a corn hybrid that was used in fritos.
Both he and his father did so much more like
this is very very condensed, but reading it is one
of those times where I was like, what you did
(16:14):
this much stuff? Also? And how did you? You must
have gotten up very early in the morning exactly, But
that's that's kind of the gist. Cheetos, though. Doulan was
looking to make a snack that wouldn't go stale, and
he got his inspiration from corn chips, and he conducted
several experiments with his kids as the test subjects. That's
(16:35):
a theme that we're seeing coming f al lot Um
and he he did first come up with a recipe
for fritos and then later cheetos. He got inspiration for
an adaptation to dairy preservative technique from the U. S.
Armies dehydrated cheese, So in a way U. S. Army
is also responsible for cheetos. Yep. The Army placed a
huge order for um World War One, buying twenty five
(17:00):
million quarter pound tins of processed cheese from Craft and
this is what catapulted Craft to what it is now
at least one of the big things. Point being, the
armor is big cheese fans and was always looking for
a way to do more with less. In a U. S.
D a dairy scientist by the name of George Sanders
(17:20):
came up with the first cheese powder. At the time,
the military was a little mad with the powers of dehydration. Uh.
You know, water is heavy, heavy is expensive to ship.
If you dehydrate your food, you can ship way more
of it, be it vegetables, potatoes, eggs, or cheese. So
they were funding all kinds of people who were working
(17:41):
on all these dehydration technologies at the time, including the
aforementioned craft and the U S d A. And cheese
for a long time was considered impossible to dehydrate because
that the heat used in dehydration would melt the cheese
and separate the fats from the milk solids. But Sanders
developed a method of drying shredded use at low temperatures
(18:01):
to create this protective crust not not just around the
shreds of cheese, but around the molecules themselves within the shreds. Uh.
The shreds could then be ground and dehydrated at closer
to a usual temperature. And this, obviously, like getting a
packet of dehydrated cheese, wouldn't really be the same thing
as you know, sending a soldier like a hunk of
(18:22):
cheese to eat with your hand, um. But it was
useful for cooking and flavoring, and when the war ended,
the army had all of these wartime contracts and excess
food to figure out UM in a way that wouldn't
calls companies to collapse or maybe even industries. One of
(18:42):
the things they did was sell back dehydrated cheese at
like a third of the price, and a lot of
companies snapped it up. It's cheap, we'll find a we'll
find something to do with it later, including the Freedo Company,
which debuted the Cheeto dusted with Army dehydrated cheese. Uh yeah.
And meanwhile, during the war, Freedo was a supplier of
(19:03):
chips to the military um which sort of like craft,
helped increase the band's reach and and positioned it as
a national business. In nineteen sixty on, the Freedo Company
merged with H. W. La and Company, and in nineteen
sixty five they merged with PepsiCo. A couple of different
flavors were tried, but really none stuck around at first,
(19:25):
apart from the Cheesy in nineteen seventy one, no new
flavors until two and Flaming Hot Cheetos. All Flaming Hot Cheetos.
They are a favorite around the office. I don't necessarily
understand it, but but Dylan looks like he's dreaming right now,
(19:47):
and the story behind them is pretty Great Richard Montaignez
was a janitor at the California Plants Freedo plant. He
had dropped out of high school in part because he
spoke little English at the time, and when he got
a job at the Friedol plant, he took the advice
of his grandfather, quote, make sure that floor shines and
let them know that A. Montaignez mopped it, and Montenniez did.
(20:11):
As he was working, he started to notice that there
weren't products catering to Latinos, and one day, due to
a breakdown in the machinery, Montagniez procured some cheetohs before
they got that coating of cheese powder, and he took
them home and added chili powder in its place. He
got the idea, I believe he saw some elotes and
(20:31):
he was like, ha ha, let me try this um
and this habit was adopted by his friends and family,
who encouraged him to share the idea of this idea
of his with the CEO, and Montagniez did, calling up
the CEO directly. He didn't realize that wasn't really a
thing you did, but the CEO heard him out and
(20:55):
gave him two weeks to prepare for a presentation, and
Monteniez wasn't sure what a presentation to a CEO should be,
but with the help of his wife, they checked out
library books on marketing, they designed bags and manually made
one hundred packages, and during the presentation, when he was
asked about how much market share they could get, montenie
(21:18):
says he sort of spread his arms wide and said
this much, which I love. The CEO was like, oh right, yeah, sure, um,
and now it's a best selling flavor. And Monteniez is
the Executive VP of Multicultural Sales for PepsiCo North America.
He's been named one of the most influential Hispanic leaders
(21:40):
in America by Fortune five hundred and Newsweek, and he
teaches NBA classes at a college close to his home.
When a student asked how he was teaching without a PhD,
Monteniez responded, I do have a PhD. I have been poor,
hungry and determined. M And last I heard Fox Searchlight
was is making a movie about him? Yes, yeah, um,
(22:03):
and yes these things have a huge following. Flaming hot cheetos. Yes, yes,
Katy Perry dressed as one for what I'm guessing saloween,
but you know it could have been anything. Um, there's
a rap song about them. School kids love them, and
they qualify as smart snacks here in the US, the
whole grain kind of the less salt and less oil
do anyway, So that's the flaming hot Cheetos, and their
(22:29):
success reopened the door to new flavors and a lot
of interesting ones. I have to say, yeah, um, there
are twenty one flavors in North America, like it's also
can cause so bacon cheddar Alpino extra flaming Hot Cheetos.
In Japan, you can are could get pepsi flavored like
(22:51):
we mentioned at the top, mountain dew flavored cheetos. Pepsi
might sound like an odd flavor of chips, but despite this,
or maybe because of it, of Americans rushed to eBay
for samples. One review read quote it created a carbonated
sensation when you eat them, kind of like pop rocks
if pop rocks came in blindingly citrus like flavor. Huh.
(23:16):
China wasn't big into cheetos, probably because of the general
lack of cheese and Chinese diet. So six hundred flavors
were tested in focus groups before a sort of pop
corny flavor called Savory American Cream was declared the winner. Okay,
Savory American Cream. In ninety one, Cheetos debuted their mascot
(23:38):
to the public, A mouse. A mouse, Yes, the first
mascot was the Cheetos Mouse. You can still find old
commercials with him online. Uh, Cheese that goes crunch was
the slogan. He was very like calm. He was just like,
you know, don't you want to try some cheese that
goes crunch? Very very different than the current mascot, Chester
(24:04):
the Cheetah. And he was introduced in the mid eighties.
And we have to talk about Chester for a second.
I'm sorry we have to because it ain't easy be
and cheesy and he's dangerously cheesy, and we can relate.
He was cool that we can't really do. Really, he
had sunglasses, he had lace up sneakers. Daffy Duck was
(24:27):
his stunt double one cool dude, cool enough for PepsiCo
to want to give him his own Saturday Morning cartoon.
The proposed name yo, It's the Chester Cheetah Show, but
groups were worried about the impact of essentially a commercial
on kids brains and they fought successfully to keep it
(24:49):
off the air. I do still I mean Transformers, Geeah Joe,
oh yeah, my little Pony. I mean like the Super
Mario Brothers super show. Like come on, guys, like if
you guys all of that through, what could have possibly
gone wrong with Yo? It's the chick Cheese nothing not
think of um and kind of unrelated um. The name
(25:14):
of the craft brand Mac and Cheese is the mascot
is Cheese a source Rex and he too almost had
a show at the same time that was shot down.
Just picturing like a supergroup Cheese mascots. Sure, maybe Chuck
E Cheese could yeah, oh man picturing something very like
(25:38):
adventures or yeah, yeah, I think that um for our
our other side project that well one day happened the Dunker.
Perhaps they could be a like boy band Cheese because
Cheese a source drugs has got the jazz thing happening. Yeah,
Chester seems like he'd sing. I think he could play
(25:59):
a guitar. He seems like the kind of cat, one
cool cat who's there for the That is a young
Hercules reference. Probably don't want seen that show, but there
were a lot of Cheetos commercials in the breaks of
that show I remember, um, and some of these commercials
might have been for things like Cheeto Paws, which I
(26:21):
kind of remember, but they were discontinued in nine, or
maybe the XS and Osh they were dis continued in
two thousands, or the Pizza Puffs were discontinued in two
thousands six. The Twist discontinued in are the Mystery colors?
Do you remember the Mystery I don't, and I'm sort
of glad they had like bright green picturing like Skittles colors,
(26:44):
but on Cheetos, kind of perfect. Kind of yeah that
all of those probably not that won't surprise anyone, but
all of them have Facebook groups trying to bring them back,
like Petition especially, I think the xs and Os or
the Pause, one of those two has it like a
really big Facebook group. In two thousand nine, a Cheeto
(27:04):
that allegedly looked like Michael Jackson moonwalking was available on eBay,
and the seller claimed he found it the week before
Jackson died and that this increased the value. Allegedly, it
sold for thirty five dollars that same year, which seemed
to be a big year in finding oddly shaped cheetos.
(27:24):
A couple in Texas found a Cheeto shaped like Jesus,
which newspapers dubbed Jesus. There you go. I nod in approval.
In a Colorado governor brought up Cheetos when trying to
keep the public from getting their hopes up when it
came to Canadabis like legalization. Quote, the voters have spoken
(27:46):
and we have to respect their will. This will be
a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said.
Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so
don't break out the Cheetos are goldfish too quickly, and
voters in Colorado sent cheetos to his office when cannabis
was legalized in the state. And also in two thousand twelve,
(28:10):
a flying bag of Cheetos caused a brawl at a
high school in Indiana. Students were waiting outside to get
into the school and a bag of Cheetos hit the
assistant principle in the head, and the assistant principle accused
a student and the student denied it, and things escalated
from there. The student attacked the assistant principle and the
superintendent described it thus, like cheetos went flying everywhere. As
(28:34):
to whether or not the bag was throwing at him
or white was thrown in that general direction. We're looking
into Cheeto mysteries. In the world's largest Cheeto, the product
of what Frito Lay called a seasoning accumulation went on
EVA with bids of over a million dollars for EVA
(28:56):
shut it down for fraudulent bidding. The cheet have discovered
donated it to a small town in Iowa where tourists
could look at it through plexiglass. I don't know if
it's still there, but if it is and you've seen it, listeners,
please send in pictures. A Colorado man stabbed his brother
in an argument that started with cheetos getting dumped onto
(29:19):
a bed. Um. This sounds a lot like an argument
my siblings would have without the stabbing. But yeah, you
put something in my bed, we're going to get in
a fight. Both are okay and claim that the fight
was over stupid stuff. Is Cheetos stuff ever? Stupid stuff?
I don't know or In one of the philosophical questions
(29:40):
of our time, UM kind of an aside, Sweetos, which
are cinnamon sugar sweet Cheetos, came out in um and
this is when the Cheetos store opened where one of
the items available is a makeup bronser so you can
achieve that vibrant Cheetos globe. Oh boy. Um, that's a lot.
(30:03):
Another fun thing about Cheetos they're a good fighter, firestarter
or tender. Um. Not because of anything to do with
the cheese powder. Like I think that the assumption is
that there's some like weird chemical in the cheese coating
that makes some extra flammable. No, it's the fact that
they're fried in oil. They have a lot of oil
in them, and oil is a little bit flammable, just
(30:25):
a little bit. Yeah, but now you know, if you're
ever in the woods you start a fire, be careful,
don't do it unless you know what you're doing. But
if you have a bag of Cheetos, I can't hurt. Oh,
it can hurt. Never take my advice. Um. We have
a little bit of Cheetos marketing science for you. But
(30:47):
first we've got one more quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. Um. Also special thanks to producer Dylan who
(31:07):
during the ad break, because we do frequently talk during
the ad break as though we need to literally take
one um that that although there was no There was
no Chester Cheetah cartoon. There was a video game called
Too Cool to Fool, Yes, and there were no mentions
of Cheetos in the game because it's too cool to fool. Yeah.
(31:31):
But speaking of fooling people, yeah with snacks. Um. Okay.
So there's there's a term in the snacks market um,
and that the getting people to eat more market at large,
which also includes, for example, the military when it's you know,
trying to make sure that soldiers actually eat um. There's
a term called sensory specific safety, and basically this means
(31:56):
when a particular flavor or or sensation that you get
from a food is big enough it overwhelms your brain.
And at first that's a cool thing. Um, You're You're like, cool, Yes,
I like I like this, But quickly your brain doesn't, okay,
enough of that. And so what processed food manufacturers are
doing when they design a food is trying to make
(32:18):
their foods interesting enough to crave, but not so exciting
that your brain feels full of that thing. They'll test
different formulas with with like normal human taste testers and
and record what recipes folks don't like versus what they
like okay versus what they like the most. Um, And
it's often a bell curve where some formula in the
middle is that bliss point of flavor. When researching for
(32:44):
The New York Times circu an article that would become
the Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk, food writer Michael Moss
consulted with a food scientist by the name of Stephen
Witherly um and about Cheetahs, like out of a whole
bag of snacks, whether he picked out the Cheetos and said,
this is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on
(33:04):
the planet in terms of pure pleasure. And this has
something to do with a with a balanced flavor formula,
but also with the way that Cheetos melt in your mouth.
After that initial crunch, it tricks your brain into feeling
like there's nothing to it and that it's okay to
keep eating more. Very chicky. Indeed. Um. That New York
(33:27):
Times article, by the way, makes it sound like a
lot of the food scientists who are involved with these
companies experience like kind of a lot of guilt over
their work and its impact on the health of the
general public. Yeah. I remember when this was first coming
out and a lot of people were talking about it
and hearing some of the people involved expressing so much
(33:47):
guilt about it. Um. But uh, but on a related note,
hope is not totally lost because researchers are always looking
at ways to make these cravable foods healthier. Um. You know,
from the type of food coloring used, to the types
of oil used to uh, the actual physical batter. There
(34:08):
was one study out of Washington State University that added
too to the corn meal in an extruder dried carrot pulp,
which is a waste product left over from from chuicing carrots.
Once extruded, the puffs were even puffier than usual and
the taste was unchanged. Um, and the pulp added a
little bit of like fib fiber and vitamins. So could
(34:30):
could the future hold healthier cheese puffs? I like to
think so me too. Thanks science, First, you make this
marvelous construction of unhealth. Now perhaps perhaps you make it
(34:50):
healthier healthier. Yeah, but that's our our Cheetos cheese puff
but mostly Cheetos episodes. UM. I would love to know
the different brands from different countries. I know we mentioned
that two at the topic and those are from the
UK and Australia. But yeah, in other countries, if you
(35:12):
have different flavors of cheetos, one are different types of
yeah puffs. Yeah, and if they've got terrific brand names
like the holtz It Yeah so good. Yeah. Let us know, yes,
please let us know. But in the meantime this brings
us to listen. Man, is that Chester Cheetah? Not at all,
(35:38):
He's too cool for me. I am dangerous in a
different way. Yes, Kitty wrote, I was just listening to
the peas episode and wanted to say, the English nest
is a very real thing. I always heard it was beef,
mashed potatoes and peas. The beef is the branch, and
the potatoes the nest, and the peas the egg. The
(36:00):
first time I saw an English nest was in a
book featured on Reading Rainbow titled How My Parents Learned
to Eat by Ena Friedman. I was about six years old.
In short. In the book, a Japanese woman learns to
eat with a knife and fork to be with the
man she loves. The man in the book also learns
to use chopsticks. While I am actually Chinese American, not Japanese.
Growing up in the eighties. Here in the US, there
(36:21):
was virtually no Asian representation in books or any media,
so this book really stuck with me. It took me
decades later as an adult to finally find a copy
of my own. Now I believe it is in reprint
and easier to find, so thank you, Kitty. Um. I
knew I had read it in a book somewhere. I
knew it. A lot of people wrote in and said
that they grew up doing this, so I once again
(36:43):
and comforted that it was not just a strange thing
my family did, although there's probably a lot of those
and that's okay too. Oh yes, absolutely, Uh We're we're
all mad down here, uh, Leslie wrote, I devoured the
fetacchinail fredo episode and wanted to share a couple of
(37:03):
morsels with you. I worked in an Olive Garden restaurant
back in the early nineties, and I can verify that
facchino al fredo is definitely the Italian version of American
macaroni and cheese. I guess that's because it's pretty bland,
yummy but not too spicy, and easily tolerated by picky
eaters and children. Serve it in a dish with a
basket of hot breadsticks, and you have the fast Italian
(37:25):
version of chips and salsa in Mexican restaurant staple. Back
in the day, I was a server at Alive Garden,
but also made fresh pasta during the day for use
in the restaurant that night. Pasta episode Anyone Sorry that
gave me access to the kitchen and to trade secrets.
I learned the recipe for their fetacciniol fredo then and
(37:47):
still use it today when I need an easy side
dish to balance something healthy like broiled fish or grilled chicken.
I won't give exact proportions, but the ingredients were and
likely still are, butter, parmesan cheese, heavy cream, and garlic powder.
As server, I discovered that diners can be very passionate
about their alfredo sauce. I once had a guest almost
(38:07):
stab the back of my hand with a fork when
I tried to move her not quite empty dish of
alfredo sauce to make room for her entree. Is my
go to suggestion for that person in a large party
who didn't really like Italian food. It quickly became one
of my favorite comfort foods and still is twenty eight
years later, behind the scenes at all of Garden, all
(38:29):
these Alfredo facts, I love it. Oh yes, thank you. Yes.
If you have any behind the scenes facts and would
like to send them to us, you can. Our email
is food Stuff at house to works at dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Facebook and Twitter at food Stuff hs W. Also on
Instagram at food Stuff. We do hope to hear from you.
(38:51):
Thank you for our super producer, Dylan Fagan, for being
among other things, at Cheeto inspiration. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm an Eries and
I'm Lauren vocal Bam, and today we're talking about Cheetos
and other cheese puffs, cheese poofs, whatever you want to
call him. I did keep calling them cheesy poofs. That's
from South Park, as we learned in the fictional trivia thing.
I mean also from watching the show. But I think
that's why it's been on my mind. Yes, there's a
(00:32):
lot of things to say about cheetahs. There is that.
This episode was inspired by our super producer Dylan and
his cheeto genius. Um. He eats cheetos chopsticks. It keeps
everything nice and clean and neat. He's doing it currently,
he is right this very moment, and it is delightful. Yes,
So I want to start out with a question. Do
(00:52):
you know the game and Jack in the Box? I
believe we've played it in in line for rides at
Disney World. That was heads up, okay, okay, sorry man.
We did get a lot of enjoyment out of that.
But I am familiar with the game Check in the Box.
It's like a series of games, um, but you play
it usually on your phone with other people in the
(01:13):
room and all the phones connect to the TV, and
there's one that is sort of like a March Madness
brackets thing where people vote to determine what being in
the bracket should advance. And one of the competitions or
questions is um around the sexiest mascot, and Chester of
(01:33):
the Cheetos always wins. No contest, no one votes for
anyone else, And I've pondered it sometimes I'm like, I mean,
I suppose, you know, as Chester himself might say, it's
not easy being cheesy. No, we we know every time
(01:55):
we record um, we know the battle. Also, another rule
thing I wanted to mention is supproad Dissilda Dad's. The
taste of loneliness is the parody brand on a thirty rock.
That's what Liz Lemon eats when she's sad or you know,
upset are just in general because she's usually pretty. Oh yeah,
Baseline a little bit, a little bit upset at people. Yeah,
(02:18):
I love it, I love it, but all right, Cheetos,
what is it? Cheetos are a name brand of cheese puffs,
which are a snack made of puffed corn dough that's
either baked or fried and then coated in either dehydrated
cheese or a cheese flavored powder. Cheese fla poder flavored powder. Yes,
(02:41):
depending on your level of actual cheese in there. Um,
there's certain marketing restrictions on what you can actually call something.
I love it. Yeah. Um. Cheese puffs, by the way,
here are are not to be confused with are um,
which are French pastry puff bites that are made with
just an impressive amount of greer cheese and are so delicious.
(03:01):
Sometimes they come stuffed with things. Oh indeed. Yeah, it's
like cheese flavored too, and it's just so good. Anyway, Yes,
we must move on. We we do this a whole
whole other episode about puff pastry at some point in
the future. I'm a little bit intimidated by it in
a baking and a sign standpoint, but we're going to
(03:21):
come back to it. Meanwhile, Cheetos, Yeah, how they're made
is great. I'm really excited about this because they're because
they're basically a different form of popcorn. What I couldn't
be more on board. You start, you start, um the
cheeto process with three simple ingredients and one kind of
(03:43):
complicated one. Um corn meal, water, oil, and flavor coating.
Flavor coating. The flavor coating will come back to later. Um.
But okay, so did you listen to or perhaps if
you're Annie and sitting across from me, participate in our
popcorn episode. Just listen to it on repeat. It I
hand over heart streaming of what could be all right
(04:08):
if you if you did listen, or if you listen
every night. Um, you might remember that corn kernels contain
a mix of proteins and starches that, when heated with
a little bit of moisture under pressure, will gelatinize. M Yeah,
they turned into this kind of kind of fun goo.
If you release the pressure, the goo will rapidly expand
(04:30):
into a foam that cools at room temperature into a
solid fluff. A kernel of popcorn. It's own little pressure
cooker when it's heated up. But when you've got corn meal,
you've got to provide the pressure along with the temperature
in order to create this puffing scenario. So therefore, cheese
puffs are extruded. Extrusion is a scary sounding word, but
(04:54):
but it just means that you've you've got a machine
that lets you push dough through a tube with a
die or a mold on the end to to create
different shapes like a like a Plato machine. Oh yeah, um,
Except in this case, your Plato machine is filled with
corn meal and just a little bit of water, and
it heats this mixture up to just about the boiling
point of water. And there's this screw on the inside
(05:16):
of the pipe that shears the hot corn meal against
the sides of the tube, creating enough pressure that the
water boils and the corn meal gelatinizes. So when when
it goes through that die at the end into the
relatively cool and low pressure environment that we call normal air,
the goo expands into foam and cools to a solid
(05:37):
and a split second, And the shape of the dye
and the way that you cut the dough as it
comes out will determine the shape of your cheese puff.
And I'm actually somehow downplaying how completely rad this is.
Um that the machine is moving fast enough and at
high enough pressure that when the puffs come out, they
actually fly three ft through the air and hit the
(06:00):
net or cage that that drops them down onto a
belt to go on through the rest of the process.
Your video of this so badly, yes, Um, But we're
not done yet. There's more yes, there's more for flavor
and crunch, and to reduce the amount of moisture left
in the puffs. You know you don't want a saggy cheeto. Um.
(06:20):
The puffs will move through either a fryer or an oven.
Cheetos are generally fried, um, unless they say baked on
the package, and then they're probably baked yeah weird. Um.
Then they're ready for flavor. They'll either be spritsed with
oil and then tossed with dry seasonings, or, in the
case of Cheetos, sent into this tumbler drum that simultaneously
(06:42):
tosses them and also sprays them with this pre mixed
oil plus seasonings kind of stuff. Um. This drum is
called a flavor reel. By the way, our favorite R
E L flavor reel. M hmm. I love everything about
this the the the coated puffs are allowed to dry out,
(07:03):
and they're packaged, and the entire process of creating this
packaged product takes like less than twenty minutes. I have
some kind of weird desire to just like stand in
from the net and be pelted with That is slightly strange,
but I want to be in like a beekeeping soup
(07:26):
I don't know what this says about me, Lauren, I
don't know. I can't deny that it sounds delightful. I
just want to spread wire arms wack and just receive
received the corn puff goodness. Yeah. As wacky as it
all is, it is this highly scientific process. You you like,
have to get the just the right moisture content in
(07:47):
the original corn meal itself, and also once you add
the water, and also throughout the whole process and also
when you're packaging it. Um Chinos has an in house
lab that analyzes the chemical composition of their product once
every thirty minutes wow, and then once every four hours,
a panel of four tasters will inspect a sample, comparing
it to reference Cheetos that are flown in by the
(08:10):
powers that be? Is so scientific, fantastic reference Cheetos? Who
gets to be the tasters? Is this like a job
you change for your whole life? I think it is
a rocky theme is planning and you're like dinner eating Cheetos.
I didn't ask. There's no one that I could ask,
if you know? Right in yes please. There's also a
(08:32):
recipe for making your own up on splendid table. It
involves steaming tapioca and corn flower dough for an hour,
dehydrating pieces of it for up to ten hours, and
then deep frying them. I was almost scared to link
this because I feel like you're gonna go do it. Yeah, yeah,
(08:53):
and I suspect it will go well for me, but
you know, I won't know until I try exactly like
a very gesture in terms of nutrition. Mm hmm. Well,
baked baked cheese puffs aren't too bad for you, um,
but the fried ones uh, nutritionally speaking, you know, they're
(09:17):
they're mostly oil and simple carbohydrates. You know, it's just
fat and like the specific type of sugars that carb
sugars that they get you like a little bit high. Oh,
I mean not like high high, but but they just
they just perked you up real quick, okay. Um, So
it's a very pleasurable thing to eat, um, along with salt,
(09:38):
which you know also gives you a little bit of
it that's delicious. Um. Some of the other ingredients listed
on your typical cheese puff package are vitamins and minerals
uh that actually get leached from the corn meal during
processing and thus are added back in so that your
snack isn't like completely nutritionally void, So that's nice. Yeah,
um but what But what I'm saying is that you know,
(09:59):
they feel like a treat, and they should be treated
as treats, treated as a treat all right around the world.
There are all kinds of brands of cheese puffs, like
Twisties and what's it's, but the leading brand of cheese puffs, um,
I keep wanting to call them cheesy proofs is Friedo
Lays Cheetos, which boasted four billion in annual sales in
(10:24):
and to make a year's supply of Cheetos, PepsiCo needs
five thousand cows to get the eleven million gallons of milk.
That's two thousand, two hundred gallons per cow to make
the ten million pounds of cheddar cheese for that cheesy powder.
More and how that cheese powder is made. In the
middle of our history section, yeah, twenty two countries produced Cheetos,
(10:45):
making all kinds of flavors, from pepsi to peanut butter.
Jillists did a rather in depth look into the serving
sizes of nine types of chips snack things and found
that Cheetos regularly gives customers more than the serving size
on the back indicates one hundred and eighty nine is
(11:06):
what it probably says in the back, but what you're
more likely to get is something closer to two thirty
seven and a half um. And che Does was declared
the value winner of all of the others at point
zero zero eight dollar, so I guess sense per chip uh. Interestingly,
baby boomers are the first generation whose intake of snacks
(11:29):
did not decline as they hit middle age, but increased.
Interesting indeed, I think it has something to do with
our snack habits overall. Probably is sometimes known as the
year of the Cheeto. It appeared in loads of fast
food items like case that eats, burritos are as, the
coating on chicken tenders, the scientific marvel that is Burger
(11:53):
King's Mac, and Cheetos. They were hailed as the new Torito,
which I love that because I don't what that means.
What war is peace? I don't know. Nothing makes sense anymore,
but the Cheeto. Speaking of making sense or not. As
(12:17):
a very perhaps a surprising history, it does. And we
will get into that just as soon as we get
back from a quick break for a word from our sponsor.
(12:37):
And we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you alright.
So we owe our thanks for cheese curls cheese puffs
poofs to an animal feed manufacturer in Wisconsin. Animal feed,
animal feed. Mm hmm yep. I'm not gonna explain were.
(13:00):
I'm gonna let you wonder about it. Perfect. No, I
have to explain everything because I love it. Um. Okay.
So when this manufacturer was making the feed, um grinder
flaked the corn, and in order to clean the grinder,
workers would feed the machine damp corn, which made these
poofy corn things a k corn puffs. One of the
(13:23):
employees took them home and dried them out, and when
he didn't die, uh, he found the flavor and texture
quite pleasing actually, and he suggested that the company sell
them for human consumption under the name corn Curls with ks,
which they did after changing the name of the company
to you know shake. The history of you know, animal feed. Yeah,
(13:46):
we're an animal feed company, but now we're feeding you humans.
The Elmer Candy Corporation lays claim to creating the first
cheese curl the cheesee as well, and the cheese doodle.
Cheese with the Z was a popular snack produced in
New York, and it came onto the scene in the fifties.
But when it comes to Cheetos, they were the invention
(14:09):
of Ce Doulin in nineteen. Dolan was born in Kansas City, Kansas,
in nineteen but his family moved to Texas when he
was quite young. His father was an inventor, and the
young Duelan worked at his father's auto repair shop and
the confectionery that the family owned. He was looking for
(14:29):
a new snack and he responded to an ad in
the San Antonio Express for a fried cornship recipe and
adapted potato ricer. And that's not all nineteen retail accounts too,
and Dulan got all of this for a cool one
hundred bucks. Then massa was pushed through the ricer and
(14:50):
then snapped into ribbons and fried in oil. These chips
um were named Friedo's and the Friedo compan and he
got it start. It grew relatively quickly, five plants by
and they made other snacks as well. Friedo wasn't the
only thing. Dulan was behind innovations and practices like store
(15:11):
door delivery are or having the company's salespeople doing the
stocking of their product um clip wrecks Who's behind that.
He experimented with canned foods and dis toes and fast food,
opening one of the first text mex fast food places
in the country and the first place in Dallas to
have a microwave, as it was called at the time
(15:34):
radar range. He came up with cup shaped fried tortilla shelves.
Another thing he did was invest in Disneyland in its
early stages. When it opened in nineteen fifty five, Disneyland
featured a restaurant of Doolan's called Costa to free Do.
Kind of ironically, I guess he was a big health
(15:54):
nut and kept up to date with health advancements and trends,
and he tried to translate that into his products. He
went on to join the Texas Department of Agriculture, which
later developed a corn hybrid that was used in fritos.
Both he and his father did so much more like
this is very very condensed, but reading it is one
of those times where I was like, what you did
(16:14):
this much stuff? Also? And how did you? You must
have gotten up very early in the morning exactly, But
that's that's kind of the gist. Cheetos, though. Doulan was
looking to make a snack that wouldn't go stale, and
he got his inspiration from corn chips, and he conducted
several experiments with his kids as the test subjects. That's
(16:35):
a theme that we're seeing coming f al lot Um
and he he did first come up with a recipe
for fritos and then later cheetos. He got inspiration for
an adaptation to dairy preservative technique from the U. S.
Armies dehydrated cheese, So in a way U. S. Army
is also responsible for cheetos. Yep. The Army placed a
huge order for um World War One, buying twenty five
(17:00):
million quarter pound tins of processed cheese from Craft and
this is what catapulted Craft to what it is now
at least one of the big things. Point being, the
armor is big cheese fans and was always looking for
a way to do more with less. In a U. S.
D a dairy scientist by the name of George Sanders
(17:20):
came up with the first cheese powder. At the time,
the military was a little mad with the powers of dehydration. Uh.
You know, water is heavy, heavy is expensive to ship.
If you dehydrate your food, you can ship way more
of it, be it vegetables, potatoes, eggs, or cheese. So
they were funding all kinds of people who were working
(17:41):
on all these dehydration technologies at the time, including the
aforementioned craft and the U S d A. And cheese
for a long time was considered impossible to dehydrate because
that the heat used in dehydration would melt the cheese
and separate the fats from the milk solids. But Sanders
developed a method of drying shredded use at low temperatures
(18:01):
to create this protective crust not not just around the
shreds of cheese, but around the molecules themselves within the shreds. Uh.
The shreds could then be ground and dehydrated at closer
to a usual temperature. And this, obviously, like getting a
packet of dehydrated cheese, wouldn't really be the same thing
as you know, sending a soldier like a hunk of
(18:22):
cheese to eat with your hand, um. But it was
useful for cooking and flavoring, and when the war ended,
the army had all of these wartime contracts and excess
food to figure out UM in a way that wouldn't
calls companies to collapse or maybe even industries. One of
(18:42):
the things they did was sell back dehydrated cheese at
like a third of the price, and a lot of
companies snapped it up. It's cheap, we'll find a we'll
find something to do with it later, including the Freedo Company,
which debuted the Cheeto dusted with Army dehydrated cheese. Uh yeah.
And meanwhile, during the war, Freedo was a supplier of
(19:03):
chips to the military um which sort of like craft,
helped increase the band's reach and and positioned it as
a national business. In nineteen sixty on, the Freedo Company
merged with H. W. La and Company, and in nineteen
sixty five they merged with PepsiCo. A couple of different
flavors were tried, but really none stuck around at first,
(19:25):
apart from the Cheesy in nineteen seventy one, no new
flavors until two and Flaming Hot Cheetos. All Flaming Hot Cheetos.
They are a favorite around the office. I don't necessarily
understand it, but but Dylan looks like he's dreaming right now,
(19:47):
and the story behind them is pretty Great Richard Montaignez
was a janitor at the California Plants Freedo plant. He
had dropped out of high school in part because he
spoke little English at the time, and when he got
a job at the Friedol plant, he took the advice
of his grandfather, quote, make sure that floor shines and
let them know that A. Montaignez mopped it, and Montenniez did.
(20:11):
As he was working, he started to notice that there
weren't products catering to Latinos, and one day, due to
a breakdown in the machinery, Montagniez procured some cheetohs before
they got that coating of cheese powder, and he took
them home and added chili powder in its place. He
got the idea, I believe he saw some elotes and
(20:31):
he was like, ha ha, let me try this um
and this habit was adopted by his friends and family,
who encouraged him to share the idea of this idea
of his with the CEO, and Montagniez did, calling up
the CEO directly. He didn't realize that wasn't really a
thing you did, but the CEO heard him out and
(20:55):
gave him two weeks to prepare for a presentation, and
Monteniez wasn't sure what a presentation to a CEO should be,
but with the help of his wife, they checked out
library books on marketing, they designed bags and manually made
one hundred packages, and during the presentation, when he was
asked about how much market share they could get, montenie
(21:18):
says he sort of spread his arms wide and said
this much, which I love. The CEO was like, oh right, yeah, sure, um,
and now it's a best selling flavor. And Monteniez is
the Executive VP of Multicultural Sales for PepsiCo North America.
He's been named one of the most influential Hispanic leaders
(21:40):
in America by Fortune five hundred and Newsweek, and he
teaches NBA classes at a college close to his home.
When a student asked how he was teaching without a PhD,
Monteniez responded, I do have a PhD. I have been poor,
hungry and determined. M And last I heard Fox Searchlight
was is making a movie about him? Yes, yeah, um,
(22:03):
and yes these things have a huge following. Flaming hot cheetos. Yes, yes,
Katy Perry dressed as one for what I'm guessing saloween,
but you know it could have been anything. Um, there's
a rap song about them. School kids love them, and
they qualify as smart snacks here in the US, the
whole grain kind of the less salt and less oil
do anyway, So that's the flaming hot Cheetos, and their
(22:29):
success reopened the door to new flavors and a lot
of interesting ones. I have to say, yeah, um, there
are twenty one flavors in North America, like it's also
can cause so bacon cheddar Alpino extra flaming Hot Cheetos.
In Japan, you can are could get pepsi flavored like
(22:51):
we mentioned at the top, mountain dew flavored cheetos. Pepsi
might sound like an odd flavor of chips, but despite this,
or maybe because of it, of Americans rushed to eBay
for samples. One review read quote it created a carbonated
sensation when you eat them, kind of like pop rocks
if pop rocks came in blindingly citrus like flavor. Huh.
(23:16):
China wasn't big into cheetos, probably because of the general
lack of cheese and Chinese diet. So six hundred flavors
were tested in focus groups before a sort of pop
corny flavor called Savory American Cream was declared the winner. Okay,
Savory American Cream. In ninety one, Cheetos debuted their mascot
(23:38):
to the public, A mouse. A mouse, Yes, the first
mascot was the Cheetos Mouse. You can still find old
commercials with him online. Uh, Cheese that goes crunch was
the slogan. He was very like calm. He was just like,
you know, don't you want to try some cheese that
goes crunch? Very very different than the current mascot, Chester
(24:04):
the Cheetah. And he was introduced in the mid eighties.
And we have to talk about Chester for a second.
I'm sorry we have to because it ain't easy be
and cheesy and he's dangerously cheesy, and we can relate.
He was cool that we can't really do. Really, he
had sunglasses, he had lace up sneakers. Daffy Duck was
(24:27):
his stunt double one cool dude, cool enough for PepsiCo
to want to give him his own Saturday Morning cartoon.
The proposed name yo, It's the Chester Cheetah Show, but
groups were worried about the impact of essentially a commercial
on kids brains and they fought successfully to keep it
(24:49):
off the air. I do still I mean Transformers, Geeah Joe,
oh yeah, my little Pony. I mean like the Super
Mario Brothers super show. Like come on, guys, like if
you guys all of that through, what could have possibly
gone wrong with Yo? It's the chick Cheese nothing not
think of um and kind of unrelated um. The name
(25:14):
of the craft brand Mac and Cheese is the mascot
is Cheese a source Rex and he too almost had
a show at the same time that was shot down.
Just picturing like a supergroup Cheese mascots. Sure, maybe Chuck
E Cheese could yeah, oh man picturing something very like
(25:38):
adventures or yeah, yeah, I think that um for our
our other side project that well one day happened the Dunker.
Perhaps they could be a like boy band Cheese because
Cheese a source drugs has got the jazz thing happening. Yeah,
Chester seems like he'd sing. I think he could play
(25:59):
a guitar. He seems like the kind of cat, one
cool cat who's there for the That is a young
Hercules reference. Probably don't want seen that show, but there
were a lot of Cheetos commercials in the breaks of
that show I remember, um, and some of these commercials
might have been for things like Cheeto Paws, which I
(26:21):
kind of remember, but they were discontinued in nine, or
maybe the XS and Osh they were dis continued in
two thousands, or the Pizza Puffs were discontinued in two
thousands six. The Twist discontinued in are the Mystery colors?
Do you remember the Mystery I don't, and I'm sort
of glad they had like bright green picturing like Skittles colors,
(26:44):
but on Cheetos, kind of perfect. Kind of yeah that
all of those probably not that won't surprise anyone, but
all of them have Facebook groups trying to bring them back,
like Petition especially, I think the xs and Os or
the Pause, one of those two has it like a
really big Facebook group. In two thousand nine, a Cheeto
(27:04):
that allegedly looked like Michael Jackson moonwalking was available on eBay,
and the seller claimed he found it the week before
Jackson died and that this increased the value. Allegedly, it
sold for thirty five dollars that same year, which seemed
to be a big year in finding oddly shaped cheetos.
(27:24):
A couple in Texas found a Cheeto shaped like Jesus,
which newspapers dubbed Jesus. There you go. I nod in approval.
In a Colorado governor brought up Cheetos when trying to
keep the public from getting their hopes up when it
came to Canadabis like legalization. Quote, the voters have spoken
(27:46):
and we have to respect their will. This will be
a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said.
Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so
don't break out the Cheetos are goldfish too quickly, and
voters in Colorado sent cheetos to his office when cannabis
was legalized in the state. And also in two thousand twelve,
(28:10):
a flying bag of Cheetos caused a brawl at a
high school in Indiana. Students were waiting outside to get
into the school and a bag of Cheetos hit the
assistant principle in the head, and the assistant principle accused
a student and the student denied it, and things escalated
from there. The student attacked the assistant principle and the
superintendent described it thus, like cheetos went flying everywhere. As
(28:34):
to whether or not the bag was throwing at him
or white was thrown in that general direction. We're looking
into Cheeto mysteries. In the world's largest Cheeto, the product
of what Frito Lay called a seasoning accumulation went on
EVA with bids of over a million dollars for EVA
(28:56):
shut it down for fraudulent bidding. The cheet have discovered
donated it to a small town in Iowa where tourists
could look at it through plexiglass. I don't know if
it's still there, but if it is and you've seen it, listeners,
please send in pictures. A Colorado man stabbed his brother
in an argument that started with cheetos getting dumped onto
(29:19):
a bed. Um. This sounds a lot like an argument
my siblings would have without the stabbing. But yeah, you
put something in my bed, we're going to get in
a fight. Both are okay and claim that the fight
was over stupid stuff. Is Cheetos stuff ever? Stupid stuff?
I don't know or In one of the philosophical questions
(29:40):
of our time, UM kind of an aside, Sweetos, which
are cinnamon sugar sweet Cheetos, came out in um and
this is when the Cheetos store opened where one of
the items available is a makeup bronser so you can
achieve that vibrant Cheetos globe. Oh boy. Um, that's a lot.
(30:03):
Another fun thing about Cheetos they're a good fighter, firestarter
or tender. Um. Not because of anything to do with
the cheese powder. Like I think that the assumption is
that there's some like weird chemical in the cheese coating
that makes some extra flammable. No, it's the fact that
they're fried in oil. They have a lot of oil
in them, and oil is a little bit flammable, just
(30:25):
a little bit. Yeah, but now you know, if you're
ever in the woods you start a fire, be careful,
don't do it unless you know what you're doing. But
if you have a bag of Cheetos, I can't hurt. Oh,
it can hurt. Never take my advice. Um. We have
a little bit of Cheetos marketing science for you. But
(30:47):
first we've got one more quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. Um. Also special thanks to producer Dylan who
(31:07):
during the ad break, because we do frequently talk during
the ad break as though we need to literally take
one um that that although there was no There was
no Chester Cheetah cartoon. There was a video game called
Too Cool to Fool, Yes, and there were no mentions
of Cheetos in the game because it's too cool to fool. Yeah.
(31:31):
But speaking of fooling people, yeah with snacks. Um. Okay.
So there's there's a term in the snacks market um,
and that the getting people to eat more market at large,
which also includes, for example, the military when it's you know,
trying to make sure that soldiers actually eat um. There's
a term called sensory specific safety, and basically this means
(31:56):
when a particular flavor or or sensation that you get
from a food is big enough it overwhelms your brain.
And at first that's a cool thing. Um, You're You're like, cool, Yes,
I like I like this, But quickly your brain doesn't, okay,
enough of that. And so what processed food manufacturers are
doing when they design a food is trying to make
(32:18):
their foods interesting enough to crave, but not so exciting
that your brain feels full of that thing. They'll test
different formulas with with like normal human taste testers and
and record what recipes folks don't like versus what they
like okay versus what they like the most. Um, And
it's often a bell curve where some formula in the
middle is that bliss point of flavor. When researching for
(32:44):
The New York Times circu an article that would become
the Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk, food writer Michael Moss
consulted with a food scientist by the name of Stephen
Witherly um and about Cheetahs, like out of a whole
bag of snacks, whether he picked out the Cheetos and said,
this is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on
(33:04):
the planet in terms of pure pleasure. And this has
something to do with a with a balanced flavor formula,
but also with the way that Cheetos melt in your mouth.
After that initial crunch, it tricks your brain into feeling
like there's nothing to it and that it's okay to
keep eating more. Very chicky. Indeed. Um. That New York
(33:27):
Times article, by the way, makes it sound like a
lot of the food scientists who are involved with these
companies experience like kind of a lot of guilt over
their work and its impact on the health of the
general public. Yeah. I remember when this was first coming
out and a lot of people were talking about it
and hearing some of the people involved expressing so much
(33:47):
guilt about it. Um. But uh, but on a related note,
hope is not totally lost because researchers are always looking
at ways to make these cravable foods healthier. Um. You know,
from the type of food coloring used, to the types
of oil used to uh, the actual physical batter. There
(34:08):
was one study out of Washington State University that added
too to the corn meal in an extruder dried carrot pulp,
which is a waste product left over from from chuicing carrots.
Once extruded, the puffs were even puffier than usual and
the taste was unchanged. Um, and the pulp added a
little bit of like fib fiber and vitamins. So could
(34:30):
could the future hold healthier cheese puffs? I like to
think so me too. Thanks science, First, you make this
marvelous construction of unhealth. Now perhaps perhaps you make it
(34:50):
healthier healthier. Yeah, but that's our our Cheetos cheese puff
but mostly Cheetos episodes. UM. I would love to know
the different brands from different countries. I know we mentioned
that two at the topic and those are from the
UK and Australia. But yeah, in other countries, if you
(35:12):
have different flavors of cheetos, one are different types of
yeah puffs. Yeah, and if they've got terrific brand names
like the holtz It Yeah so good. Yeah. Let us know, yes,
please let us know. But in the meantime this brings
us to listen. Man, is that Chester Cheetah? Not at all,
(35:38):
He's too cool for me. I am dangerous in a
different way. Yes, Kitty wrote, I was just listening to
the peas episode and wanted to say, the English nest
is a very real thing. I always heard it was beef,
mashed potatoes and peas. The beef is the branch, and
the potatoes the nest, and the peas the egg. The
(36:00):
first time I saw an English nest was in a
book featured on Reading Rainbow titled How My Parents Learned
to Eat by Ena Friedman. I was about six years old.
In short. In the book, a Japanese woman learns to
eat with a knife and fork to be with the
man she loves. The man in the book also learns
to use chopsticks. While I am actually Chinese American, not Japanese.
Growing up in the eighties. Here in the US, there
(36:21):
was virtually no Asian representation in books or any media,
so this book really stuck with me. It took me
decades later as an adult to finally find a copy
of my own. Now I believe it is in reprint
and easier to find, so thank you, Kitty. Um. I
knew I had read it in a book somewhere. I
knew it. A lot of people wrote in and said
that they grew up doing this, so I once again
(36:43):
and comforted that it was not just a strange thing
my family did, although there's probably a lot of those
and that's okay too. Oh yes, absolutely, Uh We're we're
all mad down here, uh, Leslie wrote, I devoured the
fetacchinail fredo episode and wanted to share a couple of
(37:03):
morsels with you. I worked in an Olive Garden restaurant
back in the early nineties, and I can verify that
facchino al fredo is definitely the Italian version of American
macaroni and cheese. I guess that's because it's pretty bland,
yummy but not too spicy, and easily tolerated by picky
eaters and children. Serve it in a dish with a
basket of hot breadsticks, and you have the fast Italian
(37:25):
version of chips and salsa in Mexican restaurant staple. Back
in the day, I was a server at Alive Garden,
but also made fresh pasta during the day for use
in the restaurant that night. Pasta episode Anyone Sorry that
gave me access to the kitchen and to trade secrets.
I learned the recipe for their fetacciniol fredo then and
(37:47):
still use it today when I need an easy side
dish to balance something healthy like broiled fish or grilled chicken.
I won't give exact proportions, but the ingredients were and
likely still are, butter, parmesan cheese, heavy cream, and garlic powder.
As server, I discovered that diners can be very passionate
about their alfredo sauce. I once had a guest almost
(38:07):
stab the back of my hand with a fork when
I tried to move her not quite empty dish of
alfredo sauce to make room for her entree. Is my
go to suggestion for that person in a large party
who didn't really like Italian food. It quickly became one
of my favorite comfort foods and still is twenty eight
years later, behind the scenes at all of Garden, all
(38:29):
these Alfredo facts, I love it. Oh yes, thank you. Yes.
If you have any behind the scenes facts and would
like to send them to us, you can. Our email
is food Stuff at house to works at dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Facebook and Twitter at food Stuff hs W. Also on
Instagram at food Stuff. We do hope to hear from you.
(38:51):
Thank you for our super producer, Dylan Fagan, for being
among other things, at Cheeto inspiration. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things coming your way.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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