Savor Classics: Cranberries, from Bog to Table

This North American winter staple has sprouted crazes, battles, and bitter scares. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren linger just a little on the cranberry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome Savor protection of iHeart Radio and Stuff Media.
I'm Any and I'm Lauren voc Obam, and today we
have a classic Savor episode for you from back when
we were a food stuff indeed, and it's about cranberries. Cranberries. Yes,
I admitted recently that, Um, I have started culling down
the menu at our Thanksgiving meal, right, which as you

(00:31):
listen to this has just happened. And also I love
last year how many people commented and we're like, how
drunk are you at this point? Drink responsibly? But that
was funny. Um, I am doing away with cranberry sauce,
which is one of my favorite things, but no one else,
so I've been equal opportunity. Yeah, right, Well that's very
polite of you. Yeah, and I guess it's one less

(00:52):
thing to cook. It is like a relatively simple thing,
It's true, but it's it's as you know, Lauren, I
have an anxiety around leftovers, so it falls to me
to eat all the cranberry sauce, which is wonderful in
some ways but very stressful in other ways. I'm a
very complicated human being. I see you, I see you,
and I understand. Um, Okay, well maybe maybe I'll like

(01:15):
bring them to D and D so that you can
like have like a little bit without having that anxiety. Yes,
and our fella, a fella, our fellow dn D player
in the campaign with those um ramsay producer here had
been on the show. Um he texted me last night
and he just made a cocktail that had cranberries in it,
and he said it was really good because of the
tartness of the cranberries. And I was hitt hit, nudge, nudge,

(01:37):
make that. Let's try it. Yes, Oh that would be wonderful.
I hope I certainly hope that he does. We should
bring it up and don't mention me. Yeah, you know, naturally,
just haven't made any new cocktails that are interesting and
fun and holiday related lately that you'd like to reproduce
for us. Yeah, he won't see through that, No, not
at all. Yeah. Yeah, we've got this episode for you,

(02:01):
and so yeah, we're going to let past Lauren and
Annie take it away. Hello, and welcome to food Stuff.
I'm Lauren Vogelbon and I'm Annie Reese, and today we're
talking about cranberries. Yes, cranberries. It's a seasonal festive topic

(02:28):
here in the United States anyway. Yeah, and pretty much
only in the US and Canada. I was very surprised
to learn that. Well we'll talk about that more later,
but well, they are native to North America. I think
that probably helps. It does. It does, and we're crazy
about them for one tiny part of the year and
then forget that. Nobody cares. What is this tart berry?

(02:50):
We don't want anything to do with it. Oh and
speaking of what are cranberries, Lauren, cranberries are berries. I
know it sounds sort of dub when I say it
that way, but after pineapple and sweetbreads, I felt like
I should really specify. They are the fruit of a
couple of trailing viney shrubs by the scientific names Vaccinium

(03:10):
oxycoccus and Vaccinium macro carbon um, although the latter the
large cranberry that macro um is much more common. A Vaccinium,
by the way, is the same genus that blueberries are
in there, they're pretty closely related. In case you've never
seen a cranberry or never worked with raw ones, which
you know, I think so. In some parts of America,

(03:33):
the conception of a cranberry is just this tin can
shaped jelly are dried things you might find in your salad. Sure, um,
cranberries are are we things an oval about half an
inch long. It's about ten millimeters with bright red or
pink skin and white flesh and side containing these time
and little seeds. Um. They are very tart and a

(03:54):
little bit better. So. Although they can be eaten raw,
they're usually cooked and sweetened. They there are a few
unrelated species of shrubs that bear similar looking and sometimes
similar tasting fruit in the Vibernum genus that are commonly
called cranberry bushes. But they are not. They're not cranberries.

(04:15):
They are totally different plant. Not even a berry has
to be handled differently. Not not what we're talking about
here today. Why did they try to trifles up with
these things? They they look so similar, let's call it
the same thing? Yeah, you know, okay, sure, thanks history. Yeah.
True cranberries, as we've already said, our native to North America,
but have been cultivated in Europe and Chile, and cranberry

(04:39):
bush species are native to parts of Europe and Asia
and Africa. True cranberries grow in bogs. Bogs, I get
to talk about bogs. These are great fascinating ecosystems. Okay,
the first thing you need to make a bog is
a glacier. Of course, about ten thousand years ago, towards
the end of the last ice Age, the leashers that

(05:00):
had descended upon the land began to to separate and recede.
Bits of them would get caught in depressions in the landscape,
and as they melted, if those depressions happened to be
lined with impermeable clay, they wound up forming small lakes
and or large ponds that are called kettle holes. Over time,

(05:20):
these kettle holes collect sediments, and they attract particular plants
that further specialize the environment. You've got you've got peat deposits,
You've got thick moss and acidic water that is low
in oxygen. Cranberries happen to love this. What doesn't love
this is bacteria and fungi. And that is why some
amazingly preserved specimens of ancient humans and other animals have

(05:42):
been found in bogs. Yea that the micro critters that
usually break things down can't really live there. So you
get good. You get good fossilized stuff, or not necessarily
fossilized but preserved in many ways like blog butter bog butter.
Oh right, okay, bringing it back to butter, thank you.
Cranberries are another food that have gone by a handful
of fun names throughout their history, like finn wart and

(06:05):
war short marsh berry. Marshwart not a thing that does
not sound you imagine buying marshwort and the grocery store.
I mean, I can that sounds like you're making a potion. Yeah.
The Native Americans called them sasamanesh are imbani, which translated
to bitter or sourberry, and this can make tracking them

(06:27):
in historical documents and recipes difficult. Like a lot of
things we talked about, The word cranberry itself, a translation
of the German craneberry, referenced its long beak like stocks
that kind of looked like cranes um And it didn't
appear until late seventeenth century America and was probably again
based on things that weren't cranberries at all. Yep, totally correct. Um. Today,

(06:52):
the cranberry industry is valued around three million, with the U. S.
And Canada accounting for nineties percent of production. Yeah, and
it's the state fruit of Wisconsin and Massachusetts and Wisconsin
and Washington State have cranberry museums. Oh, another field chrip opportunity.
I know, if you're in one of those states and
I visited, or you should go visit and write in

(07:13):
and tell us what they're like. Yeah. Meanwhile, As Americans
consume about four hundred million pounds of cranberries a year,
primarily is juice, yes, and that consumption occurs during the
Thanksgiving season. Only five percent of cranberries are sold as
the whole fruit. The rest is all processed stuff. Yeah,

(07:35):
it's a terrible shame. I love fresh cranberries. I know,
I have only had them recently, and I was like,
have I gone so long only knowing the jellied stuff? Anyway,
how did we get to this point? Let's look at
the history. Yeah, over four dred years ago, the Native
Americans were using cranberries a variety of ways. Um. Apart
from eating them straight or as a sweet sauce, they
dry them out and make them into cakes or mix

(07:57):
them with dried venisone and animal fat for pemicon, a
portable and long lasting food that often served as a
primary calorie source on winter trading routes. And could be
traded itself as a commodity. I think about it as
sort of like a like a protein bar of the
ancient days. I think it's often called like the original,
the first protein bar. Yeah. Yeah, jerky and cranberries. I

(08:17):
would definitely eat that protein bar. Oh yeah, me too.
And the importance of pemicon for winter traders led to
the Battle of Seven Oaks in eighteen sixteen. After in
eighteen fourteen, the Red River Colonies governor tried to keep
the Matisse from exporting pemicon through the Pemicon Proclamation. Pemicon Proclamation. Yeah,
he was worried there wouldn't be enough food to feed

(08:39):
the settlers without it, but also wanted to help out
the Hudson Bay Companies for Trade at the extent of
the Northwest Companies for Trade. Yeah, and the Matis believed
he was trying to kill their trade, which legitimately um
After after a series of skirmishes and rising tensions, the
Matise and the Northwest Company fur Traders joined forces to

(08:59):
it hack Red River Colony in response, and twenty two
people died. Yeah, so pretty important, pretty important fomcon. Yeah,
Cranberries were also used other than food and teas, and
as the leaves as a tobacco substitute. They worked well
as a die and as a bait in traps laid
for hairs. The Native Americans utilized cranberries and poultices to

(09:22):
speed up the healing of wounds and tumors, which may
or may not have provided some benefit due to the
cranberry compound that keeps E. Coli and staff from glomming
onto tissue walls, cell walls, um Some traps used it
for bladder and kidney problems. You've probably heard this yourself,
and we will be talking more about that later, absolutely
um digestive problems, and childbirth related issues. European settlers quickly

(09:48):
subbed cranberries interestipes using similar berries, mostly sauces, jams, and
jellies that often appeared alongside meat. Cranberries contain a lot
of pectin, which is one of those natural jelling agents
that that helps make stuff without having to mess with,
you know, like boiling an entire calf's leg right. The
naturalistidity helps absolutely accentuate the meat. By the six hundreds,

(10:12):
North American cranberrys were being used as a cure for scurvy.
For the sailors transverse in the Atlantic back to Europe.
It was believed the so harness pulled the salt from
the body, but we know today this worked due to
the vitamin C and cranberries, because scurvy is a vitamin
C deficiency. Yeah, the pilgrims would most likely be familiar

(10:32):
with the smaller wild European cranberry that grew in bogs
and marshes in England. Not the same thing, but looks similar.
Um northern Europe and even parts of Siberia that's where
it all grew and and Siberia. They stored these cranberries
and barrels of water during the winter, and they would
eat them during the spring. Yeah, if you keep them refrigerated,

(10:52):
cranberries lasted a good couple of months. Yeah, they're chilling out. Literally,
didn't even mean that, boy, Bonus points for the waxy
film on cranberries that could help keep them for weeks. Yeah.
And bees, I love it whenever history and whenever history
talks about bees. I know, and I believe we've mentioned
this before, but in bees from Britain arrived and transformed

(11:14):
the way the colonists could use fruit. Now with a
more readily available form of sweetener honey. Yep, cranberries start
popping up in tarts and pies. Cranberries popularity skyrockets, so
much so that nineteenth century Boston satirist William Tudor wrote,
cranberry is eaten with almost every species of roasted meat,

(11:34):
particularly the white meats, turkeys, etcetera. Some even eat it
with boiled fish. And I knew one person otherwise, a
very worthy man who eats it with lobsters for supper. Oh, outrageous, outrageous.
European cookbooks like The Experienced English Housekeeper in London Art
of Cookery in the seventeen hundreds gave recommendations on cranberry storage.

(11:57):
In the frequently mentioned sev six cookbook American Cookree Amelia
Simmons suggested for cranberry tarts and pies that they be stewed,
strained and sweetened, put into a paste, and big gently mhm. Meanwhile,
in eighteen sixteen we get our first instant instance of
cranberry cultivation. A Massachusetts Revolutionary war veteran by the name

(12:19):
of Henry Hall observed that cranberries in his bog grew
faster when they were exposed to sand blown off of
nearby dunes, and that gave him the idea to transplant
some cranberry vines to an area that he had fenced off,
drained and sanded. The vines became much more fruitful of
producing a variety of types, some of which Hall called

(12:40):
jumbo mm HM. New York City and Boston enjoyed shipments
of Hall's cranberries by eighteen twenty, and others in the
Cape Cod areas started making cranberry yards of their own.
It was around this time in Massachusetts that early Black
and house were selected as the two main cultivars, and
New Jersey began and cultivating cranberries in eighteen thirty five,

(13:02):
Wisconsin in eighteen three, and Oregon in Washington towards the
end of the century. Meanwhile, the price of granulated sugar
was decreasing, and this coincided with the increased availability of cranberries,
meaning that more housewives purchased them as they could now
afford to sweeten them with sugar. Right and sea captains,

(13:23):
familiar with cranberries due to the whole scurvy prevention thing,
got in on the cranberry bog action as well, some
financing them. Two locals in a similar manner they had
done with their ships. The financing some of these bogs
were passed down for generations, and since cranberry vines live
so long, some are thought to be the first vines planted.
Boston would become the major marketing and shipping hub for cranberries,

(13:47):
and uh when shipped greater distances, up to one hundred
pounds of cranberries were packed in barrels of water, and
this barrel became the standard measurement for cranberries still is today.
I've leave. So these barrels of cranberries would become available
starting in the fall, ready for winter celebrations. But how

(14:09):
exactly did they become such a well known part of
North American winter celebrations. We'll find out right after. We
take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So the association of

(14:31):
cran bears with Christmas probably began as early as the
first American Christmas trees in the eighteen forties, which were
traditionally decorated with sweetmeats, not sweetbreads, fruits, nuts, and the like. Um,
and it's only natural that the bright red berry that's
available around this time would lend itself to such a decoration. Also,

(14:51):
since they're kind of sturdy, you can string them on
a string as opposed to other things that you would
string them on. Sure, uh, string string them on a
string and hanging them up, and they'll they'll remain pretty
okay for for a while. Yeah. In eighteen sixty eight,
Queen Victoria's book reference to pie with good tart of
cranberries she had at a dinner in Scotland, so they'd

(15:12):
made it over there. And Reverend Benjamin Eastwood's book on
cranberry cultivation helped grow the industry even further, as did
the expansion of ha yes after the Civil War, something
some historians have given the name cranberry fever took the
country by storm. Everything's a fever. In eighteen seventy one,

(15:34):
the first Cranberry Girls Association coalesced. The eighteen eighties innovation
of wooden cranberry scoops. With improvements in sorting and screening
up to production, and with dollar bill signs in their eyes,
amateurs rushed into the cranberry business. Promises of cranberry money
pouring in did not come to fruition in most cases,
and the majority lost their money. Yeah, there was a

(15:57):
real craze going on. It's like the gold Rush, but
with reason. She saw it. Described that way. Cranberry bog
spread to Wisconsin and New England, which they both surpassed
Massachusetts in production um and by nineteen hundred, twenty one thousand,
five hundred acres were used to produce the berry. Massachusetts
was not out of the game, though not by a

(16:19):
long shot. Cape cod became a household name, and up
until nineteen seven, children of the state might be excused
from school to go help out with the cranberry harvest
every year. Yeah, it's serious business. In nineteen o seven
we saw the force the first formation of the first
cranberry marketing cooperative, the New England Sales Company. Three years later,

(16:41):
in nineteen ten, Massachusetts got the University of Massachusetts Cranberry
Research Station. Yeah, very intrigued by that. The first mechanical
cranberry picker arrived in nineteen twenty, and in nineteen thirty,
as the cranberry industry was peaking with twenty seven thousand,
six hundred forty acres ocean spread, A Cranberries Inc. Stepped

(17:02):
in with a marketing cooperative owned by growers, The great depression.
As you would probably guess, depressed cranberries, crazy growth and
disease also decreased growth further. In the nineteen forties, in
hand scooping was almost a universally replaced by a mechanical

(17:23):
walk behind harvester um. These days this is called dry
harvesting and sometimes uses a helicopter to transport the berries
from the bog without hurting the vines. Then, in the
early nineteen fifties, as refrigerators electric refrigerators that is, became
a thing, housewives began freezing cranberries to last throughout the year.
Thanks to cranberries dot org by the way for this

(17:44):
handy dandy timeline, super handy dandy. Cranberries primarily came as juice,
jelly or gelatin until after World War Two, when people
started to use the fresh stuff, especially around the holidays
and with that refrigeration. Um. But this was still the
minority of cran very usage. But then, but then done, yes,

(18:05):
disaster struck with the cranberry scare of nineteen Cranberry scared.
First there's a craze and then there's a scare. When
Secretary of the U. S Department of Health, Education and
Welfare Arthur Fleming announced to the country that some cranberries
had been exposed to amno triazle, a suspected carcinogenic used

(18:26):
as an herbicide. This was a severe blow, severe like
how severe like? Sales of cranberries plummeted by seventy Some
consider this the first major cancer scare in the US
transpect to cranberries. I never would have guessed. Yeah, yeah,
it was only a small number of cranberries harvested in Oregon,

(18:47):
but cranberries had to be destroyed, and the massive resulting
price decline meant that a lot of acres devoted to
cranberry acreage had to be shut down, and it took
almost a decade for the industry to bounce back. Farmer
has figured out um water harvesting in the nineteen sixties,
and most bogs implemented the practice, which allowed for more
growth and product diversification to eventually lead to the seven

(19:12):
release of ocean sphrase crazins, crazins yep, I'm still let
sure that I approve of that of that minor pun No.
I have to think about it further. You're allowed form
form your own opinions. Water harvesting entailed pumping about eighteen

(19:34):
inches that's about forty of water into a dry cranberry bog.
And the day after this, the cranberries are harvested using
these water reels called egg beaters that pull the cranberries
from the vines and and thanks to this air pocket
that is naturally in the berry around the around the seeds,
the berries float to the surface ready to be scooped

(19:56):
up with a big plastic or wooden brooms. They're then
leaned and processed, and we now get of our cranberries
this way to this day, despite the kind of rough
treatment it means for the berries, which doesn't matter too
much if you're processing most of them into chiefs. Absolutely right.
It wasn't until the two thousand's we start to see
cranberries paired with salads. The two thousands dried cranberries, by

(20:21):
the way, I don't think I've ever seen a fresh
cranberry on a salad. No, I don't think so. I
don't think so either. Most likely because that's about when
these nicer prepackaged salads complete with topping tappings started to
hit grocery store shelves. Um perhaps but probably not related.
Total production of export markets grew by probably not related

(20:41):
but interesting um and worth noting that by the mid
nineteenth century, most Native American tribes had been wiped out
of the New England region, but some do have ties
to the cranberry in the present day. Um. The Coquill
tribe owns and operates organic cranberry farm Coquilla Cranberries out
of Oregon, and the Wampa Noag hold Cranberry Fest in

(21:04):
Martha's Vinyard each year. So yeah, yeah, yeah, in another
episode where we get a nice depressing yeah, but the
right right on the end, um, although, hey, I've actually
got some more kind of depressing things to to to
talk about, and there's gonna be a Lawrence Killjoy corner.

(21:26):
But first there's gonna be one more quick break for
a word from our sponsor. And went back, thank you sponsor.
So okay. There seemed to be a lot of misconceptions

(21:48):
about the healthfulness of cranberries. First off, dried sweet and
cranberries are basically candy. Yeah, they're no longer a fruit.
And and the thing about about dried cranberries is that
all of them on the market are sweetened. If you
find any unsweetened ones, please tell me, please send me

(22:08):
to that website. I want to buy them. Um. But okay,
the nutritional information about dried sweetened cranberries. A single ounce
serving that's about twenty eight grams or like a like
a handful, um, contains eighteen grams of sugar, which is
half as much as a can of coke. Basically, uh,
that's not that's that's not healthy. Um. Furthermore, the manufacturing

(22:31):
process that makes them dried and sweetened leeches basically all
of their nutritional benefits or or beneficial nutrients rather from them. Um.
Vitamin C is gone, all of the like possible antioxidants
are gone. They still contain one percent of your daily
recommended value of iron and four percent of manganese. Okay,

(22:56):
that's about it. Yeah, that's not too much to brag about. Yeah,
so if you really like eating them, do it, but
just be aware that you're not doing yourself any particular
nutritional favors. So don't don't think you're doing a healthy
thing by eating them. Secondly, oh and okay, this gets
back to cranberry's use in treating urinary tract infections. Okay,

(23:20):
so so this was this was an an ancient or
not ancient this This was an older folk remedy and
about a hundred years ago UM, as we started developing
science but still didn't quite have antibiotics, some doctors that
that they might be able to treat U t I
s by making patients yurine too acidic for bacteria to

(23:40):
grow in. Cranberry juice became a popular therapy, but it
was later found that the amount of cranberry juice you'd
have to drink to really see an effect is prohibitive,
being that mostly it would just give you ulcers and
kidney stones in the long run. But then a while
later another thing that we talked about UM that that

(24:00):
protein present in cranberries and also blueberries by the way,
UM that prevents bacteria from from binding too and thus
from infecting other cells was discovered UM, and cranberry juices
and supplements like like dried pounded cranberries and little gel
caplets UM started to be promoted as therapies again, but

(24:22):
no research has yet shown that this actually prevents infection
in humans. So scientifically speaking, no one knows whether cranberries
actually help with U t I s. And hey, the
cranberry juice cocktail that you buy in the store contains
a lot of sugar and acid, um, both of which
can exacerbate an already angry urinary tract. Man, do not

(24:47):
do not drink cranberry juice cocktail for a u T.
I maybe consider a cranberry supplement like if you want to,
but be aware that they have not consistently been performed
better than placebo. So like, don't put yourself out of
money if if you're strapped for cash, it's probably not
the care you're looking for. Um. To keep your urinary
tract healthy, drink water the kind without bubbles sometimes. Uh,

(25:10):
like were cotton underpants. To talk to your doctor if
you have a persistent problem. And sorry that got kind
of weirdly personal for a second there. It's cool, okay, Um,
all that being said, Uh, you know, as our seafaring
ancestors sussed out, cranberries are a great source of vitamin C.
They're also really high and antioxidants, which may help prevent

(25:31):
some diseases like cancer in some situations. Um, they're high
fiber and low calorie until you add a bunch of sugar,
so they're pretty filling. Um, which means that if you
like tart things, um, fresh cranberries or a fresh made
sauce that is low in sugar is really great to
add to to oatmeal or yogurt or baked goods or

(25:51):
sauces or roasted savory dishes or whatever. Just wash out
for that sugar, you know, by by fresh cranberries when
they're available, maybe free some make your own loue sugar
sauce to add stuff. Yeah, I'm a fan of douning that.
I like to put them in an acorn squash with
keen and cranbers. Oh no, yeah, it's good. Okay, I

(26:11):
want to make that right now, maybe later, all right,
but first we gotta talk about pesticides. Oh yeah, yeah,
oh man, well, welcome, welcome to my killjoy corner. Thank
you for having me. Huh, it's a show within a show.
It's gotten really meta. Um okay. According to the U
s d A Pesticide Data Program, adds of two thousand
six cranberries tested positive for thirteen different pesticides. Some of

(26:34):
these are classified as known carcinogens and honeybee toxins. Yeah
that's bad. Nope. Ocean Spurray did attempt growing them without
the stuff, but found it too difficult and costly. Since
cran beers are native to North America, pest have had
forever to figure out the cranberry, there by making pesticides necessary.
Their argument goes another environmental concern is the exposure to

(26:56):
these pesticides of the water pumped into the cranberry bog
during what hard list um where it After that it
returns to local bodies of water. Um. And this type
of runoff is not regulated by the US government. They
are a handful of companies out there growing an organic
cranberry crop. The article I was reading gave cranberry hill
farms and fresh meadow farms as examples, and the only

(27:18):
way they're able to do this currently is through programs
that buy their fruit at a super high price point
to help incentivize them. Yeah. And I sort of hesitate
hesitate and talking about pesticide because honestly, I don't really
know too much about them. Um. Hopefully you will rectify
this in a later episode. Absolutely very important topic. Yeah,
so grain assalted, do your own research. Um. Yeah, but

(27:39):
hopefully this is useful to some of you out there.
Ye worth noting. Yeah, absolutely notes it's good to good
to know where where food comes from and what the
overall cost of it is um. But that's the end
of the killjoy corner. Yeah, let's let's eat ourselves out
of this corner into the into the open wide vistas
of cranbar a culture, cranberry culture. So first, cranberry sauce.

(28:06):
And you know, I'm just realizing that maybe a lot
of people listening don't know. I don't know for sure
what this is. Yeah, cranberry sauce is a mixture of
cranberries and sugar. You can also put a little bit
of spices, like like maybe like a ground grind of nutmeg,
maybe some ginger in there. Yeah, that's if you homemake it, yeah,
which I love to do. That's actually way better than

(28:28):
the stuff most Americans get, which is like this can
and it's just a log, a jellied log that comes out. Yeah,
it's it's got so much pecked and it's so jellied
that when you open the can from one end, you
can just just wiggle an entire can shaped loaf of
this stuff out of it, which I find endlessly disturbing. Yeah,

(28:51):
my family used to before I started making my own um.
For some reason, we'd get it every year and no
one would eat it, Like, would put it on the
table and no one would eat it, but we kept
up the facade. I most most thanksgivings that I've been
a part of have been so entertained by how artificial
it looks that they don't bother disguising the fact that
it comes from a can. They like slice it, yes,

(29:13):
straight from the and like you can still see the
ridges from the can. And it's brilliant. It's bizarre. It's
something very mid century. I am very charmed by it. Yeah,
it's it's particularly weird. I'm still made a cranberry so
it's still kind of delicious. Yeah. Um, I avoided it
so hardcore. I can't honestly recall the taste. But maybe

(29:33):
this year, when I see that lone plate, because we
still we still put it on the table, even though
I make homemade cranberry sauce, maybe I'll give it a
give it a try. I think it's more a texture
than a taste. Really, Okay, Okay, anyway, So Americans eat
or buy and intend to eat five millions gallons of
jellied cranberry sauce each year during the holidays, just during

(29:57):
the holidays. According to Ocean Spray. The first jellied cranberry
sauce was canned in nineteen twelve by a lawyer turned
cranberry bog owner, Marcus L. Uron in Massachusetts. Once mechanical
harvesting was introduced and a lot of the berries came
out of the other side damaged, Ocean Spray decided to
can them since selling them fresh would be difficult. It

(30:19):
would be a difficult prospect and before canning technology came around,
cranberries didn't last that long. It wasn't until that the
sauce was available across the US. And the reason it's
so solid ish, like Lauren said, has to do with
the pecton. Yeah, but so many of the berries were
damaged and damage berries just didn't last and you don't

(30:40):
obviously want to take that much of a loss. Um, Yeah,
let's just can them. Let's just put him in this uh,
this can and marketed as a holiday thing. Um Uron
went on to invent the cranberry juice cocktail and a
cocktail syrup for drink mixers. In nineteen thirty, he convinced
competitors to come together to form Cranberry Canners, Inc. In

(31:02):
ninety seven, they change their name to Ocean Spray. Okay,
that Ocean Spray, that one. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I couldn't
bear to do a Cranberry episode without mentioning the Cosmo.
The Cosmo, Ah, that's nineties staple cocktail. It's so pink.
It's in a impossible to hold Martini glass. Seriously, what's

(31:23):
up with martini glasses? Question for a future episode. Oh
my goodness. Okay, the Cosmo, if you have never encountered one,
calls for vodka, quantro lime and cranberry juice, and we'll
have to do a whole cocktail hour episode about it,
because this is this one. It's one that's relatively new
onto the scene. But there's that, But there's some really

(31:44):
great little little bits of subculture wrapped throughout its creation.
And it seems to have originated with a late sixties
marketing directive from Ocean Spray to get more adults consuming
cranberry juice. Kids were all about it, adults were like,
what am I doing with this? Right? Put was in it?
Sell it to them that way, coolever, I mean, can't
fault them for that seems to have worked. So yeah,

(32:07):
that is our brief story of the Cranberry and that
brings us to the end of this classic episode. We
hope that you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed any
food that you've been enjoying hopefully. Yes, yes, And we
do have a couple updates about the cranberry because, you know,

(32:30):
doing my due diligence, I Google. I just put goog
cranberry into Google Search before we came in here and
the band most of the band that I had to
specify my Google search. But yeah, um, so okay. In
recent years, the global supply of cranberries has outpaced demand UM,
perhaps partially because sales of cranberry juice have slumped in
these are modern like cut sugar out of our diets

(32:53):
times um, and that means that prices are dropping. Prices
for cranberries are dropping in some farmers are struggling with
making a living um, and even just dealing with the
amount of cranberry crop that they have. UM. Prices that
Massachusetts growers could fetch at market for their cranberries have
dropped from two yeah um and more bad news. Simultaneously,

(33:19):
the Triump administration's trade war with China is affecting international
cranberry markets, which were a thing that the cranberry growers
of the United States and Canada, which are the primary
ones in Chile, which kind of brings up the rear.
They had been trying to get cranberries out to more
international communities, sell more stuff always fun um and China

(33:40):
had started picking up on that until all of these
fun new tariffs started coming out and uh, yeah, that's
making importing cranberries in particular more expensive and so an
uncertain future for the cranberry. But so you're telling me
I should make cranberry sauce. You need to do your part. Annie,
all right, I'll do it. I'll take on this responsibility

(34:05):
as much as it pains me. You're a good person
any race. Thank you. But yes, that that is. That
is what we have by way of updates for you today. Yes, um,
and we would love to hear hear the food things
that you're excited about, that you're eating, that you want
to learn more about, and you can email those things

(34:28):
to us. You can. Yes, Our email is hello at
savor pod dot com. And we're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saber pod. We do hope to hear from you. Sabor
is production of iHeart Radio and stuff Media. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, you can visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(34:48):
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and I
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.