July 15, 2022 • 59 mins
This brand of gelatin and pudding dessert mixes has been adding wiggle/jiggle to American tables for over a century. Anney and Lauren explore the science and history of Jell-O.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to favor Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm Any Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam and today
we have an episode for you about Jello. Mm hmmm.
And this one goes places. Oh, it goes a lot
of wibbly wobbly places. It does, and we could have
gone to a lot more places. We just had a
pretty rousing discussion right before this about all the different
(00:32):
types of Jello molds and different Jello star wars pun ideas.
It's it's a whole big Jello world out there, it
really is. Mm hmmm. Was there any particular reason Jello
came to mind? I've been wanting to do this episode
for a while, and it seemed like the time, you know,
it was I was like, let's do a brand and
(00:53):
then I was like, oh man, Jello. M h yes,
and it's definitely a fun one. Uh. I had to say,
I'm not a big fan of Jello. I don't like
guess like, I just never want Jelly. It's not a
thing that I crave. Okay, it does remind me primarily
of when I got my wisdom teeth taken out, really
(01:15):
bad experience for me. But Jello, uh, and jello shots
because I threw a big jello shot face. Oh no. College, Yeah,
black cherry jello shots was the most popular, and I've
learned through this research black cherry jello is not the
easiest to find, really, Okay, Um well, uh, I like
(01:37):
I had a friend a little bit post college who
was kind of obsessed with creating like the most alcoholic
jello shots that would still firm up and not only
into shot format, but into larger mold format and so like,
there was a whole scientific process to figuring this out,
(01:58):
which I really respect it. Um. But yeah, but I
wouldn't say I'm a huge jello person. Now. I loved
jello when I was a kid. I was so into it,
specifically jigglers. Uh Like, when I realized that you could
make just like firm handheld jello that that I was
(02:19):
the most into that. Um. We would buy the unflavored
like Knox gelatin and use fruit juice to make it.
So Like, my parents weren't that mad about it. They
were like, well, this isn't the worst thing we could
feed this child. Uh And and then of course, right
I had on as we talked about in our ASPAC episode.
(02:41):
I'm sure my my, my grandmama Lou Um would make
a jello salad for for for dinner a lot of
the time. UM like the side salad for dinner would
be like some lime jello with shredded carrots or something
like that in it. And uh, and I have very
fond memories of that as well. Yes, And this led
to an interesting conversation between me and Lauren, because you
(03:03):
have this story, I have a story. We're in a different,
very different story where in one of my best friends
moms when I was growing up, she was my neighbor
UM and I was eight or nine at the time,
and I came over and she quite proudly presented to
(03:25):
me this big dish of orange jello with chunks, not
shredded cabbage, chunks of cabbage in it. And this was
the main course. It also had orange juice in it. Okay,
so orange. I every time you tell the story, I
feel like I only have more questions. I me too,
(03:48):
orange like sweet orange jello and orange juice. And now
you say chunks of cabbage like not like leaves of cabbage,
like wedges like wedge wedge is how they were small wedges,
but they were wedges okay. And this was green cabbage, yes, okay,
(04:10):
and this was and this was dinner, this was this
was this was flat out this was what dinner was.
And you know, I was a child, and I but
I was very polite. I was a very polite child.
But I just remember her showing this to me and
being like, put a smile on your face and don't
(04:32):
be visibly grossed out. Yeah. I've never seen anything like
that either before. That was like my first time. Oh wow, yeah, see,
I trust me. I lay awake at night trying to
parse this out. I don't know my my best theory
(04:52):
and I have thought a lot about this since the
first time you told me about it. Does talked about
this with other friends. Yes, it's haunting, uh but um
but but so my yeah, my my best theory is that, uh,
is that like a side of jello salad was something
(05:14):
that this nice lady had grown up eating um in
her parents household, and that she had these fond memories
of it, and that she just went like, what if
that was the whole dinner. I'm an adult, No one
can tell me that this isn't a whole dinner, and
so she just did it, um because you know, no
(05:34):
one could tell her no, and no one did, even
though that was a very silent meal. I have to see, Um,
I told you, I gave you a further I think
you're probably right. I think that's true. But she's also
somebody I'm still I still know her who like the
(05:55):
meal is less than the deal, no right to get
a deal on things. Yeah, it's a really cheat meal
she made. That's better than the taste of it to her.
I mean she didn't spend much on Yeah, now there
are priorities there, and for sure, I mean you get
(06:17):
a you get an on sale head of cabbage. M hmm.
I mean she bet like six of us. Yeah. So
funnily enough, my friend who her mom is the one
who made this dish, we're still best friends today. And
I texted her all these pictures of aspects and she
(06:39):
was getting progressively more angry, so cross, why you doing this?
And I was like, don't you remember when your mom
made us one? Essentially? And she was like, oh my god,
I blocked that. Wow, Oh no, you'reies. I know. I
feel like we're covering a lot of ground right now,
like even here, Yeah, we haven't even started yet. Really, Yeah,
(07:03):
and and also like I was thinking about it, um My,
my dad was on again, off again a chaffer a
cook when I was growing up, and his like when
when he had to make a cake, he his like
secret recipe. I'm just giving it away. Definitely involved um uh,
(07:26):
like packaged pudding mix because it helps add like a
like a moisteness to the cake that's otherwise like a
little bit tricky to get the texture right. Um. Yeah,
well I talked about that in our Gingerbread Cookie episode.
We used the butterscotch pudding. Yeah, it's delicious, it's nice. Well,
(07:51):
clearly we've got a lot to say about this. Um.
And yes, you can see our Aspect episode for more.
And I think our Propsical episode, I couldn't find it
in our archive, but I know we talked about somebody
who was inspired by Jello and was determined to make
a product like Jello. It might be the popsicle one.
I think we've talked a little bit about some of
(08:12):
this stuff and marshmallows. Yeah, the collagen gelatin kind of
stuff and marshmallows for sure, And we talked about that
in our Oxtail episode. But that's a little bit less related. Um,
definitely are special effects episode. Yes, well, I guess this
brings us to awk question goodness. I suppose so Jello,
(08:37):
what is it? Well? Jello is a brand of gel
based desserts and dessert mixes, sometimes also used for savory dishes,
but generally sweet and meant to be served and eaten,
usually chilled. The product lines include fruit flavored gels and
dairy flavored puddings and or pie feelings, and the brand
(08:59):
centers on like convenience and affordability and nostalgia and like fun,
like like simple pleasures. Yeah, it's it's this really entrenched American,
like every man brand. It's like if it's like a
Superman jiggled. I'm not familiar enough with TikTok, but there's
(09:21):
a tick joke that could be made, right, well, I
am also not so y'all are going to have to
fill billis in um. The brand is currently owned by
Kraft Hind's UM and it encompasses a couple of hundred products.
UM but the bread and Butter the original are these
boxed gelatine dessert mixes which consists of powdered gelatine flavorings
(09:46):
and colorings and some kind of sweetener, sugar or or
otherwise aspertain or something um all in a single packet
contained in a box the size of like a large
deck of cards. Um. So, what you do is you
dissolve the contents of the packet in hot water, then
at cold water, refrigerate a few hours until firm, and
then you've got this like soft, translucent, colorful gel that
(10:10):
melts in your mouth. Uh yeah. Flavors that are currently
on the line include cherry, black, cherry, lemon, lime, orange, orange, tangerine, mango, peach, apricot, watermelon, grape, raspberry, strawberry, strawberry, banana,
BlackBerry fusion, berry blue blueberry, pomegranate, tropical fusion, and island pineapple.
(10:38):
Huh yeah, Okay, a lot of that's new to me,
but all right. It can be made in like individual
cups or in like larger pretty molds that you can
release into a standing jelly cake of sorts. Um And
I'm like making a wiggle motion with my hands as
I described. You can add a fruit or vegetables, yes, um,
(11:03):
or like firm it up in different layers or um
or cube up some sheets and then mix those into
different layers together to create combinations of flavors and visual effects.
If you have never googled jello mold, I need you
to do that absolutely immediately, no question, no doubt zero.
(11:28):
And we were talking about this beforehand. But like, but
like jello, imagery is a fractal okay, like like, the
more detailed you get, the more details there are. Like
you can zoom in infinitely. So try try your weirdest
combination of search terms and see what you come up with.
Report backs. Uh. Some of these flavors are also available,
(11:52):
um pre made in little refrigerated snack cups. Yea, um,
but that's not all. Oh no, um there pudding mixed
line Um. These contain cornstarches, flavors and colors and sweeteners
all in a single packet again um. And these come
in two basic varieties, cooking serve, which requires you to
heat the contents with milk, and instant, which can gell
(12:15):
up with just cold milk. Either way. Refrigerating it will
set it to a firm orgel, yielding a soft, creamy
and like slightly wiggly pudding. M hmm. Yeah. Flavors they're
currently include vanilla, French, vanilla, vanilla, bean, chocolate, chocolate, fudge,
white chocolate, Devil's food, red velvet, butter, scotch, caramel, lemon, strawberry, pistachio,
(12:42):
banana cream, coconut cream, Oreo cookies and cream, pumpkin spice, tapioca,
and cheesecake. Again, this is that's quite a list. I
didn't know that you flavors spend some time in the
jelloile Annie. I don't know why that felt like a
threat to Yes, I will oh heck. Um. These can
(13:07):
be served alone as is, or layered into like pie
crusts or trifles, often with other things like sliced fruits
or or cake or cookies or whipped cream stuff like that.
And yes, several flavors also come in pre made snack cups. Um.
Plus some flavors that I don't think are available as
boxed mixes, like um Dulce de leche and unicorn magic cupcake. Okay,
(13:34):
I don't know what that one is. It's like lavender.
I think I'm not sure anyway. Um. There are also
some like grown up aimed cups in a line called Temptations,
including including strawberry cheesecake and lemon meringue. I forgot about temptations. Yeah,
we parodied that in our yogurt video. Oh oh yeah, huh.
(13:59):
I've read this one article that suggested it was trying
to suggest that jello sales have been have been sliding
because of dessert alternatives like Greek yogurt, and I was like,
pardon me, hold up, yeah, I think it's this this temptations,
(14:24):
because I think yogurt has that too. They've got their
like key lime pie. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I mean,
if that's what you want, go for it. But let's not.
I I like Greek yogurt as much as the next guy.
But holy anyway, um uh but uh but wait, there's
(14:47):
there's still more. Um. There's also what's basically puttings that
are meant specifically to be made into pies and or
bars and come packaged in like kits with a crumb
cross mixes and toppings. Generally, these call for you to
take the packet of crumb crust, a mix it with
some melted butter, press it into a pie tin or
(15:08):
cake pan, then separately beat the filling with cold milk
and layer it into that pan with whatever toppings might
be provided. Um either corn or potato starches and cellulose
gels help firm up the fillings. Um, they're a little
bit more solid than your typical pudding mix. UM flavors
here include cheesecake with options for like strawberry or cherry
(15:29):
or no topping, um Jet, puffed s'mores, oreo bars, and
pumpkin style pie. Oh interesting style, not enough squash to
count as a pumpkin pie, but pumpkin style by The
(15:55):
brand also produces a few like kits for making like
layered autting desserts themed around like dirt or beaches or whatever.
You know. UM kits for making firmer handheld gelatin cutouts.
Those jigglers, Yeah, different, different, different molds and stuff like that. Yes,
we did find some old Star Wars themed jiggler molds
(16:18):
when we were talking about it earlier. I think this
is I think this is underway. I think that can
I be honest with you. I didn't know what jiggler
wash man. They seem like they're very popular, are they were? Yeah,
So idea, I think we're gonna have to in this
ever expanding Stranger meal we're conducting planning, I think we're
(16:44):
going to have to have the Star Wars jigglers. Okay,
all right, we can make this work perfect heck. UM.
But yeah, yeah, these these products are kind of just
the beginning. Like there are just a ton of recipes
out there from the brand and from home and come
virtual kitchens UM that use these products to add texture
and structural support to cakes and fillings and frozen desserts
(17:07):
and chilled snacks of all kinds UM. As we've talked
about before, UM sort of In brief, gelatine is just
a really useful thing in food chemistry because it solidifies
it like freezes and around degrees fahrenheit or thirty five
celsius and melts above that, which is why things like
(17:28):
jello melt in your mouth, which is hypothetically a couple
of degrees above that UM, thus delivering this like flavor
payload like directly to your tongue. UM. Gelatin is a
protein made up of these long friendly chains of amino acids.
By friendly, I hear mean that they are super willing
(17:48):
to bond up into like complex three dimensional matrices at
room temperature UM. And they're also happy to form bonds
with water molecules weekly when the temperature is cold enough,
like a little bit colder. So what happens is you
add gelatine to warm water. The warmth makes all of
the gelatine molecules slip and slide and wiggle apart from
(18:10):
each other, and then as they cool, they chill out
and grab up water molecules and cling to each other
in complex patterns, trapping the water in among themselves, which
is what happens when you get a jello mold. Um,
if you warm it up again, say in your mouth,
all the molecules slide away from each other again. Um.
(18:30):
Gelatine is itself flavorless, but anything soluble in water of
those flavorings and colorings will come along for the ride.
You get gelatine by breaking down collagen um, which is
long chains of amino acids that are twined up together.
And this occurs as a connective protein in and around
cells that gives them flexible structure. It's especially prevalent in
(18:53):
a skin and tendons and bones, anything that needs to
be kind of flexible. Yeah. So when you both will
these tissues, um, the collagen inside them untwined, leaving you
with gelatine molecules. Um. So it's happening when you cool
gelatin down is the molecules are sort of trying to
reform those twiny collagen patterns and sort of failing but
(19:16):
failing deliciously. Oh yeah, good for you, Yeah thanks collagen
um On on the jellow pudding and corn starches act similarly. Um.
They're made up of raveled chains of starches instead of proteins,
and when introduced to water and especially when heated, UM,
(19:36):
those starches will unravel and grab up bits of liquid
and then reform into like a semi solid mesh UM.
I think refrigerating helps because it solidifies like wee bits
of fat in there as well. But I didn't, I
didn't look that closely. Into a corn starch is gonna
have to be a whole different episode, yes, yeah, and
within it, I will share my what it feels to
(19:57):
me like a very complicated recipe of making graving at Thanksgiving,
But it's not. It's not actually complicated, but it involves
corn starch and moving things from heat into not heat
and more heat and lots of whisking I assumed, just
continual lots. Yeah. Well, what about the nutrition? Oh okay,
(20:20):
jello like like the fruit flavored gel, is low in fiber,
pretty low in micronutrients, does have a tiny bit of
protein from the gelatine. UM. In terms of the puddings,
milk is okay for you. Um, gelatine may carry health
(20:40):
benefits UM, like enough of it over enough of a
period of time, because like when gelatine supplements are taken,
specifically with vitamin C, they've sometimes been shown to improve
patients blood levels of like the markers of collagen synthesis.
So times. So but yeah, no, you should. You should
(21:03):
eat it because you like it at that point. And like,
certainly the addition of all kinds of sweeteners and other
stuff is going to affect your nutritional value. Yeah, sugar
isn't good for you. Artificial sweeteners also are not good
for you. So yeah, but it's a treat, and treats
are nice. Yeah. And I know, like, I mean, we
(21:24):
can debate the merits of this and not not in
this podcast, but I know that Jello, like the kind
of prepackaged um jello, the cups, the cups, Yeah yeah yeah,
the prepacting chellow cups. Um. They were big in like
Keto diets or similar diets where that's like your treat,
(21:45):
your snatch. Yeah. Which again, if you like, oh yeah,
go for it, um. But for me, I'm always I'm like,
jellow is not a dessert. I get that it technically
is in my book. Yeah, if you have to be
on a liquid diet, then that's it's fine. Yeah. And
(22:08):
I know people who love jello. So this is just
my personal personal See what you like. Mm hmmm, we
do have some numbers for you. As you kind of
alluded to, Lauren, Jello has historically been a popular item
in things like movies for achieving certain colors of our textures.
I know it came up in like Wizard of Oz,
that's how they died. The horses shared that color. Um,
(22:33):
a bunch of movies. Jello is a popular, popular thing
to use. Yeah. And and historically, um, it's been a
popular food item. Um. In the nineteen eighties, for example,
American households consumed jello on average thirteen point five times
a year. Okay, not bad, not bad. Meanwhile, um, the
(23:00):
Guinness record for the most jello, although it could have
could have been unbranded, I'm not sure um anyway, that
the most jello type product eaten with chopsticks in one
minute was set in seventeen in Germany, which was for
(23:21):
seven hundred and sixteen grams of jello, which is about
one point six pounds. Um, I don't I don't know
what flavor. Oh wow, someone knows. You've gotta gotta tell us.
Oh heck um. Also another another Google search for y'all um.
(23:43):
In nineteen, former NASA JPL engineer Mark Robert Robbert. Oh,
I always forget how to say his name out loud anyway. Um.
Former NASA JPL engineer designed a swimming pool filled with
jello or like unsweetened red gelatine. Um because he didn't
want to waste food, sugar being food. And he did
(24:05):
this because you know who has not dreamed, especially as
a child, of jumping into a pool full of jello
sounds terrible. Then you become the thing inside. Oh yeah,
everything a horror story. Yeah, the old like Mickey Mouse,
like Jack and the bean Stock really dealt with that.
(24:29):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you're right. We really are on
covering a lot of stuff. When we are we are
just like layers of an aspect um. But okay, so
so what what happened here was the team set up
um an underground pool in Colorado and used six gallon
(24:50):
drums that were fitted with these propane heating elements to
heat the gelatine and water to a hundred and sixty
degrees um and then pipe it into the pool in
layers and and used the cool outdoor overnight temperatures during
this like three week sweet spot in late April wow,
(25:14):
to progressively chill seven days worth of layers of gelatin
until the pool was full. And there's a video. It's
very charming. Um, so they went for a swim and yeah, yeah,
it's it's very satisfying to watch. Okay, yeah, alright, well
(25:34):
congrats to them. Then it didn't turn into a horror
show for you. No, no, not that time, not that time.
I do like the implication that jello without sugar is
not food. That kind of cracks me up. We do
have quite a bit of history for you. Oh we do,
(25:56):
heck um. And we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break.
For a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you, which I think we did
not mention, but Jello is currently not a sponsor. Oh no, no,
(26:19):
we were just interested in the suffect matter. Yeah, if
you couldn't tell, we always we always clarify if it
is sponsored. But just to clarify even more, which is
interested in these kinds of things. Yeah, but Jello, we're here,
you know. Oh yeah, call us Jello. It's Jello. Of
(26:41):
course it would be Jello. Okay, okay, no, dear, sorry, sorry, sorry,
I'm already working on the title phone. All right. So,
as we've discussed in previous episodes, gelatin was featured in
popular dishes in Europe going back to at least four
century UM. Making gelatine at the time frequently was pretty
(27:03):
time consuming. Um. It involved this process of boiling the
feet of animals. Uh. And once that had set, flavorings
were added to make the resulting mixture tasty. Right, and
the earliest gelatins were savory um like spiced meat or
fish dishes were what was up at fancy parties, UM
(27:27):
like like either meat or fish covered in a layer
of gelatine or write like an aspect type thing that
contained some of these elements. Um. And these were right,
very fancy parties. Like you had to take the skin
and bones of animals or fish and boil them down
and then subtle and strain the resulting stock multiple times
to get your gelatine and then use that to create
(27:50):
a coating or a mold containing whatever. UM and refrigeration
and or ice was expensive, so getting gelatine cold enough
to gel was expensive. The ingredients these recipes called for,
like saffron, were also like really pricey and showy mm hm.
Out of all of this, the word jelly or gelatin
(28:10):
may have come from the Latin gelata, meaning frozen, indicating
that the liquid and anything you put in it would
be frozen in place, and this would be used to
great visual effect fish swimming and jelly um and there
was a um and and also this stuff was like
sort of a preservative, like by putting meat or vegetables
(28:31):
into the gelatine, as long as you could keep it cool,
it cut off bacteria's access to oxygen and thus prevented spoilage.
Ah um. Sweet gelatine dishes appeared by the early sixteen hundreds,
flavored with things like ginger and rose water or um,
white wine, and almonds and a few other sources of
(28:52):
gelatin and production methods were developed across the sixteen and
seventeen hundreds as well, UM seaweed, uh, fish, bladders, eats,
and glass, steam and or pressure tech for creation of
these things, and then technology leapt forward again in the
early eighteen hundreds with the invention of industrial methods of
gelatine extraction right UM, and then in eighteen forty Peter
(29:17):
Cooper got to work on making a product that made
gelatin easier for people to access UM and to do this,
he ground up sheets of gelatine into powder, and he
went on to secure a patent for what he called
Portable Gelatine UM, which was a gelatine dessert powder that
only needed hot water before it was ready to go. However,
Cooper didn't do much to market the powder after that.
(29:41):
He sometimes sold it to cooks and chefs, but he
didn't commercialize it at all. Yeah, he hadn't really been
aiming to make a food item. He was more interested
in glue yes, And pretty much every single article I
read said he also did something with the steam engine.
So he was an inventor. He was, he was, He
(30:02):
got around, He did a lot of stuff. He did,
but he was not the only one making strides in
the gelatine field. Industrialists started using animal rite products to
create powdered gelatine products for like tanners and gluemakers in
eighteen forties and in eighteen ninety, Charles and Rose Knox
started the Knox Company to sell powdered gelatine. Another competitor, Royal,
(30:24):
got their start in eighteen sixty three. Yes, and this
brings us to Pearl and May Wait, a married couple
that ran a cough syrup and laxative business in Leroy,
New York. Um. I know we're nerds, um, but they
were barely making ends meet with this business, and after
years of struggling, they decided to focus on food because
(30:46):
May was a big cook and she loved making desserts,
especially um. So they found the patent for powdered gelatine. Uh.
And gelatine is pretty bland by itself usually, so they
added some of the flavored syrups they used in their medication,
flavors like orange, lemon, strawberry, and raspberry. The addition of
these serves meant that their desserts were now almost nine
(31:08):
sugar uh huh. And the story goes that May name
the product jello, which was a combination of gelatin and
or jelly with an oh at the end, because apparently
that was just a really popular way of naming things
at the time. Because it was both aesthetically pleasing and
fairly easy to take a word in trade market by
(31:29):
adding me, oh, which I kind of love, like just
I don't know onto it? Yeah cool mm hmm. Once again, though,
the weights weren't really great at marketing for this product,
so they eventually sold the patent, recipes and the name
to their neighbor, Frank Woodward, for the equivalent of about
twelve thousand dollars in today's money. Whatard was the owner
(31:52):
of the Genesee Food Company, and he had a lot
of experience in the world of marketing packaged food products,
so he would send out these really nicely just salesman
to home stop to offer free samples of this product.
But yeah, which I have again, horror show, I'm telling
you anyway, all right, maybe the people agreed with me
(32:13):
because the dessert just was not catching on even with
this marketing uh ploy, I don't know if it's the
right word, marketing scheme. Every word I'm thinking of as
negative even with this marketing idea. At one point, Woodward
tried to sell the product to someone else for a
mere thirty five dollars, but the person refused, no, thank you,
(32:36):
okay um. But to boost the sales and the standing
of Jella. The company did lean really hard into marketing
I believe would word like put a lot of money
into it. He was like, we've got to do something here. Um,
I'm stuck with this. We might as well let's really
(32:57):
pull out all the stuffs. And one of the ads
ran in a nineteen or four edition of Ladies Home Journal,
and it called Jello America's favorite dessert. And these ads
were incredibly successful. Uh, and sales shot up to two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars or about six million dollars
in today's money. Okay, this is like from this one
(33:20):
ad campaign, or that's what a lot of people attribute
attributed it to. Anyway. Um. Woodward wasn't done either, and
started printing Jello recipe books. UM. Immigrants arriving to Ellis
Island were sometimes handed Jello molds. The Jello Girl, played
by the daughter of ad legend Franklin King Um and
Franklin King worked for Woodward, was introduced in nineteen o
(33:41):
eight with the slogan you can't be a kid without it. Um.
Around this time, UH, they were expanding their product line
with flavors like cherry peach, chocolate and coffee. Coffee, Yeah,
only in certain markets. Oh of course, I won't fly
everywhere in a way. Charles Knox promoted his gelatine at
(34:08):
the nineteen o four World's Fair, and the next year
a Pennsylvania woman one third place in a cooking contest
sponsored by Knox for recipes she called perfection salad um,
which was quote an aspect filled with finely chopped cabbage, celery,
and red pepper. And I think we did talk about that,
and they ask, yeah, oh yeah, we did. Oh yeah.
In ninety two, James Beard wrote that this event quote
(34:31):
unleashed a demand for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly,
particularly in the suburb. I don't know why that cocks
me up so much. Um And that quote the jellied
salad does have its delights though, and it is without
question in American innovation. And yes, we are going to
talk about that more in a second. As you know,
we could not, we could not not, must we must? Yes. Uh.
(34:57):
In nineteen o four was a big year for jello
because it was also the year a book came out
calling for a bigger focus on calories and nutrients for
patients and places like hospitals as opposed to home cooked
meals often provided by nurses before then. And this this
work had a really big impact on that UM and
Jello did that the bill for a liquid diet as well,
(35:18):
and that this is part of the reason they became
a key prison food too. M yep uh. So thanks
to this marketing, Jello did become a household name, and
in the Genesee Food Company changed their name to the
Jello Company. Also that year, they hired a pre famous
Norman Rockwell to paint illustrations of Jello. As radio became
(35:42):
more popular and accessible, Jello was one of the first
companies to advertise on that platform, hiring Jack Benny for
one of their very first radio ads. This was also
something I didn't know what they were talking about, but
it seems like everyone else did. But it's a jingle,
the Jello jingle. Uh, but he did it, Jack Betty
did it. I'm sure you all know what what it is,
but I don't. Is it just the j E L
(36:04):
L O? I think so? Probably? Yeah, there you go,
very simple. During World War One, Jello sales were negatively
impacted by the rationing of sugar, but they shot up
again after the war, in part because jello products were
fairly cheap. When lime jello was introduced in the nineteen thirties,
(36:27):
the popularity of dishes like jellied salads only further increased.
I know, we talked about that in our episode two
Um the whole cookbooks were written about lime jello and
how to use it as a savory base for salads.
In six the company started offering instant chocolate pudding, a
powdered mixed made with milk, um and other flavors of pudding.
(36:48):
Soon followed after that. In two a Coca cola flavored
powder was briefly introduced because of the popularity of the
Southern Coca cola salad, a jelled salad made with coke.
But it didn't last long. Yeah, it was out by
the end of the year. I think. Yeah. Big year,
(37:10):
big year for Coca cola jello salads. Yep, the only year.
In fact, yes, the only year. Indeed. The Jello plant
and leeard closed in n six when production was taken
over by what is now Craft Foods. According to legend,
jello shots were invented in the fifties as a way
(37:32):
to shirk alcohol restrictions on an Army Base by singer
and songwriter Tom Larer, and I did not look further
than that. I think that could be a whole thing. Yeah,
but that is what these like brief search ideas. Okay, okay,
we're willing to accept that it is a legend that exists. Yes, yes, absolutely,
(37:52):
all right, so now let's let's get to the jelly salads.
Let's do it. Okay, here we here we go. Yes,
so excited. Um. As we've discussed in multiple episodes, the
jello salad was the prize of the American table from
the fifties two about the eighties, as was going downhill
by probably the seventies, but like, oh and you know
(38:15):
what it's like the thirties to the eighties, but I
think the fifties was It's real. Yeah, absolutely yes. And
these were both savory and sweet. Uh though, Yeah, they
were popular even before that, because we've been talking about
them throughout UM. And in the nineteen thirties, about one
third of most American recipe books UM were dedicated to
jelly salads, which blows my mind. And now I want
(38:37):
to get my hand on these recipe books. Oh yeah, no,
there I have at least one in my personal cookbook collection.
And they are glorious, um, terrifying and glorious. I love it.
I want to see it, Laura, and I want to
see it. I'll try to remember to bring one to
our next D and D game. Yes, now, that would
(39:00):
be a D and D meal. Oh no, we could
get one. He would be so mad at us. Okay,
all right, here we go. Well, this whole jelly salad idea,
it was sort of wrapped up in the realm of
domestic science, which was also called home economics, because gelatine
was typically viewed as difficult. Jello, though, was a relatively
(39:22):
cheap way to achieve the impression that you put a
lot of time and effort into something, and that you
were well off enough to afford a big enough refrigerator
for these jelly salads, um, and also the time to
make them. And to be clear, women did often put
a lot of effort into the presentation. That was like
the key. It was a really strange and interesting balancing
(39:47):
act of saving time and money but appearing like you
hadn't very interesting. Um. It was also seen as new
and sciency and visually pleasing. Yes, I know, but it
was seen like that yeah, yeah, even even the most
The the term that gained popularity popularity on the internet,
(40:09):
I think from a Facebook group perhaps is aspects with
threatening auras and threatening aura is definitely the correct terminology
for some of these molded salads. Yes, yes, I like
I said, I was horrifying my friend just sending her
picture after a picture, and my favorite are like the
(40:32):
mold that shaped like a fish and it has like
anchovies in it. Yeah, the one is like lamb ones. Yeah,
it is threatening, you're right. I yeah. One of the
recipes that I was just looking up called for boiling
lamb hearts and then slicing them thin as though you're
in the cell, and and then using them to line
(40:55):
a mold. This is from four. I was like, okay,
m hm, at any rate, please continue. Oh wow, No,
you've really put an image in my head, so I'm sorry.
Let me shake myself out of their second. Yes, also
they have really great names. They have really really yea
(41:16):
so again, Hi, we cannot recommend enough. Please look it up. Um.
It was also this dish was also viewed as a
cleaner option than a traditional salad, like it didn't mess
with the lines of your plate, like it didn't. I
don't know, it wasn't messy or that was the view anyway.
The company's advertising really leaned into it being a quote
(41:38):
pure product, like a clean products. And this was kind
of based on like the jungle and fears about what
was in people's food and all that stuff. Um. And
they were also seen as quite a feminine food. According
to a book by Knox, for example, it was a
dainty food for dainty people. Again, a lot of them
(42:00):
are terrifying. Yeah, I some dainty things are also terrifying,
though very true, Lauren Yes. During the nineteen sixties, Jellow
debut savory flavors like celery, mixed vegetable, and Italian salad,
(42:21):
but within a decade, flagging sales met the company stopped
selling those flavors. A lot of it had to do
with changing views around dieting and sugar. Jello salads were
replaced with salads of mixed screens. As women were entering
the workplace, Um, but we're also still largely responsible for
preparing meals, uh, they sought out newly available, more convenient
(42:41):
options like microwavable meals um and that that microwavable meals
had improved a lot by that point. Um. In response,
Jello leaned back into being a dessert and started offering
products like pudding and gelatine pops, and they hired Bill
Cosby as their spokesperson. Uh. Putting pops were specifically introduced
(43:03):
in ninety nine and gelatin pops after that, and they
were pretty popular for a few years. And this strategy
was successful, and it substantially boosted Jello sales. Cosby voiced
for the product for over thirty years and it just
won of the longest running celebrity endorsements of all time.
(43:23):
After his conviction in he became the first person ever
kicked out of the American Advertising Federation, and one of
the first meals he was served in prison included Jello
that makes me very happy. Yeah, I because throw that
whole man away. Yep. Also, anyone else who's been watching
(43:49):
The Boys, that one line made me laugh harder than
many other things in the history of laughing. Um. And
I don't think you've you've gotten there yet, So now
I did it. Yep. When I start something, I don't stop.
(44:10):
That's when I put off starting it. Anyway, Jella went
an opposite way. We'll say then The Boys because part
of this whole thing was a purposeful effort by the
company to market their products as family friendly UM and
pivot away from things like Jello's Shots and Jello Wrestling,
(44:31):
which came into existence in the nineteen eighties. And I
want to talk about on stuff I never told you
because I had never heard about it. Oh my goodness, now, yeah,
I never heard of it. Wow. Yeah, I know I'm
learning a lot in this Jello episode. Oh man, I'm like,
am I just really old? No? I feel like I
(44:55):
feel like there was a period during like the late
eighties early nine d's where you couldn't watch a pop
culture thing for teenagers that was taught that that that
didn't mention Jello wrestling like it was such a pervasive joke.
Really yeah, wow, Well I intend to learn more about it.
(45:21):
Cool cool, cool, Yeah, all right, Yeah, that's a different podcast.
That's a whole, different, whole different rabbit hole. Indeed. UM, oh,
speaking up, this is really interesting. Um. In nineteen seventy four,
a doctor Adrian Upton said about proving that an e
G shouldn't be the only method for determining if a
(45:43):
human is alive by attaching a green lime dome of
jello to an E G um and sure enough, just
like an awake human would, it's sent alpha waves, which
doesn't mean it doesn't mean that the jello was alive.
It me that E E G doesn't signal life, right,
But the headlines were hilarious about it, very funny. I approved, yes,
(46:09):
that you're jello is alive and it's coming. I well
there there was also um okayness, it wouldn't have been
in the seven Actually, I'm not sure when, Oh did
I did I note when jigglers entered the market. Well, okay,
there was this one marketing campaign for Jigglers. I think
for Jigglers that um that incorporated the phrase it's alive.
(46:34):
Oh and oh and I don't think I have a
note in in here about when jigglers hit the scene.
I think it was in like later in the seventies,
and I don't think that specific ad campaign happened until
the nineties. But again, I'm like going on completely whatever
is happening in my memories, which it's not. It's not reliable, um,
(46:56):
but anyway, I don't I definitely still have a version
of that j E L l oh. It's a live
like jingle in my head. I love it. I can't
remember my phone number all the time, but that that
is cemented, you don't have to worry about that um
(47:16):
at any rate. Okay. During the diet trends of like
the eighties through the early two thousand's, uh, Jello launched
sugar free and low fat versions of their mixes and
prepared products. And I had to put a note in
about this. Okay, do y'all remember Jello one, two three?
(47:36):
This was this. This was a single packet that like you,
you did, like whatever it's said on the package, and
it would separate out into three distinct layers, like like
a like a jelly layer, and like a slightly more
opaque layer, and then this layer of like foam on top. Well,
(48:00):
and I was obsessed with these when I was a kid.
This was like eight nine through six, and that was it.
That was me. But yeah, no, I I did not
remember them until I came across product photos and then
I was like, oh my goodness, m man, that one
(48:21):
escaped me. But I bet I would have liked it.
I liked that kind of stuff. Jello was famously featured
in the film Jurassic Park, and yes, I still can't
believe it came out in ninety three and not ninety four.
In My life is a lie because I said that
so confidently in the past episode. A lot of you
wrote in like, no, it wasn't three, but you did
it much more polite way than the voice. I just didn't,
(48:45):
which because I used that as a mark of my life.
That's when I moved Jurassic. My life was a lie.
At any rate by this point, yes, uh. By this
point Jello pops up popsicles were off the market. Um,
and by the early two thousands, Craft General gave up
(49:07):
on their quiescently frozen dessert line and licensed the Jello
name to competitor Popsicle, which, if you read the opinions
on the Internet, never did anything appropriate with the Jello
brand because jell O pops were terrific and Jello branded
popsicles are stupid. Got it? Okay? I do remember really
(49:35):
loving uh Jello pudding pops and also Jello Gelatin pops
when I was a kid. So at any rate, Um,
sparkling white grape flavor was introduced in to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of Jello Ah and then a Utah State
representative introduced the Resolution Urging Jello Recognition in two thousand one,
(49:59):
pushing for Jello to be recognized as the state's official steck,
and the resolution passed, Uh pretty close to you, namously.
I believe in part because Jello is incredibly popular within
the Mormon community in Utah. UM sales figures from that
time indicated that Salt Lake City, Utah, was the largest
consumer of Jello, and when that city hosted the two
(50:19):
thousand two Winter Olympics, they offered a much prized green
Jello pen that quickly sold out and became something of
a collector's item. People are very determined to find them,
all right, cool. I love product pens and how how
very devoted people are to them. Uh. But meanwhile, Jello
(50:43):
sales have been in decline for the past couple of
decades UM. For example, from two thousand, sales declined about
like like almost across across the brand. Wow. Yeah, mm hmm. Well,
there's certain seen a lot of ups and downs, so
I believe Jello is not out for the count Yeah yeah.
(51:06):
And I think I think they were using the slogan
like America's most famous dessert starting in the early nine
and it has been a long time since then, so
m hmm. Well, listeners, we would love to hear if
(51:26):
you've got any recipes for oh my goodness pictures. Oh yes,
and also if we didn't talk about your favorite uh
media example of Jello being used. I love that as well. Yeah,
any any related story. As as you can tell, this
is a topic that we are excited about. It just
(51:48):
goes in so many different directions and all of them
are weird. All of them are weird, and that's our
brand pretty much. Ye. So yes, that's about what we
have to say about Jello for now, But we do
have some listener mail for you, and we are going
to get into that as soon as we get back
from a quick break. For a word from our sponsors,
(52:17):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with the go. Yeah. I was going to
do in a Dell pund then I was like, we
can't do a deal. Oh no, we cannot, no, no way.
(52:39):
And then I was like, I could do the TikTok thing,
but Lauren already said she doesn't know what it is. Yeah,
zero percent, no no clue. Okay, but that would have
been hard to do anyway, Like even if you had
known what it is. All right, it's just it's like
a song on there. It's my money. Don't jiggle, jiggle.
We sound so old right now. But anyway, it's very popular.
It was very popular. I think it's out so already
(53:01):
behind the shrine. Alright, alright, sorry, cool, I hope you appreciated.
I'm okay with being old and lame. That's fine. We're
happy where we are. Yeah, you know, okay, Cecilia wrote,
(53:24):
I am in France now and go down to the
local shop to get a bag a most mornings. The
shop isn't open on Monday's. Um our little village used
to have a bakery, but it closed. Now we have
a d which means a truck brings fresh bread in
every morning. We actually think this bread taste better than
the bread we used to get from the bakery. The
two of us consume one bag at per day, which
(53:45):
corresponds exactly with what you said that the average Frenchman
eats half a bag at a day. I had thought
that the weight of a bag at was controlled by law,
but my reading this morning indicates that it can vary
between one and eight and two hundred fifty grams, but
must be within four grams of the posted weight. The
price is not controlled either, but there are so many
bakeries that if one baker charged too much, folks would
(54:08):
just go to another bakery. In French, the term baggett
refers to the shape and the weight of a loaf
of bread. You can buy a skinnier loaf that tastes
the same ways only one five grams. This would be
a feast cell in most parts of France, or a
fatter loaf four hundred grams called flute. So this would
be why the world record baguette was not made in France,
(54:30):
and France that is no longer a bagat. As I
alluded to, the taste ferries from baker to baker. If
Annie doesn't get excited about baggetts, it's because she hasn't
had a good one. I try to restrict my carbs
when at home, but I just can't resist the baggats
we get here. I always buy baguette. These call slightly
more one point to five euros or about one dollar
(54:52):
and thirty cents than a regular baggett, but they are
made in a more traditional way. The time the dough
rises is longer, and the baggatton cannot include any additives
or be frozen at any time during its production. These
regulations obviously apply only to commercial bakers in France. The
taste and texture of the baguette to Decian is in
our opinion, much better than an ordinary baguette and worth
(55:13):
a few extra sense. French bread may be made from
various types of flour and include hold grains. Again, the
term baguette refers to the shape and weight of the loaf,
not the ingredients. I thought I would see what the
French sites say about the origin of the long, skinny shape,
but they mostly mentioned the stories you told and say
that it was probably not Napoleon. They really don't know
the origin of the shape. I might mention one more
(55:35):
trivial thing. If I asked for Wum baguettes, I will
get an ordinary baguette with no rapper and carry it
home in my bare hand. But when I buy um
baguette to Dellen, she puts it in a paper bag
that is slightly shorter than the loaf. I don't know
why this is your podcast always put a smile on
my face, and I always learned something from them. Oh,
thank you, and we always learned something from from you
(55:57):
Cecilia to you other listeners. Um, that's fascinating. I love
that makes sense about the world record now yeah, yeah,
there's Yeah. France is like, well that's not a heck
and bagett anymore, so take the world record, I guess, yeah,
very side. I suspect like, oh no, all of that.
(56:19):
If I had, if I had like walking distance access
to fresh baked baggette every morning, that is also what
I would eat every morning. That Yeah, I mean it
sounds lovely. Yeah, sounds really lovely. And clearly I just
need to try more baggetts. Yeah, clearly. Clearly. Also, I
(56:41):
would assume that the inclusion of the paper bag is
because you are paying the extra couple of cents, and
so it's kind of like, oh, well throw it in there.
I had noticed that too. I haven't had enough baggets
to like pick up on win or why, but I
have noticed like sometimes they don't put it in anything.
They just hand it to you another time, like here
you go, here's your baget. Yeah, for one, here it is.
(57:05):
They're like, oh, it's not gonna last long enough for
you to need a bag. I'm trying to remember to
least bakery. We have a Korean Korean. We have a
Vietnamese bakery in Atlanta where they give up they sell bagheads. Yeah,
I can't remember if they put them in a background.
I think they're just kind of hand them to you.
Oh I don't remember either right now. How strange it's been.
(57:26):
It's been a while since I've just gone and gotten
bread that wasn't already made into a botton me or something. Um.
Oh man, it was like day old kind of stale ones.
So good? Any right, alright, alright, um, Paul wrote your
recent episode about sardines brought back fond memories of me
and my dad. I grew up in the late nineteen
(57:47):
fifties and early sixties. On Saturdays, my dad and I
hung out because my mom worked on that day, but
sometimes we would have a picnic lunch on our back porch.
Our lunch menu consisted of saltines, can sardines, cheddar cheese, slices,
sweet gherkins, um, and if we needed a vegetable, a
cold can of pork's beans. Two pals hanging out. What fun.
(58:08):
I love that. I love that so much. Oh that
sounds so delightful, man. Yeah, yeah, just like a salty, delicious,
refreshing meal. Right. Yeah, I love how many people a
lot of you have written in about sardines and that
makes us very happy. Yes, yes, yeah, because I I
(58:30):
don't know, I feel like it can be I know
so many humans who like either like don't like fish
or don't like strong fish flavors, or who like have
a kind of personal reticence to try like different canned products. Um,
and so right, all the love for it is very
much appreciated. It is, it is, um. So thank you
(58:51):
to both of these listeners for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can. Our email
is hello at saborpod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(59:13):
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to favor Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm Any Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam and today
we have an episode for you about Jello. Mm hmmm.
And this one goes places. Oh, it goes a lot
of wibbly wobbly places. It does, and we could have
gone to a lot more places. We just had a
pretty rousing discussion right before this about all the different
(00:32):
types of Jello molds and different Jello star wars pun ideas.
It's it's a whole big Jello world out there, it
really is. Mm hmmm. Was there any particular reason Jello
came to mind? I've been wanting to do this episode
for a while, and it seemed like the time, you know,
it was I was like, let's do a brand and
(00:53):
then I was like, oh man, Jello. M h yes,
and it's definitely a fun one. Uh. I had to say,
I'm not a big fan of Jello. I don't like
guess like, I just never want Jelly. It's not a
thing that I crave. Okay, it does remind me primarily
of when I got my wisdom teeth taken out, really
(01:15):
bad experience for me. But Jello, uh, and jello shots
because I threw a big jello shot face. Oh no. College, Yeah,
black cherry jello shots was the most popular, and I've
learned through this research black cherry jello is not the
easiest to find, really, Okay, Um well, uh, I like
(01:37):
I had a friend a little bit post college who
was kind of obsessed with creating like the most alcoholic
jello shots that would still firm up and not only
into shot format, but into larger mold format and so like,
there was a whole scientific process to figuring this out,
(01:58):
which I really respect it. Um. But yeah, but I
wouldn't say I'm a huge jello person. Now. I loved
jello when I was a kid. I was so into it,
specifically jigglers. Uh Like, when I realized that you could
make just like firm handheld jello that that I was
(02:19):
the most into that. Um. We would buy the unflavored
like Knox gelatin and use fruit juice to make it.
So Like, my parents weren't that mad about it. They
were like, well, this isn't the worst thing we could
feed this child. Uh And and then of course, right
I had on as we talked about in our ASPAC episode.
(02:41):
I'm sure my my, my grandmama Lou Um would make
a jello salad for for for dinner a lot of
the time. UM like the side salad for dinner would
be like some lime jello with shredded carrots or something
like that in it. And uh, and I have very
fond memories of that as well. Yes, And this led
to an interesting conversation between me and Lauren, because you
(03:03):
have this story, I have a story. We're in a different,
very different story where in one of my best friends
moms when I was growing up, she was my neighbor
UM and I was eight or nine at the time,
and I came over and she quite proudly presented to
(03:25):
me this big dish of orange jello with chunks, not
shredded cabbage, chunks of cabbage in it. And this was
the main course. It also had orange juice in it. Okay,
so orange. I every time you tell the story, I
feel like I only have more questions. I me too,
(03:48):
orange like sweet orange jello and orange juice. And now
you say chunks of cabbage like not like leaves of cabbage,
like wedges like wedge wedge is how they were small wedges,
but they were wedges okay. And this was green cabbage, yes, okay,
(04:10):
and this was and this was dinner, this was this
was this was flat out this was what dinner was.
And you know, I was a child, and I but
I was very polite. I was a very polite child.
But I just remember her showing this to me and
being like, put a smile on your face and don't
(04:32):
be visibly grossed out. Yeah. I've never seen anything like
that either before. That was like my first time. Oh wow, yeah, see,
I trust me. I lay awake at night trying to
parse this out. I don't know my my best theory
(04:52):
and I have thought a lot about this since the
first time you told me about it. Does talked about
this with other friends. Yes, it's haunting, uh but um
but but so my yeah, my my best theory is that, uh,
is that like a side of jello salad was something
(05:14):
that this nice lady had grown up eating um in
her parents household, and that she had these fond memories
of it, and that she just went like, what if
that was the whole dinner. I'm an adult, No one
can tell me that this isn't a whole dinner, and
so she just did it, um because you know, no
(05:34):
one could tell her no, and no one did, even
though that was a very silent meal. I have to see, Um,
I told you, I gave you a further I think
you're probably right. I think that's true. But she's also
somebody I'm still I still know her who like the
(05:55):
meal is less than the deal, no right to get
a deal on things. Yeah, it's a really cheat meal
she made. That's better than the taste of it to her.
I mean she didn't spend much on Yeah, now there
are priorities there, and for sure, I mean you get
(06:17):
a you get an on sale head of cabbage. M hmm.
I mean she bet like six of us. Yeah. So
funnily enough, my friend who her mom is the one
who made this dish, we're still best friends today. And
I texted her all these pictures of aspects and she
(06:39):
was getting progressively more angry, so cross, why you doing this?
And I was like, don't you remember when your mom
made us one? Essentially? And she was like, oh my god,
I blocked that. Wow, Oh no, you'reies. I know. I
feel like we're covering a lot of ground right now,
like even here, Yeah, we haven't even started yet. Really, Yeah,
(07:03):
and and also like I was thinking about it, um My,
my dad was on again, off again a chaffer a
cook when I was growing up, and his like when
when he had to make a cake, he his like
secret recipe. I'm just giving it away. Definitely involved um uh,
(07:26):
like packaged pudding mix because it helps add like a
like a moisteness to the cake that's otherwise like a
little bit tricky to get the texture right. Um. Yeah,
well I talked about that in our Gingerbread Cookie episode.
We used the butterscotch pudding. Yeah, it's delicious, it's nice. Well,
(07:51):
clearly we've got a lot to say about this. Um.
And yes, you can see our Aspect episode for more.
And I think our Propsical episode, I couldn't find it
in our archive, but I know we talked about somebody
who was inspired by Jello and was determined to make
a product like Jello. It might be the popsicle one.
I think we've talked a little bit about some of
(08:12):
this stuff and marshmallows. Yeah, the collagen gelatin kind of
stuff and marshmallows for sure, And we talked about that
in our Oxtail episode. But that's a little bit less related. Um,
definitely are special effects episode. Yes, well, I guess this
brings us to awk question goodness. I suppose so Jello,
(08:37):
what is it? Well? Jello is a brand of gel
based desserts and dessert mixes, sometimes also used for savory dishes,
but generally sweet and meant to be served and eaten,
usually chilled. The product lines include fruit flavored gels and
dairy flavored puddings and or pie feelings, and the brand
(08:59):
centers on like convenience and affordability and nostalgia and like fun,
like like simple pleasures. Yeah, it's it's this really entrenched American,
like every man brand. It's like if it's like a
Superman jiggled. I'm not familiar enough with TikTok, but there's
(09:21):
a tick joke that could be made, right, well, I
am also not so y'all are going to have to
fill billis in um. The brand is currently owned by
Kraft Hind's UM and it encompasses a couple of hundred products.
UM but the bread and Butter the original are these
boxed gelatine dessert mixes which consists of powdered gelatine flavorings
(09:46):
and colorings and some kind of sweetener, sugar or or
otherwise aspertain or something um all in a single packet
contained in a box the size of like a large
deck of cards. Um. So, what you do is you
dissolve the contents of the packet in hot water, then
at cold water, refrigerate a few hours until firm, and
then you've got this like soft, translucent, colorful gel that
(10:10):
melts in your mouth. Uh yeah. Flavors that are currently
on the line include cherry, black, cherry, lemon, lime, orange, orange, tangerine, mango, peach, apricot, watermelon, grape, raspberry, strawberry, strawberry, banana,
BlackBerry fusion, berry blue blueberry, pomegranate, tropical fusion, and island pineapple.
(10:38):
Huh yeah, Okay, a lot of that's new to me,
but all right. It can be made in like individual
cups or in like larger pretty molds that you can
release into a standing jelly cake of sorts. Um And
I'm like making a wiggle motion with my hands as
I described. You can add a fruit or vegetables, yes, um,
(11:03):
or like firm it up in different layers or um
or cube up some sheets and then mix those into
different layers together to create combinations of flavors and visual effects.
If you have never googled jello mold, I need you
to do that absolutely immediately, no question, no doubt zero.
(11:28):
And we were talking about this beforehand. But like, but
like jello, imagery is a fractal okay, like like, the
more detailed you get, the more details there are. Like
you can zoom in infinitely. So try try your weirdest
combination of search terms and see what you come up with.
Report backs. Uh. Some of these flavors are also available,
(11:52):
um pre made in little refrigerated snack cups. Yea, um,
but that's not all. Oh no, um there pudding mixed
line Um. These contain cornstarches, flavors and colors and sweeteners
all in a single packet again um. And these come
in two basic varieties, cooking serve, which requires you to
heat the contents with milk, and instant, which can gell
(12:15):
up with just cold milk. Either way. Refrigerating it will
set it to a firm orgel, yielding a soft, creamy
and like slightly wiggly pudding. M hmm. Yeah. Flavors they're
currently include vanilla, French, vanilla, vanilla, bean, chocolate, chocolate, fudge,
white chocolate, Devil's food, red velvet, butter, scotch, caramel, lemon, strawberry, pistachio,
(12:42):
banana cream, coconut cream, Oreo cookies and cream, pumpkin spice, tapioca,
and cheesecake. Again, this is that's quite a list. I
didn't know that you flavors spend some time in the
jelloile Annie. I don't know why that felt like a
threat to Yes, I will oh heck. Um. These can
(13:07):
be served alone as is, or layered into like pie
crusts or trifles, often with other things like sliced fruits
or or cake or cookies or whipped cream stuff like that.
And yes, several flavors also come in pre made snack cups. Um.
Plus some flavors that I don't think are available as
boxed mixes, like um Dulce de leche and unicorn magic cupcake. Okay,
(13:34):
I don't know what that one is. It's like lavender.
I think I'm not sure anyway. Um. There are also
some like grown up aimed cups in a line called Temptations,
including including strawberry cheesecake and lemon meringue. I forgot about temptations. Yeah,
we parodied that in our yogurt video. Oh oh yeah, huh.
(13:59):
I've read this one article that suggested it was trying
to suggest that jello sales have been have been sliding
because of dessert alternatives like Greek yogurt, and I was like,
pardon me, hold up, yeah, I think it's this this temptations,
(14:24):
because I think yogurt has that too. They've got their
like key lime pie. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I mean,
if that's what you want, go for it. But let's not.
I I like Greek yogurt as much as the next guy.
But holy anyway, um uh but uh but wait, there's
(14:47):
there's still more. Um. There's also what's basically puttings that
are meant specifically to be made into pies and or
bars and come packaged in like kits with a crumb
cross mixes and toppings. Generally, these call for you to
take the packet of crumb crust, a mix it with
some melted butter, press it into a pie tin or
(15:08):
cake pan, then separately beat the filling with cold milk
and layer it into that pan with whatever toppings might
be provided. Um either corn or potato starches and cellulose
gels help firm up the fillings. Um, they're a little
bit more solid than your typical pudding mix. UM flavors
here include cheesecake with options for like strawberry or cherry
(15:29):
or no topping, um Jet, puffed s'mores, oreo bars, and
pumpkin style pie. Oh interesting style, not enough squash to
count as a pumpkin pie, but pumpkin style by The
(15:55):
brand also produces a few like kits for making like
layered autting desserts themed around like dirt or beaches or whatever.
You know. UM kits for making firmer handheld gelatin cutouts.
Those jigglers, Yeah, different, different, different molds and stuff like that. Yes,
we did find some old Star Wars themed jiggler molds
(16:18):
when we were talking about it earlier. I think this
is I think this is underway. I think that can
I be honest with you. I didn't know what jiggler
wash man. They seem like they're very popular, are they were? Yeah,
So idea, I think we're gonna have to in this
ever expanding Stranger meal we're conducting planning, I think we're
(16:44):
going to have to have the Star Wars jigglers. Okay,
all right, we can make this work perfect heck. UM.
But yeah, yeah, these these products are kind of just
the beginning. Like there are just a ton of recipes
out there from the brand and from home and come
virtual kitchens UM that use these products to add texture
and structural support to cakes and fillings and frozen desserts
(17:07):
and chilled snacks of all kinds UM. As we've talked
about before, UM sort of In brief, gelatine is just
a really useful thing in food chemistry because it solidifies
it like freezes and around degrees fahrenheit or thirty five
celsius and melts above that, which is why things like
(17:28):
jello melt in your mouth, which is hypothetically a couple
of degrees above that UM, thus delivering this like flavor
payload like directly to your tongue. UM. Gelatin is a
protein made up of these long friendly chains of amino acids.
By friendly, I hear mean that they are super willing
(17:48):
to bond up into like complex three dimensional matrices at
room temperature UM. And they're also happy to form bonds
with water molecules weekly when the temperature is cold enough,
like a little bit colder. So what happens is you
add gelatine to warm water. The warmth makes all of
the gelatine molecules slip and slide and wiggle apart from
(18:10):
each other, and then as they cool, they chill out
and grab up water molecules and cling to each other
in complex patterns, trapping the water in among themselves, which
is what happens when you get a jello mold. Um,
if you warm it up again, say in your mouth,
all the molecules slide away from each other again. Um.
(18:30):
Gelatine is itself flavorless, but anything soluble in water of
those flavorings and colorings will come along for the ride.
You get gelatine by breaking down collagen um, which is
long chains of amino acids that are twined up together.
And this occurs as a connective protein in and around
cells that gives them flexible structure. It's especially prevalent in
(18:53):
a skin and tendons and bones, anything that needs to
be kind of flexible. Yeah. So when you both will
these tissues, um, the collagen inside them untwined, leaving you
with gelatine molecules. Um. So it's happening when you cool
gelatin down is the molecules are sort of trying to
reform those twiny collagen patterns and sort of failing but
(19:16):
failing deliciously. Oh yeah, good for you, Yeah thanks collagen
um On on the jellow pudding and corn starches act similarly. Um.
They're made up of raveled chains of starches instead of proteins,
and when introduced to water and especially when heated, UM,
(19:36):
those starches will unravel and grab up bits of liquid
and then reform into like a semi solid mesh UM.
I think refrigerating helps because it solidifies like wee bits
of fat in there as well. But I didn't, I
didn't look that closely. Into a corn starch is gonna
have to be a whole different episode, yes, yeah, and
within it, I will share my what it feels to
(19:57):
me like a very complicated recipe of making graving at Thanksgiving,
But it's not. It's not actually complicated, but it involves
corn starch and moving things from heat into not heat
and more heat and lots of whisking I assumed, just
continual lots. Yeah. Well, what about the nutrition? Oh okay,
(20:20):
jello like like the fruit flavored gel, is low in fiber,
pretty low in micronutrients, does have a tiny bit of
protein from the gelatine. UM. In terms of the puddings,
milk is okay for you. Um, gelatine may carry health
(20:40):
benefits UM, like enough of it over enough of a
period of time, because like when gelatine supplements are taken,
specifically with vitamin C, they've sometimes been shown to improve
patients blood levels of like the markers of collagen synthesis.
So times. So but yeah, no, you should. You should
(21:03):
eat it because you like it at that point. And like,
certainly the addition of all kinds of sweeteners and other
stuff is going to affect your nutritional value. Yeah, sugar
isn't good for you. Artificial sweeteners also are not good
for you. So yeah, but it's a treat, and treats
are nice. Yeah. And I know, like, I mean, we
(21:24):
can debate the merits of this and not not in
this podcast, but I know that Jello, like the kind
of prepackaged um jello, the cups, the cups, Yeah yeah yeah,
the prepacting chellow cups. Um. They were big in like
Keto diets or similar diets where that's like your treat,
(21:45):
your snatch. Yeah. Which again, if you like, oh yeah,
go for it, um. But for me, I'm always I'm like,
jellow is not a dessert. I get that it technically
is in my book. Yeah, if you have to be
on a liquid diet, then that's it's fine. Yeah. And
(22:08):
I know people who love jello. So this is just
my personal personal See what you like. Mm hmmm, we
do have some numbers for you. As you kind of
alluded to, Lauren, Jello has historically been a popular item
in things like movies for achieving certain colors of our textures.
I know it came up in like Wizard of Oz,
that's how they died. The horses shared that color. Um,
(22:33):
a bunch of movies. Jello is a popular, popular thing
to use. Yeah. And and historically, um, it's been a
popular food item. Um. In the nineteen eighties, for example,
American households consumed jello on average thirteen point five times
a year. Okay, not bad, not bad. Meanwhile, um, the
(23:00):
Guinness record for the most jello, although it could have
could have been unbranded, I'm not sure um anyway, that
the most jello type product eaten with chopsticks in one
minute was set in seventeen in Germany, which was for
(23:21):
seven hundred and sixteen grams of jello, which is about
one point six pounds. Um, I don't I don't know
what flavor. Oh wow, someone knows. You've gotta gotta tell us.
Oh heck um. Also another another Google search for y'all um.
(23:43):
In nineteen, former NASA JPL engineer Mark Robert Robbert. Oh,
I always forget how to say his name out loud anyway. Um.
Former NASA JPL engineer designed a swimming pool filled with
jello or like unsweetened red gelatine. Um because he didn't
want to waste food, sugar being food. And he did
(24:05):
this because you know who has not dreamed, especially as
a child, of jumping into a pool full of jello
sounds terrible. Then you become the thing inside. Oh yeah,
everything a horror story. Yeah, the old like Mickey Mouse,
like Jack and the bean Stock really dealt with that.
(24:29):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you're right. We really are on
covering a lot of stuff. When we are we are
just like layers of an aspect um. But okay, so
so what what happened here was the team set up
um an underground pool in Colorado and used six gallon
(24:50):
drums that were fitted with these propane heating elements to
heat the gelatine and water to a hundred and sixty
degrees um and then pipe it into the pool in
layers and and used the cool outdoor overnight temperatures during
this like three week sweet spot in late April wow,
(25:14):
to progressively chill seven days worth of layers of gelatin
until the pool was full. And there's a video. It's
very charming. Um, so they went for a swim and yeah, yeah,
it's it's very satisfying to watch. Okay, yeah, alright, well
(25:34):
congrats to them. Then it didn't turn into a horror
show for you. No, no, not that time, not that time.
I do like the implication that jello without sugar is
not food. That kind of cracks me up. We do
have quite a bit of history for you. Oh we do,
(25:56):
heck um. And we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break.
For a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you, which I think we did
not mention, but Jello is currently not a sponsor. Oh no, no,
(26:19):
we were just interested in the suffect matter. Yeah, if
you couldn't tell, we always we always clarify if it
is sponsored. But just to clarify even more, which is
interested in these kinds of things. Yeah, but Jello, we're here,
you know. Oh yeah, call us Jello. It's Jello. Of
(26:41):
course it would be Jello. Okay, okay, no, dear, sorry, sorry, sorry,
I'm already working on the title phone. All right. So,
as we've discussed in previous episodes, gelatin was featured in
popular dishes in Europe going back to at least four
century UM. Making gelatine at the time frequently was pretty
(27:03):
time consuming. Um. It involved this process of boiling the
feet of animals. Uh. And once that had set, flavorings
were added to make the resulting mixture tasty. Right, and
the earliest gelatins were savory um like spiced meat or
fish dishes were what was up at fancy parties, UM
(27:27):
like like either meat or fish covered in a layer
of gelatine or write like an aspect type thing that
contained some of these elements. Um. And these were right,
very fancy parties. Like you had to take the skin
and bones of animals or fish and boil them down
and then subtle and strain the resulting stock multiple times
to get your gelatine and then use that to create
(27:50):
a coating or a mold containing whatever. UM and refrigeration
and or ice was expensive, so getting gelatine cold enough
to gel was expensive. The ingredients these recipes called for,
like saffron, were also like really pricey and showy mm hm.
Out of all of this, the word jelly or gelatin
(28:10):
may have come from the Latin gelata, meaning frozen, indicating
that the liquid and anything you put in it would
be frozen in place, and this would be used to
great visual effect fish swimming and jelly um and there
was a um and and also this stuff was like
sort of a preservative, like by putting meat or vegetables
(28:31):
into the gelatine, as long as you could keep it cool,
it cut off bacteria's access to oxygen and thus prevented spoilage.
Ah um. Sweet gelatine dishes appeared by the early sixteen hundreds,
flavored with things like ginger and rose water or um,
white wine, and almonds and a few other sources of
(28:52):
gelatin and production methods were developed across the sixteen and
seventeen hundreds as well, UM seaweed, uh, fish, bladders, eats,
and glass, steam and or pressure tech for creation of
these things, and then technology leapt forward again in the
early eighteen hundreds with the invention of industrial methods of
gelatine extraction right UM, and then in eighteen forty Peter
(29:17):
Cooper got to work on making a product that made
gelatin easier for people to access UM and to do this,
he ground up sheets of gelatine into powder, and he
went on to secure a patent for what he called
Portable Gelatine UM, which was a gelatine dessert powder that
only needed hot water before it was ready to go. However,
Cooper didn't do much to market the powder after that.
(29:41):
He sometimes sold it to cooks and chefs, but he
didn't commercialize it at all. Yeah, he hadn't really been
aiming to make a food item. He was more interested
in glue yes, And pretty much every single article I
read said he also did something with the steam engine.
So he was an inventor. He was, he was, He
(30:02):
got around, He did a lot of stuff. He did,
but he was not the only one making strides in
the gelatine field. Industrialists started using animal rite products to
create powdered gelatine products for like tanners and gluemakers in
eighteen forties and in eighteen ninety, Charles and Rose Knox
started the Knox Company to sell powdered gelatine. Another competitor, Royal,
(30:24):
got their start in eighteen sixty three. Yes, and this
brings us to Pearl and May Wait, a married couple
that ran a cough syrup and laxative business in Leroy,
New York. Um. I know we're nerds, um, but they
were barely making ends meet with this business, and after
years of struggling, they decided to focus on food because
(30:46):
May was a big cook and she loved making desserts,
especially um. So they found the patent for powdered gelatine. Uh.
And gelatine is pretty bland by itself usually, so they
added some of the flavored syrups they used in their medication,
flavors like orange, lemon, strawberry, and raspberry. The addition of
these serves meant that their desserts were now almost nine
(31:08):
sugar uh huh. And the story goes that May name
the product jello, which was a combination of gelatin and
or jelly with an oh at the end, because apparently
that was just a really popular way of naming things
at the time. Because it was both aesthetically pleasing and
fairly easy to take a word in trade market by
(31:29):
adding me, oh, which I kind of love, like just
I don't know onto it? Yeah cool mm hmm. Once again, though,
the weights weren't really great at marketing for this product,
so they eventually sold the patent, recipes and the name
to their neighbor, Frank Woodward, for the equivalent of about
twelve thousand dollars in today's money. Whatard was the owner
(31:52):
of the Genesee Food Company, and he had a lot
of experience in the world of marketing packaged food products,
so he would send out these really nicely just salesman
to home stop to offer free samples of this product.
But yeah, which I have again, horror show, I'm telling
you anyway, all right, maybe the people agreed with me
(32:13):
because the dessert just was not catching on even with
this marketing uh ploy, I don't know if it's the
right word, marketing scheme. Every word I'm thinking of as
negative even with this marketing idea. At one point, Woodward
tried to sell the product to someone else for a
mere thirty five dollars, but the person refused, no, thank you,
(32:36):
okay um. But to boost the sales and the standing
of Jella. The company did lean really hard into marketing
I believe would word like put a lot of money
into it. He was like, we've got to do something here. Um,
I'm stuck with this. We might as well let's really
(32:57):
pull out all the stuffs. And one of the ads
ran in a nineteen or four edition of Ladies Home Journal,
and it called Jello America's favorite dessert. And these ads
were incredibly successful. Uh, and sales shot up to two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars or about six million dollars
in today's money. Okay, this is like from this one
(33:20):
ad campaign, or that's what a lot of people attribute
attributed it to. Anyway. Um. Woodward wasn't done either, and
started printing Jello recipe books. UM. Immigrants arriving to Ellis
Island were sometimes handed Jello molds. The Jello Girl, played
by the daughter of ad legend Franklin King Um and
Franklin King worked for Woodward, was introduced in nineteen o
(33:41):
eight with the slogan you can't be a kid without it. Um.
Around this time, UH, they were expanding their product line
with flavors like cherry peach, chocolate and coffee. Coffee, Yeah,
only in certain markets. Oh of course, I won't fly
everywhere in a way. Charles Knox promoted his gelatine at
(34:08):
the nineteen o four World's Fair, and the next year
a Pennsylvania woman one third place in a cooking contest
sponsored by Knox for recipes she called perfection salad um,
which was quote an aspect filled with finely chopped cabbage, celery,
and red pepper. And I think we did talk about that,
and they ask, yeah, oh yeah, we did. Oh yeah.
In ninety two, James Beard wrote that this event quote
(34:31):
unleashed a demand for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly,
particularly in the suburb. I don't know why that cocks
me up so much. Um And that quote the jellied
salad does have its delights though, and it is without
question in American innovation. And yes, we are going to
talk about that more in a second. As you know,
we could not, we could not not, must we must? Yes. Uh.
(34:57):
In nineteen o four was a big year for jello
because it was also the year a book came out
calling for a bigger focus on calories and nutrients for
patients and places like hospitals as opposed to home cooked
meals often provided by nurses before then. And this this
work had a really big impact on that UM and
Jello did that the bill for a liquid diet as well,
(35:18):
and that this is part of the reason they became
a key prison food too. M yep uh. So thanks
to this marketing, Jello did become a household name, and
in the Genesee Food Company changed their name to the
Jello Company. Also that year, they hired a pre famous
Norman Rockwell to paint illustrations of Jello. As radio became
(35:42):
more popular and accessible, Jello was one of the first
companies to advertise on that platform, hiring Jack Benny for
one of their very first radio ads. This was also
something I didn't know what they were talking about, but
it seems like everyone else did. But it's a jingle,
the Jello jingle. Uh, but he did it, Jack Betty
did it. I'm sure you all know what what it is,
but I don't. Is it just the j E L
(36:04):
L O? I think so? Probably? Yeah, there you go,
very simple. During World War One, Jello sales were negatively
impacted by the rationing of sugar, but they shot up
again after the war, in part because jello products were
fairly cheap. When lime jello was introduced in the nineteen thirties,
(36:27):
the popularity of dishes like jellied salads only further increased.
I know, we talked about that in our episode two
Um the whole cookbooks were written about lime jello and
how to use it as a savory base for salads.
In six the company started offering instant chocolate pudding, a
powdered mixed made with milk, um and other flavors of pudding.
(36:48):
Soon followed after that. In two a Coca cola flavored
powder was briefly introduced because of the popularity of the
Southern Coca cola salad, a jelled salad made with coke.
But it didn't last long. Yeah, it was out by
the end of the year. I think. Yeah. Big year,
(37:10):
big year for Coca cola jello salads. Yep, the only year.
In fact, yes, the only year. Indeed. The Jello plant
and leeard closed in n six when production was taken
over by what is now Craft Foods. According to legend,
jello shots were invented in the fifties as a way
(37:32):
to shirk alcohol restrictions on an Army Base by singer
and songwriter Tom Larer, and I did not look further
than that. I think that could be a whole thing. Yeah,
but that is what these like brief search ideas. Okay, okay,
we're willing to accept that it is a legend that exists. Yes, yes, absolutely,
(37:52):
all right, so now let's let's get to the jelly salads.
Let's do it. Okay, here we here we go. Yes,
so excited. Um. As we've discussed in multiple episodes, the
jello salad was the prize of the American table from
the fifties two about the eighties, as was going downhill
by probably the seventies, but like, oh and you know
(38:15):
what it's like the thirties to the eighties, but I
think the fifties was It's real. Yeah, absolutely yes. And
these were both savory and sweet. Uh though, Yeah, they
were popular even before that, because we've been talking about
them throughout UM. And in the nineteen thirties, about one
third of most American recipe books UM were dedicated to
jelly salads, which blows my mind. And now I want
(38:37):
to get my hand on these recipe books. Oh yeah, no,
there I have at least one in my personal cookbook collection.
And they are glorious, um, terrifying and glorious. I love it.
I want to see it, Laura, and I want to
see it. I'll try to remember to bring one to
our next D and D game. Yes, now, that would
(39:00):
be a D and D meal. Oh no, we could
get one. He would be so mad at us. Okay,
all right, here we go. Well, this whole jelly salad idea,
it was sort of wrapped up in the realm of
domestic science, which was also called home economics, because gelatine
was typically viewed as difficult. Jello, though, was a relatively
(39:22):
cheap way to achieve the impression that you put a
lot of time and effort into something, and that you
were well off enough to afford a big enough refrigerator
for these jelly salads, um, and also the time to
make them. And to be clear, women did often put
a lot of effort into the presentation. That was like
the key. It was a really strange and interesting balancing
(39:47):
act of saving time and money but appearing like you
hadn't very interesting. Um. It was also seen as new
and sciency and visually pleasing. Yes, I know, but it
was seen like that yeah, yeah, even even the most
The the term that gained popularity popularity on the internet,
(40:09):
I think from a Facebook group perhaps is aspects with
threatening auras and threatening aura is definitely the correct terminology
for some of these molded salads. Yes, yes, I like
I said, I was horrifying my friend just sending her
picture after a picture, and my favorite are like the
(40:32):
mold that shaped like a fish and it has like
anchovies in it. Yeah, the one is like lamb ones. Yeah,
it is threatening, you're right. I yeah. One of the
recipes that I was just looking up called for boiling
lamb hearts and then slicing them thin as though you're
in the cell, and and then using them to line
(40:55):
a mold. This is from four. I was like, okay,
m hm, at any rate, please continue. Oh wow, No,
you've really put an image in my head, so I'm sorry.
Let me shake myself out of their second. Yes, also
they have really great names. They have really really yea
(41:16):
so again, Hi, we cannot recommend enough. Please look it up. Um.
It was also this dish was also viewed as a
cleaner option than a traditional salad, like it didn't mess
with the lines of your plate, like it didn't. I
don't know, it wasn't messy or that was the view anyway.
The company's advertising really leaned into it being a quote
(41:38):
pure product, like a clean products. And this was kind
of based on like the jungle and fears about what
was in people's food and all that stuff. Um. And
they were also seen as quite a feminine food. According
to a book by Knox, for example, it was a
dainty food for dainty people. Again, a lot of them
(42:00):
are terrifying. Yeah, I some dainty things are also terrifying,
though very true, Lauren Yes. During the nineteen sixties, Jellow
debut savory flavors like celery, mixed vegetable, and Italian salad,
(42:21):
but within a decade, flagging sales met the company stopped
selling those flavors. A lot of it had to do
with changing views around dieting and sugar. Jello salads were
replaced with salads of mixed screens. As women were entering
the workplace, Um, but we're also still largely responsible for
preparing meals, uh, they sought out newly available, more convenient
(42:41):
options like microwavable meals um and that that microwavable meals
had improved a lot by that point. Um. In response,
Jello leaned back into being a dessert and started offering
products like pudding and gelatine pops, and they hired Bill
Cosby as their spokesperson. Uh. Putting pops were specifically introduced
(43:03):
in ninety nine and gelatin pops after that, and they
were pretty popular for a few years. And this strategy
was successful, and it substantially boosted Jello sales. Cosby voiced
for the product for over thirty years and it just
won of the longest running celebrity endorsements of all time.
(43:23):
After his conviction in he became the first person ever
kicked out of the American Advertising Federation, and one of
the first meals he was served in prison included Jello
that makes me very happy. Yeah, I because throw that
whole man away. Yep. Also, anyone else who's been watching
(43:49):
The Boys, that one line made me laugh harder than
many other things in the history of laughing. Um. And
I don't think you've you've gotten there yet, So now
I did it. Yep. When I start something, I don't stop.
(44:10):
That's when I put off starting it. Anyway, Jella went
an opposite way. We'll say then The Boys because part
of this whole thing was a purposeful effort by the
company to market their products as family friendly UM and
pivot away from things like Jello's Shots and Jello Wrestling,
(44:31):
which came into existence in the nineteen eighties. And I
want to talk about on stuff I never told you
because I had never heard about it. Oh my goodness, now, yeah,
I never heard of it. Wow. Yeah, I know I'm
learning a lot in this Jello episode. Oh man, I'm like,
am I just really old? No? I feel like I
(44:55):
feel like there was a period during like the late
eighties early nine d's where you couldn't watch a pop
culture thing for teenagers that was taught that that that
didn't mention Jello wrestling like it was such a pervasive joke.
Really yeah, wow, Well I intend to learn more about it.
(45:21):
Cool cool, cool, Yeah, all right, Yeah, that's a different podcast.
That's a whole, different, whole different rabbit hole. Indeed. UM, oh,
speaking up, this is really interesting. Um. In nineteen seventy four,
a doctor Adrian Upton said about proving that an e
G shouldn't be the only method for determining if a
(45:43):
human is alive by attaching a green lime dome of
jello to an E G um and sure enough, just
like an awake human would, it's sent alpha waves, which
doesn't mean it doesn't mean that the jello was alive.
It me that E E G doesn't signal life, right,
But the headlines were hilarious about it, very funny. I approved, yes,
(46:09):
that you're jello is alive and it's coming. I well
there there was also um okayness, it wouldn't have been
in the seven Actually, I'm not sure when, Oh did
I did I note when jigglers entered the market. Well, okay,
there was this one marketing campaign for Jigglers. I think
for Jigglers that um that incorporated the phrase it's alive.
(46:34):
Oh and oh and I don't think I have a
note in in here about when jigglers hit the scene.
I think it was in like later in the seventies,
and I don't think that specific ad campaign happened until
the nineties. But again, I'm like going on completely whatever
is happening in my memories, which it's not. It's not reliable, um,
(46:56):
but anyway, I don't I definitely still have a version
of that j E L l oh. It's a live
like jingle in my head. I love it. I can't
remember my phone number all the time, but that that
is cemented, you don't have to worry about that um
(47:16):
at any rate. Okay. During the diet trends of like
the eighties through the early two thousand's, uh, Jello launched
sugar free and low fat versions of their mixes and
prepared products. And I had to put a note in
about this. Okay, do y'all remember Jello one, two three?
(47:36):
This was this. This was a single packet that like you,
you did, like whatever it's said on the package, and
it would separate out into three distinct layers, like like
a like a jelly layer, and like a slightly more
opaque layer, and then this layer of like foam on top. Well,
(48:00):
and I was obsessed with these when I was a kid.
This was like eight nine through six, and that was it.
That was me. But yeah, no, I I did not
remember them until I came across product photos and then
I was like, oh my goodness, m man, that one
(48:21):
escaped me. But I bet I would have liked it.
I liked that kind of stuff. Jello was famously featured
in the film Jurassic Park, and yes, I still can't
believe it came out in ninety three and not ninety four.
In My life is a lie because I said that
so confidently in the past episode. A lot of you
wrote in like, no, it wasn't three, but you did
it much more polite way than the voice. I just didn't,
(48:45):
which because I used that as a mark of my life.
That's when I moved Jurassic. My life was a lie.
At any rate by this point, yes, uh. By this
point Jello pops up popsicles were off the market. Um,
and by the early two thousands, Craft General gave up
(49:07):
on their quiescently frozen dessert line and licensed the Jello
name to competitor Popsicle, which, if you read the opinions
on the Internet, never did anything appropriate with the Jello
brand because jell O pops were terrific and Jello branded
popsicles are stupid. Got it? Okay? I do remember really
(49:35):
loving uh Jello pudding pops and also Jello Gelatin pops
when I was a kid. So at any rate, Um,
sparkling white grape flavor was introduced in to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of Jello Ah and then a Utah State
representative introduced the Resolution Urging Jello Recognition in two thousand one,
(49:59):
pushing for Jello to be recognized as the state's official steck,
and the resolution passed, Uh pretty close to you, namously.
I believe in part because Jello is incredibly popular within
the Mormon community in Utah. UM sales figures from that
time indicated that Salt Lake City, Utah, was the largest
consumer of Jello, and when that city hosted the two
(50:19):
thousand two Winter Olympics, they offered a much prized green
Jello pen that quickly sold out and became something of
a collector's item. People are very determined to find them,
all right, cool. I love product pens and how how
very devoted people are to them. Uh. But meanwhile, Jello
(50:43):
sales have been in decline for the past couple of
decades UM. For example, from two thousand, sales declined about
like like almost across across the brand. Wow. Yeah, mm hmm. Well,
there's certain seen a lot of ups and downs, so
I believe Jello is not out for the count Yeah yeah.
(51:06):
And I think I think they were using the slogan
like America's most famous dessert starting in the early nine
and it has been a long time since then, so
m hmm. Well, listeners, we would love to hear if
(51:26):
you've got any recipes for oh my goodness pictures. Oh yes,
and also if we didn't talk about your favorite uh
media example of Jello being used. I love that as well. Yeah,
any any related story. As as you can tell, this
is a topic that we are excited about. It just
(51:48):
goes in so many different directions and all of them
are weird. All of them are weird, and that's our
brand pretty much. Ye. So yes, that's about what we
have to say about Jello for now, But we do
have some listener mail for you, and we are going
to get into that as soon as we get back
from a quick break. For a word from our sponsors,
(52:17):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with the go. Yeah. I was going to
do in a Dell pund then I was like, we
can't do a deal. Oh no, we cannot, no, no way.
(52:39):
And then I was like, I could do the TikTok thing,
but Lauren already said she doesn't know what it is. Yeah,
zero percent, no no clue. Okay, but that would have
been hard to do anyway, Like even if you had
known what it is. All right, it's just it's like
a song on there. It's my money. Don't jiggle, jiggle.
We sound so old right now. But anyway, it's very popular.
It was very popular. I think it's out so already
(53:01):
behind the shrine. Alright, alright, sorry, cool, I hope you appreciated.
I'm okay with being old and lame. That's fine. We're
happy where we are. Yeah, you know, okay, Cecilia wrote,
(53:24):
I am in France now and go down to the
local shop to get a bag a most mornings. The
shop isn't open on Monday's. Um our little village used
to have a bakery, but it closed. Now we have
a d which means a truck brings fresh bread in
every morning. We actually think this bread taste better than
the bread we used to get from the bakery. The
two of us consume one bag at per day, which
(53:45):
corresponds exactly with what you said that the average Frenchman
eats half a bag at a day. I had thought
that the weight of a bag at was controlled by law,
but my reading this morning indicates that it can vary
between one and eight and two hundred fifty grams, but
must be within four grams of the posted weight. The
price is not controlled either, but there are so many
bakeries that if one baker charged too much, folks would
(54:08):
just go to another bakery. In French, the term baggett
refers to the shape and the weight of a loaf
of bread. You can buy a skinnier loaf that tastes
the same ways only one five grams. This would be
a feast cell in most parts of France, or a
fatter loaf four hundred grams called flute. So this would
be why the world record baguette was not made in France,
(54:30):
and France that is no longer a bagat. As I
alluded to, the taste ferries from baker to baker. If
Annie doesn't get excited about baggetts, it's because she hasn't
had a good one. I try to restrict my carbs
when at home, but I just can't resist the baggats
we get here. I always buy baguette. These call slightly
more one point to five euros or about one dollar
(54:52):
and thirty cents than a regular baggett, but they are
made in a more traditional way. The time the dough
rises is longer, and the baggatton cannot include any additives
or be frozen at any time during its production. These
regulations obviously apply only to commercial bakers in France. The
taste and texture of the baguette to Decian is in
our opinion, much better than an ordinary baguette and worth
(55:13):
a few extra sense. French bread may be made from
various types of flour and include hold grains. Again, the
term baguette refers to the shape and weight of the loaf,
not the ingredients. I thought I would see what the
French sites say about the origin of the long, skinny shape,
but they mostly mentioned the stories you told and say
that it was probably not Napoleon. They really don't know
the origin of the shape. I might mention one more
(55:35):
trivial thing. If I asked for Wum baguettes, I will
get an ordinary baguette with no rapper and carry it
home in my bare hand. But when I buy um
baguette to Dellen, she puts it in a paper bag
that is slightly shorter than the loaf. I don't know
why this is your podcast always put a smile on
my face, and I always learned something from them. Oh,
thank you, and we always learned something from from you
(55:57):
Cecilia to you other listeners. Um, that's fascinating. I love
that makes sense about the world record now yeah, yeah,
there's Yeah. France is like, well that's not a heck
and bagett anymore, so take the world record, I guess, yeah,
very side. I suspect like, oh no, all of that.
(56:19):
If I had, if I had like walking distance access
to fresh baked baggette every morning, that is also what
I would eat every morning. That Yeah, I mean it
sounds lovely. Yeah, sounds really lovely. And clearly I just
need to try more baggetts. Yeah, clearly. Clearly. Also, I
(56:41):
would assume that the inclusion of the paper bag is
because you are paying the extra couple of cents, and
so it's kind of like, oh, well throw it in there.
I had noticed that too. I haven't had enough baggets
to like pick up on win or why, but I
have noticed like sometimes they don't put it in anything.
They just hand it to you another time, like here
you go, here's your baget. Yeah, for one, here it is.
(57:05):
They're like, oh, it's not gonna last long enough for
you to need a bag. I'm trying to remember to
least bakery. We have a Korean Korean. We have a
Vietnamese bakery in Atlanta where they give up they sell bagheads. Yeah,
I can't remember if they put them in a background.
I think they're just kind of hand them to you.
Oh I don't remember either right now. How strange it's been.
(57:26):
It's been a while since I've just gone and gotten
bread that wasn't already made into a botton me or something. Um.
Oh man, it was like day old kind of stale ones.
So good? Any right, alright, alright, um, Paul wrote your
recent episode about sardines brought back fond memories of me
and my dad. I grew up in the late nineteen
(57:47):
fifties and early sixties. On Saturdays, my dad and I
hung out because my mom worked on that day, but
sometimes we would have a picnic lunch on our back porch.
Our lunch menu consisted of saltines, can sardines, cheddar cheese, slices,
sweet gherkins, um, and if we needed a vegetable, a
cold can of pork's beans. Two pals hanging out. What fun.
(58:08):
I love that. I love that so much. Oh that
sounds so delightful, man. Yeah, yeah, just like a salty, delicious,
refreshing meal. Right. Yeah, I love how many people a
lot of you have written in about sardines and that
makes us very happy. Yes, yes, yeah, because I I
(58:30):
don't know, I feel like it can be I know
so many humans who like either like don't like fish
or don't like strong fish flavors, or who like have
a kind of personal reticence to try like different canned products. Um,
and so right, all the love for it is very
much appreciated. It is, it is, um. So thank you
(58:51):
to both of these listeners for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can. Our email
is hello at saborpod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(59:13):
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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