food history

WTF Fun Fact 13685 – Fruit Loops are all the Same Flavor

Despite their rainbow of colors, all Fruit Loops are all the same flavor. This revelation might just change your morning routine forever. Let’s unravel this flavorful illusion.

The Fruity Illusion of Flavor

At first glance, Fruit Loops seem like a bowl full of varied flavors. Red, blue, green, and yellow ones, each presumably tasting like the fruit they represent. However, the truth is they all taste the same. Kellogg’s, the company behind the cereal, has crafted these cereals to have a uniform flavor profile, a blend that hints at fruitiness but doesn’t correspond to any specific fruit.

The Science of Taste

Why do so many of us believe we’re tasting different flavors? It boils down to the power of visual cues and how they influence our perception of taste. Studies in sensory science show that color can significantly affect how we perceive the flavor of food. When we see a colorful array of loops, our brain prepares us to experience different tastes.

This expectation influences our perception, making us believe we’re enjoying a variety of flavors when, in fact, each loop tastes the same.

The Flavor Formula: Fruit Loops are all the Same

What exactly are we tasting when we dive into a bowl of Fruit Loops? The flavor is a fruity concoction, designed by food scientists to appeal broadly to the cereal’s audience. It’s a mix of fruit flavors that creates a unique taste, which many of us can’t pinpoint to a single fruit but find deliciously satisfying. This generic “fruity” flavor is consistent across all the loops, regardless of their color.

From a manufacturing standpoint, producing Fruit Loops of the same flavor but different colors is a stroke of genius. It simplifies the production process, allowing Kellogg’s to create a single flavor batch of cereal and then divide it into separate streams for coloring. This efficiency in production likely helps keep costs down while maintaining the allure of a fun, colorful breakfast option.

Marketing Brilliance

The uniform flavor of Fruit Loops is also a masterclass in marketing. By associating the cereal with a variety of colors, Kellogg’s taps into the visual appeal that attracts both kids and adults. The colorful presentation makes Fruit Loops stand out on the shelves, promising a fun and fruity eating experience.

This visual variety, despite the singular flavor, has helped cement the cereal as a breakfast staple in many households.

The Psychological Play

The uniform flavor strategy plays into a psychological phenomenon where our senses, including sight, smell, and taste, converge to create our eating experience. This sensory interplay can lead to surprising perceptions, like tasting different flavors in Fruit Loops. It’s a reminder of how our brains synthesize information from our senses to create subjective realities, even when it comes to the taste of our favorite foods.

Thrown for a Loop: Fruit Loops are all the Same Flavor

The revelation that Fruit Loops are all the same flavor despite their colorful variety has sparked discussions and debates among cereal enthusiasts and foodies alike. It challenges our assumptions about how food should taste based on its appearance and invites us to explore the role of sensory perception in our eating habits.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Breaking Breakfast News: Froot Loops Are All the Same Flavor” — Time Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13342 – Lithium in 7-Up

Few people remember the debut of 7-Up in 1929, so it’s no surprise that you might not know its original name. But Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda was quite a product! And if you read that closely, you might be wondering if they really put lithium in 7-Up. And the answer is yes.

Why was there lithium in 7-Up soda?

As you likely know, lithium is a compound that is used to help people with mental health issues like bipolar disorder and specific kinds of depression. It’s a mood stabilizer.

The soda really did contain the ingredient lithium citrate. And maybe that’s not such a big surprise since there were plenty of medicinal “tonics” on the market in those days that claimed to miraculously cure all kinds of ailments. (Of course, it’s not the only soda with an eye-popping history of ingredients – we’re looking at you, Coca-Cola!)

Interestingly, when 7-Up hit the shelves (right before the great stock market crash), it was competing with HUNDREDS of other lemon-lime sodas. It sold well – and perhaps it’s because people liked more than just the taste! But that may also be because its creator, Charles Leiper Grigg, marketed it as both a healthy and slenderizing tonic.

What’s in a name?

People were attracted to lithiated soda at the time because lithium had a reputation for being healing and restorative. There are naturally lithiated bodies of water that people still visit in order to absorb trace amounts of the compound. Just take a trip to Lithia Springs, Georgia!

Any lithium you’d absorb in water or in the original 7-Uo would be minuscule compared to what psychiatrists prescribe today. It would not have been enough to alter the mind in any significant way. But it could have been enough so that regular drinkers found some benefits in choosing it over other lemon-lime sodas.

In any case, the government saw fit to ban the use of lithium citrate in soft drinks in 1948. Eventually, it just became 7-Up.

Heads up, 7-UP

The big mystery about 7-Up is where the 7 came from – and that we really don’t know. According to a blog by Ada Mcvean from McGill University back in 2017:

“The soda went through a name change to 7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda, before finally settling on just 7 Up, and a formula with no added lithium. The 7 in the name has no confirmed source, but several theories about its origin. Some soda fans claim that it is derived from the 7 ingredients used in the original recipe, others from the soda having a pH of 7 (which is not true), and others think that the 7 originates from the lithium in the original formula, as this element has an atomic mass of ~7.”

Maybe a historian will dig up Charles Leiper Grigg’s notes someday. But until then, the name will remain a mystery since he took that information to his grave.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “7-Up used to contain lithium” — Gizmodo

WTF Fun Fact 13217 – The Origin of the Taco

The exact origin of the taco is unknown, but we do have a best guess. What might surprise you is that tacos are a relatively new creation.

The first recorded reference to the word ‘taco’ was in the early 19th century in Mexico. The word “taco” is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) language, and has multiple meanings. It can be used to refer to a plug, a wedge, a tool, or to wrap something. The first taco was likely a soft corn tortilla filled with beans, chiles and tomatoes.

Studying the origin of the taco

Believe it or not, there is a taco expert. Granted, many of us consider ourselves expert taco eaters, but Jeffrey M. Pilcher, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, has actually studied the origin of the taco for 20 years.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), “he has investigated the history, politics, and evolution of Mexican food, including how Mexican silver miners likely invented the taco, how Mexican Americans in the Southwest reinvented it, and how businessman Glen Bell mass-marketed it to Anglo palates via the crunchy Taco Bell shell.”

In case you didn’t catch that, Taco Bell is the creation of a guy named Glen Bell.

Pilcher is the author of an entire book on tacos called Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (Oxford University Press). He also edited The Oxford Handbook of Food History and wrote The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917, and Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity.

How did today’s taco come to be?

The term taco made its way to the United States in the late 1800s, when the popularity of Mexican cuisine began to rise. At first, the term was used to refer to the food item itself – the taco – but, in the early 1900s, it began to also be used as a descriptor for other foods, such as burritos, enchiladas, and tostadas.

Taco quickly grew to become an integral part of American culture. Americans embraced the taco as their own, adding their own unique ingredients and flavors, such as beef, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese.

Pilcher notes:

“The first mention that I have seen [in the U.S.] is in 1905, in a newspaper. That’s a time when Mexican migrants are starting to come—working the mines and railroads and other such jobs. In the United States, Mexican food was seen as street food, lower-class food. It was associated with a group of women called the Chili Queens and with tamale pushcarts in Los Angeles. The Chili Queens of San Antonio were street vendors who earned a little extra money by selling food during festivals. When tourists started arriving in the 1880s with the railroad, these occasional sales started to become a nightly event.”

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Where Did the Taco Come From?” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12607 – The Lenten Origins of Pretzels

While we tend to associate pretzels with Germany, they’re likely Italian in origin. And even though they’re a typical Oktoberfest food these days, they were once closely associated with Easter and, more specifically, Lent.

It appears the humble pretzel originated in Aosta, Italy in 610 AD with a young monk who decided to get creative with the unleavened bread he was preparing for Lent. He rolled and twisted the dough in the shape of arms crossed in prayer. (In those days, people prayed with their arms crossed over their chests and not with their hands in the prayer position we do today.)

Source: Wikipedia

Originally, the pretzels or “pretiola” were handed out to children to get them to say their prayers, and the word pretiola is Latin for “little reward.” Some historians also believe that the three holes in the pretzel are meant to represent the Holy Trinity.

It’s unclear how pretzels made their way out of the monastery to become a larger European tradition, but by 1440, pretzels became a popular Good Friday food in Germany, along with eggs, which were nestled in the pretzels’ holes. The evidence is scarce, but it has long been said that Germans used to hide pretzels along with eggs on Easter morning. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Why We Eat Pretzels On Easter” — Mashed

WTF Fun Fact 12575 – American Bologna

The Italians may have brought bologna to America, but there’s little resemblance to the mortadella meat of Italy. The meat became a household staple for just about everyone during the Great Depression since it was cheap. It continued to reign supreme on shelves after that because it was easy to make into lunch sandwiches.

When Americans think of bologna, we tend to think of those yellow packages and round slices. And that’s because of a German immigrant who began his career beginning at age 14 when he apprenticed with a Chicago butcher.

Oskar Ferdinand Meyer spent six years in Chicago meatpacking until he could afford to lease his own marketspace and put his skills to use. He had learned traditional European sausage-making techniques over the years.

That’s how what we now know as Oscar Meyer bologna began, and success came early because of a growing German-American immigrant population in Chicago. His company later created the technology for vacuum packing sliced meats to make lunch making much more effortless.

So while the Italians brought proto-bologna to America in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was young Oskar who took steps to make it mainstream. – WTF fun facts

Source: “How Lunch Became a Pile of Bologna” — Eater