Latest / Be Amazed / Reasons Behind Strange Things You See In Food

Transcript

Reasons Behind Strange Things You See In Food · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ever wondered why donuts have holes, or why some lickers intentionally come with an insect problem?
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, grab a fork, pal, because today we're finding out the truth about the strange things hidden inside our favorite foods and drinks.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: From how Swiss cheese gets its holes to the meaning of hidden codes on food packaging, and even exploring Oreos connection to the world's largest secret society?
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's tuck into the reasons behind strange things you see in food.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Donuts have a wonderfully unique shape, a tourist to get technical, and strangely the story goes that the snack acquired its distinctive hole on a boat in the 19th century.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to legend, a sailor from Maine named Hansen Gregory was kept in a ship in 1847 while eating a plate full of traditional European donuts, which are essentially big balls of deep red dough.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hansen wanted to keep hands on the wheel while eating, so he started skewering his cakes onto the spokes of the ship's wooden steering wheel, allowing him to easily grab his neck.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The rad cakes were far easier to eat with the hole in the middle, so Hansen started skewering all of them from that point on, accidentally inventing the ring doubt.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: This origin story is popular in Maine, but it's almost completely false, and Hanson Gregory personally debunked it during a newspaper interview in 1916.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: He still claimed to have invented the ring donut, but he explained that he did it for more practical reasons relating to the way that donuts are fried.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, making donuts involves deep frying them in a oil, so when you deep fry a donut without a hole, the outer layer will often be fully cooked before the heat even reaches the middle.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Traditional European donuts often had an under-cooked sensor and excessively tough exterior, until Hansen realized that if you cut a ring into the donut before frying it, the oil will cook the outer and inner layers simultaneously, frying the snack perfectly.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hanson cooked these ring donuts on his voyage and when he came home he shared the recipe with his mother who shared it with her friends and so on.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Soon donuts with holes with a most popular choice in Maine, the preference which spread across America.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the 1940s, a donut company called the donut corporation of America verified Hanson's claim and named him the official inventor of the ring donut, confirming that the famous treat was officially invented and on the high seas.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yo, yo, yo, yo, don't hold for me.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's take a trip to England.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a bean-zantosed, marmite, and Arkazipai, a savory dish that features several heads of large sardines called pilchards protruding through the crust.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fish inside the pie have been skinned and deboned, but the filtered heads are arranged to make it look like they're gazing up at the stars.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stargazie pie looks like the work of a maniac, but it actually has an incredibly interesting story that's 500 years old.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the 16th century, the English village of Mousel had an incredibly stormy winter, so none of their fishing boats could head out to see without risking being destroyed.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fish was Mousel's main source of food, so by Christmas the entire village faced our patient.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until a fisherman called Tom Balkock decided to breathe the storm.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The people of Mousel anxiously waited for Tom's return, and when his boat safely pulled back into harbor, he'd called enough fish to feed the entire village.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to local legend, the villagers cooked his entire catch into one giant pie, and it contained so many fish that their heads and tails poked through the crust.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the degree to which the story is factually accurate is almost impossible to prove.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing as all evidence was hungerly chalped down, there's no doubting that Mousel still celebrates the story with an annual festival called Tom Balkoxy.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: This festival takes place on the 23rd of December and the entire event is centered around eating star geese pies, which act as a symbolic version of the dish that saved Mousel 500 years ago.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This gives the bizarre looking dish and awesome origin story, but you still won't catch me eating a pie that stares back, and if I ever visit mouse hole, I think I'll stick to the fish and chips.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to cartoons, the iconic holes in Swiss-Amental Cheese are created by hungry mice.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the real explanation is a whole lot more scientific.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: See dairy farms use hay to feed their cattle and when the cows are milked, microscopic specs of hay will often float into the milk buckets.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This hay often contains a naturally occurring bacteria called propionic bacteria, and when the milk is aged to make a mental, the bacteria starts giving off carbon dioxide, creating gas bubbles that leave holes in the cheese.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without this propionic bacteria, Swiss cheese is completely smooth and today, a mantle actually has less holes than it used to, as modern dairy farms use more sanitary milking methods, which in turn stop hay and other contaminants from getting into their milk.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some ultra sanitary modern cheesemakers even have to add powdered hay and purities back in just to get their whole fix.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, Swiss cheese isn't made holy by hungry mice, and this is just one of the many lives that the dairy industry is feeding us.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, every kid worked their cheddar nose yet, color and cheese using the yellow crayon.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It may shock you to learn that some of your favorite types of cheese are dyed yellow.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: See the natural color of cheese is dependent on the diet of the cows that make it.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the summer, cows left out to pasture, graze on grass, which is filled with a chemical called beta-carotene.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This gets released through their milk and becomes visible through the cheese-making process resulting in cheese with a natural yellow tint.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in winter, cows eat grass that's been dried and turned into hay, the drying process destroys the beta-carotene in the hay, so that cheese that winter cows produce will be a pale, off-white color.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in 16th century England's summer cheese was considered far more desirable than winter cheese, until cheese makers realized that they could dye their pale winter cheese's yellow to trick their customers.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They used carrot juice, saffron, and a red dye called and not to color their products.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as cheese became more colorful, consumer started to believe that the more vibrant the cheese, the better the quality.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This led to the invention of orange cheeses like red lifestyler, Colby cheese and orange cheddar, as cheese makers attempted to make their naturally pale cheeses as colorful as possible.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time these products became incredibly popular and our grocery stores are still stocked with cheese that's been dyed orange or yellow.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, if your favorite cheese is brightly colored, you are really the victim of a con that was started by a group of English farmers over 500 years ago.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those were assholes.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes reading an ingredients label is like reading a chemistry textbook, often being full of additives with complex chemical names.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, we eat these mysterious additives on a daily basis, and one of the most common ingredients in our food is a molecule called cellulose.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: This additive can be found in everything from tomato sauce and cookies, to hot dogs and bagels, and shockingly the molecule is taken from sawdust.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now before you start to panic, you are needing pure sawdust when you eat cellulose.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: See cellulose is found in all plants, including vegetables like broccoli, so it's completely safe for human consumption once chemically extracted from waste sawdust and food manufacturers add it to their products to improve texture or increase the amount of fiber in our food.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cellulosis isn't the only eyebrow raising additive found in our food.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: ammonia is a poisonous chemical compound that causes burns when it's exposed to human skin.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, it's been widely reported over the past 15 years that some food manufacturers will blast their ground beef with ammonia to kill harmful bacteria on the meat.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the ammonia dissolves into the meat's moisture and this chemically treated ground beef is then sold in grocery stores.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now feeding poison meat to the public sounds pretty debolical.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the FDA have stated that these products are completely safe as they use small amounts of ammonia mixed with water, and there are barely any traces of the poisonous chemical left when the process is done.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, this practice still highlights how many chemicals are pumped into our food and additives aren't exclusively used in ground meats.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you buy a cheap steak from a grocery store, there's a chance that it's been filled with a substance called transglutaminase, or meat glue.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a naturally occurring enzyme in animals that connects different tissues together, and meat manufacturers can use it to take lots of small pieces of meat and seamlessly
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: These Frankenstakes are far cheaper to produce than legitimate cuts of meat.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the European Union banned the enzyme in 2010, as when you stick multiple pieces of meat together from different sources and increases the risk of dangerous bacteria being introduced to the food.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Carving pumpkins into jackalannins is a classic Halloween tradition, but incredibly the practice started thousands of years before Halloween even existed, emerging from ancient pagans, and what we know is Ireland and Britain today, celebrating a Celtic holiday called Soin.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Saoan marked the beginning of winter and the calts believe that during this period the doorway to the spirit world was opened allowing demons and spirits to freely walk the earth.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pagans needed to scare these evil spirits away so they started dressing up and spooky costumes, letting bonfires and carving scary faces into turn up during Saoan.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Irish calts in particular widely celebrated this festival for millennia, until the 5th century CE when European Catholics began converting Ireland to Christianity.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Christians knew that this conversion would be gradual, so instead of a racing Celtic culture completely.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They incorporated pagan celebrations into the Catholic calendar.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This process partially involved taking the Christian holiday of all hollows Eve, this being the evening before all hollows day, otherwise known as all Saints Day, and tweaking it to include some elements of Salin.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like selling ghost stories and curving turnips are root of acres, there's somewhat ease the transition from paganism to Catholicism and, as Ireland became a predominantly Christian country, they came up with a new myth to explain the pagan practice of turnip carving.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This story follows a devious drunkard called Jack, who was visited at a pub by Satan, who hovered to buy him a drink and exchange for his soul.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jack convinced Satan to turn into a coin to pay the barkeep, with Jack suggesting they could then disappear to cheat the barkeep out of the money.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: This impressed Satan and he obliged with the plan, but Jack tricked the devil himself by quickly putting the coin in his pocket next to a silver crucifix.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The holy symbol trapped the devil inside the coin and Jack only released him when he promised not to take Jack's soul to hell when he died.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Jack passed away years later the devil fulfilled his promise and didn't drag him to hell.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, Jack wasn't a good man so he wasn't led him to heaven either.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, Jack's soul was forced to roam around the Irish wilderness for eternity, carrying a lantern made from a hollowed-out turn-up.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: This story offered a Christian explanation for the tradition of carp turn up sand and also prompted Irish people to start calling them Shaco lanterns.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the 18th century large numbers of Irish settlers started moving to America and they brought their all hollows Eve or hollowing traditions with them.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Upon their arrival, they discovered that pumpkins were far more abundant and easier to carve than turnips, so they tweaked their traditions slightly, and the modern jack-a-lanon was born creating a Halloween icon that's linked to paganism turnips, and the wandering spirit of an alcohol at God's Jack.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conspiracy cookies!
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oreos are the best selling cookie in the world, and each one is marked with the same distinctive pattern.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of us don't pay any attention to this design, but some conspiracy theorists are obsessed with it, and they believe the symbols and shapes hide a dark secret.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sea Oreos are made by a company called Nabisco, and conspiracy theorists have noted that both Nabisco's logo and the Oreo pattern display an ancient symbol called the Cross of Lorraine.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This symbol features on every Nabisco product and incredibly, it's also used by the Freemasons, the largest secret society in the world.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This secret brotherhood has over six million members worldwide, and although no outsiders know exactly what the Freemasons do behind closed doors, they've been rumored to interfere with political elections and permanently silence people to stop their secrets from getting out.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This society used lots of ancient symbols to represent their different ranks, including the cross of Lorraine and the Cross Patty, another symbol that supposedly represented on the Oreo, though I'd say that's a stretch.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Either way, some people believe that this proves that Nabisco and Oreos are connected to Free Masonry.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the theories have some holes.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The three basins were founded in 1599, but the cross of Lorraine is so old that it was used all the way back in 1095 AD by the Knights Templar, a Catholic military group that fought during the Holy Crusades.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The symbols have been used by hundreds of different organizations over the years and the specific design of an oval top with the cross was regularly used as a mark of quality
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1898, Nabisco's first chairman of Dolphas Green discovered this while flicking through an old Venetian book, he found the cross of Lorraine stamp on the pages and he immediately adopted it as Nabisco's logo, without any knowledge of its connections to Free Masonry.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: As for the modified version of the pattern seen on Oreos, that was designed in 1952 by a Nabisco employee called William A Turner.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2011, Turner's son set the record straight by stating that his father wasn't a free Mason, and his designs didn't contain anything nefarious.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, he included the cross of Lorraine to reference Nabisco's logo, and the supposed cross patties instead actually a flower.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: All this suggests that the connections between Oreo and Freemasons are purely coincidental.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when you twist, lick and dip your Oreos and milk, you aren't pledging allegiance to the largest secret society in the world.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd leave that's what they want you to think.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty common for an alcoholic beverage to be decorated with an olive or a tiny umbrella, but there's a Mexican spirit called Mescal that contains a far more goulish garnish.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plenty of Mescal brands contain a worm floating inside the bottle, and this devious decoration has an intriguing origin story.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seal Mescal is made by fermenting the juice of the roasted heart of the agave, a plant that's commonly eaten by the McGay worm.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Legend of Miss Kyle Entrepreneur called Yacobo Luzano Pais was making some mezcal in the 1940s when he accidentally roasted in the gave heart that still contained some McGay worms.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yacobo decided to drink the concaction anyway, and he discovered that the worm infuse drink tasted far better than his usual recipe.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: From that point on, Yacobo started adding McGay worms to all the mezcal he made and he started putting a dead worm in his
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: During this period of Americans reportedly assumed Miss Cal was just a cheaper form of the more well-known agave-based drink tequila, so Miss Cal manufacturers wanted to find a way to make their products stand out in the states.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing Jakobo's warm and fused Miss Cal, they decided to copy the practice while creating marketing campaigns that falsely claimed that the McGay worm was a traditional Mexican garnish that acted as a hallucinogen and have her DJac,
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This marketing campaign worked and today lots of domestic household and America comes with an added worm.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, traditional mezcalin Mexico rarely comes with a worm, and some folks even insist that the original legend of Yokobo's happy little worm accident is little more than a marketing boy in itself.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dang, although this confusion I need a stiff drink, worm included.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Life is full of disappointments, and there's nothing worse than opening a bag of chips and discovering, and it's only half full.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Opening a bag of air is pretty soul-crushing, however you should know that the chip manufacturers aren't trying to steal your money and they have a pretty valid reason for not filling their bags to the brim, at least partially.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It turns out the air inside the bag isn't regular air at all.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually nitrogen gas that's intentionally funneled into the packaging.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sea Voxygen got into a bag of chips who would make them all stale, so chip manufacturers leave a space in each bag that they can pump full of nitrogen, which is in our gas that won't react with the food like oxygen does, giving the product a longer shelf life.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This pocket of nitrogen is also designed to act as a cushion that prevents the chips from getting crushed and transit to your local grocery store.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This protective air pocket is known as slack fill, and although it feels unfair, it actually
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about you though, but I can't help feeling they could still squeeze at least a few more chips in there.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now that we've looked inside our bags of chips, let's explore the secrets hidden on their packaging.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most types of food packaging are marked with colorful circles and they aren't just there to look pretty.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are processed control patches and they're used to make sure all of the colors on the packaging are printed properly.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, if the blue process control patch comes out too pale when the bag is printed, the manufacturer knows that all the different shades of blue on the packaging will be pale too.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Allowing them to adjust the printer and fix the mistake.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: These batches can be found on most food products, but they aren't the only secret feature that's hidden on packaging.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: In America, most pieces of fruit have stickers that contain coated numbers called price-lookup codes.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each product has a different identification number in the codes are designed to help grocery stores keep track of their stock.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: However consumers can use them to learn more about the fruit they're eating.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, if the code starts with a 9, it typically means the piece of fruit was grown organically.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, if the number starts with a 9, it means the fruit is genetically modified, usually for a longer shelf life.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other packaging features are implemented to make the experience easier for the consumer.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, candy bars will often have a zig-zag pattern at the end that makes the wrapper easier to tear open.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, when you're finishing a lollipop, you might notice that the hollow sticks often have a small hole cut into the side.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: When lollipops are produced, the candy is melted and partially pushed through the hole before hardening.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This secures the head of the lollipop to the stick, making it less likely to fall off into your mouth.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: For the more, if an overexcited child accidentally inhales the stick, they're less likely to choke as they'll be able to breathe through the hole in the hollow too.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other products use similar techniques to keep their customer safe?
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In America, lots of milk containers feature inverted circles on the side of the jug.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If your milk expires, the bacteria inside it will start to produce gas, and this gas will push against the indented circle and cause it to pop out, showing the consumer that their milk is not safe to drink.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The indented circle also acts as a shock absorber if you drop the jug as when the curtain hits the ground, the force will cause the circle to pop out.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This will absorb some of the energy of the fall and stop the jug from exploding, saving you from mopping the floor and crying over spilled milk.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and for me, nothing beats waking up to a couple of fried eggs.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But has your breakfast ever been ruined by cracking open an egg to find a red spot in the yolk?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: These sinister marks are called blood spots, and lots of people think that they mean the egg has been fertilized.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gross.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the truth is a little less disturbing.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: See during formation, the surface of every egg yolk is covered in tiny blood vessels, and if one of them ruptures during the egg production or laying process, it will leave a tiny speck of blood behind.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This can happen to any chicken, though more commonly occurs if the egg is laid by an older hand.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Around 4% of eggs will have these bloody spots, however barely any of them will make it to your logo grocery store.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is due to candleing a process that involves shining a bright light through an egg to see inside the shell.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Egg factories use this process to remove red spotted eggs from the production line.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: However unlike Pokemon, they can't catch them all, so some quality eggs do get shipped out to grocery stores and end up in our frying pans.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, you shouldn't let this ruin your breakfast.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Red spots are completely harmless, and these eggs are still totally safe to eat.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So even though most people prefer to scrape the blood spots out of their eggs before eating them, it's totally healthy to start your day with bacon eggs and a tiny burst blood vessel.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mmm, delicious.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to food, nobody does it quite like France.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: A land where a meal can consist of one baguette for cigarettes, six nails, and a slice of oldie cheese.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: In all seriousness, French cuisine is delicious, and blue cheeses from France are among the most popular types of cheese in the world.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, lots of people don't know why we started eating moldy cheese or how we can eat the fungal fromage without getting sick.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: See many common types of mold-produced poisonous mice-o-toxins that can make a sick one eaten.
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, blue cheese is made with a very specific type of mold-cog penicillium-roke-fort-day.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: This mold culture still produces mice-o-toxins that are poisonous to mice and dogs, however they are perfectly safe for humans to eat.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This allows cheese makers to make blue cheese, and they do so by adding penicillium, roco-forte, to the milk at the very beginning of the cheese-making process.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the cheese ages, the mold will grow too, and spikes are pushed into the cheese during the maturation process to create hollow veins that the fungus can grow into.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the original inventor of this process is a source of debate among cheese historians, boo cheese is widely believed to have been accidentally discovered in Central Europe as early as 800 BC, having likely developed on cheese's stored in caves with temperatures and moisture levels that were naturally favorable for harmless molds.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ever since blue cheese has become one of the most popular staples of cheesy cuisine, allowing foodies worldwide to safely stuff their faces with mold.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: That being said, remember that the mold used in blue cheese has to be penicillium, roca-forte, or another proven-safe penicillium species, so you can't scrape the mold from your bathroom wall and spread it on crackers.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a recipe for disaster.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to organic foods, most of the attention is placed on fruits and vegetables.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, they have a creepy cousin that's just as interesting.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mushrooms can look pretty freaky, and lots of them have a strange kill-like structure on the underside of their cabs called Lama Lane.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: These weird-looking gills have been freaking out fussy kids for generations, but most people don't know that the Lamelea actually have a very important purpose.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, fungi generally reproduce by firing millions of microscopic spores into the air so they can land somewhere and germinate into a new mushroom sprouting network.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Lamelea are where the spores are made and the folds between each gill are covered with microscopic spore producing cells which regularly release their payload into the air.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, when we shout out on Mushroom with Lamalay, we're literally budding down on giant spore factories.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, maybe the fussy eaters have a point.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fortune cookies are a staple of Chinese restaurants in America, so most people assume that the prophecy-bearing snakes are a traditional Chinese dessert.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the cookies were invented in America, and their story actually starts in Japan.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Japanese culture, an omikuji is a written fortune prediction that's handed out at temples and shrines, and in Kyoto, some store sell omikujis that are given to you with the traditional cookie.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This snack is like a large savory version of a fortune cookie and when Japanese immigrants move to America in the 1800s, they brought the recipe with them.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time, Japanese chefs in California tweak this recipe to make a sweet dessert with the fortune paper baked inside, creating the modern fortune cookie.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, during World War II, Japan and America were at war, and the U.S. government placed upwards of two-thirds of Japanese Americans living stateside in detention camps, causing the closure of most Japanese businesses.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Japanese restaurants started shutting down, Chinese restaurants decided to start selling fortune cookies, and they became incredibly popular.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the time the war ended in 1945, most Americans believed the dessert originally came from China, and this reputation has endured.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, very few people know the cookies Japanese origins, and they're still considered to be one of the most popular quote-unquote Chinese snacks in America.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: That being said, I never bother ordering fortune cookies.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I go out for Chinese food, I already know my fortune.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the evening of lying on the couch in a food coma,
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that about wraps up our look at the strange things you see in your food.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know about any little food factoids I might have missed?
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the podcast, we'll see you again next time you'll want to be amazed.