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Short Stuff: William A. Mitchell: Food Inventor · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry's here for Dave, and this is short stuff. We're
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: talking about one of the greatest Americans to ever fiss earth.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: That's right, a food scientist named William A. Mitchell who
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: was a research chemist for thirty five years at General Foods.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: And this is a great guy. He seems like it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: There was an interview with a guy named Marv Rudolph
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: who worked with Mitchell, that said he just knew how
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: to amplify flavors in food. He knew what colors to
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: make something to make it more attractive, and if you
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: had a problem, he was a guy to go to.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: He could figure it out.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: The other great thing was, and this is also from
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the same interviews, they tried to promote him at General
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Foods to management many many times, but he didn't want
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: to do that. He was a lab guy and wanted
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: to stay in the lab.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, and that is the sign of a true artiste. Yeah,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: because I think we talked about our Peter Prince full
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: episode appropriately enough, because that's what we're talking about here.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: You can very easily get raised. I guess promoted, thank
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you out of your field of expertise and suddenly you're
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a manager and not everybody's a manager. We can tell
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: you for sure.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done that job. I'm okay at it. I
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: don't love it.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm terrible at it. Just screaming, pounding my fists on desks.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: But Mitchell, and we'll get to the things he invented
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: after this, maybe because that'll be a nice little teaser.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: But he has more than seventy food patents that he
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: invented from nineteen forty one to nineteen seventy six. But
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: this was a guy that was born to very very
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: hard work in a Minnesota farm family, or to a
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Minnesota farm family in nineteen eleven, isn't it right?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because his dad died while he was in elementary school.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Although I suspect if you're born to a Minnesota farm
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: family in nineteen eleven, you're gonna work regardless. But I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: think the pressure was on William Mitchell even more than
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the average Minnesota farm child born in nineteen eleven because
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of his father's death. So Bill Mitchell had to harvest
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: peas and beans for other farmers to help supplement the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: income of their family by the time he was a teenager,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the family was living in Colorado and he was trapping
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: muskrat and I guess selling them at the local muskrat
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: market and harvesting melons for other farmers too. So he
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: did a lot of work that probably the average person didn't.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: But he also worked his way through college too, I
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: guess as a carpenter.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Before that, though, he got a job that would kind
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of come in handy later on as a food scientist
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: because he worked the overnight shift at the sugar crystallization
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: tank room for the American Beat Sugar Company. So that
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: work with sugar just sort of put a pin in
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: that because that'll come back.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can kind of imagine that's probably where he
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: started to develop his love of food science, right.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know one going only guess he
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: was around all that sugar.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he really hyped him up. Well. I say that
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: because pretty early on after he graduated with a master's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: degree in chemistry, he went into research chemistry with a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I guess a lean toward food. Because it was at
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the Agricultural Experiment Station in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm guessing he
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: worked a lot with corn and so that was his
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: first career was essentially in food science, or he started
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: working with food as a scientist. How about that?
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: And as you will see, he was not a person
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: to be deterred because not long after he started that job,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that was a pretty bad explosion from heating a cracked
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: beaker with alcohol in it, and he got second third
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: degree burns over eighty percent of his body. Took some
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: time off to recover a few months, and then that
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: is when he landed his job and moved to White Plains,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: New York with the general food foods excuse me, more
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: than one food corporation.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Don't say it. Don't say any names yet, I won't, okay,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: because we're going to take a break real quick, and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: we're come back and talk about some of the great
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: things that Bill Mitchell did with his life later after this, so, Chuck,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: we talked about Bill Mitchell being an amazing person. And
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why is because he developed some
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: of the best foods that came out of the twentieth century.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Not the best for you foods, right, the best?
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wondered.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: After I did this research, I was like, Man, are
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: we gonna get people writing in because we're like celebrating
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: this guy for creating junk food.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Well, they just can soak their heads.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Great. I like that term. That's a nice way to
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: say other things.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: So one of the first things was in nineteen fifty seven,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: he was like, how about a powdered drink that tastes
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: sort of like sort of citrusy and people might I
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: think it's good.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: For you, but it's a ninety eight percent sugar.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is primarily sugar. Got a little bit of
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: vitamin C in there. Oh, and those flavor crystals happening.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: You're gonna mix that together with water. You're gonna get
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a bright, very bright, almost unsettlingly bright orange color, tangerine
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: color drink.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: And it's called tang Yeah.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And you said flavor crystals. That was a big one
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: because William Mitchell was known in the food science industry
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: is the master of disaster. Yeah, and in parentheses they
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: would put disaster being flavor crystals. That just couldn't find
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: anything that rhymed with it.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Tank wasn't a big hit right away though, it took
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: a little while to catch on, but one of the
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: big things that helped, you know, helped launch it. No,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: I guess pun intended was when it went into outer
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: space in nineteen sixty two. It was on board John
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Glenn's Mercury spaceflight because he was like, Man, we're storing
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: this drinking water in metal cans and metal vats and
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: it tastes great. So he's like, just throw some tang
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: powder in there and you're all good.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, I mean this was the time when
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: America was just totally fascinated with space. You know, you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: could have put an old leather boot in space and
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: solder his tang and people would have drank it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: So you talked about John Glenn saying it was gross
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to drink metallic water. Later on, buzz Aldrin said tang
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: is gross. As a matter of fact, he said tang sucks.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: And he said it while he was doing the most
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen thing you could possibly be doing. He was
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: presenting a Spike TV Guy's Choice Award to Felix bombgartnerm.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I was Hee the parachute Guy. Yeah, yeah, that jumped
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: from space. Yeah yeah, sponsored by Red Bullet.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't know how it came up. I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: didn't see the clip, but that was what made the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: rounds of the media. Tang sucks in quotes.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Oh good for you buzz speaking of being sponsored though,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: by the time Apollo eight rolled around, Tang was such
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: a thing for space flights that the televised event was
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: sponsored by Tang.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: They were like, we got we got to get in
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: on this thing.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Did you drink Tang when you were a kid?
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: A little bit? But we I drank a lot of water.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: My mom was you know, we couldn't afford a lot
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: of stuff, even though Tang was like super cheap, and
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I think my mom also didn't want us just having
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a ton of junk. It wasn't like super health food
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: family or anything, but it was just one of the
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: things like I'm not going to waste my money on
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: that garbage.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I guess you probably didn't drink kool aid either.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: A little bit here and there.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Those were treats I usually got at other kids' houses.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kool Aid was the best.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Did you just drink all that stuff?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I drank so much kool aid. Cherry lime was really good,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: grape was probably the best.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, good freezer pops too.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, But if you ever made it chuck, you would
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: put the kool Aid powder in a pitcher and it
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: would be like a couple of tablespoons maybe pops and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: did you report literal cups of sugar on top of it,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: add water, stir and just thank me later.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hey too, lad.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: It was it was nuts, Like, looking back, it was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: insane that that's what kids drank.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Pretty great, God bless the seventies.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Bill Mitchell was trying to solve a lot of problems
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: often when he came up with these inventions for food,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: try to save people time in the kitchen at the time,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: you know, trying to save moms time in the kitchen.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: And in nineteen sixty seven he was like, jello takes
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: way too long to make because you have to use
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: this hot water boiling water to dissolve that stuff. So
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: he came up with a and got a patent for
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: a quick set form of jello using cold water. He
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: was like, look at that, everybody, Yeah, presto chaninjo you
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: got cold jello and no time flat.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: No time flat. So what's interesting is jello is very
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: famous for making some really weird being a part of
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: some really weird mid century recipes. So Bill Mitchell had
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: his hand in jello. He also had his hand in
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: another ingredient some really weird recipes from century, which was
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: cool whip, which was total and still is almost totally
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: artificial whipped cream. It's made with water, hydrogenated vegetable oil,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: high fruit toast, corn syrup, corn syrup, and then skim milk.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And the skim milk is a modern addition. There used
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: to be nothing that was a milk product in cool whip,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: which meant you could freeze it, which was a huge
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: boon to general foods.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, but I think you missed one ingredient, love
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the hand of God.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So you're a cool whip dude, huh.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, we don't get it because it's just, you know,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: it's garbage. But you know when we pumpkin pine and
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: pecan pine and stuff like that around Thanksgiving and Christmas,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: we will get cool whip. I don't like the shake
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of can ready whip stuff.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: We're a cool whip family.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: And it does not last long on our house because
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: it just gets eaten out of the container with a
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: spoon by all three of us.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Same with ready whip, though, you just turn it up
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and spray it right in your mouth and then when
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it's out you it gives you a pretty good bat.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like that cool it better. I like
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: the taste.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I like it frozen too. I like it both ways.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: But it's really good frozen as well.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I told you before cool. Yeah, we
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: talked about it was cool whipping peanut butter. It's a
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: dangerous combination.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Oh, I still didn't try that. I forgot. I'll have
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: to try that this Thanksgiving.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: You know, you probably just shouldn't. I don't think you should.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: It's like you might as well have just said I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: think I'll start smoking cigarettes.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So the granddaddy of them all, Bill Mitchell, had a
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: hand in in that. He kind of laid the groundwork
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: for the product to come. But back in nineteen fifty six,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: William Mitchell was trying to figure out ways to carbonate
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: kool aid to basically create instant soda. Yeah, and he
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was like, let me just figure out how to add
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide to flavor crystals, because again he was the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: flavor crystal king. Yeah, and I guess he did enough
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: so that, like he created a legacy process of adding
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: CO two to two flavor crystals. It just wasn't creating
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the soda that he was looking for, so he shelved it,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and then somebody else came along and picked it up. Right.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty years later, somebody else tweaked it just a bit,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: and thankfully the world, the United States and the world.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Over got pop rocks.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Can you describe pop rocks if people don't know what
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: those are?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're a little very tiny candy on the kind
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of like this size and shape of nerds. And if
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: you don't know what nerds are, we're just totally lost here.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Not quite as codd if they are at all. But
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: when they touch your tongue, that co two that's inside
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: just like starts to get released, and it makes the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: candy crackle. So not only does it make a cool sound,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: fizzing sound just like the top of like when you
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: pour a sprite, it like you can feel it on
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: your tongue too. It's very delightful.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So, I mean the idea was you would take a
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: scoop of this and add water. So in this case
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the water is just your saliva and the moisture from
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: your mouth and your tongue.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Gave Ruby some when she was like four or five.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: I was like, you've never had pop rocks, kiddo, you
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: got to try this out, and she was. It was
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: sort of one of those great mind blowing moments. As apparent,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: She's like more no, not really, She's not one of
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: those kids that it's weird. She loves the thing, but
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: maybe it's the ADHD shees. She kind of forgets about
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it after that.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Usually ADHD laser focuses on something like a big sugar rush,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: so she's fortunate. Yeah. So there was a myth. I
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: think some people probably still believe this if they've heard
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: it Chuck, that if you drink soda and pop rocks
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: eat pop rocks at the same time, you're at risk
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: of blowing your stomach up from all of the carbon dioxide.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: And that is just not true. But it was persistent
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: enough that General Foods had to take out a full
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: page ad back in the seventies. And I looked it up.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: It's an open letter to parents talking about pop rocks
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: and how it's safe, and it was written by Bill Mitchell.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Oh that's great.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they trotted him out and they were like,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: tell everybody Bill, because we don't understand how they work.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: You explain it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they stood next to him with a knife gently
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: pressed into the side.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Of his neck. So we salute you. William A.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Mitchell, he retired from General Foods in nineteen seventy six.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Tried to find out some dirt on this guy, but
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: he seems like just a pretty great person. He was
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: a father of seven, he's married for sixty years, and
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: when he passed away in two thousand and four, his
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: obituary said he was devoted, stimulating and loving parent and
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: made a pretty big impact on, you know, the diet
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: of American kids.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we should say one of those seven children is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Cheryl Mitchell, his daughter. She became a food scientist as well,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: followed in her father's footsteps. And if you like rice
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: dream you can thank Cheryl Mitchell or Elmhurst nut grain
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and seed milk you can thank her as well. And
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: she's known as a quote world authority on sweetener's rice
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: processing and the extraction and metabolism of.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Anulin parentheses, but not flavor crystals.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: No, that was her dad's jam.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the legacy continues, so pretty cool.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Same here, all right, Well, thank you and thank you
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: for signing off as a salute to William Mitchell to Chuck,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it, and I think that also means short
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: stuff is out.
• 14:27
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• 14:30
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