Learning about Food for the Masses

Trigger Warning: suicide mentioned.

Beside watching Disney movies (for research purposes for my SimLit) I been watching TV documentary series the first series was “Toys that built America” explaining how everything from Game of Life and Monopoly board games to gross out products like Slimmer and others got created or made. The current series I just started is “Food That Built America” 

Let’s me list some things I found interesting:

KELLOGG’s

What I found interesting that I didn’t know before is the Dr. John Kellogg of the Kellogg Sanatorium is the first person to have made an exercise tape- due to the fact TVs weren’t a thing back in those days the exercise tape was of course on a record. It’s kind of a same both his Sanatorium, and later his brother’s first cereal factory burned down. 

POST/GENERAL MILLS FOOD

C.W. Post was a patient at Kellogg Santorum and because he wasn’t rich like the other patients he couldn’t afford to pay the normal way so he helped by working with Will Kellogg in the kitchen. When his time was finished at the Santorum, he “stole” the recipe for the “cereal” that was yet to be invented. That after his suicide death he left everything to his 27 year old daughter Marjorie Post which was unheard of at that time when women weren’t in the work force yet

  c) and she apparently had quiet the eye for good deals? That she brought up other businesses including a company (Birdseye) that was having trouble getting its feet off the ground due to the lack of cold storage everywhere from trains & trucks, to homes.

HEINZ

I found it really interesting that Heinz ketchup factory was the very first factory to have electricity. Also he was the first person to have their product in clear container to make it more trust worthy. He also was the first person to have an assembly line (so that means even before Henry Ford!). I also learned that, Henry Heinz, through his son, Howard, that the United States got a precursor to the FDA under “Teddy” Roosevelt to try to stop the other competitors from putting “nasty stuff” in their “knock-off” versions of Heinz’ ketchup. Even if the predecessor of the FDA also got Cola company because by then, the main ingredient in it, was no longer being use.

HERSEY

I was not aware until listening to this that milk chocolate was a luxury in Europe but Henry Hersey wanted to get it “to the masses” and he wanted to use fresh dairy milk in Pennsylvania near where his factory town is now. I didn’t realize THE William Murray mentioned in the first two episodes aka Hersey’s semi-partner was the same Murray whos name is represented in the M&Ms from the Mars company. I also found it interesting that Hersey company in the Great Depression greeted a version of a “Meal Bar” aka M. Goodbar – which might or might not have been where Welsh Roald Dalh got his idea for a “meal gum” for Wonka’s Chocolate factory in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” story I knew the Great Depression was bad but it was so bad that the Hersey workers had a “sit-down” strike and it ended up in a bloody fight with the angry local dairy farmers coming in throwing stones and pitchforks and what nots. I think if Torches had still been a thing they probably would have used that as well!!!

MARS

I was not aware of the fact that the founders of MARS candy factory were father (Frank) and son (Forest) but due to reasons ( think divorce?) that Frank and Forest never really meet until Forest was an adult. You know those type of parents, that take over their children’ projects, and such? Well think of a reverse scenario so to speak which the child takes over the parent’s “project”? The next time I ever see one of those “You aren’t You when you’re hungry” Snickers commercials -I’m going to wonder if their horse turned into a human, or a donkey or another breed of horse, when it’s hungry. I’m only saying that because the candy bar Snickers was named after the Mars’ ‘favourite horse” or something like that. But after not a lot of respect from *both sides* of the father-son duo, that Forest walked out and never got to make amends with his Dad because he died shortly afterwards. But Forest didn’t directly inherited anything he had to “have a big idea” in order to buy a share in his Dad’s company and that’s how M&Ms happened. But due to U.S joining WWII that M&Ms became popular with American soldiers over seas and they wanted more of them when they got home after the war ended.

MCDONALD’S

I know the first ever McDonald’s was in California. But what I didn’t know is that Dick and Mac McDonald  had originally opened up a drive-in movie theatre but they scrapped the “movie” part of it, once they realized they’re earning most of their money from the concession stand and not from the tickets. 

So as I said they got rid of the movie part of the drive-in- movie theatre and started a drive-in resturants. But its seems to be because of a mix of both too much food on the menu as well as employees-in this case the teen girl carhops, being the age-old ENWW “Employee Not Wanting to Work” and might be more interesting in batting eyelashes, or playing with their hair-aka flirting that took forever to get out to the customers instead of it being fast like they wanted, the drive-in restaurant became a ‘glorified parking lot” as the series called it.  So they fired the car hops and eventually figured out the “fast food assembly line” that we’re know so well today with the flipping and assembling of burgers and the frying of fries or other fried items. They didn’t even mind showing it to anyone who asked- that on the same day they showed it to the two people who would make one of McDonald’s competitors, Burger King, as well as Glen Bell who would create Taco Bell.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

As I said with another company above, I know the Great Depression was bad but to understand just how bad it was is listening to the early days of Colonel Sanders’ (before he was a Colonel of course) gas station/service-station in Hell’s Arce Kentucky gives you a new perspective. That there was one other service station in the town, that the two had an ongoing war so to speak because the latter kept painting over Colonel Sanders’. signs for the service station. It got so bad that the last time, the Colonel Sanders and the other guy literally got into a gun fight and the former short the latter in the shoulder but one of Colonel Sanders’ employees got killed. The other service-owner got put into jail.

It was around this time that Colonel Sanders started a mini-restaurant in his service station of course serving chicken. Like the Dick and Mac McDonald brothers, that customers at this restaurant got tired of I think the hour long wait for the food- that Colonel Sanders had to find a quickly way to cook the chicken so that he turned a pressure cooker into a pressure fryer and boom business! But its a shame after WWII, that I think is was Route 66, was created so it passed by Route 22/25 where his sit-down restaurant was so because he was so much in debt, that he had to sell off the restaurant. But that didn’t stop him and he took the chicken recpie and the pressure fryer on the road and sold it to various buisiness and saying he would get 4% of the sales of each chicken sold.  The recipe and the pressure fryer didn’t get completely sold until the 1960s when someone brought it outright from him.

I wonder what I’m going to learn next from Season 2 and Season 3 of the series? I know that the next topic is two Pizza restaurants I’m familiar with Pizza Hut and Domino’s.