25 min
The Sweet Raspberry Blues! Interesting If True
-
- Improv
Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast you’re listening to.
I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me are: Aaron… Steve...
I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that bananas are actually berries, but beavers are not.
I'm Steve and it turns out that fruity pebbles are not, as I had been led to believe, a gay rock band.
Feeling blue for raspberries
Seeing, or rather not seeing, that I am completely color blind, I thought talking about color would make the most sense. Also with the way the world has been turning my thoughts turned to hypocrisy, and that's where this story was born.
With fake news and double talk rampant in the USA I decided to pick apart the most glaring problem facing us in the world today. What flavor is blue raspberry when real raspberries are red?
One of my favorite slushy flavors and a mainstay in most gas stops was first seen by Steve back in the olden days of 1970. Before gaining it's new unnatural color, ice pops we're the popular ice treat of the day, like otter pops. The popular flavors of the past we're very similar to flavors now, cherry, watermelon, strawberry, regular normal rasberry. Which you may have noticed, not me, that they are all various colors of red. Originally cherry and strawberry were different shades of red, watermelon was a pink shade and our original raspberry was a deep red wine color. All was well in the world of frozen treats and those with color vision could reliably figure out their flavor before tasting it.
That all changed in the early 70's when the FDA banned E123 and FD&C Red No. 2, for those of you not in the world of cheap food dyes, this was the deep red wine dye used to color raspberry pops. Also known as Amaranth, the dye could provoke severe reactions, and was deemed a possible carcinogen. The future looked bleak for our burgundy berries.
Due to new technology in food science during the time, new sources of food dye and color we're popping up all over the market. A cheap blue coloring was sitting in the warehouses while cooks and creatives tried to figure out what would look good blue, not very many things are blue in nature and thus a bit off-putting to a public unaware of its flavor.
Well the ice pop Barron's of the day had an idea, they had a colorless pop and a new color… After some really creative thinking from the PR and marketing department they found the Rubus leucodermis, known as the whitebark raspberry or to some savvy botanists out there, the blue raspberry.
Image on your phone now. After some careful research/asking my wife, I have come to the conclusion that those still aren't blue, maybe a dark purple but definitely not the brilliant blue swirling at the corner store. Brilliant blue, coincidentally, is the color of the dye used, FD&C Blue No. 1. So before the age of information fact checking the color of a blue raspberry was a bit harder to check and children around the world we're happy to have their favorite flavor back, even if it meant you looked like you had a roll in the hay with Papa Smurf.
I’m Sweet Enough Already
Sugar! Delightful little granules of goodness. The only white crystal I like to sprinkle on things more is MSG.d
But is it vegan? Or even vegetarian really?
The answer for most people is “yes, of course, I’m no major general but that’s not an animal it’s a mineral!” and for the most part, they’re right. A few listeners probably said “nope, bone char” and… they are also, for the most part, right.
It’s a good bet the second group of hypothetical respondents I turned into an introductory segway are, or are at least dinner-party-our-wives-arraigned-without-telling-us-until-it-was-too-late-to-back-out friends with,
Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast you’re listening to.
I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me are: Aaron… Steve...
I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that bananas are actually berries, but beavers are not.
I'm Steve and it turns out that fruity pebbles are not, as I had been led to believe, a gay rock band.
Feeling blue for raspberries
Seeing, or rather not seeing, that I am completely color blind, I thought talking about color would make the most sense. Also with the way the world has been turning my thoughts turned to hypocrisy, and that's where this story was born.
With fake news and double talk rampant in the USA I decided to pick apart the most glaring problem facing us in the world today. What flavor is blue raspberry when real raspberries are red?
One of my favorite slushy flavors and a mainstay in most gas stops was first seen by Steve back in the olden days of 1970. Before gaining it's new unnatural color, ice pops we're the popular ice treat of the day, like otter pops. The popular flavors of the past we're very similar to flavors now, cherry, watermelon, strawberry, regular normal rasberry. Which you may have noticed, not me, that they are all various colors of red. Originally cherry and strawberry were different shades of red, watermelon was a pink shade and our original raspberry was a deep red wine color. All was well in the world of frozen treats and those with color vision could reliably figure out their flavor before tasting it.
That all changed in the early 70's when the FDA banned E123 and FD&C Red No. 2, for those of you not in the world of cheap food dyes, this was the deep red wine dye used to color raspberry pops. Also known as Amaranth, the dye could provoke severe reactions, and was deemed a possible carcinogen. The future looked bleak for our burgundy berries.
Due to new technology in food science during the time, new sources of food dye and color we're popping up all over the market. A cheap blue coloring was sitting in the warehouses while cooks and creatives tried to figure out what would look good blue, not very many things are blue in nature and thus a bit off-putting to a public unaware of its flavor.
Well the ice pop Barron's of the day had an idea, they had a colorless pop and a new color… After some really creative thinking from the PR and marketing department they found the Rubus leucodermis, known as the whitebark raspberry or to some savvy botanists out there, the blue raspberry.
Image on your phone now. After some careful research/asking my wife, I have come to the conclusion that those still aren't blue, maybe a dark purple but definitely not the brilliant blue swirling at the corner store. Brilliant blue, coincidentally, is the color of the dye used, FD&C Blue No. 1. So before the age of information fact checking the color of a blue raspberry was a bit harder to check and children around the world we're happy to have their favorite flavor back, even if it meant you looked like you had a roll in the hay with Papa Smurf.
I’m Sweet Enough Already
Sugar! Delightful little granules of goodness. The only white crystal I like to sprinkle on things more is MSG.d
But is it vegan? Or even vegetarian really?
The answer for most people is “yes, of course, I’m no major general but that’s not an animal it’s a mineral!” and for the most part, they’re right. A few listeners probably said “nope, bone char” and… they are also, for the most part, right.
It’s a good bet the second group of hypothetical respondents I turned into an introductory segway are, or are at least dinner-party-our-wives-arraigned-without-telling-us-until-it-was-too-late-to-back-out friends with,
25 min