A Chemical Feast (1973)

Remember the old days, the pies your mother used to make? You'd go into the kitchen, there's mom breaking eggs, beating them. There'd be rich country cream and sugar and fresh fruit and real vanilla beans and butter. Remember all that? Well, you can forget it. We've eliminated all the old sentimentalities. Modern baking through modern chemistry. Here's a pie you can make with the same ingredients that the manufacturer uses and lists on the box. The same ingredients that I have right here. We'll make the crust first. Let's begin with some wheat flour. That's always good for a beginning when you're making a crust. Just pour it right through the sifter and make sure that any dross or detritus is caught by the mesh of the sifter. There it goes. It's all gone. That's fine. Now, we're going to put some sugar in to make it sweet. Just lay the sugar in nicely. A little shortening to shorten the crust so it doesn't stay long in the bowl. And use your friendly tools, all that you have to get the shortening in there. That's good. Don't let it fight you. It's always going to fight you. Now, to make it stay moist and loose, you want to put some water in. That's very good. Add a little sweetening from our friend Dextrose. Hospital tested, hospital approved. Lay it right in. Now, we want to mix a little sorghum flour with a little grain flour. There's some graham flour. Mix that around. And put your sorghum flour in there, too. And just let it all go in. Make sure you're getting all the impurities out. That's fine. Okay. And a little dash of salt to give it some power and strength so it can stand there proud. Here's some sodium bicarbonate. You want to measure this out carefully. You want to be careful with it, too. These spoons so they stick together like little spoons do. Okay, there's some sodium bicarbonate. And here's its antidote, ammonium bicarbonate. They think of everything, don't they? You might have some trouble finding these, but if you ask around, you might get these ingredients from some friends of yours or if you know any drugist or chemist. And what's a pie without little artificial flavoring and coloring? Just put it in there so it looks appetizing. That's fine. We'll just let this set chemically and heat up by itself and go over and make the body of the pie. We're going to start with water. Just lay that water right in the bowl. That's good. And add some corn syrup. It's thick and it's sweet and it's just fine. It lays right in there with the water. Great. Here's some shortening. We have shortening in both sides in the crust and in the body. Get some help for our friend. The wooden spoon. Wooden spoon helps us out to get the shortening in there. Excellent. More sugar just to make it sweet. Here's our sugar sets there with the shortening and the sugar and the dextrose. And now we get to the interesting part. Here they come. Here are whey solvents. Fresh from bossy to you. Just lay that right in there. Mix it around. Make sure you have enough. That's dairy fresh, dairy approved. Sits right in there. Now we're going to food starch modified. What are the modifications? No one knows, but they've been modified for some years. That sits in there. Makes it thick, too. More dextrose. More sweets behind the sweets. That sits in there. Here's some sodium caseinate. Remember the word casein. see it in glue and paints. This is something different though. It's a dairy product as well and not bad for you nutritionally. That's good. Now we come to an important part. Time to add the flavoring. This is what distinguishes our pie from other pies. It has a certain amount of flavor. That's good. Great. Some gelatin to give that flavoring a little mush and gush and make it stand tall and proud in the world of pies. Real gelatin. Now we put some whole milk solids. Also a very wonderful natural dairy item. It's good. Monos sodium and diglycerides. This is an emulsifier. Make it hang together. Hang together and stay sloppy in your tummy. Another dash of salt. Just a little. Just a dash. Like snow. Isn't that pretty? Taste the vinegar to give it that old tartness. But be careful you don't put too much vinegar in. If you do, the kids will be turning their noses up at it, saying you made a vinegar pie, and you don't want to do that. Poly sorbate number 60, not 58 or 59 or 61. If you have trouble finding this, your local organic chemical supply house probably have a little for you. This is an emulsifier and it's also retards spoilage. So many pies these days are spoiling right and left. This one doesn't spoil every for seven or eight months. Here's some vanilla to counteract the vinegar and add a little more flavoring. That's fine. And our old friend. Where is he? Where are you? There she is. This is monos sodium phosphate. can be found in laxatives and detergents. Cleans all kinds of tubes out and you'll have a clean pie. We'll just lay this in right here. You don't want to put too much. Acts like a draano or something. That's fine. Now we go to the Texas grasslands for a little guar gum. That's fine. That's purely organic. Little leopin for the arteries. That's it. And what's a pie without a little artificial color? Just a couple drops. Not too much. You don't want it to clash with the walls or the curtains. That's fine. Okay. You may wonder what kind of a pie we've made here. See that? Now, I'll show you exactly what kind of a pie it is. There it is. A modern lemon cream pie. I'll open that for you. Get it out of the box. Good. Take the paper off. Factory fresh. Factory approved. No lemons, no eggs, no cream, just pie. Let's play the creative play food challenge. Foods no longer fall into the simple categories they once did. When we go to the market, we no longer buy just a sack of potatoes, a bag of sugar, or a pound of steak. We are now confronted and challenged by alluring packaging, hard cell advertising, and too many choices. It is also difficult to judge the real worth of foods now that chemicals contribute to the confusion. For that matter, how can we judge how much the ingredients should cost when often times we cannot determine what the ingredients are? Now, one of the new categories is the creative play food. A chemical whimsy created for fun and profit. Your fun, the creator's profit. Now, let's play the creative play food challenge. We'll describe four creative play foods and withhold the price. You guess which one costs the most per pound. Here are the four product. Shoppers, bear the price in mind. Here's number one. A truly revolutionary product, Froot Loops. So sweet it could be called the first breakfast dessert. Up to now, no one wanted a dessert for breakfast. But it took a kind of genius to whip up some sugar, some blended flour, and flavoring, secretly process it, and call the results a loop. They don't call it a cereal, but what's a loop anyway? It's the first breakfast dessert, and it doesn't need any sweetening. You wouldn't want more sugar. And let's take the word fruit, spelled F R O T. And for good reason. If they spelled it F R UI T, then they'd have to put real F R UI T in it. This 7 oz box, Froot Loops, cost 41. This is not an ordinary potato product, and it's not made from ordinary potatoes. Potato crisps are partly dehydrated potatoes and the rest degermed yellow corn grits and eight chemicals and preservatives blended together to give you a taste just like ordinary French fried potatoes. They take the fried taste you crave and make them go crunch. 5 oz box of potato crisps sells for 49. Here's an old favorite of kids everywhere. furic acid, sugar, monosodium phosphate, artificial flavoring, calcium carbonate, and every school boy knows the rest. It's Kool-Aid. No fuss, no mus, and no fresh fruit leftovers to clean up and throw away. This little packet here delivers two quarts of non-nourishing imitationflavored soft drink. All you do is rip open the packet, toss the contents into a non-metal pitcher, add more sugar, cold water, stir and serve. Non-metal pitcher. What would it do if you put it in a metal pitcher? It's a lot of thought there. A lot of care and thought went into the creation of Whip and Chill. The one rich dessert you can play with while you make. You can whip it up or let it barely feel the lash of your beater. Vent your aggression on your food. Whip and chill. The fulmination of 20th century sophisticated technology. Not the kind of dessert mother would make, but some mothers or fathers over at General Foods knew what happens when you mix propyline glycol monasterate with sodium silicoluminate, sodium steroid 2 lactylate, and acetylated monoglycerides. Abracadabra deluxe magical dessert mix. Those mothers knew. They concocted a magical dessert mix. Not a pudding, not a cream, a chemical dessert dream. 29 cents for a box, 4 oz box of whip and chill. Here's the quiz. Which of these did you like best? Which one do you think is the most expensive? Now, shoppers, choose amongst whip and chill, Kool-Aid, Froot Loops, potato crisps. Here's the question. If each of these weighed a pound, which one would cost the most? Right. Here's the answer. Froot Loops by the pound cost 93. Whip and chill goes for $116. 16 ounces of potato crisps will give you $156 worth of goodness. And here's the winner. Kool-Aid. And the reason why the non-metal pitcher is smiling is Kool-Aid by the pound costs $5.80. [Music] Chuck steak. This little chuck steak sells for 69 cents a pound. Can you imagine what it's going to cost when it becomes sizzling stoco bits and joins the ranks of the play foods? Try to imagine that. Go ahead. I'll leave. [Music]