Selects: The Stories Behind A Few Food Fads

# Stuff You Should Know Episode Summary

Josh hand-picks a delightfully eclectic journey through American food fads, starting with the surprisingly fascinating origin story of TV dinners—which came about when Swanson found itself stuck with 250 tons of excess turkey that needed to stay frozen on a constantly moving refrigerated train. From there, the episode explores how gelatin transformed from a labor-intensive French delicacy into the convenient Jello phenomenon of the 1950s, complete with bewilderingly gross savory molds that somehow represented the height of dinner party sophistication. The guys also dive into how the Crock-Pot revolutionized busy working mothers' dinner routines in the 1970s, and wrap up with a wild ride through the oat bran craze of the 1980s—when massive hype around cholesterol-lowering claims turned oat bran into a fad food that eventually crashed just as spectacularly as it had risen.