Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff Josh, Chuck, Jerry, not Dave, but Dave's still anyway, short stuff.
That's right, another banger of a job by you, thanks to your research with Science of Food Journal, the marketing stage, optimizing nutrition across the margin, our Ole Priends at housetuffworks dot com, Mashed and Panolion, the Panolion whatever that is.
It's right, right, Yeah, they were all very good resources because this is kind of like a wide ranging topic. We're talking about bliss the bliss point, which is essentially what food scientists have come up with to make you eat and crave junk food ceaselessly.
Yeah, you have a pretty startling stat here out of the gate. The average American consumed, and this is a few years ago in twenty twenty two, one hundred and twenty six point four grams of sugar a day, which is one hundred and one pounds or forty six key lows of sugar per American per year. Some people say it's like up to one fifty, which is a ton of sugar. In nineteen fifteen that number was about seventeen and a half pounds, and processed foods were developed in
that time span. And that's literally to blame.
Yeah, for sure. And that's added sugar. That's not like the sugar from fruit. It's the sugar that you could like put into a package and sell at the store. That's the sugar that they're counting right there. Yeah. And there's a guy named Michael Moss. He wrote a book that you probably have heard of called Salt, Sugar and Fat. Came out I don't know within the last decade or so, but he talks about a market researcher named Howard Moskowitz, and Moscowitz basically gave us the food industry as we
understand it today. And I looked up and down to see if he expressed any remorse at the end of his life, and he doesn't seem to have been anything but proud of his work. But the reason he revolutionized the food industry is that in the seventies he identified the idea of bliss points like it was almost a discovery, as more than an invention. And that is the perfect balance between fat, sugar, and salt in any given food product.
It's not the same for every food product. It's specific to each individual Dorito or cheeto or whatever, and if you do it right, people are just going to eat those things constantly and they're not going to stop. They're going to have trouble stopping.
In fact, Yeah, he was a what's known as a psychophysicist, and they are people who look at the relationship between a stimulus and your brain's response to it. And in this case, we're talking about taste. As far as the
stimulus and then as far as our brains response. It's like, I want to eat all of that that I can, right, And he was eventually became known as like a really pretty brilliant market researcher who would pump out these really detailed reports on consumer on consumers consuming, and some of these could be like over one hundred pages long, like really drilled down to like kind of weird levels of specificity and granularity, and he would discover a bliss point
of something. And I think he's really well known for helping Prego the Saucier come up with their chunky variety and he introduced thirty two different mustards and seventeen different olive oils and a lot of other products to the market.
Yeah, and again by just doing this exhaustive market research and interviews and focus groups and testing to just figure out what people wanted and then figure out how to make it so that most the most people would buy it because it had maximal palatability.
Yeah, and we have bliss points for everything, basically, they're different for different macro nutrients. Bliss points for junk food are just heavily engineered to do that, but there are natural bliss points, like protein satisfies people pretty quickly, so I think Marty Kendall says on the Optimizing Nutrition blog, had a pretty funny mistake that we'd be found that if a food has a protein content of just fourteen percent,
that's going to make you feel satisfied. And that's why a lot of high protein diets are recommended because you're just probably not gonna eat as much because you can feel fuller and become satisfied more quickly.
Yeah. And also that's why you rarely find protein and junk food. Yeah, exactly. They don't want you to feel satisfied. They don't want it feel satiated. They just want that bliss point as such that your brains just like keep going, keep going. And the reason why salt, fat and sugar are focused on is because those three combined basically set off all of our taste buds. Right. Yeah, so it really like pumps out a huge message to our brain saying like this is amazing, let's just eat this forever.
And like you said, everything kind of has a bliss point. And also most foods or a lot of foods have these same three ingredients naturally. But again, these aren't These foods like aren't really engineered to keep us going to maximalize the bliss point. They just kind of have a natural version in it. You know, like an apple tastes good because it has its own bliss point, but it's not so highly engineered that you don't just keep eating apple after apple.
Yeah, that would make you sick in your belly.
Yes, because they're high in fiber, they're good for that. Yeah. Should we take a break, Yeah we should.
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
I want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
It's stuff you should know.
Should all right, So again, salt, fat, sugar, these these three things. If you can get that down, your food company will probably be successful if you can figure out how to just kind of put them together just right, and they serve other purposes too, like salt masks, the taste of other ingredients pretty well, sugar is also preservative, so the shelf life of a product is extended from it. But really taste is essentially what you're trying to do
with this. But it goes to show you just how how not precarious, just what a juggling act it is to come to the bliss point. So it's maximally palatable. But also there's enough sugar in there to keep your you know, stovetop stuffing from turning bad on the shelf if you don't move them fast enough.
Yeah, I mean, this is one of those is kind of disappointing to learn how sort of they're not like, let let's make something that people really like and that tastes awesome. They're like, let's let's make something that they will eat and eat and eat. That's why I just became German.
That's a problem with the twentieth century business mindset that's still around Today's hook your audience and you'll have profits for your shareholders constantly.
Yeah, from Dorito's to social media. Yeah, it sucks, so we don't know, you know, you can't get a recipe for dorriedo, you know, like an actual recipe. But that optimizing nutrition blog that you found, they took. They got hundreds of thousands of food logs and came up with some pretty good guesses on sort of a prime bliss
point ratio. I guess, yeah, wherein sugar makes up or should make up about twenty three point five percent of the calories, salt about two point nine grams per two thousand calories, and fat about twenty twenty four percent of the food's calories. And again, this is not like the construction of a good diet. This is if you're looking to maximize that bliss point exactly.
Yeah, it's not a good diet, right, So there's other things that come into play that food scientists have figured out along the way. Do you remember the chewy granola bar revolution of the early nineties, Yeah, sure those are good. Chewy mouthfeel was basically investigated and they figured out how to maximize that and then also crunchy. You know, you
can't really sneeze at that. But the biggest, the biggest invention or the biggest discovery aside from bliss point, as far as food science goes, as vanishing caloric density which is really important for junk food.
Yeah, this is incredible. This is the idea that something that you put in your mouth to eat that has that sort of melt in your mouth quality, your brain doesn't register that you are eating calories. So that's when like popcorn is one of them. That's why you can sit down and eat a giant sub of popcorn at the movies because it kind of has that melt in your mouth feel, and your brain's not saying like, maybe you should put this down because you're eating a lot
of calories. It doesn't signal your brain in that way. And a little fact that I learn from your research that hits home to my family was that they have found that cheetos Michael Mass said that that is the perfect snack for as far as bliss point goes, as far as the crunchy mouthfeel, the flavor ratio, and most importantly that vanishing color density. And my friend, my wife Emily has a Cheeto problem such that we don't keep
Cheetos in the house. She's like, I can't stop eating them when they're in the house.
I know how she feels. I've got some products like that, Yeah that I just I don't keep in the house. You can't. I do have to say though, that it's gotten easier and easier with just how ridiculous the prices are for chips these days.
Yeah, chips are a price.
It's insane, chuck, Like a bag of ruffles printed on the bag is seven dollars and fifty cents for half of a bag of ruffles. Potato chips, Now, that is insane. The only good part of it is hopefully more and more people are like, I'm not eating chips anymore. This is dumb.
Yeah, I mean we don't eat a lot of that stuff. You know, when we'll go to the lake for the weekends with like kids and stuff, we'll get like chips and dip and that's always fun. I do have a French onion sunship problem.
Yeah, oh fan, I love that so much. The mouth seel of those turned me off. Actually, oh, I love it.
And they also they're one of those sort of evils that make you think you're eating sort of a healthy like a multi grid thing, and it's like, I don't think those are any healthier than a fried potato chip.
Right, Well, here, take my hand and help me off of my soapbox, because I have a follow up question about Emily's Cheeto problem. All right, let's hear it. Does she like the original Cheetos, the straight ahead version, or is she more like a fiery hot version kind of cheeto lover.
No, she's a standard Cheeto, and to be specific, not a cheese puff either, like a real Cheetoh, like a Frid Flintstone Club Cheeto. But it's funny that she accidentally got some of those flaming hots and Ruby was like, I want to try those, and we're like, no, those are way too high. Eat those and she was like no, I can handle it.
And she ate it.
And it was one of those things where you can see like her eyes starting water and she's like, these are really good.
I like these. She played it off.
Oh yeah, She's like I want to take those to school, and then we later found she was trading them.
And sure yeah, she's like you're trying these, you'll love it exactly. So okay, So just figuring out the bliss point is not enough. You don't just figure it out and release it. You try a million different combinations, maybe not a million, but not that far off, and you test it with people. That's how you fine tune everything and get it just right so that you find that bliss point that's going to help you sell as much, and so those taste tests can like really start to
add up. There's some legendary ones, as a matter of fact. One of them is Prego Chunky.
Yeah, we mentioned that earlier. They had forty five different versions of Prego Chunky that they were testing until they got to their main one. And then I'm going to let you handle the Doctor Pepper because that's just amazing.
Cherry Vanilla Doctor Pepper. They went through sixty one different versions and four thousand different taste tests before they finally released it. It's not bad.
I've never tried it. I mean, I'm not a doctor Pepper guy. It's such a specific I don't like hate it, but it's just not when I go to.
I'm not either. But that's or wait, maybe it's the cream soda doctor Pepper. That's not bad. I don't really drink it either, but I tried one once and I was like, that's actually pretty good.
Yeah.
What about Oreos Chuck, Because one of the things they've become known for in the last few years is releasing just nutso flavors all the time.
Yeah, and you know, this is probably the gen X in me coming out. But I love a not I do love a standard Oreo, But to me, they hit peak Oreo with the double stuff standard.
Oh really, you don't like lemon.
No, I mean I'm not into lemony dessert iserts.
Yeah, you probably wouldn't like lemon Oreos. Then I think they're very good. And I also think some of the minuted editions they've come out with are pretty good. Like Birthday Cake, which was the first one they did to commemorate their one hundredth birthday back in twenty twelve. To me, the pin it was very good. I think it's still around. To me, the pinnacle was rice crispy treats Oreos. They were amazing.
That sounds so good.
They were really really good. If they re released any I would I would definitely go get those. But I've very fortunately been like, I should probably stop buying like crazy flavored Oreos because I just eat the whole bag, like in one sitting. Basically, oh man, glass of cold
whole milk. Yeah, Oreos go really well with that. But oh, the reason why that they've been releasing so many flavors is that they figured out when they release a crazy flavor, it gets lots of press, so it gets people to the stores, right, And they found that when people are at the stores to buy that crazy flavored Oreo, they apparently remember how much they love the original Oreos like you, so they buy both. That's great, too interesting. I guess it's great for a Nubisco. Yeah.
I bet that was a finding too where they were like, oh my god, look what's happening. Yeah, Chuck went to get a Lady Gaga Oreo and he got the double stuff as well.
I know that's so weird. That's one of the flavors. And I guess before we signed off, Chuck, I think we should remind everybody, as we have many times, Oreo is the knockoff Hydrox was the original. That's right. Everybody's short stuff.
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