Why The Fries Taste Good

By: Jamie & Anna

John Richard Simplot

• America’s great potato baron• Eighth grade drop out• Became potato farmer

– Potato industry started 1920’s• Perfected new method for

drying potatoes– Principal suppliers of military

food during WWII– Largest dehydrating plant in

the world

Golden Age of Food Processing

•Sales of kitchen appliances soared after WWII•Frozen orange juice, frozen TV dinners, Jell-O, Jet Puffed marshmallows, Miracle Whip

French Fries

• Simplot started selling in 1953– Disappointing sales, due to taste– Improved by restaurant chains

• 1960 Americans yearly ate– 81 lbs fresh potatoes – 4 lbs frozen french fries

• Today Americans yearly eat– 49 lbs fresh potatoes– 30lbs frozen french fries (90% fast

food)

Farmers• $1.50 spent on fries at fast

food restaurant $0.02 goes to the farmer

• Idaho’s potato farmer face enormous pressure– “The only thing I can really

control,” one farmer told me, “is what time I get out of bed in the morning.”

• In 25 years Idaho lost ½ of its potato farmers

The Taste• McDonald’s fries unique taste

from mixture 7% cottonseed oil 93% beef tallow– More saturated beef fat per

ounce than a McDonald’s hamburger

• Switch to pure vegetable oil in 1990 created a taste challenge

In The Lab

•The perfume industry makes the taste of foods•Most widely used color additives•Make from desiccated bodies of female Dactlyopius coccus Costa (small insect)

Video

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZ2D_TAXDY&safe=active