4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
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You are what you eat - and so is America. Various foods have played their part in the country’s history. Anna Zeide, author of US History in 15 Foods, takes us through 5 of them - Corn, Peanuts, Graham Bread, Spam and The Big Mac.
Produced by Freddie Chick. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.
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0:00.0 | Way back in the 1990s in the early days of my career, I appeared in commercials. |
0:07.0 | Lots of commercials, from aspirin to deodorant to telephone pricing plans. |
0:12.0 | But one food item stood apart from the other |
0:15.8 | products. One world famous mainly chocolate cookie that bases its |
0:20.9 | branding on how you can twist and separate the cookie wafers from their inner white filling. |
0:26.4 | You know the one I'm talking about, Oreos. |
0:28.8 | You might even have a vague memory of me sitting at a table demonstrating this age-old practice for a two-year-old |
0:35.8 | toddler named Gary. |
0:37.8 | Gary, it's time I taught you something every man should know how to eat an Oreo cookie. |
0:44.0 | Twist it off. |
0:45.0 | Oh, you did it. |
0:47.0 | Just give it a lick. |
0:49.0 | It was an unusual experience shooting this shot, I remember. |
0:52.0 | It involved lab-coated food technicians |
0:54.4 | heating individual cookies to an optimal temperature for effective camera |
0:59.4 | friendly licks. Gary and I were portraying the essential human bond between father and son, but that was, of course, secondary to the more important human connection to cookies. |
1:10.0 | Now, you just learned to tie your shoelaces and you'll be all set. |
1:13.0 | Crossing time and generations, one need only know how to twist the wafer off to get to the really good stuff in the middle. |
1:20.0 | There's a metaphor there. |
1:22.0 | Connection to food is human history of the highest order |
1:26.0 | and the lowest. |
1:27.0 | Either way, it's universal. |
... |
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