Jell-O
March 28th, 2008On March 17, 1993, according to the Jell-O Museum web page, technicians at St. Jerome Hospital in Batavia, NY, apparently having nothing better to do, hooked an electroencephalograph up to a bowl of lime flavor Jell-O. They were amazed, the story goes, to discover that America’s favorite gelatin dessert exhibits brain waves “identical” to an adult human being. Unrecorded but obviously relevant is whether the adult human used for comparison happened to work as a technician at St. Jerome Hospital.
But while lime Jell-O seems an unlikely candidate for the Nobel Prize in much of anything, it does hold the distinction of being a big hit in Salt Lake City, which consumes more of the green jiggly stuff than any other American metropolis.
For a brand name that today is recognized by 95% of Americans and found in 66% of their homes, Jell-O got off to a rocky start. The first person to patent a gelatin dessert, in 1845, was Peter Cooper, the inventor, manufacturer and philanthropist best known for pioneering the railroad locomotive in America. But making Cooper’s gelatin took the better part of a day and the product was not very popular.
A scant fifty years later, however, carpenter and cough-medicine purveyor Pearle B. Wait and his wife May Davis Wait of LeRoy, NY fiddled a bit with Cooper’s gelatin, and by 1897 had developed easier-to-make strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon flavors. A name was needed for the product, and May came through with a winner — “Jell-O.”
Given the spelling “Jell-O,” May Wait was probably thinking of “jelly,” not “gelatin,” when she dreamt up the name, but the two words share a common root. The Latin “gelare” means “to freeze,” and as it percolated into various later European languages took on the connotation of “to congeal” (in fact, “congeal” itself is a descendant of “gelare”). Both “gelatin” and “jelly” were originally applied to a substance produced by boiling animal bones, skins, etc., to release collagen, which “jells” into a semi-solid as it cools. (Fruit jelly, which does not come from animals, jells because of the pectin in the fruit itself.) Today’s gelatin, including that found in Jell-O, comes from the same animal sources, but is so rigorously purified that many vegetarians consider Jell-O perfectly acceptable.
In subsequent years the Jell-O brand changed hands several times and today is owned by Kraft Foods Inc., which markets more than 150 products under the Jell-O name, including puddings, pie fillings, and Jello-O Pudding Pops. And in January 2001, all that lime finally kicked in and Jell-O was declared the “Official State Snack” of Utah. EEG testing of the legislature might be interesting.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:29 am
I think you’ll find that, in Salt Lake City, Jell-O is consumed in no more than normal quantities: That is, only those required during unfortunate events such as hospital stays and school lunches. It is the rest of Utah that is Jell-O crazy.
That is not to say that the flavored gelatin dessert doesn’t have special significance in the city..
For various complicated reasons, at some point during the past 30 years, Jell-O became the symbol par excellence of rural Utah culture. And, during the same time period, Salt Lake City become eager to establish itself as a midsize metropolis with a modicum of sophistication.
The best way of doing this seemed to be by differentiating ourselves from our fellow Utahns who live in the sticks. Fortunately, this was easy: We just looked at what they were doing, and then we did the opposite.
(That’s why you’ll rarely find Jell-O served in any Salt Lake City home, unless it’s for camp value. I once made an elaborate Jell-O diorama for a friend’s birthday party, and then had great fun acting affronted when somebody actually ate it.)
Of course, Salt Lake City’s wayward ways did not go unnoticed. The Legislature finds a way to punish Salt Lake City for its unconventional behavior during every yearly session. That’s where the “Official State Snack” resolution came in:
In reaction to Salt Lakers’ incessant ridicule of Jell-O, rural Utahns adopted it as a badge of honor. However, Jell-O sales continued to decrease until, around 1999, Kraft Foods announced that Iowa had overtaken Utah in per-capita Jell-O consumption.
This was humiliating to rural Utahns, who staunchly refused to accept the idea that Utah culture might change as a result of deviant shopping patterns in the capital city. A campaign to reestablish Utah’s Jell-O preeminence ensued, and rural Utahns redoubled their Jell-O efforts, recapturing the title.
Because of this, Utah may be the only place where Jell-O carries political connotations.
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A copy of the 2001 Utah Senate resolution (SR5) is available on the Legislature’s Website:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2001/bills/sbillint/SR0005.htm
April 27th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
This was a good information site. Although I really needed to find out the consumption of americans eating jello.