Original subtitles

Did you know that there was once a time

when kids ate chocolate right out of the gutter?

Can you imagine being a kid six, seven years old,

and suddenly the street is covered in chocolate?

Who's not gonna eat that?

Yes, they choked down a little horse poop,

but man, the stories.

Or when martinis came with a twist.

Of toxins.

Man, I know what you're thinking.

"Canned black olives?

What could be so bad?"

In World War II, governments were looking into using this

as a chemical weapon.

Do you remember when cereal was nearly a serial killer?

Kids no longer see the cereal

as something they eat at breakfast.

It's the thing that contains this prize that they want.

There's just this one issue.

The material inside the ring, it's polonium,

the radioactive element used in the Manhattan Project.

These are the things we used to do for fun, for money,

or maybe out of boredom that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous?

Certainly.

Deadly?

Occasionally.

But, boy, wasn't it exciting?

Remember when breakfast was the best part of waking up?

A giant bowl of sugary cereal, cartoons on the TV,

not a care in the world.

But sometimes even the most innocent looking treats

came with a surprise nobody saw coming.

In the 1960s, in the heat of the cereal wars,

a clear winner emerges

with the first marshmallow-laden cereal, Lucky Charms.

♪ Grab the Lucky Charms

♪ They're magically delicious

This was probably the single biggest

technological advancement in breakfast cereal ever.

And from then on, everybody was trying to innovate

in giving you new marshmallow shapes and colors.

In 1971, supermarkets around the United States

begin stocking a now iconic cereal called Franken Berry.

Oh, what a beautiful day for Franken Berry,

the world's super sweet new cereal.

It's part of the family of cereals

that include the equally iconic Count Chocula

and a blueberry-flavored cereal called Boo Berry.

Franken Berry was filled with intensely pink

strawberry-flavored marshmallow bits.

It's all brightly-colored, it's so fun to look at.

And at the end, when you've eaten all the cereal,

you've got like a bowl of pink milk now

that's like a delicious strawberry milkshake.

I love this stuff as a kid.

This was it.

This was, like, monster and cereal mashed together,

and it tastes so good.

Franken Berry quickly becomes a top seller,

but soon something spooky starts happening.

Kids start complaining about severe stomach pains,

and it gets worse.

Part of them start to turn this light red color

and it's not their skin, it's their poop.

Parents freak right out

because everybody knows red-colored stool means blood.

And there are a lot of things

that can cause you to have blood in your stool,

none of them are good.

In one case, a 12-year-old boy,

he's rushed to the emergency room after two days

of stomach pains and reddish poop.

Doctors ask if he started any new medications.

He says no.

Has he been eating any cranberries or beets?

Uh-uh.

But in the days leading up to the bright pinkish stool,

he actually had a couple of bowls of Franken Berry cereal.

- Franken Berry. - Count Chocula.

- Meow. - Ah!

Aha!

Doctors suspect they have the culprit,

but just to be sure, they run an experiment.

They feed him four bowls of Franken Berry and send him home.

And sure enough, the parents call back

and he does indeed have very pink poop.

Turns out, back then, there's something lurking

in those bright pink marshmallows.

The cereal's intense color comes from a synthetic

food dye called Red Dye No. 2.

And at the time, Red Dye No. 2 is used

in a ton of different foods and drugs and cosmetics

because it's cheap, it's easy to produce,

and it looks great.

There's just this one small catch,

and that is that the body can't fully break it down.

So if you have Red No. 2 coming in,

you'll have a pink No. 2 coming out.

It becomes so common for doctors

to be dealing with this issue

that they come up with their own name for it,

Franken Berry Stool.

But pink cereal is just the beginning.

People start to wonder,

"Look, if this dye can turn your poop pink,

what else can it do to you?"

And studies start being performed,

and they realize that in certain cases

it can raise the risk of cancer.

Time Magazine declares Red Dye No. 2

one of the 50 worst inventions of all time.

The Mars Company even pulls red M&Ms from the shelves,

even though they don't actually contain Red Dye No. 2.

There's just that much of a panic around it.

In 1976, the FDA bans Red Dye No. 2.

Franken Berry, they changed their formulation

to the safer Red Dye No. 40.

And the pink poop panic passes.

Some dangers came for what was in your bowl.

But at one San Francisco restaurant, it was on the walls,

on the ceiling, and headed straight for your dinner.

In the mid-1800s, San Francisco is booming.

Gold rush money is flowing in

and industries like shipping, banking,

and manufacturing are taking off.

There are dock workers and miners and excavators

and people from all points of the compass,

and they all have to eat.

And they all love going to one place in particular.

The Cobweb Palace.

The Cobweb Palace has fancy wines from Europe.

They serve good food, the chowder was very popular.

It seems like maybe Cobweb Palace

is just sort of an ironic name for an upscale place.

But the name is no joke.

When you walk into the restaurant,

the walls and the ceilings are draped

with thick, dusty cobwebs.

And they're not like fake cobwebs.

They are real cobwebs.

In some spots, there's like six foot wide webs.

And you would think,

"Well, this clearly can't be on purpose."

Oh no, the owner, Abe Warner, actually loved spiders,

so he thought, "Well, this is perfect.

This is exactly what I want this place to look like."

A bowl full of cobwebs is bad enough,

but they also trap dirt, dust, and other insects.

So, as you enjoy a cocktail or a bowl of soup,

who knows what might descend from the ceiling

and fall right into your food?

Normally, a fly in your soup is an exception

in a restaurant experience, but at The Cobweb Palace,

you might just get a rat turd swaddled in cobwebs

that falls into your soup.

It's an everyday part of the dining experience.

This place would definitely fail

a modern health inspection.

But at the time, Abe had the right

to run his business as he wished.

That's only the beginning of the ambience

because he's collecting stuff from all over

that sailors are carrying

and that he'll trade them for drinks.

So there's strange weapons, whale teeth,

bones, totem poles.

The restaurant never violates health codes

because there are no health codes.

And it worked for The Cobweb Palace's,

let's say, unique clientele.

You got sailors coming in from all over the Pacific.

Some of them are bringing in exotic animals.

And Abe will not just let them bring them

into the restaurant,

but he will trade liquor to get the animals

so that they can hang around the restaurant.

What that means is you could pull up to the bar

and be next to a cockatoo, or kangaroos, or monkeys.

There's also a bear that lives in a shed out back.

Like, that's pretty wild.

Despite how potentially dangerous this place might be,

there's really no authority that exists to shut it down.

I love it, the era when there were no health codes.

And if you didn't like it, you can just leave.

Even more shocking than the fact that this place

exists is that it lasts.

The place really takes off,

but it becomes more of like a tourist attraction

than just a restaurant.

And it's open for the next 40 years.

It's also like a roadside attraction

that you just can't miss.

The Cobweb Palace eventually closes,

and it's not because there's some salmonella outbreak

and it's not because somebody gets mauled by the bears

or one of the other wild animals.

It's because time marches on.

The neighborhood fundamentally changes.

By 1893, Warner can't pay the rent anymore.

And so he closes his doors,

and soon thereafter, the building is demolished.

You just have to love that people back then

accepted this restaurant for what it was, warts and all.

Nobody was writing a negative Yelp review or complaining.

They were just experiencing life.

I've eaten at some exotic restaurants in my time,

but when the decor starts moving, I say, "Check please."

Believe it or not, there was a time when ice cream

would only cost you a penny,

but it turns out the real cost was a lot higher

than anyone realized.

In the 1800s,

industrialization brings the price of candy way down,

allowing for small sweets to be sold individually

for just one cent.

These treats become known as penny candy.

And they're hugely popular, especially with kids.

Penny candy opens up a huge new market

for candy manufacturers

because kids don't have a lot of money,

but if they have two, three, four cents,

they can run to the candy store and get some penny candy.

Ice cream vendors want in on the action,

so they start talking, trying to figure out,

"What's our penny candy version of ice cream?"

That's where they come up with a penny lick.

It's a tiny scoop of ice cream.

It costs one cent.

Part of what's clever about the penny licks is the glass.

It's got this tall base.

So it looks like you're about to get this big serving.

But then the ice cream is smooshed into

this teensy little depression at the top.

When a vendor's going down the street,

saying, "Penny licks, penny licks,"

for kids, this is amazing.

For a penny, they can get some ice cream.

You don't have to spend five cents to get a whole one.

No, no, just a little.

While penny lick vendors have plenty of business,

what they don't have is plenty of glassware or spoons.

Ice cream cones aren't a thing yet,

and without utensils, you just dive in with your mouth,

swirling it around this little piece of glass,

making sure that not a drop

of that ice cream goodness is missed.

The process is that you get your penny lick,

lick your ice cream out of there,

hand it back to the vendor,

who puts more ice cream in there and serves it again.

Obviously, they're gonna wash it, right?

No!

No, that would be crazy.

When you hand it back, if you're lucky,

it might get a quick rinse in the same water

that all the other ones have been rinsed in,

or it might get a quick wipe with a rag

that has been used to wipe out all the other ones,

and then it goes right back out to another consumer.

It's not exactly sanitary.

I mean, as a kid,

we've all licked the bowl of ice cream before,

but 100 kids didn't lick that bowl before us.

That'd be gross.

With 100 tongues in a never washed bowl,

you got a recipe for something way worse than a sticky mess.

This is a time period where there are big outbreaks

of epidemic diseases and medical experts start to believe

that somehow germs are being transferred

by items that people share, whether it's a cup

or, in this case, a penny lick glass.

Those barely wiped down glasses pass along bacteria

and viruses that lead to fevers, stomach cramps,

intestinal problems, even death.

The United States is not the only place

that's having this problem.

Penny licks are also used commonly in the United Kingdom,

where they are tied to things like tuberculosis

and cholera outbreaks.

It's only a matter of time before local governments

step in and shut it all down.

But for one vendor,

the answer is simple and completely edible.

In the late 1890s,

a Manhattan ice cream vendor is over the penny licks.

It's not the health risk for him.

It's that A,

people keep dropping the glass and they break,

or B, they run off with them,,

then suddenly he can't sell penny licks.

His name is Italo Marchiony.

His solution is a small, molded wafer cup.

Something sturdy enough to hold a single scoop

and edible when done.

Marchiony invents the ice cream cone.

It's crazy because this one guy and this idea

takes us from this communal

shot glass of ice cream and filth

to the sort of coolness of summer

right there, held in your hand.

If ice cream for a penny was tempting,

free chocolate sounds like a dream come true.

And in Brooklyn a century ago, it was.

There was only one small catch.

In the early 1900s, Brooklyn was ground zero for candy.

There were factories lining the waterfront.

The smell of chocolate and sweets were in the air.

At the center of it all is Rockwood & Company.

They were the second biggest chocolate manufacturer

in the country after Hershey.

On May 12th, 1919, just after 1:00 AM,

a watchman notices smoke rising from the facility.

This is in the shipping department,

which is just full of highly flammable

burlap sacks and cocoa beans.

The fire spreads fast.

Those burlap bags are like kindling.

And by the time the firefighters get there,

it's already spread to the third floor.

And that's where things get sticky.

This is a recipe, literally, for a disaster.

You got cocoa, you got melting butter.

What do you need next?

Firefighter water.

The fireman sprayed all sorts of water on the fire.

All of the ingredients for making chocolate

mixed with the only missing ingredient, water,

it all blended into a chocolatey ooze

that spread out into the streets of Brooklyn.

Tens of thousands of gallons of chocolatey sludge

are literally flowing down Flushing Avenue.

And as it starts to cool, this thick, gooey mass

starts to cover storm drains and congeal,

so that there's no place for it to go

and more and more of it begins to fill

the area around the factory.

A reporter describes it as an ocean of fudge so deep,

you could actually float a rowboat for two blocks.

If you think a fire and flood

would have people running for cover, you'd be wrong.

Kids hear about it, they smell it,

and they come running out.

And they're using cup, spoons, their hands

to just scoop this chocolate mixture off the street.

Can you imagine being a kid six, seven years old,

and suddenly the street is covered in chocolate?

Six-year-old me would've definitely dived in face first,

just cleaning the streets.

Remarkably, nobody seems to stop these children.

Not the parents, not the police, not the firefighters.

They just look at them and grin.

They're like, "Hey, look at those kids being kids,

enjoying the chocolate."

I love chocolate.

There is a list of places that I won't eat it from.

A gutter in Brooklyn in 1919

is very near to the top of the list.

The horse manure, the dead rat, the chemicals, the poison.

People just spitting in the street.

These kids were just eating it up.

After about an hour, an adult does tell them to stop,

and it's a truant officer.

He's not stopping them because of the health hazard

of eating this dirty candy,

he's telling them it's time to get cleaned up

and get to school.

Somehow there are no major illnesses that we know of

that came from this,

and the chocolate factory stays in business until 1967.

The Rockwood candy fire is a once-in-a-lifetime,

unique experience that these kids got.

Yes, they choked down a little horse poop,

but man, the stories.

These days, you can get chocolate covered

just about anything, but not a sidewalk.

Back during Prohibition,

Americans found all kinds of creative ways

to keep the liquor flowing.

And the challenge wasn't finding a drink.

It was hoping it didn't kill you.

When Prohibition begins in 1920,

people do not stop drinking.

Despite the nation's best efforts,

we cannot stamp out the tendency of people

to consume intoxicating liquors.

During Prohibition, 30,000 illegal speakeasies

opened up in New York City alone.

What a town.

But what's keeping these speakeasies

flush with booze?

Prohibition bans alcohol

that is fit for human consumption.

It doesn't ban industrial alcohol,

and there are lots of industrial applications for alcohol.

It could be used in perfume.

It could be used in paint.

It can be used in cleaners.

And they don't ban it because they think it's so toxic,

no one's going to drink it.

Ah, but then the people prove them wrong.

So that left barrels and barrels

of all this industrial-grade alcohol just sitting there

for a person to come along with the bright idea

to turn it into drinkable alcohol.

And boy, did they ever.

Bootleggers want to keep the party going,

and they turn to an unlikely partner in crime.

Professional chemists.

Together, the bootleggers and the

professional scientists

figure out that they can make industrial alcohol drinkable.

They dilute it, they filter it, they re-distill it,

and then they add flavoring.

And suddenly, bathtub gin is on the menu.

And the taste, it's not too bad once you get used to it.

It's also a really easy process to scale up.

At one point, there are 60 million gallons

of industrial alcohol per year

being converted into bathtub gin.

It's America's number one source of liquor.

The government sees what's going on

and decides to get tough.

Industrial booze,

the stuff they're starting with is so toxic.

So what do the feds do?

Well, they tell the manufacturers

to make industrial alcohol more dangerous

because surely that will stop people

from drinking it, right?

In 1926, the manufacturers of industrial

alcohol are now required to put more poisonous chemicals

into their alcohol.

Things like gasoline, kerosene,

formaldehyde, and chloroform.

And all manufacturers are now required

to add at least 10% methanol.

Methanol looks and smells like regular alcohol,

but a few ounces of methanol can cause blindness,

and a little more can kill you.

You're basically drinking windshield wiper fluid.

Scientists and bootleggers

started taking this industrial alcohol,

working it further, distilling it further,

and selling it to people anyway.

Now, did they get all of those dangerous chemicals out?

No, they did not.

Did that stop people from drinking?

No, it did not.

It's the 1920s.

It'll take a lot to get people to stop drinking.

During the 1926 Christmas season,

hospitals are filling up with patients

who are suffering from alcohol poisoning.

One man insists that Santa is chasing him with a bat.

And shortly after that, he dies.

Not because of Santa, it's because of the alcohol.

In 1927, 700 New Yorkers die this way

of alcohol poisoning.

By the end of Prohibition in 1933,

10,000 Americans have died from consuming tainted alcohol.

This stuff was incredibly dangerous.

Eventually, even the government has to admit

its last call for Prohibition.

In December of 1933,

the 21st Amendment repeals Prohibition.

Gone are the days when you have to build a still

out in the middle of the woods

so that you can have something to get you drunk.

You can just go back to the good old days

of getting that from a restaurant or a bar.

Dangerous drinks were not just an adult problem.

In the 1960s, kids discovered a drink

with a unique side effect.

After World War II, powdered drink mixes

really take off.

♪ For the very best drink you ever made ♪

♪ Be sure that the envelope says Kool-Aid. ♪

They're cheap and they're easy to store,

and you can instantly turn a pitcher

of water into a colorful and tasty drink.

By the 1960s, drink mixes are everywhere.

Kids love them because they're super sweet.

And in 1964, a new one arrives on the scene

called Funny Face.

Hey, it's time for Funny Face.

Who said that?

Us, the Funny Face drinks.

Funny Face is kind of like Kool-Aid.

It comes in the same small little packets,

but instead of having one mascot,

each flavor has its own unique mascot.

So imagine, Rootin'-Tootin' Raspberry, Goofy Grape,

Freckle Face Strawberry, and they were a lot of fun.

The big selling point for Funny Face though

is that they have no sugar.

Which is amazing

because parents don't want to feed their kids sugar

because sugar causes cavities,

and this is not gonna cause cavities, so win-win.

And, in fact, the commercials say to parents,

"Hey, you could feel good about giving this to your kids.

'Cause there's no sugar.

They can drink all they want."

With a Funny Face drink, all you add is water.

Don't add sugar.

- No sugar? - Nope.

'Cause we're pre-sweetened without sugar.

Brilliant marketing.

And, obviously, there's going to be a hoard of children

asking, "Mom, get me that drink."

And it works.

And it's not just marketing.

The drink is actually sweeter than most on the market,

thanks to chemistry.

The sweetener used in Funny Faces

is a substance called cyclamate.

It is 30 times sweeter than normal sugar

and it has almost zero calories.

30 times sweeter than sugar.

And this is at a time when they're pouring

heaps of sugar into everything.

And now with cyclamates, you can drink all you want.

By the mid-1960s, nearly 20 million pounds of

cyclamates are being produced every year.

And they're in everything.

All kinds of sugar-free drinks and foods and products.

People are consuming them without a care

because sugar is the bad guy.

But then a closer look reveals

that it might be too good to be true.

Lab tests show lots of potential consequences

with this substance, including diarrhea, migraines,

and an increased risk of bladder cancer.

But then they find another more bizarre symptom,

testicular atrophy.

In other words, shrinkage.

And not from a cold pool, it's from your drink mix.

Now, if you're a teenager in the '60s,

especially a male teenager in the '60s,

this is not the news you wanna see.

"Oh, you want to shrink my [bleep] if I drink Goofy Grape?

You have my attention."

This gets the attention of not just teenage

boys, but the government,

and they finally banned cyclamates in 1969.

Funny Face changes formula in response to this,

but the damage, it's already done.

And eventually, Funny Face winds down production.

Despite the cancer-causing ingredients,

Funny Face is still fondly remembered.

♪ Funny Face is fun to drink.

Of course, drink mixes are still around today,

but now it's just the kind

that won't shrink your you know what.

In the 1800s, putting food in cans was something new.

It promised to keep food fresh for years.

It just didn't always keep you around to enjoy it.

In August 1919, a group of World War I vets

and their families are having dinner together

at a Lakeside Country Club in Canton, Ohio

to honor a local war hero named Charles Weybrecht.

The dinner goes great,

but a few days later, some of the people start coming down

with these mysterious symptoms.

Their eyelids droop, their vision blurs, speech slurs.

And a few days later, seven of them actually die

of respiratory failure.

Ohio Department of Health investigators look into

it, but they don't really see anything.

They're trying to figure out,

could it have been food poisoning?

Nobody remembers any of the dishes tasting funny

or the food smelling funny.

Nothing was off.

The health inspectors investigate the turkey,

the mayonnaise, the alcohol in the martinis, everything.

And finally, they find the culprit.

Olives.

Canned black olives.

Man, I know what you're thinking.

"Canned black olives?

Like, what's the big deal?"

Those are the little ones you put on your finger

and you dance them around.

What could be so bad?

The Ohio dinner party ends up being

one of several cases of deaths

from canned olive exposure across the country.

It's not just olives.

People are getting deathly ill, eating canned beans

and canned corn, and all of these things look,

smell and taste totally fine.

Despite canned food's dominance in 1919,

the industry is barely regulated.

Canned food is easy and convenient to eat,

but that's only if the canning is done properly.

If you don't boil them at the right temperature

for the right amount of time,

you create the perfect environment for a bacteria

that causes a disease called botulism.

Botulism attacks the nervous system, starting at the

face and paralyzing you downwards,

eventually seizing up your lungs.

The toxin that causes botulism

is the deadliest natural substance known to man.

Without modern medical treatment,

botulism kills 70% of the people that are infected by this.

In fact, in World War II,

governments were looking into using this

as a chemical weapon.

The olive deaths are all over the news.

They call it the Great Olive Poisoning of 1919.

Olive sales plummet,

and 95% of the industry is just wiped out.

The canning industry goes into overdrive

and they actually create the botulism commission,

where scientists and experts figure out safe ways

to regulate the industry and prevent future outbreaks.

And they also educate the public

on how to spot this invisible menace,

either bulging or dented cans.

I remember as a kid,

people were always really sensitive at the grocery store

about dented cans,

and I didn't really understand

like what the significance was.

Now it all makes sense.

But canned goods weren't the only place

hidden dangers lurked.

Sometimes they came free with breakfast.

By the 1930s, the cereal market is a battlefield,

with each company trying to get the upper hand on the other

to become the top dog on your breakfast table.

General Mills comes up with a revolutionary idea.

They figure out if they've got a cool prize within,

kids will harass parents to buy it.

So they start putting Skippy comic trading cards

inside boxes of Wheaties.

Kids no longer see the cereal

as something they eat at breakfast.

It's the thing that contains

this prize that they want.

It's kind of brilliant.

Pretty soon, every competitor starts doing

the same thing.

This was a magical moment in cereal history.

It was entertainment, it was a rush.

Breakfast now is a treasure hunt.

Every box is its own little treasure chest.

We used to get the cereal boxes, rip them open,

put our gross hands in, just deform everything

by digging for these prizes.

But back in the day, the germs from dirty hands

might be the least of your problems.

In 1947, Kix Cereal is cashing in on the atomic

craze that's sweeping the nation.

For just 15 cents and a box top,

you can mail away for your own coveted piece

of the atomic era, an atomic bomb ring.

The ring itself is actually pretty badass,

but the top, you could look through this lens

and you could see a shower of sparks going through

in what they call the atom chamber.

There's just this one issue,

and that is that the material inside the ring, you know,

the stuff that's creating this little cloud of sparks,

it's polonium, the radioactive element used

in the Manhattan Project.

"Hey, kids, do you want atomic bomb ring?"

"Yes, I do, yes, I do!"

"Oh, it's got an actual atomic bomb in it.

Here you go."

Not only is polonium highly radioactive,

it's one of the deadliest substances on Earth,

far more deadly than cyanide.

If you ingest just a tiny bit, it'll kill you.

It's been used to assassinate spies.

Fortunately, there are no reports of any kids getting sick

or injured from these rings.

But it only lasted a year.

And it's not because of a recall

or any kind of safety warning or anything like that.

It's just because the promotion ended.

And the atomic ring isn't alone.

Cereal boxes are full of surprises.

In 1987, one cereal company decides to offer

one of these hard, super bouncy rubber powerballs

as a prize in their cereal.

And it was the most fun ever.

But unfortunately, that same year, a kid chokes on it,

and it causes the company to pull

five million boxes of cereal off the shelves.

In 1993, one cereal introduces

the toy popper as its giveaway.

Think half of a rubber ball that when you press it in,

it springs back to life again.

Seems like harmless fun.

The problem was that it looked like an eyeball.

So what did every kid in the world do?

They stuck it on their eyeball.

And this thing has such a powerful suction force

that when one 12-year-old boy tries to take it off his eye,

he breaks a whole bunch of blood vessels in the eye,

he tears part of his cornea, and he suffers double vision.

At least 36 kids suffer eye injuries from the popper,

and that forces the company to recall

boxes and boxes of perfectly good cereal.

Over time, the lawsuits pile up,

industry standards tighten,

and it really leads to the reigning in

of shoving toys into boxes of cereal.

Today, the thrill of digging your hands into cereal

to get that little tiny plastic toy is gone.

I remember cereal prizes with such fondness

in my heart.

I,unfortunately, was around for the decline

of the cereal prize.

That simple thing was lost of like,

"There's an action figure in there.

Let's get it and go play with it."

For generations of kids, breakfast wasn't just a meal,

it was a treasure hunt.

And every good treasure hunt comes with a little risk.

Appliances that can cook food faster

have always been popular,

but the rise of one-time saving marvel

was positively explosive.

Pressure cookers start becoming available

in America in the 1930s.

It's really after World War II

that they become sort of all the rage.

For busy post-war families,

the pressure cooker becomes

the sort of symbol of efficiency.

And you've got lots of people having kids.

Mom now is able to save time on the stews, on the roast.

From the outside, it looks like a pot.

Inside, it's basically a steam-powered speed run.

A pressure cooker functions by heating up

and heating steam.

The trapped steam in the pot

actually forces the water to boil hotter

at about 250 degrees.

So a very tough cut of meat can cook faster

and become softer cooked in a pressure cooker

simply because that force and that moisture

will penetrate more deeply.

Beans which normally have to be soaked to soften them,

cooked in a fraction of the time.

This is just a huge time saver.

The pressure cooker is able to prepare a meal

in 70% less time.

I mean, that is huge.

By the 1950s,

the demand for pressure cookers is really high,

so companies work overtime to just pump them out

and get them to consumers.

But the popularity of these early pressure cookers

isn't the only thing about to blow up.

Temperatures in a pressure cooker climb

really quickly.

And if heat isn't reduced at exactly the right time,

excess steam and pressure builds up.

The steam is supposed to be released

by an automatic pressure regulator,

but those don't always work properly.

Many of the early pressure cookers

have this really simple release valve.

It's like a little chimney.

And if that chimney gets blocked by like, I don't know,

some lentils or some chicken, then you have a major problem.

It's like a ticking time bomb.

Soon wild stories of pressure cooker mishaps

start popping up all over the country.

In 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio,

a pressure cooker full of chili quite literally explodes

and covers everything.

And I do mean everything.

Drapes, windows, cabinets, knobs,

appliances, floor, ceiling,

the whole shebang was dripping with molten chili.

One blows up in California.

It is such a loud explosion,

the neighbors called the police, saying,

"I think there's a bomb gone off."

The police come,

and what they find out is what blew up?

Beans blew up, a whole pot of beans.

In a Missouri kitchen in 1964,

a spaghetti and meatball blast erupts,

sending a saucy shockwave

that takes out three windows in this house.

In Tampa, Florida, a 10-pound ham

being cooked in a pressure cooker

shoots straight through the ceiling and through the roof

like it was shot out of a submarine

like a Polaris missile.

I guess that day pigs truly did fly.

Newspapers run stories about pressure

cooker survivors.

They don't look like they've come from making dinner.

They look like they came from a battlefield.

Over time, manufacturers tweak designs

to make them safer, but it's an uphill battle.

These pressure cookers end up with an image problem,

and people now are afraid to use them.

So, of course, that means that sales drop.

Ultimately though, they fall out of favor

with people mostly going towards microwaveable meals

and TV dinners and other things for quick eating

rather than, you know, risking death and dismemberment

for a pot of beans.

It was the quickest way to cook a meal

and the fastest way to redecorate your kitchen.

Back in the 1980s,

movie nights at home became a big thing,

but the real drama wasn't always on the screen.

Sometimes it was in the microwave.

In the mid-1980s, VCRs are everywhere.

Families start to have more organized movie nights.

Well, if you're gonna have a movie night,

what do you need?

You need popcorn.

Luckily, another invention steps up

that is sweeping American homes in the 1980s.

The microwave.

In 1984, you get the invention

of the very first shelf stable microwave popcorn.

And this is a game changer.

What used to be cooked in a pan over spitting oil

now gets made in this magic bag.

You put it flat into the microwave,

and then it comes out like an inflated party balloon.

We all know this technology now,

but back then, it was amazing.

By the mid '80s,

microwave popcorn is a sensation.

Those early bags, however,

are hiding more than just popcorn.

In order to get the popcorn to pop in such a quick time,

the oil has to heat up to something like 400 degrees.

400 degrees is like medieval times boiled oil

going out of the castle temperatures.

That is really, really hot.

Unlike today's popcorn bags, which have vent

holes so that the hot air can escape,

those early first popcorn bags were air tight.

As with any great breakthrough,

people don't entirely understand how the new thing works.

This is a new product, and people have no idea

just how hot it is in there.

So they rip open the bags at eye level

and immediately get blasted in the face.

Doctors report eye injuries and face burns.

So if you've ever noticed a microwave popcorn bag

with that warning label that says open away from face,

this is why.

But steam isn't the only issue

when it comes to these old popcorn bags.

In the early 2000s, doctors began observing

that there are people who have lung scarring,

they have respiratory failure,

and they notice that they're working in factories

that make microwavable popcorn.

And so they call the condition initially popcorn lung.

Eventually, researchers identify the cause

of this popcorn lung as diacetyl,

one of the ingredients used to make artificial butter

taste like butter.

Diacetyl's totally safe to eat.

It's just that when people inhale it on a constant basis,

like the workers at the factory,

overexposure produces this awful disease.

Soon, manufacturers remove diacetyl from their products

and replace it with safer alternatives.

Microwave popcorn,

it's like a mini science experiment

occurring in your microwave.

I still don't fully understand how it happens.

It's a miracle.

Now, after all that movie night snacking,

you might want to go healthy with a salad.

But in the early days of the salad bar,

healthy isn't exactly the word that comes to mind.

In the 1950s, a new healthy innovation is introduced

at American steakhouses.

The self-serve salad bar.

Within a few decades, salad bars are everywhere.

They're in supermarkets and cafeterias

and even fast food restaurants.

Fresh vegetables are great.

Keeping them fresh is the hard part.

When you start, you've got this beautiful salad

bar, but a few hours later,

some of this stuff is starting to brown.

It kind of looks like it's going bad

right in front of your eyes.

Now you've got a not so great salad bar.

So restaurants look to science for a way to

to cheat nature.

It's called sulfites.

Sulfites are chemical compounds made

from burning sulfuric rock.

They slow oxidation and keep bacteria at bay.

They'll preserve that bright, just cut look.

By the 1950s, the FDA classifies sulfites as quote,

"generally recognized as safe."

Pretty soon, restaurants start just spraying

all their vegetables down with sulfites.

I was a professional prep cook in a bar restaurant,

and we'd make the salad like on a Wednesday

and you'd pour in this preservative,

and that salad would stay fresh for days.

But generally safe is not the same

as entirely safe.

So every time you're eating sulfites,

it can create a little bit of this sulfuric gas.

This gas formation is harmless for most people,

but in people with asthma,

it triggers severe asthmatic reactions,

respiratory distress, potentially death.

The irony of this happening in a salad bar

is so many people are like choosing the vegetables

to try to have a healthier alternative,

and then sometimes it turned incredibly harmful.

In the mid-'80s, authorities report 850 serious

reactions to these sulfites and about a dozen deaths.

It turns out about 80% of these

are tied back to salad bars and restaurant produce.

Soon, health officials intervene.

In 1986, the FDA finally bans these sulfites

on fruits and vegetables that will be eaten raw.

Can you imagine if a salad killed you?

Oh, it'd be so sad.

What a way to go.

Should have ordered the steak.

Looking back at the foods

that went down the hatch from chocolate in the gutter

to cereal that made our poop pink,

to a single cup of ice cream

shared by the entire neighborhood,

the line between delicious and dangerous was pretty thin.

But a little risk wasn't enough to spoil our appetite,

and that's why our hazardous history

had us coming back for seconds.