One of the fathers of the Pop-Tart, a staple from my childhood, has gone west.
William Post, who died Saturday at 96 in Grand Rapids, Mich., led the bakery plant that developed the first Pop-Tarts for Kellogg’s in 1964, according to his son, Dan.
Post was a hands-on sort who used his kids to test-drive the early prototypes — some good, some not so good — and once he got them dialed in, well, it was off to the races. Today, for good or ill, sales are in the billions.
One wonders what Post might have done if some Suit brought him the idea for “hybrid rice” — traditional rice grains slathered in fish gelatin, seeded with skeletal beef muscle and fat stem cells, and then grown in a lab.
Professor Jinkee Hong, who actually brought this Frankenrice to life at Yonsei University in South Korea, was hoping to develop a protein source more affordable than traditional beef, with a smaller carbon hoofprint.
After cooking and tasting his creation the professor said it “retains its traditional appearance but carries a unique blend of aromas, including a slight nuttiness and umami which are characteristic of meat.”
“While it does not exactly replicate the taste of beef, it offers a pleasant and novel flavor experience,” he added. “We tried it with various accompaniments and it pairs well with a range of dishes.”
Hm. Maybe so. I suspect it might have been one of those tough sells around the Post family table. But as a perpetually famished skinny-ass kid who inhaled everything from Tang to Space Food Sticks to Hamburger Helper to sammiches of Wonder Bread, pasteurized/processed “cheese food” and Oscar Meyer braunschweiger (in a tube!), I might have given it a go.
Hold the Beef-Rice Pop-Tarts, though. Ain’t enough Taster’s Choice in the world.
Mad Blog Media 
Braunschweiger in a tube is some seriously nasty stuff! My Mom would disguise liver 10 different ways. Her “that’s not liver it’s chicken fried steak” almost fooled me. But one taste told the tale. Still can’t eat liver to this day, not even fried chicken livers.
No amount of soy sauce could make that rice appealing to me.
Isn’t it? Damn. Ugly to look at, worse to eat. I learned my lesson about fried chicken livers when I gobbled a ton of them for a birthday once at the O Club on Randolph AFB. Those suckers didn’t taste nearly as good coming up as they did going down.
“…Tang to Space Food Sticks to Hamburger Helper to sammiches of Wonder Bread, pasteurized/processed “cheese food” and Oscar Meyer braunschweiger…”
Yikes. I remember putting a lot of that stuff down the hatch. Space Food Sticks! Tang! Builds Strong Bodies 12 ways! Between that and the four years of college, where I majored in Genesee Beer, I’m surprised my liver still exists.
I’m still waiting for Soylent Green to come out. Or as in that Twilight Zone episode about the Kanamit Diet, “To Serve Man…it’s a Cookbook!”
Hey Patrick. You were/are a huge consumer of sci-fi. Did you ever read the Damon Knight short story that the Serling episode was based on?
I don’t even want to think about how much of that garbage is hiding away in the dark recesses of the O’Carcass. I was basically a slops-gobbling hawg until a patient girlfriend suggested I learn about cooking, wine, and Scotch. Bought me a couple simple cookbooks. I was a slow learner, and still am, but at least I got past the Space Food Sticks stage.
I don’t remember that particular Damon Knight story, though of course I remember the “Twilight Zone” episode. It popped into my head just the other day for no good reason I can think of. Great minds?
I did read a ton of SF, though. “The Stars My Destination” by Alfred Bester remains a fave, as do “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke, the original “Foundation” trilogy by Isaac Asimov, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein, and “Dune” by Frank Herbert. Gotta give a shout-out to H.G. Wells for “The Time Machine” and Jules Verne for “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas,” too.
One short story that has stuck in my head was “The Weapon” by Frederic Brown. I tend to look for strong opening lines, but this has one of the best final sentences ever.
Holy shit. I’m sending that Frederic Brown story to some buddies at work. It is so…perfect.
It’s a keeper, for sure. Sort of a shaggy-dog story, but with a shorter setup and a grimmer punchline.
Copied you on an email I sent to one of my best Honolulu friends, Ramdas Lamb, a professor of religion at the U of Hawaii. When I took the job at the bomb factory rather than stay at the U of H, he looked me in the eye and asked “are you sure you want to do this?”
’Tis a question to ponder, for sure. Herself holding down a gig at the Death Star sounds like a no-no to an old commie peace creep like Your Humble Narrator, but it’s a tad late to claim virginity; the old man was career Air Force, after all, and Herself’s kin have worked for AEC, DOE, USAF, and other appendages of the military-industrial complex.
In other words, we’ve established what it is that we are — it was simply a question of haggling over the price.
Khal, mi amigo: You need to fully invest yourself into recycling!
There are thousands of Spam recipes; enjoy some fleischkase; Soylent Green nailed it!
And don’t forget the Donner Party and Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.
When push comes to shove the survival instinct trumps (questionable choice of words?) culture, morality, and ethics, eh?
Oops, I wasn’t necessarily referring to American politics! 🙂
What I can say about rice is that we struggled for 40 years to make consistently good rice. Especially the short grain brown. And then the clouds parted, the choir sang and we bought a Cuckoo rice maker. Although it has WAY too many functions, we just follow the basic route and it comes out perfect every single time. That’s cause the thing is smarter than us and knows about things like water ratio, humidity and that you already drank the wine you were saving for dinner. Oh and Lundberg rice varieties never let ya down if you keep them sealed.
We had some unremarkable rice cooker that for years was as reliable as sunrise. When one of the spring clamps that held the lid on broke, I used a 2.5-weight to hold the sumbitch down and we got a few more years out of it.
Now we have a Hamilton Beach cheapo and it works OK. I rinse the rice for a couple minutes (Lundberg, to be sure) and let it dry before dumping it in. I’ve made Mexican red rice in the thing and it turns out swell. Arroz verde I make in a saucepan on the stove top.