Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb here with another classic episode for you. This one is about one of my favorite food topics and one we've talked about in a couple other episodes, the flavor of butter, and relatedly, how that nine irresistible popcorn sold in movie theaters can taste so buttery while containing zero butter. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and it's time we talked about movie theater popcorn, that salty siren of the cinema. You come without nutrition labels and sizes that defy sensibility. We consume you in the dark. You're inadvertently vegan and gluten free, but that still doesn't mean you're good for us. So what the heck are you made of anyway?

Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb here with another classic episode for you. This one is about one of my favorite food topics and one we've talked about in a couple other episodes, the flavor of butter, and relatedly, how that nine irresistible popcorn sold in movie theaters can taste so buttery while containing zero butter. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and it's time we talked about movie theater popcorn, that salty siren of the cinema. You come without nutrition labels and sizes that defy sensibility. We consume you in the dark. You're inadvertently vegan and gluten free, but that still doesn't mean you're good for us. So what the heck are you made of anyway?

Meat? Movie theater popcorns two main ingredients after poppedcorn, of course, flavorcle and butter flavored topping. Let's break those down. Flavocol is a proprietary seasoned powder that goes on the corn before it's popped. It contains only four ingredients, superfine salt, artificial flavor, and two synthetic yellow dyes that help give the popcorn its violently yellow, butteryish color. A butter can naturally be yellow because of a pigment and vitamin called beta carotene that's found in the fresh grass that dairy cows are sometimes fed, or butter can be dyed that color when cows are fat other things. Flavocol has zero calories and zero fat, carbs, and protein, but being mostly salt, it packs a wallup in the sodium department. One teaspoon contains one hundred and sixteen percent of your recommended daily intake of sodium based on the average two thousand calorie per day diet, and depending on the recipe and the machine being used, you'd get about a third of a teaspoon in a small popcorn, So heads up if you're monitoring your sodium consumption. Next up that butter flavored topping, which is what gets squirted out in pumps if you ask for it. Warning betrayal alert. It doesn't have any butter in it at all. What it does contain is partially hydrogenated soybean oil, which is a trans fat that falls into the category of bad fat. These types of fats have been linked to heart disease and other cardiovascular problems. The topping also has some beta carotene that pigment I just mentioned. Beta carotene helps add to the buttery color and can, by the way, either be naturally derived from plants or made in a lab. That's the difference between it being labeled a natural versus an artificial color. The topping also has tertiary buttle hydroquinone or TBHQ, which is a synthetic preservative that keeps oils from becoming rancid as they sit, and polydimethyl silazane or PDMS, which is a silicone based chemical that prevents foaming in hot oil. It's also been preliminarily shown to help hair cells grow when applied topically, but that's a different episode. Don't rub butter flavored topping on your scalp. The final ingredient the one that gives movie theater popcorn. It's irresistible taste. Buttery flavoring, a one hundred percent non dairy mystery chemical that mimics the taste of butter. This and the artificial flavoring and flavorcoll are industry secrets, but they're probably one of a few lab synthesized molecules that taste and smell like butter diacetyl acitoin sethyl propianal or similar. Those first two that I mentioned are compounds that are naturally created in old fashioned cultured butter by the friendly lactic acid bacteria that helps solidify cream into butter. Butter flavor is basically a tasty byproduct, sort of like with beta carotene. These compounds can be naturally derived from farmed bacteria or synthesized in a lab. They'll make that butter flavored topping taste almost like the real thing. The real slap in the face, though, is that movie theater butter flavored topping has twenty more calories per tablespoon than real butter. So if you are a large bucket of plane popcorn is about one thousand calories with just the flavor call seasoning on it, and you choose to add a minimum of three tablespoons of buttery topping, or as much as six if you opt for a squirt in the middle and a scort on the top, the large bucket you gnash on while watching the latest blockbuster could be more than two thousand calories. It definitely means that movie theater popcorn is a treat everything in moderation. Oh and a side note about diacetyl, one of those butter flavor compounds. You may have heard that it causes health problems. That is a real thing, but the story got sort of sensationalized. Factory workers who breathe in a whole lot of diacetyl do have an increased risk of a particular type of lung disease, and one guy who was popping two to three bags per day for a number of years successfully sued a bunch of microwave popcorn producers after contracting that disease. But there's no known risk in eating this artificial flavor or in breathing in the amount you'd realize from popping a bag of popcorn in your microwave every now and then, And the Flavor Call brand has come out as being diacetyle free. Good news for movie theater popcorn. Do watch out for it as an ingredient in vape liquid.

Meat? Movie theater popcorns two main ingredients after poppedcorn, of course, flavorcle and butter flavored topping. Let's break those down. Flavocol is a proprietary seasoned powder that goes on the corn before it's popped. It contains only four ingredients, superfine salt, artificial flavor, and two synthetic yellow dyes that help give the popcorn its violently yellow, butteryish color. A butter can naturally be yellow because of a pigment and vitamin called beta carotene that's found in the fresh grass that dairy cows are sometimes fed, or butter can be dyed that color when cows are fat other things. Flavocol has zero calories and zero fat, carbs, and protein, but being mostly salt, it packs a wallup in the sodium department. One teaspoon contains one hundred and sixteen percent of your recommended daily intake of sodium based on the average two thousand calorie per day diet, and depending on the recipe and the machine being used, you'd get about a third of a teaspoon in a small popcorn, So heads up if you're monitoring your sodium consumption. Next up that butter flavored topping, which is what gets squirted out in pumps if you ask for it. Warning betrayal alert. It doesn't have any butter in it at all. What it does contain is partially hydrogenated soybean oil, which is a trans fat that falls into the category of bad fat. These types of fats have been linked to heart disease and other cardiovascular problems. The topping also has some beta carotene that pigment I just mentioned. Beta carotene helps add to the buttery color and can, by the way, either be naturally derived from plants or made in a lab. That's the difference between it being labeled a natural versus an artificial color. The topping also has tertiary buttle hydroquinone or TBHQ, which is a synthetic preservative that keeps oils from becoming rancid as they sit, and polydimethyl silazane or PDMS, which is a silicone based chemical that prevents foaming in hot oil. It's also been preliminarily shown to help hair cells grow when applied topically, but that's a different episode. Don't rub butter flavored topping on your scalp. The final ingredient the one that gives movie theater popcorn. It's irresistible taste. Buttery flavoring, a one hundred percent non dairy mystery chemical that mimics the taste of butter. This and the artificial flavoring and flavorcoll are industry secrets, but they're probably one of a few lab synthesized molecules that taste and smell like butter diacetyl acitoin sethyl propianal or similar. Those first two that I mentioned are compounds that are naturally created in old fashioned cultured butter by the friendly lactic acid bacteria that helps solidify cream into butter. Butter flavor is basically a tasty byproduct, sort of like with beta carotene. These compounds can be naturally derived from farmed bacteria or synthesized in a lab. They'll make that butter flavored topping taste almost like the real thing. The real slap in the face, though, is that movie theater butter flavored topping has twenty more calories per tablespoon than real butter. So if you are a large bucket of plane popcorn is about one thousand calories with just the flavor call seasoning on it, and you choose to add a minimum of three tablespoons of buttery topping, or as much as six if you opt for a squirt in the middle and a scort on the top, the large bucket you gnash on while watching the latest blockbuster could be more than two thousand calories. It definitely means that movie theater popcorn is a treat everything in moderation. Oh and a side note about diacetyl, one of those butter flavor compounds. You may have heard that it causes health problems. That is a real thing, but the story got sort of sensationalized. Factory workers who breathe in a whole lot of diacetyl do have an increased risk of a particular type of lung disease, and one guy who was popping two to three bags per day for a number of years successfully sued a bunch of microwave popcorn producers after contracting that disease. But there's no known risk in eating this artificial flavor or in breathing in the amount you'd realize from popping a bag of popcorn in your microwave every now and then, And the Flavor Call brand has come out as being diacetyle free. Good news for movie theater popcorn. Do watch out for it as an ingredient in vape liquid.

Though today's episode is based on the article what the heck is in Movie theater Popcorn on how Stuffworks dot com, written by Kerry tatrou Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klin. Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Though today's episode is based on the article what the heck is in Movie theater Popcorn on how Stuffworks dot com, written by Kerry tatrou Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klin. Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.