By the late 1990's McDonalds claimed to be opening a new store somewhere every three hours. Today nearly two million people work at 36,000 McDonalds fast food restaurants in 119 countries. Transitioning to foreign countries has meant experimenting with their 75-year old tried-and-true operation. In Sweden this has even meant a ski-through.
Menus have also been played with, and have become more nutritious because of demand. And local foods have been incorporated, like the Hula Burger (with grilled pineapple) in Hawaii, Filet-O-Fish launched in 1982 to capture Lenten business, and the McLean Deluxe, made with seaweed to save calories.
They haven't been alone playing with their food choices, of course. KFC, for instance, has debuted a burrito stuffed with fried chicken, cheese, bacon and bourbon barbecue sauce in New Zealand.
The Filipino enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada, is making changes there. Filipino spaghetti, unlike Italian style, is sweet. In place of tomato sauce they use banana ketchup, which was developed during World War II when tomatoes were in short supply. And they plunk sliced hot dogs into it, instead of meatballs. They also use rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles the Chinese prefer.
Some other foods they just import as is, like siopao, which is the Chinese steamed buns with meat inside; Spanish flan they call leche flan; and adobo, which is a derivative of Chinese soy sauce chicken. Frozen foods include banana leaves, squash flour, horseradish fruit, grated casava, and macapuno and cheese ice creams. And halo-halo, which is rather unforgettable. This is sort of an ice cream sundae, but the ice cream is purple (made from yams), evaporated milk replaces whipped cream, boiled beans - garbanzo, white and red - replace nuts, and coconut, palm fruit, pounded rice flakes, jack fruit and shaved ice are added. Halo-halo quite logically means "hodge podge".
Companies that produce the foods and drinks used in restaurants, and in our homes, also have experimentation periods where tasting panels play with flavors. In attempting to find their product's "bliss point", where the perfect amount of sugar creates the maximum amount of appeal, the Cadbury Schweppes company tasters prepared 61 distinct formulas and subjected them to 3,904 tastings before creating their popular cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper.
They aren't alone in their failures. In a given year up to 89% of new items, like Classic Coke, fail.
To show how far afield this playing with food goes, some of the foods we now eat have intriguing origins. For example, the bacteria responsible for sourdough bread originally came from rodent feces. Any sourdough we eat has that history, yet it is all perfectly safe, and delicious.
The first graham crackers, as another example, were invented by a Presbyterian minister "to reduce sexual desire". Sylvester Graham created a bland, white, wheat-like biscuit and it wasn't until after his death that it was turned into the sweet treat we know today.
Indiana dairy farmer Mike McCloskey dissected milk, adjusted its components and came up with a milk that has almost 50% more protein and calcium, half the sugar, and no lactose.
Not everything turns out so well with this sort of individual tinkering. J.M. Hirsch, a writer for Associated Press, in a report on a new ketchup, states that Traina Foods, producer of all manner of dried fruits and vegetables, "has combined the world's two most perfect condiments" to make sweet and spicy Sriracha Sun Dried Tomato Ketchup. Then he spoils it by relating how he uses it - in what he calls "ketchup-pickle soup". Here is his recipe: Fill a cereal bowl with bread-and-butter pickle chips, then overfill this with Sriracha Ketchup. He eats this with a spoon!
(Sourdough and graham cracker items courtesy of Rob Dunn in "The Man Who Touched His Own Heart" and Libby O'Connell in "The American Plate: A Culinary History in Two Bites" respectively.)
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