What Popcorn and Vaping Have in Common

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[Narrator] For almost a century, popcorn has been

the predominant movie theater snack.

But how did our love affair with these

buttery popped kernels even start?

There's more to understand about

popcorn than just nostalgia.

The food has an unusual history.

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I remember going to the theaters with my mother

and she had her method and it would always embarrass me.

But now I'm, like, I'm that guy.

We would always ask them to fill the bucket halfway,

go butter it, come back, fill the rest,

butter the top of that for even butter distribution.

And I feel like I do that, I do that now,

as an adult, if there's time.

Well, I used to have braces as a kid,

so it's like the forbidden food,

so it's always had that special place for me.

Like the unattainable. [laughs]

So there's a particular smell that comes from popcorn.

It's just like, it takes you back to the good times.

It's just, any positive is the smell of it.

They get you as soon as you walk in the door.

It's the smell, gets me every time.

It's just coming out of the popper

and I'm like, I gotta, I gotta have it.

I always keep it in my plastic so that

it doesn't fly out in case it's windy.

And it stays warm when I get home, as you can see.

There we go. I'm a purist.

I'm just butter guy, 100%.

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[Narrator] Movie theater popcorn's popularity

has a lot to do with Flavacol, a seasoning used

to give popcorn its signature buttery taste.

The fine salt flakes stick to the kernels

before they are popped, resulting in

a perfect, evenly buttered flavor.

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So, I have, my tongue is unique,

but there are other people with tongues like mine.

I have a series of large taste buds

on my tongue, all over my tongue, actually.

You could be of the 25% of people

who actually do have large taste buds

and you could be a super taster and not even know it.

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Usually gonna put 10 grams.

Whoa, you can really smell it.

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Whoa.

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It's so aromatic.

I was wondering about that,

once it hydrated, what I would smell.

I'm just gonna pour some in my hand so I can taste it.

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It's gonna probably burn my tongue

but I'm gonna do this for you.

Here we go.

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'Kay, the first thing that I taste is salt

and the second thing that I taste

is actually a buttery flavor

and the third thing that I taste

is a little bit of bitterness

and maybe a little bit of a nutty flavor.

The flavor sits on my tongue and it travels

up the roof of my mouth and down my throat,

it's kind of weird that way.

Oh, man.

The recommended daily allowance of sodium for us,

based on the USDA, is 2,400 milligrams

and in one teaspoon of Flavacol,

there's actually 2,740 milligrams of sodium,

which is 114% of the recommended daily allowance.

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What people know is that it's mostly salt,

but what they don't know is

what are the artificial ingredients

and what are Yellow #5 and #6 made from.

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[Narrator] The oldest known ears

of popcorn are about 5,600 years old

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and they were discovered in the back cave

of West Central Mexico in the late 1940s.

Pre-Colombian civilizations in Central and South America

ate popcorn and the Aztec language even has

a word that describes the sound

of many kernels popping at once: totopoca.

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After the Spanish invaded the Aztec empire

in the 16th century, popcorn spread around the world.

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Popcorn became popular in the Eastern

United States by the early 19th century,

sold under the names pearl or nonpareil.

With the invention of the steam-powered popcorn stand

in 1885, the snack quickly became favored

as American street food, sold at circuses and fairs.

♪ Let's all go to the lobby ♪

♪ Let's all go to the lobby ♪

[Sarah] Popcorn hasn't always been

popular in the movie theater

because they didn't think it was fancy enough

and it was a snack of the peasant,

so I think vendors were probably

out on the street selling it and people were

carrying it into the theater with them

to snack on while they watched the movies.

♪ So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat ♪

[film reel clicking]

[Narrator] As the movie business started to

suffer during the Great Depression,

theater owners realized that

selling popcorn could keep them afloat.

This financial model still exists today,

with theaters prioritizing concessions as a way

to make up for the lack of profit from ticket sales.

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And with the widespread adoption of microwave popcorn,

the snack grew to a scale to meet a mass consumer market.

It might be difficult to see

anything in common between popcorn and vaping,

but the connection has to do with

the flavor-creating chemical called diacetyl,

which can be safely consumed but not inhaled.

So people will use something like diacetyl

to provide a buttery aroma to popcorn

so that they can take the butter out of there.

So, they're gonna that aromatic without getting

the calories that come alongside it with butter.

Diacetyl, when used in making popcorn,

becomes airborne and connects with the oxygen

and then we breathe it into our lungs.

Popcorn lung was discovered when some folks

working in a popcorn factory making microwave popcorn

became ill from the over-exposure of diacetyl.

[Narrator] In 2000, eight former microwave popcorn

factory workers developed a rare lung disease

called bronchiolitis obliterans or popcorn lung.

Popcorn lung is a condition in which

otherwise young, healthy individuals come in

with multiple discrete punctate areas of the lung

that had been destroyed or developed infections in them.

And we believe its an infectious process related to

or an inflammatorious process related to inhaling the vapor.

[Narrator] Almost all microwave popcorn manufacturers

promise to remove diacetyl from their products

but popcorn lung has made news

more recently in vaping-related illnesses.

Diacetyl is often added to e-use liquid

by e-cigarette companies to compliment flavors

such as vanilla, maple, and coconut.

Diacetyl can be used in anything

that you want to enhance flavor,

and e-cigarettes, the way that they're created,

is to have fanciful flavors that may be fruity or nutty

or sweet or even a popcorn-flavored one, of all things.

And that created an instance where people

are actually inhaling unknown food-based ingredients

that were never developed to be inhaled.

[Narrator] Whether we're interacting

with natural or artificial flavors,

what's happening in our brains when we're eating popcorn?

When we put foods into our mouths, we're chewing the food

and the air is being pumped backwards out of our nostrils,

so those inputs are brought together in the brain

and we don't really know how to separate them.

We're also getting information from textures,

even the temperature of the food.

Those things are coming together and forming

a more complex picture that we think of as flavor.

Flavors and aromas have this quality

where they're able to trigger memories very powerfully.

When we're eatin' popcorn,

despite us not really thinking about it,

we're getting these positive associations with it.

We're remembering some of those times that we felt so good.

We're feeling good without even

knowing why we're feeling good.

[Sarah] Popcorn has been paired with

some of these unusual chemicals

because people didn't wanna use real butter.

Real butter is more expensive

and so, they were trying to maximize

the amount of money they could make on popcorn.

So, they've changed the color

with artificial color to make it look buttery

and they've added artificial flavors

to make it taste buttery.

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[Narrator] But today's food trends lean towards

natural flavorings like using non-dairy butter

or seaweed to mimic the taste of popcorn.

Does popcorn's strange chemical-infused past

fit our health conscious future?

I think the future of food design

is multi-sensory in nature, so foods,

I think, will soon be designed taking

our other senses into account as well.

So, you can imagine, for instance,

popcorn that has a certain coloration to it

and all of a sudden, it tastes sweet

without us needing to put sugar in there.

[Sarah] As often as people wanna try something new,

they also like to have their old favorites

and I believe popcorn with butter on it

may be one of those old favorites that we can all

eat and remember from our childhood.

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