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What do King Kong’s poop, Gummi Bears and Jell-O have in common? They all feature a substance produced by heating an acidified extract of animal bones or skin referred to as “hydrolyzed collagen” but better known as “gelatin.”
Collagen is a protein found in the bones, skin and connective tissue of animals, including humans. It is not soluble in water, but when heated, especially in the presence of acid or alkali, the long chains of amino acids that make up collagen are broken down into smaller fragments called peptides. These are soluble in water, and if the water is allowed to evaporate, a solid that can be processed into sheets or a powder is left behind. This is gelatin.
When gelatin is dissolved in hot water, the tangled peptide chains separate and move around freely in the solution. As the solution cools, the chains of amino acids are once more attracted to each other. But as they attempt to bind together, they form a matrix that traps water molecules, and the result is a gel. If you have ever noted what happens when soup made with bones cools, then you have experienced this fascinating bit of chemistry.
Peter Jackson, director of the 2005 remake of the 1933 classic King Kong, is a stickler for detail, and he wanted the cargo hold of the ship that transports the great ape and other animals to America to look authentic, including animal poop. So, off the prop people went to Wellington Zoo in New Zealand, where the movie was filmed, and examined excreta ranging from mouse droppings to camel dung. After much experimentation they came up with a mixture of cocoa powder, breakfast cereal, mustard and salt, bound together with gelatin.
Who knows, maybe this use of chemistry even contributed to the film winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Now, moving on to Gummi Bears. We travel back in time to 1920, when German confectioner Hans Riegel founded the Haribo Company, deriving the name from the first two letters of his first and last name and that of Bonn, his hometown. Riegel started out by making hard candies, but his business struggled. A new idea was needed. Taking a page from jam and jelly makers, he combined fruit juice, sugar and a gelling gum from the sap of acacia trees known as “gum arabic” — hence the name “gummy.” Gum arabic, a mixture of proteins and polymers of the sugars arabinose and galactose, had to be imported from Africa and was expensive, so Riegel replaced it with the cheaper gelatin. Today, gum arabic can be found as a thickener and binding agent in gumdrops, M&Ms and shoe polish.
Why did Riegel choose to shape his candy in the form of bears? The story is that he was inspired by the dancing bears that made children chuckle at street festivals. Such bears had been entertaining the public since the Middle Ages, but their training was no laughing matter. As young cubs, the bears were made to stand on hot plates, causing them to hop from one foot to another while music played. They learned to associate the music with pain and began to “dance” whenever they heard the familiar tune.
The original German name for the candies was “Tanzbaren,” which means “Dancing Bear.” The sweet was rebranded in 1960 as “Goldbears” and is somewhat more “elaborate” than the original. Thanks to advances in synthetic chemistry, the little bears come in a larger variety of colours and flavours. Corn syrup replaces some of the sugar, since it is cheaper, palm kernel oil and starch improve texture, while carnauba and beeswax add a luster to the candies. “Sour gummies” owe their tartness to citric and malic acids, both of which occur in fruits but can be more efficiently produced synthetically from starting materials derived from petroleum.
Jell-O predates Gummi Bears by several decades. Although gels produced by boiling animal bones had been known since the 10th century, granulated gelatin was only patented in 1845. This is what Pearle Bixby Wait used in 1897 to produce a dessert in LeRoy, N.Y., that he trademarked as Jell-O.
Appropriately, it is in LeRoy that you can find the Jell-O Museum, replete with a host of memorabilia that includes samples of packages with all the different flavours, moulds to make the gel, spoons with images of hockey players with which to eat it, and even the head and neck of a giraffe made by a taxidermist. Why a giraffe? Because, as the ad says, “Jell-O feels so good when it slides down your throat ... and giraffes have longer throats for it to slide down!” You can even learn that comedian Jack Benny was Jell-O’s first spokesperson. I don’t know how much publicity the museum gives to Jell-O’s longest running spokesperson, Bill Cosby.
If you would like to see Gummi Bears live up to their original name of “Dancing Bears,” there is a way. But you do need some chemical expertise and some molten potassium chlorate.
They are mostly sugar, and sugar burns. The more oxygen, the better it burns. Potassium chlorate is a strong oxidizing agent, meaning it readily releases oxygen, especially when hot. A classic experiment is to melt potassium chlorate in a test tube and drop in a Gummi Bear. There are numerous videos on YouTube where you can watch that little bear do one explosive dance. Do not try this at home.
Stick to putting it in your mouth and see if, with eyes closed, you can match the flavour — raspberry, orange, strawberry, pineapple and lemon — to their respective colours of red, orange, green, colourless and yellow. Bet you can’t.
