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Authors: David Feldman
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What Are the Skins of Hot Dogs Made Of?
Our correspondent wondered whether hot dog skins are made out of the same animal innards used to case other sausages. We recollect when we sometimes used to need a knife to pierce a hot dog. Don’t hot dog skins seem a lot more malleable than they used to be?
Evidently, while we were busy chomping franks down, manufacturers were gradually eliminating hot dog skins. Very few mass-marketed hot dogs have skins at all any more. Thomas L. Ruble, of cold-cut giant Oscar Mayer, explains:
A cellulose casing is used to give shape to our hot dogs and turkey franks [Oscar Mayer owns Louis Rich] during cooking and smoking, but it is removed before the links are packaged. What may have seemed like a casing to you would have been the exterior part of the link that is firmer than the interior. This texture of the exterior of a link could be compared to the crust on a cake that forms during baking.
Submitted by Ted Goodwin of Orlando, Florida .
Why Is Comic Strip Print in Capital Letters?
The cartoonists we contacted, including our illustrious (pun intended) Kassie Schwan, concurred that it is easier to write in all caps. We’ve been printing since the first grade ourselves and haven’t found using small letters too much of a challenge, but cartoonists have to worry about stuff that never worries us. Using all caps, cartoonists can allocate their space requirements more easily. Small letters not only vary in height but a few have a nasty habit of swooping below or above most of the other letters (I’s make a’s look like midgets; and p’s and q’s dive below most letters).
More importantly, all caps are easier to read. Mark Johnson, archivist for King Features, reminded us that comic strips are reduced in some newspapers and small print tends to “blob up.”
We wish that our books were set in all caps. It would automatically rid us of those pesky capitalization problems. While we’re musing…we wonder how Classics Illustrated would handle the type if it decided to publish a comics’ treatment of e. e. cummings’ poetry?
Submitted by Carl Middleman of St. Louis, Missouri .
Why Are Peanuts Listed Under the Ingredients of “Plain” M&Ms?
We’ve always felt that “peanut” M&Ms weren’t as good as “plain” ones—that the synergy between Messrs. Goober and Cocoa just wasn’t there. As lovers of chocolate and peanuts and, come to think of it, hard candy shells, as well, you could have knocked us over with an M&M when two readers brought it to our attention that “plain” M&Ms contain peanuts.
We contacted the folks at M&M/MARS to solve this troubling Imponderable and we heard from Donna Ditmars in the consumer affairs division. She told us that peanuts are finely ground and added to the chocolate for flavor. The quantity of peanuts in the candy is so small that “labeling laws do not require that we list this small amount of peanuts as an ingredient, we do so voluntarily so that consumers will know that it is in the candy.”
Why is listing the peanuts so important? Nuts are the source of one of the most common food allergies.
FLASH: Just after the publication of the hardcover edition of Do Penguins Have Knees? , we heard surprising news from the external relations director of M&M/MARS, Hans S. Fiuczynski. Starting in January, 1992, the company no longer includes any peanuts in its plain candies. Even so, this Imponderable will not become obsolete. M&M/MARS will continue to list peanuts as an ingredient on the label, just in case a small amount of peanuts inadvertently appears in the plain candies.
Submitted by Martha Claiborne of Anchorage, Kentucky.
Thanks to Susan Wheeler of Jacksonville, North Carolina .
Why Do the Volume Levels of Different Cable Networks Vary Enormously Compared to Those of Broadcast TV Networks?
Anyone with an itchy hand and a remote control device that
What Are the Skins of Hot Dogs Made Of?
Our correspondent wondered whether hot dog skins are made out of the same animal innards used to case other sausages. We recollect when we sometimes used to need a knife to pierce a hot dog. Don’t hot dog skins seem a lot more malleable than they used to be?
Evidently, while we were busy chomping franks down, manufacturers were gradually eliminating hot dog skins. Very few mass-marketed hot dogs have skins at all any more. Thomas L. Ruble, of cold-cut giant Oscar Mayer, explains:
A cellulose casing is used to give shape to our hot dogs and turkey franks [Oscar Mayer owns Louis Rich] during cooking and smoking, but it is removed before the links are packaged. What may have seemed like a casing to you would have been the exterior part of the link that is firmer than the interior. This texture of the exterior of a link could be compared to the crust on a cake that forms during baking.
Submitted by Ted Goodwin of Orlando, Florida .
Why Is Comic Strip Print in Capital Letters?
The cartoonists we contacted, including our illustrious (pun intended) Kassie Schwan, concurred that it is easier to write in all caps. We’ve been printing since the first grade ourselves and haven’t found using small letters too much of a challenge, but cartoonists have to worry about stuff that never worries us. Using all caps, cartoonists can allocate their space requirements more easily. Small letters not only vary in height but a few have a nasty habit of swooping below or above most of the other letters (I’s make a’s look like midgets; and p’s and q’s dive below most letters).
More importantly, all caps are easier to read. Mark Johnson, archivist for King Features, reminded us that comic strips are reduced in some newspapers and small print tends to “blob up.”
We wish that our books were set in all caps. It would automatically rid us of those pesky capitalization problems. While we’re musing…we wonder how Classics Illustrated would handle the type if it decided to publish a comics’ treatment of e. e. cummings’ poetry?
Submitted by Carl Middleman of St. Louis, Missouri .
Why Are Peanuts Listed Under the Ingredients of “Plain” M&Ms?
We’ve always felt that “peanut” M&Ms weren’t as good as “plain” ones—that the synergy between Messrs. Goober and Cocoa just wasn’t there. As lovers of chocolate and peanuts and, come to think of it, hard candy shells, as well, you could have knocked us over with an M&M when two readers brought it to our attention that “plain” M&Ms contain peanuts.
We contacted the folks at M&M/MARS to solve this troubling Imponderable and we heard from Donna Ditmars in the consumer affairs division. She told us that peanuts are finely ground and added to the chocolate for flavor. The quantity of peanuts in the candy is so small that “labeling laws do not require that we list this small amount of peanuts as an ingredient, we do so voluntarily so that consumers will know that it is in the candy.”
Why is listing the peanuts so important? Nuts are the source of one of the most common food allergies.
FLASH: Just after the publication of the hardcover edition of Do Penguins Have Knees? , we heard surprising news from the external relations director of M&M/MARS, Hans S. Fiuczynski. Starting in January, 1992, the company no longer includes any peanuts in its plain candies. Even so, this Imponderable will not become obsolete. M&M/MARS will continue to list peanuts as an ingredient on the label, just in case a small amount of peanuts inadvertently appears in the plain candies.
Submitted by Martha Claiborne of Anchorage, Kentucky.
Thanks to Susan Wheeler of Jacksonville, North Carolina .
Why Do the Volume Levels of Different Cable Networks Vary Enormously Compared to Those of Broadcast TV Networks?
Anyone with an itchy hand and a remote control device that
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