For years, there has been one kind of deli meat that has held a special place in the hearts of children, broke college students, and more — the old reliable slice of bologna. Who hasn't experienced a traditional bologna sandwich with two slices of white bread, mayo, and perhaps a slice of cheese food product? If you're from the south, you may even consider fried bologna to be a delicacy, but what exactly is bologna? Where does it come from? How does it get made, and are we still going to want to eat it if we find out? Well, like it or not, we will finally reveal the truth about bologna in this video.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00For many, bologna is a nostalgia food, a non-negotiable part of summertime,
00:05and also a major part of school lunches. But how much do you really know about this mystery meat?
00:10Let's find out where it came from, what it's made of, and where it is now.
00:15Bologna may be a low-cost lunch meat today, but its roots go way back to something surprisingly
00:20fancy. You might not know it today, but bologna is the great-great-grandson of the Italian
00:26mortadella. Mortadella, much like bologna, is made from finely ground pork meat,
00:31which is first cured and then cooked in a low-temperature oven before it's packaged.
00:35The main difference between bologna and mortadella is that mortadella also contains
00:39added fat, or lard, which gives it that distinct marbled appearance. Mortadella also has some
00:45pistachios or green olives in it, which makes it sort of like a fancy version of bologna's
00:50olive loaf. Mortadella also contains a lot of spices, and at one point it was considered a
00:55food for the rich and powerful, due to the cost of the spices used in the production of it.
01:00And in some varieties of bologna, you can still taste this lunchtime favorite's spicy roots.
01:05Yes, the standard grocery store bologna you'll find prepackaged in your grocer's refrigerated
01:10cold-cut section doesn't contain a lot of spices, but if you visit a meat market and
01:14buy sliced bologna, you will probably be able to discern spices like pepper, coriander, and garlic.
01:21When you purchase lunch meat like ham or roast beef at your deli,
01:25you basically see what you're getting. Ham looks like ham, turkey looks like turkey,
01:30and there's no doubts about what you're putting on your sandwich. That's not quite so with bologna.
01:35You can't quite tell exactly what it is, and that's given rise to bologna's reputation as
01:40something of a mystery meat. The FDA requires that all bologna be created in such a way that
01:46it's ground into tiny particles, which makes it so that consumers can't discern any fat or spices.
01:52Essentially, the result of this manufacturing process creates a meat batter. What goes into
01:57this meat batter? Beef, pork, turkey, chicken, or all of the above. One of the most common
02:03varieties, the Oscar Mayer brand, is made from mechanically separated chicken and pork.
02:08The USDA explains,
02:10Mechanically separated meat is a paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones
02:16with attached edible meat under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate
02:22the bone from the edible meat tissue. Or, to put it another way, don't think about how your bologna
02:28is made or what exactly it's made from and just sit there peacefully and eat your sandwich.
02:33Many people might have viewed bologna as having too much of a mystery meat vibe,
02:38of being a little too weird. It's a texture thing, right? It probably doesn't help that
02:43as a lunchtime staple, bologna sandwiches have long been given little consideration.
02:48White bread, some mayo, and done. Yum?
02:52I hate bologna, like more than anything else in the world.
02:59Spit it out, spit it out, spit it out, please don't swallow it."
03:01No longer relegated to the category of desperation lunch, bologna sandwiches have
03:06recently become the hippest thing since sliced bread. Turkey and the Wolf,
03:10a restaurant in New Orleans, makes theirs with locally made bologna, fried on the griddle and
03:15piled high on buttered and browned slices of bread with cheese, mustard made in-house,
03:20shredded lettuce, and of course, mayo. Then, a handful of chips are added for some seriously
03:25delicious crunch. Fried bologna isn't just a simple staple anymore. Chefs are frying it and
03:30dressing their sandwiches up with all sorts of things, like sweet relish and all different types
03:35of cheeses. Others are topping their bologna sandwiches with things like caramelized onions
03:40and olives, and still others are subscribing to the idea that you can't have too many fried things
03:45on your sandwiches, and adding some fried pickles on there, too. Some places don't settle for just
03:50frying their bologna, they're smoking it and then serving that up on a sandwich.
03:55Today, it's just downright good for the soul, and whether you are enjoying a gourmet version
04:00for your next meal out or eating a cold bologna sandwich over your sink,
04:04it's time we all started welcoming bologna back into our hearts and stomachs. In moderation,
04:10of course. And after, you share your fanciest bologna creations with the rest of the world.
04:16During the early 1900s, most kids went home for lunch. By the 1920s and 1930s,
04:22many schools had a lunch program where children were either given free meals or meals that cost
04:27pennies. During this time, guidelines about what constituted a nutritious lunch were quickly
04:32changing, but schools did their best to keep up. How did bologna fit in and become such a popular
04:37lunchtime staple? It had a lot to do with the fact that in 1946, President Truman signed the
04:43National School Lunch Act, which established the National School Lunch Program. The National School
04:48Lunch Program provides low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. Because bologna is
04:54a low-cost food, it ended up on a lot of lunch trays and in a lot of lunch bags. Around this
05:00same time, grocery stores began offering fresh foods that were packaged to have a longer shelf
05:05life than they had previously. Bologna was a lunch meat that was relatively inexpensive,
05:10able to keep fresh, and appealed to the taste buds of children. What more could schools and
05:14parents want? Packaged bologna sometimes comes with a red string or seal around it. What exactly
05:21is that stuff? And can you eat it? There's actually a few possibilities, depending on the brand.
05:27It might be a casing made from the gastrointestinal tracts of cattle, sheep,
05:31and hogs, which makes it slightly gross, but still edible. If it's bright red, though,
05:36it's most likely a synthetic casing, which may be made from collagen, plastic, or other fibrous
05:41material. Not all bologna has this red casing, and sometimes it's removed before it's sold in
05:47stores. When confronted with this question on Facebook, Oscar Mayer replied, quote,
05:52Yep, all the bologna in the package purchased is good to eat,
05:55though questions about specific products went unanswered.
05:59While red synthetic casings may or may not be edible, it's probably safer to remove them before
06:04consumption, unless the packaging specifically states that they're edible. There's a good chance
06:09that they're not, and that's a chance you probably don't want to take. A little bit of plastic isn't
06:14going to do much to make your sandwich taste better, that's for sure. Even if you're a huge
06:19bologna fan, the idea of being locked up in the Dakota County Jail sounds pretty awful and is
06:24made more awful by the fact that bologna is all you get. The jail serves two turkey bologna
06:30sandwiches and a small side dish of fruit per inmate, seven days a week, 365 days a year,
06:36even on Christmas. In Alabama, a sheriff was locked up after feeding the inmates at his jail
06:42grits and paper-thin bologna sandwiches. Why such weird cruelty? Wardens in Alabama are allowed to
06:48pocket money left over from providing inmates with meals, and bologna is a very inexpensive
06:54choice to feed a group of people. In Alaska, two Muslim inmates were fed bologna sandwiches
07:00during Ramadan and later sued for having their civil rights violated. Infamous Maricopa County
07:05Sheriff Joe Arpaio not only makes his inmates wear pink socks and underwear, but he has also
07:10boasted about serving them rotten food, including green bologna. Most prisons allow access to
07:16vending machines and canteen services where incarcerated people can supplement these meager
07:21mealtime offerings, but all that talk about bad bologna is enough to make anyone rethink our
07:26whole legal system. For those of you who want more bologna with your bologna, why not whip up
07:32a delicious, creamy bologna cake? This cake resembles a normal cake, until you slice into
07:38it and reveal layers of bologna with a zesty cream cheese and ranch dressing frosting between
07:43the meat layers. If you think it couldn't get any better than this, you'd be so wrong,
07:48because you also decorate this deliciousness with cheese, but not just any cheese. If you
07:53want it to be authentic, you'll have to use the stuff in a can. That's right, you decorate the
07:57cake with aerosol cheese. Serve it up with some yummy buttery crackers or cocktail bread and watch
08:03your friends' faces light up. Who needs a plain old cheese ball when you can have a cheese and
08:08bologna cake? Sounds like a pretty delicious football game treat to eat with a nice cold can
08:12of PBR as you watch your favorite team fight their way to victory. Americana at its finest.
08:19If you thought the only way to eat bologna on a sandwich was to open the package,
08:23pull the little red string off, and slap it into bread, you'd be sadly mistaken,
08:28because you can also enjoy the down-home deliciousness of bologna salad.
08:32Nobody knows exactly where bologna salad came from. It may have just been an offshoot of ham
08:37salad that came into existence when a clever housewife only had bologna in her refrigerator
08:42in the 1950s, so she decided to whip that into a bologna salad. But everyone knows someone who
08:48has a grandma or an aunt or a cousin who made this. Bologna was cut up and mixed with mayonnaise
08:54and pickle relish and sometimes celery. Then you either ate it on white bread or with crackers.
08:59Nostalgia food for the win
09:02It's common knowledge that we should all be trying to limit processed foods,
09:05including lunch meats like hot dogs and bologna. But how bad is it, really?
09:10Well, for one thing, it's got a lot of salt and fat. One slice of bologna contains 7.9 grams of
09:17fat and 302 milligrams of sodium, about 13 percent of your entire daily intake. And who eats just one
09:25slice, especially when you're busy digging into one of those delicious bologna cakes?
09:29The real risk, though, lies in the nitrates in bologna. Processed foods like bologna and
09:34bacon are frequently cured by adding sodium nitrate to them because nitrates can help
09:39stop food from spoiling and prevent botulism-causing bacteria from growing.
09:43The big downside to eating processed deli meats is that the International Agency for Research on
09:49Cancer concluded that when you eat just a 50-gram portion of processed meat every day,
09:54you're increasing your risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. Even though that risk is somewhat
09:59small, eating less processed meat can decrease your bowel cancer risk. This basically means
10:04that bologna should be a sometimes food if you simply can't resist the urge to indulge.
10:10The World Health Organization has classified processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen,
10:15like cigarettes and alcohol, which means they recommend it should be avoided entirely.
10:19Depressing news, but better to be safe than sorry and swap out your bologna sandwich for
10:24peanut butter on occasion. All over the world, people keep making sandwiches in honor of
10:29President Donald Trump. And what do these sandwiches contain? Bologna, and a lot of it.
10:35Restaurants from New York to Sweden are serving up the Donald Trump Special,
10:39which, to be more specific, contains a stack of bologna served on white bread,
10:43topped with Russian dressing and a small pickle on the side.
10:47Some places, like the Windsor Sandwich Shop, have also added a wall of tortilla chips to the plate.
10:52Don't look for Trump to be ordering this delicacy anytime soon,
10:55because he has said his favorite sandwich is a meatloaf sandwich.
10:59The Donald is not the first president to be associated with bologna. President Bush was
11:04said to order bologna sandwiches with a side of Doritos when he stayed at the Waldorf Astoria
11:08in New York City. First Lady Barbara Bush handed out bologna sandwiches at a soup kitchen in
11:13Washington, and President Obama served bologna sandwiches at a D.C. non-profit that serves
11:18low-income families. It just goes to show that whether you love it or hate it, bologna is here
11:23to stay.
11:29you