Food Theory: Froot Loops and Apple Jacks Are SECRETLY The Same!

mmm this cereal is totally tubular would you agree 90s kid 2 couldn't agree more 90s kid number 1 the cereals to bomb what do you think 90s kid 3 i mean the cereal's fine i'm just wondering why we're eating breakfast in a heavily grafed alleyway um like did one of you actually carry these bowls silverware cereal boxes and milk all the way from your house to this heavily graffitied alleyway you're overthinking this dude did we meet here spontaneously did we actually call each other to rendezvous for breakfast in a heavily graffitied alleyway i don't know dude it's the 90s okay stop saying heavily graffitied alleyway why is only one of my overall straps buckled where are our parents hello internet welcome to food theory parents just don't get it we theorize what we like now i started this channel as a way to tackle the big questions in the world of food is a hot dog a sandwich how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop does chuck e cheese actually recycle its pizza and does every 90s kid who ever ate cereal in a heavily graffitied alleyway nose there's no bigger unanswered food question than this they named it applejack shouldn't it taste like well apple that's right today food theory is finally answering the question that's been lingering since applejack's was introduced back in 1965 what does it taste like now since the very beginning apple jacks has said that its cereal is the a claim that they still make today both in commercials and on the box itself but as their famous ad campaign from the mid 90s points out cinnamon and apple aren't the flavors that actually stand out when they hit your taste buds i don't get why you'd like a cereal called applejacks that doesn't taste like apple we know why yeah okay geniuses why good answer see the net taste of applejack cereal is something unique something that's immediately recognizable but difficult to put your finger on decades later we still don't have ourselves a definitive answer until today cause food theory discovered a new way to approach this conundrum and it all begins with acknowledging that apple jacks is actually a different cereal you heard that right i'm saying apple jacks is not really apple jacks follow me on this let's start by talking about kellogg's corn flakes a cereal that's been around since the 1890s over the years kellogg's has tried a few different varieties of corn flakes including a sugar frosted version in 1952 that's today marketed to kids as kellogg's frosted flakes in your part of the world you may also know them as frosties zuccaritas sucralose corn frosty or corn frost now as you might suspect kellogg's frosted flakes and kellogg's corn flakes are the same cereal aside from the fact that one has an added sugar coating and the other does not this is all to say that a freshly toasted baby cornflake in the factory might wind up in either a corn flake box or a frosted flakes box depending on which assembly line it gets assigned to a comparison of the two cereals listed ingredients also confirms this milled corn milled corn sugar sugar malt flavor malt flavor salt salt and get this not only are corn flakes and frosted flakes's listed ingredients minerals and vitamins identical but they're also listed in the exact same order that's important because as the international food additives council explains quote food labels are required to list all ingredients contained in the food in descending order based on the amount found in the final product that is to say if sugar is listed ahead of malt flavor that means the food product contains more sugar than malt flavor by weight so in this way food labels allow us to compare ingredient amounts relative to each other so why the heck am i rambling about corn flakes and frosted flakes when this episode is supposed to be about apple jacks well hold on to your alpha bits for a second because here's the thing that for some reason nobody is talking about apple jacks are fruit loops with an extra step exactly the way frosted flakes are corn flakes with an extra step i mean look at the two cereals side by side wake up sheeple they're the same size and shape they're the same shade of orange they're the same shade of green they're both kellogg's cereals if it weren't for the little specks of red i defy anyone to try and tell them apart and when we compare the listed ingredients of both cereals it's like deja vu all over again we see that every major ingredient in the two cereals is identical and listed in the identical order as we get toward the end of the list among the ingredients that constitute two percent or less of the cereal by weight we do get a few differences the colors for example are listed in different orders this of course is to be expected because froot loop cereal pieces come in a wider variety of colors than apple jacks but coloring aside it's clear that froot loops is the base cereal and any orange or green froot loop pieces may be destined to one day become apple jacks once they receive an extra coating with red speckles that make them taste different the fact that fruit loops were introduced a couple years before apple jacks came along also supports this theory see there is no listed ingredient in fruit loops that doesn't also appear in apple jacks keep in mind maltodextrin a flavorless binding agent is sometimes listed as modified cornstarch and is also found in modified food starch so despite that discrepancy and terminology that ingredient is actually shared by both of these cereals furthermore food distributors have some leeway to decide how to list out their ingredients for instance while modified cornstarch is only listed on the apple jack's label that ingredient may very well be present in froot loops under modified food starch a catch-all term that does include modified corn starch but enough about the ingredients shared by both cereals the ingredients of interest here are the ones that appear only on the apple jack's label dried apples apple juice concentrate corn starch cinnamon wheat starch baking soda now corn starch and wheat starch are mostly flavorless used to add texture more than taste so basically in the end the ingredients that differentiate the taste of apple jacks from the taste of fruit loops are apple and cinnamon just like the box suggests and so this must be why the flavor of apple jacks is so difficult to pin down it's a complex mix of flavors not only does apple jack cereal taste like apple not only does it taste like cinnamon but it also tastes like fruit loops specifically the orange colored ones and also the green colored ones ever since green apple jack pieces were added in 1998 i mean that's a lot of different fruit flavors competing for your taste buds attention because as we all know orange colored fruit loops are orange flavored and green colored fruit loops are lime flavored right i mean sure the label just says natural flavors so we can't really verify that in any way but still there are oranges and limes plastered all over fruit loops commercials toucan sam even explicitly states orange and lime are flavors i love that orange lemon sherry diamond berry flavor too now toucan sam only lists off five flavors in that clip but here in the us we actually have blue colored loops as well take that other countries that have stricter regulations against artificial coloring naturally i wanted to fact check my suspicions that the blue loops are blueberry flavored and that's when it happened i stumbled upon information that completely changed my world view folks i honestly can't believe the words that are about to come out of my mouth because i can hardly believe it myself but my research is telling me that fruit loops are all the same flavor you heard that right all the colors taste identical i mean i swear as a kid i could taste the difference between each colored loop but then again i also swore that berenstain bears was spelled with an e.i the berenstein bears so maybe i need to stop trusting my childhood brain quite so much because apparently in 1999 kellogg's revealed to the straight dope that their cereal pieces were indeed all the same flavor and then again in 2014 a froot loop spokesperson admitted the same to kltv7 in east texas the name of that flavor fruit spelled with two o's which is apparently a blend of fruit flavors according to the fruit loop spokesperson fruit is a medley of exactly seven flavors orange lemon cherry raspberry apple blueberry and lime that means toucan sam is technically telling the truth when he says there's orange lemon cherry lime and berry flavors present in the cereal he's just being a bit misleading about the fact that every single cereal piece no matter its color contains a blend of all of those flavors you know what though i need to verify this for myself because i'm telling you my childhood brain absolutely a hundred percent tasted different flavors and also i distinctly remember the commercials where loops were being extruded from individual fruit pieces so i just can't take kellogg's word on this one not when my own taste buds have told me otherwise my entire life and that means it's time for a blind taste test so we are here today with the glorious task of determining what apple jacks actually tastes like because as any 90s commercial tell you they don't taste like apple and then of course the parents always like well then what do they taste like right why do you like them and the kids never have an answer right there's never an answer to this question until today yeah they're always just like we just do and then everyone laughs them off because they're stupid kids have rationale for your likes and dislikes people those that those commercials always drove me crazy me too like well then give them an alternative if you don't want them to tell you it tastes like apples then give them something else to go on right even if it's like sugary sweetness or like why do you like them because they're crispy because they're fun little o's that i can make necklaces out of literally any explanation will do the box is a great color i don't know in our quest to determine what flavor apple jacks is we stumble across the fact that fruit loops are actually the same cereal apple jacks is just a fruit loop with one or two added ingredients it's crazy right which leads to the question of well then what flavor are fruit loops and i swear as a kid i swear that every single color had a different flavor the internet tells me otherwise yeah the internet according to research online froot loops all actually have the same flavor regardless of what color you're eating to be fair i wanted to put it to the test right like sure online research is one thing but the nice thing about having a channel to do this we can do these tests ourselves so today we're gonna determine whether or not fruit loops are actually the same flavor step one we're gonna flavor test each of these visually see how they taste but then we're gonna blindfold ourselves taste them again see if we can actually accurately predict the different flavors okay so taste them with eyes open taste them blindfolded yep that's it okay red starting with red cherry obviously yeah cherry kind of i mean cherry supposed to be cherry cherry in the synthetic sense got a little sharp berry flavor maybe on the back end maybe a back end okay blue okay blue what is blue supposed to be blue should be berry what is blue blue raspberry you're probably a blue wrap it's a blueberry i would assume it's either a blueberry or blue raspberry smell do they smell different too this one tastes less sharp than the red the red tasted sharper didn't it okay and i i think maybe this is tasting like blueberry maybe i would it would be a very pungent blueberry lemony yellow i know lemonade smells good lemony yellow smell oh yeah it smells lemony yellow oh yeah well that's definitely lemony yellow i think it tastes like lemon yeah that one that one feels lemony yellow i don't know orange orangey orange right this is lime that's supposed to be lime cause they're all citrus then unclear about all of these i think there's a difference i'm not sure the only way to know i think there's a difference right load up load up the blindfold here we go so matthew's blindfolded up and next i'm going to line up each flavor one by one right here so we have them very clearly distinguished and i'm going to give them to matthew in a totally random order not telling him which one is which we'll see if he can tell any of them oh that smells like lemony yellow okay immediately off the bat maybe a little orangey orange but let me let me do the taste i'm getting a lot of sugary sweetness there uh-huh uh-huh that's correct so far you're on it's got that little uh cardboardy aftertaste stop stalling you gotta pick one clearly it's orange loop two here we go loop dose nose nose this one is a slightly subtler citrus i think they're very citrusy okay slightly subtler citrus here we go so it's not as citrusy as the other one it does have a very uh it's it's it's the same i noticed that that loop was actually significantly smaller than the one that came before it did happen to be yeah which makes me want to say it was purple because when we were doing the first taste test the purple ones seem to be smaller for some reason i don't know why do you want a larger one of that same color yeah give me a look okay we're still on loop two here it smells like your perfume oh yeah okay uh it's either purple or blue gotta pick one i'm gonna say purple on that one loop two recorded purple moving on to loop three okay smell smells like citrus because it smells like dinner sugar yeah here the wave waft it again here oh okay yeah yeah that's either lemon or lime right there okay clearly that is a uh a lime okay easy got it easy right 100 every time loop number four smells easy i'm getting stuffed after all these loops i figured oh it smells citrusy like everything else all right and we go oh subtler much subtler i i thought you would say that yeah yeah i think that might be blue all right sniff the wheelie okay sniff the wheelie ah smells like lemon like everything else that's come before oh fantastic yes open up this one isn't that strong i think this is a cherry do you want a spatula it's a red okay oh that was cherry that was clearly the cherry okay that's a strong pungent citrus oh that's a that's a thick boy i know but i'm dummy thick oh i will say this flavor feels for whatever reason less flavorful than a lot of the other ones that have come before really yeah the last this both this one and the piece that you gave me before wait one more weird huh yeah for and maybe it is just me imagining it or whatever uh but it feels like the least flavored of them here wait one more huh weird yeah i don't know what it is about that specific flavor but i'm not getting a whole lot of differentiatedness to it like they all feel kind of neutral no way yeah so i'm gonna guess that one's yellow i'm determined to find one of these one of this color that actually tastes like something for you here here put it in still nothing yeah still nothing yeah i don't know here try one more okay maybe one more maybe it's just this flavor yeah maybe it's just this color that just doesn't have any flavor to it or maybe my pet no other one is pretty good oh oh we got one well the last four i've given you have been different colors so yeah do you want to learn how you did how did i do it 10 out of 10. beating the odds actually you managed to get 100 of those completely wrong yes not even by blind guessing did you get one right so six flavors is a lot to choose between to make sure it's fair and also to give us the best odds of actually being able to tell a difference in the flavors we brought it down to two so matthew picked red and yellow as the two flavors he thought would be most distinct and we're to try those so we have 10 of each and i'm basically going to give one at a time to matthew and all he has to do is a 50 50 coin toss and we're going to see if he can beat the like just beat the average yeah do i play better than chance at this point exactly okay so i'm not going to tell you which pile they come from i'm just going to pick one up i'm going to put them right next to each other so you can't hear which pile i'm picking up from all of that all right ready loop one red loop two red loop three red blue four um red five lemon yellow loop six red loop seven red ah they all taste the same uh yellow loop nine yellow loop ten red loop eleven yellow loop twelve yellow i know i'm out of red at this point loop thirteen do you wanna concede defeat yellow keep going okay ready loop 14. yellow 15. just make it stop okay all right all right red you have gotten less than 50 correct so there you have it friends i know the internet's talked about this but now i can confirm it firsthand there is no difference between the different colors of fruit loops and the flavors they're all this general citric acidy lemon yeah flavor and interestingly from the ingredient list it seems like one of the only or the very few ingredients that could actually give something that flavor is the extra vitamin c that they try to shove into the cereal to make moms buy it so like the ascorbic acid in there may make it actually taste like a little citrusier and other cereals wouldn't have that necessarily in it so fruit loops has vitamin c it actually has 25 apple jacks no vitamin c whatsoever yeah not in the slightest and almost every other ingredient is the same between these two cereals in the same order yeah and they're in the exact same order so we would expect them to look and taste almost identical except for maybe the citrusiness over here and then whatever whatever apple jacks actually taste like okay kellogg's you won this round i can see that all your cereal pieces no matter the color taste like fruit so apple jacks then aren't just apple and cinnamon flavored they're apple cinnamon and fruit flavored and to prove that they're in the same flavor family we did another blind taste test this time with steph wearing the blindfold and having to pick out whether i was feeding her froot loops or apple jacks here one last bonus experiment mystery loop one okay oh oh that's a fruit loop loop two oh also a froot loop oh jeez loop three this is still a froot loop stop giving me fruit loops loop four ah this still tastes like problems loop five i'm not i am not kidding are you just giving me all fruits i'm starting to get really paranoid okay this is an applejack oh god finally an applejack apple jack apple jack all the way an orange one loop seven is it a fruit loop shoot i can't tell if it's because my tongue is really mottled or what blue i'm getting so uncertain now i feel like you're just messing with me loop 9. applejack no bad aftertaste no wait no wait that was a fruit loop i can't tell oh no that was an apple jack that was a froot loop don't know oh no oh no i really don't know that's really i really don't know and that's because there's one other standout flavor in all of this one other flavor that goes beyond the sugar and the cinnamon and the synthetic fruit the flavor that brings it all together cardboard and that's not me trying to be mean or anything it is the scientific truth a big reason these cereals have a cardboardy taste to them is cellulose aka fiber apple jacks and fruit loops have added fiber in the form of oat fiber and soluble corn fiber our bodies are unable to break down fiber and so these large cellulose molecules remain intact and actually brush away bacteria and build up as they travel through our intestines that's why it's important to have fiber in your diet even though the body can't digest it fiber helps keep your digestive tract operating smoothly fiber is a vital component of paper products including cardboard so if you've ever thought that your oatmeal or cereal tastes like cardboard because it kind of does they share ingredients now i set out today to pin down the taste of applejack cereal once and for all and what i've discovered is that there are four major flavors at play here sugar cardboard apple cinnamon and fruit punch which we now know is basically a citrus blend and having tasted a fair number of apple jacks for this video i'd keep the flavors in that precise order sugar dominates cardboard comes on strong and then cinnamon with mild fruit notes at the end so here it is friends apple jacks taste like sugar cardboard cinnamon citrus punch that is the official flavor of apple jacks it's no wonder that the 90s ad campaigns didn't want the kids to talk about it we what we like is far more catchy and still has us talking about it to this very day but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit thanks for watching loyal theorists be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future food theory episodes push us above the 2 million mark so we can hit that milestone before 2021. now i know i've been going pretty hard on the serial themed episodes lately after doing three of them in a month i guess you could call me a serial cereal theorist but in case you haven't seen them all make sure to check back on the previous episode about green onion chex it is a real thing from south korea and if you're wondering why anyone would want such a disgusting tasting cereal treat the answer is very simple democracy so if any of that sounds intriguing to you make sure you click the link on screen to go watch that video by the way that green onion serial has itself an oh so korean music video and it is an absolute bop

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 1,573,138

Rating: 4.9561591 out of 5

Keywords: froot loops, fruit loops, apple jacks, cereal, breakfast, breakfast cereal, cereal taste test, what does dcolor taste like, does color have taste, color taste, apple jacks commercial, froot loops commercial, toucan sam, toucan sam commercial, taste, science of taste, recipe, taste test, cereal challenge, food commercial, matpat, food theorists, food theory, film theory, game theory, game theorists, film theorists, eat the menu, rosanna pansino, binging with babish

Id: LZ8lkhgnCzw

Length: 21min 55sec (1315 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Fyreshield]

What do you mean secretly, I haven’t even watched the video yet and I know what they are

[u/zgamer200]

If I had to take a guess as to why MatPat thought the Froot Loops actually tasted different when he could see them, it's probably because of "priming."

Basically he saw the color of the Froot Loop, and since he associates that color with a specific flavor(for example, red = cherry), he was more careful to try to taste the cherry flavor with red Froot Loops, which is entirely possible since all the loops contain just a bit of each of the different flavors.

It'd also explain why he couldn't taste any difference once the blindfold came on, because without that visual stimulus to prime his brain/taste buds to lookout for a certain flavor, he simply tasted the Froot Loops for what they really were; "Froot" flavored.

[u/Time-Vault]

This isn’t common knowledge?

[u/Wubaluba_Dub_DubzZ]

laughs in colorblind

[u/Track_Lazy]

I kinda know what MatPat is talking about but also I kinda don’t 😅😂😅 (I don’t live in the United States)

[u/Dragonborn8977]

EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT

[u/Emerald_Dragon2005]

My mom when I say I want the Apple Jacks, not the fruit loops:

[u/Flaky_Counter9647]

But no? Applejacks have a cinnamon twist to it. If you talkin about just the apple part then kind of, but the cereal as a whole is different tastes.

[u/Happy_Pink_Pony]

I love food theory but am I the only one who gets a little sad when the theories are very America centric? The curse of Cornell Sanders and sandwich episodes are some of my favorite but a lot of the episodes are about something a large portion of the audience won’t relate to or understand in the same way. Not a complaint, just an observation