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 Modern Marvels Complete Food Series 20 DVDs 50 minutes each Many are Closed Captioned History Channel
Overview
The History Channel's Modern Marvels series is one of the most fascinating and informative video programs on TV. The series is famous for its brilliant and wonderfully detailed coverage of technical and industrial subjects, of which many are about foodservice and food manufacturing.
FoodSoftware.com brings you these food titles because they are essential backgrounders to the food business, and not only are they highly educational but they're fun to watch too!
SAVE $200.00 Developed by the world-renowned History Channel, this master library of DVDs are grouped in a specially priced bundle. Titles in the bundle include:
- BBQ Tech
- Breakfast Tech
- Brewing
- The Butcher
- Candy
- Canning
- Cheese
- Chocolate
- Distilleries
- Drive-Thru
- Fast Food Tech
- Harvesting
- Milk
- More Snack Food Tech
- Nuts
- Snack Food Tech
- Sugar
- Tea
- The Pig
- The Supermarket
BBQ Tech
An old-fashioned style of cooking, barbecue has evolved into a modern food craze and spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. We digest famous barbecue cook-offs and visit long-established barbecue restaurants like Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City, where the huge grills and taste thrills of true barbecue are more popular than ever. At home, three out of four US households own a grill. After WWII's end, the phenomenon of backyard barbecuing swept the nation, thanks to inexpensive and mass-produced grills, including the kettle-shaped Weber. Our tour of Weber's modern factories shows how they keep pace with demand by manufacturing more choices than ever, including portable mini-grills. We also examine the variety of fuels available for the savory selection of spicy sauces and rubs. Join us as we devour the mouthwatering flavors of BBQ in this episode.
Breakfast Tech
It slices and squeezes, sorts and sizes, mixes and cooks. Every morning we count on it to keep our orange juice fresh, our eggs whole, our cereals flaked, and our McGriddle syrupy--this is Breakfast Tech. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Stennis, we'll see how technology makes it possible for chefs to prepare a fresh and nutritious breakfast for five thousand hungry sailors. We will take you to the Tyson Foods factory where thousands of pork bellies are dissected into savory, smoked slices of bacon and at the Sunkist Orange Juice Factory, we'll watch a million oranges get squeezed to a pulp. For those on the go, it's a tour of a McDonald's factory to see the McGriddle pancake being made. If you eat breakfast and you're not afraid to see where it came from, join us on this tasty journey.
Brewing
It's one of the world's oldest and most beloved beverages--revered by Pharaohs and brewed by America's Founding Fathers. Today, brewing the bitter elixir is a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Join us for an invigorating look at brewing's history from prehistoric times to today's cutting-edge craft breweries, focusing on its gradually evolving technologies and breakthroughs. We'll find the earliest known traces of brewing, which sprang up independently in such far-flung places as ancient Sumeria, China, and Finland; examine the surprising importance that beer held in the daily and ceremonial life of ancient Egypt; and at Delaware's Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, an adventurous anthropologist and a cutting-edge brewer show us the beer they've concocted based on 2,700-year-old DNA found in drinking vessels from the funerary of the legendary King Midas.
The Butcher
In a carnivorous world, a butcher is a necessary link in the food chain, carving a carcass of unsavory flesh into mouthwatering cuts. We trace the grizzly trade's evolution--from yesteryear's butcher-on-every-corner to today's industrial butcher working on a "disassembly" line. We tour the infamous remains of the Chicago Stockyards, where Upton Sinclair, Clarence Birdseye, and refrigeration changed butchering forever; witness high-speed butchering; and travel to a non-stop sausage factory. And if you're still squeamish, a USDA inspector offers the lowdown on HAACP--the country's new system of checks and balances on everything from quality grading to E. coli, Salmonella, and Mad Cow Disease. Finally, we visit the last bastion of old-school butchering--the rural custom butcher, who slaughters, eviscerates, skins, and cuts to his customer's wishes.
Candy
It pulls, stretches, bubbles, hardens, crunches, and melts! We eat about 7-billion tons of it yearly. We're talking about Candy--loved by kids and savored by adults. Candy-making evolved from a handmade operation to high-tech mass production. Nowhere is that more apparent than at Hershey's. On a tour of their newest production facility, we learn how they process the cocoa bean. At See's Candy, we see how they make their famous boxed chocolates--on a slightly smaller scale than Hershey's. We get a sweet history lesson at Schimpff's Confectionery, where they still use small kettles, natural flavors, and hand-operated equipment. Then, we visit Jelly Belly, purveyors of the original gourmet jellybean. Saltwater-taffy pullers hypnotize us on our sweet-tooth tour; we gaze at extruders making miles of licorice rope; and watch as nostalgia candy bars Abba-Zaba and Big Hunk get packaged. And in this sugary hour, we digest the latest sensations--gourmet chocolates and scorpion on a stick!
Canning
It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of a preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry. There are self-heating and self-cooling cans, microwaveable cans, ozone safe aerosol cans and cans that store nuclear waste. We will explore where canning has been, where it is now and where it is going in the future.
Cheese
From cheddar to brie, Parmesan to blue, take a look at both ancient techniques and new technologies behind some of the world's most popular cheeses. Visit the cow pastures of Wisconsin to the giant cheese factories of California to discover how cheese is made. Travel through history from the Roman Empire's diversity of cheeses to the 19th Century birth of industrial cheese.
Chocolate
Americans eat over three and a half billion pounds of chocolate each year--that's 12 pounds per person per year with annual sales topping $13 billion! Take a tour through the entire chocolate making process and learn how chocolate has been thought of as an energizer, an aphrodisiac and a cure-all. Watch as colorful M&Ms are made by the millions at Mars. Visit a working cacao bean farm in Central America for a demonstration of the hand harvesting techniques that have remained unchanged for centuries. To the delight of those who indulge, this awesome edible is now even good for you--full of antioxidants, cholesterol-lowering polyphenols, and heart-healthy flavonols.
Distilleries
From water and grain...to mash...still...vat...barrel and bottle--the distilling of alcoholic spirits is a big business and near-sacred religion. Its acolytes eye the color, swirl the glass, inhale the bouquet, sip, then ponder their ambrosia. What's your pleasure? Bourbon, Scotch, Rum, Gin, Vodka, or Tequila? We trace the history of distilling from the one-man/one-still tradition to the Voldstead Act of 1920 that devastated American distilleries to the mega-sales and high-volume distillery of today.
Drive-Thru
Join us for a ride through the history of car-culture commerce from the first gas station to the drive-thru funeral parlors and wedding chapels of today. We chronicle the birth of the first drive-in restaurants that paved the way for a billion-dollar fast food dynasty, and feature many lesser-known drive-thru venues, such as dry cleaners, flu shot clinics, liquor stands, and drug stores. And we'll take a journey to the future to see what products might be passing through the drive-thru of tomorrow.
Fast Food Tech
Can fast food get any faster? Fast food joints in the US pull in $150 billion dollars in annual sales. Their mantra is "fast, consistent, and inexpensive." Learn how they grow it, process it, freeze it, ship it, track it, fry it, flip it and pack it. Watch as hundreds of burgers, fries and shakes fly across counters and drive-thru windows at Carl's Jr., Jack in the Box, Wendy's and McDonald's. Visit a potato-processing plant for the scoop on how fries are made and learn how Taco Bell's founder developed the fast-food hard shell taco. Find out what the future holds for fast food technology.
Harvesting
Cutting, digging, picking, stripping, shaking, and raking--whatever the crop, there's a custom machine to harvest it. It all began with handpicking and today it's often one man and one machine harvesting hundreds of acres in a single day. The farmer may even get a little help from satellites. Far above the earth, high-resolution photography is giving the grower more opportunities to cut costs and maximize the harvest. From the debut of the sickle in ancient Egypt to McCormick's famous Reaper to the field of Ergonomics that assists human harvesters, we'll dig into the past and future of the harvest.
Milk
Got milk? Billions of pounds of milk are consumed worldwide on a daily basis. Milk is the basis for its own food group, and has been around since the dawn of mammals. Visit a farm with a milking parlor that looks more like a cow merry-go-round. Learn what pasteurization is really all about, and even milk a yak. Find out what those active cultures in yogurt are and discover if milk truly makes the body good. Wait until you discover just how many types of cows there truly are.
More Snack Food Tech
They crunch; they ooze; they crackle; they pop--mmmmm, yeah! Soft drinks, donuts, meat snacks, popcorn, and gum. What's your weakness? From the handmade treats of the earliest civilizations to hi-tech mass production, these snacks are borne of man's need to feed his cravings. Join us for an hour-long tasty treat as we examine the history of this snackfoods and check out how they are made today.
Nuts
Pintsized as a pea or big as a bowling ball, nutritional, durable, and versatile, nuts have been a staple of the human diet since time began, and archaeological evidence places them among our earliest foods. For that, the ancients worshiped them. And because they were relatively non-perishable, nuts sustained the imperial armies of Rome and China, the royal navies of England and Spain, and the native tribes that roamed the American wilderness. Today, we think of nuts as mere snacks, but in a poignant segment, we feature how a peanut product is used by organizations like UNICEF to reverse malnutrition in starving children in less than four weeks. And a powder ground from walnut shells cleans everything from ship hulls to the Space Shuttle. From ancient traditions of tree-picking and hand-gathering to today's powerful machine shakers, sophisticated irrigation techniques, and the latest bio-science, we'll provide a spread of history that's just as smooth as your peanut butter!
Snack Food Tech
Extruders, molds, in-line conveyor belts. Are these machines manufacturing adhesives, plastics, or parts for your car? No, they're making treats for your mouth--and you will see them doing their seductively tasty work in this scrumptious episode. First, we visit Utz Quality Foods in Hanover, Pennsylvania, that produces more than one million pounds of chips per week, and Snyder's of Hanover, the leading U.S. pretzel manufacturer. Next, we focus on the world's largest candy manufacturer, Masterfoods USA, which makes Milky Way, Snickers, Mars, and M&Ms, and check out the world's largest lollipop producer, Tootsie Roll Industries. And at Flower Foods' Crossville, Tennessee plant, an army of cupcakes rolls down a conveyer belt. The final stop is Dreyer's Bakersfield, California plant, where 20,000 ice cream bars and 9,600 drumsticks roll of the line in an hour.
Sugar
The sugar industry came of age on the backs of slaves toiling in Caribbean fields, and British desire to control production of sugar and its byproduct, rum. Sugar also played a surprisingly critical part in America's battle for independence. Tour a sugar plantation on Maui, Hawaii to get an inside look at how cane sugar is produced today and learn how the sugar stalks are put through an extensive process of extraction and purification--and how a ton of harvested cane results in 200 pounds of raw sugar. Learn the technology behind creating the sweetener in all of its permutations, including corn syrup, brown sugar, powdered sugar and cube sugar, and how it's used in candies, soda and sauces as well as more exotic uses such as in pipe tobacco and processed meat.
Tea
After water, tea is the second most popular drink in the world. It has been around as a drink for 5000 years, and 6 billion pounds of tea are harvested annually. We begin with a trip to the Lipton's plant in Suffolk, VA., where state of the art machines crank out 24 million teabags a day, and then its off to the only tea plantation in the US, the 127 acre Charleston Plantation in South Carolina. We'll follow the flow of tea from England to the Colonies, where a tea tax precipitated the Boston Tea Party, and chronicle the brief but glorious age of the Clipper Ships, speed craft that brought tea from China to London in less than 100 days. Big news in the 20th century for the tea trade includes the emergence of herbal, powdered, iced and decaf teas. Tour the Celestial Seasonings plant in Boulder Colorado, and then visit a boutique tea garden where expensive teas sell for upwards of $30 a pot. Is it true that the best Darjeelings can bring in hundreds of dollars an ounce?
The Pig
It is said that the pig is as smart as a three-year-old human. The pancreas, heart valve and intestines of the pig have been transplanted into human bodies, yet the primary use of the pig is for food. Watch the pig transform into bacon, ham, ribs and sausage, using a high tech water knife, at Burger's Smokehouse in Missouri. Then Chef Chris Cosentino re-creates old world dishes from pig parts and culinary artisans attempt to duplicate long-vanished pork specialties like prosciutto and acorn-fed pigs.
The Supermarket
Our basic need and desire for food has made the supermarket one of the great success stories of modern retailing. Making customers' visits to the market as efficient as possible has led to many technological advancements such as bar coding and a scale that recognizes the type of produce placed on it. We'll explore the psychology of the supermarket including store layout, lighting, music and aromas that trigger the appetite. With a growing percentage of the public interested in eating healthier foods, organic grocers are carving out an increasingly large niche. These are just a few of the items worth checking out in this appetizing hour.
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