Check Out These Disgusting Recipes From The Glory Days Of Jell-O (2024)

FAQs

Why is Jell-O no longer popular? ›

With Jell-O salads becoming less popular, the brand looked for its next hit. But it had a problem: With the increase in women entering the workforce, families weren't sitting down for as many meals and eating dessert like they once did. And new, ready-to-eat foods were hitting the market that were more convenient.

Preindustrial History. Few home cooks bothered with such labor-intensive dishes—gelatin indicated to dinner guests that you had a kitchen staff large and well-appointed enough to spare the hours. This remained the case in the American colonies, where elites adapted European customs to their own tastes.

Jell-O salads were born out of modern convenience.

Gelatin salads had been around long before that, but it was only after the extensive rationing and scarcity of World War II that Americans began to fully embrace the convenience of Jell-O and other pre-packaged foods.

Jell-O, particularly, was able to capitalize on the low prices of their products and the nostalgia women felt toward the aspics prepared by their grandmothers in the Victorian era.

Jello has 3 main ingredients: water, sugar, and protein (in the form of gelatin). As such, it hydrates you, is easy to digest, and gives your body energy and resources for healing. Jello is being used in some nursing homes as a way to hydrate patients who may have trouble drinking liquid water.

Utah is famously known for its per capita consumption of Jell-O—so much so that two decades ago, in 2001, the Utah State Legislature voted to name Jell-O its official state snack.

Digestion. Gelatin contains glutamic acid, which the body can form into glutamine. This substance may help promote a healthy mucosal lining in the stomach and aid digestion.

There's some evidence that gelatin in doses up to 10 grams daily can be safely used for up to 6 months. Gelatin can cause an unpleasant taste, sensation of heaviness in the stomach, bloating, heartburn, and belching. Gelatin can cause allergic reactions in some people.

You'll practically starve since Jello is essentially nothing but water with coloring and flavoring, however, there is an increased likelihood that you'll binge-eat after a while and gain any lost weight.

Yes, savory Jello molds were a popular dish in the mid-20th century in the United States, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. These dishes were made by combining savory ingredients, such as vegetables, meat, and cheese, with Jello gelatin, which would then be chilled until it set into a mold.

What was Jell-O originally made for? ›

In 1897, Pearle Wait, a carpenter in LeRoy, was developing a cough remedy and laxative tea in his home. He experimented with gelatine and came up with a fruit flavored dessert which his wife, May, named JELL-O.

The original gelatin dessert began in Le Roy, New York, in 1897, when Pearle Bixby Wait trademarked the name Jell-O. He and his wife May had made the product by adding strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon flavoring to sugar and granulated gelatin (which had been patented in 1845).

Jello is not the healthiest food option, but eating it in moderation likely won't hurt you. Even though it contains artificial ingredients and has very little nutritional value, many people still eat jello because they enjoy its flavor, consistency, and convenience.

Jello salads are a common feature of US communal meals such as potlucks, most probably because they are inexpensive and easy to prepare. The salad has a strong regional presence in Utah and surrounding states (the Mormon Corridor), especially among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe, aspic often takes the form of pork jelly and is popular around the Christmas and Easter holidays. In Poland, certain meats, fish and vegetables are set in aspic, creating a dish called galareta.

But in the decades after World War II ended, the problems that JELL-O had initially solved went away. Cheap food items did not impress a wealth-building American society, and wartime staples became repellant. In the 1970s, JELL-O languished as a children's snack and hospital dessert.

People were still eating colorful gelatin, but they were no longer serving it as a main course as frequently as they used to. These days, it's more of a quirky novelty snack than an accepted meal option.

Nonetheless, I informed my mother that yes, Jell-O is indeed making a comeback. Today, Solid Wiggles — a business with a decidedly millennial aesthetic operating out of Kit in Brooklyn and online through Goldbelly — creates Jell-O cakes that are often boozy and always beautiful, selling for $100ish a pop.

Instead, it now had the added reputation of being a diet food which only increased in the early 2000s as Jell-O pivoted to promoting it's sugar free products to take advantage of the Atkins diet craze.