Popcorn: It’s Been Around Thousands of Years

Archeological digs in Mexico uncovered evidence of popcorn kernels dating back to 3,600 BC. It’s the earliest evidence that humans ate popcorn. However, historians surmise that the snack food wasn’t a staple in the diets of ancient humans, because it easily burned when cooked over open fires. Its popularity didn’t soar until 5,500 years later during the first part of the 20^th century.

Inventor and entrepreneur Charles Cretors increased the accessibility of popcorn in the early 1900’s when he invented a portable popcorn maker/vendor. A Chicago candy store owner, Cretors was the inventor of a steam powered nut roasting machine mounted on a cart that one person could push and sell the hot snacks around city streets. He adapted that technology to work with popcorn, and the popularity of the convection grew as people bought popcorn from street corner sellers. Acreage of farmland dedicated to raising the unique seed, which is different from the ears of corn people eat, increased as the demand for popcorn grew.     

Making popcorn at home, a depression era shortage of sugar, and the booming business of movie theaters led to an enormous increase in popularity of eating popcorn in North America during the first part of the 20^th Century.

In May, 1929, the U.S. stock market crash started the Great Depression that lasted up to World War II. The population found solace and temporary relief from the lack of jobs, money and adequate food in the low cost of going to the movies. A ten cent movie ticket allowed audiences to see what was called a double feature—two new movies back-to-back. Hollywood kept cranking out movies through the 1930s into the war years to meet the increasing demand for new features. That resulted in a record number of people going to the movies each week. A sugar shortage drove up the cost of candy, and popcorn, with its cheap price of 10 to 15 cents a bag, became the mainstay for movie goers’ snack food.

Two major inventions—the microwave oven and the video tape player/recorder—unexpectedly worked together to get popcorn sales soaring even higher.

A major improvement in making popcorn at home came from an unplanned use of microwave energy. Experimenting in 1945 with cooking food with different energy sources, electrical engineer Percy Spencer discovered that microwave energy did an excellent job of cooking popcorn. During the next decade, the convenience of the new type of cooking resulted in microwave ovens becoming common in homes everywhere.

The invention of video tape machines in 1956 signaled an important boom to home entertainment. During the 1960’s the cost of VCRs kept dropping, allowing most households to own one. Consumers could rent and see full-length movies in their homes without commercials, and eating popcorn while watching movies was a natural progression. Manufactures put several types of electrical popcorn makers on the market, including hot air poppers, to cash in on the growing popularity of making popcorn at home.

According to The Popcorn Institute in Chicago, Americans eat more popcorn than any other country. In the United States, 1.18 billion pounds of popcorn were consumed in 2015. About 70% was eaten at home. The remaining 30% was consumed in theaters, stadiums, and other entertainment venues.

Popcorn kernels are different from other types of corn, and they can last indefinitely when they are stored in a dry place. That’s why kernels have been found in the diggings of ancient civilizations.

The hard, outer hulls of popcorn kernels protect the starch and water inside. During the cooking process, moisture inside the kernels turns to steam and explodes the kernels, making a distinctive popping noise. The exploded or popped kernels become a tasty white puff of low calorie starch. Only specific popcorn kernels have the tough outer husks that allow the moisture inside to get hot enough to explode the seed. That’s why drying and trying to use other types of corn to make popcorn doesn’t work.

By itself, popcorn is considered a healthy, low calorie food. However, popular flavorings such as salts, coconut oils, sugars, and caramel add many empty calories but no nutrition to popcorn. But the popularity of flavored popcorn by consumers has encouraged specialty businesses to spring up inside malls and shopping centers where dozens of different flavors of popcorn are sold.

People have used popcorn for nonfood applications. Some creative uses include stringing popcorn and using it as a decoration, especially during the holiday months when it’s hung on Christmas trees. 

Popcorn has been used as an environmentally safe packing material inside shipping boxes. That application, however, can attract insects that invade the packaging, leading shipping industry officials to prohibit the use of popcorn for packaging.

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