The Wise Book of Whys (9 page)

Why Swiss Cheese Has Holes

The holes come from a by-product of some of the microbes added to milk to make Swiss cheese. Specifically, there are three primary types of bacteria that are typically used to make Swiss cheese (these can vary slightly depending on the manufacturer): Streptococcus thermophilus; Lactobacillus helveticus; and Propionibacterium shermanii.

The first two types of microbes produce significant amounts of lactic acid, which is, in turn, consumed by the latter type of microbes, Propionibacterium shermanii
. It is this Propionibacterium shermanii that is responsible for the holes in Swiss cheese. Through the process of consuming the lactic acid, the shermanii produces acetate, propionic acid, and carbon dioxide as a by-product.

The acetate and propionic acid give the Swiss cheese much of its distinct flavor, while the carbon dioxide forms bubbles within the cheese block or wheel
. These carbon dioxide bubbles are left in as the cheese continues to ferment, rather than pressing them out, which gives Swiss cheese its distinctive holes. Historically, however, these holes were seen as an imperfection in the cheese and most manufacturers would try to avoid them by pressing this type of cheese during the aging process to force the bubbles out and keep the cheese solid throughout the block or wheel.

Why Cats Like Catnip

Catnip, which is a perennial herb in the mint family, contains a chemical called “nepetalactone” that is released when catnip is crushed
. When cats get a whiff of nepetalactone, most will start rubbing themselves against it, playing with it, sometimes eating it, and generally will act quite bizarrely. It is thought, but not known exactly, that this chemical mimics certain feline pheromones, specifically their theoretical facial pheromones. (It isn’t known whether these actually exist, but many researchers think they do.)

Once cats have been exposed to the nepetalactone for a few minutes,
the chemical loses its effect on them, and cats will usually no longer be interested in it for about an hour or two. At this point the chemical will start to kick in again as the cats breathe it in, and they will once again begin acting bizarrely around it for a few minutes.

Despite the apparent drug-like effect, it isn’t thought that catnip is in any way harmful to cats, nor is it thought that it is addictive
. Most researches think that nepetalactone simply triggers something in their brains that causes them to want to rub up against this particular smell, not unlike what dogs often do when they encounter certain smells. That being said, cats can “overdose” on catnip, which typically results in vomiting or diarrhea.

Interestingly, not all cats respond to catnip. Whatever genetic quirk that causes them to respond to nepetalactone is inherited and only about 70% of ca
ts show a behavioral difference around catnip. Further, cats under the age of a few weeks old are also not attracted to catnip, and some even show an aversion to it.

Not only are very young cats sometimes averse to catnip, but so are cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, and termites
. In fact, nepetalactone extract has been shown to be ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET (N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide), which is the chemical traditionally used in mosquito repellant. However, it should be noted that when put on human skin, nepetalactone’s effectiveness as a mosquito repellant decreases drastically, so it’s more suitable as a mosquito repellent when sprayed on clothing or the like.

Why
Coke Tried to Switch to “New Coke”

It turns out there was actually (if you squint at the problem hard enough), a semi-good reason for making the switch. It didn’t work out, of course… But then, it kind of did work out amazingly well at the same time, as you’ll soon see.

Now, before I get into the real reason for the switch, let
me debunk the conspiracy theory that Coca-Cola was trying to swindle people into accepting high fructose corn syrup over sugar in their drink by pulling the New Coke stunt. The truth of the matter is that they’d already allowed bottlers to use high fructose corn syrup in Coke for about five years before they introduced New Coke (before they even thought up the idea to make a New Coke).

Most bottlers made the switch pretty quickly because of the drastic cost savings. Initially, Coca-Cola allowed a 50% corn syrup substitution and by about 6 months before the introduction of New Coke, nearly every major bottler of Coca-Cola was using 100% high fructose corn syrup, rather than sugar or a mixture of the two. So those who claimed they could taste a difference because of the high fructose corn syrup after the return of the old Coca-Cola, actually had already been drinking it with high fructose corn syrup, in most cases long before New Coke.

Coca-Cola did consider not announcing that they were switching to New Coke, with a plan to just very gradually change the flavor. But they ended up deciding that it was too risky, because if someone noticed, it might become a huge news story and hurt sales from the bad publicity of trying to trick their customers.

So what really was the motivation for switching to New Coke? Coke had steadily been losing ground to Pepsi and by the early 1980s, taste tests done by Coca-Cola and Pepsi showed that most people tested preferred Pepsi over Coke. Further, if not for Coke’s exclusive contracts with many restaurants and vending machine vendors, Pepsi would have been drastically outselling Coke, as it was in supermarkets and other locations where people had a choice.

Coca-Cola, thus, set about changing their formula to come up with something people would prefer over the original Coke and Pepsi. Specifically, they created New Coke based on their Diet Coke formula. Diet Coke was extremely popular right from its debut (rocketing up to the third most popular cola after Pepsi and Coke within just a few years of its launch), even though it was a new flavor and not based on regular Coke, as the name seems to imply.

Thus, as taste tests showed that more people preferred the taste of Diet Coke to regular Coke, they decided to primarily just take out the artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke and substituted in high fructose corn syrup. With a few more minor modifications, they succeeded in creating a new apparently tasty drink.

This wasn’t a case of them not doing their due diligence on whether it was better than the original Coca-Cola. They knew full well how big of a thing it would be to abandon their old formulation. As such, they ran numerous tests that showed the vast majority of people preferred the new formulation over the old and it also beat out Pepsi by a decent margin.

What went wrong is still partially up for debate, but the heart of the issue is basically the “nostalgia” factor and that they’d spent nearly a century marketing their product as something you can’t live without, then they took it away. People had apparently taken this message to heart. While the taste tests made New Coke look great, they never explicitly asked the question in any of their tests “Would you care if we switched in this new formulation of Coke and got rid of the old?” They didn’t do this because they didn’t want people to know they were developing a new formula at all.

They did ask a very similar question that subtly implied the previous question and the result should have clued them in to the dissent. They asked tasters who had liked it, “Would you buy this [new flavor] if it were Coca-Cola?” While the majority said yes, about 10% said no and got angry about the subtle implication of getting rid of Coke. While this is a small percentage, the problem ahead was illustrated in that these 10% were very vocal about their dissent and had a tendency to try to convince other testers that they should switch their answer to “no” too.

This is exactly how it played out when New Coke was introduced
. At first, sales were up a significant amount over the previous year, even more than Coca-Cola expected; and according to surveys run by Coca-Cola, most people preferred the new flavor over the old. Just as importantly, the majority of existing Coke drinkers continued to buy Coke at the same levels as they did before. Further, most of those few customers they lost weren’t switching to Pepsi, they were simply just not drinking Coke anymore. Coca-Cola stock went up and things were looking really good.

But then the vocal minority
started kicking up their heels; complaints trickled in and the angered Coke fans started enlisting the aid of the media. Soon that trickle developed into a flood. One man, Gay Mullins, even started the Old Cola Drinkers of America organization to lobby for the return of the Old Coke, or at the least try to get Coca-Cola to license out the formula to someone else. The fact that in a blind taste test Mullins himself picked New Coke over Old Coke as his favorite didn’t stop him from attempting to sue Coca-Cola over the switch.

The disse
nters started convincing others; many who had never even tried New Coke decided they hated it before even tasting it, primarily because they were upset at the fact that the original Coke was no longer available. Finally, just three months after New Coke was introduced, the public outcry forced Coca-Cola to release the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic”.

So why did they get rid of Coca-Cola “Classic” in the first place, rather than just introducing New Coke as a sep
arate drink right off the bat? There were a few reasons, but the big one was because the market for cola drinks at the time was shrinking fast and by introducing another Coke substitute (having introduced Diet Coke in 1982), they feared it would split the market for their product with many people who would have drank Coca-Cola Classic now drinking New Coke. This would allow Pepsi to take the top spot by a good margin, allowing Pepsi to not only claim taste tests showed people preferred Pepsi, but also to boast about how Pepsi was the most popular soft drink in the world. Coca-Cola was unwilling to give this marketing advantage to Pepsi, so decided to get rid of the original Coke, in favor of New Coke. After all, every test they ran showed people preferred the new formulation anyways. What could go wrong?

Despite this switch not working out the way they hoped, it did in th
e end work out amazingly well. After this fiasco, Coca-Cola Classic, instead of continuing its steady decline, began to take back market share over both Pepsi and New Coke. This was despite the fact that when people were blind taste tested, they continued to almost universally pick both New Coke and Pepsi as better tasting than Coca-Cola Classic. Some theorize that the taste tests here are flawed because they often only gave people small sips. Thus, the sweeter tasting Pepsi and New Coke would perform better, whereas when drunk normally, might be too sweet, and so Coca-Cola would win in these cases. Those who theorize this is the reason for Coke losing out in the taste tests tend to state that Pepsi’s steady rise before this fiasco was not due to superior taste, but from their superior marketing, particularly to youth.

Whatever the case, while the whole t
hing was a fiasco that looked for a time like it might kill the brand, six months after the return of the original Coke, Coca-Cola sales had risen to double the rate of Pepsi and it continued to climb. Thus, the blunder ultimately was a huge part of why Coca-Cola was able to reestablish itself as the most popular cola in the world. Sometimes doing something stupid can really pay off.