Although the Steelers and Eagles didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year, Pennsylvania and Penn State will still be represented on game day — on your plate. And more likely than not, Penn State experts have had a hand in developing, or evolving, many of the Keystone State’s famous finger foods.
While Nittany Lion alumni will represent Penn State Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium, Pennsylvania food industries’ wares will be served at Super Bowl parties nationwide. Companies from around the commonwealth — referred to as the snack food belt — supply many of the Sunday afternoon munchies enjoyed while calling plays from the couch.
If your potato chips are from Utz, Middleswarth, Martin’s, Snyder’s of Hanover or Snyder of Berlin — just to name a few — the snack came from some region of Pennsylvania.
The state isn’t just about spuds. Pretzels, Peeps and peanuts also reign supreme. And of course, chocolate — Hershey and Mars among the largest. All kinds of sweet and savory foods are made in Pennsylvania, and Penn State researchers representing one of the top food science programs in the nation have helped improve companies’ products, including some famous brands not readily associated with the Keystone State.“In addition to chocolate and confectionery, you have the chippers — potato chips — nuts and other kinds of things you might even not necessarily consider snack foods,” said Greg Ziegler, Penn State professor of food science. “Then, obviously, pretzels. And then in the best of all worlds: Chocolate-covered pretzels.”
Why is Pennsylvania home to many of these products? “Both chocolate and pretzels have a heritage extending back to the Pennsylvania German ethnicity that we have around here,” Ziegler said.
Factors like location and infrastructure also play a role. “Since Pennsylvania is within 500 miles of 40 percent of the U.S. population, certainly the East Coast population, we’re very centrally located” for widespread production and distribution of these kinds of shelf-stable foods, he said.
In general, Ziegler explained, there are three kinds of operations in the overall food industry: supply-oriented industries, where the raw material, such as meat, is the important factor; demand-oriented industries — like the bread industry — in which it’s cheaper to produce products very close to the market; and footloose industries.
“These are not industries that are bound by supply and demand, but they tend to locate where there is the infrastructure, things like shipping and a good labor pool,” he said. “Probably most of the snack food industry in Pennsylvania would be considered the footloose.”
For chocolate, Ziegler points to the need for sugar and cocoa, which doesn’t grow locally. “For a long time, a lot of cocoa came in through the port of Philadelphia,” he said.
The science of salty and sweet
Penn State shares a slice of the proverbial pie, too. Beyond its famed creamery, the University has a wealth of knowledge and research dedicated to many kinds of sweet treats.
In fact, the food science department has had an endowed graduate fellowship from the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Confectioners Association for more than 25 years. The current PMCA scholar is working on astringency, “the puckering, drying feeling that you get when you eat chocolate and some other foods,” Ziegler explained.