Pod Insights The Sporkful Are The Jell-O Heirs Cursed? (Reheat) About this episode Allie Rowbottom’s great-great-great uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor in 1899 for $450, then sold it in the 1920s for $67 million — nearly a billion dollars in today’s money. Lately, Allie’s been obsessed with how all that Jell-O money shaped America, and her own family. It’s funded generations of Rowbottom women, including Allie, but it’s also been a shadow they can't escape.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Pashman? As someone who has been lucky enough to go to Napa Valley, I can tell you it's everything people say it is. Beautiful scenery, quaint, beautiful towns, and phenomenal food and drink everywhere you go. I don't even know that much about wine, but I know that every glass of wine I had in Napa Valley was excellent. I mean, there's no bad glass of wine and no bad meal. Choose between hundreds of wineries, tasting rooms, and chef-led restaurants from a low-key lunch on a vineyard terrace to a full tasting menu paired by the winemaker. Plan your trip at visitnapavalley.com.
0:32 Dan Pashman? I grew up on Land O' Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Land O' Lakes American cheese. And now, Land O' Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Land O' Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Land O' Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.
1:04 Speaker 01 Sirius XM Podcasts.
1:12 Dan Pashman? Hey, everyone. It's Dan here with another Sporkful Rehe for you. And this is one of those episodes we did years ago, and I still think about it all the time. Certain episodes just stay with you like that. It's a mysterious story. It's a mystery of sorts. And unraveling it touches on themes of American history, sexism, medicine, food, dynasties, wealth passed down from one generation to another. And it all centers on one family's complicated relationship with Jell-O. This story was originally reported by Dan Bobkoff for Business Insider. I think you're really gonna like it. Now, remember, there's a Sporkful episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer? Drop me a line. Send me an email or a voice memo to [email protected] .
1:56 Dan Pashman? Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want us to reheat, and why. Thanks so much, and enjoy.
2:05 Dan Pashman? Please note, this episode deals with eating disorders.
2:10 Speaker 02 My sort of odd and tangential claim to fame here is that my great, great, great uncle, by marriage order, Francis Woodward, bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor in 1899 for $450 and then sold it for $67 million in 1920s.
2:35 Dan Pashman? This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Allie Rowbottom is an heir to the Jell-O fortune. That $67 million that her great, great, great uncle made back in the 1920s, it's worth nearly a billion dollars today. That money has filtered down through Ally's sprawling family over generations. And lately, Allie's become obsessed with Jell-O. How Jell-O has shaped America with messages like this.
3:06 Speaker 03 What's for dessert when a spouse needs cheer?
3:09 Speaker 04 The men in my life swear by it.
3:11 Speaker 05 Ask any little girl. When it comes to entertaining, there's nothing quite like Jell-O. There's always room for Jell-O.
3:23 Dan Pashman? Ally's also been thinking about how that Jell-O money shaped her family. Jell-O funded Ally's grandmother and mother, and now it's funding Ally. But it's also been a shadow that they can't escape. Jell-O became a twisted metaphor for all the bad things that happened in their lives, to the point that they started to wonder, are we cursed? To tell this story, I'm going to turn the mic over for this episode to reporter Dan Bobgoff.
3:48 Dan Pashman? In the late 1600s, a guy in France boiled some animal bones and skin and figured out how to extract the collagen. The jiggly, clear substance became known as gelatin. Jump ahead 200 years, and a self-taught engineer named Peter Cooper turned it into a powder that became a dessert when you added hot water. But it didn't catch on, and he started working on glue instead.
4:12 Speaker 06 A half century later, a kaffir maker in Leroy, New York branched into foods and added flavors like strawberry to the instant gelatin. His wife named it Jell-O. But he couldn't get people to buy it either. So in 1899, he gave up and sold it to someone who finally turned it into a hit. That guy was Ally's great, great, great uncle. You know, the one who bought Jell-O for a few hundred and sold it for millions? From that point on, Ally's family was loaded, but they were never again directly involved with Jell-O's business or manufacturing. For years, they stayed in Jell-O's hometown, Leroy, New York. This is where, until the mid-'60s, the Jell-O factory turned those
4:54 Speaker 06 bits of old bones into a shiny dessert. In that small town upstate, it was a Jell-O economy. The family's wealth put their name on buildings. Whenever one of their kids got sick, the local gossip pages would write about it. When it got cold out, a limousine would pick them up from school. Ally heard the stories as a child, third-hand from her mother.
5:16 Speaker 02 And I loved hearing about the light elements of those stories. The feasts and servants and butlers and a limousine.
5:26 Speaker 06 Ally's childhood was more station wagon than limousine, but that 1920s fortune still meant her mom didn't need a day job. And as Ally got older, she wanted to understand where she came from, where her money came from. And so she started with the earliest inheritor in her family line, her grandmother, Midge.
5:45 Speaker 02 So Midge was the young woman growing up in Leroy, New York. My mom did always say that she had a very soft, even tone and that she really rarely raised her voice, which seems in keeping with her character. I've read a lot of her letters and they're very restrained. She had brown hair, which she wore swept into a neat bun at the back of her head, and she wore very neat earrings and very fashionable outfits for the time, a lot of sort of trim waists.
6:17 Speaker 06 Midge's Jell-O money helped make her life more exciting than the average married woman in the 1940s and 50s. She met and married her husband Bob during a stint as a reporter in Honolulu. Then the two lived in Lima, Peru for several years, as he flew commercial planes around the world.
6:33 Speaker 02 She had always wanted to travel and to write. And so the idea of living abroad with her dashing husband was, you know, obviously really fetching.
6:43 Speaker 06 But then she had kids, and her adventures hit a dead end. She found herself feeling isolated in Lima. She didn't have the support and status she got in La Roy from her place in the Jell-O royalty. So she and Bob left Lima behind and returned to their hometown, Jell-O's hometown, La Roy. In some ways, it felt sort of like a letdown. La Roy was drab, suburban, and snowy. But it was the easier choice, the safe choice.
7:10 Speaker 02 She was sort of a social butterfly. So she had a lot of girlfriends and acclimated.
7:16 Speaker 06 Midge's family was in La Roy, her cousins, her aunt. And being close meant they'd make sure to get that inheritance.
7:23 Speaker 02 So I think, you know, Midge made a sacrifice herself. She had wanted to travel, she had wanted to write, but moving back to La Roy meant that she was in the society there.
7:34 Speaker 06 Also, her life in La Roy looked a lot like what Jell-O marketing promoted back then.
7:39 Speaker 02 It was very wedded to the idea of the housewife and the strong American family where daddy goes to work at 9:00 a.m. every morning and comes home and has a martini in the evening, and the kids all gather around the table, and it's happily ever after with a white picket fence.
7:56 Speaker 06 Midge's husband was more of a beer drinker than a martini kind of man. Midge would fetch him a bottle from the fridge when he got home every day, playing the role dutifully, if unhappily. Meanwhile, their maid was in the kitchen making dinner, sometimes pouring fruit into Jell-O molds.
8:13 Speaker 06 Back then, Jell-O's makers wanted Americans to put all sorts of things into Jell-O. Onions, radishes, carrots, peas. There was a Jell-O salad with mayo and anchovies. Beans, lime, and string. A ham and celery loaf made with lime Jell-O. Mmm, bright crisp vegetables in cool...
8:32 Speaker 07 Shimmering Jell-O. There's a solid for you.
8:35 Speaker 06 What is going on? That's not even the worst of them.
8:38 Speaker 04 It was prunes, unflavored gelatin, chili sauce, cottage cheese mayo, and sweet pickles.
8:46 Speaker 06 This is Ruth Clark. She runs a blog called Mid Century Menu that tests old recipes from the 50s and 60s.
8:52 Speaker 04 Really, it was very soft. And the only thing that was hard in it were the, like, chunks of sweet pickles. So otherwise, everything's just kind of like glooping around in your mouth. It was very, very strange and very gross. It was like having a mouthful of like silly putty.
9:07 Speaker 06 This was definitely not the finest hour in the history of American food, or American food marketing. What was Jell-O saying to women at the same time that midge was in Leroy?
9:20 Speaker 02 Oh, so much about where to stay physically, which is in the home.
9:26 Speaker 07 Too late to make dessert. Wait, it's not too late to make dessert.
9:31 Speaker 02 And how to make it in particular.
9:34 Speaker 07 Just add to milk and beat.
9:36 Speaker 02 So I think, especially because initially, Jell-O was this mystery food. It was a scientific experiment, in a way.
9:44 Speaker 07 This terrific new busy day dessert is ready to eat.
9:48 Speaker 02 Once we're talking about the 40s and 50s, we're really talking about time periods that privileged growth and innovation.
9:56 Speaker 07 Or let the children make it themselves. It's that easy.
10:00 Speaker 02 And cleanliness. So old recipes might be seen as dirty.
10:05 Speaker 07 Creamy, nourishing, so delicious.
10:11 Speaker 06 It's as though the whole marketing campaign for Jell-O recipes was basically, you can hide whatever you want in a Jell-O mold. Old chicken, wilted lettuce, put it in some Jell-O. How nourishing.
10:22 Speaker 02 Jell-O really fit well with that identity, in part because it literally is a food that you mold. So it encapsulates and contains what feel like messy ingredients, like shredded vegetables, or leftovers, or whatever. It can all go into the Jell-O and become neatly contained. And I think, you know, especially in an era of American history where we were really privileging sameness, a lot of people probably had to do a lot of stuffing and hiding of their own trauma.
11:01 Speaker 06 In the mid 50s, Midge and Bob took their kids to Italy. Ally's mom, Mary, was 12. And just like Midge had realized in Peru, Mary saw there was life outside their small town of La Roy. She loved being in exciting new places, and she saw a future for herself that didn't look like the rest of the Jell-O aristocracy. But while they were abroad, Midge found out she had breast cancer. And again, she reluctantly returned to La Roy. She had a mastectomy, but she remained ill, eventually bedridden. And for months, no one in the family talked about the cancer. Mary resented her mother for taking them back to La Roy, resented the sickness. It also scared her.
11:41 Speaker 02 There was a time, and it really shaped my mother's life as sort of the last time that she saw her mother, which was in the winter. And her mom had been worsening, but I think people weren't really talking about it. And the family wasn't talking about it, certainly. But it was, it was happening.
12:02 Speaker 06 What was unsaid is that the cancer had come back. Midge was dying, and Mary wasn't prepared for it. No one was, apparently. Perhaps most of all, her husband.
12:11 Speaker 02 Her mother came out of the bathroom on the first floor of the house and was very concerned. In the other room, Bob, Midge's husband, was calling the ambulance. And Midge was saying to my mother, "Please hide me. Don't let them come for me." The subtext being, "If they come and take me, I'm never coming back." And my mother was completely bewildered by this and frightened, I'm sure, and didn't know what to do. And so she said to her mother, like, "Okay, I'll take care of you." But then ultimately couldn't figure out what to do and just had her sit down.
12:52 Speaker 02 And then my mom ran and hid behind the tool shed in the backyard while the ambulance came and took her mother away. And that was always told as sort of the last time that she saw her mother. And her mother's last words to her being like, "Hide me."
13:09 Speaker 06 A couple of weeks later, Mary received a phone call from her cousin telling her Midge had died.
13:14 Speaker 02 Everything fell apart. It was like somebody turned off the lights and things just fell apart.
13:20 Speaker 06 Mary left Leroy as soon as she could. She wanted to escape the small-town life of Jell-O fame, to carve out her own path on her own terms. She went to boarding school, then Sarah Lawrence, a small liberal arts college just north of New York. But she kept having nightmares about Midge's death. She turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. By 19, Mary ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Someone there asked her, "What's your deal?" "Jell-O," she said.
13:52 Speaker 02 I think that loss and the turmoil that ensued felt like a curse to my mom.
13:59 Speaker 06 In Ally's family, there's been an idea for generations that all the family's problems came from Jell-O, a Jell-O curse. Allie's been hearing about it since she was five. The men in the family had their idea of what it meant.
14:12 Speaker 02 Alcoholism, addiction, existential boredom. The family had a history of all of those problems and also suicide and early deaths from mysterious causes.
14:24 Speaker 06 Mary heard about the curse when she was little. And at first, it was like a scary bedtime story.
14:29 Speaker 02 She had learned as a child that the curse was specific to her family, specific to the men in her family, and how it haunted them because of the connection to Jell-O and the great wealth that Jell-O had brought the family.
14:45 Speaker 06 But then, after Midge died, Mary struggled with grief. A number of men took advantage of her vulnerability, abused her. And she eventually became addicted to drugs and alcohol. The curse started to feel very real to Mary, a curse that affected women. And over her life, she began to see Jell-O and everything it represented as a kind of parable. She could see it when she turned on the TV or opened a magazine and got a blunt reminder of where her money came from. The Jell-O ads made her cringe.
15:14 Speaker 02 So it seems like she's looking up at someone who's taller than her and--
15:18 Speaker 06 Ally showed me some old Jell-O ads from this time, around 1970. In one, a woman with coiffed auburn hair grimaces up at the camera, her hand over her mouth.
15:28 Speaker 02 And the quote at the top of the image is, "This is the 'Guess What Happened When I Backed the Car Out, Dear' pudding." So the idea being that this woman messed up and now has to atone for it by offering her husband a slice of pie.
15:43 Speaker 06 Jell-O isn't alone here. It didn't invent sexism, and it was far from the only mainstream company with ads like this. But even so, something about these ads feels especially biting. It's always a woman serving Jell-O to what we presume to be her husband. In one, she says, "Congratulations, dear. But what exactly does a vice president do?" In another, she's holding a Jell-O cream pie, clearly to atone for the new $950 fur coat she bought. You can even see the price tag on it.
16:14 Speaker 02 It's pretty egregious in terms of its sexism.
16:16 Speaker 06 When these ads were published, Mary, her mother, was in her 30s. Ally hadn't even been born. Then later in the 70s, Jell-O found a new face for the product, the always cheerful, friendly, and seemingly unthreatening-- Bill Cosby! Why not make new sugar-free Jell-O Instant Pudding? Bill Cosby hawked Jell-O in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s. It's one of the longest celebrity endorsements in history. How long has it been since your mom's fixed Jell-O pudding for you? A long time ago. How long? For a lot of that time, especially in the 70s and 80s, the ads were still about mom in the kitchen, making Jell-O for her family. Remind her, Moms, you know how the kids love Jell-O pudding.
16:58 Speaker 06 And you know it's made with fresh milk, so it's wholesome. Bill Cosby is at the kids' table. He's never the one making the Jell-O. And you haven't made Jell-O pudding for them since? Last night. Last what? But seeing him perched at the kitchen table in a woolen sweater was enough to reinforce those all-American family values, those Jell-O family values.
17:21 Dan Pashman? Coming up, after battling her addictions, Mary turns to art. Plus, her daughter Ally opens up about the role that Jell-O played in her own struggles with disordered eating. That's coming up after the break.
17:33 Dan Pashman? Time to cook up some advertisements.
17:38 Dan Pashman? When you're cooking, ingredients matter, right? You use higher-quality ingredients, you usually get better results. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably the kind of person who puts some thought and effort into your ingredients. But ingredients don't just matter with food, they also matter with laundry detergent. Of course, the cleaning job needs to get done, the odors and stains have to be tackled, and I want to feel good about the detergent and the ingredients in it. Because remember, whatever's in your laundry detergent is essentially in your clothes, and then you're putting those clothes on, you want good stuff in there. And All Free Clear uses only essential ingredients. It's 100% free from dyes, perfumes, parabens, and irritating residues. Check out the label and see for yourself, it lists all the ingredients and what they do. We've been using it in my house, we're very happy with it, and let me tell you, family of four, two teenagers,
18:21 Dan Pashman? we do a lot of laundry, so we have put All Free Clear to the test. It's a powerful clean that you can feel good about. All Free Clear is the number-one detergent brand recommended by dermatologists for sensitive skin. When it comes to laundry detergent, the choice is clear: All Free Clear. Pick up a bottle for your next laundry day. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now, Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick
19:00 Dan Pashman? dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners. Last year, right around this time, I got a new jacket from Quince, a lightweight fall jacket, and it has turned into my favorite jacket. And this is why you need a lightweight jacket, and probably a new one because it's time to freshen up your look. You need a lightweight jacket from Quince because the beauty of a lightweight jacket is you can wear it in the early fall, you can wear it in the early spring, but also it goes over a sweater, over a sweatshirt. And then suddenly, your lightweight jacket is a great accessory for pretty much the whole winter. Bottom line, when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on those everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable all season long.
19:44 Dan Pashman? They make elevated everyday essentials using premium materials and designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was The Sporkful. It's the best way to support the show.
20:20 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, check out my Instagram when you get a chance. I share what I'm up to, what I'm eating, all of my hot takes that don't always make the cut here on The Sporkful, although I don't know why anybody would want to cut out my rants about the best way to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But the point is that that stuff is on my Instagram, and we have a lot of fun there. Also, sometimes I'm like debating, what should we do for this episode? And I'll put up a poll, so it gives you a chance to actually have input into the show. So you can do it right now while you're listening. Follow me on Instagram, @thesporful. Again, it's @thesporful. Now, let's return to Dan Bobkoff and the story of the so-called Jello Curse.
21:05 Speaker 06 In her 30s, Mary had controlled her addictions and found some comfort and expression in art. She painted nude women with bold gestures and brushstrokes. But she never promoted herself or the work. She'd give away her paintings for free. After all, she had Jell-O money. Then she married, and at 40 years old, she got a surprise. She named her Ally. What was your mom like as a mother?
21:30 Speaker 02 She was very present and very childlike with me, which, you know, seems almost kind of strange, looking back on it, I think. Like, when I look at old movies or whatever, I'm a little like, I'm like, oh, I don't think I would be that kind of mom.
21:47 Speaker 01 Should we sing "Clementine"?
21:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:50 Speaker 01 Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, oh, my darling, Clementine.
21:56 Speaker 06 You can never really know a family from the outside. But when I see some of her childhood videos, I see a happy kid and a loving mom singing to her child in the bathtub with a puppet on her hand.
22:08 Speaker 01 Whoops, I got wet. Whoa, I got wet again. Ow, ooh, ah, I got wet.
22:12 Speaker 06 But Ally sees something different.
22:14 Speaker 01 Ooh, she's good at it.
22:15 Speaker 02 I noticed this in a lot of my childhood videos, like, she's acting when she's talking to me. Like, she's created a persona, and that's where we meet.
22:25 Speaker 01 Do you want me to take that little dead mouse and bury him, and we'll have a little service? Yeah. All right.
22:32 Speaker 06 In another video, it's Ally's first birthday party. Mary's sitting next to a plastic white picnic table. Ally's perched on her lap. They blow bubbles together. Ally giggles.
22:45 Speaker 06 And just to their left, on a platter, a lime-green Jell-O mold glistens in the sun.
22:58 Speaker 06 What's your first memory of Jell-O?
23:01 Speaker 02 My first memory of Jell-O, it was at, I don't know if people are familiar with the grocery store chain Stop & Shop, but they had a salad bar that had Jell-O in it and cottage cheese and whipped cream and cantaloupe melon and other things, I'm sure, but those were the things that my mom and I were selecting at the time, which I realize now, she must have been on some kind of diet.
23:24 Speaker 06 Jell-O followed Mary and Ally throughout their lives, and weirdly, Mary and Ally seemed to follow Jell-O.
23:31 Speaker 02 During my adolescence, my parents divorced, and my mom was again struggling to find her footing, and we started Weight Watchers together.
23:43 Speaker 02 I'd already had some struggles, like in my very early adolescence, with restricting what I was eating, but I think, I don't know, like I had sort of yo-yoed, and she was like worried for some reason, and she was gonna do Weight Watchers, so she was just like, why don't we do it together?
24:01 Speaker 06 Oh, so it was her idea?
24:02 Speaker 02 It was her idea. So, as in a lot of things at that time, I was like, fine, I feel betrayed by the fact that you've told me to start Weight Watchers, so I'm gonna start Weight Watchers, but then I'm gonna get better at it than you are. And so it felt like I gotta get my number smaller than hers.
24:22 Speaker 06 Weight Watchers assigns points to food, except there are a few foods that are zero points. You can eat as much of those as you want, and one of those was sugar-free Jell-O.
24:36 Speaker 02 We would just put it in the bowl on the table in between us and eat it together with spoons. It was, it was kind of an interesting time with us making Jell-O together, because it was at once this sort of bonding experience, but it was also like bonding over this ultimately destructive act, like we were both trying to change our bodies as a way of feeling better about ourselves. And Jell-O, also, it doesn't really fill you up, it's not nutritious, and it tastes horrible.
25:07 Speaker 06 This started when Ally was a teenager. By the time she got to college, the mini fridge in her dorm room was stocked full of sugar-free Jell-O cups. She refused to eat almost anything else, and before long, it turned into a full-on eating disorder.
25:21 Speaker 02 And that was a horrible, horrible time. It was a time that was really fraught for my mom and I. And then ultimately, she gave me an ultimatum, and I went into treatment when I was in my early 20s.
25:32 Speaker 06 What'd she say to you?
25:33 Speaker 02 She said, "No more money if you don't go to treatment."
25:36 Speaker 06 And that worked?
25:37 Speaker 02 It did, yeah, because I didn't know what I was gonna do otherwise.
25:43 Speaker 06 Eating all that sugar-free Jell-O, sometimes only sugar-free Jell-O, was a habit that helped enable Ally's disorder. But it was the threat of losing the Jell-O money that compelled her to seek treatment, and it paid for that treatment. That Jell-O money her mom was threatening to cut off was paying her rent and other big costs. Then, when she was better, Jell-O money would allow her to become a full-time writer. She didn't need a day job to pay the bills. So it's no wonder she didn't want to give up the cash, even if it was a little cursed. The idea of weight was such a big thing in your life. Where do you think that came from?
26:18 Speaker 02 There's this idea, at least for me in my life, of what happens when you are not, for whatever reason, allowed to speak of your trauma? And how it becomes important, in situations like that, to shut off the body, but then also give yourself something else to focus on? Like, I think, at that point in my life, like, my parents were getting divorced, and it was pretty messy. And I think I was also on the verge of adolescence and womanhood, and it felt like I wasn't ready for that. I had no protector.
26:58 Speaker 06 Ally got better, but what her family saw as the curse was reappearing in other ways. Now, Mary was sick, cancer, just like her mother, Midge. Then, as Mary began treatment in Connecticut, she and Ally became obsessed with a news story from their Jell-O hometown, Leroy, New York. It was about a group of young women known as the Leroy Girls. For months, doctors in Leroy, New York have been trying to figure out what caused 12 girls to have severe tics, almost like Tourette's Syndrome.
27:29 Speaker 06 Stay with us.
27:37 Dan Pashman? Time to cook up some advertisements.
27:44 Dan Pashman? Boar's Head brings to the deli the taste of deep fried turkey. Look, whether or not you've had deep fried turkey, I think you can probably understand that it's amazing, but making it is also a massive production. That's why Boar's Head now presents the Friar's Turkey Breast. One bite and flavor takes over. Perfectly seasoned, deliciously golden fried. A backyard tradition available at the deli only from Boar's Head. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite at your local Boar's Head deli. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring
28:28 Dan Pashman? delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.
28:43 Speaker 07 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app at participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.
29:10 Dan Pashman? Now, back to the Jell-O curse and reporter Dan Bobkoff.
29:15 Dan Pashman? Welcome back.
29:15 Speaker 02 What's been going on in LaRue, New York in the past months? So in 2011 and 2012, and this is the story that my mom became really obsessed with. A strange illness has made at least a dozen teenage girls sick at the same high school. A group of girls who were living in LaRue, New York. Well, I used to cheer every day. Came down with a mysterious set of ailments. I would go to art class. I used to, I used to go to two art classes every day. Ticking, twitching, Tourette's like symptoms. I was always so.
29:51 Speaker 02 I was always so active and Nobody knew what was causing them. Everybody was always happy to be around me. And these ailments seemed to spread like wildfire among this group of girls. So the town freaked out, as they should, looked for all sorts of contaminants and environmental factors.
30:12 Speaker 05 And it's important to reiterate, the state health department says it's confident students there are not at risk because if anything, in or at Leroy High School.
30:21 Speaker 02 But ultimately, you know, after every physical test was run and every possible physical problem was ruled out, the girls were issued a diagnosis of conversion disorder.
30:33 Speaker 06 What is a conversion disorder?
30:35 Speaker 02 Conversion disorder is sort of what it sounds like. It's the conversion of emotional stress or trauma into physical symptoms that the person experiencing those symptoms experiences as real and involuntary.
30:50 Speaker 06 Seeing these girls, it suddenly struck Ally that something like this had been her experience too. After recovering from anorexia, one of her hands occasionally became paralyzed, stuck in a claw shape she couldn't uncurl. But she'd never known what was going on. Doctors had called her experiences stress-related. She got heart palpitations and migraines, panic attacks so bad she had to go to an emergency room. She and Mary had both come to understand their ailments, partly through conversion disorder, or as Mary might have said, as symptoms of the curse. So the case of the Leroy girls captivated Ally and her mother.
31:28 Speaker 02 But I also really related to what felt like to me at their age, like an inability to understand the scope of my own trauma or to own it and certainly to speak it. So it made total sense to me that they couldn't say like
31:47 Speaker 02 What it was that they maybe needed to say. And so their symptoms were coming out sideways because that certainly had happened to me.
31:55 Speaker 06 What did your mom think?
31:56 Speaker 02 My mom really thought that this was not only a response to the individual traumas in each girl's life, but the sort of larger patriarchal character of the town in which they lived. One that she oftentimes described as sort of Brigadoon, like nothing ever changed, and that as being a problem specifically for women. She also saw it as sort of an intergenerational phenomenon wherein like women and young girls in this case are responding to the pain and the trauma that's passed down genetically from one generation to the next.
32:36 Speaker 06 Eventually, the Leroy girls started to get better. One of them was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome, and the rest were treated for conversion disorder. By the time high school graduation rolled around, everything was back to normal. And Jell-O, the food, obviously didn't cause any of this. Years later, the neurologist who treated them stands by his diagnosis of conversion disorder. As to Mary's belief that it was caused by some kind of inherited trauma, we can't say for sure. An increasing number of studies are showing that traumatic experiences in your youth can alter your DNA. Then those changes can be passed to your kids, especially through women. But the research is pretty new.
33:17 Speaker 06 Still, it sounds like a more scientific version of what Mary would call "the curse." The curse is something that you've been thinking about since you were five, right?
33:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:27 Speaker 06 And so what does it mean to you?
33:30 Speaker 02 It means not something that's at all specific to where I come from or my family, but rather something that's specific to American culture. I mean, I think it's a particular brand of patriarchy that's wedded to American capitalism and epitomized by the Jell-O brand. But I think you could look at other products and see it too. But Jell-O, because it was so invested in women's lives and...
33:59 Speaker 02 Freedom, or lack thereof, I think is a particularly apt emblem of the curse. And so like, although my mom had grown up learning about this Jell-O curse that people said was specific to her family, really, she discovered that the curse was collective.
34:19 Speaker 06 Jell-O left Leroy in the 60s and moved its manufacturing to Delaware. But much of the family stayed. And just before her mom died, Ali headed back to Leroy.
34:29 Speaker 02 It was summertime, and it was green and beautiful and a little bit suffocating, which is something that I've oftentimes felt about upstate New York. It feels like landlocked, and there's trees closing in and mountains closing in. And there's this sort of myth of Rip Van Winkle. And I feel it. Like, I just have always felt sort of a palpable difference. I like, couldn't wait to get out of there.
35:01 Speaker 06 How do you feel about your own inheritance and money? It comes from Leroy, it comes from Jell-O.
35:05 Speaker 02 Honestly, I see it. And I have to say, I'm like, fairly early into my life as like, an heir. My mom died three years ago, and she, she left me her slice of Jell-O.
35:17 Speaker 06 Her slice is worth a couple million dollars. That, plus some other money, means she never has to work.
35:23 Speaker 02 I, I really feel like it comes from her. Like, I don't really think about that. I know she did. And obviously, like, she grew up with Jell-O as much more of a presence than I did. But it feels to me like her. Maybe I am breaking the curse in some ways, is I really don't see the money as a curse at all.
35:42 Speaker 06 In 2015, Jell-O made its final appearance in Ali's relationship with her mother. It was a few months before Mary died from the cancer she'd had for more than a decade.
35:52 Speaker 02 So at this point, it was spring, March of 2015. My mom had gone in for surgery in January and had seemed to be improving, but then was no longer improving. So my husband and I flew to New York for her birthday and to see her through another hospital stay, sort of in an emergency capacity, and decided to have a little birthday party for her. It was going to be her 70th birthday, and the only thing that she could eat was Jell-O. And she preferred black cherry, so we bought a bunch of that. And since we didn't have a mold, we just put it in a Tupperware bowl, which we then flipped into this sort of odd cylinder shape and topped with whipped cream and a couple
36:37 Speaker 02 candles.
36:38 Dan Pashman? There's a video of this. She and her husband seem excited they got it to work at all.
36:47 Speaker 02 I went upstairs and got my mom and led her to the table, and we all sang "Happy Birthday." And she was sort of shuffling to the table in a white bathrobe with her hair a total mess. But she was trying to be delighted by the whole production. I think she was ultimately really fatigued. I have pictures of it, and she looks just tired. But that was, that was pretty much the last meal she ever ate.
37:28 Dan Pashman? Ali Robotom's book is called Jell-O Girls: A Family History. Our thanks to Dan Bobkoff and his whole team. This story originally aired on the Business Insider podcast Household Name, which later became the podcast brought to you by. The show's not around anymore, but they got a lot of other great food stories in their archive. This episode was originally produced by Claire Rolinson, Sarah Wyman, Dan Bobkoff, and Anna Mazarakis, with help from Anne Sanney, Aviva DeKornfeld, and me. We had editing help from Peter Clowney and Gianna Palmer. Sound design and original music by Casey Hofer and John Delore, with additional engineering by Dan DeZula and additional music from Black Label Music. This update was produced by Johanna Mayer and mixed by Jared O'Connell. Our team also includes Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, and Tracy Samuelson. The
38:11 Dan Pashman? Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
38:17 Speaker 04 I'm Shalita from Wallkill, New York, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
38:38 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by
38:40 Speaker 04 Gianna Palmer.
38:41 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
39:32 Speaker 04 Oregon Vada Zona? Is that a word? In the 2026 Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid, it might as well be, because it can be one road trip. It's all about turbocharged power and hybrid efficiency working together, so you get the thrill of quick acceleration and the satisfaction of fuel efficiency. Book a test drive and keep the Venture going. Kia. Movement that inspires. Call 800-333-4KIA for details. Always drive safely.
40:01 Speaker 07 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.
Previous This Afghan Restaurant In Houston Tastes Like Home Next Which Restaurant Serves The Best Free Bread In America? Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated