There are plenty of salty snacks that get lost in the shuffle, but Cheetos are a Cheesy
treat that has long been a favorite with snackers around the world. You are likely familiar
with both the puffy and crunchy varieties of Cheetos, but there’s a lot more to learn. So
let’s turn those fingers orange with 10 cheesy Cheetos facts that you never knew.
Making Cheetos 'till the Cows Come Home
Like most modern corporations, Frito-Lay, the folks who make many of our favorite snacks
like Doritos, Fritos and Cheetos, keep track of a lot of information about their snacks.
Of course they keep track of basic things like sales figures, but many of these statistics
they collect concern the logistics behind the production of the snacks many of us enjoy.
For instance, the company reports that it uses as many as 11 million gallons of milk
a year to produce this savory snack. This massive amount of cows milk is enough to make
about 10 million pounds of cheddar cheese. But this particular supply of cheese isn't
destined for your local supermarket because Frito-Lay has other plans for it. This tasty
cheese is used to make the savory, cheesy powder that gives Cheetos their distinctively
sharp, cheese taste that has made this snack so popular around the world. All of this Cheetos
production puts a lot of pressure on the cows because this amount of production would require
5,000 cows to each produce an average of 2,200 gallons of milk. The next time you find yourself
licking the cheesy powder from your fingers you might want to take a moment to acknowledge
the essential contribution of those thousands of cows that made your bag of Cheetos possible!
The Cheetos Colorz Caper
Anyone familiar with Cheetos snacks knows that the powdery cheese coating turns your
fingers orange. In the early 2000's Frito-Lay decided to try a new twist on this by developing
a line of Cheetos that would turn your tongue, not orange, but either blue or green. These
specially made Cheetos were called Cheetos Mystery Colorz. Customers responded with mixed
feelings about these unique varieties. Some snackers complained that tiny blue and green
specs on these Mystery Colorz reminded them too much of mold. Clearly, this was not the
kind of reaction the makers of Cheetos were hoping for when they dreamed these up. Snackers
didn't know whether their tongues would turn blue or green and this element of surprise
helped to boost curiosity about these products. However, the novelty soon wore thin and these
Mystery Colorz Cheetos were soon discontinued with seemingly little opposition from customers
who weren't as enamored of their stained tongues as Frito-Lay hoped. This idea likely failed
because it was too gimmicky. Coloring people's tongues has nothing to do with flavor and
Cheetos lovers crave distinct flavors - not colors. This was one idea from Frito-Lay probably
best left on the drawing board.
A Career In Cheetos
So you say you love Cheetos more than anything. How does this sound for a dream job? The Frito-Lay
production facilities spread around the world struggle to keep the taste and quality of
their products consistently good. One way they do this is to assign employees to periodically
taste the Cheetos coming off the assembly lines. These fresh samples are compared to
samples sent from Frito-Lay headquarters. First the chemical composition of the fresh
Cheetos are tested to make sure everything is all right with the recipe. But then comes
the fun part. A batch of Cheetos snacks must be tasted about every four hours by a group
of lucky employees who must really like Cheetos. These particular employees are referred to
as a quality control panel, but this really just sounds like a group of lucky Cheetos
lovers who get to binge on snacks several times a day. Can there be too much of a good
thing? Even if you truly love these cheesy snacks, would actually having this kind of
job ruin these snacks for you? It would probably be worth a try to find out. Who wouldn't want
to get paid to eat one of their favorite snacks?
It's A Small Cheetos World
The cheesy goodness of Cheetos snacks aren't just loved in America, they are loved around
the world by those who crave a wide variety of flavors. Frito-Lay can't satisfy all this
international demand just with production facilities located in the U.S. In fact, the
snack company has facilities spread around the world in 22 different countries as diverse
as Poland, Pakistan and Cyprus. Some of these facilities produce Cheetos snacks you would
be familiar with, but many of them make more exotic flavors that appeal to specific local
tastes. For example, snackers in Japan are crazy about Cheetos covered with strawberry
icing and another variety that tastes like Pepsi Cola. These cola flavored Cheetos probably
go well with a can of Pepsi. Apparently, Chinese snackers prefer Cheetos that taste like steak
and Eastern Europeans like peanut butter flavored Cheetos. There is something about the peanut
butter flavored Cheetos that just sounds wrong. Cheetos lovers in Pakistan crave a variety
called Ocean Safari. That title doesn’t sound too appetizing, but who knows. There
are probably plenty of Cheetos lovers around the world who think the honey barbecue flavor
is a strange flavor for this cheesy snack. When you include all of these regional favorites,
the Frito-Lay company produces a total of 50 different flavors of Cheetos to satisfy
all of its international customers. Cheetos may have started as an American snack, but
its popularity has truly grown to world wide proportions to satisfy a planet full of hungry
snackers.
Cleaning Up With Flamin' Hot Cheetos
This story deserves to be filed under American Dream: fulfilled. Richard Montanez was working
as a janitor, but he had bigger ideas in mind. He loved to eat Cheetos, but they weren't
spicy enough for his tastes so he quietly went to work to change this. After some research
and experimentation, and more than a little taste-testing, he came up with a hot and spicy
version of his beloved Cheetos snacks. What happened next is the stuff of feel good Hollywood
movies. Mr. Montanez was able to convince the snack company to give him a meeting with
the CEO to discuss his snack invention. He went to the fateful meeting well prepared
with samples and marketing research and succeeded in dazzling the Cheetos people with his new
spicy flavor. Montanez was rewarded with an impressive executive vice president position
and we were rewarded with the delightful spiciness of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. It is unclear whether
Mr. Montanez came up with the catchy name for his new product, but he certainly hit
the bull's eye with his hot take on a cheesy classic. Flamin' Hot Cheetos has become one
of Frito-Lay's most successful snacks, so here's to Mr. Montanez and his inspiring story.
Maybe there are more people out there with the next great Cheetos flavor idea waiting
to make us all happy.
Cheetos For Dinner
How much do you love Cheetos? Do you love this snack enough to scramble to make reservations
for a pop-up restaurant based on Cheetos recipes? In 2017, thousands of New Yorkers did exactly
this so they could be one of the lucky ones to get a taste of these cheesy-snack-infused
dishes. Extra points if you guessed that the name of the trendy restaurant was called The
Spotted Cheetah after the Cheetos mascot himself, Chester Cheetah. This New York eatery specialized
in everything Cheetos including Cheetos meatballs, mac & cheese with Cheetos, on top and even
tacos with Cheetos inside. The menu also offered a variety of salads and sandwiches with you
guessed it - Cheetos! If you were lucky enough to get a table, you had to bring a generous
appetite and a big affection for all things cheese and Cheetos. This pop-up restaurant
had a good, if a very short, run of three days, in New York City. This unique eatery
certainly left fans of the cheesy snack wanting more, but like all good things, it had to
come to and end before its time. However, like some of the discontinued flavors that
were returned to the store shelves, perhaps The Spotted Cheetah will be given another
chance. This could happen in New York again or perhaps another city hungry for the addictively
cheesy taste of Cheetos.
The Gorilla Cheetos
You've probably heard about someone seeing the face of Jesus in a home-made tortilla
or in a bag of potato chips, but have you heard the one about the Cheetos that looked
like Harambe? Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla who made the news in 2016
when he was unfortunately killed at a Cincinnati zoo when a kid fell into the gorilla enclosure.
Harambe then made it back into the news when a Cheetos lover reached into a bag of the
Flamin' Hot variety for another handful. The man's hand came out with a unique looking
Cheeto. The young man immediately noticed a resemblance to the recently deceased gorilla
and recognized that there might be money to be made with this unique piece of food. This
particular Cheeto in question was put up for auction on eBay with the following listing: "I
opened up a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and as soon as I looked inside I came across this
unique Cheetos that looks like Harambe the gorilla," The bidding started low at around
$11.99, but soared as high as Ninety Nine Thousand Dollars before being sold. It's not
clear what the new owner of the most expensive Cheeto in history did with it. Do you think
he ate it or is sitting somewhere under glass?
Cheetos Strong
In the early 1930's the founder of the Frito Company came up with a new way to make powdered
cheese that would alter the course of snack food history. Mr. C.E Doolin used a dairy
preservative technique that had been studied by the U.S. military to allow him to use real
milk in foods with a decent shelf life. The military had been developing ways to extend
the shelf life of a wide variety of foods to better support the nutritional needs, as
well as the taste buds, of troops spending extended periods out in the field. The troops
usually didn't have access to refrigeration for extended periods of time so these new
techniques promised to be game changers. The U.S. military eventually perfected a process
for dehydrating cheese to extend its shelf life. Mr. Doolin adopted this technique in
the production of his famous line of snacks. This innovative technique allowed him to use
real cheese in the recipe for his tasty snacks that have become favorites around the world.
Without this research, Mr. Doolin's snacks would have, like other snacks of the time,
had to rely only on artificial cheese products for flavoring. It's hard to imagine Cheetos
snacks becoming an international sensation if they had to rely on artificial chemicals
for their cheesy flavor. You might want to salute the U.S. military for its contribution
to snack history the next time you enjoy a cheesy bag of Cheetos.
Gone But Not Forgotten
Most snackers are quite familiar with the classic cheddar cheese flavor associated with
Cheetos, but over the years there have been a lot of other flavors introduced. Some of
them have been very successful such as Flamin' Hot Cheetos and others not so much. Perhaps
one of the more successful discontinued flavors was called Cheesy Pizza Puffs. The name is
rather self explanatory and they were sold from 2001 to 2005. Fans can always hope the
flavor makes a return at some point. Some snackers aren't willing to rely on hope and
have taken matters into their own hands and launched social media campaigns to lobby for
the return of their favorite discontinued flavor. Fans of the X's and O's variety are
waiting to see if their efforts to bring back this particular variety will pay off for them.
In the meantime have they resorted to playing tic tac toe on their tablets? Regardless it
seems that so far not enough Cheetos lovers care about playing tic tac toe with these
snacks, so this unique variety is most likely destined to remain missing in action. Introduced
in 2011, Cheetos Honey Barbecue Puffs found a bit of a following with its robust sweet
and tangy flavor. However, the small following wasn't enough and they were discontinued after
a short run. A honey barbecue flavor sounds like an odd choice for a cheese puff and this
probably explains its short shelf life. This one would probably worked better as a potato
chip. Because some of the discontinued flavors developed fairly strong followings, they are
gone, but they are certainly not forgotten.
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