Horrifying 12-day Cool Whip Experiment
Two years ago, I did a 12-day Cool Whip experiment to demonstrate to my daughter the impact of chemicals on food…and on us.
The outcome was so bizarre, it left quite an impression.
And, I shared the results in this very post. But, I felt the need to “refresh” the post and revisit the experiment after what unfolded yesterday.
Talk about the power of “seeing is believing,” last night—two years later—we were out a restaurant with the family. When our waiter brought my daughter a glass of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, she gleefully dove in with a spoon. Scooping up a dollop, she noticed it was unusually thick. She tasted a bit.
Then turned to me and whispered,
“daddy, this tastes like Cool Whip”
…and promptly slid the glass away.
To understand why, you’ve got to see what unfolded in the original experiment…
It all started as a simple way to demonstrate to my daughter the difference between real-food and fake food. But, man-oh-man, did this thing go horribly wrong!
As the son of a mad-baker, I had a lot off whipped-cream growing up. But, not the kind you get from a can or a plastic tub. Mom used to whip it up fresh from heavy cream, vanilla and sugar. Okay, so we know that’s not the best thing for your body these day…but wait’ll you see this!
The Great 12-day Cool Whip experiment…documented in photos!
I decided to do a little experiment to see just how fake some food was and show my daughter, because pictures speak so much louder than words. So, I picked up a small tub of Cool Whip Lite whipped “topping,” and I also made up a quick batch of fresh whipped-cream. I dropped a big scoop of each into two little bowls and set them on the table.
Not surprising, within minutes, the real stuff began to melt away to nothing. An hour later, it was just a puddle of cream and sugar.
But, what unfolded next not only shocked, but horrified us…
The Cool Whip appeared unchanged…for 12 straight days!
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
After Day 12, I finally got the guts to touch it and found that it had begun to harden into a plastic-like substance…
So, I decided to run two final tests on it…
The sideways gravitational-pull study…
and, the drawing-a-smiley-face-on-it study…
Sufficed to say…my little girl won’t be eating Cool Whip anytime soon!
So, can I get a nice, juicy, collective YYYUUUCCCKKKK in the comments?
92 comments
POSTED IN: Branding, Conscious living, Health & fitness, Parenting | Family | 05/25/10
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Yuck is right. But… uh… you may have just taught your daughter that Cool-Whip is better. See how long it lasts?
Wow!! That is sooooo….. YUCKY!!!! (Aren’t I hip… I can talk like my 6 year old)
It is so amazing the amount of chemicals most foods have in them. That is the only way food would remain unchanged for that long…. chemicals!! Isn’t it the Twinkie that could remain unchanged for 30 years? UGH!!
get a couple of cans and make a snowman….it’ll last forever.
@sharon Haha! AWESOME idea.
@ James – funny, I thought of that, so I was trying to tell her it would stay like that inside her…forever! Okay, a little overdramatic, but, hey, just trying to make a point.
@ Shana – Yeah, this really freaked me out!
@ Sharon – Brilliant, experiement number 2 in the works, gotta figure out what to use for the face, though. Suggestions? (gotta be fake)
@Jonathan: Licorice for the face?
Twizzlers ingredients: Corn Syrup , Flour , Sugar , Cornstarch , Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil 2% or Less , Salt 2% or Less , Artificial Flavorings 2% or Less , Citric Acid 2% or Less , Potassium Sorbate 2% or Less – a Preservative , Artificial Coloring 2% or Less – Includes Red 40
As the mad baker and hands-on science experiment person in my family, there is not much I will not cook, eat or try. This, I never thought of.
I must thank you for an inspiring Monday… er… expose. Yes, that’s it. Expose. An expose that showed me that though Cool Whip is made of complex forever pharma chemo stuff, smiling is simple and almost anything can inspire a good smile.
Now I am having a craving for roasted sweet onions on a bed of steamed organic kale.
Aww man Jonathan! You’ve just ruined my favorite whipped topping! Actually, you used the “lite” version, so I would definitely have to say YUCK! Full calorie cool whip all the way for me!
[...] to add insult to injury, I have recently learned that Cool Whip is not food either. Well, that is not exactly what it says, but really, take a look at the pictures and tell me that [...]
I am close to devistated by this… it was bad enough when I found out McDonald’s french fries weren’t made out of food.
It reminds of the movie Super Size Me where the guy eats McDonald’s food for 3 meals a day, for 30 days. (If you haven’t seen it,talk about yucky!) In any event at the end they put various fast foods in separate jars to see what happens. Many of them, like your cool-whip, never changed.
As nasty as it is to see mold grow on foods kept too long, it does make me feel a little bit better about what I’m eating.
You have a big great “yuck” from the South East of England. That’s as bad as the tooth dissolving in coke I saw on TV when I was a kiddie.
Speaking of Coke, did you know that it makes an excellent toilet bowl cleaner?
So does lemon juice…
Hmm, I”m seeing art potential. You could paint with this stuff! Could be huge!
LOL. Yuck! This brought back the fun my kids and I had with our “scientific” experiments. Congratulations on making such happy memories with your daughter.
Reminds me of this story of a shopkeeper back in 1967 who did a similar experiment with margarine:
“I put a cube of margarine … on a saucer and placed the saucer on the window sill in the back room of my store. I reasoned that if I made it readily available and if it was real food, insects and microorganisms would invite themselves to the feast. Flies and ants would be all over it just as if it were butter … That cube of margarine became infamous. I left it sitting on the window sill for about two years. Nobody ever saw an insect of any description go near it. Not one speck of mold ever grew on it. All that ever happened was that it kind of half-puddled down from the heat of the sun beating through the windowpane, and it got dusty – very dusty.”
(Fred Rohe, PPNF Health Journal)
All I can say is, no thanks!
Just think if you put enough together you could go tubing in mid July Florida weather.
By the way Jonathon when I’m ready I’ll tell ya my story, I may even ask for some help.
Thanks for the expose
Pat
Here’s is one even better, if you mix with Coke could you clean your Engine.
20 year old twinkies anyone?
http://www.rogernichols.com/EQ/EQ_97-01.html
@ Everyone – Oh man, I just clicked on Lisa’s link to the 20 year old twinkie story…that is NASTY!
And, for anyone who’s favorite snack food I’ve unintentionally killed, um, sorry. If you’d like to avoid the need for embalming when you pass, though, just keep eating a spoonful a day! hehehe!
That’s some pretty freaky stuff! It’s weird, when I saw your happy face drawing my immediate association was with the Kool-Aid character. But a quick google proved my brain wrong, they don’t look much alike.
Good on ya for doing this experiment for your daughter, and sharing it with us.
Oh, that is scary! I always make fresh whipped cream too. Not the best for you, but at least it’s natural, right?
My grandpa has had a twinkie a day habit for many years. We would joke that we could make a bomb shelter and just stack it with his twinkies and survive a few years in there.
speaking of margarine, I heard somewhere that if you changed one molecule in margarine, it would be plastic. eww. why does anyone even eat that stuff?
..and what is the point of all this????
Yo Jonathon whats up? I loved this expirement, i have a question when u drew on the face did it move at all or did it stay the same and you had to draw around the peaks of the wipped cream and stuff???
Luv ya
bye!!!
haha that’s nuts. i should give that a try and show it to my brotherinlaw.
My Dad was a chef,.. he never let us eat anything pre-packaged. I wish I was as strict, but YUUUUKKK no cool whip for us!
Everyone should read “Deconstructing the Twinkie” by Steve Ettlinger, it is literally an adventure in processed food manufacturing. I found it a bit bland and scientific, but a browse of each chapter is enough to make you want to avoid all boxed goods outside of Whole Foods.
Did you know that Corn dextrin, a Twinkie ingredient, is also the glue on postage stamps and envelopes?
Something tells me if I had a living Great-Grandmother she wouldn’t be that into Cool Whip either.
My mistake the correct title is “Twinkie, Deconstructed”!
[...] That’ll make you think twice about putting that stuff on your pumpkin pie. Horrifying 12-day Cool Whip experiment [...]
[...] The Cool Whip Experiment (HT: Whole-Life) [...]
I’ve always preferred whipped cream to Cool Whip as the latter has always tasted like plastic to me. But, the thing that bothers me here is that so many people seem to think that whipped cream is bad for you. Granted most of the cream sold in most grocery stores is probably bad for you. But, if you can get access to cream from a pasture-fed cow, it is loaded with vitamin A and D. And, if you can get it raw, so much the better. Check out the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation. It’s a real eye opener.
http://westonaprice.org/
OMG!! Yikes. Imagine what it’s doing to the insides of people who are eating this fake stuff on a regular basis. Horrifying is right! @.@
Thank you for the insight. I am not a fan of non-home made whipped cream, but this will certainly deter me from ever being remotely tempted to buy or eat the pre-made variety ever again. I can’t believe you where able to draw on it!
Long time no see. I hope all is well with you and the family
. Take care.
[...] This experiment answers that age old question; “What happens to Cool Whip if I leave it out on the counter for 12 days?” [...]
That is YUCK ! CW stinks !! But there is still hope for us whipped topping junkies becoz there are other products like Reddi-wip in the market that are made with REAL CREAM !!!! Not fake like CW. I did my own experiment and a dollop of reddi-wip in a few minutes does melt away. Ofcourse, its the REAL THING !!! And the cherry on top is that its only 15 calories !!!
Jonathan – Maybe your daughter should try RW !
[...] 1. An experiment that illustrated what happens to Cool Whip (as opposed to natural whipped cream) when it is left out at room temperature for 12 days. To see that experiment CLICK HERE [...]
I like cream on my waffle .I hate the cool whip, which cream can be substituted for cool whip. I have grown up with just beating up whipping heavy cream.
Thank you.
Amina
Wow, I wonder how many other processed foods behave like that. No wonder we are so sick.
would you please do the same experiment leaving the natural whipped cream uncovered in the bowl for 12 days and show us what it looks like???
i am not advocating the use of cool whip,, i just think without the 12 day old whipping cream to compare it against,, it is literally impossible to decide which is more or less appetizing at the 12 day mark…..
As a Cherokee, my dad, opposed embalming and “cast iron” caskets. We weren’t able to get permission for a wooden casket when he died, but we didn’t have to embalm him. Mortician told me that we didn’t need to embalm because he would have eaten enough preservatives in foods to preserve him. That was in 1984. Imagine now, when even produce is bio-engineered.
The only thing I use Cool Whip for is on pumpkin pie. I’m going to have to find something else. All natural vanilla ice cream?
I eat really healthy, and sometimes I think a little “bad” food will be O.K., but I don’t think I’ll be touching Cool Whip again.
Cool Whip is probably hating you and your experiment right now. Bad for their business. Good for our bodies.
Thanks for the post!
@donna, it is actually super easy to make your own whipped cream – all you need is heavy cream, a little confectioners’ sugar and vanilla.
even without a hand mixer or blender, it just requires a little exercise to whip it up until it’s fluffy… with a mixer, it’s even easier!
I love that you did this experiment! It should open many eyes to what is in the foods we eat. I just found your blog today as I was finishing my newsletter. I included your blog link to pass on to my readers more visual examples of how our processed food is more plastic than real food. Your daughter will always remember this. You did a great job!
I did something like that, but it was on accident, on the 2nd day the cool whip becomes kinda crispy.
That is an interesting experiment. I did the same thing by accident the other day with the low fat cool whip. I accidentally left it on the counter over night, forgetting to put it back in the fridge, and in less then 8 hours it had melted down into a water puddle. Which leads to me wonder, just how cold is your house??? Or how honest was your experiment? Perhaps you were just trying to prove a point to you daughter to encourage healthy eating?
[...] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.05/st_coolwhip.html http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/horrifying-12-day-cool-whip-experiment/ [...]
[...] the ingredients in Cool Whip are scary and this guy did a 12-day experiment on the stuff. I think as long as you keep everything in moderation, all that butterfat is just [...]
eeewwww yuuuuuuukkkkkkk!!!!
(how’s that?)
Grok on!
According to wikkipedia Cool Whip Original is made of water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60 (sorbitan monostearate), and beta carotene.
So let’s see: waters okay but the next three ingredients aren’t even food – corn syrup, hydrogenated oil, HFCF. Bleck. The rest of it sounds pretty inedible too. I’ll stick to getting beta carotene from yellow veg thanks.
“Sorbitan monostearate (also known as Span 60) is an ester of sorbitan (a sorbitol derivative) and stearic acid and is sometimes referred to as a synthetic wax.[1] It is primarily used as an emulsifier to keep water and oils mixed. Sorbitan monostearate is used in the manufacture of food and healthcare products, and is a non-ionic surfactant with emulsifying, dispersing, and wetting properties[citation needed].
It is also employed to create synthetic fibers, metal machining fluid, brighteners in the leather industry, as an emulsifier in coatings, in pesticides, and in various applications in the plastics, food and cosmetics industries.”
ugh.
That Cool Whip may also be sentient
BTW, my wife is a molecular biologist who teaches bacteriology. One of her “fun” experiments with grad/med students is to have them take baterical cultures from a toilet seat, raw chicken, and bagged, “pre-washed” salad. Guess which of the three lit up the petri dish the most?
Beware packaged food, no matter how seemingly benign (lettuce) or obviously malevolent (COOL WHIP).
On the one hand, ewwwwwwwwww.
On the other hand, hasn’t honey, nature’s own bee-vomitty sweetener, been known to emerge from Egyptian pyramids a little crunch but still edible?
I’m going to have to think on this one.
YUMMY! After all this time, it still LOOKS good to eat. But, then again I don’t like eating anything with a face on it.
I think the next experiment should involve that spray cheez in a can. (When it comes in a can, I think you have to spell it with a ‘z’.)
Looking forward to the results.
Isn’t that the stuff they use for insulation foam these days?
I’m certainly glad that I’m not a fan of this stuff, since I’ll be making it a point to not eat any!
I don’t see what the problem is. That looks like some well-engineered food to me.
Of course, I’m an engineer, not a human, so I might be grading this stuff on the wrong scale.
After seeing documentaries like “King Corn”, “Food, Inc.”, and “Supersize Me”, I’m not surprised at what passes as “food”.
I was raised on a strict organic diet (before it was fashionable), and I wish it were more affordable. I suppose small investments in our diet now prevents long term illness.
There’s a reason why we have so many health problems here in the U.S.
I never buy whipped cream from the store anymore because real whipped cream is SO easy to make, and tastes much better.
Thanks for sharing this nasty experiment with us!
Awww…don’t tell me this! I love Cool Whip:) Now I feel the same way I felt when I found out that a pop tart has more sugar than a Snickers (both also delicious. yum)
When I was growing up, we ate whatever was cheapest. I know convenience food is certainly not less expensive in the long run, but when you are trying to eat, a frozen pizza is way less than all the ingredients to actually make a pizza. Same case with a lot of things, which is why poor people eat so many carbs. It fills you up. It took me years to get over eating bread and butter with every meal. Old habits, especially fond ones from childhood, die hard.
YUCK!!!!!
I understand Wonder bread will last forever too.
I said for years and years that butter was fine, but margarine would kill you. Turns out I was right! Ha!
@Debbie, my grandmother ate bread with every meal. She lived into her 90s and was thin.
WOW, such a simple experiment to demonstrate how we are potentially poisoning ourselves with our crappy food choices….if ever there was a message about eating REAL food this is it. Thanks Jonathon.
Ooh this is such a good lesson you’re teaching her! I seriously wish I had learned this early on in my life.
Whipped cream with real cream is sooo much better, no matter what.
Another fun (disgusting?) one is BionicBurgers… a guy who forgot a burger in his coat pocket for a year, and 1 year later it had not rotted at all. Major yuck indeed!
Haha,
Some of the time you have amazing business insights.
Some of the time I’m caught off guard by a post like this.
Either way, its all good =)
The worst part though is I like Cool Whip! What to do…
Ewwwwwwwwwww, from Australia. I don’t think we have cool whip here, I think I’m grateful??
When my brother was in high school he did a similar experiment with a small piece of ground beef and a glass of coke. After about a week, the piece of ground beef was GONE. Scary what we willingly put into our bodies without a thought (and I do love a icy cold coca-cola every so often). Haven’t thought about that in years!
Thanks for the reminder J!
I can’t believe so many people are shocked or even surprised by the results of this experiment. Did you really not suspect that Cool Whip isn’t real food?
Yuck, but only twelve days old…
Do you know the FOUR YEAR OLD CHEESEBURGER (and fries) from this nutritionist lady?
You can find it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IGtDPG4UfI
I shared this tale with my niece today. She was disgusted. And promptly slapped me for rendering her permanently unable to consume Cool Whip ever again. It was the doodled smiley face that pushed her over the edge. Mission accomplished!
It is chemical food and diseases that increase our GDP about which our politicians are bothered about and economists worry about and managers bonus about. What is needed is a green way of living, home cooking, home loving and family people. Let us change economics.
Eeeeewwww…
In the Uk we do not have quite so much synthetic food as I recall seeing in the USA but tins of “whipped topping” abound. Never bought one myself I hasten to add.
One other remarkable product I remember from a hotel was something called “Egg Beaters”. It was a carton (tetra-pack) of something that you could pour into a pan to make omlettes etc.
Why on earth the chef couldn’t break a few eggs and whisk them for 20sec was totally beyond me. I never went near that stuff as I had no idea what else was in the carton.
Perhaps the most amazing thing was how the Hotel was proudly advertising the fact that their freshly cooked, made-to-order, omelettes were made using Egg Beaters…
Jonathan, I have some marshmallow Peeps given to me at Easter 12 years ago. Other than stiffening a bit, their essential Peepness is still fully intact. (Of course, eating a fresh Peep is dining recklessness regardless.)
However, somewhere, a Dorian Gray Peep rots and rots…
YUCK! LOL I hardly ever hear anyone talk about “fake food” so I appreciate this. I don’t eat the stuff either. Not fake sugar, fake butter, fake whatever. Why? Hear, hear, for real whipped cream. Takes two minutes to make.
Reminds me of “marshmallow bread” and a similar experiment my sister and I did, years ago. I think it was “Wonder” brand bread. Put a few pieces out side-by-side with home-made bread. In a few days, the Wonder bread will look something like your Cool Whip experiment. On the real bread, mold is happily munching it down. Which one would you rather eat? The one that even mold won’t eat?
I remember being at a weekend retreat, talking about organic food while at the dinner table. One of the diners said she used to buy organic produce, but stopped because it rotted so quickly.
Yeah, someone else pointed out, but you *want* your food to rot! You want to buy it fresh, and eat it while it’s still fresh. Lettuce is not *meant* to least for weeks!
There’s a reason the conventional produce doesn’t rot: chemicals. Yum! (Not.)
Basic rule of thumb, perhaps: the shorter the shelf life, the healthier the food.
Gross.
And here’s another “food” to add to the list: anything from McDonald’s that can last over one year (unrefrigerated) on a shelf without showing any real sign of decay:
http://consumerist.com/2010/03/this-1-year-old-happy-meal-has-aged-surprisingly-well.html
YYYUUUCCCKKKK! And I am Lactose intolerant!
Some time ago my daughter and I saw a TV program which detailed the ingredients in Cool Whip (one of them was very similar to anti-freeze!) – we have never had Cool Whip since.
And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with good old real whipped cream. You don’t even need to add sugar to it – it simply tastes wonderful.
The real problem people have with weight, health, etc. is not from eating “whipped cream” but from eating way too much food and not exercising regularly. But then, I’ve always been interested in nutrition – when my oldest were little I even used to make my own peanut butter and mayo (though I figured out home-made ketchup doesn’t cut it and isn’t worth the trouble!)
And another thing, if people would quit drinking soda (except for very rare occasions) – many of them could solve their weight and health problems right there!
I had several toppings, over a span of just a few days, the same as which you experimented with and spent a day in agony, convinced I would die. In fact, dying might have been a relief. Why isn’t that product banned from the marketplace ?
[...] Horrifying 12-day Cool Whip Experiment – This is easily one of the grossest things ever. So gross that I actually called up some friends to find out if they had Cool Whip in their homes – and immediately told them to chuck it! When they asked why I sent them straight to Johnathan’s blog. [...]
[...] food is not really food Check out this link, courtesy of my sister. By sdmcclurg, on May 31, 2010 at 7:29 am, under Bad Decisions?. . No [...]
yyyuck. I live in Germany but I’ve been to the States a couple of times. I’ve never stumbled over Cool Whip so far but I guess I’ll have to try it some time if only to build my own opinion on it.
Nice post!
Came across your site when I googled ‘what is Cool Whip’. Ive never tried it, and was curious when I saw my local grocer selling them. Your 12 day study has officially killed any curiosity I may have for tasting it. Thank you for the interesting experiment. Did you know there is one other product on the shelves which also doesnt change when opened and left out for days? Margarine. It horrible and I cant imagine why they still sell it as a subsitute for butter when the flies wont even touch it.
[...] Horrifying 12-day Cool Whip Experiment <<I believe it was Michael Pollan who first said, “If it doesn’t rot it isn’t food.” That means even bugs won’t eat it. (Jonathan Fields) [...]
Don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Makes me think of Joan Gussow’s famous quote: http://bit.ly/duJBX3
[...] Horrifying 12 Day Cool Whip Experiment….thank you Jenn Posted in Uncategorized [...]
I had thought about cryogenics after I passed on, but now I want to be covered in cool whip!
On one hand, ew.
On the other hand… there are few other choices that are as readily available to the large contingent of lactose-intolerant and allergic people who still want some sort of whipped topping on their desserts. Lactose-free cream is pretty much non-existent in North America and specialty non-dairy products are still pretty rare and often require a trip to specialty food markets. Just sayin’. I’ve gotten sick a handful of times, even after taking lactase tablets, because of the siren call of whipped cream.
[...] * I know Cool Whip is easier to use, I do. But if the fact that it is made out of about ten different kinds of chemicals does not convince you not to use it, maybe this will. [...]
I was born and raised in Europe and do not use this product. Recently at a neighborhood event I was introduced to a dessert which featured Cool Whip. Frankly the texture and taste scared me. I am not a whole food/organic food freak but I try to be careful about what I eat within reason. I don’t understand why a nation of people who worry about cholesterol would dive into something made with Cool Whip or, worse, low fat, Cool Whip. Natural dairy products, in moderation, are so much healthier than this chemically created substitute and they taste better too!
[...] months ago by Jonathan Fields, a “fitness entrepreneur,” in which he described a “horrifying 12-day Cool Whip experiment” he had done with his daughter. Check the blog for the details, but the short story is [...]
[...] 12 day Cool Whip Experiment [...]
My husband’s grandfather eats pumpkin pie with Cool Whip on it at least once a week. It’s his favorite dessert. He’s eaten it for decades. He’s 93 years old and fit as a fiddle! I love Cool Whip and I am still going eat it! Yum! (And since when are corn syrup and vegetable oil not foods? They are made from foods – corn and vegetables.) Oh well, I guess I like living on the edge. I drink Dr. Pepper too.