My intention in providing a pithy back-story on this long-standing brand was to provide a little context for a product that in itself is not much more than sweetened and fortified popcorn. In addition, Doolin even ran for president on the vegetarian ticket (who knew such a thing existed?) in 1956, and in general shunned all manner of junk food, even his own.īut alas, this is a product review about Smart Food Popcorn Clusters and not a true history lesson (at least not by design). Herbert Shelton, a San Antonio vegetarian and healer who held innovative, if not controversial, theories about nutrition and fasting. Doolin was the treasurer of the Texas Natural Foods Association and an avid follower of Dr. I guess the ironic thing about all of this was Charles Elmer Doolin (who also invented the "Cheeto") was a bit of a food purist himself and health food advocate, not unlike the Kellogg brothers who ran the famed Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan and more famously started the hugely profitable Kellogg's cereal brand. Lay Company in 1945 to lay (forgive the pun) the foundation for a snack food empire. Soon people started developing a taste for these fried corn chips in 5¢ bags, and with the upswing in popularity, Doolin merged his company with H.W. Smart Food being an ever-popular brand of popcorn snacks with nearly two decades of peddling munchies on the open market, and Frito-Lay (a division of PepsiCo, Inc.) being a longstanding snack food giant and purveyor of such snack hits as Ruffles, Doritos, Funyuns, and the venerable Fritos corn chips.įritos are a good starting point for this brief history lesson, as they were the inspired creation of Texas entrepreneur Charles Elmer Doolin, who purchased the recipe in 1932 for an extruded corn chip (essentially a close cousin to Mexican fried masa) and started manufacturing and marketing "Fritos" or originally "Fritas" (translation in Spanish: fried foods) to Texas locals right out of his mother's kitchen.
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In this case Smart Food and its parent company Frito-Lay. Arguably, what is more interesting than knowing about your food, may be knowing about the history of your food.