Few Remember Life Before Tootsie Rolls

What could be more impressive than 75 years’ worth of Cheez-Its?

Try an entire century of Tootsie Rolls.

The venerable munchies are celebrating those anniversaries this year, with all the accompanying media hype you might imagine.

Tootsie Rolls, we’re told, were born in a log cabin … er, in a New York City storefront in 1896, made by hand and named after Austrian immigrant Leo Hirshfield’s 5-year-old daughter, whom everyone called “Tootsie.” Now, sophisticated equipment cranks out more than 37 million of the chewy chocolate treats each day.

Sunshine, meanwhile, figures it has baked more than 1,968,300,000,000 Cheez-It snack crackers so far - enough to stretch from the Earth to Venus, cover the entire metropolitan areas of Atlanta, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver and Washington, D.C., or pave an 861-foot-wide highway between New York City and Los Angeles. (Which would give a whole new meaning to “road hog.”)

By the book

Want to be smarter about what you’re putting into your body? Three publications from Washington State University Cooperative Extension can help.

“Nutritive Value of Foods” (publication No. PNW0357, $4) contains charts telling everything from the amount of calcium in a cantaloupe (58 milligrams), to how much cooked meat a pound of raw hamburger will yield (9-13 ounces), to the daily protein recommendation for a 14-year-old boy (45 grams).

“The Sodium Content of Your Food” (EB1338, $2) lists the amount of sodium in common foods, as well as selected nonprescription drugs (53 milligrams per Rolaid, for example).

And “Storing Foods at Home” (EB1205, $2.50) tells how to handle various foods and how long they will last at room temperature, refrigerated or frozen without deteriorating in quality. (You can keep that canned tuna practically forever, from a safety standpoint, but after a year it might start to taste or look a little funky.)

Publications are available at cooperative extension offices (in Spokane, at 222 N. Havana), or by sending a check for the amount indicated (price includes shipping and handling) to: Cooperative Extension Publications, Cooper Publications Building, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-5912. Be sure to give publication numbers.

Germ limits

Finally, some good news for those of you concerned about the big wheat germ shortage (what, you hadn’t noticed?); Kretschmer reports that, assuming spring harvests are normal, supermarket supplies should be back to full strength by August.

, DataTimes MEMO: We’re always looking for fresh food news. Write to: The Fresh Sheet, Features Department, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. Call 459-5446; fax 459-5098.