I woke up this morning, checked my phone, and saw someone sharing a video of a woman pouring the various ingredients that make up a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos into a tall glass while making YouTube thumbnail faces. I didn’t think much of it. By the time I finished eating my breakfast, that’s all my timeline was talking about.
On June 15, Keith Fitzgerald shared the video of the woman and the deconstructed Cheetos tube to BlueSky, where it went viral as people rightfully dunked on how silly it was. People began cracking jokes about the odd video, pointing out how, if you were to break down basically any food into its core ingredients, it would probably look weird and gross. It’s not like any of us were eating Cheetos because we assumed they were all-natural or healthy.
Personally, I can’t help but look at that big tube of Cheeto detritus and wonder what it would taste like if I stirred it all up and drank it. A forbidden, ultra-processed milkshake. The pinnacle of food science and ingenuity swirling around my mouth. It’s a repulsive idea, and yet, also an intriguing one. Hmmm. Much to ponder.
The source of this Cheeto ingredients video
While Fitzgerald has received a lot of shares on social media, they didn’t create the video or have a hand in making it. Instead, it was made by a popular content creator known as Science Snitch.
Science Snitch, which has YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels, was seemingly created by the woman seen in the Cheeto video. The channel claims to be an “investigative food and consumer product content brand” that performs “research” into “what’s actually inside” various “everyday products.” What this really seems to amount to is that she looks at the back of a product, where all the ingredients are listed, and then guesses how much of each ingredient goes into the food item and pours all of those into a tube that vaguely resembles a glass beaker while mugging at the camera.
And that’s an important thing to note: She is likely guessing. Unless she somehow got her hands on the actual recipe for a Cheeto, which is not public information, she only has the ingredients listed on the bag and the order they appear, which is determined by how much of each ingredient makes up the product, to determine how much of anything to pop into her tube.
Science Snitch has been making this content since March and has a few hits, though it seems the Cheetos video is breaking containment more than most of the prior stunts. That’s good for her, but bad for the world, as this kind of weird pseudoscientific viral nonsense is funny to watch, but also leads people down weirder MAHA paths that could eventually end up with them questioning vaccines and drinking raw milk. So, please feel free to joke about the dumb Cheetos video, but please don’t take it seriously.