White Popcorn And The Demise Of The Interweb

We were talking about white popcorn tonight. I had a friend who just arrived back from a trip to Canada... she had very kindly asked if there was anything I wanted from there. Thanks, I said, it would be great if you could bring back some white popcorn... it's impossible to get here. She said she'd take a look for me.

Well, it turns out that they don't have it in Ontario. She went to a bunch of stores - seven, actually - including what may have been an actual underground hippie colony fronting as a health-food shop (who would they be hiding from, you ask? most likely the fashion police, but that's a whole other post). No one had it.

"Is it bleached?" the hippies asked her. "'Cause if it's white 'cause it's been bleached, we sure won't have it."

It seems like kind of a pointless thing to say, to me, since they already didn't have it and they didn't even know if it was bleached. But, I wasn't there. In any case, she was kind enough to bring me back a jar of Orville's original gourmet which, while not white, is going to be tasty. But she did ask me... what's the difference?

"Well," I said, "it's.... uh, better. You know."

"Better... how?"

"Well, it's lighter. It's not as chewy. The flavor is cleaner."

"So, is it bleached?"

And I realized that I have no idea. Why is it white? Why is it better, and why don't more people sell it if it's better? I decided I would just look it up when I got home.

So that's what I've done. But the internet has been pretty unhelpful on this one.

I tried what makes white popcorn white, with no quotes, and just got a lot of sites trying to sell me either white popcorn or, usually, something white and related to popcorn. I tried with quotes and got nothing. Same with why is popcorn white.

Now, usually, I can find what I need online in not much time. But this is different. I've been looking for a while, and I have only found one site that kind of explains it, here. And it just tells me that there are three common varieties of popcorn. But are they processed differently? Why do they taste different? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Alternative Field Crops Manual from Purdue University is more of a technical document than something done by David Rosengarten would be, but it's a shame. I've seen a few people suggesting that the husks are thinner on the white popcorn, which would certainly explain why the texture is better once it's popped, but I haven't really found anything substantive.

So, does somebody have a book or something?

Oh, and Anonymous, let me just head you off right now and say that this has nothing to do with being fussy. Really, popcorn is just on a whole other level...