First things first, the City of Bologna (Bo-LO-nya) is the capital of Northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna province. An hour’s drive north of Florence, it sits in the middle of the Po Valley, at the foot of the Apennine Mountains that run like a spine down the length of the boot. It’s been the home of the University of Bologna, the world’s oldest university in continuous operation, since 1088.
That’s a Bunch of Phogna Bologna and You Know It
Less prestigiously, the city of Bologna is also known as La Grassa, meaning the fat one
And with good reason, say the name-callers. Bologna was where lasagna was invented, made alla Bolognese, with a rich and hearty beef-based sauce. Bologna is also the home of mortadella, a big sausage made from finely-ground pork loaded with small cubes of the white neck fat of the hog. This is considered by some to be a delicacy. As to the name, there are arguments for the Latin word for the tool used to pulverize the meat and for the name of a Roman berry that was a popular spice until pepper came along.
Thinly-sliced mortadella went viral
To protect the franchise, the Italian government imposed a strict set of definitions about what could legally be called mortadella. This was back in 1661. France did the same with Champagne in 1936 and has been updating the rules ever since.
Sixty years ago, mortadella imported from Italy was banned because of an outbreak of African swine fever
Wikipedia says a 1971 comedy starring Sophia Loren was based upon that ban. U.S. Customs won’t let her enter the country with her mortadella sausage, so she has to eat it at the airport. If you’re up for it, Lady Liberty is on YouTube and Danny DeVito and Susan Sarandon are also in the cast.
Italians who came to America had to adapt their handed-down recipes
They had to use less-prized substitutes sold in this new country, so it wasn’t for the better. Over time, the same speed at which many things change, mortadella devolved into an emulsified meat product.
Scientists say emulsifying is the process of blending together two or more liquids that resist mingling
All emulsified meat products are classified as a special category of processed meat that has been altered to improve flavor (what the marketing departments say) and extend shelf life (the big reason). The emulsifying process is what gives bologna that uniform texture throughout.
The special category is called finely comminuted meat products
I didn’t know comminuting means pulverizing raw meat and grinding it into fine particles by mechanical means. How finely comminuted is this meat product? The US Department of Agriculture says bologna must be “paste-like and smooth” and can include none of the fat globules that characterized mortadella. The paste is ground until particles are smaller than the width of a human hair, a dimension often specified for precisely-machined parts.
The ground-up meat parts are blended with fat and water (the ones needing emulsification)
Flavorings (I can’t make myself say spices), are added, as are extenders, fillers that increase the weight and add to the bulk but not the flavor. Common fillers include corn syrup, powdered milk, and whey protein. They’re the bits that keep our emulsified meats from crumbling. Other emulsified meat products? Sausages, frankfurters, hot dogs, and liverwurst. The rest of the things we call lunch meats are members of the sliced meats category.
Most American bologna is made of pork, beef, and chicken, unless otherwise labeled
The original mortadella sausage was flavored with myrtle seeds. Common flavorings in today’s bologna include nutmeg, paprika, coriander, garlic powder, allspice, celery seed, and chemical curing agents. Most American bologna uses salt and sodium nitrite as a stabilizer. It’s the ingredient responsible for the pinkish color and rubbery texture. And don’t forget the salt, the fundamental ingredient in cured meat. American bologna has plenty of it.
The casing is the girdle that keeps bologna’s shapeless mass from spreading in all directions
Bologna is wetter and tenderer than most lunch meats. It had to be slushy enough to pump though hoses into tubes called casings. So much so that without a wrapper of some sort, this wet mush would be an unappealing blob of slurry you’d buy in clumps and globs. By holding the moisture in, the casing also preserves the texture. For years, casings were made from recycled pig intestines. Today, most casings are made from cellulose or plastic.
Bologna’s popularity was simple
It was less expensive than other delicatessen meats because it was made from the least desirable scraps of meat, tissue, and organs. The branded, packaged bologna sold in grocery stores stayed fresh, eliminating a trip to the butcher, a commonplace occurrence in recent history when most married women were housewives who cooked meals for their families.
Techo-bologna
Modern meat processing has made great strides in efficiency since the days of Upton Sinclair, the man who told the world of the horrors of the meatpacking industry. There’s now a process that separates the skeletal muscle tissue from the bone with breaking off bits that could be recognized as bone. It’s called Advanced Meat Recovery because focus groups said it sounds better than “scraping the last traces of the tough, stringy bits that we could never get unglued from the bones until someone invented this machine.” At this point, the recovered substance is referred to as meat material, which means it only technically qualifies as meat. Sorta like the labels that say cheese product instead of just cheese.
The word baloney rhymes with many words
Bologna, as pronounced by Italians with its characteristic NYA sound, rhymes with nothing much. Some make the case that the change from bologna (-YA) to baloney (-EE) was as natural for Americans as how they changed Italia (-YA) to Italy (-EE). Baloney became the more easily pronounceable term for bologna sausage, the former mortadella.
So how did it become a word that meant nonsense to Americans?
It’s generally agreed that people believe baloney to be a cheap product made from scraps pretending to be meat. People would say something wasn’t real the same way baloney/bologna wasn’t real meat. This perception led to it being used to describe something deceitful, as in that’s a bunch of baloney. That’s why we say baloney even though the packages will always say B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Using the word BALONEY on the label would be too much of an admission.
Not long after that, phogna bologna entered the language, or as we say in the States, phony baloney. Here’s a scene from Blazing Saddles where Governor Lepetomane warns Hedly Lamarr of the threat to their employment.
This coming Saturday is National Bologna Day
When making your plans, keep in mind what Hall of Fame footballer Artie Donovan, called Fatso by teammates and opponents, had to say about it: “The best way to die is to sit under a tree, eat lots of baloney (he was no bologna guy) and salami, drink a case of beer and blow up.”
Bonus
The ranks of those who used the Italian pronunciation dropped sharply when Oscar Mayer first aired its famous jingle on television in 1974.
My baloney has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R.
My baloney has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R.
I love to eat it every day,
If you ask me why I’ll say,
‘cause Oscar Mayer has a way
with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.
The kid says baloney but spells out bologna, giving some lucky viewers a frisson of cognitive dissonance. Sharp-eared readers and sharp-eyed listeners caught the adult voiceover giving the Italian pronunciation.
In our easy-peasy world of AI robots who give answers to most of our questions in only seconds, anybody can find answers
Many of those answers are baloney but most people cannot tell what’s real from what isn’t. The answers all organizations need are much harder to come by. They can only be found when you know what questions to ask, how to ask them, when and where to ask them, who to ask, and sometimes most importantly, who not to ask.
Over 40 years of research, I’ve learned more about asking questions than most
As a matter of fact, when people discover I’ve long been a researcher, most say, “Oh, you’re the guy with all the answers.” “No,” I tell them, “I’m the guy with all the questions.” I’d like to add that when it comes to companies mired in the past, I’m known as “the guy with all those damn questions,” because I challenge all of their assumptions, including the ones they hold the dearest.
