Decoder Ring | A Prune by Any Other Name

Summary

Podcast Summary: Slow Burn – Decoder Ring | “A Prune by Any Other Name”
Host: Willa Paskin | Air Date: February 25, 2026

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Overview of Episode

This episode of Decoder Ring, hosted by Willa Paskin, examines the decades-long battle fought by the California prune industry to overcome the prune’s most enduring obstacle: its embarrassing reputation as a laxative for the elderly. Through interviews, colorful anecdotes, and ad campaigns from the early 20th century to the present, the episode explores attempts to rebrand the prune—including a years-long push to relabel the fruit as a “dried plum”—and reflects on the broader theme of whether a new name can ever truly rehabilitate a stigmatized identity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Prune’s Identity Crisis (00:00 – 04:44)

• Personal Anecdote: Willa recounts her introduction to “plum juice” and “dried plums” at supermarkets and how obvious attempts to hide the prune’s true identity inspired both skepticism and curiosity.
• Central Question: Why is the prune so desperate for a new image, and what does that say about self-acceptance—both for products and people? (02:44)

What is a Prune, Anyway? (04:45 – 08:36)

• Prunes are a variety of plum (specifically, the Prune d’Agen) that can be dried without fermenting.
• Originated in Western Asia, spread through France and arrived in North America in 1856, thanks to Louis Pellier’s grafting.
• California is the global prune capital: $700 million annual industry, nearly 200 million pounds produced.
• Quote:
  Rich Peterson:
  “Of course [we still eat prunes]. Do we breathe air? Yes, we eat prunes.” (07:57)

Prunes and Stigma: The Poo Problem (08:36 – 16:11)

• The prune is associated with digestion and regularity, thus gaining a reputation as something “for old people who need to poop.”
• Quote:
  Willa Paskin:
  “We associate prunes with old people taking shits.” (08:42)
• Early 20th-century ads leaned into prune’s laxative function; later advertising oscillated between earnestness and self-deprecating humor, culminating in Stan Freberg’s celebrated comedic campaigns.
• Impact:
  “Sunsweet sales went up 400%” after the self-aware ads (13:01)
• The culture at large adopted prune jokes, cementing their status as a punchline.

Surplus, Decline, and Drastic Measures (16:11 – 24:02)

• In the 1990s, expanding prune crops coincided with declining sales—youth and middle-aged consumers wouldn’t buy them due to the stigma.
• The industry, desperate to offload excess, even developed “prune burgers” for school lunches, finding USDA acceptance but tepid consumer enthusiasm.
• Quote:
  Rich Peterson:
  “What? A burger with prunes in it? Dad, come on.” (21:55)
• The prune board realizes their problem is less about the fruit’s intrinsic qualities and more about perception.

The Great Rebranding: From Prune to Dried Plum (24:02 – 36:45)

• Inspired by precedents like Chinese gooseberries → kiwifruit and Patagonian toothfish → Chilean sea bass, the industry lobbies to rename prunes as “dried plums.”
• Initial FDA resistance, fearing consumer confusion, finally overcome with political and media pressure (with help from Senators Feinstein, Boxer).
• Quote:
  Dan Haley (prune board lobbyist):
  “A prune is a dried plum. What's the deal here?" (31:31) “You ever hear of people leaking things? ... We leaked it to the press.” (33:44)
• In early 2001, the FDA relented: prunes could also be labeled as dried plums, sparking brief excitement, increased media attention, and short-term sales boost.
• Quote:
  Rich Peterson:
  “The industry was pleased. They were selling more prunes. Their prices were holding better ...” (37:42)

The Limits of Rebranding (37:22 – 44:45)

• Despite initial uptick, the term “dried plum” never displaced “prune”; even industry insiders defaulted to the original name.
• Quote:
  Willa Paskin:
  “It was a good idea on paper, but in reality, the term prune was entrenched.” (38:49)
• Underlying issue: consumers associate prunes with digestive consequences—no name can override that visceral response.
• Quote:
  Kieran Losee (Prune Board):
  “The problem is fear. We have a fear factor happening with our product.” (39:53) “Even people who eat prunes and like prunes have this number in their mind ... that number is five.” (40:52)
• Ironically, the prune’s most potent selling feature (as a laxative) is also the barrier to wider acceptance.

Embracing the Prune Once Again (43:30 – 45:34)

• Industry research leads to a reinvigorated, more honest campaign: change the name back to prunes and celebrate the product as it is, focusing on taste and health, not denial.
• The “Prunes for Life” campaign launches, but the same old sales challenges persist.
• Quote:
  Kieran Losee:
  “It was time for a refresh ... And that's when we made the change back to prunes.” (43:30)

Final Reflections: Limits of Renaming (45:34 – End)

• Social media clips reveal persistent public confusion about what a prune actually is.
• Even after all the marketing twists, people still suggest renaming them, as if that’s the magic fix.
• Quote:
  Willa Paskin:
  “A prune by any other name, it’s still gonna make you poop.” (46:12)
• The story becomes a parable on self-acceptance—the limits of trying to outrun your essential nature.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You know, my dad was a farm mechanic and my mom was a school lunch lady ... my mom made sure that all her kids were treated to prunes.” — Rich Peterson (07:17)
• “Prunes have a stigma. I mean, they’re primarily known for one thing.” — Rich Peterson (08:36)
• “It’s God’s Ozempic.” — David Leibovitz, on prunes and regularity (08:54)
• “A prune is a dried plum. What’s the deal here?” — Dan Haley (31:31)
• “It was time for a refresh. And the refresh needed to not only include a brand image change, but also a name change. And that’s when we made the change back to prunes.” — Kieran Losee (43:30)
• “A prune by any other name, it’s still gonna make you poop.” — Willa Paskin (46:12)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–04:44 — Host’s personal memories; the prune’s image crisis introduced
• 04:45–08:36 — History and botany of prunes; California’s dominance
• 08:36–16:11 — Rise of the prune as a laxative; advertising history, emergence of prune jokes
• 16:11–24:02 — Surpluses, the prune burger, and examining the market
• 24:02–36:45 — Pivot to ‘dried plum’, years-long struggle for FDA approval
• 37:22–44:45 — Rebranding aftermath, market realities, and acceptance of limitations
• 43:30–45:34 — Return to “prune”; marketing shifts again
• 45:34–End — Reflections, ongoing confusion, and broader themes of self-acceptance

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Tone & Style

The episode is wry, self-effacing, and often tongue-in-cheek, treating prune marketing drama and scatological humor with both empathy and sharp cultural observation. It leans heavily on both archival records and first-person accounts to show how a fruit’s identity is both a marketing campaign and a cultural construction—one not easily altered with a new label.

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Summary:
“A Prune by Any Other Name” is as much about the folly (and limits) of rebranding as it is about a misunderstood fruit. Through the story of prunes and their alternately earnest and embarrassed handlers, the episode suggests that changing names can't remove deep-seated cultural meanings—sometimes, the only path forward is to embrace what you are, wrinkles, baggage, and all.

Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

Before we begin, just a heads up that this episode contains some dirty language. This is an episode 20 years in the making. I remember exactly how it began when a 32 ounce clear plastic container caught my eye. It was full of a reddish liquid and had a sky blue and purple wraparound label spotted with bright yellow proclamations saying that this new product was 100% juice. And that juice came from the fruit depicted on the label. A dusky purple orb with a green leafed stem. A plum. This new product was called plumsmart, A plum juice for digestive health. Plumsmart is clinically proven to help regulate your digestion with a unique blend of prebiotic fiber, magnesium and potassium. I feel better already. And I remember all this like yesterday because I took one look at this so called plum juice and I thought, wait a minute, isn't that just prune juice? Now, I'm surely not alone in being able to imagine why a company might want to conceal the identity of prune juice. So I made a joke to my friends like, nice try, prune juice. I see you. And then I promptly stopped thinking about this so called plum juice for a couple of decades. But then this past year, it happened again. This time it was a large, bright yellow resealable bag sitting on a shelf at Costco that caught my eye. It too was dappled with those same purple orbs of fruit. And right there on the package it said dried plums. Now, believe me when I tell you they were obviously prunes. What was going on this time I did not make a joke, or I didn't only make a joke. This time I decided I needed to get to the heart or the pit of the matter. And as I did, I came to understand that these plum products I had been scoffing at for literal decades were proof of nothing less than a full blown dried fruit identity crisis. It turns out all these years, prunes have been going through it. And not just digestively speaking. This is decoder ring. I'm Willa Paskin. The prune has long had an unsavory association, an unfortunate reputation, and in the late 1990s, the California prune lobby cooked up a strategy to do something about it. This ancient fruit would attempt to rechristen itself in the hopes of becoming as unencumbered as, say, an apricot, a raisin, a fig. If all this sounds a little absurd, well, I haven't even told you about the prune burgers. But in a world where every product and person increasingly believes it's one good rebrand away from changing how the world sees them. The story of the prune is a telling tale about the virtues and difficulties of self acceptance and the limitations of of trying to escape who you really are. So today on Decoder Ring, how do you sell people a fruit that makes them poop. Day or night? VRBoCare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly, because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either. We're going to begin with the main character in this story, the prune itself.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Clusters of plump, ripe, juicy prunes hanging purple in the sun. A harvest of health, A harvest of goodness.

[Willa Paskin]

Prunes grow on trees, and that's because they are a type of plum. But not just any type.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

All prunes are plums, but all plums are not prunes. Prunes are a very special variety of plums that can be dried without fermenting. And in a very real sense, they are not prunes until they have been dried.

[Willa Paskin]

The special variety of plum that can be dried into a prune originated in Western Asia and then spread to France, where it is known as the Prune Dante, or Prun Dagen, after the region in which it is most famously grown. Prune, for what it's worth, is the French word for plum. The French word for prune is pruneau. These plums are not the same as the round, red summer fruits that ideally send reddish juice running down your chin. No, before they are dried, they are oval, with a dusky purple skin and green flesh. They did not arrive in North America until 1856. That's when a Frenchman named Louis Pellier, who had come to California during the Gold Rush and settled in the Santa Clara Valley around San Jose, grafted a cutting from a French tree onto wild American plum tree rootstock, and voila, the California prune was born.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

The prune industry, which he established, soon began to pour a golden flood into the state, which continues today long after the gold rush of 49, to pour its golden millions into California.

[Willa Paskin]

Today, the state is home to a $700 million prune industry. Over 600 prune growers produce nearly 200 million pounds of glossy, chewy, wrinkled prunes, making California the prune capital of the world.

[Rich Peterson]

There are prune growers in Chile, Argentina, South Africa, but California is still number one.

[Willa Paskin]

Richard Peterson is retired now, but in the late 1980s, he began a two decade tenure as the executive director of the California Prune Board, a commodity board dedicated to promoting the interests and reputation of California prunes. If the prune is the main character in our story, Rich Peterson is the one who will incite the action. He's the one who gave prunes a push. Did you have a relationship to prunes as a kid or a young man?

[Rich Peterson]

Oh, I sure ate them. You know, my dad was a farm mechanic and my mom was a school lunch lady. Mom made sure that all her kids were treated to prunes. Stewed prunes, snacking on prunes. Oh, yeah, our moms gave us prunes from an early age, didn't she, Dorothy?

[Willa Paskin]

Yeah. Dorothy is Rich's wife, a retired nurse who, like her husband, has found herself talking about prunes at work. And I had an argument because there's one of the docs, he kept saying, the prune is not a plum, it's a prune. And it's like, no, no, you know, this is why. And he just kind of like he was a doctor, you know, he thought he knew it all.

[Rich Peterson]

Dorothy makes a wicked prune cake, I'll tell you.

[Willa Paskin]

Oh, interesting. So you guys still eat prunes?

[Rich Peterson]

Of course. Do we breathe air? Yes, we eat prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

How often?

[Rich Peterson]

Well, now you're getting personal.

[Willa Paskin]

This right here is the whole challenge with the prune. Rich likes prunes. He grew up eating prunes. He burnished prunes for his job. For over 20 years, he has talked about prunes with hundreds, if not thousands of people all over the world. And yet even he would rather kid than tell you how many prunes he eats. And that's because prunes are personal.

[Rich Peterson]

Prunes have a stigma. I mean, they primarily are known for one thing.

[Willa Paskin]

We associate prunes with old people taking shits.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

I'm not a kid anymore. I know I'm getting old. In Vegas, I played a slot machine. Three prunes came up. What do the prunes do? They move things through the body.

[David Leibovitz]

It's God's Ozempic.

[Willa Paskin]

Oh, you were right about that prune smoothie.

[Rich Peterson]

Yeah, I've heard every prune joke in the world, I think. But you know, I have thick skin. My wife will tell you that

[Willa Paskin]

these jokes have a basis in reality. Prunes are full of something called sorbitol. Sorbitol is a sugar byproduct. And sorbitol, by drawing liquid into the intestines, makes you poop. Dried fruits in general contain a lot of it. But prunes contain more than all the rest. Dried apricot has 6 grams of sorbitol. Per 100 grams, a prune has double that. Prunes also, I just want to say, taste good and are quite good for you. I stan a prune, and yet its excellent qualities have long been overshadowed. By the late 1990s, this would make selling prunes so hard that Rich Peterson felt something drastic had to be done. But lest you think the prune's reputation is just its cross to bear, just unshakable, inevitable the way it has to be, I'm here to tell you, no, it's not. It turns out the prunes reputational problem is a man made one made by the prune business itself.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Oh. No matter how young a prune may be, is always full of wrinkles. We may get them on our face. Prunes get a manly place.

[Willa Paskin]

Starting back in the 1920s and 30s, as the prune business was expanding, American growers often marketed their product by leaning into the prune's most unique property. Science discovers a new active laxative agent. One print ad crowed. Another promised depression era customers that instead of shelling out dollars for laxatives, they could spend pennies for prunes. An ad aimed at children featured an army general with a prune for a head standing next to a locomotive built out of prunes. That, I'm sorry to tell you, looks like something else. Prune juice was sold in emerald green glass bottles like it was medicine, because in these early days, that's how it was positioned as a cure for what ails you. But by the 1950s, all of this was starting to seem limiting. Prunes might be medicinal, but they weren't just medicinal. And so when prune producers and processors elected to start paying into a collective advertising fund, they shifted their message. They commissioned promotional films that said that a prune was way more than just medicine. It was also a delectable treatment. A superstar among fruits.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Here he is now. And listen to those fans.

[Willa Paskin]

Like in this animated biopic about a movie star prune in a top hat named Sonny Sweet.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Sonny comes from a famous French family in California. He was born on a balmy spring day.

[Willa Paskin]

This film, and the one you heard earlier about the prune's California history, acknowledged prune's laxative qualities, but tried to broaden out, detailing other things, like all the delicious ways that you can eat them.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Prune birthday cake. A tender, moist, fruity cake just right for every day of the year. And for special occasions too, such as Junior's birthday party.

[Willa Paskin]

But downplaying prune's special quality didn't mean people had forgotten it existed. And so, as the prim and proper 50s and early 60s gave way to a looser era, the prune business tried another tactic. Owning it.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

I'll warn you in advance, I'm not going to like your prune. I see. And why do you say that? I say that for a very simple reason. I don't like prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

In the late 1960s, Sunsweet, the largest purveyor of prunes in the country, hired the legendary humorous Stan Freeberg, one of the pioneers of the funny knowing commercial. Freeberg did not like prunes that much himself, and he thought a successful ad ought to start there.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

And then there's the matter of the pits. Disgusting. Yes. Well, what do you do with a prune pit once it's in your mouth? There's no way of getting rid of a prune pit gracefully. I agree. That's why Sunsweet has developed this brand new pitted prune. You see? No pits. What do you mean, no pits?

[Willa Paskin]

This commercial and another starring, surprisingly, the writer Ray Bradbury gave the prune crap. Though you may have noticed not explicitly about crap. And customers responded to the winking self deprecating humor. Sunsweet sales went up 400%. In 1971, it started running a print ad for prune juice with the headline, you bought it for one good reason. Now we'll give you four more. And soon the California prune board was running radio ads that embraced the prunes and imperfect reputation. What are you eating? A pastrami sandwich, potato salad, pickles.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

And some prunes.

[Kieran Losee]

Prunes?

[Willa Paskin]

You're kidding.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

A lot of girls laugh when prunes are mentioned. Maybe it's because they don't know that pound for pound, prunes have nearly six times the iron of the six leading fresh fruits.

[Willa Paskin]

The ironic approach to prunes was extraordinarily successful. It boosted sales of prunes and then burst the bounds of advertising itself as cracks about prunes, primarily as a laxative for older people, spread all over the culture. I've gone to her house every day this week with a variety of homemade Danish begging her to listen to reason. Well, she didn't want the apricot and she didn't want the cheese. But today the prunes seem to do the trick. Always does for me. The prune business had opened the door to prune jokes, and now prunes were joked about almost everywhere. But if prunes were known for one thing, that didn't seem like a problem. Love to Snack on prunes from California. The prune business itself countered the jokes by pulling back from humorous advertisements. They started earnestly marketing to families with nary a scatological wink. Prunes might be funny, but they weren't just funny. I love California prunes because they plum good naturally. And this dual approach seemed to be working. The future looked bright. In fact, in the early 90s, the prune industry saw a golden age on the horizon. As high fiber diets were becoming fashionable. Prune goers were so confident in the future of their product that they made a huge bet. They doubled their prune plantings and whoopsie daisy. Instead of increasing as expected, prune sales started to flag. And since growers had planted so many prunes, this was a massive problem.

[Rich Peterson]

Because if production goes up and you're not supposed to selling more product, then prices go down for the growers and for the processors.

[Willa Paskin]

Rich Peterson, then executive director of the prune board, saw that at the rate things were going, by the end of the decade, the global supply of prunes would exceed demand by 25%. And when they drilled into the numbers about who was buying prunes, what they found was was even more alarming.

[Rich Peterson]

It was just senior citizens.

[Willa Paskin]

The one thing the prune was known for had scared off everyone who wasn't yet collecting Social Security benefits. Seniors accounted for 70 to 80% of the market. All those ads featuring kids and young moms, they had done nothing. A vast majority of younger people didn't even know where what a prune tasted like. And 15% of women between 35 and 50 wouldn't even try them. And the ones who did eat them expressed embarrassment about doing so. They hid prunes from their kids and friends like they were dirty magazines. Decades of promoting prunes as a laxative had created a potent stigma. And now old people were just about the only people buying prunes at all. When we come back, something needs to be done to keep the prune industry from going down the toilet. With VRBoCare. Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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[Willa Paskin]

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[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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[Willa Paskin]

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[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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[Willa Paskin]

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[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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[Willa Paskin]

That's slate.coM-Y-S f u n C T I O N to sign up. So by the 1990s, the prune business had a big problem. There were too many prunes and dwindling numbers of people who seemed open to buying them. As a vice president at a major prune purveyor put it, we have customers who are old, and while they are living long, healthy lives, all good things come to an end. If they didn't do something about it, they would soon have a surplus of dried fruits and nobody to sell them to.

[Rich Peterson]

You know, processors are saying, we've got to find new outlets for this.

[Willa Paskin]

Rich Peterson was feeling the pressure to figure out what to do with all these excess prunes, and nothing captures quite how much pressure he was under. Like one of his solutions was this around this time you started exploring prune burgers.

[Rich Peterson]

I was afraid you'd bring that up.

[Willa Paskin]

So around this time, the California Prune Board had hired a food technologist to help them create new products, and he

[Rich Peterson]

came back with prune puree, just prunes

[Willa Paskin]

in a little hot water, whirred in a blender until smooth. Rich and his colleagues started to brainstorm a food that might benefit from it might benefit from a binder that can make the food a little sweeter and juicier, too. And then they realized hamburgers we knew

[Rich Peterson]

that school lunch was a huge user of hamburger, and we figured if we can offer a benefit to the product, they'll buy a lot of prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

So they tried adding some of the puree to ground beef, a small amount, a tablespoon or two per patty. And they found that the prunes both improved the nutritional profile and kept the patties moist. So they pitched them to the usda, who buys products for school lunch programs.

[Rich Peterson]

And at first they laughed, but they tried it, and they said, this is really good.

[Willa Paskin]

What did you think of a prune burger?

[Rich Peterson]

Fine. I liked them. It did make it sweeter. My sons weren't crazy about what? A burger with prunes in it. Dad, come on.

[Willa Paskin]

In the face of the inevitable skepticism, the prune board organized taste tests in public schools across the United States. And if the reports are to be believed, most kids didn't really mind them that much. Soon, prune burgers began to appear on the menu in a smattering of schools all over the country. At the moment of peak pruning prune burger, the USDA would purchase £10 million of prunes. Still, though, the prune burger was a way to offload surplus prunes to a new market. It didn't help with the prunes fundamental problem, which was that consumers under the retirement age were mortified to buy them. But when Rich thought about how they can make prunes less embarrassing, he saw that they had tried all, almost everything already. Over the years, prunes had talked about their X factor matter of factly, demurely, hilariously, and not at all. They'd been trying to reach women and children in their advertising for nearly two decades. And yet still the stigma remained. And then, in his research, Rich noticed one thing they had not yet considered a tactic other food products had tried. When in dire straits, they'd upgraded their names.

[Rich Peterson]

For instance, Chinese gooseberries became kiwi fruits, a much nicer, easier to understand name. Filberts became hazelnuts, and garbanzo beans became known as chickpeas.

[Willa Paskin]

There's also the Patagonian toothfish, which in 1994, won itself the right to be sold as the Chilean sea sea bass and saw sales skyrocket as a result.

[Rich Peterson]

And so we thought, well, maybe a name change would appeal more to younger audiences.

[Willa Paskin]

So I just want to acknowledge here that a skeptical person might point out that comparing prunes and Chinese gooseberries is like comparing apples and oranges. It's flawed. Very few people were familiar with the Chinese gooseberry to. To say nothing of the Patagonian toothfish when they changed their names. That was the whole point. The name alone was keeping them niche. But the problem with prunes was not that they were niche, it's that they were famous. Famous for making you go to the bathroom. Imagining you can change minds about this with just a name change seems like polishing. Well, you know. But Rich didn't think so. It's true that young people were not buying prunes in the numbers they hoped, but that's not the same as saying they didn't like them. Maybe the prunes reputation was keeping people from trying them and finding out they liked them. Maybe it was keeping them from buying them and admitting they liked them. Changing the name then wasn't some hopeless foolish thing like polishing a, you know, it was more like polishing silver, making a change that would reveal the prunes true high quality. And if you think comparing a prune to a precious metal sounds nuts, well, maybe that's just because you're an American and Americans, unlike people all over the world, are big goofy babies about prunes.

[David Leibovitz]

I can't speak for everybody in France, but I have in 25 years I've never heard anybody joke about a prune except for visiting Americans when I tell them they should try French prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

David Leibovitz is a cookbook author, food writer and former pastry chef who has lived in France for many years. He was once like the rest of us. He grew up in Connecticut in the 1960s as a typical prune skeptical American.

[David Leibovitz]

In my grandmother's refrigerator there was this cloudy sort of charcoal colored prune juice. And it was a source of a lot of snickering. I never saw anybody drink it, but I think people who did drink it did it in private, like in a darkened room with the door shut.

[Willa Paskin]

But then as a young man, David began working at the restaurant Chef de Penis, Alice Water's famous Berkeley based locavore mecca, where they would routinely take prunes grown locally just down the road and turn them into show stopping menu items.

[David Leibovitz]

We would do things like poach prunes with kumquats. In creme fraiche we would do this. It's called a pastis. It's a Gascon dessert. It's prune puree with like wrinkled up filo dough around it. It's very dramatic. It looks sort of like this Sydney Opera House.

[Willa Paskin]

And it was then that David started to appreciate this fruit.

[David Leibovitz]

There's a couple of different textural things going on. When you eat a prune, you've got this sort of chewy skin that has a little resistance, then it breaks through and you've got this really unctuous, creamy, smooth consistency inside.

[Willa Paskin]

When David moved to France around 2000, he was only exposed to more prune goodies. Prunes stuffed with chocolate, Prunes stuffed with prunes, Prune cakes. Prunes soaked in Armagnac and folded into ice cream. In fact, in France, prunes are thought to have terroir like wine.

[David Leibovitz]

What's amazing, in France, they have what's called a prune aux mi cui. They're not completely dried, they're half dried and they're really moist and 10 tender and smooth, and they only last like two weeks.

[Willa Paskin]

So far from being an embarrassment, prunes are a delicacy in France. In Gascony, there's even a museum devoted to them. And it's not just France. Many places and peoples are far more mature about and appreciative of the prune than we are. They are aware of the prunes range, that it can be enjoyed alone or as part of a meal. A Moroccan tagine, a Middle Eastern pilaf, a Middle European pastry. In Japan, there's an ancient and beloved variation often marketed as a miracle fruit.

[David Leibovitz]

Because prunes are delicious, they taste chocolatey, they're naturally sweet, they're very good for you. There's no downside to prunes. You can't eat too many.

[Willa Paskin]

David's prune conversion experience was exactly what Rich Peterson was banking on. As head of the California prune board, Rich had flown all over the world on behalf of the prune. He knew Americans were uniquely uptight about them, and he thought their minds could be changed if the mention of the word prune had become a punchline. Well, maybe the solution was to get rid of the word prune. I mean, did you always know it was gonna. You wanted it to be called dried plums?

[Rich Peterson]

No. I mean, not always, but it was obvious because by definition, a prune is a dream dried plum.

[Willa Paskin]

When Rick brought the idea of rebranding prunes as dried plums to the rest of the plum board, they were intrigued. It felt like common sense. Dried plums just do sound nicer than prunes, right? But they needed more than just a gut feeling. So Rich's team ran an experiment. They did a consumer taste test with a Texas TV station where they divided a package of California prunes into two bowls, one marked prunes and the other dried plums.

[Rich Peterson]

And after people had tried them, they'd answered the question, well, which did you like better? The. The dried plums. Well, why did you like the Dried plums better? Well, they just tasted fresher, more tasty, sweeter and juicier. And they were the same product out of the same package.

[Willa Paskin]

It was the proof they needed that this was going to work. But just as Rome was not built in a day, the prune could not become a dried plum overnight.

[Rich Peterson]

You know, you don't just do this in your office and say, okay, they're now dried plums.

[Willa Paskin]

Rather, you have to get permission from the Food and Drug Administration, the organization in charge of food labeling. The prune board did not imagine that would be much of a problem. It turns out they were mistaken.

[Dan Haley]

When I first talked to them, they were like, oh, no, we can't do that. That will confuse everybody.

[Willa Paskin]

Dan Haley is a lawyer and a lobbyist, and in 1999, he was the California prune boards guy in Washington.

[Dan Haley]

The FDA was very reluctant. They came up with all these weird excuses that people would be confused, housewives would be confused.

[Willa Paskin]

Now, you could observe here that the point was to confuse people and housewives in particular a little bit, to make them take a second look at something they had a reflexive aversion to by changing its name, by disguising the product. The fact is that plenty of people did and do not know that prunes and dried plums are the same. But then, as now, dan found the FDA's position that they would be misleading customers preposterous.

[Dan Haley]

How could they be reluctant to call a dried plum a dry plum? A prune is a dry plum. What's the deal here?

[Willa Paskin]

After months of waiting for a response, the prune board finally heard back from the fda, who said they needed more information. More information about international aspects of changing the name. Oh, and also about other labeling options and why they would be ineffective and about why the prune is marketed more successfully in Europe than in the United States. And also they needed a plan of action for educating consumers about the name change. And in lieu of the prune board satisfactorily providing any of this information, the FDA seemed poised to disallow the change as false and misleading.

[Dan Haley]

I say talking to FDA sometimes like an out of body experience, they. They think in different ways over there.

[Willa Paskin]

It was starting to look to Dan like the prune might not be able to call itself a dried plum despite being a dried plum. So he sought out some influential help. We will not go back to the days of darkness. Never. We will not. The status quo must go. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were California senators the time the first two women to ever serve simultaneously for the same state. Dan reached out.

[Dan Haley]

Hey, Senator, have you heard? We can't get the FDA to approve our ability to call a dried plum a dried plum.

[Willa Paskin]

Prunes are a big business in California. The senators agreed to lend their muscle to the cause and sent a letter to the FDA asking, hey, what's the holdup here? And after a few more months of waiting, the FDA approval was still not forthcoming.

[Dan Haley]

We couldn't budge them. They were just like intent on keeping it the way it was.

[Willa Paskin]

At this point, nearly a year into a process that seemed all backed up, Dan decided to try something new. He called up the Washington Post and explained what was going on, hoping that the sheer absurdity of the situation might get some play.

[Dan Haley]

You ever hear of people leaking things? That's what this is. We leaked it to the press. How stupid they're being. At FDA Office of Dried Fruit Labeling it worked.

[Willa Paskin]

At the tail end of 1999, the Post published an article called Plum out of Luck, quoting Dan referring to the Senator's letters and the FDA's foot dragging response. The story ended with a constipation pun, but it did seem to push the issue forward.

[Dan Haley]

I'm told by people at FDA that the White House read that in the Post and basically said, get them to change that damn thing. We want them to look stupid.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

This health note tonight about a well known fruit with an unsavory reputation. The lowly prune, well known for its very specific health benefits, is getting a name change.

[Willa Paskin]

It had taken years, but In February of 2001, Prunes finally won the right to be rechristened.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Prunes can now be packaged and sold as simply dried plums, which is what they really are.

[Dan Haley]

Winning in Washington is not, not too often. So when you do win, even if it is dry plums to prune, that's a big thing.

[Willa Paskin]

The FDA did insist though, that both names would have to remain on the packaging for at least a period of two years. The California Prune Board promptly changed its name to the California Dried Plum Board. The annual California Prune Festival in Yuba City renamed itself the California Dried Plum Festival. Dried plum started showing up in stores and the media seemed delighted to cover

[Rich Peterson]

them, especially the food writers. I mean, they went crazy over it. They had something new to say about California prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

Don't call them prunes anymore.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

That's old school.

[Willa Paskin]

When we pull these packages off the

[David Leibovitz]

shelf, we call them dried plums now.

[Dan Haley]

It was amazing because in my business you do these kind of little changes, these little kind of quirks every so often and it's no big deal. But with this one, it just took on. Everyone just loved it because of the. I think everyone loves shit jokes. Excuse me.

[Willa Paskin]

And in another world, this. This would be the beginning of a new era for the prune. The one in which it became the dried plum. The one in which people say, pass me the dried plums. The one in which they spot a wrinkled person and think, what a dried plum face. The one in which they get out of the bath and go, wow, my fingers, they're so dried plummy. But of course, this is not that world. What happened when the dried plum collided with reality? When we come back,

[David Leibovitz]

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[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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[David Leibovitz]

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[Willa Paskin]

In the immediate aftermath of the prune, or shall I say the dried plums, hard won victory. Everything seemed to be going peachy. Sales were up and dried plums were getting a lot of attention.

[Rich Peterson]

Well, it certainly did help.

[Willa Paskin]

Rich Peterson, executive director of what was now the California Dried Plum Board, breathed a sigh of relief.

[Rich Peterson]

You know, the industry was pleased. They were selling more prunes. Their prices were holding better for the growers and the processors, and that made me look good. So that was good.

[Willa Paskin]

The short term goal of the name change had been to solve the problem of the incredible surplus of dried fruit. And that was largely accomplished, though not only because of the name. In 2004, an untimely heat wave resulted in the smallest prune crop since the 1920s. As acreage started to fall, prices temporarily went up and the problematic surplus evaporated. And with it, if you're curious, the Prune Burger. But there was a long term goal, too. The name change was always a bigger play. An attempt to get people to reconsider the former prune as if it were a brand new fruit. And for that to happen, people had to actually use the new new name. And that turned out to be a pretty tricky ask, even for the people who came up with it. What do you call them, this fruit?

[Rich Peterson]

We call them prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

The rebranding was supposed to completely reshape consumer thinking and thus grow the customer base for years to come. But as you probably know from your own personal experience, dried plums just never really became a thing. It was a good idea on paper, but in reality, the term prune was entrenched.

[Kieran Losee]

It was supposed to become more clear that prunes are dried plums. Oh, and if I just knew that, I'd eat more of them and that it would appeal to younger consumers and sales would take off.

[Willa Paskin]

Kieran Losee is the director of brand and industry communications at the California Prune Board.

[Kieran Losee]

But sales had not increased the way they wanted them to. Younger consumers were not entering into eating the product. And we still had this baggage and this connotation.

[Willa Paskin]

And I think we underestimated the baggage, underestimated it dramatically. As the dried plum era unfolded, new consumer research revealed the prunes problem was not that it was just a little embarrassing. It was much deeper than that.

[Kieran Losee]

The problem is fear. We have a fear factor happening with our product.

[Willa Paskin]

People are genuinely afraid of the effect prunes may have on their bodies. Calling them dried plums might make them less mortifying to talk about in public, but it couldn't alleviate that fear. And so long as the prune industry ignored that, it had distorted expectations for its product. It could imagine that with just the right name, this product would become a fruit people would mindlessly snack on. But that was never a real possibility.

[Kieran Losee]

So like with a raisin, you're pouring a bunch in your hand, you're gobbling them, or you're putting them in granola, you're not really counting, how many raisins did I eat? And with a prune, there just seems to be a different head space that's happening. Even people who eat prunes and like prunes have this number in their mind about how many they should be eating before it becomes a problem.

[Willa Paskin]

That number is five. That's what their research showed is the max for the heaviest prune users. Think about how tricky it is to sell a product the size of a prune in which even your most devoted customers max out at five a day. And the trickiness doesn't end there. While plenty of potential customers are scared of the product, no matter what the name, the product's actual consumers want it for the very reason those would be customers are scared of it.

[Kieran Losee]

In many cases, that's what helps us sell the product. When you're constipated, you go find prunes. Prune juices is offered in hospital settings for that exact reason. So we do have a set of a good, loyal base of consumers. And we don't want to deter them from eating prunes if they are already eating them and enjoying them.

[Willa Paskin]

The prune business had been so focused on all the younger people who didn't consume their product that they had ignored and sometimes even confused the loyal and sure, maybe older, true prune eater. And research showed the very logic of this prioritization was itself flawed. Prunes were actively trying to court young people when maybe all they needed to do was sit back and wait for them to get older.

[Kieran Losee]

I kind of pinpointed like, 50 is kind of the entry point. Younger people eat them, but 50 is when you realize that they're good for you in a new way. And so do we run from that or do we lean into that?

[Willa Paskin]

They chose to lean in. In the late 2010s, with sales pretty flat, the California dried plumber decided it needed to inject some new life into their product, get some attention, make a case for it all informed by their new, deeper understanding. It's worth saying here also that internationally, prunes had always remained prunes, that growers had never stopped calling their product prunes, and the term dried plum had never really taken off with the American public. So rather than trying to keep making dried plums happen in the hopes of distracting people from the undistractable, they decided to embrace what they really were, a tasty, healthful food with all sorts of unique complications.

[Kieran Losee]

It was time for a refresh. And the refresh needed to not only include a brand image change, but also a name change. And that's when we made the change back to prunes.

[Willa Paskin]

Just about 20 years after Rich Peterson and the California Prune Board decided to try and address the prunes problems with the bold name change, the California Dried Plum board did the exact same thing in reverse. It changed its name back to the California Prune Board amidst a larger rebranding that focused on taste and health and cooking and the slogan prunes for life. If you eat a prune, there's no debate left.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

You understand that it tastes great.

[Willa Paskin]

You're still allowed to call a prune a dried plum. Hence the yellow bag of dried plums I saw at Costco. That ignited my curiosity about this whole thing. But largely, the industry has embraced the return to good old prunes. And the result of that change is that selling prunes remains as challenging as ever. Sales spiked during COVID but have since come down. Household penetration figures are even lower than they were during the dried plum days.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

And.

[Willa Paskin]

And people are as confused about what a prune actually is. As ever. So I've learned something this week from the Internet. I definitely should have known this at the age of 30. Prunes. They are plums. You know that I just put that together, that prunes are dried plums.

[Dan Haley]

Prunes.

[Kieran Losee]

We're actually just plums.

[Willa Paskin]

You said you're actually just a plum. I was like, oh, I'd eat that all the time. Hearing tiktoks like these, a prune board spokesperson like Kieran might feel like banging her head against the wall. Prunes have made all these moves and yet they are still dealing with the same problems to which she even sometimes hears a familiar solution.

[Kieran Losee]

I was with a group of people recently and somebody goes, you should just change it to dry plums. And went, I been there, done that.

[Willa Paskin]

I have to admit, I feel for the prone. It has so many things going for it. But it will never be as unencumbered as an apricot, a raisin, a fig. And that can be hard to accept. Who amongst us, in fact, can honestly say we've never tried to seem cooler, slicker, healthier, less embarrassing than we really are? It can be hard to keep up that posturing, though. And if I wish anything for the prune, it's the freedom that comes from knowing it won't work. A prune by any other name, it's still gonna make you poop.

[Dan Haley]

Prunes.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Love to hear my baby say prunes. Cause every time my baby

[Willa Paskin]

prunes, it

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

means somebody's going to get kissed.

[Willa Paskin]

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If you aren't already a Decoder Ring plus member, please subscribe now from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or visit slate.comdecoder ringplus to get access. Wherever you listen, members get access to new episodes of Decoder Rings Back, in which I call a listener back and try to answer their question and to listen to the show without any ads. This episode was written by me. It was edited by Evan Chung, our supervising producer. It was produced by Katie Shepard. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Free. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at decoderinglate.com or call us at 347-460-7281. We love hearing from you guys, and we'll see you in two weeks.

[David Leibovitz]

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[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Com.