5 States That Secretly Control the Rest of America

5 Ohio and California Decide What You Get to Eat

Quick! List three things you know about Columbus, Ohio. And none of them can be that it was named after the explorer or a famous bus made of columns. What have you got? Nothing? Well, hang on to your butts, because we're about to blow them away with knowledge. If you enjoy fast food, there's an amazing chance that the good people of Columbus, Ohio, are the ones who picked your menu. That's right -- your local McDonald's won't get the new Cool Ranch Bacon McRib unless a few random citizens in Columbus give it the thumbs up.

To understand why, you have to get into the mind of a fast food chain. Before they risk millions of dollars on a new burger or stupid-sounding smoothie, they'd better be sure that the thing isn't going to flop. After all, no one wants to be known as the dummy who came up with the McAfrika burger. And Columbus happens to be the perfect test lab. For one thing, the demographics of the city mirror the rest of the nation; Columbus doesn't have a bunch of vegetarians or Eskimos clogging up the population and skewing fast food test results. It's a pure mini-America.

For another, Columbus is a bustling college town. When college students aren't busy cramming or emptying their bongs, they're "tweeting" and "Facebooking" and "Linkedining" about how great their lunch was. Finally, Columbus' geography semi-isolates it from other major cities, which is a good thing when you're testing an ad campaign or product. When your market is contained in one spot, it's easier to tell if they're actually hearing/seeing/feeling what you're putting out.

All of this adds up to a town with almost 20 national fast food headquarters clandestinely testing their fries and steak sandwiches in local restaurants. When Wendy's wants to try out a new burger, they do a mini-test in Columbus to determine if the product is good enough to go nationwide. Living in Columbus is like living in a fast food future, aka utopia.

On the other hand, a particular chunk of California is the perfect testing ground for another brand. When Taco Bell had the outrageous idea of wrapping a taco in a Dorito shell, they tried it out in Bakersfield, California, first. It turns out Bakersfield has "diverse economic and racial demographics" and a tendency to overindulge in fast food when compared to the rest of the country. Which probably explains why one out of every three Taco Bell sales in the test area included the Doritos Taco, and why the rest of us were offered the indignity of eating the worst food in a post-Double Down world.

4 Texas Decides What Kids Learn at School

You already know that Texas rules the nation in barbecue and Tejano music, but did you also know that the Lone Star State dictates what goes in textbooks for the rest of the country?

Here's why: Even though school curriculum and standards might vary from state to state, publishers sure as hell do not want to print up 50 different editions of each book. So the standards for everyone tend to be set by whichever state buys the most books.

Sure, California may have the largest school-age population, but they also have very strict hippie standards on what they teach their hippie children. Plus, California is so bankrupt that they can't afford to dictate dick in the nationwide market. In second place in the number of schoolchildren department is Texas, a state with a thriving economy and very clearly defined textbook standards. So it makes sense that textbook companies listen to what Texas has to say.

So who cares, right? Well, Texas isn't like other states, and not just because of the big hair. Back in the '80s, a small group of Christian conservatives realized that they could influence the future more than politicians by getting into the heads of kids. That means populating the 15-member Texas State Board of Education that reviews and approves schoolbooks with creationists who don't believe in evolution, sex ed, or gay stuff. And that's why, when the Texas State Board of Education reviews the texts of a different topic annually, objections pour in from a strictly conservative viewpoint.

For example, in 2009, the subject up for review was science, so the board decided that students should be challenged to consider the gaps in the fossil record as possible evidence against evolution. The board chairman was quoted as saying, "Evolution is hooey." "Hooey," because "balderdash" was too strong a word. In 2010, the board reviewed social studies; they decided that high school students should learn about the conservative icons of the 1990s, but not liberal or minority rights groups. Oh, and Joseph McCarthy was painted in a more positive light. That was the year that the board chairman said:

"The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel ... Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan -- he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last 20 years because he lowered taxes."

We can only imagine what the board is going to do to algebra once they get their weirdly fundamentalist hands on it. (Take out the "bra" part, probably. Ninth graders will take alge from now on.)

3 You Probably Have a Credit Card Because of South Dakota

Grab your credit card statement. Look at the address: We bet that, regardless of who gave you the card or what bank it came from, the return address will be one of two cities: Wilmington, Delaware, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Remember at the end of Fight Club when Tyler Durden blew up all of the credit card company headquarters? Well, that was supposed to be Wilmington. So how did these two spots get a monopoly on credit cards?

Well, believe it or not, there was once a time when using credit was considered taboo -- like sex before marriage or acknowledging other races. Then in the 1970s, just as credit card companies started to convince Americans that borrowing money to pay for luxuries wasn't of the devil, the mother of all recessions hit the economy. Even though the inflation rate went up, usury laws prevented credit card companies from raising their rates to match it. By 1980, Citibank had lost over $1 billion in their ventures into the world of credit, and bankruptcy was imminent.

Then the executives at Citibank had an idea. According to a little-known 1978 Supreme Court ruling, banks could use the rates of the states where they were headquartered, even if they were nationwide companies lending money all over the country. Boom! Loophole! South Dakota, in an effort to draw new businesses, had just passed a law eliminating caps on interest rates. Before you knew it, Citibank got its ass relocated from Long Island to Sioux Falls, where they could set their own rates and start making money again.

And they weren't the only ones. Before South Dakota could grab every credit card company in the universe, Delaware passed their own laws luring loaners over. And that, boys and girls, is why most of the credit card companies are based out of South Dakota and Delaware. And also why those states rule over everyone else when it comes to regulating credit card companies. A consumer advocate in California can't persuade his legislators to do jack squat about credit card regulations, because the state of California has zero say in the running of businesses that are based out of Delaware and South Dakota. The good news is that Delaware and South Dakota can't tell California how to do fusion cuisine.

2 Utah Is Why You Can Buy (Killer) Vitamins

The next time you're at the grocery store or pharmacy, notice how there's two shelves: One has all of the drugs that include meticulous lists of ingredients and walls of text detailing side effects, while the other shelf is full of snake oil bullshit. Vitamin supplements that claim to speed up your metabolism, weight-loss pills made of nothing but placebo herbs and caffeine, "natural" cures that rid your body of "toxins" -- all of it blasting flagrant lies from the label. Have you ever wondered why in the hell can they get away with that, when the Food and Drug Administration watches actual medicine like a hawk?

Blame the state of Utah and Senator Orrin Hatch for that.

Church of Latter-Day Saints founder Joseph Smith didn't just believe that Jesus once walked among Native Americans; he also believed that pharmaceuticals and doctors were bad news for a healthy body. Instead, Smith advocated natural remedies for all that ailed you. And he took that mentality to Utah, where his religion and anti-medicine attitude flourished.

Fast forward to the late 20th century, and the heart of the vitamin industry still operates from Mormon country. Which was all fine and dandy until the group that regulates everything else we stuff into our holes realized that 20 people had already died from a "natural" sleep remedy and 16 kids were dead from iron supplement poisoning. So regulators got busy trying to control them. But the heart of Hatch's constituency was in bed with the vitamins -- his son is a supplement lobbyist in Washington, his grandson and son-in-law are chiropractors who shill a product called Slim and Sassy Metabolic Blend, and industry bigwigs have contributed millions to Hatch's campaigns. There was no way Hatch was going to let the FDA dig their claws into his precious vitamins.

So in 1994, Hatch ramrodded the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act through Congress. Under this Wild West of a law, supplement manufacturers can put whatever the fuck they want on the market and the FDA can't do anything about it until after people get hurt. Do you think bird shit will cure astigmatism? Wrap that shit up and sell it. We'll see what happens next.

According to Hatch, the consumer has the right to discern the difference between things that are good for you and poison marketed as weight-loss pills. Which explains why it took three years and an estimated 80 deaths before the FDA was able to shut down the sale of ephedra supplements.

1 New Jersey Is the World's Tastemaker

Take a look in your pantry, or, if you're in college, under your bed. What do you see? Probably lots of cans and boxes and bags of junk food, each with an essay-sized block of text that reveals the ingredients.

Chief among the cadre of technicians who put together those ingredients are flavorists -- scientists who are trained to create the tastes behind everything that doesn't come from the produce aisle. In fact, 90 percent of what we take home from the grocery store was touched by one of the world's 500 flavorists, who determine not only how food will taste, but also how it will look and even how it will smell. These are the guys who create the difference between Dr Pepper and Dr Thunder, Lucky Charms and Marshmallow Mateys, and James Franco and James Marsden.

Guess where most of those food scientists live and work. It's not France! It's New Jersey! Which is hilarious, because these days when we mention New Jersey, we think of orange, puffy-haired people, not orange, puffy cheese snacks. As for why, well, the natural hub for the flavor industry was New York, especially since the flavor scientists were pilfered from the fragrance scientists, who worked nicely alongside the garment district and fashion houses of New York City. But New York was too expensive for the lab space needed to invent Cool Ranch, so manufacturers moved to New Jersey, and now the state has the highest concentration of flavor experts in the country.

Savor each second of your next meal -- you're taking in New Jersey with every bite.

Yosomono writes for GaijinAss.com and is an image guru on their Imgur blog. Rafael technically owns a Twitter and you can laugh with him or at him on YouTube.

For more on why things may not always be what they seem, check out 6 People Who Secretly Ruled the World and 6 Massive Secret Operations That Are Hidden All Around You.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out The 4 Most Childish Ways Powerful People Settled Arguments.