WEBVTT - What Americans Ate When There Were No Food Laws 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:06.440 Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.440 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.040 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just stuff you 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.279 should know in it, doing some stuff you should know, 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.120 kind of stuff on the Stuff you should know podcasts. 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.759 Yeah, yeah, Hey, can I make. 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:25.880 A couple of quick announcements? 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:28.440 Oh boy, is it a correction about me? 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.960 No, that's a listener mail. Okay, just a couple of 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:39.560 quick things. Firstly, I have had my front tooth implant redone, 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:48.400 So the next roughly eighty episodes might be a little 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:49.320 lispy here and there. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:51.960 Can you say sibilants, sibilants? 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:53.880 It's actually more f's. 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.000 Can you say fibilants fibilance. 0:00:57.800 --> 0:00:58.120 Yeah. 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.600 Sometimes air just shoots out of that a little toothhole 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.520 tooth the thh at the end. That's problematic. So you know, 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.600 here we are again everyone, and bear with it. And 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.119 I appreciate your support. 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.319 You can't even tell Chuck like, had you not said something, 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:19.560 maybe one person would have noticed. I think it's fine. 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:20.640 I appreciate that. 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.680 Well, yeah, but you'll have some some words you will 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.679 stand out. The other quick one is just for this 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:34.760 episode massive CoA trigger warning any vegetarians or vegans or 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:39.320 really anybody who is just grossed out by gross food stuff. 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:41.199 This is choc bowl. 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.680 Yeah. If you find the human body and the stuff 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.520 it can do odious two, you might want to just 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.960 be prepared. Yeah, all right, So that was good, good 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:55.280 CoA buddy. Yeah, because we are talking about what things 0:01:55.280 --> 0:02:01.320 were like before America started regulating the meat that we 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.520 bought in ate and it turns out it was a 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.959 total free for all until then. But it was really 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.840 just kind of nestled in a short period. Yeah, you 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.680 know where like the Second Industrial Revolution happened and all 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:18.880 of a sudden, everybody moves to the cities and you 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.240 can't buy your bacon from the guy down the street anymore, 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.480 or make your own milk or whatever. You have to 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.480 buy it. And so these companies sprung up to supply 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.440 that stuff and they started cutting corners immediately. 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.679 Yeah, it's the American way time and time again. We've 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:40.079 seen from the very beginning corporate interest, corporate lobby all 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.920 in the name of profit. And this isn't just US railing. 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:45.639 This is the history of the United States. 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.240 Yes, for sure, most of them are advertisers on stuff 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:53.800 you should know too, probably so so people needed this 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.240 stuff and if they filled a void, like it was 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:58.519 a necessary thing that they were doing. But the problem 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:04.359 is because there's zero regulation, I mean none, Like there 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.560 was an author named Deborah Blum, and she wrote The 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.400 Poison Squad colon One chemist's single minded crusade for safety 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.640 at the turn of the twentieth century, and she said 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.080 that there was nothing that could be done to food 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.280 that was illegal because there were no food safety laws. 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:27.680 There was nothing you could do aside from kill your customers. 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.480 And even then you might just get some bad press 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:33.200 and everybody's like, oh, well it happens. 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:33.720 Yeah. 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:38.760 I wonder if it was because they just assumed that 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.440 these new corporations would just sort of deliver food the 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.200 right way, or I just don't wonder if it was 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:49.160 naivete I mean, eventually it was. Obviously stuff started coming 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:53.000 out as we'll see in this episode, and Congress, you know, 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.360 bows down to the donors, as they still do today. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.840 But I just wonder what they thought at first, just like, no, 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.240 this is great, and you know, they're supplying more food 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:03.440 and I'm sure they're doing it right. 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.320 My take on it is because this is like set 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.360 largely in the Gilded Age, that there was a general 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.960 like hands off approach like, hey, this business is zooming 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.320 this economy into the stratosphere. Sure, and we don't want 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.760 to interfere with it, and I'm sure they're going to 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:22.000 do the right thing anyway. 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:23.200 Yeah, that's a good point. 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:26.440 So that's my take. I think that there was a 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.120 combination of not really realizing that we needed regulations because 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.000 we never needed them before, and then not wanting to 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:37.000 meddle with this red hot economic engine that was flaming, 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:38.920 just with so many flames. 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.200 Yeah, flames on the side of your base. 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:46.560 Yeah, so I guess we should start with milk, huh. 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:47.679 Yeah, why not? Because it was pretty bad stuff. 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:48.640 Yeah, it was. 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.279 Pasturization had been around for a long time. It was 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:53.840 a minute in the eighteen fifties, but they didn't get 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:58.560 on the widespread pasturization of milk till about the eighty 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.080 or so years later. So if you went and bought 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.159 your milk, you know, I think the understanding for a 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.080 lot of people is like, oh, well, back then you 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.640 would buy your milk from the local dairy, right, and 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.040 it was that's way better just to get it fresh 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.000 from the teat like that, and that was not true 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:21.760 because this milk was nasty. It was killing babies. Four 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:27.200 hundred thousand babies a year from drinking bad milk. 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.800 In America alone. That's not a global stat that's just 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:30.720 in the United States. 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:32.039 Yeah, unbelievable. 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:33.720 Yeah, it is. 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:34.760 It is. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.240 It's nuts. So everybody's like, yeah, this just happens. But 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:40.520 I guess people just thought that's what happened when you 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.880 drink milk sometimes, or I don't know what the thinking was. Yeah, 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.520 But a guy named John Newell Hurdi h R t Y. 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.120 He became the chief Health Officer of Indiana in eighteen 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.960 ninety six, and we should say by this time, just 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.200 kind of to give it some context, the pure food movement, 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.360 which was a progressive movement in the nineteenth century, along 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:06.280 with like temperance, suffrage, abolition, it had really kind of 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.960 started to gain steam. So this guy wasn't laying the groundwork, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.520 but his work was very noteworthy. But he became the 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.920 chief Health Officer of Indiana and he immediately started investigating 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.960 the state's dairy farms and found what they were doing 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.080 is what was killing, you know, infants who were being 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:25.080 fed cow's milk. 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:27.800 Yeah, it was because it was cow's milk that was 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.120 watered down so they could stretch profits. But it was 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.880 watered down. It's not like they had some beautiful filtration 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:35.680 system from a Poland spring. 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:36.320 Right. 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:38.159 Actually, I don't even know what a Poland spring is. 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.360 It's a specific spring. It is ironically not in Poland. 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.320 I had a feeling so they weren't using that. 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.039 Of course, they were using like the farm's pond water, 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:53.000 which was disgusting. It was stagnant at one point, like 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.279 he literally held up a bottle of milk from Indiana 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.280 and saw actual worms inside of it. 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:01.159 Yeah, isn't that awful? 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:02.479 Live worms they were moving. 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:07.919 Yeah, and that wasn't all he found. He found insects, hares, blood, pus, 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.960 cow manure. He estimated that just the residents of Indianapolis 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.120 ingested about two thousand pounds of cow manure every year, 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:17.640 just from the milk they were drinking. 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.360 Yeah, that's collective, not each person, of course, but that's 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.320 still a lot of I. 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.040 Think you would ode on cowpoop if you ate that much. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:27.800 Or maybe it would make you into like a superhero. 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:32.160 There is another really gross one that Dave turned up. 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:34.960 I think it was originally in an Atlantic article about 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.680 the early days of milk. But one of the things 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.280 that they would do so like if you thinned milk 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.000 with water, it was very clearly thinned it. It didn't 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.440 look like milk it because it was bluish gray. So 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.320 they put like chalk or flour or plaster of Paris in. 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.800 Not great, but still it gets much worse. You also, 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:55.880 when you got a bottle of milk, expected the cream 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:57.840 to still be there on top. The cream rises to 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.760 the top, as they say, right, well, if you've been 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.240 watering down your milk, there probably isn't much cream left 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:06.720 in it, but you need to put that cream back in. 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:09.200 There's something that looks like it. So they said, aside 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.320 from stagnant pond water, what else do I have on 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.640 the farm that's basically free that I'm not using that 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.040 I can use for this? Oh yeah, these little calves 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.680 that I'm slaughtering and selling is veal. I could use 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.920 their brains impure because it has kind of a creamy texture, 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:24.840 and that will stand in for the cream that I'll 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.120 put on top of the watered down milk that I'm 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:28.040 selling in the bottle. 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:32.400 Yeah, so that is a horrifying thing to hear. Yeah, 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.400 with human ears, we should point out that wasn't It 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.840 wasn't like everybody was doing that. This is like an 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.560 example of you know, who knows, it could have been 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.160 one farm. But what they did find out what was 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.880 being used widespread and just sort of with regularity in 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:55.000 the industry was using formaldehyde to preserve milk pre pasteurization, 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:57.800 which is you know, we all know it's an embalming 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.959 chemical used for dead bodies to make them last longer. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:06.800 And this was literally killing babies if you were a 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.920 kid in Indianapolis in an orphanage, or actually anywhere in 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.840 the United States. They didn't have a baby formula back then. 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.840 You can listen to our episode on do we do 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:17.120 one just on baby formula? 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.400 Yeah, one on formula and one on the breast. 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:22.720 I think, oh, that's right. I thought there was two 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:26.280 on the breast, but it was too total. That wasn't 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:27.360 trying to be funny. 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:28.920 There, Well, it was hilarious. 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:32.959 They would you know, you would get cow's milk as 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.600 a little bebie in an orphanage, so it would you know, 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:39.679 it would it would kill a kid very quickly if 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:40.920 you're drinking formaldehyde. 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.760 Right, Yeah, it doesn't take much for a little infant, right, 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:48.520 And it's apparently one of those things I read that 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.640 it's it will just kill you, like almost immediately if 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.160 you ingest the right amount. So it's not good. And 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.079 even if it doesn't kill you right away, it's it's 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.240 not a pleasant way to die. And again, four hundred 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.920 thousand babies a year we're dying in the United States 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:06.040 just from bad milk. So it was definitely more than 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.560 just one one dairy farm in Indiana. It was a 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:09.760 widespread problem. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:10.040 Right. 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.760 Oh, absolutely, So you know that's hero number one. Hero 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.600 number two also comes to us from Indiana. 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:19.559 Wait, wait, before we move on, you got to tell 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.480 him that great, great quote from doctor Herdy. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.040 Oh, I thought it was kind of smarmy. Sure, I 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.840 guess he had the right to be smarmy. A reporter 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.520 asked if formaldehyde and milk was dangerous, and he said, well, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.320 I guess it's all right if you want to embalm 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:35.960 the baby. 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.280 That didn't strike me as smarmy. 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.240 Is it smarmy for the nineteen twenties or whatever? 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.280 I guess, But he's he's saying like that's what the 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.600 milk producers are doing. They're embalming babies. 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:49.439 Yeah, I just I don't know. I thought a man 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.559 of science would say it is extremely dangerous. 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.600 I see, you know, I see, yeah, I get so. 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.719 Still a hero, a little smarmy maybe, but who is 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:00.800 to spare him? 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:02.760 The second hoo's your. 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.080 Hero that's coming in is a gentleman named doctor Harvey 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:11.240 Washington Wiley. In the eighteen eighties, he got to be 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.480 in his bonnet about the problem with food. 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:16.359 He was a boiler. 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:21.440 Maker professor there at Purdue, and then the USDA, the 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.080 fairly new USDA, said all right, we're going to start 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:26.600 a Bureau of Chemistry, and you're the guy that's going to. 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.440 Run it, right he was. 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.079 He essentially dedicated his entire adult life and career to 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:41.280 fighting for like making the American food market wholesome. Essentially, 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.600 like that's what that guy did. And he actually had 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:46.600 a bit of the showman in him. He had a 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.400 huge ego. Apparently, most of the people who were talking 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.600 about today had enormous egos, and they rubbed up against 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.280 one another, and even though they didn't like one another, 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.320 most of them they still managed to work together to 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.079 affect real change. Which is kind of a cool little 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.240 hats off to everybody. So one of the first things 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:08.120 that doctor Wiley did when the USDA hired him to 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:10.960 run the Bureau of Chemistry, which apparently was a new 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.360 department at the time. This is in the I think 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.199 the eighteen eighties or the late nineteenth century at the 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:22.319 very least, he started testing syrup and jam and all 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.400 sorts of stuff. I'm not quite sure if he was 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.280 doing it to compare because he was actually researching corn 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.400 syrup at the time, to find out if this was 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.920 actually okay to use as a food because there was 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:34.880 that whole pure food movement was like, hey, I don't 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.439 know what we're putting into our food to preserve it, 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:40.160 Like we didn't used to do that ten years ago 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.600 before everybody moved to the city. I'm not sure how 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.560 I feel about this. So doctor Wiley's job was to 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.200 find out if these things were actually harmful or if 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:49.959 you could use them. One of the first things he 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.400 found out was that most of the maple syrup and 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.520 the honey, like ninety percent of the honey was fake. 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:57.560 There wasn't a drop of honey in it. 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.360 Yeah, it was corn syrup. They would flavor a little 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.480 bit with maple. For the syrup, they would flavor it 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:05.520 like whatever fruit. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.040 I guess. For jam, I'm not sure what they flavored 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:08.240 it with. 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.840 For honey, I don't know either, Like how would you 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:14.800 take a bite and be like, this is honey? 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:16.000 I guess, I don't know. 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:18.800 But that was just sort of a jumping off point 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:20.720 where he was like, well, wait a minute, if they're 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.640 doing this to honey and maypay syrup, we need to 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.320 start looking into other things. And he started to learn 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:34.200 about formaldehyde in foods. Borax, which is a it's a cleaner, 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.160 you know, like boric acid cleaner under the brand. I 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.600 think it was a brand, wasn't it Borax? 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:39.920 Yeah? 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.359 I think it was like twenty Mule team Borax. 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:44.559 Oh, that kind of thing. 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:46.480 Was the name. That was the name of the brand. 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:49.720 But he started realizing this stuff was in our food. 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:53.800 He got obviously pretty upset about it and goes to Congress, 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:58.800 and Congress is not interested in passing anything because, as 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.440 you will see, just like you know the things that 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.560 go on today, the food lobby was strong and rich 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.520 and powerful, and Congress sat on their hands. 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:11.040 Yeah that. Author Deborah Blum also said that like there 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.640 was no political will, not just because they were in 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.559 the pockets of like the food producers. They a lot 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.480 of them, most certainly were, and basically all of them 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:23.040 were getting money from them at the very least. But 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.200 that also if you introduced one of these bills, you 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.960 were like a crackpot. You were a quack. You were 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.040 you had no idea, right, you had no idea what 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:34.920 it meant to like be in the business world. You 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.280 were just a dummy. That's how. That's how these things 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:42.280 were reviewed. And I think something like a hundred or something. 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.280 I think like more than one hundred bills were introduced 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:47.800 and just within a decade or so, and only like 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.400 eight or nine of them managed to get passed. Yeah, 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.640 that's how that's how looked down upon the idea of 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.040 food regulation was at the time. 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:56.920 Yeah. 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.560 So Wiley is a pretty smart guy, he said, He's 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:02.680 kind of had a little bit of showman quality to him. 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.920 So he got together an experiment, also sort of a 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.560 PR stunt. In nineteen oh two, he took twelve government 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:15.000 clerks and put them in housing in the basement of 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:19.360 the Agricultural Department building there in DC, and they were 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:24.240 exposed to what they called Hygienic Table trials, where half 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:30.960 of these young men were secretly fed formaldehyde, borax, sodium benzonate, 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.360 all kinds of nasty chemicals like the stuff that was 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.360 going in food, and it was conveniently leaked to the 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:40.000 press and doctor Wiley. They were called the Poison Squad, 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.080 and doctor Wiley was dubbed Old Borax. 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.680 Yeah, so he he actually became a national figure, like 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:52.200 people like just as the average American knew about him. 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.080 If you read the newspaper, you probably were familiar with doctor. 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.400 Wiley, the old Borax, old Borax. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:15:59.880 And we talked about him in the Poison Squad in 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.520 I think that does the FDA Protect Americans episode? Yeah, 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.440 just kind of briefly, But I mean that whole book 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.200 that Deborah Blum wrote was about doctor Wiley and the 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.280 Poison Squad and the work he did amazing, and Wiley 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.080 definitely deserves a lot of credit. He gets less credit 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:20.720 than he probably should get because around that time people 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.000 started to kind of look at Teddy Roosevelt, as we'll see, 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.480 as the person who really got the legislation pushed through. 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.760 But it probably would not have happened it when it 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.440 did without doctor Wiley. But in addition to doctor Wiley, 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.520 there was also Teddy Roosevelt and another guy, a muck 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:42.760 ranking journalist, a socialist named Upton Sinclair, and those two 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:47.720 were considered to be some real driving forces behind food 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:48.960 regulation in America. 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.760 Absolutely, you know what that means. 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.960 It means that it's time for a message break. 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:57.320 Now. 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:58.920 It means I'm going to go try and find a 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.640 tiny chick lit it to shove into my tooth hole. 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.240 You should just switch the colors once in a while. 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:07.240 Aaron Cooper has my flipper. 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.080 Oh yeah, that's right, man, quite a gift. 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.159 I don't think it would fit now anyway. Okay, So 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.280 don't feel bad, Coop. Just keep praying to that thing 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:17.399 every night and it'll be okay. 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:40.359 So weird, all right, we'll be right back, all right. 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.320 So we left off with quite a teaser that a 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:47.440 gentleman named Teddy Roosevelt and a socialist writer named Upton 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:49.360 Sinclair would change the course of America. 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:50.840 And boy did they. 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.000 A little background on Teddy Roosevelt just because it really 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:57.919 applies here to how he got sort of swept up 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.520 in all this. To begin with, he was a soldier. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.040 He led the rough riders and the invasion of Spanish 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.960 held Cuba. And the reason that is important to this 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.639 story is because that invasion and that whole war was 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.760 a lot of Americans died, but not from the battle itself. 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.720 I think about four hundred Americans died in combat, but 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:26.800 about fifty five hundred died from disease, from malaria and 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:32.040 dysentery and typhoid. So President McKinley, after the war started, 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.399 just a big military commission to investigate what it was 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:37.760 like to be a soldier in all these awful conditions. 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.399 And that very key to this story included the food. 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:41.600 That they ate. 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:46.200 Yeah, because there was at least among the people who 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.879 had fought in the Spanish American War, there was this 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.480 awareness that the roast beef, especially the canned roast beef 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.959 god that had been delivered as rations. Yeah. Yeah, you're 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.600 walking a fine line just even attempting canned roast beef, Right, 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.439 it better be good. This was so not good. It 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.960 was it was like it would make you immediately start vomiting. 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.600 According to Teddy Roosevelt, Yeah, they called it embalm meek 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.000 because some of it was clearly rotted. But then they'd 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.160 added formaldehyde. This wasn't even like, Okay, this is fresh meat, 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:19.960 we're gonna add formaldehyde. They would put the formaldehyde in 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:22.400 after it was rotted to try to counteract the. 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:24.879 Rod you know, to bring it back to life. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:30.400 Exactly to frankenstein it up. And they found that that, Yeah, 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.760 when you ate the stuff, it didn't matter what you 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:34.680 did to cook it or anything like that. It would 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.280 just make you throw up or just start pooping your pants, 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.040 like almost immediately. And Teddy Roosevelt and all the other 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.800 veterans of the Spanish American War were pretty miffed about this. 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.000 So when Roosevelt got the chance to go testify for Congress, 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:49.760 he was the governor of New York by this time, 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.080 about that beef, that tinned beef, he definitely took the chance, 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:55.240 or took the opportunity. 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.760 Yeah, he called that canned beef a disgrace to our 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:04.560 country and also had a little testimonial description when the 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.000 cans were opened to the top was nothing more than 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:11.240 a layer of slime. It was disagreeable looking, that's putting 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:14.439 it mildly and nasty. Sometimes we stowed it with potato 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.159 and onions. But I could have eaten my hat stewed 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.080 with potato and onions rather than the beef. Nearly all 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:21.679 the men sickened after eating it. 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:23.280 Yeah, isn't that cross? 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:24.600 Yeah? 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:26.159 Any you know, like you said, by this time, I 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.720 mean he was already a war hero, but governor of 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:30.840 New York, he has you know, some clout all of 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:31.640 a sudden. 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:36.840 For sure. Yeah. He was fairly well known enough that 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.200 when McKinley stood for reelection in nineteen hundred, he chose 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.720 Teddy Roosevelt as his running mate. Yeah, and he was 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:48.320 still young. I think he was forty two. Less than 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:53.040 a year into the second McKinley administration, McKinley was assassinated 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:57.040 and died, and so suddenly Teddy Roosevelt, the vice president, 0:20:57.119 --> 0:20:59.920 is president, and he became the youngest president in history. 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:05.440 K was forty three, Roosevelt was forty two. And it's 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:09.120 really weird. It's one of those moments in history where 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:11.639 the right person happens to be in the right place 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:16.840