Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode.
Speaker 1: This was Let's see, was this from last year? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it was. This was one of our Dangerous
Speaker 1: Foods episodes where we talked about Oh oh, I think
Speaker 1: this is the one with killer beer in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one had concerned adverse additives in foods as part
Speaker 1: of our long running Dangerous Food series. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we're gonna if we're gonna have any anything to
Speaker 1: discuss this year, if there'll be another Dangerous Foods episode,
Speaker 1: or if this was essentially the finale. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll see what we turn up. All right, let's jump in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios Hows to work. Hey are you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick in his feast time. That's right,
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving season here once again and in the United States
Speaker 1: at any rate. So we're continuing a tradition, a tradition
Speaker 1: of dangerous foods in which we highlight foods that at
Speaker 1: least can be dangerous or deadly under the right conditions.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were trying not to alarm anyone, but
Speaker 1: we find that there's there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to be had in exploring the dangerous side
Speaker 1: of our culinary creations and our culinary instincts right now.
Speaker 1: This can range from such a strange exotic chemical adventures
Speaker 1: in the past as the hallucinogenic seabream of the Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: or or like toxic honey that was chronicled in the
Speaker 1: ancient world as leading to victories in battle when when
Speaker 1: one side ate the honey and the other could take
Speaker 1: advantage of that. But it also goes into the mundane
Speaker 1: world where we're just like normal food items that we
Speaker 1: all take for granted. If not prepared the right way,
Speaker 1: could go very bad for you. For example, normal dried beans,
Speaker 1: kidney beans, and so forth. You need to boil those,
Speaker 1: you don't just soak them and eat them, and if
Speaker 1: you do, you can experience some some extreme gastro intestinal problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to, Okay, here's the
Speaker 1: thing that human beings can eat, but under what circumstances
Speaker 1: can humans eat it? What do they have to do
Speaker 1: to it first? Do they have to remove certain parts
Speaker 1: of it? Are only certain parts edible? Is it only
Speaker 1: in and then or those parts only edible after the
Speaker 1: content has been cooked a certain way? Likewise, is there
Speaker 1: a certain time during which a particular vegetable item should
Speaker 1: be harvested? And is it dangerous to harvest it or
Speaker 1: and or consume it at another time? Or do you
Speaker 1: leave it sitting around too long? As we talked about
Speaker 1: cases with potato poisonings in the past, where potatoes were
Speaker 1: just left in the sack for got a little too
Speaker 1: wisened and then they made some schoolboys sick in England,
Speaker 1: they get that unhealthy green color, right, Yeah, But of
Speaker 1: course humans don't just eat this vegetable or that invertebrate.
Speaker 1: We we also combine all of these things. We add
Speaker 1: a small dosage of various spices, for instance, spices which
Speaker 1: in their natural form are chemical weapons and might prove
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable or dangerous to consume, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: you're consuming them, and a quantity beyond that that which
Speaker 1: is advisable when when cooking, and the culinary palate becomes
Speaker 1: quite vast. This way and out of this complexity many
Speaker 1: of the most magical of culinary possibilities emerge. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just your note here made me think about the
Speaker 1: fact that, of course I love spicy food. I think
Speaker 1: you like spicy food too, right, Yeah? Uh that that
Speaker 1: so many of these compounds that we so desire in
Speaker 1: our foods to liven them up are of course defenses there,
Speaker 1: as you say, you know, their chemical weapons. That what
Speaker 1: makes the garlics so hot and wonderful. It's got these
Speaker 1: compounds that come together when it's sell walls or ruptured
Speaker 1: and produce this pungent odor and flavor that we love.
Speaker 1: But this mention of spice was also making me wonder
Speaker 1: a question I don't think we've ever addressed on the
Speaker 1: show before. Maybe you got into it many years ago,
Speaker 1: which is can you be killed by hot peppers? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we may have covered a little bit
Speaker 1: of that in the past. I know we did an
Speaker 1: episode on nutmeg once. It was really interesting that got
Speaker 1: into a little bit of you know, the question of
Speaker 1: what is a lethal dose of nutmeg? What happens when
Speaker 1: you consume too much nutmeg? Um and and one of
Speaker 1: the things that was really emerged in that research was that, yeah,
Speaker 1: most spices, most household spices, if you consume too much
Speaker 1: of it, you will hurt yourself. Right, Um, that's just
Speaker 1: that's just kind of a fact no matter what you're
Speaker 1: grabbing out of the spice cabinet. But with a lot
Speaker 1: of these things, you would have to consume an amount
Speaker 1: of it that is not a reasonable amount that would
Speaker 1: ever be used in cooking, right. It would be the
Speaker 1: food would become inedible, Like you would have to really
Speaker 1: force yourself to choke it down. It would have to
Speaker 1: be a very deliberate act. Yeah, And I think this
Speaker 1: actually turns out to be the case with this question
Speaker 1: about hot peppers, as a lover of spicy food and
Speaker 1: as somebody who has taken a bite out of a
Speaker 1: raw Carolina Reaper pepper for an on camera experiment, which
Speaker 1: I mean that was a horrible experience. Is that what
Speaker 1: you're calling a YouTube challenge? Is that it wasn't a
Speaker 1: YouTube challenge. It was just it was just Rachel videoing
Speaker 1: me with her phone. Her dad showed up at the
Speaker 1: house with one of these. It was one of the
Speaker 1: spiciest peppers in the world. One of you did something here,
Speaker 1: No no, no, no no, it was. It was in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, so one of these uh
Speaker 1: like ten billion Scoville units peppers. He showed up and
Speaker 1: he was like, he knows I like spicy food. He's like,
Speaker 1: you want to try it? So I took a bite
Speaker 1: of it on camera, and yeah, that was like, I
Speaker 1: love spicy food. But that became a problem. It was
Speaker 1: just more like I had a disease for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. Uh. And I tried to fix it,
Speaker 1: as you know, one thing you can do if you've
Speaker 1: eaten too much spicy food is you can try to
Speaker 1: neutralize it with some milk in your mouth. But then
Speaker 1: I ended up drinking some spoiled milk, so that made
Speaker 1: it even worse. It sounds like a comedy bit. The
Speaker 1: comedy was all in my body. But yeah, so I
Speaker 1: was wondering, well, okay, so that felt pretty bad, even
Speaker 1: though I love really spicy food. Is it possible to
Speaker 1: eat food so spicy it kills you? Technically yes, but
Speaker 1: under practical circumstances not really. Uh. The active compound in
Speaker 1: chili peppers that makes them spicy is called cap sasan.
Speaker 1: Eating large amounts of capsasan can cause. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: all the symptoms were familiar with gastro intestinal distress, even vomiting, sweating, flushing, irritation,
Speaker 1: and the mucous membranes and all that which those symptoms
Speaker 1: themselves could potentially harm someone maybe if they're saying a
Speaker 1: very sensitive cardio pulmonary state. But as for just like
Speaker 1: somebody in normal health being poisoned by too much peppers. Uh,
Speaker 1: I did find some cases where people had aspirated peppers,
Speaker 1: and and that was dangerous. But normally you're not like
Speaker 1: breathing in peppers, uh, when you're eating them, you're just
Speaker 1: swallowing them. So I found one article by someone named
Speaker 1: Catherine Gammon, who consulted no less an authority than Paul Bosland,
Speaker 1: a professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and
Speaker 1: director of the Chili Pepper Institute. They've got this whole
Speaker 1: chili pepper lab there where they like breed new strains
Speaker 1: of chili's um and bosl sites of study from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty on the acute toxicity of cap sasan. So how
Speaker 1: much does it take to just kill you? By his estimation,
Speaker 1: the research revealed that to kill a one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pound person with cap sasan you need to serve
Speaker 1: them about three pounds of the powder form of one
Speaker 1: of the spiciest peppers known to human kinds, such as
Speaker 1: the boot jill Lochia or the ghost pepper. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this would need to be all in one sitting. So
Speaker 1: you get them to eat three pounds of the powdered
Speaker 1: form all at once. Uh. And he notes that your
Speaker 1: body just probably would not allow this. Some things would
Speaker 1: happen to stop you on the on the course of
Speaker 1: the suicide mission. Yeah. That Yeah, you would have to
Speaker 1: be an act of madness to really eat that much
Speaker 1: much of the pepper. Yeah. So, unless you're already in
Speaker 1: very delicate health or you're doing something very unusual and extreme,
Speaker 1: eating spicy food, even really really spicy food is perfectly safe.
Speaker 1: But hey, that's all. That's all the organic world. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's actually not, because we're breeding
Speaker 1: these peppers hotter and hotter. That is sort of agricultural technology.
Speaker 1: But still, you know this is coming from a plant,
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah, So we get into this situation where
Speaker 1: we're taking these plants, we're taking spices, we're taking other
Speaker 1: things the vast palate of things from our natural world
Speaker 1: and then using them to create food. And it's one thing.
Speaker 1: If we're creating that food within the household or within
Speaker 1: say a close tight knit community, uh such as you know,
Speaker 1: it would have been more or less the you know,
Speaker 1: the archaic normal for for humans. But of course we
Speaker 1: ascend past that, right we we begin developing much larger groups,
Speaker 1: and we begin specializing the creation of various things, various
Speaker 1: food products, especially various technologies, and we end up engaging
Speaker 1: in trade, uh and the stockpiling of foods as well.
Speaker 1: So given this, you know, there's this increased complexity allows
Speaker 1: us to work kind of a dark magic here as well.
Speaker 1: Not only can we enhance the flavor of our ingredients,
Speaker 1: but we can also hide ending smells, not nearly in
Speaker 1: a you know, in a household sense, like well, this
Speaker 1: fish is a little off, but we need to eat
Speaker 1: it more in the this fish is bad, but I
Speaker 1: really need to sell it way right. But they are
Speaker 1: all kinds of tricks like that. I mean, another thing
Speaker 1: you could do if you've seen one of those crime
Speaker 1: movies where somebody's like they cut the dope, you know,
Speaker 1: putting baby powder in the brick of heroin or whatever.
Speaker 1: People do that with food products too, Yeah, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into some some wonderful, wonderful examples of that. Uh yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: it opens the door for all manner of cuts and
Speaker 1: shortcuts and cheets, all predicated on the fact that in
Speaker 1: an industry of food, the maker doesn't have to consume
Speaker 1: their own food product, right, and perhaps they'll be down
Speaker 1: the road by the time somebody does. Now, So we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about food adulteration and food
Speaker 1: adjectives today. But I don't want to contribute, as we
Speaker 1: always do in these episodes. We don't want to contribute
Speaker 1: to food panic, and I don't want to contribute to
Speaker 1: additive panic. I think there are some people who have
Speaker 1: this attitude like I don't allow any chemicals in my
Speaker 1: food or something, which I think we've discussed that attitude
Speaker 1: on the show before. It doesn't really make sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: your food already has chemicals and it is native chemicals. Uh.
Speaker 1: Just looking at a something with a synthetic sounding name
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hurt you, right. And
Speaker 1: we'll touch a little bit, very very briefly on sort
Speaker 1: of the current state of additives in the in the
Speaker 1: future of additives, and and just the level of like
Speaker 1: legitimate concern and sometimes panic that that comes with discussion
Speaker 1: of these things. But for the most part in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about older additives, additives that we
Speaker 1: can safely say we're a bad idea, that it's not
Speaker 1: a matter a matter of opinion, uh, you know, regarding
Speaker 1: whether you should put this particular ingredient and say a
Speaker 1: candy or not. Um. Yeah, we're and we're largely talking
Speaker 1: about the deliberate adulteration of food. And this has actually
Speaker 1: been with us since ancient times. Uh. There are ancient
Speaker 1: laws and rules that that there that govern how we
Speaker 1: handle our food, how we prepare food in order to
Speaker 1: ensure food quality. This almost seems to me like it
Speaker 1: would be one of the earliest concerns of civilization. You know, like,
Speaker 1: once you're no longer making your own food or having
Speaker 1: your own food made by a family member, your food
Speaker 1: is being made by somebody maybe that you don't even know,
Speaker 1: you don't even know their name, it's being made in
Speaker 1: some place you can't see. You would naturally, I think,
Speaker 1: have people start to worry and wonder, like what's in
Speaker 1: my food? Yeah, yeah, So I was looking at a
Speaker 1: source on this from on Marcia a Ecoles, who have
Speaker 1: food safety the interplay of culture and science, of culture,
Speaker 1: science and technology, and the author points out a number
Speaker 1: of cool facts about sort of the ancient history of
Speaker 1: of food safety. So the Assyrians established weights and measures
Speaker 1: for grains because and we're getting this one of the
Speaker 1: guess one key way that you can you can cheat
Speaker 1: assus hm of weights and prices based on weights is
Speaker 1: to put something in with your grain to weight it down. UM.
Speaker 1: As early as two b c. E In, residents of
Speaker 1: India punished economic adulteration of grains and oils. During the
Speaker 1: same era, the Chinese combated consumer fraud. The ancient Athenians
Speaker 1: had purity standards for both beer and wine. The Romans
Speaker 1: had a system to control fraud and bad produce, and
Speaker 1: there are various other ancient laws, religious or otherwise that's
Speaker 1: governed the handling of meat in ways that we're concerned
Speaker 1: ultimately with with purity, which of course is we've discussed
Speaker 1: many times in the shows. It's a tricky concept because
Speaker 1: in purity you're getting ideas of sort of hygiene mixed
Speaker 1: up with with with less um a matter of fact
Speaker 1: statements about a food. But you know, as we discussed
Speaker 1: with pork recently on the show, there's always this argument
Speaker 1: that the purity is at least partially grounded in health concerns. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you can maybe make arguments like that about the
Speaker 1: mixing of different types of foods that are forbidden in
Speaker 1: some religious customs. Maybe not that there's actually anything wrong
Speaker 1: with mixing those types of foods, but perhaps there was
Speaker 1: a perception in the ancient world that it could be dangerous. Now,
Speaker 1: another source that I was looking at here is is
Speaker 1: a wonderful right up by Adam Burrows J. D Uh
Speaker 1: And it's titled Palette of Our Palettes Clever. A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Food Coloring and its Regulation from Comprehensive Reviews
Speaker 1: and Food Science and Food Safety, And this is from
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Uh. Burrows points out that the ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptians wrote of drug colorance, but archaeologists think food coloration
Speaker 1: itself dates back to roughly c. Saffron, for example, is
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Iliad, and plenty of the Elder wrote
Speaker 1: of colored wines and four hundred b C. And I
Speaker 1: looked into this little more and it seems like he's
Speaker 1: possibly talking about the use of squid inc uh in
Speaker 1: the wind. I guess, you know, give dark in it
Speaker 1: and may give it this thicker appearance. Squid inc is
Speaker 1: still used as a food additive today. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: if you ever have squid ink pasta, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're beautiful like charcoal black color in the food. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it really contributes a flavor. I've
Speaker 1: never looked into that. Yeah, And likewise, I don't know
Speaker 1: if putting squid ink in your wine is I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's it would be frowned upon at a rolling restaurant today.
Speaker 1: But saffron, of course, contributes both color and flavor. It's
Speaker 1: got a distinctive kind of aroma. But yeah, you put
Speaker 1: a little bit of saffron and say a pot of rice,
Speaker 1: and it takes on this beautiful golden hue. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: addition to saffron, a few other spices and elements that
Speaker 1: have long been used to color food. Paprika um fabulous,
Speaker 1: tumeric beat extract is a big one, because you know,
Speaker 1: you get that bright red coloration. Long used food dyes.
Speaker 1: All of these, but one that was particularly popular in
Speaker 1: the past Tyrian purple was derived from several species of
Speaker 1: predatory predatory sea snails. Oh yeah, And if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the way that the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: and particularly made use of natural occurring substances, check out
Speaker 1: our previous episode on Roman extinctions. Oh yeah, there we
Speaker 1: talk about the cultivation of like silphium and things like that. Now,
Speaker 1: another source that we looked to here was Deborah Bloom's
Speaker 1: book The Poison Squad, and Bloom points out that as
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution washed over the world of foods during
Speaker 1: particularly during I think the eighteen Seventies's pointing out here,
Speaker 1: new food processing approaches provided even more new ways and
Speaker 1: new ingredients to commit just lavish food fraud. And this
Speaker 1: included artificial flavors, artificial coloring, and chemical preservatives. And in
Speaker 1: this book she she makes a case for the importance
Speaker 1: of U. S d. A chemist Harvey Washington widely in
Speaker 1: his white Hat efforts to use our advancing knowledge of
Speaker 1: chemical science to stay on top of these many frauds.
Speaker 1: This all in advance of the Meat Inspection Act and
Speaker 1: the Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: which widely helped to bring to fruition. Yeah, he's sort
Speaker 1: of the central character in this book. And it's funny
Speaker 1: that I feel like some of the main chemicals and
Speaker 1: preservatives that he investigated with his famous Poison Squad, which
Speaker 1: was a group of men who would who would essentially
Speaker 1: meet to eat meals together that were contaminated deliberately with
Speaker 1: certain common additives used in food to see how their
Speaker 1: health fared from repeatedly eating things like borax or boric
Speaker 1: acid or whatever, that kind of thing that was used
Speaker 1: to produce stuff. I feel like some of the things
Speaker 1: that the Poison Squad investigated, the jury still kind of
Speaker 1: out on exactly how harmful they were. Maybe they weren't
Speaker 1: as harmful as he thought they were, but clearly at
Speaker 1: this time some food additives were harming and killing people.
Speaker 1: I think especially there was some danger from certain dies. Yes,
Speaker 1: and by the way, the Poison Squad, it sounds like
Speaker 1: it would make a wonderful television series, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: the public loves a good police procedural, right, This is
Speaker 1: kind of like a little bit police procedural, also a
Speaker 1: little bit you know, the flavoring of say the Nick,
Speaker 1: except with with a food um focus. So I really
Speaker 1: hope it's been optioned one thing audiences love is people
Speaker 1: in the past not knowing things that we know now.
Speaker 1: It's like the scene and Mad Men where the kid
Speaker 1: is playing putting the dry cleaning bag over their head,
Speaker 1: and like the scenes in The Nick where people are
Speaker 1: just like sitting in front of an X ray machine.
Speaker 1: Why does that give us such pleasure to see the
Speaker 1: people of the past punished by their ignorance. I don't
Speaker 1: know one thing I will I think that the Nick
Speaker 1: did a great job with it because they were able
Speaker 1: to They had those moments, for sure, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, they had plenty of moments where they I
Speaker 1: think we're able to effectively convey this sense of modernity
Speaker 1: in in the show that showing you that that even
Speaker 1: if we can look back in hindsight on these various
Speaker 1: techniques in the show in the time frame, they're occurring
Speaker 1: at the just the bleeding edge of our understanding of
Speaker 1: the human body, and it's like retro science fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so obviously, I guess it's you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: delicate balance to maintain in a show. But like I would,
Speaker 1: I would love to see the same people who did
Speaker 1: the Nick, like do the Poison Squad at least for
Speaker 1: one season, maybe many limited series maybe, but still so.
Speaker 1: The frauds during this time were many. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the more terrifying examples to discuss, just to
Speaker 1: kick things off here is u something that just on
Speaker 1: the face of things will seem like a terrible, if
Speaker 1: not a nefarious idea, and that is lead colored candy.
Speaker 1: So in our past episode on the lead um, I
Speaker 1: believe it was Cupid's leaden arrow. It was a Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day special. We pointed out that even though lead is
Speaker 1: quite poisonous h it tastes. Its taste is also sometimes
Speaker 1: described as sweet, and the ancient Romans used lead salt
Speaker 1: as a sweetener in their syrup. This was known as sapa,
Speaker 1: I believe, and plenty of the Elder once again describes
Speaker 1: the use of lead in vessels with sappa to sweeten
Speaker 1: the taste. Right, Yeah, You've got to boil down your sapa,
Speaker 1: which was like it was a syrup made by reducing
Speaker 1: some kind of wine product I think, um. And so
Speaker 1: you boil it down to make it sweet, and it
Speaker 1: takes on the lead from the pot that it's boiled
Speaker 1: and to become sweeter. He says, don't boil it in
Speaker 1: the copper pot, that's gonna taste bitter. You've got to
Speaker 1: boil it in a lead pot so it tastes nice
Speaker 1: and sweet. So when it comes to candy, obviously, candy
Speaker 1: is generally sweetened through a much more conventional means, namely
Speaker 1: sugar or or some sugar substitute. But during the time
Speaker 1: of Wiley's Wars against Dangerous Foods, children's candy was routinely
Speaker 1: laced with lead and other heavy metals to color it. Yea,
Speaker 1: to impart this kind of you know, the often describes
Speaker 1: a kind of an orange coloration, which is just, you know,
Speaker 1: terrifying to imagine, because I'm just imagining like one of
Speaker 1: these red suckers that you get at the supermarket nowadays,
Speaker 1: and just imagine that being laced with lead and being
Speaker 1: handed to a child right now. It's the CDC points
Speaker 1: out lead was, and in some parts of the world
Speaker 1: still is added to foods not only to impart in
Speaker 1: inviting orange color, but also indeed to sweeten it or
Speaker 1: to increase its weight. Again, getting back to the idea
Speaker 1: that oftentimes food, especially in bulk, is price based on weight.
Speaker 1: That you cut the dope of candy but it's with lead.
Speaker 1: So so that's like three different levels of poisonous deception.
Speaker 1: They're possibly in play in any given piece of lead
Speaker 1: laced candy. Make it cost more via way, make it
Speaker 1: look more attractive via color, and artificially enhanced the flavor
Speaker 1: to some extent as well. Uh and this applies not
Speaker 1: just to candy, but to other food stuffs with lead,
Speaker 1: often introduced via a spice blend. Now, of course, there
Speaker 1: are other ways that lead can get into candy as well.
Speaker 1: Uh and still can get into candy. There's a there
Speaker 1: was case I was looking at in which a six
Speaker 1: year old boy was allegedly poisoned by lead containing uh
Speaker 1: tamarando candy jam products purchased on a visit to Mexico
Speaker 1: with his aunt. However, it seems like a case in
Speaker 1: which the lead contamination was linked to the fact that
Speaker 1: it was quote candy packaged in ceramic jars from Mexico
Speaker 1: at the time, and as the California Department of Health
Speaker 1: points out, it is quote not entirely clear where the
Speaker 1: lead in many of the products is coming from. But
Speaker 1: products containing tamarind, chili powder or salt that is mine
Speaker 1: from certain parts of the world may have a higher
Speaker 1: likelihood of elevated levels of lead. Lead may also be
Speaker 1: introduced into the candy through improper drying, storing, or grinding
Speaker 1: of the ingredients. Now, as we know from our our
Speaker 1: our old alchemist friend Paracelsus, it is of course the
Speaker 1: dose that makes the poison, and this applies in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: It can apply to some things, can be can accumulate
Speaker 1: in the body and their effects over time with chronic exposure.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it also just has to do with an acute dose.
Speaker 1: It's possible that you know, lead compounds have been used
Speaker 1: in many food products over time that if they're in
Speaker 1: small enough concentration, there's not much of a noticeable effect
Speaker 1: on the people who eat them. But I bet in
Speaker 1: many of these cases the concentration of lead in the
Speaker 1: products is probably not very tightly controlled, especially in the
Speaker 1: past and the nineteenth century and stuff. So you might
Speaker 1: get suddenly a gumball or candy that's got a lot
Speaker 1: more lead than usual, leading to you know, high levels
Speaker 1: in an acute sense, but also eating this candy over
Speaker 1: time could lead to effects that people don't even necessarily
Speaker 1: associate with the candy, right. Yeah, And then another factor
Speaker 1: that was brought up in the case study of the
Speaker 1: child is that obviously, like children are going to be
Speaker 1: more susceptible, uh, individuals with smaller body weight, etcetera, which,
Speaker 1: of course is all the more troubling because we are
Speaker 1: talking about candy, which is inherently for children. Alright, time
Speaker 1: to take a break, but we will be right back
Speaker 1: with more. Alright, we're back. Should we talk about some
Speaker 1: more weird color additives? Alright? So these are some more
Speaker 1: examples that come from Adam Borrows j d's palette of
Speaker 1: our palettes. Uh, some of these are a number of
Speaker 1: these are not nefarious, but I'm just going to touch
Speaker 1: on them anyway because it gives I think a broader
Speaker 1: understanding of how and why we color our food and
Speaker 1: what we used to do it. Um coquineal insects have
Speaker 1: long been used to make the dye carmine, traditionally used
Speaker 1: in fabrics. It also pops up in cosmetics and food coloring. Again,
Speaker 1: not deadly unless you're one of the insects that gets
Speaker 1: ground up to in part of a reddish coloration, but
Speaker 1: it's still interesting. Saffron we already touched on, also not deadly, though,
Speaker 1: of course, with any spice. You'll run into adverse reactions
Speaker 1: if you consume too much of it. A little saffron
Speaker 1: tends to go along long way. It's derived from the
Speaker 1: saffron crocus flour, and it's long been used in cooking,
Speaker 1: both for its flavor and for its strong yellow coloration.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned earlier like cutting the dope, adding something
Speaker 1: that's not the dope to the dope that you know,
Speaker 1: bulkes it up and makes it more attractive initially. And
Speaker 1: this leads us to a famous quote from a giant,
Speaker 1: I'll grind your bones to make my bread. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's from Jack and the Beans saw. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he climbs up there and and the giant, I don't
Speaker 1: get it. Why is he grin ending his bones? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always troubled me as a kid because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know not much about bread making. I'm not
Speaker 1: a baker, but I know you don't make bread out
Speaker 1: of bones that are ground up. It makes a little
Speaker 1: more sense, though, when you understand that a typical medieval
Speaker 1: baker's trick was to brighten up bread by using ground bone,
Speaker 1: lime or chalk. Whoa. In fact, Keen Edward the first
Speaker 1: outlied this practice and uh, and here's a here's a
Speaker 1: reading of the law. If any default shall be found
Speaker 1: in the bread of a baker in the city the
Speaker 1: first time, let him be drawn upon a hurdle from
Speaker 1: the guild hall to his own house, through the great street,
Speaker 1: where there be most people assembled, and through the streets
Speaker 1: which are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging from
Speaker 1: his neck. If a second time he shall be found
Speaker 1: committing the same offense, let him be drawn from the
Speaker 1: guild hall, through the great Street of cheap Ee to
Speaker 1: the pillory, And let him be put upon the pillory,
Speaker 1: and remain there least one hour in the day. And
Speaker 1: the third time that such default shall be found, be
Speaker 1: shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down,
Speaker 1: and the baker made to forswear the trade in the
Speaker 1: city forever. Whoa the shame walk with bread around your neck.
Speaker 1: That's what you get if you put bone or something
Speaker 1: else in the bread. Victorian era Europe saw copper salts
Speaker 1: used to turn pickles and vegetables of a brighter green color. Apparently,
Speaker 1: and as described in eighteen twenty by English chemist Frederick Acum,
Speaker 1: a key individual in the crackdown on illicit additives at
Speaker 1: the time. Uh. He said the following this quote comes
Speaker 1: from Burrows Uh right up as well. Quote. Vegetable substances
Speaker 1: preserved in a state called pickles wholesale frequently depends greatly
Speaker 1: upon a fine, lively green color, and sometimes intentionally colored
Speaker 1: by means of copper. A young lady amused herself by
Speaker 1: eating pickles impregnated with copper. She soon complained of a
Speaker 1: pain in her stomach in nine days after eating the pickle.
Speaker 1: Death relieved her of her suffering. Whoa and Acam also
Speaker 1: pointed to the use of these coloring additives in candies
Speaker 1: uh and in which he pointed out vermilion would contain
Speaker 1: mercury red lead, it was another one white lead, verdigris,
Speaker 1: which is a copper salt blue vitriol which contains copper,
Speaker 1: and then sheilds green, which contains copper and arsenic shields.
Speaker 1: Green is a massive historical case of I think primarily
Speaker 1: not used in food, right, primarily used in like I
Speaker 1: don't know, coloring walls and stuff like that, but I
Speaker 1: think you see that with a few of these different things,
Speaker 1: like there'll be a die and it's fine if you're
Speaker 1: dyeing fabrics, with it, but then to turn around and
Speaker 1: use it in food is either you know, it is
Speaker 1: at least ill advised, if not in like a nefarious act. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying siels green is fine. I think sheilds
Speaker 1: green is famous for poisoning people in history, like even
Speaker 1: through fabric it was one of the real bad ones.
Speaker 1: In addition, iron compounds were sometimes used to redden up foods,
Speaker 1: and then the dye Prussian blue along with yellow gypsum,
Speaker 1: we're often added to Chinese green teas to make them
Speaker 1: more green and inviting to foreign markets. Uh and put
Speaker 1: in Prussian blue contained arsenic. This reminds me of the
Speaker 1: uh the situation with absinthe um when you when you
Speaker 1: see like a selection of absence at a you know
Speaker 1: absinthe bar. Generally speaking, if I remember correctly, you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to go for the ones that do not look
Speaker 1: as much like storybook absinthe like. The more it looks
Speaker 1: like mouthwash like it's a sign that some sort of
Speaker 1: coloration has been added, probably not arsenic. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's arsenic, but but something has been added to enhance
Speaker 1: that coloration and make it more attractive to at least
Speaker 1: the casual audience, I see it make it uh to
Speaker 1: use a tokenism, look fairer and taste fouler yes. And
Speaker 1: then there's the coloring of butter and butter like products.
Speaker 1: Burrows points out that there was a thirteen French edict
Speaker 1: against coloring butter, and late a fifteen seventy four law
Speaker 1: preventing the use of colors and pastries to simulate the
Speaker 1: presence of eggs. And then there were the then there're
Speaker 1: the margarine Wars, which we've touched on on the show
Speaker 1: in the past, in which butter manufacturers sought to protect
Speaker 1: their turf by seeking laws against yellow dyes and margarine,
Speaker 1: and and even though adding the requirement of pink dye
Speaker 1: to make it clear that margarine was not butter, and
Speaker 1: in fact the U. S. Supreme Court had to intervene
Speaker 1: and overturned state laws in thirty two pro butter states
Speaker 1: according to the Butter Wars by publishing nat Geo. And
Speaker 1: this was by Rebecca Rupp. Now, again, while it is
Speaker 1: clear that some compounds used as dies in history have
Speaker 1: turned out to be dangerous in one form or another,
Speaker 1: this is certainly not to suggest that all or even
Speaker 1: most of these compounds have any kind of negative health effects,
Speaker 1: but concerns about such have definitely continued into the modern
Speaker 1: area era, whether founded or not. Yeah, And if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about this sort of the modern
Speaker 1: state and recent history of of of die considerations, die outraged, die, pendics, etcetera,
Speaker 1: I'd refer you to Burrows for more on this because
Speaker 1: he gets into a lot of the concerns over modern
Speaker 1: dies and sometimes the urban legends about their dangers, such
Speaker 1: as the notion that Mountain Dew's yellow in our five
Speaker 1: reduces sperm count, which which is not the case, but
Speaker 1: that was like that was an urban legend that was
Speaker 1: making the rounds at one point. However, I will leave
Speaker 1: leave you all with this quote from Burrows on the
Speaker 1: history and future of color additives. I think he sums
Speaker 1: us up nicely. Quote. It is hard to believe that
Speaker 1: only a century ago our ancestors were eating food died
Speaker 1: with highly toxic color additives. From that auspicious starting point,
Speaker 1: we have come to a time where a food colorant
Speaker 1: with a one in nineteen billion chance of causing cancer
Speaker 1: is legally considered too dangerous. What we used to die
Speaker 1: our foods and how we regulated may continue to change,
Speaker 1: but there is no end in sight to the timeless
Speaker 1: practice of coloring our food. This is interest ing, like
Speaker 1: the idea that I don't know, whenever you're making a
Speaker 1: ruling on this kind of thing, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: ever say that something is you're sure one hundred percent safe?
Speaker 1: So like, what's the threshold you're comfortable with You're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe if we use this die in fruit loops for
Speaker 1: a hundred years, one person will be killed by it.
Speaker 1: Is that like, do we just decide, Okay, if it's
Speaker 1: just one person every hundred years getting killed by the die,
Speaker 1: then it's okay. Yeah. And I wondered to, like to what, like,
Speaker 1: what is our ultimate relationship with the idea of adding
Speaker 1: die to a food product? Is it one of I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're oblivious to it, is just oh, it's this
Speaker 1: is super red. I'm very attracted to it. I must
Speaker 1: have this candy or apple or whatever the product is. Well,
Speaker 1: we with the eyes first, but but then if if
Speaker 1: there also seems to be this this this this broad
Speaker 1: category of just distrust associated with food coloration as well, Uh,
Speaker 1: this this idea that and still you know pretty early
Speaker 1: on via some of these frauds that were perpetrated the
Speaker 1: idea that if there's some sort of artificial color there,
Speaker 1: there's something in the food that should not be there. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're like the understanding that this food is super red
Speaker 1: in an unnatural way. Um, why is that the case?
Speaker 1: Something is trying to fool me with this food. It's
Speaker 1: the post Watergate era of relationship with foods. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's are just general uh distrustful attitude in
Speaker 1: the modern world. I think you know, there there are
Speaker 1: reasons for us to feel that way, even if we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily correct about perceived dangers and industrial additives to
Speaker 1: food products. And another thing I wanted to clarify. I
Speaker 1: know that when you say that, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about a one in nineteen billion chance of a
Speaker 1: die killing somebody, I understand that's talking about like confidence intervals.
Speaker 1: That doesn't literally mean that like one person will die
Speaker 1: for every you know, it is just a way of
Speaker 1: expressing how confident you are generally that something is safe.
Speaker 1: And again I recommend everyone to check out that Borrows
Speaker 1: article if you want more, you know, in depth consideration
Speaker 1: of dies. But I think that's that's probably enough for
Speaker 1: for food additives for dies. At this point, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to open up some beer. Alright, we're back now.
Speaker 1: I want to start with we we've done these in
Speaker 1: some of the dangerous food episodes in the past, to
Speaker 1: to do a little sort of epidemiological detective story where
Speaker 1: there's a sudden outbreak of symptoms and then people are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what caused it. Uh So, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go back to the nineteen sixties to the mid
Speaker 1: to late nineteen sixties, and in this period, doctors in
Speaker 1: hospitals and clinics across a number of metro areas in Europe,
Speaker 1: in the United States, and Canada begin to notice a
Speaker 1: strange pattern of cases, patients showing up with a sudden
Speaker 1: onset of an unusual form of cardiomya pathy, which is
Speaker 1: a disease of the heart muscle in which parts of
Speaker 1: the heart can become enlarged or stiff for just generally
Speaker 1: aren't working properly. Uh So, between August nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: and April nineteen sixty six, a rash of cases appeared
Speaker 1: around the area of Quebec City in Canada, enough to
Speaker 1: signal that there was some kind of pattern going on
Speaker 1: to local clinicians and pathologists who at first thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe the epidemic is viral in nature, But a study
Speaker 1: of thirty patients could not isolate a viral cause for
Speaker 1: this strange kind of cardiomyopathy. Uh and this was described
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty seven report I'll sight in a minute. Instead,
Speaker 1: what the patients seem to have in common was that
Speaker 1: they were all heavy beer drinkers. Um. So, alcoholic beverages
Speaker 1: are an interesting case to explore when you're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, dangerous foods, because alcoholic beverages already contain a
Speaker 1: perfectly powerful and dangerous active ingredient, which is alcohol. According
Speaker 1: to itally by the U s c d C. And
Speaker 1: about people in the United States die every year from
Speaker 1: alcohol poisoning. And that's just alcohol poisoning, which is an
Speaker 1: acute overdose of alcohol leading directly to death. If you
Speaker 1: expand that number to alcohol related deaths such as you know,
Speaker 1: deaths from from chronic alcohol abuse, or include stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, traffic collisions caused by people driving under the influence,
Speaker 1: the number is obviously going to be a lot higher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: among other things, it is a great insight into the
Speaker 1: the uneven way in which we uh we we we
Speaker 1: we we govern the consumption and purchase of various dangerous substances.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, but for yeah, so for alcohol poisoning alone
Speaker 1: people every year as of that's an average of six
Speaker 1: people who die every single day, and just in the
Speaker 1: United States, and an overwhelming majority of the people who
Speaker 1: die from alcohol poisoning are adult men. Seventy six percent
Speaker 1: of deaths from our called poisoning occur among men, and
Speaker 1: seventy six are also between people of the ages thirty
Speaker 1: five to sixty four. And of course the primary cause
Speaker 1: of death in these cases is suppression of the life
Speaker 1: sustaining functions of the brain and the central nervous system. Alright,
Speaker 1: so the basic scenario is you have a population of
Speaker 1: people who are already drinking something that is arguably poison
Speaker 1: but something else may be involved. Right, These cases of
Speaker 1: cardio myopathy did not seem to stem from the acute
Speaker 1: or chronic effects of alcohol itself. So look at a study,
Speaker 1: the sort of breakthrough study on on the first big
Speaker 1: look at this It was by Eve's Marine and Philippe
Speaker 1: Daniel called Quebec Beer drinkers cardio myopathy ideological considerations that means,
Speaker 1: considerations for the origin of this outbreak. It was published
Speaker 1: in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and the authors here mentioned that there was a similar
Speaker 1: outbreak of sudden cardio myopathy in Omaha. No brass Ka
Speaker 1: I was also looking at the nineteen seventy two paper
Speaker 1: by a doctor named Carl S. Alexander describing an outbreak
Speaker 1: of cardio myopathy and twenty eight patients admitted to the
Speaker 1: VA Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, between nineteen sixty four and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, So again mid mid to late sixties,
Speaker 1: especially in these Midwestern and northern cities, sudden outbreak of
Speaker 1: of strange type of heart disease UH. And again what
Speaker 1: these cases seem to have in common was heavy consumption
Speaker 1: of beer and sudden unusual cardio myopathy. So, according to Alexander,
Speaker 1: a total of forty two patients with acute cardiac distress
Speaker 1: were admitted to the hospital in Minneapolis, but the study
Speaker 1: focused on just twenty eight of them because those twenty
Speaker 1: eight admitted to drinking up to thirty bottles of not
Speaker 1: just beer, but one particular brand of beer Brand X
Speaker 1: in Alexander's paper and denied drinking any other alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 1: The other fourteen patients were excluded from the initial study
Speaker 1: because they drank other kinds of alcohol as well as
Speaker 1: Brand X beer. Actually, now brand X is just to
Speaker 1: cover the name of the actual manufacturer, right right, And
Speaker 1: that's just in the literature. I will name one of
Speaker 1: the culprits that we get too log on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Alexander's paper was published in seventy two in the American
Speaker 1: Journal of Medicine. And again this is looking at a
Speaker 1: broader study of of this phenomenon. Here now, Alexander mentions
Speaker 1: that there are types of cardiomyopathy that you would otherwise
Speaker 1: expect to find among patients with alcoholism, and these cases
Speaker 1: were different in their symptoms and onset. Like Alexander says, quote,
Speaker 1: the syndrome differed from alcoholic cardiomyopathy and berry berry which
Speaker 1: again that's another related disease caused by a deficiency of
Speaker 1: vitamin B one also known as thiamine. And Alexander says
Speaker 1: the way it differed from these other known conditions was
Speaker 1: quote in its rather abrupt onset of left ventricular failure,
Speaker 1: cardiogenic shock and acids. So cardiogenic shock is when the
Speaker 1: heart suddenly fails to pump enough blood to provide circulation
Speaker 1: to the rest of the body, often happens as the
Speaker 1: result of a heart attack. Acidosis is an imbalance in
Speaker 1: the pH of the blood in which the blood plasma
Speaker 1: becomes overly acidic. Alexander also mentions two other unique features
Speaker 1: of these apparent epidemics, as identified in Belgium by a
Speaker 1: doctor named Kes Salute uh and these were pericardial effusion.
Speaker 1: And this is when there's an excess of fluids surrounding
Speaker 1: the heart inside the pericardium, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: sack that surrounds the heart muscle. So you've got the
Speaker 1: heart is inside its sack, and then there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of fluid in that sack, and then there is UH.
Speaker 1: There were also elevated hemoglobin levels. Hemoglobin is the protein
Speaker 1: in red blood cells that the body uses to transport
Speaker 1: oxygen molecules from the lungs to the rest of the body. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you might see elevated levels of hemoglobin in any
Speaker 1: kind of condition where the body is struggling to supply
Speaker 1: itself with enough oxygen. So This could range from high altitude,
Speaker 1: say right, because you know you're not getting enough with
Speaker 1: each breath, so you see increased hemoglobin in the blood,
Speaker 1: to various lung and heart diseases. Alexander mentions that among
Speaker 1: the patients he reviewed, acute mortality was eighteen percent, but
Speaker 1: the disease was associated with lingering symptoms and disabilities that
Speaker 1: led to a total mortality of forty three percent. So
Speaker 1: ultimately forty three percent of the people he saw with
Speaker 1: this condition died from it, and so it took a
Speaker 1: bit of work to isolate the cause of these outbreaks,
Speaker 1: especially it was in the first one in Quebec City
Speaker 1: in the years nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: The investigating physicians established that it probably was not caused
Speaker 1: by a virus, that it seemed to be associated with
Speaker 1: heavy beer drinking, but that it didn't look like normal
Speaker 1: alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and they discovered something else similar to what
Speaker 1: Alexander discovered later in his study about the Minneapolis patients.
Speaker 1: In Quebec City, it wasn't just that the patients were
Speaker 1: heavy beer drinkers. They drank a lot of one specific
Speaker 1: brand of beer, uh Morn, and Daniel speaking of this
Speaker 1: brewery that made this beer quote, it's excellent tasting. Brew
Speaker 1: was and still is very popular in Quebec and accounts
Speaker 1: for approximately eight of the local market. Later reports revealed
Speaker 1: this to be the Tao Brewery. So quick question, does
Speaker 1: this have does this have any uh? Did this inspire
Speaker 1: the movie Strange Brew? Is there anything I haven't seen Strange?
Speaker 1: I've never seen it either. I just okay, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just familiar with it by you know, reputation that it
Speaker 1: concerns some sort of strange Canadian brew of beer and
Speaker 1: it's you know, cinematic powers. I kind of doubt it
Speaker 1: because I think that movie is a comedy and this
Speaker 1: ultimately is not that funny of a story, though it
Speaker 1: does have I don't know, I guess it has some
Speaker 1: funny tragedy plus time comedy. Right. Yes, of course what
Speaker 1: happened to the people who drank it is not funny,
Speaker 1: But like when you when we find out what was
Speaker 1: causing this, it is actually kind of strange. So Morin
Speaker 1: and Daniel mentioned that they were inspired to look more
Speaker 1: closely at the constituents of the beer made by this
Speaker 1: brewery because of a specific historical analogy and that's the
Speaker 1: Great English beer poisoning of nineteen hundred. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: an incident in which thousands of people across Middle and
Speaker 1: Northwest England, especially in the city of Manchester, were poisoned
Speaker 1: by beer. Of the thousands who were poisoned, at least
Speaker 1: around seventy or so died. And I think it was
Speaker 1: originally believed to be nothing more than a bunch of
Speaker 1: you know, known pathologies affecting alcoholics. A royal commission in
Speaker 1: Great Britain investigated the incident and discovered that the outbreak
Speaker 1: of symptoms was due to contamination of these batches of
Speaker 1: beer with the chemical element arsenic and known poison. Now,
Speaker 1: given the isolation of this beer source, UH, and a
Speaker 1: bit of historical analogy, finally a theory started to come together.
Speaker 1: And it starts with beer foam and dish detergent. So
Speaker 1: you ever seen a beer commercial on TV the kind
Speaker 1: I know you've seen at least So sometimes you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're hanging out by the pool party and with the
Speaker 1: bottles or the cans. Right, sometimes you're a giant amid
Speaker 1: the mountains and throwing the ball back and forth. Which
Speaker 1: was the beer company that had the had the big
Speaker 1: like Transformers monster. Oh, I don't know. See they all
Speaker 1: they all couldn't run together for me. And I was never,
Speaker 1: you know, a customer, but you know, sometimes you're partying
Speaker 1: with a dog. Just About anything can happen in a
Speaker 1: beer commercial, Okay, So I'm trying to get you to
Speaker 1: picture a specific kind, which is the one where, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody is pouring a nice frosty glass of beer straight
Speaker 1: from the tap into a mug or or a pint
Speaker 1: glass and handing it across the bar to the earthy
Speaker 1: Marlboro man who's off work and ready to relax with
Speaker 1: his friends. You know this kind, right with the bar,
Speaker 1: with the glass, with especially the frothy head at the
Speaker 1: top of the glass, right, and the Marlboro man is
Speaker 1: going to drink from it, and he's gonna have the
Speaker 1: foam stuck on his mustache. Yeah, got foam. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so in this genre of beer commercial, clearly one of
Speaker 1: the most important is that equalities of that glass of
Speaker 1: beer is the foamy top. Some people call it the head,
Speaker 1: some people call it the collar. This foam is caused
Speaker 1: by the quick rising of bubbles from previously dissolved gas.
Speaker 1: Usually it's gonna be carbon dioxide, but I think some
Speaker 1: brands actually dissolved nitrogen in there to help with the
Speaker 1: foam guinness or some brands might do that. But these
Speaker 1: bubbles form at nucleation points in the glass of beer
Speaker 1: as it's poured, and they shoot up to the top
Speaker 1: of the glass where they collect in a mesh of
Speaker 1: bubbles and proteins from the malt in the beer and
Speaker 1: bitter hop compounds. I was looking at an article that
Speaker 1: interviewed a professor of biochemistry at Cornell named Carl Siebert
Speaker 1: on the subject of what constitutes beer foam, and Siebert
Speaker 1: mentioned that one of the important proteins in beer that
Speaker 1: collects in these bubbles and this matrix of bubbles and
Speaker 1: proteins in beer foam is albumen, which I thought I
Speaker 1: would just add is also the same primary family of
Speaker 1: proteins that you find in egg whites. So is there
Speaker 1: something shared in common between your logger head and that
Speaker 1: egg white omelet a little bit or your ramos gin fizz,
Speaker 1: which of course is going to have that nice, creamy,
Speaker 1: frothy consistency because of the egg whites that are part
Speaker 1: of the recipe. Oh that's right, Yeah, But but in
Speaker 1: the beer, like the head of the beer. I know
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to have too much of it, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's a sign of a bad poor right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think it's widely agreed by beer drinkers that
Speaker 1: a glass of beer without a correctly proportioned layer of
Speaker 1: head is wrong. If you get too much head, if
Speaker 1: it takes up like half the glass, or if you
Speaker 1: have none at all, you have failed to beer. But
Speaker 1: it's I'm assuming you still need a certain amount of
Speaker 1: foam at the top for it just to feel like
Speaker 1: you're drinking beer, right, And and the beer industry has
Speaker 1: studied the chemistry of beer foam extensively to meet the
Speaker 1: perceived customer demand for the right kind of frothy head
Speaker 1: on a glass of beer. But the researchers Marin and
Speaker 1: Daniel note that by the mid nineteen sixties, beer manufacturers
Speaker 1: were encountering a problem that beer wasn't looking right in
Speaker 1: a lot of ball ours. It didn't have that nice
Speaker 1: frothy head that they believed the customers were looking for,
Speaker 1: And this was believed to be the result of the
Speaker 1: use of synthetic dishwashing detergents used to clean beer glasses,
Speaker 1: which after cleaning and insufficient rinsing, would leave a layer
Speaker 1: of film on the inside of the beer glass that
Speaker 1: interfered with the beer's ability to foam up and create
Speaker 1: a nice head. Interesting, I never thought about that. So
Speaker 1: around July nine, some Canadian brewers and presumably brewers elsewhere
Speaker 1: found a solution in modern chemistry in an additive chemical
Speaker 1: compound that Marin and Daniel originally identify as cobalt sulfate,
Speaker 1: but which later authors I think more correctly identified as
Speaker 1: cobalt chloride. But the main thing here is that it's
Speaker 1: a cobalt compound. This cobalt compound was added to draft
Speaker 1: beer batches to stabilize the beer head and overcome any
Speaker 1: anti foaming influence of deterred residue left in the beer glass.
Speaker 1: So obviously we know where this is heading. But and
Speaker 1: so it's probably coloring my judgment, but already it sounds
Speaker 1: like if you're fighting detergent film, uh, through the food
Speaker 1: product itself, through the beer itself, Like that's a bad sign,
Speaker 1: right right uh? And and again this would be something
Speaker 1: that they were only really supposed to be dealing with
Speaker 1: through draft beer, right, And it's going to be poured
Speaker 1: into a glass in a bar or something, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the same in a bottle because you know the
Speaker 1: number one, the head doesn't really matter in the bottle
Speaker 1: as much. And then presumably that bottle is going to
Speaker 1: be completely clean and not have any kind of like
Speaker 1: you have control over what you're you're pre cleaning the
Speaker 1: bottles with exactly. Yeah, But it turns out that at
Speaker 1: least in this Quebec City brewery, this stuff was being
Speaker 1: added to both the draft beer and the bottle beer
Speaker 1: batches because they didn't make them separately. They made them
Speaker 1: all in one batch and then split them up later.
Speaker 1: So so they're putting cobalt in the beer. Wonder how
Speaker 1: that's going to turn about. Let's talk about cobalt. Cobalt
Speaker 1: is a amical element atomic number twenty seven. It's one
Speaker 1: of the transition metals of the periodic table. It's essentially
Speaker 1: never found in its pure form in nature. It's always
Speaker 1: bound up with other elements in compounds and compound minerals
Speaker 1: and other stuff. Very cool etymology fact. The English name
Speaker 1: cobalt comes from the German word cobalt, which in its
Speaker 1: general sense means goblin or imp or demon. More specifically,
Speaker 1: it refers to a breed of German household or subterranean goblin. Uh,
Speaker 1: there would be ones in your house, ones sometimes I
Speaker 1: think in ships, and definitely in minds. And these goblins
Speaker 1: could be full of tricks and mischief if you offended them.
Speaker 1: So essentially, yes, So the cobalt or was rarely sought
Speaker 1: out for its own sake at this time, but it
Speaker 1: was usually a byproduct of mining for other metals like
Speaker 1: silver or copper, and it seemed to some miners and
Speaker 1: refiners and metal workers that this other element in the
Speaker 1: ore carried impish or demonic qualities, since it was believed
Speaker 1: to make workers sick with its fumes and degrade the
Speaker 1: quality of silver. Now I think it seems, actually, with
Speaker 1: historical perspective, that what was really making people sick during
Speaker 1: this refining process was the arsenic content of the ore,
Speaker 1: but the goblin name stuck with cobalt. Cobalt remains the
Speaker 1: goblin metal. Cobalt was first chemically isolated in the seventeen
Speaker 1: thirties by the Swedish chemist gae Org Bronte, but the
Speaker 1: use of compounds containing cobalt goes back into the ancient world,
Speaker 1: going back to our dye discussion, it appears that it
Speaker 1: was often for the use of coloring. It was to
Speaker 1: pigment or color statuettes in ancient Egypt, or beads in
Speaker 1: ancient Persia, and cobalt was used in ceramics in China.
Speaker 1: But what happens when you start eating or drinking it? Well,
Speaker 1: Cobalt appears to have a very complex range of biological
Speaker 1: effects at the same time, of course, it is not
Speaker 1: a pure poise, and in fact, cobalt compounds in small
Speaker 1: quantities are important for good health in a number of animals.
Speaker 1: Or I said compounds plural, I think there's at least
Speaker 1: one known one I can think of, which is vitamin
Speaker 1: B twelve, also known as cobal aman. It contains cobalt
Speaker 1: and UH and B twelve is of course essential for
Speaker 1: good health. It sustains functions like cell metabolism, red blood
Speaker 1: cell formation or the I think the maturation of red
Speaker 1: blood cells, and in DNA synthesis. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: were already by the nineteen sixties known therapeutic uses of cobalt.
Speaker 1: But again, to revisit Paracelsis, it's the dose that makes
Speaker 1: the poison. While some small amounts of some forms of
Speaker 1: cobalt are necessary in the body. Humans are also extremely
Speaker 1: sensitive to large doses of cobalt. So to come back
Speaker 1: to the Quebec City outbreak in nineteen sixty five, according
Speaker 1: to Morin and Daniel, the myocardial toxicity of cobalt was
Speaker 1: already known to medical science in the nineteen sixties. Studies
Speaker 1: had already shown that metabolized cobalt is deposited in the
Speaker 1: muscle tissue of the heart and it will reduce the
Speaker 1: ability of the heart muscles to contract, which of course
Speaker 1: they need to do to pump blood. So the detectives
Speaker 1: here looked into the timing of when cobalt was added
Speaker 1: to the beer and the appearance of patients with beer
Speaker 1: drinkers cardiomyopathy, and it was clear that the cobalt in
Speaker 1: the beer was primarily to blame. After a pattern was
Speaker 1: discovered in in nineteen sixty six, breweries in the United
Speaker 1: States and Canada and elsewhere were ordered by their governments
Speaker 1: to stop using cobalt additives, and this appears to have
Speaker 1: stopped the the you know, people showing up at hospitals
Speaker 1: and clinics with this unique type of cardio myopathy. In
Speaker 1: the following months. Robert, I've attached a little timeline for
Speaker 1: you here being see quite clearly a pattern where basically
Speaker 1: the cobalt is introduced and then the patients start showing up,
Speaker 1: the cobalt is removed, and the patients stopped showing up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it is a there's a clear correlation there. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some peculiarities here, and one is that in
Speaker 1: both the case of the nineteen hundred beer poise in
Speaker 1: England and the outbreaks of beer drinkers cardiomyopathy, it seemed
Speaker 1: like at least some patients, maybe a lot of patients,
Speaker 1: displayed symptoms that were more powerful than you would expect
Speaker 1: from the doses of arsenic and cobalt alone, respectively, that
Speaker 1: they received. So it also looks like the negative effects
Speaker 1: of alcoholism, along with poor diet and nutrition, maybe contributing
Speaker 1: to making the arsenic and the cobalt more potent poisons
Speaker 1: than they would have been on their own. Nevertheless, I
Speaker 1: think it's totally clear that the cobalt was primarily the cause.
Speaker 1: Uh and Moren and Daniel also add a really stern,
Speaker 1: pretty harsh addendum to their paper. Uh. They point out
Speaker 1: that the a chelating agent called E d t A
Speaker 1: quote has been shown to prevent cobalt intoxication in the animal.
Speaker 1: Had this metal been known to be present in beer
Speaker 1: at the time of the epidemic, the prompt administration of
Speaker 1: E d t A might have saved some of our patients.
Speaker 1: The clinician, accustomed to knowing the exact composition of the
Speaker 1: drugs he uses, will therefore seriously question the necessity for
Speaker 1: the secrecy that surrounds the use of food or drink additives.
Speaker 1: That makes sense again, It comes back to to to
Speaker 1: the the fact that in the modern world we have
Speaker 1: such a robust palette from which to create our various
Speaker 1: food products. Uh. Well, if you're going to be treating
Speaker 1: an illness that maybe due to your particular food or
Speaker 1: drink product, you need to have the secret ingredients fully
Speaker 1: listed so that medical personnel can respond appropriately. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I mean it's known here that they're saying, if we'd
Speaker 1: known about the cobalt earlier, some people who died might
Speaker 1: have lived. Uh. That's a tragic reality. Um, that's just
Speaker 1: that seems to be this unfortunate side effect of the
Speaker 1: the idea of protecting recipes and industrial secrets and stuff.
Speaker 1: But anyway, after the link between the cobalt additive and
Speaker 1: the cardiac disease was discovered, the use of cobalt, of
Speaker 1: course was suspended, as we said, but there must have
Speaker 1: been plenty of cases around the world of undiagnosed cobalt
Speaker 1: cardio myopathy which doctors just mistook for more common forms
Speaker 1: of heart disease. Eves Moren emphasizes this point speaking to
Speaker 1: the CBC in article about the cobalt poisoning quote, you
Speaker 1: can't imagine the number of patients everywhere who died from
Speaker 1: that disease because it wast mortality. But the story doesn't
Speaker 1: in there. I was reading article from the CBC, uh
Speaker 1: that was the one I just cited, and and the
Speaker 1: occasion of this article was that there was another case
Speaker 1: of cobalt poisoning that was recognized by a group of
Speaker 1: doctors in Germany that year with the help of an
Speaker 1: episode of the TV show House, which I've never seen before,
Speaker 1: but apparently the doctor said the fact that cobalt poisoning
Speaker 1: had showed up on an episode of the TV show
Speaker 1: led them to along with the this historical case of
Speaker 1: the beer outbreak in the sixties led them to diagnose
Speaker 1: correctly what was happening to fifty five year old man
Speaker 1: who showed up in a hospital in Marburg, Germany with
Speaker 1: severe heart failure, deafness, blindness, fever, hypothyroidism, and swollen lymph nodes,
Speaker 1: and the doctors eventually pinpointed the cause of his sudden illness,
Speaker 1: which was cobalt poisoning from metal hip implants. A common
Speaker 1: use of cobalt today is in is in special like alloy,
Speaker 1: is like magnetic metals and alloys. And apparently this patient
Speaker 1: had I think part of some kind of ceramic object
Speaker 1: with part of it with his hip replacement rubbing against
Speaker 1: the metal alloy element of the hip replacement, and it
Speaker 1: was the rubbing was releasing cobalt into his bloodstream. But
Speaker 1: the doctors figured this out. The patient had his hip
Speaker 1: pros thesis removed and replaced with a new model, after
Speaker 1: which the concentrations of cobalt and chromium and his blood
Speaker 1: decreased and he recovered from some of the worst of
Speaker 1: his symptoms, but not immediately from all of them. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's that's very interesting, And as far as house goes,
Speaker 1: I've never watched either left the lead actor, but this
Speaker 1: is a great example of why it's it's not a
Speaker 1: bad thing to get the science at least mostly right
Speaker 1: in some sort of popular form of entertainment, because people
Speaker 1: are going to you know, they're going to learn from
Speaker 1: it for better or worse, you know. And here's an
Speaker 1: example of of of them getting the science right or
Speaker 1: even mostly right, helped investigators go in the right direction
Speaker 1: on this particular case. Yeah, but I think this is
Speaker 1: such a bizarre and fascinating story, going from like the
Speaker 1: aesthetics of what beer looks like in a glass to
Speaker 1: to these outbreaks of metal poisoning. Yeah, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and like and again it's clearly a case where the
Speaker 1: the individuals who did this, they were they were thinking, well,
Speaker 1: we just we want to make the beer look nicer.
Speaker 1: What can we add. Here's something that that we can add,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna it's not gonna hurt anybody like that
Speaker 1: was clearly far from their minds. And uh, and yet
Speaker 1: these were the unforeseen consequences. But again that's the complexity
Speaker 1: of of of food in our modern world of processed
Speaker 1: food and and and certainly beer is as a as
Speaker 1: an artificial product, it is processed. I mean, it's stories
Speaker 1: like this that can make you. Normally you don't stop
Speaker 1: to to appreciate the bureaucrats, but it's stories like this
Speaker 1: can that can really make you say, like, hey, wow,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually amazing that that modern societies have come
Speaker 1: up with things like food and drug testing organize, you know,
Speaker 1: like a Food and Drug Administration or something that looks
Speaker 1: at products that are going out to mass markets in
Speaker 1: an organized way to say, can we be pretty certain
Speaker 1: that this is safe before releasing it on the public, right,
Speaker 1: We didn't always have that. I mean, yeah, it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I don't want the government. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying what I can and can't put in my body.
Speaker 1: But if the thing we're talking about is a say,
Speaker 1: a lead laced UH sucker for a child, or or
Speaker 1: or or a cobalt infused beer, you don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: what you're putting in your body hasn't been tested. I'm
Speaker 1: all for big Brother jumping in and weeding out you know,
Speaker 1: poisonous products like that, but that's just me. You may
Speaker 1: have a different opinion of poison. So anyway, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this was going to really help anybody out
Speaker 1: this Thanksgiving uh don't don't put cobalt on your turkey,
Speaker 1: right right, You don't just don't use any like hard
Speaker 1: heavy metals to to flavor or way down anything. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess in general, you know, you're
Speaker 1: going to use some processed foods during you know, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of feast you might be having, You're going to
Speaker 1: use additives or something that has additives added to it.
Speaker 1: And so it is I think inciple to understand the
Speaker 1: history of these things, and uh and the Carol careful
Speaker 1: balance that is in play between you know, finding a
Speaker 1: nice color, enhancing a flavor, and potentially poisoning somebody. Can
Speaker 1: we end with just a food coloring tip. Sure, you
Speaker 1: sort of mentioned earlier when you were listing natural foods
Speaker 1: that are sometimes used for their their dying properties or pigments.
Speaker 1: One that I think is a great substitute for saffron.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get the flavor there, but it all so
Speaker 1: creates a wonderful yellow orange hue is just use a
Speaker 1: little bit of turmeric. You don't have saffron at the house,
Speaker 1: but you want to make a nice yellow pot of rice,
Speaker 1: a little bit of turmeric in there. It goes a
Speaker 1: long way. Oh, yeah, I love I love turmeric. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and call it here for this
Speaker 1: year's Dangerous Foods. But I think I think we'll probably
Speaker 1: be back next year with another Dangerous Foods episode. We
Speaker 1: did not exhaust the the larder of poisons this time,
Speaker 1: so I think we'll be able to come back with
Speaker 1: some new angle next year. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind, going over to stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we will find them. That's the mothership,
Speaker 1: and you can also find the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Wherever it is, just make sure you have
Speaker 1: subscribed and give us a rating and review. That really
Speaker 1: helps us out. If you want a little horror fiction,
Speaker 1: check out the second Oil Aige that's out wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. You can also check out our other
Speaker 1: nonfiction show that Being Invention. Invention is a journey through
Speaker 1: human techno history, one invention at a time. UH. This month,
Speaker 1: there have been a number of food episodes, a two
Speaker 1: part look at the microwave. For instance, use a microwave
Speaker 1: every day? Do you know how it works? Well? You
Speaker 1: should listen to these episodes and make sure you're on
Speaker 1: top of that. Uh, let's see what else? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: On on the social media, there's the Facebook group the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module. That's a good
Speaker 1: place to to chime in and chat with other listeners.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some folks are going to shi m in
Speaker 1: about Strange Brew too, and to let everyone know exactly
Speaker 1: what that film is about and what extent it may
Speaker 1: or may not tie into our topics today. Do you
Speaker 1: have Rick Moranis in it? Yeah? I was just getting
Speaker 1: Rick Moranis and uh, the other guy from was this
Speaker 1: was the Second City, Dave Thomas. Dave Thomas, Dave Thomas, Yes,
Speaker 1: Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis and probably some other names as well,
Speaker 1: but those are the two leads. Uh. I just want
Speaker 1: to emphasize again if you haven't checked out Invention yet,
Speaker 1: check that out. If you haven't checked out the second
Speaker 1: oil age, you must do it. I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: love it. It's so much fun. Oh and T shirts
Speaker 1: The Stuff to Blow Your Mind of merch store is
Speaker 1: still active and i'd just mind understanding that there is
Speaker 1: a new shirt in there for Thanksgiving and there is
Speaker 1: also some manner of like there's like you know, there's
Speaker 1: always Black Friday feels and Thanksgiving deals, so just be
Speaker 1: advised this is a good time to get merchandise from
Speaker 1: that store if you so desire. Totally by it all
Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Blips Past twenty twenty thirty pot Proper