Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick in his feast time. That's right, Thanksgiving season
Speaker 1: here once again, and in the United States at any rate.
Speaker 1: So we're continuing a tradition, a tradition of dangerous foods,
Speaker 1: in which we highlight foods that at least can be
Speaker 1: dangerous or deadly under the right conditions. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were trying not to alarm anyone, but we find that
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: be had in exploring the dangerous side of our culinary
Speaker 1: creations and our culinary instincts right now. This can range
Speaker 1: from such a strange exotic chemical adventures in the past
Speaker 1: as the hallucinogenic seabream of the Mediterranean, or or like
Speaker 1: toxic honey that was chronicled in the ancient world as
Speaker 1: leading to victories in battle when when one side ate
Speaker 1: the honey and the other could take advantage of that.
Speaker 1: But it also goes into the mundane world where where
Speaker 1: just like normal food items that we all take for granted,
Speaker 1: if not prepared the right way could go very bad
Speaker 1: for you. For example, normal dried beans, kidney beans and
Speaker 1: so forth, you need to boil those, you don't just
Speaker 1: soak them and eat them, and if you do, you
Speaker 1: can experience some some extreme gastro intestinal problems. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of it comes down to, Okay, here's the thing
Speaker 1: that human beings can eat. But under what circumstances can
Speaker 1: humans eat it? What do they have to do to it? First?
Speaker 1: Do they have to remove certain parts of it? Are
Speaker 1: only certain parts edible? Is it only in and then?
Speaker 1: Or those parts only edible after the content has been
Speaker 1: cooked a certain way. Likewise, is there a certain time
Speaker 1: during which a particular vegetable item should be harvested? And
Speaker 1: is it dangerous to harvest it or and or consume
Speaker 1: it at another time? Or do leave it sitting around
Speaker 1: too long? Is that we talked about cases with potato
Speaker 1: poisonings in the past where potatoes were just left in
Speaker 1: the sack for got a little two wisened, and then
Speaker 1: that they made some schoolboys sick in England at that
Speaker 1: unhealthy green color. Right. Yeah, but of course humans don't
Speaker 1: just eat this vegetable or that invertebrate. We we also
Speaker 1: combine all of these things, we add a small dosage
Speaker 1: of various spices. For instance, spices which in their natural
Speaker 1: form are chemical weapons and might prove very uncomfortable or
Speaker 1: dangerous to consume, you know, especially if you're consuming them
Speaker 1: at a quantity beyond that. What that which is advisable
Speaker 1: when when cooking and the culinary palate becomes quite vast
Speaker 1: this way, and out of this complexity, many of the
Speaker 1: most magical of culinary possibilities emerge. Yeah, I was just
Speaker 1: your note here made me think about the fact that,
Speaker 1: of course I love spicy food. I think you like
Speaker 1: spicy food too, right, Yeah? Uh that that so many
Speaker 1: of these compounds that we so desire in our foods
Speaker 1: to liven them up, are of course defenses there, as
Speaker 1: you say, you know, their chemical weapons. That what makes
Speaker 1: the garlics so hot and wonderful. It's got these compounds
Speaker 1: that come together when it's sell walls or ruptured and
Speaker 1: produce this pungent odor and flavor that we love. But
Speaker 1: this mention of spice was also making me wonder a
Speaker 1: question I don't think we've ever addressed on the show before.
Speaker 1: Maybe you got into it many years ago, which is
Speaker 1: can you be killed by hot peppers? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. We may have covered a little bit of
Speaker 1: that in the past. I know we did an episode
Speaker 1: on nutmeg once. It was really interesting that got into
Speaker 1: a little bit of you know, the question of what
Speaker 1: is a lethal dose of nutmeg? What happens when 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. Uh. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: this actually turns out to be the case with this
Speaker 1: question about hot peppers. As a lover of spicy food
Speaker 1: and as somebody who has taken a bite out of
Speaker 1: a raw Carolina Reaper pepper for an on camera experiment,
Speaker 1: which I mean that was a horrible experience. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're calling a YouTube challenge is that it wasn't
Speaker 1: a YouTube challenge. It was just it was just Rachel
Speaker 1: videoing me with her phone. Her dad showed up at
Speaker 1: the house with one of these. It was one of
Speaker 1: the spiciest peppers in the world. One of you did
Speaker 1: something here, No, no, no, no, it was it was
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. It was like, you know, so one of these, uh,
Speaker 1: like ten billion Scoville units peppers. Uh. He showed up
Speaker 1: and he was like, he knows I like spicy food.
Speaker 1: He's like, you want to try it? So I took
Speaker 1: a bite of it on camera, and yeah, that was
Speaker 1: like I love spicy food. But that became a problem.
Speaker 1: It was just more like I had a disease for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day. Uh. And I tried to
Speaker 1: fix it. As you know, one thing you can do
Speaker 1: if you've eaten too much spicy food is you can
Speaker 1: try to neutralize it with some milk in your mouth.
Speaker 1: But then I ended up drinking some spoiled milk so
Speaker 1: that it even worse. This sounds like a comedy bit.
Speaker 1: The comedy was all in my body. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I was wondering, well, okay, so that felt pretty bad,
Speaker 1: even though I love really spicy food. Is it possible
Speaker 1: to eat food so spicy it kills you? Technically yes,
Speaker 1: but under practical circumstances not really. Uh. The active compound
Speaker 1: in 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: Katherine Gammon, who consulted 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 Boslin cites a 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 eat that much much
Speaker 1: of the pepper. Yeah. So, unless you're already in very
Speaker 1: 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, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we get into this situation where we're we're taking
Speaker 1: these plants, we're taking spices, we're taking other things, the
Speaker 1: vast palate of things from our natural world, and then
Speaker 1: using them to create food. And it's one thing. If
Speaker 1: we're creating that food within the household or within say
Speaker 1: 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 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, defending smells, not merely 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.
Speaker 1: Basically it opens the door for all manner of cuts
Speaker 1: and shortcuts and cheats, all predicated on the fact that
Speaker 1: in an industry of food, the maker doesn't have to
Speaker 1: consume their own food product, right, and perhaps they'll be
Speaker 1: down the road by the time somebody does. Now, So
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about food adulteration and
Speaker 1: food adjectives today. But I don't want to contribute as
Speaker 1: we always do in these episodes. We don't want to
Speaker 1: contribute to food panic, and I don't want to contribute
Speaker 1: to additive panic. I think there are some people who
Speaker 1: have this attitude, like I don't allow any chemicals in
Speaker 1: my food or something, which I think we've discussed that
Speaker 1: attitude on the show before. It doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, your food already has chemicals and it is
Speaker 1: made of chemicals. Uh, just looking at a something with
Speaker 1: a synthetic sounding name doesn't necessarily mean it's going to
Speaker 1: hurt you, right, And we we'll touch a little bit,
Speaker 1: very very briefly on sort of the current state of additives,
Speaker 1: in the in the future of additives, and and just
Speaker 1: the level of like legitimate concern and sometimes panic that
Speaker 1: that comes with discussion of these things. But for the
Speaker 1: most part in this episode, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: older additives, additives that we can safely say we're a
Speaker 1: bad idea, that it's not a matter a matter of opinion, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, regarding whether you should put this particular ingredient
Speaker 1: and say a candy or not. Um. Yeah, we're and
Speaker 1: we're largely talking about the deliberate adulteration of food. And
Speaker 1: this has actually been with us since ancient times. There
Speaker 1: are ancient laws and rules that that that that govern
Speaker 1: how we handle our food, how we prepare food in
Speaker 1: order to ensure food quality. This almost seems to me
Speaker 1: like it would be one of the earliest concerns of civilization.
Speaker 1: You know, like, once you're no longer making your own
Speaker 1: food or having your own food made by a family member,
Speaker 1: your food is being made by somebody maybe that you
Speaker 1: don't even know, you don't even know their name. It's
Speaker 1: being made in some place you can't see. You would naturally,
Speaker 1: I think, have people start to worry and wonder, like
Speaker 1: what's in my food? Yeah? Yeah, So I was looking
Speaker 1: at a source on this from one Marcia a. Ecoles,
Speaker 1: who have Food Safety the Interplay of culture and science,
Speaker 1: of culture, science and technology, and the author points out
Speaker 1: a number of cool fact about sort of the ancient
Speaker 1: history of of food safety. So the Assyrians established weights
Speaker 1: and measures for grains because and we're getting this is
Speaker 1: one of the I guess one key way that you
Speaker 1: can you can cheat a system of weights and prices
Speaker 1: based on weights is to put something in with your
Speaker 1: grain to weight it down. UM As early as two
Speaker 1: b C. In uh residents of India punished economic adulteration
Speaker 1: of grains and oils. During the same era, the Chinese
Speaker 1: combated consumer fraud. The ancient Athenians had purity standards for
Speaker 1: both beer and wine. The Romans had a system to
Speaker 1: control fraud and bad produce, and there are various other
Speaker 1: ancient laws, religious or otherwise that governed the handling of
Speaker 1: meat in ways that we're concerned ultimately with with purity,
Speaker 1: which of course is we've discussed many times in the shows.
Speaker 1: It's a tricky concept because in purity you're getting ideas
Speaker 1: of sort of hygiene mixed up with with with less
Speaker 1: um a matter of fact, statements about out of food.
Speaker 1: But you know, as we discussed with pork recently on
Speaker 1: the show, there's always this argument that the purity is
Speaker 1: at least partially grounded in health concerns. Sure, uh, And
Speaker 1: you can maybe make arguments like that about the mixing
Speaker 1: of different types of foods that are forbidden in some
Speaker 1: religious customs. Maybe not that there's actually anything wrong with
Speaker 1: mixing those types of foods, but perhaps there was a
Speaker 1: perception in the ancient world that 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 D B C. And I
Speaker 1: looked into this little more and it seems like it's
Speaker 1: possibly talking about the use of squid incu in the wind.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, give dark in it and may
Speaker 1: give it this thicker appearance. Squid ink is still used
Speaker 1: as a food additive today. Yeah, yeah, Like if you
Speaker 1: ever have squid ink pasta, that's right. Yeah, they're beautiful,
Speaker 1: like charcoal black color in the food. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it really contributes a flavor. I've never looked
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, And likewise, I don't know if putting
Speaker 1: squid ink in your wine is I'm sure it's It
Speaker 1: would be frowned upon at a roll restaurant today. But saffron,
Speaker 1: of course contributes both color and flavor. It's got a
Speaker 1: distinctive kind of aroma. But yeah, you put a little
Speaker 1: bit of saffron and say a pot of rice, and
Speaker 1: it takes on this beautiful golden hue. Yeah. In addition
Speaker 1: to saffron, a few other spices and elements that have
Speaker 1: long been used to color food paprika um, fabulous, tumeric.
Speaker 1: Beat extract is a big one because you know, you
Speaker 1: get that bright red coloration. Long used food dyes. All
Speaker 1: of these, but one that was particularly popular in the past,
Speaker 1: Tyrian purple, was derived from several species of predatory predatory
Speaker 1: sea snails. Oh yeah, And if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the way that the Roman Empire and particularly
Speaker 1: made use of naturally occurring substances, check out our previous
Speaker 1: episode on Roman extinctions. Oh yeah, there we talk about
Speaker 1: 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: you know, particularly during I think the eighteen seventies, she's
Speaker 1: pointing out here, new food processing approaches provided even more
Speaker 1: new ways and new ingredients to commit just lavish food fraud.
Speaker 1: And this included artificial flavors, artificial coloring, and chemical preservatives.
Speaker 1: And in this book she she makes a case for
Speaker 1: the importance of U. S D. A chemist, Harvey Washington
Speaker 1: widely in his white Hat efforts to use our advancing
Speaker 1: knowledge of chemical science to stay on top of these
Speaker 1: mini frauds. Yeah. This all in advance of the Meat
Speaker 1: Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, which widely helped to bring to fruition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's sort of the central character in this book. And
Speaker 1: it's funny that I feel like some of the main
Speaker 1: chemicals and preservatives that he investigated with his famous Poison Squad,
Speaker 1: which was a a group of men who would who
Speaker 1: would essentially meet to eat meals together that were contaminated
Speaker 1: deliberately with certain common additives used in food to see
Speaker 1: how their health fared from repeatedly eating things like borax
Speaker 1: or boric acid or whatever that kind of thing that
Speaker 1: was used to produce stuff. I feel like some of
Speaker 1: the things that the Poison Squad investigated, the jury still
Speaker 1: kind of out on exactly how harmful they were. Maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't as harmful as he thought they were, but
Speaker 1: clearly at this time some food additives were harming and
Speaker 1: killing people. I think especially there was some danger from
Speaker 1: certain dies. Yes, and by the way, the Poison Squad,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it would make a wonderful television series,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean the public loves a good police procedural.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like a little bit of police procedural,
Speaker 1: also a little bit you know, the flavoring of say
Speaker 1: The Nick, except with with a food um focus. So
Speaker 1: I really hope it's been optioned. One thing audiences love
Speaker 1: is people in the past not knowing things that we
Speaker 1: know now. It's like the scene in Madmen where the
Speaker 1: kid 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, these various techniques
Speaker 1: in 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 a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a delicate balance to maintain in a show.
Speaker 1: But like I would, I would love to see the
Speaker 1: same people who did the nick like do the Poison Squad,
Speaker 1: at least for one season, maybe many limited series maybe,
Speaker 1: but still so. The frauds during this time were many.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the more terrifying examples to discuss,
Speaker 1: just to kick things off here is UH is something
Speaker 1: that just on the face of things will seem like
Speaker 1: a terrible, if not a nefarious idea, and that is
Speaker 1: lead colored candy. So in our past episode on the Lead,
Speaker 1: UM I believe it was cupids lead in arrow it
Speaker 1: was a Valentine's Day special. We pointed out that even
Speaker 1: though lead is quite poisonous, UH, it tastes uh. Its
Speaker 1: taste is also sometimes described as sweet, and the ancient
Speaker 1: Romans used leads salt as a sweetener in their syrup.
Speaker 1: This was known as soap, I believe, and plenty of
Speaker 1: the Elder once again describes the use of lead in
Speaker 1: vessels with sappa to sweeten the taste. Right, Yeah, You've
Speaker 1: got to boil down your sapa, which was like it
Speaker 1: was a syrup made by reducing some kind of wine
Speaker 1: product I think, um. And so you boil it down
Speaker 1: to make it sweet, and it takes on the lead
Speaker 1: from the pot that it's boiled in to become sweeter.
Speaker 1: He says, don't boil it in a copper pot. That's
Speaker 1: gonna taste bitter. You've got to boil it in a
Speaker 1: lead pot so it tastes nice and sweet. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to candy, obviously, candy is generally sweetened through
Speaker 1: a much more conventional means, namely sugar or or some
Speaker 1: sugar substitute. But during the time of Wiley's Wars against
Speaker 1: Dangerous Foods, children's candy was routinely laced with lead and
Speaker 1: other heavy metals to color it. Yea to impart this
Speaker 1: kind of you know, often describes a kind of an
Speaker 1: orange coloration, which is just you know, terrifying to imagine,
Speaker 1: because I'm just imagining like one of these red suckers
Speaker 1: that you get at the supermarket nowadays, and just imagine
Speaker 1: that being laced with lead and being handed to a child. Now,
Speaker 1: as the CDC points out, lead was and in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world still is added to foods not
Speaker 1: only to impart an inviting orange color, but also indeed
Speaker 1: to sweeten it or to increase its weight. Again getting
Speaker 1: back to the idea that oftentimes food, especially in bulk,
Speaker 1: is price based on weight. That you cut the dope
Speaker 1: of candy, but it's with lead, So so that's like
Speaker 1: three different levels of poisonous deception. They're possibly in play
Speaker 1: in any given piece of lead laced candy. Make it
Speaker 1: cost more via way, make it look more attractive via color,
Speaker 1: and artificially enhance the flavor to some extent as well.
Speaker 1: And this applies not just to candy but to other
Speaker 1: food stuffs with lead, often introduced via a spice blend. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, there are other ways that lead can get
Speaker 1: into candy as well. Uh and still can get into candy.
Speaker 1: There's a there was case I was looking at in
Speaker 1: which a six year old boy was a led really
Speaker 1: poisoned by lead containing uh Tamarando candy jam products purchased
Speaker 1: on a visit to Mexico with his aunt. However, it
Speaker 1: seems like a case in which the lead contamination was
Speaker 1: linked to the fact that it was quote candy packaged
Speaker 1: in ceramic jars from Mexico at the time, and as
Speaker 1: the California Department of Health points out, it is quote
Speaker 1: not entirely clear where the lead in many of the
Speaker 1: products is coming from, but products containing tamarind, chili powder,
Speaker 1: or salt that is mine from certain parts of the
Speaker 1: world may have a higher likelihood of elevated levels of lead.
Speaker 1: Lead may also be introduced into the candy through improper drying, storing,
Speaker 1: or grinding of the ingredients. Now, as we know from
Speaker 1: our our our old alchemist friend Paracelsus, it is of
Speaker 1: course the dose that makes the poison, and this applies
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. It can apply to some things, can
Speaker 1: be can accumulate in the body and their effects over
Speaker 1: time with chronic exposure. Sometimes it also just has to
Speaker 1: do with an acute dose. It's possible that, you know,
Speaker 1: lead compounds have been used in many food products over
Speaker 1: time that if they're in small enough concentration, there's not
Speaker 1: much of a noticeable effect on the people who eat them.
Speaker 1: But I bet in many of these cases, the the
Speaker 1: concentration of lead in the products is probably not very
Speaker 1: tightly controlled, especially in the past and the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and stuff. So you might get suddenly a gumball or
Speaker 1: candy that's got a lot more lead than usual, leading
Speaker 1: to you know, high levels in an acute sense. But
Speaker 1: also eating this candy over time could lead to effects
Speaker 1: that people don't even necessarily associate with the candy. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then another factor that was brought up in the
Speaker 1: case study of the child is that obviously, like children
Speaker 1: are going to be more susceptible, uh, individuals with smaller
Speaker 1: body weight, etcetera, which of course is all the more
Speaker 1: troubling because we are talking about candy which is inherently
Speaker 1: for children. Alright, time to take a break, but we
Speaker 1: will be right back with more. Alright, we're back. Should
Speaker 1: we talk about some more weird color additives? Alright, So
Speaker 1: these are some more examples that come from Adam Burrows
Speaker 1: j D's palette of our palettes. Uh, some of these
Speaker 1: are a number of these are not nefarious, but I'm
Speaker 1: just going to touch on them anyway because it gives
Speaker 1: I think a broader understanding of how and why we
Speaker 1: color our food and what we used to do it.
Speaker 1: Um cocuineal insects have long been used to make the
Speaker 1: dye carmine, Traditionally used in fabrics, it also pops up
Speaker 1: in cosmetics and food coloring. Again, not deadly unless you're
Speaker 1: one of the insects that gets ground up to in
Speaker 1: part of a reddish coloration, but it's still interesting. Saffron
Speaker 1: we already touched on, also not deadly, though of course,
Speaker 1: with any spice you'll run into adverse reactions if you
Speaker 1: consume too much of it. A little saffron tends to
Speaker 1: go along long way. It's derived from the saffron crocus flour,
Speaker 1: and it's long been used in cooking, both for its
Speaker 1: flavor and for its strong yellow coloration. Now we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier like cutting the dope, adding something that's not the
Speaker 1: dope to the dope that you know, bulkes it up
Speaker 1: and makes it more attractive initially. And this this to
Speaker 1: a famous quote from a giant. I'll grind your bones
Speaker 1: to make my bread. Oh yeah, that's from what Jack
Speaker 1: and the Bean saw. Yeah. Yeah, So he climbs up
Speaker 1: there and the I don't get it. Why is he
Speaker 1: grinding his bones. I yeah, I always troubled me as
Speaker 1: a kid because I'm like, I don't know not much
Speaker 1: about bread making. I'm not a baker, but I know
Speaker 1: you don't make bread out of bones that are ground up.
Speaker 1: It makes a little more sense, though, when you understand
Speaker 1: that a typical medieval baker's trick was to brighten up
Speaker 1: bread by using ground bone, lime or chalk. Whoa In fact,
Speaker 1: King Edward the first outlied this practice, and uh, and
Speaker 1: here's a here's a reading of the law. If any
Speaker 1: default shall be found in the bread of a baker
Speaker 1: in the city the first time, let him be drawn
Speaker 1: upon a hurdle from the guild hall to his own house,
Speaker 1: through the great street, where there be most people assembled,
Speaker 1: and through the streets which are most dirty, with the
Speaker 1: faulty loaf hanging from his neck. If a second time
Speaker 1: he shall be found committing the same offense, let him
Speaker 1: be drawn from the guildhall through the great street of
Speaker 1: cheap Ee to the pillory, and let him be put
Speaker 1: up on the pillory, and remain there at least one
Speaker 1: hour in the day. And the third time that such
Speaker 1: default shall be found, be shall be drawn, and the
Speaker 1: oven shall be pulled down and the baker made to
Speaker 1: forswear the trade in the city forever. Whoa, the shame
Speaker 1: walk with bread around your neck. That's what you get
Speaker 1: if you put bone or something else in the bread.
Speaker 1: Victorian era Europe saw copper salts used to turn pickles
Speaker 1: and vegetables of a brighter green color. Apparently, and as
Speaker 1: described in eighteen twenty by English chemist Frederick Acum, a
Speaker 1: key individual in the crackdown on illucid ad 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 she 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 sheelds green, which contains copper and arsenic. Fields
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 dye 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, is at
Speaker 1: least ill advised, if not like a nefarious act. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying siels green is fine. I think shields
Speaker 1: green is famous for poisonous 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: were often added to Chinese green teas to make them
Speaker 1: more green and inviting to foreign markets. Uh in in
Speaker 1: Prussian blue contained arsenic. This reminds me of the uh
Speaker 1: the situation with absinthe um. When you when you see
Speaker 1: like a selection of absence at a you know, absinthe bar.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, if I remember correctly, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: go for the ones that do not look as much
Speaker 1: like storybook absinthe like. The more it looks like mouthwash like,
Speaker 1: it's a sign that some sort of coloration has been added,
Speaker 1: probably not arsenic. I'm not saying it's arsenic, but but
Speaker 1: something has been added to enhance that coloration and make
Speaker 1: it more attractive to at least the casual audience. I
Speaker 1: see it, make it uh to use a tokenism, look
Speaker 1: fairer and taste fowler yes. And then there's the coloring
Speaker 1: of butter and butter like products. Burrows points out that
Speaker 1: there was a thirteen nine French edict against coloring butter,
Speaker 1: and later a fifteen seventy four law preventing the use
Speaker 1: of colors and pastries to simulate the presence of eggs.
Speaker 1: And then there were the Then there were the margarine wars,
Speaker 1: which we've touched on on the show in the past,
Speaker 1: in which butter manufacturers sought to protect their turf by
Speaker 1: seeking laws against yellow dyes and margarine. And and even
Speaker 1: though adding the requirement of pink dye to make it
Speaker 1: clear that margarine was not butter, and in fact the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court had to intervene and overturned state laws in
Speaker 1: thirty two pro butter states, according to the Butter wars
Speaker 1: by published in nat Geo, and this was by Rebecca Rupp. Now, again,
Speaker 1: while it is clear that some compounds used as dyes
Speaker 1: in history have turned out to be dangerous in one
Speaker 1: form or another, this is certainly not to suggest that
Speaker 1: all or even most of these compounds have any kind
Speaker 1: of negative health effects. But concerns about such have definitely
Speaker 1: continued into the modern area era, whether founded or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about this sort
Speaker 1: of the modern state and recent history of of of
Speaker 1: die considerations, die outraged, die pendents, etcetera, I'd refer you
Speaker 1: to Burrows for more on this, because he gets into
Speaker 1: a lot of the concerns over modern dies and sometimes
Speaker 1: the urban legends about their dangers, such as the notion
Speaker 1: that Mountain Dew's yellow in our five reduces sperm count,
Speaker 1: which which is not the case, but that was like
Speaker 1: that was an urban legend that was making the rounds
Speaker 1: at one point. However, I will leave leave you all
Speaker 1: with this quote from Burrows on the history and future
Speaker 1: of color additives. I think he sums us up nicely. Quote,
Speaker 1: it is hard to believe that only a century ago
Speaker 1: our ancestors were eating food died with highly toxic color additives.
Speaker 1: From that auspicious starting point, we have come to a
Speaker 1: time where a food colorant with a one in nineteen
Speaker 1: billion chance of causing cancer is legally considered too dangerous.
Speaker 1: What we used to die our foods and how we
Speaker 1: regulate it may continue to change, but there is no
Speaker 1: end in sight to the timeless practice of coloring our food.
Speaker 1: This is interesting, like the idea that I don't know,
Speaker 1: whenever you're making a ruling on this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't ever say that something is you're
Speaker 1: sure one hundred percent safe. So like, what's the threshold
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with You're like, okay, if maybe if we
Speaker 1: use this die in fruit loops for a hundred years,
Speaker 1: one person will be killed by it? Is that like
Speaker 1: do we just decide, Okay, if it's just one person
Speaker 1: every hundred years getting killed by the die, then it's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I wondered to, like to what, like, what is
Speaker 1: our ultimate relationship with the idea of adding die to
Speaker 1: a food product, is it one of I mean, if
Speaker 1: we're oblivious to it's just oh, it's this is super red.
Speaker 1: I'm very attracted to it. I must have this candy
Speaker 1: or apple or whatever the product is what we with
Speaker 1: the eyes first. But but then if if there also
Speaker 1: seems to be this this this this broad category of
Speaker 1: just distrust associated with food coloration as well. Uh, this
Speaker 1: this idea that and properly instilled, 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 in 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's just a way of expressing
Speaker 1: how confident you are generally that something is safe. And
Speaker 1: again I recommend everyone to check out that Borrows article
Speaker 1: if you want more, you know, in depth consideration of dies.
Speaker 1: But I think that's that's probably enough for for food
Speaker 1: additives for dies. At this point, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: open up some beer. Alright, we're back now. I want
Speaker 1: to start with we we've done these in some of
Speaker 1: the Dangerous Food episodes in the past, to to do
Speaker 1: a little sort of epidemiological detective story where there's a
Speaker 1: sudden outbreak of symptoms and then people are trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what caused it. Uh So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen sixties to the mid to late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and in this period, doctors in hospitals and
Speaker 1: clinics across a number of metro areas in Europe, in
Speaker 1: the United States, and Canada began to notice a strange
Speaker 1: pattern of cases, patients showing up with a sudden onset
Speaker 1: of an unusual form of cardiomyopathy, which is a disease
Speaker 1: of the heart muscle in which parts of the heart
Speaker 1: can become enlarged or stiff, or just generally aren't working properly.
Speaker 1: Uh So, between August nineteen sixty five and April nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, a rash of cases appeared around the area
Speaker 1: of Quebec City in Canada, enough to signal that there
Speaker 1: was some kind of pattern going on to local clinicians
Speaker 1: and pathologists who at first thought, well, maybe the epidemic
Speaker 1: is viral in nature. But a study of thirty patients
Speaker 1: could not isolate a viral cause for this strange kind
Speaker 1: of cardio myopathy. Uh and this was described in the
Speaker 1: 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 DC, and about
Speaker 1: people in the United States die every year from alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 1: And that's just alcohol poisoning, which is an acute overdose
Speaker 1: of alcohol leading directly to death. If you expand that
Speaker 1: number to alcohol related deaths such as you know, deaths
Speaker 1: from from chronic alcohol abuse, or include stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: traffic collisions caused by people driving under the influence, the
Speaker 1: number is obviously going to be a lot higher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: among other things. That 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 alcohol poisoning occur among men, and seventy
Speaker 1: six are also between people of the ages thirty five
Speaker 1: to sixty four. And of course, the primary cause of
Speaker 1: death in these cases is suppression of the life sustaining
Speaker 1: functions of the brain and the central nervous system. Alright,
Speaker 1: so the basic scenario is you have a a population
Speaker 1: of 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
Speaker 1: means considerations for the origin of this outbreak. It was
Speaker 1: published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven and the authors here mentioned that there was a
Speaker 1: similar outbreak of sudden cardio myopathy in Omaha, Nebraska. I
Speaker 1: was also looking at a nineteen seventy two paper by
Speaker 1: a doctor named Carl S. Alexander describing an outbreak of
Speaker 1: cardio myopathy in twenty eight patients admitted to the VA
Speaker 1: Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota between nineteen sixty four and nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. So again mid mid to late sixties, especially
Speaker 1: in these Midwestern and northern cities, sudden outbreak of of
Speaker 1: strange type of heart disease. Uh. And again, what these
Speaker 1: cases seem to have in common was heavy consumption of
Speaker 1: 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 acidosis. 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 the body uses to transport oxygen
Speaker 1: 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 mentioned 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 nor
Speaker 1: more alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and they discovered something else similar to
Speaker 1: what 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 drink a lot of one specific
Speaker 1: brand of beer. Uh Moren 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 percent of the local market. Later reports
Speaker 1: revealed this to be the Tao Brewery. So quick question,
Speaker 1: does this have Does this have any uh? Did this
Speaker 1: inspire the movie Strange Brew? Is there anything I haven't
Speaker 1: seen Stranger I've never seen it either. I just okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just familiar with it by you know, reputation that
Speaker 1: it concerns some sort of strange Canadian brew of beer
Speaker 1: and it's you know, cinematic powers. I kind of doubt
Speaker 1: it because I think that movie is a comedy and
Speaker 1: this ultimately is not that funny of a story though
Speaker 1: it does have I don't know. I guess it has
Speaker 1: some funny tragedy plus time comedy. Right. Yes, of course
Speaker 1: what 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 Moren
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 and a bit
Speaker 1: 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 one at least. Sometimes you know
Speaker 1: you're hanging out by the pool party and with the
Speaker 1: bottles or the cans, but sometimes you're a giant amid
Speaker 1: the mountains and the ball back and forth. Which was
Speaker 1: the beer company that had the had the big like
Speaker 1: transformers monster, I don't know, see they all they all
Speaker 1: going to 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 ball
Speaker 1: are with the glass with especially the frothy head at
Speaker 1: the top of the glass, right and the marble man
Speaker 1: is going to drink from it, and he's gonna have
Speaker 1: the foam stuck on his mustache. Yeh got foam? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so in this genre of beer commercial clearly one
Speaker 1: of the most important is that equalities of that glass
Speaker 1: of beer is the foamy top. Some people call it
Speaker 1: the head, some people call it the collar. This foam
Speaker 1: is caused by the quick rising of bubbles from previously
Speaker 1: dissolved gas. Usually it's gonna be carbon dioxide, but I
Speaker 1: think some brands actually dissolved nitrogen in there to help
Speaker 1: with the foam. Guinness or some brands might do that.
Speaker 1: But these bubbles form at nucleation points in the glass
Speaker 1: of beer as it's poured, and they shoot up to
Speaker 1: the top of the glass where they collect in a
Speaker 1: mesh of bubbles and proteins from the malt in the
Speaker 1: beer and bitter hop compounds. I was looking at an
Speaker 1: article that interviewed a professor of biochemistry at Cornell named
Speaker 1: Carl Siebert on the subject of what constitutes beer foam,
Speaker 1: and Siebert mentioned that one of the important proteins and
Speaker 1: beer that collects in these bubbles and this matrix of
Speaker 1: bubbles and proteins in beer foam is albumen, which I
Speaker 1: thought I would just add, is also the same primary
Speaker 1: family of proteins that you find in egg whites. So
Speaker 1: is there something shared in common between your logger head
Speaker 1: and that egg white omelet a little bit or your
Speaker 1: ramos gin fizz, which of course is going to have
Speaker 1: that nice, creamy, frothy consistency because of the egg whites
Speaker 1: that are part of the recipe. Oh that's right, yeah.
Speaker 1: But but in the beer, like the head of the beer,
Speaker 1: I know that you're not supposed to have too much
Speaker 1: of it, right, Like that's a sign of a bad
Speaker 1: poor right. Yeah. So I think it's widely agreed by
Speaker 1: beer drinkers that a glass of beer without a correctly
Speaker 1: proportioned layer of head is wrong. If you get too
Speaker 1: much head, if it takes up like half the glass,
Speaker 1: or if you have none at all, you have failed
Speaker 1: to beer. But it's I'm assuming you still need a
Speaker 1: certain amount of foam at the top for it just
Speaker 1: to feel like you're drinking beer, right, And and the
Speaker 1: beer industry has studied the chemistry of beer foam extensively
Speaker 1: to meet the perceived customer demand for the right kind
Speaker 1: of frothy head on a glass of beer. But the
Speaker 1: researchers Moran and Daniel note that by the mid nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: beer manufacturers were encountering a problem that beer wasn't looking
Speaker 1: right in a lot of bars. 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 Moran and Daniel originally identify as cobalt sulfate,
Speaker 1: but which later authors I think more correctly identified as
Speaker 1: cobalt chloride. Uh. But the main thing here is that
Speaker 1: it's a cobalt compound. This cobalt compound was added to
Speaker 1: draft beer batches to stabilize the beer head and overcome
Speaker 1: any anti foaming influence of detergent residue left in the
Speaker 1: beer glass. So obviously we know where this is heading.
Speaker 1: But and so it's probably coloring my judgment. But already
Speaker 1: it sounds like if you're fighting detergent film uh through
Speaker 1: the food product itself, through the beer itself, Like that's
Speaker 1: a bad sign, right right? Uh? And and again this
Speaker 1: would be something that they were only really supposed to
Speaker 1: be dealing with through draft beer, right and it's going
Speaker 1: to be poured into a glass in a bar or something.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be the same in a bottle because it,
Speaker 1: you know, number one, the head doesn't really matter in
Speaker 1: the bottle as much. And then presumably that bottle is
Speaker 1: going to be completely clean and not have any kind
Speaker 1: of like you have control over what you're you're pre
Speaker 1: cleaning the bottles with exactly. Yeah. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that at least in this Quebec City brewery, this stuff
Speaker 1: was being added to both the draft beer and the
Speaker 1: bottled beer batches because they didn't make them separately. They
Speaker 1: made them all in one batch and then split them
Speaker 1: up later. So so they're putting cobalt in the beer.
Speaker 1: I wonder how that's going to turn about. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about cobalt. Cobalt is a chemical element atomic number twenty seven.
Speaker 1: It's one of the transition metals of the periodic table.
Speaker 1: It's essentially never found in its pure form in nature.
Speaker 1: It's always bound up with other elements in compounds and
Speaker 1: compound minerals and other stuff. Very cool etymology. Fact. The
Speaker 1: English name cobalt comes from the German word cobalt, which
Speaker 1: in its general sense means goblin or imp or demon.
Speaker 1: More specifically, it refers to a breed of German household
Speaker 1: or subterranean goblin. Uh, there would be ones in your house,
Speaker 1: ones sometimes I think in ships, and definitely in minds.
Speaker 1: And these goblins could be full of tricks and mischief
Speaker 1: if you offended them. Yes. So, the cobalt ore was
Speaker 1: rarely sought out for its own sake at this time,
Speaker 1: but it was usually a byproduct of mining for other
Speaker 1: metals like silver or copper. And it seemed some miners
Speaker 1: and refiners and metal workers that this other element in
Speaker 1: the ore carried impish or demonic qualities, since it was
Speaker 1: believed to make workers sick with its fumes and degrade
Speaker 1: the quality of silver. Now I think it seems actually
Speaker 1: with historical perspective that what was really making people sick
Speaker 1: during 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 uh At the same time, of course, it is
Speaker 1: not a pure poison. 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 kobalaman. It contains cobalt and
Speaker 1: UH and B twelve is of course essential for good health.
Speaker 1: It sustains functions like cell metabolism, red blood cell formation
Speaker 1: or the i think, the maturation of red blood cells,
Speaker 1: and in DNA synthesis. And in fact, there were already
Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties known therapeutic uses of cobalt. But again,
Speaker 1: to revisit Paracelsus, it's the dose that makes the poison.
Speaker 1: While some small amounts of some forms of cobalt are
Speaker 1: necessary in the body, humans are also extremely sensitive to
Speaker 1: large doses of cobalt. So, to come back to the
Speaker 1: Quebec city outbreak in nineteen sixty five, according to Morin
Speaker 1: and Daniel, the myocardial toxicity of cobalt was already known
Speaker 1: to medical science in the nineteen sixties. Studies had already
Speaker 1: shown that metabolized cobalt is deposited in the muscle tissue
Speaker 1: of the heart and it will reduce the ability of
Speaker 1: the heart muscles to contract, which of course they need
Speaker 1: to do to pump blood. So the detectives here looked
Speaker 1: into the timing of when cobalt was added to the
Speaker 1: beer and the appearance of patients with beer drinkers cardiomyopathy,
Speaker 1: and it was clear that the cobalt in the beer
Speaker 1: was primarily to blame. After a pattern was discovered in
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, breweries in the United States and
Speaker 1: Canada and elsewhere were ordered by their governments to stop
Speaker 1: using cobalt additives. And this appears to have stopped the
Speaker 1: the you know, people showing up at hospitals and clinics
Speaker 1: with this unique type of cardio myopathy in the following months. Robert,
Speaker 1: I've attached a little timeline for you here, but you
Speaker 1: can see quite clearly a pattern where basically the cobalt
Speaker 1: is introduced and and the patients start showing up, the
Speaker 1: cobalt is removed, and the patients stopped showing up. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a there is 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 poisoning 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 in toxic cation
Speaker 1: in the animal. Had this metal been known to be
Speaker 1: present in beer at the time of the epidemic, the
Speaker 1: prompt administration of E d t A might have saved
Speaker 1: some of our patients. The clinician accustomed to knowing the
Speaker 1: exact composition of the drugs he uses, will therefore seriously
Speaker 1: question the necessity for the secrecy that surrounds the use
Speaker 1: of food or drink additives. That makes sense again, it
Speaker 1: comes back to to to the the fact that in
Speaker 1: the modern world we have such a robust palate from
Speaker 1: which to create our various food products. Uh. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're going to be treating an illness, that maybe due
Speaker 1: to your particular food or drink product, you need to
Speaker 1: have the secret ingredients fully listed so that medical personnel
Speaker 1: can respond appropriately. Yeah, and I mean it's known here
Speaker 1: that they're saying, if we'd known about the cobalt earlier,
Speaker 1: some people who died might have lived. Uh, that's a
Speaker 1: tragic reality. Um, this just that seems to be this
Speaker 1: unfortunate side effect of the the idea of protecting recipes
Speaker 1: and industrial secrets and stuff. But anyway, after the link
Speaker 1: between the cobalt additive and the cardiac disease was discovered,
Speaker 1: the use of cobalt, of course was suspended, as we said,
Speaker 1: But there must have been plenty of cases around the
Speaker 1: world of undiagnosed cobalt cardio myopathy, which doctors just mistook
Speaker 1: for more common forms of heart disease. Eves Morin emphasizes
Speaker 1: this point speaking to the CBC article about the cobalt poisoning. Quote,
Speaker 1: you can't imagine the number of patients everywhere who died
Speaker 1: from that disease because it wast mortality. But the story
Speaker 1: doesn't 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
Speaker 1: alloy is like magnetic metals and alloys. And apparently this
Speaker 1: patient had I think part of some kind of ceramic
Speaker 1: object with part of it with his hip replacement rubbing
Speaker 1: against the metal alloy element of the hip replacement, and
Speaker 1: it was the rubbing was releasing cobalt into his bloodstream.
Speaker 1: But the doctors figured this out. The patient had his
Speaker 1: hip pros thesis removed and replaced with a new model,
Speaker 1: after which the concentrations of cobalt and chromium in a
Speaker 1: blood decreased and he recovered from some of the worst
Speaker 1: of his symptoms, but not immediately from all of them.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's that's very interesting. And as far as
Speaker 1: house goes, I've never watched either. I love the lead actor.
Speaker 1: But this is a great example of why it's it's
Speaker 1: not a bad thing to get the science at least
Speaker 1: mostly right in some sort of you know, popular form
Speaker 1: of entertainment, because people are going to you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to learn from it, uh, for better or worse,
Speaker 1: you know. And here's an example of of of them
Speaker 1: getting the science right or even mostly right, helped investigators
Speaker 1: go in the right direction on this particular case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think this is such a bizarre and fascinating story,
Speaker 1: going from like the aesthetics of what beer looks like
Speaker 1: in a glass to to these outbreaks of metal poisoning. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and like and again it's clearly a case
Speaker 1: where the the individuals who did this, they were they
Speaker 1: were thinking, well, we just we want to make the
Speaker 1: beer look nicer. What can we add? Here's something that
Speaker 1: we can add, and it's gonna it's not gonna hurt
Speaker 1: anybody like that was clearly far from their minds. And
Speaker 1: uh and yet these were the unforeseen consequences. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: again that's the complexity of of of food in our
Speaker 1: modern world of processed food and uh and and certainly
Speaker 1: beer is a it's a as an artificial product. It
Speaker 1: is processed. I mean, it's stories like this that can
Speaker 1: make you. Normally you don't stop to to appreciate the bureaucrats,
Speaker 1: but it's stories like this can that can really make
Speaker 1: you say, like, hey, wow, it's it's actually amazing that
Speaker 1: that modern societies have come up with things like food
Speaker 1: and drug testing organize, you know, like a Food and
Speaker 1: Drug administration or something that looks at products that are
Speaker 1: going out to mass markets in an organized way to say,
Speaker 1: can we be pretty certain that this is safe before
Speaker 1: releasing it on the public. Right. We didn't always have that.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's easy to say, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want the government. You know, I'm saying what I
Speaker 1: can and can't put in my body. But if the
Speaker 1: thing we're talking about is a say, a lead laced
Speaker 1: UH sucker for a child or or or or a
Speaker 1: cobalt and used beer. You don't necessarily know what you're
Speaker 1: putting in your body. When I'm all for big Brother
Speaker 1: jumping in and weeding out you know, poisonous products like that.
Speaker 1: But that's just me. You may have a different opinion
Speaker 1: of poison. So anyway, I don't know if this was
Speaker 1: going to really help anybody out this Thanksgiving. Uh don't
Speaker 1: don't put cobalt on your turkey, right right? You don't
Speaker 1: just don't use any like hard heavy metals to uh
Speaker 1: to flavor or weigh down anything. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess in general, you know you're going to use
Speaker 1: some processed foods during you know, whatever kind of feast
Speaker 1: you might be having, You're going to use additives or
Speaker 1: something that has added is added to it. And so
Speaker 1: it is I think inciple to understand the history of
Speaker 1: these things and UH and the Carol careful balance that
Speaker 1: is in play between you know, finding a nice color,
Speaker 1: enhancing a flavor, and potentially poisoning somebody. Can we end
Speaker 1: with just a food coloring hip? Sure you sort of
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier when you were listing natural foods that are
Speaker 1: sometimes used for their their dying properties or pigments. One
Speaker 1: that I think is a great substitute for saffron. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get the flavor there, but it also creates a
Speaker 1: wonderful yellow orange hue is just to use a little
Speaker 1: 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 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 we will find them. That's the mother ship. Uh,
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 age 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 and make sure you're
Speaker 1: on 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 chime in and chat with other listeners. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some folks are going to chime in about Strange
Speaker 1: Brew too, and to let everyone know exactly what that
Speaker 1: film is about and what extent it may or may
Speaker 1: not tie into our topics today. Rick moranis in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was written Rick moranis. And uh, the other guy
Speaker 1: from was this was the Second City. Dave Thomas. Dave
Speaker 1: Thomas was Dave Thomas, Yes, Dave Thomas, Rick moranis and
Speaker 1: probably some other names as well. But those are the
Speaker 1: two leads. Uh. I just want to emphasize again if
Speaker 1: you haven't checked out Invention yet, check that out. If
Speaker 1: you haven't checked out the second oil age, you must
Speaker 1: do it. I think you're gonna love it. It's so
Speaker 1: much fun. Oh and t shirts. The Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind merch store is still active, and i'd just
Speaker 1: mind understanding that there is a new shirt in there
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving and there is also some manner of like
Speaker 1: there's like you know, there's always Black Friday deals and
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving deals, so just be advised this is a good
Speaker 1: time to get merchandise from that store if you so desire.
Speaker 1: Totally by it all huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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