Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, oh please, please please please Paul, keep
Speaker 1: our laughter in here as we open this one. Fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realists. This week's classic episode comes about due to
Speaker 1: an amazing conversation we had with a close friend of
Speaker 1: the show is basically a sibling of ours now, Lauren
Speaker 1: vogel Baum, longtime host of Savor Eric in Shadows, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: several other things. Worked with me and you, Matt and
Speaker 1: you Paul really closely. We're running our YouTube videos.
Speaker 2: Makes an appearance in Thirteen Days of Halloween, you.
Speaker 1: Know, well, yeah, you're right. And we also in those
Speaker 1: halcyon days pre pandemic, we would hang out and just
Speaker 1: shoot the breeze, shoot the beans. And I'll never forget
Speaker 1: that one day I was walking by. I had a
Speaker 1: crunch bar, candy crunch bar with me, you know, the
Speaker 1: ones with the little rice in the chocolate.
Speaker 2: I know, the one's the blue wrapper, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, iconic.
Speaker 1: And then our pal, our pal, Lauren V said, oh Nestley, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: And with that one, you see Neslie right on the
Speaker 2: front with a lot of company's products. You don't really
Speaker 2: notice the label because it's some other sub brand or something,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's the world's largest food and beverage company,
Speaker 1: or was it twenty eighteen when we decided to ask
Speaker 1: the question, why do so many people hate Nesli? Why
Speaker 1: has this one gigantic, gargantuan company been accused of so
Speaker 1: many conspiracies? We found the answer.
Speaker 2: And here it is in the form of a podcast episode.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, and our trustee co host Nol
Speaker 1: is on the road on an adventure. All will be
Speaker 1: revealed in time, I believe, is the party line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's on the road on an adventure, just still
Speaker 2: a couple of feet away.
Speaker 1: From us, right Exactly Who am I? They call me? Ben?
Speaker 1: We are joined with our super producer Paul Mission Control Deca.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you? You are here that makes
Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Wait, Ben, there's somebody else in the room too.
Speaker 1: You're right, Matt, your spider sense is, as always disturbingly accurate.
Speaker 1: We are not delving into today's topic alone, are we Matt.
Speaker 2: No, we are not. Today we are joined by Lauren
Speaker 2: Vogelbaum that you may know from Savor brain Stuff. Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, so many And if you are not already aware,
Speaker 2: Saveror is the new version of what was once food Stuff.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, it's essentially the same show, but now we
Speaker 4: go on the road sometimes and talk to actual human
Speaker 4: people aside from ourselves. We're mostly human people about food
Speaker 4: and culture and science and how all those things work
Speaker 4: together and why we eat the way that we eat.
Speaker 2: It's an awesome new thing experience to listen to Savor.
Speaker 2: Just hearing you in places, it's been a whole lot
Speaker 2: of fun as a listener. Just wanted to say that
Speaker 2: on Mike.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And we defer to you, Lauren fairly often in this
Speaker 1: show when something food related comes up. That's why we
Speaker 1: asked you to come here today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh you didn't just want to hang out?
Speaker 1: Well that too for sure, Yeah, yeah, I mean mostly Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Mostly hanging out. And then you're going to know more
Speaker 2: stuff about this than we do. Maybe.
Speaker 4: Actually, definitely, I believe you entirely.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that, enjoyed that strange shrug. Lorden you have
Speaker 1: been on the show in the past before you have
Speaker 1: joined us for an exploration of the diamond industry.
Speaker 4: Oh right, yeah, specifically not food related that one. But
Speaker 4: but yeah, who, I'm still mad about diamonds.
Speaker 2: You may notice that there's a reoccurring theme here. We
Speaker 2: bring you on for terribly depressing things.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's why when you said hang out, I was
Speaker 1: a little taken aback. Yeah, at this point, you you
Speaker 1: pretty much know the score.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean hypothetically. I did some of the
Speaker 4: research here anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one of these well, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: these episodes one day maybe will be a fun and
Speaker 1: delightful one.
Speaker 4: Do you guys do fun and delightful episodes?
Speaker 2: We did all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nope, you just never invited me.
Speaker 1: I see, yeah, no, we do. But we are so
Speaker 1: glad that you are here today, especially because we are
Speaker 1: catching you right before you take another trip for sav.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, tomorrow, I'm flying out to New Orleans with
Speaker 4: newser Dylan uh and my co Danny, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: we're gonna eat and drink some stuff. We're gonna talk
Speaker 4: to some people about it.
Speaker 2: I'm so jealous. That is some of my favorite food
Speaker 2: that exists on the planet.
Speaker 4: Oh, I can't eat bell peppers, so it's gonna be
Speaker 4: rough going for me. But it's gonna be just all right.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna just make up for it in cocktails.
Speaker 1: You can also get your own parade, which I know
Speaker 1: I keep telling, keep telling everyone. Don't blow up the
Speaker 1: spot if you list if you live in New Orleans
Speaker 1: and you don't know about this, but it's not that
Speaker 1: expensive to pay outside of Marty Gross season, to pay
Speaker 1: a band to do a parade for you, and you
Speaker 1: get to walk in the front or I guess wherever
Speaker 1: you want at that point.
Speaker 2: Impromptu parades with only two hand grenades. So that's all.
Speaker 2: That's the maximum amount of hand grenades you can have
Speaker 2: in one night. I'm telling you that's a drink, right, yes, no,
Speaker 2: not physical weapons, right you guys. Today we are talking
Speaker 2: about a major company that most people know about. They
Speaker 2: are the creators of such foods for cats and dogs
Speaker 2: as alpo benefol and fancy Feast.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Today we are exploring the disarming
Speaker 1: and perhaps surprising story of a company called Nessli. But
Speaker 1: that's not all they've created.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm you know, candy from kit Kats to Butterfingers,
Speaker 4: coffee brands like Taster's Choice, nest Cafe, Coffee Mate, and
Speaker 4: Starbucks packaged coffees, baking products from Libby's incarnation, frozen infrigerated
Speaker 4: foods like Stofers, California Pizza Kitchen, Hot Pockets, Line Cuisine
Speaker 4: and Dejiorno and Tombstone, desert brands like Hogandaws, Eaties, Skinny Cow,
Speaker 4: Boost and Power Bar, nutritional supplements, Gerber Baby Foods, Purina
Speaker 4: pet Foods, and they have a thirty percent ownership of Laorel,
Speaker 4: including cosmetics brands like Garnia, the Body Shop and Mabelene
Speaker 4: and perfume lines from Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani and Eve
Speaker 4: Saint Laurent.
Speaker 1: Wow. And that's nowhere near all of it.
Speaker 2: Did we hit Perrier and San Pellogrino.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't even mention the water right right water.
Speaker 1: There are multiple brands of water as well. This company
Speaker 1: cast a large, not entirely sugary shadow. You know, for
Speaker 1: a lot of us in the US, we associate NESTLEI
Speaker 1: with maybe like nest Cafe or a Nestle crunched candy bar.
Speaker 1: But every single thing that Matt and Lauren just named
Speaker 1: is owned by Nestle. There's so much more to the story.
Speaker 1: Nestlei is huge. It's gargantuan. It is like, ah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to ruin the surprise yet, but it's big.
Speaker 1: Let's just go with that.
Speaker 2: It's like the Facebook of foods.
Speaker 1: You know what. That is disturbingly accurate, But this is true.
Speaker 1: When Nesli first started out, they only made one thing,
Speaker 1: one real breakthrough. It was condensed milk and baby formula.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which was massively important, and that's why it became
Speaker 2: such a big company. They started in a place which
Speaker 2: was a good place to start babies.
Speaker 1: Right right, just like Wu Tang, nesle was for the kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's us, like, here's a terrible joke that we
Speaker 1: weren't proud of, but we're going to do anyway. Matt,
Speaker 1: would you like to do the condensed history of Neslei
Speaker 1: grown because it's condensed like the milk? Yes, okay, milk.
Speaker 4: Wait, we saw what you did there.
Speaker 1: I feel like this joke only gets better the more
Speaker 1: that we try to over explain it.
Speaker 2: Let it hang there. Yeah, So Neslei is named for
Speaker 2: its primary food wizard on Ree. Nestlei He was born
Speaker 2: August tenth, eighteen fourteen, on ree Neslei. Begins his career
Speaker 2: as a pharmacist's assistant before moving to Switzerland and qualifying
Speaker 2: to practice as a pharmacist and chemist. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: He moves on to become a pharmacist and chemist. That's
Speaker 2: a great job to have. Sure, that's chemist, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was a This was a much broader
Speaker 1: term back in the eighteen hundreds, right, A chemist could
Speaker 1: be mixing any sort of thing, you know, an agglomeration
Speaker 1: of potions. For Henri, one of his primary focuses was
Speaker 1: always food science. He experimented with other stuff like cement,
Speaker 1: which hopefully was not a food experiment, but he also
Speaker 1: experiment with lemonade, cooking oils. Eventually he moves towards this
Speaker 1: idea of condensed milk or some sort of replacement for
Speaker 1: breast milk for nursing parents. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Condensed milk was developed by Gail Borden, Yes, that Borden
Speaker 4: in the United States in the eighteen fifties and was
Speaker 4: hugely important in feeding Civil War troops.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird because nowadays I don't know about everyone.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for everyone. But nowadays condensed milk seems
Speaker 1: like it has a bit of a niche, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's not super widespread. No one's going
Speaker 1: to a restaurant and saying, you know, I'll have the
Speaker 1: number three with condensed milk to drink.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well it's it was a much needed for
Speaker 2: a lot of people at the time.
Speaker 4: Sure, you know, these days, I think it's mostly a
Speaker 4: baking ingredient. You're buying sweet and condensed milk to put
Speaker 4: in like a pumpkin pie or something like that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, this was back in the what like eighteen sixties,
Speaker 4: eighteen seventies. This was before refrigeration technology was a thing,
Speaker 4: and it was also a time when industrialization was on
Speaker 4: the rise, and along with that this increase in concern
Speaker 4: about food purity. You know, more people were moving into
Speaker 4: cities away from sources of fresh foods, more foods were
Speaker 4: being manufactured, but regulations had not been set up yet.
Speaker 4: And there was also this religiously influenced temperance movement or
Speaker 4: a series of movements going on in both America and
Speaker 4: Europe where people were thinking harder about what they put
Speaker 4: in their bodies. So, like all of this led to
Speaker 4: this thing where condensed milk being marketed and to be
Speaker 4: fair generally created to be safe and long lasting, and
Speaker 4: so they were considered good.
Speaker 1: Yeah products, right, yeah, because it's dependable too, it's consistent,
Speaker 1: which I think was a huge deal. So in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, just like a year after saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to work with condensed milk, Nesley develops this milk based
Speaker 1: baby food that he calls faurine lechti, which is I'm
Speaker 1: woefully mispronouncing that it means flour with milk in English,
Speaker 1: so it's cow's milk, wheat, flour and sugar to you know,
Speaker 1: I guess sweeten the whole contraption. And as we know,
Speaker 1: whenever you hear stories about inventors or inventions, it's usually
Speaker 1: pretty difficult to pin an entire invention on a single person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there were two or three people who
Speaker 4: were developing a very similar product around the same time,
Speaker 4: first in the form of a liquid condensed food, and
Speaker 4: then very shortly afterwards in terms of like a powdered
Speaker 4: condensed food.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And we remember Nesle as a pioneer of
Speaker 1: baby formula because this baby formula was a catalyst for
Speaker 1: his company, really propelled the growth of the entire operation Nesley. Originally,
Speaker 1: according to the story, Nesley develops this because he knows
Speaker 1: that some new mothers cannot breastfeed or some infants cannot
Speaker 1: be breastfed for one reason or another, and this invention,
Speaker 1: if he can get it off the ground, will help
Speaker 1: mitigate the cartoonishly high infant mortality rates of the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things were bad for infants back then. And this
Speaker 2: is a real thing where once children, once very young children,
Speaker 2: start eating any formula of this kind, it's very very
Speaker 2: difficult for them to get back onto like a breast
Speaker 2: milk or something if you're trying to switch back. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying this is a terrible they need a great
Speaker 2: thing to stop babies from dying, but it also creates
Speaker 2: this whole other problem that we're going to maybe talk
Speaker 2: about a little bit later on.
Speaker 4: Sure. Yeah, and there's also the issue of once a
Speaker 4: mother stops producing milk for her infant because of the
Speaker 4: switch to a formula, then it's hard for her to
Speaker 4: kickstart it again. And previous to this technology, to this
Speaker 4: food technology being invented, your only recourse if you couldn't
Speaker 4: personally breastfeed your child was to hire a wet nurse,
Speaker 4: and of course that's not a thing that everyone had
Speaker 4: financial access.
Speaker 2: To, and this would be essentially someone who breastfeeds your
Speaker 2: baby for you, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely, you can see how difficult that would
Speaker 1: be for a ton of people in this area in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: but also throughout the world, most people, I think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say most people. And in eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: sales are taking off. He's doing super well, gangbusters. Neslei
Speaker 1: sells his company and his factory to three local businessmen
Speaker 1: who aggressively expand both the research and the sales departments.
Speaker 1: Around this time, even before that expansion, Neslei products are
Speaker 1: sold everywhere from Indonesia to Argentina, again a globe supply chain, which,
Speaker 1: as you point out, Lauren, is super difficult to pull
Speaker 1: off without refrigeration or planes. They're just I guess going
Speaker 1: by boat, huh, and train probably rail. But where's the
Speaker 1: chocolate you're wondering? Right? Possibly. In eighteen seventy nine, Nesley
Speaker 1: merges with Daniel Peter, who is arguably the inventor of
Speaker 1: milk chocolate. I mean, at least he's the one who
Speaker 1: gets the credit for it.
Speaker 4: Right before then, they had been selling some of their
Speaker 4: condensed milk products to that guy, and that's kind of
Speaker 4: how his milk chocolate business started off. And it's kind
Speaker 4: of rolled up into each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which makes sense. That's the way a lot of
Speaker 1: business relationships tend to.
Speaker 2: Go, right. So thank you Daniel Peter for milk chocolate.
Speaker 1: I think it's weird that you have two first names,
Speaker 1: but yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Hey, some of us just have that affliction.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh Matt, I'm so sorry. I just realized that.
Speaker 1: I guess it feels normal because we hang out all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, but Daniel Peter, it's just it's a
Speaker 1: weird name. It's the name I would use as a
Speaker 1: fake name. So my profound apologies if you if I
Speaker 1: have made you feel slighted. My old friend, h Daniel
Speaker 1: Peter did some great stuff. He you know, invented milk chocolate.
Speaker 1: People generally like.
Speaker 2: That because of him. Kitkats exist, Yes, they're delicious, they're great.
Speaker 1: The Japanese ones farms, the green.
Speaker 2: Tea one was so much better than I thought it
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got some banana ones in my desk right now.
Speaker 4: They're life changing.
Speaker 1: I see you also like to live dangerously If they're
Speaker 1: the could I could I try one after this? Awesome?
Speaker 1: So in nineteen oh five, Nestley, or the company founded
Speaker 1: rather merges with an outfit called the Anglo Swisk and
Speaker 1: Denseed Milk Company, and they form what is now known
Speaker 1: as the Nestley Group. They have a bunch of mergers
Speaker 1: and name changes, but today we call them NESTLEI s A.
Speaker 1: They are the world's largest fast moving consumer goods company
Speaker 1: in terms of revenue. They make a ton of money.
Speaker 2: Yes, get this. In twenty seventeen there was a total
Speaker 2: revenue for Nestle SA the actual name of the company
Speaker 2: now of ninety point eight billion dollars with a B.
Speaker 1: Holy Crapola's a that's a lot of kitcats.
Speaker 2: Saw those dejornos?
Speaker 4: Oh, so it's partially my fault.
Speaker 1: They are still headquartered in Switzerland. They employ over three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. They own more than two thousand different brands.
Speaker 1: If you shop in a mainstream grocery store, you'll probably
Speaker 1: buy more Nestley stuff than you think. They also own
Speaker 1: almost five hundred factories in countries across the world. Their
Speaker 1: most popular products are powdered and liquid beverages still, which
Speaker 1: I think is interesting. And this is the point where
Speaker 1: we have to encounter ethics and philosophy for a second,
Speaker 1: because we'll often hear pop philosophers say that, you know,
Speaker 1: at the heart of every fortune lay some great crime,
Speaker 1: and that's not something you could really prove. But there's
Speaker 1: an argument people make that says, no company or individual
Speaker 1: can attain this much financial success without at some point
Speaker 1: along the way engaging in unethical or at the very
Speaker 1: least controversial activity. And Nessley's no different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of critics of this company
Speaker 2: that exist that you will find online especially, and these
Speaker 2: criticisms don't just come from people who disagree with the
Speaker 2: company's strategies. They're investment strategies. There is a very deep
Speaker 2: and dark rabbit hole that we're about to go down. People.
Speaker 2: Right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. Nesley is accused of a
Speaker 1: ton of dastardly activities around the planet. The first one,
Speaker 1: which might be surprising to some people familiar to others,
Speaker 1: is Nesley's Neslei's water business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've seen neslie Water bottled water, probably somewhere near
Speaker 2: a grocery store, in a grocery store at a and
Speaker 2: you may have also seen San Pellogrino or Perrier. They're
Speaker 2: sparkling versions somewhere on the shelves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In two thousand and five, a documentary called We
Speaker 1: Feed the World came out.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's a little pompous, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: And it featured the CEO of NESLEI at the time,
Speaker 1: a guy named Peter brabeck Lemete, and he made this
Speaker 1: observation that became infamous and went viral, and we have
Speaker 1: the quote today, net would you want to do the honors?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. Water is, of course the most important raw
Speaker 2: material we have today in the world. It's a question
Speaker 2: of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for
Speaker 2: the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter.
Speaker 2: One opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by
Speaker 2: the NGOs non governmental organizations, who bang on about declaring
Speaker 2: water a public right. That means that as a human being,
Speaker 2: you should have a right to water. That's an extreme solution.
Speaker 2: The other view says that water is a food stuff
Speaker 2: like any other and like any other food stuff, it
Speaker 2: should have a market value. Personally, I believe it's better
Speaker 2: to give a food stuff of value so that we're
Speaker 2: all aware it has a price, and then that one
Speaker 2: should take specific measures for the part of the population
Speaker 2: that has no access to this water. And there are
Speaker 2: many different possibilities there. I added a little emphasis in there,
Speaker 2: but you can hear how sinister that could sound.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the evil is there. I don't think.
Speaker 2: All these NGOs trying to make water a public right.
Speaker 1: A lot of Nesley critics interpreted this as an attack
Speaker 1: on the poor, attack on community suffering from drought and
Speaker 1: other people in the margins of society who cannot afford
Speaker 1: to pay this quote market price for water.
Speaker 4: He did walk the statement back a little bit in
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen after this public outcry. As you can possibly imagine,
Speaker 4: he said. He said in a YouTube video that Nesley released,
Speaker 4: I have always supported the human right to water. Everyone
Speaker 4: should have enough safe, clean water to meet their fundamental
Speaker 4: daily needs, but not to fill a pool or wash
Speaker 4: a car water. And then he talked for a minute
Speaker 4: about how it's a very precious resource and how we're
Speaker 4: kind of running out or I mean, you know how
Speaker 4: there's different areas that don't have a lot of back
Speaker 4: to it and any furthermore, said water should be better managed,
Speaker 4: should be better valued. If we give water value, there
Speaker 4: will be incentive to invest in looking after our supply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can see the logic. He's not he's
Speaker 1: not really changing the content of what he's saying. He's
Speaker 1: framing it in a different way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ultimately, he's saying, we got to respect water enough
Speaker 2: that it's valuable enough that we're not going to pollute
Speaker 2: it too bad.
Speaker 1: And I've heard I've heard similar arguments advanced about human life.
Speaker 2: Oh, if there's enough of a value, we should value
Speaker 2: that as well.
Speaker 1: If we're assigning value to things.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, that's that whole idea of selling
Speaker 2: bullets for more than a gun, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we can't sell bullets in people, then
Speaker 4: really what are we doing?
Speaker 1: Here's no keep it. We do want to be clear,
Speaker 1: that was not a quote from the CEO, right, No, no, no.
Speaker 4: No, that was just my own sarcas sarcasm. So goodness,
Speaker 4: they don't know me here.
Speaker 1: So this it's interesting too because there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of double think or a paradox here in that Nesley
Speaker 1: has a successful bottled water business because they are treating
Speaker 1: water as a public good by extracting it from land
Speaker 1: lease agreements where they just have access to the resources
Speaker 1: on the land, so they're not putting a huge value
Speaker 1: on it on their side. The value changes depending on
Speaker 1: their profit margin.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: But they're the world's largest supplier of bottled water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seven percent of their sales come from bottled water.
Speaker 1: That's about seven point seven billion worldwide in recent years.
Speaker 2: And seven point seven billion dollars worth of bottled.
Speaker 4: Water just from them. Yeah, for kind of scope. I
Speaker 4: don't have a number for the whole world worth of
Speaker 4: the water industry, the bottled water industry, but just in
Speaker 4: the United States it was worth eighteen point five billion
Speaker 4: dollars in twenty seventeen and was growing.
Speaker 1: And now they own what sixty four different bottled water
Speaker 1: brands across the planet. The big question is, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: we got to say these, Okay, name them.
Speaker 2: We got to say these because you're drinking these. You
Speaker 2: might have one in your hand right now. Deer Park
Speaker 2: guilty on my hand. Poland Spring also guilty. Aquapana not
Speaker 2: so much. San Pellegrino, sure, Perier sometimes, but only when
Speaker 2: I'm feeling fancy springs, water park, and water line.
Speaker 1: I would add to that pure life, which is huge
Speaker 1: in other countries. So where do they get all this water?
Speaker 1: It turns out that they're taking it from you if
Speaker 1: you are the resident of many rural communities across the US,
Speaker 1: in Brazil, in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, in Europe. But how ben,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you asked, Matt. Thank you. They similar
Speaker 1: to the Daniel day Lewis character, and there will be blood.
Speaker 1: They're drinking your milkshake. They're they're buying up areas that
Speaker 1: give them access to groundwater or springs, and they're using
Speaker 1: that to they're using that to fill the bottles. But
Speaker 1: as they're draining these aquifers, they're moving the water away
Speaker 1: from where it would have naturally existed.
Speaker 2: That's it's a it's such a perfect example there the
Speaker 2: Daniel day Lewis character from There will be blood because
Speaker 2: these aquifers are so massive underneath the land where people
Speaker 2: are walking around on all day you don't realize that
Speaker 2: they're down there. But if if you can put you know,
Speaker 2: a series of pipes down into the aquifer at one
Speaker 2: point in this massive space of water, you could just
Speaker 2: suck it right up, like that milkshake. It's such a
Speaker 2: good it's it's perfect and terrible.
Speaker 1: And real. And to add to that, the company is
Speaker 1: so large that they have they have acquired a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of influence, especially in smaller communities. We don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how much water they've been extracting with this method,
Speaker 1: but in twenty fifteen, some journalists found that Nessley had
Speaker 1: been illegally draining water from lands that were leased by
Speaker 1: the Marongo Band of Mission Indians in a desert area,
Speaker 1: and they'd also been taking water from the San Bernardino
Speaker 1: National Force. They did have a permit to do this.
Speaker 1: It expired in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Oops.
Speaker 1: Is that just? Is that? Is that just something that
Speaker 1: got overlooked because it's a huge operation?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean also another number related to that instance,
Speaker 4: they had been paying five hundred and twenty four dollars
Speaker 4: a year to extract about thirty million gallons of water.
Speaker 1: There, wow, including during the drought. So you can already
Speaker 1: see how this profit margin is going to work out
Speaker 1: right right that An independent analysis put the total water
Speaker 1: extraction at one billion gallons per year over time. And
Speaker 1: if we think about how many bottles of water, that
Speaker 1: is right, Is it twelve ounce bottle of water? Sixteen
Speaker 1: ounces something like that?
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: Sure those sound like numbers. Yeah, so we can see
Speaker 1: just how little they would be pain even with the
Speaker 1: cost of transportation and infrastructure, how little they're pain to
Speaker 1: produce these, right.
Speaker 4: And I did want to put in here that, like,
Speaker 4: while we can all agree that drinking bottled water is
Speaker 4: better for our health than drinking bottled soda, the marketing
Speaker 4: of bottled water as safer or healthier than tap water
Speaker 4: for the general population is and this is a scientific term,
Speaker 4: a bunch of hohoey. The stuff was safer in the
Speaker 4: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for like people in cities who
Speaker 4: didn't want cholera or typhoid or dysentery. And then later,
Speaker 4: of course, in the nineteen eighties, when the EPA found
Speaker 4: a lot of lead and a lot of drinking water,
Speaker 4: but like these problems were fixable. Health movements in the
Speaker 4: early twentieth century created free, filtered chlorinated water for many
Speaker 4: developed cities, removing concerns of disease, and in most part
Speaker 4: cities rushed to solve the lead issues. In the eighties
Speaker 4: and nineties.
Speaker 2: But they put fluoride in the water instead.
Speaker 4: They do I'm sure that's a whole other episode that
Speaker 4: I'm sure you guys have done more than once.
Speaker 2: It's fine, don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: But okay, So, bottled water has roots in health and
Speaker 4: purity movements of the eighteen hundreds, kind of like I
Speaker 4: was talking about earlier. Folks then started selling bottled water
Speaker 4: from places like Saratoga Springs like to rich.
Speaker 2: People, mostly because there's cache right right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's like, oh, this is fancy mineral water
Speaker 4: and it's naturally carbonated because we don't have good carbonation
Speaker 4: technology yet, so oooh, drink it and it's healthy and stuff.
Speaker 4: But I don't know why. My ghost voice is also
Speaker 4: my true anyway. But yeah, so mostly it wasn't a
Speaker 4: thing among people. Bottled water was not a thing among
Speaker 4: people who did have another choice until the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: and that's when pet Plastic went commercial and Perrier started
Speaker 4: sponsoring athletic events like the New York City Marathon in
Speaker 4: order to push the healthfulness of their water. Even today,
Speaker 4: with the aging infrastructure problems like we have in Flint
Speaker 4: and on Canada's First Nations reserves. The majority of marketing
Speaker 4: of bottled water is bent to that like health purity image,
Speaker 4: Like what should be an emergency solution for temporarily unsafe
Speaker 4: water is being sold as a lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Now you get bottled water in a nice glass bottle
Speaker 2: that you find in your fancy schmancy hotel rooms in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. There wasn't actually much water in
Speaker 1: those bottles.
Speaker 2: Almost no water in there. I forget the name of
Speaker 2: that brand, Voss Voss Water.
Speaker 4: Oh right, yes, ah, the bottles are pretty.
Speaker 1: They are you know, they're a real statement that That's
Speaker 1: how I felt when I was when I got one
Speaker 1: from the hotel we were at We're on the road.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna walk around with this
Speaker 1: and feel like I'm I'm saying something. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is, but I'm making a statement about something.
Speaker 2: I think it's just a noise. And it's like, mmmm,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying, That's what the noise is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So this continues this there's more to this water story.
Speaker 1: But let's bracket that for a second and look at
Speaker 1: another huge controversy with NESLEI, which is the idea of
Speaker 1: baby formula. Just like back in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Nesley remains invested in formula and baby food products. But
Speaker 1: the problem nowadays sinners less on the product itself and
Speaker 1: more on the marketing. And I'm using that term in
Speaker 1: a very generous way.
Speaker 4: Well, well, by the first decade of the twentieth century,
Speaker 4: Nesley ads, we're saying stuff like, don't wait too long
Speaker 4: before you wean the baby. If you do, the little
Speaker 4: one is likely to be weak in anemic. They admitted
Speaker 4: in these ads that breast milk was the best for
Speaker 4: young babies, but for baby six months and up, they
Speaker 4: said that their product was.
Speaker 2: The fest thing in the world. And this splendid triumph
Speaker 2: of care and science is so like mother's milk that
Speaker 2: the tiny stomach won't notice the difference. Nestley, that which
Speaker 2: is wrong, so wrong, so so wrong.
Speaker 1: On multiple levels.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, and we've we've done a lot of not
Speaker 4: us personally, but but researchers have done a lot into
Speaker 4: looking into this in the past few decades. And yeah,
Speaker 4: brea breast milk is better.
Speaker 2: Breast milk is like the best thing if we could
Speaker 2: all right now, everybody listening to this be just drinking
Speaker 2: breast milk instead of coffee, we'd be good to go.
Speaker 2: This is this is for real.
Speaker 4: Well, certainly you can. You can get some some antibodies.
Speaker 1: I like that you're passionate.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot about it when we had a kid.
Speaker 2: It's just it's incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: But not everyone has evolved the genetic mutation to drink
Speaker 1: milk into adulthood.
Speaker 4: Oh true.
Speaker 1: And just something.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of problems with the thing that
Speaker 2: I said. It's just I was being hyperbolic. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I don't everyone do that ever, please. I mean.
Speaker 4: Also, until men really start figuring out how to lactate
Speaker 4: more regularly, I think I think we're going to have
Speaker 4: a supply chain problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just logistically really tried. And Nesley also wanted to lactate. Well,
Speaker 1: they guess they're kind of your nemesis here. They wanted
Speaker 1: people to stop lactating. Oh right, They became big formula.
Speaker 1: These ads are categorically wrong, right, someone say it, it's
Speaker 1: ethically wrong, but it's definitely the science doesn't bear out,
Speaker 1: is the problem.
Speaker 2: And in the.
Speaker 1: Nineteen nineties, probably knowing this already, Nesley began pushing formula
Speaker 1: aggressively in developing and poor countries, specifically targeting the poorest
Speaker 1: among them, and they had campaigns that were meant to
Speaker 1: make formula seem equal as as good for the kid,
Speaker 1: if not better than breast milk. But the first problem
Speaker 1: here that crops up is in a medical sphere. A
Speaker 1: lot of these countries don't have great water infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: you have to have sanitary water to use this powdered
Speaker 1: formula I believe was powdered at that time.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have access to clean water, or
Speaker 1: you don't have access to the technology to boil the water,
Speaker 1: or you don't speak the language that in which the
Speaker 1: instructions are printed on the container, what good is uh?
Speaker 1: What good are English instructions if there's a place where
Speaker 1: the country has thirty different languages and the main one
Speaker 1: is Portuguese.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know, Hey, I think Neslie needed to get
Speaker 2: on that hobo code. You know what I mean, like, oh,
Speaker 2: hobo code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this comes out after right, so we can
Speaker 1: say hobo code and don't have to explain what it is. Perfect,
Speaker 1: it's you know what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: I was at your show.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh wait, oh sorry, thanks for coming problem anytime.
Speaker 4: I can tell it mental lot.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, procleped. But Nesley does seem to have knowingly
Speaker 1: ignored these risks, the risk of improper creation of the formula,
Speaker 1: the risk of unsanitary water, the health the health complications
Speaker 1: that arrive when a child is put on formula.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: This, this concern was cast aside. UNICEF estimates that a
Speaker 1: formula fed child, by the way, just for some facts,
Speaker 1: living in a disease ridden in unhygienic condition is going
Speaker 1: to be between six and twenty five times more likely
Speaker 1: to die of diarrhea and four times more likely to
Speaker 1: die of pneumonia in comparison to a child that has
Speaker 1: been breastfed.
Speaker 2: So wow, because well, there is a there's a natural
Speaker 2: filter there, which is the mom. She filters a lot
Speaker 2: of that bad stuff out, it's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's another problem, which is that if we're
Speaker 1: talking about destitute communities, often mothers would tend to use
Speaker 1: less formula than was needed because they wanted to make
Speaker 1: it last longer. Because you see, all right, So there's
Speaker 1: this thing called the International Baby Food Action Network. It's
Speaker 1: a real thing. I think it's a great name for
Speaker 1: an extremist group. They are not.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a kid's TV show or something Baby Action.
Speaker 1: Network, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I would watch that show.
Speaker 1: I would check it out. I would give it a chance.
Speaker 2: Fair.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would make it through the
Speaker 1: whole season, but I'll just ask you.
Speaker 2: But dude, they've got some crazy allegations, right, and not crazy,
Speaker 2: they're just intense.
Speaker 1: Right because Neslei they according to their belief for their allegations.
Speaker 1: Nesli distributes free formula samples and hospitals and maternity wards
Speaker 1: across these countries, knowing that this will interfere with the
Speaker 1: natural actation process.
Speaker 4: And not only in these in these less developed countries,
Speaker 4: but also in the United States also in places where
Speaker 4: we don't need that.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, we got a bunch of samples when when
Speaker 2: we had our child. Yeah, a ton of stuff sent
Speaker 2: home with us for free formulas.
Speaker 1: All that's the thing. That's the thing, because once this
Speaker 1: has interfered with the natural actation process and you go
Speaker 1: away from the hospital or the maternity ward or what
Speaker 1: have you, you find out that the formula is no
Speaker 1: longer free. So the Baby Food Action Network says that
Speaker 1: Nesley is operating under the guise of humanitarian aid. But
Speaker 1: what they're really trying to do is to create a market,
Speaker 1: a captive market. At that they say Nestley is purposefully
Speaker 1: Nesley is aware that this interference with natural milk production
Speaker 1: can occur, and they want it to that's the argument.
Speaker 2: Yikes, that's a that's a heavy accusation. I wish it
Speaker 2: didn't feel so real. So like, correct, I wish it didn't.
Speaker 1: So you think you think it was nefarious in some way,
Speaker 1: like you think it was not.
Speaker 2: Just it was nefarious, whether they meant to or not. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean, if this is actually happening, if they're giving
Speaker 2: all these free samples, which we have seen I have
Speaker 2: seen personally, it's not so great.
Speaker 1: Well, and then the argument could be that maybe the
Speaker 1: corporate heart is in the right place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just giving you free things.
Speaker 1: But we just neglected to understand the long term consequences.
Speaker 4: Well right up until someone said, hey, there's long term consequences, at.
Speaker 1: Which point you know, they did keep going.
Speaker 4: They did keep going. They did keep going, and they
Speaker 4: could certainly have a program where they offer these supplies
Speaker 4: for free to hospitals and maternity wards for patients who
Speaker 4: need them for patients who request them for specific cases
Speaker 4: where for whatever reason, the mother or the baby cannot breastfeed.
Speaker 1: And there have been there have been doctors in some
Speaker 1: developing countries who say that the way this stuff should
Speaker 1: work is that they should have to write prescriptions for format. Wow,
Speaker 1: they should put that filter up. That's because writing a
Speaker 1: prescription on their end would be free, but it would
Speaker 1: also be a way to keep the doctor involved.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the you know, medical provider for there.
Speaker 1: We go, that's the one. I don't know why that
Speaker 1: was difficult for me, but but it's true. This has
Speaker 1: been something that's been brewing for a long long time. Nesli,
Speaker 1: for their part, denies all the accusations, all the accusations
Speaker 1: across the board, and they said, we don't even know
Speaker 1: where to start looking to figure out if this is true,
Speaker 1: because there's no you haven't given us anything specific enough.
Speaker 1: But still this led to a large push for boycotts.
Speaker 1: The first US boycott of Nesli begins in July of
Speaker 1: seventy seven, nineteen seventy seven, and then it spreads to
Speaker 1: Europe and in nineteen eighty one, the World Health Assembly
Speaker 1: adopts a code a policy on the marketing of breast
Speaker 1: milk substitutes, which sounds very specific when they say it
Speaker 1: is a minimum requirement that has to be adopted in
Speaker 1: its entirety. In eighty four, Nestle as sense and they
Speaker 1: implement the code. Boycott gets suspended, but surprise, surprise, it
Speaker 1: came back in nineteen eighty eight because most people who
Speaker 1: had a problem with it pre boycott said that they
Speaker 1: didn't fix anything post boycott.
Speaker 2: So that's the story of Nesle and infant formula.
Speaker 1: Well, I like that we start with kids. Do you
Speaker 1: want to stick with kids?
Speaker 2: I think we should, but I think we need an
Speaker 2: ad break between this, just as a bit of a
Speaker 2: palate cleanser. If that's okay, share, okay, let's hear from
Speaker 2: some sponsors.
Speaker 1: We're back with a twisted segue. I believe we set
Speaker 1: this up as we enjoyed, not the right word for
Speaker 1: our conversation about formula. But we do want to stick
Speaker 1: with kids, because it turns out that there's more to
Speaker 1: the story. Nesley isn't just participating in a cover up
Speaker 1: or a conspiracy to extract water from small communities. It's
Speaker 1: not just through either incompetence or nefarious designs, forcing children
Speaker 1: to drink baby formula. It's it's also cutting out the
Speaker 1: middle man of exploitation entirely and diving right into, as
Speaker 1: we established earlier, slavery, human trafficking, child labor, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 2: At least it's being accused of such, and there are
Speaker 2: some there's some evidence to show that it's it's been.
Speaker 1: Happening in the supply chain, right chocolate, right now, We're
Speaker 1: not saying it's not like we're saying there's some crazy
Speaker 1: corporate psychopath with like a monocle and a candy bar
Speaker 1: top hat slugging down Sam Pellegrinos as he snatches children
Speaker 1: off the street. But hopefully not, hopefully not. But it
Speaker 1: is true, like you said, Lauren, with chocolate, and like
Speaker 1: you said, Matt, with the supply chain, there's compelling evidence
Speaker 1: that the people they are buying products from cocoa beans
Speaker 1: and some that those folks are engaging in slavery, child labor,
Speaker 1: human trafficking, and pretty gruesome acts of abuse.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. In two thousand and five, the International Labor
Speaker 2: Rights Fund filed one of those lawsuits against Nestley and
Speaker 2: several other companies on behalf of three children from Molly
Speaker 2: in the pseudo edge that these kids were trafficked to
Speaker 2: the Ivory Coast where they were enslaved, where they were
Speaker 2: abused on a regular basis and forced to work on
Speaker 2: a cocoa plantation. Not great.
Speaker 1: Case went on for years, right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, in twenty ten, the US District Court for the
Speaker 2: Central District of California, they deter in that corporations cannot
Speaker 2: be held liable for violations of international law and dismissed
Speaker 2: this suit. Isn't that isn't that special? As they say,
Speaker 2: this was of course a controversial decision when since then
Speaker 2: it has been appealed. But isn't it isn't that crazy
Speaker 2: that and a corporation cannot be or at least the
Speaker 2: thought at the time was that this corporation can't be
Speaker 2: held liable for violations of international law through its practices
Speaker 2: of creating products, right.
Speaker 4: Especially when it's an international corporation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. I guess the logic there
Speaker 1: is that it would be a huge hindrance to business
Speaker 1: operations and a huge expense to have to send people
Speaker 1: to every place physically to check on these things.
Speaker 2: And people need needs, you know, people, everyone, people everywhere
Speaker 2: need needs.
Speaker 4: We need our kit cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 2: Oh man, everyone everyone.
Speaker 1: Needs Now this isn't restricted to a single incident, that's
Speaker 1: the problem. There was a report done by an independent auditor,
Speaker 1: a group called the Fair Labor Association, and they said
Speaker 1: that they found Nesle committed multiple serious violations of its
Speaker 1: own internal labor code. So it's corporate laws, let alone
Speaker 1: the laws of the land and the state. This was
Speaker 1: at the very least a large degree of negligence, if
Speaker 1: not tacit approval of slavery and child labor. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Nesle commissioned the study. Nesle said, show us
Speaker 1: what we need to know. And the Fair Labor folks
Speaker 1: came back and they were like, wow, this is monstrous
Speaker 1: And they're like, whoa, really that's crazy. Yeah, no way, no,
Speaker 1: not us. And we have a quote from then executive
Speaker 1: vice president for Operations, Jose Lopez, the use of.
Speaker 4: Child labor in our Coco supply chain goes against everything
Speaker 4: we stand for. No company sourcing Coco from the Ivory
Speaker 4: Coast can guarantee that it doesn't happen, but we can
Speaker 4: say that tackling child labor is a top priority for
Speaker 4: our company.
Speaker 1: Okay, So again the argument is that no company of
Speaker 1: that size, especially could be one hundred percent certain of
Speaker 1: how their suppliers are behaving, especially they seem to say
Speaker 1: in this area of the world. It's not surprising that
Speaker 1: critics remain unsatisfied with that response. And as of this
Speaker 1: recording and estimated one point eight million children in West
Speaker 1: Africa alone are at risk of becoming a victim of
Speaker 1: child labor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it's going to take a breather here for
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it was too much to have another child
Speaker 1: related one. But maybe we should stay. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: stay geopolitical, Maybe we should go to another country.
Speaker 2: Who should we talk about like corporations going in and
Speaker 2: strong arming countries by making them payback massive debts.
Speaker 1: So this is a weird one. In two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Ethiopia was in the grips of a nationwide brutal famine
Speaker 1: and Nesle came to Ethiopia in its time of need
Speaker 1: and said, you owe us six million dollars. This claim
Speaker 1: dates back to nineteen seventies when the military of Ethiopia
Speaker 1: seized the assets of foreign companies. But things took a
Speaker 1: turn because the public found out about this and they
Speaker 1: began to speak up.
Speaker 2: Oh yes. The company received over forty thousand letters from
Speaker 2: people who were absolutely outraged in one of the most
Speaker 2: famous cases of public opinion beat corporate greed that exists
Speaker 2: on the planet. In the end, Nesli took a U turn.
Speaker 2: They settled for I guess partially.
Speaker 1: They still took some money.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely. They're like, okay, okay, guys, look, will it
Speaker 2: just give us some of it?
Speaker 4: Will meet you halfway.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In the end, Neslei did take a U turn
Speaker 2: and they settled for just some of the debt.
Speaker 4: They still took some cash, yeah, will meet you halfway.
Speaker 1: Right, right right. And in their defense, they also took
Speaker 1: that money that Ethiopia gave them and invested a portion
Speaker 1: of it to in the country to help it bounce
Speaker 1: back from famine.
Speaker 2: That's very nice.
Speaker 1: It's really weird. It's it's they could have just not
Speaker 1: taken the money. I don't know, but maybe there's an
Speaker 1: argument that they had better international development experience and so
Speaker 1: would be better stewards of that money. That's that's an
Speaker 1: argument you would hear. I could tell.
Speaker 4: I'm very politely worded.
Speaker 1: I could I can read the room here in the
Speaker 1: podcast studio. I could tell that you all are not persuaded.
Speaker 1: I'll check in with Paul and see what he thinks.
Speaker 1: But while they were in Ethiopia around the same time, roughly,
Speaker 1: they made a deal with the wife of the infamous
Speaker 1: dictator from Zimbabwe, Robert mcgabe Mayial his wife, Grace Mugabe,
Speaker 1: to buy one million liters of milk a year from
Speaker 1: farms that she had taken over, because you see, Grace
Speaker 1: mcgabe had a booming side business of taking over large
Speaker 1: farms in Zimbabwe that were white.
Speaker 4: Owned, well at least six of them since two thousand
Speaker 4: and two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so this is building a farming empire
Speaker 1: from these legally confiscated farm lands. And you know, Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: has a very very upsetting history of racial tension, colonialism,
Speaker 1: resource extraction and so on. But these farms were taken illegally,
Speaker 1: at least as far as the international community things.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, it led to another series of boycotts yet
Speaker 4: yet another as well as sanctions in both the European
Speaker 4: Union and the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it sounds like we're picking on Nesli.
Speaker 1: These are just things that you probably don't know about.
Speaker 1: A candy company, even Canada got beefed up with them.
Speaker 2: Dude. They're a lean cuisine company.
Speaker 1: Okay, they're a dog food company. That's right, There are
Speaker 1: all things.
Speaker 4: They're a hot pockets company.
Speaker 1: Come on and that at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: What matters more than hot pockets. You can put anything
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about price fixing. Price fixing is a
Speaker 2: fun thing where companies work together people who were in
Speaker 2: the same market share to control the prices of things.
Speaker 2: A lot of times it's to keep them high, keep
Speaker 2: prices high. That way, everybody gets a lot of that.
Speaker 2: Move lah. Sometimes it's to strategically keep the prices low.
Speaker 2: Either way, it's strategized. Well, guess what. Nestley has been
Speaker 2: accused of this and they even got raided.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nestley Canada got raided, along with Hershey Canada and
Speaker 1: Mars Canada. They all have the word Canada in their
Speaker 1: names because they're the Canadian branch of the company. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm over explaining that.
Speaker 2: It makes sense though. So these this company, Nestle and
Speaker 2: other companies the ones we just mentioned they're subject to
Speaker 2: a class action lawsuit. Are several of them. Per company,
Speaker 2: and ultimately they settled for nine million dollars without accepting
Speaker 2: as per usual, as we've learned on this show, without
Speaker 2: accepting any liability, without admitting any guilt or any issues there.
Speaker 2: It's like, we did no things wrong, but here's a
Speaker 2: lot of money.
Speaker 1: Isn't a lot of money to them?
Speaker 2: How much do they make?
Speaker 1: Ninety zero point eight billion in total revenue though, that's
Speaker 1: not profit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is yeah, Nicelie Canada doesn't rake in
Speaker 2: all that cash, but they rake in quite a bit,
Speaker 2: I'm assuming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they you know this, this happens. A lot
Speaker 1: of lawsuits are settled out at court this way, right.
Speaker 1: They also have been Look, they they're not hurting for money,
Speaker 1: that's true. They are a business, though, and they need
Speaker 1: to be quite aware of where a profit can be found.
Speaker 1: That is why they have been involved in like the
Speaker 1: weirdest round of criticism regarding pollution. It's nuts in a
Speaker 1: circuitous way. Nesley actually makes some some real scratch, some
Speaker 1: solid cheese off of pollution.
Speaker 2: They sorry, what now? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Wait, yeah, okay, the main the main part of that
Speaker 4: this is going to go back to water. But they
Speaker 4: have historically and sometimes still do source inexpensive palm oil,
Speaker 4: and palm oil is a vegetable oil made from the
Speaker 4: fruit of oil palm trees. Makes sense, right. It goes
Speaker 4: into a lot of their candies and other products that
Speaker 4: include processed fats, and it's a crop that fuels a
Speaker 4: lot of deforestation, endangers a lot of species, like the
Speaker 4: cute ones like like tigers and orangon tang stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and it creates a lot of pollution in the areas
Speaker 4: where they're grown and processed Africa, Asia and South America primarily.
Speaker 2: Are you saying tigers are cute. Yeah, tigers are terrified.
Speaker 1: Tigers are amazing.
Speaker 4: They're majestic kitters.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to sounds so definitive about that.
Speaker 4: I yeah, did you have a bad time with tigers?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a three year old and I've
Speaker 2: been reading about tigers everywhere and just I've been to
Speaker 2: the zoo a lot lately. The tiger is crazy, scary,
Speaker 2: it's huge, it would eat you, just bite your face off.
Speaker 1: I mean, so with cats, Yeah, it's just a size thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tigers are also brilliant. They have this is a this
Speaker 1: does have anything to do with this episode, but tigers
Speaker 1: who have been wounded in the wild and Siberia and stuff.
Speaker 1: If they manage to escape, they are able to, like corvids,
Speaker 1: remember the smell and the appearance of the person who
Speaker 1: wounded them. And there's been at least one proven case
Speaker 1: where a tiger was attacked escaped in Siberia waited for
Speaker 1: winter to hit when it knew it. It stalked the
Speaker 1: guy for months what and just waited for it to
Speaker 1: get too cold for to leave his house. And then
Speaker 1: you can see the footprints that the tiger walked around
Speaker 1: in increasingly closer spirals, and then it came through his
Speaker 1: back window, snatched him, drug him out, and I don't
Speaker 1: remember what parts of the body they found.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying Richard Parker isn't a badass assassin. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, yikes, that's all. It's just I just take
Speaker 2: issue with them being cute, because I agree there are
Speaker 2: kitty cats, and kitty cats are cute, but they're big, old,
Speaker 2: scared cats that will assassinate you after waiting a long tizing.
Speaker 4: Okay, I think this isn't my new personality test.
Speaker 1: Oh no. Also, Annie Research cost the Saver has a
Speaker 1: very fascinating personality test that. I believe she was entirely
Speaker 1: making up on the spot.
Speaker 4: I can't think of what it might be, but that
Speaker 4: doesn't mean that it didn't exist previously.
Speaker 1: I'll love to ask her about it. I love to
Speaker 1: ask her about it. It's a it's a good road
Speaker 1: trip conversation.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so so palm oil bad, palm oil bad?
Speaker 1: Palm oil is bad, Tiger's good.
Speaker 2: Tiger's okay, But what about plastic bottles?
Speaker 1: How are they well? In the US and the West
Speaker 1: at large. Increasing concern over plastic bottles that sent more
Speaker 1: and more customers back to reusable bottles or tap water,
Speaker 1: you know, And this is not Nesley's profits down a bit,
Speaker 1: And I do want to point out there's something very
Speaker 1: clever and very calculated at play here in the US
Speaker 1: at least concerning consumer plastic. Ninety percent of all the
Speaker 1: plastic pollution that we hear about in the oceans of
Speaker 1: the world comes from commercial fisheries. It comes from gigantic
Speaker 1: nets and things of that nature.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the straws that you use are not contributing that
Speaker 4: seriously compared to those items, to the great Pacific raft
Speaker 4: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And plastic bottles do play a huge role
Speaker 1: and pollution. But again, don't let people run this sort
Speaker 1: of shell game on you. It's I think it's brilliant
Speaker 1: that so many corporations have have had this change of
Speaker 1: heart moment, such great pr where they're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we decided to be the change. We're gonna make a
Speaker 1: difference here at canglom Co. No more straws yea. And
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, that's great.
Speaker 2: And you guys are really brave. But the one other major,
Speaker 2: just because we're kind of a major contributing factor though,
Speaker 2: that I've been reading about more and more, are these
Speaker 2: little food pouches that people are buying for kids and adults,
Speaker 2: like the exactly that have a little plastic top, and
Speaker 2: that plastic top in particular is becoming a massive problem.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is, you guys have seen the
Speaker 2: water bottle refillers around Atlanta and a lot of other cities.
Speaker 2: Have you seen these? It looks like a water fountain
Speaker 2: where you just put your water bottle up to it
Speaker 2: and you can refill your water bottle. Yeah, so smart.
Speaker 2: That just that makes me so happy when we're thinking
Speaker 2: about the pollution that even though it's not as bad
Speaker 2: as commercial fisheries. The pollution that is generated from plastic
Speaker 2: products like that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so how does how does Nesley end up making
Speaker 1: a profit off of this? To find the answer there,
Speaker 1: we have to travel across the Pacific because sales may
Speaker 1: be down in the US and the West, but in
Speaker 1: China sales are up in part due to pollution. About
Speaker 1: seventy percent in China's lakes and rivers have been polluted.
Speaker 1: Although people will tell you virtually all the surface water
Speaker 1: is now unsafe to drink in that country unless it's
Speaker 1: been treated. I don't know how much of that is
Speaker 1: exaggeration and how much of that bears up to the scrutiny,
Speaker 1: but they have a ton of industrial facilities, power and
Speaker 1: chemical plants, paper and textile factories, and this means that
Speaker 1: a lot of the people living in the country don't
Speaker 1: trust the water or the purification infrastructure in China, so
Speaker 1: they buy more and more bottled water from companies like Nestley, who, again,
Speaker 1: they make a huge margin out of this stuff. What
Speaker 1: did you say earlier about California, They pay like five
Speaker 1: hundred something a year five twenty four.
Speaker 4: Five hundred and twenty four dollars for every three hundred million.
Speaker 1: Gallons and you pay like minimum, what dollar twenty nine
Speaker 1: per bottle? Yeah, for twelve to sixty ounces.
Speaker 4: What do you think that twenty nine cents is about?
Speaker 1: It's to make it, you know, you know how this
Speaker 1: didn't you and I do something about pricing, like why
Speaker 1: there are so many nines? Yeah, yeah, it's aspirational, but
Speaker 1: you're also saving a penny. I don't think it works
Speaker 1: on us anymore because now thirty seems like less to
Speaker 1: a lot of people because there's a zero at the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Right, So this whole idea goes back. I think the
Speaker 2: most perhaps the most important thing here, is that ness
Speaker 2: Lee is a company that makes food stuffs. For the
Speaker 2: most part, they also make you know, we've talked about
Speaker 2: all the other companies they have hand in, but for
Speaker 2: the most part, they're creating products which you buy, you
Speaker 2: open up, throw away the packaging, and then eat the
Speaker 2: part that's edible. Right. That creates a lot of waste,
Speaker 2: a lot of trash. And it doesn't mean that, you know,
Speaker 2: Neslee is for some nefarious purpose trying to take on
Speaker 2: Captain Planet because they're bad guys.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're sitting around like Montgomery Burns doing
Speaker 1: the you know, rubbing their hands together. There's a better
Speaker 1: word for that, like like a little.
Speaker 4: Like like raccoony.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, just sort of just
Speaker 1: sort of rubbing their own palms together and saying, how
Speaker 1: how how should we ruin the world today?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What Someone's like, well, we could I don't know, ah,
Speaker 1: got me on the spot here, manty. We could uh,
Speaker 1: we could start war, we could poison the food. And
Speaker 1: it's like no, no, no, something more nuanced. And then
Speaker 1: they're like okay, okay, um um uh pollute everything and
Speaker 1: they're like.
Speaker 4: Oh, have you considered single use packaging?
Speaker 2: There we go exactly. It's not that they're not some
Speaker 2: super villain, righting evil like that, right, they're the onceler
Speaker 2: They're a giant corporation now making tons and tons of
Speaker 2: products with tons and tons of packaging, and that is
Speaker 2: just what happens when you do.
Speaker 1: That, and as people are you providing a huge boost
Speaker 1: to economies and job opportunities. Those are another that's another
Speaker 1: piec argument you'll hear watch the Lorix.
Speaker 4: Although hey, we're not even talking about the industrial runoff
Speaker 4: from the industrial factories. Who are who are creating these
Speaker 4: plastic products.
Speaker 2: Read that's true.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's absolutely true. Yes, and unfortunately, unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have to be a purposefully malevolent entity if it.
Speaker 1: If you're a corporation, job is, as Matt said, to
Speaker 1: pursue a profit, and that means that everything to a
Speaker 1: certain is going to be a lower priority, including pollution.
Speaker 1: There are very few companies in the world that would
Speaker 1: say we're going to operate at a loss for ten
Speaker 1: years to help make the world a better place. That's
Speaker 1: just not a viable tenure plan.
Speaker 2: That's not something a company does.
Speaker 1: So maybe not immoral, but amoral, And there we have it.
Speaker 1: The world's largest food and beverage company is the subject
Speaker 1: of numerous controversies, boycotts, criticisms, and arguably, yes, cover ups.
Speaker 1: One thing we did cut from this episode was the
Speaker 1: delightful tale of the Fluoride Mafia, which is, yeah, we
Speaker 1: found this. It's this group of people who believe that
Speaker 1: Nesley is so large because it is secretly charged by
Speaker 1: some elite cabal with the task of putting fluoride in everything. Ooh,
Speaker 1: that's their big master plan. Fluoride and everything, not just
Speaker 1: the usual water, no, everything florid flavored Kit Cats, fluoride
Speaker 1: flavored purina ben a full Yeah, it seems extreme. Hey,
Speaker 1: do you have no comment on that one?
Speaker 2: No, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I haven't researched to that.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get involved with big fluoride?
Speaker 2: Right? We all dose ourselves at least two times a
Speaker 2: day if we're good adults and or children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That's a bright side. Brush your teeth.
Speaker 2: See, there you go.
Speaker 1: So what happens? Now? What does this mean for anyone
Speaker 1: who was already familiar with this stuff or anyone who
Speaker 1: just learned about it. If you support NESLI and disagree
Speaker 1: with its critics, if you think they're being alarmist, or
Speaker 1: you think they're trying to create problems where none really exists,
Speaker 1: then kudos, congrat you lucked out. Life goes on as normal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Eat as many Kitcats as you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, get that purina and feed it your dogs
Speaker 2: and then put that to Giorno in the oven. Crack
Speaker 2: open a nice sand pell of Grino and watch the
Speaker 2: wor world burn.
Speaker 1: That's great. Let's put that on a T shirt. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell us if that should be a T shirt? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we should be doing more IGU commercials too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe Global Unlimited, the Illuminated ones, they've got
Speaker 2: something coming out or they're like like co sponsored something
Speaker 2: that's coming out on Savor. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Over on Saver, we're doing a reading of the Grim
Speaker 4: Brothers story The Almond Tree. Oh it's you know, it's
Speaker 4: about cannibalism. So we thought it would be perfect for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4: So it's coming out the Friday after Thanksgiving for our
Speaker 4: non American listeners, that is November twenty third.
Speaker 2: Looks for it.
Speaker 1: Share it with your loved ones, don't give them a context.
Speaker 1: Just like walk in during Thanksgiving dinner, knock some stuff
Speaker 1: off the table, slam down a boombox. You do need
Speaker 1: a boombox for this, and then just just play it
Speaker 1: and pick one person and make weirdly hostile eye contact
Speaker 1: with them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so so definitely do that. You can. If
Speaker 2: you have any questions or comments about Nesle and any
Speaker 2: of the things we've talked about today, you can find
Speaker 2: us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 2: Conspiracy stuff with most of those conspiracy stuff show on Instagram,
Speaker 2: you can you can call us.
Speaker 1: That's true, Matt, we are one eight three three.
Speaker 2: STD w y t K. Yeah, I gotta always highlight
Speaker 2: that STD because it's the most important.
Speaker 1: Transparent about that. Yeah, let people know it's the responsible
Speaker 1: thing to do.
Speaker 2: The other thing you could do is join our Facebook group.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy. That's where you can join
Speaker 2: a lot of us and our fellow conspiracy realists and
Speaker 2: just discuss things. Post some dope memes. What kind of memes?
Speaker 2: Dank I forget the cool hip memes? You can post
Speaker 2: those there. So that's where you can find us for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 1: And we know what you're probably asking yourself here, probably
Speaker 1: like guys, I know because you say this stuff at
Speaker 1: the end of every show, right, I don't care how
Speaker 1: to contact g I already know how to do it.
Speaker 1: Stop yelling STD at me at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: But but you are probably wondering how you can get
Speaker 1: in contact with Savor.
Speaker 4: Oh goodness, you can find us. Yes, it's Savor the Podcast.
Speaker 4: You can look us up via any Internet search engine.
Speaker 4: You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
Speaker 4: at savor pod or email us at hello at saverpod
Speaker 4: dot com. We would love to hear from you, and
Speaker 4: we occasionally get angry about giant corporations on our show too,
Speaker 4: So I don't know. Come tune in listen to our
Speaker 4: sugar episodes. We get really angry.
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of One of your more
Speaker 1: recent episodes has this title. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: heard this, Matt Mayo naise or Mayo naise like I
Speaker 1: don't want to Annie.
Speaker 4: Annie strongly dislikes mayonaise. It's one of her top five
Speaker 4: least favorite foods.
Speaker 2: It's so fascinating. The story of mayonnaise and some of
Speaker 2: the things you talked about in the episode is genuinely fascinating,
Speaker 2: and I love mayonnaise. Yeah, it's the European whatever blood
Speaker 2: I have in me, I just want to dip my
Speaker 2: fries in it, slather out on my sandwiches. I do
Speaker 2: not care. I'll put it on a PB and J
Speaker 2: what I'll do it.
Speaker 1: There's a I mean, live your life. I got your back.
Speaker 1: There's also a a group of people that believes, there is,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, a Mayo conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, there was just a Twitter message about this, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that that Big Mayo is like part of Big Agra
Speaker 4: and that this is a problem, specifically in the way
Speaker 4: that Vegan mayonnaise have been have been treated in the
Speaker 4: larger market, and I will say that mostly that's an
Speaker 4: issue of the definition, the legal definition from the FDA
Speaker 4: of mayonnaise, which includes eggs. So that's a that's a
Speaker 4: reason why vegan mayo has not been allowed to market
Speaker 4: itself as mayonnaise. Yeah, so that's part of the problem.
Speaker 2: Because vegan mayonnaise isn't mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is fat and eggs,
Speaker 2: delicious oil.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, vegetable oil. Vegetable oil and eggs.
Speaker 2: Mostly, I need I need my mayonnaise to be made
Speaker 2: out of.
Speaker 4: Bacon grease that also cannot be marketed as mayonnaise.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's like bacon A's at that point, some
Speaker 1: sort of ali But you know what, man, you gotta
Speaker 1: be the change, right if you want that bacon mayonnaise
Speaker 1: to happen, I have full faith that you will do.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Paul is going to turn us into bacon A's if
Speaker 2: we don't get that.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: That's true, And that's the end of this classic episode.
Speaker 2: If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
Speaker 2: you can get into contact with us in a number
Speaker 2: of different ways. One of the best is to give
Speaker 2: us a call. Our number is one eight three three
Speaker 2: std WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you
Speaker 2: can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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