Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. This is a follow up
Speaker 1: from an earlier Listener Male segment where our fellow conspiracy
Speaker 1: realist Ryan hipped us to a strange story about cheese
Speaker 1: in the United States. We talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: our favorite cheese commercials. I mean, some of that is
Speaker 1: clearly a genre now. You know, it's sometimes called although
Speaker 1: I hate the name food porn. Uh, we all know
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. The slow motion clips of like
Speaker 1: um no, you had a good example of a mozzarella
Speaker 1: stick that's a classic being pulled. And then we had
Speaker 1: you know, Taco bell Que, Sadilla's Casa Lupas, which play
Speaker 1: a big role here and uh, this this kind of
Speaker 1: commercial is almost a troupe nowadays. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: are trendy restaurants of plenty in this country dedicated entirely
Speaker 1: to one sort of cheesy food or another. Like, have
Speaker 1: you guys ever been to a macaroni and cheese restaurant
Speaker 1: or a place that only sells grilled cheese sandwiches. It's
Speaker 1: very New York. Yeah, there's a place I went to.
Speaker 1: I think it was in Oakland. It was called Homework
Speaker 1: or something like that. I was meant to evoke feelings
Speaker 1: of like childhood and like lunch room stuff, but it
Speaker 1: was these bespoke kind of personal pan like little um,
Speaker 1: you know, those dishes that are meant to be put
Speaker 1: in the oven, kind of like bakeware or whatever, like
Speaker 1: little Dutch oven kind of guys, with baccaroni and cheese
Speaker 1: of all different flavors and varieties. And it was obviously
Speaker 1: very overpriced for mac and cheese, but it was delicious. Um.
Speaker 1: What about fawn Do you guys have been to a
Speaker 1: fawn do restaurant? There's a chain here in Atlanta. I
Speaker 1: think it's called the Melting Pot or something like that.
Speaker 1: For me, it was all about the pirate ship. Oh,
Speaker 1: Dante is down the hatch. You're Dante's guy, Yeah it
Speaker 1: was so good. Uh yeah, we yea grilled cheese food trucks.
Speaker 1: Do not sleep on those in Atlanta. There are a
Speaker 1: ton of them, uh, grilled cheese food trucks. Guys. Oh
Speaker 1: so we're we're both cheesy and fans of cheese. So
Speaker 1: if you do not like this is the weirdest trigger
Speaker 1: warning we've ever done. If you do not like puns,
Speaker 1: this is not the episode for you, and you should
Speaker 1: just go to the next episode. But but the thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, a long time listens, you know, I have
Speaker 1: a personal obsession with Casa Dilla's. They're basic, They're kind
Speaker 1: of a grilled cheese, I would argue. Um. And in fact, folks,
Speaker 1: all of us here at this stuff, they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. Team we all love cheese and we
Speaker 1: all love talking about food, and we wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that was an accurate statement. So right before we
Speaker 1: went to air, I went ahead and pained our super
Speaker 1: producer code named Doc Holiday, and said, Matt and I
Speaker 1: worked on how to write this question. Said, hey, Doc,
Speaker 1: this is a work question. Do you like cheese? If so,
Speaker 1: what kind? Doc says, I love cheese, but I don't
Speaker 1: eat it as much as I would. And she kind
Speaker 1: of alluded to, you know, health concerns, but she says,
Speaker 1: I am literally the eating shredded cheese out of the
Speaker 1: bag person. So we're gonna hit her with same we're
Speaker 1: reading this on air, sorry, doc So. And you know
Speaker 1: Paul michion Control look Horse, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the prime uh champ beans of apple Bees loves cheese.
Speaker 1: Matt Old, do you guys have a favorite cheese or
Speaker 1: or you are? Yes? Old cheese kind of kind of
Speaker 1: crewe Yeah, I mean, I guess all cheeses aren't really
Speaker 1: created equal. I'll tell you what I think does get
Speaker 1: slept on a little bit is just good old fashioned
Speaker 1: American cheese product, you know, not even properly. It's like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't like I like it on I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I like it on melted, because it melts beautifully
Speaker 1: on like breakfast biscuit, like an egg and a sausage
Speaker 1: on a biscuit, and you to slap that cheese product on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into this um and it just melts
Speaker 1: beautifully and it's its own thing and a lot of
Speaker 1: like kind of cool breakfast divy type joints do that too.
Speaker 1: But I am I like a I like a funky cheese,
Speaker 1: you know, like a little bit of a foot smell
Speaker 1: to cheese. Well, I don't like you ever had a raclette.
Speaker 1: Raclette as a one. It's like a Swiss one that
Speaker 1: also has its own kind of fondue situation where you
Speaker 1: melted over meats and stuff on this special little grill
Speaker 1: that's and you drink a lot of vodka with it,
Speaker 1: which is a bonus. Man, that sounds good for my money, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for my money. It's you combine let's say, a pecan
Speaker 1: slash pecan with some kind of dried fruit and a
Speaker 1: goat cheese. Mix those together with anything else. You're good
Speaker 1: to go. Oh yeah, baby, yeah right. I'm I'm pretty
Speaker 1: uh as you guys know, I am pretty non discriminatory
Speaker 1: when it comes to food in general. Uh. Doc says
Speaker 1: that her favorites are gorgonzola, blue cheese, and gouda. Uh
Speaker 1: And when we were talking about this, you probably have
Speaker 1: your own favorite cheese, conspiracy realist, just statistically, but we're
Speaker 1: talking about this, we're talking about a national phenomenon. Cheese
Speaker 1: is almost a staple. Lights. Cheese is a staple nowadays
Speaker 1: in the US, and it can be weird if you
Speaker 1: travel to other countries where cheese is not really a thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know you wouldn't see it very often in
Speaker 1: a in your normal grocery store or market. You probably
Speaker 1: only run into it if you went to like up
Speaker 1: pizza restaurant or something of that nature. But in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world that are historically not on board
Speaker 1: with cheese, uh, it is still like a growing industry.
Speaker 1: So here are the facts. Before we get into the conspiracy. Folks,
Speaker 1: you have to realize cheese is, as the younger humans
Speaker 1: would say, popular a f in the US unless you
Speaker 1: are lactose intolerant, unless you're vegan or have some other
Speaker 1: dietary restriction. Odds are you have consumed some cheese recently.
Speaker 1: This wasn't always the case. We'll get to it. Um.
Speaker 1: We are adventurous cheese eaters. But if you're the average American,
Speaker 1: you know one of your favorite cheeses, or the one
Speaker 1: you consume most often, is gonna be cheddar. And there
Speaker 1: are health concerns that come into cheese consumption. But I
Speaker 1: suggest we put those two as to the side for
Speaker 1: a moment. Uh, to the side of our cheese plate,
Speaker 1: and look at just the straight consumption, because this is
Speaker 1: for cheesemakers. Uh, this sounds like a resounding success story.
Speaker 1: So if you start back in the mid nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: let's say nineteen seventy five, you're an average American. Look
Speaker 1: at you, so are we. We are all average Americans.
Speaker 1: We consumed around fourteen pounds of cheese. That's in a year.
Speaker 1: So in a year's time, you would eat fourteen pounds
Speaker 1: of cheese. Now, if you went to a deli right now,
Speaker 1: wherever you are, and you said, give me a pound
Speaker 1: of cheese, that seems like a lot right now, those
Speaker 1: it does. I think you typically order your cheese and
Speaker 1: maybe a quarter pounds, right. I think a quarter pound
Speaker 1: of cheese is respectable. And if you've got a family,
Speaker 1: it's half a pound or pound. That's just the way
Speaker 1: you gotta go. I am a family, family of one.
Speaker 1: Look that's my this is my experience. So perhaps I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but you know, just imagine fourteen pounds. That seems like
Speaker 1: a lot already. It in my opinion, maybe that's wrong,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's not as much as it has
Speaker 1: grown to. Yeah, you're right, Matt, it's skyrocketed as of
Speaker 1: nineteen and this is a number that continued to rise
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. But as of the average US consumer
Speaker 1: was eating around forty four zero point four pounds of
Speaker 1: cheese per year. Yeah, yeah, and uh that's just the
Speaker 1: tip of the cheeseburg or we're keeping it. For the
Speaker 1: past ten years, US per capita consumption of cheese has
Speaker 1: risen even more, uh over five pounds um from that point.
Speaker 1: And as this began to happen, we had other dairy
Speaker 1: categories that had largely remained unchanged or were flat or
Speaker 1: had even fallen UM. Things like consumption of fluid milk
Speaker 1: had plummeted from two forty seven pounds per person in
Speaker 1: the N two hundred and forty six pounds, Which makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we've talked about, I think on the
Speaker 1: the cheese segment on the listener mail. You know, there
Speaker 1: were all these amazing ad campaigns, you know, to get
Speaker 1: milk back up milk drinking about how it's good for
Speaker 1: your bones and calcium and and got milk and all
Speaker 1: of that. Uh. Now, I think most people think of
Speaker 1: milk as an ingredient rather than a beverage. Unto itself
Speaker 1: like something you add to a smoothie or using making
Speaker 1: a cake. But it doesn't seem very in vogue to
Speaker 1: just drink milk as a refreshing beverage, unless unless you're
Speaker 1: a kid. Uh, you know, a lot of parents still
Speaker 1: give their children milk. Like in the waters, I give
Speaker 1: my son milk cow's milk, um and we have, we
Speaker 1: have for a long time. But the the ability to
Speaker 1: this always so interesting. The ability to digest lactose in
Speaker 1: adulthood is a relatively recent mutation in part of the
Speaker 1: human species, and it's far from uniform. Uh. So sometimes
Speaker 1: it's funny because if you if you watch television or film, uh,
Speaker 1: you'll see the consumption of drinking milk is almost always
Speaker 1: a statement. Now it's not the only time you'd see
Speaker 1: it as like a quote unquote normal everyday thing. Is
Speaker 1: if it's an indicator of time and place, so like
Speaker 1: our story takes place in the nineteen fifties or something,
Speaker 1: or if it's one of those tremendously irritating breakfast scenes
Speaker 1: where there's this huge you know that, like there's this
Speaker 1: huge spread and they got juice and they got water,
Speaker 1: and they got coffee and they got milk, and then
Speaker 1: the guy, like the patriarch or the kid there or
Speaker 1: whomever's running through the house and they're they're like getting
Speaker 1: calls and they look at this and they like take
Speaker 1: half a bite of toast, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: love you, honey, gotta go, And no one mentions you monster.
Speaker 1: I did all this work. I made you this continental
Speaker 1: breakfast type situation. You didn't need all that, but I
Speaker 1: did it for you because I love you. You couldn't
Speaker 1: even bother yourself to eat more than a bite of toast.
Speaker 1: I want a divorce. That's that's where that goes. But no,
Speaker 1: it's true. Milk is not nearly as popular as it
Speaker 1: used to be. I like chocolate milk. I think that's
Speaker 1: still probably flies off the shells pretty well, but it's
Speaker 1: something you put in your coffee. Now. I think I
Speaker 1: got a sideways story for you guys, real quick about
Speaker 1: you know, the urban legend or the rumor about chocolate milk, right,
Speaker 1: the bad milk. Yeah, that it's the milk with the
Speaker 1: clots in it, with the blood clots, chocolate everything. For me, well,
Speaker 1: back in the back in the day, that may have
Speaker 1: been more true than it is today. You're probably safe
Speaker 1: thanks to federal health standards, So please enjoy your chocolate milk. Also,
Speaker 1: try you who if you haven't yet. It's a good
Speaker 1: it's a good you who is to chocolate milk? What
Speaker 1: those cheese slices are to cheese? You? Who is a
Speaker 1: chocolate drink product? Right? There's any real milk or chocolate
Speaker 1: in that beverage like a powder. But but yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're inundated with cheese in the US. It's officially a
Speaker 1: cheesy country and a cheesy people. How did we get here? Well,
Speaker 1: there are some easy, kind of fun answers. First, the
Speaker 1: popularity of cheese owes a ton to the rise of pizza,
Speaker 1: and I, for one, I'm grateful for the rise of pizza.
Speaker 1: I know it's maybe not the same as the legit
Speaker 1: pizza con I know it's absolutely not the same as
Speaker 1: legit pizza created in Italy. But because of pizza alone,
Speaker 1: mozzarella went from being kind of this obscure thing you'd
Speaker 1: see it a fancy cheese place to one of the
Speaker 1: most popular varieties of cheese in the country. Like around
Speaker 1: like cheddar status, which is Cheddar is like the Kanye
Speaker 1: West of cheese In the state. And was that an
Speaker 1: accidental pun the rise of pizza? No, wait, yes, yes
Speaker 1: it was. I didn't think about just checking that, checking
Speaker 1: one of those off the list. If anyone wants to
Speaker 1: make a drinking game out of this, yes, we all
Speaker 1: are not accidental or not. We have a list of uh,
Speaker 1: I think we all have. We've got a mental list
Speaker 1: of puns. So again, this is gonna be pun heavy.
Speaker 1: We've done some pretty serious, kind of dark episodes that
Speaker 1: were we think very important, so we wanted to take
Speaker 1: We're recorded on a Friday, folks. We wanted to do
Speaker 1: something that was not immensely depressing. So well, you're right.
Speaker 1: Just to get to the concept that cheese owes pizza
Speaker 1: a lot of gratitude, at least as an industry, as
Speaker 1: a food thing. Uh, really think about think about the
Speaker 1: local pizza chain that maybe you grew up with. Then
Speaker 1: also think about the big ones, the Dominoes, the pizza
Speaker 1: huts eventually the Papa John's and the Goodfellas and the
Speaker 1: ccs and all these other ones. When when you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you had companies that could just deliver
Speaker 1: you food, which wasn't a big thing in a lot
Speaker 1: of places, and for a lot of companies, delivering food
Speaker 1: was not a big thing, but it kind of changed
Speaker 1: the game and how Americans got food and the other thing.
Speaker 1: Just to really remember here, these aren't Italian companies bringing
Speaker 1: you know, Italian pizza that's done correctly in the Italian way.
Speaker 1: These are American companies that are creating food products with
Speaker 1: relatively cheap ingredients where they can make a ton of
Speaker 1: money on Uh So it's just a it's a very
Speaker 1: different it's a very different thing. Um, we don't have
Speaker 1: to get all into pizza that. We can leave that
Speaker 1: to the saver folks, but uh yeah, definitely shout out
Speaker 1: what it's telling we see all the time. Right, it's
Speaker 1: like bastardization and sort of like um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: co opting of like culture and turning it into this
Speaker 1: sort of like product that can be mass marketed. And
Speaker 1: I think, uh, these chain pizza restaurants are exactly that.
Speaker 1: Because you go to like a Antiko's really awesome pizza
Speaker 1: joint here in Atlanta, are anywhere you know that your
Speaker 1: name your pizza joint of choice that is like a
Speaker 1: little more traditional, you know, it's not covered in shredded cheese.
Speaker 1: It has like a slice of like buffalo mozzarella, like
Speaker 1: a little circle doll up on the top, and that's
Speaker 1: what you get. And it's delicious and it's very delicate
Speaker 1: and light h and it's not you don't get that
Speaker 1: massive cheese pull. You get like one. But you know again,
Speaker 1: they've got bags and bags and pounds and thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of tons of this stuff that they're trying to ship,
Speaker 1: they're trying to sell, and it's like, uh, it is
Speaker 1: a conspiracy between big pizza and big cheese. Well, let's
Speaker 1: let's step back a second before we use the C word. So,
Speaker 1: uh well, let's keep painting the picture, right. Did did
Speaker 1: someone who went on the found Dominoes and Pizza Hut
Speaker 1: go to Italy and say, look at this anything you
Speaker 1: can do, I can do feeda or was this just
Speaker 1: a natural outgrowth of changing trends and taste in the
Speaker 1: American public? Did it happen as marketers would put it, organically?
Speaker 1: We know that part of the that We know that
Speaker 1: pizza has also given a lot of heft to shredded cheese,
Speaker 1: in particular, about six billion dollars of the natural cheese
Speaker 1: categories shredded cheese and uh, this the natural cheese category. Overall,
Speaker 1: there is a little less than eighteen billion. We're talking
Speaker 1: a lot of money here. During the coronavirus pandemic, Kraft Hinds,
Speaker 1: which is a giant in the food industry, said it
Speaker 1: saw an unprecedented double digit growth in this sale of
Speaker 1: those craft singles, which is in the rest of the
Speaker 1: world people would probably call that American cheese. It's those
Speaker 1: processed yellow cheese slices we're talking about. But pizza and
Speaker 1: a pandemic and organic taste cannot entirely explain America's weird
Speaker 1: relationship with cheese. When we look into the dawn of
Speaker 1: the American Age of cheesiness, we were surprised to find
Speaker 1: there is literally a conspiracy of foot not a conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: not something that happened in the past. It is going
Speaker 1: odd today. As as we pointed out, there really is
Speaker 1: a thing called big cheese. And they're after you. What
Speaker 1: are we talking about. We'll tell you after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. So we've
Speaker 1: all heard of government cheese, right, We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: And if you, if you were in eighties or nineties, kid,
Speaker 1: you would doubtlessly heard of this stuff, even if you
Speaker 1: never saw it in person. But when we're talking about cheese,
Speaker 1: really talking about milk, right, because you can't have cheat, well,
Speaker 1: you can't have good cheese without milk, that's right. So
Speaker 1: let's that's that's wind the clock back to the good
Speaker 1: old nineteen eighties, the late eighties on the cusp of
Speaker 1: the nineties, that that gray period where it sort of
Speaker 1: still feels like the one era, but things are starting
Speaker 1: to change a little bit. Night seven the mediaan dairy
Speaker 1: farm had eighty cows or fewer. Uh. Today that number
Speaker 1: is closer to nine hundred. So economies of scale drive
Speaker 1: costs down and bolster output. Right. So on top of that,
Speaker 1: you've got the average cow producing more milk than ever before,
Speaker 1: and that is because of better breeding practices. They've kind
Speaker 1: of figured it out and honed it down to a
Speaker 1: science to get the most output for their buck. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are also those like heinous machines that you've
Speaker 1: seen in like some of the factory production of milk.
Speaker 1: I like the phrase heinous machines. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: good album named I agree, but I think we all
Speaker 1: know we're talking about those kind of like dystopian sci
Speaker 1: fi milk suction cup tube machines that we're talking about, Matt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of them are completely fine. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: who's who's to say people would argue that fact, but um,
Speaker 1: many are less impactful on the cows than others. U
Speaker 1: some I would use the term heinus. So yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: at the very least, it doesn't seem pleasant for the animal, right, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But as we know in our previous work on livestock conspiracies,
Speaker 1: the feeling of the animal being used doesn't often come
Speaker 1: into play. And there's also we should also, by the way,
Speaker 1: folks do a an episode in the future on chicken farms,
Speaker 1: just chicken, chicken, the chicken industry, poultry industry in particular.
Speaker 1: It's bad, bad, I learn some weird stuff. But wait,
Speaker 1: this is our light episode. We're keeping it light. Sorry, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: We're back to it. So you know what it is,
Speaker 1: even at the cost I mean, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: even talk about, but at the cost of the experience
Speaker 1: of the cow. The whole point of all of that production,
Speaker 1: it's to get more food for humans that need food.
Speaker 1: In theory. In theory, yes, because it's responding to a market. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a need for this milk, so we must produce
Speaker 1: more of it. How do we do that more efficiently? Well,
Speaker 1: this is how So I just put that out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah there is a logic, Yeah, there is a logic.
Speaker 1: The farmers weren't sitting around saying, how can we make
Speaker 1: things worse? People don't usually think that way. And you know, often,
Speaker 1: especially in smaller farms, they have a very human connection
Speaker 1: with their livestock, you know, and they and they want
Speaker 1: they want these cow us to live good lives and
Speaker 1: be happy. Because if the cow is in a good
Speaker 1: mental state, because it is a higher order mammal, if
Speaker 1: it's in a good mental state, then that's going to
Speaker 1: affect its diet, it's nutrition, and therefore the milk it produces.
Speaker 1: We have to acknowledge at this point the dairy industry,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about uh, several years or decades so ago,
Speaker 1: they were not just producing milk for a domestic consumer,
Speaker 1: they were producing it for other countries. And then a
Speaker 1: crash hit China's economy slowed down. This drove the global
Speaker 1: demand from milk down. At the same time, the EU
Speaker 1: said they had had these domestic caps on how much
Speaker 1: milk a European or EU farmer could produce, and they
Speaker 1: remove those caps, so all of a sudden, the EU
Speaker 1: is making a bunch of milk, which means they need
Speaker 1: less from the US. Russia slapped sanctions on foeign cheese
Speaker 1: because they were mad about some Western sanctions, and then
Speaker 1: the US dollar was stronger, and that meant that American
Speaker 1: dairy farmers had to sell milk at a more expensive
Speaker 1: rate internationally. And these factors combined into this like bubbly
Speaker 1: caso dip of problems. There was a massive ongoing cheese glut.
Speaker 1: There was not a tortilla chip of a solution. Insight,
Speaker 1: This did not occur in a vacuum at all historically,
Speaker 1: because if you look back, you'll see that the US
Speaker 1: government has a very long history of supporting dairy farmers
Speaker 1: when prices collapse, through through subsidies, through marketing campaigns, through
Speaker 1: government cheese. Uh, maybe we we should talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about government cheese, I think before we continue, what
Speaker 1: do you guys say? I think we should because I,
Speaker 1: for the longest time sort of thought it was a joke,
Speaker 1: um that it was sort of a euphemism for, you know,
Speaker 1: welfare in some way. But it turns out it's a
Speaker 1: real thing. It's an actual cheese product that the government
Speaker 1: would distribute to low income individuals UH and families UM
Speaker 1: in place of money or as a supplement to their
Speaker 1: you know nutrition. Right. Yeah, it's processed cheese. It's been
Speaker 1: around since the World Wars. It was used in military
Speaker 1: consitions during World War Two. It's been in schools since
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. So if you went to a public
Speaker 1: school in the US, you probably at some point did
Speaker 1: eat government cheese. It got a it became politically charged
Speaker 1: because it was associated with welfare beneficiaries, people who received
Speaker 1: food stamps or SNAP, people who are elderly and got
Speaker 1: Social Security checks, and then people who visited food banks.
Speaker 1: But there's absolutely nothing shameful about that. And and you know,
Speaker 1: odds are outside of schools. We've got plenty of people
Speaker 1: in our audience today who have at some point been
Speaker 1: on government assistance. And not to a box too much,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you should not feel bad about it. That
Speaker 1: is what that assistance is there for. Every time you
Speaker 1: buy something and Uncle Sam takes a little it takes
Speaker 1: a little vig from you at the cash register. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to go back to you in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I was myself when I was
Speaker 1: a young new parent, um, you know, kind of getting
Speaker 1: started in my career. Even before really I was there
Speaker 1: was a period where we were living with my my
Speaker 1: mom um when my daughter was born, and we got
Speaker 1: a little bit of government assistance for a brief period
Speaker 1: of time when we lived in Athens, Georgia. It was
Speaker 1: actually kind of great because they had a system where
Speaker 1: you could use those SNAP benefits to shop at the
Speaker 1: local farmers market and you would get to to one
Speaker 1: um value for your Snap dollars. So that was actually
Speaker 1: a really progressive, great way of doing it, I thought,
Speaker 1: And it would also support local farmers and that's that's
Speaker 1: part of that's part of what this uh, that's part
Speaker 1: of the good intention behind programs like this. The cheese, though,
Speaker 1: where did all this government cheese come from? That's the question.
Speaker 1: That's where we we see some wrinkles in the story
Speaker 1: because it really was the motivation to get people who
Speaker 1: needed food more food, or was there something else behind
Speaker 1: that move? Exactly, Matt, Exactly. So the cheese often came
Speaker 1: from food surpluses that were stockpiled by the government as
Speaker 1: part of these this huge subsidies system. Butter was also
Speaker 1: stockpiled and then it was given under the same program.
Speaker 1: But you don't hear a lot of people talking about
Speaker 1: government butter doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't sound as good exactly.
Speaker 1: So while this program it's not nefarious, it also isn't
Speaker 1: fully altruistic. Uncle Sam is killing two birds with one
Speaker 1: wheel of parmesan. Here. Yes, they are feeding the hungry,
Speaker 1: but they're also supporting a massive, sometimes faltering dairy industry
Speaker 1: by guaranteeing farmers will be able to sell their products
Speaker 1: even if the actual demand does not exist. This is
Speaker 1: exactly what Matt was talking about earlier when we kept
Speaker 1: saying in theory to each other, because in theory is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as in practice. Gentlemen, it is
Speaker 1: time for us to share with our fellow conspiracy realists
Speaker 1: the story of the Illuminati of cheese, which is a
Speaker 1: real thing. Like, can we say that one more time
Speaker 1: and Paul maybe give us a like a whatever is
Speaker 1: a cheesy, sinister sound effect, the Illuminati of cheese perfect.
Speaker 1: I thought you meant literal cheese sound effect, but well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what Paul comes up with magic Man, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? We already know where Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we paused the recording and brainstormed about this for twenty minutes. Right. So,
Speaker 1: as we said, American consumption of cheese has skyrocketed. But
Speaker 1: even that skyrocketing consumption, which was not organic, by the way,
Speaker 1: has not been enough to meet demand because we are
Speaker 1: grappling with a system that has been in place since
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, since the Great Depression, when the federal
Speaker 1: government bailed out America's dairy industry with all these subsidies,
Speaker 1: and many people who are not in in the dairy
Speaker 1: industry themselves are not aware of this, but those subsidies
Speaker 1: are in effect today, and part of the knock on
Speaker 1: consequence of this is that Uncle Sam is underwritten this
Speaker 1: gigantic surplus of milk in the dairy industry that far
Speaker 1: far exceeds the appetites of Americans like we even even
Speaker 1: the cheesiest cheese lover in this country, like the number
Speaker 1: one cheese eater person. Uh, if everybody was like that person,
Speaker 1: we still would not be able to buy all the
Speaker 1: milk and all the cheese that was being produced. And
Speaker 1: when when the US government realized that there was this
Speaker 1: huge surplus. They found themselves in a difficult political situation. Uh,
Speaker 1: they knew that it would be and it's something we
Speaker 1: talked about and passed off air. But you know, during
Speaker 1: this time, post World War two, things like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: they knew that they had two choices. They could remove
Speaker 1: the subsidies, which would lead to over time a reduction
Speaker 1: and the surplus of production, or they could find a
Speaker 1: way to buy this to create a market that did
Speaker 1: not exist at this level. And rural vote, the farmer vote,
Speaker 1: was very, very important. So so imagine you're you're, you know,
Speaker 1: a presidential administration. Are you going to go to these
Speaker 1: people who voted for you and then pull the financial
Speaker 1: rug out from under them? Yes? And I want to
Speaker 1: give you a quick quote from a professor of agricultural
Speaker 1: economics at Cornell University. This quote comes from a video
Speaker 1: created by CNBC. You can check it out on YouTube,
Speaker 1: I believe right now, maybe on CNBC, But this quote
Speaker 1: is dealing with exactly that Ben. He says that at
Speaker 1: this time in the nineteen thirties, when these subsidies first arrive, quote,
Speaker 1: rural America presented over half of the population of Americans
Speaker 1: and farmers presented over half of rural America. So there
Speaker 1: was this sense that as a politician, as the government,
Speaker 1: if you are helping out farmers, you are helping out
Speaker 1: a lot of citizens slash, as you said, been voters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's and this happens a lot in
Speaker 1: the kind of political system that the US has, Right,
Speaker 1: you have, Uh sometimes they're vilified as being special interests, right,
Speaker 1: but you have these voters and these businesses or these
Speaker 1: institutions who have a very specific set of things they
Speaker 1: want to see in place. And at times these forces
Speaker 1: can be relatively a political you know, the name brand
Speaker 1: of the political party doesn't matter as much as their actions.
Speaker 1: So you know, if there's a third party called them
Speaker 1: provolone rangers, Uh, it just gets worse, It gets worse.
Speaker 1: Did Uh If if you have that, you know, this
Speaker 1: other party and there their policies are, you know, not
Speaker 1: too extreme, but one of their big things is they
Speaker 1: support a subsidy that supports your industry, then you're probably
Speaker 1: going to vote for them, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: or at least donate to their cause. So that's what happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: the US made the decision to and you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of historians agree it was the right
Speaker 1: decision to enact these subsidies for the dairy industry and
Speaker 1: other parts of US business during the Great Depression. But
Speaker 1: once you open that door, it can be political suicide
Speaker 1: to close it, to step it back, And so they continued,
Speaker 1: they continued subsidizing this industry. And now in recent years,
Speaker 1: the US dairy surplus has reached a record high, and
Speaker 1: it's it's been going this way for a while. Uh.
Speaker 1: The U s d A quickly realized as a result
Speaker 1: of these subsidies, they they could not figure out what
Speaker 1: to do with all the milk, and so the band
Speaker 1: aid solution was, I don't know, make it cheese last
Speaker 1: longer than milk, and that's what they did. And so
Speaker 1: in recent years, we have, as we mentioned our listener
Speaker 1: mail segment, UH with Ryan, we have as a country
Speaker 1: generated a surplus of one point for billion with a
Speaker 1: b pounds of cheese. And you'll see all these breathless
Speaker 1: reports like go on YouTube and just google cheese surplus.
Speaker 1: Colbert's got a great spot on it. Your you know,
Speaker 1: your local news might have done a story on it
Speaker 1: a few years ago. But you'll see these these breathless
Speaker 1: comparisons because we as Americans love weird measurements. One of
Speaker 1: the ones who found was one point four billion pounds
Speaker 1: of cheese. That's enough to wrap around the US capital. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody's saying we should consume it all. Luckily you can
Speaker 1: store cheese. But even if the nation tried to eat
Speaker 1: all of this cheese, it's less and less likely that
Speaker 1: we could do it because that surplus is still building
Speaker 1: despite the fact that people are consuming more cheese. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were side effects that uh would break havoc on
Speaker 1: all of us. No, it's to say that's the thing though.
Speaker 1: It's like not not to get soapbox or anything, but
Speaker 1: like you know, with the healthcare crisis that we have
Speaker 1: in this country, and then you start to see that
Speaker 1: all of this consumer culture that leads to poor health
Speaker 1: uh and and and that this lack of preventative medicine
Speaker 1: everything's about curing when you're already like super sick and
Speaker 1: on your lound death's door. A lot of it is
Speaker 1: like literally the fault of the government in the first place.
Speaker 1: This whole cheese glut thing. When you really start to
Speaker 1: drill down into it, right like like I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we can think of probably a better like for
Speaker 1: the for the individuals subsidized food product like granola or something,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, what about the grain farmers only
Speaker 1: need help to But it's crazy, you guys. I just
Speaker 1: sent a link in the chat um. I was just
Speaker 1: googling government cheese and an eBay listing came up for
Speaker 1: a cardboard packaging box. It's like vintage. It's like like
Speaker 1: sixty dollars on eBay. Uh, and it says pasteurized process
Speaker 1: American cheese donated by US Department of Agriculture for food
Speaker 1: help programs, not to be sold or exchanged. It just
Speaker 1: says it all there, and it's like, there's that's it's
Speaker 1: literally helping the government. It's not helping the people that
Speaker 1: need you know, better food. Well, it's like helping them
Speaker 1: is is kind of a side effects. It's cyclical together, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But there's there's nothing wrong with multitasking, you know. And
Speaker 1: if you're not hurting anybody and you're satisfying two things
Speaker 1: at once, it's it's understandable, but aren't you They are
Speaker 1: hurting people because she's clogs your arteries if you're eating
Speaker 1: it like for every meal, and it and it leads
Speaker 1: to this, like I think obesity at pepademic that we
Speaker 1: have and like you know, heart heart disease, one of
Speaker 1: the unhealthiest countries in the world. And I would argue
Speaker 1: that the government is culpable in that. And on two
Speaker 1: separate occasions in t sixteen, first in August and then
Speaker 1: on October uh the FEDS announced they were gonna quote
Speaker 1: bail out dairy farmers. They were gonna purchase twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars more worth of surplus dairy products a kh cheese
Speaker 1: to distribute in food pantries and some milk as well.
Speaker 1: As this is occurring, by the way, as this surplus
Speaker 1: is increasing, there's a global drop in demand for dairy.
Speaker 1: Plus there's that technology we mentioned that's making cows give
Speaker 1: more milk, which results in the lowest milk prices since
Speaker 1: the Great Recession, not depression, but Great Recession ended in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. This is something we alluded to
Speaker 1: in our listener mail segment. Farmers were literally pouring gallons
Speaker 1: and gallons and gallons of unsold milk into holes in
Speaker 1: the ground. Fifty million gallons. That's according to the U
Speaker 1: s DA itself in in August letter Uh, the National
Speaker 1: Milk Producers Federation asked the U. S d A for
Speaker 1: a bailout of a hundred and fifty million dollars. This
Speaker 1: was an ongoing, continual issue. It just kind of like
Speaker 1: would reach a crisis point, maybe go down one step
Speaker 1: and then go up two steps, down one step. It
Speaker 1: was an incremental increase and this led to the creation
Speaker 1: of something with a somewhat innocuous Dame Dairy Management Incorporated.
Speaker 1: Their website is super wholesome. As wholesome as a kid
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties drinking a glass of milk. Can
Speaker 1: I just say, there's got to be a better way
Speaker 1: to dispose of fifty million gallons of milk and pouring
Speaker 1: it into a hole in the ground that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the smelliest hole ever. I can't imagine. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that's going to be this So, yes, we're keeping it.
Speaker 1: So this is it's I mean, it's true because milk
Speaker 1: doesn't have a very long shelf life, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And you could say, why don't we distribute
Speaker 1: this as part of an international aid or charity thing? Um,
Speaker 1: But if you've listened to our previous episodes on farming
Speaker 1: in the US and across the world. You know, farmers
Speaker 1: are often put in a very risky situation with a
Speaker 1: lot of forces that are beyond their control. So it
Speaker 1: is understandable, as strange as it sounds, that they might
Speaker 1: be in a situation where it is literally less expensive
Speaker 1: for them to get rid of the milk than it
Speaker 1: is to try to transport it somewhere and pay for
Speaker 1: the gas and pay for the storage. And Dairy Management, Inc.
Speaker 1: Was set to was set to try to solve this
Speaker 1: the They were created by something called the National Dairy
Speaker 1: Promotion Board in the mid nineties. Here's what they do.
Speaker 1: Their job is to act as an umbrella company for
Speaker 1: state and local programs promoting the dairy industry. In blunt terms, folks,
Speaker 1: this organization was the quasi governmental organization was explicitly created
Speaker 1: to push as much milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt as
Speaker 1: possible into products and into people, both in the US
Speaker 1: and in other countries. They're the hidden hand behind what
Speaker 1: appears to be rising cheese consumption. They're the group behind
Speaker 1: Got Milk. That campaign we mentioned. Everybody remembers Got Milk
Speaker 1: there were Uh. It started with like some normal you know, models,
Speaker 1: commercial lactors, and then it escalated to like celebrities and
Speaker 1: everybody would have a little little milk mustache, right, and
Speaker 1: then what they're called, yes sir, that we saw in
Speaker 1: subway stations, you saw them in billboards as television commercials.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely ubiquitous. I mean, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: campaign that clearly a lot, a lot, a lot of
Speaker 1: money and marketing resources went into. Yeah, it's it was.
Speaker 1: It was direct to your eyes and ears advertising, that's
Speaker 1: what they did. And it was an era defining too.
Speaker 1: We think of it and it like almost defines like
Speaker 1: that period in history in our minds. It's like a
Speaker 1: nostalgia thing at this point, right, Yeah, in a weird
Speaker 1: way their their mind lobbyists for on the individual level
Speaker 1: of people sitting there watching television you know which which
Speaker 1: was television shows? Man think about as especially kids watching
Speaker 1: TV shows with all of those like us, I think
Speaker 1: our generation, I mean it is the nineties, we got
Speaker 1: hit hard with the got Milk campaign with a lot
Speaker 1: of the promotion of dairy products and we it and
Speaker 1: it formed a lot in in our minds. We're gonna
Speaker 1: tell you a lot of these other things that you're
Speaker 1: going to remember, probably from your childhood and growing up,
Speaker 1: that that this company was behind I'm gonna pause it
Speaker 1: again here. I believe wholeheartedly that the Ninja Turtles Tell
Speaker 1: Division show that I watched as a child had some
Speaker 1: kind of behind the scenes interaction with this group to
Speaker 1: get me to like and want pizza all the time.
Speaker 1: I think I think they're behind it. I can't prove it.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And this goes to This also
Speaker 1: goes to Ryan's original question about the origin of the
Speaker 1: cheese powder used in mac and Cheese. Uh want a pause.
Speaker 1: We've got some of our fellow listeners who are who
Speaker 1: are gonna You're gonna meet at the end of the
Speaker 1: episode on Twitter with their cheese punts of their own.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to point out this excellent tweet we
Speaker 1: got from someone who lived in Wisconsin. Uh, this is Steph,
Speaker 1: and Steph, you said, one of my favorite things while
Speaker 1: living in Wisconsin were the billboards that were just black
Speaker 1: text on a yellow field that said cheese, no other
Speaker 1: info needed. They knew why you were there. And that's
Speaker 1: like that. Whenever you see those really vague this is
Speaker 1: an important point. Whenever you see those really vague prommercials
Speaker 1: that are not about a specific brand name or product.
Speaker 1: They're just about a kind of thing, right Like got
Speaker 1: milk is never saying, you know, go like, it's not
Speaker 1: Greenfield pastures milk. It's just the idea of freaking milk. Exactly, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: If that's what's for dinner, it's what's for dinner. I
Speaker 1: love those kind of commercials, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: see more of them where um. You know, sometimes they're wholesome,
Speaker 1: they're thing. They're like literacy movements. They're like read books.
Speaker 1: We don't care which one. Uh so we see we
Speaker 1: see this, and what they're What d m I is
Speaker 1: doing at this time in the in their early days
Speaker 1: is um, like you said, Matt, they're doing direct to
Speaker 1: consumer advertising. They're they're playing there. They are playing literal
Speaker 1: burnet style mind games. They want you to be thinking
Speaker 1: about milk. That wants you to be thinking about cheese
Speaker 1: and yogurt when you're in the grocery store. Dream about it,
Speaker 1: dream about it. I really want some cheese right now.
Speaker 1: The dairy rainbow. So I don't know why dairy rainbow
Speaker 1: makes me uncomfortable, but yeah, so something happened though in
Speaker 1: the late nine, people in this country began eating out
Speaker 1: more often. They were going to restaurants and stuff. They
Speaker 1: weren't cooking as often at home. So d M I
Speaker 1: did what Corporate America calls a pivot, and they started
Speaker 1: working with companies that sold food to people in fast
Speaker 1: food joints, in restaurants and what is it called approachable
Speaker 1: fine dining? You know in in uh in the hallowed halls,
Speaker 1: the Chilies, and the t g I f s throughout
Speaker 1: the nation. But what about what about them quick them
Speaker 1: quick food places? What do you call them? The fast
Speaker 1: food joints? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. We
Speaker 1: kid you not. They have been infiltrating. How weird is
Speaker 1: that they have been infiltrated by t M I. Uh Like,
Speaker 1: think about this. If you're nineties kid, you know, and
Speaker 1: you you enjoyed book It, you enjoyed that personal pan pizza,
Speaker 1: you probably you probably have this memory, yeah duds off
Speaker 1: to crust pizza in Yeah, and specifically from maybe you
Speaker 1: don't even remember eating it necessarily, but you certainly remember
Speaker 1: seeing that cheese pull when and then the whole notion
Speaker 1: of eating your pizza backwards. That was the whole impetus
Speaker 1: behind us, and a little old guy, uh we might
Speaker 1: have heard of named Donald Trump appeared in some of
Speaker 1: those ads, um eating his pizza backwards and making it
Speaker 1: sound like, you know, I'm Donald Trump, and I'm obviously
Speaker 1: a smart guy, and I eat my pizza backwards because
Speaker 1: that's just what you do, idiots. I think they cut
Speaker 1: the part where he said it. That would have been funny,
Speaker 1: That would have been edgy for nineties kid. But I
Speaker 1: think you're right. Eating pizza backwards was already this new, exciting, weird,
Speaker 1: cool thing. Uh. And by the end of the year,
Speaker 1: this initiative had increased Pizza Hut sales by three million,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot of money, but really it's
Speaker 1: it's about a seven percent improvement over the previous year.
Speaker 1: But still, think about all that extra cheese that went
Speaker 1: in each one of those pizza pies. And if you
Speaker 1: think about if you've got a stuffed crust pizza with
Speaker 1: extra cheese, good god, d M. I is just killing
Speaker 1: it here. Yeah, they're killing it, and they're killing you
Speaker 1: slowly from the inside out. Greater good. If you eat
Speaker 1: too much stuffed crust, eventually you become the stuffed crust yourself.
Speaker 1: That's that's the problem. But you know, this reminds me.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find while we're researching this um
Speaker 1: between our listener mail and this episode, I was trying
Speaker 1: to find this tweet that I loved from a while back.
Speaker 1: It was someone I didn't know very well, but they
Speaker 1: posted this this kind of explicit So Paul, please beat me. Uh.
Speaker 1: Someone said, I was on a marketing call years ago
Speaker 1: with Pete, with marketing people at Pizza Hut, and this
Speaker 1: one guy said, we do it with what stuffed crust pizza.
Speaker 1: No one asked us about that, We just did it.
Speaker 1: And then the tweet ended. I think about that guy
Speaker 1: a lot, and I love I love that idea that
Speaker 1: someone is so gangster about stuffed crust. But now it
Speaker 1: makes a little bit more sense because they had help
Speaker 1: from the illuminati of cheese. They're not the only example. Uh,
Speaker 1: Taco Bell is a huge example. Remember at the top,
Speaker 1: we said the case a Loupa is going to come
Speaker 1: into play in two thousand and twelve, a d M
Speaker 1: I operative, we could call them that food scientists. It
Speaker 1: was probably a fantastic person. We haven't spoken with her
Speaker 1: directly named Lisa McClintock started working with the Taco Bell
Speaker 1: product development team. Pause here for a second, Taco Bell fans,
Speaker 1: does that not sound kind of like a dream job?
Speaker 1: Like you go home from work and you're stressed out
Speaker 1: and and your roommates or your partner, your friends are
Speaker 1: are saying, oh, hey, what's got you down, and you're
Speaker 1: like kicking rocks and you're like, they're just not They're
Speaker 1: just not listening. With the burrito design, Okay, you don't
Speaker 1: want leakage and I don't. I don't, And you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like Samantha, they don't get my vision. Think about
Speaker 1: the beauty. I mean, we've talked about it before, about
Speaker 1: the beauty of Taco Bell and pizza. At some of
Speaker 1: these other places, you've got a limited number of ingredients,
Speaker 1: but anything you can do to create a new product
Speaker 1: out of those ingredients can bring in millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. And that's like Mexican food, or at least
Speaker 1: Americanized Mexican food in general, right, where like everything on
Speaker 1: the menu is kind of a different combination of like
Speaker 1: five or six ingredients. Taco Bell takes it to the extreme,
Speaker 1: and you know, injects massive marketing dollars into it. Ben,
Speaker 1: you were talking about what the case Uh what, there's
Speaker 1: also the case Arito. Let's not forget about the case rito.
Speaker 1: And when you look at it on the Taco Bell website, Um,
Speaker 1: the cheese pouring forth from it is clearly that powdered
Speaker 1: yellow stuff. Like there's not an ounce of actual cheese
Speaker 1: in this. I'm I'm conjecturing it's just it's this the
Speaker 1: wrong color. It's like this kind of weird beige yellow, pale,
Speaker 1: odd color. When you see it pulling apart in this
Speaker 1: perfectly symmetrical image. Uh, it also has just an insane
Speaker 1: amount of saturated fat um and just more you know,
Speaker 1: sodium than anyone should probably consume in a day. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's absolutely true, Ben, it's genius marketing paired with
Speaker 1: this actual conspiracy in this idea, we gotta move some
Speaker 1: cheese units. Yeah. So Lisa McClintock started working with the
Speaker 1: senior manager for product Development, Steve Gomez over Taco Bell,
Speaker 1: and they said, we need to develop a new kind
Speaker 1: of cheese, a new cheese filling, a new kind of cheese,
Speaker 1: a new kind of cheese. You say, here at the
Speaker 1: Taco Bell so, uh yeah, I'm at the food science lab,
Speaker 1: I'm at the Taco Bell, I'm at the combination food
Speaker 1: science and Taco Bell. There there's stretching and so they
Speaker 1: want to make a stretchy cheese that that pulls like
Speaker 1: taffy when it's heated. They want to figure out how
Speaker 1: to mass produce it, and they want to invent some
Speaker 1: proprietary machinery to make this. And the proprietary machinery is
Speaker 1: really interesting, really clever. Point. So this the result of
Speaker 1: this experimentation is something called the case Lupa, and I
Speaker 1: think the case of Rito is clearly part of this too.
Speaker 1: The case a Loupa, as you mentioned earlier, has five
Speaker 1: times as much cheese as a basic crunchy taco. Taco
Speaker 1: Bell had to buy four point seven million pounds of
Speaker 1: cheese just too produce the shells. So that puts the
Speaker 1: dent in that one point three billion pounds surplus. It's
Speaker 1: weird if you read, if you read interviews with people
Speaker 1: who are in Taco Bell management at the time, then
Speaker 1: they will say, you know, for the longest time, we
Speaker 1: thought cheese, sour cream stuff like that was kind of
Speaker 1: more of a garnish or an add on to our products,
Speaker 1: but now it's one of the main things beef and cheese,
Speaker 1: So cheese use at Taco Bell since they partnered with
Speaker 1: DMA it's increased by over twenty and that's that's why
Speaker 1: d m I gets this strange, somewhat half sinister, half
Speaker 1: hilarious nickname, the Illuminati of Cheese. We're gonna pause for
Speaker 1: word from our sponsors. I'm wondering. I'm wondering too, and
Speaker 1: we'll be back. We'll be back to explore some more
Speaker 1: of unintended consequences of this again active ongoing conspiracy. Do
Speaker 1: you guys think the Bacon Illuminati worked with Wendy's when
Speaker 1: they came up with a bacon eater? D m I
Speaker 1: definitely did. And we're back. Here's the thing. There's there's
Speaker 1: no if and or but about it. D m I
Speaker 1: will tell you and you speak with him that their
Speaker 1: work has helped slow America's declining desire for dairy And
Speaker 1: it's true that she demand for cheese is going like this,
Speaker 1: and demand for milk is going like this. Uh so
Speaker 1: do that do that for the non visual yes? So?
Speaker 1: Uh if you look at a grid in your head, uh,
Speaker 1: demand for cheese is starting at the lower left corner
Speaker 1: and it's going all the way to the top right.
Speaker 1: Demand for milk is starting sort of midway up your
Speaker 1: y axis, and it's going down into the right beautiful networks. Okay,
Speaker 1: So demand for milk has gone from thirty five pounds
Speaker 1: per person in nine seventy five to fifteen pounds today.
Speaker 1: So they've they've it's reversed. Like what was it? No,
Speaker 1: I think, as you said, um, demand for uh, cheese
Speaker 1: was what fourteen something? Oh yeah, that's right. In n
Speaker 1: Americans were consuming fourteen pound of cheese. Then in like
Speaker 1: essentially the modern day, it's around forty five pounds of
Speaker 1: cheese per person per year. Milk has decreased a ton, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was a two close to fifty pounds
Speaker 1: per person in nineteen and uh in um more like
Speaker 1: one s So a significant decrease. And this is effective
Speaker 1: for the a lot of the stakeholders, not counting the consumers.
Speaker 1: Texas A and M economists did a cost benefit analysis
Speaker 1: and in two thousand twelve they found that for every
Speaker 1: single dollar a dairy producer invests in d M I UH,
Speaker 1: they get two dollars and fourteen cents worth of return
Speaker 1: for milk, four dollars twenty six cents worth of return
Speaker 1: for cheese, and nine dollars in sixty three cents return
Speaker 1: for butter. So yeah, so investing in d m I,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a dairy person, this is this
Speaker 1: really helped. But of course, as we said, d m
Speaker 1: I has, by nature of its mission its endeavor. They
Speaker 1: have promoted lots of saturated fat, lots of cholesterol. Eating
Speaker 1: cheese can add up. And for a federal agency that
Speaker 1: is dedicated to improving overall nutrition and giving dietary guidance,
Speaker 1: these partnerships can seem kind of like a contradiction, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, And experts out there who talk about
Speaker 1: this would completely agree with you. Ben. Uh. There's there's
Speaker 1: a food oppression expert named Andrea Freeman who believes that
Speaker 1: you know this, This group d m e s efforts
Speaker 1: quote impose health costs on Americans generally, but disproportionately harm
Speaker 1: low income African Americans and Latinos who live in urban
Speaker 1: centers dominated by fast food restaurants. And we've just described
Speaker 1: how these two giant, well now one giant chains that
Speaker 1: we at least all went to when we were younger,
Speaker 1: Like my family still eats at some of these restaurants. Um,
Speaker 1: in these fast food chains, you can see where d
Speaker 1: m I had large impacts at least on those brands
Speaker 1: slash companies. And you can definitely see that. You can
Speaker 1: see the evidence of what what Andrew Freeman is saying
Speaker 1: here just in what we described with Pizza Hut and
Speaker 1: Taco Bell. You can really see it. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: also farmers themselves aren't entirely on board with d m I,
Speaker 1: because some will argue this primarily helps out the big guys,
Speaker 1: the big dairy players, and not the family farms or
Speaker 1: the smaller outfits. And that's a that's a valid criticism.
Speaker 1: We see that happening with other parts of what is
Speaker 1: called agribusiness on a high level. But either way, it
Speaker 1: app yours. The cheesy Illuminati is real and is set
Speaker 1: to stay. At this point, we want to pass the
Speaker 1: torch to you folks who want to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what you think, because there there there's a web
Speaker 1: of connections. Here is this number one. A good idea
Speaker 1: is this um. You know, some of us may argue
Speaker 1: it's too much government intervention. Some of us may say
Speaker 1: it's too dishonest for the public. Other people may say,
Speaker 1: well it is overall, it's more beneficial that it is damaging.
Speaker 1: We want to we want to hear from you. And
Speaker 1: because we purposely wanted this to be to be a
Speaker 1: lighter episode, and we promised some puns. Uh, we went
Speaker 1: on Twitter uh and asked people if they would if
Speaker 1: they would like to help us out with some puns.
Speaker 1: So the tweet I put out, which is terrible, was
Speaker 1: about to record this cheese episode. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: be a part of the show, hit us up in
Speaker 1: your favorite cheese puns in the next hour or so.
Speaker 1: Dot dot dot This will be a guda one. Oh man, God,
Speaker 1: I hate it. I hate Why do we do this? Anyway?
Speaker 1: Here's here are some responses from your fellow listeners. Vaults
Speaker 1: of x Talk, who we all know and love here
Speaker 1: on the show, says, e damn, it has an eat um.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming I can't think of any that would be
Speaker 1: good enough for you eating cheese. No, that's not what
Speaker 1: I meant to say. Eat Um. Is that a cheese ye? Yes? Um?
Speaker 1: But then Vaults Vaults follows up with and now I'm
Speaker 1: getting a pop up ad hot cheese singles in your area.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, that's great um our own O world, close
Speaker 1: friends and colleague that you've heard on our show before.
Speaker 1: Annie Reese Uh, one of the co creators and co
Speaker 1: host the Amazing Saver podcast, says, unbreathlievable. You're too big
Speaker 1: of a cheese to ask for my pun expertise. Now,
Speaker 1: you munster spelled how I want to think? Yeah, cheese puns,
Speaker 1: you monster, you relieve you're mildly cheddar than us. I
Speaker 1: camembart being so fed up. That's funny because there were
Speaker 1: some crossovers there between those two. Yeah, and then what
Speaker 1: our buddy Nick Takowsky did a good one. I'd step up,
Speaker 1: but I got the blues pretty bad this week. B
Speaker 1: l e U s y and good friend of the show,
Speaker 1: the one and only Mike Johns, who recently had a birthday.
Speaker 1: Mike is a colleague of ours, a fantastic writer, musician,
Speaker 1: producer here in Atlanta. Uh. He says something encouraging. He says,
Speaker 1: you've got some pretty sharp followers. You chedd to get
Speaker 1: some good suggestions here. I've got half a rind to
Speaker 1: suggest a few, but I don't want to wedge myself
Speaker 1: into the conversation. Wow, okay, here we go. Um, let's see,
Speaker 1: he kept going by the way. Yeah, could we This
Speaker 1: is one from at grape Whanger. That's a great twitter
Speaker 1: named vigil um. Could we not craft less cheesy puns? Craft? No,
Speaker 1: we can't wangerh Wow? Can we kind of jump to
Speaker 1: Andy really quickly? Andy? He said, Ben, I believe you
Speaker 1: have enough puns for us all but fed us safe
Speaker 1: and sorry, here's a joke. What hotel do cheese lovers
Speaker 1: stay in? The Stilton? Wonderful? My Stilton Honors Club can't
Speaker 1: wait for that? And then uh, Steph, who we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: says I'd make a joke about American cheese, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't age well. Shots fired, Shots fired. You can find
Speaker 1: you can find more of these puns. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear your your favorite cheese puns or your least favorite
Speaker 1: if you hate puns and ignored our warning and sat
Speaker 1: through this episode. And equally importantly, we'd like to hear, um,
Speaker 1: what what you think about these kind of things. They're
Speaker 1: part of what's known as check off programs. We mentioned
Speaker 1: this earlier. The idea is that it is so important
Speaker 1: to have your own domestic sources of food that you
Speaker 1: will you know, you'll go out of your way to
Speaker 1: support them more than you may some other businesses. Oh
Speaker 1: and uh, Jenna V. Says sweet dreams are made of cheese. Cheese.
Speaker 1: Oh am, I to breathe. We gotta get out of
Speaker 1: this the Paul. I can feel Paul growing so uh
Speaker 1: so let us know your thoughts. We can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 1: That's right. You can find us on the end your
Speaker 1: net where you can also find that vintage government cheese
Speaker 1: box that I mentioned. The listing is still live on
Speaker 1: eBay if you're if you're down for that, um, just
Speaker 1: search for vintage Government cheese box on eBay. I think
Speaker 1: the bid is up to around sixty bucks. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking for us, you can find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: or we are conspiracy stuff show Twitter and Facebook or
Speaker 1: were conspiracy stuff. You can also give us a telephone call.
Speaker 1: We are one eight three three s T d W
Speaker 1: y t K. Hit him with it, Matt, Yeah, hit
Speaker 1: him with the rules. I was gonna hey, is there
Speaker 1: a hey? Is there a cheese that rhymes with hey? Yes?
Speaker 1: When you call, please tell us the name you would
Speaker 1: like for us to refer to you as, doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be your real name, could be a code name
Speaker 1: like Doc Holiday or Mission Control. Super cool. Then let
Speaker 1: us know if we can use your message on air.
Speaker 1: That's very helpful for us. Thank you, lawyers say cheers.
Speaker 1: Then leave your message. Please only call once per subject,
Speaker 1: that would be very helpful as well. And if you've
Speaker 1: got a message you want to say personally to us,
Speaker 1: please put it right in the end. There you've got
Speaker 1: a quick update. This justin. Uh, code named dot Holiday
Speaker 1: adds that have our tie and grew yer are are
Speaker 1: very high on our list. And I just I promised
Speaker 1: her we would mention that, Oh that's important. It's important stuff.
Speaker 1: And you call us tell us your favorite cheese is
Speaker 1: what you know about the cheese spiracy going on here?
Speaker 1: Whenever you're front, that's perfect, that's right, oh man. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to do that stuff, you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave us a message, you don't want to
Speaker 1: find us on the internet, definitely check out the YouTube
Speaker 1: channel conspiracy stuff over there. And if you have something
Speaker 1: to tell us and you want to send links or
Speaker 1: you wanna, you know, really write a lot of stuff out.
Speaker 1: Please use our good old fashioned email address. We are
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