Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Stacy Vaningsmith, Max Chafkin.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's time here on everybody's business
Speaker 3: from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 4: For a gut check, a gut check.
Speaker 3: We do have the outbreak of cyclospora that is getting
Speaker 3: out of control, So there's the literal gut check, and
Speaker 3: then there is the gut check on politics. It's a
Speaker 3: huge week politically. We had this big upset election in Michigan.
Speaker 3: There's just also a sense that, you know, business interests
Speaker 3: are are are under attack from voters.
Speaker 2: And I do think in a lot of ways, our
Speaker 2: whole country is having a little bit of a gut
Speaker 2: check this summer between the economy and the political divide
Speaker 2: and that and that.
Speaker 3: We've got west Cause over here from BusinessWeek to talk
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: We've got Diana Shanker also from BusinessWeek to talk about
Speaker 2: all things food, including a brand new cooking show brought
Speaker 2: to you by the federal government.
Speaker 3: And I guess we sort of maybe have our own
Speaker 3: cooking show coming up at the very.
Speaker 2: End we do Max and I take to our kitchens
Speaker 2: and bring you the listener some very high quality food content.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned.
Speaker 3: Stacy Yeah, it is August twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: It is August, which means we are getting closer and
Speaker 3: closer to a midterm election. And when you get to
Speaker 3: the midterm election, people start talking about presidential elections. There
Speaker 3: is so much political news happening right now, including a
Speaker 3: lot of news that impacts our world, the world of business.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, I actually think this is a really important
Speaker 2: kind of maybe watershed type moment in the world relationship
Speaker 2: between American politics and business. And I feel like in
Speaker 2: the next maybe six months to a year, things are
Speaker 2: going to shift, possibly quite dramatically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree. And we have West Kasova here.
Speaker 3: He is editor at large at BusinessWeek. You may know
Speaker 3: him as a columnist in the magazine. Wes is in Washington, DC,
Speaker 3: joining us from there. How you doing, Wes, Hey, I'm good.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 3: All right, So, Wes, the reason we wanted to have
Speaker 3: you is because, so we're recording this on Thursday, August sixth,
Speaker 3: two days ago, there was a big primary. They're basically
Speaker 3: a primary election every week now, but there was a
Speaker 3: pretty big race in Michigan. Abdul al Sayed, who was
Speaker 3: the progressive candidate, tell us how significant this this victory
Speaker 3: was for al Sai ed So.
Speaker 5: This was a really big deal. You're right, he doesn't
Speaker 5: identify as a democratic socialist, but he's definitely part of
Speaker 5: that left wing, progressive wing, not moderate run of the
Speaker 5: midd democratic part of the party that's been doing very
Speaker 5: well this year, winning all sorts of races around the country,
Speaker 5: be until the win in Michigan, a lot of them
Speaker 5: had been in solid blue states, and of course we
Speaker 5: saw the big one that kind of kicked off this
Speaker 5: whole trend with Mom Donnie winning the mayor's race in
Speaker 5: New York.
Speaker 3: You hit it at this West Elseiah did not run
Speaker 3: as a socialist per se, but he ran with the
Speaker 3: endorsement of Bernie Sanders, with the endorsement of AOC, with
Speaker 3: many of these figures on the sort of progressive populace
Speaker 3: left who've been running around, you know, essentially saying we
Speaker 3: got to stick it to the billionaires. Let's listen to
Speaker 3: a clip of Bernie Sanders, who was active in this race,
Speaker 3: kind of trying to doing his best to spin this
Speaker 3: victory or claim victory.
Speaker 6: In the so called purple state of Michigan. A tectonic
Speaker 6: shift took place in American politics. That's what I believe.
Speaker 6: With an historic voter turnout, the largest voter turnout in
Speaker 6: Michigan primary history, the people of that state stood up
Speaker 6: to an unprecedented onslaught of billion am money close to
Speaker 6: seventy million dollars in ads coming from super PACs like
Speaker 6: APAC and others. And despite that onslaught of money, they
Speaker 6: voted for a progressive candidate who has the guts to
Speaker 6: take on the oligoux and fight for working people and
Speaker 6: for a saying in moral foreign policy.
Speaker 2: When we first started the show, it was the inauguration.
Speaker 2: Happened the presidential inauguration, and I will never forget the
Speaker 2: image of Donald Trump with all of these big tech
Speaker 2: CEOs behind him, these big business people behind him, and
Speaker 2: the message seemed to be the era of like business
Speaker 2: friends deals is happening. How are big businesses feeling now?
Speaker 2: This seems like a really different atmosphere.
Speaker 5: Yeah, things have just gotten a whole lot more complicated.
Speaker 5: You know, presidential races tend to clarify politics in a
Speaker 5: way that midterm elections don't.
Speaker 2: You know, two big candidates.
Speaker 5: Running for the biggest office in the country as opposed
Speaker 5: to hundreds and hundreds of candidates running all.
Speaker 4: Over the country.
Speaker 5: But when Trump was elected, you're right, you remember he
Speaker 5: had that famous line where he said everybody wants to
Speaker 5: be my friend, and it was true. Yet all of
Speaker 5: these billionaires giving a million dollars and more for his
Speaker 5: inaugural parties.
Speaker 4: And it's not.
Speaker 5: Necessarily, of course, that they all love Donald Trump. If
Speaker 5: you look back at some of their other giving their
Speaker 5: own personal politics in the past, it wasn't as though
Speaker 5: that they were kind of standard Republicans, let alone maga Republicans.
Speaker 5: But they could see the power shifting. They could see
Speaker 5: how it was going to affect their businesses, and they
Speaker 5: wanted to make sure that they were on the right
Speaker 5: side at the right time. And you know, that's something
Speaker 5: that businesses have done all the time. The real difference
Speaker 5: now is just the amounts of money are astonishing.
Speaker 3: And now what we've had is a very unpopular Trump presidency,
Speaker 3: a Trump presidency that's been defined by kind of shifting policies.
Speaker 3: You know, the tariffs have not been particularly popular, The
Speaker 3: war is unpopular, and that feels like it's redounding on
Speaker 3: the business class right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 5: And you know, when you look at why these companies
Speaker 5: were kind of cozying up to Trump in the beginning.
Speaker 5: It was that they understood Trump to be a purely
Speaker 5: transactional creature. His policies were based on the deals that
Speaker 5: he wanted to make, some of them benefiting the things
Speaker 5: he ran on, some of them benefiting himself. Some of
Speaker 5: them He just wanted all these powerful people to come
Speaker 5: and kind of bend the need to him. And so
Speaker 5: you saw a lot of these people, take Tim Cook
Speaker 5: of Apple coming into the White House and giving Donald
Speaker 5: Trump this gold plated award, shaking his hand, saying congratulations,
Speaker 5: mister President. You saw the CEO of Intel coming and
Speaker 5: striking a deal with Donald Trump. You saw all of
Speaker 5: these CEOs who had gotten in trouble with Trump or
Speaker 5: gotten on his wrong side, realizing that the way to
Speaker 5: get back in and make sure that you weren't on
Speaker 5: the bad side of a president who liked to take
Speaker 5: out his anger in by punishing companies to make sure
Speaker 5: that they were on the right side of that. And
Speaker 5: now what you have is the politics for Trump not
Speaker 5: looking as good, But the calculation for businesses might not
Speaker 5: necessarily change, because if what they're looking for is to
Speaker 5: protect their own interests, to protect against regulations they don't want,
Speaker 5: or to get tax incentives that they do want, or
Speaker 5: any number of things. Trump's own popularity may not be
Speaker 5: as important as whether or not they're still able to
Speaker 5: operate more freely than if they crossed it.
Speaker 2: I do feel though, like maybe the hide is turning
Speaker 2: a little bit against business. Certainly, business is sort of
Speaker 2: a superstar in our economy right now. The stock markets
Speaker 2: have been setting records, company earnings are coming in, some
Speaker 2: of them incredibly high. But it also seems like there
Speaker 2: is a little bit of a wave of socialism happening.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of protest against data centers. It does
Speaker 2: seem like there's starting to be a little bit of
Speaker 2: resistance against big business. Should big business be worried or
Speaker 2: now so.
Speaker 5: A lot of the backlash I think that we're seeing
Speaker 5: is just that the difference between a working person and
Speaker 5: a mega ultra hyper billionaire now is so beyond anything.
Speaker 5: It used to be used to be that Americans didn't
Speaker 5: resent billionaires because everyone thought, well, I'm going to get
Speaker 5: rich too one day. But now the difference between a
Speaker 5: person working and say a CEO of a company, the
Speaker 5: difference between a person working in an Amazon fulfillment warehouse,
Speaker 5: and Jeff Bezos is just so completely out of proportion
Speaker 5: that when we talk about things like the K shaped economy,
Speaker 5: it doesn't even begin to capture just how vast the
Speaker 5: difference is. And Donald Trump came into office saying the
Speaker 5: system is rigged against you. He meant it in a
Speaker 5: particular way. And I think that people now, a lot
Speaker 5: of people who are finding some of these left wing
Speaker 5: candidates attractive, are saying, yeah, the system is rigged against me.
Speaker 5: And these politicians, including Donald Trump and all the companies
Speaker 5: that are occurring favor with him, are the problem, not
Speaker 5: the answer.
Speaker 3: Despite the fact that many of the most prominent Democrats
Speaker 3: in the state, the Gretchen Whitmer or the governor, had
Speaker 3: endorsed Steven's not say it is this as big an
Speaker 3: upset Wes. As Bernie Sanders says, it.
Speaker 5: Is, yes and no. Everybody loves to read everything into
Speaker 5: certain races, like all of us in the press are
Speaker 5: guilty of this. We're looking for attention, We're looking for
Speaker 5: stories that can explain it all. But as we know,
Speaker 5: these things are really complicated in one race. Doesn't the
Speaker 5: reason when people looked at this one in particular, because,
Speaker 5: as Sanders said in that Klip is a purple state.
Speaker 5: It's not just a Democratic socialist candidate or in this case,
Speaker 5: a very liberal candidate winning in a liberal place where
Speaker 5: you'd think, okay, that's where that could happen. It was
Speaker 5: a test of whether this has a kind of attraction.
Speaker 4: In other places too.
Speaker 5: And if you look at the amount of money that
Speaker 5: was spent against him, it really is impressive that he
Speaker 5: was able to win. You're right that it wasn't this
Speaker 5: big blowout, which would have shown maybe Democrats and Republicans okay,
Speaker 5: things have really really changed. But APAC, the pro Israeli
Speaker 5: American Political Action Committee, spent thirty two million dollars to
Speaker 5: try to defeat him.
Speaker 2: He's a very strong critic of Israel.
Speaker 5: Now that he's won, they've said, okay, now we're going
Speaker 5: to be really opening up the checkbook and we're going
Speaker 5: to be spending even more to defeat him and other
Speaker 5: candidates around the country. And you're seeing this in all
Speaker 5: kinds of other ways where the politics are getting split,
Speaker 5: even within the Democratic Party where they would want to
Speaker 5: be focused single mindedly on defeating Trump, and instead there's
Speaker 5: spending half their time just arguing amongst each other about
Speaker 5: which side of the party should be winning.
Speaker 3: I do want to talk about the Republicans for one second, West,
Speaker 3: because you have been we have been talking about the Democrats,
Speaker 3: because there was this big Democratic primary, and because a
Speaker 3: lot of this populist energy is happening on the Democratic side,
Speaker 3: it is happening on the Republican side as well. And
Speaker 3: that is one thing that would really scare me if
Speaker 3: I were one of these big donors, because you know,
Speaker 3: I just wrote a story in BusinessWeek about this kind
Speaker 3: of very far right candidate, James Fishback. He's like a Groperesque.
Speaker 3: Many of his followers are fans of Nick Fuentes. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is at the fringes of the Republican Party. But
Speaker 3: this is a guy who's going around, in addition to
Speaker 3: making appeals based on race, making these very populist economics,
Speaker 3: talking about we got to stop data centers, we got
Speaker 3: to get rid of palant here, we got to get
Speaker 3: rid of flock. It's it's almost like Bernie esque stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's not just you know, this is happening even
Speaker 3: when you look at somebody like Ron DeSantis, who's who's
Speaker 3: kind of carved out a political identity that is not
Speaker 3: super friendly to big companies, or jd Vance, who who
Speaker 3: I think right now would be the you know, consider
Speaker 3: the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in the
Speaker 3: next cycle.
Speaker 4: You know, he has favored you know, breaking up tech monopolies.
Speaker 3: He attacks tech companies like, where does this money go
Speaker 3: on the Republican side.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it goes to protect all the interests
Speaker 5: that you're talking about, and it's going to try to
Speaker 5: find the candidates who are going to give.
Speaker 4: Them that voice.
Speaker 5: You're right, you know you are seeing that same kind
Speaker 5: of message, which is the natural outgrowth of Trump's own message,
Speaker 5: which is that this there's a big system and it's
Speaker 5: rigged against you. And I think that the strain that
Speaker 5: you're identifying has this common theme of this idea that
Speaker 5: you know, there is an enormous amount of self enrichment
Speaker 5: going on from the White House, in corporations, among CEOs
Speaker 5: at all different levels that is allowing them to get
Speaker 5: richer and richer and richer by breaking the rules of
Speaker 5: the game that everybody else has to play. And if
Speaker 5: you're looking for the kind of next beat of maga
Speaker 5: after Trump and everything that comes along with Trump. That's
Speaker 5: not a bad place to be considering that the beating
Speaker 5: heart of Trump is working class men who are the
Speaker 5: ones who often are getting really the short end of
Speaker 5: the stick of trump Ism. And these people, for culture
Speaker 5: war reasons and other reasons, will never vote for a Democrat,
Speaker 5: but they're looking for a Republican who's going to kind
Speaker 5: of voice those concerns actually do something about it.
Speaker 3: Wes, thank you for being here. Come back soon anytime.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 2: So Max, I have a question for you. Yes, do
Speaker 2: you watch cooking shows?
Speaker 4: I mean not with any kind of regularity.
Speaker 2: I know, cooks for your family sometimes cook.
Speaker 3: And so every now and then, i'll, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: check in see what's going on in the you know.
Speaker 4: In the world of cuisine on television.
Speaker 2: There is a hot new cooking show that you need
Speaker 2: to know about and check out immediately. It is called
Speaker 2: The Real Food Show. It is I love the name,
Speaker 2: presented by the Department of Health and Human Services and
Speaker 2: it is hosted by none other than RFK Junior. Yes,
Speaker 2: so this is a cooking show. It's I've actually kind
Speaker 2: of thought the idea is pretty cool. The idea is
Speaker 2: he presents recipes that are sort of whole food Zee
Speaker 2: make America healthy again, a.
Speaker 3: New food pyramid. This is going to be axact place
Speaker 3: to show people. I guess how to apply the new
Speaker 3: food pyramids.
Speaker 2: Teach a man to cook a fish, and the meals
Speaker 2: are supposed to be less than five dollars to serpa.
Speaker 3: I got to see a clip of this before, ye any, Okay,
Speaker 3: here we go.
Speaker 8: And another element that people don't necessarily talk much about
Speaker 8: is nutritional yeast. This is actually very good for you,
Speaker 8: and it adds a ton of blue mommy and richness
Speaker 8: without having to add things like cheese or any of
Speaker 8: those other fattier ingredients that might overpower the flavor of
Speaker 8: the salmon.
Speaker 3: And then I'm just ready for your microbiome.
Speaker 8: Wonderful for the microbiome.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's you know, it's not for everybody, but
Speaker 2: it's really but it is for your gut biome.
Speaker 4: It's you know who it's for. It's for Dina Shanker.
Speaker 4: Who it is for.
Speaker 2: Dina Shanker, who is a Bloomberg columnist or column's called
Speaker 2: Extra Staal. You should check it out. And we brought
Speaker 2: her in to talk about the new RFK Food Show,
Speaker 2: also the cyclospora outbreak that's been happening, and just the
Speaker 2: price of food going up so much. We feel like
Speaker 2: Dina would be a great person to help us like
Speaker 2: round up all these topics. Dina, welcome, Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for having me back. Okay, Dina, first of all,
Speaker 2: you've been writing about food for a long time. How
Speaker 2: has the food business changed since Trump took office and
Speaker 2: RFK Junior took his posts.
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting because Make America Healthy Again first became,
Speaker 1: you know, like a nationally recognized political movement of sorts.
Speaker 1: It's a certainly a grassroots amalgamation of all different kinds
Speaker 1: of personalities with all kinds of different goals.
Speaker 7: The first big campaign that actually sort of almost.
Speaker 1: Kind of was there at the creation maybe was part
Speaker 1: of the creation of this movement was against Artificial Dies.
Speaker 1: That was a campaign led by Vonnie Harry, who's also
Speaker 1: known as food bab online, and she has like just
Speaker 1: a massive social following and she's been running these kinds
Speaker 1: of campaigns since before influencers online were a thing. She's
Speaker 1: was an activist that used the Internet to bring attention
Speaker 1: to weird stuff in food. This then sort of became
Speaker 1: its own political movement, and.
Speaker 7: Kennedy took it up, and so Maha was born.
Speaker 1: And so when this first happened, when they were first elected,
Speaker 1: I remember listening to the Smucker investor call for earnings
Speaker 1: and someone asked him about.
Speaker 7: Maha as the CEO, and he was like, I am
Speaker 7: not worried about Maha.
Speaker 1: Fast forward, Oh, every major company is making these promises
Speaker 1: they're going to take the food dies out of their
Speaker 1: products by a variety of timelines. So the government hasn't
Speaker 1: actually put out any new regulations. They're just basically relying
Speaker 1: on companies to live up to their word. They've made
Speaker 1: these promises in the past, them backed out of them.
Speaker 1: And it's not the entire food industry. But the question
Speaker 1: is do they want to be in the spotlight as
Speaker 1: the company that isn't doing what Kennedy food Babe and
Speaker 1: a lot of the public really wants.
Speaker 3: All Right, So you have this new administration, this new regime.
Speaker 3: RFK Junior leading Department of Health and Human Services.
Speaker 4: It's a vast bureaucracy, right.
Speaker 3: It includes not just the food pyramid, but the FDA,
Speaker 3: the cdced NIH including you know, being responsible for you know,
Speaker 3: surveillance of various food born outbreaks such as the cyclospora
Speaker 3: outbreak that's going on right now. And what is RFK
Speaker 3: doing right now? Do you know what is happening here?
Speaker 3: What is this?
Speaker 1: The idea is to be presenting recipes that align with
Speaker 1: the new dietary guidelines and that are affordable for I
Speaker 1: guess like everyday Americans. But if you watch this recipe,
Speaker 1: this cooking demonstration, I don't know who this is for.
Speaker 7: And I will start by saying.
Speaker 1: That was one really clean kitchen and two really clean aprons.
Speaker 1: Everything was perfectly prepared, like the ingredients were all set
Speaker 1: up in their own little bowls. Everything just like really ready.
Speaker 1: It's also like sam min cakes.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you should say. Now the recipe is like
Speaker 2: it's for salmon cakes with wildcod salmon, Pinko bread crumbs,
Speaker 2: avocado mayonnaise, nutritional yeast. And then there's a salad on
Speaker 2: the side, a white bean salad. So yeah, talk about
Speaker 2: the recipe itself, because I think this this was quite
Speaker 2: surprising to me because it was pitched as an affordable
Speaker 2: nutritious meal and wildcod salmon is not the most affordable
Speaker 2: thing at the store.
Speaker 1: It's funny because salmon cakes are like, in my mind,
Speaker 1: oh that's a pantry dinner.
Speaker 7: That's like you've run out of stuff to cook. But
Speaker 7: you've got, you know, a can.
Speaker 1: Of salmon that probably costs you like five dollars or
Speaker 1: less at the supermarket. You've got you know, an egg
Speaker 1: and some bread crumbs and whatever, and you can put
Speaker 1: together some kind of salmon cake. But they decided to
Speaker 1: use a salmon filet, which they said was had been frozen,
Speaker 1: and then they defrosted it, which also takes time, and
Speaker 1: then they roasted it, which all so it takes time.
Speaker 4: Not that long.
Speaker 1: Salmon doesn't take a super long time to cook, but
Speaker 1: then you have to wait for it to cool, which
Speaker 1: also takes time.
Speaker 7: And like you said, it's not cheap.
Speaker 1: Can you find a frozen filet of salmon for a
Speaker 1: reasonable price, Sure, but why not go with the can
Speaker 1: salmon which is half the price And all you need
Speaker 1: to do to prepare that can is open it. So
Speaker 1: that to me felt like a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: out of touch with the way somebody just trying to
Speaker 1: get dinner on the table would actually cook.
Speaker 7: Now, I actually have a few complaints.
Speaker 2: About the recipe for it. Do you know, we want
Speaker 2: to know, but you know what else makes a salmon
Speaker 2: cake good?
Speaker 4: Sauce?
Speaker 7: You know what they did not have sauce?
Speaker 2: I thought that's what the avocado mayonnaise.
Speaker 1: No, they used that in the recipe to help the
Speaker 1: whole thing kind of bind together.
Speaker 2: Also like twelve bucks a jar, Yeah, FYI.
Speaker 7: And I mean nutritional yeast actually made me.
Speaker 1: Laugh because who keeps nutritional yeast in their pantry?
Speaker 4: Vegans?
Speaker 7: I don't know anybody whose does it.
Speaker 1: So it's not that there's anything wrong with any of
Speaker 1: these ingredients. It's just that if you want to share
Speaker 1: with Americans how to make dinner that is affordable and healthy,
Speaker 1: help me do that in a way that is not
Speaker 1: completely inconvenient and requires an entire trip to the supermarket.
Speaker 3: If there's one thing I know about RFK is that
Speaker 3: he's no vegan. But leaving that aside, and I think,
Speaker 3: like leaving the recipe aside, there's sort of the question, Okay,
Speaker 3: is this a good recipe?
Speaker 4: I think we've got the version of it seems funny,
Speaker 4: it's okay, But I think the.
Speaker 3: Other question, maybe, and maybe the more important question is
Speaker 3: like is this good politics? And I have to say
Speaker 3: this is a series of strange choices made by the
Speaker 3: Trump administration at a very strange time where you know,
Speaker 3: approval ratings are very low, and we should talk about
Speaker 3: the outbreak in a second, but like where you have
Speaker 3: this outbreak, there are other things they could be doing,
Speaker 3: and they're choosing to present OURFK. Not the most telegenic
Speaker 3: figure in the administration, not the most relatable. You know,
Speaker 3: he's a Kennedy. He's known for, you know, running over
Speaker 3: a bear and then positioning it in a strange.
Speaker 4: Well I got whale carcass.
Speaker 3: You know, he's got a quirky set of interests and
Speaker 3: that's true, and and sort of trying to find a
Speaker 3: way to kind of unify all of that in a
Speaker 3: sort of relatable way, Like here's an idea for staying
Speaker 3: healthy and saving money. And it just struck me as
Speaker 3: a very interesting media strategy.
Speaker 4: So what are they doing? Do you think?
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I actually think the concept
Speaker 1: as a way to get out information about healthy cooking
Speaker 1: could work.
Speaker 7: Cooking videos can be great.
Speaker 1: I watch so many cooking videos that I never turn
Speaker 1: into actually well, I.
Speaker 2: Have a lot of saved cooking videos in my TikTok stas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I like to think that they're gonna somehow
Speaker 1: inform a meal for me at some point, but it
Speaker 1: just didn't work. It just felt so out of touch.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like Kennedy, he's such a divisive figure. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to make something that you hope a lot
Speaker 1: of people are going to use and watch and enjoy,
Speaker 1: then like, don't put a politician in it.
Speaker 2: Okay. So there is the RFK Junior this video. There
Speaker 2: is the Maha movement. There are a lot of interesting
Speaker 2: kind of dietary movements happening in the US. It seems
Speaker 2: like our relationship with food is changing. At the same time,
Speaker 2: the business of food has changed a lot because of tariffs,
Speaker 2: because of like there was the egg crisis and Avian
Speaker 2: flu and all these things. How are food companies doing
Speaker 2: right now? What are they doing right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, the food safety situation in this country has
Speaker 1: never been good. It was described to me once as
Speaker 1: a Jenga tower, and we just keep pulling blocks out.
Speaker 1: And so now we have the cyclospora out break, probably
Speaker 1: outbreaks I should say plural. It is historic, and that
Speaker 1: more people have been sickened than have ever been sickened
Speaker 1: bicyclospora in this country before to.
Speaker 7: Death as well.
Speaker 1: And you know, the thing that scares me the most
Speaker 1: out of all of this is that because many of
Speaker 1: these pathothogens thrive in warmer temperatures, we can expect this
Speaker 1: to continue to get worse. And you would hope that
Speaker 1: a government would take more proactive steps knowing that, But
Speaker 1: I don't think that we've seen that happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, it feels like the business of food is
Speaker 2: getting harder, like the profit margins are getting slimmer, the
Speaker 2: trends are getting more disparate, and the regulations are It
Speaker 2: sounds quite quite fuzzy. What does that mean for us?
Speaker 1: I mean, food is getting more expensive. Portions may get smaller,
Speaker 1: but not because of regular just because as food gets
Speaker 1: more expensive, that would be something that companies could do.
Speaker 1: So I think everyone I've spoken to in the past,
Speaker 1: you know, six eight months about food safety issues, expects
Speaker 1: things to get worse because we're not being proactive about
Speaker 1: making them better. And in fact, as you said, we're
Speaker 1: actually taking resources away from the regulators whose job it
Speaker 1: is to protect us.
Speaker 3: So far, two companies I believe have been linked to
Speaker 3: this outbreak too primarily tailor farms, big produce.
Speaker 4: Company, major produce companies, and Taco Bell, the you know
Speaker 4: small Mexicans.
Speaker 2: They got it from.
Speaker 4: Yeah they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but okay, but on Taco Bell, we're talking to you.
Speaker 3: What was like about a year ago maybe about how
Speaker 3: Taco Bell was actually doing very well. I can't even
Speaker 3: remember what, you know what specifically it.
Speaker 2: Was the micro trends. Oh, they were like, you know,
Speaker 2: just have like a different viral thing every week and
Speaker 2: people well that online viral.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now they are implicated in this you know,
Speaker 3: to use the scientific term turbo diarrhea outbreak. And what
Speaker 3: does it mean for them? Have they kind of turned
Speaker 3: the corner? What is this business response looking like? And
Speaker 3: when can I as a consumer safely returned to Taco I.
Speaker 7: Think we have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: I think the longer that this goes on, it's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt Taco Bell. But whether it hurts Taco Bell as
Speaker 1: much as it hurts say like McDonald's had an E
Speaker 1: coli outbreak a couple of years ago and that really
Speaker 1: really hurt.
Speaker 3: Well about a decade ago, Chipotle had at its own
Speaker 3: back in the box him or was it Chipotle lettuce or.
Speaker 1: A Chipotle was like everything that was that was a
Speaker 1: few different ones.
Speaker 2: I remember that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was to the point where somebody I wrote a
Speaker 1: story about a theory that it was like a corporate
Speaker 1: sabotage because it was like so bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and one of the great Business Week covers of
Speaker 3: all time. It was a Taco bell or Chipotle burrito experience.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna to try to not describe it graphically,
Speaker 3: but just experiencing an illness on the cover.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, the vomiting the burrito.
Speaker 2: The vomiting burrito. Well, maybe the steak and Sauer kraut
Speaker 2: diet is the diet for the moment. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's great for your gut biome.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, you have a healthy gut microbiome and
Speaker 1: then everything else full takes care of itself.
Speaker 7: Yeah, your skin looks great.
Speaker 3: It's claim despite what the Health and Human Services goes
Speaker 3: down by the FDA.
Speaker 4: Dina Shanker, thanks for being here.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: All right, Stacy, Yeah, we are back.
Speaker 2: We are back. It's been twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: We have completed our assignments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I should go first because I had a
Speaker 2: little bit of a journey with the salmon cakes. Okay,
Speaker 2: I went to Wegman's. Let me tell you, I was
Speaker 2: going to get everything that RFK Junior said we needed
Speaker 2: for the salmon cakes. Now a pound and a half
Speaker 2: of salmon, a frozen wildcot salmon thirty dollars.
Speaker 3: Okay, a pound and I had. That's a lot of sand.
Speaker 3: I feel like that's that's what Sam cost thirty dollars.
Speaker 2: The nutritional yeast was ten bucks.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's gonna help your gut microbiomes, I mas, that's
Speaker 3: basically they're given that.
Speaker 2: Can you put a price on that avocado mayo? Ten bucks?
Speaker 2: And the Dijon mustard was five dollars, and the panco
Speaker 2: was four dollars, and the white beans were two dollars,
Speaker 2: and the apple cider vinegar was three dollars.
Speaker 4: So all told sixty two dollars.
Speaker 2: Sixty two dollars.
Speaker 4: Are you impressed that I did that?
Speaker 2: And very impressed that you did that? I was so
Speaker 2: upset that I went to another grocery store and it
Speaker 2: was the same. It was about sixty bucks. I did
Speaker 2: not make this meal because it was too expensive, and
Speaker 2: so I thought it would be much more of much
Speaker 2: more nutritional value to talk about food inflation, which is
Speaker 2: not by a third stance before the pandemic, and it
Speaker 2: seems like something that they should be very aware of
Speaker 2: at the White House and are not aware of.
Speaker 7: A lot of American families.
Speaker 2: Cannot afford that.
Speaker 4: Okay, I want to say two things. Yeah, One is
Speaker 4: you're absolutely right, and.
Speaker 3: That this we we had the conversation with Dina about
Speaker 3: how this recipe was a curious choice because of health
Speaker 3: spens of these ingredients are. But I do feel like
Speaker 3: you did not uphold your end of the bargain, which
Speaker 3: is upsetting to me because I very much upheld my
Speaker 3: end of the parts to eat taco bell, which I think, well,
Speaker 3: definitely more economically responsible. I'm not sure if it was
Speaker 3: responsible from an epidemiological that's.
Speaker 2: True, you did take a lot of health risks.
Speaker 3: Uh, And I have to say, what did you spend ten.
Speaker 4: Dollars all in?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: Is this the inturito that's ENTUREDO?
Speaker 3: So just to describe this, it sort of looks like
Speaker 3: in uh, something you might get on an airplane.
Speaker 4: Its looks like an air plastic.
Speaker 3: It looks to have been maybe will you I have
Speaker 3: different sauces for you there's mild, there's fire, there's diablo,
Speaker 3: and then there's the special. I paid forty cents extra
Speaker 3: for this just in cases. Well, I should try it.
Speaker 3: It is green, what is it? But I assume because
Speaker 3: it's little luxuries.
Speaker 2: How much was the inturito itself?
Speaker 4: It was like, let me see, it was just over
Speaker 4: four dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay, what are your thoughts on the inenturito.
Speaker 4: It's fine, it's pretty good. Right, it's not good. The
Speaker 4: zalmon GGG would have been better.
Speaker 2: I actually think it's well spiced.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, listeners, we will check in.
Speaker 2: I believe the uh oh, there's the dormant period.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we'll check in with you thirty days from now.
Speaker 4: Let you know how this is gone. We've got at
Speaker 4: least a few more shows in US exactly.
Speaker 2: Is maybe the last podcast episodes you'll be able to
Speaker 2: get so well interesting food, Ernie. If somebody out there
Speaker 2: made the salmon cakes, I want to know if they're good,
Speaker 2: what you thought, how your gut biome reacted all those things,
Speaker 2: or if you ate an enturito.
Speaker 4: We want to know.
Speaker 3: Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an s
Speaker 3: at bloom Redunat.
Speaker 2: This show is produced by Jasmine JT. Green and Stacy Wong.
Speaker 2: Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, Sam Rogich handles engineering,
Speaker 2: and Dave Purcell factchecks special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Speaker 2: and Marie Ling. Amy Keen is our executive producer, and
Speaker 2: Cheryl Brumley is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. And if
Speaker 2: you have a story that should be our business or
Speaker 2: a special recipe, please send it to us. That is
Speaker 2: it everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is everybody's with
Speaker 2: an s at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: We will see you next week.