Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist, this is a classic episode that you
Speaker 1: want to hear while you're naching. Back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: we started exploring the wide world of food conspiracies. I
Speaker 1: believe this is where we give This may be the
Speaker 1: one where we start our obsession with Checkers and they're
Speaker 1: amazing fast food motto you've got to eat, Yes, you
Speaker 1: got us eat. Yeah. I liked ooh, I like that
Speaker 1: translation too. That's a little more hardcore and some all
Speaker 1: gothic one must eat well. Yes.
Speaker 2: I would also say that this may also be an
Speaker 2: episode that you don't want to be nauching while while
Speaker 2: listening to just.
Speaker 1: You know, results may vary whatever your thing is.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about a wide range of food conspiracies,
Speaker 2: some of which are not gross and some of which are,
Speaker 2: you know, little gross.
Speaker 1: All right, we tricked you a little, folks. This is
Speaker 1: not super appetizing, Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 3: And this is right before COVID happened, too, so we're
Speaker 3: not really sure how that is going to affect things,
Speaker 3: like the way we thought about food before COVID weird.
Speaker 2: Remember when people were putting their groceries in the garage
Speaker 2: for like a cool down period.
Speaker 1: At Washington, Washington. I loved it. I loved it. I
Speaker 1: loved it when everybody had to wear a mask. It
Speaker 1: just made things easier, you know.
Speaker 2: And that just saying there are still ancompromise people out there,
Speaker 2: and long COVID is very much still a thing. So
Speaker 2: maybe even consider wearing a mask if you go to
Speaker 2: a big public situation, just saying.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly so, without further ado, let's roll the tape.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your.
Speaker 4: Thoughts from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
Speaker 4: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
Speaker 4: or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Speaker 3: Noel is on jury duty.
Speaker 1: Yes that is true. They call me Ben. We were joined,
Speaker 1: as always with our super producer, Paul Mission Control decand
Speaker 1: or uh or Paul Nitella decad. You know, we'll go
Speaker 1: for different I always think we could do more case
Speaker 1: specific nicknames. But most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna exercise full disclosure here I have
Speaker 1: I have not had a feeding period today, so I
Speaker 1: neither of I I'm very interested invested in what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you are going to hear many stomach noises. These
Speaker 3: are against our will. It's our bodies rebelling against our
Speaker 3: life choices. But it's just what we have to do sometimes.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm gonna be imagining a oh delicious toasted
Speaker 3: banana and Natella sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yes, hold that image in your mind. I will imagine
Speaker 1: a burrito bowl. Oh maybe some chocolates and chocol some
Speaker 1: mutant live stock, and some aprodisiac gum. Oh wow, that
Speaker 1: all together. It's a combo meal. You actually save money
Speaker 1: if you buy those at once. It's amazing. You're right,
Speaker 1: this this episode is about food, perhaps not in the
Speaker 1: way you think. It's often said that you are what
Speaker 1: you eat, right, And like many cliches, that is a
Speaker 1: cliche because it is true. It doesn't matter whether you
Speaker 1: live in Mumbai or Malibu, or whether you're orbiting the
Speaker 1: moon or one of the moons in the Solar system. You,
Speaker 1: like every other living person, have to eat to survive
Speaker 1: over the long term. It's one of the biggies, you know,
Speaker 1: like you have to sleep, you have to breathe, you
Speaker 1: have to eat. So it's no wonder that the world
Speaker 1: of food is so rife with conspira theory as well
Speaker 1: as genuine cover ups. It's it's wide rife with corruption.
Speaker 1: Wide rife is a phrase that a good pal, Frank
Speaker 1: Mulharan taught me. So, Frank, if you're listening, I still
Speaker 1: think you made it up, but I think it's awesome.
Speaker 3: Oh like Frank, Frank, Yeah, Frank, that Frank I never know.
Speaker 3: I have never known his last name.
Speaker 1: Well, he has been We've just compromised him.
Speaker 3: I just yeah, Frank is the best shout out to you, Frank,
Speaker 3: Did you.
Speaker 1: Ever listen to this? And we know that while conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories quote unquote may be treated like they exist in
Speaker 1: the realm of folklore, right or urban legend, we know
Speaker 1: that in the case of food, which is such a
Speaker 1: massive business, many of the things that were once called
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories were later proven to be true right in
Speaker 1: one way or another.
Speaker 3: Yes, everything from some artificial sweeteners to a lot of
Speaker 3: other food additives, to hormones in you know, meats and
Speaker 3: other products that we eat. We've on this show covered
Speaker 3: a lot of it and seen a lot of it
Speaker 3: to be at least somewhat true.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget the day. And I say this
Speaker 1: with an air of gratitude, Matt, I'll never forget the
Speaker 1: day you ruined orange soda for me. Orange soda. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: You've told me about rominated vegetable oil. Remember this.
Speaker 3: I do remember that a flame retardant. I believe at
Speaker 3: least that's the way the chemical was originally created for
Speaker 3: that purpose. It's in your mountain dew right now, your
Speaker 3: citrus drinks your orange Sodas.
Speaker 1: You know, I've still never tried mountain dew. Am I
Speaker 1: missing out? It has an interesting history. I've just never
Speaker 1: tried it.
Speaker 3: You know. Thirteen year old me would like take you
Speaker 3: right now to a convenience store and purchase at least
Speaker 3: three different types of mountain dew. But older or me
Speaker 3: would say, I drank diet mountain dew the other day,
Speaker 3: and I know I shouldn't have, but I had to
Speaker 3: because I needed I needed some diet mountain dew.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to do the do right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we have covered a lot of this stuff. Romanated
Speaker 1: vegetable oil, the vast insidious conspiracy of the sugar lobby.
Speaker 1: Both of those things are true. The dangers of DuPont,
Speaker 1: for instance, would be another thing. Corporate shenanigans, strange origins
Speaker 1: of aspartame, strange origins of aspartain for sure. Nesley just
Speaker 1: trying to make the Mad Max dystopian fictional world a
Speaker 1: reality here on Earth within your lifetime. So that's something
Speaker 1: to look forward to.
Speaker 3: The non water world, I think, is what it would
Speaker 3: be called.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, well done, Yes, the non water world. Just so,
Speaker 1: what we've seen though, with the realm of food related
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories is that we will never run out of idea.
Speaker 1: Is you know, check out those episodes we mentioned if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard them yet, But you don't have to
Speaker 1: listen to them to enjoy today's episode or be incredibly
Speaker 1: terrified by it. Because as the state of food on
Speaker 1: this planet changes, the conspiracy theories and the opportunities for
Speaker 1: corruption and evil deeds also evolves. The rumors change. And
Speaker 1: before we get to some of the really crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: let's just paint the picture of the people alive now
Speaker 1: and the stuff that they're shoving down their gullets. You Paul,
Speaker 1: you dear listener, and me included.
Speaker 3: Yes, the facts are there are a lot of human
Speaker 3: beings hanging around on this planet and a few of
Speaker 3: them floating in orbit around it. Currently, the world population,
Speaker 3: if you go to worldimeters dot info, is seven billion,
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty seven million, three hundred and four thousand,
Speaker 3: and then the number just.
Speaker 1: Keeps growing, right, okay, just under seven point eight billion.
Speaker 1: I always love when we play this game because whenever
Speaker 1: we pull that number up, what that means is we
Speaker 1: go back at the end of the episode and see
Speaker 1: how many people have been born. We can also be
Speaker 1: a little grizzly and see how many people have died.
Speaker 3: So, to be fair, that number is going up and
Speaker 3: down constantly.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's absolutely true. So that's a ton of people. Well,
Speaker 1: that's millions of tons worth of people. Read And unless
Speaker 1: there is a global, very large scale regional disaster catastrophe
Speaker 1: like a plague, an impact event, a coronal mass ejection,
Speaker 1: you know, all the Old Testament stuff.
Speaker 3: In less, wide scale nuclear warfare.
Speaker 1: Wide scale nuclear warfare exactly, unless something like that happens,
Speaker 1: this number of people on the planet seems set to grow,
Speaker 1: and every single one of these seven point eight billion people,
Speaker 1: every single one of them has to eat, just like
Speaker 1: the fast food chain checker says, So what what on earth?
Speaker 1: The guy, I don't know, what's the most Have you
Speaker 1: ever cooked a large meal or a meal for a
Speaker 1: large group of people? I? Yes, okay it without you know,
Speaker 1: without diving too much into the personal life, how many people?
Speaker 3: Largest one for me was on a grill for about
Speaker 3: twenty five something like that.
Speaker 1: I'm probably around the same. And to be clear, that
Speaker 1: was a cooperative thing, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't just me, yeah right, but you
Speaker 3: know it was the amount of food purchased in order
Speaker 3: to feed that many people was significant.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and just the logistics involved, right, because you
Speaker 1: want people to be able to eat roughly at the
Speaker 1: same time. So how would you feed heat billion people?
Speaker 1: How what do living people eat? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Oh, sure, we can talk about that. Throughout the world,
Speaker 3: there is a staple grain in any given region roughly
Speaker 3: because people human beings are grain eaters because it's something
Speaker 3: that will fill us up. It's relatively cheap to create
Speaker 3: and it or to well, it's relatively cheap and easy
Speaker 3: to manufacture. Essentially through farming. Right, So things like corn, rice,
Speaker 3: and wheat together, those three, just those three make up
Speaker 3: fifty one percent of the world's total caloric intake. So
Speaker 3: if you look at corn, it's about twenty percent, nineteen
Speaker 3: and a half, rice sixteen point five percent, and wheat
Speaker 3: comes in at about fifteen percent. And there are also
Speaker 3: a lot of other roots that have I guess you
Speaker 3: would call them like starches, kind of these foods that
Speaker 3: will fill us up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, stuff like and tubers or cassava potatoes. Then
Speaker 1: we also have another genre, right, soybeans or sorghum and plantains.
Speaker 1: Most of the world's food, just a little over half
Speaker 1: of it, is this sort of stuff. It's super efficient
Speaker 1: to grow. You can find regional, regional specific varieties, and
Speaker 1: we have also as a species, spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time genetically modifying these before the concept of genetic modification existed.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's the old by hand genetically.
Speaker 1: Modifying mendel, the mendel and the peapods. Right, yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. So we have a different category though, and
Speaker 1: this is an exciting category. And ever since the moment
Speaker 1: that you were born, this category has been growing, it's
Speaker 1: been exploding, it's been metastasizing. Some would say if they're
Speaker 1: being more critical because people, you know, people tend to
Speaker 1: eat these grains cheap, they're affordable, they can be ubiquitous
Speaker 1: in certain areas. But that's I would say, that's maintenance food,
Speaker 1: that's survival food, that's keeping the machine running. Everybody has,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people have some sort of favorite dish.
Speaker 1: And that's when we move into the realm of what
Speaker 1: I would like to call aspirational food. Oh okay, you know,
Speaker 1: in some parts of the world, it's funny. If you
Speaker 1: are a vegetarian or a vegan, or you have any
Speaker 1: friends who are, you should know that in some parts
Speaker 1: of the world, if you if you say you're a
Speaker 1: vegetarian and you refuse to eat meat, if someone offers
Speaker 1: it to you, you know who lives in that area,
Speaker 1: they will no matter, they won't assume you're rude. That's
Speaker 1: somewhat of a myth. No matter. You can be really
Speaker 1: polite and people understand maybe you don't eat it for
Speaker 1: some reason or another. But in some parts of the world,
Speaker 1: people will assume that you're not doing that because you're
Speaker 1: poor or you've never had the opportunity to eat whatever
Speaker 1: delicacy this is being proffered towards you. Oh, okay, And
Speaker 1: this is a telling cultural thing because people want to eat,
Speaker 1: you know, the meat of the gods, the food of
Speaker 1: the king, the royal cuisine, and globally speaking, it's more
Speaker 1: possible to do that than it wasn't any other point
Speaker 1: in history. You know. The Atlanta, Georgia, for instance, has
Speaker 1: one river of any note un running around it or
Speaker 1: through it right now as a couple of artificial lakes
Speaker 1: shout out to Chattahoochie, shout out to the hooch. And
Speaker 1: that means that we if we were trying to eat
Speaker 1: ocean bound food or something, we would only eat the
Speaker 1: stuff that came from that river or those lakes, because
Speaker 1: otherwise there'd be no way to get you know, crab
Speaker 1: lags to us or something that's yes, it's a long
Speaker 1: way away. But now we have these huge networks that
Speaker 1: can transport everything from point A to point B zip
Speaker 1: SAPs up, you know, just like the improv game. But
Speaker 1: it's steak right, or it's a it's a it's antelope wards,
Speaker 1: it's shark fin, you know, things like that.
Speaker 3: Thank goodness for that. We always make this joke thank
Speaker 3: goodness for that Legal Seafood.
Speaker 1: Yes, ah, we we've talked about that, but yeah, what
Speaker 1: a what a weird name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a brand, everybody. That's not a concept, it's
Speaker 3: a brand.
Speaker 1: It's it's a restaurant that calls itself Legal Seafood. You know.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's like going out of your way at
Speaker 1: a fast food restaurant to guart to have a sign,
Speaker 1: a large sign that says, you know, we guarantee that
Speaker 1: almost one hundred percent of our burgers have never been
Speaker 1: spat in. You know, it's like that's the McDonald's guarantee,
Speaker 1: almost almost one. Right, we have these these gargantuan avenues
Speaker 1: of shipping and trade, and we also have hand in
Speaker 1: hand with that. Concurrently, we have a great deal of
Speaker 1: global development. You know, in the times for many of
Speaker 1: us listening, in the times of our grandparents are great grandparents,
Speaker 1: people were limited to the food that was locally available,
Speaker 1: and things like say an orange might be a luxury,
Speaker 1: it might be something you get as a birthday present,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and that's changing now because people are
Speaker 1: in these rapidly developing areas and they are able to
Speaker 1: eat aspirationally. Now we can have meat every day. Now
Speaker 1: we can dine on whatever the cave are of our
Speaker 1: mind's eye may be.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, or even things that are maybe processed in
Speaker 3: package that are coming from far away. We can we
Speaker 3: have access to those foods now they're being shipped to us,
Speaker 3: rather than us having to create them here at.
Speaker 1: Home again before it all collapses. Yeah, there's that moral
Speaker 1: crossroads moment that some people have had, and I've had
Speaker 1: it myself. We say, well, it's quite possible that wild
Speaker 1: seafood will no longer be a thing before you know,
Speaker 1: I die or you die, or whomever dies. And then
Speaker 1: you have the choice, you say, do I do I
Speaker 1: join the embattled and outnumbered good side trying to save
Speaker 1: the planet, and do I, you know, do I recuse
Speaker 1: myself from the seafood game for the betterment of the world,
Speaker 1: Or do I, like the vast majority of people who
Speaker 1: eat seafood, say I gotta get mine before the house
Speaker 1: burns down? You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, for me, seafood died. Most of seafood that
Speaker 3: I have access to died in two thousand and seven
Speaker 3: when the Deep Water Horizon went down. That two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, whenever Deep Potter Horizon went down all of
Speaker 3: my golf shrimp. I just I had to say, no, thanks,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, man, I know me too.
Speaker 1: It changed you, it really did as a person inside
Speaker 1: and out. Yeah, yes, mostly inside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all that oil and flame retardant again.
Speaker 1: I know. But if there's ever a fire, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be fine. So you're right, though, we have more
Speaker 1: and more people who not only want to consume something
Speaker 1: more than you know, a porridge or staple grain every day,
Speaker 1: they can also now do it. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: that that does tie in in some ways with an
Speaker 1: increase in the quality of life. We would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we didn't point out that also ties into things
Speaker 1: like the increase of early onset diabetes, obesity, all those
Speaker 1: other terrible problems. A lot of that due to the
Speaker 1: process snacks, and of course, again I use the word previously,
Speaker 1: the insidious actions of big sugar. Yeah. So let's look
Speaker 1: at the meat, right, If we have more people eating
Speaker 1: the same amount of stuff, then logically we'd also want
Speaker 1: to grow that industry, right, we want to satisfy that demand.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and to do that, and guess what, we
Speaker 3: need more of that grain, which is great. So now
Speaker 3: it's not just humans consuming all the grain. It's also
Speaker 3: our food consuming.
Speaker 1: All the grain.
Speaker 3: Because really, if you love it, you hate it, doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: There's no denying that meat itself is extremely inefficient because
Speaker 3: it's a thing you gotta feed to, then slaughter and eat.
Speaker 3: To produce a single kilogram of beef, which is highly popular,
Speaker 3: at least in these old United States and many other
Speaker 3: places in the world, it requires twenty five kilos twenty
Speaker 3: five kilograms of grain to feed the animal. One kilogram
Speaker 3: of beef equals twenty five kilograms of grain and roughly
Speaker 3: fifth fifteen thousand liters of water.
Speaker 1: So not only the fresh water that is.
Speaker 3: Quickly becoming they're problematic finding enough fresh water for all
Speaker 3: of humanity.
Speaker 1: Nestley about it, they're really yeah, they're really torn up
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: The grains that will feed us, in the water that
Speaker 3: will quench our thirst, it's all being used in these processes.
Speaker 3: In pork, if you look at that, it's still a
Speaker 3: big issue. A little less heinous at least from the
Speaker 3: amount of stuff needed to create pork, and then chicken
Speaker 3: is a little less than that, but still all three
Speaker 3: are problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can also see the problem with space just
Speaker 1: not the final frontier, I mean just the geography. This
Speaker 1: scale of the meat industry has left a mark in
Speaker 1: the way that we use land. Currently, about thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the Earth's surface is use for livestock farming of
Speaker 1: some sort in some way, and since food, water and
Speaker 1: land are scarce or arable land are scarce in many
Speaker 1: parts of the world, this could also represent an inefficient
Speaker 1: use of resources. There's something else we have to talk about.
Speaker 1: This is a messed up in gross This is the
Speaker 1: one that I have some money on. This one. Industrial livestock,
Speaker 1: especially in the US many other places, relies heavily on
Speaker 1: intense and profound application of antibiotics, the same kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that will fight an infection for you or one
Speaker 1: of your human loved ones. If you are feeling peaked,
Speaker 1: then you know you should be able to in theory,
Speaker 1: have an antibiotics regiment of some sort and then boom,
Speaker 1: you will be cured onto your happily ever after whatever
Speaker 1: the next problem becomes in your life. However, because there's
Speaker 1: so many antibiotics being used to keep animals alive in
Speaker 1: unnatural circumstances, right, what we're seeing is that this gives
Speaker 1: this gives some of these infections a chance to evolve
Speaker 1: at a faster pace than normal, and this renders antibiotics
Speaker 1: less and less effective each passing year. In the US alone,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of antibiotics are consumed not by humans but
Speaker 1: by the livestock industry. So good god, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, this is a crappy voice of dark humor,
Speaker 1: but I just have to make it. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, the last hamburger you ate, if you ate
Speaker 1: in this country, in a way, it had better access
Speaker 1: to medicine than you did. It just didn't get to
Speaker 1: consent to it. Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow, man, that's it's really rough. And this is very
Speaker 3: like you guys know in a lot of these situations,
Speaker 3: Ben and Nola and I have to like be humorous
Speaker 3: about these things because it is so intensely upsetting. As
Speaker 3: somebody whose grandfather died as a direct result of an
Speaker 3: antibiotic resistant bacteria infecting him like this, it horrifies me
Speaker 3: and it really pisses me off because just listen to this. Already,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, more than twenty three thousand people are
Speaker 3: like projected or estimated to die every year inside the
Speaker 3: United States alone, just in here due to some form
Speaker 3: of resistant bacteria, and you know that number is not
Speaker 3: going to go down because unless we completely change our
Speaker 3: ways and somehow the bacteria just decides it's not going
Speaker 3: to evolve anymore, right, and become resistant to a lot
Speaker 3: of these things. Because at this point, we are to
Speaker 3: continue giving our livestock antibiotics at this levels because we
Speaker 3: will have to because we have to create more food.
Speaker 3: It's just we're in a rough position.
Speaker 1: Right, and nobody nobody wants to purpose It's the hazard
Speaker 1: of the common good, right. Nobody wants to purposefully step
Speaker 1: down their own lifestyle for a minute benefit net benefit
Speaker 1: to the planet unless they know everybody else is also
Speaker 1: going to be helping. Well, no people do that, But
Speaker 1: no one wants to be in a situation where you know,
Speaker 1: we slave way and eat gruele for the rest of
Speaker 1: our lives. And then there's some elite steak eaters out there,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and they're reaping the benefits
Speaker 1: of fewer people participating in the meatia industry, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have to change it all. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like how if you're ever in a if
Speaker 1: you're ever in a bad traffic situation. You see a
Speaker 1: bad driver and as long as everybody else is a
Speaker 1: defensive driver, the bad driver can be as horrible as
Speaker 1: they want until they hit something. Yeah, and they you know,
Speaker 1: they there's a system to punish them, but how often
Speaker 1: does it work? Right? So, so I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of gallows humor here. But if you like steak,
Speaker 1: if you enjoy a good I don't know, Korean barbecue, right,
Speaker 1: or a good bacon buddy sandwich as they in the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, then you'll be glad to know that these drawbacks,
Speaker 1: which are real, have done nothing to hinder the popularity
Speaker 1: of meat. It still remains aspirational, you know, it's associated
Speaker 1: with success. Globally, our species consumes around three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen million tons of meat per year. By twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: that number is going to reach four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: three million. That's an increase of forty four percent. Gets
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy as we go further into the future,
Speaker 1: but experts can make a ballpark, you know, like cocktail
Speaker 1: Napkin guess as to the rates of meat consumption in
Speaker 1: twenty fifty and the highest estimate they have is five
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy million tons, and with that, you know,
Speaker 1: there becomes a lot of hidden fees, just like buying
Speaker 1: a car. You have the deforestation that will occur. You
Speaker 1: have the increasing likelihood of an antibiotic resistant infection. They
Speaker 1: could just mow down humans the way that the original
Speaker 1: popular gross Michelle bananas were mowed down. Right, And again
Speaker 1: that's all just assuming no large scale disaster occurs before then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it certainly feels like one is on the
Speaker 3: way with every passing moment. But for now, let's switch
Speaker 3: gears a little bit and let's talk about some of.
Speaker 1: Some foods that are.
Speaker 3: I don't know, less scary, less scary, but still have
Speaker 3: some issues that are gonna make you not sleep at night.
Speaker 3: I mean, before we do that, we're gonna take a
Speaker 3: quick word from our sponsor. Let's just cross our fingers
Speaker 3: and hope it's not food based.
Speaker 1: So I hope it's blue apron and we're back. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's some hard hitting stuff. No, you know, many people
Speaker 1: in the audience today we may be seen as preaching
Speaker 1: to the choir for people who live the Michael Pollen
Speaker 1: esque plant based diet, or people who are vegetarian or vegan,
Speaker 1: or some you know variation thereof, or you may be
Speaker 1: you may be an avowed carnivore and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is over hyped, hippy and hippy stuff. The thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not vegetarians. We're not practicing vegetarians. I
Speaker 1: was for some time. But what we just told you,
Speaker 1: that's true, and what we're about to tell you now
Speaker 1: is also true. Let's take a lighter tact, maybe, as
Speaker 1: you said, Matt, and examine some foods that are often
Speaker 1: the mainstream, not associated with these various drawbacks. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: we get it, there are tons of problems. They're profound,
Speaker 1: abiding problems with the meat industry. But what about you know,
Speaker 1: what about desserts? What about the sweet stuff?
Speaker 3: Huh oh yeah, sure, but dude, let's go into chocolate.
Speaker 3: My one of my favorite things in the world. Chocolate
Speaker 3: probably one of your favorite things too. My wife would
Speaker 3: my wife would give me up in a minute for
Speaker 3: a lifetime supply of chocolate. I guarantee you that it's
Speaker 3: not her fault. I wouldn't blame her. I would say,
Speaker 3: you know what, you're right, I would take that deal.
Speaker 3: And no, it's not true. None of that is true.
Speaker 3: But in Western Africa. Let's just go there to where
Speaker 3: anyone of the places where cocoa actually comes from, where
Speaker 3: the stuff that becomes chocolate comes from. It's a commodity crop.
Speaker 3: It's grown primarily for export to other countries. The United
Speaker 3: States is one of those places that takes in a
Speaker 3: whole lot of it. Sixty percent of the Ivory Coast
Speaker 3: export revenue comes from its cocoa. And as the chocolate
Speaker 3: industry has become bigger and bigger and bigger, as more
Speaker 3: and more massive companies become conglomerates, and then they all
Speaker 3: depend on their chocolate goods that they export across the globe,
Speaker 3: so has the demand for cheap cocoa, So super cheap,
Speaker 3: as cheap as we can get it, Just give me
Speaker 3: it as much as you can for as little as
Speaker 3: I can possibly pay. Check this out though, that, as
Speaker 3: you can probably imagine, has a pretty big effect on
Speaker 3: the people actually cultivating and gathering the cocoa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. The average cocoa farmer or earns less
Speaker 1: than two dollars per day, that is, income below the
Speaker 1: poverty line. And in case I was a question, and
Speaker 1: as a result in this intensely competitive market, people often
Speaker 1: result to child labor to keep themselves able to stay
Speaker 1: in the game price wise. Most of the children laboring
Speaker 1: on cocoa farms are between the ages of twelve and sixteen.
Speaker 1: This is again, cannot stress this enough, and I'll stress
Speaker 1: this again later. This is not a rumor, that's not
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. Twelve to sixteen year olds and reporters
Speaker 1: have found children as young as five working in the
Speaker 1: cocoa industry. Forty percent of these children are girls. Some
Speaker 1: stay for a few months, others end up making a
Speaker 1: living into adulthood on this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And one of the ways that the larger buyers of
Speaker 3: the coco they get away with it by claiming that
Speaker 3: this is a third party kind of thing, right where
Speaker 3: we are just acquiring from this group of essentially what
Speaker 3: would be farms or farmers or gatherers of this product,
Speaker 3: and we have no visibility into those companies as to
Speaker 3: what their practices are. We just know that we are
Speaker 3: buying from this supplier, essentially. There's numerous documentaries online where
Speaker 3: you can find that pretty well documented.
Speaker 1: And you'll hear companies saying, often in good faith, is
Speaker 1: saying that while we have this list of standards to
Speaker 1: which our suppliers must adhere, and if we find out
Speaker 1: that something is wrong, then we will go investigated or
Speaker 1: we'll stop working with them. And of course, when the
Speaker 1: rubber hits the road, the picture is not always as
Speaker 1: clear cut as we would hope.
Speaker 3: Even incentives to make sure this kind of thing doesn't
Speaker 3: happen usually monetary, but those funds perhaps find their ways
Speaker 3: into other hands.
Speaker 1: And again, it's such a huge, huge business. Every coast alone,
Speaker 1: we said it's a lot of its export revenue is
Speaker 1: tied up in coco but thirty they produce thirty eight
Speaker 1: percent of the cocoa in the world, and West Africa
Speaker 1: overall creates two thirds of the world's annual cocoa crop.
Speaker 1: It's insane. And that doesn't even count some other adjacent
Speaker 1: countries in the region where you can grow this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to have to walk away from and
Speaker 1: it's a lot to figure out. Of course, if you're
Speaker 1: the kind of person who's bothered by child labor. Once
Speaker 1: you love chocolate, you can find things that say they
Speaker 1: are ethically sourced and say they are for instance, free trade,
Speaker 1: or that the people work in the industry are paid
Speaker 1: a fair market rate, But really the burden of the
Speaker 1: burden of proving that has been passed to the consumer
Speaker 1: because for one reason or another, large corporations don't have
Speaker 1: the best track record. So that's chocolate. So we ruined chocolate.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but that's okay. You don't need chocolate.
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, why don't you just settle settle up
Speaker 1: with some some delicious natilla. Right, that's like chocolate, you know,
Speaker 1: something that's less chocolate, more hazel nut, maybe some other
Speaker 1: alternative ingredients to give it that smooth consistency and texture.
Speaker 1: It's still you know, it still hits those savory notes,
Speaker 1: but it's not as bad.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's not as bad. And you're definitely not
Speaker 3: going to get any trans fats in there.
Speaker 1: Right, because you won't be eating trans fats. You'll be
Speaker 1: eating palm oil. In the US, palm oil is mostly
Speaker 1: used in processed foods. And a while back, Uncle Sam said,
Speaker 1: we got to get rid of this trans fat. This
Speaker 1: trans fat is everywhere. It's nuts. I can't have it.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a duty as a marriage ends.
Speaker 1: And so they moved, you know, they they tried to
Speaker 1: reduce the amount of trans fat that could be in
Speaker 1: your snacks at your local grocery store. It backfired. They
Speaker 1: started using palm oil, and they started using a lot
Speaker 1: of it. The Center for Science and the Public Interest
Speaker 1: reports that palm oil is now the second most popular
Speaker 1: food oil in the world, the first being soybean oil,
Speaker 1: and a lot of palm oil comes from countries like Indonesia.
Speaker 1: Indonesia is one of the largest palm oil producers and
Speaker 1: next borders in the world. It also used to be
Speaker 1: home to a lot of orangutans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or least fifty percent of the world's wild orangutans
Speaker 3: have disappeared. They I mean, that's not even really a
Speaker 3: good term for it. They're gone.
Speaker 1: It's not like a lost situation. They're not on an
Speaker 1: island waiting fighting the black smoke or something.
Speaker 3: No, you cannot make it up in vantage season about this.
Speaker 3: It is just they're gone. And the problem is just
Speaker 3: the groups of orangutans who could be reproducing, could be
Speaker 3: you know, making more of them, have reduced in size
Speaker 3: and number, and eighty percent of the orangutan habitat has
Speaker 3: either been just depopulated or totally destroyed. All of the
Speaker 3: places where they could have lived are just gone. And
Speaker 3: this this is not a trend like that just started happening.
Speaker 3: This is something that's been going on for a long
Speaker 3: time and has it's not going to stop. There's no
Speaker 3: signs that this is going to stop anytime soon. If
Speaker 3: you look at government maps, just of the way different
Speaker 3: countries are planning out the land, how it's going to
Speaker 3: be used. It's just the same thing because it's the
Speaker 3: same problem we're running into with more of us, with
Speaker 3: more consumption. We need more land to make the same
Speaker 3: stuff we're making.
Speaker 1: Now, I want to show you something and we'll post
Speaker 1: it on our face page. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: This is a clip from fairly recently of an orangutan
Speaker 1: attempting to fight a bulldozer that's destroying its habitat oh Man.
Speaker 1: That is heartbreaking. Yeah, and it's it's very short video.
Speaker 1: You can you can find it here. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: palm oil is has a direct connection to this.
Speaker 3: And just to clarify here what we're talking about with
Speaker 3: you know, making use of the land in that same way,
Speaker 3: it's because palm oil is derived from the fruit of
Speaker 3: palm trees, these oil palms, primarily the African oil palm.
Speaker 3: But it's the way you get it is by use
Speaker 3: by smashing up essentially the fruit of these palm trees.
Speaker 3: And in order to get enough of that fruit to
Speaker 3: make as much palm oil as is needed, you have
Speaker 3: to plant as many of these palm trees as you
Speaker 3: possibly can, and the only way to do that is
Speaker 3: to have enough land to plant those trees, so you
Speaker 3: wipe everything else out and put those palm trees up.
Speaker 1: This problem continues in Malaysia. Pete swamp forests are being obliterated,
Speaker 1: and these disappearing forests are home to things like the
Speaker 1: pygmy elephant. For everyone who has a soft spot for tiny,
Speaker 1: cuddly baby Yoda like things, this is the elephant version
Speaker 1: of that he just remembers Dumbo, and the clouded leopard,
Speaker 1: tons of rare birds. Again we had. These are all facts,
Speaker 1: not even into the next act of the show. Yet
Speaker 1: everything you just heard is one hundred percent true. These
Speaker 1: are not conspiracy theories. These are proven incidents of child
Speaker 1: labor in some cases, slavery, corporate corruption followed by cover ups.
Speaker 1: And this is just the beginning. We will be back
Speaker 1: with some of the most bizarre, strangest food conspiracies in
Speaker 1: the world, and we'll also tell you the best we
Speaker 1: could determine the likelihood of these. We'll do that after
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy,
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realist. Not only are there more food related
Speaker 1: conspiracies than you might ever imagine, new ones are cropping
Speaker 1: up all the time. We can divide these into several rough,
Speaker 1: kind of broad categories. But within any of these categories
Speaker 1: you're going to find you're going to find at least
Speaker 1: several instances per year of a new specific tale popping
Speaker 1: up within them.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, You've got everything from corporate malfeasance, just something
Speaker 3: that a corporation decided they had to do, either for
Speaker 3: a bottom line or for a pr they just had
Speaker 3: to save themselves. Illegal government meddling, where you've got some
Speaker 3: large thing like the FDA coming through and making changes
Speaker 3: or enacting something particular.
Speaker 1: Zill and the forestation.
Speaker 3: There we go hidden costs of food, which is kind
Speaker 3: of what we were talking about, Like antibiotics, these things
Speaker 3: just what it actually takes to make make that beef
Speaker 3: of yours that you're eating right now. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to judge you. Keep eating, and it's fine. I might
Speaker 3: have some later. I'll do my best not to. You
Speaker 3: can also look at fad diets like which.
Speaker 1: Breadth or arianism, yeah, oh yeah, where.
Speaker 3: You just need air. Yeah, all I need is the air. Oh,
Speaker 3: don't sue us, Please, don't sue. Bizarre medical claims are
Speaker 3: another one. There's all kind of these are kind of
Speaker 3: the big the Big five. I guess that we can
Speaker 3: put these things into.
Speaker 1: So we found a couple that we thought would be
Speaker 1: enjoyable and maybe surprising to many of us in the audience,
Speaker 1: because you, like us, have dug into a lot of
Speaker 1: these things before. So we've heard about allegations of detrimental
Speaker 1: thing X due to consuming fluoridated water, sure and tale
Speaker 1: as old as time. We've also heard things about, you know,
Speaker 1: the meat industry and livestock and the way animals are mistreated.
Speaker 1: We've also heard stuff about the maybe the food pyramid
Speaker 1: so popular in the US here being ultimately an illicit
Speaker 1: collaboration between the government and several food producing interests. Oh
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: And don't even worry about the pesticides and herbicides that
Speaker 3: all that stuff's great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, Neo nicked tinoids all day baby.
Speaker 1: By the way, we did a video on that and
Speaker 1: it turned out we were right. Yeah, it turned out
Speaker 1: the science and it wasn't. We didn't fit it out
Speaker 1: in a lab. We just dug into the science and
Speaker 1: it was there. It was published, it was not classified.
Speaker 1: And then years later, oh oops exactly, and then someone
Speaker 1: has the nerve to say, well, it's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Yes it was. It was absolutely conspiracy to cover up
Speaker 1: the deletorious effects of pesticides. Anyhow, No, let's before I
Speaker 1: go on some weird ted talk rant, let's let's look
Speaker 1: into some of the things we found that we thought
Speaker 1: might surprise you. Let's go big. This is a weird one.
Speaker 1: Afrid Deasi at gum. Now, before we started researching this episode,
Speaker 1: I had never heard of this.
Speaker 3: I like the idea.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some kind of.
Speaker 3: Just in the concepts like an aphrodisi at gum.
Speaker 1: So the idea then with this gum is that you
Speaker 1: would chew this, and while chewing it, you would ingest
Speaker 1: substances that made you so blindingly unreasonably horny that you
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything else. Okay, it turned you into uh,
Speaker 1: a sexual version of the Tasmanian Devil cartoons. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like whirlwinding around, trying to trying
Speaker 1: to get intimate was something. And this story comes to
Speaker 1: us because Hamas, which is a governing authority and Palestine,
Speaker 1: was for a time convinced that the government of Israel
Speaker 1: have been sending Palestinian kids this aphrodisiac chewing gum to
Speaker 1: make them, you know, excited, to mess with their hormones
Speaker 1: and distract them from the struggle against oppression and the
Speaker 1: you know, the the tension of violence between those two entities. Objectively,
Speaker 1: the evidence is pretty scarce, but we do have on
Speaker 1: record one of the spokespeople for Hamas in a two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine article from BBC.
Speaker 3: Yes, this spokesperson, Islam Shahuan, stated quote, we have discovered
Speaker 3: two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza
Speaker 3: strip from Israeli border crossings. And then later this person
Speaker 3: said quote the first type is present in the form
Speaker 3: of chewing gum and the second in the form of drops.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this story got regional and then global attention
Speaker 1: when a Palestinie man complained that his daughter had experienced
Speaker 1: dubious side effects after chewing this gum, and this was
Speaker 1: reported by the media and Israel and they started trying
Speaker 1: to hunt down the people that they thought were smuggling
Speaker 1: this gum or bringing it into the territory and selling it.
Speaker 1: One suspect said he got the products from an intelligence
Speaker 1: officer the Israeli government at a cut rate price, and
Speaker 1: the officer said, you know, we don't want money, We
Speaker 1: want to distribute. We want you to distribute these products
Speaker 1: amidst the young people of Gaza. So the idea, then,
Speaker 1: it seems like a little bit of a reach, doesn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like the most direct way to affect people.
Speaker 1: And if you modify even a science is there, and
Speaker 1: you modify a small part of a person's behavior, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily result in the effects you want.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it sounds like a high cost research project
Speaker 3: and manufacturing thing that would give you very little gain.
Speaker 3: And strategic advantage doesn't seem to be a thing here.
Speaker 3: So it's difficult for me to see a scenario where
Speaker 3: this is true.
Speaker 1: Right right. Also, we looked and could not find an
Speaker 1: example of the scum, you know what I mean, find
Speaker 1: these statements, to find any stories. The Israeli military decline
Speaker 1: to comment on the record, but one source in the
Speaker 1: Israeli military said, this is absurd. Why would we do
Speaker 1: this for the reasons that you just mentioned. So that
Speaker 1: was one we had never heard of. But here's one
Speaker 1: you may have already heard of in the past. If not,
Speaker 1: we are thrilled to introduce this to you today.
Speaker 3: All right, So let's say you just left Popeyes. You've
Speaker 3: got one of those glorious new sandwiches that are have
Speaker 3: to admit, pretty dang good.
Speaker 1: Pretty good, right, I enjoy.
Speaker 3: The spicy version very much. Well, maybe not Popeyes, maybe
Speaker 3: not any one particular food chain. Let's just call them
Speaker 3: mass market food chains, the big ones, the mega chains.
Speaker 3: Some weird stuff is going on in trying to make
Speaker 3: enough chickens, enough chicken to fill all of the orders
Speaker 3: that are just occurring.
Speaker 1: They never stop.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've got a twenty four hour McDonald's
Speaker 3: anywhere near your house, you know, whenever you've been up,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter how early in the morning is, how
Speaker 3: late it is. There are people getting some food. Some
Speaker 3: of that food is probably going to be chicken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the ice cream machine will never work for Ronalds.
Speaker 1: It's always out. That's a different conspiracy, it's true. So
Speaker 1: how then is all this food supplied.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so how do you do it? How do
Speaker 3: you get enough chicken? Well, there is a theory out
Speaker 3: there that possibly someone out there is making chickens without heads,
Speaker 3: chickens without feathers, without feet, just with breasts, extra breasts,
Speaker 3: extra wings, extra.
Speaker 1: Meat, extra legs, more meat.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine a chicken that is just the meat?
Speaker 1: I wish to scream, but I have no mouth, right
Speaker 1: that old Harlan Ellison's story. Yeah, yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: a hellish existence, even if there is not a brain.
Speaker 1: As we understand.
Speaker 3: It, it sounds out there.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the science is massively advanced, beyond what
Speaker 1: we're currently aware of. Versions of this legend, this is
Speaker 1: Nerban legend, have been circulating for decades, ands and decades,
Speaker 1: And when I first heard it, you know, it made
Speaker 1: sense to me on some level because I always thought
Speaker 1: the fast food stick, their whole thing was weird and
Speaker 1: delicious and evil but delicious. It's delicious. It's evil and
Speaker 1: it's delicious. I always thought it was weird. The example
Speaker 1: that stayed with me. I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: if you ever knew this, but years, years, years ago,
Speaker 1: I went to a Chick fil A, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted a sandwich, fries and to coke, and they said,
Speaker 1: I want a combo meal. Just what's the difference and
Speaker 1: they said, well, it comes with slaw And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I don't want any slaw though, I just
Speaker 1: want a sandwich, fries and to drink. And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: but when we give you that, it's going to be
Speaker 1: more expensive than if we gave you the combo with
Speaker 1: the slaw. So yeah, yeah, I made the same face
Speaker 1: that Matt's making now, which is, you know.
Speaker 5: You're tilted a little slight eyebrow for because what that
Speaker 5: means essentially is that I am paying a tax to
Speaker 5: not have slaw.
Speaker 1: I am like I I am required, I am mandated
Speaker 1: to help them dispose of their coal slaw. God knows
Speaker 1: where it came from, and God knows they don't care
Speaker 1: where it goes. But if I refuse to participate in this,
Speaker 1: in this slaw exchange, this slaw transactioncy yeah, yeah, this slawnspiracy,
Speaker 1: then I will have to pay a toll. Essentially, I
Speaker 1: am being taxed for this. I don't get it either,
Speaker 1: So you know, having experienced stuff like that and maybe
Speaker 1: that's maybe I just had a weird one off mentalt
Speaker 1: with with the wanted to give you person working at
Speaker 1: chick fil A. Yes, but with that in mind, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that can help you. It's a
Speaker 1: bread crumb along the precipitous slope into the idea of
Speaker 1: mutant chickens. KFC, not Chick fil A or Popeyes, was
Speaker 1: usually the one that was most often accused. The earlier
Speaker 1: versions of the story were like six legged chickens, and
Speaker 1: the idea was that the birds were so plumped up
Speaker 1: by chemicals also that their huge bodies were impossible for
Speaker 1: them to support, you know, room feet walking, So they
Speaker 1: have more six state like chickens. Because the you know,
Speaker 1: the questions, how do they taste?
Speaker 3: How does a six legged chicken taste?
Speaker 1: No? No, because no one's ever caught one. I'm sorry, I.
Speaker 3: Was just pausing for laughter.
Speaker 1: I'm all, I heard the booze and the wamp wamp
Speaker 1: from here. But but it's true. That was the idea,
Speaker 1: and this rumor was so popular that Kentucky Fried Chicken
Speaker 1: itself eventually addressed it on their own website in a
Speaker 1: page that has since been removed. It also tied into
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever heard this one, the
Speaker 1: idea that the federal government make Kentucky Fried Chicken changed
Speaker 1: their name to KFC because what they were using could
Speaker 1: not legally nor ethically be called chicken.
Speaker 3: Oh so now it's just KFC the thing. There's no
Speaker 3: chicken involved.
Speaker 1: It was going to be legal fried.
Speaker 3: There you go, bringing it back, buddy, I mean I
Speaker 3: do remember hearing that. Actually, I do remember hearing that.
Speaker 3: And here we have from the KFC website their response
Speaker 3: to this rumor of mutant chickens or whatever you want
Speaker 3: to call them.
Speaker 1: Uh you, I'll get there. I'll get there. Keep going,
Speaker 1: you give me a second, worries. Here we go.
Speaker 3: We can set the record straight. No mute or genetically
Speaker 3: engineered chickens are involved in making our delicious KFC chicken.
Speaker 3: Just one hundred percent real chicken from US farms, which
Speaker 3: have to pass over thirty quality checks and USDA inspection
Speaker 3: before being hand prepared by one of our cooks. Ultimately
Speaker 3: less than ten percent of chickens meat. KFC's high standards
Speaker 3: for quality, which includes no artificial hormones or steroids, a
Speaker 3: federal regulation.
Speaker 1: Favored out of context. Quote, there may i ask you
Speaker 1: to do a Colonel Sanders esque voice.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, No mutated chickens are involved in making our
Speaker 3: delicious fried chicken.
Speaker 1: It's a true story. It's pulled from the internet, the
Speaker 1: official site, or they moved it somewhere else, but you
Speaker 1: can find that. I love the KFC. KFC just thought.
Speaker 1: You know, if we throw the word delicious around like
Speaker 1: somebody throwing a crucifix around a vampire, maybe that'll ward
Speaker 1: off these allegations. At this point, you know, for most
Speaker 1: of the lifespan of this theory or this rumor, the
Speaker 1: technology wasn't there to the scale that would need to
Speaker 1: have occurred.
Speaker 3: Right, sure, just growing meat like that essentially, but that
Speaker 3: may be the future.
Speaker 1: Lab grown meat is already a thing and has been
Speaker 1: for a number of years now. It's just a question
Speaker 1: of again making a large enough amount of it, right, So,
Speaker 1: mutated chicken thing, the idea of no beaks, no heads,
Speaker 1: extra wings, extra legs, that has a very low likelihood
Speaker 1: of being true. However, the way that these individual animals
Speaker 1: are treated in just normal no smoke and mirrors, skull
Speaker 1: and bones livestock life, they do have tremendously painful lives
Speaker 1: right their beaks are chopped off, they are oftentime unable
Speaker 1: to walk, and they are, of course, as we said,
Speaker 1: pumped full of antibiotics to stop the infections that would
Speaker 1: otherwise rage through them. So it's still not pretty, but
Speaker 1: they do have brains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's move away from meat. Let's let's get something
Speaker 3: that's maybe meat adjacent. Would that be okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah? About Uh you like fondue, Oh.
Speaker 3: My gosh, fondue. We used to have an amazing fondue
Speaker 3: place in Atlanta, the Melting Pot. No, it was on
Speaker 3: a pirate ship.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. Uh, Dantana's Dante's Dante's down the hatch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I miss it so badly. Yeah, that place was great.
Speaker 1: It was part of that fondue craze that swept the US.
Speaker 1: It turns out that the fondue craze, there's a conspiracy,
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy theory. The fondu craze was manufactured by
Speaker 1: what we could reasonably call big Cheese.
Speaker 3: The Big Cheese was responsible.
Speaker 1: The Big Cheese. Like, we need a sound cue for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: technically their name is the Swiss Cheese Union. That's how
Speaker 1: i'd say in English. Okay, A little bit after World
Speaker 1: War One, cheese consumption was really low. People just had
Speaker 1: other priorities. And the Swiss Cheese Union, which sounds like
Speaker 1: the name of some indie band that we would have
Speaker 1: been in in college. The Swiss Cheese Union says, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to get together. We're going to reduce supply,
Speaker 1: we're going to create artificial scarcity, we're going to fix prices.
Speaker 1: We're also going to limit the types of cheese that
Speaker 1: you can legally make and then will literally rough people
Speaker 1: up if they don't play ball with us. And this
Speaker 1: is in Switzerland, is throughout Europe eventually, and in Switzerland
Speaker 1: so in common. They also got the government involved, so
Speaker 1: the government collaborated with them, and they made a marketing
Speaker 1: push that was Brene's level clever to get people to
Speaker 1: convince people they like fondue. Who doesn't like like cheese
Speaker 1: dep anyway? Right? People love dipping. Dipping is one of
Speaker 1: the best things about eating in general. You dip stuff
Speaker 1: and stuff, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sauces are great. And if your sauce is mostly cheese,
Speaker 3: I mean, come on.
Speaker 1: You're ahead, you're winning your light years ahead. You're just
Speaker 1: sort of you know, it's in some culture. You are
Speaker 1: a god. You're like, there's a cargo cult about the
Speaker 1: cheese sauce guy, absolutely, which I would be into. I
Speaker 1: would hear him out. I'm not saying I convert, but
Speaker 1: i'd hear him ount.
Speaker 3: I mean some Caeso. Caso was just fondue in a
Speaker 3: different vessel.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, man, Yeah, I have no shame about the
Speaker 1: ungodly unclean amount of cheese.
Speaker 3: Me too.
Speaker 1: Mean, I'm kind of always up for it, sort of
Speaker 1: like an arsenist, you know. He asked arsenists if they
Speaker 1: want to see a fire most of the time, I imagine
Speaker 1: not hanging out with any arsenists that in maware of.
Speaker 1: Imagine most of the time they're like, yeah, I'll check
Speaker 1: it out. They might not do anything, but they might
Speaker 1: want to just window shop.
Speaker 3: I literally was just daydreaming about Queso being right here
Speaker 3: between us and a whole bunch of chips.
Speaker 1: That'd be so great. Man, I'm so hungry. Oh so
Speaker 1: even after this, yeah, I'm hungry as well. So So
Speaker 1: it turns out that the fon Due craze quote unquote
Speaker 1: was manufactured. Here's one that we saved for you, our
Speaker 1: good pal, our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decad, Paul
Speaker 1: and Natelladecad's Paul Chipotle Decad.
Speaker 3: Oh oh uh, I've heard tell of it. He goes
Speaker 3: by that sometimes just by the sheer number of delicious
Speaker 3: burritos and slightly lime flavored chips he consumes.
Speaker 1: The Chipotle down the street from us actually has a
Speaker 1: day in Paul's honor because, yeah, when things are getting rough,
Speaker 1: he saved the business. Oh really, it's very it's very
Speaker 1: instant dirational, inspirational story. I think Disney's optioning.
Speaker 3: It is that when there were outbreaks occurring at Chipotle's
Speaker 3: all over the place.
Speaker 1: Ding ding ding, Yes, yes, whole in one. There were
Speaker 1: outbreaks reports of E. Cole I, most famously, I think,
Speaker 1: but there were other things too, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, salmonella, norovirus m yum, yum yum.
Speaker 1: But that E.
Speaker 3: Cole I is always the one that freaks me and
Speaker 3: probably a lot of us out the most, just because
Speaker 3: it is you know, poop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. The weird thing about
Speaker 1: these scandals is they all occurred within a few months
Speaker 1: of each other in twenty fifteen, and then it happened
Speaker 1: again in twenty seventeen and that's when a fellow named
Speaker 1: Aaron Allen at a restaurant consulting group Aaron Allen associates,
Speaker 1: said that he saw a pattern. He said, look, I
Speaker 1: see a pattern, not just in the food poisoning that's occurring,
Speaker 1: which you know, Chipotle, to their and their parent company
Speaker 1: did a great job in finding the finding the bad
Speaker 1: food products, right sure, But Aaron Allen said there was
Speaker 1: another pattern that was functioning in concert with the incidencies
Speaker 1: of food poisoning. He said he saw the stock activity
Speaker 1: and he was paying attention to it because Aaron Allen says,
Speaker 1: of course, after there's a scandal again there's some e coli,
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's some poop in the burritos, naturally
Speaker 1: the stock price drops, right Yeah. This was at a
Speaker 1: time when people were very anti feces and burritos. It's
Speaker 1: just not where the market was. And his idea was
Speaker 1: that someone was intentionally doing this, maybe not someone working
Speaker 1: for Chipotle, but someone with some sort of reach was
Speaker 1: manufacturing the scandal. They were making the stock price drop,
Speaker 1: and then they were buying it up again for pennies
Speaker 1: on the dollar, knowing that it would eventually rise because
Speaker 1: right because as super producer Paul Decktt can attest Chipotle
Speaker 1: is going gangbusters. You know, it'll hit some bumps in
Speaker 1: the road, but they're they're not in trouble, man.
Speaker 3: That is in that's intense equivalent of letting a or
Speaker 3: purposefully having a certain part of a city or something
Speaker 3: being run down by depriving it of let's say police
Speaker 3: officers or or you know, just letting something happen to
Speaker 3: where the property prices get so low to the point
Speaker 3: where you can buy all of it and then put
Speaker 3: up your own thing. That's what was occurring allegedly in
Speaker 3: the Chipotle market, according to this Aaron Allen Fellow.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And again he does run a consulting group,
Speaker 1: or did at the time. So there's one one more
Speaker 1: we'll touch on today. And this could be just a
Speaker 1: bit of a palate Cleitzer. It's a fun idea, right.
Speaker 1: The world's probably not going to burn down because of
Speaker 1: this one. So if you ever been in a Starbucks
Speaker 1: and said, okay, hi, my name is you know Chanelle
Speaker 1: or Donovan, I've got the drink that I want whatever,
Speaker 1: and then you go you wait for them to call
Speaker 1: your name and they yell out something like Danell or
Speaker 1: Seanovan or you know something that wasn't a name but
Speaker 1: it's it's like slightly off or whatever. There is a theory,
Speaker 1: an Internet rumor, it's kind of like a fan theory,
Speaker 1: that Starbucks employees do this on purpose because when people
Speaker 1: post they're hilariously misspelled or mispronounced names, they're written on
Speaker 1: the cup. It's free marketing for Starbucks. What do you
Speaker 1: think about that?
Speaker 3: Ah? Okay, here's what I would say. I am and
Speaker 3: I do not know the numbers here. I have not
Speaker 3: looked into this, but I imagine that it is not
Speaker 3: quite as amazing for your social media feed to post
Speaker 3: a Starbucks cup, no matter what's inside that container. It's
Speaker 3: probably not as amazing to do that as it would
Speaker 3: be to do some smaller chain, right with a generic
Speaker 3: cup of coffee or something like that. Does that make
Speaker 3: any sense? Like just that branding within your feed? I
Speaker 3: can imagine that's not as an exciting as of an
Speaker 3: exciting thing to post as would be if it was
Speaker 3: small chain. So perhaps by having that funny moment occur,
Speaker 3: the Starbucks is back in the feeds, just with you know,
Speaker 3: Adam's name misspelled?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, they know you're gonna post it. I
Speaker 1: don't buy it. It seems a little Rube Goldberg esque, right,
Speaker 1: It seems secuitous, it seems unnecessary.
Speaker 3: But but Starbucks literally needs zero advertising bind.
Speaker 1: Right, right, when's the last time you saw Starbucks by
Speaker 1: itself without you know, like another Starbucks down the street.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they exist, I just I just think they're
Speaker 1: increasingly rare. So we're we're in this situation right where
Speaker 1: where we have to ask ourselves whether this was a
Speaker 1: Bob Ross style happy accident. Yeah, and I think I
Speaker 1: think that's the most likely occurrence here.
Speaker 3: Did you know I played my first professional music gig
Speaker 3: at a Starbucks that's a very local reference in Atlanta,
Speaker 3: played my very first gig no Starbucks. Yep, it was fine.
Speaker 3: The coffee was perfectly fine back then in the early
Speaker 3: two thousands.
Speaker 1: What a time, those halcyon days. This does bring us
Speaker 1: to a stopping point where we have simply scratched the
Speaker 1: surface of a multitude of food conspiracies. We'll return to
Speaker 1: some other ones in the future, sure, but we would
Speaker 1: also like to hear your take on these the ones
Speaker 1: we examined in this episode, ones that you think your
Speaker 1: fellow audience members should be aware of whether there's something
Speaker 1: kind of a funny thought experiment like Starbucks, or whether
Speaker 1: it's something incredibly disturbing like chocolate, or whether it's something
Speaker 1: that just makes you makes you think for a second,
Speaker 1: it gives it gives you something to grind your cognitive
Speaker 1: gears against.
Speaker 3: I will say there's one thing I'm very interested in
Speaker 3: here that we touched on, and it has to do
Speaker 3: with the meat manufacturing processes. And I have read in
Speaker 3: a lot of places and seen documentaries actually about the
Speaker 3: effects of specifically cattle on you know, what would be
Speaker 3: global climate change?
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, And I've.
Speaker 3: Not done the research like we would do for one
Speaker 3: of these episodes.
Speaker 1: On that topic.
Speaker 3: And I'm interested in it, but I would like to know.
Speaker 3: I think we would all like to know if you
Speaker 3: are interested in that, and we should Should we do
Speaker 3: an episode on that anytime we bring up climate change?
Speaker 1: M h.
Speaker 3: It's a bit controversial just from the viewpoints of all
Speaker 3: of us coming forward, but I think the science generally
Speaker 3: isn't so well.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, So I think that's the nextll idea
Speaker 1: for another show we do here at the office called
Speaker 1: car Stuff. We looked into that. Yeah, the amount of
Speaker 1: the amount of pollutants that cattle alone released into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is it is enormously significant. It's a lot. We
Speaker 1: have a full episode on that if you want to
Speaker 1: check it out. We also had an episode on hybrids
Speaker 1: that that relates to this energy consumption, because you know,
Speaker 1: when hybrids first came out, many many people were saying,
Speaker 1: I can make the world a better place. I don't
Speaker 1: have to change that much, just have to pay a
Speaker 1: little more for a car, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But the problem with hybrids, and the problem with some
Speaker 1: electric vehicles at that time, was that they were pulling
Speaker 1: their electricity from a power grid. What was supplying that
Speaker 1: power grid coal coal. That's right, So congratulations on your
Speaker 1: coal powered car. You just move the pollution a bit
Speaker 1: further away from your line of mental sight. And I'm
Speaker 1: not being detegrated. The technology has come a long way,
Speaker 1: and overall, I think the world is attempting to find
Speaker 1: the newer, less long term harmful alternatives. But you're right,
Speaker 1: there's something sinister about cattle when it comes to pollution,
Speaker 1: and it's something that a lot of people don't think about.
Speaker 3: The biggest thing for me, Ben and Paul and everybody
Speaker 3: out there is how honestly, like I want to, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have a conversation with you off air, maybe we
Speaker 3: bring it to the air at some point, But how
Speaker 3: you were able to maintain vegetarianism for a sustained period
Speaker 3: of time, Because I've been attempting personally in my life
Speaker 3: to do a little more of that, and I'm not
Speaker 3: having a lot of success, because I really am Maybe
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's addicted to certain flavorings or
Speaker 3: fats or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: I'm at least trained to eat in a certain way.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to fight it.
Speaker 1: Here's what happened to me, and we can't talk about
Speaker 1: this on air. But first I became very busy and
Speaker 1: also very lazy, okay. And then it was dating someone
Speaker 1: who was a vegetarian, so it made it very easy
Speaker 1: to say yes to that.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, you know, and.
Speaker 1: She was a fantastic cook. But but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's easy to become lazy of relationships and date
Speaker 1: someone and say, oh, all right, that's the thing you're into.
Speaker 1: I got yeah, I guess I like scat too. Now
Speaker 1: you know, well, that one's tough for me, and that's
Speaker 1: our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts. It's right let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: You can reach.
Speaker 2: You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Speaker 2: Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Speaker 2: Stuff Show.
Speaker 3: If you want to call us dial one eight three
Speaker 3: three STDWYTK. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Speaker 3: Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
Speaker 3: we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 3: If you got more to say than can fit in
Speaker 3: that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
Speaker 3: fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are the entities to read every single piece of
Speaker 1: correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.