April 7, 2026 • 67 mins
Food is one of the few things that unites the human species -- so it's no surprise the world of food is chock-full of conspiracies. In today's episode, the guys return to the world of conspiracy and cuisine, fielding some of the strangest, most disturbing urban legends and rumors about everything from fast food to livestock and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. This one is for everybody who likes
to have a snack while they're listening to their favorite podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Gotta Eat, Ben says via Checkers. You don't have to
eat Checkers, but you do have to eat sustain your body.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yes, guys, Honestly, I can't remember all the stuff we
talked about in this one. I do recall as a
bit of a grab bag from all of the things
we had been hearing over the course of most of
that year. In twenty twenty, there's so many different rumors
about food. Twenty found their way, well, they've found their
way onto social media, and particularly because we're all going
(00:39):
through this weird pandemic thing for a while and we're
thinking more about the food, how it gets in our house.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you wash it?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Doesn't the pandemic just seem charming comparatively now, I don't know,
Maybe that's a hot take.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I am gonna say it bring me back to the
golden days.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
If you are in our audience, we trust you. In
Transparency is key. Having a bunch of people locked inside
their houses was actually very good for podcasting.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's great for podcasting, and I don't mean to make light.
I know people lost their lives and it was a
horrific time, but you know.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It was also really good for the planet.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, where the dolphins were appearing in the canals all
of a sudden, the Oza Frank style just hopping over
rainbows and the ozone popped up back like Captain America
and Avengers films, and went, I could do this all.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Day maybe, And then we were all like, burn the
oil fields.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Roll the co.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So food is a great unifier the human experience. We
talked about that in a recent episode on the looming
hunger crisis, which we made mention in part of this
series from twenty twenty. But tune in to this one
for an exploration of as Matt you said, a grab
bag of some of the strangest, most disturbing evolutions of
(01:57):
urban legends. You know, like the GMO chickens that are
just chicken centipede, like human centipede, and they have no
head or ass, you know, just breast and wings and
draw all.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
The way down, all the way down.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Let's roll the tape.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Met, my
name is Nol.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We are returning to the world
of food conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What are you eating?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
What's the last thing you ate? What's the next thing
you're going to eat? After you hear this show?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Leftover Chinese, leftover, Chinese, leftover Turkey for a lot of people,
because as we record today's episode of Folks, we are
hurtling toward the end of twenty twenty and as you
are hearing this post.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Thanksgiving, just to get this out of the way very quickly,
pandemic rates will have shot up in the United States.
People will die.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah. I heard a stat today that it was I think, uh,
maybe a third of the Thanksgiving travel from last year,
but still like the most traffic airports have seen since
the pandemic began. They're saying like a million people a day.
So people are paying super close attention to the experts,
and that's just a little troubling.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I can't remember which show I mentioned this on, but
earlier I found some of the same information in one
of the One of the most trouble things is that
historically the busiest day for airports every year in the
US is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so be careful if
you have to travel anyhow, All of this is not
(04:12):
a conspiracy. In fact, we predicted a pandemic in earlier episodes,
not because we're some sort of clairvoyance or precogs or something,
just because statistically it was a certainty. Today, Matt Nole,
Mission Control and yours truly are exploring something a little
bit lighter. This is the last last episode we're recording
(04:36):
before we go to a Thanksgiving break. Stuff they'll want
you to know is often a pretty heavy meal of
ugly truths and we hope worthwhile information. But as we
had the parts unknown this weekend, what we'd like to
do with this episode is has offered more something like
a series of tapas. You know what I mean. It's
(04:57):
a grab bag, if you will, some of our favorite
food related conspiracies and urban legends. Longtime listeners, you know
that we've We've covered stuff like this in the past.
We just keep finding more weird things about food before
we dive in.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Can I can I bust one myth real quick? You
don't need to brin your turkey hot take. I don't
know how few people feel about it. I found out
that what brining a turkey does is, you know, the
salt causes osmosis, So the turkey takes in all this water,
the salt water, and you know, you can season the
brian as well, but that gives the illusion of juiciness.
(05:36):
But the juiciness is not really the juiciness of the turkey.
It's just water that's been absorbed into the turkey. So
while that definitely will give you a juicy or bird,
you can get that same effect just by like doing
a nice butter garlic rub under the skin and then
letting it rest long enough so that the juices actually
begin to kind of flow. So that's that's from Gordon
(05:58):
Ramsey to my ears to your ears, just putting that
out there, and that's what I'm doing this year. Hopefully
it was actually successful. This is obviously happening in the
past now, but I'm really feeling strong about it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, you heard it here. Everyone, do not Brian your turkeys.
Gordon Ramsey says so, and I listened to anything that
man says. Honestly, I think he's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Now he's really nice in person.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Actually that's what I hear from everybody. But you know, instead,
hopefully all of you took your oil, you know, your
large bats of oil where you're going to fry your turkeys,
put them outside, maybe on your wooden porch, and did
it there, and you know, hopefully only a small percentage
of you burned your porch down.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Hopefully some folks did the beer can turkey recipe.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That thing is.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That's pretty fun. But you know, there's ritual. There's ritual
I think, involved in creating the Thanksgiving meal, and sometimes
that ritual becomes even more important than the culinary science. Right,
you cook the way that someone of your older relatives
taught you in the days of old, and that'll happen
(07:06):
again toward the end of the year, because these sorts
of traditional meals are very important in human culture. Which
makes me sound a bit like a robot, but I
am technically correct. So let's see what we find in
this dive into the world of food conspiracies, and let's
see what we can actually prove. This is a little
topsy turvy because we're going to start with some terrible
(07:27):
things that are absolutely true, and then we'll get to
the fun stuff. So here are the facts. First. Many
of the terrible, terrible things you have heard about the
food you eat, about the way it's grown, about the
way it's sold, transported, processed, given to you. All of
those terrible things are true, a lot of them. I mean,
(07:48):
nutrition is power. The power balance is skewed. Millions of
people are starving right now while other people are fighting
about the quote unquote right way to eat caviaar or
to law or you know, like where's the good where's
the good coffee or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's got to have a special spoon for caviar. Is
that a thing? It's like a caviar spoon. Yeah, I've
never had it before. Is it good?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
The spoon or the I don't think I've ever had
caviar before.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Maybe in a dish, a fancy dish, but I've never
eaten it like on its own. That's sounds like something
you might have tried been.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Do fish eggs incorporated into a sushi dish count as caviar.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I don't believe so different than I've had caviar either.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Very specific kind of God, it's a whole thing. I
think the Emperor has no clothes as far as that goes.
But but yeah, it's true. There there are a lot
of inequalities in our food system. And then there are
a lot of it might sound hyperbolic to see it,
but there are a lot of vampiric corporations that are
(08:54):
heavily influencing the food and beverage industry right right, like yeah,
bless you, But you know there are there are powerful
companies that are bending the laws to their whim and they've.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Got a bunch of really long straws that go underground
and they drink our collective milkshakes.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And one of the big ones is Nestley. Not for nothing,
that's not our opinion. You can you can easily look
that up. Third, and this is another bummer, absolutely true.
Plastic boy. We got so much feedback on our microplastics episode,
and it is all correct, and it is all terrifying.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, it's everywhere on the lands, in the seas, on
the seas, in your body.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, yeah, legos, I'm just gonna leave it there. What
about the food pyramid, Guys, that was a thing that
was like on posters in our like elementary school classrooms,
and you know it praises sung worshipful to the food pyram.
That's obviously a thing that we still rely heavily upon
in our nourishment, at least in terms of a visual aid. Right.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, it has been for a long time, has changed
a lot over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, the food pyramid is kind of a crock.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
This is not this is not to say that there
isn't solid science involved, but unfortunately the pyramid was at
least in the past, heavily influenced by the food industry,
by powerful lobbying groups. In that sphere, you can see
multiple books that claim that sort of influence exists today
(10:44):
and that these companies exert a lot of agency and
power on the USDA, and especially like milk companies get
accused of influencing the Department of Agriculture into you know,
tilting the pyramid their way.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, but if you're interested in learning more about that,
I would recommend everybody, if you're in the US, go
to choose MyPlate dot gov, which is actually a I
don't know. In my opinion, a pretty good nutritional guide
that's set up for personal use for an individual person
or family, where you can actually kind of make your
own food pyramid of what you should be eating and
(11:23):
where you should be where you could be getting your nutrients.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Oh that's great. Yeah, that I have not checked that
out before, Matt, I'm going to pull that up. I
would also I would also recommend checking out a book
by Michael Pollen called The Omnivores Dilemma. The Omnivores Dilemma
is pretty It has a very simple diet that is
summed up like this, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
(11:51):
I'm not here to proselytize. I just like the way
it's written. So check that out. Because we have to
consider the source, we look at things like industry influence
science in any case. So these are all bummers, right,
this is this is all kind of bad news. We
usually take careful time to explore the stories behind those
(12:18):
four or five things that we just mentioned. You can
learn more about this in previous episodes. We've also done
work on the weird sugar cover up that occurred in
the US. We've examined stories about chocolate and cocoa, and
of course palm oil. You can find that in previous episodes.
(12:41):
But today, just to take a break from this very
very crazy year, we thought it would be interesting to
delve into some of that rogues gallery of urban legends
about food, all the weird stuff you heard growing up,
all the things that maybe like that guy who lived
down the hallway from your first apartment, which is sometimes
(13:03):
like mutter, you know, the weird out of the blue stuff.
People really seem to believe. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean, you know, food is a necessity. Got
to have it to survive, got to have it to
get things done. It's something that we have in common
with all other humans, despite our many many differences. So
it shouldn't surprise anyone that we've evolved an incredibly complex
and dense, dare we say, folkloric kind of system around food.
(13:44):
And you know, the idea of it being an art form,
or the idea of it representing all kinds of different
cultural rituals and various other aspects of life that are
kind of embodied through the food we eat and the
way we prepare it and the way we eat it
and the way we make it kind of like a
factor in community. Right, So the world of mass marketed
(14:06):
food is inherently conspiratorial because it's almost like the antithesis
to that in some ways, or it's sort of like,
it's easy to look at it as kind of the
the big bad, corporate, lazy answer to like all the
things that are lovely and wonderful about food. So, if
you're listening to this in the United States, a question
(14:27):
to you is is it not somewhat weird that you
can eat almost anything.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Except for that or laton right, or latan ortolon, tiny.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Fried songbrick hydr and you have to have the napkin
or a cloth over your head so that God doesn't
see you enjoying yourself. That's literally the process it is.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And really quickly, I had a friend who is a
very very adventurous eater and went to I want to
see the Philippines and he ate those one hundred year
old eggs the baalute, which are like, uh, maybe that's different.
Hundred year old eggs a different so excuse me. Balute
is like an un uh uh fertilized or a partially
fertilized chicken egg where it's inside of the hard boiled
(15:13):
egg is a little tiny bird fetus. And apparently you
eat them warm and they it's it tastes like you said,
it tastes like chicken soup. He said, it was delightful.
But the concept of it squiggs me out big time.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, you eat the you eat the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And I've had it before. It's it. I think the
main thing that turns people off about it is that appearance.
You know, this partially developed creature, but it's still way
better than a century egg, the one hundred year egg
that you're describing.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
We ate some of that on a weird Facebook show
we used to do called stack stuff, and that's that.
That stuff was gross. Like I it is the definition
of an acquired taste.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Well, okay, have you let me just ask you guys
a question. You guys seem like adventurous eaters. Have either
of you tried tripe before?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yes, infa, it's been. I've had it in as like
a extra ingredient, INFA. But I've never had a hagus
or never really had like well, hagis and tripe on
the same I've never really eaten it like on its own.
I've had sweet breads, which isn't quite the same. That's thalamus,
if I'm not mistaken. But that's about as adventurous I've
got in that department. Ben you you did an immediate yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Because tripe is in actual intestine.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
One thing I had to admit here is that I've
I'm a big fan of sausage. I think it's maybe
the German parts of me or something, is something in
my blood very much enjoys a pork intestine encased meat.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
A worse sitzel.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah, but yeah, but but the thought of just eating
intestines just alone, no matter how it's prepared, grosses me out.
And I think it's just a I know, it's the
same kind of deal with the ballot, Like the thought
of it is much worse than the actual act or
the flavor or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
A couple things, okay. First off, one of my favorite
restaurants in the world for some reason, is a place
called Saint John's in the United Kingdom. The chef is
a guy named Fergus Henderson, and he has been credited
with quote unquote resurrecting British cooking. This guy cooks with
every part of the animal, especially the stuff that's usually
(17:39):
considered awful and thrown away. And this comes to it's
funny that you guys bring this up, because just a
few days ago I received their newest publication. I love
his cookbooks actually, and this call this one's called the
Book of Saint John, and there is an entire chapter
on tripe. It just he goes ham with it, not
(18:03):
on purpose, not that great, but I would I would
love to cook it for you guys sometime post pandemic.
Let's see if it's good. I've actually been to the
restaurant and it is surprisingly good. But there's some weird
stuff there. I like.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I like liver, I like Gamier meats, I like obviously
chicken thives isn't isn't the same thing as awful. But
I've had heart heart is tasty. It's very like hearty there.
It is that was absolutely not on purpose, yeah, but
it is. It has a really it's almost like steak
like it really is like a very muscular piece of meat.
I don't find it gross at all. I think the
(18:36):
things that I find gross are things that are are
squishy or in some ways have an odd texture. But yeah,
I don't. It doesn't really turn me off inherently.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
I'm glad you said squishy because that brings us to
the first big conspiracy we want to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, it does. It does just to sew this up.
This is the player want I made for anybody who
for anybody who was like, uh, anybody who feels very
closed minded about food or nutrition, or anybody who has
the audacity the temerity to look at another culture and say, oh,
it's gross that you eat that. If you're in the US,
(19:14):
I would ask you to consider just how strange it
is that cheese exists. Like, cheese is a weird thing.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And it's so normalized in our minds. It's just we
think of it as like this nice kind of pale
orange block that we can just slice off pieces of
and make a you know, a grilled sandwich with. But
the process of it is really strange, and if you
really dig down deep into it, it's an odd concept.
Like it's one of those things where like who figured
(19:42):
that out? It was obviously an accident, right, like letting
the milk kerdle, and what is it scraping off the
gross gelatinous surface that forms on top, and then processing
it further.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yeah, but it's it's a form of saving food that
was it going to go bad?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Right, right? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I mean it's so much food innovation comes from that
need to stock up on something when food supplies are limited.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I just bring that up because when it comes to cuisine,
a thing that everybody has in common, we're all in
a glasshouse or a glass restaurant, So I would be
very careful when throwing stones or looking down one's nose
at another person's plate.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
It really should be outdoor seating, by the way.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
It should be. Yes, it should be outdoor seating. But Matt,
you had the perfect segue. There's something we have to
talk about that may ruin one particularly popular appetizer in
the US. It's weird how normal it is to be
able to hop online in any major city and get
(20:53):
almost any food you want, virtually any food. Historically, if
you live hundreds and hundreds of miles in Lint, you
should not be able to get seafood, right, there's not
a water source from which to take that fish up.
But now it is very common to say, hey, let's
(21:14):
splurge a little Let's get some calamari, you know what
I mean. Let's get some fried lovely squid. Little squeeze
a lemon on there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I remember when I first started like encountering calamari, it
did feel like a very like special occasion kind of
dish like it was, and because it was exotic feeling like, ooh, squid, squiggy, squiggly,
squishy squid that's fried to a delightful golden brown and
then dipped in marinara sauce or some kind of what
do you call it aoli perhaps, But yeah, you know
(21:47):
the ones you can't go wrong when they're the ones
that have the little tentacles and they're the little heads.
That's definitely you're in good shape there. You're in good
hands with whomever is serving you those little babies. But
the ring is where things can go horribly south.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Yeah, you got to get the Kathulhu kalamari. Okay,
you want to lovecraft aspect to your klamari, because it
may not always be the squid you think.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It is, at least to some rumors.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
At least according to some rumors. Right, this is the
part of the episode where we have to say allegedly,
so allegedly the calamari might be something different. Kauugh cough,
it is often cough cough. Really it's happened, man, it's happened.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I see. I don't think so. I don't think it's
happened at all. Honestly, I've got to take that stance
right now because ikay, well, well let's talk about it first.
But I disagree with you, but let's let's go.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, yeah, I'm into it. So back in twenty thirteen,
this allegation hit a garnered national attention when it was
the subject of an episode of This American Life, A fantastic,
fantastic show. Uh In this was sort of conspiratorial. The
(23:10):
allegation here was that the calamari that people order in
restaurants is sometimes not from squid, but from pigs, specifically
their rectums, their intestines.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
To Matt's point, I do want to pose it are
there are the rectums just so cleanly removable that they
would just instantly resemble. And also it's like you get
one calamari ring per pig. That's that's that's a big
investment of livestock. That's all I'm saying here, Yeah, it's more.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I think using the word rectum is more for clickbait
or buzz value.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, it would really just be the.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The intestine itself cut into rings.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes, that's the thing that has been bandied about for
for for many years. While again to Matt, you may
completely disagree with this, we don't definitively know or we
or have proof of this has happened on some kind
of large scale, we do know that counterfeit seafood absolutely does,
(24:10):
whether it's you know, well meaning mislabeling right or maybe
in cooking perhaps, like it would be less of a
thing if you went into a fish market and they
were selling you something under the guise of being fresh
snapper and it was actually some other trash fish. But Matt,
we got to give you your day in court. What
is with what is your misgivings about this pig butthole phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Well, I was just doing some reading about it. Slate
has a great write up on that episode of This
American Life and that specific segment that came from a producer,
Ben Calhoun, and it literally was a friend of a
friend story that was just retold essentially in you know,
(24:53):
within this American life, and you know, upon further looking
at it, in really considering it, Calamari or you know,
squid frozen versions of it are widely available. They're fairly inexpensive,
and you can charge a good amount of money for it.
So it's one of those menu items where only only
(25:17):
in the most desperate of situations I think would anyone,
you know, step to trying to get one over on
their customers to instead put tripe of some sort or
pig intestines of some sort in that in there in
the mix, rather than just you know, buying some fairly
inexpensive calamari and then selling it at a at a
(25:40):
price that they that they could.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, that's interesting, and I've I've read the same thing.
Here's how I would respond. These kinds of stories often
get exaggerated, Right, So is there a is there a
widespread calamari conspiracy? Probably not, I grant financially it it
doesn't make as much sense, and legally, according to Uncle Sam,
(26:05):
anything containing a pork product has to be labeled as such. However,
has this happened in isolated, perhaps desperate instances. The answer
is quite possibly, because there are numerous blind spots in
the supply chain. I would not characterize a restaurant maybe
selling counterfeit calamari as some sort of devious penny pinching institution.
(26:30):
I would say they may have been built as well,
somewhere in the supply chain. Because the issue here is
that counterfeit seafood, right, the true conspiracy here. Counterfeit seafood
is a real ongoing thing. No one has conclusively proven
a routine practice of subbing out squid for pig intestines.
(26:54):
But that lack of oversight is what compels people to
say as possible. But someone would have to be in
a very unique financial arrangement for this to make sense.
But the counterfeit seafood stuff, man, it goes way deeper
than a pig's butt.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
For sure. I wanted to bring one up really quickly. Again,
that's something that you know you've got imitation crab. It's
labeled as imitation crab. I really am not quite sure
what imitation crab is made of. But you have scallops
for example. Scallops sometimes can be cookie cutter punch outs
of like stingray or what else shark as well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
There's an interesting report just last year from an outfit
called Oceana, and they found that twenty one percent of
the seafood in the US is being served somehow under
what we could call a fake identity. I love that
you mentioned scallop snool. Things like lobster, catfish, flounder, hall
(27:54):
a ton of fish are often to be diplomatic mislabeled.
And there's also some marketing in here that's totally legal,
like Chilean sea.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Bass spared no expense. Remember that was that was the
That was the meal in Jurassic Park, the nice Chilean
sea bass.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That's right. The real name for Chilean sea bass is
Patagonian toothfish and yum. And you can pull up you
can pull up a picture. It's uh, it's it's not
gonna win the fish beauty contest.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Have you ever heard the expression toothsome?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Does that mean you got a lot of teeth if
it's something that's a nice texture to it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yes, testure, which you know something that I find very
toothsome is this imitation crab meat. This one's from trans Ocean.
This is one of my son's favorite snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
What's it made of? Matt? I just brought it up
a minute ago.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, whitish, right.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
That's why I'm bringing it to you. Alaska pollock, that's
what's in this one, water, egg whites, corn starch, sugar.
Oh god, king crab meat is in this just dash
or less of king crab meat or whoa or blue
crab meat extract or lobster or refined fish oil. Jesus.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Oh, this is like to choose your own adventure.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Ingregiations to my son. He loves it.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You don't know what you're feeding him each time. It
could be crab, it could be lobster.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh god, Well, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Honestly, there are some dishes in which with which I
prefer to use imitation crab.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But I I was not aware of that, Matt. Thank
you for bringing that to our attention. I don't think
I've seen an ingredient list that goes down into an
either or situation. I didn't know that was legal.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It does seem a little fishy there.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It is. You know what I was wrong with the or?
There are a couple of oars. But don't I put
in a few, sir, soup Lula put in too many? Jesus,
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go with this back before
he goes bad. Yeah, I'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Well, I think we're wrapped on seafood there, and that
was a great way to do it. But I just
had to bring this up because I don't think it's
anywhere else in the outline. If we're talking about imitation stuff,
we would be remiss if we didn't mention the all
the horse meat kerfuffle of recent years. I don't quite
remember what. I think it was just a couple of
years twenty thirteen, okay, so a few more than recent.
(30:30):
But the chain of German in origin supermarkets all the
conducted a test on some of their ready made beef dishes,
you know, frozen things, and it was from a supplier
named Camigel, and tests revealed that thirty to one hundred
percent of these beef products were actually horse meat. No, yeah,
(30:55):
and they withdrew them. And this is a thing, This
can be confirmed. This actually happened. This is not a
conspiracy theory. And I think Ben, we've talked about this.
You have interesting takes on horse meat. There's some Asian
countries where you've been to where it is pretty readily available,
and I believe you tried it and you didn't think
it was too bad.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
No, not too bad at all.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
But you want to know, you want to know, that's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You want to know. I don't think anybody is looking
back fondly on twenty thirteen as that time I got
tricked into eating horse meat. This also all they got
the most pressed for this. But that supplier you mentioned
was supplying several other companies in Sweden and I want
to say France. The counterfeiting problem in food is a
(31:44):
multi layered conspiracy and it occurs all the time all
around us. In fact, by the way, we're probably going
to see more of it unless there's some pretty robust
legislation down the pike. As maritime ecosystems collapse. You know
(32:04):
you're gonna see more and more confusing seafood.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Uh huh. I do have to add this last thing,
and then I'm then I'm done on this topic. The
dishes in question at Aldi, to be fair, were called
Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagna and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti bollinet.
So you know it was special beef aka horse beef.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, and especially you know, given that consuming that type
of flesh is taboo in the West. This is not Yeah,
this is not like finding out you know that you
were you ordered chicken and you got a duck, you
know what I mean. These are very different things.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So it's sort of almost the equivalent of like being
a vegetarian and being dosed with like chicken meat, you
know what I mean. Like, I mean, it's a little different,
but it's that level of like if you found this out,
it was against all of your principles, Like eating a
horse would be like the worst possible thing you could imagine.
It could shake your whole culinary worldview and really like
(33:14):
cause some serious PTSD for some people.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Agreed, And speaking of trauma fear speculation, let's pause for
a word from our sponsor and we'll dive into some
urban legends and we're back. This is a weird one.
(33:38):
Right to us conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. If you
have heard of a theory like this, there's a long
running idea or theory we can call it, that certain
beverages are meant to promote sterilization or to prevent sexual
(34:00):
activity through some ingredient, some additive that's put into the mix.
This is a long running concept in parts of world
militaries and This is a concept that's pretty common in
the US prison system. Right, they'll say, hey, the stuff
they're giving you to drink maybe like rendering you sexually
(34:26):
dysfunctional for a time, or the very far extreme is
that this will somehow permanently sterilize a person. And it
makes sense that these two ideas would come from places
with a large male population, right, and that has to
live in close quarters, which is kind of unnatural for people.
(34:49):
The thing is, there's not any proof of this. If
you have proof from maybe your time in the armed
forces or something, then we would love to hear it.
But have you guys ever heard of this there?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Well, I mean not intentional, like I wasn't there a
thing where certain dyes maybe would render people sterile or
or not promote proper growth of reproductive cells like yellow
number five and things like that, or did I make
that up?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
There have been rumors about various food additives, food colors,
and a couple other things like stabilizers. We talked about
was what we talked about a little while ago. That
was in Mountain Dew. God, it was a long time.
I think it was twenty fourteen maybe we talked about that,
(35:37):
But it's the flame, flame retardant chemical or something that
exists within a lot of citrus beverages that causes that
cloudy Look.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
Oh, bromri brominated Yes, something.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Vegetable oil?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yes, exactly is that true? Brominated vegetable oil? This is
what I recall it being.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, it a multifies citrus flavored soft drinks. There's a
lot of issue with that. But ben to your to
answer your question, I don't know anything about some kind
of larger conspiracy to you know, sterilize people through some
kind of drink or substance like that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, it's a it's kind of a subgenre that bears
something in common with the belief that substance X is
added to a common resource like water, right for some
nefarious purpose. So it's similar to say, it's similar to
(36:41):
the old fluoridation stories. The fluoride is added to water.
That part is true. But with this there are some
weird questions, right, There are some holes in this concept,
first one being how do you regulate a dosage that's
the same you run into with the fluoride theories and
(37:02):
other related ones. But the scary thing about this is
that it doesn't come from nowhere, right, it has a
past and a precedent because theories and speculation regarding population
control in the United States are firmly rooted in Uncle
Sam's very real and very disturbing practice of eugenics. Like
(37:29):
the government of the United States actively did sterilize people
multiple times, and it's weird that it doesn't get mentioned
as often as it should.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Yeah, we've talked about a couple in a couple of
different episodes on for various reasons, just the terrible history
that the United States has with eugenics and how it
actually appears to have influenced a certain regime out in Germany.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Right, And it might surprise a lot of our US
listeners to know the first eugenics based compulsory sterilization law
in human history was passed here in the US. Indiana
in nineteen oh seven made humanities first law of this sort,
(38:22):
and other people just copied Indiana. The Virginia Sterilization Act
in nineteen twenty four called for patients and mental institutions
to be sterilized against their will.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
This is when they threw around all those really you know,
offensive terms for people with low IQs. Correct.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, this is another one of those things and rumors
that as you're saying, it feels true because if you
think about a prison population, let's just take that as
a as an example, there would be motive for those
who run the prison to keep the inmates, you know,
(39:02):
the population as calm as possible, right they would have
there would be motivation for that, for that desire. And
if you could achieve that by applying some what was it,
extra ingredient to you know, whatever food supply or drink
supply that you've got providing that you're providing for them,
(39:23):
you know, it would be it would be easily achieved. However,
you know, I don't have any proof. I don't think
we have any proof to show that it's happening at
even one particular prison or something like that. But it
definitely feels real.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. So we couldn't find any
solid confirmation about this. It's just it's very common. One
of the ingredients that you hear a lot in these
theories is saltpeter, and someone will say that saltpeter is
added to maybe not just the water, but the food
(40:00):
as well. Also you'll hear this in boys schools, and
the idea is that it diminishes the sex drive to
your point, Matt, to make the population somewhat more sedate
and easy to control.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Wait, wait, you're saying I can take saltpeter to lower
my sex.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Drive potassium nitrate. But the problem here is no, I'm
not saying that because it doesn't work. Oh okay, it
doesn't work. It just sounds intelligent and conversation. Okay, you know,
because you can find saltpeter and a ton of stuff.
It's used as a preservative in food and color. It's
(40:40):
an agent of color retention in things like bacon, corn, beef, haam,
hot dogs. Hey, maybe even sausages. But it's also an
ice cream. So this one we can say is, so
far as we can tell, is not true, but it
is based in some very real, very disturbing truths, and
those are you know, there's an argument you could make
(41:02):
that the oral tradition of this conspiratorial story is kind
of our culture recounting the terrible things that occurred in
the past. But now we know you were waiting for this, folks. Yes,
(41:23):
we are going to talk about some of those wild
fast food ideas. Fast food itself is kind of a conspiracy, right,
There's never been a global supply chain like this.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
You've probably heard rumors that the McRib for McDonald's is
so popular that it like skews the world pork market.
You probably had some weird fast food experiences in your
old life.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Is that why they only bring it back seasonally? Ben?
Because they don't want to totally upend the pork supply. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah, cows and chickens, we're good all year. That's fine.
But the pigs, you got to let them be for
a while.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Got to wonder how much actual pork is in that
McRib too. I mean, I just I'm not I have
no proof for answer to this question. I just, for
some reason, I have a feeling like it's a pork
composite kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Oh for sure. Yeah, here's here's the thing. You can
find some work on this by economists who are usually
arguing that there isn't there isn't a super strong correlation
between the McRib and pork prices in terms of like
a causative relationship, right, there were not saying. Most economists
(42:35):
will argue that the McRib itself doesn't seem to be
swinging the needle on global pork supplies. But maybe there's
another relief, Maybe there's a different relationship. Maybe McDonald's is
following the curve right, so maybe when pork prices drop
to some threshold, then they say, okay, it makes sense
(42:57):
for us to make the McRib again.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
That makes so much sense.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I mean, that makes more sense than the idea that
Ronald McDonald is somewhere steepling his clown fingers and saying
it's time to punish the pork people. They'll learn release
the McRib, you know what I mean. I don't think
it's quite that level.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
But there is somebody in some office that hits the
McRib button, though, and it's just an alert that goes
out to every franchise e and they're just like, it's.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Mc I like the idea of a red phone, like
an old school landline phone with no number. It's just
a red phone, like the batphone or something, and there's
one person who's entire job is to every so often
just pick up this phone and then say like, do it,
and then all across the world.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, oh, and they do it too, and they pick
up we're going to make apple fritters now, and then
he's they just say the new things I love it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
How do you get that gig? That's sort of like
dipping your toe into fast food conspiracy kind of thing, right,
because it sounds ostensibly possible, if not plausible, it sounds possible,
but other stories get weird so quickly. You guys remember
that before nineteen ninety one, KFC used to be called
(44:25):
Kentucky Fried Chicken. Do you guys remember that?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Yeah, big old signs there were just huge, with so
many letters.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And then they went the way of many brands like that,
and you know, wanted to simplify, go for a minimalist
approach KFC TLC. The implication what is that? I mean,
the implication in the conspiracy circles perhaps is that chicken
no longer was in play.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yes, Do you guys remember when we used to make
a show called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know
and then it became stiddied yep, oh.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah I do. It was a golden day at pr agency,
was worth every penny.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
So yeah. The idea then is that there's some sort
of dilution, right, the tail goes something like this. Over
the years, while selling you buckets of chicken, KFC was
also pain scientists to do insane experiments on poultry, and
(45:32):
they were genetically altering these poor, unfortunate birds to the
point where they weren't They might not even have heads anymore.
They might just be somehow some kind of like chicken
equivalent of a human centipede. Right, It's just they figured
out a way to just grow the breasts of the
wings and the drumsticks, et cetera. And now this could
(45:54):
no longer be, as you pointed out, labeled as chicken.
Whatever they did, they did it, they took it too far.
It's not chicken anymore, to be fair or foul. KFC
actually responded to this one. The responses to a lot
of these theories are classic. But imagine you're the pr
(46:17):
person for KFC and you have to say, okay, we
still use chicken. We're not at the dark forefront of
evil gadiga like genetic experimentation. But their response to this,
their comeback is, I don't know, it's believable, because they said,
we did change the name to get rid of some
(46:40):
words the government didn't tell us to. We just don't
want people to hear the word fried.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, because for quite a while there and even now
the word fried comes comes with it the connotation of
super unhealthy, like don't eat that. Ever, that's the worst
thing you could do to your body, don't do that,
which isn't necessarily true, but it's also not wrong.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
So I'll tell you what is one of the worst
things you could possibly put in your body is the
amazingly unhealthy KFC menu item, the double down. Do you
recall this? Is it? I don't know if it is
or not, but it was certainly was around. It was,
you know, a football he kind of themed menu item
that that substituted fried chicken patties for buns.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
So yeah, they weren't chicken patties. Those were breasts, my friend, okay, okay,
and they were delicious.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That they were, and it as bacon. I I never
ate it. I think they still serve it, but I
got close one time. But it was one of those
do I dare disturb the universe moments?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You know? Yes, do I dare disturb the sleeping elder
beast's slumber? That was redundant, but you get where I'm
coming from. Have you guys seen the delightful new Hulu
rebo of the show Animaniacs.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah, the first episode, it's great.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
And they in the first episode it's all about it.
They've been like away, I don't know, they were exile
or something, and they do with this amazing song called
the catch Up Song. That's all about everything that's happened
since the nineties when the show ended, and then since now,
and it goes through politics, it goes through like Amazon
and drones and all the things. There's a really great
part where they they're like, well, we don't know what's
gonna happen in the future because the writers are writing
(48:28):
this in twenty eighteen and it's not going to come
out till twenty twenty, so we'll just use our imagination.
And there is a amazing verse that goes like this,
we have chips in our brains. We no longer feel pain.
There are worsening climate disasters. Now we live underground, and
we can't make a sound lest we anger our polar
bear masters. We breed birds without arms on our factory farms,
(48:51):
and we live in aluminum bunkers. We sent humans to Mars.
All the food comes in bars, and the top rated
show is called Clunkers. And then it says it's about
a talking police car who's also a time machine. Wow,
here comes the star a klunko. I travel through time
following crime. Okay, that's all I've got. But I just
love the factory farms, births without arms, line and food
and bars. I thought that was appropriate for this episode.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
There you go, man, Animaiacs. Steven Spielberg made that stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
You guess still he's still involved. Yeah, it's very very good.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Well, you know what, you know what you have to
do a lot of when when you're making animated series.
What's that you gotta do? Caffeine baby? Yeah, well, some
kind of upper.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Drink.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah, yeah, excellent segue.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Man.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
There's a very popular chain that's familiar to all our
Canadian listeners. It's called tim Horton's. Many of our friends
up north will gladly seing the praises of a delicious
cup of tim Horton's coffee. This coffee a sponsor, not
a sponsor. This coffee come, I've actually never tried it.
(50:01):
This coffee comes with a free conspiracy theory of its own.
There are people who seemed to to some degree, believe
that Tim Hortons was spiking its coffee with something else,
and the people were becoming physiologically addicted to not the
caffeine necessarily, but whatever that ingredient X was, we'll just
(50:24):
referred to it collectively as crank. And they well, they
said that they thought, like the popular theory was that
Tim Hortons was adding nicotine to the coffee and people
were getting addicted to nicotine and they didn't realize it
because they were They thought they just really had to
have my morning cup of coffee, which you probably already
(50:46):
do if you are into caffeine. I'm drinking my second
cup of coffee right now. I don't know if there's
nicotine in it.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
This episode of stuff that I want you to know
is brought to you by iced coffee, home brewed or otherwise.
It's just going.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And then again pr manager for Tim Horton's had to
respond to this, which is a fun response. I like
the way Michelle Robischow put this. She says, there is,
in fact nothing added to our coffee. We believe our
guests are addicted to consistency.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Oh sick. Pr Burn really put those conspiracy theorists in
their place. Yeah, but this isn't the only time we've
heard about this. There are other instances in the past McDonald's,
for example, was accused of adding nicotine to hamburgers.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah, I mean it's nicotine is the addictive thing. Like
you want to get addicted to something, try nicotine. You'll
get there real fast. So that is one of the
I guess the go tos, the go to chemical when
it comes to something feeling like it's overly addictive or
more addiction, then you expected it to be.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Right right, because also nicotine is legal, you know what
I mean, It's not as if the accusation that somebody
who was, say, putting opioids in food wouldn't make as
much sense. That seems like a lot of risk for
a very weird gamble. So that you can see already
that a lot of this stuff, upon further examination, may
(52:25):
have a grain of truth as its cornerstone or its foundation.
But things get carried away pretty quickly. We wanted to
give you one very real one which you may not
have heard of, but it's called shrink flation. So have
you ever noticed a I know we're doing a lot
(52:47):
of Andy Rooney like you ever, but have you ever
noticed a sudden change in the packaging of your favorite
food like that? Did you go to buy some reel
that you loved during childhood out of nostalgia, and you say, hey, whoa,
this box is huh, this box is weirdly small. You're
(53:07):
not crazy. It's not the Mandela effect. You are experiencing.
Shrink Flation.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Just to the other day, actually bought a box of
Lucky Charms out of that exact impulse you're describing, pure nostalgia.
But honestly, it's one of those things where it's like,
do I really want a giant bag crammed full of
sugary marshmallow e morsels or would I be doing myself
a favor by having a half filled bag. I would
(53:33):
go with the latter personally, But it is a phenomenon
that we've seen over time, this idea of shrinkflation.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, it's a kind of inflation, right, but it works
because of the way that human beings encounter a product.
It doesn't just apply to food and beverage, but it's
pretty common in those respective industries. The ideas that you
can slowly reduce the size or amount of a product
(54:02):
while maintaining its sticker price. Because one thing consumers will
notice immediately when they're buying something is not necessarily the
change in what they're buying, but they will notice the
change in the product price, which is why, like, that's
the number most people pay attention to. You might shop
(54:22):
at some grocery store where they have the full price
of something, you know, like I say four ninety nine
or whatever, and then they have it broken down to
costs per ounce, but very few people actually read that part.
They just see four ninety nine or five ninety nine
or three ninety nine, and it makes a huge impact
on whether or not they buy that thing.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yep, there's a package. The label looks familiar. This is
what I always get. It's the same price, or maybe
a little bit more expensive or a little bit cheaper.
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
And manufacturers realize they could do this. They could skim
them just a little bit, the little taste, a little
bit more, a little bit more, retain the same price.
It doesn't happen overnight. You can see it in things
like the indentations at the bottom of cups, that little
half sphere that just gets bigger and bigger. You can
(55:17):
also see it in boxes, you know, like your experience
with lucky charms. But just me, it was orange juice,
orange juice, what's the deal?
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Just or like if you remember, if anyone's familiar with
a gallon of orange juice or milk or something, just
a full gallon was very common, or a half gallon,
at least here in the US. That's how you would
for a long time when I was a kid, that's
how you would buy orange juice. And then you know,
with a lot of these other companies creating new orange
(55:50):
drinks or orange orange juice products, like we've talked about
simply simply orange, I think is one of the major ones.
The packaging became very differ, and they're these specialized bottles,
and those bottles over time began to get smaller and smaller,
but it was the same type of bottle, but they
would get smaller and smaller. And it's gotten to the
(56:11):
point now where several brands that I have seen actually say,
you know, still one gallon or still however many fluid ounces,
or still you know this many millileaterers. It's really interesting
because it's become a marketing tool just to say, hey,
we're not doing the shrinking over here, but.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
You still could you could just say, like you could
say still sixty four ounces, and then next year you
could say still fifty two ounces.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Have you guys ever noticed those like indentations on the
side of gallons of milk or orange juice. It's like
a big circle that's an indentation. It's one of these
things where you'll see these like silly kind of life
hack or whatever. Like you that you didn't know this
about this thing that you've noticed every day of your life.
But there's actually a story behind it. The initial version
of that that I saw was that button will pop out.
(57:00):
Milk has gone bad because it's producing more gases, and
that button will like pop outward. But the real reason
is it allows the milk gallon to flex a little
more so it doesn't hold this rigid shape, so if
one happens to fall off a truck or get dropped,
it won't just explode. It gives it a little more
give because that button is flexing outward, you know, as
(57:22):
opposed to it being rigid walled container.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
That's brilliant to me. That just seems like good product,
is it? It really is engineering, baby, I'm fascinated by
the concept of it. You know, you see all this
clever packaging that works, like like you you have the
perfect example there Noel it's it's a what seems to
be a very simple solution, but holy smoke. So that's
(57:48):
got to be a game changer for the dairy industry.
And maybe that's where maybe that's where we end, just
on a slightly more sinister new packaging. We talked a
little bit about it with shrinkly, which is very, very real.
We'd love to hear your favorite or most infamous examples
of shrink flation. But let's talk a little bit about packaging.
(58:08):
What happens, what happens to all that stuff?
Speaker 2 (58:12):
You know?
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Oh well, okay, yeah, that's a that's a great thing
to bring up. By the way, if you want to
talk about packaging and intelligent design, somebody came up a
long time ago and with the pouch, the food pouch,
the food product pouch.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Matt. When you say intelligent design, are referring to the
notion that God is in control of our destinies.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yes, a deity of some sort designed the things. Yes,
these things are pouches of food.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah at the little twisty top. I love those.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Well, anyone that has ever had a child or is
just a fan of, you know, fruits and vegetables that
are puraed down into this consistency that can fit into
a bag like this. I mean, really is a brilliant
thing because there's not a ton to this. It's super
simple and you can put anything in there. The problem is,
(59:09):
instead of you know, let's say, back in the day,
this is old man Matt talking. Back in the day,
we used to get our apple sauce in a big
glass jar and you just spoon it out and eat
it individually like that. It was delicious. But now each
little serving comes in something like this, when like nowadays,
(59:31):
when you're eating apple sauce or something like that, or
it comes in one of these little individual I apologize
to anyone just listening to this.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Well, this is obviously going to be the YouTube clip.
Let's make a note of this. If you don't mind,
this has gonna be. This is the show and tell
portion of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (59:45):
Well, well, I'm holding up just one of these individual
little plastic cups filled with this one I think has
peaches in it, but it would be like apple sauce
or something, and every time you consume one of those,
all of that becomes trash, and even if you you
are recycling it. We've talked about the pitfalls of recycling,
it is probably going to end up in a landfill
(01:00:06):
somewhere or in an ocean somewhere. And think about right now,
going through the times of COVID in twenty twenty, just
how much takeaway food you're getting, how much carry out
you're getting, and all of the just the stuff that
you end up throwing away every time you eat a
meal like that. It's horrifying. I know, in my family
we counted up the number of plastic you know, those
(01:00:29):
little packages of plastic forks and so plastic wear that
you get. We actually saved them over the course of
a month. And we too frequently get takeaway and just
looking at it and quantifying it in that way was
a horrifying site.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, but it's also like something you would maybe potentially
buy for like picnics, or for like, you know, more
low key guest situations where you maybe don't want to
have to wash dishes. So if you take a little
bit of care with those kinds of products and you
you stockpile them, they can be useful and it's not
all waste. It's gonna be waste eventually. But I'm annoyed
(01:01:09):
when when those things are provided, when they're not asked for,
and it's.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Like, yeah, little sauce packet, how many of these have
you thrown away?
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Sorry? I always keep them with the intent of using them,
But then I'm like, I already have a giant bottle
of soy sauce. What am I going to do with
this little, tiny, single serving of soy sauce? You know,
I keep them, but then I never use them, and
then I eventually purge them.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry. I don't even be a big
downer that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
It's just these are things we should think about. Back
to our plastics discussion at the very top of the show,
these are important things. And Ben, we're talking about micro plastics, right,
wouldn't that be a thing that you'd need to consider
when it comes to forks and when it comes to
soy sauce packets. Over time, wouldn't those packages degrade and
potentially cause you to ingest those microplastics?
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Absolutely? Yeah, Unfortunately this has been proven. We just don't
know the extent of the long term consequences. Now, packaging
is packaging is a huge deal. There are companies that
will use what's called biodegradable packaging or sell you stuff
(01:02:21):
in glass bottles, which is cool because you have a
useful container at the end of the day. But the
fact of the matter is plastic checks all the boxes
for a durable thing that is cost effective, so that enshrinkflation.
Are two very real conspiracies. One last shout out. I
know everybody's been worried about this for the entire the
(01:02:43):
entirety of today's episode. We can confirm that Outback Steakhouse
has denied their tie, their alleged ties with the Illuminati.
Thank god, So everybody relaxed.
Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Yeah, we could be cool or you know, get more
on your toes because they talked about it. So, I mean,
and that was in twenty nineteen, so who knows. I
don't know. I think jury's out when he comes to
the Outback Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
This is this is a real story. We don't have
too much time to get into it. But a while
back someone on Twitter did it, did a conspiracy map,
and they mapped out locations of Outback Steakhouses in Arizona
and Georgia, Illinois, and a couple other places, and they said,
look at this these all if you look at the
(01:03:34):
arrangement here, this forms a pentagram. Is Outback Steakhouse au
front for a Satanic cult. Outback Steakhouse said, in another
great pr statement, Outback Steakhouse said they have no world
conquering plans other than to bring bold steaks and bluemin
(01:03:57):
onions to our guest.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Ever eat the bloomin onion? Why it's it's got an
insane amount of calories.
Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Oh yeah, well it's it's for sharing, Matt, It's for sharing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Oh no, it's not. It's for personal consumption. I know
this for a fact. I've I've been there.
Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
You bloom uh so?
Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Uh so.
Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
That that's that's our show today. We've covered a lot
of things. We hope that you enjoyed it. And Australian listeners,
I've always wondered, what what do you all in Australia
think of Outback Steakhouse?
Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Is it offensive?
Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Is it like is it like too much of a caricature?
And then there's what fosters Australian for beer.
Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Here's my question. Do they have outback steakhouses in Australia?
Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
I think yeah, I think there is uh it, there
is one in Australia. But you know, we can't talk
too much trash about that because here in the us.
We have American Deli.
Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
We do. They're everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
So that's our show, folks. We hope this finds you
happy and in good health, and as always, we want
to hear from you. We've covered some really crazy stuff
that's probably not true. We've covered some things that are
very true and disturbing, but we didn't cover everything. So
what food related conspiracies do you feel have serious? Sand?
(01:05:20):
Let us know.
Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Yes, you can find us on social media. We are
all over the place. Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook,
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram, check out YouTube dot com
slash conspiracy Stuff to watch clips from this episode and
all of the other ones that we do. It's it's
quite a bit of fun and reading the comments is
(01:05:41):
a joy, and leaving a comment is you know, I
don't know what you'd call that experience, but you should.
Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
You should try it out.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
But that's not it. If you want to give us
a call, we have a phone number.
Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
That's right, it's one eight three three std WYTK. Leave
a message at the sound of Ben's dulcet tone. Try
to keep it in their three minute range three minute maximum.
If it's really juicy, you need to call back. It
will cut you off after three, but you know do
your best. Brevity is the soul of wit, as they say,
and you might find your story on one of our
(01:06:15):
weekly listener mail episodes, and if.
Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Done, that quite badgs your badgers. We have one way
that you can always contact us, regardless of the time
of year and time of day or what you're eating.
None is our good old fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't
(01:06:51):
want you to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. This one is for everybody who likes
to have a snack while they're listening to their favorite podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Gotta Eat, Ben says via Checkers. You don't have to
eat Checkers, but you do have to eat sustain your body.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yes, guys, Honestly, I can't remember all the stuff we
talked about in this one. I do recall as a
bit of a grab bag from all of the things
we had been hearing over the course of most of
that year. In twenty twenty, there's so many different rumors
about food. Twenty found their way, well, they've found their
way onto social media, and particularly because we're all going
(00:39):
through this weird pandemic thing for a while and we're
thinking more about the food, how it gets in our house.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you wash it?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Doesn't the pandemic just seem charming comparatively now, I don't know,
Maybe that's a hot take.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I am gonna say it bring me back to the
golden days.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
If you are in our audience, we trust you. In
Transparency is key. Having a bunch of people locked inside
their houses was actually very good for podcasting.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's great for podcasting, and I don't mean to make light.
I know people lost their lives and it was a
horrific time, but you know.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It was also really good for the planet.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, where the dolphins were appearing in the canals all
of a sudden, the Oza Frank style just hopping over
rainbows and the ozone popped up back like Captain America
and Avengers films, and went, I could do this all.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Day maybe, And then we were all like, burn the
oil fields.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Roll the co.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
So food is a great unifier the human experience. We
talked about that in a recent episode on the looming
hunger crisis, which we made mention in part of this
series from twenty twenty. But tune in to this one
for an exploration of as Matt you said, a grab
bag of some of the strangest, most disturbing evolutions of
(01:57):
urban legends. You know, like the GMO chickens that are
just chicken centipede, like human centipede, and they have no
head or ass, you know, just breast and wings and
draw all.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
The way down, all the way down.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Let's roll the tape.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Met, my
name is Nol.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We are returning to the world
of food conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What are you eating?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
What's the last thing you ate? What's the next thing
you're going to eat? After you hear this show?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Leftover Chinese, leftover, Chinese, leftover Turkey for a lot of people,
because as we record today's episode of Folks, we are
hurtling toward the end of twenty twenty and as you
are hearing this post.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Thanksgiving, just to get this out of the way very quickly,
pandemic rates will have shot up in the United States.
People will die.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah. I heard a stat today that it was I think, uh,
maybe a third of the Thanksgiving travel from last year,
but still like the most traffic airports have seen since
the pandemic began. They're saying like a million people a day.
So people are paying super close attention to the experts,
and that's just a little troubling.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I can't remember which show I mentioned this on, but
earlier I found some of the same information in one
of the One of the most trouble things is that
historically the busiest day for airports every year in the
US is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so be careful if
you have to travel anyhow, All of this is not
(04:12):
a conspiracy. In fact, we predicted a pandemic in earlier episodes,
not because we're some sort of clairvoyance or precogs or something,
just because statistically it was a certainty. Today, Matt Nole,
Mission Control and yours truly are exploring something a little
bit lighter. This is the last last episode we're recording
(04:36):
before we go to a Thanksgiving break. Stuff they'll want
you to know is often a pretty heavy meal of
ugly truths and we hope worthwhile information. But as we
had the parts unknown this weekend, what we'd like to
do with this episode is has offered more something like
a series of tapas. You know what I mean. It's
(04:57):
a grab bag, if you will, some of our favorite
food related conspiracies and urban legends. Longtime listeners, you know
that we've We've covered stuff like this in the past.
We just keep finding more weird things about food before
we dive in.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Can I can I bust one myth real quick? You
don't need to brin your turkey hot take. I don't
know how few people feel about it. I found out
that what brining a turkey does is, you know, the
salt causes osmosis, So the turkey takes in all this water,
the salt water, and you know, you can season the
brian as well, but that gives the illusion of juiciness.
(05:36):
But the juiciness is not really the juiciness of the turkey.
It's just water that's been absorbed into the turkey. So
while that definitely will give you a juicy or bird,
you can get that same effect just by like doing
a nice butter garlic rub under the skin and then
letting it rest long enough so that the juices actually
begin to kind of flow. So that's that's from Gordon
(05:58):
Ramsey to my ears to your ears, just putting that
out there, and that's what I'm doing this year. Hopefully
it was actually successful. This is obviously happening in the
past now, but I'm really feeling strong about it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, you heard it here. Everyone, do not Brian your turkeys.
Gordon Ramsey says so, and I listened to anything that
man says. Honestly, I think he's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Now he's really nice in person.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Actually that's what I hear from everybody. But you know, instead,
hopefully all of you took your oil, you know, your
large bats of oil where you're going to fry your turkeys,
put them outside, maybe on your wooden porch, and did
it there, and you know, hopefully only a small percentage
of you burned your porch down.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Hopefully some folks did the beer can turkey recipe.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That thing is.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That's pretty fun. But you know, there's ritual. There's ritual
I think, involved in creating the Thanksgiving meal, and sometimes
that ritual becomes even more important than the culinary science. Right,
you cook the way that someone of your older relatives
taught you in the days of old, and that'll happen
(07:06):
again toward the end of the year, because these sorts
of traditional meals are very important in human culture. Which
makes me sound a bit like a robot, but I
am technically correct. So let's see what we find in
this dive into the world of food conspiracies, and let's
see what we can actually prove. This is a little
topsy turvy because we're going to start with some terrible
(07:27):
things that are absolutely true, and then we'll get to
the fun stuff. So here are the facts. First. Many
of the terrible, terrible things you have heard about the
food you eat, about the way it's grown, about the
way it's sold, transported, processed, given to you. All of
those terrible things are true, a lot of them. I mean,
(07:48):
nutrition is power. The power balance is skewed. Millions of
people are starving right now while other people are fighting
about the quote unquote right way to eat caviaar or
to law or you know, like where's the good where's
the good coffee or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's got to have a special spoon for caviar. Is
that a thing? It's like a caviar spoon. Yeah, I've
never had it before. Is it good?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
The spoon or the I don't think I've ever had
caviar before.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Maybe in a dish, a fancy dish, but I've never
eaten it like on its own. That's sounds like something
you might have tried been.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Do fish eggs incorporated into a sushi dish count as caviar.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I don't believe so different than I've had caviar either.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Very specific kind of God, it's a whole thing. I
think the Emperor has no clothes as far as that goes.
But but yeah, it's true. There there are a lot
of inequalities in our food system. And then there are
a lot of it might sound hyperbolic to see it,
but there are a lot of vampiric corporations that are
(08:54):
heavily influencing the food and beverage industry right right, like yeah,
bless you, But you know there are there are powerful
companies that are bending the laws to their whim and they've.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Got a bunch of really long straws that go underground
and they drink our collective milkshakes.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And one of the big ones is Nestley. Not for nothing,
that's not our opinion. You can you can easily look
that up. Third, and this is another bummer, absolutely true.
Plastic boy. We got so much feedback on our microplastics episode,
and it is all correct, and it is all terrifying.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, it's everywhere on the lands, in the seas, on
the seas, in your body.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, yeah, legos, I'm just gonna leave it there. What
about the food pyramid, Guys, that was a thing that
was like on posters in our like elementary school classrooms,
and you know it praises sung worshipful to the food pyram.
That's obviously a thing that we still rely heavily upon
in our nourishment, at least in terms of a visual aid. Right.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, it has been for a long time, has changed
a lot over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, the food pyramid is kind of a crock.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
This is not this is not to say that there
isn't solid science involved, but unfortunately the pyramid was at
least in the past, heavily influenced by the food industry,
by powerful lobbying groups. In that sphere, you can see
multiple books that claim that sort of influence exists today
(10:44):
and that these companies exert a lot of agency and
power on the USDA, and especially like milk companies get
accused of influencing the Department of Agriculture into you know,
tilting the pyramid their way.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, but if you're interested in learning more about that,
I would recommend everybody, if you're in the US, go
to choose MyPlate dot gov, which is actually a I
don't know. In my opinion, a pretty good nutritional guide
that's set up for personal use for an individual person
or family, where you can actually kind of make your
own food pyramid of what you should be eating and
(11:23):
where you should be where you could be getting your nutrients.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Oh that's great. Yeah, that I have not checked that
out before, Matt, I'm going to pull that up. I
would also I would also recommend checking out a book
by Michael Pollen called The Omnivores Dilemma. The Omnivores Dilemma
is pretty It has a very simple diet that is
summed up like this, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
(11:51):
I'm not here to proselytize. I just like the way
it's written. So check that out. Because we have to
consider the source, we look at things like industry influence
science in any case. So these are all bummers, right,
this is this is all kind of bad news. We
usually take careful time to explore the stories behind those
(12:18):
four or five things that we just mentioned. You can
learn more about this in previous episodes. We've also done
work on the weird sugar cover up that occurred in
the US. We've examined stories about chocolate and cocoa, and
of course palm oil. You can find that in previous episodes.
(12:41):
But today, just to take a break from this very
very crazy year, we thought it would be interesting to
delve into some of that rogues gallery of urban legends
about food, all the weird stuff you heard growing up,
all the things that maybe like that guy who lived
down the hallway from your first apartment, which is sometimes
(13:03):
like mutter, you know, the weird out of the blue stuff.
People really seem to believe. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean, you know, food is a necessity. Got
to have it to survive, got to have it to
get things done. It's something that we have in common
with all other humans, despite our many many differences. So
it shouldn't surprise anyone that we've evolved an incredibly complex
and dense, dare we say, folkloric kind of system around food.
(13:44):
And you know, the idea of it being an art form,
or the idea of it representing all kinds of different
cultural rituals and various other aspects of life that are
kind of embodied through the food we eat and the
way we prepare it and the way we eat it
and the way we make it kind of like a
factor in community. Right, So the world of mass marketed
(14:06):
food is inherently conspiratorial because it's almost like the antithesis
to that in some ways, or it's sort of like,
it's easy to look at it as kind of the
the big bad, corporate, lazy answer to like all the
things that are lovely and wonderful about food. So, if
you're listening to this in the United States, a question
(14:27):
to you is is it not somewhat weird that you
can eat almost anything.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Except for that or laton right, or latan ortolon, tiny.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Fried songbrick hydr and you have to have the napkin
or a cloth over your head so that God doesn't
see you enjoying yourself. That's literally the process it is.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
And really quickly, I had a friend who is a
very very adventurous eater and went to I want to
see the Philippines and he ate those one hundred year
old eggs the baalute, which are like, uh, maybe that's different.
Hundred year old eggs a different so excuse me. Balute
is like an un uh uh fertilized or a partially
fertilized chicken egg where it's inside of the hard boiled
(15:13):
egg is a little tiny bird fetus. And apparently you
eat them warm and they it's it tastes like you said,
it tastes like chicken soup. He said, it was delightful.
But the concept of it squiggs me out big time.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, you eat the you eat the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And I've had it before. It's it. I think the
main thing that turns people off about it is that appearance.
You know, this partially developed creature, but it's still way
better than a century egg, the one hundred year egg
that you're describing.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
We ate some of that on a weird Facebook show
we used to do called stack stuff, and that's that.
That stuff was gross. Like I it is the definition
of an acquired taste.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Well, okay, have you let me just ask you guys
a question. You guys seem like adventurous eaters. Have either
of you tried tripe before?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yes, infa, it's been. I've had it in as like
a extra ingredient, INFA. But I've never had a hagus
or never really had like well, hagis and tripe on
the same I've never really eaten it like on its own.
I've had sweet breads, which isn't quite the same. That's thalamus,
if I'm not mistaken. But that's about as adventurous I've
got in that department. Ben you you did an immediate yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Because tripe is in actual intestine.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
One thing I had to admit here is that I've
I'm a big fan of sausage. I think it's maybe
the German parts of me or something, is something in
my blood very much enjoys a pork intestine encased meat.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
A worse sitzel.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah, but yeah, but but the thought of just eating
intestines just alone, no matter how it's prepared, grosses me out.
And I think it's just a I know, it's the
same kind of deal with the ballot, Like the thought
of it is much worse than the actual act or
the flavor or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
A couple things, okay. First off, one of my favorite
restaurants in the world for some reason, is a place
called Saint John's in the United Kingdom. The chef is
a guy named Fergus Henderson, and he has been credited
with quote unquote resurrecting British cooking. This guy cooks with
every part of the animal, especially the stuff that's usually
(17:39):
considered awful and thrown away. And this comes to it's
funny that you guys bring this up, because just a
few days ago I received their newest publication. I love
his cookbooks actually, and this call this one's called the
Book of Saint John, and there is an entire chapter
on tripe. It just he goes ham with it, not
(18:03):
on purpose, not that great, but I would I would
love to cook it for you guys sometime post pandemic.
Let's see if it's good. I've actually been to the
restaurant and it is surprisingly good. But there's some weird
stuff there. I like.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I like liver, I like Gamier meats, I like obviously
chicken thives isn't isn't the same thing as awful. But
I've had heart heart is tasty. It's very like hearty there.
It is that was absolutely not on purpose, yeah, but
it is. It has a really it's almost like steak
like it really is like a very muscular piece of meat.
I don't find it gross at all. I think the
(18:36):
things that I find gross are things that are are
squishy or in some ways have an odd texture. But yeah,
I don't. It doesn't really turn me off inherently.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
I'm glad you said squishy because that brings us to
the first big conspiracy we want to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, it does. It does just to sew this up.
This is the player want I made for anybody who
for anybody who was like, uh, anybody who feels very
closed minded about food or nutrition, or anybody who has
the audacity the temerity to look at another culture and say, oh,
it's gross that you eat that. If you're in the US,
(19:14):
I would ask you to consider just how strange it
is that cheese exists. Like, cheese is a weird thing.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And it's so normalized in our minds. It's just we
think of it as like this nice kind of pale
orange block that we can just slice off pieces of
and make a you know, a grilled sandwich with. But
the process of it is really strange, and if you
really dig down deep into it, it's an odd concept.
Like it's one of those things where like who figured
(19:42):
that out? It was obviously an accident, right, like letting
the milk kerdle, and what is it scraping off the
gross gelatinous surface that forms on top, and then processing
it further.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yeah, but it's it's a form of saving food that
was it going to go bad?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Right, right? Right?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I mean it's so much food innovation comes from that
need to stock up on something when food supplies are limited.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I just bring that up because when it comes to cuisine,
a thing that everybody has in common, we're all in
a glasshouse or a glass restaurant, So I would be
very careful when throwing stones or looking down one's nose
at another person's plate.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
It really should be outdoor seating, by the way.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
It should be. Yes, it should be outdoor seating. But Matt,
you had the perfect segue. There's something we have to
talk about that may ruin one particularly popular appetizer in
the US. It's weird how normal it is to be
able to hop online in any major city and get
(20:53):
almost any food you want, virtually any food. Historically, if
you live hundreds and hundreds of miles in Lint, you
should not be able to get seafood, right, there's not
a water source from which to take that fish up.
But now it is very common to say, hey, let's
(21:14):
splurge a little Let's get some calamari, you know what
I mean. Let's get some fried lovely squid. Little squeeze
a lemon on there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I remember when I first started like encountering calamari, it
did feel like a very like special occasion kind of
dish like it was, and because it was exotic feeling like, ooh, squid, squiggy, squiggly,
squishy squid that's fried to a delightful golden brown and
then dipped in marinara sauce or some kind of what
do you call it aoli perhaps, But yeah, you know
(21:47):
the ones you can't go wrong when they're the ones
that have the little tentacles and they're the little heads.
That's definitely you're in good shape there. You're in good
hands with whomever is serving you those little babies. But
the ring is where things can go horribly south.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. Yeah, you got to get the Kathulhu kalamari. Okay,
you want to lovecraft aspect to your klamari, because it
may not always be the squid you think.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It is, at least to some rumors.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
At least according to some rumors. Right, this is the
part of the episode where we have to say allegedly,
so allegedly the calamari might be something different. Kauugh cough,
it is often cough cough. Really it's happened, man, it's happened.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I see. I don't think so. I don't think it's
happened at all. Honestly, I've got to take that stance
right now because ikay, well, well let's talk about it first.
But I disagree with you, but let's let's go.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, yeah, I'm into it. So back in twenty thirteen,
this allegation hit a garnered national attention when it was
the subject of an episode of This American Life, A fantastic,
fantastic show. Uh In this was sort of conspiratorial. The
(23:10):
allegation here was that the calamari that people order in
restaurants is sometimes not from squid, but from pigs, specifically
their rectums, their intestines.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
To Matt's point, I do want to pose it are
there are the rectums just so cleanly removable that they
would just instantly resemble. And also it's like you get
one calamari ring per pig. That's that's that's a big
investment of livestock. That's all I'm saying here, Yeah, it's more.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I think using the word rectum is more for clickbait
or buzz value.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, it would really just be the.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The intestine itself cut into rings.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes, that's the thing that has been bandied about for
for for many years. While again to Matt, you may
completely disagree with this, we don't definitively know or we
or have proof of this has happened on some kind
of large scale, we do know that counterfeit seafood absolutely does,
(24:10):
whether it's you know, well meaning mislabeling right or maybe
in cooking perhaps, like it would be less of a
thing if you went into a fish market and they
were selling you something under the guise of being fresh
snapper and it was actually some other trash fish. But Matt,
we got to give you your day in court. What
is with what is your misgivings about this pig butthole phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Well, I was just doing some reading about it. Slate
has a great write up on that episode of This
American Life and that specific segment that came from a producer,
Ben Calhoun, and it literally was a friend of a
friend story that was just retold essentially in you know,
(24:53):
within this American life, and you know, upon further looking
at it, in really considering it, Calamari or you know,
squid frozen versions of it are widely available. They're fairly inexpensive,
and you can charge a good amount of money for it.
So it's one of those menu items where only only
(25:17):
in the most desperate of situations I think would anyone,
you know, step to trying to get one over on
their customers to instead put tripe of some sort or
pig intestines of some sort in that in there in
the mix, rather than just you know, buying some fairly
inexpensive calamari and then selling it at a at a
(25:40):
price that they that they could.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, that's interesting, and I've I've read the same thing.
Here's how I would respond. These kinds of stories often
get exaggerated, Right, So is there a is there a
widespread calamari conspiracy? Probably not, I grant financially it it
doesn't make as much sense, and legally, according to Uncle Sam,
(26:05):
anything containing a pork product has to be labeled as such. However,
has this happened in isolated, perhaps desperate instances. The answer
is quite possibly, because there are numerous blind spots in
the supply chain. I would not characterize a restaurant maybe
selling counterfeit calamari as some sort of devious penny pinching institution.
(26:30):
I would say they may have been built as well,
somewhere in the supply chain. Because the issue here is
that counterfeit seafood, right, the true conspiracy here. Counterfeit seafood
is a real ongoing thing. No one has conclusively proven
a routine practice of subbing out squid for pig intestines.
(26:54):
But that lack of oversight is what compels people to
say as possible. But someone would have to be in
a very unique financial arrangement for this to make sense.
But the counterfeit seafood stuff, man, it goes way deeper
than a pig's butt.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
For sure. I wanted to bring one up really quickly. Again,
that's something that you know you've got imitation crab. It's
labeled as imitation crab. I really am not quite sure
what imitation crab is made of. But you have scallops
for example. Scallops sometimes can be cookie cutter punch outs
of like stingray or what else shark as well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
There's an interesting report just last year from an outfit
called Oceana, and they found that twenty one percent of
the seafood in the US is being served somehow under
what we could call a fake identity. I love that
you mentioned scallop snool. Things like lobster, catfish, flounder, hall
(27:54):
a ton of fish are often to be diplomatic mislabeled.
And there's also some marketing in here that's totally legal,
like Chilean sea.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Bass spared no expense. Remember that was that was the
That was the meal in Jurassic Park, the nice Chilean
sea bass.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That's right. The real name for Chilean sea bass is
Patagonian toothfish and yum. And you can pull up you
can pull up a picture. It's uh, it's it's not
gonna win the fish beauty contest.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Have you ever heard the expression toothsome?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Does that mean you got a lot of teeth if
it's something that's a nice texture to it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yes, testure, which you know something that I find very
toothsome is this imitation crab meat. This one's from trans Ocean.
This is one of my son's favorite snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
What's it made of? Matt? I just brought it up
a minute ago.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, whitish, right.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
That's why I'm bringing it to you. Alaska pollock, that's
what's in this one, water, egg whites, corn starch, sugar.
Oh god, king crab meat is in this just dash
or less of king crab meat or whoa or blue
crab meat extract or lobster or refined fish oil. Jesus.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Oh, this is like to choose your own adventure.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Ingregiations to my son. He loves it.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You don't know what you're feeding him each time. It
could be crab, it could be lobster.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh god, Well, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Honestly, there are some dishes in which with which I
prefer to use imitation crab.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But I I was not aware of that, Matt. Thank
you for bringing that to our attention. I don't think
I've seen an ingredient list that goes down into an
either or situation. I didn't know that was legal.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It does seem a little fishy there.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It is. You know what I was wrong with the or?
There are a couple of oars. But don't I put
in a few, sir, soup Lula put in too many? Jesus,
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go with this back before
he goes bad. Yeah, I'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Well, I think we're wrapped on seafood there, and that
was a great way to do it. But I just
had to bring this up because I don't think it's
anywhere else in the outline. If we're talking about imitation stuff,
we would be remiss if we didn't mention the all
the horse meat kerfuffle of recent years. I don't quite
remember what. I think it was just a couple of
years twenty thirteen, okay, so a few more than recent.
(30:30):
But the chain of German in origin supermarkets all the
conducted a test on some of their ready made beef dishes,
you know, frozen things, and it was from a supplier
named Camigel, and tests revealed that thirty to one hundred
percent of these beef products were actually horse meat. No, yeah,
(30:55):
and they withdrew them. And this is a thing, This
can be confirmed. This actually happened. This is not a
conspiracy theory. And I think Ben, we've talked about this.
You have interesting takes on horse meat. There's some Asian
countries where you've been to where it is pretty readily available,
and I believe you tried it and you didn't think
it was too bad.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
No, not too bad at all.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
But you want to know, you want to know, that's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You want to know. I don't think anybody is looking
back fondly on twenty thirteen as that time I got
tricked into eating horse meat. This also all they got
the most pressed for this. But that supplier you mentioned
was supplying several other companies in Sweden and I want
to say France. The counterfeiting problem in food is a
(31:44):
multi layered conspiracy and it occurs all the time all
around us. In fact, by the way, we're probably going
to see more of it unless there's some pretty robust
legislation down the pike. As maritime ecosystems collapse. You know
(32:04):
you're gonna see more and more confusing seafood.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Uh huh. I do have to add this last thing,
and then I'm then I'm done on this topic. The
dishes in question at Aldi, to be fair, were called
Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagna and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti bollinet.
So you know it was special beef aka horse beef.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, and especially you know, given that consuming that type
of flesh is taboo in the West. This is not Yeah,
this is not like finding out you know that you
were you ordered chicken and you got a duck, you
know what I mean. These are very different things.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So it's sort of almost the equivalent of like being
a vegetarian and being dosed with like chicken meat, you
know what I mean. Like, I mean, it's a little different,
but it's that level of like if you found this out,
it was against all of your principles, Like eating a
horse would be like the worst possible thing you could imagine.
It could shake your whole culinary worldview and really like
(33:14):
cause some serious PTSD for some people.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Agreed, And speaking of trauma fear speculation, let's pause for
a word from our sponsor and we'll dive into some
urban legends and we're back. This is a weird one.
(33:38):
Right to us conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. If you
have heard of a theory like this, there's a long
running idea or theory we can call it, that certain
beverages are meant to promote sterilization or to prevent sexual
(34:00):
activity through some ingredient, some additive that's put into the mix.
This is a long running concept in parts of world
militaries and This is a concept that's pretty common in
the US prison system. Right, they'll say, hey, the stuff
they're giving you to drink maybe like rendering you sexually
(34:26):
dysfunctional for a time, or the very far extreme is
that this will somehow permanently sterilize a person. And it
makes sense that these two ideas would come from places
with a large male population, right, and that has to
live in close quarters, which is kind of unnatural for people.
(34:49):
The thing is, there's not any proof of this. If
you have proof from maybe your time in the armed
forces or something, then we would love to hear it.
But have you guys ever heard of this there?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Well, I mean not intentional, like I wasn't there a
thing where certain dyes maybe would render people sterile or
or not promote proper growth of reproductive cells like yellow
number five and things like that, or did I make
that up?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
There have been rumors about various food additives, food colors,
and a couple other things like stabilizers. We talked about
was what we talked about a little while ago. That
was in Mountain Dew. God, it was a long time.
I think it was twenty fourteen maybe we talked about that,
(35:37):
But it's the flame, flame retardant chemical or something that
exists within a lot of citrus beverages that causes that
cloudy Look.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
Oh, bromri brominated Yes, something.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Vegetable oil?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yes, exactly is that true? Brominated vegetable oil? This is
what I recall it being.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, it a multifies citrus flavored soft drinks. There's a
lot of issue with that. But ben to your to
answer your question, I don't know anything about some kind
of larger conspiracy to you know, sterilize people through some
kind of drink or substance like that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, it's a it's kind of a subgenre that bears
something in common with the belief that substance X is
added to a common resource like water, right for some
nefarious purpose. So it's similar to say, it's similar to
(36:41):
the old fluoridation stories. The fluoride is added to water.
That part is true. But with this there are some
weird questions, right, There are some holes in this concept,
first one being how do you regulate a dosage that's
the same you run into with the fluoride theories and
(37:02):
other related ones. But the scary thing about this is
that it doesn't come from nowhere, right, it has a
past and a precedent because theories and speculation regarding population
control in the United States are firmly rooted in Uncle
Sam's very real and very disturbing practice of eugenics. Like
(37:29):
the government of the United States actively did sterilize people
multiple times, and it's weird that it doesn't get mentioned
as often as it should.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Yeah, we've talked about a couple in a couple of
different episodes on for various reasons, just the terrible history
that the United States has with eugenics and how it
actually appears to have influenced a certain regime out in Germany.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Right, And it might surprise a lot of our US
listeners to know the first eugenics based compulsory sterilization law
in human history was passed here in the US. Indiana
in nineteen oh seven made humanities first law of this sort,
(38:22):
and other people just copied Indiana. The Virginia Sterilization Act
in nineteen twenty four called for patients and mental institutions
to be sterilized against their will.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
This is when they threw around all those really you know,
offensive terms for people with low IQs. Correct.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, this is another one of those things and rumors
that as you're saying, it feels true because if you
think about a prison population, let's just take that as
a as an example, there would be motive for those
who run the prison to keep the inmates, you know,
(39:02):
the population as calm as possible, right they would have
there would be motivation for that, for that desire. And
if you could achieve that by applying some what was it,
extra ingredient to you know, whatever food supply or drink
supply that you've got providing that you're providing for them,
(39:23):
you know, it would be it would be easily achieved. However,
you know, I don't have any proof. I don't think
we have any proof to show that it's happening at
even one particular prison or something like that. But it
definitely feels real.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. So we couldn't find any
solid confirmation about this. It's just it's very common. One
of the ingredients that you hear a lot in these
theories is saltpeter, and someone will say that saltpeter is
added to maybe not just the water, but the food
(40:00):
as well. Also you'll hear this in boys schools, and
the idea is that it diminishes the sex drive to
your point, Matt, to make the population somewhat more sedate
and easy to control.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Wait, wait, you're saying I can take saltpeter to lower
my sex.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Drive potassium nitrate. But the problem here is no, I'm
not saying that because it doesn't work. Oh okay, it
doesn't work. It just sounds intelligent and conversation. Okay, you know,
because you can find saltpeter and a ton of stuff.
It's used as a preservative in food and color. It's
(40:40):
an agent of color retention in things like bacon, corn, beef, haam,
hot dogs. Hey, maybe even sausages. But it's also an
ice cream. So this one we can say is, so
far as we can tell, is not true, but it
is based in some very real, very disturbing truths, and
those are you know, there's an argument you could make
(41:02):
that the oral tradition of this conspiratorial story is kind
of our culture recounting the terrible things that occurred in
the past. But now we know you were waiting for this, folks. Yes,
(41:23):
we are going to talk about some of those wild
fast food ideas. Fast food itself is kind of a conspiracy, right,
There's never been a global supply chain like this.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
You've probably heard rumors that the McRib for McDonald's is
so popular that it like skews the world pork market.
You probably had some weird fast food experiences in your
old life.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Is that why they only bring it back seasonally? Ben?
Because they don't want to totally upend the pork supply. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah, cows and chickens, we're good all year. That's fine.
But the pigs, you got to let them be for
a while.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Got to wonder how much actual pork is in that
McRib too. I mean, I just I'm not I have
no proof for answer to this question. I just, for
some reason, I have a feeling like it's a pork
composite kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Oh for sure. Yeah, here's here's the thing. You can
find some work on this by economists who are usually
arguing that there isn't there isn't a super strong correlation
between the McRib and pork prices in terms of like
a causative relationship, right, there were not saying. Most economists
(42:35):
will argue that the McRib itself doesn't seem to be
swinging the needle on global pork supplies. But maybe there's
another relief, Maybe there's a different relationship. Maybe McDonald's is
following the curve right, so maybe when pork prices drop
to some threshold, then they say, okay, it makes sense
(42:57):
for us to make the McRib again.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
That makes so much sense.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I mean, that makes more sense than the idea that
Ronald McDonald is somewhere steepling his clown fingers and saying
it's time to punish the pork people. They'll learn release
the McRib, you know what I mean. I don't think
it's quite that level.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
But there is somebody in some office that hits the
McRib button, though, and it's just an alert that goes
out to every franchise e and they're just like, it's.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Mc I like the idea of a red phone, like
an old school landline phone with no number. It's just
a red phone, like the batphone or something, and there's
one person who's entire job is to every so often
just pick up this phone and then say like, do it,
and then all across the world.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, oh, and they do it too, and they pick
up we're going to make apple fritters now, and then
he's they just say the new things I love it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
How do you get that gig? That's sort of like
dipping your toe into fast food conspiracy kind of thing, right,
because it sounds ostensibly possible, if not plausible, it sounds possible,
but other stories get weird so quickly. You guys remember
that before nineteen ninety one, KFC used to be called
(44:25):
Kentucky Fried Chicken. Do you guys remember that?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Yeah, big old signs there were just huge, with so
many letters.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And then they went the way of many brands like that,
and you know, wanted to simplify, go for a minimalist
approach KFC TLC. The implication what is that? I mean,
the implication in the conspiracy circles perhaps is that chicken
no longer was in play.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yes, Do you guys remember when we used to make
a show called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know
and then it became stiddied yep, oh.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah I do. It was a golden day at pr agency,
was worth every penny.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
So yeah. The idea then is that there's some sort
of dilution, right, the tail goes something like this. Over
the years, while selling you buckets of chicken, KFC was
also pain scientists to do insane experiments on poultry, and
(45:32):
they were genetically altering these poor, unfortunate birds to the
point where they weren't They might not even have heads anymore.
They might just be somehow some kind of like chicken
equivalent of a human centipede. Right, It's just they figured
out a way to just grow the breasts of the
wings and the drumsticks, et cetera. And now this could
(45:54):
no longer be, as you pointed out, labeled as chicken.
Whatever they did, they did it, they took it too far.
It's not chicken anymore, to be fair or foul. KFC
actually responded to this one. The responses to a lot
of these theories are classic. But imagine you're the pr
(46:17):
person for KFC and you have to say, okay, we
still use chicken. We're not at the dark forefront of
evil gadiga like genetic experimentation. But their response to this,
their comeback is, I don't know, it's believable, because they said,
we did change the name to get rid of some
(46:40):
words the government didn't tell us to. We just don't
want people to hear the word fried.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, because for quite a while there and even now
the word fried comes comes with it the connotation of
super unhealthy, like don't eat that. Ever, that's the worst
thing you could do to your body, don't do that,
which isn't necessarily true, but it's also not wrong.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
So I'll tell you what is one of the worst
things you could possibly put in your body is the
amazingly unhealthy KFC menu item, the double down. Do you
recall this? Is it? I don't know if it is
or not, but it was certainly was around. It was,
you know, a football he kind of themed menu item
that that substituted fried chicken patties for buns.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
So yeah, they weren't chicken patties. Those were breasts, my friend, okay, okay,
and they were delicious.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That they were, and it as bacon. I I never
ate it. I think they still serve it, but I
got close one time. But it was one of those
do I dare disturb the universe moments?
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You know? Yes, do I dare disturb the sleeping elder
beast's slumber? That was redundant, but you get where I'm
coming from. Have you guys seen the delightful new Hulu
rebo of the show Animaniacs.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah, the first episode, it's great.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
And they in the first episode it's all about it.
They've been like away, I don't know, they were exile
or something, and they do with this amazing song called
the catch Up Song. That's all about everything that's happened
since the nineties when the show ended, and then since now,
and it goes through politics, it goes through like Amazon
and drones and all the things. There's a really great
part where they they're like, well, we don't know what's
gonna happen in the future because the writers are writing
(48:28):
this in twenty eighteen and it's not going to come
out till twenty twenty, so we'll just use our imagination.
And there is a amazing verse that goes like this,
we have chips in our brains. We no longer feel pain.
There are worsening climate disasters. Now we live underground, and
we can't make a sound lest we anger our polar
bear masters. We breed birds without arms on our factory farms,
(48:51):
and we live in aluminum bunkers. We sent humans to Mars.
All the food comes in bars, and the top rated
show is called Clunkers. And then it says it's about
a talking police car who's also a time machine. Wow,
here comes the star a klunko. I travel through time
following crime. Okay, that's all I've got. But I just
love the factory farms, births without arms, line and food
and bars. I thought that was appropriate for this episode.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
There you go, man, Animaiacs. Steven Spielberg made that stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
You guess still he's still involved. Yeah, it's very very good.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Well, you know what, you know what you have to
do a lot of when when you're making animated series.
What's that you gotta do? Caffeine baby? Yeah, well, some
kind of upper.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Drink.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah, yeah, excellent segue.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Man.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
There's a very popular chain that's familiar to all our
Canadian listeners. It's called tim Horton's. Many of our friends
up north will gladly seing the praises of a delicious
cup of tim Horton's coffee. This coffee a sponsor, not
a sponsor. This coffee come, I've actually never tried it.
(50:01):
This coffee comes with a free conspiracy theory of its own.
There are people who seemed to to some degree, believe
that Tim Hortons was spiking its coffee with something else,
and the people were becoming physiologically addicted to not the
caffeine necessarily, but whatever that ingredient X was, we'll just
(50:24):
referred to it collectively as crank. And they well, they
said that they thought, like the popular theory was that
Tim Hortons was adding nicotine to the coffee and people
were getting addicted to nicotine and they didn't realize it
because they were They thought they just really had to
have my morning cup of coffee, which you probably already
(50:46):
do if you are into caffeine. I'm drinking my second
cup of coffee right now. I don't know if there's
nicotine in it.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
This episode of stuff that I want you to know
is brought to you by iced coffee, home brewed or otherwise.
It's just going.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And then again pr manager for Tim Horton's had to
respond to this, which is a fun response. I like
the way Michelle Robischow put this. She says, there is,
in fact nothing added to our coffee. We believe our
guests are addicted to consistency.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Oh sick. Pr Burn really put those conspiracy theorists in
their place. Yeah, but this isn't the only time we've
heard about this. There are other instances in the past McDonald's,
for example, was accused of adding nicotine to hamburgers.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yeah, I mean it's nicotine is the addictive thing. Like
you want to get addicted to something, try nicotine. You'll
get there real fast. So that is one of the
I guess the go tos, the go to chemical when
it comes to something feeling like it's overly addictive or
more addiction, then you expected it to be.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Right right, because also nicotine is legal, you know what
I mean, It's not as if the accusation that somebody
who was, say, putting opioids in food wouldn't make as
much sense. That seems like a lot of risk for
a very weird gamble. So that you can see already
that a lot of this stuff, upon further examination, may
(52:25):
have a grain of truth as its cornerstone or its foundation.
But things get carried away pretty quickly. We wanted to
give you one very real one which you may not
have heard of, but it's called shrink flation. So have
you ever noticed a I know we're doing a lot
(52:47):
of Andy Rooney like you ever, but have you ever
noticed a sudden change in the packaging of your favorite
food like that? Did you go to buy some reel
that you loved during childhood out of nostalgia, and you say, hey, whoa,
this box is huh, this box is weirdly small. You're
(53:07):
not crazy. It's not the Mandela effect. You are experiencing.
Shrink Flation.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Just to the other day, actually bought a box of
Lucky Charms out of that exact impulse you're describing, pure nostalgia.
But honestly, it's one of those things where it's like,
do I really want a giant bag crammed full of
sugary marshmallow e morsels or would I be doing myself
a favor by having a half filled bag. I would
(53:33):
go with the latter personally, But it is a phenomenon
that we've seen over time, this idea of shrinkflation.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, it's a kind of inflation, right, but it works
because of the way that human beings encounter a product.
It doesn't just apply to food and beverage, but it's
pretty common in those respective industries. The ideas that you
can slowly reduce the size or amount of a product
(54:02):
while maintaining its sticker price. Because one thing consumers will
notice immediately when they're buying something is not necessarily the
change in what they're buying, but they will notice the
change in the product price, which is why, like, that's
the number most people pay attention to. You might shop
(54:22):
at some grocery store where they have the full price
of something, you know, like I say four ninety nine
or whatever, and then they have it broken down to
costs per ounce, but very few people actually read that part.
They just see four ninety nine or five ninety nine
or three ninety nine, and it makes a huge impact
on whether or not they buy that thing.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yep, there's a package. The label looks familiar. This is
what I always get. It's the same price, or maybe
a little bit more expensive or a little bit cheaper.
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
And manufacturers realize they could do this. They could skim
them just a little bit, the little taste, a little
bit more, a little bit more, retain the same price.
It doesn't happen overnight. You can see it in things
like the indentations at the bottom of cups, that little
half sphere that just gets bigger and bigger. You can
(55:17):
also see it in boxes, you know, like your experience
with lucky charms. But just me, it was orange juice,
orange juice, what's the deal?
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Just or like if you remember, if anyone's familiar with
a gallon of orange juice or milk or something, just
a full gallon was very common, or a half gallon,
at least here in the US. That's how you would
for a long time when I was a kid, that's
how you would buy orange juice. And then you know,
with a lot of these other companies creating new orange
(55:50):
drinks or orange orange juice products, like we've talked about
simply simply orange, I think is one of the major ones.
The packaging became very differ, and they're these specialized bottles,
and those bottles over time began to get smaller and smaller,
but it was the same type of bottle, but they
would get smaller and smaller. And it's gotten to the
(56:11):
point now where several brands that I have seen actually say,
you know, still one gallon or still however many fluid ounces,
or still you know this many millileaterers. It's really interesting
because it's become a marketing tool just to say, hey,
we're not doing the shrinking over here, but.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
You still could you could just say, like you could
say still sixty four ounces, and then next year you
could say still fifty two ounces.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Have you guys ever noticed those like indentations on the
side of gallons of milk or orange juice. It's like
a big circle that's an indentation. It's one of these
things where you'll see these like silly kind of life
hack or whatever. Like you that you didn't know this
about this thing that you've noticed every day of your life.
But there's actually a story behind it. The initial version
of that that I saw was that button will pop out.
(57:00):
Milk has gone bad because it's producing more gases, and
that button will like pop outward. But the real reason
is it allows the milk gallon to flex a little
more so it doesn't hold this rigid shape, so if
one happens to fall off a truck or get dropped,
it won't just explode. It gives it a little more
give because that button is flexing outward, you know, as
(57:22):
opposed to it being rigid walled container.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
That's brilliant to me. That just seems like good product,
is it? It really is engineering, baby, I'm fascinated by
the concept of it. You know, you see all this
clever packaging that works, like like you you have the
perfect example there Noel it's it's a what seems to
be a very simple solution, but holy smoke. So that's
(57:48):
got to be a game changer for the dairy industry.
And maybe that's where maybe that's where we end, just
on a slightly more sinister new packaging. We talked a
little bit about it with shrinkly, which is very, very real.
We'd love to hear your favorite or most infamous examples
of shrink flation. But let's talk a little bit about packaging.
(58:08):
What happens, what happens to all that stuff?
Speaker 2 (58:12):
You know?
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Oh well, okay, yeah, that's a that's a great thing
to bring up. By the way, if you want to
talk about packaging and intelligent design, somebody came up a
long time ago and with the pouch, the food pouch,
the food product pouch.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Matt. When you say intelligent design, are referring to the
notion that God is in control of our destinies.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yes, a deity of some sort designed the things. Yes,
these things are pouches of food.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah at the little twisty top. I love those.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Well, anyone that has ever had a child or is
just a fan of, you know, fruits and vegetables that
are puraed down into this consistency that can fit into
a bag like this. I mean, really is a brilliant
thing because there's not a ton to this. It's super
simple and you can put anything in there. The problem is,
(59:09):
instead of you know, let's say, back in the day,
this is old man Matt talking. Back in the day,
we used to get our apple sauce in a big
glass jar and you just spoon it out and eat
it individually like that. It was delicious. But now each
little serving comes in something like this, when like nowadays,
(59:31):
when you're eating apple sauce or something like that, or
it comes in one of these little individual I apologize
to anyone just listening to this.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Well, this is obviously going to be the YouTube clip.
Let's make a note of this. If you don't mind,
this has gonna be. This is the show and tell
portion of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (59:45):
Well, well, I'm holding up just one of these individual
little plastic cups filled with this one I think has
peaches in it, but it would be like apple sauce
or something, and every time you consume one of those,
all of that becomes trash, and even if you you
are recycling it. We've talked about the pitfalls of recycling,
it is probably going to end up in a landfill
(01:00:06):
somewhere or in an ocean somewhere. And think about right now,
going through the times of COVID in twenty twenty, just
how much takeaway food you're getting, how much carry out
you're getting, and all of the just the stuff that
you end up throwing away every time you eat a
meal like that. It's horrifying. I know, in my family
we counted up the number of plastic you know, those
(01:00:29):
little packages of plastic forks and so plastic wear that
you get. We actually saved them over the course of
a month. And we too frequently get takeaway and just
looking at it and quantifying it in that way was
a horrifying site.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, but it's also like something you would maybe potentially
buy for like picnics, or for like, you know, more
low key guest situations where you maybe don't want to
have to wash dishes. So if you take a little
bit of care with those kinds of products and you
you stockpile them, they can be useful and it's not
all waste. It's gonna be waste eventually. But I'm annoyed
(01:01:09):
when when those things are provided, when they're not asked for,
and it's.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Like, yeah, little sauce packet, how many of these have
you thrown away?
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Sorry? I always keep them with the intent of using them,
But then I'm like, I already have a giant bottle
of soy sauce. What am I going to do with
this little, tiny, single serving of soy sauce? You know,
I keep them, but then I never use them, and
then I eventually purge them.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry. I don't even be a big
downer that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
It's just these are things we should think about. Back
to our plastics discussion at the very top of the show,
these are important things. And Ben, we're talking about micro plastics, right,
wouldn't that be a thing that you'd need to consider
when it comes to forks and when it comes to
soy sauce packets. Over time, wouldn't those packages degrade and
potentially cause you to ingest those microplastics?
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Absolutely? Yeah, Unfortunately this has been proven. We just don't
know the extent of the long term consequences. Now, packaging
is packaging is a huge deal. There are companies that
will use what's called biodegradable packaging or sell you stuff
(01:02:21):
in glass bottles, which is cool because you have a
useful container at the end of the day. But the
fact of the matter is plastic checks all the boxes
for a durable thing that is cost effective, so that enshrinkflation.
Are two very real conspiracies. One last shout out. I
know everybody's been worried about this for the entire the
(01:02:43):
entirety of today's episode. We can confirm that Outback Steakhouse
has denied their tie, their alleged ties with the Illuminati.
Thank god, So everybody relaxed.
Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Yeah, we could be cool or you know, get more
on your toes because they talked about it. So, I mean,
and that was in twenty nineteen, so who knows. I
don't know. I think jury's out when he comes to
the Outback Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
This is this is a real story. We don't have
too much time to get into it. But a while
back someone on Twitter did it, did a conspiracy map,
and they mapped out locations of Outback Steakhouses in Arizona
and Georgia, Illinois, and a couple other places, and they said,
look at this these all if you look at the
(01:03:34):
arrangement here, this forms a pentagram. Is Outback Steakhouse au
front for a Satanic cult. Outback Steakhouse said, in another
great pr statement, Outback Steakhouse said they have no world
conquering plans other than to bring bold steaks and bluemin
(01:03:57):
onions to our guest.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Ever eat the bloomin onion? Why it's it's got an
insane amount of calories.
Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Oh yeah, well it's it's for sharing, Matt, It's for sharing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Oh no, it's not. It's for personal consumption. I know
this for a fact. I've I've been there.
Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
You bloom uh so?
Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Uh so.
Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
That that's that's our show today. We've covered a lot
of things. We hope that you enjoyed it. And Australian listeners,
I've always wondered, what what do you all in Australia
think of Outback Steakhouse?
Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Is it offensive?
Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Is it like is it like too much of a caricature?
And then there's what fosters Australian for beer.
Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Here's my question. Do they have outback steakhouses in Australia?
Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
I think yeah, I think there is uh it, there
is one in Australia. But you know, we can't talk
too much trash about that because here in the us.
We have American Deli.
Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
We do. They're everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
So that's our show, folks. We hope this finds you
happy and in good health, and as always, we want
to hear from you. We've covered some really crazy stuff
that's probably not true. We've covered some things that are
very true and disturbing, but we didn't cover everything. So
what food related conspiracies do you feel have serious? Sand?
(01:05:20):
Let us know.
Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Yes, you can find us on social media. We are
all over the place. Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook,
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram, check out YouTube dot com
slash conspiracy Stuff to watch clips from this episode and
all of the other ones that we do. It's it's
quite a bit of fun and reading the comments is
(01:05:41):
a joy, and leaving a comment is you know, I
don't know what you'd call that experience, but you should.
Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
You should try it out.
Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
But that's not it. If you want to give us
a call, we have a phone number.
Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
That's right, it's one eight three three std WYTK. Leave
a message at the sound of Ben's dulcet tone. Try
to keep it in their three minute range three minute maximum.
If it's really juicy, you need to call back. It
will cut you off after three, but you know do
your best. Brevity is the soul of wit, as they say,
and you might find your story on one of our
(01:06:15):
weekly listener mail episodes, and if.
Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Done, that quite badgs your badgers. We have one way
that you can always contact us, regardless of the time
of year and time of day or what you're eating.
None is our good old fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't
(01:06:51):
want you to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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