December 4, 2020 • 64 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 I Heart Brading Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is meant, my name is null. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul mission controlled decads. 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. What are you eating? What's the last
(00:46):
thing you ate? What's the next thing you're going to eat?
After you hear this show? Leftover Chinese, leftover Chinese, leftover
Turkey for a lot of people, because as we record
today's episode, folks, we are hurtling towards the end of
and as you are hearing this post Thanksgiving, just to
get this out of the way very quickly, pandemic rates
(01:08):
will have shot up in the United States. People will die. 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,
(01:30):
and that's just a little troubling. Yeah. I can't remember
which show I mentioned this on, but earlier I've found
some of the same information in one of the One
of the most troubling 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,
(01:54):
all of this is not a conspiracy. In fact, we
predicted a pandemic in earlier or episodes, not because we're
some sort of clairvoyance or precogs or something, just because
statistically it was a certainty. Uh. Today, Matt Knel, Mission
Control and yours truly are exploring something a little bit lighter.
(02:16):
This is the last last episode we're recording before we
go to a Thanksgiving break. Uh stuff. Then, what you
know is often a pretty heavy meal of ugly truths
and we hope worthwhile information. But as we had the
parts of known this weekend, what what we'd like to
do with this episode is as offer more or something
(02:37):
like a series of tap us, you know what I mean,
A grab bag if you will of 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. Can I can I bust one myth
(02:58):
real quick? You don't need to Brian your turkey hot take?
I don't know how a few people feel like I
found out that that what brining at turkey does is,
you know, the salt causes osmosis, So the turkey takes
in all this water, h the salt water, and you know,
you can season the brian as well. But that gives
the illusion of juiciness. But the juiciness is not really
(03:21):
the juiciness of the turkey. It's just water that's been
absorbed into the turkey. So while that definitely will give
you a juicier 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 that that's from Gordon Ramsey to my ears
(03:43):
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. Well, you heard it here.
Everyone do not Brian your turkeys, Gordon Ramsey says so,
and I listen to anything that man says. Honestly, I
think he's pretty awesome. He's really nice in person. Actually
(04:04):
I I that's what I hear from everybody. Uh. 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.
(04:24):
Hopefully some folks did the beer can turkey recipe that
that thing is. That's pretty fun. But you know, there's ritual.
There's ritual I think involved in creating a Thanksgiving meal,
and sometimes that ritual becomes even more important than the
culinary science. Right you you cook the way that some
one of your older relatives taught you in the days
(04:48):
of old, and that will happen again towards 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
(05:10):
gonna start with some terrible 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 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
(05:30):
a lot of them. I mean, 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 caviar or or too lon or
you know, like where's the good where's the good coffee
or whatever? It's gonna have special spoon for caviar. Is
that a thing? It's like a caviar spoon. Yeah, I've
(05:53):
never had it before. Is it good? The spoon or
the I don't think I've ever had caviar, but for
maybe in a dish, a fancy dish, but I've never
eaten it like on its own. That sounds like something
you might have tried. Been do fish eggs incorporated into
a sushi dish counter as caviare, I don't believe. So
(06:13):
I've 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
say it, but there are a lot of vampiric corporations
(06:37):
that are heavily influencing the food and beverage industry right right, well,
like yeah, bless you, but you know there are there
are powerful companies that are bending the laws to their whim. Yeah,
and they've got a bunch of really long straws that
go underground and they drink our collective milkshakes. And one
(07:00):
of the big ones is Nestle. Not for nothing, that's
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 terrified. Yeah, it's
everywhere on the lands, in the seas, on the seas,
(07:23):
in your body. Yeah yeah, legos, I'm just gonna leave
it there. Um, what about the food pyramid, Guys, that
was the thing that was like on posters and are
like the elementary school classrooms and uh, you know it's
praises song like worshipful to the food Pyramid. That's obviously
(07:44):
a thing that we still rely heavily upon our nourishment,
at least in terms of a visual aid, right, Yeah,
it has been for a long time. It's changed a
lot over over the years. Yeah, the food pyramid is
uh kind of a crock. Uh. You know that this
is not this is not to say that there isn't
(08:06):
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. Uh. You can see
multiple books that claim that sort of influence exists today
(08:28):
and that these companies exert a lot of a lot
of agency and power on the U. S d A.
And especially like milk companies get accused of influencing the
Department of Agriculture into you know, tilting the pyramid their way.
But but if you're interested in learning more about that,
I would recommend everybody, if you're in the US, go
(08:50):
to choose my Plate dot gov, which is actually, I
don't know, in my opinion, a pretty good nutritional guide
that's set up for personal use for an end of
visual person or family, where you can actually kind of
make your own food pyramid of what you should be
eating and where you should be where you could be
getting your nutrients. Oh, that's great. Yeah that I have
(09:12):
not checked that up before. Man, I'm going to pull
that up. I would also I would also recommend checking
out a book by Michael Pollen called The Omnivore's Dilemma.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is pretty It has a very simple
diet that has summed up like this, eat food, not
(09:32):
too much, mostly plants. I'm not here to proselytize. I
just like the way it's written. So so check that out.
Because we have to consider the source when we look
at things like industry influence science in any case, So
these are all bummers, right, this is all this is
(09:52):
all kind of bad news. Uh. We usually take careful
time to explore of the stories behind those 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.
(10:15):
We've examined stories about chocolate and coco and of course
palm oil. You can find that in previous episodes. 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 that rogues gallery of urban legends about food,
(10:38):
all the weird stuff you heard growing up, all the
things that maybe like that that guy who lived down
the hallway from your first apartment, which just sometimes like mutter,
you know, the weir 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
(11:04):
where it gets crazy. Yeah, I mean, you know, food
is a necessity. Gotta have it to survive, gotta 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 a an
incredibly complex and dense, dare we say, folkloric kind of
(11:25):
system around food, and 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 UM community. Right,
(11:48):
So the world of mass marketed 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 the United
(12:09):
States UM, a question to you is is it not
somewhat weird that you can eat almost anything except for
that or Laton whatever, whatever, the tiny tiny fried song
hyde and you have to have the napkin or a
cloth over your head so that God doesn't see you
(12:30):
enjoying yourself. That's literally the process it is. 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 hundred year old eggs the ballut um,
which are like, maybe that's different. How are your old
eggs are different? Start? Excuse me. Balut is like an
un uh fertilized or a partially fertilized chicken egg where
(12:55):
it's inside of the hard boiled egg is a little
tiny bird fetus um. And apparently you eat them warm
and they it 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. Yeah, you
eat the you eat the whole thing. Uh. And I've
had it before. It's it. I think the main thing
(13:18):
that turns people off about it is that appearance, you
know of this partially developed creature, but it's still way
better than a century egg, the hundred year egg that
you're describing. Uh. We ate some of that on a
weird Facebook show he used to do called stack stuff
and that's that. That stuff was gross, Like I it
(13:40):
is the definition of an acquired taste. Well, okay, have
you let me just ask you guys a question. You
guys seem like adventurous eaters. Um, have either of you
tried tripe before, Yes, in fah it's been. I've had
it and as like a extra ingredient infa. But I've
(14:01):
never had haggess or never really had like well haggess
and tripe on the thing. I've never really eaten it
like on it. So and I've had sweetbreads, which isn't
quite the same. That's thalamus if I'm not mistaken. But
that's about as adventurous as I've got in that department.
Then you you did an immediate yes, yes, because tripe
is in actual intestine. Correct. One thing I had to
admit here is that I've I am a big fan
(14:23):
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. Uh worse yeah, but
but yeah, but but the thought of just eating intestines
(14:45):
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 with the ballute, Like the
thought of it is much worse than the actual act
or the flavor or anything like that. A couple of things, okay,
First off, one of my favorite restaurants in the world,
(15:05):
for some reason is a place called St. 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 considered awful and thrown away. And
(15:26):
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 called this one's
called the Book of St. John And there is an
entire chapter on tripe. It just could he goes ham
with it. Not on purpose, not that great, but I
(15:49):
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, I like liver,
I like game ere meats, I like obviously chicken thighs
doesn't isn't the same thing as awful, But I've had
heart heard is tasty. It's very like hardy where it
(16:09):
is it 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 things
that I find grosser things that are sure are squishy
or in some ways have an odd texture. But yeah,
I don't. It doesn't really turn me off inherently. I'm
glad you said squishy because that brings us to the
(16:33):
first big conspiracy we want to talk about today, right.
It does. It does just to sew this up. This
is the player. I would it for anybody who, for
anybody was like, uh, anybody who feels very close minded
about food or nutrition, or anybody who has the audacity
that's a merity to look at another culture and say, oh,
(16:54):
it's gross that you eat that. If you're in the US,
I would ask you to consider just how strange it
is that cheese exists. Like cheese is a weird thing,
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
(17:15):
and make up, 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
that out? It was obviously an accident, right, like letting
the milk kurdle and what is it? Scraping off the
gross gelatinous surface that forms on top and processing it further. Yeah,
(17:40):
but it's it's a form of saving food that was
going to go bad. I mean it's so much. So
much food innovation comes from that need to to stalk
up on something when food supplies are limited. Yeah. I
just bring that up because when it comes to cuisine,
the thing that everybody has in common. Uh, we're all
(18:00):
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. Uh. Really should be outdoor seating,
by the way, it should be. Yes, it should be
outdoor seating. But Matt, you had the perfect segue. There's
(18:21):
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 almost any food you want, virtually
any food. Historically, if you live hundreds and hundreds of
(18:43):
miles in lent, 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 splurge a little. Let's get some calamari, you know
what I mean. Let's get some fried lovely squid. A
(19:05):
little squeeze a lemon on there, you know what I mean.
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, oh, squid, squiggy, squiggly,
squishy squid. It's fried to a delightful golden brown and
then dipped in marinara sauce or some kind of what
(19:27):
do you call it? A oli perhaps um? But yeah,
you know 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 rings is where things can go horribly south. Yeah, yeah,
(19:48):
you gotta get the cathulu calamari. Okay, you want to
love craft aspect to your calamari, because it may not
always be the squid you think it is, at least
to us, 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.
(20:13):
Cough cough. It is often it's happened, man, it's happened.
I see. I I don't think so. I don't think
it's happened at all. I don't. I've got to take
that stance right now because okay, well, well let's talk
about it first. But I disagree with you, but yeah, yeah,
I'm into it. So back in twenty thirteen, this allegation
(20:38):
hit 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 allegation here
was that the calamari that people order in restaurants is
(20:58):
sometimes not from squid, but from pigs. Specifically, they're rectums
their intestines. To Matt's point, I do want to pose
it are there are the rectums just so cleanly removable,
but 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. Because that's all I'm saying here. Yeah,
(21:21):
it's more. I think using the word rectum is more
for uh, click bait or buzz value. So it would
really just be the intestine itself cut into rings. Yes. Um,
that's the thing that has been bandied about for for
for many years. While again to Matt, you may completely
(21:42):
disagree with this, we don't definitively no, uh, we have
or have proof of this has happened on some kind
of large scale. We do know that counterfeit seafood absolutely does. Um,
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
(22:04):
were selling you something under the guise of being fresh
snapper and it was actually some other trash fish. Um.
But Matt, we gotta give you your day in court.
What what what is with what is your your misgivings
about this pig butthole phenomenon. Well, I was just doing
some reading about it. Slate has a great right up
on that episode of This American Life and that specific
(22:25):
segment that came from a producer, Ben Calhoun, and it
literally was a friend of a friend story of that
was just retold essentially in you know, within This American Life,
and you know it upon further looking at it and
really considering it. Calamari or you know, squid frozen versions
(22:50):
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 in
the most desperate of situations I think, would anyone you know, uh,
step to trying to get one over on their customers
to instead put tripe of some sort or pig intestines
(23:15):
of some sort in the in there in the mix,
rather than just you know, buying some fairly inexpensive calamari
and then selling it at a at a price that
they that they could. 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
(23:37):
a is there a widespread calamari conspiracy? Probably not, I
grant financially, it's it doesn't make as much sense and legally,
according to Uncle Sam, anything containing a pork product has
to be labeled as such. However, has this happened and
isolated perhaps desperate instances. The answer is quite possibly, because
(24:00):
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 penching institution. I would say
they may have been built as well, somewhere in the
supply chain. Because the issue here is that counterfeit seafood, right,
(24:24):
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. But that lack of oversight
is what compels people to say as possible. But someone
(24:44):
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 pigs button, 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 I'm not quite sure what
imitation crab is made of. But you have scallops for example.
(25:07):
Scalops sometimes can be cookie cutter punch outs of like
stingray or uh what else shark as well. Uh. There's
there's an interesting report just last year from an outfit
called Oceanica, and they found that twenty one per cent
of the seafood in the US is being served somehow
(25:28):
under what we could call a fake identity. I love
that you mentioned scalop snool. Things like lobster, catfish, flounder, hallibut,
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 bass spared no expense. Remember that was
(25:52):
that was the That was the meal in Jurassic Park,
the nice Chilean sea bass. That's right. The real name
for chill and sea bass is Patagonian toothfish and yum.
And you can pull up you can pull up a picture.
It's it's it's not gonna win the fish beauty contest.
Have you ever heard the expression toothsome yes, does that
(26:16):
mean you've got a lot of teeth? And it's something
that's texture to 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.
What's made of, Matt, I just brought it up a
minute ago. Yeah, that's why I'm bringing it to you.
Alaska pollock. That's what's in this one. Water, egg whites,
(26:39):
corn starch, sugar. Oh god, king crab meat is in
this two or less of king crab meat or whoa
or blue crab meat extract or lobster or refined fish oil. Jesus,
this is like a choose your awn adventure ingredient. He
(27:03):
loves it. You don't know what you're FEEDI um each time.
It could be crab, it could be lobster. Oh god,
Well you know, honestly, there are some dishes, uh, in
which with which I prefer to use imitation crab. But
I I was not aware of that, Matt. Thank you
for bringing that to our attention. I don't think I've
(27:26):
seen an ingredient list that goes down into an either
or situation. I didn't know that was legal. It does
seem a little fishy. There is you know what I
was wrong with? The or? There are a couple of ors,
but don't I put in a few supp put in
(27:46):
too many, Jesus, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go put
this back before he goes bad. Yeah. 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. Uh, we
would be remiss if we didn't mention the all the
horsemeat krawfuffle of of of recent years. I don't quite
(28:09):
remember what. I think it was just a couple of years. Okay,
so a few more than in recent but um, the
chain of German in origin supermarkets all the uh conducted
a test on some of their ready made beef dishes,
you know, frozen things, and it was from a supplier
named call me gul Uh and tests revealed that thirty
(28:31):
to a hundred percent of these beef products were actually horsemeat.
No yeah, and they withdrew them. And this is a
thing that can be confirmed. This actually happened. There's not
a conspiracy theory. Um. 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
(28:54):
you didn't think it was too bad. No, not too
bad at all. But if you want to know, you
want to know, that's the thing you want to know.
I don't. I don't think anybody is looking back fondly
on as that time I got tricked into eating horsemeat.
This also all the got the most pressed for this,
(29:16):
but that supplier you mentioned was supplying several other companies
in Sweden, and I want to save France. The counterfeiting
problem in food is a multilayered 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 the
(29:39):
unless there's some pretty robust legislation down the pike. As
maritime ecosystems collapse, you know you're gonna see more and
more uh, confusing seafood. 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 d to be fair,
(30:01):
we're called Today's Special Frozen beef Lasagna and Today's Special
Frozen spaghetti bolinas. So you know it was special beef
a k A horse beef. Yeah, and especially you know
given that consuming that type of flesh is taboo in
(30:24):
the West. This is not Yeah, this is not like
finding out you know that you were you ordered chicken
and you've got a duck, you know what I mean.
These are very different things, and 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 it's I mean, it's a little different, but it's
(30:45):
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,
Like it could shake your whole culinary worldview and really
like cause some serious PTSD for some people. Agreed, And
speaking of uh trauma fear speculation, let's pause for a
(31:08):
word from our sponsor and we'll dive into some urban
legends and we are back. This is a weird one.
Right to us conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
If you have heard of a theory like this, there's
(31:29):
a long running idea or theory we can call it
that certain beverages are meant to promote sterilization or to
prevent sexual activity through some ingredients, some additive that's put
into the mix. This is a long running concept in
(31:54):
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 maybe like
rendering you, uh, sexually dysfunctional for a time. Or the
(32:14):
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 that has to live in close quarters, which
is kind of unnatural for people. The thing is, there's
not any proof of this. If you have proof from
(32:37):
maybe your time in the armed forces or something, then
we would love to hear it. But have you guys
ever heard of this theory? Well, I mean non intentional,
Like I wasn't there a thing where certain dies maybe
would render people sterile or or not promote proper growth
of reproductive cells like yellow number five and things like that,
(32:59):
or did I make that there? There have been rumors
about various food additives, food colors, um and a couple
of other things like um stabilizers. We talked about what
was what we talked about a little while ago. That
was in Mountain dew. Um. God, it was a long time.
I think it was maybe we talked about that. But um,
(33:22):
it's the flame flame retardant chemical all or something that
exists within a lot of citrus beverages that causes that
cloudy look. Oh uh broad Yes, something vegetable oil, Yes,
exactly is that true? Brominad vegetable oils. This is what
(33:44):
I recall it being. Yeah, it multifies citrus flavored soft drinks. Uh.
There there's a lot of issue with that. But ben
a dear to answer your question, I don't know anything
about some kind of larger conspiracy to you know, uh,
sterilized people through some kind of drink or substance like that. Yeah,
it's it's a it's kind of a sub genre that
(34:08):
bears something in common with the 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 the old fluoridation stories. The fluoride is added
(34:28):
the water. Uh, that part is true. But with this
there there's some weird questions. Right, There's some holes in
this concept, first one being how do you regulate a dosage.
That's the same issue run into with the fluoride theories
and other related ones. But the scary thing about this
(34:51):
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.
(35:12):
Like the government of the United States actively did sterilized
people multiple times, and it's weird that it doesn't get
mentioned as often as it should. Yeah, we've talked about
a couple of in a couple of different episodes on
for various reasons, just the terrible history that the United
(35:33):
States has with eugenics and how it actually appears to
have influenced a certain regime out in Germany. Right, right,
And it might surprise a lot of our US listeners
to know the first eugenics based compulsory sterilization law in
(35:54):
human history was it was passed here in the US
Indiana in nine seven, made humanity's first law of this sort,
and other people just copied Indiana the Virginia Sterilization Act
in culled for patients and mental institutions to be sterilized
(36:16):
against their will. This is when they threw around all
those really you know, offensive terms for people with low
i q s. Correct. Yeah, this is 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
(36:38):
would be motive for those who run the prison two
keep the inmates, you know, the population as calm as possible,
right they would have they would there would be motivation
for that, for that desire. And if you could achieve
that by applying some what was it, extra ingredient to
(37:00):
you know, whatever food supplier or drink supply that you've
got providing that you're providing for them, 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 at even
one particular prison or something like that, but it definitely
(37:21):
feels real. 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 somebody will say that saltpeter
is added to maybe not just the the water, but
(37:43):
the food as well. Also you'll hear this in boys schools,
and the idea is that it it diminishes this X
drive to your point, Matt, to make the population somewhat
more sedate and easy to control. Wait, what you're saying,
I can take saltpeter to lower my sex drive potassium nitrate.
But the problem here is no, I'm not saying that
(38:05):
because it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It just sounds
intelligent and conversation, you know, because you can find saltpeter
in a ton of stuff. It's used as a preservative
in food and color. It's a it's an agent of
color retention in things like bacon, corned beef, ham, hot dogs. Hey,
(38:29):
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 can make that the oral tradition
of this conspiratorial story is kind of our our culture
(38:54):
recounting the terrible things that occurred in the past. Uh,
but now we know you were waiting for this, folks. Yes,
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. Ever.
(39:17):
You've probably heard rumors that the mc rib for McDonald's
is so popular that it like excuse the world pork market.
You probably had some weird fast food experiences in your
old life. Is that why they only bring it back seasonally, Ben,
because they don't want to totally upend the pork supply. Yeah. Yeah,
cows and chickens we're good all year, that's fine. But
(39:40):
the pigs, you gotta let them be for a while.
I gotta wonder how much actual pork is in that
McRib too. I mean, like, I just I'm not I
have no proof for answer to this question. I just
for some reason have a feeling like it's a pork
uh composite kind of situation. Oh for sure. Yeah, here's
here's the thing. You and find some work on this
(40:01):
by economists who are usually arguing that there isn't there
isn't a super strong correlation between the mic ribb and
pork prices in terms of like a causative relationship. Right there,
they were not saying most economists will argue that the
mic ribb itself doesn't seem to be swinging the needle
(40:25):
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 dropped to some threshold, then
they say, okay, it makes sense for us to make
the mcribb again. That makes so much sense. I mean
that that makes more sense than the idea that Ronald
(40:49):
McDonald is somewhere steepling his clown fingers and saying it's
time to punish the pork people. They'll learn, really the
McRib you know what I mean? I don't. I don't
think it's quite that level. But there's somebody in some
office that hits the McRib button though, and it's just
(41:10):
an alert that goes out to every franchise e. They're
just like 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 bat phone or something.
And there's one person whose entire job is to every
so often just pick up this phone and then say like,
(41:32):
do it, and then all across the world and they
do it too, and they pick up we're going to
make apple fritters now, and then they just say the
new things. I love it. How do you get that gig?
That's sort of like uh dipping your toe into fast
food conspiracy kind of thing, right, because it sounds ostensibly possible,
(41:58):
if not plausible, it sounds possible, but other stories get
weird so quickly. You guys, remember that before KFC used
to be called Kentucky Fried Chicken. Do do you guys
remember that? Yeah? Yeah, big old signs that were just
huge with so many letters. And then they went the
(42:19):
way of many UH brands like that and you know,
wanted to to simplify, go for a minimalist approach KFC TLC.
The implication what is that that? I mean the implication
and the conspiracy circles perhaps is that chicken no longer
was in play? Yes, do you guys remember when we
used to make a show called Stuff they Don't Want
(42:41):
You to Know? And then it became Stiddardwick. Oh yeah,
I do. It was a golden day at PR agency.
Was worth every penny. So yeah. The the idea then
is that there's some sort of delustion, right the tail.
The tail goes something like this. Over the years, while
(43:05):
selling you buckets of chicken, KFC was also paying scientists
to do insane experiments on on poultry. H and 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
(43:27):
equivalent of a human centipede. Right, It's just they've figured
out a way to just grow the breasts, the wings
and the drumsticks, et cetera. And now this could no
longer be as you pointed out in the labeled as chicken.
Whatever they did, they did it, they took it too far.
It's not chicken anymore. Um to be fair or foul. Uh.
(43:52):
KFC actually responded to this one. The responses to a
lot of these theories are classic. But imagine you're the
PR person for KFC and you have to say, okay,
we still use chicken. We're not at the dark forefront
of evil gadaga like genetic experimentation. But their their response
(44:15):
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 words the government didn't tell us to.
We just don't want people to hear the word fried. Yeah,
because for quite a while there and even now, the
(44:35):
word fried comes comes with it the connotation of super unhealthy,
like don't eat that. Ever, that's the worst thing you
can do to your body. Don't do that, which isn't
necessarily true, but it's also not wrong. So I'll tell
you what it is, one of the worst things you
can possibly put in your body. As the amazingly unhealthy
(44:55):
KFC menu item the double down. Do you recall this,
I don't know if it is or not, but it
was certainly was around. It was, you know, a football
kind of themed menu item that that substituted fried chicken
patties for buns. So they weren't chicken. Those were breasts,
my friend, okay, okay, and they were delicious that they were,
(45:19):
and it as bacon. I I actually 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? You know, yes, do I
dare disturb the sleeping elder beasts slumber? That was redundant,
but you get where I'm coming from. Um. Have you
guys seen the delightful new Hulu reboot of the show Animaniacs.
(45:47):
The first episode, Uh, it's great. And they in the
first episode it's all about it. They've been like away,
I don't know, they were exiled or something. Um, and
they do with this amazing song called the catch Up Song.
That's all about everything that's happened. It's the nineties when
the show ended and 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,
(46:09):
we don't know what's gonna happen in the future because
the writers are writing this in and it's not gonna
come out till so we'll just use our imagination. And
there's 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.
(46:31):
We breed birds without arms on our factory farms, 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. Uh. And then it says it's
about a talking police car who's who's also a time machine. Wow,
here comes the star Clunko. I travel through time following crime. Okay,
that's all I've got. But I just love the factory farms,
(46:52):
birth without arms line and food and bars. I thought
that was appropriate for this episode. There you go, man,
and I'm any acts. Steven Spielberg made that stuff. You
can still he's still involved. It's very very good. That's awesome. Well,
you know what, you know what you have to do
a lot of Uh when when you're making animated series.
(47:14):
What's that you gotta do? Caffeine baby, Well, some kind
of upper drink. Yeah, yeah, the excellent segue, Matt. 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 seeing the praises of a delicious cup of
(47:37):
Tim Horton's coffee. This coffee come not a sponsor. Uh,
this coffee come, I've actually never tried it. This coffee
comes with a free conspiracy theory of its own. There
are people who seemed to to some degree believe that
tim Horton's was spiking its coffee with something else and
(47:58):
the people were becoming uh physiologically addicted to not the
caffeine necessarily, but whatever that ingredient X was just refer
to collectively as crank. And they, well, they said that
they thought, like the popular theory was that tim Horton's
was adding nicotine to the coffee and people were getting
(48:20):
addicted to nicotine and they didn't realize it because they
were They thought, they just really have to have my
morning cup of coffee, which you probably already 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.
This episode of stuff that I I don't want you to
know is brought to you by iced coffee, home brewed
(48:41):
or otherwise. It's what keeps us going. And uh then again, uh,
pr manager for tim Horton's had to respond to this,
which is a fun response this. Uh. I like the
way Michelle Robis show put this. She says, there is
in fact nothing added to our coffee. We believe our
(49:02):
guests are addicted to consistency. 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, Uh, There
there are other instances in the past. McDonald's, for example,
was accused of adding nicotine to hamburgers. Yeah, I mean
(49:24):
it's nicotine is the addictive thing. Like, do you want
to get addicted to something, try nicotine. You'll get there
real fast. Um. So that that is one of the
I guess the go toos, the go to chemical when
it comes to something feeling like it's overly addictive or
more addictive than you expected it to be. Right right,
(49:47):
Because also nicotine is legal, you know what I mean.
It's not as if the accusation that somebody would say
putting opioids in food wouldn't wouldn't make as much sense.
It seems like a lot of risk for a very
weird gamble. Um. So that you can see already that
a lot of this stuff, upon further examination, may have
(50:09):
a grain of truth as its cornerstone or its foundation.
But things get carried away pretty quickly. We wanted to
give you one, one, very real one 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
(50:31):
of Andy Rooney like you, however, but have you ever
noticed a sudden change in the packaging of your favorite
food like that? Did you go to buy, uh, some
cereal that you loved during childhood out of nostalgia and
you say, hey, whoa this box is Huh, this box
is weirdly small. You're not crazy. It's not the Mandela effect.
(50:54):
You are experiencing. Shrink Flation Just to the other day,
actually bought a box a lucky charm is out of
that exact impulse you're describing pure nostalgia. Um, But honestly,
it's one of those things where it's like, do I
really want a giant bag cram full of sugary marshmallowy
morsels or what I've been doing myself a favor by
(51:15):
having a half filled bag? I would go with the
ladder personally, but it is a phenomenon that we've seen
over time. Um, this idea of shrink flation, 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
(51:36):
in those respective industries. The the ideas that you can
slowly reduce the size or amount of a product 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
(52:00):
the product price, which is why, like, that's the number
of most people pay attention to. You might shop at
some grocery store where they have the full price of something,
you know, it's like four or whatever, and then they
have it broken down to cost per ounce, but very
few people actually read that part. They just see four
(52:20):
ninety nine or nine or three, and it makes a
huge impact on whether or not they buy that thing.
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 m h and and manufacturers realized they could do this.
(52:41):
They could skim 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 that that little half sphere that just gets bigger
and bigger. Uh. You can also see it in boxes,
(53:04):
you know, like your experience with Lucky charms. But just
it was orange juice, orange juice, what what's the deal?
Just so 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
(53:25):
for a long time when I was a kid, that's
how you would buy orange juice. UM. And then you know,
with a lot of these other companies creating new new
orange 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 different. They are these
specialized bottles, and those bottles over time began to get
(53:49):
smaller and smaller. But it was the same type of bottle,
but they would get smaller and smaller. And it's gotten
to the point now where several brands that I have
seen actually say still one gallon, We're still still however
many fluid ounces or still you know this many miller leaders.
It's really interesting because it's become a marketing tool just
(54:10):
to say, hey, we're not doing the shrinking over here,
but 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. 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
(54:31):
see these like silly kind of life hack or whatever like.
But 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. Um. The initial version of that that
I saw was that button will pop out if the
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
(54:53):
more um 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 um. It gives it a little
more give because that button is flexing outward, you know,
as opposed to it being a rigid walls container. That's
brilliant to me. That just seems like good product is
(55:14):
I am fascinated by the concept of it. You know,
you see all this clever packaging, uh that works like
like you you have the perfect example there, nol. It's
it's a what seems to be a very simple solution,
but holy smokes, that's got to be a game changer
for the dairy industry. And maybe that's where maybe that's
(55:36):
where we end. Just on a slightly more sinister note. Packaging.
We talked a little bit about it with shrink flation,
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. What happens, what happens
to all that stuff? You know? Oh well, okay, yeah,
(55:58):
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, um
in with the pouch, the food pouch, the food product pouch.
Now when you say intelligent design, are you referring to
the notion that God is in control of our destinies? Yes,
(56:19):
a deity of some sort designed these things. These things,
they're pouches of food, the little twisty top. I love those, well,
anyone that has ever had a child or is just
a fan of you know, fruits and vegetables that are
purred down into this consistency that can fit into a
(56:42):
bag like this. I mean, it 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,
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 a apple sauce at a big
(57:03):
glass jar and you just put it out and eat
it individually like that. It was delicious. But now each
little serving comes in something like this, when like nowadays,
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. This is obviously going
to be the YouTube clip. Let's make a note of this.
(57:25):
If you don't mind, this has got to be. This
is the show and tell portion of the podcast. Well, well,
I'm I'm holding up just one of these individual little
plastic cups filled with this one I think has peaches
and a body would be like apple sauce or something.
And every time you consume one of those, all of
that becomes trash. And even if you are recycling it,
we've talked about the pitfalls of recycling, it is probably
(57:48):
going to end up in a landfill somewhere or in
an ocean somewhere. And think about right now, going through
the times of COVID, 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
(58:08):
know in my family were we counted up the number
of plastic you know, those little packages of plastic forks
and silver plastic wear that you get. We actually saved
them over the course of a month, and we to
frequently get take away um and just looking at it
(58:28):
and quantifying it in that way was a horrifying site. 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 those if you, if you take
a little bit of care with those kinds of products
and you you you stockpile them, they can be useful
and it's not all waste. It's gonna be waste eventually.
(58:51):
But I'm annoyed when when, um, those things are provided
when you they're not asked for, and it's like, you mean,
like this, noll, yeah, so sauce packet. How many of
these have you thrown away? 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 gonna do with this little, tiny, single serving
(59:12):
of soy sauce? You know? I I keep them, but
then I never use them, and then I eventually purged them. Yeah, anyway,
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a big down
over that, you know, 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
(59:32):
thing that you 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? Absolutely? Yeah, Unfortunately, uh, this has been proven.
We just don't know the extent of the long term consequences. Now, Uh,
(59:56):
packaging is packaging is a huge deal. There are companies
that will use what's called biodegradable packaging or sell you
stuffing 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
(01:00:17):
and shrin inflation are two very real conspiracies. One last
shout out. I know everybody has been worried about this
for the entire uh the entirety of today's episode. We
can confirm the Outback Steakhouse has denied their tie, their
alleged ties with the Illuminati. Thank god. So everybody relaxed
and we could be cool or you know, get more
(01:00:41):
on your toes because they're they talked about it, so,
I mean, and that was so who knows, I don't know.
I think jury's out when it comes to the outback Illuminati.
This is this is a real story. We don't have
too much time to get into it. But haw. While back,
someone on Twitter did it, did a conspiracy map and
(01:01:06):
they mapped out locations of outback steakhouses in Arizona and Georgia,
Illinois and a couple of other places, and they said,
look at this these all if you look at the
arrangement here, this forms a pentagram. Is Outback Steakhouse affront
for a Satanic cult? Uh? Outback Steakhouse said uh. In
(01:01:30):
another great pr statement, Outback Steakhouse said, uh, they have
no like world conquering plans other than to bring bold
steaks and blooming onions to our guest. Don't ever eat
the blooming onion. Why it's it's got an insane amount
of calories. Oh yeah, well it's for it's for sharing, Mad,
(01:01:51):
it's for sharing. Oh no, it's not. It's for personal consumption.
I know this for a fact. I've I've been there.
So uh so 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
(01:02:12):
all in Australia, think of out back steakhouse? Is it offensive?
Is it like is it like too much of a caricature?
You know? And then there's what Foster's Australian for beer.
Here's my question. Do they have outbacked steakhouses in Australia?
I think yeah, I think there is uh it, there
(01:02:33):
is one in Australia. But you know, we can't talk
too much trash about that because here in the US
we have American Delhi. We do. They're everywhere. 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
(01:02:54):
and disturbing, but we didn't cover everything. So what food
related conspiracy do you feel? Have serious sand let us know. Yes,
you can find us on social media. We're all over
the place. Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram, check out YouTube dot com slash conspiracy
(01:03:16):
stuff to watch clips from this episode in all of
the other ones that we do. Uh it's it's quite
a bit of fun and reading the comments is a
joy and leaving a comment is um, you know, I
don't know what you would call that experience, but you should.
You should try it out. Um, but that's not it.
If you want to give us a call, we have
(01:03:38):
a phone number. That's right, It's one three st d
W y t K. 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. Um, 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 weekly list
(01:04:00):
our male episodes. And if done of that quite bags
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 we are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
(01:04:35):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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(00:25):
My name is meant, my name is null. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul mission controlled decads. 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. What are you eating? What's the last
(00:46):
thing you ate? What's the next thing you're going to eat?
After you hear this show? Leftover Chinese, leftover Chinese, leftover
Turkey for a lot of people, because as we record
today's episode, folks, we are hurtling towards the end of
and as you are hearing this post Thanksgiving, just to
get this out of the way very quickly, pandemic rates
(01:08):
will have shot up in the United States. People will die. 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,
(01:30):
and that's just a little troubling. Yeah. I can't remember
which show I mentioned this on, but earlier I've found
some of the same information in one of the One
of the most troubling 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,
(01:54):
all of this is not a conspiracy. In fact, we
predicted a pandemic in earlier or episodes, not because we're
some sort of clairvoyance or precogs or something, just because
statistically it was a certainty. Uh. Today, Matt Knel, Mission
Control and yours truly are exploring something a little bit lighter.
(02:16):
This is the last last episode we're recording before we
go to a Thanksgiving break. Uh stuff. Then, what you
know is often a pretty heavy meal of ugly truths
and we hope worthwhile information. But as we had the
parts of known this weekend, what what we'd like to
do with this episode is as offer more or something
(02:37):
like a series of tap us, you know what I mean,
A grab bag if you will of 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. Can I can I bust one myth
(02:58):
real quick? You don't need to Brian your turkey hot take?
I don't know how a few people feel like I
found out that that what brining at turkey does is,
you know, the salt causes osmosis, So the turkey takes
in all this water, h the salt water, and you know,
you can season the brian as well. But that gives
the illusion of juiciness. But the juiciness is not really
(03:21):
the juiciness of the turkey. It's just water that's been
absorbed into the turkey. So while that definitely will give
you a juicier 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 that that's from Gordon Ramsey to my ears
(03:43):
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. Well, you heard it here.
Everyone do not Brian your turkeys, Gordon Ramsey says so,
and I listen to anything that man says. Honestly, I
think he's pretty awesome. He's really nice in person. Actually
(04:04):
I I that's what I hear from everybody. Uh. 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.
(04:24):
Hopefully some folks did the beer can turkey recipe that
that thing is. That's pretty fun. But you know, there's ritual.
There's ritual I think involved in creating a Thanksgiving meal,
and sometimes that ritual becomes even more important than the
culinary science. Right you you cook the way that some
one of your older relatives taught you in the days
(04:48):
of old, and that will happen again towards 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
(05:10):
gonna start with some terrible 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 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
(05:30):
a lot of them. I mean, 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 caviar or or too lon or
you know, like where's the good where's the good coffee
or whatever? It's gonna have special spoon for caviar. Is
that a thing? It's like a caviar spoon. Yeah, I've
(05:53):
never had it before. Is it good? The spoon or
the I don't think I've ever had caviar, but for
maybe in a dish, a fancy dish, but I've never
eaten it like on its own. That sounds like something
you might have tried. Been do fish eggs incorporated into
a sushi dish counter as caviare, I don't believe. So
(06:13):
I've 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
say it, but there are a lot of vampiric corporations
(06:37):
that are heavily influencing the food and beverage industry right right, well,
like yeah, bless you, but you know there are there
are powerful companies that are bending the laws to their whim. Yeah,
and they've got a bunch of really long straws that
go underground and they drink our collective milkshakes. And one
(07:00):
of the big ones is Nestle. Not for nothing, that's
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 terrified. Yeah, it's
everywhere on the lands, in the seas, on the seas,
(07:23):
in your body. Yeah yeah, legos, I'm just gonna leave
it there. Um, what about the food pyramid, Guys, that
was the thing that was like on posters and are
like the elementary school classrooms and uh, you know it's
praises song like worshipful to the food Pyramid. That's obviously
(07:44):
a thing that we still rely heavily upon our nourishment,
at least in terms of a visual aid, right, Yeah,
it has been for a long time. It's changed a
lot over over the years. Yeah, the food pyramid is
uh kind of a crock. Uh. You know that this
is not this is not to say that there isn't
(08:06):
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. Uh. You can see
multiple books that claim that sort of influence exists today
(08:28):
and that these companies exert a lot of a lot
of agency and power on the U. S d A.
And especially like milk companies get accused of influencing the
Department of Agriculture into you know, tilting the pyramid their way.
But but if you're interested in learning more about that,
I would recommend everybody, if you're in the US, go
(08:50):
to choose my Plate dot gov, which is actually, I
don't know, in my opinion, a pretty good nutritional guide
that's set up for personal use for an end of
visual person or family, where you can actually kind of
make your own food pyramid of what you should be
eating and where you should be where you could be
getting your nutrients. Oh, that's great. Yeah that I have
(09:12):
not checked that up before. Man, I'm going to pull
that up. I would also I would also recommend checking
out a book by Michael Pollen called The Omnivore's Dilemma.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is pretty It has a very simple
diet that has summed up like this, eat food, not
(09:32):
too much, mostly plants. I'm not here to proselytize. I
just like the way it's written. So so check that out.
Because we have to consider the source when we look
at things like industry influence science in any case, So
these are all bummers, right, this is all this is
(09:52):
all kind of bad news. Uh. We usually take careful
time to explore of the stories behind those 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.
(10:15):
We've examined stories about chocolate and coco and of course
palm oil. You can find that in previous episodes. 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 that rogues gallery of urban legends about food,
(10:38):
all the weird stuff you heard growing up, all the
things that maybe like that that guy who lived down
the hallway from your first apartment, which just sometimes like mutter,
you know, the weir 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
(11:04):
where it gets crazy. Yeah, I mean, you know, food
is a necessity. Gotta have it to survive, gotta 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 a an
incredibly complex and dense, dare we say, folkloric kind of
(11:25):
system around food, and 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 UM community. Right,
(11:48):
So the world of mass marketed 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 the United
(12:09):
States UM, a question to you is is it not
somewhat weird that you can eat almost anything except for
that or Laton whatever, whatever, the tiny tiny fried song
hyde and you have to have the napkin or a
cloth over your head so that God doesn't see you
(12:30):
enjoying yourself. That's literally the process it is. 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 hundred year old eggs the ballut um,
which are like, maybe that's different. How are your old
eggs are different? Start? Excuse me. Balut is like an
un uh fertilized or a partially fertilized chicken egg where
(12:55):
it's inside of the hard boiled egg is a little
tiny bird fetus um. And apparently you eat them warm
and they it 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. Yeah, you
eat the you eat the whole thing. Uh. And I've
had it before. It's it. I think the main thing
(13:18):
that turns people off about it is that appearance, you
know of this partially developed creature, but it's still way
better than a century egg, the hundred year egg that
you're describing. Uh. We ate some of that on a
weird Facebook show he used to do called stack stuff
and that's that. That stuff was gross, Like I it
(13:40):
is the definition of an acquired taste. Well, okay, have
you let me just ask you guys a question. You
guys seem like adventurous eaters. Um, have either of you
tried tripe before, Yes, in fah it's been. I've had
it and as like a extra ingredient infa. But I've
(14:01):
never had haggess or never really had like well haggess
and tripe on the thing. I've never really eaten it
like on it. So and I've had sweetbreads, which isn't
quite the same. That's thalamus if I'm not mistaken. But
that's about as adventurous as I've got in that department.
Then you you did an immediate yes, yes, because tripe
is in actual intestine. Correct. One thing I had to
admit here is that I've I am a big fan
(14:23):
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. Uh worse yeah, but
but yeah, but but the thought of just eating intestines
(14:45):
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 with the ballute, Like the
thought of it is much worse than the actual act
or the flavor or anything like that. A couple of things, okay,
First off, one of my favorite restaurants in the world,
(15:05):
for some reason is a place called St. 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 considered awful and thrown away. And
(15:26):
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 called this one's
called the Book of St. John And there is an
entire chapter on tripe. It just could he goes ham
with it. Not on purpose, not that great, but I
(15:49):
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, I like liver,
I like game ere meats, I like obviously chicken thighs
doesn't isn't the same thing as awful, But I've had
heart heard is tasty. It's very like hardy where it
(16:09):
is it 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 things
that I find grosser things that are sure are squishy
or in some ways have an odd texture. But yeah,
I don't. It doesn't really turn me off inherently. I'm
glad you said squishy because that brings us to the
(16:33):
first big conspiracy we want to talk about today, right.
It does. It does just to sew this up. This
is the player. I would it for anybody who, for
anybody was like, uh, anybody who feels very close minded
about food or nutrition, or anybody who has the audacity
that's a merity to look at another culture and say, oh,
(16:54):
it's gross that you eat that. If you're in the US,
I would ask you to consider just how strange it
is that cheese exists. Like cheese is a weird thing,
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
(17:15):
and make up, 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
that out? It was obviously an accident, right, like letting
the milk kurdle and what is it? Scraping off the
gross gelatinous surface that forms on top and processing it further. Yeah,
(17:40):
but it's it's a form of saving food that was
going to go bad. I mean it's so much. So
much food innovation comes from that need to to stalk
up on something when food supplies are limited. Yeah. I
just bring that up because when it comes to cuisine,
the thing that everybody has in common. Uh, we're all
(18:00):
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. Uh. Really should be outdoor seating,
by the way, it should be. Yes, it should be
outdoor seating. But Matt, you had the perfect segue. There's
(18:21):
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 almost any food you want, virtually
any food. Historically, if you live hundreds and hundreds of
(18:43):
miles in lent, 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 splurge a little. Let's get some calamari, you know
what I mean. Let's get some fried lovely squid. A
(19:05):
little squeeze a lemon on there, you know what I mean.
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, oh, squid, squiggy, squiggly,
squishy squid. It's fried to a delightful golden brown and
then dipped in marinara sauce or some kind of what
(19:27):
do you call it? A oli perhaps um? But yeah,
you know 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 rings is where things can go horribly south. Yeah, yeah,
(19:48):
you gotta get the cathulu calamari. Okay, you want to
love craft aspect to your calamari, because it may not
always be the squid you think it is, at least
to us, 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.
(20:13):
Cough cough. It is often it's happened, man, it's happened.
I see. I I don't think so. I don't think
it's happened at all. I don't. I've got to take
that stance right now because okay, well, well let's talk
about it first. But I disagree with you, but yeah, yeah,
I'm into it. So back in twenty thirteen, this allegation
(20:38):
hit 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 allegation here
was that the calamari that people order in restaurants is
(20:58):
sometimes not from squid, but from pigs. Specifically, they're rectums
their intestines. To Matt's point, I do want to pose
it are there are the rectums just so cleanly removable,
but 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. Because that's all I'm saying here. Yeah,
(21:21):
it's more. I think using the word rectum is more
for uh, click bait or buzz value. So it would
really just be the intestine itself cut into rings. Yes. Um,
that's the thing that has been bandied about for for
for many years. While again to Matt, you may completely
(21:42):
disagree with this, we don't definitively no, uh, we have
or have proof of this has happened on some kind
of large scale. We do know that counterfeit seafood absolutely does. Um,
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
(22:04):
were selling you something under the guise of being fresh
snapper and it was actually some other trash fish. Um.
But Matt, we gotta give you your day in court.
What what what is with what is your your misgivings
about this pig butthole phenomenon. Well, I was just doing
some reading about it. Slate has a great right up
on that episode of This American Life and that specific
(22:25):
segment that came from a producer, Ben Calhoun, and it
literally was a friend of a friend story of that
was just retold essentially in you know, within This American Life,
and you know it upon further looking at it and
really considering it. Calamari or you know, squid frozen versions
(22:50):
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 in
the most desperate of situations I think, would anyone you know, uh,
step to trying to get one over on their customers
to instead put tripe of some sort or pig intestines
(23:15):
of some sort in the in there in the mix,
rather than just you know, buying some fairly inexpensive calamari
and then selling it at a at a price that
they that they could. 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
(23:37):
a is there a widespread calamari conspiracy? Probably not, I
grant financially, it's it doesn't make as much sense and legally,
according to Uncle Sam, anything containing a pork product has
to be labeled as such. However, has this happened and
isolated perhaps desperate instances. The answer is quite possibly, because
(24:00):
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 penching institution. I would say
they may have been built as well, somewhere in the
supply chain. Because the issue here is that counterfeit seafood, right,
(24:24):
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. But that lack of oversight
is what compels people to say as possible. But someone
(24:44):
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 pigs button, 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 I'm not quite sure what
imitation crab is made of. But you have scallops for example.
(25:07):
Scalops sometimes can be cookie cutter punch outs of like
stingray or uh what else shark as well. Uh. There's
there's an interesting report just last year from an outfit
called Oceanica, and they found that twenty one per cent
of the seafood in the US is being served somehow
(25:28):
under what we could call a fake identity. I love
that you mentioned scalop snool. Things like lobster, catfish, flounder, hallibut,
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 bass spared no expense. Remember that was
(25:52):
that was the That was the meal in Jurassic Park,
the nice Chilean sea bass. That's right. The real name
for chill and sea bass is Patagonian toothfish and yum.
And you can pull up you can pull up a picture.
It's it's it's not gonna win the fish beauty contest.
Have you ever heard the expression toothsome yes, does that
(26:16):
mean you've got a lot of teeth? And it's something
that's texture to 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.
What's made of, Matt, I just brought it up a
minute ago. Yeah, that's why I'm bringing it to you.
Alaska pollock. That's what's in this one. Water, egg whites,
(26:39):
corn starch, sugar. Oh god, king crab meat is in
this two or less of king crab meat or whoa
or blue crab meat extract or lobster or refined fish oil. Jesus,
this is like a choose your awn adventure ingredient. He
(27:03):
loves it. You don't know what you're FEEDI um each time.
It could be crab, it could be lobster. Oh god,
Well you know, honestly, there are some dishes, uh, in
which with which I prefer to use imitation crab. But
I I was not aware of that, Matt. Thank you
for bringing that to our attention. I don't think I've
(27:26):
seen an ingredient list that goes down into an either
or situation. I didn't know that was legal. It does
seem a little fishy. There is you know what I
was wrong with? The or? There are a couple of ors,
but don't I put in a few supp put in
(27:46):
too many, Jesus, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go put
this back before he goes bad. Yeah. 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. Uh, we
would be remiss if we didn't mention the all the
horsemeat krawfuffle of of of recent years. I don't quite
(28:09):
remember what. I think it was just a couple of years. Okay,
so a few more than in recent but um, the
chain of German in origin supermarkets all the uh conducted
a test on some of their ready made beef dishes,
you know, frozen things, and it was from a supplier
named call me gul Uh and tests revealed that thirty
(28:31):
to a hundred percent of these beef products were actually horsemeat.
No yeah, and they withdrew them. And this is a
thing that can be confirmed. This actually happened. There's not
a conspiracy theory. Um. 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
(28:54):
you didn't think it was too bad. No, not too
bad at all. But if you want to know, you
want to know, that's the thing you want to know.
I don't. I don't think anybody is looking back fondly
on as that time I got tricked into eating horsemeat.
This also all the got the most pressed for this,
(29:16):
but that supplier you mentioned was supplying several other companies
in Sweden, and I want to save France. The counterfeiting
problem in food is a multilayered 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 the
(29:39):
unless there's some pretty robust legislation down the pike. As
maritime ecosystems collapse, you know you're gonna see more and
more uh, confusing seafood. 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 d to be fair,
(30:01):
we're called Today's Special Frozen beef Lasagna and Today's Special
Frozen spaghetti bolinas. So you know it was special beef
a k A horse beef. Yeah, and especially you know
given that consuming that type of flesh is taboo in
(30:24):
the West. This is not Yeah, this is not like
finding out you know that you were you ordered chicken
and you've got a duck, you know what I mean.
These are very different things, and 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 it's I mean, it's a little different, but it's
(30:45):
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,
Like it could shake your whole culinary worldview and really
like cause some serious PTSD for some people. Agreed, And
speaking of uh trauma fear speculation, let's pause for a
(31:08):
word from our sponsor and we'll dive into some urban
legends and we are back. This is a weird one.
Right to us conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
If you have heard of a theory like this, there's
(31:29):
a long running idea or theory we can call it
that certain beverages are meant to promote sterilization or to
prevent sexual activity through some ingredients, some additive that's put
into the mix. This is a long running concept in
(31:54):
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 maybe like
rendering you, uh, sexually dysfunctional for a time. Or the
(32:14):
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 that has to live in close quarters, which
is kind of unnatural for people. The thing is, there's
not any proof of this. If you have proof from
(32:37):
maybe your time in the armed forces or something, then
we would love to hear it. But have you guys
ever heard of this theory? Well, I mean non intentional,
Like I wasn't there a thing where certain dies maybe
would render people sterile or or not promote proper growth
of reproductive cells like yellow number five and things like that,
(32:59):
or did I make that there? There have been rumors
about various food additives, food colors, um and a couple
of other things like um stabilizers. We talked about what
was what we talked about a little while ago. That
was in Mountain dew. Um. God, it was a long time.
I think it was maybe we talked about that. But um,
(33:22):
it's the flame flame retardant chemical all or something that
exists within a lot of citrus beverages that causes that
cloudy look. Oh uh broad Yes, something vegetable oil, Yes,
exactly is that true? Brominad vegetable oils. This is what
(33:44):
I recall it being. Yeah, it multifies citrus flavored soft drinks. Uh.
There there's a lot of issue with that. But ben
a dear to answer your question, I don't know anything
about some kind of larger conspiracy to you know, uh,
sterilized people through some kind of drink or substance like that. Yeah,
it's it's a it's kind of a sub genre that
(34:08):
bears something in common with the 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 the old fluoridation stories. The fluoride is added
(34:28):
the water. Uh, that part is true. But with this
there there's some weird questions. Right, There's some holes in
this concept, first one being how do you regulate a dosage.
That's the same issue run into with the fluoride theories
and other related ones. But the scary thing about this
(34:51):
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.
(35:12):
Like the government of the United States actively did sterilized
people multiple times, and it's weird that it doesn't get
mentioned as often as it should. Yeah, we've talked about
a couple of in a couple of different episodes on
for various reasons, just the terrible history that the United
(35:33):
States has with eugenics and how it actually appears to
have influenced a certain regime out in Germany. Right, right,
And it might surprise a lot of our US listeners
to know the first eugenics based compulsory sterilization law in
(35:54):
human history was it was passed here in the US
Indiana in nine seven, made humanity's first law of this sort,
and other people just copied Indiana the Virginia Sterilization Act
in culled for patients and mental institutions to be sterilized
(36:16):
against their will. This is when they threw around all
those really you know, offensive terms for people with low
i q s. Correct. Yeah, this is 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
(36:38):
would be motive for those who run the prison two
keep the inmates, you know, the population as calm as possible,
right they would have they would there would be motivation
for that, for that desire. And if you could achieve
that by applying some what was it, extra ingredient to
(37:00):
you know, whatever food supplier or drink supply that you've
got providing that you're providing for them, 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 at even
one particular prison or something like that, but it definitely
(37:21):
feels real. 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 somebody will say that saltpeter
is added to maybe not just the the water, but
(37:43):
the food as well. Also you'll hear this in boys schools,
and the idea is that it it diminishes this X
drive to your point, Matt, to make the population somewhat
more sedate and easy to control. Wait, what you're saying,
I can take saltpeter to lower my sex drive potassium nitrate.
But the problem here is no, I'm not saying that
(38:05):
because it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It just sounds
intelligent and conversation, you know, because you can find saltpeter
in a ton of stuff. It's used as a preservative
in food and color. It's a it's an agent of
color retention in things like bacon, corned beef, ham, hot dogs. Hey,
(38:29):
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 can make that the oral tradition
of this conspiratorial story is kind of our our culture
(38:54):
recounting the terrible things that occurred in the past. Uh,
but now we know you were waiting for this, folks. Yes,
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. Ever.
(39:17):
You've probably heard rumors that the mc rib for McDonald's
is so popular that it like excuse the world pork market.
You probably had some weird fast food experiences in your
old life. Is that why they only bring it back seasonally, Ben,
because they don't want to totally upend the pork supply. Yeah. Yeah,
cows and chickens we're good all year, that's fine. But
(39:40):
the pigs, you gotta let them be for a while.
I gotta wonder how much actual pork is in that
McRib too. I mean, like, I just I'm not I
have no proof for answer to this question. I just
for some reason have a feeling like it's a pork
uh composite kind of situation. Oh for sure. Yeah, here's
here's the thing. You and find some work on this
(40:01):
by economists who are usually arguing that there isn't there
isn't a super strong correlation between the mic ribb and
pork prices in terms of like a causative relationship. Right there,
they were not saying most economists will argue that the
mic ribb itself doesn't seem to be swinging the needle
(40:25):
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 dropped to some threshold, then
they say, okay, it makes sense for us to make
the mcribb again. That makes so much sense. I mean
that that makes more sense than the idea that Ronald
(40:49):
McDonald is somewhere steepling his clown fingers and saying it's
time to punish the pork people. They'll learn, really the
McRib you know what I mean? I don't. I don't
think it's quite that level. But there's somebody in some
office that hits the McRib button though, and it's just
(41:10):
an alert that goes out to every franchise e. They're
just like 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 bat phone or something.
And there's one person whose entire job is to every
so often just pick up this phone and then say like,
(41:32):
do it, and then all across the world and they
do it too, and they pick up we're going to
make apple fritters now, and then they just say the
new things. I love it. How do you get that gig?
That's sort of like uh dipping your toe into fast
food conspiracy kind of thing, right, because it sounds ostensibly possible,
(41:58):
if not plausible, it sounds possible, but other stories get
weird so quickly. You guys, remember that before KFC used
to be called Kentucky Fried Chicken. Do do you guys
remember that? Yeah? Yeah, big old signs that were just
huge with so many letters. And then they went the
(42:19):
way of many UH brands like that and you know,
wanted to to simplify, go for a minimalist approach KFC TLC.
The implication what is that that? I mean the implication
and the conspiracy circles perhaps is that chicken no longer
was in play? Yes, do you guys remember when we
used to make a show called Stuff they Don't Want
(42:41):
You to Know? And then it became Stiddardwick. Oh yeah,
I do. It was a golden day at PR agency.
Was worth every penny. So yeah. The the idea then
is that there's some sort of delustion, right the tail.
The tail goes something like this. Over the years, while
(43:05):
selling you buckets of chicken, KFC was also paying scientists
to do insane experiments on on poultry. H and 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
(43:27):
equivalent of a human centipede. Right, It's just they've figured
out a way to just grow the breasts, the wings
and the drumsticks, et cetera. And now this could no
longer be as you pointed out in the labeled as chicken.
Whatever they did, they did it, they took it too far.
It's not chicken anymore. Um to be fair or foul. Uh.
(43:52):
KFC actually responded to this one. The responses to a
lot of these theories are classic. But imagine you're the
PR person for KFC and you have to say, okay,
we still use chicken. We're not at the dark forefront
of evil gadaga like genetic experimentation. But their their response
(44:15):
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 words the government didn't tell us to.
We just don't want people to hear the word fried. Yeah,
because for quite a while there and even now, the
(44:35):
word fried comes comes with it the connotation of super unhealthy,
like don't eat that. Ever, that's the worst thing you
can do to your body. Don't do that, which isn't
necessarily true, but it's also not wrong. So I'll tell
you what it is, one of the worst things you
can possibly put in your body. As the amazingly unhealthy
(44:55):
KFC menu item the double down. Do you recall this,
I don't know if it is or not, but it
was certainly was around. It was, you know, a football
kind of themed menu item that that substituted fried chicken
patties for buns. So they weren't chicken. Those were breasts,
my friend, okay, okay, and they were delicious that they were,
(45:19):
and it as bacon. I I actually 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? You know, yes, do I
dare disturb the sleeping elder beasts slumber? That was redundant,
but you get where I'm coming from. Um. Have you
guys seen the delightful new Hulu reboot of the show Animaniacs.
(45:47):
The first episode, Uh, it's great. And they in the
first episode it's all about it. They've been like away,
I don't know, they were exiled or something. Um, and
they do with this amazing song called the catch Up Song.
That's all about everything that's happened. It's the nineties when
the show ended and 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,
(46:09):
we don't know what's gonna happen in the future because
the writers are writing this in and it's not gonna
come out till so we'll just use our imagination. And
there's 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.
(46:31):
We breed birds without arms on our factory farms, 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. Uh. And then it says it's
about a talking police car who's who's also a time machine. Wow,
here comes the star Clunko. I travel through time following crime. Okay,
that's all I've got. But I just love the factory farms,
(46:52):
birth without arms line and food and bars. I thought
that was appropriate for this episode. There you go, man,
and I'm any acts. Steven Spielberg made that stuff. You
can still he's still involved. It's very very good. That's awesome. Well,
you know what, you know what you have to do
a lot of Uh when when you're making animated series.
(47:14):
What's that you gotta do? Caffeine baby, Well, some kind
of upper drink. Yeah, yeah, the excellent segue, Matt. 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 seeing the praises of a delicious cup of
(47:37):
Tim Horton's coffee. This coffee come not a sponsor. Uh,
this coffee come, I've actually never tried it. This coffee
comes with a free conspiracy theory of its own. There
are people who seemed to to some degree believe that
tim Horton's was spiking its coffee with something else and
(47:58):
the people were becoming uh physiologically addicted to not the
caffeine necessarily, but whatever that ingredient X was just refer
to collectively as crank. And they, well, they said that
they thought, like the popular theory was that tim Horton's
was adding nicotine to the coffee and people were getting
(48:20):
addicted to nicotine and they didn't realize it because they
were They thought, they just really have to have my
morning cup of coffee, which you probably already 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.
This episode of stuff that I I don't want you to
know is brought to you by iced coffee, home brewed
(48:41):
or otherwise. It's what keeps us going. And uh then again, uh,
pr manager for tim Horton's had to respond to this,
which is a fun response this. Uh. I like the
way Michelle Robis show put this. She says, there is
in fact nothing added to our coffee. We believe our
(49:02):
guests are addicted to consistency. 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, Uh, There
there are other instances in the past. McDonald's, for example,
was accused of adding nicotine to hamburgers. Yeah, I mean
(49:24):
it's nicotine is the addictive thing. Like, do you want
to get addicted to something, try nicotine. You'll get there
real fast. Um. So that that is one of the
I guess the go toos, the go to chemical when
it comes to something feeling like it's overly addictive or
more addictive than you expected it to be. Right right,
(49:47):
Because also nicotine is legal, you know what I mean.
It's not as if the accusation that somebody would say
putting opioids in food wouldn't wouldn't make as much sense.
It seems like a lot of risk for a very
weird gamble. Um. So that you can see already that
a lot of this stuff, upon further examination, may have
(50:09):
a grain of truth as its cornerstone or its foundation.
But things get carried away pretty quickly. We wanted to
give you one, one, very real one 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
(50:31):
of Andy Rooney like you, however, but have you ever
noticed a sudden change in the packaging of your favorite
food like that? Did you go to buy, uh, some
cereal that you loved during childhood out of nostalgia and
you say, hey, whoa this box is Huh, this box
is weirdly small. You're not crazy. It's not the Mandela effect.
(50:54):
You are experiencing. Shrink Flation Just to the other day,
actually bought a box a lucky charm is out of
that exact impulse you're describing pure nostalgia. Um, But honestly,
it's one of those things where it's like, do I
really want a giant bag cram full of sugary marshmallowy
morsels or what I've been doing myself a favor by
(51:15):
having a half filled bag? I would go with the
ladder personally, but it is a phenomenon that we've seen
over time. Um, this idea of shrink flation, 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
(51:36):
in those respective industries. The the ideas that you can
slowly reduce the size or amount of a product 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
(52:00):
the product price, which is why, like, that's the number
of most people pay attention to. You might shop at
some grocery store where they have the full price of something,
you know, it's like four or whatever, and then they
have it broken down to cost per ounce, but very
few people actually read that part. They just see four
(52:20):
ninety nine or nine or three, and it makes a
huge impact on whether or not they buy that thing.
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 m h and and manufacturers realized they could do this.
(52:41):
They could skim 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 that that little half sphere that just gets bigger
and bigger. Uh. You can also see it in boxes,
(53:04):
you know, like your experience with Lucky charms. But just
it was orange juice, orange juice, what what's the deal?
Just so 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
(53:25):
for a long time when I was a kid, that's
how you would buy orange juice. UM. And then you know,
with a lot of these other companies creating new new
orange 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 different. They are these
specialized bottles, and those bottles over time began to get
(53:49):
smaller and smaller. But it was the same type of bottle,
but they would get smaller and smaller. And it's gotten
to the point now where several brands that I have
seen actually say still one gallon, We're still still however
many fluid ounces or still you know this many miller leaders.
It's really interesting because it's become a marketing tool just
(54:10):
to say, hey, we're not doing the shrinking over here,
but 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. 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
(54:31):
see these like silly kind of life hack or whatever like.
But 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. Um. The initial version of that that
I saw was that button will pop out if the
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
(54:53):
more um 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 um. It gives it a little
more give because that button is flexing outward, you know,
as opposed to it being a rigid walls container. That's
brilliant to me. That just seems like good product is
(55:14):
I am fascinated by the concept of it. You know,
you see all this clever packaging, uh that works like
like you you have the perfect example there, nol. It's
it's a what seems to be a very simple solution,
but holy smokes, that's got to be a game changer
for the dairy industry. And maybe that's where maybe that's
(55:36):
where we end. Just on a slightly more sinister note. Packaging.
We talked a little bit about it with shrink flation,
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. What happens, what happens
to all that stuff? You know? Oh well, okay, yeah,
(55:58):
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, um
in with the pouch, the food pouch, the food product pouch.
Now when you say intelligent design, are you referring to
the notion that God is in control of our destinies? Yes,
(56:19):
a deity of some sort designed these things. These things,
they're pouches of food, the little twisty top. I love those, well,
anyone that has ever had a child or is just
a fan of you know, fruits and vegetables that are
purred down into this consistency that can fit into a
(56:42):
bag like this. I mean, it 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,
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 a apple sauce at a big
(57:03):
glass jar and you just put it out and eat
it individually like that. It was delicious. But now each
little serving comes in something like this, when like nowadays,
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. This is obviously going
to be the YouTube clip. Let's make a note of this.
(57:25):
If you don't mind, this has got to be. This
is the show and tell portion of the podcast. Well, well,
I'm I'm holding up just one of these individual little
plastic cups filled with this one I think has peaches
and a body would be like apple sauce or something.
And every time you consume one of those, all of
that becomes trash. And even if you are recycling it,
we've talked about the pitfalls of recycling, it is probably
(57:48):
going to end up in a landfill somewhere or in
an ocean somewhere. And think about right now, going through
the times of COVID, 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
(58:08):
know in my family were we counted up the number
of plastic you know, those little packages of plastic forks
and silver plastic wear that you get. We actually saved
them over the course of a month, and we to
frequently get take away um and just looking at it
(58:28):
and quantifying it in that way was a horrifying site. 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 those if you, if you take
a little bit of care with those kinds of products
and you you you stockpile them, they can be useful
and it's not all waste. It's gonna be waste eventually.
(58:51):
But I'm annoyed when when, um, those things are provided
when you they're not asked for, and it's like, you mean,
like this, noll, yeah, so sauce packet. How many of
these have you thrown away? 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 gonna do with this little, tiny, single serving
(59:12):
of soy sauce? You know? I I keep them, but
then I never use them, and then I eventually purged them. Yeah, anyway,
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a big down
over that, you know, 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
(59:32):
thing that you 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? Absolutely? Yeah, Unfortunately, uh, this has been proven.
We just don't know the extent of the long term consequences. Now, Uh,
(59:56):
packaging is packaging is a huge deal. There are companies
that will use what's called biodegradable packaging or sell you
stuffing 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
(01:00:17):
and shrin inflation are two very real conspiracies. One last
shout out. I know everybody has been worried about this
for the entire uh the entirety of today's episode. We
can confirm the Outback Steakhouse has denied their tie, their
alleged ties with the Illuminati. Thank god. So everybody relaxed
and we could be cool or you know, get more
(01:00:41):
on your toes because they're they talked about it, so,
I mean, and that was so who knows, I don't know.
I think jury's out when it comes to the outback Illuminati.
This is this is a real story. We don't have
too much time to get into it. But haw. While back,
someone on Twitter did it, did a conspiracy map and
(01:01:06):
they mapped out locations of outback steakhouses in Arizona and Georgia,
Illinois and a couple of other places, and they said,
look at this these all if you look at the
arrangement here, this forms a pentagram. Is Outback Steakhouse affront
for a Satanic cult? Uh? Outback Steakhouse said uh. In
(01:01:30):
another great pr statement, Outback Steakhouse said, uh, they have
no like world conquering plans other than to bring bold
steaks and blooming onions to our guest. Don't ever eat
the blooming onion. Why it's it's got an insane amount
of calories. Oh yeah, well it's for it's for sharing, Mad,
(01:01:51):
it's for sharing. Oh no, it's not. It's for personal consumption.
I know this for a fact. I've I've been there.
So uh so 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
(01:02:12):
all in Australia, think of out back steakhouse? Is it offensive?
Is it like is it like too much of a caricature?
You know? And then there's what Foster's Australian for beer.
Here's my question. Do they have outbacked steakhouses in Australia?
I think yeah, I think there is uh it, there
(01:02:33):
is one in Australia. But you know, we can't talk
too much trash about that because here in the US
we have American Delhi. We do. They're everywhere. 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
(01:02:54):
and disturbing, but we didn't cover everything. So what food
related conspiracy do you feel? Have serious sand let us know. Yes,
you can find us on social media. We're all over
the place. Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram, check out YouTube dot com slash conspiracy
(01:03:16):
stuff to watch clips from this episode in all of
the other ones that we do. Uh it's it's quite
a bit of fun and reading the comments is a
joy and leaving a comment is um, you know, I
don't know what you would call that experience, but you should.
You should try it out. Um, but that's not it.
If you want to give us a call, we have
(01:03:38):
a phone number. That's right, It's one three st d
W y t K. 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. Um, 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 weekly list
(01:04:00):
our male episodes. And if done of that quite bags
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 we are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
(01:04:35):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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Ben Bowlin
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com