July 4, 2014 • 32 mins
Whether you're sipping a soda, grabbing some fast food or eating ready-made snacks from the local grocery store, chances are that you're ingesting a number of "barely-food" chemicals used to preserve color, taste or texture. But what are these, exactly? Are they dangerous?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs, two ghosts, and government cover ups. His jories
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
hello everybody. Before we start, Matt and I are gonna
do a little banter. What what did you have for
(00:22):
lunch today? If I could ask for lunch? I had
a chicken salad sandwich with some sonships you know it
does the sound have bad? Oh? And some unsweetened tea. Yeah,
iced tea. Oh he said iced tea for a second
if they said heist tea heist and picturing bank robbers,
you know, pausing for a second, just having a sip,
(00:43):
plug in the kettle in or just mixing the ice.
I had a Philly cheese steak because I make bad
life decisions. Did you have fries with that? Sir? I
did have fries with that? I did? And uh yeah,
we have a little cafe downstairs, and uh the one
of a lady who works there and asked me if
I wanted to have no salt on the fries, and
(01:04):
I said, yeah, a lot, no more, no seriously drown
them in salt? Yeah yeah, yeah, and uh so much
so funny story that um. Part way through, she stopped
and she put the salt away, and she pointed her
finger at me, and she said, you know it's not
good for you. Yeah, she said, don't do it all
(01:27):
the time. I said, alright, alright, next time I come
down or buy lunch, I'll buy a salad. And she said,
before you get sick. Yeah. It freaked me out. Just
I appreciate the concerned my lunch, my salt holiday here
salt today, but it made me. It made me think
about the video series that we've been doing this week,
(01:49):
which is all about food additive. So we've got some
we were doing some a little weird. We have two
classic episodes this week because we've got some vacations in
our future. Well, I've got a vacation in my future.
I'm sorry, Ben Ben Ben doesn't get to leave everybody,
uh and I usually don't either, but I finally, finally
(02:11):
am escaping. Right, Yeah, we should. We'll we'll talk about that,
uh a little bit after. I don't want to sour
the experience. We'll talk about okay, return, but but yes,
food the Fooie is crazy. Process, food is crazy. This
season needs salt. I feel like I got a weird,
you know, uh, prophecy or she read my fortune or something. Yeah,
(02:32):
she knew, and she knew you were going to be
doing this too. So a lot of times you'll be
looking at your food labels. We all do this, uh well,
not as much as we should, but we do do
it every once in a while, and you'll just you'll
see that there are more chemicals, more words with names
on them that you just have no idea what the
(02:53):
heck it is. Unless you're a chemistry major or work
in a lab somewhere, you probably don't even know what
these different comp hounds are. Right, Yeah, sodium benz a
weight huh mono sodium glutamate. Right, sounds delicious and that
stuff really is, though I know it's exactly what it is,
(03:13):
just delicious in a powder rite some long name that
sounds a little bit more like somebody randomly playing on
the alphabet than it does like an actual word. Much
less food, and a lot of us, as you said,
don't seek these ingredients out. One thing that is so
strange about the modern world is that we have easier
(03:36):
access to food now than at any point. And now,
I know a lot of people are gonna say, but wait, guys,
clearly starvation and famine are huge problem. That is, that
is true. But overall, if you look at the human
population as a whole, the way it works out is
just a strange and in some places, uh, mainly counterintuitive
(04:02):
availability of food. Yeah, it's a strain. I don't know.
I feel like Hunger Games got it right with their allegory.
They're um, just with the capital that has so much
food that they're throwing up so that they can eat
more and than other places there's nothing um. But you're right.
Over overall, if you take a wine, enough of you Yeah,
(04:22):
it's good. Sorry, I'm just thinking about that now, about
how many people don't have any food. And then I'm
sitting here thinking about the additives and complaining about them,
and weirdly, you know, of course, this is a sidebar
we should throw in here, Matt. Obesity is a huge
threat in developing countries. And you can be starving while
(04:43):
appearing OBEs. Oh yeah, because you can still be deprived
of the actual vitamins, minerals and other substances that you
need to have a working body. Oh and before we
go any further, this all has turned into some long
segue because we're just we're just talking, right. I think
that's I like though, Yeah, it feels more natural. Um.
My name is Ben. Everybody, sorry about that, And my
(05:04):
name is Matt. And we also have Nolan the house. Uh.
He's got his arms up. He's elated to be recording
and editing at the same time. He's thinking about all
the wonderful music shows he'll be playing later on in
the week. Fantastic musician. He's the DJ Baboo to our
evidence and r Science, the Spinderella to our salt and pepper.
(05:27):
Oh man, Yeah, that's a dated reference and really nice.
Uh So, but anyway, that's us. And as we were
talking about, UM, we need to outline something very important here.
We are all from the United States. Uh. We have
a lot of listeners who are not from the United States,
(05:47):
and thank you for listening. We just want you to
know that we were well aware of the stereotype about
US nutrition in general. The portions here are huge. You
can buy things that have been on a shelf for
a year and contain what is legally called you know,
like milk and meat and other perishable items. Uh. You
(06:08):
can do that because there are so many preservatives and
other additives in food. So that's what we mean when
we say processed food. It contains these additives. Um. These
give food a longer shelf life. But they're also there
to preserve flavor, color, even even texture, you know. Oh yeah,
(06:29):
and well okay, so if we go back a little
bit in history, man's been using preservatives for a long time,
or at least means to preserve food. So we've got
all kinds of salts, vinegars, herbs, you could boil things.
Then refrigeration came along because that'll keep it for a
little bit longer. Um. But in the past fifty years,
(06:52):
we man the preservatives that we've been creating, the chemical preservatives,
they are just there astounding. First of all, it's amazing
that we can do these things and they're extremely common,
extremely common. Yeah, like you've you have you ever held
a can of soup, you know something again with darrior
(07:13):
meat in it. You know, this can of clam chowder
or something, and it's uh old enough that if it
was a kid, it could be walking around, you know,
but it's you might have a best by this date,
but you can still eat it apparently. Um. So yeah,
that's that's a great point. The most popular of the
(07:35):
chemical or man made additives in the food industry today
are stuff like benzoites, nitrites, uh sul fights, and swore bates.
Uh so sodium nitrite uh nitrate rather big thing in bacon.
Do you bacon and you want to avoid that, then
you have to make sure you read the labels with
(07:56):
great care. Um, Sometimes you don't because it's the vast
majority of bacon soul in the United States has this added, right.
Uh So these additives do server purpose, like they stop
mold and they stop yeast. Um. Sometimes Uh they're just cosmetic,
like sulfur dioxide, right, it's uh, what is it. It's
(08:21):
it's one of the most common additives and it's just
the bleaching agent. It just makes your stuff look nicer
so someone will pick it up off the shelf. Okay,
oh yeah, that's so much cosmetic stuff that the American
cheese must be yellow, the yellow coloring on cheddar. Now
I'm just naming yellow things. But there's there's so many
(08:44):
additives used today, so many in fact, that in this
podcast we cannot list them all, but we will talk
about a few because we are part way through our
video series on food additives, where we covered, Uh, let's see,
we covered bromonade vegetable oil that we covered aspertain Yep,
(09:08):
that's the artificial sweetener. I think these are the only
two that we end up covering. Yeah, you're right. We
we have a list of these, but we specifically focused
on aspertame and bromanade vegetable oil because we found, uh,
some allegations, some conspiratorial ideas, specifically that there might be
(09:29):
cover ups between the FDA and lobbying organizations. Yes, and
and there's an incentive, monetary incentive to put these additives
out there when perhaps the jury is not out on
whether they're safe for us or not. Right, And we're
not We're not saying, of course, that the f d
A is a bunch of evil, conniving uh supervillains who
(09:53):
want other folks to die. They're also not immune to bribery. Touche,
old friend. You are correct. We we we shall also point
out it is not uncommon for a food additive that
was originally believed to be safe to later be found
toxic because of the testing processes and the ways in
(10:13):
which we the ways in which we have learned to
test these sorts of things. Now, there's some studies that
we looked at over these videos that showed certain food
additives as sources of headaches and nausea and everything from
weakness to even difficulty breathing. Um, I don't I don't
have the name of that study or those studies that
we mentioned right here. We'll have to maybe make a
(10:34):
blog or I don't know, do something to really give
people more information here. Sure, yeah, there are certain foods
that can damage new human nerve cells when they're combined
with other additives. Uh. The truth is that we really
don't understand all the long term effects that additives could
(10:56):
have on our health because in the grand scheme of things,
these are relatively new inventions and we can test these
things to the best of our means. But there is
a reason that not all additives are uniformly banned in
all countries. There's a lot of stuff in the United
(11:18):
States that you could never serve in a product in
the EU or in Japan, for instance, because what do
you need to prove that something is safe? You need
time and trials, enough trials, and when a new food
food additive comes around, maybe it's been in testing for
a while, but you know it took a long time
(11:39):
for us to understand that the tar from smoking cigarettes
was terribly bad for you, right, and later we found out,
at least in that case, that some tobacco companies were
actively fighting against that being uh made made public. Now,
obviously we have to we have to be very careful
(12:03):
and I think, very proactive with the science of these
sorts of things, because some of these effects can be cumulative,
meaning you won't notice them, you know, to your point
about time, until decades down the road. So additives aren't
banned until enough research is collected to determine the exact
effects they have on the body. And and don't forget
(12:24):
there could be cumulative effects just from all the different
additives or something, you know, something else completely different, because
our diets now are so filled with these and how
are you going to separate one from the other unless
you have such strict clinical trials, right, But we do know, uh,
we do know some dangerous additives, right, And we've made
a little bit of a rogues gallery here of some
(12:47):
top fives that are not mentioned in our video series.
So uh, for those intrepid audio podcasts listeners, do feel
free to tell the people who will watched the videos
that that you know more about this than they do.
Oh yeah, you totally do. I'm so I'm sorry, I'm
so setting up a flame war. Oh yeah, no, dude,
(13:10):
let's let's do it. You guys got a battle in
the streets, the audio versus a video, and then maybe
if the battle is you know, long and and difficult enough,
they will become one. Wow, man, I love it. I
love What What a weird mind you have? So it's
like warriors come out and play. Yeah, it's like warriors.
(13:30):
But then in the end and they realized that, hey, guys,
are differences, aren't that different? Maybe we should band together.
I have not seen the end of that. I don't
think that's all right. So wait, what's what's uh number
five on our list here? Okay, so number five is
something that if you have kids you already know about
this food dies and this is this is a big one.
(13:54):
So um, the f d A has they've they've met
to decide whether or not certain food dies should even
be allowed in food, or whether or not they should be,
you know, carrying a warning label. Hey, this product has
food dies in it with the certain food dies, right, yes,
Like Michael Jacobson, the director of the Center for Science
and the Public Interest. He stated that he was most
(14:17):
concerned about the dies Red number forty, Yellow number five,
and yellow number six, and those combined make up about
of the food dies on the market, their allegations that
these cause child hyperactivity, and even a d H d uh.
For the record, I'm not completely convinced on those um
(14:39):
And you know, we've been using food dies for years,
but the use has really accelerated, as in like what
quintupled quintupled. Well, yeah, if if you were in school
in the nineties, you probably heard the rumors about yellow
number five and mountain dew. And do you do not
(15:00):
know this? I've heard this. Oh wow, maybe I'm one
of the only ones. Okay, not feel horrible. I didn't
get outside very often. Well, I have very many friends,
that's fine. The idea was that yellow number five would
affect your genitals if you were a male in certain ways.
Oh okay, yeah, wow. Anyway, there was a huge rumor
(15:21):
back in the time. But I remember thinking that rumor
caused me to think about some of these chemicals way
back in the day in middle school. But anyway, uh
so number four is lead, which might surprise people because
you know, lead food two things you wouldn't think about
going together. Well, and it's also kind of a strange
(15:42):
culprit when you think about where this lead is found.
It's in juice drinks. So, according to the study and
Natural News, beverages marketed to these two kids contain levels
of lead, varying levels of lead, some of them can
be dangerous. The levels were high enough to gain a
(16:02):
warning under California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act
of so Prop sixty pro Prop sixty five. And that's
a little scary when you think about lead because, as
we talked about before, lead is dangerous inside the human
body because it's lead. It's so weird, you know. Okay,
(16:26):
and then we've got number three on our list, which
is something you schooled me about a number of years ago, Matt,
and that is v P eight. Yes, there are certain
synthetic hormones that are in our diet and can be
found in things. This one b p A, U BI
sephanol A can be found in canned foods. There was
a new study that's showing that organic or not of
(16:49):
your canned foods that you're consuming contain this. Uh, this hormone,
and there are a couple of studies that you can
go online. Just just put b P a canned food
into a search bar and look at it, but not
while you're eating. Well, that might make for an interesting
(17:10):
reaction video if you want to post those on YouTube. Oh,
that's not a bad idea at all. Um, all right,
so I'd love it if people were posting more reaction videos.
That'd be interesting. Um, alright, So Thallate's right, thouilates. Uh.
These are another synthetic hormone, often founding canned foods. This
(17:31):
chemicals associated with endocrine disruption animals and in some human
studies they've confirmed this, but they've been shown to cause
reproductive and neurological damage in lab animal test. Uh. You
can also, in addition to canned foods, find these in
some personal care products, which leads us all to number one,
(17:52):
probably one of my favorite food additives, the most delicious
thing that exists. Ms g oh Man Okay, linked to
hormonal imbalances, weight game, brain damage, obesity, headaches, and it
is just it's dude, and well it's yeah, that's what
it does. It just makes things taste better. And it's
(18:12):
back in style. Too. There are a couple of there
are a lot of very popular restaurants you can go
to now that specifically say, yeah, we make it with
MSG because it's this beautifully horrible thing that makes everything
taste delicious. Yeah, no kidding, I'm gonna have to take
it one day at a time. Man, This post MSG
lifestyle I'm living, it's crazy. I'm a you know, maybe
(18:35):
I don't care enough that it's harmful. Maybe I just
need some more MSG man sprinkling on everything put in
my coffee. It's like I used to taste in color
and now I taste in grays. Uh, it's not that bad.
I'm I'm joking, guys. Uh. So that is our gallery
of five food additives. They're controversial, but that we didn't
(18:57):
mention in our video series yet. Uh. Weirdly enough, Matt,
we had a sponsor for this one, but they they
pulled out the last minute. Yeah, I guess legally we
can't even tell you which h food company pulled out.
But you know, just just wonder mayor it may or
(19:20):
may not be the people who make dehydrated space ice cream.
Well maybe I mean no, I mean those wonderful people
that maybe we'll work with in the future. I'm having
so much fun. Say may or may not be it
may or may not be the makers of pavement sauce,
which is both a condiment and pavement alternative, delicious pavement sauce. Alright, well,
(19:46):
speaking of payment sauce, man, here's where it gets crazy. Yes, yes, yes,
let's talk about the more conspiratorial things in the side
of this. Oh codex alimentary right, alimentarius, thank you? That
is the that is a tremendously controversial move by the
United Nations to standardize food across the globe. Yeah, for safety, Ben,
(20:12):
that's why. That's why you would do that, for safety.
So school me on this one. Matt. You know more
than I do about this. Well, I actually don't, but
I'll tell you a couple of things that I do know.
I know that it was a great episode and you
should watch it. Yeah, we have an episode about this,
uh in our gosh, this is an older episode. Yeah,
it's just been a while. Uh. I should really prepare
(20:34):
for these things better, Ben, Well, we'll do. What we'll
do instead is maybe we'll do a podcast on that
in detail and its entirety in the future if people
are interested. Because we Uh, we covered it in our
video series, and that's sort of an introduction to the concept. Yeah,
But all in all, it goes back to the idea
(20:55):
that the u N wants to bring a new world
order and control everything, and and they're starting with the food.
It's like a slippery slope argument kind of thing, right, Yeah,
And they're also there's the argument that the health requirements
or the standards for this the Okay, the advocates say, look,
we're just trying to make things hygienic, safer, and more uniform,
(21:18):
maybe with more environmental considerations and packaging, because that's a
huge thing to opponents say, yeah, this is a new
world order grab for control and also mandating, uh, the
insertion of chemicals that will damage people's neurological functions control. Yeah,
(21:38):
so we'll have to There's so much to that that
it would be fun to explore it in another episode.
Maybe funds not the right word, It would be fascinating.
But it does lead us to our next one, which
is the concept of brain drain. The idea that not
only are food additives put into uh into process food
(21:59):
with the intention of hurting you, like, willfully put in
there instead of just trying to save some money, but
these also have uh calculated neurological effects on the population.
This one, I had to tell you, This one I
don't buy just because it's hard to How would you
regulate the dose? How would you ensure that it had
(22:22):
the actual effect that you're looking for, you know what
I mean? And you're looking at a huge population sample
size to try and treat everyone, or if you wanted
to look at it that way, Uh, And how do
you prevent anybody that you don't want to eat it
not to eat it? Do you just have an email
list with all the foods you can't eat this week
(22:42):
or this month or this year? Alright, a little sad
face emoji. But you know, at the same time, I
think back to our Florida episode and that that has
always made me question what I believe about some of
that stuff. Not necessarily that I believe that Flora it
is calcifying my o pineal gland, but it certainly interests me. Uh.
(23:05):
With the hexelfloor solicit solicit, Yeah, basically because of the
motivations behind that kind of stuff and the money which
goes to the other one of the other conspiracy theories,
the idea that big business and perhaps corruption with lobbying
and the FDA. As we mentioned earlier that these forces
(23:26):
are responsible for unsafe additives and food. This isn't so
much a case of some business saying let's hurt people,
as it is a business or a lobbying group more
likely saying, hey, we already spent so much money researching
this chemical. It's a sunk cost for us, so we
(23:48):
don't want to lose billions of dollars trying to find
a new you know, in insert ingredients. How how can
we use it? How can we make this chemical that
was meant for this Charlotte, Let's try its form it,
let's let's rename it. It will be huge. What was
your campaign? Yeah? What was that food additive that gave
people the runs in the healthy potato chips? Yeah? Because
(24:12):
it was better for you than fat. Had a name
o Lean. Yeah, so it just made it just made you,
just made you poop, I mean fat, but wasn't really
poop so much, right, that's the worst part. It was
an oily discharge that which is the phrase that they
use in the official literature. That's not just thus messing around,
(24:36):
And it makes me think of the Hierbo hierbo sugar
free or sugar less gummy bears? Have you heard about
Oh what happened? Did those also have similar facts? Apparently
tons of videos online about that. You have to watch
out for that sort of stuff, which is ultimately the
moral of the story here. There's another one that another
(24:56):
conspiracy theory, and I don't think it's fair to call
these a theory. And while we're here, shout out to
one of our listeners or audience members who said, Uh,
you guys say the word can theory when you mean hypotheses.
I get it, I understand it. But what we say
is conspiracy theory because that's the phrase that most people understand.
(25:18):
We're not here to exclude anybody, so with all due respect,
we we do understand that. But it's sort of like
you park in a driveway. We already have the word driveway,
so we're using it to reach the most people. I
remember that argument from high school and science class, which
is the hypothesis. I get it as accurate to say, yeah, yeah,
(25:41):
we get it, um. But this leads us to again
the most dangerous, uh conspiratorial idea here, which is corner cutting.
So you know, we've all heard the stories about dog
food from China that contains dangerous thing and it's making
animals sick. Right. The The idea that somebody would cut
(26:04):
a a processed food, uh, not to preserve its shelf
life necessarily, but just to make the actual food go
further is more common than you might think. Yeah, and
it kind of reminds me of cutting a drugs No.
(26:25):
I see what you're saying, Just trying to make as
much profit as you can off of the supply you
currently have. Yeah, and this is not something that is
just restricted to uh, one part of the world by
any means. I know. I think that China often gets
a really bad rap for that, which maybe in some
cases is exaggerated propaganda. But you know, it's not like
(26:49):
there's a country with the perfect manufacturing process. Uh. One
thing I should point out then, is that there were
a couple of studies done in the UK that found
I can't remember the specific brand, but there was there
was like this meat pie brand, uh, and I think
it may have been like their own brand that was
(27:09):
found to contain actually no meat. Yeah, that's very familiar there.
There's things like that that happen all the time. Just
not what you're expecting because in the factory process, one
will switch didn't get turned or something right messed up
for you know, that's why there's so many food recalls
happened constantly, and the Publix and the Kroger where I
(27:31):
go to locally, there's constantly food recalls up. And it's
always packaged food always and yeah, and some of the
strangest packaged food to also comes from your local fast
food outlet, which may pure package just because it's hot,
but make no mistake it is. It arrives packaged and
it is uh processed severely. Like you know, sometimes uh
(27:55):
fast food restaurants will do that thing where they say
now with blank percent more blah blah blah blah blah.
The scary thing is that when you know, when you're
an average person, you read that and you say, oh, okay,
the hamburger or the hot dog or whatever is now
percent bigger, bigger. That means they added fifteen or fifty
(28:16):
percent more meat to the mix that they used to
create the thing, or they yeah, or they put more
saline solution into their chicken breasts to make them murder,
which is that you can do no Matt something tells
me that we're gonna get a lot of listener mail
about this four things that we should examine in more detail. Absolutely, Yeah,
(28:37):
I'm looking forward to that because there's a lot of
stuff we touched on. Unfortunately we're out of time. Uh
that in a lot of these things could be their
own podcasts, just the fast food stuff alone, labeling alone.
You know, what is organic mean? What is a natural flavor?
I love that the green movement is something we can
really delve into. Well, but before we leave been yeah,
(28:59):
what the hell? Because the is there a solution? How
how do we get out of this? Because we Okay,
let me just give you what I've been thinking about.
We can't go back to an all natural you know,
the idea of the all natural movement. We can't do
that because there's no way we could have enough food
for everybody. Um, it's just not possible. That's why, that's
(29:24):
why Norman Borolog was such a hero. He gave food
to just billions of people who wouldn't have been able
to eat in the super wheat inventor. Well, and it's
a processed food, right, also genetically modified that then becomes
a processed food and almost has to I see what
you're saying, just from the idea of transporting the food.
(29:46):
What's weird. What's weird about it is that there's more
than enough food around to feed every single person on
the planet. Uh. The problem is we have so much
food waste, we have so much inefficiency in transporting it,
and uh, you know, in in a lot of ways,
our systems of social hierarchy, UH make it make feeding
(30:11):
everyone a much lower priority than you know it would
be theoretically. Uh. It's an interesting question man, whether or
not these these food additives are necessary. I would say,
with the current state of affairs, You're absolutely right. A
lot of people who are eating an entirely healthy organic
(30:32):
diet um in in some ways are are privileged, you know.
And it's not I'm not saying it's a bad thing
at all. What I'm saying is it's a thing that
is simply not a reality, not an accessible possibility for
a great deal of the human race or human species,
I guess. And Uh, at this point there we have
(30:55):
found that there are food additives that do good things
for people, right, and we do also know that there
is a huge argument to be made from moderation like salt. Salt,
if you think about it, one of the first things
you would add to food historically. Ye, salt is too
bad for you. What man, those fries were so good though, Sure, Oh,
(31:21):
she warned me. Rosie warned me. Well, you know on
that note, I guess what we're saying is that we
would like to hear from you guys. What should we
cover in more detail coming up? What should other You're well,
you're what your your fellow listeners know about food additives
that aren't that isn't really out there in the mainstream,
and do you have any topics that we should cover
(31:42):
before I die of assault overdose? Let us know On
Facebook and Twitter. You can visit our website, which is
pretty awesome, Nottitude, our own horns stuff they want you
to know dot com and remember we're always just an
email away. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot com.
(32:05):
From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomena, visit test
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From UFOs, two ghosts, and government cover ups. His jories
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
hello everybody. Before we start, Matt and I are gonna
do a little banter. What what did you have for
(00:22):
lunch today? If I could ask for lunch? I had
a chicken salad sandwich with some sonships you know it
does the sound have bad? Oh? And some unsweetened tea. Yeah,
iced tea. Oh he said iced tea for a second
if they said heist tea heist and picturing bank robbers,
you know, pausing for a second, just having a sip,
(00:43):
plug in the kettle in or just mixing the ice.
I had a Philly cheese steak because I make bad
life decisions. Did you have fries with that? Sir? I
did have fries with that? I did? And uh yeah,
we have a little cafe downstairs, and uh the one
of a lady who works there and asked me if
I wanted to have no salt on the fries, and
(01:04):
I said, yeah, a lot, no more, no seriously drown
them in salt? Yeah yeah, yeah, and uh so much
so funny story that um. Part way through, she stopped
and she put the salt away, and she pointed her
finger at me, and she said, you know it's not
good for you. Yeah, she said, don't do it all
(01:27):
the time. I said, alright, alright, next time I come
down or buy lunch, I'll buy a salad. And she said,
before you get sick. Yeah. It freaked me out. Just
I appreciate the concerned my lunch, my salt holiday here
salt today, but it made me. It made me think
about the video series that we've been doing this week,
(01:49):
which is all about food additive. So we've got some
we were doing some a little weird. We have two
classic episodes this week because we've got some vacations in
our future. Well, I've got a vacation in my future.
I'm sorry, Ben Ben Ben doesn't get to leave everybody,
uh and I usually don't either, but I finally, finally
(02:11):
am escaping. Right, Yeah, we should. We'll we'll talk about that,
uh a little bit after. I don't want to sour
the experience. We'll talk about okay, return, but but yes,
food the Fooie is crazy. Process, food is crazy. This
season needs salt. I feel like I got a weird,
you know, uh, prophecy or she read my fortune or something. Yeah,
(02:32):
she knew, and she knew you were going to be
doing this too. So a lot of times you'll be
looking at your food labels. We all do this, uh well,
not as much as we should, but we do do
it every once in a while, and you'll just you'll
see that there are more chemicals, more words with names
on them that you just have no idea what the
(02:53):
heck it is. Unless you're a chemistry major or work
in a lab somewhere, you probably don't even know what
these different comp hounds are. Right, Yeah, sodium benz a
weight huh mono sodium glutamate. Right, sounds delicious and that
stuff really is, though I know it's exactly what it is,
(03:13):
just delicious in a powder rite some long name that
sounds a little bit more like somebody randomly playing on
the alphabet than it does like an actual word. Much
less food, and a lot of us, as you said,
don't seek these ingredients out. One thing that is so
strange about the modern world is that we have easier
(03:36):
access to food now than at any point. And now,
I know a lot of people are gonna say, but wait, guys,
clearly starvation and famine are huge problem. That is, that
is true. But overall, if you look at the human
population as a whole, the way it works out is
just a strange and in some places, uh, mainly counterintuitive
(04:02):
availability of food. Yeah, it's a strain. I don't know.
I feel like Hunger Games got it right with their allegory.
They're um, just with the capital that has so much
food that they're throwing up so that they can eat
more and than other places there's nothing um. But you're right.
Over overall, if you take a wine, enough of you Yeah,
(04:22):
it's good. Sorry, I'm just thinking about that now, about
how many people don't have any food. And then I'm
sitting here thinking about the additives and complaining about them,
and weirdly, you know, of course, this is a sidebar
we should throw in here, Matt. Obesity is a huge
threat in developing countries. And you can be starving while
(04:43):
appearing OBEs. Oh yeah, because you can still be deprived
of the actual vitamins, minerals and other substances that you
need to have a working body. Oh and before we
go any further, this all has turned into some long
segue because we're just we're just talking, right. I think
that's I like though, Yeah, it feels more natural. Um.
My name is Ben. Everybody, sorry about that, And my
(05:04):
name is Matt. And we also have Nolan the house. Uh.
He's got his arms up. He's elated to be recording
and editing at the same time. He's thinking about all
the wonderful music shows he'll be playing later on in
the week. Fantastic musician. He's the DJ Baboo to our
evidence and r Science, the Spinderella to our salt and pepper.
(05:27):
Oh man, Yeah, that's a dated reference and really nice.
Uh So, but anyway, that's us. And as we were
talking about, UM, we need to outline something very important here.
We are all from the United States. Uh. We have
a lot of listeners who are not from the United States,
(05:47):
and thank you for listening. We just want you to
know that we were well aware of the stereotype about
US nutrition in general. The portions here are huge. You
can buy things that have been on a shelf for
a year and contain what is legally called you know,
like milk and meat and other perishable items. Uh. You
(06:08):
can do that because there are so many preservatives and
other additives in food. So that's what we mean when
we say processed food. It contains these additives. Um. These
give food a longer shelf life. But they're also there
to preserve flavor, color, even even texture, you know. Oh yeah,
(06:29):
and well okay, so if we go back a little
bit in history, man's been using preservatives for a long time,
or at least means to preserve food. So we've got
all kinds of salts, vinegars, herbs, you could boil things.
Then refrigeration came along because that'll keep it for a
little bit longer. Um. But in the past fifty years,
(06:52):
we man the preservatives that we've been creating, the chemical preservatives,
they are just there astounding. First of all, it's amazing
that we can do these things and they're extremely common,
extremely common. Yeah, like you've you have you ever held
a can of soup, you know something again with darrior
(07:13):
meat in it. You know, this can of clam chowder
or something, and it's uh old enough that if it
was a kid, it could be walking around, you know,
but it's you might have a best by this date,
but you can still eat it apparently. Um. So yeah,
that's that's a great point. The most popular of the
(07:35):
chemical or man made additives in the food industry today
are stuff like benzoites, nitrites, uh sul fights, and swore bates.
Uh so sodium nitrite uh nitrate rather big thing in bacon.
Do you bacon and you want to avoid that, then
you have to make sure you read the labels with
(07:56):
great care. Um, Sometimes you don't because it's the vast
majority of bacon soul in the United States has this added, right.
Uh So these additives do server purpose, like they stop
mold and they stop yeast. Um. Sometimes Uh they're just cosmetic,
like sulfur dioxide, right, it's uh, what is it. It's
(08:21):
it's one of the most common additives and it's just
the bleaching agent. It just makes your stuff look nicer
so someone will pick it up off the shelf. Okay,
oh yeah, that's so much cosmetic stuff that the American
cheese must be yellow, the yellow coloring on cheddar. Now
I'm just naming yellow things. But there's there's so many
(08:44):
additives used today, so many in fact, that in this
podcast we cannot list them all, but we will talk
about a few because we are part way through our
video series on food additives, where we covered, Uh, let's see,
we covered bromonade vegetable oil that we covered aspertain Yep,
(09:08):
that's the artificial sweetener. I think these are the only
two that we end up covering. Yeah, you're right. We
we have a list of these, but we specifically focused
on aspertame and bromanade vegetable oil because we found, uh,
some allegations, some conspiratorial ideas, specifically that there might be
(09:29):
cover ups between the FDA and lobbying organizations. Yes, and
and there's an incentive, monetary incentive to put these additives
out there when perhaps the jury is not out on
whether they're safe for us or not. Right, And we're
not We're not saying, of course, that the f d
A is a bunch of evil, conniving uh supervillains who
(09:53):
want other folks to die. They're also not immune to bribery. Touche,
old friend. You are correct. We we we shall also point
out it is not uncommon for a food additive that
was originally believed to be safe to later be found
toxic because of the testing processes and the ways in
(10:13):
which we the ways in which we have learned to
test these sorts of things. Now, there's some studies that
we looked at over these videos that showed certain food
additives as sources of headaches and nausea and everything from
weakness to even difficulty breathing. Um, I don't I don't
have the name of that study or those studies that
we mentioned right here. We'll have to maybe make a
(10:34):
blog or I don't know, do something to really give
people more information here. Sure, yeah, there are certain foods
that can damage new human nerve cells when they're combined
with other additives. Uh. The truth is that we really
don't understand all the long term effects that additives could
(10:56):
have on our health because in the grand scheme of things,
these are relatively new inventions and we can test these
things to the best of our means. But there is
a reason that not all additives are uniformly banned in
all countries. There's a lot of stuff in the United
(11:18):
States that you could never serve in a product in
the EU or in Japan, for instance, because what do
you need to prove that something is safe? You need
time and trials, enough trials, and when a new food
food additive comes around, maybe it's been in testing for
a while, but you know it took a long time
(11:39):
for us to understand that the tar from smoking cigarettes
was terribly bad for you, right, and later we found out,
at least in that case, that some tobacco companies were
actively fighting against that being uh made made public. Now,
obviously we have to we have to be very careful
(12:03):
and I think, very proactive with the science of these
sorts of things, because some of these effects can be cumulative,
meaning you won't notice them, you know, to your point
about time, until decades down the road. So additives aren't
banned until enough research is collected to determine the exact
effects they have on the body. And and don't forget
(12:24):
there could be cumulative effects just from all the different
additives or something, you know, something else completely different, because
our diets now are so filled with these and how
are you going to separate one from the other unless
you have such strict clinical trials, right, But we do know, uh,
we do know some dangerous additives, right, And we've made
a little bit of a rogues gallery here of some
(12:47):
top fives that are not mentioned in our video series.
So uh, for those intrepid audio podcasts listeners, do feel
free to tell the people who will watched the videos
that that you know more about this than they do.
Oh yeah, you totally do. I'm so I'm sorry, I'm
so setting up a flame war. Oh yeah, no, dude,
(13:10):
let's let's do it. You guys got a battle in
the streets, the audio versus a video, and then maybe
if the battle is you know, long and and difficult enough,
they will become one. Wow, man, I love it. I
love What What a weird mind you have? So it's
like warriors come out and play. Yeah, it's like warriors.
(13:30):
But then in the end and they realized that, hey, guys,
are differences, aren't that different? Maybe we should band together.
I have not seen the end of that. I don't
think that's all right. So wait, what's what's uh number
five on our list here? Okay, so number five is
something that if you have kids you already know about
this food dies and this is this is a big one.
(13:54):
So um, the f d A has they've they've met
to decide whether or not certain food dies should even
be allowed in food, or whether or not they should be,
you know, carrying a warning label. Hey, this product has
food dies in it with the certain food dies, right, yes,
Like Michael Jacobson, the director of the Center for Science
and the Public Interest. He stated that he was most
(14:17):
concerned about the dies Red number forty, Yellow number five,
and yellow number six, and those combined make up about
of the food dies on the market, their allegations that
these cause child hyperactivity, and even a d H d uh.
For the record, I'm not completely convinced on those um
(14:39):
And you know, we've been using food dies for years,
but the use has really accelerated, as in like what
quintupled quintupled. Well, yeah, if if you were in school
in the nineties, you probably heard the rumors about yellow
number five and mountain dew. And do you do not
(15:00):
know this? I've heard this. Oh wow, maybe I'm one
of the only ones. Okay, not feel horrible. I didn't
get outside very often. Well, I have very many friends,
that's fine. The idea was that yellow number five would
affect your genitals if you were a male in certain ways.
Oh okay, yeah, wow. Anyway, there was a huge rumor
(15:21):
back in the time. But I remember thinking that rumor
caused me to think about some of these chemicals way
back in the day in middle school. But anyway, uh
so number four is lead, which might surprise people because
you know, lead food two things you wouldn't think about
going together. Well, and it's also kind of a strange
(15:42):
culprit when you think about where this lead is found.
It's in juice drinks. So, according to the study and
Natural News, beverages marketed to these two kids contain levels
of lead, varying levels of lead, some of them can
be dangerous. The levels were high enough to gain a
(16:02):
warning under California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act
of so Prop sixty pro Prop sixty five. And that's
a little scary when you think about lead because, as
we talked about before, lead is dangerous inside the human
body because it's lead. It's so weird, you know. Okay,
(16:26):
and then we've got number three on our list, which
is something you schooled me about a number of years ago, Matt,
and that is v P eight. Yes, there are certain
synthetic hormones that are in our diet and can be
found in things. This one b p A, U BI
sephanol A can be found in canned foods. There was
a new study that's showing that organic or not of
(16:49):
your canned foods that you're consuming contain this. Uh, this hormone,
and there are a couple of studies that you can
go online. Just just put b P a canned food
into a search bar and look at it, but not
while you're eating. Well, that might make for an interesting
(17:10):
reaction video if you want to post those on YouTube. Oh,
that's not a bad idea at all. Um, all right,
so I'd love it if people were posting more reaction videos.
That'd be interesting. Um, alright, So Thallate's right, thouilates. Uh.
These are another synthetic hormone, often founding canned foods. This
(17:31):
chemicals associated with endocrine disruption animals and in some human
studies they've confirmed this, but they've been shown to cause
reproductive and neurological damage in lab animal test. Uh. You
can also, in addition to canned foods, find these in
some personal care products, which leads us all to number one,
(17:52):
probably one of my favorite food additives, the most delicious
thing that exists. Ms g oh Man Okay, linked to
hormonal imbalances, weight game, brain damage, obesity, headaches, and it
is just it's dude, and well it's yeah, that's what
it does. It just makes things taste better. And it's
(18:12):
back in style. Too. There are a couple of there
are a lot of very popular restaurants you can go
to now that specifically say, yeah, we make it with
MSG because it's this beautifully horrible thing that makes everything
taste delicious. Yeah, no kidding, I'm gonna have to take
it one day at a time. Man, This post MSG
lifestyle I'm living, it's crazy. I'm a you know, maybe
(18:35):
I don't care enough that it's harmful. Maybe I just
need some more MSG man sprinkling on everything put in
my coffee. It's like I used to taste in color
and now I taste in grays. Uh, it's not that bad.
I'm I'm joking, guys. Uh. So that is our gallery
of five food additives. They're controversial, but that we didn't
(18:57):
mention in our video series yet. Uh. Weirdly enough, Matt,
we had a sponsor for this one, but they they
pulled out the last minute. Yeah, I guess legally we
can't even tell you which h food company pulled out.
But you know, just just wonder mayor it may or
(19:20):
may not be the people who make dehydrated space ice cream.
Well maybe I mean no, I mean those wonderful people
that maybe we'll work with in the future. I'm having
so much fun. Say may or may not be it
may or may not be the makers of pavement sauce,
which is both a condiment and pavement alternative, delicious pavement sauce. Alright, well,
(19:46):
speaking of payment sauce, man, here's where it gets crazy. Yes, yes, yes,
let's talk about the more conspiratorial things in the side
of this. Oh codex alimentary right, alimentarius, thank you? That
is the that is a tremendously controversial move by the
United Nations to standardize food across the globe. Yeah, for safety, Ben,
(20:12):
that's why. That's why you would do that, for safety.
So school me on this one. Matt. You know more
than I do about this. Well, I actually don't, but
I'll tell you a couple of things that I do know.
I know that it was a great episode and you
should watch it. Yeah, we have an episode about this,
uh in our gosh, this is an older episode. Yeah,
it's just been a while. Uh. I should really prepare
(20:34):
for these things better, Ben, Well, we'll do. What we'll
do instead is maybe we'll do a podcast on that
in detail and its entirety in the future if people
are interested. Because we Uh, we covered it in our
video series, and that's sort of an introduction to the concept. Yeah,
But all in all, it goes back to the idea
(20:55):
that the u N wants to bring a new world
order and control everything, and and they're starting with the food.
It's like a slippery slope argument kind of thing, right, Yeah,
And they're also there's the argument that the health requirements
or the standards for this the Okay, the advocates say, look,
we're just trying to make things hygienic, safer, and more uniform,
(21:18):
maybe with more environmental considerations and packaging, because that's a
huge thing to opponents say, yeah, this is a new
world order grab for control and also mandating, uh, the
insertion of chemicals that will damage people's neurological functions control. Yeah,
(21:38):
so we'll have to There's so much to that that
it would be fun to explore it in another episode.
Maybe funds not the right word, It would be fascinating.
But it does lead us to our next one, which
is the concept of brain drain. The idea that not
only are food additives put into uh into process food
(21:59):
with the intention of hurting you, like, willfully put in
there instead of just trying to save some money, but
these also have uh calculated neurological effects on the population.
This one, I had to tell you, This one I
don't buy just because it's hard to How would you
regulate the dose? How would you ensure that it had
(22:22):
the actual effect that you're looking for, you know what
I mean? And you're looking at a huge population sample
size to try and treat everyone, or if you wanted
to look at it that way, Uh, And how do
you prevent anybody that you don't want to eat it
not to eat it? Do you just have an email
list with all the foods you can't eat this week
(22:42):
or this month or this year? Alright, a little sad
face emoji. But you know, at the same time, I
think back to our Florida episode and that that has
always made me question what I believe about some of
that stuff. Not necessarily that I believe that Flora it
is calcifying my o pineal gland, but it certainly interests me. Uh.
(23:05):
With the hexelfloor solicit solicit, Yeah, basically because of the
motivations behind that kind of stuff and the money which
goes to the other one of the other conspiracy theories,
the idea that big business and perhaps corruption with lobbying
and the FDA. As we mentioned earlier that these forces
(23:26):
are responsible for unsafe additives and food. This isn't so
much a case of some business saying let's hurt people,
as it is a business or a lobbying group more
likely saying, hey, we already spent so much money researching
this chemical. It's a sunk cost for us, so we
(23:48):
don't want to lose billions of dollars trying to find
a new you know, in insert ingredients. How how can
we use it? How can we make this chemical that
was meant for this Charlotte, Let's try its form it,
let's let's rename it. It will be huge. What was
your campaign? Yeah? What was that food additive that gave
people the runs in the healthy potato chips? Yeah? Because
(24:12):
it was better for you than fat. Had a name
o Lean. Yeah, so it just made it just made you,
just made you poop, I mean fat, but wasn't really
poop so much, right, that's the worst part. It was
an oily discharge that which is the phrase that they
use in the official literature. That's not just thus messing around,
(24:36):
And it makes me think of the Hierbo hierbo sugar
free or sugar less gummy bears? Have you heard about
Oh what happened? Did those also have similar facts? Apparently
tons of videos online about that. You have to watch
out for that sort of stuff, which is ultimately the
moral of the story here. There's another one that another
(24:56):
conspiracy theory, and I don't think it's fair to call
these a theory. And while we're here, shout out to
one of our listeners or audience members who said, Uh,
you guys say the word can theory when you mean hypotheses.
I get it, I understand it. But what we say
is conspiracy theory because that's the phrase that most people understand.
(25:18):
We're not here to exclude anybody, so with all due respect,
we we do understand that. But it's sort of like
you park in a driveway. We already have the word driveway,
so we're using it to reach the most people. I
remember that argument from high school and science class, which
is the hypothesis. I get it as accurate to say, yeah, yeah,
(25:41):
we get it, um. But this leads us to again
the most dangerous, uh conspiratorial idea here, which is corner cutting.
So you know, we've all heard the stories about dog
food from China that contains dangerous thing and it's making
animals sick. Right. The The idea that somebody would cut
(26:04):
a a processed food, uh, not to preserve its shelf
life necessarily, but just to make the actual food go
further is more common than you might think. Yeah, and
it kind of reminds me of cutting a drugs No.
(26:25):
I see what you're saying, Just trying to make as
much profit as you can off of the supply you
currently have. Yeah, and this is not something that is
just restricted to uh, one part of the world by
any means. I know. I think that China often gets
a really bad rap for that, which maybe in some
cases is exaggerated propaganda. But you know, it's not like
(26:49):
there's a country with the perfect manufacturing process. Uh. One
thing I should point out then, is that there were
a couple of studies done in the UK that found
I can't remember the specific brand, but there was there
was like this meat pie brand, uh, and I think
it may have been like their own brand that was
(27:09):
found to contain actually no meat. Yeah, that's very familiar there.
There's things like that that happen all the time. Just
not what you're expecting because in the factory process, one
will switch didn't get turned or something right messed up
for you know, that's why there's so many food recalls
happened constantly, and the Publix and the Kroger where I
(27:31):
go to locally, there's constantly food recalls up. And it's
always packaged food always and yeah, and some of the
strangest packaged food to also comes from your local fast
food outlet, which may pure package just because it's hot,
but make no mistake it is. It arrives packaged and
it is uh processed severely. Like you know, sometimes uh
(27:55):
fast food restaurants will do that thing where they say
now with blank percent more blah blah blah blah blah.
The scary thing is that when you know, when you're
an average person, you read that and you say, oh, okay,
the hamburger or the hot dog or whatever is now
percent bigger, bigger. That means they added fifteen or fifty
(28:16):
percent more meat to the mix that they used to
create the thing, or they yeah, or they put more
saline solution into their chicken breasts to make them murder,
which is that you can do no Matt something tells
me that we're gonna get a lot of listener mail
about this four things that we should examine in more detail. Absolutely, Yeah,
(28:37):
I'm looking forward to that because there's a lot of
stuff we touched on. Unfortunately we're out of time. Uh
that in a lot of these things could be their
own podcasts, just the fast food stuff alone, labeling alone.
You know, what is organic mean? What is a natural flavor?
I love that the green movement is something we can
really delve into. Well, but before we leave been yeah,
(28:59):
what the hell? Because the is there a solution? How
how do we get out of this? Because we Okay,
let me just give you what I've been thinking about.
We can't go back to an all natural you know,
the idea of the all natural movement. We can't do
that because there's no way we could have enough food
for everybody. Um, it's just not possible. That's why, that's
(29:24):
why Norman Borolog was such a hero. He gave food
to just billions of people who wouldn't have been able
to eat in the super wheat inventor. Well, and it's
a processed food, right, also genetically modified that then becomes
a processed food and almost has to I see what
you're saying, just from the idea of transporting the food.
(29:46):
What's weird. What's weird about it is that there's more
than enough food around to feed every single person on
the planet. Uh. The problem is we have so much
food waste, we have so much inefficiency in transporting it,
and uh, you know, in in a lot of ways,
our systems of social hierarchy, UH make it make feeding
(30:11):
everyone a much lower priority than you know it would
be theoretically. Uh. It's an interesting question man, whether or
not these these food additives are necessary. I would say,
with the current state of affairs, You're absolutely right. A
lot of people who are eating an entirely healthy organic
(30:32):
diet um in in some ways are are privileged, you know.
And it's not I'm not saying it's a bad thing
at all. What I'm saying is it's a thing that
is simply not a reality, not an accessible possibility for
a great deal of the human race or human species,
I guess. And Uh, at this point there we have
(30:55):
found that there are food additives that do good things
for people, right, and we do also know that there
is a huge argument to be made from moderation like salt. Salt,
if you think about it, one of the first things
you would add to food historically. Ye, salt is too
bad for you. What man, those fries were so good though, Sure, Oh,
(31:21):
she warned me. Rosie warned me. Well, you know on
that note, I guess what we're saying is that we
would like to hear from you guys. What should we
cover in more detail coming up? What should other You're well,
you're what your your fellow listeners know about food additives
that aren't that isn't really out there in the mainstream,
and do you have any topics that we should cover
(31:42):
before I die of assault overdose? Let us know On
Facebook and Twitter. You can visit our website, which is
pretty awesome, Nottitude, our own horns stuff they want you
to know dot com and remember we're always just an
email away. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot com.
(32:05):
From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomena, visit test
tube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff. You can also get
in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.