The Wide World of Food Conspiracies

Whether rich or poor, young or old, everyone on the planet has to eat. Government institutions monitor the safety, cleanliness and consistency of our favorite foods, but as with any global industry, there are more than a few skeletons in the collective closet of the food and beverage business. Join Ben and Matt as they dive down the gastronomic rabbit hole of food conspiracies.

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Episode Transcript

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 Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel is
on jury duty. Yes that is true. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control Decond or uh or Paul and the Tell Decond.
You know, we'll go for different I always think we
could do more case specific nicknames. But most importantly, you

(00:47):
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Matt, I'm gonna I'm
gonna exercise full disclosure here. I have I have not
had a feeding period today, so very interested invested in
what we're going to talk about. You are going to
hear many stomach noises. These are against our will. It's

(01:10):
our bodies rebelling against our life choices. But it's just
what we have to do sometimes. Um. You know, I'm
gonna be imagining a oh delicious toasted banana nutella sandwich. Yes,
hold that image in your mind. I will imagine a
burrito bowl. Maybe some chocolates, uh, Chaco burrito bowl, Uh,

(01:36):
some mutant live stock, and some affrodaisy at gum all together,
it's a combo meal. You actually save money if you
buy those at once. It's amazing, right, Uh, this this
episode is about food, perhaps not in the way you think.
It's often said that you are what you eat, right,
And like many cliches, that is a cliche because it

(01:57):
is true. It doesn't matter whether you live in Mumbai
or Malibu, or whether you're orbiting the moon or one
of the moons in the Solar system. You, like every
other living person, have to eat to survive over the
long term. It's one of the biggest you know, like
you have to sleep, you have to breathe, you have
to eat. So it's no wonder that the world of

(02:19):
food is so rife with conspiracy theory as well as
genuine cover ups. Uh, it's it's wide rife with corruption.
Wide rife is a phrase that a good pal, Frank
Mulharan taught me. So, Frank, if you're listening, I still
think you made it up, but I think it's awesome,
Like Frank, Frank, Yeah, Frank, that Frank, I never knew

(02:42):
I have never known his last name. Well he has
been we we've just compromised him. I just yeah, Frank
is the best. Shout out to you, Frank. And uh.
And we know that while conspiracy theories quote unquote may
be treated like they exist in the realm of folklore writing,
urban legend, we know that in the case of food,

(03:05):
which is such a massive business, many of the things
that were once called conspiracy theories were later proven to
be true, right, Uh in one way or another. Yes,
everything from some artificial sweeteners, uh, to a lot of
other food additives to hormones in you know, meats and

(03:27):
other products that we eat. We've we've on this show
covered a lot of it and seen a lot of
it to be at least somewhat true. And I'll never
forget the day. And I say this with an air
of gratitude, Matt, I'll never forget the day you ruined
orange soda for me. Orange soda? Huh? You told me
about romanaded vegetable oil. And remember this, I do remember

(03:51):
that flame retardant. I believe at least that's where the
chemical was originally creative for that purpose. It's in your
mountain dew right now. Your citrus drinks, your orange sodas.
You know, I've still never tried mountain dew. Am I
missing out? Um? It has an interesting history. I've just
never tried it. You know. Thirteen year old me would

(04:14):
like take you right now to a convenience store and
purchase at least three different types of mountain dew. But
older me would say, I drank diet mountain do the
other day, and I know I shouldn't have, but I
had to because I needed I needed some diet mound do.
Sometimes you have to do the do right. Yeah. So
we we have covered a lot of this stuff. Romanato,

(04:36):
vegetable oil, the vast and sidious conspiracy of the sugar lobby.
Both of those things are true. Uh. The dangers of DuPont,
for instance, would be another thing. Corporate Shenanigan's strange origins
of aspartame. Strange origins of aspartame for sure. Uh. Nestley
just trying to make the Mad Max Dystopi in fictional

(05:01):
world a reality here on Earth within your lifetime. So
that's something to look forward to. The nonwater World, I think,
is what it would be called. Yes, Oh, well done, Yes,
the non water World just so the what we what
we've seen though, with the realm of food related conspiracy
theories is that we will never run out of ideas.

(05:23):
You know, check out those episodes you mentioned if you
haven't heard them yet, But you don't have to listen
to them to enjoy today's episode or be incredibly terrified
by it. Because as the state of food on this
planet changes, the conspiracy theories and the opportunities for corruption

(05:43):
and uh evil deeds also evolves. The rumors change. And
before we get to some of the really crazy stuff,
let's just paint the picture of the people alive now
and the stuff that they're shoving down their gull you, Paul,
you dear listener, and me included. Yes, the facts are

(06:06):
there are a lot of human beings hanging around on
this planet and a few of them floating in orbit
around it. Currently, the world population, if you go to
world a meters dot info, is seven billion, seven hundred
and fifty seven million, three hundred and four thousand, and
then the number just keeps growing, right, okay, just under

(06:28):
seven point eight billion. I always love when we play
this game because whenever we pull that number up, what
that means is we go back at the end of
the episode and see how many people have been born.
We can also be a little grizzly and see how
many people have died. So to be fair, that number
is going up and down constantly. Yes, yes, that's absolutely true.

(06:53):
So that's a ton of people. Well, that's millions of
tons worth of people. And unless there is a global
or very large scale regional disaster, catastrophe like a plague,
an impact event, coronal mass ejection, um, you know, all

(07:14):
the old Testament stuff, unless wide scale nuclear warfare, wide
scale nuclear warfare, exactly, Unless something like that happens, this
number of people on the planet seems set to grow.
And every single one of these seven point eight billion people,
every single one of them, has to eat, Just like
the fast food chain checker says, So what what on earth? Guy?

(07:39):
I don't know what's the most. Have you ever cooked
a large meal or a meal for a large group
of people? Yes, okay, without you know, without diving too
much into the personal life, how many people? Largest one
for me was on a grill for about twenty five
something like that. I'm probably around the the same. And

(08:01):
to be clear, that was a cooperative thing, you know, yea, yeah,
it wasn't just me, yeah, right, but you know it
was the amount of food purchased in order to feed
that many people was significant. Yeah yeah, and just the
logistics involved, right, because you want people to be able
to eat roughly at the same time. So how would
you how would you feed heat billion people? How what

(08:25):
do living people eat? You know what I mean? Oh, sure,
we can talk about that. Throughout the world, there is
a staple grain in any given region roughly because people,
human beings are grain eaters because it's something that will
fill us up. It's relatively cheap to create and it
uh or two, well, it's relatively cheap and easy to

(08:49):
manufacture essentially through farming. Right, So things like corn, rice,
and wheat together, those three, just those three make up
fifty one cent of the world's total caloric intake. So
if you look at corn, it's about nineteen and a half,
rice sixteen point five percent, and wheat comes in and
about fifteen percent. And there are also a lot of

(09:12):
other roots that have I guess you would call them
um like starches kind of these these foods that will
fill us up. Yeah yeah, stuff like roots and tubers
or cassava potatoes. Then we also have another another genre, right,
soybeans or sorghum and plantains. Most of the world's food,

(09:33):
just low ower half of it is this sort of stuff.
It's super efficient to grow. You can find regional, regional
specific varieties. And we have also as a species, spent
a lot of time genetically modifying these before the concept
of genetic modification existed. Right. Yeah, by that's the old

(09:56):
by hand genetically modifying mendel, the mendel and the peapods. Right.
So we have a different category though, and this is
an exciting category. And ever since the moment that you
were born, this category has been growing, it's been exploding,

(10:17):
it's been uh metastasizing. Some would say if they're being
more critical because people, you know, people tend to eat
these grains. They're affordable, they can they can be ubiquitous
in certain areas. But that's I would say, that's maintenance food,
that's survival food, that's keeping the machine running. Everybody has

(10:41):
the vast majority of people have some sort of favorite dish,
and that's when we move into the realm of what
what I would like to call aspirational food. You know,
in some parts of the world it's funny. If you
are a vegetarian or a vegan, or you have any
friends who are, you should know that in some parts
of the world, if you if you say you're a

(11:03):
vegetarian and you refuse to eat meat, if someone offers
it to you know who lives in that area, they
will no matter, they won't assume you're rude and somewhat
of a myth. No matter. You can be really polite
and people understand maybe you don't need it for some
reason or another. But in some parts of the world,
people will assume that you're not doing that because you're

(11:23):
poor or you've never had the opportunity to eat whatever
delicacy this is being proffered towards you. And this is
a telling cultural thing because people want to eat, you know,
the meat of the gods, the food of the king,
the royal cuisine, and globally speaking, it's more possible to

(11:46):
do that than it was any other point in history.
You know, the Atlanta, Georgia, for instance, has one river
of any note running running around it or through it.
Right now as a couple of artificial lakes. Shout out
to Chattahoochie, shout out to the hooch Uh and that
means that we if we were trying to eat uh

(12:10):
ocean bound food or something, we would only eat the
stuff that came from that river or those lakes, because
otherwise there'd be no way to get you know, crab
lags to us or something that's. Yes, it's a long
way away, but now we have these huge networks that
can transport everything from point A to point B zipsaps up,
you know, just like the improv game. But it's steak

(12:31):
or it's it's it's uh, it's antelope words, it's shark finn,
you know, things like that. Thank goodness for that. We
always make this joke, thank goodness for that. Legal Seafood. Yes, ah,
we we've talked about that, but it's just what a
what a weird name. It's a brand, everybody. That's not

(12:52):
a concept, it's a brand. It's it's a restaurant that
calls itself Legal Seafood. You know. That's like that's like
going out of your way at a fast food restaurant
to get to have a sign, a large sign that says,
you know, we guarantee that almost a hundred percent of
our burgers have never been spat in. You know, it's

(13:17):
like that's the McDonald's guarantee. Almost almost right. We have
these these gargantelan avenues of shipping and trade, and we
also have hand in hand with that concurrently, we have
a great deal of global development. You know, in the
times of for many of us listening, in the times

(13:37):
of our grandparents are great grandparents, people were limited to
the food that was locally available and things like us, say,
an orange might be a luxury, it might be something
you get as a birthday present, you know, And that's
changing now because people are in these rapidly developing areas

(13:59):
and they are able to eat aspirationally. Now we can
have meat every day. Now we can dine on whatever
the cave are of our minds I may be, oh yeah,
or even things that are maybe processed and package that

(14:20):
are coming from far away. We can. We have access
to those foods now they're being shipped to us rather
than us having to create them here at home. Again,
before it all collapses, we there's that moral crossroads moment
that some people have had and I've had it myself,
when we say, well, it's quite possible that wild seafood

(14:42):
will no longer be a thing. Before you know, I die,
or you die, or whomever dies. And then you have
the choice, you say, do I do I join the
embattled and outnumbered good side trying to save the planet,
And do I, you know, do I recute use myself
from the seafood game for the betterment of the world,

(15:03):
Or do I, like the vast majority of people who
eat seafood, say I gotta get mine before the house
burns down, you know. Yeah? Yeah, for me, seafood died.
Most of seafood that I have access to died in
two thousand seven when the deep Water Horizon went down,
or was that two thousand eight? Whenever Deep Arter Horizon

(15:24):
went down, all of my Gulf shrimp. I just I
had to say, no, thanks, I'm sorry, man, I know
me too. It changed you, it really did, as as
a person inside and out. Yeah, yes, mostly inside. Yeah,
all that oil and flame retardan again, I know. But

(15:45):
if there's ever a fire, you know, yeah, I'll be fine.
So you're right, though, we have more and more people
who not only want to consume something more than you know,
a porridge or a staple grain every day, they can
also now do it, you know, and that that does
tie in in some ways with an increase in the

(16:08):
quality of life. Would be remiss if we didn't point
out that also ties into things like the increase of
early onset diabetes, obesity, all those other terrible problems. A
lot of that due to the process snacks, and of course,
again i use the word previously, the insidious actions of
big sugar. Yeah, so let's look at let's look at

(16:29):
the meat. Right. If we have more people eating the
same amount of stuff, then logically we'd also want to
grow that industry, right, we want to satisfy that demand. Well, yeah,
and to do that, guess what, we need more of
that grain, which is great. So now it's not just
humans consuming all the grain, it's also our food consuming
all the grain. Because really, if you love it you

(16:51):
hate it, doesn't matter. There's no denying that meat itself
is extremely inefficient because it's a thing you gotta feed
to the slaughter and eat. To produce a single kilogram
of beef, which is highly popular at least in these
old United States and many other places in the world,
it requires twenty five kilos of grain to feed the animal.

(17:16):
One kilogram of beef equals twenty of grain and roughly
fifteen thousand liters of water. So not only the fresh
water that is uh quickly becoming they're problematic finding enough
fresh water for all of humanity about it, they really, yeah,

(17:39):
they really torn up about it. But the grains that
that will feed us, in the water that will quench
our thirst, it's all being used in these processes. And pork,
if you look at that, it's still a big issue.
A little less heinous at least from the amount of
stuff needed to create pork, and then chicken is a
little less than that, but still, uh, all three are problematic. Yeah,

(18:03):
we can also see the problem with space, just not
the final frontier, I mean just the geography. The scale
of the meat industry has left a mark in the
way that we use land. Currently, about thirty of the
earth surface is used for livestock farming of some sort

(18:25):
in some way, and since food, water, and land are
scarce or arable land or scarce in many parts of
the world, this could also represent an inefficient use of resources.
There's something else we we have to talk about. This
is the one that I have. I have some money

(18:46):
on this one. Industrial livestock, especially in the US many
other places, relies heavily on intense and profound application of antibiotics,
the same kind of stuff that will fight an infection
for you or one of your human loved ones. If
you are feeling peaked, then you know you should be

(19:08):
able to, in theory, have an antibiotics regiment of some
sort and then boom, you will be cured onto your
happily ever after whatever the next problem becomes in your life. However,
because there's so many antibiotics being used to keep animals
alive in unnatural circumstances, right, what we're seeing is that

(19:32):
this gives this gives some of these infections a chance
to evolve at a faster pace than normal, and this
renders antibiotics less and less effective each passing year. In
the U S Alone, eight percent of antibiotics are consumed
not by humans but by the livestock industry. So good god,

(19:56):
if you think about it, this is a crappy voice
of dark humor, but just have to make it. If
you think about it, the last hamburger you ate to
ate in this country, in a way, it had better
access to medicine than you did. It just didn't get
to consent to it. Wow. Wow, man, that's it's really rough,
and this is this is very like you guys know

(20:21):
in a lot of these situations, Ben and all, and
I have to like be humorous about these things because
it is so intensely upsetting as somebody whose grandfather died
as a direct result of an antibiotic resistant bacteria infecting
him like this, it horrifies me and it really pisces

(20:45):
me off because just listen to this. Already, in more
than twenty three thousand people are like projected or estimated
to die every year inside the United States alone, just
in here due to some form of resistant bacteria. And

(21:06):
you know that number is not going to go down
because unless we completely change our ways and somehow the
bacteria just decides it's not going to evolve anymore, right,
and become resistant to a lot of these things. Because
at this point, we're going to continue giving our livestock
antibiotics at these levels because we will have to because

(21:27):
we have to create more food. It's just we're in
a rough position, right, and nobody nobody wants to purpose
It's it's the hazard of the common good, right. Nobody
wants to purposefully step down their own lifestyle for a
minute benefit net benefit to the planet unless they know

(21:50):
everybody else is also going to be healthy. Well, no
people do that, But no one wants to be in
a situation where you know, we slave way and rule
for the rest of our lives. And then there's some
elite steak eaters out there, you know what I mean,
and they're reaping the benefits of fewer people participate in

(22:12):
the meat industry, but they didn't have to change at all.
It's like, it's it's kind of like how if you're
ever in a if you're ever in a bad traffic situation,
you see a bad driver, and as long as everybody
else is a defensive driver, the bad driver can be
as horrible as they want until they hit something. Yeah,
and they you know, they there's a system to punish them,

(22:35):
but how often does it work? Right? So, so I
know there's a lot of gallows humor here. But if
you like steak, if you enjoy a good I don't know,
Korean barbecue, right or a good bacon buddy sandwich as
they eat in in the United Kingdom, then you'll be
glad to know that these drawbacks, which are real, have

(22:57):
done nothing to hinder the popularity of meat. It still
remains aspirational. You know, it's associated with success. Globally, our
species consumes around third fifteen million tons of meat per year.
By thirty that number is going to reach four hundred
and fifty three million. That's an increase of forty four percent.

(23:19):
Gets a little fuzzy as we go further into the future,
but experts can make a ballpark, you know, like cocktail
Napkin guess as to the rate of meat consumption in
twenty fifty and the highest estimate they have is five
hundred and seventy million tons. And with that, you know,
there becomes a lot of hidden fees, just like buying

(23:39):
a car. You have the deforestation that will occur, you
have the increasing likelihood of an antibiotic resistant infection. It
just mow down humans the way that the original popular
uh gross Michelle bananas were mowed down, right, And again

(24:01):
that's all just assuming no large scale disaster occurs before then. Yeah, um,
and it certainly feels like one is on the way
with every passing moment. But for now, uh, let's let's
switch gears a little bit and let's talk about some
of some foods that are I don't know less scary

(24:27):
less scary, but still have some issues that are going
to make you not sleep at night. Uh. I mean,
before we do that, we're gonna take a quick word
from our sponsor. Let's just cross our fingers and hope
it's not food based. I hope it's blue apron and

(24:49):
we're back. Yes, that's that's some hard hitting stuff. No.
You know, many people in the audience today we may
be uh seen as preaching to the choir for are
people who live the Michael Pollen esque plant based diet,
or people are vegetarian or vegan or some you know
variation thereof, or you maybe you may be an avowed

(25:11):
carnivore and saying, you know, this is over hyped hippie
dippy stuff. The thing is, uh, you know, we're not vegetarians,
were not practicing vegetarians. I was for some time. But
what we just told you that's true, and what we're
about to tell you now is also true. Let's take

(25:33):
a lighter tact, maybe, as you said, man, and examine
some foods that are often the mainstream not associated with
these various drawbacks. Like sure, we get it, h there
there are tons of problems. They are profound, abiding problems.
With the meat industry. But what about you know, what

(25:54):
about desserts, what about the sweet stuff? Huh? But dude,
let's go into chocolate, and my one of my favorite
things in the world, chocolate probably one of your favorite things.
To my wife would um, my wife would give me
up in a minute for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
I guarantee you that it was not her fault. I

(26:15):
wouldn't blame her. I would say, you know what, you're right,
I would take that deal. And no, it's not true.
None of that is true. But in Western Africa, let's
let's just go there to where anyone the places where
coco actually comes from, where the stuff that becomes chocolate
comes from. It's a commodity crop. It's grown primarily for
export to other countries. The United States is one of

(26:37):
those places that takes in a whole lot of it.
Six of the Ivory Coast export revenue comes from its coco.
And as the chocolate industry has become bigger and bigger
and bigger, as more and more massive companies become conglomerates
and they all depend on their chocolate goods that they
export across the globe, so has the demand four cheap cocoa,

(27:02):
so super cheap, as cheap as we can get it.
Just give me it as much as you can for
as little as I can possibly pay. Check this out though, that,
as you can probably imagine, has a pretty big effect
on the people actually cultivating and gathering the cocoa. Yeah,
that's right. The average cocoa farmer earns less than two

(27:23):
dollars per day, that is income blue the poverty line.
And in case there was a question, and as a
result in this intensely competitive market, people often result to
child labor to keep themselves able to stay in the
game price wise. Most of the children laboring on cocoa

(27:43):
farms are between the ages of twelve and sixteen. This
is again, I cannot stress this enough, and I'll stress
this again later. This is not a rumor, that's not
a conspiracy theory is the twelve to sixteen year olds,
and reporters have found children as young as five working
in the cocoa industry. Of these children are girls. Some

(28:05):
stay for a few months, others end up making a
living into adulthood on this. Yeah. And one of the
ways that the larger buyers of the cocoa um they'll
get away with it by claiming that this is a
third party kind of thing, right where we are just

(28:26):
acquiring from this group of essentially what would be farms
or farmers or gatherers of this product, and we have
no visibility into those companies as to what their practices are.
We just know that we are buying from the supplier essentially. Um.
There's numerous documentaries online where you can find that pretty

(28:47):
well documented, and you'll hear companies saying, often in good faith,
saying that, well, we have this list of standards to
which our suppliers must adhere, and if we find out
that something is then we will go investigated or will
stop working with them. And of course when the rubber
hits the road, the picture is not always as clear

(29:08):
cut as we would hope. Even incentives to make sure
this kind of thing doesn't happen usually monetary, but those
funds perhaps find their ways into other hands. And again,
it's such a huge, huge business. Uh Ivory Coast alone,
we we said it's a lot of its export revenue

(29:30):
is tied up in coco, but thirty they produced thirty
eight percent of the coco in the world, and West
Africa overall creates two thirds of the world's annual coco crop.
It's insane. And that doesn't even count some other adjacent
countries in the region where you can grow this stuff.

(29:51):
It's a lot to have to walk away from, and
it's a lot to figure out. Of course, if you're
the kind of person who's bothered by child labor. Once
you love chocolate, you can find things that say they're
ethically sourced and say they are for instance, free trade,
or that the people work in the industry you're paid
a fair market rate. But really the burden of the

(30:15):
burden of proving that has been passed to the consumer
because for one reason another large corporations don't have the
best track record. So that's chocolate. So we ruined chocolate. Yeah,
that's okay, you don't need chocolate, Come on, yeah, why
don't you settle settle up with some uh, some delicious natella. Right,

(30:37):
that's like, you know, something that's less chocolate, more hazel nut,
maybe some other alternative ingredients to to give it that
smooth consistency and texture. It's still you know, it still
hits those savory notes, but it's not as bad, that's right.
It's not as bad. And you're definitely not gonna get
any trans fats in there, right because you won't be

(30:59):
eating eat trans fats. You'll be eating palm oil. In
the US, palm oil is mostly used in processed foods.
And a while back, Uncle Sam said, we had to
get rid of this trans fat. This trans fat is everywhere.
It's nuts. I can't have it. Uh, you know, we

(31:20):
have a duty as Americans. And so they move. You know,
they tried to reduce the amount of trans fat that
could be in your snacks at your local grocery store.
It backfired. They started using palm oil, and they started
using a lot of it. The Center for Science and
the Public Interest reports that palm oil is now the

(31:41):
second most popular food oil in the world, the first
being soybean oil, and a lot of palm oil comes
from countries like Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the largest
palm oil producers next borders in the world. It also
used to be home to a lot of orangutans. Yeah,

(32:04):
or at least fifty of the world's wild orangutans have disappeared.
They I mean, and that's not even really a good
term for it. They've they're gone It's not like a
lost situation. They're not on an island waiting fighting the
black smoke or something. No, you cannot make an up
and vanished season about this. It is just they're gone. Um.

(32:26):
And the problem is just the groups of Orangutans who
could be reproducing, could be you know, making more of them,
have reduced in size and number, and of the Orangutan
habitat has either been just depopulated or totally destroyed. All
of the places where they could have lived are just gone.

(32:47):
And this this is not a trend like that just
started happening. This is something that's been going on for
a long time and has It's not going to stop.
There's no signs that this is going to stop anytime soon.
If you look at government map just of the way
different countries are planning out the land, how it's going
to be used, it's just the same thing, because it's

(33:09):
the same problem we're running into with more of us,
with more consumption. We need more land to make the
same stuff we're making. Now. I want to show you
something and we'll we'll post it on our Facebook page.
Here's where it gets crazy. This is a clip from
fairly recently of an orange ting attempting to fight a

(33:30):
bulldozer that's destroying its habitat oh Man. That is heartbreaking. Yeah,
and it's it's very short video, you can you can
find it here. But but yeah, palm oil is has
a direct connection to this. And just to clarify here
what we're talking about with you know, making use of

(33:51):
the land in that same way, it's because palm oil
is derived from the fruit of palm trees. These oil
palms um primarily the africa An oil palm. But it's
the way you get it is by use by smashing
up essentially the fruit of these palm trees. And in
order to get enough of that fruit to make as
much palm oil as is needed, you have to plant

(34:12):
as many of these palm trees as you possibly can.
And the only way to do that is to have
enough land to plant those trees, so you wipe everything
else out and put those palm trees up. This problem
continues in Malaysia pete swamp forest or being obliterated, and
these disapperior forests are home to things like the pygmy elephant.

(34:34):
For everyone who has a soft spot for tiny, cuddly
baby yoda like things, this is the elephant version of
that just remembers Dumbo. Uh and the clouded leopard, tons
of rare birds again we had. These are all facts,
were not even into the next act of the show.
Yet everything you've just heard is true. These are not

(34:56):
conspiracy theories. These are proven incidents of child labor and
cases slavery, corporate corruption followed by cover ups. And this
is just the beginning. We will be back with some
of the most bizarre, strangest food conspiracies in the world.
Will also tell you the best we could determine the
likelihood of these. We'll do that after a word from

(35:19):
our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy, fellow conspiracy realist.
Not only are there more food related conspiracies than you
might ever imagine, new ones are cropping up all the time.

(35:40):
We can divide these into several rough, kind of broad categories.
But within any of these categories you're going to find, um,
You're going to find at least several instances per year
of a new specific tale popping up in within them.
Oh sure, you've got everything from corporate mouthfeasance, just something

(36:02):
that a corporation decided they had to do either for
a bottom line or for pr they just had to
save themselves. Um. Illegal government meddling where you've got some
large thing like the FDA coming through and making changes
or enacting something particular Brazil and the forestation. There we

(36:24):
go hidden costs of food, which is kind of what
we were talking about, like antibiotics. These things, Um, just
what it actually takes to make make that beef of
yours that you're eating right now. I'm not going to
judge you. Keep eating in It's fine. Um, I might
have some later. I'll do my best not to. You

(36:44):
can also look at fad diets, which breath of area
isn't yeah, oh yeah, where you just need air. All
I need is the oh, don't sue us, Please don't sue.
Bizarre medical claims are an other one. There's all kinds.
These are kind of the big the Big five. I
guess that we can put these things into. So we

(37:07):
found a couple that we thought would be enjoyable and
maybe surprising to many of us in the audience, because you,
like us, have dug into a lot of these things before.
So we've heard about allegations of detrimental effects due to
consuming fluoridated water and tail as old as time. We've

(37:28):
also heard things about, you know, the meat industry and
livestock and the way animals are mistreated. We've also heard
stuff about the maybe the food pyramid so popular in
the US here being ultimately a an illicit collaboration between
the government and several several food producing interest o for sure.

(37:51):
And don't even worry about the pesticides and her herbicides
that all that stuff is great. Oh yeah, oh yeah,
neo nikeotinoids all day baby. By the way, we did
a video on that and it turned out we were
right and turned out the sign and it wasn't We
didn't figure it out in a lab. We just dug
into the science and it was there, it was published,

(38:12):
it was not classified. And then years later, oh oops exactly,
and then someone has the nerve to say, well, it's
not a conspiracy. Yes it was. It was absolutely conspiracy
to cover up the delatorious effects of pesticides. Anyhow, No,
let's before I go on some weird ted talk rant,

(38:33):
let's let's look into some of the things we found
that we thought might surprise you. Let's go big. There's
a weird one AFRODSI act gum. Now, before we started
researching this episode, I had never heard of this. I
like the idea. I'm sure there's some kind of just
in the concepts like an aphrodisi act gum. So the

(38:55):
idea that with this gum is that you would chew this,
and while chewing it, you would ingest substances that made
you so blindingly unreasonably horny that you couldn't do anything else.
It turned you into a sexual version of the Tasmanian

(39:16):
Devil cartoons. You know, you're just kind of like whirlwind
and around trying to trying to get intimate with something.
And this story comes to us because Hamas, which is
a governing authority and Palestine, was for time convinced that
the government of Israel have been sending Palestinian kids this

(39:37):
afrodisiac chewing gum to make them, you know, excited, to
mess with their hormones and and distract them from the
struggle against oppression and the you know, the the tension
of violence between those those two entities. Objectively, the evidence
is pretty scarce, but we do have on record one

(40:00):
the spokespeople for Hamas in a two thousand nine article
from BBC. Yes, this spokesperson Islam Schahuan stated, quote, we
have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into
the Gaza strip from Israeli border crossings. And then later
this person said quote the first type is presented in

(40:22):
the form of chewing gum and the second in the
form of drops. Yeah. So this story got regional and
then global attention when a Palestinian man complained that his
daughter had experienced dubious side effects after chewing this gum,
and this was reported by the media and Israel and

(40:43):
they started trying to hunt down the people that they
felt were smuggling this gum or bringing it into the
territory and selling it. One suspect said he got the
products from an intelligence officer in the Israeli government at
a cut rate price, and the officer said, you know,
we don't want money, We want to distribute. We want
you to distribute these products amidst the young people of Gaza.

(41:06):
So the idea then, it seems like a little bit
of a reach, doesn't it. It doesn't seem like the
most direct way to affect people. And if you modify,
even even with the sciences there, and you modify a
small part of a person's behavior, it doesn't. It doesn't

(41:28):
necessarily result in the the effects you want. Right, Yeah,
it sounds like a high cost research project and manufacturing
thing that would give you very little gain and strategic
advantage doesn't seem to be a thing here. So it's
difficult for me to see a scenario where this is true,

(41:48):
right right. Also, we looked and could not find a
an example of the scum you know what I mean.
Find these statements, find these stories. The israel The military
declined to comment on the record, but one source in
the Israeli military said this was this is absurd. Why

(42:08):
would we do this for the reasons that you just mentioned.
So that was one we had never heard of. But
here's one you may have already heard of in the past.
If not, we are thrilled to introduce this to you today.
All right, So let's say you just left Popeyes. You've

(42:29):
got one of those glorious new sandwiches that are I
have to admit, pretty dan good, pretty good. Right. I
enjoyed the spicy version very much. Well, maybe not Popeyes,
maybe not anyone particular food chain. Let's just call them
mass market food chains, the big ones, the mega chains.

(42:53):
Some weird stuff is going on in trying to make
enough chickens, enough chicken to fill all of the orders
that are just occurring. They never stop. I mean, if
you've got a twenty four hour McDonald's anywhere near your house,
you know, whenever you've been up, it doesn't matter how
early in the morning is, how late it is. There
are people getting some food. Some of that food is

(43:15):
probably gonna be chicken. Yeah, because the ice cream machine
will never works different. It's always it's it's that's a
different conspiracy. It's it's true. So how how then is
all this food supplied? Well? Yeah, so how do you do?
How do you get enough chicken? Well, there is a
theory out there that possibly someone out there is making

(43:37):
chickens without heads, chickens without feathers, without feet, just with breasts,
extra breasts, extra wings, extra meat, extra legs, more meat.
Can you imagine a chicken that is just the meat?
I wish to scream, but I have no mouth. Right

(43:58):
that old Harlan Ellison story. Yeah, it seems like a
hellish existence, even if there is not a brain. As
we understand it sounds out there. It sounds like the
science it's massively advanced, beyond what we're currently aware of
versions of this legend. This is an urban legend, have

(44:20):
been circulating for decades and decades and decades, And when
I first heard it, you know, it made sense to
me on some level because I always thought the fast
food stick, their whole thing was weird and delicious and
evil but delicious. It's delicious. It's evil and it's delicious.

(44:42):
I always thought it was weird. The example that stayed
with me. I don't know if you ever if you
ever knew this, but years, years, years ago, I went
to a Chick fil A and I just wanted a sandwich, fries,
and to coke. They said, on a combo meal. What's

(45:02):
the difference, and they said, well, it comes with slaw
And I said, okay, that's fine. I don't want any
slaw though, I just want a sandwich, some fries and
to drink. And they said, okay, but will we give
you that. It's going to be more expensive than if
we gave you the combo with the slaw. So yeah, yeah,
I made the same face that Matt's making now, which is,

(45:24):
you know, you're tilted a little slight eyebrow for because
what that means essentially is that I am paying attacks
to not have slaw. I am like I I am required,
I am mandated to help them dispose of their cold slaw.
God knows where it came from, and God goes. They

(45:45):
don't care where it goes. But if I refuse to
participate in this, in this slaw exchange, the this slaw transaction. Yeah, yeah,
this slaw spiracy, then I will have to pay a toll.
Essentially I am and being taxed for this. I don't
get it either, So, you know, having experienced stuff like that,

(46:06):
and maybe that's maybe I just had a weird one
off mental tete a tete with with the somebody to
give you of working to Chick fil A. Yes, but
with that in mind, it's one of those things that
can help you. It's a bread crumble along the precipitous

(46:28):
slope into the idea of mutant chickens. KFC, not Chick
fil A or Popeye's was usually the one that was
most soften accused. The earlier versions of the story were
like six legged chickens, and the idea was that the
birds were so plumped up by chemicals also that there

(46:50):
there huge bodies were impossible for them to support. You know,
the room feet walking, so they have more sixth day
like chickens because the you know, the questions, how do
they taste? How does this six legged chicken taste? You know,
because no one's ever caught one. I'm sorry, I was

(47:14):
just pausing for laughter. Us I heard the booze and
the wamp wamp from here. But but it's true. That
was the idea. And this rumor was so popular that
Kentucky Fried Chicken itself eventually addressed it on their own
website in a page that has since been removed. It
also tied into I don't know if you ever heard

(47:35):
this one, the idea that the federal government make Kentucky
Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC because what they
were using could not legally nor ethically be called chicken. Oh,
so now it's just KFC the thing. There's no chicken involved.
It was going to be legal fried. There you go,
bringing it back funny then, I mean, I do remember

(47:58):
hearing that. Actually, I do remember hearing that. And here
we have from the KFC website their response to this
rumor of mutant chickens or whatever you want to call them.
Uh you, I'll get there. I'll get there, keep going
to you give me a second. Here we go. We

(48:20):
can set the record straight. No mutated or genetically engineered
chickens are involved in making our delicious KFC chicken. Just
one real chicken from US farms, which have to pass
over third equality checks and U s D a inspection
before being hand prepared by one of our cooks. Ultimately,
less than ten percent of chickens meet KFC's high standards

(48:42):
for quality, which includes no artificial hormones or steroids, a
federal regulation. Favorite out of context quote, there may I
ask you to do? Uh Colonel Sanders esque voice. No
mutated chickens are involved in make an hour delicious fried chicken.

(49:03):
It's a true story. It's full from the internet, the
official site, and they moved it somewhere else. But you
you can find that. I love the KFC. KFC just thought,
you know, if we if we throw the word delicious
around like somebody throwing a crucifix around a vampire, maybe

(49:25):
that'll ward off these allegations. At this point. Uh, you know,
for for most of the lifespan of this theory or
this rumor, the technology wasn't there to the scale that
would need to have occurred, right, sure, just growing meat
like that essentially, but that may be the future. Lab

(49:45):
grown meat is already a thing, and has been for
a number of years now. It's just a question of
again making a large enough amount of it. Right, there's
a mutated chicken thing, the idea of no beaks, no heads,
extra wings, extra legs. That has a very low likelihood
of being true. However, the way that these individual animals

(50:08):
are treated in just normal no smoking, mirrors, uh, skull
and bones livestock life. They do have tremendously painful laves, right,
Their beaks are chopped off, they are oftentime unable to walk,
and they are of course, as we said, pumped full
of antibiotics to stop the infections that would otherwise rage

(50:29):
through them. So it's still not pretty. But they do
have brains. Yeah, let's move away from meat. Let's let's
get something that's maybe meat adjacent. Yeah about Uh you
like fond Oh, my gosh, fond We used to have
an amazing fondue place in Atlanta. No, it was on

(50:51):
a pirate ship. Oh that's right. Uh, Dantanna's Dante's Dante's
down the hatch and I miss it. So badly. Yeah,
that place is great, and it was part of that
fon du craze that swept the US. It turns out
that the fon du craze, there's a conspiracy, not a
conspiracy theory. The fon du craze was manufactured by what

(51:15):
we could reasonably call big cheese. The big cheese was responsible.
The big Cheese. I feel like we need a sound
cue for that. Technically, their name is the Swiss Cheese Union.
That's how we'd say in English. A little bit after
World War One, cheese consumption was really low. People just

(51:36):
had other priorities. And the Swiss Cheese Union, which sounds
like the name of some indie band that we would
have been in in college. The Swiss Cheese Union says,
all right, we're gonna get together. We're gonna reduce supply,
we're going to create artificial scarcity, we're gonna fixed prices.
We're also going to limit the types of cheese that
you can legally make, and then will will literally rough

(52:01):
people up if they don't play ball with us. This
is in Switzerland, is throughout Europe eventually, and in Switzerland
so in common. And they also got the government involved.
So the government collaborated with them, and they made an
a marketing push that was Bernet's level clever to get
people to convince people they like fondue. Who doesn't like

(52:24):
like cheese dep anyway? Right? People love dipping. Dipping is
one of the best things about eating in general. You
dip stuff and stuff, you know what I mean. Sauces
are great, and if your sauce is mostly cheese, I mean,
come on, you're you're ahead, so winning your light years ahead.
You're just sort of you know, it's in some culture

(52:46):
you are a god. You're like, there's a cargo cult
about the cheese sauce guy, absolutely, which I would be into.
I would hear him out. I'm not saying I convert,
but i'd hear him out. I mean, some caso case,
it was just fondue in a different vessel, right, yeah, man, Yeah,
I have no shame about the ungodly unclean amount of

(53:07):
cheese I eat me too. I'm kind of always up
for it, sort of like an arsonist. Uh you know,
I asked an arsenists if they want to see a
fire most of the time. I imagine not hanging out
with any arsenist that A'm aware of I imagine most
of the time they're like, I'll check it out. They
might not do anything, but they might want to just

(53:28):
window shop. I literally was just daydreaming about Caso being
right here between us and a whole bunch of chips.
I'd be so great, man, I'm so hungry. Ah so
even after this, yeah, I'm hungry as well. So so
it turns out that the fondue craze quote unquote was manufactured.
Here's one that we saved for. You are good, pal

(53:51):
are super producer, Paul Mission controlled decade Paul and the
Teledeconds Paul Chipotle decond I've to tell it, he goes
by that sometimes just for the sheer number of delicious
burritos and slightly lime flavored chips he consumes. The Chipotle
down the street from us actually has a day in

(54:14):
Paul's honor because when things are getting rough, he he
saved the business. Oh really is very It's a very inspirational,
inspirational story. I think Disney's optioning it is that when
there were outbreaks occurring, a Chipotle is all over the place,
ding ding ding, Yes, yes, whole in one there were outbreaks,
reports of the cole I most famously, I think, but

(54:38):
there were other things too write oh yes, salmonella, NOA virus,
um yum, yum yum. But that icole I is always
the one that freaks me and probably a lot of
us out the most, just because it is, you know, poop. Yeah, yeah,
that's what it is. The weird thing about these scandals
is they all occurred within a few months of each

(55:01):
other in and then it happened again in and that's
when a fellow named Aaron Allen at a restaurant consulting
group Aaron Allen Associates, said that he saw a pattern.
He said, look, I see a pattern, not just in
the food poisoning that's occurring, which you know, Chipotle, to

(55:21):
their credit and their parent company, did a great job
in finding the finding the bad food products, right, But
Aaron Allen said there was another pattern that was functioning
a concert with the incidencies of food poisoning. He said
he saw the stock activity and he's paying attention to
it because Aaron Allen says, of course, after there's a

(55:45):
scandal again, there's some eat coal I, there's some you know,
there's some poop in the burritos. Naturally, a sack price drops. Right.
This was at a time when people were very anti
feces and burritos. It's just not where the market was. Uh.
And his idea was that someone was intentionally doing this,
maybe not someone working for Chipotle, but someone was some

(56:08):
sort of reach was manufacturing the scandal. They were making
the stock price drop, and then they were buying it
up again for pennies on the dollar, knowing that it
would eventually rise because it would just be a cycle thing. Right, Because,
as as superproducer Paul Decan can attest, Chipotle is going gangbusters.
You know, it'll hit some bumps in the road, but

(56:29):
they're they're not in trouble man. That is in that's intense.
That this equivalent of letting a or purposefully having a
certain part of a city or something being run down
by depriving it of let's say police officers or or
you know, just letting something happen to where the property

(56:50):
prices get so low to the point where you can
buy all of it and then put up your own thing.
That's what it was occurring allegedly in the Chipotle market.
According to Uh, this Aaron Allen Fellow right, right, And
again he does run a consulting group or did at
the time. So there's one one more we'll touch on today,
and this this could be just a bit of a

(57:12):
palate Glantzer. It's a fun idea, right. The world's probably
not gonna burn down because of this one. So have
you ever been in a Starbucks and said, Okay, hi,
my name is you know, Chanelle or Donovan, I've got
the drink that I want, whatever, And then you go, uh,
you wait for them to call your name and they

(57:34):
yell out something like Danielle or Shanavan or you know
something that wasn't your name but it's it's like slightly
off or whatever. Uh. There's the theory, an Internet rumor.
It's kind of like a fan theory that Starbucks employees
do this on purpose because when people post they're hilariously
misspelledroum is pronounced names, they're written on the cup. It's

(57:58):
free marketing for Starbucks. What do you think about that? Um, okay,
here's what I would say. I am and I do
not know the numbers here. I have not looked into this,
but I imagine that it is not quite as amazing
for your social media feed to post a Starbucks cup

(58:22):
no matter what's inside that container. It's probably not as
amazing to do that as it would be to do
some smaller chain, right with a generic cup of coffee
or something like that. Does does that make any sense?
Like just that branding within your feet? I can imagine
that's not as an exciting as of an exciting thing

(58:42):
to post as would be if it was a small chain.
So perhaps by having that funny moment occur, the Starbucks
is back in the feeds just with you know, Adam's
name misspelled? Oh yeah, yeah, because they know you're going

(59:02):
to post it. I don't buy it. It seems a
little Rube Goldberg esque, right, It seems secuitous, it seems unnecessary.
But but Starbucks literally needs zero advertising, ben right, right,
when's the last time you saw a Starbucks by itself
without you know, like another Starbucks down the street. I'm

(59:26):
sure they exist. I just think they're increasingly rare. So
we're we're in this situation right where where we have
to ask ourselves whether this was a Bob Ross style
happy accident, and I think I think that's the most
likely occurrence here. Did you know I played my first

(59:49):
professional music gig at a Starbucks on one that's a
that's a very local reference in Atlanta, played my very
first gig our Bucks. It was fine, the coffee was
perfectly fine back then in the early two thousand's. What

(01:00:09):
a time, those halcyon days. Uh. This does bring us
to a stopping point where we have simply scratched the
surface of a multitude of food conspiracies. Will return to
some other ones in the future, but we would also
like to hear your take on these the ones we
examined in this episode, ones that you think you your

(01:00:31):
fellow audience members should be aware of whether there's something's
kind of a funny thought experiment like Starbucks, or whether
it's something uh, incredibly disturbing like chocolate, or whether it's
something that just makes you makes you think for a second,
it gives it gives you something to grind your cognitive
gears against. I will say there's one thing I'm very

(01:00:52):
interested in here that we touched on, and it has
to do with the meat manufacturing processes. And I have
read in a lot of places, uh and seen documentaries
actually about the effects of specifically cattle on you know,
what would be global climate change. And I have not

(01:01:14):
done the research like we would do for one of
these episodes on that topic. And I'm interested in it,
but I would like to know. I think we would
all like to know if you are interested in that,
and we should Should we do an episode on that?
Um anytime we bring up climate change. It's a bit
controversial just from the viewpoints of all of us coming forward,

(01:01:35):
but I think the science generally isn't so well. Here's
the here's the thing. So I think it's an ext
lille idea of for another show we do here at
the office called car Stuff. We looked into that. Uh yeah,
the amount of the amount of pollutants that cattle alone
released into the atmosphere is it is enormously significant. It's

(01:01:59):
a lot. Uh. We have a full episode on that
if you want to check it out. We also had
an episode on hybrids, uh that that relates to this
energy consumption, because you know, when hybrids first came out,
many many people were saying, I can make the world
a better place. I don't have to change that much.
You just have to pay a little more for a car,

(01:02:20):
you know what I mean. But the problem with hybrids
and the problem with some electric vehicles at that time
was that they were pulling their electricity from a power grid.
What was supplying that power grid coal? Coal, That's right,
So congratulations on your coal powered car. You just move
the pollution a bit further away from your line of

(01:02:44):
mental sight. And I'm not I'm not being detegrated. The
technology has come a long way, and overall, I think
the world is is attempting to find a newer, less
long term harmful alternatives. But you're right, that is there's
something sinister about cattle when it comes to pollution, and

(01:03:04):
it's something that a lot of people don't think about.
The biggest thing for me, Ben and Paul and everybody
out there is how, honestly, like I want to, I'm
gonna have a conversation with you off air, maybe we
bring it to the air at some point, but how
you were able to maintain vegetarianism for a sustained period
of time. Because I've been attempting personally in my life

(01:03:25):
to do a little more of that, and I'm not
having a lot of success, because I really am Maybe
I don't know if it's addicted to certain flavorings or
fats or something. I don't know what it is. I'm
at least trained to eat in a certain way. I'm
trying to fight it. Here's what happened to me, and
we can't talk about this on air. And but uh,

(01:03:46):
first I became very busy and also very lazy, okay.
And then it was dating someone who was a vegetarian,
so it made it very easy to say yes to that.
Uh okay, you know, uh, and she was a fantastic cook. Uh.
But but I don't know. It's it's easy to become

(01:04:10):
lazy of relationships and dates, date someone and say, oh,
all right, that's the thing you're into. I got Yeah,
I guess I like Scott too, now you know. So,
but there are you know, we have a lot of
vegetarians in the crowd. Maybe you can help Matt and
I out. I am also eating a lot, uh a
lot less meat and not full confession, not because of

(01:04:32):
ethical reasons, but because I I was eating like a
wolf would eat for the last part of twenty nineteen.
So I'm stepping back. Yeah, but I saw this a
steak tomorrow my future. I I saw that picture. Yeah. Yeah,
I've eaten a lot of stuff. I've eating horses, I've
eaten um, yeah, I remember that. And you've eating a

(01:04:53):
lot of stuff. I I it might be too I
might be too far gone, Matt. But it's not too
late for you, right. We We also want to say
that these next generations of food related conspiracies will, why
possibly take a harder, more sinister edge as the food
supply evolves. It must to feed the increasing human population.

(01:05:15):
We hope this evolution succeeds, but you can already see
the roots of its stretching back for years. The United Nations,
for instance, has fully and and ironically endorsed the idea
of normalizing insect consumption. It's a great source of protein, right,
Also eating bugs, they're not that bad, depends on how
to make them. Yeah. I have not partaken yet, but

(01:05:39):
but I do think it's something that I know, it's
something that I need to at least approach with a
with an open mind. You've never really Yeah, I think
I have some stuff at my desk. Okay, I gotta
I gotta get an open mind first. Okay, alright, alright,
well let us know. Let us know where you get there, Mat,
and also let us know what you think. What are

(01:06:00):
the biggest food conspiracies of the world is currently ignoring?
What do you think is overblown? What do you think
is under reported? We want to hear from you. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram,
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(01:06:21):
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We are one eight three three st d w y
t K. You can leave a message. We will hear
it and it may get on the show as a
form of an extra episode, you know, a voicemail episode,
or it could just be for our years and that's all.

(01:06:42):
It has to be one big shout out. I would
like to give shout out to the First next Step
on Twitter for throwing a little bit of a monkey
wrench into one of our shows in universe catchphrases. It
put it out to me that it was not, in
fact Billy Mays, who said, but wait there's more. Who

(01:07:06):
was it? It was the other guy. It was Ron
Popel with the spray on hair. Yeah, yeah, he's a one.
You said it and I thought, no, that can't be true,
and I dug through and because I distinctly visually right,
I remember Billy Mays saying this, or I think I do.
But they said there's a Mandela conspiracy about this going
around a Mandela effect. What Mandela effect? Yeah? So interesting stuff, right,

(01:07:33):
But we do want to correct that. With absolutely all
due respect to Billy and Ron, I am sure that
they both appreciate us getting that quote straightened out. Oh
and one thing before we get out of here, let's
check in with the old current world population right now.
We're at seven billion, seven hundred and fifty seven million,
three hundred and fourteen thousand and seven hundred and eighty

(01:07:56):
and last things. Last, if you have a suggestion for
a show you think your fellow listeners will enjoy. If
you have some feedback, if you have your own spin,
your own take, we'd love to hear it. If you
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earlier episode on Facebook. We have one other way for
you to contact us. Twenty four hours a day, seven

(01:08:20):
days a week, three hundred and sixty four days a year.
Now yeah for leap here. Yeah really here, that's right.
You can still send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff

(01:08:54):
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