Latest / The You Project / #2037 The Toddler Milk Scam - David Gillespie

Transcript

#2037 The Toddler Milk Scam - David Gillespie · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I get a team.
0:01
Speaker 2: It's the project. That's you at s Glespo, It's Harps,
0:03
Speaker 2: it's Cookie. It's that time of the fortnight where the
0:07
Speaker 2: great man from the Banana State, the Sunshine State drops
0:10
Speaker 2: by and just bloody blows us away with his great,
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Speaker 2: big fucking brain and his questionable attitude. Loves TIF, hates me,
0:19
Speaker 2: tolerates me anyway. That's the price. That's the price we pay.
0:23
Speaker 2: We'll start with the world famous international, well traveled speaker
0:29
Speaker 2: that is TIF. Cook will say a low to her,
0:31
Speaker 2: the one with all the issues.
0:33
Speaker 1: Hello Cookie, plenty of issues, but hello, Hello, Craig Anthony.
0:37
Speaker 2: Harper, issues for days and you and I did a
0:40
Speaker 2: podcast yesterday and there was one funny bit that we
0:44
Speaker 2: had to leave out because of the potential lawsuits that
0:48
Speaker 2: would have come our way. I did mention that it
0:51
Speaker 2: was a zinger, and you sorry, David, I'll be thirteen seconds.
0:56
Speaker 2: You did want to know what the zing? Can you
0:58
Speaker 2: just confirm to the listeners that it was, in fact, hilaris, I.
1:01
Speaker 1: Would like it was an absolute zinger.
1:05
Speaker 2: Indeed, we'll tell David when we finished. We'll tell David.
1:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, you better, Bloody will tell me. Yeah, it's been
1:12
Speaker 1: going on about it. It's sad that political correctness is
1:17
Speaker 1: a thing, because gee, it was good. Yeah.
1:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were having fun and I was on a
1:21
Speaker 2: bit of a role. I was already right at the
1:24
Speaker 2: fucking edge. I was just I was just at the
1:27
Speaker 2: edge of what is probably okay. And there was one
1:32
Speaker 2: that was just would have been the icing on the
1:34
Speaker 2: politically incorrect cake. Ah, But for some unknown reason, I
1:42
Speaker 2: showed great restraint and but I'll share it with you.
1:46
Speaker 2: But it would have been a fucking killer. But I
1:48
Speaker 2: would have got a few emails. But anyway, I didn't.
1:50
Speaker 2: How are you, David?
1:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, for a Wednesday?
1:54
Speaker 2: What's going what's going on? Why are we doing it?
1:57
Speaker 2: This at seven o'clock. Not that I'm not grateful. I'm
2:00
Speaker 2: always grateful. Did you have a date earlier or something?
2:02
Speaker 1: It's no, no, no, I just I have to it's boring.
2:07
Speaker 1: I won't bore you with it. I had something else
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Speaker 1: on that had to be done.
2:12
Speaker 2: Your actual job. Get in the road of this fullshit.
2:16
Speaker 1: That's all right, Yeah, but this is Yeah. I thought
2:21
Speaker 1: we might have a bit of a chat today about
2:22
Speaker 1: baby food. What do you reckon?
2:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's somebody told me about it earlier today?
2:28
Speaker 3: Did you read David's article on formula is a formula?
2:32
Speaker 3: Baby food formula? And then I went to try to
2:36
Speaker 3: find it, and I definitely went to the wrong place,
2:39
Speaker 3: and I thought it must be an old one, but
2:41
Speaker 3: it's not.
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Speaker 2: You wrote it today, the Great baby food Scam. That's
2:46
Speaker 2: not your title, that's mine.
2:48
Speaker 1: Tell us, Okay. So we briefly talked about this a
2:53
Speaker 1: little while ago when we talked about I think it
2:55
Speaker 1: might have been been the last time, and we talked
2:57
Speaker 1: about the immunity advantages for breast fee eating mothers, so
3:01
Speaker 1: the immunity advantage that's given to their children, and I
3:06
Speaker 1: think you asked right at the end of it about
3:08
Speaker 1: you know, what what does this mean for women who
3:11
Speaker 1: can't breastfeed and so on, And we talk briefly about
3:14
Speaker 1: the fact that the very much the preferred thing is
3:18
Speaker 1: that women breastfeed if they possibly can, preferably for twelve.
3:23
Speaker 2: Th sorry, also my bad. We're talking about reduced incidents
3:27
Speaker 2: of certain or potential correlations with disease were lower for
3:31
Speaker 2: women who breastfeed first, that's right, yeah, yeah.
3:34
Speaker 1: And for their children as well. So they're undoubted, undoubted
3:41
Speaker 1: advantages to breastfeeding, and so you know, reiterate once again,
3:45
Speaker 1: if women can possibly breastfeed, then A they should do it,
3:49
Speaker 1: and b they should do it for as long as
3:50
Speaker 1: they can, preferably twelve months. I know twelve months is
3:53
Speaker 1: to be asked, but if you can at all manage it,
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Speaker 1: then it's the advantages not only for the baby, which
4:01
Speaker 1: are huge, but also for the mother significant as well. Now,
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Speaker 1: because of that, the World Health Organization in nineteen ninety
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Speaker 1: two major pronouncement that said that essentially and also asked
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Speaker 1: formula manufacturers as a result of some quite nasty marketing
4:17
Speaker 1: techniques that were going on, particularly with Nesle in Africa,
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Speaker 1: where they were just basically encouraging women who are quite
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Speaker 1: capable of breastfeeding to use formula using god knows what
4:27
Speaker 1: water that they found to mix with it and obviously
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Speaker 1: processed by the mother's body and then delivered. Is much much,
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Speaker 1: much safer in those circumstances than mixing milk powder with
4:41
Speaker 1: water where the waters of dubious origin. So there were
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Speaker 1: some big scandals about that. World Health Organization ninety ninety
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Speaker 1: two came to a historic agreement with a lot of
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Speaker 1: the world's formula manufacturers and came out with a statement
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Speaker 1: that said rest is best basically, and everyone's going to
4:59
Speaker 1: agree that, and a lot of the manufacturers said that
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Speaker 1: they would put things to that effect on their websites
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Speaker 1: and put out press releases to that effect and make
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Speaker 1: sure that they didn't encourage women to use formula during
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Speaker 1: the first twelve months. Now, how that translated into Australian
5:20
Speaker 1: law is quite interesting because what happened here is the
5:24
Speaker 1: ahable C, who are our regulator for competition, basically had
5:29
Speaker 1: a gentleman's agreement with the big Australian manufacturers that they
5:33
Speaker 1: would not advertise formula. So what's called infant formula or
5:40
Speaker 1: stage is one and two, which is six months and
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Speaker 1: twelve months the first six months and then follow on
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Speaker 1: which is the twelve months. They wouldn't advertise that in
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Speaker 1: the Australian market. And while that the Australian Competition Commission
5:53
Speaker 1: would normally be against people agreeing not to advertise things
5:56
Speaker 1: because that's anti competitive and they want people to compete,
6:00
Speaker 1: they felt that the benefit of this, in accordance with
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Speaker 1: the World Health Organization's pronouncement, was was worth the effect
6:09
Speaker 1: on competition, and so they had this gentleman's agreement with
6:12
Speaker 1: all the big manufacturers, we're okay with you agreeing not
6:15
Speaker 1: to advertise this, and we in fact want you to
6:17
Speaker 1: not advertise this. And that was the way it's been
6:22
Speaker 1: for the last thirty years, where the big manufacturers have said,
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Speaker 1: we are not going to advertise formula because we don't
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Speaker 1: want to talk people out of breastfeeding, except there's been
6:36
Speaker 1: a loophole you could drive a truck through in this,
6:39
Speaker 1: which is there was absolutely nothing to stop them doing
6:43
Speaker 1: exactly what they did do, which was create essentially sugar milk,
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Speaker 1: call it Stage three formula, branded exactly the same as
6:54
Speaker 1: the Stage one and two that they were not going
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Speaker 1: to advertise, and then advertise the hell out of it.
7:00
Speaker 1: So what they did was say, yeah, yeah, we agree,
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Speaker 1: we're not going to advertise formula. We're not going to
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Speaker 1: go out and compete with breastfeeding, not going to do that,
7:10
Speaker 1: all perfectly fine, and they haven't. They haven't advertised infant formula.
7:14
Speaker 1: What they have advertised heavily is tins of staff that
7:20
Speaker 1: look identical and I mean identical to that those formulas
7:28
Speaker 1: and said, but we'll advertise that, ah, but it's not this,
7:32
Speaker 1: it's not we're not advertising the infant formula. We're advertising
7:37
Speaker 1: toddler milk. Now, toddler milk is skim milk plus sugar. Okay,
7:42
Speaker 1: has zero nutritional benefit whatsoever. But it's advertised heavily on
7:47
Speaker 1: television anywhere you want to look, and it is also
7:52
Speaker 1: branded exactly the same. So is what does someone do
7:55
Speaker 1: when they go to the supermarket and they see the
7:56
Speaker 1: tins there and there's the infant formula and the toleert milk,
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Speaker 1: and it all looks it's exactly the same. Yeah, they
8:02
Speaker 1: go ahead and buy the infant formula, thinking, oh, all
8:05
Speaker 1: these health benefits blah blah blah that they're talking about,
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Speaker 1: that's fine. And so effectively what they've done is create
8:13
Speaker 1: a half billion dollar industry out of doing what they
8:17
Speaker 1: promised not to do. And this year the A Trible
8:22
Speaker 1: C said enough's enough, mate, enough's enough. We're not going
8:26
Speaker 1: with this anymore. Okay, you're not abiding by the spirit
8:30
Speaker 1: of the agreement. It's over. Our handshake deal is out
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Speaker 1: the window. So the A Triple C said that earlier
8:36
Speaker 1: this year, and the federal government has said, yeah, we agree,
8:41
Speaker 1: we're going to We're actually going to it's no longer voluntary.
8:44
Speaker 1: We're going to introduce laws that stop you doing this.
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Speaker 2: Can I just interject for one secon because I'm a
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Speaker 2: sixty year old man who knows fuck all about toddlers.
8:55
Speaker 2: Is a toddler like two years plus?
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Speaker 1: Is that at all? What they agreed not to advertise
9:02
Speaker 1: too was anything under one because the stuff fed to
9:06
Speaker 1: children under the age of one is very very heavily regulated,
9:10
Speaker 1: so you can't fill it with sugar. It's got to
9:14
Speaker 1: be exact formula within exact ranges, so it's very heavily regulated,
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Speaker 1: particularly in Australia, and they agreed they wouldn't advertise that
9:23
Speaker 1: because it's meant to be an alternative to breastfeeding only
9:26
Speaker 1: when breastfeeding is not possible, so they didn't. They haven't
9:32
Speaker 1: advertised with that, But what they do is they call
9:33
Speaker 1: it so formulas are broken up into what's called stage
9:37
Speaker 1: one and stage two. Stage one is the first six
9:40
Speaker 1: months has a very particular formula associated with it. Stage
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Speaker 1: two is what's called supplemental feeding, which is by six
9:46
Speaker 1: months the child should be having some solids, and so
9:50
Speaker 1: the formula that has fed to them changes to give
9:54
Speaker 1: them different things in the second six months. So that's
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Speaker 1: Stage two formula. Now, what the food companies did is
10:00
Speaker 1: invent something that didn't exist, and they've branded it as
10:03
Speaker 1: Stage three formula, and what that means is from twelve
10:07
Speaker 1: months onwards, and then also from Stage four formula, which
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Speaker 1: I think is from eighteen months or two years on now.
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Speaker 1: Stage three and four formula are sugar and skim milk powder. Okay,
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Speaker 1: they're not formula at all, but you wouldn't know that
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Speaker 1: from looking at them. So if you have a look
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Speaker 1: at the article that I've read, I've actually put up
10:27
Speaker 1: some comparative shots of one of the brands and I
10:31
Speaker 1: just picked one at random, at the optimal, which is
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Speaker 1: one that's sold in Australia. I've put their Stage one
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Speaker 1: and their Stage three side by side, and I defy
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Speaker 1: you aside from the one and the three to tell
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Speaker 1: the difference. Right, they're identical, So the branding, the marketing,
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Speaker 1: it's all identical. And that's the bit that the A
10:53
Speaker 1: Trip will see has a problem with. Yes, they're saying
10:57
Speaker 1: this is not the spirit of what we agreed. You
10:59
Speaker 1: are effectively advertising because you're using identical branding, and the
11:05
Speaker 1: government has agreed with them and said yes, that's not
11:08
Speaker 1: on we you know, the gentleman's agreements out the door.
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Speaker 1: We're going to legislate and you're not going to win.
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Speaker 2: When is this going to be enforced, like when it's.
11:16
Speaker 1: Well yes, well you know, in the fullness of time, Craig.
11:22
Speaker 2: Oh, you sounded like a lawyer.
11:24
Speaker 1: Then yeah, they're gonna They're gonna do it. The Age
11:30
Speaker 1: will See made its decision early this year. The government
11:35
Speaker 1: has said it's within their legislative time frame. I'm not
11:39
Speaker 1: sure what that means. It hasn't happened yet, let's just
11:42
Speaker 1: say that, but there's intent there now. The reason I
11:47
Speaker 1: even looked at this now, besides our excellent conversation earlier
11:50
Speaker 1: about it, was there's a case. It's made some big
11:54
Speaker 1: waves in the United States. Well, two cases in the
11:56
Speaker 1: United States that made some big ways. One that fail
12:00
Speaker 1: held dramatically, and it's interesting for why it failed, which
12:04
Speaker 1: was a case of a person suing a big food
12:08
Speaker 1: essentially suing the big food manufacturers for his diabetes. So
12:13
Speaker 1: had diabetes, got diabetes from the age of sixteen, type
12:17
Speaker 1: two diabetes, and suing the food manufacturers and saying you
12:22
Speaker 1: cause this, so it's like cigarette smoking. Therefore you owe
12:26
Speaker 1: me for the health tream.
12:28
Speaker 2: Of particular manufacture, any particular manufacturers.
12:31
Speaker 1: Or and that's the problem right there. Good old Judge
12:34
Speaker 1: Harper on the bench has has nailed it immediately, nailed
12:39
Speaker 1: it immediately. Why his lawyers didn't nail it immediately is
12:42
Speaker 1: beyond me. The case. So the two in particular that
12:46
Speaker 1: he sued were Craft and Heinz, I think, but there
12:50
Speaker 1: were others joined as well, so the case was Martinez
12:54
Speaker 1: versus Craft, heins. Of course I put the link in
12:57
Speaker 1: the in the article for anyone who wants to read lawcue.
13:00
Speaker 1: And it was being billed as really the first of
13:05
Speaker 1: the sort of like big tobacco type cases. You know,
13:08
Speaker 1: the punter you know, smoked all their lives, dying of
13:12
Speaker 1: lung cancer. This is the same thing, but with type
13:15
Speaker 1: two diabetes and FATI liver disease. So he's nineteen, he's
13:19
Speaker 1: had diabetes since he was sixteen, he says, and he's
13:22
Speaker 1: suing them and saying, you people cause this. The judge
13:27
Speaker 1: dismissed it for the reasons you would have guessed first,
13:32
Speaker 1: what exactly was it that caused this? You know, he's
13:36
Speaker 1: saying he's got eleven defendants, Craft, Heinz, Coca, Cola, PepsiCo,
13:41
Speaker 1: et cetera, one hundred of their brands, Oreo's, Ritz, Gerber Chocolates,
13:46
Speaker 1: et cetera in the United States. So it didn't name,
13:49
Speaker 1: it didn't nail a specific product or even a specific
13:52
Speaker 1: ingredient in the product that was supposed to have caused
13:56
Speaker 1: his diabetes. And also, who you know, there's loads of
14:03
Speaker 1: potential defendants making loads of products. And this was the
14:07
Speaker 1: big problem with a lot of the early cigarette cases
14:09
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies is people would say, I'm seventy,
14:13
Speaker 1: I'm dying of lung cancer. The smokes caused it, and
14:17
Speaker 1: courts would say, well, maybe you're right, but which smokes?
14:20
Speaker 1: Did you smoke the same cigarettes your entire life? You know, No,
14:26
Speaker 1: I didn't. I changed from that brand to that brand
14:28
Speaker 1: of that brand. I smoke whatever I could get. Well,
14:30
Speaker 1: there you go. Your case is toast. And that's what's
14:33
Speaker 1: happened here as well, which is establishing causation what it's
14:36
Speaker 1: called in law, is really difficult where you can't say
14:41
Speaker 1: for certain was it that person's product that caused this disease. Now,
14:46
Speaker 1: the science is really clear that if you consume vast
14:49
Speaker 1: amounts of sugar over an extended period of time, you
14:52
Speaker 1: will likely contract type two diabetes, fatterly liver disease, hard disease,
14:57
Speaker 1: a whole raft of things. Okay, but sugar is in everything,
15:03
Speaker 1: So who are you going to tool if you're going
15:05
Speaker 1: to go after them. Much more likely to succeed are
15:10
Speaker 1: cases where you've got a really controlled food environment. So
15:16
Speaker 1: for example, if you're in the baby, yes, or we'll
15:20
Speaker 1: get to the baby. But in the military, for example,
15:23
Speaker 1: if you've been in the military since the age of eighteen,
15:26
Speaker 1: you've been there thirty years, they've been feeding you everything
15:28
Speaker 1: that you eat, then they are probably responsible for anything
15:33
Speaker 1: that is caused as a result of whatever you eat.
15:36
Speaker 1: At least there you've got a defendant. Now, there might
15:39
Speaker 1: be lots of different manufacturers, but at the end of
15:40
Speaker 1: the day, it was the military that was telling you
15:42
Speaker 1: what to eat and in serving it and putting it
15:44
Speaker 1: in front of you. So potentially, or in an institution,
15:47
Speaker 1: in a hospital, or in an asylum or something like that,
15:51
Speaker 1: where your food supply is entirely controlled, the other place is,
15:54
Speaker 1: as you correctly identify Judge Harper, if you're a baby,
16:00
Speaker 1: we had a lot of life before your only source
16:03
Speaker 1: of nutrition is the thing that's being supplied out of
16:06
Speaker 1: a tin. Yes, so that's potentially an interesting cause of action.
16:13
Speaker 1: And to test that, there's another case in the United
16:17
Speaker 1: States that's just kicked off called Castro and Laboratories, where
16:22
Speaker 1: Castro is suing the makers of a baby formula in
16:26
Speaker 1: the United States.
16:28
Speaker 2: What condition did the kid get? Like, what's the malaise?
16:32
Speaker 2: What's the ah?
16:34
Speaker 1: Now? See alleged lawyer es, well, they didn't go that
16:38
Speaker 1: way at all. That's a trap for young players, right.
16:41
Speaker 1: They saw what happened with Martinez and they said, no, no,
16:46
Speaker 1: we're not after that at all. What we are after
16:50
Speaker 1: is misrepresentation. You represented to us that this was infant
16:55
Speaker 1: formula and that it was safe and healthy. But your
16:58
Speaker 1: product is twenty three percent sugar.
17:00
Speaker 2: Yes, surely that was identified on the packaging though, because
17:05
Speaker 2: that's a requirement.
17:07
Speaker 1: Sure. I don't know if you've ever looked at a
17:09
Speaker 1: baby formula package, but it does identify lots of things
17:13
Speaker 1: on it. In fact, there's security and obscurity. There's about
17:17
Speaker 1: a thousand things identified between the vitamins and the minerals
17:22
Speaker 1: and the breaking down of the certain types of facts
17:23
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and so forth, I defy
17:26
Speaker 1: any normal person to read all that fine print and
17:29
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that this isn't something that they
17:31
Speaker 1: should feed to their child. And besides all of that,
17:35
Speaker 1: people know in the back of their mind, even if
17:37
Speaker 1: they're not studying the law, they have a suspicion the
17:40
Speaker 1: baby food is probably heavily regulated. Yeah, and they think that, Well,
17:49
Speaker 1: I keep on feeding my child this thing that looks
17:52
Speaker 1: exactly the same as the thing that I know I've
17:54
Speaker 1: been feeding them in stage one and two, and they
17:55
Speaker 1: tell me I should buy Stage three and feed it
17:57
Speaker 1: to them. But what I'm actually feeding them is a
18:01
Speaker 1: chocolate milkshake. By the time I get to stage three,
18:04
Speaker 1: they're saying, there's the problem. Yes, there's the problem.
18:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that what I was going to say too,
18:11
Speaker 2: is like broadly, you know, zooming out from the micro
18:15
Speaker 2: of baby food and formula to the macro of just
18:18
Speaker 2: food in general. Like the reason that the nutritional information
18:23
Speaker 2: is on the back down the bottom in the right
18:25
Speaker 2: hand corner, and it's a size two font is because
18:29
Speaker 2: they don't want us to pay attention to it.
18:31
Speaker 1: It's there because they're required to put it there. It
18:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't be there if they weren't correct.
18:36
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And so okay, so
18:40
Speaker 2: what's happening with this case with the misreddentation.
18:45
Speaker 1: That one's still about hasn't made it to court yet.
18:49
Speaker 1: In the United States, much more likely to succeed because
18:53
Speaker 1: there they're not relying on this question about did your
18:59
Speaker 1: product cause this disease? They're going they're going sort of
19:03
Speaker 1: like the I guess what was the buggy was the
19:07
Speaker 1: what were those famous outlaws? It Bugsy Malone and the
19:12
Speaker 1: bugs alone and anyway, well, one of those famous outlaws
19:17
Speaker 1: probably was bugs Malone. I've forgotten now chief will have
19:20
Speaker 1: it before we even get to the end of the sentence.
19:22
Speaker 1: There were ones they didn't get him on shooting people
19:26
Speaker 1: and killing people and being an outlaw and taxation and
19:30
Speaker 1: that's the one al Capone.
19:32
Speaker 2: They got him on tax Yeah, tax fraud.
19:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here is it's a little reminiscent of that.
19:38
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they go down on misrepresentation, not on
19:41
Speaker 1: the thing that actually happened. In Australia, we don't even
19:46
Speaker 1: have to rely on that because we've got a regulator
19:48
Speaker 1: saying we're done, this is deceptive conduct. We want legislation
19:53
Speaker 1: that stops this happening. We're still a step further though,
19:57
Speaker 1: before we can start saying and your product has caused
20:01
Speaker 1: this disease, and you owe me a lot of money,
20:04
Speaker 1: but at least in terms of deceptive marketing, there may
20:07
Speaker 1: be some damages there if this case succeed in the
20:11
Speaker 1: United States. Where we need to get to though, is
20:14
Speaker 1: where it got to with the tobacco legislation in the end,
20:17
Speaker 1: which is it didn't. There were a couple of cases
20:20
Speaker 1: that did succeed because the person could prove that this
20:24
Speaker 1: was the only brand of cigarette they had to ever smoked,
20:27
Speaker 1: so they could prove I have smoked your cigarettes and
20:31
Speaker 1: nothing else my entire life, and they succeeded. Unfortunately, often
20:36
Speaker 1: they died before they did succeed. So there are states succeeded.
20:41
Speaker 1: But where the big money cases came in the tobacco
20:46
Speaker 1: litigation in the United States was when the state attorney
20:50
Speaker 1: generals took the cases on behalf of their health systems.
20:54
Speaker 1: So they said, our health system has to pay for
20:58
Speaker 1: the consequences of you selling a product which causes disease. Yeah,
21:04
Speaker 1: so you owe us money for the cost of doing that.
21:07
Speaker 1: Those are the cases that succeeded in the tobacco wars,
21:12
Speaker 1: and they're likely to be the cases that succeed here too.
21:15
Speaker 1: Is it Ultimately we are going to have governments saying
21:18
Speaker 1: you are selling a product that causes disease and that
21:23
Speaker 1: we have to pick up the tab for you owe
21:26
Speaker 1: us money. Wow.
21:29
Speaker 2: Like, I'm just thinking, I'm actually googling right now how
21:33
Speaker 2: much sugar in Last time I looked at neutra grain,
21:35
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, it's not It's not a big stretch
21:37
Speaker 2: to go to cereals, is it. Like last time I
21:40
Speaker 2: looked at something like neutragrain, it was like thirty six
21:43
Speaker 2: grams of sugar per hundred Like yeah, I mean, I
21:48
Speaker 2: mean you've done You've done all the cereals and stuff
21:50
Speaker 2: I know with your research. But does that just open
21:53
Speaker 2: a door for people then to because you know, the
21:57
Speaker 2: breakfast of champions, like all these Olympians who are selling
22:01
Speaker 2: this stuff kind.
22:03
Speaker 1: Of well it is, I mean, And there's problematic advertising
22:07
Speaker 1: right now with I think it's one of the cocoa
22:09
Speaker 1: pops one with that comedian doing it, where advertising high
22:17
Speaker 1: sugar cereal on the basis that it's full of energy
22:20
Speaker 1: or full of protein, and what they mean is it's
22:22
Speaker 1: full of sugar and we've put some protein in it
22:27
Speaker 1: because otherwise we've got nothing to sell it. So we
22:29
Speaker 1: can't say this is a high sugar cereal. So we'll
22:31
Speaker 1: call it a high protein cereal or a high energy cereal.
22:35
Speaker 1: But there's nothing good about breakfast real, nothing good about
22:38
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal. You know, if you ask me, well, what
22:42
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal should I eat, I'd say, well, don't eat
22:44
Speaker 1: any breakfast cereal, but if you must, if you feel
22:47
Speaker 1: it you can't get through the morning without a breakfast cereal,
22:49
Speaker 1: then wheatbix is pretty much the only option.
22:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's got minimal sugar and it's like.
22:56
Speaker 1: Well, it's got no added sugar in it. So it's
22:58
Speaker 1: about two grams per hundred so, you know, which is
23:01
Speaker 1: basically the sugar content of wheat. So it's that's fine.
23:06
Speaker 1: But everything else is just loaded with sugar. I mean,
23:11
Speaker 1: even corn flakes, which you wouldn't most people wouldn't identify
23:14
Speaker 1: as containing much sugar. Most people add sugar to it.
23:18
Speaker 1: You know, even cornflakes is ten percent sugar, and that's
23:21
Speaker 1: really really low as far as breakfast reals go. Most
23:24
Speaker 1: of them are twenty twenty five thirty thirty five percent
23:26
Speaker 1: sugar because no one would eat that cardboard without all
23:28
Speaker 1: the sugar in it, honestly one percent.
23:31
Speaker 2: What happens. So let's say with this one, with the
23:34
Speaker 2: you know, the misrepresentation around the formula or the toddler's
23:40
Speaker 2: food or whatever it is. What let's say they win
23:44
Speaker 2: that case and they win a whole heap of dough.
23:47
Speaker 2: Does that then mean people start coming out of the woodwork.
23:50
Speaker 1: Does that mean.
23:51
Speaker 2: That that that company has to do a complete one?
23:56
Speaker 2: Are they're probably going to do one eighty already, But like,
23:59
Speaker 2: what are some of the consequences of that litigation?
24:03
Speaker 1: Well, I suspect if they succeed besides them getting money,
24:07
Speaker 1: you know, and it'll be a stupid amount of money
24:09
Speaker 1: the way US litigation generally goes. Besides that, it will
24:14
Speaker 1: point really really clearly to the fact that to the
24:16
Speaker 1: place that the Australian government has already arrived, which is
24:19
Speaker 1: you don't get to do this, You don't get to
24:25
Speaker 1: work this loophole where you market a product that looks
24:28
Speaker 1: identical to a product which is sugar free, loaded up
24:32
Speaker 1: with sugar and then represented as healthy. So that's where
24:38
Speaker 1: it'll end up. They'll get there by litigation, will get
24:42
Speaker 1: there by legislation, but thankfully, hopefully relatively soon, we should
24:48
Speaker 1: be in a place where they no longer get away
24:50
Speaker 1: with this. It won't stop them keeping going though in
24:54
Speaker 1: other areas, because they're already on to the fact. You
24:57
Speaker 1: know that we can do the same stuff with what
25:00
Speaker 1: we feed old people right now, you know we can
25:03
Speaker 1: call it. You know, every hospital it gets loads of
25:06
Speaker 1: free samples of all these various milks that are meant
25:11
Speaker 1: to be food substitutes, which are heavily loaded with sugar.
25:16
Speaker 1: And you might say, well, why are they bothering? Why
25:19
Speaker 1: put a ton of sugar in these things? Why not
25:21
Speaker 1: just sell them with other sugar? Why can't follow one
25:24
Speaker 1: formula or stage three formula whatever it's called a toddler milk.
25:28
Speaker 1: Why can't I just be milk? Because then what are
25:32
Speaker 1: you selling? These things are thirty bucks a ten. If
25:35
Speaker 1: you're selling a tin of milk powder and the kids
25:38
Speaker 1: thinking this tastes like milk powder, he's not going to
25:41
Speaker 1: be pestering mum. Can I have another glass of that
25:45
Speaker 1: dried milk? Mum? No, The reason the kids want it
25:49
Speaker 1: is because it's full of sugar.
25:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder as you're talking about all of this,
25:56
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, like, in the space that I've inhabited
25:59
Speaker 2: for long time, fitness, health, wellness space, is like, never
26:04
Speaker 2: in my life has there been so many supplements, you know,
26:08
Speaker 2: pills and powders and potions and various forms of creatine
26:13
Speaker 2: and protein powders and a million other peptides and supplements.
26:18
Speaker 1: I wonder most of them are a waste of money.
26:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, true, one hundred percent. But it seems almost it
26:26
Speaker 2: seems almost unregulated.
26:29
Speaker 1: It is largely unregulated. The test is often will this
26:35
Speaker 1: you know, if someone consumes a bucket of this stuff,
26:39
Speaker 1: will it kill them on the spot? Probably not so okay.
26:44
Speaker 1: I mean the whole supplement industry is largely unregulated, mostly
26:48
Speaker 1: because they're perceived as being largely harmless. So if people
26:53
Speaker 1: want to buy this stuff and eat this stuff, and
26:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of in the same category, I guess,
26:58
Speaker 1: as you know, scented candles, like if you think it
27:01
Speaker 1: does something for you, then you know, knock yourself out.
27:05
Speaker 1: But but we're not going to. There are no proven
27:09
Speaker 1: health dangers or benefits to this stuff, so off you go,
27:14
Speaker 1: and and you know, the advertising for these things is
27:17
Speaker 1: always full of weasel words like may improve this, or
27:21
Speaker 1: could improve that, or up to one hundred percent, which
27:23
Speaker 1: could be anything from zero percent to one hundred percent.
27:26
Speaker 1: You know, you pay close attention to that kind of advertising,
27:31
Speaker 1: you can see that it's full of weasel words because
27:33
Speaker 1: it's telling people stuff they want to hear. You know,
27:37
Speaker 1: I have a problem with X, y Z insert melody.
27:40
Speaker 2: Here.
27:41
Speaker 1: Here is the thing that's you know, that may help
27:45
Speaker 1: with that problem. Probably won't is the subtext. But you
27:50
Speaker 1: know it probably won't hurt you either. And this is
27:52
Speaker 1: we've talked about this a couple of times. Recently, they're
27:58
Speaker 1: starting to be some really concerning evidence about some of
28:00
Speaker 1: these things, particularly the bigger vitamins, where in overdose they
28:05
Speaker 1: probably will do you harm. And you have to be
28:09
Speaker 1: really careful about that because these things have been thrown
28:12
Speaker 1: willy nilly into all sorts of things, sometimes without even
28:15
Speaker 1: mentioning that they're there, like vitamin B six, which is
28:18
Speaker 1: in massive amounts in magnesium, and people are probably not
28:21
Speaker 1: even aware they're taking it because they're actually taking the
28:24
Speaker 1: magnesium because they've got leg cramps. And so we have
28:29
Speaker 1: to be really careful about this because up until now
28:32
Speaker 1: the attitude has been well, probably doesn't hurt, and the
28:39
Speaker 1: reality is, take enough of this stuff, it probably does hurt.
28:43
Speaker 2: Just before we go. It kind of sounds like from
28:46
Speaker 2: what you're saying that Australia is ahead of America in
28:50
Speaker 2: a way, like with the baby formula stuff anyway, because
28:54
Speaker 2: we're already dealing with it, making decisions about it and
28:56
Speaker 2: saying it's not okay. But in this so it's more
28:59
Speaker 2: regulation here and litigation in the States. Are we leading
29:03
Speaker 2: the way or is that just in this particular this.
29:06
Speaker 1: On this issue, we are. And it's a different regulator
29:10
Speaker 1: to the one that regulates supplements, So this is the
29:13
Speaker 1: Australian Competition Commission who has an agreement with people about
29:18
Speaker 1: how to market this stuff. So they're not looking at
29:23
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of the stuff itself. They're just
29:26
Speaker 1: going with what the World Health Organization said, which is
29:30
Speaker 1: really should be using breast milk up to the age
29:32
Speaker 1: of twelve that is heavily regulated by a different regulator,
29:35
Speaker 1: the TGA. These guys are concerned only with the marketing
29:39
Speaker 1: and they're saying, like the piece of litigation in the
29:42
Speaker 1: United States, which is really about marketing, not about health.
29:45
Speaker 1: They're saying this marketing is not on because it's deceptive,
29:48
Speaker 1: and like I mentioned, with the component tax returns, maybe
29:52
Speaker 1: that's where we get them. Maybe that's the backdoor root
29:55
Speaker 1: here where we say, let's not get all tied up
29:58
Speaker 1: in whether it was bad for you or not. Let's
30:00
Speaker 1: just talk about the deceptive of marketing.
30:03
Speaker 2: Well government. If you need a good lawyer, the lespo's available.
30:08
Speaker 2: He's very fucking expensive. I don't think you could afford him,
30:11
Speaker 2: but maybe just a small consult.
30:14
Speaker 1: Hey, this is a first, by the way, Craigie, you've
30:16
Speaker 1: got to this is a headline for you. This is
30:17
Speaker 1: the first. This is the first time I've ever written
30:20
Speaker 1: about anything to do with the law.
30:23
Speaker 2: That is well, I don't know if that is true,
30:25
Speaker 2: but yeah, this is the first time we've had a
30:27
Speaker 2: chat where you've actually opened the legal door.
30:31
Speaker 1: So yeah, I normally avoid doing it. So just because
30:36
Speaker 1: you know, I prefer to write about things where I
30:37
Speaker 1: can't get fired for my opinion. But how dare you.
30:42
Speaker 2: Talk about something that you qualified in?
30:46
Speaker 1: Say what you know?
30:49
Speaker 2: Hey, mate, we appreciate you will say goodbye affair, but
30:52
Speaker 2: as always, good to chat and thanks for your time.
30:55
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure as always