Transcript

Big Parma · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Originals.
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Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
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Speaker 3: Welcome back to very special episodes. So glad you're here.
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Speaker 3: My name is Jason English. Today, Dana Zaren and I
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Speaker 3: have something extra very special in store for you. We
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Speaker 3: have two very special guest stars from elsewhere in the
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Speaker 3: iHeart Cinematic Universe. Our good friends Ben Bowlin and Alex
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Speaker 3: French are going to be taking the mic. This one
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Speaker 3: starts with a simple question, how the did cheese get in?
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Speaker 3: Everything from stuff Cruss Pizza to Got Milk ads to
0:40
Speaker 3: that famous West Wing episode. These guys cover a ton
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Speaker 3: of ground. Ben and Alex are a great team. They'll
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Speaker 3: be back on this feed throughout twenty twenty five, popping
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Speaker 3: in here and there. We haven't recorded their next episode
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Speaker 3: yet or else I would end today's show with a
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Speaker 3: post credit scene, but I will give you one spoiler.
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Speaker 3: It starts in a waffle house. That's a food story
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Speaker 3: for another day. Today we're talking big Parma.
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Speaker 1: The year is nineteen ninety five. Coolio has a massive
1:12
Speaker 1: radio hit with Gangster's Paradise. Bruce Willis's Die Hard with
1:17
Speaker 1: a Vengeance is king of the international box office. The
1:21
Speaker 1: Internet is privatized, AOL and Prodigy usher forth the birth
1:26
Speaker 1: of the information age. OJ is acquitted. The cheesecake factory
1:31
Speaker 1: rapidly becomes one of suburban America's favorite kitchens, and on
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Speaker 1: every TV set. Donald Trump and his ex wife Havanna,
1:41
Speaker 1: divorced for five years by then, are hawking mutant pies
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Speaker 1: for Pizza Hut. Do you really think this is the
1:47
Speaker 1: right thing for us to be doingva? But dear people think,
1:51
Speaker 1: let him talk. It's wrong, isn't it?
1:57
Speaker 2: But it feels so right?
1:59
Speaker 1: Then it's a deal. Yesa pizza the wrong way.
2:02
Speaker 2: Cruss first, introducing stuff crust pizza from Pizza Hut with
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Speaker 2: a ring of cheese baked into a total thinner crust.
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Speaker 1: You don't want to eat it the wrong way crust First,
2:10
Speaker 1: I have the last size. Actually, you're only entitled to
2:13
Speaker 1: half large.
2:14
Speaker 2: Just nine ninety nine, obesity was an epidemic.
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Speaker 1: About one in five American adults was considered dangerously overweight.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, heart disease was on the rise.
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Speaker 1: I mean what a time.
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Speaker 2: Oh, I remember it well, Ben moving through the world
2:33
Speaker 2: and a food induced stupor from a constant barrage of
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Speaker 2: gargantuan portions served up at popular casual dining chains. Yet
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Speaker 2: the stuff crust pizza creation was world changing, a watershed
2:44
Speaker 2: moment in the history of stunt food and unnecessary anything
2:48
Speaker 2: goes sort of gimmick that led to nothing good.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because pizza is already perfect sticking cheese in the crust, However,
2:57
Speaker 1: it felt like it was bad.
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Speaker 2: Tomak Love handles, oh chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
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Speaker 1: Alex, the list goes on. Pizza Hut rolled out stuffed
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Speaker 1: crust pizza to the public during Final four weekend with
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Speaker 1: a forty five million dollar advertising campaign.
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Speaker 2: C Suite execs at The Hut hoped that the solution
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Speaker 2: for stagnant sales numbers was laying a necklace of mozzarella
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Speaker 2: cheese around the pizza crust perimeter and folding over the dough.
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Speaker 1: Alan Huston, the chain's president and chief executive, told The
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Speaker 1: New York Times that the stuffed crust pizza represented the
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Speaker 1: razor edge of pizza dough technology and mozzarella management. The
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Speaker 1: recipe called for using a whopping fifty percent more cheese
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Speaker 1: than your typical pizza.
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Speaker 2: And that stuffed crust pizza innovation wasn't cooked up by
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Speaker 2: Pizza Hut alone. They had help from a secret government agency,
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Speaker 2: a Queso Cabal, if you will, funded by the dairy industry,
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Speaker 2: with the express purpose of convincing the pizza huts and
4:00
Speaker 2: Tacko bells of the world to use more milk products
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Speaker 2: in their food, no matter the expense nor the health
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Speaker 2: risks consumers, the sorts of Cretans who think it's okay
4:09
Speaker 2: to load shredded taco blend and a garden salad.
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Speaker 1: I'm Ben Bollett, I'm Alex French, and in this very
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Speaker 1: special episode, we peel back the curtain on the dairy
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Speaker 1: industrial complex, also known as Big Parma. Alex, you and
4:35
Speaker 1: I have been in some pretty deep rabbit holes before.
4:39
Speaker 2: That's right. We created a show called Let's Start a Coup,
4:41
Speaker 2: which is about a real pill named Smellley Butler who
4:45
Speaker 2: just might have saved America.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, true story. We sure did. And ever since
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Speaker 1: then we've been talking about other weird things. I'm always
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Speaker 1: learning new stuff about you. For example, you have never,
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Speaker 1: and this is true, drank a glass of milk.
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Speaker 2: Not even once. Huh, not even chocolate or strawberry as
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Speaker 2: a kid. I escaped it by fanning a milk allergy.
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Speaker 2: Another fun fact I do not allow yogurt in my
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Speaker 2: house amazing.
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Speaker 1: Like, I know you well and I still have a
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Speaker 1: hard time believing that. But regardless, it's safe to say
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Speaker 1: that you and I are both fans of cheese.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I would commit unspeakable crimes for a piece of
5:21
Speaker 2: age parmesan, drizzled and honey. Anyway, not too long ago,
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Speaker 2: you reached out to me and our pal Jason English,
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Speaker 2: who's executive producer of the show, to ask a pretty
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Speaker 2: odd question.
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Speaker 1: When did cheese get into everything? How am I am?
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Speaker 1: I crazy?
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Speaker 2: Well, I don't think cheese is going to be our
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Speaker 2: deciding factor for that one, but this question did set
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Speaker 2: us on a journey. We started digging, and as we progressed,
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Speaker 2: the story just got stranger and stranger. I mean, I
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Speaker 2: believe we uncovered a cheese spiarracy.
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Speaker 1: Right. So, in nineteen seventy five, the average American consumed
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Speaker 1: a little more than fourteen pounds of cheese per year.
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Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, the average consumer in the United States
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Speaker 1: eight about forty point four pounds of cheese.
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Speaker 2: And in twenty twenty two, according to numbers provided by
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Speaker 2: the Cheese industrial Complex aka Big Parma, Fromage consumption in
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Speaker 2: the United States set an all time high at nearly
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Speaker 2: forty two pounds per person, a half pound per person
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Speaker 2: increase over the previous year. That is an insane quantity
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Speaker 2: of cheese. Insane, I mean, just think about it. Forty
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Speaker 2: two pounds. That's two and a half slices of cheese
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Speaker 2: per person per day.
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Speaker 1: And let's also consider there are scores of people who
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Speaker 1: don't dig on dairy at all, you know, vegans and
6:43
Speaker 1: folks who, unlike you, are genuinely lactose intolerant.
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Speaker 2: Which leads me to wonder, with all those people eating
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Speaker 2: zero cheese, who's at the high end of the average.
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Speaker 2: Who are these people eating eighty pounds of cheese a year?
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Speaker 2: Eighty pounds? Rabbit holes band rabbit holes, Alex.
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Speaker 1: And one day those same rabbit holes may themselves be
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Speaker 1: stuffed with cheese. You see, folks, cheese iswear these days,
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Speaker 1: Cheesy Gordidas, sides of caesu, stuffed crust, pizza, quesa lupas,
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Speaker 1: you name it. Things that were once cheeseless are now
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Speaker 1: drenched in the stuff. Not that I'm complaining, And.
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Speaker 2: I'll tell you what. During a recent expedition to the
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Speaker 2: grocery store, it struck me that by far more square
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Speaker 2: footage and refrigerator space is dedicated to cheese and cheese
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Speaker 2: foods than any other product.
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Speaker 1: And in the course of your journalism career, you've seen
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Speaker 1: tons of trends come and go. I'm sure you've seen
7:41
Speaker 1: cheese trends or cheese filtration in ways that I've never imagined.
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Speaker 2: Well, how far is too far? I mean, think of Brata.
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Speaker 2: One day, about a century ago, some guy said, hey,
7:53
Speaker 2: let's put cheese in the cheese. So you and I
7:57
Speaker 2: looked around and asked each other, how did we get here?
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Speaker 2: Does America just have an organic, insatiable demand for the stuff,
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Speaker 2: or is.
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Speaker 1: There something smelly afoot?
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Speaker 2: Maybe maybe this is all just the result of consumer
8:10
Speaker 2: demand and companies giving people what they want, or just
8:13
Speaker 2: maybe there is something stinky here, as stinky as an
8:17
Speaker 2: old sock stuffed with limburger. To answer that question, to
8:21
Speaker 2: really get our heads around big cheese, we have to
8:24
Speaker 2: start with something else, the dairy industry, strapping ben there's
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Speaker 2: hidden history ahead. Okay, before we go any further, I
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Speaker 2: think we have to take a look at what cheese is.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all right, Alex imagine describing cheese to aliens,
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Speaker 1: or for that matter, describing it to anyone encountering cheese
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Speaker 1: for the first time. We'd be like, hey, uh, you
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Speaker 1: guys know milk, and they'd be like ew yeah, and
9:02
Speaker 1: we'd say, okay, So we take this milk and we
9:05
Speaker 1: curdle it and we press it together and get this
9:09
Speaker 1: we salted solid milk. It's important to keep in mind
9:13
Speaker 1: that people discovered this well before recorded human history, probably
9:18
Speaker 1: in step with dairy and domestication. So this hypothetical conversation
9:23
Speaker 1: is taking place more than seven thousand years.
9:25
Speaker 2: Ago, and no one really knows who invented cheese. The
9:29
Speaker 2: technique is that ancient. We do believe, like a lot
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Speaker 2: of inventions and discoveries, that ancient people stumbled across this
9:36
Speaker 2: by accident.
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Speaker 1: Classic human classic.
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Speaker 2: From there, let's move forward through the rise of the
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Speaker 2: dairy all the way to the United States.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, before Europeans arrived in the Americas, there wasn't really
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Speaker 1: any big dairy industry to speak of. Indigenous peoples fed
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Speaker 1: themselves through hunting, fishing, foraging, agriculture, all the hits. The
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Speaker 1: first cows arrived on the continent around the same time
10:01
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus made his second voyage in fourteen ninety three and.
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Speaker 2: Spread across the continent soon after. In a very real way,
10:09
Speaker 2: cattle were a tool of colonialism.
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Speaker 1: Oh I dig it? What does that mean? Exactly?
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Speaker 2: Well, think about it. Cattle changed the original landscape. Cattle
10:19
Speaker 2: require land, and they also transform it their existence and
10:23
Speaker 2: expansion in the America's pushed out native species. This doesn't
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Speaker 2: get mentioned often, but the animals Europeans brought over influenced
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Speaker 2: the area just as much as the humans. That's what
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Speaker 2: leads anthropologists like Rosa E. Faisik to write conquest worked
10:37
Speaker 2: indirectly through bodies of cattle taking up more and more space.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the US has always been in a kind
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Speaker 1: of situationship with cheese. Fans of the West Wing may
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Speaker 1: remember the old story about former President Andrew Jackson and
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Speaker 1: how he kept a ginormous block of cheese right there
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Speaker 1: in the White House. While the West Wing is great TV,
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Speaker 1: he took some liberties with the story.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the story really starts with Thomas Jeffer. Jefferson was
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Speaker 2: given a massive sixteen hundred pound cheese from Western Massachusetts
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Speaker 2: as a gift, and later when Jackson was elected, his
11:15
Speaker 2: supporters were determined that Jackson should get every honor Jefferson
11:18
Speaker 2: got up to and including a cartoonish hunk of cheddar cheese.
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Speaker 2: So it wasn't that Jackson necessarily loved cheese that much.
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Speaker 2: It was more like political theater.
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Speaker 1: Oh oh, and the cheese on tour. Speaking of theater
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Speaker 1: before it arrived at the White House, Jackson's White House,
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Speaker 1: I mean, the cheese was displayed in Baltimore, New York,
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Speaker 1: and Philadelphia.
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Speaker 2: Fast forward to Jackson's final party as president in eighteen
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Speaker 2: thirty seven. He has a blowout and allows everyone around
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Speaker 2: to scarf down as much of the presidential cheese as
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Speaker 2: they like.
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Speaker 1: According to author Benjamin Purley Poor in his Reminiscences of
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Speaker 1: sixty Years in the National Metropolis, this was quite a scene, Poor.
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Speaker 2: Writes, four hours did a crowd of men, women and
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Speaker 2: boys hack at the cheese, many taking large hunks of
12:07
Speaker 2: it away with them. When they commenced that cheese weighed
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Speaker 2: one four hundred pounds and only a small piece was
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Speaker 2: saved for the president's use, the air was redolent of cheese,
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Speaker 2: the carpet was slippery with cheese, and nothing else was
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Speaker 2: talked about at Washington that day, even the scandal about
12:25
Speaker 2: the wife of the president's secretary of War was forgotten
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Speaker 2: in the tumultuous jubilation of that great occasion.
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Speaker 1: That honestly sounds like a blast.
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Speaker 2: You know, somebody took a nasty slip and fall in
12:37
Speaker 2: that cheese slicked carpet.
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Speaker 1: Cheese slicked carpet. There's a turtive phrase. It's also important
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Speaker 1: for us to note we're already seeing a narrative at play.
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Speaker 1: A lot of people believe this big block at cheese
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Speaker 1: was a purposeful symbol of democracy that had stood for
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Speaker 1: the common people, the tire, the poor, the hungry masses yearning.
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Speaker 2: To add a little flavor to their crackers.
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Speaker 1: Okay, come on, man, but yeah, you get the drift.
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Speaker 1: It's it's the kind of pru just cannot buy cheese,
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Speaker 1: or more broadly, dairy means democracy. Something about cheese was
13:14
Speaker 1: seen as a unifying force. And this is not an
13:18
Speaker 1: originally American idea either.
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Speaker 2: In her book Milk, a local and global history professor
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Speaker 2: Deborah Vlenz notes Europeans sometimes felt the same way about cheese.
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Speaker 2: Everyone ate it, the wealthy ate it for digestion, and
13:31
Speaker 2: the poorate it for hunger. But really, again, if we're
13:35
Speaker 2: talking cheese, we're talking.
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Speaker 1: Milk, and milk is a real pickle. Think about it.
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Speaker 1: It's expensive to create at scale. You have to have
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Speaker 1: the cows or the goats or the camels or whatever,
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Speaker 1: and you have to feed them and care for them,
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Speaker 1: and once you ensure they're healthy, you have to milk them.
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Speaker 1: And once you have the milk, eight clock starts ticking.
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Speaker 2: Because milk is perishable, you have to process and package
13:58
Speaker 2: and transport it all in a pretty narrow window of time.
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Speaker 2: And if you don't manage to get all those dairy
14:04
Speaker 2: ducks in a row and sell the milk before it
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Speaker 2: goes bad, you're out.
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Speaker 1: Of luck, and you're out of a lot of time, sweat,
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Speaker 1: and money as well. This is why for most of
14:15
Speaker 1: human history milk production was a local, or at best
14:19
Speaker 1: regional affair, and dairy has been with humans for a
14:22
Speaker 1: long long time. Despite all the ways milk production can
14:27
Speaker 1: possibly go wrong, it usually works. And we love it
14:31
Speaker 1: when stuff works, we do.
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Speaker 2: But Ben, let's just say you, me and our listeners
14:36
Speaker 2: at home are all hypothetically dairy farmers way back.
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Speaker 1: In the day.
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Speaker 2: We'll call ourselves wholesome creams and kurds, all.
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Speaker 1: Right, which time period are we talking.
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Speaker 2: Let's go eighteen hundreds, so maybe our outfit needs to
14:50
Speaker 2: be called yield creams and kurds, all right, I am
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Speaker 2: in Okay, So here we are. It's the eighteen hundreds,
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Speaker 2: and we've been going gangbusters on this whole milk thing.
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Speaker 2: Our cows are doing great, a little too great. In fact,
15:02
Speaker 2: we've sold all the milk we can all around the land.
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Speaker 2: Our customers love us, but they can only drink so
15:08
Speaker 2: much of the stuff. What do we do next?
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Speaker 1: Well, we don't want to dump our hard earned dairy
15:14
Speaker 1: down a hole in the ground, and we can't just
15:17
Speaker 1: sit on it. We've spent so much time making this stuff.
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Speaker 1: I mean, yes, the cows are doing the real work.
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Speaker 2: But you know what I'm saying exactly, we can't leave
15:25
Speaker 2: this opportunity on the table. If we go wonder, we'll
15:29
Speaker 2: be out of a job and there won't be milk
15:30
Speaker 2: in the future when demand kicks back in.
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Speaker 1: I think I see where you're going.
15:36
Speaker 2: Cheese, we transform our notoriously perishable product into something that
15:40
Speaker 2: can sit for months years without spoiling, a popular food
15:44
Speaker 2: for princes and peasants alike. We might even forego the
15:47
Speaker 2: cheese making process ourselves. After all, it's the eighteen hundreds
15:51
Speaker 2: and there are already well established cheesemakers and mongers.
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Speaker 1: So if the demand for milk isn't there, we shift
15:59
Speaker 1: toward a demand for cheese.
16:00
Speaker 2: It's a time trusted strategy. And here's the thing. People
16:04
Speaker 2: have been doing this in the modern day. Make no mistake,
16:09
Speaker 2: the US dairy industry is a juggernaut. It has a
16:12
Speaker 2: lot of economic theft. It also ihs heavily on the
16:15
Speaker 2: minds of policymakers. At various times in US history, the
16:20
Speaker 2: dairy industry becomes a matter of national security.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and jokes aside. It's an odd relationship, isn't it.
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Speaker 1: I mean, the Constitution has no role for federal powers
16:31
Speaker 1: to regulate farmers. And while there were a few exceptions
16:35
Speaker 1: to this general vibe that free enterprise lack of regulation
16:40
Speaker 1: was largely par for the course until about the nineteen thirties.
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Speaker 2: This is where we enter one of the most pivotal
16:46
Speaker 2: times in all of US history, the Great Depression.
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Speaker 1: It's just a terrible You always say that, yeah, Alex,
16:52
Speaker 1: it's just misleading. But granted you're onto something.
16:57
Speaker 2: The Great Depression doesn't refer to the happiness of the people.
17:00
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite. Instead, it refers to the sheer magnitude
17:04
Speaker 2: of misery felt by the country overall. Farmers were affected
17:08
Speaker 2: as horribly as anyone else picture it. People are starving
17:12
Speaker 2: in the cities. Droughts trigger the Great Oak migration.
17:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, Steinbeck's grapes of wrath didn't come from nowhere.
17:19
Speaker 2: And add to this, prices are going insane, Commodity indexes collapsed,
17:24
Speaker 2: people in urban centers starve, clamoring for food, and farmers
17:28
Speaker 2: are literally throwing away milk to shore up prices.
17:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, check out things like the infamous Wisconsin milk strikes
17:34
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty three. We were talking utter chaos. Something
17:39
Speaker 1: had to be done.
17:40
Speaker 2: On multiple fronts. This is where we see the rise
17:43
Speaker 2: of Roosevelt's New Deal, the sweeping legislation sought by Hooker
17:47
Speaker 2: by Crook to save the US economy, and part of
17:51
Speaker 2: that involved dairy subsidies. It was what we might call a.
17:55
Speaker 1: Bailout, most notably through something called the Commodity Credit Corporation,
18:02
Speaker 1: created in nineteen thirty three expressly to stabilize port and
18:07
Speaker 1: protect farm incomes and prices.
18:11
Speaker 2: The US survived the Great Depression, but the Commodity Credit
18:13
Speaker 2: Corporation remained. It established a precedent and a trend.
18:18
Speaker 1: And these trends continue. Uncle Sam repeatedly supports the dairy
18:23
Speaker 1: industry by purchasing surplus milk, just like our fictional milk
18:27
Speaker 1: company yield wholesome creams and kurds. In the eighteen hundreds,
18:32
Speaker 1: the US again and again finds itself in a corner.
18:35
Speaker 1: They buy all this milk, this perishable product, to keep
18:39
Speaker 1: people's jobs and an entire industry alive. And they don't
18:44
Speaker 1: want that milk to go to waste.
18:45
Speaker 2: And this is where we see the rise of butterstock
18:48
Speaker 2: piles as well as processed cheese. Think about the nineteen forties.
18:52
Speaker 2: Just a few decades later, military kitchens were chalk full
18:55
Speaker 2: of the stuff in World War Two. Thankfully this war
18:57
Speaker 2: didn't last forever, but after nineteen forty five, the US
19:00
Speaker 2: government again found itself in a tough spot. Without all
19:04
Speaker 2: these soldiers doing well, it sounds weird to say it.
19:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, but without all these soldiers supplying the demand, yeah,
19:11
Speaker 1: that's it.
19:11
Speaker 2: Really, Without that baked in demand, the US needed to
19:14
Speaker 2: find another place to push all these products. We've entered
19:17
Speaker 2: the era of public private partnerships. To put it simply,
19:21
Speaker 2: cheese lobbies, increasingly powerful interests, organizations and trade groups. They
19:27
Speaker 2: form a policy feedback loop. This is big Parma.
19:35
Speaker 1: Power begets power, right, So once you have one program
19:40
Speaker 1: in place, it becomes as normalized as stuffed crust pizza,
19:44
Speaker 1: and pulling that program back can be political suicide.
19:48
Speaker 2: Big Parma not only sought that money out, it did
19:50
Speaker 2: so in ways that weren't always above board.
19:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I see where we're going. Shout out to
19:55
Speaker 1: our buddy Archibald Cox from back in the days of Watergate.
20:00
Speaker 1: Our pal Cox didn't just investigate that June nineteen seventy
20:04
Speaker 1: two break in the one that spelled doom, old tricky Dick.
20:08
Speaker 1: Cox also looked into a bunch of other alleged crimes.
20:11
Speaker 1: In fact, his task force focused largely on something they
20:15
Speaker 1: called the Milk Deal, in which a handful of dairy
20:19
Speaker 1: cooperatives bribed then President Nixon with hundreds of thousands of
20:24
Speaker 1: dollars of campaign contributions, all in exchange for record breaking
20:29
Speaker 1: subsidies and tighter import controls on foreign dairy products.
20:34
Speaker 2: So, for those of us playing along at home, what
20:37
Speaker 2: does that mean? Then?
20:38
Speaker 1: It means simply put. They managed to make America say
20:43
Speaker 1: we will sell you our milk, and we sure as
20:46
Speaker 1: hell are not buying yours.
20:47
Speaker 2: This was only one chapter in a much larger story,
20:50
Speaker 2: and in the wake of Watergate, a thing that was
20:52
Speaker 2: easily forgotten, Uncle Sam scrambled back and forth to keep
20:56
Speaker 2: the dairy industry going through the next few decades. The
20:59
Speaker 2: history of dairy farming in the twentieth century is really
21:01
Speaker 2: about labor. I mean, think about it. The creation of
21:03
Speaker 2: cooperatives that set prices and then held strikes or boys
21:06
Speaker 2: cots when they weren't treated fairly. When the supply of
21:10
Speaker 2: milk drops off due to boycott's or droughts, everyone freaks out.
21:14
Speaker 2: Think about the national dairy shortage of the nineteen seventies.
21:16
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's when all dairy product prices across the board
21:20
Speaker 1: shot up by thirty percent.
21:22
Speaker 2: Right exactly. The government intervened, prices plummeted, and in came
21:26
Speaker 2: President Jimmy Carter to make another bailout, pouring money like
21:29
Speaker 2: milk you could say, into the industry. From nineteen seventy
21:33
Speaker 2: seven to nineteen eighty one, this new policy put two
21:36
Speaker 2: billion dollars of subsidies into massive milk.
21:39
Speaker 1: Which was great in the short term, but without sounding
21:44
Speaker 1: like a dairy DeBie Downer. Was this an over correction?
21:48
Speaker 1: Do we maybe push the pendulum too far?
21:51
Speaker 2: Yeah? This may be the case. Farmers knew they could
21:53
Speaker 2: produce as much as possible. They were financially motivated to
21:57
Speaker 2: do so because whatever wasn't sold the regular way would
22:00
Speaker 2: end up being bought by the government at stabilized, predictable prices.
22:04
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I got a presidential voice for this picture.
22:07
Speaker 1: It are follow over, our coads. We are Richard moult smirt.
22:17
Speaker 2: Man. Not bad seven out of time.
22:18
Speaker 1: You're a tough crowd man. But again we see the
22:21
Speaker 1: old issue arise. Now the US has all this milk
22:25
Speaker 1: with no real market demand for it, but they've paid
22:28
Speaker 1: in full and don't want to be ass out on
22:31
Speaker 1: the deal.
22:31
Speaker 2: Can we say that utterly like you're being utterly ridiculous?
22:35
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, fair enough, But you see the problem,
22:38
Speaker 1: the dilemma of having all this milk. So what do
22:40
Speaker 1: we do with it? We make cheese.
22:42
Speaker 2: That's right. It's the nineteen eighties and here we see
22:44
Speaker 2: the rise of government cheese.
22:46
Speaker 3: Ah.
22:46
Speaker 1: Yes, government cheese bought and stored by the Commodity Credit
22:50
Speaker 1: Corporation from earlier.
22:52
Speaker 2: And the public, to be clear, didn't necessarily love this idea.
22:56
Speaker 2: Some folks in the US saw this as a slap
22:58
Speaker 2: in the face. Think about it, You're going hungry and
23:00
Speaker 2: your own government has this crazy stockpile of food.
23:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it, you get it. We can all
23:07
Speaker 1: stand that. As a result of public or perhaps manufactured outcry,
23:11
Speaker 1: then President Ronald Reagan both cut the US food stamp
23:15
Speaker 1: budget and rolled out government cheese for direct distribution back
23:20
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two. Under the auspice of the USD eight.
23:24
Speaker 1: This was touted as a panacea for hunger, sort of
23:27
Speaker 1: a two birds with one breeze situation. Does that one?
23:31
Speaker 2: Does that work?
23:32
Speaker 1: Okay? So they're addressing hunger while also ensuring the continuation
23:36
Speaker 1: of this industry.
23:38
Speaker 2: Again, we've got the supply, we find the demand. Reagan's
23:42
Speaker 2: Agriculture and Food Act of nineteen eighty one both acknowledged
23:44
Speaker 2: the massive stockpile of cheese and at the same time
23:48
Speaker 2: decreed it would be distributed to the needy and nonprofit organizations.
23:52
Speaker 2: Any state that asked would get thirty million pounds of cheese.
23:56
Speaker 2: What take that, Jackson? This also guarantee that the US
24:00
Speaker 2: would continue supporting big Parma.
24:02
Speaker 1: So it goes that. Same year, nineteen eighty one, the
24:06
Speaker 1: second Mitary of Agriculture, John R. Block told reporters, referring
24:11
Speaker 1: to all these pounds of cheese, he said, we've got
24:14
Speaker 1: sixty million of these that the government owns. It's moldy,
24:18
Speaker 1: it's deteriorating. We can't find a market for it, we
24:22
Speaker 1: can't sell it, and we're looking to give some of
24:24
Speaker 1: it away.
24:25
Speaker 2: We're off to the races here. Let's talk economy of scale,
24:30
Speaker 2: which is just a fancy term meeting prices go down
24:33
Speaker 2: when you have more output and better infrastructure.
24:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why, for example, a single guy making shoes
24:39
Speaker 1: by hand is almost always going to have to sell
24:42
Speaker 1: his shoes for more than the big companies making thousands
24:46
Speaker 1: of shoes every day.
24:48
Speaker 2: And we saw this with the US dairy industry. Back
24:50
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven, the median dairy farm had eighty
24:53
Speaker 2: cows or fewer. Today it's about nine hundred. Economies of
24:57
Speaker 2: scale have driven costs down and bolstered output.
25:01
Speaker 1: And on top of that, the average dairy cow is
25:04
Speaker 1: producing more milk than ever. Thank you to some at times,
25:08
Speaker 1: sinister decisions on breeding and diet. We've got government cheese,
25:13
Speaker 1: we've got dairy products as cheese infiltrated as possible into
25:17
Speaker 1: the military supply chain, and improvements in global trade mean
25:21
Speaker 1: we can ship stuff fast, finding that ever elusive demand
25:26
Speaker 1: in markets, countries and continents away.
25:29
Speaker 2: And this gets us to your original questions, how did
25:32
Speaker 2: cheese get in everything? Why was the demand always there
25:36
Speaker 2: or was it to some degree manufactured?
25:39
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, Alex, did big cheese win the game? Or
25:43
Speaker 1: did someone rig it?
25:45
Speaker 2: I imagine saying rigged might put some people off spoil
25:48
Speaker 2: their milk, soda.
25:49
Speaker 1: Say, but it's a valid question, and we can also
25:53
Speaker 1: see why people might look askance at this. But at
25:56
Speaker 1: the same time we can argue this is as Homer
25:59
Speaker 1: Simpson would have said in Beginning Opportunities. We're taking dairy
26:03
Speaker 1: products outside of the US. We're leveraging and nonprofits to
26:08
Speaker 1: move milk and cheese around the world. Plus, of course,
26:12
Speaker 1: with each step we're keeping domestic farmers in business, which.
26:15
Speaker 2: All sounds great until that global market collapses in ocean away.
26:19
Speaker 2: The nation of China grappled with its own problems when
26:23
Speaker 2: demand for dairy products in the Chinese market imploded, which
26:26
Speaker 2: has happened several times, including just this year in twenty
26:29
Speaker 2: twenty four, Yet again, Uncle Sam found itself in a pickle.
26:34
Speaker 1: Holy? Is this the part?
26:35
Speaker 2: This is the answer to the question sort of, Oh yeah.
26:39
Speaker 1: Alex, can we please do a little trade industry ad?
26:42
Speaker 2: I don't see why not.
26:44
Speaker 1: Real milk has eight times more protein than almond milk.
26:47
Speaker 2: Real milk has naturally occurring calcium.
26:49
Speaker 3: Almond milk doesn't amory, and it also only has two
26:52
Speaker 3: percent almonds, which looks like this.
26:54
Speaker 1: What's the other ninety eight percent? Get real, get naturally
26:57
Speaker 1: nutritious real milk. So that's bonkers, right? We got ads
27:05
Speaker 1: for not a specific brand of a thing, just the
27:08
Speaker 1: general idea of milk.
27:11
Speaker 2: And marketing groups for the general idea of milk had
27:14
Speaker 2: already popped up pretty early in the twentieth century. There
27:17
Speaker 2: are plenty of other examples as well, beef, pork, you
27:20
Speaker 2: get it. For quite some time, the United States has
27:23
Speaker 2: disguised national security through a proxy program of interdependent quasi
27:28
Speaker 2: private industries attempting to extol the virtues of a given
27:31
Speaker 2: product instead of telling the American public the truth. Come on, man,
27:36
Speaker 2: this is my part.
27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just you know, people need to know, well,
27:40
Speaker 1: are we doing the show? Absolutely, dude. We are the
27:43
Speaker 1: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this whole cheese thing, the Moulder
27:46
Speaker 1: and Scully. I love it. I want to believe. Let's
27:56
Speaker 1: go to twenty seventeen.
27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were one point three billion pounds of cheese
28:01
Speaker 2: and cold storage, and no small part due to two
28:04
Speaker 2: separate federal announcements that the US would purchase something like
28:07
Speaker 2: twenty million dollars worth of dairy surplus for distribution to
28:11
Speaker 2: food pantries.
28:12
Speaker 1: Because we have to keep it.
28:14
Speaker 2: Going, because someone says we have to keep it going,
28:18
Speaker 2: and that someone is the dairy farmers.
28:22
Speaker 1: It's crazy that you seriously have never drank a glass
28:25
Speaker 1: of milk.
28:25
Speaker 2: Never, not at once. It's gross. Moving on, moving on.
28:30
Speaker 2: In an August twenty sixteen letter, the National Milk Producers
28:33
Speaker 2: Federation begged the USDA for one hundred and fifty million
28:37
Speaker 2: dollar bailout. Ben, have you ever heard of Dairy Management Incorporated?
28:41
Speaker 1: Do I do I do a voice here? Or do
28:44
Speaker 1: we just roll with it? All? Right?
28:45
Speaker 2: Fine, it's a soft move. You know about DMI. I
28:48
Speaker 2: know about DMI, and we're both hoping you listening along
28:51
Speaker 2: at home will learn a little bit about it too.
28:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Without getting into the milk weeds, folks, there
28:57
Speaker 1: are trade organizations, a concentrated group of government and private
29:02
Speaker 1: industry concerns, all actively working right now as we record
29:07
Speaker 1: to make sure the production of dairy products meets some
29:10
Speaker 1: sort of demand. And if we cannot find that demand naturally,
29:15
Speaker 1: we will.
29:16
Speaker 2: We will make it an inherently American approach to the problem.
29:19
Speaker 1: And this is where we enter that story of dairy
29:21
Speaker 1: management Incorporated. It's fair to say that a lot of
29:25
Speaker 1: people have never heard of this.
29:27
Speaker 2: Group, which is a shame because they're one of our
29:29
Speaker 2: key characters. DMI is a trade association funded through the
29:33
Speaker 2: Dairy Promotion Program, which is in turn funded by government
29:36
Speaker 2: regulations requiring dairy farmers to pay three dollars and thirty
29:40
Speaker 2: one cents per metric ton on all milk produced and
29:43
Speaker 2: marketed in the forty eight contiguous states. DMI is the
29:47
Speaker 2: beating heart of Big Parma.
29:49
Speaker 1: And DMI was originally created by the US Department of
29:53
Speaker 1: Agriculture way back in nineteen ninety five. Wheels within cheese wheels. Indeed,
29:59
Speaker 1: this already sounds like a bunch of odd companies passing
30:04
Speaker 1: money around, maybe on the slide, but to be fair,
30:08
Speaker 1: they won't describe themselves as odd or sinister. We have
30:12
Speaker 1: to remember there are no quote unquote bad guys in
30:15
Speaker 1: the story.
30:15
Speaker 2: But have you noticed been that like in movies these days,
30:18
Speaker 2: the only people who drink milk are like weird villains
30:22
Speaker 2: and yes, little kids.
30:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, Yeah.
30:24
Speaker 2: I would absolutely describe the stuff crust pizza as a
30:27
Speaker 2: crime against gastronomy.
30:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's that old line? History is written by the victors.
30:32
Speaker 2: And we're still in the turn of history here. We
30:35
Speaker 2: reached out to multiple sources for answers at DMI. On
30:38
Speaker 2: a phone call, I told the media relations flack with
30:41
Speaker 2: the company that we wanted to learn about dairy as
30:43
Speaker 2: an industry that innovates, about the history of DMI, about
30:47
Speaker 2: their work with the big fast food chains, about the
30:49
Speaker 2: got Milk campaign, and their response was a little, I
30:53
Speaker 2: don't know, disingenuous, Dear Alex.
30:56
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we don't have anyone who'd be a good fit
30:58
Speaker 1: to answer questions on all the topics you mentioned you'd
31:01
Speaker 1: like to include in this upcoming episode. Well, Alex, if
31:06
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like a clandestine cabal of cheese operatives.
31:11
Speaker 1: I don't know what does we do know? DMI is
31:14
Speaker 1: one of our most easily identifiable gosh. I don't want
31:18
Speaker 1: to say culprits, but they're the collective protagonists for getting
31:23
Speaker 1: cheese into more American food products.
31:25
Speaker 2: Yep. They've worked with McDonald's, Pizzahu, Wendy's, Taco Bell, you
31:29
Speaker 2: name it. If there's a way of injecting cheese into something,
31:33
Speaker 2: they've probably invented it.
31:35
Speaker 1: There's another thing all of us listening along need to know.
31:38
Speaker 1: Why does this work so successfully? I would posit the
31:42
Speaker 1: answer is found in evolution. Humans evolved to prize high
31:46
Speaker 1: fat unctious food stuffs, and cheese fits the bill. But
31:50
Speaker 1: Jesus definitely not perfect. Surprisingly enough, some of the most
31:55
Speaker 1: strident criticisms of big Parma come from physicians, and.
31:59
Speaker 2: We have to be at front about this. Cheese is
32:01
Speaker 2: an ancient art, but it does have some potentially dangerous
32:04
Speaker 2: effects on your health. Obesity is an up in the
32:07
Speaker 2: United States and abroad. Milk and other dairy products are
32:10
Speaker 2: the top source of saturated fat in the American diet,
32:13
Speaker 2: contributing to heart disease, type two diabetes and Alzheimer's. Studies
32:17
Speaker 2: have also linkedairy to an increased risk of breast, ovarian
32:20
Speaker 2: and prostate cancers. There's a whole bunch of good stuff
32:23
Speaker 2: in milk, calcium, protein, vitamin D, for instance, But it's
32:26
Speaker 2: not like dairy is the only source for those things.
32:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and DMI in particular has a long history of
32:34
Speaker 1: cheese filtration. By their own account, this organization works with
32:38
Speaker 1: leading restaurant chains, grocery stores like Kroger, and food manufacturers
32:44
Speaker 1: like General Mills, all of whom collectively invest hundreds of
32:48
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in marketing efforts and advertising campaigns to
32:52
Speaker 1: promote their dairy centric menu items.
32:55
Speaker 2: The McDonald's mcflurry, the five cheese mac and cheese at Dominoes,
32:59
Speaker 2: a Grandma style pizza pizza hut that eliminated crust so
33:03
Speaker 2: cheese could be piled all the way to the outer
33:05
Speaker 2: margins of the pie.
33:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the result, folks, through these various and alex
33:11
Speaker 1: I'm not yet calling it a proxy war. Through these
33:14
Speaker 1: proxy entities, DMI has moved an astonishing seven point five
33:19
Speaker 1: billion pounds of dairy. And you know what, man, this
33:23
Speaker 1: is aggravating because I can't even get away with a
33:25
Speaker 1: late fee at the library.
33:28
Speaker 2: We mentioned the high level version of this, Let's get
33:31
Speaker 2: to the nitty gritty. These cheese drenched culinary Frankenstein's aren't
33:36
Speaker 2: the result of organic supply and demand.
33:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. The more we learn about it, the less DMI
33:42
Speaker 1: seems like a trade group, and the more it seems
33:45
Speaker 1: like a think tank Rand corporation style, but with cheddar.
33:49
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. DMI employs a panoply of dairy scientists
33:53
Speaker 2: working not just hand in hand, but on site with
33:57
Speaker 2: like their own offices, at the headquarters of your favorite
34:00
Speaker 2: fast food joints, eternally brainstorming new ways to inundate the
34:05
Speaker 2: American and international diet with dairy product, cheese in particular.
34:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is not just some kind of disturbing
34:15
Speaker 1: campfire story, Alex. You actually did some digging into a
34:20
Speaker 1: specific dairy scientist over at DMI. Yeah.
34:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, late one night I trilled the Internet looking
34:26
Speaker 2: for evidence of DMI dirty work, and I stumbled on
34:29
Speaker 2: this video of a cheese operative named Mike Seresi doing
34:32
Speaker 2: an interview about his gig working in the Taco Bell
34:34
Speaker 2: innovation kitchen.
34:35
Speaker 1: Alex, you're making it sound like you're about to unveil
34:39
Speaker 1: the smoking gun that proves a global cheese spiracy.
34:42
Speaker 2: More like a smoking good eband the whole video was
34:46
Speaker 2: a little off putting if I'm being honest, Sersi, is
34:49
Speaker 2: this guy talking about how glorious it is being embedded
34:51
Speaker 2: as a dairy operative in a top American food chain,
34:54
Speaker 2: pumping what I would call harmful ingredients into foods so
34:57
Speaker 2: that the dairy industry can turn bigger profits.
35:00
Speaker 1: At one point, the interviewer asked Sersi about some of
35:03
Speaker 1: the winds he's had over the years. Ms.
35:07
Speaker 4: Mike Serising, I'm a dairy scientist with DMI. I have
35:09
Speaker 4: been working in research and development for about fifteen years now,
35:13
Speaker 4: mostly focused on dairy science, and I first joined DMI
35:18
Speaker 4: back in twenty thirteen, where I had the amazing opportunity
35:22
Speaker 4: to join the Taco Bell team on behalf of THEMI
35:25
Speaker 4: working in their test kitchen and developing new products for
35:28
Speaker 4: the menu. We've had some really great successful launches over
35:31
Speaker 4: the year. Just a couple that come to mind is
35:33
Speaker 4: the Ca Salupa that was a truly innovative product. It
35:36
Speaker 4: was a cheese stuffshell had a massive media promotion behind it.
35:40
Speaker 4: We actually had a TV ad that ran during the
35:43
Speaker 4: Super Bowl, so that was just super exciting.
35:47
Speaker 1: Folks. We're an audio show, so it's important for you
35:50
Speaker 1: to know. While Ceresi is saying all of these things
35:53
Speaker 1: you just heard, a bunch of information cards are popping
35:56
Speaker 1: onto the screen and the stats look bonkers. Before DMI support,
36:00
Speaker 1: tacos contained about a quarter of an ounce of cheese.
36:04
Speaker 1: Thanks to this partnership, new food items contain about five
36:08
Speaker 1: to ten times more cheese.
36:10
Speaker 2: The discussion leads to the beverage category.
36:12
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, yeah, Alex. Have you ever had a
36:15
Speaker 1: Pineapple Whip or the Baja Blast Kalauda?
36:18
Speaker 2: I have not, but I do know that Taco Bell
36:20
Speaker 2: is owned by Pepsi Company and the Pineapple Whip was
36:23
Speaker 2: their first dairy drink. But the way sor Recei talks
36:26
Speaker 2: about the process of reverse engineering those drinks is kind of,
36:30
Speaker 2: I don't know, alarming. Here he is again.
36:33
Speaker 4: We also have a new dairy dessert beverage that's testing
36:36
Speaker 4: in market, which we're really excited about.
36:39
Speaker 1: I'm getting diabetes just thinking about this one. Surely it
36:43
Speaker 1: was discontinued.
36:44
Speaker 2: You're correct. In fact, we could do an entire episode
36:47
Speaker 2: on discontinued fast food products, but both the pineapple whip
36:51
Speaker 2: and the grilled cheese burrito were one hundred percent the
36:54
Speaker 2: result of DMI intervention. How do we get more dairy
36:58
Speaker 2: in more things?
36:59
Speaker 1: You know, it's weird, isn't it? Just philosophically, it is
37:03
Speaker 1: a bizarre proposition, creating demand demand where a natural demand
37:09
Speaker 1: does not exist. I'll say it. It feels like a
37:12
Speaker 1: good time for some serious questions.
37:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is where I start to have
37:16
Speaker 2: problems too, the idea of injecting cheese into something not
37:20
Speaker 2: because it enhances the flavor or healthfulness of the food,
37:23
Speaker 2: but because it drives up profits for the dairy industry.
37:26
Speaker 2: In this way, Big Parma bears an alarming resemblance to
37:30
Speaker 2: the tobacco or liquor industries. Knowing that you're creating a
37:33
Speaker 2: product that's going to make people fat and sick and
37:36
Speaker 2: doing it anyway. And at the same time, Big Parma
37:39
Speaker 2: covers its cellulate pocked rear end to seem like you know,
37:42
Speaker 2: the good guys by forming strategic partnerships with the Mayo
37:46
Speaker 2: Clinic too, and I'm quoting here, improve public health and
37:49
Speaker 2: advance dairies benefits, including the role full fat dairy may
37:54
Speaker 2: play in cardiovascular and metabolic conditions. That's sort of like
37:58
Speaker 2: you know, Exxon Mobile or British Petroleum claiming to do
38:01
Speaker 2: good bye researching climate.
38:03
Speaker 1: Change the Mayo clinic. Huh, yes, Alex, there's got to
38:07
Speaker 1: be a cheese and mayo joke in here somewhere, right.
38:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about a serious thing.
38:12
Speaker 1: Then, Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, but what if it's like,
38:15
Speaker 1: what if we do a thing where people buy mayonnaise
38:18
Speaker 1: and cheese together? Gross, dude, I know, but I'm saying,
38:21
Speaker 1: what if it's like you buy another condiment and they
38:23
Speaker 1: just start putting cheese in there. Cat cheese up to
38:27
Speaker 1: other examples.
38:29
Speaker 2: Then this is a very special episode. Okay, Okay, seriously, man,
38:33
Speaker 2: you asked us to look into it, and we're doing
38:35
Speaker 2: puns now at the end of a pretty damning investigation
38:38
Speaker 2: into an extremely grave issue.
38:39
Speaker 1: All right, all right, yes, I hear you. Focus, all right, okay,
38:44
Speaker 1: focusing and Justina side, Alex, I do understand what you're saying.
38:50
Speaker 1: I'm still going to eat cheese though, like a lot
38:54
Speaker 1: of it? Are you and I cool? I guess?
38:57
Speaker 2: I mean I would expect nothing less. And millions of
39:00
Speaker 2: Americans have made the same choice including.
39:03
Speaker 1: Me agreed, and whether we're talking about fanatics or strict
39:08
Speaker 1: vegans who don't need anything, they cast a shadow. It's
39:11
Speaker 1: crucial to understand how a phenomenon like this occurs, and
39:15
Speaker 1: perhaps more importantly, why, Alex, would you say it's fair
39:19
Speaker 1: to call this a legit conspiracy.
39:23
Speaker 2: I'd say we should call it a chiefs spiracy.
39:32
Speaker 3: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
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Speaker 3: This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
39:39
Speaker 3: Jason English. Today's episode was written and hosted by Very
39:43
Speaker 3: Special guest stars Ben Bolin and Alex French. Our producer
39:48
Speaker 3: is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs.
39:52
Speaker 3: Additional editing by Mary Doo, mixing and mastering by Behead Fraser.
39:58
Speaker 3: Original music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Kintinia.
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