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The Rise of Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad · Ridiculous History

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Ye on prussic acid. We break our fast, we lunch
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: on a morphine stew. We dine with a match head,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: consume and drink carbolic acid brew. That is an excerpt
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: from uh song that will become increasingly relevant over the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: course of this episode. Hi, I'm Ben. I want to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: kiss you about your lips are fool love borrax? I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: mean your food. My name is Noel and this is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: ridiculous history. And we're talking about poison food today. Yes, yes,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: we're talking about poison food. But don't worry, folks, this
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: will not be a downer of an episode. Actually pretty inspiring.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: As always, We'd like to introduce you to our super producer,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. He's not suffering anymore apparently. No, no, he's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: not suffering anymore. He has been through the fire. So
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: let's hop in the time machine. No, what do you say?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I am down for some time travel, Casey, can we
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: get our time travel sound cue? Perfect? Alright, No, here
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: we are. We're in the eighteen hundreds, the late eighteen hundreds.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Is that what we put into the time machine dial?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: We just typed in general late eighteen hundreds. Yeah, it's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a preset button. Okay, cool, it's right next to popcorn.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Just trying to make sure I understand the intricacies of
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this device. Right. Well, it's a good thing that they
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: had that button preset because it helped us get here
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  Speaker 1: for today's episode. In the late eighteen hundreds, you see,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: food in the US was banana in a slang way.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It wasn't all bananas, that's right. There was no way
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to really tell what was in your food. We take
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: for granted that today we can take down a packet
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of crisps off of the shelf in our local grocery
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and we can see, you know, listed sequentially, what poisonous
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: materials are in it that will clog our arteries and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: slowly kill us. Back then, it was a mystery, right exactly.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It is true that more people in the United States
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: at least tended to grow their own food, right or
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the chicken they consumed, for instance, would be chicken raised
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: on their property. But you are absolutely right about the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: grocery store, especially processed food, something made in a factory
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: with little to know oversight, something maybe roughly along the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: lines of hay trying not to put any fingers in
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the beef stew. And you know, pig parts take your
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: take your pick, right, and things were adulterated. Right, they
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: could be polluted per bisflee uh to save cost sure right.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: They could also be accidentally contaminated because there weren't very
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: high health standards at the time. Absolutely not. I mean,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: we know how important it is to wash our hands
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: when handling raw chicken because Gordon Ramsey told us so.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: But in our home there's no oversight as to whether
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: or not we did that. So if we get a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: food born illness, it is on our heads. But at
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: least today we can hopefully depend that the people working
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: in chicken processing plants or any food processing plants are
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: operating under safety guidelines that keep us from getting contaminants
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in our food, and they're tested to make sure said
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: contaminants do not make it through the process. And today,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: where we are because we're in the late eighteen hundreds,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: not the case. No, do you happen to see that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: hot headed man looking increasingly aggravated and perturbed here on
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: our random late eighteen hundred street. I think he has gout.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I don't doubt he has gout. I just said that
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: because it rhymed. I'm all about the lack of doubt
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: that he has gout. Give me a shout if you
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: can finish the stanza for us. But who were we
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: talking about? I'm so glad we posed this question. Uh.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: The fellow we see they're getting increasingly irritated is a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: guy named Harvey Washington Wildie. So he doesn't have gout.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: He's a very health conscious guy. No, no, yeah, yeah,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: he's he's talking about the angry guy next to him. Yeah,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: there's a line of angry people here, but Harvey was
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: angry for a pretty specific reason. Right then, Yes, absolutely,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: He looked around at the state of food and said,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: looks you mean he's doing it right now? Sure? Sure, absolutely.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: He looks around and he says, what on earth is
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: going on here? What is actually going into people's food?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: While you see is a man on a mission. He
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: is a Civil War vet who, after fighting for the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Union side, returned to the Academy capital A to continue
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: his studies. After he graduated, he started teaching in a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: public school, and then he became He went back and
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: became a doctor. He he has his bona fides, is
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying here, that's right. Then he got his
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: undergrad in eighteen sixty seven from Hanover College and then
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: proceeded to get an m d from Indiana Medical College
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy one. He also studied for a year
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, and afterwards
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: he became a professor. This is all backstory for this
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: guy next to the guy with gout, for everyone who's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: keeping track of our time travel. In eighteen seventy four,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: he took a position as a professor of chemistry at
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Purdue University, and you will find we found in the
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: course of our research that he did leave perdue. But
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I heard an interesting the anecdote about him that I
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: thought you might enjoy. Apparently he left with a bit
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: of a scandal. Scandal, it's it's a very different time,
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  Speaker 1: dish Okay. So apparently he left because he was riding
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a bicycle around campus, and this was seen as unbecoming
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  Speaker 1: of a professor. Yeah, what is he some kind of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: common riff raff riding a bicycle two wheels? Absurd malarkey,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: one would say, what was he doing at per do
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: He was studying sugar and sorghum cultures, and throughout this
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: process he started discover that the sugar that was available,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, is available in the time that we're still
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: occupying in our travels. Was adulter rated. It had extra
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: stuff in it that did not belong in there, like filler.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Right then, right, And his fascination with uh, the dark
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: side of sweet things didn't stop there. He published his
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: first paper on food adulteration, UH, connected to the use
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: of glucose, specifically in honey. Was his mission What are
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you eating? He keeps saying to people, is that when
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a food cheats on its spouse. Well, I guess it
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: depends on the relationship the food has with the spouse.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think foods have to only like foods can commune?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Or could could have banana commune, you know, with a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: piece of bread. I don't know. This is a conversation
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  Speaker 1: for another time. Let's leave it. But he found this stuff,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: this filler in the sugar, in the honey, and it
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  Speaker 1: made him go, Huh, maybe I haven't reached the bottom
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  Speaker 1: of this problem yet. Right, How deep does this culinary
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  Speaker 1: rabbit hole go? So his interest began to expand beyond
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  Speaker 1: UH the academy right beginning in eighteen eighty. Oh, look,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: now we're back in present tense. Now we're done with
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: his back story. Here's what's happening to him, right. He
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: is protesting against the practice of adulteration in food and infertilizers,
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  Speaker 1: but primarily narrowing his focus to food as time goes on.
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  Speaker 1: In eight one, was appointed State Chemist of Indiana to
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: analyze the contents of this. So his passion became his job. Yeah,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and he was even elected to something called the German
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Chemical Society, which sounds very fancy. Um. And he worked
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: in Germany at at a lab called the Imperial Food Laboratory,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: which was in Bismarck. And it was at this time
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  Speaker 1: that he started getting really comfy with a new fangled
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: device called the polariscope that allowed him to do that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: deep research of food stuffs and off air. We were
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: talking about this. No you mentioned that he didn't just
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: stay with India and Germany. Eventually he goes federal. Correct.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: He did, in fact get a job was appointed indeed
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: at the U. S Department of Agriculture in their Chemical division.
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  Speaker 1: This was in eighteen three. And this is where he
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: goes big time, Noel, because now he has a budget
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  Speaker 1: and he has the wherewithal the lab to to the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: agency to figure out how to tackle what he sees
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  Speaker 1: as the systemic contamination of food in the United States.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I think his budget was in the neighborhood of five k.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: You want to plug that into your handy dandy inflation calculator. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: five grands five large in eighteen eighty three is equal
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to about a hundred and fifteen thousand, seven hundred dollars
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: in today's today's cash. So not a blockbuster budget, but
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: not exactly meager either. But most importantly he had that budget,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: he also got himself some test subjects, Yes, twelve eager
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  Speaker 1: young men in their twenties who were described as clerks
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  Speaker 1: that had passed the Civil Service exam and had insatiable appetites.
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  Speaker 1: There's actually a letter from one of them to Harvey
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  Speaker 1: Um asking to be a part of this study. Um
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  Speaker 1: that really relied on the ability to have kind of
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  Speaker 1: an iron gut, and the fellow really thought he fit
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the bill. He says, dear sir, I read in the
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  Speaker 1: paper of your experiments on diet. I have a stomach
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  Speaker 1: can stand anything. I have a stomach that will surprise you.
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  Speaker 1: I am afflicted with seven and then he spells out
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  Speaker 1: seven diseases. Never went to a doctor for fifteen years.
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  Speaker 1: They told me fifteen years ago that I could not
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  Speaker 1: live eight months. What do you think of it? My
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: stomach can hold anything. That's the kind of guy that
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  Speaker 1: Harvey is looking forward, because you see he is planning
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  Speaker 1: to poison these twelve hungry men, and he's you know,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: he's played to poison them with their consent. I think
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: that's important to note some kind of fetish thing. What
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: are we talking about here. It's sort of like in
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages they would have the trope of the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: royal taste tester, who would who would check food for
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the aristocracy to make sure, you know, they're jellied eels
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  Speaker 1: weren't poison You think that guy volunteer, though, I feel
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like he was just some schmuck that just sort of
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: got stuck with that job. Yeah, I don't know. I
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  Speaker 1: bet it's one of those jobs that you sort of
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: fall into. It doesn't seem like you go to school
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: for that. You're just in the right place at the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: right time or the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: But this is in many ways a modern analog. He
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: was turning these test subjects into sort of the taste
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: testers for the United States. What he did was to
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  Speaker 1: first have them consent and sign a waiver, essentially removing
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: all liability from him or the U. S d A.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: And then they would agree to eat all of their
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: meals three meals a day from his test kitchen. Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Not not like America's test kitchen. This was a much
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: more disturbing version of that. And it had the very
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: tidy name of Hygienic Table Trials. But the Washington Post
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: gave it a much sexier name, didn't they. Yes, they
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: called it Casey. We might need some dramatic music for this.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: The Poison Squad. Yeah, I mean that's that's a great
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: name for almost anything. The Poison Squad rolls deep. My
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: friend off Air Ben and I were talking about how
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: our new hip hop duo would maybe be called the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Poison Squad. It's either that or start a fan group
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: for the rock band Poison, which I think we went
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the right direction with hip hop feeling it. So here's
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: here's what he did. Here's the kind of stuff you
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: put in these poor guys food, borax, copper sulfate, salasilic acid,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and U formaldehyde even and they would they would just
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: eat this food. Now, he didn't tell them this is important.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: He didn't tell them what item would have been poison.
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  Speaker 1: The whole meal wouldn't necessarily have some kind of contaminant
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: in it. But the early trials gave him some I guess,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: added insight into human behavior. Because imagine you have, let's say,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: just for example, roast chicken, potatoes, the cole slaw. What
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: else you got like four or five maybe some asparagus
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: there we go, a nice side, perhaps some mac and cheese.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I editorializing here. I think that's a
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: delicious meal, and they probably did too. But what wild
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: he found is that when someone was eating something, they
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: could detect a contaminant in the food and they would just,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: you know, stop eating that mac and cheese dish, or
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: stop eating those potatoes. So he realized he would have
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: to change his testing method, and he started putting the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: cantaminants in these gelatin capsules. Yeah, because they were complaining
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: about they could actually taste it in the food. They
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: say the milk tastes metallic, or that the soup tastes
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: like it's gone bad. But Ben, was it really important
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: that it maintained that sense of they didn't know which
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: one they were eat I guess it didn't really matter
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: because when they're eating the capsules, then why did they
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: even have to eat the meal? Why? I whyted to just
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: just eat the capsules? What? What? What? What was the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: food even play into the research anymore at that point? Right?
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Part of it is to replicate the experience of the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: American household eating, right, like how much how much borax
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: do you have to have in potatoes before you get tasted? Right?
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Just to backtrack slightly, these guys, and they had to
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: be guys because whiley was a well renowned misogynists. Um,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: he said that women were quote savages and that they
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: um were bereft of the brain capacity that men were
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: blessed with. Um. So kind of a jerk. Yeah, not
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: not not necessarily a good guy. Um. We did do
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: some good work here. But you know, it's that same
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: discussion I guess about separating the art from the artist
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: or the research from the researcher. But there was a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: lot that went into this process. There were a lot
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of measurements that had to be taken. These subjects had
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: to be weighed, They had to have their poop checked,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and their urine and their hair and and all kinds
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of bodily fluids collected and he tested, you know, the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: prevalence of these materials that would come out, and he
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: would check them before and after and then compare the results,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: right and building on. While he's terrible opinions of women,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: he did have subjectivity when he came to selecting these, uh,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: these young men. He wanted them to have what he
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: described as high moral character, which is not really something
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you can effectively measure. It kind of boils down to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: do I like them. And so so when he was
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: meticulously measuring these folks, or him and his team, I
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: should say, you were absolutely right. They were getting there
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: urine and their feces analyzed, being way their hair was
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: being checked. They were also getting sick. This this did happen.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It wasn't something that they just stopped. They continued and
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: as a result, these test subjects got sick. They learned
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the hard way how much borax or a formaldehyde is
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you know, too much? And as part of their qualifications,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: they had these iron guts because it just made them
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: willing to do the thing, I guess more than anything,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to willingly be poisoned. I'm not sure if it was
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: were they getting paid. I guess they had to have
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: been getting paid something, right, surely a stipend, I would hope.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: So oh no, man, I'm sorry, I just found uh
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: they weren't paid. Their pay was there's three squares a day.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Oh wow. And it was kind of like prison rules,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: different time indeed. But they also one could argue we're
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: paid in public renown because this project was a water
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: shed moment for food regulation in the United States, and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: this Poison Squad was lionized by the press, not just
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post, but people were writing songs about them.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: They were writing to their legislators and demanding food regulation.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And because they were getting stomach aches, they were vomiting,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: they had nausea, and the public was aware of this.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: The song we opened the show with, or the excerpt
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: we opened the show with, is from a song called
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the Song of the Poison Squad by S. W. Gilliland.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: These were these were like public figures. So I think,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the question is what, uh what price could
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: you put on fame? Would you exchange some stomach aches
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and vomiting to, you know, be a national food hero.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: We we should also mention all that Harvey Wiley, I
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: know we're making him sound like a little bit of
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: a mad scientist. But in his defense, he did also
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: eat some of these meals with his poison squad boys.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe that was, you know, as a result of his
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: war experience. He felt like if he was gonna ask
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: these boys to take a bullet, he had to be
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: willing to take one too, which is, you know, a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: great point to make this guy is U is increasingly complex.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: He is quite complex, but again a total work when
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it came to his treatment of women. As it turns out,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: in addition to the slurs that I mentioned that he
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: said earlier, Um, the program had a chef by the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: name of Chef Perry Um and it's at one point,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: according to an article from Esquire called The Poison Squad
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: An Incredible History by Bruce Watson, Chef Perry was replaced
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: by a female and you know, his poison squad. While
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: he's poison squad, they were kind of his bros. And
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe one of the weir qualifications might have
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: been misogyny as well, because one of them was quoted
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: as saying, a woman a tut tut Why the very
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: idea a woman can potter around a domestic hearth but
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: when it comes to frying eggs in a scientific mode
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and putting from malde hyde in the soup, never, that
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: was kind of my like the doctor, the professor from Futurama,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: kind of came out of nowhere, this sort of a
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: professor Farnsworth, that's the guy. And despite this rampant cartoonist,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: supervillain level misogyny, this guy was lauded in the UH,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: in the public sphere, in magazines like Good Housekeeping, which
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: called him the watch dog of the kitchen. According to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: an article by the Science History Institute, he was garnering
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: public support. Who's garnering governmental support, and in this specific case,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: public support from the same people that he thought so
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: little of was instrumental enforcing large businesses and food manufacturers
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: to actually, you know, stop putting from malde hyde and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: sodium Ben's await and stuff. But there was another supervillain
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: in this story, wasn't there. The food lobby, the dreaded
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: food lobby, who looked at Wiley as persona non grata,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and they fought him and his findings tooth and nail
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: and did everything in their power to discredit him. But
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: despite that adverse city, he managed to continue to turn
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: public opinion to the point where a law passed that
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: led to the foundation of a pretty important organization. Yes,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: at last, at last, nineteen o six, the Pure Food
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and Drugs Act passes. And this is at this point
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: in Wiley's life he has been an unceasing advocate of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: some sort of regulation. He also, we should mention, expanded
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: later into the field of contamination in drugs. But the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Pure Food and Drugs Act of nineteen o six a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: k A. One of the biggest reasons you're not going
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to vomit when you eat a bag of chips, hopefully
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: in theory. Crisps, Yes, crisp chips uh. Freeze dried asparagus, uh.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Cashew milk pretty much any any nut milk really, he
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: nut milk really. Uh. This Act passes with a backing
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of President Theodore Roosevelt, and it specifically prohibits adulteration and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: misbranding of food and drugs. At this point, it was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the most comprehensive legislation of its kind in the United States.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It paved the way for the f d A, the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Food and Drug Administration, And to make a long story short,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the foundation of the Food and Drug Administration led to
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the nutrition and ingredient labels that we see today in
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: our local hold foods, and this this is something that
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: continues in the modern day. We are back in the present, right,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: but we've taken the long way around. It was a slog.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: It was this log we should have just hop back
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: in the time machine spoiler earlier. There's well, you know,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: it's figurative. I guess. I mean, we're all time travelers, aren't.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: We were just moving at a rate of one second.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It's all about imagination. There we go, there we go.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And when you and I were looking into this, I
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: don't know about you know, but I was surprised to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: find that some food legislation was far more recent than
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: one would have supposed. I am surprised to hear that.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Ben tell me more. I'm so glad. I'm so glad
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you're into this. Uh. In nine, the Nutrition Labeling and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Education Act passes. This requires all packaged food to bear
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: nutrition labeling and all health claims for food to be
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: consistent with current regulations. There's a really interesting and strange
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: ongoing conflict between food advertisers and the US government and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: probably the government in which you live. If it's not
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the us like, well, have you ever gone grocery shopping
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and you see a cereal that says maybe it's all
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: natural or wholesome. How do you define wholesome? Yeah, that's
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: sort of vague. Language is a thing all across manufacturing,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and like I guess a good example is like a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: bottle of water where it as it contains up to
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: recycled material and that up to mean zero, Yeah, it
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: could be up to zer rosie rosie rosie rosiero one
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: percent yea. And you see that with food packaging. Of course,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: these regulations are hugely important. But with any regulation, you're
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: gonna find a loophole, right, and manufacturers are doing that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: all over the place. And we found in the course
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of of poking around in in this this food war
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: between advertisers in the government, uh, we found that contamination
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of foods or counterfeiting of foods still occurs today. And
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: this this is kind of surprising. M. One of the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: anecdotes that that I heard unconfirmed was that there was
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a Calamari counterfeiting problem. That the lees is made of
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: pig butt holes. Yes, yeah, chiplands, chilands fried with some
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: sort of adulterants who make them taste more seafood? Is
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: this true? This is true? I always heard that was
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: urban myth. Is it really true? Ben? I don't want
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to ruin this for everyone, so I I will say
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that I have not seen hardor like wide reaching study
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: on this. But there's a pretty interesting piece that ran
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: on This American Life about what's marketed as imitation calamari.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So it's not illegal to sell something as imitation, right,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: like imitation crab meat or one of our mutual favorites
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: cheese food flavored product. Yeah, or even back to our
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Margarine versus Butter episode where the reason that margarine was
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: so uh maligned by the butter industry is because it
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: was looked at as potentially being sold as a faux butter.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: But that all powerful butter lobby made damn sure that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the margarine folks couldn't even color the stuff yellow. And
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: we got a great email that I think we'll read
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: about die packs in margarine, that people could die their
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: own margarine so they could make a yellow at home.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: That one comes with pictures and we're going to post
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: those on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where you can find
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: us as Niculous History or some variation thereof. So while
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: we're in the modern day to sew it up. Another
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: thing that is often reported as counterfeit would be sushi. Uh.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Study by nonprofit group Oceana Around cited that of restaurants
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: surveyed in New York City are serving fraudulent fish, a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: phrase that I am oddly fond of. It's it's it's
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: like a good insult. You could call someone a fraudulent fish,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: a faux fish. And according to these reports, what's happening
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: is that restaurants or maybe even wholesalers are selling a
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: cheaper alternative to a certain type of fish grade. Maybe right,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: you got sushi grade tuna, but maybe they're selling a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: slightly cheaper cut and calling it bad. Is that? What
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's one. That's one
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: aspect of it, for sure. But here's here's one of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the really dirty ones. Since we're talking about tuna, some
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of the fraudulent fish that would be substitute for tuna
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: is something called escolar, commonly referred to in the seafood
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: industry as X lax fish. Does it do what I
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: think it does? Yes, it is not an ironic name.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: This is not a little job in situation got it.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: So the problems continue today, but luckily they were mitigated
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to a great and amazing degree by one man who
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: was not perfect, who made it his mission to clean
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: up the grocery store. Yeah, and today, I think a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: big thing that we're still having to deal with, UM
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: is concern about pesticides being in our food and hormones
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: being injected into livestock, and it kind of leaching into
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: milk and eggs because you know, back in the day
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and the early days we were talking about livestock was
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: largely being raised by individual families on family farms. UM.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Today you know the meat packing industry as a whole,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: ginormous conglomerates, and you know, there is concern about that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: So hopefully the FDA continues to fulfill its mission. But
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you can never be sure, right because I mean, it
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: is only one organization, and there's so many new food
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: products coming out all the time. Even recently, the Sargento
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Company recalled a huge batch of their ultra thin sliced
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: longhorn colby six point four ounce products, and with this
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: recall comes the UPC code and all of that because UM,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: some adulterants made it through the process so even with
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: this organization and the work of our misogynist friend, stuff
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: still does make it through. That might even give the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: most iron gutted of us a run for our money,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: no matter how many pre existing diseases you have or
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the runs for our money. There we go spot on
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and we want to hear from you. What are your
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: encounters with contaminated or adulterated food? What what do you
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: think about the f d A. And also, just out
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: of curiosity, what's the weirdest thing you ever ate? Was
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: it good? Let us know? You know, this makes me
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: think of there's a Tim and Eric sketch those songs
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: called all the Food Is Poison. Um, it's just like
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: tacos poison, hot dogs, it's poison. It's like just rattling
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: off food and all the food is poison. That's just
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be in my head for the rest of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the day. Now you haven't seen that, check it out.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's upsetting. And speaking of you friends and neighbors,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: follow food fans where food feeds alike. It's time for
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: listener mail. Our first listener mail comes from Gordon in Ontario, Canada.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He says, gents, I thoroughly enjoyed last week's Marjarine episode.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Of all things, it brought back childhood memories of small
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: town Ontario and the packaging innovation shown below. We mentioned
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: this a little while ago. Ontario consumers were restricted by
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: law from buying yellow margarine and got really tired of
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: messing up their mixing bowls to color their lily white
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: edible oil. Spread, Ben, do you see the impulse there?
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Why do we need to trick ourselves? We know it's
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: not butter. It's very strange because you know again, folks,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: you have to see these pictures. It's so it's so weird.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I was wondering where this motivation would come from. And
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I can't help but think maybe there was a cook
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: somewhere who was by margarine and wanted it to appear
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: to be butter at the home dinner table or in
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a restaurant. But there was a there's a weird method
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: to this product. Well really strengthens big butters beef with margarine,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that this coloring was such an important factor. Um, so
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: the message goes on. So folks really got tired of
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: messing up their mixing bowls to color their lily white
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: edible oil spread. In the early sixties, the manufacturers responded
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: by selling uncolored margarine and sealed plastic bags with a
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: tiny button of food die in the middle. I recall
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: being tasked by my mom with popping the dye button
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and squishing the bag until the color was nice. In uniform,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: it's called easy color. You sent us some amazing picks, uh,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and it shows the process of um the lily white
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: oil spread in the bag. Um a pair of delightful
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: sixties kind of Frank Lloyd Wright painted fingernail woman's hands
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: squishing the bag. You see the little nipple in the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: middle popping with color, and then more squishing hands with
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a with a diamond ring and then boom it ends,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: mixing bowl mess. The taste tells that's the slogan. There's
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: another spoken to. It's pinched the color berry. Need the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: bag for that rich, creamy flavor. Oh my gosh, thank
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: you so much for writing in Gordon, this this email,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: This email made our day. And I keep staring at
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: these old advertisements. I think we're both fans of vintage ads.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Love it so much he does in the letter with
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: easy Color. Truly stupid and yes, ridiculous. And our next
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: email comes from Holly. Holly writes in to say, one
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of my favorite things about the Old Green Acres show
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: was when they had to climb up the poll outside
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the house to answer the phone or make a call.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Listening to your podcast brought to mind one of the
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: more memorable phone related episodes. Oliver got really upset with
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the phone company and decided he could do better, so
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: they gave him the keys to the switchboard. Hilarity ensues.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Holly sites this it's Oliver versus the phone Company in
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: nineteen seven, Holly continues. Until I listened to your show,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I assumed that this was just a way of laughing
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: at how backwards their farming culture was still using a
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: system that was long gone, even in rural areas. But
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: it was filmed in the late sixties, and according to
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: your report, phone systems like that were still operational at
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: that time, and this was not so unbelievable as I
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: imagined it to be. Instead of a dig at a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: negative aspect of rural culture hopelessly stuck in the past,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: that show was more of a negative view of the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: uppercross not being able to adapt, which of course was
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the theme of the entire series. Thanks for the podcast,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and thanks to Green Acres for presenting their own Ridiculous History.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: No York, I'd rather stay I get allergic smelling. Hey, yeah,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: that was them. It presented two sides in the theme.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You know the dude really was he? You know? What
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: does he say? Fresh air at times square, at some something?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: You are my wife? Goodbye city life? You know? Yeah,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: that's that's a really good point. It almost is a
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: satire of the upper crust and what big babies they
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: can be. Right, absolutely, and this concludes our listener mail,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: but not our show. We hope you enjoyed this look
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: at the strange yet profoundly important mission of Harvey Wiley
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: and his Poison Squad, and we hope you tune in
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: for our next episode, which takes us to ancient India. Yeah,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna get super shady and leave it at that,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: so tune in as always, thinks to our super producer,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, Thanks to Candice Gibson, our contributor who wrote
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the article Ridiculous History, an Ambitious Chemist and a Poison Squad.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks you Alex Williams for composing our theme, and thanks
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: to you for tuning in. And we hope you'll join
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: us for the next episode of Ridiculous History.