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Unwrapping McDonald's Flavor Secrets with Chef Mike · In Moderation

• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to In Moderation.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: The show where we give you a moderate dose of info sarcasm and we already know we're not approved.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Episode 15, and we have Chef Mike with the unpronounceable last name here.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Hi-oh, it's Maris and it's sp it's said just like it's spelled H-A-R-A-C-Z Harris Z.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I don't understand the confused Z.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: That's exactly how I would think it was spelled.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Well, if it's said exactly how it's spelled, then it would be Herak Zed.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Herak, it's Polish, it's like Charać, which is because I'm Polish, and apparently that's the money you give people for protection for your business.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Now, that's what that means.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Is that how McDonald's is doing so?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's what they're there.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: I think they're the Hush Money they figured it out.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Classic.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So you are an ex-corporate chef for McDonald's.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: That is correct and you currently do R&D for big food.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, I am Some of your favorite people's probably enemy.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: However, they don't realize that I also make their items as well.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: So not only do I help develop the cheapest preservative filled as much water macaroni salad for Walmart, I also make the incredibly all-natural, organic, gluten-free paleo whatever for your extreme Whole Foods consumer.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So it is my job to make all the things for all the people.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to go the big food route because we want some controversy right Like.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Rob, that's how people blow up, is how?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: it's going to be yeah.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: I am now the face of big food we have with us big food as our guest.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, also my daughter, which you may hear her make some noise as well.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: A special guest.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Special with two guests.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: You start hearing burping.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It's not us, it's Oakley.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Well, no promises on that one.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: That silly mask.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: But it keeps me.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: But yes, Don't get the red 40.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Chef Mike okay, I want to start with talking to something right off the bat, because I always see these videos and I'm always interested, and it seems like everyone else is also interested, because those are the videos that always blow up.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: How do we get McDonald's food Not at McDonald's?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: That's what I want to know At the store, how do we get?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I want, I want, I want, I want McDonald's chicken nuggets, I want like their fries, I want the closest thing to that.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: If not at McDonald's, I wanted at my house.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: How do I get close to that?
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just some of my more recent TikTok posts have been where you could find close dupes of these items, so big food secret here.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: When you're a McDonald's, you are big enough to buy a specific recipe or formula all to yourself.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Nobody at McDonald's restaurants are going to your local supermarket and getting mayonnaise off the shelf and developing a thing.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Everything is so big and is made in such mass production that there's their own recipe or own formula.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: However, retailers that usually want a store brand to compete with national brand or whatever will look at sales numbers on the best thing in a category.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: So let's say, french fries or breakfast sausage or whatever McDonald's sells more than everyone else.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: So I want my Walmart store brand to kind of taste and look just like McDonald's, because I'm not advertising, I'm not do anything other than having a store brand and when somebody eats it, that's probably the most recognizable flavor based off of sales numbers.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: So big food, it's all about them numbers, unfortunately.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: What I want to know is where do I get American McDonald's fries here in Canada?
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Are you both Canadian or just one or two?
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: No, we're not both Canadian.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: So hold on hold, on hold, on hold, on Wait is Canadian fries different?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Are Canadian fries different?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Am I learning this for the first time?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: You're learning this for the first time.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: The French fries that are served in the US, I believe, are pre-fried in oil that has a beef flavor in it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And they get rid of that for Canada.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Is it maple syrup flavor?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: I'm in LA, but it's in Canada.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: That is not the thing, or?
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: there's some really goofy labeling laws where they can kind of hide it, not sure.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Well, everybody says they taste different.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I've never had American McDonald's fries, so I'm not sure.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's pretty.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure Liam hid it on the net head there it's the maple syrup.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: It's got to be the syrup.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got to be yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Little extra hockey dust that they have.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: So I was specific to the US menu with all of my work that I did.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: What's interesting, every other country other than the US, even Canada, their consumers are more willing to wait.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: They are more willing to pay a little bit more for a cool flavor, a different thing, like if you go to a McDonald's Japan, mcdonald's, mexico, any other country.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: There's all these different interesting flavors.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: That is also due to money, because McDonald's in the US huge.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: They want everything cheap and fast as humanly possible.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: There are also supply chain issues that McDonald's needs to worry about, and food crossing a border not only costs a lot, it is just so difficult to do that for the masses.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: So other countries try to source ingredients locally, reducing the carbon footprint of delivering things so they don't have to worry as much about ruining an entire industry of supply chain.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: So like McDonald's can only get so much Alaskan Pollock in the US for their filet of fish, because they could easily buy it all and destroy the entire industry.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: So they choose not to do that, which is nice.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, capitalism, baby, let's go, you may have freedom.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: I need to almost destroy the industry, just enough so we can keep it alive just as much money as we possibly can.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they make sure to not destroy an industry.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: But there are things.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: There is a story they wanted to come up with some premium fruit and yogurt parfait where they were using fresh blueberries and after a while, somebody started doing math and if they were to launch that item just in the US with fresh blueberries, they would have to buy the entire world's resource of blueberries.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: Wow, they wanted to launch it, which?
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: there would be no fresh blueberries for anyone.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: That's too many blueberries.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: What they just got away from McDonald's, that is way too much fresh, so, like you could make a bunch, freeze it and that helps with your issues there.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: But for fresh blueberries and to keep up with demand they would need to buy all of them.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: So again, they did not move forward with that project.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: What I got out of all of this is that, hey, canadians, so whenever you're at fast food places and the clerk is like, hey, sorry it's taking so long, and you're like, that's no problem, hey, I'm sorry it's taking you that long, we get rewarded for being patient.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: We get more stuff.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, quality wise, they're willing to.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all that kind of thing.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: You.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Maybe they'll hook you up with a LeBat or a Molson triple X while you wait, trying to think of other Canadian beer deliciousness.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: That's all I could think of at the moment.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: No, we want Fast and Cheap right here, right Oakley, in the.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: United States.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: We want Fast and Cheap.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: He is so unfortunate.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Speaking of Fast and Cheap.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: We got to know what is in the beef, because I know it's not.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I know it's not actually beef.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: That's according to everybody I've seen on the internet.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It is either horse meat or maybe whale cockatrice.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: I'm totally going to.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I'm going to divulge the secret.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: This is a hot off the press.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: You're not going to find this information from anyone else other than your boy right here.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Who's going to give you secret insider info?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: It's made with human remains from the crematorium next to the internet.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: So although McDonald's is huge, they are not big enough to be vertically integrated with their beef, which vertically integrated which they are with chicken in the United States means you own the egg, you decide the feed, you sell the feathers, you own the birds from beginning to end.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Where beef, they don't do that.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: They buy beef on the open market just like every supermarket that you would go to.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: It's literally exactly the same beef.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: It's cheapest to just use beef and not use any of those other ingredients and legally for ingredient statement wise, they have to put like what's in it.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: It is literally 100% beef.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Nobody believes me when I tell them that I've been to the store.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: You're kidding.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't cost less for you to use more ingredients.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Do you know if people are like, oh, they're using that lab grown meat already.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Do you know how expensive?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: And I am not against lab grown meat.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: I'm neutral in the subject.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: I sell ingredients and I work with companies that do this and are trying to figure it out.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: I'm neutral, I'll help them.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: I'll help everybody.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: It is so expensive, it would not make any sense to put lab grown meat in it because it's so expensive.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a new technology.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: I mean and like to make the volume McDonald's would need.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: It's the most.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think people forget what it was like when 3D printers first came out and they were like thousands of dollars and you had to spend like made a dice oh, look at this.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: I made $1000 of filament.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Rob had something with the crematorium.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I mean McDonald's is so big they got to have their own graveyard or something like that.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: I mean it's it's, it's something you know what I think it is A lot of.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: It comes down to remember that the pink slime when that came out, that was like oh yeah that was everywhere.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: People like well, I'm done eating McDonald's.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Like no, you're not Todd.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Like you're going tomorrow.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Like I know you go there every day.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Also.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, who would just want to like leverage one of the most recognizable brands ever in their content to get like views and information Like that's super annoying when people do that.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: So anytime there's any food related thing, like potatoes and gassing off McDonald's does it.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: No, that's the entire potato industry.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: That it's not a McDonald's thing, it's a the industry.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: That's how it works.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Do you want potatoes year round?
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: They're going to have to store them.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: There are different ways to store them, using, you know, modified atmospheres to keep them longer, and then you're going to have to let that gas off.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: You know when you're transporting it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: When everyone's McDonald's did it.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: No, that's the industry.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Everybody does it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I still feel a little unsatisfied with the where I get the McDonald's stuff.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So what about like?
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So I know you've seen, I've seen you do some things where you go to like the frozen you talk about frozen section and like chicken nuggets and stuff like that that are similar to McDonald's.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: What's a chicken nugget?
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I could get that similar to McDonald's.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I recently posted about.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: It's either Pilgrims brand or Pilgrims pride.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: There's also I'll look back in my post but you have to obviously look up a tempura style battered one.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, the issue is also going to be you can't just microwave them, you got a deep frying.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: So if you want them to taste like McDonald's, you have to make sure you don't get your dino nugget, which is pre cooked chicken.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: You got to get a more premium chicken nugget which is raw in the middle that you have to fry.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: Got it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: See, these are the secrets I need.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: The first thing I need to do is to get the chicken nugget to taste like McDonald's pride, at least in the U S man, how much oil does.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: McDonald's go through.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Like they must go through I can't.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: I don't have the capacity to fathom just the amount of oil.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: That is how much.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: I can't give you a number on oil, but I will give you a number that will blow your mind.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: In the United States alone, the fresh cracked eggs that go on egg McMuffins so only the round egg which are cracked fresh in McDonald's stores in the U?
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: S On average a year they serve 7 billion eggs.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: That's a lot.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Just around the egg, that's a lot.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: I don't believe it.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Bullshit, not the square egg, but that we're not counting the eggs that's used for the regular, like scrambled egg or the folded egg, or the egg that goes in the breakfast burrito.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: It is only the egg McMuffin, and only in the United States.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Well, we just lost all our vegan audience.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Sorry about that, everybody so many eggs.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it's over the eye.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I helped develop these buttermilk crispy tenders when I worked there and it literally changes the commodity price of chicken because we buy so much and even though they're vertically integrated, they could buy outsourced to deal with capacity and they had to do that because it sold so well in the first month.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: That's so crazy.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you're a chef for McDonald's, so you obviously have to come up with recipes and stuff like that.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: What really goes in?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Is there testing?
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Do you get a bunch of people?
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: You come in and you're like, hey, this is McDonald's, we're trying new things, try this.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: All that stinks.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I don't want that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: How do you decide on what to make?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: What's going on?
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: And one of the reasons why I left the company is because I had really no decision making or influence in any of that world.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's a small thing.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Most of the projects or development would come through marketing.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: So marketing would determine we need a new chicken sandwich because Chick-fil-A is stealing share from us.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: A lot of in the fast food business is share.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: There is a finite number of people who are ordering chicken.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: 23% of all sales is Chick-fil-A or whatever and they're growing the share.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: More people are going there than ours.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: So how do we get more people to come to us?
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Do we knock them off?
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Do we make a Chick-fil-A version and sell it at?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: our place, Do we try to do whatever.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So do they come to you and say like, okay, Chick-fil-A sandwich is killing it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: So we need you to make something that's like this but that's cheaper for McDonald's, because we want things fast and cheap and you have to come with something very similar but cheaper.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: And I would.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Another reason why they probably don't like because I fought them constantly.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: Who would not go to Chick-fil-A to come to McDonald's to eat the same Chick-fil-A?
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: People who go to Chick-fil-A are people who are like Whole Foods consumers.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: There's no logical reason why they want to keep going there.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: I'm a Chick-fil-A consumer and I have a story for you about that.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: So a lot of the marketing comes out.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: We need this.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: We need focus groups, consumer panels.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Most of my job I wasn't even cooking.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: All of the suppliers of McDonald's have full teams of chefs like much better chefs than me helping develop, do all the work.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: So I'm managing stuff.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: So we got into focus groups and marketing was like well, we want a Chick-fil-A one.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: I was like all right, I'll give you a Chick-fil-A one, chef Mike's version.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: I'm going to put one in a panel along with our original.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: You know their original way.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: So we're in the panel.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: We're trying.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: You can arrange to bring in random heavy McDonald's eaters, heavy Chick-fil-A eaters, man they got a whole system.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: That's just like Do they have like people on the list, like returning Cosmo, like this is, this is.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: They love coming and doing these for free food, so yeah, the better question is where do we get on this list?
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: All of the stuff you love is probably been in a focus group.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: So this is not just a McDonald's thing, this is whole foods consumers.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: It could be ultra health and wellness.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Health advocates you can arrange, you know no, no, no.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Seed oils, we can't, but we can't bring that one.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: My information explode.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: But we're in a room I'm feeding people, blind All right, so they don't know what the food is.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: If you're a heavy user, you kind of like oh that's too clean.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: That's fine and mine Kept winning against.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: We would order Chick-fil-A, bring it in, take the wrapper off and people would eat it and rate it.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: We made a Chick-fil-A knockoff version.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: People would eat it and rate it.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: We made chef Mike's version and the first one we did mine, one marketing and all this other influence, like now, our owner operators wanted Chick-fil-A, let's do another test.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, do another test per their requirement.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: I went again Five times in a row.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: My chicken sandwich wins.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: But they're like the owner operators think and marketing things.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: We need a Chick-fil-A knockoff, so oh geez go ahead with that.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: But in the room when, after you know information, they've eaten everything, there's always moderators so they actually talk about and this is like consumer psychology is amazing, where a group think all of the well, somebody says something and now everybody agrees with them, even though they weren't thinking that two seconds ago.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: So they're like hey, chick-fil-a fans, fanatics who identify.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: You just rated the new chicken sandwich better.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: This one is gonna be sold at McDonald's.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Would you go to McDonald's to get it?
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Oh no, you like it better.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm a Chick-fil-A consumer, but you like this better and it will be cheaper.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not gonna go there.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Is that this?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: See, this is so interesting because I think it kind of comes back to what we've talked about before in this podcast, where it's just like Food kind of becomes a Religion yeah it like it becomes this just who you are, sort of thing, where you have a diet like I am Keto, you're like I am a Chick-fil-A eater.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I will only eat from this restaurant.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I don't care.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, something's better.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Fuck that, that's dumb.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: There are so many reasons and that's why I Personally don't like to vilify things that I don't like because there are so many reasons why Somebody would choose this over that.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, my kids still love happy meals, so I have to go get happy meals occasionally and they're like hey, mike, and you're like yeah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Nobody has as recognized me doing that yet, but really.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: No.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's great.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: It's immensely popular in that world.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: But that's all of the reasons.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: Whether you're in a food desert, it's the only things are available.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: You're on a budget, you won the Lotto and you could get all these Bobby approved items like that's.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: There's all these reasons why some my my grandma said that I can't eat this because it's haunted.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: So I've never.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Another great example is now you can actually eat like pork chops, things of that 150 to 155 degrees, and they're okay for you.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: So some people would consider that undercooked.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: When I was growing up it was cooked pork until it is Disintegrating, because back in the day pig farmers would just feed their pigs trash.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Now that we are having industry, it's like it's safer, it's cleaner.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: You could undercook it a little bit, you know, and it is food safe, more juicy, more moist and delicious.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Boucher grandma ain't gonna do that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: She thinks it's like you gotta.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Disintegrates it's so funny, cuz you.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: You're like okay, so McDonald's, they're gonna come out with the new best tasting thing.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: It's like.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: It's like movies.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Right now, Every movie coming out is just a remake of a different movie right, it's just the reverse of the other.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: We've done this before.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: We're gonna remake it now.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing in food.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: We're like no chick-fil-a's done it, no, you know, wendy's has done it.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: We're gonna create the same thing but slightly different, so that we can sell it, and then we're gonna market the hell out of it, cuz like most of my, most of my career job there.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: There is non-stop Projects of.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Can you match this one?
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: This other one, yeah?
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Something well, this company wants to make it, or we want you to match that product because we're gonna try to make it cheaper.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: And then we could go to that company and say, look it, we could make the same thing five cents less a pound.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: Why don't you buy ours?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of that stuff.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: There's just general cost reduction.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: When egg prices were spiking, all of these companies were like hey, oreo cakesters, how do we, how do we remove egg from this?
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Because it's so expensive?
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: All right, I've got different Fruit and vegetable fibers that we can use to replace the egg.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: That will give it structure and it will increase your fiber content.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: It's actually better for you, but it is a little more expensive.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: But because of egg prices, right it might be neutral, awesome and then egg prices level out.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: We're like now we don't need, we don't need fiber, we don't need any of those things.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Have you worked on any other things besides McDonald's that were interesting to you, just like cases where they had to somebody to swap something?
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: We currently sell ingredients to all of the plant-based everything you could think of.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: So whether that's milks, plant-based cream cheeses, plant-based burgers, all of those things, we provide ingredients and I help develop all of those kinds of products.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: The question is how toxic are they now?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Well, and I've been media trained by big foods, so I know how to answer everyone's questions just appropriately.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: So my only issue is that there was a big subsection of people who say we don't like processed foods who then decide to eat plant-based proteins.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: If you look on the ingredient statement of plant-based proteins, it is a laundry list of ingredients to get it to emulate actual meat items, also legally.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: If you are emulating, let's say, a burger patty, your macros and calorie and fat content, well, fat being a macro needs to be identical to what you're replicating.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: So it is not a low calorie food at all.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: It is highly processed to make it emulate real meat.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I will not argue with anyone who wants to go that route for humane reasons or whatever other reasons they may decide.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: But if you're trying to eat healthy and usually most people think healthy means lower calories or lower fat- it is exactly the same and, in case you guys didn't know, I actually have degrees in culinary arts and culinary nutrition.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: So corporate chef who has a culinary nutrition degree also is funny to a lot of people.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I know they've done studies before where they've swapped out, like they found that these plant-based alternatives are really just not a replacement for whole plant foods.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people see that, and that comes down to marketing as well.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: You're what, beyond meat or whatever, they definitely were pretty good at marketing, getting people to believe that these things were a substitution for actual broccoli or whatever it is.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: So we definitely know that, but I do think it's a good alternative for someone who is either vegan or they just want an alternative.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Absolutely Like.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: It's great.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: You have an issue with cholesterol.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: You're not allowed to eat red meat After five months.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Man, I could really go for a burger that emulates whatever.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Now, me as a consumer.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: That's not my thing.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: I would imagine I would go more towards the like black bean rice patty mushroom burger Kind of like.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I don't need you to emulate the real deal.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Just give me a good plant-based burger.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that just goes to show you everyone's different and everybody has this difference.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Here's actually a question, now that I just thought of it what because you're a corporate chef for McDonald's what McDonald's, what discontinued McDonald's product would you bring back?
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: That's my question because, right off the top of my head, I love the hula burger.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: For anyone listening that doesn't know what the hula burger is, this was a burger.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: That was not a burger at all.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: It was literally just a pineapple slice put between two buns and I believe there was cheese on top of it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: That is the most insane idea I've ever heard.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: It sounds terrible, but I also love it because of that reason.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Like, who was just like?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I think it became.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It was something to do with.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, we're going to make a non-meat option or something so like let's just put a.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: So Ray Kroc was like hey, on Fridays nobody is coming to our restaurant.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: What's the deal?
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Well, during Lent the fish filet is on the menu.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: 80 or 90% of all filet of fish sales are during Lent, so people go on there Fridays and eat the filet of fish.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: But that was before the filet of fish was invented.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: It was an idea to come up with a approved item for those who are for religious reasons.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: If you like Google cockamamie idea, that's what comes up.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: That is just so crazy, just put like a slice of pineapple.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: But I also love it for that reason and I wanted to come back and I will purchase it if it ever comes back, just for that reason.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: That would be a good influence.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Your influence are real.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Mcdonald's would be the Liam Box You've got to come up with some overpriced plastic destroy the environment.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Toy to put in your box.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: This is going to be great.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: I'll talk to somebody.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: We'll make it.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Give me in touch with McDonald's.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: I have ideas, I have ideas.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Are they good ideas?
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: No, but they are ideas that people will purchase just for that reason.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Rob, before you go, I have to explain why it is a good idea, why you are not.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Even this is a good idea.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Pumpkin spice lattes Okay, everybody.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Look when pumpkin spice season comes around.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Have you noticed it's even earlier than it ever was?
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know, oh yeah.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pumpkin spice everything Season gets longer and longer and longer.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: 85 to 90% of all pumpkin spice things sold during pumpkin spice season are people who buy one thing one time.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: 10% are the regulars who will Right go back to their original order.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Buy the one thing one time and then they're like this stuff, kind of sucks.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is why I don't order it, or I got my things.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Is that different people every year?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Or is it people like going back and like let me try it again?
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: It's probably.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the majority are.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Whoever it is, we're trying to get you to buy one of the things because otherwise you would not never buy it.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't actually buy it.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so my idea stands.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Who wouldn't buy?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Who wouldn't see the Hoolberger One?
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: time you make enough to buy just one.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, what is this?
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Cheese half-pipes.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: This is a limited edition.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's nonsense, but like, please, if you haven't seen it, Google the Hoolberger.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It's ridiculous, but I think we would get enough people just buying it, for they would go to McDonald's just to try that and they would also get fries and other things.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you McDonald's, for all the the head, Other corporate shelves at McDonald's who are listening, bring back the.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Hoolberger, oh I think there's two, now maybe three, yeah, but I left in 2019, so it's been a little while.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: A whole pandemic happened and is happening, so it's been a while since I worked over there.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: That's great, but the real question here is did McDonald's start the pandemic with seed oils?
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I can't confirm or deny that, but certainly I can't.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I think they were not happy, but it was certainly an excuse to get rid of all-day breakfast in the United States that a lot of people liked, which they probably were already talking about before the pandemic of how are we going to remove this thing, that there's a bunch of people who actually like it, I don't know Pandemic hits.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: They're like excellent, all-day breakfast is gone.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, so all the conspiracy theories about McDonald's starting COVID, of which nobody has ever said that, I've just started a new conspiracy theory McDonald's started COVID.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like if I go on Reddit, I feel like I would find it.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I feel like I would find that theory somewhat deep within Reddit.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Well, anybody on Reddit who happens to subscribe to that theory and is happening to listen to this podcast.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I have just confirmed it for you.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: And it was actually.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: It actually started with Rule 34.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you're familiar with that.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Oh God, that's how it really got me.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Nobody looked that up.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody looked that up.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: On McDonald's yes, there we go.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Rule 34,.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Cause COVID, there you go.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes, yep, yep, yep.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: But I mean, I'm not even trying to be ignorant.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I don't want to know.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I'm dying on the inside right now.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: I feel like during COVID, though, did how were their sales like hit hard during COVID?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Did they increase, like with the drive-through or?
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I figure people, more people are going through that, like what happened.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Anytime there is financial struggles in the world.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Anytime there is, you know people are struggling.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: The cheapest foods sell better.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: So, like dollar stores do better during the worst times, dollar stores do better during the budget.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Everyone's doing that.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: So usually during those times a fully integrated into society McDonald's does perfectly fine.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: They've got enough money to weather the storms of, like you know, up and down of sales.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Seriously, they are too big to fail.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: That's what I was just about to say.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Because, like, I feel like all these like wellness, like health gurus are always like let's just get rid of all the fast food.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like I feel like if we just got rid of only McDonald's alone, the economy would crumble.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: The amount of yeah people employed there.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: The amount of McDonald's sells more fruits to kids than any other restaurant.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: The apples that go in their happy meals.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: How many happy meals are sold?
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: They sell more fruits to children than and milk than any other restaurant.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Man Wow.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: So middle and nowhere Delphas, ohio, where it's a manufacturing facility on McDonald's and a Walmart sometimes like hey, mcdonald's putting fruit and milk in their happy meals and not advertising cheeseburgers but hamburgers instead because they're lower calorie, all of those things.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: There is the major metropolitan city where everyone's got money.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: We wouldn't eat that trash.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: There is middle America, where that is the only restaurant in your town.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: So again, it's interesting.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: I feel like in order to like you know, one of the better things we can do is just push these like fast food companies because like OK, I think a good example is like eggs.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: You know there was a big push for like I don't want conventional eggs, I want like pasture raised, like free range, like eggs, that sort of thing, and it seemed like overnight we went from like oh, maybe a couple options, to now there's like 50 options of just different like pasture raised eggs, yeah, or so, like with McDonald's, you could maybe do something similar if we just push these, you know, like we all send fast food to you are very smart, Liam.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I've told that I never, but I appreciate it.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: This is, and I'm not here to praise or promote McDonald's in any capacity, but when McDonald's decides that we want free range eggs served in our restaurant, their restaurant, the entire industry then is like all right, now we have to do that.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: So McDonald's can insight change within an industry based on what their like you just said the Apple thing Like they.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: how when did they start selling apples?
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, what is 10,?
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: 15 years ago Like something.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: It was yeah, I think yeah somewhere, something like that.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And you know now they sell what more you just said.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: They sell more fruit than like any other restaurant.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: So just like a small change, like that it can have, Absolutely so.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: McDonald's, when I was there, removed artificial flavors, colors and preservatives from their core 11 burgers.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: So that was an initiative.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: It initially, you know they wanted to do that.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: The flip side is when McDonald's says, hey, guess what we did, here's healthier menu items.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: We were do that.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Nobody cares, nobody goes and buys the healthier food items from McDonald's.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: The reason why salads are gone, egg white delights are gone.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: All of these things is because people might buy it that one time yeah.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: And then go back to their original.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: So the advice and this is not a McDonald's, this is an everyone thing inform people to make healthier choices with their money, exactly.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: I think that is the key right there.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: The healthier, better for you, items Right and more will come.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Money talks right at the end of the day Like we decide with you know, with our dollars.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easy to blame it on McDonald's and stuff, but if you're not buying it, why are they?
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: They have no reason to produce it.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: There's the whole debate.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: You're making McDonald's is making people fat.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Is McDonald's pulling people into the restaurant and force feeding them the burger?
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: only when they're doing the test groups Only in the focus groups.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is our, this is our new force.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: They're the burger.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: We have to feed it to you.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: No, get in here, we have to be.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: You've been foiled off.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: It's making you eat it.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, yeah, that's just really interesting to me.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I think we need so, like it comes back to like a lot of things like we talk about, like, oh, the algorithm does it this, like the algorithm is just people right, like the algorithm, like we decide.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: So I think you know like we need to try and inform people, yeah, of better options and then encourage them to, you know, ask for those, and that's how we get you know apples at McDonald's, or you know pastries, eggs or all these sort of things.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: How do we do more of that, rob?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Answer this question.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Answer this very complex question in a very simple, easy way to understand.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: How do we get more people to you know want to, to, to, to buy those healthier options, or to to demand those healthier options at fast food places?
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: We need to turn it into a conspiracy somehow.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: He's going back to the conspiracy.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: No we're done.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: I like.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: OK, OK, Reddit, Reddit.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Anybody listening on Reddit?
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Anybody listening on on anonymous or anything like that?
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Come on, we need some conspiracies to make fruit.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Make fruit great again I don't, please.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Here's a question I'm going to ask both of you.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Get ready.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Is it OK for somebody like me to hide healthy ingredients in food items so people don't know that they're eating?
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Healthier options, like hiding vegetables, not talking about it, changing ingredients statements, removing things without letting consumers know that we're doing it?
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: So it's still like it would still be labeled, though correctly, Like if you looked it up.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: If I went online and I looked up McDonald's recipe and the ingredients say there's would that?
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So it wouldn't be on that label, Like I wouldn't be able to see it.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Yet you would, legally, you would have to change an ingredient statement or a label.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: You don't have to necessarily market it.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: You know not just not specifically just McDonald's but, right, Any restaurant.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: Like, hey, we removed all of this stuff and we're not going to tell anybody.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Because when you market healthier items, unfortunately 25 to 30 percent less sales right out the gate.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: If you say this is a healthier thing, a better for you item, there is such a demand of people who are like no, that's I'm going to get.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I want to clip this right here and I'm going to when this podcast is I'm editing.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I want to clip this right here because that's such an important point that, like, even if these companies go make something healthier, as soon as they announce it, we stop buying it.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Correct that's a fast.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, is it.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: OK for the, for the betterment of society.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: If we sneak healthy things into people without them knowing, let's go.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Flip side is now you're being secretive and deciding what people should eat OK, ok, ok.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: So you know, in the movie where, like, the robot kind of takes over and it's first it's helping, but then the robot realizes that humans are all killing each other and it needs to basically like control us in order to make us not kill each other.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: When I was younger I was like, ok, no, that's a terrible robot, we need to kill it.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: And as I get older I'm like I kind of agree with the robot, like we're kind of At an exponential level.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I am neutral because it's like, yeah, we could just just take all those bad menu items from McDonald's and don't serve them anymore.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: All right, then they're going to go out of business and we just do crumbled.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Is that OK to be?
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: We're in a sticky sticky situation here.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: It's like I I would be a hypocrite to say that it's not OK because, like in personal cooking, I'll like hide some chia seed in something, hide some peas in something, right that's what I know.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Most of us do it on a personal level.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: And I'm still stuck on this, like when you market something as healthy, sales of it go down.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: That's always, that's just.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: It's very interesting.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: I would.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, people turn around and blame the industry.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Right, I kind of not that it's healthy, but there is a brand of I think you've probably all heard of liquid death, the water.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how their whole stick is.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: We're doing this because plastic is not as recyclable as aluminum, so we want to sell water in cans, but they're not marketing it like that.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: They're marketing as this water will drown and kill you, murder your first.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're marketing it in one way, but their initiatives and goals are to reduce plastic in our ecosystem, so like they're promoting it, not talking about that at all.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: OK, ok, ok, OK, ok, ok.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I have a thought.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I have a thought Everybody listen.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Ok, ok, ok.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Are you listening?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've stopped listening.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Now You've lost me.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I think this was Burger.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: King, this was in McDonald's, but I remember what was wasn't there the nightmare burger or something like that, where there was a burger where the whole idea was that had certain ingredients in it that it would give you nightmares was the whole, the whole thing about it.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd have to look at it Sounds like an American thing.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: That was I know it was like come on, it was like the black button.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I'll look it up in a second, but yeah, the Canadian thing would be the.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, burger.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you do not get the chance to apologize.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Sorry to no.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's nightmare.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: A few of our Canadians are not squeaky.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: This is why is she?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I have done some research.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I just looked it up.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: It is the nightmare burger from Burger King and the whole idea was you had like a green bun and it looks super weird but like it was.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: The whole idea was that it would give you nightmares because something in it and they had some weird study.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: You know it's basically like a Paul Saladino study where they're like it was in rats or some weird shit in a German library.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: It's all.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: It was all weird, but but people bought it.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: People are like, oh shit, that's going to give me nightmares.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: I got to try that.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: We need that.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: But for like, yeah, we need to do that for health.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: We need to tell people it's.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: We need to reverse psychology, people into being healthy.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: That's what we need to do.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: We need to tell we need to go.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: I think we need to go to the liquid, that nightmare burger route.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: I think we need to do that.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: That's 10,000% man.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: We've discovered something.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Now you clip this and now we have the answer.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: We have the answer Now we have to force, we have to humanize certain things and force people to eat the other thing.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: We're now turning into the people we hate.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: We've gone this rub.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: We are being a detriment right now because we're calling out people for saying, like seed oils are terrible, and we're like, no, actually they're fine.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: We need to lean into this shit.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: We need to say seed oils are the worst thing ever.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: I've ever heard the worst thing ever.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Everyone's gonna eat me?
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I did not.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: We didn't tell people they're horrible, so they buy more of them.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: That's what we're discovering.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: We can't say things are healthy, because I'm still fascinated by this thing, because it seems like recently, like in the past, I don't know 10 years or so, they have made it so that there's more healthy options.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: You see, like these different restaurants with healthier options pop up, but maybe it's just those like restaurants do well, but when a typically quote, unquote, unhealthy restaurant like McDonald's or Burger King, when they try something to make it healthier, they kind of lose their fan base in a way.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: It's I'm too fast.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: I need to think about this for like months.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: This is so crazy to me.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: That's how you know what else we?
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: also need to do is we need to make sure that people understand that lettuce detox is your liver.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Do we need to go to detox?
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: No, detox feels like positive.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: We need to go to.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Is it like lettuce, just water?
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: No, it's like.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: We need to go.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Lettuce toxifies your body.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Lettuce detoxifies you.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: You all aware of.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: There was somebody who said, like iceberg lettuce should not be a food supply in our system and it should be destroyed from the earth.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Because the amount of resources it takes to make iceberg lettuce, the amount of nutrients that are not in it, how fast it goes bad, the shipping, how much food waste, it is a useless food item.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: It's like the American penny.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: We just yeah, just take space and energy.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: It is useless.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: We should not be using it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: You can replace it with more nutritious greens that are maybe even heartier, that last longer.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: But people like the crunch, people like the flavorlessness of iceberg and like half of iceberg that is grown is wasted and thrown away, so we should not even bother growing it.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: It is a waste of resources.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Why don't we just grow half as much?
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: That's way too logical, but I think they go, because I'm one.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: If the store doesn't have it, I need to have it, we need to have an option.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: It needs to be available.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: They like the tastelessness of it.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: So I think you're right when we need to change things slightly to make them more healthier.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: Flavorless kale, that's a genius idea.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Flavorless kale.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: Come on, with all the nutrients, all the health benefits, but it tastes like iceberg lettuce In every futuristic movie.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: what do you see?
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: What do you see?
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Robin Soil?
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and green Every futuristic movie, when it comes to food, soil and Okay, I was thinking more like pills or whatever that you take, that are all the nutrients.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: You have it in some little pouch or something like that and that just has everything.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: I feel like we need to go that route.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: We haven't started that yet.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess we started with soil, that's kind of a thing, but we need to push it harder.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: We're just like here's all your nutrients.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Because what do people always ask us Like okay, I'm trying to be healthier, which multivitamin should I take?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Which supplement should I take?
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: That's always their first question, because that's what they want.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: That's what they want.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: They want it.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nice and easy.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, and everyone's that.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: I want to be healthier.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: That means nothing unless you put parameters behind it.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: What do you mean healthy?
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Do you want to probably lose weight, aka lose fat?
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: I'm assuming that's what most of you mean, which means you need to reduce your caloric intake.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to switch.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Instead of buttered noodles, I'm going to drench my noodles in olive oil.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: I am going to be so much better.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, there are some health benefits to that.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Calorie wise, there is no change.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: You are still going to be fat and get fat if you just keep doing it.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: So that actually does not.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: You know, there are those little things.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: The healthy halo is what it's called in the food biz.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: Hey, these are cholesterol free fries.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Oh fan, they must be better for me.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're fried in seed oils.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Or like sweet potato fries, if you ask like the average person.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Like are sweet potato fries like way healthier than for you, than regular fries?
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: But like, yeah, sweet potato is so much like they're just fries.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, veggie chips.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: That's a great example of veggie straws, all that stuff.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Like oh, kids love veggie straws.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: It's deep fried, it's tasty, but it's fried.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: That chip.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Oh man.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: So these are the things as an R&D chef so away from McDonald's, my entire R&D career.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I started wanting to be a chef.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: I went to culinary school, did all the stuff when I was in culinary school I also wanted to be in a metal band.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: So nights, weekends and holidays that's show night I can't work in a restaurant.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: So I kind of fell into the R&D chef world because I wanted to have a life and all of those things.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: But the whole career after working in restaurants is my opinion on what I'm making.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: Developing is irrelevant.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: I am making a thing for a consumer.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: So if it's a Liam item, a Rob item, a Joe Schmo in middle America item, if it's a Whole Foods consumer, a Kroger stop and shop, I don't know what other weird Canadian stores, I don't know what those are called, but whatever those are, I'm just kidding.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: Obviously I'm making something for a specific consumer using data.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: So it is, although my personal feelings of like aspartame Came up in the media not too long ago.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: All of these customers of mine wanted to remove aspartame from a lot of their items.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: Okay, I also happen to sell stevia, splenda, you know, all of the other monk fruits, whatever other kind of non-nutrients.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Right, all right, I'll make you that one.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Do I necessarily agree with the?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: decision they doesn't matter.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: No, what comes to down?
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Are people gonna buy something?
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't matter.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: So when I was I think I said it before the camera roll, but I'll say it right now you to say a lot of the things I would love to publicly say but can't because it's not my job or place to do that.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: I have my own opinions and Right, yeah, you just have to deal with that.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Your allegiance lies with, you know, creating the food that people want to purchase, that people spend their dollars on, and it's just yeah, and that's just a different world, and I find it.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: I find it interesting.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: It is hard sometimes, you know, and not only for the health and wellness aspect of it it's.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: I'm a trained chef that worked fine dining and one of the first things out of culinary school was to make Amish potato salad for Walmart, which is incredibly cheap.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Filled with sugar, not Exotic, delicious flavor, it was.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: How cheap can we make it?
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so early on there is a big struggle of why would I want?
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna eat this.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: While I do this, I also have to realize that if I'm not doing the work, one of the reasons why I wanted to be at McDonald's was to try to make things better, and after a couple years I was like I have no influence in this company whatsoever.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: But it's the battle between a fancy chef who now works at a fast-food place, a health and wellness Advocate who now developed the deep-fried fatty thing.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of different.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm a parent.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: What do I want to feed my kids?
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: I tried to.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: My entire family eats trash eats.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: Like my wife is Polish, she grew up Polish its meat and potatoes, so to get any of my women upstairs to eat a vegetable is like Absolutely impossible, so I had to go the route of hiding it in, yeah, marinara sauce and puree it up and getting them to eat it.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: But Do I say no, kids, you're gonna starve.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: You eat this broccoli or you get nothing.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: I'm in the.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: I want my kids to be fed.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: I don't want them to starve.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: They will just not eat if it's something they don't like.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: So how do I deal with that, knowing that these dino nuggets are probably not the best protein source, but it is certainly better than them eating just buttered noodles all day.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: They need to eat protein, so we're gonna eat a lot of cheese.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: We're gonna try to supplement macros with other kinds of things and figure out what works for them, and it's a constant battle I struggle with on a daily basis.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: There was one thing in there I really wanted to highlight for the listeners.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: It's that, especially when we're talking about Studies and stuff, we always get the well, who funded it?
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Big food or whatever, and it's like, okay, yeah, they funded it, they didn't have any control over it.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: But the people working on it, the people working behind the scenes, the scientists, the Culinary experts, all these people they are not big food, they actually do care about you.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Doctors care about you.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes, there's gonna be person, a person be here or there that, yeah, they're in it for the money.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Usually you can see that because they're selling supplements, but a lot of the people behind the scenes actually do care about you.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it's I do like you know.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: Hey, did you guys hear about this one study?
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: So with ten really fit males?
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, they did a thing, and this results.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: So Okay, like I'm, I'm not the smartest, but I do know how to look and interpret data, understanding probability statistics, risk things of that nature, and you both have pointed out the hypocrisy of some people of saying, well, no, you can't have this, unless I'm selling it, then you could.
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: You could have you pick a lane.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: I would be ecstatic if you just stick to the one side and if you can't promote your thing without Trash villainizing the other thing.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: That is nothing to do with the food.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Did you're just a piece of trash who can't communicate appropriately, or you're trying to leverage?
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Ask Hullary to Do what you got to do, which is why I asked that question.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Shouldn't we just hide healthy things and make people eat healthy things?
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: It's that easy.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Well, now we're being jerks, forcing people to do what we want without with alleviating choice.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: So that's why I very much promote education, knowledge.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: So people buying the flipping flop.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: You have two options.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, listen, we either go the the the death water, you know nightmare burger route and we make everything seem horrible for you so that you then buy it, or we hide healthy foods in your foods that you think are unhealthy those are the.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Personally, personally, I'm for option a.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: I'm all for some.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: You know I'm with you.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Lethal injection of Toxic dose burger or whatever you know, I just came up with it.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: Marvel bought ready to go into X-Men mode for mutants.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Right, right, this plant-based lab grown meat.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: There is a study that says you might gain superpowers.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: And that's gonna pop them off.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: We'd let, we need to make, we need to relabel it, death broccoli or you know you, just like it's just.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Carrots.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: I think that's what I'm going with, that's what we're, that's that's what we're doing now.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: That's we've decided.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: I'll get in the kitchen outside doing some R&D Gotcha.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Once, when you guys start seeing this stuff flying on the shelves, you'll know where it came from.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: I think I'll give it a try.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think, yeah, but I think we're getting that time.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Mike, where can people find you?
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Where can they read?
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Can they find so where to get McDonald's stuff?
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Where can they find your metal band?
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Only on tiktok is it McDonald's heavy.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: All the rest are general Mike shenanigans, you just look up my name.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: I also hosted a Dungeons Dragons inspired cooking show.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: That is on yes, I'm free VN Plex right now.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: I am currently writing a cookbook based on one of the best video games ever made in history.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna spoil it to you guys maybe.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Okay yeah, I'll get real trouble, but just look my last name up and it's spelled just like it sounds Harris HA, ra, cz, zed, zed.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Hericson or up drinking, son of.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, what do you guys do you call it zebras?
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: There's Zed bros, zabra's weird.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Oh Tim.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: Horton drinking son of a double double.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: I like to do double double.