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

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