Hyperfixed - ‘Only to be Consumed’ in Canada

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Help support Hyperfixed by becoming a premium subscriber! You will get two bonus episodes a month, access to the discord, and much much more. http://hyperfixedpod.com/joinThis week, An asks us perhaps the smallest question we've ever had to answer, and inadvertently sends us on a wild reporting journey. Also Alex yells and swears. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life. You don't know what's true or not because you don't know if AI was involved in it. So my first reaction was, ha ha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was, wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real? And I think we will see it to a streamer president, maybe within our lifetimes. You can find Close All Tabs

wherever you listen to podcasts. Why do people commit themselves to the things they do? Why are people so worried about sport? Why wine? Why video games? I'm Brian Lowry, and in this season of my podcast, Know What You See, I'm asking a simple question, but a really big one. What's the point?

In conversations with people with a variety of passions and obsessions, we give the chance to look through a window and see what it means to truly focus on a realm of human experience. Join me on Know What You See. New episodes begin November 26th. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman, and this is Hyperfixed. On this show, listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try.

And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. This week, only to be consumed in Canada. Okay. So for the last few months, we have been chasing a seemingly simple question that came to us from one of our listeners in Vancouver. My name's An. I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and that's where I am. An is a total sweetie pie.

I mean, did you hear that laugh? An is vegan, he's studying to be a musical therapist, and he lives with six roommates in a collective house where everyone shares responsibilities and like organizes adorably wholesome activities for the group to do together. Which honestly to me sounds like a socialist utopia. You've got to have like the right mix of personalities, but it's uh if you get the magic if you can make it happen It can be a really great way to live Okay, so to summarize on is adorable. His home is adorable. We all love on

But this question he submitted We hate this question. It's been the bane of our existence for the entirety of 2025 and As much as we love on we're still kind of mad at it for asking it. And part of the reason this question is so frustrating is because on its face, it feels like it should be an incredibly easy question to answer. So back in December, Anan and his roommates were at home in their kitchen, getting ready to do one of their adorably wholesome activities. We wanted to decorate gingerbread cookies because it's that time of year. My housemate

actually made the gingerbread cookies and then got all the stuff to decorate them. And they have all this fun decorating stuff to work with. They've got sprinkles and candy. They've got those Betty Crocker icing tubes in three different colors and special nozzles for drawing lines and designs. And they're getting ready to spruce up these gingerbread cookies. But again, An's vegan. This is a vegan household. So before the roommates get started, An picks up one of the tubes of the Betty Crocker icing, and he looks at the nutrition facts.

Just to make sure none of the ingredients we purchased were accidentally not vegan. And while An's standing there looking over the list of ingredients, he sees a strange label on this tube. ANNE These tubes of icing said only to be consumed with other foods on them. And I've never seen that warning before. JARED Anne sent me photos of the icing in question,

and at first glance, it looks like your everyday run-of-the-mill supermarket icing. There's a pretty picture of a cake on the front, and all the labels are in English and French, because, you know, it's from Canada. But on the back, just below the nutrition facts, there is this weird label. Only to be consumed with other foods. And it's written in bright red capital letters, as if consuming this icing without other foods presents some kind of incredible safety hazard. But the label makes no specification about what that hazard might be. What could possibly be going on here?

Well, that's what I wanted to know. I looked at it and I thought, that's weird. Someone surely has asked about this on the internet. And I typed it into Google, I put the quote marks around it just to make sure I was only getting results that had the specific disclaimer. And the only thing that came up was two articles about rutabagas. What? We looked into this, and apparently there was once an article in which the author claimed

that, quote, there are many people who think rutabagas should only be eaten with other foods, unquote. And that's, as far as I can tell, the only place on the internet that has been indexed by Google that has the phrase only to be consumed with other foods on it. Bizarre. I've never encountered a situation like this. Okay, so I have some, I have, I have some follow up questions, obviously. When you and your housemates saw it, what did you, like, what was the reaction? Like, how are we, how are we handling this? You

know, I don't think anyone was really concerned about it exactly. But everyone was sort of, like, confused. Like, what does it mean? And we started having a discussion about like, how much other food do you need to have proportionally before you are consuming it? On its own. Look, look, I get it. This isn't an urgent question, not even for on. And it's even small by hyperfixed standards, and we've gone after some pretty small stuff. But the novelty of it intrigued him, and as for me,

I was looking forward to asking experts to explain what exactly constitutes food, or for that matter, like, what amount of other food do you need before you're no longer eating icing on its own? Because that's just the kind of bullshit philosophical question I could imagine myself getting into arguments with friends about. For years. Like, let me give you an example. I don't know if you've seen Gremlins 2, but there is a scene in Gremlins 2 where Billy Pelzer, the hero of the movie, is explaining the rules of the Gremlins, which is that,

like, you can't get water on them or they'll multiply, they can't eat after midnight or they'll turn into scaly green monsters. They hate bright light. So he's explaining all the rules and one of the people he's talking to says, oh, wait a minute, they can't eat after midnight? What if they're eating in an airplane and they cross the time zone?

I mean, it's always midnight somewhere. And before Billy can answer, this guy's attacked by a gremlin. And I have been thinking about and arguing about this question since June of 1990. So yeah, it's a small question, but I'm invested. And I asked Ahn, what would make this feel resolved for you? There are a couple of ways I could consider this solved. I would love to know the real story behind why it is on there. Who made the decision or why the decision was

made or a credible theory as to specifically what might have led to this specific decision. Failing that, I'd love to know the answer to how much icing makes the other food not other food. So I'm not running a fowl of this particular disclaimer. I mean, honestly, it feels to me like the first answer is easier than the second answer. The second answer feels deeply philosophical to me. I'd be happy with either. If you can answer both, that's even better. I mean, I think that you have to look inward to answer the second one, but I feel like we can probably. But you know what? I take that back because someone put it there for a reason. That's not there for no reason. Something's going on here. They're

not telling they're trying to hide something from us. And frankly, I'm not going to let it happen. All right, so here we go. We have two questions to answer here. The first is, what's the deal with the label? And the second is, essentially, how do I abide by this label? And initially, I thought the first question was going to be very easy to answer, because theoretically, all we have to do is call up Betty Crocker corporate and ask them this question. But I really should have known better.

So many of you know that the idea for Hyperfix started as a segment on my old podcast Reply All. What you probably don't know is that that segment, which was called Super Tech Support, started in part because we realized that when you're trying to talk to someone at a large company, whether it's Amazon or Betty Crocker, it's basically impossible to find the specific person you need to talk to. When you're on the phone with customer service people or even corporate media relations teams, 99% of the time they're operating from a script. And if you ask a question that falls outside of the script, it can land as if

you are trying to talk to them in Esperanto, which is what we found when we are trying to communicate with Betty Crocker. But this time, in this story, this particular instance, the corporate clusterfuck was on a level that I have never experienced before. When we called Betty Crocker's customer service, they were like, huh, huh, that's a weird label. I don't know what that means. But we'll connect you with our media relations team, you can see what they say. We leave a message for media relations, nobody calls back. So we call Betty Crocker's manufacturer, Signature Brands.

Again, we leave a message and get no response. Then we call Betty Crocker's parent company, General Mills. And when they search the barcode for the icing, they're like, oh, actually, it doesn't even look like we make this product. It's made by Hometown Food Company. And when we call Hometown Food Company, they're like, I don't know why General Mills would give you our number. We make Pillsbury products, not Betty Crocker. So without a way into the corporate world of Betty Crocker, we're like, you know what? Maybe we should just try calling the real Betty Crocker.

I'm the real Betty. The real Betty right here, Dr. Betty Crocker. This is Betty Crocker. Yes, that is actually her name. No, she is not affiliated with Betty Crocker the brand, but she is a registered dietitian and nutritionist. And she serves as the Director of Nutrition Services for the Lodi Unified School District in Lodi, California. We are part of the largest restaurant chain in the United States of America, known as School Food Service, School Nutrition, kind of one and the same. So we make sure the kiddos are fed every school day, breakfast, lunch, after school. And in the summer, just to show off a little bit, we also serve during all summer things.

I know we're being a little cutesy, contacting Dr. Betty Crocker for a story about Betty Crocker the brand, which yeah, okay, sure. But there was also a strategic motivation behind this move. School nutrition services report to the US Department of Agriculture, and they derive their policies from the official dietary guidelines for Americans. And because they're feeding America's kids, the school system takes those guidelines and applies even more rigorous standards.

For example, if the guideline says that half of your daily grains should come from whole grains, the regulation for schools says 80%. They're just way more hardcore about all these rules and regulations. So we figured if there's any reason why this product should not be eaten on its own, Dr. Betty Crocker is probably gonna know about it. But when we told her about this label, she literally laughed in our faces. What does that mean? Okay, so as a nutritionist,

have you ever seen anything like that on a food product? No, I have not. Are you punking me right now? I assured Dr. Betty that I was not punking her, that this was a real label on a real product purchased in the real country of Canada. And she was like, look, I've never seen this before, but as a dietitian, I don't think there's anything dangerous about eating straight icing.

And as to the question of why this label is here, maybe this is some kind of Canadian regulatory thing. Or… Maybe somebody made a mistake. Maybe, maybe the world's just waiting for you to call the right person. Maybe. And say, hey, what's going on here? Now I felt pretty confident that this was not a mistake.

I have done dozens of stories on consumer products, consumer product design, and I know how many rounds of reviews packaging has to go through before it gets approved. And like, yeah, mistakes do happen. But in this case, it seemed pretty unlikely. It's printed in red on its own in all caps, and it draws a lot of attention to itself. So if you're going to miss something on the label, it's likely not going to be this. However, Dr. Betty's other theory about how maybe this label is a response to some specific

Canadian policy, that doesn't sound crazy at all. Because why would you put a big red warning on your product that makes it sound dangerous unless someone was telling you you absolutely had to? And after a little Googling and a visit to the grocery store, we discovered that this label is not on the US version of the same product. So with our next step, we decided to reach out to some Canadian regulators. One of those regulators, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is essentially like the enforcement arm of Canada's Food and Drug Administration, got back to us and said, quote, this statement does not appear to be related to any law enforced by the

Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In other words, we've never seen this label and we don't know why it's there. And for that reason they said if we want an answer to this question we were gonna have to go to the people who chose to put it there. Presumably the very same people that told us they'd never seen it before. I'm talking of course about the people working inside the corporate black box that is Betty Crocker. And the shittiest part of it is that in my heart, I knew they were right. Eventually we were going to have to go back to the corporate black box and try to convince them that this was a question worth elevating to someone who knew the answer. But we couldn't do it yet, because we knew if we went back with the same question,

they were probably going to give us the same answer. So we huddled up and decided that what we needed to do was find a theory so good that it was worth sending what's called a no surprises letter. If you've ever seen a movie about journalism, there's probably been a moment in it where the reporter's about to blow the roof off some big story, but before she does, she has to give the bad guy an opportunity to comment. So she writes them a letter saying, hey, I am gonna put this story out there. This is what it's gonna say, so if there's anything you want to tell us before we do, you better do it now. So

that's what we were gonna do as soon as we got something that felt like a solid theory. And in order to do that we reached out to specialists from a bunch of related fields and we got back two pretty excellent theories. It's got to be something specific to Canada. This is Jen David Connolly. She designs food packaging here in the U.S., but some of the products she designs are distributed in Canada. So she does have some familiarity with Canadian food labeling requirements.

And when we sent her our question, she immediately started looking through them again. And I think I found something. I think I found the reason why it's on there. Get out of here! Are you serious? I think so. I think I found the reason why it's on there. Get out of here! Are you serious? I think so. I think so. I would say I'm like 99.99% sure. But again, I'm not an expert. It's really complicated language. But what I found was, so the US doesn't have this, but Canada and I know some other countries do, they're requiring front of package food kind of call outs warnings like required declarations if you will, of certain

nutrients that exceed certain levels. So like sugars, fats, and sodium. If they're in excess of certain levels, you have to put this kind of really bold kind of icon call out on the front of your package. So I dug into that and being a sugary product it made sense. Now there's certain exemptions in this as far as I understood again it's kind of complicated and nuanced language but there are certain exemptions one of them being if the food is intended to be consumed with other foods. It can be exempt from that front of package requirement. Oh my God. Of course.

I mean, not of course, that's ridiculous. I mean, it is ridiculous, but it's also totally believable, right? Like what a perfect label for skirting a regulatory hurdle. Rather than calling out how bad your food product is for people, you just tell them to drown it out with more food. And as for why On hadn't seen a label like this on the other icing packages in Canada,

it's because it's a new policy and companies have until January 1st, 2026 to comply with it. So Betty Crocker might just be a little bit ahead of the curve on this one. Okay, so that's theory one. Theory two came from a guy named Glenford Jameson. I need to be clear here. I don't ask for General Mills. I don't have any specific knowledge of Betty Crocker's products.

I've, you know, a long time consumer, first time commenter, I guess. As you could probably tell by his lengthy disclaimer about his expertise, Glenford is an attorney. Anyhow, we reached out to him because we'd started harboring our own little theory that this label had something to do with a class action lawsuit. Like maybe there had been one,

or maybe Betty Crocker was trying to protect itself from a bad faith lawsuit in the future. But since the label was only on the Canadian version of the icing, whatever happened or whatever could happen seemed only to be of concern in Canada. So we texted the only lawyer we know in Canada, who practices tree law, by the way. Shout out Greg, we love you buddy. And we told him about this weird label question we had. And he was like, Oh, I know exactly who you need to talk to. And he put us in touch with Glenford, because his law firm is the only firm in Canada

that specializes in food policy law. And when we asked him about the label, he was the first person we spoke to who didn't go like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? In fact, he seemed totally unfazed. He also seemed not at all convinced by our class action lawsuit theory because he said those aren't really common in Canada. But he did have a different theory.

Icing is a really funny ingredient because really meant to be used to pen or a way to communicate a message in an edible way. And so when they're designing that product, it's likely that the first thing that they want is they want a texture that's going to sort of be coherently together. The second thing they're going to want is they're going to want to be very bright. They're going to want to be brighter than most products. And so because of that, they're likely going to lead into food coloring. And in Canada, food coloring is an additive, and it's governed by something called

the list of permitted food colors. Sgt. John H. Keefe In Canada, just like in the U.S., food dyes are a hot topic. California's even banned the use of certain food colors in school lunches, because there's a concern that the chemicals in them can cause behavioral problems or cancer in children. But there's not a that the chemicals in them can cause behavioral problems or cancer in children. But there's not a lot of consensus on that. In Canada, we have this list of permitted food colors. It simply says,

what is the additives? What is the food color? What is the purpose of the use of the food color? And then what is the maximum levels? So if you go to this Canadian government website, there's a spreadsheet that has a list of food colors and the amount of each color you can use based on what you're using them for and what kind of dye it is. And for the dye in An's icing tubes? And it will say something along the lines of, if it's used singly, so if it's used apart from anything else, the amount is not to exceed, often it's 300 parts per million. So this additive can exist in icing sugar, but not to exceed 300 parts per million if the function is for it to be used singly.

In other words, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is telling manufacturers not to use this product in high concentrations, presumably because it magnifies whatever harmful effects the food dye is believed to have. So by putting this disclaimer on the Betty Crocker icing tubes, it's possible that would then allow the manufacturer to use a higher concentration of food coloring for a brighter, more vibrant color. And so I think what you're seeing on that label is the way for the manufacturer to say to the consumer, but really the regulator, this product is not intended to be used single.

Maybe it's nearer or potentially exceeds 300 parts per million color because the function of the thing is truly to be a bright ink, effectively, to write a message on top of a cake where those parts from it will be diluted to something effectively meaningless, depending on how many layers are on that cake. So now we're armed with two very solid theories for our No Surprises letter. We reach back out to Betty Crocker, General Mills, and Signature Brands. And guys, remember when I said that this question has been the bane of our existence

for the entirety of 2025? This is the shit I was talking about, because our No Surprises letter didn't change anything. We called, we emailed, we tweeted, and like, I really hope that this doesn't get anyone in trouble, but on those front lines of communication where the company meets the world, the intransigence is stunning. So we just started trying to reach out to anybody we could think of. We were emailing friends, we posted to our discord and our twitter asking anybody to connect us with someone inside of any one of these companies and

Where the Betty Crocker black box fails? the hyper fixed discord delivers the community came through and connected us with some folks inside of General Mills and That's when we learned that with the exception of Betty Crocker Frosting all of Betty Crocker's cake and cookie decorating stuff, including An's tubes of icing, is actually made by signature brands. The Betty Crocker name is just licensed to them. We also learned that signature brands, which started as a mom and pop business in Ocala, Florida, controls something like an 80% share of the entire cake decorating

market. So at that point it was like, the blindfold is off, we know exactly who our target is. And we had promised on that we would not stop until we found him an answer. So with that in mind, Hypervix producer, Amore Yates, reached out to Signature Brands legal team, and they put us in touch with the CEO of Signature Brands.

The CEO! We were right on the top of the mountain! After the break, we get our answer to Ann's question, and we find out which of our theories prove to be correct. Welcome back to the show. So after months of banging our heads against the wall, all we really had to show for it was like a couple of solid theories. And even though Ahn was totally fine with those theories being his answer, we weren't. We felt like this had to be answerable and we were letting him down if we didn't pull it off.

So we hunkered down and we focused on our real target, the company that manufactured An's Betty Crocker Icing, Signature Brands. And once we did that, everything that we'd spent months trying to get an answer to came together so quickly, like in a matter of days. It started with Amor sending Signature Brands CEO Joe Enns our No Surprises letter. She told him about the icing that Ann had purchased in Vancouver, the weird label on the back. She told him that we had confirmed with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that it was not a legal requirement.

And she told him about the two theories we were working with. The first being that the sugar content might be too high to be eaten on its own. And the second being that the food coloring concentration in the icing either exceeded or nearly exceeded Canadian standards. By the next day, CEO Joe had gotten back to us. And for the first time in our investigation, someone at a frosting company didn't tell us, and I'm paraphrasing here, we have no idea what you're talking about,

please leave us alone. Instead, Joe said, and now I'm not paraphrasing, he said, quote, happy to help, I love the interest in the brand. And another thing about Joe, he's a proud Canadian. So I think that did make him more inclined to help us with this very specific to Canada problem. So when we got Joe's email,

we finally had the who and why that An was looking for, and we got back in touch with him. So are you ready for the answer? I am so ready. Okay, Joe wrote back to us, total sweetheart, by the way, and told us that we were right that the labeling on the pouch or tube of icing, the word he used his pouch, we clarified, these are tubes. And he was like, yeah, that too.

So Joe wrote back to us and said that the pouch slash tube of icing, the language on it is not a CFIA requirement. Instead, because of the design of the container, someone could very easily squeeze it into their mouths if they wanted to. And the team at Signature Brands did not want consumers to mistake this decorative icing product as a snack. And the reason that it's not on the American Betty Crocker icing is because Betty Crocker is relatively new to the Canadian market.

They've been in America for a long time. And the signature brands marketing team used the opportunity to try out some new language to be clear on the intended usage. And when we pointed out that this was a weird thing that we were all confused by Joe was like, yeah That is kind of confusing When Joe told us that he was just as confused by the label as we were it got us thinking about one of our earlier Conversations with the real Betty Crocker aka. Dr. Betty Crocker. Maybe somebody made a mistake Maybe the world's just waiting for you to call the right person

I mean after everything we've been through trying to solve this ridiculous problem it sure felt like it. For months we were in the weeds of this problem coming up with theory after theory and calling experts throughout the food and regulation industries but in the end it wasn't food coloring or sugar content. Joe is telling us that the label was there because the icing was an inappetizing looking tube and they didn't want their customers to confuse it with like a go-gurt. And once we finally got in touch with the right person,

Dr. Betty Crocker was sort of right. The label only to be consumed with other foods, it was kind of arbitrary. And because of that language, it might make a consumer question, how much other food you need to eat with this product, which is your second question. But that second question is based on a false premise, which was caused by the poor wording of the packaging.

So before we reached out to Joe, he did not know about this label. It did not come about this label. It did not come directly from Joe. So he went and did some digging of his own. And now that he knows how confusing the language is, he's taking it to the marketing team and suggesting that they remove the disclaimer. Because a consumer will already know that it's just decoration. And the label has caused more confusion than it intended

Wow, so on you might have caused an international incident I Mean for not like not like an international not like the Bay of Pigs but more like More like just a Betty Crocker realignment. But I'm wondering how you feel knowing that you might be the cause for the change of icing packaging labels. I feel very powerful. Maybe there's other stuff I could change too, if I'm just curious enough.

There's a kind of journalism called service journalism, which is like consumer-oriented journalism to try and like help consumers figure stuff out. Like the person on the 11 o'clock news who's like, hey, you know, this person's actually trying to scam you. Don't use this product, use this product instead. And very occasionally, that kind of reporting results in a change from a manufacturer or company. Very rarely though.

And even as a show that sometimes deals with heavy topics, people giving up on their dreams, people worried about having kids. Like, you know, what I do is tell a story. I don't move the needle very often. So even the fact that like this has moved the needle a little bit, that Joe N's from signature brands might end up removing this from the label, it feels like we've done something.

Yeah. You know what I mean? The power you feel is absolutely earned. It's reporting with results. So I guess that means that it would be fine to glurp a whole tube of this. Yeah, you should glurp it up, my friend. Amor is taking exception to this. Definitely not! If there's anybody that we do need to keep that label on for,

I think it's probably me. This episode of Hyperfixed was produced by Emma Cortland, Amore Yates, and Saris Saffer-Sukenek. It was also edited by Emma Cortland, Amore Yates, and Saris Saffer-Sukenek. It was engineered by Tony Williams, fact-checking by Sona Avakian, music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and me. Special thanks to Jake Robinson, Ian Mooney, Amanda Schumacher, and Greg Phillips. You can get bonus episodes, join our Discord, and much much more at hyperfixedpod.com slash join. And at this point, like why wouldn't you? I mean, we're hanging out in the Discord solving

problems together. I did a live stream where we worked on a music cue for the episode together. We're having a blast over here. Again, that's HyperfixedPod.com slash join. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia from PRX.