The Chaser Report - What Is A 'Nacho Cheese Subscription'?

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

As part of Charles' 2024 New Year's resolutions he's agreed to do the opposite of everyone else, which in this case means subscribing to everything... including food? Listen and find out how Americans are using subscription models to enjoy food. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. We said we'd come and do weekly episodes in January. Aren't we just heroic for turning up again for one episode? Wouldn't it be amazing if we made this podcast weekly instead? Wouldn't it be so much less work?

Yes, it would be good. It would be, I mean, the listeners would get to not have. have to hear us as much. Yes, it would be good for them. Yeah, it'd be good for us. It'd be terrible for the numbers, probably. Yeah, it'd be terrible for our numbers. We must be at 7 million by now.

Oh, I think we would be. I haven't bothered to check lately because we're on holidays. No, so look, we are here. We're back. But I think February is when we're going to increase the output. Oh, definitely. So it'd be grateful we're here at all, frankly. And we're relaunching.

Oh, are we? Yeah, we're relaunching. Yeah, yeah. Let's find out what that means after this. Are we changing the name of it? Something? What are we... No, we're just going to...

Oh, finessing. We're just going to finesse the... It's a thing where you say it's relaunched to generate excitement that wouldn't otherwise be... Yes, it's going to be new. All new, all exciting, chaser report. Reimagined 2.0. The Chaser Report 2.0.

Cucs. Coming in 2024. Wow. That's very good. So, get excited for whatever that turns out to be. And Loughlin, can you put some explosions behind that? Oh, yeah. Can we have a moment for some massive sound effects.

Representing the enormity of what's going to happen on this podcast. The Chaser Report in 2024 is bigger than you could have ever imagined. The Chaser Report. It's like if Will Anderson's podcast had a baby with Hamish and Andy. Hello there. And somehow 7 a.m., which would be weird, but awesome. Okay. Back to the Chaser.

report. Anyway, so that's next month. Your voice is deep in the moment. So, no, but what I've been enjoying about January is you're getting your house in order. Oh, yes. We did that. We spent a lot of time, precious holiday time, reorganising the house. And the one thing I've been doing is going through, and you know how I said with New Year's

resolutions, the thing to do is to go against the grain. So, you know, a New Year's resolution that everyone tends to do is I'm just going to, you know, unsubscribe to a whole lot of things. I'm going to unsubscribe to email news. I'm going to unsubscribe to all the little micro payments that you gather up during the year and just spring clean everything. I've gone in the opposite direction. I just wanted to check.

Are you sure you want to remind people that they can unsubscribe with this podcast? No. And cancel the micro payments. No. Make us through iTunes. No. Through Apple podcasts or through ACAS Plus? No.

Dom, what I'm saying is I've done the opposite. I've decided to start subscribing to more things because that was my new year's resolution. It was to go against the grain. That's true. I've signed up to some Patrions in this new year. Yes, exactly. You know the stupid thing that I do? I pay for this podcast because I like listening to the ad free version. But hang on, isn't the whole point that whenever people complain all the time that there's ads in the ad free version? Oh yeah, that's me. No, it's not. It's actually fine. It works all right. It does work. Most of the time.

But the latest subscription that I've taken out, and I don't know whether you've seen it, is Taco Bill, admittedly in the U.S. But just for the sake of this yarn, let's pretend that this is true in Australia as well. Taco Bell has just released a $10 a month subscription to nacho cheese. You know, there's a taco bill five minutes from this studio. Yeah, I wonder whether they have nacho cheese. I'm going to subscribe. What does that even mean? I've heard of nacho cheese as a corn chip flavour.

And by the way, this is not an ad for Taco Bill in any way. It's likely to turn out not to be the opposite. Yeah, that's right. But, no, so one of the, and so this stems from this incredible problem that food marketers in the US are having, which is that there's this new wonder drug that makes you lose weight called a Zempic. A Zampic, yes, that's right. And everyone's taking it. We had friends come out from the US over summer, and they all went, oh, yeah, all our friends take a Zempick. Like, everyone takes a Zemik.

Did that look svelte and in shape? I mean, not huge. Well, yeah, probably more. Relatively. Yeah, yeah, because you know how your friends go to America and they always, over the course of a couple of years, they become fatty bum bars. I believe so, yeah. So this is something that you take the type to diabetes, the whole supply of which I think

has been taken away from the diabetics who need it. Yes. And given to fat people with money. And, yeah, the whole. But I think, like, everyone in the US now use it. And one of the interesting side effects is it's not that you, it just makes you lose weight, because it does do that. It also makes you just.

not have an appetite. So my friend was saying that you go to these dinner parties and people serve you food and you just do not feel like no matter how delicious the food in front of you is, you sort of just push it around on your plate. Don't even eat it. Right. So the lifelong joy that I've got when I bite into a delicious meal, like just really, you know, yum char or a spag bowl or a roast, that's just taken away. Yes. And so the addictive qualities of food has been taken away. And in the last 30 or 40 years, the entire U.S. food industry has relied mainly on getting people addicted to food. And marketing their food is being irresistible or, you know, bet you can't eat just one. All you can eat. Yeah, all you can eat. And the whole, and so that's been the focus. And so

food marketers in the U.S. are having to shift their focus. And one of the things that they're doing is doing things like trying to hook people on a subscription basis. That's so funny. So is the pitch now, it's worth being fat for? Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I think what apparently they're trying to do is talk about the joy that eating highly processed food brings you. And this is the whole point, isn't it? The food has like the big sort of food industry, big food has moved to massive amounts of additives and stuff to basically addict you to whatever it is, the sort of hyper MSG of all rather than the food.

But the addictive qualities have gone, so now they need something else. Can you just explain to me what a nacho cheese subscription is? Because I know what nachos is. Very tasty. I know what cheese is. Yeah. How do you subscribe to nacho cheese? What are you getting in return for the $10 a month?

So you get nacho cheese every day. So you just walk into Taco Bell and you go, I've got a subscription. And they just give you a free nacho cheese every single day. Does that mean there's just corn chips covered in cheese? Yeah, yeah, corn chips covered in cheese. Yeah, yeah. $10. And this is off the back of.

their $10 a month taco subscription which they actually started back in 2022 which is also $10 a month you can still get it

and you get a free taco every day I mean it's not free it's like it's a $10 subscription and it's just the point that you come in and you buy something

more expensive is that what they're hoping for I think no I think it's Taco Bell recognising that the future of food is subscription

based so if you're boring enough to want the same meal every day yes you can get it for almost no money. As long as it is, as long as it is the most basic and shit thing that they sell. Yeah. It's like kind of going to McDonald's and just getting the bun every day.

But I can see McDonald's, you know, setting up a subscription service for a Big Mac, don't you? How much we, I'd pay, I don't know, 50 bucks a month for a big Mac a day? Plus all the, you'd have to pay for the heart surgery at the end of a year. I mean, I remember, I still remember this great thing from high school where they sat us down with the McDonald's interesting information. Oh, yeah. And we had to try and work out if it was possible to have three meals a day from the McDonald's menu. Spoiler alert, it was not. And then, isn't the point that Chaz, I remember this, I had a locker right below Chaz's

locker at school. Poor bastard. Yeah, yeah. And he left a cheeseburger. Remember this? He did an accidental experiment where he left a cheeseburger in his bag for, it was like a couple of months. Ages, absolutely ages.

And it didn't, it did not decay in any way. Well, I've done this for years, and it's fine. But, no, Chaz would often, back in those days, I think he's more healthy these days because, you know, television. He used to leave cheeseburgers in the side of his bag for a very long time. Like, he's just usually on any given day, I have a mouldy cheeseburger. Sorry, a non-moldy, a suspiciously non-mouldy. And the whole point was that he preferred them cold. He did.

He liked them lukewarm. That's right. So he would buy one in the morning and then eat it on the way home. It's like leaving, it's like cellaring wine, isn't it? And then years later, I remember having this conversation with him, where he went, Did you know, Charles? Actually, what you should do is you should eat healthily, right? Like, and he had his, remember, it was sort of in his mid-20s.

He started eating fennel, only fennel. He came to this realization that it was possible to not eat just Big Macs and Bolognese every day. A lot of conversations in the Chaser group over the years have gotten on to Chal, have gotten on to Chaz's weird habits. The combined one was he used to be addicted to Coke. Coca-Cola, important to clarify people in the television industry. And what he used to do was he'd start a can of Coke, always the full-strength sugary Coke.

And he wouldn't finish it, so he'd just leave it in places. He would leave it like in empty lockers at school, and then go and pick it up later on. And he would sometimes leave it under bins. One of the places he'd just wherever he could. He would just leave these, and occasionally, you know, bees would fly into them because they'd attract it. I don't know if you ever got.

Stung, but, yeah, that wasn't the greatest habit either. Didn't we have a spreadsheet cataloging Chaz's behaviors? There's an entire list somewhere called Chas Facts. I think I've still got access to it somewhere. Chaz Facts. We should get Richard Cook on. He was the founder of Chaz Facts. Anyway.

So, yeah, so that's, look, when we're talking New Year's resolutions, never listen to Chaz is probably a good way to go on that front. The Chaser Report, news of news. few days after it happens. Okay, but have you, so I've got my house in order. I've taken up a food subscription. Have you? Well, the Taco Bell, I mean, sort of like, or at least for the yarn.

You're looking a bit pudgy, actually, Charles. I can see the magic working out. The Taco Bell Chihuahua's delivery. And the good thing is, it really cuts down on time, right, because I used to have friends, right? And then you start eating Taco Bell and you start emanating the smell of Taco Bell. Yes, they can't be good for the sort of pause, can it? I haven't made any New Year's resolutions. I just figured rather than letting myself down,

the resolution I should make is to begin the year on a positive note by not trying to better myself. Yes. Not because I'm finished work, but just because I seem unable to make any meaningful changes. But Dom, you've been working constantly this whole holidays. You've been in here writing quite a lot. I've been writing and I've been doing other things.

How many words do you have to write by the end of February? I think it's just around 40,000. Words between now and the end of February, that'll be all right, won't it? No? Yes? Like the podcast is weekly for the time being. Yeah, quite a lot of words. I mean, how good is they got to be good?

I've got a book that's going to come out later this year. Do I'm very excited about? No, no, no. We haven't worked out the title yet exactly. We're finishing some ideas. But it's basically me whinging about shit. So it's kind of like the podcast, actually. Maybe you should call it the Chaserer aboard in book form.

Well, you could write interruptions. Yeah, that's great. That would be good. And you could subscribe to it. Actually, yes. That's not a bad idea. But the thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to get us to brainstorm how to market food now that people don't get addicted to it anymore. Oh, now likes food anymore.

If you're a food marketer and you've got to now rely – I mean, this destroys the American food industry because food is not something that you want to eat in America. Like, it's just horrible, horrible stuff. So that's why they had to add all the sort of addictive qualities and fast. balance the sodium and the fat and the sugar. They've got some magic formula. Isn't it true that it's very hard for particularly people in lower socioeconomic groups? You just can't basically get proper food anymore. No, you can't get fresh food.

It's just impossible. Like, unless you go to a farmer's market, you can't get proper fresh food. What about, have you seen this trend recently, the surprise box? I mean, there's a Japanese version called the Gatshapon, which my nephew's massively into a niece, which is where there's a vending machine. Got these little balls that kind of like little pods. Kind of like big kind of like big kind of capsules.

And you get all these different bizarre little things like a cat dressed as a cheeseburger is a popular one for instance. Right. I think we could do the same thing with food. I mean, Chaz is already proven you don't need it to be refrigerated. No, yeah. You open like a little capsule and you don't know what the flavor is going to be. And it doesn't matter because you don't like food anymore.

You don't know food. But you don't know what color it's going to be and maybe it's collectible in some way. And you could do it from all the different food chains. Yes, so you could have a Big Mac, you know, in one box. Yeah, sushi. Yeah, sushi. Some sashimi, I'm sure that would go off. You can have some Taco Bell Nacho cheese and be like, oh, shit, I've already got that on a subscription.

I don't need that. They would all taste the same, is the important thing. It would all taste bland and horrible. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, it doesn't matter anymore. You're marketing it on the look of it and the colors. Like, you could sort of bet what color it was going to be. It would be purple today or yellow.

I'm not, I'm not sure. I mean, what is the point of food anymore? Well, not to die. I mean, if you're reducing any of the enjoyment. from it, isn't it just basically? It's like putting petrol in a car. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, the whole point about a Zenpick is you don't really eat food anymore, do you?

Oh, the bare minimum, I'd say. Yeah, yeah. That's why you lose a whole other, and I think with Americans, it's probably years that they need to stop eating food before that they then need the food, isn't it? It's like, you know what I mean? I'm not sure there's a role for food in American society. So you just think food is obsolete now? Yes, I think so.

So what are they going to happen? How do you not die? Soilent green. Soilent green is people. Yeah, okay. So, well, that could work. It could just be like generic bar, like a sort of bar. A bar.

Packaged bar. Yes. Okay. Let's do that. Like a Musley bar, but without the taste of Musley. Like, even more boring than a musley bar. Yeah. We should get it on this.

Okay. What would we call it? The chaser bar. Tasteless. Yeah. Yeah, you could be the tasteless bar by the chaser. A good pun. Yeah.

And no one could sue us Because if it tasted of nothing We would have been delivering on our vision Yes, that's right And, okay So just an unrelated point, Charles Let's say that I was belatedly looking To make a new year's resolution

My birthday's coming up Yeah, yeah I'm not that far away from 50, right? 50 is coming for me in a couple years How do I get a Zimbich? I could try working out I could try getting into shape But it seems that the easy option

It's just to take injections of a diabetes his medicine once a week. Is there any way of... Oh, is it injections? Yeah, it's an injection. So I think in Australia at the moment, I'd need to become diabetic in order to do it. Yeah, I don't think it's available. So how do I do that?

Do I just drink lots of Coke, Chaz style and just... Yeah, just become diabetic. That's easy. Okay, and then I'll get the weight loss. And I think the way to do that is to lead a lifestyle that is identical to the lifestyle that you lead. Sedentary. Yeah.

Sedentary and dull. Yeah, that's good. Just write 45,000 words in the next four weeks. You see, you know what I could do now that I could do now that I'm. think of it is like, what if I wrote those words, like on an exercise bike or a treadmill or something? Wouldn't that be? I'd be in such good shape. See, this is the problem. You're going to, you're going to try and get a Zen pic and instead overshoot and just become, you know, life without any need for drugs. You'll eliminate the, like, in trying to get to the point where

you can be prescribed a Zen pick. I'll rule out the whole need for a Zempeak. Yeah. This is a diet book we should write. Yes. The Dom and Charles Way. The Dom and Charles Day. Yes, and so what's the Dom and Charles diet? Because that's the other thing. I think the diet industry is going to be completely wiped out by Zempik as well. And I think the diet industrial complex. That's right. The best diet is the one that acknowledges your flaws at the beginning.

So it has to be basically you fool yourself. Yes. We're talking about basically a hack. Like we're talking about a hack for weight loss that you're so complicated to qualify for that you actually end up getting you to shape by accident. Yes, yes. So in actual fact, the gold should. It shouldn't be, you know, healthiness.

No. The goal should be, I don't know, how do you... To completely deceive yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. God, that's hard. That's psychological. What I need is some sort of Wagyu beef cheeseburger

that actually contains a Zambik. So that I eat the unhealthiest possible option as I usually do. And you go, oops, accidentally. What's this needle in the burger? I was looking back the other day. Oh, just injected into me. Oops. I don't know.

I think you weren't around at the time. I think you were overseas. But there was a couple of days. which people always laugh at me about in The Chaser. You remember when the Atkins diet was big? Oh, no, the Atkins, yes. I was reading that book and I got really excited. And I went on the way home, I went to Chinatown and went to, like, the Chinese butcher

and brought all this roast duck and roast pork. And I'm like, this is it. I have no carbs. I'm just going to have a massive amount of roast pork and roast duck. And honestly, the fat sweating through my paws later that evening. I remember, let's just say that the toilet time became quite stinky. for a while there. It wasn't pleasant for anybody.

It certainly didn't lead to fat loss. Because that was true. Is it the keto diet as well? Yeah, a lot of the stuff bounces around. Because somebody I knew was on one of those diet, you know, like all protein. And their breath just stank. Like it was sort of like, okay, you're no longer my friend. Well, this is the point about the kind of caveman is that it wasn't like great life.

Like a short life expectancy. Kind of hunter-gatherer. Like, yes, it's the diet you have when you have. have no better way of getting food. So all these people embracing at this point, kind of giving up on thousands of years of moving away from that evolution. But also, isn't it all just bullshit? Isn't it like, yeah, it's just, like, my understanding is people pre-agriculture ate

really well, didn't they? Well, presumably also they were all in good shape because they had to work in the fields all day because of serfdom. Well, no, no, no, but before that, before serfdom and everything like that, It wasn't the whole point that you only worked like a few hours a day. Like at most you, you know, spent two or three hours and then you spent the rest of the time, I don't know, doing cave paintings and having sex. Charles, I think we've hit on something brilliant. That's a cave paintings and having sex.

It's a brilliant concept. It's the serfdom diet. It's the serfdom diet. That's what we need to write. The diet book about embracing sort of pre-industrial. And we can call it the road to surfdom. Yeah. Yeah.

That's fantastic. Okay. Unlock the surf within. I unlock the surf and turf. Yeah, surf and turf. All right. We've just made our next billion dollars, Charles. Okay.

Can you write 45,000 words on that by the end of February? I can try. Okay, done. How curious from Road. We're part of the Iconiclass Network, and this podcast is evidence that we came up with the surfdom diet first, and we are definitely registering that trademark. Definitely.