The Jordan Harbinger Show - 766: Banned Foods | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Why are so many of the snacks and drinks offered as safe for consumption in the United States wholly banned in other parts of the world? How bad could our favorite foodstuffs actually be? Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and fact-checker, comedian, and podcast host David C. Smalley break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. Editor's note: A previous version of this show's notes erroneously declared that aspartame was banned in the EU. We are in the process of correcting this and apologize for the error.  Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/766 On This Week’s Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Coffee Mate's liquid version is banned in Europe due to the presence of trans fats (found in hydrogenated vegetable oils) that can lead to heart disease. While the US requires warning labels for these foods, they are still available to consumers. Mexican and most European cola brands use cane sugar, while American Coke uses high fructose corn syrup, which is regulated in the EU. High fructose corn syrup has been linked to health issues such as insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular illnesses. Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener found in many US foods and drinks, including diet sodas and gum. It contains phenylalanine, which can cause problems for people with a rare genetic condition called PKU. While evidence is still being gathered, there have been concerns about the potential health effects of certain artificial food dyes, particularly their potential to cause hyperactivity in children. In the European Union, these dyes are banned from use in food products, while they are widely used in the United States. The EU has banned the use of growth hormones in cows due to concerns about potential health risks to humans and animals, as well as potential negative impacts on the environment. In the United States, however, they're commonly used in the dairy and meat industries to promote faster growth and increase milk production in cows. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with David at his website, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and make sure to check out The David C. Smalley Podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! If you like to get out of your house and catch... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and this is Skeptical Sunday. A special edition of the Jordan Harbinger show where fact checker and comedian David C. Smalley and I break down a topic that you might never have thought about. We open things up and debunk common misconceptions. Topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham, why expiration dates are a bunch of nonsense, why tipping makes absolutely no sense, recycling, banned foods, toothpaste, chemtrails, and a whole lot more. Normally on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and we turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We have long-form interviews and conversations

with a variety of incredible people from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show around these festive holiday times, I suggest our episode starter packs, these are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Topics like persuasion and influence, negotiation and communication, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. Just visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash start or take a look in your Spotify app to get started. Now, we haven't done Skeptical Sunday in a while. I'm actually going to be doing these hopefully every week in 2023, toying with that idea, but we had to throw this one down this year.

Now ban foods. We know lots of foods, and they're not great for us, but how bad are the bad foods really? We see these YouTube videos comparing American products to similar items in the UK or other parts of the world, and they look so different. So what's going on there? Why are some foods allowed in the U.S., but banned in other parts of the world? Comedian fact checker David C. Smalley is here, so I assume he wants to take all the fun out of snack time. David? Yeah, I might surprise you this time, Jordan.

I only want to ruin some of your snacks, but I have to be. I might actually throw a couple of curveballs your way. So I wanted to do this for a while because there are so many myths and so much misinformation about the food we eat, warnings about things to avoid that are overblown and things that are said to be dangerous that no one wants to even talk about. So I'm just here to break it all down. All right. What's up first?

I want to start in the morning where a lot of us would typically start. Yeah. Let's start with Coffee Mate. So in Europe, coffee made is only allowed. in powder form. So you'll see it on the shelves, but it's very different. This is that creamer stuff, right? Yeah, the coffee creamer.

They don't have it in liquid form in Europe, at least not the coffee mate brand, because the liquid version contains hydrogenated vegetable oils, which makes it one of the few products that still remain on the planet with trans fat, which has been proven to lead to heart disease. So the EU has a hard no on that. You won't find it in Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, or Denmark. But in powder form, they can still get that creamer effect without the bad stuff. Yet, in America, it's still approved for some reason.

I had a friend from South Africa come to visit, and he popped down to the shop to get, I don't know, like cigarettes and beer or whatever, and he wanted to drink. And he comes back up and he goes, oh, man, this drink is disgusting. You know, that's a terrible South African accent, but that's all I can muster right now. And I go, what are you drinking? And he holds up this bottle of coffee mate. I'm like, dude, that is not a drink. That is not something you're supposed to take a big fat swig of and slosh around and swallow.

Oh, man. Yeah. That's like what you put in an entire pot of coffee that gulp you just took. And he's like, oh, it's so sweet, man. I can't even. It was so gross looking at it. So it's like watching someone just drink, you know, pure cream out of the creamer at a restaurant. He probably thought the package was like, have a coffee, mate?

Yeah. It was like, no. It's not. It's not. It's not. Yeah, don't mind if I do. Yeah, they're definitely not used to, in many parts of the world. they're not used to seeing that in liquid form.

This next one may shock some people because this brand is so widely known around the world, but it's actually Coca-Cola, at least as we know it. So Mexican Coke and most coax in the EU contain sugar or cane sugar. An American Coke contains high-fructose corn syrup, which is regulated in the EU. So there aren't very many drinks in the EU that allow high-fructose corn syrup. So the Coke in Europe contains real sugar because high-fructose corn syrup, shocker, has been linked to issues like insulin resistance, diabetes, and multiple cardiovascular illnesses. You don't say, really, sugar is bad for you, or sorry, high fructose corn syrup is bad for you, and sugar's also bad for you, by the way.

So I guess it's like six of one, half dozen of the other, or maybe in this case, it's seven of one and a half dozen of the other, so slightly the same thing. Yeah, I'm seeing more and more people, I'm seeing more and more people say that like the regular sugar, even though it's poison, we all know it's terrible. Right. You take it in smaller doses. High fructose corn syrup is just so concentrated. so much worse for you than natural sugar. Oh, interesting, right, because it's sweeter. And also, it's so cheap they can just dump it in there.

I didn't think high fructose corn syrup was an issue when our parents were growing up, right? No, it wasn't. There was never part of their diet. So from the 1800s to the, like, the mid-1970s, corn prices fluctuated so much that it was just completely unpredictable. We had farmers cranking out corn and not enough products being made with corn. So the value and the price of corn became almost worthless. And then on top of that, the Great Depression only made things worse.

So in the 80s, our U.S. government decided to start offering subsidies on corn products to the tune of like $4.5 billion a year. Oh, wow. So that stabilized corn value, it encouraged manufacturers to use corn in their products. And it theoretically saved some farms from going under. So it could be a good thing. But I can come on and ruin farm subsidies on another episode because while it may sound like a good idea, idea. It actually does a lot of harm for a lot of different reasons, but that's for another episode. The point is, high fructose corn syrup is one of the worst things you could ever put

in your body. According to Healthline, one study in men and women with excess weight showed that drinking sodas with high fructose corn syrup for just six months significantly increased liver fat compared to drinking milk, diet sodas, or water. And liver fat accumulation leads to serious health problems like fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, things like that. It also causes inflammation in the body. It leads to gout, uric acid production, cell deterioration, cancer, and even heart disease, which of course is the number one killer in America. So no, diet soda isn't necessarily great for you, but those artificial sweeteners are not as bad as high-fructose corn syrup. So yes, shocker, sugar-filled sodas are still poison.

While we're on artificial sweeteners, can you clear up some myths around that? now there's like 10 different kinds and I don't know if they're all bad for you or if it's fine. Yeah, so there's a lot of misinformation around diet sodas and aspiratame in particular. It contains phenylalanine. Now, phenylalanine has been linked to complications for people with a specific condition known as PQU, which the Mayo Clinic defines as a rare inherited disorder that causes an amino acid called phenylalanine to build up in the body. So it affects about 1 in 10,000 people.

So naturally, I mean, if you're all, already having an excess amount of phenylalanine build up in your body. You don't want to add to the problem by drinking products containing aspartame because it's one of the primary ingredients. But is it bad for most of us? This is a real question. So, aspartame is about 180 times sweeter than sugar, but it has the same amount of calories. So you can have less of it and still get your sweet tooth cured.

That's why we use it in diet. Oh, interesting. It's not, so they just use way less of it. It's not that it's a, okay, that's interesting. It's not calorie-free. it's just you only need like a drop instead of a handful, basically. Exactly. So you get a lot less calories, but you still get the sweetness. And so the studies around the negative health effects have mostly been around massive doses of this stuff.

So they're not doing minimal amounts in diet soda. So the three ingredients that make up aspartame are already found in most of the foods we eat. And two of the ingredients are actually made inside your body. So it's not like it's a completely foreign substance. There was a massive study done. It was literally a study of studies. It was a study of studies. It was a done by the EFSA in the UK in 2013. They literally combined all of the data from all the studies all over the world about aspartame. And the findings were that essentially, and I encourage people to go find the study to look

up the EFSA. It's all going to be linked. All the doubters can look up the sources that we use right in the show notes. Absolutely. So they basically say that humans have an acceptable daily intake of 40 milligrams per day per kilogram of body weight. And I'm no fan of math or converting kilograms. grams to pounds. That's a ton of aspartame though, man. Yeah. So it basically means that on average,

a person weighing 165 pounds would have to drink 16 diet sodas per day to exceed the recommended limit, according to the American Cancer Society. And if you're drinking that much diet soda, you have way more issues than aspartame intake. Right, right. Like your teeth are gone at that point, and your esophagus is coming up every time you sneeze. So don't worry about aspartame. Like, You're already dead. You're already a walking dead man at that point. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. What about the claims that diet sodas are artificial sweeteners spike your blood sugar? They make you produce insulin and ultimately cause weight gain, right? Like it tricks your body into thinking you ingested sugar. How true is that? Yeah, I'm ashamed to admit I believed this for many years.

I definitely did. Yeah, I stayed away from diet sodas. There were times where I was on, like, I was getting ready for a role, or I was like working out or about to do a TV thing or a movie thing. and I would avoid diet sodas and I would be so miserable because I'd be at dinner I'd be having this healthy dinner and I would want that sort of spiky cola taste I absolutely hate sparkling water

it's just not something I can wrap my head around it feels like I'm drinking static I don't know why people do it Oh I'm drinking it right now I hate it I drink all daily show I just drink sparkling water I'm trying to force myself to learn to like it I think it would drastically reduce my craving for

That's why I started man I moved to Europe when I was in high school as an exchange student And this is so gross to admit. But I basically just didn't drink water. I was like, I have Coca-Cola. Why would I drink water? And then I got to Europe and I was like,

okay, I can't just keep drinking this. It's not the same family. And everybody already drank sparkling water because that's just a thing in Germany. You don't drink regular water most of the time. And I was like, oh, it's not bad. And then I came back and I was like, we call it pop. I don't need pop anymore.

I got sparkling water. So I got a soda stream, and I just don't use the soda packets. I just sparkle the water. And I don't drink pop anymore. Like, I don't even like it, really. Yeah. It's just totally detonated.

So I'm trying to, I'm trying to wean myself onto it, if that's a thing. I've been trying to make myself do it. I just think back to all the times I was miserable, and all I wanted was just a dyed soda or something that gave me that little sparkle. Sparkling water is the methadone for sodas. That's a great way to put it. You know what I mean? It's like instead of, yeah, you're trying to get off soda so you get on sparkling water,

except for sparkling water theoretically will not also kill you. It may write your teeth. I don't know. Different show. So I've heard there's been for years, they told us the, the quote unquote experts would say, you know, if you drink a diet soda, your body thinks it sugar so you overproduce insulin and you get fat, your blood sugar spikes and all this other thing. Well, there are multiple studies now and test you can do at home. I don't know why I

never even thought of this, but you can do tests at home to debunk this. So just if you want to experiment and you can safely do it, don't say, I tried it and died. It was David Smalley's fault. I used a rusty spoon to take my blood sample. Do you believe I got an infection? So get a Coke and then get a Diet Coke and get a Glucometer, right? One of those blood sugar things. And then you take a baseline reading of your blood in the morning. Drink one of the sodas. Like drink the regular Coke and then test again in 20.

I mean, I recommend doing the Diet Coke first. And then test again, you know, test your blood sugars again 20 minutes after you drink the Diet Coke and see what happens. And then a couple of days later or the next day or in a few hours, wait, that kind of flow through and try it again with the other thing. listen, what you're going to find is the diet sodas have virtually no effect on blood sugar. And if you see a small rise, it could be that either the machine is cheap and weird or that it could be linked to trace amounts of carbohydrates instead of the artificial sweetener. So I don't recommend drinking anywhere close to 16 diet sodas a day or even four or three, for that matter.

If you want to have a diet drink with dinner and you're not suffering with a medical condition or a PQ, relax and go for it. It's not going to spike your insulin levels. It's not going to make you fat. Now, it might make you bloated and not want to work out. It might give you a caffeine rush if you're not used to it. But in moderation, diet drinks aren't all that bad. Just pay attention to your body, eat healthy for the most part, and walk a few times a week.

It's not that hard. All right. Well, that's better news than expected. I do love me a little caffeine-free Diet Coke from time to time. Usually you ruin everything for us, so that's good news. It's like a little hall pass there. Yeah, and now it's time to ruin some things for you. So.

That's why you're here. Here we go. Potassium bromate. Doesn't sound delicious at all. No, it sounds like someone that would hang out with Brendan Scha. It's one of the lesser known ingredients that I'll be talking about today, but it's only really lesser known to Americans. It's banned in China. It's banned in Canada.

It's banned in the European Union, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, South Korea, Sri Lanka, India, and many more. Why? Well, it's been shown to cause cancer in lab rats. But it's allowed in the food in the United States. Jeez, when it's banned in China and it's not Twitter and it's not banned in the United States, that is bad news. It's scary. Yeah, that's scary, man.

Okay. So what are you about to destroy for me? Because I don't know, please tell me this isn't like vegetables or something, right? What is this in? Sorry, man. This is in pizza, pastries, bread, and breakfast sandwiches. So basically my entire diet. So is it in, what is it in flour, I guess, or what?

Yeah, so most flowers, specifically all Trump's flour, no relation. I was like, wait a minute. We don't have to make this political, man. No, yeah, he's got his own flour now. No, no, it's a type of flour. So according to LiveScience.com, in 1982, researchers in Japan published this series of studies that showed potassium bromate causes cancer in the thyroid, kidneys, and other body parts of rats and mice.

And as a result of those findings, countries all over the world started banning the additive, but the FDA held back, in part because the amount of potassium bromate that's supposed to remain in the bread after baking it is supposed to be negligible, which would be about less than 20 parts per billion. So according to the EWG or the environmental working group, they say, quote, despite the significant evidence of potassium bromate's harmful health effects, the food industry has long argued that it is of no concern in baked products. The industry claims that potassium bromate is theoretically fully converted into potassium bromide, a similar yet non-carcinogenic chemical during baking.

Uh-huh. End quote. But testing in the UK revealed that potassium bromate still remains detectable after baking, with six out of six unwrapped breads and seven out of 22 packaged breads showing they contained measurable levels of potassium bromate. So this alone led the state of California to pass a law stating that any product that contains potassium bromate must put a store level cancer warning on it, but it's still not banned. You know, it's actually fit for human consumption, some of the products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting the show. All of the deals and all of the URLs and discount codes, they're all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Also, search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. Consider supporting those who support this show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Those cancer warnings, though, the problem with those, and this is a tangent, they're on everything in California. Like, I was in a parking structure today, and it's like, hey, just so you know, Prop 65, chemicals in this area can cause cancer.

And I'm like, what, car exhaust? Yeah, obviously. It's on every building. And then every restaurant has it. There may be chemicals in here. And I open food, and it's like, there might be something in here that causes. is cancer. And I'm like, well, I can't even do anything about it. Now, this is on everything that I touch in California. The warning has become completely meaningless, which is sort of like,

this is what happens when maybe you overregulate a lot of stuff, but that's maybe a different show entirely. So it's hard to pay attention to that stuff because it's like a slip and fall sign on every floor. Like, yeah, I can potentially fall here. I get it. Gravity. Thanks. Absolutely. And there are places that do that. They will literally leave the slip and fall sign in their main entrance at all times. In case anyone ever falls, it's like their little insurance policy. And that's a problem with, instead of just banning it, putting it on labels under the guise of freedom, let the people decide. They won't because you get desensitized to the label and then people just keep shoving it in their faces without understanding exactly how bad it is.

Guilty as charged. So are these pre-packaged frozen pizzas and desserts or what? Yeah, so I've provided a link to a list so that you guys can put it in the show notes. But to get an idea, the EWG says it's in goya pastries, some hormones, breakfast sandwiches, some brands of pizza rolls, some frozen crab cakes, some golden crust products, wheat brand bread. There are over 60 items on the list. Probably the most ironic is one called Canadian home style pizza, but it has an ingredient that's literally banned in Canada, so it's definitely not Canadian style.

Sorry to hear that. What's that all about? Now, to be a good skeptic, I fact check this entire list. So that was a whole ass Monday. That sounds like a miserable. I am sorry that I did that to you. Yeah, you know what? I wanted to be thorough.

And not only that I do it online where I could, I did it in person as well. I literally went grocery shopping without buying things. And I was flipping products over going, why is this different from the picture on the internet? Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave whole foods. You can't handle all the food and then put it back. Yeah, I was tossed out of multiple Trader Joe's.

They're like, you cannot be here. You should see my wall. It looks like a serial killer with yarn, linking products to parent companies. You're ruining my life, Jordan. I want you to know that. Yeah, that's fine. I found something interesting through all this psychotic research. So a lot of the brands I listed will have their ingredients readily available on their

websites for items that do not contain potassium bromate. And then when I would start digging for specifics like, let's say specifically to make sure the Hormel Breakfast Sandwich actually has it, their ingredients in the same. sandwich just says like bagel, ham, cheese, et cetera. But they don't say what the bagel is made of or what kind of flour was used to make it. And then when you click on the products list, sometimes they just don't have an ingredients tab. And in one instance, the ingredient link just goes to this page and no longer exists. So they're not making it very easy to locate or to confirm or deny. And I've got one other suspicion here. I think this is not necessarily factual.

This is my speculation. It's a bread conspiracy. Yeah. Yeah. on Netflix. Yeah, our new duck with Jordan Arpenter and David C. Swally, Brett Spearsie. I think sometimes they use generic pictures from other countries so that when you look at ingredients, they can kind of be slick because you have to dig and dig and dig and then zoom in and then take a picture and zoom on your phone. Like, they're not very forthright with the ingredient.

So I think sometimes they're using images willy-nilly, shall we say. And then when you go to the supermarket and flip the package over, you'll see sometimes potassium bromate, sometimes it will not say that. It'll call it by a different name, but I'll get to that in a second. Okay. Wow, different name. They have an alias for their poisonous chemicals. Yeah, they do.

And I think sometimes they're using different images from different parts of the world. And I would like to know the legalities on that. Yeah, that's interesting because it's kind of like, well, the image may be different than package, which is fair. Like, oh, we change the label from green to yellow, okay. But not like, oh, we put different stuff in other countries because it's bare. here because it's unhealthy, but hey, it's cheap. Yeah, food brands have always done a great job of hiding the ingredients or changing the names of ingredients. I mean, when you and I were growing up,

nutrition labels, I don't even know if they were mandatory. I don't think they had to put that on the food or just had calories or something. This is all sort of new. So a lot of people that grew up that are 40 plus, we don't look at nutrition labels because we never really learned about it and we're not used to seeing them. So it's like, I just buy the stuff that I've eaten for the last 30 years because whatever. Right. So, What's going on here is hiding the bad stuff under different names. So the key phrase I eventually found was bleached flour. Oh, yeah.

I've seen that. Hillbilly bread, man. You remember that bread? It's all over. No. Okay. It was called Hillbilly bread. My parents bought it all the time.

I'm guaranteed listeners have heard of this. And it was bleached flour, but it was like, I think they died it so that it looked like wheat bread, but it was just wheat bread. It's just nonsense crap, junk bread. And I grew up on it. Most of the pastries that we eat, I know I mentioned some specific brands, but most of the stuff you eat, you flip it over, you'll see bleached flour. So I have to give the disclaimer that technically not all bleached flour contains potassium bromate, but almost all of it does. In fact, the non-bromate flour will typically say non-bleached, non-bromated white flour. Like Bob's Redmill and King Arthur, for example, they say unbleached all-purpose flour. flour or unbleached white flour. Those brands do not contain bromate. In fact, both brands actually have sections on their website, like dedicated to addressing the dangers of bromating flour.

Must be a popular page on the site, yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure tons of hits on that one. They should sponsor it. But almost every other major brand in your supermarket has it, like gold metal. And I'm not throwing them under the bus. They're proud of it. They're like bromated white flour, bleached flour. And that in turn includes most of the pastries you're buying, the bakery treats at the grocery store, most of the breads in the supermarket. And if you're reading your pastry ingredients and it says bleached flour or sometimes enriched flour, there's really a good chance. It's been bromated, bro. So, rather than getting into the weeds further, I just strongly recommend people do research on your products, avoid potassium bromate every chance you get,

you know, like most of the world is already doing. I want to get into food dyes. I don't know if you remember when we were a little, like, red dye number four or something was turned out to be completely horrifically toxic and in a bunch of kid food. It's red dye three. Three, okay. I was close. Off by one.

Sorry, red dye number four. I've slandered you here. I don't think there is a four. Oh, well, then it doesn't exist. Therefore, I can slander it all I want. So there's things that don't have to be banned, but they would start looking a lot differently if we made some federal regulations to catch up with some of the healthier countries, right?

you've talked before about controversial food dies. Yeah, during one episode or maybe we were even like not recording yet or something. And I mentioned that I wanted to do banned foods. The food dies were really the kind of driving force behind it. Like, because I was eating, I think, a bag of talkies. My daughter loves those talkie chips. And I'm like, how bad is this stuff? And I flip them over and I see that there's like these food dies in them.

So I've said on the show before that I'm vegan. And then I say, I cheat sometimes, which makes me a liar. But it's most about being sustainable. It has a lot to do with food allergies. I said I have 29, you know, food allergies. So I'm always avoiding stuff. Eating vegan just tends to help me out. But the times where I've kind of been like on a seaside restaurant or something,

and literally the only vegan option is a plate of French fries, I've gone the pescatarian route and been like, okay, I'll have fish this one time. I think maybe four or five times during the whole vegan stretch I had a little bit of fish. But then I would still be like, well, I want to be sustainable. I'm going to be respectful to the environment. and I know our seas and our lakes get overfished. So I would rather go with farm-raised salmon

just as the ethical, because if they were literally born and raised specifically for food, that makes me feel better about the concept that we're not overfishing nature, right? Well, here's the problem with that. Organic.org notes this. They say wild salmon gets its bright pink color

from natural foods in their diet, including a natural cartenoid called astazanthan. And Healthline says that a natural, sourced astazanthan, which is in plants, wildfish, it's really good for you. It can help with heart health. It can help with joint pain. It can help your skin. And it's even an antioxidant that could potentially fight some cancers. So they argue that wild caught salmon is actually very good for your diet. Farmed salmon, on the other hand, are typically raised on an unnatural diet of grains and a concoction of antibiotics and other drugs and chemicals not shown to be safe for humans. Oh yeah. Surprise,

That diet leaves fish with this unappetizing, like, gray color. So to compensate, farm salmon are fed this synthetic astazanthin that's made from petrochemicals. Stop. Petrochemicals. Is that what it sounds like? Like petroleum, bi-product? Oh, my God. Petroleum.

So that's what gives it the bright pink color and that has not been approved for human consumption and has well-known toxicities. Some studies suggest it can potentially damage your eyesight. The Chicago Tribune reports that that's the reason it's banned for consumption in Australia and New Zealand, but for some reason it's allowed the United States. Okay, so we've all seen Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 in the ingredients. I'm looking at some stuff. What is that? Just tell me that safe. So those three, the Red 40, the Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, the reason those are just at the tip of your tongue, those are three most common in the states. They're all over the place. They're in boxed mac and cheese. They're in cheddar flavor crackers. They're jello. They're kids. cereals, spicy chips, they contain red 40, yellow 5,

yellow 6, and or blue 2. Sometimes blue 2 is a part of that thing and sometimes it's not. And they're the most popular dies of the United States. They're in the most popular products. So this is a little bit controversial. I'm going to tell you what food safety news.com claims about this. They say that these synthetic chemicals

do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of the foods, which is true. But they say that it can trigger behavior problems in children. and possibly cancer in just about anybody. Now, that was from CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. James Huff, an associate at the National Toxicology Program, commented,

quote, some dies have caused cancer in animals, contain cancer causing contaminants, remember that for later. That's very important in a second. Or they have been inadequately tested for cancer or other problems. So, by the way, CSPI is the center for science in the public interest. I was going to ask. I was like, not really familiar with CSPI. Okay. No, so that organization mailed a letter to the FDA in 2010, and they detailed a request that food dies be banned in the United States to protect consumers. Their whole charge is that

the FDA is failing to enforce already existing laws. They're like, this stuff is already banned if you pay attention to your own law. So number one, that Red 3 and Citrus Red 2 should be banned under the Delaney Amendment because they cause cancer in rats, and that's been proven. And some of our dyes were banned in the 90s, but then they were unbanded. They were later allowed without really any explanation. As should red 40, yellow 5, and yellow 6. So all the stuff we use all the time is tainted, potentially? Well, the red 40, yellow 5, and yellow 6, they say it's an important distinction that it's tainted

with cancer-causing contaminants. So I'm going to touch on that in just a second, because I want to kind of get through the other claim that the CSPI makes toward the FDA. I want to touch back on this, the difference between the dye and the contaminants in the die. Okay. So the second thing the CSPI charges when they write the FDA in 2010, they say that evidence suggests, although it doesn't conclusively prove it, but the evidence suggests that blue one, blue two, green three, and red 40 and yellow six cause cancer in animals. But even if it doesn't conclusively prove that it does, there is certainly not convincing evidence of safety.

And that's another major point here. When it comes to food, everything is guilty until proven innocent. You're supposed to conclusively prove food safety before it's allowed, not just ignore it and hope no one dies. Yeah, ideally, right? I mean, it seems that what CSPI is saying is that even if we don't have conclusive proof of the danger, we definitely don't have conclusive proof of safety. Exactly. The only point of these dies is to make food brighter and more attractive. Food Safety News.com shows that the differences in the UK and in America,

when it comes to the same products are striking. So back in 2010, they wrote this. They say, in Britain, Fanta orange soda is dyed with pumpkin and carrot extract, while the U.S. version is dyed with red, 40, and yellow 6. They say that Kellogg's strawberry nutrigraine bars are colored with red 40, yellow 6, and blue 1 in the United States, but with beetroot and paprika extract in the UK. McDonald's Strawberry Sundays, they're colored with strawberries in Britain. but with red 40 in America.

That explains so much. It's like a bright-ass red. Yeah. So I went to fact-checked this myself. I literally went to a grocery store. I picked up a box of the NutraGrain bars at Target. The product here says vegetable juice for color. So it's possible that either the info online is outdated.

It's possible that it's regional or that California has some regulations. But because it's not banned in the U.S., there's no way. way to know which products have it, which ones don't, which companies decide to stop using it when the controversy starts and then start using them again, or which local stores around me import UK versions of the product? So read your labels carefully because the dyes aren't banned. I also fact-checked the cancer claims, and I found this on Healthline. They say that the safety of artificial food dyes is highly controversial. However, the studies that have evaluated the safety of food dyes are on long-term animal studies. So interestingly, studies using Blue 1, Red 40,

yellow 5, and yellow 6 found no evidence of cancer-causing effects. Great. But pause. An animal study on Blue 2 found a significant increase in brain tumors in the high-dose group. Male rats, given Red 3, had an increased risk of thyroid tumors. Then, after just saying that the dyes themselves don't necessarily cause cancer, they say this, quote, while most food dyes did not cause any adverse effects in toxicity studies, there is some concern about possible contaminants inside the dyes. Oh man, like an ingredient in the ingredient is the thing that's bad for you. Exactly, just like with aspartame. Just like the bagels. Yeah. Yeah, just like with aspartame, the phenylalanine is the issue, not the specific aspartame. So red 40, yellow five, and yellow

six may contain contaminants that are known cancer-causing substances with the excessive. With the exception of red three, there is currently no convincing evidence that an artificial food dies specifically causes cancer. But you know there's an asterisk there. So red three is definitely the worst, but who the hell knows about the rest? That is scary. But also, you know, it makes me think, you know that race to make food sweeter? So like we go from sugar to cane sugar to high fructose quixor? High fructose, yeah. It's almost like, hey, this red is not red enough for people to go, dang, that's red and I want to eat it. So let's use the reddest thing we can find that contrast against the ice cream and the Sunday or whatever, we need the reddest of the red. In fact,

even if we're going to have strawberries, I want red syrup with red 40 in there so that when people pour these out, they're like, these are the reddest strawberries I've ever seen in my life. You know, so we constantly kind of ratchet up our level of how salty, sweet or red or blue or green or whatever the hell that we require to make sure something looks fresh or appetizing. And that's a bad idea. That's a race to the bottom. So this is either, I want to blame one of two groups. It's either the fault of focus groups, because if we had never known how bright it was supposed to look, if the strawberry Sunday was just that color of pink, we would have just rolled with it, right? But when they stick two of them in front of a focus group of 12 people and eight of the 12

go with the brighter color, they go, aha, we have to inject the food dyes. Like, it's not really all that necessary. It's either their fault or amazing photographers who take these beautiful photos, alter the colors and the lighting so that the reds pop and everything's amazing and it makes your mouth water. And then you go to the store, you go to the restaurant, and you buy it and you're like, this doesn't look like the picture. And then so they're like, all right, well, strap in, buddy. There's a good shot of red three in your face.

And now it looks like the picture, you know, and so that can cause a lot of the issues. Yeah. We'll be right back. If you liked this episode of Feedback Friday and you found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. To learn more and get links to all of the discounts and all the codes, they're all in one place, a very searchable place works on your phone. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is the page. All of those codes are there, and you can also search for any sponsor using the search box

right there on the website as well at Jordan Harbinger.com. Thank you so much for supporting those who support us. It really does keep us going and makes it possible to continue creating these episodes week after week. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. I went to go to the, the Great Barrier Reef half a decade ago in Australia, and I'm snorkeling around with the instructor or the guide. We got out of the boat and she goes, amazing, isn't it? And I go, yeah, I just thought it would be like much more colorful. Is that because of coral bleaching? And she's like, no, you moron, it's because we're not on the Discovery Channel. You can't see those colors underwater with your stupid goggles. You know, they fine tune that after they film it. It's

filmed on a $100,000 underwater camera. That's just not what it looks like in real life. It's what it looks like under ideal conditions after being retuned by a laboratory. And I was like, oh, so I've come here to expect the full technical or whatever experience. And Coral Reese have never looked that way ever to the human eye. You're swimming around going, this sucks. It's not even in 4K. Yeah, I flew it all the way out here. It's all like there's salt in my mouth.

How dare you? Where's my snack? Yeah. And she was just, she was offended by how I was like, well, it's a little disappointing because it's not bright. Meanwhile, I thought it was about environmental pollution, and she's like, you're a terrible person. Just get out of my reef. I love the response, no, you moron, because we're not on the Discovery Channel.

That's the best. Totally. She was just like, no, you watch too much TV. And I was like, yeah, okay, thanks for the tour, jerk. So this one's scary. I made an off-the-cuff mention about red meat at one point on the show, I think during our expiration dates episode. But this again from organic.org, ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, which basically just means it makes animals more muscular and reduces fat.

So organic.org estimates that ractopamine is currently used in about 45% of U.S. pigs, while Livestcience.com estimates it's about 60 to 80%. It's in about 30% of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys are pumped full of this drug in the days leading up to slaughter. Here's the scary part. Up to 20% of rectopamine remains in the meat you buy from the supermarket, according to veterinarian Michael W. Fox. It is banned in 160 countries, including all of the EU, Russia, China, and Taiwan. In fact, in 2013, Russia, put a ban on U.S. imported meats until we are willing to certify it as ractopamine-free.

But currently, we don't even test for it, let alone regulate or ban it. Wow. Yikes. That's terrifying. It sounds like something bodybuilders would use before a contest, right? Just get leaner and more muscular. But I get it. They want the animals leaner and to produce better meat because pigs are supposed to be fat,

but if you can make the denser, muscular part and it just has enough fat, then you're going to get a better price for the hot. So that's the purpose, but the drug itself was originally developed to treat asthma. So it's like a steroid to strengthen the patient. And it was only adapted for animal use when it was accidentally shown to boost growth rates. So livescience.com says that the FDA approved rectopamine for use on pigs. Here's another scary piece of this. After just one human health study, and in the study they only evaluated six people,

and the six people were young, healthy men, one of whom, dropped out because his heart started racing and pounding out normally. So don't worry, only 15% of the people almost died taking this. Yeah. So three years later, the FDA sent ractopamine sponsored this 14-page letter accusing the company of withholding information about the drugs adverse animal effects and safety and effectiveness and was really threatening. Shortly thereafter, the FDA then required drug manufacturers to add this warning. Here's the warning. Ractopamine may increase the number of injured and or fatigued pigs during marketing,

not for use in breeding swine. But the warning only goes on pig and cow feed, not on the meat packaging for humans to consume. So not only is ractopamine associated with major health problems in food-producing animals, such as Downer Syndrome, which is essentially extreme fatigue, somewhat so to the point that they won't even stand up on their own, as well as severe cardiovascular stress, it's also been linked to heart problems

and even poisoning in humans. And after being banned in 160 countries, it's still allowed in the United States. How can this be possible? Why are there not federal regulations on this or any of the other chemicals that you've talked about so far? I mean, the FDA does a decent job with a lot of things. This seems to be completely under their radar for decades.

You know, on my podcast, when I bring on conspiracy theorists, any time they start to bring up some issues with our government or issues with secrets, I have to give them a little bit of leeway and go, I know. There's some issues I have, too. Not all the ones you have. I think whenever Johns Hopkins University and multiple different outlets are all confirming the same thing from different parts of the world, I tend to believe it more. But there are some issues politically within our government that should be addressed. Sure. So if you have a chance to pop by opensecrets.org, you're going to see that the food and beverage industry gave a total of $53 million to American politicians in 2020 alone. So when the government speaks about it, they acknowledge that like ractopamine exists. But then they'll just say something like it's not in big enough amounts to be of concern. That's their answer for just about anything. Yeah.

I hate that answer. I mean, look, many times that answer is indeed true. but as we found out from our bread conspiracy above, sometimes it's not true and it's like, oh, yeah, well, this is often true. But 30% of the time it is true and good luck to you if you were raised on those brands because now you're taking in a crap load of it, but hey, whatever. Yeah. And by the way, and speaking of the bread thing, it could be about the temperature to which you bake the bread.

If it's baked at, you know, 160, you know, let's say 300 degrees for an hour, then it might go away more. But if it's baked at 280 for 48 minutes, it might not be enough. So the bread is baked, but maybe the potassium bromine, you know, stays in your system. So like one batch has a crap load of it and one batch is fine. Or when they started testing it years ago, they're like, we haven't changed a thing other than baking it for 10 fewer minutes, but whatever. And it's like, well, that made all the difference. Exactly.

Ugh, scary. So I've got another one I want to jump into. This one is mostly being taken care of. It's known as BVO. So according to the Mayo Clinic, bromine, which we're back on the same sort of potassium bromide bromine situation or bromate, which this one is found in BVO, which is called brominated vegetable oil. So just like in real life, this bro thing seems to make everything worse.

I was going to say, bros are so bad for you. Bros are ruining all of this. So BVO can irritate the skin, irritate the mucous membranes, and while long-term exposure can cause neurologic symptoms like headache, memory loss, impaired balance, or loss of coordination. That's why it's banned in Japan. It's banned in the EU. So the primary use of this has been in drinks, specifically citrus-flavored sodas.

So in 2014, Coca-Cola removed BVO from all of its products. But until 2020, BVO was found in Mountain Dew and some different flavors of Gatorade, both owned by PepsiCo. So they just announced two years ago that they were removing that toxic chemical from the drinks, but it's still not banned by the FDA. So pay close attention to your drinks. It's usually in citrus-based drinks because it's used as an emulsifier that helps to keep the citrus oils from just floating to the top so that every drink tastes the same. So many brands still use it.

So just watch your labels closely. Okay, so like squirt. Remember that? That was so good, man. That's an underrated pot. Yeah, that was one of my favorites as a kid. It was one of my favorites. And I don't know for sure if it has it.

It sounds like it would. I didn't specifically check that one and I don't want anyone freaking out. But yes, that's sort of in line with the products that would use it. Could use a diet squirt right now. Yeah. And I don't know if you have any animals, but BHA and BHT are synthetic antioxidants that can be found in dog foods primarily. But it's also in breakfast cereal.

It's in nut mixes. It's in chewing gum, butter spread, some meats, dehydrated potatoes, and beer. That one broke my heart. Yeah. So BHA is known to cause cancer in rats, and it may be cancer causing in humans as well. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Toxicology Program's 2011 report on carcinogens says that BHA is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. BHA and BHT are both banned in parts of the EU and Japan.

My mom is a certified vet tech and she refuses to give her dogs any food that contains BHA or BHT. If you look at the treats, the dog treats, the main brand of dog foods, it's in all of that stuff. So you've got to dig to find stuff that doesn't have it. Man, yikes. I mean, luckily it seems like it's in a lot of pet foods, but chewing gum, I mean, there can't be that much in there, but I guess it depends on how much gum you chew. Beer seems like it could add up quick. I've got one more. So it's called Alestra.

Have you heard of it? I feel like I have because it was in the news. And it was, what is this? This was a potato chip thing or like a fat thing. Yeah, so it's usually in french fries and fat-free potato chips. So whenever they started pushing for things to be like more fat-fat-fut. or whatever. Delish.com writes,

low calorie counts aren't always worth it when the product is made with cooking oil substitute Olestra, which inhibits your body ability to absorb vitamins, which is why it's banned in Canada and in the EU.

So sometimes there's no way to tell if your product has been made with it and until it's regulated or banned, you just really may never know, which is why it's just best to avoid those items to begin with like fried things or whatever or at the very least,

just keep it in moderation. So the running, theme here is not only are these chemicals proven to be dangerous in some form or fashion, but they're either not fully tested or they are suspected to be harmful to humans and not fully studied. Right. And you'd think it would be enough that several other countries are banning the products, but America just doesn't seem to give a damn. Yeah. So do we have an idea of how much this actually affects the health of Americans? Like, is there impact that we can measure from this? Well, I'll put it like this. Out of roughly 195 countries in the world, America is number five for cancer rates per capita. We're number 14 in obesity. And according to the World Health Organization, among OECD countries who participate in leading the world in economic development, the United States is the fattest country in the group with 36 percent of our population classified as obese.

34 million Americans are diabetic and one person in the United States dies from heart disease every 36 seconds. Wow. That sounds really bad. Anyway, you slice it. Yeah, especially when Japan, Israel, and other parts of the EU rank pretty low on the cancer scale. And Spain, who was, of course, part of the European Union and Japan, who banned most of the same foods as the EU, are tied for the healthiest countries in the world, while America ranks 35th overall with a scoffer. score of like 75. The National Institute of Health released a report in 2010 showing that the United States lags behind many countries in increasing longevity, ranking just 49th among world countries in life expectancy at birth. And this isn't just about death. The analysis showed that, for example, a man who was 20 years old in 1998 could expect to live about 55 additional years, spending

about 10 of those years with serious disease and about 3.8 years with limited mobility. But in contrast, a man who was 20 years old in 2006 could expect to live about a little bit longer, about 56 more years, but spend more time with disease 12.3 years instead of 10, and more years with a lack of mobility, 5.8 years instead of 3.8. So you're living like one year longer, but spending two more of those years with serious disease and less mobility. That's terrible. That's going backwards. It really is. It's the new American dream. I know, you know, everyone wants that easy to follow God or that magic pill to answer all the health and weight loss. And I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to hand you what you've always,

what you've always wanted. Move to Spain or Japan. Here we go. One other thing I found is that in Spain and Japan, those healthiest countries in the world with all those banned additives, they also happen to have the highest amounts of people who walk to work. So there are no shadowy secrets here. Eat your vegetables. Have the occasional snack. Drink a diet cola with dinner if you want. But walk every single day and you'll increase your chances of not being a sickly

American who dies too young. Also, look both ways. Buses can really throw a wrench in that whole longevity thing. Yeah, super healthy, but then he got hit by a beer truck. Who knows? Who knew? Must have been the bromids in the beer, man. Must be.

David, thank you very much. Really enlightening. And now I would say I'd go have a snack, but everything in my pantry has to go straight to the trash now. It's all disgusting. Yeah. All right. It felt good to drop a skeptical Sunday here to wrap up the year. Any feedback, any suggestions on topics for skeptical Sunday, please do keep those coming.

You can shoot them to me as a DM on Instagram. You can hit me on LinkedIn or just email me, Jordan atjurbinger.com. A link to the show notes for the episode can always be found on the website at Jordanharbinger.com as well. transcripts in the show notes i'm at jordan harbinger on twitter and instagram again you can connect with me on lincoln there's less crazies there i've found you can find david smalley at david c smalley on all social media platforms at david c smolley dot combe or better yet on his podcast the david c smolley links to all that in the show notes as well this show is created an association with podcast one my team is jenn harbinger jase sanderson robert ayn baird millio campo josh ballard and gabriel mizrahi our advice and opinion

are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and you shouldn't trust my advice, even if I were. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. Hey, if you found the episode useful, share it with somebody else who needs to hear it. And enjoy your holiday, full of foods, banned or otherwise. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. Here's a preview with a former undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Gambino crime family in New York for nearly three years, resulting in the arrest and conviction of 35 mobsters. And get this, he's not even Italian.

Here's a bite. Jordan, I've done everything. I mean, I have posed as a money laundry. I've worked as a drug dealer. I have worked as a transporter for drug dealers. I worked as a warehouse guy. The whole gamut. My career was 24 out of 26 years. We're solely dedicated working on the cover. If I wasn't working for the FBI, I would have been investigated by the FBI. Exactly, yeah. Now, I walk in, I'm in the bar. Now, there's a barmate there. Good looking young lady. She's serving me, what would you like? I used to leave my drink was give me a kettle, one martini, three olives, a glass of water on the side. I finished the drink. The guys come in. I'm going to go, go in my pocket, take out the big water money at knot with the rubber band on it.

Bam, I'll give her $100. You're not a guy. who takes out a little leather wallet and he's going through the change or he's doing that. Can you imagine four gangs are sitting around going, let's split it up. I had the soup. He had to sandwich and french fries. What about the table? Sometimes we get into bidding work. That goes, hey, your money's no good here.

What are you doing? You're embarrassing me over here. What do you mean? You paid the land. Let me get to. Forget about it. You pay for it. If I would have gone in there and became a guy who had never a penny,

never went into his wallet, never picked up a lot. never picked up a tab, never had a dime, never kicked up money, never gave tribute payments. That'd be on my ass, they throw me out. If you're with the mob, I say, hey, Jordan, you're on record with us. That means we protect you, nobody could shake you down. We could shake you down, but you're on record with us. For more, including tricks wise guys used to know who's legit and who's not, mob culture and the rules that govern the always upward flow of money, and how Jack became so trusted by the highest levels of the organization that they offered him the chance to become a made man. Check out episode 392 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Jack Garcia.

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