Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck 62: From Mom-and-Pop to Mega-Corporations: The Transformation of America’s Food Industry

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

How did a nation built on local farms and family businesses become dependent on a handful of massive corporations for most of its (now mostly processed) food? In this week's Short Suck, we investigate the surprising evolution of the American food industry over the past century, from mom-and-pop markets to mega-distributors, exploring how convenience, consolidation, and ultra-processed foods quietly transformed what ends up on all of our plates. For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to another edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins, and today I will be answering a question you may not have asked, but maybe should be asking, what are we eating? What in God's green earth has been going on with America's food industry? I'll sum it up with just four words, but really just one word. It has been economized. But I think you probably want more than that summary, right? You do.

So stay right where you are and allow me to explain the past 100-year shift in America's food industry. industry. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I'll plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us. A century ago, what the average American family ate was probably not surprisingly, very

different than it is now. Caviar, lobster, and steak. That was it. That was all any American ate ever 100 years ago. Just nothing but caviar, steak, and lunch. Lobster. What a dream. No. But let's look at some data taken from USDA's loss-adjusted food availability historical data sets. The USDA being the United States Department of Agriculture, an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of

commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and production, works to assure food safety, protects natural resources, fosters rural communities, and works to end hunger in the U.S. and internationally, or so they say, headed by the Secretary of Agriculture, who reports directly to the president of the U.S. and is a member of the president's cabinet. And the data I will be sharing from the USDA represents the actual ingested calories for a blended average of U.S. adult men and U.S. adult women age 20 to 39. And we'll first look at 1930, the first year we have comprehensive data.

Back then, almost a century ago, we consumed an average of 597 calories of bread. and pasta per day, 543 calories of potatoes, 336 calories of red meat. So top three, bread and pasta, potatoes, red meat. And then 314 calories of milk and yogurt, 295 calories of lard and butter, 156 calories of vegetable greens, followed by 129 calories of fruits and berries, then 115 calories of canned and preserved foods, way down on the list. 94 calories of eggs, 62 calories of sweets and candies, also way down on the list, 160 calories of rich and whole grains, 41 calories of poultry, and then finally, just 27 calories of cheese and melted dairy for an average of about 2,870 actual ingested calories.

Now, let's compare all that to now. It's going to look a little different to 2026. The new category of fast food, now the top category, for average calorie consumption. 657 calories from fast foods such as cheeseburgers and pizza. Then the new category of junk snacks. Stuff like mostly mass manufactured bags of potato chips and Oreos and Fudge Graham cookies, etc.

Second place with 482 calories. Then seed oils in third place with 306 calories. Seed oils had already hit the market by 1930, but they weren't that popular. Man, today fast food junk. snacks and seed oils. Top three categories of caloric consumption. After that, the bottom category from 1930. Cheese and melted dairy has fucking soared into fourth place with 248 calories over nine times as much as we ate in 1930.

Holy shit, do we love ourselves some cheese? Next is 219 calories of poultry. We now eat over five times as much poultry as we did in 1930. Then another fun new category shows up on the list. sugary drinks. Not that those didn't exist technically back then, but it wasn't a whole category widely marketed and produced like it is now.

You know, stuff like soda, juice that is actually maybe at most 5% juice, but mostly just refined sugars. 171 calories. Fuck yeah, bro. Thank you, Kool-Aid man for introducing me to your sugary elixirs. Oh yeah.

Here comes Kool-Aid. Here comes Kool-Aid. I'm gonna save the day. Brand soft drink mix. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm surprised just the Kool-Aid I was allowed to make myself growing up. Didn't just single-handedly give me diabetes.

So many giant scoops of sugar. I just remember dumping those into that picture. After sugary drinks is more sugar. Sweets and candies. Oh, sweet, sweet sugar. 169 more calories worth over two and a half times as much as we would eat in 1930. The best breakfast under the big top is post-sue. Sugar rice corincles.

So crinkly, so delicious, so different. Each grain of rice and sugar rice corincles is carinkled with honey and sugar. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Start your day with sugar. We're having Super Sugar, Chris. With Sugar Bear. Delicious puffs of wheat you want to share with friends.

Thank you, Sugar Bear. They're not my friends, bear. Blonde. Black, white, brown, yellow, and I got fur, and we all enjoy Super Sugar, Chris. Oh, what are fun, robot. Love animals too. Learn brotherhood, blob. Learn to have a sugar bear breakfast featuring vitamin-fortified post-sup of sugar crisp.

Tastes the good, you're going to share it with your friends. Taste so good, you're going to crack yourself out. Eat the sugar, or sugar bear will die, kids. Do you want sugar bear to die? Of sadness, of loneliness? Because you're not eating a sweet, sweet sugar? Let's move on. Next on the 2026 list, 160 calories of rich and whole grains,

95 calories of red meat, 87 calories of protein powders and protein shakes, and then 68 calories of the former number one category of breads and pastas, an 88% drop in consumption in that category. Finally, 64 calories of eggs, 58 calories of seafood for a total average of 2,787 actual ingested calories, down surprisingly almost 100 calories from 1930. Now, does that mean we're taking in less calories and eating less? It does not. the total calories listed on a food label represent the absolute chemical energy of that food actual ingested or absorbed calories that refers to the exact amount of the energy

that your body actually extracts and absorbs during digestion the two numbers rarely match due to biological processing too much of a side road to get into here now we have other fish to fry so to speak but we do eat 20 to 25% more on average calorie-wise than we did in 1930

just clearly not eating as many foods that have nutrients that are readily absorbed. But the really eye-opening change has been where the calories come from. What are the biggest changes in the American diet over the past century? One, as you probably just saw in that data, and already knew, is sugar. Today, approximately 13 to 15 percent of the average American's daily caloric intake comes from added processed sugars. 1930 processed sugars accounted for an estimated 4 to 6% of daily categories. So, big jump.

And what is processed sugar? Process sugar, often called added or refined sugar, is extracted from natural sources like sugar cane, sugar beets, and corn, but then chemically concentrated. It's like, I don't know, I guess the difference between weed and hash or something. A very popular and cheap thing in almost every food today, it seems, is high fructose, high fructose, excuse me, corn syrup, very heavily processed sugar. And guess how much high fructose corn syrup we ate back in 1930? Not a drop. It had not been invented yet.

Sorry, sugar bear. Wasn't invented until the 1960s, wasn't introduced into the U.S. food supply until 1970. now high fructose corn syrup accounts for roughly 8 to 10% of the average American's total daily caloric intake. And I actually thought it would be more than that when I first came across that data.

HFCS is just one of the many processed or ultra-processed foods we now consume. A 20-23 CDC study found that the mean percentage of total calories consumed from ultra-processed foods among those aged one and older, so everyone except for little babies, in America was 55 percent, over half of our calories coming from ultra-processed food. And ultra-processed foods did not exist back in 1930.

What are ultra-processed foods, per John Hopkins Medical Center, UPSs are industrial formulations made mostly from substances extracted from foods or synthesized in labs. They undergo multiple processing steps like extrusion and mold. It sounds like something made for a fucking car Rather than the human body They contain added preservatives sweeteners, emulsifiers, Amulsifiers, and Artificial Flavors They are highly engineered to be convenient,

hyper-palatable, and long-lasting What are some common examples? Well, a lot of shit from the top of that 2026 lists Like carbonated sodas actually Artificially sweetened fruit drinks Sugary breakfast cereals like Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, fucking sugar bear, commercial baked goods like box donuts, hand pies, twinkies, hostess cupcakes.

I'm Captain Cupcake. What makes hostess cupcakes such fun? First, you like the fudgy icing room. Then you eat up for the devil food cake. And the dumb that you got left over is a gushy, squishy, creamy middle that you can squash with your tongue. Whoa. Hostas cupcakes fruit pies and Twinkies cakes. Fresh snacks with a snack in the middle. Uh, sad, sad story.

The little girl in that commercial, they had to do, I guess, 12 takes to get that right. She ended up eating 24 cupcakes and died right after filming. I have no idea what happened to that little girl. She's probably fine. Uh, but hostas cupcakes, I guess they can't kill you, beat enough. They're sold in pears. They are delicious.

But each one, 20 grams of total sugar, 19 grams of added sugar. The American Heart Association recommends that men consume no more than 36 grams, aka 9 teaspoons of added sugar a day, and that women consume no more than 25 grams, aka 6 teaspoons a day. One package of those cupcakes exceeds the daily maximum recommended intake for either men or women as adults. That should have been marketed toward primarily children for decades. So like way too much for kids. More examples of ultra-processed foods are candy bars, mass-produced ice cream, frozen dairy desserts of all sorts, microwavable frozen pizzas, you know, hungry men, frozen dinners, you know, TV dinners in general,

among so many other things, fast food, most fast food. Most burgers and chicken nuggets and tacos, et cetera, you're grabbing at the drive-thru is ultra-processed because of all the added sugars, saturated fats, added sodium, etc. And Burger King, there's no such thing as too much bacon. Meet the new double-bacon king. Two flame grill 100% beef patties, melty cheese, Topped with six slices of crispy, thick-cut bacon. Stack between a brioch bun, the new double-bacon king, only at Burger King.

That burger, the Burger King, the Burger King, Double Bacon King, just over 1,300 calories on its own, not counting fries or a drink. 837 calories come from fat, 39 grams come from saturated fat, twice the maximum recommended daily intake, based on a 2,000 calorie diet for the average U.S. adults to burn the 13-13 calories. in a double baking king, you'd have to run for 150 minutes or walk for 188 minutes. If you add a large fry, that's 440 additional calories. Add a large Coca-Cola. That's around 500 more calories, depending on how much ice you put in that cup. Between 100 and 127 grams, roughly, of sugar.

Significantly more than the American Heart Association's daily recommended limit of 25 grams for women and 36 grams for men. This is added sugar. You're getting way more added sugar, way more saturated. fat that anyone should ever eat in a single day like a lot, lot more, and you're doing it in one meal. So why does this really matter? Well, because diets high and ultra-processed foods carry significantly more health risks than those based on fresh, organic, whole foods. Extensive research has conclusively linked ultra-processed foods to over 30 different adverse health conditions, including obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression. But I'm sure when you're suffering

from obesity and you've got a bad heart and diabetes, yeah, you're going to tend to be depressed. While research does not show that ultra-processed foods directly cause cancer, major health organizations have found strong associations, quote-unquote, between high UPF consumption and increased risk of certain cancers, particularly breast and pancreatic cancers. That's terrifying. But life expectancy in America has increased a lot in the past century from about 58. to 62 years in 1930 to nearly 79 years today. So our food can't be that bad, can it? No, it can't. That increase is not thanks to our food.

That jump is driven primarily by vaccines, antibiotics, like penicillin, public health interventions such as better sanitation and water purification, the drastic reduction of infant in maternal mortality rates thanks to, you know, various advances in medical care. But for those of us not dying now of contagious diseases and bacteria, riddled water for those of us who did not die young during childbirth, thanks to advances in emergency medical care, we are not as healthy diet-wise as we used to be on average, not even close.

The obesity rate in 1930 is estimated to have been less than 5%. The U.S. did not have official national obesity rates back then. The modern body mass index, BMI tracking, did not begin until the 1960s. That low number is not because of the Great Depression. estimates from the 1920s are also less than 5%. And all of this makes sense when you look at old photos. I googled photo of large crowd of people at a public school in the U.S. in the 1930s.

And I saw a bunch of skinny motherfuckers in every photo I looked at. Then I googled photo of large crowd of people at a public pool in the U.S. in the 2020s. Let me just say that the results were wildly different. The second group of photos, overall significantly, shall we say, thicker than people in the first photos, which makes sense, because the obesity rate is now over

42 percent. The diabetes rate in 1930 less than 1 percent. Now roughly 12 percent. And what has been the primary cause of those increases? Well, one factor has definitely been an increase in a sedentary lifestyle, right? More people drive now, walk less, more people have desk jobs and labor jobs compared to, you know, people did 100 years ago. That is a big part of it. But an even bigger part. It is strongly believed to be a difference in how we eat, in what we eat. So how has that difference come about? Well, let's take this way back to the original mom and pop restaurants of America, places that got their food, not from a freight truck delivery from C&S wholesale grocers or United Natural Foods, but from local dairy farms, you know, local chicken

farms, flour mills, local produce farms, local, et cetera, emphasis on local, local, local, and shit that was because of that comparatively fresh and often, you know, never frozen. This is back when farmed a table, you know, it wasn't a trend. It was just a necessity. It was a mainstream. As a result, every restaurant had something unique about it with different suppliers and menus that often reflected seasonal foods. You know, you'd run out of things at restaurants a lot more often because the local farm only had so many, you know, peaches to make your fucking peach marmalade, et cetera. Very cool. Not the best method for consistent profit. You know, a good way to keep things fresh and tasty,

not the best way to make money, not a way that would allow companies to corporatize and take over the entire national market then jump to taking over international markets. This old way of getting food, again, came with the advantage of being fresh, you know, fresh food, but many economic disadvantages, such as supply shortages,

higher prices, seasonal limitations, you know, the possibility of a farmer's business failing unexpectedly, and then that failure cascading and causing restaurants to fail. I mean, imagine you're running a small business a century ago, and your chicken supplier's flock has been struck by avian influenza, killing half the birds. Then a mysterious drought destroys all your wheat supplier's crops, and because of this mysterious

drought, your beef prices suddenly rise too. They got less food to eat. Back then, you had to scramble and try and quickly find a new supplier of chicken, beef, or wheat in your immediate area, which oftentimes just wasn't possible to keep your restaurant's menu available and thus keep your restaurant in business. You couldn't just fed X shit overnight, to your restaurant. You couldn't Amazon next day deliver anything. You couldn't get a bunch of shit loaded onto a plane or a train or an 18-wheeler from across the country or across the world. That supply chain structure did not yet exist. Many of the circumstances that could and did tank small businesses like restaurants and also grocers a century ago, you know, went away

with a shift to corporate food providers. And so, you know, stability is a big advantage of these corporate food providers. Without modern refrigeration and interruptive rail line or a regional drought meant empty shelves, forcing restaurants and grocers to rewrite menus daily, to pivot to preserve goods. Obviously, menus with the restaurant, you know, preserve goods at the store there. But now, now there are no more concerns about your chicken, wheat, or beef, except for the nationwide decline in cattle herds. You know, things like that are going to come up. But even then you can go internationally. Big national and international companies offer restaurants a stable partner that can handle supply disruptions and provide consistent deliveries.

the Great Depression, combined with the Dust Bowl, directly brought about changes in America's food consumption preferences, that favor these big national and international companies. The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms, catastrophic agricultural collapse that devastated the American Great Plains during the 1930s, right, real bad one-two punch combined with that stock market collapse. Many farmers not destroyed by the Dust Bowl and the inability to produce anything, found that they suffered from falling prices,

and producing too much instead. It was truly a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, right? Farmers whose crops were destroyed suffered for obvious reasons. They didn't have shit to sell. Farmers and ranchers whose crops and livestock flourished also suffered. They didn't have enough customers with enough money to buy the shit they were selling like they did before. Decreasing demand then led to another problem, right? This all just snowballed.

They continued to lower prices further and further to try to make things affordable for the customers they had until prices got so low that even when they sold their stuff, it still wasn't profitable. And because there were no large-scale programs that could distribute the unused food, many crops simply rotted in piles or spoiled in the fields, untouched. The Imperial Valley of California, for example, lost 2.8 million watermelons,

1.4 million crates of cantaloupes and 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes in 1932 alone, simply because it could not be sold, despite widespread poverty and hunger. creating an obvious need for that food. In response to that, in similar disasters, around the nation in 1933, President Roosevelt budgeted $75 million to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration

to purchase food for farmers, giving them revenue and a reason to continue farming. And also, necessity being the mother of invention and a new kind of consumer demand, creating a new kind of producer supply, many people turn to newly developed, mass-produced foods like canned meats, corn chips, and fruit-filled cakes.

Scarcity led to resourceful food repurposing techniques with as much as 25% unemployment nationwide and the looming danger of malnutrition and even starvation for entire families, few could afford any sort of food waste. A huge example of this. Possibly my favorite processed food, Kraft, Mac and Cheese!

Then before I talk more about sweet, sweet mac and cheese, time for today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon, get the catalog ad free, get these episodes early and more. Thanks for listening those ads, and now let's talk about that mac and cheese. The first boxes of Kraft mac and cheese were marketed and sold in the U.S. in 1937, priced at just 19 cents a box, the original iteration, marketed as Kraft dinner,

promised to feed a family of four in just nine minutes, and sold a staggering 8 million boxes in its very first year of production. Six years later, Americans would purchase a staggering, 50 million boxes in 1943. And here is a commercial from 1958. Homemade macaroni and cheese makes a hit. And it's simple with craft macaroni

and cheese dinner. Only a nickel a serving too. You get tender macaroni a new improved craft grated that makes craft dinner golden with rich cheddar flavor. For this tasty main dish we've spooned into it onto Frankfurters that we've spit and broil and then spread with mustard.

The garnish is pomeadow. Enjoy it often. Craft macaroni and cheese dinner. And to get any of tonight's recipes free, send a postcard with your name and address. Well, how nice. To craft television recipes, Fox 1718, Chicago 77, Illinois.

Those days are gone. Now they're like, do not contact us. We are fucking busy, right? It's a fair exchange. You get our mac and cheese. We get your money. Fucking leave us alone. I do love tossing hot dogs into mac and cheese.

I don't know about the mustard. I don't know about the pimento's. I'm not, you know, just slathering on an actual hot dog with, like, a bun and stuff. I'm just cutting up the hot dog in the mac and cheese. Please. Thank you, Kraft. Your weird MRE-style chemical space cheese powder shit is absolutely delicious. I don't even want to know what's in it.

1932, Fritos, the original corn chips snack. They began mass production in America. 1944, Herman Lays simplified his company name to Lays potato chips, began producing his own branded chips, leading to wide distribution across the American South and then the rest of the country. 1961, the two companies merged to form Fridolay, creating an American snack. food powerhouse, a miracle whip introduced at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, offered a sweeter, more budget-friendly, more processed alternative to traditional mayonnaise, Snickers, other candy bars introduced in the 30s, Snickers in 1930, rich crackers hit the shelves 1934 and on and on and on.

As more processed, very profitable products hit the shelves, more entrepreneurs saw the money and followed it and created still more profitable products that then lured more competitors into the pool and it just kept going. It was like an arms race, but with cheap, long-lasting, often heavily sugared and heavily processed foods instead of bombs and missiles. Then the beginning of a new way of receiving food showed up in 1956. Really an extension of an old way, but a new transportation system was arriving, the interstate highway system.

It changed the way Americans would travel throughout the country, and as people began to drive from coast to coast a lot more easily, the food followed. construction on the first stretch of the original network began in November of 56, the monumental public works project officially completed in 1992, changing the way goods were able to be transported across America, you know, just much, much more quickly via 18 wheelers. With refrigerated trucking and freeways, food could be transported almost anywhere in the U.S., from anywhere else in the U.S., and relatively quickly, and then, of course, from, like, Mexico and Canada, and on and on, and the Panama Canal makes things easier to go from one hemisphere to the U.S. the next, et cetera, et cetera. Along with refrigerated railroad cars, excuse me, and container shipping, there was suddenly no limit to the variety of food restaurants could serve. These technological advances changed how food moved across America and opened the door for companies to streamline operations in the food industry. While the McDonald brothers founded the original San Bernardino, California

McDonald's, in 1940, for example, and then opened a few regional franchises in the early 50s. It wasn't until the mid and late 50s that they really started. to pop up around the country, thanks in large part, to these new food delivery methods. Ray Kroc became a franchise agent, opened his first franchise location just outside of Chicago in 1955. There were 228 locations by the end of the decade, over 1,500 locations by the end of the 1960s, over 6,200 locations by the end of the 70s. The same pattern was mirrored by many other franchises.

Wendy's franchise program began in 1972 by 1979. they had already reached over 1,500 locations nationwide by 1980. The chain had reached roughly 2,000 U.S. locations, and then they pushed past 3,000 franchised and company stores in the country by February of 1985. Beating beef. Wendy's Bacon, Six Gips of Bacon and beef. It's way better than fast food. It's Wendy's.

So much fucking food. It is crazy when you really think about it. That's a crazy lunch. I'm just going to have two hamburger patties, two slices of cheese, a bunch of sauce. Oh, and also six strips of bacon. Oh, and can throw a large fry

and a large soda in there? And then I, you know what? And could you also just put a coffin across the booth for me? I'm just going to go ahead and eat myself to death. And then if you wouldn't mind, just toss my body in there. I've prepaid for things.

Yeah, wow. the demand for further broadline distribution in America has largely become from the further expansion of these, you know, many fast food restaurant changed during the second half of the 20th century. After World War II, Americans were ready to splurge. And by the summer of 1945, Americans have been living under wartime rationing policies for more than three years and they were fucking over it. And then consumerism and consumption exploded into a higher gear. This was mainly characterized by Americans' ability to buy big ticket items like cars and furniture, but also by the ability to freely buy fast food. and, you know, dine out. That was a big culture shift.

Families began eating out more often than in years past. Franchises like the ones I mentioned, you know, plus Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Burger King, on and on, started popping up. And this wasn't a brand new thing. It just was accelerated. You know, in the 1920s, you know, end of the 20s, truly a century ago, dining out was largely a rare luxury. Today, you know, it's a staple of American life.

Despite recent cutbacks, due to inflation, the average American still eats out, roughly four to six times per month. That wasn't the norm for so, so long in our history. Back in 1927, U.S. home economist Christine Frederick reported, quote, the woman is no longer a cook. She has become a can opener. Just talking about how things are shifting.

Critics of the time pointed to women's laziness and selfishness, oh my, is the reason for the new can opener cuisine. While the restaurant industry was busy planning ways to get people away from the kitchen and into their businesses, the crisis over the decline of home cooking gave restaurants a chance to serve as surrogate homes for mixed sex, middle-class patrons. This movement became known as the Home Cooking Campaign. And according to food and culture journalist Samantha Barbus, quote, with hearty foods, matronly servers, and cozy decor, restaurants recreated the aura of a nostalgic pre-modern kitchen,

the very institution that they had helped to destroy. So that is interesting right there, though, too, that, you know, the first kind of push for restaurants was because more like processed foods were being eaten at home and people wanted to go out to then have like home-cooked meals, quote unquote. The family diner or dinner, excuse me, declined continued steadily into 1940s. Families were increasingly on the go. You know, more people often had to work outside of the home, like as far as like both people in the home.

Not just, you know, one person. Meals were served on a kitchen counter for everyone to eat at their leisure instead of everybody gathering around the dinner table like people would do, especially when America was largely agricultural, excuse me, many, many years ago and everybody works on the farm and then all sharing dinner together. That's, you know, becoming more and more thing in the past. Canned, frozen, pre-cooked foods,

relieved women of the burden of making meals from scratch. In the 1950s, TV dinners took American households by storm, right? When there's a demand, there's going to be a supply with meals ready-made, mass-produced, easily consumed without a table, home-cooked family dinners, becoming even harder to organize, easier to avoid. None of that would have been possible without new mass food distribution methods. Circling back to McDonald's, with approximately 13,800 McDonald's locations in the U.S. alone now, how have they managed food safety, portion sizes, consistency, inventory, pricing, and contracts

over the years as they've expanded. You can go to McDonald's in New York, Los Angeles, and the food should, in my experience, tends to actually taste the same. How is that achievable? Starting in the 20th century, food distribution powerhouses such as Cisco, U.S. Foods, and PFG, Performance Food Group, started to take care of much of the work for local restaurants by providing a reliable food delivery system and low prices. McDonald's actually uses the North American Logistics Council, a highly specialized dedicated distribution network that accomplishes the same thing. From the restaurant's point of view, instead of many separate providers, Well, you now have only one, you know, one call, one truck, one bill to pay.

This one provider for all your restaurant needs model is made possible by the modern supply chain. And what exactly is a supply chain? Well, let's bounce back to McDonald's. And the beautiful Big Mac Americans, many Americans hold so near and dear. A single Big Mac may look like one easygoing sandwich, but behind, excuse me, every ingredient is a story to tell in an enormous supply chain it has traveled through before reaching the customer. Every ingredient goes through long supply chains. I won't bore you with all of them. Let's just focus on the beef, the sauce, and the bun.

Ranchers raise beef cattle for nearly two years before they start to sell them to one of the nation's major meat packers. The meatpackers slaughter and inspect process and package of the meat into standardized hamburger patties. The frozen patties are then shipped to massive refrigerated warehouses before being delivered by food distributors like Cisco to McDonald's restaurants across the country, right? Put on trains, put on trucks. trucks eventually show up at the, you know, franchises. And they are stored in massive warehouses. The biggest refrigerated warehouse in the U.S. that heavily handles beef and other meat products is under a three-hour drive, actually.

I did not know this from where I'm recording right now here in Cordillane. A 2,800 polar way in Richland, Washington, part of the Tri-Cities. This warehouse spans over 500,000 square feet and holds up to 350 million pounds of food. So it can have a couple of. hundred million pounds of beef in it at one time. This massive facility, the largest refrigerated warehouse, the largest automated freezer on earth, according to some sources. Where's the beef?

Where's the beef? Where's the beef? Well, the beef is in the tri-cities, apparently, Wendy. Next, take the Big Mac sauce, perhaps the most essential ingredient other than the beef patty. Rather than being made in each restaurant, it's manufactured in large food production facilities. where ingredients such as mayonnaise, relish, mustard, vinegar, spices, and preservatives are mixed in these huge fucking vats. The package sauce then shipped nationwide to ensure every product is identical.

Now let's talk about the bun. Sesame seeds alone begin their journey months before they ever reach the bun. Roughly 95% of the world's global sesame seed supply is produced in Africa and Asia before being shipped worldwide. Wheat farmers purchase seeds from companies such as Bear Evil, Inc. or despair. They grow the wheat using pesticides and fertilizers produced by many of the same large corporations. After being harvested, the wheat is cleaned and ground in a flour at a flour mill.

Flower then shipped to industrial bakeries that produce thousands of identical buns every hour. Once the buns are baked, frozen are packaged and transported through regional distribution centers before arriving at McDonald's. This doesn't even include the cheese, lettuce, pickles, onions, or packaging, all of which takes separate but similar journeys, before reached McDonald's menus. Every Big Mac represents the work of farmers, ranchers, processors, truck drivers, warehouse workers, packaging manufacturers, distributors not only across the U.S., but the world. Today, these ingredients move through highly centralized supply change controlled by an increasingly small number of international conglomerates. This modernized system allows McDonald's to serve nearly identical sandwiches, whether a customer, you know, orders one in New York, Nebraska, Los Angeles, or Tokyo. There are almost 200 different McDonald's locations

just in the Tokyo metro location alone, by the way. This is my Mac. Shia's for McDonald's to. That was a Japanese McDonald's commercial, if you're confused. Sounds more intense than U.S. commercials. I didn't, you know, I don't speak Japanese. I don't know exactly what he was saying there, but I felt like he was telling me to eat the burger,

not asking me. You know what? I like the assertiveness. But I'm trying to focus on America's food today. All this illustrates how dependent restaurants have become on large corporations. The major shift, transformed this major shift, transformed the world of restaurant ownership, and allowed restaurants to expand into multiple locations while maintaining the same quality and stability at each.

Now, for these supply chains to work, all this food has to get from the warehouse to the restaurant. Imagine you are riding along with the Cisco driver at 4 o'clock in the morning. The world still seems to be asleep, but the warehouse is alive, forklifts, move pallets of frozen food, fresh produce, canned goods, paper products, cleaning supplies, and the list goes on and on. Workers load your truck and trucks around it. So frozen products stay frozen. Refrigerated products stay cold. And dry goods are easy to unload when the driver reaches each stop.

As the sun rises, the truck pulls out of the warehouse. The first stop may be a hospital that serves thousands of meals every day. Next stop could be a family-owned diner preparing for the breakfast rush. After that, the truck might deliver to a school, cafeteria, a hotel, sports stadium, even a prison. They all depend on the same truck arriving on time. I used to unload freight for the grocery store. I worked out in high school before school, two times a week, junior and senior year. And yeah, man, that guy, he had to drive up from Boise.

I don't even know how early he woke up to get to Riggins three hours from Boise with the freight truck. You know, he'd get there at, I think, 6 a.m. Me and some other dipshit would have hand trucks and just take that stuff off and twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays and loaded onto the shelves. and quick as possible, man, he was a hardworking dude. Always go, go, go, rush, rush, and he had to go down to the next stop. Every box of lettuce, every case of ketchup, every frozen hamburger patty,

every roll of paper towels has been sourced from hundreds of manufacturers combined into a single shipment, which is pretty fucking wild and impressive if you really think about it. And this is the main benefit of consolidation that people actually notice. The consolidation of food in America

makes life simpler for people like restaurant owners. to make one call, you know, what's one schedule? A truck arrives with all their hopes and dreams, box inside. This convenience is what helped companies like Cisco, U.S. foods, and PFG grow into the giants they are today, right? They sell efficiency. For restaurants operating on razor-thin profit margins, having nearly everything they need arrive on a single truck, saves valuable time, reduces labor costs, allows employees to focus on serving customers rather than managing dozens of suppliers. Okay, now that we have cleared up. why large restaurant chains use companies like Cisco to provide consistent food for customers through supply chains.

Let's get into the economics of why smaller restaurants also need these huge corporate food companies to survive in today's economic climate. According to Food Belt.com, even businesses that appear to be doing well can struggle because of low profit margins. A family-owned sushi restaurant in Seattle, for example, with approximately $1.3 million in annual revenue paid its two owners $50,000 each in salary. after expenses, resulting in a net profit of just 1.5%, roughly $20,000. Now, some of that is due to clever accounting and exaggerating write-offs and minimizing taxable income, right? A game every small business owner plays, including myself. Still, this is nowhere near the amount of money the average person would probably assume a well-run sushi restaurant makes. The average restaurant only stays in business for about 8 to 10 years in America.

While the well-known myth that 90% of restaurants fail in the first year, that's not a true. That is heavily exaggerated. Still, the real first year failure rate is closer to between 17 and 30 percent. Still quite a bit. And about 60 percent closed within three years. And only 20 to 30 percent survive a decade. And why is that? Well, the average net profit margin for a restaurant in the U.S. typically ranges between three and five percent. That is slim. That doesn't allow much wiggle room for shit to go wrong. You know, that means for every $100 a restaurant earns, only $3 to $5 is retained as actual profit after paying food costs, labor, rent, and overhead.

And that puts into perspective why it's so important for some businesses to save money, even if it's just a few cents per purchase. It all adds up, it all matters. Those small savings can determine whether a restaurant earns a profit or operates at a loss. And this is why distributors have become just as attractive to small businesses

as they are to large ones. So now, by this point, we've cleared up some of the appeal of distribution companies like Cisco. Let's talk a little more about how they have become so powerful. Cisco was founded in 1969, has since acquired over 100 other companies. Damn. Today, it controls approximately 17% of all food service distribution in the U.S.

and 35% of what is known as broadline distribution in America, which is best described as a massive one-stop supply chain partner that stocks and delivers a wide variety of products. Cisco alone serves over 700,000 food service customers, including Whole Foods, Kroger grocery stores, Taco Bell, and many, many, many independent restaurants. The company has also been criticized for offering preferential pricing to their large customers at the expense of independent restaurants, making it harder going forward for more, you know, new franchises, more new restaurants to disrupt the existing market. With fewer options remaining for restaurants, businesses may ultimately have to pay for more necessities.

Recently, Cisco made headlines for a 29.1 billion. billion dollar deal to acquire Jetro, aka Restaurant Depot. In the past, Jetro was an option that smaller operators could rely on for affordable ingredients and supplies. This deal will strengthen Cisco's hold on the market by giving the company direct access to a part of the market that was previously separate if the deal goes through. The transaction currently pending regulatory approval, but expected to officially close around early 2027, well, restaurant operators could lose leverage. When negotiating for the products, they need to sustain profitable businesses. and when I say they could, they definitely will.

Corporate consolidation rarely occurs because one company suddenly becomes better than its competitors, actually. Instead, it happens to mergers and acquisitions. You may have heard the words, merger and acquisition before. They're important to understand what follows, so let me quickly explain them. Right after today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks.

Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Now let's talk 1-800 business, mergers and acquisitions. A merger combines two companies into one larger business, and an acquisition occurs when one company purchases another company outright. Every merger in the food industry over the last hundred years may seem insignificant, but over the past few decades, the cumulative effects have become enormous. Hundreds of local distributors disappear, their employees become part of a larger corporation, and restaurants gradually lose alternative suppliers. The result has been an industry with fewer and fewer competitors, greater and greater market concentration, and greater pricing power held by the few remaining companies. What was once a market filled with hundreds of regional distributors, if not thousands,

slowly becoming dominated by just a handful of international corporations. When looking at what these mergers have done for the food industry's powerhouses, Cisco, not the only one benefiting. U.S. foods controls approximately 11% of the U.S. food service market, while PFG controls approximately 5 to 6%, making it the third largest broad-line distributor in the country behind Cisco and U.S. foods. And together, these three distributors control a significant portion of the food service market in America. You may have seen a Cisco truck outside your high school, parked behind a hospital,

dropping some food off at a prison. And when speaking on food producers and suppliers that have become consolidated, it would be doing this short suck and injustice not to include the meatpacking industry in America with leaders including Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Cargill, Meat Solutions, and National Beef. These four suppliers are nicknamed the Big Four, and they control roughly a whopping 85% of all beef packing in America. Where's the beef? Well, with the big four, Wendy, with the big four. Although meat packing plants are not growing at the same rate as food distributors,

due in part to a 75-year low in the national cattle herd caused by droughts and high feed costs, they still control how meat is processed, packaged, and distributed throughout the U.S. In addition to discussing the meatpacking industry's consolidation over the past 100 years, we also need to examine the U.S. seed and pesticide industries, which are also dominated by four powerhouses. Bear Evil, Incorporated. Or just bear. Corteva, Syngenta, and BASF.

These four companies have these seed and pesticide business in America pretty much under lock and key. Seed prices for genetically modified seeds have risen sharply in part two, not that many, you know, competitors. And the big four is making a lot of, money off of that, and they aggressively protect their intellectual property rights and make it harder for anybody to infringe on their market. Conventional and organic breeders face increasingly restricted access to plant genetics, reducing seed diversity, weakening food security.

Summed up from start to finish, from seed to table, much of America's food system has become increasingly consolidated under a handful of food industry powerhouses that continue to push smaller businesses out of the market. Looking at all these powerhouses of the food world, you might be thinking the government has to be involved. This is all part of the Illuminati's new world order, and once they have all the food distribution locked up into one corporation, work with the same government, two heads of the same snake, it's only a matter of time until we're all eating Soylent Green.

They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've got to tell them. Promise, Tiger, I promise. I'll tell the exchange. You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You got to tell them, silent breed is people. It's people!

I'm not taking that too far, but the death grip, a very small group of corporations, has on so much of the food we are eating is concerning. Since these corporations are motivated primarily by serving shareholders, not the health of their customers, a lot of incentive for powerful, wealthy people to become more wealthy, more powerful by short-changing nutrition needs out in favor of making a penny more per hot dog or whatever. The corporate consolidation of the food in the street,

in America did not happen overnight. Of course, nor was it simply the product of natural market forces. Instead, it was largely shaped by policy decisions that made it easier for giant corporations to merge in an economy that is supposed to prevent monopolies. Monopolys have always existed. And during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Congress passed several major antitrust laws intended to prevent them from forming in the U.S. economy or, you know, strengthening, you know, forming further. Antitrust laws and regulations are intended to promote market competition and protect consumers by preventing monopolies, right? More competition means better prices.

This is, you know, these laws designed to protect us from price fixing, other unfair business practices. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 considered the foundation of U.S. antitrust law was the first major law prohibiting contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that restrained trade, making it illegal for businesses to monopolize a market. However, the Sherman Act was considered too vague, leading to the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Clayton Act clarified and strengthened the Sherman Act by targeting specific anti-competitive practices before they could become full-blown monopolies.

Some of its key provisions included banning practice discriminations that reduce competition or excuse me, banning price, discrimination makes a lot more sense, that reduced competition and drove smaller competitors out of business, preventing companies from forcing buyers to purchase one product to gain access to another and blocking mergers and acquisitions that would substantially lessen competition. During that same year, the Federal Trade Commission Act established the Federal Trade Commission, given at the authority to investigate corporate practices, enforce antitrust laws, and police unfair business practices. Up until approximately the 1960s, these laws were interpreted aggressively, and regulators frequently blocked mergers, right?

That was working on behalf of the people. Beginning in the 70s, however, the federal government's approach started a shift. Let's get to know Robert Bork for a second because of his importance and why that shift happened. his importance in how our economy works, excuse me, and the role he played in changing when companies were allowed to do. Old Bork, who passed away in 2012 at age of 85, was a legal scholar,

strong proponent of originalism, this legal theory in the U.S., which bases constitutional, judicial, and statutory interpretation of text on the original understanding at the time of its adoption, and the former Solicitor General of the U.S. His rejection by the Senate

after being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Reagan became one of the most controversial confirmation battles in American history. Senator Ted Kennedy, for example, claimed Bork's America will be a land of, quote, back-alley abortions, black sitting at segregated lunch counters, and rogue police conducting midnight raids, fundamentally painting him as an extremist threat to civil liberties. Senate Democrats highlighted Bork's legal writings opposing parts of the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his views on the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade as a reason to confirm him. Regarding the food industry, or I guess rather reason not to confirm him,

regarding the food industry, Bork's most important contribution was his book, The Antitrust Paradox, which drew heavily on his originalist ideals. Fun fact, Bork has a word named after him in the Oxford English Dictionary now. The verb Bork is defined as to defame or vilify a person usually to prevent their appointment to public office. Not enough people getting borked. A quote from his book showed his belief that antitrust policy should serve in the consumer's best interest. Quote, these are not prescriptions for the non-enforcement of the antitrust laws, but rather for their enforcement in a way that advances rather than halts competition and consumer welfare. I mean, you know, kind of vague sounds nice, but how exactly, Bob, does fewer consumer choices help consumers?

I don't think that argument has ever made in a coherent, explicit logical way, because I'm not convinced that that argument exists in an explicit, coherent logical way. This book fundamentally changed the government's philosophy towards antitrust enforcement. Federal regulators became much more willing to approve mergers unless there was, you know, strong evidence that they would directly, like, immediately harm consumers. But that's pretty subjective assessing what's going to directly harm consumers. I mean, I don't think it should be, but it tends to be. Some of the negative consequences of this approach, including increasing pressure placed on farmers and workers. Because the consumer welfare standard largely ignored the market power that large processors held over their suppliers, major meat packers and agricultural

buyers have been able to consolidate and legally increase their influence substantially over pricing in recent decades. Due to this ideology, national food distributors have found it much easier to acquire regional competitors. Over time, the powerhouses of the food industry acquired hundreds of smaller businesses across the country. Cisco, again, one of the companies that benefited the most from this, unlike many other large companies in the industry, instead of building new operating centers in every city spreading out the employment and the tax benefits, etc. They would buy existing regional distributors allowing for rapid expansion across the country. Although consolidation can make it harder for restaurants to choose among large-scale food

suppliers, it does also offer many benefits, including lower costs, reliable deliveries, reduced transaction costs, one-stop shopping for businesses. Lower costs, I should say in the short run at least. I mean, you consolidate too far, you eventually get down to the logical, end of just one company, well, now they have not a lot of incentive to not raise costs to the very limit of what the market will bear because now you have to play ball with them or you're fucking done. It's too much power. In the short term, though, large corporations can save millions of dollars by eliminating duplicate corporate roles, centralizing management and closing

redundant facilities. Their ability to buy in bulk allows them to negotiate deep discounts with vendors, which in turn lets them sell goods to businesses at lower prices. One of the biggest benefits is economy of scale, right? The cost advantages a business obtains as its production volume increases. When companies can buy in bulk from large suppliers like U.S. Foods and Cisco, it usually results in each item being cheaper for the business. These cost savings can benefit the entire industry through better infrastructure, government subsidies, or a larger pool of skilled labor. But even with these benefits, poultry growers and ranchers, for example, looking long term, have been advocating on Capitol Hill for year for stronger protections

against what they view as unfair business practices by these corporations. With the benefits of larger distributors being lower costs, reliability, reduced transaction costs, one-stop shopping, the issues for smaller distributors in the American economy are significant. Corporate consolidation plays a central role in many of the issues raised previously, creating a fragile supply chain. Also allows corporations, as I mentioned, to dictate prices, paid to producers and influence truckers' wages, for example, putting truckers in a position where they have, had to strike, you know, against Cisco, for example, to demand higher pay. The national trend

towards corporate consolidation leaves farmers and ranchers, along with small and mid-sized food processors, fewer buyers for their goods. An article on the consolidation of America's food supply chains by Claire Kelloway, the program manager for fair food and farming systems at the Open Markets Institute highlights the impact on workers' wages. Consolidating food companies have also exerted downward pressure on wages. Between 1972 and 19. 1992 in nine central food processing industries, average worker compensation fell by 25% in relation to the consumer price index. And that is obviously not good, right? A quarter drop in real wages, you know, for your times adjusted for inflation, all that. You know, a quarter drop in average

worker compensation, thanks specifically to this consolidation. The negative effects on local farmers, independent distributors, restaurants, consumers, paint a broader picture, raising questions about how continued mergers and buyouts will affect the general public. The COVID pandemic exposed one of the biggest flaws in this system. During the pandemic, this negative impact was shown on a massive scale. Food corporations failed to protect their employees from contracting the virus, resulting in 86,000 meat packing workers becoming infected and over 400 of them dying. The supply chain disruptions caused by major American food corporations

has been very difficult to move food to schools and restaurants, leading to food waste and empty supermarket shelves. the pandemic magnify the fact that efficiency and resilience are not the same thing and that as fewer companies control the market, a disruption at a single company can now affect thousands and thousands and thousands of businesses across the whole country. Through monopolization, large companies have taken control to market and use that market power to force small producers to lower their prices even as the large companies raise prices for consumers. Even so during the pandemic, some restaurants were able to rely on multiple large distributors

and when Cisco became unavailable, they could turn to companies like Jetro Restaurant Depot. But if that big proposed merger currently underway goes forward, well, it can take away that option in a future crisis. Over the past several decades, the American food industry has been optimized due consolidation to reduce costs, increased efficiency, and above all maximize production. Under normal economic conditions, this system allows restaurants to receive reliable deliveries, consumers to enjoy the lowest possible prices, and businesses to operate with fewer supplies at the utmost efficiency. However, when the pandemic disrupted labor, transportation, and food processing, the system's concentration left little room for flexibility. Every temporary closure of a processing

plant or distribution center creates ripple effect throughout the supply chain. In a crisis, the flaws of America's food system, you know, become much more visible. Learning from the situation, America's largest distributors could have created opportunities to build a more resilient economy. Instead, the largest companies controlling the food industry continue to merge, limiting restaurant options and creating a concerning future. Because they're not thinking about the broader picture. They're just thinking about, you know, share price. As we look to the future and as large distributors continue to gain more power

while the loss of individuality is ignored, the results are becoming increasingly clear. And don't shoot the messenger. Sad to see. In the past year, according to the nation's restaurant news, 9,500 independent restaurants closed in America. Independent restaurants are closing at a faster rate now. then they are opening, shrinking by 2.3% this past year, while massive national chains and top 500 franchise groups actually have expanded by about 1.4% during the same time frame.

So smaller independents, you know, they're getting crushed by high operating costs and shrinking profit margins in a way that the franchises are not. How can you push back against all this? I don't know, whenever possible, you know, by supporting local businesses, investing in local economies, by doing so you can help preserve the individuality, competition and choice that allows Americans to truly know where their food comes from and what we're eating.

However, even when you try and eat locally, you know, it can be confusing. Large corporations have quietly worked their way into local supermarkets, giving you the consumer, the illusion of choice in a lot of instances. You know, as you walk to the aisles of your local grocery store have to pick one of the many strawberry brands or face a tough choice between Burger King and maybe some local burger place for a late-night snack after the store, is there really a difference? or is it just the same identical products placed under different labels

to make us feel like we have a choice? It is starting to seem more and more like a lot of it is the same. You know, you might buy berries and believe they're local or the best option, but in reality, four companies dominate the seed industry.

So in all likelihood, even if they are local, the siege are the same as the, you know, cart and berries with a different label further down the shelf. Earlier, it was noted

that these four companies aggressively protect their intellectual property rights, and they do, and day by day, year by year, locally owned, organic and unique fruit businesses are being pushed out of stores because of that.

Many of the same businesses that dominate the seed market also control the pesticides and herbicides used to grow crops. Just as large mergers have taken place in the food distribution industry, mergers have also changed the pesticide and herbicide industry, so that seed genetics are designed to work with specific chemical products, often forcing farmers to purchase both from the same supplier. This vertical integration gives these corporations an incredible amount of influence over agriculture. Farmers are put in the same position as consumers with fewer alternatives and increasing dependence on a handful of multinational corporations.

This detracts from the uniqueness to different fruits and vegetables across America and limits innovation in the agricultural market. This consolidation adds to the economic challenges faced by small farmers and can increase grocery store prices. To better understand the seed, pesticide, and herbicide industries, let's put it into perspective

by following a single strawberry, like we did with the glorious Big Mac. From the moment it begins its life to the moment it ends up in your shopping cart, its journey starts long before it is planted in the ground. A farmer must first purchase strawberry plants or seeds, and in many cases, those seeds develop by, again, one of the few companies that dominate the industry. They often come with licensing agreements or recommendations for specific pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, designed to work alongside them. Strongly encouraging farmers to purchase, again, many of their supplies from the same companies. This is a stark difference from the past when farmers often shopped around among dozens of independent businesses.

Once the strawberries are grown, they're harvested, inspected for quality, washed, packaged into plastic containers loaded into good old refrigerated trucks. Those trucks carry them to packaging facilities and distribution centers often operated by companies like Cisco or their equivalents. Eventually, they reached the shelves of your local grocery store. By this point in their journey, they've passed through farmers, packaging companies, trucking companies, warehouses, retailers, distributors. In many cases, they are advertised as local because they were grown nearby, but is it really local? If the seeds, the plants, genetics, the chemicals used to protect it, were all developed long before they ever reached a local farm. This is where the illusion of choice, right? You know, comes back into the picture.

The consumer may see several different strawberry brands and think they're supporting completely different businesses, but really it's the same thing. Many of the strawberries may have started with the same seed genetics, been grown using the same crop protection products, travel through many of the same distribution networks. This has a different sticker at the end. This is not to take away from the differences between farms. Farmers still make countless decisions that affect the final product from how they irrigate, how they fertilize their crops to when they harvest them, how they care for the land, you know, in which the strawberries are grown.

It's simple to say that much of the system behind them is increasingly controlled by the same small group of multinational corporations, though, but by no means does that mean that every strawberry is identical? It simply brings to light how much influence a handful of companies have over the food that ends up on Americans' tables, even something as small as a strawberry. As Joe Maxwell, a Missouri farmer and president of the Farm Action Fund, said in a civil eats article, there really isn't a bright spot in agriculture or food. And there's really not a sector that we have that isn't heavily concentrated in driving up consumer prices through price gouging while pushing down the prices paid to farmers. Every single part of the American food system, as I mentioned at the very beginning, has been economized.

I hope this has all been informative and not just depressing, the corporate consolidation of food in America and its economization. Not an easy topic to cover quickly. There's a lot to it from how local restaurants, you know, used to work with food from nearby farms, butchers and mills to the advances in technology like the interstate highways, refrigeration, restaurant chains with the need for uniformity and efficiency. Today a meal on your plate at a restaurant or even at home may travel through dozens of companies before it reaches your table. In some cases, we all get to reap the benefits of cheaper, more consistent food that's available year round, but the power has been concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, which is scary. consolidation obviously not all bad would be unfair to leave this without noting that it has benefits again

if the current state or in this current state of our world excuse me hundreds of thousands of restaurants depend on companies like US foods and Cisco to stay in business and at times consumers have enjoyed lower prices and much greater convenience because of the efficiency of their supply chains but behind it all the negatives

have continued to emerge with farmers losing their bargaining power independent businesses facing greater challenges consumers slowly losing the beauty of a variety of products without their knowledge that that's being lost. And, you know, there's that whole problem of ultra-processed food being cheap and longer-lasting compared to fresher food options because it's, you know, full of terrible shit that's not good for you. And so sugary. High-fructose, you know, corn syrup used extensively by food manufacturers primarily because it's significantly

cheaper than traditional cane or beet sugar. Some research suggests high-fructose corn syrup more addictive than raw sugar. And sugar is highly addictive on a neurological level. We can do a whole suck on all the problems of just more and more sugar in our diet, specifically being pumped into us thanks to cheap, highly processed food, being shuttled along the supply chains we've talked about here. So what can you do as an American citizen to stay vigilant about the state of food in America? You know, try to support local companies, try to stay healthier.

Well, the next time you walk down the aisles or your local grocery store or stop in for a quick meal, you could look more closely. How many of the products truly come from different companies? How many of the brands are simply different labels owned by the same corporation? when you go out of your way to choose, you know, to support a local farm, independent grocery store, you know, you can look a little more closely to make sure you're preserving something unique, not being just tricked into still participating in an increasingly consolidated system. You can ask questions. You know, understanding how America's

food industry works does not mean having to reject it entirely. It means being able to recognize the positives and negatives of food purchases and how they shape the continually evolving food economy in America so you'll know how to vote to try and bring about changes you want if you indeed want them. And again, you'll know what questions to ask at restaurants about what you're buying at the store. If you can swing it, you know, at what you're buying at the local farmers' markets. If you have time, maybe it'll make you want to, you know, grow your own vegetables in a garden in your yard or get some space at one of those shared community gardens if you have one in your area. Maybe you'll want to buy some beef or poultry or pork from a local rancher that

you know, feeds them in a way that you find a little healthier, doesn't pump them full of hormones and things. Maybe, you know, you can start hunting and fishing if you have time in the inclination. You can plant some fruit trees, some berries. It's going to be different for everybody based on their available time or finances and, you know, what matters to them. For me, I've been trying to eat simpler, fresher this year, you know, find more fresh foods, maybe eat a little less of it, not spending any more, actually. on groceries than I was before, you know, mostly because I'm eating less. I'm down about

25 pounds. Just eating more intentionally. Trying to support local whenever possible, you know, trying to go less sugar, more vegetables, less bad fats, more good fats. You know, again, buying smaller amounts of stuff to cut down on waste, eating leftovers from a healthy meal rather than grabbing fast food because it's tasty, inconvenient. Definitely trying to eat less processed, frozen food, paying more attention to restaurants who claim to source their ingredients locally or lean towards organic whenever possible. I know it's not always an option, but it's good to have the knowledge

so if the option comes up, you can take it. You know, I don't know. Personally, I do feel better than I felt six months ago. And that's all I got. You know, use this info how you will, maybe try and eat a little healthier, less sugar, less mass distributed processed food. But also, you know,

sometimes enjoy these modern amenities we have and just say fuck it and live fast, die maybe a little bit younger, but have some, oh, delicious, cheap, sugary delights. Look at Johnny and Janie Black, watching and wishing they had a snack. Hello, what's this, hang onto your chairs? Our three friends, the honey bears.

Honey bears? Because you were wishing for something to eat. Something delicious. Something sweet. And here's the treat that can't be beat. How sugar crisp, it's fun to eat. As a snack or a cereal, it's a dream. You don't need show.

Just milk or cream. It's already sweetened. We hope you've noticed. Each single puff is candy coated. Sugar crisp is fun to eat three ways. As a cereal with milk or cream, as a snack any time of day, or as candy right out of the box. Remember, as a cereal, it's dandy. For snacks, it's so handy.

Or eat it like candy. Post sugar crisp. The red, white, and blue package with the three bears on it. I do like old advertising more than modern advertising, because I feel like they were more straightforward. I love that they didn't even try to hide it. in that commercial. They're like, yeah, it's candy. Each piece of this cereal is candy. You don't have to put milk on it.

You can just enjoy a box of candy, kids. Candy for breakfast. What could go wrong? And that's it. For this edition of Time Sucks, Short Sucks. I know it was a lot to put into one little episode, but hopefully it came across as understandable and helpful on some level.

If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic catalog, beefier episodes at Time Suck. Mondays at Noon Pacific Time. New episodes is now long-running, Paranormal Podcast. to death, Tuesdays at midnight, with some episodes of nightmare fuel thrown into the mix each month, some fictional horror.

Big thanks to my daughter Monroe Cummins. Man, tackling a very complicated topic, her suggestion right out of the gate. You know, just after graduating high school, she wanted to take a shot at Timeshook like Kyler did when he finished high school and she fucking killed it. I was thinking she'd pick something more like in a narrative space. I mean, she definitely has a lot of intellectual interests, but I was thinking like, maybe first time something a little easier. True crime does tend to be much easier to compile

because you're not having to tackle a lot of background, complicated background information. It's just like, here's what this person did. But she's like, nope, I want to tackle the food industry. The change is there in the last century. So good for her. And thank you to Logan Keith, polishing up the sound of today's episode. Please go to bad magic productions.com for all your bad magic needs

and have yourself a great weekend.