1013: Big Dairy | Skeptical Sunday

1013: Big Dairy | Skeptical Sunday

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I am here with Skeptical Sunday co-host comedian Michael Lio on the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today milk. It does a body good or so we're told from the picturesque imagery of grazing cows on green pastures to the cartons of milk on our grocery shelves.

There's a story being sold. Americans are taught in order to grow up big and strong, we must drink our milk. But is that true or is it the big and strong dairy industry that's controlling the narrative? What impact does this dairy have on our health and the environment? And today, skeptic and comedian Michael Lio is here to give us the utter truth about dairy.

Hey Jordan.

[00:01:35] Michael Regilio: Well, what do you think about milk, like a glass of milk? Personally, as an adult, the idea of drinking a big, tall glass of milk kind of grosses me out.

[00:01:45] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, a big, tall glass of milk. I actually drink a ton of milk. Pretty much every day, but it does have to be cold or it starts to just be kind of, kind of icky.

[00:01:53] Michael Regilio: Yeah, I mean, I used to love it. My mother wouldn't allow me to have sugar cereals like Fruit Loops, but she would allow me to drown cereal in as much milk as I wanted and then sprinkle a little sugar on top. When she wasn't looking, I would spoon enough sugar onto my cereal that the milk couldn't absorb anymore, and I just slurp it up.

I loved it.

[00:02:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that sounds absolutely disgusting actually.

[00:02:17] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Okay, fine. I went a bit nuts. But it's normal for human children to drink milk in some form. If our ancestors could see us now, what they'd think is gross is adults drinking milk. Children are born with an enzyme called lactase to digest milk.

Our early ancestors lost the ability to digest milk after childhood. Adults literally couldn't drink this stuff. Look no further than the huge number of adults today who are lactose intolerant. That used to be everyone drinking milk, made adults sick.

[00:02:48] Jordan Harbinger: So way back when you basically knew your childhood was over when milk gave you the shits.

Okay?

[00:02:55] Michael Regilio: Yeah, pretty much. But some humans chose to suffer through the baring and diarrhea. Such as Northern Europeans who needed to drink milk through the winter or they'd starve. So

[00:03:05] Jordan Harbinger: diarrhea or die basically.

[00:03:08] Michael Regilio: Yeah. The harsh winters in Northern Europe left them little choice. Other groups surviving on milks were nomadic tribes in the desert and the people of India, but milk drinkers were not the norm.

Through necessity, they forced their bodies to adapt. They forced the hand of evolution to produce a genetic mutation to allow their bodies to break down milk well into adulthood. I. About 6,000 years ago, European farmers became lactase, persistent. They as well as other groups, could now digest milk for life.

[00:03:40] Jordan Harbinger: So lactase, persistent is basically the opposite of what? Lactose intolerant. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Okay. So milk for life for them, but many other groups couldn't deal with that. I take it.

[00:03:50] Michael Regilio: Right. In fact, close to a hundred percent of South Koreans are lactose intolerant. That number kind of blew my mind when I heard it, but it's totally true.

Milk is not a universal food. Digesting milk is just a thing some descendants of some people can do because their ancestors forced themselves to get sick or starve

[00:04:09] Jordan Harbinger: sounds. It's a noble that that. Explosive diarrhea is a noble tradition. Apparently.

[00:04:15] Michael Regilio: Yes, you could say that. In fact, places where close to 100% of the population is, I guess, normal, or that is to say Can't digest milk, include Ghana, Malawi, Yemen, and just about all of Asia.

Overall, about 65% of the human race has a reduced ability to digest milk. Here in the US the groups that have a high percentage of lactose intolerance are Asian, native and African Americans. Descendants of Northern and Central Europe, on the other hand, are only about 5% lactose intolerant. Okay, so white

[00:04:46] Jordan Harbinger: people basically can digest milk?

[00:04:48] Michael Regilio: Yeah, well, among other groups. But yeah, white people have been digesting lactose for a long time. The problem for milk drinkers back then was even if you could digest the stuff, you better do it quickly. 'cause you sure couldn't digest it for long. Milk goes bad, crazy fast. In order to store it longer. Our ancestors learned to take enzymes called REIT from a cow or sheep or goat's belly, and mix it with milk.

Group photos would never be the same because this process led to the invention of cheese.

[00:05:21] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Oh wow. That was clever enough that I'm gonna let it go. So pretty sure we had yet to invent group photos. So the cheese lasted longer without going back. Well, but actually before we get to that, I have to say, I'm still hung up on the a hundred percent of Koreans are lactose intolerant thing because.

Korean food is one of the only Asian foods that has cheese on stuff, right? They have like cheese on corn. There's these like big, I forget what it's called, but it's basically this giant pan full of chicken and rice and stuff, like noodles, whatever, and they throw cheese on that and it's like, okay, so are they just dealing with that?

I wonder, I'm, I want to hear from our Korean fans. Do you all take an enzyme? Is it a different kind of cheese that doesn't trigger you? Or is everyone just kind of like, you know what, this is tasty enough where I'm just gonna have to go home immediately after this and tomorrow's gonna be rough. That's what I wanna know.

I'm curious about that.

[00:06:07] Michael Regilio: So, just to be clear, I, I've looked it up. I said close to a hundred percent. I saw 90% on a different form. I'm now seeing up to 75%. Of older Koreans have been able to ingest lactose. It's lactose intolerant. Lactose resistant. There's varying degrees of it. I see. And it is a good question.

It is a good question.

[00:06:27] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of Americans that are lactose intolerant and you, it's not like ice cream has a hard time being sold around here, or milk for that matter. That's why we're talking about it right now in cheese. So I guess people just either deal with it or take a little pill or, or have upset stomach all the time and have no idea why.

Okay. So. Cheese lasted longer without going bad. And it sounds almost like that's the point. The point of cheese was to store milk for longer because otherwise you would die in the winter.

[00:06:53] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, also, butter and yogurt, they also lasted longer. And by creating cheese and yogurt, people could store dairy much longer.

They would oftentimes store them in caves or dark places. I mean, they had stuff worked out. And as a result. Cows became important, even sacred animal, right? India. Many cultures, folklore, reveres, cows, and milk. The ani of West Africa believed that the world started with a single drop of milk. There's a Norse legend where a cow made from thawing frost gave milk to the world.

[00:07:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, very scientific. And the Bible describes the promised land as a land of milk and honey as well. That's, yeah. Kind of all I know about that. Yeah.

[00:07:32] Michael Regilio: Well, to ancient Hebrews milk is one half of the ingredients of paradise. I mean, milk was luxurious to many, but not to everybody. The Romans, on the other hand, saw milk as low status because it was the drink of farmers.

Julius Caesar was appalled at how much milk was consumed in Britain. Japanese Buddhist didn't get milk at all and called Europeans butter stinkers.

[00:07:53] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, nice dig, but these are the people that brought us NATO or fermented soybeans, which smell absolutely horrible and tastes like something that you might put in your car's engine.

So I don't know if they have any room to talk.

[00:08:06] Michael Regilio: Well, the truth is, it's odd that anyone was drinking milk at all since raw milk was really dangerous. It is really dangerous. Milk is a breeding ground for bacteria that has killed lots and lots of people. But despite this fact, yeah, people just kept drinking it.

[00:08:21] Jordan Harbinger: How good is this milk if it was literally killing people? And folks were just like, you know what? I'm willing to take the risk. Hit me again. Make it a double.

[00:08:29] Michael Regilio: Yeah, it was super dangerous. But in my research I did find one example of a group where milk didn't kill them, but gave them kind of superpowers.

Okay? In the 18

[00:08:38] Jordan Harbinger: hundreds, people noticed that milk maids. So these are women that milk cows. Yeah. Yes. No milk men. Look, you'd think guys were kind, kind of born to do this and had a lot of practice by the time they were teenagers.

[00:08:54] Michael Regilio: Yeah, the milkman came later. I bet. Anyway, in Europe, in the 18 hundreds, ladies milked the cows and it was noticed that milk maids were pretty much immune from smallpox.

[00:09:03] Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. That is pretty awesome. Especially because smallpox is, well continue. I don't wanna interrupt you too much. Yeah,

[00:09:09] Michael Regilio: no, trust me. It was totally awesome if you were in Europe in the 18 hundreds and you could become immune to one thing.

You'd want it to be smallpox. It was quite literally the plague.

[00:09:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It must've been good to be a milkmaid. Maybe they didn't know they were immune. They just didn't get it. Which is still PR still really good. Maybe he didn't sleep as well at night, but at least he didn't get smallpox.

[00:09:29] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well soon that would be the case for everyone because Physician Edward Jenner developed a vaccine and he based his research on the idea that milk made.

Were immune to smallpox because they had all been exposed to cowpox and by modern standards. His research was wildly unethical, but it was effective.

[00:09:46] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, really? Well, so wildly unethical. How, I mean, he invented a, oh no. This is gonna be gross, isn't it? Uh,

[00:09:51] Michael Regilio: yeah. Well, he deliberately infected an eight-year-old boy with cowpox.

Then he exposed the kid to smallpox and the kid didn't get smallpox.

[00:10:00] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, at least it worked, but it is absolutely insane. To think that a scientist would just willingly kind of try to infect a child with smallpox. So if you Google smallpox, by the way folks, it is absolutely horrifying what it does to the body.

If you're listening to this on your lunch hour, do it later. 'cause it's really, really gross and sad. Yeah. And it

[00:10:20] Michael Regilio: wasn't just one kid he did this to. He did it to a. Bunch of kids, including his own son, father of the year. He, he concluded that exposure to cowpox provided immunity to smallpox.

[00:10:31] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, man, if you're gonna expose your son to you better be right.

I mean, I guess if you're gonna experiment on kids at all, the best case scenario is that the treatment actually works. So, I don't know. Good for him and, and good for humanity, I suppose.

[00:10:42] Michael Regilio: For sure. And good for everyone. 'cause smallpox wasn't gonna kill you anymore, but raw milk still would. In 1858, a newspaper in New York ran a story about Brooklyn and New York dairy distilleries calling them quote, milk murderers who had distributed liquid

[00:10:59] Jordan Harbinger: poison.

So that seems, well, it seems like clickbait. Melodramatic BS headlines were a thing even back then. But was milk really that dangerous? Look, I mean it may have

[00:11:09] Michael Regilio: been hyperbole, but it read quote, for the midnight assassin, we have the rope and the gallows for the robber, the penitentiary. But for those who murder our children by the thousands, we have neither reprobation nor punishment.

Strong words. Alright, so what was going on with the raw milk? Okay, so these milk producers were churning out what was known as SW milk. Which came from feeding cows, the worthless byproduct of grain distillation. Basically, the mash used to make booze, ah, when the grain was used up by the spirit distillers, they'd feed it to cows.

It was low grade and lacked any real nutrition. The cows were also kept in unsanitary conditions, and as a result, they produced a week. Bluish milk. Mm. The milk producers would try and hide the blue color and watery texture by adding chalk and other stuff. Oh my god. Gross. And then they'd sell the swell milk as, and this is true, quote, pure country milk.

[00:12:05] Jordan Harbinger: That is super disgusting. So people were feeding chalky booze, alcoholic cow milk to their kids, and it was raw. So there's just all kind, just whatever kind of gross germs are in there. And that's literally killing children, which no surprise, I guess, at that point,

[00:12:21] Michael Regilio: right? Yeah. And it wasn't just in New York on hygienic facilities were like Petri dishes cooking up diseases like typhoid and tuberculosis.

Ugh. Which created a public health crisis that led to skyrocketing infant mortality in cities. Pretty much everywhere. Oh, milk. Milk. It does a baby bed. Yeah. And it wasn't until Louis Pasteur and the process of pasteurization that milk became safe to drink.

[00:12:44] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So I think everyone's heard of Pasteur. He came up with germ theory.

Everybody thought he was crazy, and he's the guy who's like, Hey, maybe wash your hands before you. Reach into a pregnant woman to get a child after you've touched a corpse or whatever. Yes.

[00:12:57] Michael Regilio: Yeah. That's kind of basically the idea, right? Yeah. And pastor understood that microbes in milk made people sick, so he invented a process in which milk was rapidly heated and cooled to kill the deadly organisms.

[00:13:09] Jordan Harbinger: Right. So pasteurization, which we all know, it says that on the carton even today.

[00:13:14] Michael Regilio: Yeah. It also says homogenization, which is another thing, which is where basically. Before homogenization, the cream would always rise to the top and you'd scrape off the cream on your milk. Homogenization is a process where milk is forced through like.

Fine fiber cloth that basically makes it consistent, and that's why you no longer have to scrape the cream off the top of your milk. That said pasteurization, right? And by the way, it worked so well that today you can drink all the spoiled milk you want.

[00:13:43] Jordan Harbinger: I have drank spoiled milk. I put it in coffee and thought this coffee's terrible.

And then when I had my second cup and a chunk fell outta the carton, I realized, oh. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's not the coffee. Yeah. So when you come back from vacation, you should just go ahead and don't, don't rely on sniffing the milk. 'cause if it's only a little bit spoiled, you gotta taste it. So I guess it won't hurt you 'cause I didn't puke.

Right?

[00:14:03] Michael Regilio: No pasteurized milk can be totally spoiled and totally safe. The pasteurization is so effective at killing all the microbes in milk that even if it's spoils and stinks and looks clumpy. It's safe. Few things are as safe as milk. You can drink spoiled milk or you can drink spoiled pasteurized milk totally safely.

[00:14:20] Jordan Harbinger: I'm not interested in testing that again, so I'm gonna go ahead and take your word for it. But again, you know, sample size of one, it didn't kill me. You know what won't give you explosive diarrhea and or kill your children. The fine products and services that support this show, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by no story loss.

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It is a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. So does that mean that we have solved the poison milk problem that we once had in America?

[00:17:31] Michael Regilio: Of course not. We're Americans. We prioritize everything above our health. And pasteurized milk was thought to be flavorless.

People didn't want it

[00:17:40] Jordan Harbinger: so people understood that raw milk could literally kill them and their children, but they kept drinking it because they preferred the taste. That, well, I was gonna say defies logic, which it does, but also is kind of on brand.

[00:17:54] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I mean, ever met a cigarette smoker or a fast food junkie?

We do it all the time. Yeah. And it wasn't just the general public government officials were openly critical of pasteurization in the early 19 hundreds. Harvey Wiley, director of the US Bureau of Chemicals. Was on record saying pasteurized milk lost all its nutritional qualities.

[00:18:15] Jordan Harbinger: So is there any truth there?

I mean, I'm pretty sure milk still has vitamins in it.

[00:18:18] Michael Regilio: Yeah, for sure. I looked it up. It loses a little B two. That's about it.

[00:18:22] Jordan Harbinger: That's another conspiracy theory about our health. Again, kind of peak America, although you expect, I just thought that was a new thing for America, not. Not something we've been doing for centuries.

[00:18:31] Michael Regilio: No, no, no. It's American is apple pie as conspiracy theories. In fact, a government official spouting off about a conspiracy theory that's very America 2024.

[00:18:41] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:41] Michael Regilio: And rather than drink safe, pasteurized milk, this is so crazy. A medical milk commission was set up to certify raw milk. The commission identified healthy cows in clean dairies and then would certify the milk as safe.

So was it safe then or what? No, no. It didn't do much for the mortality rate of children at all. In fact, this is so sad. The founder of the group watched his son die of milk poisoning two years after he set up the commission.

[00:19:09] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's awful. That poor guy. I mean, poor kid, but also that poor guy just ugh.

That's awful.

[00:19:14] Michael Regilio: Things had to change, and an awareness campaign was launched to try and get people, particularly young mothers, to switch to pasteurized milk. There were shops set up where women were invited to see how pasteurization worked firsthand, and then they could buy that pasteurized milk really cheap.

[00:19:30] Jordan Harbinger: It's. Certainly sounds better than poisoning your children. Plus also, is it just me or would a tour of how they pasteurize milk be kind of cool? Maybe I'm just a big nerd, but I would, I would check that out.

[00:19:39] Michael Regilio: In fact, interestingly enough, one of the popular things to do was to buy a home pasteurization kit.

The mortality rate among children was cut in half. Society. Women took on the cause, and the International Pure Milk League and the mother's Club were formed. People were slow to the notion of not drinking poison, but progress was made. Then in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt had his surgeon general issue report that stated childhood mortality rates were directly linked to unpasteurized milk.

It's crazy, but even in the report about why you should drink pasteurized milk, there were complaints about the taste. It was presented to the public. Like it might taste bad, but it's necessary.

[00:20:21] Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna be honest, I kind of wanna try some raw milk at this point because just how good is this stuff where the president's like, Hey.

I know it's not gonna taste as good. And also people are like, you know what, I'm still gonna do it because freedom and I don't care if my kids die. This stuff tastes delicious. How good are we talking about like what's in this dang milk besides cholera and typhoid,

[00:20:40] Michael Regilio: right? I mean, we'll see. But what you just said has echoes of what's going on with raw milk even today.

So raw milk must have tasted so good that five years after that government report in 1913, another large typhoid epidemic hit New York City, and this was because people were still drinking contaminated raw milk.

[00:21:01] Jordan Harbinger: Well, new Yorkers are known for being stubborn and putting up a bit of a fight. You gotta give 'em that they're consistent.

Yeah.

[00:21:07] Michael Regilio: Well, in fact, they put up so much of a fight that at one point there was something called the New York Milk Wars. Farmers were pissed at the distributors, so they organized spilling committees. They would block off roads and spill out hundreds of gallons of their own milk.

[00:21:21] Jordan Harbinger: I feel like calling things like that.

A war is a little hyperbolic. It's, this is more like a milk melee. I. I'm assuming they spilled their milk to what reduced the supply and drive up the price? Or am I overthinking this?

[00:21:31] Michael Regilio: Nope. Nope. Bingo. That was it. Milk was becoming big business and everybody wanted a piece.

[00:21:36] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I guess, is this the beginning of big dairy?

Is this why we call it big dairy?

[00:21:40] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I mean, well, it gets much bigger as we'll see, but dairy was drinking its milk and growing up big and strong. Hmm. In the early 20th century, the industry saw the first new threat to their livelihood, and that was the threat from margarine

[00:21:54] Jordan Harbinger: threatening margarine, delicious.

Is it called hydrogenated oil? Is that basically what that is? Yeah, that's

[00:22:00] Michael Regilio: basically what it is.

[00:22:01] Jordan Harbinger: Yum,

[00:22:01] Michael Regilio: yum. And dairy needed to convince people to stick with butter, and so came the first of many industry scientific studies. And for the record, I am air quoting. These bias studies concluded that milk was not just good for you, but essential for your health.

[00:22:17] Jordan Harbinger: So milk went from being something that no adult could even drink without barfing or having diarrhea. To it being essential for everyone. And that's quite a comeback for milk.

[00:22:27] Michael Regilio: Yeah. The industry saw a good marketing angle and they ran with it. In fact, it was in studying milk in 1913 that scientists isolated the first vitamin.

Vitamin A

[00:22:37] Jordan Harbinger: vitamins were discovered by the dairy industry. That's surprising somehow.

[00:22:41] Michael Regilio: Yes. And this fangled vitamin A was in milk. So now you had to have milk or no vitamin A for you.

[00:22:48] Jordan Harbinger: You have to have this thing that we. Just discovered like five minutes ago. That's some solid marketing. I'm gonna give them that and let me guess that worked because everyone's like, have you heard about vitamins?

You can only get it in milk. They don't exist anywhere else.

[00:23:00] Michael Regilio: Exactly. It worked brilliantly. And then the dairy industry did something to change the American experience forever. In 1915, they formed a council, the National Dairy Council. I have heard of that.

[00:23:12] Jordan Harbinger: That still exists, right?

[00:23:13] Michael Regilio: Yeah. It's a huge player at American Politics and Daily Life.

They have always made sure milk was equated with health. One of their dairy industry sponsored studies states that milk, and this is what it says, quote, corrects dietary deficiencies and is the greatest factor for the protection of mankind.

[00:23:35] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, whoa. Drinking milk is suddenly, it's pretty high stakes.

Put in the future of mankind on the line. It, this sounds like something you'd hear about a Marvel superhero movie.

[00:23:45] Michael Regilio: Yeah, exactly. They portrayed milk as a cape, wearing superfood, a superfood That was about to get another big boost with an unlikely ally. I. Kaiser v. Helm ii.

[00:23:57] Jordan Harbinger: So this is one of the German leaders before Hitler.

I don't think it was like right before Hitler, but whatever. So, okay. Unlike most superhero movies, that was kind of an unexpected plot twist actually. So what does Kaiser v Helm II have to do with milk?

[00:24:11] Michael Regilio: Well, debatably, he started World War I, right? Okay. And during that war to keep the soldiers healthy, the American government turned to the dairy industry and its new inventions, powdered milk and condensed milk.

These new versions of milk could last just about forever, and were easily stored and could be readily sent to the front lines. It made Uncle Sam the dairy industry's biggest customer. Big dairy got bigger. In fact, many farmers walked away from their crops and switched to dairy. It was a literal cash cow.

[00:24:42] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. World War I eventually ended. So didn't things kind of just go back to the way they were before the war?

[00:24:48] Michael Regilio: No. No.

[00:24:48] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:24:49] Michael Regilio: No, because there was suddenly way more milk than demand, and the government and the dairy industry together working together made like a really strange move. They decided that instead of making less, they would convince everyone in America to drink more.

[00:25:05] Jordan Harbinger: So the government got in bed with just one industry for the sake of. Supporting that industry. This is so weird.

[00:25:12] Michael Regilio: I mean, particularly the Department of Agriculture, the USDA, they decided to promote all

[00:25:17] Jordan Harbinger: things dairy. It doesn't sound very capitalistic like, Hey, invisible hand of the market. We can We can see you.

[00:25:23] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Questionable science was used to put out official reports recommending children drink four classes of milk a day. Big dairy was getting really fat with the government's help. So when the Great Depression hit, new laws were actually passed, subsidizing big dairy.

[00:25:39] Jordan Harbinger: Nowadays we, what do we say, too big to fail dairy.

Yeah, I guess, exactly. Yikes.

[00:25:43] Michael Regilio: In 1940, the first Federal milk program for schools was made. The government implemented a system that put a carton of milk in every student's hand while Uncle Sam put his thumb on the scale for big dairy. In 1946, Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act. In it. Three types of lunches were prescribed for schoolchildren and every lunch included

[00:26:05] Jordan Harbinger: milk.

This all makes sense. My parents were so strict about me drinking milk with dinner and I could have as much milk as I wanted and if I finished my milk, they would pour me more milk. This is like every day of my young life. Milk for breakfast, milk for dinner. Probably no milk for lunch unless I got it at school.

But now it all makes sense. 'cause I was just like, how healthy is this stuff? And this is quite a windfall because if every lunch includes milk at school, and I remember there was like a milk cart and you would go and get the milk out of this thing. Was there a provision about everyone getting a bologna sandwich or whatever?

Or were they trying to make kids get protein or is it just milk?

[00:26:40] Michael Regilio: No, no, no. There was nothing for big deli. Just for big dairy. Hmm. The government said whatever you serve. Serve it with milk, man. That's a fat government thumb on the scale then. Right? And we need to understand that the USDA's mission statement reads, quote, to help rural America thrive and promote agricultural production.

It's right there in black and white. The USDA is looking out for more than just us. They're out to help American agriculture. The problem is. The USDA is the government agency that makes dietary recommendations and they're putting out recommendations using our tax dollars that don't necessarily have our best interest in mind.

[00:27:17] Jordan Harbinger: I feel like they should make that better known, like when you see the USDA stamp on food. It should say the USDA approves you consuming this product because it helps someone's bottom line, regardless of its effect on your health. 'cause when you see that, you're kind of like, oh, this was inspected for safety and quality.

Not like, oh, this is directly subsidizing somebody who could, should probably be doing something else with their time and money and effort, but we're giving them a check. Yeah,

[00:27:44] Michael Regilio: right.

[00:27:44] Jordan Harbinger: That's crazy.

[00:27:46] Michael Regilio: Yeah. In fact, during the recession in the 1970s, the government stepped in to help the dairy industry. Again.

This time it was Jimmy Carter. And he bailed out the dairy farmers to the tune of $2 billion. That's 1970s money.

[00:27:59] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow. So 2 billion in seventies dollars. That is a lot of bell bottoms in cocaine actually adjusted for inflation. That's about 11 billion in today's money. Or $11 billion in what? Lululemon tights And.

Yeah, well still cocaine.

[00:28:16] Michael Regilio: Yes, cocaine is timeless. Jordan actually, I mean this literally and metaphorically, that's a lot of cheese. Jimmy Carter bailed the farmers out by buying up the surplus. And just like thousands of years ago, dairy keeps a lot longer in the form of cheese. So the US government bought millions of pounds of cheese.

What?

[00:28:38] Jordan Harbinger: So do we have like some great cheese reserves stashed away under a mountain next to some. Nuclear warheads or something like that. Well, it's ridiculous.

[00:28:47] Michael Regilio: Yes. Yes, we do. The cheese was stored in giant warehouses and caves. But here's the thing. Even wrapped up in caves, that cheese wasn't gonna last forever, and by the time Ronald Reagan was president, it was close to its expiration date.

It. Which, by the way, expiration dates are bullshit, as most of us know, from skeptical Sunday episode 6, 4, 6 on expiration dates. But this cheese was actually really nearing the end of its run.

[00:29:12] Jordan Harbinger: So what did the gipper do with all that cheddar?

[00:29:14] Michael Regilio: Well, Ronnie went all Marie Antoinette and he said, let them have cheese.

But then he actually did it and he gave away all the cheese to the poor.

[00:29:23] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Not a bad Reagan imitation. So that's where go the phrase government cheese comes from. I, I always thought. That was an urban legend or some kind of jokey phrase from the eighties. I had no idea that that was actually a real thing.

'cause I guess I've never seen it in a store or whatever.

[00:29:39] Michael Regilio: Well, I don't know if you can get government cheese. Maybe not in the store 'cause it's just given away for free. But government cheese wasn't, I. To be clear, the government coming up with a benevolent plan to feed the poor, it was about as noble as somebody saying, Hey, before I throw out this 200 million pounds of food that's been in my fridge for six years, I don't know.

Do you want it?

[00:29:59] Jordan Harbinger: So did people actually want it? It sounds kind of gross when you phrase it that way.

[00:30:02] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, cheese actually was a huge hit. Government cheese became a cultural phenomenon. At one point the US government was buying up one quarter of the cheddar

[00:30:11] Jordan Harbinger: cheese in the whole country. I did not realize the extent to which the government was inflating the cheese market.

So it seems like Americans are just gonna subsidize big dairy forever from the sound of it.

[00:30:22] Michael Regilio: Well, I mean, in fairness, we're also subsidizing big oil, big pharma, all the bigs, and as such, the supply and demand for dairy are out of whack. So again, rather than the market correct itself, the government and the USDA.

Decided to again convince people to drink more. Enter the nineties. In 1990, Congress passed the Fluid Milk Protection Act to promote the sale of milk and to allow collective advertising for generic milk. What do you mean generic milk? Got milk. Didn't that ad ever strike you as strange? Like milk? What?

Milk? Who's milk? Just milk. I mean, what other industries so successfully just advertises the general idea of their product. I mean, I've never seen a got car commercial.

[00:31:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's right. That there's no enjoy any brand of soda today Ads. Good point. I had not thought about that. I do, however remember, cheese, glorious cheese.

You remember

[00:31:20] Michael Regilio: those? Yeah. In fact, glorious indeed. And it's all from the same thing. The Fluid Milk Promotion Act. Stated fluid milk products are basic foods and are a primary source of required nutrients such as calcium. And otherwise are a valuable part of the human diet. The act mandated that fluid milk products be readily available and marketed efficiently to ensure that the people of the United States receive adequate nourishment.

And so we were all told we need more milk in magazines and TV ads and by celebrities with gross looking milk mustaches.

[00:31:58] Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. The milk mustache ads. Kind of gross. Very catchy and fun at the time. And your favorite celebrity was for sure in there. One of my favorites was the Garfield one because, well, actually some of them were super cringey.

The, if you have time, y'all look up, got milk and look for like the Dennis Rodman one. Or the Serena and Venus Williams one, where you're just going, who approved this? This is just bizarre.

[00:32:22] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I hate to say it. Alex Trebek comes to mind. Oh yeah. It was kind of gross. I mean, a milk mustache on a real mustache.

Yeah. What is gross for 10,000? Alex? Oof. Again, the USDA was directly involved in all those advertisements. Those were partly our tax dollars selling us big dairies products. And this wasn't just the same old milk they were pushing on us. In 1993, the artificial bovine growth hormone was approved by the FDA.

These new dairy cows were getting roed up, so to speak. They were super cows, super cows.

[00:32:56] Jordan Harbinger: I, ugh, I don't really want my dairy cow to be genetically altered. Unless we're damn sure that that's not going into the milk.

[00:33:03] Michael Regilio: Yeah. The artificial bovine growth hormone is banned in Canada and the EU by the way. Yet here in the US the FDA concluded that the use of the artificial hormone and the use of additional antibiotics that would accompany the growth hormone due to the fact that it causes a painful inflammation of the utter do not pose a risk to human health.

Speaking of bell bottoms and

[00:33:24] Jordan Harbinger: cocaine, now it's time for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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[00:34:34] Jordan Harbinger: This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by booking.com. Booking dot. Yeah. It's finally time for summer travel.

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Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. All the deals, discounts, and ways to support the show are all in one searchable and clickable place. Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Now for the rest of skeptical Sunday, that's really gross. So they take, I remember this is Bgh HI remember this being a thing in college and people were like, you don't want BGH in your milk.

There's this thing in your milk. And it's banned in Canada and the eu, which is never really a good sign when all of our sort of fellow Western countries are like, Hey, you should really not use this stuff. And we're kind of like, ah, it's not that bad. That's never really a good sign. And then they just give the cow additional antibiotics, which is probably also not great because the BGH makes their utter, which is where the milk is, folks in ca, in case your biology isn't up to snuff.

Because it gets all inflamed. I just, Ugh, that's gross. And even recently, I was reading about how much bird flu they're finding in the milk. I mean, it's dead flu, but it's, ugh. And also just pus milk comes to mind. Looking back, it seems strange. They put all this advertising and cajoling behind milk. But I, I never thought about it in the moment, like you said.

Milk's just not that great. Most people don't drink it. But big dairy is more than just milk. Right? I mean we, you mentioned cheese before,

[00:36:38] Michael Regilio: right? Exactly. And by the way, the industry was getting that message too, even during the nineties. Got milk campaign consumption of milk decline. Hmm. Which is why big dairy made the big switch from pushing milk to pushing cheese.

The Got milk campaign partnered with the Run for the Border ads and the stuffed Crust pizza promotion and the summer of cheese parties,

[00:36:59] Jordan Harbinger: right? Stuffed crust pizza. That was, I think Pizza Hut run for the border was Taco Bell Summer of Cheese. What was that? Do you remember that one?

[00:37:07] Michael Regilio: So yeah, no, that was also Pizza Hut and their big summer of cheese promotion led to them using 102 million extra pounds

[00:37:14] Jordan Harbinger: of cheese.

Oh, Mike, think about how much that is. So they were already using however many million pounds of cheese for their pizza and then summer of cheese, they're like, ah, we need 102 million extra pounds of cheese. So the government partnered with the fast food industry, which I kind of didn't see coming, but also doesn't come as a huge shock.

But that is pretty damning proof that they never really gave a crap about our health. Right. If they're now pushing chalupas and stuffed crust pizza, this is, they've lost the plot.

[00:37:45] Michael Regilio: Right. Well, I mean, to be clear, the USDA partnered with the Dairy Council. Dairy Council partnered with the fast food restaurants.

I see. It's a little more convoluted than it's that the government partnered with them. It's that the Dairy Council pays everything into this fund, which is controlled by the USDA for the advertising and by. De facto, the USDA is putting their stamp on these ads, pushing milk and cheese, and then the dairy council goes and partners with the fast food industry and it's one hand washing the other.

Yeah. I just wanna be clear about that.

[00:38:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that, that's a good clarification.

[00:38:17] Michael Regilio: Yeah. And so gone, are the gut milk ads replaced by the super cheesy fast food ads? I mean, we've all noticed that. A bunch of food chains have gone all in on the cheesiest, most loaded, dripping triple cheese products. They're not just shoving cheese into the crust, they're shoving cheese into us.

Taco Bell, in partnership with the dairy industry, came up with a quesadilla with. Eight times more cheese than anything else on their menu. Yeah. Domino's increased cheese by 40%. If fast food could stuff something with cheese, they were gonna stuff it with cheese. All because big dairy wants to move more product and the milk add weren't cutting it.

[00:38:55] Jordan Harbinger: I'm surprised there's no. Cheese, stuffed cheese, which I, I'm not gonna lie, that sounds really awesome, and I would definitely eat that.

[00:39:02] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I actually looked into that and I did find cheese, stuffed cheese, but, uh, the, in fairness, it was only at one restaurant in Wisconsin. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. In my research, I also found that an aficionado of cheese is called a curd nerd, catchy.

And then my skepticism. I was like, I bet the term is another manufactured trick by the industry to just get us to go for more dairy. Big dairy is pushing dairy everywhere. Everywhere. Domino's has a program getting their products into thousands of schools. Oh my

[00:39:32] Jordan Harbinger: God, that's terrible For kids. That's probably worse than milk getting pizza.

Into school, especially Domino's Pizza. Now you're just eating cardboard with cheese on it. Come on.

[00:39:40] Michael Regilio: Yeah, I mean, in a way, none of it should be served in schools. 'cause let's talk just for a minute about the actual nutrition in milk. It's not special. You can get calcium from almonds, figs, kale, tofu, collared greens, and sweet potatoes.

You can get protein from any number of foods as well as vitamins. Milk is not essential. It's an option and maybe not even a good one. New studies show that drinking too much milk for teenage boys can increase the

[00:40:09] Jordan Harbinger: risk of fractured bones. How was that possible? Why? How can it increase the risk of fractured bones?

I thought we were all drinking milk because it builds strong bones and all that stuff. That was like the core of the eighties. Ad campaign for us?

[00:40:22] Michael Regilio: No, we're drinking milk because an industry found a good marketing angle about strong bones. But the fact of the matter is that this is through meta-analysis of multiple studies.

It's showing that there could be a correlation between not just young men, teenagers drinking too much milk, and then later in life having a higher risk of fractured bones, particularly hips. But the meta-analysis is also showing that there could be a connection between too much dairy can increase prostate cancer in men as they get older.

Oof. Yeah. It increase the chances of prostate cancer as they get older. And in women, too much dairy in the formative teenage years can lead to breast cancer. They think,

[00:41:00] Jordan Harbinger: wow. So not just teenagers. Basic, it sounds like nobody should be drinking large amounts of milk, which kind of is scary for me 'cause I drink large amounts of milk.

[00:41:07] Michael Regilio: Right? Large amounts. Yes, that is a true statement. And by the way, not if they want good skin, because milk has been shown to increase acne by 24%.

[00:41:16] Jordan Harbinger: So teenagers are told to drink milk every day and it causes acne and later on might ruin your bones and give you cancer. The acne thing at least kind of explains my high school years.

[00:41:25] Michael Regilio: Yeah, well yet, milk programs still make up a huge chunk of the money spent by the government on dairy. Here's the thing, poor communities have higher percentages of students with lactose intolerance,

[00:41:37] Jordan Harbinger: so the kids, the food programs are meant to benefit. They can't even drink the stuff because a lot of 'em are lactose intolerant.

That's a good point. I didn't put that together.

[00:41:45] Michael Regilio: There are pills that kids can take if they really want it.

[00:41:48] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:48] Michael Regilio: And we're still buying and distributing government cheese, by the way, and sending it to schools. I had no idea. The USDA lunch program is a very dairy heavy. Of the three components of a school breakfast, one of them is milk, and another could be partially dairy.

Your breakfast could be sugary flavored milk, sugary flavored yogurt, and a sugary cereal with milk. Oh

[00:42:09] Jordan Harbinger: man, that sucks. So it's like dairy and sugar with dairy, and then some more sugar with dairy, and then some crappy empty carbs. Dairy and it, by the way, a lot of sugar reminds me of when you were a kid and you dumped that bag of sugar in your cereal.

Still gross, by the way,

[00:42:24] Michael Regilio: right?

[00:42:25] Jordan Harbinger: But so

[00:42:25] Michael Regilio: take my word for it. I get it. Here's the thing, there's no limit on the amount of sugar you can serve to a student during the day. There are limits for fat and sodium, but not sugar. In fact, just this week, the USDA announced that despite pressure to limit sugar and ban chocolate and strawberry milk.

They were leaving sugar in schools unrestricted.

[00:42:47] Jordan Harbinger: That's gross. I didn't even know that they were serving strawberry milk. I mean, we had chocolate milk when I was younger, but it wasn't super sugary. Well, maybe it was. It didn't taste as bad as today's sugary chocolate milk. Like the stuff my kids like.

Strawberry milk just sounds vile, by the way. I'm not even down to,

[00:43:04] Michael Regilio: oh, I gotta fight you on that one, man. Really? I love it. Oh really? Strawberry quick. Disgusting and delicious.

[00:43:11] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, quick is so, oh man. Oh man. I forgot about quick. I. That's some nostalgia that I just don't need. Alright, so it seems like all this is because the government didn't know what to do with dairy farmers after World War I, which just boggles the mind.

It's like, should we break the news to these guys that they need to switch crops? It's like, no, let's just throw, I. Billions and billions of dollars at the problem, health consequences be damned.

[00:43:36] Michael Regilio: Yeah, it's tough to put the genie back in the bottle, but one thing is for sure kids' health should be decided by current good science.

[00:43:44] Jordan Harbinger: I cannot agree more. I mean, milk isn't as essential to a growing body as we once assumed. Certainly strawberry chocolate milk and cheese, stuffed cheese curds or whatever are not either.

[00:43:55] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Well, it's not so great for the planet either. Cows produce a lot of greenhouse gases. Big dairy is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every airplane combined.

[00:44:05] Jordan Harbinger: I had no idea it was that much. That is a, that's a lot of cow farts, man. Yeah, a lot of cow farts.

[00:44:10] Michael Regilio: Dairy farming can also degrade water sources and destroy ecologically important lands. Plus there's the treatment of the cows themselves. Dairy cows are impregnated over and over again, separated from their young and slaughtered the minute they're no longer productive.

Mm. I personally can't get over the ethical implications.

[00:44:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It doesn't sound like dairy has, by the way. I did not know that. That's really horrifying. I knew dairy cows took BGH or whatever and gave a lot of milk. I didn't know they were impregnated a bunch and then slaughtered when they weren't productive.

That's extra gross. It doesn't sound like dairy has a lot of upside. I mean, it's an easy way to get protein and make shakes, which is why I drink it all the time, like every day. My kids also, gosh, they won't eat fricking anything, but they love drinking milk, so I feel like I'm kind of stuck with it for now.

I. If I want to, you know, feed my kids some nutrition.

[00:45:00] Michael Regilio: Yeah. Hey look, I hear you. I mean, to some it tastes good. In fact, this is gonna blow your mind. But the raw milk wars continue to this day. People still insist on raw milk, and guess what?

[00:45:14] Jordan Harbinger: It's still dangerous. That was my next question. I was like, well, surely they've made a way to make it not kill you by now, but I did read about a government raid on a farm that was selling raw dairy and I think it was quite nearby and they were selling it at farmer's markets or whatever, like places you can easily get it.

It's not some, it's not like drugs. Where you gotta know where to go. You basically go to the farmer's market and you go to the milk guy and you're like, Hey, you got any of that raw stuff? And he pulls it out from where to the folding table?

[00:45:39] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I mean, there's been a bunch of raids and the one that you're talking about that was nearby, there was a case of a farmer in Fresno who would drive down to my hometown of Los Angeles.

And he said he would go to a back alley by Venice Beach and he would be mobbed by hundreds of people coming for the raw milk. And that they would drink it on the spot. Like just he would sell it to them. They were throwing, uh, the way he put it in the article, he is like, they were throwing twenties at him without even asking for change and just grabbing bottles of raw milk.

And that's vile sucking it down, man,

[00:46:10] Jordan Harbinger: dude on Venice Beach on like a 90 degree day. Right. And Venice Beach is disgusting folks these days. I know. Cool neighborhood, but like. It's pretty gross and I can't imagine going there and being like, oh, look, there's a guy in an alley selling something that you can drink that's maybe dangerous.

Go there and get it before it sounds like You know what that scene you're telling me about right now, you ever see Requiem for a Dream where the, there's no more heroine and the guys with the masks open up a truck. And the junkies all come up and they need their fix, and they're throwing money in and they're throwing these little baggies.

That's That's what this sounds like. Wow. I mean, it's disgusting.

[00:46:44] Michael Regilio: It's a bunch of people. There's an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania, he was famous. His farm was famously rated, and now he's become sort of a folk legend. A hero because it's actually turned political or ideological or, yeah, philosophical. These people are kind of intense.

It's now called. The food freedom movement, food freedom in the land of cheese, stuffed cheese, what freedom are they fighting for? Come on the right to get sick as hell. Of course. Okay. Food freedom fighters, it's kind of, it's a mind boggling argument they make, but they point out that you can buy raw chicken, raw eggs, and raw meat, but not raw milk.

They want their raw milk, which by the way, as I said, is still totally dangerous and can still get you really sick. Ah, but no one's eating raw chicken. Not on purpose, right? I mean, you can also buy Crystal Draino and drink it if you want it. That's, yeah. Like the fact that, yeah, look, all it takes is one online article about how raw chicken tastes better and has more nutrients, and then we'll have the raw chicken eaters.

I assure you it's coming.

[00:47:47] Jordan Harbinger: Do you remember the social media trend with the NyQuil chicken? Do you remember this? No. I think it was a gag, but people were still doing it. It was like had a. Cook a chicken in NyQuil. It was just, it was one of the grossest things I've ever heard in my life and I hope nobody actually did it.

But, uh, it sounds like there's a new. Campaign coming though. Like got death or got listeria maybe.

[00:48:10] Michael Regilio: Yeah. I mean, who knows? Maybe big dairy will see the demand and jump into the raw milk market again.

[00:48:17] Jordan Harbinger: But maybe my tax dollars won't have to fund it. Geez. Yeah, right. I mean, big dairy will forever milk the system.

Bad pun aside, that sure seems true. I oof.

[00:48:28] Michael Regilio: Yeah, I mean, the catchphrase was got milk, but the only thing that. Was got was

[00:48:33] Jordan Harbinger: us. It sure sounds like it. I have to assume we're the only species that drinks milk that isn't from our own mothers, or even from a member of the same species, which is weird if you think about it.

[00:48:44] Michael Regilio: Yeah. And well, unless you count cats who drink the saucers of cow's milk, humans give them, which you shouldn't do because cats lose the ability to digest dairy in adulthood like normal mammals. So yeah, in conclusion, I guess. Humans are

[00:49:01] Jordan Harbinger: weird. Humans are weird. But if you're looking for a good grift, go and get some milk, regular milk, and put it in weird jars and go down to Venice Beach and say that it's raw and you're not gonna hurt anyone because you're selling pasteurized milk.

Have people throw, literally throw money at you while you run out of mason jars of good old 2% or four, maybe use 4% so that people, you know, think it's the real deal. Ugh, that's, I mean, can you get in trouble? Is that fraud? If you tell people that if you feed people a safe product and they think they're getting something illegal, who's gonna report that?

[00:49:33] Michael Regilio: I don't know.

[00:49:33] Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. This is not legal advice. Maybe don't actually do that, but it seems like a pretty good grift if you ask me.

[00:49:38] Michael Regilio: I would say the corollary would be the guys that were selling bags of oregano and saying it was weed. Like what was the. Punishment for them.

[00:49:45] Jordan Harbinger: Well, thanks Michael. I gotta run.

I'm gonna headed to Venice Beach today. Totally unrelated. Thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday toJordan@jordanharbinger.com. Show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts are always in the show notes, advertisers deals, discounts, and ways to support this show.

All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Michael Lio at Michael Lio on Instagram Tour dates up now as well for that comedy, and we will link to that in the show notes because as always, I. Nobody can spell Lio.

This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Rahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday.

If you think we really dropped the ball on something, definitely let us know. We're usually pretty receptive to that. Y'all know how to reach me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com. I'm ready Michael, for the people who are like raw milk's, not that bad. Here's why. Look, I'll read that email 'cause I don't, I don't know.

Maybe it's not that bad. Here's why, but it sure sounds like it, at least used to be really bad. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out here today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You are about to hear a preview of one of my favorite stories from an earlier episode of the show. My friend Steve Elkins found a lost city in the jungle that most people never even knew existed.

I'm not even kidding. It sounds insane. This has to be one of the most incredible stories I've ever recorded on the show. I know you're gonna love this one.

[00:51:32] Clip: The legend of CED Blanca, or White City in English goes back. Probably 500 years to the best of my knowledge, people have believed that there is this civilization out there and the local indigenous people have their own legends.

It has about five different names of which I can't pronounce about this. Culture, this civilization that lived out in the jungle at one time. One of the other monikers for the city in current times is lost city, the monkey. God, maybe there's some truth to this legend. I kind of felt there was something to it.

The Ede Jungle where it's located in the eastern third of Honduras is one of the toughest jungles in the world, and by accidents of geography in history. It's remained pretty much unexplored until recently. I have a map made by the British in the 1850s, and on that map it says portal de and au over that part of the jungle, and it was called the gates of Hell because the terrain was so tough.

A lot of people have gone looking for it. Some went in and some never came back. A director friend of mine introduced me to a guy named Captain Steve Morgan, and he was a lifelong adventurer, explorer, treasure hunter, raconteur, nice guy. Fairly, pretty smart. And I said, let's go. In the 1994, we headed out to Honduras for an unknown adventure, looking for the lost city.

[00:53:00] Jordan Harbinger: For more with Steve Elkins, including the details on how they discovered the city and made one of the most important archeological discoveries of the century. Check out episode 2 99 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.