1088: Counterfeit Foods | Skeptical Sunday

1088: Counterfeit Foods | Skeptical Sunday

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday Co-host, writer, and researcher, Jessica Wynn. 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.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. And during the week we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, it's skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest, co-host and I break down a topic that you might have never thought about.

And debunk common misconceptions about that topic. Topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham, why tipping, makes no sense, astrology, recycling, chemtrails, hypnosis, and one of my recent favorites, internet porn. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs.

These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, crime, and cults and more. That'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, we unwrap a topic that is not so appetizing, counterfeit food from the most basic products to the most luxurious ingredients.

It seems like pretty much anything can be counterfeited. That's right. Even your perfectly aged artisanal cheese is not safe. It might just be a cleverly disguised hunk of cheese flavored plastic. And I'm not really exaggerating here. And that fancy, high priced bottle of wine you're sipping on, it could be nothing more than grape juice with just a splash of regret.

So grab your napkins 'cause we're about to dig into the murky world of counterfeit food where the steaks are high and the stakes are not even real beef. These criminals are not exactly Michelin star material. Joining me to take a bite outta food crime is writer and researcher, Jessica Wynn.

[00:01:46] Jessica Wynn: Hey Jordan.

Can you believe counterfeiting food is a massive multi-billion dollar industry?

[00:01:52] Jordan Harbinger: I am a little skeptical about this skeptical Sunday as a man who goes out to eat a lot. We might be actually asking questions I don't really want the answers to.

[00:02:00] Jessica Wynn: That's the lawyer in you, but it won't make you feel better that everything we eat is susceptible to being counterfeited.

So from basic staples like milk and bread to high-end products like truffles and aged bourbon. Counterfeit foods are everywhere. Essentially, if you eat food, you're being lied to

[00:02:20] Jordan Harbinger: and lying to yourself. I guess I like to think that I pay enough attention that I'm not getting scammed by my food, but I don't know.

Here. Here we go.

[00:02:27] Jessica Wynn: But you are. So am I. And so is everyone listening.

[00:02:31] Jordan Harbinger: If your favorite cheese turns out to be a plastic imitation, and your wine is a cheap knockoff. What's the real risk here? Beyond disappointment, of course. Yeah.

[00:02:40] Jessica Wynn: Counterfeit food is a deliberate deception that can have no effect on us, or enormous consequences.

So it's really subjective. They can involve mislabeled ingredients, they can be outright fraudulent products, imitating brands or types of food. And in some cases, pose serious health risks. Counterfeit food is like those fake Rolexes, but for your taste buds.

[00:03:04] Jordan Harbinger: When I was in high school, I bought a bag of pot that turned out to be straight up oregano.

[00:03:08] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I have news for you. Even that oregano is often counterfeited. But yeah, that was rough. Before it was legal. Pot smokers inhaled a lot worse than oregano. I bet.

[00:03:19] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It was definitely not the high I was looking for. I smelled great though. My friend smelled great though.

[00:03:25] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. When I was in college, let's just say my friend purchased what was most likely a bag of white paint chips and it burned.

[00:03:34] Jordan Harbinger: Yep. So did the oregano from what I heard. Man, the trials of experimental youth and prohibition.

[00:03:41] Jessica Wynn: But it's a really good analogy for counterfeit foods. We're expecting something real. We pay for that authenticity, but if our senses don't catch the fraud, like the burning sensation from that oregano, we might never know and someone is pocketing a few extra bucks.

[00:03:57] Jordan Harbinger: Absolutely. So how did we end up in this mess where our food is so easily manipulated?

[00:04:02] Jessica Wynn: It's all about our global food supply chain. It's enormous and opaque, which makes it a playground for fraudsters. They can operate in this vast market without much chance of detection. I. Plus high value products are prime targets for counterfeiting, and the higher the value of the product, the more tempting it is for fraudsters to get involved.

[00:04:24] Jordan Harbinger: Okay? So basically the bigger the market and the more valuable the product is, the more likely it is to be faked. It's unsettling to think that so much of our food might be compromised by greed. What? Hashtag capitalism, I suppose. So who's involved? In this dark trade,

[00:04:39] Jessica Wynn: it's a range of players. If you can exploit gaps in food regulations and oversight, then you can manipulate the food market to your advantage at any scale.

So we're talking everyone from individual criminals like your friends, oregano dealer. To large corporations, organized crime groups, and even entire mafia networks.

[00:05:00] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, you got my attention. Mafia Networks. Now it's getting interesting. So how did the mafia even get their hands into our food? I thought they were kind of in the drug trafficking business or something.

A little more serious sounding.

[00:05:11] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's actually a thing called. Agro Mafia, and it's a $16 billion year industry. So food and agriculture are ripe for mafia infiltration because those sectors are less technologically advanced and often involve small scale competition, which makes them vulnerable.

[00:05:31] Jordan Harbinger: Agro Mafia sounds like something out of Goodfellas.

I never thought that pasta and racketeering were a combination.

[00:05:37] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, a lot of those scenes were in a restaurant, right? Like the Mafia has infiltrated the entire food chain from farms to restaurants. I. They buy up the cheap farmland, livestock markets, and even restaurants laundering money through what's become a leading industry in Italy.

[00:05:55] Jordan Harbinger: So this starts at the farms and goes all the way to the plates.

[00:05:58] Jessica Wynn: Exactly. The agro mafia's reach extends from production to packaging, transport, and distribution. So the value of this criminal enterprise has almost doubled in recent years from 12.5 billion being reported in 2011. To over 22 billion by 2018, and it now represents about 15% of total mafia turnover.

[00:06:25] Jordan Harbinger: So this is so bizarre. So let me get this straight. While we're enjoying our ke or olive oil, the mafia, the actual real life Italian mafias. They're just raking in profits from the very food that we are eating.

[00:06:36] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, that's right. It's a highly profitable venture with profit margins as high as 2000%. So compared to drug running or robberies, what we think of as the mafia, this is way less dangerous and it's more lucrative.

So the Mafia's involvement is all about exploiting vulnerabilities, drugs and food. They ship well together and restaurants provide a perfect front for laundering money and conducting criminal business. So our food is deeply entwined with crime. But it's easy to overlook when we're just hungry.

[00:07:12] Jordan Harbinger: Is it that widespread?

This isn't just a bunch of shady characters sneaking into farmer's markets.

[00:07:16] Jessica Wynn: It's actually worse than you might think. Mafia syndicates have turned food fraud into a massive, profitable enterprise. And according to the observatory of crime in agriculture and the food chain, that's a real Italian commission.

I was gonna say, battling food crime. That's

[00:07:33] Jordan Harbinger: ridiculous, but okay. Yeah.

[00:07:35] Jessica Wynn: Um, it probably sounds nicer in Italian. The mafia has infiltrated the entire food supply chain.

[00:07:41] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I'm gonna sound like a jerk, but it sounds like an Italian problem that they have to just deal with,

[00:07:46] Jessica Wynn: right? That's what it sounds like.

But all of Italy's major crime syndicates have rooted themselves so deeply in every part of the food chain, affects the path that our food takes around the world, and this web of crime leads to other things. So according to Professor Umberto Santino, who's a mafia historian from Palermo, the mob's interests in the agriculture industry extend to human trafficking.

Money laundering, extortion, loan sharking, illegal breeding, backstreet butchering, and baking. There's burial of toxic waste on farmland. It's an integrated cycle, a full package of systemic interactions, and the fraud can start anywhere in the world. So when crops are destroyed somewhere. Organized crime steps in to fill the gap, and that's when counterfeit products start flooding the market.

[00:08:42] Jordan Harbinger: What do you mean when crops are destroyed? What do you mean by that?

[00:08:45] Jessica Wynn: Crops are destroyed. Organized criminal activity flourishes when farms face bad weather and hurricane comes, or a drought, whatever it is. I

[00:08:54] Jordan Harbinger: got it. So literally when crops are destroyed by the weather, there's just a shortage of stuff, so they fill the gap.

Is that the idea?

[00:09:00] Jessica Wynn: Absolutely. Like this year's heat wave in California destroyed Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. So I can guarantee everybody that counterfeit Cabernet Sauvignon will be on the rise.

[00:09:13] Jordan Harbinger: So it's not, this is so weird. It's not some Scorsese movie plot. It's happening right now in it, possibly even in California.

Is it just specific crops or is it products like olives and grapes? 'cause those are the ones I've heard about.

[00:09:24] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, olive oil fraud is rampant. That's where it all begins. And. Many consumers have lost their virginity figure, figuratively speaking. When it comes to genuine Italian olive oil, cheap oils are blended with a splash of real extra virgin olive oil, and then a high end label is slapped on the bottle.

So this is being battled constantly. Take Operation Yellow Gold, for example.

Yeah, yeah. Per, yeah. Perfect. Uh, in Puglia traffickers were caught producing counterfeit olive oil. They were using rape seed oil and selling it as extra virgin. The operation was so advanced, it infiltrated international markets, including restaurants in Switzerland and Germany. And they made millions of dollars off the scam.

[00:10:16] Jordan Harbinger: Millions. So this is like a heist movie, but way more boring without, 'cause it didn't, it's olive oil. It's a real bummer for anybody trying to buy genuine Italian olive oil. And you see that and it's expensive. How do we tell if we're even getting the real deal? I don't know how to test olive oil.

[00:10:31] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, unfortunately it's tough.

Most olive oil that claims to be, quote unquote from Italy, it could have been. Imported to Italy, re-exported and then imported back. So there's ways to get around these weird labeling laws, and it's just nearly impossible to tell without testing. So the best you can do is visit the Italian countryside and stock up directly if you're up for being.

The olive oil connoisseur weirdo with a cellar.

[00:11:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It sounds like a good excuse for a trip to Italy, but what about other products? I'm guessing it's not just olive oil that's being counterfeited because it seems like such easy money. Surely there's other vectors. Yeah,

[00:11:12] Jessica Wynn: I mean, olive oil is a big issue.

The mafia's influence definitely spans beyond that though. So there's a. Big counterfeit cheese meal.

[00:11:23] Jordan Harbinger: Why is that? You know what? It sounds like an episode of Paw Patrol. That's why it's funny, and I've heard you can think you're getting a fine cheese, but it's like plastic or corn starch or whatever mixed in there.

Is that true?

[00:11:35] Jessica Wynn: I mean, in fairness with the plastic stuff, it's yes and no. A plastic is simply any material that can be molded into a desired shape. And processed cheese does fit that definition, but no one I can find is like grinding up plastic bottles and slapping cheese labels on them. What happens is cheeses are melted, they're blended, and they're reshaped, and then often mislabeled.

So there was a major scandal in 2016 that revealed many Parmesan cheeses labeled as a hundred percent pure. Contains significant amounts of cellulose, which is a wood product.

[00:12:13] Jordan Harbinger: Okay? So wood chips in my cheese, that's like saying this burger is a hundred percent beef and finding out it's a beef flavored tree branch.

[00:12:21] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it was a real eyeopener. Yeah, it's disgusting. So for years though, consumers are being duped by these domestic imitations of Italy's famous Parmesan. Instead of the real deal, which only has salt, ret, and pure hormone free milk from cows fed a natural diet. Many of these Parmesan products were using lower quality milk additives, and sometimes Jordan up to 20% wood.

[00:12:51] Jordan Harbinger: Ooh, there's a joke in there somewhere. I gotta add that to my Tinder profile. So consumers were basically getting. Sawdust with their spaghetti. To be fair, the brand we're probably talking about that stuff does look like sawdust. If we already know about this fraud, why is it still going on? You'd think that somebody would put a stop to wood in my cheese.

[00:13:09] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's the mafia and their operations are incredibly sophisticated. So the fraudsters use advanced methods to avoid detection, and there's just a need for better international cooperation. So countries have to work together and share information to tackle this effectively. But there's just so many products to track.

There's honey maple syrup, cinnamon wine there. All really frequently counterfeited.

[00:13:37] Jordan Harbinger: I've got all those in my kitchen just like everyone listening to this right now, honey, maple syrup, cinnamon wine, and, and yes, I've heard about wine fraud. We actually did an episode on that. I kinda wanna do more 'cause it's it.

That is a huge in deep topic.

[00:13:49] Jessica Wynn: I mean it, yeah, it's never ending. It's wine fraud's, a multi-billion dollar industry and experts say that around 5% of wine sold are fake, which is a lot considering how, how much wine we drink and often it. Involves passing off just average wine as a prestigious label, or selling lesser vintages as high-end ones to fetch high prices.

[00:14:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This seems almost inevitable, especially when all these blind taste tests, they show that even all, you see those where the experts are like, oh, this is so great, and it, it's always the cheap stuff, and they can't tell. They really can't tell the difference. It's all nonsense.

[00:14:25] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. And neither can we, because I'm sure that we've.

Probably celebrated something with a bogus wine, but we still got the requisite buzz so. Unless you're a serious wine collector and you're stocking your cellar with like back vintage Chateau la feet, this isn't likely to be a problem you actually care about. We get ripped off on a $15 glass of wine, whatever, but if your $2,000 bottle is bogus.

Yeah. So if

[00:14:52] Jordan Harbinger: you are a collector, maybe make sure you know how many teas are in Lafite.

[00:14:57] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Right. Stuff like that gets missed by average consumers. And it's just so easy to be fooled, especially with how accessible just fake labels are these days. And it's not just wine. Counterfeit alcohol in general is a huge problem.

[00:15:12] Jordan Harbinger: I'm sure I've bought some watered down drinks in my day.

[00:15:15] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, right. But this problem goes like way beyond a disappointing cocktail. The bourbon community is especially up in arms and it's a competitive world with thousands of people vying for just. A few barrels. So there's even a push for like antit tampering measures to combat bourbon counterfeiting.

But the sad truth is the counterfeits are out there and if the bottle is sealed and it looks legit, consumers are not going to notice probably.

[00:15:45] Jordan Harbinger: So it's like counterfeit art or wine. If nobody's the wiser counterfeiters, just laugh all the way to the bank and they might just never get caught. 'cause who's even pulling the alarm on this?

[00:15:54] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And the consumer too, they don't know. And if they get enjoyment,

[00:15:58] Jordan Harbinger: and I mean, when these high-end luxury collectors of fine foods and libations get scammed. I know I'm an a-hole, but it's a little hard to have empathy sometimes.

[00:16:07] Jessica Wynn: I guess it's subjective. There's a famous story where for Wall Street, I imagine douchey businessmen.

Exactly. Or served an $18 bottle of wine when they had ordered a $2,000 bottle of wine and like a young couple at the table near them got the $2,000 bottle. So it was switched. And the young couple was just like, yeah, our wine's okay. And the businessmen were raving about how great their wine was, and it's just a classic case of tasting with our wallets.

I mean, it was an embarrassing accident, of course. But it speaks to your point about empathy. If those businessmen had ordered that bottle from eBay as collectors, would you feel more bad for them?

[00:16:48] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, first of all, people are buying wine on eBay. I guess that makes sense.

[00:16:52] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it can be legitimate. And you can buy anything on eBay.

Yeah, that's

[00:16:56] Jordan Harbinger: true.

[00:16:56] Jessica Wynn: So that's when having empathy gets a little more complicated when regular products are faked, like. Counterfeit balsamic vinegar.

[00:17:05] Jordan Harbinger: Wait, why bother counterfeiting balsamic vinegar? This is one of those discussion threads that leads to me realizing I've never actually had real balsamic vinegar, so my balsamic vinegar that I get with my Greek salad or whatever, that's not real.

That's so dumb. Somehow I know

[00:17:20] Jessica Wynn: what's happening. I know. It's so much work. Yeah, I mean, it might not be real. Those same counterfeiting practices used with wine and bourbon. They're used with balsamic vinegars. So we trust with our eyes, and if we see that label and that seal intact and there's a dark liquid inside, we trust it's balsamic.

But traditional balsamic vinegar is aged for years and must meet strict standards. With so many balsamic products on the market, it's really easy to get duped. So you look for quote unquote grape must in the ingredients or the designation. Aceto balsamo, traditional, if it's just labeled modina. It might be a cheaper diluted product.

[00:18:02] Jordan Harbinger: Clearly you're fluent in Italian, so again, but this really sounds like an Italian problem, but this isn't just rooted in Italian products, is it? Or should we? Can we blame the Italians for everything? Can we get away with that? I can get behind that strategy. Yeah.

[00:18:16] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. We could blame the Italians, but it's everywhere.

And we can thank the Italians for giving it a headstart. The Ang a powerful Italian mafia group dating back to the 18 hundreds. They've made food counterfeiting a global racket, and they've been active in the United States since the 1950s initially, with those mislabeled olive oils. But they've also made a name for themselves in the fruit and vegetable industries in South America, Asia, and Australia, using food as a front for drug trafficking.

So they're reported to be operating in most of Europe, the Americas, Australia, west Africa, and Asia. Uh,

[00:18:57] Jordan Harbinger: okay, so the whole world basically. Yes.

[00:18:59] Jessica Wynn: I guess, yeah. You left out

[00:19:00] Jordan Harbinger: Antarctica fine, whatever.

[00:19:01] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, you can eat a good diet there, but the stories are endless of fraud and the stories where food is used as a front.

Just go on and on. In 2008, there was the infamous canned tomato bust, and it still holds the title, the biggest ecstasy bust Ever. There were 15 million tablets of ecstasy worth half a billion dollars found stashed in cans of tomatoes.

[00:19:27] Jordan Harbinger: So with the tomatoes reel, that's the important question here.

[00:19:30] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, the tomatoes were legit, but they were definitely tossed out with the pills.

[00:19:33] Jordan Harbinger: Bummer.

[00:19:34] Jessica Wynn: This case just shows how sophisticated these guys are and how. Entrenched they are in our food and it's hard to fight. So countries have to share intel and beef up enforcement if they wanna keep up. Italy's got entire units just trying to protect their precious food heritage from these crooks, especially the en ranita.

The.

[00:19:56] Jordan Harbinger: Deliciousness involved with the ecstasy tomatoes. Can you, Ima like, this past is so good. This is the most amazing tomato sauce I've ever had in my life. Feel my hair? Yeah. Yeah. Just high off of your face on MDMA. Okay. But the scale and sophistication of this whole operation, it really is nuts. They move from phony olive oil labels to ecstasy, laed, tomatoes.

How do you stop something like this? 'cause it seems like it starts from the source, or it's getting adulterer at the source, right? It's not just like somebody opens up the tomato cans and shove these things in here.

[00:20:31] Jessica Wynn: I mean, that's the thing. Food fraud is so complex and widespread, and it can be dangerous.

Mislabeled products can pose serious ethical dilemmas, the ecstasy and the tomato. If they didn't catch that, and then who knows what could have happened with the tainted tomatoes, but. A lot of times Pygmy is found in beef products and this is problematic for people with dietary restrictions or religious beliefs.

[00:20:55] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I suppose it's heartbreaking for anybody living a kosher or halal lifestyle. I'd be pretty pissed to get to the pearly gates and find out that global food corporations or the mafia scam me out of heaven. That surely I. God must make exceptions, but I don't know.

[00:21:09] Jessica Wynn: I'll say if anyone understands counterfeits, I would think it'd be God.

[00:21:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You know what's actually fit for human consumption, the fine products and services that support this show, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help. The holidays can be a mixed bag. While there's joy in celebration, there's also stress expectations, sometimes even loneliness.

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[00:23:28] Jordan Harbinger: Also, I wanted to plug our newsletter wee bit wiser. The idea here is to give you something specific, something practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology and your relationships in under two minutes a week.

It's every Wednesday. It's called wee bit Wiser, and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now back to skeptical Sunday. Uh, okay. So it's not just about the taste, it's about ethics. Although that's a distant second for me.

I'm, yeah, fine. Sorry you got pig meed in your beef thing, but I'm more pissed that I didn't get MDMA tomato sauce. I.

[00:24:04] Jessica Wynn: Right, but it's also about health issues. So honey is a particularly sneaky product because counterfeit honey can be cut with harmful substances like corn syrup. There's a lot of chemicals that are hard to pronounce that can be in there, and that can affect people with allergies or diabetes.

So about 10 years ago, there was a case where cheap honey from China was relabeled as premium honey. And the way they were shipping it, it contaminated honey. And then that was sold at a discount to unsuspecting buyers and our homeland security. They even ran an operation called Project Honey Gate. Yeah.

Yeah. So this operation address. The honey issue and they had someone pose as an employee at a honey supplier to get inside the beehive.

[00:25:00] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. So the honey in my team might be more gate than honey. That's funny though. They had an undercover agent working at a honey company. That just seems like your tax dollars at work right there, I guess.

I know.

[00:25:09] Jessica Wynn: It's amazing. But for a whole, a whole year they infiltrated a company called Honey Holding, which is one of the biggest honey suppliers in the US original. I know. Yeah. Food companies don't really have great originality.

[00:25:23] Jordan Harbinger: No.

[00:25:23] Jessica Wynn: And then so they were investigating the counterfeiting and the testing that they revealed.

One container was contaminated with chloramphenicol, which is an antibiotic that the United States has banned

[00:25:38] Jordan Harbinger: Chloramphenicol. Sounds scary. It even sounds scary.

[00:25:41] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it sounds terrible. And this led to the Al Capone of honey laundering being busted in 2011. For allegedly smuggling cheap honey with this antibiotic in it from China and then relabeling it as expensive white Korean honey.

So it's just another example of how deeply organized crime can penetrate legitimate industries.

[00:26:04] Jordan Harbinger: So white honey is priced high because it's raw, right? It comes right from the beehive. I'm surprised people can't tell, but I guess if you've never seen real honey.

[00:26:12] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, not a lot of people are chewing on fresh honeycomb and like developing these pallets to distinguish between honey and corn syrup.

Americans do consume more honey than anyone else in the world, which they, it's nearly like 400 million pounds a year. I. But about half of that is used by the big food companies in cereals, breads, cookies, lots of our processed food. So we don't consume a lot of it raw. And after US beekeepers accused these Chinese companies of selling their honey at artificially low prices, the government imposed taxes, import duties, which tripled the price of Chinese honey.

So. Since we're no longer importing so much of it, it's just opened the market to counterfeit that specific kind of honey.

[00:27:00] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, the teddy bear bottles look so cute though.

[00:27:03] Jessica Wynn: I know. But take a really close look at them. Look at their beady little eyes. Those smug upturn noses.

[00:27:09] Jordan Harbinger: Right?

[00:27:10] Jessica Wynn: That bear's hiding something, Jordan.

And in fact, there's countless reported cases of honey. That's just sucrose or beet sugar or just straight up high fructose corn syrup, which is, again, dangerous if you have allergies or diabetes.

[00:27:25] Jordan Harbinger: I was, at first, I was chuckling like, oh, harmful substances like corn syrup, which is in everything, so whatever.

But you're right, allergic reactions must be a huge problem. I didn't really think about that. All right. I love a good seafood dish. I know a lot of people have allergies to shellfish and other seafood, and they have to be careful to stay away from that stuff. I know that some sushi is also more expensive than others, but I can't really tell what's what once it's on my plate.

So is there counterfeit fish I've gotta worry about too?

[00:27:51] Jessica Wynn: Oh, of course there is. Seafood fraud is a major concern. So often cheaper fish is labeled as more expensive varieties. Chilean sea bass was called Patagonian Tooth Fish until the 1970s when just like your reaction, the industry changed the name to make it sound more appetizing.

Yeah. I'm

[00:28:11] Jordan Harbinger: never ordering tooth fish. That sounds dangerous and disgusting. Yes,

[00:28:16] Jessica Wynn: but the thing is, it never is bass. It's cod. And it's hard to find any that actually come from Chilian waters. So what we're buying here in the States is usually just cod caught in the Arctic, but they list it on menus in a pretty font, and we pay a lot for the idea of this Chilian sea bass.

I.

[00:28:35] Jordan Harbinger: If they just called it arctic cod, I'd still buy it. But I guess you're right. Chilean Sea bass does sound fancy. This also makes me wonder if I've ever eaten real bass.

[00:28:44] Jessica Wynn: Maybe not. But there's also a problem with Escolar, which is a fish that is often passed off as white tuna. LAR is particularly bad because it contains histamines and that can cause like serious digestive issues.

Think really unpleasant side effects.

[00:29:05] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Get graphic here 'cause I just ate that maybe yesterday.

[00:29:08] Jessica Wynn: Oh no. A lot of the research I have read uses the phrase anal leakage.

[00:29:16] Jordan Harbinger: Oh God. Okay.

[00:29:18] Jessica Wynn: So how are you feeling?

[00:29:20] Jordan Harbinger: I was gonna say my stomach hurts a little bit, but I've yet to experience any leakage from anything.

Yeah.

[00:29:25] Jessica Wynn: More real fish than you think. But, uh, maybe,

[00:29:27] Jordan Harbinger: oh my gosh.

[00:29:29] Jessica Wynn: Escolar is flat out banned in Japan and Italy because of those health risks. Yeah, it's like

[00:29:35] Jordan Harbinger: a horror movie villain. What do I think I'm eating when I eat Escolar and get oily poops?

[00:29:41] Jessica Wynn: Most likely they're passing it off for tuna. Okay. Tuna's the most frequently counterfeited seafood, and because there's a demand for raw tuna, the health risks, they're dire.

In 2015, an investigation uncovered that some tuna is often injected with nitrates to make it appear fresher.

[00:30:01] Jordan Harbinger: I've heard of nitrates. What does injecting nitrates do in fish?

[00:30:05] Jessica Wynn: Nitrates are preservatives and they turn brown or gray meat. Bright red. Ooh, gross. Yeah. It's a trick of the tuna trade to make old tuna look new.

Or any meat you buy that you want it to look really red, they inject it.

[00:30:21] Jordan Harbinger: You just can't tell. 'cause I use my senses to see as this fresh, as this good, and they're just tricking me. Yuck.

[00:30:26] Jessica Wynn: It works. Yes it does. It's so gross. But we taste with our eyes first and we want our tuna and ham and tar, whatever to be bright red.

So when brown tuna loins go through a machine that injects nitrates, I. The meat oxidizes to regain its color, and now the recolored tuna can be sold as fresh

[00:30:48] Jordan Harbinger: brown tuna loins. That sounds like a Reddit username. It's an Instagram handle. Brown

[00:30:54] Jessica Wynn: gross probably is, but this practice can cause allergic reactions, even food poisoning The dreaded.

Anal leakage. Yeah. In 2017 in Europe there were over 400 cases of poisoning due to nitrate spike tuna leading to a major crackdown. So Europol, which is like their CIA. They're European crime fighting organization.

[00:31:21] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's not an intelligence agency, really. It's like a international police force. You know, they're not assassinating spies

[00:31:27] Jessica Wynn: right yet, but they mobilized 11 different countries and they worked together and in 2018 they seized a record, 131 tons of counterfeit tuna.

80 people were arrested in connection to the tuna tampering,

[00:31:43] Jordan Harbinger: man, tuna gate. What? What a huge waste of food, though, unless it's not supposed to be eaten, but 131 tons of fish. And they obviously, they just threw it out. I

[00:31:51] Jessica Wynn: know it's senseless and they caught that operation, but unfortunately these injections are continuing somewhere because tuna is seized on a regular basis.

And there's other seafood practices that hurt your wallet more than your health because often fish are gorged with water to increase their weight and that makes them more expensive.

[00:32:13] Jordan Harbinger: So does not red sushi grade fish have more integrity? Like I could just maybe stick to yellow tail or something.

[00:32:20] Jessica Wynn: And you're not gonna like this.

I don't like any of this, by the way. No, it's for the record.

[00:32:24] Jordan Harbinger: This whole episode is disgusting. Yeah, I'll never

[00:32:25] Jessica Wynn: eating again. In a study conducted between 2010 and 2012, the Ocean Conservation Organization called Oceana, it found that of the 1200 samples taken. Every single sushi restaurant in New York City that they tested, carried mislabeled fish, every single one.

[00:32:48] Jordan Harbinger: Okay,

[00:32:48] Jessica Wynn: so not only does this mean the customer overpays, but the fish on the plate is one you might have never ordered. Like Snapper is up there with tuna being counterfeited. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, they used DNA bar coding to analyze samples of red snapper from restaurants, seafood markets, and grocery stores across North Carolina and over 90% of the grocery store samples were mislabeled.

And the mislabeling rate for restaurants and seafood markets was 100%. Wow. So a hundred

[00:33:24] Jordan Harbinger: percent. So you're okay. No sushi, no tuna, no snapper, even if you want it because you can't get it.

[00:33:29] Jessica Wynn: Yeah. And no scallops

[00:33:31] Jordan Harbinger: or whatever they're passing off is scallops.

[00:33:33] Jessica Wynn: Scallops. They actually could be. Anything. Rays skate shark, a lot of times, like any variety of fish that's been sectioned up by a cookie cutter.

[00:33:43] Jordan Harbinger: So the moral of the story must be to buy the whole fish and then read the labels and cut it yourself, which I am not doing.

[00:33:49] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, we could just leave the ocean alone for a while. There's a thought.

[00:33:54] Jordan Harbinger: Don't be ridiculous. Yeah,

[00:33:56] Jessica Wynn: just learn where your food really comes from. If you're trying to choose between Colombian or Peruvian coffee grounds.

You're fooling yourself. You're just wasting time in the grocery store aisle.

[00:34:08] Jordan Harbinger: Is that a a metaphor or are you trying to mess with my coffee, Jessica? Because people can't function without it. We buy it, we brew it, we drink it. I'm not ready to give up coffee over here, even if it is wood chips or whatever you're about to tell me.

Yeah.

[00:34:19] Jessica Wynn: Hot brown water, ground coffee can be mixed with. All sorts of brown powders. Like often it's coffee husks, but it can be roasted corn twigs, even ground up toasted parchment paper.

[00:34:33] Jordan Harbinger: How is that not more expensive than coffee? Come on.

[00:34:36] Jessica Wynn: The little stickers on our fruit, they have to be edible according to the FDA, and so does the parchment.

A lot of foods wrapped in, in case we in ingest it, so. The companies are like, I have all this parchment paper. I guess we'll just, it's a cheap way to bulk up the product. This is why buying whole beans and grinding them yourself is the best way to avoid a lot of coffee crimes.

[00:34:58] Jordan Harbinger: Okay, that's good to know.

Whole beans. It is. I've been grinding my own stuff for a while. It's insane that they put toasted paper in there. But I guess we're talking about the mafia or some affiliated group, right? So they don't care.

[00:35:08] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's delicious. Toasted paper, I guess, right? It

[00:35:12] Jordan Harbinger: tastes fine. Screw it.

[00:35:12] Jessica Wynn: There's currently a crackdown though on fake Starbuck coffee beans.

This is happening in Chinese markets and horrifically a fake soluble coffee bean product recently made its way to some small retailers in Germany. And it contains dangerous amounts of glass and plastic shards. There's not a lot of information, like this is a really new investigation into these specific beans.

[00:35:42] Jordan Harbinger: This is really wild coffee criminals, man, they need to be drinking prison coffee glass shards. That just is horrifying.

[00:35:48] Jessica Wynn: Why? Why would you do that, ed? Prison is really uncommon for these kind of crimes though. Like the biggest caviar con artist was actually busted after 23 years of the authorities trying to catch him.

This was a couple years ago, but the judge declared it a victimless crime because no one got sick, so he didn't do any time. So it seems the caviar he was selling was still pretty good. But like any rare covetable food. Counterfeit caviar is rampant. And just a side note, I want you to know that I learned while writing this is that some of the best and real caviar is actually coming out of Kentucky.

[00:36:29] Jordan Harbinger: Kentucky Caviar. Okay, first of all, that sounds like a euphemism for something else, like Rocky Mountain Oysters, which I think are bull testicles.

[00:36:37] Jessica Wynn: Deep fried bull testicles.

[00:36:39] Jordan Harbinger: Caviar coming from Kentucky, first of all, gross, but I'm sure I've eaten that and thought it was scallops or whatever. Caviar coming from Kentucky is like finding out your favorite.

French wine is from Cleveland.

[00:36:50] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, but apparently if you're into caviar, like you're missing out the caviar from the Ohio River in Kentucky, it's known as bluegrass caviar. It's sourced mostly from paddlefish, and it's different. It's not like expensive caviar, which has large, big beads that pop in your mouth.

The bluegrass caviar is delicate and creamy, and it doesn't really have a hard pop, but it's still real caviar.

[00:37:14] Jordan Harbinger: Counterfeit or not Caviar's? Not really my thing at all. I'm a, I guess I'm a caveman. I think it's gross. Maybe I need to expand my palate. I know you think milk is gross and I love it, and a majority of people consume it every day.

Can we trust that the milk is real or we, no, not really.

[00:37:29] Jessica Wynn: Oh, Jordan Milk might be your drink of choice, but again, it's just a prime candidate for food fraud. So. I don't know if you remember this, but there was the great Chinese infant formula debacle of 2008.

[00:37:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they put a chemical in there, right? Or something.

Yeah, the kids died. Yeah. Yeah, me

[00:37:46] Jessica Wynn: melamine and over 50,000 infants were known to be sickened from it, and like really tragically, six infants died from the milk tainted with melamine.

[00:37:58] Jordan Harbinger: What is melamine

[00:37:59] Jessica Wynn: again? It's the type of plastic that's used to fake higher protein content. And yeah. Since that disaster, I mean, you'd think the milk would be made safer, right?

But there's actually been more reports of melamine and milk. So it's like trying to fix a problem, but we're just adding more of the same problem. And unfortunately, the melamine is not the only thing showing up in milk. We've seen cases of milk contaminated with detergent and hydrogen peroxide 'cause it, it makes it that bright white that we look for.

So if you're gonna drink milk, buying from a local farmer is the best and safest thing to do.

[00:38:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. I drink so much milk, I'm probably like 10% plastic by now, plus I feed it to my kids. Maybe more juice for the kids then, I don't know.

[00:38:47] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, maybe, but, oh, here we go.

[00:38:51] Jordan Harbinger: Damnit. Why did we choose to do this Epi?

Everyone hates us right now. I hate myself for doing this episode. Ignorance is bliss.

[00:38:57] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I know, right? I'm still gonna drink it though, is the thing. But the liquid that's supposed to be this refreshing juice is often a bottle of mystery. So. I don't think you'll be surprised to find that the food fraud database, which is also a real thing.

[00:39:14] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:39:15] Jessica Wynn: Shows don't look it up. You'll be more upset. Shows most juices are blended with other juices.

[00:39:21] Jordan Harbinger: I can live with that. Okay. Yeah. But

[00:39:23] Jessica Wynn: sometimes it's, again, it's a money thing like. A lot of times when pomegranate juice is tested, it has zero traces of pomegranate and grape juice. It's just like the wild, wild west of labeling.

So grape juice is the main culprit because once a dark liquid is in that sexy bottle, it's kind of anyone's guess what it is.

[00:39:44] Jordan Harbinger: I just gotta take care of some mild anal leakage. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Aura Frames. You know how parents and in-laws are always asking for more pictures of the kids or wondering when you're visiting next?

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It doesn't have to look expensive though to make me question what I'm buying. Meat is just covered in plastic on a tray at the store, and I guess I sometimes wonder what I'm really looking at.

[00:42:28] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, meat is a whole other can of worms.

[00:42:33] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you had to phrase it that way? Uh,

[00:42:35] Jessica Wynn: yeah. It's a can of mystery meat.

We'll

[00:42:37] Jordan Harbinger: say. School lunches have prepared us all for this, but in the real world, anything, meat fraud sounds pretty alarming. I. By the way, I don't think we can say fake meat. That's a successfully marketed multi-billion dollar product now, and some vegans love it. You know the, what are they made out of? Like plant seed stuff, chemicals.

That's a whole different skeptical Sunday, by the way. I think we have to do, what kind of meat fraud are we talking about here?

[00:42:59] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, so the stuff from school cafeterias has caused many nightmares, but in real life, mystery meat is way scarier than your. High school stew or whatever. Meat fraud includes all sorts of industry sins, and the most prevalent seem to be horse meat masquerading as ground beef and fox meat that pretends to be lamb.

Thankfully, most, and I would say most, not all, most of this happens outside the United States, but it's still really unsettling.

[00:43:30] Jordan Harbinger: The threat of Fox meet makes me wish I had a close relationship with a butcher. Horse meat as beef sounds a little bit like something out of a dystopian novel.

[00:43:40] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it doesn't it.

The horse meat discovery exploded in late 2012 when horse DNA was first detected in beef in Ireland, but then they realized it wasn't just a local issue,

[00:43:54] Jordan Harbinger: so everybody was just eating horse.

[00:43:57] Jessica Wynn: Chowing down on it, and authorities, at first, they thought it was this isolated discovery, but beef prices started to drop around the world and it quickly expanded into a global scandal.

So it turned out that horse meat was being sold as beef and put in products like burgers, lasagnas, raviolis, and the horse meat labeled as beef affected. Products sold from Singapore to the Caribbean to. All over Europe.

[00:44:26] Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like food fraud is so widespread. This is practically a punchline.

[00:44:30] Jessica Wynn: There's that show, Bob's Burgers, that cartoon, they have a whole episode about serving horse meat and it's really interesting actually to see how it happens and it makes things cheaper, but it's just become such a common issue.

It's entered pop culture.

[00:44:44] Jordan Harbinger: How was there not widespread panic? Or is eating horse just not really that bad? Did some cultures do it and they don't care?

[00:44:50] Jessica Wynn: I think. There was a huge outcry. It just wasn't happening in the states at the time, but the scale was enormous. So Tesco, which is the large UK supermarket chain, they reported sales of beef fell 50% after the discovery was reported.

And investigations trace the problem to a complex network involving Dutch and Belgian traders who were manipulating meat labels to disguise the horse meat as beef. So it was like. A massive international game of hide and seek with labels, and it was all orchestrated by someone named Jan Fen.

[00:45:28] Jordan Harbinger: One guy did this.

[00:45:29] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, one guy, Yan Fen, he set up this elaborate system for handling and distributing fake meek products. So he had warehouses full of frozen horse meat, multiple businesses, and just hired teams that changed labels daily. And he made an estimated. $2 million a year. A profit

[00:45:51] Jordan Harbinger: that is high stakes horse steak.

It's just that easy to transform horse meat into beef by the magic of a label maker. This is kind of ridiculous. There's no safeguards at all.

[00:46:02] Jessica Wynn: I know. It's wild. And then this mislabeled horse meat. It's sold to manufacturers who think they're buying beef and then they distribute millions of ready-made meals like Stouffer's frozen meals and stuff to hundreds of supermarkets all over the world.

[00:46:20] Jordan Harbinger: It's unreal how so much counterfeit food crosses borders. There's almost a near certainty that I've eaten horse lasagna Then. Or something like that.

[00:46:27] Jessica Wynn: It's possible. Don't think about it. But globalization has made it easier for food products to cross borders, and that complicates tracking and regulations.

So in 2019, there was a scandal in France, so this was just like six years after the horse meat scandal. 1500 tons of minced meat, which was meant for charities, was found to contain horse. Pig and other like meat byproducts, but zero beef. It was another supply chain mass across Europe, and this one tied back to counterfeiting happening in Poland.

And because of this, since 2020, the Polish veterinary authorities have gotten involved and they work with the Polish government to eliminate this practice.

[00:47:17] Jordan Harbinger: So we're putting a lot of trust in countries whose regulations we don't know and hoping that they enforce them. It's just the point is we're such trusting eaters.

[00:47:25] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly. And even if you're skeptical, unless you have a chromatography set in your kitchen, I mean, how can you be sure of what you're eating?

[00:47:34] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Chromatography sounds like something from a spy movie right on theme here,

[00:47:38] Jessica Wynn: right? It's just a chemistry lab test. But it would be helpful because unfortunately.

The public is not given the full picture. So products get recalled, but many people have no idea what they've consumed. I hear products are recalled and I, I don't know. I don't think about it when I go to the grocery store.

[00:47:56] Jordan Harbinger: No, unless it's something I have in my fridge or my pantry. Okay, fine, I'll bring it back.

But if it's like, Hey, you've been eating this for years. Hey, by the way, this was horse the whole time. Okay, what should I do about that now? What do I do now? It's like living in a modern day Upton Sinclair novel.

[00:48:10] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, absolutely. And for consumers it's about immediate health concerns and losing trust in the food system.

But honestly, our relationship with food is insane. Like I see people buying, I. Blue Dorito dusted cupcakes at the supermarket. Yeah. And I just wonder, you know what people are paying attention to when they eat?

[00:48:30] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. That same person is complaining about binders and their vitamins or something, and it's like you just bought blue dyed Dorito, dusted cupcakes that have been frozen and reheat, whatever, and you're just, don't worry about binders, homeboy,

[00:48:44] Jessica Wynn: but it says fat free.

Yes, they're fat free.

[00:48:47] Jordan Harbinger: It's amazing how easily we can be fooled, even when we're paying attention. We're just buying counterfeit products. It just. Seems a bit hopeless if even the, it's down to the juice in the milk.

[00:48:56] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I know. And it's really affects our wallets without us realizing it. So like saffron, it's the world's most expensive spice.

And what does Saffron taste like? Jordan?

[00:49:07] Jordan Harbinger: No clue. I look, I grew up middle class. Why would I know that? I don't even know what it looks like.

[00:49:11] Jessica Wynn: Right? That's my point. It comes as those fine little red threads. Sometimes they're in those old school photo bags for some reason. I don't know. Make it look extra fancy, but.

If it seeps out a little red into whatever we're cooking or our tea or whatever, then we're satisfied. But real saffron is made from the stigma of the saffron crocus, and it costs upwards of $2,000 a pound, but it, it's expensive for a reason. It takes 150 flowers to make a single gram of saffron. But if you're a food fraud, stir it.

Only takes an onion and some orange dye to make the powder sitting on the clearance shelf.

[00:49:52] Jordan Harbinger: I've always been a little suss of a lot of those spices. Like saffron vanilla too is another one. That's another big one, right? Yeah, because everybody uses that.

[00:49:58] Jessica Wynn: Oh yeah, for sure. Vanilla is the second most expensive spice, which makes it ripe for the faking.

If vanilla is listed, it's synthetic, it's fake. Same with any like added sugars, like the high fructose and corn syrups. That's a red flag and don't even get me started on cinnamon. Like most cinnamon sold in the United States is actually cacia. Which is, it's another wood product. It's made from bark of evergreen trees, and it's not true cinnamon.

So casia is easy to confuse with real cinnamon, even like the whole barks and stuff. But especially once it's ground. So sometimes you think it's cinnamon, it's, it's often the casia or like other fillers. So. We can find food fraud all over the spice rack.

[00:50:47] Jordan Harbinger: Why does it say sugar here?

[00:50:49] Jessica Wynn: Unless it's a thousand percent like picked from your garden and ground, everything on your spice rack probably has sugar as an ingredient.

We just don't notice it.

[00:50:58] Jordan Harbinger: It's like we're living in a spice themed sci-fi novel.

[00:51:00] Jessica Wynn: These spices are deceptive, like black pepper, another hotbed for fraud. So it's often mixed with papaya seeds, juniper berries, or other fillers. So going whole peppercorn, always better to try and avoid the issues

[00:51:16] Jordan Harbinger: I. So it's a constant battle between the counterfeiters and those trying to stop them.

How do we even handle such an overwhelming problem? You just have to grow your own food. I'm not doing that.

[00:51:26] Jessica Wynn: All right. Who has the space? It's tough. There are efforts to enforce stricter regulations. There's a call for more robust testing and verification procedures. Like manufacturers, they do perform thousands of self checks each year, but transparency is definitely lacking and only the most dangerous frauds are reported to authorities.

So many other issues remain hidden. Relying on the goodwill of manufacturers, I.

[00:51:52] Jordan Harbinger: Authorities and whistleblowers play a crucial role in tackling these fraudulent practices. But what a tough job. And we can't really rely on that. I mean, you gotta go undercover at the honey factory,

[00:52:02] Jessica Wynn: right? And it takes courage on any level to be a whistleblower.

They're usually brave factory workers or journalists. And prosecutors who work hard to bring these issues to light, but it requires stringent regulatory measures. And honestly, with how the food supply chain works, there has to be better communication between all the borders for stronger enforcement. I.

[00:52:24] Jordan Harbinger: And consumers, we just sit tight over here.

[00:52:27] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I wish I had better news, but at the end of the day, we should be reading the ingredients and looking out for words like aroma or essence, added sugars and sneaky ingredients like vanilla. I. They're common tricks, so just buying Whole Foods is a safer bet.

After all, how can you just fake an orange?

[00:52:47] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's a topic for another show. I suppose. The system that we have is clearly struggling to keep up with the scale and sophistication of fraudsters, but for the industry, counterfeiting busts, that's gotta disrupt the market and. There's gotta be big financial implications when you're throwing out 120 tons of tuna or whatever, it's, oh

[00:53:03] Jessica Wynn: my god, totally.

And counterfeiting leads to big economic losses. It harms brand reputations. But here's the catch, like the counterfeiting, it has to be discovered and publicized. So the profit margin from fake foods, it often outweighs the losses for the companies and. Food fraud, it'll undermine the trust in the food system.

So sometimes that's why it's not reported, but it can pose serious health risks. So it is like this weird balance. It damages the reputation of genuine products and raises broader issues of transparency and regulatory enforcement. So Italy likes to pride itself on being at the forefront of the fight against fraud.

They have a special unit that they created called the National Gastronomic Heritage. That's

[00:53:51] Jordan Harbinger: one of those other, it's another thing, another, it must sound better in Italian.

[00:53:54] Jessica Wynn: Yes. Its efforts are focused on olive oil developing a unique surveillance system that allows the controllers to follow in real time.

All the producers of extra virgin olive oil down to each delivery, this meticulous control is equivalent to putting the entire production of Italian olive oil under administrative supervision. But it's having dismal results because in May, 2021, the Consumer Protection Magazine, Salva Gente, tested 15 bottles of oil from major brands, and none were a hundred percent extra virgin.

[00:54:33] Jordan Harbinger: Jeez. I'm just giving up on extra virginity, regular virginity from here out for this guy. So can we expect things to improve

[00:54:41] Jessica Wynn: as technology advances?

[00:54:43] Jordan Harbinger: So do the methods of processors. So do the methods. Yes, exactly. God dammit. So

[00:54:47] Jessica Wynn: advances in food packaging will tackle the problems in some ways because there'll be better detection power.

However, even though increased awareness, better technology for detection, and more stringent regulations or steps in the right direction. Fraudsters are known for staying a few steps ahead. The mafia is smart, and so it's a continuous effort, and while the outcome's uncertain, I do think a little bit of progress is being made.

[00:55:15] Jordan Harbinger: It almost seems like encouragement for criminals given the scale and the complexity of counterfeit food. Is it really all we can do to just read the labels and hope that the label is accurate? Because I could read the ingredients, but if the mafia printed the label. Okay. Back to square one.

[00:55:29] Jessica Wynn: Exactly. I think we just have to surrender to the lie.

Yeah. Gosh, I'm kidding. But eating more whole foods, there's just no trick. It just comes down to being informed. So. Buy your meat from a reputable supplier, find a butcher you trust. Check labels carefully. Be skeptical of vague or misleading information. Trust your senses. If food looks or smells off, don't eat it.

It's a big one. So

[00:55:55] Jordan Harbinger: if it's too red, it's fake. Yeah. And if it's brown, it's real, but then it's probably bad. So yeah, that's where we're at now.

[00:56:02] Jessica Wynn: Yeah, we just have to support the transparency, which means getting behind the rigorous tracking and verification systems. So. We have to research some favor brands and suppliers that provide simple information about their sourcing and production practices.

It's on us. We have to discipline ourselves to have discriminating food shopping practices, and it's just so difficult because we can only buy what is sold.

[00:56:28] Jordan Harbinger: Thanks, Jessica, for serving up the facts about counterfeit foods. Really disgusting. Gonna head out for some sushi, followed by a full afternoon of anal leakage.

Sure. Thanks everyone for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes to me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com. Show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

Jessica Wynn is on her substack between the lines. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on this show. 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 today. And if one of your friends or family is suffering from mysterious anal leakage, maybe they're the person that needs to hear this one.

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. Imagine facing a rare, incurable disease and finding out that AI could repurpose an FDA approved drug as a potential cure. That's the breakthrough achieved by Dr. David Feigenbaum and the mission of his company.

[00:57:49] Clip: I'll never forget, the doctor walks in the room and says, David, your liver. Your kidneys, your bone marrow, your heart and your lungs are all shutting down. That's it. Like we've tried everything. There's, there's nothing more that we can do. I. I was terrified. I was like, had my last rights read to me. Course, you know, no one thought that it was even possible that I could survive.

You're dying from this horrible disease, chemotherapy just gave you a little bit of a window, but it's probably gonna come back. So, you know, what's your game plan to prevent this thing from killing you? Well, the only way to get back is to use the tools that you have. Within reach, I'm like, shit, I've got this horrible disease.

And the only way that like I might be able to save myself was if I can find a drug that's already at the CVS. And so my mission then became could I figure out what the hell's going wrong in my immune system? So then maybe I could find a drug that already exists that could treat it. I'm not supposed to be here, like my drug wasn't made for me.

It saved my life. It was always there. I am completely on fire about this idea that there are drugs at your nearby CBS, your nearby Walgreens that could help more diseases and more people, but the incentives aren't aligned for us to do that. So we created every cure a couple years ago. Because we believe that every drug should be utilized for every disease it possibly can, regardless of, you know, whether it's profitable or not.

80% of our drugs that can help people today and tomorrow, no one's doing any research whatsoever to figure out more uses for them.

[00:59:17] Jordan Harbinger: Tune into episode 1005 of the Jordan Harbinger Show to explore how existing medications are bringing new hope to those confronting elusive illnesses.