1013: Big Dairy | Skeptical Sunday

23:31Big dairy was getting really fat with the government's help. So when the Great Depression hit, new laws were actually passed subsidizing big dairy. Nowadays, what do we say? Too big to fail dairy, I guess? Exactly. And 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 milk. This all makes sense.

24:07My 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 because 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?

24:37Were they trying to make kids get protein or is it just milk? No, no. There was nothing for big deli, just for big dairy. 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.

25:17I 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. Because 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 should probably be doing something else with their time and money and effort, but we're giving them a check. Yeah. Right. That's crazy. Yeah. In fact, during the recession in the 1970s, the government stepped in to help the dairy industry again.

25:51This time it was Jimmy Carter. And he bailed out the dairy farmers to the tune of$2 billion. That's 1970s money. Oh, wow. So$2 billion in 70s. 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, well, yeah, well, still cocaine. 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 U.S.

26:33government bought millions of pounds of cheese. What? So do we have like some great cheese reserves stashed away under a mountain next to some like nuclear warheads or something like that? Well, it's ridiculous. 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 going to last forever. And by the time Ronald Reagan was president, it was close to its expiration date, which, Which, by the way, expiration dates are bullshit, as most of us know from Skeptical Sunday episode 646 on expiration dates. But this cheese was actually really nearing the end of its run.

27:13So what did the Gipper do with all that cheddar? 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. Okay, not a bad Reagan imitation. So that's where the phrase government cheese comes from. I always thought that was an urban legend or some kind of jokey phrase from the 80s. I had no idea that that was actually a real thing, because I guess I've never seen it in a store or whatever. Well, I don't know if you can get government cheese in the store because it's just given away for free. But government cheese wasn't, to be clear, the government coming up with a benevolent plan to feed the poor.

27:50It 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? So did people actually want it? It sounds kind of gross when you phrase it that way. Yeah, well, cheese actually was a huge hit. Government cheese became a cultural phenomenon. At one point, the U.S. government was buying up one quarter of the cheddar 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 going to subsidize big dairy forever from the sound of it.

28:23Well, 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 90s. 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? Whose milk? Just milk? I mean, what other industry so successfully just advertises the general idea of their product?

29:07I mean, I've never seen a got car commercial. Yeah, that's right. There's no enjoy any brand of soda today, adds. Good point. I had not thought about that. I do, however, remember cheese, glorious cheese. You remember 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.

29:49And so we were all told we need more milk in magazines and TV ads and by celebrities with gross looking milk mustaches. 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 cringy. 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. Yeah, I hate to say it. Alex Trebek comes to mind. It was kind of gross.

30:27I mean, a milk mustache on a real mustache. What is gross for$10 ,000, Alex? 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 roided up, so to speak. They were super cows. Super cows. 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. Yeah, the artificial bovine growth hormone is banned in Canada, and the EU, by the way.

31:08Yet here in the U.S., 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 udder do not pose a risk to human health. Speaking of bell-bottoms and cocaine, now it's time for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back. 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, jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday.

31:44That's really gross. So they take, I remember this is BGH. I 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 udder, which is where the milk is, folks, in case your biology isn't up to snuff, because it gets all inflamed.

32:17I 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 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, you mentioned cheese before. Right, exactly. And by the way, the industry was getting that message too. Even during the 90s Got Milk campaign, consumption of milk declined, which is why big dairy made the big switch from pushing milk to pushing cheese.

32:54The Got Milk campaign partnered with the Run for the border ads and the stuffed crust pizza promotion and the summer of cheese parties. 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? So, yeah, no, that was also Pizza Hut. And their big summer of cheese promotion led to them using 102 million extra pounds 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.

33:31So 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. 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.

34:06And 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. just want to be clear about that. Yeah, that's a good clarification. Yeah. And so gone are the got 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.

34:46Domino's increased cheese by 40%. If fast food could stuff something with cheese, they were going to stuff it with cheese, all because Big Dairy wants to move more product and the milk ads weren't cutting it. I'm surprised there's no cheese stuffed cheese, which I'm not going to lie, that sounds really awesome and I would definitely eat that. Yeah, I actually looked into that and I did find cheese stuffed cheese, but 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. Yeah.

35:20And 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 God. That's terrible for kids. That's probably worse than milk, getting pizza into school, especially Domino's pizza. and now you're just eating cardboard with cheese on it. Come on. Yeah, I mean, in a way, none of it should be served in schools because let's talk just for a minute about the actual nutrition in milk. It's not special.

35:53You can get calcium from almonds, figs, kale, tofu, collard 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 risk of fractured bones. How was that possible? 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 80s ad campaign for us. No, we're drinking milk because an industry found a good marketing angle about strong bones.

36:30But 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, 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. Wow.

37:03So not just teenagers. There's basic, it sounds like nobody should be drinking large amounts of milk, which kind of is scary for me because I drink large amounts of milk. 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 percent. 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, it kind of explains my high school years. Yeah, well, yet milk programs still make up a huge chunk of the money spent by the government on dairy.

37:35Here's the thing. Poor communities have higher percentages of students with lactose intolerance. So the kids, the food programs are meant to benefit. They can't even drink the stuff because a lot of them are lactose intolerant. That's a good point. I didn't put that together. There are pills that kids can take if they really want it. 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 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.

38:12Oh, 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 with dairy. And 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. Right. But so 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.

38:50That's gross. I didn't even know that they were serving strawberry milk. 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... No, I got to fight you on that one, man. Really? I love it. Oh, really? Strawberry Quick, disgusting and delicious. Oh, Quick is so, oh man, oh man. I forgot about Quick. That's some nostalgia that I just don't need. All right, 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.

39:30It's like, should we break the news to these guys that they need to switch crops? It's like, no, let's just throw billions and billions of dollars at the problem. Health consequences be damned. 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. 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. Yeah, well, it's not so great for the planet either. Cows produce a lot of greenhouse gases.

40:04Big dairy is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every airplane combined. I had no idea it was that much. That's a lot of cow farts, man. Yeah. A lot of cow farts. 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. I personally can't get over the ethical implications. 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.

40:40I 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, every day. My kids also, gosh, they won't eat freaking anything, but they love drinking milk. So I feel like I'm kind of stuck with it for now. If I want to, you know, feed my kids some nutrition. Yeah. Hey, look, I hear you. I mean, to some, it tastes good. In fact, this is going to blow your mind, but the raw milk wars continue to this day.

41:13People still insist on raw milk. And guess what? 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 like drugs where you got to 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 one of the folding table.

41:42Yeah. 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 the way he put it in the article. He's like they were throwing 20s at him without even asking for change and just grabbing bottles of raw milk and that's vile sucking it down, man. Dude, on Venice Beach on like a 90 degree day.

42:16Right. And Venice Beach is disgusting, folks these days like 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 that there's no more heroin 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 that's that's what this sounds like.

42:45Wow. I mean, it's disgusting. It's a bunch of people. There's an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania. He was famous. His farm was famously raided. And now he's become sort of a folk legend, a hero, because it's actually turned political or ideological or 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. Food freedom fighters, 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.

43:23They want their raw milk, which, by the way, as I said, is still totally dangerous and can still get you really sick. But no one's eating raw chicken. Not on purpose. Right. I mean, you can also buy crystal Drano and drink it if you wanted. The fact that, But 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. 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 how to cook a chicken in NyQuil.

44:00It was just one of the grossest things I've ever heard in my life. And I hope nobody actually did it. But it sounds like there's a new campaign coming, though. Like, got death or got listeria, maybe? Yeah, I mean, who knows? Maybe Big Dairy will see the demand and jump into the raw milk market again. But maybe my tax dollars won't have to fund it. Jeez. Yeah, right. I mean, Big Dairy will forever milk the system. Bad pun aside, that sure seems true. Oof. Yeah, I mean, the catchphrase was got milk, but the only thing that was got was 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.

44:47Yeah. 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 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 going to hurt anyone because you're selling pasteurized milk and have people literally throw money at you while you run out of mason jars of good old 2%, or maybe use 4 % so that people think it's the real deal.

45:27Ugh. 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 going to report that? I don't know. 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. 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? Well, thanks, Michael. I got to run. I'm going to head to Venice Beach today. Totally unrelated. Thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com.

45:58Show notes at JordanHarbinger.com. Transcripts are always in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support this show, all at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Michael Rogelio at Michael Rogelio on Instagram. Tour date's up now as well for that comedy, and we will link to that in the show notes because, as always, nobody can spell Rogelio. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

46:30Our 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, at 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 because I don't, I don't know. Maybe it's not that bad. Here's why.

46:56But 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're 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.

47:26I'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 going to love this one. The legend of Ciudad 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 of the Monkey God.

48:03Maybe there's some truth to this legend. I kind of felt there was something to it. The Mesquitea 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 and 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 del Inferno 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.

48:46Nice guy, really pretty smart. And I said, let's go. And in 1994, we headed out to Honduras for an unknown adventure looking for the lost city.

49:03For more with Steve Elkins, including the details on how they discovered the city and made one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the century, check out episode 299 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

49:19This episode is sponsored in part by Conspirituality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiratuality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

49:52An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which if you listen to the show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored in part by the Something You Should Know Podcast.

50:22Finding a great new podcast can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Let me save you some hassle. Check out Something You Should Know with my friend Mike Carruthers. Every episode is packed with fascinating insights that you can actually use. Mike interviews top experts on topics that shape your life, like how to optimize your brain chemistry, the best and worst ways to apologize, probably could have used that recently, why couples hate to talk about money. No matter the topic, Mike asks the questions you'd want to ask, getting straight to the good stuff, and the conversations are always engaging, always insightful, guaranteed to leave you a little smarter than before.

50:50They've got thousands of five-star reviews, but do you even need that? I'm recommending it. You don't need other people's opinion. right at this point i would hope anyway give it a listen just search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening to something you should know