635: Taiwan #1 with Eric Sze

31:35It's so incredibly competitive. And people are so incredibly picky. And I, for one, will, I'm going to say it now, I will never open in Taiwan because I simply am not good enough. That is the truth. No, no, no. It's because if you think about Taiwan as a demographic and if you're operating a business, you're trying to please one demographic and you have one shot to please them, right? The Taiwanese people have a very particular type of taste. They like a particular type of thing. And if you don't nail it, The very first try, you're fucked. But in New York, we have so many different types of people, it's a lot more forgiving, right?

32:18So yes, it is very competitive still in New York, but doing a concept in Taiwan is way harder, I think. Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like to bring the conversation back to New York a bit, when you opened 886, it felt like there wasn't necessarily a ton of options for people to get Taiwanese food here in the city. And now I think there have been a lot more openings. Like, how do you feel about the current state of Taiwanese food in New York? I think it's great. I think we're we're we are moving forward and that's all we can ask for. Right. When we opened 886, there was us, Winsan and Whole Foods, at least within my radar.

33:01In terms of newer Taiwanese restaurants, Taiwan Bear House was around, obviously, Taiwan Pork Chop. What's that one in Queens, like Taiwanese Gourmet? Taiwanese Gourmet in Elmhurst. There was also Mama Lee's in Bayside. And those guys are a little bit more old guard. Right. And we need those guys. They sort of paved the road for us. and but when we opened 886 we were among the only new guards right Taiwanese food the reason why we opened up 886 was because we were frustrated there is no place for people to drink and eat Taiwanese food it's as simple as that right and I my partner Andy and I just we were so frustrated that we were giving all our money to the Japanese and Koreans and so like we need a Taiwanese watering hole.

33:52And so we did it. And looking back now, we went from only having, you know, more like traditional and homestyle Taiwanese cooking to people eating, you know, fly's head, sha-cha beef, luffa and clams with a cocktail in their hand. and and as a guy who born and raised in Taiwan and and really feels this sort of debt to the Taiwanese identity I feel like this past seven years we've we've achieved something and more and more people know about Taiwanese food nobody knows what it is yet but more and more people more and more people know about it and if if we can keep pushing this envelope then we're happy.

34:40Like I'm very much in the camp of we need more Taiwanese restaurants. Yeah. In all shapes and forms. And is that a similar reason why you wanted to make the cookbook that you want to be kind of showcasing more of Taiwanese food? Yeah. Yeah. Selfishly, self-ishly, I wanted to do the book because I feel like it's a stamp in time for me. But also on a more macro scale, it does talk about Taiwanese food as a whole. Maybe not globally, but at least in New York and Taiwan. The two places I spent the most time. And I think if this book can encourage more young people, young Taiwanese or even Asian Americans to think about their own identity in a different lens or in different approach, then mission accomplished, right?

35:34Yeah. And I have to say, you know, I worked with Elise at Bon Appetit. We are always in touch. And I feel like she's been trying to write this book with you for like seven years at this point. So I'm really glad that it's in motion and that it's happening. Yeah. Elise is the best. We worked together on a hot pot story at Bonap. Yeah. And I had never encountered a person that can take my shitty English and stupid sense of humor, wrap it up and spin it into something so elegant without losing that edge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really sweet partnership. And I guess on the topic of partnership, I wanted to ask you about your beautiful romance friendship with Lucas.

36:14And specifically, my co-host Matt wanted me to ask you about the Vice Chef's Night Out episode that you guys did back in the day because he considers that to be the highest form of the genre. Well, thank you, Matt. I will say Lucas and I, we are very oddly similar. We were born in the same year. Both grew up abroad. So he grew up in Hong Kong. I grew up in Taiwan. We both played the cello growing up. And our first startups were both named after an allium. So mine was scallion foods. His was chive something. No way. Yeah, really stupid. Super corny. Except he went to an Ivy League school and is a lot smarter than I am.

36:56And he uses big words while I use fuck shit and asshole. He uses those too, though. And I think it's very serendipitous because he I met Lucas for the first time in person at 886 and we bonded over tomato and eggs. But. It's difficult to find a person in the same in the restaurant industry that shares that same third culture background. and um and most of the time that we're we're hanging out we're just talking a lot of trash and we have so much trash to talk and we find so much pleasure like um productive trash yeah um but when we received that text from our friend ian shrewd who was the producer at munchies back then asking us if we wanted to do a shy boys chef's night out it was a dream come true it was absolutely a dream come true moment um because we grew up on that that series yeah like that series was one of the biggest reasons why we wanted to to become chefs and so to be able to partake in that in itself was already great but but we sat down we were like we need to make this the best chef's night out ever um and and i feel like that video is is is so good because it is very organic all the people that was that were in the video we would just hang out in that fashion after work um not healthy we have since reduced the amount of times we do that per month yeah um and i will say that video probably shaved four months off of my life expectancy.

38:51But thank you, Matt. That was, I'm glad I did it. I will not do it again. I think that's the right answer. You know, like if you can't top something, why even try? Yeah, that's Mount Rushmore for me. It really is. And I think it's really sweet to see how you guys have graduated into doing hosted videos together for Bon Appetit. And I think the two of you both are so knowledgeable about the science behind cooking. You guys are, you know, speaking in multiple languages, like with the chefs, depending on where you are. Like you have so much respect for the art form of cooking. And I think it's like really special to get to watch those videos as well.

39:27So I wanted to compliment you. Thank you. Thank you. If only they'll hit me up for more. Yeah. If Vanna Petit is listening, commission a second series. You did some in Taiwan together, actually. Yes, we did four episodes. All four came out. we shot those in two days well four episodes in two days it was a lot but it was so much fun and you get to decide what the videos would be yes so i actually picked all the places um obviously the production team had input um but frankly that was another dream come true i've always wanted to bring a big american media company to taiwan and showcase taiwanese food in taiwan through my lens.

40:09You did a beef noodle soup place. What were the other three? We did the beef noodle soup place that we highlighted that place because they're changing the game on late night beef noodle soup. Yeah. When I was growing up, beef noodle soup, if you could eat it late night, like post 11 p.m., it would be like some watered down bullshit. But that place does it from scratch the right way, heavily seasoned for the drunken crowd, but still absolutely delicious. It doesn't matter. We were getting flamed in the comment section. That's not the best beef noodle soup. No shit. Everybody's best beef noodle soup differs.

40:46But for me, at least, they're changing the game culturally. What's the name? It's called Taipei Beef Noodles, I think. Okay. Likely story. Yeah. Their Chinese name is Niu Rou Mian Ji Tang, which is beef noodle soup, chicken soup. Yeah. Yeah. That's Shirley's favorite beef noodle soup place in Taipei. So you have one person on your side. There we go. Yeah. And two in the morning, a bowl of beef noodle soup with beef cheeks and short rib. I mean, 17-year-old me would have literally be through the roof with that. The second place we went to is Fuhang Soy Milk, which is very popular. Obviously, everybody knows about it.

41:26It's in every single guidebook. It's like the breakfast spot. It is the breakfast spot. They're so busy. and my train of thought was I wanted to showcase why they're so busy because people know it's busy it's touristy people it's filled with like American tourists Japanese tourists Korean tourists but they're also busy because they're good but they're also good because they're busy right it's it think of it as a pastry shop if you're getting your croissant like five minutes out of the oven every single time it's going to be very good five minutes out of the oven maybe let it cool down a little bit more but you get my analogy um and so with that specific genre of Taiwanese breakfast freshness is key like for example we highlighted this um I call it sourdough saobing but it's technically not a sourdough but it really is it's laomian which is old mother dough it's a mother dough saobing that has the texture of a cross between a bagel donut and and and a sourdough loaf.

42:30Yeah. And they brush a layer of molasses on top to have the sesame stick. So it's sweet. It's crispy on the outside. It's a little bit dense. It's still fluffy. And then you put an egg inside and then you dip that into soy milk. That texture is heavenly, but it lasts for 10 minutes. Like literally lasts for 10 minutes. You can reheat it all you want. It will not be the same. And we wanted to sort of showcase why it was so popular. And that sort of dichotomy of it's good because it's busy, it's also busy because it's good. And the third place we went to is Jilong Night Market. This one, BA insisted to have a night market.

43:10Yeah. And I get it, right? Night markets, Taiwan, Taiwan equals night markets. It's like Singapore and hawker stalls. But out of all the stalls, the one place that I was adamant about going to was the pork knuckle place. It's called Jijia Zhuzhiao. I think it highlights the Taiwanese style of cooking pork because pork is so abundant and Taiwan doesn't export any of that protein. So all the pork slaughtered on the island is consumed within. That means everything is ultra fresh. It hasn't had time to sit on the supermarket counter and oxidize and develop all this gamey flavor. So all you need to do is sort of cook it in water with a little bit of seasoning.

43:55That's it. You get to enjoy pork at its purest form and all its gelatinous, gooey goodness. I feel like Rauhe is the night market that everyone talks about going to. So you did choose one that was off the beaten path a little. Yeah. It is a trek. A lot of locals. I've actually never been to Rauhe. I haven't been either, but I want to go because of the clay pot. Pepper bun. That is also a very good example of they're good because they're busy and they're busy because they're good. Right. Imagine having a pepper bun that's been sitting out for like 20 minutes. Yeah. So if it's super fresh out of the oven, too hot for you to put in your mouth first.

44:33As it cools down, the crust gets crispier. And then the moment you can bite into it is the perfect temperature. And the last place we went to was in Yilan. So a small trick as well. Taiwanese style kiln roasted chicken. So I also wanted to showcase Taiwanese chicken. It's very different than what you can get in the States. And the roasting method is, as Lucas would say, very ancestral, which just means old. It's a very old technique. And that was the first time I saw them cooking it. And I was in genuine disbelief in the skill and the craftsmanship. Yeah, that was fun. That was really fun. I want to do more.

45:17Well, I think after we speak it into existence, maybe that will happen. Maybe some of those details make their way into the book. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière. An exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus.

46:05The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code. Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes? Yeah, Matt. My friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables in little baggies. I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner.

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47:16It was incredible. These ButcherBox ribs are amazing. For nearly a decade, ButcherBox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic-free. As an exclusive offer, our listeners can get free protein in every box for a year, plus$20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash taste. Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. To close today, I want to play a rapid fire game with you. So I'm going to make you play some favorites. Okay. Okay.

47:57Your favorite cookbook. Ooh. Right now. I just picked up Bruto and that's good. I keep going back to Momofuku cookbook. I am biased, but I feel like when I came to New York, that was Momofuku at its most dominant phase. Yeah. And they were unstoppable. And it has shaped how I cook and how I look at food. And so I keep going back to that cookbook. If not for the story, then for the sous vide churrit recipe. Your go-to bodega snack. Oh, I like my chopped cheese with extra pickled jalapeno and five dashes of hot sauce. Yeah. Your favorite ice cream flavor? Van Leeuwen's Sicilian pistachio. Every time.

48:47The best hangover food? Pho. The first thing that you want to eat when you're back in Taiwan? Um, sautéed, uh, it's called longshu菜, dragon beard, uh, veggie. It's, it's the, it's, it's, it's the stem of chayote. It's chayote stems. Yeah. Um, I don't know why we can't find these in New York. I see chayotes everywhere. What happens to the stems? Gotta find out. Yeah. It's, that's my favorite vegetable. So mildly grassy. I love that. It's sautéed. Sautéed with garlic. Yeah. Your favorite night market in Taiwan? Oh, man. It's going to have to be Jilong. Yeah. Still Jilong. Your favorite spot for Taiwanese food in New York that you do not own?

49:36Whole Foods. Always. Your favorite New York City grocery store? If I could only shop at one place, it would be the Great Wall Supermarket in Elmhurst. There's parking. The vegetables are always fresh. They have the cuts of meat I want. And a very vast seafood selection, as well as spice and sauces. Okay, I've never been to this one, but I love a grocery store, so I have to go. Oh, you got to go here. And it's never crowded. Wow. Yeah. Your favorite New York City bar? Josie's. That's where we did the Long Island Iced Tea for the chef's night out. Uh-huh. Yeah. For me, it's about comfort. Yeah. Yeah.

50:15It's a classic. Yeah, it's classic. No frills. I can get a pint of Guinness, or I can do the Long Island Iced Tea. And for me, their bar food program is top-notch. It's simply executed, but very good. Your favorite special occasion restaurant in New York? Wifey and I love Juwa. We go there for every anniversary. Again, execution is simple. Fantastic ingredients. Highly technical and lovely atmosphere and fantastic service. Okay, finally, a fictional food scene, like from a book or a movie, something made up that you wish you could magically eat in real life. Oh, Spirited Away. Yeah, which one?

50:57Yeah, when the dad and mom were turning into pigs. Yeah. That entire spread. You would turn into a pig. Yeah, I would gladly turn into a pig if I get to eat that. Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been truly so much fun. Thanks for having me. Liz Dunn, great catching up with you. How are you? I am great. How are you, Matt? I'm better because I read your piece in New York Times this weekend. I was sipping a coffee and I'm like, this story is telling the story that I've had in my mind for a long time since I found out about David Protein and this whole kind of brouhaha around EPGs.

51:39We're going to get into all of that. But Liz, tell us before you started reporting on David Protein and the pieces titled The Protein Bar Arms Race, what was your relationship with protein bars? I would call my relationship with protein bars very casual. I am not a big protein bar consumer. The one bar that I have gone back to time and time again in my life, and I'm not even sure it would be considered a protein bar in today's world, but it's the Luna Bar. Do you remember Luna bars? Like, they taste great. Again, I think in the past, they would have been considered a protein bar. Now you have to hit, like, kind of an insane protein threshold to be classified as a protein bar.

52:23But that's the one bar. And I still love it. I mean, it's delicious. It's a great on-the-go snack. Luna was always coded feminine, in a way. It was. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that the David Barr founders told me about their branding process was that they felt that you could code a product masculine and women would still buy it. Like think about perfume and cologne, like men and women will wear cologne. You don't get a lot of men wearing perfume. And so going the like the female coded route was just cutting off half of your audience in a way that going the male coded route was not, which I thought was pretty interesting.

52:59Interesting. I think there's a lot of psychology in that and it makes a lot of sense. For the record, I crushed a few lunas in my life. I never felt the hesitation to reach for a luna. Just saying. Well, you're an evolved man. I'm an evolved man. I can definitely reach across the aisle. Okay. Well, the focus of this piece is David Protein and how the founders, they used really savvy marketing, a very sharp package design, and truly some macro wizardry to create this very singular protein bar. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, so the David Bar hit the market last September, and its big claim was that it has a better protein-to-calorie ratio than anything else on the market, bar-wise.

53:45So it's 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero sugar, which caused quite a sensation on TikTok. It's also very distinctive-looking. It comes in this gold wrapper and the name David, while many people think that it must have just been like founded by a guy named David, it actually refers to the famous Michelangelo Renaissance sculpture, the David, like the archetype of male beauty. Yeah. Yeah. And we talked about Eliza and I on three things sometime earlier this year when I finally bought a bar and my wife Tamar bought two boxes. It just like rolled in and I think she was on reels and that's what happens.

54:33and we talked about it. We talked about the flavor profile and these incredible macros that is getting everybody excited. But describe, I just want to know from your point of view, the flavor profile and what's happening when you're enjoying one of these bars or maybe not enjoying it. It comes in eight flavors. I'm not going to remember all of them, but I think that the flagship one, like their first one, was chocolate chip cookie dough. There's cake batter, red velvet cake. all of the sort of sweet indulgent flavors that people tend to go to when they're doing protein bars. I will say from a texture perspective, I think it's pretty unique in that it is quite moist.

55:16Protein bars can be really dry. Yeah, exactly. Chalky, dry. It also has these little chunks of like chocolate chunks and little crispies and things in it to sort of break up the texture, which is very intentional. The David people told me that they were trying to create a bar that led you to want to consume more. And one trick for that is to have there be variation. If it's all really uniform, you're less likely to eat as much. From a flavor perspective, I have to say, this is not a huge departure from... If you're a person who eats Quest or Bear Bells bars, my feeling is the flavor is pretty similar.

55:56It sounds like you've eaten a David bar or two in your life. So tell me if you agree with that. I think you're on to something. And I love that your reporting reveals their thought process and the development of the product. Because when I first had it, and as I continue to have it, I actually went to the Fancy Food Show a couple weeks ago and went to the David's booth and talked to their head of marketing about my thoughts. Here's what they are. Puffed rice is great. A lot of salt. They're like really, really upping the salt for that kind of like craving and that like you're just going to keep eating it.

56:29I as I told them at the booth and I was being honest because they asked, I was like, I think it has a really bad aftertaste. I think the finish, so to speak, is really undesirable. But I will continue to eat David bars because of those macros, because it is a real magic trick. Yeah, I mean, I think for them, their goal is to minimize the unpalatable aspects of protein as much as possible. but like the macros are the North Star. So they don't care as much about making it delicious as they care about making it almost as much protein as cod. Which they ended up releasing, I think after you found the story.

57:05Yeah, that's a whole other thing. That's a whole other thing. And you can read about that on Snackshot and some other publications. Yeah, to be quick, they released all these great bars, they ate flavors, and then all of a sudden they just dropped some cod on their website. Drop some cod. Yeah, drop some cod. I first read about David on Emily Sundberg's terrific Feed Me Substack, and I think she was on the story early. And I think there was definitely some growing buzz. You end up writing the big piece for the paper of record. What drove you personally to report on David and some of the fallout that we'll talk about with the EPG ingredient and kind of the buying of the major company that makes it?

57:46Yeah. So I also write a sub stack. It's called Consumed. And for that publication, a lot of what we've read, I mean, we've read about all kinds of things related to food, but a lot of it has turned out to be reporting on consumer food products that promise functional nutritional benefits. It seems to be something that is really top of mind for people and people really want to understand better. So David was on my radar really from the very beginning. I mean, I follow Peter Atiyah on the various platforms and probably saw him promoting it first and saw that it was turning into something that really was unlike any other protein bar that I had ever seen on the market in terms of people's enthusiasm for it and just how much it was in the conversation.

58:32Um, what prompted the time story was David's announcement in May of a$75 million funding round that they had just raised, which that's an enormous amount of money for a company that makes protein bars. Like there, there are something like 2000 bars on the market, um, to raise$75 million for your new protein bar company is like a pretty big thing. So that was the moment where I realized this was like more than just sort of a story, like sort of a trend story, a social media story. This was really a business story. Well, let's talk about EPG. It is a very, very important component to hit this golden macro level.

59:12And, you know, it seems like kind of gnarly stuff. I want you to tell us a little bit about what it is exactly. And David's acquisition of the main producer of it was a big part of the story. Yeah. So EPG is a modified plant fat and its claim to fame is that it passes through the digestive system, mostly undigested, mostly unabsorbed, which means that it delivers 92 % fewer calories than regular traditional fat. Those of us of a certain age might remember Olestra. Oh, we certainly do. The Olestra boom of the 90s. I remember a big Super Bowl ad for it. And of course, it's kind of a shitty response in the marketplace.

1:00:01Right. So Olestra was the kind of original low calorie fat and it did not go over very well. Gave people just horrendous digestive side effects. And so it's not on the market anymore. EPG supposedly does not create the same terrible digestive side effects, but it's a similar idea. Just like we have low-calorie sugar substitutes, it's a low-calorie fat substitute. And the patent for it is owned by a company called Epigee. So this fat-like substance, or they call it, I think, a non-nutritive fat, which is a great term, it was developed in a university context in the 1990s. So it's not new. But it really, before David started using it in the bars, it was really not very widely used in the food industry.

1:00:57There were a few different companies that used it. There's a Swedish ice cream, protein ice cream maker called Nix that used it. There are like a few other chocolate companies and things like that. But this was not something that was widely used. Epigee is a pretty small company. um one of the co-founders of the david bar zach raynan knew about it because he ate this low calorie low low fat high protein i think ice cream called nyx that used that used dpg and he thought well this would be kind of great for helping us do what we're trying to do with this protein bar which is reduce the calories and increase the protein um so they used it in the bar which was obviously tremendously popular and successful.

1:01:43Months go by, they're selling, I think, more of this bar than they ever expected to. And they hit a point, I'm guessing, in the early spring, although we didn't talk about the details of the transaction, where they're realizing there is not enough EPG for us to continue to make these bars. It's a patented product. It's created by this one company. we need to do something about this and they end up purchasing epigee the maker of epg with some of this money that they raised in their series a um so as of early may they're the new owners of epigee i mean this was a big story because while there was nix using epg there There were other products in the pipeline and founders who were using EPG in their product launches.

1:02:35And they all of a sudden were faced with the fact that they had no supply. And I mean, when you say they used some of that raise, I mean, EpiG could have been like, give me all the$75 million. I mean, they had an ultimate leverage as a business reporter. Did you get any details about that transaction, about what went down with EpiG? I didn't get too many details because it's this ongoing litigation, which we'll get to in a second. They really didn't want to talk about it in detail. I did talk to some of the other companies that were users of EPG that, well, so I guess I should backtrack and say that David acquires Epigee, right?

1:03:13And then right after the acquisition, they make it very clear that people who are currently using EPG in their products are just out of luck. Like, we need all the EPG. There already is not enough produced by Epigee to meet our needs. So David gets busy investing in Epigee and trying to scale up EPG production. So pretty much immediately after David buys Epigee, three of the companies that use EPG in their products, Own Your Hunger, Lighten Up Foods, and Defiant Foods file suits claiming that David violated federal antitrust laws by creating an artificial monopoly restricting access to EPG. um david obviously immediately immediately shot back with his own court papers denying any wrongdoing but this is yes this is like a huge flare-up tiktok noticed i mean when you when you start to mess with founders and you've got a big big 75 million dollar company against the small guy i can imagine where the sentiment led on tiktok yeah and people on tiktok if i mean as you can tell, I spent a lot of time on TikTok reporting this story, but the TikTok reaction was, you know, a lot of the people who are customers for David are also customers for these other smaller food companies producing products with EPG.

1:04:28And so there was a level of, I guess, anger directed at David for what people saw as, you know, punching down at these companies that use EPG to create these products that people know and love. So where do we stand today with EPG, EPG, David's, you know, rise? I mean, these are a lot of questions, but like they're kind of like where David's is heading. And really, do you feel like this idea of protein maxing that I think this is all around, like that revolves around this idea that you need more protein, where does this all land. Yeah. So on the EPG front, it looks, the early signs are that these other companies are not going to be successful in their lawsuit because when you're a patent holder, you can pretty much decide who you want to sell to and who you don't want to sell to.

1:05:29And I think they're going to have a hard time. I think they're going to have a hard time making a headway with this, making headway with this lawsuit. On the David front, in terms of their particular products, They're actually out of stock on their website in all flavors of the bar because of this EPG shortfall. It seems like you can still get it other places. You can get it on Amazon, but who knows how long that will last. So they're really kind of struggling right now to get production up to speed to be able to fulfill all of their supplier agreements and to restock their website. um and as as you mentioned it seems like as a stopgap they have released cod as a product on their website um which it seems like a viral stunt but peter ray hall who's the co-founder of david was you know he was adamant that it was a real product that they really were going to keep offering um protein maxing in general i think what i would say to that is listen protein is everywhere right now.

1:06:34It's in places we would have never expected it to be, like water and popcorn and ice cream and pasta sauces and stuff like that. It seems unlikely to me that that continues indefinitely. I think there is a bit of a bubble. However, if you look back at the history of protein and how people have regarded it, unlike carbs and fat, which have gone through their various periods of being championed or being vilified. Protein has never had a period historically of being vilified. Protein has never gone through a down cycle, really. And so I think that it's really pretty likely that people continue to view protein as a really essential part of their diet and a big part of their diet.

1:07:21The question is just whether companies offering super protein saturated foods can continue to do that. And like that market can continue to expand. I also will add that as long as GLP-1 drugs are effectively marketed and used and that, you know, that audience grows and grows, I think the protein centric diet will continue to rise because I think like those drugs require nutrient rich, protein rich diets. Yes. And And doctors are definitely telling patients on GLP-1s, you have to be careful about your protein consumption and you really have to seek it out. And so that's a tailwind. I am a little bit skeptical about really what the current impact of that is because there isn't great data out there showing how many people are currently on GLP-1s, but it's not, you know, if it's 4%, that's like the very high end estimate.

1:08:16So while it's, you know, definitely a contributing factor, I don't think we're yet at a place where it's really like a market maker. Yeah, great point, Liz. And I think in Consumed, you write all about this and definitely check out the website and Substack. And I think like as long as the GLP-1s, you know, don't have bad data and bad news around it and perhaps there's some new data about other areas. I mean, you hear about all sorts of things with GLP-1s about cancer prevention. You hear, I mean, there's, it feels like every day. Gambling addiction, I've heard, is something that it's being used to curb.

1:08:51It does sort of seem like a miracle drug. And I think that it's probably only gonna increase, right? Like our use of GLP-1s. You nailed it with the miracle drug. I mean, I think at least with the marketing and branding of it, people are really putting it out there as that, not just as a weight loss drug, but many more things. And it'll be interesting to follow the protein age. And do you have anything else lined up on Consume that we should be looking for? Oh man, we've got, what do we have coming up? when the Maha Commission releases its big report in August on what the Maha Commission is going to do to improve all of our health and reduce chronic diseases.

1:09:31We're going to do a sub-sec live with Marion Nessel. So that, I don't know the exact date because we're all waiting to see when RFK decides to get that report out, but that's going to be a banger. I love that. That's such a great news bag to talk to Marion and just unpack this wild document, as I'm sure it is. I won't take any excuse to talk to Marion. Yeah. Well, hey, Liz, this has been a lot of fun. I hope to have you in the studio. Let's do this again. That would be awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Matt.

1:10:05This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, Director of Media Production and Development at Penguin Random House Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House Theme music by Steve Rydell Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter To keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste