Jessica Wynn
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
This is the, how many licks does it take to get to the center of the lollipop question? I mean, it really depends on your biology, but it is possible to get a hangover from anything fermented. Personally, I can have a sneezing fit if I just smell an IPA. I think a lot of people get that allergic reaction and it turns out that's a natural response to hops for most people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Do you ever get stuffy after you have a pint or something? And Science and history tells us our species survived because if we put a plant in our mouth and it was bitter, we'd spit it out because it signaled it was poison. So all those hop heads out there, they probably wouldn't have lasted.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
They probably would have popped a bitter berry in their mouths and not made it very long thousands of years ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, we have allergic reactions because our primal brain is like, wait, this might be poison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, so sulfites, they're not like congeners. They're not byproducts of fermentation at all. They're preservatives that we add to tons of food, not just wine. So let your friends know to order the sulfite-free guacamole and chips if they're that sensitive to it. It's a buzzword, but... If you are sensitive to sulfites, it's definitely a thing. They can give you a headache.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
But skipping them in your wine, it's not going to save you from any kind of hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, the sideways movie, all of that? Yes, exactly. It seemed like we could just slap a with antioxidants label on a wine bottle and get to pretend it's health food. But the thing is, those antioxidants, they're not coming from the ethanol. Antioxidants are a gift from the grapes. So it's just a marketing scam.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I've seen articles about the healthiest wines, but there's no evidence antioxidants in wine do anything. You could just go eat some grapes. Less fun. Less fun. But there's no need to spend the evening stumbling through a vineyard. Alcohol is a known carcinogen and no amount of antioxidants is going to make alcohol healthy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
If that were true, tobacco companies would be selling antioxidant-coated cigarettes. Everybody should just hold off on raising a wine glass to their health.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Well, prevention is more effective than dealing with hangovers the next morning. But you can take some multivitamins or Advil before you go to sleep. That might cut down on some aches and pains. Drinking top shelf instead of cheap liquor, that also might lessen the pain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Revealing some of your habits there? Yeah. How do you know that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So there's a big difference in the distillation process from grain alcohol to some really fancy tequila. And so because top shelf alcohol goes through way more distillation, it removes a lot of those congeners and other impurities. So more distillation is what makes top shelf drinks taste, you know, what we call smooth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, yeah, exactly. People make hangovers this binary problem, but they're just like any other medical condition. You can have mild, moderate, or severe hangovers. So it's a really complex physiological process that occurs when we consume alcohol. And the main mechanisms involved include five very familiar effects we've already touched on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Dehydration, nausea, fluctuating blood sugar, inflammation, and just crummy sleep.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Dehydration is a confusing one, though, because alcohol is a diuretic, so it makes you pee more, which leads to dehydration and an electrolyte imbalance. That's why your head's pounding and your mouth's dry the next morning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
When you're hungover, your body is just in complete revolt and it's trying to process the poison that we poured into it. And alcohol just messes with everything. So first off, understand it suppresses this thing called vasopressin, which is a hormone whose job it is to tell your kidneys to hold on to water.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So you just drain yourself dry and that contributes to all the thirst and fatigue and headaches.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, right. And so many people think hangovers are just dehydration, but it's really your least worry. There's a lot more going on than that Gatorade can handle. So there's also a thing called oxidative stress, which is a lack of antioxidants. This is why people confuse the antioxidants in wine as a good thing, but that's a misunderstanding.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
There's no balance there between what you lose and what wine has in it. So... You also get inflammation. But the real culprit is acetaldehyde and it gets accumulated in our bodies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So when your liver breaks down alcohol, it creates acetaldehyde, which is a toxic substance. And that's what causes our nausea, our vomiting and some of the inflammation. So it's the body teaching you a lesson in the worst way possible. There should be a simpler name for it so that we can be more connected to it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. It's the thing that makes you swear off drinking as you're hugging your toilet. But it's short lived. It's a short lived byproduct. And it makes itself known while it's around, inflaming everything, the liver, the pancreas, the brain, most of our organs. And it just causes so much discomfort.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I bet. I'm trying to be nice, but alcohol just messes with so much. And like we said, it puts that blood sugar on a roller coaster ride. So since our liver is overwhelmed metabolizing the alcohol, it can't do its job controlling our blood sugar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. That's what makes drinking so dangerous too. So first it makes our blood sugar spike and that's party time. And then our blood sugar crashes. That's when the hangover comes in and crashes the party. That's what leads to the fatigue, the weakness that can make us pass out, also contribute to those headaches. It gives us stomach pain, gastrointestinal irritation, and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
That makes us not really know which end to put on the toilet. It's like your body's in a constant state of chaos the moment it has to handle alcohol.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I'm definitely not. I actually haven't had a drink in years, but wow, I could recall moments of begging any higher power to help my hangover pains. Those headaches, those heaves, those humiliations, like, no thanks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, it's scary. It's just all part of the way alcohol causes inflammation. Generally, in life, we need inflammation. It's a complex biological response to tissue infections, and it's like the weapon our bodies have to fend off all kinds of infections. But alcohol-induced inflammation, that's an immediate response to alcohol.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
It's our body just yelling to our immune system like, hey, something's not right. It's why our noses turn red, our cheeks get flushed. So that warm feeling your drink gives you, it's really your insides in panic mode. And let's not forget, a hangover messes with your sleep. So alcohol suppresses REM sleep, which means even if you do pass out, you're not getting quality rest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Exactly. And your body is trying to heal, but the alcohol that's still in your system, it just won't let you. So this is what contributes all that fatigue and irritability. And we don't always connect that to that daily glass of wine with dinner. But science tells us even a few drinks a week will mess up our sleep. So people might fall asleep faster after drinking alcohol, but...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Like you said, like your sleep's fragmented. You wake up at weird times. You tend to wake up earlier. We're all out of whack.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
It just depends on who you are. Genetic factors play a big role in our hangovers. So some people like Ron Swanson, they're just built better to process alcohol while it hits others harder. So your metabolism, your age, weight, gender, all of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
plays into how severe your hangover is so when someone claims they don't get hangovers their genes are doing them a huge favor by just quietly processing their alcohol it's still doing damage inside but they're just not getting those tangible effects
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, people really want there to be some magic formula, like we can beat the system by following some weird drinking rules, but there's just no evidence the order you consume drinks matters. It's just a fun thing to say.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, when you try to bring logic to drinking, you just sound drunk. Here's the thing. Hangovers are nature's way of telling you you consumed poison. Nothing's going to reverse that. Definitely not a late night beer. But drinking patterns can make a little bit of a difference, so... If you've ever drank, you probably realized it hits you differently when you drink on an empty stomach.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
The amount of alcohol, of course, matters. The type of alcohol you have and just your overall health. These patterns all influence the severity of a hangover. And in general, the more alcohol a person drinks, the worse the hangover will be. And this is true regardless of if you drink beer, wine, tequila, or any kind of combination. Your Jäger bomb you had earlier.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
There's a lot of stuff. Hangovers are a really tricky study. And there's a doctor, Dr. Jason Burke, who founded Hangover Heaven and is a Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Gross. I mean, I guess I admire that commitment and I will prepare to stop recording when you have to go lay down for a second.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, you know, I have my vices. Don't worry. But I get it. Drinking is really fun. When we overdo it, it's also really painful. And the hard truth is alcohol is poison. And it's a poison so addictive that despite knowing it's going to make us feel like crap, we just invent products and remedies to feel like we're battling against it instead of just not drinking it in the first place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I wonder what happens at customs when you come home with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not really certain, but I guess the thinking is that a stronger fermented food will combat the fermented drink. But I don't know for sure. But if you think that all sounds gross, for a long time, there was another less appetizing hangover remedy that was highly trusted called rabbit dung tea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, it's real. So good old American cowboys, they knew that any good manure has a lot of healthy nitrogen, potassium and minerals. And they also believed that those were the things good for a hangover. So they figured, hey, why don't we just steep some bunny poop in hot water and guzzle it? It was really popular practice in the Wild West. Oh, this coffee smells like shit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, for sure. Drinking, it has a beautiful and rich tradition, but we just don't talk about the aftermath. A few drinks and bam, you wake up in a stranger's backyard with a sprained ankle. No idea how you got there. I've heard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
There's no scientific evidence coffee can do anything for a hangover. And actually, caffeine is found to worsen those symptoms. So caffeine is another diuretic, which means it further dehydrates you. And caffeine actually narrows your blood vessels. It also raises your blood pressure. And this will just amplify that pounding inside of your head.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Drinking water is a better choice, but it doesn't give you that momentary jolt that we get from coffee.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, like I said, it's been a long time since I drank, but I've been there. I can remember the agony of very specific nights in my 20s. And I think the worst was I woke up on a plane once after a debaucherous night in Vegas. To my surprise, I'm just sitting in a puddle of red wine. I didn't remember ordering. And next to me is this just horrified businesswoman.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, hair of the dog, it's really interesting because, yes, having an alcoholic drink in the morning after a night of drinking will help you avoid hangover symptoms. But you're not curing anything. You're not cheating the hangover. You're just stopping your blood alcohol from returning to zero. And when our blood alcohol returns to zero, that's when the hangover symptoms really kick in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So you can keep drinking, but you'll eventually face those hangover symptoms. Okay. So that actually works then from the sound of it. Yeah. I mean, it might temporarily minimize your symptoms. I just want to stress this, not recommended.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Not only is there no concrete evidence that more alcohol will always help you feel better, it could also indicate a sign of dependency.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So internal medicine specialists, they'll tell you that you're only overwhelming your liver more, which is already working over time. And it turns into a vicious cycle that there's actually a name for. It's called alcoholism. I see.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
The whole idea of hair of the dog just comes from medieval magic talk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
It was a real thing in medieval Europe. People believed that if you were bit by a rabid dog, you should place hair from the rabid dog on the wound to help it heal. I guess they had a big problem with rabid dogs in medieval times. This idea was based on the philosophy that like cures like, which dates all the way back to ancient Greece.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So over time, the saying morphed into the idea that more alcohol will fix a hangover. Spoiler, this only delays the hangover until your blood alcohol level is at zero.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Drinking in moderation is just, unfortunately, it's another bullshit saying, just like hair of the dog. So study after study from Harvard to Northwestern to Oxford all show that no amount of alcohol is safe. And moderation, it's all just marketing spin.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Well, you're in good company, Jordan. I mean.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, for sure. Anyway, there's just so many variables into what creates the severity of a hangover. And those moderation studies, they've been manipulated with just unreliable control groups.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, it's actually become known that, you know, studies show scam. So in 2018, the New York Times exposed several alcohol studies that were conveniently funded by the alcohol industry. And these ended up with so much flawed data because they didn't factor in how they chose the non-drinkers in the control groups.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
And she's trapped as I barf and I'm warning her my head's going to explode when the altitude changes at landing. And I could go into so many details, but you get it. Everyone who drinks gets it. I got home from that short flight and I was what I can only assume clinically dead for two days. I was definitely praying for death. I don't know. What's the worst hangover you remember?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
And it turned out that the people, they were either already sick as hell for reasons that have nothing to do with drinking. They were former drinkers who already have bad health effects from all the drinking they did, or people who can't afford drinking, which... I guess their assumption was they're going to have bad health because they're lower income.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
But these studies, they're just so irresponsible because people who label themselves moderate drinkers, they're out there thinking a glass of wine is a heart attack prevention strategy. But the reality is if the control group wasn't manipulated, the studies would show zero health advantages to being a moderate drinker.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So subsequently from the New York Times article, all these studies were shut down and it just shows no amount of alcohol is good for you. The moderation thing, you know, in your own experience, have you ever had a hangover after just one drink?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, it is. And it's just so hard to predict. But we do know hangover symptoms peak. When we stop drinking after the blood alcohol gets to zero, we do know that the symptoms can last for 24 hours or so. And so the higher you get your blood alcohol level, the longer it will seem like your hangover lasts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And the only thing coconut water is going to do is hydrate you enough to accept that you did this to yourself. Sports drinks, they're just marketing in disguise. We discussed this in the episode we did about hydrotherapy, which was number 1046. So technically, these companies can say their drinks help with dehydration and electrolyte imbalance because they contain sodium and potassium.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So it might satisfy an instant craving in your taste buds, but your organs are doing all the hard work balancing your electrolytes and other things. So research has not found any correlation between drinking those Gatorades and things that are heavy with electrolytes and the severity of hangovers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So in most people, your body quickly restores the electrolyte balance on its own once the effects of alcohol subside. So your body really has this whole restoration thing down and throwing some vitamin water at it. That's fine if it makes you feel better, but your body's just going to say, look, I'll take care of the physiology. You deal with the consequences of your poor decisions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, our bodies aren't stupid. We know when we've been poisoned. So you can throw all the antioxidants and Gatorade at it you want. The coconut water, it's not going to save you. So we just need to stop pretending there's some magic cure because there isn't one. You just got to ride it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, sure. It'll help your headaches, probably. But however, acetaminophen, which is in Tylenol, can cause liver damage on its own. And it's worse when combined with alcohol. So as long as it's not a habit, a pain reliever is fine, but you just have to watch your liver.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, definitely both painful and dangerous. Don't forget, during a hangover, like that next day, we have all kinds of lingering effects of the alcohol. It messes with our attention, our decision making, our coordination, even things like that. So if you're consistently hung over, you might want to stop and think about the damage you're doing long term.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
We've mentioned a lot of them, right? You know, sipping liquids, eating fatty foods, just going back to bed and letting your body recover if you can. So a person just has to wait for the body to finish clearing the toxic byproducts of alcohol out. And we need to rehydrate. We need to heal our irritated tissue and restore... you know, are immune and brain activity to normal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So there's no way to speed up the brain's recovery from alcohol use. No amount of coffee or showers or greasy foods are going to rush the process.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Think about it. If someone had the cure for a hangover, they would be wildly famous and wealthy and just known for these huge breakthroughs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Right, exactly. So those ads and products, they're just modern day snake oil. People buy into them because they promise you can drink as much as you want and still feel fine the next day. But the science behind these, it's all smoke and mirrors. And I do wonder, too, like how much of it's psychosomatic. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, sure. And people buy them because they're desperate for the relief, right? But studies haven't found any natural remedies that consistently improve hangovers. Some of these best-selling hangover cures, they're supplements, they're pills, they're drinks. And they're natural, but that doesn't always mean they're safe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So these products might help you with a headache or your body aches or nausea, but no more than taking Tylenol. In fact, the main ingredient in a lot of them is acetaminophen. So you're just buying expensive Tylenol.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's actually recorded. So the Hangover Cure products market, which is a thing, its size was valued at $2 billion in 2023, and it's expected to grow to almost $7 billion by 2032. Thank God. That's almost 15% growth. So the market is definitely counting on drinking alcohol. and hangovers to stick around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
But when you mix it with the alcohol, it's a whole different kind of hangover. Yeah, I know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So drinking a jar of pickle juice after drinking, that's a Polish tradition.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
It's become pretty popular in the States as people take a shot and then pickle back or whatever. Yes, a pickle back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, yes. And the theory goes that naturally fermented pickles, think of the roll mops, they're full of probiotics. So pickles also contain electrolytes, and that's thought to maintain the fluid balance in our bodies. Just like anything else you're eating, it might bring you some comfort if you like pickles. But let's be real. If you just rest and hydrate, you'll feel better without the juice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I always thought it was because you buy pickles. What the hell do you do with all that leftover brine?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, if it's too much to handle drinking all the pickle juice, there are herbal remedies that'll probably go down easier. There's ginger and peppermint tea, which people say helps with their nausea. There's milk thistle that is supposed to help your liver function. But I bet taking these homemade remedies is awesome.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. According to Puerto Ricans, rubbing a slice of lemon under your armpits before a drinking session will prevent dehydration and headaches. The idea here is that the body's going to absorb that hydrating citrus juice, which also cleanses away the toxic effects of alcohol and is going to deliver those vitamins to your system.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
You know, I'm wondering now when you go to a resort, it's a trick. They're playing on tourists. Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, it gets weirder, though. So ancient Egyptians and Greeks, they wore carefully selected plants on their heads to avoid hangovers. Some cultures just cast a spell over their beers before drinking them. Or we could do as Athenians did, who... They preferred a frog drown in their alcohol before they drank so that they wouldn't get hungover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So we talked about the Brits inventing brunch, but traditionally their go-to hangover cure was tomato juice and raw eggs. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
And there's always a little bit of science here. Like the egg yolk contains amino acids. That's thought to help expel alcohol toxins. Meanwhile, the tomato juice is rich in those antioxidants we love and other vitamins. So there's nothing wrong with eating this. There's just no evidence it does a damn thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
There's another weird belief that's pretty popular right now that activated charcoal can be taken in pill form. That's a real thing, though, right? I've heard of this. We should see. It says it'll trap the toxins and chemicals that alcohol releases into the bloodstream. But activated charcoal, it is a favorite of wellness enthusiasts. But I assume this is just going to be a wellness trend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
The science shows it only absorbs toxins in your stomach, not in your blood. can actually make you feel worse because it's soaking up other nutrients your body needs. So I don't know all the facts about the activated charcoal, but the little bit I read, I would stay away from taking the stuff for probably anything, but especially a hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, the alcohol is metabolized through the liver. So exercising ends up being this really subjective remedy, right? It depends on which kind of hangover you have. Is it just fatigue and anxiety? Then maybe, you know, a run could give you a little boost of energy. But if you're nauseous and you have a headache, exercise might worsen your hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
And that's even if you can drag yourself out of bed to go work out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, it's the same. If you're hungover, you're already dehydrated. So just like exercise, it's really subjective if it'll give you any relief. And it's certainly not a cure, but if it makes you feel better the day after, just monitor yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. I was going to say, of course, anything that messes with our blood sugar or dehydrates you gives us any of those symptoms. That's a hangover. So weed, sure. Caffeine, even if we just have crummy sleep, like anything that throws off our system can give us a technical hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Right. I mean, you have kids, if they have a crazy night of eating sugar, like they're probably still a little weird the next day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
But, oh, I wanted to tell you there's a Hangover Cure playlist on Spotify that claims to have brainwaves that will make you feel better. But it turns out the playlist is like a couple hours long. So it's really just the time that you're laying there listening that's healing you. definitely not a cure for poison, unfortunately, no matter how good that mixtape is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So a hangover, it's the price of admission to a lifestyle with alcohol, and there's no getting around paying that in full. So if you're going to drink, find the fun and comfort attached to all the hangover stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's it. Hydrate, give your body time to recover. That's really the best you can do. So everything else, it's just a comforting distraction. And it's like we said, it's not about curing the hangover. It's about surviving it. So just lean into what makes you feel best.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
When you're hungover, you just know it's an awful feeling. And like I said, you pray for death, but nobody rushes to the doctor or the ER to get a diagnosis or treatment when they're hungover. You just know the symptoms are so familiar to every drinker.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, yeah. You're thirsty. You're tired. You have a horrible headache. Plus, you're cranky and sensitive. And it's often coupled with regret, like maybe the urge to fake your death and move to Cuba after you scroll through all those drunken messages on your phone.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Symptoms can be more low-grade, too, like less obvious. And there's a good chance most people listening have been technically hungover and just not realized it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Seems silly, right? But since the first fruits developed like 80 million years ago, living creatures have been getting drunk. Fermentation started when overripe fruit mixed with yeast in the air, and it created the first natural alcohols. So for animals, the high sugar content of an overly ripe fruit signaled high nutrition, leading to inadvertent intoxication among early species.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
But since at least 10,000 BC, humans have been purposefully mixing fermented beverages and imbibing them. There's even studies where there'll be two watering holes out in, I don't know, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Somewhere where watering holes are. One will have very little water. One will be overflowing. And researchers saw these animals going to the ones with small water and figured out that it's because that one was closer to a fruit tree. So the water in there was fermented. So even wild animals are just naturally attracted to alcohol.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
We've always loved to drink. The Greek cult of Dionysus, for example, they worshipped their wine-creating god by drinking too much. Meanwhile, the rest of Greek and Roman civilizations weren't exactly teetotalers either. There's not much scholarship tracing the first recorded hangover, but knowing humans today, it's a fair assumption that the day after hangover afflicted them then, too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Oh, of course. It's definitely studied. A hangover refers to those symptoms we talked about. that we experience after we drink too much. There's obvious ones like the thirst, the headache, the nausea. The more subtle ones are anxiety, irritability, and increased blood pressure. So we feel hangovers differently each time we drink, and the symptoms just vary from person to person.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
It's believed we humans evolved to drink ethanol. So there's a theory called the drunken monkey hypothesis that suggests basically our ancestors developed the ability to consume ethanol to get the nutrients from the rotting fruit when other fruit was scarce. So it's like we're hardwired to get a little tipsy. Plus, alcohol gives you a nice little euphoria boost. So it seems like a win-win.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Lying on the floor of the uncomfortable cave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Maybe have like some nice fermented fruit snack that takes the edge off. I don't know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Didn't work out that way because we... really like alcohol but it hasn't changed the effects when it hits our bloodstream so it only takes about five minutes to reach your brain and that's when the magic happens or maybe the mayhem depending on your perspective but the effects peak in about an hour and And after that, your liver goes into overdrive, just trying to deal with the alcohol.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
And this throws so many things in our bodies out of whack. And then it takes hours for us to fight it and recalibrate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
You probably were hungover technically.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
So you might not wake up with the headache, of course, but you're not taking your blood pressure the next day after drinking. So you just don't realize what your body's going through. Like not sleeping well, that's a hangover. And meanwhile, your liver is working overtime, breaking down the alcohol and your kidneys. On top of that, alcohol is a diuretic. So your kidneys go into meltdown mode.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
They can't function properly. So boom, you have all these hangover symptoms, whether you realize it or not. Your entire body is working to process and eliminate the alcohol. So this means various factors can be responsible for your hangover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Alcohol is the main culprit in our hangovers, but there's other components of alcoholic beverages that can contribute to your symptoms and make a hangover worse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, definitely just not alcohol that causes us pain. So there's stuff in our drinks like additives, sugars, congeners, and they make your hangover even nastier.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Congeners are non-alcoholic compounds, but they're byproducts of fermentation. So they give alcoholic drinks their taste and their smell, but they're also what makes your hangovers worse. It's sort of obvious when you look at darker spirits like bourbon, they have way more congeners than clear spirits like vodka, which have virtually none.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
The congeners party really hard in our bodies. And if you have a big sensitivity to them, they can make you feel hungover even after drinking non-alcoholic beers. Why are there still congeners in non-alcoholic beers?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1131: Hangover Cures | Skeptical Sunday
Because there's trace amounts of alcohol in NA beers, and along with other byproducts that it creates, like acetate or additives like hops, non-alcoholic drinks, they cause hangover symptoms. Most commonly, it seems to be a headache, but anything fermented can make us experience hangover symptoms. Kombucha, kimchi, it just depends on our personal chemical makeup.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But the second ingredient, that caramel color, and it has nothing to do with caramel, it's just a nice name describing the color of the chemicals that make soda brown. And it contains sulfates and aspartame, which trick your brain into thinking you're getting sugar. And as we've said, that's a problem, because when the sugar never arrives, your body has a stress response.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
So I try not to think about the bone density issues with all the Diet Coke. Obviously, I just drank it. I know. It's all about that fizz, Jordan. Because there's no flat version of Diet Coke. Like, that just wouldn't sell.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, of course. The most common fake food is hydrogenated oils. Hydrogenated oils are used to improve the texture and shelf life of many processed foods. But they're linked to health risks because they're so high in trans fat content, which contributes to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Yet they're still sitting on all the supermarket shelves. And the same goes for processed cheeses.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, high-tech food, there it is. Maybe some portion of the product is cheese, but often it's a very small amount of natural cheese that's added to a ton of additives that increase the shelf life of whatever cheese product.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
In 2016, the CEO and some executives of Castle Cheese Inc., who make a lot of the Parmesan we shake on our pasta, like I'm sure you know the container, it's got like green sides and a red top. They were convicted for selling fake Parmesan, Romano and other cheeses. Their cheeses were cut with wood pulp, but the container said 100% real Parmesan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Nein, der echte Argument in diesem Fall war, dass, seit Hühner natürlich Woodpulp essen, es als Essen bezeichnet wird.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Give me one more example. Termites. Yeah, it's fine. But wood pulp is processed into cellulose, which food manufacturers use as a declumping agent in our foods. I don't know how they figured that out. Whenever you see cellulose in your ingredient list, you're most likely having a little sawdust.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ich weiß, die FDA sagt, hey, nur 5% kann Woodpulp sein, okay? Und nehmt es nicht hin, nur um den Gewicht zu erhöhen, damit ihr mehr Geld verdient, okay? Und die Food-Companies sind so, okay, gut. Aber all das kann so schwer zu beweisen sein. Egal, die Castle Cheese Company, sie wurden nicht verurteilt, Woodpulp zu verkaufen. Sie wurden verurteilt, ihre Produkte zu verurteilen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
If you test any of those cans labeled Parmesan in every supermarket, I'd be shocked if you found any actual Parmesan. Like usually they're using other cheaper cheeses. I don't know how they get away with it, but they do because the FDA requirements for food are confusing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I wish there were more, but FDA recognizes food fraud, but that doesn't have anything to do with healthy ingredients or ingredients at all. If food doesn't make us sick almost immediately or kill us, the FDA is totally happy. Making us sick long term seems to be perfectly fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, try these pharmaceuticals we make. Yeah. But what they do have a problem with is the FDA has a classification of economically motivated adulteration, which is when companies profit by leaving out or substituting an expensive ingredient. And this happens all the time. Like I would bet everyone listening right now has been a victim of economically motivated adulteration at some point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it turns my stomach. Some people also into that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
And if you think horse is bad, wait until you find out about the bogus extra virgin olive oil racket the Italian Mafia has going on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the agro-mafia. It counts for 15% of the mafia's income.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
That sounds fake. I know, the Scorsese farm film. Coming soon or something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Wow. Wow. And it was worth over 13 million euro. The mafia was taking adulterated, low quality Spanish and Greek oils and were exporting it as primo Italian EVOO.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, hey Jordan. Also, weißt du, wie gesund es ist, in einem Supermarkt zu shoppen? Nein, was ist das? Steck dich an die Perimeter. Also, denk an es. Alles, was auf einer Eile ist, ist wahrscheinlich verpackt, aber die Perimeter ist, wo wir frische Früchte, Vegetable, Fleisch und Fisch finden. Also, aus den Eilen zu bleiben, verhindert viele falsche Füße.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I know. Food is scandalous. And oil is the most faked food in the world, with milk and honey coming in second and third. There are honey launderers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
There's a lot of deliberately watered down milk. This food fraud is so extensive that the National Institutes of Health has kept a food fraud database since 1980. Wir werden einfach verletzt, wenn wir all diese teuren Zutaten kaufen. Es gibt Saffron, der ca. 1.500 Dollar pro Pound auf der günstigen Seite ist.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Und es kommt in so einer kleinen Menge in der Fotobagge oder in diesen kleinen schwarzen Baggen oder so. Es ist alles nur für die Show, weil wenn getestet wird, ist es meistens Kornsilke oder Kokonuthusk, rot-grün.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Absolut. Es ist auf einer großen Ebene. Ich liebe es, dass Jen ein B-Keeper war. Hat sie den Mann konfrontiert?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I think they actually list the first ingredient as corn syrup. Like at least they're letting you know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I'm sure that was corn syrup. And people who don't have the information Jen has, they're buying it and just getting sweet and thinking it's delicious. Like the corn syrup is often the first ingredient in honey, which it surprises us of how delicious honey is. People just don't know. Yeah. The biggest bummer for me, though, is coffee.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
When you buy it just ground, it's often mixed with barley, legumes and twigs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But as climate change reduces, like the coffee acreage, it's going to make it all worse because we drink a lot of coffee. And buying whole beans is going to definitely be the best option because the ground stuff will end up being more lentil than coffee bean.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, ja, du bekommst echte Kaffee, Knob.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ich meine, das sind nur ein paar Beispiele von Fake Foods, die wir bekommen können. Und es gibt einige Fake Food Firmen, die gute Intentionen haben. Und sie versuchen, die Probleme des Wachstums, der Gesundheit und des Tierwohlfahrts zu beantworten, wie pflanzliche Mehl.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, you nailed it. These products are just a joke on the health conscious. Food companies realized like, hey, a lot of people aren't eating meat or cheese. So what if we process the shit out of plant derived ingredients like soy and pea protein, emulated the taste and texture of animals and sold it at a ridiculously high price?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, people who didn't eat meat were eating so much fresh food, like they didn't need the food company's help of buying all this processed stuff. And the health benefits of the meat alternatives are definitely not worth it. According to the National Institutes of Health, all meat imitations they tested, they are high in protein and fiber.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Gimitation sausages and milks, they have lower total unsaturated fat compared to animal-based products, which that's all good, but... All Imitation Dairy has lower protein than animal-based dairy. And we don't really know as much in the States, but the Nutri-Score system, which is, it's like a color labeling system on foods in the EU and UK.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
All their foods have, they're like little traffic lights on the labels for calorie, fat, sugar and salt. So it'll be... Green for A, which is the healthiest, and then goes down like light green, yellow, orange. And then the worst for you is when it's red.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
And all imitation cheeses, whether it's the really fancy Voile, or whatever you think you're buying, they're all labeled a bright red E. So it's just the additives and processing used to make these imitations are being found to have negative effects on our health. But we need to do a lot more testing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, es ist ein ziemlich breites Spektrum. Also Fake Food bezieht sich auf Imitation oder synthetische Nahrung, wie jede Nahrung, die den Ausblick, den Geschmack, die Texturen oder den Nahrungsprofil von natürlichen Nahrungsmitteln mimiziert. Denk an Nahrungsmittel mit hydrogenierten Ölen, Additiven, Artifizierten Süßigkeiten und Geschmacks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, there's so many documented cases of exactly that. People buy a McDonald's Happy Meal and then they check in on it a year later and there's no change.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
And that's because all processed foods are dry as a bone. And natural foods have moisture, so they mold. And when you eat a McDonald's hamburger, they're fooling you that you think it's moist. There's sauces and hamburgers. Yeah, it seems like with the plant-based meats, animal welfare slash ethics are the reasons to add that fake meat to your diet, not for your health. Yeah, totally.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But it's confusing since the health food market is now overrun by big food companies passing off ultra-processed foods as healthy choices. Impossible Meat is impressive. It's really popular right now, but it's more modern chemicals than food. And the creator, he's really clear that it was never meant as a health food, that it's meant to reduce industrial farming, period.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
They did a study on the safety of impossible meat and they found the burger's key ingredient, the thing that gives it its meatiness, which is called soy leg hemoglobin, is safe for human consumption. But what the consumption is doing to our health is really debated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, for us, it's not that great, but if It could completely replace animals or even if it just replaced cows. It would slow greenhouse gases and habitat destruction by incredible rates. There's no slaughter, there's no hormones, there's no antibiotics, but it is built on commodity agriculture and ultra-processed foods, so there's a huge health trade-off. These products are just questionable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
They solve one problem, like regarding animal welfare, but they create a ton of health issues. Okay, so Fake Meats, not the best choice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's a really bumpy road. The one good thing is that it does lead to innovation and food technology. So food companies are continuously improving taste and texture, which is great. But it's the nutritional profile of fake foods that needs to be advanced in the processing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Lab-grown meat is cultivated from animal cells. So it does start with an animal. And they take the animal cell in a lab setting. They cultivate it. And it's a sustainable alternative to conventional meat production. But there's a lot of testing that needs to be done on lab-grown meats. Most are in the developmental stage. There's two main companies working furiously to get them on the market.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and that word shows up a lot in our ingredient lists. There's also plant-based meat alternatives, molecular milk, processed cheese, lab-grown meat. They're all fake foods.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
They do eliminate animal slaughter, but again, the health pros and cons are really questionable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh mein Gott, das ist mein größter Wunsch, weil ja, natürlich kann Krankheit durch einen industriellen Farm verbreiten, aber die Art, wie diese Vats funktionieren, es sieht fast aus wie eine Brühe und du legst ein paar Zellen in einen der Tanks und dann bleibt es nur mehr und mehr und die leere Vat ist komplett voll mit Kekse in fünf Tagen oder so etwas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and it's just so vulnerable to disease and I would think in those kind of facilities it would spread even faster.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they use a lot of antibiotics in lab-grown meat. There's a lot of pharmaceutical techniques being used. And so that's a big reason not to eat industrial farmed meat, right, is all the antibiotics that they give the animals. But they're putting even more in the lab-grown stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
You're not killing an animal, but it's weird Frankenstein. Yeah. It's really bizarre. Like depends on who you ask, though, because governments see it only the positives in it. But eventually, when the technology improves, be a cheaper way to feed the masses. The U.N. wants the U.S. government to promote lab grown and plant based meats, but they are prohibited. Natürlich. Ja.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Es ist die Milch aus dem Zukunft, sicher. Ein wirklich komplizierter Prozess, die Moleküle zu manipulieren. Ein riesiges Prozent von dem, was wir essen, wird entdeckt. Und wir machen das mit der Verwendung einer Kombination von synthetischen Ingredienzen, Additiven und verschiedenen Prozesstechniken.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It's called just eat an apple. Go old school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Of course. And I get really frustrated with the almond controversy because that whole campaign was started by dairy farmers in California. And their big argument was, it takes so much water to grow an almond tree, which if you think about it rationally, like it's bullshit. It doesn't take any more water to grow an almond tree than any other tree. That's not the problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
And it's just a baseless argument. But anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I've heard it was kind of this manipulation by Big Dairy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not saying almond farming doesn't use a ton of water, but it's not any higher than any other farm as far as I've read. And I think it was like a smear campaign because a lot of people are buying almond milk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Dairy companies have a lot of lobbying power.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, interesting. Yeah, plant-based foods typically have a lower environmental footprint compared to animal-based foods, but they still make an impact. Almond trees still need water, but plant-based requires less land typically, less water, less energy, and it definitely generates fewer greenhouse gases.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
They reduce the demand for factory farmed meat, dairy and eggs, which some big food companies are upset about. But we're just duped into thinking that these plant-based products are automatically a healthy choice. It's just a false equivalency.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Fake Foods versuchen also, die sensorische Erfahrung eines echten, frischen Lebens zu replizieren, ohne die gleichen Ingredienzen oder Produktionmethode zu benutzen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, und Fake Foods, sie bieten absolut Möglichkeiten für Menschen mit Allergien. Wer Laktose-intolerant ist, ist ein tolles Produkt zu haben. Sie könnten wahrscheinlich nicht Milch trinken, ich weiß nicht. Aber nicht nur für Allergien, wie Fake Foods, die Möglichkeiten für Vegetarier, Veganer oder glutenfreie Diäten erweitern.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Aber alle die Additiven, die wir benutzen, um das echte Ding zu simulieren, haben alle negativen Effekte auf unsere Gewicht und Gesundheit. Das ist die bottom line.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
We just need to mitigate these concerns. Like the industrialized production of fake foods, for example, relies a lot on palm oil, which contributes to environmental degradation big time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, absolut. Das Prozess der Pflanze zerstört Ökosysteme. Es ist wirklich schlecht. Aber die Ölpalmen, natürlich, weil sie indigenisch sind, wie um die Äquator in Afrika. Wenn es lokal aufgewachsen ist, produziert es diesen rot-grünen, wirklich leckeren Liquid, der hoch in Antioxidanten ist. Und weil es so eine effiziente Frucht ist, haben wir massiv Ölpalmen produziert, überall in Asien.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Und dann senden wir sie zu einem Öl-Refinerie und wir strecken all ihre Nahrung aus durch Ultraprozessing. Es scheint, dass das große Problem ist, dass Fake-Food günstiger ist als non-fake-fresh-Foods. Yeah, produce is enormously expensive. We're mistaken when we think people are making bad choices by not buying fresh fruits and veggies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It's not like the whole world just stopped having willpower of how to eat and got fat. There's something going on with the food we're eating. And for many people of low income, ultra-processed food is all that's available. Like a lot of people live in food deserts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
In Food Deserts, they're disproportionately found in high poverty areas. There's about 40 million Americans that are living in places considered Food Deserts. So, stores like 7-Eleven or the Dollar Store are supplying those communities with their food and there's zero fresh options. There's just no access. And it shows in the weight and health of these communities.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
We are like processivores. And compared to animals of our size, we have... Tiny jaws, tiny teeth and tiny intestinal tracts. So humans develop techniques and tools to make food easier to chew and digest, like mashing and cooking, using grinders and knives, salting and curing, smoking, anything that makes food edible and delicious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It makes no sense that food options aren't equally available.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
We just adapt to it. But there is a movement to eliminate food deserts, but it takes people investing in these poor communities. Tiffany Haddish grew up in the food desert of South L.A. and she's made it her mission to change food options and food quality in that neighborhood.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
So more than five years ago, she launched Diaspora Groceries and she opened a market in the neighborhood that has fresh, healthy choices where she grew up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I know, but why aren't there more community gardens? In Philadelphia they have a neighborhood farmers market and it's all raised beds so you don't have to use the soil in the city and that feeds a neighborhood in Philly. But it's like, why aren't things like that everywhere?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Any place you see a garden, like a community garden, it's Just long waiting lists. So one market's not going to change it, but at least Tiffany Haddish is setting a good example. Like we had more people giving back to their communities. So it'll be interesting to see how it affects the neighborhood.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But even if you do have access and can afford fresh produce, you also need to have a kitchen with energy and appliances and a knife and a cutting board and the time to cook. And you'll need to make food in quantity and So, if you can't afford fresh food, you better be able to afford healthcare, which is a really crappy trade-off. The problem with fake foods, it's not just the cost.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It's both the cost and the availability. So instead of investing just in synthetic substitutes, we should be focusing on improving access to fresh, nutritious ingredients for everyone. We have to be careful that as the innovation and competition increase affordable food options, that those options aren't 100% fake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It might be, if we're not careful, but processing isn't going anywhere. And the reason you process food is not because there's anything wrong with it in its natural state, but because there's more money to be made when you process. There's a lot of money being made in the food industry, but it's not going to the farm end of things. The farmer gets less than 15% of your food dollars.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
The money goes to food processors who are benefiting from the fact that we're overproducing. Wow, I had no idea. That's huge money. I know. It's crazy. What? Yeah. Aber ich denke, es sind etwa 15 Firmen, die alle unsere Kalorien machen. Und ca. 75% dieser Kalorien kommen aus den sechs Top-Firmen, die Gras und Öl produzieren. Yeah, it's wild.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, poor diet has overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of early death globally. The primary cause of diet-related disease, including obesity, is the rise of a diet of industrially produced, ultra-processed foods. This is all driven by profit incentives. So agriculturalists need to work with economists. We need to treat food companies like we've been treating the tobacco companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, wir sind ein paar Zentimeter auf der Zeitung weg von Nikotin-Flecken für Frühstück. Oh Gott, ja, mit einem Fake-Watered-Down-Sawdust-Milch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I know, I wish we could all have that luxury, but when is your farmer's market open?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I have one stand I go to like specifically for bok choy. I don't know what it is, but it's like a treat. It would be awesome if our food system aligned with our values and farmers markets were more available. But the food industry is just dominated by a very few big and powerful companies. And those companies are not in control of their business model. Their investors are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Like CEOs at Dannen and Pepsi that proposed making foods better for people, they were voted out and replaced. The food companies have just made it clear what their motives are, and it is not public health.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
We just need a cultural change. We have to come to regard food companies like tobacco companies because their money is dirty. And ultra-processed foods need to be in national dietary guidelines. Policymakers and industry leaders must start prioritizing public health and sustainability and social equity all across food production. We need marketing restrictions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Like Mexico has ruled that no tiger on the cover of frosted flakes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Mexico passed a law insisting on the removal of all cartoon characters from labels. And that law also said that your warning label has to be bigger than your logo. That's kind of genius.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and it's effective in guiding the consumer to healthier choices. Mexico has seen a lot of sales of these popular products. Whether you're pro-fake or anti-fake, the future of food, it sounds like it's a topic we must all digest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, of course. There's processed foods like we process them when we're cooking, but they're not the same as ultra-processed foods. So this is super, super important to understand. Processed foods are what we've always done and any kind of processing changes how our bodies metabolize the food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But we've known since the 70s when it was found through studies that the body reacts differently to eating a whole apple versus eating a mashed apple versus eating just the juice. And the only time it doesn't spike our sugar is when we eat the whole apple. It's that balance of the fiber and the sugars our body needs. So whole foods are what our bodies are designed to digest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
I know, and ultra-processing affects our body's reaction even more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ultra-processing is when we eat things that have never been in the human diet before, like modern chemicals. Es gibt eine geeignete, einfachen Definition für ultraverpackte Füße. Es ist in Plastik verpackt mit mindestens einem Ingredient, den man in einer Standard-Küche nicht finden würde.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And our food is labeled around what we all think of as the components of nutrition, right? Salt, sugar, carbs, fat, protein and fiber. But research shows food is more than that. It's what we do to the food, like how processed it is, that matters. In 2019, a hypothesis was tested where researchers designed two diets and they tested two groups.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
One group was fed 80% of their calories from ultra-processed foods and the other 0%. It was the same sugar, the same carbs, the same fat, same everything. The ultra-processed foods group, they ate an average of 500 calories more a day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
So the studies suggest that there's something else about ultra-processed foods that drive people to overeat, because calorie for calorie, the diets were exactly the same.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, das ist es absolut. Wie Tiere sind alle zu dem Futter, das sie brauchen. Und Menschen sind nicht anders. Das ist, wie wir überleben. Aber Geschmack ist wie die Natur's Language of Nutrition. Und Geschmack-Moleküle sind, wie der nützliche Wert des Lebens zu unserem Gehirn kommuniziert wird. Okay, so what do our bodies then end up doing when they get new molecules?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it gets confusing because when our taste buds send a message of, say, orange flavor to our brains, our body prepares for vitamin C. But if it's an artificial orange flavor with no vitamin C, the body doesn't know what to do with the information. When we fool our brains like this over and over, the brain and the body's ability to metabolize food, it goes all out of whack.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, absolutely. We all burn the same amount of calories a day pretty much, but We absorb these ultra processed foods very quickly. So we eat them really fast and we get the calories faster than our bodies can realize we're full. And then when you have sweetness without sugar and smoothness without fat and savory without protein, it's just messing with our taste buds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Like we evolved to have an incredibly balanced diet. And so when you keep fooling your brain, it's just trying to balance things out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Das ist hundertprozentig wahr. Es ist viel Profit. Und wenn du wirklich die Ingredientenliste lesen beginnst, wirst du einen Pattern bemerken, wo der erste Ingredient typisch ein Commodity-Crop ist, wie die vordersten vier sind Fleisch, Soja, Mehl und Korn. Und dann gibt es ein Commodity-Öl, wie Pumpe oder Sonnenblumen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, well, they grow so much of it for the farm animals that the leftovers are what's thrown into the human food supply. And then they're processed down into powders of fat, protein and carbohydrates. And these powders are low cost. They're really easy to ship and they store for a long time. So all they need is a ton of additives to reconstitute. And then you can turn the powders into anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Additives are definitely mysterious. There's about 5 to 15,000 additives in our diets. But the reason we don't know how many are actually used for sure is that for some reason the FDA just doesn't keep a list.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, sie sind wie eine magische Potion. Sie emulsifizieren und stabilisieren die Füße. Sie verbinden diese basic Ingredients zusammen. Und dann schaffen sie Texturen, die gepresst, gebraten, gebacken oder was auch immer sind. So, they say we taste with our eyes first. You know anything about that? Yeah, absolutely. That's what gets us salivating the first time we look at it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
But we don't know how healthy what we're looking at is when we're fooled behind all the packaging. So the artificial flavor and color, it can come from natural compounds, but most are entirely synthetic chemicals that we're just happily ingesting because it makes the spicy chip red.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, my guess is yes, but we can only really look at the additives that have been specifically tested, right? We don't know what they all are, but countless research shows that various additives are linked to mental health disorders, attention deficit disorder, cardiovascular disease and cancers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
It just slowly crept in. Instead of not making foods that were harming our guts, there's just a whole new market for products for good gut health. And food companies put things like kombucha and probiotics on the shelves. Das ist wahr. Also anstatt zu sagen, hey, wir sollten Essen machen, die dir den Fisch in den Mund geben,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Dekreieren von Zucker ist eine gute Idee für jeden auf der Welt, sicher. Und Artificial Sweeteners sind sugar- und kaloriefreundlich, das ist großartig. Aber Studien linken sie zu Gewichtsgänse, schwerem Blutgewicht und erhöhten Bedürfnissen. Also brauchen wir Zucker, richtig? Aber unsere Gehirne brauchen eine Balance von süß und Kalorien.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Also zu süß oder nicht süß genug, das beeinflusst das Körper, die Möglichkeit zu metabolisieren, diese Kalorien. Within a decade of artificial sweeteners hitting the market, type 2 diabetes and obesity, which was basically unheard of in the past, became leading health problems in the United States.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1116: Fake Foods | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, gross. Yeah, that's just it though, like diet sodas have so many people hooked. Look at the ingredients in a diet coke, which everybody loves to say that it has no fat, no sugar, no salt, but what are we drinking? So, the ingredients are, the first one is always listed as carbonated water, that's fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
In 1918 haben die Bananen-Arbeiter versucht, zu schießen, aber die UFC hat ihre Anforderungen für Jahre ignoriert, bis sich all dieser Bananen-Drama zehn Jahre später in Kolumbien in dem, was als Bananen-Massaker bekannt wurde, gebraten hat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Definitely a brown spot in history. The UFC set up one of its plantations in Magdalena, Colombia, which is a hot tourist spot along the Caribbean coast today. Oh, that is dark. It sounds like everybody had a banana job.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It was twisted. And since UFC owned everything, workers couldn't just pack up and find another job. So they organized again and on October 6, 1928, Colombian banana workers handed the UFC a list with nine demands.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Gute Idee. Ja. The UFC didn't like that and they refused to negotiate. So in a classic corporate move, they said, hey, you're subcontractors, not employees, nothing to discuss.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Exactly. And to make things worse, the Colombian government passed new laws, making it even harder for workers to protest. So when they finally went on strike on November 11th, 1928, the situation escalated quickly. The strike grew into the largest in Colombia's history. The government panicked, arrested hundreds and called in the military to silence the strikers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it turns out the Colombian military was on UFC's payroll. So they sent 700 troops to confront 30,000 striking workers in the so-called Banana Zone. And get this, according to the US State Department, there was talk of sending US warships to back them up. All over bananas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It got ugly. The workers, they sabotaged the railways, crippled the banana trade. They became a revolutionary threat, which scared the living daylights out of the authorities. So on December 5th, they told the protesters there'd be negotiations. Thousands of workers gathered, thinking it was for peace talks. But the banana cops got nervous and a Colombian general declared a state of siege.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, wow. This is like some Game of Thrones type of scene, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, but the death toll depends on who you ask. The Colombian government said 47 people died, but every other account puts the death toll at around 3,000. I think it was really brutal. And to send a message, the military left nine bodies in the workers' village, one for each of their demands.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, some historians argue that the political instability in Colombia today and the whole drug trafficking nightmare can be traced back to UFC's colonizing grip on the banana trade. And as for the UFC's founder, our friend, Miner Cooper Keith, He died a few months after the massacre, but that didn't stop UFC.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So I would like to introduce you to our next banana character, Sam Zemery, also known as Sam the Banana Man, or the guy who took UFC's corruption to places even darker.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, definitiv. Wir sollten das Skript für sicher schreiben. Dieser Kerl wurde 1877 in Russland geboren, aber er wurde in Alabama geboren. Und Sam war einfach besessen mit Bananenbooten in seinem lokalen Flur als Kind. Und als er wuchs, sah er eine Goldmine in dem, was die Reibs heißt, die verletzten Bananen, die weggezogen werden. Wow, so we're talking about a teenage brown banana baron here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In 1903 hat Sam, der Bananenmann, ein Kontrakt mit der UFC gegründet, um Rippen in Süd- und Zentralamerika zu verbreiten. In 1905 hat er seine eigene Firma in Honduras gegründet, die Koya Melfrut, und hat die Infrastruktur dort kontrolliert.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It is. And when the Honduran government tried to limit the foreign land ownership and raise taxes, Sam wasn't having it. So in 1911, he took drastic measures and went full banana scarface. He hired a mercenary, you'll love this name, Lee Christmas, to overthrow the democratically elected president of Honduras.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It worked out really well. He succeeded. The Christmas guy toppled the government, put in a puppet leader and Sam got everything he wanted. Land, tax breaks and power. He was running the whole country of Honduras as one big banana plantation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, wild. Sam dominated banana diplomacy in Honduras and Nicaragua. He ended his contract with UFC in 1913. And then his company and UFC, they just played dirty with each other for years. So fast forward to after the Banana Massacre in 1928, Sam the Banana Man's ships were raided and found to have loads of weapons on board, which was never really explained in my research.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
The US State Department intervened to stop the banana drama and negotiated a merger that let UFC swallow up Sam's company.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
He got 30 million dollars, which would be 500 million today. He got a seat on the board of directors and this made him one of the richest people in the United States. But less than a year later, the stock tanked with the Great Depression. Sam was furious and literally stormed into a UFC board meeting, declared himself the new managing director of operations.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And by 1938, he was the president of UFC.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I think he was a crazy genius. But if we fast forward by 1954, UFC was fighting another battle and this time in Guatemala. The new president there was Jacobo Arbenz, and he wanted to redistribute land not being used and land owned by foreign companies, and UFC was not having it. They had 600,000 acres in Guatemala, which is about a quarter of the country.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And they weren't using most of the land, they were just hoarding it. The Guatemalan government offered like 1.2 million for the land, but UFC wanted 16 million. And the US Secretary of State and the CIA Director, which at the time were brothers, by the way, the dullest brothers of airport fame, I guess, they advised President Eisenhower that President Arbenz is the problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And the Secretary had ties to UFC, the CIA Director owned UFC stock, so it's a whole tangled web.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, they backed a coup called Operation Success.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
The goal of the operation success was to overthrow Arbenz. Sam the Banana Man published a book accusing Arbenz's land reform plan of being a communist plot. And in 1954, if you just whispered the word communism, people would lose their minds. So it was a branding win.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And by June of 1954, UFC-backed forces, think about this, a banana company's forces, invaded Guatemala using UFC boats and American planes, calling it a liberation war against communism. And thousands of Arbenzes supporters were rounded up. And it took just 12 days for the president to flee the country. It was another banana queue in record time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And just like that, Guatemala was in chaos that lasted decades. But it was a success for the UFC.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So, who knew fruit companies were so connected to the federal government? I guess all you need is a ton of money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
UFC said, hey, let's get rid of Fidel. So, yada, yada, yada. That's how we get to the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 14th, 1961.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I am so ready. Who doesn't love a good banana, right? But it turns out bananas have a shady side.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yes. The CIA totally invaded Cuba. And UFC's banana boats were the ones transporting soldiers and arms. And a hundred ships known as the Great White Fleet that were regularly used for transporting bananas and tourists started ferrying troops, weapons and ammunition to overthrow Castro.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Correct. And Fidel caught up the Soviets for backup. And boom, we're in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It's so crazy. And UFC and all these dirty dealings, it left them pretty vulnerable after that. But they still had a lot of power in Central America into the 1970s. The ripple effects from these coups, it's still haunting the region today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I know, or shopping at the store Banana Republic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
But marketing genius allowed that. It's like eating at Heart Attack Burgers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It's a pretty offensive term for countries that are politically unstable, have a wealth gap and are run by foreign companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
The OG of this is the banana industry countries. In fact, in the 70s, several Latin American companies So this is OPEC, but for bananas. So did they take over the banana trade completely? Well, they did have help from Hurricane Carmen in 1974, which wiped out a bunch of banana plantations in Latin America, mostly Honduras, and that sent UFC just spiraling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
They lost 70 million dollars, what would be 450 million today. And in the company chaos uncovered a bribery scandal with the Honduran government. And consequently, in 1975, the then CEO of UFC, Eli M. Black, he just jumped to his death from his 44th floor office window. All right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so this is not about health. Korrekt. Es geht nicht um eure Gesundheit. Die einzigen gesundheitlichen Nachteile sind, dass sie hoch in Karben sind. Also vielleicht verpassen Sie sie, wenn Sie auf einem Keto-Kick sind. Und sie vermischen sich nicht gut mit ein paar Medikamenten, aber das ist kaum die Schuld der Bananen. Es ist rar, aber manche Leute sind allergisch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, or he slipped on a lot of corruption, I think. What's super weird is he jumped with his briefcase and it scattered documents everywhere that proved he bribed the president of Honduras for lower export taxes on bananas. This became known as Banana Gate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So it's not just the UFC that's problematic. Yeah, there are other fruit companies. So Del Monte Foods and Dole, they both have rich histories, but just not in bananas. Del Monte formed in 1886 as a premium coffee brand, expanded into canned peaches and Hawaiian pineapples, eventually rebranding as the Del Monte Corporation in 1967, and they have ongoing human rights violations facing them today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Mittlerweile begann Dole in 1899 mit einem Hawaiian Pineapple Plantation und sie revolutionisierten die Produktion. Aber Dole befindet sich heute mit vielen öffentlichen Krankheiten, z.B. E-Coli-Erkrankungen 2005, 2006.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Both companies remain major players in the fruit and vegetable industries, but we'd have to do an episode on pineapples for those tales.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And there's other banana massacre type stories in the Philippines, Mexico, all over Latin America, where workers face intimidation from the military because of their banana union activities. Like there's human rights abuses that are rampant in the banana industry. The profits for these companies are not reflected in the workers' wages or benefits, but they are paid in actual currency now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the fruit that keeps on giving, I guess.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
But when the skeletons finally started spilling out to the public, UFC figured a fresh logo would make people forget about all the coups and massacres and paramilitary ties. So in 1990 they rebranded Chiquita Brands International.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Chiquita translates literally to mean little girl or little lady. So they changed their name to little lady banana. Cute for marketing, I guess.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Richtig. Miss Chiquita war UFC-Maskott, aber die Firma war die United Fruit Company bis 1990. Miss Chiquita wurde in den 40er-Jahren gegründet, um die Reputation der UFC zu wechseln, aber diese Brandung hat sich nicht gut gegründet. Die UFC-Chiquita-Banana-Ads waren über das Exotische, und sie haben die latinamerikanischen Frauen in Weisen ausgedrückt, die Sexismus und Kolonialismus schreien.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, it's like they thought, what if we made a fruit sexy?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Right, but the character's first introduction was weird. In 1946, UFC put out a racist animated short called Chiquita Banana and the Cannibals.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's like a cartoonish stereotype of an African man shown cooking an Englishman over a fire. And then this Chiquita Banana Lady interrupts singing, if you'd like to be refined and civilized, then your eating habits really ought to be revised. And she suggests a recipe for banana scallops as an alternative to cannibalism.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Es ist weniger als 1% der Bevölkerung, also ist das Weltliebe von Bananen wach. Und von all den Verbrechen, essen wir nur einen typischen Bananen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Incredibly, when I went to the Chiquita Company website, they nostalgically have an image from this early ad with text celebrating the shorts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, like the cookbooks and baby food, it was all about distracting from the horror show behind the scenes. But the 90s name change to Chiquita did not deter the company from continuing to pull strings in Colombia, and journalists unpeeled the facts of Chiquita and her ties to paramilitary groups in Colombia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah. And Chiquita likes inexpensive land. Unidas. But to operate safely, they started paying the Autodefenses Unidas to Colombia or the AUC, which in English means the United Self Defenders of Colombia. And they were a far right paramilitary drug trafficking group that came to power in the 1980s.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Not only in bed with extremists, in 1998 investigations in the US and Colombia uncovered Chiquita bribing Colombian officials for use of their port while funneling millions to several paramilitary groups. The AUC were designated as terrorists and there was just no way Chiquita didn't know that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Chiquitas Payments helped these gangs maintain control over the land and suppress union activity. The AUC's banana division of the group funded by Chiquita was responsible for numerous human rights violations and murders. Wow. Over 100,000 people were displaced by the violence in Colombia's Yoruba region between 1995 and 2006, all thanks to Chiquitas dealings.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Well, in 2003 Chiquita testified to the U.S. Department of Justice that, yeah, they knew the AUC was designated a terrorist organization, but they were being extorted by the group. And in 2004 Chiquita sold its Colombian operations. In 2007 zahlten sie einen 25-Millionen-Dollar-Fonds an die Justiz-Departement, aber kein Geld ging an die Gefühle und keine Exekutiven gingen in die Gefängnis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
In der Zwischenzeit hat Columbia zehn Chiquita-Exekutiven für die Finanzierung der AUC beurteilt. Und die Firma befindet sich auch mit mehreren Beurteilungen für Terrorismus, Kriegskriege, falsche Todesfälle. Aber es ist, als ob Chiquita seit über einem Jahr aus der Justiz ausgelaufen wäre.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, wow. Oh, wow. 17 Jahre von Litigation. Ein Jurist in Florida gab das erste Set von Schwestern und ihren Familien Gerechtigkeit, mit Earthrights International reporting, Quote, ein Jurist hat den Bananen-Giant Chiquita Brands für die Finanzierung der AUC, einen brutalen paramilitären Todesquad im Namen des Bananen-Gesetzes, gefunden. Aber niemand wurde in die Gefängnis gesetzt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, das ist wahr. Bananen sind ziemlich sexy. Sie sind wie das Fastfood der Natur, serviert in biodegradablen Wrappers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Chiquita musste acht Schwestern-Familien, ein Total von 38 Millionen Dollar, bezahlen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and these court cases don't even address other problems of the banana trade, like missing and murdered union leaders, child labor, which is out of control in Nicaragua, and inhumane treatment of women. Like, the banana game is vicious. Also, we can pay 69 cents a pound at the store. I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Billions, with a B. There's over 100 billion bananas eaten worldwide every year. And they've been around forever. Evidence of bananas dates back to 6th century BCE in Papua New Guinea, but likely thousands of years earlier in Asia and northern Australia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Right, they do. Child labor is rampant across Latin America and the Caribbean. So, Workers are making peanuts while big banana rakes in billions. Nothing has changed even today? Exactly. Workers get a fraction of the retail price, while companies dodge unionization and lower wages with short-term contracts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Unfair trading practices mean supermarkets pay low prices, which forces fruit companies to pay even lower wages. And working in the banana trade is so bad. There's a traditional Jamaican work song about how bad it is that we all probably know, that Deo Banana Boat song that was made famous by Harry Belafonte.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ich meine, ein Acht-Fuß-Bund würde wirklich schwer sein. Und dieser Junge singt, er will den Tally-Mann als Bananen zählen, weil er so müde ist, von diesem Bananen-Plantation-Alltag zu arbeiten. Hör zu den Lyrics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ich meine, der Punkt ist hier, wo Bananen kultiviert werden, gibt es arbeitende Arbeiter, nicht zu erwähnen, eine verwandte Umgebung. Hey, have a banana and ignore the blood on the peel. We covered it in toxic chemicals. So what are they using on these things? Und Monokultur ist, was ist das? Monokultur. It's like the ultimate soul-sucking farming method.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
You just grow the same exact crop year after year and it strips the soil, killing biodiversity and basically leaving the land trashed, dry, cracked. It's like ecological destruction at its finest. And on a huge plot of land, only one crop is grown and nothing else can survive. And the thing with banana monoculture is it's like the banana equivalent of having no immune system.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So like we said earlier, this means that one disease, one little fungal pathogen can wilt the Cavendish out of existence. And guess what? There is a fungus and it is wiping them out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, they were considered exotic in the West for a long time. There's some debate about when they first made it to Europe. In the 1500s, Magellan even wrote letters home describing bananas as, quote, like a really long fig.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Don't be too upset though. The extinction thing is a good headline, but it is a bit dramatic. Bananas will not disappear. We bred the Cavendish and we'll just breed another one more resistant to disease. Why don't they just breed more varieties now? Money. Okay. The reality is it's expensive to introduce other banana varieties.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
The entire global banana infrastructure is designed around the Cavendish. Everything from how they're harvested to how they ripen during transport. And so replacing it would just be a logistical nightmare. And that's the real problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, well, there's a very long chemical name for it, but we can just call it TR4. And it started hitting bananas in Asia in the 90s and has attacked the banana industry, but it's slowly spreading across the globe. The whole banana industry has been bad for the environment, bad for the people growing them, and now bad for the fruit itself. The whole thing's absurd.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, ich meine, Bananen, sie werden gegründet und kultiviert, um Profite zu maximieren und nicht gute Bananen zu sein. Ja. These chemicals are usually applied by aerial application or crop dusting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's estimated that only 15% of the agrochemicals actually land on the crop. The other 85 lands on workers, their homes and other food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Richtig. Und weil die Regulierungen anderer Länder anders sind, ist eine der ökologisch genannten Agro-Chemikalien in der Nahrung von Bananen, Dibromochloropropan oder DBCP, die in den USA seit 1979 verabschiedet wurde, aber sie ist immer noch in Lateinamerika verwendet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Numeröse Gesetzgebungen wurden von Arbeitern gegen Bananen-Giants gebracht, die beurteilen, dass sie ernsthafte Krankheiten haben.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, sicher. Ja, du solltest nicht. Die Agrochemicals, die in der Bananen-Kultivation genutzt werden, verletzen die Regenwälder, die die Pflanzen brechen. In der Tat, vor etwa zehn Jahren gab es eine Studie von spektakulären Kamen, die wie kleine Krokodile sind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Und sie leben nahe Bananen-Pflanzen in Costa Rica. Sie haben Tränen von Pestiziden in ihrem Blut gefunden, insbesondere DDT. Und das wurde in der Region seit Jahren nicht genutzt. Ja.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
But DDT is a persistent pollutant, so it lingers in places that it hasn't been used for decades. And it was really popular in the banana industry before. And that and other chemicals, they get into our water.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And bananas have a big thirst for water, so they account for a huge amount of water use and contamination. Since they require a constant level of moisture, like neither too much or too little, banana fields have channels for irrigation and drainage, which sounds fancy until you realize it's just an elaborate way to cause serious soil erosion.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, long fig hammock doesn't quite work either.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
As a result, agrochemicals and silt are delivered into adjacent waterways. In the Caribbean, where plantations are located along the coasts, this kind of runoff has caused considerable damage to estuaries and coral reefs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
But yeah, as Europeans colonized tropical regions, bananas became more and more desired. But transporting them pre-refrigeration was obviously pretty tricky.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, das ist richtig. Ja, das ist viel verpassterter Frucht. Ich weiß, dass ich mich überraschen werde, das zu fragen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Was für eine existenzielle Frage. Organische Bananen können Arbeiter sein, die nicht von schrecklichen Chemikalien ausgesprochen werden, aber sie verbessern typisch nicht die Werte oder andere Arbeitsbedingungen für die, die auf den Pflanzenschaften arbeiten. Und was zahlt der Konsument? Echt nur Frieden.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Die Chancen, dass keine Chemikalien überall, wo Ihre Banane wächst, aufgelöst werden, sind unglaublich. Minimal. Plus, I don't know if you've ever done an episode on this, but the chemicals are labeled organic. So is your banana.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Fairtrade is not as straightforward as it sounds. Fairtrade works on certifications and some certifications treat workers' rights like optional perks. Congratulations, you're a banana worker, but sorry, you don't get any benefits.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
And unfortunately, some prominent certification systems consider workers' rights to be voluntary elements by the company, not just basic standards that need to be upheld. Fairtrade is like a badge for trying and it's a bummer, I know, but Fairtrade is really just, it's a marketing strategy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, you can. It's a really hard find and that's just how it was set up. Baker, Preston, Sam the Banana Man, they weren't doing environmental impact studies, right? They were just making banana bucks. And as far as money, it's a testament to the history that it's equated with making money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So much money in bananas that it's actually in crypto today. Like just when you thought this couldn't get crazier, there is banana coin. And it's a cryptocurrency peg to the export price of bananas. Because, of course, that's what we need.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I don't know how that works. I wish I was smarter about that stuff, I guess. Every banana coin represents just over two pounds of bananas grown on an ever-expanding plantation in Laos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I know. I mean, it's not all bad, though. Like, we love bananas and bananas have made their way into beauty regimens. There's banana-based face masks that have become popular in recent years. Additionally, using bananas on acne-prone skin can be beneficial because it's anti-inflammatory properties that can soothe blemishes and irritation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So we're just constantly learning new things about our little fruity friends.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Glücklicherweise brachten die 19. Jahrhunderte Steamschiffe, Straßen und Refrigeration, sodass die Luxus-Bananen mehr zugänglich geworden sind. In 1870 schickte ein Mann namens Captain Lorenzo Baker die ersten Bananen aus Jamaika nach Philly, um das Bananen-Empire auszulösen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
So, I found the food empowerment project strives to inform people about where their food comes from so we can make the most ethical choices possible. But for many, bananas are just a reasonably priced fruit that contains beneficial nutrients. But buying conventional bananas contributes to both environmental and human rights abuses. You just can't get around it. But I still want to eat bananas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I know. We all do. And there are brands to look for, like Equal Exchange, Coleman, Earth University. There's a few others, but it turns into a banana scavenger hunt. I wish we could ask the grocer, hey, could you stock ethical bananas? I'm trying to save the world here, one fruit at a time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
We've been making all these puns, but it is worth discussing bananas in pop culture. They are our most comical food. And when we first shocked the idea of this episode, remember, like our texts were just a pun battle. Bananas have been used in pop culture forever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Bananas are a symbol of cultural identity in Latin American countries. For example, there's a Puerto Rican artist, Francisco Aller, and in his paintings, bananas represent national pride. Und natürlich gibt es die phallische Form, den visuellen Element, der ihnen ein gutes Thema in Film, TV, Kunst macht. Indy Warhol hat oft die Bananenform als Sexobjekt benutzt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
It's very funny. They are used in comedy, right? And memes. There's the dancing banana icon. That's a big widespread meme. There was a French dancer and singer who was pretty popular, Josephine Baker. And she wore a banana skirt costume in 1927. She did a review, which became... A symbol of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. And recently, Beyonce, Rihanna, they've paid homage to
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Bananas are indeed bananas, to prove your point. But hey, at least they taste good and they make us laugh while we battle the ethics of the whole thing. Every time we put a banana in that morning smoothie, though, we're blending this history of coups and scandals and human rights violations with a little bit of that entertainment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I also have a new substack called Where the Shadows Linger, but it's all fiction. I have a short story collection coming out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Baker machte Wälder. In 1876 nahm er einen Bananen-Tree an die Weltmeisterschaft und es war ein Hitsch. Ungefährdend war es überschattet von etwas, was sich als Telefon bezeichnet hat. Aber trotzdem hat er genug Buzzer gegründet, um den ersten kommerziellen Bananen-Farm in den USA, in Florida, zu bauen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht, die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Dies führte zu der Erstellung der Boston Fruit Company, die in 1899 die United Fruit Company wurde, die jetzt Chiquita ist.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Wait, so just three men monopolized the banana trade. And the term banana baron makes it really hard to take these guys seriously, but I'm guessing they made hella bank. Ja, Bananenbank. Del Monte und Dole, diese Fruchtfirmen waren da, aber sie fokussierten sich auf gebratenen Gemüse und Pineappeln. Niemand hat mit der United Fruit Company und ihren Bananen beschäftigt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
This UFC is way more crazy than a cage match. In 1871, as Baker's Bananas were making waves in Philly, this guy named Minor Cooper Keith... Okay, does not sound like a real name at all, but continue. Minor Cooper Keith, he left Brooklyn for Costa Rica because his uncle... Oh, tell me his name was Major Cooper Keith. I'm not sure, I'll have to check on that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
But anyway, he was also involved in the railroad industry and he brought Miner and his brothers to help build a railroad through the raw jungle. They had no experience, just thought, let's build a railroad through the Costa Rican wilderness.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Great. I mean, back then, Central America had virtually no infrastructure. Building a railroad through the mountains, rainforests and volcanoes of the jungle to the Caribbean coast was a monumental task. Scorching heat, torrential rain. Costa Rica threw every disaster at them and it was a nightmare.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Aber was hat das mit Bananen zu tun? So, by 1874, Miner's uncle, his brothers and about 5,000 workers were dead from the harsh conditions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Minor was left alone to run the show, but was out of money and had to figure out how to feed his remaining workers. So what does a guy do?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
How can we not? Es ist tatsächlich nicht eine schlechte Idee. Sicherlich eine bessere Idee, als zu versuchen, eine Rennbahn durch den Wald in den ersten Ort zu bauen. It was a fruitful venture. By 1890, forget about passengers, his trains were exclusively used for banana transport. Exporting bananas was way more lucrative than any passenger fare.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht, die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Miner was raking it in. And of course, as any good colonizing businessman does, he wanted more than just money. He wanted power and prestige. So he married the daughter of a former Costa Rican president in exchange for negotiating his father-in-law's debt with English banks. Er war ein großer Bananen-Baron, alle respektvoll und so weiter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Und jeder hat einfach vergessen über diese 5.000 toten Arbeiter, eine Verletzung des Prozesses, glaube ich.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, sure. And meanwhile, the banana business stateside was booming. The United Fruit Company monopolized the banana trade. They built infrastructure and became incredibly powerful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Absolut. Und diese drei Jungs, die die UFC fuhrten, kontrollierten alles. Miner kündigte die Straßen in Südamerika, Preston hatte eine Steamship-Fleet und Baker hatte Plantationen in den Westindien und im südwesten USA. Also machten sie Verträge mit Unternehmen in Kolumbien und was jetzt Panama ist und nahmen das Bananen-Business von null Profit in 1884 ab. Wow. Let me get this straight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, and they didn't just grow bananas, they made bananas cool. They lobbied doctors to tell moms to give their babies bananas. They put out cookbooks with banana recipes. They spread banana fever across America. The demand skyrocketed and that's when the banana boys needed more land.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, definitely. And they were smart. But here's the kicker. They needed endless land because they were growing bananas like clones to speed up production.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
This led to the development of the disease-resistant Cavendish, the same variety we eat today, but also the cause of the destruction of a lot of tropical forests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, und die UFC dann, sie waren kraftvoll. Um die lokalen Regierungen glücklich zu machen, hatten sie gefordert, Infrastruktur in Plätzen zu bauen, die keine hatten, um Landrechte und exklusive Verträge zu bezahlen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Die Regierungen rationalisierten das, indem sie sagten, dass die Lokalen von der Infrastruktur profitierten, aber wirklich die UFC brauchte die Infrastruktur, um ihre Operationen zu runtern.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, was this dishonest or just good business?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and the banana business was powerful, like I said. The UFC built Central America's Telegraph Communications Network. They built a railroad that stretched from Mexico to Guatemala to El Salvador, controlled ports all over the Caribbean, and even took over the postal service in Guatemala.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Locals there called the UFC company El Pulpo, which means the octopus, because they had their slimy yellow tentacles in everything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
Sure, but the conditions were downright criminal. Like workers lived in filthy dorms on the banana plantations. They paid their workers and company coupons that could only be spent at UFC stores. No actual currency was paid and they couldn't do anything about it because the banana guys were everywhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
I think that was the norm at the time. Let me just stress, the working conditions were horrific. Bananas grow in hot, humid weather, including monsoon season, and workers wade through rain and mud daily. So banana bunches are really heavy. Like we're talking carrying up to 100 pounds for 14 hours a day with no pay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1125: Bananas | Skeptical Sunday
The conditions were so bad that the life expectancy for men in Central America started to drop. And not just for plantation workers, but for the entire male population. All because of bananas. And how long did this go on?