Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

Matthew Regusci: It's in our soil, right? Organic material. Our soil is made of elements in rock and organic material. And so that soil has Lead has cadmium, has arsenic in it. It's an element. It's on the periodic table. Now the further up the tree you go, the less amount of lead and all that stuff that's going to be in there.
So if you have potatoes, if you have carrots, if you have sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, which is tapioca, cassava everywhere else, tapioca here in the United States. Those are in soil, right? That's going to have more lead, cadium, arsenic.
Intro: Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick.
That's why heroes toil into shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Regus for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't.
Eat. Poop. Don't eat poop.
Matthew Regusci: Hello, hello, Francine.
Francine L Shaw: Hi, Nat.
I am devastated. I don't eat Lunchables. But do you know how many of those Lunchables that my grandchildren have probably eaten?
Matthew Regusci: Oh my gosh. I have a dozen of them in my refrigerator right now. Now, mind you, that would be just one meal for all my kids.
Francine L Shaw: It doesn't even cover one meal.
Matthew Regusci: No, but this has gone crazy. I, should we give context here?
Francine L Shaw: Yeah, so Consumer Reports did an investigation and discovered that there's lead in Lunchables.
Matthew Regusci: But you're right. So Consumer Reports does this thing and it says, Consumer Reports investigation finds high levels of lead in Lunchables.
And it's gone viral. Have you had people send you TikToks or things about this? Through Facebook. Yeah, the amount of time we talk about Starbucks. Starbucks, Eagle,
Francine L Shaw: Protect,
Matthew Regusci: Steve,
Francine L Shaw: where are you Steve? I can probably sit here and name half a dozen companies that we talk about on a regular basis.
Matthew Regusci: So yeah, but I won't name names, but let's just say that there are some amazing people at Starbucks.
That I'm really close with and I get to keep on up to date on what's happening through some of them and a lot of other people too, but some of it's great. So I got this TikTok, couple TikToks about consumer reports thing on Lunchables and I was like, what the heck is going on? But people are freaked out about a lot of things on this report.
One is That there is allowable lead in, I think we should break this down in a few ways. Consumer Report did a thing on an expose, you may say, on Lunchables. And how much lead, there are lead and sodium and other things in Lunchables. And one of the reasons why is, Lunchables won a contract for kids lunches.
So USDA is one of the largest buyers of food in our nation, I don't know, maybe even the world, just the amount of food the USDA buys. And there are certain contracts you have to abide by for the school lunch program. Lunchables got this school lunch program. So Lunchables, it was already on the radar because they're like a lot of people buy Lunchables.
Like you and I were just talking about this in the beginning of the episode. Do you buy them for your grandkids?
Francine L Shaw: I have.
Matthew Regusci: And I definitely get for my kids. It's a treat. They love it.
Francine L Shaw: It's one of those things like, the boat. My son has a boat. If we go out on the boat, it's easy. You know what I mean? You grab Lunchables.
There are times we've grabbed Lunchables, and it's just something that's easy for them to have as a snack while we're out there. And it, like you said, it's a treat. It's not something they eat a lot.
Now, sodium doesn't surprise me, by the way. I'm not surprised by the sodium.
Matthew Regusci: Everything in a Lunchable has a ton of sodium in it.
There's nothing in that thing that doesn't have sodium. You have the processed meats, you have crackers, you have cheese. You have whatever the dessert is that's in there. Regardless of what package you get, there's going to be some mixture of those different categories and they all have a ton of sodium in them.
Francine L Shaw: Any prepackaged food is loaded with sodium, basically. Are notorious for having sodium in them.
Matthew Regusci: Did you say you love sodium?
Francine L Shaw: I said, they're notorious for having high levels of sodium.
Matthew Regusci: Levels of sodium. You said that at the same time, I was like, I love sodium.
Francine L Shaw: I love country cured ham. So
Matthew Regusci: what
Francine L Shaw: does that say?
Matthew Regusci: Right. And I grew up by fact, my grandfather helped start what the year I was born helped start a country. Italian meat company that was just in the news for outbreaks. This is obviously 40 years later that this happened, but it had been on the board for a very long time up until maybe a decade ago. So 30 years was involved in this company.
So I grew up with salami, prosciutto, dried beef. It was just what we had at the house all the time. Like it was in our fridge and we were poor. So it was like really expensive meat that we got for free for my grandpa. Cause my grandpa got it a ton of it. And it was just, so it was like that or totally crappy food that we ate.
So yeah. And it's interesting too, because when you're poor, you eat way more sodium than someone who is not poor.
Francine L Shaw: Oh, a hundred percent. One hundred percent.
Matthew Regusci: Because I know most of what I ate was processed food because it's super cheap. And all those processed foods are high in sodium.
Francine L Shaw: There's little Vienna sausages.
Matthew Regusci: Oh man, I don't know if other cultures do this, but this is total white trash. They take like those croissant or biscuits, like pigs in a blanket, and we would put Vienna sausages in that and then bake them. I still do that stuff for my kids. They think it's the greatest thing ever. I cooked spam for my kids for breakfast this morning.
They think it's awesome. My wife thinks it's the grossest thing ever. My father in law and my wife do not eat spam at all. My mother in law, who also grew up like me, she eats spam. I eat spam. Oh, this is bad. We're going to lose viewers just from this right now. We're going to lose people. They're like, no, Matt.
No,
Francine L Shaw: I saw spam in the grocery store the other day. And I was like, I wonder because I ate a lot of spam when I was young. I haven't eaten spam in years that potted meat
Anyway, we digress
Matthew Regusci: you went down that rabbit hole.
Okay, so there is a lot of sodium in Lunchables I'm, not sure if that surprised anybody I think what surprised people was one There is a limit That is allowable of lead by certain states.
There is an FDA warning if lead gets over a certain amount in certain foods. Like they start getting worried if that is the amount. So people are freaked out, I think, on a lot of levels. One, there is lead in food and cadmium in food. And two, it's allowed. Like in certain doses, that's actually allowed. So I don't think people really realize that is the case.
And by the way, that's like my, my new role as CEO of ellipse analytics. This is what we do all day long. Like the vast majority of the testing that we're doing in my laboratory is AB eight, nine, nine prop 65 clean label project testing for heavy metals in food. And so spoiler alert world, there is lead.
Arsenic, cadmium, all of these heavy metals are in food, a trace amount. There's really no way of getting rid of that. What really good companies try to do in terms of really good quality wise company, I would say Lunchables is a great company. If you look at just bunch of like, it's a great brand, I should say.
If you look at them in general, they're a great brand. I wouldn't say that their food is quality food, right? Let's distinguish these two different things. Where really great brands that are looking for very high quality foods, they're trying to get the least amount of heavy metals, least amount of pesticides, least amount of things in their products.
And so why are there heavy metals and all this stuff in food is because the earth has been around billions of years longer than human beings have. There's a reason why human beings have to have. a certain amount of copper, a certain amount of iron, a certain amount of things that we have to have in order to survive.
Like we have to have metals in trace amounts in order to survive. There are other metals that we have in trace amounts that aren't good for us, right? Or in large amounts, definitely not good for us. But the earth has been around for so long, it's in our soil. It was the bedrock of the earth is filled with a whole lot of metals.
So it's in our soil, right? Organic material. Our soil is made of elements in rock and organic material. And so that soil has Lead has cadmium, has arsenic in it. It's an element. It's on the periodic table. Now the further up the tree you go, the less amount of lead and all that stuff that's going to be in there.
So if you have potatoes, if you have carrots, if you have sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, which is tapioca, cassava everywhere else, tapioca here in the United States. Those are in soil, right? That's going to have more lead, cadmium, arsenic, than wheat is going to have more than fruits are going to have.
Because the tree kind of processes some of that out before it gets to the fruit. So you're never going to get it out of there. But the issue is Still, even though there can be trace amounts, you want to keep it at trace amounts. You don't want high levels of it. And in these samples of these Lunchables, it's 73 percent of what you can consume in the FDA says is okay for an adult, not even a child, are in these Lunchables.
And it's 15 percent of your calories that you're supposed to have a day. So there is an issue, but I think we need tackle the issue correctly. It's not. that there's lead in there. It's the amount of lead that we're talking about. Does that make sense? That was a very long ramble. Sorry to be a professor here, but I just want to make sure that we argue correctly or else we mislead consumers.
Yeah, so when you were looking at that, what was your thoughts?
Francine L Shaw: The headline is written to draw attention, you know what I mean? So everybody that reads it is, oh my god, there's lead. And then how many people read the full article?
Matthew Regusci: Very little, but even if they do read the full article, It still doesn't look good, right?
Like, it doesn't look good. Even after this long diatribe that I just said, it still doesn't look good. Well,
Francine L Shaw: and most people don't understand either that there are allowable levels. You know what I mean? Most people don't know that many of these things Many of these metals, or we talked about food filth, like a year or so ago.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah, food filth for those that don't remember the episode. If you want to go back and talk about that's like insect parts in the food. Yes, the allowable amount of insects in your food.
Francine L Shaw: Right. We'll probably still aren't eating peanut butter. So it's just, it's one of those things where ignorance is bliss in some cases.
Matthew Regusci: Where ignorance is bliss, but even with knowing that you can have a certain amount, this doesn't look good.
Francine L Shaw: For, you know, I meant for the safe levels. For the safe levels.
Matthew Regusci: Right.
Francine L Shaw: There are things we need to know. And that's why they get published. That's why we have food safety news.
Matthew Regusci: Or consumer reports. This is a long report.
Francine L Shaw: Consumer reports is unbiased. They don't have sponsors of the items that they test.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah, but going back to this too, like the consumer reports, this is really interesting because what we're talking about is our lead levels for human consumption, but not for children and baby consumption. And so this is really high levels.
We're not talking about it's going to give you lead poisoning or anything like that, but over a long period of time, if you're giving a kid a Lunchable every single day for years, then that's not good.
Francine L Shaw: I was just going to say, take into consideration how young are the children that are eating these? How many of them are they eating?
Matthew Regusci: Yeah,
Francine L Shaw: because that's a factor. That's absolutely a factor. You know, are they eating one a week? Are they eating three a day? And have they been doing this for two days or two years?
Matthew Regusci: It's how much, how frequently, how long.
Francine L Shaw: And is this on top of the applesauce? Oh
Matthew Regusci: no! Yeah, the one of Hanna which had a thousand times more than what's
Francine L Shaw: expected.
Because now we've got real problems.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: Like the applesauce wasn't enough.
Matthew Regusci: And we weren't meaning to do this to talk about Clean Label Project, but I think that's why Clean Label Project, the company I've moved to, or Where the ellipse analytics is the certification body for clean label project. We do a lot of other stuff too, but one of the big things we do is we're the certification body for clean label project.
And. That's why it's so important to be looking for things like that because that actually is being tested To make sure that it is at a much lower level particularly for babies So yeah, now I make sure that we're minimizing all that for our kiddos. Here's the question. Are you still going to Get Lunchables for your grandkiddos?
Francine L Shaw: Yeah,
Matthew Regusci: I think I agree with you. I think I have to until Lunchables comes out and goes, Oh my gosh, yes, I'm doing something to minimize that. I have to find a different alternative.
Francine L Shaw: So the social media feeds that I was reading last night, everything I was reading last night said, don't buy the stop buying these.
Now this wasn't being written by experts. It was being written by. Moms and dads. People. Yeah.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah. It's written by I mean, some of them are really funny just because they're they're like Wait! There's an allowable level of lead? That's how is that even possible? And they're just going off and I think what everybody's probably seeing this one.
I'll post it up here on TikTok because This guy is hilarious. He's just screaming into the thing. I don't think he thinks he's, or anybody thinks he's hilarious for the reason why I think he's hilarious because he just doesn't know that all these things exist.
Francine L Shaw: It's not like we're saying it's okay to let your kid eat an allowable level of chips of paint.
Matthew Regusci: Right.
Francine L Shaw: It's not the same,
Matthew Regusci: but studies have been done. And we talked about this when we're, when we're talking to new clients for ellipse analytical, they're looking to get clean label project. We talked to him about it, like the most exposure of lead, of cadmium, of arsenic, of all these things, but particularly lead comes from food comes from water.
Like it flipped Michigan. Like, We're now seeing the, yeah, we're now seeing the ramifications of just that blip on the radar. I don't want to minimize the impact, but we're talking about just maybe half a decade of huge exposure to lead and 20 percent of the kids are having learning disabilities. We're able to see now how big of an impact That it had not just economically for Flint, Michigan, but over the period of the lives for these kids, for their parents of huge, of high exposure to lead.
Now, I'm not putting this like Flint, Michigan and Lunchables are two different things. The one with Wannabana and the lead levels in that completely different than Lunchables. But we had talked about Stanley cups, you know, about how that also was very, very different. If you break your Stanley cup, are you going to get probably the same amount of lead that you're going to get in a Lunchable?
Maybe more, but still, this is not good optics for Lunchables.
Francine L Shaw: Are you going to use your Stanley cup after you break it? I'm not
Matthew Regusci: maybe that was a very bad analogy. It's a good thing to look at it because we were talking about you could get trace of levels of Stanley cup would say that. And I think we're talking about maybe a higher amounts on the Stanley cup breaking than you would in a lunchable.
But still, this is 74 percent of your allotted amount.
Francine L Shaw: Are they going to lose their contract?
Matthew Regusci: Probably not. I mean, think about all the stuff the USDA allows. Think about how bad the formula is that is being consumed. The USDA still has, allows a monopoly to be. So
Francine L Shaw: for that product,
Matthew Regusci: I'm guessing that Lunchables will still have that product being given to kids in the lunchroom.
Because they're not doing anything illegal. This is not illegal. The optics are absolutely terrible, but there is no illegality of it. It's just, you're right. Yeah, so again, we're talking about two different things. One is optics, brand value, versus what is illegal. No, this is not illegal. Yeah, you're
Francine L Shaw: right.
Matthew Regusci: So I would assume they will still have their contract with the USDA. Yeah, interesting, huh? What a world we live in.
Francine L Shaw: Think about this, though. If it wasn't a government contract, and it was a contract with somebody else for the same reason, I bet they would just because of the publicity.
Matthew Regusci: I don't know. I think the USDA maybe makes decisions based upon bad press occasionally if it continues on.
But again, look at how terrible the infant formula thing is and they still haven't fixed it.
Francine L Shaw: Right, but I'm talking about if it were a, just a standard retail establishment that was doing business in this, it was this kind of press
Matthew Regusci: and
Francine L Shaw: they had a contract with them. I bet that retail establishment would cancel the contract just because if it was Walmart that had the contract and it was a large contract per se.
Not saying that Walmart's going to stop selling lunchables. Like, no,
Matthew Regusci: I don't think anybody's going to stop selling lunchables. But if
Francine L Shaw: it was a large, you understand what I'm saying?
Matthew Regusci: No, whatever I said. And I don't think anybody, I don't think people should stop selling lunchables. No, I'm not
Francine L Shaw: saying that.
I'm not saying that.
Matthew Regusci: What are we going to do? This is not good. This is not good for the brand. And I'll bet that there is a bunch of things that changes within supply chain or whatever they do in order to minimize this optics, maybe more testing, maybe more, some more supply chain changes. I bet they'll come out with it, or they'll just assume, like a lot of things, like a lot of companies, like probably the USDA, people will forget about this.
The vast majority of people will forget about this. Only the certain crazy moms, they are going to care about this, and we don't have to worry about it.
Francine L Shaw: They're owned by Kraft, right? Are they owned by craft?
Matthew Regusci: I don't know. It's a good question.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah. Responding to the findings craft Heinz, the parent company of Lunchables.
I bet craft is having a lot of meetings today.
Matthew Regusci: I 100 percent agree. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, obviously the Anheuser Busch thing was for a completely different reason. Why things just kind of Cradle for them with their press that they had a year ago is obviously very different than this, but I think brands are realizing that social media has way more effect on perception than they even really realized.
And the last thing that they want to do is take moms off and moms are making buying decisions. And they don't want kids with lead their kids to have lead poisoning and they control what goes into their kiddos mouths. Yeah. And so lasting lead that craft in Lunchables wants are moms to feel like they don't care.
And so I think there's gonna be some changes.
Francine L Shaw: I don't care how old your children are, you don't wanna piss off a mother
You do not wanna piss off a mom.
Matthew Regusci: I didn't want to piss off the mom I'm married to.
Francine L Shaw: Big mistake.
Matthew Regusci: Big mistake.
Francine L Shaw: Don't mess with her family.
Matthew Regusci: I mean, on a little bit of a rabbit hole, like I grew up in gang territory with my grandma 20 years, so everybody knew her and was deathly afraid of her. Let's just say hard, hard gangster guys.
We're afraid of my grandma, and she was like five foot nothing. She would come out there just like breaking up fights. That's crazy. So, yeah, you don't want to take off mom, no matter how old they get.
Francine L Shaw: I was like 17, had a foster sister. I don't know how, but I had a foster sister. Went into a department store and when I came out of that department store, she had made some people mad.
I don't know why, but I was a very meek, quiet, introverted individual. There were people literally all over my car. They were on the roof, they were on the hood, they were like all over my car.
Matthew Regusci: Wow, this sounds like a scene in a movie.
Francine L Shaw: Like what am I going to do? And she's in the car. Like, she's made these people mad, and she's in my car.
This meek, quiet little girl, who is also five foot tall, got rid of those people real quick, because I'm like, I'm telling you right now, you get off the car, because if you don't, I'm going to start this car. And run your ass over. And you will come off this car.
Terrified. I was terrified. But again, we talked last episode about how we grew up and that's the last thing you want to do is let people know you're scared.
Matthew Regusci: 100%. 100%. So, with that said, don't want to be ticking off moms. I agree with you when you said there's going to be a lot of meetings. I think you're right.
There's going to be a lot of meetings.
Francine L Shaw: Oh, they're having them now. All day long. How do we fix this problem? What are we doing?
Matthew Regusci: Yeah, and craft is re Done a lot of products like Kraft macaroni and cheese. They redid the whole entire product, made it taste identically with way better products than when the macaroni and cheese, and then told their people like months later that they like their consumers months later that they did that and nobody even knew.
So definitely Kraft is definitely going to be on top of this.
Francine L Shaw: If I'm not mistaken, it's Kraft cheese and macaroni. I only know because my kids love that stuff. I would rather have baked macaroni and cheese, but my kids love that stuff still. Anyway. Okay. So.
Matthew Regusci: What do you have for us next?
Francine L Shaw: Ah, so I sent you a picture earlier today.
That was a real picture. We will have to add it in the notes so people can look at it. A friend of mine, Donna, sent that to me. She was at a lunch. She went on a bike ride. And she was at a lunch motorcycle. When I say bike motorcycle ride, and they provided lunch to them. You get what you pay for it. It was a free lunch.
Matthew Regusci: Oh my gosh. Tell me that when you, when you show me the picture this morning.
Francine L Shaw: Anyway, this burger bun has literally, like, a huge spot of mold all over the bottom of the bun. Oh my. She had taken the meat out of the bun. I don't know who You
Matthew Regusci: can't even see it. Oh my.
Francine L Shaw: First of all, I don't know who looks at the bottom of the bun before they eat the burger.
Or if she just didn't want the bread for some reason. I would have never just looked at the bottom of the bun before I ate the burger. I would have just eaten it. Do you look at the bottom of the bun before you eat the burger? I
Matthew Regusci: do. I do just because it's so disgusting to me. So I said to Francine, Francine sends me this picture.
There's this huge mold spot. I, I'm, we're, we will put the, the picture in the, in the thing, but you, you can, that's days of mold. That's a huge spot on there. And I'm actually allergic to amoxicillin, penicillin. So I look at that and I just, I know what my, I get when I get hives and all that stuff. So I see that and I actually look, because if I can see it, that means it's been there for a while and, okay, here's the other thing too, is.
If that's on that bun, that means that mold has been throughout that whole entire bag of buns.
Francine L Shaw: Did the person sitting next to her eat their butt?
Matthew Regusci: And by the way, I don't know if I would get an allergic reaction from this. I just know that that's where amoxicillin and penicillin comes from. And so I would just rather, A, I don't want to eat a moldy bun.
That's disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. And growing up the way I did, there was nasty stuff in my house. Oh my gosh, I am so anal about food In my house and not having anything on the shelf For oh,
Francine L Shaw: did they tell you to cut the mold off of it?
Matthew Regusci: Oh, man
Francine L Shaw: Cut the mold off
Matthew Regusci: like false on that guy's head. That was my house growing up.
And so it was just Disgusting dead food maggots and trash. It was, uh, so this type of stuff so grosses me out that Oh, man, I would be so angry if that was, if that, if I got something like that. And so that means that all the buns in that bag had mold on it in some way, shape or form. It was just, it had maybe hadn't bloomed yet, but it was definitely in that bag.
Francine L Shaw: Penicillin, I believe comes from a different kind of mold. But I don't know about the allergic reaction thing. I have no idea.
Matthew Regusci: Yeah. I don't know either. Just I do know that
Francine L Shaw: I'm allergic to mold myself. Oh
Matthew Regusci: gosh. Yeah. Yeah. What I don't want the audience to think that's the only reason why. It's just, that's another reason where I just know I'm allergic to it, so Well, and you
Francine L Shaw: can't pick that off.
You can't pick that off and eat that run because those mold spores have Oh
Matthew Regusci: yeah. And that's the other thing too, is molds. The vast majority of mold is its tentacles or whatever you call those, the roots of the mold. So when it blooms like that's what it's reproducing. It's throughout that whole entire thing.
Oh,
Francine L Shaw: she sent that to me and I'm like, Oh my God, what is that? They were feeding people that.
Matthew Regusci: Well, they were trying to feed people that.
Francine L Shaw: Well now, okay. So the last episode you said, did you go back and did you make that call? And my response was no, I did not. This I would have been at the stand saying what are you doing?
You can't serve this now This isn't a biker
Matthew Regusci: The last episode francie talked about washing your hands in a restroom. It didn't have water And she knows some people in the higher ups that would have been interested in that and I asked if she had told her Those people and she said, no. And so that's the context of this.
If, if there was a bold on the bud, yes. There
Francine L Shaw: was a restroom that did have water. There was one that one that did. So there was a restroom with water. One did not this like, how many people are you feeding this to?
Matthew Regusci: Not good. Not good, in a lot of reasons.
Well, this was a very interesting episode, Francie.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah,
Matthew Regusci: it was.
So, with that, don't eat mold and don't eat poop. Oh, and don't eat lead on a certain on high levels. Not good. Trace amounts that are there, they're ubiquitous. Carry your lead chart with you. Carry your lead chart? Oh my gosh, yeah. Alright, on that note, don't eat poop.