Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

DEP E164
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[00:00:00] Matt: You don't wanna accidentally od on this stuff because it affects the heart, right? So I'll, I'll ask my wife and like the, we give it to them in the morning and the evening in one of 'em, we give them morning, evening, afternoon, and I'll ask my wife, I'm like, have you given the boys their boner meds and their babies?

They're like little babies. So it, it doesn't affect them at all in that way. It's just for their heart.

[00:00:30] Intro: Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes, toil in the 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 Reci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.

Don't eat poop.

[00:00:55] Matt: Hello? Hello, Francine.

[00:00:57] Francine: Good morning, Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Matt: Today we have a really fun topic. This show may end up on the blooper reels. This show may end up going into the top funniest ones, I, I'm not quite sure. Maybe I shouldn't make that projection.

[00:01:12] Francine: The most bizarre, the worst, I dunno.

[00:01:15] Matt: Okay, so this is one of your favorite topics, NC what? What is one of your favorite foods?

[00:01:22] Francine: Chocolate. So wait a minute. I'm thinking, oh my God, chocolate. Recall. There's a chocolate recall.

[00:01:29] Matt: I totally queued you up when I said this is about one of your favorite topics. And then you were looking at me like, uh, what part of this is one of my favorite topics?

Chocolate Francine. It's about chocolate. So this chocolate has recall red tape. Red C was, was like, oh my gosh, Matt, you have to see this. There's a. Here's a recalled chocolate. And I was like, oh, that's sad for you. Did you buy this chocolate? And then I look at this, ended up like, oh, I don't know, Franc, did you buy this chocolate?

So [00:02:00] it is the, the product is fantasy aphrodisiac chocolate, make love more desirable, exciting, and pleasurable. This is on the packaging of the chocolate.

[00:02:13] Francine: I don't think it's in the candy aisle.

[00:02:16] Matt: Well, it depends on what store you're going to. 'cause it could be, there could be a candy aisle in whatever store that uh, sells other things.

[00:02:25] Francine: I don't think it's in the local giant,

[00:02:32] Matt: but I think this is supposed to make you quote unquote giant. So it's

[00:02:37] Francine: not supposed to though. That's why there's a recall. That is why the recall.

[00:02:45] Matt: Disclaimer. Okay. Disclaimer. Maybe we should make a disclaimer on this one. If you are in the car with your children and your children know nothing about Viagra and you don't want them to know anything about that, this might be [00:03:00] an episode at which you listen to when you don't have children in the riff.

[00:03:04] Francine: Yes. Yes. I mean, we're not gonna be rude or, but

[00:03:09] Matt: No, no.

[00:03:10] Francine: Yeah. You would definitely not want Liz to, or your kids are there. That isn't something you want them to listen to.

[00:03:17] Matt: So this is recalled. This is a legitimate recall. So it is.

[00:03:21] Francine: It's

[00:03:21] Matt: within our

[00:03:22] Francine: purview of our show. It's news. It's news.

It's

[00:03:24] Matt: news.

[00:03:26] Francine: It's on food safety news.

That's where the article is. It's where we get most of our stuff.

[00:03:33] Matt: So this is recalled due to undeclared active ingredients. Undeclared ingredient. It is an active ingredient. It is an active ingredient for enhancement. You may say, well, I guess

[00:03:47] Francine: this says, says direct on, it says undeclared, mail enhancement drugs.

That's why it's being recalled.

[00:03:54] Matt: It has Viagra, the added Viagra and[00:04:00]

fil and I don't dunno what fill and I dunno what

[00:04:06] Francine: like the prescription. Name for it is Alis

[00:04:10] Matt: is this S is Te Ali. No. S is,

[00:04:14] Francine: yes, it's,

[00:04:16] Matt: it's okay. They created a double whammy with this. They added Viagra and S to this and it's, you know, you can't do that. I mean, you can do that. I guess you just add it to it, but you're not legally allowed to do that.

[00:04:34] Francine: Apparently. That's a problem. Well, apparently the problem is it can cause a life-threatening drop in blood pressure among the male population. What does it say? Use of products with undeclared active ingredients, child ne fill. And Viagra. And Cialis or the count over the counter? Yeah,

[00:04:54] Matt: it's the dinino fill.

[00:04:56] Francine: May pose a threat to consumers because the active ingredient may [00:05:00] interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs such as nitroglycerin and may cause significant drop in blood pressure that may be life-threatening among the adult male population who are most likely to use these products.

Adult males who use nitrates for cardiac conditions are most at risk from these products to date. Gear Isle, who is the producer of this product, is not receiving any reports of the adverse events related to this recall. The product is labeled as a dietary supplement. Interesting. The products were distributed nationwide

[00:05:35] Matt: via

[00:05:36] Francine: the wonderful internet.

You're getting a notification letter now. By the time you get the letter, you're probably gonna have concerned it's product. If you've purchased it, it's gonna be a little late, isn't it? We're gonna send you a letter. Arranging for returns and refunds of all recalled products. Consumers who have half the products that are being recalled should stop [00:06:00] using them.

Consult your physician if you've experienced any problems.

[00:06:07] Matt: Okay, so I looked@gearaisle.com. And by the way, don't look@gearaisle.com on your work computer. I just did, so I'm doing it for you because I didn't realize. I mean, this is a food safety recall. I did not realize the Gear Aisle is, well, I think it's hilarious.

The name Gear Aisle. Gear Aisle is a shop for adults basically. So you can buy anything that you would need as an an adult. Okay, so great. I should have known that when, and it has to be, if I was 21 plus. So don't do that. Don't at work. Do not do this. Oh my gosh. The things that we do for our listeners.

Okay. Lordy.

[00:06:58] Francine: We're rarely speechless. [00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Matt: Okay. So, uh, sildenafil, why? I know, like, I can, I can

[00:07:03] Francine: pronounce, I have a question. Did you think this was gonna be a candy factory? What did you think this was gonna be?

[00:07:10] Matt: Yes. I thought that maybe they were Sully that when they said it was Yeah,

[00:07:16] Francine: I didn't think it was gonna be Hershey.

Sorry. Not didn't mean the Hershey ran out there, but right down the road from me,

[00:07:25] Matt: it's a town right down the road from You

[00:07:29] Francine: didn't think it was gonna be the equivalent of,

[00:07:32] Matt: okay, lemme close this out. I don't wanna be on that. Okay. There's a lot of questions that go on with this because if that had the active ingredient of this, what others of their products probably do as well.

First, ENA,

[00:07:47] Francine: wait a minute. That's a prescription item. Prescription items. I have

[00:07:54] Matt: prescriptions of it in my, and I like Sildenafil is a heart med. [00:08:00] Okay. And lot of little babies. That have heart conditions, take sildenafil. I have two babies in my house that take Sildenafil, so I have this in my house,

[00:08:12] Francine: so, okay.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[00:08:16] Matt: Would I give this to my babies too? Or like when I ask my wife, 'cause you know, you don't want to give a lot of this, you don't wanna accidentally od on this stuff because it, it affects the heart, right? So I'll, I'll ask why. Why in, like, we give it to them in the morning, in the evening.

In one of 'em, we give them morning, evening, afternoon, and I'll ask my wife, I'm like, have you given the boys their boner meds? And they're babies. They're like little babies. So it, it doesn't affect them at all in that way. It's just for their heart. But

[00:08:48] Francine: that is so bad. That is so wrong.

[00:08:50] Matt: She works in the nicu.

I see it to her so much. Just Just 'cause it's funny. Well I think it's funny. One time she asked another nurse [00:09:00] if they had given the baby the bone effect. Then she was like, wait, I mean so so did that to fill

[00:09:06] Francine: That is so incorporate. Okay, back to what we were talking about. That's a prescription med. How did they get that?

[00:09:16] Matt: So with Clean Label project, not part of the Clean Label Project certification, but for things that we do for retailers, we get into the weeds a lot about this as well. So you see this in sports. As well. So like all the Olympic and all of the professional athletes get tested frequently for any type of sports enhancement drugs.

And there can be, there's like 400 of these different things. And what some companies will do is they will get this active ingredient and they will add it to their products and they won't do. [00:10:00] Declare that it's in there, but when the athletes are taking this benign supplement, they see, oh, this is going to help me with this, whatever is on the package.

And they'll take this supplement and then, then it does help them, you know, athletically. And so they keep taking it. And then they find out later on when they get tested and then all of a sudden now there's an investigation. They start going through all the different supplements and they start testing all the supplements that this athlete has taken.

They'll find that one of 'em will have an active ingredient that isn't illegal, but it is illegal in professional sports. And then they'll go like, oh my gosh. Of course. So there is certifications that are designed to make sure that. Supplements and all this different type of stuff that athletes take is certified to be free of those active ingredients.

[00:11:00] Supplement companies can get it. They just get it. I don't know how, it's not like I've, like, I've created an illegal supplement or something like that, but there is the ability to go get this. Yeah, and then put it

[00:11:14] Francine: into a chocolate bar. They must be getting it from pharmaceutical companies or. Something which I wouldn't think would be legal or maybe in its weakened version, maybe.

Maybe the individual ingredients that are used to make that product you would need a prescription for. So when you take those individual ingredients that are needed to make Viagra or Cialis, and you throw them into this supplement. That's not a problem. But when it's the compound all thrown together in a pill and it then becomes Viagra, you [00:12:00] need a prescription.

But if you take all those different chemicals and throw them into a powder individually, you don't need a prescription for all the individual chemicals.

[00:12:09] Matt: Yeah, I think you're over complicating it. I think they actually went and bought the active ingredients and then they put it into this chocolate. And then they marketed it for exactly what it's going to do.

Fan C aphrodisiac chocolate. Make love Making more Desirable. Exactly. It pleasurable. And they sold it without telling anybody that there is both Cialis and Viagra hara in this. And then they probably sold a lot of it, and it probably did exactly what was on the package. They just didn't disclose. Yes, we become a pharmaceutical company selling pharmaceutical.

[00:12:45] Francine: When I was saying that, I was thinking more about what you were talking about for the Olympics and the chemicals that went into the things that they were taking. Not this.

[00:12:54] Matt: Well, there is, there is like some of the. There's a couple of companies that do [00:13:00] this that specialize in the active ingredients that are sports enhancing drugs.

And I've talked with them and it's interesting 'cause I didn't know this, it was fascinating. This was like just a couple months ago. There are herbals, right where you would get the chemical compounds that the chemical compound was then isolated and made into a pharmaceutical grade, this chemical compound.

But there are plenty of herbal type of supplements that have. This in trace amounts because that's where it came from, right? And so then pharmaceutical companies find this out and they go, oh my gosh, this, well, let's do some testing on this and see if we, you know, if we could create the dosage of this and make it more potent, right?

So part of it is depending upon the seasonality enough of that herb. May show up in trace amounts and then then they find it on the athletes. So that's why it's so important that athletes take certified products that are [00:14:00] clean of those, because they'll fight it, you know? They'll fight it in your blood, they'll fight it in your urine, they'll fight it in your hair follicles.

However it is. They're testing that's like trace amounts, right? But they're still fighting, which is fascinating to me. It's so beyond our purview, like. It's not beyond my purview to know this stuff exists. Like I totally know this stuff exists. You and I have created our whole entire career around making sure things like this don't happen, but the

[00:14:26] Francine: Right,

[00:14:27] Matt: like if you and I were to create a product, like if you and I were to sit down and go, it would probably be a chocolate product.

'cause that's like your favorite products. You and I would try to create the most clean, safe product there is in existence, regardless of the cost.

[00:14:42] Francine: When we're thinking about what we're gonna put in that product. This, isn't it? I mean, we talked about on a podcast we did a few weeks ago, we were talking about insects and things like that.

You know, we might try to create some novelty products. You know, if they were legitimate, we might [00:15:00] create something that was off the wall. We might put random items in it, but we're, we're not gonna put these kind of things.

[00:15:08] Matt: No.

[00:15:10] Francine: Here's what, here's

[00:15:10] Matt: the thing too.

[00:15:12] Francine: When I say that, I mean like natural items that we know are like,

[00:15:16] Matt: now if you and I were like, Hey, listen, which I don't know, you and I will come up with crazy stuff, but like if you and I were to be like, Hey, listen, there's a need in the marketplace for people who are having issues with certain types of fundamental things that makes life better like this chocolate is advertising towards.

And you know, the Alice and Viagra just, they just haven't figured out how to make this better. We should create a chocolate bar with this in it. The last thing we would do is just throw the active ingredients in there and just market it as doing what it's doing without telling [00:16:00] anybody what's in it.

Like those are all the laws that are needed to do this correctly and let's make sure we follow all the regulations to make sure that it's right. Like that would be the route to go.

[00:16:13] Francine: Let's just make a surprise Candy bar. Market it on e-commerce and two happens.

[00:16:18] Matt: Honey. Surprise. It does work.

[00:16:23] Francine: My God.

[00:16:25] Matt: Yes.

[00:16:26] Francine: Well,

[00:16:26] Matt: but this is, but Francine, this is.

This is right up there. This is obviously, this is a form of food fraud, right? This is a form of food fraud,

[00:16:37] Francine: and this is a perfect example of the kind of shit that happens on the internet that we talk about all the time.

[00:16:47] Matt: Yeah,

[00:16:47] Francine: you don't know what you're buying, you have no idea what you're buying. You buy this stuff and you don't have any clue what it is that you're buying.

None. [00:17:00] None. I thought it was a family chocolate book.

[00:17:03] Matt: Well, it is. It helps create family. Here's the thing, like, okay, so my work in cannabis, right? When cannabis companies were creating chocolate bars and gummies and all this different type of stuff, like Right. Very, were

[00:17:17] Francine: they still are?

[00:17:18] Matt: No, no. When they first started really doing it in actively marketing it and all this stuff.

And it was really getting in there. Remember, I think we had a podcast about this, about people were like eating the whole entire bar, right? One piece of chocolate is like five or 10 milligrams depending on how much is of the active ingredient is in the whole entire bar. One piece, one piece of the bar was like five to 10 milligrams of THC.

Well, people weren't really paying attention or this was the first time that they'd done this and they didn't realize how much cannabis it takes to get you high, and they eat the whole entire bar. It's a hundred [00:18:00] or 50 to a hundred milligrams of THC in a whole entire bar of chocolate. And then they're like, heart is like bumping and they're, they're having a panic attack and all this different type of stuff, and it's not a fun experience.

Right? Which is exactly opposite of what the cannabis brands were wanting to do. And so then it, it was like this active campaign to be like, no, no, no, just take maybe one bite of one piece of chocolate. Okay. When you're used to going to the grocery store and buying a bar of chocolate and consuming the whole entire bar of chocolate at one time, you have to like have a different mindset going into, this is not chocolate, this is cannabis.

This is THC, active ingredient. Think of like a prescription or something like that. It's designed to taste like chocolate so that it tastes better. And all I need is a tiny little piece. Like you have to change your mindset to that. Not eat the whole, that's

[00:18:58] Francine: a mentality. You have to change the [00:19:00] mentality.

It's a dosage instead of a piece of candy.

[00:19:02] Matt: It's a dosage. Exactly. It's exactly correct, but you know that, so you're going to your local, depending on the state that you're in, you go to your local cannabis shop. I'm

[00:19:12] Francine: in Pennsylvania. We just became allowed to buy beer. Or wine. I'm sorry. We still can't buy beer, wine in the grocery store like a couple years ago.

[00:19:21] Matt: Yeah.

[00:19:21] Francine: We're not buying anything here.

[00:19:22] Matt: Yeah, I grew up in California and have lived in Colorado for a decade, so it's very, very different for us. Right. Like you go to your local shop,

[00:19:32] Francine: sister Colorado. Yeah, I live in Pennsylvania. We're not, we don't buy anything here.

[00:19:36] Matt: You know, you see what's on there and your quote unquote bud tender tells you like, this is how you're supposed to consume this.

It's a dosage, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's a different experience. Okay? What I have on this chocolate is literally, there's no, there's no dosage on this. You don't know how much of Viagra, [00:20:00] csil, or Cialis you are getting. Like, does it take the whole entire bar? Is it one piece of chocolate? Are people like literally all of a sudden there because it's Viagra, ISB bed, is it like you literally stopping their heart with the whole bar?

Like there's so many things that are wrong with this because you're consuming a drug disguised as a candy and you, you don't know the dosage.

[00:20:29] Francine: This is like several months ago when they manufactured that energy drink and it was alcohol. They were putting it on the shelves as the energy drink. It was like, surprise.

This is not the energy drink that you thought it was. This is alcohol.

[00:20:49] Matt: If anybody wants to hear by, uh, my alcohol testimony, if you, you could go look at that. My AA testimony. You go, listen, [00:21:00] that one, that's a big issue.

[00:21:02] Francine: That's another, that was another big problem. Yeah. I mean, it's more than just, oops, we made a mistake.

Not to mention the minors that, you know, or the kids that were getting hold of it.

[00:21:11] Matt: Well, fun, fun

[00:21:13] Francine: and we laugh because, you know, that's our, you know, personality profile, but it, it's serious. You know, we, we laugh at the most bizarre things, but it's not because we don't take it seriously. It's very serious.

[00:21:27] Matt: Yeah, yeah. And to say that our, that's our personality, like really, truly, that's how we we bonded many, many years ago is every crazy thing that's ever happened in our lives. We call each other when we need a laugh and we always get it. So it doesn't matter.

[00:21:44] Francine: It's how we deal with trauma Legitimately.

[00:21:48] Matt: Yeah, which is the like exact opposite, about 90% of the population.

[00:21:53] Francine: Right.

[00:21:55] Matt: Which is why we bonded. Oh, lordy. Okay. [00:22:00] So yeah.

[00:22:01] Francine: Well

[00:22:02] Matt: this is to your point though, Fred team, which is a huge point. You don't know what you're getting into when you buy things online.

[00:22:14] Francine: You don't have a clue, and most people don't understand that a lot of that stuff is not FDA approved. They assume because they can buy it, it's safe.

[00:22:23] Matt: Sil i Sildenafil or Viagra, and on its own individually are FDA approved.

[00:22:32] Francine: Approved is a prescription drug, not as a candy ingredient. Not as a food ingredient. I,

[00:22:40] Matt: I don't know if it's a good idea to be taking both simultaneously either. Like

[00:22:44] Francine: I would say that your doctor is not gonna prescribe both at the same time.

I mean, I don't know that, but I'm gonna guess.

[00:22:51] Matt: I don't know that

[00:22:51] Francine: either. Educated guess.

[00:22:53] Matt: Thankfully, I've never had to. Get to that point in my life in which I need to. That may be something I [00:23:00] have a conversation with, with my doctor later on down the road, but not now. So you're right. I don't know. But either way, putting them both in the chocolate bar, not letting your consumers know that it's in there.

Not FD. I mean, obviously because I'm on the FDA's website and they said that there's a recall of this though. Well that,

[00:23:22] Francine: well, we beat that to death.

[00:23:24] Matt: Alright, well, fun. Fun. Okay, well on that note on Don't eat poop.