Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

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[00:00:00]

Matt Regusci: So methylene chloride is an active ingredient in paint thinner that was recently banned by the FDA. So you could not use this product to scrape paint off of your walls. It's too dangerous for that, but the throw into some coffee beans to get rid of caffeine, no problem. That sounds like a good application for this thing.

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 Regus for a deep dive into food safety. It alls down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat poop.

Don't eat poop.

Matt Regusci: Hello? Hello Francine.

Francine L Shaw: Hi Matt.

Matt Regusci: Wow, [00:01:00] what a morning already. Wait, most people in this world have what? 2.34 children or something like that? I always wonder...

Francine L Shaw: Like 1.8 or something. I don't know what it is. I wonder... I don't know how that happens. My children were whole numbers.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. Can I choose what parts of the child? And I know like my friends always perpetually have things just disappear, right? There's an elf on the shelf, children stealing things. Not the children, right? You ask the child, Hey, do you know where X, Y, Z? It's not me, man. So I must have another child in the house called, it wasn't me. I think there's a child. There's somebody named in this house "it wasn't me" because "it wasn't me" gets blamed for just about everything in this household.

But yeah, Francine's like, where's your chair? Are you gonna sit down? And I'm like, that's a very good question. So, my stool that is specifically designed for this desk is gone. So, we had to improvise this morning. Okay. [00:02:00]

Well, Francine, I know you have an amazing topic for us today.

Francine L Shaw: I did.

Matt Regusci: You are planning on ruining many people's lives.

Francine L Shaw: So it's been a while since we've talked about recalls. I thought we should talk about recalls and specifically, we should talk about the decaf coffee recall.

Matt Regusci: So was this a recall or was this a lawsuit?

Francine L Shaw: It's a recall.

Matt Regusci: Okay. You gotta explain this to me.

No, that's because I realize it was a recall.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. It was initiated on March 13th and it's ongoing by the FDA. Is classified as a Class II recall, indicating a low risk, serious health consequence. It is the Massimo Zanetti Beverage company out of Suffolk, Virginia. Here we go with the glasses thing again.

Matt Regusci: You and the... did you not learn from the blooper reel, Francine?

Francine L Shaw: I [00:03:00] knew where they were though. They were right in front of me.

692 cases of Our Family’s Traverse City Cherry, artificially flavored, Decaf Light Roast Ground Coffee because a portion of the production was mislabeled as decaffeinated when it might contain caffeine. I read that right before we started, and I don't remember exactly what it said.

I should have written it down, but I did not. I don't remember what the difference is.

Matt Regusci: An eight ounce cup of regular coffee typically contains round 95 to 200 milligrams of coffee while decaf coffee, which has at least...

Francine L Shaw: Caffeine, not coffee.

Matt Regusci: You're right. Yeah. Caffeine. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Francine L Shaw: You're real funny.

Matt Regusci: I haven't had enough of my coffee yet this morning.

95 to 200 milligrams of coffee while decaf caffeine, excuse me, caffeine. Lordy, Matt. While decaf [00:04:00] coffee, which has at least 97% of its caffeine removed. Usually has around two to 15 milligrams. Okay.

Well, do you ever drink decaf coffee?

Francine L Shaw: I have, but not regularly. I think it tastes very different. I think it's bitter.

Matt Regusci: I feel like all the years on this Earth, Francine, you can't remember when?

Francine L Shaw: No, I do know. When I used to travel a lot and I would be driving on the turnpike late at night, I might stop and get decaffeinated coffee because if I drink coffee after like two or three o'clock in the afternoon, it, it will keep me awake.

I can't drink it. I'm not one of those people that can drink coffee and go to bed. I drink coffee for the sole purpose of the caffeine.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Francine L Shaw: That is why I like coffee.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, me too.

Francine L Shaw: That I drink coffee for the caffeine. I'm not gonna drink decaf. I see no [00:05:00] purpose in drinking decaf coffee.

Matt Regusci: Here's an interesting story compared to that. I was watching Seth Rogan being interviewed about this movie Sausage Party. It's a crazy movie, and the guy asked Seth Rogan, "Were you stoned when you wrote that movie?" 'Cause the movie's super crazy. I don't recommend the movie, but if you're... yeah, it's a crazy movie. It's not the greatest movie in the world.

So they were asking like, were you stoned when you wrote Sausage Party? And he's just just "Given the odds, yes." Basically, he went on to say that he's basically perpetually stoned. Like, he's awake and baked. He wakes up in the morning and then it's all day long Seth Rogan is stoned. So yeah, he did that.

You could ask me the same question, Matt. Not for cannabis, but for coffee. Matt, [00:06:00] are you caffeinated right now? Given the odds the answer will be yes. It doesn't matter what time of day. You, you, you and I have been at conferences together, like multiple times, many different things. Have you ever not seen me drink like something with caffeine in it? It's like perpetual.

Francine L Shaw: Well, and we're both like that. Yeah. Now, again, it's like after like two or three o'clock, I can't have anything that has a lot of caffeine in it, but it probably still has some caffeine in it. Yeah, it's probably it later in the day soda.

Matt Regusci: My daughter and her boyfriend calculated one day the amount of caffeine that I consumed from the time I woke up to about one o'clock in the afternoon. It was like a full gram or something like that.

They were like, you're gonna die. Like your heart's gonna stop. I was like, yeah, I probably need to chill this out. Okay. So this, it was so [00:07:00] funny, we were like, Francine, we're gonna talk about these three things, these three outbreaks. And I was like, in one episode?

Francine L Shaw: Recalls not outbreaks, outbreak. What is wrong with you today?

Matt Regusci: I dunno, like... I haven't had enough of my caffeine yet. Okay. So, and then we're like... Francine was like, ah, maybe we could just talk an hour on one of them. I'm like, we're talking about caffeine and coffee. We could talk four hours on this.

Francine L Shaw: Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with a couple different kinds of caffeine and I didn't shut the lid on the donuts behind me.

Matt Regusci: Okay, so back on tracks. There is a recall of a bunch of cases of decaf coffee because it's actually caffeinated. What do they do? Just mislabeled? Did they put like regular...

Francine L Shaw: It was mislabeled as decaf when it may contain caffeine.

Matt Regusci: There is so much wrong with this. First off, who drinks cherry coffee?

Francine L Shaw: Oh my heavens.

I think it sounds [00:08:00] delicious. Really? Yes.

Matt Regusci: Ah. Okay, well, I am a coffee purist, like I just drink my coffee black.

Francine L Shaw: You're just boring. That's not a purist. That's just somebody that's very boring. Forget purist.

Matt Regusci: Yeah. Okay.

Francine L Shaw: That's like somebody said to me the other day, I just drink black. Okay, well, you stick to your black.

You don't want anything interesting or different in your life. That's wonderful. Don't go out on a limb and have any risk because you might like something different.

Matt Regusci: I wish you and I were more opinionated, Francine, it would make the show much more entertaining.

Francine L Shaw: We were talking this morning about people who can't have different opinions and fight about it.

Matt Regusci: No, and I wouldn't. We agree to disagree every day. Well, my Lin, speaking of which last, oh, wait. This is, is, this show is such a cluster right now, Francine. Our ADHD is the...

Right now we're like an early morning talk show. This is, we're [00:09:00] just all over the map. But wait, the episode that landed a month ago or whatever, when we were going off on the FDA.

You and I both thought we were going to lose all of our listenership. It's one of the best shows we've had in a long time. In terms of numbers, maybe we need to disagree more about the government, Francine. Okay. So yes, I am a coffee purist, or boring as you would say. So I drink 20 ounces of coffee with two added shots in the morning.

I love my espresso machine, it's awesome. And then I just continue drinking coffee until I move to like tea or something like that.

Francine L Shaw: Okay, so there's a difference though between you and I drinking that caffeine, knowing what we're getting, and somebody who is expecting decaf...

Matt Regusci: Totally.

Francine L Shaw: ...and getting like this burst of energy and it, and maybe it's a woman that is like breastfeeding their baby and not want that caffeine.

Or maybe somebody that... [00:10:00] Can you imagine that baby with that sudden burst of energy? Or worse, somebody that maybe has a heart problem that you know suddenly their heart is pitter pattering out of their chest. There's insomnia. I... Yeah. If I drank coffee after like four o'clock in the afternoon and I don't after two, just because I literally would be awake till one or two o'clock in the morning.

Really? It affects you like that?

Don't know why. I can drink tea. I can drink soda. Anything but coffee, and I don't know why that is, but I can't. Monster would do that to me too.

Matt Regusci: Yeah.

Francine L Shaw: And none of those.

Matt Regusci: My mother-in-law is the same way. We have like decaf pods and decaf.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. I couldn't...

Matt Regusci: Espresso and all that stuff for her because of that.

Francine L Shaw: We, well, and I went through the Starbucks drive through one time and ordered, I think I might have ordered decaf when it... or no.

I ordered something and they said, we only [00:11:00] have decaf or something. Do you want that? And I said, what's the point in drinking coffee? But that was apparently earlier in the day. Anyway, so it can increase blood pressure. So high blood pressure. So if somebody has a blood pressure problem, that would be bad.

Anxiety, nausea, headache, sleep disruptions. And that's all according to the FDA. So those are all the things that could go wrong, that could go bad for somebody.

Matt Regusci: So it was 4,152 cases of 12 ounce packages of Our Family’s Traverse City Cherry Decaffeinate. When I smoked pipe, I used to smoke cherry. That was good. Smoking cherry was good. Drinking it?

But you seem to think that would be a good flavor. Okay. I'll believe you.

Francine L Shaw: Starbucks has a cherry chai latte.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, they're [00:12:00] wrong.

Francine L Shaw: The cherry chai. Oh my God. It's amazing.

Matt Regusci: Is it?

Francine L Shaw: Yes.

Matt Regusci: My son got that the other day.

Francine L Shaw: Cherry chai. Cherry chai tea.

Matt Regusci: Cherry chai. That's exactly what he got. Cherry chai. And I looked at him like, what?

You're gonna have to pay for that outta your own pocket, 'cause I don't know if I want to endorse this.

Francine L Shaw: Okay, so good. Come on. What was that oleo or whatever that thing that Starbucks took off the menu? Remember with the oil in it?

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. The olive oil coffee.

Yeah. Thank God Brian's there now.

Matt Regusci: But... yeah, I remember you and I were gonna do a show about that. We're gonna drink the oleo coffee from Starbucks.

Francine L Shaw: You were, I didn't want any part of that.

Matt Regusci: And, and see if we could do a whole episode without having to run because of runs.

Okay. So one another thing that, that is interesting about decaf. Okay, so Clean Label Project, the... I run the certification body and testing arm for Clean [00:13:00] Label Project. Clean Label Project did a whole entire thing about all the chemicals in decaffeinated coffee, and it's pretty bad. Like the industrial chemicals that are used to remove the caffeine out of coffee are nasty.

Francine L Shaw: I remember that. Tell everybody what that is.

Matt Regusci: It's Methylene Chloride. It's like a paint thinner stuff. It's designed to like, just... It's bad, it's a bad chemical, and they use that in the process. You could find some that don't use these chemicals, but what they do is they steam this using the chemical. They're placed in the heated solvent.

This chemical is a solvent and the caffeine is removed from the coffee beans and separated out from the solvent. Then the process continues until the desired amount of caffeine is removed. You can go on Clean Label Project, or if you type in decaf and Clean Label Project, you'll see there's a 17 page white paper of all the potential contaminants and decaf.

But yeah, if you're [00:14:00] worried about that type of stuff and you drink a lot of decaf coffee, maybe go for the water based process. It costs a little bit more, but you're not putting terrible chemicals in your body.

Francine L Shaw: I think there's something called the Swiss water process. Is that right?

Matt Regusci: Yeah. Swiss water Process. Correct.

Francine L Shaw: They don't use chemicals. It preserves the flavor well, and it's the most expensive. And then there's the carbon dioxide method. Yes. Under high pressure. Yes. No chemical residue. And then there is a direct solvent method. Methylene chloride or ethyl acetate.

Matt Regusci: Okay, so methylene chloride is an active ingredient in paint thinner that was recently banned by the FDA.

So you could not use this product [00:15:00] to scrape paint off of your walls. It's too dangerous for that, but to throw into some coffee beans to get rid of caffeine? No problem. That sounds like a good application for this thing.

Francine L Shaw: Wow. And then there's an indirect solvent method. That's how they decaf coffee. Yep.

Matt Regusci: For those of you that have to drink it for whatever you have health reasons. Sure. And you can't have caffeine or you have to stay up at night, but you want your cup of coffee. I would go for the water based or...

Francine L Shaw: Anything but.

Matt Regusci: Anything other than the paint thinner that was declared illegal by the EPA.

But the FDA is like whatever.

Francine L Shaw: I'm just trying to maintain my thoughts.

Matt Regusci: Please state the thoughts that are going... Of all the days and of all the episodes to not say the something that's going through your head, you're gonna choose today? Now I'm very curious. Now you have to say it. Thousands of people are wondering what's going through your head.[00:16:00]

Okay, so when did you start flipping houses?

Francine L Shaw: Oh, we started doing that during the housing crisis, like 2008. Oh, okay. Is when we started doing it. It was like 2008 I think is when we did the first one. 2007, 2008.

Matt Regusci: And do you... did you use like paint stripper stuff? Getting paint off walls or anything like that, or?

Francine L Shaw: No, I don't think so.

Matt Regusci: Oh. Do you use any crazy chemicals for doing anything to clean the houses up?

Francine L Shaw: Over the years? For different things. Yes, we have.

Matt Regusci: At any point in time when you were using those chemicals, did you think, wow, maybe this application could be used in food?

Francine L Shaw: Not a chance. I'm thinking, I probably shouldn't be doing this.

Matt Regusci: Well, welcome to America, Francine.

Francine L Shaw: Sometimes there were times when I'm thinking, I don't even know how they can sell this [00:17:00] stuff, you know, because you're in there with a respirator. Yeah, and it's like literally you've got a respirator and you've got, and then there were times we hired companies to do things.

For example, there's a house right now that we just did a bid on, and there is a mold remediation company that's doing mold remediation on the property because there was like, we went in to do a, uh... I'm allergic to mold. I can walk into a house and tell you if there's mold in the house. Really. So off topic here.

Because I'm really allergic. Anyway, this house had so much mold and it was like we weren't doing anything until they got rid of the mold. And so there's a mold remediation company in there now, getting rid of the mold. And we're doing this for a bank. It's a foreclosure and it we're gonna do the work for the bank.

And I was talking to the asset manager the other day and he had a couple questions and Tim and I needed to go [00:18:00] back in and look at a couple things. And they wanted us to go back in the house, but the mold remediation's being done this week. So I didn't know if they had started yet. And I called the company that's doing the mold remediation to ask them a question and they're like, "No, we've started. You guys can't go in."

So part of me is thinking, these guys that do this work, you know what they're exposing themselves to as well. And one of the men that we used to work with. Owned the business before this company that owns it now and real good guy, his name was Donnie. He did a lot of work for us previously and sometimes he didn't wear the equipment that we know that he should have...

Matt Regusci: Oh, no.

Francine L Shaw: ...worn and he died last year. Cancer.

Matt Regusci: Shocking. Wow.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah. Good guy. But again, now this was [00:19:00] almost 20 years ago. And I don't know at that point in time that they were... Like, there's more rules and regulations about that now than there was then. Right. Those chemicals are harsh.

Matt Regusci: Yeah, harsh. Like in a hazmat suit, when they go in and do that stuff.

Francine L Shaw: They are, or they should be.

It's so bad they sometimes they can't even clean it up. They rip it out, like the drywall's being ripped out down to the studs. The ventilation has to be cleaned, all of that. So ripping out vanities in the bathrooms, all the carpets is coming out because you have to Because of the spores and things.

Matt Regusci: Yeah.

Francine L Shaw: Because it's not safe if you don't. You can get rid of it. It can be killed, but the chemicals that they have to use to do that. Yeah.

Yet there are other things that they'll let with food. [00:20:00] Right. Or other things that... it makes no sense to me. No sense.

Matt Regusci: Right. And what will come back, what what will be said is you have to understand that the dosage that we're talking about is so small.

The residual solvent that is on this decaf is so small that it's not really that big of a deal.

Francine L Shaw: It's small, but how many cups of decaf are you drinking during a day? And how many years, year after year? Like, how much exposure did he really have per day from the time he started the business till he got sick? Was a lot.

Matt Regusci: Right? This reminds me of Blum's book, The Poison Squad. That interview with her was so good. Anybody who's interested in understanding compounding effects of residual chemicals over a period of time should read that book. It's fascinating. That's actually how the FDA and USDA were started. This mad scientists in the FDA or in the federal government just started [00:21:00] doing tests.

What happens if that's okay in a tiny amount? What if you're consuming that in a multiple different types of food over a period of time, day in and day out? So if you're drinking decaffeinated coffee every single day and you're having a few cups a day. Like, if you're a coffee drinker, all of a sudden your doctor says you can't drink caffeine anymore, and you're like, okay, well, instead of just dropping the habit of drinking coffee, I will change it to decaf.

But then you consume the amount of coffee every single day. That builds up over a period of time. Mm-hmm. Like, it's a lot. If you're drinking one cup of decaf coffee, like at church once a week. Okay, well that's very different than three or four cups a day, or a pot, for 20 years. But yeah, a pot like me.

Yeah.

Francine L Shaw: I understand that we're talking about food, but this spans across multiple industries because [00:22:00] there were houses that we would go into where there's just a little bit and okay, it's just like a spot, and then we've gone into houses where it's literally hanging from the ceilings. It's like there's that, the much mold, it's just dripping from the ceiling.

It's so bad. And like sometimes you'll say, okay, we aren't touching this. It's somebody's gotta do something. And again, things have changed over the years. They'll send their teams in to get rid of it, to just tear out the mold, tear out to the drywall, and I'm like, they shouldn't be doing it either.

Yeah. Crazy.

We probably a while back did some that maybe we shouldn't have, but we didn't over the period of years. It's not like we did hundreds of them. There were probably a few that maybe we questioned whether or not we should have done. They wore masks and we, it isn't as if we did a tremendous [00:23:00] amount of them, but there were probably a couple.

Matt Regusci: Maybe after a while you just get preserved in the chemical. That's what I'm going with.

Francine L Shaw: I don't know. Again, Donnie, he did the chemicals that he used were, I'm sure, far worse than what he was saying now.

Matt Regusci: Oh yeah. That's his business.

Okay, so there you go.

If you have in your cabinet  Our Family’s Traverse City Cherry Decaffeinated Ground Coffee, and you think it's decaffeinated, you should probably send it back.

Francine L Shaw: Yeah, this here has a UPC code of 0 7 0 2 5 3 1 1 0 8 0 1.

Matt Regusci: Yep. And if you're curious about the chemicals inside coffee, go search out Clean Label Project Decaf coffee, and there's [00:24:00] a 17 page white paper detailing all the chemicals. There's also a list. I don't want to go through the list in our podcast, 'cause I don't want us to get sued for naming out names, but there is a list of the copies that were tested and detected and not detected for that chemical.

So you can see what's on there.

Francine L Shaw: And there you go.

Matt Regusci: Don't eat poop.