Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center newsstand studios, joined as usual with John here in the booth. How're you doing, John?

Doing great. Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Got Joe Hasan rocking the panels here in New York. Hey, how you doing, man? Good to see you. Good to see you as well. Quinny Quinn over there on Vancouver Island and a MIMO. What's up? Yeah, good. Good. Good. And then we have a triple threat in Los Angeles all crowded around. A single iPhone, their little super spreader. Radial event. We have Anastasia hammer Lopez, how're you doing? I'm good. Good. Yeah, you sound like you're all credit rivalry. You leaned back and like, like on a couch somewhere? Like usually in the distance and Jackie molecules. Is there.

her usual usual posture? You know? Yeah.

The usual. Yeah. could care less posture? Yeah. Okay. And special guest over there in Los Angeles, a former coworker of mine, a longtime friend of the show, Austin Hennelly. How're you doing?

I'm doing well. Dave, how are you?

Now? You sound clear as a bell. Here's someone who knows how to do a radio presentation. Even on an iPhone. Puts his face into the microphone has been my mouth. Nice. Yeah. Well, you know, don't chew on it. Don't chew on it. So when I first visited you over there in LA, you were at Domo, but now you're running the program at a Taiwanese joint Cato. Right, which I haven't been to here. Great things Michelin starred the whole time. Yeah. So why don't you talk to me about what you doing over there.

Yeah, so Kato was a restaurant on the west side of LA for about five years. They got a Michelin star in that location, tiny little strip mall, restaurant. Got a Michelin star without any beverage program at all, which, as, as far as I know, at least, the only restaurant in the US to get a star without a beverage program. And then, about a year ago moved to a new location on the east side in the row in downtown LA with a liquor license. So that opened up the opportunity to have a wine program and a cocktail program.

What's the row is that we're all those tall buildings are like the last in the art studio places.

It's it's a development in a round the arts district in LA that has high end retail as well as a few restaurants. So we're located in their Hayato, which is a seven seat Koseki restaurant, as well as the LA outpost of crispy Yonkos. pizzeria.

So how fast can a seven seat Koseki restaurant lose money? I think?

I think that if you have people who are spending 10 to $15,000 on wine, I think I think you can stay afloat for a little while.

Yeah, but we would like that's the kind of project where it's like, you know, that's the old school adage, right? How do you make a how do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? Start with a big one. But boom, boom, boom. That's the old thing that they say Right? Because that seems like a recipe for burning money. Right? Because it's like, in the old days, you'd be like, I run this restaurant out of my house. My family runs it. And so we make enough money. There's no overhead other than our rent. Anyway, here you go. Here's your seven seats. Right. But like to pay commercial rent in a fancy neighborhood in Los Angeles? I don't know man. seven seats hardcore, right. I don't know. Hardcore hardcore, move. Hardcore move. Yeah, I

mean, it seems like it seems like they're doing fine.

I'm sure. I'm sure sure. I just don't understand the economics of it. And it has a how many CGI The Cato

so we do

about 65 to 75 covers a night. And 10 of those are at the bar for an abbreviated menu that's made up of classic dishes from previous menus of the restaurant.

So since you won't tell me how many seats you have, how many turns is it

we do a one and a half turn.

All right. Okay, so you're like, you're like 35 plus another 10 at the bar or something like that.

Yeah, somewhere around there. Nice.

Alright, so now one of the reasons you want to come on and this is a subject that obviously that's important to me as well as that you're doing getting a lot of press there for your non alcoholic right

yeah, the the non alcoholic program has been really well received. Um, I, part of it, I think has to do with the fact that keto already had a clientele that a lot of them didn't drink alcohol. So it was kind of a perfect opportunity to try something more expansive on the non alcoholic front. So rather than just having a shorter menu of non alcoholic cocktails, we decided to kind of fully lead into it and have more options available. So we have a wine pairing, the the menu is nine to 11 courses depending and so we have a wine pairing, you get two ounces of wine with each course. And then we also do a non alcoholic pairing, where we have some items that are made by the bar, as well as source items. So those can be varietals, grape juices, or the alcohol as wines. And we just brought on. It's really great kombucha from a producer out of Brooklyn. So the the menu, the non alcoholic menu is a little bit more varied than your typical handful of non alcoholic cocktails.

How do they verify that on alcohol in the Capcom? Bucha? How do they verify that? Or do you not worry? Is it not that hardcore?

It's I mean, they they in the computer? They say that it's less than point five, which I think that's the legal definition.

In other words, right, because I've had, I've had kombucha, people say that they're, conversely, on the flip side, they're like, this is has X percentage of alcohol in it, and I taste it. And I know that all you know, the vast majority of the alcohol has been converted to acetic acid because I can taste acetic acid, I'm not dummy. So I'm like, you know, now. No, it's not, you know what I mean? So it's like, maybe a lot, a lot has changed. That was number of years ago, I bet you the kombucha manufacturers now are much better at testing their products and actually knowing what they're providing, but such a complicated, you know, it's such a multi micro organism thingamajig that like X ray tacking it down short of actually measuring it is can be challenging, I think.

I mean, I'm sure they are measuring it to be able to sell it as with an alcohol free designation,

although interestingly, have you heard about this thing about this tattoo parlor in New York? Have you heard about this ephemeral? Okay, so it's a tattoo parlor to temporary tattoo, not temporary tattoos, they're called ephemeral, and they give you a tattoo and the tattoo supposed to fade within a year, right? And now, like two years later, people's tattoos not only haven't faded, but they just look kind of scrubbed out, like kinda like washed out. Right. So and, and the people are like, what, what the hell? And they're like, Well, you know, maybe fade in a year maybe, like, for a lot of people, it fades in a year. That's what they're saying. Now, you know what I mean? So like, just because somebody sells it, don't make it sell. You know, I mean, anyways, especially No offense. You know who you are in Brooklyn. I'm saying, I love Brooklyn, a lot of skullduggery in Brooklyn, a lot of Skald stars. My wrong about this? Oh, you're right. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of skullduggery. You know, not saying you have to, you know, be doing bad things. I'm just saying, you know, if you look at people's claims out of Brooklyn, sometimes, not that Manhattan's much better. Oh, speaking of which, I don't want to go any further. Last week. Apparently, we insulted Trenton. So what happened John?

Rob, l reached out on the discord to put in a good word for Trenton. And I will quote Trenton, New

Jersey for all of you that don't know, like the lay of the land here at Trenton is the capital of our fine sister state, New Jersey where I spent a good portion of my childhood right. So that's how I have the right to save kind of whatever I want, you know, I mean, but Trenton I mean, Lee said, I don't know what they build there and Trenton's claim to fame is that ain't Camden. Right? That's what I said. So that's like, okay, so then was that was the response.

So Rob says it is the pizza capital of the United States in my opinion, and as a place of great culinary note, Trenton like New Haven had metal manufacturers, which were a major attractor of Italian immigrant labor, and had some of the first pizza bakeries in the new world. Downtown Trenton is widely considered as unsafe today and the Italians have left for the surrounding areas and the pizza places have followed the best pizza in my opinion is DiLorenzo and Robbinsville, New Jersey, which move from downtown to a suburban strip mall but it's absolutely fabulous. There's another de la Renta run by cousins in the parking lot of large mall in the outskirts of Trenton that is nearly as good. Either of these are really either of these are easily worth a read from New York City or Philly if you happen to be in Princeton you're only 10 minute drive away.

Well, Austin what you need to do next time you're coming out right is like you know, when you leave work go to Bianca which you know, is it as good as the original I haven't been to either so I can't say but you know, whatever. Well known famous great pizza have one of those

I haven't been to the original but this is the LA location is some of the best pizza in LA for sure.

And is it most Well, okay. Is a great pizza. Some of the best pizza. It's some of the best sushi in Oklahoma. What? You know what I mean? It's like, is it great pizza is what I'm asking you. And I mean

I would say that by by any standard, it is very good.

Okay. So what you need to do is get the Bianca, go to Bianca, get on an aeroplane eat nothing. Water only land. Take the Uber to Trenton and try it on. See, we think the Lorenzo zoo is closely mimics what I wanted to do. Remember, I wanted to get us all I wanted to. I wanted to go to Maine. I wanted to get sea urchins out of the water in Maine, and then have Nastasia go to Santa Barbara and get sea urchins out of the water in Santa Barbara both get on airplanes with igloo coolers and meet halfway. And totally reasonable. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, like right out of the water be great. Right out of the water main sea urchins are every bit as good as the West Coast sea urchins when you get them right out of the water. But what I don't know because I've never done it is if I get and also I've had right out of the water. The Mediterranean Marcee Delicious, right. So then, if you get them right out of the water in Santa Barbara, are you like, Oh my God, holy crap. You know what I mean? I don't know. So he needs to have an equal time out of water kind of situation. Although it's gonna be a lot easier to get a flight out of Santa Barbara anywhere than it is to get a flight out of Podunk Maine anywhere around America. Yeah, yeah. What do you think's does?

I think I think considering how up in arms, people are with people eating burritos on a plane, I'm fairly sure they'd be upset with sea urchin as well.

We don't even get on the plane. You're meeting halfway and eating it in the airport. You ever been to? You ever been in Nogales? Mexico, Austin? I have not. So Nogales is like, you know, on the on the border between Mexico and Arizona. And it's one of the border towns that you know, Americans would go to to buy blankets and glasses and stuff like that. In the 90s. I went there. You know, when I first started visiting my parents house when they lived in Phoenix outside of Phoenix, and I bought a cow skull. Right? Because they had a pile of cow skulls. And I was like, You know what's cool? My first time the desert you know what I'm going to do? Buy a cow skull right? I ended up buying one also for my father in law so he could have it on his zero scaped you know, lawn next to the swirl cactus be official. You know, I'm saying because he had some moral. He legit had some morals in his front lawn anyway, but he kept the cow skull on the back. So wouldn't get stolen behind the fence. Anyway, I digress. So I get the I get the cow skull. And I realized once it's in the car, that they you know what a domestic beetle is? No. Domestic beetles are the beetles that eat the flesh off of bones so that you can so that you can have really nice bone presentations that don't rot. They don't stink like rotting meat. Okay, so I find out that if you don't pay a lot for cow skulls, they don't bother using Dermestid beetles. And they have a lot of rotten meat left on them. And so as soon as we get in the car, it starts thinking. And so it's thinking all the way back from Nogales to Phoenix. And you know, they're tolerating me because I'm new in the family. Right? You know, I'm still just a boyfriend. We're not even engaged yet. And then I'm like, they're like, how the hell you're gonna get to something? It's carry on. I carried that cow skull on pre 911 I carried that cow skull with the horns on and they're like, how the hell are you gonna get it? I was like, well, if anyone gives me crap, I'm just gonna say it's a bolo tie. I'm gonna wear it. It's my clothes. They can suck it. That's what I said. I was, you know, a little more. Whatever. I brought it home. It ended up getting attached to the front of my 1976 Pontiac Bonneville. Eventually,

you know, it's a Carry on, carry it.

Yes. That's great. That's good. I never even thought that it's classic. I don't know how I got there. Anyway. So back to the non alcoholic program at Cato. Calm Bucha. What else?

So we decided to have a program that was a little more wide reaching, because I don't know about you. But even when I did drink alcohol, I don't enjoy drinking cocktails throughout a whole meal.

I'm a one. I'm a cocktail before a cocktail after entering guy. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the way it should be done. I mean, obviously, my career is dependent on people wanting to drink cocktails with dinner. But I thought that it was important to give the people who are choosing not to drink alcohol for whatever reason. The kind of The breadth of offerings that you get if you are drinking alcohol, start with cocktails move on to something more Venice or wine like and then you can finish with a cocktail as well. So that was the idea of going in. So we have kind of three different, like big categories that you can decide to enjoy. If you want to do something that's non alcoholic, we have non alcoholic cocktails, as well as a whole menu of wine like offerings that that people can choose to buy the glass or do the pairing.

Is la like New York where you can have nothing. And then beer and wine and then full liquor or is it? Is it all or nothing there?

No, there are there are beer and wine licenses. In LA.

Right. Okay. Just curious. Now, here's a question. So like, you know, an ex con, we made the decision to only source kind of super fancy stuff for our non alcoholic stuff and charge the same amount. What are you guys doing for the cost? The charge rather?

Yeah. So I mean, some of the, some of the things that we're offering by the glass are cost as much as, as wine does give you I mean, if you're starting with, if you're starting with a high quality product, and then you are the alcohol lysing that product, and then bottling it and shipping it etc, you're you're adding a step that's going to be adding additional costs for the producer to the product. So oftentimes, they are as expensive as, you know, lower costs, alcoholic products,

right. But what I'm saying is you're charging the when you're charging the guest, like, are they seeing it as it? Is it less expensive? And if not, is it for them to buy in general, and then do people balk at paying the same amount, because we always said, I don't think anyone's going to balk if they're there to buy a non alcoholic drink, they want to be treated with respect, they want a high quality product, they're not going to balk at the price. That was our theory. I'm asking, I'm wondering if you are seeing the same thing in your locale.

So I mean, as far as like the hour, we I structure the pricing just based on a slight targeted Cost of Goods presented. So the non alcoholic pairing, we're trying to get to the same cost of goods as the wine pairing and at that cost of goods percentage is $85 for the pairing, and the wine pairing is 155. And then the non alcoholic cocktails at the same cost of goods as the alcoholic cocktails are $15 versus $20. And no people aren't balking at the price.

How much more labor though is going into the non alcoholic because we put a lot more labor into the non Alex than we did into the alcohol because it just took more manipulation.

Yeah, I mean, it's a tremendous amount of labor, but I'm I'm on salaries.

Right? But theoretically, if you are getting paid for your time, that means you'd be you'd have to charge more than you do because you're doing it on a cost a cost of goods not on a cost of production. Right yeah. And like and so how much is the check average gone up? Now that I guess you can't really compare because you move locations as well so you can't compare check average before versus checking right after? Yeah, I'd be interested in

though the menu at the menu at the original location was was much shorter.

Yeah, so I was never definitely a different ballgame. But I

but I can tell you that on any given night, our non alcoholic sales are often as high as our liquor sales.

Yeah, we never we never got there, I guess got a bar. And we never got there. No matter how hard we push it. We never got there. I was also we were never able at existing conditions to crack we I think we did a good job cracking, carbonated. And we did a good job cracking builts but we never I never felt happy with any of our attempts to crack a shake and cocktail or a stern cocktail. You have any results on that?

i Yeah, so I I think that it's tremendously difficult. Because especially with a with like a stirred cocktail, you're you're missing the the texture of alcohol, which is why I don't really try to mimic or make non alcoholic versions of alcoholic cocktails. I often get asked for recipes for you know, non alcoholic Negroni use or things like that. And I just I don't I think that trying to mimic the straw Sure, or the result of an alcoholic cocktail is just kind of setting yourself up for failure. So I just I tend to build them from the ground up as their own kind of entity. And because those, those two categories of drinks don't really work, I just I haven't pursued it,

right. I mean, I think the issue for me is, is that there are certain categories of drink, right? non alcoholic drink that have they're very specific and well known. So like tea, right? So like, there's tea, and then there's things that have been added to tea or messed with tea. And people kind of understand that there's a lot of obviously baggage that goes with messing with teas. And there's a lot of connoisseurship behind tea coffee, then there's like your various lemonades aids and then fruit juices, right. But to me, like so if you're going to do those, sometimes, unless it's got a very specific selling point. Well, the teas and coffees obviously, you can but like on fruit juices, it's kind of hard to distinguish yourself as being something different, or, or special or worthy of a lot of money. Which is why I think, you know, when we were trying to do it, I don't, we weren't necessarily interested in hitting a particular cocktail. But for me, it's like what's interesting about like, a dinner adult beverage is lower in sugar, right? Some sort of complexity and a specific kind of drink because like a soda, you'll me I pound cocktails, but I'm bad. You know what I mean? By like a soda you pound, a carbonated non alcoholic dinner drink. You're not supposed to freaking pound it, you know what I mean? You're supposed to sip it and what kind of what kind of adds to that structure that is an alcohol. And so like for me, like I would never try to mimic, as you say, a Negroni but then on the other hand, like you know, I don't necessarily want to make something drink like a slowly sipped, stirred cocktail just by turning it into some kind of like weird health tea or bomb, you know what I mean? Which is a lot of you know, what you'll see is like a heavily bittered, heavily herbal concoctions, you know that they're sippers. All right? But not for the same reason

a lot of the a lot of the things in the in the RTD non alcoholic space, they are overly bittered but a kind of bitters that I at least find unpleasant. Like, kind of like a, that sort of like, popery, like, floral gentian, like sharp bitterness that hits you in the back of the throat.

Yeah, or like, you know, when you go to like, you know, when you go to Hong Kong, and you go to one of those tea shops, and they're like, what's wrong with you? And you tell them what's wrong with you and they hand you a cup of something is supposed to fix that. It's not supposed to taste good. You know what I mean? And you drink it, you're like, oh, you know what I mean? Like those things? Stars. Remember when we went one of those places? Yeah. Hardcore, hardcore. did not finish the cup. did not finish the cup. And whatever ails me is still ailing me. So there you go. Maybe I should have finished the cup.

So then you just ailing and have a terrible taste in your mouth.

Yeah. Yeah. So we launch right into this. I didn't ask any of you guys whether you had anything. culinarily interesting happened to you last week. And the show's almost half over. I didn't ask you if you had anything interesting. Anyone? Anything interesting last week? Nothing? No? No,

thank you. Not really.

Okay. So the two people who are working in restaurants and he particularly egregiously bad guests in the past week that you want to share a story about without naming names.

For top reservation came in with eight people.

And how angry were they when they were not seated properly?

Not as angry as the I would have expected them to garden. They were like, well, I mean, there were difficult but yeah, yeah.

Really already lubricated. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That was the problem. Yeah. As usual. Yeah. Increases the incentive. The, the, what's it called? Entitlement exponentially?

Sure. Does, you know? Sure.

Yeah. What about you, Austin, any any particularly egregious guests you want to discuss?

Well, there's one thing I've noticed, since this is, since I now work at a restaurant and not a cocktail bar, I don't often have to deal with the stumps of bartender or bartenders choice games that people tend to play, which is, which is very nice. But you know, it does happen from from time to time. And that's, you know, that's fine. That's what we're there for. But Kant had a request. Yeah. Okay.

Go ahead. Give me a request. I want to hear.

I had a request from guest for a dealer's choice, old fashion. No sugar. Don't like bitters.

Okay, straight the person who wants you straight whiskey, bourbon, they want bourbon and creative.

And it was, it was to be creative that really got me. Because I don't know. I don't know if he expected me to just pour him straight spirit but with the feather boa on

other than amazing. Do you have a feather boa at the restaurant?

No, but not an option in the future. Oh,

yeah, you need to keep that as an option. You know, your future. Be creative. You're like, gotcha. And then you just return to the bar. Put on the bowl. And you're like, sweet. Yeah, yeah. And then they get their straight pour whiskey or rock. Yeah. Yeah, I have to say this.

Like, I mean, I, I had to cheat. I did

use a little Amaro. That's being creative. Yeah. Yeah.

Legal sweetness in there. Of course.

Otherwise, it's straight liquor. Right. Anyway. Yeah.

I mean, I stirred it and i Straw tasted it before I gave it to him. He's like, Oh, what do you think I was like, it'd be better for sugar.

So, question, I know that bartenders hate when someone like you know, says just make me something good dealer's choice, but it's really I hate choosing my own stuff so much. What I really mean is just pick something off the menu that you think is good, and no matter what it is, I like it. Why is that such an offensive odor?

I don't find that offensive.

Yeah. So I'm like, Hey, choose something. I don't care. You don't I mean, I just want to know what you guys do with this bar. I've never been here before. I'm never going to come again. I'm not going to write anything about it. I just want like a drink that you know, you guys make well make one. I like I don't know. Whatever. Apparently. I'm, you know, of course, I'm widely hated. So there you go. Yeah. Bartenders hate that order. And I'm widely hated. So there you have John. Notoriously, notoriously, John, why don't you push the a Patreon and upcoming guests. And by the way, if you are listening live, and you want to ask us or Austin anything about anything calling 917-410-1507 That's 917-410-1507 and tell them how to listen, live on

patreon.com/cooking issues. We get a lot of great guests coming up. And we've got Katie parla coming up soon to talk about her new book of food from the Italian islands. We get discounts with kitchen arts and letters. We should do classics in the field episodes. Yeah. I now have access to the discord and all the perks that come with that. So yeah, patreon.com/cooking issues and their different membership levels. You should join them. Check us out.

And by the way, I think it was last week with Caroline chef at what's at pastry chef, right. Yeah. You know, she was on and we went around the roundtable and played what piece of kitchen equipment would you like? And one of us said blast chiller maybe was even me and Kevin's dad Meyer wrote in on Twitter saying that you can get there's a sub $2,000 blast chiller now. was the name of the manufacturer coin. I haven't looked it up. So I don't know if it's any good, wasn't it? Vesta, Vesta anyway, so if anyone has any experience with that, let us know. And we'll check it out. Because you know, I love a blast chiller. Speaking of playing games, have we ever played your favorite Newton? No. All right. What's your favorite Newton? Ready? Fig? Right Wayne? Right Isaac or juice

I mean figured it's a pretty delicious think of them enough

juice no one knows who juice Newton is anymore? No who is now just known as a great singer. Playing the Queen of Hearts she had a fantastic albums back in like juice Newton is the answer to me. Sure.

I think it's gotta be Isaac. No.

I use a weird dude man. Not really long and hard about

this Dave I think it has to be

live knits live knits came out with calculus at the same time Newton did and all of those physical principles would have been figured out by someone pretty quickly after Newton any hoo ha he ended up being kind of a vile individual. Right? I don't think anyone would have come up with playing with you know with the Queen of Hearts other than juice notice until maybe now that AI can do it. Right. Fig Newtons are delicious. They're the problem there they are. They're the order like you know Newton pastry so uh, go with those as opposed to you know, and Wayne Newton not only do I not know his songs too well, but he you know he's on that he's on that surgery train Wayne Newton. He's on that hardcore surgery train. You know, I mean, and yeah, yeah. But I you know, I asked a bunch of people and no one under the age of like, 45 knows juice newton. So I feel it Part of my like, need is to get people to go back and listen to juice notice. She's great. I don't know what am I? Okay?

Certain that people in that age group also do not are not familiar with Figgins. Wait, the general Newton ignorance.

Wait. People don't eat fake news anymore generation. People don't eat fake news anymore.

Once I started age of 35 you said,

like anyone younger than anyone? Yeah, like Yes. Yeah. I don't eat anything like that. And when was the last time I had any cookie like this? It's not a cookie. It's freaking fruit and cake. It's freaking fruit and cake Joel commercials for the my favorite cookie commercial back in that era, though was peak friends. Remember? Peak friends commercials? Anyone know peak greens are extraordinarily serious. Cookies. They're made for grownups. You never heard this. Yeah. Now we should turn this into little segment. Yeah, yeah. Old. All the commercials. Anywho I got the perfect little spinning wheel for it. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Okay, it keeps going like that. Austin. Are you saying you've never had?

Oh, no, I have had to figure Okay. Okay. Thank

god. Okay. When I was a kid, they started don't

think they're very popular with the Gen z's.

When I was a kid, or when I was a young adult, young adult. I think Fig Newton popularity started to maybe wane a bit. And it was the beginning of the kind of skew task or fee that's happened in recent decades where like, you know, it used to be when I was growing up. There were Doritos. Right? And then all of a sudden, there were Cool Ranch Doritos. And then there are an infinity of Doritos. And the idea is, is that if there's a if there's only one to rido, you're like, am I gonna get Doritos, or am I gonna get some other product, right? Whereas if there's an infinity of Doritos, you're like, oh, which Doritos Am I gonna buy? So it increases the overall buy of Doritos. So then, the Newton folk did the same thing with Newton's and they came up with raspberry, Newton's apple, Newton's all kinds of things. So apricot is delicious. I've never had the apricot delicious. I love I love I love dried apricots. It's my favorite fruit wrap. You know that jova fruit wraps are the joy of whatever it is that Brooklyn made fruit roll ups the original ones of course. Yeah. Apricot, my favorite. My favorite are apricot. Love it. Love it. And the star seed you remember my favorite California dried apricot variety. Lemon blend, I was correct ding ding high acidity. Delicious. Sometimes they're too low in sugar. So they need to be kind of left with a little bit when I use them in in cooking or cocktails but they're the most good I love high acidity stuff and so like a high acidity dried fruit. Here's another good Nastasia I think this is an associate quote Nastasia what's the best peach? Do you remember? No, I don't the best peaches. I don't the best peaches or nectarines. That's what you said. I was like Zoey. Yeah. You want a peach but with less hair and more flavor. Go with a nectarine. Insulting all kinds of people right there. But I find it to be true. So what are you going to do? What are you gonna do about it? It's our show right now. So finally I'm getting to this Mizo spy Bezos question. And you all feel free to chime in this rant is going to take fundamentally forever right and then we're going to need their like rip through these other questions which are all obviously equally Do you have any you guys have anything else you want to get in edgewise before? Like, this question causes me to completely unhinged my jaw.

Oh, sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun. Get going?

Let's do it. All right. Okay. Measles by Bezos quoted a what's it called a a paragraph or two from a CNN opinion poll. What is day's take on this recent article excerpt? A food is ultra process if you can't make it in your home kitchen says Marion Nestle, author of over a dozen books on nutrition and food politics at 86. Nestle who retired in 2017 holds the title of Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition food studies and public health at New York University. It is a specific category of junk food that is industrially processed. It doesn't look anything like the foods from which it is derived, and usually has a lot of chemical additives of one kind or another. She explains these foods are industrially formulated to be irresistibly delicious, so you can't stop eating them. Alright, where do I begin? First of all, let me say that I have a lot of respect for Marion Nestle a lot, right she ran the Food Studies program. She was you know, kind of best known for her book food politics and she's done a lot of good crusading specifically around false labeling claims names and kind of the going back to another word we use earlier skullduggery that happens in, in the food industry. Having said that, I think that the this new concept which by the way, if you haven't already, how many of you guys have already heard this? This catchphrase Ultra processed foods? Yeah, yeah. It's going to start trending up and up and up and up, I'm just letting you know that it's gonna start trending up and up and up and up. It first started getting used in the literature around 2010 2012. Right. And it's gonna go up and up. And I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. It is, kind of it is. You know how Sylvester Graham, I'll get into that later, I'll get into sort of Instagram later, after I've explained some of this stuff. It is basically the newest scientific spackling over a whole bunch of kind of moralistic elitist attitudes towards the way people eat, and to wishing to change other people's dietary habits to fit what you think is healthy. And the term itself Ultra processed, if you look into kind of its derivation, is written in very moralistic terms. So I'll go back to one of the early papers, and 2012, Carlos Montero at all, wrote a paper called commentary, the food system Ultra processing, the big issue from nutrition, disease, health and well being this is in 2012. All right. And this was about I think he was, you know, in the original group, who is kind of coining this term as of ultra processed as being something that to look at. Alright, so from that article, our general theory is that the global food system, and specifically its increasing domination by processed food products, as specified and defined here is the big issue from nutrition, disease, health and well being. So right away, by the way, all of these papers are written by people with hardcore axes to grind by places who whose specific job it is to tell you how to eat and what is considered healthy and what is not. Right. So it's not that their data is necessarily wrong on account of that, but I already don't trust them. It's like when, when tobacco people tell you that tobacco is healthy, that is not trustworthy, if a tobacco person pays for a study, and then that says, tobacco is gonna kill you, all of a sudden, I start to trust it more, when people start writing things that are counter to what they want, I trust them more, it doesn't mean, just because they have an axe to grind, though, doesn't mean their data is wrong. I'm just gonna say that from that from the get go, right. Okay.

In the last, where is it? We begin here by explaining the history and development of the theory of ultra processed foods. And its context and our findings and thinking so far, we also outlined implications for the assessment of dietary patterns, development of dietary guidelines, promotion of good health, and well being and prevention and control of obesity and related chronic non communicable diseases. So right there, they're saying, there's something wrong, and we're going to tell you how to live already. I hate that. I already hate that. They then go on to notice this, the lead author is from Brazil. And he's and his point is, is that, you know, in Brazil, sometime in like the, in the 80s, Brazil started getting fatter, like the fat like like fatty fat Americans, and why what's different, because he's like, we're not eating the exact same thing that Americans are eating. And we don't have the same culture that Americans are eating, we used to think Americans were getting fat and having these problems just because they're bad people. I'm really paraphrasing. He didn't say any of that stuff. But he basically wanted to know why is it in what's considered, you know, a high but more middle income and not the United States or UK? Why are we starting to see increased rates of these kinds of metabolic what they call metabolic syndrome? Which is another thing for another day. But he's like the answer is ultra processed foods right. And Ultra processing as said above our specific thesis when our with our general theories that the principal dietary driver of pandemic overweight and obesity and related chronic non communicable diseases, forget how crappy all the data is on just using weight as a as an indicator of health, specifically, like corrected for your age and whatnot, like forget the fact that that data is trash and garbage, right. And it related, chronic non communicable diseases is what we identify as Ultra processed products. Well, edible and usually very palatable. These are not real foods, right? So here are the moral things. These are not real foods, right? They are fundamentally different from foods that have been processed, however, intensively in ways that modify or even transform the original unprocessed food. So already in the underpinnings of this quote, unquote scientific document and this is referenced and goes through all of the ones that are cohort studies which I don't want to have time to get into kind of why I think those things are necessarily are often trash cans studies, right? But you can already see the moral kind of underpinnings of what they're saying, right? So they're fundamentally different and somehow worse, ultra processed products are not made from foods they are made from ingredients. Some of these are derived from foods such as oils, fats, flour, starches and sugar, but many are obtained by the further processing of food constituents such as hydrogenated oils, hydrolyzed, proteins, starch, modified sugar, I don't even know what a starch modified sugar is. I don't think it's a thing starch, modified sugar, starch modified sugar, they add a starch to sugar, not a thing. Nothing and extruded or otherwise processed remnants of meat. Right, so the act of cutting meat up and putting it through a sausage grinder now makes it Ultra processed, right? In reality, they're anti salt as those salt is some sort of new thing right? numerically the great majority of the ingredients of ultra processed numerically are additives of any variety of types, which include preservative stabilizers, emulsifiers, solvents, binders, bulk or sweeteners, sensory enhancers, flavors and colors. The function of any of these is to make the product look smell, feel and taste like food. Bulk may come from era water, synthetic nitrogen micronutrients may be added to fortify the products. So what you have here is a scientific distillation of this kind of BS garbage, pollen trash, about how you're supposed to eat what your grandparents eat, as though your grandparents were freaking healthy. Right? Me My grandparents were quite healthy. But my great grandparents in amener my great great grandparents, they ate a crap ton a salt. They eat pork barrel stuff, you don't I mean, like literal like salted pork barrel stuff. So what they consider food or food and mentally minimally processed foods, stuff you do in the kitchen is okay, so fermentation and molting. As long as you don't make alcohol, alcohol is no good, right? These are ancient, and you can do them all at home. These are in quotes, quotes that they say interestingly, you can peel things so you're allowed to throw away all the nutrients from potato by peeling it, that's fine, you know what I mean? But it's still not Ultra processed as is backpacking and sterilization. For some reason sterilization is okay. Culinary ingredients are okay to use a little bit that's oils, fats, flour, sugar, and pasta, which is very hardcore extruded and made from semolina, which has almost none of the whole, you know, none of the brand, none of the germ left at All right, very highly tweaked out product, right? Those are all old technologies, you're allowed to use those carefully, right. And then processed foods like canned beans, you can use them spit sparingly, they're okay, because you can still recognize them as food. But really, you should be using dried beans, so already, and then stay away from anything that's been processed like sausage, and they group together a bunch of things that you could easily make at home, especially if you're doing it in the old days. And they literally have pictures in this in this article of like people sitting around a family freaking table and cooking things. And what they're saying is, is that if you have the privilege, to be able to spend the time to buy a bunch of dried beans, and whole meats, and chop them up and cook them and enjoy them around the table with your family, that you're going to be healthier. Rah rah, rah, right. It's just a real like labeling of this elitist trash that I hear all the time. And I guarantee you that what's going to happen instead is this term is going to be co opted by big companies because you know who's out to make money, food companies, and you know what people don't have time to do cook a bunch of dried beans and whole meats from scratch every day. So maybe look at that as maybe look at the fact that people have to do other things to make a living now and we can't all sit around and cook dried pulses, and whole grains are all day and do nothing else. And to label breakfast cereals, which were the original health foods, they sometimes they'll say, oh, sugared breakfast cereals are bad. I gotta tell you. Some breakfast cereals are basically the least processed things you can do you take wheat, you shove it in a roller pot, it comes out the other end as raisin brand. End of story. Now, they might add flavorings to it, but it's basically a whole whole foods. So they're labeling things. They're putting a moral label on it, and it really ticks me off. I really don't enjoy it. Is that clear? And and going back to Sylvester Graham Sylvester Graham in the early 1800s wrote a book about bread where he basically said the reason society sucks is because we buy bread from Baker's those evil sons of baker's right are ruining us. We have to have the mother cooking bread at home. Otherwise it's not going to be good because it's the love and the fact that she makes it that is what makes you healthy. And there's this newfangled sifting that we use with our flour and these bakers that they bake it when you're not there, they can't make a wholesome bread and this is basically newfangled Graham ism, it's Graham ism and under a different guise and I hate it. Okay, that makes any sense. Yeah. So now it was a couple of weeks mizos until I could get to it but there you have it. Zach from Pittsburgh, I've trained my mouth to handle pretty much any spicy food from capsaicin. Different story from my gut, though, do I need to just work on it longer should I accept that I'm getting old and shouldn't and should stay away from anything above five out of 10? A lot depends on how much other stuff is in your gut with it. I think like, you know, eating a lot of spicy stuff on an empty stomach is going to kind of rip it up. But I've noticed that my stomach maybe hurts a little more as I'm getting older. Any of you guys noticed this with spicy foods, where it said that again? So he's having trouble being like, unfortunately, yeah, his mouth can take it, but it kind of burns in the in the stomach a little bit. I never had any problems on the actual amount, and I have no exit problems with capsulation. You know, I'm saying, like, I've gotten no fire on the outside. You know what I mean? But it does hurt my stomach more, but I think I relate