1403: Restaurant Food | Skeptical Sunday

On Skeptical Sunday, Jessica Wynn explains why your mozzarella sticks taste the same everywhere — and how to find restaurants that still really cook. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Jessica Wynn https://jessicawynn.substack.com/! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1403 https://jordanharbinger.com/1403 On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: How two distributors, Sysco and US Foods, supply more than a quarter of what Americans eat when dining out — and why their 400,000-product catalog means the sports bar, the bistro, and the Mexican place may serve identical mozzarella sticks, lava cakes, and pre-seared steaks. Why chains like Cracker Barrel, Applebee’s, and Olive Garden rely so heavily on frozen, pre-made, and microwaved dishes, and how ghost kitchens and restaurant groups like Darden turn one shared supply chain into a dozen seemingly distinct brands. What menu buzzwords like farm-to-table, artisanal, and locally sourced really mean (legally, often nothing), how menu engineering steers diners toward high-margin items, and why most franchisees can’t swap in better local ingredients even if they want to. How consolidation costs more than money — feeding ultra-processed diets, nationwide recalls that hit thousands of restaurants at once, hidden allergen risks, vanishing regional food traditions, and kitchens where trained cooks are reduced to setting timers. How to eat out smarter: ask “Is this made here?”, order simple dishes like grilled chicken or poached eggs, favor small menus with specific descriptions and changing specials, and reward scratch kitchens with your business and reviews that mention the cooking. Connect with Jordan on Twitter https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jordanharbinger, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/THEJORDANHARBINGERSHOW. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] and let him know! Connect with Jessica Wynn at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamjessicawynn/ (and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/NeverMetJessicas!), and subscribe to her newsletters: Between the Lines https://jessicawynn.substack.com/ and Where the Shadows Linger https://storiesbywynn.substack.com/! And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: Sequencing: 10% off: sequencing.com, code JHS https://sequencing.com/CookUnity: 50% off first week: cookunity.com/jordan or code JORDAN https://www.cookunity.com/jordanThe Cybersecurity Tapes: Listen here: thecybersecuritytapes.com https://thecybersecuritytapes.com/FlyKitt: 15% off: flykitt.com, code JORDAN https://www.fount.bio/flykittSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:00Speaker 01

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today, I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Jessica Nguyen. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday. A rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as astrology, acupuncture, recycling, GMOs, toothpaste, self-help cults, and more. And if you're new to the show, or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest

• 2:03Speaker 02

  our episode Starter Packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now, today, we're talking about restaurant food. You ever notice you can order mozzarella sticks at a neighborhood sports bar, and a month later, you order them at a completely different restaurant, three states away, and somehow, they're exactly the freaking same? Same breading, same marinara, marinara, whatever you call it. Some, you East Coasters. Some, it's got the same molten cheese that strips the roof off of your mouth like a chemical peel. And then, you notice, it's not just the mozzarella sticks.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  The spinach dip tastes familiar, the fries, the chicken Alfredo, the cheesecake, entire menus, kind of feel weirdly interchangeable, even at restaurants with different owners, different cuisines, different themes, completely different prices. So are any of these restaurants actually cooking, or are they all just serving the same frozen foods? Where does restaurant food even come from? To help us digest all this, I'm joined by writer and researcher Jessica Nguyen. So Jess, let's cut right to it. Is all restaurant food basically identical? Because sometimes, it really seems that way.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  It does seem like it. Not all of it, though, but a lot more of it than people realize. So, modern restaurant food distribution revolves around two enormous companies. Cisco and its smaller competitor, U.S. Foods. Together, they supply more than a quarter of everything Americans eat when they dine out.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  A quarter, wow. So that's why their trucks, I mean, you see those trucks everywhere. You drive on the highway, there's like five.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  So, yes, with the flashes on, because they're passing each other at five miles an hour going up a hill. So a quarter of every restaurant meal in America starts with these two companies? That's crazy.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, at the very least. And even that understates their influence, because thousands of smaller distributors act as like middlemen, selling the exact same products from the exact same manufacturers.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  So even when it's not Cisco, it might be Cisco-adjacent?

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Often, yes. So the Italian restaurant, the barbecue joint, the upscale bistro, and the casual chain are often serving items ordered from the same catalog. Different plating, different prices, different lighting, but underneath it, the same food.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Okay, but why should I care? Because mozzarella sticks having twins in Nebraska, it's a fun trivia fact, but is this a real problem? I mean, who cares?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you should care, because when a handful of companies control what America eats when it eats out, it affects your health, what you pay for, and whether the small farm down the road has anywhere left to sell its food.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, this stops being a mozzarella stick story pretty fast.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, very fast.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  And when you said you order food at a restaurant, dinner may be coming from a catalog? So the food's all listed in a book?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Yes. Cisco's catalog offers more than 400,000 products to kitchens across the country.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Wow, it's a big book, 400,000. So choosing a restaurant is less about the food and more about the story they're wrapping around the meal?

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And they sell everything, from raw ingredients to fully-prepared meals that only need to be reheated. Frozen lasagna, pre-portioned steaks, pre-scrambled eggs in cartons, caramelized onions in bags, pre-made desserts. If you can imagine a restaurant serving it, Cisco sells it ready to heat.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Pre-scrambled eggs, though, in a carton? Come on, do we need that?

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of breakfast places don't crack eggs for scrambled dishes anymore. They pour in a liquid egg mixture from a carton that's already blended and ready to cook.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  That feels spiritually incorrect. Does that not affect the taste? It's kind of strange.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  I mean, of course, it does. But it's faster, it's cheaper, it's consistent, and there's no waste from shells or unused product.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  I see. Well, okay, caramelized onions are also surprising. Caramelizing onions is like onions plus a little bit of heat and some patience.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Right. But patience is expensive. Properly caramelizing onions can take, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. Or a line cook can open a bag and heat them in a few minutes. So Cisco sells them already caramelized. You just heat them up. In a restaurant kitchen, time is money.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Oh, man. What else comes pre-made that will genuinely ruin people's day?

• 6:32Speaker 03

  So much. I guess, you know, there's pre-portioned burger patties with the seasoning already mixed in, pre-seasoned shrimp grill-ready with, you know, the seasoning already on it. There's pre-marinated chicken, instant mashed potatoes, just add hot water, lots of pre-made gravies, soup bases, sauce bases, and steaks that arrive pre-portioned and already marked like they were on a grill.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Wait a minute. This steak arrives with fake grill marks, just what painted on there? That's ridiculous.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of the time, yeah. I mean, they're technically real grill marks. They just weren't made on the restaurant's grill where you're eating.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Ah, okay, that's a little bit better. Yeah. They're not like sprayed on there with a machine. That would creep me out.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Steak tattoos.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  But they're from an industrial grill. So the steak is cut, portioned, and seared at a huge processing facility. The restaurant heats it, plates it, and those impressive-looking marks are essentially, you know, set dressing, just theater.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Steak theater. So my steaks are giving a performance. And multiple restaurants could be serving the steak with identical grill marks that are down to the millimeter, the exact same.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. And they are. I mean, Cisco sells pre-portioned, pre-seared steaks to different restaurants, and then the restaurants sell them under different names at different prices.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Okay, so let me make sure I understand what Cisco does. This is the Amazon, but for restaurants, everything restaurant?

• 8:01Speaker 03

  More or less. I mean, they are an enormous logistics company with incredible distribution. Their strength is variety, consistency, and expediency. So they deliver the next day to most restaurants in America.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and because the catalog is so large and the delivery network is so efficient, restaurants that appear completely unrelated can all be shopping from the same catalog pages.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  So the Italian place and the Mexican place downtown, serving the same appetizers? I have noticed that before. I always thought that was kind of bizarre.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, very likely. The mozzarella sticks, the onion rings, the chicken tenders, the wings, tons of restaurants buy the same frozen versions from the Cisco catalog. So a Mexican restaurant adds those kind of things for picky eaters.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  An Italian place adds them for families, a sports bar makes them, you know, their main attraction. They just have like a different font.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yes, that's wild. What else crosses cuisines like that?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  So much, but desserts are probably the clearest example. So only a handful of companies manufacture a huge share of restaurant desserts. You have Sara Lee, Rich's, and Cisco's own brand. So that molten lava chocolate cake served at thousands of restaurants, it's the same product.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Okay, I've seen that. We've all seen that.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. And the cheesecakes and those skillet cookie desserts.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  They just picked the same product number from the catalog.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Basically, if you get it for free on your birthday, it's from the Cisco catalog. Have you noticed that? Those are the ones they always give you on your birthday. So when I order dessert, I'm basically choosing from a shared national dessert menu.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much, yes. And many restaurants don't even rename the items creatively anymore. You know, you'll see chocolate lava cake on menu after menu, because that's literally what it's called in the Cisco catalog. Sara Lee supplies frozen cheesecakes to more than 30,000 restaurants, and Rich's products makes those molten lava cakes from more than 40,000 locations. But you get all that through Cisco. So when you order dessert, a massive portion comes from a very small group of manufacturers supplying the entire industry, you know, maybe five companies, tops.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Wow. Why would restaurants do this instead of making desserts from scratch? Wouldn't they want to stand out from their competitors? And I assume the answer, again, is just time.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  It's time. It's labor, equipment, skill, consistency. From a restaurant's perspective, why would you make lava cakes from scratch? You would need a pastry chef who knows what they're doing, enough kitchen space, specialized equipment, and perfect timing during service. Or you can buy them frozen for around $2 each, microwave them for 45 seconds, and sell them for $10.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  But wouldn't a homemade one just taste so much better?

• 10:59Speaker 03

  But customers can't tell the difference.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  You know what? You're damn right about that. I guess the frozen ones come out perfect every time, too.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's what restaurants value. Customers say they want craftsmanship, but restaurants survive on consistency, not craft. So if the frozen dessert tastes good, costs less, and almost never fails, making it from scratch becomes a financial risk. So I've seen restaurants buy frozen crab cakes for about $1.50 each, serve two for $14.99. They're making a 400% markup just for reheating them. And those like loaded potato skins, they cost-

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Love those.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, everybody does. And they cost maybe 75 cents per serving, and they get sold for about $9.99.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  The labor, it's just a couple minutes of microwave time.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  When I was a kid, I used to eat, I mean, I haven't had loaded potato skins in 25 years, but I think when I was a kid, I loved those. I would order those-

• 11:54Speaker 03

  And you feel so adult, like, I'm getting a loaded potato skin.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  It's a loaded potato skin, and potatoes are a vegetable, if you grew up in Michigan. It's not just mindless starch with sour cream and fake bacon dumped on it. Remember Baco's? Do you remember those fake bacon bits?

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, bacon bits, yes.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, fake bacon bits, though. Baco's. Jay Leno, I believe, was the spokesman for that, which is hilarious to think about.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, that's a blast from the past. I do remember that.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  You're talking about Baco's. He's like, oh, low in cholesterol, right? The Jay Leno pitch.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  That's good casting. He's the perfect celebrity for that.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  He is the perfect guy for that. He was also the Doritos guy, if you remember. That was, he was the Doritos guy for a long time.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  He was the Doritos guy and the Baco's guy, which is funny, because now he's like an international, massive, household name.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Right, we gotta get you a-

• 12:44Speaker 02

  I gotta get a Baco's deal.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, Baco's deal.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  What's 2026 Baco's? What are fake bacon bits in 2026, right?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I don't know. The Funyun, what are those like fried onion things that come in the can?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I mean, maybe we're switching gears. Maybe I need to be like the Ozempic guy, right?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Oh, please don't.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  I think, I think we're out of like fake replacements for things that we think were bad for, like, because bacon had fat in it. So now we have Baco's, which is like sawdust with flavor sprayed on it, right? And then they had Crisco, and they're like, it's not really fat, right? But it does the same stuff as fat.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh, yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And they had Pam, the fake butter spray that you would spray on, which I think was just kind of like trans fat.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Oh, right, and the oleo stuff that gave everybody diarrhea.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yes, 1,000%. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about here on the show.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  I hope people write in saying what you would be the perfect face for.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Oh, please, write in with what I would be the perfect face for. Which product? And it has to be a real product, right? Don't give me like a fake, made up one. And don't, yeah, I'm open to parodies, too. Like, should I be the new Oil of Olay guy? I feel like I could get away with that. I'm-

• 13:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, they'd be good billboards, sure.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Anyway, okay, the whole reheating loaded potato skins in the microwave thing, that suddenly explains why every frozen food commercial says, "Restaurant quality." Because actually, of course, a frozen food or delivery meal is restaurant quality. It's literally restaurant food. It's probably from the exact same place. It's just in a package that says something else on it when it arrives at your house versus when you order it from TGI Fridays or whatever.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Right, the Cisco catalogs have restaurant pages and food store pages. So probably it is just exactly, it's in a different box.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Because I'm thinking about my sponsors, right? I shouldn't throw these guys under the bus, so I won't mention names, because I don't have any evidence of any of this. But I would imagine a lot of these like, oh, we mail you the food that you then heat up at home, and it's healthy. You know those meal services?

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Why can't they just buy from Cisco and put it in a plastic tray, portioned out, and then resell it for $15?

• 14:47Speaker 03

  That's why it's so expensive, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and deliver it and be like, hey, high protein meal is delivered to your door. It's still a service. I'm still buying them. They're tasty, and they're portioned, and they have, you know, the flavor profile's good, and the macros are good. So there's the value. But I bet you those are also like $2.95 raw ingredients from the Cisco catalog.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're paying for the convenience.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  When we go to restaurants, you know, we want to think cooks are back there making a perfect mirepoix.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 15:14Speaker 03

  That's a basic soup base. So it's 50% onion, 25% carrot, 25% celery. That's sort of the base of every stock, right?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  But nobody's making that anymore unless you're at a very high-end restaurant. And most restaurant soup is not made from that. It arrives in sealed bags from these distributors. So you heat the bag, you cut it open, and you pour it out. I mean, I can see this, too, in the supermarkets, these little restaurant tricks. They've trickled into the frozen food section, right? Now you can, there's microwavable bags of vegetables and things like that. I mean, there's so many preservatives in those things. It's crazy.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  That is upsettingly efficient.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  I do see what you mean.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, sauces work like that, too. You know, there's an entire industry making sauce bases for every cuisine. General Tso's, creamy sauces and gravies. Thousands of restaurants buy these giant containers of shelf-stabilized bases. Maybe they customize them, but they all start with a manufactured foundation.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  So General Child's Chicken, I can't say it so, I mean, it probably, it depends if it's, this is nerdville, but it depends on whether you use a Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, I think. So General Child's Chicken tastes the same everywhere, because to some extent, it is actually the same everywhere.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Largely, yes. I mean, different restaurants might tweak it slightly, like, one restaurant may add more garlic, another might add some chili flakes, but they're all starting from the same base.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Nothing says homestyle cooking like Grandma lovingly setting the microwave for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. We'll be right back.

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• 19:29Speaker 02

  This does explain something that's bothered me for years. I'll eat at an Italian restaurant. Then, a week later, I'm somewhere serving American comfort food, and I swear, I taste the same ingredients. And I'm, like, I thought I was hallucinating a flavor conspiracy or like, oh, it's just the thyme or whatever that you're tasting.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Right, what's wrong with my palate? Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's wrong with my palate? How come I can only taste one thing? No, it's actually probably the same curly fries frozen in a bag that are being reheated at the American place and then that come, I don't know, or that's in like the rice, and the rice is the same, or like, the guacamole is the same, whatever.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  You're on point. Like, the shredded cheese at that Italian place, or the Mexican restaurant, the pizza joint, they're most likely identical.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  So the pre-cooked grilled chicken strips, they're the same for every restaurant, but they become a pasta dish at one, fajitas at another, and thrown in a salad at a third. The coleslaw can show up beside barbecue and then appear on a pulled pork sandwich at a gastropub. So you think you're eating broadly across the culinary spectrum.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  But you're often just, you know, rearranging these foods, and the ingredients are kind of, you know, changing costumes.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  This is the illusion of choice at its finest, right? Served with your choice of dipping sauce.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  I mean, it really is, yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  All right, let's name names. Cracker Barrel, for instance, the entire brand is homestyle cooking from Grandma's Kitchen down in Texas or whatever. Comfort food, rocking chairs, emotional support biscuits, right? What's really going on here?

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Cracker Barrel is a fascinating example because the entire- Higher brand is built around this made from scratch comfort food nostalgia. The rocking chairs you mentioned, the antiques, old timey general store aesthetic. It's designed to feel like someone's mother has been cooking since sunrise.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  But mom and grandma are shopping wholesale from Costco.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Most of their food arrives frozen or pre-made. Even their famous meatloaf arrives in frozen distributor boxes. So according to employees, almost nothing is made on site. The only proprietary Cracker Barrel items are the pancake mix, syrup and biscuit mix.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  The biscuit mix, they don't even make biscuits from scratch. I thought that was their thing.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, they just add water to a prepared mix.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Biscuits are literally flour, butter and butter milk. That's 2.5 ingredients, really. If you're going to be technical, how hard is it to make biscuits?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it's not about whether biscuits are difficult to make. It's about labor and consistency. So if every Cracker Barrel location makes biscuits from scratch, some batches will be better than others. Corporate doesn't want a transcendent biscuit in Tennessee and a hockey puck in Cracker Barrel in Ohio. They just want every biscuit to be identical.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, they got hockey pucks everywhere. So they've industrialized comfort food itself. Wow.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, they've industrialized the comfort too, right? I mean, and financially it works. Customers keep returning for the homestyle experience, even when much of the food is industrially produced. So people nearly rioted over the Cracker Barrel logo change earlier this year, right? Imagine giving them regional variations in meatloaf.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Okay, well, now I'm afraid to ask, but what about Applebee's? This one's got to be on the same scale.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, well, Applebee's kitchens reportedly have microwaves at every station in the kitchen. So former employees have posted photos and videos all over social media showing laminated charts with heating times for their dishes. Bourbon Street Chicken, 2 minutes, 45 seconds. Chicken Alfredo, 3 minutes, 15 seconds. There's no cooking instructions, it's just timer instructions.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  So they have a menu for the microwave?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, they've optimized microwaving into a science, you know?

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Sounds like it.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  They created a system where reheating is dialed in to the second. And that allows them to train kitchen staff quickly and produce the same dish at every location. Almost anyone can work the line with very minimal training. So when you consider the turnaround at a lot of these places, it starts to add up.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  I'm actually surprised Cisco doesn't sell them a microwave that scans a QR code and heats the product without even typing in the time. Like, welcome back Bourbon Street Chicken, nice to reheat you again. I mean, that would even be faster, right? You just like scan it, throw it in and shut the door and it turns on. They still have a grill in there somewhere, though, right?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  They do grill some things, sure. But a surprising amount of the menu is precooked and reheated. The riblets are precooked, then microwaved and finished on the grill just for char marks. Pasta dishes are thawed and reheated. That Bourbon Street Chicken and shrimp arrives already prepared. And Applebee's isn't unique. So there's a viral video from an Olive Garden employee showing the Tour of Italy, which is their signature platter with lasagna, chicken parmigiana and fettuccine Alfredo, arriving in plastic bags and being microwaved according to precise instructions.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Wow, well, the Tour of Italy lasts 35 seconds in the microwave. Got it.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we're paying for it, you know? The comments on these videos are really interesting, too. So half the people are horrified. The other half are saying things like, yeah, you know, I worked there. This is all true, or this is definitely how it works.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I'm not shocked. Olive Garden reheats things. I guess I'm shocked whenever somebody who's not a sophomore in college treats it like it's fine dining.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, their pasta dishes use a lot of prepared components. Even the famous breadsticks arrive as frozen dough sticks from Cisco that are thawed, baked and finished at the restaurant.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  By the way, I'm not trying to sound like a snob. I come by it naturally. I'm not trying to sound like an elitist for the Olive Garden. I love me some breadsticks. I remember going there mostly in college, because it was one right near campus, and just eating like seven baskets of breadsticks, because what's a calorie, right? And going on dates that lasted like three hours and be like, can we get a little more of this? And they're just like, get out of my section.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  This is what you could be the spokesperson for, breadsticks.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Oh, just the breadsticks only.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Just breadsticks in general, yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Got carbs?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Got carbs. I'm the got carbs guy. Uh, I'm not so sure that's a compliment. Okay, so they thaw, bake and finish the breadsticks at the restaurant. They do cook something. There is fire. Yay. There we go.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Sure, they bake dough somebody else made.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Ah, dare I ask about the beloved Cheesecake Factory?

• 26:06Speaker 03

  This one's more complicated. So the Cheesecake Factory actually does more cooking on site than any of the large chains.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  I'm a little surprised to hear that. One, I love me some Cheesecake Factory, don't get me wrong. But they have like a 39-page menu with a table of contents. And their meals contain enough calories for the whole weekend, let alone the meal you're in. But I'm surprised they cook any of that on site with all of those choices. There's just, they gotta have some big ass freezers back there.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, their menu is absurdly large with over 250 items, which actually forces them to do more prep work in-house. Because they couldn't possibly store 250 complete frozen entrees. But the menu is also so enormous that they can't possibly prepare every component from scratch every day either. The scale itself requires industrial products and overlapping ingredients.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  So the menu is both evidence for the defense and exhibit A for the prosecution. That's funny. So should a giant menu always make me suspicious?

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Yes, very suspicious. If a modestly sized restaurant offers 50 or 60 unrelated dishes, there's no realistic way a small kitchen can make every sauce, soup, appetizer, dessert and entree from scratch each day. The larger and more diverse the menu, the more likely it relies on frozen or pre-made components. Oh, and those cheesecakes at the Cheesecake Factory aren't made at any Cheesecake Factory.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  The cheesecakes at the Cheesecake Factory aren't made at the Cheesecake Factory. I guess it would make sense that there's a real cheesecake factory, but it's a huge complex somewhere else and their restaurants are kind of like showrooms?

• 27:46Speaker 03

  You're not far off. The cheesecakes are produced at an actual factory.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  A cheesecake factory, factory in California.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  And shipped frozen to the restaurants.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  So the name is accurate, we'll give them that. We've just all been visiting the gift shop, not the actual Cheesecake Factory, just the dealership. What a world. Okay, chain restaurants are chains, no surprise. What about independent restaurants?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  So independent restaurants have more freedom to choose their suppliers and decide what they cook, but they tend to operate on much tighter margins. Many do use Cisco, US Foods or other broadline distributors for at least part of the menu, because it's affordable, reliable and available year round. The question isn't if they use Cisco, it's how much they use Cisco.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Right, buying flour and cooking with it is just different from reheating frozen lasagna. But how can you tell?

• 28:42Speaker 03

  We'll start with the size of the menu, like we said. You know, if a small local restaurant serves dozens of dishes across several cuisines, a lot of that food is almost certainly pre-made. Then look at how dishes are described. Classic lasagna tells you almost nothing. Bolognese lasagna with house-made ricotta and pasta rolled each morning, that makes a specific claim the restaurant can be held to.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  So specificity is a green flag?

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, usually. I mean, restaurants doing the extra work tend to tell you, because that work costs money. Look for details about technique, ingredients, farms or preparation. You know, they're proud of it, so they tell you about it. Also, watch whether the menu changes. If a restaurant claims to cook seasonally, but the vegetable selection doesn't change from January to July, the seasons may be coming from the freezer aisle.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Okay, what about daily specials? That's, is that a good sign, maybe?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  I mean, a genuinely changing special can be a great sign. Daily specials often mean the chef is working with an ingredient that arrived that morning or needs to be used while it's fresh. Fresh catch of the day is usually real. Tuesday is meatloaf day. That probably means they're rotating through frozen inventory.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  So specials can be either good or bad signs?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. You have to read between the lines. Real specials change based on availability. Fake specials are just scheduled rotation of frozen items.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  What about bakeries that don't actually bake? That's a thing I've noticed as well. You walk into a cafe, there's tons of baked goods, but there's no evidence of baking equipment. There's no smells like you would expect in a real bakery.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  This is one of my favorites, so. A Cisco driver posted delivering pre-made cheesecakes to a bakery that had all these "fresh baked" signage, but they had no oven.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Right. Well, technically, it's fresh baked, but just not by us. So a bakery with no oven is like a library with no books.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's a storefront that sells baked goods. The bakery part is pure branding. And it's not even unusual. It's most common in grocery store bakery departments.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Sure, that makes sense.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, products arrive frozen, or they're partially prepared. Employees thaw them, bake them, maybe decorate them, and then place them under a sign that says "fresh."

• 31:01Speaker 02

  So the fresh baked cookies I buy might not be baked on premises at all?

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Probably not. The cookie may have been baked there, but the dough was manufactured somewhere else, or the entire product may simply have been just thawed there after Cisco or US Foods dropped it off.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Man, let me ask you about something that drove me crazy during COVID. I'd scroll through delivery apps, right? I'd try a bunch of supposedly different restaurants in different parts of town, and the food, or at least I thought, and the food would taste related. I mean, similar packaging, same timing, the bags are the same, like, the way it's stapled is the same. The receipt printer is the same. And I know this because I'd leave the bag maybe by the door and get the food out and forget it. And then the next day I had it or something, and I'd leave it on the kitchen island. I'd be like, I gotta throw away all these bags from different restaurants. And they're all alike, right? Just the same white bag, the same everything. And I was like, wait a minute, all these flavors, there's too many things that are alike.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  You discovered ghost kitchens.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  So what is a ghost kitchen?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  It's a commercial kitchen operating multiple restaurant brands out of the same facility. So you have Tony's Italian Kitchen next to Dragon Express, Burger Heaven, and Taco Fiesta, or whatever. You know, they are probably all operating from the same kitchen with the same cooks, using the same Cisco ingredients, just rearranged into different cuisines. So ghost kitchens don't have brick and mortar restaurants. Only delivery drivers can access them.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  I see. That seems like fraud somehow.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's not technically fraud.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  If you order chicken parmigiana and receive chicken parmigiana, they technically delivered what you purchased. What they didn't tell you is that Tony's Italian Kitchen is a brand name, not an actual Italian restaurant with an Italian chef named Tony. You can never go there. You know, in fact, that same quote-unquote chef probably made the pad Thai you ordered yesterday.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  So it's just a dropdown menu of restaurants. How common are these places? I feel like there's a zillion of those around here, actually.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, they exploded rapidly during the pandemic. There's companies like Reef Technology and Cloud Kitchens that developed facilities where one kitchen could operate numerous delivery-only brands. So a single ghost kitchen location might appear on a delivery app as 10, 15, or 20 different restaurants. I toured one of these places. They are impressively organized and incredibly efficient and completely bereft of any kind of personality, you know? It feels less like visiting a kitchen and more like watching a fulfillment center just assemble lunch.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wow. So on a delivery app, you're not really choosing between restaurants. You're choosing between brands and logos or whatever.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. One kitchen can operate a dozen different restaurant brands or more. You might Uber Eats Italian one night, Thai the next, but never realize both meals came from the same address.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Wow. Okay, multiple cuisines, one loading dock.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's the model, yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  And then above ghost kitchens, there are restaurant groups. I know some companies own multiple supposedly distinct restaurant brands, right? I don't know if that matters.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. The biggest example is Darden Restaurant Group. So Darden owns Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, and Bahama Breeze. They also own the Capital Grill, all these other brands, too. They all have different decor, different menus, different price points, but they benefit from the same corporate purchasing power and centralized supplier relationships because they all source from the same Darden commissaries and suppliers.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  I think it's weird that it's called Cheddar's Scratch.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  It's really weird, yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's an aggressive use of the word "scratch" if it's all frozen stuff.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty silly marketing. But Cheddar's does prepare certain items in-house, but it still operates within a major corporate restaurant system with centralized purchasing. You know, they have approved products and standardized procedures.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Man, this whole episode is reminding me of in Breaking Bad when they find out that the German food company is connected to the meth thing.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  And the guy is the CEO or whatever is like taste-testing different nugget sauces and just there's no reaction because he knows he's about to kill himself, right? I don't know why that came up, but yeah, this whole thing just seems so corporate. All right, so I could spend 15 bucks at Olive Garden, or 50 bucks at the Capital Grill, and I'm supporting the same corporate octopus, maybe even getting some of the same stuff with like a different garnish, and all the foods, it's just coming from the same supplier.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  The preparation might not be identical, but the businesses are related and the supply chain heavily overlaps. So the Capital Grill does more skilled preparation and higher-end finishing, but the backend supply chain is the same. Same parent company, same bulk purchasing from Cisco and US Foods.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  The illusion of choice. The dining room changes more dramatically than the food.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Completely. Most people have no idea how connected all these restaurants are. And it's not an accident that two companies got this big. So in 2015, Cisco tried to buy US Foods outright, but the FTC sued to stop the merger, arguing the combined company would control roughly three-quarters of the food service distribution market. And a federal judge agreed and blocked the deal. Cisco eventually walked away.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  A federal judge basically looked at this and ruled that this industry has a monopoly problem, or would potentially have a monopoly problem.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Basically, yeah. I mean, the judge said the merger would likely reduce competition, cause higher prices, provide fewer choices, and worse service. So not just for restaurants, but hospitals, schools, basically anybody buying food in bulk, stadiums, you know?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  This is what the concentrated end of an industry looks like. The judge was right to stop the merger, just based on the minimal facts we have right in front of us.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, they didn't merge, but they're still the two biggest players. So that gives them enormous influence over prices, what's in the catalogs, and whether a small food producer ever gets in front of restaurant buyers.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Okay, what about franchises, then? Can an individual franchise owner decide to source better ingredients if they want? Like, if they decide to buy bread from an actual bakery on their block instead of ordering bread from Cisco, is that allowed? Probably not, right?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Usually not, no. I mean, franchise agreements commonly require owners to purchase specific products from approved suppliers. That's how the parent company ensures a sandwich in Texas tastes like the same sandwich in Indiana.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  So even if a Subway franchise owner found incredible, undeniable, local bread, they can't use it?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  They legally can't.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  I see.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are able to ask permission, but using an unapproved product violates the franchise agreement. So corporate controls the recipes, specifications, and suppliers because the entire business model depends on uniformity. Franchises want consistency across all locations, and they often get kickbacks or deals from the suppliers. You know, it's profitable for everyone except the customer who might want something better.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  So the owner owns the store, but not the recipe. So even franchisees have their hands tied, even if they actually wanted to serve better food and had the ability to do so, they're gonna get smacked down from corporate?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, completely. I mean, some owners are primarily interested in operating the business model.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Others may want to improve ingredients or source locally, but a franchise isn't designed to encourage individual culinary expression. It's designed to reproduce a system.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  This makes me wonder about the farm-to-table movement. That's supposed to be the escape hatch here, right? Does that phrase even mean anything?

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Sometimes it does. Sometimes it absolutely does not. The Tampa Bay Times investigated restaurants making farm-to-table claims and found businesses purchasing from Cisco and other ordinary distributor food while naming local farms on their menus. So when reporters contacted some of those farms, the farmers said they had never supplied the restaurants.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Okay, well, that is actual fraud, I believe. That is a crime, or a tort, at least.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  It should be, it seems like, but "farm-to-table" isn't a legally defined term.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Ah, okay.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  So restaurants can say it without it meaning anything. "Locally sourced" can mean the local Cisco warehouse. So a restaurant can use these terms very, very loosely.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Apparently, "farm-to-table" sometimes means the farm is in a warehouse off the interstate. And now, a word from companies actually willing to tell you what they're selling. We'll be right back.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. Cybersecurity threats keep evolving, but is your business prepared for what comes next? October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an opportunity to look beyond day-to-day security operations and ask bigger questions about how your organization protects its data, its infrastructure, and its ability to keep doing business. The Cybersecurity Tapes brings these questions to life, blending fictional cyberattacks with practical perspectives from real experts to make complex security challenges easier to understand. As AI moves from models to autonomous agents, securing it requires careful consideration from the start. Explore how securing AI agents, sovereign AI, and AI governance fit into that effort and how AI itself can help strengthen cybersecurity.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Effective protection also means connecting security operations to measurable business outcomes. How do you talk to your board about cybersecurity? And how can those conversations help leaders understand whether the business is truly protected? When an attack happens, resilience becomes essential. It's not just about safeguarding data, it's about ensuring the infrastructure your business depends on can recover quickly and keep running. And as quantum computing advances, preparing for tomorrow's threats means understanding the risks today, prioritizing readiness, and building defenses that can adapt as encryption requirements change. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, tune into what's next. Visit dell.com/cybersecuritymonth to learn how to protect your business and subscribe to the Cybersecurity Tapes to explore the threats, strategies, and ideas shaping cybersecurity.

• 41:27Speaker 02

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• 42:10Speaker 02

  It just takes the guesswork out of managing jet lag and helps you adjust so you can actually arrive feeling more like yourself. When you've traveled halfway around the world, you don't want to lose the first few days to jet lag and be zombified the first week of your trip. That's why FlyKit is part of our international travel routine. Also, it helps you get back to work after your trip. But yeah, that's not as fun. Go to flykitwith2ts.com and use code JORDAN for 15% off. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. All of the deals and discounts and ways to support the podcast are on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Well, this podcast, by the way, folks, farm-to-table, locally sourced, because it's downloaded from a server somewhere in your area.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Doesn't matter where it's produced. I mean, that's ridiculous, right? That analogy is actually so apt because it means nothing, so I can say it. And then also locally sourced, well, okay, I'm producing this in San Jose, California, but if you're downloading it from a local server in Germany, well, it's locally sourced, that's the source. Ridiculous, yeah, organic. Well, that's got to have an actual definition. So that's local in the same way my Amazon package is handmade by the person who left it on my porch. I guess as long as they don't claim to be buying from specific farms, maybe they can skirt that. I mean, obviously, everyone, including myself, hates this.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's not just a marketing annoyance. I mean, every dollar a restaurant spends at a Cisco warehouse instead of an actual local farm is a dollar that leaves the local economy instead of circulating through it. And it cuts the other way, too. Restaurants are often a small farm's best customer because a restaurant will pay more for quality and consistency than a commodity grain buyer will. So when restaurants default to the distributor instead, small farms lose their best buyers. Some of them fail or sell out, and that just feeds the same consolidation further up the chain.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  So skipping the farmer's market for the Cisco truck doesn't just mean fake local marketing, it actually helps kill the real local farms. Wow, I didn't think about that.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, it's shocking. And the fake version and the real version are competing for the same restaurant. And right now, the fake version is winning.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Wow, so farm-to-table, more of a philosophy than a literal description. I had no idea.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, nobody's regulating the marketing language. Organic is regulated.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Farm-to-table is just vibes.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  What happens when a restaurant gets caught lying about being farm-to-table? Those are some bad Yelp reviews, come on.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's usually it, though, just bad press. The restaurant may remove the farm names, soften the language, but they usually continue operating. Unless it made a specific fraudulent claim that regulators or a customer can act on, the consequences are limited.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  I would think customers would revolt once they found out they were being sold a bucket of lies, but whatever.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  I know, I mean, some do. Others decide, ah, the food tastes good, and they move on. There was a famous case of a high-end restaurant in New York that claimed everything was from small local farms. Investigative journalists found they were ordering thousands of dollars of Cisco products weekly. So they changed their menu language, and that was it, they moved on. A lot of customers didn't even care. You know, they just didn't understand what that means. And people don't want to feel foolish for believing a lie. So cognitive dissonance, it's really powerful.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  After I read the draft for this episode, some of the notes, I went to Tahoe, this was a while ago because we've been working on this for a hot minute, but I went in and I ordered pretty mediocre breakfast food. You know, it was like, oh, an omelet, and it's that like light yellow egg thing that's folded over. And I was like, this just looks like Cisco nonsense, right? And so the next day, we went in and I said, what is made here? And she goes, oh, so not the hash browns, but the home fries are. And if you get the omelet, it's from a carton, but if you get regular eggs done a certain way, then those are obviously cracked here. You know, so I was like, all right, instead of an omelet with hash browns, I'll have poached

• 46:19Speaker 02

  eggs and I think it was like corned beef hash or something like that, and home fries. And she's like, great. And it was a million times better because that was the food that they actually made at the restaurant. And I thought, wow, this is the life hack right here. Is this made here? What is made here?

• 46:35Speaker 03

  You're lucky that you got a server who could answer you, though.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Who even knew what was made here? Yeah, no kidding.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  But is this made here is a perfectly reasonable question. So restaurants that cook from scratch, they're just super proud to answer that. Restaurants that get weirdly evasive usually aren't, you know?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  When I get to a restaurant, what should make me skeptical that they have anything fresh or cooked from scratch?

• 46:58Speaker 03

  A menu that's trying too hard is a good clue. If everything they make is artisanal or craft or hand-selected, I mean, those words have almost no legal meaning, it's just marketing.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  So you're paying for adjectives, I see.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Sometimes. And if you look at a menu and think, why is that here? Pay attention to that feeling. A restaurant usually adds Cisco's bestsellers because they're easy to keep in the freezer and they're easy to sell.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  I see, why is that here? So like mozzarella sticks at a Mexican restaurant, which may not surprise you if you're from Michigan like me, but if you go to Mexico, there's not a whole lot of those being handed out at the taquerias, I suppose.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Right, but the Mexican restaurant wants to appeal to kids and adult picky eaters, you know?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yes, true. So menu items are not just inventory, it's not a chef's personality. I've heard the term "menu engineering." What is that? That sounds kind of sinister. Is that when they put like a box around something because it's more expensive?

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I mean, it kind of is. So menu engineering, it's the science of making the customer spend more money.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  It works on me really well, by the way, all this stuff.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  It works on me, too.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, put something in a well, in a graphic design.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  This is in red font, and it's got a box around it, so it must be special.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  It's a little more expensive.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  My wife looks at me like, dude, it's in a box. And I'm like, yeah, for a reason. And she's like, and I know that I'm being played, right? I know the margin is just higher on whatever that thing is, so they want to sell more of it, and it's like $3 more than everything else. But like, my brother-in-law's the same way, and he'll be like, it says grandma's famous, whatever. And I'm like, speaking of terms that have no meaning whatsoever, grandma's famous.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  I'm all in, yeah, I'm a sucker for that stuff, too.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  That's why it's got a box, a red box around it.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  There's consultants who specialize in this, and they analyze food costs and labor and profit margins for every item, and then they tell restaurants exactly what to feature in those boxes, how to describe it, where exactly to put it on the menu, and what price the public will tolerate paying.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  So somebody's job is literally convincing diners that Uncle Bob's signature handcrafted artisan meatballs sounds like it's worth 19 bucks.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Essentially, yeah. I mean, the upper right corners of menus get the most attention. That's prime real estate for high-profit items.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  It's a lot of boxes in the upper right corners.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of boxes up there. Dishes with long flowery descriptions increase perceived value.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  That's where you see those words, like artisanal, locally sourced, or signature. They make people willing to pay more, even though they don't actually tell you anything.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  So artisanal could just mean somebody lovingly microwaved it.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Legally, yes. A restaurant can call anything artisanal, craft, or handpicked. You know, it's all marketing language with no legal meaning. Like, think about Budweiser. I think all of a sudden, after the craft beer explosion, they started using that word, right?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. I'm going to this restaurant today. Night that's a Korean fusion and they cook everything there. And the menu is different because it's, first of all, they change the menu every month. You're watching them cook everything. You can see what they're doing. It's kind of like hoity-toity kind of place. And we've gone there every month for over a year and like know the whole crew. Their menu is interesting because it'll say like the brand of strawberries, where they got the, like the farmer's market where they get it. And you can ask questions like, what does this mean? And they're like, oh, that's the vendor. That's the name of the farm. We have to go to the farmer's market on Saturday and we found all these really good ones. So we added them this week, but we might print the menu next week without it.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  And they're so proud of that. I mean, restaurants that have paper menus that are going to get trashed at the end of service, that's a great indication that they are making everything from scratch.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  And they want to highlight the community and yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  This place that I go to, you're right. They have to get rid of the menus because like next week, they might not have Nantucket brand strawberries because they might not be able to get them.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Right, so it's like now the dessert doesn't have that. It's got some cherries on it from Traverse City, Michigan, or whatever it is to add a slightly different flavor. Yeah, okay. So anyway, the whole craft, handpicked artisanal stuff being just marketing language with no meaning is a little depressing. So do you think regional food culture is kind of dying out because of this? Because if everybody's just ordering from the same place in California or Kentucky, then we're all eating the same stuff.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely dying. Regional food exists because generation of cooks developed techniques and recipes tied to a place. So standardized supply chains replace those with products designed to taste the same everywhere.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Do you know of something that we have lost for sure because of the standardization?

• 51:43Speaker 03

  There's tons of things, but I think the best example, barbecue. So real barbecue takes time, 14, sometimes 16 hours in the smoker. Then a chain opens across the street, reheats pre-cooked meat in 20 minutes, charges $2 less than the family barbecue that's been around for 50 years, all while using a bottle of Memphis-style sauce from Cisco or US Foods.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and most people just think like, okay, this is barbecue now, right?

• 52:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And over time, the shortcut becomes the expectation. And that's how regional food starts disappearing. I just listened to a really incredible interview with Chef Asma Khan, who, she's on that show Chef's Table. She's an Indian chef who works out of the UK. And she will only make things from scratch. She also only puts women in her kitchen. And she just has this incredible philosophy of like foods more about what we taste. It's identity, it's history, it's, you know, it's about humanity and the stories of our ancestors. And so we're losing all of that by fusing everything into one catalog, you know?

• 52:57Speaker 02

  So she fixes it with sexism? Got it.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  She's not a fan?

• 53:02Speaker 03

  She's really against the whole like machismo yelling in the kitchen thing.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  Her interview is really great. I mean, if anybody wants to listen further, like check out her books and stuff. She's my kind of philosopher about food, for sure.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  The Jacques Cousteau of the cooking world.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  So all right, so we're not just standardizing restaurants. We're standardizing taste, which is not good.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's the real loss. So local restaurants close, regional chains get bought out and homogenized. And what replaces them are restaurants serving standardized products from the same national distributors. So we're losing something irreplaceable, the diversity of American food culture built over generations.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  What about food safety? When there are food recalls, now a ton of restaurants are going to get hit at once, right? Because if everybody's got the same supplier.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think today we can all come up with an example pretty quickly, right?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  But every year, there's like a romaine lettuce E. coli recall.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  And then suddenly Panera, Chipotle, Wendy's, even Trader Joe's, you know, completely different restaurants and food stores all have to pull salads simultaneously.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  And it reveals that they all source from the same suppliers. When one link in the consolidated supply chain fails, everyone fails at once.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  So the consolidation creates systemic risk.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are only a handful of major produce suppliers, a few giant meat processors and a few massive dairy distributors. When something goes wrong, it doesn't stay local. It can hit thousands of restaurants at the same time. You know, the consolidation goes all the way up the food chain.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  That is not bad luck. That is bad design.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  A resilient food system has lots of independent supply lines. If one fails, one restaurant has a really bad week. But a consolidated system has a few giant supply lines everybody depends on. And when one of those breaks, everybody feels it. It's the difference between, you know, a neighborhood with backup generators for each house and a neighborhood with just one giant power plant.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  So we basically built restaurant food to all fail at once, which does happen sometimes, right?

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, more than people realize. I mean, take produce. So every few years, we hear about a nationwide lettuce recall. This year, we have the cyclospora. Some other organism comes up every few years that sounds like a transformer or something, but it gives you explosive diarrhea.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  And it's not because every restaurant suddenly forgot how to wash lettuce. They're often just buying from the same suppliers.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Which is why Taco Bell from coast to coast served infected lettuce this summer, or whatever it was. So if restaurants don't make a lot of this food, how confident should somebody with a serious allergy be when they ask their server what's in certain dishes? I mean, it's like, we don't even know, maybe.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  So terrifying. It's a real danger. So distributors like Cisco, they provide ingredient lists, but they're long and complicated. And servers can't memorize ingredients for 50 menu items.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  Cross-contamination can happen at the processing facility that the restaurant doesn't know about. You know, there have been cases of allergic reactions because restaurants assured people something was safe, but didn't actually know what was in the pre-made components.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Right, so people with serious allergies really need to be extra careful, it sounds like.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Very careful, especially at chains. Always asked to see written ingredient lists. I mean, then it's like embarrassing. You don't want to be a pain, but don't trust verbal assurances. There was a case a few years ago where someone with a severe peanut allergy asked about desserts at a chain restaurant. The server assured them the chocolate cake was peanut-free. Turns out, it was a frozen Sara Lee cake made in a facility that also processes peanuts. And so it had trace amounts. The person had an allergic reaction, they had to use an EpiPen. The restaurant didn't know because the catalog didn't mention the facility also processes peanuts.

• 57:10Speaker 02

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• 57:53Speaker 02

  Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  So let's talk about what this has done to people who work in restaurants. What about line cooks who went to culinary school? I mean, now you're just what, microwaving stuff? That sucks.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this is depressing. So you have people who went to culinary school, they racked up the debt, they learned actual cooking techniques. And then they get hired at a chain restaurant and their job is opening bags and pressing microwave buttons.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, soul-crushing, super boring.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  Right, it's one reason there's such a high turnover in restaurants, you know, around 75% annually.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Ugh.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  So people who genuinely love cooking don't stay at places where they're not allowed to cook. They leave the industry entirely, or they fight to get into one of the few remaining restaurants that actually cook.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  So we're losing culinary talent, surprise, surprise.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're losing an entire generation of cooks. And the traditional career path was culinary school, work your way up in restaurant kitchens, eventually become a chef. But if most restaurants don't actually cook, you know, where do you learn?

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Right, high-end restaurants, but there's only so many jobs, I guess.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Right, and those are increasingly the only places where people are still learning to cook professionally, but there aren't enough of them and they're incredibly competitive. So at the same time, culinary schools have been closing at an alarming rate because fewer people see a future in the profession. So you've got fewer places teaching people to cook and fewer restaurants letting them cook once they graduate.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  And everyone else is just, they just be microwaving.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Or leaving the industry, you know? There's been a massive exodus of talent from professional cooking because the job isn't what people thought it would be. A chef who graduates from, say, the Culinary Institute of America, gets hired at a mid-range chain and quits after three months because they spent two years learning how to make mother sauces and now their job is just setting timers. You know, it's a really common story.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, instead of paying tuition, you should just get a job at a fast food joint, I guess. But it wasn't always like this, right?

• 59:59Speaker 03

  No, no, it wasn't. And in the 1970s and 80s, most restaurants did significantly more cooking onsite, but several things changed. So restaurant chains went public and private equity got involved, creating pressure to maximize profits. Labor costs are the biggest controllable expense, so they eliminated the need for skilled cooks.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  So they de-skilled the entire profession to save money. I guess that shouldn't surprise me.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. If your kitchen staff just has to reheat and plate, you can pay them less and train them faster. Employee turnover is brutal in restaurants. Teaching someone to microwave and plate, that just takes a couple of days, right? Teaching someone to actually cook, that takes months or years.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And it worked financially, I assume, yeah?

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Well, it worked brilliantly. Chains like TGI Fridays pioneered this model in the 1990s and saw profits increase dramatically when they shifted to centralized prep and reheating at scale.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the food got worse. And you didn't even think that could happen at TGI Fridays.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  I think they're closed now, aren't they?

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  I have no idea, actually.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  Or at least they've shut down a lot of locations. But the food got more consistent at places like that, which corporate values more than quality. So every location serving identical food means no location fails because of bad cooking. It also means no location really excels either, but that's acceptable to corporate.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  By the way, I just looked this up. They have 380 locations in 35 countries, 72 locations in the US. I bet you there used to be at least a zero after that before, because I feel like every place had a TGI Fridays. Every airport had one, malls had them.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Oh, they were everywhere. Office Space, that was the restaurant that it was based on.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Jennifer Aniston worked.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  The last time I saw one was in Taiwan.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wonder what the story is there. I didn't look it up.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. You're right, because that used to just be everywhere. That and like Bennigan's or whatever.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Bennigan's, right. All those places with all the tchotchkes and stuff on the wall.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Okay, anyway, so there are other factors too going on here, right?

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  Sure, yep. Food costs have risen dramatically. Waste is expensive. You know, if you buy fresh ingredients and don't use them, you lose money. So pre-made frozen food has a much longer shelf life and you can keep it in the freezer for months. Say a restaurant makes their own meatloaf from scratch. They'd waste about 15% to 20% of ingredients because of trimming, spoilage, overordering. When they switched to frozen, pre-made meatloaf from Cisco, waste drops to essentially zero. They could save about 200 bucks a week or more on waste alone, plus eliminate hours of daily prep labor. So from a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer. And Cisco offers volume discounts. A chain ordering 10,000 frozen lasagnas

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  gets a better price than a single restaurant buying ingredients for, you know, 100 lasagnas.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they scaled back the business by shrinking the cooking.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  And from Cisco's perspective, they're providing a valuable service.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, of course.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Restaurants get reliable products, consistent quality and next-day delivery. Cisco has some of the most sophisticated logistics in the world. You know, a Cisco driver was interviewed and said he delivered to a farm-to-table restaurant in the morning, then to an Applebee's in the afternoon, and the orders were the same frozen entrees, the same desserts, just different quantities. You know, he said drivers know which restaurants are lying about their sourcing because they see what's on the truck. Some drivers have stories about delivering to multiple competing restaurants on the same street, same products, just different logos.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  I wonder if COVID made this worse.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Well, COVID accelerated everything. So restaurants cut costs to survive, which meant more frozen food, more pre-made items, fewer staff. And here's what they learned. Customers accepted lower quality if it meant their favorite restaurant survived.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  So we basically enabled them to make food worse.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, essentially. I mean, people were so grateful restaurants stayed open that they didn't complain when quality dropped noticeably. Restaurants realized they could serve cheaper, more processed food, and customers would still come. Many never raised quality back up after COVID ended. So labor costs have increased dramatically since COVID. If you can serve cheaper food and customers don't leave, that's the smart business decision.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Oh, man, that's depressing.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, COVID was essentially a massive test of what restaurants could get away with. The answer was a lot. So it gave restaurants cover to, you know, cut quality and many just never restored it.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Okay, but if I love mozzarella sticks, shouldn't I just embrace this? And if they're the same everywhere, at least I know what I'm getting.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  Honestly, that's not the worst strategy. No offense, but I would look into why you love mozzarella sticks.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't, but if I'm drinking, maybe.

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  If your goal is predictable comfort food over health and taste, that's exactly what these products are designed to deliver. The bigger issue is when you're paying three times as much because you think you're getting something unique, fresh or house-made at the yard house, and you're not.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. Okay, so we need to stop pretending one restaurant has better mozzarella sticks or steak than another in most cases.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, and if you're looking for the biggest repeat offenders, those molten lava cakes, the skillet desserts, the cheesecakes, they're usually the same everywhere. Boneless wings, which, when they come from Cisco, aren't wings at all. They're chicken nuggets in, like, denial, you know?

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Right, chicken nuggets in denial, yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Riblets in chain restaurant pasta are probably the same product from kitchen to kitchen. Soups from these distributors are poured out of the bags, the quesadillas, the pot stickers, the crab cakes, even at seafood restaurants.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Basically, any appetizer that seems universal across different restaurant types and price points is the same ultra-processed product devoid of any whole food.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's super annoying.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  I mean, it kind of is. Before we get to what's safe, I guess, to eat from a health perspective, this isn't just about paying 8 bucks for mozzarella sticks at a chain or $18 at the hipster gastropub for the same product. A lot of these foods fall into a category nutrition researchers call ultra-processed food. We've talked about this on other episodes, and this isn't some, you know, wellness jargon. Large studies following hundreds of thousands of people over decades consistently find that people who eat more ultra-processed foods have higher rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, and overall mortality.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Yikes. Okay, so not only are you possibly slash pretty much getting ripped off, you're ordering up bad health.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the deception is kind of the funny part, but the health consequences are the part that's actually worth paying attention to.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  All right, enough doom. What can I safely order without feeling betrayed that's going to maybe be made there somewhat better quality?

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  At a lot of places, burgers are usually grilled to order. Salads are usually assembled fresh, though ingredients might be pre-washed and pre-cut. Steaks are real, even if they come from the Cisco factory. Eggs, like you pointed out at the place you went to, they're real unless they're scrambled. That usually comes from a carton. So order your eggs, you know, over medium or poached or whatever. And simple items are more likely to be real. A grilled chicken breast is probably actual chicken grilled in the local restaurant's kitchen, while chicken marsala with sauce, that's probably a Cisco frozen entree.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  So simplicity equals authenticity, maybe?

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  Generally, yes. The more components a dish has, the more likely something came from a Cisco box.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Should restaurants have to disclose this stuff? It seems like the public should know what they're paying for.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you would think that would be nice if we knew what we were paying for.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Not in America, but France does this. So since 2015, French law requires restaurants to mark dishes made from fresh ingredients versus frozen or prepared items. They use a small icon on the menu.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  And does it work?

• 1:08:26Speaker 03

  Beautifully. French consumers have real information to make choices, and restaurants cooking from scratch proudly display those symbols.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Why don't we have this in America?

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  The National Restaurant Association would fight it tooth and nail. If Olive Garden had to put an asterisk next to every Cisco reheated dish, their menu would look like a pharmaceutical ads' side effects list, right? It would be devastating for business.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Is there any hope? Is there a counter movement to this stuff at all, or what?

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  I mean, there is. More restaurants are advertising, Scratch Kitchen specifically, because it's rare enough to be a selling point now. Places proudly say handmade pasta or house-made desserts because they know customers who care will pay for it.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  Is it working? I feel like unless I'm just not at home and starving, maybe I should only go to places that actually make food. But maybe that's, I don't know. Is that a weird? That sounds weird coming out of my mouth, but like, most of these places don't even make food, so why should I go there? I should just go to the grocery store and buy food.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  I mean, it's working for some restaurants. You know, these places charge more and can't compete on price with chains using Cisco. But there's a growing market of people willing to pay for food that's cooked onsite instead of assembled from industrially-prepared components.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  So the simple answer we keep coming back to is just asking restaurants if a dish is made by them from scratch.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  You can also Google a restaurant name plus Cisco and see what comes up. You know, read reviews that specifically mention freshness and ingredient quality. There are too many restaurants. Restaurants to eat at, ones that get angry about reasonable questions when it comes to your food.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  All right, so where do you eat when you go out?

• 1:10:07Speaker 03

  I actually don't really eat out too much. And if I do, I support small, independent restaurants where I can see the kitchen. That's my favorite, when I can see the kitchen and talk to the owner. And I'll ask questions. I order things that are hard to fake, you know, dishes requiring actual skill to make. When I'm forced to eat at a chain, I know exactly what I'm getting. Convenient, affordable, reheated Cisco food. And that's fine, as long as I'm honest with myself about it. But I often end up leaving hungry and going home and, you know, chopping up some broccoli.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Sure. So the key is honesty with ourselves and demanding it from restaurants where we can.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, knowing this doesn't mean you have to stop eating at restaurants. It just means you can make informed choices. If you're eating at a chain and you want convenience and predictability, go ahead. Just know what you're getting.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  And if I want to support real cooking, what do I do then?

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  I mean, like we said, you know, seek out the restaurants that advertise scratch cooking. They might buy produce, meat, or flour from Cisco like everyone else, but they're turning those ingredients into something instead of reheating finished products. So pay a little more when you can. Leave reviews that mention the cooking, not just the service. And be patient. Real cooking takes longer, and dishes may vary a little from one visit to the next. That's actually a good sign.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  The inconsistency is a feature, not a bug.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  I mean, real cooking isn't perfect. It's human. Frozen reheated food is industrial, which serves a purpose, but that purpose isn't culinary excellence. It's efficiency and profit.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Should I be mad at restaurants for doing this? I feel a little ticked off that I've been duped like this for two decades or however long.

• 1:11:50Speaker 03

  I mean, we've all been duped like this, right? But, you know, you can be frustrated with the lack of transparency, but remember, most restaurants are barely surviving. They're not making huge profits. They're just trying to stay in business in an industry where profit margins are just 3% to 5%. There's rising labor costs, expensive real estate, food inflation, and customer expectations for cheap, fast, consistent meals that all pushes restaurants toward this model. This is why you see a lot of food trucks popping up, too.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, there are a ton of food trucks around here. Why? Because you don't have to worry about real estate and it's a small operation, so there's maybe two people running it, kind of thing?

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's all costs. Yeah.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, huh. Rage against the machine, I guess.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, be mad at the system, but also recognize that we, the customers, created the system by prioritizing cheap and fast food over good and real and whole foods. So we're complicit. We chose this through our purchasing decisions, through deregulation, and through allowing massive consolidation in the food industry.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Fair enough. Just because something comes out on a sizzling skillet doesn't mean it started there. You're not just choosing between restaurants, you're choosing between convenience and craftsmanship. Sometimes those are the same thing. A lot of times, they are not. And the more you know about what's happening behind the kitchen door, the easier it is to decide which one you actually want. Thanks for thawing this out for us, Jess, and thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, [email protected]. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her multiple Substacks, Between the Lines and Where Shadows Linger. We'll link to those in the show notes.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Her work is also on Instagram, at NeverMetJessica's. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Todd Isidlouskas, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked, so consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Your body fights microscopic cancers before you know they're there, but what happens when its defenses slip? Here's a preview with Dr. William Lee.

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  I'm a researcher as well as a physician, so being a doctor and a scientist gives me an unusual lens. It turns out, the actual new biology of cancer, we're actually forming cancers in our bodies all the time. The fact of the matter is, is our bodies are made of about 40 trillion cells. Those are the building blocks of our body. These cells have to copy themselves over and over and over again over the course of our lives. 40 trillion cells copying and pasting each other. Do they make an error? And the answer is yes. That's how we understand cancers can actually form. So they sit there abnormally until our immune system wings by, finds them, and then knocks them out. And that's actually the key.

• 1:15:15Speaker 05

  Most of this stuff gets taken out by our body's health defenses, meaning that when our defenses are working well, these kinds of things are going to get taken out. We're not going to be worried about them. And so our health is a result of our body's defenses firing on all cylinders from the day we're born until our very last breath. Having your shields down is really the problem. The diagnosis of cancer is still a big deal, but we are beginning now to see the end of cancer with treatments that are actually able to take very advanced cancers and literally dry erase them. The developments are happening so fast now, I never thought in my career I would see stage four cancer going to stage zero, and it's happening.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  To hear which foods can help and which health trends could backfire, check out episode 1357 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Dr. William Lee.