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JEREMY:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Eat This podcast with me, 
Jeremy Cherfas.

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I've been reading a really interesting book called Real Food Real 
Facts,

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subtitled Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge.

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It's by Charlotte Biltekoff, a professor at the University of 
California,

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Davis. Now, UC Davis is really big in industrial agriculture and food 
science.

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So you might expect the book to put that point of view.

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It doesn't, because Charlotte Biltekoff spends half her time in 
American Studies and half her time in Food Science and Technology.

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And her book is an effort to bridge the gap between what food science 
thinks of the American people and what American people think of food

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science.

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CHARLOTTE:
I was really struggling to understand what was going on around me.

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Um, you know, in the sort of mid like, 
say around 20 14, 2015.

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I just felt that I was immersed in this really confusing landscape, 
where on the one hand,

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a lot of people I knew were concerned about processed food and trying 
to avoid processed food,

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preferring real or natural food. Right.

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That that was pretty normal in my milieu.

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And then in my other life, my work life and my sort of professional 
relationships in food science and in the food industry,

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I heard a lot of people saying that those views were misinformed and 
based in irrational fears.

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And ultimately, I decided that what I was really seeing was a contest 
between two different ways of thinking about the same thing:

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processed food. And that on the one hand, 
we had this, what I call the real food frame,

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which is an articulation of public concerns about what's in processed 
food,

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its effects on health, its relationship to the environment and overall 
sense that it's like a troubled product of a troubled food system.

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All of that comes together to make this real food frame.

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And then, on the other hand, we have this other completely different 
way of thinking about the problem,

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a point of view in which the problem isn't processed food itself, 
but consumers' misinformed ideas about it.

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Misperceptions, lack of scientific literacy, 
and an assumption that those can be corrected,

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right, with better education and facts and that kind of thing.

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So I call that the real facts frame.

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And so the book really tries to make sense of the sort of friction 
between these two very different ways of thinking about the same

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thing.

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JEREMY:
You talk about a kind of a deficit model that the food industry thinks 
that the public has.

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Well, actually not just one, but lots of deficits and that's what's 
getting in the way.

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CHARLOTTE:
Yeah. So looking at, you know, the food industry, 
communication with the public,

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and food industry communication with itself, 
food industry magazines and other ways in which the food industry

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talks to itself. I realized that there was this really pervasive 
assumption that public concerns about really food

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technologies and the food system at all -- 
but I focused on processing technologies,

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and processed food -- came from like, 
not understanding the science, not understanding the benefits of the

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science, not understanding what science is and does.

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And its, you know, beautiful imperfections.

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And being emotional. There's a lot of language about consumers use ...

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Being driven by emotions rather than being rational.

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This all of this just really echoes a long standing assumption among 
experts that skepticism or hesitancy around science and

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technology is driven by knowledge deficits or trust deficits.

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Social scientists have long argued that that's not the case.

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Not that we don't have deficits. Like, 
nobody understands all of this perfectly.

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Scientists themselves have plenty of knowledge deficits in their 
fields even,

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let alone others. But the argument here is that that's not what drives 
the ...

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That's not the main driver of any kind of like, 
you know, overarching skepticism or hesitancy around the uses of

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technology. So, yes, deficits exist, 
but no, they don't explain widespread public concerns about certain

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technologies, such as food processing.

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JEREMY:
And addressing the deficits doesn't have any impact either.

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All that they do is tell us how safe it is and and the benefits.

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And people still don't trust them or want the products.

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CHARLOTTE:
Right. It doesn't work because it misdiagnoses the problem.

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And in fact, I would argue that it leads to greater mistrust and 
alienation because it is such a misdiagnosis of the problem.

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Right. My argument really is that ...

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Also really building on long standing social science arguments about 
like public concerns about technology.

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A) they're not anti science and B) they're not based in deficits, 
but rather they're about big important questions like in the case of

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processing like to what ends like what are the aims and the purposes 
and the values that the kind of technologies we're developing and

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deploying serve. Those are big, important questions.

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Who gets to decide the kinds of questions we ask, 
the technologies we develop,

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and towards what end? Who gets to decide what's safe and who 
regulates?

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And it's about power dynamics, and it's about big questions about the 
aims and trajectory of the food system.

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But the the discourse, both among experts and in popular discourse, 
really focuses on this question of risk.

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You know, this assumption that, like, 
the public is just concerned about their own safety or their, you

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know, pocketbooks. A nd again, it's a misunderstanding of the public.

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And it just leads to more alienation.

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JEREMY:
But now one of the interesting responses by the food industry was this 
Center for Food Integrity ,

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and they kind of tried quite hard to change the nature of the 
discussion,

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saying that, "no, no, no, you know, 
you've got it all wrong.

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food industry, you need to be more transparent.

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You need to understand what people are ...".

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Did it have any impact?

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CHARLOTTE:
Well, that's a good question. S o the Center for Food Integrity comes 
along,

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and they say this facts forward approach to communicating with the 
public is not working.

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We need a new approach. And here it is.

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H ere's our trust model. Trust depends more on, 
you know, a sense of confidence and shared values rather than on,

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you know, facts and expertise. So let's shift how we're doing this and 
connect through transparency and a sense of shared values.

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So what I learned from really looking carefully with the Center for 
Food Integrity is doing in terms of trying to retrain the food

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industry and how they're communicating with the public, 
is that it is a new approach,

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like it's values focused. They're bringing in multiple stakeholders.

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They're opening, you know, the conversation to include, 
you know, that values matter,

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that people ... a little more empathy, 
right, for where the public is coming from,

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rather than just dismissing them as a bunch of irrational, 
like, misguided,

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you know, ignorant publics. Right? But ultimately with the same kind 
of dynamics in terms of like,

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well, we know best, we've already decided what the outcome of our 
communication should be,

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which is that we need to convince you to accept these technologies so 
you can,

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can and will consume them. With that being the end point, 
you know.

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Yes, fiddling around with what the communication looks like and 
looking for trusted communicators,

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you see a lot of female scientists reassuring the public that they 
also care about sustainability in the environment,

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you know. So yeah, it looks and sounds different, 
but the endpoint is still predetermined.

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And behind it all is still the assumption that the public has some 
kind of deficit.

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There's a little bit of a different kind of deficit. It's like, 
yeah, their thinking is really shaped by like their relationships and

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their psychology and these social factors.

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So a little less dismissive, but it still is really deficit driven.

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And there's a lot of that real facts frame still in there.

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JEREMY:
And the impression you get is still that, 
we determine what questions we're going to answer

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And we keep answering the questions we want to answer.

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The fact that you're not asking those questions becomes kind of lost 
in the mix somehow.

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CHARLOTTE:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, in a way, you're describing the paradox of 
transparency,

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right? This idea that, you know, transparency is kind of now almost 
taken for granted as like how you need to communicate around these

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technologies. B ut transparency can only be paradoxical, 
right?

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It promises to reveal everything, but it can't possibly reveal 
everything ,

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so it reveals something. And again, 
the communicators decide what's included within,

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you know, in the .. within the frame, 
so to speak, of transparency.

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A very narrow set of questions, like you said, 
leaves out all the big questions about the power dynamics that shape

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that conversation. And those are the ones that the book is really 
trying to point to.

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JEREMY:
One of the one of the interesting distinctions you make in the book is 
between,

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trade lobbying groups who you kind of expect to put an industry point 
of view --

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I mean, that's their purpose -- and front groups.

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And I think the Center for Food Integrity is a front group, 
which is essentially it looks like a disinterested

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party, but it isn't. Can you expand on that?

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CHARLOTTE:
Yeah. So one of the the helpful ways of thinking about the difference 
between a trade association and what

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critics would call a front group is in the name.

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That's like a great way to think about it. Like they're ...

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The book looks at hundreds of trade associations.

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And so this would be something like the Corn Refiners Association or 
the Sugar Association.

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Dairy Foods Association. Frozen Foods Association, 
Snack Foods.

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They tell you what they are, and they tell you what they're about. But 
something like the Center for Food Integrity in the name.

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Right? It just, it's very ... It doesn't tell you anything about whose 
interests it serves.

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And in the case of the Center for Food Integrity, 
they explicitly state that they don't lobby on behalf of any

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particular food company, which is true because they're, 
in a sense, because their role is to represent interests across many

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different sectors of the food industry.

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When it comes to the question of communication with the public, 
the Center for Food Integrity is unique in that most of what they do

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is facing the food industry. So they have webinars and workshops and 
training sessions and conferences and reports,

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all of which are meant to help the industry better understand the the 
public and how to communicate with them.

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They develop, you know, seven -step transparency model and an engaged 
training system for literally how to have conversations with people

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about controversial topics. Right. They also have a have a public 
facing website.

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I believe it's called Best Food Facts and that is public facing.

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And it says, you know, we gather the best expert experts in the field 
to answer your questions about food and health,

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basically. And it does present as extremely neutral and science driven 
,

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which is how ... So largely how the food industry represents itself as 
science driven,

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evidence based, really deploying science as a sort of a way of 
claiming objectivity and neutrality in a

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situation where that's really not the case.

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They're not objective or neutral, they're using science in their own 
interests.

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JEREMY:
But coming back to the real food thing, 
we've said that industry doesn't understand what is really driving the

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real food approach. It seems to be very much a question of anxiety and 
fear,

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and in some respects the real food people stoke that fear.

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So they, they are also working on emotions.

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They're working on people's deficit, 
if you like, of comfort with industrial food.

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There is a problem there, don't you think?

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CHARLOTTE:
Certainly. I mean, real food as a frame.

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Similarly, the same is true for real ...

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the real facts frame the way I use it.

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It's extremely general and generalizing.

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And both of these things include a lot, 
a lot of variation, a lot of perspectives,

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voices, actions, behaviors. So it's a gross generalization.

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Very useful nonetheless, but important to acknowledge that.

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A nd so you're pointing to a piece of this, 
right, that is important to talk about.

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So yes, I think that's true. There's deficit thinking on both sides.

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There's a lot of, you know ... The whole concept of like lifting the 
veil.

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So, you know, if they only knew, you know, 
if people only knew where their food came from,

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they would be more responsible. They would make better choices. We 
could change the food system by voting with our forks. That's like the

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fundamental thing of the food movement, 
right?

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That is like a deficit model in a sense.

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Right?

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JEREMY:
Yeah.

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CHARLOTTE:
B ut it, you know, it's a deficit model in the interest of getting 
people to engage as active participants in shaping the

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food system. Very different from a deficit model on the real facts 
frame,

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being used in a purely commercial sense to prepare people to accept 
technologies and be passive consumers.

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That's what I'm trying to do for real food is to get past the yes, 
afraid of ingredients we can't pronounce.

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We've heard over and over again that that's what the public's really 
afraid of, right?

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Ingredients they can't pronounce. Great. So that that gets everybody 
engaged and teaching people not to be afraid of ingredients they can't

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pronounce. There's a hundred examples I can give you of people trying 
to do that.

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But I'm really trying to say, look, 
the reason why people are concerned about ingredients they can't

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pronounce, etc., when it comes to processed food, 
is because of a confluence of historical factors that change the way

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we think about good food starting in the early 21st century.

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We have, you know, a sociocultural way of thinking about, 
what the so-called obesity epidemic.

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We have a whole host of new environmental concerns and sustainability 
concerns related to food production.

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And a confluence of those two things.

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We have an explosion of technologies, 
lax regulation, increasing concern about risks from technologies.

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All of these things converge, and increasing awareness of how the food 
industry manipulates the informational environment by funding science,

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etc. All of these converge on the idea that the answer is to eat less 
processed food or avoid processed food.

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So it comes from these like really legitimate concerns about the food 
industry and the food system that all come together

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to say you should try not to eat processed food.

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And then, yes, in the grocery store, 
that can look like I'm not buying this because it has more than five

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ingredients. But taking a step back, 
zooming out, that's what I'm really trying to do.

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JEREMY:
Yeah, I mean, the five ingredient thing is interesting as a diversion 
because all it really did along with unpronounceable ingredients is it

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kind of gave manufacturers a new target.

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Can we make this with four ingredients.

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Can we can we make those unpronounceable chemicals that we're putting 
in,

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can we make those pronounceable? I mean, 
it moves the goalposts, but the game remains the same.

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CHARLOTTE:
Absolutely. It was very fascinating.

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One of the things that I did was read hundreds of articles in the food 
industry press,

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and that includes advertisements, the food industry, 
business to business advertising.

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And I just watched the whole, you know, 
opportunity explode, the opportunity right,

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being to to make these same products somehow.

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Right. Because the public still wants their food to taste good and 
have the right texture and be shelf stable,

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but also ingredients we can pronounce, 
right.

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So all these ingredients companies went into overdrive, 
coming up with new ingredients that that could have the same function

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but be called something different, 
right.

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So instead of modified food starch, 
now we have corn starch.

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And it sounds less modified, right?

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And so, but that ... You know, amplify that times a thousand like it 
was a boom in product development

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especially ingredient development to meet these supposed needs, 
you know.

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JEREMY:
Mhm. Um, let's talk about natural.

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CHARLOTTE:
Um, let's talk about natural.

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JEREMY:
It's one of the crucial identifiers for quote, 
real food unquote is that it's natural,

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but that doesn't actually mean anything.

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And in the US, the FDA monitors these things.

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They had a big hearing to decide what natural meant.

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O n the one hand, look, natural means not tampered with.

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Natural means stuff you can do yourself if you like.

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So, A) what was the point of the hearing?

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And B), was there an outcome? What was the outcome?

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CHARLOTTE:
Yeah. So natural, all natural claims are ...

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Became, in the wake of these changes and our ideas about good food, 
natural claims just became extremely lucrative,

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natural and all natural just was. It was a huge boom in in product 
development and marketing.

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But it was squishy. It was on unstable ground because the FDA didn't 
have a clear definition and didn't regulate the use of the term very

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strictly. And so there were a series of class action lawsuits accusing 
companies of labeling things natural when in

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fact their ingredients didn't comport with what the public would 
expect from something called natural.

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And so as a result of this, like the food industry actually started 
lobbying the FDA to to better regulate.

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Yeah. And the initial request, one of the initial petitions that set 
the whole thing in motion was from this big trade association called

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at the time, Grocery Manufacturers Association.

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And their petition asks the FDA to regulate natural in a way that it 
would include ingredients produced through biotechnology.

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That was what they wanted. The Consumers Union, 
which publishes Consumer Report,

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which ... you know, also wrote a petition very much arguing for a more 
narrow definition of natural.

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So it was a result of all this that the FDA opened a public comment 
period in 2014 -15.

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They never did go to a hearing, but they did collect over 7000 
comments,

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which I analyzed for that chapter of the book.

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A nd the arguments for what natural should mean were all over the 
place.

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In general, the industry was claiming that their ideas about what it 
should mean were evidence based and science based,

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but they were all over the map. Every argument you could imagine, 
you know,

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different companies were making so that the language would include 
their products because it was so lucrative.

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Right. A nd then you have the public and their representatives like 
Consumers Union,

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arguing for a much narrower definition.

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My sense from reading the comments was that the public really did want 
natural to mean something,

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to mean that the product was healthier, 
more responsible or sustainable,

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aligned with their values in some way.

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A nd so they wanted a narrow, stricter definition and regulation 
around that.

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And in the end, nothing changed. The FDA never ruled on it, 
never changed their regulation.

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Part of the result of all of that, 
including those early class action lawsuits,

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was less and less use of the actual terminology of natural, 
but all kinds of other ways of signaling natural.

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Like we talked about the short ingredients list, 
the words you can pronounce,

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the various kinds of like, you know, 
imagery or packaging that suggests that something is simpler or

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natural. It's called, we call that clean label, 
right?

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It doesn't use the language of natural. It doesn't have to have to, 
to convey the same thing.

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JEREMY:
It's very intriguing, really, that there's a sort of equivalence in 
both directions on almost all of these things.

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So, for example, the people talk about the public mistrust of science.

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You could equally well talk about the scientists' mistrust of the 
public.

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I mean, they just don't want to know what the public is really 
concerned about.

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Do you see any chance of a rapprochement between the public that wants 
real food and food industry companies

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that want sales from a willing public?

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CHARLOTTE:
Um, well, I mean, I do think that this is

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a, you know, a long standing and ongoing source of tension and 
friction that has,

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like you said, at the heart of it, 
a double misunderstanding, right?

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W e know well about the public's supposed misunderstanding of science 
and of the industry.

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This is a major obsession, right, of experts who are trying to improve 
science communication.

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B ut so much less attention and discussion about the ways in which 
experts misunderstand the public.

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So I hope that the book helps these, 
you know, helps these two different frames,

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these people who are immersed in them, 
so immersed in them that the other one just seems completely foreign.

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I do hope to have at least helped these two groups better understand 
each other.

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And that is an opening of, you know, 
possibly an opening of some movement towards more

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collaboration and less misunderstanding in terms of ...

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Like this is an urgent moment, clearly, 
right, in terms of how we ...

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what, you know, really what kind of food system do we want for the 
future?

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What kind of questions should we be asking about the food system?

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Who, whose questions matter? What kind of questions matter, 
and what kind of expertise is considered relevant to the question of

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what the future of food should be like?

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These are urgent matters, right? And I hope to have, 
like, really shed light on how important those issues are.

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Like, let's maybe step back from this "should I or shouldn't I eat 
processed food?" question for a minute and look at all these ...

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That's kind of what the book is trying to say, 
is that we need to zoom out to these larger questions,

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and I hope by doing that, I've contributed a little bit to some 
movement in the right direction.

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JEREMY:
You know, I have a long memory for this stuff and yeah, 
way back in the early 80s,

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exactly the same dynamic played out with respect to GMOs, 
genetically manipulated organisms in the food system.

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And again, anti-GMO was all about risk.

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Pro-GMO was all about: there is no risk to human health.

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Europe has sort of maintained an opposition to GMOs.

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I don't know how long that's still going to last, 
but it has maintained it because of the larger questions.

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But America seems to me to have kind of rolled over and given up.

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CHARLOTTE:
Mhm.

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JEREMY:
Yes. There are pockets of resistance.

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Organic is a pocket. But basically, 
the industry ...

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I mean, I hate to put it in these terms.

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Basically the industry won on the question of genetic engineering.

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Maybe it'll win on the question of processed and industrial food.

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CHARLOTTE:
Yes. Yes. Maybe. I hear what you're saying.

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The issues are in many ways mirrors of each other.

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A lot of what I've worked out in relationship to processed food 
applies and builds on scholarship that tried to understand what was

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going on with GMOs. Y ou know, there's a real sea change happening 
right now in the in the conversation about processed food in the US,

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and I think elsewhere, because we now have this language of ultra 
processed food,

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UPF, which was designed with this exact intent in mind.

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Like the Brazilian public health researchers who came up with the NOVA 
classification gave us the language of ultra processed food because

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they wanted to enable researchers to investigate the impact of ultra 
processing and a high percentage of ultra processed foods in our diets

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on public health. A nd researchers are picking up that tool and using 
it.

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And the the results are quite convincing that there's something going 
on there.

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Right? A nd so there is some momentum in the direction of being able 
to establish some

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negative health impacts, in particular of ultra processed foods, 
that could take this in a different direction.

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JEREMY:
Yeah. And I think that's the big difference between this debate and 
the GMO debate,

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is that I still haven't seen anything on human health.

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I haven't seen anything to suggest that GMOs pose a particular 
problem.

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Right. Whereas on on UPFs ...

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CHARLOTTE:
Yeah, exactly. And our regulatory agencies are only set up to respond 
to questions of risks to human

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health. A nd as you know, one of the big differences in the European 
and the US context is that the European framework is one of

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precautionary principle. You know, 
it has to be proven safe.

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Things have to be proven safe. Whereas in the US we work on a proof of 
harm model.

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It's much more generous towards industry because you have to prove 
harm,

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which is much harder to do, in order to regulate.

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S o, very different systems. And I do think that that, 
you know, they've really shaped the trajectory of GMOs.

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But we'll see what happens with UPFs.

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JEREMY:
Charlotte Biltekoff. Her book, Real Food, 
Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge,

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is published by the University of California Press, 
and you can download it online.

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I'll put a link in the show notes at EatThisPodcast.com.

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I hope you enjoyed our chat and if you did, 
please spread the word.

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And I'd love to know what you think.

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Is the food industry ever going to acknowledge the public's real 
concerns?

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And for that matter, are people ever going to take food industry 
reassurances at face value?

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Drop a line to Jeremy @ eat this podcast.com.

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And you may have noticed, depending on how you listen, 
you may have noticed that there's a transcript available along with

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the audio. And that's in addition to the more written one you can 
download from the site.

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And both are thanks to the good people who donate to the show and Eat 
This Podcast.

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It's a really simple business model.

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Some people pay so that everyone has access.

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I hope you'll join them if you can.

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For now though, from me, Jeremy Cherfas and Eat This Podcast, 
goodbye and thanks for listening.