From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Before we dive into today's episode, want to give a very special shout out to Heather, to Major Tom, and to Latrodectus, all of whom wrote to us about today's episode. First question for you, guys, what's the last thing you ate? Pop tart? Strawberry frosted pop tart? Just now? I ate a frozen, uncrustable strawberry nice and oh well, thanks Matt, Yeah, I ate Uh, I ate some left over Korean barbecue. I'm getting back into the Korean barbecue game. Uh My marinade is not to be missed. I'll have to make it for you guys sometime. A secret ingredient, oh man, it's the secret ingredient is ambition. Bro and you let it sit overnight for a few for like, you know hours. No, seriously, I will cook it for you. Uh my bulgogie. In particular, I'm not saying michelin Star, but michelin would stop by if I had a restaurant. So what michelin Man have to say about it? Do you think the michelin Man, the old school michelin Man, would be absolutely too hammered to understand what was happening. That is by far the worst mascot for driving ever. Uh. Please check out our episode on the michelin Man Ridiculous History. Today we're talking about food. It's one of those great unifiers. Right. You can go anywhere in the world, and this is true, this is not hyperpoly. You can go anywhere in the world and meet another person and you can have a conversation about food despite language barriers. Everybody is so into food. Food so hot right now and has been for a long time. Uh. People will shoot shoot the breeze about what they've eaten, what they want to eat, what they do or don't like food wise, for ungodly amounts of time. Let's be honest, you know what I mean. It's it's like a it's like a version of talking about the weather. And as with any other universal human subject, it's no surprise that food itself is at the heart of so many conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. Today we're going to talk about something that has been controversially termed food deserts. Where they come from, why, and whether there's a conspiracy involved. Dang dude, I thought were talking about desserts today. I researched the entirely wrong stuff and pod to cram all the creme desserts. It will still apply. Here are the facts, Okay, basics. If you live in the United States, like the four of us making this show today, uh, a matter of fact, if you live anywhere these days, you've probably noticed basic food stuffs are growing more expensive. And we're not talking about weird they like weird bespoke things like tiger meat or shark fin soup. We're talking about cereal, grains, milk, read all the stuff you get right before Hurricane hell Man, fast food has gotten expensive. You know. I saw on the outline he put he Gotta eat you know, which is the genius tagline of Checkers. But um, fast food McDonald's, like a happy meal, costs more than it did just a couple of years ago. You know, I went to five Guys not long ago to get some of their delicious burger and fries, and I almost walked out when I saw how much I was gonna have to pay to get my son and I a meal. And I was like, uh, it's worth it. My place has always been kind of on the top end of like, you know, sort of uh, you know, some more fire, the higher end to fast food. But yeah, I can imagine. But like I think, like, uh, you know, a quarter pounder meal and McDonald's pushing six bucks where it used to be, you know, the extra value meal was like I think three or something like that, you know. Yeah, And uh, many of us sending along today come from an era where a twenty dollar bill would make you an emperor at Taco Bell. You might be in a position where you say, why don't I just buy the whole store? Right? I remember those days quite fondly, But that is no longer the case. Global food supply chains have been pressed as in a way that hasn't occurred for many, many human years. And this is a global thing. Like look, if you live, if you're foodie, if you go to a lot of restaurants of one sort or another, then you have probably seen notices that these restaurants are putting out where they say, due to increase demand or due to supply chains, we have to adjust our prices. This is a global thing right now. Uh, in what's called food inflation, where the same stuff you would pay five dollars for all of a sudden becomes six or eight dollars. In the UK, this food inflation rate is over ten percent in Japan. It's hitting a high that has not been around for more than thirty years. In the US alone, just this past year, from like April April, food prices popped almost eleven percent, and the trend seems set to increase. I swear I eat it places other than McDonald's, and I will not say one more word about it again. But I was wrong. Uh. It's about seven bucks here in Georgia for an extra value meal or whatever they call it now, but with a quarter pounder. But it can range. That's like the lowest of the low. In Massachusetts there are eleven seventy nine. So I mean, to your point, then, this inflation, it hits globally, but it also varies widely depending on your location. There are so many issues going into those prices inflating right now, and one of the main ones has to do with shipping calls. You guys, I know we've talked about before. I was just looking a little deeper into shipping costs to get things usually across the Atlantic Ocean, sure via cargo ship. I had no idea how much those prices had inflated and how rapidly they've inflated just over the course of the past four years, three or four years um. And it's just making me think with these larger corporations that we're going to be even talking about today, like where where's that food coming from? Where these prices increasing? I'm really interested to dig even deeper into this subject. Yes, that's another episode we have to get to. And when you think about, like you know, companies like Amazon controlling their own means of delivery and quote unquote cutting out the millman, somebody's paying that cost somewhere because they still have to get that stuff shipped from abroad. And if we're not paying the cost of that shipping, it's got to get soaked up somewhere else in the economy. I've got to imagine. Yeah, yeah, you might be on bas there. Also, I want to point out Amazon is getting a little cradle to the grave with their purchase of medical companies and insurance companies. Apple, Yes, the folks who make the phone. You may be listening to the show on They're also getting into the private insurance business. Things are getting weird all around, you know what I mean. It's two One thing I want to I don't want to be too Larry David about this, although he is kind of my spirit animal, but one thing that always bugged being is another factor that you mentioned. There are multiple factors. There's another thing that a lot of people don't notice, which is called shrink inflation. Like every time a your favorite beverage they change the bottle, what they're doing is squeezing a little bit more profit by selling you a little bit less for the same price. You can find multiple examples of shrink flation. It's not necessarily related to today's episode, but this is all part of a larger issue. Do you buy orange juice, Look at the orange juice in your fridge. I guarantee you it's a smaller bottle than it used to Or like look at the bottles How look at the bottom of a lot of beverages. How they're all of a sudden Is this alcove, this tiny little alcove punched in part. Yeah, yeah, and and each like a certain number of those represents an entirely new bottle of stuff that can be sold. It's really dive it on the side, all the way up the you know what I mean that it looks like aesthetic but hugely count for four of them, right, that probably equals about a fluid out right, exactly exactly. That conspiracy is real, and the problem of rising food costs is partially due to the weird, arcane human religion of inflation, by it's also due to a really bizarre problem of supply and demands. I mean, yes, there are more people on the planet than ever before. Oh I love this. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. It's time to check the world population clock. Where are we at? I checked this morning and we were at seven nine. Okay, all right, we are at now all of us listening together, and all your friends and everyone you ever met or will meet, We're all in this together. The world population is seven point nine zero three one, seven thirty one thousand, two hundred nine one to three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine three billion people. Is that gonna be eight billion by the time this comes out it's October. Yeah, we're still close, right, We're still close. Nobody ow anything up. We really want to make it to eight billion, just so, you know, like in a video game. We want our little trophy, our achievement. So there are more people than ever before. And whether we're talking on the ghost, snacks, award winning dishes and Michelin star restaurants are just staples. Wheat Rice Dato's current civilization relies heavily, crucially on access to some sort of nutrition. And you know, to say the quiet part out loud. If you are a longtime listener, if you're one of our fellow conspiracy realists, you have probably already heard some terrifying statistics regarding famine or what is sometimes diplomatically called food insecurity and death by starvation. I mean, you know, and a lot of dystopian or perhaps utopian science fiction novels and films you see sort of a universalized neutra, you know, thing that people eat. We are exactly, we are in the rare position to be able to have some diversity and choice and different flavors. And you know, it's not too far off the map to think that could be a thing of the past if we're not careful. Yeah, it's true right now. Okay, so we're we're virgin on eight billion human beings. Awesome, go team multiplying. Yeah, yeah, expand reproduce you know what I mean? Humanities going viral? Uh. The World Food Program estimates that at least eight hundred and twenty eight million people right now are going to bed hungry every night, so almost a billion people out of almost eight billion. Two is a year of unprecedented acute hunger. The again diplomatic, someone say, euphemistic term for this is acute food insecurity. In there were a hundred and thirty five million people that were facing straight up starvation, not missing a meal, not tightening a belt level, but dying from hunger dehydration associated problems. This year, the number is shaping up to be more than three d and forty five three and fifty million. But we can't give up on humanity just yet. You know, they've been doing it for a while. They're not new to the game. If you're listening, you're more optimistic are you aimed to be more optimistic than you might say? Hey, look at all this school stuff that's happening. You know, look at the global supply chain that Matt just described earlier. It does allow some people access to food across the planet. You live hundreds of miles inland, but you want some fresh seafood. You got it. All you need is a little bit of scratch. You know you want Let's see what what else do you want? You want? You You're like, hey, I've never been in a place where dragon fruit grows naturally, but I'd like some dragon fruit because I'm just I like how it looks like it's it's an anime, uh drawing of produce. It looks like a dice when you see it cubed. You know, yeah, all you need is some funding. But but the thing is, the reality is, with all this choice that a lot of people have in privileged countries, you don't need Lobster Newburgh on a daily basis. You your your diet is not caviare dependent. You know, you know you're not gonna die if you don't need flag gross as you Okay, fair enough, but you need if you are a human being, then you need some thing around du to calories every twenty four hours, something to put in the machine in the great city that is your body. And that's where today's story takes a turn. I just wanted to put him really quickly, just because you mentioned lobster, and I just wanted to say, I am terribly sorry. I have horrible news. If you haven't heard this yet, if you live, if you live on this planet and you enjoy a crab leg, specifically an Alaskan snow crab leg, as seen in the amazing Discovery series The Deadliest Catch, you will be out of luck from now until I guess next season, and then maybe every season after that, because yeah, yeah, it maybe ten years. The population declined over the course of two years, from eight billion to an estimated this year forty five million, which is an incredible crash. Billions of crabs disappear, and uh, right now, no one is completely sure why, but the primary culprit seems to be ocean warming, which we predicted years ago. Check out our ocean acidification episode. Oh my gosh, you know, I don't know if I want to listen to it, Matt, because it's yeah, it's terrible, it's terrible. As a matter of fact, wildlife in general is uh currently undergoing what is called a mass extinction. This is the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet. And congratulations, if you're listening, What a time to be alive. You're alive during the time that future historians will write about extensively. You could be a footnote in someone's PhD. Assuming humans are still a thing. So that point. So this, like, here's the the issue, right, Yes, there are global problems. There are global problems. And make no mistake, we're not being alarmist, we're not being hyperbolic. Is hitting the fan, and it's hitting it in such a way that you will inevitably see the results. They will affect you directly within your lifetime. This is no longer a kick the can down the road problem. You know what happens when it's the fan, right, everyone ends up coverage or at least like a really good sprinkling, you know, like the splatter. Oh oh, let's ruin everybody's day. Let's tangent and let's go on a tangent ruin everybody's day. When so, smell and taste are related, right, So you listen, listen, listen, so every time that you smell something you don't like, every time you like smell SPD level fart in an elevator, your taste already. Okay, you're tasted. I saw a meme where it was remembered. It was like a skeletor with the skeletor means or he'll say something unpleasant and the like, and I'm off he said that little fact, and then he's like, and ha. But every time he smells something good, you're kind of tasting it too. Yeah, that doesn't work. No, we're still focused on the boop anyway, So all this global stuff is happening, and if you were one of almost eight billion people, then you might feel outnumbered by these global events. You might say, let me focus on what I can do, you know, let me feed my family, let me feed myself, let me try to ensure as much as I can a better world for the people who matter to me. And that's why so many, that's why so many folks. You know, we've got a lot of single parents in the audience today, We've got a lot of folks who have struggle through a pandemic. And we have many folks not just who listen to our little show, but across the world who have had to make some hard decisions in the past few years to prioritize feeding their family. And it is incredibly difficult to eat healthy food in many parts of the US and in many parts of the world, to you know, defined ways to get that two thousand five calories a day without breaking the bank. You know. You know what I was thinking about. I was in a I was in a grocery store recently. I went talking about myself too much, But I was in grocery store recently, and I often do the thing where you shop on the outside ring of the store's perimeter, where you find the produce, you find the dairy, you know what I mean, you find more unprocessed foods. And I realized that salad, of all things, is getting crazy expensive. And I was like, wow, this is you know, I used to be a vegetarian for many years. I was not a good vegetarian. I was what you would call a French fry and cheese to vegetarian. But uh, but but it's nuts. And it's counterintuitive that eating healthy for many people it seems to require an investment of either more money or more time in terms of prep. Well. Also, it's like, I mean, what's getting expensive too, is like the pre mixed bag salads and stuff like that that already have weird dressing and crew times. I literally saw a pumpkin spice salad recently at the store. But you know, if you buy romaine lettuce, which by the way, keeps much longer than those pre bagged salads, it's certainly gone up a little bit as well, but they can't quite up charge it the same as they can a uh, you know, a pre assembled kind of salad. Idea of being that you're paying for the prep work, right, you're paying because someone's already mixed the salad. Well, the problem is simply put this. In the United States alone, almost forty million people today right now as you're listening to this are living in areas without easily accessible, healthy, and affordable places to get food. You've seen, You've seen these things. They're called food deserts. They're all across the country. Today's question is how did they come to be? More importantly, is there a conspiracy of foot will pause for word from our sponsors and dive in. Here's where it gets crazy. So, yes, I had the same issue as no earlier. Not food desserts, which would be a much more pleasant episode, but food deserts, food desertification. It's uh. I was surprised. It's a fairly recent term. You just know that, Like this term only comes about in the nine nineties. I didn't know about it until the mid two thousand's frankly, So you know, there you go. Yeah, And it's not a US created problem, or at least the language describing it isn't. It originates in Scotland when there was a public housing development out there in the nineteen nineties and it did not have access like the people living there did not have access to healthy foods, to nutritious foods. Let's say, right, and this idea describes something that you have doubtlessly seen yourself. If you've ever been in the if you've ever been in what people would describe as the rougher part of a city, you know what I mean, or you've been everybody knows. We're tykeing like you go. You go by um the strip in a community where there's nothing but dollars stores and fast food places. That's where I live. I lived there. Every time a new thing opens or hoping to come on restaurants and nope, it's another gas station. Um. You know, it's really dollar stores, gas stations, barely what you even liquor stores, barely what you'd call a bodega, you know. So it is the reason I kept talking about McDonald's because that's the closest thing resembling a restaurant that's near me. Um. But you know a lot of times areas like that also, of course, are ground zero for gentrification, and over time, you know, they change, but it doesn't benefit the folks that have lived there for years who have had to deal with this food desert or this food shortage, and then are ultimately unless their own generational property are essentially priced out. Yeah, and I like that you're pointing out the intergenerational aspect of this. So let's break down this conspiracy. Food deserts earned their name because they're like the gold deserts. There are areas where it is more difficult to hunter gather nutritious foods. Basically, we're talking about hunting and gathering still very popular with the human species. I would maybe translate that to to buy foot right to to walkable areas or places. Yeah, just transit in general. That's another piece of the puzzle. So there, it's tough to traverse these areas. You know, think about like if you are in and we'll get to an example of this in a second, but think about if you are in um you have grown up in an area that was historically segregated, quite possibly by the federal government itself. You got redlines, and later the policy makers of your municipality said, you know the perfect place to put an interstate through. It's this community, the ones who can't fight back, and so boom, the interstate goes in. Now, let's say there was a grocery store that used to be a few blocks away, and you have to walk across somehow a six lane interstate just to get to that grocery store. Oh, and then add to that, the corporate owners of the grocery store close it down because they say there aren't enough profits to be made year over year. And then maybe there is, uh, maybe there's a public transit if you're lucky, but probably not, probably not super great public transit. And let's say you take a bus. You take a bus to like a grocery store, a fancy grocery store, right, like a Whole Foods or something First, you can't buy anything super perishable because it has to survive that hour and a half. Again, if you're lucky bus ride back to your place and it's super expensive, how are you going to afford it? Why not? Why not just say, hey, we're gonna have a night out and get the kids some fast food, right because you know, therefore or whatever, they're not going to know any better. It's going to be a treat. Oh yeah, And even in more common just get food from like a dollar store or Family General or whatever they're called in that area, because you can actually afford that food. But it's gonna be either canned or prepackaged or processed, and just not not as nutritious as something you could get from a larger grocery chain. Yet. And unless we sound like we're talking down at all, right, we're I at least will speak for my part here. Dietarily, I am a walking garbage disposal. It is insane, Like I have never said no to any food, So I'm not one of I'm not a a fancy organism, you know what I mean. So we're not we're not here to preach to people or to lecture people on some sort of the sanctimonious do better kind of speech. Those are inappropriate and they're not helpful. What is helpful, we hope, is to understand how this situation came to be in the United Kingdom, in the US, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, all of five eyes. Basically, people still don't understand what caused food deserts, uh, Matt in and our preparation for this episode, you you went into some maps regarding food deserts right now? How how these things zone? And one of the one of the most crazy parts of this is that we know some of the factors influencing these regions, and those can help us. Can literally comparing maps that are that are um studying seemingly unrelated, very specific things. Comparing those maps and overlaying them will tell us how this situation took shape. And I argue it is a conspiracy, but it's an accidental conspiracy, as dumb as it sounds. It's like a byproduct, right, I mean more than anything. M Yeah, just so, I mean, so, Matt, can you describe a little bit about these maps just for someone who's unfamiliar. Yeah, there's a map you can check out right now if you have the time and access to your phone, Like, if you're not driving, uh, you can head over to the United States Department of Agricultures Economic Research Service at last map. UH. So you you can probably find it by searching for U s D A Food Access Research Atlas. That is the title of it. And it just gives you a full map of the United States at least is it Does it include Alaska? I don't think it includes Oh, it does include Alaska, and it basically has all of Alaska as a food desert. Wow. Um it should. It has four things you can click on from different years right now. I think it's just representing what is this two thousand fifteen and two thousand nineteen because it's got census data that it's using to make these calculations. Has to do with low income and then low access to food and then putting those two factors together and essentially giving a score. Um. And you can you can add or subtract variables on here, um, like how far of a distance a certain area is to a place that would have nutritious food. I'm gonna give you one specific here. If you zoom way down into Atlanta into the area where I I lived. I looked at my address just to see how they categorize at that area, and it's very interesting. Guys. There's a strip of that is a neighborhood where I used to live. It says that it is low income and low access at one half and ten miles. Now, if you click on that and try and get more information, it says low incomes census tracks where a significant number of share of residents is more than one half a mile urban or ten miles rural from the near supermarket. So that would mean one half of a mile from a supermarket. But if you've lived in that neighborhood like me, you know that on one side of the neighborhood, exactly on the line where it says it's low income low access, there's a Kroger, And on the other side of that same tract there's a Publix. So I want to like, it makes me wonder how much of this data is just from census information from like uh wide shot gathering of information, and then how much of it is actually drilled down specific information about families that really do not have access to food. Yeah, it's like, uh, you bring up a great point. It's like Noel was saying, the question is access right? Can can you walk to this place? Right? Can you walk home? Do you can need a car? Yeah? And and and how current is this information? Right? When most people think of a food desert, they don't think of a place where the line of demarcation is a Publix and a Kroger. By the way, side note, I found I find so many irrelevant facts because uh, Kroger is about to buy another grocery chain. Uh, the monopoly continues. It's Albertsons or something like that. Yeah, you know, you know the score. So maybe if podcasting doesn't work, will get in to the grocery monopoly business. I'm becoming radicalized, want to be a delic diving into into food research. I am absolutely becoming radicalized. Good well that, but but you you'd make a great point because just because there's a Kroger in a public's there doesn't mean people can't afford to buy even fresh, somewhat inexpensive foods there. Like you, some people just can't. So like, where would you get your food? Then? Even if there is a grocery store, do you met delineate like priceiness between Kroger and public I've always thought of Public as the more like upscale kind of. But I also the one near me is always picked over and weird. You'll get tricked. You can get tricked because look, I've been going to Kroger's for all of my adult life. There's always been one close enough that it's been my primary grocery store. And I've got one of those cards that they get you to sign up for you put all your personal information in there, and yeah, I'm sure I thought Public Polics doesn't do that. For whatever. Cars also way better to its employees said it and no, no, you're right. But what I'm saying is I used to only go to Kroger because it felt like I was getting much better deals there and I was saving a lot of money because an illusion of switched. And it's nothing to you know, sorry Kroger just d sorry Ka Raj. Yeah, no, this is That's a beautiful thing, man, because well it's an insidious thing, but it's beautiful that you're pointing it out and you're aware of it. Because just like Sesame credit in China, what happened with the Kroger discount card or whatever nomenclature they put on it is in the beginning to incentivize people. You could save, you could save some chump change right on specific items. But as it became more in place and normalized it, the reverse occurred. So now to get a regular price you have the Kroger card, you are essentially getting taxed a little bit more if you don't play their reindeer game. Now. I don't know if Kroger is a sponsor of this. I don't think I'm saying anything controversial. I'm certainly not saying libel because everything we're saying is true. This is because it's a data game now and it's helping it's helping the grocery chain know what to order, like who's buying. It's not necessarily you the individual buying specific things. It's more what are the trends right? What do we need more of? What do we need less of? But it's they're not Yeah, they're not sweating. They're not up at night in a corporate boardroom with their shirt sleeves rolled up, terrified whether Paul Decade will order more avocados. No, but have you ever thought about that? The the the legist sticks of managing perishable food items like that, if you don't do it right, it's just gonna rot on the shelf. So you really do need a little extra data, you know, to help with that. But it also I think if there is any benefit to the whatever you know, um bonus card situation is it does teach the system what coupons to spit out at you. That's true, Yeah, it's targeted advertising. But also consumer data is should be treated as an extra income stream for any company. It doesn't matter what they are ostensibly selling you, it's what pieces of you they're selling to someone else, which is frightening. But anyway, yeah, this just in time supply chain approach these logistics. That's another part of food deserts. We know the factors influencing these regions, and this is where we see our conspiracy really start to firm up. So food deserts tend to be inhabited by low income residents with not the best access to transit, and that makes those areas less attractive ak profitable for large supermarket chains. And again we're not talking down because Matt Nolan, your faithful correspondent over here, we have all lived in these areas as well, you know what I mean. These things, though as normalized as they have become. It is crucial for us to note that food deserts are not naturally occurring. They are the result of systematic, entirely human social decisions over the course of generations. It's deeper than wrap, you know what I mean. It dates back to zoning, which sounds like such a boring thing until you realize how dangerous it is. In the modern day, urban planning has been used. Urban planning has been weaponized. That's the best way to say it. It has been used to segregate the segregate members of the US population for decades and decades. Jerrymandering, anyone, jerry mandarin is another part of it. Yeah, man, it's it's the Oh, jerry mandarin is about to encounter a brand new renaissance depending on how things go. That's a that's weirdly enough, and a political point. It doesn't matter how you vote, you should not like jerrymandering. And anyone who's not familiar, it's like a term that was like, I think it was some sort of made up mythical monster because of how bizarre the lines looked that were drawn to to you know, separate voting blocks. They refer to them as the Jerrymander, Like I guess like the Jabberwalkee or something. But it's essentially creative, uh you know, line drawing um to create systems that I guess generate the desired outcome of those creating the delineations. Is that about right? Yeah? Yeah, nailed it. Jerry Mandarin was invented by Jerry Mander. Uh. Dr Mander was a cartoonist working in the nineteen thirties who was mistakenly hired to map political districts, to map voting districts, and he just drew cartoons. Is b s right? No, No, it's true. No one fact checked it, Okay, so it's yeah, no one, no one checked that. Just thinking as an article of faith. But we got a message from Keith that yelled at me for saying something about Timothy McVeigh or something like that in the last episode that I was given out false information. But I just misspoke. So I just was, hey, we do that sometimes, or we have fun with language and try and be silly and and make a joke on the show. Just a message to you, Keith. One of my favorite websites for news is Articles of Faith dot com. Some great journalism there. I'll tell you, you you know, speaking of great journalism, we can see some fantastic scholarship describing food deserts. Okay, so Jerryman dred right, that's a real thing, and it's I would argue, it is bound up in the processes that lead to food deserts, and even the term food deserts is controversial. We're also talking about stuff like redlining or yellow lining. These are nefarious urban planning practices that targeted certain community necessities. Where does the school go right, where where do the roads run? How do we worry about public safety? And weirdly enough, everything is affected by this, even down to the access to food. I mentioned that not everybody likes the phrase food desert. This is where we need to shout out Professor Shante M. Reese, who is a food justice scholar, and uh dr Reese prefers the term food apartheid, which emphasizes the the segregationist basis of this stuff. It's the zoning codes, it's the lending practices, it's the discrimination that all combined to make some neighborhoods bad to live in. A desert occurs naturally usually right, apartheid is imposed. Yeah, yeah, and this is part of a large feedback loop. Here's the story, quick and dirty version. In three in the United States, there was a big housing shortage, right the federal government. Uncle Sam said, Okay, we are going to put some of that taxpayer money into making more houses. We gotta have more places that are affordable for people to live. Now, granted this is during the Depression, this is like New Deal era. The current ruling class of the United States would never do something like that today. What they would do instead is try to um, you know, monetize it and accelerate inequality. But the New Deal legislation wasn't It wasn't a great deal for everyone. That's why it was called the Great Depression and the New Deal and not the New Depression and the Great Deal. So there's this author that really really impressed me. I wrote a book called The Color of Law. Richard Rothstein talks about how these housing programs that started under the New Deal we're functioning as a state sponsored system of segregation, which led to the nutrition access problems that haunt the United States today. If we talked about the basics, even just the basics, it's so messed up. So the Federal Housing Administration f h established nineteen. They said, let's build more houses, but let's have some caveats. So the Federal Housing Administration which was created, essentially escalated segregation by refusing to ensure mortgages UH in and around African American predominantly African American neighborhoods UM. At the very same time, the f h was subsidizing builders building new properties mass producing these entire McMansion kind of you know enclaves, UH, these subdivisions for white members residents of the United States, with the requirement than none of the homes literally requirement none of the homes be sold to African Americans. UM. African Americans and other people of color were left out of these new communities. Again, Ben, you you mentioned earlier than the importance of the idea of legacy kind of generational ownership, because folks were literally cast out of the system. So if they didn't already own or weren't intimidated into selling, which was a thing, or you know what what have you. Um, it was very very difficult to to get in to become a property owner in certain areas, and it created this is red lining, man, this is it's insane. It's you say it out loud and all this stuff sounds so outlandish and fiendish, but this stuff really happened. It was a policy. Yeah, And look, the folks who are adversely affected by these policies, they didn't disappear as much as some factions of the government clearly wanted them to. Instead, like everybody else, they grew, they lived their lives, they had families. These later generations had families as well, but they were put at this tremendous disadvantage. They did not have the opportunity to garner that increased generational wealth and with it socio political influence. For a very long time, they were simply not allowed into the conversation. And there are consequences to this. There are consequences that affect everyone. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor. Then we'll fast forward to the present. We've returned. We're in the present. We're no longer in the nineties. All that stuff is still affecting everyone, you know, if you live in the US, but now we're in This stuff matters when we look at food access because as a result of these earlier decisions, these earlier attempts at apartheid, retailers, private corporations are less willing to go into poorer areas. So we know about the concept of redlining now, but supermarket redlining is a thing. Larger grocery stores might refuse to move into a lower income area, or they might shut down an existing store and say, hey, let's move to the place where we can sell you know, more high profit items. And to be honest, I know it sounds like we're we're taking a hit out on grocery stores, but most grocery stores count their profits in pennies, not in pounds, you know what I mean. Like they're they're getting that eight nine cent can of um, what are the creepy peas lisour peas they have, like the silver They're always creepy to me because the label says very young, very sweet, you know, little peas, baby peas. Yeah. Yeah, So they're buying, you know, you're buying for like eight nine cents or something. The grocery store is getting that for maybe like a little bit less. They're not they're not making necessarily a ton of money per item, so they're very conscious of how to increase their margin. So for them, they're not necessarily being these evil Monty burns esque villains. When they say we have to move this store to a wealthier suburb, they're thinking, how do we make profits? Yeah, that's exactly what we talked about. It's a it's a perishable problem, right, because you can only keep so much inventory in your store before it goes bad, especially if it's fresh, if it's like produce meat, that kind of thing. If you don't sell that stuff, that's all lost profits and you have to throw it away or find a way to donate it. But you're not going to make money on it. Absolutely, And you know, Matt, that's something that's very close to me as well, for doing food activism in the past, getting detained for it because you can't walk around and give away food. What a What a world. But there's someone else who want to bring into conversation, a professor named Julian I Given who actually wrote for the website The Conversation and puts it this way, there may be a cultural bias amongst these retailers. They may have already decided based on some you know, algorithm or calculation that it's there's no percentage in putting their outlets in places with a with a kind of population that they don't like or don't see as profitable. This professor points out that supermarkets fleed queens in New York City. They they've like on mass they started leaving queens in the nineties nineties, and the Consumer Affairs commit ser of the time for New York City, a guy named Mark Green put it this way. He said, first, if I don't want to understand the minor already market, the second is a knee jerk premise that black people of poor and poor people who are poor market. I don't know Mark Green's accent, but I think, uh, I think Mark is making a really good point here. And so now all these things moved out less healthy food options, often at a higher price. How messed up is that they take over in these areas like if you have if you've been no you mentioned Dollar Store, you mentioned matt Dollar General. You can you find food options there, but also sometimes they're more expensive than what you would find and say a farmer's market. I just want to make a comment here. I mentioned the Kroger and the Public's that were on either side of the neighborhood where I lived, right so on the over by the Kroger, it's almost all lower cost apartment houses all up and down this strip of a road called Buford Highway. If you go into that Kroger, the produce, the fresh produce feels as though it is already days old. When you walk in, the freshest produce that you can find there just feels old. And that's like elderly apples. I mean no, I mean for real, I'm serious. Like if you go in there and you pick up a cucumber, it feels like it's been there for a while. If you go to the publics on the other side of that neighborhood where the massive private Catholic school is, okay, all that produce is super fresh and feels like it was brought in that day. It is very odd and it seems, you know, it's just a feeling, I guess for me, but it feels as though money is being spent on one side and money is not being spent on the other side when it comes to fresh and fresh produce. Can I ask them, Matt, I mean, you're talking about Beauford Highway, a place that we all know and love and have mentioned on show, I think multiple times. It is a absolute cornucopia of Asian markets. Latino markets, tac areas, you know, any kind of cuisine you want. Is this an area beyond that or separated from that? Is that part of Beaufort Highway kind of not in play here for folks that maybe have to walk or take the bus. And I'm just saying, it's it's all. It's all about can you is it easily walkable or can you get there through public transportation? That's at least the calculation I'm making in my head, because if you lived in that neighborhood, you could easily get to either one of those by foot. Also, shout out again to Beauford Highway. The city of Atlanta is tremendously fortunate for that that area. That's where the best restaurants are. And uh and it's the only I don't know if you guys heard this, it's the only place where Marta, our public transit system is profitable. It's Bufford Highway corridor. Uh So, Okay. The whole thing is that it makes me wonder if that that particular grocery or is making the calculation because oh, maybe this is a poorer area on this side of Beufford Highway or in this area of Beauford highway, so we will not put our you know, spend our money getting the freshest produce, will spend it in other areas in the store, or is it a matter of not getting the profits they need to continue that because of where it is, right. I mean, there's just so many factors in this it just makes you want to explore it further. Yeah, and there's there's a banality to this sort of evil because people can just point it a spreadsheet or put you know, it's not our decision, it's the algorithm. I'm just doing what I'm told. And it's a company that has to make profits. You're over quarter over quarter, you know, So it's just weird. It's not a nonprofit grocery store, you know what I mean? This is there's a really interesting study by a guy named Nathan McClintock. It comes from two thousand nine, so it's kind of old now, but uh, it specifically at Oakland, California and asked what caused these food deserts. Oakland had a huge problem with this And it's a limited study, but it has a I think it paints a frightening and accurate snapshot of the larger problem you have as we talked about this. Uh, folks, you may be surprised by how similar your own experiences have been in your neck of the Global woods. So racially segregated areas in this in Oakland historically during the interwar period. That's how far back it goes. So between World War One and World War Two, right during this time, these redlining policies forced people into segregated pockets of poverty, and these you know, these were absolutely normal people. They're like, we're not talking about a bunch of criminals getting put somewhere. We're talking about average smart go getting people who were denied the opportunities that are that are you know, defining factors of the American tree. So if you fast forward past World War Two into the nineteen fifties, the Oakland City Council said, we're gonna build some freeways. Where do we put them? Right? Where did they cut through? And the city council, which was comprised of all um white folks at the time, they said, We're going to put them through the neighborhoods that can't fight back. We're reducing their walkability, We're reducing the ability to have um community centers. Right, this is the example we teased earlier, the six lane Highway all of a sudden separates you from the place where you can buy fruit and vege. So this isolates West Oakland's primarily community of color, from downtown Oakland. And what happens is the people who can afford to move move out of town. They go to wealthier neighborhoods like Oakland Hills, and there's a financial drain put on the communities made up of people who cannot afford to move. Then these suburban supermarkets that you can only get to by car in the eighties and nineties, they come around and there are no fresh food outlets in these historically discriminated against communities. So what's left, according to mcclintlock, is a quote crude mosaic of parks and pollution, privilege and poverty, whole foods and whole food deserts. That's how it happens. And as terrible as it is to say it, if you're playing along at home, you're in your Like the majority of people in the world who live in an urban environment, you're not too far away from a place like this, which means that it does affect you directly. Even if you don't think about it. That's where we get to like, why is this important? Said it earlier, it's an accidental conspiracy. They architects of urban segregation were definitely dicks, but they weren't smart enough to plan for food deserts. That's just a side effect of their They're terrible ideas about society and and capitalism's most basic tenants. I think it's a combination of those two things, like the they're required to just always make more money and to make a profit, which is why there are so many great not solutions to the problem, but a lot of great individuals and organizations that are attempting to put a dent in the food desert problem. And guys in cities across the United States at least that's really the only place where I looked it up, especially in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, even there are these companies trying to find a creative way to work within that capitalism rubric to find food that's either going to be thrown away or just is in excess and get it logistically. Two places that can take it, Like what you're talking about, Ben, when you know, helping out, giving giving food away or finding a way to you know, get food to people who need it. I was really inspired in research for this episode and the number of humans that are working really hard at this. Yeah. I mean there are things like um mobile food markets, you know, so to think of a food truck, but it's selling produce, you know what I mean that that is an innovative solution. There is a bit of hope, like Minneapolis, Boston. Uh, those two cities in particular, like to shout out they have some excellent food programs in New York City, as you pointed out, Man, Well, let me shout out a couple of things. Just a couple of places, Real Quick Food, Waste Reduction Alliance, look them, look them up, Rethink Food, New York City, NYC, Refeed America, Postmates Food Fight. I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't know Postmates was doing a thing where they will deliver excess food for a restaurant to a charity. That's crazy. I didn't know that was a thing. Uh, there's oh, oh, what the heck is it? Guys? Do you remember the first time you went to New York and you saw that weird pred preda manger. Um, They're everywhere right, I didn't know. Listen to this, guys. I'm gonna read directly from this article from the Counter titled should restaurants donate excess food? The answer is not so simple. Preda mange A has four hundred and fifty locations worldwide and it has donated all excess we're refrigerated, ready made sandwiches and all their foods uh since nineteen eighties six and what is it? In Twin two thou eighteen alone, that company donated five million pounds of food in the United States. So, like individual companies, even though they're for profit, even though they're you know, working to make a buck from you when you walk into those places, can make a difference by setting something up internally or working with one of these other companies. Like, like I mentioned before, I have a weird shout out to. I would like to shout out Immortal Technique, who is a rapper and activist, a big fan. If you're a fan of hip hop, you are knocked down the towers. Uh. The So Immortal Technique may not be for everybody. No, I mean, I'm giving a but but one thing that's really interesting that this guy does. He's done a lot of food activism himself. He's an old school New York Cats, so he is aware of this, and I just want to add to like, even here in Georgia, UM, there is you know, the I guess it's called the Snap program. Um. It is, you know, food subsidy that comes in the form of like a card that you can use, you know, kind of I think a little bit of a dated term is what people might know as food stamps. Um. But it's on a card. And if you go to farmers markets here around Georgia specifically, I know there's one an Athens that does it, a very big one, and I'm pretty sure there's some in Atlanta, you will get twice the amount of the value of your Snap money towards that stuff, like towards those fresh fresh produce. And I always thought that was a very you know, you don't think of Georgia as being particularly forward thinking in that department, but I think that's pretty cool. He's gotta find your way to one of those locations, right, that's the toughest part often for people. So there we have it, folks. This is a conspiracy, but it seems to be an accidental conspiracy. It's a feedback loop over generations, and it was caused by bad faith actors who very likely did not think about the consequences, did not think how this would affect generations to come in the modern day. But the good news is people are aware of this. If you if you want to be optimistic, you have good reason to do so. Staff programs in places like Georgia, food activism in places like Minnesota, in Massachusetts, in New York, in Oakland as well. There are people who are making a difference, you know, and you can be one of those people as well. This is where we want to pass the torch or you know what, I want to pass the plate to you. Right, we're we're all at the cook out together. So let us know what you think. Let us know your experiences with so called food deserts. Let us know what you think the solutions could be um or you know, failing that, if if you don't have a if you have some guiding policy points for us, uh, tell us the best restaurant in your town, because we love to hit the road. We might be coming to a town near you soon and we uh, you know, we'd like to eat the good places. We try to be easy to find online. Correct. You can find us on Twitter, you can find us on YouTube, and you can find us on Facebook. Or we have a group called Here's where it Gets Crazy joined that thing. We exist in those places out of the handle conspiracy Stuff on Instagram, Conspiracy Stuff show. Hey, and don't forget we have a book. If you want to support this show, that's the best way. Buy a book. We really would appreciate it. And gosh, if you do buy it, please please please give us a rating on Amazon. I know it's Amazon. We know. Look, come on, it's Amazon. We know. But it's one of the best ways to support the book, which in turn supports us. 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