I get a team.
It's the project. That's you at s Glespo, It's Harps, it's Cookie. It's that time of the fortnight where the great man from the Banana State, the Sunshine State drops by and just bloody blows us away with his great, big fucking brain and his questionable attitude. Loves TIF, hates me, tolerates me anyway. That's the price. That's the price we pay. We'll start with the world famous international, well traveled speaker that is TIF. Cook will say a low to her, the one with all the issues.
Hello Cookie, plenty of issues, but hello, Hello, Craig Anthony.
Harper, issues for days and you and I did a podcast yesterday and there was one funny bit that we had to leave out because of the potential lawsuits that would have come our way. I did mention that it was a zinger, and you sorry, David, I'll be thirteen seconds. You did want to know what the zing? Can you just confirm to the listeners that it was, in fact, hilaris, I.
Would like it was an absolute zinger.
Indeed, we'll tell David when we finished. We'll tell David.
Yeah, you better, Bloody will tell me. Yeah, it's been going on about it. It's sad that political correctness is a thing, because gee, it was good. Yeah.
Yeah, we were having fun and I was on a bit of a role. I was already right at the fucking edge. I was just I was just at the edge of what is probably okay. And there was one that was just would have been the icing on the politically incorrect cake. Ah, But for some unknown reason, I showed great restraint and but I'll share it with you. But it would have been a fucking killer. But I would have got a few emails. But anyway, I didn't. How are you, David?
Yeah, all right, for a Wednesday?
What's going what's going on? Why are we doing it? This at seven o'clock. Not that I'm not grateful. I'm always grateful. Did you have a date earlier or something?
It's no, no, no, I just I have to it's boring. I won't bore you with it. I had something else on that had to be done.
Your actual job. Get in the road of this fullshit.
That's all right, Yeah, but this is Yeah. I thought we might have a bit of a chat today about baby food. What do you reckon?
Yeah, well, it's somebody told me about it earlier today? Did you read David's article on formula is a formula? Baby food formula? And then I went to try to find it, and I definitely went to the wrong place, and I thought it must be an old one, but it's not.
You wrote it today, the Great baby food Scam. That's not your title, that's mine.
Tell us, Okay. So we briefly talked about this a little while ago when we talked about I think it might have been been the last time, and we talked about the immunity advantages for breast fee eating mothers, so the immunity advantage that's given to their children, and I think you asked right at the end of it about you know, what what does this mean for women who can't breastfeed and so on, And we talk briefly about the fact that the very much the preferred thing is
that women breastfeed if they possibly can, preferably for twelve.
Th sorry, also my bad. We're talking about reduced incidents of certain or potential correlations with disease were lower for women who breastfeed first, that's right, yeah, yeah.
And for their children as well. So they're undoubted, undoubted advantages to breastfeeding, and so you know, reiterate once again, if women can possibly breastfeed, then A they should do it, and b they should do it for as long as they can, preferably twelve months. I know twelve months is to be asked, but if you can at all manage it, then it's the advantages not only for the baby, which
are huge, but also for the mother significant as well. Now, because of that, the World Health Organization in nineteen ninety two major pronouncement that said that essentially and also asked formula manufacturers as a result of some quite nasty marketing techniques that were going on, particularly with Nesle in Africa, where they were just basically encouraging women who are quite capable of breastfeeding to use formula using god knows what water that they found to mix with it and obviously
processed by the mother's body and then delivered. Is much much, much safer in those circumstances than mixing milk powder with water where the waters of dubious origin. So there were
some big scandals about that. World Health Organization ninety ninety two came to a historic agreement with a lot of the world's formula manufacturers and came out with a statement that said rest is best basically, and everyone's going to agree that, and a lot of the manufacturers said that they would put things to that effect on their websites and put out press releases to that effect and make sure that they didn't encourage women to use formula during
the first twelve months. Now, how that translated into Australian law is quite interesting because what happened here is the ahable C, who are our regulator for competition, basically had a gentleman's agreement with the big Australian manufacturers that they would not advertise formula. So what's called infant formula or stage is one and two, which is six months and twelve months the first six months and then follow on which is the twelve months. They wouldn't advertise that in
the Australian market. And while that the Australian Competition Commission would normally be against people agreeing not to advertise things because that's anti competitive and they want people to compete, they felt that the benefit of this, in accordance with the World Health Organization's pronouncement, was was worth the effect on competition, and so they had this gentleman's agreement with all the big manufacturers, we're okay with you agreeing not
to advertise this, and we in fact want you to
not advertise this. And that was the way it's been for the last thirty years, where the big manufacturers have said, we are not going to advertise formula because we don't want to talk people out of breastfeeding, except there's been a loophole you could drive a truck through in this, which is there was absolutely nothing to stop them doing exactly what they did do, which was create essentially sugar milk, call it Stage three formula, branded exactly the same as
the Stage one and two that they were not going to advertise, and then advertise the hell out of it. So what they did was say, yeah, yeah, we agree, we're not going to advertise formula. We're not going to go out and compete with breastfeeding, not going to do that, all perfectly fine, and they haven't. They haven't advertised infant formula.
What they have advertised heavily is tins of staff that look identical and I mean identical to that those formulas and said, but we'll advertise that, ah, but it's not this, it's not we're not advertising the infant formula. We're advertising toddler milk. Now, toddler milk is skim milk plus sugar. Okay, has zero nutritional benefit whatsoever. But it's advertised heavily on television anywhere you want to look, and it is also
branded exactly the same. So is what does someone do when they go to the supermarket and they see the tins there and there's the infant formula and the toleert milk, and it all looks it's exactly the same. Yeah, they go ahead and buy the infant formula, thinking, oh, all these health benefits blah blah blah that they're talking about, that's fine. And so effectively what they've done is create a half billion dollar industry out of doing what they promised not to do. And this year the A Trible
C said enough's enough, mate, enough's enough. We're not going with this anymore. Okay, you're not abiding by the spirit of the agreement. It's over. Our handshake deal is out the window. So the A Triple C said that earlier this year, and the federal government has said, yeah, we agree, we're going to We're actually going to it's no longer voluntary. We're going to introduce laws that stop you doing this.
Can I just interject for one secon because I'm a sixty year old man who knows fuck all about toddlers. Is a toddler like two years plus?
Is that at all? What they agreed not to advertise too was anything under one because the stuff fed to children under the age of one is very very heavily regulated, so you can't fill it with sugar. It's got to be exact formula within exact ranges, so it's very heavily regulated, particularly in Australia, and they agreed they wouldn't advertise that because it's meant to be an alternative to breastfeeding only
when breastfeeding is not possible, so they didn't. They haven't advertised with that, But what they do is they call it so formulas are broken up into what's called stage one and stage two. Stage one is the first six months has a very particular formula associated with it. Stage two is what's called supplemental feeding, which is by six months the child should be having some solids, and so the formula that has fed to them changes to give them different things in the second six months. So that's
Stage two formula. Now, what the food companies did is invent something that didn't exist, and they've branded it as Stage three formula, and what that means is from twelve months onwards, and then also from Stage four formula, which I think is from eighteen months or two years on now. Stage three and four formula are sugar and skim milk powder. Okay, they're not formula at all, but you wouldn't know that
from looking at them. So if you have a look at the article that I've read, I've actually put up some comparative shots of one of the brands and I just picked one at random, at the optimal, which is one that's sold in Australia. I've put their Stage one and their Stage three side by side, and I defy you aside from the one and the three to tell the difference. Right, they're identical, So the branding, the marketing, it's all identical. And that's the bit that the A
Trip will see has a problem with. Yes, they're saying this is not the spirit of what we agreed. You are effectively advertising because you're using identical branding, and the government has agreed with them and said yes, that's not on we you know, the gentleman's agreements out the door. We're going to legislate and you're not going to win.
When is this going to be enforced, like when it's.
Well yes, well you know, in the fullness of time, Craig.
Oh, you sounded like a lawyer.
Then yeah, they're gonna They're gonna do it. The Age will See made its decision early this year. The government has said it's within their legislative time frame. I'm not sure what that means. It hasn't happened yet, let's just say that, but there's intent there now. The reason I even looked at this now, besides our excellent conversation earlier about it, was there's a case. It's made some big waves in the United States. Well, two cases in the
United States that made some big ways. One that fail held dramatically, and it's interesting for why it failed, which was a case of a person suing a big food essentially suing the big food manufacturers for his diabetes. So had diabetes, got diabetes from the age of sixteen, type two diabetes, and suing the food manufacturers and saying you cause this, so it's like cigarette smoking. Therefore you owe me for the health tream.
Of particular manufacture, any particular manufacturers.
Or and that's the problem right there. Good old Judge Harper on the bench has has nailed it immediately, nailed it immediately. Why his lawyers didn't nail it immediately is beyond me. The case. So the two in particular that he sued were Craft and Heinz, I think, but there were others joined as well, so the case was Martinez versus Craft, heins. Of course I put the link in the in the article for anyone who wants to read lawcue. And it was being billed as really the first of
the sort of like big tobacco type cases. You know, the punter you know, smoked all their lives, dying of lung cancer. This is the same thing, but with type two diabetes and FATI liver disease. So he's nineteen, he's had diabetes since he was sixteen, he says, and he's suing them and saying, you people cause this. The judge dismissed it for the reasons you would have guessed first,
what exactly was it that caused this? You know, he's saying he's got eleven defendants, Craft, Heinz, Coca, Cola, PepsiCo, et cetera, one hundred of their brands, Oreo's, Ritz, Gerber Chocolates, et cetera in the United States. So it didn't name, it didn't nail a specific product or even a specific ingredient in the product that was supposed to have caused his diabetes. And also, who you know, there's loads of
potential defendants making loads of products. And this was the big problem with a lot of the early cigarette cases in the sixties and seventies is people would say, I'm seventy, I'm dying of lung cancer. The smokes caused it, and courts would say, well, maybe you're right, but which smokes? Did you smoke the same cigarettes your entire life? You know, No, I didn't. I changed from that brand to that brand of that brand. I smoke whatever I could get. Well,
there you go. Your case is toast. And that's what's happened here as well, which is establishing causation what it's called in law, is really difficult where you can't say for certain was it that person's product that caused this disease. Now, the science is really clear that if you consume vast amounts of sugar over an extended period of time, you will likely contract type two diabetes, fatterly liver disease, hard disease,
a whole raft of things. Okay, but sugar is in everything, So who are you going to tool if you're going to go after them. Much more likely to succeed are cases where you've got a really controlled food environment. So for example, if you're in the baby, yes, or we'll
get to the baby. But in the military, for example, if you've been in the military since the age of eighteen, you've been there thirty years, they've been feeding you everything that you eat, then they are probably responsible for anything that is caused as a result of whatever you eat. At least there you've got a defendant. Now, there might be lots of different manufacturers, but at the end of the day, it was the military that was telling you what to eat and in serving it and putting it
in front of you. So potentially, or in an institution, in a hospital, or in an asylum or something like that, where your food supply is entirely controlled, the other place is, as you correctly identify Judge Harper, if you're a baby, we had a lot of life before your only source of nutrition is the thing that's being supplied out of a tin. Yes, so that's potentially an interesting cause of action.
And to test that, there's another case in the United States that's just kicked off called Castro and Laboratories, where Castro is suing the makers of a baby formula in the United States.
What condition did the kid get? Like, what's the malaise? What's the ah?
Now? See alleged lawyer es, well, they didn't go that way at all. That's a trap for young players, right. They saw what happened with Martinez and they said, no, no, we're not after that at all. What we are after is misrepresentation. You represented to us that this was infant formula and that it was safe and healthy. But your product is twenty three percent sugar.
Yes, surely that was identified on the packaging though, because that's a requirement.
Sure. I don't know if you've ever looked at a baby formula package, but it does identify lots of things on it. In fact, there's security and obscurity. There's about a thousand things identified between the vitamins and the minerals and the breaking down of the certain types of facts and so on and so forth, and so forth, I defy any normal person to read all that fine print and come to the conclusion that this isn't something that they
should feed to their child. And besides all of that, people know in the back of their mind, even if they're not studying the law, they have a suspicion the baby food is probably heavily regulated. Yeah, and they think that, Well, I keep on feeding my child this thing that looks exactly the same as the thing that I know I've been feeding them in stage one and two, and they tell me I should buy Stage three and feed it to them. But what I'm actually feeding them is a
chocolate milkshake. By the time I get to stage three, they're saying, there's the problem. Yes, there's the problem.
Yeah. I mean that what I was going to say too, is like broadly, you know, zooming out from the micro of baby food and formula to the macro of just food in general. Like the reason that the nutritional information is on the back down the bottom in the right hand corner, and it's a size two font is because they don't want us to pay attention to it.
It's there because they're required to put it there. It wouldn't be there if they weren't correct.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And so okay, so what's happening with this case with the misreddentation.
That one's still about hasn't made it to court yet. In the United States, much more likely to succeed because there they're not relying on this question about did your product cause this disease? They're going they're going sort of like the I guess what was the buggy was the what were those famous outlaws? It Bugsy Malone and the bugs alone and anyway, well, one of those famous outlaws probably was bugs Malone. I've forgotten now chief will have it before we even get to the end of the sentence.
There were ones they didn't get him on shooting people and killing people and being an outlaw and taxation and that's the one al Capone.
They got him on tax Yeah, tax fraud.
Yeah, So here is it's a little reminiscent of that. You know, maybe they go down on misrepresentation, not on the thing that actually happened. In Australia, we don't even have to rely on that because we've got a regulator saying we're done, this is deceptive conduct. We want legislation
that stops this happening. We're still a step further though, before we can start saying and your product has caused this disease, and you owe me a lot of money, but at least in terms of deceptive marketing, there may be some damages there if this case succeed in the United States. Where we need to get to though, is where it got to with the tobacco legislation in the end,
which is it didn't. There were a couple of cases that did succeed because the person could prove that this was the only brand of cigarette they had to ever smoked, so they could prove I have smoked your cigarettes and nothing else my entire life, and they succeeded. Unfortunately, often they died before they did succeed. So there are states succeeded.
But where the big money cases came in the tobacco litigation in the United States was when the state attorney generals took the cases on behalf of their health systems. So they said, our health system has to pay for the consequences of you selling a product which causes disease. Yeah, so you owe us money for the cost of doing that. Those are the cases that succeeded in the tobacco wars, and they're likely to be the cases that succeed here too.
Is it Ultimately we are going to have governments saying you are selling a product that causes disease and that we have to pick up the tab for you owe us money. Wow.
Like, I'm just thinking, I'm actually googling right now how much sugar in Last time I looked at neutra grain, I'm just thinking, it's not It's not a big stretch to go to cereals, is it. Like last time I looked at something like neutragrain, it was like thirty six grams of sugar per hundred Like yeah, I mean, I mean you've done You've done all the cereals and stuff
I know with your research. But does that just open a door for people then to because you know, the breakfast of champions, like all these Olympians who are selling this stuff kind.
Of well it is, I mean, And there's problematic advertising right now with I think it's one of the cocoa pops one with that comedian doing it, where advertising high sugar cereal on the basis that it's full of energy or full of protein, and what they mean is it's full of sugar and we've put some protein in it because otherwise we've got nothing to sell it. So we can't say this is a high sugar cereal. So we'll call it a high protein cereal or a high energy cereal.
But there's nothing good about breakfast real, nothing good about breakfast cereal. You know, if you ask me, well, what breakfast cereal should I eat, I'd say, well, don't eat any breakfast cereal, but if you must, if you feel it you can't get through the morning without a breakfast cereal, then wheatbix is pretty much the only option.
Yeah. Yeah, it's got minimal sugar and it's like.
Well, it's got no added sugar in it. So it's about two grams per hundred so, you know, which is basically the sugar content of wheat. So it's that's fine. But everything else is just loaded with sugar. I mean, even corn flakes, which you wouldn't most people wouldn't identify as containing much sugar. Most people add sugar to it. You know, even cornflakes is ten percent sugar, and that's
really really low as far as breakfast reals go. Most of them are twenty twenty five thirty thirty five percent sugar because no one would eat that cardboard without all the sugar in it, honestly one percent.
What happens. So let's say with this one, with the you know, the misrepresentation around the formula or the toddler's food or whatever it is. What let's say they win that case and they win a whole heap of dough. Does that then mean people start coming out of the woodwork.
Does that mean.
That that that company has to do a complete one? Are they're probably going to do one eighty already, But like, what are some of the consequences of that litigation?
Well, I suspect if they succeed besides them getting money, you know, and it'll be a stupid amount of money the way US litigation generally goes. Besides that, it will point really really clearly to the fact that to the place that the Australian government has already arrived, which is you don't get to do this, You don't get to work this loophole where you market a product that looks identical to a product which is sugar free, loaded up with sugar and then represented as healthy. So that's where
it'll end up. They'll get there by litigation, will get there by legislation, but thankfully, hopefully relatively soon, we should be in a place where they no longer get away with this. It won't stop them keeping going though in other areas, because they're already on to the fact. You know that we can do the same stuff with what we feed old people right now, you know we can
call it. You know, every hospital it gets loads of free samples of all these various milks that are meant to be food substitutes, which are heavily loaded with sugar. And you might say, well, why are they bothering? Why put a ton of sugar in these things? Why not just sell them with other sugar? Why can't follow one formula or stage three formula whatever it's called a toddler milk. Why can't I just be milk? Because then what are
you selling? These things are thirty bucks a ten. If you're selling a tin of milk powder and the kids thinking this tastes like milk powder, he's not going to be pestering mum. Can I have another glass of that dried milk? Mum? No, The reason the kids want it is because it's full of sugar.
Yeah, I wonder as you're talking about all of this, I'm just thinking, like, in the space that I've inhabited for long time, fitness, health, wellness space, is like, never in my life has there been so many supplements, you know, pills and powders and potions and various forms of creatine and protein powders and a million other peptides and supplements.
I wonder most of them are a waste of money.
Yeah, true, one hundred percent. But it seems almost it seems almost unregulated.
It is largely unregulated. The test is often will this you know, if someone consumes a bucket of this stuff, will it kill them on the spot? Probably not so okay. I mean the whole supplement industry is largely unregulated, mostly
because they're perceived as being largely harmless. So if people want to buy this stuff and eat this stuff, and you know, it's sort of in the same category, I guess, as you know, scented candles, like if you think it does something for you, then you know, knock yourself out.
But but we're not going to. There are no proven health dangers or benefits to this stuff, so off you go, and and you know, the advertising for these things is always full of weasel words like may improve this, or could improve that, or up to one hundred percent, which could be anything from zero percent to one hundred percent. You know, you pay close attention to that kind of advertising, you can see that it's full of weasel words because
it's telling people stuff they want to hear. You know, I have a problem with X, y Z insert melody.
Here.
Here is the thing that's you know, that may help with that problem. Probably won't is the subtext. But you know it probably won't hurt you either. And this is we've talked about this a couple of times. Recently, they're starting to be some really concerning evidence about some of these things, particularly the bigger vitamins, where in overdose they
probably will do you harm. And you have to be really careful about that because these things have been thrown willy nilly into all sorts of things, sometimes without even mentioning that they're there, like vitamin B six, which is in massive amounts in magnesium, and people are probably not even aware they're taking it because they're actually taking the
magnesium because they've got leg cramps. And so we have to be really careful about this because up until now the attitude has been well, probably doesn't hurt, and the reality is, take enough of this stuff, it probably does hurt.
Just before we go. It kind of sounds like from what you're saying that Australia is ahead of America in a way, like with the baby formula stuff anyway, because we're already dealing with it, making decisions about it and saying it's not okay. But in this so it's more regulation here and litigation in the States. Are we leading the way or is that just in this particular this.
On this issue, we are. And it's a different regulator to the one that regulates supplements, So this is the Australian Competition Commission who has an agreement with people about how to market this stuff. So they're not looking at the ins and outs of the stuff itself. They're just going with what the World Health Organization said, which is really should be using breast milk up to the age of twelve that is heavily regulated by a different regulator,
the TGA. These guys are concerned only with the marketing and they're saying, like the piece of litigation in the United States, which is really about marketing, not about health. They're saying this marketing is not on because it's deceptive, and like I mentioned, with the component tax returns, maybe that's where we get them. Maybe that's the backdoor root here where we say, let's not get all tied up in whether it was bad for you or not. Let's just talk about the deceptive of marketing.
Well government. If you need a good lawyer, the lespo's available. He's very fucking expensive. I don't think you could afford him, but maybe just a small consult.
Hey, this is a first, by the way, Craigie, you've got to this is a headline for you. This is the first. This is the first time I've ever written about anything to do with the law.
That is well, I don't know if that is true, but yeah, this is the first time we've had a chat where you've actually opened the legal door.
So yeah, I normally avoid doing it. So just because you know, I prefer to write about things where I can't get fired for my opinion. But how dare you.
Talk about something that you qualified in?
Say what you know?
Hey, mate, we appreciate you will say goodbye affair, but as always, good to chat and thanks for your time.
Absolute pleasure as always