1403: Restaurant Food | Skeptical Sunday

1403: Restaurant Food | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Jessica Wynn.

On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers.

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Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now, today we're talking about restaurant food. You ever notice you can order mozzarella sticks at a neighborhood sports bar and a month later you order them at a completely different restaurant three states away and somehow they're exactly the freaking same, same breading, same marinara, marinara, whatever you call it, you East Coasters, some say it's got the same molten cheese that strips the roof off your mouth like a chemical peel.

And then you notice it's not just the mozzarella sticks. The spinach dip tastes familiar. The fries, the chicken Alfredo, the cheesecake, entire menus kind of feel weirdly interchangeable, even at restaurants with different owners, different cuisines, different themes, completely different prices.

So are any of these restaurants actually cooking or are they all just serving the same frozen foods? Where does restaurant food even come from? To help us digest all this, I'm joined by writer and researcher Jessica Wynn.

So Jess, let's cut right to it. Is all restaurant food basically identical? Because sometimes it really seems that way.

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

Jordan Harbinger: A quarter. Wow. So that's why they're trucks.

I mean, you see those trucks everywhere. You drive on the highway, there's like five.

Jessica Wynn: With flashers on. Yeah.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: So even when it's not Sysco, it might be Sysco adjacent?

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

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

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, very fast.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yes.

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly. And they sell everything from raw ingredients to fully prepared meals that only need to be reheated. Frozen lasagna, pre-portioned steaks, pre-scrambled eggs in cartons, caramelized onions in bags, pre-made desserts.

If you can imagine a restaurant serving it, Sysco sells it ready to heat.

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

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

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

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Right. But patience is expensive. Properly caramelizing onions can take, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, or a line cook can open a bag and heat them in a few minutes.

So Sysco sells them already caramelized. You just heat them up. In a restaurant kitchen, time is money.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man, what else comes pre-made that will genuinely ruin people's day?

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the time, yeah. I mean, they're technically real grill marks.

They just weren't made on the restaurant's grill where you're eating.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, okay. That's a little bit better. Yeah.

They're not, like, sprayed on there with a machine. That would creep me out.

Jessica Wynn: Steak tattoos. But they're from an industrial grill. So the steak is cut, portioned, and seared at a huge processing facility.

The restaurant heats it, plates it, and those impressive looking marks are essentially, you know, set dressing, just theater.

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

The exact same.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So let me make sure I understand what Sysco does. This is the Amazon, but for restaurants, everything restaurant.

Jessica Wynn: More or less. I mean, they are an enormous logistics company with incredible distribution. Their strength is variety, consistency, and expediency.

So they deliver the next day to most restaurants in America.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah.

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Very likely. The mozzarella sticks, the onion rings, the chicken tenders, the wings. Tons of restaurants buy the same frozen versions from the Sysco catalog.

So a Mexican restaurant adds those kind of things for picky eaters.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

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

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

Jessica Wynn: So much. But desserts are probably the clearest example. So only a handful of companies manufacture a huge share of restaurant desserts.

You have Sara Lee, Rich's, and Sysco's own brand. So that molten lava chocolate cake served at thousands of restaurants. It's the same product.

Jordan Harbinger: OK, I've seen that. We've all seen that.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah.

Jessica Wynn: The same product number from the catalog.

Jordan Harbinger: Basically, if you get it for free on your birthday, it's from the Sysco catalog. Have you noticed that? Those are the ones they always give you on your birthday.

So when I order dessert, I'm basically choosing from a shared national dessert menu.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, pretty much. Yes. Many restaurants don't even rename the items creatively anymore.

You know, you'll see chocolate lava cake on menu after menu because that's literally what it's called in the Sysco catalog. Sara Lee supplies frozen cheesecakes to more than 30,000 restaurants. And Rich Products makes those molten lava cakes for more than 40,000 locations.

But you get all that through Sysco. So when you order dessert, a massive portion comes from a very small group of manufacturers supplying the entire industry. You know, maybe five companies tops.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Why would restaurants do this instead of making desserts from scratch? Wouldn't they want to stand out from their competitors?

And I assume the answer, again, is just time.

Jessica Wynn: It's time. It's labor, equipment, skill, consistency. From a restaurant's perspective, why would you make lava cakes from scratch?

You would need a pastry chef who knows what they're doing, enough kitchen space, specialized equipment, and perfect timing during service. Or you can buy them frozen for around $2 each, microwave them for 45 seconds, and sell them for $10.

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

Jessica Wynn: But customers can't tell the difference.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, and that's what restaurants value. Customers say they want craftsmanship, but restaurants survive on consistency, not craft. So if the frozen dessert tastes good, costs less, and almost never fails, making it from scratch becomes a financial risk.

So I've seen restaurants buy frozen crab cakes for about $1.50 each, serve two for $14.99. They're making a 400% markup just for reheating them. And those, like, loaded potato skins, they cost...

Jordan Harbinger: I love those.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh.

Jessica Wynn: The labor?

It's just a couple minutes of microwave time.

Jordan Harbinger: When I was a kid, I used to eat... I haven't had loaded potato skins in 25 years. But I think when I was a kid, I loved those.

I would order those.

Jessica Wynn: And you feel so adult. Like, I'm getting a loaded potato skin.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a loaded potato skin. And potatoes are a vegetable if you grew up in Michigan. It's not just mindless starch with sour cream and fake bacon dumped on it.

Remember Bacos? Do you remember those?

Jessica Wynn: Oh yeah, bacon bits.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, fake bacon bits, though. Bacos. Jay Leno, I believe, was the spokesman for that, which is hilarious to think about.

Jessica Wynn: Oh my gosh. That's a blast from the past.

Jordan Harbinger: I do remember that. You talk about Bacos. He's like, oh, low in cholesterol, right?

Of the Jay Leno pitch.

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

Jordan Harbinger: He is the perfect guy for that. He was also the Doritos guy, if you remember. That was...

He was the Doritos guy for a long time.

Jessica Wynn: Oh really?

Jordan Harbinger: He was the Doritos guy and the Bacos guy. Which is funny because now he's like an international, massive household name.

Jessica Wynn: Right. We've got to get you a...

Jordan Harbinger: I've got to get a Bacos deal.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, a Bacos deal.

Jordan Harbinger: What's 2026 Bacos? What are fake bacon bits in 2026, right?

Jessica Wynn: I don't know. The Funyun... What are those like fried onion things that come in the can?

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

Jessica Wynn: No, please don't.

Jordan Harbinger: I think we're out of like fake replacements for things that we think were bad. Like because the bacon had fat in it. So now we have Bacos, which is like sawdust with flavor sprayed on it, right?

And then they had Crisco and they're like, it's not really fat, right? But it does the same stuff as fat. And they had Pam, the fake butter spray that you would spray on, which I think was just kind of like trans fat.

Jessica Wynn: Oh, right. And the oleo stuff that gave everybody diarrhea.

Jordan Harbinger: 1000%.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, please write in with what I would be the perfect face for, which product.

And it has to be a real product, right? Don't give me like a fake made up one. And yeah, I'm open to parodies too.

Like, should I be the new Oil of Olay guy? I feel like I could get away with that.

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah, they'd be good billboards, sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Anyway, okay. The whole reheating loaded potato skins in the microwave thing. That suddenly explains why every frozen food commercial says restaurant quality.

Because actually, of course, a frozen food or delivery meal is restaurant quality. It's literally restaurant food. It's probably from the exact same place.

It's just in a package that says something else on it when it arrives at your house, versus when you order it from TGI Fridays or whatever.

Jessica Wynn: Right. The Sysco catalogs have restaurant pages and food store pages. So probably it is just exactly it's in a different box.

Jordan Harbinger: Because I'm thinking about my sponsors, right? I shouldn't throw these guys under the bus. I won't mention names because I don't have any evidence of any of this.

But I would imagine a lot of these like, oh, we mail you the food that you then heat up at home and it's healthy. You know, those meal services.

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah.

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

Jessica Wynn: That's why it's so expensive. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: And deliver it and be like, hey, high protein meals delivered to your door. It's still a service. I'm still buying them.

They're tasty and they're portioned and they have, you know, the flavor profiles good and the macros are good. So there's the value. But I bet you those are also like $2.95 raw ingredients from the Sysco catalog.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, we're paying for the convenience.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

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

Jordan Harbinger: What's that?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Got it.

Jessica Wynn: But nobody's making that anymore unless you're at a very high end restaurant. And most restaurant soup is not made from that. It arrives in sealed bags from these distributors.

So you heat the bag, you cut it open and you pour it out. I mean, I can see this too in the supermarkets. These little restaurant tricks, they've trickled into the frozen food section, right?

Now you can, there's microwavable bags of vegetables and things like that. I mean, there's so many preservatives in those things. It's crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: That is upsettingly efficient. Right. I do see what you mean.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, sauces work like that too. There's an entire industry making sauce bases for every cuisine. General Tso's, creamy sauces and gravies.

Thousands of restaurants buy these giant containers of shelf-stabilized bases. Maybe they customize them, but they all start with a manufactured foundation.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Nothing says homestyle cooking like grandma, lovingly setting the microwave for two minutes and 45 seconds. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Sequencing.

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We've also got a subreddit. You can discuss any episode of the show. Skeptical Sundays are particularly popular, but not as popular as Feedback Friday, of course.

Get into all the drama on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. This does explain something that's bothered me for years.

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

Jessica Wynn: Right, what's wrong with my palate?

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

The rice is the same or the guacamole is the same, whatever.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Jessica Wynn: So, the pre-cooked grilled chicken strips, they're the same for every restaurant, but they become a pasta dish at one, fajitas at another, and thrown in a salad at a third. The coleslaw can show up beside barbecue and then appear on a pulled pork sandwich at a gastropub. So, you think you're eating broadly across the culinary spectrum, but you're often just rearranging these foods and the ingredients are kind of, you know, changing costumes.

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

Jessica Wynn: I mean, it really is, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: All right, let's name names. Cracker Barrel, for instance, the entire brand is homestyle cooking from grandma's kitchen down in Texas or whatever. Comfort food, rocking chairs, emotional support biscuits, right?

What's really going on here?

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

Jordan Harbinger: But mom and grandma are shopping wholesale from Costco.

Jessica Wynn: Most of their food arrives frozen or pre-made. Even their famous meatloaf arrives in frozen distributor boxes. So, according to employees, almost nothing is made on site.

The only proprietary Cracker Barrel items are the pancake mix, syrup, and biscuit mix.

Jordan Harbinger: The biscuit mix. They don't even make biscuits from scratch. I thought that was their thing.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, they just add water to a prepared mix.

Jordan Harbinger: Biscuits are literally flour, butter, and buttermilk. That's 2.5 ingredients, really, if you're going to be tactical. How hard is it to make biscuits?

Jessica Wynn: I mean, it's not about whether biscuits are difficult to make. It's about labor and consistency. So, if every Cracker Barrel location makes biscuits from scratch, some batches will be better than others.

Corporate doesn't want a transcendent biscuit in Tennessee and a hockey puck in Cracker Barrel in Ohio. They just want every biscuit to be identical.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well, they got hockey pucks everywhere is what happens. So, they've industrialized comfort food itself. Wow.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, they've industrialized the comfort too, right? I mean, and financially, it works. Customers keep returning for the home-style experience, even when much of the food is industrially produced.

So, people nearly rioted over the Cracker Barrel logo change earlier this year, right? Imagine giving them regional variations in meatloaf.

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

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah. Well, Applebee's kitchens reportedly have microwaves at every station in the kitchen. So, former employees have posted photos and videos all over social media showing laminated charts with heating times for their dishes.

Bourbon Street Chicken, 2 minutes, 45 seconds. Chicken Alfredo, 3 minutes, 15 seconds. There's no cooking instructions.

It's just timer instructions. So, they have a menu for the microwave. Yeah, they've optimized microwaving into a science, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Sounds like it.

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

Jordan Harbinger: I'm actually surprised Sysco doesn't sell them a microwave that scans a QR code and heats the product without even typing in the time. Like, welcome back, Bourbon Street Chicken. Nice to reheat you again.

That would even be faster, right? You just scan it, throw it in, and shut the door, and it turns on. They still have a grill in there somewhere, though, right?

Jessica Wynn: They do grill some things, sure. But a surprising amount of the menu is precooked and reheated. The riblets are precooked, then microwaved, and finished on the grill just for char marks.

Pasta dishes are thawed and reheated. That Bourbon Street Chicken and shrimp arrives already prepared. And Applebee's isn't unique.

So, there's a viral video from an Olive Garden employee showing the Tour of Italy, which is their signature platter with lasagna, chicken parmesan, and fettuccine alfredo, arriving in plastic bags and being microwaved according to precise instructions.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. The Tour of Italy lasts 35 seconds in the microwave. Got it.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. And we're paying for it, you know. The comments on these videos are really interesting, too.

So, half the people are horrified. The other half say things like, yeah, you know, I worked there, this is all true, or this is definitely how it works.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: By the way, I'm not trying to sound like a snob. I come by it naturally. I'm not trying to sound like an elitist for the Olive Garden.

I love me some breadsticks. I remember going there, mostly in college because it was one right near campus, and just eating like seven baskets of breadsticks because what's a calorie, right? And going on dates that lasted like three hours and be like, can we get a little more of this?

And they're just like, get out of my section.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, just the breadsticks only.

Jessica Wynn: Just the carbs in general, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, oh my gosh. Got carbs.

Got carbs. Oh, I'm the got carbs guy. I'm not so sure that's a compliment.

Okay, so they thaw, bake, and finish the breadsticks at the restaurant. They do cook something. There is fire.

Yay. There we go.

Jessica Wynn: Sure. They bake dough somebody else made.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, dare I ask about the beloved Cheesecake Factory?

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

Jordan Harbinger: I'm a little surprised to hear that. One, I love me some Cheesecake Factory. Don't get me wrong.

But they have like a 39-page menu with a table of contents, and their meals contain enough calories for the whole weekend, let alone the meal you're in. But I'm surprised they cook any of that on site with all of those choices. There's just, they've got to have some big ass freezers back there.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, their menu is absurdly large with over 250 items, which actually forces them to do more prep work in-house because they couldn't possibly store 250 complete frozen entrees. But the menu is also so enormous that they can't possibly prepare every component from scratch every day either.

The scale itself requires industrial products and overlapping ingredients. So the menu is both evidence for the defense and exhibit A for the prosecution.

Jordan Harbinger: That's funny. Should a giant menu always make me suspicious?

Jessica Wynn: Yes. Very suspicious. If a modestly sized restaurant offers 50 or 60 unrelated dishes, there's no realistic way a small kitchen can make every sauce, soup, appetizer, dessert, and entree from scratch each day.

The larger and more diverse the menu, the more likely it relies on frozen or pre-made components. Oh, and those cheesecakes at the Cheesecake Factory aren't made at any Cheesecake Factory.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Jessica Wynn: A Cheesecake Factory factory in California.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Jessica Wynn: And shipped frozen to the restaurants.

Jordan Harbinger: So the name is accurate. We'll give them that. We've just all been visiting the gift shop, not the actual Cheesecake Factory, just the dealership.

What a world. Okay. Chain restaurants are chains.

No surprise. What about independent restaurants?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Buying flour and cooking with it is just different from reheating frozen lasagna. But how can you tell?

Jessica Wynn: We'll start with the size of the menu, like we said. You know, if a small local restaurant serves dozens of dishes across several cuisines, a lot of that food is almost certainly pre-made. Then look at how dishes are described.

Classic lasagna tells you almost nothing. Bolognese lasagna with house-made ricotta and pasta rolled each morning, that makes a specific claim the restaurant can be held to.

Jordan Harbinger: So specificity is a green flag.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, usually. I mean, restaurants doing the extra work tend to tell you because that work costs money. Look for details about technique, ingredients, farms, or preparation.

You know, they're proud of it, so they tell you about it. Also, watch whether the menu changes. If a restaurant claims to cook seasonally but the vegetable selection doesn't change from January to July, the seasons may be coming from the freezer aisle.

Jordan Harbinger: What about daily specials? Is that a good sign, maybe?

Jessica Wynn: I mean, a genuinely changing special can be a great sign. Daily specials often mean the chef is working with an ingredient that arrived that morning or needs to be used while it's fresh.

Fresh catch of the day is usually real. Tuesday is meatloaf day. That probably means they're rotating through frozen inventory.

Jordan Harbinger: So specials can be either good or bad signs?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly. You have to read between the lines.

Real specials change based on availability. Fake specials are just scheduled rotation of frozen items.

Jordan Harbinger: What about bakeries that don't actually bake? That's a thing I've noticed as well. You walk into a cafe and there's tons of baked goods, but there's no evidence of baking equipment.

There's no smells like you would expect in a real bakery.

Jessica Wynn: This is one of my favorites. So a Sysco driver posted delivering pre-made cheesecakes to a bakery that had all these fresh-baked signage, but they had no oven.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, it's a storefront that sells baked goods. The bakery part is pure branding.

And it's not even unusual. It's most common in grocery store bakery departments.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense.

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

Jordan Harbinger: So the fresh-baked cookies I buy might not be baked on premises at all?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Man, let me ask about something that drove me crazy during COVID. I'd scroll through delivery apps, right? I'd try a bunch of supposedly different restaurants in different parts of town, and the food, or at least I thought, and the food would taste related.

I mean, similar packaging, same timing. The bags are the same, like the way it's stapled is the same. The receipt printer is the same.

And I know this because I'd leave the bag maybe by the door and get the food out and forget it. And then the next day I'd order something and I'd leave it on the kitchen island. I'd be like, I've got to throw away all these bags from different restaurants.

And they're all alike, right? Just the same white bag, the same everything. And I was like, wait a minute, all these flavors, there's too many things that are alike.

Jessica Wynn: You discovered ghost kitchens.

Jordan Harbinger: So what is a ghost kitchen?

Jessica Wynn: It's a commercial kitchen operating multiple restaurant brands out of the same facility. So you have Tony's Italian Kitchen next to Dragon Express, Burger Heaven, and Taco Fiesta or whatever. You know, they are probably all operating from the same kitchen, with the same cooks, using the same Sysco ingredients, just rearranged into different cuisines.

So ghost kitchens don't have brick and mortar restaurants. Only delivery drivers can access them.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. That seems like fraud somehow.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, it's not technically fraud.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Jessica Wynn: If you order chicken parmesan and receive chicken parmesan, they technically delivered what you purchased. What they didn't tell you is that Tony's Italian Kitchen is a brand name, not an actual Italian restaurant with an Italian chef named Tony. You can never go there.

You know, in fact, that same quote unquote chef probably made the pad thai you ordered yesterday.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, they exploded rapidly during the pandemic. There's companies like REEF Technology and CloudKitchens that developed facilities where one kitchen could operate numerous delivery-only brands. So a single ghost kitchen location might appear on a delivery app as 10, 15, or 20 different restaurants.

I toured one of these places. They are impressively organized and incredibly efficient and completely bereft of any kind of personality. You know, it feels less like visiting a kitchen and more like watching a fulfillment center just assemble lunch.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. So on a delivery app, you're not really choosing between restaurants.

You're choosing between brands and logos or whatever.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Okay. Multiple cuisines, one loading dock.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, that's the model. Yeah.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. The biggest example is Darden Restaurant Group. So Darden owns Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, and Bahama Breeze.

They also own The Capital Grille, all these other brands too. They all have different decor, different menus, different price points, but they benefit from the same corporate purchasing power and centralized supplier relationships because they all source from the same Darden commissaries and suppliers.

Jordan Harbinger: I think it's weird that it's called Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen.

Jessica Wynn: It's really weird, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's an aggressive use of the word scratch if it's all frozen stuff.

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: And the CEO or whatever is like taste testing different nugget sauces and just there's no reaction because he knows he's about to kill himself, right?

I don't know why that came up, but yeah, this whole thing just seems so corporate. All right, so I could spend 15 bucks at Olive Garden or 50 bucks at The Capital Grille and I'm supporting the same corporate octopus, maybe even getting some of the same stuff with like a different garnish and all the foods, it's just coming from the same supplier.

Jessica Wynn: The preparation might not be identical, but the businesses are related and the supply chain heavily overlaps. So The Capital Grille does more skilled preparation and higher end finishing, but the back end supply chain is the same. Same parent company, same bulk purchasing from Sysco and US Foods.

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

Jessica Wynn: Completely. Most people have no idea how connected all these restaurants are. And it's not an accident that two companies got this big.

So in 2015, Sysco tried to buy US Foods outright, but the FTC sued to stop the merger, arguing the combined company would control roughly three quarters of the food service distribution market. And a federal judge agreed and blocked the deal. Sysco eventually walked away.

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

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

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: OK, what about franchises then? Can an individual franchise owner decide to source better ingredients if they want, like if they decide to buy bread from an actual bakery on their block instead of ordering bread from Sysco? Is that allowed?

Probably not, right?

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

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

Jessica Wynn: They legally can't.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, they are able to ask permission, but using an unapproved product violates the franchise agreement. So corporate controls the recipes, specifications, and suppliers because the entire business model depends on uniformity. Franchises want consistency across all locations, and they often get kickbacks or deals from the suppliers.

You know, it's profitable for everyone except the customer who might want something better.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

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

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

Jessica Wynn: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it absolutely does not. The Tampa Bay Times investigated restaurants making farm-to-table claims and found businesses purchasing from Sysco and other ordinary distributor food while naming local farms on their menus.

So when reporters contacted some of those farms, the farmers said they had never supplied the restaurants.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, okay.

Jessica Wynn: So restaurants can say it without it meaning anything. Locally sourced can mean the local Sysco warehouse. So a restaurant can use these terms very, very loosely.

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

This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. Cybersecurity threats keep evolving, but is your business prepared for what comes next? October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an opportunity to look beyond day-to-day security operations and ask bigger questions about how your organization protects its data, its infrastructure, and its ability to keep doing business.

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Go to flykitt.com and use code JORDAN for 15% off. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. All of the deals and discounts and ways to support the podcast are on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Well, this podcast, by the way, folks, farm-to-table, locally sourced, because it's downloaded from a server somewhere in your area.

Jessica Wynn: That's right, that's right.

Jordan Harbinger: Doesn't matter where it's produced. I mean, that's ridiculous, right? That analogy is actually so apt because it means nothing.

So I can say it. And then also locally sourced. Well, okay, I'm producing this in San Jose, California, but if you're downloading it from a local server in Germany, well, it's locally sourced.

That's the source. Ridiculous. Yeah, organic.

That's got to have an actual definition. So that's local in the same way my Amazon package is handmade by the person who left it on my porch. I guess as long as they don't claim to be buying from specific farms, maybe they can skirt that.

I mean, obviously everyone, including myself, hates this.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, and it's not just a marketing annoyance. I mean, every dollar a restaurant spends at a Sysco warehouse instead of an actual local farm is a dollar that leaves the local economy instead of circulating through it. And it cuts the other way too.

You know, restaurants are often a small farm's best customer because a restaurant will pay more for quality and consistency than a commodity grain buyer will. So when restaurants default to the distributor instead, small farms lose their best buyers. Some of them fail or sell out, and that just feeds the same consolidation further up the chain.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I know. It's shocking. And the fake version and the real version are competing for the same restaurant.

And right now the fake version is winning.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So farm to table, more of a philosophy than a literal description. I had no idea.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, OK.

Jessica Wynn: Farm to table is just vibes.

Jordan Harbinger: What happens when a restaurant gets caught lying about being farm to table? Those are some bad Yelp reviews. Come on.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, that's usually it, though. Just bad press. The restaurant may remove the farm names, soften the language, but they usually continue operating.

Unless it made a specific fraudulent claim that regulators or a customer can act on, the consequences are limited.

Jordan Harbinger: I would think customers would revolt once they found out they were being sold a bucket of lies. But whatever.

Jessica Wynn: I know. I mean, some do. Others decide the food tastes good and they move on.

There was a famous case of a high end restaurant in New York that claimed everything was from small local farms. Investigative journalists found they were ordering thousands of dollars of Sysco products weekly. So they changed their menu language and that was it.

They moved on. A lot of customers didn't even care. You know, they just didn't understand what that means.

And people don't want to feel foolish for believing a lie. So cognitive dissonance, it's really powerful.

Jordan Harbinger: After I read the draft for this episode, some of the notes, I went to Tahoe. This was a while ago because we've been working on this for a hot minute. But I went in and I ordered pretty mediocre breakfast food.

You know, it's like, oh, an omelet. And, you know, it's that like light yellow egg thing that's folded over. And I was like, this just looks like Sysco nonsense.

Right. And so the next day we went in and I said, what is made here? And she goes, oh, so not the hash browns, but the home fries are.

And if you get the omelet, it's from a carton. But if you get regular eggs done a certain way, then those are obviously cracked here. You know, so I was like, all right, instead of an omelet with hash browns, I'll have poached eggs.

And I think it was like corned beef hash or something like that. And home fries. And she's like, great.

And it was a million times better because that was the food that they actually made at the restaurant. And I thought, wow, this is the life hack right here. Is this made here?

What is made here?

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

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

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

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

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

It's just marketing.

Jordan Harbinger: So you're paying for adjectives. I see.

Jessica Wynn: Sometimes. And if you look at a menu and think, why is that here? Pay attention to that feeling.

A restaurant usually adds Sysco's bestsellers because they're easy to keep in the freezer and they're easy to sell.

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

Jessica Wynn: But the Mexican restaurant wants to appeal to kids and adult picky eaters, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, true. So menu items are not just inventory. It's not a chef's personality.

I've heard the term menu engineering. What is that? That sounds kind of sinister.

Is that when they put like a box around something because it's more expensive?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Well, I mean, it kind of is. Menu engineering, it's the science of making the customer spend more money.

Jordan Harbinger: It works on me really well, by the way.

Jessica Wynn: It works on me too. Yeah. Put something in a well-bought, in a graphic design.

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

Jessica Wynn: It's a little more expensive.

Jordan Harbinger: My wife looks at me like, dude, it's in a box. And I'm like, yeah, for a reason. And she's like, I know that I'm being played, right?

I know the margin is just higher on whatever that thing is. So they want to sell more of it. And it's like $3 more than everything else.

But like my brother-in-law is the same way. And he'll be like, it says grandma's famous, whatever. And I'm like, speaking of terms that have no meaning whatsoever, grandma's famous.

Jessica Wynn: I'm all in. Yeah, I'm a sucker for that stuff too.

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

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

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

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

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

Jessica Wynn: There's a lot of boxes up there. Dishes with long, flowery descriptions increase perceived value. That's where you see those words like artisanal, locally sourced, or signature.

They make people willing to pay more, even though they don't actually tell you anything.

Jordan Harbinger: So artisanal could just mean somebody lovingly microwaved it.

Jessica Wynn: Legally, yes. A restaurant can call anything artisanal, craft or handpicked. You know, it's all marketing language with no legal meaning.

Think about Budweiser. I think all of a sudden, after the craft beer explosion, they started using that word, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's true. I'm going to this restaurant tonight that's a Korean fusion, and they cook everything there. And the menu is different because it's, first of all, they change the menu every month.

You're watching them cook everything. You can see what they're doing. It's kind of like a hoity-toity kind of place.

And we've gone there every month for over a year and know the whole crew. Their menu is interesting because it'll say, like, the brand of strawberries, where they got the, like, the farmer's market, where they get it. And you can ask questions like, what does this mean?

And they're like, oh, that's the vendor. That's the name of the farm. We have to go to the farmer's market on Saturday, and we found all these really good ones.

So we added them this week, but we might print a menu next week without it.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, yeah.

Jessica Wynn: And they want to highlight the community. Yeah.

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

Jessica Wynn: Right. Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So it's like, now the dessert doesn't have that. It's got some cherries on it from Traverse City, Michigan, or whatever it is, to add a slightly different flavor.

Yeah. Okay. So anyway, the whole craft, hand-picked, artisanal stuff being just marketing language with no meaning is a little depressing.

So do you think regional food culture is kind of dying out because of this? Because if everybody's just ordering from the same place in California or Kentucky, then we're all eating the same stuff.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely dying. Regional food exists because generation of cooks developed techniques and recipes tied to a place.

So standardized supply chains replace those with products designed to taste the same everywhere.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you know of something that we have lost for sure because of this standardization?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And most people just think like, OK, this is barbecue now, right?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly. And over time, the shortcut becomes the expectation. And that's how regional food starts disappearing.

I just listened to a really incredible interview with Chef Asma Khan, who she's on that show Chef's Table. She's an Indian chef who works out of the UK, and she will only make things from scratch. She also only puts women in her kitchen.

And she just has this incredible philosophy of, like, food's more about what we taste. It's identity. It's history.

It's, you know, it's about humanity and the stories of our ancestors. And so we're losing all of that by fusing everything into one catalog, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: So she fixes it with sexism. Got it.

Jessica Wynn: She fixes it with sexism. Not a fan. Yeah.

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

Jordan Harbinger: The Jacques Cousteau of the cooking world.

Jessica Wynn: All right.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, that's the real loss. So local restaurants close.

Regional chains get bought out and homogenized. And what replaces them are restaurants serving standardized products from the same national distributors. So we're losing something irreplaceable.

The diversity of American food culture built over generations.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: But every year there's like a romaine lettuce E. coli recall.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

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

Jordan Harbinger: So the consolidation creates systemic risk.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are only a handful of major produce suppliers, a few giant meat processors and a few massive dairy distributors. When something goes wrong, it doesn't stay local.

It can hit thousands of restaurants at the same time. You know, the consolidation goes all the way up the food chain.

Jordan Harbinger: That is not bad luck. That is bad design.

Jessica Wynn: A resilient food system has lots of independent supply lines. If one fails, one restaurant has a really bad week. But a consolidated system has a few giant supply lines everybody depends on.

And when one of those breaks, everybody feels it. It's the difference between, you know, a neighborhood with backup generators for each house and a neighborhood with just one giant power plant.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, more than people realize. I mean, take produce. So every few years we hear about a nationwide lettuce recall.

This year we have the Cyclospora. Some other organism comes up every few years that sounds like a transformer or something, but it gives you explosive diarrhea. And it's not because every restaurant suddenly forgot how to wash lettuce.

They're often just buying from the same suppliers.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's so terrifying. It's a real danger. So distributors like Sysco, they provide ingredient lists, but they're long and complicated.

And servers can't memorize ingredients for 50 menu items.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Jessica Wynn: Cross-contamination can happen at the processing facility that the restaurant doesn't know about.

You know, there have been cases of allergic reactions because restaurants assured people something was safe, but didn't actually know what was in the pre-made components.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So people with serious allergies really need to be extra careful, sounds like.

Jessica Wynn: Very careful, especially at chains. Always ask to see written ingredient lists. I mean, then it's like embarrassing.

You don't want to be a pain. But don't trust verbal assurances. There was a case a few years ago where someone with a severe peanut allergy asked about desserts at a chain restaurant.

The server assured them the chocolate cake was peanut free. Turns out it was a frozen Sara Lee cake made in a facility that also processes peanuts. And so it had trace amounts.

The person had an allergic reaction. They had to use an EpiPen. The restaurant didn't know because the catalog didn't mention the facility also processes peanuts.

Jordan Harbinger: Apparently, the difference between a $9 appetizer and an $18 appetizer is mostly lighting and adjectives. Speaking of getting actual value for your money, here are our sponsors. We'll be right back.

Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So let's talk about what this has done to people who work in restaurants. What about line cooks who went to culinary school?

I mean, now you're just, what, microwaving stuff? That sucks.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, this is depressing. So you have people who went to culinary school.

They racked up the debt. They learned actual cooking techniques. And then they get hired at a chain restaurant and their job is opening bags and pressing microwave buttons.

Jordan Harbinger: Soul crushing. Super boring.

Jessica Wynn: Right? It's one reason there's such a high turnover in restaurants, you know, around 75% annually. So people who genuinely love cooking don't stay at places where they're not allowed to cook.

They leave the industry entirely or they fight to get into one of the few remaining restaurants that actually cook.

Jordan Harbinger: So we're losing culinary talent. Surprise, surprise.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Right. High-end restaurants, but there's only so many jobs, I guess.

Jessica Wynn: Right. And those are increasingly the only places where people are still learning to cook professionally, but there aren't enough of them. And they're incredibly competitive.

So at the same time, culinary schools have been closing at an alarming rate because fewer people see a future in the profession. So you've got fewer places teaching people to cook and fewer restaurants letting them cook once they graduate.

Jordan Harbinger: And everyone else is just, they just be microwaving.

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

You know, it's a really common story.

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

Jessica Wynn: No, no, it wasn't. And in the 1970s and 80s, most restaurants did significantly more cooking on site.

But several things changed. So restaurant chains went public and private equity got involved, creating pressure to maximize profits. Labor costs are the biggest controllable expense.

So they eliminated the need for skilled cooks.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, if your kitchen staff just has to reheat and plate, you can pay them less and train them faster. Employee turnover is brutal in restaurants. Teaching someone to microwave and plate, that just takes a couple days, right?

Teaching someone to actually cook, that takes months or years.

Jordan Harbinger: And it worked financially, I assume, yeah?

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

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

Jessica Wynn: I think they're closed now, aren't they?

Jordan Harbinger: I have no idea, actually.

Jessica Wynn: Or at least they've shut down a lot of locations. The food got more consistent at places like that, which corporate values more than quality. So every location serving identical food means no location fails because of bad cooking.

It also means no location really excels either. But that's acceptable to corporate.

Jordan Harbinger: By the way, I just looked this up. They have 380 locations in 35 countries, 72 locations in the U.S. I bet you there used to be at least a zero after that before. Because I feel like every place had a TGI Fridays.

Every airport had one. Malls had them.

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

Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

Jennifer Aniston worked there. The last time I saw one was in Taiwan.

Jessica Wynn: Interesting. Yeah, I wonder what this story is there. I didn't look it up.

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

Jessica Wynn: Bennigan's, right. All those places with all the chopsticks and stuff on the wall.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Anyway, so there are other factors too going on here, right?

Jessica Wynn: Sure. Food costs have risen dramatically. Waste is expensive. You know, if you buy fresh ingredients and don't use them, you lose money.

So pre-made frozen food has a much longer shelf life, and you can keep it in the freezer for months. Say a restaurant makes their own meatloaf from scratch. They'd waste about 15 to 20 percent of ingredients because of trimming, spoilage, over-ordering.

When they switch to frozen pre-made meatloaf from Sysco, waste drops to essentially zero. They could save about 200 bucks a week or more on waste alone, plus eliminate hours of daily prep labor. So from a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer.

And Sysco offers volume discounts. A chain ordering 10,000 frozen lasagnas gets a better price than a single restaurant buying ingredients for, you know, 100 lasagnas.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they scaled back the business by shrinking the cooking.

Jessica Wynn: And from Sysco's perspective, they're providing a valuable service.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure, yeah, of course.

Jessica Wynn: Restaurants get reliable products, consistent quality, and next-day delivery. Sysco has some of the most sophisticated logistics in the world. You know, a Sysco driver was interviewed and said he'd deliver to a farm-to-table restaurant in the morning, then to an Applebee's in the afternoon.

And the orders were the same frozen entrees, the same desserts, just different quantities. You know, he said drivers know which restaurants are lying about their sourcing because they see what's on the truck. Some drivers have stories about delivering to multiple competing restaurants on the same street, same products, just different logos.

Jordan Harbinger: I wonder if COVID made this worse.

Jessica Wynn: Well, COVID accelerated everything. So restaurants cut costs to survive, which meant more frozen food, more pre-made items, fewer staff. And here's what they learned.

Customers accepted lower quality if it meant their favorite restaurant survived.

Jordan Harbinger: So it basically enabled them to make food worse.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, essentially. I mean, people were so grateful restaurants stayed open that they didn't complain when quality dropped noticeably. Restaurants realized they could serve cheaper, more processed food, and customers would still come.

Many never raised quality back up after COVID ended. So labor costs have increased dramatically since COVID. If you can serve cheaper food and customers don't leave, that's the smart business decision.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man, that's depressing.

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

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't. But if I'm drinking, maybe.

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

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Right, chicken nuggets in denial, yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Riblets and chain restaurant pasta are probably the same product from kitchen to kitchen. Soups from these distributors are poured out of the bags, the quesadillas, the potstickers, the crab cakes, even at seafood restaurants.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

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

Jordan Harbinger: Well, that's super annoying.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, it kind of is.

Before we get to what's safe, I guess, to eat from a health perspective, this isn't just about paying eight bucks for mozzarella sticks at a chain or $18 at the hipster gastropub for the same product. A lot of these foods fall into a category nutrition researchers call ultra-processed food. We've talked about this on other episodes, and this isn't some, you know, wellness jargon.

Large studies following hundreds of thousands of people over decades consistently find that people who eat more ultra-processed foods have higher rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, and overall mortality.

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

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

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

Jessica Wynn: At a lot of places, burgers are usually grilled to order. Salads are usually assembled fresh, so ingredients might be pre-washed and pre-cut. Steaks are real, even if they come from the Sysco factory.

Eggs, like you pointed out at the place you went to, they're real unless they're scrambled. That usually comes from a carton. So order your eggs, you know, over medium or poached or whatever.

And simple items are more likely to be real. A grilled chicken breast is probably actual chicken grilled in the local restaurant's kitchen, while chicken marsala with sauce, that's probably a Sysco frozen entree.

Jordan Harbinger: So simplicity equals authenticity, maybe?

Jessica Wynn: Generally, yes. The more components a dish has, the more likely something came from a Sysco box.

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

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

Jordan Harbinger: And does it work?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Why don't we have this in America?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Is there any hope? Is there a counter movement to this stuff at all or what?

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

Jordan Harbinger: Is it working? I feel like unless I'm just not at home and starving, maybe I should only go to places that actually make food. But maybe that's, I don't know, is that a weird, that sounds weird coming out of my mouth, but like most of these places don't even make food.

So why should I go there? I should just go to the grocery store and buy food.

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

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

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

Jordan Harbinger: All right. So where do you eat when you go out?

Jessica Wynn: I actually don't really eat out too much. And if I do, I support small independent restaurants where I can see the kitchen. That's my favorite, when I can see the kitchen and talk to the owner and I'll ask questions.

I order things that are hard to fake, you know, dishes requiring actual skill to make. When I'm forced to eat at a chain, I know exactly what I'm getting, convenient, affordable, reheated Sysco food. And that's fine, as long as I'm honest with myself about it.

But I often end up leaving hungry and going home and, you know, chopping up some broccoli.

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

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly. I mean, knowing this doesn't mean you have to stop eating at restaurants. It just means you can make informed choices.

If you're eating at a chain and you want convenience and predictability, go ahead. Just know what you're getting.

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

Jessica Wynn: I mean, like we said, you know, seek out the restaurants that advertise scratch cooking. They might buy produce, meat or flour from Sysco like everyone else, but they're turning those ingredients into something instead of reheating finished products. So pay a little more when you can.

Leave reviews that mention the cooking, not just the service. And be patient. Real cooking takes longer, and dishes may vary a little from one visit to the next.

That's actually a good sign.

Jordan Harbinger: The inconsistency is a feature, not a bug.

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

It's efficiency and profit.

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

Jessica Wynn: I mean, we've all been duped like this, right? But, you know, you can be frustrated with the lack of transparency. But remember, most restaurants are barely surviving.

They're not making huge profits. They're just trying to stay in business in an industry where profit margins are just three to five percent. There's rising labor costs, expensive real estate, food inflation, and customer expectations for cheap, fast, consistent meals that all pushes restaurants toward this model.

This is why you see a lot of food trucks popping up too.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, there are a ton of food trucks around here. Why?

Because you don't have to worry about real estate and it's a small operation, so there's maybe two people running it kind of thing.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's all costs. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, huh. Rage against the machine, I guess.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, yeah. I mean, be mad at the system, but also recognize that we, the customers, created the system by prioritizing cheap and fast food over good and real and whole foods. So we're complicit.

We chose this through our purchasing decisions, through deregulation, and through allowing massive consolidation in the food industry.

Jordan Harbinger: Fair enough. Just because something comes out on a sizzling skillet doesn't mean it started there. You're not just choosing between restaurants, you're choosing between convenience and craftsmanship.

Sometimes those are the same thing. A lot of times they are not. And the more you know about what's happening behind the kitchen door, the easier it is to decide which one you actually want.

Thanks for thawing this out for us, Jess. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

You can find Jessica on her multiple Substacks, Between the Lines and Where Shadows Linger. We'll link to those in the show notes. Her work is also on Instagram at nevermetjessicas.

This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.

And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked.

So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love.

If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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

William Lee: I'm a researcher as well as a physician. So being a doctor and a scientist gives me an unusual lens. It turns out the actual new biology of cancer, we're actually forming cancers in our bodies all the time.

The fact of the matter is, our bodies are made of about 40 trillion cells. Those are the building blocks of our body. These cells have to copy themselves over and over and over again over the course of our lives.

40 trillion cells copying and pasting each other. Do they make an error? And the answer is yes.

That's how we understand cancers can actually form. So they sit there abnormally until our immune system swings by, finds them and then knocks them out. And that's actually the key.

Most of this stuff gets taken out by our body's health defenses. Meaning that when our defenses are working well, these kinds of things are going to get taken out. We're not going to be worried about them.

And so our health is a result of our body's defenses firing on all cylinders from the day we're born until our very last breath. Having your shields down is really the problem. The diagnosis of cancer is still a big deal, but we are beginning now to see the end of cancer with treatments that are actually able to take very advanced cancers and literally dry erase them.

The developments are happening so fast now. I never thought in my career I would see stage four cancer going to stage zero. And it's happening.

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