Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. We're
Speaker 1: all decked out for Halloween. One of four Halloween episodes
Speaker 1: that we're doing. And if it's not Halloween and you're listening,
Speaker 1: I mean, keep going, because these are good anytime, but
Speaker 1: but we're particularly excited about these topics because we get
Speaker 1: to hie them in with our Halloween enthusiasm. In fact
Speaker 1: that we were recording this in costume. Um, Julie, would
Speaker 1: you describe your costume? Um? Well, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to describe because I think I just look very uh well,
Speaker 1: I mean I've got a lot of stainless steel surrounding
Speaker 1: me right now, yes, and people keep dumping vegetables into me,
Speaker 1: and then like two hours later, I produce a substance.
Speaker 1: Can you guess what I am? Um? You're do? You
Speaker 1: look kind of like a robot with soup on you?
Speaker 1: But I thought was the costume like a super robot
Speaker 1: that wasn't very like complex and just kept spilling my soup? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right now now I'm the Chloeac Machine. Oh, that's gross.
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah, it's a it's a terrifying, uh Halloween costume,
Speaker 1: which we will describe a little and a little more
Speaker 1: detail at the end of this this podcast. And we
Speaker 1: but we mentioned it in a previous one about digesting robots.
Speaker 1: So you are a digesting robot more like the pooping duck.
Speaker 1: And and just to make everybody feel better, there's some
Speaker 1: actual stuff produced by me. But if you had like
Speaker 1: brought in some like soft served chocolate ice cream, that
Speaker 1: would have been appropriate based on the pictures I've seen
Speaker 1: of the poop that the Cloaca bot produces. Yes, yes, yes, gosh,
Speaker 1: now you've told everybody in my secret. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: you're sitting over there eating your your Halloween candy. What
Speaker 1: are you? I am? Humpty hump See you noticed the
Speaker 1: glasses and the large fig nos in the first from
Speaker 1: you know, Digital Underground, right, I thought I thought it
Speaker 1: was just Wednesday. Now this is my Humpty costume. UM
Speaker 1: A big big fan from way back, especially the Digital
Speaker 1: Underground cameo with tupac in um that horrible dan ackroid
Speaker 1: movie Nothing but Trouble. Oh goodness, I have to say
Speaker 1: that I have not seen that it was like Danacroid's
Speaker 1: pet project and and God bless him, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a horrible film that Gimmy Moore in it and uh
Speaker 1: Chevy Chase, and it's just it's very Halloween theme, like
Speaker 1: a kind of a haunted house and all these grotesque
Speaker 1: characters running around and not really funny at all. And
Speaker 1: then there's just this huge theme or digital underground is
Speaker 1: is brought before the the the Evil Judge, one of
Speaker 1: like eighteen characters played by Dan Ackroyd in this, and
Speaker 1: then they're made to perform that sounds like the result
Speaker 1: of too much money, too much time, and too many stimulants.
Speaker 1: So speaking of yes, speaking of stimulants. Not not too
Speaker 1: much time, time or money, but stimulants, speaking stimulants. So
Speaker 1: we're of course talking about it's Halloween. You think Halloween,
Speaker 1: you think Halloween. Candy. The topic of this particular podcast
Speaker 1: the candy Cordinace, and we're we're not just talking about
Speaker 1: candy corn, but about various candies and just sugar in
Speaker 1: general as a is a childhood obsession and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, and adulthood obsession as well. Yeah, Yeah, why
Speaker 1: kids are so transfixed and why we are too. Why
Speaker 1: we continue to be just sort of going to that
Speaker 1: siren call of candy except for candy corn, for me,
Speaker 1: for you. I'm in the camp of hating candy corn.
Speaker 1: I don't think it really should exist other than to
Speaker 1: create little things with um way abomination. Well, I this
Speaker 1: was we're talking about this yesterday and I I asked
Speaker 1: people on the house stuff Works main Facebook page. I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, guys, what's what's your favorite candy and
Speaker 1: what candies? How do we tip candies do you find
Speaker 1: is particularly vile? And a number of people mentioned candy corn. Uh.
Speaker 1: At least one person mentioned my least favorite candy, which
Speaker 1: happens to be circus peanuts, which are you know those
Speaker 1: giants like they I guess they kind of they're kind
Speaker 1: of molded to look like a giant swollen peanut. But
Speaker 1: it's made of some are thought you're going to say
Speaker 1: something else, some sort of orange spongy material that may
Speaker 1: or may not be food but is ingested. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's really grim And then uh, I asked my wife
Speaker 1: and she she mentioned Boston beans. It's like who would
Speaker 1: name a candy buston? And then and then there we'll
Speaker 1: talk about some other disgusting candies as we we go forth,
Speaker 1: and and also maybe candies that are not all that
Speaker 1: disgusting as far as their taste may go, but there
Speaker 1: their marketing has been some questionable and uh and if
Speaker 1: I had to pick one though that I'm not really
Speaker 1: a candy eater anymore. And this is something we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about, how adults tend to move more and more
Speaker 1: away from candy while children cannot get enough. I will
Speaker 1: occasionally have a hankering for some Twizzlers. Ah yeah, and
Speaker 1: I bet that it's probably that that time of the
Speaker 1: day when you're Circadian the self dropped right, and you
Speaker 1: need an easy pick up Twizzler o'clock, Twizzler o'clock, three o'clock.
Speaker 1: I see them on your desk, not on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, you don't. Don't. Don't make the listeners, especially
Speaker 1: my wife, think that I'm pulling out twisted every afternoon
Speaker 1: from your little safe underneath your desk. I don't know
Speaker 1: what else is in there, the Twizzler safe. Yeah well, okay, great,
Speaker 1: now I've got explaining to do. But but anyway, so
Speaker 1: let's let's move on. So why are kids so into
Speaker 1: candy like Why are they because they were just obsessed
Speaker 1: with it? Well, we should probably talk about it from
Speaker 1: evolutionary perspective. Yes, yeah, let's let's because if they're craving it,
Speaker 1: there's there's something at work there. We tend not to
Speaker 1: crave things unless we need it on some level. So,
Speaker 1: so on a very basic level, like what is sugar about?
Speaker 1: As a structural material, sugar is involved in just about
Speaker 1: every aspect of our biology. It's involved in recognizing pathogens,
Speaker 1: blood clotting, enabling sperm to penetrate the ovum, regulating the
Speaker 1: half life of hormones, directing embriyonic development, acting as an
Speaker 1: address code for directing traffic of various cells and proteins.
Speaker 1: Of course, this doesn't mean that it's it's a good nutrient,
Speaker 1: like it's it's right when it comes to uh that
Speaker 1: it's like mostly calories and no vitamins, no fiber, and
Speaker 1: it's liking the good stuff you'll find and things like apples, oranges, oranges,
Speaker 1: other fruits that deliver sugar, but also other helpful things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we talk about sugar, we should probably acknowledge that, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely fruits carry that. So it's it's an easy, quick
Speaker 1: burst of energy. Yes, you've got you know glucose, and
Speaker 1: glucose is quite a prize when you're surviving in an
Speaker 1: environment where food is hard to come by. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you came upon an apple, that would be great. Although,
Speaker 1: of course apple has fiber, so it's gonna full you
Speaker 1: up a little bit more. Just from a evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 1: we know that this would be important for us having
Speaker 1: a leg up in the survival game. Right. It gives
Speaker 1: you a little boost. Uh. And if we if we've
Speaker 1: discussed in our one of our previous topics about decision fatigue,
Speaker 1: that boost is not just like a physical energy boost
Speaker 1: that can also help you in your ability to navigate
Speaker 1: the world around you to figure out what choice you're
Speaker 1: gonna make. Are you gonna when when you're running from
Speaker 1: that sudden sabretooth tiger attack, are you gonna Are you
Speaker 1: gonna run towards the rock or you're gonna run towards
Speaker 1: the tree. Maybe that fruit you just date off the
Speaker 1: ground is going to give you the mental leg up
Speaker 1: you need to know which place is gonna mean your survival. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you brought this up the other day when we
Speaker 1: were just sort of casually talking about the topic about
Speaker 1: how it really does help your decision making abilities, especially
Speaker 1: in the context of decision fatigue, which we talked about before,
Speaker 1: and we talked about a study there where the judges
Speaker 1: were becoming extremely fatigued and they were making decisions that were,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially just kind of putting off the parole
Speaker 1: decision that they were trying to make. And they found
Speaker 1: that when the judges were given a quick burst of
Speaker 1: sugar in the form of fruits, that all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: their decision making came back online. So it makes you
Speaker 1: think that that like, especially in the courtroom and basically
Speaker 1: need a big hummingbird feeder full of sugar water for
Speaker 1: for the judges. Yeah, I mean, really, if you've got
Speaker 1: a case at three o'clock in the afternoon, you should
Speaker 1: probably bring a snack for the judge, although you need
Speaker 1: to clear it with the security guard first. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be bad form if you did not. So let's
Speaker 1: go in the way back machine and look at prohibition
Speaker 1: and how actually, wait, we just traveled back into the past.
Speaker 1: So aren't we going forward at this point? Oh we are, Well,
Speaker 1: we were still in the way back machine. But anyway,
Speaker 1: well yeah, okay, let's go in the way back and
Speaker 1: forth machine. Okay, that works as forwarding. Then from the
Speaker 1: saber tooth, tiger dodging, ground fruit eating caveman dates and
Speaker 1: now we're prohibition. Yea, everybody's doing to Charleston biglebee gowns
Speaker 1: are being worn, and alcohol is getting itself. Um and
Speaker 1: in the United States, that's right, it's not as readily available.
Speaker 1: So what do they find is happening? They find that uh,
Speaker 1: candy like nickel nips no tittering please, these are wax
Speaker 1: bottles with sugar sort up become really popular growing probe
Speaker 1: and these are still around. Um. I picked them up
Speaker 1: as a novelty a few years back to take to
Speaker 1: uh Mystery sent theater night, which I get to every week,
Speaker 1: and used to we would have more of an emphasis
Speaker 1: on absurd candies like nerds, rope and stuff. But we
Speaker 1: got over that because we're older and wiser. But but
Speaker 1: I remember bringing some of those and they're they're just
Speaker 1: really gross. I mean, I guess, like I say, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm approaching this as as a non for the
Speaker 1: most part, a non candy person. So kids, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll still find them very exciting because it's like this
Speaker 1: little wax bottle filled with something that is it's a
Speaker 1: liquid and I guess it's like colored sugar water kind
Speaker 1: of a thing, some sort of weird syrup. And I
Speaker 1: actually thought about picking them up for this podcast, but
Speaker 1: we record in the morning, and I was gonna have
Speaker 1: to pick them up in the morning, and I might
Speaker 1: get arrested if I'm seen buying what are these called again, uh,
Speaker 1: nickel nips, nickel nips, Or I go into a store
Speaker 1: asking for nickel nips at eight am. You're probably have
Speaker 1: to go to a specific store for this. I don't
Speaker 1: think that this is just a your corner drug store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're available now, but I don't know if they
Speaker 1: make them anymore. Like have this suspicion that candies like
Speaker 1: nickel nips and Circus peanuts that they haven't been made
Speaker 1: in decades. They just made enough of them and the
Speaker 1: consumption rate is so low. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: open a new drug store and you're just issued some
Speaker 1: nickel nips and some Boston beans and some Circus peanuts,
Speaker 1: and then and they're like, all right, you got your candy.
Speaker 1: It's like government issues subsidized a shelf light of five years.
Speaker 1: We've got to get rid of them. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what people were tipping back in lieu of
Speaker 1: alcohol because it was giving them a sugar rush, and
Speaker 1: people were to eat drinking like massive amounts of alcohol
Speaker 1: before prohibition. That's one thing to to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: It's not just an issue of like, oh well, we
Speaker 1: were drinking and then we had this brief period where
Speaker 1: we cut back because it was illegal, and then we
Speaker 1: were right back where we started. According to Ken Burns,
Speaker 1: who currently or by the time they sit airs, they
Speaker 1: may have varied the entire mini series. Have the new
Speaker 1: mini series Prohibition that goes into great detail about the
Speaker 1: roots of prohibition and then uh, you know, draw parallels
Speaker 1: to current political climates. And he pointed out before prohibition,
Speaker 1: the average person was consuming somewhere between ninety and a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty bottles per year of alcohol. Okay, so
Speaker 1: a lot of that booze is going to have a
Speaker 1: fair amount of sugar in it. Yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: we know right exactly, So it's sort of a double whammy.
Speaker 1: And we know that with the sugar rush and with
Speaker 1: alcohol that it's going to start affecting the reward center
Speaker 1: of our brain. Right, So this is obviously why we
Speaker 1: keep coming back to it time and time and again,
Speaker 1: and that's why during that time period it was viewed
Speaker 1: as an epidemic. So let's talk about the reward center
Speaker 1: and candy. Basically, we have sugar causing the release of
Speaker 1: dopamine in the nucleus incumbents old friend nucleus that combins
Speaker 1: which I see, I feel like we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot lately, um delivering the classic sugar high. So Neurosciences
Speaker 1: Behavioral Review reports that binging on sugar stimulates the same
Speaker 1: euphoric pathway targeted by hardcore drugs like cocaine and can
Speaker 1: cause similar withdrawal, craving, and cross sensitilization. So it's no
Speaker 1: wonder that one of the slang terms for cocaine is
Speaker 1: nose candy. Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's the same
Speaker 1: ding ding in the brain. Not to be confused with
Speaker 1: ding dongs, which are like a there's not definitely a candy,
Speaker 1: I guess, but a a junk sweet food, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And another thing though, to keep in mind about prohibition
Speaker 1: real quick is that the alcohol makers and the and
Speaker 1: the brewers a lot of them found themselves unable to
Speaker 1: legally produce alcohol, so they turned their attention to creating
Speaker 1: candies or sugary sodas. That's right. Yeah. So so suddenly
Speaker 1: a lot of the guys that were in the business
Speaker 1: of giving you your alcohol were now saying, well, that's illegal,
Speaker 1: but we have orange soda like crazy, so drink this instead, right,
Speaker 1: and you can get a quick little high and system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's the new drug ar Okay. So back in
Speaker 1: the time machine a little bit forward here the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: and then now you see candy being come completely marketed
Speaker 1: in another way. Right, So, as you mentioned, it was
Speaker 1: in the form of Kula's. But now, I mean, resources
Speaker 1: are seriously scarce and people are not able to actually
Speaker 1: buy a full meal or make a full meal for
Speaker 1: themselves or their families. So they go to the store
Speaker 1: and they buy themselves a chicken dinner candy bar. That
Speaker 1: is truth. That sounds at all I like, I looked
Speaker 1: it up. You can if you do a Google imag
Speaker 1: search on chicken Dinner candy bar, you will find images
Speaker 1: of this this awesome and terrifying like like like you
Speaker 1: as you stress that it was not flavored like a
Speaker 1: chicken dinner. This is not like the candy that they
Speaker 1: have in uh In Willy Wonka that tastes like a
Speaker 1: seven course meal. It's just a candy bar. The gimmick
Speaker 1: here is, Hey, you don't have time or money, um
Speaker 1: et cetera to have an actual chicken dinner, buy a
Speaker 1: candy bar instead. Right, And according to Beth Camerly Issues,
Speaker 1: the author of Candy the Sweet History, that the package
Speaker 1: actually had a picture of a coasted chicken with like
Speaker 1: steam coming off of it, which again it's just sounds
Speaker 1: kind of awful and disgusting, but they were trying to
Speaker 1: to to market this as healthy and inexpensive. Hearing that,
Speaker 1: on one level, I'm like, oh my goodness, what an
Speaker 1: unenlightened age, or you know, or I want to make
Speaker 1: you know judgments about about the differences. But you go
Speaker 1: to the store now and you have all these things
Speaker 1: like the like the cliff bars, and various diet and
Speaker 1: energy bars, and and those may not be marketed as
Speaker 1: here is a substitute for your dinner, but but it
Speaker 1: is very much the idea of here is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a meal or huge energy punch in bar form. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can also look at fast food joints and
Speaker 1: you can you know, the dollar menu is a good example, right,
Speaker 1: so they have um, you know obviously like there's much
Speaker 1: more protein, there's much more to this in terms of
Speaker 1: what a person is consuming. That it's the same idea
Speaker 1: of here's this healthy and inexpensive thing, it's a dollar
Speaker 1: when in fact it's something that's unhealthy and it's very
Speaker 1: much subsidized and may have basically come out of a
Speaker 1: clot Well we'll see, we'll see in two hours. But
Speaker 1: you know that the same sort of idea exists, right, Like,
Speaker 1: whatever you have at your disposal at that time, you've
Speaker 1: got candy, let's market it as something that's going to
Speaker 1: satiate your appetite. So candy has just kind of morphed
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, through history in terms of
Speaker 1: how people have perceived it. But I do really love
Speaker 1: the fact that it was that this package, this roosted
Speaker 1: chicken on a package was was like as if you
Speaker 1: just put it right there, then you would believe it,
Speaker 1: I'm going to eat this chicken. But I also think
Speaker 1: that it points to how dire the circumstances were at
Speaker 1: the time. Now you you mentioned the fast food, and
Speaker 1: it is important to mention that this sort of stereotypical
Speaker 1: the average fast food meal. As we can see, it
Speaker 1: does pack a huge sugar punch in the form of
Speaker 1: a supersized cola drink. Yeah that's true. Um well, and
Speaker 1: also additives to right depending on what you're getting. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk about kids, why they are such
Speaker 1: candy fiends and how honestly they can't help themselves. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will discuss these little monsters. This podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
Speaker 1: which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
Speaker 1: explore the answers to life's questions. All right, then we're back,
Speaker 1: uh so on the issue of children and candy. One
Speaker 1: of the memory that always comes to my mind is
Speaker 1: that there was this uh about mitzvah that my my
Speaker 1: wife shot and she's a photographer. She was shooting this
Speaker 1: thing and I came along to do some on site
Speaker 1: printing for the guests, and so you had this entire
Speaker 1: room just filled with little girls, and they had all
Speaker 1: the like their their snack bar slash lunch dinner bar
Speaker 1: or whatever you got time to day it was, but
Speaker 1: it was just loaded with things like uh, you know
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry's ice cream and all sorts of sweets
Speaker 1: to put on it, and then like a cupcake fountain. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I mean then of course like
Speaker 1: pizza and and other kind of kid friendly foods as well.
Speaker 1: But they were just crazy on sugar and they were
Speaker 1: just running around and they would just swoop into the
Speaker 1: photo booth that we had set up and they would
Speaker 1: just go crazy for these photos. I would remember thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: these kids are insane, and it was just because they
Speaker 1: were just getting a NonStop rush of sugar. They were
Speaker 1: just doing more sugar every five minutes. And what's really
Speaker 1: it's really funny if the kid doesn't actually belong to
Speaker 1: you and you just get to observe it. But especially
Speaker 1: with little girls because in those circumstances, because he usually
Speaker 1: have dresses on with crinolines and stuff, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like they there's like a wrestling pile
Speaker 1: of them and they're just so high on sugar and
Speaker 1: they start beating each other up, at least with the
Speaker 1: parties I've been too, they're all like little Hull Colgan's.
Speaker 1: But yes, I mean this is this is the result
Speaker 1: of sugar. It creates a even the most docile child
Speaker 1: becomes a sort of whole Cogan up kid, right right.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that you mentioned the whole cogan thing
Speaker 1: because of course we think of whole coke and we
Speaker 1: think hulking up. We think of muscles and bones, um
Speaker 1: and uh and and that's actually linked to this uh
Speaker 1: we we think um, they're The theory is that that
Speaker 1: a lot of this um, this sugar craving is linked
Speaker 1: to rapid grown bone growth, that they're hardwired to it
Speaker 1: because growing bones secrete hormones that influence metabolism, and we
Speaker 1: know that other metaball hormones are like left in and
Speaker 1: insulin um, connect on areas of the brain that control
Speaker 1: cravings and appetites and even directly behind the tongue where
Speaker 1: they affect the preference for sweet tas, which is fascinating,
Speaker 1: right because what they found, um, this is from an
Speaker 1: article from mp ARE called Kids Sugar Craving maybe biological,
Speaker 1: is that they found that kids actually have a different
Speaker 1: taste landscape. I guess you could say, yes, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what really like sensory sen pete really yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they referred to it as kids living in a
Speaker 1: different since reworld than adults. Yeah, it was. So it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like the entire world is turned
Speaker 1: slightly on its head when it comes to what tastes
Speaker 1: good and what doesn't. Yeah, it's very different from an adult.
Speaker 1: Researcher Julie Manella of the Monell Chemical Census Center says, quote,
Speaker 1: kids prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the
Speaker 1: adult and it doesn't decrease until late adolescents. And we
Speaker 1: have some evidence that they may be more sensitive to
Speaker 1: bitter taste. So when Manella's researchers studied this, that they
Speaker 1: did as they gave adults a sucrose and water solution
Speaker 1: that was on part of like your average cola, okay,
Speaker 1: and so that that was kind of the extent that
Speaker 1: the adults wanted their sugar. They didn't want it anymore,
Speaker 1: They didn't want it really any less. Kids, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, prefer twice the amount of sugar, and then
Speaker 1: younger children had absolutely no limit when it came to
Speaker 1: the amount of sugar that was put in the solution
Speaker 1: and keep dumping it in until the solution cannot hold
Speaker 1: more sugar before it just becomes a big container of
Speaker 1: damp sugar. Yeah, they were all like heavy on the
Speaker 1: sugar and lead on the water, if you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Wink wink um. So I mean that gives
Speaker 1: you a clue right there. That Yes, that's a different
Speaker 1: sensory palette, which leads us this whole idea that it
Speaker 1: is hardwired that for a kid surviving, particularly back in
Speaker 1: the way back, way back day, right, Yeah, the sugar
Speaker 1: would give them an advantage. Yeah, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: me think back to Halloween bag of candy days, and
Speaker 1: I mean I would just over a few days, I
Speaker 1: would eat all the candy. Yeah. It was like, look,
Speaker 1: if you gave me a sack of Tutsi rolls and
Speaker 1: told me to eat them, now, there's no telling how
Speaker 1: sick I would become. Right, there would have to be
Speaker 1: like some sort of five rewards, right they would have.
Speaker 1: It would be a pretty serious endeavor. But you had
Speaker 1: a bag of Tutsi rolls to like a six year old,
Speaker 1: they're like that. They won't even blink an eye. Oh no,
Speaker 1: Like I remember Halloween's in my candy stash and my
Speaker 1: pillow case and being horribly protective of it because I
Speaker 1: thought that my brother was going to rate it. So
Speaker 1: I mean you to understand why people, why little kids
Speaker 1: get so connected to it. Um. This is actually another
Speaker 1: really interesting thing that came from that article that sucre
Speaker 1: sucros is actually a natural pain reliever and little ones. Um.
Speaker 1: They gave sucro solutions to newborns receiving circumcisions and babies
Speaker 1: receiving immunizations, and they found that there was a significant
Speaker 1: decrease in pain. Sugar actually makes them stronger, It actually
Speaker 1: heals their wounds. No, it doesn't. But my my daughter
Speaker 1: received a bunch of shots when she was born from
Speaker 1: the get go for a two week period and they
Speaker 1: did give her sugar water before every single shot. And
Speaker 1: now sugar. Yeah, she has never had candy, but the
Speaker 1: store around the corner from us has like the old
Speaker 1: fashioned like you know, little bins of candy and she
Speaker 1: just will will stare at it. Uh, I mean for
Speaker 1: hours she would she knocks on them sometimes. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like well, because every single children children something that every
Speaker 1: single one, but every other. One of them talks about
Speaker 1: candy children's books talk about maybe maybe there's like they're
Speaker 1: just hardwired to the point where like a child can
Speaker 1: hear sugar, you know, they walk into the store and
Speaker 1: they're like, what's it saying. You can hear the sugar,
Speaker 1: like grinding the follicles in their ears are like that
Speaker 1: sensitive to sugar. Uh. I don't know that could be,
Speaker 1: who knows, But let's talk about the downside of candied
Speaker 1: um other than just you know, having that initial rush
Speaker 1: and then plummeting with your energy. A lot of it
Speaker 1: comes back to our our origins and how we evolved
Speaker 1: and what our diet was originally like. And generally you
Speaker 1: you might you'll find some fruit on the ground, you'll
Speaker 1: eat it, You'll get some sugar out of that, but
Speaker 1: we also get some other things that are important for
Speaker 1: you in addition to just the pure sugar. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in many cases, you would go for a long period
Speaker 1: time without getting sugar, Like sometimes sugar is difficult to acquire.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's seen the amazing BBC Discovery co production Human
Speaker 1: Planet has seen that amazing sequence where the Biaka tribesmen
Speaker 1: line this enormous tree to raid this bee hive enormously high,
Speaker 1: like stories and stories up just climb up with nothing
Speaker 1: more than like a burning brand um, you know, some
Speaker 1: smoke to ward off some of the bees. And the
Speaker 1: guy still gets stung, just hundreds and hundreds of times
Speaker 1: while he's retrieving this honey for himself and his family.
Speaker 1: But the promise of honey and this sugar rush is strong,
Speaker 1: and not just the sugar rush, but the calories. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's there's a benefit to having it.
Speaker 1: But in the old days it was more work or
Speaker 1: or when you got it, you you didn't just get
Speaker 1: the pure sugar. You received other you know, nutrients, and
Speaker 1: you might not get it every day. Now it's an
Speaker 1: entirely different story, right, Right, we have to worry about
Speaker 1: being propped up until the next meal, right, especially industrialized nations.
Speaker 1: I mean, it begins the first thing in the morning
Speaker 1: for some folks with a nice sugary cereal or even
Speaker 1: like some some wholesome oatmeal that has been just attacked
Speaker 1: with a sugar spoon until it's just standing on end,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, you really don't have to go
Speaker 1: that far for it. Um. Scientists Ralph di Leone at Yale,
Speaker 1: your university found that an animal sweet or fatty foods
Speaker 1: can act a lot like drugs in the brains, which
Speaker 1: which we've talked about, and there's growing evidence that eating
Speaker 1: too much of these foods can cause long term changes
Speaker 1: in the brain circuits that control eating behavior. UM. So
Speaker 1: you know, both animal and human brains include special pathways
Speaker 1: that make us feel good when we eat right and
Speaker 1: really give when we eat sweet or fatty foods with
Speaker 1: lots of calories. And he says that drug addiction is
Speaker 1: really hijacking some of these pathways that evolve to promote
Speaker 1: food intake for survival reasons. So we talked about dopamine
Speaker 1: being released in the brain right when you when you
Speaker 1: eat sugar, and we know that with addiction that if
Speaker 1: you abuse a substance you know, whether it's sugar, if
Speaker 1: you can call it that, you know, a substance UM
Speaker 1: that is really truly addictive, or alcohol or cocaine, that
Speaker 1: the more and more you do it, the more and
Speaker 1: more your dopamine is released. But then your brain backs
Speaker 1: off on really using it, actually stops releasing as much,
Speaker 1: which then requires the user to go and sort of
Speaker 1: double up on the substance to get the same sugar high, right,
Speaker 1: So so a real sugar junkie is essentially chasing the
Speaker 1: dragon after a while, to use the old Victorian terminology. Yeah, yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean they're seeing this. There's actually a Teresa Rays.
Speaker 1: She's a research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology
Speaker 1: at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was part of
Speaker 1: a team that gave mice a high fat diet from
Speaker 1: the time that they are weaned until they reached twenty weeks,
Speaker 1: so they gained significant amounts of weight and they became obese.
Speaker 1: Then the researchers looked at the brain's pleasure centers um,
Speaker 1: which are the areas that we know change in drug addiction,
Speaker 1: and she said that what we found is that in
Speaker 1: animals that were obese, there were really dramatic changes in
Speaker 1: these areas of the brain that participate in telling us
Speaker 1: how rewarding food is. The changes made these areas less
Speaker 1: responsive to fatty foods, so no beast mouse would have
Speaker 1: to eat more fat than a typical mass stick at
Speaker 1: the same amount of pleasure. And some of these changes
Speaker 1: didn't go away for these mice, which I think is
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating is that that the whole idea, that
Speaker 1: it really is changing the way that your brain functions.
Speaker 1: And then you think about highly processed foods, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's basically just concentrating sugar, you know, to to the
Speaker 1: point where it's no longer just the sugar from my fruit.
Speaker 1: It's something completely different and much more potent, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you you are just talking about the difference
Speaker 1: between eating an apple and drinking a glass of apple juice, like,
Speaker 1: there's a huge difference in how what you're taking in there.
Speaker 1: But then you add this, uh like a chemical process
Speaker 1: on top of that, and then these varying levels of
Speaker 1: refinement you get even even farther and farther from the
Speaker 1: the original source. Well and from from what I read that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you've got it concentrated like this, the
Speaker 1: message to your brain is a lot louder if I
Speaker 1: can put that in air quotes, then something like a
Speaker 1: simple sugar in a banana, and so you get a
Speaker 1: bigger response from the rewards there. So it's it's essentially
Speaker 1: like the difference between heroin and opium, or you know,
Speaker 1: or say crack cocaine and cocaine. It's like a processed
Speaker 1: um more impactful version of the of the original substance. Right,
Speaker 1: that's really going to mess with your brain a lot more.
Speaker 1: And again, just sugary sodas and juices can make a
Speaker 1: huge difference. I ran across this study that showed the
Speaker 1: teens who quit drinking sugar, soda and juices lost basically
Speaker 1: a pound a month over six months. And it wasn't insane.
Speaker 1: And that's not that's not factoring in other things that
Speaker 1: could potentially cut out, but but just like really sugary
Speaker 1: sodas and and the like. So yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: reason why candy is really actually a menaces because of
Speaker 1: childhood obesity. And we know that from the CDC, the
Speaker 1: Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta, that they have
Speaker 1: put some pretty staggering statistics out there, and uh and
Speaker 1: not counting situations where the brain is really then reprogrammed
Speaker 1: um in terms of how much sugar it thinks the
Speaker 1: body needs. It's actually not that difficult for the average
Speaker 1: person to cut down on their their on their taste
Speaker 1: for sweetness. Like I think I've seen the figure around
Speaker 1: like three weeks it takes to sort of adjust your
Speaker 1: taste to something say, even if it's something is mild
Speaker 1: as cutting down from a normal soda to a diet
Speaker 1: soda tastes weird at first, but they say, like three
Speaker 1: weeks thereabouts, that's about how much time it takes to
Speaker 1: get used to the new flavor, right, right, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's it's a matter of being
Speaker 1: aware of it and taking out. But when you know,
Speaker 1: in Forks Ever Knives, they talked about the childhood obesity rate,
Speaker 1: and they were actually saying that the coming generation will
Speaker 1: have a shorter lifespan than ours, which is kind of like, ohh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't gone in fact checked the movie,
Speaker 1: but I will say that when from what the CDC says,
Speaker 1: they said, child childhood obesity has more than tripled in
Speaker 1: the past thirty years because of all these highly processed foods, right,
Speaker 1: and because of high fructous corn syrup, and the percentage
Speaker 1: of children age six to eleven years United States who
Speaker 1: are a beasts increased from seven percent in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two nearly in two thousand eight. Similarly, the percentage of
Speaker 1: adolescents aged twelve to nineteen who are a beast increased
Speaker 1: from five percent to eight percent. Over the same period.
Speaker 1: So you know, in two thousand and eight, we have
Speaker 1: more than one third of children and adolescents who are
Speaker 1: overweight or abase. Yeah, and the long term health effects,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously are are many. And uh, I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking about increased incidences of certain cancers, type two, diabetes, uh,
Speaker 1: kidney problems, pancreas list goes on and on. It's kind
Speaker 1: of pressing. Then you mean to bring candy down like this? Well,
Speaker 1: it leads to the ultimate question here, and that is,
Speaker 1: Halloween is approaching. If you're listening to this at the
Speaker 1: publication time, and even if you're not, Halloween's gonna roll
Speaker 1: around again. And if not Halloween, then Easter or any
Speaker 1: any of the various holidays that have some sort of
Speaker 1: marketed candy associated with them, which is pretty much every holiday.
Speaker 1: Uh So, do you give the kids Halloween candy? Do
Speaker 1: they get to have the candy? Do you try and
Speaker 1: stop them? Do you dare try and stop them with
Speaker 1: their strange little zombie minds? Does your house get egged
Speaker 1: because you give out apples or toothbrushes? Yeah? Don't you
Speaker 1: know anybody the neighbor that never came out a toothbrush? No,
Speaker 1: my dad was a dentist, and we didn't give out
Speaker 1: the toothbrushes. We gave out candy. But then again, as
Speaker 1: a dentist, you kind of have in a center give
Speaker 1: out candy. I guess, yeah, yeah, that's what your dad
Speaker 1: was like. Here you go, there's the it's the really
Speaker 1: sweet yuh. I'll see at the office. There you go. Well,
Speaker 1: let me reach into the Halloween bag here and get
Speaker 1: some listener mail. Have a couple of interesting ones, and
Speaker 1: the first one does relate to the chloec Abot. Would
Speaker 1: you describe the chloekabot? That's just a refresh. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the artists, but them del Vo, okay, fim Delvoy
Speaker 1: who who created this chloec a bot and put it
Speaker 1: in a really sterile environment, basically put it in a
Speaker 1: museum with like, you know, stark white walls around it.
Speaker 1: And so I can't remember how long this actual bot was,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm going to say, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe twelve feet or something like that. And he would
Speaker 1: feed he had a chef actually prepare meals for the
Speaker 1: cloak a bat and feed it regularly, and then he
Speaker 1: would add some enzymes, some acids, basically trying to replicate
Speaker 1: the conditions in your stomach and lo and behold that
Speaker 1: cloak a bot would produce coo like every two hours
Speaker 1: or so, No, not actually every two hours because it
Speaker 1: was mimicking the human digestion, but anyway would then produce
Speaker 1: actual pooh, and then people in the museum would come
Speaker 1: and look at it and they could buy the samples. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it really blew our minds when we find out
Speaker 1: found out about it, because then it also delivers on
Speaker 1: earlier Victorian attempts or aspirations of mimicking the human bottom
Speaker 1: and by chemical active digestions with the machine. And this
Speaker 1: guy comes along and and nails it with horrifying results.
Speaker 1: But of course we just had pictures to go on
Speaker 1: and uh, we have to depend on other people to
Speaker 1: actually smell the exhibit for us, and our listener, Bernard
Speaker 1: from Australia, does just that. He writes, listen to your
Speaker 1: podcast on the pooping duck. I have witnessed of them
Speaker 1: Delvo's cloaca professional in action at the Mona Museum in Hobart, Tasmania.
Speaker 1: Uh picks I took below. They feed it lettuce apparently,
Speaker 1: and at three pm every day it does its thing.
Speaker 1: I can confirm the smell is realistic almost there's something
Speaker 1: not quite right and disturbing about the smell. Maybe that
Speaker 1: was all in my mind. As it comes out of
Speaker 1: the out of the little glass plate it falls on,
Speaker 1: rotates in a circular pattern to create a mr whippy
Speaker 1: like soft serve. Uh. There were lots of kids there
Speaker 1: and none of them cried. None of them laughed either. Um,
Speaker 1: and then he has on another subject. Was standing on
Speaker 1: a rock a couple of feet in diameter a few
Speaker 1: yards out into a lake fishing. Once a platypus swam
Speaker 1: up and circle the rock against it a few times,
Speaker 1: then swam away. I have seen them from a distance
Speaker 1: many times, but that was special. I was just blown
Speaker 1: away by that because it's two really cool things, right,
Speaker 1: like we're fans, which is pretty weird and has a
Speaker 1: cloak yes, thank you, and then yep, and just right
Speaker 1: around back to actually seeing the kaka bought in person
Speaker 1: and then sending his photos. I couldn't have end. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: it looks like a mad scientists laboratory. Um. This looks
Speaker 1: to be like five hanging vessels right with all sorts
Speaker 1: of tubes that are coming from it. I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: this is the this is the junk that they put
Speaker 1: in there to actually break down the food and make
Speaker 1: it into feces um. And it's hanging from a track.
Speaker 1: It is horrific looking. And then the soft serve is
Speaker 1: that comes out of the shoot onto this plate. I
Speaker 1: can't believe we're making me describe this UM and it
Speaker 1: kind of looks a little bit like Plato. But anyway, hey,
Speaker 1: we're always game to putting these up on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: so so definitely thank you Bernard for writing in UM
Speaker 1: not only to share the pictures, but also to to
Speaker 1: describe your first hand experience with this strange and fascinating exhibit.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were kind of recoil and horror from it,
Speaker 1: but it is, it is a very fascinating piece of art. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not this dude is create obviously creating UM art
Speaker 1: that is that is shocking, that's going to evoke a
Speaker 1: certain response from the viewer. But but it's intelligent work.
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not just messing. She is serious
Speaker 1: about excrement, this artist. Let's see, we have another email
Speaker 1: here in response to an older episode we did UM
Speaker 1: nine nine and nine Birthday Candles. Writer Evan writes in
Speaker 1: and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, but mostly Robert because
Speaker 1: it has to do with Dune. I realize that the
Speaker 1: tie in with the N nine Birthdays Channel podcast in
Speaker 1: Doom may have been a little too heady nerdy for
Speaker 1: most listeners, but the story has significant relevance to the podcast,
Speaker 1: particularly in terms of maturity in the later parts of
Speaker 1: the Dune series. The character the Letto the Second undergoes
Speaker 1: the transformation to make him part man, part sandworm. He
Speaker 1: does this so that he can extend his life expectancy
Speaker 1: to an indefinite period of time. He states that the
Speaker 1: problems humanity has a result of typical human life expectancy
Speaker 1: and then and that makes them particularly vulnerable. If they
Speaker 1: were able to naturally live longer, they might gain a
Speaker 1: more far sighted perspective and give up or change their ways,
Speaker 1: since a whole race can't do that. Letter the Second
Speaker 1: undergoes this transformation and purposely represses almost every aspect of
Speaker 1: the human race in an effort to build in a
Speaker 1: race memory of tyranny. By doing so, he was able
Speaker 1: to mature the entirety of humanity because they despised him,
Speaker 1: so they underwent an exponential expansion when he died, making
Speaker 1: it so that he they would be virtually impossible to
Speaker 1: wipe out the Golden Path Man. The saddest part about
Speaker 1: this is that Frank Herbert died before he could continue
Speaker 1: the series. If he could have lived to be a
Speaker 1: few hundred years old, US fans would have been able
Speaker 1: to see his vision come to print instead of his
Speaker 1: son's attempts to fulfill and change that vision. Great podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the Dune references. So yeah, indeed, the U
Speaker 1: the later books, I mean, the first book, in my
Speaker 1: opinion is is the best. Uh and then from there
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert began to expand this even more elaborate story.
Speaker 1: And at one point Letto does change into this enormous
Speaker 1: sandworm human hybrid that's featured prominently on the cover art
Speaker 1: for Emperor of Dune and always intrigued me as a
Speaker 1: child long before I actually read it. Um and there's
Speaker 1: in that particular volume is choked with all of a
Speaker 1: lot of like really cool existential ponderings about the state
Speaker 1: of humanity, the long term survival of the human race.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so indeed, thanks Heavan for writing in about
Speaker 1: that and raising that point in regard to the Dune series,
Speaker 1: and it kind of makes me want to read the
Speaker 1: first book again. All right. I just keep thinking of Sting.
Speaker 1: That's a non Dooner, That's that's my only reference. And
Speaker 1: then I start thinking, what if what if Sting were
Speaker 1: to live to be a thousand years old? Would he
Speaker 1: still be practicing tan trick yoga, h and sacks? Would
Speaker 1: anybody want to see them? I don't. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: would be a market for it somewhere, but there's no
Speaker 1: wrong with There's no problem with the market. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no problem with appreciating the movie Dune. It's
Speaker 1: an imperfect adaptation, for sure. It has some some definite flaws.
Speaker 1: It's kind of boring, but it's also got some some
Speaker 1: serious flare and moments. It's got some great costumes and
Speaker 1: uh even you know, as a Dune fan, you can't
Speaker 1: help but like something about it. Right, But you're saying
Speaker 1: the books are a richer experience, Well, the first book
Speaker 1: is Richard's right, It's it's complicated. Fine, then I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read the first one enough rest Well, the second
Speaker 1: one pretty good too. Anyway, if you have some thoughts
Speaker 1: to share it with us. They may relate to candy,
Speaker 1: They may relate to cooping robots. They may relate to
Speaker 1: the Dune series. Right in let us know you, especially
Speaker 1: on the candy and the whole staying thing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but you know, not together unless you have a candy
Speaker 1: sting story that might be it. Now. You can of
Speaker 1: course find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
Speaker 1: mind on both of those, and you can always drop
Speaker 1: us a line at blow the Mind at house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
Speaker 1: video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
Speaker 1: staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
Speaker 1: of tomorrow.