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, and
Speaker 1: we continue our journey through the seven Deadly Sins. This
Speaker 1: week we're looking at a little something called gluttony. I
Speaker 1: feel like you have to do that every time we
Speaker 1: talk about one of these sins. Yeah. Well, well, of course,
Speaker 1: I don't know if the true glutton would be able
Speaker 1: to like it would be more of a muffled food
Speaker 1: joked laugh right, food falling down the face, kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, wine spilling all over the one's body
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. Wine spilling. Wow, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it does have sort of like a boccus like yeah
Speaker 1: evocation there. Yeah, it makes me think of on Futurama,
Speaker 1: they have a there's a robot called hedonism Bot, and
Speaker 1: he his legs are the legs of like a reclining chair.
Speaker 1: It's like in a reclining state with a bowl of
Speaker 1: grapes on his chest and as a very Roman air
Speaker 1: to him. But yeah, so so gluttony is is the
Speaker 1: sin that's typically associated with massive consumptions of food being
Speaker 1: really into food, enormous feasts, feast without end and uh.
Speaker 1: If we look to the pages of Dante's Divine Comedy,
Speaker 1: we see we see gluttony show up in both Inferno
Speaker 1: and Purgatory, and Inferno the pit of the eternal suffering.
Speaker 1: At the center of the planet, we see a circle.
Speaker 1: This is the third circle, guarded by Cerebus, the three
Speaker 1: headed dog. You know, the dog is a good symbol
Speaker 1: of gluttony, so and a dog with three mouths is
Speaker 1: let's like triple gluttony, right, But but in this circle,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of interesting because it's not what if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with Dante, it's it's not quite what
Speaker 1: you might imagine for a punishment of glutton's uh. All right,
Speaker 1: So you have rain hale and snow falling just like
Speaker 1: crazy rain hale and snow, all right, and it's just
Speaker 1: pummeling the gluttons who are just they're just like held
Speaker 1: to the ground by it, and there's just mud everywhere.
Speaker 1: They're they're wallowing like pigs in this mud. That's kind
Speaker 1: of they may or may not be excrement. There's um
Speaker 1: that they're described in very doglike terms. And so this
Speaker 1: is where the gluttons are punished now in purgatory, whereas
Speaker 1: we discussed before, this is the mountain that connects Earth
Speaker 1: to heaven, and souls that aren't quite bad enough for
Speaker 1: hell when they need a little polishing before they can
Speaker 1: get up into heaven, they have to climb this mountain
Speaker 1: terrace by terraces. In each terrace they remove a sort
Speaker 1: of a layer of grimy sin from themselves, so they're
Speaker 1: transcending their sins. Right on the sixth terraces of Purgatory,
Speaker 1: you will find these emaciated spirits with sunken eyes, you know,
Speaker 1: all the way back in the and the sockets and
Speaker 1: their their faces are said to resemble the letter M.
Speaker 1: That's how swollen and sunk. Not swollen, but that's how
Speaker 1: sunk in their faces are. And so they're just suffering
Speaker 1: excruciating hunger and thirsts. So in life they had all
Speaker 1: their fill. So if they're going to work off this
Speaker 1: layer of gluttony, they're gonna have to get used to
Speaker 1: the idea of going hungary. I like how Dante just
Speaker 1: dove into the gird task wasn't scared of it. Um
Speaker 1: And but that is part of the human condition, right
Speaker 1: and um as uh Orson Well says, gluttony is not
Speaker 1: a secret vice. You can see it all over you
Speaker 1: and on the surface. You know, we discussed in the
Speaker 1: past with the most recent one, we did envy, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about how India is not a fun sin.
Speaker 1: Gluttony is is one that, at least on the surface,
Speaker 1: seems a lot more fun because because I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I I really like food,
Speaker 1: Like food is not just something I'm just kind of into.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy an excellent meal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the reason why we really
Speaker 1: really enjoy our hardwired yea, and to actually over enjoy
Speaker 1: it sometimes. Yeah. And the thing that gets me about
Speaker 1: gluttony is that there's this level of gluttony that we
Speaker 1: encounter an inferno and impurgatory, this this medieval idea of
Speaker 1: just you know, obsessive feasts and all this, but there's
Speaker 1: like a space age level of gluttony that is only
Speaker 1: possible in this day and age, Like it's a level
Speaker 1: of gluttony that was unimagined in Dante's time well exactly.
Speaker 1: And and and let's even say, like Henry the Eighth right,
Speaker 1: could that's that's someone who could afford to be gluttonous, right,
Speaker 1: had a bunch of resources, master glutton, I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: would imagine it's fair to say that. I always think
Speaker 1: of him with like huge turkey legs in both hands,
Speaker 1: just waving them around. But in today's world, we can
Speaker 1: all be Henry the Eighth right, I mean, gluttony is
Speaker 1: at our fingertips everything that we've ever wanted, particularly food wise,
Speaker 1: um libations available. You can at least be a glutton
Speaker 1: on you can as far as bad food goes, you can,
Speaker 1: and you could actually be a professional glutton if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. And this would come into play in competitive eating. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm talking about. Competitive eating. There are
Speaker 1: these different levels of your enjoyment of food. There's sort
Speaker 1: of like, I'm eating because I need nourishment for my body,
Speaker 1: and then there's this level I'm eating because I really
Speaker 1: enjoy these tastes and I enjoy the sensation of eating,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm enjoying the the sun a purely sense level.
Speaker 1: But when you start looking at competitive eating, it's it
Speaker 1: seems devoid of either of those things. It is eating
Speaker 1: purely for the act of eating, like and you hear
Speaker 1: some comments, like one of the dudes we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about here says that he got into it because he
Speaker 1: really likes chicken, and if he really likes the like
Speaker 1: he likes the flavor of things. But still, there's no
Speaker 1: way you're enjoying the flavor of like thirty eight hot
Speaker 1: dogs in a row, you know, and you're certainly not
Speaker 1: eating that for your your well being. It's something completely
Speaker 1: removed from those two necessities. Well, it's eating to an
Speaker 1: absolute obsessive degree to degree um. And I think most
Speaker 1: people are familiar with Chakaro Kobayashi. He is the usually
Speaker 1: a person that you think of when you think about
Speaker 1: stuffing like three and sixty three hot dogs in your
Speaker 1: mouth and under an hour, um, and getting paid handsomely
Speaker 1: for it. But who the person we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about today. His name, um, well, actually he goes by
Speaker 1: a wing a door and you just refer to him.
Speaker 1: He his specialty are his chicken chicken wings. And there's
Speaker 1: a documentary film by Errol Morris called Elwing a Door
Speaker 1: and like a seven minute deal. Yeah, it's not very long,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty it's worth checking out. We'll link to
Speaker 1: it on the blogs are on the Facebook, but it
Speaker 1: focuses on this five time champion of the Philadelphia wingboll
Speaker 1: Bill Simmons, and how he prepares for these competitions. It's
Speaker 1: just insane. Yeah. I would be tempted to classify him
Speaker 1: as a power glutton. Yeah, yeah, a power if you
Speaker 1: think about a power lifter, he guess that kind of
Speaker 1: powerlifter vibe, except he's he's only lifting things enough to
Speaker 1: stuff in his mouth right, right, and stuff to the
Speaker 1: degree that it's just purely unholy, unholy. And they talk
Speaker 1: about this actually in the documentary, to to the extent
Speaker 1: that he says that he has almost accidentally eaten one
Speaker 1: of his digits his fingers. Yeah, like he said, he
Speaker 1: claims that his his hands are covered with scars because
Speaker 1: he'll just will get so into the I guess he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's achieving flow. He's a transcendent experience for him.
Speaker 1: But it's to the point where he's biting his hands
Speaker 1: and leaving scars because he's eating chicken wings in this
Speaker 1: state of mind focused. Let's talk about how he trains.
Speaker 1: He eats fifteen pounds of food to day when he's training,
Speaker 1: and he drinks three gallons of water day, just sending
Speaker 1: his stomach, right, that's the point of that. And ten
Speaker 1: pounds of tutsie rolls a week. Yeah, this was especially
Speaker 1: growth test because he's not just eating one and then
Speaker 1: swallowing it. Now, he's he's throwing him in his mouth
Speaker 1: and forming them into a massive baseball sized mass of
Speaker 1: tutsie rolls, A giant tutsie roll cut? Is that the
Speaker 1: word like a like a cow choose its cut. Well,
Speaker 1: then there's some vomiting involved there, he's not doing that, right, Well,
Speaker 1: we don't really know. Well, I mean he's doing some vomiting,
Speaker 1: but not in this situation. So he's he's two in
Speaker 1: these tutsie rolls up in there, his baseball size mass
Speaker 1: in his mouth, and then he swallows that. And he
Speaker 1: says it's all about a strengthening his jaws so that
Speaker 1: he can really chomp and chomp during these competitions, but
Speaker 1: also like widening his esophagus right right, And he likens
Speaker 1: it to a snake swallowing a rat. Yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're eating for you know, your own enjoyment,
Speaker 1: then you should totally chew your food. But competition different story.
Speaker 1: Like chewing is for chumps. Yeah, chewing is for chumps,
Speaker 1: And and and only that he's such a pro that
Speaker 1: when he masters this, he moves on to dog bones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: masticating them normal when and I'm equating a baseball made
Speaker 1: air tutsi rolls its normal human food here. But but
Speaker 1: but this becomes just too mundane for him, so he
Speaker 1: moves on to his dogs chew toys. And he ends
Speaker 1: up like, what is a five pound bag competition of
Speaker 1: raw hide bones? Yeah, and he says he claims that
Speaker 1: he never gets full and that he feels that he
Speaker 1: has an eating disorder. Yeah, because five pound bags of
Speaker 1: raw high bones like these are the if you've ever
Speaker 1: been around a dog chewing one of these things, these
Speaker 1: are those things that the dog too and it makes
Speaker 1: that loud clacking noise that makes your own teeth hurt.
Speaker 1: That's what this guy works on. Yeah. Yeah, and um
Speaker 1: pops I actually has a really interesting article on competitive
Speaker 1: eating and they're talking about what actually happens when when
Speaker 1: you're doing this to your body, and they say that
Speaker 1: muscle stretch when they relax right in the stomach, and
Speaker 1: when we eat a big meal, our stomach muscles relax
Speaker 1: so much that they send a message to the brain,
Speaker 1: which interprets the signal to mean, hey, you've got a
Speaker 1: full belly. Um that our brain stops is from eating anymore.
Speaker 1: That's what normally happens. But they say a good training
Speaker 1: regimen for competitive eating deadens this communication, causing the signal
Speaker 1: to the brain of the brain itself to become less
Speaker 1: responsive to the large volume of food. And this is
Speaker 1: according to Douglas Seidner, m d. Program director for Clinical
Speaker 1: Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. So it's kind of mind
Speaker 1: over matter. Yeah, yeah, it's mind over manning, mind over
Speaker 1: mind over anything. That you eat yourself into a numbness
Speaker 1: and you deaden your urge to up eating, which is
Speaker 1: just incredible, incredible. It is one way way to put it.
Speaker 1: L Wing a door. He's he's pretty amazing and he
Speaker 1: has some or or when he is his I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if he's active at the moment, but when he
Speaker 1: is active sometimes he is accompanied to the eating platform,
Speaker 1: the gluttony ring, whatever you wanna call it by he
Speaker 1: has he has a valets who are called the wing
Speaker 1: at the wing at Yeah, so if anyone is particularly
Speaker 1: taken with this man, you can probably get in touch
Speaker 1: with them and see about becoming a wing at and
Speaker 1: be one of his wing women. Yes. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: not only do they cheer for him, that they actually
Speaker 1: sort of ore backup counters for him, right, don't they
Speaker 1: sort of? From from what I remember, they actually are
Speaker 1: counting the amount of food items that he's stepping down
Speaker 1: his gullet, helping to corroborate his win. Yeah, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna need somebody to keep track of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: like when I'm swimming or doing yoga. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like I can't keep track of how many laps or
Speaker 1: how many sin citations have done. It's like I need
Speaker 1: somebody else. Does tell me now we're at number five
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna get wrong. So you need some lamb ats? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need some. But the reason why I bring it
Speaker 1: competitive eating is because this actually sort of informs the
Speaker 1: conversation on gluttony, and not only just gluttony, but obesity
Speaker 1: and um, how our body actually responds to eating. It's
Speaker 1: really pretty fascinating. Physician Jane jack Wang of Brookhaven National
Speaker 1: Laboratory and his colleague Nora Volcal observed that ABC and
Speaker 1: drug addiction alter the same brain circuits UH. In their studies,
Speaker 1: Wang and Volcal found that both drug addicts and obese
Speaker 1: people are usually less sensitive to dopamine's rewarding effects. So,
Speaker 1: as we all remember, dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It delivers
Speaker 1: the high that we feel um our brain perceives when
Speaker 1: we eat food or we were to say, if you
Speaker 1: have drug addic or to have some cocaine. Um. So
Speaker 1: this means that both drug addicts and um obese people
Speaker 1: have to chase after a stronger dose of food or
Speaker 1: drugs in order to get a decent bump of that dopamine. Yes,
Speaker 1: that whole trait chasing the dragon type thing, when we've
Speaker 1: all heard examples of it with like an extreme case
Speaker 1: like like heroin, where you an individual individual have that
Speaker 1: first taste of heroin and it'll be this amazing, just
Speaker 1: overpowering experience, but they never get that same experience again,
Speaker 1: like the rest of their lives then is assuming they
Speaker 1: I mean and hopefully they're able to get away from it,
Speaker 1: but if they don't, the rest of their lives is
Speaker 1: about chasing that high, chasing that that dragon that they
Speaker 1: met that first time. Right, And it's really interesting to
Speaker 1: see this in food and obesity, and and see that
Speaker 1: that's increased or excessive stimulation just creates more decent citation
Speaker 1: with dopamine. And then yeah, again that vicious circle kicks
Speaker 1: in and you've got increased desire and decreased payoff at
Speaker 1: the same time. I have to say I did have
Speaker 1: a really good, like brunch sandwich of this place, and
Speaker 1: then they caught it a Napoleon complex. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but but it had breathe and bacon or Canadian bacon.
Speaker 1: I'm not sharing like fig spread. It't was sounds like
Speaker 1: this really nice toasted bread. The first time I had
Speaker 1: it was amazing, and then I went back to have
Speaker 1: it again and it was it was it was all right,
Speaker 1: and then it's like each time it's like a little
Speaker 1: a little further removed from that original experience. My own
Speaker 1: meager comparison to that was the sandwich on stilts or something. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to figure out why I'm telling it
Speaker 1: that the Napoleon I don't know, it's really At one
Speaker 1: time I had to order it and there was a
Speaker 1: short person at the table and it was really kind
Speaker 1: of weird because I was like, I'll have that sandwich,
Speaker 1: you know, and he just made it even more like yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it became even more of a thing. The
Speaker 1: server was like, what sandwich? That sandwich? Oh, the Napoleon,
Speaker 1: the really short one. Stilts to make it feel better.
Speaker 1: It would be cool if it were on stilts. But well, yeah,
Speaker 1: My point is the sandwich was dope, and that it
Speaker 1: actually I mean, yeah, nice, nicely done. So um Whang
Speaker 1: looks into this problem of obesity and addiction and he
Speaker 1: actually asked him of his while tears in a study
Speaker 1: to come hungry. The torture experiment horrible. It's horrible. He
Speaker 1: has them to describe their favorite meals while he heaps
Speaker 1: up that meal in a nearby microwave so that the
Speaker 1: waft of the smell of it, let's say, the Napoleon sandwich,
Speaker 1: is clearly being transmitted to their brains. And then they
Speaker 1: show a pet scan of the volunteers brains during this
Speaker 1: whole process, and they see that the motivation part of
Speaker 1: their brain goes nuts, okay, and then the orbital frontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which is implicated in decision making, also lights up. And
Speaker 1: then they find that the in the brains of obese people,
Speaker 1: the regions that regulate sensory information from the mouth and
Speaker 1: the tongue are even more active than than other people.
Speaker 1: And they figure out that sensory processing is elevated. Um,
Speaker 1: this is the oh that tastes good part, right, but
Speaker 1: the reward sensitivity is a lower So now this reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of our podcast about children and Halloween
Speaker 1: candy and about how darn experience sugar in a in
Speaker 1: a kind of different sensory realm than adults do, and
Speaker 1: then most adults do. And in this the experiment that
Speaker 1: really highlights this this idea that that obase individuals or
Speaker 1: individuals with this sort of with this heightened appetite. I mean,
Speaker 1: they are experiencing the food in a different way, which
Speaker 1: which is which I think is a helpful way to
Speaker 1: look at it, because it's easy for someone to to
Speaker 1: look at someone else's problems with food, um and or
Speaker 1: weight and say, oh, what's the matter with you? Why
Speaker 1: can't you control yourself? Why why don't you eat just
Speaker 1: one such the piez instead of four? You know, But
Speaker 1: but if you if you think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of a different sensory experience, it becomes harder to really
Speaker 1: have that kind of judgmental attitude. I think, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean understanding that the brain is actually getting rewired
Speaker 1: so that it has less control um in these situations.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this was explored even more by a
Speaker 1: New York Times sort are called called the Fat Trap,
Speaker 1: and what they found is that weight loss and weight
Speaker 1: control depends. It still depends of us on the simple
Speaker 1: equation of eat less and exercise more, right, but for
Speaker 1: some people it's a lot more complicated. Right, So we
Speaker 1: talked about the brain being changed in that instance. Um.
Speaker 1: They were talking in this article of the Fat Trap
Speaker 1: about something called post diet syndrome, and it's essentially a
Speaker 1: state that your body enters once it's lost at least
Speaker 1: ten percent of its body weight. It becomes biologically altered.
Speaker 1: It's really fascinating. There's a guy named Joseph Proyeto and
Speaker 1: he's a physician at the University of Melbourne and he
Speaker 1: kept wondering why his really really motivated and committed patients
Speaker 1: would gain back at least eleven pounds of the on
Speaker 1: average thirty pounds that they had lost. And these guys
Speaker 1: were like super diligent. Um. The patients that he was
Speaker 1: working with, they had food diaries. Um, they still exercise,
Speaker 1: they did all of this stuff, um. And they were
Speaker 1: on a localori diet essentially at first. But you know,
Speaker 1: they followed up with him for a full year and
Speaker 1: he kept thinking to himself, why do they keep gaining
Speaker 1: this back? Um? And journalist Herapote Parker Pope, who wrote
Speaker 1: The Fat Trap, started to think about this too in
Speaker 1: her the context of her own life, and she started
Speaker 1: to look at all these different factors, um, that could
Speaker 1: be responsible for the inevitability of weight gain. You know,
Speaker 1: no matter if you're abuse or not. But it makes
Speaker 1: it incredibly difficult for people who are obese to maintain
Speaker 1: their weights throughout their whole lives. And we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about why that is when we come back.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back talking about the post diet syndrome.
Speaker 1: The body has has realized that something is a miss,
Speaker 1: and it's trying to replenish the stores and it breaks
Speaker 1: down in an interesting way. It's the research has found
Speaker 1: that there's a gastric hormone called grillan, often dubbed the
Speaker 1: hunger hormone, and it's about higher There's another hormone associated
Speaker 1: with suppressing hunger called peptide double y, and it also
Speaker 1: ends up leveling out pretty low. Levels of lepton, a
Speaker 1: hormone that suppresses hungered increases metabolism, also remain lower than expected.
Speaker 1: And then you have a whole host of other hormones
Speaker 1: that are associated with hunger metabolism and they're all significantly
Speaker 1: changed compared to pre dieting levels. Yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 1: cocktail that your cocktails of hormones that get messed with
Speaker 1: in this post diet state, right, so that that grayllin
Speaker 1: is higher, that hormone that tells you that you're hungry,
Speaker 1: so you're more activated in terms of like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling kind of hungry in your post diet scenario. And
Speaker 1: again the left in and the peptide why why are
Speaker 1: both decreased, and those are the things that helps suppress
Speaker 1: your appetite. Another odd finding is that in some post
Speaker 1: diet subject, muscle fibers were acting like slow twitch muscles.
Speaker 1: A slow twitch muscles are actually responsible for less burned calories.
Speaker 1: So you're seeing this other weirdness happening in the post
Speaker 1: diet scenario. And then there's again going back to the
Speaker 1: brains of post dieters, um they were studied by researchers
Speaker 1: Rudolph Libel and Michael Rosenbaum at Columbia University and f
Speaker 1: m r I was used to track the brain patterns
Speaker 1: of people before and after weight loss while they looked
Speaker 1: at objects like grapes, gummy bears, chocolate, broccoli, cell phones,
Speaker 1: and yos, just to put in a couple of non
Speaker 1: food items right and after weight loss. When the dieter
Speaker 1: looked at food, the scan showed a bigger response in
Speaker 1: the parts of the brain associated with reward and a
Speaker 1: lower response in the areas associated with control. Again, that's
Speaker 1: the same thing that we were talking about before, and
Speaker 1: the implication is that the body induces cravings by making
Speaker 1: the person feel more excited about food and giving him
Speaker 1: her less willpower to resist high calorie treat a body
Speaker 1: wants to reset at the higher weight. So I mean,
Speaker 1: how this actually susses out is that it really gives
Speaker 1: someone who's in a post diet scenario caloric disadvantage. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is that you could be
Speaker 1: subject a for instance, who is two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: pounds and you're eating three thousand pounds or three three
Speaker 1: thousand pounds. That's a lot that's even more than l
Speaker 1: winger um three thousand calories a day. But then you
Speaker 1: drop down to one and in order to maintain a
Speaker 1: weight of a hundred and ninety pounds, you eat twenty
Speaker 1: three hundred calories a day. Your counterpart who has not
Speaker 1: been in a dieting scenario, who is weighs a hundred
Speaker 1: ninety pounds, actually could have two hundred and fifty to
Speaker 1: four hundred calories more per day than you to just
Speaker 1: maintain their weight. So that's what this is. This is
Speaker 1: how this is all sort of shuffling out, is that
Speaker 1: you know, when you're in this post diet state, which
Speaker 1: by the way, it could last up to six years um,
Speaker 1: your body really is not going to burn as many
Speaker 1: calories and automatically wants you to reset as opposed to
Speaker 1: your your your counterpoint who isn't dieting at that same weight,
Speaker 1: so you have to burn more and more calories. And this,
Speaker 1: I think is is the sticking point of why people
Speaker 1: continue to creep up on the scales throughout their lives
Speaker 1: or yo yo diet because your your body is sort
Speaker 1: of working against you. Yeah, and it really really becomes
Speaker 1: an issue of like sort of knee versus body, and
Speaker 1: which is which is kind of a false idea because
Speaker 1: we are our bodies and as we discussed before, what
Speaker 1: our guts doing affects what our brain is doing to
Speaker 1: a level that you can't just cut one off from
Speaker 1: the other. But it's also not this situation of um,
Speaker 1: I am you know this is all about me, I
Speaker 1: am going to lose this weight. It becomes this this
Speaker 1: knee and what I want versus the needs of my
Speaker 1: body and the sort of the ideas of my body.
Speaker 1: And it's not our body just trying to be terrible
Speaker 1: to us. I mean how we evolved, right, Like we
Speaker 1: have these you know, big thick brains that require a
Speaker 1: lot of energy. It's sort of like the firefox of browsers, right,
Speaker 1: takes up a lot of energy. But it makes sense
Speaker 1: that we have gluttony hardwired into us because at some
Speaker 1: level we need it. Our brain evolved for us to
Speaker 1: eat an excess in order to survive. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we we live in a an environment now that is
Speaker 1: rather far removed from from what we originally evolved into
Speaker 1: where we can go and we can in most most
Speaker 1: of our listeners anyway, you're in a position where you
Speaker 1: could go out today and you could probably eat just
Speaker 1: as much as you possibly wanted to. There's there's there's
Speaker 1: nothing that that would stop you, and our bodies aren't
Speaker 1: really evolved to deal with that. Right. We didn't know
Speaker 1: that buckets of chicken were just available for you know,
Speaker 1: the drive through. We thought we had to forge for
Speaker 1: this stuff. Now did we mention this? That El wingadore
Speaker 1: the that Errol Morris originally shot the videos an extra
Speaker 1: because he was he was shooting a promotional video for
Speaker 1: KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken we didn't talk about and that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And so he was like, this is the dude, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess this was I forget the exact
Speaker 1: time frame that I guess. This was in that era
Speaker 1: of the double down where KFC is like unhealthy food
Speaker 1: for the wind, let's let's market it this way. So
Speaker 1: so Morris is like, this is this is the dude,
Speaker 1: This is the patron saint of double downs. So he
Speaker 1: shoots this video with and he's like, this dude is
Speaker 1: so interesting. This is such a fascinating glimpse into really
Speaker 1: the heart of gluttoning my words, not his. Uh, he
Speaker 1: had to shoot this tim Inte extra where he's just
Speaker 1: talking to wing a door about about it and I
Speaker 1: love that. And as you had mentioned earlier when we
Speaker 1: were talking about this, but you have to see him
Speaker 1: in action with the wings, getting his glutton chops on
Speaker 1: Clinton chops, which is I guess what you call the
Speaker 1: smears of orange hot wing sauce. They're on the side
Speaker 1: of your face when you're fully engorging yourself on chicken wings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a vegetarian, because I have never had glutton chops.
Speaker 1: Are there? I might have had soy glutton chops? Are there?
Speaker 1: Soy based or do you think they're vegetarian inter vegan
Speaker 1: eating competitions? No, but you know again, if someone's out
Speaker 1: there and they want to explore that, there you go.
Speaker 1: There's an idea. Yeah. I think it's just sort of
Speaker 1: empathetical to the whole vegetarian vegan thing. Yeah. I could
Speaker 1: be wrong, though, I think it tends to be. Well.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the future of gluttony, because there's
Speaker 1: always a future for gli Yeah, I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: Like I said, we've reached the space age of gluttony
Speaker 1: with the eating competitions, But I think humans could be grosser.
Speaker 1: I think we have it in ourselves too to do
Speaker 1: more well. I think that you know, there's there's the
Speaker 1: possibility that we could actually create the vomitorium. Right. We
Speaker 1: used to think that in room in times that there
Speaker 1: was something called a vomitorium that we would eat And
Speaker 1: maybe there was a vomitorium, but it was it was
Speaker 1: not a place where you throw up your food so
Speaker 1: you can eat more. It was just an architectural flourish,
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah, yeah, that people mistook for like this
Speaker 1: big communal place where you just threw up after you yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a factless gluttonous idea of that doesn't exactly exist.
Speaker 1: But in the future we might actually be able to
Speaker 1: manage food in a way that we could overeat and
Speaker 1: in a way get rid of all of this access
Speaker 1: and that is through lefton Again. We talked about left
Speaker 1: in as being something that could uh that is very
Speaker 1: helpful and appetite suppression, and scientists at Columbia University have
Speaker 1: conducted several small studies looking at whether in injecting people
Speaker 1: with lepton can override the body's resistance to weight loss
Speaker 1: and help maintain a lower weight. And this is in
Speaker 1: a few small studies, left injections seemed to trick the
Speaker 1: body into thinking it's still fat and after left in replacement,
Speaker 1: and this is really interesting. Study subjects burned more calories
Speaker 1: during activity, and in brain scan studies, left in injectons
Speaker 1: appeared to change how the brain responds to food, making
Speaker 1: it seem less enticing. So you would like stick a
Speaker 1: syringe of lefton in one end and a meatball sub
Speaker 1: in the other, and and they would they would balance
Speaker 1: each other, right, right, they just cancel each other. But
Speaker 1: of course this is a sort of a new treatment
Speaker 1: and not something that's been widely studied and is probably
Speaker 1: years away for use. Right, she took on for cheese steak.
Speaker 1: Why did they go from meatball? Cheese steak as much grosser?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's more glad as the meatball? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically the same. Both are lots of
Speaker 1: meat and some cheese on giant pieces of bread. But
Speaker 1: there's something about the cheese steak that's a little vialer.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe because it's protein on protein, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's a show I was watching and
Speaker 1: it was like they were profiling these different chefs and
Speaker 1: their favorite foods in different cities, and like every city
Speaker 1: has its own cheese steak. I feel like I've done
Speaker 1: this rent before, but I have a thing against cheese sticks,
Speaker 1: all right. I think we're gonna have to have a
Speaker 1: Science of Cheese Sticks podcast coming up. Um. Here's another
Speaker 1: thing that is that on the cusp of our understanding
Speaker 1: and perhaps harnessing this information, something called brown fat are
Speaker 1: fat cells that consume calories and release heat. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: if you're not driving or riding a bicycle or anything
Speaker 1: like that, you can you can probably reach up around
Speaker 1: your neck and you can sort of feel yourself a
Speaker 1: little a little brown fat, right, because that's where the
Speaker 1: human body tends to store it doing it right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a nice little padding there. Um. It is
Speaker 1: important because researchers actually think that, um, this could help
Speaker 1: turn white fat into brown fat, and you could actually
Speaker 1: burn more calories and you could possibly do the spy
Speaker 1: exercising they have seen in subjects that exercise can create
Speaker 1: brown fat out of white fat. Yeah. And this brown
Speaker 1: fat is remarkable because rather than storing excess energy, the
Speaker 1: fat actually burns through it right. Yeah. And and previously
Speaker 1: we kind of only thought that it was like a
Speaker 1: rodent or human newborn thing. Rats are babies, one of
Speaker 1: the you know, they were the only ones who who
Speaker 1: are really that into it. And we would and generally
Speaker 1: if you would see a lot of brown fat in
Speaker 1: the human, an adult human, it meant that there was
Speaker 1: some sort of generally, there was some of the kind
Speaker 1: of health ailment going on that unbalanced things. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they have a much better understanding and this, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is only like three years old information right now,
Speaker 1: we're still figuring out. Yeah, like there that they even
Speaker 1: figured out that brown fat exists in adult humans. And
Speaker 1: again to go back to the rodents. Um. At first,
Speaker 1: you know, they thought, okay, well, rodents can't shiver and
Speaker 1: they use brown fat to keep warm, and so do
Speaker 1: human infants, who also don't shiver very well. And then
Speaker 1: they thought, well, once humans lose their brown fat after infancy,
Speaker 1: the shivering response kicks in and we no longer have
Speaker 1: a use for the brown fat. And that is not true. Um.
Speaker 1: They actually found found that younger women have more brown
Speaker 1: fat than say, older men, Thinner people have more brown
Speaker 1: fat than um than larger people. So they're still trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out. And figure out how to actually
Speaker 1: manipulate it for own use. And it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: Could be problematic though, because the people who have the
Speaker 1: most active brown fat are generally individuals with cancer or hyperthyroidism.
Speaker 1: So right, and again hypothrotoism in cancer, assuming that you
Speaker 1: probably have whittled down to a weight that's not that
Speaker 1: is no longer healthy. Right, So yeah, it's got its limits,
Speaker 1: but that could be an interesting future in terms of
Speaker 1: fighting off gluttony. Another possibility. This would be far future.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I've mentioned this example before, but
Speaker 1: an Ian m Banks culture series, the denizens of the
Speaker 1: culture who you know, they've been genetically advanced to the
Speaker 1: point where they can they can release random drug like
Speaker 1: chemicals into their body just thinking about them. Uh, they
Speaker 1: have these you know, the benevolent robots that look after them.
Speaker 1: But they can also bypass food or beverage. So like,
Speaker 1: if an individual wants to have another cocktail that doesn't
Speaker 1: want to feel the effects of that cocktail, they can
Speaker 1: bypass it straight through. Well not straight through, well, that
Speaker 1: would it be the effects of that cocktail later on?
Speaker 1: I mean you still want to hit the reward center, right,
Speaker 1: I think they would just you would get the taste
Speaker 1: would be like chewing a food and then spitting it out,
Speaker 1: or I guess it would be a little they would
Speaker 1: get like a little bit of the I got the
Speaker 1: impression it was. It was like, I want to enjoy
Speaker 1: this food, but I don't want to actually digest it
Speaker 1: and I don't Or I want to enjoy this beverage,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to actually take into the alcohol
Speaker 1: into my system. So it's like they have a separate
Speaker 1: line just for purely recreational food and beverage. I like,
Speaker 1: that's just like two different digestive systems in a way.
Speaker 1: The one digestive system doesn't really work. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think how we can fit this into our own
Speaker 1: little uh worldview in the future. Possibility of having two
Speaker 1: different digestives systems, Yeah, I mean, of course there are
Speaker 1: other possibilities too in terms of the future of gluttony,
Speaker 1: Like imagine being able to plug yourself into a virtual
Speaker 1: environment where you just eat all you want. Yeah. With that,
Speaker 1: with that, say, you you know, I wonder if that
Speaker 1: would chick in again with the reward center and openmine,
Speaker 1: if that would be released situation. Maybe maybe it's it's
Speaker 1: such a far future possibility, like you would have to
Speaker 1: we're talking, we would be talking more than just like
Speaker 1: strapping in some goggles and some haptic gloves and you know,
Speaker 1: going through a city made out of cheeseburgers. It would
Speaker 1: you would have to have a much more like neurologically
Speaker 1: plugged in system for that to take place. And by
Speaker 1: that point, who knows what else would have figured out? Well,
Speaker 1: and then do you think in that realm that more
Speaker 1: people would become competitive eaters? That's my question. Maybe, but
Speaker 1: it would be a crazy like the competition would just
Speaker 1: be off the charts. I mean, how would you even
Speaker 1: clock that. I don't know, I don't know somehow someway
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, you know this will come out like a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks later, but that we were recording this
Speaker 1: on ash Wednesday before a lot of people will go
Speaker 1: into like some sort of Lenten fasting or saying I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna eat fried foods except on feast days kind
Speaker 1: of a thing. So, but that's kind of that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of perfect. Yeah, yeah, talking about sins and lent
Speaker 1: and gluttony. Shall we bring the robot over? Yes, bring
Speaker 1: the robot over with his fat sack of mail. All right,
Speaker 1: and this this is rather fitting as well. We heard
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of Aaron. Aaron all
Speaker 1: right sin and says hello, Robert and Julie. I just
Speaker 1: finished listening to your Absolute Disgust podcast in which you
Speaker 1: mentioned the Kloaka bot, which you have just to specify,
Speaker 1: because I guess we do mention that creation a lot.
Speaker 1: Last week, I was lucky enough to take a trip
Speaker 1: to Tasmania for my twenty fifth birthday, Happy Birthday, and
Speaker 1: whilst I was there, I visited the Mona Art Gallery. Um.
Speaker 1: It was here I got to experience the Kloaka Bot
Speaker 1: for myself, close up and somewhat personal. Upon arrival of
Speaker 1: the gallery, I wasn't too familiar with Wim Delvo's work,
Speaker 1: so when I walked into the room that contained the bot,
Speaker 1: I was a bit caught off guard. There was a
Speaker 1: quote in some of the information that was given to
Speaker 1: me about the bot that pretty much sums up the
Speaker 1: artwork for me, and it was a bit tedious to
Speaker 1: watch and stinks. Um. I was captivated by the contraption
Speaker 1: as it looked like something could have come out of
Speaker 1: the original wallet Willy Wonka film, and once I realized
Speaker 1: what the piece was, I was intrigued to find out more,
Speaker 1: but I also was soon impulse to get out of
Speaker 1: the room quickly. I can only describe the smell as unsettling.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a smack in the face stinch, but more
Speaker 1: of an unearthy, grumbling deal in the back of your
Speaker 1: throat kind of smell. Um that, as much as I
Speaker 1: wanted to explore the machine more, I couldn't stay in
Speaker 1: the room. Uh. There were a few other smaller versions
Speaker 1: of the cloak a bot. My favorite was kloak A
Speaker 1: number five that we're in a separate room that I
Speaker 1: mustered up lung capacity to do a quick trip round
Speaker 1: to peak at all the inner works of these machineries.
Speaker 1: It was a smell a yet intriguing experience. And then
Speaker 1: she goes on to point out that her perhaps her
Speaker 1: only major disgust these mangoes. You know what, I actually
Speaker 1: understood that what's really because they're slimy um, and they
Speaker 1: don't for me. They don't pack the punch of like
Speaker 1: a peach or you know, some other fruit in the
Speaker 1: same category. Uh well, I mean I love mangoes, that
Speaker 1: they are a bit temperamental. They're one of those fruits
Speaker 1: when you buy them that and you will never really
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna get. Like a banana, banana is
Speaker 1: pretty consistent. I mean assume that you can tell on
Speaker 1: the outside what a banana is probably doing on the inside,
Speaker 1: and and you know what you're in for. But like
Speaker 1: a mangoes, kind of like a cantaloupe, the candleop is
Speaker 1: one of those where sometimes sometimes the candlop is amazing
Speaker 1: butt al, though sometimes it's just kind of yeah, just
Speaker 1: to payoff is not so great. I get this, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't see anything about sliminess, but I understand it from
Speaker 1: that perspective. But apparently in Australia that makes for a
Speaker 1: bit of a un Australian, very UnAustralian odd personal fruit,
Speaker 1: the golden fruit. Right, she's been shunned for an unliking him.
Speaker 1: We'll presumably I would say, well, may me your man
Speaker 1: goes then, but that would be disgusting because by the
Speaker 1: time I got here, would they would just be grotest
Speaker 1: package full of insects and slide. Anyway, She closed by
Speaker 1: saying love listening to your podcast, along with lots of
Speaker 1: other podcasts from you folks at hs W, thanks for
Speaker 1: blowing my mind on a weekly basis. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: that was an excellent to you know, definitely hear about
Speaker 1: and more about like firsthand knowledge of the clay butt.
Speaker 1: I love that people are out there meeting it for us. Well,
Speaker 1: it's on my bucket list now. I've heard so much
Speaker 1: about it and I've read so much about it. I
Speaker 1: just I've got to see it in the flesh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: poor choice affords. All right, Well, there you go. Gluttony.
Speaker 1: We would love as always to hear your input on
Speaker 1: this topic. What is your perception of gluttony? What is
Speaker 1: your experience with gluttony? What do you think about professionally
Speaker 1: eating contest? Have you ever participated in one? And uh
Speaker 1: and what do you think about a nice friendly vegan
Speaker 1: eating competition? Is that against everything that you can stand for?
Speaker 1: Or would it be kind of interesting? I don't know.
Speaker 1: You can find us on faceboo. Look it is stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind and uh oh, we're also on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can reach out to us there at Blow the
Speaker 1: Mind and you can always send us an email to
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast Stuff from the future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.