Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: it is Thanksgiving two and so we would like to
Speaker 1: revisit a past episode for you today. That's right. It
Speaker 1: is one of the seven Deadly sinned gluttony. And if
Speaker 1: you do not live here in the United States, or
Speaker 1: if you're just not celebrating Thanksgiving, just luxuriate in the
Speaker 1: fact that it is one of the seven Deadly sins.
Speaker 1: And there's lots of really interesting information about food, diet,
Speaker 1: the way that your body responds to food. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was an episode that we did as part of our
Speaker 1: Seven Deadly series where we took each of the seven
Speaker 1: Deadly sins and we looked at some of the scientific
Speaker 1: research behind that topic. Creed, wrath of lust, what have you.
Speaker 1: We had all seven of them, and this was just
Speaker 1: one page. But it's one page that's deaf only worth
Speaker 1: revisiting for the most glaton talk, at least in the
Speaker 1: American tradition. So we thought you guys might enjoy this today.
Speaker 1: Um again, if you're in the United States, you're listening
Speaker 1: to us, and you're listening and thinks, I think, happy
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and thanks to everybody. We appreciate you. This is
Speaker 1: if we were going around the dinner table right now,
Speaker 1: we'd say thank you, thanks for our stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind listeners because they're awesome. It makes me think
Speaker 1: goes on Futurama. They have there's a robot called Heatonism
Speaker 1: bot and uh. He his legs are the legs of
Speaker 1: like a reclining chair. It's like in a reclining state
Speaker 1: with a bowl of grapes on his chest and has
Speaker 1: a very Roman air to him. But yeah, so so
Speaker 1: gluttony is is the sin that's typically associated with like
Speaker 1: massive consumptions of food, being really into food, enormous feasts,
Speaker 1: feast without end and uh. If we look to the
Speaker 1: pages of Dante's Divine Comedy, we see we see gluttony
Speaker 1: show up in both Inferno and purgatory. An inferno the
Speaker 1: pit of the eternal suffering. At the center of the planet.
Speaker 1: We see a circle. This is the third circle guarded
Speaker 1: by Sarabus, the three headed dog. You know, the dog
Speaker 1: is a good symbol of gluttony. So, and a dog
Speaker 1: with three mouths let's like triple glutton eia. But but
Speaker 1: in this circle, it's it's kind of interesting because it's
Speaker 1: not what if you're not familiar with Dante, it's it's
Speaker 1: not quite what you might imagine for a punishment of gluttons.
Speaker 1: Uh all right. So you have rain hale and snow
Speaker 1: falling just like crazy rain hale and snow, all right,
Speaker 1: and it's just pummeling the gluttons who are just they're
Speaker 1: just like held to the ground by it. And there's
Speaker 1: just mud everywhere, so they're they're wallowing like pigs in
Speaker 1: this mud that's kind of that may or may not
Speaker 1: be excrement. There's that they're described in very dog like terms.
Speaker 1: And so this is where the gluttons are punished. Um
Speaker 1: and but that is part of the human condition, right
Speaker 1: and um as uh worth 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 it, our hardwired ye and to actually over
Speaker 1: enjoy it sometimes. Yeah. And the thing that gets me
Speaker 1: about gluttony is that there's this level of gluttony that
Speaker 1: we encounter an inferno and impurgatory, this this medieval idea
Speaker 1: of just you know, obsessive feasts and all this, but
Speaker 1: there's like a space age level of gluttony that is
Speaker 1: only possible in this day and age. Like it's a
Speaker 1: level 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: how a bunch of resources? Yeah, he was, finger was
Speaker 1: a master glutton. I would I would imagine it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that. I always think of him with like
Speaker 1: huge turkey legs in both hands, just waving them around.
Speaker 1: But in today's world, we can all be Henry the
Speaker 1: eighth Right. I mean, gluttony is at our fingertips everything
Speaker 1: that we've ever wanted, particularly food wise, um libations available.
Speaker 1: You can at least be a glutton on you can
Speaker 1: as far as bad food goes, you can, and you
Speaker 1: could actually be a professional glutton if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: 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 sound a purely since 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 that, 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 the degree um And I think
Speaker 1: most people are familiar with Takaro Kobayashi. He is the
Speaker 1: usually a person that you think of when you think
Speaker 1: about stuffing like three dred and sixty three hot dogs
Speaker 1: in your mouth and under an hour, um and getting
Speaker 1: paid handsomely for it. But who the person we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today. His name, um, well, actually he
Speaker 1: goes by a wing a door and he just referred
Speaker 1: to him. He his specialty are his chicken chicken wings.
Speaker 1: And there's a documentary film by Errol Morris called l
Speaker 1: Wing a Door and like a seven minute deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not very long, so actually pretty it's worth checking out.
Speaker 1: Will link to it on the blogs are on the Facebook.
Speaker 1: But it focuses on this five time champion of the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Wingboll Bill Simmons, and how he prepares for these competitions.
Speaker 1: It's just insane. Yeah. I would be tim to classify
Speaker 1: him as a power glutton. Yeah, yeah, power you can
Speaker 1: think about a power lifter. He has 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 says that,
Speaker 1: he claims that his hands are covered with scars because
Speaker 1: he'll just he'll 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. And this
Speaker 1: he's a state of mind right, uber focused. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how he trains. Okay, he eats fifteen pounds of
Speaker 1: food to day when he's training, and he drinks three
Speaker 1: gallons of water day just sending his stomach right at
Speaker 1: the point of that. And ten pounds of tutsie rolls
Speaker 1: a week. Yeah, this was especially grow test because he's
Speaker 1: not just eating one and then swallowing it. Now he's
Speaker 1: he's throwing him in his mouth and forming them into
Speaker 1: a massive baseball sized mass of tutsie rolls a giant
Speaker 1: tutsie roll cut. Is that the word like a like
Speaker 1: a cow choose its cut. Well, then that there's some
Speaker 1: vomiting involved there, he's not doing that, right, Well, we
Speaker 1: don't really know. Well, I mean he's doing some vomiting,
Speaker 1: but not in this situation. So he's he's chewing these
Speaker 1: tutsie rolls up in there, his baseball size mass in
Speaker 1: his mouth and then he swallows that. And he says
Speaker 1: it's all about a strengthening his jaws so that he
Speaker 1: can really chomp and chomp during these competitions, but also
Speaker 1: like widening his esophagus right right, And he likens it
Speaker 1: to a snake swallowing a rat. Yeah, he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're eating for you know, your own enjoyment, then
Speaker 1: you should totally chew your food. But competition it's different. Story,
Speaker 1: Like chewing is for chumps. Yeah, chewing is for chumps.
Speaker 1: And and and not only that, he's such a pro
Speaker 1: that 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: out of tussi rolls, there's normal human food here. But
Speaker 1: but but this becomes just too mundane for him, so
Speaker 1: he moves on to his dogs chew toys and he
Speaker 1: ends up like, what is a five pound bag competition
Speaker 1: of raw hide bones? Yeah, and he says he claims
Speaker 1: that he never gets full and that he feels that
Speaker 1: he has an eating disorder. Yeah, because five pound bags
Speaker 1: of raw hide bones like these are this. If you've
Speaker 1: ever been around a dog cheeling one of these things,
Speaker 1: these are those things that the dogs chew and it
Speaker 1: makes 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 you'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 me and hey, you've got
Speaker 1: a full belly. Um that our brain stops us from
Speaker 1: eating anymore. That's what normally happens. But they say a
Speaker 1: good training regimen for competitive eating deadens this communication, causing
Speaker 1: the signal to the brain of the brain itself to
Speaker 1: become less responsive to the large volume of food. And
Speaker 1: this is according to Douglas Seidner and the program director
Speaker 1: for Clinical Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of mind over matter. Yeah, yeah, it's mind over matter,
Speaker 1: mind over mind over anything. That you eat yourself into
Speaker 1: a numbness and you deaden your urge to stop eating,
Speaker 1: which is just incredible, incredible, It's one way way to
Speaker 1: put it. L winged or he's pretty amazing and he
Speaker 1: has some or when he is his I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if he's active at the moment, but when he is active,
Speaker 1: sometimes he is accompanied to the eating platform, gluttony, ringing,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it by he has. He has
Speaker 1: a valets who are called the wing at, the wing at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if anyone is particularly taken with this man, you
Speaker 1: can probably get in touch with them and see about
Speaker 1: becoming a wing at and be one of his wing women. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that not only do they cheer for him, that
Speaker 1: they actually sort of ore backup counters for him, right,
Speaker 1: don't they sort of? From from what I remember, they
Speaker 1: actually are counting the amount of food items that he's
Speaker 1: stuffing down his goalet and helping to corroborate his win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna need somebody to keep track of that.
Speaker 1: I mean like when I'm swimming or doing yoga. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like I can't keep track of how many laps
Speaker 1: or how many some citations I've done. It's like I
Speaker 1: need somebody else to tell me. Now we're at number
Speaker 1: five because I'm gonna get wrong. So you need some lambts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need some to keep to keep track. But the
Speaker 1: reason why I bring it competitive eating is because this
Speaker 1: actually sort of informs the conversation on gluttony and not
Speaker 1: only just gluttony, but obesity and um, how our body
Speaker 1: actually responds to eating. This is really pretty fascinating. Physician
Speaker 1: Jene Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and his colleague
Speaker 1: Nora Volcyl observed that ABC and drug addiction alter the
Speaker 1: same brain circuits UH. In their studies, Wang and Volcal
Speaker 1: found that both drug addicts and obese people are usually
Speaker 1: less sensitive to dopamine's rewarding effects. So as we all
Speaker 1: remember dopamine as a neurotransmitter and delivers the high that
Speaker 1: we feel, um our brain perceives and we eat food
Speaker 1: or we were to say if you have drug addic
Speaker 1: or to have some cocaine. Um. So this means that
Speaker 1: both drug addicts and um obese people have to chase
Speaker 1: after a stronger dose of food or drugs in order
Speaker 1: to get a decent bump of that dopamine. Yes, that
Speaker 1: whole trait chasing the dragon type thing. We've all heard
Speaker 1: examples of it with like an extreme case like like heroin,
Speaker 1: where you an individual individual have that first uh taste
Speaker 1: of heroin and it'll be this amazing, just overpowering experience,
Speaker 1: but they never get that same experience again like the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives then is assuming they I mean
Speaker 1: and hopefully they're able to get away from it, but
Speaker 1: if they don't, the rest of their lives is about
Speaker 1: chasing that high, chasing that that dragon that they met
Speaker 1: that first time. Right, And it's really interesting to see
Speaker 1: this in food and obesity and and see that this
Speaker 1: increased or excessive stimulation just creates more decent citation with dopamine.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, again that vicious circle kicks in and
Speaker 1: you've got increased desire and decreased payoff. At the same time.
Speaker 1: I have to say I did have a really good
Speaker 1: like brunch sandwich of this place, and then they caught
Speaker 1: it a Napoleon complex. I don't know why, but but
Speaker 1: it had breathe and uh bacon or Canadian bacon, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, like fig spread and it sound like this
Speaker 1: really nice toasted bread. The first time I had it
Speaker 1: was amazing, and then I went back to have it
Speaker 1: again and it was it was, it was all right,
Speaker 1: and then just like each time, it's like a little
Speaker 1: a little further removed that original experience. My own meager
Speaker 1: comparison to that was the sandwich on stilts or something. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to figure out why they're telling it
Speaker 1: that the Napoleon. I don't know. It's really one time
Speaker 1: I had to order it and there was a short
Speaker 1: person at the table and it was really kind of
Speaker 1: weird because I was like, I'll have that sandwich. You know,
Speaker 1: you just made it even more like yeah, even more
Speaker 1: of a server was like what sandwich that sandwich of
Speaker 1: the Napoleon, the really short one serve on stilts. To
Speaker 1: make it feel better, it would be cool if it
Speaker 1: were on stilts. Well yeah, My point is the sandwich
Speaker 1: was dope, and that it actually I mean yeah, nice,
Speaker 1: nicely done. So, um, Whang looks into this problem of
Speaker 1: obesity and addiction, and he actually asked him of his
Speaker 1: volunteers in a study to come hungry. Oh, is this
Speaker 1: the torture experiment? Horrible? It's horrible. He asked them to
Speaker 1: describe their favorite meals while he heats up that meal
Speaker 1: in a nearby microwave so that the waft of the
Speaker 1: smell of it, let's say, the Napoleon sandwich is clearly
Speaker 1: being transmitted to their brains. And then they show a
Speaker 1: pet scan of the volunteers brains during this whole process,
Speaker 1: and they see that the motivation part of their brain
Speaker 1: goes nuts okay, and then the orbital frontal cortex, which
Speaker 1: is implicated in a decision making, also lights up. And
Speaker 1: then they find that 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 children experience sugar, you know, in
Speaker 1: a kind of different sensory realm than adults do and
Speaker 1: than most adults do. And in this experiment really highlights
Speaker 1: this this idea that that obese and of Jules 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 just one
Speaker 1: slip the pizza instead of four? You know, But but
Speaker 1: if you if you think of it in terms of
Speaker 1: a different sensory experience, it becomes harder to really have
Speaker 1: that kind of judgmental attitude. I think, yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean understanding that the brain is actually getting rewired so
Speaker 1: that it has less control um in these situations. And
Speaker 1: in fact, this was explored even more by a New
Speaker 1: York Time short are called called the fat Trap, and
Speaker 1: what they found is that weight loss and weight control depends.
Speaker 1: It still depends, of course, on the simple equation of
Speaker 1: eat less and exercise more, right, But for some people
Speaker 1: it's a lot more complicated. Right, So we talked about
Speaker 1: the brain being changed in that instance. Um. They were
Speaker 1: talking in This are All The Fat Trap about something
Speaker 1: called post diet syndrome. And it's essentially a state that
Speaker 1: your body enters once it's lost at least ten percent
Speaker 1: of its body weight. It becomes biologically altered. It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Joseph Proyeto and he's a physician
Speaker 1: of the University of Melbourne, and he kept wondering why
Speaker 1: his really really motivated and committed patients would gain back
Speaker 1: at least eleven pounds of the on average thirty pounds
Speaker 1: that they had lost. And these guys were like super diligent. Um.
Speaker 1: The patients that he was working with, they had food diaries, Um,
Speaker 1: they still exercise, they did all of this stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were on a localori diet essentially at first.
Speaker 1: But you know, they followed up with him for a
Speaker 1: full year and he kept thinking to himself, why do
Speaker 1: they keep gaining this back? Um? And journalist Tara Parker Pope,
Speaker 1: who wrote The Fat Trap, started to think about this too.
Speaker 1: In her the context of her own life, and she
Speaker 1: started to look at all these different factors um that
Speaker 1: could be responsible for the never ability of weight gain.
Speaker 1: All right, Hey, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back more glutton. All Right, we're back
Speaker 1: talking about the post diet syndrome. The body has has
Speaker 1: realized that something is a miss, and it's trying to
Speaker 1: replenish the stores and it breaks down in some interesting way.
Speaker 1: It's the research has found that there's a gastric hormone
Speaker 1: called grilling, often dubbed the hunger hormone, and it's about higher.
Speaker 1: There's another hormone associated with suppressing hunger called peptide double y,
Speaker 1: and it also ends up leveling out pretty low. Levels
Speaker 1: of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism,
Speaker 1: also remain lower than expected. And then you have a
Speaker 1: whole host of other hormones that are associated with hunger
Speaker 1: metabolism and they're all significantly changed compared to pre dieting levels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of cocktail that your cocktails of hormones um
Speaker 1: that get messed with in this post diet state, right,
Speaker 1: so that that graylon is higher, that hormone that tells
Speaker 1: you that you're hungry, so you're more activated in terms
Speaker 1: of like, hey, I'm feeling kind of hungry in your
Speaker 1: post diet scenario. And again the left in and the
Speaker 1: peptide why why are both decreased, and those are the
Speaker 1: things that helps suppress your appetite. Another odd finding is
Speaker 1: that in some post diet subjects, muscle fibers were acting
Speaker 1: like slow twitch muscles, and slow twitch muscles are are
Speaker 1: actually responsible for less burned calories, So you're seeing this
Speaker 1: other weirdness happening in the post diet scenario. And then
Speaker 1: there's again going back to the brains with post dieters
Speaker 1: um They were studied by researchers Rudolph Libel and Michael
Speaker 1: Rosenbaum at Columbia University, and f m r I was
Speaker 1: used to track the brain patterns of people before and
Speaker 1: after weight loss while they looked at objects like grapes,
Speaker 1: gummy bears, chocolate, broccoli, cell phones, and you yos to
Speaker 1: put in a couple of non food items right and
Speaker 1: after weight loss. When the dieter looked at food, the
Speaker 1: scan showed a bigger response in the parts of the
Speaker 1: brain associated with reward and a lower response in the
Speaker 1: areas associated with control. Again, that's the same thing that
Speaker 1: we were talking about before, and the implication is that
Speaker 1: the body induces cravings by making the person feel more
Speaker 1: excited about food and giving him her less willpower to
Speaker 1: resist high calorie treat the body wants to reset at
Speaker 1: the higher weight. So I mean, how this actually susses
Speaker 1: out is that it really gives someone who's in a
Speaker 1: post diet scenario caloric disadvantage. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is that you could be subject a for instance,
Speaker 1: who is two hundred and thirty pounds and you're eating
Speaker 1: three thousand pounds or three thousand pounds. That's a lot,
Speaker 1: that's even more than l winger door um three thousand
Speaker 1: calories a day. But then you drop down to one
Speaker 1: and in order to maintain a weight of a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety pounds, you eat twenty three hundred calories a day.
Speaker 1: You're counterpart who has not been in a dieting scenario
Speaker 1: who is weighs a d nine pounds, actually could have
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty to four hundred calories more per
Speaker 1: day than you to just maintain their weight. So that's
Speaker 1: what this is. This is how this is all sort
Speaker 1: of shuffling out, is that you know, when you're in
Speaker 1: this post diet state, which by the way, it could
Speaker 1: last up to six years. Um, your body really is
Speaker 1: not going to burn as many calories and automatically wants
Speaker 1: you to reset as opposed to your your your counterpoint
Speaker 1: who isn't dieting at that same weight, So you have
Speaker 1: to burn more and more calories. And this, I think
Speaker 1: is the sticking point of why people continue to creep
Speaker 1: up on the scales throughout their lives or yo yo
Speaker 1: diet because your your body is sort of working against you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it really it really becomes an issue of like
Speaker 1: sort of me versus body and which is which is
Speaker 1: kind of a false idea because we are our bodies
Speaker 1: and as we discussed before, what our guts doing affects
Speaker 1: what our brain is doing to a level the you
Speaker 1: can't just cut one off from the other. But it's
Speaker 1: also not the situation of, um, I am you know
Speaker 1: this is all about me, I am going to lose
Speaker 1: this weight. It becomes this this knee and what I
Speaker 1: want versus the needs of my body and the the
Speaker 1: sort of the ideas of my body and it's not
Speaker 1: our body just trying to be terrible to us. I
Speaker 1: mean how we evolved, right, Like we have these you know,
Speaker 1: big thick brains that require a lot of energy. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the Firefox of browsers, right, takes up
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. But it makes sense that we
Speaker 1: have gluttony hardwired into us because at some level we
Speaker 1: need it. Our brain evolved for us to eat an
Speaker 1: excess in order to survive. Yeah, I mean we we
Speaker 1: live in a an environment now that is rather far
Speaker 1: removed from from what we originally evolved into where we
Speaker 1: can go and we can in most most of our
Speaker 1: listeners anyway, you're in a position where you could go
Speaker 1: out today and you could probably eat just as much
Speaker 1: as you possibly wanted to. There's there's there's nothing that
Speaker 1: would stop you, and our bodies aren't really a volved
Speaker 1: to deal with that, righties, we didn't know that buckets
Speaker 1: of chicken were just available for you know, the drive through.
Speaker 1: We had to forge for this stuff. Now did we
Speaker 1: mention this? The Elingador, the Errol Morris originally shot the
Speaker 1: videos an extra because he was he was shooting a
Speaker 1: promotional video for KFC Kentucky Fried chicken. We didn't talk
Speaker 1: about that. That's fascinating. So he was like, this is
Speaker 1: the dude, because I mean, I guess this was I
Speaker 1: forget the exact time from, but I guess this was
Speaker 1: in that era of the double down where KFC is
Speaker 1: like unhealthy food for the win, let's let's market it
Speaker 1: this way. So so Morris is like, this is this
Speaker 1: is the dude, This is the patron saint of double Bounce.
Speaker 1: So he shoots this video with him and so he's like,
Speaker 1: this dude is so interesting. This is such a fascinating
Speaker 1: glimpse into really the heart of gluttony. My words, not his. Uh,
Speaker 1: he had to shoot this tim and it extra where
Speaker 1: he's just talking to wing a door about about it
Speaker 1: and I love that. And as you had mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this, but um, you have
Speaker 1: to see him in action with the wings getting his
Speaker 1: glutton chops on Clinton chops. Yeah, which is I guess
Speaker 1: what you call the smears of orange hot wing sauce
Speaker 1: that are on the side of your face when you're
Speaker 1: fully engorging yourself on chicken wings. Yeah, as a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: because I've never had glutton chops, I might have had
Speaker 1: soy glutton chops. Are there soy based or do you
Speaker 1: think they're vegetarian or vegan eating competitions? No, but you
Speaker 1: know again, if someone's out there and they want to
Speaker 1: explore that, there you go, there's an idea. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's just sort of antithetical to the whole vegetarian
Speaker 1: vegan thing. Yeah. I could be wrong, though, I think
Speaker 1: it tends to be. Well, so let's talk about the
Speaker 1: future of gluttony, because there's always a future for Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what, I guess that we've reached
Speaker 1: the space age of gluttony with the eating competitions, But
Speaker 1: I think humans could be grosser. I think we have
Speaker 1: it in ourselves to to do more. Well. I think
Speaker 1: that you know, there's there's the stability that we could
Speaker 1: actually create the vomitorium. Right. We used to think that
Speaker 1: in room in times that there was something called vomitorium
Speaker 1: that we we'd eat and maybe there was a vomitorium,
Speaker 1: but it was it was not a place where you
Speaker 1: throw up your food so you can eat more. It
Speaker 1: was just an architectural flourish, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: people mistook for like this big communal place where you
Speaker 1: just threw up after you yea, which is a factlessness
Speaker 1: idea that doesn't exactly exist. But in the future we
Speaker 1: might actually be able to manage food in a way
Speaker 1: that we could overeat and in a way get rid
Speaker 1: of all of this access and that is through lefton. Again,
Speaker 1: we talked about left in as being something that could
Speaker 1: uh that is very helpful and appetite suppression, and scientists
Speaker 1: at Columbia University have conducted several small studies looking at
Speaker 1: whether injecting people with lepton can override the body's resistance
Speaker 1: to weight loss and help maintain a lower weight. And
Speaker 1: this is in a few small studies, left injections seemed
Speaker 1: to trick the body into thinking it's still fat and
Speaker 1: after left in replacement, and this is really interesting. Study
Speaker 1: subjects burned more calories during activity and in brain scan studies,
Speaker 1: left in jecton's appeared to change how the brain responds
Speaker 1: to food, making it seem less enticely. So you would
Speaker 1: like stick a syringe of lefton in one end and
Speaker 1: a meatball sub in the other, and they would they
Speaker 1: would balance each other right, right, They just can'cel each
Speaker 1: other up. But of course this is a sort of
Speaker 1: a new treatment and not something that's been widely studied,
Speaker 1: and it is probably years away for use. Right. Tooking
Speaker 1: for cheese steak, why did I go from meatball? Cheese
Speaker 1: steak as much grosser? Do you think that's more glenn
Speaker 1: Is than meatball? Yeah? Yeah, I mean it basically the same.
Speaker 1: Both are lots of meat and some cheese on giant
Speaker 1: pieces of bread. But there's something about the cheese steak
Speaker 1: that's a little vialer. I guess maybe because it's protein
Speaker 1: on protein, I guess. Yeah. It seems like there's a
Speaker 1: show I was watching and it was like they were
Speaker 1: profiling these different chefs and their favorite foods in different cities,
Speaker 1: and like every city has its own cheese steak. I
Speaker 1: feel like I've been this rant before, but I have
Speaker 1: a thing against cheese steaks. All right. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to have a Science of TI Sticks podcast
Speaker 1: coming up. Um. Here's another thing that is that on
Speaker 1: the cusp of our understanding and perhaps harnessing this information,
Speaker 1: something called brown fat. There are fat cells that consume
Speaker 1: calories and release heat. Yeah, and if you're not driving
Speaker 1: or riding a bicycle or anything like that, you can
Speaker 1: you can probably reach up around your neck and you
Speaker 1: can sort of feel yourself a little a little brown fat, right,
Speaker 1: because that's where the human body tends to store it
Speaker 1: doing it right now? Yeah, Yeah, you have a nice
Speaker 1: little padding there. Um. It is important because researchers actually
Speaker 1: think that, um, this could help turn white fat into
Speaker 1: brown fat and you could actually burn more calories. And
Speaker 1: you could possibly do this by exercising. They have seen
Speaker 1: in subjects that exercise can create brown fat out of
Speaker 1: white fat. Yeah. And this brown fat is remarkable because
Speaker 1: rather than storing excess energy, the fat actually burns through
Speaker 1: it right. Yeah. And and previously we kind of only
Speaker 1: thought it was like a rodent or human new born thing.
Speaker 1: Rats are babies one of the you know, they were
Speaker 1: the only ones who who are really that into it.
Speaker 1: And we would and generally if you would see a
Speaker 1: lot of brown fat in the human, an adult human,
Speaker 1: it meant that there was some sort of did generally
Speaker 1: there was some of the kind of health ailment going
Speaker 1: on that unbalanced things. Yeah, but they have a much
Speaker 1: better understanding and this, I mean, this is only like
Speaker 1: three years old information right now we're still figuring out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the that they even figured out that brown fat
Speaker 1: exists in adult humans, and again to go back to
Speaker 1: the rodents. Um. At first, you know, they thought, okay, well,
Speaker 1: rodents can't shiver and they use brown fat to keep warm,
Speaker 1: and so do human infants, who also don't shiver very well.
Speaker 1: And then they thought, well, once humans lose their brown
Speaker 1: fat after infancy, the shivering response kicks in and we
Speaker 1: no longer have a use for the brown fat. And
Speaker 1: that is not true. Um. They actually found that younger
Speaker 1: women have more brown fat than say, older men, Thinner
Speaker 1: people have more brown fat than um than larger people.
Speaker 1: Uh So they're still trying to figure it out and
Speaker 1: figure out how to actually copulated for own use. That's
Speaker 1: one of those things could be problematic though, because the
Speaker 1: people who have the most active brown fat are generally
Speaker 1: individuals with cancer or hyper thyroidism. So right, and again
Speaker 1: hypothrotoism in cancer, assuming that you probably have whittled down
Speaker 1: to a weight that's not that is no longer healthy. Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's got its limits, but that could be
Speaker 1: an interesting future in terms of fighting off gluttony. Another possibility.
Speaker 1: This would be far future, and I feel like I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this example before, but an Ian m Banks culture series.
Speaker 1: The denizens of the culture who you know, they've been
Speaker 1: genetically advanced to the point where they can they can
Speaker 1: release random drug like chemicals into their body just by
Speaker 1: thinking about them. Uh, they have these you know, the
Speaker 1: benevolent robots that look after them. But they can also
Speaker 1: bypass food or beverage. So like if an individual wants
Speaker 1: to have another cocktail but doesn't want to feel the
Speaker 1: effects of that cocktail, they can bypass it straight through.
Speaker 1: Well not straight through, well, that would have be the
Speaker 1: effects of that cocktail later on, I mean, you still
Speaker 1: want to hit the reward center, right, I think they
Speaker 1: would just you would get the taste would be like
Speaker 1: chewing a food and then spitting it out, or I
Speaker 1: guess it would be a little they would get like
Speaker 1: a little bit of the I got the impression it was.
Speaker 1: It was like, I want to enjoy this food, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to actually digest it and I don't
Speaker 1: Or I want to enjoy this beverage, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to actually take into the alcohol into my system.
Speaker 1: So it's like they have a separate line just for
Speaker 1: purely recreational food and beverage. I like that's just like
Speaker 1: two different digestive systems in a way, but the one
Speaker 1: digestive system doesn't really work. I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: how we can fit this center our own little uh
Speaker 1: worldview in the future possibility of having few different digestive systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, there are other possibilities to in
Speaker 1: terms of the future of gluttony, like imagine being able
Speaker 1: to plug yourself into a virtual environment where you just
Speaker 1: eat all you want. Yeah, with that, with that, say,
Speaker 1: you you know, I wonder if that would chick in
Speaker 1: again with the reward center and openmine, if that would
Speaker 1: be released. I don't know, 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, for 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 that's kind of that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of perfect. Yeah, talking about sins and lent and gluttony.
Speaker 1: That you have it a little slice of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind past to have with those three slices
Speaker 1: of pie that you had for Thanksgiving dinner and dessert.
Speaker 1: We hope that the information helps you to understand the
Speaker 1: gluttony that you part took off today, or help you
Speaker 1: to understand the gluttony that you dodged, but inevitably someone
Speaker 1: you know indulge again. Do you want to find us,
Speaker 1: you want to talk to us about this topic and others,
Speaker 1: you can head on over to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: mind dot com. That's where you'll find all seven of
Speaker 1: those uh seven Deadly's episodes there there for your listening pleasure,
Speaker 1: including this one. If you want to listen to it
Speaker 1: in its original format, hey, go for it. You can
Speaker 1: also find our blogs, you can find our videos all
Speaker 1: that stuff Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You
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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. You'll find us, that's right, and you
Speaker 1: can always drop us a line at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Could
Speaker 1: be per