Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know Frondhouse Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: clark Wood, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So it's
Speaker 1: stuff you should know and Chuck, Yes, we have done
Speaker 1: some stuff before that relates to this episode. Okay, is
Speaker 1: high food toast coincer are bad for you? That's right.
Speaker 1: How McDonald's works, yea, how twinkies work? Yeah? Uh, well
Speaker 1: that's it. I bet there's more. Probably I can't think
Speaker 1: of it right now. Our zoos good or bad for animals?
Speaker 1: Does your grandfather's diet affect you? Yeah? True that you know,
Speaker 1: you know they drunk food mite and well yeah, so
Speaker 1: you the future grandfather listening today, you're screwing up your
Speaker 1: grandkids health right now, that's right. Go listen to our
Speaker 1: epigenet accept Junk food is uh ubiquitous now and it
Speaker 1: wasn't in my grandparents day. No, you know, no, they
Speaker 1: had lame, lame diets. Yeah, of whole foods, these natural things. Well,
Speaker 1: that's something that this article I thought was smart to
Speaker 1: point out that back in the day before junk food,
Speaker 1: it didn't mean everybody was just eating like hippies or
Speaker 1: something like that, Like they were just these wonderful, like
Speaker 1: wholesome spreads at every meal or something like that. They
Speaker 1: like crowd or they ate the same thing, or there
Speaker 1: are plenty of times where they were like I would
Speaker 1: kill you for a tomato right now in the day
Speaker 1: of winter. Um, I'm tired of eating this forty steak
Speaker 1: covered in gravy exactly every night. Um. But they did
Speaker 1: not have access to mass produced, um, really fundamentally unhealthy
Speaker 1: food like we do today. And that's the definition of
Speaker 1: junk food. Really, that's right. Junk food. You might have
Speaker 1: heard of, like empty calories. Um, that's what junk food is.
Speaker 1: It's food that has either zero or very little nutritional
Speaker 1: value but has a lot of calories. But has a
Speaker 1: ton of calories, usually in the form of carbs, which
Speaker 1: um is usually a shot of way more energy than
Speaker 1: you need. That doughnuts stick, it's tasty. What's a donut stick? Oh,
Speaker 1: there's donut sticks, just like it's exactly what it sounds like. No,
Speaker 1: it's a little debby device. Ohh yeah, I know this. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's a shot of energy device. Very rarely do
Speaker 1: you need like a shot of energy like that, especially
Speaker 1: when you're going to sit down in front of your
Speaker 1: computer for three hours straight. They don't need that. So
Speaker 1: what happens to that energy is it gets translated into
Speaker 1: fat stored is fat and just as bad, you don't
Speaker 1: get any nutritional value from it whatsoever. It doesn't contain
Speaker 1: dietary fiber usually you know, it doesn't have any of
Speaker 1: the minerals or vitamins that your body needs to like
Speaker 1: mount immune response. And even worse, as we'll talk about later,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that it's contributing to things like um
Speaker 1: uh mental ill health in you ye, mental health, physical health.
Speaker 1: Because we're talking packaged sweet goods, talking soft drinks, uh,
Speaker 1: baked goods, salty stuff, man stuff loaded with that, all
Speaker 1: the good things, all the good things. Right Like when
Speaker 1: we were researching this, UM, I was like, I want
Speaker 1: a doughnut right now. I'm gonna go get a donut.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll get like a griddle or something too. Like
Speaker 1: I just wanted everything. I even thought like maybe I'll
Speaker 1: get a root beer somewhere. I don't even know where
Speaker 1: to get a root beer, but I was gonna try
Speaker 1: and find one. You get any other soda and I well,
Speaker 1: I I guess you probably could. That's what I was
Speaker 1: going on. But I'm just saying I don't have personal
Speaker 1: experience buying root beer anywhere. I gotta That's what this
Speaker 1: article did to me, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: got a guy can get you from up here good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just stick with me afterwards. All right, I'll introduce you. Thanks. Man,
Speaker 1: you gotta meet him first, but yeah, after that, it's
Speaker 1: all good. Um yeah, it's bad stuff. UM. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about junk food. Let's talk about the history. I
Speaker 1: guess because it's um it's pretty interesting and the like
Speaker 1: we were saying before, before the dawn of the nineteenth century, UM,
Speaker 1: people ate food mostly from stuff that they grew or harvested.
Speaker 1: It wasn't processed that much. And big changes came around
Speaker 1: when the Industrial Revolution hit and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: people could get cheap flower. That was the big turning point,
Speaker 1: the big turning point four in your home. And the
Speaker 1: story of junk food is essentially the story of the
Speaker 1: industrialization of food. Like before we had food that was
Speaker 1: bad for you, like caramels were introduced by the Arabs
Speaker 1: probably about a thousand years ago, some somewhere around there. Um. Um,
Speaker 1: chocolate has been around for a very long time. Cookies
Speaker 1: the dude who founded Keebler, Mr Keebler, he had a
Speaker 1: bakery in the early nineteenth century. Like, people were making
Speaker 1: stuff that wasn't good for you, but they were making it,
Speaker 1: and it was a pain in the neck to make it,
Speaker 1: so they weren't making it all of the time. You
Speaker 1: couldn't just go anywhere and get it. And that is
Speaker 1: inherently the problem with junk food today is it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's cheap and it's easy to get. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there were, uh, there were a lot of other factors
Speaker 1: that contributed to the rise of junk food. Um, besides
Speaker 1: the industrialization. People moved to cities and away from farms.
Speaker 1: And if you're living in the middle of New York
Speaker 1: City and you're not gonna have a big farm, let
Speaker 1: us farm in your backyard. So long can let us
Speaker 1: that you can the winter before? Right? Uh civil war?
Speaker 1: That's what I know about canny. Uh. Well, we used
Speaker 1: to can when I was a kid. I think I
Speaker 1: told that story. Yeah, my mom used to take me
Speaker 1: to the Canary and can stuff canary for like really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where was the cannary. It was the Cab County Cannary
Speaker 1: over like a memorial drive. So it's just like the
Speaker 1: facilities you needed to can your own stuff. That's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: And you could show up with your green beans and
Speaker 1: your peaches and you could can that stuff. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: never can, but I do eat a lot of can
Speaker 1: stuff because pickled things are very very good for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and things in the can aren't necessarily terrible for you. No. No.
Speaker 1: And when you're saying can, like cans were not involved
Speaker 1: at all, I'm guessing like glass jars were that. We
Speaker 1: can't silver cans. Oh wow, yeah, man, that is serious stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. You're like a Steinbeck family or something.
Speaker 1: I just remember it was awful as a kid. Now
Speaker 1: I would totally get into it, but back then it
Speaker 1: was the most boring place on earth for a kid
Speaker 1: to be wrong. Tire store is the most boring place
Speaker 1: on earth for a kid to be wrong. Fabric store,
Speaker 1: I will say, fabric store is definitely up there, I
Speaker 1: have to say. Man, and I tweeted about this. You
Speaker 1: me and I went to the fabric store the other
Speaker 1: day and I was looking around, like, what are some
Speaker 1: of you people doing in here. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of the fabrics people, a lot of people I would
Speaker 1: not have expected are into sewing, and like, I'm like, okay, everybody,
Speaker 1: so like the entire spectrum of humanity was represented in
Speaker 1: this fabric store. Well, that doesn't mean they so necessarily
Speaker 1: know they were searching for fabrics and like looking at
Speaker 1: them and comparing them to other fabrics they alsold. Well,
Speaker 1: but that does it. Just because you buy fabric doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you sow. They could upholster. Okay, that's to me
Speaker 1: falls under sewing. It is one of the industrial arts
Speaker 1: on its own, true, but I think of upholstery is
Speaker 1: sewing to an extent, even though there's no sewing involved necessarily.
Speaker 1: And these people better not have been upholstering anything with
Speaker 1: their pink valor leopard fabric that they bought. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fabric stores are pretty amazing when you go in, like
Speaker 1: the stuff that you can tell has been sitting on
Speaker 1: the shelf since Yeah. Yeah, my mom used to take
Speaker 1: me to the fabric store, so I have needed it.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it either, but it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: tire store to me, like getting tires put on your car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Not only is there nothing for you to do
Speaker 1: as a kid except to like run your hand over
Speaker 1: the little quickly things on the new tire. The smell
Speaker 1: in there just made it. It's just even worse. And
Speaker 1: unless you're into reading like Car and Driver magazine, than
Speaker 1: you're out of luck drinking bad coffee. That's where you
Speaker 1: started drinking coffee when you're like, hey, just to kill
Speaker 1: the boredom. So waiter, we agreed that the tire store
Speaker 1: is the worst of all. Really for me, it was
Speaker 1: a fabric store. But I'm sure I have bad memories
Speaker 1: of the tire store in the Canary. Oh man, that
Speaker 1: was a good one. It was about seven seven minutes
Speaker 1: sometimes side trackage all right back to the ark in
Speaker 1: Civil War. Um, another reason that fast food and junk
Speaker 1: food became, and those are two different things we should
Speaker 1: point out. Um, fast food isn't always junk food. No,
Speaker 1: anybody who's been to Chipotle can tell you that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went yesterday. They're trying to do it right, great stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, which they're not McDonald's associated anymore, you
Speaker 1: know that, right. No, I don't understand why McDonald's divested
Speaker 1: because the stock went through the roof if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: Chipotle was like, uh wanted the separation. I would guess
Speaker 1: McDonald's would be like ts, we own like tons of
Speaker 1: shares of you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how that
Speaker 1: went down, so weird. It's probably a good thing though,
Speaker 1: Yeah for Chipotle, you know, and McDonald's in big trouble. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will be very surprised if there's not McDonald's fifty
Speaker 1: years from now. No, no, no, I don't think that.
Speaker 1: But they just had their big quarterly pow wow, and
Speaker 1: they're they're all pretty scared. No, no, I know, like
Speaker 1: they're right now. Their money is a way down their profits.
Speaker 1: It's our way now because like five Guys and all
Speaker 1: these other burger chains definitely eating into their market share.
Speaker 1: The problem is is McDonald's is trying is chasing after
Speaker 1: everything right now rather than this is what we do.
Speaker 1: This is why people come to McDonald's. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to If I go to McDonald's is
Speaker 1: because I'm hungover and I want a quarter poundary. I
Speaker 1: don't want to mcfresh wrap, right, and it's you don't
Speaker 1: even want something at the level of five guys like
Speaker 1: you want down in Rudy McDonald's familiar tastes, and the
Speaker 1: sooner McDonald's realizes that that's what people want from McDonald's
Speaker 1: and just says, here you go, if you want to
Speaker 1: come get it. Um, fantastic. Have you seen the Artist
Speaker 1: and girl chicken? That's what I'm saying, Like, what is that?
Speaker 1: That's not okay, that's not McDonald's. Well, plus they're What
Speaker 1: is disturbing about it is you'll see the commercial saying
Speaker 1: now it's a better quality chicken, blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's basically admitting like, look like mutants, like what
Speaker 1: were you giving us before? Or still? Yeah? And the
Speaker 1: other menu Yeah, American Civil War, I forgot where there again.
Speaker 1: In the Civil War, troops started eating rations for the
Speaker 1: first time, little easy to eat canned process garbage basically,
Speaker 1: and they were like this is really good. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: got hooked on it, and when they came back, they
Speaker 1: wanted the same familiar taste and um, that's sort of
Speaker 1: how fast food grew. Food vendors started, you know, parking
Speaker 1: their carts outside of factories and stuff, and that that
Speaker 1: was sort of like the first fast food chain. Well
Speaker 1: not just that, that's where diners came from those food
Speaker 1: carts that were parked outside for people coming off of
Speaker 1: like the night shift or whatever, when all the restaurants
Speaker 1: were closed. Um, they eventually took the wheels off and
Speaker 1: added like seating inside, and that's where the diners originally
Speaker 1: came from. And of course that all came about because
Speaker 1: of the suburban sprawl and the birth of the automobile. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a few of these. Uh. You found
Speaker 1: this great article on what was it called New York Times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what was the article called, I don't remember what
Speaker 1: it was called. Let us now praise the great men
Speaker 1: of junk food. Yes, that was It was a great one.
Speaker 1: And so they listed some of the early some of
Speaker 1: the first junk food in the United States, and the
Speaker 1: first snaky junk food they credit as being cracker Jack's um,
Speaker 1: introduced at the World's Fair in Ee by the brothers
Speaker 1: Frederick and Louis or Lewis uh Rukheim m hm. And
Speaker 1: you know, cracker Jacks is delicious, is still around today, right,
Speaker 1: And and the thing with cracker Jacks is, again, there
Speaker 1: was recipes like that in existence prior to cracker Jack's, Right,
Speaker 1: same with Caramel's name with chocolate. People made this stuff.
Speaker 1: But what the Rockheim brothers did was they took it.
Speaker 1: They figured out a way to produce it on a
Speaker 1: larger scale, sell it, and and this is one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of junk food. They figured out a way
Speaker 1: to market it effectively. That little prize, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That basically established the rule book for junk food from
Speaker 1: then till now. Yeah, the Tutsi roll is another good example.
Speaker 1: In five Um, there was candy before that, but this
Speaker 1: is the first one to be individually wrapped. You know,
Speaker 1: that didn't come in a packet of six or eight.
Speaker 1: So you could take a penny, a little shiny copper penny,
Speaker 1: and you could get a Tutsi roll and you didn't
Speaker 1: have to like pick the hair off of it first
Speaker 1: because it was wrapped individually. That's right. Uh. I like
Speaker 1: this story. UM. An eleven year old named Frank Epperson
Speaker 1: UM left on a cold night in San Francisco, left
Speaker 1: his powdered soda drink with a stirring stick in the cup.
Speaker 1: Came out the next day and it was frozen, and
Speaker 1: he ate it. He said, this is amazing. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wait twenty years and then patting this. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: quite twenty years. About eighteen years later, he basically applied
Speaker 1: for a patent and called them, uh, epsicles because everybody's
Speaker 1: like and this. Children said, hey, pop, why don't you
Speaker 1: call him popsicles? And so the popsicle was born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his children never saw a penny of that money
Speaker 1: another junk food, did they not? I'm just okay, what
Speaker 1: about do you know much about potato chips? Uh? Now,
Speaker 1: So we could sit here for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: do this, because every junk food has a great origin story.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a book that did this for est.
Speaker 1: It's called The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food,
Speaker 1: and it's on Academia dot E d U, which is
Speaker 1: basically apparently they upload books onto this thing and you
Speaker 1: can read them. Yeah. So, um, potato chips. The legend
Speaker 1: goes that it was invented in the eighteen fifties in Saratoga,
Speaker 1: New York by a guy, a chef named George Crew
Speaker 1: I believe, and um, that's not true. They've been around
Speaker 1: for at least thirty years before that, but that's the
Speaker 1: popular story. And Um, around the eighteen fifties, eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, people started manufacturing him on mass, but they
Speaker 1: were delivered in barrels, and then the customers would come
Speaker 1: and be like, I brought my own brown paper bag,
Speaker 1: shovel some potato chips into this, and I'll go home
Speaker 1: and warm them up, and they'll be stale. And so
Speaker 1: they part of the mass commercialization of this junk food
Speaker 1: was to figure out how to package it and preserve
Speaker 1: it so that they didn't go stale and people didn't
Speaker 1: have to bring their own bag from home to go
Speaker 1: buy potato chips. They could just buy the bag and
Speaker 1: take it home. And it took until the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: to figure that out. How long was that the eighties
Speaker 1: and really started to sell them. It took like fifty
Speaker 1: years to get him package correctly. Interesting uh, soda soda drinks,
Speaker 1: soft drink, soda, pop pop coke. Depending on where you're from,
Speaker 1: you're gonna call it something different. Uh. That goes back
Speaker 1: to seventeenth century Europe when they had carbonated water mixed
Speaker 1: with lemon juice and honey and um. Many years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, seven eleven introduced the world to
Speaker 1: the Big Gulp, which was thirty two ounces of um
Speaker 1: of nasty stuff, and then they said, how about doubling
Speaker 1: down on that, and they created the double Big Gulp,
Speaker 1: And then Mayor Bloomberg was like, no, no, I think
Speaker 1: I got rid of those, didn't they think they tried to? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely tried to. I don't know if I went
Speaker 1: through or not. In New York City, Yeah, Emily still
Speaker 1: drinks the diet Coke Big Gulp every day, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, you just can't do that to yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's got to be something really really wrong with it.
Speaker 1: There has to be. This is too too much science,
Speaker 1: like in one concentrated form, you know. Yeah, but what's
Speaker 1: funny is Coke, PETSI Hires, roop Here dr Upper. They
Speaker 1: all started out as a lick sers and tonics that
Speaker 1: were sold at the pharmacy, like that's where you got
Speaker 1: those originally, and then they became one of the most ubiquitous,
Speaker 1: unhealthy drinks on the planet. Alright, So we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about we could, like you said, we could go
Speaker 1: on all day talking about the history of different junks.
Speaker 1: Would you got one more? I got one more? The
Speaker 1: world's first combination candy bar. There were chocolate bar bars
Speaker 1: before the first candy bar, Clark Bar really, which is uh,
Speaker 1: it's like a butterfinger but better is it? Because it
Speaker 1: was first and it's a Clark You got any more?
Speaker 1: I've got more, but I'll stop. Pop tarts used to
Speaker 1: be called the fruit scone. They used to be called
Speaker 1: ep tarts and oh, I've got this is this is
Speaker 1: very important, actually chucking all right, this is possibly the
Speaker 1: mind blower the podcast. And this is a mind blowing
Speaker 1: episode so far. Oreos was the knockoff, Hydros was the original.
Speaker 1: Away Why how did they get market share? Oreo? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just by tasting way way better, I guess. Interesting, yea,
Speaker 1: So Hidrocks is like made fun of it, like I
Speaker 1: got hide Drocks when I was a kid because they're
Speaker 1: a little cheaper, I think, you know, But they were
Speaker 1: the original ones in hershey or Oreos was the rival,
Speaker 1: the competitor knockoff of hide Rocks. I wish I would
Speaker 1: have done that, although I'm not sure it would have
Speaker 1: worked in elementary school if people like you can't afford
Speaker 1: Oreos and like this was the original. It's disgusting, but
Speaker 1: it's the It came first, and I can't even get
Speaker 1: the cookie apart without it breaking like the oreo. Poor kid.
Speaker 1: All right, so after this break, we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about the science of junk food.
Speaker 1: Google Cluster first. Munition Candy pop Tarts are the knockoff.
Speaker 1: They were originally created to overcome the rival country Square Stop.
Speaker 1: I love how you said it quieter, like maybe Chuck
Speaker 1: won't notice sitting right across from me, just between you
Speaker 1: and listening. Although the bubble gum one was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: The guy, yeah, he invented gun before bubble gum was
Speaker 1: just chewing gum. Double bubble is what he came up with, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: it was a double bubble, was the first one, I think.
Speaker 1: So it was in that one New York Times article. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was double bubble. And he said that he died
Speaker 1: with a smile on his face because he brought so
Speaker 1: much joy to children all over the world. You didn't
Speaker 1: care about their gentle habits. Alright, So the science of
Speaker 1: junk food, Um, it's actually pretty interesting because it's not
Speaker 1: just there's nothing willy nilly about it. These are very
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money at steak, so companies throw
Speaker 1: a lot of dough into food laboratories, um, finding what
Speaker 1: they refer to as that sweet spot or the bliss point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bliss point. Um. Again, the article is really great
Speaker 1: for New York Times. That was a different one. That
Speaker 1: one is called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.
Speaker 1: It's very long, um, but that bliss point or the
Speaker 1: sweet spot is what they're after. And what you're really
Speaker 1: talking about is mouth feel, which we've talked about in
Speaker 1: Nothing Taste or Know something else more recently than that.
Speaker 1: I think I had to do with bars. Remember gum
Speaker 1: Arabic gave a different mouth feel, um to than just
Speaker 1: regular simple syrup. Yeah, that's right, mouth feel. So Cheetos
Speaker 1: is one of the more famous junk foods of all
Speaker 1: time because it's sort of a wonder of science in
Speaker 1: that um it praise upon something called vanishing caloric density,
Speaker 1: which basically means you put a cheeto or a cheese
Speaker 1: puff or a cheese poodle in your mouth and you're
Speaker 1: gonna chew it a couple of times and it's just
Speaker 1: gonna sort of dis aolve and your brain doesn't really
Speaker 1: register that it's even eating calories. That is why you
Speaker 1: eat an entire bag of Cheetos because we've evolved to
Speaker 1: see with our tongues, or to measure with our tongues. Um,
Speaker 1: roughly the caloric density of a food. Yeah, because when
Speaker 1: took Tucks running around, they needed to eat efficiently, which
Speaker 1: means eating as many calories as they could with his
Speaker 1: little stuff going in their mouth as possible. Exactly right. So, um,
Speaker 1: the tongue would learn to detect fat. Fat is extremely
Speaker 1: dense calorically, So after you eat a certain amount of fat,
Speaker 1: you get kind of this nasty feel in your mouth.
Speaker 1: Your mouth feel it's kind of greasy, right, and you
Speaker 1: suddenly realize that you can't eat another bite of this
Speaker 1: fatty slab of pork fat. You know, yeah, it is good,
Speaker 1: but imagine eating a big toilet seat size slab over
Speaker 1: you would not write. You get sick from it, and
Speaker 1: the reason why is your brain becomes satiated. So what
Speaker 1: these food scientists figured out is that they if they
Speaker 1: can make something basically melt like a cheeto, it tricks
Speaker 1: your tongue into missing the fact that it's a really
Speaker 1: fatty food, and like you said, you can eat a
Speaker 1: whole bag of it thanks to that vanishing caloric density. Well,
Speaker 1: another thing they do is like, let's say you're eating
Speaker 1: a cheeseburger from a fast food chain and that has
Speaker 1: that same fatty feel, but they realize if you serve
Speaker 1: the the soda with that, it balances things out to
Speaker 1: where you don't have that greasy mouth feel any longer exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's I mean, that's one reason why they sell
Speaker 1: SODA's fast food chains. That's what a value meal comes from.
Speaker 1: It's not just like, yeah, we want to make we
Speaker 1: want to make sure you get your money's worth. No,
Speaker 1: they want to make sure that you're gonna say I
Speaker 1: could use another cheeseburger. I'm back, I want another cheeseburger please,
Speaker 1: And I say, certainly, we will happily sell you one
Speaker 1: of those. See, I don't drink soda, So when I
Speaker 1: eat fast food, what do you drink water? Huh? Is
Speaker 1: that strange? Yeah? Like what else would I drink? Off?
Speaker 1: Notn soda? Well that's that's it. Oh yeah, that's your choice,
Speaker 1: soda or nothing. You're not even allowed to drink water.
Speaker 1: You have to sit there and eat it dry well.
Speaker 1: Although my sister in law drinks milk with most meals.
Speaker 1: I grew up like that. Like milk and pizza even, Yeah,
Speaker 1: milk and everything. Yeah, not me. I've got a really
Speaker 1: disgusting milk and broccoli story that I'm not going to tell,
Speaker 1: but it is rody. Come on, you really want to
Speaker 1: hear it? Okay? Well, then warning for those of you
Speaker 1: with a weak stomach, you really don't want to hear this.
Speaker 1: Or if you're I would say eating broccoli or drinking
Speaker 1: milk anytime soon, probably avoid it. Okay. So um, I
Speaker 1: hate broccoli, but I used to really hate broccoli. And
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, like you just couldn't leave
Speaker 1: the table until you were done eating your vegetables, and
Speaker 1: we drank milk with every every meal. So I would
Speaker 1: I would eat the broccoli where I would take a
Speaker 1: bite and it would touch my tongue for a mill
Speaker 1: a second, and I'd wash it down with like half
Speaker 1: a thing of milk. Right, So you're basically swallowing broccoli, hoole, Right,
Speaker 1: but I'm taking like a half a cup of milk
Speaker 1: for each swallow. So I kept having to drink more
Speaker 1: and more milk, I think. Well, one night, my mom
Speaker 1: was working a shift at the er and my dad
Speaker 1: was in charge of feeding me dinner. And um, I'd
Speaker 1: gotten about halfway through my broccoli and then drank god
Speaker 1: knows how much milk with it. When I took one
Speaker 1: more bite, and all of it just came right back
Speaker 1: up on my plate and without looking my dad was
Speaker 1: like looking up at the ceiling while he grabbed my plate.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I think that's enough for you,
Speaker 1: and like cleared the plate, and I thought I won.
Speaker 1: So your dad cleared a plate of vomited up food
Speaker 1: without knowing it, No, without like purposely not looking at Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, that's enough. Well, that was nice of him.
Speaker 1: It was I didn't have to finish my brother. I
Speaker 1: thought he was gonna say, like, eat it again, right,
Speaker 1: he rubbed my face in it. My mom used to
Speaker 1: said the old oven timer, remember that trick. Oh, we
Speaker 1: didn't have time. It was just you're not getting up.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what time it is. You can't get
Speaker 1: up and go get bed or watch TV or anything.
Speaker 1: We had. Like he got ten minutes to finish those
Speaker 1: screen beans, and I did the old drink. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm drawing just corner the bathroom, right. It didn't work. Now,
Speaker 1: I thought it was smart all right, So drunk food
Speaker 1: is not healthy for you. Oh yeah, we know that, Um,
Speaker 1: the American Civil War. Here are things that can happen
Speaker 1: if you eat too much junk food. You're going to
Speaker 1: get obese, which means you're gonna have an increased risk
Speaker 1: of heart disease. You may get type two diabetes, and
Speaker 1: like you said, with the mental side, you may become depressed.
Speaker 1: Because addiction. UM, it has all the characteristics of just
Speaker 1: like a drug addiction and alcoho all addiction. You bene
Speaker 1: on it, you withdraw from it, you um get an
Speaker 1: increased tolerance from it. And UM, I I have the
Speaker 1: impression that they have figured out like that there really
Speaker 1: is a certain amount of addiction you can you can
Speaker 1: get from eating junk food, and that it's basically getting
Speaker 1: that pop, that that blood sugar high rush that you're
Speaker 1: dropped off from very quickly and then having to chase
Speaker 1: after it again, chasing, chasing the dragon or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's what it's called. UM. And so
Speaker 1: you can display them the signs of addiction from junk
Speaker 1: food as well. UM. Much more closely linked is the
Speaker 1: connection between junk food and type two diabetes. Yeah, Americans
Speaker 1: UM consume about twenty two teaspoons of sugar a day
Speaker 1: on average. UM. A lot of this stuff comes from
Speaker 1: high pric doose, corn sert um, candy, junk food, soft drinks,
Speaker 1: and UM. How that works, as your body is going
Speaker 1: to break that down, uh, break down those carbohydrates, and
Speaker 1: your blood sugar is gonna spike. UM. Which you know,
Speaker 1: a single episode of your blood sugar spiking isn't the
Speaker 1: biggest deal in the world. But when you repeatedly do
Speaker 1: that to your pancreas, UM, it's gonna basically tire out
Speaker 1: and wear out those insulin producing cells and trigger type
Speaker 1: two diabetes. Right. Because when you when you have glucose
Speaker 1: in your blood, that's a good thing because that provides
Speaker 1: energy to yourself and insulin comes along and helps open
Speaker 1: up your cells to allow it to absorb the glucose
Speaker 1: and get it out of your blood stream. Right. But
Speaker 1: after being exposed to this time and time again, your
Speaker 1: cells stop absorbing glucose as well, so you have to
Speaker 1: produce more and more insulin, and eventually, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: those cells tire out, your pancreas can't produce enough insulin,
Speaker 1: and so you always have an elevated level of glucose
Speaker 1: in your blood streak. That's bad. That leads to nerve
Speaker 1: damage and blood vessel damage which is associated with type
Speaker 1: two diabetes, and everything from heart disease to foot amputations
Speaker 1: can result. Because, like say, with your foot, this always
Speaker 1: fascinated me. I was like, why would diabetes lead to
Speaker 1: your foot getting amputated? I'll tell you why. So, remember,
Speaker 1: glucose levels leading to nerve damage supposedly concentrates in the
Speaker 1: foot and you lose feeling in your foot. So even
Speaker 1: just like stubbing your toe badly can lead to an
Speaker 1: infection that you don't notice because you're not feeling the pain.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden you have this uh infection
Speaker 1: that's not being fought off properly because the blood circulation
Speaker 1: to your foot is diminished. And next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you have gang green and your foot has to be
Speaker 1: amputated because of type two diabetes. Yeah, and isn't um
Speaker 1: I didn't look this up. But the way I understand
Speaker 1: it is you can reverse the head towards type two
Speaker 1: diabetes until you have type two diabetes, and then you've
Speaker 1: got it. That's what I think, That's what I thought
Speaker 1: to you, like, you can't undo it once it's take
Speaker 1: and hold right. What you what you go through first
Speaker 1: is called insulin resistance metabolic syndrome or pre diabetes, and
Speaker 1: you can catch that. You just need to go in
Speaker 1: for a physical like once a year or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to catch whether or not you
Speaker 1: have pre diabetes, and then you take certain measures to
Speaker 1: not get type two diabetes. But yeah, I think once
Speaker 1: you have type two diabetes, you got it for life. Um.
Speaker 1: One other thing I want to say, uh, and it's
Speaker 1: not just about the health aspects of it, but there's
Speaker 1: this really great documentary narrated by Katie Curic called fed
Speaker 1: Up I think everybody should see and it's about this
Speaker 1: really good, really well done documentary. Yeah. There there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great food documentaries out right now, Um that
Speaker 1: really go into what the food industry has become these days.
Speaker 1: Very eye opening stuff. Yeah. Have you seen Supersize Me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know he's under fire for basically like a lot
Speaker 1: of people have tried to replicate his results and if
Speaker 1: no one's been able to do it. Huh, it was
Speaker 1: interesting at the time. Have you seen super High Me? Uh? Yes, Benson, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was funny. That was For those who don't know,
Speaker 1: Doug Benson is a comedian who was famous for smoking
Speaker 1: tons of weed. And he's got a documentary called Super
Speaker 1: High Me Yeah, in which I believe he smoked pot
Speaker 1: every day, all day for thirty days and then died
Speaker 1: and took a bunch of tests like brain tests and
Speaker 1: physicals and things like that, and then did not smoke
Speaker 1: at all, and then compared the two. How did it
Speaker 1: turn out? That was interesting? Some results were as you'd expect,
Speaker 1: in some surprise to see that he's a funny guy
Speaker 1: that I like him. Um, all right, so we'll take
Speaker 1: a break here and we come back. We're gonna to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about this really cool article,
Speaker 1: the Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. All Right, you
Speaker 1: sent me this article that we reference, the Extraordinary Science
Speaker 1: of Addictive Junk Food, and it's really interesting. UM by
Speaker 1: Michael Moss. Right was that his name pretty sure? As
Speaker 1: in the New York Times in two thousand twelve, or yeah,
Speaker 1: And he basically details, Uh, at first, a meeting in
Speaker 1: n of the heads of some of the largest food
Speaker 1: companies in the world getting together, um to talk about
Speaker 1: the fact that all these doctors are staying we're making
Speaker 1: junk people are getting no beasts, and um this this
Speaker 1: chemist basically thought, I'm going to talk these people into
Speaker 1: sort of reverse seeing some of their their practices the
Speaker 1: name of good health, and was disappointed to find that
Speaker 1: they all kind of dug in and we're like no, Like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make this stuff and people want it. They
Speaker 1: want it, and we're not going to try and make
Speaker 1: a healthier snicker bar that doesn't sell because the name
Speaker 1: of the game is selling food. I think the way
Speaker 1: nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: thing is is a lot of people controvert that point
Speaker 1: and say, you guys kind of use science to hijack
Speaker 1: our evolutionary processes and make it so that it's really,
Speaker 1: really difficult to refuse this food, right, like the cheetos
Speaker 1: that melt in your mouth and your brain doesn't realize
Speaker 1: it's eating all these calories. Uh, so you end up
Speaker 1: eating tons of cheetos. Um one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: stories in here, I thought, And he tells a bunch
Speaker 1: of sort of histories of some of these junk foods,
Speaker 1: but um, lunchables was super interesting to me and I
Speaker 1: want to say nefarious almost, you know when you look
Speaker 1: at how it came about. Um, But basically what they
Speaker 1: did a lot of research into uh motherhood and found
Speaker 1: that the biggest challenge was time and moms don't have time.
Speaker 1: And I say, mom's parents, Well this is so it
Speaker 1: was mom's Yeah that's true. Um, parents and moms don't
Speaker 1: have time to get to get a good meal into
Speaker 1: their child. So we're also having a bologney crisis, right.
Speaker 1: Oscar Meyer was like, nobody's eating all of loaf any longer.
Speaker 1: We're in a lot of trouble. So what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? Yeah, these things came together to create the Lunchable,
Speaker 1: which was a new convenient way to package food in
Speaker 1: a tray. But it was the same stuff. Yeah, sell
Speaker 1: that ballogne. Yeah again, it's all marketing and packaging. So
Speaker 1: that Bologny. They wanted to put bread in there, but
Speaker 1: of course bread, you can't make bread lass for two months. Um,
Speaker 1: So they threw some crackers in there. Uh, they wanted
Speaker 1: cheese in there because what goes better with bologna and
Speaker 1: crackers cheese? And then I think Oscar Meyer bought Kraft,
Speaker 1: so they just started using craft cheese, and both of them.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're owned by Philip Morris, a cigarette
Speaker 1: manufacturer who definitely has your health at heart. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They did experiment with some different cheeses and they found
Speaker 1: that like, real cheese was no good. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: best cheapest cheese that lasted the longest was not even cheese.
Speaker 1: It was cheese food, which I think is awesome that
Speaker 1: it's in its own category cheese food, cheese food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but hats off to him for trying real cheddar first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So it's like the potato chips and a barrel.
Speaker 1: Though they go stale, you can't you can't sell it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This article points out that it takes several months for
Speaker 1: something from to go from the factory to the grocery
Speaker 1: store shelf. Yeah. So wait, that's the part I didn't get.
Speaker 1: The ham in those things is good for several months. Yes, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's probably good for several years. Preservatives the same thing
Speaker 1: that the poison squad was like testing against. Remember in
Speaker 1: the FDA episode. These are the things that didn't make
Speaker 1: them sick. That's what preserves our food. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily good for you, but it won't make you sick
Speaker 1: immediately and Chuck, There's one other thing I want to say. Um,
Speaker 1: I've seen this a couple of places. Apparently the apple
Speaker 1: that you buy at the store has been off the
Speaker 1: tree for an average of fourteen months. Really, yes, and
Speaker 1: it's just the preservatives, Like, I have no idea how
Speaker 1: they do it. Fourteen months is the average from tree
Speaker 1: to shelf for an apple? An apple? That's what eve.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Interesting, I don't know, but I have
Speaker 1: seen it a couple of places, and I would like
Speaker 1: to know if anyone out there knows that that is
Speaker 1: incontrovertibly untrue, or if it is true, how that's possible.
Speaker 1: I would love to know, all right, the big I'm
Speaker 1: sure someone knows, because you make an excellent point, like
Speaker 1: why would then it's spoil very quickly in your house
Speaker 1: unless it's kept under certain conditions until it gets to
Speaker 1: your house, and then it's like, well die because you
Speaker 1: bought me. Uh So back the lunchables, the sales were
Speaker 1: going gangbusters, but they were still losing money on it
Speaker 1: because it was just an expensive product to package those
Speaker 1: little trays and everything costs money. Um, and then they
Speaker 1: just started to run wild with adding things to make
Speaker 1: a two increased sales. They started adding desserts to it.
Speaker 1: They started adding sugary drinks to them, um Pret's son
Speaker 1: Yeah Kool Late Capris son um. And then they started marketing.
Speaker 1: They tried things like carrots, but they didn't sell well,
Speaker 1: so they scrapped it. Uh. And then they started realizing
Speaker 1: that we should market to children and not moms anymore,
Speaker 1: because what they figured out was that it was about
Speaker 1: the kids having control, because the kids would go and
Speaker 1: throw out the carrots and just eat the meat and cheese,
Speaker 1: let's say, in the loresa cup that went in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they started marketing to children with commercials like
Speaker 1: all day you gotta do what they say, but lunchtime
Speaker 1: is all yours. And little kids on Saturday mornings are like,
Speaker 1: lunchtime is all mine with lunchables and they wanted it,
Speaker 1: so they would go to the store and scream at
Speaker 1: the top of their lungs until they got it. The
Speaker 1: other interesting thing was which which also one other thing
Speaker 1: I guarantee you, and I haven't verified this, but I
Speaker 1: guarantee you that if you go to the store and
Speaker 1: you find lunchables, they're at a child's eye level. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they are. That's where they're placed, not mom
Speaker 1: I level, child eye level. Yeah. I think they're on
Speaker 1: the um the horizontal part of the meat section. Yes,
Speaker 1: like not built vertically up on a shelf as if
Speaker 1: they're down even below the kid where they can even
Speaker 1: grab it, yeah and run out of the store with me. Um.
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing I think it was in this
Speaker 1: article when they talked about what's happened to yogurt over
Speaker 1: the years, was that in here we're basically they hijacked
Speaker 1: something that should be good for you, and now you
Speaker 1: get like twice the amount of sugar your body needs
Speaker 1: and a serving of yogurt these days like heath bar sprinkles. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now let's put it. Let's put it in its
Speaker 1: squeezy tube for kids. Can call it yogurt, call it yogurt. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: This article was really great. I mean, this guy really
Speaker 1: laid it out. Um, just the ideas behind it, the
Speaker 1: thinking behind it, the science behind It's a really long article.
Speaker 1: It's really really worth reading. Um. One of the other
Speaker 1: things he goes into is that there's this um uh,
Speaker 1: this food scientist who's kind of like a legend. I
Speaker 1: think his last name is Moscow Wits. Yeah. Um, he's
Speaker 1: just a legend in this field. And he figured out
Speaker 1: very early on that the optimizer. Yeah, he figured out
Speaker 1: that UMP not only does your tongue like detect fat
Speaker 1: and say, okay, you've had enough fat, stop eating this,
Speaker 1: that that has to be tricked. It does the same
Speaker 1: thing with flavor too. So um, if there's a really
Speaker 1: overt and obvious flavor that might taste delicious, you get
Speaker 1: sick of it faster. So what this guy figured out
Speaker 1: what food scientists now do is they'll take flavors and
Speaker 1: combine other flavors so one isn't dominant, so that there's
Speaker 1: no real flavor for the tongue to be like, I'm
Speaker 1: sick of it. So doritos are a really good example,
Speaker 1: Like nacho dorritos is its own flavor. It's not just garlic,
Speaker 1: it's not just cheesy. It's this thing that they've put
Speaker 1: together that tricks your tongue into never being satiated, which
Speaker 1: is how you can down a whole bag of doritos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was so interesting, and so much research goes into this.
Speaker 1: When they start talking about the amount of consue, more
Speaker 1: study they did and and uh, like thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of hours of people tasting things, uh and taking notes
Speaker 1: on what they're tasting, and basically creating a mathematical formula
Speaker 1: for how to create the perfect thing that you won't
Speaker 1: want to stop eating, and not just for people for
Speaker 1: this age group or this age group of this ethnicity
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like, it's really down to science all of
Speaker 1: this just to come up with cherry vanilla dr pepper. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other thing too was remember how I railed
Speaker 1: about all the doritos now the different flavors, which I
Speaker 1: have no problem with that. Well, I just thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting and that they basically food technicians at a
Speaker 1: certain point stopped worrying about new products and said, the
Speaker 1: line extension is where it's at. So instead of uh,
Speaker 1: one type of dorito, will offer you like twenty five
Speaker 1: different types rather than one type of dorito and like
Speaker 1: an entirely new product, because apparently one of the hardest
Speaker 1: things in the world to do is to get people
Speaker 1: to buy a new product. Whereas if you already have
Speaker 1: the branding associated with it, the emotional attachment, people know
Speaker 1: it's tasty, they'll try a different version and offshoot of it,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily a whole new product that could be
Speaker 1: superior in every way. Uh. And they spend as much
Speaker 1: as thirty million dollars a year on some of these products,
Speaker 1: not the company, but like on a specific food product,
Speaker 1: including things like machinery forty dollar machine that simulated a
Speaker 1: chewing mouth to test the perfect breakpoint of a potato chip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is four pounds per square inch. I think have
Speaker 1: four pounds of pressure per square inch. And so they're
Speaker 1: not only spending money on research on advertising as well
Speaker 1: as how stuff works. Article pointed out that um, in
Speaker 1: two thowelve, just McDonald's spent two points seven times as
Speaker 1: much money on advertising as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water,
Speaker 1: and milk producers can buy. Yeah, I believe that totally.
Speaker 1: You don't see a lot of broccoli commercials. They're disgusting.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll finish with something interesting that you sent
Speaker 1: about the junk food diet. I think I've heard of
Speaker 1: this before, um, where someone will undertake a diet of
Speaker 1: not only junk food, but a lot of junk food. Oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's a nutritionist, like a nutrition scientist from Kansas State.
Speaker 1: Go some sort of cat Yeah, like a large cat
Speaker 1: case state. Yeah, it's some sort of big cat there.
Speaker 1: You all right, go big cats? Uh. Yeah. He went
Speaker 1: on a ten week junk food diet, um chocolate covered snacks,
Speaker 1: cream filled cakes, sugary cereals, cookies, chips. He did eat
Speaker 1: a protein shake every day, and some vitamins and supplements
Speaker 1: and some veggies here and there too, And he lost
Speaker 1: a lot of weight doing it because he calories a day,
Speaker 1: which is a calorie reduced diet. But technically, as far
Speaker 1: as macronutrients goes uh, it was a balanced diet, balance
Speaker 1: between carbs, proteins, and fats. And he lost a bunch
Speaker 1: of weight. He lost a bunch of weight. He lost
Speaker 1: his b m I went down, his total body fat
Speaker 1: was reduced, his cholesterol was reduced, the bad cholesterol went down,
Speaker 1: the good cholesterol went up. And that nuts eating junk
Speaker 1: food on a junk food diet. Like I can see
Speaker 1: losing weight like calories or calories, And there's a big
Speaker 1: debate about that, but I think ultimately that's what this
Speaker 1: thing shows. And if you reduce calories, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where your calories are coming from, you're going to lose weight.
Speaker 1: But to have your bad cholestero all go down and
Speaker 1: you're good. Cluster all go up. Was really surprising to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think the main thing I took away though,
Speaker 1: this is a ten week diet and what happens over
Speaker 1: a ten year period, Well that yeah, who knows. That
Speaker 1: was a great question, pretty interesting though, very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Mark stab, I believe Mark Hobb of K State go
Speaker 1: big cats man. Sorry, K State. That was Lane Chuck.
Speaker 1: That was lame. Uh. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about junk food, you should type those words in the
Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot com and check out,
Speaker 1: um the New York Times articles. There's some good ones
Speaker 1: on there. Check out the Encyclopedia Junk Food and Fast Food.
Speaker 1: Actually go to the podcast page for this episode, and
Speaker 1: it's got all that stuff. Uh. And I guess it's
Speaker 1: time for listening there. Uh. Yeah. By the way, I
Speaker 1: just looked it up. I don't normally do that. But
Speaker 1: it's wildcats, so we were right. Bam, Willie the wildcat
Speaker 1: is the actual man. We said big cats, and it's
Speaker 1: the wildcat. Wildcats are not super big, but they can
Speaker 1: be yeah, like allions. Technically a wildcat. Oh, I guess
Speaker 1: I just think of like bobcats and things in mountain
Speaker 1: lines when I think the wildcats, but the line would
Speaker 1: be a wildcat right, Sure, they're huge, huge, All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this aborigines. Um. Remember when the Male
Speaker 1: Puberty episode we talked about, Um, the Aborigines had some
Speaker 1: pretty brutal puberty rights that they would put boys through. Um,
Speaker 1: we were taking a task a little bit in a
Speaker 1: nice way. Um, guys, want to give you some feedback
Speaker 1: about the term in the Australian context. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: quite an outdated term to say aborigines. Some people still
Speaker 1: identify with it, but it's generally accepted to say Indigenous
Speaker 1: Australians are Aboriginal Australians. Uh. There are hundreds of Aboriginal
Speaker 1: nations around Australia, each with their own traditions and knowledge.
Speaker 1: Within these nations our various clan and family groups, and
Speaker 1: within those are multiple types of kinship relationships. It gets
Speaker 1: really complicated. So that puberty ritual you mentioned would likely
Speaker 1: have only been practiced by some people. Others would have
Speaker 1: had their own traditions. So in other words, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: have just said, like, the Aborigines do this, because it
Speaker 1: might have been like one small part of a tribe
Speaker 1: or something very very good point. Yeah, so that is
Speaker 1: from Krista Uh, I assume in Australia. Can you say
Speaker 1: it like in Australian. Yeah, that's pretty good, all right
Speaker 1: Australian for Krista. Um if you want to take us
Speaker 1: to task in a nice way or otherwise, but we
Speaker 1: always prefer it a nice way. Um, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can tweet to us at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at our home
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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