Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. The intersection between eating and
Speaker 1: happiness is pretty complicated and something I think about a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's not a topic we've tackled a lot on
Speaker 1: the show. Recently, I was invited to appear on the
Speaker 1: podcast Food We Need to Talk, and preparing for my interview,
Speaker 1: it really helped me focus my thoughts on this important subject.
Speaker 1: Just like the Happiness Lab, Food we Need to Talk
Speaker 1: relies on the latest science to tackle issues like body image, nutrition, exercise,
Speaker 1: and addiction. I felt totally at home on the show
Speaker 1: and really enjoyed my conversation with the host Yuna and Eddie,
Speaker 1: and so I thought you would too. If afterwards you
Speaker 1: want to hear more smart thoughts on eating, then you
Speaker 1: should listen to other episodes of Food we Need to
Speaker 1: Talk wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Just a heads up to our listeners, this episode does
Speaker 2: involve discussion of eating disorders. If you need more information
Speaker 2: or need help finding help, go to National Eatingdisorders dot Org.
Speaker 3: I'm Unadjata and I'm doctor Eddie Phillips, Associate Professor at
Speaker 3: Harvard Medical School.
Speaker 2: And you're listening to Food we Need to Talk, the
Speaker 2: only podcast that has been scientifically proven to help you
Speaker 2: be happy with your food again. Welcome back to food.
Speaker 2: We need to talk. Thank you so much, Professor Santos
Speaker 2: for coming back on to talk about food this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, the first question we wanted to ask you about
Speaker 2: is do you think that we view food differently today
Speaker 2: than we traditionally have in the past, Because I feel like,
Speaker 2: to me, food has always seemed very utilitarian. You use
Speaker 2: food to either be healthy or to manipulate your weight.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that in the past people were
Speaker 2: so preoccupied with their weight and so focused on health,
Speaker 2: right because they were just eating food to survive. And
Speaker 2: so I feel like it's completely you started to mean
Speaker 2: this different thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it's worth
Speaker 1: going really way back right to how we used to
Speaker 1: think about food evolutionarily, right, you know. I think when
Speaker 1: we were a hunter gatherers, food was just another one
Speaker 1: of our basic needs, right, you know, we'd get sleepy
Speaker 1: and we'd sleep, we'd be cold and maybe put on
Speaker 1: a blanket or a fur or something. I think when
Speaker 1: we were hungry, we wanted to eat. And I think
Speaker 1: if you look at the foods that people were eating
Speaker 1: back then, you know, like roots and tubers and whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, in the back in the evolutionary day, very
Speaker 1: little of it was this sort of highly palatable food.
Speaker 1: And so I think sometimes we think, oh, today food's
Speaker 1: so utilitarian. You know, maybe we need to get back
Speaker 1: to pleasure. But in some ways, I think we need
Speaker 1: to get back to what food really was. It's just
Speaker 1: like a way to fulfill our needs. It wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: supposed to be this super pleasurable thing that you know,
Speaker 1: we got a lot out of. And so I think
Speaker 1: when you take that big historical approach, you realize, wow,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about food in a really different way, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the needs that we've gotten so obsessed about.
Speaker 1: You know, you talked about regulating your weight or kind
Speaker 1: of wanting to get fit and things like that. And
Speaker 1: I think these days we really are super utilitarian when
Speaker 1: it comes to food. And when you start to realize
Speaker 1: that it's just an urge, this starts to feel kind
Speaker 1: of weird, you know when you think about like, you know,
Speaker 1: if I have urged to go to the bathroom, right,
Speaker 1: I have to urinate, I'm not like making a schedule
Speaker 1: or having an app or like there's not like influencers
Speaker 1: who are telling me I wanted to go to eth,
Speaker 1: Like if I'm feeling cold, there's very little infrastructure for
Speaker 1: like how to get warmer or tips on getting what like.
Speaker 1: You just kind of obey that need. And somehow we've
Speaker 1: gotten off track with food.
Speaker 3: So I'm picturing the folks coming back from their hunting
Speaker 3: and gathering and the food arrives, and it might just
Speaker 3: be some tubers. Maybe it was an exceptional day and
Speaker 3: you caught an animal of whatever size, if you really
Speaker 3: went nuts and you were willing to climb up a
Speaker 3: tree and smoke at the bees, you got a little
Speaker 3: bit of honey. But what I'm hearing is that was
Speaker 3: everyone clapping and saying hooray, I'm really happy. Or is
Speaker 3: it just like, oh my god, I won't be starving
Speaker 3: for another twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there definitely even were foods back
Speaker 1: in the evolutionary day that tasted better than others. You know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned honey, and I think honey has these features
Speaker 1: of the kind of thing that we're out there looking for.
Speaker 1: It's really high caloric, you know, very sweet sort of food.
Speaker 1: But my guess is that most of the time it
Speaker 1: wasn't really this sort of pleasure thing. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: we were, you know, going on our hunter gatherer yelp
Speaker 1: to try to pick their best restaurant, you know, with
Speaker 1: the best cocktails and food.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: It was just food, right, And I think we've somehow
Speaker 1: built food up a lot, in part because you know,
Speaker 1: it really is a form of pleasure that we can
Speaker 1: savor in our lives now done well, But I think
Speaker 1: it wasn't always that. And I think, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the kind of difficult, challenging relationships that some of
Speaker 1: us have with food. Now, if we could get back
Speaker 1: to thinking about food just as fuel, like gasoline that
Speaker 1: we're putting into our big human meat tanks, and we
Speaker 1: might end up developing a healthier relationship with eating.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's a great s way into what is
Speaker 2: a healthy relationship to food. I think it's become a buzzword. Yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody loves to say, especially on Instagram. Itway was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm like really like working on my relationship with you,
Speaker 2: or I'm really good or whatever. It's so vague at
Speaker 2: this point that I have no idea what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: So how do you define a good relationship with food.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I think a good relationship with food
Speaker 1: is one that you don't think about, right, you know,
Speaker 1: like I have, you know, historically been part of diet culture, right,
Speaker 1: Like I've picked up these norms. I too have a
Speaker 1: complicated relationship with you know, should I be eating healthier?
Speaker 1: You know? Is this going to make me fat? Like
Speaker 1: these kinds of things come in right, even for me.
Speaker 1: But when I watch people who have what I would
Speaker 1: think of as a healthy relationship with food, they just
Speaker 1: eat when they're hungry, and they eat something that seems
Speaker 1: like it will make their bodies feel decent, and then
Speaker 1: they don't really think about food very much. So I
Speaker 1: think kind of just the act of worrying about this
Speaker 1: healthy relationship with food and making hashtags about it that
Speaker 1: go on Instagram already, that's signaling like something is a miss, right, Like,
Speaker 1: no one's hashtagging like I have this great relationship with
Speaker 1: my like you know, urination or like my body feel warm? Right,
Speaker 1: Like it's just another urge that we have, is just
Speaker 1: another need that our bodies have. And so already, as
Speaker 1: we start asking this question, I think it means we
Speaker 1: got off track. But I think you know, when we
Speaker 1: think about a healthy relationship with food, it's one that's
Speaker 1: not taking up a lot of mental bandwidth. I think
Speaker 1: when you start having a take up mental bandwidth already,
Speaker 1: this is problematic. You know, even maybe if it's pleasurable, right,
Speaker 1: even if you're obsessed with, oh, what I'm going to
Speaker 1: eat tonight, I'm really excited about this restaurant and things.
Speaker 1: I think that already is signaling, but you might be
Speaker 1: kind of getting off track a little bit. So that's
Speaker 1: I think point number one is you shouldn't be obsessed
Speaker 1: with it. You shouldn't have to talk about it. But
Speaker 1: the second thing is I think that it's kind of
Speaker 1: not an emotion that seems to be like very high arousal,
Speaker 1: Like you're not feeling anxious or sad or stressed. It's
Speaker 1: kind of much more one of these neutral emotions. Even
Speaker 1: when it kind of verges on the positive relationship, like
Speaker 1: you're savoring your food and you're enjoying it, it's not
Speaker 1: this like extreme thing. It's kind of just like joy.
Speaker 1: It's like walking around and seeing the nice flowers. It's
Speaker 1: like that level of emotion and not one that's taking
Speaker 1: up a lot of energy and mental bandwidth.
Speaker 3: Let's add in the texture of food is love, and
Speaker 3: there's so many cultures where my god, if you told
Speaker 3: my wife, if you told my mother in law like
Speaker 3: not to worry about what they're going to serve when
Speaker 3: we get together for dinner, that would be sort of
Speaker 3: like a negative.
Speaker 1: So I think more I was answering Youn's question about
Speaker 1: the influencer version of a healthy relationship with food. I
Speaker 1: think if you're paying attention food from the perspective of
Speaker 1: sort of diet culture and one you have to eat
Speaker 1: to be healthy, then you have to kind of worry
Speaker 1: about these sort of more negative emotions, like things like
Speaker 1: anxiety and so on. Right, But if we stop that,
Speaker 1: then we can ask, okay, how do we get a
Speaker 1: more pleasurable relationship with food? And I think that brings
Speaker 1: us into the healthier versions of cultures that we can
Speaker 1: have with food, right, because food is really it's super
Speaker 1: important part of our social connection. Right again, done well?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I think you know influencer version of orthorexia where you
Speaker 1: just have your snacks in your bag and you just
Speaker 1: eat your parents on the way to the That doesn't work.
Speaker 1: But these you know, recipes that have been part of
Speaker 1: your culture. For generations, food that's part of rituals that
Speaker 1: are meaningful both for the social connection and for what
Speaker 1: they represent in terms of how you're representing the world
Speaker 1: and sort of life changes. These things can be really essential,
Speaker 1: but they're often less about the food and more about
Speaker 1: kind of how we're thinking about the food and what
Speaker 1: it represents in our lives. Like, my guess is it's
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily you know, if I think back to like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know my grandmother is cooking. My
Speaker 1: grandmother used to make these cupcakes and things. It's less
Speaker 1: about what's in the particular cupcake and more the narrative
Speaker 1: and the stories that I have going with it, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's been part of this tradition and so on,
Speaker 1: and so that healthy relationship with food is less about
Speaker 1: the particular food itself. I don't think anybody cares about
Speaker 1: the macros that are in the cupcake. It's really about
Speaker 1: the narrative and the stories and the sort of cultural
Speaker 1: background that comes with food.
Speaker 4: How do we reclaim that?
Speaker 1: I think it's really hard because that healthy relationship comes
Speaker 1: with being in a culture that thinks about this stuff,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways, we've sort of lost
Speaker 1: those cultures. You all talk a lot about Michael Polland
Speaker 1: who has a lot of discussion about kind of how
Speaker 1: we can get back to a healthier relationship with food
Speaker 1: and how we should think about our food decisions. You know,
Speaker 1: he talks about, you know, you should go for food
Speaker 1: and real food that you're you're like grandmothers would be
Speaker 1: aware of. But even my grandmother, you know, I was
Speaker 1: born in the it was a child of the eighties,
Speaker 1: and already she was, you know, making food out of
Speaker 1: boxes and doing these things right. Already, the cultural traditions
Speaker 1: that I think she had grown up with were kind
Speaker 1: of fading in my you know, American upbringing, and so
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we've lost a lot of that
Speaker 1: and we need to start building that back in. And
Speaker 1: I think that's important both for our happiness but also
Speaker 1: for our health.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I take Michael Pollan's point to be, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what a healthy diet is, it's no
Speaker 1: like one thing or one set of macros. It's often
Speaker 1: more like the traditional kind of ways that people used
Speaker 1: to eat kind of no matter what was in it. Right,
Speaker 1: you take traditional cultures that are much more meat based
Speaker 1: or much more plant based, and they have, you know,
Speaker 1: some nuance there, but pretty much all the traditional die
Speaker 1: it's are better than what I was growing up on
Speaker 1: out of the box in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: So I feel like the message of like not thinking
Speaker 2: or stressing too much about food is really important. But
Speaker 2: then I feel like, with the food environment that we
Speaker 2: live in today, it's kind of hard to not think
Speaker 2: about it and still eat. I think what's good for
Speaker 2: your body. I have a new roommate that moved in.
Speaker 2: She loves baking, so now there's just baked goods in
Speaker 2: the house all the time. And it's like, if I
Speaker 2: don't consciously think to myself like I probably shouldn't be
Speaker 2: having this all the time, I just would because they
Speaker 2: just taste good, do you know what I mean? So,
Speaker 2: how do you like balance the idea of like these
Speaker 2: things are everywhere all the time, and even all my
Speaker 2: social gatherings, I've been noticing like I've just been going
Speaker 2: out every other day guys and getting food that I
Speaker 2: know isn't good for you, because I've just been meeting
Speaker 2: my friends because this summer, and in the back of
Speaker 2: my mind, I'm like kind of like, oh, like I
Speaker 2: feel like it's just like happening a lot right now.
Speaker 2: I don't really like it. I don't really feel like
Speaker 2: I feel as good. But then I also don't want
Speaker 2: to be becoming very stressed about it like I used to,
Speaker 2: and I haven't been. I haven't not been going those
Speaker 2: social gatherings because there's food there the way I used to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this is the problem, right is
Speaker 1: as food becomes something that we get worried about that
Speaker 1: we're paying more attention to, like that kind of in particular,
Speaker 1: we might even think of it like a diet mentality,
Speaker 1: that kind of diety mentality that comes in. Whether it's
Speaker 1: based on health like really, I just want my body
Speaker 1: to feel good, or whether it's based on some diet
Speaker 1: notions like I want to change the size of my
Speaker 1: body or I want to become fitter or so on.
Speaker 1: Both of those have a particular psychological set of features,
Speaker 1: which is like it's making us obsessed with stuff, right
Speaker 1: like we kind of whether it's a sort of diet
Speaker 1: mentality or a sort of fitness mentality, neither of them
Speaker 1: are pretty good when they go along with this sort
Speaker 1: of anxiousness. And so you know, the kind of anxiousness
Speaker 1: you're describing about these sort of social events isn't ideal.
Speaker 1: But then that of course raises the question like, okay,
Speaker 1: but how do I do that in the environment where
Speaker 1: there's this hyper palatable food that I know, even if
Speaker 1: I don't care about, like, even if I'm not in
Speaker 1: diet head, I still don't want my body to feel
Speaker 1: super gross right afterwards, right, And so I think part
Speaker 1: of that is really trying to come to terms with
Speaker 1: actually paying attention to how these foods make us feel.
Speaker 1: There's lots of evidence growing that these hyper palatable foods
Speaker 1: really kind of hijack a certain part of our system,
Speaker 1: and we often talk about it hijacking our sort of
Speaker 1: pleasure system what we really like. But I think that's
Speaker 1: sort of incorrect, because when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: these foods don't necessarily feel that great if you're paying
Speaker 1: attention to them. You know, a lot of people who
Speaker 1: engage in mindful eating exercises sometimes have the realization that
Speaker 1: whatever food they've been obsessing over, say like Hershey's kisses,
Speaker 1: they finally eat them and they're like, oh, they're kind
Speaker 1: of waxy, Like I didn't like in my brain, I
Speaker 1: had this is this very delicious thing. But when I
Speaker 1: mindfully really pay attention on what the taste is, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of not digging it that much. And that plays
Speaker 1: into this very dumb feature of the way our brains work.
Speaker 1: It's like the one feature like if I could change
Speaker 1: the way that this part of the human brain work,
Speaker 1: I would, which is that there seems to be this
Speaker 1: weird disconnect in our brains between wanting and liking, and
Speaker 1: so liking is like I eat the Hershey kiss and
Speaker 1: how it actually tastes, like what's my actual pleasure response
Speaker 1: to is it is or whatever? But wanting is different.
Speaker 1: Wanting is how much I start obsessing about it, how
Speaker 1: much I want to go after it, how much when
Speaker 1: I see it add for it, I'm like, oh, that
Speaker 1: seems really good. You would assume that our brains would
Speaker 1: be smart, that our brains would put those two circuits together,
Speaker 1: that we would want only things that we actually liked,
Speaker 1: But it turns out if you look that is not
Speaker 1: how brains are organized. There seems to be this interesting
Speaker 1: disconnect between liking and wanting, and so you can see
Speaker 1: that most clearly with drugs of addiction. You know, so
Speaker 1: take somebody who has a heroin addiction. That person has
Speaker 1: a really strong wanting for heroin. Right, they're going to
Speaker 1: you know, rob their family, get into all kinds of
Speaker 1: bad behaviors to go after heroin. But because their bodies
Speaker 1: are habituated to it, when they actually experience the drug,
Speaker 1: they don't really even like it anymore. Right, They're not
Speaker 1: getting the same blast that they got maybe the first
Speaker 1: time they got it, and so that already shows us
Speaker 1: that there's this disconnect. But I think this is the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing that's happening with hyperpalatable food. Right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, your roommate makes the bake goods and
Speaker 1: you see them on the table, and your wanting system
Speaker 1: is like go go go like take that, you know, like,
Speaker 1: but maybe when you eat it, I guess you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like no, no, Like shade to your room. She
Speaker 1: really delicious, but it might not be as good as
Speaker 1: your right. And what's frustrating about the wanting liking system
Speaker 1: is I think it runs in reverse too. I think
Speaker 1: there's lots of stuff that we like that the wanting
Speaker 1: system just hasn't latched onto. Take exercise. Right, we were
Speaker 1: just talking before we started about you know, all your
Speaker 1: dead lifts and going up right, Like, I have never
Speaker 1: had my wanting system like tell me to go to
Speaker 1: the gym or tell me to do dead lifts. But
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure most of the time I engage in
Speaker 1: like a hard plates class or a hard workout, my
Speaker 1: liking system fires to that. In the end, when I'm
Speaker 1: leaving the gym, I'm having like I'm in a sort
Speaker 1: of euphoria of like that felt really good, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't translate into this sort of wanting to go after things.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true for healthier foods too. Right there,
Speaker 1: you know, we're in the middle of summer when we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation, and right now, like the peaches are
Speaker 1: just like so good. I had a nectary in the
Speaker 1: other day that was like on the verge of orgasmic,
Speaker 1: but like, oh, I do not still do not have
Speaker 1: the wanting for those nectaries and the same way I
Speaker 1: would for the bake goods. And so I think understanding
Speaker 1: the way this system works can help us a little bit. First,
Speaker 1: it just gives us some knowledge about when I'm experiencing
Speaker 1: this wanting. It might not be an honest signal I'm
Speaker 1: probably not gonna like this as much as my brain
Speaker 1: is telling me, my mind's kind of lying to me.
Speaker 1: But in another way, it can cause us to really
Speaker 1: start to pay attention more to the things we really
Speaker 1: do like. And while it is true that the wanting
Speaker 1: and liking systems are a little bit disconnected, they can
Speaker 1: sort of update a little bit, like when you actually
Speaker 1: start to pay attention to your liking. And we know
Speaker 1: this from work by folks like Hetty Kobert, who's a
Speaker 1: colleague of mine at Yale who studies drugs of addiction,
Speaker 1: where she gets, for example, cigarette smokers to really pay
Speaker 1: attention when they're smoking, to like do you like the
Speaker 1: way this feels? To like the way this smells? You know,
Speaker 1: do you like the way this feels? And people often
Speaker 1: when they start to pay attention like, actually, this feels
Speaker 1: kind of gross. I don't like the smell of that.
Speaker 1: I don't like you know, I don't like what this
Speaker 1: is doing to my body when I think about that.
Speaker 1: And what she finds is that that can gradually start
Speaker 1: to update the wanting system, not perfectly, but when you
Speaker 1: really start to pay attention to like, hang on, this
Speaker 1: was not rewarding, I like really didn't like this. Then
Speaker 1: it can kind of do the update, and the same
Speaker 1: with really mindfully paying attention to the healthy food. If
Speaker 1: you really focus on the nectarine and think about it again,
Speaker 1: you're not probably going to crave it. In the same
Speaker 1: way your dopamine system goes to these highly palatable foods
Speaker 1: that are literally engineered by engineers in a laboratory to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, be like the heroine, but you
Speaker 1: can kind of get your wanting system a little bit
Speaker 1: more on board with going for it.
Speaker 2: So with other drugs of addiction, the biggest thing that
Speaker 2: is always like so annoyed me is that, like you,
Speaker 2: the ideal would be to like not have them at all,
Speaker 2: right for the rest of your life. But with food, like,
Speaker 2: it's impossible to do that because you're never going to
Speaker 2: be able to like never have hyper palable food again, right,
Speaker 2: unless you like live super super restrictively.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think and I can't imagine anyone honestly
Speaker 1: doing that right out anxiety, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's lots of talk these days in
Speaker 1: the field of psychology about orthorexia, right, which for listeners
Speaker 1: that don't know, is this again, it's not a DSM,
Speaker 1: like you know, like categorist official disorder, but it's one
Speaker 1: that leads to people experiencing a lot of anxiety where
Speaker 1: you're just really obsessed with eating healthy foods and so ostensibly,
Speaker 1: you know, if your dietician or nutrition looked at your
Speaker 1: what you were eating, they might be like, oh, that's great,
Speaker 1: like you look so healthy, But in practice, you feel
Speaker 1: really dysregulated. You feel like you're on this kind of
Speaker 1: like verge of a binge all the time. It's taking
Speaker 1: up all your airtime for you. It doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's the problem, is that living
Speaker 1: in this environment of food being so hyper palatable, it's
Speaker 1: so hard to pay attention without dipping into the orthorexia.
Speaker 2: I just I am such an all or nothing person,
Speaker 2: Like I would just so much rather have like not
Speaker 2: care at all, or like super care than like kind of.
Speaker 1: Care, do you know what I mean, totally have my
Speaker 1: friend who says, I wish, you know, the soilent companies
Speaker 1: would just like make the thing that was really healthy
Speaker 1: and we would never But that's I think we need
Speaker 1: to get back to the question that Eddie mentioned right,
Speaker 1: which is to get back to kind of having real,
Speaker 1: true pleasure in food. Beyond just the hyperpalatability, Right, can
Speaker 1: we get back to like the way these things were
Speaker 1: created over time, Like maybe like slowly creating healthy foods, right,
Speaker 1: embedding them in our cultures and in our rituals. Even
Speaker 1: if that's sort of starting new cultures and rituals, What
Speaker 1: does that look like?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: If you build up that narrative in that history, it
Speaker 1: can help there be other things that maybe don't necessarily
Speaker 1: replace the hyper palatable foods. Right, We're not going to
Speaker 1: like wipe them out of our culture, but it gives
Speaker 1: us an alternative of things to pay attention to that
Speaker 1: might be kind of healthier in terms of our bodies too.
Speaker 3: Is there a kind of like a literacy around food?
Speaker 3: And what I'm thinking of is, I'm sitting here with
Speaker 3: a concert pianist to my right. I'm effectively musically illiterate.
Speaker 3: I've never learned how to play an instrument. I will
Speaker 3: listen to music. I have to remind myself to do it.
Speaker 4: It's all, oh my well, and.
Speaker 3: What's like who while I'm exercising, And I would say
Speaker 3: I'm happier if I'm listening to music, but I'm musically illiterate.
Speaker 3: I mean, I Okay, is the same with food, Like,
Speaker 3: there are some people for whom that's all they focus on.
Speaker 3: It can be pathological, as you're pointing out, and then
Speaker 3: there's others that could be the happiest people I know,
Speaker 3: and they just go like food just doesn't resonate with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's it's complicated. I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the research really suggests about
Speaker 1: the narrative that we tell ourselves and again not really
Speaker 1: what's in the food. You know. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: examples of this that shows kind of how funny these
Speaker 1: narratives can be looked at individuals who are paying attention
Speaker 1: to different wines. Right, you're tasting wines, right, and you're
Speaker 1: doing that, for example, like in an fMRI scanner, so
Speaker 1: we can see what's happening in your brain as you're
Speaker 1: tasting these things. And what you find is that the
Speaker 1: simple label that you're showing people of the price of
Speaker 1: this wine affects whether or not they taste it. You know,
Speaker 1: literally the reward centers in their brain firing more as
Speaker 1: they taste it. And so you can give someone exactly
Speaker 1: the same wine and their brains will fire more for
Speaker 1: that same wine. If it's labeled as more expensive, right,
Speaker 1: And so that tells us something interesting, right, It tells
Speaker 1: us it's not what we're tasting, it's kind of what
Speaker 1: we're thinking about as we're tasting it. There's a similar
Speaker 1: paper about tasting coke and pepsi, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of people say that they like coke better. I also
Speaker 1: like say that I like coke better. But if you
Speaker 1: put people in the scanner and you don't tell them
Speaker 1: which is which, people's reward centers fire more for pepsi,
Speaker 1: I think, just because pepsi actually has more sugar in
Speaker 1: it than the whole and coke. But if you tell
Speaker 1: people it's pepsi as they're drinking it, then it will
Speaker 1: fire less. So if they don't know what it is,
Speaker 1: they like it more than coke. But if you tell
Speaker 1: them it's pepsi, they're like.
Speaker 4: Oh, story sets the stage.
Speaker 1: And I think that's powerful, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it means that we can set our own stories. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, so if your roommate's bringing out the cookies
Speaker 1: that she bakes and she just says, oh, they're cookies
Speaker 1: that might not taste as delicious as if you say,
Speaker 1: these are my grandmother's secret rest if you deck get it,
Speaker 1: chocolate cookies, Like just labeling something differently actually does make
Speaker 1: it more delicious to us, right, And so there's there's
Speaker 1: kind of funny hacks that we can engage in to
Speaker 1: make things more delicious.
Speaker 2: Well, I wonder if part of like the reason I
Speaker 2: feel that way about food is because like for most
Speaker 2: of my life, really food was just like like I
Speaker 2: was trying to eat less of it, like that was
Speaker 2: its only purpose, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if like part of it is that, Like
Speaker 2: I think one time I saw a nutritionis she's kind
Speaker 2: of like kind of nutritionis kind of psychologist, and she
Speaker 2: was like, you have a lot of fear associated with food,
Speaker 2: and you're a migdala is really that miguala is the
Speaker 2: part of the brain, guys, that's like the fear kind
Speaker 2: of anxiety center of the brain, and it's the kind
Speaker 2: of the oldest part of the brain. It's like very
Speaker 2: very deep in your brain anyways, and she was saying,
Speaker 2: like you just have all these connections between food and
Speaker 2: you're amygdala, and like we need to like rewire to
Speaker 2: have food and like pleasure associated together, not just food
Speaker 2: and fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think there's really something to that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you really have like a
Speaker 1: clinically you know, diagnosed eating disorder, you know, you're building
Speaker 1: in so many negative emotions that come with food, whether
Speaker 1: it's about eating too much of it or which kinds
Speaker 1: of it? Right, Like, it means that you're not no
Speaker 1: longer thinking of food as this like fuel that's neutral,
Speaker 1: or like a friend that you could savor, that you
Speaker 1: might like, but is this negative, scary, like potentially harmful,
Speaker 1: threatening thing. And so I think the process of trying
Speaker 1: to engage a little bit more with food mindfully, you know,
Speaker 1: might be might be pretty helpful, you know, because we
Speaker 1: do know that both again, the stories we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: about food matter, and so if you have a negative story,
Speaker 1: that's only going to make it worse. But if you
Speaker 1: have a positive story, that might be better. But also
Speaker 1: the rituals that we have around food matter to right.
Speaker 1: You know, a wine drunk and a really nice wine
Speaker 1: glass at a beautiful restaurant's gonna taste different than you know,
Speaker 1: out of a bag, like you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: in a dorm room somewhere like some ivy league dorm room, right,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I think we can try to
Speaker 1: develop different rituals to come up with food and a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, therapeutic interventions for eating disorders as
Speaker 1: people are eating more. You know, that's one of the things. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, let's let's try to kind of make this
Speaker 1: thing not scary. Let's put it in a pretty dish,
Speaker 1: you know, set thee have a nice ritual about it.
Speaker 1: You really take a deep breath before you eat it,
Speaker 1: really try to pay attention to what does this taste like?
Speaker 1: You know, how would I describe this?
Speaker 2: Like that?
Speaker 1: Kind of mindful eating can at least make you more
Speaker 1: pay more attention to how things taste. And often when
Speaker 1: you're doing that, you can notice the pleasure that's associated
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 4: So I have like several thoughts that may be related.
Speaker 4: Let me give it a truck.
Speaker 3: So once a year, I have this joyous obligation of
Speaker 3: going out to the healthy Kitchens.
Speaker 4: Healthy Kitchens. Course, it's a NAPA valley.
Speaker 3: It is at the Culinary Institute of America and part
Speaker 3: of it you're in the middle of wine country, and
Speaker 3: part of it they actually have these tables set up
Speaker 3: and you can go from table to table and do
Speaker 3: a wine tasting. And my first reaction when I tasted
Speaker 3: some of these remarkable wines that cost like one hundred
Speaker 3: dollars plus per bottle was like, oh, it's like velvet.
Speaker 3: And I remember calling my wife and saying, remember how
Speaker 3: I said, I don't like wine. I don't like cheap wine.
Speaker 3: But what I'm learning from you, Laurie, is that what
Speaker 3: sold the wine to me was again the setting and
Speaker 3: the story that is it the venter is that they
Speaker 3: were actually standing there pouring their their creation and setting
Speaker 3: me up for this experience. And it was sort of like,
Speaker 3: of course I was going to I mean, first off,
Speaker 3: it really is objectively better. Put me in an FMR.
Speaker 4: We could test it. I'm sure someone has. I'll sign
Speaker 4: up for that study.
Speaker 3: But I guess what I'm learning is that it's really
Speaker 3: the setting, the story.
Speaker 4: Can we do that to get ourselves eating better?
Speaker 1: I think so? And I think you know, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some evidence that even right, the palatability of you know,
Speaker 1: not so palatable foods, right, you know, the healthier like
Speaker 1: just a bunch of greens or roots or these kinds
Speaker 1: of things, just the setting can make a lot of difference, right.
Speaker 1: You know, if you walk into you know, one of
Speaker 1: these like bougie New York kind of vegan places where
Speaker 1: the stuff has plated really well, and you know you're
Speaker 1: paying a lot of money, the kale that's there is
Speaker 1: different than the kale that I you know, grab the supermarket,
Speaker 1: like just to me to taste differently, right, So I
Speaker 1: think that matters. I think who we are eating with
Speaker 1: seems to matter too. You know there's lots of top
Speaker 1: account what's that.
Speaker 2: My TikTok account? I'm just scrolling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is part of yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think but you bring up a really important point, right,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, we act like these healthier
Speaker 1: foods don't taste good, but in practice we're not really
Speaker 1: giving them the sort of mindfulness benefit of the doubt
Speaker 1: when we're engaging with them. You know, I was joking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the snacks that you have in your bag
Speaker 1: kind of thing earlier. But you know, as I've made
Speaker 1: a foray into trying to eat more healthfully again, not
Speaker 1: for a weight loss or just like to you know,
Speaker 1: make my body feel good. Sometimes that means eating on
Speaker 1: the go. Sometimes that means grabbing you know, a few
Speaker 1: carrot sticks that are in my bag, and that's not
Speaker 1: often eating and the prettiest way possible with the best
Speaker 1: narrative possible. It's just kind of like getting the fuel
Speaker 1: in to go, right. And so it does feel like
Speaker 1: we're sometimes because we're so busy and because we're so
Speaker 1: easily distracted, missing out on these opportunities to really enjoy food. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the main complaints of people who
Speaker 1: try to engage in more mindful eating is just like
Speaker 1: it's boring, yes, Like you're like like I have to
Speaker 1: just eat and not watch you know, like not look
Speaker 1: at my TikTok videos or not watch root Pul's drag
Speaker 1: race or whatever. It's like what, you know, Like how
Speaker 1: am I expected to just eat? Right? Like? It just
Speaker 1: seems so boring, right, And I think that tells us something, Right,
Speaker 1: even if we're eating a hyper palatable food, it sometimes
Speaker 1: seems boring, right, And that really tells us it wasn't
Speaker 1: about the food, It wasn't about our enjoyment. It was
Speaker 1: really about the wanting of the food, right. The getting
Speaker 1: of it and enjoying didn't really matter as much as.
Speaker 3: The advertisements set the wanting.
Speaker 4: I mean, the double bacon cheeseburger, make it your way.
Speaker 1: I mean part of them is that, you know, like
Speaker 1: most advertisements, they're often very inaccurate. Google how companies make
Speaker 1: these palatable food exactly. Yeah, you know, like ice cream
Speaker 1: with food ads is actually just like Crisco or like
Speaker 1: because they can't it would melt under the lights, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, so a lot of them are
Speaker 1: kind of faked. But yeah, I think those things are
Speaker 1: created to really amp up our wanting system.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's even like I have an association with Starbucks.
Speaker 2: I've loved Starbucks since I was like fifteen. I've been
Speaker 2: a gold member since that age anyways, and so I
Speaker 2: used to go there every day, and like now I
Speaker 2: don't say I can't afford it anymore, but even when
Speaker 2: I go, it's just like, oh my, oh, this latte
Speaker 2: is so good. It's so much better than that. And
Speaker 2: everybody hates Starbucks coffee. People that actually coffee are like
Speaker 2: Starbucks is not good. And it's just like the even
Speaker 2: the brand of Starbucks. Like I just love the idea
Speaker 2: of I'm going to get my Starbucks, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Just it's something I grew up with and it's so
Speaker 2: comforting to.
Speaker 1: Me, and even branding right can matter a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned this coke and pepsi, you know again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we drink it, the neural activation fire is more
Speaker 1: for pepsi, But knowing it's pepsi versus coke makes us
Speaker 1: think really differently about it. I think knowing something Starbucks
Speaker 1: makes us think think differently about it. And I think
Speaker 1: this gets also back to you know, we were talking
Speaker 1: about why are these hyperpalatable foods, you know, so addictive?
Speaker 1: Why do they kind of trigger this wanting system so much?
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is that, like the
Speaker 1: not so hyperpalatable foods, they don't tend to have the
Speaker 1: marketers or the brand now, like my nectarine from the
Speaker 1: Farmer's Market doesn't come with, like, you know, a logo
Speaker 1: that I associate with that nectarine that's bright that you know,
Speaker 1: triggers my memories about eating previous nectarines. It's just a nectarine, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think that's that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that we're pushing against as we try to engage in
Speaker 1: eating more healthily, is that most of the healthy stuff
Speaker 1: just doesn't have any of that kind of branding narrative.
Speaker 1: Nuance that gets our wanting systems and.
Speaker 2: No health claims on the packaging too. So I think
Speaker 2: we had a figure in our book that was like
Speaker 2: the amounts of money spent on like food marketing by
Speaker 2: food companies, and it was like billions of dollars. And
Speaker 2: then the amounts of money spent on like agriculture marketings,
Speaker 2: like marketing vegetables basically, and it was like two hundred million,
Speaker 2: and it was like less than one percent of the
Speaker 2: marketing budget or whatever. Also, all the packaging in the supermarket,
Speaker 2: if you look at the packaging, you would think the
Speaker 2: healthiest food is in the middle of the supermarket, right,
Speaker 2: and then all the vegetables have zero packaging. So it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it is all very deceptive.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, and we're back with Professor Laurie
Speaker 3: Santos of the Happiness Lab, a professor of psychology at
Speaker 3: Yale University.
Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to ask you about was
Speaker 2: weather restriction makes the wanting part even more mismatch with
Speaker 2: the liking because I remember when I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can't eat this, that and the other. The only
Speaker 2: thing I was allowed to eat at the end of
Speaker 2: the week. That was like, my treat thing was Halo
Speaker 2: Top ice cream, which is like the high protein ice cream.
Speaker 2: If you don't know itdy, it's like it's like ice
Speaker 2: cream with protein powder. Yeah, okay, everybody says it's terrible.
Speaker 2: Because I was having no other treats, I was like,
Speaker 2: Halo Top is the best thing on the planet. And
Speaker 2: remember I'd wait all week for my and I was like,
Speaker 2: I can have a whole pint because it's only three
Speaker 2: hundred whatever calories. And then I would get it and
Speaker 2: I'd be like, this is like not good. Why did
Speaker 2: I wait all week? But I would eat the whole things.
Speaker 2: I was like, I waited all week for this. I
Speaker 2: have to eat, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think your liking system was more honest, maybe
Speaker 1: about the Halo Top, but yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: you know. So, another kind of dumb feature in the
Speaker 1: brain is that our brain really doesn't have any way
Speaker 1: to kind of tell itself not to do something. So
Speaker 1: take like, you know, let's get back to sort of
Speaker 1: drugs of addiction. Like you're walking down the street and
Speaker 1: you're a smoker and you see a non smoking sign, right, Ostensibly,
Speaker 1: the sign is telling you not to smoke, but we
Speaker 1: don't really have any representation in our brain for not smoke.
Speaker 1: What our brain sees is smoking, and it tries to
Speaker 1: shut that down. So it turns out that if you
Speaker 1: look at the cravings that smokers experience, they experience more
Speaker 1: craving in the presence of no smoking signs Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And the reason is, like you just they're just like
Speaker 1: walking down the street, maybe not thinking about smoking, and
Speaker 1: they look and they're like smoking. Oh wait, don't do that.
Speaker 1: But what's in their brain is like smoking, smoke, right.
Speaker 1: I think that insight tells us why restricting often comes
Speaker 1: with binges. Why In the words of someone who's been
Speaker 1: on my podcast a lot, Andrea Walker, who studies mindful eating,
Speaker 1: she calls it the diet riot roller coaster, the diets
Speaker 1: often go with the riots and part because just the
Speaker 1: act of telling yourself don't have it usually comes with
Speaker 1: you thinking about having it. Right, So take your halo
Speaker 1: top right, You're like, I'm not gonna have it till
Speaker 1: the end of the week. I'm not gonna have it
Speaker 1: till the end of a week. But your brain is
Speaker 1: just like halo top, halo top, and like there's pressure
Speaker 1: is to like kind of squish it down. But really
Speaker 1: what it's thinking about is that food. And so a
Speaker 1: better way to kind of get out of that restriction
Speaker 1: mindset is actually to find the healthier food that you like.
Speaker 1: You know, so instead of like, oh I can't I
Speaker 1: just got to wait on the halotop, no halotop, no halotop.
Speaker 1: If you thought like, ooh, today you're like really good
Speaker 1: blueberries that just came from the supermarket, or like I
Speaker 1: got these almonds that are like so fresh and I'm
Speaker 1: excited about them. Right, thinking about the thing that you
Speaker 1: actually want to do rather than the thing that you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do can be quite helpful. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, pretty much every available study of
Speaker 1: binge eating suggests it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes
Speaker 1: from having a mindset of restriction. Right, That's what's kind
Speaker 1: of leading people to. People don't necessarily binge unless they
Speaker 1: also have a even in their head, if they're not
Speaker 1: acting on it, this urge that they're not supposed to
Speaker 1: do or these are the things they're not supposed to eat.
Speaker 4: I love this list of dumb things our brains do.
Speaker 1: Usual. My podcast is all about just like things that
Speaker 1: Laurie think is stupidly designed in the brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Laurie's going to come out with like a human
Speaker 2: brain two point zero that we can all transplant some point.
Speaker 2: The other thing I want to ask you about binge
Speaker 2: eating is that isn't it true that binges also serve
Speaker 2: some sort of emotion regulation purpose? And we cited a
Speaker 2: few studies that were interesting in our book that kind
Speaker 2: of made binge eating analogous to food addiction, And it's
Speaker 2: said that the research wasn't really conclusive on whether or
Speaker 2: not food addiction is binge eating, whether or not food
Speaker 2: adiction is actually a real thing. Maybe they're related, maybe
Speaker 2: they're two separate things, but it did relate food addiction
Speaker 2: or like not being able to regulate food intake. I
Speaker 2: guess to substances of abuse because a lot of people,
Speaker 2: when you ask them about it, it's like a behavior
Speaker 2: they really want to stop and they're unable to stop,
Speaker 2: and they kind of tell themselves to not do it,
Speaker 2: not do it, not do it, and they end up
Speaker 2: doing it and they feel really bad. So it kind
Speaker 2: of had a lot of similarities to the addiction cycle.
Speaker 2: So I was wondering what you think about that relationship
Speaker 2: between addiction food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, you know, the addiction literature in fields
Speaker 1: of psychology and psychiatry right now is a little complicated,
Speaker 1: right in the sense that you know, we know that
Speaker 1: some addictions are kind of more classic addiction, say, you know,
Speaker 1: like a heroin addiction, for example, Those drugs of abuse
Speaker 1: are literally tapping into chemicals that are kind of part
Speaker 1: of the wanting system, right, you know, like like heroin
Speaker 1: is like you know, these are opiates that are tapping
Speaker 1: into opiate systems that exist in our brain. So it's
Speaker 1: like you're abusing the very chemical that is very very
Speaker 1: close to the signal in the brain. There's a more
Speaker 1: open question about addictions that seem to have all the
Speaker 1: same features where people binge on these things, they overthink
Speaker 1: about them, they want to stop, but they can't write. Like,
Speaker 1: behaviorally and psychologically these look the same, But the substance
Speaker 1: that you're feeling addicted to isn't like an opiate, right,
Speaker 1: It isn't a chemical signaler in a brain, you know,
Speaker 1: So things like a shopping addiction, or an internet addiction,
Speaker 1: or a TikTok addiction, or you know, maybe in a
Speaker 1: more nebulous case, a sugar addiction or a food addiction. Right, Obviously,
Speaker 1: foods are you know, they're not direct opiates, but they're
Speaker 1: chemicals that are playing a part in this process.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But there's some debate about whether we want to call
Speaker 1: that addiction. Yeah, you know, to a psychologist like me,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's taking up your thought pattern, if
Speaker 1: it's like messing with your sense of self, if it's
Speaker 1: messing with your daily life, it feels addictive, even though
Speaker 1: we might not want to call it a capital a addiction.
Speaker 1: And I think bending behaviors, food behaviors for a lot
Speaker 1: of people feel addictive, you know, whether that's kind of
Speaker 1: a drug of choice and that you're kind of eating
Speaker 1: more food than you want to or comfortable with, whether
Speaker 1: that's you know, something like orthorexia where the thought patterns
Speaker 1: that you engage in are really you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to keep thinking about healthy food, but you're kind
Speaker 1: of obsessing with it, like almost like in an OCD way.
Speaker 1: And so I think, even though again there's some debate
Speaker 1: about whether it kind of fits as a kind of
Speaker 1: capital a addiction that would be in like the psychology journals,
Speaker 1: it definitely for the people that are experiencing these things
Speaker 1: is like deeply problematic, you know, beyond just being an
Speaker 1: eating disorder or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also that a lot of people use food
Speaker 2: to cope with things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a big thing, right. You know,
Speaker 1: food really is about pleasure, right. It's a way of
Speaker 1: getting pleasure. Sometimes it just gives us something to do, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're feeling bored and it's like a
Speaker 1: thing that you can turn to. Sometimes it's a way
Speaker 1: of escaping reality, you know, so kind of it's it's
Speaker 1: a behavior akin to something like cutting, which is another
Speaker 1: sort of behavior like this, where it's like it just
Speaker 1: is the only thing you can think about, so you
Speaker 1: can't think about other things. And so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we're using these foods in functional ways. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: when we think about disorders of eating, we say, like
Speaker 1: what's going on? But you know, minds are smart, despite
Speaker 1: what I was saying about all these problems with the
Speaker 1: way brains are organized, Like, our minds are smart, right,
Speaker 1: And sometimes the best go to for pleasure for when
Speaker 1: you need to stop thinking about something is something related
Speaker 1: to your eating.
Speaker 3: So as we start to wrap up absent paying, what
Speaker 3: does Yale cost now seventy thousand dollars. What kind of
Speaker 3: assignment would you give your students in your happiness course
Speaker 3: about food?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, what is to start paying attention to kind
Speaker 1: of how and why you're eating? Right? I think one
Speaker 1: of the best early steps in mindful eating is to
Speaker 1: start when you have the urge to eat something, kind
Speaker 1: of ask like, why, what's going on? Am I actually hungry?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I'm bored? Maybe I just saw the food,
Speaker 1: Like when you have that craving kind of ask what's
Speaker 1: going on? Not in a judgmental like I can't have
Speaker 1: it way, but just in a like curious noticing, like
Speaker 1: I wonder what caused that urge? And sometimes when you
Speaker 1: start to engage in that process, you notice it wasn't
Speaker 1: really about hunger. It was about some emotion like you
Speaker 1: were bored, or maybe you were in a good mood,
Speaker 1: or you were excited, or you just saw it, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the first step I think to noticing whether you're
Speaker 1: using food in the way that at least evolutionarily our
Speaker 1: bodies intended, which is as fuel. Right, And you can
Speaker 1: eat for other reasons, but like that's the main reason.
Speaker 1: And then I think the second exercise is to really
Speaker 1: pay attention to how a food really truly feels, the
Speaker 1: real liking that you're getting from it when you experience it,
Speaker 1: because again, sometimes these hyper palatable foods that are like
Speaker 1: in our brain of like, oh, I'm so obsessed with that,
Speaker 1: when you finally sit down and notice you're kind of
Speaker 1: it sort of takes some of the magic away. You're like,
Speaker 1: that actually wasn't like as super delicious as I thought.
Speaker 1: And this is a practice that we use generally beyond
Speaker 1: just the domain of food in the class, just a
Speaker 1: practice of mindfulness trying to notice what things feel like.
Speaker 1: And I think often that practice shows us this dissociation
Speaker 1: between wanting and liking, where we're like, huh, I really
Speaker 1: wanted that thing, you know whatever, it was shopping, buying something,
Speaker 1: watching the TikTok videos, eating, but I didn't actually like
Speaker 1: it as much as I thought. And sometimes, I think
Speaker 1: in a more important way, it can tell us the opposite,
Speaker 1: right Like I didn't really want to go to the gym,
Speaker 1: but I enjoyed it more than I thought, Right Like,
Speaker 1: I thought this salad was just gonna be the boring
Speaker 1: thing I was going to eat because I was you know,
Speaker 1: trying to eat healthier. But when I paid attention, it
Speaker 1: was crunchy, it was delicious, It had these flavors that
Speaker 1: I didn't expect, right, And so I think that that
Speaker 1: mindful process can kind of allow us to get our
Speaker 1: wanting and liking back in sync. And it can also
Speaker 1: be you know, an important part of the presence that
Speaker 1: just makes life better, and that we can savor it
Speaker 1: and notice it more.
Speaker 2: M Okay, do we have our assignments.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm going to savor more.
Speaker 3: I'm going to like more, want less.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, these ancient traditions were onto something
Speaker 1: in so many domains. I think, for sure when it
Speaker 1: comes to happiness, but probably when it came to food.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think that the ancients had as
Speaker 1: complicated a relationship with food. You know, we went all
Speaker 1: the way back to hunter gatherers, but I'm like, we
Speaker 1: don't have to go back that far. I think even
Speaker 1: if we rewind, honestly, like seventy five one hundred years,
Speaker 1: we're already getting to cultural relationships with food that were
Speaker 1: a lot healthier.
Speaker 2: That's what my parents always said when after they read
Speaker 2: the book and stuff, and my mom said that she
Speaker 2: was so surprised at how complicated my relationship with food was,
Speaker 2: because she said, when she grew up in Albania, like
Speaker 2: nobody was like dieting or like changing their food choices
Speaker 2: on purpose. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in some ways, it's a funny, weird privilege that
Speaker 1: we have. Yeah, because we have a lot of food,
Speaker 1: because we have an enormous variety of food. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: it's not a fun privilege. It's one that causes people
Speaker 1: a lot of pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: But do you think part of the reason why, like
Speaker 2: we have more of that today than we did before
Speaker 2: is because the food environment is so different today. I
Speaker 2: feel like if the food environment is the way it
Speaker 2: is now, these problems are always going to arise because
Speaker 2: these aren't foods that necessarily promote the best eating patterns totally.
Speaker 1: And I think that that came hand in hand with
Speaker 1: a kind of relaxing or maybe a removal of some
Speaker 1: of the cultural traditions of food that came with it.
Speaker 1: You know, So two things kind of happen. One is
Speaker 1: I think we lost kind of culturally specific ways of
Speaker 1: eating right for the most part, especially in the US
Speaker 1: where maybe we didn't even grow up with them, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people came from family backgrounds where they
Speaker 1: you know, had kind of these traditions of eating food.
Speaker 1: So those things were going away at the same time
Speaker 1: as I think, you know, the food industrial complex was
Speaker 1: telling us like, oh, these things are so healthy or
Speaker 1: these things are so delicious. And there were advertisements on TV,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean take an extreme example, take something
Speaker 1: like breast milk versus formula. Right. You know, I was
Speaker 1: from the generation my mom where they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: breast milk so totally not good, like we want the
Speaker 1: you know, food science energized formula like healthy. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: ways it still is, you know. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, that basic thing was telling you, oh, you're
Speaker 1: you know, the wisdom you thought you had about food
Speaker 1: that was wrong. Let's follow what the nutrition science says,
Speaker 1: you know, like doctor Kellogg who with his you know,
Speaker 1: crackers of like we'll control those urges and make you
Speaker 1: healthy eat these crackers, right, And so I think that
Speaker 1: that really really was a moment in time that was
Speaker 1: happening as again, culturally, we were kind of abandoning what
Speaker 1: we used to do, and so in some ways it
Speaker 1: was like a double edged sword of these more of
Speaker 1: these hyper palatable foods around in a way there never
Speaker 1: had been in human history. Plus the kind of loss
Speaker 1: of our sort of ancestral wisdom about just how to eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when my parents came to America, they my mom
Speaker 2: said that everybody here had like low fat milk and
Speaker 2: like low fat yogurt and stuff, and like they could
Speaker 2: not be converted because they were like it's so gross,
Speaker 2: like it tastes so bad in comparison. And I remember
Speaker 2: growing up and I was like, oh, you guys are
Speaker 2: so unhealthy, like you're always getting you know, and my
Speaker 2: mom would make her own yogurt and with whole milk,
Speaker 2: should buy, right, I like, you guys are so unhealthy,
Speaker 2: blah bah blah. And now the narratives completely changed where
Speaker 2: it's like people always say don't have low fat things
Speaker 2: because they've been manipulated to take out the fat and
Speaker 2: blah blahlahlah blah. And I was like, damn it.
Speaker 4: They were right.
Speaker 2: They're always right in the end, damn it. Anyways, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming back on the podcast to
Speaker 2: talk to us about food.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having.
Speaker 2: Me and for telling us all the dumb things that
Speaker 2: the human brain does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome back next time and do it even more.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Professor Santis for coming on
Speaker 2: today's episode again, it was so much fun. We will
Speaker 2: link to her podcast as well as all her work
Speaker 2: on our website, and if you want to hear bonus episodes,
Speaker 2: you can go to food we Need to Talk dot com,
Speaker 2: slash membership and become part of the foodie fam. You
Speaker 2: can find us on Instagram at food we Need to Talk.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Instagram at the official Una
Speaker 2: and Yunajada. On YouTube and TikTok, you can find.
Speaker 4: Eddie savoring and really learning to like my food.
Speaker 2: Food we Need to Talk is a production of pr X.
Speaker 3: Our senior producer is Morgan Flannery and our producer is
Speaker 3: Megan Aftermat.
Speaker 2: Tommy Bazarian is our mixed engineer.
Speaker 3: Jocelyn Gonzales is executive producer for PRX Productions.
Speaker 2: Food we Need to Talk was co created by Kerry Goldberg,
Speaker 2: George Hicks, Eddie Phillips and me.
Speaker 3: For any personal health questions, please consult your personal health provider.
Speaker 3: To find out more, go to foodwe Need to Talk
Speaker 3: dot com thanks for listening, who WO,