Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and I welcome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I never told your prodiction of I heart Radios has
Speaker 1: to firs as we record this. It is prime over
Speaker 1: eating time, cuffing season. Also that yes, also only for me.
Speaker 1: Maybe other people have better moderation than I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know not in this booth it booth here
Speaker 1: it is the holiday times when a lot of us
Speaker 1: do perhaps over indulged, but you know you only do
Speaker 1: it twice a year. And it's at the same time
Speaker 1: there's so many pies. How can you say no to
Speaker 1: love pie? I do love pies so much. Okay, They're
Speaker 1: at the top of my dessert hierarchy. Um. And so
Speaker 1: we we on this classic for for you asking the
Speaker 1: the age old question, I guess not, because the question
Speaker 1: is is food the new sex? And this was after
Speaker 1: you might remember there were a bunch of studies that
Speaker 1: came out where it seemed that respondents were more excited
Speaker 1: about something like a pie then sex. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie. I think that'd be more excited about pie.
Speaker 1: I mean, pie is damn good. Um. And it got
Speaker 1: me to thinking about kind of another avenue of this conversation.
Speaker 1: I guess of how we use words to describe food
Speaker 1: that are often sexual nature or things like UM, guilty, sinful, indulgence, UM, decadence,
Speaker 1: commercials using women like sex objects or eating food like
Speaker 1: they're having an orgasm or something. UM. But just just
Speaker 1: a kind of weird intersection of consumption. I guess of
Speaker 1: consuming women consuming food sexualizing both it's weird it is,
Speaker 1: and I things like UM, guilty, guilt foods. UM. That's
Speaker 1: something that I've really struggled with because I have been
Speaker 1: somebody who's pretty strict about what I eat often, and
Speaker 1: you do have those guilty foods. But I'm trying really
Speaker 1: hard to get away from that kind of thinking. UM.
Speaker 1: Moderation is always good, but I don't want to feel
Speaker 1: guilty about enjoying a slice of pie or have a
Speaker 1: pie or a whole pie. Now, maybe I will feel
Speaker 1: guilty about that. Little baby steps that way, we can
Speaker 1: split it, okay, perfect, Oh, I'd love to do that.
Speaker 1: We just spent New Year's last year and together, Yes
Speaker 1: we did. Yes, we did it because you needed mac
Speaker 1: and cheese and I ordered it twice and ordered it
Speaker 1: twice success. It was delightful, very decadent indeed. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we hope that for those of you listening and celebrating
Speaker 1: the holidays, that you have a wonderful holiday and that
Speaker 1: uh you enjoy this classic episode Welcome to Stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen.
Speaker 1: As we are all doing a little bit of holidays
Speaker 1: shopping maybe for our hams and our turkeys, our hams
Speaker 1: and yams, Our hams and yams and turkeys and nothing
Speaker 1: rhymes with turkey except maybe to furky, it would be
Speaker 1: interesting maybe on your grocery trip, listeners, to think about
Speaker 1: your attitude towards that food that you will be making. Right,
Speaker 1: even though we don't have a very like a holiday's
Speaker 1: specific thing to talk about, holiday is the season of feasting.
Speaker 1: Like presents are cool, sure, but what I really enjoy
Speaker 1: even more than that is putting a lot of food
Speaker 1: in my face. That's right, Yeah, to the point where
Speaker 1: like you have to unbutton the pants, maybe just put
Speaker 1: on stretchy pants. Get it over with. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: addition to that, speaking of stretchy pants, the holidays are
Speaker 1: also the most wonderful time of the year for lovers. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: you know, you think about like New Year's kisses and
Speaker 1: cuddling up, you know, with chestnuts, roasting on open fire,
Speaker 1: kissing under mistletoe. So why not combine all of these
Speaker 1: things in a holiday conversation A feast for your ears
Speaker 1: about food and how food is seeped into many different
Speaker 1: parts of our culture. Yeah, but also how pervasive sex
Speaker 1: is in the culture, and how maybe food and sex
Speaker 1: have swapped places. Yeah, and how they are, like, if anything,
Speaker 1: so intertwined. So to kick things off, I've got a
Speaker 1: quote here from Dr Helen Fisher, who we've referenced many
Speaker 1: times on the podcast. She's done a lot of neurological
Speaker 1: research on attraction in romance, and she was also the
Speaker 1: chief scientific advisor to match dot com. And she says, food, sex,
Speaker 1: and courtship go hand in hand in nature. Food also
Speaker 1: informs what and how a partner eats, like with their
Speaker 1: hands and if they share such crucial things about their habits,
Speaker 1: health and empathy. They're also built to want an adventurous eater,
Speaker 1: a sign that this individual will be flexible, a vital
Speaker 1: trait for loving and parenting. Would you agree that you know,
Speaker 1: if you go on a on a meal date with
Speaker 1: someone you're attracted to, that they're eating style what they
Speaker 1: order influences your attraction. Maybe, I mean, I guess I
Speaker 1: don't want to go on a first date with a
Speaker 1: guy who orders a salad. Yeah, I understand that, But
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go on a first date
Speaker 1: with a guy who orders a turkey leg and eats
Speaker 1: it with his bare hands either. I don't know what
Speaker 1: if he ate the turkey leg though, with a knife
Speaker 1: and fork, that would be weird. Then that would be
Speaker 1: just like George Costanza with the Snickers bar. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's really no good in between. There is no good
Speaker 1: in between. So basically, never take Caroline on a meal day.
Speaker 1: I bowling. Bowling is good. Um. But one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we're asking this question of is food the
Speaker 1: new sex is because in January two thousand nine, a
Speaker 1: gal named Mary eber Stott, who works at Stanford's Hoover Institution,
Speaker 1: which is a little more conservative leaning. We should say,
Speaker 1: because this will make more sense that we talked about
Speaker 1: the essay. She she asked whether or not food and
Speaker 1: sex have switched places in Western culture. Yeah, Basically, the
Speaker 1: attitudes towards sex we're you know, at one time very
Speaker 1: very conservative now that they're not now. But she she
Speaker 1: basically uses housewife Betty from Night and Betty's present day
Speaker 1: granddaughter Jennifer, a thirty year old to point out the
Speaker 1: differences and attitudes back then and now as far as
Speaker 1: food and sex go, and how Betty would have used
Speaker 1: canned and jarred food, lots of dairy, red meat, refined sugar.
Speaker 1: She didn't care what she ate as long as she
Speaker 1: liked it, right, And then there's Jennifer who was all like, no,
Speaker 1: but you should be a vegetarian. I don't eat red
Speaker 1: meat because of the saturated fat, bi organic and so
Speaker 1: she just paints. So that's the food attitude, right, like
Speaker 1: different food attitudes from the fifties and now, and then
Speaker 1: compares the attitudes towards sex, which she says are like
Speaker 1: completely flip flopped right as you can imagine, Old Betty
Speaker 1: in ninety eight has more conservative views on sex where
Speaker 1: it is restricted and bet and Betty is really just
Speaker 1: you know, the signpost for culture culture at the time, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, where you know, sex should be restricted to
Speaker 1: a very heteronormative framework of husband and wife, even though
Speaker 1: of course premarital sex was happening, but nobody talked about it. Um.
Speaker 1: Whereas Jennifer, with her you know, organic cabinets and pess caterianism,
Speaker 1: is just having sex with whoever she wants. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: would never judge anyone for their sexual activity. And while
Speaker 1: even star makes uh, you know, it's an interesting theory
Speaker 1: to think about, like and you could say maybe at
Speaker 1: first blush, oh, well, sure that that switch. I'll buy
Speaker 1: that switch. But at the same time, though, there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of moralizing that is going on in this
Speaker 1: essay that some people were not too fond of, because
Speaker 1: she's saying that she was comparing the junk sex quote
Speaker 1: of today with the junk food of yester year. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't well know that that that that's really
Speaker 1: the case. I mean it not that it's a terrible point.
Speaker 1: I mean it is interesting to think about changing attitudes
Speaker 1: one way or the other. I mean she she points
Speaker 1: out that Betty thought that there was a clear black
Speaker 1: and white right and wrong about sex and thought that
Speaker 1: her attitudes should be universal, and that's opposite for this
Speaker 1: imaginary Jennifer who thinks that her attitudes on food should
Speaker 1: be universal, and that everybody should be eating clean, eating organic,
Speaker 1: you know, local, all this stuff, and that, of course
Speaker 1: I'm right, and y'all are wrong for not believing that. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and I also find it interesting that that this argument
Speaker 1: is framed only in terms of two women, because the
Speaker 1: way that we judge women for sex and how they
Speaker 1: eat and therefore their body shape is completely different and
Speaker 1: far more judgmental than how that is applied to men.
Speaker 1: But that's just a bit of an aside. Uh So,
Speaker 1: there were some some people that we've mentioned who we're
Speaker 1: not totally on board with this quote unsubstantiated generalization dressed
Speaker 1: up as an easily digested social theory, so says David Bell,
Speaker 1: who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Yeah, he says. Basically,
Speaker 1: why her theory doesn't work, according to Bell, is that, yes,
Speaker 1: Americans ate a lot of things back in the day
Speaker 1: that we now consider unhealthy. But he points out a
Speaker 1: glance through magazines at the time reveals an emphasis on
Speaker 1: healthy diets and a strong differentiation between good and bad food.
Speaker 1: So he says, what has changed is not the people
Speaker 1: have suddenly become judgmental, but just the content of their
Speaker 1: judgments has changed. Yeah, and when when it comes to
Speaker 1: food as well, like things were certainly not as lais
Speaker 1: ay fair in when Betty was living, even though Betty
Speaker 1: might not have had as much access to like fresh,
Speaker 1: organic produced and things as we might now um. And
Speaker 1: it also ignores how obesity at that time was still
Speaker 1: considered something of a moral weakness. And it's only been
Speaker 1: in more recent history that science has uncovered things like
Speaker 1: while with the podcast that we did not too long
Speaker 1: ago on how hormones influence that there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to it than just what you're putting in your body.
Speaker 1: And also Hugo Schweizer, who's a gender studies professor uh
Speaker 1: points out too that it was in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: that we have the emergence of good versus bad eating habits.
Speaker 1: And this is also again something that's more applied to women. Um.
Speaker 1: And it reminded me of the nineteen sixty three book
Speaker 1: by Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means UM that
Speaker 1: I read recently, and it's tracks these women in England
Speaker 1: post World War two, and there's a character in there
Speaker 1: who is obsessive about her food and like a lot
Speaker 1: of it has to do with them, um, you know,
Speaker 1: selectively eating things in order to stay slim. So we
Speaker 1: were still you know, back in the day. It's not
Speaker 1: it's nothing new for us to be choosy. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of people also are arguing, not only Schweitzer
Speaker 1: but also Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic are basically arguing
Speaker 1: that maybe either stat is putting too much weight on
Speaker 1: the morality aspect of both sex and food, and that
Speaker 1: they don't exactly line up when you flip flop them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so perhaps this you know, kind of cultural argument that
Speaker 1: food is the new sex. Uh, you know, in theory
Speaker 1: doesn't really hold up. I'm gonna go ahead and say
Speaker 1: that I don't. I don't buy that so much just
Speaker 1: because it's too sweeping of a statement to make. But
Speaker 1: when I think about is food the new sex, I'm
Speaker 1: more to think about it on the level of like,
Speaker 1: would I rather have this brownie than have intercourse like
Speaker 1: or be you know, intimate or close to another person? Right?
Speaker 1: Like do we eat instead of nurturing instead of feeding
Speaker 1: our relationships? Right? I don't know, it depends on the brownie.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, it seems like that it is kind
Speaker 1: of this meme that's taken off online because how many
Speaker 1: headlines do you see where it's like women think about
Speaker 1: chocolate more than sex, then think about well, sex more
Speaker 1: than sex. So yeah, so speaking of who is thinking
Speaker 1: about what when and more than whom women in particular,
Speaker 1: surveys have found do you think about food more than sex? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Because these are these studies are coming from diet companies, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are surveying women, dietli and female yeah dieters. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this was written about in time. In December, a survey
Speaker 1: survey by shape Smart, which is a group that creates
Speaker 1: personal health plans for its customers, found that of women
Speaker 1: think about food every thirty minutes, compared to ten percent
Speaker 1: of women who think about sex over the same time span. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know what I found more concerning, you know,
Speaker 1: who cares whether or not like women think about I
Speaker 1: think about food more than sex because you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm hungry, Like, yeah, like I can have a sandwich
Speaker 1: in my cubicle. I can't have sex in my cubicle. Um,
Speaker 1: but by more concerning is the statistic that like sixty
Speaker 1: of women in relationships are not happy eating in front
Speaker 1: of their partner, and half of them are shy undressing
Speaker 1: in front of their partners. Should be thinking about those
Speaker 1: things more of these shame factors, and these surveys are
Speaker 1: not helping shame factors. But to talk about some more
Speaker 1: of these questionable yeah, these questionable survey results. There was
Speaker 1: one from match dot com and it found that if
Speaker 1: forced to choose, of single women would rather give up
Speaker 1: sex than their favorite food for a year, and six
Speaker 1: of single men would do the same thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um. There was another study by Atkins, another
Speaker 1: diet company, that found that of UK women thought about
Speaker 1: food more than sex, and just over thirty seven percent
Speaker 1: thought about eating more than they thought about their significant others.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's a lot of not thinking about
Speaker 1: your significant other. I guess, well, what about if you're
Speaker 1: does it count if you're thinking about eating with your
Speaker 1: significant other, like what you're gonna make for the dinner
Speaker 1: that you will eat together? Maybe I don't. Apparently, like
Speaker 1: I am totally going to bat for thinking about food
Speaker 1: all of the time. Well, there was another stat from
Speaker 1: that study that kind of made me raise an eyebrow.
Speaker 1: They found that ten of the women surveyed would feel
Speaker 1: worse cheating on a diet than cheating on a partner.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that's a minority. But still yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, like we're talking, we should be more concerned
Speaker 1: about all the body shaming that's going on rather than
Speaker 1: like what may or may not be happening in the
Speaker 1: bedroom in my opinion, um, But thankfully there was a study.
Speaker 1: I think we've cited it before. I know that I've
Speaker 1: blogged about it. UM a while ago. Just came out
Speaker 1: of Ohio State and totally a debunked the myth that
Speaker 1: men think about sex every seven seconds or whatever it is. UM.
Speaker 1: I also found that because it took a we finally
Speaker 1: have a sample pool of men and women to look at.
Speaker 1: And men do think about sex more than women, but
Speaker 1: they also think about food more than women as well.
Speaker 1: They think about sex nineteen times a day on average,
Speaker 1: and these are college undergraduate dudes. I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: see how it changes over age. An average of seventeen
Speaker 1: times a day for sex and eighteen times a day
Speaker 1: for food, So it's pretty equal. But for women, we
Speaker 1: still got you know, doing it on the brain. On average,
Speaker 1: we think about sex ten times a day and think
Speaker 1: about food fifteen times a day. Yeah, so men are
Speaker 1: thinking about sex and food more than we are. But
Speaker 1: we're still thinking about sex and food quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But what what do you think is in that gap though,
Speaker 1: where where it's like in the gas between like the
Speaker 1: food sex thoughts. My room, my roommate would say that
Speaker 1: women are thinking about shopping. I know, he's such a dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it that. I'm probably thinking about um nope,
Speaker 1: still food, still food. Yeah. No, I start planning, like
Speaker 1: what am I going to do for lunch around ten thirty,
Speaker 1: because usually ten thirties about snack time. I've had breakfasted
Speaker 1: around eight ten thirty, I'm starting to need a granola bar.
Speaker 1: By noon, I'm like, yeah, it's time to get a sandwich.
Speaker 1: Let's change to tell this podcast to Christine Caroline's Food Dirty.
Speaker 1: But no, on that note, though, and after this week
Speaker 1: and move on. It is true that at nine this
Speaker 1: morning I did I looked up at the clock and
Speaker 1: realized that I was planning tomorrow night's meal in the
Speaker 1: morning today. I don't know what that's now. If you
Speaker 1: run out of tasks, maybe it's time to start that
Speaker 1: shopping list. Talked about making the grocery storms. Um, So
Speaker 1: what happens though in relationships, like when maybe food does
Speaker 1: start to overshadow the bedroom. Yeah, well, you brought up
Speaker 1: that whole thing about is a brownie more important than
Speaker 1: intimacy with your partner? John DeVore over at The Frisky
Speaker 1: wrote a column about this that he was really worried
Speaker 1: that people were making food more important in their relationships
Speaker 1: dan sex, and he says that when that happens, the
Speaker 1: relationship is over. There's no more excitement. You clearly are
Speaker 1: not thinking about each other and getting each other to
Speaker 1: the bedroom. You're just thinking about, like about takeout menu?
Speaker 1: Should we peruse this evening? Oh but it's greating takeout
Speaker 1: with someone else? I know. I yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't find a problem thinking about eating with a partner.
Speaker 1: But he's saying that a month in, if you get
Speaker 1: more excited about perusing the takeout menus together than picking
Speaker 1: new sexual positions, you guys are done zo. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that sounds like it's more a case of just
Speaker 1: a barometer of your attraction to the other person. Well.
Speaker 1: He also brings up the junk food versus junk sex argument,
Speaker 1: saying like, well, sex is omnipresent, cheap, it's so disposable
Speaker 1: that it's easy to forget. It's one of our primary
Speaker 1: pursuits as humans. So maybe we should be eating at
Speaker 1: like Jillian Star restaurants and then going home and having
Speaker 1: very very interesting intimate sex with each other Jillian Star sex,
Speaker 1: jillion Star sex commers rated this sex um and like,
Speaker 1: it makes total sense to that food and sex are
Speaker 1: so intertwined. We haven't even talked about like like food sex,
Speaker 1: you know, like that a horrible scene in the Varsity
Speaker 1: Blues with the whipped cream or nine and a half weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't even see that. I don't even I don't
Speaker 1: even want to know. Um, But it makes sense so
Speaker 1: that these things are so intertwined, and we do obsess
Speaker 1: with both of them so much because it's one of
Speaker 1: our three like primal needs as humans. We need sleep,
Speaker 1: we need sex, and we need food in order to survive,
Speaker 1: and that's it. And in our brains these two things
Speaker 1: are very closely intertwined because of how eating and having sex,
Speaker 1: especially good sex, uh, services our reward systems and makes
Speaker 1: us feel all nice inside. Yeah, because all these drives
Speaker 1: are coming from the same place, right, the hypothalamus. Yes,
Speaker 1: well so Kristina, I, um, if you're if you're up
Speaker 1: on your podcast, Ladies and gentlemen, we did a podcast
Speaker 1: on hormones and obesity and the hormones that drive you
Speaker 1: to eat, that make you hungry, make you like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I'm not hungry anymore. I'm not gonna eat myself
Speaker 1: to death, which is a good thing to have. Um.
Speaker 1: Those brain chemicals do inhibit and stimulate feeding. They also
Speaker 1: seem to be involved in the modulation of mood and
Speaker 1: perhaps reward, similar to like the good hormones that are
Speaker 1: released when you're having sex with someone. Right. Um, And
Speaker 1: sexual behavior also regulated by the brain, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on with the hypothalamus as well. But we
Speaker 1: also have the spinal cord and endocrine glands involved, and
Speaker 1: it motivates like our sex drive motivates a wide range
Speaker 1: of planned behaviors in the same way that our hunger
Speaker 1: drive motivates these behaviors. It's like full body engagement when
Speaker 1: we are hungry, when we want to eat, and when
Speaker 1: we want to have sex. Right, Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen me hungry, I don't want to see you.
Speaker 1: That is quite a drive when I am hungry and like, okay,
Speaker 1: I can start to get hungry, like okay, thanks a
Speaker 1: going fine, Sorry, If I can just get a granola
Speaker 1: bar here in a second, I'll be okay. And then
Speaker 1: I start to get angry and I just can't stop
Speaker 1: until I'm like that's I'm like the Snickers bar commercial.
Speaker 1: Some people see the red Caroline se send which is
Speaker 1: watch out. That's right. But there's also interesting sleep studies,
Speaker 1: like all these studies that have shown all of the
Speaker 1: horrific things that can happen to your brain and your
Speaker 1: body and your whole system if you don't get enough sleep,
Speaker 1: and that can really mess with a lot of things
Speaker 1: in your body, temperature control, metabolic balance, immune function. And
Speaker 1: again we've got hormones, because hormones essential to sexual development
Speaker 1: and reproductive capability are released on a schedule that is
Speaker 1: related to sleep. Yeah, it's all intertwined in the circle
Speaker 1: of life. We uh, you know, in order to have
Speaker 1: good sexual functioning, we need good physical health, which requires
Speaker 1: the good food, which also necessitates good sleep, and you know,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So it's a good
Speaker 1: thing that we are so obsessed in a way with
Speaker 1: food and sex. But what happens though when some wires
Speaker 1: do get crossed and things like eating to soothe emotions
Speaker 1: rather than hunger or as replacements for uh sex or
Speaker 1: other kinds of needs takes over. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: emotional eating. And reading about emotional eating because I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm mentally stronger than this. I'm not an emotional eater.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, as I'm reading over exactly what
Speaker 1: emotional eating is, what constitutes it, I was like, oh God,
Speaker 1: I am an emotional eater because it's not that I
Speaker 1: eat if I'm sad or angry or happy necessarily, it's
Speaker 1: really what I'm bored. Well, tell tell our listeners what
Speaker 1: emotional eating is. Yeah, So basically, you're trying to soothe
Speaker 1: something in yourself when you're eating emotionally, and some signs
Speaker 1: of that are that emotional hunger comes on suddenly, so
Speaker 1: you're like cupcakes, whereas physical hunger comes on gradually. With
Speaker 1: emotional eating, you crave a specific food, likely a comfort food,
Speaker 1: which people eat to basically obtain or maintain a good feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Whereas if that grolling kicks in and you're super hungry,
Speaker 1: then you are open to a wide arrange of options right, like, yes,
Speaker 1: I'll go with the chicken, that's fine, Whereas if you're
Speaker 1: emotionally hungry, you're gonna be like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: have to have cake, and I have to have it now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And not only that, when you are eating for hunger,
Speaker 1: once the body is full, it will release the lepton
Speaker 1: that tamps down on that signal saying eat, Whereas if
Speaker 1: you are emotional eating, the lepton isn't gonna come in,
Speaker 1: and so you're much more likely to over eat all
Speaker 1: the cupcakes, all of them. Well, is it also emotional eating?
Speaker 1: I feel like every time I have a beer, I
Speaker 1: really want some salty snacks. Is that just I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's something different. I think maybe that's the
Speaker 1: beer hormone released in your brain. It could be. Um.
Speaker 1: One interesting study that we found this is in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Clinical Investigation in August talks about emotional eating.
Speaker 1: You know, do we do we maybe just like eat
Speaker 1: that cupcake and just mentally kind of feel better or
Speaker 1: is there something more to it? And this study found
Speaker 1: that we do receive a soothing effect on a biological
Speaker 1: level when we eat emotionally, when we eat that comfort
Speaker 1: food and basically what happened. Researchers fed subjects through feeding tubes,
Speaker 1: so you don't see the cupcake or whatever. You're just
Speaker 1: getting either a solution of saturated fatty acids because comfort
Speaker 1: foods are often fatty, or a saline solution through a tube.
Speaker 1: Then the researchers exposed the subjects to sad stuff, pictures
Speaker 1: of sad people, they listened to sad music, and they
Speaker 1: found that the subjects who received the fat were less
Speaker 1: depressed than the control group who received the sailing solution.
Speaker 1: And for further proof, I'm like getting super excited, my
Speaker 1: voice is going away out, they did an m r
Speaker 1: I that showed that the solution, the fatty acid solution,
Speaker 1: actually dampened activity in parts of the brain involved in sadness.
Speaker 1: So basically, hormones are getting released similar to sexual activity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's controlling all of the facets and rituals of
Speaker 1: eating a fatty comfort food. So in that way, yes,
Speaker 1: we can. We can totally replace sex with food, which
Speaker 1: probably will not have the healthiest results though, because maybe
Speaker 1: it's that that's saturated fat. Apparently, why can also can
Speaker 1: we do a podcast on why the unhealthiest foods are
Speaker 1: the tastey use foods. I guess it goes back to
Speaker 1: our evolutionary past when it's we're queued into fatty things
Speaker 1: for energy storage to keep us going, but still in
Speaker 1: the modern era. Really really chaps me. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: co author of the study does point out that evolution
Speaker 1: has made every aspect of feeding as rewarding as possible.
Speaker 1: Although now, of course that may not be a good
Speaker 1: thing because if we get rewarded by cupcakes every five minutes,
Speaker 1: we might not be very healthy anymore, right, because that
Speaker 1: that kicked in when food was scarce, But now food
Speaker 1: is everywhere. We are surrounded by foods, and usually foods
Speaker 1: that are not good for us. Well maybe ever, stat
Speaker 1: would argue that we're also surrounded by sex all the time.
Speaker 1: That's not good for us, cheap extramarital sex all over
Speaker 1: the place. What would Jennifer say. Jennifer would say she
Speaker 1: would say, yes, that the sex is uh just cheapening
Speaker 1: our our lives because we're just treating it like basically
Speaker 1: like ho host we're just eating them, We're just eating
Speaker 1: it and it's making us Or would that be well, no,
Speaker 1: though you would say that the sex are the new twinkies.
Speaker 1: You know so anyway, But one thing, Not only are
Speaker 1: we surrounded though by these readily accessible foods, we are
Speaker 1: also now visually, even if we're not eating, we are
Speaker 1: visually surrounded by images of food. We're talking about food
Speaker 1: porn and in our next episode, Feast Part two, because
Speaker 1: we've got to take a break. It's Christmas Eve and
Speaker 1: we need to gorge ourselves to prepare for Feast. To
Speaker 1: to talk about more specifically, like what happens with the
Speaker 1: impact of all this food porn we're now surrounded with
Speaker 1: and foodie culture, moving the conversation away from sex a
Speaker 1: little bit into our culture at large and our general
Speaker 1: obsessions with food, Like why do we even like we
Speaker 1: watch food on television? Now? I can't, it's so hard
Speaker 1: for me. But we'll get into that in the next one.
Speaker 1: We'll get a yeah, tune in. We Caroline and I
Speaker 1: are going to take a break and break all of
Speaker 1: the rules and eat everything that we can. Lots of ham, hm,
Speaker 1: only we're gonna need a lot of water, Gonna make
Speaker 1: a hand sandwich and mean, if it's in hand between
Speaker 1: two pieces of ham, make some mustard, rabbit and bacon,
Speaker 1: call it a day. Pig So we want to hear
Speaker 1: from you though. Do you think that uh food is
Speaker 1: the new sex? Has food ever replaced sex in a
Speaker 1: relationship that you've had. Let us know all of your
Speaker 1: thoughts and holiday wishes that we can make come true.
Speaker 1: Ham Ham Mom stuff at Discovery dot Com. I hope
Speaker 1: that we have not offended any vegetarians vegans out there. Yes,
Speaker 1: there we go. Now before we get to our listener letters.
Speaker 1: Got a quick word from our sponsor that brought us
Speaker 1: this episode of stuff Mom Never told You, And now
Speaker 1: back to our listener letters. And I said before our
Speaker 1: our word from our sponsor that we uh, we had letters,
Speaker 1: but we actually have a letter. Because this letter was
Speaker 1: so comprehensive impact with information, wanted to to share it.
Speaker 1: And it is in response to our episode that we
Speaker 1: did a while ago on crazy Cat Ladies and whether
Speaker 1: or not this parasite is making cat owners crisy. So yes,
Speaker 1: this is a very extensive letter from Aaron covers a
Speaker 1: lot of ground about Gandhi, which is the parasite that
Speaker 1: you know, you can potentially pick up from your cat
Speaker 1: and become insane relatively speaking. Okay, so she says that
Speaker 1: we missed some key factors Christen, Oh, I know, she said.
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever mentioned how the cats pick
Speaker 1: up toxo Cats become infected after consuming intermediate hosts like rodents, birds,
Speaker 1: and other small animals harboring tissue cysts. Cats may also
Speaker 1: become infected directly by ingestion of scorelated o osis. Possibly
Speaker 1: that's how it's pronounced, but the prevalence of this o
Speaker 1: sis shedding in cats is very low. Even though at
Speaker 1: least fifteen of cats have been infected with toxoplasma at
Speaker 1: some point, this means very few cats at any one
Speaker 1: time are actually able to pass their infection onto people.
Speaker 1: Infection is more common in pets that go outside, hunt
Speaker 1: or are fed raw meat. You also didn't mention that
Speaker 1: humans can get tea gandhi from meat. Animals, bread for
Speaker 1: human consumption, and wild game may also become infected with
Speaker 1: tissue cis after ingestion of those technical things with spoirrelated
Speaker 1: stuff in the environment. Humans can become infected by any
Speaker 1: of several roots bullet points, eating under cooked meats of
Speaker 1: animals harboring tissue sits, consuming food or water contaminated with
Speaker 1: cat feces, blood transfusion, or organ transplantation, trans plus sin
Speaker 1: ely from mother to fetus, and she points out the
Speaker 1: risk of contracting toxoplasma infection from cleaning the litter box
Speaker 1: of a house cat is very small, especially if a
Speaker 1: few simple precautions are observed. Clean your cats litter box
Speaker 1: every day. Always wash your hands with soap and water
Speaker 1: after cleaning the litter box. Keep your cat indoors. Keep
Speaker 1: sandbox with covered so outdoor cats. Don't contaminate them with stool.
Speaker 1: Cook all meat, especially pork, lamb, mutton, and wild game
Speaker 1: to an inter internal temperature of a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: three degrees fahrenheit. Ensure children don't eat sand, which I
Speaker 1: think is a general good policy anyway. She goes on
Speaker 1: to say that a lot of the Gandhi research is
Speaker 1: currently being criticized, so maybe we just shouldn't worry about
Speaker 1: it as much, and she asks us please do not
Speaker 1: encourage cat fear. So thank you Aaron for for laying
Speaker 1: down some info. Yeah, we would never want to encourage
Speaker 1: cat fear. If anyone heard my story about Sir Lancelot,
Speaker 1: come on, cat that is not my own that I
Speaker 1: have named. You probably know I am a Felino file.
Speaker 1: I made that up. I'm not sure if filino file
Speaker 1: is the correct way to say a cat lover, but
Speaker 1: you get my point. Uh. And also another point is
Speaker 1: this Happy holidays to all, and if you were listening
Speaker 1: to this on your holiday break, congratulations and thank you
Speaker 1: and may all of your holiday wishes come true and
Speaker 1: feast away go for it. Uh. And if you have
Speaker 1: anything you'd like to send our way again, our email
Speaker 1: addresses mom stuff at Discovery dot com. Give us a
Speaker 1: holiday present, follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Tumbler at stuff mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You dot tumbler dot com. And of course you
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook as well. And if you
Speaker 1: are bored over the holidays and want to get that
Speaker 1: brain real smart, you know the best place to go.
Speaker 1: It's our website, how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com