December 21, 2012 • 31 mins
Have food morals replaced sexual morals? Do modern humans want pizza and chocolate more than sex? Surveys suggest yes. Listen in to learn more about how food and sex collide in the brain.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen. As we are all doing
a little bit of holidays shopping maybe for our hams
and our turkeys, our hams and yams. Our hams and
(00:24):
yams and turkeys and nothing rhymes with turkey except maybe
to furkey. It would be interesting maybe on your grocery trip, listeners,
to think about your attitude towards that food that you
will be making. Right, even though uh, we don't have
a very like a holiday specific thing to talk about.
(00:46):
Holiday is the season of feasting. Like presents are cool, sure,
but what I really enjoy even more than that is
putting a lot of food in my face. That's right, Yeah,
to the point where like you have to button the pants.
Maybe just put on stretchy pants. Get it over with. Yeah.
And in addition to that, speaking of stretchy pants, the
(01:07):
holidays are also the most wonderful time with the year
for the loves. Traditionally you think about like New Year's
kisses and cuddling up, you know, with chestnuts roasting on
open fire, kissing under mistletoe, So why not combine all
of these things in a holiday conversation A feast for
(01:27):
your ears about food and how food is seeped into
many different parts of our culture. Yeah, but also how
pervasive sex is in the culture, and how maybe food
and sex have swapped places. Yeah, and how there's like,
if anything, so intertwined. So to kick things off, I've
(01:49):
got a quote here from Dr Helen Fisher, who we've
referenced many times on the podcast. She's done a lot
of neurological research on attraction and romance, and she was
also the chief scientific advisor to match dot com, And
she says, food, sex, and courtship go hand in hand
(02:09):
in nature. Food also informs what and how a partner eats,
like with their hands and if they share such crucial
things about their habits, health and empathy. We're also built
to want an adventurous eater, a sign that this individual
will be flexible, a vital trait for loving and parenting.
Would you agree that you know if you go on
(02:30):
a on a meal date with someone you're attracted to,
that they're eating style what they order influences your attraction. Maybe,
I mean, I guess I don't want to go on
a first date with a guy who orders a salad. Yeah,
I understand that, But I don't really want to go
on a first date with a guy who orders a
turkey leg and eats it with his bare hands either.
(02:52):
I don't know what if he ate the turkey lego
with a knife and fork, that would be weird. Then
that would be just like George Costanza with a Snickers bar.
I don't know. There's really no good of a queen.
There is no good in between. So basically, never take
Caroline on a meal day. I bowling. Bowling is good. Um.
But one of the reasons why we're asking this question
of is food the new sex? Is because in January
(03:16):
two thousand nine, a gal named Mary eber Stott, who
works at Sanford's Hoover Institution, which is a little more
conservative leaning, we should say, because this will make more
sense to we talked about the essay. She she asked
whether or not food and sex have switched places in
Western culture. Yeah, basically, the attitudes towards sex we're, you know,
(03:39):
at one time very very conservative, now that they're not now.
But she she basically uses housewife Betty from and Betty's
present day granddaughter Jennifer, a thirty year old, to point
out the differences and attitudes back then and now as
far as food and sex go, and how Betty would
(04:00):
have used canned and jarred food, lots of dairy, red meat,
refined sugar. She didn't care what she ate as long
as she liked it, right, And then there's Jennifer who
was all like, no, but you should be a vegetarian.
I don't eat red meat because of the saturated fat,
bi organic and so she just paints. So that's the
food attitude, right, like different food attitudes from the fifties
(04:24):
and now, and then compares the attitudes towards sex, which
she says are like completely flip flopped, right, as you
can imagine, Old Betty in nine has more conservative views
on sex where it is restricted and bet and Betty
is really just you know, the signpost for culture culture
(04:44):
at the time, uh, you know, where you know, sex
should be restricted to a very heteronormative framework of husband
and wife, even though of course premarital sex was happening
but nobody talked about it um. Whereas Jennifer with her
you know, organic cabinets and peskyterianism is just having sex
(05:05):
with whoever she wants. Yeah, she would never judge anyone
for their sexual activity. And while even start makes uh,
you know, it's an interesting theory to think about, like
and you could say maybe at first blush, oh, well,
sure that that switch. I'll buy that switch. But at
the same time, though, there's also a lot of moralizing
(05:26):
that is going on in this essay that some people
were not too fond of, because she's saying that she
was comparing the junk sex quote of today with the
junk food of yester year. Um, but I don't well
know that that's that that's really the case. I mean
(05:46):
it not that it's a terrible point. I mean it
is interesting to think about changing attitudes one way or
the other. I mean she she points out that Betty
thought that there was a clear, black and white right
and wrong about sex and thought that her attitudes should
be universal, And that's opposite for this imaginary Jennifer who
(06:10):
thinks that her attitudes on food should be universal and
that everybody should be eating clean, eating organic, you know, local,
all this stuff, and that, of course I'm right, and
y'all are wrong for not believing that. Yeah. Um, and
I also find it interesting that that this argument is
framed only in terms of two women, because the way
(06:31):
that we judge women for sex and how they eat
and therefore their body shape is completely different and far
more judgmental than how that is applied to men. But
that's just a bit of an aside. Uh So, there
were some some people that we've mentioned who we're not
totally on board with this quote unsubstantiated generalization dressed up
(06:56):
as an easily digested social theory, so says Avid Bell,
who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Yeah, he says. Basically,
why her theory doesn't work. According to Bell, is that, yes,
Americans ate a lot of things back in the day
that we now consider unhealthy. But he points out a
(07:17):
glance through magazines at the time reveals an emphasis on
healthy diets and a strong differentiation between good and bad food.
So he says, what has changed is not that people
have suddenly become judgmental, but just the content of their
judgments has changed. Yeah, and when when it comes to
food as well, like things were certainly not as Laisy
(07:38):
fair in when Betty was living, even though Betty might
not have had as much access to like fresh, organic
produced and things as we might now um. And it
also ignores how obesity at that time was still considered
something of a moral weakness. And it's only been in
(07:59):
more recent history that science has uncovered things like while
with the podcast that we did not too long ago
on how hormones influence said, there's a lot more to
it than just what you're putting in your body. And
also Hugo Schweizer, who's a gender studies professor uh points
out too that it was in the nineteen twenties that
we have the emergence of good versus bad eating habits.
(08:22):
And this is also again something that's more applied to women. Um.
And it reminded me of the nineteen sixty three book
by Murial Spark, The Girls of Slender Means UM, that
I read recently, and it's tracks these women in England
post World War Two, and there's a character in there
who is obsessive about her food and like a lot
(08:43):
of it has to do with them, um, you know,
selectively eating things in order to stay slim. So we
were still you know, back in the day. It's not
it's nothing new for us to be choosy. I mean
a lot of people also are arguing not only Schwitzer
but also Andrew's all of It at the Atlantic are
basically arguing that maybe either status putting too much weight
(09:05):
on the morality aspect of both sex and food, and
that they don't exactly line up when you flip flop them. Yeah,
so perhaps this you know, kind of cultural argument that
food is the new sex, uh, you know, in theory
doesn't really hold up. I'm gonna go ahead and say
that I don't. I don't buy that so much just
(09:25):
because it's too sweeping of a statement to make. But
when I think about is food the new sex, I'm
more to think about it on the level of like,
would I rather have this brownie than have intercourse? Like
or be you know, intimate or close to another person? Right?
(09:45):
Like do we eat instead of nurturing instead of feeding
our relationships? Right? I don't know, it depends on the brownie.
I guess. Well, it seems like that it is kind
of this meme that stay get off online because how
many headlines do you see where it's like, women think
about chocolate more than six, men think about will six
(10:09):
more than six. So yeah, so speaking of who is
thinking about what when and more than whom women in
particular surveys have found do think about food more than sex.
Maybe maybe maybe because these are these studies are coming
from diet companies, yeah, that are serving women diet exclusive
(10:32):
and female yeah dieters. So yeah, this was written about
in Time. In December, a survey survey by shape Smart,
which is a group that creates personal health plans for
its customers, found that of women think about food every
thirty minutes, compared to ten percent of women who think
about sex over the same time span. Yeah. But you
(10:55):
know what I found more concerning, you know who cares
whether or not like women think about I think about
food more than sex because you know what, I'm hungry,
Like Yeah, like I can have a sandwich in my cubicle.
I can't have sex in my cubicle. Um, but what
if by more concerning is the statistic that like sixty
(11:17):
of women in relationships are not happy eating in front
of their partner and half of them are shy undressing
in front of their partner. Maybe you should be thinking
about those things more of these shame factors, and these
surveys are not helping shame factors. Um. But to talk
about some more of these questionable Yeah, these questionable survey results.
There was one from match dot com and it found
(11:40):
that if forced to choose, of single women would rather
give up sex than their favorite food for a year,
and six of single men would do the same thing. Yeah,
I don't know. Um. There was another study by Atkins,
another diet company, that found that of UK men thought
(12:00):
about food more than sex, and that just over thirty
seven percent thought about eating more than they thought about
their significant others. That's a lot. There's a lot of
not thinking about your significant other. I guess, well, what
about if you're does it count if you're thinking about
eating with your significant other, like what you're gonna make
for the dinner that you will eat together? Maybe I don't. Apparently,
(12:23):
like I am totally going to bat for thinking about
food all of the time. Well, there was another stat
from that study that kind of made me raise an eyebrow.
They found that ten of the women surveyed would feel
worse cheating on a diet than cheating on a partner.
I mean, I guess that's a minority, but still, yeah,
and again, like we're talking we should be more concerned
(12:44):
about all the body shaming that's going on rather than
like what may or may not be happening in the
bedroom in my opinion. Um, But thankfully there was a study.
I think we've cited it before. I know that I've
blogged about it. UM a while ago. Just came out
of Ohio State and totally a debunked the myth that
(13:06):
men think about sex every seven seconds or whatever it is. UM.
I also found that because it took a we finally
have a sample pool of men and women to look at.
And men do think about sex more than women, but
they also think about food more than women as well.
They think about sex nineteen times a day on average,
(13:29):
and these are college undergraduate dudes. I'd be curious to
see how it changes over age. An average of seventeen
times a day for sex and eighteen times a day
for food, So it's pretty equal. But for women we
still got you know, doing it on the brain. On average,
we think about sex ten times a day and think
about food fifteen times a day. Yeah, so men are
(13:50):
thinking about sex and food more than we are, but
we're still thinking about sex and food quite a bit.
But what what do you think is in that gap though,
where we're it's like in the gas between like the
food sex thoughts. My roommate would say that women are
thinking about shopping. I know, he's such a dude. Yeah,
I'm going to do it that I'm probably thinking about.
(14:14):
Um nope, still food still yeah, No, I start planning,
like what am I going to do for lunch around
ten thirty, because usually ten thirties about snack time. Yeah,
I've had breakfasted around eight ten thirty, I'm starting to
need a granola bar by noon. I'm like, yeah, it's
harving a sandwich. Let's change the tell this podcast to
(14:36):
Christine Caroline's food diary. But no, on that note, though,
and after this week and move on. It is true
that at this morning I did. I looked up at
the clock and realized that I was planning tomorrow night's
meal in the morning today. I don't know what that's now.
If you run out of tasks, maybe it's time to
start that shopping list. Talked about making the grocery. Um,
(15:00):
what happens though in relationships, like when maybe food does
start to overshadow the bedroom. Yeah, well, you brought up
that whole thing about is a brownie more important than
intimacy with your partner. John DeVore over at The Frisky
wrote a column about this that he was really worried
(15:21):
that people were making food more important in their relationships
damn sex, and he says that when that happens, the
relationship is over. There's no more excitement. You clearly are
not thinking about each other and getting each other to
the bedroom. You're just thinking about, like about takeout menu?
Should we peruse this evening? Oh but it's greating takeout
with someone else? I know. I yeah, but I don't.
(15:45):
I don't find a problem thinking about eating with a partner.
But he's saying that a month in, if you get
more excited about perusing the takeout menus together then picking
new sexual positions, you guys are done zo. Yeah, I
mean that sounds like it's more a case of just
a barometer of your attraction to the other person. Well.
(16:06):
He also brings up the junk food versus junk sex argument,
saying like, well, sex as omnipresent, cheap, It's so disposable
that it's easy to forget. It's one of our primary
pursuits as humans. So maybe we should be eating at
like bajillion star restaurants and then going home and having
very very interesting intimate sex with each other bajillion star sex,
(16:29):
jillion star sex frommers rated this sex, um, and like,
it makes total sense to that food and sex are
so intertwined. We haven't even talked about like like food sex,
you know, like that a horrible scene in a Varsity
Blues with the whipped cream or nine and a half weeks. Yeah,
I didn't even see that. I don't even I don't
(16:49):
even want to know. Um, but it makes sense so
that these things are so intertwined and we do obsessed
with both of them so much because it's one of
our re like primal needs as humans. We need sleep,
we need sex, and we need food in order to survive,
and that's it. And in our brains, these two things
(17:10):
are very closely intertwined because of how eating and having sex,
especially good sex, uh, services our rewards systems and makes
us feel all nice inside. Yeah, because all these drives
are coming from the same place, right, the hypothalamus. Yes, well,
so christ and I, um, if you're if you're up
(17:32):
on your podcast, ladies and gentlemen, we did a podcast
on hormones and obesity and the hormones that drive you
to eat that make you hungry, make you like, okay, well,
I'm not hungry anymore. I'm not gonna eat myself to death,
which is a good thing to have. Um. Those brain
chemicals do inhibit and stimulate feeding. They also seem to
be involved in the modulation of mood and perhaps reward,
(17:56):
similar to like the good hormones that are released when
you're having sex with someone. Right. Um, and sexual behavior
also regulated by the brain, and there's a lot going
on with the hypothalamus as well, but we also have
the spinal cord and endocrine glands involved, and it motivates
like our sex drive motivates a wide range of planned
(18:17):
behaviors in the same way that our hunger drive motivates
these behaviors. It's like full body engagement. We when we
are hungry, when we want to eat, and when we
want to have sex. Right, Like, I don't know if
you've seen me angry, I don't want to see you.
That is quite a drive when I am hungry and like, okay,
(18:38):
I can start to get hungry, like okay, thanks, like
going fine, It's all right. If I can just get
a granola bar here in a second, I'll be okay
And then I start to get angry and I just
can't stop until I'm like that's I'm like the Snickers
bar commercial. Some people see Red Caroline Susan, which is
watch out. That's right. But there's also interesting sleep studies,
(18:59):
like all these studies that have shown all of the
horrific things that can happen to your brain and your
body and your whole system if you don't get enough sleep,
and that can really mess with a lot of things
in your body temperature control, metabolic balance, immune function. And
again we've got hormones, because hormones essential to sexual development
(19:20):
and reproductive capability are released on a schedule that is
related to sleep. Yeah, it's all intertwined in the circle
of life. We uh you know, in order to have
good sexual functioning, we need good physical health, which requires
the good food, which also necessitates good sleep, and you know,
and so on and so forth. So it's a good
(19:41):
thing that we are so obsessed in a way with
food and sex. But what happens though, when some wires
do get crossed and things like eating to soothe emotions
rather than hunger or as replacements for uh, sex or
other kinds of needs takes over. Yeah, that would be
(20:04):
emotional eating, and reading about emotional eating because I was like,
I'm mentally stronger than this. I'm not an emotional eater.
And then, of course, as I'm reading over exactly what
emotional eating is, what constitutes it, I was like, oh God,
I am an emotional eater, because it's not that I
eat if I'm sad or angry or happy necessarily, it's
(20:24):
really what I'm bored. Well, tell tell our listeners what
emotional eating is. Yeah, So basically, you're trying to soothe
something in yourself when you're eating emotionally, and some signs
of that are that emotional hunger comes on suddenly, so
you're like cupcakes, whereas physical hunger comes on gradually. With
(20:46):
emotional eating, you crave a specific food, likely a comfort food,
which people eat too basically obtain or maintain a good feeling. Yeah,
Whereas if that growlling kicks in and you're super hungry,
then you are open to a wide arrange of options, right, like, yes,
(21:06):
I'll go with the chicken, that's fine, Whereas if you're
emotionally hungry, you're gonna be like, oh my god, I
have to have cake, and I have to have it now. Yeah,
And not only that, when you are eating for hunger,
once the body's full, it will release the lepton that
tamps down on that signal saying eat, eat, eat, Whereas
if you are emotional eating, the lepton isn't gonna come in,
(21:29):
and so you're much more likely to over eat all
the cupcakes them. Well, is it also emotional eating? I
feel like every time I have a beer, I really
want some salty snacks. Is that just I don't know
if that's something different. I think maybe that's the beer
hormone it's released in your brain. It could be um.
(21:49):
One interesting study that we found this is in the
Journal of Clinical Investigation in August talks about emotional eating.
You know, do we do we maybe just like eat
that cupcake ache and just mentally kind of feel better
or is there something more to it? And this study
found that we do receive a soothing effect on a
biological level when we eat emotionally, when we eat that
(22:12):
comfort food. And basically what happened researchers fed subjects through
feeding tubes, so you don't see the cupcake or whatever.
You're just getting either a solution of saturated fatty acids
because comfort foods are often fatty or a saline solution
through a tube. Then the researchers exposed the subjects to
(22:33):
sad stuff, pictures of sad people, they listened to sad music,
and they found that the subjects who received the fat
were less depressed than the control group who received the
sailine solution. And for further proof, I'm like getting super excited.
My voice was going way up. They did an m
r I that showed that the solution, the fatty acid solution,
actually dampened activity in parts of the brain involved in sadness.
(22:57):
So basically, hormones are getting released similar to sexual activity. Yeah,
and that's controlling all of the facets and rituals of
eating a fatty comfort food. So in that way, yes,
we can. We can totally replace sex with food, which
probably will not have the healthiest results though, because maybe
(23:22):
it's that that's saturated fat. Apparently, why can also can
we do a podcast on why the unhealthiest foods are
the tastiest foods? I guess it goes back to our
evolutionary past, when it's we're queued into fatty things for
energy storage to keep us going. But still in the
modern era, really really chaps me. Yeah, because the co
(23:47):
author of the study does point out that evolution has
made every aspect of feating as rewarding as possible. Although now,
of course that may not be a good thing because
if we get rewarded by cupcakes every five minutes, we
might not be very healthy anymore, right, because that that
kicked in when food was scarce. But now food is everywhere.
(24:08):
We are surrounded by foods, and usually foods that are
not good for us. Well maybe ever, stat would argue
that we're also surrounded by sex all the time. That's
not good for us, cheap extramarital sex all over the place.
What would Jennifer say. Jennifer would say. She would say, yes,
(24:28):
that the sex is uh just cheapening our our lives
because we're just treating it like basically like ho hosts
were just eating them. We're just eating it and it's
making us Or would that be well no, though she
would say that the sex are the new twinkies, you know,
(24:50):
so anyway, but one thing, not only are we surrounded
though by these readily accessible foods, we are also now visually,
even if we're not eating, we are visually surrounded by
images of food. We're talking about food porn and in
our next episode, Feast Part two, because we've got to
(25:13):
take a break. It's Christmas Eve and we need to
gorge ourselves to prepare for Feast. To to talk about
more specifically, like what happens with the impact of all
this food porn we're now surrounded with and foodie culture,
moving the conversation away from sex a little bit into
(25:35):
our culture at large and our general obsessions with food,
Like why do we even like we watch food on television? Now?
I can't, it's so hard for me. But we'll get
into that in the next one. We'll get a yeah,
tune in. We Caroline and I are going to take
a break and break all of the rules and eat
everything that we can. Lots of ham m only gonna
(25:58):
need a lot of water. I'm gonna make a and
sandwich and mean, if it's in hand between two pieces
of ham, make some mustard, rabbit and bacon, call it
a day, pig. So you want to hear from you though,
Do you think that uh, food is the new sex?
Has food ever replaced sex in a relationship that you've had?
Let us know all of your thoughts and holiday wishes
(26:22):
that we can make come true. Ham Ham Mom stuff
at Discovery dot com. I hope we have not offended
any vegetarians or vegans out there work. Yes, there we go.
Now before we get to our listener letters, got a
quick word from our sponsor that brought us this episode
of stuff Mom Never Told You, and it is audible
(26:43):
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Mom Never Told You can actually go to audible podcast
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(27:05):
that U r l uh and download a free audio
book of your choosing. And since we're talking all about food,
I would recommend going over to audible podcast dot com
slash stuff Mom and downloading for free In Defense of
Food by Michael Pollen, who is one of my favorite
(27:26):
food writers out there. He works for the New York Times.
So don't delay head on over to audible podcast dot
com slash stuff Mom. And thanks to our sponsor Audible
for bringing us this episode. And now let's get to
some listener mail. And now back to our listener letters,
(27:48):
and I said before our our word from our sponsor
that we uh, we had letters. We actually have a letter.
Because this letter was so comprehensive and act with information,
wanted to to share it. And it is in response
to our episode that we did a while ago on
crazy cat ladies and whether or not this parasite is
(28:11):
making cat owners crasy. So yes, this is a very
extensive letter from Aaron covers a lot of ground about T. Gandhi,
which is the parasite that you know, you can potentially
pick up from your cat and become insane relatively speaking. Okay,
so she says that we missed some key factors. Kristen, Oh,
I know, she said, I don't think you ever mentioned
(28:33):
how the cats pick up taxo. Cats become infected after
consuming intermediate hosts like rodents, birds, and other small animals
harboring tissue cysts. Cats may also become infected directly by
ingestion of sporelated oosis possibly that's how it's pronounced, but
the prevalence of this o sis shedding in cats is
(28:54):
very low. Even though at least fifteen cats have been
infected with Toxoplasma apps point, this means very few cats
at any one time are actually able to pass their
infection onto people. Infection is more common in pets that
go outside, hunt or are fed raw meat. You also
didn't mention that humans can get tea gandhi from meat. Animals,
bread for human consumption, and wild game may also become
(29:17):
infected with tissue cysts after ingestion of those technical things
the spirrelated stuff in the environment, Humans can become infected
by any of several roots bullet points, eating under cooked
meats of animals, harboring tissuests, consuming food or water contaminated
with cat feces, blood transfusion, or organ transplantation trans plus
(29:38):
sint ely from mother to fetus, And she points out
the risk of contracting toxoplasma infection from cleaning the litter
box of a house cat is very small, especially if
a few simple precautions are observed. Clean your cats litter
box every day. Always wash your hands with soap and
water after cleaning the litter box. Keep your cat indoors,
(29:59):
keep sandbox so have covered so outdoor cats don't contaminate
them with stool. Cook all meat, especially pork, lamb utton,
and wild game to an inter internal temperature of a
hundred and fifty three degrees fahrenheit ensure children don't eat sand,
which I think is a general good policy. Anyway. She
goes on to say that a lot of the t
Gandhi research is currently being criticized, so maybe we just
(30:24):
shouldn't worry about it as much, and she asks us
please do not encourage cat fear. So thank you Aaron
for for laying down some info. Yeah, we would never
want to encourage cat fear. If anyone heard my story
about Sir Lancelot, come on, cat that is not my
own that I have named. You probably know I am
(30:46):
a Felino file. I made that up. I'm not sure
if filano file is a correct way to say a
cat lover, but you get my point. Uh. And also
another point is this Happy holidays to all, And if
you were listening to the US on your holiday break,
congratulations and thank you, and may all of your holiday
wishes come true and feast away go for it. Uh.
(31:10):
And if you have anything you'd like to send our
way again, our email addresses mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
Give us a holiday present. Follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. You can follow us on Tumbler. And
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And if you are bored over the holidays and want
to get that brain real smart, you know the best
(31:31):
place to go. It's our website how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it have stuff works dot com?
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen. As we are all doing
a little bit of holidays shopping maybe for our hams
and our turkeys, our hams and yams. Our hams and
(00:24):
yams and turkeys and nothing rhymes with turkey except maybe
to furkey. It would be interesting maybe on your grocery trip, listeners,
to think about your attitude towards that food that you
will be making. Right, even though uh, we don't have
a very like a holiday specific thing to talk about.
(00:46):
Holiday is the season of feasting. Like presents are cool, sure,
but what I really enjoy even more than that is
putting a lot of food in my face. That's right, Yeah,
to the point where like you have to button the pants.
Maybe just put on stretchy pants. Get it over with. Yeah.
And in addition to that, speaking of stretchy pants, the
(01:07):
holidays are also the most wonderful time with the year
for the loves. Traditionally you think about like New Year's
kisses and cuddling up, you know, with chestnuts roasting on
open fire, kissing under mistletoe, So why not combine all
of these things in a holiday conversation A feast for
(01:27):
your ears about food and how food is seeped into
many different parts of our culture. Yeah, but also how
pervasive sex is in the culture, and how maybe food
and sex have swapped places. Yeah, and how there's like,
if anything, so intertwined. So to kick things off, I've
(01:49):
got a quote here from Dr Helen Fisher, who we've
referenced many times on the podcast. She's done a lot
of neurological research on attraction and romance, and she was
also the chief scientific advisor to match dot com, And
she says, food, sex, and courtship go hand in hand
(02:09):
in nature. Food also informs what and how a partner eats,
like with their hands and if they share such crucial
things about their habits, health and empathy. We're also built
to want an adventurous eater, a sign that this individual
will be flexible, a vital trait for loving and parenting.
Would you agree that you know if you go on
(02:30):
a on a meal date with someone you're attracted to,
that they're eating style what they order influences your attraction. Maybe,
I mean, I guess I don't want to go on
a first date with a guy who orders a salad. Yeah,
I understand that, But I don't really want to go
on a first date with a guy who orders a
turkey leg and eats it with his bare hands either.
(02:52):
I don't know what if he ate the turkey lego
with a knife and fork, that would be weird. Then
that would be just like George Costanza with a Snickers bar.
I don't know. There's really no good of a queen.
There is no good in between. So basically, never take
Caroline on a meal day. I bowling. Bowling is good. Um.
But one of the reasons why we're asking this question
of is food the new sex? Is because in January
(03:16):
two thousand nine, a gal named Mary eber Stott, who
works at Sanford's Hoover Institution, which is a little more
conservative leaning, we should say, because this will make more
sense to we talked about the essay. She she asked
whether or not food and sex have switched places in
Western culture. Yeah, basically, the attitudes towards sex we're, you know,
(03:39):
at one time very very conservative, now that they're not now.
But she she basically uses housewife Betty from and Betty's
present day granddaughter Jennifer, a thirty year old, to point
out the differences and attitudes back then and now as
far as food and sex go, and how Betty would
(04:00):
have used canned and jarred food, lots of dairy, red meat,
refined sugar. She didn't care what she ate as long
as she liked it, right, And then there's Jennifer who
was all like, no, but you should be a vegetarian.
I don't eat red meat because of the saturated fat,
bi organic and so she just paints. So that's the
food attitude, right, like different food attitudes from the fifties
(04:24):
and now, and then compares the attitudes towards sex, which
she says are like completely flip flopped, right, as you
can imagine, Old Betty in nine has more conservative views
on sex where it is restricted and bet and Betty
is really just you know, the signpost for culture culture
(04:44):
at the time, uh, you know, where you know, sex
should be restricted to a very heteronormative framework of husband
and wife, even though of course premarital sex was happening
but nobody talked about it um. Whereas Jennifer with her
you know, organic cabinets and peskyterianism is just having sex
(05:05):
with whoever she wants. Yeah, she would never judge anyone
for their sexual activity. And while even start makes uh,
you know, it's an interesting theory to think about, like
and you could say maybe at first blush, oh, well,
sure that that switch. I'll buy that switch. But at
the same time, though, there's also a lot of moralizing
(05:26):
that is going on in this essay that some people
were not too fond of, because she's saying that she
was comparing the junk sex quote of today with the
junk food of yester year. Um, but I don't well
know that that's that that's really the case. I mean
(05:46):
it not that it's a terrible point. I mean it
is interesting to think about changing attitudes one way or
the other. I mean she she points out that Betty
thought that there was a clear, black and white right
and wrong about sex and thought that her attitudes should
be universal, And that's opposite for this imaginary Jennifer who
(06:10):
thinks that her attitudes on food should be universal and
that everybody should be eating clean, eating organic, you know, local,
all this stuff, and that, of course I'm right, and
y'all are wrong for not believing that. Yeah. Um, and
I also find it interesting that that this argument is
framed only in terms of two women, because the way
(06:31):
that we judge women for sex and how they eat
and therefore their body shape is completely different and far
more judgmental than how that is applied to men. But
that's just a bit of an aside. Uh So, there
were some some people that we've mentioned who we're not
totally on board with this quote unsubstantiated generalization dressed up
(06:56):
as an easily digested social theory, so says Avid Bell,
who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Yeah, he says. Basically,
why her theory doesn't work. According to Bell, is that, yes,
Americans ate a lot of things back in the day
that we now consider unhealthy. But he points out a
(07:17):
glance through magazines at the time reveals an emphasis on
healthy diets and a strong differentiation between good and bad food.
So he says, what has changed is not that people
have suddenly become judgmental, but just the content of their
judgments has changed. Yeah, and when when it comes to
food as well, like things were certainly not as Laisy
(07:38):
fair in when Betty was living, even though Betty might
not have had as much access to like fresh, organic
produced and things as we might now um. And it
also ignores how obesity at that time was still considered
something of a moral weakness. And it's only been in
(07:59):
more recent history that science has uncovered things like while
with the podcast that we did not too long ago
on how hormones influence said, there's a lot more to
it than just what you're putting in your body. And
also Hugo Schweizer, who's a gender studies professor uh points
out too that it was in the nineteen twenties that
we have the emergence of good versus bad eating habits.
(08:22):
And this is also again something that's more applied to women. Um.
And it reminded me of the nineteen sixty three book
by Murial Spark, The Girls of Slender Means UM, that
I read recently, and it's tracks these women in England
post World War Two, and there's a character in there
who is obsessive about her food and like a lot
(08:43):
of it has to do with them, um, you know,
selectively eating things in order to stay slim. So we
were still you know, back in the day. It's not
it's nothing new for us to be choosy. I mean
a lot of people also are arguing not only Schwitzer
but also Andrew's all of It at the Atlantic are
basically arguing that maybe either status putting too much weight
(09:05):
on the morality aspect of both sex and food, and
that they don't exactly line up when you flip flop them. Yeah,
so perhaps this you know, kind of cultural argument that
food is the new sex, uh, you know, in theory
doesn't really hold up. I'm gonna go ahead and say
that I don't. I don't buy that so much just
(09:25):
because it's too sweeping of a statement to make. But
when I think about is food the new sex, I'm
more to think about it on the level of like,
would I rather have this brownie than have intercourse? Like
or be you know, intimate or close to another person? Right?
(09:45):
Like do we eat instead of nurturing instead of feeding
our relationships? Right? I don't know, it depends on the brownie.
I guess. Well, it seems like that it is kind
of this meme that stay get off online because how
many headlines do you see where it's like, women think
about chocolate more than six, men think about will six
(10:09):
more than six. So yeah, so speaking of who is
thinking about what when and more than whom women in
particular surveys have found do think about food more than sex.
Maybe maybe maybe because these are these studies are coming
from diet companies, yeah, that are serving women diet exclusive
(10:32):
and female yeah dieters. So yeah, this was written about
in Time. In December, a survey survey by shape Smart,
which is a group that creates personal health plans for
its customers, found that of women think about food every
thirty minutes, compared to ten percent of women who think
about sex over the same time span. Yeah. But you
(10:55):
know what I found more concerning, you know who cares
whether or not like women think about I think about
food more than sex because you know what, I'm hungry,
Like Yeah, like I can have a sandwich in my cubicle.
I can't have sex in my cubicle. Um, but what
if by more concerning is the statistic that like sixty
(11:17):
of women in relationships are not happy eating in front
of their partner and half of them are shy undressing
in front of their partner. Maybe you should be thinking
about those things more of these shame factors, and these
surveys are not helping shame factors. Um. But to talk
about some more of these questionable Yeah, these questionable survey results.
There was one from match dot com and it found
(11:40):
that if forced to choose, of single women would rather
give up sex than their favorite food for a year,
and six of single men would do the same thing. Yeah,
I don't know. Um. There was another study by Atkins,
another diet company, that found that of UK men thought
(12:00):
about food more than sex, and that just over thirty
seven percent thought about eating more than they thought about
their significant others. That's a lot. There's a lot of
not thinking about your significant other. I guess, well, what
about if you're does it count if you're thinking about
eating with your significant other, like what you're gonna make
for the dinner that you will eat together? Maybe I don't. Apparently,
(12:23):
like I am totally going to bat for thinking about
food all of the time. Well, there was another stat
from that study that kind of made me raise an eyebrow.
They found that ten of the women surveyed would feel
worse cheating on a diet than cheating on a partner.
I mean, I guess that's a minority, but still, yeah,
and again, like we're talking we should be more concerned
(12:44):
about all the body shaming that's going on rather than
like what may or may not be happening in the
bedroom in my opinion. Um, But thankfully there was a study.
I think we've cited it before. I know that I've
blogged about it. UM a while ago. Just came out
of Ohio State and totally a debunked the myth that
(13:06):
men think about sex every seven seconds or whatever it is. UM.
I also found that because it took a we finally
have a sample pool of men and women to look at.
And men do think about sex more than women, but
they also think about food more than women as well.
They think about sex nineteen times a day on average,
(13:29):
and these are college undergraduate dudes. I'd be curious to
see how it changes over age. An average of seventeen
times a day for sex and eighteen times a day
for food, So it's pretty equal. But for women we
still got you know, doing it on the brain. On average,
we think about sex ten times a day and think
about food fifteen times a day. Yeah, so men are
(13:50):
thinking about sex and food more than we are, but
we're still thinking about sex and food quite a bit.
But what what do you think is in that gap though,
where we're it's like in the gas between like the
food sex thoughts. My roommate would say that women are
thinking about shopping. I know, he's such a dude. Yeah,
I'm going to do it that I'm probably thinking about.
(14:14):
Um nope, still food still yeah, No, I start planning,
like what am I going to do for lunch around
ten thirty, because usually ten thirties about snack time. Yeah,
I've had breakfasted around eight ten thirty, I'm starting to
need a granola bar by noon. I'm like, yeah, it's
harving a sandwich. Let's change the tell this podcast to
(14:36):
Christine Caroline's food diary. But no, on that note, though,
and after this week and move on. It is true
that at this morning I did. I looked up at
the clock and realized that I was planning tomorrow night's
meal in the morning today. I don't know what that's now.
If you run out of tasks, maybe it's time to
start that shopping list. Talked about making the grocery. Um,
(15:00):
what happens though in relationships, like when maybe food does
start to overshadow the bedroom. Yeah, well, you brought up
that whole thing about is a brownie more important than
intimacy with your partner. John DeVore over at The Frisky
wrote a column about this that he was really worried
(15:21):
that people were making food more important in their relationships
damn sex, and he says that when that happens, the
relationship is over. There's no more excitement. You clearly are
not thinking about each other and getting each other to
the bedroom. You're just thinking about, like about takeout menu?
Should we peruse this evening? Oh but it's greating takeout
with someone else? I know. I yeah, but I don't.
(15:45):
I don't find a problem thinking about eating with a partner.
But he's saying that a month in, if you get
more excited about perusing the takeout menus together then picking
new sexual positions, you guys are done zo. Yeah, I
mean that sounds like it's more a case of just
a barometer of your attraction to the other person. Well.
(16:06):
He also brings up the junk food versus junk sex argument,
saying like, well, sex as omnipresent, cheap, It's so disposable
that it's easy to forget. It's one of our primary
pursuits as humans. So maybe we should be eating at
like bajillion star restaurants and then going home and having
very very interesting intimate sex with each other bajillion star sex,
(16:29):
jillion star sex frommers rated this sex, um, and like,
it makes total sense to that food and sex are
so intertwined. We haven't even talked about like like food sex,
you know, like that a horrible scene in a Varsity
Blues with the whipped cream or nine and a half weeks. Yeah,
I didn't even see that. I don't even I don't
(16:49):
even want to know. Um, but it makes sense so
that these things are so intertwined and we do obsessed
with both of them so much because it's one of
our re like primal needs as humans. We need sleep,
we need sex, and we need food in order to survive,
and that's it. And in our brains, these two things
(17:10):
are very closely intertwined because of how eating and having sex,
especially good sex, uh, services our rewards systems and makes
us feel all nice inside. Yeah, because all these drives
are coming from the same place, right, the hypothalamus. Yes, well,
so christ and I, um, if you're if you're up
(17:32):
on your podcast, ladies and gentlemen, we did a podcast
on hormones and obesity and the hormones that drive you
to eat that make you hungry, make you like, okay, well,
I'm not hungry anymore. I'm not gonna eat myself to death,
which is a good thing to have. Um. Those brain
chemicals do inhibit and stimulate feeding. They also seem to
be involved in the modulation of mood and perhaps reward,
(17:56):
similar to like the good hormones that are released when
you're having sex with someone. Right. Um, and sexual behavior
also regulated by the brain, and there's a lot going
on with the hypothalamus as well, but we also have
the spinal cord and endocrine glands involved, and it motivates
like our sex drive motivates a wide range of planned
(18:17):
behaviors in the same way that our hunger drive motivates
these behaviors. It's like full body engagement. We when we
are hungry, when we want to eat, and when we
want to have sex. Right, Like, I don't know if
you've seen me angry, I don't want to see you.
That is quite a drive when I am hungry and like, okay,
(18:38):
I can start to get hungry, like okay, thanks, like
going fine, It's all right. If I can just get
a granola bar here in a second, I'll be okay
And then I start to get angry and I just
can't stop until I'm like that's I'm like the Snickers
bar commercial. Some people see Red Caroline Susan, which is
watch out. That's right. But there's also interesting sleep studies,
(18:59):
like all these studies that have shown all of the
horrific things that can happen to your brain and your
body and your whole system if you don't get enough sleep,
and that can really mess with a lot of things
in your body temperature control, metabolic balance, immune function. And
again we've got hormones, because hormones essential to sexual development
(19:20):
and reproductive capability are released on a schedule that is
related to sleep. Yeah, it's all intertwined in the circle
of life. We uh you know, in order to have
good sexual functioning, we need good physical health, which requires
the good food, which also necessitates good sleep, and you know,
and so on and so forth. So it's a good
(19:41):
thing that we are so obsessed in a way with
food and sex. But what happens though, when some wires
do get crossed and things like eating to soothe emotions
rather than hunger or as replacements for uh, sex or
other kinds of needs takes over. Yeah, that would be
(20:04):
emotional eating, and reading about emotional eating because I was like,
I'm mentally stronger than this. I'm not an emotional eater.
And then, of course, as I'm reading over exactly what
emotional eating is, what constitutes it, I was like, oh God,
I am an emotional eater, because it's not that I
eat if I'm sad or angry or happy necessarily, it's
(20:24):
really what I'm bored. Well, tell tell our listeners what
emotional eating is. Yeah, So basically, you're trying to soothe
something in yourself when you're eating emotionally, and some signs
of that are that emotional hunger comes on suddenly, so
you're like cupcakes, whereas physical hunger comes on gradually. With
(20:46):
emotional eating, you crave a specific food, likely a comfort food,
which people eat too basically obtain or maintain a good feeling. Yeah,
Whereas if that growlling kicks in and you're super hungry,
then you are open to a wide arrange of options, right, like, yes,
(21:06):
I'll go with the chicken, that's fine, Whereas if you're
emotionally hungry, you're gonna be like, oh my god, I
have to have cake, and I have to have it now. Yeah,
And not only that, when you are eating for hunger,
once the body's full, it will release the lepton that
tamps down on that signal saying eat, eat, eat, Whereas
if you are emotional eating, the lepton isn't gonna come in,
(21:29):
and so you're much more likely to over eat all
the cupcakes them. Well, is it also emotional eating? I
feel like every time I have a beer, I really
want some salty snacks. Is that just I don't know
if that's something different. I think maybe that's the beer
hormone it's released in your brain. It could be um.
(21:49):
One interesting study that we found this is in the
Journal of Clinical Investigation in August talks about emotional eating.
You know, do we do we maybe just like eat
that cupcake ache and just mentally kind of feel better
or is there something more to it? And this study
found that we do receive a soothing effect on a
biological level when we eat emotionally, when we eat that
(22:12):
comfort food. And basically what happened researchers fed subjects through
feeding tubes, so you don't see the cupcake or whatever.
You're just getting either a solution of saturated fatty acids
because comfort foods are often fatty or a saline solution
through a tube. Then the researchers exposed the subjects to
(22:33):
sad stuff, pictures of sad people, they listened to sad music,
and they found that the subjects who received the fat
were less depressed than the control group who received the
sailine solution. And for further proof, I'm like getting super excited.
My voice was going way up. They did an m
r I that showed that the solution, the fatty acid solution,
actually dampened activity in parts of the brain involved in sadness.
(22:57):
So basically, hormones are getting released similar to sexual activity. Yeah,
and that's controlling all of the facets and rituals of
eating a fatty comfort food. So in that way, yes,
we can. We can totally replace sex with food, which
probably will not have the healthiest results though, because maybe
(23:22):
it's that that's saturated fat. Apparently, why can also can
we do a podcast on why the unhealthiest foods are
the tastiest foods? I guess it goes back to our
evolutionary past, when it's we're queued into fatty things for
energy storage to keep us going. But still in the
modern era, really really chaps me. Yeah, because the co
(23:47):
author of the study does point out that evolution has
made every aspect of feating as rewarding as possible. Although now,
of course that may not be a good thing because
if we get rewarded by cupcakes every five minutes, we
might not be very healthy anymore, right, because that that
kicked in when food was scarce. But now food is everywhere.
(24:08):
We are surrounded by foods, and usually foods that are
not good for us. Well maybe ever, stat would argue
that we're also surrounded by sex all the time. That's
not good for us, cheap extramarital sex all over the place.
What would Jennifer say. Jennifer would say. She would say, yes,
(24:28):
that the sex is uh just cheapening our our lives
because we're just treating it like basically like ho hosts
were just eating them. We're just eating it and it's
making us Or would that be well no, though she
would say that the sex are the new twinkies, you know,
(24:50):
so anyway, but one thing, not only are we surrounded
though by these readily accessible foods, we are also now visually,
even if we're not eating, we are visually surrounded by
images of food. We're talking about food porn and in
our next episode, Feast Part two, because we've got to
(25:13):
take a break. It's Christmas Eve and we need to
gorge ourselves to prepare for Feast. To to talk about
more specifically, like what happens with the impact of all
this food porn we're now surrounded with and foodie culture,
moving the conversation away from sex a little bit into
(25:35):
our culture at large and our general obsessions with food,
Like why do we even like we watch food on television? Now?
I can't, it's so hard for me. But we'll get
into that in the next one. We'll get a yeah,
tune in. We Caroline and I are going to take
a break and break all of the rules and eat
everything that we can. Lots of ham m only gonna
(25:58):
need a lot of water. I'm gonna make a and
sandwich and mean, if it's in hand between two pieces
of ham, make some mustard, rabbit and bacon, call it
a day, pig. So you want to hear from you though,
Do you think that uh, food is the new sex?
Has food ever replaced sex in a relationship that you've had?
Let us know all of your thoughts and holiday wishes
(26:22):
that we can make come true. Ham Ham Mom stuff
at Discovery dot com. I hope we have not offended
any vegetarians or vegans out there work. Yes, there we go.
Now before we get to our listener letters, got a
quick word from our sponsor that brought us this episode
of stuff Mom Never Told You, and it is audible
(26:43):
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Mom Never Told You can actually go to audible podcast
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(27:05):
that U r l uh and download a free audio
book of your choosing. And since we're talking all about food,
I would recommend going over to audible podcast dot com
slash stuff Mom and downloading for free In Defense of
Food by Michael Pollen, who is one of my favorite
(27:26):
food writers out there. He works for the New York Times.
So don't delay head on over to audible podcast dot
com slash stuff Mom. And thanks to our sponsor Audible
for bringing us this episode. And now let's get to
some listener mail. And now back to our listener letters,
(27:48):
and I said before our our word from our sponsor
that we uh, we had letters. We actually have a letter.
Because this letter was so comprehensive and act with information,
wanted to to share it. And it is in response
to our episode that we did a while ago on
crazy cat ladies and whether or not this parasite is
(28:11):
making cat owners crasy. So yes, this is a very
extensive letter from Aaron covers a lot of ground about T. Gandhi,
which is the parasite that you know, you can potentially
pick up from your cat and become insane relatively speaking. Okay,
so she says that we missed some key factors. Kristen, Oh,
I know, she said, I don't think you ever mentioned
(28:33):
how the cats pick up taxo. Cats become infected after
consuming intermediate hosts like rodents, birds, and other small animals
harboring tissue cysts. Cats may also become infected directly by
ingestion of sporelated oosis possibly that's how it's pronounced, but
the prevalence of this o sis shedding in cats is
(28:54):
very low. Even though at least fifteen cats have been
infected with Toxoplasma apps point, this means very few cats
at any one time are actually able to pass their
infection onto people. Infection is more common in pets that
go outside, hunt or are fed raw meat. You also
didn't mention that humans can get tea gandhi from meat. Animals,
bread for human consumption, and wild game may also become
(29:17):
infected with tissue cysts after ingestion of those technical things
the spirrelated stuff in the environment, Humans can become infected
by any of several roots bullet points, eating under cooked
meats of animals, harboring tissuests, consuming food or water contaminated
with cat feces, blood transfusion, or organ transplantation trans plus
(29:38):
sint ely from mother to fetus, And she points out
the risk of contracting toxoplasma infection from cleaning the litter
box of a house cat is very small, especially if
a few simple precautions are observed. Clean your cats litter
box every day. Always wash your hands with soap and
water after cleaning the litter box. Keep your cat indoors,
(29:59):
keep sandbox so have covered so outdoor cats don't contaminate
them with stool. Cook all meat, especially pork, lamb utton,
and wild game to an inter internal temperature of a
hundred and fifty three degrees fahrenheit ensure children don't eat sand,
which I think is a general good policy. Anyway. She
goes on to say that a lot of the t
Gandhi research is currently being criticized, so maybe we just
(30:24):
shouldn't worry about it as much, and she asks us
please do not encourage cat fear. So thank you Aaron
for for laying down some info. Yeah, we would never
want to encourage cat fear. If anyone heard my story
about Sir Lancelot, come on, cat that is not my
own that I have named. You probably know I am
(30:46):
a Felino file. I made that up. I'm not sure
if filano file is a correct way to say a
cat lover, but you get my point. Uh. And also
another point is this Happy holidays to all, And if
you were listening to the US on your holiday break,
congratulations and thank you, and may all of your holiday
wishes come true and feast away go for it. Uh.
(31:10):
And if you have anything you'd like to send our
way again, our email addresses mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
Give us a holiday present. Follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. You can follow us on Tumbler. And
stuff mom never told you dot tumbler dot com and
of course you can find us on Facebook as well.
And if you are bored over the holidays and want
to get that brain real smart, you know the best
(31:31):
place to go. It's our website how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.