November 23, 2019 • 34 mins
Have food morals replaced sexual morals? Do modern humans want pizza and chocolate more than sex? Surveys suggest yes. Listen in to this classic to learn more about how food and sex collide in the brain.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and I welcome to stuff.
I never told your prodiction of I heart Radios has
to firs as we record this. It is prime over
eating time, cuffing season. Also that yes, also only for me.
(00:27):
Maybe other people have better moderation than I don't know.
I don't know not in this booth it booth here
it is the holiday times when a lot of us
do perhaps over indulged, but you know you only do
it twice a year. And it's at the same time
there's so many pies. How can you say no to
love pie? I do love pies so much. Okay, They're
(00:53):
at the top of my dessert hierarchy. Um. And so
we we on this classic for for you asking the
the age old question, I guess not, because the question
is is food the new sex? And this was after
you might remember there were a bunch of studies that
came out where it seemed that respondents were more excited
(01:16):
about something like a pie then sex. Yeah, I'm not
gonna lie. I think that'd be more excited about pie.
I mean, pie is damn good. Um. And it got
me to thinking about kind of another avenue of this conversation.
I guess of how we use words to describe food
(01:38):
that are often sexual nature or things like UM, guilty, sinful, indulgence, UM, decadence,
commercials using women like sex objects or eating food like
they're having an orgasm or something. UM. But just just
a kind of weird intersection of consumption. I guess of
(02:02):
consuming women consuming food sexualizing both it's weird it is,
and I things like UM, guilty, guilt foods. UM. That's
something that I've really struggled with because I have been
(02:22):
somebody who's pretty strict about what I eat often, and
you do have those guilty foods. But I'm trying really
hard to get away from that kind of thinking. UM.
Moderation is always good, but I don't want to feel
guilty about enjoying a slice of pie or have a
pie or a whole pie. Now, maybe I will feel
(02:43):
guilty about that. Little baby steps that way, we can
split it, okay, perfect, Oh, I'd love to do that.
We just spent New Year's last year and together, Yes
we did. Yes, we did it because you needed mac
and cheese and I ordered it twice and ordered it
twice success. It was delightful, very decadent indeed. Um, but yeah,
(03:06):
we hope that for those of you listening and celebrating
the holidays, that you have a wonderful holiday and that
uh you enjoy this classic episode Welcome to Stuff Mom
Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(03:28):
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 yams and turkeys and nothing
rhymes with turkey except maybe to furky, it would be
interesting maybe on your grocery trip, listeners, to think about
(03:51):
your attitude towards that food that you will be making. Right,
even though we don't have a very like a holiday's
specific thing to talk about, 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
(04:12):
in my face. That's right, Yeah, to the point where
like you have to unbutton the pants, maybe just put
on stretchy pants. Get it over with. Yeah. And in
addition to that, speaking of stretchy pants, the holidays are
also the most wonderful time of the year for lovers. Traditionally,
you know, you think about like New Year's kisses and
cuddling up, you know, with chestnuts, roasting on open fire,
(04:35):
kissing under mistletoe. So why not combine all of these
things in a holiday conversation A feast for 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
(04:57):
have swapped places. Yeah, and how they are, like, if anything,
so intertwined. So to kick things off, I've 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 in romance, and she was also the
chief scientific advisor to match dot com. And she says, food, sex,
(05:23):
and courtship go hand in hand 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. They'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,
(05:45):
if you go on 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
(06:06):
it with his bare hands either. I don't know what
if he ate the turkey leg though, with a knife
and fork, that would be weird. Then that would be
just like George Costanza with the Snickers bar. I don't know.
There's really no good in between. 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
(06:29):
new sex is because in January two thousand nine, a
gal named Mary eber Stott, who works at Stanford's Hoover Institution,
which is a little more conservative leaning. We should say,
because this will make more sense that we talked about
the essay. She she asked whether or not food and
sex have switched places in Western culture. Yeah, Basically, the
(06:52):
attitudes towards sex we're you know, at one time very
very conservative now that they're not now. But she she
basically uses housewife Betty from Night 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
(07:12):
food and sex go, and how Betty would 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
(07:35):
she just paints. So that's the food attitude, right, like
different food attitudes from the fifties 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 ninety eight has more conservative views on sex where
it is restricted and bet and Betty is really just
(07:58):
you know, the signpost for culture culture 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 pess caterianism,
(08:20):
is just having sex with whoever she wants. Yeah, she
would never judge anyone for their sexual activity. And while
even star 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 that is going on in this
(08:43):
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 that that's really
the case. I mean it not that it's a terrible point.
(09:05):
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 thinks that her attitudes on food should
(09:29):
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 that we judge women for sex and how they
(09:50):
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
(10:12):
up as an easily digested social theory, so says David 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
(10:33):
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 the 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 lais
(10:54):
ay 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 more recent history that science has uncovered things like
(11:18):
while with the podcast that we did not too long
ago on how hormones influence that 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.
(11:38):
And this is also again something that's more applied to women. Um.
And it reminded me of the nineteen sixty three book
by Muriel 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
(11:59):
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 Schweitzer
but also Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic are basically arguing
that maybe either stat is putting too much weight on
(12:21):
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
because it's too sweeping of a statement to make. But
(12:45):
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?
Like do we eat instead of nurturing instead of feeding
(13:06):
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's taken off online because how many
headlines do you see where it's like women think about
chocolate more than sex, then think about well, sex more
than sex. So yeah, so speaking of who is thinking
(13:43):
about what when and more than whom women in particular,
surveys have found do you think about food more than sex? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?
Because these are these studies are coming from diet companies, Yeah,
that are surveying women, dietli and female yeah dieters. So yeah,
(14:05):
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 know what I found more concerning, you know,
(14:27):
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 by more concerning is the statistic that like sixty
of women in relationships are not happy eating in front
(14:50):
of their partner, and half of them are shy undressing
in front of their partners. Should be thinking about those
things more of these shame factors, and these surveys are
not helping shame factors. But to talk about some more
of these questionable yeah, these questionable survey results. There was
one from match dot com and it found that if
(15:10):
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 women thought about
(15:30):
food more than sex, and just over thirty seven percent
thought about eating more than they thought about their significant others.
That's a lot. That'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, like
(15:52):
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
(16:14):
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
(16:36):
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,
(16:58):
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
(17:20):
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 where it's like in the gas between like the
food sex thoughts. My room, my roommate would say that
women are thinking about shopping. I know, he's such a dude. Yeah,
I'm gonna do it that. I'm probably thinking about um nope,
(17:45):
still food, still food. Yeah. No, I start planning, like
what am I going to do for lunch around ten thirty,
because usually ten thirties about snack time. I've had breakfasted
around eight ten thirty, I'm starting to need a granola bar.
By noon, I'm like, yeah, it's time to get a sandwich.
Let's change to tell this podcast to Christine Caroline's Food Dirty.
(18:09):
But no, on that note, though, and after this week
and move on. It is true that at nine 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 storms. Um, So
(18:30):
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
(18:51):
that people were making food more important in their relationships
dan 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.
(19:15):
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 than picking
new sexual positions, you guys are done zo. Yeah, I mean,
and that sounds like it's more a case of just
a barometer of your attraction to the other person. Well.
(19:36):
He also brings up the junk food versus junk sex argument,
saying like, well, sex is 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 Jillian Star restaurants and then going home and having
very very interesting intimate sex with each other Jillian Star sex,
(19:58):
jillion Star sex commers 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 the 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
(20:19):
even want to know. Um, But it makes sense so
that these things are so intertwined, and we do obsess
with both of them so much because it's one of
our three 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
(20:40):
are very closely intertwined because of how eating and having sex,
especially good sex, uh, services our reward 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 Kristina, I, um, if you're if you're up
(21:01):
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
(21:23):
perhaps reward, 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
(21:46):
of planned behaviors in the same way that our hunger
drive motivates these behaviors. It's like full body engagement 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 hungry, I don't want to see you.
That is quite a drive when I am hungry and like, okay,
(22:08):
I can start to get hungry, like okay, thanks a
going fine, Sorry, 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 the red Caroline se send which is
watch out. That's right. But there's also interesting sleep studies,
(22:29):
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
(22:49):
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
(23:10):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:54):
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
(24:15):
emotional eating, you crave a specific food, likely a comfort food,
which people eat to basically obtain or maintain a good feeling. Yeah,
Whereas if that grolling kicks in and you're super hungry,
then you are open to a wide arrange of options right, like, yes,
(24:36):
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 is full, it will release the lepton
that tamps down on that signal saying eat, Whereas if
you are emotional eating, the lepton isn't gonna come in,
(24:58):
and so you're much more likely to over eat all
the cupcakes, all of 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 released in your brain. It could be. Um.
(25:19):
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 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 comfort
(25:42):
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 sad stuff, pictures
(26:03):
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 sailing solution.
And for further proof, I'm like getting super excited, my
voice is going away out, 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.
(26:27):
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
(26:51):
it's that that's saturated fat. Apparently, why can also can
we do a podcast on why the unhealthiest foods are
the tastey use 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
(27:16):
co author of the study does point out that evolution
has made every aspect of feeding 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. We are surrounded by foods, and usually foods
(27:40):
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, that the sex is uh just cheapening
(28:01):
our our lives because we're just treating it like basically
like ho host we're just eating them, We're just eating
it and it's making us Or would that be well, no,
though you would say that the sex are the new twinkies.
You know so anyway, But one thing, Not only are
(28:22):
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
(28:42):
we've got to 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
(29:03):
little bit into 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, hm,
(29:27):
only we're gonna need a lot of water, Gonna make
a hand 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 we 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
(29:49):
thoughts and holiday wishes that we can make come true.
Ham Ham Mom stuff at Discovery dot Com. I hope
that we have not offended any vegetarians vegans out there. 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 now
(30:27):
back to our listener letters. And I said before our
our word from our sponsor that we uh, we had letters,
but we actually have a letter. Because this letter was
so comprehensive impact 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
(30:50):
or not this parasite is making cat owners crisy. So yes,
this is a very extensive letter from Aaron covers a
lot of ground about 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 Christen, Oh, I know, she said.
(31:13):
I don't think you ever mentioned how the cats pick
up toxo 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 scorelated o osis. Possibly
that's how it's pronounced, but the prevalence of this o
(31:34):
sis shedding in cats is very low. Even though at
least fifteen of cats have been infected with toxoplasma at
some 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
(31:56):
human consumption, and wild game may also become infected with
tissue cis after ingestion of those technical things with spoirrelated
stuff in the environment. Humans can become infected by any
of several roots bullet points, eating under cooked meats of
animals harboring tissue sits, consuming food or water contaminated with
cat feces, blood transfusion, or organ transplantation, trans plus sin
(32:20):
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. Keep
(32:40):
sandbox with covered so outdoor cats. Don't contaminate them with stool.
Cook all meat, especially pork, lamb, mutton, 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 Gandhi research is
(33:01):
currently being criticized, so maybe we just 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,
(33:22):
come on, cat that is not my own that I
have named. You probably know I am a Felino file.
I made that up. I'm not sure if filino file
is the 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 this on your holiday break, congratulations and thank you
(33:45):
and may all of your holiday wishes come true and
feast away go for it. Uh. 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 at stuff mom Never
Told You dot tumbler dot com. And of course you
(34:06):
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 place to go.
It's our website, how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and I welcome to stuff.
I never told your prodiction of I heart Radios has
to firs as we record this. It is prime over
eating time, cuffing season. Also that yes, also only for me.
(00:27):
Maybe other people have better moderation than I don't know.
I don't know not in this booth it booth here
it is the holiday times when a lot of us
do perhaps over indulged, but you know you only do
it twice a year. And it's at the same time
there's so many pies. How can you say no to
love pie? I do love pies so much. Okay, They're
(00:53):
at the top of my dessert hierarchy. Um. And so
we we on this classic for for you asking the
the age old question, I guess not, because the question
is is food the new sex? And this was after
you might remember there were a bunch of studies that
came out where it seemed that respondents were more excited
(01:16):
about something like a pie then sex. Yeah, I'm not
gonna lie. I think that'd be more excited about pie.
I mean, pie is damn good. Um. And it got
me to thinking about kind of another avenue of this conversation.
I guess of how we use words to describe food
(01:38):
that are often sexual nature or things like UM, guilty, sinful, indulgence, UM, decadence,
commercials using women like sex objects or eating food like
they're having an orgasm or something. UM. But just just
a kind of weird intersection of consumption. I guess of
(02:02):
consuming women consuming food sexualizing both it's weird it is,
and I things like UM, guilty, guilt foods. UM. That's
something that I've really struggled with because I have been
(02:22):
somebody who's pretty strict about what I eat often, and
you do have those guilty foods. But I'm trying really
hard to get away from that kind of thinking. UM.
Moderation is always good, but I don't want to feel
guilty about enjoying a slice of pie or have a
pie or a whole pie. Now, maybe I will feel
(02:43):
guilty about that. Little baby steps that way, we can
split it, okay, perfect, Oh, I'd love to do that.
We just spent New Year's last year and together, Yes
we did. Yes, we did it because you needed mac
and cheese and I ordered it twice and ordered it
twice success. It was delightful, very decadent indeed. Um, but yeah,
(03:06):
we hope that for those of you listening and celebrating
the holidays, that you have a wonderful holiday and that
uh you enjoy this classic episode Welcome to Stuff Mom
Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
(03:28):
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 yams and turkeys and nothing
rhymes with turkey except maybe to furky, it would be
interesting maybe on your grocery trip, listeners, to think about
(03:51):
your attitude towards that food that you will be making. Right,
even though we don't have a very like a holiday's
specific thing to talk about, 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
(04:12):
in my face. That's right, Yeah, to the point where
like you have to unbutton the pants, maybe just put
on stretchy pants. Get it over with. Yeah. And in
addition to that, speaking of stretchy pants, the holidays are
also the most wonderful time of the year for lovers. Traditionally,
you know, you think about like New Year's kisses and
cuddling up, you know, with chestnuts, roasting on open fire,
(04:35):
kissing under mistletoe. So why not combine all of these
things in a holiday conversation A feast for 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
(04:57):
have swapped places. Yeah, and how they are, like, if anything,
so intertwined. So to kick things off, I've 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 in romance, and she was also the
chief scientific advisor to match dot com. And she says, food, sex,
(05:23):
and courtship go hand in hand 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. They'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,
(05:45):
if you go on 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
(06:06):
it with his bare hands either. I don't know what
if he ate the turkey leg though, with a knife
and fork, that would be weird. Then that would be
just like George Costanza with the Snickers bar. I don't know.
There's really no good in between. 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
(06:29):
new sex is because in January two thousand nine, a
gal named Mary eber Stott, who works at Stanford's Hoover Institution,
which is a little more conservative leaning. We should say,
because this will make more sense that we talked about
the essay. She she asked whether or not food and
sex have switched places in Western culture. Yeah, Basically, the
(06:52):
attitudes towards sex we're you know, at one time very
very conservative now that they're not now. But she she
basically uses housewife Betty from Night 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
(07:12):
food and sex go, and how Betty would 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
(07:35):
she just paints. So that's the food attitude, right, like
different food attitudes from the fifties 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 ninety eight has more conservative views on sex where
it is restricted and bet and Betty is really just
(07:58):
you know, the signpost for culture culture 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 pess caterianism,
(08:20):
is just having sex with whoever she wants. Yeah, she
would never judge anyone for their sexual activity. And while
even star 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 that is going on in this
(08:43):
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 that that's really
the case. I mean it not that it's a terrible point.
(09:05):
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 thinks that her attitudes on food should
(09:29):
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 that we judge women for sex and how they
(09:50):
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
(10:12):
up as an easily digested social theory, so says David 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
(10:33):
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 the 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 lais
(10:54):
ay 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 more recent history that science has uncovered things like
(11:18):
while with the podcast that we did not too long
ago on how hormones influence that 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.
(11:38):
And this is also again something that's more applied to women. Um.
And it reminded me of the nineteen sixty three book
by Muriel 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
(11:59):
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 Schweitzer
but also Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic are basically arguing
that maybe either stat is putting too much weight on
(12:21):
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
because it's too sweeping of a statement to make. But
(12:45):
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?
Like do we eat instead of nurturing instead of feeding
(13:06):
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's taken off online because how many
headlines do you see where it's like women think about
chocolate more than sex, then think about well, sex more
than sex. So yeah, so speaking of who is thinking
(13:43):
about what when and more than whom women in particular,
surveys have found do you think about food more than sex? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?
Because these are these studies are coming from diet companies, Yeah,
that are surveying women, dietli and female yeah dieters. So yeah,
(14:05):
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 know what I found more concerning, you know,
(14:27):
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 by more concerning is the statistic that like sixty
of women in relationships are not happy eating in front
(14:50):
of their partner, and half of them are shy undressing
in front of their partners. Should be thinking about those
things more of these shame factors, and these surveys are
not helping shame factors. But to talk about some more
of these questionable yeah, these questionable survey results. There was
one from match dot com and it found that if
(15:10):
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 women thought about
(15:30):
food more than sex, and just over thirty seven percent
thought about eating more than they thought about their significant others.
That's a lot. That'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, like
(15:52):
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
(16:14):
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
(16:36):
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,
(16:58):
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
(17:20):
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 where it's like in the gas between like the
food sex thoughts. My room, my roommate would say that
women are thinking about shopping. I know, he's such a dude. Yeah,
I'm gonna do it that. I'm probably thinking about um nope,
(17:45):
still food, still food. Yeah. No, I start planning, like
what am I going to do for lunch around ten thirty,
because usually ten thirties about snack time. I've had breakfasted
around eight ten thirty, I'm starting to need a granola bar.
By noon, I'm like, yeah, it's time to get a sandwich.
Let's change to tell this podcast to Christine Caroline's Food Dirty.
(18:09):
But no, on that note, though, and after this week
and move on. It is true that at nine 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 storms. Um, So
(18:30):
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
(18:51):
that people were making food more important in their relationships
dan 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.
(19:15):
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 than picking
new sexual positions, you guys are done zo. Yeah, I mean,
and that sounds like it's more a case of just
a barometer of your attraction to the other person. Well.
(19:36):
He also brings up the junk food versus junk sex argument,
saying like, well, sex is 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 Jillian Star restaurants and then going home and having
very very interesting intimate sex with each other Jillian Star sex,
(19:58):
jillion Star sex commers 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 the 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
(20:19):
even want to know. Um, But it makes sense so
that these things are so intertwined, and we do obsess
with both of them so much because it's one of
our three 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
(20:40):
are very closely intertwined because of how eating and having sex,
especially good sex, uh, services our reward 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 Kristina, I, um, if you're if you're up
(21:01):
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
(21:23):
perhaps reward, 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
(21:46):
of planned behaviors in the same way that our hunger
drive motivates these behaviors. It's like full body engagement 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 hungry, I don't want to see you.
That is quite a drive when I am hungry and like, okay,
(22:08):
I can start to get hungry, like okay, thanks a
going fine, Sorry, 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 the red Caroline se send which is
watch out. That's right. But there's also interesting sleep studies,
(22:29):
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
(22:49):
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
(23:10):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:54):
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
(24:15):
emotional eating, you crave a specific food, likely a comfort food,
which people eat to basically obtain or maintain a good feeling. Yeah,
Whereas if that grolling kicks in and you're super hungry,
then you are open to a wide arrange of options right, like, yes,
(24:36):
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 is full, it will release the lepton
that tamps down on that signal saying eat, Whereas if
you are emotional eating, the lepton isn't gonna come in,
(24:58):
and so you're much more likely to over eat all
the cupcakes, all of 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 released in your brain. It could be. Um.
(25:19):
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 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 comfort
(25:42):
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 sad stuff, pictures
(26:03):
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 sailing solution.
And for further proof, I'm like getting super excited, my
voice is going away out, 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.
(26:27):
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
(26:51):
it's that that's saturated fat. Apparently, why can also can
we do a podcast on why the unhealthiest foods are
the tastey use 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
(27:16):
co author of the study does point out that evolution
has made every aspect of feeding 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. We are surrounded by foods, and usually foods
(27:40):
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, that the sex is uh just cheapening
(28:01):
our our lives because we're just treating it like basically
like ho host we're just eating them, We're just eating
it and it's making us Or would that be well, no,
though you would say that the sex are the new twinkies.
You know so anyway, But one thing, Not only are
(28:22):
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
(28:42):
we've got to 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
(29:03):
little bit into 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, hm,
(29:27):
only we're gonna need a lot of water, Gonna make
a hand 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 we 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
(29:49):
thoughts and holiday wishes that we can make come true.
Ham Ham Mom stuff at Discovery dot Com. I hope
that we have not offended any vegetarians vegans out there. 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 now
(30:27):
back to our listener letters. And I said before our
our word from our sponsor that we uh, we had letters,
but we actually have a letter. Because this letter was
so comprehensive impact 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
(30:50):
or not this parasite is making cat owners crisy. So yes,
this is a very extensive letter from Aaron covers a
lot of ground about 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 Christen, Oh, I know, she said.
(31:13):
I don't think you ever mentioned how the cats pick
up toxo 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 scorelated o osis. Possibly
that's how it's pronounced, but the prevalence of this o
(31:34):
sis shedding in cats is very low. Even though at
least fifteen of cats have been infected with toxoplasma at
some 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
(31:56):
human consumption, and wild game may also become infected with
tissue cis after ingestion of those technical things with spoirrelated
stuff in the environment. Humans can become infected by any
of several roots bullet points, eating under cooked meats of
animals harboring tissue sits, consuming food or water contaminated with
cat feces, blood transfusion, or organ transplantation, trans plus sin
(32:20):
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. Keep
(32:40):
sandbox with covered so outdoor cats. Don't contaminate them with stool.
Cook all meat, especially pork, lamb, mutton, 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 Gandhi research is
(33:01):
currently being criticized, so maybe we just 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,
(33:22):
come on, cat that is not my own that I
have named. You probably know I am a Felino file.
I made that up. I'm not sure if filino file
is the 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 this on your holiday break, congratulations and thank you
(33:45):
and may all of your holiday wishes come true and
feast away go for it. Uh. 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 at stuff mom Never
Told You dot tumbler dot com. And of course you
(34:06):
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 place to go.
It's our website, how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
stuff works dot com
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