October 20, 2011 • 38 mins
Whether scarfing down gummy worms or pouring an endless cascade of sugar into their breakfast cereal, children's appetite for sweets seems insatiable. In this episode, Julie and Robert break down the science of childhood sugar madness.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. We're
all decked out for Halloween. One of four Halloween episodes
that we're doing. And if it's not Halloween and you're listening,
I mean, keep going, because these are good anytime, but
(00:25):
but we're particularly excited about these topics because we get
to hie them in with our Halloween enthusiasm. In fact
that we were recording this in costume. Um, Julie, would
you describe your costume? Um? Well, it's kind of hard
to describe because I think I just look very uh well,
I mean I've got a lot of stainless steel surrounding
me right now, yes, and people keep dumping vegetables into me,
(00:49):
and then like two hours later, I produce a substance.
Can you guess what I am? Um? You're do? You
look kind of like a robot with soup on you?
But I thought was the costume like a super robot
that wasn't very like complex and just kept spilling my soup? Yeah?
Right now now I'm the Chloeac Machine. Oh, that's gross.
(01:12):
I know. Yeah, it's a it's a terrifying, uh Halloween costume,
which we will describe a little and a little more
detail at the end of this this podcast. And we
but we mentioned it in a previous one about digesting robots.
So you are a digesting robot more like the pooping duck.
And and just to make everybody feel better, there's some
actual stuff produced by me. But if you had like
(01:34):
brought in some like soft served chocolate ice cream, that
would have been appropriate based on the pictures I've seen
of the poop that the Cloaca bot produces. Yes, yes, yes, gosh,
now you've told everybody in my secret. Okay, so you
you're sitting over there eating your your Halloween candy. What
are you? I am? Humpty hump See you noticed the
glasses and the large fig nos in the first from
(01:54):
you know, Digital Underground, right, I thought I thought it
was just Wednesday. Now this is my Humpty costume. UM
A big big fan from way back, especially the Digital
Underground cameo with tupac in um that horrible dan ackroid
movie Nothing but Trouble. Oh goodness, I have to say
that I have not seen that it was like Danacroid's
(02:15):
pet project and and God bless him, it's it's it's
a horrible film that Gimmy Moore in it and uh
Chevy Chase, and it's just it's very Halloween theme, like
a kind of a haunted house and all these grotesque
characters running around and not really funny at all. And
then there's just this huge theme or digital underground is
is brought before the the the Evil Judge, one of
(02:37):
like eighteen characters played by Dan Ackroyd in this, and
then they're made to perform that sounds like the result
of too much money, too much time, and too many stimulants.
So speaking of yes, speaking of stimulants. Not not too
much time, time or money, but stimulants, speaking stimulants. So
we're of course talking about it's Halloween. You think Halloween,
you think Halloween. Candy. The topic of this particular podcast
(03:00):
the candy Cordinace, and we're we're not just talking about
candy corn, but about various candies and just sugar in
general as a is a childhood obsession and to a
certain extent, and adulthood obsession as well. Yeah, Yeah, why
kids are so transfixed and why we are too. Why
we continue to be just sort of going to that
(03:22):
siren call of candy except for candy corn, for me,
for you. I'm in the camp of hating candy corn.
I don't think it really should exist other than to
create little things with um way abomination. Well, I this
was we're talking about this yesterday and I I asked
people on the house stuff Works main Facebook page. I
(03:43):
was like, hey, guys, what's what's your favorite candy and
what candies? How do we tip candies do you find
is particularly vile? And a number of people mentioned candy corn. Uh.
At least one person mentioned my least favorite candy, which
happens to be circus peanuts, which are you know those
giants like they I guess they kind of they're kind
of molded to look like a giant swollen peanut. But
(04:07):
it's made of some are thought you're going to say
something else, some sort of orange spongy material that may
or may not be food but is ingested. It's it's
it's really grim And then uh, I asked my wife
and she she mentioned Boston beans. It's like who would
name a candy buston? And then and then there we'll
(04:28):
talk about some other disgusting candies as we we go forth,
and and also maybe candies that are not all that
disgusting as far as their taste may go, but there
their marketing has been some questionable and uh and if
I had to pick one though that I'm not really
a candy eater anymore. And this is something we're gonna
talk about, how adults tend to move more and more
(04:48):
away from candy while children cannot get enough. I will
occasionally have a hankering for some Twizzlers. Ah yeah, and
I bet that it's probably that that time of the
day when you're Circadian the self dropped right, and you
need an easy pick up Twizzler o'clock, Twizzler o'clock, three o'clock.
I see them on your desk, not on them. Yeah,
well no, you don't. Don't. Don't make the listeners, especially
(05:10):
my wife, think that I'm pulling out twisted every afternoon
from your little safe underneath your desk. I don't know
what else is in there, the Twizzler safe. Yeah well, okay, great,
now I've got explaining to do. But but anyway, so
let's let's move on. So why are kids so into
candy like Why are they because they were just obsessed
with it? Well, we should probably talk about it from
(05:31):
evolutionary perspective. Yes, yeah, let's let's because if they're craving it,
there's there's something at work there. We tend not to
crave things unless we need it on some level. So,
so on a very basic level, like what is sugar about?
As a structural material, sugar is involved in just about
every aspect of our biology. It's involved in recognizing pathogens,
blood clotting, enabling sperm to penetrate the ovum, regulating the
(05:55):
half life of hormones, directing embriyonic development, acting as an
address code for directing traffic of various cells and proteins.
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's it's a good nutrient,
like it's it's right when it comes to uh that
it's like mostly calories and no vitamins, no fiber, and
it's liking the good stuff you'll find and things like apples, oranges, oranges,
(06:16):
other fruits that deliver sugar, but also other helpful things. Yeah,
when we talk about sugar, we should probably acknowledge that, right, So, yeah,
definitely fruits carry that. So it's it's an easy, quick
burst of energy. Yes, you've got you know glucose, and
glucose is quite a prize when you're surviving in an
environment where food is hard to come by. Right, So
if you came upon an apple, that would be great. Although,
(06:37):
of course apple has fiber, so it's gonna full you
up a little bit more. Just from a evolutionary perspective,
we know that this would be important for us having
a leg up in the survival game. Right. It gives
you a little boost. Uh. And if we if we've
discussed in our one of our previous topics about decision fatigue,
that boost is not just like a physical energy boost
that can also help you in your ability to navigate
(06:59):
the world around you to figure out what choice you're
gonna make. Are you gonna when when you're running from
that sudden sabretooth tiger attack, are you gonna Are you
gonna run towards the rock or you're gonna run towards
the tree. Maybe that fruit you just date off the
ground is going to give you the mental leg up
you need to know which place is gonna mean your survival. Yeah, yeah,
And you brought this up the other day when we
(07:20):
were just sort of casually talking about the topic about
how it really does help your decision making abilities, especially
in the context of decision fatigue, which we talked about before,
and we talked about a study there where the judges
were becoming extremely fatigued and they were making decisions that were,
you know, essentially just kind of putting off the parole
(07:41):
decision that they were trying to make. And they found
that when the judges were given a quick burst of
sugar in the form of fruits, that all of a sudden,
their decision making came back online. So it makes you
think that that like, especially in the courtroom and basically
need a big hummingbird feeder full of sugar water for
for the judges. Yeah, I mean, really, if you've got
a case at three o'clock in the afternoon, you should
(08:03):
probably bring a snack for the judge, although you need
to clear it with the security guard first. Yeah, that
would be bad form if you did not. So let's
go in the way back machine and look at prohibition
and how actually, wait, we just traveled back into the past.
So aren't we going forward at this point? Oh we are, Well,
we were still in the way back machine. But anyway,
(08:25):
well yeah, okay, let's go in the way back and
forth machine. Okay, that works as forwarding. Then from the
saber tooth, tiger dodging, ground fruit eating caveman dates and
now we're prohibition. Yea, everybody's doing to Charleston biglebee gowns
are being worn, and alcohol is getting itself. Um and
in the United States, that's right, it's not as readily available.
(08:48):
So what do they find is happening? They find that uh,
candy like nickel nips no tittering please, these are wax
bottles with sugar sort up become really popular growing probe
and these are still around. Um. I picked them up
as a novelty a few years back to take to
uh Mystery sent theater night, which I get to every week,
(09:09):
and used to we would have more of an emphasis
on absurd candies like nerds, rope and stuff. But we
got over that because we're older and wiser. But but
I remember bringing some of those and they're they're just
really gross. I mean, I guess, like I say, I'm
I'm I'm approaching this as as a non for the
most part, a non candy person. So kids, I'm sure
we'll still find them very exciting because it's like this
(09:31):
little wax bottle filled with something that is it's a
liquid and I guess it's like colored sugar water kind
of a thing, some sort of weird syrup. And I
actually thought about picking them up for this podcast, but
we record in the morning, and I was gonna have
to pick them up in the morning, and I might
get arrested if I'm seen buying what are these called again, uh,
(09:51):
nickel nips, nickel nips, Or I go into a store
asking for nickel nips at eight am. You're probably have
to go to a specific store for this. I don't
think that this is just a your corner drug store. Yeah,
and they're available now, but I don't know if they
make them anymore. Like have this suspicion that candies like
nickel nips and Circus peanuts that they haven't been made
in decades. They just made enough of them and the
(10:11):
consumption rate is so low. But you know, if you
open a new drug store and you're just issued some
nickel nips and some Boston beans and some Circus peanuts,
and then and they're like, all right, you got your candy.
It's like government issues subsidized a shelf light of five years.
We've got to get rid of them. But yeah, I mean,
this is what people were tipping back in lieu of
alcohol because it was giving them a sugar rush, and
(10:34):
people were to eat drinking like massive amounts of alcohol
before prohibition. That's one thing to to keep in mind.
It's not just an issue of like, oh well, we
were drinking and then we had this brief period where
we cut back because it was illegal, and then we
were right back where we started. According to Ken Burns,
who currently or by the time they sit airs, they
may have varied the entire mini series. Have the new
mini series Prohibition that goes into great detail about the
(10:58):
roots of prohibition and then uh, you know, draw parallels
to current political climates. And he pointed out before prohibition,
the average person was consuming somewhere between ninety and a
hundred and eighty bottles per year of alcohol. Okay, so
a lot of that booze is going to have a
fair amount of sugar in it. Yeah, yeah, and so
(11:20):
we know right exactly, So it's sort of a double whammy.
And we know that with the sugar rush and with
alcohol that it's going to start affecting the reward center
of our brain. Right, So this is obviously why we
keep coming back to it time and time and again,
and that's why during that time period it was viewed
as an epidemic. So let's talk about the reward center
and candy. Basically, we have sugar causing the release of
(11:42):
dopamine in the nucleus incumbents old friend nucleus that combins
which I see, I feel like we talked about a
lot lately, um delivering the classic sugar high. So Neurosciences
Behavioral Review reports that binging on sugar stimulates the same
euphoric pathway targeted by hardcore drugs like cocaine and can
cause similar withdrawal, craving, and cross sensitilization. So it's no
(12:05):
wonder that one of the slang terms for cocaine is
nose candy. Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's the same
ding ding in the brain. Not to be confused with
ding dongs, which are like a there's not definitely a candy,
I guess, but a a junk sweet food, yes, yes.
And another thing though, to keep in mind about prohibition
real quick is that the alcohol makers and the and
(12:25):
the brewers a lot of them found themselves unable to
legally produce alcohol, so they turned their attention to creating
candies or sugary sodas. That's right. Yeah. So so suddenly
a lot of the guys that were in the business
of giving you your alcohol were now saying, well, that's illegal,
but we have orange soda like crazy, so drink this instead, right,
(12:47):
and you can get a quick little high and system. Yeah.
So it's the new drug ar Okay. So back in
the time machine a little bit forward here the Great Depression,
and then now you see candy being come completely marketed
in another way. Right, So, as you mentioned, it was
in the form of Kula's. But now, I mean, resources
(13:08):
are seriously scarce and people are not able to actually
buy a full meal or make a full meal for
themselves or their families. So they go to the store
and they buy themselves a chicken dinner candy bar. That
is truth. That sounds at all I like, I looked
it up. You can if you do a Google imag
search on chicken Dinner candy bar, you will find images
(13:29):
of this this awesome and terrifying like like like you
as you stress that it was not flavored like a
chicken dinner. This is not like the candy that they
have in uh In Willy Wonka that tastes like a
seven course meal. It's just a candy bar. The gimmick
here is, Hey, you don't have time or money, um
et cetera to have an actual chicken dinner, buy a
(13:51):
candy bar instead. Right, And according to Beth Camerly Issues,
the author of Candy the Sweet History, that the package
actually had a picture of a coasted chicken with like
steam coming off of it, which again it's just sounds
kind of awful and disgusting, but they were trying to
to to market this as healthy and inexpensive. Hearing that,
on one level, I'm like, oh my goodness, what an
(14:13):
unenlightened age, or you know, or I want to make
you know judgments about about the differences. But you go
to the store now and you have all these things
like the like the cliff bars, and various diet and
energy bars, and and those may not be marketed as
here is a substitute for your dinner, but but it
is very much the idea of here is the equivalent
(14:34):
of a meal or huge energy punch in bar form. Well, yeah,
but you can also look at fast food joints and
you can you know, the dollar menu is a good example, right,
so they have um, you know obviously like there's much
more protein, there's much more to this in terms of
what a person is consuming. That it's the same idea
of here's this healthy and inexpensive thing, it's a dollar
(14:54):
when in fact it's something that's unhealthy and it's very
much subsidized and may have basically come out of a
clot Well we'll see, we'll see in two hours. But
you know that the same sort of idea exists, right, Like,
whatever you have at your disposal at that time, you've
got candy, let's market it as something that's going to
satiate your appetite. So candy has just kind of morphed
(15:18):
a little bit, you know, through history in terms of
how people have perceived it. But I do really love
the fact that it was that this package, this roosted
chicken on a package was was like as if you
just put it right there, then you would believe it,
I'm going to eat this chicken. But I also think
that it points to how dire the circumstances were at
the time. Now you you mentioned the fast food, and
(15:39):
it is important to mention that this sort of stereotypical
the average fast food meal. As we can see, it
does pack a huge sugar punch in the form of
a supersized cola drink. Yeah that's true. Um well, and
also additives to right depending on what you're getting. Okay,
so let's let's talk about kids, why they are such
(16:01):
candy fiends and how honestly they can't help themselves. All right, well,
we let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we will discuss these little monsters. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
(16:24):
explore the answers to life's questions. All right, then we're back,
uh so on the issue of children and candy. One
of the memory that always comes to my mind is
that there was this uh about mitzvah that my my
wife shot and she's a photographer. She was shooting this
thing and I came along to do some on site
(16:45):
printing for the guests, and so you had this entire
room just filled with little girls, and they had all
the like their their snack bar slash lunch dinner bar
or whatever you got time to day it was, but
it was just loaded with things like uh, you know
Ben and Jerry's ice cream and all sorts of sweets
to put on it, and then like a cupcake fountain. Yeah, yeah,
(17:06):
that kind of thing. I mean then of course like
pizza and and other kind of kid friendly foods as well.
But they were just crazy on sugar and they were
just running around and they would just swoop into the
photo booth that we had set up and they would
just go crazy for these photos. I would remember thinking, Wow,
these kids are insane, and it was just because they
were just getting a NonStop rush of sugar. They were
just doing more sugar every five minutes. And what's really
(17:27):
it's really funny if the kid doesn't actually belong to
you and you just get to observe it. But especially
with little girls because in those circumstances, because he usually
have dresses on with crinolines and stuff, and then all
of a sudden, like they there's like a wrestling pile
of them and they're just so high on sugar and
they start beating each other up, at least with the
parties I've been too, they're all like little Hull Colgan's.
(17:50):
But yes, I mean this is this is the result
of sugar. It creates a even the most docile child
becomes a sort of whole Cogan up kid, right right.
And it's interesting that you mentioned the whole cogan thing
because of course we think of whole coke and we
think hulking up. We think of muscles and bones, um
and uh and and that's actually linked to this uh
(18:12):
we we think um, they're The theory is that that
a lot of this um, this sugar craving is linked
to rapid grown bone growth, that they're hardwired to it
because growing bones secrete hormones that influence metabolism, and we
know that other metaball hormones are like left in and
insulin um, connect on areas of the brain that control
cravings and appetites and even directly behind the tongue where
(18:35):
they affect the preference for sweet tas, which is fascinating,
right because what they found, um, this is from an
article from mp ARE called Kids Sugar Craving maybe biological,
is that they found that kids actually have a different
taste landscape. I guess you could say, yes, yeah, this
is what really like sensory sen pete really yeah. Yeah.
(18:56):
They they referred to it as kids living in a
different since reworld than adults. Yeah, it was. So it's
I mean, it's just like the entire world is turned
slightly on its head when it comes to what tastes
good and what doesn't. Yeah, it's very different from an adult.
Researcher Julie Manella of the Monell Chemical Census Center says, quote,
kids prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the
(19:18):
adult and it doesn't decrease until late adolescents. And we
have some evidence that they may be more sensitive to
bitter taste. So when Manella's researchers studied this, that they
did as they gave adults a sucrose and water solution
that was on part of like your average cola, okay,
and so that that was kind of the extent that
the adults wanted their sugar. They didn't want it anymore,
(19:40):
They didn't want it really any less. Kids, on the
other hand, prefer twice the amount of sugar, and then
younger children had absolutely no limit when it came to
the amount of sugar that was put in the solution
and keep dumping it in until the solution cannot hold
more sugar before it just becomes a big container of
damp sugar. Yeah, they were all like heavy on the
(20:00):
sugar and lead on the water, if you know what
I mean. Wink wink um. So I mean that gives
you a clue right there. That Yes, that's a different
sensory palette, which leads us this whole idea that it
is hardwired that for a kid surviving, particularly back in
the way back, way back day, right, Yeah, the sugar
would give them an advantage. Yeah, I mean it makes
(20:21):
me think back to Halloween bag of candy days, and
I mean I would just over a few days, I
would eat all the candy. Yeah. It was like, look,
if you gave me a sack of Tutsi rolls and
told me to eat them, now, there's no telling how
sick I would become. Right, there would have to be
like some sort of five rewards, right they would have.
It would be a pretty serious endeavor. But you had
(20:43):
a bag of Tutsi rolls to like a six year old,
they're like that. They won't even blink an eye. Oh no,
Like I remember Halloween's in my candy stash and my
pillow case and being horribly protective of it because I
thought that my brother was going to rate it. So
I mean you to understand why people, why little kids
get so connected to it. Um. This is actually another
(21:05):
really interesting thing that came from that article that sucre
sucros is actually a natural pain reliever and little ones. Um.
They gave sucro solutions to newborns receiving circumcisions and babies
receiving immunizations, and they found that there was a significant
decrease in pain. Sugar actually makes them stronger, It actually
heals their wounds. No, it doesn't. But my my daughter
(21:28):
received a bunch of shots when she was born from
the get go for a two week period and they
did give her sugar water before every single shot. And
now sugar. Yeah, she has never had candy, but the
store around the corner from us has like the old
fashioned like you know, little bins of candy and she
just will will stare at it. Uh, I mean for
(21:51):
hours she would she knocks on them sometimes. Oh yeah,
like well, because every single children children something that every
single one, but every other. One of them talks about
candy children's books talk about maybe maybe there's like they're
just hardwired to the point where like a child can
hear sugar, you know, they walk into the store and
(22:12):
they're like, what's it saying. You can hear the sugar,
like grinding the follicles in their ears are like that
sensitive to sugar. Uh. I don't know that could be,
who knows, But let's talk about the downside of candied
um other than just you know, having that initial rush
and then plummeting with your energy. A lot of it
comes back to our our origins and how we evolved
(22:34):
and what our diet was originally like. And generally you
you might you'll find some fruit on the ground, you'll
eat it, You'll get some sugar out of that, but
we also get some other things that are important for
you in addition to just the pure sugar. Uh. And
in many cases, you would go for a long period
time without getting sugar, Like sometimes sugar is difficult to acquire.
Anyone who's seen the amazing BBC Discovery co production Human
(22:56):
Planet has seen that amazing sequence where the Biaka tribesmen
line this enormous tree to raid this bee hive enormously high,
like stories and stories up just climb up with nothing
more than like a burning brand um, you know, some
smoke to ward off some of the bees. And the
guy still gets stung, just hundreds and hundreds of times
while he's retrieving this honey for himself and his family.
(23:19):
But the promise of honey and this sugar rush is strong,
and not just the sugar rush, but the calories. Right. Yeah,
like you said, there's there's a benefit to having it.
But in the old days it was more work or
or when you got it, you you didn't just get
the pure sugar. You received other you know, nutrients, and
you might not get it every day. Now it's an
(23:40):
entirely different story, right, Right, we have to worry about
being propped up until the next meal, right, especially industrialized nations.
I mean, it begins the first thing in the morning
for some folks with a nice sugary cereal or even
like some some wholesome oatmeal that has been just attacked
with a sugar spoon until it's just standing on end,
that's right. I mean, you really don't have to go
that far for it. Um. Scientists Ralph di Leone at Yale,
(24:02):
your university found that an animal sweet or fatty foods
can act a lot like drugs in the brains, which
which we've talked about, and there's growing evidence that eating
too much of these foods can cause long term changes
in the brain circuits that control eating behavior. UM. So
you know, both animal and human brains include special pathways
that make us feel good when we eat right and
(24:23):
really give when we eat sweet or fatty foods with
lots of calories. And he says that drug addiction is
really hijacking some of these pathways that evolve to promote
food intake for survival reasons. So we talked about dopamine
being released in the brain right when you when you
eat sugar, and we know that with addiction that if
you abuse a substance you know, whether it's sugar, if
(24:46):
you can call it that, you know, a substance UM
that is really truly addictive, or alcohol or cocaine, that
the more and more you do it, the more and
more your dopamine is released. But then your brain backs
off on really using it, actually stops releasing as much,
which then requires the user to go and sort of
double up on the substance to get the same sugar high, right,
(25:09):
So so a real sugar junkie is essentially chasing the
dragon after a while, to use the old Victorian terminology. Yeah, yeah, seriously,
I mean they're seeing this. There's actually a Teresa Rays.
She's a research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology
at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was part of
a team that gave mice a high fat diet from
the time that they are weaned until they reached twenty weeks,
(25:32):
so they gained significant amounts of weight and they became obese.
Then the researchers looked at the brain's pleasure centers um,
which are the areas that we know change in drug addiction,
and she said that what we found is that in
animals that were obese, there were really dramatic changes in
these areas of the brain that participate in telling us
how rewarding food is. The changes made these areas less
(25:54):
responsive to fatty foods, so no beast mouse would have
to eat more fat than a typical mass stick at
the same amount of pleasure. And some of these changes
didn't go away for these mice, which I think is
kind of fascinating is that that the whole idea, that
it really is changing the way that your brain functions.
And then you think about highly processed foods, right, I mean,
that's basically just concentrating sugar, you know, to to the
(26:18):
point where it's no longer just the sugar from my fruit.
It's something completely different and much more potent, right, I mean,
even if you you are just talking about the difference
between eating an apple and drinking a glass of apple juice, like,
there's a huge difference in how what you're taking in there.
But then you add this, uh like a chemical process
on top of that, and then these varying levels of
(26:39):
refinement you get even even farther and farther from the
the original source. Well and from from what I read that,
you know, when you've got it concentrated like this, the
message to your brain is a lot louder if I
can put that in air quotes, then something like a
simple sugar in a banana, and so you get a
bigger response from the rewards there. So it's it's essentially
(27:02):
like the difference between heroin and opium, or you know,
or say crack cocaine and cocaine. It's like a processed
um more impactful version of the of the original substance. Right,
that's really going to mess with your brain a lot more.
And again, just sugary sodas and juices can make a
huge difference. I ran across this study that showed the
(27:23):
teens who quit drinking sugar, soda and juices lost basically
a pound a month over six months. And it wasn't insane.
And that's not that's not factoring in other things that
could potentially cut out, but but just like really sugary
sodas and and the like. So yeah, I mean the
reason why candy is really actually a menaces because of
childhood obesity. And we know that from the CDC, the
(27:44):
Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta, that they have
put some pretty staggering statistics out there, and uh and
not counting situations where the brain is really then reprogrammed
um in terms of how much sugar it thinks the
body needs. It's actually not that difficult for the average
(28:05):
person to cut down on their their on their taste
for sweetness. Like I think I've seen the figure around
like three weeks it takes to sort of adjust your
taste to something say, even if it's something is mild
as cutting down from a normal soda to a diet
soda tastes weird at first, but they say, like three
weeks thereabouts, that's about how much time it takes to
(28:26):
get used to the new flavor, right, right, which makes sense,
But you know, it's it's it's a matter of being
aware of it and taking out. But when you know,
in Forks Ever Knives, they talked about the childhood obesity rate,
and they were actually saying that the coming generation will
have a shorter lifespan than ours, which is kind of like, ohh,
I mean, I haven't gone in fact checked the movie,
(28:48):
but I will say that when from what the CDC says,
they said, child childhood obesity has more than tripled in
the past thirty years because of all these highly processed foods, right,
and because of high fructous corn syrup, and the percentage
of children age six to eleven years United States who
are a beasts increased from seven percent in nineteen eighty
two nearly in two thousand eight. Similarly, the percentage of
(29:11):
adolescents aged twelve to nineteen who are a beast increased
from five percent to eight percent. Over the same period.
So you know, in two thousand and eight, we have
more than one third of children and adolescents who are
overweight or abase. Yeah, and the long term health effects,
you know, obviously are are many. And uh, I mean
we're talking about increased incidences of certain cancers, type two, diabetes, uh,
(29:35):
kidney problems, pancreas list goes on and on. It's kind
of pressing. Then you mean to bring candy down like this? Well,
it leads to the ultimate question here, and that is,
Halloween is approaching. If you're listening to this at the
publication time, and even if you're not, Halloween's gonna roll
around again. And if not Halloween, then Easter or any
any of the various holidays that have some sort of
marketed candy associated with them, which is pretty much every holiday.
(29:59):
Uh So, do you give the kids Halloween candy? Do
they get to have the candy? Do you try and
stop them? Do you dare try and stop them with
their strange little zombie minds? Does your house get egged
because you give out apples or toothbrushes? Yeah? Don't you
know anybody the neighbor that never came out a toothbrush? No,
(30:20):
my dad was a dentist, and we didn't give out
the toothbrushes. We gave out candy. But then again, as
a dentist, you kind of have in a center give
out candy. I guess, yeah, yeah, that's what your dad
was like. Here you go, there's the it's the really
sweet yuh. I'll see at the office. There you go. Well,
let me reach into the Halloween bag here and get
some listener mail. Have a couple of interesting ones, and
(30:42):
the first one does relate to the chloec Abot. Would
you describe the chloekabot? That's just a refresh. I can't
remember the artists, but them del Vo, okay, fim Delvoy
who who created this chloec a bot and put it
in a really sterile environment, basically put it in a
(31:04):
museum with like, you know, stark white walls around it.
And so I can't remember how long this actual bot was,
but I'm I'm going to say, like, I don't know,
maybe twelve feet or something like that. And he would
feed he had a chef actually prepare meals for the
cloak a bat and feed it regularly, and then he
would add some enzymes, some acids, basically trying to replicate
(31:27):
the conditions in your stomach and lo and behold that
cloak a bot would produce coo like every two hours
or so, No, not actually every two hours because it
was mimicking the human digestion, but anyway would then produce
actual pooh, and then people in the museum would come
and look at it and they could buy the samples. Well, yeah,
(31:47):
it's it really blew our minds when we find out
found out about it, because then it also delivers on
earlier Victorian attempts or aspirations of mimicking the human bottom
and by chemical active digestions with the machine. And this
guy comes along and and nails it with horrifying results.
But of course we just had pictures to go on
(32:08):
and uh, we have to depend on other people to
actually smell the exhibit for us, and our listener, Bernard
from Australia, does just that. He writes, listen to your
podcast on the pooping duck. I have witnessed of them
Delvo's cloaca professional in action at the Mona Museum in Hobart, Tasmania.
Uh picks I took below. They feed it lettuce apparently,
(32:29):
and at three pm every day it does its thing.
I can confirm the smell is realistic almost there's something
not quite right and disturbing about the smell. Maybe that
was all in my mind. As it comes out of
the out of the little glass plate it falls on,
rotates in a circular pattern to create a mr whippy
like soft serve. Uh. There were lots of kids there
and none of them cried. None of them laughed either. Um,
(32:53):
and then he has on another subject. Was standing on
a rock a couple of feet in diameter a few
yards out into a lake fishing. Once a platypus swam
up and circle the rock against it a few times,
then swam away. I have seen them from a distance
many times, but that was special. I was just blown
away by that because it's two really cool things, right,
like we're fans, which is pretty weird and has a
cloak yes, thank you, and then yep, and just right
(33:16):
around back to actually seeing the kaka bought in person
and then sending his photos. I couldn't have end. I mean, honestly,
it looks like a mad scientists laboratory. Um. This looks
to be like five hanging vessels right with all sorts
of tubes that are coming from it. I'm assuming that
(33:37):
this is the this is the junk that they put
in there to actually break down the food and make
it into feces um. And it's hanging from a track.
It is horrific looking. And then the soft serve is
that comes out of the shoot onto this plate. I
can't believe we're making me describe this UM and it
kind of looks a little bit like Plato. But anyway, hey,
(34:01):
we're always game to putting these up on Facebook, and
so so definitely thank you Bernard for writing in UM
not only to share the pictures, but also to to
describe your first hand experience with this strange and fascinating exhibit.
I mean, we were kind of recoil and horror from it,
but it is, it is a very fascinating piece of art. Like,
it's not this dude is create obviously creating UM art
(34:23):
that is that is shocking, that's going to evoke a
certain response from the viewer. But but it's intelligent work.
It's not just it's not just messing. She is serious
about excrement, this artist. Let's see, we have another email
here in response to an older episode we did UM
nine nine and nine Birthday Candles. Writer Evan writes in
(34:44):
and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, but mostly Robert because
it has to do with Dune. I realize that the
tie in with the N nine Birthdays Channel podcast in
Doom may have been a little too heady nerdy for
most listeners, but the story has significant relevance to the podcast,
particularly in terms of maturity in the later parts of
the Dune series. The character the Letto the Second undergoes
the transformation to make him part man, part sandworm. He
(35:07):
does this so that he can extend his life expectancy
to an indefinite period of time. He states that the
problems humanity has a result of typical human life expectancy
and then and that makes them particularly vulnerable. If they
were able to naturally live longer, they might gain a
more far sighted perspective and give up or change their ways,
since a whole race can't do that. Letter the Second
undergoes this transformation and purposely represses almost every aspect of
(35:31):
the human race in an effort to build in a
race memory of tyranny. By doing so, he was able
to mature the entirety of humanity because they despised him,
so they underwent an exponential expansion when he died, making
it so that he they would be virtually impossible to
wipe out the Golden Path Man. The saddest part about
this is that Frank Herbert died before he could continue
(35:52):
the series. If he could have lived to be a
few hundred years old, US fans would have been able
to see his vision come to print instead of his
son's attempts to fulfill and change that vision. Great podcast.
Thanks for the Dune references. So yeah, indeed, the U
the later books, I mean, the first book, in my
opinion is is the best. Uh and then from there
(36:12):
Frank Herbert began to expand this even more elaborate story.
And at one point Letto does change into this enormous
sandworm human hybrid that's featured prominently on the cover art
for Emperor of Dune and always intrigued me as a
child long before I actually read it. Um and there's
in that particular volume is choked with all of a
lot of like really cool existential ponderings about the state
(36:35):
of humanity, the long term survival of the human race.
Uh So, so indeed, thanks Heavan for writing in about
that and raising that point in regard to the Dune series,
and it kind of makes me want to read the
first book again. All right. I just keep thinking of Sting.
That's a non Dooner, That's that's my only reference. And
then I start thinking, what if what if Sting were
(36:55):
to live to be a thousand years old? Would he
still be practicing tan trick yoga, h and sacks? Would
anybody want to see them? I don't. I'm sure there
would be a market for it somewhere, but there's no
wrong with There's no problem with the market. Yeah, there's
no there's no problem with appreciating the movie Dune. It's
(37:15):
an imperfect adaptation, for sure. It has some some definite flaws.
It's kind of boring, but it's also got some some
serious flare and moments. It's got some great costumes and
uh even you know, as a Dune fan, you can't
help but like something about it. Right, But you're saying
the books are a richer experience, Well, the first book
is Richard's right, It's it's complicated. Fine, then I'm just
(37:37):
gonna read the first one enough rest Well, the second
one pretty good too. Anyway, if you have some thoughts
to share it with us. They may relate to candy,
They may relate to cooping robots. They may relate to
the Dune series. Right in let us know you, especially
on the candy and the whole staying thing. Yeah, I mean,
but you know, not together unless you have a candy
(37:58):
sting story that might be it. Now. You can of
course find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
mind on both of those, and you can always drop
us a line at blow the Mind at house stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(38:21):
of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. We're
all decked out for Halloween. One of four Halloween episodes
that we're doing. And if it's not Halloween and you're listening,
I mean, keep going, because these are good anytime, but
(00:25):
but we're particularly excited about these topics because we get
to hie them in with our Halloween enthusiasm. In fact
that we were recording this in costume. Um, Julie, would
you describe your costume? Um? Well, it's kind of hard
to describe because I think I just look very uh well,
I mean I've got a lot of stainless steel surrounding
me right now, yes, and people keep dumping vegetables into me,
(00:49):
and then like two hours later, I produce a substance.
Can you guess what I am? Um? You're do? You
look kind of like a robot with soup on you?
But I thought was the costume like a super robot
that wasn't very like complex and just kept spilling my soup? Yeah?
Right now now I'm the Chloeac Machine. Oh, that's gross.
(01:12):
I know. Yeah, it's a it's a terrifying, uh Halloween costume,
which we will describe a little and a little more
detail at the end of this this podcast. And we
but we mentioned it in a previous one about digesting robots.
So you are a digesting robot more like the pooping duck.
And and just to make everybody feel better, there's some
actual stuff produced by me. But if you had like
(01:34):
brought in some like soft served chocolate ice cream, that
would have been appropriate based on the pictures I've seen
of the poop that the Cloaca bot produces. Yes, yes, yes, gosh,
now you've told everybody in my secret. Okay, so you
you're sitting over there eating your your Halloween candy. What
are you? I am? Humpty hump See you noticed the
glasses and the large fig nos in the first from
(01:54):
you know, Digital Underground, right, I thought I thought it
was just Wednesday. Now this is my Humpty costume. UM
A big big fan from way back, especially the Digital
Underground cameo with tupac in um that horrible dan ackroid
movie Nothing but Trouble. Oh goodness, I have to say
that I have not seen that it was like Danacroid's
(02:15):
pet project and and God bless him, it's it's it's
a horrible film that Gimmy Moore in it and uh
Chevy Chase, and it's just it's very Halloween theme, like
a kind of a haunted house and all these grotesque
characters running around and not really funny at all. And
then there's just this huge theme or digital underground is
is brought before the the the Evil Judge, one of
(02:37):
like eighteen characters played by Dan Ackroyd in this, and
then they're made to perform that sounds like the result
of too much money, too much time, and too many stimulants.
So speaking of yes, speaking of stimulants. Not not too
much time, time or money, but stimulants, speaking stimulants. So
we're of course talking about it's Halloween. You think Halloween,
you think Halloween. Candy. The topic of this particular podcast
(03:00):
the candy Cordinace, and we're we're not just talking about
candy corn, but about various candies and just sugar in
general as a is a childhood obsession and to a
certain extent, and adulthood obsession as well. Yeah, Yeah, why
kids are so transfixed and why we are too. Why
we continue to be just sort of going to that
(03:22):
siren call of candy except for candy corn, for me,
for you. I'm in the camp of hating candy corn.
I don't think it really should exist other than to
create little things with um way abomination. Well, I this
was we're talking about this yesterday and I I asked
people on the house stuff Works main Facebook page. I
(03:43):
was like, hey, guys, what's what's your favorite candy and
what candies? How do we tip candies do you find
is particularly vile? And a number of people mentioned candy corn. Uh.
At least one person mentioned my least favorite candy, which
happens to be circus peanuts, which are you know those
giants like they I guess they kind of they're kind
of molded to look like a giant swollen peanut. But
(04:07):
it's made of some are thought you're going to say
something else, some sort of orange spongy material that may
or may not be food but is ingested. It's it's
it's really grim And then uh, I asked my wife
and she she mentioned Boston beans. It's like who would
name a candy buston? And then and then there we'll
(04:28):
talk about some other disgusting candies as we we go forth,
and and also maybe candies that are not all that
disgusting as far as their taste may go, but there
their marketing has been some questionable and uh and if
I had to pick one though that I'm not really
a candy eater anymore. And this is something we're gonna
talk about, how adults tend to move more and more
(04:48):
away from candy while children cannot get enough. I will
occasionally have a hankering for some Twizzlers. Ah yeah, and
I bet that it's probably that that time of the
day when you're Circadian the self dropped right, and you
need an easy pick up Twizzler o'clock, Twizzler o'clock, three o'clock.
I see them on your desk, not on them. Yeah,
well no, you don't. Don't. Don't make the listeners, especially
(05:10):
my wife, think that I'm pulling out twisted every afternoon
from your little safe underneath your desk. I don't know
what else is in there, the Twizzler safe. Yeah well, okay, great,
now I've got explaining to do. But but anyway, so
let's let's move on. So why are kids so into
candy like Why are they because they were just obsessed
with it? Well, we should probably talk about it from
(05:31):
evolutionary perspective. Yes, yeah, let's let's because if they're craving it,
there's there's something at work there. We tend not to
crave things unless we need it on some level. So,
so on a very basic level, like what is sugar about?
As a structural material, sugar is involved in just about
every aspect of our biology. It's involved in recognizing pathogens,
blood clotting, enabling sperm to penetrate the ovum, regulating the
(05:55):
half life of hormones, directing embriyonic development, acting as an
address code for directing traffic of various cells and proteins.
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's it's a good nutrient,
like it's it's right when it comes to uh that
it's like mostly calories and no vitamins, no fiber, and
it's liking the good stuff you'll find and things like apples, oranges, oranges,
(06:16):
other fruits that deliver sugar, but also other helpful things. Yeah,
when we talk about sugar, we should probably acknowledge that, right, So, yeah,
definitely fruits carry that. So it's it's an easy, quick
burst of energy. Yes, you've got you know glucose, and
glucose is quite a prize when you're surviving in an
environment where food is hard to come by. Right, So
if you came upon an apple, that would be great. Although,
(06:37):
of course apple has fiber, so it's gonna full you
up a little bit more. Just from a evolutionary perspective,
we know that this would be important for us having
a leg up in the survival game. Right. It gives
you a little boost. Uh. And if we if we've
discussed in our one of our previous topics about decision fatigue,
that boost is not just like a physical energy boost
that can also help you in your ability to navigate
(06:59):
the world around you to figure out what choice you're
gonna make. Are you gonna when when you're running from
that sudden sabretooth tiger attack, are you gonna Are you
gonna run towards the rock or you're gonna run towards
the tree. Maybe that fruit you just date off the
ground is going to give you the mental leg up
you need to know which place is gonna mean your survival. Yeah, yeah,
And you brought this up the other day when we
(07:20):
were just sort of casually talking about the topic about
how it really does help your decision making abilities, especially
in the context of decision fatigue, which we talked about before,
and we talked about a study there where the judges
were becoming extremely fatigued and they were making decisions that were,
you know, essentially just kind of putting off the parole
(07:41):
decision that they were trying to make. And they found
that when the judges were given a quick burst of
sugar in the form of fruits, that all of a sudden,
their decision making came back online. So it makes you
think that that like, especially in the courtroom and basically
need a big hummingbird feeder full of sugar water for
for the judges. Yeah, I mean, really, if you've got
a case at three o'clock in the afternoon, you should
(08:03):
probably bring a snack for the judge, although you need
to clear it with the security guard first. Yeah, that
would be bad form if you did not. So let's
go in the way back machine and look at prohibition
and how actually, wait, we just traveled back into the past.
So aren't we going forward at this point? Oh we are, Well,
we were still in the way back machine. But anyway,
(08:25):
well yeah, okay, let's go in the way back and
forth machine. Okay, that works as forwarding. Then from the
saber tooth, tiger dodging, ground fruit eating caveman dates and
now we're prohibition. Yea, everybody's doing to Charleston biglebee gowns
are being worn, and alcohol is getting itself. Um and
in the United States, that's right, it's not as readily available.
(08:48):
So what do they find is happening? They find that uh,
candy like nickel nips no tittering please, these are wax
bottles with sugar sort up become really popular growing probe
and these are still around. Um. I picked them up
as a novelty a few years back to take to
uh Mystery sent theater night, which I get to every week,
(09:09):
and used to we would have more of an emphasis
on absurd candies like nerds, rope and stuff. But we
got over that because we're older and wiser. But but
I remember bringing some of those and they're they're just
really gross. I mean, I guess, like I say, I'm
I'm I'm approaching this as as a non for the
most part, a non candy person. So kids, I'm sure
we'll still find them very exciting because it's like this
(09:31):
little wax bottle filled with something that is it's a
liquid and I guess it's like colored sugar water kind
of a thing, some sort of weird syrup. And I
actually thought about picking them up for this podcast, but
we record in the morning, and I was gonna have
to pick them up in the morning, and I might
get arrested if I'm seen buying what are these called again, uh,
(09:51):
nickel nips, nickel nips, Or I go into a store
asking for nickel nips at eight am. You're probably have
to go to a specific store for this. I don't
think that this is just a your corner drug store. Yeah,
and they're available now, but I don't know if they
make them anymore. Like have this suspicion that candies like
nickel nips and Circus peanuts that they haven't been made
in decades. They just made enough of them and the
(10:11):
consumption rate is so low. But you know, if you
open a new drug store and you're just issued some
nickel nips and some Boston beans and some Circus peanuts,
and then and they're like, all right, you got your candy.
It's like government issues subsidized a shelf light of five years.
We've got to get rid of them. But yeah, I mean,
this is what people were tipping back in lieu of
alcohol because it was giving them a sugar rush, and
(10:34):
people were to eat drinking like massive amounts of alcohol
before prohibition. That's one thing to to keep in mind.
It's not just an issue of like, oh well, we
were drinking and then we had this brief period where
we cut back because it was illegal, and then we
were right back where we started. According to Ken Burns,
who currently or by the time they sit airs, they
may have varied the entire mini series. Have the new
mini series Prohibition that goes into great detail about the
(10:58):
roots of prohibition and then uh, you know, draw parallels
to current political climates. And he pointed out before prohibition,
the average person was consuming somewhere between ninety and a
hundred and eighty bottles per year of alcohol. Okay, so
a lot of that booze is going to have a
fair amount of sugar in it. Yeah, yeah, and so
(11:20):
we know right exactly, So it's sort of a double whammy.
And we know that with the sugar rush and with
alcohol that it's going to start affecting the reward center
of our brain. Right, So this is obviously why we
keep coming back to it time and time and again,
and that's why during that time period it was viewed
as an epidemic. So let's talk about the reward center
and candy. Basically, we have sugar causing the release of
(11:42):
dopamine in the nucleus incumbents old friend nucleus that combins
which I see, I feel like we talked about a
lot lately, um delivering the classic sugar high. So Neurosciences
Behavioral Review reports that binging on sugar stimulates the same
euphoric pathway targeted by hardcore drugs like cocaine and can
cause similar withdrawal, craving, and cross sensitilization. So it's no
(12:05):
wonder that one of the slang terms for cocaine is
nose candy. Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's the same
ding ding in the brain. Not to be confused with
ding dongs, which are like a there's not definitely a candy,
I guess, but a a junk sweet food, yes, yes.
And another thing though, to keep in mind about prohibition
real quick is that the alcohol makers and the and
(12:25):
the brewers a lot of them found themselves unable to
legally produce alcohol, so they turned their attention to creating
candies or sugary sodas. That's right. Yeah. So so suddenly
a lot of the guys that were in the business
of giving you your alcohol were now saying, well, that's illegal,
but we have orange soda like crazy, so drink this instead, right,
(12:47):
and you can get a quick little high and system. Yeah.
So it's the new drug ar Okay. So back in
the time machine a little bit forward here the Great Depression,
and then now you see candy being come completely marketed
in another way. Right, So, as you mentioned, it was
in the form of Kula's. But now, I mean, resources
(13:08):
are seriously scarce and people are not able to actually
buy a full meal or make a full meal for
themselves or their families. So they go to the store
and they buy themselves a chicken dinner candy bar. That
is truth. That sounds at all I like, I looked
it up. You can if you do a Google imag
search on chicken Dinner candy bar, you will find images
(13:29):
of this this awesome and terrifying like like like you
as you stress that it was not flavored like a
chicken dinner. This is not like the candy that they
have in uh In Willy Wonka that tastes like a
seven course meal. It's just a candy bar. The gimmick
here is, Hey, you don't have time or money, um
et cetera to have an actual chicken dinner, buy a
(13:51):
candy bar instead. Right, And according to Beth Camerly Issues,
the author of Candy the Sweet History, that the package
actually had a picture of a coasted chicken with like
steam coming off of it, which again it's just sounds
kind of awful and disgusting, but they were trying to
to to market this as healthy and inexpensive. Hearing that,
on one level, I'm like, oh my goodness, what an
(14:13):
unenlightened age, or you know, or I want to make
you know judgments about about the differences. But you go
to the store now and you have all these things
like the like the cliff bars, and various diet and
energy bars, and and those may not be marketed as
here is a substitute for your dinner, but but it
is very much the idea of here is the equivalent
(14:34):
of a meal or huge energy punch in bar form. Well, yeah,
but you can also look at fast food joints and
you can you know, the dollar menu is a good example, right,
so they have um, you know obviously like there's much
more protein, there's much more to this in terms of
what a person is consuming. That it's the same idea
of here's this healthy and inexpensive thing, it's a dollar
(14:54):
when in fact it's something that's unhealthy and it's very
much subsidized and may have basically come out of a
clot Well we'll see, we'll see in two hours. But
you know that the same sort of idea exists, right, Like,
whatever you have at your disposal at that time, you've
got candy, let's market it as something that's going to
satiate your appetite. So candy has just kind of morphed
(15:18):
a little bit, you know, through history in terms of
how people have perceived it. But I do really love
the fact that it was that this package, this roosted
chicken on a package was was like as if you
just put it right there, then you would believe it,
I'm going to eat this chicken. But I also think
that it points to how dire the circumstances were at
the time. Now you you mentioned the fast food, and
(15:39):
it is important to mention that this sort of stereotypical
the average fast food meal. As we can see, it
does pack a huge sugar punch in the form of
a supersized cola drink. Yeah that's true. Um well, and
also additives to right depending on what you're getting. Okay,
so let's let's talk about kids, why they are such
(16:01):
candy fiends and how honestly they can't help themselves. All right, well,
we let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we will discuss these little monsters. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
(16:24):
explore the answers to life's questions. All right, then we're back,
uh so on the issue of children and candy. One
of the memory that always comes to my mind is
that there was this uh about mitzvah that my my
wife shot and she's a photographer. She was shooting this
thing and I came along to do some on site
(16:45):
printing for the guests, and so you had this entire
room just filled with little girls, and they had all
the like their their snack bar slash lunch dinner bar
or whatever you got time to day it was, but
it was just loaded with things like uh, you know
Ben and Jerry's ice cream and all sorts of sweets
to put on it, and then like a cupcake fountain. Yeah, yeah,
(17:06):
that kind of thing. I mean then of course like
pizza and and other kind of kid friendly foods as well.
But they were just crazy on sugar and they were
just running around and they would just swoop into the
photo booth that we had set up and they would
just go crazy for these photos. I would remember thinking, Wow,
these kids are insane, and it was just because they
were just getting a NonStop rush of sugar. They were
just doing more sugar every five minutes. And what's really
(17:27):
it's really funny if the kid doesn't actually belong to
you and you just get to observe it. But especially
with little girls because in those circumstances, because he usually
have dresses on with crinolines and stuff, and then all
of a sudden, like they there's like a wrestling pile
of them and they're just so high on sugar and
they start beating each other up, at least with the
parties I've been too, they're all like little Hull Colgan's.
(17:50):
But yes, I mean this is this is the result
of sugar. It creates a even the most docile child
becomes a sort of whole Cogan up kid, right right.
And it's interesting that you mentioned the whole cogan thing
because of course we think of whole coke and we
think hulking up. We think of muscles and bones, um
and uh and and that's actually linked to this uh
(18:12):
we we think um, they're The theory is that that
a lot of this um, this sugar craving is linked
to rapid grown bone growth, that they're hardwired to it
because growing bones secrete hormones that influence metabolism, and we
know that other metaball hormones are like left in and
insulin um, connect on areas of the brain that control
cravings and appetites and even directly behind the tongue where
(18:35):
they affect the preference for sweet tas, which is fascinating,
right because what they found, um, this is from an
article from mp ARE called Kids Sugar Craving maybe biological,
is that they found that kids actually have a different
taste landscape. I guess you could say, yes, yeah, this
is what really like sensory sen pete really yeah. Yeah.
(18:56):
They they referred to it as kids living in a
different since reworld than adults. Yeah, it was. So it's
I mean, it's just like the entire world is turned
slightly on its head when it comes to what tastes
good and what doesn't. Yeah, it's very different from an adult.
Researcher Julie Manella of the Monell Chemical Census Center says, quote,
kids prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the
(19:18):
adult and it doesn't decrease until late adolescents. And we
have some evidence that they may be more sensitive to
bitter taste. So when Manella's researchers studied this, that they
did as they gave adults a sucrose and water solution
that was on part of like your average cola, okay,
and so that that was kind of the extent that
the adults wanted their sugar. They didn't want it anymore,
(19:40):
They didn't want it really any less. Kids, on the
other hand, prefer twice the amount of sugar, and then
younger children had absolutely no limit when it came to
the amount of sugar that was put in the solution
and keep dumping it in until the solution cannot hold
more sugar before it just becomes a big container of
damp sugar. Yeah, they were all like heavy on the
(20:00):
sugar and lead on the water, if you know what
I mean. Wink wink um. So I mean that gives
you a clue right there. That Yes, that's a different
sensory palette, which leads us this whole idea that it
is hardwired that for a kid surviving, particularly back in
the way back, way back day, right, Yeah, the sugar
would give them an advantage. Yeah, I mean it makes
(20:21):
me think back to Halloween bag of candy days, and
I mean I would just over a few days, I
would eat all the candy. Yeah. It was like, look,
if you gave me a sack of Tutsi rolls and
told me to eat them, now, there's no telling how
sick I would become. Right, there would have to be
like some sort of five rewards, right they would have.
It would be a pretty serious endeavor. But you had
(20:43):
a bag of Tutsi rolls to like a six year old,
they're like that. They won't even blink an eye. Oh no,
Like I remember Halloween's in my candy stash and my
pillow case and being horribly protective of it because I
thought that my brother was going to rate it. So
I mean you to understand why people, why little kids
get so connected to it. Um. This is actually another
(21:05):
really interesting thing that came from that article that sucre
sucros is actually a natural pain reliever and little ones. Um.
They gave sucro solutions to newborns receiving circumcisions and babies
receiving immunizations, and they found that there was a significant
decrease in pain. Sugar actually makes them stronger, It actually
heals their wounds. No, it doesn't. But my my daughter
(21:28):
received a bunch of shots when she was born from
the get go for a two week period and they
did give her sugar water before every single shot. And
now sugar. Yeah, she has never had candy, but the
store around the corner from us has like the old
fashioned like you know, little bins of candy and she
just will will stare at it. Uh, I mean for
(21:51):
hours she would she knocks on them sometimes. Oh yeah,
like well, because every single children children something that every
single one, but every other. One of them talks about
candy children's books talk about maybe maybe there's like they're
just hardwired to the point where like a child can
hear sugar, you know, they walk into the store and
(22:12):
they're like, what's it saying. You can hear the sugar,
like grinding the follicles in their ears are like that
sensitive to sugar. Uh. I don't know that could be,
who knows, But let's talk about the downside of candied
um other than just you know, having that initial rush
and then plummeting with your energy. A lot of it
comes back to our our origins and how we evolved
(22:34):
and what our diet was originally like. And generally you
you might you'll find some fruit on the ground, you'll
eat it, You'll get some sugar out of that, but
we also get some other things that are important for
you in addition to just the pure sugar. Uh. And
in many cases, you would go for a long period
time without getting sugar, Like sometimes sugar is difficult to acquire.
Anyone who's seen the amazing BBC Discovery co production Human
(22:56):
Planet has seen that amazing sequence where the Biaka tribesmen
line this enormous tree to raid this bee hive enormously high,
like stories and stories up just climb up with nothing
more than like a burning brand um, you know, some
smoke to ward off some of the bees. And the
guy still gets stung, just hundreds and hundreds of times
while he's retrieving this honey for himself and his family.
(23:19):
But the promise of honey and this sugar rush is strong,
and not just the sugar rush, but the calories. Right. Yeah,
like you said, there's there's a benefit to having it.
But in the old days it was more work or
or when you got it, you you didn't just get
the pure sugar. You received other you know, nutrients, and
you might not get it every day. Now it's an
(23:40):
entirely different story, right, Right, we have to worry about
being propped up until the next meal, right, especially industrialized nations.
I mean, it begins the first thing in the morning
for some folks with a nice sugary cereal or even
like some some wholesome oatmeal that has been just attacked
with a sugar spoon until it's just standing on end,
that's right. I mean, you really don't have to go
that far for it. Um. Scientists Ralph di Leone at Yale,
(24:02):
your university found that an animal sweet or fatty foods
can act a lot like drugs in the brains, which
which we've talked about, and there's growing evidence that eating
too much of these foods can cause long term changes
in the brain circuits that control eating behavior. UM. So
you know, both animal and human brains include special pathways
that make us feel good when we eat right and
(24:23):
really give when we eat sweet or fatty foods with
lots of calories. And he says that drug addiction is
really hijacking some of these pathways that evolve to promote
food intake for survival reasons. So we talked about dopamine
being released in the brain right when you when you
eat sugar, and we know that with addiction that if
you abuse a substance you know, whether it's sugar, if
(24:46):
you can call it that, you know, a substance UM
that is really truly addictive, or alcohol or cocaine, that
the more and more you do it, the more and
more your dopamine is released. But then your brain backs
off on really using it, actually stops releasing as much,
which then requires the user to go and sort of
double up on the substance to get the same sugar high, right,
(25:09):
So so a real sugar junkie is essentially chasing the
dragon after a while, to use the old Victorian terminology. Yeah, yeah, seriously,
I mean they're seeing this. There's actually a Teresa Rays.
She's a research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology
at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was part of
a team that gave mice a high fat diet from
the time that they are weaned until they reached twenty weeks,
(25:32):
so they gained significant amounts of weight and they became obese.
Then the researchers looked at the brain's pleasure centers um,
which are the areas that we know change in drug addiction,
and she said that what we found is that in
animals that were obese, there were really dramatic changes in
these areas of the brain that participate in telling us
how rewarding food is. The changes made these areas less
(25:54):
responsive to fatty foods, so no beast mouse would have
to eat more fat than a typical mass stick at
the same amount of pleasure. And some of these changes
didn't go away for these mice, which I think is
kind of fascinating is that that the whole idea, that
it really is changing the way that your brain functions.
And then you think about highly processed foods, right, I mean,
that's basically just concentrating sugar, you know, to to the
(26:18):
point where it's no longer just the sugar from my fruit.
It's something completely different and much more potent, right, I mean,
even if you you are just talking about the difference
between eating an apple and drinking a glass of apple juice, like,
there's a huge difference in how what you're taking in there.
But then you add this, uh like a chemical process
on top of that, and then these varying levels of
(26:39):
refinement you get even even farther and farther from the
the original source. Well and from from what I read that,
you know, when you've got it concentrated like this, the
message to your brain is a lot louder if I
can put that in air quotes, then something like a
simple sugar in a banana, and so you get a
bigger response from the rewards there. So it's it's essentially
(27:02):
like the difference between heroin and opium, or you know,
or say crack cocaine and cocaine. It's like a processed
um more impactful version of the of the original substance. Right,
that's really going to mess with your brain a lot more.
And again, just sugary sodas and juices can make a
huge difference. I ran across this study that showed the
(27:23):
teens who quit drinking sugar, soda and juices lost basically
a pound a month over six months. And it wasn't insane.
And that's not that's not factoring in other things that
could potentially cut out, but but just like really sugary
sodas and and the like. So yeah, I mean the
reason why candy is really actually a menaces because of
childhood obesity. And we know that from the CDC, the
(27:44):
Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta, that they have
put some pretty staggering statistics out there, and uh and
not counting situations where the brain is really then reprogrammed
um in terms of how much sugar it thinks the
body needs. It's actually not that difficult for the average
(28:05):
person to cut down on their their on their taste
for sweetness. Like I think I've seen the figure around
like three weeks it takes to sort of adjust your
taste to something say, even if it's something is mild
as cutting down from a normal soda to a diet
soda tastes weird at first, but they say, like three
weeks thereabouts, that's about how much time it takes to
(28:26):
get used to the new flavor, right, right, which makes sense,
But you know, it's it's it's a matter of being
aware of it and taking out. But when you know,
in Forks Ever Knives, they talked about the childhood obesity rate,
and they were actually saying that the coming generation will
have a shorter lifespan than ours, which is kind of like, ohh,
I mean, I haven't gone in fact checked the movie,
(28:48):
but I will say that when from what the CDC says,
they said, child childhood obesity has more than tripled in
the past thirty years because of all these highly processed foods, right,
and because of high fructous corn syrup, and the percentage
of children age six to eleven years United States who
are a beasts increased from seven percent in nineteen eighty
two nearly in two thousand eight. Similarly, the percentage of
(29:11):
adolescents aged twelve to nineteen who are a beast increased
from five percent to eight percent. Over the same period.
So you know, in two thousand and eight, we have
more than one third of children and adolescents who are
overweight or abase. Yeah, and the long term health effects,
you know, obviously are are many. And uh, I mean
we're talking about increased incidences of certain cancers, type two, diabetes, uh,
(29:35):
kidney problems, pancreas list goes on and on. It's kind
of pressing. Then you mean to bring candy down like this? Well,
it leads to the ultimate question here, and that is,
Halloween is approaching. If you're listening to this at the
publication time, and even if you're not, Halloween's gonna roll
around again. And if not Halloween, then Easter or any
any of the various holidays that have some sort of
marketed candy associated with them, which is pretty much every holiday.
(29:59):
Uh So, do you give the kids Halloween candy? Do
they get to have the candy? Do you try and
stop them? Do you dare try and stop them with
their strange little zombie minds? Does your house get egged
because you give out apples or toothbrushes? Yeah? Don't you
know anybody the neighbor that never came out a toothbrush? No,
(30:20):
my dad was a dentist, and we didn't give out
the toothbrushes. We gave out candy. But then again, as
a dentist, you kind of have in a center give
out candy. I guess, yeah, yeah, that's what your dad
was like. Here you go, there's the it's the really
sweet yuh. I'll see at the office. There you go. Well,
let me reach into the Halloween bag here and get
some listener mail. Have a couple of interesting ones, and
(30:42):
the first one does relate to the chloec Abot. Would
you describe the chloekabot? That's just a refresh. I can't
remember the artists, but them del Vo, okay, fim Delvoy
who who created this chloec a bot and put it
in a really sterile environment, basically put it in a
(31:04):
museum with like, you know, stark white walls around it.
And so I can't remember how long this actual bot was,
but I'm I'm going to say, like, I don't know,
maybe twelve feet or something like that. And he would
feed he had a chef actually prepare meals for the
cloak a bat and feed it regularly, and then he
would add some enzymes, some acids, basically trying to replicate
(31:27):
the conditions in your stomach and lo and behold that
cloak a bot would produce coo like every two hours
or so, No, not actually every two hours because it
was mimicking the human digestion, but anyway would then produce
actual pooh, and then people in the museum would come
and look at it and they could buy the samples. Well, yeah,
(31:47):
it's it really blew our minds when we find out
found out about it, because then it also delivers on
earlier Victorian attempts or aspirations of mimicking the human bottom
and by chemical active digestions with the machine. And this
guy comes along and and nails it with horrifying results.
But of course we just had pictures to go on
(32:08):
and uh, we have to depend on other people to
actually smell the exhibit for us, and our listener, Bernard
from Australia, does just that. He writes, listen to your
podcast on the pooping duck. I have witnessed of them
Delvo's cloaca professional in action at the Mona Museum in Hobart, Tasmania.
Uh picks I took below. They feed it lettuce apparently,
(32:29):
and at three pm every day it does its thing.
I can confirm the smell is realistic almost there's something
not quite right and disturbing about the smell. Maybe that
was all in my mind. As it comes out of
the out of the little glass plate it falls on,
rotates in a circular pattern to create a mr whippy
like soft serve. Uh. There were lots of kids there
and none of them cried. None of them laughed either. Um,
(32:53):
and then he has on another subject. Was standing on
a rock a couple of feet in diameter a few
yards out into a lake fishing. Once a platypus swam
up and circle the rock against it a few times,
then swam away. I have seen them from a distance
many times, but that was special. I was just blown
away by that because it's two really cool things, right,
like we're fans, which is pretty weird and has a
cloak yes, thank you, and then yep, and just right
(33:16):
around back to actually seeing the kaka bought in person
and then sending his photos. I couldn't have end. I mean, honestly,
it looks like a mad scientists laboratory. Um. This looks
to be like five hanging vessels right with all sorts
of tubes that are coming from it. I'm assuming that
(33:37):
this is the this is the junk that they put
in there to actually break down the food and make
it into feces um. And it's hanging from a track.
It is horrific looking. And then the soft serve is
that comes out of the shoot onto this plate. I
can't believe we're making me describe this UM and it
kind of looks a little bit like Plato. But anyway, hey,
(34:01):
we're always game to putting these up on Facebook, and
so so definitely thank you Bernard for writing in UM
not only to share the pictures, but also to to
describe your first hand experience with this strange and fascinating exhibit.
I mean, we were kind of recoil and horror from it,
but it is, it is a very fascinating piece of art. Like,
it's not this dude is create obviously creating UM art
(34:23):
that is that is shocking, that's going to evoke a
certain response from the viewer. But but it's intelligent work.
It's not just it's not just messing. She is serious
about excrement, this artist. Let's see, we have another email
here in response to an older episode we did UM
nine nine and nine Birthday Candles. Writer Evan writes in
(34:44):
and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, but mostly Robert because
it has to do with Dune. I realize that the
tie in with the N nine Birthdays Channel podcast in
Doom may have been a little too heady nerdy for
most listeners, but the story has significant relevance to the podcast,
particularly in terms of maturity in the later parts of
the Dune series. The character the Letto the Second undergoes
the transformation to make him part man, part sandworm. He
(35:07):
does this so that he can extend his life expectancy
to an indefinite period of time. He states that the
problems humanity has a result of typical human life expectancy
and then and that makes them particularly vulnerable. If they
were able to naturally live longer, they might gain a
more far sighted perspective and give up or change their ways,
since a whole race can't do that. Letter the Second
undergoes this transformation and purposely represses almost every aspect of
(35:31):
the human race in an effort to build in a
race memory of tyranny. By doing so, he was able
to mature the entirety of humanity because they despised him,
so they underwent an exponential expansion when he died, making
it so that he they would be virtually impossible to
wipe out the Golden Path Man. The saddest part about
this is that Frank Herbert died before he could continue
(35:52):
the series. If he could have lived to be a
few hundred years old, US fans would have been able
to see his vision come to print instead of his
son's attempts to fulfill and change that vision. Great podcast.
Thanks for the Dune references. So yeah, indeed, the U
the later books, I mean, the first book, in my
opinion is is the best. Uh and then from there
(36:12):
Frank Herbert began to expand this even more elaborate story.
And at one point Letto does change into this enormous
sandworm human hybrid that's featured prominently on the cover art
for Emperor of Dune and always intrigued me as a
child long before I actually read it. Um and there's
in that particular volume is choked with all of a
lot of like really cool existential ponderings about the state
(36:35):
of humanity, the long term survival of the human race.
Uh So, so indeed, thanks Heavan for writing in about
that and raising that point in regard to the Dune series,
and it kind of makes me want to read the
first book again. All right. I just keep thinking of Sting.
That's a non Dooner, That's that's my only reference. And
then I start thinking, what if what if Sting were
(36:55):
to live to be a thousand years old? Would he
still be practicing tan trick yoga, h and sacks? Would
anybody want to see them? I don't. I'm sure there
would be a market for it somewhere, but there's no
wrong with There's no problem with the market. Yeah, there's
no there's no problem with appreciating the movie Dune. It's
(37:15):
an imperfect adaptation, for sure. It has some some definite flaws.
It's kind of boring, but it's also got some some
serious flare and moments. It's got some great costumes and
uh even you know, as a Dune fan, you can't
help but like something about it. Right, But you're saying
the books are a richer experience, Well, the first book
is Richard's right, It's it's complicated. Fine, then I'm just
(37:37):
gonna read the first one enough rest Well, the second
one pretty good too. Anyway, if you have some thoughts
to share it with us. They may relate to candy,
They may relate to cooping robots. They may relate to
the Dune series. Right in let us know you, especially
on the candy and the whole staying thing. Yeah, I mean,
but you know, not together unless you have a candy
(37:58):
sting story that might be it. Now. You can of
course find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
mind on both of those, and you can always drop
us a line at blow the Mind at house stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(38:21):
of tomorrow.
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