November 27, 2014 • 40 mins
What does comfort mean to you? Thanksgiving dinner? A cup of tomato soup and a warm blanket? In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie examine the particulars of comfort, why we crave it and what happens when we have too much of a good thing.
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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 Douglass. And
if we're rolling into the Thanksgiving season here once again
for those of you celebrate Thanksgiving, we thought we would
roll out an old favorite here that deals with the
(00:25):
science of something that we're supposedly in the midstop here Thanksgiving,
and that is comfort and mainly comfort food, right, although
some of us will have some comfort from our family
members and friends and some of us won't. And you
are submitting yourself to this tradition, and we thought, well, heck,
why don't you share this a little bit that we found.
(00:45):
And it's all about leftover turkey and lasik surgery. Yes, yes,
the amazing connection between the origins of lasic surgery and
your Thanksgiving turkey. Well, let's travel back to the day
after Thanksgiving and Rangoswami Shri Shrine of Boston, who is
a researcher at IBMS, Thomas J. Watson. J. Watson, we
(01:09):
know that research center in New York had brought some
turkey with him to work the next day, right, right,
So he's looking for the the just the right tissue
to experiment on. And then lo and behold, there it is. Yes,
he and his fellow researchers, they found this turkey to
be the absolute perfect tissue to try out a new tool,
(01:30):
which was an argon fluoride or a r f X
nim Er laser. So what did he do. He blasted
his leftover turkey with ten nanosecond pulses of light from
this laser. And and they all had that big Eureka
moment because they realized that it could deliver a clean
incision mark and and the rest is really lasik surgery history.
(01:54):
There you go. So you think about that at the
thanks even dinner table or the next time you go
under the uh the laser for a little lasic surgery yourself.
I was, I was just thinking, I don't know, maybe
this is something that would be uncomfortable at the dinner table.
You know, you're tucking into your turkey and someone's all like, yeah,
lasic eye surgery, the correct incision, and then every incision
(02:14):
into the turkey becomes on some level insertion into an eyeball.
Yeah yeah, do that share this story? All? Right? So
here we go. We're talking about comfort, and this is
certainly a season of comfort, but comfort food, the feeling
of comfort is something that we we crave, that we
seek out at various times throughout the years. So so
(02:37):
don't run away. If you were listening to this in July,
that's right, because you never know, in Jela you might
need a bit of comfort, cold comfort at that point
from your air conditioner. But um yeah, I mean what
I think about comfort. I think about quilts, I think
about hot cocoa, and I think that some people are
drawn more to comfort than other people. M yeah, I'm
(02:58):
probably about you know, halfway there, doesn't you know. Sure,
I'll take some comfort, but I don't need it. I
mean I really like comfort. I mean I'm pro comfort
because for me, I probably think, you know, and like
a nice warm blanket, that's good, cat on your lap,
that's good hot beverage of some kind. I guess the
comfort I do tend to think of it especially something
(03:21):
I seek out during colder months. Um yeah, which which
also brings to mind, like like chicken soup, something that
I don't actually nobody really likes chicken soup. I mean,
my wife makes delicious chicken soup, but for the most part.
You're coming at chicken soup out of a sense of
more than just wanting to taste, but you want all
the emotions that come with it and all the all
(03:41):
the ideas about chicken soup that exists culturally. You know.
So already we've talked about several different aspects of comfort,
because really you've got the tactile part of it, and
then you've got the food part of it, and then
the psychology that sort of jells all of it together. Yeah,
because what does it ultimately breakdown to? Um afkan neuroscientists
and they'll say it all comes down to it being
the opposite of stress, which is pretty broad. But yeah,
(04:04):
I think of a thing of time you've been stressed,
thing of the time when you've been comfortable. They're pretty
much polar opposites. Nobody's sitting around biting their nails and
guzzling chicken soup with a blanket wrapped around them while
they watched Gilmore Girls Marathon on TV or something, right,
I mean, it's it's all about very specific and there's
another aspect because I I know somebody who's who's who
that remember that was their comfort thing, and certainly that's
(04:27):
another aspect of comfort is is media. You know, It's
like there'll be certain certain albums you might put on.
There was like, Yeah, I'm gonna put on some Boards
of Canada and that's for me a very that's a
very comfort minded soundtrack to plug into. Or for some
people it is a Gilmore's Girl Marathon, you know, something
that they that really serves as kind of a replacement
(04:47):
social engagements. Well, for me, Little House from the Prairie. Yeah,
Michael Landon, all the schmaltz, Michael Landon it could ever want,
because when the world seems cruel and unfair, Michael Landon
is there for you. So what we're talking about are
three principles of comfort, security, reward and connectedness. So I'm
just feeling connected to your fellow man, which might have
(05:09):
something to do with Michael Landon right. Um, And each
of these principles of comfort activate different parts of our brains.
So it would make sense that you have this sort
of big idea of comfort having to do with the tactile,
having to do with food, having to do with music, media, um,
(05:29):
all being rolled up into this one big thing that
comes at the end of November, you know, into our
living rooms. And Thanksgiving. And that's really why we wanted
to cover this topic, because you think about Thanksgiving and
ultimately you think about not just family conflict and uncomfortable
silence around the table, but comfort foods to help ameliorate
(05:50):
all of those feelings of tension with your family. Yes,
uh and comfort food It's it's interesting when you start
really thinking about not only what it means to you,
because everyone's got their comfort foods, you know, and and
certainly there are some comfort foods that you think of
a lot. And you think of things like fried chickens
a comfort food or various uh you know, or a
casserole or what have you. Um, So a lot of
(06:11):
times it's something that your mom made or whoever raised you,
something you grew up with, where when you eat it,
it takes you back to that feeling of safety that
you had as a child being provided for. But then
also a lot of it is cultural to uh. You
say you're of Italian heritage, then your comfort food might
be uh, not not only your mother's food, but your
mother's spaghetti or than anybody's uh particular spaghetti recipe, or
(06:34):
if you're of German heritage, and maybe it's that particular
schnitzel that really does it for you. It really takes
you back and and and and it might be I mean,
God help you. Of schnitzel is what you eat every day.
So it's so it's something that is also a treat.
It's something you don't normally have, and then when you
do have it, it comes in with all this cultural
and personal resonance. It's true if you are reaching out
for a blood sausage and you're German heritage, this might
(06:57):
be just the fix that you need to pick up
your day. Um. Psychologists call comfort food a social surrogate,
as as you've already pointed out in different ways. And
it's interesting because if you look at studies concerning food
and comfort you will find a bevy of them. And
one of the ones that I thought was really interesting
is a study that had to do with people feeling
(07:19):
less lonely after just writing about food. Okay, they didn't
consume anything, and it was specific to comfort food. All right,
This is the two thousand eleven University of Buffalo study.
And so they bring in a bunch of people, set
them down and said, hey, I want you to write
a little bit about a fight that you had with
with somebody that the relationship with you. I imagine that
(07:40):
most of these are gonna involve like previous relationships or
current spouses that kind of thing, uh, current girlfriend's boyfriends, etcetera.
So they write about this painful, awkward, or traumatic episode
and then put your pencils down now six minutes later,
six minutes later, and now let's flip over the page,
and I want you to write to start right about
about some some comfort foods and about the fried chicken
(08:03):
or the blood sauzage or whatever it may be, right
about some food. Yeah, that's right. Some people were asked
to write about comfort food while other people were asked
to write about a new food experience. Right. So obviously
you see right there, the new food experience doesn't have
all the sorts of emotional attachments to it because it's
a new experience that's not related back to mom or childhood. So,
of course, what do you think the results were? Uh,
(08:25):
the results are probably going to be the comfort food
is the one that really makes the difference in most
of these. Yeah, that's right. What they did is they
took all of the participants took a test after they
wrote about food when they filled out this questionnaire about loneliness.
It was found that the comfort food, just thinking about
it and writing about it helped those people to self
adjust their moods. Now, there's an important caveat here, and
(08:47):
that is that, uh, generally, the individuals who were aided
by the food, they were in a more or less
good relationship that they just had some some either fighting
in the past or or just a little you know,
fighting in the present. So it's not a situation where
you're going through like you just murdered your spouse the
night before and then for some reason you came in
to do this study and you thought about mashed potatoes
(09:08):
and it fixed everything. No, not not quite. It's not
that powerful. But certainly if you're like, oh, I really
love my wife, but we we just we keep fighting
over what color of the carpet should be. I think
it should be hot pink. She thinks it should be
neon green. We can't come to a decision. We keep
fighting mashed potatoes. Oh what was I What was I
upset about? Well, and I think it's just interesting because
we've talked about this before, but how just thinking about
(09:29):
things can really change your brain. And we talked about
this before, even in writers who are writing about their
characters and people who are reading of novels that they're
mirror neurons began to activate as though they were throwing
the ball or they were running to to escape someone. So, UM,
what I started to think about is that's really powerful
(09:51):
because a lot of these comfort foods involve fat. And
there's another study that actually looks at fatty foods and
moods and this was UH in the Netherlands, and what
they were doing is they were taking twelve healthy individuals
and they all underwent four forty minute fmr I tests
(10:12):
while listening to music or viewing pictures that induced sad emotions. Now,
at the same time, all of these participants received an
infusion of either sailing or fatty acids directly into their stomachs.
This is where that the experiment really goes off the rails,
because the other one it's like, Oh, you're writing something
and thinking about food or or I can imagine signing
up for the study and thinking, oh, or they're just
(10:32):
gonna show at me like a large Vontarier film and
then feed me some mashur tases. But no, they're going
to pump something directly into my stomach after I watch it.
That's in addition to the large Montreier. Yeah yeah, but
what kind of movie theater is that? Yeah? Yeah, I
wonder if they did show Melancolio through them, because that
would be a really great film to try to and
induce sadness. I have to say, um, but all all
(10:54):
of the participants had completed a twelve hour fast, so
they came with empty stomachs, and they had no idea
what it was that was being put into their stomachs. Okay,
So the results indicated that subjects who received the fatty
infusion were less sad when viewing sad pictures or listening
to sad music. And then the fmm f m r
I tests confirmed fewer neural responses to sadness in several
(11:17):
areas of the brain in this group. Wow. Again, I'm
still overwhelmed just by the weirdness of the experiment though.
But but I guess it was important because they wanted
to cut out the actual eating of the food, and
I don't know, maybe they just really wanted to pump
stuff directly into the gut. Well, and what they were
also trying to do is to say, hey, there's it's
not just the mind body link. It is the body
(11:38):
mind link. And we've talked about this before in our
podcast about whether or not our guts are really our
second brains, right, And then of course when we're they
really wanted to look at the nutritional intake and when
you eat food. I mean, it's a no brainer, but
there's a lot going on. It's about it's about smelling
the food that you're eating. It's about the texture. I
mentioned mashed potatoes, and it's true a lot of a
lot of the comfort foods you encounter, it's like a
(11:59):
cream me kind of consistency to it. Um. I mean,
some people may have beef jerky as a comfort food,
that's great, but a lot of comfort foods are kind
of like a smooth, easy to eat kind of a thing.
And again just having a story about that food as well.
You can circumvent that by just pumping stuff directly into
the stomach. It's also worth noting on that two thousand
eleven University of Buffalo study, they also had another experiment
(12:21):
where they found that eating chicken soup in the lab
made people think more about relationships. If they consider chicken
soup to be a comfort food, which again comes down
to my argument that chicken soup, even when it's really good,
isn't really great because it's chicken soup. That's all about
the idea of it. Because like when I think of
chicken soup, I think of I'm I was, I'm feeling bad,
I'm feeling I mean, you know, I'm under the weather,
(12:43):
and like my mom makes me chicken soup. It's like
it's the you can taste the love, right, It's somebody
making the time, taking the time to make this dish.
That is all about please get better and feel better
because someone loves you. And I feel the same way,
like when my wife makes it for me when I
whenever i'm ill. You know what's funny about that is
my mom doesn't cook, never really has cooked. So but
(13:03):
I have the same feelings about chicken soup even though
I don't consume it now because she make it. No,
I was gonna say, I can look at a can
of Campbell's, I feel a little warm cockles in the
heart there. Well yeah, well, you know I think my
mom I could be wrong in this, and I'm sure
she'll correct me when she hears this, But I think
it would like she would do like canned chicken soup
as well, because I mean she was busy as you did.
I'm trying to make a bunch of you know, who
(13:25):
has time to make like chicken stock from scratch in
this day in war and day and age. But I'm
pretty sure that was canned as well. But still it
was this was a thing that you had when you
were sick, and if you had it and then somebody
loved you enough to at least open a can. And
that was the truth, not boiled down the chicken carcass
for hours and create fresh chicken stock. Hey man, she
she did many other things, I would say to help
(13:47):
me feel better. And I should also mention that, alright.
The eleven University of Bubble study, you mentioned the distinction
between people writing about new food experiences and people writing
about food experiences that they had all this comfort and
all these creations for. But in some cases you do
encounter people's comfort foods that are associated with new discoveries,
because ultimately, like food is his very personal and also
(14:10):
kind of selfish thing, you know, So in some cases
it will be something that that we see as a
personal discovery. One of the articles I was looking at.
I think it was a psychology today they mentioned, um,
the writer's husband went crazy for Sharako, like Sharaka on anything,
it was a comfort food. Um. And certainly you get
some spicy and some sweet in there, and sharak is amazing.
But it's his whole thing was that this was something
(14:31):
he had discovered, This was something that was totally totally
him and didn't necessarily have a connection with with his
upbringing or his past. No, he just discovered that it
was making the reward part of his brain go ding
ding ding, really because he was getting a little bit
euphoric with a spice there. Um. And I also think
that too with new experiences and food. You know, you'll
pin that a lot of times to travel. So you know,
(14:53):
sometimes I'll think about things that I've eaten and I
will elevate them to the highest level because I think, oh,
that have that in Italy or whatever, and it may
not even actually be that great. Yeah, but you still,
again it comes down to why pump this stuff directly
into the the test subject stomach, Because again, food comes
to us with a story, food comes as to us
with a smell, with a texture, and all of these
(15:14):
things that go beyond near nutrition, and what we're talking
about here too is really gaming a sense of comfort.
Of course, there is the food industry which is really
interesting in this idea of tweaking moods through food. At
the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, Karina Martinez
Majorga presented the latest findings from her ongoing study of
(15:37):
the effect of various food flavors on mood. And it
turns out that molecules in chocolate, a variety of berries,
and then foods containing Omega three fatty acids positively affect mood.
Um it was found, and this is really interesting. It
was found that the chemical components of these food flavors
are structurally similar to something called valporic acid, and this
(15:59):
is the primary ingredient. It's several pharmaceutical mood stabilizers. Of course.
The research was supported in part by a food flavor company,
France based uh Roberte uh Flavors, and the scientists say
that food industry companies are joining pharmaceutical companies in the
quest for natural mood boosters. So they're not intending this
(16:23):
as a replacement for you know, for treating clinical depression,
but they are saying like, maybe this could give you
a little extra pep in your step, right, I mean, well,
certainly there are a lot of fine arguments out there
that that a lot of problems with health and even
mental health um to a certain degree, can be treated
through a proper diet and an informed diet. But again, yeah,
(16:45):
I think of what comfort foods tend to be. They
didn't be soft, They can't be sweet, smooth, salty, and
uh like we mentioned sugar and starch. They spur serotonin,
your transmitter known to increase a sense of well being,
like prozac. Um Salty foods for oxytocin, the cuttle chemical
that we talk about a lot that we also get
from hugs and orgasm. So you know that's that's that
(17:07):
explains the saltiness there. Um fat is a good bomb
for the fear of starvation. So again we think back
to our naked caveman running through the Sengetti chase by
savor tooth tigers, the scenario that may or may not
actually pan out. Actually I mean on that too much,
but but still the idea that on a very primal level,
(17:27):
we are creatures that are having to run fast to
get away from something or run fast to catch something.
We need the energy, we need the fat. So that's
why the fat is such a bomb for fear we're
not gonna starve, if we're not going to be eaten
on a very primitive level. You know that drives home well.
And you know, it's interesting that you mentioned the fat
because it takes me back to the podcast that we
did on gluttony and all of that research about how
(17:49):
when we lose weight, our body actually begins to game
the body to to try to get back at the
old level because of this fear of losing fat. And
in fact, people who lose I think it was something
like of their body weight have to exercise even harder
than their counterpart who didn't lose weight, but they weigh
(18:09):
the same amount um simply because the body won't burn
as many calories because again it wants to get back
to that set weight that it knows, and it also
begins to crave more fatty foods. Yeah, and we've, as
we've discussed before and as a and as countless food
documentaries point out, we live in an age now where
all the fat you want just walk down to the
(18:30):
storm by all of the salty you want i'll sweet
you want. Generally, all these things are actually available in
one bag at your local fast food restaurant. But of
course we didn't evolve into that scenario. You know, that's
not that's not the natural availability of these various elements. Yeah.
I actually saw something the other day. It was it
was about weight loss and a group of people who
had lost weight, and it said we'll work for less food.
(18:54):
And I thought, well, if that's not a commentary on
the abundance of food in the world right now, as
well as a commentaryans mother stuff, I don't know what
is um. Then again, we're talking about this concept of
gaming comfort, and you guys out there are probably familiar
with this study because I think it got a lot
of play, But this idea that comfort also comes externally
(19:17):
so and actually affects our moods in ways that we
might just make favorable decisions about others. And what I'm
talking about is um the warm Mug of liquid study.
Do you know when I'm talking about where the participants
were given a warm mug of coffee, I believe to
hold just for a few moments and to think about
(19:39):
someone that they may not have particularly have warm feelings
about but talk about them as they were holding the
warm cup. And then participants were given uh an iced
coffee to hold. Okay, so now they were holding something
that's cold. And so turns out that those people who
(20:01):
held the months of hot Joe, we're much more likely
to perceive others as having warmer personality traits. Well, this
is it. Basically, this is the hot coco phenomenon here
because with hot cocoa, well, first of all, you getting
that chocolate that's sweets, so you're you're turning on some
various neuro transmitters there. Uh. Some people like like their
their hot chocolate little salty, so you've got that going on, uh,
(20:24):
giving you a little little oxy cocin. And then of
course it is a warm mug of goodness that you're
having generally with friends or family or loved ones while
you're interacting with them. So it tends to uh to
color an even warmer interpersonal relationship. Well, and you know,
it could be anybody that in this this study, which
is really interesting, they got to be talking about co worker,
(20:44):
They could be talking about their neighbor, or they could
be talking about a family member. And this is one
of those examples that neuroscientists David Eagleman talks about when
he questions whether or not we actually have free will.
And what I mean is that if a warm mug
of coffee subconsciously makes you feel better about the person
you're talking to while you're holding the coffee, um, than
(21:07):
what sort of decisions might follow after that interaction or
during that interaction. Well, this, this reminds me, actually reminds
me of times where we've dragged our recorder Matt in here,
our editor, producer, director general, awesome m a man of
our times, and sometimes we drag him in a a ridiculous
hours to try and get an episode recorded. And sometimes
(21:29):
you'll you'll give him coffee and I thought you were
just being nice, but you were manipulating him by giving
him this warm beverage so that he can't help but
think will warm thoughts than about us and not hate
us for dragging him in it like five in the morning.
Thanks for taking that down, man, No, really it was.
It's all coming from my heart, my warm, warm heart.
(21:50):
But still, this is a good This is a good
trick that we should all exploit in our lives. You're
going in for a tough meeting or you want to
just go for a job interview, bring some hot coffee,
some hot coco something and some hot tea, anything that'll
that'll get the room warm. And do not let that
job interview take place outside on a November day. Okay.
So if you doubt this idea that a warm beverage
(22:11):
or even just the warmth itself doesn't affect how we feel, um,
consider a study by Harry Harlow involving primates. Oh yes,
this is the great one where they it was with maccaques,
I believe, and and you've seen the photos because there terrifying, depressing,
depressing where they have the baby macaques and they're they're
(22:33):
they're given the choice of two or they tested out
in two different environments. One there's this metal framework mother
that that is there to distribute milk through a nipple, right,
and it's just this metal framework. And then there there's
nothing monkey is about it. Ye vaguely monkey shaped, I
guess if you really want to get creative. But for
the most part it's like metal thing with a nipple
(22:54):
that feeds baby monkey. But then then the other part
of the test is cover that with fur and you
have a sort of fake monkey with a nipple. It's
it's soft, it's vaguely monkey ish, but it's covered in fur.
And which one do you think the macaques prefer? Now?
This one that had the fur. The cloth was heated
with a light bulb as well. Yes, yes, so it's
not soft and furry but warm. So the surrogate that
(23:18):
gets the most play is, of course the one that
has the light bulb in it. Yeah, because it turns
out that the baby maccaques, although they would run and
they would get the milk from the other surrogate when
they were really hungry, they prefer to spend time with
the warm surrogate and cling to it, which tells you
that there's there's something just inherent to this feeling of
(23:40):
warmth and comfort and our ability to survive. And it
reminds me of of a study you sent me as
we were looking into this podcast as well about the
whole cold hands warm heart thing, which I commit I'd
never heard that saying, but apparently it's a saying cold hands,
warm heart. There's a song too, really, but I can't remember,
but it comes on her system every once in a while. Okay, well,
(24:01):
but the idea is, if if I guess if you
shake hands with somebody has a really cold hand, it's
okay because it means their heart is so warm, they're
so full of warmth in their heart they can love
for their fellow man. That is actually affecting blood flow
to their to their limbs apparently, which I've never heard
because because it sounds ridiculous to me, because it sounds
like people with cold fish hands. This is like propaganda
(24:24):
they put out, you know, like like C. E. O
S and whatnot, where they're like, oh, people think I'm
I'm horrible just because my hand is a piece of
impersonal ice that I shove it people. Uh, maybe we
should get some some some data out there that the opposite.
We don't normally, um shake, but I think we should
right now. The hand is cold. So everything you just
(24:45):
describe my friend is me. And I will tell you
that even before I knew him, at the song cold heart,
cold heart, warm hands, I used to say to my husband,
cold heart, warm hands. Um. So it turns out you
were wrong in science, is there because because because in
the study they actually looked into it too. I was
in an eight researchers, Lawrence Williams and John bra They
actually debunked this and then found that that physical warmth
(25:06):
activates concepts of interpersonal warmth. And it's very much in
keeping with the whole iron mother fury warm mother scenario.
I know, I know, so it boils down to actually
pour circulation for me um. But but I thought it
was interesting because I think that in the article, the
question was whether or not people would perceive your handshake,
your your cold, dead handshake as is in a negative
(25:29):
light and then inform their feelings about you that way,
much in the way that the mug of warm coffee
made people feel friendlier. Couldn't do the opposite. So here's
another idea to game the system. Next time you go
into a job interview or whatnot, if you know that
you have the cold hands, or even just to be
on the safe side, do a little palm rubbing there,
(25:50):
get it all warmed up, and then then impress them
with your loving handshake. That's what I do before I
hugged my daughter so that she doesn't run in terror
from me. We should probably take a break when we
get back. We're going to talk about automating comfort. All right,
(26:10):
we're back. So we were talking about about the experiment
with maccaques about the the iron mother that's cold and
loveless and the the lightbulb powered furry mother that all
the little maccaques go crazy for. And of course we've
discussed this a little bit in the past. We've talked
about robots. Yeah, we've talked about robots hugging you. And
(26:32):
the reason is is because hugging is obviously very comforting.
In fact, one study showed that when people engage in
a hug for twenty seconds or longer, that actually reduces
their courters all levels, their stress levels pretty significantly. And
this is why you you said you always hold your
husband in for twenty seconds, like count to twenty and
don't let him escape until you hit twenty, Yeah, which
(26:53):
he kind of tries to wriggle from, but then he
lovingly submits to my embrace. But yeah, this is a
really quick life hack. So of course, what do we
do whenever we we are trying to figure out something
that we do human wise, we look through the robots
to see if we can do something similar. And there's
something called the hug shirt, which I believe we've talked
(27:14):
about before. This is a bluetooth enabled shirt made by
the UK's cute circuit and it uses embedded sensors and
actuators to simulate a hug. Yes, so you can get
the same effect. Um, there is the Hug machine, which
was designed by Temple Grandon and um that is a
deep pressure device designed to calm hyper sensitive people. Yes,
(27:36):
and that's so, by the way, the Temple grand In movie,
great movie. I highly recommend that. Yeah, that is really great.
I can who's the actress who played that, Um, Claire Danes, right, yeah,
who a lot of you know from Homeland. She's yeah, yeah,
she did a phenomenal job in that. Um. So there
are these different ways that we have tried to create
the hug. But what do you do if you're beyond
(28:00):
the hug, if you're in a situation where you are
actually taking the last breaths of life and you need comfort.
Well a few of possibilities come to mind, self hug,
which may not be possible, and that might not actually
work because generally the self hug is something you do
just to convince other people that you're making out with
somebody when your tent right. Uh. And then I guess
(28:22):
you could if you had like say that, you could
if you had a pet python. You could unleash the
python on you in those final moments because get a
combination of things there, embrace quick demise and uh, and
then you also ultimately feed a giant snake. But but
you're probably but what you're getting at here, I'm sure,
(28:43):
is that we should have a robot that that enters
into the scenario, that enters the room of our dying
and actually tends to our final emotional needs. Yep. This
is the Last Moment Bought or the end of life
care machine, which was made by artist in designer Dan Chin.
He made this because he wanted to try to present
an extreme example of a world where machines fill in
(29:07):
for humans. And now keep in mind too that we've
talked about caregiving robots, so that art, this is his
idea is is I'm going to create some art that's
going to generate discussion. It's still very much in keeping
with stuff that's going on today because we've talked about
robots that are being designed to help elderly people around,
to help them use the restroom, and not only the
elder really, but injured individuals as well, to care for
(29:30):
them in a hospital environment. So it's art, but it's
it's like all great art. It has a lot of
ties into our real current position and our near future reality.
Um it is Uh, I think the robot in the
art installation is incredibly depressing. Yes, well that's your argument.
(29:51):
I I interpreted it differently. Um, and we should we
should describe what. Um. So, you're dying, all right, You're
in this hospital room by yourself. That's important to note here.
You're in this room by yourself, and then in your
your your signs are being monitored by this machine. And
suddenly it realizes that you or your death is imminent.
(30:12):
So what happens. It turns on the last moment robot
and it wheels itself over to you there and you're
you're soon to be deathbed and and what does it do? Well,
first of all, it actually embraces you a little bit.
There are some hug mechanics that go on. It kind
of looks like it's rolling dough out of your arm.
But the idea is that it's supposed to feel like
(30:33):
like an embrace, like somebody's roping your arm. But now
we're talking about this plastic kind of arm thing. It doesn't.
There's nothing very human looking about it. It's all about
the sensation. And then the robot actually speaks to you.
The robots says, I am the last Moment Robot. I
am here to help you and guide you through your
last moment on Earth. I am sorry that your family
(30:54):
and friends can't be with you right now, but don't
be afraid. I am here to comfort you. You're not alone.
You are with me. Your family and friends love you
very much. They will remember you after you are gone. Sucker, No,
it actually kind of sounded like how For a second there,
I was going for a little bit of how, a
(31:15):
little bit of David. Yeah, okay, so what what do
you find comforting about that? Okay? So I actually like
just reading that, like I feel my heart strings. Kind
of not reading it out loud because it makes it
sound like I really love the son of my own voice,
but just reading it on the page. When I first
read the article about this piece, it connected with me,
you know, because I'm because it actually reminds me. I
(31:37):
mentioned Boards of Canada earlier. The UK Electronic do a
do a lot of very nostalgic, ethereal sounding electronic idem soundscapes.
They have a track called an Eagle in Your Mind
off the album music Has the Right Has the Right
to Children, and it's it's kind of a kind of
a somber piece at first, and then it and then
(31:58):
it picks up and there's a voice sample in there
where it's kind of a computer e voice. It says
I love you. And every time I hear that, even
though I know it's just a sample, there's something about
it where I'm like, oh, somebody loves me, you know
it like it it's still connects with you. And I
got that same feeling from from reading and in the
video hearing the last moment robots final words to the dying.
(32:18):
Even though it's just some sort of speech to text
kind of scenario going on there, it's still I feel
like it's still resonates with you, you know, Okay, I
understand that abstractly, but I still feel like it's such
a personal thing and you want to feel connected, right
because if you're drawing your last breaths here on earth,
wouldn't you want to feel as though you were somehow
(32:39):
pinned to the center of it in some way through
another person, through someone's eyes. To see the light go
out in someone's eyes is just an incredibly personal thing.
So I mean, you make it sound like it's it's
to be like it needs to like find a dying
person today and go look into their eyes when they die.
Oh no, no, no, no, I don't breathing their soul
and it's wonderful. Know What I mean is for the
(33:00):
person who is dying, for the person or persons who
are losing this person, it's uh to me, my mind
would be preferable to have the human connection. Okay, well,
I would imagine the human connection is ideal. Certainly, if
I were given the choice between saying goodbye or being
or or having a loved one tell me goodbye on
my death bed and a robot, I would probably go
(33:22):
with the human Uh. Though it should be said, at
least the robots keeping it together here, the robots like
a saint. The robots like a like a priest giving
you last riots that's done this many times before and
can at least fake being sincere about it while also
not losing it because you know you don't want you
also don't want the robot. There's probably not a setting
for the for the last moment robot where it just
(33:43):
loses it and it's like, oh, please, don't die and well,
maybe there is, because you know, if that were, if
that were to actually come to fruition, they would obviously
the people who created the robot would want to try
to simulate the experience so that you could draw as
much comfort from And some people might draw comfort from
the because the message of the robot, it's pretty straight.
But it's like, hey, you're dying. It's cool. Everyone does this.
(34:06):
You had a good life, everyone loved you, and now
it's time to turn it off. Yea, I'm just saying
I would feel jipped. I'd be like, really, you're the
last thing that I see. But but if the alternative, though,
think of if the alternative, though, is dying in a
room by yourself, or being vaguely attended to by an
overworked caregiver who may or may not be able to
(34:27):
muster some fake enthusiasm or legitimate enthusiasm. Enthusiasm isn't the
right word, um, compassion for for your last moments, then
I can see that the robot is being the preferred method. Okay, true, true. Um.
Here's one situation that I will get behind, though, and
this is this idea that you could seek a virtual psychologist.
(34:48):
And we've actually mentioned this before, but NASA in their
program called the Virtual Space Station Psychologist just came out
of It's for Your Pilot program to try to U
have some of their participants really reach out to this
virtual psychologist and gain some self help care. Yeah, it's
um It's essentially the idea we're talking about here is
(35:11):
you're on a long distance space journey, or you're in
space for a while. You may or may not. Maybe
you're alone. Maybe you're dealing with a small group of people,
but as we've discussed before, that's a very intimate environment,
and also you're dealing with a lot of biological funk
that's gonna be going on. Is your body adjust a
life in a semi waitless environment and the best cases
being locked away with a group of people's gonna get old.
(35:32):
But then throw in a lot of vomit and it's
just gonna get worse. So maybe you have a laptop
in a room. It's kind of like the confessional room
you know in all the reality shows where you go
in and you uh, either you talk to this thing
you actually have some back and forth interaction, or perhaps
it's more like a questionnaire multiple choice, like how are
you doing today? A for great, B for okay, or
(35:53):
C four I want to launch Carl out of the
airlock and uh, And then the the machine will ask
you why do you want to launch Carl out of
the airlock, and you're like, well, he's been I feel
like he's just been kind of cold recently, and I'm
reaching out to you know. A part of it is like,
let's get the astronaut actually processing some of this instead
of it said they're just brooding inside you. And then
(36:16):
also it could consuerably launch some some tips grounded in
actual psychology at you give you some text to read
about what you're feeling or what you should be feeling. Yeah,
the idea is that these virtual psychologists provide a problem
solving treatment. And so I'm not discounting, you know, flesh psychologist,
because I think there are many, many talented ones. But
(36:37):
some of the success that I think that happens in
UM therapy is that it's the talking Here. It's a
lot of people sort of talking through the problems and
in doing so finding areas that they need to work
on or areas that they can find solutions for. Because
if you've ever been if you've been to a therapist,
and U, and I highly recommend it if you if
(36:58):
you're even considering it, if you think maybe if you
go to a therapist for this, then do seriously consider
because it can be very helpful. But there's certainly there
are times where you might find yourself thinking, hey, this
isn't like on TV. This person is not telling me
how to solve my problems. A lot of this is
me talking through it and someone nodding and writing something
down and interjecting a little bit. It's easy for people
to make fun of that and belittle it and say,
(37:19):
like I I was just need doing all the work,
But that's kind of what's happening. It facilitates you actually
working through what you're feeling. Well, and ideally these this
program would have this sort of UM great sophisticated feedback
that you might get from from a human psychologist. UM
in the works. You know, hopefully this will be something
(37:39):
that will come online later. But I did want to
mention that twenty nine current and former astronauts have been
consulted for the project and the trial has shown pretty
good results in treating depression. And this is according to
James Cartraine. He's a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School
and uh, future test with firefighters and e m t
s could help launch a more wide bread use of
(38:00):
the self help software and eventually bring it to the public. Yeah.
And just a quick example from real life of actual
interpersonal tension causing problems for space flights. In a mission
on Russia's Solute seven space station was scrapped after colleagues
noticed the commander seemed uninterested in his work and spent
hours looking out of the window on the ship. And
(38:23):
in three years earlier mission on the same station was
somewhat hampered by tension between two astronauts, so also maybe
it was haunted. I don't know that that could be
a possible as well. Uh but no, I mean, I
guess that underscores the reason why you need to have
people feel as good as they can up there on
their missions, because obviously a lot of things could go wrong,
(38:45):
all right. So there you go a little a little
insight into comfort and what it is is it certainly
as you're seeking out comfort this holiday season or the next,
or just after a tough day at the office or
break up or whatever. Because we didn't even mention ice
cream after a breakup. It I mean that's another motif
that you run. You never did that. I don't understand
(39:05):
that because it is cold, yeah, but it's but it's
also fatty and sweet cold comfort yea. So I want
to leave that with just a couple of quotes here
about comfort and about our our search for comfort in life.
First of all, here's a little bit from C. S. Lewis.
He said, if you look for truth, you may find
comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you
will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap
(39:28):
and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end despair.
And then our good buddy Aristotle said, we live in deeds,
not years, in thoughts, not breaths, in feelings, not in
figures on a dial. We should not count time by
heart throbs. He most lives, who thinks, most feels, the noblest,
acts the best. So there you have it. Comfort food.
(39:54):
Why it matters to us what's going on when we
eat it while we keep coming back to it, and
what is it doing to our bodies? Indeed, uh, if
you want to share your favorite comfort food with us,
we would love to hear it, because we have a
whole litany of comfort things ourselves, and you can do
that by emailing us that blow the mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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 Douglass. And
if we're rolling into the Thanksgiving season here once again
for those of you celebrate Thanksgiving, we thought we would
roll out an old favorite here that deals with the
(00:25):
science of something that we're supposedly in the midstop here Thanksgiving,
and that is comfort and mainly comfort food, right, although
some of us will have some comfort from our family
members and friends and some of us won't. And you
are submitting yourself to this tradition, and we thought, well, heck,
why don't you share this a little bit that we found.
(00:45):
And it's all about leftover turkey and lasik surgery. Yes, yes,
the amazing connection between the origins of lasic surgery and
your Thanksgiving turkey. Well, let's travel back to the day
after Thanksgiving and Rangoswami Shri Shrine of Boston, who is
a researcher at IBMS, Thomas J. Watson. J. Watson, we
(01:09):
know that research center in New York had brought some
turkey with him to work the next day, right, right,
So he's looking for the the just the right tissue
to experiment on. And then lo and behold, there it is. Yes,
he and his fellow researchers, they found this turkey to
be the absolute perfect tissue to try out a new tool,
(01:30):
which was an argon fluoride or a r f X
nim Er laser. So what did he do. He blasted
his leftover turkey with ten nanosecond pulses of light from
this laser. And and they all had that big Eureka
moment because they realized that it could deliver a clean
incision mark and and the rest is really lasik surgery history.
(01:54):
There you go. So you think about that at the
thanks even dinner table or the next time you go
under the uh the laser for a little lasic surgery yourself.
I was, I was just thinking, I don't know, maybe
this is something that would be uncomfortable at the dinner table.
You know, you're tucking into your turkey and someone's all like, yeah,
lasic eye surgery, the correct incision, and then every incision
(02:14):
into the turkey becomes on some level insertion into an eyeball.
Yeah yeah, do that share this story? All? Right? So
here we go. We're talking about comfort, and this is
certainly a season of comfort, but comfort food, the feeling
of comfort is something that we we crave, that we
seek out at various times throughout the years. So so
(02:37):
don't run away. If you were listening to this in July,
that's right, because you never know, in Jela you might
need a bit of comfort, cold comfort at that point
from your air conditioner. But um yeah, I mean what
I think about comfort. I think about quilts, I think
about hot cocoa, and I think that some people are
drawn more to comfort than other people. M yeah, I'm
(02:58):
probably about you know, halfway there, doesn't you know. Sure,
I'll take some comfort, but I don't need it. I
mean I really like comfort. I mean I'm pro comfort
because for me, I probably think, you know, and like
a nice warm blanket, that's good, cat on your lap,
that's good hot beverage of some kind. I guess the
comfort I do tend to think of it especially something
(03:21):
I seek out during colder months. Um yeah, which which
also brings to mind, like like chicken soup, something that
I don't actually nobody really likes chicken soup. I mean,
my wife makes delicious chicken soup, but for the most part.
You're coming at chicken soup out of a sense of
more than just wanting to taste, but you want all
the emotions that come with it and all the all
(03:41):
the ideas about chicken soup that exists culturally. You know.
So already we've talked about several different aspects of comfort,
because really you've got the tactile part of it, and
then you've got the food part of it, and then
the psychology that sort of jells all of it together. Yeah,
because what does it ultimately breakdown to? Um afkan neuroscientists
and they'll say it all comes down to it being
the opposite of stress, which is pretty broad. But yeah,
(04:04):
I think of a thing of time you've been stressed,
thing of the time when you've been comfortable. They're pretty
much polar opposites. Nobody's sitting around biting their nails and
guzzling chicken soup with a blanket wrapped around them while
they watched Gilmore Girls Marathon on TV or something, right,
I mean, it's it's all about very specific and there's
another aspect because I I know somebody who's who's who
that remember that was their comfort thing, and certainly that's
(04:27):
another aspect of comfort is is media. You know, It's
like there'll be certain certain albums you might put on.
There was like, Yeah, I'm gonna put on some Boards
of Canada and that's for me a very that's a
very comfort minded soundtrack to plug into. Or for some
people it is a Gilmore's Girl Marathon, you know, something
that they that really serves as kind of a replacement
(04:47):
social engagements. Well, for me, Little House from the Prairie. Yeah,
Michael Landon, all the schmaltz, Michael Landon it could ever want,
because when the world seems cruel and unfair, Michael Landon
is there for you. So what we're talking about are
three principles of comfort, security, reward and connectedness. So I'm
just feeling connected to your fellow man, which might have
(05:09):
something to do with Michael Landon right. Um, And each
of these principles of comfort activate different parts of our brains.
So it would make sense that you have this sort
of big idea of comfort having to do with the tactile,
having to do with food, having to do with music, media, um,
(05:29):
all being rolled up into this one big thing that
comes at the end of November, you know, into our
living rooms. And Thanksgiving. And that's really why we wanted
to cover this topic, because you think about Thanksgiving and
ultimately you think about not just family conflict and uncomfortable
silence around the table, but comfort foods to help ameliorate
(05:50):
all of those feelings of tension with your family. Yes,
uh and comfort food It's it's interesting when you start
really thinking about not only what it means to you,
because everyone's got their comfort foods, you know, and and
certainly there are some comfort foods that you think of
a lot. And you think of things like fried chickens
a comfort food or various uh you know, or a
casserole or what have you. Um, So a lot of
(06:11):
times it's something that your mom made or whoever raised you,
something you grew up with, where when you eat it,
it takes you back to that feeling of safety that
you had as a child being provided for. But then
also a lot of it is cultural to uh. You
say you're of Italian heritage, then your comfort food might
be uh, not not only your mother's food, but your
mother's spaghetti or than anybody's uh particular spaghetti recipe, or
(06:34):
if you're of German heritage, and maybe it's that particular
schnitzel that really does it for you. It really takes
you back and and and and it might be I mean,
God help you. Of schnitzel is what you eat every day.
So it's so it's something that is also a treat.
It's something you don't normally have, and then when you
do have it, it comes in with all this cultural
and personal resonance. It's true if you are reaching out
for a blood sausage and you're German heritage, this might
(06:57):
be just the fix that you need to pick up
your day. Um. Psychologists call comfort food a social surrogate,
as as you've already pointed out in different ways. And
it's interesting because if you look at studies concerning food
and comfort you will find a bevy of them. And
one of the ones that I thought was really interesting
is a study that had to do with people feeling
(07:19):
less lonely after just writing about food. Okay, they didn't
consume anything, and it was specific to comfort food. All right,
This is the two thousand eleven University of Buffalo study.
And so they bring in a bunch of people, set
them down and said, hey, I want you to write
a little bit about a fight that you had with
with somebody that the relationship with you. I imagine that
(07:40):
most of these are gonna involve like previous relationships or
current spouses that kind of thing, uh, current girlfriend's boyfriends, etcetera.
So they write about this painful, awkward, or traumatic episode
and then put your pencils down now six minutes later,
six minutes later, and now let's flip over the page,
and I want you to write to start right about
about some some comfort foods and about the fried chicken
(08:03):
or the blood sauzage or whatever it may be, right
about some food. Yeah, that's right. Some people were asked
to write about comfort food while other people were asked
to write about a new food experience. Right. So obviously
you see right there, the new food experience doesn't have
all the sorts of emotional attachments to it because it's
a new experience that's not related back to mom or childhood. So,
of course, what do you think the results were? Uh,
(08:25):
the results are probably going to be the comfort food
is the one that really makes the difference in most
of these. Yeah, that's right. What they did is they
took all of the participants took a test after they
wrote about food when they filled out this questionnaire about loneliness.
It was found that the comfort food, just thinking about
it and writing about it helped those people to self
adjust their moods. Now, there's an important caveat here, and
(08:47):
that is that, uh, generally, the individuals who were aided
by the food, they were in a more or less
good relationship that they just had some some either fighting
in the past or or just a little you know,
fighting in the present. So it's not a situation where
you're going through like you just murdered your spouse the
night before and then for some reason you came in
to do this study and you thought about mashed potatoes
(09:08):
and it fixed everything. No, not not quite. It's not
that powerful. But certainly if you're like, oh, I really
love my wife, but we we just we keep fighting
over what color of the carpet should be. I think
it should be hot pink. She thinks it should be
neon green. We can't come to a decision. We keep
fighting mashed potatoes. Oh what was I What was I
upset about? Well, and I think it's just interesting because
we've talked about this before, but how just thinking about
(09:29):
things can really change your brain. And we talked about
this before, even in writers who are writing about their
characters and people who are reading of novels that they're
mirror neurons began to activate as though they were throwing
the ball or they were running to to escape someone. So, UM,
what I started to think about is that's really powerful
(09:51):
because a lot of these comfort foods involve fat. And
there's another study that actually looks at fatty foods and
moods and this was UH in the Netherlands, and what
they were doing is they were taking twelve healthy individuals
and they all underwent four forty minute fmr I tests
(10:12):
while listening to music or viewing pictures that induced sad emotions. Now,
at the same time, all of these participants received an
infusion of either sailing or fatty acids directly into their stomachs.
This is where that the experiment really goes off the rails,
because the other one it's like, Oh, you're writing something
and thinking about food or or I can imagine signing
up for the study and thinking, oh, or they're just
(10:32):
gonna show at me like a large Vontarier film and
then feed me some mashur tases. But no, they're going
to pump something directly into my stomach after I watch it.
That's in addition to the large Montreier. Yeah yeah, but
what kind of movie theater is that? Yeah? Yeah, I
wonder if they did show Melancolio through them, because that
would be a really great film to try to and
induce sadness. I have to say, um, but all all
(10:54):
of the participants had completed a twelve hour fast, so
they came with empty stomachs, and they had no idea
what it was that was being put into their stomachs. Okay,
So the results indicated that subjects who received the fatty
infusion were less sad when viewing sad pictures or listening
to sad music. And then the fmm f m r
I tests confirmed fewer neural responses to sadness in several
(11:17):
areas of the brain in this group. Wow. Again, I'm
still overwhelmed just by the weirdness of the experiment though.
But but I guess it was important because they wanted
to cut out the actual eating of the food, and
I don't know, maybe they just really wanted to pump
stuff directly into the gut. Well, and what they were
also trying to do is to say, hey, there's it's
not just the mind body link. It is the body
(11:38):
mind link. And we've talked about this before in our
podcast about whether or not our guts are really our
second brains, right, And then of course when we're they
really wanted to look at the nutritional intake and when
you eat food. I mean, it's a no brainer, but
there's a lot going on. It's about it's about smelling
the food that you're eating. It's about the texture. I
mentioned mashed potatoes, and it's true a lot of a
lot of the comfort foods you encounter, it's like a
(11:59):
cream me kind of consistency to it. Um. I mean,
some people may have beef jerky as a comfort food,
that's great, but a lot of comfort foods are kind
of like a smooth, easy to eat kind of a thing.
And again just having a story about that food as well.
You can circumvent that by just pumping stuff directly into
the stomach. It's also worth noting on that two thousand
eleven University of Buffalo study, they also had another experiment
(12:21):
where they found that eating chicken soup in the lab
made people think more about relationships. If they consider chicken
soup to be a comfort food, which again comes down
to my argument that chicken soup, even when it's really good,
isn't really great because it's chicken soup. That's all about
the idea of it. Because like when I think of
chicken soup, I think of I'm I was, I'm feeling bad,
I'm feeling I mean, you know, I'm under the weather,
(12:43):
and like my mom makes me chicken soup. It's like
it's the you can taste the love, right, It's somebody
making the time, taking the time to make this dish.
That is all about please get better and feel better
because someone loves you. And I feel the same way,
like when my wife makes it for me when I
whenever i'm ill. You know what's funny about that is
my mom doesn't cook, never really has cooked. So but
(13:03):
I have the same feelings about chicken soup even though
I don't consume it now because she make it. No,
I was gonna say, I can look at a can
of Campbell's, I feel a little warm cockles in the
heart there. Well yeah, well, you know I think my
mom I could be wrong in this, and I'm sure
she'll correct me when she hears this, But I think
it would like she would do like canned chicken soup
as well, because I mean she was busy as you did.
I'm trying to make a bunch of you know, who
(13:25):
has time to make like chicken stock from scratch in
this day in war and day and age. But I'm
pretty sure that was canned as well. But still it
was this was a thing that you had when you
were sick, and if you had it and then somebody
loved you enough to at least open a can. And
that was the truth, not boiled down the chicken carcass
for hours and create fresh chicken stock. Hey man, she
she did many other things, I would say to help
(13:47):
me feel better. And I should also mention that, alright.
The eleven University of Bubble study, you mentioned the distinction
between people writing about new food experiences and people writing
about food experiences that they had all this comfort and
all these creations for. But in some cases you do
encounter people's comfort foods that are associated with new discoveries,
because ultimately, like food is his very personal and also
(14:10):
kind of selfish thing, you know, So in some cases
it will be something that that we see as a
personal discovery. One of the articles I was looking at.
I think it was a psychology today they mentioned, um,
the writer's husband went crazy for Sharako, like Sharaka on anything,
it was a comfort food. Um. And certainly you get
some spicy and some sweet in there, and sharak is amazing.
But it's his whole thing was that this was something
(14:31):
he had discovered, This was something that was totally totally
him and didn't necessarily have a connection with with his
upbringing or his past. No, he just discovered that it
was making the reward part of his brain go ding
ding ding, really because he was getting a little bit
euphoric with a spice there. Um. And I also think
that too with new experiences and food. You know, you'll
pin that a lot of times to travel. So you know,
(14:53):
sometimes I'll think about things that I've eaten and I
will elevate them to the highest level because I think, oh,
that have that in Italy or whatever, and it may
not even actually be that great. Yeah, but you still,
again it comes down to why pump this stuff directly
into the the test subject stomach, Because again, food comes
to us with a story, food comes as to us
with a smell, with a texture, and all of these
(15:14):
things that go beyond near nutrition, and what we're talking
about here too is really gaming a sense of comfort.
Of course, there is the food industry which is really
interesting in this idea of tweaking moods through food. At
the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, Karina Martinez
Majorga presented the latest findings from her ongoing study of
(15:37):
the effect of various food flavors on mood. And it
turns out that molecules in chocolate, a variety of berries,
and then foods containing Omega three fatty acids positively affect mood.
Um it was found, and this is really interesting. It
was found that the chemical components of these food flavors
are structurally similar to something called valporic acid, and this
(15:59):
is the primary ingredient. It's several pharmaceutical mood stabilizers. Of course.
The research was supported in part by a food flavor company,
France based uh Roberte uh Flavors, and the scientists say
that food industry companies are joining pharmaceutical companies in the
quest for natural mood boosters. So they're not intending this
(16:23):
as a replacement for you know, for treating clinical depression,
but they are saying like, maybe this could give you
a little extra pep in your step, right, I mean, well,
certainly there are a lot of fine arguments out there
that that a lot of problems with health and even
mental health um to a certain degree, can be treated
through a proper diet and an informed diet. But again, yeah,
(16:45):
I think of what comfort foods tend to be. They
didn't be soft, They can't be sweet, smooth, salty, and
uh like we mentioned sugar and starch. They spur serotonin,
your transmitter known to increase a sense of well being,
like prozac. Um Salty foods for oxytocin, the cuttle chemical
that we talk about a lot that we also get
from hugs and orgasm. So you know that's that's that
(17:07):
explains the saltiness there. Um fat is a good bomb
for the fear of starvation. So again we think back
to our naked caveman running through the Sengetti chase by
savor tooth tigers, the scenario that may or may not
actually pan out. Actually I mean on that too much,
but but still the idea that on a very primal level,
(17:27):
we are creatures that are having to run fast to
get away from something or run fast to catch something.
We need the energy, we need the fat. So that's
why the fat is such a bomb for fear we're
not gonna starve, if we're not going to be eaten
on a very primitive level. You know that drives home well.
And you know, it's interesting that you mentioned the fat
because it takes me back to the podcast that we
did on gluttony and all of that research about how
(17:49):
when we lose weight, our body actually begins to game
the body to to try to get back at the
old level because of this fear of losing fat. And
in fact, people who lose I think it was something
like of their body weight have to exercise even harder
than their counterpart who didn't lose weight, but they weigh
(18:09):
the same amount um simply because the body won't burn
as many calories because again it wants to get back
to that set weight that it knows, and it also
begins to crave more fatty foods. Yeah, and we've, as
we've discussed before and as a and as countless food
documentaries point out, we live in an age now where
all the fat you want just walk down to the
(18:30):
storm by all of the salty you want i'll sweet
you want. Generally, all these things are actually available in
one bag at your local fast food restaurant. But of
course we didn't evolve into that scenario. You know, that's
not that's not the natural availability of these various elements. Yeah.
I actually saw something the other day. It was it
was about weight loss and a group of people who
had lost weight, and it said we'll work for less food.
(18:54):
And I thought, well, if that's not a commentary on
the abundance of food in the world right now, as
well as a commentaryans mother stuff, I don't know what
is um. Then again, we're talking about this concept of
gaming comfort, and you guys out there are probably familiar
with this study because I think it got a lot
of play, But this idea that comfort also comes externally
(19:17):
so and actually affects our moods in ways that we
might just make favorable decisions about others. And what I'm
talking about is um the warm Mug of liquid study.
Do you know when I'm talking about where the participants
were given a warm mug of coffee, I believe to
hold just for a few moments and to think about
(19:39):
someone that they may not have particularly have warm feelings
about but talk about them as they were holding the
warm cup. And then participants were given uh an iced
coffee to hold. Okay, so now they were holding something
that's cold. And so turns out that those people who
(20:01):
held the months of hot Joe, we're much more likely
to perceive others as having warmer personality traits. Well, this
is it. Basically, this is the hot coco phenomenon here
because with hot cocoa, well, first of all, you getting
that chocolate that's sweets, so you're you're turning on some
various neuro transmitters there. Uh. Some people like like their
their hot chocolate little salty, so you've got that going on, uh,
(20:24):
giving you a little little oxy cocin. And then of
course it is a warm mug of goodness that you're
having generally with friends or family or loved ones while
you're interacting with them. So it tends to uh to
color an even warmer interpersonal relationship. Well, and you know,
it could be anybody that in this this study, which
is really interesting, they got to be talking about co worker,
(20:44):
They could be talking about their neighbor, or they could
be talking about a family member. And this is one
of those examples that neuroscientists David Eagleman talks about when
he questions whether or not we actually have free will.
And what I mean is that if a warm mug
of coffee subconsciously makes you feel better about the person
you're talking to while you're holding the coffee, um, than
(21:07):
what sort of decisions might follow after that interaction or
during that interaction. Well, this, this reminds me, actually reminds
me of times where we've dragged our recorder Matt in here,
our editor, producer, director general, awesome m a man of
our times, and sometimes we drag him in a a ridiculous
hours to try and get an episode recorded. And sometimes
(21:29):
you'll you'll give him coffee and I thought you were
just being nice, but you were manipulating him by giving
him this warm beverage so that he can't help but
think will warm thoughts than about us and not hate
us for dragging him in it like five in the morning.
Thanks for taking that down, man, No, really it was.
It's all coming from my heart, my warm, warm heart.
(21:50):
But still, this is a good This is a good
trick that we should all exploit in our lives. You're
going in for a tough meeting or you want to
just go for a job interview, bring some hot coffee,
some hot coco something and some hot tea, anything that'll
that'll get the room warm. And do not let that
job interview take place outside on a November day. Okay.
So if you doubt this idea that a warm beverage
(22:11):
or even just the warmth itself doesn't affect how we feel, um,
consider a study by Harry Harlow involving primates. Oh yes,
this is the great one where they it was with maccaques,
I believe, and and you've seen the photos because there terrifying, depressing,
depressing where they have the baby macaques and they're they're
(22:33):
they're given the choice of two or they tested out
in two different environments. One there's this metal framework mother
that that is there to distribute milk through a nipple, right,
and it's just this metal framework. And then there there's
nothing monkey is about it. Ye vaguely monkey shaped, I
guess if you really want to get creative. But for
the most part it's like metal thing with a nipple
(22:54):
that feeds baby monkey. But then then the other part
of the test is cover that with fur and you
have a sort of fake monkey with a nipple. It's
it's soft, it's vaguely monkey ish, but it's covered in fur.
And which one do you think the macaques prefer? Now?
This one that had the fur. The cloth was heated
with a light bulb as well. Yes, yes, so it's
not soft and furry but warm. So the surrogate that
(23:18):
gets the most play is, of course the one that
has the light bulb in it. Yeah, because it turns
out that the baby maccaques, although they would run and
they would get the milk from the other surrogate when
they were really hungry, they prefer to spend time with
the warm surrogate and cling to it, which tells you
that there's there's something just inherent to this feeling of
(23:40):
warmth and comfort and our ability to survive. And it
reminds me of of a study you sent me as
we were looking into this podcast as well about the
whole cold hands warm heart thing, which I commit I'd
never heard that saying, but apparently it's a saying cold hands,
warm heart. There's a song too, really, but I can't remember,
but it comes on her system every once in a while. Okay, well,
(24:01):
but the idea is, if if I guess if you
shake hands with somebody has a really cold hand, it's
okay because it means their heart is so warm, they're
so full of warmth in their heart they can love
for their fellow man. That is actually affecting blood flow
to their to their limbs apparently, which I've never heard
because because it sounds ridiculous to me, because it sounds
like people with cold fish hands. This is like propaganda
(24:24):
they put out, you know, like like C. E. O
S and whatnot, where they're like, oh, people think I'm
I'm horrible just because my hand is a piece of
impersonal ice that I shove it people. Uh, maybe we
should get some some some data out there that the opposite.
We don't normally, um shake, but I think we should
right now. The hand is cold. So everything you just
(24:45):
describe my friend is me. And I will tell you
that even before I knew him, at the song cold heart,
cold heart, warm hands, I used to say to my husband,
cold heart, warm hands. Um. So it turns out you
were wrong in science, is there because because because in
the study they actually looked into it too. I was
in an eight researchers, Lawrence Williams and John bra They
actually debunked this and then found that that physical warmth
(25:06):
activates concepts of interpersonal warmth. And it's very much in
keeping with the whole iron mother fury warm mother scenario.
I know, I know, so it boils down to actually
pour circulation for me um. But but I thought it
was interesting because I think that in the article, the
question was whether or not people would perceive your handshake,
your your cold, dead handshake as is in a negative
(25:29):
light and then inform their feelings about you that way,
much in the way that the mug of warm coffee
made people feel friendlier. Couldn't do the opposite. So here's
another idea to game the system. Next time you go
into a job interview or whatnot, if you know that
you have the cold hands, or even just to be
on the safe side, do a little palm rubbing there,
(25:50):
get it all warmed up, and then then impress them
with your loving handshake. That's what I do before I
hugged my daughter so that she doesn't run in terror
from me. We should probably take a break when we
get back. We're going to talk about automating comfort. All right,
(26:10):
we're back. So we were talking about about the experiment
with maccaques about the the iron mother that's cold and
loveless and the the lightbulb powered furry mother that all
the little maccaques go crazy for. And of course we've
discussed this a little bit in the past. We've talked
about robots. Yeah, we've talked about robots hugging you. And
(26:32):
the reason is is because hugging is obviously very comforting.
In fact, one study showed that when people engage in
a hug for twenty seconds or longer, that actually reduces
their courters all levels, their stress levels pretty significantly. And
this is why you you said you always hold your
husband in for twenty seconds, like count to twenty and
don't let him escape until you hit twenty, Yeah, which
(26:53):
he kind of tries to wriggle from, but then he
lovingly submits to my embrace. But yeah, this is a
really quick life hack. So of course, what do we
do whenever we we are trying to figure out something
that we do human wise, we look through the robots
to see if we can do something similar. And there's
something called the hug shirt, which I believe we've talked
(27:14):
about before. This is a bluetooth enabled shirt made by
the UK's cute circuit and it uses embedded sensors and
actuators to simulate a hug. Yes, so you can get
the same effect. Um, there is the Hug machine, which
was designed by Temple Grandon and um that is a
deep pressure device designed to calm hyper sensitive people. Yes,
(27:36):
and that's so, by the way, the Temple grand In movie,
great movie. I highly recommend that. Yeah, that is really great.
I can who's the actress who played that, Um, Claire Danes, right, yeah,
who a lot of you know from Homeland. She's yeah, yeah,
she did a phenomenal job in that. Um. So there
are these different ways that we have tried to create
the hug. But what do you do if you're beyond
(28:00):
the hug, if you're in a situation where you are
actually taking the last breaths of life and you need comfort.
Well a few of possibilities come to mind, self hug,
which may not be possible, and that might not actually
work because generally the self hug is something you do
just to convince other people that you're making out with
somebody when your tent right. Uh. And then I guess
(28:22):
you could if you had like say that, you could
if you had a pet python. You could unleash the
python on you in those final moments because get a
combination of things there, embrace quick demise and uh, and
then you also ultimately feed a giant snake. But but
you're probably but what you're getting at here, I'm sure,
(28:43):
is that we should have a robot that that enters
into the scenario, that enters the room of our dying
and actually tends to our final emotional needs. Yep. This
is the Last Moment Bought or the end of life
care machine, which was made by artist in designer Dan Chin.
He made this because he wanted to try to present
an extreme example of a world where machines fill in
(29:07):
for humans. And now keep in mind too that we've
talked about caregiving robots, so that art, this is his
idea is is I'm going to create some art that's
going to generate discussion. It's still very much in keeping
with stuff that's going on today because we've talked about
robots that are being designed to help elderly people around,
to help them use the restroom, and not only the
elder really, but injured individuals as well, to care for
(29:30):
them in a hospital environment. So it's art, but it's
it's like all great art. It has a lot of
ties into our real current position and our near future reality.
Um it is Uh, I think the robot in the
art installation is incredibly depressing. Yes, well that's your argument.
(29:51):
I I interpreted it differently. Um, and we should we
should describe what. Um. So, you're dying, all right, You're
in this hospital room by yourself. That's important to note here.
You're in this room by yourself, and then in your
your your signs are being monitored by this machine. And
suddenly it realizes that you or your death is imminent.
(30:12):
So what happens. It turns on the last moment robot
and it wheels itself over to you there and you're
you're soon to be deathbed and and what does it do? Well,
first of all, it actually embraces you a little bit.
There are some hug mechanics that go on. It kind
of looks like it's rolling dough out of your arm.
But the idea is that it's supposed to feel like
(30:33):
like an embrace, like somebody's roping your arm. But now
we're talking about this plastic kind of arm thing. It doesn't.
There's nothing very human looking about it. It's all about
the sensation. And then the robot actually speaks to you.
The robots says, I am the last Moment Robot. I
am here to help you and guide you through your
last moment on Earth. I am sorry that your family
(30:54):
and friends can't be with you right now, but don't
be afraid. I am here to comfort you. You're not alone.
You are with me. Your family and friends love you
very much. They will remember you after you are gone. Sucker, No,
it actually kind of sounded like how For a second there,
I was going for a little bit of how, a
(31:15):
little bit of David. Yeah, okay, so what what do
you find comforting about that? Okay? So I actually like
just reading that, like I feel my heart strings. Kind
of not reading it out loud because it makes it
sound like I really love the son of my own voice,
but just reading it on the page. When I first
read the article about this piece, it connected with me,
you know, because I'm because it actually reminds me. I
(31:37):
mentioned Boards of Canada earlier. The UK Electronic do a
do a lot of very nostalgic, ethereal sounding electronic idem soundscapes.
They have a track called an Eagle in Your Mind
off the album music Has the Right Has the Right
to Children, and it's it's kind of a kind of
a somber piece at first, and then it and then
(31:58):
it picks up and there's a voice sample in there
where it's kind of a computer e voice. It says
I love you. And every time I hear that, even
though I know it's just a sample, there's something about
it where I'm like, oh, somebody loves me, you know
it like it it's still connects with you. And I
got that same feeling from from reading and in the
video hearing the last moment robots final words to the dying.
(32:18):
Even though it's just some sort of speech to text
kind of scenario going on there, it's still I feel
like it's still resonates with you, you know, Okay, I
understand that abstractly, but I still feel like it's such
a personal thing and you want to feel connected, right
because if you're drawing your last breaths here on earth,
wouldn't you want to feel as though you were somehow
(32:39):
pinned to the center of it in some way through
another person, through someone's eyes. To see the light go
out in someone's eyes is just an incredibly personal thing.
So I mean, you make it sound like it's it's
to be like it needs to like find a dying
person today and go look into their eyes when they die.
Oh no, no, no, no, I don't breathing their soul
and it's wonderful. Know What I mean is for the
(33:00):
person who is dying, for the person or persons who
are losing this person, it's uh to me, my mind
would be preferable to have the human connection. Okay, well,
I would imagine the human connection is ideal. Certainly, if
I were given the choice between saying goodbye or being
or or having a loved one tell me goodbye on
my death bed and a robot, I would probably go
(33:22):
with the human Uh. Though it should be said, at
least the robots keeping it together here, the robots like
a saint. The robots like a like a priest giving
you last riots that's done this many times before and
can at least fake being sincere about it while also
not losing it because you know you don't want you
also don't want the robot. There's probably not a setting
for the for the last moment robot where it just
(33:43):
loses it and it's like, oh, please, don't die and well,
maybe there is, because you know, if that were, if
that were to actually come to fruition, they would obviously
the people who created the robot would want to try
to simulate the experience so that you could draw as
much comfort from And some people might draw comfort from
the because the message of the robot, it's pretty straight.
But it's like, hey, you're dying. It's cool. Everyone does this.
(34:06):
You had a good life, everyone loved you, and now
it's time to turn it off. Yea, I'm just saying
I would feel jipped. I'd be like, really, you're the
last thing that I see. But but if the alternative, though,
think of if the alternative, though, is dying in a
room by yourself, or being vaguely attended to by an
overworked caregiver who may or may not be able to
(34:27):
muster some fake enthusiasm or legitimate enthusiasm. Enthusiasm isn't the
right word, um, compassion for for your last moments, then
I can see that the robot is being the preferred method. Okay, true, true. Um.
Here's one situation that I will get behind, though, and
this is this idea that you could seek a virtual psychologist.
(34:48):
And we've actually mentioned this before, but NASA in their
program called the Virtual Space Station Psychologist just came out
of It's for Your Pilot program to try to U
have some of their participants really reach out to this
virtual psychologist and gain some self help care. Yeah, it's
um It's essentially the idea we're talking about here is
(35:11):
you're on a long distance space journey, or you're in
space for a while. You may or may not. Maybe
you're alone. Maybe you're dealing with a small group of people,
but as we've discussed before, that's a very intimate environment,
and also you're dealing with a lot of biological funk
that's gonna be going on. Is your body adjust a
life in a semi waitless environment and the best cases
being locked away with a group of people's gonna get old.
(35:32):
But then throw in a lot of vomit and it's
just gonna get worse. So maybe you have a laptop
in a room. It's kind of like the confessional room
you know in all the reality shows where you go
in and you uh, either you talk to this thing
you actually have some back and forth interaction, or perhaps
it's more like a questionnaire multiple choice, like how are
you doing today? A for great, B for okay, or
(35:53):
C four I want to launch Carl out of the
airlock and uh, And then the the machine will ask
you why do you want to launch Carl out of
the airlock, and you're like, well, he's been I feel
like he's just been kind of cold recently, and I'm
reaching out to you know. A part of it is like,
let's get the astronaut actually processing some of this instead
of it said they're just brooding inside you. And then
(36:16):
also it could consuerably launch some some tips grounded in
actual psychology at you give you some text to read
about what you're feeling or what you should be feeling. Yeah,
the idea is that these virtual psychologists provide a problem
solving treatment. And so I'm not discounting, you know, flesh psychologist,
because I think there are many, many talented ones. But
(36:37):
some of the success that I think that happens in
UM therapy is that it's the talking Here. It's a
lot of people sort of talking through the problems and
in doing so finding areas that they need to work
on or areas that they can find solutions for. Because
if you've ever been if you've been to a therapist,
and U, and I highly recommend it if you if
(36:58):
you're even considering it, if you think maybe if you
go to a therapist for this, then do seriously consider
because it can be very helpful. But there's certainly there
are times where you might find yourself thinking, hey, this
isn't like on TV. This person is not telling me
how to solve my problems. A lot of this is
me talking through it and someone nodding and writing something
down and interjecting a little bit. It's easy for people
to make fun of that and belittle it and say,
(37:19):
like I I was just need doing all the work,
But that's kind of what's happening. It facilitates you actually
working through what you're feeling. Well, and ideally these this
program would have this sort of UM great sophisticated feedback
that you might get from from a human psychologist. UM
in the works. You know, hopefully this will be something
(37:39):
that will come online later. But I did want to
mention that twenty nine current and former astronauts have been
consulted for the project and the trial has shown pretty
good results in treating depression. And this is according to
James Cartraine. He's a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School
and uh, future test with firefighters and e m t
s could help launch a more wide bread use of
(38:00):
the self help software and eventually bring it to the public. Yeah.
And just a quick example from real life of actual
interpersonal tension causing problems for space flights. In a mission
on Russia's Solute seven space station was scrapped after colleagues
noticed the commander seemed uninterested in his work and spent
hours looking out of the window on the ship. And
(38:23):
in three years earlier mission on the same station was
somewhat hampered by tension between two astronauts, so also maybe
it was haunted. I don't know that that could be
a possible as well. Uh but no, I mean, I
guess that underscores the reason why you need to have
people feel as good as they can up there on
their missions, because obviously a lot of things could go wrong,
(38:45):
all right. So there you go a little a little
insight into comfort and what it is is it certainly
as you're seeking out comfort this holiday season or the next,
or just after a tough day at the office or
break up or whatever. Because we didn't even mention ice
cream after a breakup. It I mean that's another motif
that you run. You never did that. I don't understand
(39:05):
that because it is cold, yeah, but it's but it's
also fatty and sweet cold comfort yea. So I want
to leave that with just a couple of quotes here
about comfort and about our our search for comfort in life.
First of all, here's a little bit from C. S. Lewis.
He said, if you look for truth, you may find
comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you
will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap
(39:28):
and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end despair.
And then our good buddy Aristotle said, we live in deeds,
not years, in thoughts, not breaths, in feelings, not in
figures on a dial. We should not count time by
heart throbs. He most lives, who thinks, most feels, the noblest,
acts the best. So there you have it. Comfort food.
(39:54):
Why it matters to us what's going on when we
eat it while we keep coming back to it, and
what is it doing to our bodies? Indeed, uh, if
you want to share your favorite comfort food with us,
we would love to hear it, because we have a
whole litany of comfort things ourselves, and you can do
that by emailing us that blow the mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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