SciShow Tangents - Sugar with Deboki Chakravarti

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. When the Hank's away, the Sam will play edition. Whoa. Part two. I'm Sam, the host this week, because Hank is gone. And this week, as always, we're joined by Stephan Chen. How's it going? Stephan, what's your favorite dessert?

Starting point is 00:00:37 Right now, I'm really crushing on alternative ice creams. Oh, like coconut? So like, yeah, coconut or the almond milk. Coconut's good. We're also joined by Sari Riley. Yep, I'm here. How are you? Tired. You have a sleeping cap on. Yeah, I'm always tired. I got a blanket.

Starting point is 00:00:53 I do have my office Snuggie. It has like a pouch. Oh, it has a pocket in it. Wait, do you have arms? I do have arms. And my Snuggie has arms also. Are you typing with that thing? Is that what's going on there? Yeah, when I'm really cold. Yeah, during the winter times when the garage that I work in, in these working conditions, too cold.

Starting point is 00:01:12 It's a finished garage. Yeah, it is a finished garage. It looks like a fleece-lined wizard's robe. It does. Yeah, that's grand. I have never described myself as grand while wearing this, but thank you. You should. I don't think you look that grand.

Starting point is 00:01:27 What's your favorite dessert? I really like fudgy cakes. I don't know what they're called. Like lava cakes? Lava cakes. The ones that are volcanoes, but with chocolate inside. With the stuff inside of them? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Those are pretty good. Yeah. Also, this week, again, we're joined by Deboki Chakravarti, SciShow Tangents editorial assistant and the host of the upcoming Crash Course Organic Chemistry. Hello, Deboki. Hello. How are you? I'm good. I'm really stressed out about picking a favorite dessert, though.

Starting point is 00:01:55 You had a lot of time, too. I know, but they're all so good, and I don't want to offend any of them. It's like I love all desserts except like chocolate raspberry things. Oh, my God. Wait, you don't like chocolate raspberry? For some reason, that is like the one thing I don't like. That's the best chocolate raspberry things. Oh my God. Wait, you don't like chocolate raspberry? For some reason, that is like the one thing I don't like. That's the best chocolate berry combination.

Starting point is 00:02:09 I agree. Oh yeah, I can't do it. Do you like other chocolate berries? Chocolate strawberry? I'll do strawberries. I can do that. Like that is really good actually. Not just like I can do it, I will consume it. But I guess I've been on a real donut kick lately.

Starting point is 00:02:20 So I'm going to go with that. I feel like donuts don't even count as dessert. Donuts are like a breakfast. It's true. Every week on SciShow Tangents we get together and try to one up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory but we're also playing for sandbox and we're keeping score.

Starting point is 00:02:36 I'm in last place. I might even be in last place compared to Deboki. That's how few points I have. We do everything we can to stay on topic but judging by previous conversations, we will not be good at that because we might talk about donuts. So if the rest of the team deems a tangent unworthy, you'll be forced to give up a sandbug.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic, which I already hinted at a little bit, with the traditional science poem this week by Stephen Chin. I put sugar in my coffee and I put honey in my tea. If you add a little heat, you could probably caramelize my teeth. Candy doughs for breakfast. Sure, that seems fair. What do we have for dinner?

Starting point is 00:03:13 Well, a frosted treat I have prepared. But I know, I know, too much is not good for me. Lactose, fructose, or glucose, pick your enemy. You've made it very clear I shouldn't eat sugar every moment when I'm waking, so I'll try my best to reduce it even when I'm baking. But a gram or two here, a sprinkling there, try not to get too irate, about the ways that people consume their carbohydrates. Either way, the discussion around sugar can sometimes get pretty thorny,

Starting point is 00:03:41 but I say an unsweetened life like high fructose syrup is pretty corny. Oh, I asked Evan. I want to watch you write a poem someday. Just like see inside your brain. When you make a really bad rhyme, how happy you are about it. I'm just giggling to myself. Or how you imagine things like

Starting point is 00:03:59 candy teeth. That's disgusting and horrifying. I don't think you realize how horrifying it is and some of the things you say are. You're like the Shakespeare because you invent new concepts that blow our minds. But instead of like inspiring us, you disgust us. You're like extreme Shakespeare. I'll take it. Edgy Shakespeare.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Some kind of Mountain Dew Shakespeare. So this week's topic is sugar. Terry and Deboki, what is sugar? Well, Stefan said a very key word in his poem, carbohydrates, which are sugars. And so they're one of the main groups of biomolecules. So carbohydrates are things with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, usually in a 1 to 2 to 1 ratio. So like C6H12O6 is a glucose molecule. Glucose is one of the simplest ones. Fructose is a different form of a simple sugar, but then you can get more

Starting point is 00:04:55 complicated. So like sucrose is table sugar and that's a glucose and a fructose molecule bonded together. We have glycogen, which is a polysaccharide that's in our bodies for energy storage. And then in plants, there's cellulose and starch. And one of those is fiber, I think cellulose, that's indigestible for us. So it just like clears out our intestines. And starch is like when you say a food is starchy, that's because it has starch polysaccharides in it. And are all of those sweet or some of them are not sweet? Sweetness is about kind of like how our taste receptors on our tongue respond to it. So I'm guessing it would vary a lot, like depending on the kind of sugar it is, the extent to which we're going to think of it as sweet is going to depend on how it binds to those receptors. So I think

Starting point is 00:05:37 there are animals that will process some sugars as sweet, but they won't taste other sugars the same way. But usually the simpler sugars are the ones that we think of as activating our taste buds to cause sweetness. So like if you add high fructose corn syrup to something, that is a sweetener. You know, I did not know that sugars and carbohydrates are the same thing. So thanks. That's what's cool about chemistry. All of these things boil down to very simple structures that somehow repeat into very weird things that are different from each other so like there's complex carbohydrates and not ones of those and i feel like one of them is worse for you than the other one is what science says science says a lot of things about this stuff people have a lot of opinions about sugar because

Starting point is 00:06:21 it's something that is necessary for our body. So like we need glucose and to metabolize glucose in order to make energy to do anything. But because sugar tastes good, we've like started adding it to food because it tastes good. And now people have all kinds of opinions about like what that is doing to our bodies, but there's not a lot of scientifically backed conclusions. And even some of the conclusions that we have are funded by big sugar industry or big fats industry. So for example, at some point in the last few decades, there were a bunch of studies funded by sugar companies that found that fat was nutritionally worse for us than sugar

Starting point is 00:07:07 but like they were being funded by sugar companies so the scientists were more inclined to draw conclusions that were in that person like in the sugar company's favor and i think a lot of nutrition science is fairly fraught like that so so sugar and fat are feuding with each other basically yeah for like which one's less healthy because everyone wants their own product to sell right and as far as like complex sugars versus simple sugars there's something to be said about if your body needs to expend more energy to digest something so like if you are eating pasta or if you're eating an apple where there's a lot of other things besides sugar in there and the sugar molecules are bound up or like they're longer chains as opposed to just like individual monomers, which are like one molecule

Starting point is 00:07:57 chunks like glucose, then it's like slightly healthier for you because your body has to put in the effort to break it down as opposed to like eating a spoonful of table sugar that's going to get into your bloodstream faster and cause a sugar spike and then like a decrease which is what people are like oh that's bad if you're you have a sugar rush and then a crash okay but it's more complicated than like sugar bad because if we cut out all sugar from everything or all carbohydrates for everything we would die what is the etymology of sugar sucra is that part of it yeah uh that's from old that's the old french okay which comes from medieval latin sucarum and from arabic sucar, which Hall seems to trace back to sugar, but also grit or gravel. And then glucose is from Greek.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Basically pronounced the same, but spelled a little differently. That means sweet wine. Where'd the wine part come from? This etymology page says it first was obtained from grape sugar. So maybe they had a lot of grapes, and then were like, this is the only sweet thing I've ever tasted in my whole life.

Starting point is 00:09:07 All right. Well, I think we have a pretty in-depth view of sugar. More than usual. So much more than I could have imagined. We don't usually know anything about anything. But this time we did. So now it's time for Truth or Failure. Where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for your education and enjoyment,

Starting point is 00:09:25 but only one of those facts is real. The other two are big fat lies, and you guys have to figure out which one it is. If you do, you get a sandbuck. If you don't, I get a sandbuck, because this time I'm lying to you. So here are my facts. One thing that humans and bees have in common is that we both love a sweet treat. Bees spend their lives in search of nectar, just like we spend our lives in search of Oreo cookies and gummy worms.

Starting point is 00:09:48 And just like competing candy in the candy bar aisle, flowers have different ways of advertising themselves to make sure bees pick them. Which of these flower nectar facts is true? Number one, some flowers have light-sensing organs that can detect the shadows of a nearby hovering bee trying to pick out a snack. The flower then increases the amount of sugar in its nectar to try to woo the bee.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Number two, some flowers' nectar contains nicotine, and when bees drink this nectar, they become basically brand loyal, remembering and seeking out that flower at a higher rate than bees usually do that kind of thing. Or number three, in big cities, flowers face stiff competition as city-dwelling bees have been found to go for soda and other processed sugars over flower nectar. So licensing organs, extra sugar, nicotine, brand loyalty addiction, basically.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Or big city bees love sody pop. I love the idea of like big tobacco flowers being super nefarious. So the nicotine one seems just reasonable because I feel like I have a vague recollection of bees also being addicted to things, like experiencing addiction in similar behavioral ways. Behavioral. The shadow one, I don't know. Plants have a lot of receptors that I don't know plants have a lot of receptors that I don't know about there's so many things that causes shadows

Starting point is 00:11:08 like if it was a cloudy day how do they know it's a bee can you have a bee shaped receptor well like what you maybe do if you're a flower and you're really dedicated to this approach is like you have like a spot selection receptor like it has to discern between shadows just like in a small area versus like the whole flower but flowers don't have a lot

Starting point is 00:11:30 else to think about either that's true they just they just think about how to find bees all day and then the soda one i feel like wasps i've seen drink soda i don't know they just start no what well i had an image of like at a picnic i see soda cans left out and like bees coming to them. But I think it might just be wasps that I've seen. I want to say nicotine because that seems like a plant thing anyway. Oh. Deboki, you go. Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:11:58 I don't know. They all seem like they could be so true. Well, no. I think the shadow one seems like BS. BS. I feel like I could see the big cities thing being a real thing. You know what? I'm going with nicotine.

Starting point is 00:12:14 I have a feeling. The answer was the nicotine one. Oh. I was so scared. So, the nicotine one. Lots of plants make nicotine as a way to stop leaf-eating creatures from eating them because it's toxic, I guess, in a high enough dosage. And plants that make nicotine, like tomato plants,

Starting point is 00:12:33 like tons of plants that aren't just tobacco plants, have small amounts of nicotine in their nectar and pollen. So in 2017, some scientists were like, hey, wouldn't that be bad for the bee? Or like make the bee not want to go to that plant. So they did what scientists do and they made a bunch of fake flowers that had four varying levels of nicotine from no nicotine to a bunch of nicotine. And they let bumblebees go at the flowers. The flowers all had different designs too, corresponding to how much nicotine

Starting point is 00:12:59 they had. They let the bumblebees go to the flowers, and then the next time they let the bumblebees go to the flowers, they went to the flowers that had a little tiny bit of nicotine over any other type of flower, and they were repelled by the flowers that had a ton of nicotine. So then they switched the flower designs around, and they put the bumblebees back out, and the bumblebees still went to the design that had previously had the palatable amount of nicotine, even if it had too much nicotine in it now so basically it just showed that they have

Starting point is 00:13:30 like brand loyalty like they will go to that flower that has a little bit of nicotine over any type of flower even if the other flowers in the area have a better like nutritional value than the nicotine flower i guess they get addicted It didn't say that one way or the other. I don't know what it is. They just get like a little buzz from it maybe because they're bees. They like the way it feels. We mostly smoke tobacco as far as like cigarettes. Is it just that like other plants don't have enough nicotine to make them super smokable? Probably.

Starting point is 00:14:01 You want to smoke a tomato or something? super smokable probably you want to smoke a tomato yeah so my uninformed guess is that the only thing we cultivate tobacco for is nicotine whereas like other nightshade plants are either poisonous to us so i think that like belladonna which is the stuff that was used to like dilate your eyes and still is used to dilate your eyes. For fashion. Dilate your eyes, yeah, for fashion or as like eye doctors. So they're either deadly or we grow them for food like potatoes or tomatoes or eggplants. And so tobacco seems like one that's just like, it's just a leaf and probably has a certain concentration of nicotine that we realized you could smoke. And maybe through human intervention have made it even more so?

Starting point is 00:14:47 Possibly, yeah. Like selective breeding or, yeah. So it's not impossible, Stephan. Keep the dream alive. Okay, all right. So the flowers with light-sensing organs, a 2018 study of evening primrose flowers found that they can use their bowl-shaped petals to pick up the specific vibrations of pollinating insects' wing beats. Oh, cool. That does make sense as like a more specific detector. Yeah. When they detect that sound, they increase the amount of sugar in their nectar by up to 20%. Scientists think that this happens because nectar is costly to make for a flower. So if they're only making it when they

Starting point is 00:15:22 know that an insect is around, or like they're only making that certain quality of nectar, when they know that they can attract a pollinating insect, then that's just better for them. Like they can survive longer. They have more resources to go around for other processes they need to do. How do the plants detect the sound? I think it, so they're pretty sure it's from the petals because they pulled petals off of other, of the same flower and they weren't making more nectar. So they would shoot the bee sound at the flower and they think it vibrates the petals in the right way to make them be like, aha, bees are in. And city bees, in 2016, a study in Raleigh, North Carolina found that, kind of to researcher's surprise, local bees did not have more processed sugar in their diet than the humble country bees. They tested for carbon-13, which I guess is present in sugarcane and in specific bees,

Starting point is 00:16:11 and they didn't find any more of it than they find in any other kind of bee, which was surprising because there's lots of soda pop and candy all over cities. They don't know if this would hold up for even bigger cities than Raleigh, North Carolina, because Raleigh has 50% green space compared to New York City, which only has 10% green space. But it seems like they don't like our human sugars. Good job, bees. Yeah, good job, bees.

Starting point is 00:16:35 Very healthy choices that you're making. Conscientious. All right, next up, we are going to take a short break, and then we'll be back for the fact-off. We're back from our short break now. Let's go over the scores, shall we? Stefan, you have two points points putting you in the lead.

Starting point is 00:17:06 Sari and me each have one point and Devoki, unfortunately, not so great. You don't have any points and you're in last place. But,

Starting point is 00:17:14 you have a chance to get some points now because it is time for the Fact Off where two panelists bring science facts to present to the others in an attempt

Starting point is 00:17:21 to blow their minds. The presentees, which is me and Stefan, each have a Hank Buck, oh my God, why would, which is me and Stefan, each have a Hank Buck. Oh my god. Why would I say that of all people? Each have a Sandbuck to award to the fact that they like the most, but if both facts are terrible, we won't give anybody any

Starting point is 00:17:34 points. So, they better be good. The two people who are presenting, Sari and Deboki, the battle of the big brains. And to decide who goes first, Stefan has a trivia question for you. The United States claims the glory of the highest average for sugar consumption per capita. How many grams of sugar does the average U.S. resident eat per day? Okay, so this is a bad question for me because I just eat food without looking at nutrition labels,

Starting point is 00:17:59 and I eat like a bag of candy sometimes, And I have no concept of what a gram is. So 150? Is that smaller? I don't know. We can't tell you yet. I know. You can't tell me. 150 is my guess.

Starting point is 00:18:14 I'll go double Sari. I'll go 300 grams. Wow. The answer is 126.4. Somehow got extremely close. Wild. I was like thinking of a bag of Sour Patch Kids.

Starting point is 00:18:32 Like, that's probably like my daily intake of sugar. So apparently in a small pack of Sour Patch Kids, like a fun-sized pack, like very fun. Oh, very small. There is 19 grams of sugar. Oh, that's not bad at all.

Starting point is 00:18:48 You could eat like 10 of those. I want to go first, I think, because it's related to the truth or fail, so I think it'll be a nice transition. So honeybees aren't the only insects that store sweet, sugary goo for later. There are stingless bees that make honey, honey wasps, and even these insects called honeypot ants. And in a few different species across the Americas, one of them is Myrmecosistus mexicanus, but also there are species in Africa and Australia. They have a food storage system to help them

Starting point is 00:19:20 through times when there isn't as much water or flowers blooming or other things like that, and they still need sugar to give them energy. The way they do it is certain worker ants, so like workers, a class of ants, not soldiers or drones or the queen, become what are called repletes who hang from a ceiling and act as sugary food storage orbs. And this is because of an anatomical adaptation of their butts. Their abdomen is made of stiff plates called sclerites that are connected by a squishy membrane called the arthrodial membrane. So like a balloon, as more nectar and stuff goes inside them,

Starting point is 00:19:59 their butt can inflate, so the plates go really small and far apart, and it's mostly membrane, but it can also deflate and look like a normal ant butt. So they're hanging from the ceiling, and when another worker brushes their antenna, they're like a vending machine, and they just barf up one serving of food. I was like, are they butt suckers? No. So they brush their antennas, and they're like, food, please,

Starting point is 00:20:21 and then they barf up one serving size of food that either that ant eats or carries away to someone else that needs it so this is their sugar storage system and here's a picture of them they can get as big as small grapes why do they have to hang off the ceiling to get out of the way for other people i love that they're called repletes like it makes it sound so sci-fi that is what like if we had the sci-fi version of this world and there was a organism that did that for us we would call them-fi version of this world and there was an organism that did that for us we would call them repletes yeah

Starting point is 00:20:47 so it's mostly just like an adaptation for them to store they don't have honeycombs to store honey or anything this is just like they use their their fellow ants

Starting point is 00:20:55 as nectar storage I want to study the brains of this like class of ants to see if they're happy that's a good point you know ant worker satisfaction

Starting point is 00:21:03 is really important. Yeah. It seems like it could either be like a live in the dream or a living nightmare. Yeah. No in between.

Starting point is 00:21:11 Can they eat from their own butt sacks? I assume so. So like that's how they don't die because they're not dead. They have to stay alive so that they can be

Starting point is 00:21:18 a vending machine. They can just sit there. They don't even have TVs to watch while they're hanging off the ceiling. You gotta just think thoughts. Oh, weird.

Starting point is 00:21:26 And then be ready for someone to brush your antenna and be like, it's time to barf again. Maybe we're all just ants hanging on the ceiling. You ever think about that? All right. Beautiful fact. Thank you. Equal parts horrifying and beautiful. Like all the best facts out there.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Deboki. Okay. Well, this fact will take a turn the port wentworth sugar plant was built in georgia in 1917 and was eventually bought by the imperial sugar company the plant operated for around 80 years without any problems until february 7th 2008 when the refinery was suddenly torn apart by an explosion refineriesies have lots of heavy machinery, so you might think, okay, some of this machinery, something went super wrong, and that's what caused the explosion. But it was actually the sugar.

Starting point is 00:22:15 More specifically, the sugar dust that was released by the machinery during a lot of this refinery process. So sugar is flammable. So if you've held a marshmallow over a fire too long, I've done that and suddenly you're like, oh, my marshmallow is on fire. It's organic, it burns, but when we're cooking, we're not really too afraid of things exploding when we're dealing with sugar. But in the Imperial Sugar Refinery, the equipment they were using was basically dispersing a lot of sugar dust everywhere. So according to a report carried out by NASA

Starting point is 00:22:45 after the explosion, there were several inches to several feet of sugar dust on light fixtures and beams. But the real problem was the sugar dust that was floating around in the air. Once one of those ignites, because it's floating around, it has access to all of this oxygen around it.

Starting point is 00:23:01 So that oxygen will fuel the flame. Plus there are other sugar dust particles that are floating around in the air. So that oxygen will fuel the flame. Plus, there are other sugar dust particles that are floating around in the air. So there's this whole chain reaction where one sugar dust ignites, it then sets off another particle and another particle, and it just keeps building and building. And so especially if you're not in a well-ventilated area, as those things are igniting, the air in the room expands. And like if it happens fast enough, you get an explosion. So this is actually called a dust explosion and it's not restricted to sugar. It can happen like with wood and other sources of particles. It's really just like things that can ignite and that

Starting point is 00:23:36 are like accumulating too much in an unventilated room. But that's just the primary explosion, which is like called the primary explosion because when it explodes, it will basically disperse other particles in other areas, which can then keep that chain going. So you'll actually get secondary explosions that can be even more powerful than that primary explosion. In the case of the sugar refinery, they're not actually quite sure what like set off that initial ignition, but they think it was most likely the hot surface of an overheated ball bearing that just like interacted with a piece of sugar and that just like got them going. And this was considered one of the worst dust explosions in decades. And the worst part is that investigations showed that it was preventable. The sugar industry had like known about the risks

Starting point is 00:24:19 of this since like the 1920s. And it was really just that they weren't cleaning things and they weren't taking the safety issues seriously. Again, the rest of us, we don't really need to be worried about sugar dust explosions in our homes. The particles have to be pretty large, apparently, like, four times larger than a grain of table salt. And, like, from what I've read, the dust layer has to be, like, about 132nd of an inch, which is actually, like, when you're dealing with sugar, it's pretty thick. The room has to be unventilated. So this was mostly a lesson to people in the industry and to NASA, which is also worried about in close paces. When did this happen?

Starting point is 00:24:51 In 2008. Oh. Yeah. The whole time I was like, this is an old-timey factory story. They just didn't know any better. No, this was recent. Is it common that NASA looks into explosions like that?

Starting point is 00:25:05 I don't know. Do they investigate weird explosions? Is that kind of their... I was surprised to find this report. And my sense from reading their conclusions is that they mostly want to apply what they learn to their own kind of enclosed system sort of things. To life in space capsules and stuff. Yeah. And it seems like this explosion was like a really big event like it was like

Starting point is 00:25:25 really big in like the industrial world of like just what what are we doing in terms of safety did people die yes yeah unfortunately there were like 14 14 people died and a lot of injuries so there was a lot of anger obviously over the explosion was there a certain level of cleanliness like the factory was supposed to be that it wasn't? is which it like enclosed it even further and so like that's even worse because you're making the volume smaller you're packing all of that in like it can just burn and expand so quickly it's interesting too because i think sugar is especially one of those things like like we were talking about with the definition section like we don't really understand what a carbohydrate is and we don't really understand what a sugar is and we can say that it turns into energy in our body.

Starting point is 00:26:25 But this is a very clear example of how like, no, it is fuel. It is energy. Just packaged in a different way. And then when it's released. Okay, Stefan, are you ready? I think so. I'll count.

Starting point is 00:26:36 Then up to three. One, two, three, go. Either way. Down, up. We'll know. One, two, three. The bokeh. All right. Nice split. Well, very good facts. Excellent facts, in fact. down up we'll know one two three the bokeh alright nice split

Starting point is 00:26:46 well very good facts excellent facts in fact I would say and now it's time for Ask the Science Couch where we will ask a question from

Starting point is 00:26:53 one of our listeners to our couch of finely honed scientific minds at Kimabo Peep wants to know does sugar cause changes

Starting point is 00:27:00 in behavior I feel like that is what you when you're a kid you're watching all kinds of cartoons where people are eating sugar and bouncing off the walls. I've never even thought that it wouldn't be the case that that is what happens. So is it? It seems like it is mostly a myth. Okay. So I want to preface this whole section with the fact that like we are not doctors here.

Starting point is 00:27:21 The nutrition field is very fraught with a lot of different opinions. And hyperactivity is something that apparently a lot of people have debated about for a long time. But it seems like the idea came from something called the Feingold hypothesis. 70s, I think, who suggested that a diet with artificial food coloring, preservatives, and sugars would make kids hyperactive. And this is before we really understood ADHD really well. And so they were specifically talking hyperactive and ADHD symptoms. And so cutting out those things would reduce hyperactivity. But according to like a meta-analysis from 1983 and further research up until the present day, foods high in refined sugar don't increase hyperactivity by any measurable amount. properly and if anything like you get a short energy boost from it but it shouldn't affect behavior to the intensity that these claims are making and some doctors think that it's like has to do with the social aspect of it so like times when kids are generally more hyperactive are like

Starting point is 00:28:35 a birthday party or halloween when it's otherwise like an exciting thing and so your kid is probably just excited because they're excited not because they're eating a bunch of cake yeah yeah wow you're blowing the lid off everything yeah but there are still some people that are like it it does seem like for my child especially it is associated with hyperactivity and i don't want to like invalidate those things i would like people to think more critically about why they're drawing those conclusions but i'm not telling anyone how to raise their kids on psychotandins. Good. I was just going to feed my future children lots of sugar. I know. Also, anecdotally, I eat so much sugar all the time and I was fine. I was like a fine kid.

Starting point is 00:29:18 Yeah. You have a fairly sleepy demeanor. Yeah, I do. You talk about being sleepy all the time. People mention addiction to sugar which is like an inherently behavioral trait so addiction in psychology is both like neurochemistry and behavioral changes so if you're addicted to like hard drugs or something or alcohol then that usually involves a physical dependence on that and changes in behavior. So you like recede from your social life in order to like use this substance. And so by those definitions, sugar isn't really

Starting point is 00:29:51 addictive. And so people say sugar is addictive because it lights up the reward pathways in your brain. But like a lot of things do that. And not all of those things are addictive. Largely, it doesn't seem like people are willing to put themselves like in pain or in physical harm or recede from their social groups to get more sugar right so it doesn't match the addictive quality of other addictive substances but it's like a catchy headline to say like oreos are addictive yeah this has been the most informative episode of size in like a long time yeah and then this is the thing that blew my mind, so I saved it for the end.

Starting point is 00:30:26 But there is potentially a positive effect of sugar on behavior for old people. Where are those originals? That's why they're housing those things down all the time.

Starting point is 00:30:38 Where there have been a couple studies from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization that have shown that a glucose or fructose supplement seems to improve memory for older people because their glucose levels is depleted.

Starting point is 00:30:52 And so if they got a little boost before a memory exercise or something, then they performed cognitively better. And so a little sugar for an old person as a treat might be okay. Just can we define the old person as a treat might be okay yeah just can we like define the old like old person is like 30 yeah here we are what is the age range of that actually it just says elderly human subjects and i didn't trace back the study to find i think it was behind enough paywall so i didn't find how elderly is elderly but i think like qualitatively your memory starts to deteriorate from old age because that like naturally happens

Starting point is 00:31:28 as a part of us growing older. Right. Yeah, it's already happening. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so then eat a little sugar. We're not eating enough candy, Stefan. We gotta step it up. Eat like two Sour Patch Kids packs and you're good.

Starting point is 00:31:39 I think I'll remember everything that ever happened to you in your entire life. No, I better avoid it. If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet upcoming topics out for you to ask us about. Thank you to at PatunaF, at Dana001, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this and every episode.

Starting point is 00:32:02 Final Sandbox scores. Deboki and me tied for last place with one point. Sari and Stefan tied for first place with two points. So my two episode score is three then, right? I believe so. That's right.

Starting point is 00:32:17 You can buy some stuff in the Sandbox store. A little eraser. A little bendy dinosaur. All the props on the shelf behind us Boki it's the end of our time with you for now thank you so much

Starting point is 00:32:30 for being here and for being smart in Hank's stead thank you for having me it was a lot of fun where can people find more of you? so you can find me

Starting point is 00:32:38 on twitter at okidoki underscore boki but I will be hosting Crash Course Organic Chemistry which will be starting mid-April approximately and you can also see more of my work at Journey to the Microcosmos, which I do writing for, and it is awesome. I highly recommend it. For all of these things. And you're one of the forces behind this show.

Starting point is 00:32:58 Yes. So you touch every episode. Yeah. Your ghost is always with us. If you like the show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to that first leave us a review wherever you listen it's very helpful and it helps us know what you think about the show what we can improve what we should keep doing and we'll be looking at itunes reviews for topic ideas for future episodes second tweet out your favorite moment of the episode and finally if you want to show your love for scishow tangents to book are you ready for this just tell people about us! Great job. Plus enough.

Starting point is 00:33:29 And if you want to listen to SciShow Tangents ad-free, you can do that on Luminary. Thank you for joining us for SciShow Tangents. I have been Sam Schultz. I've been Stefan Chin. I've been Sari Reilly. I'm Deboki Chakrabarty. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Sam Schultz,

Starting point is 00:33:45 who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember,

Starting point is 00:33:56 the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. delighted but one more thing rectal prolapse all right just end it yeah at the end of every episode. Rectal prolapse is where your rectum sort of slides out of your body due to muscle strain or weakness. And one non-surgical way to reduce rectal prolapse is apparently sprinkling granulated sugar, a.k.a. sucrose, on the prolapse for like 15 minutes to absorb extra water and make it shrink. Where do you learn these things? Who discovered this?

Starting point is 00:34:47 I know. Also that. I think they figured out first that sugar was a desiccant and then someone was like, try sprinkling it on your prolapsed rectum. They're all just standing around looking at a prolapsed rectum throwing out ideas. What kind of desiccants do we have?

Starting point is 00:35:02 They're pouring all kinds of spices and sugars and stuff on it see what works seasoning it like a little turkey yeah oh god

SciShow Tangents - Sugar with Deboki Chakravarti

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