Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Food Companies Skew What We Eat & How to Avoid Tech Stress

Episode Date: September 10, 2022

Since watching a scary movie can be so stressful and even unpleasant – why do people do it? This episode begins with a discussion on why people watch them and the benefits of doing so. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152040.htm We all make food choices every day. And a lot of things influence those choices which can make it difficult to eat a healthy diet.  To help understand how to make better food choices and resist those negative influences is Marion Nestle, PhD. Marion is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, and she has researched and written several books about food, nutrition and the politics of food – including Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat (https://amzn.to/2EUTGbm) She also has a rather simple way to lose weight you likely want to hear.  Millions of us sit at a computer almost all day – and nothing could be worse! When we slouch and strain our neck and do all the other things we do, it cause all sorts of physical problems. Plus, when you spend a lot of time looking down at your phone, that’s not helping either. Joining me to give some expert advice on what to do about this is Erik Peper. He is a professor of Holistic Health at San Francisco State University and co-author of the book Tech Stress: How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics (https://amzn.to/2QEyZCS). What makes it more likely that you get pulled over by the police? Yes, speeding is the obvious reason but you can also get pulled over because of your position in relation to the other cars as well as other factors. Listen to hear some advice on how to improve your chances of not getting pulled over by the cops. Source: Interview with Eric Peters of https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! With Bambee, get access to your own dedicated HR Manager starting at just $99 per month! Go to https://Bambee.com RIGHT NOW and type in Something You Should Know under PODCASTwhen you sign up - it’ll really help the show! Start hiring NOW with a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING  Offer good for a limited time. Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today on Something You Should Know, why do people watch scary movies when it's so scary and unpleasant? Then, why do you eat the food you eat? The food industry spends billions of dollars to try to influence food choice and we respond to that. It's not the only influence. Religion, families are also very powerful influences on food choice. Plus, how to avoid getting pulled over by the police. And tech stress. That's the stress you put on your body sitting in front of a computer, not to mention staring down at your phone. It's a disaster. When you're looking down at your

cell phone, it's equivalent to having a 60-pound weight on your back. It compresses the neck. And more importantly, when you're looking down at your cell phone, you don't see the world around you. And there's a radical increase in accidents. All this today on Something You Should Know. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're

building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple, built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I haven't mentioned this in a while, but if you have a smart speaker, like an Alexa speaker, or any smart speaker, you can listen to this podcast. We, in fact, can tell from our analytics how many people listen on an Alexa smart speaker. It's a significant number of listeners listen that way.

I actually listen that way sometimes. It's a fun way to listen to anything, but all you have to do is say, Alexa, play something you should know, and just like magic, she'll play the most recent episode of something you should know. First up today, psychologists have always been fascinated with why people watch horror movies. Why in the world would someone subject themselves to something that is scary and unpleasant and call it entertainment? The two prevailing theories have been, one, that the person is not actually afraid, but excited by the movie. The second explanation is that they're willing to endure the terror in order to enjoy a euphoric sense of relief at the end.

It's kind of like hitting your head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop. But recently, two scientists concluded that neither of these explanations was adequate. They believe that some people watch or do scary things because they're happy to be unhappy. They enjoy the negative feeling of being scared. For some, the most pleasant and memorable part of an event may also be the most fearful. Legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock once said, People like to be scared when they feel safe. And that is something you should know. People spend a lot of time talking about food. After all, food is important,

really important. Still, there is a lot of confusion about what to eat, how much to eat, when to eat, what's healthy. And Marion Nestle has been trying to set the record straight for a long time about food and nutrition. She is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She's researched and written several books about food, nutrition, and the politics of food. Her latest book is Unsavory Truth, How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat. Hi, Marion. Welcome. Oh, glad to be here. It's interesting when you listen to other people's conversations, when you eavesdrop,

how much of the conversation is often about food, about what people eat, or what they don't eat, or what they wish they could eat, or what their kids eat, or what they wish they could eat or what their kids eat or what they wish their kids wouldn't eat. There's so much talk about food. Well, food is something we put into our bodies. So it's something that we take very personally. And when we hear all of this information, it's very confusing. And so we want to feel good. We want to be healthy. We want to do right for the planet.

It seems really complicated. I wish it weren't because I actually think it's very simple. And, in fact, dietary advice is so simple that the journalist Michael Pollan can do it in seven words. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That's really all there is to it. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Sounds like good. You have to kind of work on that a little bit and expand on it, but basically that's all it is. And why is that advice so difficult for so many people to follow? Well, nobody makes any money off of it, for one thing. If people just ate real food,

all the makers of processed foods would go out of business. And they spend billions to make sure we eat their products. There is a school of thought, though, that a lot of the problem is the food companies, that they're making us eat all this horrible food as if there is no such thing as personal responsibility. Where do you come down on that? Well, I'm a real believer in personal responsibility, but I think you have to be informed. And where the vacuum is is in the information. If you don't have the information that you need or you're getting conflicting information

and you don't know how to sort it out, then it becomes very difficult. And we like what we like. And the influences on food choice, I mean, I love going on the internet and looking for what are influences on food choice. And you come up with this enormous list of what your friends are eating, what you hear on the radio, you know, what this, that, and the other thing, but they never talk about food industry marketing influence. The food industry spends billions of dollars to try to influence food choice, and we respond to that whether we realize it or not.

It's not the only influence. Religion, families, friends are also very powerful influences on food choice, but I think it's a really important one, and one that's greatly neglected, which is why I write about it so much. What are the things that are, you just mentioned a couple, but what are the big influencers of what I eat? Well, what's in front of you. It's the food that's on your plate that's in front of you and how it gets there varies. You may put it there yourself, in which case you're exercising a lot of personal choice,

but lots of people eat out or did before the pandemic hit, or they eat what their families give them. And that's the number one influence is what's in front of you. And then what your friends are eating, what your family eats, what you're given in schools or in institutions, and what's advertised and what's cool. All of those things. Some people have religious restrictions on what they can eat. I mean, it's really complicated. So where is, what is the unsavory truth? What are we not hearing?

Well, the unsavory truth is the way that food companies try to influence research in order to influence consumer choice. I mean, just the idea of superfoods. Superfoods is a marketing term. From a nutritionist standpoint, you know, my standpoint, there's no such thing as a superfood. All foods, except for sugar, have vitamins and minerals and protein and fats and carbohydrates and things that you need in order to grow and maintain your health. And the key to healthy diets is to eat a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods

because their nutrient compositions complement each other. And really beyond that, that's the most important thing to know. But superfoods is a term that when I hear that term, superfoods, it isn't processed foods. It's things like blueberries and strawberries. So nobody's making a killing on blueberries. Exactly, and that's the problem. But the blueberry industry, and there is a blueberry industry, sells more blueberries. If you think that by

eating blueberries, you're going to live forever and be smarter. And they have funded research to show that, or sensibly to show that, whether the research is any good or not is something we can argue about. But they discovered pretty early on that if they could advertise blueberries as having some special nutritional value, that people would buy more of them. And I'm greatly in favor of eating blueberries. I love them. I eat them every chance I get, especially in the summer when they're really fresh.

But the same thing could be said about any fruit or vegetable. They all have really useful vitamins and minerals and fiber and other kinds of things that are good for you. And I don't really like the marketing competition. It doesn't make any sense to me. You should be eating a lot of different kinds of fruits and vegetables. That's really the best way to maximize nutrient intake. Better blueberries than Cheetos? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so you can argue, well, what's wrong with marketing blueberries?

What's wrong with marketing blueberries? What's wrong with marketing blueberries? I think it confuses people. It makes people think that there is something so special about blueberries that if they eat blueberries, they're going to be healthy. If they don't eat blueberries, they're not going to be healthy. And not realize that every other fruit and vegetable also has nutritional value that's worth getting. As I said, I'm greatly in favor of people eating blueberries. I like them.

I eat them all the time But you don't think their research doesn't show that there is no hierarchy Because we hear, for example, that iceberg lettuce is relatively nutritionally void Versus strawberries or blueberries or broccoli Which are supposedly nutritional powerhouses Well, you have to look at those kinds of claims very carefully because a lot of them have to do with the water content. Iceberg lettuce has mostly water, so anything that's in it is going to be highly dilute. There's not going to be much there. I don't want to look at these things with that kind of scrutiny because I think the basic principle of healthy eating is really simple,

and that's to eat a wide variety of largely but not necessarily exclusively plant foods, and in general not to eat what are now called ultra-processed foods. That's the new buzzword for junk foods. It's somewhat politer than junk foods. But ultra-processed, these are foods that are industrially produced. You can't make them in home kitchens. They have lots of ingredients that you can't pronounce. Everybody knows what those are.

And those you eat in small quantities. So let's talk about what you just said. So you're supposed to eat mostly plant-based foods, and there has been a trend towards people eating less meat. People say, well, I eat chicken, but I don't eat beef, or I've given up meat, or whatever. Are those kinds of decisions healthy decisions if you look at them in isolation? Is not eating meat better than eating meat? Well, we're talking about one food at a time here. And that's not something that I can do very easily. Because if you're eating a generally healthy diet, one food isn't going to make any difference in that generally healthy diet.

Or if you're eating a diet that's almost exclusively based on ultra-processed foods and high-fat meats, one food isn't going to, eating a couple blueberries isn't going to make that much of a difference in your diet either. So when we're trying to compare is it better to eat chicken or beef, it's better to eat chicken. It has less of an impact on the environment. There's less evidence that it's harmful to health. But in looking at diets in general, it's always good to eat small amounts of as wide a variety of foods as you possibly can, as long as they're relatively unprocessed.

And yet you don't have to look very far to find a lot of people who are not following your advice because... That's true. And so why? Nobody listens to me. Speak up. I'm trying. So you wonder, because I've always thought, if you went into any fast food place and the person eating the triple burger

stacked with bacon, you know, that's not really good for you. They're not going to go, really? I didn't know that. No, they're not. No, you know, that's not really good for you. They're not going to go, really? I didn't know that. No, they're not. No, people know. People have a sense of what good food is and isn't. But a lot of them choose to ignore the advice. Well, that's, I mean, it's hard to explain what that's about.

It's what people grew up eating. It's what they think is they're supposed to be eating, what the norm is for them. And if the norm that you grew up with or that all your peers are eating is foods that are extremely high in calories, that are highly processed, a lot of junk food. You're going to think that's normal, and you're not going to want to hear anybody tell you that they would be much better off if they changed their diet to something that's unfamiliar to them. A lot of people never ate vegetables in their family. I happened to grow up in a family where vegetables were prized, and it's my preference. That's what I prefer to eat.

So for me, it's really easy to follow my own advice, and I understand that that makes me quite unusual. And for lots of people, this is an enormous change in the way they eat. And since food is one of life's greatest pleasures, it's something that gives you pleasure several times a day, it's very, very hard to give up what gives you pleasure. So, I mean, that requires a big educational effort. Some people don't get that education until they get sick, and their doctor tells them they have to do something to change it. And I meet people like that all the time.

I'm talking with Marion Nestle. You know, she's in the circles of nutrition and health. She's pretty famous when it comes to this topic, and she is the author of several books, including Unsavory Truth, How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly.

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Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. So, Marion, it's hard for me to believe that if you talk to people who drink a lot of soda, I know people who drink a lot of soda, it's no surprise to them that it's not good for you, that there are better things to be drinking. This is not a big shock. Well, I think they may have heard it, but it didn't get incorporated into the way they think.

When everybody around them is drinking sodas, and they like the way sodas taste, and billions of dollars are going into advertising sodas as something that you should be doing because it's pleasurable. Well, it's what the cool kids do. Exactly. Exactly. That's an enormous influence on food choice. Well, I remember when I was young, when I was a teenager, I drank a lot of soda because all the cool kids did. But I don't drink soda anymore, and when I had a taste of soda not long ago, it tasted terrible.

It just tasted real syrupy and sweet, and I remember soda being very pleasurable, but somehow my, probably because I don't drink it anymore, I've lost the taste for it. Yes, it's one of the things that happens when you're an adult. You lose the taste for it, and it's possible to change taste. It really is, but it usually takes some number of weeks, and not everybody has the patience to go through that.

But I was impressed that I wrote a book called Soda Politics some years ago, and it was not a diet book. It was a book about politics. And yet people told me, I read your book and I stopped drinking sodas. I lost 10 pounds. I lost 20 pounds. One person told me they lost 80 pounds. And the only change they had made in their diet was to stop drinking sodas, but they drank a lot of soda. So that was one change that made a really big difference in their lives. I think it's hard for one change to make a really big difference. You need a lot of little changes, and that's often very difficult. If you've eaten a certain way all your life, to change that is hard.

We're human. There's something about our humanity that makes that very, very difficult and requires a lot of motivation, a lot of support, and our peer group has to do it with us. Well, that's certainly true. motivation, a lot of support, and our peer group has to do it with us. Well, that's certainly true. And, you know, what's interesting to me is that, you know, if you can kind of get your head into it,

that healthy food doesn't have to taste bad. It isn't the ick, oh, I couldn't eat that. That's just, you know, you just eat twigs and sticks and leaves, and, you know, you just eat twigs and sticks and leaves. And, you know, I need my beef. But you can make almost anything taste pretty good. You can make it taste absolutely delicious if you know how to cook. And that's another issue. People, you know, not everybody knows how to cook.

And that's a big issue. If you do know how to cook, you know how to handle anything in your kitchen and make it taste good. But those are skills that are no longer taught in schools. And a lot of people have lost them, which I think is really too bad. And one of the things that the COVID pandemic has done is to force a lot of people to cook. And I think that's a good thing. I remember talking to somebody who was on this program who said, you know, part of the problem is, you know, people demonize ultra processed foods because the way these foods are made, they taste good, they feel good, they taste really good. And he said, but these companies are in, why would you make a processed food that didn't taste good?

Why would you lower the deliciousness of this food if your goal is to sell a lot of it and make money? Well, yes, and food companies are not social service or public health agencies. They're businesses with stockholders to please. And these ultra-processed foods are enormously profitable because the ingredients can be bought when they're cheap, and they have a long shelf life. They sit on shelves for a really long time. So, of course, they're formulated to make people absolutely love them.

They go through enormous amounts of research to make sure that people absolutely love to eat them. You can't eat just one. I certainly can't. And I think they have a position in daily diets. They just don't have a big position. They need to be looked at as an occasional treat, not as something that you eat all day long. Well, it sounds like you're saying that, you know, people are going to eat what they've always eaten, and there's a lot of other influences, and food companies are marketing

heavily, and if you're not used to healthy food, it's hard to eat it. So it's not a real optimistic picture you're painting. Well, I happen to think that healthy food is delicious. It's my preference. I really like it. You know, given a choice, that's what I'm going to eat. And I can usually go to a fast food place and find something that I like to eat in it. Or if there's something that I think isn't going to be particularly good for me, I just don't order too much of it. I order some, but not a huge amount.

The big issue in obesity is how much you eat, which I think a lot of people really don't understand. When obesity became a big problem in the United States and its prevalence started to increase, it increased because people were eating more. They were eating more calories every day. And what we know from the research is that ultra-processed foods encourage people to eat more of them. You can't eat just one. That really works. And so if you're worried about weight, a really good way to handle it is to cut down on ultra-processed foods,

because that's where the weight's coming from. So what's the, if you have any, what's the advice to somebody who says, all right, well, you know, she makes a lot of sense, but that's not been the way I've eaten, so where do you begin? How do you start? I mean, you just said cut down the ultra-processed food, but is that a good place to start, I guess? I think that's a great place to start. My first question is, do you drink sugar-sweetened beverages of any kind whatsoever? And that's the first place to start, because sugary drinks have sugars, water, and nothing of nutritional value.

So that's the first thing you cut out if you can. You know, I mean, some people say they're addicted to them. That means that you need to deal with that as anybody would deal with any kind of addictive feeling. You need help and support, but that's a really great place to begin. There are so many claims, and maybe these are the kind of claims that you talk about in your book, that food companies promote the research on this, and it may be suspect, for example, that chocolate is good for you. And, you know, that just sounds too good to be true. And maybe it is. Maybe chocolate's good for you.

Wouldn't that be wonderful? It's candy, for heaven's sakes. You know, I tell people to use common sense. Use common sense. If the result of a study seems too good to be true, it's probably not true. Sorry about that. You know, chocolate is fine in small amounts. Candy is fine in small amounts. It's not the small amounts you worry about. It's the big amounts. Since you're out speaking and teaching and writing, what's the

one thing that people ask you the most about? Well, mostly they ask, why does nutrition advice change all the time? That's the one I get the most. And it always upsets me because I don't think nutrition advice has changed, at least not in its fundamentals. The first nutrition recommendations for preventing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, all of those things came out in the 1950s. And you could look at those dietary recommendations. They look exactly like today's dietary recommendations, which are to eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and to eat less of foods that are high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat.

I mean, really, it hasn't changed at all. It's when you start talking about individual foods or individual nutrients that it gets really confusing. But people don't eat individual foods. They eat meals. They eat meals that vary enormously from one day to the next. And the best way to optimize your nutritional intake is to make sure you're eating a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods. Not complicated at all. The trick is liking those foods. And that requires

a lot of cognitive restructuring for a lot of people. I know it does. Well, you say the nutrition advice doesn't really change, but diets come into fashion, the Atkins diet or the paleo diet, and people claim to lose weight and feel better. So it does change in that way. Well, yes, and somebody will go on a diet and they'll lose weight, and therefore they will become an expert on weight loss.

And it happens over and over and over again, and they think that their particular way of doing it is going to work for everybody, and I wish that were true. All diets work if they reduce the amount of calories that you're eating relative to the number of calories that you're using up every day. And all diets work for a while on people who try them, and then people regain the weight when they go back to their usual eating patterns. So unless you can figure out a way to reduce your caloric intake without it ruining your life,

it's going to be really hard to lose weight. And that's why I think the ultra-processed idea is such a powerful one because there's research now that shows that when people eat ultra-processed foods, they eat more calories. And when they stop eating ultra-processed foods, they reduce their calorie intake. So that gives you a clue as to one way to change your diet. You still can eat foods you like. Just try to make them real foods. Well, as I said in the beginning, and this is a topic that's on everybody's mind, people talk about it all the time. People have a lot of good and then a lot of crazy ideas about what to eat, what not to eat.

So it's good to get some of the facts. My guest has been Marion Nestle. She's the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, author of several books, and her latest is called Unsavory Truth, How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Marion. My pleasure. It was fun talking to you.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

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get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Just think about how much time you and I spend sitting in front of a computer. I'm doing it right now. Millions of people sit in front of a computer most of the day for work. Then millions of people, often the same people,

spend a lot of time in front of their computers for pleasure, or to shop, or to pay bills. Further still, almost all of us, it seems, spend time looking at our phones. And all of this, as you might imagine, causes problems. A lot of problems. Of course, there's the problem that if you're spending all that time in as you might imagine, causes problems. A lot of problems. Of course, there's the problem that if you're spending all that time in front of a screen, you're not interacting with real people in the real world. But it also creates physical problems.

And here to talk about all of these problems and what you can do about them is Eric Pepper. He is a professor of holistic health at San Francisco State University, and he's been researching all the ways technology affects us. He's co-author of the book, Tech Stress, How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. Hi, Eric. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Well, thank you so much, Michael. It's such a pleasure to be present. So I think everybody who's ever stood up after sitting in front of a computer for hours knows that it can cause aches and pains and a stiff neck. It's even worse now. The problem is that, one, we are now communicating, working, socializing, and dating by screens. When we look at the screen, we get captured.

We get often eye fatigue, eye irritation. By the end of the day, when we go outside, we have more difficulty in focus. People report neck and shoulder pain, probably half the people we talk to. Students, 90% of them will, at the end of the days, have tired eyes, neck and shoulder, you know, they are even anxious, we get irritable, and then we have sleeping difficulty as well. We try to solve this often by saying, ah, it must be ergonomics. That means how can I get a good chair, a good keyboard? And it isn't just that, because even with the best chair,

the best arranged chair that only gives you the opportunity to sit correctly, it doesn't mean you will. And today it's really even differently. You know, think of young children playing. We used to go to school, at least we would walk to school or be driven to school. We would move around. Now we're in front of screens. Well, it's interesting. I think people know when they're sitting at a computer,

they should sit up straight. I know that. But I often find that I'm not sitting up straight. When I check, if I think to check, I'm often hunched over or you know I'm slouching I'm not I'm not doing what I what I know I'm supposed to do and then the question is you know I know better even I know better why don't I do it because the the task the visual task the visual stimulation the notifications are really triggering evolutionary survival mechanisms. For millions of years, you know, we would be reacting to stimuli out there. Is it friend or foe or food? We didn't know we reacted. We do it automatically. And all of us know that in a sense. When I fly, I haven't done it for now a couple of months, but I sit next to somebody, they open up their computer, their screen goes on.

Without any intent on my part, I automatically look at their screen. I even do the two people's cell phones. I shouldn't say that, but I do. I think most people do that. And that is really means I'm captured. And those are the biological background why we react this way. There are two more parts. When we sit so long, we tend to collapse like a letter C.

We forget in that position, a couple of things happen. One, I'm compressing almost or applying more pressure to my abdomen. I don't know that. I do. But it's similar to when we go for dinner and we're eating a nice meal. And you know when you feel too full and then you undo your zipper a little bit or you loosen your belt and you can let your bubble self bubble out more and you feel better. Well, in a sense, we are sitting in this collapsed position continuously. It also means that we put our bodies in a state which is really submissive and powerless or hopeless. Think about it.

When you're depressed, how do you sit? How do you walk? Most people tend to walk collapsed. And that position is a biological position of submissiveness. Think of two dogs meeting. One is dominant, its tail is up, it's tall, the other one is submissive. When you sit in the computer, unknowingly you start collapsing, you put your body in that position, that signals the brain and it affects our emotions and thoughts. We totally forget that. And what about when we spend all that time looking down at our phones, you know, whether we're walking or sitting,

nobody puts their phone up. We're always looking down at the phone. It's a disaster. When you're looking down, it's equivalent to having a 60 pound weight on your back and the body has to compensate lifting this weight, holding this weight, it compresses the neck. And more importantly, when you're looking down at your cell phone, your vision is right at the cell phone and you don't see the world around you. And there's a radical increase in accidents that occurs. Pedestrian deaths have tripled. People have many more accidents. It's shocking. This is a universal problem. I mean, everyone who is in front of a screen suffers the symptoms that you're talking about.

And so what is the universal solution? The universal solution is to be aware that we are triggered in these patterns. It's really part of our evolutionary background. We have no choice, almost. We look down. So that's one. Two, once you identify it, then there are some solutions, especially at the computer. You can rearrange your station, that's called the ergonomic side of it by which you at least sit up more by which the screen is higher and good luck i'm saying this in a humorous way because when you're using a tablet a tablet it's almost always down so you need a tablet stand if using a laptop, it's always a compromise. To solve the laptop, you either need an external keyboard so the screen can be higher, or an external screen so the keyboard can be on your lap.

I remember not long ago, I did a little experiment where I put a little box underneath the computer screen to lift it up off the desktop about four inches. And it really did make a difference because on a standard desktop, my computer screen, I'm looking down a little bit. Depends on where on the screen on the monitor I'm looking. But generally, I'm looking down. Not much, but it is down a little. Yes, and when it's low, you automatically start looking down.

You put your body lower. If the screen is a tiny bit higher, so the top of the screen is no higher than your eyebrows, then you overall will be slightly more erect. You can also put a slight pillow in your lower back. So when you're sitting into the chair, you put your way in back in the chair and then lean back a bit so you're erect but now there's a problem my vision may not be correct because if i can't see the screen well or the letters are too small i automatically look forward because it's more important to see what is going on than to deal with the adaptation of the body. Seeing is survival. And those are early mechanisms.

We forget that. Is there any research that would indicate that, yes, this is annoying and it's painful in the moment and when you get up it hurts, but is there any long-term, do we know if there's any long-term effects of this? Well, in our studies at least, we have shown very clearly that if you hold chronic bracing of the muscles, it will definitely lead to neck and shoulder pain or pain down your arm. And it occurs more quickly. The key is to solve that is have many interruptions. Think about the old typist. You know, when I think of a typist on a real typewriter,

the person sat almost in the same positions, but then they would have to put the paper into the typewriter. There was different muscles. Then they had to get up and file the paper. And they almost never just looked at a screen. They could look around the room. We don't do any of those. You know, we forget how much we freeze.

And I imagine not only do you freeze your muscles, your limbs, but it also affects your breathing, right? Most people aren't aware that they often breathe, either hold their breath or breathe much more shallowly. When we look at adults, almost every adult we have ever measured at the work site, and also students, when they are mousing and working, their breathing rate is quicker and higher in their chest. Now, so what? Right? But when it increases our anxiety, it stops us being regenerated. So the easiest way is to breathe slower. That's one solution at least. And do lots of wiggling. And we don't remember how to do that. Lots of what? Wiggling. The more we can be alternate

movements the better let me give another example when you work at the computer not you but if people work at the computer they have no idea that their shoulders may be slightly tense we have demonstrated that so many times and you work like that for long time periods. So notice what it would feel like. As you're sitting like this, obviously don't do it when you're driving, I like you to lift your right knee an inch up. Just lift it up so the foot is away from the floor.

Just hold it. It is not a very big movement. Just hold it up. And what you now experience is, most likely, initially you held your breath. You obviously stiffened your body. And you start feeling some slight achiness starting to develop in the hip. Let it go. Now it goes away.

Notice we tightened the muscles. But the longer we tightened it, that stopped the blood flow. And it caused the achiness. We do this when we work at the computer at a very subtle level. So by the end of the day, we've held these muscles tight for too long. We feel stiff. We feel achy. And that builds up chronically over time. It gets even worse than

that or better. That if you're emotionally stressed, time urgency, then the body does not regenerate. And finally, when you're sitting, we have sitting disease. You know how your legs, at least my legs, often feel heavy if I sit too long stiff? The reason is my blood flow goes down my legs, but it doesn't get pumped up easily. To pump the blood up from my legs, my calf muscles have to tighten and squeeze the veins to get it back. And often, so we're not using our,, second heart as the calf muscles is often called. Well, it does seem that a big part of the problem that you're talking about, the root cause of the problem is sitting still for so long. When you sit still for so long, that's when the problems start. But I know from experience that it's hard to catch yourself sitting there for so long and

get up and start moving around so how can we do what can we do about it maybe that's what i have done and when i teach is to use a little program to remind myself because eric pepper it works out is not trustworthy to listen to himself damn so i So I have a program, which, you know, it's not my program. It's called stretchbreak.com. It's free for anybody. They can put it onto their computer and then you can set a timer and every 20 or 30 minutes or 15 minutes, it pops up and it guides you through stretches. For me, I've never made it automatic, I must be honest. And so I use this program to remind me. And I've trained myself even when I teach or work, when it pops up, I interrupt literally in the middle of the sentence, and I start doing this for myself.

And then by the end of the day, as one of the employees, when we did this. I'll never forget this employee. You know, he said, I have no problems. You know, I have no achiness, nothing. My eyes don't hurt. I work hours at the computer. I have no problems at all. Finally, because it's part of a program, he persuaded him to use this program to take breaks.

At the end, the next week he came back and he said, you know, there's life after five, his quote. And what he meant was that he had much more energy when he left his work site than he ever did before. Let's talk about cell phones, because you can walk down any street in any town, any city, anywhere, and you will see people walking along, staring down at their cell phones with their neck bent, walking along, not paying attention to anything. And that can't be good for your neck. It will do two things. One, like I said, we become less aware of our social connections or the social world around us. It is natural that we look down.

That's what I call an evolutionary trap you know the visual stimuli the updating is critical from an evolutionary perspective when we look at a visual screen our brain does not really know that it's a visual screen it reacts as if the information there is real the second part is that when we walk in a collapsed way, we, for most of us, and we have done studies this way and published them, when you start walking collapsed, you are, your energy starts dropping. The data is overwhelming. You're more prone for depression. If you feel low energy, all you do is physiologically change and skip. Skip in place. Look up and skip.

People think you're crazy if you did it on the sidewalk. But I highly recommend your energy goes up. Everybody, when they skip, their energy goes up. I mean, I can give one more example, if you like, on this for how our brains work in math or so with our students if that's useful sure okay so we do this very simple study anybody can do this at home you sit and now you sit collapsed looking down slouched and in this position you're you're just do some mental math mainly subtract the number seven or the number 13 sequentially backward from, let's say, 113. So 113, 106.

If I subtract seven each time, then 99. I do this as quickly as possible. Okay. That's the kind of task. Now you have people do this task, the same people in different controlled studies, where they do it collapsed or sitting up and looking up and erect. Very simple. Universally, when people are in the collapsed or slouched position, they find the math, the cognitive task much harder to do, except for one small subgroup of students. The students who absolutely have no test anxiety, no fear of math, no performance anxiety, which is a small group, that group, it has no effect.

But for more than 80% of them, it has a significant effect. And from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. When we look down, we are moving in a defensive position. We don't need abstract thinking. When you look up, you can think more of the future of new alternatives. So for work, I think this is critical. When you're trying to do problem solving, move. Move your body. Look up.

Get a new view in life. Well, this is an important topic for everyone because I think, speaking for myself and probably just about everybody listening, I'm going to be sitting at my computer and looking at my phone for the foreseeable future. Eric Pepper has been my guest. He is a professor of holistic health at San Francisco State University, and he is author of the book, Tech Stress, How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Eric.

Well, Michael, I really appreciate the interview. I hope you find it helpful. Nothing will ruin your day quicker than getting a speeding ticket. And if you think it's just the speeding that puts you at risk for a ticket, well, there's more to it than that. Here are some tips to avoid being a ticket target. First, go with the flow, because the police tend to look for drivers who are going significantly faster

than the cars around them. Don't be the leader of the pack. Stay in the middle. Being the lead or the last car puts you in the most ticketable position. Stay in the wake. Find a driver who's going the speed that you'd like to go,

and then follow him at a safe distance. You're still vulnerable, but often the radar gun will be trained on the front car. And mind your manners. Frequent lane changes or tailgating is not just dangerous, it's rude, and there are a lot of drivers who will not hesitate to call your license plate in to the police. And stay in the center lane. Speed traps are in the left and right shoulders, and it's easier for the cops to target you

if you're in one of those outside lanes. And that is something you should know. And now that the show is over, please take a moment, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and tell a friend, share this podcast with somebody you know. I'm Mike Hurbrothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast,

Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures?

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