Something You Should Know - The Psychology of Being “Played for a Sucker” & Food Myths That Won’t Die

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Ever wonder why some people seem naturally gifted at music? It turns out your personality may have more to do with musical ability than you think. This episode begins with research identifying which personality traits actually predict innate musical potential — and which ones don’t. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151013135831.htm Are we too worried about getting scammed? Most of us would rather lose money through an honest mistake than fall victim to a con — and that hyper-vigilance affects far more of our decision-making than we realize. My guest, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and psychologist, argues that our fear of “being the sucker” often makes us worse off. She is the author of Fool Proof: How Fear of Playing the Sucker Shapes Our Selves and the Social Order–And What We Can Do About It (https://amzn.to/3jMqrfo). She explains why this deeply human fear is so powerful — and how putting it in perspective can make us happier, more confident, and even more generous. Food brings out some strong and unusual beliefs. Some people insist eggplant is dangerous… others worry that burnt toast or charred meat causes cancer… and many assume artificial sweeteners wreak havoc on gut bacteria. To separate fact from fiction, I speak with Dr. Joe Schwarcz, Director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society and author of 19 books, including his latest, Better Not Burn Your Toast: The Science of Food and Health (https://amzn.to/3JMmYe3). He breaks down what’s real, what’s rumor, and what you actually need to know to eat smarter. Finally, what’s the right way to stay warm in cold weather? Is it true that you lose most of your body heat through your head? We look at the real science of staying warm, avoiding frostbite, and protecting yourself when temperatures drop. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2025/01/03/what-cold-weather-does-to-the-body-and-how-to-protect-yourself-this-winter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, how your personality determines how well you play a musical instrument. Then no one wants to be a sucker or played for a fool, but maybe we worry about that way too much. Really what I'm trying to do here is to make the case for being a sucker sometimes, because I think that in a number of contexts in our lives, the fear of being played for a fool is counterproductive to our own actual goals. Also, the secret to staying warm when the weather gets cold.

And the facts and myths about the food we eat, from burnt toast to tomatoes and sugar. I think, as a general rule, the population, certainly in the Western world, is consuming too much sugar. When you consider that a can of soft drink contain 40 grams of sugar, which is actually more than the amount of added sugar

that we should be eating during a day. All this today on Something You Should Know. I want to tell you about a great new podcast I think you'll like. I'm loving it. So what happens when our passions become obsessions? Well, on David Green is obsessed, one of America's most familiar voices and longtime co-host of NPR's Morning Edition seeks out obsessives of all kinds

while unpacking his own fixations. You'll hear David talk to comedian Tigni, Totaro about her complex passion for plant-based food. Actor David Arquette on his love of Bozo the Clown. Paula Poundstone on her house full of cats. Celebrity chef and author Michael Simon discusses why he just can't quit the Cleveland Browns even though they often make him miserable,

and so much more. It's pop psychology disguised as conversations with the world's most fascinating people. You can listen to David Green is obsessed wherever you get podcasts. 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. So how could it be that your ability to play an instrument, your musical skill and ability, is determined by your personality? Well, that's the question we're going to start with today.

Hi, welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers, and this is something you should know. So psychologists at the University of Cambridge tested people's musical ability and then linked their scores to their personality traits. And what they discovered is that aside from musical experience, the trait of openness was the next best predictor of musical skill. Openness is defined as being willing to try new experiences and new ways of thinking. extroversion was also linked to musical ability so a person who is more open and outgoing

will typically have more musical ability than people who are closed and introverted interestingly they found that the links between personality and musical performance were present even in people who did not play a musical instrument this means that there are individuals who have the potential for musical talent but are entirely unaware of it

And that is something you should know. Have you ever been scammed? I have. Imagine most people have. Nobody likes that feeling of being taken advantage of. Most of us are on guard a lot of the time to prevent being taken advantage of because it's such a horrible feeling to feel like a sucker. You feel foolish.

And that actually may be a problem. The fear of being taken advantage of may be worse sometimes than being taken advantage of. So how can that be? Well, here to discuss it is Tess Wilkinson Ryan. She is a University of Pennsylvania law professor and psychologist and author of the book, Full Proof, how fear of playing the sucker shapes ourselves and the social order and what we can do about it. Hey, Tess, welcome to something you should know. Thank you so much.

So what I love about this topic is it's a topic that I didn't know was a topic. I didn't know this was a thing that people study. I always thought that the fear of being a sucker was just like common sense, good consumerism, smart thing to do. But is this like human nature to always think, is this a real deal or is this guy trying to take me? I think I agree with you that everyone thinks this is common sense, which is why I'm kind of having fun pushing back a little bit on this common sense and saying, wait a minute, aren't there a whole bunch of places in our lives when actually we'd be better off like playing the fool a little bit? I'm sort of making the case for being a sucker,

even though I think you're right. We are pretty programmed to have sort of our antennae always on the lookout for the potential scam. So is this perpetual fear of being taken or worrying about is this legit? Is this human nature or is this a learned behavior? You know, that's a really interesting question. There are studies in other areas of psychology about sort of a natural ability to detect cheating. But I also think that it's clearly learned. And the reason I think that is because of all of the different sayings we have that reinforce this message. So if you think about how many fables are about scams like the Trojan horse or the boy who cried wolf and all the sayings from your parents like don't take any wooden nickels right fool fool me once shame on me

that kind of thing which does suggest that there is this like built up cultural apparatus that wants the members of a society to stay on guard and we want to keep people honest so this idea of being vigilant and looking out for trouble seems like really good advice. So why are you questioning it, shining a light on it? Why are we talking about this? Most of the time, trying not to put yourself in the position of being suckered, taking advantage of, betrayed. Most of the time, that's a really sensible, reasonable thing to do, right? I do not want to invest my money with a person who's going to scam me out of it. That seems totally right. But let me describe a study to you where it seems like people are taking this fear of being betrayed and applying it in a

case when it doesn't make a lot of sense. The study is an investment study. The task is you are going to be given $100 to invest in this company. There's a 95% chance of either breaking even or of making a real profit. There's a 5% chance that you lose your entire investment. Now, this is an experimental study, so half the subjects are randomly assigned to one additional piece of information and half to another. Here are the two additional pieces of information that subjects could conceivably get. Participants in one condition are told the 5% risk of losing everything is because the investors of this company may not have accurately predicted the consumer demand for their product. The other participants, the other condition is told the 5% risk of losing money

is because the founders of this company may be scammers, they may be fraudsters. How much do you want to invest? This is a hypothetical task, so people are supposed to say how much of the $100 they want to invest in this hypothetical company. The subjects, the participants who heard that the downside risk of this investment was a scam, were willing to invest much, much less than those that heard that the exact same level of downside risk was just because of regular sort of misprediction of the market by something like $30 out of $100.

So a huge difference in whether or not they'd be willing to enter this gamble based on the kind of mistake that they might make. If the mistake was the mistake of being saved, scammed, they really were much more hesitant than if the mistake was the mistake of a regular kind of error. And why do you suppose that is? I think that the experience of being betrayed or scammed is really humiliating. Being a sucker is like a very, is a very sort of alienating kind of low status position to be in.

And if you're just the victim of a random mistake or even of a random crime, It doesn't have the same effect as if you are the victim of some kind of an interpersonal hustle where you could have saved yourself. You could have taken better precautions. And now you're going to blame yourself for having let yourself be taken advantage of. And so what's the big so what here? So why are we talking about this? I mean, you've laid out what it is, but so what?

It seems like it's going to happen. So what? Yeah. Really what I'm trying to do here. is to make the case for, to make the case for being a sucker sometimes. And the reason I'm making that case is because I think that in a number of case, a number of context in our lives, the fear of being played for a fool is counterproductive to our own actual goals.

So give me an example of that. Okay, great. Actually, if it's okay with you, I'm going to give you two examples, one of which is really trivial. So the trivial example is this, and this is an example that I will thank my sister for because she knew that I was thinking about these issues. she called me to tell me about it. And the issue and the example is that my sister and some friends were taking a bike ride in Vermont. And it was a very intense ride. And they pulled into a town in

Vermont and went to a general store. In Vermont, general stores can kind of have one of two different flavors to them. Some of them are obviously aimed at sort of out of towners and others are just sort of standard country stores. And she, this one turned out to be something more of a touristy general store and so my sister who lives in Vermont couldn't believe when she went inside that they were going to charge like six dollars for a gatorade and she was like this is outrageous right i'm not going to be the kind of person who gets who basically gets scammed into buying a two dollar drink for six just because this store has like fancy artisanal maple syrup and she actually considered for a moment not buying the gatorade even though she was miles from home and as she finally told me she's

finally she said at that moment this gatorade was literally worth a hundred dollars to me. Like, I really needed to be hydrated to even get home. And she talked herself out of this sort of worry about, you know, about the racket of the store and bought the Gatorade and went home. I think that's an experience a lot of us have had of being like, I can't believe this. This is outrageous. But her point was like, look, I got to get home. In fact, this Gatorade is more expensive than other Gatorades, but its value to me right now is higher than almost any other thing I could buy at any store. Yeah. That's a great example. And that's happened to everybody. I mean, even things like, you know, you pass up the gas station because you think the

price of gas there is just ridiculously high and then you run out of gas. Well, exactly. Maybe. No, this is exactly the kind of, I mean, I myself have done, of course, this exact thing. Because you have some idea in your head about like what the price is that's fair. And so, and the price seems unfair, you think, well, this is, you know, what a, you know, what a racket. I'm not going to be part of this. But there's a difference between, I think, between, that kind of scam because you know you do have the option of not buying the Gatorade for six dollars but but then there are there are people who are much more dishonest I remember when I was in college and I was living in an apartment and there was a knock on the door and this guy was you know a young guy selling magazine subscriptions and I thought oh I'll help the guy out and I wrote him a check and I

think I subscribe to People magazine and he came in I think I gave him a glass of water and the whole thing was a scam and he stole my money. And that, and the fact that I still remember that, that's different than just the price is too high. That's, that's a legitimate scam where somebody very dishonest took advantage of me. Absolutely. I think that the scam that you're describing is exactly the kind of thing that you want to ideally avoid. Part of the suggestion I'm making is that we often overestimate the risk of that kind of scam, and it sort of bleeds over into situations in which we actually would prefer to go ahead and do the thing, even though it's going to have a small risk of that kind of a scam. Yeah, I think you're right. And what's your other example?

I see this particular thing happen less often, but this was a sort of a common hustle in Philadelphia when I would be walking around in my student days, which would be that somebody would come up to me with a bus schedule and say, excuse me, is there any way you can help me? I've missed my bus and I've lost my wallet and I just need $6 to get on the bus and get a transfer out to where my car is parked way out in the suburbs. And they would have like a pretty elaborate story

about what they needed. I remember finding this to be particularly hard in part because I felt somewhat, I felt like the risk in that case that they were not telling the truth was very high. But there was also a part of me that thought, you know, if this story is true or even if a sort of a piece of it is true, which is just this is a person in somewhat dire financial circumstances who's asked me for help in a moment when I have the ability to do that, even if a piece of the story was true, it was kind of work. worth it to me, to give the money, given the risk to me, right? We're talking about $6. I wasn't going to lose more. It wasn't a situation where I was going to be stolen from in some greater, in some other way. And so the question was, are my sort of sucker antennae potentially steering me away from something that I actually think might

be the better choice, which is to give the money and move on? That to me is the harder kind of question. And this kind of question comes up, not just in these kind of one-on-one interactions, but in cases like how people donate money to charities, one of the things people suggest that there's a real preference for like in-kind donations, like people prefer to donate food to shelters rather than money to food shelters, in part because the food feels like it's less vulnerable to being exploited or used for things like drugs, something like that. But that fear the fear that the money is going to be somehow taken advantage of leads people to make sort of less efficient donations

because actually, from the food shelter's point of view, it's a lot more efficient for them to get $10 in cash than it is for them to get $10 in canned goods. And there's something interesting about the difference in our two examples I want to ask you about. I'm speaking with Tess Wilkinson Ryan. She is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book, Full Proof,

how fear of playing the sucker shapes ourselves. and the social order and what we can do about it. Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at p.c.express.ca. Of the Regency era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, or it's the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.

The Regency era was also an explosive. of time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar history's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. So, Tess, there's an interesting difference between your example of giving the $6 and my example is you'll never know. And so you'll And I did because I called people magazine and said, well, where's my magazine? And they said, what?

And then it all dawned on me that this was just a total scam. So I know I was scammed. You'll never know. You'll never know if that was a real thing or not. And so who cares? That's a really good point. Some of the research on regret, which I think is obviously tied very tightly into the idea of being a sucker. because suckers obviously really regret agreeing to something.

There's a super interesting research on regret that basically says the things that makes people nervous is the decisions they make that they know that they're going to find out whether or not they made the right decision or the wrong decision. Whereas you're right, in the situation I'm describing, I was never going to know. And I'd rather not know. I can be blissfully ignorant.

Yeah, I think ignorance is bliss in that case because not only will you likely never know, but there wouldn't even be a way to go find out that would itch at you. So you just let it go because it's $6 and so what? So what's your message here? What do you think people should take away from this? My message is often the fear of being a sucker feels so intense that it's a little bit closer to a true phobia

where people don't want to go anywhere near it. It takes up more space than we actually intend to give it. And so it's totally sensible to think rational. about what kind of deals are going to yield outcomes that you want. You know, do I want to buy this product? Do I want to make this investment? Do I want to make this loan? Those things, it's totally sensible to think, you know, what is the outcome here really going to be?

But that oftentimes the fear of playing the sucker gets to take up a ton of space in the decision that it doesn't actually deserve. And so my message in a lot of ways is the fear of being a sucker, the risk of it, should get to be like any other risk, like just a normal risk that can be traded off against other priorities depending on how serious it is or what the real goals are. And oftentimes the real goal is something deeper than I want to avoid scams. Oftentimes the real goal is something like I want to be a compassionate citizen or I want to be a person who connects with other people or something like that. Well, it's such an interesting thing. Because as I said in the beginning,

I've never thought about this as a thing to think about. But how many times have you gone to a store and seen something with a price that seems very high? And like your Gatorade example. And so you, and you think to yourself, I could get this for half the price at, you know, at Costco or whatever. But then you never do. You had the chance to buy it then. You wanted it then. You pass it up because you think you're getting taken advantage of. And then you never buy it. You never buy it. Exactly. And part of what I like about that example so much is that what do I care if the store makes a couple dollars off of me for some random product if I got to have the, if I got to actually enjoy myself for this particular thing? Like in some ways, the focus on the store.

store taking advantage just isn't even like part of my, it should, I think if my like rational self says that doesn't need to be part of the decision. What matters is how valuable would this thing have been to you? That's what really matters. Not like is this store sort of pricing their goods in a way that seems sort of the platonic ideal of the prices for these goods. And you see this. And well, it's kind of my thing is like I hate high gas prices and I hate ATM fees. And but I'm not nuts about it, but I know there are people who will drive for a long time to find an ATM that doesn't, because it's their bank that doesn't charge fees, or never find a bank that doesn't charge fees and never get the money they needed to do whatever they were going to do

because they're so afraid of paying ATM fees and they think it's such a scam. I mean, there's a million examples now that you've kind of opened the drawer here of how that really works against you in your life, just for the sake of saying, aha, I didn't get scammed. No, that's, you know, you don't want to be the one who's like the fool in the, in the sayings, you know, one born every day, that kind of thing. You know what? It just feels like that's a sort of a cultural status.

Nobody wants to occupy. But, you know, a lot of times if your goal is something like getting things done, quickly or, you know, or having some sort of deeper integrity in some kind of a process, right? And you think, well, listen, actually the risk that this is going to cost me a little bit more or whatever, all else being equal, it's a relatively small risk. So really my only sort of pitch here is just to right size the risk, right? Just to give it the space it deserves, rather than the sort of like radioactive sense that I can't go anywhere near a situation that would make me feel a little bit foolish. Yeah. Well, it's a great message. And it's one I've never

heard before. And there's a lot of missed opportunities when I listen to you talk and I think of my life of things I've done or not done because of that fear. And I never really thought of it as a one singular thing to think about. But it really is. It's like, wow. Yeah. Thank you. I will say, as a person who in my day-to-day life, I teach contract law. And in contracts, there are a ton of cases where you think, these people are spending so much money to litigate a dispute because neither of them is willing to feel like they were the sucker in this situation. And you think, is this, was it really worth all this? Well, that's really interesting when you think about contracts because not only do you want to not feel like you've been

scammed, but you have evidence to prove that you, in your view, should not have been scammed. Like, you almost have an obligation to fight it because it's in black and white. It isn't some kind of vague. I should have paid $4. No, no, this is clear right in black and white, and you got scammed. And so you're going to sue when maybe you could just suck it up and move on with your life. Settled for a little bit. You know, one of the interesting kinds of cases that I come across,

usually at the end of a contracts course, are these cases where both people think that they were, that they were scammed. Like, they both think the other one. So, so they're litigating and everyone's mad because oftentimes it's because they miss it, like, they disagree on what the contract actually meant. And once you get everybody, once you have both sides insistent that the other party is the scammer, it is so hard to untangle that kind of a case and it becomes incredibly expensive because both parties are sort of willing to litigate to the health. Yeah, right. Because there's a righteousness there that I'm right and it says so right here in paragraph five, section three. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I think people even have a sense that

that they're supposed to fight back, like that they're, you know, if you think about the idea of like avenging your honor, I think that sometimes people even feel like they have to fight back to save face, like the only way, because if they sort of just take it, it's going to make them seem weak. And so it's not only that they have a strong emotion, but they feel like, well, I think I'm supposed to do this thing, which is to like make sure I don't seem weak to others, even though it turns out to be incredibly costly in other ways. Well, I like this conversation because, well, through your explanation, you're really giving people permission not to worry about it so much, that by putting that fear of being a sucker so high up on the priority list,

you may be denying yourself some real possibilities and some real joy in life. So, so why not? I've been talking with Tess Wilkinson Ryan. She is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And the name of her book is Full Proof, how fear of playing the sucker shapes ourselves and the social order and what we can do about it. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Tess.

Thank you so much, Mike. This has been such a pleasure. Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmist. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times. No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird.

Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry, we rate every episode grim, grimmer, or grimace. So you, your child, your child, your... your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist, and our new season, available now. When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kradarokian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxies inhabited planets.

The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses. in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression. Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living, but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone Wolves is Season 11 of the Galactic Football League Science Fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a stand-alone story or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with season one, the rookie. Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts.

There are few topics that spark more confusion or stronger opinions than food. What's healthy? What's harmful? What's hype? I mean, there's so much information out there. plenty of misinformation that it's really hard to know what to believe. So today, we're going to separate food facts from fiction with Dr. Joe Schwartz. He's director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, and he's received numerous awards for his work making science understandable to the public. He's written 19 books, including his latest, Better Not Burn Your Toast,

The Science of Food and Health. Hey, Joe, welcome to something you should know. Thanks very much. Glad to be here. So since it is in the title of your book, why don't we start out with burnt toast? Because I know I have heard, and I'm sure plenty of other people have heard, there's something about black toast, burnt toast that's related to cancer, that it could cause cancer and that you should need it. So what's the story with that, and is it true?

Well, it probably is true if you're going to feed your crumbs from burnt toast to mice or to rat. in huge amounts, they may indeed develop cancer because whenever you burn wheat, which contains glucose and contains an amino acid called asperogen, these two will react together and form acrylamide. We call acrylamide a carcinogen. Now, a lot of people are confused by that term, but scientifically, it just means that it is a chemical that can cause cancer without taking into account under what conditions or in what amount. In the case of acrylamite, that is true because when you feed huge doses to test

animals, you can trigger cancer. But that is a long way from saying that eating burnt toast will cause cancer in humans. The story, of course, becomes much more complicated because obviously the cornerstone of toxicology is that only the dose makes the poison. So it's a question of how much one would eat. And if one would make a diet of burnt toast, you know, with every meal, there might be an issue there, especially if you combine it with burnt marshmallows or a steak that has been grilled to the degree that it's black on the outside. Yeah, then we're looking at a possible risk to health. But when it is consumed, in reasonable amounts in moderation, that is a completely different story.

But is it cumulative? In other words, I may not eat a lot of burnt toast at any one meal, but if I'm eating over my lifetime, burnt toast, burnt marshmallows, burnt meat, it all adds up. It has a cumulative effect, and that that could be hazardous. Is that right? That's right. Less is better, because acrylamide is indeed a recognizable. nice carcinogen, albeit it has only been shown to cause cancer in test animals at high doses. But nevertheless, we want to limit our intake of anything that is potentially carcinogenic. So, indeed, yes, we should be concerned about overconsumption of anything that has burned, but I would not panic about eating a toast that has a little bit of char on it.

But as a general rule, I think it's always a mistake to sort of tune in to one specific food. So I wanted to ask you about, I hear this all the time. There are supplements that are advertised with the claim that it boosts memory or that improves performance, I don't know what that means, and I don't know what it, if it's true. Well, to cut to the chase, I think it is not true. I, of course, follow the literature very closely on this memory enhancement business, especially because as you get older, you know, you become more and more concerned about this. Names are harder to remember, et cetera. I think it's a, you know, a common feature of aging.

Aging is a bad idea. Anyway, obviously there is a lot of literature on this, but there is absolutely no compelling literature that any of these supplements will have any benefit. The one that is mostly touted as Prevagen, and when you look at the one study that they actually refer to all the time, you find that it really is rather unconcernation.

inclusive and they have some cherry-picked data that has never been reproduced. Overall, one can say that the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the more likely you are to prevent any kind of memory problems or any kind of cognition problems. But there is no single supplement that will do that. And once again, it's the question of emphasizing the overall diet. And it isn't really all that complicated. We recommend eating five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, eating mostly whole grain products, and minimizing the ultra-process foods. What about supplements or drinks or, you know, shakes or whatever that supposedly help improve physical endurance and physical performance? Well, there are some

supplements that actually will do that, protein. If you are really into heavy-duty exercise and heavy-duty weightlifting, for example, then you do benefit from upping your protein intake. And the protein shakes, protein smoothies, yes, those will help regenerate muscles after exercise and build muscle. Now, they will not build muscle on their own. You do, have to do the work, but it will enhance your chance of improving your muscular. That much is true. There are also some evidence for creatine in terms of endurance. And basically, if someone is into really heavy-duty athletics, if you're into the 100-meter swim, for example, yes, you can cut off a fraction of a second by using creatine.

And swimmers do that. It is a supplement that is allowed, and they do bank on it. But aside from creatine and protein supplements, I don't think that there's anything that has been demonstrated to improve performance. There's a phrase you often hear that food is medicine.

Is food medicine? Can food treat disease? It depends on what the disease is and what we mean by treatment. Obviously, if someone is diabetic, for example, they have to be very careful about their diet. If they eat the wrong things, of course, their diabetes will go astray. So it's very important to know exactly what your carbohydrate intake, what is your sugar intake. So in that sense, you can't treat disease with food. If someone has high cholesterol, for example, which of course is a risk factor for heart disease,

well, you can indeed reduce your blood cholesterol levels by an appropriate diet. But when it comes to conditions like cancer, and of course you can go on the web and there will be all kinds of websites that will tell you what to eat and what not to eat if you're already been diagnosed with cancer, there there's much less evidence for that. The evidence mostly is for prevention, that we have a healthy diet, you're less likely to suffer for heart disease, less likely to come down with diabetes, less likely to get cancer. But treatment, that is a very difficult kind of thing. Now, obviously, there are many food connections. I mean, if you're allergic to peanuts, obviously you stay away from peanuts.

So in that sense, food can be medicine. But I think that the card is often overplayed. So yes, there is certainly a relationship between what we eat and our health. I mean, that's obvious because food is the only raw material that ever goes into our body. So our body is constructed of the molecules that are found in food. So obviously, what we eat is very important. But it is only one of the determinants of health, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, how well we have selected our parents, right, in genetics. Those are very critical things.

But so food is one player in the whole health game. Are there any foods that are particularly, have been particularly demonized, you know, like egg pie? plants or tomato, whatever that. Right. I mean, the so-called nightshade vegetables have been demonized, eggplant being one, with absolutely no scientific rationale behind it. This is one of those mythical scares that appears on the internet. None of that is based on real science. And once again, you know, single foods do not make food angelic or devilish.

it's the overall diet that matters i figured it must have been somebody who didn't like eggplant that started that so that yeah very often you can trace it to to that or to you know some sort of myth there's a story that goes around about tomatoes that tomatoes are toxic and because they are also in in the nightshade family and the the story is that in the united states they would were not eaten because of that until the uh somewhere in the 1800s uh when a gentleman by name of johnson in front of a crowd in salem massachusetts decided to demonstrate that tomatoes are healthy and bit into a tomato as a as a little orchestra played a funeral dirge in the background and he had invited people to gather to watch this epic event because they thought that uh they would see his

demise when he bit into a tomato and he ate one and then he ate another and as the legend says at that point tomatoes tomato eating was initiated in north america the story isn't exactly true it's apocryphal but it's reported in in many books but tomatoes of course are perfectly healthy to eat, as are basically all fruits and vegetables. There has been a lot of talk lately about this idea of intermittent fasting, restricting the hours of the day that you eat. What's the science there? Well, there is some science there.

The reason that people advocate intermittent eating is for weight loss, essentially. And the story is that if, you decide that you're only going to eat between certain hours of the day, it will be healthier and you will be able to control your weight better. And mostly people who go on to intermittent fasting say that they will restrict their eating to between 8 o'clock in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And they feel better and they say they have better weight control. I think that that is probably true because it automatically means that you're going

to restrict your total food intake. We do an awful lot of snacking at night, and obviously if you're cutting out eating after 4 o'clock, then you're cutting out all of that snacking. And the studies show that people who do go in for this intermittent fasting do consume fewer calories. Is there anything? Because you look at all of this stuff,

and you kind of have this reputation of, being a naysayer. No, there's no science there, there's no science there. But has there been anything that's come along lately that you went, wow, this is really something? No single discovery, because in fact, science doesn't work like that. Science doesn't work by leaps and bounds. Science progresses by a series of small steps. And what those small steps have shown is that the closer we are to a plant-based diet, the better off we are. And there the information is becoming more and more impressive about the benefits of being on a plant-based diet.

What about sugar and then also what about artificial sweeteners? Sugar has been demonized. The sugar is a big problem, but then artificial sweeteners are a big problem. So we like our- I think both of those statements are true. to a certain extent, but you do have to take into account the extent to which we are exposed. I think as a general rule, the population certainly in the Western world

is consuming too much sugar. When you consider that a serving of soft drink, a can of soft drink can contain 40 grams of sugar, which is actually more than the amount of added sugar that we should be eating during a day. Sugar, mostly, mostly does its harm by contributing excess calories. So it of course leads to obesity.

It also has an effect on dental health because it feeds the bacteria that will erode teeth. And it is unnecessary in the diet. We certainly require glucose in a diet, but that is furnished by all the starch that we eat. We don't need extra sugar in order to get the glucose into our body that our body actually needs. Now, in terms of the artificial sweeteners, which of course were introduced in order to replace the calorie content of sugar, they have a checkered history. First of all, they have not really done what they were supposed to do, which is to make a dent

in obesity. We have seen that since the early 1980s, when the artificial sweeteners really became very popular, we have seen an increase in obesity. How do we rationalize this? I think one point here is that when someone eliminates sugar from their coffee and they use an artificial sweetener, they will be so proud of themselves that they will then eat that piece of cake that they wouldn't have eaten if they had put sugar into the coffee and the piece of cake will have more calories than the sugar would have had. And then we're also seeing some concerning features about the artificial sweeteners,

mostly about what they may do to our microbiome. And this is this collection of bacteria that live in our gut. And artificial sweeteners can imbalance those gut bacteria. And that has consequences that can range from digestive problems to, even mental problems. I'm not a big fan of artificial sweeteners, and of course I'm not a big fan of the overconsumption of sugar either. I think we need to cut down on both. But all artificial sweeteners are not the same. So are you putting them all in one basket? Or they're not. Unfortunately, most of them, whether we're looking at aspirin, we're looking at sucralose, which are the prime ones,

both of those will unbalance our gut bacteria. So they have that common feature. Asophane potassium, which is another one, also falls into that category. I don't think that I would put too much weight on all of the publicity about aspartame being a carcinogen. I don't think that there is sufficient evidence for that. But this business of upsetting the microbiome is somewhat concerning. What about stevia? Stevia comes from a plant source, not that that tells you anything about whether it's good or bad,

because one of the biggest myths out there is that anything that comes from nature is good and anything synthetic is bad, and that is just not the case. Stevia has good solid research behind it. The reason that people generally don't take to it too much is because it does have somewhat of an aftertaste that people are object to but I don't think that there's any health issue with Aspart, with

Stavia. But again, you know, we get back to this old story that we just don't see the overall benefits in terms of weight control by people who use artificial sweeteners. Well, one of the things, well,

I put Stevia in my coffee and I used to put sugar in my coffee and then I thought, well, you know, it's an artificial sweetener and I don't drink that much coffee so I tried to go back to sugar and I didn't like it I didn't like the way the coffee tasted because I had gotten so used to the artificial sweetener and I think that well I'll want up you on that because I've gotten used to drinking coffee without sugar or without artificial sweetener and when you make good coffee you don't need either sugar or an artificial sweetener you can enjoy the taste of the coffee itself yeah I've

tried that. That's going to be more of a process for me to get to completely black coffee. But, you know, I think people really want to know the truth about food and nutrition, and it's hard for the average person to separate fact from fiction, so I appreciate you coming on and doing that. I've been talking to Joe Schwartz. He is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, and the author of 19 books. His latest is called Better Not Burn Your Toast, The Science of food and health. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Joe, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Okay. Thanks very much. Thanks, Joe. As the weather cools down, thoughts turn to ways to keep warm. And there's some interesting things to keep in mind if you don't want to freeze

this winter. First of all, protect your core. Did you know that when people lose fingers and toes and other extremities to frostbite, that's really self-preservation going on. You see, in order to protect your vital organs inside your torso, the body stops sending blood to your extremities. If you keep your torso warm, then the body will worry about your fingers and toes. Wear a hat. Now, there is this assumption that 70% of a person's body heat escapes through the head. That's just not true. body heat loss relates to how much skin is exposed, not which part of the body you're exposing. With that said, though, wearing a warm hat can and definitely will help keep you warm, because the more skin you cover, the better.

And drink water. Water is actually a very effective way to retain body heat. Simply put, the more water you have in your system, the easier it is to keep warm. And that is something you should know. I hope you liked this episode. I certainly hope you liked it enough that you would want to share it with somebody else and tell them about it so they could give it a listen. It really helps us grow our audience in a very competitive business. So I would appreciate if you would just take a moment to share this podcast with someone you know

by just using the share button, it only takes a moment. I'm Micah Rothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robert Ince and I've sat next to Brian Cox who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series. Primarily Eels. And what else?

It was fascinating, though, the Eels. But we're not just doing Eels, are we? We're doing a bit. Brain computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and Eels. Did I mention the Eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagas O.C?

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.