StarTalk Radio - A Seat at the Table with Anthony Bourdain (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 7, 2013

How can a dish be fit for a king in one country and for the garbage in another? Find out when Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with world traveler, author and chef Anthony Bourdain. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. I also serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium. And I have with me my co-host for this program, the one and the only Eugene Merman. Eugene, welcome back! Welcome back to me.

We so tap your talents for this. Thank you. This will not be the last. No. Welcome back. Welcome back. We so tap your talents for this. Thank you. And this will not be the last. No. For sure. This would be a fun way to fire me. And you're still on one of the voices in Bob's. I'm still one of the voices of Bob's Burgers, also not replaced. Bob's Burgers. Yeah. Burgers. We'll get back to burgers in a minute. Yeah. Today's show, by the way, is about food and nutrition. So I combed the land. Then I found someone who actually has the title, Professor of Nutrition at New York University, Marion Nessel. Marion, welcome to StarTalk. I'm glad to be here, I think. She thinks. So you'll be the judge of that later. We'll find out. First, I'm intrigued and impressed that there's such a thing as

a professor of nutrition. So I'm glad that somebody has that. He thought of it like alchemy. No, so no, so I'm- There are nutrition departments all over the country. No, I just never ran into one. And I'm glad you were here and ready for us. I'm ready for you. Because in this episode of StarTalk, we have my interview with Anthony Bourdain. He's the famous TV travel chef. In fact, first he had a New York Times bestselling book

in the year 2000 titled Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Bestselling book. Which I understand is a very accurate account. Excellent, excellent. So he's been around a while, and he had a long-standing travel channel show called, of course, No Reservations. And he's moving from the travel channel to CNN. Yeah. And he's going to do a show, Cuisines of the World. Yeah.

So I just chatted with him about what made him tick, what got him interested in food. In particular, what intrigues me, and we'll get back to you on this in a minute, is just how cuisine can be so different around the world. What some people think is nasty, other people think is extraordinary, and how people just eat differently around the world. So let's go to this first clip right away, and we'll have a lot of time to talk about it and carry it into the other segments. My opening clip with Anthony Bourdain, Chef extraordinaire. People always say, oh I've been to this country and this food is a delicacy there. That's cute to me that the food tastes nasty or some bug that they pulled out of the ground and

sauteed. So what's with people saying something is a delicacy? Well, it's rare or expensive. You know, it's valued more than, you know, the way we look at shrimp or lobster or truffles as the good stuff. A lot of people in this world look at ingredients that many of us would probably have difficulty with. That's an attitude that changes really quickly the more you travel. Something I got over very quickly particularly you know you talk about wow their food in thailand is really repulsive to me

i mean they eat bugs but the thais who are largely a non-dairy culture try to put yourself in their shoes they're looking at us you know eat like cottage cheese or roquefort would be truly horrifying and if you think about it for a second, what that must look like. So you get some milk and then turn it into cheese and then let mold grow on it, then eat it. Yeah, just hideous. I got over sort of using words like bizarre a long time ago when looking at how other people eat around the world. But what I do find interesting, though, is you go from one country to the next, and one

of the simplest measures of this is, what is the assortment of flavors that they infuse in their potato chips that they sell? Yeah. For example, right? I mean, you know, so in Japan, they have like fish-flavored potato chips. I mean, we eat fish here, but I don't know that that would sell. There are whole spectrums of flavors that other countries, other cultures

take for granted and require in their diet. The Philippines, there's a whole bitter component that we are almost instinctively not happy with. I mean, they will introduce bile into dishes to give it that welcome bitter note.

Cultures like Scandinavian cultures, where there's a very limited spectrum of flavors, not a lot of spices traditionally, a lot of fresh fish, fresh fish, frozen fish, more fresh fish, maybe some preserved fish, as well as South Pacific cultures where it's all sort of sweet, fresh fish, not a lot of salty, savory. There's a tradition of rotting things, like fermenting fish, as well as South Pacific cultures where it's all sort of sweet, fresh fish, not a lot of salty, savory. There's a tradition of rotting things, like fermenting fish, getting it really offensively funky by our standards, just because I think out of boredom. It introduces another flavor. And it's worth noting also that we, Western societies anyway, used to do that.

Roman times, the condiment of choice was essentially something called garum. It was essentially rotten fish guts and rotten fish sauce. This was the salt, the principal seasoning ingredient all across Europe. So even our own tastes have changed. For a lot of people, the last frontier is the textural thing. Particularly in Asia, they like, you know, textural thing particularly in asia they like you know squishy or even rubbery chewy or a lot of traditional european cultures you know cartilage texture that's something that we really have a problem with we tend to like crispy once you cross that border you you're really you're someplace special to get back to you guys about delicacies and valued a lot of i think you got to ask always is there an assumed medical component to what we're talking about also i think a lot of, I think, you got to ask always, is there an assumed medical

component to what we're talking about also? I think a lot of what we consider the really freakiest foods, the eye-popping, what, why would you eat that? A lot of that has either folk medicine or traditional Chinese medicine applications or a regular feature in my life in China is if something arise, still wriggling or there's a sex organ involved, it's usually accompanied by winking and banging on the bottom of the table. This will make you strong.

You know, many, many sons, you know, it's like, oh God. Wow. So Marion, I got to go straight to you on this. When we think of nutrition, I think of things that are tasty that might be good for me. when we think of nutrition I think of things that are tasty that might be good for me and for so many of the cultures of the world I don't know that they have an active science of nutrition but they just simply know what has worked over the centuries right so is a person more likely to think that something tasty is actually nutritious probably but the point is that the physiology people eat

what's available. Before there were supermarkets and before there was internet food and before there was food on every corner, people had to eat what was available to them. So they learned to put together a diet that supported life, supported reproduction. So the empirics of that is if you died, you didn't keep doing it. They wouldn't be here if it hadn't worked. So wait, you were saying that people would eat healthy, you would think that some, like you would think like ribs were delicious because they're, were healthy because they're delicious? If you had them.

If you had them, you'd be like this must be… Because these people survived, these cultures survived, these populations survived. So it's self-selecting. Yeah. So it's self-selecting. Yeah. So it's self-selecting. So, and we know that healthy diets can be made out of almost anything as long as the foods are varied. In India, they drink a bear-ass friend's soup. Yeah, and you don't eat too much of them.

On that note, we'll come back to StarTalk Radio after this break. We're back on StarTalk Radio and I've got Eugene Lerman. Hello. And this show is about nutrition. So professor of nutrition here, Marion Nessel. Marion, thanks for being on StarTalk. Pleasure. Coming up from New York University. And, in fact, you have a book just was published, Why Calories Count, From Science to Politics. How about that? That's awesome.

Because calories do count. They do. So, here we are talking about nutrition all around the world. And so, here are people eating local foods. They're not thinking, does it have vitamin C? Does it have vitamin A? But if someone gets sick or the tribe doesn't continue, presumably they figured out that that diet wasn't good.

And so over the generations, an emergent diet comes that happens to work out. If it didn't, they wouldn't be here. They wouldn't be here. Everyone who tried to just only eat dirt is dead. That's right. All the religions and the people who just only just... All the cults and all the... Yeah, yeah, they'd like suck on a weird rock and be like, I still feel hungry.

They're all dead. They're all dead. All we have now is French food and a lot of Asian food. All right. So here in America, I guess since the 1950s, but certainly in recent decades, fast food is a major part of the American diet. It's everywhere. And then with the American cultural influence around the world, our fast food restaurants are showing up in other countries. Is that good? Is it bad?

I mean, do you have an opinion on this? It's business. There's only a certain amount that people can eat. Americans, they're maxed out on what they can eat. If these companies want to make money, they have to move it overseas. So they're maxed out on what they can eat. If these companies want to make money, they have to move it overseas. So they can't make us fatter than we are. Yeah, we've hit a fat max. And we now need to make everyone in Vietnam fat. We're working on it. Yes. And then when Earth is done with the next planet, right? All right,

but fast food shouldn't necessarily make a person fat. Not if they don't eat too much. If they don't eat too much of it. So the issue is not the existence of fast food. It's the regulation of the consumption of food. Yes. And that turns out to be evolutionarily complicated because we have about 100 physiological factors that encourage us to eat more. And one or two... Because historically, on the Serengeti, that's survival.

If you found a McDonald's in the Serengeti, you would be like, I'm going to eat all I can because two historically on the serengeti that's survival if you found a mcdonald's in the serengeti you would be like i'm gonna eat all i can because the next mcdonald's is far away centuries away possibly i had a brother-in-law who grew up in alaska and every time we fed him we said you want seconds and he said you never know when you're gonna eat next but in fact is he does know when he's gonna eat next and it's in three hours when it's the next meal. Right. So we're not very well tuned to the environment that we're in. And our physiology is much better at saying, eat, eat, eat, eat, you're hungry, better get the glucose to the brain quick, and much, much less effective at telling us when to stop. When to not eat.

Alas. We're like geese trying to turn ourselves into foie gras. Yes, you're right. Banned in California. Yeah, yeah. geese trying to turn ourselves into foie gras banned in california yeah so you're saying the ready availability of fast food is what's contributing to our inability to stop eating yeah the things that encourage people to eat more are having it right there if we had candy here we'd be eating it the fact that you could eat it any time night or day uh 24 7. you got the refrigerator that's got the food through the night,

and there's a corner person selling you food, particularly in the cities. Yeah. So that makes people eat more. You make it sound like gluttonous monsters surrounded by piles of food. We're just encouraged to exercise our physiology. We're not biologically prepared for the world we've created around ourselves. That's right. You. That's right. You know, I spoke with Anthony Bourdain about this, just to get his reaction to it. Let's

find out what he said. So what about the idea of what Americans have done to some foods? We put cheese in a can. Now maybe the cheese tastes okay, but that's got to be an abomination to the cheese cultures of the world. Increasingly, the French are doing it too. You know, the great cheese making cultures, by joining the EU, have agreed to bastardize a lot of their traditional artisanal products like cured meats, traditional forms of cheese making.

They've been killing their own products for years. Is that not our influence, our cultural influence on them? It's a combination of convenience food culture. Well, who invented convenience food? Well, America. I think it's a byproduct of post-war affluence, less time to kick back. Second World War. Yeah. Must specify for the current generation. People forget. They lose touch with the roots. They learn to demand newer, saltier flavors. So it's not just us, unfortunately. So there's not only the concept of fast food, to which there's been this resistance, I guess they're calling it slow food, right?

I mean, has that movement caught on? People certainly talk about or think about where their food's coming from a lot more and not just that the elite foodie levels people even if they're not particularly knowledgeable about organics or sustainable or local or artisanal all of those very fuzzy words at least they're thinking about it now you only need to look at what McDonald's has publicly forsworn any use of pink slime. Pink slime, it is not an ingredient according to the rules. It is a process that allowed ground beef manufacturers to essentially buy the outer cuts of beef that would otherwise previously have had to be discarded or used for pet food because they were more likely to come in contact with hides,

excrement, other animals, and contain E. coli. They found that by introducing, as I understand it, an ammonia vapor, basically steaming this stuff, whipping it into a mulch-like paste with bits of extruded fat, mixing it into this slime, and processing it with ammonia, that they were able to bring the likelihood of E. coli down. Now it doesn't sound like good stuff for sure and there was clearly a backlash though not a huge one. The fact that McDonald's and other major retail outlets are saying we're not using it anymore, it's not like they're nice guys. They're looking pretty far into the future and seeing that this is going to

come back and bite us. We're saving money now. We're making money now, but this could really come back and hurt our brand. So clearly that's one of many indications of this sort of thinking affecting the marketplace, you know? Yeah. So it wasn't, like you said, it was not a separate ingredient because it was still beef. Well, that's up to you to decide whether the introduction of an ammonia vapor or whatever is an ingredient or a process. Personally, I would like to know if there's ammonia in my cleaning product, in my meat.

All right, so this is kind of America's hallmark. I mean, agribusiness, growing production and storage technologies. I think America has led the world in this. We have. I looked this up recently. We're spending a third today of our annual budget on food compared with what we were doing in the 1950s. Our single largest privately

held company is a food producer. I think Cargill is the biggest American privately held company. And so we're making more food on less land with fewer farmers than ever before. No doubt about it. You know, frozen food, surely a good thing, most of these things. But, you know frozen food surely a good thing most of these things but you know with the good comes the bad and the bad might be that it is in the financial interest of some very large powerful companies that you continue to eat badly and too much and they're going to spend a lot of money as any company will do to make you continue to buy their products and a lot of these products are not ideal staples of any diet. We need only look at the way Americans look and the state of our health to see that that's the truth.

So is processed food bad? I like french fries. I like burgers. So unfortunately, it's not like cigarettes. It's a matter of proportion. It's not you can't eat it. It's that you can't eat too much of it. That's hard. So it is so good and so cheap it makes it that much harder to regulate and the politics come into how come it's so cheap okay so what what's an example of that we subsidize corn

and soybeans we don't subsidize broccoli and soybeans what do we do with that that's so bad soy oil it goes into processed foods So what's your solution to this? Is it to make food more expensive? Is it to change the availability of it? What's the solution here? Yeah, you want to change the environment in order to make it easier for people to eat more healthily. That's what Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do with his 16-ounce soda cap. He's trying to outlaw 20-ounce sodas in the city.

Yeah, he's trying to make fat people illegal, which I think is a good thing. So are you over that line? Are you ready to- I don't drink a lot of soda. I'm just a regular fat person. But I think that ban sounds pretty good. But what if we subsidize parsley? It's not a ban, it's a cap. Yeah, yeah, it's a cap. It's a cap. So there is a public good that laws can serve because somebody out there is more concerned about your health than you are yes because they have to pay for it right if something goes wrong

right the insurance base the tax base i mean there have been estimates i don't know how good they are that overweight costs america 190 billion dollars a year yeah i don't want to go to mars twice for that i would hope so wow and imagine if the trip was full of people who were overweight the savings combined with shipping away the problem that's a double the exploration it's just like i'm full of solutions so lately fast food has been fortified in ways so you are getting vitamins and minerals and things vitamins and minerals and protein and other kinds of nutrients it's not sodas sodas are the only thing that have calories and no nutrients and no nutrients yeah okay alcohol sorry okay so you think there's no there's no nutrients there's no not even whiskey especially whiskey what about red wine

it makes pregnant people run faster isn't't that true? That's true. When we come back to StarTalk Radio, more of my interview with Anthony Bourdain. We're talking about nutrition around the world, food around the world. More on StarTalk Radio, and I'm with Eugene Merman. Hello. And I've got Professor Marion Nessel, spelled like Nestle, I guess, but without the accent.

Without the accent. There you go. No relation. Too bad, right? Yes. She's a professor of nutrition at New York University. She's thought a lot about this, and not only nutrition in general, but the role of food and its impact on culture and politics. In fact, you've got a book out called Why Calories Count,

From Science to Politics. Excellent title. Check it out. So what's interesting is different regions of the world have different diets and you can look at how long those people live and say, hey, maybe something's going on in their culture that's not going on in my culture. They've talked about the Mediterranean diet that is high in, I guess, olive oils and things. There's the Japanese, broadly the Asian diet, which is very low fat, high carbs.

Let's hear what Anthony Bourdain had to say about it. Then we come back and get some of the science of why that may or may not be true. Let's check it out. Tell me about these diets. We call them diets, but it's just the mainstay culinary offerings in various parts of the world.

There's a lot spoken of the Mediterranean diet or the Japanese diet. And they live a long time. Heart disease is low. From your life experience, is all that true? No doubt about it. I mean, you go to Crete, for instance. I guess we know it's true.

But are we going to credit the food or because there's no stress? Or because how big a factor is the food? I'm guessing you're a Vietnamese rice farmer. You're working hard. You're working. You are working hard. You're working. You are working hard, and there is stress in your life, especially if you've been through three or four wars in the last 30 years. I don't think that's it.

I think clearly the ratio in much of the world, the ratio of, I'm a confirmed carnivore, but clearly there's something to be said for cultures where the ratio of meat, protein to uh to fresh vegetables uh is completely different ours is distorted um much of the cultures we're talking about they use meat or bone or protein almost as a flavoring ingredient very carefully much more value a condiment um you have delicious for the most part vegetables uh generally a filler like starch, like whether it's rice or cassava or potato, wherever it is, clearly it has an impact on what your body looks like and how long you're going to live. No doubt about it. All right. Now, you're over six feet tall. In Japan,

people hardly get that height. So is it a trade-off between that kind of diet and whether you grow tall? Well, I don't think it's a trade-off we make anymore because they're getting taller and bigger. There's no doubt about it as they become fonder of Western food and processed food. I mean, the same thing's happening there as here, the bulking of the world. But I think, yeah, there clearly is. I mean, one of my favorite, I'm not particularly well inclined, as much as it might be good to eat more vegetables and less animal protein, I'm not particularly well inclined towards really hardcore, unwavering vegans.

So one of my favorite statistics is that apparently vegans in non-industrialized cultures seem to do very much better than vegans in industrialized cultures and people are trying to figure out why that was why they're living longer and seem healthier and apparently the insect parts and carcasses in rice much higher in non-industrial cultures and It's left in the product. Yeah, so basically they're getting a lot more animal protein. Insect protein. We're flicking away the insects out of our vegetables.

Very high in protein bugs, by the way. People eat those for a reason. So, you know, I happen to know separately that little people live longer than big people. So if you have a culture where everyone's little, then maybe it doesn't matter what they eat. Leave them alone. That's why babies live forever. So in certain cultures, people are just smaller. Maybe that's the biggest driver for their longevity.

Or is there much truth in these diets that... What can you say? The statistics all show that there are plenty of countries in the world that have much better longevity than we do. And they tend to have in common that they eat more plant foods, fruits and vegetables and grains, and they don't eat as much meat and they don't eat as much junk food. And as the American fast food and soda company it's not just fewer calories oh yeah actual mixture it has a lot to do with count it's just harder to eat so much parsley that it's as many calories as a burger I've tried I've tried really hard to get fat on parsley you have to eat roomfuls of it it's really tough now Buddha last, Buddha, last I checked, was a vegetarian, and he's generally shown as quite chubby.

But everybody was bringing him rice offerings all day long. He had a very high-carb diet. Yeah, all right. That's the reason. Okay, so you're prepared to say that in America, if we want to live longer, cut the meat. Cut the calories. Oh, cut the calories. Cut the calories. Cut the calories and change the, cut the meat. Cut the calories. Oh, cut the calories. Cut the calories.

Cut the calories and change the balance of the meat. And change the balance. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Don't eat so much junk food. Balance calories and love what you're eating. What does that do for you? That's my advice. Meaning eat, find ways to make foods that aren't burgers delicious.

Yeah, or just make sure that you enjoy what the burger is the reference frame i don't even i don't even i mean burgers are totally fine one of great life's greatest pleasure yeah you should enjoy it and not make it your enemy it should be your friend to be your friend right befriend food you're like yoda you're like befriend food eat it When we come back more of my clips With Anthony Bourdain And my in studio guest Marion Nestle and of course Eugene Merman be right back We're back. StarTalk Radio.

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. Find us on the web at startalkradio.net. You can download our archives of shows. Great stuff there. Not only that, we're on Facebook. Like us there. Just StarTalk Radio. You'll find us. And we tweet StarTalk Radio. Of course. great stuff there and not only that we're on Facebook like us there just start talk radio you'll find us and we tweet start talk radio of course Eugene

you tweet yes at Eugene Merman yes mi r mi n man and my special guest today right I tweet you tweet a tweeting nutritionist Marion Nestle Marion Nestle Marion this came out of the previous segment I called you Nestle I'm sorry perfectly I can't be the relation you called you Nestle. I'm sorry. Perfectly. I can't be the first one. No relation. You're not the first. And I'm not the first.

And you won't be the last. And I surely won't be the last. By the way, we're also on the Nerdist channel of YouTube. Check us out in video form. So we're featuring my interview with Anthony Bourdain. Yeah. He gets around. He makes great food.

He eats food that is prepared all around the world. And an intriguing subject, as you know, because not everyone eats the same way. My great disappointment traveling America is the same restaurants are in the same places. And I asked him about food that's sort of good or bad. You know, I mean, you can make that judgment. You mean like morally? Because he travels the world and when you travel you eat different foods yeah yeah so i asked him what kind of good food did he have what kind of bad food no

just what i see but did he taste good yeah yeah tasted good didn't taste good that's all but might be a delicacy in its land so let's find out what he said the fermented fish in iceland is something i will never ever be able to really, even many people in Iceland, probably even the majority, it's a celebrated national dish that they eat on their holidays, and it's basically rotten sharp. I'm not going to be visiting that again. I could choke down anything to be a good guest. Really, the only real problems are when it's a matter of freshness, you know, when it's a really poor culture with very limited access to ingredients. You have a hearty digestive system.

Yeah, but I mean, the two times that I've been brought down and lost a day's work were both tribal situations. The whole tribe looking at me. It's bushmeat. It's whatever protein they could scrounge. It's not in good shape. There are cleanliness issues. You took one for the team. I absolutely did. Oh, my did. The surprises are everywhere. Eating street food in Asia changed my life. It

ruined my life in wonderful ways. When you've had a really well-made bowl of spicy noodles in Vietnam, even out of a chipped bowl on a low plastic stool in the street, your old breakfasts just won't cut it anymore. You cannot go back to be the person you were before when you've experienced some of the degree of spice, complexity, and even a little bit of pain. There's an element of sadomasochism in some of that food that's kind of disturbing and yet enticing. Good and bad food around the world. I mean, this was parodied in or captured in the indiana jones yeah second of those where he has to eat the little boy's heart i can't remember what happens that's when they pull the heart out they give them the icelandic shark that's shield monkey brain

and eyeball soup and so are these real foods out there they must be uh whatever they're if they're being served they're obviously real foods. Unless they're trying to get you. Do they do that? If you go somewhere and they're like, we eat brains all the time. And they're like, no we don't. So is there study on the nutritional analysis of all these exotic foods? Absolutely.

And what do you guys find? They have nutrients. All foods have nutrients. At the end of the day, they're just eating something that was once alive. That's right. How good are sweetbreads for you, would you say? I think in small quantities, I wouldn't worry about them at all. It's neither sweet nor is it bread.

It's neither sweet nor bread. It's organ meat of mammals. But if a tiny bit of it will make you strong and fast and outrun people drinking red wine. Wouldn't you love that? I'm just trying to have you go, like, most people don't know this, but eating butter in the morning is very good for you. They're like, why won't you love that i'm just trying to have you go like most people don't know this but eating butter in the morning is very good for you like why won't you tell me this because they've got their safe secrets these people who think it's okay to eat whatever you like as long as you vary it and don't eat too much of it right all right so foods that are really horrendous is

you think there's something it must be cultural i i mean a learned taste buds yeah yeah i mean if everybody if you grew up on eating sweetbreads all the time you would think it was a great delicacy if you grew up on eating crickets all the time you would think it was a great you'd be right about sweetbreads but wrong about crickets right there you are just that's culturally just to give a world blanket statement whether or not americans are the right answer to this question hold it aside what country in the world has the worst health the worst health yes excluding america yes oh i would say the countries that are poorest so poorest poorest countries so poorest and then the fattest yeah that's good, go poorest, poorest, fetties. That too. And then just like vegetarian Asians.

And what's happening in the developing countries now is that as everybody gets a little money, they start eating more. But then they just start eating like Kit Kats and stuff. And they start eating like we do and they put on weight and develop type 2 diabetes and there it goes. It even has a name, it's called the nutrition transition nutrition transition where it goes from hungry to diabetes in one fell swoop when we come back star talk radio we're talking about nutrition my clips with anthony bourdain we'll see in a moment We're back on StarTalk Radio.

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I got Eugene Merman and professor of nutrition, Marian Nessel. The verb, not the chocolate. Oh, okay. Nestle, that would be. Is that what it says on your card? The verb, not the chocolate. We've been featuring my interview with Anthony Bourdain,

the TV chef and world traveler, tasting exotic foods. And just interesting to hear how he got to where he is everyone's got a story he's got a story and the story surprised me entirely I had no idea this was in his case I could have done my homework but I wanted it all to be fresh it's a surprise because you didn't Google it was all very fresh and it was it was it was a delightful success story let's Let's check out what he tells us. I was an angry, embittered, spoiled, I was a bad kid. Where did you grow up? Grew up in New Jersey in the suburbs right across the river.

What exit? I was very disappointed with the way that the 60s turned out. And I was a bitter, self-destructive, drug-seeking kid who really had a hard time finding anything to believe in. And I found a home the way that a lot of people find a home in the military. I found a home in the restaurant business. I mean, this was a world of absolutes that I responded to. I liked the science of, to me, it was a revelation working as a dishwasher. Why? Because plates went in dirty, and they came out clean every time. And if I did my job of washing dishes, I got the respect of hardworking people in the kitchen,

and that made me feel proud of myself in a way I never had before. I'll tell you really... So that was a transitional career. Transitional. I went from a very unhappy, self-destructive college kid, a college dropout to a guy with a... You're like a transformed washing dishes. Yes. Absolutely.

And I live by those. The lessons I learned as a dishwasher were the most important in my life. Show up on time. Have the respect. Sounds like a book. Have the... Lessons I learned washing dishes. I've written that book. And then at age 44, I found myself standing broke but reasonably happy next to a deep fryer at a restaurant in New York. And I'd written an obnoxious over-testosterone account of my life that I didn't think anyone would buy.

And suddenly I found myself on the bestseller list. anyone would buy and suddenly i found myself on the bestseller list and my life literally changed in the space of a week from a guy who never thought he'd see saigon much less rome to somebody who's now been traveling uh for the last 10 years anywhere i want to go in the world doing pretty much whatever i pleased so not to over interpret what you just shared with me, but the fact that your life transformed at age 44, that's extraordinary. Look at how many people give up long before then saying, look, I'll never make anything of my life. I'd never had health insurance.

I'd never owned a car. I'd never owned a home. I never paid my rent on time. I owed the IRS 10 years in back taxes, I went to sleep every night hyperventilating from fear for who's going to call first, the landlord, credit card company, or the IRS. I had no hope of ever changing that situation, and that was good by previous year's standards. So it came as a big, big, big surprise to me to suddenly

have the freedom to see this world and do the things that I'm able to do with the people I do it with. I think it makes me grateful in a way that I might not be had it happened earlier. So who would have thought food can change somebody's life that way? It's an extraordinary story. Yeah, I was a dishwasher for like a year, but I didn't realize I could do this. I had six years before I'm his age and have to have accomplished the same stuff. You got to keep at it. Keep working at it. You have to work on the dishwashing.

I know. I feel like I learned a lot, but not quite as much. So Marion, I think most people who care about their health have either only a pseudoscientific understanding of nutrition or no understanding at all. So you've got to be disappointed. Present company excluded. You've got to be disappointed with the state of knowledge out there. No, I'm disappointed with the state of science and knowledge in general. In general, yeah, yeah. It's just one aspect of it all. Well, it's an aspect that hits people personally. We put food in our bodies, and that makes it extremely personal.

And it's some combination of protein, carbohydrates, fat. Yeah, I mean, nutrition is complicated. There are probably 50 different components in food that we need in order to survive, and it's hard to keep track of them, and you don't know what's in food. Can I live off of any one of them if I want to just go all protein? No, no, no, no, no, variety, variety. You couldn't live off of just Diet Coke? It would be very difficult. For how long do you think if you just drank Diet Coke would you live?

Like two months? A year? Actually, it's probably very close to 70 days. 70 days of just Diet Coke? Yeah, if you... But it has no calorie sources. It has no calories and no nutrients, so it's just like... So you'd also have to eat bugs. 70 days. 70 days just Diet Coke. 70 days. Yeah. If you- But it has no calorie sources.

It has no calories and no nutrients. So it's just like- Oh, yeah. So you'd also have to eat bugs. So it's the equivalent of water. And there've been studies, the Irish hunger strikers, for example, they were very carefully studied. And on average, they lived about 70 days once they decided not to eat anymore.

Wow. Okay. So the Diet Coke experiment, proxied with water, would do that. Yeah, and if they ate something, then they would have lived longer. Right, right, right. We got to wrap up this hour. It's been an awesome conversation about food and diet. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, and I've had Eugene Merman, you've seen him and heard him before, and of uh professor marion nessel uh thanks for being on star talk radio a pleasure contributing to the information surrounding my interview with anthony bourdain

i'm neil degrasse tyson your host you've been listening to star talk radio a show brought to you in part by a grant from the national science foundation and as always i bid you to keep looking up.