Stuff You Should Know - How Junk Food Works

Episode Date: May 26, 2015

Junk food is literally that, empty calories of energy that provide little nutritional value and usually are stored as fat. Yet junk food is irresistible and for good reason - companies spend tens of millions engineering it to be that way. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking

to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind season three. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace the way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles Dougie, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, So It's Stuff You Should Know. And Chuck. Yes. We have done some stuff before

that relates to this episode. Okay. Is high fruit toast corn syrup bad for you? That's right. Yeah. How McDonald's works. Yeah. How Twinkies work. Yeah. Well, that's it. I bet there's more. Probably. I can't think of it right now. Are zoos good or bad for animals? Does your grandfather's diet affect you? Yeah. True that. You know, you know, they junk food might. Yeah. So you, the future grandfather listening today, you're screwing up your grandkids health right now. That's right. They'll listen to our epigenetics episode. Yeah. Junk food is ubiquitous now, and it wasn't in my grandparents day. No. You know. No, they had lame, lame diets. Yeah. Of whole foods and all these natural things. Well, that's something that this article I thought was smart

to point out that back in the day before junk food, it didn't mean everybody was just eating like hippies or something like that. Like they were just these wonderful like wholesome spreads at every meal or something like that. They like crowd or they ate the same thing or there were plenty of times where they were like, I would kill you for a tomato right now and the winner. I'm tired of eating this 40 ounce steak covered in gravy. Exactly. Every night. Yeah. But they did not have access to mass produced, really fundamentally unhealthy food like we do today. That's right. And that's the definition of junk food, really. That's right. Junk food, you might have heard of like empty calories. That's what junk food is. It's food that has

either zero or very little nutritional value, but has a lot of calories, but has a ton of calories, usually in the form of carbs, which is usually a shot of way more energy than you need. Yeah. That doughnut stick. It's tasty. What's a doughnut stick? Oh, there's doughnut sticks. Okay. What is it though? Is it just like a? It's exactly what it sounds like. No, it's a little Debbie device. Oh, yeah, I know those. Okay. So it's a shot of energy device. Very rarely do you need like a shot of energy like that, especially when you're going to sit down in front of your computer for three hours straight. No need that. So what happens to that energy is it gets translated into fat, stored as fat. And just as bad, you don't get any nutritional value from it whatsoever.

It doesn't contain dietary fiber, usually. Nope. It doesn't have any of the minerals or vitamins that your body needs to like mount immune responses. Nope. And even worse, as we'll talk about later, it's entirely possible that it's contributing to things like mental ill health. Sure. In you. Yeah. Mental health, physical health. Yeah. Because we're talking package sweet goods, talking soft drinks, baked goods, salty stuff. Man. Stuff loaded with fat. All the good things. All the good things. Right. Like when we were researching this, I was like, I want a doughnut right now. I'm going to go get a doughnut. Yeah. Maybe I'll get like a McGrittle or something too. Oh, goodness. Like I just wanted everything. I even thought like maybe I'll get a root beer

somewhere. I don't even know where to get a root beer, but I was going to try and find one. You get a root beer or you get any other soda. And I, well, I guess you probably could. That's what I was going on. Okay. But I'm just saying I don't have personal experience buying root beer anywhere. I got a guy. That's what this article did to me. You know what I mean? I got a guy and get you some root beer. Good stuff. Yeah. You just stick with me afterwards. All right. I'll introduce you. Thanks, man. You got to meet him first, but yeah. After that, it's all good. Yeah. It's bad stuff. So let's talk about junk foods. Let's talk about the history, I guess, because it's pretty interesting in the, like we were saying before, before the dawn of the 19th

century, people ate food mostly from stuff that they grew or harvested. It wasn't processed that much and big changes came around when the industrial revolution hit and all of a sudden people could get cheap flour. That was the big turning point. The big turning point because flour in your home. Right. And the story of junk food is essentially the story of the industrialization of food. Yeah. Like before we had food that was bad for you. Like caramels were introduced by the Arabs, probably about a thousand years ago, some, somewhere around there. Yeah. Chocolate's been around for a very long time. Yeah. Cookies. The dude who founded Kebler, Mr. Kebler, he had a bakery in the early 19th century. Like people were making stuff that

wasn't good for you, but they were making it and it was a pain in the neck to make it. Yeah. So they weren't making it all of the time. You couldn't just go anywhere and get it. And that is inherently the problem with junk food today is it's everywhere and it's cheap and it's easy to get. Yeah. And there were a lot of other factors that contributed to the rise of junk food. Besides the industrialization, people moved to cities and away from farms. Yeah. And if you're living in the middle of New York City in 1800, you're not going to have a big farm, a lettuce farm in your backyard. So long canned lettuce that you canned the winner before. That's right. Right. Civil war. That's what I know about canning. Well, we used to can when I was a kid. I think

it told that story. Did you? Yeah. My mom used to take me to the cannery and canned stuff. I thought the cannery was for like, really? Yeah. Wow. Where was the cannery? It was the Keb county cannery over like off Memorial Drive. So it's just like the facilities you needed to can your own stuff? Yep. That's pretty neat. And you could show up with your green beans and your peaches and you could can that stuff. Yeah, I've never canned, but I do eat a lot of canned stuff because pickled things are very, very good for you. Yeah. And things in the can aren't necessarily terrible for you. No, no. And when you're saying canned, like cans were not involved at all. I'm guessing like glass jars were. No, we can't. Silver cans. Oh, wow. Yeah. Man, that is serious stuff.

Yeah. It was pretty cool. You're like a Steinbeck family or something. I just remember it was awful as a kid. Now I would totally get into it. But back then it was the most boring place on earth for a kid to be wrong. Tire stores, the most boring place on earth for a kid to be wrong fabric store. I will say fabric stores. Definitely up there. I have cement and I tweeted about this. You mean I went to the fabric store the other day and I was looking around like, what are some of you people doing in here? Oh, yeah. There were a lot of the fabrics people. Oh, okay. A lot of people I would not have expected are into sewing. And like I'm like, okay, everybody sows. Like the entire spectrum of humanity was represented in this fabric store. Well, that doesn't mean they sew

necessarily. No, they were searching for fabrics and like looking at them and comparing them to other fabrics. They all sewed. Well, but that does just because you buy fabric doesn't mean you sew. They could upholster. Oh, okay. That's to me falls under sewing. It is one of the industrial arts on its own true, but I think of upholstery as sewing to an extent. Even though there's no sewing involved necessarily. And these people better not have been upholstering anything with their pink velour leopard fabric that they bought. Yeah. Fabric stores are pretty amazing when you go in like the stuff that you can tell has been sitting on the shelf since like 1975. Yeah. Yeah. My mom used to take me to the fabric store. So I have I hated it. I didn't like it either,

but it wasn't like a tire store to me like getting tires put on your car. Yeah, because not only is there nothing for you to do as a kid except to like run your hand over the little prickly things on the new tire. Sure. The smell in there just made it just even worse. And unless you're into reading like car and driver magazine, then you're out of luck. Yeah. Drinking bad coffee. That's where you started drinking coffee when you're like just to kill the boredom. So wait, are we agreed that the tire store is the worst of all? Oh, sure. Really? For me, it was the fabric store, but I'm sure I have bad memories of the tire store in the cannery. Oh man. That was a good one. It was about seven, seven minutes. Yeah. Side trackage. All right. Back to the American

Civil War. Oh yeah. Another reason that fast food and junk food became and those are two different things we should point out. Fast food isn't always junk food. No, anybody who's been to a Chipotle can tell you that. Yeah, I went yesterday. Nice. They're trying to do it right. Great stuff. Which they're not McDonald's associate anymore. You know that right? No, I don't understand why McDonald's divested because that stock went through the roof. If I'm not mistaken, Chipotle was like wanted the separation. I would guess McDonald's would be like TS. We own like tons of shares of you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure how that went down. It's weird. It's probably a good thing though. Yeah. For Chipotle, you know, and McDonald's is in big trouble.

Yeah. I will be very surprised if there's not McDonald's 50 years from now. No, no, no. I don't think that, but they just had their big quarterly powwow and they're, they're all pretty scared. No, no, I know. Like they're right now. Their money is way down. Their profits are way down. Right. Because like five guys and all these other burger chains. Definitely eating into their market share. Yeah. The problem is, is McDonald's is chasing after everything right now rather than saying, this is what we do. This is why people come to McDonald's. Yeah. I don't want to go to McDonald's is because I'm hungover and I want a quarter pounder. Exactly. I don't want a McFresh wrap. Right. And it's, you don't even want something at the level of five guys. Like you want

down and dirty McDonald's. That familiar taste. And the sooner McDonald's realizes that that's what people want from McDonald's and just says, here you go. If you want it, come get it. Fantastic. Have you seen the artisan girl chicken? That's what I'm saying. Like, what is that? That's not okay. That's not McDonald's. Well, plus there, what is disturbing about it is you'll see the commercial and say, now it's a better quality chicken, blah, blah, blah. And it's, it's basically admitting like, right. It makes other chickens look like mutant. Yeah. Like, what were you giving us before? Or still. Yeah. In the other menu. American Civil War. Right. I forgot we're there again. In the Civil War, troops started eating rations for the first

time. Little easy to eat canned processed garbage, basically. They're like, this is really good. Yeah. They got hooked on it. And when they came back, they wanted the same familiar taste. And that's sort of how fast food grew. Food vendors started, you know, parking their carts outside of factories and stuff. Right. And that, that was sort of like the first fast food chain. Well, not just that. That's where diners came from. Those food carts that were parked outside for people coming off of like the night shift or whatever, when all the restaurants were closed, they eventually took the wheels off and added like seating inside. And that's where the diners originally came from. Yeah. And of course,

that all came about because of the suburban sprawl and the birth of the automobile. Right. Let's talk about a few of these. You found this great article on, what was it called? New York Times. Yeah. But what was the article called? I don't remember what it was called. Let us now praise the great men of junk food. Yes. That was, it was a great one. And so they listed some of the early, some of the first junk food in the United States and the first snacky junk food they credit as being cracker jacks. Yeah. Introduced at the World's Fair in 1893 by the brothers Frederick and Louis or Lewis, uh, Rookheim. And you know, cracker jacks is delicious. It's still around today. Right. And the, the thing with cracker jacks is

again, there was recipes like that in existence prior to cracker jacks, right? Sure. Same with caramel, same with chocolate. People made this stuff. But what the Rookheim brothers did was they took it, they figured out a way to produce it on a larger scale, sell it and, and this is one of the hallmarks of junk food. They figured out a way to market it effectively. That little prize. That's exactly right. That basically established the rulebook for junk food from then till now. Yeah. Uh, the Tootsie Roll is another good example in 1905. Um, there was candy before that, but this is the first one to be individually wrapped. You know, that didn't come in a packet of six or eight. Right. So you could take a penny, a little shiny copper penny. Yeah.

And you could get a Tootsie Roll. Right. And you didn't have to like pick the hair off of it first because it was wrapped individually. That's right. Uh, 1923, I thought like this story. An 11 year old named Frank Epperson, um, left on a cold night in San Francisco, left his powdered soda drink, uh, with a stirring stick in the cup, came out the next day and it was frozen and he ate it. He said, this is amazing. I'm going to wait 20 years and then patent this. Yeah. And not quite 20 years, about 18 years later, he basically applied for a patent and called them, uh, Epsicles. Everybody's like you. Epperson. And his children said, hey pop, why don't you call them popsicles? And so the popsicle was born. Yeah. And his

children never saw a penny of that money. Another junk food. Did they not? I'm just teasing. Oh, okay. What about, uh, do you know much about potato chips? Uh, no. So we could sit here for hours and hours and do this because every junk food has a great origin story. Sure. There's a, there's a book that did this for us. It's called the Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food. Yeah. And it's on academia.edu, which is basically apparently they upload books onto this thing and you can read them. Yeah. So, um, potato chips, the, the legend goes that it was invented in the 1850s in Saratoga, New York by a guy, a chef named George Crew, I believe. And, um, that's not true. They'd been around for at least 30 years before that. Oh yeah.

But that's the popular story. And, um, around the 1850s, 1870s, 1880s, people started manufacturing them on mass, but they were delivered in barrels and then the customers would come and be like, I brought my own brown paper bag, shovel some potato chips into this and I'll go home and warm them up and they'll be stale. And so the part of the mass commercialization of this junk food was to figure out how to package it and preserve it so that they didn't go stale. Yeah. People didn't have to bring their own bag from home to go buy potato chips. They could just buy the bag and take it home. Wow. And it took until the 1930s to figure that out. How long was that? The 1880s is when we really started to sell them. It took like 50 years to get them

packaged correctly. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, so did, uh, soda drinks, soft drinks, soda pop, pop, coke, depending on where you're from, you're going to call it something different. Right. Uh, that goes back to 17th century Europe. Uh, when they had carbonated water mixed with lemon juice and honey. And, um, many years later in 1976, 7-11 introduced the world to the big gulp. Yeah. Which was, uh, 32 ounces of, um, of nasty stuff. And then in 1988, they said, how about doubling down on that? And they created the double big gulp. Right. And then Mayor Bloomberg was like, no, no. Oh, they got rid of those, didn't they? Are they tried to? Yeah. They definitely tried to. I don't know if it went through or not. In New York City?

Yeah. Yeah. Emily still drinks the Diet Coke big gulp every day. And I'm just like, you just can't do that to yourself. Yeah. Um, there's, there's got to be something really, really wrong with it. There has to be. This is too, too much science, like in one concentrated form, you know? Yeah. But what's funny is Coke, Pepsi, Hire's root beer, uh, Dr. Pepper, they all started out as elixirs and tonics. Yeah. That were sold at the pharmacy. That's right. Like that's where you got those originally. And then they became one of the most ubiquitous, unhealthy drinks on the planet. All right. So we've talked a lot about, we could, like you said, we could go on all day talking about the history of different junk foods. You got one

more. I got one more. Okay. The world's first combination candy bar. There were chocolate bars before. Yeah. The first candy bar. Clark bar. Really? Yeah. Which is, uh, it's like a Butterfinger, but better. Is it? It's better. Cause it was first. Right. And it's Clark. You got any more? I've got more, but I'll stop. Pop Tarts used to be called the, um, fruit scone. They used to be called Eptarts. And oh, I've got, this is, this is very important actually, Chuck. All right. This is possibly the mindblower of the podcast. And this is a mind blowing episode. So far. Oreos was the knockoff. Hydrox was the original. No way. Way. How did they get market share? Oreo. Yeah. Just by tasting way, way better, I guess. Interesting. Yeah. So Hydrox is

like made fun of it. Like I got Hydrox when I was a kid because they're a little cheaper, I think. Yeah. You know, but they were the original ones. And Hershey or, uh, Oreos was the, the rival, the competitor knockoff of Hydrox. I wish I would have known that. Although I'm not sure would have worked in elementary school if people were like, you can't afford Oreos. I'm like, this was the original. I'll have you know, it's disgusting, but it's the, it came first. And I can't even get the cookie apart without it breaking. No. Like the Oreo. Poor kid. All right. So so after this break, we're going to come back and talk a little bit about the science of junk food. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so,

my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Guru cluster first combination candy, 1912. Pop tarts are the knockoff. They were originally created to overcome the rival country squares. Stop. I love how you said it quieter. Like,

maybe Chuck won't notice sitting right across from me. Just between you and me listening. Although the bubblegum one was pretty cool. The guy invented, yeah, he invented gum before bubblegum was just chewing gum. Double bubble is what he came up with, right? Was it double bubble was the first one? I think so. It was in that one New York Times article. Yes, it was double bubble. Yeah. And he said that he died with a smile on his face because he brought so much joy to children all over the world. You didn't care about their dental habits. All right. So the science of junk food is actually pretty interesting because it's not just, there's nothing willy nilly about it. No, these are very, there's a lot of money at stake. So companies throw a lot of dough into

food laboratories, finding what they refer to as that sweet spot or the bliss point. Yeah, the bliss point. Again, that article is really great from New York Times. That was a different one. That one is called the extraordinary science of addictive junk food. Oh, really? Yeah. It's very long, very good. Yeah. But that bliss point or the sweet spot is what they're after. And what you're really talking about is mouthfeel, which we've talked about in nothing taste or no, something else more recently than that. I think I do bars. Remember, gum Arabic gave a different mouthfeel to than just regular simple syrup. Yeah, that's right. Mouthfeel. So Cheetos is one of the more famous junk foods of all time because it's sort of a

wonder of science in that it preys upon something called vanishing caloric density, which basically means you put a Cheeto or a cheese puff or a cheese doodle in your mouth and you're going to chew it a couple of times and it's just going to sort of dissolve and your brain doesn't really register that it's even eating calories. That is why you eat an entire bag of Cheetos. Yeah. Because we've evolved to see with our tongues or to measure with our tongues roughly the caloric density of a food. Yeah, because when tuk-tuk was running around, they needed to eat efficiently, which means eating as many calories as they could with his little stuff going in their mouth as possible. Exactly, right? So the tongue would learn to detect

fat. Fat is extremely dense calorically. So after you eat a certain amount of fat, you get kind of this nasty feel in your mouth. Your mouthfeel. It's kind of greasy, right? Yeah. And you suddenly realize that you can't eat another bite of this fatty slab of pork fat. You know? Yeah, it is good. But imagine eating a big toilet seat size slab. You would not, right? You'd get sick from it. And the reason why is because your brain becomes satiated. So what these food scientists figured out is that if they can make something basically melt like a Cheeto, it tricks your tongue into missing the fact that it's a really fatty food. And like you said, you can eat a whole bag of it thanks to that vanishing caloric density. Well, another thing they do is like let's say you're

eating a cheeseburger from a fast food chain. And that has that same fatty feel. But they realize if you serve the soda with that, it balances things out to where you don't have that greasy mouthfeel any longer. Exactly. So that's one reason why they sell sodas at fast food chains. That's what a value meal comes from. It's not just like, yeah, we want to make sure you get your money's worth. No, they want to make sure that you're going to say, I could use another cheeseburger. I'm back. I want another cheeseburger, please. And they say, certainly, we will happily sell you one of those. But see, I don't drink soda. So when I eat fast food, what do you drink? Water. Huh? Is that strange? No. Like what else would I drink if not a soda?

Well, that's, that's it. Oh, yeah. That's your choice. Yeah. So soda or nothing. You're not even allowed to drink water. You have to sit there and eat it dry. Well, although my sister-in-law drinks milk with most meals. I grew up like that. Like milk and pizza even. Yeah. Milk and everything. Yeah. Not me. I've got a really disgusting milk and broccoli story that I'm not going to tell, but it is rowdy. Come on. So you really want to hear it? Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, then warning for those of you with a weak stomach, you really don't want to hear this. Or if you're, I would say eating broccoli or drinking milk anytime soon, probably avoid it. Okay. So, um, I hate broccoli, but I used to really hate broccoli. And when I was a kid, like

you just couldn't leave the table until you were done eating your vegetables. That'll trick. And we drank milk with every, every meal. So I would, I would eat the broccoli where I would take a bite and it would touch my tongue for a millisecond and I'd wash it down with like half a thing of milk, right? You're basically swallowing broccoli whole. Right. Yeah. But I'm taking like a half a cup of milk for each swallow. So I kept having to drink more and more milk. I think I see where this is headed. Well, one night my mom was working a shift at the ER and my dad was in charge of feeding me dinner. Sure. That was fun. And, um, I'd gotten about halfway through my broccoli and then drank God knows how much milk with it when I took one more bite and all of it just came right

back up on my plate. Oh man. And without looking, my dad was like looking up at the ceiling while he grabbed my plate. It was like, okay, I think that's enough for you. And like cleared the plate. And I thought, I won. So your dad cleared a plate of vomited up food without knowing it? No, without like purposely not looking at it. Oh, okay. He's like, okay, that's enough. Well, that was nice of him. It was. I didn't have to finish my broccoli. I thought he was going to say like, eat it again. Right. He rubbed my face in it. My mom used to set the old oven timer. Remember that trick? Oh, we didn't have time. It was just, you're not getting up. It doesn't matter what time it is. You can't get up and go to bed or watch TV or anything. We had like,

you got 10 minutes to finish those green beans and I did the old trick. That makes way more sense. I was like, I'm done. I'm just going to the bathroom. It didn't work. No. No. I thought I was smart. All right. So junk food is not healthy for you. Oh yeah. We know that. Tire stores. The American Civil War. Here are things that can happen if you eat too much junk food. You're going to get obese, which means you're going to have an increased risk of heart disease. You may get type two diabetes. And like you said, with the mental side, you may become depressed because addiction, it has all the characteristics of just like a drug addiction and alcohol addiction. Right. You binge on it. You withdraw from it. You get an increased tolerance from it. And

then I have the impression that they have it figured out like that there really is a certain amount of addiction you can get from eating junk food and that it's basically getting that pop, that blood sugar high rush that you're dropped off from very quickly and then having to chase after it again. Right. Chasing that high. Chasing the dragon or something like that. That's what I guess is what it's called. And so you can display the signs of addiction from junk food as well. Much more closely linked is the connection between junk food and type two diabetes. Yeah. Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of sugar a day. That's so crazy. On average, a lot of this stuff comes from high fructose corn syrup, candy, junk food,

soft drinks and how that works is your body's going to break that down, break down those carbohydrates and your blood sugar is going to spike. Which, you know, a single episode of your blood sugar spiking isn't the biggest deal in the world. But when you repeatedly do that to your pancreas, it's going to basically tire out and wear out those insulin producing cells and trigger type two diabetes. Right. Because when you have glucose in your blood, that's a good thing because that provides energy to yourselves. And insulin comes along and helps open up your cells to allow it to absorb the glucose and get it out of your bloodstream, right? But after being exposed to this time and time again, your cells stop absorbing glucose as

well. So you have to produce more and more insulin. And eventually, like you were saying, those cells tire out, your pancreas can't produce enough insulin. And so you always have an elevated level of glucose in your bloodstream. Yeah. That's bad. That's real bad. That leads to nerve damage and blood vessel damage, which is associated with type two diabetes and everything from heart disease to foot amputations can result. Great. Because like say with your foot, this always fascinated me. I was like, why would diabetes lead to your foot getting amputated? I'll tell you why. So remember, glucose levels leading to nerve damage supposedly concentrates on the foot. Yeah. And you lose feeling in your foot. So even just like stubbing

your toe badly can lead to an infection that you don't notice because you're not feeling the pain. Right. And all of a sudden, you have this infection that's not being fought off properly because the blood circulation to your foot is diminished. Yeah. And next thing you know, you have gangrene and your foot has to be amputated. Unbelievable. Because of type two diabetes. Yeah. And isn't, I didn't look this up, but the way I understand it is you can reverse heading toward type two diabetes until you have type two diabetes and then you've got it. That's what I saw too. Yeah. Like you can't undo it once it's taken hold. Right. What you go through first is called insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome or prediabetes. Right.

And you can catch that. You just need to go in for a physical like once a year or something like that and you'll be able to catch whether or not you have prediabetes. Yeah. And then you take certain measures to not get type two diabetes. But yeah, I think once you have type two diabetes, you got it for life. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to say and it's not just about the health aspects of it, but there's this really great documentary narrated by Katie Couric called FedUp that I think everybody should see. And it's about this kind of stuff. Really good, really well done documentary. Yeah. There's a lot of great food documentaries out right now that really go into what the food industry has become these days. Very eye-opening stuff.

Yeah. Have you seen Super Size Me? Yeah. I have not. Oh, really? You know he's under fire for basically like a lot of people have tried to replicate his results and if no one's been able to do it. Huh. It was interesting at the time. Have you seen Super High Me? Uh, yes. Is that any good? Doug Benson. Yeah. It was funny. Gotcha. That was for those you don't know Doug Benson is a comedian who's famous for smoking tons of weed. And he's got a documentary called Super High Me. Yeah. In which I believe he smoked pot every day all day for 30 days and then died and took a bunch of tests like brain tests and physicals and things like that and then did not smoke at all and then compared the two. How did it turn out? That was interesting.

Some results were as you'd expect and some surprised you. Huh. I'll have to see that. He's a funny guy though. I like him. Yeah. Um, all right. So we'll take a break here when we come back. We're going to talk a little bit more about this really cool article, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if

you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. SOS, because I'll be there for you. And so my husband, Michael, and a different hot,

sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. If so, tell everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, you sent me this article that we referenced, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, and it's really interesting. By Michael Moss, right? Was that his name? Pretty sure. It was in the New York Times in 2012 or 13.

Yeah, and he basically details at first a meeting in 1999 of the heads of some of the largest food companies in the world getting together to talk about the fact that all these doctors are saying we're making junk if people are getting obese. And this chemist basically thought I'm going to talk these people into sort of reversing some of their practices in the name of good health and was disappointed to find that they all kind of dug in. And we're like, no, we're going to make this stuff and people want it. They want it. And we're not going to try and make a healthier snicker bar that doesn't sell because the name of the game is selling food. Right. I think the way they put it is nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads.

Yeah. The thing is, is a lot of people controversial at that point and say, you guys kind of use science to hijack our evolutionary processes and make it so that it's really, really difficult to refuse this food. Right. Like the Cheetos that melt in your mouth and your brain doesn't realize it's eating all these calories. Yeah. So you end up eating tons of Cheetos. One of the most interesting stories in here, I thought, and he tells a bunch of sort of histories of some of these junk foods, but Lunchables was super interesting to me. Yeah. And I want to say nefarious almost. You know, when you look at how it came about,

but basically what they, they did a lot of research into motherhood and found that the biggest challenge was time. Yeah. And moms don't have time, and I say moms, parents. Well, this is 1985. So it was moms. Yeah, that's true. Parents and moms don't have time to get, to get a good meal into their child. So we're also having a baloney crisis. Right. Oscar Meyer was like, nobody's eating all of loaf any longer and we're in a lot of trouble. So what are we going to do? Yeah. These things came together to create the Lunchable, which was a new convenient way to package food in a tray. But it was the same stuff. Yeah. So that baloney, yeah, again, it's all marketing and packaging.

Yeah. So that baloney, they wanted to put bread in there, but of course bread, you can't make bread last for two months. Right. So they threw some crackers in there. Nice. They wanted cheese in there because what goes better with baloney and crackers? Right. Cheese. And then I think Oscar Meyer bought Kraft. So they just started using Kraft cheese, and both of them, by the way, were owned by Phillip Morris, a cigarette manufacturer, who definitely has your health at heart. Yeah. They did experiment with some different cheeses, and they found that like real cheese was no good. And the best cheapest cheese that lasted the longest was not even cheese. It was cheese food. Which I think is awesome that it's its own

category, cheese food. Cheese food. Yeah. But hats off to them for trying real cheddar first. Yeah. I guess so. It's like the potato chips in a barrel, though. If they go stale, you can't, you can't sell it. Yeah. This article points out that it takes several months for something to go from the factory to the grocery store shelf. Yeah. So wait, that's the part I didn't get. The ham in those things is good for several months. Yes. Oh, it's probably good for several years. How? Preservatives. Oh. It's the same thing that the poison squad was like testing against. Remember in the FDA episode? Yeah. These are the things that didn't make them sick. That's what preserves our food now. It's not necessarily good for you, but it won't make you sick immediately.

And Chuck, there's one other thing I want to say. Yeah. I've seen this a couple of places. Apparently the apple that you buy at the store has been off the tree for an average of 14 months. Really? Yes. And it's just the preservatives like baked into the tree? I have no idea how they do it. 14 months is the average from tree to shelf for an apple. An apple. That's what Adam gave to Eve. I don't know. Interesting. I don't know, but I have seen it a couple of places and I would like to know if anyone out there knows that that is incontrovertibly untrue. Yeah. Or if it is true, how that's possible, I would love to know. All right. I'm sure someone knows. Because you make an excellent point. Like why would then it spoil very quickly

in your house? Unless it's kept under certain conditions until it gets to your house and then it's like... Well, it probably is. I can finally die. Yeah. Because you bought me. So back to Lunchables. The sales were going gangbusters, but they were still losing money on it because it was just an expensive product to package. Those little trays and everything cost money. Then they just started to run wild with adding things to increase sales. They started adding desserts to it. They started adding sugary drinks to them. Capri Sun. Yeah. Kool-Aid, Capri Sun. Then they started marketing. They tried things like carrots, but they didn't sell well, so they scrapped it. Then they started realizing that we should market to children and not moms

anymore because what they figured out was that it was about the kids having control because the kids would go and throw out the carrots and just eat the meat and cheese, let's say, in the little risicup that went in there. Right. And so they started marketing to children with commercials like, all day you got to do what they say, but lunchtime is all yours. Yeah. And little kids on Saturday mornings are like, lunchtime is all mine with Lunchables, and they wanted it, so they would go to the store and scream at the top of their lungs until they got it. The other interesting thing was what happened. Which also one other thing, I guarantee you, and I haven't verified this, but I guarantee you that if you go to the store and

you find Lunchables, they're at a child's eye level. Oh, I'm sure they are. I'll bet that's where they're placed. Not mom eye level, child eye level. Yeah. I think they're on the horizontal part of the meat section. Yes. Like not built vertically up on a shelf. Right. I think they're down even below the kid where they can even grab it. Yeah. And run out of the store with it. Yeah. The other interesting thing, I think it was in this article when they talked about what's happened to yogurt over the years. Was that in here? Yeah. Well, basically they hijacked something that should be good for you. And now you get like twice the amount of sugar your body needs in a serving of yogurt these days. Like Heath bar sprinkles. Yeah. It's not healthy. Yeah. And now

let's put it, let's put it in a squeezy tube for kids and call it go girl. Call it go girl. Yeah. This article was really great. I mean, this guy really laid it out. Just the ideas behind it, the thinking behind it, the science behind it. It's a really long article. It's really, really worth reading. One of the other things he goes into is that there was this food scientist who's kind of like a legend. I think his last name is Moskowitz. Yeah. He's just a legend in this field. And he figured out very early on that the optimizer. Yeah. Yeah. He figured out that not only does your tongue like detect fat and say, okay, you've had enough fat stop eating this, that that has to be tricked. It does the same thing with flavor too. So if there's a really

overt and obvious flavor that might taste delicious, you get sick of it faster. So what this guy figured out and what food scientists now do is they'll take flavors and combine other flavors. So one isn't dominant so that there's no real flavor for the tongue to be like, I'm sick of this. So Doritos are a really good example. Like nacho Doritos is its own flavor. It's not just garlic. It's not just cheesy. It's this thing that they put together that tricks your tongue into never being satiated, which is how you can down a whole bag of Doritos. Yeah. It was so interesting. And so much research goes into this when they start talking about the amount of consumer study they did and like thousands and thousands of hours of people tasting things

and taking notes on what they're tasting and basically creating a mathematical formula for how to create the perfect thing that you won't want to stop eating. And not just for people for this age group or this age group of this ethnicity or whatever. Like it's really down to a science. All this just to come up with cherry vanilla, Dr. Pepper. Yeah. And the other thing too was the, remember how I railed about all the Doritos now, the different flavors? Which I have no problem with that. Well, I just thought it was interesting in that they basically had food technicians at a certain point stopped worrying about new products and said the line extension is where it's at. Right. So instead of one type of Dorito, we'll offer you like 25

different types. Right. Rather than one type of Dorito and like an entirely new product. Right. Because apparently one of the hardest things in the world to do is to get people to buy a new product. Whereas if you already have the branding associated with it, the emotional attachment, people know it's tasty, they'll try a different version and offshoot of it. Yeah. But not necessarily a whole new product that could be superior in every way. And they spend as much as $30 million a year on some of these products. Not the company, but like on a specific food product, including things like machinery, a $40,000 machine that simulated a chewing mouth to test the perfect breakpoint of a potato chip. Yeah. Which is four pounds per square inch, I think. Yeah. Four pounds of pressure

per square inch. And so they're not only spending money on research on advertising as well as House of Works article pointed out that in 2012, just McDonald's spent 2.7 times as much money on advertising as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water and milk producers combined. Yeah, I believe that. Totally. You don't see a lot of broccoli commercials. They're disgusting. All right. We'll finish with something interesting that you sent about the junk food diet. I think I'd heard of this before. Yeah. Where someone will undertake a diet of not only junk food, but a lot of junk food. This guy's a nutritionist, like a nutrition scientist from Kansas State. Go. Some sort of cat. Yeah. Like a large cat. Go K-State. K-State. Yeah. Some sort of big cat.

There you go. All right. Go big cats. Yeah. He went on a 10 week junk food diet. Chocolate covered snacks, cream filled cakes, sugary cereals, cookies, chips. He did eat a protein shake every day and some vitamins and supplements and some veggies here and there too. And he lost a lot of weight doing it. Because he ate 1800 calories a day, which is a calorie reduced diet. Right. But technically, as far as macronutrients goes, it was a balanced diet, a balance between carbs, proteins and fats. And he lost a bunch of weight. He lost a bunch of weight. He lost his BMI went down. His total body fat was reduced. His cholesterol was reduced. The bad cholesterol went down. The good cholesterol went up. Isn't that nuts eating junk food on a junk food diet?

Yeah. I can see losing weight, like calories or calories. And there's a big debate about that, but I think ultimately that's what this thing shows. And if you reduce calories, it doesn't matter where your calories are coming from, you're going to lose weight. But to have your bad cholesterol go down and your good cholesterol go up was really surprising to me. Yeah. And I think the main thing I took away though is this is the 10 week diet and what happens over a 10 year period. Well, yeah. Who knows? That was a great question. Yeah. Pretty interesting though. Very interesting stuff. Mark Staub, I believe. Mark Hobb of K-State. Go big cats. Man. Sorry, K-State. I know. That was lame, Chuck. That was lame. If you want to know more about junk food,

you should type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and check out New York Times articles. There's some good ones on there. Check out the encyclopedia of junk food and fast food. Actually, go to the podcast page for this episode and it's got all that stuff. And I guess it's time for listening now. Yeah. By the way, I just looked it up. I don't normally do that, but it's a wild cat. So we were right. Bam. Willy the wild cat is the actual name. We said big cats and it's a wild cat. Yeah. Wild cats are not super big, but they can be. Yeah. Like a lion's technically a wild cat. Oh, I guess I just think of like bobcats and things and mountain lions when they go wild cats, but

a lion would be a wild cat, right? Sure. They're huge. Huge. All right. I'm going to call this aborigines. Remember when the male puberty episode, we talked about the aborigines had some pretty brutal puberty rights that they would put boys through. We were taking a task a little bit in a nice way. Guys want to give you some feedback about the term in the Australian context. This is quite an outdated term to say aborigines. Some people still identify with it, but it's generally accepted to say indigenous Australians or aboriginal Australians. There are hundreds of aboriginal nations around Australia, each with their own traditions and knowledge within these nations are various clan and family groups. And within those are multiple types of kinship

relationships. It gets really complicated. So that puberty ritual you mentioned would likely have only been practiced by some people. Others would have had their own traditions. So in other words, excellent point. We shouldn't have just said like the aborigines do this because it might have been like one small part of a tribe or something. Very, very good point. Yeah. So that is from Krista, I assume in Australia. Can you say it like an Australian? No. Krista. Yeah, that's pretty good. All right. Australian for Krista. Yeah. If you want to take us to task in a nice way or otherwise, but we always prefer it nice way, we'd love to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.