Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Happy Foods!

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Some foods make you happy. But they aren't necessarily comfort foods. You know what they call that? SCIENCE!See 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, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry

and for Dave. And this is short stuff, the happy foods edition, which I'm good with. I like happy foods. Did you remember this from your past, my friend? What do you mean? You wrote this article. No, I didn't. Yeah, this is, uh, this is back when we were at HouseOfWorks.com and this was a Josh Clark special. No, I did not. I have no recollection of it whatsoever, Chuck. You know why? It's because I, uh, sent you the file. I cut out the, remember we always had to do this kind of corny couple of paragraphs at the beginning. I cut those out. Okay. All right. But you might remember that. I mean, listen to this sentence. Gabba is produced during the Krebs cycle, a physiological process by which nutrients

are converted to energy for cellular use. I should have seen my own genius in that amazing sentence. Let me ask you honestly, when you were reading this, were you like, oh, gosh, this, this stuff? A little bit. I was like, wow, that's a pretty ancient Cornell university study. And I'm sure those 277 participants were probably undergrads getting extra credit. So yeah, I did beat up on myself a little bit. Well, this is a Josh Clark special and it's about how certain foods can make you happier and some foods can make you maybe 10 toward depression or a little down. And it is not just, I'm not talking about comfort food. We are going to mention that briefly, but it's, it's, it's science, right? Science. Yes. Thank you. So yeah. And there's a

distinction that we'll get to happy foods and comfort foods. I call them happy foods. That's another thing. I was like, that's a pretty doofus thing to call them. I feel, but what's weird is I feel comforted knowing that I was criticizing myself. It all just seems right and normal now. But we're going to call them because I call them that back in the day, back in the aughts, happy foods, which are foods that actually can affect your mood. Whereas, like directly through physiological action, whereas comfort foods are things that have an effect on your mood through psychological processes. Right. And if you're talking about the brain and the transmitters, there are a couple that are largely responsible for our moods. Inhibitory. And are we going with excitatory or

excitatory? Excitatory. I thought so. I just wanted to make sure you wrote it. I'm just deferring to the author. This is so bizarre. So excitatory transmitters, we're talking about, like, Nora Epinephrine. Nora Epinephrine. Did I say it wrong? I think you said Nora Epinephrine, too. Nora Epinephrine. Man, she's been making appearances all over the place lately. Yeah. There's a lot of party parts that sound like her. They stimulate, she passed away, right? Oh, did she? Yeah, she did. I'm pretty sure. One of the greats. Yeah, she really was one of the greats. Like, I don't want to say, you know, unsung. Like, she was hugely successful, but I think she was even more of a genius than she gets credit for.

Yeah, one of the great writers. So where was I? I was with Nora Epinephrine. They stimulate our body. They stimulate our mind, but it can be too much. And what you need is a balance of those excitatory neurotransmitters and the inhibitory, which provide, which gives things like serotonin, to kind of balance things out. And that's kind of where the true good mood lies. Right. As I put it, ultimately, the best moods are found when there's a balance between these two types. I remember thinking like, best moods. And some, it's gone yet. Stupid sense. So the thing is, is like when, when we start producing these neurotransmitters, like serotonin or norepinephrine, like we actually make them out of the food that we eat. We eat the food,

our bodies break down the food, and we use those as building blocks, as constituent nutrients, as building blocks for things like neurotransmitters. So there are actually foods that can aid in our mood. And a big one, serotonin is a really big neurotransmitter, one of the biggest. And it's, it's frequently considered like a happy neurotransmitter. It's an inhibitor. It kind of says mellow out norepinephrine. It helps you kind of stay calm, stay relaxed, be in a good mood. And there's a lot of foods out there that actually help you make serotonin. Yeah. It says put on when Harry met Sally and have some turkey and bananas. And you're like, that's not a very good combo. And they said, well, add some spinach and that'll really tie it

all together. But those things are all very high in folate. And that's a B vitamin that serotonin needs to be made. And folate and tryptophan too. And tryptophan is remarkable because it can go directly into your brain. It can cross the blood-brain barrier. And interestingly, serotonin can't cross the blood-brain barrier. So since tryptophan directly is translated into serotonin in the brain, you're basically feeding your brain serotonin when you eat turkey and bananas and other tryptophan containing foods. That's right. I say we take a break and we're going to get back and I'm going to let the author speak to the Krebs cycle right after this. 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. 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. 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 came crashing 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. All right, Dr. Krebs, tell me about Gaba. It always reminds me of the adventures of Pete and Pete, because I think there's like Krebco or something was like the generic company that

they always use. I think so. But it reminded me of the Krebs cycle. So, Gaba is Gabba immunobutyric acid, or Gaba. Everybody knows what Gaba is. It's called nature's volume, or so I said in quotes. And it is indeed made during the Krebs cycle, where you convert energy for use, nutrients converted to energy for later use. And Gaba helps you sleep. It helps you mellow out. And it's based on what we get from foods called glutamates. And I think those are actually also the basis for umami too. Isn't that correct? Yeah, that sounds really, all this stuff sort of was ringing some bells. But the idea is if you eat something like sesame or sunflower seeds, or if you're a meat eater and you like pork and beef, you're going to be getting a lot of that

glutamate. And that's that amino acid, which is a big, it's not Gaba, but it helps make Gaba. Yeah. And that can glutamine, did I say glutamate? I've been saying glutamates, but it is glutamines. And I'm sure there's a pretty substantial difference between those two. Right. So glutamine, hold your emails, is what we mean. And that can transcend the blood-brain barrier. And so you're going to have, you know, a pretty significant impact on your happiness with the foods that you're eating there. Which is pretty cool to think like you're, like the foods you eat can actually impact your mood. You know, it makes you kind of want to, you know, nourish yourself.

Right. Other times, though, you say, I don't want to nourish myself at all. I want to do the exact opposite of that because I need comfort food. And here again, we reach that distinction where as those happy foods, those foods that can actually influence the production of Gaba and serotonin in your brain, those are different from comfort foods, which basically activate neural pathways of a happier time. And that we crave to make ourselves feel better when we're not feeling very good. Yeah. Which is, you know, it's the difference of physiology and psychology. And you know, what you mentioned is pretty true because I think, I think if you did a survey of people, you would find that most people lean toward comfort foods that is something

their grandma made or their mom or dad made or something like that when they're a little that reminds them of maybe a special time or happier time in their life, or maybe a time when things were a little more simple. Maybe, dare I say, Mr. Hodgman, a bit more nostalgic. But, you know, my comfort foods are those like mashed potatoes and fried chicken and is like sort of good old Southern home cooking is my comfort food because I remember my mom and my grandmother making all that stuff and and just chowing down on it when there was no regard. And that's probably part of it too, as an adult who gets older and like has to deal with, you know, weight issues back when it didn't matter when you were a child. Right. And you could just eat all of

that stuff and you had the metabolism of a of a nat and it just you could consume guilt free. Yeah. So comfort foods like that was like, he just kind of took me back, man. Oh, man. So like, what's your comfort food? I don't know what my comfort foods are. I like sweet stuff. I like sure me cakes, cookies, donuts, or big time comfort food of mine. Is that childhood stuff for you? So I've learned not to look too deeply into the psychology behind my comfort foods or also start weeping. So I just take them on face value. I'm like, this makes me feel good. This is the food I go to, you know, you go home or Simpson, which is fine. So with comfort foods, the fact is like donuts for me and fried chicken for you like it under

underlines the fact that like it's a really personal choice. But apparently, there are kind of commonalities between say like men and women who over who wants what when they're craving comfort food. Yeah, there was a study in 2005 out of Cornell that surveyed close to 300 cisgendered men and women and found that women tend to seek sugary things more than men do. Men tend to seek out things like, ooh, I do like soup. I got to say it's a comfort food. Sure. Soup and steak and things like that. Steak is a comfort food? Well, I mean, according to Cornell. But I'm saying for you, is it a comfort food? Oh, I mean, I love steak. I don't know that I would say it's a comfort food. Yeah, for me, it's like my body's like get steak, eat now. That's how I end up eating a steak.

It's not like I'm feeling down, Josh. I could really use a steak that's never happened. It's rainy day and I'm feeling a little blue. Yeah, exactly. Like a nice bowl of soup sounds really good, but not yeah, you're right. Not a toilet seat size steak. It's not what I'm going for when I'm looking for comfort food. They also found that the cisgendered men tend to use comfort food as the reward while women might feel guilty about it and that there may be an evolutionary advantage for women when it comes to that. This sounds awfully made up. Oh, you wrote it. I know. I'm trying to suss out if I did make it up. I don't think I did. So it does sound editorial though that this idea that if you are craving comfort food all the time and you just eat it willy-nilly,

that's not typically good for you because the foods that we crave for comfort are not particularly nourishing or nutrient rich or nutrient dense. They may or may not be bad for your junk food depending on your perspective about food. So I don't know if that's like an evolutionary thing that sounds like a segway that I forced, but who knows? Well, there's also the idea that if you are not eating something, the lack of that can physiologically affect your mood because there's a fatty acid called DHA, a daco-say-sa-hexonic. Daco-sa-hexonic? I think that's it, yeah. Okay. This is a fat, the most abundant fat found in the human brain and it's very important for brain structure

and there's a lot of it in fish and shellfish and they've done studies and even though they're not, they're correlative and not necessarily causal, they did find links and other studies have confirmed links that in places where people eat like Taiwan where people eat a lot more fish and it's a big part of the diet, then people are happier. Yeah, 10 times the prevalence of depression in areas where they don't eat a lot of fish and I do say, although this doesn't prove causation, it's a pretty good reason to eat more fish and other foods containing DHA and that's true. I mean, what's the problem? Eat more fish. Even if it doesn't say, yes, we link DHA and lack of it to depression, just eat some more fish if you see a study like that. There's nothing

wrong with that. Yeah. I feel really defensive about this episode. I feel bad that I didn't tell you beforehand. I kind of wanted to see what would happen if I'm being honest. I hope you're ashamed of yourself for how it turned out. I'm going to keep doing this and just pop them in there every now and then and see if you recognize. Well, now I'm going to be on the lookout and it would be super paranoid. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, since Chuck's got nothing else, I got nothing else. The humiliation ends here. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.