0:15

Pushkin Hey,

0:23

Happiness Lab listeners. The intersection

0:25

between eating and happiness is pretty complicated

0:27

and something I think about a lot, but it's

0:30

not a topic we've tackled a lot on the show. Recently,

0:33

I was invited to appear on the podcast Food

0:35

We Need to Talk, and preparing for my interview,

0:37

it really helped me focus my thoughts on this important

0:40

subject. Just like the Happiness Lab,

0:42

Food we Need to Talk relies on the latest science

0:44

to tackle issues like body image, nutrition,

0:47

exercise, and addiction. I felt

0:49

totally at home on the show and really enjoyed

0:51

my conversation with the host Yuna and

0:53

Eddie, and so I thought you would too.

0:56

If afterwards you want to hear more smart thoughts on

0:58

eating, then you should listen to other episodes

1:01

of Food we Need to Talk wherever you get your

1:03

podcasts.

1:12

Just a heads up to our listeners, this episode does

1:15

involve discussion of eating disorders.

1:17

If you need more information or need help

1:19

finding help, go to National Eatingdisorders

1:22

dot Org.

1:25

I'm Unadjata and I'm doctor Eddie

1:27

Phillips, Associate Professor at Harvard

1:29

Medical School.

1:30

And you're listening to Food we

1:32

Need to Talk, the only podcast that has

1:34

been scientifically proven to help

1:36

you be happy with your food again. Welcome

1:46

back to food. We need to talk. Thank you so

1:49

much, Professor Santos for coming back

1:51

on to talk about food this time.

1:53

Yeah.

1:54

So, the first question we wanted to ask you about is

1:56

do you think that we view food differently today

1:58

than we traditionally have in the past, Because I

2:00

feel like, to me, food has always

2:03

seemed very utilitarian. You use food

2:05

to either be healthy or to

2:07

manipulate your weight. But I don't

2:09

think that in the past people were so preoccupied

2:11

with their weight and so focused on health, right because

2:13

they were just eating food to survive. And so I feel like

2:15

it's completely you started to mean this different

2:18

thing.

2:18

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it's worth going

2:21

really way back right to how we used to think

2:23

about food evolutionarily, right, you know.

2:25

I think when we were a hunter gatherers, food

2:27

was just another one of our basic needs, right,

2:29

you know, we'd get sleepy and we'd sleep, we'd be

2:31

cold and maybe put on a blanket or a fur

2:34

or something. I think when we were hungry, we wanted

2:36

to eat. And I think if you look at the foods that

2:38

people were eating back then, you know,

2:40

like roots and tubers and whatever, you

2:42

know, in the back in the evolutionary day,

2:45

very little of it was this sort of highly palatable

2:47

food. And so I think sometimes we think, oh, today

2:49

food's so utilitarian. You know, maybe we need

2:51

to get back to pleasure. But in some ways, I think

2:53

we need to get back to what food really was. It's

2:55

just like a way to fulfill our needs. It wasn't

2:58

necessarily supposed to be this super

3:00

pleasurable thing that you know, we got

3:02

a lot out of. And so I think when you take that

3:05

big historical approach, you realize,

3:07

wow, we're thinking about food in a really

3:09

different way, and it's one of the needs

3:11

that we've gotten so obsessed about. You know, you talked

3:14

about regulating your weight or kind of wanting

3:16

to get fit and things like that. And I think these

3:18

days we really are super utilitarian

3:20

when it comes to food. And when you start to realize

3:22

that it's just an urge, this starts to feel kind of

3:24

weird, you know when you think about like, you

3:27

know, if I have urged to go to the bathroom, right, I have to urinate,

3:29

I'm not like making a schedule or having

3:32

an app or like there's not like influencers

3:34

who are telling me I wanted to go to eth, Like

3:36

if I'm feeling cold, there's very little

3:39

infrastructure for like how to get warmer

3:41

or tips on getting what like. You just kind of

3:43

obey that need. And somehow we've gotten

3:45

off track with food.

3:47

So I'm picturing the folks coming back

3:49

from their hunting and gathering and

3:52

the food arrives, and it might just

3:54

be some tubers. Maybe it was an exceptional

3:57

day and you caught an animal of whatever size,

4:00

if you really went nuts and you

4:02

were willing to climb up a tree and smoke at the bees,

4:04

you got a little bit of honey. But

4:07

what I'm hearing is that was everyone clapping

4:09

and saying hooray, I'm really happy. Or

4:11

is it just like, oh my god, I won't be starving

4:15

for another twenty four hours.

4:16

Yeah.

4:17

I mean, I think there definitely even were foods back

4:19

in the evolutionary day that tasted

4:21

better than others. You know, you mentioned honey, and I think

4:23

honey has these features of the kind

4:25

of thing that we're out there looking for. It's really high

4:27

caloric, you know, very sweet sort of food.

4:30

But my guess is that most of the time it

4:32

wasn't really this sort of pleasure

4:34

thing. It wasn't like we were, you know, going on

4:36

our hunter gatherer yelp to try to pick their best

4:38

restaurant, you know, with the best cocktails

4:41

and food.

4:41

Like.

4:42

It was just food, right, And I think

4:44

we've somehow built food up a lot, in

4:46

part because you know, it really is a form of pleasure

4:48

that we can savor in our lives now done well,

4:51

But I think it wasn't always that. And I think,

4:53

you know, some of the kind of difficult,

4:56

challenging relationships that some of us have with food.

4:58

Now, if we could get back to thinking about food

5:00

just as fuel, like gasoline that we're putting

5:02

into our big human meat tanks, and we

5:05

might end up developing a healthier relationship

5:07

with eating.

5:08

Okay, So that's a great s way into what is a

5:10

healthy relationship to food. I think it's become a buzzword.

5:12

Yeah, everybody loves to say, especially on Instagram.

5:15

Itway was like, yeah, I'm like really like working

5:17

on my relationship with you, or I'm really good or whatever.

5:20

It's so vague at this point that I

5:22

have no idea what they're talking about. So

5:24

how do you define a good relationship with

5:26

food.

5:27

I mean, honestly, I think a good relationship with food

5:29

is one that you don't think about, right, you

5:31

know, like I have, you know, historically

5:33

been part of diet culture, right, Like I've

5:35

picked up these norms. I too have a complicated

5:37

relationship with you know, should I be eating healthier?

5:40

You know? Is this going to make me fat? Like these kinds of things

5:42

come in right, even for me. But when I watch

5:44

people who have what I would think of as a healthy

5:46

relationship with food, they just eat

5:48

when they're hungry, and they eat something that seems

5:51

like it will make their bodies feel decent, and

5:53

then they don't really think about food very much.

5:55

So I think kind of just the act of worrying about

5:58

this healthy relationship with food and making hashtags

6:00

about it that go on Instagram already, that's signaling

6:02

like something is a miss, right, Like, no

6:04

one's hashtagging like I have this great relationship

6:06

with my like you know, urination or like my

6:09

body feel warm? Right, Like it's just

6:11

another urge that we have, is just another

6:14

need that our bodies have. And so already, as we

6:16

start asking this question, I think it means we got off

6:18

track. But I think you know, when we think about a healthy relationship

6:20

with food, it's one that's not taking up a lot

6:22

of mental bandwidth. I think when you start

6:25

having a take up mental bandwidth already, this

6:27

is problematic. You know, even maybe if it's

6:29

pleasurable, right, even if you're obsessed with, oh,

6:31

what I'm going to eat tonight, I'm really excited about this restaurant

6:34

and things. I think that already is signaling,

6:36

but you might be kind of getting off track a little bit.

6:38

So that's I think point number one is you shouldn't

6:41

be obsessed with it. You shouldn't have to talk about it. But

6:43

the second thing is I think that it's kind of not

6:45

an emotion that seems to be like

6:48

very high arousal, Like you're not

6:50

feeling anxious or sad or stressed.

6:52

It's kind of much more one of these neutral emotions.

6:55

Even when it kind of verges on the positive

6:57

relationship, like you're savoring your food and you're enjoying

7:00

it, it's not this like extreme thing.

7:02

It's kind of just like joy. It's like walking around

7:04

and seeing the nice flowers. It's like that level

7:07

of emotion and not one that's taking

7:09

up a lot of energy and mental bandwidth.

7:11

Let's add in the texture of

7:14

food is love, and there's so many

7:16

cultures where my god,

7:18

if you told my wife,

7:21

if you told my mother in law like not to

7:23

worry about what they're going to serve

7:25

when we get together for dinner, that

7:28

would be sort of like a negative.

7:30

So I think more I was answering

7:32

Youn's question about the influencer

7:35

version of a healthy relationship with food. I

7:37

think if you're paying attention food from

7:39

the perspective of sort of diet culture and one you have

7:41

to eat to be healthy, then you have to kind

7:43

of worry about these sort of more negative emotions,

7:45

like things like anxiety and so on. Right, But

7:47

if we stop that, then we can

7:49

ask, okay, how do we get a more pleasurable

7:51

relationship with food? And I think that brings

7:53

us into the healthier versions of cultures

7:56

that we can have with food, right, because food

7:58

is really it's super important part of our social

8:00

connection. Right again, done well?

8:02

Right?

8:03

I think you know influencer version of orthorexia

8:05

where you just have your snacks in your bag and you just

8:07

eat your parents on the way to the That doesn't

8:09

work. But these you know,

8:11

recipes that have been part of your culture. For

8:14

generations, food that's part of rituals

8:16

that are meaningful both for the social connection

8:19

and for what they represent in terms of how you're representing

8:21

the world and sort of life changes. These

8:23

things can be really essential, but they're

8:25

often less about the food and

8:28

more about kind of how we're thinking

8:30

about the food and what it represents in our

8:32

lives. Like, my guess is it's it's not

8:34

necessarily you know, if I think back to like, you

8:36

know, I don't know my grandmother is cooking. My grandmother

8:39

used to make these cupcakes and things. It's less

8:41

about what's in the particular cupcake and

8:43

more the narrative and the stories that I have going

8:45

with it, the fact that it's been part of this tradition and

8:48

so on, and so that healthy relationship

8:50

with food is less about the particular

8:52

food itself. I don't think anybody cares about

8:54

the macros that are in the cupcake. It's

8:56

really about the narrative and the stories and the

8:58

sort of cultural background that comes with food.

9:01

How do we reclaim that?

9:03

I think it's really hard because that healthy

9:05

relationship comes with being in a culture

9:07

that thinks about this stuff, and in

9:10

a lot of ways, we've sort of lost those cultures.

9:12

You all talk a lot about Michael Polland

9:14

who has a lot of discussion about kind

9:16

of how we can get back to a healthier relationship with food

9:18

and how we should think about our food decisions. You know,

9:20

he talks about, you know, you should go for

9:22

food and real food that you're you're like grandmothers

9:25

would be aware of. But even my grandmother,

9:27

you know, I was born in the it was a child of the eighties,

9:29

and already she was, you know, making

9:31

food out of boxes and doing these things

9:33

right. Already, the cultural traditions that I think she

9:36

had grown up with were kind of fading in

9:38

my you know, American upbringing, and so

9:40

I think, you know, we've lost a lot of that and we

9:42

need to start building that back in. And I think

9:44

that's important both for our happiness but also

9:47

for our health.

9:48

You know.

9:48

I take Michael Pollan's point to be, if you're trying

9:50

to figure out what a healthy diet is, it's no like

9:53

one thing or one set of macros. It's often

9:55

more like the traditional kind of ways

9:58

that people used to eat kind of no matter what

10:01

was in it. Right, you take traditional cultures that are much

10:03

more meat based or much more plant based, and

10:05

they have, you know, some nuance there, but

10:07

pretty much all the traditional die it's are better

10:09

than what I was growing up on out of the box

10:12

in the nineteen eighties.

10:13

So I feel like the message

10:16

of like not thinking or stressing too much about

10:18

food is really important. But then I feel like,

10:20

with the food environment that we live in today,

10:22

it's kind of hard to not think about

10:24

it and still eat. I think what's good

10:26

for your body. I have a new roommate that moved

10:29

in. She loves baking, so now there's just baked

10:31

goods in the house all the time. And

10:33

it's like, if I don't consciously

10:36

think to myself like I probably shouldn't be having

10:38

this all the time, I just would because they just taste good, do you

10:40

know what I mean? So, how do you like balance

10:42

the idea of like these things are everywhere all the time,

10:44

and even all my social gatherings, I've been noticing like

10:46

I've just been going out every other day guys and getting

10:49

food that I know isn't good for you, because I've just been

10:51

meeting my friends because this summer, and in

10:53

the back of my mind, I'm like kind of like, oh, like I feel like it's

10:55

just like happening a lot right now. I don't really like it. I don't

10:57

really feel like I feel as good. But then I also

10:59

don't want to be becoming very stressed about

11:01

it like I used to, and I haven't been. I

11:03

haven't not been going those social gatherings because

11:06

there's food there the way I used to.

11:07

Yeah, And I think this is the problem,

11:09

right is as food becomes something that we get

11:12

worried about that we're paying more attention

11:14

to, like that kind of in

11:16

particular, we might even think of it like a diet mentality,

11:19

that kind of diety mentality that comes in.

11:21

Whether it's based on health like really,

11:23

I just want my body to feel good, or whether

11:25

it's based on some diet notions like I want

11:27

to change the size of my body or I want to become

11:30

fitter or so on. Both of those have

11:32

a particular psychological set of features,

11:34

which is like it's making us obsessed

11:36

with stuff, right like we kind of whether it's

11:39

a sort of diet mentality or a sort of fitness

11:41

mentality, neither of them are pretty good when

11:43

they go along with this sort of anxiousness.

11:46

And so you know, the kind of anxiousness you're describing

11:48

about these sort of social events isn't ideal.

11:50

But then that of course raises the question like, okay, but

11:53

how do I do that in the environment

11:55

where there's this hyper palatable food that I

11:57

know, even if I don't care about, like, even if

11:59

I'm not in diet head, I still don't want my body

12:01

to feel super gross right afterwards, right,

12:03

And so I think part of that is really trying to come

12:05

to terms with actually paying attention

12:08

to how these foods make us feel.

12:10

There's lots of evidence growing that these

12:12

hyper palatable foods really kind

12:14

of hijack a certain part of our

12:16

system, and we often talk about it hijacking

12:18

our sort of pleasure system what we really like.

12:21

But I think that's sort of incorrect, because

12:23

when you get down to it, these foods don't

12:25

necessarily feel that great if you're paying attention

12:28

to them. You know, a lot of people who engage in

12:30

mindful eating exercises sometimes have the realization

12:32

that whatever food they've been obsessing over, say

12:35

like Hershey's kisses, they finally eat them

12:37

and they're like, oh, they're kind of waxy, Like I didn't like

12:39

in my brain, I had this is this very

12:41

delicious thing. But when I mindfully really

12:43

pay attention on what the taste is, I'm kind

12:45

of not digging it that much. And that plays

12:47

into this very dumb feature

12:50

of the way our brains work. It's like the one feature

12:52

like if I could change the way that this part of the human brain

12:54

work, I would, which is that there

12:57

seems to be this weird disconnect in our brains

12:59

between wanting and liking,

13:02

and so liking is like I eat

13:04

the Hershey kiss and how it actually tastes,

13:06

like what's my actual pleasure response to is it is

13:09

or whatever? But wanting is different. Wanting

13:11

is how much I start obsessing about

13:14

it, how much I want to go after it, how much when

13:16

I see it add for it, I'm like, oh, that seems

13:18

really good. You would assume that our

13:20

brains would be smart, that our brains would

13:22

put those two circuits together, that

13:24

we would want only things that we actually

13:27

liked, But it turns out if you look that

13:29

is not how brains are organized. There seems

13:31

to be this interesting disconnect between liking

13:34

and wanting, and so you can see that most

13:36

clearly with drugs of addiction. You know, so

13:38

take somebody who has a

13:40

heroin addiction. That person has a

13:43

really strong wanting for heroin. Right,

13:45

they're going to you know, rob their family, get into all kinds

13:47

of bad behaviors to go after heroin.

13:49

But because their bodies are habituated to

13:51

it, when they actually experience the drug,

13:54

they don't really even like it anymore. Right, They're

13:56

not getting the same blast that they got maybe

13:58

the first time they got it, and so that already

14:00

shows us that there's this disconnect. But I think this

14:02

is the same kind of thing that's happening with hyperpalatable

14:05

food. Right, Like you know, your roommate

14:07

makes the bake goods and you see them on the table,

14:10

and your wanting system is like go

14:12

go go like take that, you know, like,

14:15

but maybe when you eat it, I guess you know, I'm

14:17

like no, no, Like shade to your room. She

14:20

really delicious,

14:24

but it might not be as good as your right.

14:28

And what's frustrating about the wanting liking

14:30

system is I think it runs in reverse too.

14:32

I think there's lots of stuff that we like that

14:35

the wanting system just hasn't latched onto.

14:37

Take exercise. Right, we were

14:39

just talking before we started about you know, all

14:41

your dead lifts and going up right, Like, I have

14:43

never had my wanting system like

14:46

tell me to go to the gym or tell me to do

14:48

dead lifts. But I'm pretty sure most of the time I

14:50

engage in like a hard plates class

14:52

or a hard workout, my liking system

14:54

fires to that. In the end, when I'm leaving the gym,

14:56

I'm having like I'm in a sort of euphoria

14:59

of like that felt really good, but it doesn't translate

15:01

into this sort of wanting to go

15:03

after things. And I think that's true for healthier

15:06

foods too. Right there, you know, we're in the middle of summer

15:08

when we're having this conversation, and right now, like the

15:10

peaches are just like so good.

15:12

I had a nectary in the other day that was like on

15:15

the verge of orgasmic, but like, oh,

15:18

I do not still do not have the wanting for

15:20

those nectaries and the same way I would for the bake

15:22

goods. And so I think understanding the way this

15:24

system works can help us a little

15:26

bit. First, it just gives us some knowledge about when

15:29

I'm experiencing this wanting. It

15:31

might not be an honest signal I'm probably

15:33

not gonna like this as much as my brain is telling

15:35

me, my mind's kind of lying to me. But in another

15:37

way, it can cause us to really start

15:39

to pay attention more to the things we really do

15:42

like. And while it is true that the wanting and liking

15:44

systems are a little bit disconnected, they

15:46

can sort of update a little bit, like

15:48

when you actually start to pay attention

15:50

to your liking. And we know this from work by folks

15:53

like Hetty Kobert, who's a colleague of mine at Yale

15:55

who studies drugs of addiction, where she gets,

15:57

for example, cigarette smokers to really pay

15:59

attention when they're smoking, to like do you like

16:01

the way this feels? To like the way this smells?

16:03

You know, do you like the way this feels? And people often when they

16:05

start to pay attention like, actually, this feels kind of gross.

16:08

I don't like the smell of that. I don't like you

16:10

know, I don't like what this is doing to my body when I think about

16:12

that. And what she finds is that that can gradually

16:15

start to update the wanting system, not perfectly,

16:17

but when you really start to pay attention to like, hang on,

16:20

this was not rewarding, I like really

16:22

didn't like this. Then it can kind of do the update,

16:24

and the same with really mindfully paying

16:26

attention to the healthy food. If you really

16:28

focus on the nectarine and think about it

16:31

again, you're not probably going to crave it. In the same

16:33

way your dopamine system goes to these highly

16:35

palatable foods that are literally engineered

16:37

by engineers in a laboratory to kind of you

16:39

know, be like the heroine, but you can kind of get

16:41

your wanting system a little bit more on board with

16:43

going for it.

16:44

So with other drugs of addiction,

16:48

the biggest thing that is always like so annoyed me

16:50

is that, like you, the ideal

16:52

would be to like not have them at

16:54

all, right for the rest of your life. But with food,

16:56

like, it's impossible to do that because

16:58

you're never going to be able to like never have hyper

17:01

palable food again, right, unless you like live super

17:03

super restrictively.

17:04

Right, And I think and I can't imagine

17:06

anyone honestly doing that right out anxiety,

17:09

right, I mean, I think there's you know, there's lots of talk

17:11

these days in the field of psychology about orthorexia,

17:14

right, which for listeners that don't know, is

17:16

this again, it's not a DSM,

17:18

like you know, like categorist official

17:21

disorder, but it's one that leads to people experiencing

17:23

a lot of anxiety where you're just really obsessed

17:25

with eating healthy foods and so ostensibly,

17:28

you know, if your dietician or nutrition looked

17:30

at your what you were eating, they might be like, oh, that's great,

17:32

like you look so healthy, But in practice,

17:35

you feel really dysregulated. You

17:37

feel like you're on this kind of like verge of a

17:39

binge all the time. It's taking up all your airtime

17:42

for you. It doesn't feel good. And so I

17:44

think that's the problem, is that living in this

17:46

environment of food being so hyper palatable,

17:48

it's so hard to pay attention without dipping

17:51

into the orthorexia.

17:53

I just I am such an all or nothing person, Like I would

17:55

just so much rather have like not care at all,

17:57

or like super care than like kind

17:59

of.

17:59

Care, do you know what I mean, totally have my friend

18:02

who says, I wish, you know, the soilent companies

18:04

would just like make the thing that was really

18:06

healthy and we would never But

18:08

that's I think we need to get back to the question

18:10

that Eddie mentioned right, which is to get

18:13

back to kind of having real,

18:15

true pleasure in food. Beyond

18:18

just the hyperpalatability, Right, can we get

18:20

back to like the way these things were created

18:22

over time, Like maybe like slowly

18:24

creating healthy foods, right, embedding

18:26

them in our cultures and in our rituals.

18:28

Even if that's sort of starting new cultures and rituals,

18:31

What does that look like?

18:32

Right?

18:32

If you build up that narrative in that history,

18:35

it can help there be other things that

18:37

maybe don't necessarily replace

18:39

the hyper palatable foods. Right, We're not going to like wipe

18:41

them out of our culture, but it gives us an alternative

18:44

of things to pay attention to that might be kind

18:46

of healthier in terms of our bodies too.

18:48

Is there a kind of like a literacy

18:51

around food? And what I'm thinking

18:53

of is, I'm sitting here with a concert pianist

18:55

to my right. I'm

18:58

effectively musically illiterate. I've

19:00

never learned how to play an instrument. I

19:03

will listen to music. I have to remind myself

19:06

to do it.

19:07

It's all, oh my well, and.

19:09

What's like who while I'm exercising,

19:11

And I would say I'm happier

19:14

if I'm listening to music, but

19:17

I'm musically illiterate.

19:19

I mean, I Okay, is the same with food,

19:21

Like, there are some people for whom that's

19:24

all they focus on. It can be pathological,

19:26

as you're pointing out, and then

19:28

there's others that could be the happiest people I

19:30

know, and they just go like food just doesn't resonate

19:32

with me.

19:33

Yeah, I think it's it's complicated. I mean, I think,

19:36

you know, a lot of the research really suggests about

19:38

the narrative that we tell ourselves and

19:40

again not really what's in the food.

19:43

You know. One of my favorite examples of this that

19:45

shows kind of how funny these narratives

19:47

can be looked at individuals who are

19:49

paying attention to different wines. Right, you're

19:51

tasting wines, right, and you're doing that,

19:54

for example, like in an fMRI scanner,

19:56

so we can see what's happening in your brain as you're

19:58

tasting these things. And what you find is that

20:00

the simple label that you're showing people

20:03

of the price of this wine affects

20:05

whether or not they taste it. You know, literally

20:07

the reward centers in their brain firing more

20:10

as they taste it. And so you can give someone

20:12

exactly the same wine and their brains

20:14

will fire more for that same

20:16

wine. If it's labeled as more expensive,

20:19

right, And so that tells us something

20:21

interesting, right, It tells us it's not what we're tasting,

20:23

it's kind of what we're thinking about as we're tasting

20:25

it. There's a similar paper about

20:27

tasting coke and pepsi, and so a lot

20:29

of people say that they like coke better. I also

20:32

like say that I like coke better. But if you put

20:34

people in the scanner and you don't tell them which is

20:36

which, people's reward centers fire

20:38

more for pepsi, I think, just because pepsi actually has more

20:40

sugar in it than the whole and coke. But

20:43

if you tell people it's pepsi as they're drinking

20:45

it, then it will fire less. So if they don't know

20:47

what it is, they like it more than coke. But if you tell them

20:49

it's pepsi, they're like.

20:50

Oh, story sets

20:52

the stage.

20:53

And I think that's powerful, right, I mean, I

20:56

think it means that we can set our own

20:58

stories. Right. You know, so if your

21:00

roommate's bringing out the cookies that she

21:02

bakes and she just says, oh, they're cookies that

21:05

might not taste as delicious as if

21:07

you say, these are my grandmother's secret

21:09

rest if you deck get it, chocolate cookies,

21:11

Like just labeling something differently

21:14

actually does make it more delicious to us,

21:16

right, And so there's there's kind of funny hacks that we

21:19

can engage in to make things more delicious.

21:21

Well, I wonder if part of like the reason I feel

21:23

that way about food is because like for

21:25

most of my life, really food was just

21:27

like like I was trying to eat less of it, like

21:30

that was its only purpose, you know what I mean. So I don't

21:32

know if like part of it is that, Like I think one

21:34

time I saw a nutritionis she's kind of like kind

21:36

of nutritionis kind of psychologist, and

21:39

she was like, you have a lot of fear

21:41

associated with food, and you're a migdala

21:43

is really that miguala is the part of the brain, guys, that's like

21:46

the fear kind of anxiety center of the brain, and

21:48

it's the kind of the oldest part of the brain. It's like very

21:50

very deep in your brain anyways, and she was saying, like

21:52

you just have all these connections between food and

21:54

you're amygdala, and like we need to like rewire

21:57

to have food and like pleasure associated

22:00

together, not just food and fear.

22:01

Yeah, I mean, I think there's really something to that, right, I

22:03

mean, I think if you really have like a

22:05

clinically you know, diagnosed eating disorder,

22:08

you know, you're building in so many negative

22:10

emotions that come with food, whether it's

22:12

about eating too much of it or which kinds of

22:14

it? Right, Like, it means that you're not no longer

22:16

thinking of food as this like fuel

22:18

that's neutral, or like a friend that you could

22:20

savor, that you might like, but is this negative,

22:23

scary, like potentially harmful, threatening

22:25

thing. And so I think the process of trying

22:28

to engage a little bit more with food mindfully,

22:31

you know, might be might be pretty helpful,

22:33

you know, because we do know that both again, the

22:35

stories we tell ourselves about food matter,

22:37

and so if you have a negative story, that's only going to make it

22:39

worse. But if you have a positive story, that might be better.

22:42

But also the rituals that we have around food

22:44

matter to right. You know, a wine

22:47

drunk and a really nice wine glass

22:49

at a beautiful restaurant's gonna taste different

22:51

than you know, out of a bag, like you know, I

22:53

don't know, in a dorm room somewhere like some

22:55

ivy league dorm room, right, you know, And so I think we

22:58

can try to develop different rituals

23:00

to come up with food and a lot of you know, therapeutic

23:02

interventions for eating disorders as people are

23:05

eating more. You know, that's one of the things.

23:07

Right, It's like, let's let's try to kind of make

23:09

this thing not scary. Let's put it in a pretty dish,

23:12

you know, set thee have a nice ritual about

23:14

it. You really take a deep breath before you eat

23:16

it, really try to pay attention to what does this taste

23:18

like? You know, how would I describe this?

23:20

Like that?

23:21

Kind of mindful eating can at least make you more

23:23

pay more attention to how things taste.

23:25

And often when you're doing that, you can notice

23:28

the pleasure that's associated with that.

23:30

So I have like several thoughts that may

23:32

be related. Let me give it a truck.

23:35

So once a year, I have this joyous obligation

23:38

of going out to the healthy

23:40

Kitchens.

23:40

Healthy Kitchens. Course, it's a NAPA valley.

23:44

It is at the Culinary Institute of America and

23:47

part of it you're in the middle of wine country, and

23:50

part of it they actually have these tables set up and you

23:52

can go from table to table and do a wine tasting.

23:55

And my first reaction when I tasted

23:57

some of these remarkable

24:00

wines that cost like one hundred dollars plus

24:02

per bottle was like, oh,

24:04

it's like velvet. And I remember

24:06

calling my wife and saying, remember how I

24:08

said, I don't like wine. I

24:11

don't like cheap wine. But

24:13

what I'm learning from you, Laurie, is that what

24:16

sold the wine to me was again the

24:18

setting and the story

24:21

that is it the venter is that they were actually

24:23

standing there pouring their their

24:25

creation and setting me up

24:27

for this experience. And it was sort of like, of

24:30

course I was going to I mean, first off, it

24:32

really is objectively better. Put me in an

24:34

FMR.

24:37

We could test it. I'm sure someone has. I'll

24:39

sign up for that study.

24:40

But I guess what I'm learning is that it's really

24:43

the setting, the story.

24:46

Can we do that to get ourselves

24:48

eating better?

24:50

I think so? And I think you know, you know, there's some

24:52

evidence that even right, the palatability

24:54

of you know, not so palatable

24:56

foods, right, you know, the healthier like just a bunch

24:58

of greens or roots or these kinds of things,

25:00

just the setting can make a lot of difference, right.

25:02

You know, if you walk into you know, one

25:05

of these like bougie New York kind

25:07

of vegan places where the stuff has plated

25:09

really well, and you know you're paying a lot of money, the

25:11

kale that's there is different than the kale

25:13

that I you know, grab the supermarket, like just

25:15

to me to taste differently, right, So

25:18

I think that matters. I think who we are

25:21

eating with seems to matter too. You

25:23

know there's lots of top account what's

25:25

that.

25:25

My TikTok account? I'm just scrolling.

25:27

Yeah, yeah, that is part

25:29

of yeah, yeah, but I think but you bring up a really

25:31

important point, right, which is that you know, we

25:33

act like these healthier foods don't taste

25:35

good, but in practice we're not

25:37

really giving them the sort of mindfulness

25:40

benefit of the doubt when we're engaging with

25:42

them. You know, I was joking about, you

25:44

know, the snacks that you have in your bag kind of

25:46

thing earlier. But you know, as I've made

25:48

a foray into trying to eat more healthfully

25:50

again, not for a weight loss or just like to you

25:52

know, make my body feel good. Sometimes that means

25:55

eating on the go. Sometimes that means grabbing you know,

25:57

a few carrot sticks that are in my bag, and

25:59

that's not often eating and the

26:01

prettiest way possible with the best narrative

26:03

possible. It's just kind of like getting the fuel

26:06

in to go, right. And so it does feel

26:08

like we're sometimes because we're so busy and

26:10

because we're so easily distracted, missing

26:13

out on these opportunities to really enjoy

26:15

food. Well, you know, one of the main

26:17

complaints of people who try to engage

26:19

in more mindful eating is

26:22

just like it's boring, yes, Like

26:25

you're like like I have to just eat and

26:27

not watch you know, like not look at my TikTok

26:29

videos or not watch root Pul's drag race or whatever.

26:32

It's like what, you know, Like

26:34

how am I expected to just eat? Right?

26:37

Like? It just seems so boring, right, And I think that

26:39

tells us something, Right, even if we're eating a hyper

26:41

palatable food, it sometimes seems boring, right,

26:43

And that really tells us it wasn't about the food,

26:45

It wasn't about our enjoyment. It was really about the

26:47

wanting of the food, right. The getting of it and enjoying

26:50

didn't really matter as much as.

26:52

The advertisements

26:54

set the wanting.

26:55

I mean, the double bacon cheeseburger, make

26:59

it your way.

27:00

I mean part of them is that, you know, like most advertisements,

27:03

they're often very inaccurate. Google

27:05

how companies make these palatable food

27:07

exactly. Yeah, you know, like ice

27:09

cream with food ads is actually just like

27:11

Crisco or like because they can't

27:13

it would melt under the lights, right, and so you

27:16

know, so a lot of them are kind of faked. But yeah,

27:18

I think those things are created to really

27:21

amp up our wanting system.

27:23

I mean, it's even like I have an association with Starbucks.

27:25

I've loved Starbucks since I was like

27:27

fifteen. I've been a gold member since that age anyways,

27:30

and so I used to go there every day,

27:32

and like now I don't say I can't afford it anymore, but

27:35

even when I go, it's just like, oh my, oh,

27:37

this latte is so good. It's

27:39

so much better than that. And everybody hates Starbucks

27:41

coffee. People that actually coffee are like Starbucks

27:43

is not good. And it's just like the

27:46

even the brand of Starbucks. Like

27:48

I just love the idea of I'm going

27:50

to get my Starbucks, if that makes sense. Just it's something I

27:52

grew up with and it's so comforting to.

27:54

Me, and even branding right can matter a lot.

27:56

You know, I mentioned this coke and pepsi, you know again,

27:58

Yeah, when we drink it, the neural activation

28:00

fire is more for pepsi, But knowing it's pepsi

28:03

versus coke makes us think really differently

28:05

about it. I think knowing something Starbucks makes

28:07

us think think differently about it. And I think

28:09

this gets also back to you know, we were talking about

28:11

why are these hyperpalatable foods, you

28:13

know, so addictive? Why do they kind of trigger this

28:16

wanting system so much? And I think part of

28:18

it is that, like the not so hyperpalatable foods,

28:20

they don't tend to have the marketers or the brand

28:23

now, like my nectarine from the Farmer's

28:25

Market doesn't come with, like, you know, a

28:27

logo that I associate with that nectarine

28:30

that's bright that you know, triggers my memories

28:32

about eating previous nectarines. It's

28:34

just a nectarine, right, And so I

28:36

think that's that's one of the things that we're

28:39

pushing against as we try to engage in eating more

28:41

healthily, is that most of the healthy stuff

28:43

just doesn't have any of that kind of branding

28:46

narrative. Nuance that gets our wanting

28:48

systems and.

28:49

No health claims on the packaging too. So

28:51

I think we had a figure in our book that was like the

28:53

amounts of money spent on like food marketing

28:55

by food companies, and it was like billions

28:57

of dollars. And then the amounts of money spent

29:00

on like agriculture marketings, like marketing vegetables

29:02

basically, and it was like two hundred million, and it

29:04

was like less than one percent of the marketing budget

29:06

or whatever. Also, all the packaging

29:09

in the supermarket, if you look at the packaging, you would think

29:11

the healthiest food is in the middle of the supermarket,

29:14

right, and then all the vegetables

29:16

have zero packaging. So it's like, I don't

29:18

know, it is all very deceptive.

29:20

We'll be right back, and

29:32

we're back with Professor Laurie Santos

29:34

of the Happiness Lab, a professor

29:36

of psychology at Yale University.

29:38

The other thing I wanted to ask you about was

29:41

weather restriction makes the wanting

29:44

part even more mismatch with the liking because

29:47

I remember when I was like, oh,

29:49

I can't eat this, that and the other. The only thing I was

29:51

allowed to eat at the end of the week. That was like, my treat

29:53

thing was Halo Top ice cream, which is like the high protein

29:55

ice cream. If you don't know itdy, it's like it's like ice

29:57

cream with protein powder. Yeah,

30:00

okay, everybody says it's terrible.

30:02

Because I was having no other treats, I

30:04

was like, Halo Top is the best thing on the planet.

30:07

And remember I'd wait all week for my and

30:09

I was like, I can have a whole pint because it's only three

30:11

hundred whatever calories. And then I would get

30:13

it and I'd be like, this is like not good. Why

30:15

did I wait all week? But I would eat the whole things. I was like, I waited

30:17

all week for this. I have to eat, you know what I

30:20

mean?

30:20

Yeah, I think your liking system was more honest,

30:22

maybe about the Halo Top, but yeah,

30:24

I mean I think you know. So, another kind

30:26

of dumb feature in the brain is that our

30:29

brain really doesn't have any way to kind

30:32

of tell itself not to do something.

30:34

So take like, you know, let's get back to sort

30:36

of drugs of addiction. Like you're walking down the street and you're

30:38

a smoker and you see a non smoking sign,

30:41

right, Ostensibly, the sign is telling you not

30:43

to smoke, but we don't really

30:45

have any representation in our brain for not

30:47

smoke. What our brain sees is smoking,

30:50

and it tries to shut that down. So

30:53

it turns out that if you look at the cravings

30:55

that smokers experience, they experience

30:58

more craving in the presence of no

31:00

smoking signs Oh my god. And the reason is,

31:02

like you just they're just like walking down the street, maybe not thinking

31:04

about smoking, and they look and they're like smoking. Oh wait, don't

31:06

do that. But what's in their brain is like smoking, smoke,

31:09

right. I think that insight tells

31:11

us why restricting often

31:14

comes with binges. Why In the words

31:16

of someone who's been on my podcast a lot, Andrea Walker,

31:19

who studies mindful eating, she calls it the diet riot

31:21

roller coaster, the diets often go with the riots

31:23

and part because just the act of telling yourself

31:26

don't have it usually comes

31:28

with you thinking about having it. Right,

31:30

So take your halo top right, You're like, I'm not gonna

31:33

have it till the end of the week. I'm not gonna have it till the end of a week.

31:35

But your brain is just like halo top, halo top,

31:37

and like there's pressure is to like kind of squish

31:39

it down. But really what it's thinking about is that

31:41

food. And so a better

31:44

way to kind of get out of that restriction mindset

31:47

is actually to find the healthier

31:49

food that you like. You know, so

31:51

instead of like, oh I can't I just got to wait

31:53

on the halotop, no halotop, no halotop. If

31:56

you thought like, ooh, today you're like really

31:58

good blueberries that just came from the supermarket,

32:01

or like I got these almonds that are like so fresh

32:03

and I'm excited about them. Right, thinking

32:05

about the thing that you actually want to do

32:08

rather than the thing that you're not supposed to

32:10

do can be quite helpful. But yeah,

32:12

I mean, you know, pretty much every available

32:14

study of binge eating suggests

32:16

it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from

32:18

having a mindset of restriction. Right,

32:21

That's what's kind of leading people to. People

32:23

don't necessarily binge unless they also have

32:25

a even in their head, if they're not acting

32:27

on it, this urge that they're not supposed to do or these

32:29

are the things they're not supposed to eat.

32:31

I love this list of dumb things our brains

32:33

do.

32:34

Usual. My podcast is all about

32:36

just like things that Laurie think is stupidly

32:38

designed in the brain.

32:39

Yeah, Laurie's going to come out with

32:41

like a human brain two point zero that we can all

32:44

transplant some point. The other thing I want to

32:46

ask you about binge eating is that isn't it

32:48

true that binges also serve some sort of emotion

32:50

regulation purpose? And we cited

32:53

a few studies that were interesting in our book that

32:55

kind of made binge eating analogous

32:57

to food addiction, And it's said that

33:00

the research wasn't really conclusive on whether

33:02

or not food addiction is binge eating, whether or not

33:04

food adiction is actually a real thing. Maybe

33:06

they're related, maybe they're two separate things, but

33:08

it did relate food addiction

33:11

or like not being able to regulate food

33:13

intake. I guess to substances

33:15

of abuse because a lot of people, when you ask them about it,

33:17

it's like a behavior they really want to stop and they're unable

33:20

to stop, and they kind of tell themselves to not

33:22

do it, not do it, not do it, and they end up doing it and they feel

33:24

really bad. So it kind of had a lot of similarities to

33:26

the addiction cycle. So I was wondering what you think about

33:28

that relationship between addiction food.

33:31

Yeah, I think, you know, the addiction literature

33:33

in fields of psychology and psychiatry right

33:35

now is a little complicated, right in the sense

33:37

that you know, we know that some addictions

33:40

are kind of more classic addiction, say, you know, like

33:42

a heroin addiction, for example, Those drugs

33:44

of abuse are literally tapping into chemicals

33:47

that are kind of part of the wanting system, right,

33:50

you know, like like heroin is like you

33:52

know, these are opiates that are tapping into opiate

33:54

systems that exist in our brain. So it's like you're

33:56

abusing the very chemical that is

33:59

very very close to the signal in the brain. There's

34:01

a more open question about addictions

34:03

that seem to have all the same features where

34:05

people binge on these things, they overthink

34:07

about them, they want to stop, but they

34:09

can't write. Like, behaviorally and psychologically

34:12

these look the same, But the substance

34:14

that you're feeling addicted to isn't

34:17

like an opiate, right, It isn't a chemical

34:19

signaler in a brain, you know, So things

34:21

like a shopping addiction, or an internet addiction,

34:24

or a TikTok addiction, or you know, maybe

34:26

in a more nebulous case, a sugar addiction

34:28

or a food addiction. Right, Obviously, foods are

34:31

you know, they're not direct opiates, but they're chemicals

34:33

that are playing a part in this process.

34:35

Right.

34:35

But there's some debate about whether we want to call

34:37

that addiction. Yeah, you know, to a psychologist

34:39

like me, if it's if it's taking up your

34:41

thought pattern, if it's like messing with your

34:43

sense of self, if it's messing with your daily

34:45

life, it feels addictive, even though we might

34:48

not want to call it a capital a addiction. And

34:50

I think bending behaviors, food behaviors

34:52

for a lot of people feel addictive,

34:55

you know, whether that's kind of a drug

34:57

of choice and that you're kind of eating more food

34:59

than you want to or comfortable with, whether

35:02

that's you know, something like orthorexia where the

35:04

thought patterns that you engage in are really

35:06

you know, you don't want to keep thinking about healthy food, but

35:08

you're kind of obsessing with it, like almost

35:10

like in an OCD way. And so I think, even though

35:13

again there's some debate about whether it kind

35:15

of fits as a kind of capital a addiction that

35:18

would be in like the psychology journals,

35:20

it definitely for the people that are experiencing

35:22

these things is like deeply problematic,

35:24

you know, beyond just being an eating disorder or

35:26

something like that.

35:27

Well, it's also that a lot of people use food to cope

35:29

with things.

35:30

Yeah, and I think that's a big thing, right. You know, food

35:33

really is about pleasure, right. It's a way of

35:35

getting pleasure. Sometimes it just gives us

35:37

something to do, right, you know, like you're feeling

35:39

bored and it's like a thing that you can turn to.

35:41

Sometimes it's a way of escaping reality,

35:43

you know, so kind of it's it's a behavior

35:46

akin to something like cutting, which is another

35:48

sort of behavior like this, where it's like it just

35:50

is the only thing you can think about, so you can't think about

35:53

other things. And so yeah, I think

35:55

we're using these foods in functional ways.

35:57

I think sometimes when we think about disorders

36:00

of eating, we say, like what's going on? But

36:02

you know, minds are smart, despite what I

36:04

was saying about all these problems with the way brains are organized,

36:07

Like, our minds are smart, right, And sometimes the best

36:09

go to for pleasure for when

36:11

you need to stop thinking about something is something

36:14

related to your eating.

36:15

So as we start to wrap up absent

36:18

paying, what does Yale cost now seventy thousand

36:20

dollars. What kind of assignment would

36:23

you give your students in

36:25

your happiness course about

36:27

food?

36:28

Yeah? Well, what is to start paying attention to

36:31

kind of how and why you're eating? Right?

36:33

I think one of the best early steps in mindful

36:35

eating is to start when you have the urge

36:37

to eat something, kind of ask like, why,

36:40

what's going on? Am I actually hungry? Maybe

36:42

maybe I'm bored? Maybe I just saw the food,

36:45

Like when you have that craving kind of ask what's going

36:47

on? Not in a judgmental like I can't

36:49

have it way, but just in a like curious

36:51

noticing, like I wonder what caused that urge?

36:54

And sometimes when you start to engage in that process,

36:56

you notice it wasn't really about hunger. It

36:58

was about some emotion like you were

37:00

bored, or maybe you were in a good mood, or you were excited,

37:03

or you just saw it, right, Like, that's the first

37:05

step I think to noticing whether you're using

37:07

food in the way that at least evolutionarily

37:09

our bodies intended, which is as fuel. Right,

37:11

And you can eat for other reasons, but like

37:14

that's the main reason. And then I think the second

37:16

exercise is to really pay attention to how

37:18

a food really truly feels,

37:21

the real liking that you're getting from it when you

37:23

experience it, because again, sometimes these hyper

37:25

palatable foods that are like in our brain

37:27

of like, oh, I'm so obsessed with that, when you finally

37:29

sit down and notice you're kind of it sort of

37:31

takes some of the magic away. You're like, that actually

37:34

wasn't like as super delicious

37:36

as I thought. And this is a practice that we

37:39

use generally beyond just the domain of

37:41

food in the class, just a practice of

37:43

mindfulness trying to notice what

37:45

things feel like. And I think often that practice

37:48

shows us this dissociation between wanting

37:50

and liking, where we're like, huh, I really wanted

37:52

that thing, you know whatever, it was shopping, buying

37:55

something, watching the TikTok videos, eating,

37:57

but I didn't actually like it as much as I thought.

37:59

And sometimes, I think in a more important way, it

38:01

can tell us the opposite, right Like

38:03

I didn't really want to go to the gym, but I enjoyed

38:06

it more than I thought, Right Like, I thought this salad

38:08

was just gonna be the boring thing I was going to eat because I

38:10

was you know, trying to eat healthier. But when I paid

38:12

attention, it was crunchy, it was delicious,

38:15

It had these flavors that I didn't expect, right,

38:17

And so I think that that mindful process can

38:19

kind of allow us to get our wanting and

38:21

liking back in sync. And it can also

38:23

be you know, an important part of the presence

38:26

that just makes life better, and that we

38:28

can savor it and notice it more.

38:30

M Okay, do we have our

38:32

assignments.

38:33

Yes, I'm going to savor more.

38:35

I'm going to

38:38

like more, want less.

38:41

I think that's a great Yeah. Yeah,

38:44

I mean, you know, I think, you know, these

38:47

ancient traditions were onto

38:49

something in so many domains. I think, for sure when

38:51

it comes to happiness, but probably when it came

38:54

to food. You know, I don't think that

38:56

the ancients had as complicated a relationship

38:58

with food. You know, we went all the way back to hunter gatherers,

39:00

but I'm like, we don't have to go back that far.

39:03

I think even if we rewind, honestly,

39:05

like seventy five one hundred years, we're

39:08

already getting to cultural

39:10

relationships with food that were a lot healthier.

39:13

That's what my parents always said when after

39:15

they read the book and stuff, and my mom said that

39:17

she was so surprised at how complicated

39:20

my relationship with food was, because she said, when she grew up

39:22

in Albania, like nobody was like dieting

39:24

or like changing their food choices on

39:26

purpose. Do you know what I mean?

39:28

Yeah, in some ways, it's a funny, weird privilege

39:30

that we have. Yeah, because we have a lot of food,

39:32

because we have an enormous variety of food.

39:35

Yeah, But it's not a fun privilege. It's one that causes

39:37

people a lot of pain and suffering.

39:40

But do you think part of the reason why, like we have

39:42

more of that today than we did before is because

39:44

the food environment is so different today. I

39:46

feel like if the food environment is the way it is

39:48

now, these problems are always going to arise because

39:51

these aren't foods that necessarily promote

39:53

the best eating patterns totally.

39:55

And I think that that came hand in hand

39:58

with a kind of relaxing or maybe

40:00

a removal of some of the cultural traditions

40:02

of food that came with it. You know, So two things kind

40:05

of happen. One is I think we lost kind of culturally

40:07

specific ways of eating right for the most

40:09

part, especially in the US where maybe we didn't even grow

40:11

up with them, but a lot of people came from family backgrounds

40:13

where they you know, had kind of these traditions of eating

40:16

food. So those things were going away at

40:18

the same time as I think, you know, the food

40:20

industrial complex was telling us like,

40:22

oh, these things are so healthy or these things are

40:24

so delicious. And there were advertisements on TV,

40:27

you know, I mean take an extreme example, take something

40:29

like breast milk versus formula. Right.

40:31

You know, I was from the generation my mom where

40:34

they were like, oh, breast milk so totally not

40:36

good, like we want the you know, food science

40:38

energized formula like healthy. Yeah,

40:42

some ways it still is, you know. And

40:44

I think that you know, that basic thing was telling

40:46

you, oh, you're you know, the wisdom

40:49

you thought you had about food that was

40:51

wrong. Let's follow what the nutrition science

40:53

says, you know, like doctor Kellogg

40:55

who with his you know, crackers of like we'll

40:57

control those urges and make you healthy

40:59

eat these crackers, right, And so I think that that

41:02

really really was a moment in time that

41:04

was happening as again, culturally,

41:06

we were kind of abandoning what we used to do,

41:08

and so in some ways it was like a double edged

41:10

sword of these more of these hyper palatable

41:12

foods around in a way there never had been

41:15

in human history. Plus the kind of loss

41:17

of our sort of ancestral wisdom about just

41:19

how to eat.

41:20

Yeah, when my parents came to America, they

41:23

my mom said that everybody here had like low

41:25

fat milk and like low fat yogurt and stuff,

41:27

and like they could not be converted because

41:29

they were like it's so gross, like it tastes so

41:31

bad in comparison. And I remember growing up and

41:33

I was like, oh, you guys are so unhealthy, like you're always

41:35

getting you know, and my mom would make her own yogurt and

41:38

with whole milk, should buy, right, I like, you guys are so

41:40

unhealthy, blah bah blah. And now the narratives completely changed

41:42

where it's like people always say don't have low fat

41:44

things because they've been manipulated to take out the fat and blah

41:46

blahlahlah blah. And I was like, damn it.

41:48

They were right.

41:49

They're always right in the end, damn

41:51

it. Anyways, thank you so

41:54

much for coming back on the podcast to talk to us about food.

41:56

Thanks so much for having.

41:57

Me and for telling us all the dumb things

41:59

that the human brain does.

42:02

Yeah, welcome back next time and do it even more.

42:07

Thank you so much to Professor Santis for coming

42:09

on today's episode again, it

42:11

was so much fun. We will link to her podcast

42:14

as well as all her work on our website,

42:16

and if you want to hear bonus episodes, you

42:18

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42:20

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42:25

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42:27

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42:29

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42:31

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42:33

Eddie savoring and

42:36

really learning to like my food.

42:38

Food we Need to Talk is a production of

42:40

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42:42

Our senior producer is Morgan Flannery

42:44

and our producer is Megan Aftermat.

42:47

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42:49

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42:51

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42:54

Food we Need to Talk was co created

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42:58

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42:59

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43:09

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