Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that cup of tea that you forgot about,
Speaker 1: and now it's exactly the right temperature and it's me.
Speaker 1: I'm back at alli Ward High. So what a month
Speaker 1: or so it's been. If you're like, what, ha huh?
Speaker 1: What happened so very quickly? I was in the hospital
Speaker 1: three times. I had pneumonia, and then I was forced
Speaker 1: by my doctors and my loved ones to take some
Speaker 1: time to stare at an ocean. And now I'm back.
Speaker 1: I'm healthy, I'm feeling refreshed. I've been told I'm glowing,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing hella better. So victory is ours. I
Speaker 1: could taste it. Speaking of taste, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: So your tongue's just sitting there on standby to talk
Speaker 1: or to tell you if you should swallow or spit
Speaker 1: or gag or lick. It's just like a disgusting, naked,
Speaker 1: muscular drill sergeant that lives in your mouth. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to one of the most celebrated experts
Speaker 1: on the study of taste, who is a delight to
Speaker 1: talk to and handled my thousands of questions with a plum.
Speaker 1: So I got myself to Philly to do this keynote
Speaker 1: earlier this summer, and I managed to record eleven interviews
Speaker 1: for various episodes, and then unshockingly after that, I can
Speaker 1: down with pneumonia just immediately upon my return, so lesson learn.
Speaker 1: But while I was in Philly, I got myself to
Speaker 1: the Monel Chemical Census Center, which you can locate in
Speaker 1: Philly via the giant gold nose and mouth sculpture on
Speaker 1: the exterior steps. As one researcher told me, it's a
Speaker 1: good thing that they're not a proctology center. So I
Speaker 1: went in with my ears open and my appetite big
Speaker 1: for gustology, which is a real word. It comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin for tasting or flavor. But first from my mouth,
Speaker 1: A quick thank you to patrons of the show at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash ologies, who have been supportive since
Speaker 1: before episode one six years ago and without whom the
Speaker 1: show would not exist. And thank you to everyone on
Speaker 1: Patreon who responded to my video about taking a break
Speaker 1: with such love. I'm so lucky to have y'all as
Speaker 1: a community.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 1: You can also support the show with merch from ologies
Speaker 1: meerch dot com or just by leaving reviews and rating
Speaker 1: Because I read all the reviews and then I pick
Speaker 1: an of an hot one to read each week, Like
Speaker 1: this one was written by Happy Worldwide, who wrote the
Speaker 1: show is also very good and that the example I
Speaker 1: was setting by taking a vacation was also great. So
Speaker 1: thank you Happy Worldwine. Thanks for everyone who left reviews
Speaker 1: while I was out, I caught up. I loved them all. Also,
Speaker 1: we had a little glitch with running some silence bits
Speaker 1: this past month because of an AD error, but it's
Speaker 1: all fixed. Are bad, It's all good now, Okay. On
Speaker 1: the episode in which we will chat about celebrity grade,
Speaker 1: hot winks, excited toxinsmammy medical textbook, flim flam gag reflexes,
Speaker 1: cats on pixie sticks, weaning off of sugar, the worst
Speaker 1: soup on the market, which countries have salt restrictions, why
Speaker 1: some people like IPAs and some don't, artificial sweeteners and
Speaker 1: aging and more, with absolute gem of a scientist and gastologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Gary Champs. I don't know, gastologist, doctor carry Gary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of hold it and talk into it
Speaker 1: like an ice cream cone. Okay, imagine you're just on
Speaker 1: a stage talking to people. Yeah, exactly. Your Linda Ronstadt.
Speaker 2: First name is Gary. Last name is pronounced poorly for
Speaker 2: the French is pronounced beacham.
Speaker 1: Is it really Beacham? I definitely would have said bushel.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 2: I was in a ceremony a few weeks ago where
Speaker 2: one of the winners was French and the first thing
Speaker 2: she did is chew me out for the way I
Speaker 2: pronounced my name.
Speaker 1: Wow, chewing out a taste expert. We are off to
Speaker 1: the races. Did you say it's your name? You can
Speaker 1: say however you want.
Speaker 2: That's right. Actually it's a very very well known name
Speaker 2: in Britain.
Speaker 1: Do you have a lot of doctors and scientists in
Speaker 1: your family?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, really? Were you the first?
Speaker 2: Well, my father was an engineer. I guess that's kind
Speaker 2: of a scientist. But before that they were just farmers
Speaker 2: and working people.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it may not have been handed down to him,
Speaker 1: but he has two sons. One's a playwright and one's
Speaker 1: a scientist, so when it comes to careers, they all
Speaker 1: have great taste. Did you always have an inclination toward that?
Speaker 2: My story is that when I was three years old,
Speaker 2: a butterfly flew into my ear and I caught it
Speaker 2: and I was taken by it, and from then on
Speaker 2: I was pointing toward biology.
Speaker 1: Did you start getting interested in how different animals experienced
Speaker 1: different chemicals? Was insects mouth parts something that sparked.
Speaker 2: I was interested in different animals, for sure, and I
Speaker 2: caught collected animals for many, many years, But I don't
Speaker 2: think I had a real interest in their sensory capabilities
Speaker 2: until I was in college and it was focused on
Speaker 2: how animals engage in the world. And it really wasn't
Speaker 2: until I came here to Bodel that I focused on
Speaker 2: the chemical senses because that's what the institute was going
Speaker 2: to be doing.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the way that humans experience chemical
Speaker 1: and sensory information versus other animals, is there a big
Speaker 1: difference when you jump from invertebrate to vertebrate how we
Speaker 1: experience and understand the world.
Speaker 2: The founder of this institute, Guy in Morally Care, used
Speaker 2: to say, and he was famous for saying it, as
Speaker 2: was Vince Deatiers, another famous person in our field. Every
Speaker 2: animal lives in its own sensory world, and that is true.
Speaker 2: Some of them are more similar to others, some of
Speaker 2: them are more different. It's amazing in some ways how
Speaker 2: similar in terms of at least sensory responses some insects
Speaker 2: are to humans.
Speaker 1: So take for example, the teeny tiny Drosophilia, which is
Speaker 1: a common research focus. It's the humble and fascinating fruit.
Speaker 2: Fly, and so fruitflies are an interesting and valuable model
Speaker 2: for understanding how taste and smell work and what they
Speaker 2: do in the environment. But there are other species that,
Speaker 2: for example, have no ability to taste or no ability
Speaker 2: to smell, or both, and of course there are blind animals, whatever,
Speaker 2: So there's a huge variation. There's no general rule you
Speaker 2: could make about it, so.
Speaker 1: It's really based on need and what they've adapted to.
Speaker 2: What I would say that the sense is most important
Speaker 2: for is getting food, getting enough food, It is mating, reproducing.
Speaker 2: It depends on what they need. So I can take
Speaker 2: an example right off the bat, which is one of
Speaker 2: my favorites and we worked on for many years. I
Speaker 2: studied cats and their response to various tastes and flavors
Speaker 2: and smells, and we discovered, which was a big controversy
Speaker 2: in the literature, somewhat of a controversy literature at the time,
Speaker 2: that they didn't seem to respond very particularly well to
Speaker 2: sugars like we would. And so we actually found that
Speaker 2: was true with our domestic casts. And so I went
Speaker 2: to the zoo, which is six blocks over here, and
Speaker 2: we tested lions and tigers and leopards and jaguars, and
Speaker 2: what we found was that those animals loved things like fat,
Speaker 2: loved amino acids, which was part of protein FRS. We
Speaker 2: could tell they had no interest whatsoever in sugar or
Speaker 2: anything sweet.
Speaker 1: I'm not really a dessert person.
Speaker 2: And the way we did this we had these long
Speaker 2: pans we stuck under their cages. They couldn't get too
Speaker 2: close to them. But we proposed, and this is in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties, that in fact,
Speaker 2: maybe an animal which is an obligate carnivore which cats
Speaker 2: out they have to have protein, those animals no longer
Speaker 2: are not able to detect sugars. That would be the
Speaker 2: easiest way to explain our behavioral results. But there was
Speaker 2: no real easy way to test that at the time
Speaker 2: until around two thousand and two, two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: when everybody including us, discovered something about what the actual
Speaker 2: taste receptor was in the tongue of humans of mice
Speaker 2: is where most of it was done first, so we
Speaker 2: knew what the receptor was. It's a protein that binds
Speaker 2: sugars and then sends a message to the brain says
Speaker 2: this is sweet, and another part of the brain says
Speaker 2: this is good. And what my colleagues found, I'm not
Speaker 2: moluckly bygis. But what will make collegues fund is that
Speaker 2: if you could look at the structure of that receptor,
Speaker 2: that they lost function of that particular receptor, and so
Speaker 2: none of those cats can taste sweet at all. One
Speaker 2: of the most interesting things is that we looked at
Speaker 2: then many other carnivores that were obligatory, that only ate meat,
Speaker 2: and they all had some change in their sweet receptor.
Speaker 2: They'd all lost almost all of them lost it independently,
Speaker 2: not one event, but independently in all of these species,
Speaker 2: presumably based on the fact that their dietary needs no
Speaker 2: longer drove them towards carbohydrates, which is what the sugars
Speaker 2: are driving for a good source of calories. But for cats,
Speaker 2: or for many other of these carnivores, they don't respond
Speaker 2: to it, and in fact, they can't even handle it
Speaker 2: makes them sick. Really, So if you were to feed
Speaker 2: your cat friend a diet that was very high in sugar.
Speaker 2: If they would eat it, they would be sick because
Speaker 2: they don't have the mechanisms which they can break that
Speaker 2: down into something that they can use, which would be glucose.
Speaker 2: Glucose is also a taste, and they use glucose a
Speaker 2: course for their bodily functions, but they don't taste it.
Speaker 2: They have to make it.
Speaker 1: For more on cats on Keto, you can see the
Speaker 1: study Cats and Carbohydrates the Carnivore Fantasy from the Journal
Speaker 1: Veterinary Science in twenty seventeen, which stated evolutionary events adapted
Speaker 1: the cat's diet to one strictly composed of animal tissues
Speaker 1: and led to metabolic peculiarities of carbohydrate metabolism. And though
Speaker 1: a cat's body needs glucose to function, it's not being
Speaker 1: absorbed from the gut. Rather, it's produced by the kitty
Speaker 1: body via gluconeogenesis, which means making glucose. So cats lack
Speaker 1: some enzymes to even break down carbs, which explains the
Speaker 1: paragraph in the study that reads, high carbohydrate intaking cats
Speaker 1: therefore increases adverse digestive effects such as diarrhea, flatulence, and bloating.
Speaker 1: Smelly cat. What are they feeding you at carbs? It's
Speaker 1: carbs kidneys plus carbs equals farts. I asked our philonology
Speaker 1: guest doctor Michael Delgatto about this, and she said that
Speaker 1: they do have a special taste receptor for a dentisine triphosphate,
Speaker 1: which is basically a signal for meat. True killers. She says,
Speaker 1: what about dogs.
Speaker 2: Dogs are a little different. Dogs are much more Catholic
Speaker 2: in their interests. And some people say they'll eat anything,
Speaker 2: They'll just gobble it down, which is what it looks
Speaker 2: like sometimes. But dogs have not lost their ability to
Speaker 2: taste sweet. So I think if you go to most
Speaker 2: dead foods and you look at what they actually made
Speaker 2: out of, the ones for cats don't have anything that
Speaker 2: would be resembling a sweetener. The ones for dogs have
Speaker 2: carbohydrates that might be sweet. That's the one reason the
Speaker 2: cat foods are more expensive than dog foods. I had no.
Speaker 1: Idea, so yes, the two thousand and seven study cats
Speaker 1: lack a sweet taste receptor says verbatim that dogs prefer
Speaker 1: natural sugars, and overall, cats and dogs respond very differently
Speaker 1: to sweet tasting stems, Although both species belong to the
Speaker 1: order carnivora. So I'm sorry, cat people. Science has proven that, yes,
Speaker 1: dogs are sweety peaties, but I'm not biased, all right.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't planning on asking this, but as
Speaker 1: long as I got you here. I have a tiny,
Speaker 1: cutadorable daughter. She's a dog, and whenever she tastes something
Speaker 1: that she's never tried before, like a tiny bit of
Speaker 1: mango juice or maybe a little bit of a type
Speaker 1: of ice cream, if we let her have a little taste,
Speaker 1: she does this thing where she goes, mam mam mam, mamma, mammamo.
Speaker 1: And it's only on new foods she's never tried, and
Speaker 1: we have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 2: She's testing it obviously.
Speaker 1: Is she trying to get it into her up into
Speaker 1: her snoot.
Speaker 2: Well, she'd probably just that's her way of getting a
Speaker 2: better sensory of response than on my other areas is
Speaker 2: olive oil and there's this. It's like wine too. You
Speaker 2: and the tasting, I mean, if you if you do that,
Speaker 2: you're getting it. You're driving it more up. Actually that's
Speaker 2: more old faction probably than taste. But you're driving up
Speaker 2: to the old factory receptors and particularly it's something. Well,
Speaker 2: it's very very wise for an animal, including humans, to
Speaker 2: be it wary because the real world is really dangerous
Speaker 2: from what you eat. Most things out in the real
Speaker 2: world are poison or semi poison because they're defending themselves.
Speaker 2: And so you know, people always complain about babies don't
Speaker 2: like vegetables or whatever. Get that out of my sight.
Speaker 2: But they're wise not to like them. They write it
Speaker 2: first because all through revolution until you know how many
Speaker 2: few hundred years, a few thousand years ago, that was
Speaker 2: the real world, and one had to be very careful
Speaker 2: when put it in the mouth.
Speaker 1: And from what I understand, we lose taste buds as
Speaker 1: we age. Is that correct? Can you walk me through
Speaker 1: the minefield in your field that is taste buds? Like,
Speaker 1: what are they doing? Who tastes what? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, so what you just said is controversial.
Speaker 1: Yet best good good, correct us.
Speaker 2: Well, many studies suggest there is a loss of taste buds.
Speaker 2: Taste buds are these little bumps in your tongue and
Speaker 2: just look at them in the mirror. Although the ones
Speaker 2: who see that their taste and the ones that do
Speaker 2: other things are very hard to tell. The difference certainly
Speaker 2: in the mirror, but on those little buds are taste
Speaker 2: receptor cells, and they respond to sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami,
Speaker 2: which is a amino acid, perhaps, and maybe a few
Speaker 2: other things. The counts of those, like everything else with aging,
Speaker 2: I have to say, which I'm doing, is is downhill.
Speaker 2: But the evidence that older people really don't respond well
Speaker 2: to tastes is very, very poor. And I would say
Speaker 2: I have a story about this that is almost one
Speaker 2: of my favorites and advows my father in law. So
Speaker 2: my father in law was getting older. He was ninety
Speaker 2: two years old, and my wife and I had to
Speaker 2: take him and put him in a nursing home. Most
Speaker 2: horrible thing. And so we got calls a little bit
Speaker 2: later from the nursing home saying that he wasn't eating
Speaker 2: and they were worried about it, and we knew we
Speaker 2: ate well. I fed him, and so I went to
Speaker 2: the nursing home and spoke to people there and they said, yeah,
Speaker 2: he just won't eat this food, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'll try it. So I went in and to his
Speaker 2: lunch and I started eating the food and it was terrible.
Speaker 2: It was terrible, in a very specific way that I
Speaker 2: think I was particularly able to discern, which was that
Speaker 2: it was no salt whatsoever. No salt, and so one
Speaker 2: of my real expertise is in salt. So I went
Speaker 2: to the person who was in charge of the food
Speaker 2: and she said, well, you know, salt causes hypertension. And
Speaker 2: my response was, you know, this man is ninety two
Speaker 2: years old, he has no high blood pressure problems whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and I know that he loves salt. Please please put
Speaker 2: it into the food.
Speaker 1: So your health may vary, and ask your doctors about
Speaker 1: how much salt is right for you, especially since some
Speaker 1: studies have found that the older you get, the more
Speaker 1: you might gravitate towards saltier foods. And according to this
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two study out of Japan, older adults perception
Speaker 1: of taste intensity increases slowly after they take a bite,
Speaker 1: but it remains lower than that of young adults, so
Speaker 1: it takes a minute before they're like okay, but it's
Speaker 1: still lower than when you were younger. And this study
Speaker 1: suggests that older adults savor and chew sufficiently during eating
Speaker 1: to optimize their perceived salty taste. So give it a
Speaker 1: good chew because it might take a second before it
Speaker 1: tastes good. And I'm sorry. I have one million questions
Speaker 1: for this man, and I want to move forward, but
Speaker 1: something was nagging at me, so we got to go back.
Speaker 1: And I want to circle back really quick, because I'm
Speaker 1: dying to know when you were feeding sugar tooo lions?
Speaker 1: What was going in the pan? Was it in a
Speaker 1: cotton candy, jelly beans? What were you feeding them?
Speaker 2: Now that's a great question because what we were feeding
Speaker 2: them is what scientists do, which is not such a
Speaker 2: great thing. We were feeding them sugar and water, So
Speaker 2: we were giving sugar water or salt water or amino
Speaker 2: acid water fast and a little bit tricky. So we
Speaker 2: were trying to get a liquid fast that was in
Speaker 2: the same kind of format at least. But it's a
Speaker 2: real good question because when this paper was published and
Speaker 2: we were on in PR a few times about this,
Speaker 2: the claim was this is a long time ago. Now
Speaker 2: I'm sure not true anymore. That they got more responses
Speaker 2: to this particular issue almost anything else. We were getting
Speaker 2: the people calling and saying, my cat loves ice cream,
Speaker 2: my cat loves.
Speaker 3: Cake, and there's so much fat in there. There's so
Speaker 3: much fat. Absolutely you got it right right away. The
Speaker 3: one problem I had was with marshmallows.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, because.
Speaker 2: To me that there's nothing much there but a structure
Speaker 2: and sugar. And it turns out that one of the
Speaker 2: one group of animals that have no interest in sweets
Speaker 2: in the alligator crocodile family, And yet I've watched them
Speaker 2: eat of marshmallows, and so I don't quite know what's
Speaker 2: going on there. It's mystery. But for the most part
Speaker 2: what you said is right. The ice cream, the cake,
Speaker 2: those kinds of things are really the fat they're responding to.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I were a big lizard looking beast
Speaker 1: and someone threw something made out of horse gelatin that
Speaker 1: looked like an egg at me, I think I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'll take another one of those.
Speaker 2: Maybe your point maybe actually true that what they're responding
Speaker 2: to is the visual signal, maybe not the sensory signal
Speaker 2: at all, although the tactile thing may have something to
Speaker 2: do with it as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about you personally? Do you have a sweet
Speaker 1: tooth or a sweet taste bud?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, everybody does. I mean almost everybody does. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's almost no evidence. There's some genetic evidence that we
Speaker 2: differ a little bit in our responses to sweets, But
Speaker 2: I would argue that it's the most profound, innate stimulation
Speaker 2: that humans and many other species respond to. It. It's immediate,
Speaker 2: it's right birth, it is before birth, it's working, and
Speaker 2: we all have it almost so. I like sweets at
Speaker 2: some certain circumstances. I'm not a big sweet fan. If
Speaker 2: I had to make a judgment between sweet and salt,
Speaker 2: I'd usually go salty. Okay, But some people claim that
Speaker 2: there's characteristically sweet lovers assault lovers, But the evidence is
Speaker 2: I think it's more depending upon what they've been eating,
Speaker 2: what they've recently had, and what they've had over their lifetimes.
Speaker 1: We call this in my family the onion dip test.
Speaker 1: Where would you rather have a piece of cake or
Speaker 1: the onion dip? And my sister cannot fathom wanting the cake.
Speaker 1: She's like, I would eat a whole bowl of onion
Speaker 1: dip with a spoon before cake. And I'm wondering about
Speaker 1: how we acclimate to certain tastes. If you put a
Speaker 1: lot of sweetener in your coffee every day, chances are
Speaker 1: you are used to that. But if you never have
Speaker 1: your coffee sweet a little bit probably tastes like a lot.
Speaker 1: So what's happening between receiving the chemicals from our taste
Speaker 1: buds to our brain saying too much? Too little?
Speaker 2: Okay, so you jumped one step ahead.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, tell me what the middle steve is.
Speaker 2: So the one step ahead you jumped is your assumption
Speaker 2: that we like what we're used to or whatever is reasonable.
Speaker 2: It's valid, and it's mostly true, but it's not so
Speaker 2: clear that it's true. So I mean, you're asking questions
Speaker 2: that are so much in my Bailey wick that I'm
Speaker 2: not even too embarrassed to try to answer them. But
Speaker 2: go back to salt. So, during the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: there was real concern about consuming excess salt, and the
Speaker 2: question was why do we do it? And I can
Speaker 2: remember going to meetings and the poobahs of the blood
Speaker 2: pressure group said, well, you just stop eating food with
Speaker 2: salt in it. I did it. It was no problem.
Speaker 2: But it is a problem. And the question is to
Speaker 2: what degree do we come to like the amount of
Speaker 2: salt we consume? What is it? And so we got
Speaker 2: interested in this a long time ago, not even because
Speaker 2: of the health reasons, but to see what effect it
Speaker 2: would have if people who were eating, say normal levels
Speaker 2: of salt, were put on a really low salt diet,
Speaker 2: would they acclimate to that. The study was a very
Speaker 2: small study at the time. We took students from the
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania here and maybe not the average person, but that's
Speaker 2: what we had. And part of the time we put
Speaker 2: them in the hospital so we could really control what
Speaker 2: they ate, and we lowered the amount of salt in
Speaker 2: their foods. Sometimes we did it with people from outside too,
Speaker 2: and we tested how much they like salty foods. Basically,
Speaker 2: what we measured was if you were looking at say
Speaker 2: a cookie or some sort of cracker. We got somebody
Speaker 2: to manufacture the crackers with different levels of salt so
Speaker 2: we can look to see which ones they liked best.
Speaker 2: And we made soups and we were the world's largest
Speaker 2: consumer at the time of Campbell's sort of vegetable soup
Speaker 2: because nobody else would need it, and we used that
Speaker 2: as the base, and we made levels of salt and
Speaker 2: so we tested them beforehand before they went on low
Speaker 2: salt diets. And what happened, of course, was that when
Speaker 2: they immediately went on these low saladium diets, they were miserable.
Speaker 2: They hated them, but turned out they gradually came to
Speaker 2: think they were okay. And when we tested them, we
Speaker 2: found indeed the same thing that they liked, this level
Speaker 2: of salt, which surprising, surprising Campbell's so put him in
Speaker 2: the super But after a while that was too salty,
Speaker 2: and they began to like less salt in it, And
Speaker 2: the same thing with the crackers. And it turns out,
Speaker 2: of course, that we were not making a novel discovery.
Speaker 2: There were two other classes of discoveries that we found
Speaker 2: that had already done this. One was an Arctic explorer
Speaker 2: named Stephenson.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I can do a whole episode about this dude,
Speaker 1: but let me throw down bullet points. Okay. So it's
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. There's this young explorer by the
Speaker 1: name Vilharmer Stephenson born in Manitoba to Icelandic parents, and
Speaker 1: he's leading an exploration in the far North. He hires
Speaker 1: an Inuit guide and a seamstress. He gets very romantic
Speaker 1: with the seamstress, who goes by Fanny penninga Block and
Speaker 1: they have a son. Later in life he would have
Speaker 1: another affair with a different woman named Fanny and maybe
Speaker 1: Fanny was like the Brittany or Jenny at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's a lot of Fanny's for one man.
Speaker 1: But back to nineteen thirteen, so he studies Inuit populations
Speaker 1: and diets, and that year his ship gets marooned in
Speaker 1: sea ice and he says to the crew, hang tight,
Speaker 1: chill on the boat, play some cards, whatnot. Nobody panic,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ashore. I'm gonna hontus some meat. But
Speaker 1: then as he's ashore, he's like, psych smell you latter,
Speaker 1: and he leaves the ship to sink. Seventeen of his
Speaker 1: crew members were killed. Such a party, foul Villhammer. It's
Speaker 1: eight years later and he has an understandably sketch reputation,
Speaker 1: but he bounces back and people keep giving him chances
Speaker 1: and money. Not much has changed since then, and he
Speaker 1: decides to colonize an island off the coast of Siberia,
Speaker 1: and Russia is like, that's ours, and Britain meanwhile goes,
Speaker 1: We're We're so sorry about this Canadian guy. We don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what he's doing. To ignore him. Four
Speaker 1: out of five of the researchers on the expedition die
Speaker 1: guess who doesn't Villhimmer and his new Inuit seamstress who
Speaker 1: knows what the fuck is up and knows how to
Speaker 1: survive in Siberia. Also, their cat named Vic makes it
Speaker 1: out alive, probably cost it several lives. Though later Vilhemmer
Speaker 1: really botches a plan to domesticate Norwegian reindeer. The rein
Speaker 1: dealer like, get bent, we hate you. Excuse me, what
Speaker 1: does this have to do with anything? Get us on track?
Speaker 1: So Stephenson did make notes and found that the Inuit
Speaker 1: diet had a really meaty base of the food pyramid,
Speaker 1: with about ninety percent of the food being meat and fish,
Speaker 1: pretty much doing keto or zero carb for much of
Speaker 1: the year. And when eating like this, all of even
Speaker 1: the non native explorers, they were in great health. Everyone
Speaker 1: doubted him because he was dubious as hell, but at
Speaker 1: some point later in his life a study was conducted.
Speaker 1: It was funded, unsurprisingly by the American Meat Institute, and
Speaker 1: it found that when Willhemmer and his cohorts ate only
Speaker 1: fatty meat, they had no deficiency problems and their health
Speaker 1: seemed to be great. In fact, even their stools were
Speaker 1: smaller and quote did not smell. But then when they
Speaker 1: ate lean meat. Villhemmer got the runs wicked bad and
Speaker 1: then couldn't poop for like a woeful ten days. I
Speaker 1: bet he wrote poems about it. So that is who
Speaker 1: doctor Beecham was talking about. This guy named Wilhelmer Stephenson,
Speaker 1: who it turns out I did a little more digging.
Speaker 1: He was not born will Hummer Stephenson. Rather his name
Speaker 1: was William Stevenson, and he changed it for optics. He
Speaker 1: was also said to have been quote the greatest humbug alive.
Speaker 1: Real rapscallion this guy, and they ate.
Speaker 2: Raw fish and other things. And when he got there,
Speaker 2: he was miserable because he wanted more salt. He wanted
Speaker 2: to put salt on it, and he didn't have any
Speaker 2: with him. So he reports that after one, two, three months,
Speaker 2: which is exactly the same amount of time we found
Speaker 2: with people here, he began to think that losalt was okay,
Speaker 2: even better. In one of Gulliver's travels, Gulliver goes to
Speaker 2: a low sodium country and he's miserable with the food
Speaker 2: and he just almost can't eat it. But after two
Speaker 2: or three months it's okay. When he comes out of
Speaker 2: that low sodium food country, everything tastes too salty. So
Speaker 2: we were just proving something that everybody already knew. But
Speaker 2: it turns out that our little study has been replicated
Speaker 2: now many times with much bigger studies and forms. The
Speaker 2: basis for the FDA and CDC recommended that companies uniformly
Speaker 2: should lower the amount of salt they put in foods.
Speaker 2: They say, gradually some people they really need to go
Speaker 2: in lower CUD units. But the epidemiologists tell us, and
Speaker 2: I certainly believe them, that the best way to do
Speaker 2: this is to get everybody to shift downwards. And so
Speaker 2: this is of course very controversial. I was on a
Speaker 2: national academy a committee that recommended the government enforce this
Speaker 2: by law, and it is enforced by law in some
Speaker 2: other countries.
Speaker 1: Now, oh wow, the way, have they seen any benefits
Speaker 1: in health?
Speaker 2: They claim they have in both Finland and in the UK.
Speaker 1: Okay, so news to me. But according to the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization's Sodium Country Scorecard, over twenty five percent of
Speaker 1: the world humans live somewhere with a mandatory sodium reduction plan.
Speaker 1: And I can list them all, but no one wants that.
Speaker 1: But I did find that some nations even have implemented
Speaker 1: attacks on sugary or salty foods, including the country Hungary.
Speaker 1: But what you should know is that most populations are
Speaker 1: eating around nine to twelve times the amount of salt
Speaker 1: that we need, and that reducing salt and diets is
Speaker 1: apparently the most cost effective way of reducing non communicable diseases,
Speaker 1: because you're cutting down on cardiovascular diseases and strokes. And
Speaker 1: some people are like, you can pry the salt shaker
Speaker 1: from my cold, dead, stroke afflicted, cardiovascular failed hands. But
Speaker 1: the biggest daily culinary offender are daily bread. So a
Speaker 1: lot of mandatory sodium cuts are to breads. So you
Speaker 1: can lower your salt intake and then layer mustard and
Speaker 1: salami and pickles on top of it and shrug because
Speaker 1: hey man, you tried.
Speaker 2: But in the population as a whole, you can see
Speaker 2: decline and blood pressure related diseases. Sweet. So yeah, and
Speaker 2: so step forward to now the question is the same
Speaker 2: thing true for sugar. And we are actually, as we speak,
Speaker 2: finally conducting a study to look at this much better
Speaker 2: study with collaboration with USDA, where we are taking peace
Speaker 2: people and putting them on low sweet diets. Well, you'll
Speaker 2: low sugar diets with them without non nutrient to sweeteness,
Speaker 2: so we can see if it's the sweetness that's involved.
Speaker 2: The study shouldn't have been completed about three years ago,
Speaker 2: but just as we were starting COVID hit, and so
Speaker 2: we're now up and running as of this month. I'm
Speaker 2: suspicious that it's going to be harder with sugar, but
Speaker 2: we'll see. I just want to tell you both good luck.
Speaker 2: We're all counting on you. Well.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious because I feel like I read a
Speaker 1: long time ago that if you have a diet soda
Speaker 1: with a meal, you'll end up eating more.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that is one of the again controversial issues.
Speaker 2: The idea there is that the sweetener should stimulate release
Speaker 2: of hormones that are involved in appetite. And if the
Speaker 2: sweetener is say a carbohydrate which has calories, then that
Speaker 2: makes sense. The body recognizes that and uses it appropriately.
Speaker 2: But if it has the sweetness but not the carbohydrates,
Speaker 2: it really confuses things and maybe makes people more hungry
Speaker 2: or makes them eat more. There too, the evidence is
Speaker 2: very controversial.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick real quick insulin is squirted out of your
Speaker 1: pancreas and it clears glucose from your blood and the
Speaker 1: hormone grellin is known as the hunger hormone, and it
Speaker 1: can influence insulin secretion and back and forth and forth.
Speaker 1: And if you have something sweet without actually increasing your
Speaker 1: blood sugar all, some researchers think your appetite gets wonky,
Speaker 1: like in a twenty sixteen article that found artificial or
Speaker 1: non nutritive sweeteners kicked off a sweet versus energy imbalance
Speaker 1: and fruitflies and the study experienced hyperactivity, insomnia, glucose intolerance,
Speaker 1: and a sustained increase in food and calories consumed, all
Speaker 1: of which just reversed when they kicked the sucrilose. Also,
Speaker 1: what does a hyperactive fruitfly even look like? To be
Speaker 1: a fly bouncing off the wall in that laboratory? Anyway,
Speaker 1: there are a ton of studies on this, some that
Speaker 1: say you need to eat twenty thousand servings of splendor
Speaker 1: before grellin was affected, others that say not so. There
Speaker 1: was a twenty twenty one Polish study titled Aspartame True
Speaker 1: or False Narrative Review of Safety Analysis of General Use
Speaker 1: in Products in the journal Nutrients, and it stated that
Speaker 1: aspartame use has also been associated with increased risk of
Speaker 1: type two diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, non alcoholic fatty liver disease,
Speaker 1: microbiome disruption, hormone related cancers, and is suspected of causing
Speaker 1: behavioral disorders in humans and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,
Speaker 1: multiple sclerosis, and brain tumors. And in July of this year,
Speaker 1: researchers via the World Health Organization said that there was
Speaker 1: limited evidence that aspertame caused cancer in humans, but they
Speaker 1: classified it as possibly carcinogenic. Yet, if you were to
Speaker 1: saunter over to the Wikipedia page titled Aspartame controversy, the
Speaker 1: first paragraph says that quote potential health risks have been
Speaker 1: examined and missed. Did a diet Coke write that we
Speaker 1: may never know.
Speaker 2: I have to be careful because it's not just controversial.
Speaker 2: There's people that are very seriously angry about it. If
Speaker 2: you take one side or the other. Really, and I'm
Speaker 2: a sensory person, I really stay away as far as
Speaker 2: possible from the medical thing. But of course we're talking
Speaker 2: about things that are medically important, but from the sensory
Speaker 2: point of view, we've got to get the studies right
Speaker 2: and then the physicians can tell us. As my doctor
Speaker 2: said the other day, we are not scientists. We are physicians.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great line. Okay, So the distinction is
Speaker 1: research essentially, So most researchers have a doctorate a PhD,
Speaker 1: but not all mds or medical doctors have done lab research.
Speaker 1: It's linguistically very confusing, and it's like a deep cut
Speaker 1: Blu ray nerd humor. It's very cute. You mentioned about
Speaker 1: ninety days to wean off of sodium. Is it similar
Speaker 1: if you are going for a no sugar diet. Is
Speaker 1: there something about that amount of time to make new
Speaker 1: connections in the brain.
Speaker 2: Well, we don't know. And that's a big problem with
Speaker 2: our study is because how long do we have to
Speaker 2: go to see whether it might work. I mean, the
Speaker 2: only thing really that we had for humans was the
Speaker 2: salt study. Sours is going three months, and if it
Speaker 2: takes longer for sugar, we won't see it. So that's
Speaker 2: probably the other part of your question, which is the
Speaker 2: more profound one, really though, is where is this happening
Speaker 2: and how is it happening? And I mean one presumes
Speaker 2: it's in the brain somewhere up top, but exactly where
Speaker 2: these effects of experience happened and how they modify the
Speaker 2: real structures. We're going to need an animal, good animal
Speaker 2: model to study that. Well, maybe with fMRI you could
Speaker 2: do something with it, just nobody has nobody has worked
Speaker 2: on that. You know.
Speaker 1: I have something called post prandial reactive hyperinstallinemia that sounds
Speaker 1: very official, isn't it, which just means that I sugar
Speaker 1: crash more so than most people. So I had a
Speaker 1: no sugar diet for a long time. Yeah, I fell
Speaker 1: off the wagon horribly.
Speaker 2: But did you, as I'm describing it, did you have
Speaker 2: this effect that when you first went back on and
Speaker 2: it was too.
Speaker 1: Strong or I think that what happened was my brain
Speaker 1: knew that I wasn't allowed to eat it, and so
Speaker 1: when I ate it, it was like, oh, go to town.
Speaker 1: Like it was so forbidden that when I did have some,
Speaker 1: it was like I got it stop.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It was like a dog with a toy. And so
Speaker 1: my relationship to sweets became more psychological. For more on
Speaker 1: insulin ups and downs, you can check out the recent
Speaker 1: Encore episode with diabetologist and type one diabetic doctor Mike Natter. Also,
Speaker 1: some people take umbrage to the term diabetic as a noun,
Speaker 1: others prefer person with diabetes. So I took a poll
Speaker 1: via Twitter or x or whatever, and three to one
Speaker 1: people with diabetes preferred the term diabetic because it's such
Speaker 1: a large part of their lives and their identity, So
Speaker 1: don't come at me for that. And doctor Natter responded,
Speaker 1: I prefer the term my busted pancreas pieced out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: either way, my pancreas is a little bit of an
Speaker 1: overachiever in the insulin department, causing some blood sugar crashes
Speaker 1: and then sugar cravings and may, like me, one day burnout.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting you say that, because there's anecdotal reports
Speaker 2: of exactly the same thing where those people really had
Speaker 2: no exposure all their lives. This is anecdote and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to remember it from some other time. But the
Speaker 2: sugar one, as I recall, was very quick that it
Speaker 2: was a taste and maybe even spinning out at first,
Speaker 2: but then quickly realizing wow, this is something.
Speaker 1: Have you had to look at any studies of how
Speaker 1: to get off of sugar, like, we can tell that
Speaker 1: pancreatic illnesses and insulin responses and type two diabetes definitely
Speaker 1: having some problems there, and I know for me personally,
Speaker 1: my life would be better if I did not eat sugar,
Speaker 1: and yet every day I put a little sugar in
Speaker 1: my coffee this morning. So do you have there been
Speaker 1: any studies out there of trying to break that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what our study is about. What our study
Speaker 2: is about.
Speaker 1: I mean know if you need any objectsful, but our.
Speaker 2: Study actually comes back to you. Do you think you
Speaker 2: have to be sugar or is it any sweetener?
Speaker 1: I feel like when I get acclimated to sugar in
Speaker 1: my coffee or sweetener in my coffee like a splendid situation.
Speaker 1: I'm used to it, and I expect it when I
Speaker 1: drink it, and the less I put it in, the
Speaker 1: less I want it. I do feel like I've weaned
Speaker 1: off it a little bit at least.
Speaker 2: One of the things that that's interesting about the sweetener response,
Speaker 2: at least from the sensory point of view, which is
Speaker 2: what I know about, is that, as I said in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, we and it's happened so many times,
Speaker 2: five other groups at the same time discovered what the
Speaker 2: receptor was. Very exciting time. I think we were first,
Speaker 2: but we didn't get to be published first bummer. That's
Speaker 2: another story. But the other sweeteners are discriminable from the
Speaker 2: carbohydrate sweeteners. That seems pretty clear. But the carbohydrate sweeteners
Speaker 2: like sucrose, fructose, glucose, from the sensory point of view,
Speaker 2: are taste identical. But there it turns out to be
Speaker 2: another receptor, another class receptors that is particularly responsive to
Speaker 2: the small molecule carbohydrate receptors, mainly glucose, that goes through
Speaker 2: a different pathway that we may or may not be
Speaker 2: conscious of them. And so there are ways to discriminate
Speaker 2: that our body discriminates between these that maybe we don't
Speaker 2: discriminate up here.
Speaker 1: So the tongue is kind of a sweet, happy bimbo
Speaker 1: saying yum, I love it. But our body has all
Speaker 1: kinds of tubes and goop that knows what the fuck
Speaker 1: is up on a molecular level, speaking of talking in tongues, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm curious a little bit about our taste
Speaker 1: buds themselves from what I understand, And maybe this is outdated,
Speaker 1: but look kind of like an orange with sections for
Speaker 1: different receptors for bitter in umami instead of having a
Speaker 1: bunch of bitter taste receptors in the back of your
Speaker 1: tongue and some on the side when you're looking at
Speaker 1: a taste bud, the ones that are detecting salts and
Speaker 1: carbohydrates and maybe proteins and amino acids. Is that what's happening,
Speaker 1: little tiny orange sections that are tasting different things.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, but they're not. Again, this is one of
Speaker 2: the sort of the things that drive people in our
Speaker 2: field nuts. Was this drawing in all the medical textbooks
Speaker 2: showing that in the back is bitterness, the front is sweetness,
Speaker 2: the sides are salt, and they didn't pay attention to
Speaker 2: amino acids. And of course that's not true. They're distributed
Speaker 2: all through the tongue and the palette actually and actually
Speaker 2: fairly far back. But what is true is that you're
Speaker 2: sort of more sensitive to more bidders in the back
Speaker 2: and maybe more sensitive to the good things in the front.
Speaker 2: And so there's a little bit of truth to that.
Speaker 2: And again it makes kind of sense if you think
Speaker 2: of what the bitterness is for. This is even controversial,
Speaker 2: but I still totally believe it that the real evolution
Speaker 2: of bitterness is to make sure you don't kill yourself
Speaker 2: with poison and you think the last chance to stop
Speaker 2: from eating something is if you get it here and
Speaker 2: can get rid of it. And when you look at
Speaker 2: babies response to bitterness, newborn babies, you see this very
Speaker 2: distinct facial expression with rats do the same thing of
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of it, and the negative things
Speaker 2: are much clearer than the positive ones. People claim that
Speaker 2: babies smile when they get sugar right at birth. I
Speaker 2: don't believe it, but they certainly are calm, and they
Speaker 2: certainly appreciate it by sucking on it. So there is
Speaker 2: something to that that there's this differential thing, and particularly
Speaker 2: for very bitter things that they're avoiding. But the idea
Speaker 2: that it's only in these various parts. But each tastes
Speaker 2: cell presumably this is also a little controversial. Each taste
Speaker 2: cell responds to only one of these tastes.
Speaker 1: As described in the paper taste buds cells signals and synapses.
Speaker 1: So in mammals, each taste bud is this compact cluster
Speaker 1: of cells. It kind of looks like a garlic bulb,
Speaker 1: they say, with fifty to one hundred elongated cells, and
Speaker 1: in general they are the most type one cells and
Speaker 1: fewer Type two and type three cells, but their concentrations
Speaker 1: differ in different parts of your mouth or a lot
Speaker 1: of people's mouth, provided that the person is a mammal
Speaker 1: and has a tongue.
Speaker 2: Unlike the olfactory system, the smell system. There really are
Speaker 2: these sort of basic fundamental things which I've argued, and
Speaker 2: many people have argued, not just me, that they're really case.
Speaker 2: System is designed as the most important sensory system we have.
Speaker 2: And I can defend that if you'll let me the
Speaker 2: most important sensory system we have, because this is the
Speaker 2: thing that's going to protect us, help us decide is
Speaker 2: this something I can put in my body or is
Speaker 2: this something that I should not put in my body?
Speaker 2: Don't put that in your mouth. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: can't figure that difference out, you're dead. Yep. And so
Speaker 2: I do think that that kind of carries over to
Speaker 2: salt too, if you're sodium deficient, which is humans are
Speaker 2: never so deficient and access everybody has plenty of salt. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I look this up and even in countries reporting
Speaker 1: the lowest sodium intake Kenya and Malawi, folks there consumed
Speaker 1: about five times what an active, healthy human needs to
Speaker 1: survive in terms of sodium.
Speaker 2: But during evolution that wasn't true, and so finding salt
Speaker 2: was really really important, and I think we're built to
Speaker 2: find salt and we respond particularly when we need it.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of study on lord sodium and how
Speaker 2: that rasts in particular respond to it, not so much
Speaker 2: in people, of course.
Speaker 1: So yes, both medical doctors and scientists don't let gostologists
Speaker 1: deprive human test subjects of regular soup for too long.
Speaker 1: They're like, we know you hate it, here's the regular soup,
Speaker 1: thank you for participating.
Speaker 2: Amino Acids is a little different story, and that's a
Speaker 2: long and weird history about what the amino acid taste
Speaker 2: really is and whether umami and glutamate are the mechanisms
Speaker 2: underlying our ability to detect and respond to protein. But certainly,
Speaker 2: under certain circumstances, the amino acid glutamate, which is the
Speaker 2: main one for MSG, is highly attractive to children and
Speaker 2: too adults. And it is in fact true that if
Speaker 2: you substitute bottlexodium glutamate with pure salt, you can reach
Speaker 2: the same level of liking with lower total sodium, because
Speaker 2: the glutamate part stimulates another presumably another receptor, and that
Speaker 2: compensates for the lower salt dietes. And so that's one
Speaker 2: of the recommendations actually from the CDC, I think to
Speaker 2: use that substitution for sometimes that won't work for everything,
Speaker 2: and it only reduces that the maximum would be forty
Speaker 2: fifty percent, but that's substantialis Yeah, people use it. So
Speaker 2: salt is a very very interesting substance, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Just a side note on how this works. So glutamate
Speaker 1: is an amino acid and it hops into the receptor
Speaker 1: on your tongue that's primed for umami, and it tells
Speaker 1: your brain yeam, yam, yum yum. Now, if you combine
Speaker 1: glutamate with a nucleotide like anocinate or guanulate, which is
Speaker 1: in beef and fish and packaged foods and fermented veggie,
Speaker 1: then it heightens that umami flavor by extending the taste sensation.
Speaker 1: And yes, MSG got a real bad rap in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties when one dude One dude wrote a
Speaker 1: pissi letter to a science journal about his own woes
Speaker 1: with a condition he dubbed Chinese restaurant syndrome, and then
Speaker 1: the Western world just freaked out in a misplaced gesture
Speaker 1: of bloated panic and just straight up zenophobia. Now, in reality,
Speaker 1: bound glutamate is in a ton of foods naturally, bunch
Speaker 1: of protein sources, and free glutamate like what's in MSG
Speaker 1: also naturally occurs in cheese and seaweed and tomatoes and peas,
Speaker 1: cow milk, human milk, and in additives labeled autolized yeast
Speaker 1: extract and such. Now, for more on this, you can
Speaker 1: see the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. Twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: study called glutamate a safe nutrent, not just a simple additive. However,
Speaker 1: some neurobiologists have looked into the relationship between free glutamates
Speaker 1: and specific medical conditions like fibromyalgia OCD and what's called
Speaker 1: Gulf War syndrome. But more studies may need to be
Speaker 1: done on that. And this was surprising to me, But
Speaker 1: I'm actually a podcast host, I'm not a medical doctor.
Speaker 1: So you can just tell that to your lawyers in
Speaker 1: terms of what you should eat. And I was going
Speaker 1: to ask, where does capsaicin and excitotoxins like monosodium glutamate,
Speaker 1: where do they come into this?
Speaker 2: Okay, so first of all, I wouldn't put those together
Speaker 2: at all. Okay, yes, yes, so they go back in history.
Speaker 2: If you look through all of history and you look
Speaker 2: at different cultures around the world, everybody agrees that these
Speaker 2: basic tastes are sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and something one
Speaker 2: or two things that are irritants like cap sayism, And
Speaker 2: of course they have a different pathway, a different mechanism.
Speaker 2: They don't go through the taste system at all their pain.
Speaker 2: So the cap sayisin literally has the same set of
Speaker 2: receptors that if you put a match, a burning match
Speaker 2: in your throat, it would do it. I mean, it
Speaker 2: really is burning by our language.
Speaker 1: So doctor Peacham did a study on this in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six. It was titled Ethanol Consumption and Taste References
Speaker 1: in C. Five to seven bl slash six by J
Speaker 1: and one two nine J. Mice. I linked that so
Speaker 1: you don't have to google it. But he found that
Speaker 1: no mice did not like the solution that was liquid
Speaker 1: del score show hot, which is why in the Chickenology
Speaker 1: and Squirrel episodes we talk about lacing bird seed with
Speaker 1: hot pepper to keep the rodents out of your feedbacks.
Speaker 1: Because birds don't give a shit about spicy. They can't
Speaker 1: taste it, they don't hate it. But in the same
Speaker 1: study doctor pechrimccolleagues also found that in rodents they drank
Speaker 1: more of a boozy solution, possibly because of ethanol's sweet taste.
Speaker 1: And that quote the proclivity to drink alcohol is associated
Speaker 1: with elevated sweet preferences. So if you got a sweet
Speaker 1: tooth and a drinking problem, or you quit drinking and
Speaker 1: now you're reaching for candy, perhaps something to look at.
Speaker 1: It even happens to rodents. But yes, our main tastes
Speaker 1: are sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. And then the burning,
Speaker 1: hot out tongue stuff is just in its own, painful
Speaker 1: joy sichos.
Speaker 2: So they had those seven or six and they are universal.
Speaker 2: Only four or five of them are taste and the
Speaker 2: others but you could see, well nobody would know. They
Speaker 2: don't know the anatomy, and they're in the mouth. Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, you put capsaus in your eye or your
Speaker 2: nose or other places, it will burn there too, and
Speaker 2: it won't taste sweet. If you put it in your eye,
Speaker 2: that's a little bit different. So it's not the same
Speaker 2: thing exactly. But MSG is different. And I've studied MSG
Speaker 2: a lot, and I particularly think that it's a useful
Speaker 2: and good substance if not consumed in excess. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't like to speak in the medical side because I
Speaker 2: didn't do any work in there, but I'm pretty convinced
Speaker 2: that the studies that show that it has any negative
Speaker 2: characteristics when eaten in reasonably low concentrations, the evidence is
Speaker 2: not good. Other people who disagree with me, probably, But
Speaker 2: if you took MSG the glutamate, glutamate is a brain receptor.
Speaker 2: It is a toxic in the way you were using
Speaker 2: the word. But in order to get toxic consequences in
Speaker 2: your body, you have to inject it or put I
Speaker 2: mean the original studies were actually putting in the brains
Speaker 2: and monkeys literally right in the brain, and of course
Speaker 2: that really messed things up. And those studies were i think,
Speaker 2: used to sort of make people worry about it, but
Speaker 2: through the oil cavity, not much.
Speaker 1: Let's go back, though and get another helping of hot sauce.
Speaker 1: God help us.
Speaker 2: It was really interesting. Question is why in the world
Speaker 2: do people love to consume something that hurts?
Speaker 1: Is a great question. Have you ever seen Hot Wings
Speaker 1: on YouTube? Hot Wings is a show where it's just
Speaker 1: like a guy interviewing a celebrity and they have a
Speaker 1: range of hot wings.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I've never seen that.
Speaker 1: Oh I mean it goes from mild all the way
Speaker 1: up to like call the paramedics level, and to watch
Speaker 1: people go up and up and up and see how hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like gushing tears.
Speaker 2: But fuck this?
Speaker 1: Are you someone that puts a lot of hot sauce
Speaker 1: on things I do?
Speaker 2: But I'm not a fanatic. I'm not a fanatic. Actually,
Speaker 2: my son is more a fanatic than I am. So
Speaker 2: I don't know what that shows about anything.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is a scientist one or
Speaker 1: the artist. But if I had to put money on it,
Speaker 1: I would see the play, right, because pain is beauty, drama, delicious.
Speaker 1: Do people do that a lot when you come over
Speaker 1: for dinner parties? Are they like, well, he is an
Speaker 1: expert in taste, it better be good murdera.
Speaker 2: I try to avoid that, and people that know me
Speaker 2: well know that I'm no no specialists.
Speaker 1: You're not a food snob about it?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No, no, yeah, you don't strike me as such. But
Speaker 1: what about just like if I'm eating a pear but
Speaker 1: I have anosmia? My friend Micah lost his sense of
Speaker 1: smell as a baby when he had a fever.
Speaker 2: It's still gone.
Speaker 1: It's still on. Yeah, which is great. If you need
Speaker 1: to fart around him, nobody's gonna know.
Speaker 2: They're gonna know, how would they know.
Speaker 1: But other than that, it's not good for him. But
Speaker 1: we've often wondered, like, if he's having an apple or
Speaker 1: a peach or something, how much of it is he
Speaker 1: tasting and how much of it is he missing because
Speaker 1: he just doesn't have a sense of smell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's obviously missing all the good parts. Yeah,
Speaker 2: except for the sugar, right, those things all have sugar.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's this oft sided statistic that eighty percent
Speaker 1: of what we think is taste is really just smell.
Speaker 1: Though many chemosensory scientists are like no, they're quick to
Speaker 1: point out that that is flim flam, never been substantiated,
Speaker 1: but they do agree that some of taste is in
Speaker 1: fact smell. And my friend's lack of old faction caused
Speaker 1: Gary at this point to just shake his head and
Speaker 1: look down on the ground. A chemos sensory scientist.
Speaker 2: Rueful, and he lost it as baby. I think people
Speaker 2: you know COVID COVID it is awful. It's a disaster.
Speaker 2: The one person, the one group that's good for was
Speaker 2: the people that study smell because there was this initial
Speaker 2: smell loss and it was very characteristic. Is much better
Speaker 2: than his temperature as a diagnostic for the original COVID
Speaker 2: and so we had a lot of people interested in that.
Speaker 2: But I think people that lose it as an adults
Speaker 2: or at least later in life, they're able to sort
Speaker 2: of kind of remember what it was. And so the
Speaker 2: disturbance is when it happens right away and when it
Speaker 2: keeps going forever. My son did it, really my scientific
Speaker 2: student did a really interesting experiment study where he looked
Speaker 2: at complaints about Yankee candles.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I love that study. You're kidding me. Is
Speaker 1: he a smell scientist.
Speaker 2: No, he's a big data scientist. Oh, but I think
Speaker 2: he has an interest in chemical sensus because he was
Speaker 2: brought up in it for all his life.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite things that has happened in
Speaker 1: the history of humanity. Now for the full report, you
Speaker 1: can see the twenty twenty one paper titled this Candle
Speaker 1: has No Smell Detecting the effect of covid anosmia on
Speaker 1: Amazon reviews, using Beezyan vector auto regression by the Department
Speaker 1: of Political Science at Northeastern University Professor doctor Nick Beecham. Yes,
Speaker 1: his son, and he tweeted this belated hat tip to
Speaker 1: both Terry draws Stuff and Kate Petrova, citing the particularly
Speaker 1: great work Kate Petrova did. And I'm just tickled by this.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that they followed the data trail and
Speaker 1: sniffed it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know what's kind of too bad about it?
Speaker 2: Or no, it's not too bad, it's good. Is the
Speaker 2: subsequent variance of COVID The smell loss is not so
Speaker 2: prominent interesting, But it looks as if whatever it was
Speaker 2: that differentiates the first COVID's the first year or so
Speaker 2: and the subsequent ones that seem maybe not to be
Speaker 2: so bad, or maybe just because most of us have
Speaker 2: vaccinations or have had it already. The smell loss is
Speaker 2: still there, and taste loss by the way, as well.
Speaker 2: But I think that the consensus really now is that
Speaker 2: the smell loss from the original COVID is due not
Speaker 2: to an effect on the smell receptor cells themselves, but
Speaker 2: to cells around it that swell up and block the
Speaker 2: odor from getting to the receptor. Oh, so that's not
Speaker 2: so interesting from the mechanistic point of view of smell obviously,
Speaker 2: you know when you have a cold views yeah, for
Speaker 2: a while, and it's just because it's blocked up, So
Speaker 2: that may be not so interesting.
Speaker 1: What about the taste part of it?
Speaker 2: Taste part of oo puzzling to me exactly. There's demonstrations
Speaker 2: that some of the receptors involved in COVID are on
Speaker 2: taste cells as well, and so that may be a
Speaker 2: receptor effect. The taste was not so prominent in the
Speaker 2: original publications, but there's good evidence that the taste and
Speaker 2: smell are both affected.
Speaker 1: So this freshest health study came out in the journal
Speaker 1: of Laringoscope literally a few weeks ago, and it was
Speaker 1: titled Smell and Taste Loss associated with COVID nineteen infection,
Speaker 1: and it found it about sixty percent of COVID patients
Speaker 1: experienced a loss of taste and smell, and the severity
Speaker 1: of the infection correlated to the amount of taste and smell loss. Overall,
Speaker 1: seventy percent of people recovered their smell and taste, and
Speaker 1: on the other side, about three percent just did not.
Speaker 1: That is, if they survived, which over a million Americans
Speaker 1: have not so far, but from infections to inquisitions. I
Speaker 1: asked listeners if they had anything to ask you. But
Speaker 1: before we do, let's give away some cash. So one
Speaker 1: donation is going to the monol Chemical s Census Center,
Speaker 1: which is the world's only independent, nonprofit scientific institute dedicated
Speaker 1: to basic research on the senses of taste and smell.
Speaker 1: Their world class scientists, including doctor Beechum, are unlocking some
Speaker 1: of the most fundamental mysteries of what makes us human.
Speaker 1: So that donation went to monel dot org. And we're
Speaker 1: making a secondary contribution in the honor of Gary's wife, Fay,
Speaker 1: who works with the Philadelphia Young Playwrights, which playwriting into
Speaker 1: classrooms and community settings with these intensive writing residencies providing
Speaker 1: literary skills, creativity, communication and collaboration. And the great news
Speaker 1: about visiting Phillyhong Playwrights Dot work is that you do
Speaker 1: not need to know how to spell Philadelphia on the
Speaker 1: first try, which I did not correctly. So links to
Speaker 1: those orgs are in the show notes, and the donations
Speaker 1: were made possible by sponsors of the show. Okay, we
Speaker 1: are at the Patreon questions part of the show, and
Speaker 1: some folks wanted to know about the awkward after party
Speaker 1: that's happening in your face. A couple very smart listeners
Speaker 1: had this question, Zombat Lisa and Niko Prince. Lisa wants
Speaker 1: to know what causes there to be such a difference
Speaker 1: in phases of taste. They want to know about after taste.
Speaker 1: What's going on with taste versus after taste.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, that's a great question. And actually COVID really
Speaker 2: comes to the fore there because one of the treatments
Speaker 2: for COVID, of course, was this pax slovin. This drug. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the people took and I took it because the older person,
Speaker 2: I was able to get it right away, and I
Speaker 2: guess it worked, but I had to rebound effect, so
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: Oh I had a friend that had the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the greatest thing. But in any case, the most
Speaker 2: striking thing to a taste person was the aftertaste. It
Speaker 2: was just awful, no, no, horrible, and it was it
Speaker 2: was really profound.
Speaker 1: Was it in tablet form or how did it take?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And so that's the interesting part because it was
Speaker 2: in tablet form, So that drug was made up of
Speaker 2: two different drugs. One which was the anti viral, and
Speaker 2: the other was a drug that I think I was
Speaker 2: told made it last longer. Oh, and what we think
Speaker 2: is going on is that that drug is somehow going
Speaker 2: through the blood system to saliva and is being excreted
Speaker 2: in the mouth on the tongue. We have a colleague
Speaker 2: here who's looked at the receptor. He even knows what receptor.
Speaker 2: There's twenty five bitter receptors. He knows which receptor it's
Speaker 2: being responded to. I wanted my chemist friend here to
Speaker 2: take my saliva and see if they could see the
Speaker 2: drug and presumably covid in my saliva. He wouldn't touch
Speaker 2: it because, of course he gets sick. Yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 2: stupid of me to why don't you do that.
Speaker 1: I love where his head was at. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to lie.
Speaker 2: So I think the main mechanism for the aftertaste for
Speaker 2: a lot of things is coming back. Some of it
Speaker 2: can be regurgitated from the gut, but some of it
Speaker 2: gets into the blood. And there's a medical practice. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's probably done anymore, something to do with
Speaker 2: your heart function, and they would inject sacharin into your
Speaker 2: veins and time how long it took for you to
Speaker 2: taste sweet oh wow. And so that really shows that
Speaker 2: it is going through the blood system and presumably salbarty system,
Speaker 2: because the taste beds are all covered with blood vessels.
Speaker 2: If you've cut your tongue, you don't bleeth like a banshee.
Speaker 2: But so I think that is the pathway for most
Speaker 2: after taste, although some of them are coming also more
Speaker 2: quickly from the gut and from gas coming up.
Speaker 1: Well, Kate Helpman had a question how to chemo affect
Speaker 1: your taste buds if you get, say, like a metallic
Speaker 1: taste or my friend Simone had a brain tumor in
Speaker 1: radiation and she said the metallic taste was something that
Speaker 1: was really difficult for her. Are those chemical? Are they structural?
Speaker 1: What are those tastes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, again this complicated story. But I think some
Speaker 2: of the ones who are the people who are describing
Speaker 2: the metallic taste probably are doing what just what I suggested,
Speaker 2: that the drug itself is being somehow brought to the
Speaker 2: saliva and it's causing this taste. The idea of metallic
Speaker 2: taste has been very controversial over the years, really, and
Speaker 2: some people claim it doesn't even exist. Other people say
Speaker 2: that's crazy, Well.
Speaker 1: Would it be a salt taste because a sodium is
Speaker 1: a metal and like potassium, No.
Speaker 2: Passium as possible post because potassium is a bitter taste.
Speaker 2: But I mean, there's some people tested metallic taste by
Speaker 2: putting nickels in water and showing that a head of taste.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. One of my colleagues claimed it was
Speaker 2: almost all smell. I don't know, I know about that.
Speaker 2: But the other thing about radiation, of course, is that
Speaker 2: if the radiation is up here around the neck, head
Speaker 2: and neck radiation often destroys the taste and smell receptor cells.
Speaker 2: So it's truly a loss of smell and particularly the
Speaker 2: taste loss. And this is another reason that I argue
Speaker 2: that taste is really important, very very rare for people
Speaker 2: to lose their sense of taste. Losing sense of smell
Speaker 2: is pretty common. Okay, this sense of taste is very rare.
Speaker 2: But the one place that happens, or it has happened
Speaker 2: in the past, I think they're getting better at it now,
Speaker 2: is in head and neck radiation.
Speaker 1: So this is called radiosurgery, and we cover it with
Speaker 1: doctor Varshanna Gubersami and I'll link that in the show notes. Also,
Speaker 1: huge shout out to all the radiology texts out there
Speaker 1: in the world also doing important work. And when doctor
Speaker 1: Beatrim mentions getting better or more precise with radiosurgery, that's
Speaker 1: in part due to just better imaging technology which allows
Speaker 1: doctors to pinpoint tumors and zap them the LINAC which
Speaker 1: is linear particle accelerator methods or the very superheroic sounding
Speaker 1: gamma knife. But yes, it may affect adjacent taste receptors
Speaker 1: and not being able to fully enjoy your boba sounds
Speaker 1: like not a bad deal in exchange for zip zapping cancer.
Speaker 2: However, it can be so bad that people literally stop eating.
Speaker 2: It can be a killer actually, because it's so difficult.
Speaker 2: It is incredibly difficult to eat food if you don't
Speaker 2: have a sense to taste. There's some rat studies now
Speaker 2: that show that this is true as well, that rats
Speaker 2: just stop eating and they die even when the food
Speaker 2: is there in front of them.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about craving dirt. This one. Really I had
Speaker 1: this question. I wasn't sure if any listeners want to this,
Speaker 1: but Becky, the sccgrass scientist asked, what is the deal
Speaker 1: with pika. Is it just a brain mix up or
Speaker 1: is it a taste bud mix up too? And I
Speaker 1: know that you also like to study moths and butterflies
Speaker 1: who are out for salts in the rainforest a lot.
Speaker 1: Is there something that happens the human brain when we're
Speaker 1: low on minerals where we like the taste of dirt.
Speaker 2: So I can say it's extreme. If an animal, even
Speaker 2: a mammal, but certainly insects as well, our lower need sodium,
Speaker 2: they have the ability, most of them to detect it immediately,
Speaker 2: they go after it, they consume it, and when they
Speaker 2: consume it, they stop because they get enough of it.
Speaker 2: So there really is a pathway, very very profound pathway
Speaker 2: in needing salt and detecting it. The human literature is
Speaker 2: much much more complicated, and the story that people always
Speaker 2: go to, which is a horrible story, which I believe
Speaker 2: one of the greats in our field. The man named
Speaker 2: Richter published this. A child who had a dreanmal in
Speaker 2: sufficiency profound adrenal insufficiency and basically, in order to keep
Speaker 2: that at bay, needs to consume salt more salt, and
Speaker 2: parents nobody knew this. His parents took him to the
Speaker 2: hospital three or four years old, I think he was,
Speaker 2: and the hospital did exactly what my father in laws
Speaker 2: feeders did. Put this child on a very low salt diet.
Speaker 2: Child died. Oh no, But before that, the child would
Speaker 2: climb up on top of the table to get it salt,
Speaker 2: would chew bacon on cooked bacon to get the salt. Retrospectively,
Speaker 2: this was found, but they thought that was just wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they prevented it.
Speaker 1: So those with adrenal insufficiency they could retain more fluid,
Speaker 1: which waters down the blood and it leads to something
Speaker 1: called hyponatremia, which is a low level of electrolytes in
Speaker 1: your blood and thus tons of salt cravings. And I
Speaker 1: read one study about a fifty year old woman who
Speaker 1: experienced a lack of appetite, malaise, unintentional weight loss, and
Speaker 1: the study continues the patient also recalled developing an unusually
Speaker 1: strong craving for pickles. Now, if you're eating for two
Speaker 1: and you have a human critter growing inside of your body,
Speaker 1: why would you want pickles? Also, are your adrenal glands
Speaker 1: on strike because of your new residence? Nope, just twenty
Speaker 1: six percent of you growing another person have decreased salt
Speaker 1: sensitivity and hence you become a pickle hound. In case
Speaker 1: you were wondering, Patrons kJ Kelsey, Laura, Audrey Pearson, Amelia
Speaker 1: Frank's pregnant friend, and Olivia aliasen Now. On the topic
Speaker 1: of development, patron shale Hacker asked how long does it
Speaker 1: take to develop a taste for something? And fellow patrons
Speaker 1: Marinprophet first time question asker Madelin d Nico Price, Elia Myers,
Speaker 1: Cola Turnbull, Melanie Metzker, Will Clark, tim and Ashley flint
Speaker 1: Off and s Bartfast. Well, what about people who want
Speaker 1: to acquire a taste for something? Do you have any
Speaker 1: tips for someone who maybe doesn't like black coffee or
Speaker 1: doesn't like vegetables, any tips on learning to like something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my tip would be just what you suggested yourself,
Speaker 2: which is to gradually increase it over time. It works.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm drinking black coffee here. Some people can't
Speaker 2: say how I can stand it. I can't stand the
Speaker 2: idea of putting milk and sugar into it.
Speaker 1: Did you know that if you drink your coffee like
Speaker 1: a baby with lots of milk and sugar, you're not
Speaker 1: prissy and weak. You might just be a super taster.
Speaker 1: So twenty five percent of you out there are better
Speaker 1: at tasting, and thus things like hoppy beer and gin
Speaker 1: and black coffee and kale and Brussels sprouts and grapefruit
Speaker 1: juice might be gnarly to you. And you might even
Speaker 1: like salt more than sweets. Why are you so good
Speaker 1: at tasting? Might be a genetic thing. You might just
Speaker 1: have more taste buds per square centimeter of tongue, or
Speaker 1: it might be a combination. So if you want to
Speaker 1: brag about being a super taster, get yourself some super
Speaker 1: tasting strips and then you can pass them around at
Speaker 1: a party and see who gags at the bitterness and
Speaker 1: who says this should just tastes like paper and I
Speaker 1: love my coffee black, Hey, pass the grapefruit and kale
Speaker 1: gin cocktail. Now is the person who tastes less strawnger
Speaker 1: than you for drinking bitter things? No, their taste buds
Speaker 1: are just like a two thousand and five Honda Civic
Speaker 1: and you sipping a milky latte are like a tongue ferrari.
Speaker 2: Now, what we did find profoundly and this is I
Speaker 2: think maybe the most the best discovery we ever made
Speaker 2: here and the student of mine at the time, that
Speaker 2: if you can expose people, and we're talking about people
Speaker 2: that are babies to a particular flavor very early in life,
Speaker 2: maybe even in utero, because we can show that at
Speaker 2: least the smellbled parts of flavor get into amniotic fluid.
Speaker 2: So the babies are being exposed to this, their century
Speaker 2: system is presumably working at least the last trimester for sure.
Speaker 2: But the experiment that we did first was to take
Speaker 2: some others, three groups of others. One group was fed
Speaker 2: carrot juice during prenatal and postnatal life, second group was
Speaker 2: carrot juice during just prenatal life, no carrot juice postnatal
Speaker 2: life up to about four or five months, I think,
Speaker 2: and the third group was the reverse.
Speaker 1: Okay, so some babes got it in and out of
Speaker 1: the womb, others got it only went in, and others
Speaker 1: got zero carrot juice.
Speaker 2: The two exposure groups responded very very positively to the
Speaker 2: flavor oh, and the other one didn't, So we know
Speaker 2: that they can get information about foods and flavors. It
Speaker 2: probably smells but maybe tastes. But the other one that's
Speaker 2: almost Even more dramatic is in baby formulas. Typical formula's
Speaker 2: milk formula, but for infants that for some reason or
Speaker 2: other don't handle those very well, they make hydrolyzed casing formulas,
Speaker 2: and these are widely used all over the world. When
Speaker 2: I first got into this business, I was having pediatricians
Speaker 2: come to me and say, we can't get the babies
Speaker 2: to take these formulas. Oh, I think some of the
Speaker 2: better pediatricians who tasted them themselves, said and I agree
Speaker 2: that they're terrible, And the mothers would say they're terrible,
Speaker 2: and is there some way you can fix them? And
Speaker 2: I had no idea, but it led to the idea
Speaker 2: that maybe we ought to look at when it is
Speaker 2: they're fed them. And it turns out that this is
Speaker 2: an incredibly dramatic example of a sort of imprinting learning.
Speaker 2: If you feed these babies these formulas, which to me
Speaker 2: and you at the time at least I think they've
Speaker 2: gotten better, but at the time just tasted horrible. They
Speaker 2: were bitter, but they also had a really hideous off smell.
Speaker 2: And what that was was the protein is broken down
Speaker 2: into amino acids or peptides, but it's also broken down
Speaker 2: into volatile things that the receptors could detect. Receptors can't
Speaker 2: really detect protein for the most part, but they can
Speaker 2: detect the breakdown products. And these breakdown products are horrible,
Speaker 2: no question. But if their babies were fed these beginning
Speaker 2: early in life three or four months, they were fine
Speaker 2: with no expression of negative response, and they continue to
Speaker 2: be fine, and we have some evidence that they continue
Speaker 2: to like these flavors into a delta. But if you
Speaker 2: waited till four or five months, ough couldn't get them
Speaker 2: to do it. Wow, something's happening around three to six
Speaker 2: months of age about the century system and how it's
Speaker 2: processing these things. Again, you can make a teleological argument.
Speaker 2: When the baby is born, whatever the mother's eating must
Speaker 2: be okay, because the mother wouldn't been able to have
Speaker 2: a baby. Yeah, if it didn't work. And so the
Speaker 2: babies are potentially programmed to respond positively to what the
Speaker 2: mothers were eating, even if you don't know what the
Speaker 2: mothers were eating, didn't matter what they ate, but they
Speaker 2: respond positive to that situation, and so presumably it's the
Speaker 2: best predictor of what their baby is going to be
Speaker 2: eating when it grows older.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, no wonder why my mom, I think,
Speaker 1: drink a lot of diet soda while she's pregnant with me.
Speaker 1: And there you go. After this interview, I decided to
Speaker 1: cold turkey it and I am now proudly six weeks
Speaker 1: without a diet soda. So please give me a hearty
Speaker 1: pat on the back. I've been through a lot, and
Speaker 1: usually I ask your favorite and least favorite thing about
Speaker 1: your job, But since this is one about taste, what's
Speaker 1: the grossest thing you've ever tasted before? Or what's your
Speaker 1: least favorite thing to eat?
Speaker 2: Okay, so these formulas, as they were made at the
Speaker 2: time when I started this work, we're probably the worst
Speaker 2: things I ever did. And in fact, we had some
Speaker 2: people that threw up when we were testing them. They
Speaker 2: were really really.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. What about do you have something that
Speaker 1: you crave a lot, your favorite taste and do you
Speaker 1: overanalyze it while you do?
Speaker 2: No, No, I really don't think I do. I do
Speaker 2: think that there is times when salt is better than
Speaker 2: sugar and other times when sugar is better than salt.
Speaker 1: What about a favorite thing about your work? Is there
Speaker 1: something you love about this work?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the most interesting thing about it is
Speaker 2: that it is something that everybody thinks they know a
Speaker 2: lot about, and most people do. Actually most people do,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of things we don't know. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think that the idea of trying to
Speaker 2: express really the importance of what we do.
Speaker 1: Gary pointed to the full scholarly bookshelf behind him, up
Speaker 1: to row of leather bound volumes.
Speaker 2: And so there's vision, hearing, whatever, taste and smell is
Speaker 2: a very small piece of those books. And that's because
Speaker 2: humans are arguably and reasonably much more interested in vision
Speaker 2: and hearing. Losing your smell not so bad. Using your
Speaker 2: taste doesn't happen much. And so you know, I think
Speaker 2: that we are a very minute piece of the animal world.
Speaker 2: That book was written by cats or dogs or moths
Speaker 2: or whatever. You'd have a very different, different size volumes
Speaker 2: of each one.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been an absolute joy. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for letting me ask you so many questions. And
Speaker 1: if people want to find more about your published work,
Speaker 1: they can go to obviously the site for Monel, they
Speaker 1: can go to research Gate. We can pour through all
Speaker 1: of your steady Oh, I love it so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this good So ask very
Speaker 1: smart people tasty questions because it's really less embarrassing than
Speaker 1: you think, trust me, and usually they love it. There
Speaker 1: are links to the model center in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much Gary for being on. We also
Speaker 1: have tons of research and links at aliwoard dot com,
Speaker 1: slash ologies slash guestology that's linked in the show notes,
Speaker 1: and for a full menu of all of our episodes
Speaker 1: by topic, over three hundred of them, just go to
Speaker 1: ologies dot com. We have them all listed and categorized.
Speaker 1: Smologies are also available. There's shorter kid and classroom friendly
Speaker 1: episodes if you need them. Thank you Zegrodriguez, Thomas Jerreed, Sleeper,
Speaker 1: and Mercedes Maitland for working on those. Thank you Aaron
Speaker 1: Talbert for adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Emily White
Speaker 1: of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts. Noelle Dilworth works
Speaker 1: as our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our managing director
Speaker 1: and fact checker, also does merch. Additional editing is by
Speaker 1: Mark David Christensen and lead editor is Mercedes Maitland of
Speaker 1: Maitland Audio. And these are all people that I'd call
Speaker 1: my taste buds. They're pals I love them. Nick Thorburn
Speaker 1: made the theme music, and if you stick around to
Speaker 1: the end, I divulge a secret. And this week I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a little bit of behind the
Speaker 1: scenes action because it's so exciting. So when I arrived
Speaker 1: at Manel for this interview, I was greeted by their
Speaker 1: lovely communication specialist Ahmed Barricott, who, in the three minutes
Speaker 1: from greeting me and taking the elevator up to Gary's office,
Speaker 1: happened to mention that one of.
Speaker 2: My friends who is a quid scientist, Wait, Sarah mc I'm.
Speaker 1: Staying in her guest, you're right now. So thank you
Speaker 1: to Touthology guest and squid expert doctor Sarah McNulty, who
Speaker 1: runs skypascientist dot com, which pairs experts with classrooms and
Speaker 1: book clubs and Scout troops and such for free. Skypei
Speaker 1: Scientists dot com is amazing. Thank you Sarah for being
Speaker 1: my pal and hosting me for that fun filled week
Speaker 1: in Philly. The day after we recorded this, meet and
Speaker 1: Ahmed and doctor mcattack all ended up playing Wingspan at
Speaker 1: a friend's house and while I was there, I went
Speaker 1: to flush their toilet and I accidentally doused my crotch
Speaker 1: with their bidet absolutely soaking wet, just right in the crotch,
Speaker 1: and I came downstairs and they said it happens a lot,
Speaker 1: so all right, I'll add one wingspand okay for by pacodermatology,
Speaker 1: homiology or doe zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, al paratology, anthology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 1: That's just a taste