Short Stuff: Happy Foods!

Some foods make you happy. But they aren't necessarily comfort foods. You know what they call that? SCIENCE!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff on Josh. There's Chuck,
there's Jerry in for Dave, and this is short Stuff
the Happy Foods edition, which I'm good with. I like
Happy Foods. Did you remember this from your past? My friend?
What do you mean you wrote this article? No? I didn't.
This is uh, this is back when we were at

(00:25):
hou Supports dot com and this was a Josh Clark special. No,
I did not. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Chuck.
You know why is because I uh sent you the file.
I cut out the Remember we always had to do
this kind of corny couple of paragraphs at the beginning.
I cut those out. Okay, all right, I mean listen

(00:46):
to this sentence. Gabba is produced during the crib cycle,
a physiological process by which new treats are converted to
energy for cellular use. I should have seen my own
genius in that amazing sentence. Let me ask you, honestly,
when you were reading this or you're like, oh god,
this this stuff a little bit, I was like, Wow,
that's a pretty ancient Cornell University study. And I'm sure

(01:10):
those two seventy seven participants were probably undergrads getting extra credit.
So yeah, I did beat up on myself a little bit. Well,
this is a Josh Clark special and it's about how
certain foods can make you happier and some foods can
make you maybe tend toward depression or a little down.
And it is not just I'm not talking about comfort

(01:32):
food We are going to mention that briefly, but it's
it's it's science, right, science, yes, thank you, so yeah,
And there's a distinction that we'll get to happy foods
and comfort foods. I call them happy foods. That's another thing.
I was like, that's a pretty deufest thing to call them,
I feel, But it's weird. Is I feel comforted knowing
that I was criticizing myself. It all just seems right

(01:53):
and normal now. But um, we're gonna call them because
I call them that back in the day, back in
the odds. Happy foods, which are foods that actually can
affect your mood, whereas UH like directly through physiological action,
whereas comfort foods or things that have uh an effect
on your mood through psychological processes. Right, And if you're

(02:15):
talking about the brain and the transmitters, there are a
couple that are largely responsible for our moods. Uh, inhibitory
and are we going with excitatory or excitatory excited tory?
That thought? So I just wanted to make sure you
wrote it, just deferring to the author. This is so bizarre.
So excitatory transmitters we're talking about, like Nora f and Eprin,

(02:38):
Nora Epefrin. Did I say it wrong? I think you
said Nora to man. She's been making appearances all over
the place lately, probably parts of sound like her. Uh
they stimulate she passed away, right? Oh? Did she? Yes?
I'm pretty sure one of the greats. Yes, she really
was one of the great like I don't want to say,

(03:01):
you know, unsung like she was hugely successful, but I
think she was even even more of a genius than
she gets credit for. One of the great writers. Uh so,
where was I was with Nora epinephrin. They stimulate our body,
they stimulate our mind, but it can be too much.
And what you need is a balance of those excitatory
neurotransmitters and the inhibitory which provide which gives things like

(03:25):
seratonin to kind of balance things out. And that's kind
of where the true good mood lies. Right as I
put it, Ultimately, the best moods are found when there's
a balance between these two types. I remember thinking like
best And so the thing is is like when when
we start producing these neurotransmitters like serotonin or nora epephrin,

(03:48):
like we actually make them out of the food that
we eat. We eat the food, our bodies break down
the food, and we use those as building blocks as
constituent nutrients is building box for things like aero transmitters.
So there are actually foods that can aid in our
mood and a big one. Serotonin is a really big neurotransmitter,

(04:09):
one of the biggest, and it's it's frequently considered like
a happy neurotransmitter. It's an inhibitor. It kind of says,
mellow out, nora A penephrin helps you kind of stay
calm uh, stay relaxed, being a good mood. And there's
a lot of foods out there that actually help you
make serotonin. Yeah, it says put on. When Harry met

(04:31):
Sally and have some turkey and bananas and you're like,
that's not a very good combo, and they said, well,
add some spinach and that will really tie it all together.
But those things are all very high and full late
and that's a B vitamin that serotonin needs to be
made fully and tripped to fan too. And trip to

(04:52):
fan is is remarkable because it can go directly into
your brain. It can cross the blood brain barrier, and interestingly,
serotonin can across the blood brain barrier. So since trip
to fan directly is translated into serotonin in the brain,
you're basically feeding your brain serotonin when you eat turkey
and bananas another trip to fan containing foods. That's right.

(05:16):
I say, we take a break and we're gonna get back,
and I'm gonna let the author speak to the crib
cycle right after this, All right, Dr Crabs. It always

(05:46):
reminds me of um, the Adventures of Pete and Pete,
because I think there's like creb Co or something was
like the generic company that they all I think so,
but it reminded me of the crib cycle. So, um,
gabba is gabba? You know you tyroic acid or gaba.
Everybody knows what gabba is. It's called nature's valum or
so I said in quotes, and it is indeed made

(06:09):
during the crib cycle. Um, where you convert energy for use,
nutrients converted to energy for later use, and um, gabba
helps you sleep, it helps you mellow out. Um. And
it's based on what we get from foods, uh called glutamates,
and I think those are actually also the basis for

(06:29):
umami too, in that correct glutam Yeah, that sounds really
all this stuff sort of was ringing some bells. But
the idea is if you eat something like sesame or
sunflower seeds, or if you're a meat eater and you
like pork and beef, you're gonna be getting a lot
of that glutamate. And that's that amino acid, which is
a big It's not gava, but it helps make gabba
and that can glutam glutamine. Did I say glutamate? I've

(06:54):
been saying glutamates, but it is glutamines, and I'm sure
there's a pretty substantial difference between those two, right, So glutamy,
told emails is what we mean, and that can transcend
the blood brain barrier. And so you're gonna have you know,
a pretty uh significant impact on your happiness which your
foods that you're eating there, which is pretty cool to think,
like you're like the food you eat can actually impact

(07:17):
your mood. You know, it makes you kind of want to,
you know, nourish yourself. Other times though you say, I
don't want to nourish myself at all. I wanted the
exact opposite of that, because I need comfort food. And
here again we reach that distinction. Whereas those happy foods,
those foods that can actually influence the production of GABBA
and serotonin in your brain. Um, those are different from

(07:41):
comfort foods, which basically activate neural pathways of happier time
and that we crave to make ourselves feel better when
we're not feeling very good. Yeah, which is you know,
it's the difference of physiology and psychology. And you know,
what you've mentioned is pretty true because I think, I
think if you did a survey of people, you would

(08:03):
find that most people lean toward comfort foods. That is,
something their grandma made or their mom or dad made,
or something like that when they're a little that reminds
them of maybe a special time or happier time in
their life, or maybe a time when things were a
little more simple. Maybe dare I say, Mr Hodgeman a
bit more nostalgic, But you know, my comfort foods are

(08:24):
those like mashed potatoes and fried chicken and is like
sort of good old southern home cooking is my comfort
food because I remember my mom and my grandmother making
all that stuff and and just chowing down on it
when there was no regard. And that's probably part of
it too, as an adult who gets older and like
has to deal with, you know, weight issues back when

(08:45):
it didn't matter when you were a child and you
could just eat all of that stuff and you had
the metabolism of a of a gnat and it just, uh,
you could consume guilt free. Yeah, so comfort foods like yeah,
that was like he just kind of took me back, man. Man,
So like, what's your comfort food? I I I don't

(09:06):
know what my comfort foods are. Um, I like sweet stuff.
I like cakes, Um, cookies, Uh, donuts are big time
comfort food of mine. Is that childhood stuff for you?
So I've learned not to look too deeply into the
psychology behind my comfort foods. Were also started leaping, So
I just take him on face value. I'm like, this

(09:27):
makes me feel good. This is the food I go to,
you know, you go home or Simpson, which is fine.
So um with comfort foods. The fact it's like donuts
for me and fried chicken for you, Like it under
underlines the fact that, like it's a really personal choice.
But apparently, um, there are kind of commonalities between say,
like men and women. Um, who over who wants what

(09:51):
when they're craving comfort food. Yeah. There was a study
in two thousand five out of Cornell that surveyed close
to three hundred sister undered men and women and found
that women tend to seek sugary things more than men do.
Men tend to seek out things like I do, like soup.
I gotta say it's a comfort food. Soup and steak

(10:12):
and things like that. Steak is a comfort food. Well,
I mean according to Cornell, but I'm saying for you,
is it a comfort food? Oh? I mean I love steak.
I don't know that I would say it's a comfort
food for me. It's like my body's like get steak, eat. Now.
That's how I end up eating a steak. It's not
like I'm feeling down, Josh, I could really use a steak.

(10:35):
That's never like it's it's rainy day and you're not
feeling a little blue. Yeah, exactly, Like a nice bowl
of soup sounds really good, but not Yeah, you're right,
not a not a toilet bowl, toilet seat size steak.
It's not what I'm going for when I'm looking for
comfort food. Uh. They also found that these cis gendered

(10:56):
men tend to use comfort food as the reward, while
women might feel guilty about it, uh, and that there
may be an evolutionary advantage for women when it comes
to that this sounds awfully made up. Oh you wrote it,
I know. I'm trying to suss out if I did
make it up. I don't think I did. So it

(11:16):
does sound editorial though, that that this idea that, um,
if if you are craving comfort food all the time
and you just eat it willy nilly, that's not typically
good for you. Because the foods that we crave for
comfort or not particularly nourishing or nutrient rich or nutrient dents,

(11:37):
they may or may not be bad for your junk food,
depending on your perspective about food. So I don't know
if that's like an evolutionary thing. That sounds like a
segue that I forced, but who knows. Well. There's also
the idea that if you are not eating something the
lack of that can physiologically affect your mood. Because there's

(11:59):
a fatty said called d h A h DACKO say
saw hexonic dacos to hexonic. I think, I think that's it. Yeah, okay, Uh.
This is a fat the most abundant fat found in
the human brain, and it's very important for brain structure.

(12:20):
And there's a lot of it in fish and shellfish.
And they've done studies and even though they're not um
their core correlative and not necessarily UH causal, they did
find lengths and other studies have confirmed links that in
places where people eat like Taiwan, where people eat a
lot more fish and it's a big part of the
diet than uh, people are happier. Yeah, ten times the

(12:43):
prevalence of depression in areas where they don't eat a
lot of fish. And I do say, although this doesn't
prove causation, it's a pretty good reason to eat more
fish and other chores containing d H A. And that's true,
I mean, like, what's the problem eat more fish? Like
if even if it doesn't say yes we linked d
H A and lack of it to depression, just eat

(13:05):
some more fish. If you see a study like that,
there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, I feel really defensive
about about this episode. I feel bad that I didn't
tell you beforehand. I kind of wanted to see what
would happen. Well, I I hope you're ashamed of yourself
for how it turned out. I'm gonna keep doing this
and just pop them in there. I mean now and
then CEF record. Now, I'm going to be on the lookout.

(13:27):
I'm gonna be super paranoid. You got anything else, I
got nothing else? All right, Well, since Chuck's got nothing else,
so I got nothing else. The humiliation ends here. Stuff
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(13:49):
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