Why We Eat What We Eat
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2018
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Humans eat just like every other living creature. Have you ever wondered what drives us to binge eat, or spend too much time at the grocery store? And how does the food we eat impact us emotionally? We talk to Dr. Rachel Herz, author of "Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food," about the surprising science of food in our daily lives.
Dr. Herz is a leading world expert on the psychological science of smell, and has been conducting research on olfaction, sensory perception, emotion, motivated behavior and cognition since 1990. She holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and sometimes teaches in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University.
Additional resources discussed:
- "Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food"
- Dr. Rachel Herz website (RachelHerz.com)
- Dr. Rachel Herz faculty bio (Brown University)
- Diet beverage drinkers compensate by eating unhealthy food, study finds (Science Daily)
- U.S. News Best Diets: How We Rated 40 Eating Plans (U.S. News & World Report)
- Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again (The Telegraph)
- Does organic farming reduce environmental impacts? – A meta-analysis of European research (ScienceDirect)
- Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review (American College of Physicians)
- Conventional and organic foods: A comparison focused on animal products (Cogent)
- Grapefruit And Salt: The Science Behind This Unlikely Power Couple (NPR)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm curious, why don't we all just eat healthy? |
| 0:02.4 | Well, because we're actually programmed to love salt, sugar, and fat, |
| 0:05.8 | because we evolved in a landscape where a good calorie was hard to find. Hi, I'm Cody Gough with the delicious and nutritious curiosity. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm Ashley Hamer, and today we ask the question why do we eat what we eat |
| 0:26.0 | every day we explore what we don't know because Curiosity makes you smarter. |
| 0:29.6 | This is the Curiosity Podcast. |
| 0:34.6 | We all eat, and by we, I mean literally every living being on the planet. |
| 0:40.0 | But why do we eat what we eat? |
| 0:42.1 | Also, why do we have cravings? |
| 0:43.6 | What's really going on in the grocery store? |
| 0:45.8 | And why do we eat ourselves sick when we know we're full? |
| 0:49.2 | Today we'll get some answers from the author of the book, |
| 0:51.3 | Why You Eat What You Eat, The Science Behind Our |
| 0:53.8 | relationship with Food. Seems pretty appropriate for this topic. |
| 0:57.0 | Dr. Rachel Hurts is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human |
| 1:01.0 | Behavior at Brown University, and she's a leading expert on the psychological science of smell. |
| 1:05.6 | She's been conducting research on olfaction, sensory perception, emotion, motivated behavior, and |
| 1:11.0 | cognition since 1990. |
| 1:13.3 | So kind of a big deal. |
| 1:15.0 | This is a field that encompasses a lot of different disciplines, |
| 1:18.9 | right? |
| 1:19.2 | A little bit of neurology, a little bit of psychology, |
... |
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