Transcripts For CSPAN2 Rachel Herz Why You Eat What You Eat 20180224

Doctor rachel who is a neuroscientist, a leading world expert on the Psychological Sciences and someone who i am very lucky to have as a colleague and friend and in addition to numerous awards and grants for Research Record accumulated over nearly the last 30 years since more than 80 original research articles, multiple scholarly books and several academic and Popular Science books including the college textbook, hello students, in its fifth edition and the sense of desire and that is disgusting unraveling the mysteries of evolution. Shes a thought after a special consultant to various industries regarding smell, taste, food and labor indisputably called upon as an Expert Witness in legal cases involving affection. Students are lucky to work with her and shes an adjunct professor here at brown and the medical school and i love working with her as part of his studies at brown and its a new initiative for research and teaching and projects related to. This evening you are in for quite a treat to hear about her latest fascinating book why you eat what you eat, the Science Behind our relationship with. Please join me in welcoming doctor rachel hurst. [applause] thank you so much. I hope i can live up to that instruction. Thanks for being here. I thought i would give you a little tasting sampler for my book reading various sections to you and after words have a q a and see what happens. Not necessarily in the order that things are written in the book but i will start off with something about taste which is in the beginning and the chapter called the fab four and i will read to you about sweet happiness. It is unsurprising that people with the proverbial sweet to have less control over their ability to resist suites and tend to be somewhat heavier than people with less of a penchant for sugar. That is but extra like the sweet taste is also coupled with extra pressure from eating it. Lovers get more happiness from treats the experience stronger positive mood swings than those who are just onto sugary foods. How much of a suite to view have also determined how much people like you and how nice you are. In an Extensive Research project conducted at north Dakota State University and Gettysburg College in pennsylvania it was found that eating sweets and being sweet were highly correlated. First, it was confirmed that we believe liking suites and being sweet are connected. Strangers are described as looking honey were rated as earlier, more cooperative and more compassionate than the strangers were described as liking grapefruits, lemons, pretzels or hot peppers. That is a bitter, sour, salty and spicy taste. To further experiments show that people who [inaudible] they were more cooperative, kinder and exhibited more altruistic behaviors. They volunteered in Disaster Relief effort completing assisting a stranger. Another that after brief taste of a chocolate compared to a non sweet fruit such as a plain cracker or know it all people felt they became more agreeable to think that it wasnt just talk they also volunteered more of their time to help someone else. This means that a little sugar can give us more sugar pretty decently sweet makes us happier in nicer regardless of how much the sweet tooth we. Sweet taste brings her mood and on the flipside how sweet something taste is affected by the mood you are in. A study conducted at the university of minnesota investigated how stress might change taste perception. On the rest day placements watched a nature film for 30 minutes and on the stress day they underwent 30 minutes of [inaudible] including performing public speech, doing governmental arithmetic problems and submerging a hand in ice water for 90 seconds. On each day following the stress looks. Participants rated the unpleasantness of salty, sour, sweet solutions. Feeling stressed versus wax had no impact on how pleasant the various taste solutions rated to be but on the stress day the taste of sweet, though not salty, sour, was perceived as noticeably weaker. In other words, stress makes sugar taste less sweet. This means that we need more sweetness to get the bang for our buck that we are looking for when we are stressed out. This may cause us to go for extra sweet treats when were frazzled and tense. To sum up tasting a little sugar can make us sweeter but we need to be careful not to overindulge when were not feeling so nice. Now i will move on to a section on the psychological aspects of the things that influence how we consume food and also the consequences of eating and review a section called the milk sake placebo from the chapter mind over monday. Placebo effects in which what we think alters how we feel can be a salvation in emergency situations. A wellknown battlefield for believing agony when Pain Medicine is an supply is to convince porter told her that a pill is morphing when it is nothing but sugar. Amazingly pain almost always subsides. Crisis management a wide range of placebo effects readily occur and its employees are told their jobs with exercise benefits they will lose more weight than their coworkers who are given this information and if people are convinced there is a correlation between athleticism and visual acuity they do better on a vision test after working out. Sleep deprived individuals believe that decaf coffee is fullstrength. It will leave their fatigue and mental fog and runners given a shot of salt water and telling them theyre getting performanceenhancing drugs will run faster and report spending less energy and having a speedier recovery. These are just a few examples. Believing that we will feel healthier, stronger and faster because weve taken the magical pill can produce powerful selfsealing effects. These mind over matter changes are just that. They are distractions, mental control and positive emotional state are all generally within our conscious awareness and that they have consequences on other psychologically driven estate such as energy level in pain perception is not extremely surprising. What would be surprising is the mind could influence what we seem to have no conscious control over such as our metabolism. In a fascinating experience colleagues at yale university. Normal weight, male and female catchments, and the residence for a shake testing study. At one session volunteers evaluated a french pill shake served in a bottle with a label indulgence and the alluring tagline decadence you deserve with smooth, rich delicious on the package. At another session they were given a personal essay called 70 shake tagline tollfree satisfaction and promoted as having 0 fat and added sugar. On both models the nutrition facts were highly visible in the top lines from a calorie content praying in at 624 indulgence but only 144 the other shake. Unbeknownst to the participants the shape was identical in both sessions and truly contained 34. The experiment involved more than just drinking a milkshake. At both sessions which were separated by one week in intravenous catheter was placed in the participants arm so that blood could be drawn for the drink and shake when they first tasted the shake in half an hour after they finished it in order to measure levels. [inaudible] is a hormone secreted by the court when it is empty. It signals the brain that is time to eat and it flows our metabolism so that we burn fewer calories just in case the pantry is bear and would have to carry on hunting for food without sustenance. After a hearty meal the levels drop. This drop also wraps up the metabolism so that we can burn the calories we just just by contrast after eating a garden salad for the dressing the levels dont budge and metabolism to start. In the theory the rise of [inaudible] in occurs in proportion to the calories we consume. In order to achieve a healthy Metabolic Balance between negation between our brain and our metabolism doesnt always follow the theological rules. The study found that when participants strengthen the indulgence shake their levels rose substantially after the first days at 30 minutes later had dropped an astonishing three times more compared to when they drink the other shake. When they drink the lowcalorie shake their levels remained virtually flat broke the entire session and in other words if the participants believed that they were drinking a highcalorie milkshake their body responded as if they had just consumed three times more calories than when they thought they had just downed a lowcalorie shake. Despite the fact that the two shakes were the same in all effects and number of calories they contained was actually moderately high. This means that simply believing that you consumed a whole lot of calories speed up your metabolism. You burn more calories and makes you feel less hungry and this is irrespective of the Actual Energy content of what you have adjusted. The milkshake magician, a leah who is now at Stanford University told National Public radio that labels are just labels but they evoke a set of beliefs and our beliefs matter in virtually every domain in everything we do. The cautionary takehome message is that being obsessed with buying food lowcalorie labels made that fire bicycling our metabolism so that you burn fewer calories than you would if you didnt know how many calories were in that lowfat container of yogurt. The body you need to attend is to convince yourself that what you are eating is a caloric static and even when it isnt in this is a very hard to accomplish labels printed directly on plastic containers and calorie content and low that everywhere you look. The better alternative is to just choose the bowler calorie version of whatever youre buying since the caloric differential usually isnt all that much. For example, half cup of non that vanilla yogurt contains a half at 1000 calories while half a cup of [inaudible] is only 10. Not only will your metabolism not be suppressed but the higher that content will make you feel full for longer. Lowfat also means high sugar. Our minds in the physical environment have a tremendous impact on our experience with food on the consequences of eating both psychological and physiological whether we want them to or not. Now i will move further ahead how the environment can influence our experience of food in our interactions with it and this is about how the shopping environment influences what we buy when were in the grocery and this is a section called byob or bring your own bag in the chapter buying indulgences. Increasingly stores are compelling customers to bring their own shopping bags by either penalty or persuasion. As of 2015 at least 30 us cities have imposed some sort of fan, fee or regulation on the use of thinfilm disposable bags. Elsewhere the practice of bringing your own reusable bag is becoming more psychologically in society rewarded. Many storage encourage this by incentives. Bringing your own Reusable Bags to the Grocery Store is good for the environment but it can also alter your purchasing behavior in ways you may never have imagined. In a groundbreaking collaboration Business School professors from Harvard University and a professor from Duke University conducted an analysis of shoppers behavior large commercial Grocery Stores in california between 2005 and 2007. Using data obtained from Loyalty Cards the researchers were able to ascertain what the shoppers bought and whether the shopper brought their own bag. In total information was collected for 884 households and almost 143,000 shopping trips. The result from this to your study revealed two major findings. First, as might be expected shoppers about their own bags bought more organic products. Second, stunningly byob shoppers put more indulge in foods such as desserts candies and chips on the checkout. Consumers see organic diamonds are likely to care about debarment and therefore are already conscientious about bringing their own backs. This study demonstrates that anyone who is susceptible to buying organic when they bring a reusable bag because buying it primes you to think about the environment. Even if you arent environmentally conscious generally your mind is now has Co Environmental thoughts since organic products are considered to be more environmentally ethical than conventional products into the shopping cart goes organic avocados. Visual cues to change behavior all the time and seafood as [inaudible] is a classic example but the effects can be more subtle. For instance when people see a picture of an exclusive restaurant for eating a snack to eat more neatly and with better table manners than if they were shown a picture of something unrelated. This is what you need to do little kids. Why does the bag encourage you to buy more treats . In this case it isnt so much the site of your bag but rather you feel virtuous because of your bag. This leads to licensing. The film entitled to give yourself a pat on the back because you just done a good deed and benefits to her it comes in the form of tasty calories. Treating yourself to a box of chocolate covered cherries is an easy way to reward yourself not adding to the landfill but the story isnt quite the symbol. They found that bringing her own bag did not always [inaudible] it was not affect all shoppers in the same way. If for Example Store penalize customers to not bring her back they do not buy extra candy bar they were still more likely to purchase organic over conventional egg. Therefore you have to feel that youre being virtuous of your own free will in order to reward yourself with a goodie. Even though having a reasonable bag still finds you towards organic produce. Another observation was that if the shopper had children and therefore was buying groceries for the family there was no difference in the number of organic products or treats they purchased whether they bought their own bags or not. You have to be fine to just be yourself in order for indulgent rewards and green party to the cold. Further medical director was whether the cost of those indulgent treats was made salient. If there was a big sign with the price rewarding yourself was eliminated probably because seeing price tags when youre pulling on your wallet remind you to be thrifty but again this only happens when you bring your own bags freely. The store enforces of byob policy then you buy fewer treats in place for the treat purchases you make are affecting how much they cost. The bottom line is that shop what you bring are more likely to treat the environment and sells well by doing something virtuous may not be as grand as helping the environment but merely doing something beneficial for yourself shifts the reward switch. With the cards of over a thousand shoppers at a large east coast supermarket were tracked with radiofrequency tags that after shopping in the virtuous produce ill and putting kale and grapefruit into their cards customers next stop is most likely the vice sections, the alcohol or ice cream department. In other words we reward our Good Behavior with hedonism and keep a subconscious tally of what we are doing to maintain a balance between our virtues in our places. We are especially assiduous about this when it comes to caloric intake. In a recent study on dieting that follows the progress of 126 people over a sixweek period the more weight they lost in a given week the less they would lose or the more they would gain the next week. We are extremely good at keeping our behavior in weight balance whether we like where its balanced or not. In fact, this is a major reason why most diets fail and why inherently then people dont become recklessly generous after making one donation. Indeed our inherent balancing act of food with bad extends far beyond food eating and we make poorly responsive decisions and was back to my life it can make us feel entitled to act immorally in others. I now will move back to the senses and talk about my favorite sense which is the sense of smell and review a section called aroma craving distractor. In 2013 a study conducted in the United Kingdom exposed women were trying to diet to the sense of fresh oranges or chocolate at two different session separated by at least one week. The women fasted for at least two hours prior to coming in for the experiment and either unwrapped chocolate or broken into pieces or segmented in orange with a knife. In each case they inhaled the aroma that was released several times. It was then removed and participants next had a snack reading test. Fresh orange slices, pieces of cereal bars in the same type of chocolate were placed on a tray and participants were told to help himself to his much as each bit as they needed in order to judge how good it was and how much they wanted to eat it. The participants then came back a week later were exposed to the aroma they hadnt previously spelt. Either orange slices or chocolate and to the same food rating task. No differences were found. On the day and when the participants felt fresh oranges they consumed 60 fewer calories than the snack test on a than they did when the small talk. One explanation for why smelling fresh orange produced subsequent taking her to chocolate is that since aroma sparked the emotion and Memory Centers of our brain the sense of oranges cute and motivational memory reminding the dieters of their longterm weight loss goals resulting in controlled intake. Great food aroma [inaudible] alternatively the sense of chocolate was so learning that participants were driven to eat above and beyond because they couldnt resist the chocolate aromas deliciousness compared to the orange sense. Chocolate is by far the most craved food in western culture especially in women. Tempting to resist that only increases the temptation. Once you become [inaudible] on chocolate thinking about it more treats the craving instructor. These attempts at the university in australia conducted several experiments and found that non chocolate aromas indeed specifically nonfood aromas help reduce cravings for chocolate and other treats by intruding into are elaborated food fantasies. In the first study presented colleges with 30 highresolution photographs of appetizing chocolate delights. Such as chocolate cake and brownies. Each paragraph is displayed for five seconds and dispenser told to think about the food and how much they wanted to eat it in the following eight seconds. While they were thinking about the food they just think they simultaneously sniffed either water, nonfood order such as jasmine or a food order such as green apple. Then they rated how much the craved food from no urgent all too extremely strong desire. What the person smelled while imagining the chocolate delicacies had a big impact on how much they wanted to eat. When participants small jasmine there craving for chocolate goodies was 30 less than when they sniffed green apple or water. This shows that sniffing an order unrelated to interferes with food cravings because it disrupts our thinking about eating. [inaudible] shows that nonfood orders are better than other sensory cues at reducing our food urges. For this study she and her colleague compared the effectiveness of sound versus sent on controlled. When participants were presented with photographs 30 delicious savory and sweet foods such as pizza and ice cream and picture of the treat was shown five seconds and the participant was told to imagine eating it following eight seconds. This time however mother thinking about issue they either smelled and unfamiliar mildly unpleasant odor called methyl acetate smells like lou but in a good way or heard his words were just stared at the blank computer screen and rated there craving. [inaudible] the glue like small reduce cravings by nearly 20 for sweet foods and 25 perceive reasons. At 2016 study published in the journal further confirmed that the incongruence between tempting treats and nonfood aromas herbs cravings. The students were shown chocolate desserts and exposed to fresh citrus with the sent there craving for chocolate indulgences were 30 lower than when they were given no sense. By contrast when participants mold vanilla eating and cravings shot up by 20 . Most likely it isnt that grapefruit, olive oil, orange, jasmine and freshman sense are the secret to diet aromatherapy rather any odor that elicits similar types of thoughts motivations and sensory associations will do the trick. Nonfood aromas help us resist certifications by triggering associations such as stress and passion. The sense of Healthy Foods can remind us of our wiser food intention or direct our inclinations toward similar low calorie. In other cases senses connected to [inaudible] make food see more decadent and therefore we are satisfied reading lots of it. When it comes to creating control simple technique has been tried is to find a nonfood order that you like but arent overly familiar with and at four in the afternoon when youre daydreaming about doughnuts without your aroma vial interrupt the sauce back to work. Affect your ability to smell it is increase the acute at this time of day as a bonus. If you dont already have a stash of aroma you can try a sense from Previous Library which has over 200 different everyday since ranging from iconic to unusual including grants, greenhouse in moving along with various hormones citrus and decadent aromas. Owners trigger our most emotional and evocative memories. Therefore the most way to use them as a diet aid is defined in aroma or several only distracting thoughts of doughnuts but triggers personal memories potent enough to disrupt what you were thinking about, doughnuts or otherwise. Aromas that take you one trip down memory lane for transport you back to a moment when you are especially filled with fire you with feelings of competence can rent you from your cravings while also delivering a punch positive emotion that gives you the fortitude to move beyond your permit into desires. The key is to find the aromas that are particularly evocative for you. Due to our unique experiences the sense connected to the most motivating memories are different for everyone. Once you found aromas that carry you to special moments in time or uplift you with inventory emotions try in healing one with the craving that he wanted to dispel hits. Even after the intensity of the memory feelings paid now you have reoriented yourself mentally your cravings should be diminished. Get on with what you are doing without succumbing to temptation, at least for a little while. Orders in case are extremely powerful sensory forces and they guide and shape our experiences of food in a multiple of its ordinary ways. They are also many other psychological factors the paper for roles whether we reach for a burger or banana and how much we eat when we do. Thank you very much. [applause] and if anyone has questions there is a microphone coming around. [inaudible] [laughter] that is an interesting question. There are two things going on and in this case it was just to be a nonfood order that was distracting and completely and growing category so glue and who do not relate but its more of a kid where that school had glue. It was an order that was particularly Pleasant View i would expect that there would be even more of a deterrent because from the point of view of discuss that would be definitely a turnoff for food but most people are not really willing to discuss things in a lie. The idea is to find something that is not in order that is somewhat familiar but that is something you be willing to smell because if youre going to do this in a tactful way you would want to smell it. But for something unpleasant that would be completely annihilate the urge to. [inaudible] there are a variety of different small food kiosks where you probably have noticed in the Shopping Mall to make it seem as though there cooking giant ovens that are invisible but there arent. Cinnabon has a classic example. There aroma of cinnamon is extremely intense and alluring and there is no one baking cinnamon buns anywhere. Nearby. Coffee establishments often will do the same kind of tricks, restaurants as well if theres an Italian Restaurant often they will pipe out garlic aromas and this is to lure people in by their noses that if you smell something appetizing it will not only make us want to eat but make us 20 that specific food. There is specific marketing in a way that is being done to a certain extent. There are also things that restaurants dont realize are doing which have counterproductive effects on eating especially the more expensive restaurants and trendy restaurants just playing loud music and even though that may be cool it actually has a detrimental effect on your experience of eating for two reasons, one because really loud music and especially fast music makes you eat more quickly and makes want to leave more quickly so that you are not getting the full enjoyment of the meal and another thing has to do with the fact that loud noise influences our ability to taste and this is why on airplanes food never taste very good even when you are in first class and that is because allowed ambient noise also affects one of the cranial nerves involved in our ability to taste food so the nerve involvement hearing is often involved in taste perception and really loud noise which is activating that has a dampening effect on his feet taste and salty taste, to taste that we like a lot. Whatever you are eating when it loud like the 8090 db on an airplane will taste as good but it doesnt affect bitterness so the grapefruit that you get in your morning transcontinental fight is really a better and doesnt have any of the sweetness or much of the is as you thought otherwise. Loud noise in restaurants like i said i dont think it has a detrimental impact on diners experience. The point you just made are there different patterns or desires with food intake if you were eating alone or at the dinner table people and your. Out conversation. Absolutely. The number of people you are with exponentially imposes how much you consume. If you are eating with six other people its much more than that and even eating with strangers makes you although not to the same extent and theres another factor that you also mentioned in question which is that what you are doing with those other people talking vigorously been excited and if you are especially something celebrating that encourages more eating and the food is also in front of you for longer than you keep on reaching into it and another interesting thing is if you dont see the discard from your food so lets say you went to a bar with your friends after a softball game and you are ordering nachos and chicken wings and the servers continuously clearing the table so that you dont see how much you consumed you will keep ordering another round of chicken wings over here compared to if you see the bones piling up they are more likely to say hold on a second so the social environment has a big impact. What you recommend and how to balance neurological happiness as to how we balance how to eat healthy but also indulging when we find [inaudible] you say in the book theres a lot about this and how that makes you feel better if you are indulging but how to balance in your life . I have a couple of take a messages. Moderation and variation. I want people to love food and eat anything they want to eat but obviously not to the extreme accent. Moderation and with that also another subtext is common sense. You can realize when youre over consuming something and its probably you gone overboard you should bring it back in and is using common sense that. The example of salt and salt is a good example to see where this comes in to play, physiological perspective as well. The Heart Association salt is a low realm of being the healthiest and it turns out that from a major study that was recently conducted people who were consuming what the american Heart Association was recommending and that most from versus people consuming more than that compared to people who were consuming much more than that those in the middle for the healthiest. They were healthier from a whole variety of related things like Blood Pressure and so forth and people who were consuming the smallest amount so again its the goldilocks effect. Another thing important respect to this, nutritional perspective is variation. You want to. The foods you want to eat. You want to make sure that youre getting a lot of different foods because thats the healthiest and actually you will get from the pleasure of it if you mix things up a little bit so if you go to is chocolate caramel ice cream and you always have that then maybe one day in the cheesecake it would taste better than you expected and going back to the ice cream would be an extra bonus so we dont want to cheat on food even when its pleasurable and want to take in as many different types of sensations as possible from a health perspective. I havent taken diet soda in ten or 15 years but i would get hungrier after having a diet soda. Is there a fact of that versus sugar soda. Diet soda is really bad for a whole variety of reasons and there were studies in there still so is being done but there were a number of classic study saying that aspartame one of the main ingredients in diet soda as a sugar replacement increased appetite and people tended to eat more than they did from regular cola. This is specifically something with the estimates of but using non clerks nurse have a variety of detrimental effects on your metabolism and in fact its dangerous if not more so for developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome as consuming real sugar and there are two reasons for this. One reason is that these non clerks nurse actually alter our microbiota so they because they are constituents are not part of our regular intake of foods our bodies respond to them differently in the produce more different bacterias and they tend to eliminate others in our internal physiology changes from that fact and its been shown that micro is linked not only to everything but linked to metabolism and obesity in the likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome as well as linked cancer and depression and so many other things right now. In addition to that what happens when we have non clerks nurse is that it tricks our brain into thinking that we are getting sugar and that causes our body so when you normally eat sugar your body releases insulin, insulin then has a specific response and your body is dealing with carbohydrates you have consumed and metabolizes and so on but if you are consuming a lot of non clerks nurse and influence is getting released you get into this chronic level of insulin production which is one of the precursors to diabetes and metabolic syndrome so another reason to avoid non clerks nurse unless theres a real serious metabolic reason why you cant have them but the better thing to do would be to either have the real thing occasionally or to something else. [inaudible] yes, theres a lot of interesting dichotomies between the smell and taste of things we like to eat and so during [inaudible] has a pungent aroma with not familiar with it find it disgusting and its a fruit in east asia that the fancy western hotels theyre not allowed to bring it inside because the other clientele dont like the smell of it but its a very popular print in that culture and there are a couple things going on. Liking or disliking for any different aroma comes from our experiences with it and so if we learned that this is a yummy fruit that we like the smell and if we think it is a disgusting thing then we will not like the smell. There isnt something inherent about the aroma that is good or bad fact its connected food for a wide range of population concern culture means that its really good. Teases similar. A lot of people they think im just telling the cheese maybe that aroma isnt so great in fact ive done research where we give people a file of the sentence and they cant see anything and in one instance we call it vomit and in another instance we call it Parmesan Cheese its the exact same thing and people think ive done a magic trick because actually that same chemical could be either or what you think it is totally changes your education of it. There you have the cultural connection being why you would like something or not and the flipside of that is coffee. People love the aroma of coffee but in the case and its too bitter and depending upon your taste sensitivity it could be actually better and thats why people at sugar or cream and some like that to tone down the bitterness. When i was young my mom would say just try it eight times and then you will like it. Is there to our bodies have an inability to override those pathways of assuming we dont like it or is that more you just said its going to past memories. Yeah, i dont know the magic number eight but definitely the more familiar we are something the more appealing it is so the more commonly we eat something or even just in the conduct of smell people who work in a meat rendering factory that when the first are working there its disgusting they become more familiar with it and they start adapting to the smell they hardly notice it and it becomes okay. The idea here is you become more familiar with as a food is its positive and encourage children to tie more foods if theyre willing to try again and tried again and again and eight sound a reasonable number because by the time you stopped counting in its become familiar enough that you are okay with it. One thing that is interesting to to the point memories and sensations is the foods that are parents made for us as children often become computer for us as adults. Speaking of tunafish, my mom used to make this tunafish and rice price that i will not sound appetizing but to not rise mayonnaise and that was what to make often they were going out for dinner and i like tunafish and was warm and creamy and to me that is something really good but only because of the fact it was given to me in a certain context and now as in all that i have that association. Ive never had that association to eat to not rise and mayonnaise left its all to do with the connection we have. Where does the burden of the texture come from . [inaudible] people are different in terms of their sensitivities and tactile sensitivities which are also involved in taste so we feel foods so we feel the creaminess of fat in the crunchiness and we feel that some foods have a rust coding and whether they liked it or not become sensitive to things like people who are more sensitive to tactile food or not [inaudible] itchy sweaters and feeling like something is bugging you on your leg where someone might not notice that and so one of the tactics also for doing the children with picky eaters this is one of their issues. They dont like to feel the touch of food is to get the more familiar with touching Different Things to get them touching slimy rocks or jello or things before you start trying to force them to try to eat foods that have different textures that can help with the transition to foods that have textures they might not be so accepting of. [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] yes to everything you just said. [laughter] learned taste aversions which are the classic example that you mentioned that certain alcohol, tequilas was classic because it has such a strong aroma can turn to Something Like vodka is quite neutral in terms of aroma but in this instance you ate a mushroom casserole and then considerately came down with a stomach flu that night spent the whole night in the bathroom the smell of mushroom casserole is less than uh would be totally aversive to you. This is based on good biological mechanisms because in nature if you just in something that is poison to you and your sick from it you do not want to eat that again in the aroma is a tell because salt, sour, sweet or bitter you want to know what specific that aroma of mushrooms and whatever else you want point. Those are hard to undo and time can help heal but it often doesnt so one thing that is most beneficial is try again as many times as you can if you can push yourself if something want to try to eat again. It is interesting you say you feel like time has cured that because i think it could possibly work to some extent but it definitely that when we feel sick and then will we do to stay away from those who a long time and we can bring them back in the first associations with a negative are powerful and theres a lot behind us. There was an interesting story done where people were planted with a false memory of a tasty version where they were told this is a big story and im not sure if you with Elizabeth Moss was done a lot of research on implanting false memories and she had subjects read a document that is a printout file something that happened to them as a child computergenerated variety of information and one of the things that said was as a child they became sick after eating strawberry ice cream. People who have been given this information and other people were not given information and then later you had them grading a battery of foods and theyd had done this report and a whole different food embedded strawberry ice cream and the people who wrote the profile about themselves that supposedly from their little kid got sick from eating it rated the story ice cream is much lower than they had originally and the other people so you can create psychological taste. I dont recommend it but it is easy to do. Thats a powerful. Does the taste and smell change as you age and are there demarcations in your 20s you are stuck there, no offense,. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] getting older is not better. Everything declines as we age and our sense of smell, our sense of taste so tasting purely salt, sour, sweet and bitter that has affected last our sense of smell so bitter taste in all the taste for good biological reasons but maybe not for culinary delight reasons declines in the least so were able to taste better as it were another taste become less intense but our perception of aroma decreases with age and decreases faster in earlier for males and females overall and around age 55 ish is when the decline starts but it is different for everybody and like people dont need hearing aids or glasses there are the sons of small remains high well into their 80s and so forth so other people even in their 40s have dramatic of authors of smell so if in this earlier age group say if youre in your mid 40s and you are starting to have serious abilities with aroma that could be a sign for other serious neurological disorder specifically alzheimers disease and earlyonset alzheimers or parkinsons because while for the other symptoms especially the motor symptoms in the case of altheimer is the memory symptoms, and board the ability to not know what you are smelling is a classic symptom. If someone in that age starts having a problem it be wise to get checked out because that would be an Early Morning and you get medications to help it and better the progress untrained prognosis. [applause] will be sitting over there and if anyone wants to sign protect me. [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some books being published this week. If your mom read it and what his reaction to this line again, this is a fiction book. We were a madefortv family and when called action we had our marks and delivered our lines like post and the scripts were all the same and we had the formulas down. Actually, that didnt have much to do with my family but it does deal with popculture and theyre talking about the cosby show and when the cosby show came out a lot of people middleclass black people said finally on to be and theres a brownstone in heights and two parents who are professionals and in many ways the first time we saw ourselves in that particular way on tv. Popculture is very important to the main character and how people the world. His relationship to the cosby show becomes a way of talking about the lie behind that kind of cosby show fiction and of course, now we know bill cosby. [laughter] bill cosbys own life has underscored the separation between the Television Reality and how things are in the world and whether you plugged into the cosby show or [inaudible] or hiphop, pop culture becomes a way of filtering of the world in dealing with emotions. Like you said, i had to exaggerate to make this interesting that section has nothing to do with my family which is a proud family of non movie watching folks. The jet magazine really put in whenever black people are going to be on tv. Sure, i mean, in the 60s, 70s diane was going to be on the tonight show and so jet magazine weekly would have a runup of a listing of any black person going to be on tv. It was so rare and lovely that you know the black press would tell you when you are going to be on the. We have talked for an hour, colson whitehead, and we are you kicking me off . Im kicking me off and more broadly were getting american volunteer. [laughter] but we will begin with phone call from charles in albuquerque, next. Charles and thank you for your patience for neuron with author. Whitehead. Caller first of all, you dont have to say thank you. Its been wonderful. I enjoy listening to the show not only your insightful questions but porcelain opening up and letting us have a birds eye view into that magnificent brain of his and his greatest process. I had the blessing of being friends with one who won the National Book award for poetry and he talks to me about having to find the harvest time and sometimes theres asia to get up and drudgery in your stock in knowing how is his character developing and does this character have a life of its own and then colson was talking about making sure you maintain the movement of the book forward in the layer structure and things of that nature and also the beauty and difficulties in opening yourself up when you do historical novel the fact that you take creative license with what you are doing so it does help in terms of storage elements but being true to the story youre trying to convey is and my question has to do then with there has been so much amazing and interesting and the story developed that you talk of this idea in this plot and the structure in this background and certain times where he gets bogged down and not knowing exactly where to go where he wanted to take something but he persevered and got right those pages down and desperate yeah, so my friend said persevering in the face of where you have this daunting task ahead of you and it can be overwhelming and maybe you are just cranking out a few pages a day and if you talk about. Host lets see what and white house has to say. Guest thank you for listening. Its work in sundays you are definitely in tune with the project and everything is coming together and some days you are struggling. Periodparagraph and if you do one paragraph a day that is a victory. A novel is a marathon and even that one paragraph is a lot and for my own way of keeping thing is that if i can do eight pages a week thats a good accumulation. Thats 400 a year and thats a novel in a dorky way of thinking about it. Then some days you get up and you see a movie and read a book and maybe those eight pages are tuesday, wednesday, saturday and sunday and sometimes its tuesday through friday but it could be one page pages each day but if i get a pages thats where keeps me sane and some days i wake up and dont like working or not feeling it and i will improvise and that is worth. It doesnt take the same part of the brain but you are making progress toward the end of the book. You can watch this and other programs online at the tv. Org. For nearly 20 years in depth on the tv has featured the nations best known nonfiction writers with life conversations about their books. This year is a special project we are featuring bestselling fiction writers Monthly Program in depth fiction addition. During a live sunday march 4 at noon eastern with jeff was novel gods and generals was made into a major motion picture. His most recent book is the present hours. His other books include the final storm, to the last man, plus 11 more novels which recount the military history of america from the American Revolution to the korean war. During the program we will be taking your phone calls, pete and facebook messages. Our special series in depth fiction addition with author jeff live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on tv on cspan2. Rule number one on this conspiracy is that under mining your aspiration and when i say your aspiration and i need to be clear because this is primarily an audience of color but i said the same thing for mainstream caucasian audience last week in new york city and im going to say to everybody is that your problem today is not that you are black or white but that youre part of what i call the invisible class. You are invisible to power invisible 12 invisible district you dont feel like your vote counts and thats why hundred Million People didnt vote. Theres a very prominent guy in the media in a moment to say but hes done a lot of great things for social justice and civil rights but he didnt vote. It is proud that he didnt know. I have a problem with that because that then creates an environment where some people become elected to office the dont represent your interest or maybe even Public Interest but we endorsed that by not voting. When you feel invisible you dont show up in your own life. Its extremely important point which means the bad guys win. I want to make clear here that there is a bogeyman in your life but it is not just your life but 80 of everybody in america because 70 of all americans are living from paycheck to paycheck so if youre living in new york city making 70000 a year you are struggling to make intimates. Be living in atlanta, georgia making 50000 a year 40000 a year which is middleclass struggling to make ends meet. Can i get an amen question that was in a black a man or a white a man or an asian amen it was just an amen. Youre living in a small town in alabama making 30000 a year you are struggling to make ends meet. If you live in a white Rural Committee making 25000 a year are struggling to make ends meet. You have too much at the end of your money. A third of americans would have to sell their car to raise 3000. Did you hear that . 65 of americans dont have 500 for an emergency. Thats not a racial thing but a human thing. Theres something going on in the world and this is a global issue, by the way. 1 of the worlds population own half of the wealth of the world. I will repeat that. By the way, these are not just rich caucasians. These are rich asians, rich russians, yes, rich africans and these are just rich people from all parts of the world got the memo. You watch this and other programs online at the tv. Org. Sunday night on after words author tara talks about growing up with survivalist parents in the idaho mountains in her book, educated a memoir. Shes interview by author in journalist susanna. A lot of people seem to have taken to heart this idea that to learn something you have to have a degree and you have to have a whole institution in place to teach it to you. Im grateful to my parents but i was not raised to think that so when i decided i wanted to the college i was 16 it felt like something i could do, not because i had formal education but okay, i need to learn algebra i will buy a book and i will earn it. I didnt do an amazing job but i barely got into university but i kept going with that and yeah, my parents took it too far. I arrived at the university really underprepared and i want to raise my hand in class and asked what the holocaust was. I never heard of it. People thought i was in denying and i wasnt, i never heard of it before