How Sugar & Soda Impact the Brain | Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | Do you view soda as one of the worst, certainly not the best, but one of the worst culprits
00:00:10.000 | out there?
00:00:11.000 | I mean it is really prominent, especially nowadays also we should include energy drinks.
00:00:14.520 | A lot of kids, especially males, by the way, it's almost, this is crazy, it's almost 95%
00:00:21.080 | of energy drink consumption is males.
00:00:23.600 | Interesting.
00:00:24.600 | And I don't know what is, maybe it's the packaging or how the marketing has been pitched.
00:00:29.560 | But by the way, as soon as I say that, someone will be in the YouTube comments telling me
00:00:32.640 | that that's completely false, but we can point you to the data.
00:00:35.920 | So what are your thoughts on sugary drinks and what that's doing?
00:00:40.200 | How it's, do you think this is a reaction to how much stress people are experiencing?
00:00:44.220 | Is this like people's attempt to inoculate their stress or is it simply that it tastes
00:00:48.760 | good and it's easy to consume and it's relatively inexpensive?
00:00:52.660 | People have not, and we have not really studied the sugary drinks in the same way we have
00:00:59.400 | studied the comfort food and the binge eating.
00:01:02.440 | And so my guess is that it is part of a stress response, but even more than that, it's part
00:01:11.080 | of the hedonic cycle.
00:01:13.180 | So when you get the sugar, especially if it's packed with caffeine, that's going to be a
00:01:17.240 | more addictive drink, you get this, you know, really feel good response right away.
00:01:23.920 | And then you get the low and it's the hedonic withdrawal, so which is this, you actually
00:01:29.560 | feel bad when it's been a while since you've had it.
00:01:33.020 | And so then it drives the compulsivity.
00:01:35.280 | You want it again because you want to, not because you want to feel good, you want to
00:01:38.040 | get rid of feeling bad.
00:01:39.680 | So that's what happens with both food addiction and we think that happens with sugary drinks.
00:01:44.120 | Now let me tell you that when you asked is a sugary drink one of the worst things we
00:01:49.120 | can do for our health, yes, because sugary food doesn't go to our brain as quickly as
00:01:57.040 | a liquid sugar, a sugary drink.
00:01:59.840 | So think about cocaine and crack, crack goes to the brain immediately and it's that much
00:02:05.400 | more addictive.
00:02:06.880 | That's how we think of liquid sugar.
00:02:09.040 | The view on sugar I think is starting to change.
00:02:12.240 | And I think in the years to come, provided folks like you and Dr. Lustig continue to
00:02:18.360 | be vocal about it, which I hope you will, I think it's going to shift things quite a
00:02:23.120 | bit.
00:02:24.120 | I look at it a little bit like trans fats.
00:02:26.600 | You know, when I was growing up, people ate margarine and now like trans fats are banned
00:02:30.040 | in many cities.
00:02:31.040 | Yeah.
00:02:32.040 | It's kind of incredible how these things have changed over time and it requires an effort
00:02:37.040 | not just on social media but podcasts and I think also lobbying, lobbying our politicians,
00:02:43.520 | really getting them to understand just how pernicious this stuff is.
00:02:47.680 | There's a lot of social norms that go into like what's good for all of us as a group
00:02:53.040 | or community and what's personal choice.
00:02:55.440 | It's very fiery.
00:02:56.440 | You know, I've heard a colleague talking about how bringing junk food or soda to work is
00:03:02.060 | like passive smoking.
00:03:03.440 | You're bringing something in that's going to pollute other people's health and you shouldn't
00:03:06.640 | do it.
00:03:07.640 | So that's much more edgy and people will fight them on that.
00:03:11.320 | But the basic reality is, yeah, we're going to eat the donuts if they're in front of us.
00:03:16.640 | And so, it is much more considerate to bring a bowl of fruit.
00:03:20.200 | I do love a good donut every once in a while.
00:03:22.920 | Oh, me too.
00:03:23.920 | That's my weakness.
00:03:24.920 | I'm glad you brought up smoking.
00:03:27.080 | I don't want to take us off topic but as long as we're venturing into these general or I
00:03:31.080 | should say more general and yet really important themes around public health and food, yes,
00:03:36.680 | I learned something interesting about smoking and why so few people now smoke.
00:03:42.320 | I always thought that the campaigns around smoking and how terrible it is for us showing
00:03:48.000 | pictures of lungs that are, you know, caked with all this tar and like, you know, cancer
00:03:53.000 | and all this stuff was the effective message.
00:03:55.980 | But what I learned was that one of the most effective messaging systems in the battle
00:04:01.600 | against smoking was to get young people to stop smoking, not by telling them it was bad
00:04:06.720 | for them, but by showing them videos of these rich men sitting around tables cackling about
00:04:15.040 | the fact that they're making so much money on the health problems of other people because
00:04:18.880 | of smoking.
00:04:19.880 | In other words, what they did is they made being a non-smoker anti-establishment.
00:04:25.080 | And so, I find it very interesting anytime there's something like soda or highly processed
00:04:29.560 | foods that are so woven into the establishment, it seems like we can tell people until, you
00:04:35.840 | know, we're blue in the face about all the health concerns with these things, you know,
00:04:41.200 | sugar is bad and this is bad, highly processed food is bad.
00:04:43.960 | Some people might change their behavior, but it seems like for the younger generation,
00:04:47.480 | the thing that's most effective is to activate their sense of rebellion.
00:04:50.720 | This has been true for probably hundreds of thousands of years, but it's certainly true
00:04:54.080 | in the last hundred years.
00:04:56.120 | And let them see that there is a very strong big food, sometimes big pharma, but certainly
00:05:02.680 | big food system that is working against them.
00:05:05.720 | And that in order to take control of their health, actually we want to activate their
00:05:09.580 | sense of rebellion so that they're like, "No, I'm going to take excellent care of myself.
00:05:13.360 | I'm not going to fall victim to this monetary scheme."
00:05:15.800 | And here, I'm not pointing to any conspiracy.
00:05:17.280 | I mean, this has been seen with smoking, this has been seen with a number of different pharmaceuticals.
00:05:20.840 | Again, not all pharmaceuticals are bad.
00:05:23.240 | This is true of a number of different aspects of kind of big marketing.
00:05:27.600 | Absolutely.
00:05:28.600 | Pull the blinders off, let people know that we're vulnerable to all the marketing and
00:05:33.680 | that there really are suppression of data behind a lot of it.
00:05:37.400 | So it's happening with eating disorders too.
00:05:41.520 | Eric Stice, who's at Stanford with you, has been using this method, we call it dissonance,
00:05:47.400 | showing people with eating disorders how the food industry has been manipulative and has
00:05:52.680 | tried to design foods for addiction, for the highest bang for the buck with dopamine, etc.
00:06:00.620 | And so that has helped reduce eating disorders in these studies and it has even helped reduce
00:06:06.760 | reward drive.
00:06:07.960 | Isn't that amazing that the dissonance could do that?
00:06:11.560 | So interesting.
00:06:12.560 | Yeah, I think what it's telling us is that few things are as strong as the, "No, I won't.
00:06:19.320 | I refuse to," response in terms of changing behavior, especially when there's something
00:06:23.980 | to push against.
00:06:25.200 | So it's not just a battle with ourselves, "I want the soda, but I'm not going to drink
00:06:28.560 | it."
00:06:29.560 | It becomes a, "Well, I want it, but I want it because you are making me think I want
00:06:32.920 | it.
00:06:33.920 | I don't actually want that."
00:06:34.920 | So I don't know, maybe this is getting me back into my teenage mindset.
00:06:38.400 | But I think a sense of rebellion, provided it's in the direction of health, one's own
00:06:42.600 | health and the health of others, of course, can be a positive thing.
00:06:46.040 | Yeah.
00:06:47.040 | Well, we do that with the mindful eating.
00:06:48.040 | We have them bring in the junkiest processed food they can think of, like a Twinkie, and
00:06:53.040 | eat that really slowly and mindfully.
00:06:56.240 | And few people finish it and are like, "That actually wasn't nearly as good as the picture
00:07:00.200 | of it and the idea of it."
00:07:02.040 | And so it's like that reward predictive error that you've talked about where they think
00:07:08.720 | the brain is driving them to have it because of the advertising and their expectation that
00:07:13.400 | they'll feel good.
00:07:14.480 | But if they're really paying attention, it's a very disappointing experience, versus we
00:07:20.120 | also have people savor a piece of good chocolate, whichever they like, milk or dark.
00:07:24.960 | And that experience teaches them to eat slowly and really enjoy small amounts of rewarding
00:07:32.160 | food so that they don't need to feel full and binge.
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