Do you view soda as one of the worst, certainly not the best, but one of the worst culprits out there? I mean it is really prominent, especially nowadays also we should include energy drinks. A lot of kids, especially males, by the way, it's almost, this is crazy, it's almost 95% of energy drink consumption is males.

Interesting. And I don't know what is, maybe it's the packaging or how the marketing has been pitched. But by the way, as soon as I say that, someone will be in the YouTube comments telling me that that's completely false, but we can point you to the data. So what are your thoughts on sugary drinks and what that's doing?

How it's, do you think this is a reaction to how much stress people are experiencing? Is this like people's attempt to inoculate their stress or is it simply that it tastes good and it's easy to consume and it's relatively inexpensive? People have not, and we have not really studied the sugary drinks in the same way we have studied the comfort food and the binge eating.

And so my guess is that it is part of a stress response, but even more than that, it's part of the hedonic cycle. So when you get the sugar, especially if it's packed with caffeine, that's going to be a more addictive drink, you get this, you know, really feel good response right away.

And then you get the low and it's the hedonic withdrawal, so which is this, you actually feel bad when it's been a while since you've had it. And so then it drives the compulsivity. You want it again because you want to, not because you want to feel good, you want to get rid of feeling bad.

So that's what happens with both food addiction and we think that happens with sugary drinks. Now let me tell you that when you asked is a sugary drink one of the worst things we can do for our health, yes, because sugary food doesn't go to our brain as quickly as a liquid sugar, a sugary drink.

So think about cocaine and crack, crack goes to the brain immediately and it's that much more addictive. That's how we think of liquid sugar. The view on sugar I think is starting to change. And I think in the years to come, provided folks like you and Dr. Lustig continue to be vocal about it, which I hope you will, I think it's going to shift things quite a bit.

I look at it a little bit like trans fats. You know, when I was growing up, people ate margarine and now like trans fats are banned in many cities. Yeah. It's kind of incredible how these things have changed over time and it requires an effort not just on social media but podcasts and I think also lobbying, lobbying our politicians, really getting them to understand just how pernicious this stuff is.

There's a lot of social norms that go into like what's good for all of us as a group or community and what's personal choice. It's very fiery. You know, I've heard a colleague talking about how bringing junk food or soda to work is like passive smoking. You're bringing something in that's going to pollute other people's health and you shouldn't do it.

So that's much more edgy and people will fight them on that. But the basic reality is, yeah, we're going to eat the donuts if they're in front of us. And so, it is much more considerate to bring a bowl of fruit. I do love a good donut every once in a while.

Oh, me too. That's my weakness. I'm glad you brought up smoking. I don't want to take us off topic but as long as we're venturing into these general or I should say more general and yet really important themes around public health and food, yes, I learned something interesting about smoking and why so few people now smoke.

I always thought that the campaigns around smoking and how terrible it is for us showing pictures of lungs that are, you know, caked with all this tar and like, you know, cancer and all this stuff was the effective message. But what I learned was that one of the most effective messaging systems in the battle against smoking was to get young people to stop smoking, not by telling them it was bad for them, but by showing them videos of these rich men sitting around tables cackling about the fact that they're making so much money on the health problems of other people because of smoking.

In other words, what they did is they made being a non-smoker anti-establishment. And so, I find it very interesting anytime there's something like soda or highly processed foods that are so woven into the establishment, it seems like we can tell people until, you know, we're blue in the face about all the health concerns with these things, you know, sugar is bad and this is bad, highly processed food is bad.

Some people might change their behavior, but it seems like for the younger generation, the thing that's most effective is to activate their sense of rebellion. This has been true for probably hundreds of thousands of years, but it's certainly true in the last hundred years. And let them see that there is a very strong big food, sometimes big pharma, but certainly big food system that is working against them.

And that in order to take control of their health, actually we want to activate their sense of rebellion so that they're like, "No, I'm going to take excellent care of myself. I'm not going to fall victim to this monetary scheme." And here, I'm not pointing to any conspiracy. I mean, this has been seen with smoking, this has been seen with a number of different pharmaceuticals.

Again, not all pharmaceuticals are bad. This is true of a number of different aspects of kind of big marketing. Absolutely. Pull the blinders off, let people know that we're vulnerable to all the marketing and that there really are suppression of data behind a lot of it. So it's happening with eating disorders too.

Eric Stice, who's at Stanford with you, has been using this method, we call it dissonance, showing people with eating disorders how the food industry has been manipulative and has tried to design foods for addiction, for the highest bang for the buck with dopamine, etc. And so that has helped reduce eating disorders in these studies and it has even helped reduce reward drive.

Isn't that amazing that the dissonance could do that? So interesting. Yeah, I think what it's telling us is that few things are as strong as the, "No, I won't. I refuse to," response in terms of changing behavior, especially when there's something to push against. So it's not just a battle with ourselves, "I want the soda, but I'm not going to drink it." It becomes a, "Well, I want it, but I want it because you are making me think I want it.

I don't actually want that." So I don't know, maybe this is getting me back into my teenage mindset. But I think a sense of rebellion, provided it's in the direction of health, one's own health and the health of others, of course, can be a positive thing. Yeah. Well, we do that with the mindful eating.

We have them bring in the junkiest processed food they can think of, like a Twinkie, and eat that really slowly and mindfully. And few people finish it and are like, "That actually wasn't nearly as good as the picture of it and the idea of it." And so it's like that reward predictive error that you've talked about where they think the brain is driving them to have it because of the advertising and their expectation that they'll feel good.

But if they're really paying attention, it's a very disappointing experience, versus we also have people savor a piece of good chocolate, whichever they like, milk or dark. And that experience teaches them to eat slowly and really enjoy small amounts of rewarding food so that they don't need to feel full and binge.