ASM038 Picky Eaters, Fossil Fuels, and Why Siblings Fight

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picky eaters fossil fuels and wise siblings fight all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemike

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer questions about science faith and life bummer news this week the site that hosts our uh crowdsourcing crowdfunding campaign called patreon got hacked and i'll have more news about that at the end of the show how you may be affected if you help keep this show going but for now let's get it [Music] started hi sans mike my name is sage and i'm eight years old and i'm here to ask you a question of um um why do uh like older brothers or younger brothers and sisters fight so much together and me and my older brother um fight a lot and i and i was wondering if you could give me any advice on that thank you well hi sage you know i've got two daughters their names are madison and macy and they are ten and eight and they are two of the best people i know my daughters are so nice and well-mannered and fun to be around that lots of people like to spend time with them including grown-ups people always remark about how amazing madison and macy are and yet they fight all the time at home they get in arguments a lot they slam doors they get really really upset with each other that's completely normal and here's why you see growing up is all about learning how to be you and this is hard sometimes because you have a smaller body than adults and your brain has had less time to grow than adults but your feelings are just as strong as any adult's feelings are when you're young your feelings are the hardest to control that they will be of your entire life everyone kids and adults has to learn to balance two different parts of their brains the first part of our brain is very selfish which is actually good because this part of your brain is meant to keep you alive when times are tough but the other part of your brain is very social and likes to get along with other people which is also good you see people do much better in groups than they do alone we're not solitary animals we were designed to live with other people so kids are learning to balance these two sides of their brains and kids who grow up together usually in the same house like brothers and sisters are learning to control their brains and their feelings at the same time and so this creates conflict whenever these people want different things because if you think about it there aren't many relationships like siblings with siblings you have people with growing brains sharing space and trying to get as much attention from their parents as possible now science tells us that the closer two siblings are in age the more likely they are to have frequent conflict but all siblings have conflict this is because older siblings like to take charge and to some degree dominate their younger sibling while younger siblings just want to have independence and be able to do their own thing so if i had any advice for you there's a couple things i'd say first of all conflict is good your family will always love you and the conflict you have with your brothers or your sisters does help you learn really important skills like how to compromise how to negotiate and how to share space and things it seems tough right now but you're actually practicing skills that will keep you happy and successful for the rest of your life and that's what it comes down to when you realize you're having conflict when you realize you're arguing or fighting think about how you can keep things calm instead of making things hotter how can you de-escalate a situation how can you step it down and make it less emotional how can you move towards compromise where two people figure out how they can both get something of what they want how can you negotiate meaning how can you come to the terms of a compromise and when and how is it appropriate for you to share things that you don't want to share and for your siblings to share things that they don't want to share but most of the world's problems are actually very similar to what happens between siblings two people with different desires don't want to give up what's rightfully theirs and their perspective and believe it or not learning to get along with your siblings not only helps your life improve but as you become an adult and become more influential in the world you actually help make the world a better place by knowing how to negotiate compromise and share i've heard of oil referred to as a fossil fuel and that it actually came from fossils of some sort as their name implies can you explain the science behind that dinosaur bones are the rock stars of the fossil world everybody recognizes them everybody likes to see them in person and people get pretty excited anytime they get to stand next to a tyrannosaur rex that's how it goes bones aren't the only kinds of fossils out there you can have fossils that are impressions of footprints or skin you can have fossils that are impressions of plants you can have fossilized plants which is really different than fossilized bones that comes into play when we talk about fossil fuels it is a misnomer to think that oil and coal are fossilized dinosaurs the fact is oil is much older than the dinosaurs and uh for example oil is mostly made up of algae and plankton from the ocean when you fossilize that kind of biomass in the right circumstances you get oil which is interesting because we have oil at places other than the bottom of the sea and that's because sea levels change over time and plate tectonics move the land around so things that used to be under the sea are are now continental plates for example and you get oil coal is fossilized trees and ferns from long ago and interestingly enough based on again moving ocean sediment some of the sulfur problem we have with coal is related to those kind of migrations in and out of the ocean so it is absolutely true and scientifically accurate to call oil and coal fossil fuels because they are fossilized biomass and that's the problem with using fossil fuels as an energy source when you burn oil or coal you're taking the carbon that those plants pulled out of the atmosphere and putting it back into the atmosphere you're running photosynthesis backwards and if we burn all the fossil fuels we have under the earth we will return the atmosphere to a state more similar to what it was say 500 million years ago which is a problem because the earth was much hotter in those days you had palm trees on the poles uh and human civilization didn't develop in those kinds of circumstances we have been in an ice age the entire time that human civilization has been around an ice age is any time you have ice on the poles for at least part of the year now we're obviously in a little ice age nap if you will we don't have a snowball earth or dramatic glacier coverage on the continents but we are in an ice age and that's the circumstances we've developed in and the circumstances we're designed for a hot non-ice age earth has a lot of deserts fresh water is harder to get a lot of the plants we depend on don't especially thrive in it so it's a real problem that's why we get so concerned with fossil fuels as we're just running photosynthesis backwards and releasing the carbon from these ancient plant life back into the atmosphere basically putting the earth in a time machine taking it backwards pretty scary stuff [Music] hey science mike my name is jenny and i'm from seattle washington and i have a question about picky eaters my son who's almost five has never liked meat but my daughter who's three loves the stuff and will eat handfuls of beef and chicken both my kids love raw fruits and vegetables but don't like the cooked version i have family members that hate spicy food cilantro fish sushi even the seeds from a cucumber and then i have other family members that will literally eat anything even if it's burnt so with the diverse foods and cultures around the world what makes some people more prone to being picky and others to be more experimental is it cultural is it exposure is it something that happens to us as children can we outgrow it i love to hear the science behind why some people are picky eaters thanks science mike food is such a dramatic thing for humans it's absolutely necessary for our survival food sustains us we enjoy the process of eating generally but why we enjoy different foods is really complex it's an interaction of more than just our ability to taste smell plays a huge role our eyesight though how food appears to us plays a role in what foods we find appetizing for example you know pretty simple grade school experiment is you can take a steak put it underneath green light and most people don't want to eat it even though it smells good and tastes the same the green light makes it look unappetizing so when we talk about uh taste which itself is very complicated you have multiple forms of taste signals that are processed in the brain differently that combine to make a palette of all these different tastes that then get amplified by your sense of smell so let's look at some of the factors understanding that i could probably do an hour show on this and there would be plenty to talk about first of all absolutely there are genetic factors in pickiness when it comes to eating and among those a genetic sensitivity to bitterness is especially prominent in shaping the way people eat we've found that children who have high gene expression for being able to taste bitter sensations to have really strong sweet tooths they like sweet things that compensate for that bitterness although many adults don't show the same preference they still avoid more bitter foods but they don't necessarily compensate with sugar so that lets us know among many other data points that our conditioning can change our palate over time now early food exposure dramatically shapes the palette the first things we eat in the first year year and a half of life has a lifelong imprint on our dining preferences to some degree now this is this can be good or bad for many children exposure to stronger vegetable tastes lower amounts of sugar will help them develop a healthy palate but if you have an infant who might be a super taster which depending on what research i've read is either someone that has more taste buds than normal or someone who simply processes their tongue sends more intense flavor signals to the brain than a normal tongue or both they can be conditioned to not like these kinds of foods from overexposure because they have bad experiences so you have a combination of genetic factors and environmental factors and cultural factors that come in to create the preferences of your palette now the good news is that it can change over time picky children as they grow and frankly as their taste sensitivity decreases may have positive experiences trying foods they once found off-putting that happened to me i was an incredibly picky child i would hunger strike when my parents had the audacity to serve me foods that weren't white brown or yellow even in that very limited palette there were many foods i couldn't stomach i would actually wretch when i tried to eat broccoli or other vegetables that had a bitter component to them i was pretty locked in as a chicken strips and french fries kind of person until i started to date when the honey badger and i started going out that's my affectionate name for my wife for those of you who are new to the show she started serving me uh foods that weren't chicken strips and french fries and my affinity for her was greater than my antipathy for those foods oddly enough i found that when i tried them the things that she cooked i liked them that started a process of of culinary discovery for me to the point now where i'll eat pretty much anything and i'll try absolutely anything that's safe i actually eat a lot more than jenny does now because i've had these reinforcing experiences now that means i'm probably not a super taster the fact that my palate is so flexible it means that it's probably shaped by my early experiences which by the way when i say early experiences some scientists believe that what mothers eat can affect the flavor of the amniotic fluid in the uterus and that already starts shaping taste preferences of course breast milk plays a huge role as well as what mom eats can affect the taste of breast milk so what can you do if you are a parent of a picky eater or you're a picky eater yourself number one as early as possible introduce a variety of foods and limit the amount of sugar in the diet our brains are primed for it we tend to crave it the more sugar you get the more you're just gonna want more sweet things so as you can tone down the amount of sugar you can start to become aware of other foods and flavor sensations one thing i've learned to do with foods i don't like is simply hold them in my mouth for a minute because i might find that once the bitterness taste buds get saturated in my mouth i'm actually able to find other flavors in the food and i can start to train my brain to signal in on those other tastes and flavors instead of just focusing on whatever component of that food item i might find offensive it works pretty well because like your nose your tongue is a molecular sampler it works by actually temporarily binding to different chemical agents and if your bitterness receptors get full you're not going to have that intense sensation of bitterness anymore it's going to subside you become aware of the other flavors in that food that other people enjoy now it's got limited success there are some things that no matter how much i try i i just can't do it means there is hope conditioning can help picky eaters be less picky now with kids just never make it of a battle of wills that'll create a defensive child that just wants to win wants to assert their individuality so i tried to position new food experiences as an adventure as a treat as something we all do together as a family and then we sort of talk about our experiences with the food understanding it's okay if they hate it and spit it out the important thing is just they try it and see if they like it that's worked pretty well our kids are a relatively diverse eater certainly much more than i was as a kid but the fact is uh believe it or not the science of peak eating is relatively poorly understood considering how common societal phenomenon that is and your mileage may vary hi science mike i have a silly question i was wondering if you could tell me if there's a reason why when i'm freezing cold that my husband is always burning up this seems to be a universal couple problem and i'd love to just end the argument and say hey it's science there's nothing we can do about it thank you so much for what you're doing bye believe it or not the factors behind why people are hot versus cold natured are relatively controversial in science i had an idea of the answer i would give to this question and the answer i was going to give was subverted by research which happens sometimes on the show i blow up my own ideas about science as i answer your questions and this was one of those cases i thought i had a pretty good line on exactly why people are hot or cold natured and it turns out that my ideas are accepted by some scientists but not all so i'll tell you what we understand about this phenomenon but wow believe it or not we're in uncharted scientific territory here in terms of why people are hot or cold-natured first of all absolutely scientifically as population groups women tend to perceive a given environmental temperature as cooler than men do but that's as population groups this doesn't apply universally for example the honey badger is very hot natured she wants the air blasting all the time and i tend to be pretty cold nature my hands and feet get cold easily i like it a little warmer and as we've aged she likes it colder and colder and i like it warmer and warmer when we first got married i was the hot natured one and she was cold all the time so the first thing i want to say is not only are these not universally applicable to individuals although you can speak about them in groups men versus women they can change over time your naturedness towards temperature but here's some of the factors i found in science about what makes someone hot versus cold natured one is a surface to mass ratio smaller people have more surface compared to the amount of mass they have which means they radiate more of their heat out into the environment okay so that's one surface to mass ratio number two is your body fat percentage uh to some degree fat is an insulator and does prevent the transfer of thermal energy outside of the body's core which can make people feel warmer although often obese people actually feel colder because their skin is cooler than uh people with less body fat your body muscle percentage is a big factor muscle gen muscle generates a lot of heat it's a very active tissue even at rest but it also easily radiates heat into the environment another factor is your metabolism how fast you burn calories in action and at rest i'm sure you've noticed before that if you're cold you start moving around a lot you get warmer if you start running you can actually feel hot i know that when i'm training for a race even on very cold days when i run long distances i feel quite warm suddenly a 30 degree day feels about right for t-shirts and shorts if i'm going to run multiple miles and that's because our hormones play a role in our metabolism in addition to our activity level that's why for example my wife keeps getting more and more hot natured it's two pregnancies changed her body's chemistry enough that she became hot natured on the other hand i keep getting colder and colder likely because inactive thyroid runs in my family i should probably go to the doctor get that check to get a pill i might not be so cold all the time and some studies have shown that there is an absolutely neurologically linked significance to being hot or cold nature that there are characteristic differences in activity in the brain that predict whether someone is hot or cold natured so of course that's all very interesting what does it mean well humans don't sense temperature in some absolute sense we're not thermometers what humans sense is change in temperature over time we feel hot when we're not losing enough energy we feel cold when we're losing too much and this is a really easily shown in science especially with your hands if you touch a device that lets you have alternating warm and very cold spots on it that device will feel scalding hot even though you're in absolutely no danger of burning because your nervous system just measures a difference in temperature when we look at women they tend to have a larger surface to mass ratio they tend to have a higher body fat percentage but it's centered around their core so their extremities are colder compared to their core than is true of men as a group and what we found is when you find men who have similar attributes they're about the same size as an average woman they have about the same body fat percentage and body muscle percentage guess what they tend to feel remarkably similar temperature wise to women statistically now of course you might have an anecdote well i've got a cousin is whatever what i'm telling you is the data is clear when you adjust for size differences there isn't actually a big difference in the way that men and women perceive temperature of being hot or cold natured it seems to be a function of body size so why are men typically hot natured or more hot natured than women typically more cold natured because genetically men tend to be bigger this is one of the few genuine differences in the sexes i've come across that's not just culturally influenced the fact is men are larger larger humans tend to feel warmer in the environment now how do we solve the battle of the thermostat well as for me and my house i set it where jenny's comfortable i'll bump the air down even though i'm a penny pincher and it bugs me to pay the extra few bucks on the utility bill the fact is she's more comfortable with more cold air and so i grab house slippers and pajama pants and wear a jacket sometimes because it's easier for me to overcome my cold bias than it is for her to overcome her hot bias and only so much she can do to feel cooler whereas there's obviously a lot of options for humans to feel warmer where tropical apes we can't live anywhere but the tropics without clothing and shelter so we're well versed in the art of making the cold feel warm so i gotta say i give the nod to the hot natured people it's easier to set the environment in a way that makes them comfortable and for us cold natured people to bundle up and try not to shiver [Music] okay a few housekeeping things this week first of all as i mentioned at the top of the show patreon which is the wonderful site that helps this show keep going because it allows people to contribute monthly to its success got hacked because of a way they had their development system set up now the good news about patreon is they use properly strong encrypted passwords so your password if you contribute to the show was not compromised unfortunately other information was like your name email address your physical address all those bits of information you may have put into patreon your credit card number is safe because patreon doesn't store that they keep that with a credit card processor but here's the deal if you use your password on patreon on another site like you use it on your banking site or facebook or whatever you need to go reset those passwords and you need to reset your patreon password before i was science mike i was a computer nerd and because the hackers got the source code for patreon there's a good chance they're going to have the opportunity to crack a lot of those passwords and i'd hate to see anyone involved in the show get affected i don't think it's unsafe to keep using patreon right now if if i do then we'll we'll change payment processors but i think it's worth going ahead and changing your password and keeping an eye out for suspicious emails when people get your email address they might try to pretend to be patreon or pretend to be facebook or your bank and steal your password and wreak all kind of havoc so just be a little suspicious even more so of of the emails that come in and uh if you need help validating that they're actually from who they're say they're from go ahead and ask a nerd in your life for help i also want to let people know thanks for all your thoughts and your prayers and messages following dad's stroke he's doing a lot better a week later and although it's going to take a few months we're expecting he's going to make a pretty significant recovery he's gone from left side paralysis to use of his left leg limited use of his left arm he's smiling with both sides of his face again so things are going well and i would dare say your prayers are helping they really are and i've actually been overwhelmed by the amount of support there's been so many people texting me and facebooking me and tweeting me and filling out the contact form on my website to send encouragement that i've actually been buried under a mountain of notifications and haven't been able to get through them all yet but i appreciate so much that you guys care that you're praying for dad that is huge in my life now uh some things coming up uh later in october i'm going to be at st andrews united methodist in denver there's going to be a jennifer knapp concert and then we're going to ask science mike live and then i'll be doing the wildflower service there you can go to my website at sciencemike.com and click on events to get more information about that in november we've got belong in london and tickets are going fast for that guys if you've kind of been on the fence about going to belong i think this one's going to sell out so you can go to the liturgist.com belong or ask sciencemike.com and click on events and you can learn all about belong it's going to be a 130 people with me michael gunger lisa gunger and the honey badger talking about how do we create safe spiritual communities how do we find other people that can respectfully disagree and have discussions and how do we live in a world where science art and faith are changing the way that we look at our lives and how we look at god that's what belong is all about the one we did in atlanta was incredible and i'm expecting london to be just as good now of course if you're not in atlanta or london you'd say when's belong coming to me we'll probably do los angeles next there'll be more announcements about that we are working on it these things are surprisingly complicated just to get a room together and get people in it to talk i had never had any idea also in november i will be at storyline in chicago with don miller bob goff my friend jj from episode 20 of the allergies podcast a lot of really killer people shawn and equals still be there so uh if we i'd love to see you at storyline in chicago if you're in that area even you're not in that area that's that's definitely an event worth traveling for we're definitely going to do an ass science mic live tour in the first part of 2016 and i'm hoping in the next couple of weeks to get more information out about that honestly i'm a little behind it's been a few hours a day with dad and that's that's delaying some of my science mic work but that's important stuff now great questions coming in i couldn't be more happy with the quality of the questions i still would like to get more questions from women on the show women if you're listening i want your science questions i don't this is not a guy's show and i don't like the societal convention that science technology engineering math are boys fields i'm a dad with two daughters it's time to reclaim science for all of humanity so you can ask questions using the hashtag ask sciencemike on twitter soundcloud or youtube or you can go to asksciencemike.com and submit a voice or text question our show is listener supported if you go to sciencemike.com you can click on the patreon link and learn about that every single dollar helps it's literally how i pay my mortgage our show is produced by greg nordin and greg i gotta send you a shout out man with all the scheduling trouble i've had because of dad's stroke you guys greg is turning the show around on incredibly tight time frame so it's in your ears on monday morning this show would not be possible without greg's work if you get a chance to send greg a shout out on twitter this week it would mean a lot to me our theme song is by jeb botiford my polar bear sized best friend and so thankful for a theme song that not only explains what i do but also makes fun of me at the same time thanks for listening guys and i will see you next week [Music]