Learn about why you get sleepy after you eat, and how to prevent that inevitable food coma; an easy way to avoid raising materialistic kids; and current efforts to save the world by creating a circular economy, with 3M Chief Sustainability Officer Gayle Schueller. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Food Coma? Here's Why You Get Sleepy After You Eat There's an Easy Way to Avoid Raising Materialistic Kids Additional resources from 3M: 3M Sustainability — https://3m.com/sustainability Follow @3M on Twitter — https://twitter.com/3m Manufacturing giant 3M commits to 100% renewable power for global operations | RE100 — http://there100.org/news/14285888 Six new members join the CE100 network | Ellen MacArthur Foundation — https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/news/six-new-members-join-the-ce100-network-1 3M and Clean Air Asia Act on Climate Change with New Air Pollution Initiative — https://news.3m.com/press-release/company-english/3m-and-clean-air-asia-act-climate-change-new-air-pollution-initiative Reinventing warmth with recycled plastic — https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/sustainability-us/stories/full-story/~reinventing-warmth-with-recycled-plastic/?storyid=9b569514-1e4a-4891-87be-36477aeee013 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about why you get sleepy after you eat, and how to prevent that inevitable food coma; an easy way to avoid raising materialistic kids; and current efforts to save the world by creating a circular economy, with 3M Chief Sustainability Officer Gayle Schueller.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Additional resources from 3M:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/food-coma-science-how-to-avoid-raising-materialistic-kids-and-3m-on-building-a-circular-economy
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why you get sleepy after you eat, and how to prevent that inevitable food coma; an easy way to avoid raising materialistic kids; and current efforts to save the world by creating a circular economy, with special guest Gayle Schueller from 3M.
CODY: And if you’re listening here in the US, then Happy Thanksgiving! Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Food Coma? Here's Why You Get Sleepy After You Eat — https://curiosity.im/373ldkt (Ashley)
Thanksgiving is just one of many wonderful holidays for enjoying friends, family and food! Of course, it’s a lot easier to enjoy those things when you’re awake. And that means that the last thing you need is a food coma! You know the feeling, right? You’re just SO sleepy after the meal, all you want to do is take a nap. Fun fact: in scientific terms, this is called postprandial somnolence. [post-PRAN-dee-uhl] "Postprandial" means “after a meal,” and "somnolence" means “drowsiness.” And I’m about to tell you why it happens AND how to avoid it.
When you eat, your pancreas releases insulin to help your stomach absorb glucose from the carbohydrates in the meal. This insulin also sends a variety of amino acids into your brain, including the sleepy chemical known as tryptophan. When you eat a meal that’s high in carbohydrates, you get a larger spike in insulin — along with more tryptophan heading to your brain. That’s why you don’t fall into a food coma after every meal. The first thing the tryptophan does is turn into serotonin, which makes you feel good. And then it turns into melatonin, which makes you feel drowsy. Glucose from the carbs also may block brain cells called orexin neurons, which are responsible for keeping you alert.
But let’s separate meal myth from feast fact. When you combine tryptophan in your food with all the other amino acids, hormones, and macronutrients you get in a meal, it doesn't have much of an effect. So stop blaming the Thanksgiving turkey! It has less tryptophan than chicken anyway. Plus, high-protein meals don't have the same sleepy effect, since protein tends to promote the release of more stimulating amino acids.
So, if you want to avoid getting sleepy after you eat, all you need to do is eat a balanced meal. Try to not have too much starch or fat, and make sure your meal comes with enough veggies and protein. Also, watch your portions and eat slowly so your body's hormones have time to balance out. This will keep the food coma at bay so you can really enjoy the festivities. Bon apetit!
There's an Easy Way to Avoid Raising Materialistic Kids — https://curiosity.im/2Oga1YT (from Friday 11/29) (Cody)
You’re about to learn an easy way to avoid raising materialistic kids. And this is important because sometimes kids can become very fixated on STUFF. Hot new gadgets, designer jeans… and sure, a lot of the time, this is just a phase. But sometimes, it can blossom into a lack of generosity — and even lifelong mental health issues. Fortunately, parents can do something to make sure it doesn’t last. And I can sum it up in one word: gratitude. In a 2018 study in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers found that adolescents who had what they called "grateful dispositions" were less likely to be materialistic. They also found that keeping a daily gratitude journal for two weeks reduced teens' materialism, AND made them more generous with their money. The first part of this study was a straightforward survey of 870 adolescents, aged 11 to 17. The kids and teens rated how much they agreed with statements that were designed to measure their levels of materialism and gratitude. And the researchers found a major negative correlation between the two traits. The second part of the study had another 61 participants take that same survey, but then about half of them kept a gratitude journal, where they wrote down who and what they were thankful for. They all re-took the gratitude survey after 2 weeks, and the ones who’d kept gratitude journals were more grateful and less materialistic. That group was more generous than the control group; at the end of the study, the kids were each given 10 one-dollar bills, and a researcher told them they could either keep the money or donate any amount of it by dropping it in a lockbox. The adolescents who kept gratitude journals donated 60 percent more than their peers. And sure, it might sound pretty obvious that gratitude journaling boosts ... gratitude. But the results of this study also establish a causal link between gratitude journaling and a decrease in materialism. And figuring out how to become less materialistic is important, because materialism is linked with lots of health issues, including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. That tends to hit adolescents extra hard since a lot of the time, materialism and insecurity go hand in hand, and there's no more insecure time than middle and high school. Which is all to say that focusing on gratitude could be a powerful parenting hack in our materialistic culture. And there's no reason it has to be just for kids. Adults can start gratitude journals, too!
[SKURA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Skura Style. When’s the last time you replaced your sponge?
CODY: Your sponge is a pretty important part of your kitchen, especially when you’ve got an extra-high pile of dishes after hosting a big holiday dinner. So you’re gonna want to keep that sponge clean. But according to research, the average disgusting, soggy sponge sitting in the kitchen sink can be 200-thousand times dirtier than a toilet seat. Fortunately, Skura can help.
ASHLEY: Skura Style sponges are made of a patented polyurethane foam and are antimicrobial so they don’t smell. Microbiologists recommend changing a kitchen sponge every one to two weeks. And Skura helps you do that super-easily with their “Fade-To-Change” technology. When the Skura logo rubs off, you know it’s it’s time to swap your sponge! And SKURA’s easy subscription plans mean you get sponges delivered right to your door, so you don’t even have to think about when it’s time to swap them out.
CODY: Skura sponges also harbor 99-point-9 percent less e.Coli than cellulose sponges. And they’ll rinse clean, dry fast, and keep their shape. So go to Skura-style-dot-com now - enter CURIOSITY in the promo box - and get your first month free. Just pay for shipping; you can cancel at any time.
ASHLEY: That’s S-K-U-R-A-style-dot-com. Try the sponge seen on the Today Show that was called life changing. That’s Skura Style. S-K-U-R-A STYLE-dot-com.
CODY: PROMO CODE CURIOSITY
Gayle Schueller - Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at 3M [2:18] (Ashley)
There’s a lot of doom and gloom around pollution and climate change these days, but some companies are doing some pretty cool stuff to help save our planet. So today we wanted to wrap up with a guest who will give you something to be thankful for. Gayle Schueller is the Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at 3M. Earlier this year, 3M became a member of both the RE100 and Circular Economy 100, which means they committed to advancing renewable energy and a global circular economy. Here’s Gayle with more on what that means.
[CLIP 0:40]
If this idea of a circular economy sounds familiar, then you’re a good listener: we talked about it with the fashion industry during our Sustainable September mini-series. During that series, we also talked about the challenges of recycling plastics, so here’s what we asked Gayle about that.
[CLIP 1:38]
Gayle told us that 3M is working with suppliers on new ways to do plastic recycling to help give it a longer life, whether it’s for food use or health care. Makes you feel good about the future of our planet, doesn’t it? And that’s not all: in September, 3M announced a five-year partnership with international NGO Clean Air Asia, aimed at improving air quality in New Delhi and Metro Manila. Gayle told us that right now they’re trying to understand the root causes of the poor air quality in those areas, and then figure out how to take action to make the biggest impact and really make a difference. Again, Gayle Schueller is the Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at 3M, and you can lean more about all the great things all of these organizations are doing at 3M-dot-com-slash-sustainability. We’ll also put links in today’s show notes.
What we learned: So aluminum is a great model, and there are glimmers in science like chemical recycling processes that might help us take plastic to the same place.
25
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Mae Rice, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity.com.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!