Short Stuff: Bliss Point

The food we eat – especially the junk food – is a highly engineered technical marvel that’s designed to make you want nothing other than more! more! more! Learn about how food scientists make that possible by hijacking our brains. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh, Chuck, Jerry, not Dave, but Dave still anyway, the short stuff.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  That's right. Another banger of a job by you. Thanks to your research with Science of Food Journal, The Marketing Sage, Optimizing Nutrition, Across the Margin, our old friends at HowStuffWorks.com, Mashed and Panolian, the Panolian, whatever that is.

• 1:01Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yeah, they were all very good resources because this is kind of like a wide ranging topic. We're talking about bliss, the bliss point, which is essentially what food scientists have come up with to make you eat and crave junk food ceaselessly.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have a pretty startling stat here out of the gate. The average American consumed, and this was a few years ago in 2022, 126.4 grams of sugar a day, which is 101 pounds or 46 kilos of sugar per American per year. Some people say it's like up to 150, which is a ton of sugar. In 1915, that number was about 17 and a half pounds and processed foods were developed in that time span and that's literally to blame.

• 1:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And that's added sugar. That's not like the sugar from fruit. It's the sugar that you could like put into a package and sell at the store. That's the sugar that that they're counting right there.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  And there's a guy named Michael Moss. He wrote a book that you probably have heard of called Salt, Sugar and Fat. Came out, I don't know, within the last decade or so. But he talks about a market researcher named Howard Moskowitz. And Moskowitz basically gave us the food industry as we understand it today. And I looked up and down to see if he expressed any remorse at the end of his life and he doesn't seem to have been anything but proud of his work. But the reason he revolutionized the food industry is that in the seventies, he identified the idea of bliss points. Like, it was almost a discovery as more than an invention. And that is the perfect balance between fat, sugar, and salt in any given food product.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  It's not the same for every food product. It's specific to each individual Dorito or Cheeto or whatever. And if you do it right, people are just going to eat those things constantly, and they're not going to stop. They're going to have trouble stopping, in fact.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was what's known as a psychophysicist. And they are people who look at the relationship between a stimulus and your brain's response to it. And in this case, we're talking about taste as far as the stimulus. And then as far as our brain's response, it's like, I want to eat all of that that I can.

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And he was a, eventually became known as like a really pretty brilliant market researcher who would pump out these really detailed reports on consumer, on consumers consuming.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  And some of these could be like over 100 pages long, like really drilled down to like kind of weird levels of specificity and granularity.

• 3:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  And he would discover a bliss point of something. And I think he's really well-known for helping Prego, the saucier, come up with their chunky variety. And he introduced 32 different mustards and 17 different olive oils and a lot of other products to the market.

• 4:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And again, by just doing this exhaustive market research and interviews and focus groups and testing to just figure out what people wanted and then figure out how to make it so that the most people would buy it because it had maximal palatability.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we have bliss points for everything, basically. They're different for different macronutrients. Bliss points for junk food are just heavily engineered to do that. But there are natural bliss points, like protein satisfies people pretty quickly. So I think Marty Kindall says on the Optimizing Nutrition blog.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Had a pretty funny mistake that we beat down. That if a food has a protein content of just 14%, that's going to make you feel satisfied. And that's why a lot of high protein diets are recommended, because you're just probably not going to eat as much, because you can feel fuller and become satisfied more quickly.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and also, that's why you rarely find protein in junk food.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:59Josh Clark?

  They don't want you to feel satisfied. They don't want you to feel satiated. They just want that bliss point such that your brain's just like, "Keep going, keep going." And the reason why salt, fat, and sugar are focused on is because those three combined basically set off all of our taste buds.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18Josh Clark?

  So it really pumps out a huge message to our brains, saying like, "This is amazing. Let's just eat this forever." And like you said, everything kind of has a bliss point. And also, most foods, or a lot of foods, have these same three ingredients naturally. But again, these foods aren't really engineered to keep us going, to maximize the bliss point. They just kind of have a natural version in it. You know, like, an apple tastes good because it has its own bliss point. But it's not so highly engineered that you don't just keep eating apple after apple.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that would make you sick in your belly.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  Yes, because they're high in fiber. They're good for that.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, should we take a break?

• 6:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we should.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or a half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 7:20Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 8:09Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 8:17Speaker 06

  Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's Stuff You Should Know. All right.

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  So again, salt, fat, sugar, these three things, if you can get that down, your food company will probably be successful. If you can figure out how to just kind of put them together just right. And they serve other purposes, too. Like, salt masks the taste of other ingredients pretty well.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:52Josh Clark?

  Sugar is also preservative, so the shelf life of a product is extended from it. But really, taste is essentially what you're trying to do with this. But it goes to show you just how.

• 9:05Josh Clark?

  How not precarious, what a, just what a juggling act it is.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:09Josh Clark?

  To come to the bliss point, so it's maximally palatable. But also, there's enough sugar in there to keep your, you know, stove top stuffing from turning bad on the shelf if you don't move them fast enough.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is one of those, it's kind of disappointing to learn how, uh, sort of, they're not like, hey, let's make something that people really like and that tastes awesome. They're like, let's, let's.

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  Make something that they will eat and eat and eat.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  That's. I don't know why I just became German.

• 9:37Josh Clark?

  That's the problem with 20th century business mindset that's still around today is, hook your, hook your audience and you'll have profits for your shareholders constantly.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, from Doritos to social media.

• 9:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it sucks.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  So, we don't know, you know, you can't get a recipe for Dorito, you know, like an actual recipe.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  But that optimizing nutrition blog that you found, uh, they took, uh, they looked at hundreds of thousands of food logs and came up with some pretty good guesses on sort of a, a prime bliss point, um, ratio, I guess.

• 10:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Wherein, sugar makes up, or should make up about 23.5% of the calories, salt about 2.9 grams per 2,000 calories, and fat, about 24%, uh, 24% of the food's calories. And again, this is not, if, like, the construction of a good diet, this is if you're looking to maximize that bliss point.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  Exactly. It's not a good diet.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  So, there's other things that come into play that food scientists have figured out along the way. Do you remember the chewy granola bar revolution of the early 90s?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, those are good.

• 10:45Josh Clark?

  Chewy mouth feel was basically investigated and they figured out how to maximize that. And then also crunchy, you know, you can't really sneeze at that. But the biggest, um, the biggest invention or the biggest discovery, aside from bliss point, as far as food science goes, is vanishing caloric density, which is really important for junk food.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is incredible. This is, uh, the idea that something that you put in your mouth to eat, that has that sort of melt in your mouth quality, your brain doesn't register that you are eating calories. So, that's when, like popcorn is one of them, that's why you can sit down and eat a giant tub of popcorn at the movies.

• 11:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Because it kind of has that melt in your mouth feel. And your brain's not saying like, maybe you should put this down because you're eating a lot of calories. It doesn't signal your brain in that way. And the little fact that I learned from your research that hits home to my family was that they have found that Cheetos, Michael Maas said that that is the perfect snack for as far as bliss point goes, as far as the crunchy mouth feel, the flavor ratio, and then most importantly, that vanishing caloric density. And my friend, my wife Emily, has a Cheeto problem.

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Such that we don't keep Cheetos in the house. She's like, I can't stop eating them when they're in the house.

• 12:02Josh Clark?

  I know how she feels. I've got some products like that.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  That I just, I don't keep in the house.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  You can't.

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  I do have to say, though, that it's gotten easier and easier with just how ridiculous the prices are for chips these days.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, chips are pricey.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  It's insane, Chuck. Like, a bag of Ruffles, printed on the bag is $7.50 for half of a bag of Ruffles potato chips now. That is insane. The only good part of it is hopefully more and more people are like, I'm not eating chips anymore. This is dumb.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we don't eat a lot of that stuff. We, you know, when we'll go to the lake for the weekends with like kids and stuff, we'll get like chips and dip, and that's always fun. I do have a French onion sun chip problem.

• 12:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I love that so much.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  The mouth feel of those turn me off, actually.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I love it. And they also, they're one of those sort of evils that make you think you're eating sort of a healthy, like a multi-grain thing.

• 13:02Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  And it's like, I don't think those are any healthier than a fried potato chip.

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  Right. Well, here, take my hand and help me off of my soapbox, because I have a follow-up question about Emily's Cheeto problem.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  All right, let's hear it.

• 13:13Josh Clark?

  Does she like the original Cheetos, the straight ahead version, or is she more like a fiery hot version kind of Cheeto lover?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  No, she's a standard Cheeto, and to be specific, not a cheese puff either, like a real Cheeto, like a Fred Flintstone Club Cheeto. But it's funny that she accidentally got some of those Flamin' Hots, and Ruby was like, I want to try those. And we're like, no, those are way too hot. You can't eat those. And she was like, no, I can handle it. And she ate it. And it was one of those things where you can see like her eyes starting water. And she was like, these are really good. I like these.

• 13:47Josh Clark?

  She played it off?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, she was like, I want to take those to school. And then we later found she was trading them.

• 13:53Josh Clark?

  I'm sure, yeah. She's like, here, try one of these, you'll love it.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:57Josh Clark?

  So, okay, so just figuring out the bliss point is not enough. You don't just figure it out and release it. You try a million different combinations, maybe not a million, but not that far off. And you test it with people. That's how you fine tune everything and get it just right so that you find that bliss point that's going to help you sell as much. And so those taste tests can like really start to add up. There's some legendary ones, as a matter of fact. One of them is Prego Chunky.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we mentioned that earlier. They had 45 different versions of Prego Chunky that they were testing until they got to their main one. And then I'm going to let you handle the Dr. Pepper because that's just amazing.

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  Cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper. They went through 61 different versions and 4,000 different taste tests. Before they finally released it. It's not bad.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  I've never tried it. I mean, I'm not a Dr. Pepper guy. It's such a specific, I don't like hate it, but it's just not one I go to.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  I'm not either, but that's, or wait, maybe it's the cream soda Dr. Pepper that's not bad. I don't, I don't really drink it either, but I tried one once and I was like, that's actually pretty good.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  What about Oreos, Chuck? Because one of the things they've become known for in the last few years is releasing just nutso flavors all the time.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, this is probably the Gen X in me coming out, but I love a, not, I do love a standard Oreo, but to me they hit peak Oreo with the double stuff standard.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? You don't like lemon?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I'm not, I'm not into lemony dessert, desserts.

• 15:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you probably wouldn't like lemon Oreos then. I think they're very good. And I also think some of the limited editions they've come out with are pretty good. Like Birthday Cake, which was the first one they did to commemorate their 100th birthday back in 2012. To me, the pin, it was very good. I think it's still around. To me, the pinnacle was Rice Krispie Treats Oreos. They were

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 15:55Josh Clark?

  amazing.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  That sounds so good.

• 15:57Josh Clark?

  They, they were really, really good. If they re-released any, I would, I would definitely go get those. But I've very fortunately been like, I should probably stop buying like crazy flavored Oreos because I just eat the whole bag like in one sitting, basically.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Glass of cold whole milk?

• 16:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Oreos go really well with that. But oh, the reason why that they've been releasing so many flavors is that they figured out when they release a crazy flavor, it gets lots of press, so it gets people to the stores, right? And they found that when people are at the stores to buy that crazy flavored Oreo, they apparently remember how much they love the original Oreos, like you, so they buy both.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:38Josh Clark?

  That's great, to an extent. I guess it's great for Nabisco.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bet that was a finding, too, where they were like, oh, my God, look what's happening.

• 16:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Chuck went to get a Lady Gaga Oreo, and he got the double stuff as well.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  I know, that's so weird. That was one of the flavors. And I guess before we sign off, Chuck, I think we should remind everybody, as we have many times, Oreo is the knockoff, Hydrox is the original.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:02Josh Clark?

  Everybody's short stuff is that.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.