Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness (2022) s01e04 Episode Script

I made you a pot of coffee
with chocolate, just the way you like.
JVM!
These are empty again!
I am sorry.
I had a midnight snack,
and a 1:00 a.m. snack,
and a 2:00 a.m. snack.
Ooh! But wait, look under the counter.
I love you.
How could I ever have doubted you?
And you know that minis are my fave.
Yeah, girl, I got you.
Now, let's split a donut.
Like, split it.
Like, you-- Like, you share it with me.
Ooh, the forecast
predicts powdery rain, baby.
Aah, aah.
Eh!
My whole life,
I have been head over heels,
absolutely in love with snacks.
You wanna talk about savory?
I'm here to talk about it.
You wanna talk about sweet?
I'm here to talk about that too.
You wanna pizza roll?
You wanna cinnamon roll?
Nutty Buddy Bars?
Gummy bears? Powdered donuts?
Hyuh! Ooh, nice catch.
Or when you
take a Pop-Tart and you toast it,
my pupils start to dilate.
I just wanna eat snack foods all the time.
My brain, when I'm eating snacks,
says one thing and one thing only.
More.
I love snack foods.
But why do I love 'em so much?
JVM!
I've got processed foods fever.
Ooh, I know what'll fix it!
 Jonathan
My processing of my love
for processed foods
begins at Entenmann's Bakery.
-Mike! How are ya?
-Hey, Jonathan.
Where do the mini powdered
donuts of my dreams come to fruition?
Where do they go from being
just microscopic little balls of grain
to the gorgeous diva
that is a mini powdered donut?
Are my donuts just in here?
This is the beginning of the process.
This is one of our key ingredients that's
gonna make your wonderful, powdered donut.
Is it sugar?
-Bingo.
-Wh-- Ahh!
'Cause is that like the main ingredient?
That's one of our main ingredients.
Wow. Are you allowed
to say all the main ingredients?
Well, what else would come with donuts?
-Flour.
-Flour.
E-- Eggs?
Eggs.
-No.
-No.
Ahh!
We have a magic pre-blend
-that has many secret ingredients
-Top secret.
-that makes the Entenmann donut
-Yes, yes.
be the Entenmann donut.
Is there, like,
a highly addictive, like, drug in there?
Because I can't stop eating,
like, powdered donuts?
In that bag-- What we
like to say is that's the bag of love.
I feel like it's, like,
go-with-your-dad-to-work day.
Oh my God, I can really smell it. Wow!
-Hairnet, right?
-Hairnet, check.
-Beard net.
-Beard net.
Good. Okay, great.
-Chief Donut Officer for the day.
-Wow.
-I'm ready. Just like--
-We're ready to go.
Let's do this.
Here it is.
This is where the magic happens.
Oh my God, it smells so good.
Mmm.
Mmm.
Look how small the donut is
when it comes off the cutter.
Now watch, when you come here,
look at how beautiful
in rise that donut is,
-coming out of that fryer.
-Look at that!
This is our spiral cooler.
In order for them to get packaged
at the proper temperature,
-they have to cool.
-Ooh.
So they actually
come down a conveyor belt.
Some are gonna go plain,
some are gonna go in our cinnamon,
and then some are gonna go
in your ultimate favorite,
the sugar tumbler.
-So--
-Oh my God!
-If you could see here.
-Oh my God!
-This is the powdered sugar.
-Oh my God,
it's right here!
Look at this donut,
and now, watch what happens.
The magic!
It's like heaven,
or like a magical wonderland.
Oh my God!
Like, where magical things happen.
I'm gonna eat all these donuts.
Like, am I gonna eat your coffee cake,
and your powdered donuts,
and your chocolate-dipped donuts,
and your cinnamon sugar donuts? Yes.
-What are you doing?
-I haven't died, but I'm in heaven.
I am in donut heaven.
They continue down the conveyor,
and then they all meet together.
And now, they're going
through our UV lights.
To sanitize?
Pretty close.
It's actually a mold inhibitor for us.
-Oh. No.
-We don't want any mold on our donuts.
Here's our wonderful workers
that are putting these donuts
-in the box by hand.
-Oh my God. Oh my God.
So each person
is just doing one type of donut,
and they do three in each hand.
Oh my God!
What do you think about trying to do this?
I would-- I, I, I wanna try.
When they come down, you're gonna try
to put the powder in the box.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.
-Okay?
-Oh my God!
Oh my God! Fuck, shit, fuck!
Oh my God, there are supposed to be four!
Seeing these
people pack donuts together
with their "frond" makes me wanna work
at a factory with my best "frond," Antoni.
Still got this.
-No, that one's gonna go.
-Got it.
Come on,
why you moving at a snail's pace?
-Faster, ladies, faster!
-Oh no, Jesus.
Inspections to commence immediately.
Stop the line, stop the line.
-Jonathan, what is going on over here?
-I tried.
Come on, there's much more to see.
What?
I
am
flabbergasted.
Look at all the boxes!
One-point-seven million units
leave the facility every week.
And then they go to all these cities?
They go to all these city locations,
and then from those city locations,
they distribute in the region.
I'm, like, so struck by the volume.
I imagine that all the
donuts that I've eaten in my life
would probably be about this amount.
Mmm.
One second.
You all be good.
Be good on your way to your new homes.
Y'all need to go to this factory.
So tasty. If you're
ever looking for someone
who's just like a strict taste tester,
I'm so here for you for that.
I learned there's a lot more
that goes into this donut
than what you might think.
There's the flour,
there's the sugar, there is the
What secrets are you hiding?
Mmm.
How do I
experience my favorite snack foods?
How do they get flavored this well?
What senses are involved?
Why does my tongue love sweet,
other people hate sweet?
Someone call me a flavor chemist,
I got burning questions
hotter than the fire salsa at Taco Bell,
and I need answers!
What are the things that you do
in your job as a stunning flavor doctor?
I do a lot of work with chefs
in restaurants that are interested in
doing more creative things on their menu.
We can develop new techniques
to get flavor out of ingredients and
-make new dishes.
-Ooh.
-What is the pathway from my tongue
-Mm-hmm.
-to my brain to my heart?
-Mm-hmm. Yes.
There are five basic tastes.
Uh, so that's, uh, sweet,
sour, salty, bitter, and umami.
Most of flavor is actually smell.
Oh my God, it smells so good!
You experience smell
while you're eating.
What we're gonna do
is pretend like we have a cold
-and simulate that
-Okay.
by putting this clamp on our noses.
-Okay.
-Okay. So, um
Yeah, so just so you
can't get any air through.
Okay, I'm gonna pick a jellybean for you.
-Okay.
-Okay.
Oh, wait. I don't wanna look.
-No, don't look.
-Okay, go ahead.
Do you wanna be like an influencer
and show them what color it is?
The secret flavor is orange.
-Oh my God.
-I'm gonna give it back.
Start chewing it.
Don't swallow it yet.
So, what do you taste?
-The green. Oh.
-Yeah. No, it was orange, but
I thought it was
green for sure, I'm so shocked.
That's okay. What this shows
is that we use smell, we use taste
directly to sense flavor, but since
eating food is essential for our survival
we're gonna use all of our senses
to get in as much information as possible.
What's this thing?
Um, that is a,
that is a spicy hot chip.
What do I need to know
about spicy flavors?
What do I need to know
about spicy molecules?
Well, so interestingly, the sense of spicy
is not actually a taste.
-But I didn't even realize.
-Yeah, so spicy we actually sense as pain
and temperature with pain nerves.
So it's technically a sense of touch.
What makes this spicy hot chip
flavoring different than the jalapeno?
They're actually two different,
but, like, structurally similar molecules.
Snack foods have a bunch of
food scientists that study every element
of flavor perception,
and then use that to maximize
your enjoyment or, like,
sensory overload when you're eating it.
They'll optimize flavor by adding
just the right amount of MSG, salt, sour--
Science!
Who knew?
They will also spend a lot of time
making sure that the crunch is just right,
and what that involves is actually sound.
So most of our perception
of whether something is crunchy
actually has to do with
us hearing the sound of biting into it.
When I eat this,
I can't tell if you can hear me eating it
or if that's just the sound in my ear.
Okay, so sound
is really mechanical vibrations.
Can you hear that?
I might a little bit.
It's not, like, obnoxious.
-Earth-shattering.
-No, no. It's like--
What's the disease when people
hate the sound of you eating?
Uh, misophonia. It's a, it's an aversion.
I also feel like there's
just so many connections
and, you know, behavioral traits, so many
relationships we all have with our food.
There's these, like,
preferences that we have.
But if you think about, like, if you eat
a food that, like, your grandmother made,
or like your dad,
and you, you know, really love them and
had a good time growing up
and eating those things,
you associate that with positive feelings.
When I think about my love
for snack foods, I think comfort.
I am just in my mom's basement,
getting ready to watch figure skating,
stuffing my face with powdered donuts.
Safe,
secure,
the bullies are not here,
'cause I'm down here,
watching TV, eating powdered donuts.
So is it kinda important
for us to be curious
about the ways that maybe, like,
our approach to flavor are being used
-Oh, absolutely.
-to entice us in the world?
Yeah. Well, I mean, so, flavor can be
used to, like, market and entice things.
There's like bright orange cheese balls
and things like that.
Brightly colored jelly beans. All of those
are priming your evolutionary human brain
to get ready to taste something
really intense and love it.
One more thing that
I'm really curious about is
what were you gonna
do with these jelly beans?
Well, I mean, I was gonna
maybe analyze some for science,
-but I won't tell anyone
-Mmm.
if, uh, some go missing.
Dr. Ariel Johnson
fascinated me with flavor.
I learned that snacks are
made to appeal to our senses.
These snacks are made for us to love them.
Which I guess makes sense,
'cause it's not like people
would make snacks for us to hate.
But is there something
a little bit more sinister
about the snack food world?
What is going on in my brain
that makes me want more
and more and more and more?
I gotta find out what's going on here.
Is my relationship
to processed foods healthy?
Is it unhealthy?
Am I dependent on snacks? I need to know.
-How are you?
-I'm great, how are you?
-I'm so excited to meet you.
-It's so great to meet you too.
Dr. Nicole Avena is a neuroscientist
with an expertise in
nutrition, diet, and food addiction.
So did you bring
what you were supposed to bring?
-I brought my whole day's food.
-Okay.
-Let's have it come out.
-This is a vulnerable moment.
So, usually what it is,
is it's coffee from, like, the time my
feet hit the floor until, like, noonish.
-Okay.
-Then I might have a delicious sal-sal.
-Back up. What do we do for breakfast?
-Oh, coffee.
Okay, coffee is not a food group,
-but we'll work on it.
-I do a pot of coffee with
a splash of milk.
Then, of course, yogurt covered pretzel.
Do you want one?
Um, I'm good for now.
Then I might come home and throw in
a delicious pizza. Now, to be honest
-Oh.
-we might have a Pop-Tart,
a Gusher,
and an Oreo.
So, I think we can
talk about some of the problems
that might be coming
from this type of diet,
because my concern is that,
over time, eating a diet like this
is going to catch up with you.
I'm worried about what you might look
like on the inside after eating like this.
-Mm-hmm.
-And I think there's changes
we could make, so have a seat and--
When you talk about my friends
like that, they get kind of upset.
No more chocolate for you!
Aw, the poor kid.
What you just showed me is
sending you down the path
of having a lot of
serious health problems later on.
A lot of this food is bringing you down.
-I don't feel great after I eat it.
-Yeah.
But why am I in this
abusive relationship with sugar?
It's tough. A lot of people
are in this abusive relationship.
You are not alone. We're finding
this obesity crisis in our country,
where more than half of the country is
struggling with being overweight or obese,
and a lot of that is tied back to these
very same things that we're seeing here,
with sugar-rich foods, processed foods,
just pulling people in to wanna eat them.
What's happening is that you've
developed a dependence to these foods.
No, those words.
I had to go to rehab before.
These feel like such big words.
I know. But it's
really meant to illustrate
the similarities between what
happens when people become dependent
on things like sugar, and when
people become dependent on things like
drugs and alcohol.
I think if I really am
being honest with myself,
I think I actually really
do experience sugar addiction.
My guess is, is that
the sugar industry isn't gonna shut down.
So what information can we arm
ourselves with to protect ourselves?
The billion dollar
sugar industry
isn't just gonna up
and stop putting sugar in foods.
That is really marketing towards
getting people to wanna eat these foods
-because they know they taste delicious
-No!
and that's how they're tricking you.
-Oh no, I'm in the machine!
-We gotta get you out of the machine.
Because it's really about
trying to rewire your brain.
Sugar is there to sort of
do double duty for the food industry.
It makes it taste even better which
is great, 'cause then people wanna eat it.
And then, a lot of the times,
it's to mask some of the bitter tastes
that are in a lot
of the chemical additives and dyes
and other things
that are in processed food.
Welcome back
to the Chipps National Spelling Bee.
Your word is,
azodicarbonamide.
-
-Could you use that in a sentence, please?
The chemical azodicarbonamide
is used in foamed plastic product
and is also an additive
in some snack cakes to add fluff,
and whiten flour.
Azodici azodicarbonamide.
A-Z-O
D-I
All right, so this is what we have here.
So I'm showing you
what your brain looks like on sugar.
So this is, like, fully me.
There's a couple of things
important to notice here.
We can get a sense of what's happening
in the dopamine system in your brain.
Now, dopamine
is one of the neurotransmitters
in the brain, that's involved
with reinforcement and reward.
It gets activated when people use drugs.
Okay, so I'm so-- Uh.
But a neurotransmitter is like a chemical.
It's a chemical, right.
So we have neural chemicals in our brain,
and some of them
are important for transmitting information
from one cell to another in the brain. So,
dopamine is considered a neurotransmitter.
Aah.
And so what ends up happening
when people overuse drugs of abuse,
their dopamine system
basically gets hijacked.
Now, normally when people eat food,
the dopamine system doesn't really
overreact because, you know, food is food.
You eat a healthy salad,
you even have a steak.
It's fine.
What ends up happening is that,
if you overeat sugar, though,
-it's a completely different story.
-Mmm.
In a normal brain,
their dopamine system is normal, right?
And we're seeing
the pretty colors of red and the orange.
So the red is dopamine?
-Right.
-It's weird because I would think
if I ate a bunch of sugar,
-I'd be getting more dopamine.
-Right.
But here's what happens. When you eat
a bunch of sugar, your brain has changed,
and you're no longer
able to release dopamine in a normal way.
So you end up eating more sugar,
and that's why you're having
six or eight powdered donuts,
instead of maybe just one.
You're always chasing
that high because your brain
isn't releasing dopamine
in the way that a normal brain does.
So but, do you think I'm,
like, all up in this?
-If I've been eating that like--
-You're headed in that direction.
'Cause you have to remember, you're
talking like maybe three or four times
the amount of
recommended sugar in just one day.
When we talk about sugar being addictive,
here we have the brain
of somebody who is overeating sugar,
and then we have the brain
of someone who's using cocaine.
-That's fascinating.
-And so-- We do.
It's really, really fascinating stuff,
to be able to see on this level,
how food can be acting like a drug.
But does the
glow-in-the-darkness
denote how active it is?
Yes. And so what this is showing us here,
you can see that these other parts
of the brain are pretty much grayed out.
But these primitive parts
of the brain, those are overactivated.
And so you see that happening
with cocaine and also with sugar.
I'm sorry, girl.
I'm talking to my own brain.
-I guess she's like, probably so worn out.
-Aah.
Wowzers.
-I think I've got the sugar dependence.
-Mm-hmm.
This is something that I think
is such a visceral
vulnerable thing to talk about
for so many people.
For me, I just notice
that there's a lot of shame,
that's all tied up in,
in how I think about
-my eating habits and my food stuff.
-Right.
It's not your fault.
You don't need to beat yourself up.
This is a brain condition,
and I think that if we can
recognize in the medical community that
there is an addictive component to this,
and stop making it be about willpower
and about, "Oh, you just,
you know, you're not strong enough
to control what you eat."
I feel like we need to take the onus
and the blame off of the patient
who's suffering and put it somewhere else.
I feel like we don't talk
about sugar addiction
and then I feel like
we get judgmental about it.
Right, absolutely, you're so right.
And I think being more inclusive,
educating people about the dangers
of sugar addiction and how it really
can be negatively impacting people's lives
and their happiness and well-being,
will be such a benefit
to help support each other.
This has been an industry that
has been rigged against us from the start.
Uh-oh.
We really never had a chance.
Everyone likes candy.
They were all loaded with so much sugar,
we were going to get
hooked on it immediately.
There's no doubt about it.
And once you want it, you want it.
He's got Lucky Charms!
And that's what these companies
want us to want as well.
-Hee-hoo.
Sadie is the company
emotional support animal.
-Oh my gosh, are you Sadie?
I wanted to see,
like, other approaches
to snacky foods. Because I love snacks.
I have learned more about sugar, and my
Love of it?
-Yes, exactly.
-Yep.
-That's what I was go-- Yes.
-Welcome to the club.
This is our top seller,
our dark cacao coconut cookies.
Oh my-- You need energy
before you go make cookies.
You absolutely do.
We don't
use anything artificial.
What would be like,
a common artificial ingredient
that. like, other
cookie companies might use?
Probably, like,
natural flavors is a big one.
Is natural flavors kinda like
the same with beauty things,
like how fragrance can
really encapsulate,
like, a thousand ingredients?
Exactly. Yeah, you don't
totally know what's, what's in them.
Oh my God. Ah. Mmm. Mmm.
-Mmm.
-So, that's
lemon ginger. So we're also using
real organic ginger in there as well.
-Yep.
-Mmm.
Right?
Now, what about, like,
preservatives and things?
So we don't use any preservatives.
Really, the acting preservative
in our product is the coconut oil.
-Ohh.
-'Cause that has a long shelf life,
and the fat kind of helps
maintain the moisture.
-And our shelf life is about nine months.
-Mmm.
-I'm gonna have one more.
-Yeah.
I don't wanna, like, get peckish when
we're in the middle of making cookies.
'Cause I'm like ready to,
like, bag it. I'm ready to--
-Let's go. Excuse us, Sadie.
-So, I'm gonna roll up my sleeves.
Is there a jacket?
Yeah, we've
got a whole thing for you.
-Can the--
-Sadie's not allowed.
Oh my God.
Are we going in there?
-Yes, let's do it.
-Let's go!
-Okay.
Welcome.
-This is where the magic happens.
-Mmm.
Right?
I so wish there was
smell-o-vision right now.
-Yeah, yeah.
-So this is--
-Oh my God, this is the fresh batter.
A lot of batter.
What are
the ingredients in this batter?
Well, first ingredient's coconut.
-Yes.
-Then we have almond flour.
-Then?
-Agave syrup.
-And then?
-Cocoa powder.
Cocoa powder.
-Coconut oil.
-Coconut oil.
Himalayan salt.
So six things,
and nothing that you can't pronounce.
-Nope.
-We have 60% less sugar than,
like, the leading cookie on the market.
There's no, like, white sugars?
Right, we don't use corn syrup
or, like, highly, highly processed sugars.
We, we don't, like,
claim to be a low, like, no-sugar product,
but we do have way less sugar.
-Yes.
-That's really--
It's not overloaded with artificial stuff.
Yes.
I don't know if I'm projecting,
but they do look like they wanna go
to their machines and be made into cookies
so they can go live in somebody's tum-tum.
-Yep. Absolutely.
-My tum-tum wants to be their house.
-Yes.
So now, we take the batter,
and we go over to the forming station.
Oh my God, let's go form.
The batter goes into the top.
How do I put it in that big machine?
-Yes! Okay.
-Yeah, that's dense dough.
-Yes, dense dough.
-Yes!
So you can have
about six ingredients in your cookie,
with all ingredients
that you can pronounce,
and it can still taste
absolutely delicious.
-You wanna take it over to the oven?
-Yes.
So good to know
that there is a healthier approach
to snacking.
Just chef's kiss.
Jonathan.
Uh, right now,
it's actually snack o'clock.
-Uh, actually, it's, it's half past snack.
That means we get to have a donut,
or, like, one of those, like,
hamburgers that's made out of gummies.
I'm the type of queen
that has room for everyone.
I can be someone
who loves Entenmann's so dearly,
but also loves Emmy's Organics so dearly.
And realize if I've eaten, like,
27 cookies of anybody's brand,
there might be a deeper emotional
issue that I need to, like, sit with.
We can all enjoy snacks.
It's really about slowing down long enough
to ask ourselves,
"Why? Why are we wanting this?"
"Do we feel like we have to have it?"
And being aware of what is in this
food that we're putting into our body.
Let's have snacks.
You know, I really think maybe I'm just
I think I'm not hungry.
Uh, thirsty?
I just don't think I need
a Pop-Tart tonight.
Hey, I'm right there with you.
So let's just have cupcakes.
Maybe I just want one Oreo
because I do just want
a little sweet treat.
Right, like a, like a cup that's a cake,
cupcake.
A little tiny snack is fine.
"Little snack." Huh.
I never heard that before.
Any good relationship needs what?
Counseling.
-Boundaries.
-Oh yeah, th-- that's what I meant.
You wanna split it?
I'll leave this here for you.
This is great.
Thanks, Jonathan.
So nice of you, always wanted
to have a jagged half of an Oreo.
Starving but okay.
Sugar. Literally,
what this is and this too.
Absolutely. And you see it going up
through one of our silos.
Can you guess how much is in that silo?
100,000 pounds.
He's hired. Each of our silo holds just
over 100,000 pounds of ingredients.
No one told me that!
Literally, no one told me that!
You heard it! You heard it!
No one told me. I didn't even read that!
-I just looked at that and I guessed.
-That is awesome.
I think it's 'cause I'm a hair colorist.
and we're, like, really good
at measuring stuff. Oh my God!