RecSciPod S01E09 full transcript
Timestamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 2:22 Watermelon
- 6:04 Wacky scientific journal title quiz
- 16:46 Kids food study
- 38:32 What did you learn today, outro
Intro
Lu: Let’s both do the intro with a big smile, unlike last time, okay?
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Recreational Science, the podcast where we explore creativity in science by examining some of the funniest, wackiest, and most provocative studies ever done. I’m Lu.
Tirth: And I’m Tirth.
Lu: Listeners, come join us on our journey. Because while we’re just two drifters, Tirth and I, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see. And really, aren’t we all after that same rainbow’s end?
Tirth: We are?
Lu: Waiting around the bend. My huckleberry friend. That’s you. Moon River.
Tirth: Quite the trendy intro.
Lu: I don’t get that reference.
Tirth: There’s no reference. I’m just trying to rhyme.
Lu: Tirth, if you don’t know what that’s from, we’re gonna stop doing the podcast right now. It’s over.
Tirth: In that case, I’ll tell you, I’ll say yes. I know where that’s from.
Lu: Okay. Where is it from?
Tirth: Moon River.
Lu: Okay. Good. I actually did not think you knew that. I was really hoping we would stop doing this podcast forever.
Tirth: Hey man, if you want to stop recording, there’s better ways. You just say no.
Lu: Moon River. One of the greatest songs ever written, maybe. Second only to the song that I released. Yeah, quick plug, new song. I put the link in the description, please check it out.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Big release. I don’t usually release songs, but this one is meant to be shared. So please give it a listen, give it a five-star review.
Tirth: Tell a friend.
Lu: Tell a friend. Yeah, I was going to say. In fact, please stop listening to this podcast right now and just go listen to the song.
Tirth: Well, hold on, hold on. You can actually do both. Come on, let’s not get too carried away.
Lu: No, no, no, no, no. I prefer people listen to the song and delete this podcast right now.
Tirth: Hey, is this what the kids call negging? Is that what’s going on right now?
Lu: Negging you? Why would I neg you?
Tirth: Negging our audience, negging ourselves. I don’t know.
Lu: No, no, no, please, Tirth. This podcast is going to end after 10 episodes anyways.
Tirth: So, oh my god. What is this? Episode 9?
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Wait, that’s news to me. News to me.
Lu: Two more to make it count.
Tirth’s weird watermelon story
Lu: Tirth, we got to stop joshing around, right? We got to stop joshing around because there’s something very important that we got to discuss.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: I was at the grocery store the other day. I was buying my annual watermelon. Yeah, I buy a watermelon every summer. Don’t give me that look.
Tirth: Just one watermelon a year and that’s it.
Lu: Yeah, but it’s a really big watermelon. I pick the biggest watermelon, like a 40-pounder.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: And well, because it’s so big, it takes up a lot of fridge space. So I try to eat it as fast as possible. So every day for like two weeks, I would come home and just eat like three pounds of watermelon.
Tirth: My God.
Lu: Yeah, that’s how I spend two weeks of my summer. It’s like a second job coming back home and just eating watermelon.
Tirth: Sounds like it. Are you sure you didn’t just kidnap a child? You actually bought a 40-pound watermelon?
Lu: It’s a 40-pound watermelon.
Tirth: Okay, if you say so.
Lu: Well, you got to pick the biggest one when you’re picking watermelons. Let people know that you’re very strong.
Tirth: Hey, do you have a system? Do you have a method when you pick watermelons? You know, because you know, people will say that’s it…
Lu: The biggest one…
Tirth: You don’t like knock on them, listen for the echo, look at the color…
Lu: No. Well, I have heard that if it’s a little yellowish, it’s very ripe.
Tirth: Right.
Lu: But I haven’t confirmed that for myself.
Tirth: Hey, I have a watermelon story for you.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: The one and only time I bought a watermelon was in St. Louis.
Lu: What?
Tirth: It was. Yeah.
Lu: That cannot be. No, no. You don’t eat watermelons?
Tirth: At the end of the story…no, I love watermelons. I just don’t buy them. And at the end of this story, you’ll see why, okay?
Lu: You steal them?
Tirth: No.
Lu: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Tirth: I let someone else buy them or I’ll just buy sliced watermelons. It’s very expensive, but that’s okay.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: You know, I splurged. But let me tell you, this was probably July or August, maybe about nine or ten years ago. As you know, St. Louis gets very hot, very humid, okay?. So I bought – you know, very excitedly – I’m like, you know what I need? I need a nice, sweet, cold watermelon.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: So I went to Schnucks, just like, you know, right there on Lindell. I used to live like two blocks from there.
Lu: Yeah, big fan of Schnucks.
Tirth: And I bought not the biggest watermelon, but a medium sized watermelon because it was just me.
Lu: Because you’re very weak. You don’t work out.
Tirth: Please, the exact opposite. I’m a very strong man. I don’t need to show anyone that I’m strong by holding watermelon, okay?
Lu: Yeah, sure. Good excuse.
Tirth: So anyway, I bring this thing home. And then I left it on the kitchen counter, okay?
Lu: Uh-huh.
Tirth: And then I was like, okay, I’ll cut this tomorrow after I come home from work. I think the next day I got very late. I’m like, you know what? I’ll just cut this tomorrow. It’s okay. By day two, there is this godawful horrible stench that’s permeating the entire apartment. My first thought is, it’s probably just me or the stench of failure that emanates, you know, that tends to surround me, okay?
Lu: That’s true.
Tirth: So I paid it no mind. I was still very busy in lab. I was not eating the watermelon. Day three, I was like, okay, the stench is overpowering. So I like clean the sink. I cleaned the kitchen. Nothing happening. Then I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to relax. I’m going to cut this watermelon open, I’m going to enjoy myself, and then I’ll forget about this stench. I lifted the watermelon up and the whole thing just collapsed right there on the kitchen counter.
Lu: Oh my god.
Tirth: And this disgusting, the worst smelling water just leaked out all over the kitchen counter and the floor. Turns out the stench was the watermelon that was rotting in real time in the heat and the humidity.
Lu: Was this watermelon completely yellow?
Tirth: No it was still green. It was still green. It just collapsed, man. It was horrible.
Lu: How did you clean that up?
Tirth: I just left the apartment. No, I just got a lot of garbage bags and some bleach. And it took quite some time to get rid of that stench.
Lu: That’s a very traumatic experience. I can understand why you don’t buy watermelons anymore.
Tirth: There you go.
Lu: That and the fact that you’re very weak. But anyways, back to my story, before you really interrupted me with your very weird story.
Tirth: Very timely, very timely story.
Wacky journal names quiz
Lu: Sure, sure. Well, I was buying my watermelon at the grocery store. It’s a local grocery store. I just walked right there. You know, I’m very green. Some people came up to me and they were like, hey, man, love the podcast.
Tirth: Oh, OK, yes.
Lu: Yeah, they were fans, they were listeners. And they’re like, yeah, Lu, you seem like a very smart, very, very funny person. You look like you can grow a much better beard than Tirth.
Tirth: They said that, huh?
Lu: Yeah, yeah, they did.
Tirth: Wow, these guys must be very observant superfans.
Lu: Our fans are very perceptive. They were also like, yeah, we know you can grow a beard, but you choose not to and we appreciate that.
Tirth: Wow, OK.
Lu: Again, they nailed me. That’s me to a T. Very, very smart audience.
Tirth: Wow.
Lu: But anyways, they were also like, hey, you guys talk about funny papers a lot, right? Funny articles. But are there any funny journals?
Tirth: Good question.
Lu: Very good question. It’s a great question. So I looked it up.
Tirth: OK.
Lu: There are a lot of funny journals, journals with very, very funny names. And what I want to do is I want to play a game where I give you a journal name, you tell me what subject it’s in.
Tirth: OK. So it’s like a BuzzFeed, but journal names.
Lu: Yeah. Exactly.
Tirth: And these are all journal names? Like some of them are not like fake names, just mixing with real names, nothing like that.
Lu: Please, Tirth, these are all real journal names. They’re all, you know, peer review journals, reputable journals, maybe. Potentially. We’ll see.
Tirth: Possibly.
Lu: You ready?
Tirth: Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.
Lu: The first journal name is the International Journal of Fuzzy Systems.
Tirth: OK, so right off the bat, I have two possibilities, and I’m going to think out loud, OK? So you understand my thought process.
Lu: Please, please think out loud. Talk it out.
Tirth: Immediately, my thought was maybe this is a journal that deals in things that are literally fuzzy. So like tumbleweeds, dust bunnies, you know, things that come out of your ear, like earwax before it gets too hard. It’s a little fuzzy, you know.
Lu: Fozzy bear.
Tirth: Oh, Fozzy bear. Yes, of course. Cotton candy. You know, that’s one. This is one group of things that I was thinking about. The other less exciting and less interesting possibility is this is a journal that deals in uncertainty.
Lu: Yeah. Good, good. What kind of uncertainty?
Tirth: Like probabilities and statistics.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Things like that. I think sadly, I think the second possibility is probably correct.
Lu: That’s very close. I’m not going to give you a point because the first answer was way off. But the second answer was pretty close. So fuzzy logic is, you’ve been doing some computer science recently, so you know about Boolean logic, true or false, right? Zero or one. Fuzzy logic is basically something between zero and one. It’s not quite so dichotomous. So true values is not necessarily one, but between zero and one. So it’s used to deal with partial truth. So it’s sort of a branch of computer science.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: What do you think is the impact factor? That’s another part of this. You have to guess the impact factor. But please explain impact factor.
Tirth: Okay. I was actually just going to ask you this question. So I’m glad you followed up. So impact factor in general is this one, it’s like supposed to be one number that measures how impactful a publication in that journal is.
Lu: Or the journal overall.
Tirth: Yeah, overall. So there’s a lot of issues with this metric, but for the purpose of this discussion, it’s like one number that tells you how prestigious a journal is.
Lu: Yeah. Basically, it’s an average of like the latest published papers, how many citations they get per year. Right, so if it’s impact factor or IF of 10, average paper gets 10 citations per year…
Tirth: Correct.
Lu: …the recent publications. Yeah. Not a perfect measure of a journal’s impact, like you said, but interesting. So what do you think? International Journal of Fuzzy Systems.
Tirth: 1.3.
Lu: That’s very low. Now I should say this publication ceased in 2010.
Tirth: Okay, that’s information you could have given me.
Lu: So the latest impact factor we have is from 2010. And it’s not whatever you said. 1.2?
Tirth: I said 1.3.
Lu: 1.3. It’s 3.6.
Tirth: Wow. Double. Double what I was saying.
Lu: That’s a very good impact factor. Anything like 2 to 3 or above is pretty good.
Tirth: Vast majority of journals fall in like the one range or actually below one. So yeah.
Lu: Well, we might get to some below one impact factors today.
Tirth: Blogs.
Lu: Here’s another peer-reviewed scientific journal called Positivity.
Tirth: Positivity.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: I think this is a social science journal that talks about like perception of self and people around you, and how, like body positivity kind of thing.
Lu: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Wrong. Very wrong. Not even close.
Tirth: Okay. I was gonna say maybe it’s also a journal run by middle school students where they only talk about positive numbers because they’re not aware of negative numbers yet.
Lu: I’ll give that to you. It is not run by middle schoolers, but it is about positive numbers. Very good. It’s the international mathematics journal devoted to theory and applications of positivity. I mean, positive numbers and other positive things. But yeah, what do you think its impact factor is?
Tirth: Math journals have, I think in general, people don’t read them as much because it’s very esoteric. Even other mathematicians might not be able to understand it. So this is like probably going to be less than one, like 0.5.
Lu: 0.9. Very good. All right. I also found a few journals from the mega publisher MDPI.
Tirth: Oh, big fan. Big fan.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Industrial scale.
Lu: First journal name from MDPI is called Marine Drugs. What do you think it’s about?
Tirth: Okay. Two possibilities – one is it’s written by the, or it’s about the drug trade and drug trafficking and smuggling across the oceans, and, you know, various coastal authorities and their efforts to contain this nefarious activity. But once again, I think the more mundane explanation is these are drugs that you can find from marine creatures and plants.
Lu: Very good. Or just the ocean. The ocean water. Yeah, very good. Impact factor?
Tirth: 0.8.
Lu: Much higher.
Tirth: Oh, OK.
Lu: It’s a big field, very big field. Finding drugs in the ocean.
Tirth: 8.
Lu: 5.4.
Tirth: Wow. That’s a very high impact factor. I’m humbled.
Lu: Yeah. The next journal from MDPI is called Publications.
Tirth: That’s very meta. That’s very inception. It’s very meta, man.
Lu: Uh huh. What do you think? What do you think they publish in the journal Publications?
Tirth: Maybe they talk about the publication industry as the whole, you know?
Lu: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.
Tirth: It’s like that old Xzibit meme – “Yo dawg, I heard you like publications! So we made a publication about publications.”
Lu: Exactly. It’s a journal on scholarly publications, which I mean, I guess it makes sense. Funny name, but yeah, they talk about things like impact factor and things like that. I think, I don’t know, I’m not going to read it. Impact factor, what do you think?
Tirth: 4.
Lu: 2.5. The next journal from MBPI is called World. What do you think it’s about?
Tirth: You know, some of these titles are like books you see from like the 18th century, the 17th century, when like scientists knew nothing about anything. And they’re like, you know what, I’m going to write a book called The World because I have a theory of how the world works. So I think this is like an environmental journal that probably talks about like anything happening in the world, like from an environmental standpoint.
Lu: That’s close, very close. It’s a journal about anything that happens in the world relating to environmental issues, but also economical, social and political issues.
Tirth: So everything
Lu: Basically everything.
Tirth: Yeah, it’s like The Economist magazine, that’s what they do.
Lu: As long as it happens on earth.
Tirth: Yeah, they got it covered.
Lu: They’ll take it. Impact factor?
Tirth: 0.3.
Lu: 1.9.
Tirth: Oh, okay. Still pretty high.
Lu: A lot of people are interested in the world.
Tirth: Not just that, they’re interested in World by MDPI.
Lu: Very big field. World.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: All right. Here’s another journal from MDPI. It’s called J.
Tirth: Just the letter J?
Lu: Just the letter J, yeah.
Tirth: No…
Lu: Just the letter J. Legitimate, scientific, peer-reviewed journal.
Tirth: Okay, so I’m going to tell you the first thought that crossed my mind. Do you know who Dr. J is? He’s a legendary NBA player, mostly played in Philly, and he’s in the Hall of Fame and everything. Julius Irving. Went by Dr. J when he was playing, he had this very sick like jump shot and everything. Anyway, so my first thought is this journal is all about him.
Lu: No, no, it’s a terrible guess, if I’m going to be honest.
Tirth: Okay, what is it?
Lu: You don’t want another guess? It’s called J, come on.
Tirth: J. I think it’s about the bird bluejay.
Lu: No, no, no, it’s about all natural and applied sciences. All of it. Everything.
Tirth: Why J though?
Lu: J for Journal, I’m guessing. Very good journal.
Tirth: That’s too good, man.
Lu: Imagine writing that in the citation, just J, and then italicize it, period.
Tirth: People are like, what? Oh my god, that’s too good.
Lu: Impact factor, what do you think?
Tirth: Well, considering that it encompasses all of science…
Lu: Huge field.
Tirth: Yeah, huge, massive, massive field, 2.
Lu: Incorrect, it doesn’t have one.
Tirth: So this is a hidden gem.
Lu: Too high to calculate.
Tirth: Maybe people are too intimidated to publish in this.
Lu: That also. Yeah, so there are some funny journals for you guys. Hope you enjoyed that. We’ll probably do some of these again in a future episode if people like it.
Tirth: I enjoyed it a lot too.
Lu: All right, Tirth, should we move on to the real science?
Tirth: All right, you got a paper for me?
Lu: I do. But first, I have some questions for you.
Tirth: Okay.
Kids don’t know where food comes from
Lu: Tirth, do you have any children?
Tirth: No, I don’t. I think you know that.
Lu: That you know about…
Tirth: Okay, sure.
Lu: Do you like bacon?
Tirth: I love bacon.
Lu: Do your kids like bacon?
Tirth: I don’t have any kids.
Lu: Uh-huh.
Tirth: As far as I know.
Lu: What do you think bacon is made from?
Tirth: Well, I don’t have to think. I know it’s made from pigs. Well, occasionally there’s turkey bacon, but they’ll specify.
Lu: Good answer. Good answer.
Tirth: Thank you.
Lu: Paper I’m presenting today is sort of a follow up, the first of such on our podcast, to a paper I did in episode 5 of the podcast. Which, I’ll remind you, that paper started with a quote. And the quote is, “meat should be of special interest to psychologists because it is a quintessential example of the interesting and important state of ambivalence.”
Tirth: That’s right.
Lu: That quote was said by Dr – actually, I don’t know if he is a doctor – his name is Paul Rosen. Tirth, do you know who that is?
Tirth: No, and as I recall, neither did you.
Lu: Yeah, and I still haven’t looked him up.
Tirth: Very good.
Lu: Second time mentioning him, no idea who he is. Basically, that paper I presented talked about the meat paradox. This paradox where we eat meat, but we also don’t want to kill animals. We want to show compassion to animals.
Tirth: Right.
Lu: So it’s a bit of a paradox. And a lot of studies focus on how people deal with this cognitive dissonance, incongruence. So the other day, I was listening to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. It’s a program on NPR. That’s right. I listen to NPR because, you know, I’m a very cultured person.
Tirth: So cultured. Wow
Lu: Yeah. I go to symphonies.
Tirth: Kudos.
Lu: I eat sushi.
Tirth: It’s not 1995, man. It’s okay. Everybody eats sushi now.
Lu: No, no, no, please. Sushi, sushi. Look, the thing about sushi is once you get over the fishiness, it’s not unbearable. But anyways, on this particular episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, they mentioned that kids think bacon is a plant. And I was like, what? And it reminded me of the study I presented on episode 5. So I was like, okay, I got to look up the source of this. So I did. The paper is called “Children Are Unsuspecting Meat Eaters: An Opportunity to Address Climate Change.” This was published in 2021 in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Tirth: Great journal.
Lu: …which is a very good journal. Yeah. So what the study is trying to get at is, in my opinion, we live in this world where food is just brought to our tables, right? Just served to us. And we don’t know where it comes from.
Tirth: We’re very disconnected, yeah.
Lu: Personally, I’m a DashPass subscriber, not to brag.
Tirth: I don’t even know what that is.
Lu: DoorDash. It’s a DoorDash premium subscription. You wouldn’t know. It’s not for poor people like you.
Tirth: Yeah, I’m too poor.
Lu: So for me, this is a very personal problem. I have no idea where my food comes from. They just show up at my door.
Tirth: Yeah, literally. You open the door and it’s there.
Lu: Yeah. So this team of scientists were wondering, does this affect how kids think about food? Like do they, do kids actually know the origin of food? But also the other perspective of the study is that eating meat is actually bad for the planet. And livestock actually accounts for about 15% (1-5) of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
Tirth: That’s very high.
Lu: So they were wondering, since kids don’t know the origin of foods, maybe you can trick them into eating more plant-based diets that save the planet. Very noble question.
Tirth: Kid propaganda, yes.
Lu: So what they did was, they interviewed 176 children. These are children from like a metropolitan area in the United States.
Tirth: How old?
Lu: 4 to 7. About half the kids, a little more than half are 4 to 5. The remaining are 6 or 7 years old. Guess what the kids received for their participation?
Tirth: Broccoli.
Lu: No.
Tirth: Bacon.
Lu: Let me remind you that this is a very environmentally conscious group.
Tirth: Right, that’s why I said broccoli at first. Stickers.
Lu: No, that’s a very wasteful. It’s paper, man. It’s trees.
Tirth: Okay. No, no, maybe a potted plant.
Lu: No, no, no. Reusable water bottle.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: I’m sure the kids were very thrilled to receive…
Tirth: Listen, I actually would be very thrilled to receive that gift.
Lu: Would you?
Tirth: Yeah, four year old me, I don’t think would care as much. Maybe if there’s like superhero characters on it, maybe I would.
Lu: I thought you only used paper cups because you said it’s worse for the planet. Something we fight about all the time because again, I’m a very environmentally friendly person.
Tirth: Yeah, yeah. Yes, so noble.
Lu: Tirth uses 20 pounds of paper cups each day.
Tirth: At least, at least, rookie numbers, so most days…
Lu: Two trees a day, at least…
Tirth: Minimum.
Lu: So the results, I want to see if you can guess the results of this paper.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: So basically, they had two different tasks. The first task is they asked the children, the kids, to determine whether pictures of food are plants or animals. Here, they presented a table of how many kids, what percentage of kids got each of these food items wrong. So I’m going to list off some food items. The following food items are all plant-based, and for each one, I want you to guess how many kids thought they were meat or came from animals.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Almonds.
Tirth: 10%?
Lu: Much higher.
Tirth: 40%.
Lu: About 32%.
Tirth: 32% of kids thought that almonds came from animals?
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Kids are dumb, man.
Lu: Well, to be fair, I think kids probably don’t know what almonds are.
Tirth: That’s true.
Lu: They actually asked kids if they knew what they were, and 26%, 27% said no, they didn’t know what almonds were.
Tirth: I guess it’s not the most popular kid food.
Lu: What animal would you think an almond would come from, if it could come from an animal?
Tirth: Well, it depends on what part we’re talking about, but I don’t know.
Lu: Who knows?
Tirth: I think a goat. Maybe the horn of a goat.
Lu: The horn of a goat, I see. It’s crunchy. I’m thinking like the teeth of like a prehistoric fish, you know?
Tirth: Oh, okay. Yeah. Before they evolve proper teeth, maybe they’re all like overlapping in the jaw and…
Lu: Just almonds.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Be a delicacy, probably.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: All right. The next plant is apple. How many kids thought apples came from animals?
Tirth: This has to be low, like 30%.
Lu: You think 30% is low? Almonds was 32%.
Tirth: Oh, I see. Yeah. But I would say 30%. Not maybe low, but 30%.
Lu: All the kids knew what apples were.
Tirth: Right.
Lu: It’s actually 16 percent.
Tirth: Oh, okay. So they actually do know what a plant is. I mean, I’m just…
Lu: Shame on you for doubting American kids.
Tirth: Well, the first question, man, it didn’t do them any favors.
Lu: Almonds. Everybody knows what an apple is. Come on.
Tirth: All right, all right.
Lu: Next food, French fries. What percent of kids think French fries come from animals?
Tirth: So this is what’s interesting. I’m sure they all know what it is, but they probably also mostly get French fries with burgers or sandwiches, like with meat. So it’s possible that they associate it with meat more than they should.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: And so I’m going to say a different number, like 40%.
Lu: Very close, yeah, 47%. Even though 94% of them knew what fries are. Yeah, it’s not, it doesn’t feel like a vegetable, right?
Tirth: Because it’s all like fried and…
Lu: Sometimes fried in fat. Yeah, so we’ll get the kids a pass on that one.
Tirth: Yeah, that one’s understandable.
Lu: Despite 50% of them thinking fries are meat.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: All right, so now I’m going to give you some animal products and meat. And I want you to guess what percent of kids thought these were plants or came from plants.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Okay, the first one is cheese.
Tirth: Uh, 18%.
Lu: Let me give you a hint.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: 99% of kids know what cheese is.
Tirth: Yeah, that’s why I said 18%. I think 18% still think it’s a plant.
Lu: Okay, you’re wrong, 44%.
Tirth: I should have gone up.
Lu: It’s a trick, I just played a trick on you.
Tirth: Hey, but are you proud? I stuck to my guns though.
Lu: Yeah, sure.
Tirth: Good scientist.
Lu: No, scientists adjust their beliefs based on data. Cheese 40, almost 50%, almost half of the kids out there think cheese is a plant. That’s kind of crazy.
Tirth: I’m pretty sure they learned about this at school, man. I don’t know what they’re doing.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Like they get shown pictures of cows in like junior, like in kindergarten basically, you know? Or daycare or whatever. And there’s all these picture books and they know cows give us milk and anyway.
Lu: That one’s very surprising. That one’s very, very surprising to me.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: All right, what about eggs?
Tirth: Well, okay, so I was originally going to say the number is very low, but then I, as I was about to say it, I realized there’s also literally a plant called the eggplant.
Lu: 96% of kids know what eggs are.
Tirth: Okay, which makes sense. I just don’t know if they could confuse this in their head
Lu: I think most of them, you know, they go Easter egg hunting.
Tirth: They do. That’s true. That’s true. Okay. I think there are only very few percentage of kids think that it’s a plant product. So I’m going to say 15%.
Lu: Tricked you again. 31%.
Tirth: So less than cheese, but still pretty high.
Lu: 31% of kids think eggs are a plant. How does that happen? How do they not know? Eggs, chicken, chicken come from eggs. What is happening? Birds lay eggs. Do they not understand this?
Tirth: Do they think that because they’re hunting eggs in the garden, they think it’s a tree because everything is grown in the backyard, oh, it’s naturally grown.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: Because, you know, if you think about it, nobody sees chickens ever laying eggs, right? You just have, if you’re a kid, you just haven’t…
Lu: Kids, but parents must tell their kids, eggs come from chickens. They must have that conversation at some point.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Right? Craziness, craziness. All right, next one. Milk. How many kids think milk is a plant? 98% of kids know what milk is.
Tirth: Yeah, I’m going to say 30%.
Lu: It’s a little high, a little high, 22%. 22% of kids think milk is a plant.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Which…
Tirth: It’s still pretty high. It’s lower than cheese.
Lu: Lower than cheese, which is good, I guess. Yeah.
Tirth: Because I mean, some of these kids are 7 year olds, right? Presumably.
Lu: Yeah. But I think that the kids who got it wrong are mostly 4 and 5.
Tirth: It’s probably disproportionately the 4 or 5 year olds.
Lu: It’s the 4 and 5. But still, kids are familiar with the concept of milk.
Tirth: Which makes me…
Lu: From a very early age, from the day they’re born.
Tirth: Literally from the day they’re born, okay? Literally. They’re hardwired, man. Hardwired. It’s in, you don’t even have to teach them, right? They know.
Lu: All right. Here we get to bacon. What percentage of kids think bacon is a plant? I already alluded that it’s very high.
Tirth: Yeah, it’s got to be very high. I…
Lu: Well, let me tell you first: 85% of kids know what bacon is.
Tirth: Okay, I would have thought it was higher than that, but that’s okay. Maybe some of them are not eating it for religious reasons or other reasons.
Lu: Are kids very religious in your experience?
Tirth: No, but the families might be. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t eat bacon at home at all, you know.
Lu: I see, I see.
Tirth: 60%.
Lu: 41%.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: What about chicken nuggets? Kids should be very familiar with chicken nuggets, right?
Tirth: Yes, agreed.
Lu: 87% of them, 86% know what chicken nuggets are.
Tirth: Yeah, I’m still going to hold out some faith in America’s future, so to speak. I’m going to say 20%.
Lu: Hmmm…
Tirth: It’s higher than that?
Lu: Want to take another guess?
Tirth: 35.
Lu: 38.
Tirth: Oh my god.
Lu: 38% of kids think chicken nuggets, which has the word chicken in it, may I remind you? Pretty sure kids know what chicken is.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: What chickens are.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Yeah. Hot dog. What percentage of kids think hot dogs come from plants?
Tirth: Listen, man, swear to god, if this is not like very low, then I don’t know what is going on. The word dog is literally in the food.
Lu: 93% of kids know what hot dogs are.
Tirth: Yeah, they should. 18%.
Lu: No.
Tirth: Oh my god. Okay, fine. 35% then.
Lu: Higher, 40%. 40% think it’s a plant product.
Tirth: How? The word dog is right in there.
Lu: Yeah, but it’s not made from dogs, is it?
Tirth: So? They don’t know that. They think, kids think…
Lu: I see, I see.
Tirth: Why would it matter? That’s nuts, man. But now, you know, I’m also beginning to think that maybe these kids are just, maybe I think we’re settling around 30% as the answer choices for most of these.
Lu: For the plants, they did quite well for a lot of the plants.
Tirth: I think with the animals, there does seem to be a lot of distance, removal from the…
Lu: Yeah, and that’s sort of what they’re concluding as well. Hamburger. How many kids think hamburger is a plant? This was surprising to me: only 68% of kids recognize a hamburger.
Tirth: You think maybe it’s because they just think of burgers and not hamburgers?
Lu: Maybe. They just didn’t have a word for it because it’s kind of a long word. They probably have seen it before.
Tirth: Yeah. I would say 40% think it’s a plant product just because most of them don’t know what it is.
Lu: 36%. Yeah. So for all the meat based products, it’s around 30 to 40%.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: So they asked the kids to do a second task. In this task, they were also given pictures of foods, different foods or non-food items, like caterpillars, grass, horse, things like that, things that we don’t eat as a culture in America. And they asked the kids to identify the pictures as either things we eat or things we don’t eat.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: So again, I’m going to ask you how many kids you think got wrong, got these wrong. Okay. The first one is cat, which is not something we eat. What percent of kids thought that cat is something we eat?
Tirth: 25%.
Lu: No, no, no, no, no no. 5%.
Tirth: Oh, good. Okay. I’m going to recalibrate my-
Lu: Hopefully you’ll see a pattern here. Caterpillar.
Tirth: That I think might be high because some kids may be tempted to just put these worms in their mouth. And there is a book, a very popular kids book called The Hungry Caterpillar. So maybe they just somehow fuzzily, fuzzy logic, they associate caterpillar with food.
Lu: Ah, with hunger.
Tirth: Maybe. So I’m going to say 30% think we eat caterpillars.
Lu: 2%.
Tirth: Wow. Okay. All right. I’m way off.
Lu: Next one, dirt. What percentage of kids think dirt is edible or something we eat?
Tirth: Kids might try to eat dirt, man, but I’m going to say like 12%.
Lu: 1%.
Tirth: Wow. So they really do know.
Lu: Like I said, you’ll see a pattern.
Tirth: As I was growing up, some of my friends were eating dirt. I’ve seen this happen.
Lu: I believe you 100%. This seems like the exact crowd you would hang out with.
Tirth: This is true, man. Didn’t happen all the time, but they would definitely get curious and they would shove dirt in their mouth and see. And then sand too. I think they tried eating sand.
Lu: Well, okay. Well, sand is also up there. What do you think? Sand?
Tirth: 5%.
Lu: 1%.
Tirth: Okay, okay.
Lu: You know the meme success kid?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: If you look closely…
Tirth: He was eating sand?
Lu: He’s eating sand. People think he’s doing a fist pump.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: No, he’s got a fistful of sand that he’s bringing to his mouth.
Tirth: That’s awesome. I didn’t know this.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: That’s awesome.
Lu: Not very successful, in my opinion.
Tirth: We should track him, see what’s going on with him now. So it’s like more than 10 years ago. He’s probably like in high school or college now.
Lu: All right, what about dog? What percent of kids?
Tirth: Like 1%.
Lu: 3% actually, which is honestly, that’s a little high. And then I’m just going to tell you the rest of these. Grass was 6%, horse was 5%, and monkey was 4%. So here are some actual animals that we eat. Some farm animals. So what percent of kids think the following are not food? Chicken.
Tirth: I think 60% think they’re not food.
Lu: Yeah. 66% think chickens are not food. Cow.
Tirth: That’s going to be even higher, like 70 plus percent.
Lu: 77%. Very good. You’re seeing the pattern here.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Orange.
Tirth: Orange?
Lu: How many kids think that orange is not an edible food, not a food we eat?
Tirth: Should be pretty low, man. I’m sure they’ve seen their parents peel oranges, like 25%.
Lu: That’s a high guess. No, 6%.
Tirth: Okay, okay.
Lu: Yeah. If it’s a food they’ve eaten, then they’re going to get it right.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Tomato.
Tirth: They’ve eaten tomatoes. I’ll say 8%.
Lu: Yeah, exactly.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: 7.95 to be exact, but okay. I’ll give it to you.
Tirth: Wow. Thank you.
Lu: So basically, the majority of kids don’t think animals are food. Most kids don’t, regardless of the animal. Dog, cat, monkey, horse, chicken, cow. So I do have a couple of criticisms of the paper.
Tirth: Yeah. Go ahead.
Lu: The first one is that, so when they ask the kids to categorize the different foods, different animals or foods or whatever, they ask them to categorize the different pictures of foods into plant or animal based. They didn’t just ask the kids. They told the kids to take the picture of the food they’re shown and put it in one of two boxes. Now these boxes weren’t labeled as plant versus animal because I guess they were afraid kids don’t know how to read those words.
Tirth: I think it’s valid.
Lu: So instead, for the plant box, they wrapped it in green felt and placed like twigs and felt leaves, made out of felt on top of it, so that it looks green, kind of looks like plant growth is coming out of it. And for the animal box, they wrapped it in what I’m going to describe as a carpet that kind of has a pattern of maybe animal fur. So that’s a criticism I have because I don’t know if you necessarily associate the carpet box with animals.
Tirth: No.
Lu: Like, especially like if you think of cheese, right? Cheese to me honestly feels closer to the green box than to the carpet covered fur box.
Tirth: Even to us and we’re adults, we’re like three decades older than these kids. Yeah, definitely. Instinctively, I’m like, no, it should go in that twig box and not the carpet box.
Lu: Right, right. And like chickens, chickens don’t have fur. No, they don’t have carpet like fur.
Tirth: No.
Lu: So that’s potentially a confounding factor.
Tirth: Chickens hang out outside in like a farm or, you know, around trees and grass. So again, you’re like, okay, maybe this is part of that.
Lu: Right. And for the other task, the edibility task, food versus non-food, they had the kids place the picture next to a sculpture of a mouth, like something you might see at a dentist’s office.
Tirth: That’s creepy.
Lu: Actually, it’s exactly like a model you see at the dentist’s office because it just has teeth, gums and a tongue.
Tirth: Oh my God.
Lu: So they told kids, put it there if you think this is food. And for the non-food, they asked the kids to place the drawings inside a trash can. This is not food. You throw it away.
Tirth: Oh my God, I’m done.
Lu: But let me ask you, like some of the answers were dogs. Some of the questions were dogs and cows and whatnot. What kid is going to throw a picture of a dog in the trash can?
Tirth: Yeah, yeah.
Lu: I mean, admittedly, only 5% of kids thought dogs were food, but still.
Tirth: It would have been 0% maybe, we don’t know.
Lu: They didn’t want to throw the picture into the trash can, yeah.
Tirth: That’s funny, man.
Lu: So it seems that most children do not think chicken, cows, pigs are okay to eat.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Again, in episode 5, I talked about this paper where they looked at this meat paradox, right? And that paper presented 3 options that people use to deal with this meat paradox. The fact that they eat meat but don’t want to hurt animals. The first option is to stop eating meat, which some of us do. The option they found is that people actually deny that animals deserve moral treatment. The third option is to fail to recognize that meat comes from animals, which the kids are doing.
Tirth: Yeah, the kids are in that category, all of them basically.
Lu: Which is very smart, if I’m going to be honest. I think that’s genius. It’s a genius strategy to deal with meat paradox.
Tirth: In a way, that’s what you’re doing right now with your Dash Pass. Food just shows up, you know?
Lu: It just shows up at my door. Don’t know where restaurant it came from.
Tirth: No, it doesn’t matter.
Lu: Don’t know what it’s made from.
Tirth: Don’t know if someone spat in it.
Lu: We don’t know. Exactly. Any more thoughts, Tirth?
Tirth: No, no. It’s a very entertaining study.
Lu: I have one more food for thought. So studies have shown that children tend to value human and animal lives more equally than adults.
Tirth: Is that right?
Lu: Yeah. So adults value human lives more than animals.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: But kids, they’re more equal.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: So I wonder if their failure to recognize that meat comes from animals plays a role in that. Because like once they realize that they’re eating animals, they start to stop considering animals as deserving of moral treatment, like that other study I presented.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: So as they grow older, they stop caring about animal lives.
Tirth: Their moral compass changes.
Lu: Yeah. And so as adults, then they care much more about human lives than animal lives. Food for thought.
Tirth: Yeah, literally.
Lu: How do you think we can test this theory?
Tirth: We can show them pictures of people and say, does this go next to the dentist sculpture? Does this go in the trash can?
Lu: Good thought. I think what you do is you get a bunch of kids who don’t know that bacon comes from pigs. And therefore, they also value pigs’ lives as sort of equal to human lives. And then you feed them some bacon. And then you show them a cute picture of a pig. And then tell them that the pig was just slaughtered to produce the bacon they just ate. It might traumatize some kids. We’ll have to deal with the IRB approval down the line, that’s okay.
Tirth: But they’ll know. Knowledge is power.
Lu: And then you ask them whether they still value pig lives the same as human lives.
Tirth: That’s basically like the first study from episode five.
Lu: Basically, but with kids.
Tirth: Yeah, good.
What did you learn today?
Lu: Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of Recreational Science. Tirth, what did you learn today?
Tirth: Lu, I learned today that if I want my kids to eat broccoli, I’m going to start conditioning them by saying it’s the same as bacon. I’m going to completely dissociate plants from animals from them. So they’ll eat broccoli. They’ll think broccoli is meat.
Lu: But I thought you said your kids don’t like bacon.
Tirth: I didn’t say my kids. I don’t have kids. What are you talking about?
Lu: Ah, got you. Got you.
Tirth: Almost.
Lu: Ah, secrets revealed on this podcast. Recreational Science Exclusive.
Tirth: Breaking news.
Lu: Tirth has many kids. Well, guys, thanks for listening to another episode of Recreational Science.
Tirth: And if you like us, give us five stars and tell a friend.
Lu: That’ll be really helpful. All right. See you guys on the next one.
Tirth: Bye.
