Many people love to eat ultra-processed foods. Think about those crispy French fries, or the delicious strawberry milkshake. Ultra-processed foods are heavily changed from their original form and made mostly in factories rather than kitchens. Instead of simple ingredients you might recognize—like flour, eggs, or milk—these foods often contain long lists of additives, preservatives, artificial flavors, and chemicals designed to improve taste, texture, and shelf life.

Ashley Gearhardt, a University of Michigan psychology professor, studies how addictive processes may drive overeating. She joins the Michigan Minds podcast to share her insights on the impact of these foods on a global level and what drives over-consumption.

"Many of those products are delivering these unnaturally intense and concentrated combos of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates and added fats," she explained. "That combination just does not exist in nature, and our brain never evolved to handle that amount of intense reward stimulation in a food."

But it doesn’t stop there. Gearhardt explains that the food industry uses special ingredients and descriptions to “wake up” your brain and make food taste more exciting. Scientists can create strong flavors—like something that tastes like a strawberry—even if there’s no real strawberry in it. For example, the Froot Loops cereal tastes fruity, even though they don’t actually contain fruit.

Many of these foods send signals to your brain that remind you of natural foods your body is wired to enjoy, but they’re actually made in factories using chemicals, she said.

When these intense flavors are combined with things like refined carbs and fats, they stimulate your brain even more. This can make you start craving those specific tastes. You might find yourself wanting the flavor of Coca-Cola, the spicy “burn” of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, or the sweetness of a strawberry milkshake.

"Because of this, people often keep going back to those foods and craving them again and again," she said.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer, and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christopher Friese, a University of Michigan professor of nursing and of health management and policy, is a national authority on health care quality, nursing work environments and workforce policy.

Friese joins the Michigan Minds podcast to explain how proposed federal caps on graduate student loans could shape nurses’ education and career decisions, what high student debt is revealing about the nursing workforce, and why these policies may have ripple effects for patient care and the future supply of nurse practitioners, midwives, anesthetists and nursing faculty.

What makes loan caps on borrowing for graduate nursing degrees different?

We are worried about caps on loans for graduate nurses for a couple of reasons. Our study, the Michigan Nurses Study, identified that about a third of registered nurses have substantial levels of debt to begin with. If you already are carrying a lot of debt, imagine trying to advance your career in nursing—that usually means you have to go back for a graduate degree—and then you’re facing an even higher bill.

What we are worried about is that these proposed caps will deter people from even thinking about graduate school. They will just decide, 'I'm not going to pursue graduate school.' And that is bad for the country, because advanced practice nurses and the future faculty that train nursing students do a tremendous amount for our health care system. If we cut off this supply route for graduate nurses, we are worried about health care outcomes and the future of nursing education.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It begins with a single, panicked phone call about a fallen parent or a flickering memory, but it is quickly becoming the defining white noise of a nation. As the American population ages and family structures splinter, a quiet domestic struggle has escalated into a pressing national inquiry: Who is actually responsible for our elders?

New insights from the University of Michigan suggest that while the American heart remains committed to the ideal of family-led care, the American household is running out of resources to provide it.

Sarah Patterson, a sociologist and demographer at the Institute for Social Research, joined the Michigan Minds podcast to talk about a high-stakes collision between universal moral values and a "math problem" that no longer adds up.

Q: Is the traditional family safety net fraying under the weight of several modern demographic shifts.

So I would say that our expectations for family is pretty universal. This is a widely held belief among many people, many nations, that families should help older adults with their care. But as you said, it's becoming sort of a math problem because older adults' families are changing. So we have higher rates of what's known as gray divorce or getting divorced later in life. Family estrangement has become a big topic. For instance, Oprah has been talking about it, so it's a big topic in the public. And there's these sort of family changes that are happening for older adults that call into question what our expectations might be in this changing sort of demographic environment.

My research is concerned with how we think about these expectations for families when families are changing… There is a question about whether these sorts of values will persist into the future as there's more pressure on smaller families to take care of older adults in the U.S.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.