Food Theory: Hungry? DON'T Grab A Snickers!

it just doesn't make sense the fans keep tweeting at him clearly sean evans is just ignoring us at this point to be on hot ones and yet he invites malcolm gladwell on i'm fun like malcolm gladwell doesn't he know that i solved grubhub's hidden lore hey man eat us snickers why you're not you when you're hungry better no i'm not better why would i be better i ate a freaking candy bar no i'm grumpy and still hungry and just like slightly fatter this sucks [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory where the only thing that's gonna cure my hangryness today is you hitting that subscribe button well you hitting that subscribe button and i don't know like maybe a cheeseburger did you hit it did you ring the bell too no thank you i feel so much better now maybe i shouldn't be regulating my mood based on your subscription status but hey here we are theorists we've dissected a fair bit of food commercials over the last year but there's one campaign that's always nodded me from a scientific level those snickers ads that claim that they can transform you into a cranky old celebrity my back hurts sorry it's actually the reverse fighting into a snickers turns you from a hangry d-list celebrity into your non-hangry normal self anyway if you're unfamiliar with snickers you're not you when you're hungry campaign let me take you back in time to when betty white looked like uh she looked exactly the same as she does today let's set the scene shall we it's the late 2000s marvel is betting their marbles on the sealest character named iron man the housing market's collapsing and youtube has this crazy idea of sharing its profits with its creators okay we'll see how that one works out for you meanwhile snickers candy bar yeah they're uh their sales aren't doing too great back in 2007 they had risked it all on an ambitious super bowl ad campaign simply called manly man it um it did not go over well for many reasons just play the clip you'll see why i think we just accidentally kissed quick do something manly in 30 seconds they managed to offend pretty much everyone and things didn't get any better in 2008 when they introduced snickers charged a candy bar with 60 milligrams of caffeine which is about the amount that you get in a shot of espresso and is starting to approach red bull levels mars the parent company of snickers was desperate to keep their foothold as the number one candy bar company so they hired advertising agency bbdo and they came up with the golden idea you're not you when you're hungry the campaign was unleashed during the 2010 nfl super bowl and starred comedy legend betty white trash talking her teammates you're playing like betty white out there that's not what your girlfriend said nothing hits comedy gold quite like an 88 year old woman getting leveled by a tackle she takes a bite out of a snickers and magically mike feels more like himself this commercial came to be known as one of the best super bowl commercials ever made and it propelled the 80 year old candy brand to record numbers the sales of snickers increased by 376 million dollars from 2010 to 2012. regaining market share and solidifying its position as the world's foremost chocolate bar ten years later snickers is now the most popular candy bar in the world and all because of an elderly character actor saying the lines come on man you've been riding me all day like no wonder so much money gets dumped into advertising since 2010 snickers has worked really hard to position itself as a solution for any time you feel a negative emotion rough day at work need snickers horrific existential dread into snickers just learn that you have an evil twin that's been gaslighting all your loved ones you just snickers but really is snickers all that good at addressing the problem of hunger i know it's got peanuts and caramel and chocolate but like how good is it really and more importantly is it actually the best candy bar to do the job if i'm feeling hangry what should i be grabbing a willy gum some big nuts a plop and yes those were all real candy bar names so join me friends as we look into the science of satiation in order to identify what candy bar will truly transform me from a mr bean into a ninja [Music] to begin let's look at the saitagong leibniz middle satiety index list which ranks different foods and their ability to satisfy your hunger according to this list the most filling food of all the foods in the world is a boiled potato yep congratulations to ireland and idaho for that one maybe the snickers motto should have been eat a snickers because boiling a potato takes too long close behind potato is the ling fish ling fish is is that a typo do they mean lung the fish what is a winged fish hmm no definitely a real thing weird the reason it satisfies people is probably because they don't want another bite after seeing one of these monsters anyway after the humble laying you have yourself oatmeal oranges and finally apples you'll notice that unnamed mars candy bar is actually included on the list at 70 satiety just slightly above donuts and cake but still well below other snacks like jelly beans and popcorn but despite what the ad campaign says snickers isn't interested in curing your hunger it's interested in something else the food and agriculture organization of the united nations defines hunger as quote an uncomfortable or painful physical sensation caused by insufficient consumption of dietary energy over 815 million people around the world go to bed hungry every night without food in their stomachs hunger is serious business snickers is instead focused on the feeling that you get in between meals when you feel like you could snack on something and this has largely been their approach since the 1930s take a look at this ad from the 1980s and you'll see snickers were made for moms who want to give their teenagers a wholesome snack between meals that's right snickers is a wholesome snack complete with 14 grams of fat and 29 grams of sugar look i love myself candy and my eating habits are far from healthy but let's call a spade a spade here your candy bar is the health equivalent of a mcdonald's small fry it's not even an exaggeration the nutrition facts match up one for one also this commercial from 1986 claims that snickers takes the edge off your hunger and they poke me over beautifully snickers isn't claiming that it solves a real hunger it's just saying that it'll get you through an annoying conference call or prevent your ravenous children from eating everything in sight while they wait for their dinner so with the real question in mind does snickers cure that form of hunger well yes no mostly no when you haven't eaten for a while the glucose levels in your blood decrease this in turn causes the release of various hormones including the stress hormone cortisol as well as adrenaline and that combination is what results in the hangriness that we understand today you're stressed and you're mad and you're a little bit agitated from that adrenaline rush and so a snickers bar with its 29 grams of sugar 4 grams of protein and 1 gram of fiber is going to help spike those glucose levels immediately which is going to help in the short term but may ultimately leave you hungrier than you were before you see science suggests that simple sugars ultimately leave you more hungry when you come off of that sugar high hungry why wait grab a snickers and be hungrier later it's like procrastinating on your own feelings but okay despite the adds i don't think anyone expected snickers to be the truly great meal replacement it claims to be my question though is how does it compare to other candy bars in a competition of candy bars which are all pretty bad solutions to the problem of hangry maybe snickers is the best of the worst maybe those peanuts really do make it the healthy option of candy bar maybe there really is something special in that holy trinity of nougat caramel and peanuts that set snickers above the rest so to have ourselves some fun i pulled together around 30 of the best-selling candy bars in the u.s and then compared their nutrition facts to see if there was a better option out there that you could find at any checkout line or gas station sure there are some niche candy bars that are loaded with dark chocolate antioxidants less sugar but they aren't available everywhere they aren't in the top seller list and quite frankly they're too darn expensive so i don't care the nutrition facts i chose to focus on were fats fiber protein and sugar anything with trans fat was just immediately out because that's the type of fat that's worse for your health i then looked at protein because science has shown that it's the most filling of the macronutrients however that wasn't good enough i wanted to keep sugar low because as we just discussed we want to avoid that sugar crash that results in us being hungrier later so the less sugar the better in other words i was gonna be ranking bars based on high protein low sugar ratios stuff that's gonna keep you full without resulting in a crash lastly i looked at fiber fiber is a complex carbohydrate which means unlike simple sugars it takes longer for the body to digest fiber in fact is so complex that the body just can't digest it which means that it makes you feel fuller longer sweet potatoes beans and berries all foods that are high in fiber and thus better options to curbing your hunger so a bar that's going to be high in fiber but low in calories is going to give us the most full mileage for what are otherwise just a bunch of empty meaningless calories hungry fiber satisfies and then totaled the rankings in each category to see which bar was best overall lowest score wins and again remember not saying necessarily that these bars are healthy by any means i'm just looking for the healthiest and most filling in a category of bad options so let's talk about that first category trans fats that qualification actually knocked out six of our contenders right off the bat including take five three musketeers and you guessed it snickers bars i will say that the overall amounts of trans fats in each of these bars was really small though so i ended up throwing these guys back into the rankings that said i did find it amusing that my first data point immediately wiped out the candy bar that prompted us to do this whole hangry analysis in the first place the other thing i noticed right off the bat while i was gathering data was that peanuts in snickers really do seem to make a difference in the amount of protein each bar contains when just talking about pure protein no other calculations snickers came in at number three just behind other peanut heavy candy bars payday and mr goodbar peanut butter based candy bars also held their own in this category with reese's and snickers peanut butter having high protein content but what i was really interested in was the overall rankings when it comes to providing you with no nutritional value whatsoever skittles and starbursts dead last both of them just a literal race to the bottom skittles also had the added knock against it for having trans fat like literally anything is better for you than these guys when you're talking about satisfying your hunger but when it comes to the top of our list nothing compares to payday which crushed the competition coming in first place overall thanks to a first place finish in high protein to sugar ratio and second place in high fiber to calorie ratio the differentiating factor here is that payday is just a very different type of candy bar it is jam-packed with peanuts unlike most of our other competitors payday doesn't actually contain any chocolate instead it's a peanut coating around a caramel center and that gives it big numbers in protein and fiber with lower numbers in calorie and sugar second place was also a peanut based candy bar the peanut and chocolate bar mr good bar again a lot of peanuts bumped the protein marks significantly higher than the competition and the lack of any other sweet ingredients like caramel and nougat help to keep the sugar content relatively low continuing on with that thread peanut m m's had a solid performance in third place all of the health of peanuts with all the unhealthiness of chocolate and added sugars seriously this one could have been in first place had it not been for the 13 grams of added sugar reese's peanut butter cups came in fourth and the peanut and pretzel bar take five ironically enough took fifth place leaving snickers in a satisfying sixth so there you have it friends you're not you when you're hungry grab a payday the quote-unquote healthiest candy bar with more protein and more fiber with fewer calories than sugar than a snickers or you know if you really want to cure that midday hangry feeling get more sleep drink more water and exercise that is the way to improve your stamina unfortunately more than half the people in the united states don't drink enough water only 24 get enough exercise and one in three don't get enough sleep so it doesn't look like hangry is gonna be going away anytime soon guess it's time for another candy bar but hey that's just a perfect opportunity to thank our sponsor for today's episode fetch fetch rewards is a super easy to use free app where you earn rewards on literally anything you buy let's say hypothetically that you made a youtube video that got you to buy around 35 different candy bars from the grocery store well with fetch you just take that receipt snap a picture of it and bam seconds later you have points to redeem and if it's an e receipt no problem there fetch rewards handles those too it couldn't be easier and then comes the fun part you get to redeem those points for hundreds of rewards including amazon and visa gift cards so in short by buying candy bars today and scanning your receipt with fetch you earn points that'll get you even more candy bars tomorrow and that my friends is what's called big brain moves and i cannot stress enough that any receipt from any retail store can be scanned to get you points i tried to trick the app with some really unusual items from really obscure local stores fetch rewards wasn't fooled for a second gave me my points like the good boy that it is who's a good boy who's a good boy yes you are fetch app yes you are you're a good boy right i'm doing this right i'm assuming that an app called fetch would be personified as a dog that makes sense to all of us right anyway fetch is free it's easy to use and best of all fetch has a limited time offer for all you theorists out there download the app now and use the code food theory to get 3 000 points when you scan your first receipt there's a link waiting for you down in the description below and everything so to recap the app fetch rewards the code food theory the episode concluded a final huge thanks to fetch for their sponsorship and as always friends remember it's all just a theory a food theory bon appetit

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,504,585

Keywords: candy, halloween candy, candy bars, chocolate, candy bar, snickers, payday, reese's, kit kat, butterfinger, oreo, mars bar, hershey, halloween candy haul, snickers commercial, snickers commercial betty white, snickers superbowl, snickers danny trejo.snickers charged, superbowl commercial, superbowl commercials, hangry, chocolate bar, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, film theory, food theory candy

Id: FbsESdGUmBI

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 16 2021

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[u/pehmette]

4:44 "...unnamed Mars Candy bar". Candy bar called Mars (by Mars Inc.) exist, just not in US where similar one is called Milky Way or something.

[u/anonymous0x9]

did it ever heard of bread ...