5 foods I got wrong | Professor Tim Spector

[Music] welcome to Zoe science and nutrition we're World leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health why do we love food is shaped the way we've evolved over the last million years when we started to cook our food our digestive tract slowly became shorter as a result of more easily absorbed cooked Foods our brains became larger thanks to this increased nutrient intake with a major part dedicated to our senses in particular those neuronal areas related to food as omnivores we needed a good system to distinguish edible from non-edible foods and those were at higher risk or those that gave a bigger reward this is why from a young age we are hardwired to be wary of bitter or sour foods that may be dangerous and programmed to love sweet foods with energy dense fatty or Savory Foods lying somewhere in between the smell texture color or shape of food or plant gives us Clues to what chemicals it contains and what it might taste like taste is an imprecise term often used interchangeably with flavor which is a combined food experience today's these signals are most clearly seen in infants even before though exposed to many foods but we learned to overcome many of these inherited traits as we age we all know young children can be fussy eaters but before the age of two they are still highly receptive to many novel Foods textures and colors presented to them by their parents enabling them to overcome their initial Taste of bitter vegetables such as broccoli if you haven't guessed it already this isn't Jonathan I'm Tim Spector and you just heard a passage from food for Life the new science of eating well in today's episode Jonathan and I discussed the surprising discoveries I made during the six years it took to write this book enjoy Tim thank you for joining me today it's a pleasure Jonathan good so um I know I told you that I wouldn't ask any quick fire questions but it turns out I've cheated Tim I I woke up this morning and I decided that Everyone likes quickfire round of questions from our listeners uh so I have a few which uh you haven't had a chance to be briefed on so are you ready to go no no not at all I'm gonna do it anyway the normal rules yes no or maybe a one sentence answer at the most so let's start at the beginning Tim you're a medical doctor is food as important as medicine for our health absolutely although I didn't used to believe that and most doctors still don't believe it did you think you had nutrition all figured out when you wrote diet myth five years ago I was cocky enough to believe that yes um thought that I had most of the answers although in fact I'd scrape the surface I think of what's coming so are there things you got wrong a few things that people have pointed out in Dartmouth were wrong but on the most part I'm actually fairly happy that my speculations for what was going to happen in the future ended up being correct so actually I didn't do too badly although I was pushing the boat out a bit with that first book and have you changed your own diets while writing your new book food for life I have yes so my diet has definitely evolved and for people who know me it had already changed a bit but it continues to change and each time I discover some new interesting fact about food it it continues to be modified and now perhaps I'll never stop changing I think that's a wonderful way to think about it and I can think of one change we'll discuss later which I think will really surprise people Tim is there anything you completely change your mind about while writing food for Life yes definitely I've changed my mind at quite a few things I don't know if you want to list them all but they're in the book but um something we're going to maybe just get around to discussing but my views for example on salt have reversed really 180 degrees and my position it's definitely scarred from very strong to very weak or weak to very strong on on many other points of food and I think this is the fun bit about nutrition science is that it doesn't stay still for long brilliant well we look forward to talking about all of that now look firstly I'm just so pleased to be able to have this conversation with you Tim and mainly because it means you finally finished writing food for life which I know has been a massive Labor of Love And for those of you looking on the video I have got the book so it is real it's here um and there is some weight to it so this was a lot of work wasn't it Tim yeah six years of my life which I'll never get back but at the same time has been very rewarding so it's like anyone who's written a book will know this uh balance between pain and pleasure that books give you but uh certainly um I couldn't have you know you can't do something like that without learning masses about the subject and but I also realized why no one else before me had attempted such a massive feat of trying to cover the whole of the subject in one book and uh I realized that after I was about a year into it and I really enjoyed reading it uh and I know that a lot of people will enjoy reading it there are so many things we could talk about because it covers so many different topics but I think what would be most interesting actually is to talk about where you've changed your mind and where your view now is not the same as it was five or six years ago and I think one of the reasons I think that's so interesting is it feels like there's so much focus on the idea that people mustn't ever admit that they were wrong or that they changed their mind and one of the things that I love about you Tim is you're happy to admit this and I think that's that's so important because the whole idea of science is it's a process of of getting a better and better understanding of the world World by challenging our assumptions right change in our mind when the data proves we were wrong and so I think you know this book is your own doing science around nutrition and saying okay this is what the latest data says and so if you're all right I'd love to talk about the top five foods where Tim has changed his mind and how this has actually changed what you eat and I particularly want to do that because when I first met you six years ago I assume you already had the perfect diet so I think that if even Tim can get better it tells us that you know all of us can continue to improve absolutely yes and I think just it's worth pointing out that this book is different to the previous two Dartmouth and spoon fed in the it's a more a practical guide to Yes it covers the science but it then goes into much more detail about how you can practically tell the difference between foods and what you should actually do and I think by forcing myself to write this more focused practical book it did actually raise many of these questions that we don't always know the answer to or I'd avoid it when I was talking more in more general terms in the previous book so it does put the writer on the spot to actually sort of say well okay how much broccoli should I eat a day or you know what what what it you know where what is the best plan to choose uh you know which which is the best bread for example and and these are these really bring it into tight Focus as you then have to explain what why you made those choices and I think you just mentioned that the first topic I wanted to talk about which was bread uh and I think you know that is probably you know the number one thing that uh uh people ask us about in terms of food so bread how have you changed your mind about it Tim six years ago thought that most breads if they looked Brown and had uh some sort of healthy label on it would be generally fairly good for me and I knew to avoid very white breads or you know that that really the cheap Supermarket white breads but I thought that uh if it looked like decent healthy bread it was quite likely to be for me and I could have yeah not masses of it but but certainly um I I could still keep it as part of my diet and I think that was probably the first real shock that hit me was when I would take one of these uh Brown healthy looking loaves that have a whole grain whole wheat made of you know all kinds of nice stuff with a case or bits of seeds sprinkled on it and it was only when I started testing my blood sugar responses to these that I realized that you know All That Glitters Is Not Gold and that actually underneath it they're pretty much the same and there was very little difference between the brown Breads and the white breads that we were made in very similar ways except the brown breads are often dyed or they had just a few things added to make them look healthier and so I suddenly realized this there was this huge range within this one category of of bread that I was I was calling the same that suddenly had to reevaluate I had to go back to basics to say well what makes a bread different what is the key fundamentals about some breads that are much less healthy than the other and that's really where I came across this idea of looking at the amount of fiber in the bread versus the amount of sugars that are easily absorbed and the processes by which breads are made whether it's the highly chemical processed you can make bread in a couple of hours in a factory with the Chorley wood method or it's made over 24 hours with a Sourdough method that is the old traditional way of making bread and what actually those differences were and I also discovered breads that I thought were fantastic ancient breads from Italy that have been used for centuries like ciabatta which we see a lot I turned out it was just a marketing invention in the 1980s which I think yeah that's rather disappointing I did feel very let down by that and but realized what else you know what else I've been we've been fooled about into thinking as healthy as not healthy and I think you mentioned actually some of the labels that we often see uh on bread being in the UK or the US are also similarly sort of empty marketing can you give some examples yeah they're also all kinds of terms like that that really fairly meaningless uh you know like whole grain and um uh you know full of fiber high-end fiber and actually the bat the bar for having being high in fiber is so low that it's pretty irrelevant and if and if you match that fiber with masses of starchy carbs the overall balance means that fiber is Trivial compared to the damage it might be doing to you if like you know like me you've got a susceptibility to to carbohydrates um and so what have you changed him what were you what were you eating before and you know what are you doing today well now I pretty much only regularly eat uh dark rye bread that uh in terms of purchase bought foods and I try and get Rye sourdough but it's not always available but actually those those Rye breads you can get uh do a long shelf life I think are quite reasonable because they really are packed with fiber and they don't give you the sugar spikes and I also make my own sourdough bread now I sort of alternate my wife we compete a bit and mine are all packed with various grains I try to do multi-grain ones so not just Rye but I put spelled and other ones that I have around and there are even some flowers where where you can get 10 or 20 different grains combined always add nuts and seeds and I find that a very small amount of that really fills you up much more and doesn't give me at all the same sugar spikes or energy levels um and I unfortunately you know my love of croissants and baguettes and bagels has had to take like second choice so uh you know I no longer see the mistables which is tough because everybody loves a croissant a bagel I now have them as a special treat uh rather than saying well I can have these regularly so even if I'm in France you know there's no way I'm going to have these every day but if it's a particular famous boulangerie where where you can pick up your uh croissant or just taste a you know a superb crusty uh baguette yes you'd be stupid not to but I think changing that idea of a treat there's in fact a equivalent of a sugary treat from a staple I think is uh really something important but in general I'm eating much less bread because I'm much more fussy about it and so I reject a lot of breads that I'm offered because most people you know in in our cultures I really you know offered bread two or three times a day and I think it's um definitely the wrong thing to do and it's much more harmful I think than than people realize really interesting and I think it's a great transition actually to number two of the things that you've changed which is actually not a food the topic is actually personalization tell us about personalization and how your views have changed I was up to six years ago obviously I was very keen on the gut microbiome and started studying that about 12 years ago so and my book the diet myth was all about really introducing the gut microbiome to people in its interaction with foods and I I thought that you could if you just at for your gut then generally most things would follow and I think that's still broadly true that all of us can get to a certain level of uh healthy food by listening to our gut microbes what what do they like to eat and in general what they like to eat is good for your health and generally good for the planet but within that I think there are some quite important rules and it was only when I did the Zoe the early studies for the Zoe predict um study we were doing Pilots I think you you did this around the same time as me Jonathan I I did I remember being like in the hospital having needles stuck in me like 10 times for you we're more used to it Tim I mean you know your famous scientist medical doctor for me it was like a huge shock so I definitely remember that time no I did it because actually I do all the experiments that we put our twins through that's one of my rules is I wouldn't you know ask subjects to do things that I haven't already done and so I've had bone biopsies I've had uh fat biopsies I've had all kinds of even had colonoscopy another thing not you know uh more invasive things so it was routine I love that it's like testing your own uh testing your own material before you give it to the public yeah but I think it builds trust to say well you know he's not in some Ivory Town not doing this stuff uh he's seen what it's like and he's he's survived so if Tim can do it then we can and so I went into this uh not knowing really how I would respond to foods and we were we had those very early uh primitive muffins and you know this is the first time I'd seen this really big spike in my blood sugar when I took that uh when I I had that that first muffin and followed up by a milkshake and um it was in a Range that you know I really hadn't thought I'd be at at my age and thinking I was relatively healthy so you know I'm not overweight I I you know I exercise I look after my diet but I couldn't change those figures which for me some of this really big Sugar Peak and you know below average fat Peak so it wasn't like I was I was could eat any amount of fat so it suddenly said I had to be really much more careful about what I was eating and then I started once I sort of knew this I I started thinking more carefully about what I should have for my meals or breakfast and how I actually felt after them and what were you eating at that point for for breakfast and lunch and how have you have you changed that sort of personalized to you I don't remember the exact sequence of events but I I was still dabbling um I think I'd love as moving off the super healthy mooslis but I was still having it occasionally you know these expensive mosleys you think are better for you uh with nuts and I was starting to experiment with things like uh oat porridge which uh apparently you know According to some of the data was had been shown to be better for some of your blood fat levels yeah I think we've all read lots of things about how that's supposed to be really slow release healthy breakfast right oatmeal for for our U.S listeners yeah so I'd already given up orange juice because I knew that was bad and uh and it was and I had actually uh taken my blood sugars using different methods and seen that my orange juice was just as bad as Coca-Cola for me so I just given up Coca-Cola but it's still in this this transition period saying well there must be some healthy carbohydrates I can have in the morning that would uh work for me and uh porridge was was one you know a lot the muesli with nuts and seeds I thought that that would compensate it turns out that those two were still terrible for me so I I ended up with really big uh glucose spikes with my breakfast and that uh really told me yeah change it and for people listening who may who maybe haven't heard about this why why is that bad Tim in your opinion well these sugar spikes everyone gets some some sugar Spike after him after eating food it's a normal response to the body when you have when you eat carbohydrates gets broken down and the body gets rid of the Sugar by releasing insulin so you need a little bit of the blood sugar to go up in order to trigger the insulin to bring it down again and for most people this is a little little hump and it goes down again but in some people there's an exaggerated response that lasts a bit too long and this causes stress on the body over time it can lead to stress of the insulin system so you might end up with type 2 diabetes but short term it leads to inflammation which means that the the body is under much more stress than it should be and this can stress the blood vessels it can stress the brain and all many parts of the body just slightly in a state of tension that over time leads to all kinds of diseases accelerated aging metabolic problems Etc so so not something you want it's not something you want if you can avoid it I mean sometimes there are some things in life you can't avoid but it seemed to me once you start doing these experiments that suddenly you're empowered to change the way your body is responding and so you can actually make a real conscious decision to do things about it so you know eating a healthy oat porridge and seeing you have this big spike when all the experts were telling you it should be absolutely fine for you and particularly in the U.S you know oatmeal is seen as the Holy Grail of of foods it was rather strange that um this happened so I knew that really I had to get rid of particularly in the morning this whole idea of this carb load and I switched to a healthier fat protein predominant breakfast and this was really important to me and as soon as I started getting this full fat yogurt with nuts and seeds I felt much better I I didn't feel as hungry and that's breakfast of choice now is it Tim it's breakfast of choice when I have breakfast and um we may come on to that but I've since discovered that you know another way to avoid the sugar spike is actually to not not have breakfast at all which I know I find easier to do than you do yeah it's a catastrophe for me but again this is the joy of personalization isn't it exactly and you have to experiment and it it's something I've slowly started to do more of it's not something I just jump to on day one and but I also try and bury my breakfast so you know some days it I will still have my rye bread but I will cover it with cheese or avocado to improve it and this is what the personalization also adds is that as you layer on these other Foods you get an idea of their their score for you and you try and balance this out so that you can have fun interesting diverse food that's good for your microbiome was will also also protecting yourself from excess stresses on on the body and I remember one of the things that was really striking like when you you know when we were all in the hospital right that very early days we also were joined by our other co-founder George and um you know you and I both actually had very high blood sugar responses it turns out and Georges were way lower and so that I remember as being just like a real eye-opener um because you know there's nothing on the outside that would have made you uh made you guess and so for me you know uh I remember I remember just being sort of really stunned and I think you know similarly this has obviously had a big impact on on what I eat afterwards yeah and my wife could eat croissants which is really annoying and um is that the best special Belgian jeans is it is there you sort of adapted to a croissant for breakfast it must be yes so um but it just shows you that um you know I think this personalization is definitely going to change the family breakfast and and uh the idea that one size fits all is is obviously complete nonsense and the idea that this there is this idea of a healthy food for everybody I think it largely goes under the window but um yeah so this increasing personalization on top layered on top of my microbiome knowledge uh as has really sort of helped me shape where things are going but I'm uh you know so taking bread out of the equation apart from you know occasionally and when I do trying to make sure that I'm I'm compensating for those extra spikes I get from the from the the carbs in the bread not only with the fiber in the bread but also layering on uh other things that will delay how quickly that Sugar gets into my bloodstream I think is also important and the nice thing is it's actually quite fun to think of other bits to put on your uh on your food to add to it it's you know it's suddenly like a bit of a chemistry set I agree I I loved this uh this spices podcast we did a little while ago you know I'm still playing at trying to figure out the spices they put on my breakfast half of which are a disaster I have to admit someone who doesn't really know anything about spice but I agree that there's something really interesting about uh but you know I think many people I think must be like us at home who feel like you've sort of ended up in a bit of a rut eating the same food over and over again and I think one of the things that I've really enjoyed over the last couple of years is this push to to very different food and um my wife is actually just finished uh doing Zoe quite recently and it's interesting it's had a huge change now subtly on what we're eating because it's really changed what she feels is is is right for her and suddenly we're just eating all these foods that I've been trying to convince her for years we should try but now she's got the results for herself she's interested so uh anyway we were talking about breakfast and I think that might be quite a good segue on to your your your third thing where you you told me you'd really changed your mind in which I really enjoyed reading about in here which is milk yeah so I've had an on off relationship with milk pretty much all my life uh from when I saw I had terrible sinusitis as a kid and I was told um that I should give up all dairy products by my mum's acupuncturist because milk was associated with mucus production and so I did as I was told it gave it up for about 10 years uh amazingly made absolutely no difference at all to my sinusitis or mucus production I I'm shocked you're saying that you're acupuncturists uh medical analysis wasn't completely accurate yes but I'm sure I could have gone to any number of other doctors as well I'm not picking an acupuncturist but it um you know people have had very strong views on milk and a lot of people do have milk allergies and uh seen as foreign by some people and as life-giving by others as you're quite polarized people's views and I I've sort of oscillated between the two and certainly um I you was one of the first to probably move to low-fat milks I never liked totally skim milk I thought it tasted revolting but I would go for a semi-skim milk that sort of uh so one is that one percent I can't remember the uh in America and but uh yeah so six years ago I uh I thought well you know I'm gonna I'm gonna try some of these uh alternative milks because I didn't think milk was particularly good for you and uh uh you know and I I knew for the planet it was probably better to have Don Dairy so I got in I I tried a lot of these other milks soy milk almond milk and more likely oat milk and I was using that instead of my dairy milk and but as I read more and more in my book I changed my mind basically and I I uh will either go back to uh uh the occasional bit of full fat milk in very small quantities so you know nothing like the amounts we used to have uh because I I don't believe that the switching was was a better alternative so as I read more and more realized that actually milk tends to come out pretty neutral in the uh epidemiology studies I don't think it provides huge benefit for most people in terms of bone health or menopause or anything else like that but it's not negative either so it obviously got some components in it that that are good for you and there are lots of nutrients particularly the fatty bits of the milk and can we talk about that just for a second because um you know I think your chapter on milk is really interesting and it's you know it's something we've also talked a bit about I was certainly brought up to believe that skim milk was much healthier than full fat milk and of course that's as usual a product of my generation being told that you know low-fat was always going to be better do you still believe that skim milk is healthier than the full fat milk no the latest evidence shows there's no there's no clear daylight between them in terms of any health benefits and if anything there's less nutrients in it and therefore um I think full fat is probably you know slightly better for you if you had to choose one or the other certainly tastes better has a better mouth feel to it seems more substantial but that that's that's sort of where we are so that's that's sort of been evolving this this milk story and I think we've largely you know certainly in the in the nutrition research Community largely dispelled the myth that the fat in milk is is particularly bad for you I don't think anyone's shown that um to any degree degree so there isn't really now a health reason to switch to uh alternative plant milks they're not better for you then from your perspective Tim not in my reading and my research on this no and I it's been interesting because opposite in my previous life I was a I did a well of work in osteoporosis and there was a huge belief that calcium and milk were crucial for bone health and that evidence has really disappeared in the last 10 years uh so that there's all those early Studies have been disputed and now whether you take milk or you take calcium supplements it doesn't seem to help uh you prevent fractures in any way so clearly we've we've lost that that bit of the puzzle to think that's that was one really important reason to to drink milk and promote milk so I think it's it's gone from being on both sides either really bad for you really good for you to somewhere pretty neutral that if you like it have a bit of it but really for the planet we should be drinking less of it and probably look look for higher quality stuff rather than um you know using it as a mass drink that's going to be good for our health and that's where that's why I moved in a way to the plant foods and these these plant milks because I thought that at the time they'll be healthy for me but it turns out that's not true they have large amounts of other ingredients compared to milk they're much more highly processed generally they're not just the the almonds squeezed in a bit of water they've got all kinds of other stuff to make it look like milk in a sort of this that it you know it has a sort of vague color that resembles milk and a mouth feel that is is is Pleasant and similarly with soy milk and then you've got oat milk which for me uh I discovered uh a while ago it gives me a very big Sugar Peak as well so in a way that's relating back to uh the personalization that some people will react actually quite badly so it's a bit like having a sugary drink and so what is as a result of this what's sitting in uh in the Specter refrigerator uh in the milk Department if anything well I'm sort of fighting with my wife on that about what's actually there but um all right so tell us the real tell us the real story uh you know generally I I've I'm more or less cut it out and if there happens to be some milk in there uh and I and I need to add it to something I will do uh but I'd be probably equally happy with a bit of um if there was some oat milk to add because not that it's it if it's only in very small quantities I know it's not going to be particularly harmful for me but I know that actually that is better for the planet uh and because of its it's a you know comparison a parative benefits for climate change so but I really gone off the need for our milks at all I think you can have your your tea and your coffee uh black and I think there's lots of reasons we should be weaning ourselves off these these products which are more more habit than anything else and if we do just use very small amounts of them so that's that's the way why change but it's interesting how you know plant milks have have come from being the Savior to suddenly Rising just by understanding more about how these foods are made which was part of my research by the book food for life you come to a slightly different conclusion and in a way what it illustrates The Dilemma that we're now in with food that we think about food in three ways now you know effects on yourself and your health which may be personalized you're thinking about the ethics of How It's Made You Know of those cows really happy in that environment are they inside do they ever get to see the grass and and thirdly the effect of that food on our on our planet on climate change and I think that's why I wrote the book is so people can actually see see some of the facts make their own minds up about which these of these three is important it's gonna differ at different times in life I think that's also important can we talk about number four on uh where Tim has changed what he eats and that is mushrooms which I personally thought was my favorite chapter in in the whole book tell us about mushrooms yeah I discovered Lots about mushrooms which I didn't know I had no clue about I mean I used to you know enjoy the odd Mushroom in a risotto or with a Sunday fry up maybe but I didn't realize quite how many thousands and thousands of species there are and the fact that they're closer to animals than they are to plants as well so they're not actually members of the plant kingdom that's crazy and about a third of our you know the Earth we're we're standing on it is is made up of fungi and their their mycelium their Network and they you know incredible uh orgasm how they can produce these uh you know these mushrooms that suddenly appear uh after a bit of rain and grow massively and then disappear again for another year it's incredible and it turns out they are potentially a real Lifesaver for the planet if we can harness them right because they have an amazing amount of nutrients in them and a very very high in protein levels as well so it doesn't break up which species there are there and and they have this meat-like quality to them that humans can recognize the so-called Umami uh flavors so they're often used to disguise dishes between Italian sauces that you know they couldn't quite afford the meat so they just put in mushrooms and it's well known for centuries how you can do that and it turns out that not only as they they high in all these nutrients if you leave them in the sun they actually like humans produce vitamin D so rather than taking highly controversial supplements this is after you've cut them and put them in a basket or while they're still still connected to the rest of the uh the fungus well I've seen data shows that both so they can actually still produce it because many plants do actually stay alive once once even once you've cut them from there um the rest of the family if you like they will continue to still be alive and uh so we don't totally understand this but it's not done commercially so you can buy especially vitamin D enhanced ones but many mushrooms contain natural amounts of vitamin D and I think we're going to see more and more of that as if you know our other sources might be drying up if we're having too much um uh Ultra processed food so that's interesting they like just you know absorb the sun like we do and uh convert in their skins in a way precursors into this vitamin D which they obviously use themselves and vitamin D is pretty good for our immune system but we know that my particular views are you know see vitamin D supplementation is not really succeeded uh in preventing uh many diseases at all so natural forms of vitamin D are really important the last uh topic where I think you said you've really changed your your mind and that is ultra processed food and maybe Timmy just start by explaining what Ultra processed food is and then explain how you've really changed your views about it so the language around process processed foods is complicated because most food wheat is processed to some extent it's even something like butter or milk can be considered processed because it's it's not just eating the raw the raw plant or just cutting that bit of meat from the animal and eating it but what we mean by Ultra processed is when the the food itself no longer resembles the original ingredients so that you are using extracts of plants or meats that no longer are the same as those original members and you're putting them together in a factory in a way that you lose all the structure of those original foods and you're just taking bits of them from a sort of chemistry set and they tend to have at least 10 ingredients and to make them stick together they've often got these glues or gums or thickeners to make them seem like real foods again so they're like reconstituting these foods and this is unfortunately what uh constitutes 50 of our diet in the UK and sixty percent of our diet in the U.S which is an enormous number right so you're saying you know half to well over half of everything you eat is this sort of rebuilt food instead of something which um Bears any real resemblance to the diet that we clearly ate until 100 years ago absolutely right and and not every country does so there are countries in Europe and Mediterranean like Portugal they only have 10 percent of their food in that way so it's definitely something that affects particular countries that maybe lack to food culture but also at very strong business links and lobbying Links of the food industry to point us in this direction and you know and the fact that we we went for new modern scientific foods that may be easier to cook with and uh cut out a lot of those old uh time wasting methods but at what cost and I think when I first started writing this book uh six years ago the emphasis was all about or they have high in sugar they have their high in fats they're high in salt and that basically if you reduce those three things you can make them healthier and that's still uh the main establishment government approach to ultra processed food and one that the food industry is quite happy with because they can keep substituting different chemicals to reduce the Sugar by artificial sweeteners they can reduce fat Levels by increasing carbohydrates and other sugars it and and sugar alcohols Etc and they can reduce the salt by again tampering with the structure of the food and using different preservatives so all of it you can get round but I think what I found was that there was some new research showing that ultrabrecious Food Works not through those uh the bad effects of those chemicals those three those three uh sort of macronutrients if you like but actually it's the whole process it's these extra chemicals that act in two ways to really harm us um first is I've got microbes through the chemicals like emulsifiers and thickeners that and artificial sweeteners that in most people and this might be personalized as well uh we our gut micros react to and produce chemicals that make us sicker than if we weren't eating them and might make us more more hungry might send signals to the brain to overeat and put on weight and and generally mess up our gut microbiome so basically there are chemicals in this just to play you know make sure that we're all following you're saying now you feel this these chemicals in this Ultra processed food which are sort of directly triggering actions in these trillions of bacteria which are then creating their own chemicals that really affect our health and our brain and things like that is that is that what you're saying Tim yes so it's it's not a direct effect it's it and it's it's as you said it's through our gut microbes which I think we need to think of as like these pharmacies where where they're producing chemicals for us uh instead of our body and sometimes they produce the same chemicals that our body produces but through an alternate pathway and something that can we're just learning more and more about all the things they produce so this is a very new science but it's it's showing us how things that we thought were completely inert like artificial sweeteners like carrageenans which are like thickness or other lesser thin emulsifiers sucralose we told they can't harm you because we've done the studies to show that doesn't cause cancer or anything but it does mess with your body and it does that we think through the gut microbes but the other convincing bit of evidence for me was this a couple of things that have come about the most striking was this study from the NIH Kevin Hall's group where compared two different in a very strict environment in a lab they gave for a couple of weeks people two different diets one matched for calories completely one a whole food diet made from uh real food and the other a copy of it made from Ultra processed food and they were both equally satisfying for the participants but the group that had the ultra processed equivalent kept saying they were hungrier and they get went back to eat more and more every day so overeating by about 200 calories a day so there's something else in that food something else in that food there's nothing to do with the calories nothing to do with the salt the sugar and this because they were matched that is telling the brain eat more and we don't know if that's Direct or through the gut microbes but once you once you really absorb that information you you think gosh if I'm having this every day of my life in some form this is perhaps why we're in such a mess in countries that have high Ultra processed food uh percentages in their diet like you know the US like the UK like Canada Australia and Germany in in Europe and that's why we've got part of this problem because we've just seen it as a reductionist idea oh we only got to change the salt for certain potassium we've only got a uh switch the fats for proteins and a bit of carbs we've only got to take the sweetness away and add other chemicals that changes nothing and so I've really become much more anti Ultra processed food and that's a big shift isn't it that you're you're saying you know I think you know I remember when we first talked that you you were pretty cons you were particularly concerned there was no fiber in it so it wasn't sort of positively feeding the the bacteria and now you're talking about it almost as if we were taking a drug right it sounds like almost like you're describing what would be happening if I was taking a uh you know a medical drug that I don't need and we all know that all these different you know many drugs have side effects right they say on the label you know may cause obesity or may cause uh you to uh nausea and just you know if I play that that back Tim you're really describing this as if these are sort of like medication but we are not being prescribed by the doctor right we're just buying it at the corner store and eating it because it tastes delicious yeah and it's been designed by really brainy people uh brilliant food scientists who have spent 30 years now trying to create this perfect mix of chemicals that satisfies your your taste buds and makes you want to eat more of it and that that's what they're paid to do and they do it brilliantly and they're doing it ever and ever cheaper so using cheaper to your products more synthetic products to do that with really no restraints at all brilliant I'm going to try and do a quick summary of what uh has covered a lot of ground today and uh correct me if I get wrong so I think the first thing is that you know Tim thought he really knew a lot about nutrition and it just goes to show how complex it is because this book has really LED you to change your mind about a lot of things on bread that you've really changed your view that in fact a lot of bread you thought was healthy you really got to look beyond the label the second thing is around personalization and discovering that you know your own results were very different from lots of other people's the third is milk so um since you're acupuncturist uh convince you to to give it up you've been on a lifelong sort of in and out of uh of milk and that today you sort of ended up on a sort of neutral view on this then you talked about mushrooms and we heard it here we'll all be eating many more mushrooms in the future and then finally I think you talked about Ultra processed foods this is half of our diet or even more and that you're not saying we can't have it ever but we need to really think about this um as having much more impact than just having you know some sugar in something that we made ourselves at home absolutely I think you've summarized it beautifully brilliant well what I would say gone Tim there's plenty more yeah but you've just scraped the surface of what's in the book so um oh I was going I was going to say that I was gonna say I think we just scrape the surface there are so many chapters we haven't uh touched on if you're interested in fish you have to read the fish uh chapter if like me you really like fish um I I definitely can't recommend the book enough and again in the show notes we'll make sure that there are links there Tim thank you so much for coming in thank you so much for continuing to challenge yourself as well as everybody else in terms of what is the latest science on nutrition and I think the final question is are you are you done every time you do a book it seems like it takes a lot out of you are you done or is there another book in professor vector I think from what I heard it's a bit like childbirth you know you need a little break but then you you forget all the pain and you come back and uh do it again so uh well I think yeah we'll we'll see this will certainly keep me going for a while but there are bits that I left out of this book because it got too big that will definitely be uh another book but um I'll leave it I'll leave it a safe distance for to recover until then brilliant Tim thank you so much for spending the time with us my pleasure thank you Tim for joining me on Zoe's science and nutrition today I hope you're as excited as I am about Tim's new book if based on today's conversation you'd like to understand what personalization means for you then you may want to try Zoe's personalized nutrition program each member starts with an at-home test which is very similar to the tests that Tim was talking about today and those tests help you to understand your own biology and compare you with thousands of participants in our site studies we then create a personalized program to improve your health if you're interested in learning more about Zoe you can head to join zoe.com podcast and get 10 off your purchase if you enjoyed today's episode please be sure to subscribe and do leave us a review as we do love reading your feedback if this episode left you with any questions please send them in on Instagram or Facebook and we will try to answer them in a future episode as always I'm your host Jonathan wolf Zoe science and nutrition is produced by Fascinate Productions with support from Sharon feder yella hewings Martin and Alex Jones here at Zoe see you next time foreign [Music]

Channel: ZOE

Views: 439,935

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Id: T8MJus8IAOE

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2022