The Food Doctor: Extra Protein Is Making You Fatter!? 6 Food Lies Everyone Still Believes!

I brought everything that I could find in the supermarket that was making a claim that it was good for me and I want you to take a look at it that Tim Spectre is definitely healthy or not avoid that one terrible complete rubbish not as bad as the other one but been we going to unravel all these secrets the return of the world's biggest gut health expert Professor Tim Spectre he's an award-winning scientist bestselling author and he's co-founder of the company Zoe the home kit for personalized nutrition everything I'm about throughout you has a whole industry of people behind it the first one is protein supplements protein is massively hyped most people are having nearly twice as much protein in their diets as they need and most of it will be converted to sugars and fat coffee it's definitely a health food and you'll live longer mouthwash you're more prone to infection and actually worse smelling breath long term really yes no hard data that you should be drinking eight glasses of water a day 10 minutes in the sun will get you all the vitamin D you need and there's some actual data showing that if you got too much excess fat on your body exercise alone is a terrible way to deal with it you need something radical you and many others like you are a victim of marketing but we are in a fiber crisis we think only about one in 20 people are getting enough fiber for good health as a dramatic effect on avoiding cancers mental health and your longevity so you brought this yep that's the magic potion a handful of that you reduce your risk of death by 14 15% two handfuls of 30% and it's incredibly easy to do [Music] so Tim what is the um benefit to me if I change the way that I'm eating and start thinking through the lens of my gut microbiome and start taking the advice that you talk about in your books what is the benefit to both me and Society in terms of statistical like outcomes like why does it matter it matters because we are suffering an epidemic of common chronic diseases so we're getting increases in cancer heart disease diabetes obesity we you know uh majority of the population are overweight or obese that has enormous consequences also on our economic output um it costs the country and the taxpayer nearly 60 billion pounds a year as a country we don't want someone like you to become unhealthy and so that it's difficult for you to work you're not functioning properly the state then has to provide for you extra healthare Etc there's that individual level but also we don't want you to get mental health diseases depression uh anxiety all these things that we know are also linked to poor diet as well as increased cancers and and other elements of it so it's it's a combination of the medical uh the mental the social the economic all these things are related to having good nutrition and I think we've taking it for granted that it doesn't really matter what we eat it's all about weight and these things but that's maybe only the small side of it I think there's much more to it than that someone like me I'm you know 30ish years old and I'm I like to think that I'm in good shape I exercise every day um very active so sometimes I think I can fall into the Trap of think because there's no obvious sign of disease in me that I can eat what I want because I'm working out and then I I sat here with a doctor a couple of couple of months ago and he said a sentence to me that sounded something like we can see disease growing in you decades out that really made me change my thinking on health because if it is like a seed of health or a seed of disease that's growing in me irrespective of my current physical abilities and my you know think I'm in good shape it's kind of like compounding invisibly inside of me disease For Better or For Worse and that means that even someone like me I can I can stop 50-year-old Steve's disease now at 30 by making nudging my health in a slightly different direction in terms of nutrition is that an accurate assessment of because there'll be people that are listening that are so healthy apparently healthy on the outside because they can run fast or because they haven't got any problems with their bones or back yeah well when I was your Ed I didn't think at all about my nutrition really um you know although I was trained doctor Etc I said I don't want too much fat I want this and you know I'll try and get a nice looking steak rather than the cheapest one um but I I I didn't think in that way that I wanted to look after my health in 20 years time it's a tough concept for people who are you know doing so much else and still feeling good that you know still getting out of bed fresh in the morning energized and not really feeling the effects of of Aging so I think it's true but it's quite a tough concept to sell to the whole population particularly people in their 20s and 30s about the future and that's why I think uh focusing on things like mental health do resonate perhaps more than saying um think about what you're going to be like when you're 50 to most people I've spent definitely the last 10 years of my life believing that in order to grow big muscles which has been an aim of throughout my life I need to have protein supplements what do you think about that I still have protein supplements in my house protein powders come home from the gym big scoop of protein drink it what do you think of that protein is massively hyped there are very few people who are protein deficient in this country and need supplements there are a few but I I would say it's less than 5% of the population are not getting sufficient protein to perform either their normal activities or like you build muscle because it's so inherent in our normal food we we evolved you know to be omnivores and to get enough protein and our ancestors didn't fall apart because we didn't get protein shakes and I think the the fact that we're focusing on protein is you're you and many others like you are a victim of marketing that everywhere you look at the moment protein is the thing that sells products if it's got protein on the pack it's you know that's Ring oh I need extra protein and protein has this uh ring of only good about it there's nothing bad about protein it's like just going to get me big and strong and I don't to worry about calories or getting fat you know I use it or lose it and that's fine and it's completely wrong the all the evidence is that um most people are having nearly twice as much protein in their in their diets as they need for normal uh protein balance and the only people that really need to worry are if you're um elderly and you're not eating very much okay so young people generally yourself will be getting enough food that a percentage of all that food is going to contain protein there's very few foods that don't contain protein uh people don't think about it but every time you're eating pasta or grains you're eating protein um it doesn't have to be steak or eggs and but the elderly if you're not eating you gone off your food you're sick you've got you know on some medication uh might need some extra protein sources or to focus on it or if you're a strict vegetarian or vegan in that position where you're not eating much or you're sick or you're elderly then those people do need something now if you are a bodybuilder and again you're you're trying to lose weight at the same time then you might need some protein supplements but if you're eating a normal diet there's no evidence the vast majority of of people need any extra protein they can get it all from normal food and normal food in my opinion is a much better way of getting it because that's how our bodies have evolved rather than getting in a drink or a supplement or a powder where it's often mixed with other chemicals it's not in its natural form we're not sure that it's all used and the excess protein you have isn't for free protein gets broken down and it either gets eliminated in your body or it's stored as fat um as it gets converted to uh sugars and then to fats so people think of protein as in muscle and if it's not going to my muscle I just pee it out it doesn't matter not the case if you're having lots of protein that you you can't use up in your muscles because you already got so much on board you can't store it anywhere it uh some of it gets eliminated but most of it will be converted to sugars and fat this goes against everything they told me because I thought that you could have as much protein as you like your body can't store it so I must just be like pooping out or something I don't know um can't store it as protein okay but it gets converted it's broken down into small pieces and that gets stored in your body uh for the future so how much protein can I process in like a day how how many grams of protein how many kilos roughly you we but oh 90 say 91 because there's people listening it's all muscle though um so around roughly that amount of protein um uh because it goes with weight the more your weight is the more protein you need to repair your muscles and and keep it going so uh the official amount is normally around you know 0.8 uh grams per kilogram okay okay so but if we think you know we want to be on the safe side so most people are 95% of people that's the uh a safe level but most people uh in this country are having like 1.4 um grams per kilogram so they'd be having uh for you over a 100 grams of protein and basically if if you don't anything extra so you might do a little workout that might increase it a little bit maybe 10% so you might be able to use uh 10% there if you're doing a lot of weightlifting Etc um but not huge amounts so if you took 300 uh grams of protein most of it is just going to be either you you'd be getting rid of it excreting it in some way or it would be uh converted into uh sugars and fats stat I found here the average daily intake of protein in the UK is 76 gr per day for adults aged 19 to 64 and 67 gram a day for adults aged 65 years and over so that's how much on average people are consuming with their normal diets yeah so it's just o roughly depending on the size of people it's just over a gram per kilo and they're getting that without protein most of them without protein powders just from their normal diets I mean as an example my you know my normal breakfast gives me I worked out you know over 30 grams of protein um which is sort of what you want to Kickstart the day uh in order to get muscles repairing things but if I took you know an extra protein powder give me an extra 100 grams that really wouldn't have any effect at all other than slightly increasing my weight what about fiber I've got two questions here what is fiber in the most simple terms and is it why is it important and are we consuming enough fiber in our natural diets in the UK so unlike protein where 95% of people are absolutely fine and not deficient in protein 95% of people are deficient in fiber we think only about one in 20 people are getting enough fiber for for good health so this is this is the imbalance between the marketing people just don't make money on fiber like they do on protein so all the Commerce is going to everyone's protein deficient you got to have protein protein protein protein you know who's supporting the spinach or the the um the fiber people hardly anybody we're massively deficient in it it is the bits of carbohydrates so carbohydrates are made up of sugar starches and fibers so fibers are the parts of carbohydrates that are not broken down absorbed early on in the system so they go through to the deeper parts of the intestine they meat the microbes and they have to be digested much slower much lower down your system and they food for your gut microbes and it could be soluble ones there been insoluble ones they're just different degrees of how hard it is to break it down and we used to think of it is ruffage it used to be called ruffage when I was a a medical student and a junior doctor you used to eat this stuff and it was just a like clear out the toxins it was just like you have this stuff it scrapes your pipes and cleans it up up and that's all it was thought to do but now we we know it's absolutely crucial for health the average in the UK is about 20 gram of fiber so if you just increase that by a quarter not very much five grams that's uh uh you know a handful of nuts or seeds or something a day you will increase uh or you reduce your risk of death by 14 15% and if you did two handfuls of nuts 30% it each one it goes up so has a dramatic effect on your uh longevity and it's also important for avoiding cancers and mental health and nearly everything that we've looked at so it's really the Forgotten element of our of our diet that I think at the moment we're you know in a fiber crisis we're certainly not in a protein crisis and yet everyone's talking about protein it's really it's really a fascinating interplay between you know what the real problems are and what the marketing and and the Commerce of this whole field is so we need to improve everybody's fiber amounts all the healthy countries in the world are eating much more fiber and it's also diverse fiber it's lots of different things it's not just having kale when you came on the podcast last time you said something which I found to be quite daunting which was this idea of trying to get 30 plants into my diet a week you've brought some food with you today for me that you say can help me with this Jack could you grab the food that Tim brought with him today so you brought this jar of what looks like a bunch of nuts and seeds yep that's the magic potion magic potion tell me more so this is what I call my diversity jar so um do have a nibble but basically there's about 10 different types of nut and Seed in there that each time I see some packet of mixed nuts or I find something new in a in a shop I add it to that jar and I keep it full mix it around and that's what I throw on my yogurt and cfir in the morning or I would put on my salad uh at lunch and that basically is a a hack that instantly gets me 10 plants for my week so you're saying how hard it is to get to 30 plants well just by doing that you've got uh you've only got 20 to go say see you're a third of the way just by having a few hacks like that which incidentally also gives you your protein okay so rather than your protein shakes and your whatever handful of that um you've got you know significant amounts of of protein but the important thing for this is the 30 plants people forget that that a plant doesn't have to be doesn't look like spinach or kale it can be a nut and a seed which are so nutrient dense and so useful that they will keep whole colonies of hundreds or thou thousands of different microbes happy in your gut munching on the different chemicals in there and they're very high in fiber very high in protein I was going to say about the fiber thing this is a this is a way to get the fiber as well absolutely yes so they're high high fiber and high protein and that's why they are are so nutritious and why if you're having this sort of stuff you really don't need uh chemical supplements and so that that's a that's just one of several hacks about how you can add these to your Foods very easily as well as you know mentally just thinking I want to try and find add different things to my my meal I don't want to have the same meal every single day people get stuck going to you know their local uh sandwich shop and saying I'm only having that prawn salad prawn salad prawn salad you know just think every day go something different and if people start thinking differently about food not only does it excite the taste buds a bit more and gets you out of your rut but it's also going to generate many more microbes so you know if you're going to beat me you need to be getting more diversity in there to to grow more species so that you can uh you know keep them all happy and they they live you know they live off diversity and variety just as we humans do so when I got my Zoe results back I one of the the PDF shows all the bugs in my stomach is that what you call them bugs I'm you have more technical bugs or mic microbes let's call them microbes then uh just because it makes me sound smarter so all the microbes in my in my belly and I had a very narrow group of microbes now if I you're telling me that if I expand that collection of microbes My overall health will be better I'll process my food better my mental health will be better is there anything I'm I'm missing from that list your immune Health would be better so okay immunity would be better so you'd get less food allergies you'd get um uh resistance to infection would be better so how do I bring I know this sounds like super stupid question to ask but I looked at that list and thought okay so I almost thought of it like little pets living inside me um the where do these where do I get the new pets from like the new animals from to put inside my body because I I was thinking my girlfriend's got loads of them I'll just kiss her yes well well you could kiss your girlfriend and there is quite a lot of swapping between partners by the way in microbes so you're not wrong there MH but unless they had something to eat they die off okay so what you're doing is um you know we are continually surrounded by many of these microbes we are swapping uh microbes with all our close friends and family all the time but unless you've got the fertilizer in you they're not going to survive and the fertilizer is diversity of foods yes and you may have and you know you've kissed your girlfriend You' got some of her microbes and they're just sitting there waiting for to be fed right they might be in a very dormant State many of these microbes can go into Spore formation and stay there for years doing nothing in tiny amounts they only wake up when you know Peanut hits them on the head or something and says oh you know Steven's give me some food at last you know this I can eat this I couldn't eat the other I can't eat nandos I'm going for this so that's the concept that you want to give them this rich soil so that they can flourish and you can gain microbes from going to other countries you know eating a variety of foods and there are microbes that live on a lot of fresh produce uh that you can get you get them from dogs uh animals um just by having a pet around the house or going to the countryside you can get more microbes in you but it's it's a lot of them are actually inside us waiting and places like our appendix may may be sources of tiny amounts of these microbes that are just waiting you know for the right signal to wake up I think this is fascinating I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel and it says that since this channel started 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the Subscribe button so I have a favor to ask you if you've ever watched this Channel and enjoyed the content if you're enjoying this episode right now please could I ask a small favor please hit the Subscribe button helps this channel more than I can explain and I promise if you do that to return the favor we will make the show better and better and better and better and better that's the promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the Subscribe button do we have a deal I after our last conversation was always going through the supermarket trying to figure out what's fermented and what's not how do I know what's fermented what does fermented even mean um and you brought this array of things with you to show me how easy it is to ferment things in your own home I guess yeah I think people are frightened by fermentation and it's important to know what it is and what It Isn't So fermentation is a word lots of different meanings but it's when food is modified by microbes to produce something that is taste different taste better and is also healthy for you and in a way it's a probiotic food because what we're doing is we're taking basic Whole Foods and we are adding something like salt or sugar and that then allows natural uh microbes on those plants to flourish and change the composition of that that food so they make it acidic they get rid of all the bad bugs and make it into something super healthy and all the microbes are growing just like they would be in your gut if you fed them so it's like a a mini version of your gut is what we're seeing here um and it's incredibly easy to do so that's why I brought this stuff along so that we I can demonstrate not only how to get extra plants into your 30 a week but also if those plants are fermented they have many more times more nutrients in them and the fact that those bugs have been working on them means they've been in a way PR digested before they get into your gut and all these studies are showing these are super good for all aspects of your health and if you can have uh several portions of these a day you'll really notice the difference so for people that are just listening on audio and can't see what have we got in front of you here so we've got uh a jar uh like a like a one liter jar of which is full of uh chopped veg from the bottom of my fridge all of us would have fridges like this where you got odds and ends left behind and the idea is that you should rather than throwing it away you can actually just chop it up and ferment it and stick it in a jar and there is I can see cabbage I can see a radish in there it's just like the the waste veg that most people would probably Chuck in a bin exactly so a few years ago I just thrown this in the bin I wouldn't have thought about doing it so you you throw it out people have heard about sakra which is basically just um fermented cabbage and you might have heard of kimchi which is the Korean version which has just got a few more things in it like chilies and ginger and spices uh and this is a sort of mixture of all of them but it's just to illustrate the fact that you can ferment virtually all plants and avoid the waste and that's what our ancestors did before fridges because what all you need to do is uh put them in a jar and squash them down and add 2% salt and a little bit of water to cover it that's all you do and I I can just demonstrate that now for you if you like so we've got all these in here and the idea is you um add some add the salt so we're adding 2% salt this is really important to measure it so this that's the only thing really tricky is to make sure that you've got uh 2% salt and that gets poured in there and you you would mix it around I would normally put it in a big bowl and do it but uh you you get the idea here you you you put the salt in you mix it around and you scrunch it down really hard so you know like um really getting rid of any space for air the microbes don't like air the ones that ferment they call Anor robic they don't like oxygen and so they grow really well when you cut out the oxygen and they can just um live off start eating the sugars in in the in these plants and the salt gives them a competitive advantage against nasty microbes okay so that means that they can out compete the other guys because it's suddenly a different environment and that's what we're doing so you squash it down and um I'm going to add a little bit of water here sometimes you don't need to add hardly any water and if you add more than a bit just add a little bit of salt to that water just enough to cut it cuz the microbes are naturally in all these plants people don't realize that they think oh it must be sterile I've got it from a nice supermarket in a plastic wrapper um it's full of microbes and that's normal and we know that even in garlic for example even when you cut it there are PS uh 10 20 different types of microb living in that garlic and once they they sense the water and the salt they will suddenly say ah it's good to come out I can out compete I can grow I can start munching the the the sugar and then to pack it down you either use you can use some Stones some clean Stones what I like to do is use some leftover waste um so I get some outside cabbage leaves or something else from a plant and just put it down in there squash it and so you can see that it's now below the water line MH and I close the lid and that's basically it and I would leave that for a minimum of three days somewhere room temperature out of the Sun and you'll start to see bubbles forming and that's CO2 the microbes are producing that they're fermenting it that's it you've got suddenly your own probiotic fermented food made from your scraps rather than throwing it out and that's that's a great example of what you can do um to really improve your health for something that cost nothing uh apart from the price of salt and and that's one you made earlier yeah this is a nicer looking one that's uh one I I did earlier and I'm just going to see you can see a few bubbles there uh it's it's just starting to to get going um and uh you can open it up uh every day or so to give it a smell and see what's happening making sure that it's packed down so that it's all below the water line once you've done this it once it's fermented after a week uh you can put it in the fridge for months oh really so you could put that in the fridge fridge for month yeah once it's fermented the it's become acidic and the pH has dropped below 4.5 no other microbes can live there only the ones you want you've selected personally these are your probiotic microbes that we know are good for your health and the difference between this and your probiotic capsule is that you'll probably get 30 different microbes here whereas you take your capsule you might get two or three so this is why for fermented foods I think are a real answer to many of our problems you know the fact that we've got a rather Western deprived microbiome these could really help um people like you want to boost your G got microbiome and just introducing these fermented foods into your regular diet and this is what the Koreans do for example you know the Japanese do by using fermented soybeans in nearly all their Foods so healthiest populations have large amounts of fermented food in their diets when you look at the Japanese and the Koreans do they have better gut microbiomes than the people in the UK and the US yes they do and they but importantly they live much longer and have much less of our chronic diseases or they delay those problems by at least 10 years so I think we need to learn from the the populations that are doing it right and this is a really easy uh thing to do and I think it's it's a great EX exercise in in teaching because if you think what's going on it's this is mirroring what's going on inside your gut if you had that rich diversity of of plants in there you can get many microbes to um to to proliferate and once you start seeing the bubbles forming and the the the amazing change in taste and texture that you're getting you got to remember this is the difference between a grape and an amazing uh vintage red wine it's just the effect of those microbes in the fact you know on on that grape skin just changing over time increasing that complexity and producing chemicals it all it's basically a of chemistry lesson when I'm in the supermarket there are lots of things that now have labels on them saying that they're great for gut health or they're low sugar or they're low fat I brought everything that I could find in the supermarket that was making a claim that it was good for me and I want you to take a look look at it these are some of the most popular things that people pick up in the supermarket that make these claims that they're low sugar low fat low high protein great for gut health so the first one I've got here is acol which had says it's got vitamin D B6 it's great for immune support zero added sugar 0% fat rich in Vitamin D that Tim Spectre is definitely healthy or not so um yeah these these claims uh some of these claims they're allowed to put on the packet they're very restricted what they can actually say in terms of health it can do are date back you know 30 years and no longer really valid but they they have to do it because they're not allowed to even mention the word probiotic on a on a packet interestingly so they're trying to attract you in with things that would resonate with the consumer so they do these massive surveys to saying what's going to resonate with you Steve when you go into sh all and you say oh what's going to what's going to make me buy this rather than one of the other ones and so vitamin D we've been flogging vitamin D for forever you know 10 minutes in the sun will get you all the vitamin D you need um and it's in most Foods anyway you don't really need it in addition in these things uh % added sugar and % added fat mean that it's highly processed so the combination of Health what we call Health Halos um saying it's super healthy with Rich in this vitamin no sugar no fat um is very oldfashioned science No One Believes that that zero fat is any good for you anymore and there's some actual data showing that lowfat Foods actually uh make you overeat really yes what does the data say so when they've comp compared sort of identical uh meals to people in lab conditions those eating the lowfat foods the um high carb but High processed foods like this will actually overeat substantially over the next uh day or so so it's actually making you overeat uh quite significantly so and there's no advantage to your body in terms of heart health by having this because to get zero fat and make it taste good it's got to have lots of extra sugars and starches in there otherwise you you you just couldn't eat it fat is really important naturally to make you enjoy food and so it takes a lot of careful chemistry to mimic that fat so I would always avoid anything that said you know zero sugar zero fat uh rich in vitamins despite the fact that this probably has something good probiotics in it m so you're getting the good probiotics um it's only one lactobacillus but that's counteract Ed by all this negative stuff all these chemicals which we know are bad for your gut microbiome so that's not going to be good for you or it's not going to be good for me either so I would avoid that one always go for any yogurt that really has minimum contents just milk and microbes that's all you need can you bring me the bin this is going in the bin going I just drop in the bin I did scan it on the Zoe app as well and my relationship to it was about 35 which is not which is not a health food which is not a health food what about this this is definitely healthy Dr Tim Spectre Activia deliciously good for your gut health okay so I know this one's going to be good um what else does it say we believe that a happy gut is a happy you when you love your gut it loves you back it sounds like you wrote it what else what other claims does it make we ferment our unique blend of five active strain strains for up to eight hours so every little pot is packed with billions of live cultures loving the planet to love our gut Activia great for the gut healthy well so far you know everything looks everything looks good doesn't it um but let's have a look and say what extra things they've added to it um which is always hard to find in packets and you you often need a microscope to see them um so for for it to be good it just needs microbes and milk and that makes yogurt you just change the temperature that's what you get so here we've got um lots of we've got lots of ingredients we've got flavorings we've got concentrates we've got a bit of carrot for some reason we've got lemon juice we've got stabilizers uh we've got tapioca starch we've got sugars and it claims to have strawberries although when they last were picked from the earth I'm not quite sure so um it's not as bad as the other one but basically we're we're looking at a a highly processed product that has many chemicals you don't really want in your gut because they will counteract the good effect of the gut microbes slightly better than the other one but I would still not eat it myself self okay and the fact that it's processed does the fact that it's processed alone make it a bad food or is it because the process of processing causes a loss in the good stuff and addition of a lot of bad stuff when we say Pro because this word processed foods has become just like a blanket term so in my brain I go if it's processed it has to be bad but is that accurate well we need to separate virtually all the food that we eat and I eat as well is processed yeah but um we need to separate that from Ultra processed so plain yogurt nothing added nothing you know changed is processed because you're mixing a basic ingredient milk with microbes you're actually creating something that's processing but it's when you take it to the next stage and you would make that same product from say milk powder uh and then you would add various starches and stabilizes emulsifies concentrates artificial sweeteners flavorings that same yogurt becomes ultr processed and it's that extra step that is the main problem nothing wrong with processed food you know cheese is processed there's nothing wrong with that most of the foods we we eat or some have had salt added or oil added or something like that but it's when it's chem chemicals that you don't find in your kitchen being added to to foods that have been stripped of all their goodness so they wouldn't just use cow's milk it would be you know dried extract of casin or um you wouldn't take wheat it would be the uh stripped out inner part of that wheat and then that's temperature treated to melt it and and change its composition and to put these things back together you need all these glues like these emulsifiers uh you need stabilizers you need um uh flavoring sweeteners colorance all these extra things to make it look like food again so I think we shouldn't be calling ultr processed food food that's a misnomer uh we should call them you know edible food like substances that are industrially made and if we start to realize the difference between these we can start to make smart food choices we now know that many these ingredients there's been lots of even research since we last talked about um first things like a spart has come out as which is an artificial sweetener has been linked to many health problems including increased risk of cancers and uh heart disease we've got emulsifiers have come out uh recently in a number of studies to show that they affect mental health and they also affect heart disease even when you adjust for the whole diet and you take just that component of the food so we know that ultr processed foods are probably the worst things we're doing for our diets and then in the UK uh the average person is saying about 60% of all their food is ultr processed without knowing about it we're eating four times more than uh healthy European countries who are often poorer than us so it's not just a question of money it's just become this battle of of us poor consumers against these massive companies with billions of pounds to spend on marketing that have told us this stuff is healthy because of these fake Health Halos vitamins you know no sugar no this no fat confusing the consumer and all the time giving us foods that not only make give us disease but importantly make us overeat so we we pick that stuff doesn't matter it's says just whe even if it's just low fat or it's got lots of other chemicals both make you overeat by a quarter so you'll be hungrier after eating that than you would be if you had a completely plain yogurt with none of those extra chemicals in it okay so I've got three different drink like Foods here I've got my Oasis Citrus punch um on this one it says natural flavorings and real real fruit so that must be healthy real fruit if it says real fruit on it you should be very suspicious okay that's the first thing to to look at it uh and natural flavors that really means nothing and this is uh natural is a great word means nothing uh medically scientifically but it's been a a buzz word for me getting people to buy stuff so basically this is a a mixed blend of citrus fruits which means the mixtures of all kinds of different uh fruit extract that's combined with sugar and artificial sweeners they're again highly processed fruits they're not fresh fruits and it's got a mixture of those uh it's got citric acid it's got sugar orange flavorings uh it's got stabilizers polyphosphates glycerol Esters uh it's got um looks like wood resins um acidity Regulators uh preservatives it's got some potassium sorbate potassium benzoate it's got the sweeteners aspartame and uh a es spot is what you're just talking about right yes that's the one that who have just put on their uh warning list um so yes it's it's packed with things that you wouldn't expect if you just squeezed a bit of juice uh in and thought it was healthy so this is a good example of um a totally fake Ultra processed food that makes it look like it's real fruit and it's going to be healthy for you and it is just a mix of chemicals that's just going to mess up your gut microbes and make you feel hungrier okay but this one here this Philadelphia says light so it says 100% of The Taste but 40% less fat so Philadelphia light surely that's good well it's it's got cheese in it it's often have this we did do some tests on this a while ago it does have microbes in it if it's low in fat they've generally added something else to increase the mouth feel and indeed we see here it's got stabilizers it's got emulsifiers uh all these things that we know uh have effects on your gut microbes make you hungrier and can affect your heart as well so yeah I I would avoid that one what do we have to I've got a few last things for you there what do we have to look out for on the packaging of these products because interestingly the one you have in your hand the bar there the snack bar on the back of it they do admit that it's a little bit processed they actually there's a sentence on the back of it I'll read read out says um I was reading it as you said it it says well um well clearly it would be wrong for us to claim that everything in this bar is 100% natural and simply grows on trees obviously some ingredients need to to be cleaned dried and roasted too and therefore to some extent processed it's just that we believe the less we mess with it the better it tastes that's why we never add any artificial flavors or colors or any preservatives yeah natural bar and the ingredients you know that's a good thing to say it's quite hard to produce some of these snack bars without having things to stick it together or gums glucose syrup soy protein Crispies isolate tapioca starch salt dates almonds salt salted caramel moso sugar buttermilk powder natural flavorings cream powder milk rice flour carbo flour and salt yeah it doesn't when you read it out like that it doesn't sound quite as natural as the uh label suggests does it because you just got all these ingredients that are you know again half of them you wouldn't find in your in your kitchen um and it's partly to to you know protein packed um you know if it was if you just need the nuts and the seeds you wouldn't have to add in all this uh other stuff from soy and and other beans and things which are ultr processed they're just taking that bit of it combining it together so some of these are better than others um but um again this is ultr processed and you know these all these snacks interestingly are really often the downfall in in in places like the US and the UK where we're just eating so many so much our our our energy is coming from these snacks which wasn't the case 20 years ago so on that point of snacking is snacking good or bad and what impact does that have on the overall nutritional um profile of an individual because a lot of people snack right nearly everybody snacks I think that's right over 90% of people snack so it's become normal to snack in this in this country in the US it is the norm it's not the norm in other countries so you see much less snacking habits in southern Europe uh than you do here and much less in uh many Asian countries as well a Zoe study found that 95% of people were snackers yes and 25% of people are undoing the benefits of healthy meals by unhealthy snacking yeah so 95% of people we found in that Zoe study as are snackers and most of them are unhealthy so just by reaching for a snack unless you're really careful you're going to be having not only extra calories but unhealthy calories that's going to undo many of the good things you're you're eating so we found in the Zoe survey that people would be really focusing on their main meal saying this is a really healthy meal I'm having plenty of plants and veget but oh well I've got to have my snack and so they'd be undoing all that good by having something that would then a couple of hours later really upset um their metabolism and make them hungrier and so mess up the the idea and make them hungrier so we in the UK and the US it's around a quarter of our calories come from snacks if we were able to even to reduce that a bit or just change that snack to a healthy one or ideally move that snacking time to the meal itself most of these would be much less harmful if you had them at the end of your meal when your body is you know starting to do all this work breaking down the food is gearing up for this High activity virtually all the snacks that people have late in the evening are bad for you and that's because you're getting a sugar Spike just before going to bed your body's not ready for it your gut microbes are not ready for it it doesn't give them a rest and so you actually end up hungrier the next day so we're starting to realize that it's not just the food and we've seen that most these snacks are very unhealthy going to make you hungrier but the timing of it also messes up your Cadian rhythms so you're not recovering and the next day you're going to feel hungrier than you were if you didn't snack so it's like counterintuitive you think oh if I have something before going to bed I'm not going to be as hungry tomorrow and this is what many people get into this this common mistake AK so we need to start changing people's attitude uh in in in this snack epidemic about snacks and say you know you don't need them um and if you do have healthy ones and you know nuts and seeds and fruit are perfectly healthy ones and we showed in our in our study which we published recently that people who do have those healthy snacks are really hardly any extra risk of health problems um compared to those that people don't snack as long as it's not late at night so if you eat within that sort of normal eating window and you you know some people are natural snackers I don't know if I'm not but I know many of my colleagues at Zoe uh can't go two or three hours without eating they really find it hard and but just by thinking more about that snack and saying well I'm going to I I know I've got this tendency I'm going to eat something that's healthy like nuts or something yeah just a handful of mixed nuts an apple a pear um something that's not super sugary or super fat but importantly not ultr processed not something that's got this health Halo that says eat me I've got high in protein I'm going to you know eat me and you'll get bigger muscles uh no eat me and you'll get fatter those Health Halos then what are just so we've summarized them low fat is a health Halo you're were saying no sugar real fruit trying to remember all the ones um extra vitamins vitamin labeling on on products um natural flavorings I think it said yes one of the products those are those the main ones have I missed any there I think we've covered yeah so claims about low fat low sugar uh nothing artificial high protein I guess natural right uh high protein um some would be gut friendly um generally they warning signs that this food is to be avoided find something that doesn't need that Health claim you never see a whole real food with a health claim they don't need it you got an apple doesn't need a claim you know contains vitamins contains uh fiber real foods don't need health labels I've had a confused relationship with bread I I look at bread all bread I think that's bad this is cheating on my microbiome is that the truth is bread bad most bread is bad most Supermarket bread is ultr processed sugar and contains many other chemicals you don't really want in you makes you hungrier and the general perception of the public is it's a healthy food I found this myself when I started doing my glucose levels even Brown breads were all over the place there are some breads that I can eat in small amounts that are still healthy things like Rye Breads and if it's sourdough that also improves it but I think in general we're eating far too much bread for most people there might be some people who can support it and that's why it's good to test your glucose responses to It But most bread has too much sugar not enough fiber too many uh chemicals in it and uh we should be looking to other things for our nutrition have it as a rare treat have it just when you go to a restaurant or whatever but for most people you know it's it's a real red flag for me the other red flag that shocked me was my relationship with white rice because I'd grown up eating white rice and I thought white rice was a great thing to have after I'd been to the gym with some chicken so I I used to whenever I saw white rice I thought it was great and then I looked on Zoe and I had a 15 out of 100 relationship with white rice and I think my girlfriend had a five out of 100 relationship with white rice so I no longer have white rice I've swapped it out for uh I think quinoa is usually what we have in the house now nearly any grain is better than right white rice it's got more fiber it's got more protein in it it's got more nutrients in it and rice is the most overrated food I think even more so than bread because yeah people think it's healthier than you know having potatoes or pasta they associate it with healthy things because often sometimes the rest of the meal is actually quite good MH and you know vegetable cures or whatever it is often quite healthy but the rice itself is really just sugar and there's there's no have it as a rare treat but so many other grains you can have instead quinoa barley oats um uh you know or even putting in lentils or legumes you know beans instead of that Rice just makes it so much healthier quick one I discovered a product which has changed my life called Eight sleep this product eight sleep which are a sponsor of this podcast has been a revelation in my life because the eight sleep pod cover which is basically fitted sheet that goes over your mattress controls the temperature of your bed throughout the night and it follows Nature's natural Rhythm it starts cool gets colder while you go into different phases of sleep and then heats up slightly as you wake up in the morning which is effectively guiding you to have a deeper more restorative sleep go to 8sleep.com which is EIG ght sleep.com Steven and if you do that you'll save $150 on the Pod cover that I have on my bed the one I'm talking about grab your pod cover send me a DM and let me know how you get on when you talk about your habits being so important I when you're eating and what you're eating and making sure that you carve out time to have your meals because I was telling you earlier I think before we started recording that I'm in a bit of a pattern at the moment of eating my first meal of the day at like 400 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. because if I'm recording podcast or I'm doing something in the media or on TV I didn't like to eat before then um what is an example of great food habits I want to know what what your food habits are on a perfect day say you know this was your 10 out of 10 day when would you eat how many meals would you eat and what times would would and wouldn't you eat okay so like you I have very busy days where sometimes it goes out the window and I think we got to realize that you got to try this sort of 8020 ideal you know you're trying to stick to something 80% of the time knowing that 20% it's out of your control don't worry about it it and if you do that you can do that sustainably for decades right it's the people who obsessed and say I mustn't break it and if you've broken it one day okay end end of my brilliant experiment that's DFT so if I'm at home for example working at home I'm in control of things I will not eat anything before 11:00 I will have a black coffee because I know um that wakes me up and I like it and it's also good for me but I would have anything else until 11:00 I'll go down and I fix myself my bowl of uh full fat uh yogurt and I'd put my diversity jar sprinkled in there and I'd see what else is in the fridge so I might have some berries if they're around at the moment plenty of seasonal berries might get some from the freezer if uh we're in the mid you know we're in March or something there's no no fresh berries uh or I might just chop up an apple and put it in there I'm getting my protein I'm getting uh fat you know I'm not feeling hungry uh and having a dip in energy in the middle of the day that I I would probably have if I hadn't eat anything you said coffee I have my coffee because I know it's good for me last time we spoke you were kind of on the fence about coffee you two trains of thought about whether it's good for us or not you're now saying you think it's good for us yeah well I must have given the wrong impression to you but coffee is definitely a health food interesting okay um there are some people who don't tolerate it very well they don't tolerate the caffeine a few percent of people but even if you have deaf coffee it's decent quality because there's different ways of taking the the caffeine out all the studies are now showing consistently that uh you will have less heart disease and you'll live longer if you uh drink coffee and uh having sort of between one and four cups of coffee a day that seems to be the Sweet Spot bit more than that you probably got some problem you know that coffee is actually a fermented plant so people don't think of it that way think oh it just comes in a jar you know I don't need to worry about it but actually you know it comes off a a tree you get this pod this Bean um you take it off you break it up it then gets fermented on the floor of usually you know wherever it is in Africa or Asia where where it is and it's humid the microbes are working on it breaking it down then you go and dry it and uh roast it and that ends up being the coffee we have so the mics are playing a role in that it's also a source of fiber so three cups of coffee gives you around five grams of fiber which is about a quarter of your uh the average UK or us amount so you know it's not the main source of fiber but it all helps and in the us it's often the main source of fiber uh that they get so polyphenols the fiber um also for many people it gets them awake and alert has that effect of stopping tness so if you if you're careful with it you don't overdose on it and you know it doesn't give you heart fluctuations it's going to be actually beneficial for you long term so this is a great example of a food that we've totally changed our minds on over the years initi my first research paper I ever wrote was that um coffee causes cancer okay so when I was a I was actually a medical student and I was very proud of my paper and this was great and it was based on very poor studies done in the 1980s and it was complete rubbish um so I'm very happy that to go and correct that mistake and tell people that you know you should much better to drink coffee coffee than say orange juice and orange juice is tends to be in the health section and coffee definitely in the sort of recreational uh section and they really should be changed over most orange juice we have is ultra processed high sugar very bad for most people coffee is good for the vast majority of people what else have you been wrong about what else have you changed your mind about over the last couple of years because of the research that you now have you know the data you now have access to in the research that you've done well I was K to avoid fats for a long time um I cut back on cheese because I thought that's high in saturated fats that can't be good for you I would have bought lowfat products before um and so that most doctors were indoctrinated with that and many doctors are still in that mindset that fat is bad and you know carbs and starch are good um drinking lots of water was good for you and I now having researched it for the book know there's no hard data that you should be drinking eight um glasses of water for example a day which is what most of the um recommended government sites tell you and obviously the drinks industry is very keen to support that because you know the big companies the the co the Pepsis have moved into the water business and they're trying to sell everyone plastic bottled water which is terrible for the planet the idea that uh we're all deprived of hydration and having all kinds of problems with it is is really made up there's no hard evidence at all and if you look at um doctors who work on marathons they see that far more people die or have health problems from over hydrating in uh the marathon Race then dehydrating so the human body is really good at some things you know you think about our ancestors they kind of knew when you were thirsty right it's like hang on this quite a you know and the idea that oh we've got no idea if we're thirsty or not um we need to be eating you know have a stopwatch to tell us to drink every hour on the hour is obviously nonsense when you think about it that's so true my um for my birthday just gone someone brought me this massive like what's the way to describe it barrel water bottle and it has like eight liters marked on the side of it and they said to me when they gave it to me you need to drink that every day and so the idea was that I put it on my desk as a reminder that I need to drink that whole Barrel before I finish work no I mean you just think about it well you know we've been involving for millions of years and you know you can't live long without water um so clearly we got a pretty good mechanism we've inherited to tell us when we need to drink water and when we don't and I I I just think that's uh again marketing uh concept all the soft drink the you know all this rehydration these electrolytes all this stuff it's it's largely nonsense and it's just you know again like the protein marketing idea is that uh and we're very susceptible to it because we like a a quick fix or and there'll be a few people that say I feel better when I drink lots of water sure you know but the idea that uh we're so out of control that you know someone needs to bring us water every hour uh is madness and that there is you know there isn't this variation we got up to your lunch so we did your breakfast sounded nice your lunch what time do you typically eat lunch and what do you typically have on a 10 out of 10 day where everything's going to plan I mean it all varies and you know I think I don't want to give the idea I'm always having the same lunch cuz I I do try and Vary it um but if I'm on my own working I'm not with friends or whatever um it would be a fairly quick Affair and it would probably be a salad um and I would get a lettuce or um a grated cabbage I would throw whatever I have in the fridge in there and I would add some protein to it so I would add some beans I always keep cans of beans around they cost nothing they're a huge source of fiber and protein tip those in they might be lentils they might be um chickpeas might be standard mixed beans and um I'd put them in if I had some cheese I might chop that up might put a bit of mozzarella in there olive oil um balsamic vinegar um that' be it and if I'd had some some sourkraut or something I might have that on the side a bit of ferment and I've increasingly recently since my I've been doing more research on this I might make my salad dressing actually with some fermented milk some kefia and you just mix up the oil in vinegar and you just at the last minute add in your uh ferment so you're actually getting probiotics added to that that that if I'm on my own and hurry that's that's probably what yeah reasonable but it would vary depending on what I was taking what fruits what vegetables and yeah I would have fruit afterwards what kind of fruit do you do you like I am I noticed on my Zoe app that bananas rank incredibly low for me I think my ranking on a banana out of 100 is 50 now I've been eating bananas like a monkey I've always thought bananas were just fantastic so I thought unlimited bananas were a great idea until I saw the Zoe app and it said my score is 50 out of 100 now I've usased up on the bananas and I'm having much more berries because I do really well for red berries in particular in fact the order that I the Zoya had um fruits in is raspberries were number one cherries were number two strawberries were third then pears then peaches then apples then kiwis then blueberries then grapes and then bananas were like 10th 50 out of 100 well I scored him worse than you you'd be pleased to know um I used to eat lots of bananas and it was a thing you just put in your backpack comes to his own packaging you know you can have it when you want I thought this is super healthy cuz I've seen you know Roger Federer um eat lots of bananas you know he seemed pretty fit um and that's way we associated with with the marketing thing oh lots of potassium you know must be good for us really lots of sugar and they're not they're not great for us uh my score was about 30 or something so it so I I still have them occasionally because I you know you know enjoy them occasionally but I don't have them every day like I used to so I now swap them out for peirs we have some great peirs in this country and they're always good uh apples and again I'll have my my berries if if I've if I've got them so um and uh kiwi fruits I had to also give up grapes I used to eat lots of grapes and I used to love them but get huge sugar Spike with grapes which I know then you know would make me hungrier for the rest of the day so um and I have them as a a treat you know might have some grapes once a month that's still fine so I think we shouldn't never say I'll never have those again it's just like what's your staple MH uh what do you have most of the time should you be swapping that for something just as tasty or nice or a mixture of things but get out of that rut just because someone told you that you know Banana's good has pottassium in it and make you play tennis better you know it was it's that kind of mindset that we we really need to change and um and I guess it depends what else is on the plate I remember Fredrico who's the head of nutrition at Zoe um heard telling me that the plate itself has its overall score so if I had you know maybe something that wasn't so good in isolation but with a couple of other things that are really high ranking in terms of health in microbiome then the overall score comes up and it's really the average of the whole plate yeah it's exactly I don't we the idea is we don't want to demonize one little thing so you might be obsessed with mayonnaise for example you know and i' say to you well you can have a small amount of mayonnaise if it's going to make you eat a salad and if that salad is high fiber nutritious it's got plenty of good things in it herbs and etc etc etc or you know a tiny bit of ketchup or whatever you know I'd still be saying yeah you can try something else instead of those but don't get hung up about it and I think it's absolutely true that you know nutrition has gone into this idea of this this is wrong this gives you cancer this is this is bad and meat is a great example of that debate you know people ask me are you you know are you for meat are you against meat um and I I've s changed I flipped on this as the evidence has changed I'm definitely against processed Meats ultr processed Meats which are lowquality stuff put together in ready meals Etc you know you'd be much better off just having mushrooms or or beans instead of that mixed with it a vegetarian version of it but real high quality meat in small amounts nothing really wrong with it as long as you have enough space on the rest of the plate to make up for it what about the carnivore diet well I keep getting probably like you you know people come and say you know I heard you talking about um you know not eating plants as bad but I've been living for two years on the Carnival D I feel great you know and I say fine there might be one in 10,000 people uh that can exist with zero fiber and zero plants and you know there you know in uh in the near the North Pole Etc there are people who exist on high fat and high protein diets they' evolve for it but vast majority of people will suffer greatly by having denuded gut microbiome and just eating meat is not what our ancestors did anyway um I've lived with the hadza tribe for a week and they eat a lot of vegetables and and and fruits and berries and nuts and seeds and they still meat is a treat and three months of the year they have no meat because it's hard to catch but they've got all this other stuff so the idea that it's natural that's what we did is is really wrong and some people might feel better briefly you know there's a difference between how people respond to uh fats particularly uh and carbs so you might lose a bit of weight a lot of that's actually uh they've done some studies showing people on high keto high fat protein diets they'd lose weight quicker but a lot of it is water oh okay so they're sort of drying out and in a way sometimes bodybuilders do that to make them look more toned but actually long term they don't lose that uh and it comes back and the main problem is they gut microbes are really crying out for food so you're starving your gut microbes if you're just on a meaton diet so there's no evidence that that is healthy and lots of evidence that lack of fiber is really bad for you so remember that statistic we went back to just a five gram change in fiber so if these people you know so if the average uh is 20 grams a day and the carnivore diet person is on five or less then you we're talking you know 50% increases in heart disease and reduced longevity so you know people do what they want but the the data absolutely doesn't support it another thing that I have every day is chewing gum and I was in the car because it's in the center console of of the car that I that I'm driven around in the D car we call it and there's like seven different types of chewing gum now when I eat this chewing gum it's there's this expl iion of Sweetness in my in the first couple of bites and I I was thinking the other day as I was driving home I was thinking I think I'm becoming a little bit compulsive like I didn't need the CH gum for any other reason then I think there's this it's doing something in my brain I grab it I put one in I throw it in the B I grab another I put I throw it in the bin and I think I'm just doing it for that Sugar burst my question is broadly about chewing gum but are these artificial sweeteners that exist in the chewing gums that I'm probably eating worse than just normal sugar they're better for your teeth okay so you will get less tooth decay Yeah by having the artificial sweeteners but most of them will be causing problems to your gut microbes okay and not your mouth microbes as well so anything you mess with in your mouth and your saliva things like mouthwashes as well these artificial ones they're all shown to reduce your natural gut microbes and actually cause more problems so that you're more more prone to infections and actually more prone to get overgrowth of bad microbes giving you bad breath so you know you have this initial hit which you know often the mouthwashes are similar in a way to that sort of instant gratification of the chewing gum because it feels fresh and tangy in your in your mouth but you're often killing off the good guys that are protecting your your your mouth and the worry I have is about this sweetness is it it's sensitizing you to want more sweet Foods so it probably make you hungrier for more carb foods later in the day MH so I don't think there's any particularly bad about chewing gum per se um other than if people chew a lot of it it's sugary you know it will give you more uh uh dental decay but the artificial sweetness are probably worse because they're having a negative effect on the gut micro on the all the microbes from your mouth down to your gut mouthwash I am a prolific mouthwash user oh dear I know and they've done actual studies on this to show that um you know yes customer consumers like it you know so like you probably like that feel of being fresh and doing something and having a tang in the mouth a bit like a you know a Tangy chewing gum as well um a mint or you know there's something nice in the brain that says this is good but if you do it too much you start to de you know destroy your natural defense mechanism and microbes in your tongue and your saliva are there to fight off other bugs and you're more likely to get um overgrowth of the wrong ones and you know you may actually end up having worse smelling breath long term uh than if you weren't using these chemicals the topics I'm about to throw at you are very complicated and you're very good at simplifying things so everything I'm about to throw at you typically has a whole industry of people behind it that have over complicated it and are selling courses about it and different hacks and tips and tricks if you could I would ask you just to give me a simple solution to the things that I'm going to throw at you the first one is weight loss there's not a simple solution you have to do something that's sustainable for long periods of time so forget the idea that it's really important to lose weight over a few weeks you want something that can maintain your weight at a good level for decades and if you are have a problem with really excess weight you're uh extremely obese morbidly obese um you need something radical darts are not going to do it you need one of these new drugs um the uh gp1s these injections the asmic the wig ois or you need bariatric surgery to get you down to that level Something dramatic for most people what do you think of those new drugs the asmic and I think they're amazing really for people that really need it what about for not for you not for you well I've got lots of friends that are in seemingly great shape that are taking these new weight loss drugs zix and all that stuff well they're mad why there are lots of side effects that um aren't worth the benefits not the benefits if you have any minor weight problems the the benefits outweigh the risks if you are so obese that your chance you know your 50/50 chance of having a heart dise heart attack in the next or a stroke in the next five years so people with morbid obesity have a worse prognosis than people with cancer so it's you know like I've got cancer what do I do I'll take a drug I'll accept that it's got some side effects but you know I want to live and they do work for m majority of people for people who have only minor uh levels of uh obesity just you know some love handles or whatever to cut out your all your appetite signals in your brain we don't know what that does long term and we don't we do know that it has can affect your pancreas it can uh cause some rare cancers it can do other stuff to your digestive system that we still you know a long way away from knowing so it's it's a drug for extreme obese problems that we've created through our ultrapress foods and people with terrible diabetes Etc it is not something for uh the general population so for for those people it's firstly improving the quality of your your diet is number one so get down from an average of 60% Ultra processed food to something less than 20% find a consistent way to that's that's the first thing to do and then the next thing is to change your mindset about things don't get obsessed with with calories start thinking about eating your 30 plants a week because that will naturally give you all the fiber and uh change your appetite signals as well the fitness Community were quite disgruntled last time probably disg again when you said what you said about calories because a lot of people do rely on the calories in calories out system for weight loss yeah well OBD experts don't so it may be fine in gyms to talk about that that's old science we now know that that this calorie model from a practical point of view is completely broken because we've been not talking about the quality of food the structure of food all these different effects these interindividual effects that we're talking about meaning that counting calories is for vast majority of people impossible or meaningless so it it's and it's the the marketing and the companies who are sign selling us these low calorie products this idea that it's really simple all you got to do is x y and Zed you'll lose weight that's what we're fighting here and they may have influenced you know the gyms with their uh special drinks and programs and people wanting the crash course of come in here you'll lose all this you you'll gain muscle you lose weight you know it's easy the evidence is very clear that if you restrict calories you will lose weight but 80% of people regain it pretty quickly and will actually go over the other end if they haven't changed their diet in terms of quality and taking care of what they're eating and there's good evidence that people that follow uh a program where they are not focusing on calories but they are focusing on food quality um they're looking at their sugar Peaks they're looking at their fat levels they're looking at their gut microbes they are looking at the time of day they're eating they're looking at the how to eat just thoughtfully and not talking about fat levels and you know avoiding all these foods that we've been talking about they will consistently lose small amounts of weight not large amounts but small consistent amounts that don't make them more hungry and the key is do things that don't make you hungrier the reason calorie restriction doesn't work is our Evolution tells us to ramp up the appetite uh the hunger signal obvious you know it's a same way if you do exercise it makes you hungrier we have this inbuilt mechanism that's why the only drugs that where methods that work are these drugs like um AIC wigo that act on the appetite they act on the brain they just from the gut sends a signal to the brain switches off the appetite signal otherwise you you just reduce calories or you increase exercise that appetite signal is just going right up there and you can carry on resisting it for a while most people have tried this they know and it gets harder and harder every week and then suddenly you crack and then you say oh I've I've given up now I'm I'm back and often you swing above it yo-yo yeah and that and that yo-yoing is probably the worst thing you can do because it just makes your you know you got no consistency on that point of exercise there was a lot of contention last time we spoke around the subject matter of exercise because a lot of people go out and do cardiovascular exercise they run on a running machine in order to try and lose weight but you and many other people that I've spoken to have said that that's not a great strategy for weight loss yes the lots of Studies have done and said people are trying you know to lose weight conventional by conventional means we're not talking the Zoe method but the oldfashioned ways of calorie restriction or you know changing to keto diets or whatever it is and if those people are put on exercise or no exercise at the same time does it help them and uh generally it doesn't okay so um and if you do exercise Alone um then there's no evidence as many people gain weight as lose weight on exercise so you think why is that well if you think it through exercise uh is a and I'm not noex I exercise every day I love it it's great for my brain and my heart and everything else and reduces lots of diseases but people have got to separate that from weight loss if we're going to make any progress here and if you got too much you know excess fat on your body exercise alone is a terrible way to deal with it because you're like saying I'm not going to deal with my diet I'm just going to run it off in the gym and keep taking my supplements and do everything else and what happens for most people is that their metabolism slows down the signals of hunger increase after exercise and psychologically people think oh well I've done some exercise I've burnt off those calories you know I can have that donut or whatever and so subconsciously they're also maybe snacking slightly more than they would be and that's why for most people it doesn't work now I know people got upset last year but some people it does work and this is probably there's a different response we don't all respond to exercise with appetite signals exactly the same way but for as many people it did work there are people that made them actually put on weight do you see what I mean that's why the studies show no difference so you always find someone who writes you say Steven this guy's an idiot because I you know I did this and I lost uh you know 10 kilos but this you know exactly someone else will say I did this and I gained 10 kilos and I thought I was doing the right thing so the point is you can't rely on it and it's when there's something obviously modifiable like your diet it's so easy we've got so much choice now and what to eat we're not forced to eat ultr processed foods or lowfat this or or whatever you know we can make those choices we should be doing that not trying to saying am I lucky am I that small percentage of person that can do this purely from working out more in the gym supplements you mentioned there that's the next thing I wanted to ask you about supplements vitamins my house used to be stacked with supplements and then after our conversation last time round I look at them most most of them like they've lied to me like I've been a victim of marketing of sorts and I've got every bloody supplement I've got your omega-3 vitamin D electrolytes calcium you name it it's still in my house mhm what is your view on these supplements in general my view hasn't changed at all that the vast majority of supplements are completely worthless but there are some that are useful for some people some of the time like um like there are some people who have vitamin D deficiency who black people um yes uh some black people black dark skinned people living in places with very low you know if they're living in Scotland uh and they might have poor diets they don't have much vitamin D in it those people could probably do do with some supplementation over winter because they produce less vitamin D than people with lighter skin yes lighter skin evolved as a mutation uh as uh humans came out of Africa in order in order to survive in lower sunlight areas so naturally uh whiter skinned people have a they're less protected against the Sun but they have a better vitamin D production system so generally darker skin have more problems so I used to see many patients uh and often they don't go in the sun either because cult naturally uh you know they cover themselves up and so that that's a problem so there definitely are people who can take benefit from taking some of these vitamin I'm not saying that at all but the idea that everybody should be taking them is just Madness uh there's no evidence that in my field of osteoporosis that taking vitamin D and calcium actually prevents uh osteoporosis or bone disease although for years and years and years we thought it did but all the big studies now show that's not true if you take calcium uh all the studies are suggesting that not only does it not have any benefit in terms of uh bone or muscle Health but it can adversely affect your heart so because the calcium you get in in capsules or supplements you're taking one big lump of it at a time rather than getting it in your green vegetables which would be slowly broken down and absorbed in your gut in ways that your body can deal with so so you're getting this it's like someone injecting it into your vein is very different to being slowly given it uh throughout 24 hours as the way nature intended what what supplements then could most of us benefit from taking if you have a good diet you won't need any supplements but most of us don't have a good diet so so what do you do do you promote supplements and say don't worry about your diet which is what the marketing comp comp want and the vitamin companies want they want us to forget the diet keep the ultr processed food stuff coming keep it all coming guys this junk food no real Whole Foods no plants no fruits that's fine you guys are going to need some vitamins and that may be true for people on very poor diets you know only eat beige food maybe they do need some uh supplements but I think there's no evidence however there is very little evidence that people who do take supplements are any healthier than people that don't take supplements so it's not so you could say people say oh it's like an insurance policy I'm taking it this insurance policy therefore that's a really good reason to take multivitamins Etc and I've heard that said even from some epidemiologists and doctors but to my mind uh just as likely to do you harm as it is to do you any good and it definitely is affecting your wallet what about omega-3 I take that as well the Trials of that have shown it doesn't work uh for reducing heart disease or um any other major disease unless you've just had a heart attack alcohol I've just given up alcohol not really told anybody this but about two months ago now I decided that I could see no net positive in my life there wasn't any sort of social lubricant which sometimes people say it as being the reason to drink alcohol so I gave it up entirely and if and it's been really an interesting experiment in giving up alcohol I was one of the people that sat right on the fence didn't think I had a bad relationship with it um didn't have a huge reason to drink it didn't drink it that often anyway and then I decided one day I'll run the experiment of just quitting and see what it's like and there's been multiple situations where just out and about wait waiters who are maybe a little bit poorly trained have literally tried to force me to drink alcohol like one particular waiter was like go on this is not alcohol this is Art I'm just going to leave the bottle here right in front of you if you change your mind that one particular waiter um and then all the other social contexts where you're just like it's just assumed that you drink what is your stance on alcohol Well you certainly don't need it okay so um most the studies are pretty consistent say that the more alcohol you drink the more are your chances of all kinds of diseases and problems there are some exceptions to that that comes down often to the Mediterranean effect people who drink a glass or two of red wine do seem to have less heart disease but they won't be protected from other conditions so they won't be protected you know from cancers or um uh some Strokes Etc and lifespan is sort of unclear in that particular group so in general alcohol is bad for you no no doubt but and so if you don't drink I don't think I would say to you Stephen you're wrong you need to be start drinking uh red wine but for those people who who do drink or drink occasionally small amounts well I would say to you is do there are some drinks that are healthier than others and red wine is one that's been shown to reduce by about 30% your risk of heart disease in most studies and it's not clear absolutely clearcut but if you drink too much it actually goes bad again for you so it's really quite a small window um and there might be some other drinks in the future that might be healthy and this comes back to plants because when you're drinking wine you're drinking fermented grapes right so the alcohol is bad fermented grapes are good so in the future I'd like to see us getting LLY zero alcohol wines and they they are coming and I I I tasted some from Canada Etc where you can get like a 1% wine that you can't 1% by the way is what in kombuchas you can't metabolize you don't notice it and if they have all those benefits they could be that new era of actually healthy alcohols and there might be some ciders as well because they've got the skin of the Apple but virally all the other alcohols uh have no real uh health benefit what about sleep and the gut microbiome I've I've wondered if there was a connection between how well I sleep sleep has become this Obsession in my life I I feel like I'm a competitive sleeper now I really enjoy the process I've seen the variance in a well slept night and a poorly slept night on how on my mood um how I perform how I'm how my brain works what does the research say about the role that sleep plays on our gut microbiome and on our nutrition they're all interlined so bad night's sleep means that the next next day you're going to have a bigger sugar Spike to the same Bagel or uh breakfast that you had sorry sorry if I have a bad night's sleep the same food will give me a bigger sugar Spike yes so it upsets all of your metabolism right so as you were saying I feel better after a good night sleep your body's metabolism is also different so a disrupted night's sleep means that uh your body will overreact to sugar sugar you're more like to have a sugar dip after it and feel tired and you're more like to feel hungry and crave more carbohydrates after a bad night and I think most people listening will think of that so yeah if I really rotten night sleep you s of get up and you your body craves something to to help you through this you know and everything is is out of a sink and people who are sleeping poorly will have uh less healthy gut microbes than those that don't we we don't yet know which way around that relationship goes whether sleep is driving the microbiome or the microbiome is is affecting sleep but we know they're interrelated so the other thing we've shown is that generally as you found our body likes to a consistent pattern of activity and rest so going to sleep at the same time waking up at the same time is really good for your body you feel better and nourished now if people are say changing by a couple of hours hour and a half two hours at the weekends they're sleeping later and waking up later this affects also their sugar responses and their gut microbes so we know that this consistency of approach is really important for everything in your body now it doesn't mean I don't want to tell people they should never go out or party because you know social networking is fun but just think of that in mind particularly if it's in your control and it's just you know watching another Netflix movie you know because it's the weekend may not be the smartest thing to do if you want to feel really good long term and it's this consistency is coming out again um linking this this idea of nutrition how we respond to food but also involving our gut microbes so yeah sleep is incredibly important it's all part of the solistica circadian rhythm more than many other things that we do I used to think that light was the thing that was had the greatest influence over my circadian rhythm my like internal body's clock what time my body thinks it is but food has a big impact on that Cadian Rhythm so absolutely yeah all the studies are pointing to that so I used to think like you that yeah you know when I was going to the US or whatever the most important thing was to get out there and get in the sunlight and whatever and not worry about my meals and just eat because it when I'm jetlagged I was always hungry anyway but now you know really focusing on fasting and trying to eat at the time of where the time zone you're trying to fit into is much more important than than sunlight so yeah meal timings are increasingly important in science and I think this is one of the really new exciting areas and it all fits in with this idea of you know getting your your rest periods really well worked out your activity periods not messing them up not eating when you're supposed to be resting and uh not doing things out of syn and so the people that do deal with uh time changes and jet lag generally they're often fasting on planes now not eating all the food that's offered and and thinking about what how they want to Kickstart their new clock when they when they get to their destination so this idea that I had of getting my assistant to schedule what time I work out every day and what time I eat every day is a good idea yeah yes as long as it doesn't become obsessional I would say cuz some people there's no risk of that with me so you know people listening I think these are often good ideas but again if you go over the 8020 rule because you can get obsessed about anything whether it's exercise it's training it's sleeping and then you get anxious about it if you don't do it every day so realize it's important but realize some things are more important than your schedule okay and things like friends and having fun and and you know you know absolutely crucial and this is all part of our you know philosophy we've been trying to build with Zoe is about food is about enjoyment and we we mustn't break it down to mathematical formulas all the time got to realize that life is important to do everything uh and you know we can all have a day off my last question I think is maybe one that nobody's asked you before I'm sure a lot of people have probably asked you it um I'm a dog owner got a little French Bulldog who's 8 years old now called Pablo when I was pouring his food out today it dawned on me that his food is heavily heavily heavily processed do you have any advice on what we should be feeding our pets our dogs our [Music] cats before we started Zoe I did think of doing a gut dog dog microbiome U map my pet uh project and I did look into this but I'm not up to date on it but there's lots of evidence that the the food the pellets uh I used to give our dogs which I thought were great are the equivalent of ultr processed foods just like you said and that dogs who are given Whole Foods live longer and have less diabetes put on weight less and are much healthier so I believe that the same thing that applies to humans applies to dogs the canned stuff that smelled horrible is is they still use that but we were told that the pellets were healthier and because they contained all these extra vitamins and it was this concentrated source that was perfect for them and if you look at it it's exactly the same as ultr processed food and that's probably why our pets are getting as obese as we are they're getting diabetes they're getting chronic diseases they're getting arthritis and I think there is some evidence I'm not sure how good it is that if you convert them to whole food diets whole Meats just eating the same that uh we would might be eating or eating our our scraps they will do better so maybe you should try that I I I do I was thinking this when I saw the numbers I heard that Zoe now has more than 100,000 members and I thought you know getting to look at the data of 100,000 people I'm not saying that you look at the data but just having access to the patterns and the insights that you get from such a huge amount of people many of which tens of thousands of which are inputting food Diaries every day you must have had so many like Eureka moments or incredible insights from that bird's eye view that like there must be some things that are just you you've grown in conviction and passion about because of that perspective well we're seeing things we've never seen before we've discovered 4,000 new species of microb just you know in the last few months uh each of these could be totally novel or useful for Therapeutics um or Diagnostics uh we found things like this this parasite the blasto cytis um we're finding links with new foods that we could start to give people advice on about which which foods to eat to improve which microbe and you know as we go forward in the future we'll be able to perhaps predict microb uh combinations that look like they might prevent cancer and uh heart disease or interact with your medications to make anti-depressants more effective or hormone replacement tra more effective so I think it's all happened so fast and it uh and it's just incredible that the response that we've had Zoe and the people are all contributing their data to this community that I you know very soon we're going to be a million people and it's such an exciting time for scientists like myself knowing that uh you know we're going to unravel all these secrets and uh who knows where it's going to lead last time I asked you a question because because when we share so much advice on food I think it's it's nice to close on an overarching principle nice overarching Philosophy for everybody to take away from this conversation and everything we've discussed what in your words with that overarching principle or philosophy be towards our health and our nutrition and our diets you can't go wrong if you do things that are going to be good for your gut microbes and so thinking on half of your gut microbes or your pets as you call them think what would they want to eat how would they want you to behave and if you do that you're going to be eating all the right things and avoiding all the bad things and all the rest generally follows I think that's the simplest device I can and you know if and realizing that when you eat food you know you're not alone you've got these trillions of microbes there waiting for your every move and your choice the closing tradition on this podcast is that the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for and I love this because it changes Direction a little bit the question that's been left for you is what is a modern positive vision of masculinity did you save that one especially for me um have you got Sons I've got a son yes um so I got to think like him have I um what's a positive vision for his masculinity and a modern one it's probably someone who's prepared to go 50/50 on all the chores in the house at the moment I think that's the uh uh I think masculinity is going through a tough time at the moment and um I think uh realize there is a revolution going on so I think it's it's definitely about being flexible MH and losing a lot of those those stereotypes and uh going with a flow that's what I would advise him too late for me but um it's a confusing thing that's what the guest was talking about how young men are very confused in their masculinity what it means what it is to be a man what it's not to be a man these days and really trying to give he was that guess was really trying to give men an answer for that question of like young you know masculinity because the data shows young men are suffering um tremendously if you look at the suicide rates or if you look at the you know um employment rates or the education rates or uh dating all those in those areas so there's a bit of a as you say a Revolution going on in masculinity and what it means to be a man yeah don't be ashamed to be male but be flexible and try to adapt to the the changing world I think that's that's it Tim thank you so much thank you for your wisdom you've definitely changed my life and I know from all the feedback I got in our last conversation you've changed the lives of many many people through your work but also more broadly through what Zoe's doing I can only speak for myself obviously I'm I have a relationship with zo I'm an investor in the company and I they sponsor the podcast but in my life the key the significant changes that I've seen because of the insight and the the fact that Zoe has turned the lights onto my nutrition have been I for pretty much my whole life I had gut problems and I didn't really know why and I just accepted it I had was always bloated had pains in my um my gut and I just thought it was normal you know I thought as a lot of people probably think I thought I was broken in some way and this was just the way that my body was born and then as I've done this podcast I've realized to not accept this idea that I was born broken in any area of my life and to to look a little bit more about how there might be a misalignment between what my body wants and what the modern world is giving it and through Zoe I was able to completely remove that um decade long pain in my gut by focusing on foods that had a good relationship with me so I thank Zoe for that and I thank you for that and the work that you do in spreading the message cuz a lot of the things you say you know they ruffle feathers and they and I think I think when things are positively disruptive it's an inevitability that they ruffle feathers because there is an incumbent that has experienced cognitive dissonance there's an incumbent that feels threatened or challenged in such a way but I think that's how Innovation and positive change occurs so thank you pleasure hope it works let's talk about Zoe who you may know because they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company you guys know health is my number one priority Zoe's growth story has been absolutely incredible so far they're doing science at a scale that I've never seen before because of their members and recent breakthroughs in research they can now continue to offer the most scientifically Advanced gut health test on the market previously the test allowed them to analyze 30 bacteria types in your gut but now thanks to new science they've identified 100 bacteria types this is a huge step forward and there's nothing else that's available even close to it on the market at all so to find out more and to get started on your Zoe Journey visit zoe.com stepen you can use my exclusive code ce10 for 10% off don't tell anybody about that okay just for you guys [Music] 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Channel: The Diary Of A CEO

Views: 1,308,941

Keywords: The Diary Of A CEO, steven bartlett steve bartlett, podcast, the diary of a CEO podcast, life lessons, CEO

Id: 7XrntcEUjLM

Length: 106min 41sec (6401 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2023