What Does Professor Tim Spector Eat in a Day?

[Music] hi there i'm tim spector professor of epidemiology an expert in gut health nutrition and co-founder of the company zoe that brings you personalized nutrition now i'm often asked what do i eat and so i thought i'd invite you into my home today to show you the range of things that i would eat on an average day and let's start with breakfast so let's go on to the most important drink of the day and that is for me a black coffee made from good beans dry roasted packed with polyphenols and it turns out that the zoe predicts studies have shown that coffee drinkers have really high levels of a beneficial microbe that we call freddy you can tell instantly if someone's a coffee drinker or not just by looking at the gut microbes so it's a great start regardless of whether you're gonna have breakfast or not and sometimes i don't but let's assume we're in one of those days where i'm gonna have the full breakfast so the first thing i'm gonna get out is some full fat yogurt it can be greek style it doesn't really matter as long as it's good quality and it has no other ingredients in it so no sugars fruits it's not low fat and for me the fat is important because i learned when i did my own zoe scores that breakfast i was having that's the sort of breakfast cereal stuff even though it said healthy measly on the packet was giving really big bad glucose scores so for me starting off with a fatty breakfast means i have a better metabolism i'm less hungry later in the day and then the other ingredient is kefir or kefir which is fermented milk for those who don't know and generally it's from cows but you can also get it from goats and this has about five times the number of live microbes as uh yogurt and often make my own kefir which is very easy to do and means you don't have to spend large amounts of money on fancy stuff next yet more fat and protein actually with some mixed nuts and seeds don't believe all those people that tell you you only have these super brands like chia seeds and ones that cost a fortune any real mix is good they're all fantastic source not only of polyphenols but also fibre to finish it off we're going to go for some berries people often don't know this but things like raspberries have the highest fiber content of any plant so plenty of blueberries plenty of raspberries and any other fruit you've got lying around just look in the fridge cut it up whack it in the greater the diversity the better delicious and that's breakfast simple and then we'll move on to lunch and i'm going to show you what my really simple lunch is that is a hundred percent score for me on my zoe profile and this is one that's really good for my metabolism and is also boosting my microbes and it involves our friends the avocado full of fat full of calories but they are actually really good for you and we're going to be putting them on some sourdough rye bread and while we're talking about bread i should just remind you that the lunch i always used to have particularly working as a busy doctor in hospital for at least 10 years was what i thought was healthy i think i've got it somewhere here this is my go-to lunch in the hospital so a bit of tuna and sweet corn uh factory bread with some orange juice and i used to have a packet of potato chips as well and i've discovered that that really was dreadful for my blood sugar levels i thought it was healthy i was completely wrong so they're rubbish let's go to what is a really good healthy meal so we take an avocado and i will put it on the the bread but with some olive oil and of course not just any olive oil we're talking about extra virgin olive oil and that's because that's the only one that has really high polyphenol scores so we can be liberal with this don't worry about the the calories if it's high quality it's going to be really good for you hmm yeah that's good we're gonna get some paprika we're gonna add a few tomatoes because they are actually gut boosters for me and sometimes not every time i'll be honest i will add some sauerkraut this is fermented cabbage and we just take some of this this kraut out and always make sure that you get sauerkraut that is not in vinegar if it's in vinegar all the microbes will be dead then at the final piece of the puzzle if you've got them to hand you can just whack on some beans beans are a fantastic source of everything from protein to fiber to polyphenols so sprinkle them on let's have a few more so that is lunch done which is designed to optimize my metabolism optimize my microbiome and hopefully taste great [Music] that's great this suits me and is the perfect setup for dinner so now we're going to dinner and my general theory for dinner is plant-based diversity spicy and simple something doesn't take too long so the first thing i do is i look in the fridge and see what i've got lying around and we've actually got some leftovers from last night which i've put together i'm going to show you but basically they are consistent of a base of cauliflower which is a fantastically nutritious vegetable is not used as much as we should you fry everything up first with onions red onions are probably the best for polyphenols and then of course what's really important is is getting lots of spices in here and we've got turmeric coriander mustard seeds uh cumin garam masala and randomized control studies have shown if you just add some spices to your food every day your gut microbe is actually healthier so it's a really good tip to get start getting used to them and start adding them to your food basically i fried up the red onions and then i added the spices to that making sure they were it was nice and hot and then added in the cauliflower which had been baked for 20 minutes in the oven then mixed some kefir and this is the probiotic stuff but without boiling it making sure it's it's just kept warm so you don't kill those microbes you stir it all together and then just having reheated it just to freshen it up a bit i'm going to add in some more coriander and so we've got in this lots of different plants with about 10 different plants in this mixture which are going to boost my gut microbes help my fiber probiotics and it's a fabulous meal and just by heating it up you often get more of the taste of those spices the next day so let's uh let's just see [Music] so you've now seen what i eat on an average day and i don't eat like this every day it varies and i think you should also vary too and what goes for me doesn't always mean you should be eating the same thing but i want to leave you with four key tips that i think work for nearly everybody and they are number one try and eat 30 plants a week and that includes these herbs and spices and things that we've seen that you might not have thought about it's not that hard second is to have some fermented foods every day and we're talking about uh the yogurts the kefirs the 4ks that we discussed the kombucha the kefir the kraut etc third is try and pick your plants that are high in color and taste and astringency bitterness all the ones you see here are fantastic for that because that means they're really high in polyphenols good for your gut microbes and the fourth and final one is try and cut out as much as you can ultra processed foods which are bad for your microbes thanks for listening i'll be really interested in your comments on what you think of my diet and how maybe you think i should improve it and your alternatives do subscribe and go to the links below that you can see on this video thanks again [Music] you

Channel: ZOE

Views: 2,252,508

Keywords: Gut Health, Tim Specter

Id: xNQXeQ9KDW0

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022