Okay, So just once again, let's just be clear. Processed foods are not necessarily bad for you because cooking is a process. Fermentation is a process. We eat processed foods. Most of our foods, we eat are processed in some way. Ultra processed foods is processing of foods that we can't is industrial processing of foods that we can't do in our kitchen or most restaurants. So it's the stuff that are pretty much most of the pre-packaged stuff that we buy. It's going to be ultra processed because it's industrially processed. Now the and I'm not an ultra processed food Nazi, okay? I'm just I'm not let me tell you what the problem with ultra processed most ultra processed foods are. Because they're ultra processed, they are stripped of protein and or fibre, depending on what we're talking about. It's just the way it is. The processing just removes protein, it remove fibre and it also removes flavour. So as a result you have to add back in flavour, which comes from the holy trinity of sugar, salt and fat. So ultra processed foods tend to be lower in protein and fibre and therefore calorically very available, which means that our body uses very little energy to get the calories from ultra processed foods compared to a steak compared to celery, and typically higher in salt, sugar and fat. And that is the reason why ultra processed and we eat too much of it in this country, UK, we get more than 50% of our calories from of our energy from ultra processed foods. So it does make a big difference when we're talking about ultra processed foods, but primarily protein and fibre. That's lack thereof. Oh, just do I mean, I hope we all get bored with it soon. To be fair, I don't because I think there is some we do worship the calorie, don't we? I think that society and this is the thing that's weird so because so because there's so many things wrong. Well, not wrong with it because as long as you use it correctly, but so many misunderstandings about it, I relish the opportunity. And it's a terrible thing to say In order to correct some of the misconceptions. I will be bullied at some point. Not yet. I'm yo, my brother from another mother. Yeah, let's do this. So I this is a complicated story to do to some degree. So my eye popped out actually, so to speak. And in London, because my dad is a my dad is a medic, retired medic. But he was thinking around. He did his registrar training in endocrinology at King's College London in in the early seventies, which is when I was born. And that's why it so so, you know, my mum was and I so that's where I came out. But then we then moved back so I, then he went up to Newcastle, so I spent five years in Newcastle and so there's this small Chinese boy from Singapore now with a full, full on Geordie accent, because I learnt how to speak and then we moved back to Singapore. So I was then in Singapore for a few years until pinged around the world for a bit, up to Boston, back to Singapore, and then we finally emigrated to San Francisco, which is where I did high school and I did my university and it was then after that, then I came to Cambridge to do my PhD in stages. So that broadly speaking, so in terms of bringing up my culture, it's probably Singaporean, Chinese for my early life and then suddenly this huge cultural change into going to California, to San Francisco, and then from high school and university, which is a very formative moment part of your life. Obviously that was American, so it was Chinese Singaporean first and probably where a lot of my food culture was embedded. And then my culture, culture, the way I think and stuff was probably done in California. So that broadly speaking is me. Thank you. I am, I am 49 as go who then I'm doing very well this year. Mm. Are you okay. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The goat as they call it. Yes. Yes. Mm. Oh, man, you're what? Rupi. I listened listened with. He had a talk about calories, but no, let's move. Let's go. Let's change subjects. Now, this is what? Yes. I mean, tickets cost ridiculous sums of money. Like, you know, all the fancy people go, you know, and rupee and it's like, like 15 grand or something or ten grand for tickets. And you see Beyonce say, at halftime and it's just a crazy event, dude. Mm. I'm speechless. I'm speechless. We we could, we could end the conversation now. See you later. Thanks for having me. There's it does. Oh, I think there is. If I only had one sentence to say. It's very, very simple. We eat food and we don't eat calories. And I think that's the absolute critical basis of it. People think about calories, calories, other units of energy that ones you extract it and they are equal once they're in you as a little proof of energy. All right. But that's not what we eat. We eat food and we can eat good food, bad food, healthy food, whatever it is. And no body then works to to take apart the food Digest and extract the calories. And so we need to concentrate on the food rather than the calories, because the calories are just an output of the food. And so what we eat influences how many calories we actually get out of the food. That, in essence, is why calories don't actually count. They count. Just let me just before we can clearly 200 calories of chips is twice the portion of 100 calories of chips, but so is 200 grams of chips, twice the portion of 100 grams of chips. And no one is trying to compare 200 grams of chips to 200 grams of carrots. So it's not quite that extreme. But the analogy is there. That's why calories, I think, don't count. Hmm. Beautiful. Beautifully done. So, I mean, it's very it is old. It is very, very old. And is when people were trying to to understand almost transfer of matter from one to the other. You know but what happens when you burn wood? Where does the wood disappear to? How come it disappears? And this was the the concept that that Lavoisier was actually was actually thinking about and, and so he began to realise that when you actually transfer that matter, it doesn't disappear. He in effect was, was the first person. I don't want to say the only person or I don't know who even was the first person, but he certainly put into practice and enunciated the concept that when that matter doesn't just disappear out into the into nowhere but is just transferred, it may be transferred into heat, it may be transferred into other chemicals. Another molecules, it is transferred from solid to to, to gas, whatever it is. And he got this concept and he also came up with. So he was an amazing character, actually, before he was guillotined in the French Revolution. So he was a bit of a privileged person. But he, for example, almost described the concept of the elements and he described oxygen and he described, you know, hydrogen. He didn't call it exactly, exactly those things, but he actually identified that's Earth, Wind and fire was is not just Earth, Wind and fire, but is actually there are elements involved. The point is, because he understood this concept of matter being transformed, he was the one that brought up the concept that you needed oxygen to burn something. This is this is pretty much it. And when you burn something carbon, you know, wood or anything like that, you'd have to produce this, this, this concept of carbon dioxide. And so it was this concept that he was he was actually thinking about. And then because when you burn something and a heat came off and energy came off, he then began to he never used the term calorie. Okay. But he did begin to give the concept of heat being given off when stuff was happening. Okay. Including including he finally worked out and went to the situation that burning a piece of wood meant oxygen and giving off CO2. And he then equated that to when we ate that the food was then being burnt oxidised and CO2 giving off. And he equated the two things together that there were similar processes which which they are in many ways, and that is in very many ways the birth of the calorie because he didn't realise that. Well, wait a minute, with heat that's given up when you burn a piece of wood and if we eat a piece of meat or vegetables or what have you, that we must be giving off, that it must contain these calories. But he didn't name these calories. This one that was really the birth of the concept that when we actually ate food and burnt it, it was like burning. It was like burning a piece of of of wood, of burning a piece of fuel. And that's what we say, right? So we now we say, well, how much food we eat, how much energy do you burn? And we still use the term. And that energy you burn term actually originally came from Antoine Lavoisier. So actually where that then came from, from the Germans. The Germans. And did it come from Germans and German agricultural actually, because what then happened was it then quickly went into okay, there was a middle ground in which involved some French people, more French people in which where was the calorie, where did the whole concept of the calorie came from? And it was it became a measure of heat. Okay. And so people begin to understand and begin to nail down how much what a calorie actually actually meant. And as you know, we now know that a calorie is a unit of energy that raises water, the temperature of water a certain amount. And so when that then came to be then people started thinking about how do we measure them? And then a then this is when we went back into into the French munitions manufacturer, okay, of all the things in the world and they came up with the concept of the bomb calorimeter, okay, where we can then in effect you, you sort of I mean they were using it to measure the energy output of a bomb, like seriously literally, but, and, and they invented it. But then people then and these were then the German farmers agricultural industry began to utilise it to measure how much energy there was in food rather than in bombs. In food, why agriculture in particular domestic, you know, cattle and what have you. Because farmers really care. How much do they feed their animals, therefore how much milk and meat you actually get out the other side. And so they were the first people to really be concerned about exactly what they were feeding their animals and therefore exactly what you outputs it and they begin to use this bomb calorimeter to measure the total amount of energy of energy and food. So so so you went from the whole concept this, this rather ephemeral aethereal concept of heat to being produced and then slowly working off of it into a way of measuring it and then finally moving back into food again because of agriculture and now because of agriculture, we now have this concept of calories being a being the energy content of, of, of food in as in as efficient a way as possible. So for every penny or pound, whatever drachma, whatever money it was at the time that that was being put in, you were trying to be as efficient. It was based out of need. How can I be as efficient as possible? What can I feed my animals, you know, to get the best meats and the best milk for the least possible money that I can put it pretty much this. So this was before because then what happened was we have to introduce another person and this was a guy. So now we are at just chronological actually, for those of you who are we're now probably in the late 1800s. Okay. So we're about 1880 or so and 1880 it was actually before that 1870s, a guy named Wilbur Olin Atwater. Okay, came, came, came to be. So he was a professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. And he was interested in the concept of the category. And so he visited he visited one of these agricultural stations. They had these agricultural stations in Germany where they were doing the science on a sabbatical pretty much okay. And so he went and he and he learnt a couple of things. First of all, he understood that the concepts know of form calorimetry, he understood what they were trying to, what they were trying to do. But these were, these were the agricultural industry. He then went back to Connecticut and, and set up these agricultural stations as a concept in the United States. But his interest then was not what happened when the cow ate whatever it is, you set the cow. But hang on a second. If we could do that for animals, surely we should be thinking about doing that for humans. And so then Atwater between the years of 1880 and 1900, and I want everybody listening to this to consider this before you complain about your job again, because what Atwater then did between 1880 and 18. So so Atwater understood what I call the sweetcorn phenomenon. When you eat the sweetcorn and you look, you look at the the next day, you clearly haven't absorbed all the seed corn. We understand this phenomenon. He understood this phenomenon. And so he decided, well, you know, how much how much of the of the energy are we absorbing? So he, in over 20 years put lots of food into a bomb calorimeter to burn food and measure how much temperature came off. Lots of food, all kinds of food order foods you can think of. But critically he then fed these foods to human beings and then burnt their poop. All right. Like literally for 20 years, this is what he did. So now he understood how much energy went in the Top End and how much energy went out the back end. And because he understood this, we know and we now appreciate. He now appreciate it. Pardon me how much energy we absorbed. Okay. And so based on that, he then came up with his famous Atwater factors and these Atwater factors we still use today and this are the nine calories for every gram of fat, four calories for every gram of carb and four calories for every gram of protein. And he did this in effect over 20 years because of this burning and feeding and burning. And he published it 1901 1902. And so all of the calorie counts pretty much everywhere that we see are more than 120 years old. Based on Atwater's burning experiments. Yes. No, no, no. So a bomb calorimeter is a sealed container where you put desiccant dried food into or poop. Okay. Okay. Into the container. And why dried? Because water to at least to a human being, does not have any calorie content. Now, if we are a nuclear power reactor, if we are a nuclear power reactor, then water has then we can break apart. But we're not. Okay. So so water has no calorie content to us. So if you dry off the water, just evaporate off the water and you hadn't have the dried food that is there or poop and then you put it into a sealed container that is pressurised with pure oxygen. And the reason why you do that is so that everything burns and then you, in effect, it puts a spark of electricity. This, by the way, is still the technology we use today. It's just the machine just looks a bit better and you spark and burn it. So but around a sealed container, the sealed pressurised container is a water jacket of known volume X litres of water. And so you burn the food and literally have a thermometer in the water jackets and you measure what the temperature is and a calorie, a heat calorie, a small C calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise one millilitre of water, one degree Celsius at sea level. A food calorie, which is 1000 little calories, is one kilo calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise one litre of water, one degree Celsius at sea level. And so that's how you measure it. You burn food, you have a known volume of water, you have a thermometer in, and you just measure what the temperature of the water raised. And that is how you calculate the total number of calories in a food or poop that now. That's correct. Now there is a little bit of wobble. So in other words, now you're going to listen to this and you're going to go over to your cupboard and begin to calculate. You'll find a little bit of wobble. And the wobble comes primarily from the way people calculate how much protein there is in a specific item of food. So because of that wobble, there's a little bit of other things, but there is a little bit of wobble. But pretty much it's based on 44994449. Those Atwater calories. Yeah, that happens later. So so so so the problem is what they actually have calculated this is entirely based on the on the burning experience burning experiment. The wobble comes from the fact that so fat and if I might just just to be boring slightly and nerdy for a second, fat and carbohydrates up are made exclusively of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen exclusively. Okay. That's all in different configuration is the thing about protein that will be relevant in the metabolism element of it as well. But this is just the digestion element is that it also contains nitrogen and nitrogen is very it needs to be dealt with. And when we actually dealing with protein, if we don't use it and we have to and we have to move protein and transfer it and and make it become fat, for example, you need to get rid of the nitrogen. And so the nitrogen then comes out as we weed out. All right. Pretty much. And when it comes out. But but so dealing the way that most the way that everybody pretty much actually calculates how much protein there is in a food is by estimate how much nitrogen there is in a food and how much it actually comes out the other side. So this is the complexity, but all proteins that 20 amino acids that make proteins do not contain the same amount of nitrogen. And this is part this is part of the problem and the complexity of it, which is why it has this wobble. So people never you can't empirically determine how much protein there is in the food, but that takes a lot of effort. So people estimate how much protein there is in a food. And so it's a little bit clumsy. Comes out when when when when you're when you're there. So what we do with energy, we do. I mean, you've already said it very well, actually. So energy. So you've obviously we eat food and we have we burn the food and and we burn the food primarily for three in three different ways. Okay. And this it adds up to 100%. But obviously these things move and the first and greatest amount is your basal metabolic rate. And this is what people generally in common vernacular, we call your metabolism and metabolism. It's fast, it's slow. And this takes around 70%, pretty much 70% of the energy that we actually consume is spent on this. And your basal metabolic rate is everything that keeps you alive, your brain working, your heart beating and breathing all of the things that we have to do, even if we're lying down and doing nothing. Okay. And actually, it takes 70% of the of off the energy you eat to do that. The other 30%, you can in some way do something about. Okay. So your basal metabolic rate, interestingly the 70% we have almost zero effect on our body size and how much we exercise and how much muscle we have influences this. So we have we can do a little bit about it, but actually the rate is the rate that that that it is. The other 30%, however, comes from two elements. It comes from physical activity. And this we all understand what it is. All right? The more you exercise you, you know, you can change the amount that that you actually burn from there. And crucially, what we call diet induced thermogenesis and thermogenesis means heat production. And when we eat, it takes when we eat, it takes energy, too. It takes dough to make dough. Okay. So it takes energy to make energy. And this energy is when we eat your body then gets into into a situation that we it needs to metabolise the food and that is diet induced thermogenesis. And so that is the heat that that actually comes off as well. In terms of percentages, physical activity, we're probably talking around of the 30% that's left around 20% of your energy, roughly speaking. Clearly, that can shift if you're running the London Marathon, for example. But then the other 10% is probably diet induced thermogenesis as well. And thermogenesis is in general, actually. So in other words, if you are non shivering thermogenesis, which means that you're obviously you're shivering, this is this is still physical, physical activity when you're doing. But then if you are just producing heat to try and keep yourself warm, that's part of thermogenesis heat generation as well. And so diet and thermogenesis is about 10%. This is the theory. I don't know how I don't know if a single cold jump is going to do this. There is a there is a bit of our we call it brown fat that in our body it's not actually fat. So fat is energy storage. Brown fat. It's called brown because it's got so much mitochondria, which is our energy, which is our energy supply powerhouses in our body. It produces well, it produces energy, but in brown adipose tissue, brown fat, part of me same thing, but brown fat. It's not linked to producing energy for us. It's linked to just producing heat to actually keep us hormone. So the smaller mammals, mice and what have you will have a larger percentage of brown fat compared to normal fat babies will have a larger percentage of brown fat compared to two us who are in central heating and wear jumpers. But then if you however, are say, and Inuits in the past who actually live in an igloo, you know, out out in the middle of nowhere, well then they would have a lot more brown fat as well to keep them warm. So the whole concept of jumping into a cold, you know, icy, icy water is to try and upregulate your brown fat. You know, the other things as well as far as I understand. But this is part of pop, part of it to try and increase your energy expenditure. That's a good word for it. Hmm. And then your immune system then plummets because of because the whole thing. Yeah. No. Well, I tried once. It was so unpleasant that I said, you know what? If the whole concept is to try and increase, I like you. What I do is okay. My favourite exercise is, is cycling is if it's my thing is if I start cycling and I'm already warm, then I'm wearing too much clothes. And so I always and my wife thinks I'm crazy, but so when I start cycling, I go out where I'm okay. I'm not freezing cold. Clearly I'm not I'm not a masochist, but I need to be slightly chilly. Okay? It needs to be slightly at wintertime, not in the summertime. It needs to be slightly uncomfortable almost when you start, because by the time you're into 15, 20 minutes in and your and your engine is up and running and fully comfortable. And so then is a situation where I'm out in the cold, I'm now producing heat. And so that is my, my, my ethos. My wife thinks I'm mad. She goes on a big jumper. Yeah, Yeah. What are you doing? What are you doing? It's too cold. I say you heat up pretty quickly. Mammal am. Am I out? Middle aged men in Lycra. That's me. That's that, That's me. Not in Lycra. And she's got an e-bike. So when we go out to listen, listen. Domestic bliss is hard won. I just want to point out to you. And so with with her, with the e-bike, me, the you know, you know, in this masochistic thing, we, you know, maintain domestic bliss. So I can work myself stupid and she can have a have a good time in our marriage stays in bliss. I'm sorry about that. What a waste of what a waste of glucose. What a waste of ATP. But anyway, that's. Mm hmm. That's correct. That's correct. And people think it's just one or two mitochondria. It's actually depending on what you're talking about, particularly in your muscles. We actually talking hundreds, thousands of copies of of mitochondria. Hmm. So you're absolutely right. A lot of how many times have you heard it right? Oh, no, I am larger because I have a slower metabolism or what have you, or I'm smaller, so I have a higher metabolic rate and that's is just not true. So the biggest the biggest determination of your basal metabolic rate is your size. I mean, specifically, it's actually depending what part of your body you're talking about, if you have more muscle, you have a higher basal metabolic rates. If you have the fat is less metabolically active than muscle, but your total body weight. So the larger you are, the higher your metabolic rate. The analogy will be. That's while if you look at a mini mini okay like oh school mini cooper and it zips around you and then you look at it, it's pinging around. Whereas if you look at a big SUV, it kind of it kind of moves about what what looks like slowly. But at the end of the day, the big SUV will always use more fuel than the small, tiny car. And the same is true for for for body sizes for us. So the bigger we are, the more fuel we use, even though we appear to be slow and lumbering. But whereas the skinny, wiry person, you know, looks like, you know, really energetic, you'll always use less energy than than than the larger person, It is non-linear. So when and when we mean non-linear, we mean that if you are twice the weight of someone, you don't have a metabolic rate that's twice as fast as someone else. And how you calculate that is actually relatively complex. And I go into it, but it's not linear. So since it's not is a geometric I don't know, I forgot my maths, I don't know what what exactly it is, but it's not. It's related. It's definitely directly related, but it's not a twice foot for for, for the amount. It's not, it's proportional. That's right. That's right. It's proportional to the size but it's not it's not like twice the size, twice the twice the metabolic rate. Okay. So there are two stages to the way. There are two stages to us getting the calories from the food because we eat food and our calories. The first is digestion. And we understand what digestion is. Mechanical digestion is where we chew and the washing machine sound that our stomach makes peristalsis. And then the long, huge chemical reaction, which is largely what digestion is, which then breaks down the macronutrients into sugars, fatty acids and amino acids which are a break broken down portion of protein. Now once this happens, is absorbed into our blood. Okay, that's the digestion element. Atwater's burning experiment took into account how much of the sugar, fat and protein we finally absorb into our blood. So he, he got that done. The second part, however, is that because once we get sugar, fat and carbs, sorry, sugar, fat and protein amino acids into our blood, that's not the end of the story. That is not our fuel. Sorry, that's not our energy. It continues to be fuel. So this sugar and fat is then transport it to our organs that matter or cells that matter and are then metabolised into energy. Okay. So that, that that is the critical that's the crucial thing. And it's this stage that takes a lot of energy that Atwater didn't couldn't take into account. And this differs whether or not we're talking about a protein, whether or not we're talking about fat or whether or not we're talking about sugar or carbs. And so we know, for example, that a calorie of protein makes you feel fuller than a calorie of fat than a calorie of carb in that order. And a large part of that is because of the amount of energy it takes our body to metabolise to metabolise each of these individual macronutrients. So 100 just to put some numbers on it with some some flesh on the bones. So for every 100 calories of protein that you will eat and absorb, we our body is only ever able to use 70 calories, seven zero. So 30% of the protein calories we eat is used to sort out protein in large part because they have to get rid of the nitrogen. Okay. So this is this is part of the issue. This is why it takes so much energy. So if you actually look at the calorie counts everywhere, the protein calories are 30% wrong. They're really out by 30% before we even begin to discuss anything else. So that's the most extreme. I think, of the differences. How about carbs? Well, it depends If we're talking about the powdered white stuff, which actually is very, very calorically available, it takes very little energy, 97% available. So for every 100 calories you eat, you need three calories to deal with the sugar. So 97%. Whereas if you have a whole meal bread, you stuff with fibre in it, then it's about ten, it takes 10% of energy. So for every 100 calories, you need ten calories to deal with a slice of wholemeal bread. Fat is very efficient. And so Atwater was correct with his calculations. The fat's fat is fat, and it is nearly 100% available When you eat it. It takes nil intakes next to no energy to deal to deal with fat. And so there we go. Those are and those differences in numbers come from the metabolism because Atwater has already taken care of it in the digestion element of it. So in total, I would probably say the calorie counts on all the foods are probably out by about ten 15%, depending how much protein and fibre they're actually into. Food. Mhm. Yep. Yeah. Mhm. Oh okay. So that is not an easy question to answer. And I think I think and I think in many ways we need to do that for each food individually and so it will for now still always be predictions because it is because obviously we can obviously take up the Allman Spot and say what percentage fat protein carb is in there and sort of work out what the calorie counts are. But that doesn't tell you how they interact together. And because how they interact together really, really influences. I'll give you a better example. Might actually be an orange. Okay so where for if you because the graph is everyone knows what an orange is and we know that when we squeeze an orange, we get orange juice. Okay. So it's exactly the same food, except when you squeeze the orange juice, you get this pulp that's left, which we think what we can digest anyway, and we drink the orange orange juice. The difference there is enormous is exactly the same amount of calories we can absorb in the orange juice because it's mostly in the sugar and in the orange. But just by the fact of us eating the orange, a number of other things happen, which means that the total calorie count of the sugar calories in the orange are dealt with completely differently. We first of all, we're eating as opposed to just drinking the sugar. Right. Which is it's in orange juice, which incidentally has as much sugar as there is in Coca-Cola or any other soda. Okay. And and natural sugar is not better than Coca-Cola sugar. It just isn't. So just by the fact that you have a whole orange dead that you're eating and you're dealing with the fibre and you're eating it and your digestion system is worked on, it's the way that the sugar is released, first of all, takes a longer time rather than just, just, just going in and spiking your in your blood. But then the presence of the fibre, the way that our intestines work, helping the microbiome as it as the bugs in our gut as it goes down, helping us be regular. So does this whole, you know, other holistic elements of it, of eating the food that comes into play beyond purely the calorie? Because if it's purely the calorie, then drinking the orange juice and eating the orange will have exactly the same effects. And that's not the case. You feel fuller with an orange, you know, and everything is going to be better with the orange juice. I'm not okay before people in the orange juice community, you know, starts throwing stones at me. I'm not saying orange juice is bad for you, okay? I'm just saying that there is a substantive difference, even though with the same source food between eating the orange and drinking the juice. So I think that is what we need to really take into account beyond counting the calories in each of the individual macronutrients. Yeah. Yep. Correct. How active they are. You know, all of all of the things all of the things that you have to put in. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, undoubtedly so. So just, just to get some nomenclature you microbiota is the population of bugs that live in our guts and there are as many bugs that live in our guts as ourselves in our body. So 37 trillion in, you know, in our guts, I think many people would have heard about this. They heard about prebiotics and probiotics. I'll give you my, my, my. And people always ask me, you know, is microbe is the microbe biome? Is it good science? Is it bad? Science, I think is relatively new science. And I think that's part of that. We still are understanding more about it every single day. But what is clear, crystal clear is that we need a healthy microbiome to be healthy. Okay. And and what does a healthy microbiome mean in its most simple terms? Okay. As varied as possible. So we want a whole different variety of of of bugs, you know, in our gut because with variety comes a better ability to deal with food, right? Because obviously if you need certain types of bugs to help you digest or metabolise certain elements of the food, well then the more the kinds of bugs that you have then will, then the more different types of food you can actually you can actually deal with the bugs, play a role, a big role in our, you know, health primarily actually in the immune system because, well, the bugs have to interact with our immune system and it actually plays a big role, big role in our immune system. So that's what we definitely, you know, we need a healthy microbiome. We can debate whether or not by changing our microbiome, we can make someone fat or skinny or smarter, but we need it to be healthy. And the key thing about getting it healthy is to feed it as much fibre, as much different types of fibre as possible. Eat a rainbow, you know, say eat a rainbow type of thing. And today's modern food environment sadly is lower in fibre than we should be eating by quite a bit. And if you actually go to a higher income country such as here in the UK, such as in the United States, we have now we not me personally, the field has now shown that our microbiome on average is far less varied than if you go to a country where they're eating far more fibre and where they're eating far more fibre, their microbiome are just more varied and healthier in inverted commas. And that's where we are at the moment. We are in a moment where in the UK we need to increase the variety of our microbiome, the variety of the species of bugs in our microbiome. But we don't need to do this using expensive methods. We don't of of of eating expensive probiotics. We just need to eat more fibre, maybe more ferments. Okay. More and more and more things like sauerkraut and things as well. But the most critical element of it is fibre as much as possible. MM hmm. That's right. There are probably a whole lot of other complex reasons, I'm sure as well, but it's a big part of that comes down. Okay, So just once again, let's just be clear. Processed foods are not necessarily bad for you because cooking is a process. Fermentation is a process. We eat processed foods. Most of our foods, we eat are processed in some way. Ultra processed foods is processing of foods that we can't is industrial processing of foods that we can't do in our kitchen or most restaurants. Okay. So so so it's the stuff that are pretty much most of the pre-packaged stuff that we buy. It's going to be ultra processed because it's industrially processed. Now, the and I'm not an ultra processed food Nazi, okay? I'm just I'm not let me tell you what the problem with ultra processed most ultra processed foods are because they're ultra processed prime. They are stripped of protein and or fibre, depending on what we're talking about. Right? Depending what we're talking about. It's just the way it is. The processing just removes protein, it removes fibre and it also removes flavour. So as a result you have to add back in flavour, which comes from the holy trinity of sugar, salt and fat. So ultra processed foods tend to be lower in protein and fibre and therefore calorically very available, which means that our body uses very little energy to get the calories from ultra processed foods compared to a steak compared to celery and typically higher in salt, sugar and fat. And that is the reason why ultra processed and we eat too much of it in this country, UK, we get more than 50% of our calories from of our energy from ultra processed foods. So it does make a big difference when we're talking about ultra processed foods, but primarily protein and fibre. That's lack thereof. That's why Likewise. Likewise, I don't I if you don't have to my mind, if I don't have it in the house, then I won't eat it just without thinking. I mean, I don't mind having it outside and what have you but in the house I try and keep it clear of, of, of that stuff as well. Hmm. Okay. Toasting the spices, you know, to, to, to, to get out the flavour. That's a process, you know, all, all that thing, a little bit of oil. And so these are all processes that make food part of the joy of, of, of actually eating. Not what we're talking about here. Lots of garlic. Mm. Yes. Try it and try it and report back. You won't taste the garlic, it'll just be so umami and rich and delicious. But for the Chinese is ginger spring onion and garlic. That's the Holy trinity there. Mm. From personal research perspective, I mean I study, I study, I say I study obesity. I actually study body weight. Obesity just sits on one end of the spectrum. And in particular, I study food intake. And I'm excited that over the next few years, two things that we understand more about how humans control, how our human brains control food intake and everything about it responding to stress or not, you know, being hungry or not. And this is and not only me, by the way, the whole field is trying to is trying to understand. So that's the first bit, trying to understand more about how our simple human brains, you know, influence why I prefer eating an apple versus an orange or something along those lines. But the second thing, which I think is very, very exciting, is due to the drive in genetic technologies that are that that are now available and also more crucially in the computing power that therefore allows us to interpret this genetic data and how we interact with the environment. I'm hoping that we get to a point. So a lot of genetic testing companies that are out there at the moment claim to be able to take your genes and sequence them and what have you to make predictions of what you can, can or cannot do. I think many of them are overstating what they can, what they can do. But I think that in the near future, 10 to 15 years from now, we will get far better of being able to look at our genes and try and personalise some elements of of your diet, of your nutrition or of your illness. I'm going forward. So I think that that to, to, to to my mind from my research is what we had really interested in within the what I want to do next from a broadcasting and nutrition and point of view. I still think that do things regardless of us sitting here and having this really civilised conversation and an enjoyable conversation about about calories, this is we are still a minority of Indian in where we are now. And I think denying that is not going to help it. And so you need to continue speaking. I need to continue speaking and we need to continue talking about the importance of food and of itself rather than anything else, and the quality of food and eating, eating, eating food that is good for us and good for the soul. And we need to do this not by demonising food but by loving food. And I think anything we need this. And then the other side of things which I need to keep pushing is to destigmatize obesity. This de-stigmatize the larger in our society and continue talking about weight stigma and about the fact that because of biological processes that for many people body weight is really not a choice. So that's what I'm hoping to do going forward. Whether or not I succeed is another question entirely, but that's the aim. MM. I love your food and I think if we learn to love our food rather than fear our food, I think we go to a we'll go a long way into, into helping ourselves better and healthier, go 49 hours.
