Doctor Tim Spector: The Shocking New Truth About Weight Loss, Calories & Diets | E209

Exercise doesn't help weight loss. The reason exercise doesn't work is because Professor Tim Spector He's an award-winning scientist. Best-selling author and medical professor And he is ranked in the top 100 of the world's most cited scientist. We're going to talk about the future of personalized nutrition. Many consider you to be the leading expert on gut health and diet. What's your view on the ketogenic diet? Virtually impossible. What about vitamins? Waste of money. What are the facts around fasting? Oh dear. Oh [ __ ] What do you mean "Oh dear"? The food industry wants you to focus on calorie, fat content, and sugar so you don't have to think about the quality of the food. There's never been any long-term study showing that calorie counting is an effective way to lose weight and maintain weight loss. This is why I want people to think about food very differently than we have done in the past. So, what is the cost? Depression and anxiety is intricately linked to the quality of your gut microbes. These are microscopic bugs in our intestines. All of them are able to pump out chemicals that are vital for our body when they're fed the right foods. Reason we're in this state is we've killed off a lot of our good bugs. I think people don't think of all the positive benefits, they don't think that you need to build them up. God, it's so confusing. You know, when you walk down the aisle in the supermarket, everything is trying to pretend that it's good. So, how do I know what is good? You have to Quick one. At the start of these episodes, I told you that 74% of people who watch this channel frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. And I told you that the bigger the channel gets, the better the guests get. And hopefully, I've delivered upon that for you. So, there's two things I wanted to tell you. The first is, if you've ever enjoyed this channel, could you do me a favor and my team here a favor, which is hit that subscribe button because it helps this channel more than you know. And as I say, the bigger the channel, the better the guests. But also, we're approaching 1 million subscribers. And when we hit 1 million subscribers, we've been working for many months to do something very big in which you're all invited to. I'll reveal that when we hit a million subscribers. Tim, many consider you to be the leading expert on topics relating to gut health and diet and food, etc. But how would you describe your own professional academic bio? What is that bio in your own words? It's complicated. So, I've changed form over the years quite a lot and I'm quite unusual in in in terms of academic medics who usually stick very strictly to one specialty all their career and fear to go anywhere else. So, I was at medical school, did the usual stuff, then wanted to be a physician, then did rheumatology. What's rheumatology? Bones and joints. Okay. So, that was my subspecialty, if you like. Mhm. And but I got interested in epidemiology, which is the study of uh risk factors in populations where you just look at thousands of people rather than one patient. Really, I I switched again to study because I I got really interested in the idea that identical twins should be the same. They're clones, they've lived all their lives together, all their genes are identical. What makes them different? Counter to what everyone thought, identical twins often die at different times. They get different diseases. One gets depression, one's fine. It's all these differences. So, what that was my sort of conundrum. What makes identical twins different when they have the same lot they've lived the same lives? It was only through this sort of search to find this out that I looked at the gut microbes in in twins and found they were different and that really scientifically took me onto this whole new path. From there, I made this sort of leap into nutrition to say, "Well, now we've discovered this whole new science. All this stuff we got wrong about nutrition suddenly makes sense. So, now I would say I'm you know, an epidemiologist who's really um specializing in in nutrition and gut health and trying to change the way people think about food. That was a brilliant summary of your career and and academic background. Um as a muggle like me that's really, you know, new to many of these topics, what I understand is the study of epidemiology is the study of the like genetic root causes of disease. Not just genetic. So, it's any any root causes of disease, right? So, the people studying COVID yeah, were all epidemiologists tracking a disease, trying to work out who's getting it, when it's coming back, how common it is. Right. All these basic things in populations at a at a sort of big population level. Right, got you. You've also written 800 articles. More than 800 articles on this subject matter. Um in 2014 you set up the British Gut Microbiome Project. And you've written five books on these subject matters. I mean, I've read two of them that are sitting in front of me here. Um I'm really intrigued by by the personal story as well, because writing these books and doing all the work you've done is a lot. It's a lot of work. It requires a lot of drive. I mean, this particular book you you said it took almost 6 years to finish. What is the personal drive behind that? What is driving you to pursue the this subject matter? You know, I just love getting into a new area, finding out that something that everyone's been quoting for decades is total BS and was based on some tiny study of nine people. It's like I'm a detective. And so I've always had this this quest to sort of be this uh obsessional detective, I think, going into these areas. And at the same time, it's that's coincided with, you know, various events in my life as well that um have probably pushed me in certain directions more than others, you know, that I wouldn't have gone otherwise. What were those events in your life? I guess, you know, I was a pretty lazy um student at school. Same. Might surprise some people. People always assume if you're a professor and you've made it, you were a swot at school, but I did the absolute minimum. So, I scraped into medical school, scraped through the first few years of medical school. I spent 1 year proving you didn't have to go to any lectures and could still pass, uh which was a lot of work actually. At the end, I realized it was harder. Then, of course, age 21, my father died um suddenly overnight with a heart attack. Uh no warning at all. I was off on a skiing holiday with some friends. And I think in retrospect that that event uh changed me and um perhaps gave me, you know, a bit more uh direction and drive than I would have had. I'm not quite sure, you know, how it would have turned out if he hadn't died, um but to me him dying at 57 suddenly like that um made me think I I need to, you know, make more of my life. I could die early, too. This was something that you know, I think spurred me on to do all this kind of stuff that I didn't need to do, but I felt perhaps more compulsion to do and maybe also got me interested in this whole idea of genetics to say, well, you know, did he have rotten genes? Um am I have I got the same genes? Am I going to die in my 50s? So, I think that looking back now, I think that's it's hard to be absolutely sure, but that that seems a a reasonable scenario. I read and I've heard from members of your team that that left you with a feeling as you've kind of said there that you might also die young if it is a genetic thing. Definitely, yes. No, I was I was telling my kids, you know, this is this is it, you know, I've only I've only hit I was sort of half joking, but saying, well, you know, you know, my time's, you know, I've only got 7 years to go now, I've, you know, whatever it is. Um You were saying that to your kids? Yes, you know, that's to try and prepare them. I guess so, but it was my way of, you know, I did it in a jokey way. It wasn't like um I was writing my will and saying, you know, the candlesticks are here and the everything else, but it was um yeah, I used to make light of it, but you know, underneath it, yes, I felt, well, you know, I could go early, so I need to get on with it, I think. And I was also at that time uh probably speed was sped up by another personal incident I had at that time. Which was a mini stroke. Yes, I would call it a mini stroke. It It's a vascular occlusion, but I couldn't work for 3 months. I couldn't read. And I got a bit depressed about that. So, those 3 months where you you can't read, um I read that you were the quote, I I went from being a sporty, fitter than average middle-aged man to a pill-popping, depressed stroke victim with high blood pressure. They said you were floored by this experience and for 3 months you couldn't work. From having a pretty fast-paced, frenetic life to being bed-bound. And in those 3 months, you your focus on the microbiome increases, right? Yes, I I was I was just finishing up the very last bits of the the previous book, Identically Different, which is about why twins were different. Right. And as a sort of afterthought, I had added one page about, well, actually the microbiome could be the key to this. What is the microbiome? It's the word we use for the community of gut microbes. These are microscopic bugs in our intestines. And it it's a biome because it's like this jungle community. It's a lots of different species all together, thousands of them, that coexist in our in our lower intestine, our colon. And they it's like we've discovered in the last 10 years a new organ in our bodies. If you put them all together, they weigh about the same as our brain. Okay? So, it's that's mind-boggling, really, to think about all these bugs, which uh individually are tiny, put them together, they actually, you know, it weighs several pounds. So, you can either think of them as a as a microbial garden, but increasingly I'm shifting that towards thinking of them as a an incredible pharmacy. So, all of them are able to pump out chemicals all the time that are vital for our body. So, thousands of different chemicals are pumped out every minute by these these gut microbes uh when they're fed the right foods. And these chemicals are key for our immune system. Most of our immune system is actually in our gut. We did most people don't know that. We think it's, you know, under our armpits or somewhere, but actually, um, the all the immune cells are actually talking all the time to our gut uh, microbes through these chemicals. And that our immune system, obviously, is crucial for our whole body and fighting aging and cancer, COVID infections, allergies, all these kind of things. So, then you've also got the microbes can produce chemicals that affect the brain and will make the difference between you being happy or sad or we know that they've they're vital in depression. Important for regulating how much you eat, your appetite, when you feel full. They also provide key vitamins for you, all the B vitamins and many other components, neurochemicals like serotonin that's key for the happiness and how antidepressants work are all produced by your gut microbes. So, we're slowly learning that these guys are absolutely crucial to how our body responds to anything coming into it, whether it's painkillers, whether it's antidepressants, whether it's chemicals in the form of food. And this is why, you know, I want people to think about food very differently than we have done in the past. The idea the old idea that food is just calories, macros, you know, it's fats and carbs and proteins. Those four things, you know, that's 100 years old mentality. But, key to it is this this core of our gut health, which we've ignored totally. And this was this big aha moment for me after research for 10 years. What why would identical twins twins be different? What could it be? And it turns out their gut microbes are different. That's the only thing I've ever found in 30 years that's really different about identical twins. And that explains why one gets cancer, the other one doesn't. Why one gets an autoimmune disease or one's depressed and one's happy. So, for me, that the twins were perfect um obvious way to show that how important these these microbes are for all of us. What are some of the the biggest myths you encountered as you started researching the microbiome that most people currently believe that I probably sat here and I believe about how to keep my um my gut healthy. What are some of those key myths cuz I know you like myth-busting? Well, I think most people believe that probiotics in yogurt get killed by your stomach acid. So, they don't work because your everything gets killed off. That's a common one I hear. But they don't. No, I mean, some get killed but you're ingesting billions so always enough get through to have an effect and we know that probiotics do work. Although, the best probiotics are in food rather than in capsules. And there's plenty of fermented foods which is the same. Um I think um most people know very little about microbes. They think that most of them are harmful. So, oh, I've you know, they they cultured this microbe or they found a parasite. 50,000 people have now looked at their gut microbes in the US and the UK. In the UK, 24% have a parasite. And that parasite is actually beneficial. It's called Blastocystis and it's associated with good health, being thinner, having less internal fat, lower blood pressure. And you know, in the past we've try to kill it off. And actually the reason we're in this state is we've killed off a lot of our good bugs. So, I think people need to realize that most of the bugs in our in our system are trying to help us. And we've actually lost half of the good ones compared to if you go to hunter-gatherers or you know, I spent some time with the Hadza tribe in Africa. And you know, they have twice the number of species that we have. Because they don't pop antibiotics, they don't have sterile foods, they have a very wide range of um diverse plants, etc. So, I think people uh think that you know, their their gut microbes are really only there to hurt them whenever bad kebab or something. Uh they don't think of all the positive benefits, they don't think that you need to build them up. And that actually, you know, they're like a the more you've got the better it is. How do I build them up? How do I become more like that tribe? You have to have a more diverse range of plants. So, we did a study a few years ago with the British and American guts that showed that if you can get up to 30 different types of plant a week, you maximize your diversity of species in your gut. And that's that diversity that we want. Remember, 30 plants, you look a bit shocked, but that's um it's a plant is a nut, a seed, it's not just kale. Um it's a herb, it's a spice. And you know, things like coffee are a plant to me. Um cuz it comes from a fermented bean. Um so, it's that diversity, it's having more fermented foods, it's uh having a range of colors, it's cutting out um the ultra-processed chemicals as well, which all that all the groups in the population that have the best gut microbes, they don't eat the ultra-processed foods, they don't have antibiotics, they don't have this this modern Western lifestyle. You mentioned calories there as well, um when you were talking about the microbiome. One of my friends is a prolific calorie counter. And you know, he eats a lot of Domino's pizzas. He'll be He listens to this podcast, so he's going to know exactly He's going to know that I'm atting him. Um he eats Domino's pizzas all the time. He eats like a a real, you know, processed food diet, but then says to me it's all about calorie counting. Now, with all due respect, friend, um he's never managed to I shouldn't say that. But um but it's not necessarily work for him in terms of the goal that he's set himself. So, when I was reading about your view on calorie counting in your book Spoon-Fed, it was I screenshotted it this morning and sent it to him. And I sent I said, "You are a bullshitter." That's what I said in the message. And we had a good laugh about it this morning. But what is your view on calorie counting and this idea that we can, you know, weight loss or being healthy is just about having a calorie deficit? It's complete nonsense. Uh thank you. I'll clip that and send it to him. There's never been any long-term study showing that calorie counting is an effective way to lose weight and maintain weight loss after, you know, the first few weeks. So, yes, uh very strict calorie counting, if you deprive yourself for a few weeks, you will lose some weight, but even if you're successful, your body's uh evolutionary mechanisms will make you hungry and hungrier every week you go by where you're depriving yourself of energy, your body will go into sort of shut down mode, your metabolism slows down, so you're not expending those calories. And inevitably, I'd say more than 95% of people will go back to their baseline, and many go above it. They sort of rebound back if they're doing this this style of uh calorie restriction. Now, calorie counting's a part of that. So, people try and say, "Okay, I'm not going to I'm not going on a dramatic diet, but I'm going to just try and reduce by 10% my calories in the day, which in the old theory was supposed to make you lose weight." Well, it's virtually impossible even professionals to count calories. And because uh they're not very accurate for a start. Everything on the packet, you have to weigh everything. And in restaurants now, we're supposed to have these calorie counts, they're plus or minus about 30% because portion size makes such a huge difference to it that it's it and it's been shown in the US to be a worthless exercise anyway. So, you can't count them going in, you can't really count your metabolism going out, either. We're all incredibly different. You know, your friend's probably been told 2,500 calories is what he's allowed. Mhm. Well, that's an average. Uh but it doesn't mean it's relates to him. My average is much lower when I tested it. So, everyone is an individual, and this is another thing we need to move away from this one-size-fits-all guidelines. But, I think more importantly is that the whole calorie counting assumption means that it doesn't matter what form that calorie is, it has the same effect on your body. Therefore, whether you're cutting out fat calories or, carb calories or, you know, low-calorie sodas or whatever it is, it's it's going to be fine. But, we now know that's not true. Um the and there's several science experiments which now absolutely nail that. One was um by in America where they gave people identical meals um for 2 weeks in a sort of enclosed semi-prison. And one was homemade and one was ultra-processed. Both identical calories, macros the same. The group with the ultra-processed foods overate by about 200 calories every day. They kept coming back to the buffet for more. Okay? So yes, the same calories but the effect on the body meant they were hungrier. Why is that? We don't know for sure. It could be that those chemicals in the ultra-processed foods affect the gut microbes and they then send signals to the brain saying, "Eat more. This isn't a natural, you know, this is a really weird chemical. It's doing something weird to me. I'm producing something weird in exchange." It could be that they get absorbed much quicker. So you get a big sugar rush and you know, the nutrients get in to your body in a way faster than they should do in nature. And so your brain doesn't have time to say, "I'm full." It normally takes 20 minutes or so to to get that fullness. Um or you know, it So the it could be the matrix of the food, it could be the chemicals in the food, it could be its effect on the gut microbes. Um but it also could be things like your sugar spikes. So in the ZOE Predict studies where basically we've given now 50,000 people um in the US and the UK the same foods at the same time same time of day. Everyone's got these muffins. We show that people um one in four people who have these muffins and are wearing a we wear glucose monitors which tells you for 2 weeks every what's happening to your glucose. One in four people get a real sugar dip 3 hours later. So this is where you get your rising sugar, which is normal, and then as it comes down, it goes below baseline. But, only in one in four people. And when that happens, those people end up uh overeating in the next meal, and during the day, they feel more tired, more hungry. That's this the sort of 11:00 slump, if you like, if you've had a carby breakfast. Some people feel that, others don't. And what's really interesting is that so, one in four people eating an identical muffin of identical calories will then overeat by this, you know, another 10% that day. So, you can see how that just blows the calorie um idea out that the calories in equals calories out, everything's the same. And and the and the third thing is that ultra-processed food says it has the calories that's equal to the whole foods, but often they don't account for the fact that it's ground up, it's highly refined. And so, if you take my almonds or something like this, they use might use ground almonds. And you compare ground almonds to whole almonds, there's perhaps 30% less available calories in the whole almonds than there is in the other one. So, the whole thing is a complete nonsense, and it's there because the food industry wants you to focus on the calorie, the fat content, sugar, so you don't have to think about the quality of the food. And it's something that they can control very easily, get their profits higher, keep adding stuff to the product that's synthetic, and we know that a lot of things they're adding are harmful for our gut microbes. So, that the artificial sweeteners are harmful, the the glues, they stick the foods together, the emulsifiers. Some people react quite a lot to those, and they cause problems. So, the whole thing is like this giant camouflage. And that's that's really one thing I'm, you know, it might be my number one bugbear is to get people to see the light, stop obsessing about calories, and start thinking about food much more as quality and what it does to your body. Quality food. What is quality food in your definition of the phrase? It's the opposite of ultra-processed food, which is whole food, which is made with um from the original ingredients of plants, mainly plant-based, but um it's not exclusively, that um contains all the nutrients that those those plants produce without it being stripped away or uh boiled up or highly pressurized, deformed, and so they have to add in back those nutrients. So, you know, it's things in their pure form. So, it's it's not it's seeds, it's it's grains that haven't been ground up super finely. It's all the amazing plants and fruits and vegetables that we've got. They they're healthy foods, but, you know, it's it's not straightforward, yes, I've got this list of 10 superfoods. It's it's understanding that many foods that uh you know, are healthy for us. Most of them are in their in their original form. Berries, nuts, um virtually every vegetable is healthy for us if it's in that original form. It's only because we've we had to learn to preserve things, we had to do trickery to make, you know, margarines and things that with chemistry that we moved away from that. But, you know, going back, you know, olive oil, for example, is is a great example of something that's they vilified often because it has lots of fats in it and you know suddenly I was told men oh the Mediterranean diet they have olive oil and everything it's horrible it's all fatty. Turns out that's that's a perfect you know it comes from the olive. The good stuff extra virgin olive oil has very little done to it. And that is a a good healthy quality food. But it can be refined you can take that and you can keep refining it. Um you can take corn on the cob as an example and then you you know and then you've got I don't know uh tortilla chips or something down the other end is which bears or corn flakes which bears no resemblance to the original and they're all versions on a spectrum. God it's so confusing you know because what you've said to me is you know based on research and studies but then when I go to a supermarket labeling even I just think of corn flakes I think I grew up thinking corn flakes were healthy because it says corn in the title. You know what I mean? And it's and when you're trying to navigate I was just thinking if I'm going down an aisle now hearing what you've just said that that quality food is food that is not ultra processed and kind of resembles its original form. When you walk down the aisle in the supermarket everything is trying to pretend that it's good. So how do I know what is good? I mean I can go to the vegetable aisle and I can say okay that looks like a cabbage it looks like no one's messed with that. There's been no study done on that to it hasn't been through a laboratory but how do I like I'm in an aisle tomorrow how do I know what food is good and what is not? Well you've said the first thing if it's not in a package um you're pretty sure it's good. Okay. So um uh if it's concealed in some package that's got you know happy children and and signals of vitamins in it that should be a a warning sign. Uh you know the more they have to advertise the food and say what its additives are and everything the more you should be wary about it. The number of ingredients is another pretty good sign. So, once you get over 10 uh particularly if there's lots you've never heard of, you wouldn't find in your kitchen, you should also be wary that that is ultra-processed food. Anything that says low calorie, that says means they've had to add in lots of artificial sweeteners or protein extracts or something else is also a big uh danger sign. Uh low in fat means they've replaced the natural fat with something else that's cheaper and these are all warning signs, you know, and you know, you take breakfast cereals. I mean, I used to I used to eat lots of breakfast cereals. I was brought up on them, highly sugary stuff. And then I thought I was being healthy when I moved to mueslis and um posh uh posh uh stuff. Uh but actually, when you still you know, that appearance of healthiness, it's still got lots of additives in it. It's still got lots of sugar in it. It's just and those cereal packets have added vitamins in it, but they're often in a very poor form. Uh I did an experiment once where I um took some corn flakes or Special K, I can't remember, that said had added iron. And if you mix it up, you can put a magnet on it, you can get off the iron filings. They're so cheap that um they're just added to tick a box saying it has iron, but they don't get into your body or do anything. So, anything that's got these things added with this in it, low in this, is a sign that they're obscuring the quality of the product. So, it's you know, but there's a lot of brain you know, we've had we've been brainwashed for years and decades in this. And you know, I was as well as a doctor. You know, I should know better. And yet I've completely changed my sev- two of my meals completely. So, I've gone from having muesli with low-fat milk and an orange juice and uh a cup of tea cuz I did, you know, I started doing these tests with Zoe, I found out that gave me a massive sugar spike. And was a terrible way to start the day and I got these, you know, dips at 11:00 to a high full-fat yogurt, nuts, seeds, a few berries. And I never have orange juice. That's on my That's a really unhealthy drink for everybody. And I have a lots of black coffee, which I now know is good for me. So, that's totally different. I changed my lunch for at least 10, 15 years. Um when I got in the hos- I was having a hospital lunch, which used to be in the canteen, then it was the Marks & Spencer's. Got a healthy-looking sandwich with brown bread, sweet corn, and tuna, and a smoothie in a little bottle. And that gave me a massive sugar spike. And I wouldn't have known that. And I was told that should have been a healthy thing to eat. So, you know, there's the general rules, but also there are specific rules. And this whole idea of indivi- individuality is coming in. So, it could be that you could you might be fine on that. Don't know. Um I was very annoyed cuz when I started, we were starting doing this testing for Zoe, I had all these spare kits and I gave my wife one as well. And we'd sit down and she's um French Belgian and loves croissants. And so, we'd have croissant each. Mine would shoot up. She had no change at all in her her her sugar, which was really annoying. Yeah. So, but it also brings brings home the fact that, you know, it everyone loves simplistic rules. But you can only get so far with them. You have to start experimenting yourself and see what works for you and not just take everything for granted. And that's really the That's the whole essence of of really you know, setting up this personalized nutrition research in Zoe and everything else. But on top of this general advice about changing a whole idea of food. I think cuz I think they do go hand in hand that if you realize all these individual differences, you realize it's not as simple as you've been told. It's not that fats are evil. It's not that calories are bad, you know, it's it's much more nuanced. You mentioned breakfast there. I heard that you do some intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting. I think I pronounced that correctly. Intermittent fasting. Yes, we'll just uh use AI to swap that for my voice. What is it's intermittent Let's just call it fasting, okay? Just for people at home that can't say it. Um Fasting has become a really popular thing over the last three or four years. A lot of my friends talk about it. Again, it's it's almost feels like it's going into fad territory again. But what is the What are the facts around fasting intermittently? Okay, it's I guess it's been quite hot topic for about 10 years now. But it's Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for all kinds of different fasting. And you might remember the 5:2 style of intermittent fasting was quite big about 10 years ago. And there were also these extended fasts often used in America. People were doing two or three-day uh fasts and detoxifying. Oh gosh. That sort of stuff. So, you've got to realize you have to specify what time what what we're talking about. But I think the most interesting type of fasting now is what's called time restricted eating. Time restricted eating. I can see that. TRE, okay? So, the idea is you don't change what you eat, you just change how you eat, and you change your eating window. So, most people in in the UK and US, they'll be eating for 14 or 16 hours a day. That's me. Right? Lots of snacks, and extending late night. And what time restricted eating is, we're trying to reduce that to something like 10 hours on average. Okay, there is there are some more extreme ones, some milder ones, but that seems to be about the sweet spot that most people can manage. 10 hours, which means you start eating at 11:00 and you finish at 9:00. For example, or you might want to go from 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night. Or 7:00. I can't do my maths. Um Now, there's actually science behind this now, so there's plenty of studies showing that not only in mice and rats, this helps them their metabolism, their energy management, but there's some evidence it helps with weight loss to a small extent, but it's improves your inflammation levels, and a lot of people report energy and mood improvements. We've just done a big study with the the Zoe Health study, which is the the free app, where we had 130,000 people sign up to do this trial, if you like, where they would do this for 2 weeks, and amazingly, most people managed it. And we did see improvements in mood and energy um just in that 2-week period. And actually, hunger went down weirdly. But a lot of this we've found is people are actually snacking less. So, they weren't we weren't telling them to do less. You just you can do whatever you like in that time, but people were just paying more attention, and not grabbing something to eat just before they went to bed. Now, the science behind it is really interesting because your body needs time to recover. So, your cells we're programmed on the circadian rhythm that is very much in in line with the sun from, you know, when we were all in East Africa and it was um everything was quite programmed so that our body is in the state of work during the the day, we eat, do all our stuff, and then at night it recovers. As the stress hormones go down, then your repair stuff comes out. So, cleans up all the muck in our cells. But, we now know that it's the same happening in our guts. So, if you rest your gut for uh 14 hours, you give time for all the other microbes to come out and act as a repair team, like a cleaning force that hoover up all the mess you've left behind. They clean up nicely your gut wall, and so it's not leaky, get rid of inflammation, and this change, giving them this break, really seems to have these great benefits. So, I'm I was a real skeptic about about this, and I did lots of fasting and things for experiments with the books. But, it I think the last 2 years I've really been convinced that this is something that that does work, and is right for some people. But, importantly, it's not right for everybody. And uh there is an individuality. You may be a snacker that finds it very hard to go long periods of time without eating. Okay? I do know we've got several people at Zoe who say, "Oh, this is terrible. You know, it's the But, for me, you know, I suddenly realize when I wake up in the morning, I'm not starving. It's not the first thing that I I think in my head, and you know, very easy to wait till 11:00 to have something to eat. And it's not a big deprivation, that's something you could carry on the whole of your life, which I think is what we're we're we're into here. So, I think there's a lot to be said for this, but I think people need to personalize it. Again, I you know, people love a single single black and white solution to all their problems, but I'd say to everyone try it. You may want to, you know, do do a sort of American style eating really early and finishing early. Um you might be that kind of person who's a sort of morning person, or you might be someone that prefers the social life of eating in the evening and um skipping the morning. It's going to be It's going to be take quite a lot of discipline discipline for me to stop having chocolate at 2:00 a.m. So, could you just summarize again time restricted eating? The The The key benefits of it are my microbiome will be healthier, gives my microbiome more time to clean up, which will have an impact potentially on weight loss and overall energy levels, etc., etc. Mood. Okay, cool. That's enough for me. I think that's a convincing enough reason. And I imagine there's also an impact on sleep there cuz you know, me having chocolate at 2:00 a.m. is probably not going to give um help me have quality sleep at night. Absolutely. Yes, no, I think there is a link. Um we're studying that. We don't have any results from from that that trial, but we are logging uh sleep quality as well. Uh but per- personally, I find I've when I've started to do it, I do sleep better. I did start to get some reflux as well. So, a lot of people suffer from um heartburn. Right. And and that's again because you're eating and and drinking alcohol quite late. They're not leaving enough time to go to bed. That causes a sort of stress on your body when it's supposed to be relaxing. So, I think yeah, everyone give that a, you know, give that a try and it you know, it could be right for you. And it just makes you think also you're just thinking about more what you're eating, you know, to say, "Okay, let's give my body a rest." Just like you would if you're doing an exercise regime, whatever. It's just thinking about eating in a different way other than just fuel. What about vitamins? You know, I've I've got all these vitamins by my bedside. Not by my bedside, by my by my bathroom sink in my bedroom. Cuz, you know, I went I went to some market and the lady there told me that all these vitamins are important and then I don't know, I might have seen an ad on Facebook or something and I ended up buying more vitamins and I've I'm like a collector of vitamins. You're not alone. I think 50% of the British population have a regular vitamin or supplement every day. And it's massive industry. I read your book. So, I'm a bit rude about vitamins in there. Please. Please be. So, I know and I it's the thing that upsets people most. Um people say, "I don't I believe everything else you say, but I don't believe your chapter on on vitamins." And I again, it's it's a bit like a religion, you know, popping a pill and hoping that it's doing some good. All the evidence shows that when you do a randomized control trial, these vitamins don't work. Unless you've got some really weird disease or deficiency or for some reason you can't eat a normal diet. But it's a last resort for people who have terrible diets. If you have a a decent varied diet with plenty of plants in it, uh you don't need vitamins at all. And I used to take them and I don't take any now except uh the occasional B12 because I um I I've always been low in B12 and I have hardly any meat. But apart from B12, all the evidence points to these things being a complete waste of money. You're telling me all those vitamins I've swallowed over the last 10 years have been a the result of me being duped by the vitamin industry and have no material impact on my health. Yes. They might have had some harmful effects like people taking calcium and things like this shown that if you take regular calcium tablets, more likely to get heart disease. You're joking. I've literally got a tub of calcium tablets by my by my kitchen sink as we speak. Yeah, well, there's calcium in nearly every plant and things that we we normally break down absorb in small amounts regularly. You take something like, uh, calcium supplement, you might be taking half a gram of it. Our body isn't designed to break down that huge slab of chemical, and so it doesn't get distributed well, and studies show that it gets deposited in your arteries and and can harden them up. So, there's no there's no evidence that calcium helps people, doesn't help broken bones, it doesn't help osteoporosis, all the things that we were told it did do. So, it all the evidence was out there, and you've got all these companies pushing it. So, many of these things can be counterproductive, but my main worry about them is if people think they can pop a pill, they don't have to think about proper food. Yeah. And therefore, everything can comes in a bottle or a pill, they can go, you know, just have a junk food diet and be healthy, and that's so wrong, because, um, diet I think is the most as I said, the most important food choice we make for our health, and to take stuff that doesn't work, that could be counterproductive, and sometimes harmful, is is a daft delusion. I have been under a daft delusion. I've got so many supplements upstairs. Well, they could have a placebo effect. You might feel better because you've taken them, you know, you say, I feel like a healthy person because I take them. I don't know whether I am a healthy person, but I feel like one. When I do it, I do it, and it's really uncomfortable because I'm taking sometimes I'm taking like eight different pills, like calcium and potassium and whatever else, eem, and when I'm doing it, even though it's hard to swallow them and it tastes rancid, I feel like I'm doing future Steve a favor. Yeah. Well, there you go. But clearly I haven't been. get someone to make you some dummy ones so there's got nothing harmful in it and you can lot cheaper. I'll give that a shot. Um What about sugar? So I I was keto for the last roughly the last 2 months. I tried the diet because I had a lot of good things about the keto ketogenic diet as it relates to an inflammation. And I have to be honest, I lost about a stone in weight fairly quickly. First time I've really seen a huge dip in my weight, but also not just that, my the gut issues that I'd had seemed to to to go. So I almost lived for the last couple of years, specifically like after the age of 25 for some reason, suddenly foods that I thought had gluten in them like white breads and pastas and even like soy sauce and things like that were making me live in this permanent state of like being bloated and I'd go to the toilet and I didn't feel great. It was kind of this pain throughout the day a couple of hours after eating one of those foods. And then I tried the ketogenic diet so I cut out pretty much all of those things like I didn't have any bread most of the sort of processed bad carb I didn't even know what I'm talking about here so correct me, but I cut out what I thought were the bad carbs that were having a bad reaction on me and then I cut out a lot of sugar like refined sugars basically cut it completely out and I ate meat, vegetables, berries and things like that. Felt fantastic. Lost a stone in weight. Very very very lean. Body fat dropped completely, slept well, high energy. Um what's your view on the ketogenic diet? Well, your story is I mean you can take two ways. One you could say you really improved your diet cuz you had sounds like you had a pretty shitty diet before that, right? Well, yeah. Um so you know what I mean? So anything could have been an an improvement if someone says if you're eating real foods, right? So Yeah. Sounds like the keto you weren't having keto out of a bottle or a plastic I was having meals. I had someone prepare them for me. Yeah. Proper home cooked meals rather than takeaways and so so you're making the shift from perhaps you know the average UK diet which is high in refined carbs which is you know probably had fair bit of ultra-processed foods in there as well to this other diet so I would expect you to feel better. Um To be a keto diet you've got to get to set about 70% um fat right which Yeah. which is really really hard for anyone to to sustain. It's virtually impossible. That's why I said for the last 2 months I'm no longer keep on the keto diet. So you know you've you've gone you so so you have probably done a mild keto diet Right. that didn't put you into ketosis but got you off these high refined carbs. Yeah. So but going back to the basic question um keto diets do seem to work for people with diabetes who are overweight as a way of getting them off their medications and sort of kick-starting them into a better health pattern and there are some people I think it it can work for. Um I think for as a sustainable diet I don't think it makes any sense. I don't think many people can still be on it a year later if it's a true ketogenic diet. Mhm. Um because no studies have really shown that people can sustain eating that level of fat and and protein and virtually uh no carbs. That's all I ate for about 8 weeks. Yeah but you were eating you were eating plants as well. Um so I'd have like some plants Wasn't just steak was it? It was I mean at one point it felt like that. It was there was some plants in there. There was sort of like lettuce and broccolis and stuff like that. But I was Googling everything to check if it was keto friendly before I put it in my mouth. So yeah I mean so I think what interesting is if you you went from that to a more uh mixed healthy gut-friendly diet, you know, which includes fermented foods, small amounts of breads, grains, etc. Um I think you'd still find the same benefits cuz you're shifting from ultra, you know, cuz I would suspect that if you did the Zoe test, for example, um you would have a quite a big reaction to sugars. Mhm. And your fat control would be quite good. So, it sounds like you tolerate quite large amounts of fat without too much problem. Whereas, the sugars would spike like me, you get um a reaction, you get hunger, you get, you know, these feelings of tiredness, etc. So, just by upping your fat levels, lowering your refined carb levels, you might have produced the same without doing that extreme idea. Because my problem with the keto diets is ultimately it's restrictive. You're reducing the number of foods you're thinking about. You're uh ultimately then harming your gut microbes long-term. Because you're not giving them the variety of different plants if you're not careful. And that happens to a lot of people. They go down any of these slightly fatty diets, and they end up with a much more restrictive um you know, intakes than they would have done, which long-term will cause some problems for their immune health and long-term health. So, that's why I'm generally against these extreme diets of any kind other than if you are, you know, seriously ill diabetic and you're overweight, it for 3 months it could be a really good way to get you off your meds. Interesting. Yeah, cuz I'm trying to I'm trying to find Now, so I went from the keto diet to the New York diet. Basically, I went to New York for 2 weeks, and I just I really [ __ ] up. Um but now I'm back. I'm trying to find the nice middle ground, the sustainable middle ground. That word sustainability in my diet and and also my fitness has been key to me. Um because if I can't sustain it, there's no point doing it cuz you end up yo-yoing afterwards. So, I went from the keto diet, as I said, to the New York diet. And now I'm back in in the in the UK, so Go on the gut-friendly diet. Which is Please detail the gut-friendly diet. Just it's you know, 30 different plants a week. Um lots of fermented foods. That's your yogurts, your kefirs, your kombuchas. I don't know if you like kimchi, um kraut. Uh miso, koji, Japanese food. Eating the rainbow, so you've got plenty of colors on your plate. Everything's got cuz that means they've you got plants there that have got these defense chemicals. And they And we haven't talked about these, but these are the polyphenols that are in plants that give them their bitter taste, but also the bright colors that you get in berries and you get in bright-colored lettuce and cabbages. And they are rocket fuel for your gut microbes. So, the more you've got of those, the healthier your gut, the more you dampen down inflammation. So, really important to as well as diversity, lots of color, and lots of high polyphenol foods, things you wouldn't have thought of healthy. So, dark chocolate. I know you like dark chocolate. Was it Well, I'm not sure. Is it milk chocolate you have at home? It's Yeah, it's milk chocolate. Well, you need to change to dark chocolate. My girlfriend says that. She's obsessed with dark chocolate. Well, And she always tells me it's healthy. Take her lead. Slowly Slowly wean yourself off the milk and get onto real chocolate, okay? Which actually tastes of something really good rather than sugar. Isn't white chocolate the worst? Yes. Do you know how I know that? That's the only thing I know about food. Um I went and did a chocolate-making class. And at the start of the class, the instructor says, "Pour the sugar into" We had these big tubes. And she said, "Pour the sugar into the tube." So, I like poured a bit in. She was like, "No, no, no, no. Fill that tube with 60% sugar." I was like, "What?" She was like, "Fill the tube with" I was like, "Why?" She goes, "That's white chocolate. It's 60% sugar." Yeah. I pour this this sugar into this tube and it fills it 60% and then I put this little like oily liquid in and she was mix it and she was that's white chocolate, 60% sugar. There's people right now that are sat there eating it and realize that they're giving themselves early onset diabetes, but So, dark chocolate's a good example. Coffee we already mentioned. And if you like coffee? I do. I well, I don't For me coffee's more of a utility. I use it before I have these conversations so I don't fall asleep because I I'm very, you know, I've I've never been good Might have boring guest. Well, sometimes, but it's more so just to try and keep my mind sharp and to keep focused, but um I I read chapter 13 of your book about coffee and I've always been a bit of a coffee skeptic because I tend to have a belief that everything in life comes with a cost. And no one I've sat here with has ever been able to tell me the cost of an artificial boost in my focus, attention, energy. I feel like nothing's for free in life, you know? So, what is the cost of coffee? Well, I think there's a variability. Some people there is a big cost. They get the shakes, they can't sleep, and it has other neurotoxic effects if you have too much. So, I think it's all about dose. And this is it is a drug that if you get the dose right is very beneficial for you. If you get it wrong or you've got some genetic problem you can't process it right, it it it's a real it's it's a problem, but some of the benefits I was talking about are also there in decaffeinated coffee. So, it also has these cuz again, it's a great example of how we always think of coffee as caffeine. Mhm. Mhm. And yet if you do these epidemiology studies, you know, these big population ones, people who having regular decaf coffee also have similar heart benefits. So, it's other things in this fermented bean that are helping us and I think this is just, you know, it's a great lesson in moving away from our reductionism. We always like to think of, you know, one food is one vitamin or one chemical, and that's an easy way to think about it. We can't comprehend they've got a thousand different uh ingredients. So, decaf coffee, but yeah, well, you've got green tea um is is also pretty good. Um you know, there's many other fermented foods, but um the polyphenols are really good and important to realize and in the book Food for Life, I go into exactly that. It's a practical guide to when you go into the supermarket and you go to the aisle, say, "Gosh, I'm in the vegetable aisle. Do I get my usual iceberg lettuce that 90% of us do uh cuz it lasts for 2 weeks or, you know, longer than our prime ministers, or do we uh go for a slightly more expensive loose leaf rosso lolo with purple leaves that uh has a thousand times more polyphenols? And so, you really shop on color. Yes, now I do. I had no idea about this until doing it, but but also the fact it's loose leafed means that those those plants have had to survive in more difficult conditions to fight off predators and wind and everything else. So, they're tougher. That's why herbs and spices are also tough cuz they're the growing tips of the plant. That's where you get all the good bits. And so, it's a rethinking all this idea about what's good about food in this when you start thinking about your gut and, you know, the sugars that it releases, etc. So, um for you, yeah, I mean, if I think as a general rule, if everybody had to keep their gut microbes happy, they'd be on a a pretty healthy diet uh even before you get into personalization. Now, chapter 13 of your book, we talked about coffee there, is called coffee can save your life. You mean that quite literally, don't you? Yes. As an epidemiologist, if you drink three cups of coffee a day, you'll less likely to die 10 years later. Jesus Christ. But there's also a link between coffee, depression, and suicide, right? Well, there are lots of links. Cuz I I was reading that in studies people were less suicidal if they've been drinking coffee. Um I think that I'm sure there is a study on that. In general, what I what I do when I look at these is I don't take any one study on its own. I will try to get uh look at all the literature and see how many studies there are on that and is there a a confirmatory one that would make it real or not. So, I've tried not to over claim. Yeah. Cuz if you look at you know, you look at the Daily Mail or, you know, the general press in in the UK, they will pick up on any one story and say coffee gives you cancer, coffee does this, coffee gives you dementia next year, you know, it saves your life, it does this. So, you can switch. But what I think people need to do is you know, especially after COVID, is be much more sort of selective about how they see a study. It's epidemiology. You know, that it has to have confirmatory data. Mhm. Um so, I think yeah, coffee we know it improves sports performance by 1%, right? So, for most people, that doesn't really matter, right? You know, 1%. Am I going to run faster on my treadmill at the gym by 1%? No, but it it does give you a little bit of focus and uh for most people it it's it you know, it's a good drug that's found in food and I like coffee because also it helps it's allowed in a fast. So, your time-restricted eating, you're allowed black coffee and black tea. And it um cuz it doesn't cause a sugar spike or anything else, but it's you have to cut out the sugar. Quick one from our longest standing sponsor here. I I can't tell you over the last I'd say over the last really it's been about 2 and 1/2 years. It was really um post-pandemic how much my health has become such a huge priority in my life. Huel has been probably the most important partner in my health journey because I've been in the boardrooms. I've their offices tens and tens and tens and tens of times. I've seen how they make their decisions on nutrition, and that's why it's such a wonderful thing to be able to talk to this audience about a brand and a product that is so unbelievably linked to my values and the and the the place I am in my life of valuing the gym, exercise, movement, my mind, my breathing, and all of those things, and most importantly, my nutrition. That is the role Huel Huel plays, and so every time I get to read these ads, I do it with such passion because I really really believe every word I'm saying, and I absolutely love the brand. So, if you haven't already tried Huel and you've been resistant to my my pestering, then give it a go and let me know how you get on. Quick one. Intel, one of our podcast sponsors, and I want to talk to you for a second about their built-for-business vPro platform. In today's working world, the office is pretty much anywhere, and Intel vPro means you can remotely manage, repair, and protect devices across your entire organization, no matter how large or small, giving me and my team peace of mind to work wherever we choose to. For my IT team, whether on premise or via cloud, behind the corporate firewall or not, Intel's vPro comprehensive manageability has us covered. This is something that is so important to me. I you know, I'm a huge believer in employee flexibility and trust, so having features like this are super helpful. So, to find out more, search intel.co.uk/vpro, and let me know how you get on. I feel like more and more people are becoming gluten intolerant. I I myself one of them. I am a self-diagnosed gluten intolerant. I read chapter 16 of your book and you think most of that is made up. Yes, um most people who think they're gluten intolerant aren't when you test them. Okay, so that's that's the fact. It doesn't mean that everyone's making it up. There some of those will be real. But I think gluten got this bad rap um about 10 years ago and there's we know that yes, 1% of the population really do have a gluten problem. It's called celiac disease and they'll be vomiting and have terrible diarrhea with the smallest bit of gluten. Then there's a whole other group of people that believe they have gluten intolerance of which studies show about 3/4 when they're tested with gluten are fine. In a blind blinded way, if someone slipped you a a biscuit or something at you know, um or pasta is often the the way to trick people. And I think many people of have probably a more general irritable bowel syndrome that's that are blaming gluten because it's one they're taking that one protein that they know about from foods that have thousands of them and saying, "This is the problem." Again, this reductionism and it then they cut all everything out, but they might be cutting out things that were like the sandwich, for example, that was causing me glucose spikes. So they might feel better when they cut that out and they then say, "Okay, I've cut out bread, therefore um I'm not getting sugar spikes and tiredness. That must have been the gluten." Actually, it was nothing to do with that. It's just um cheap bread uh that has nothing to do with it. So, I think often people are taking gluten as an excuse and sometimes they do feel better when they cut out all these foods cuz they're eating less processed foods as a result of it. Not always, but it's something else in the bread or the pasta that that they were eating too much or they were eating too fast or these things that I think are important. So, I would urge everyone to you know, look again at whether it is gluten or it is something else about their food habits before that was bad and reevaluate it and you know, build up your plant diversity and your gut microbes instead. Cuz the worry is that all these people on on gluten, most of them have a rather restrictive diet. They get very worried about new foods and that's like the worst scenario cuz you end up on a vicious circle where you you get more and more nervous, so you have a smaller and smaller group of foods you're happy with. Yeah. Your microbes get um diminished and you have much less flexibility to deal with any new food that hits you. One of the um we've got a fitness group among some of my friends. There's about 10 of us in it. And um we've been tracking how often we work out and how frequently work out and the workouts that we do. And one of the things I have to say is pretty much no one in the group has lost any weight. We've been doing this for a year. And uh that kind of bucks what you would think So, the only time that I lost weight was actually when I went on the keto keto diet. I went from 14 stone 8 to 13 stone 8 in roughly in several weeks, but exercise and exercising for almost religiously for the last 2 and 1/2 years doesn't really seem to impact my weight at all. In a you know, in the way that the fitness experts might tell me on Instagram. What's your stance on the role that exercise play plays in weight loss? It has very little role in weight loss. All the studies such long-term studies show uh it doesn't help weight loss. And it's been grossly exaggerated as an easy fix for our obesity problem. Exercise doesn't help weight loss? No. All the studies show that. The only caveat to that is if you have changed your diet, improved your diet, and you've lost some weight, at maintaining some exercise does help prevent it going back up again. But, as on its own, if you don't change your diet, it's of no use. And that's well known now by all the obesity experts and all the studies. Does sugar make us fat? Is that the culprit? Um one of the main things that's contributing to No, again, that's that's reductionism. You know, we the But, the reason I the reason exercise doesn't work, is it's important to realize this, is because we all know this that, you know, you you go for a walk, build up hunger before a meal, that's what your parents told you, you know. And everything about exercise is after it, your body slows down, your your metabolism slows down, and it tries to regain the energy that you've lost. That's just our evolution. And so, that's why it's a you're not going to it's great for your health. I'm I know, I exercise. Fantastic for your mood. Um it's great for your heart, anti-cancer, all kinds of things. We should all do it. But, absolutely not if your goal is weight loss. You have to do same about changing your diet. And I think that's that's the big a huge myth. Particularly perpetuated by gyms and fitness apps and everything else. And it it is complete nonsense. I read that you um when you looked at studies over 30 years, and you looked at how many studies had been done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus things like sugar and weight, there was 12 more 12 times more studies done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus sugar and weight. And why why is that? Why is there less research done on the latter? Um I think that's the influence of governments and the food companies and the drink companies. So, uh a lot of the exercise research done in the last 20 years was sponsored by uh large corporations who wanted to make this link between uh exercise and weight loss so that they could continue to sell sugary ultra-processed foods and drinks and just say it's either childhood obesity is because we've we don't have playgrounds and we don't uh encourage this and that's why the Cokes and the Pepsis are always there at the Olympic sponsoring Olympic events and associating themselves with sport. And they gave hundreds of millions to various physiology departments, sports departments, nutrition departments to do research in this area. Basically, it was really hard to get anyone to do research into how sugary drinks make you uh gain weight or cause problems because they the amount of money for nutrition has been abysmally poor, you know, in from from governments. And that's why, you know, we the only the first ever study of ultra-processed food in a controlled trial was only about 3 years ago. And it's been around for you know, 30, 40 years. So, such is the power of that lobby that it it doesn't necessarily distort the research in a sort of, you know, evil way, but they point it to make sure that the researchers are are working in an area that they want uh people to work in and distracting them, keeping them away from talking about sugars or even artificial sweeteners, which in my view are nearly as bad cuz they're sort of you know, hidden um and deflecting us from the idea that yes, giving kids sugary drinks or even artificial sweet drinks is going to be bad for them and and cause obesity. Wait, so I'm I've been I've cut my I cut out sugary drinks about a year ago. I still have the same brands, but I have the no sugar version. Oh, dear. Oh, [ __ ] What do you mean oh, dear? All the All the the summary of the trials shows that if you take young adults young adults and kids and they were say on two cans of you know, full sugar sodas and you change them to the diet version, there's no real difference in in weight or metabolic um changes in their blood. Um you will go to the dentist less. So, you don't get as many fillings. But the And yet, you know, we you should be gaining 300 calories, right? If you were doing two cans a day. So, it doesn't work out as it should do and that's because of the extra These chemicals are not inert. So, the sweeteners in kids, they change their their brains to give them they want more sweetness in their food, okay? So, it it could reflect your wish for your your late night milk chocolate, who knows? Um and it it makes it very difficult train kids to have more bitter foods or sour foods if they've got these artificial sweeteners in their diet all the time. But they've now shown that all these sweeteners actually affect your gut microbes. So, even stevia, you know, these sort of so-called healthy ones have an effect on your gut microbes and they're not inert. So, we know that saccharin and sucralose also cause spikes in your blood sugar. Uh when I did it, you know, I have a trace. They're not supposed to, but they they actually do things they're not supposed to. So, we know very little about these these products. And my view is that they are harmful, probably not as bad as having the sugar. But they are absolutely not a health drink, and we should be encouraging people to have you know, teas and kombuchas and uh more more bitter tasting interesting flavors and foods than just this ultra sweet uh chemical concoctions. Is this this sugar conglomerate that have been funding much of the research that points towards um some of the things you're talking about there? They're That's also the conglomerate that wants us to believe the calories in calories out approach because if I just view every all foods as kind of equal and on this sort of calorie number, then I can drink some of the sugary fizzy fizzy drinks and some of the processed foods. As long as I keep it within that sort of calorie deficit, I'll be fine. And so, are they Is that sugar conglomerate is the processed food conglomerate for the calorie model? Absolutely. They need that, right? They Absolutely. It's vital, you know. Zero calories or one calorie, you know, on the can. That's what you see. And you know, you're fooling people into thinking this is a a healthy drink and oh, you know, if I used to have full Coke or Pepsi and now I'm having the diet version, I'm getting 300 calories less a day, I should lose weight. It's exactly what they've been doing, and they're also desperate to show that artificial sweeteners are s- really healthy and they come down on anyone who who tries to say that they're, you know, could be any way dangerous. And yet, they're not obliged to test them. So, none of it None of the chemicals added really go through rigorous testing on how they affect our gut microbes. And this is uh this is you know, their testing mechanisms haven't changed in 50 years. The gut microbiome, um the microbiome as an organ, one of the things you talked about earlier was the impact it has on mood. And you know, this podcast is was started as kind of a business podcast. We have a lot of people that are interested in you know, being more productive, being more successful, reaching for their goals. How significant and how pertinent is the the microbiome on my performance as an entrepreneur, as a business person? What do I need to know about the relationship as it relates to my mood, my performance, my mind? Well, we know more about mood than than anything else. Um and so we do know that depression and anxiety is intricately linked to the quality of your gut microbes. We know this from mouse studies where they've transplanted uh poo from anxious mice into sterile mice and those new mice then become anxious and depressed. Really? So you it it's a transmissible condition. And if if you go back to me telling you that one of the chemicals that our microbes produce is serotonin. Okay, so much so that sort of cuddle, you know, love friendly, warm um chemical that affects our brain that you know, is the key to dopamine and everything else that goes on in our head. So the levels of that are really important for us brea- having the right neurochemical balance in our head that stops us getting very depressed or very anxious. So we know that you can transmit it between animals. So when they say they take the the poo out of one mouse, they put it inside its gut, inside its stomach to give it the same microbiome makeup inside its stomach. Yes. And then that mouse will become depressed and anxious. Yes. So a lot of the science behind microbiome is based on large-scale human studies where you've just got um cross-sectional data or this is associated with this, but you don't know if it's cause or effect. And so there's this whole other group that's been going on of of of projects for 30 years where they have these sterile mice who have no microbes and you you create in a in a lab these other microbes that you would make them anxious or they're genetically anxious, you look at their microbes and you put take their microbes and you put them into the sterile mice and you can change their mood and their attention span and everything else about that. So that that shows that these have a direct effect rather than just being secondary. And that it links to the human data that shows if you take a groups of depressed or anxious people, you'll virtually all of them will have a deranged microbiomes and be producing abnormal chemicals. And there'll be now some recent studies showing that um compared to traditional antidepressant medication uh probiotics do as well uh in many of these studies if you give a course of probiotic medication, but even more impressive is if you give them a Mediterranean gut-friendly diet you get actually better results um with more remission than you do with antidepressant medication. So it's one of the best examples of how you know, feeding your your gut can actually improve your mood and it's particularly important because we're seeing you know, an epidemic of anxiety and depression. That's partly because of of not having many good gut microbes to start with lots of junk food diets which make it worse. And then of course, once you go into that cycle once you're depressed, you're not thinking about food. The last thing you want to go out and is, you know, oh I've got to go and get my kimchi today. You know, you just want it's just fuel. So once you once you understand that, you realize if you want to help someone depression, you know, the first thing is to not to put them straight onto an antidepressant, which in many cases doesn't work because of this individuality as we're talking about, which probably again related to microbes cuz they break down the the tablet into its active chemicals, but is to make sure they've actually got gut-friendly diet. And so, this is a really exciting area of research. You mentioned attention, the impact that the microbe biome can have on attention. That's really interesting to me cuz ADHD has become a very um widely discussed topic. Do you think there's a link between ADHD and the microbiome? Highly likely, yes. I mean, the there's less data in it than there is in depression anxiety. The studies are smaller, but those that I've seen all show again a uh an abnormality in the gut microbiome of ADHD kids. And um there've been a few studies showing that you can reverse it with um poo transplants, which is another area that's uh um was quite big a few years ago. It It's not showing the same potential as it as it did, but certainly uh affecting attention uh and mood with gut microbes is definitely on the cards. Uh these studies need to be bigger, but there's certainly preliminary evidence that what's true for depression and anxiety is also true for this whole spectrum of of other conditions. Also, you know, that have been linked in the past to diet and, you know, over sugar and E numbers and all these kind of things. So, we we've sort of known vaguely there's an association, but I think people haven't really pinpointed um the gut microbiome, which I think they should. And so, absolutely sure that if you improve the diet of many many of these kids with ADHD, you you would improve their symptoms. And there I know there's some ongoing trials at the moment. It's really been startling over the last couple of years how um mental health is really taking center stage in conversations, even conversations on this podcast. Most of them we discuss mental health issues and things like anxiety and depression. And as we look around the world, the stats around people that are being prescribed antidepressant pills, like they're called SSRIs, I believe, um is rising. And I think it's doubled over the last decade or so, with the US kind of leading the way, and then other countries like China and Japan at the bottom of the pack. What's your overall view on these these disorders, depression, mental health, anxiety? Um do you think it stems predominantly from the microbiome? Is that your perspective now, from what you've learned? No. I think they're they're multifactorial. So, I think we can't we can't just blame the gut microbiome because you do get these conditions in people who are, you know, otherwise healthy. Um genetics plays a role, you know, I'm going back to my old my old career. Um lot of evidence of strong genetics in things like depression and anxiety. But you can have the tendency to it, but you need to be triggered into it. Uh you you need some environmental event, and it could be that once your gut microbes get in such a bad, you know, gut health is such a poor state, your diet is so bad, that triggers this, and you just lack those chemicals that tip you over into it. So, that's why I think if you if you link these epidemics which we're going through at the moment, whether it's dementia, you know, uh depression, obesity, diabetes, what are they all linked for? Increasing amounts of ultra-processed foods in our diet. You know, we're the number one country in Europe for this. Rates are still going up. Kids have over 70% of their food as ultra processed now. Horrendous. Adults, it's nearly, you know, between 50 and 60% of our of our meals. So, I think that's effect on the gut microbes probably just tips this threshold in people who are susceptible. So, it could be that I think that threshold is going to vary genetically. Some people are very resilient. Some people are actually quite susceptible. And that's my That's my view of it. Um which probably isn't popular cuz it's again, I make things more complicated than people like. But, you know, I think as a as a as a scientist, I think most of these diseases are built up of a different number of risks. But, unlike your genetics, you know, your gut health is something you can do something about. And that's what you're doing with Zoe. Exactly. That's the whole idea behind Zoe is to empower people to change their health by individualizing what they eat that suits their own metabolism. What is Zoe if someone hasn't heard of Zoe before? Uh Zoe is a a personalized nutrition company that I founded nearly 6 years ago with uh two my co-founders who came to one of my uh talks. I was talking about the diet myth and the microbiome. And they came up to me and said, you know, we think what you're doing is really exciting. We'd We'd love to talk about getting a company together to personalize this. And I I do get people asking me to do startup companies. And I said, uh I'm not really interested in this. We can spend several million on doing research first. You know, I'm not interested in the usual lifestyle company based on marketing. Mhm. And I thought I'd never see them again, but they came back 2 weeks later said, "Yes, we've got several million. We're We're up and running." So, I was I was stuck then. I couldn't say no. Um and basically that we got together this massive study called the Predict study which uh looked at 1,000 people, mainly twins, gave them these identical meals, gave them these really fancy tech glucose monitors, um we'd measuring blood spots with with fat, looking at their microbes, logging foods, seeing how they're getting on for 2 weeks, and use that data as algorithms to then predict how they would people respond to any food. And then we met to develop a home test and launched that initially in the in the US and uh in the last uh year the UK. And we've now got 50,000 people who've been this identical home test, which is now a program that they then once you've got your scores, personalized to you, you can look up any food and it gives you a score from 0 to 100 on what that uh how that food is for you based on your sugar your glucose blood sugar profile, your fat profile, and your microbiome. So, it's pushing everyone to have less sugar peaks, less fat peaks, and better gut health. And so, it's changed, you know, so in a way that's my muesli would give me a terrible score. Uh my orange juice would, you know, a score of zero. Um but it's also made subtle changes. So, you know, I used to eat bananas and now they they scored badly, so now I have pears instead or apples. Um little minor shifts often, pushing people. Then you and you have a virtual nutritionist who helps you plan your menus to get overall scores that will push you more and more in this healthy direction. So, you just start to understand how what's best for your body and in a sustainable way. And we don't talk about calories. It's like a taboo word. And we're not after crash dieting or anything else. It's like improving yourself from the inside out. So, you And most people get improved dramatic improvements in their energy levels. Which we hadn't even thought about as the reason. But people started telling us, "I feel much better because maybe we're cutting out all these fat and sugar peaks that until the technology came along, no one knew about that were were causing these problems. So, it's going super well. We've got uh still a quarter of a million people waiting for the product in the UK on the wait list. And what's really nice is because we've got this this commercial arm, it's allows us to do these other um We have the Zoe Health study, which is a free app, which um uh now is a moving that towards lifestyle like this these fasting aids and things like this. We've got a neat podcast, the Zoe uh Nutrition podcast, which is getting the word out about our science, plus blogs and things. So, you know, it it's part of a whole package of of things that we're doing to sort of educate people differently. And And as I said, make people think about food in a very different way. And I think it's super exciting cuz we're you know, we've just raised some more money. We've done some crowdfunding as well, which gone amazingly well. I saw it this morning. Yeah. valuation for a company. Yes, it is. Um and you know, I think 200 million? That's a big number. It is. And it But you know, I think we've just got people's attention exactly the right time. I agree. And the technology has just been exactly right. So, often it's about timing. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I as I said to you before we started recording, I've had two of my guests come here and tell me about Zoe individually. So, I think it was Davina McCall and Gabby Logan who both mentioned it. And then I had I had this email in my inbox um from a friend of mine who connected me to George. And then I started reading about some of the work that you'd done and saw some of your videos and that's why I was compelled to reach out and have you um on this podcast. But, the idea of personalized health kind of debunks the long-standing narrative and myth that there's this one perfect diet for all of us. There's this one set of foods that we should all be eating to be healthy. And this personalized approach makes a lot more sense. Um So, I think that's the kind of the moment in time that you've arrived perfectly in from a Zoe perspective is this awakening to the perspective that personalized individual diets are um the way forward? Yeah, and it Yeah, and of course COVID didn't, you know, COVID was an amazing time for apps. Yeah. And people wanting to take um control when they feel they had no control. So, I think the idea that you give people an app and they suddenly are empowered to do things is a very new idea, particularly in the UK. People said, "No one over 60 is ever going to do that." They told us it's going to fail and it it was an incredible success cuz if you give people that interaction, that feeling that they are talking to someone and they're getting information back and it's a two-way process, it's a completely different idea to the old way of uh communicating with people. So, I think it is uh a super exciting time for for science. And you know, we've just scratched the surface of what we can do with this personalization because once we get to a million people, you know, the levels of detail we can provide back about what you should be eating in the mornings and the evening, you know, how hungry does this make this food make you feel, you know, how do you stop you individually stop getting those sugar dips? How Um you know, what combination of food should you have? You know, how do you react to protein? All the you know, what do you do to best sleep well? All All these things which people want to know are going to be possible once we get the these huge numbers. This is all quite you know, it's all quite We turn on the I'm going to have this conversation with you then I'm going to turn the TV or go on the internet go on Instagram and all of the the influencers there are going to be telling me a bunch of stuff. A bunch of fatty diets because they've all got their own incentives and their own ways of making money. If there was like one principle I could take away from all of your work which I know is almost an impossible task today but if there was one thing just just to focus on as I try and navigate the bombardment of social media and advertising posts that I'm I'm going to be um on the receiving end of as I leave this conversation, what would that kind of guiding principle be for me not to forget? Pick changes that are going to last for life not as a quick fix. I think that's that's what we're after and that's what we want to try and instill is this sustainable healthy way of eating. So that means not not feeling like I'm not depriving myself and No. Okay. I think absolutely the the the philosophy we have at Zoe is that nothing is off the table. There's no nothing's banned. White chocolate? Even white chocolate. You can be the Milky Bar Kid, you know, you can you can have it uh but realize that you know, it's that rare treat. Okay. And the more you just and so it doesn't break everything and you have to you know, start again. Uh it it's about making sure that the rest of your week is full of good foods that give you a high score that can make up for it. So we all going to you know, you know, the Christmas season everyone goes crazy and overeats and stuff. As long as you know, you've got this long-term plan that your gut is healthy and you're working and you're overall these you're not going to get these peaks over time for years. That's the that's the goal. So absolutely it's about enjoying food realizing that it's incredibly important social event. It's why the Mediterranean countries probably do so much better because it's so much more part of family life and social life in even in the elderly. Whether it's with the glass of wine and it's just taking more time enjoying the novelty of foods and increasing our range of foods. So it's really broadening it. So I really want everyone to love food again and and not have all these hang-ups about I can't have that I can't have this. If you've got enough plants on your plate basically you know, you can eat anything. Tim, thank you. I feel like that's a good place to end and I'm really going to go upstairs and reconsider that vitamin stack that I have and also um throw out all those zero calorie sugar-free drinks that I thought were good for me. Um you've given me a lot to think about and I'm incredibly honored to have have met you at this time in my life because it's as I said it's very relevant to me but also to have been given the chance to read your books. You've got so many amazing books. Five of them in total I believe. You're working on a new one. Um my favorite was these two. So the the Spoon Fed book and also your most recent book which is Food for Life which is basically like a glossary of food. Is that an accurate state statement? It goes through all the key main foods and talks about the role they play in our health. Yes, I mean it's been called a food bible or sort of a it's a but it's it's a practical guide to pretty much all the common foods so you can get what the latest science is telling you about them all from a ethical, health and environmental perspective. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest to not knowing who they're asking it for. So um the question that's been left for you is you seem nervous. I am, very nervous. Why Why do people get People always seem to get nervous when I ask this question versus all of my questions. Ask me any science question, I don't mind. Well, it's you know um the question that's been left for you is if you could say one thing to a family member you've lost who would it be? What would you say and why? Well, it's got to be to my dad. Um I guess I'd say and I'd probably say I'm really sad we never got to talk properly. Um and I I think you'd be proud of me now. And because I as I've explained, he died when I was 21. It's just the time you're sort of coming out of studentship, you're becoming more mature at the time you could start to talk to your parents, but you don't. So, I feel that's my um missing part of my life, if you like, that um I never got to discuss um anything meaningful with my father. Why was that? I have that problem, too, now. Have that problem where I struggled to talk to my my father. Um I don't know. I I think in in hindsight, it's it's it's much easier thing to say I should have done this. Yeah, that's what I'm scared about. And and I think it could be that it's built into us that, you know, we have a very different relationship to our with our our fathers that makes it hard to to actually talk to him at the same level or, you know, not feel some sort of competition or critique. Um so, I I I I think you're absolutely right that if I was sat down here with my father, um it would be quite different to wishing I had done uh all those years ago. And I think it's part of that grieving process, probably, that having lost someone, you always feel somehow responsible you should have done something before. Um I think that's that's part of it. And many people have recurring dreams also about um cuz my father, you know, I never saw him. He just I was just told he's dead. Came back from holiday, that was it. Go to the funeral. And it it was a I unreal um series of events for me. And so, for years I used to have these dreams he'd so, you know, he'd been in South America and suddenly appeared again. I also had to disappear and I've come back. So, that was an interesting um idea going on in my brain that in some ways he he wasn't really dead and um you know, I'd get a chance to talk to him again. So, it must have been you know, a key part in the the those subcon- subconscious bits of my brain. That communication goes both ways though, doesn't it? Because they have to also be Yeah, in retrospect, he you know, he was very much a you know, a 1960s dad. Uh the you know, um who wasn't really supposed to deal with children or anything else. His he went to work and stayed in his study. And cuz he wasn't sporty, he never did anything with me with me. So, absolutely, yeah. It's um but as I think you've talked about before on this podcast, Uh, you know, children have a very different perception of that relationship. They feel it's um uh it's their fault in a way. Yeah. But uh yeah, he would he was not a By modern standards, he wouldn't have been seen as a great dad. Um Tim, thank you. What a wonderful conversation. Really, really appreciate your time and thank you for coming in sharing your wisdom with me. Absolute pleasure. Quick word from one of our sponsors. I've got a tip for all of you that will make your virtual meeting experiences, I think, 10 times better. As some of you may know by now, Blue Jeans by Verizon offers seamless, high-quality video conferencing. But the reason why I use Blue Jeans versus other video conferencing tools is because of immersion. Their tools make you feel more connected to the employees or customers you're trying to engage with. 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