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26:4295 % of us are not having enough fiber. Fiber is the one nutrient that we know consistently is associated with beneficial health effects, reduce reduction in many cancers, reduction in cardiovascular disease, reduction in levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes, et cetera. It's an amazing nutrient fiber and we don't get enough of it. Just to pause there then, why is it so good for us? Because I mean, it sounds like a super molecule the way you described it. So it's good for us for many different reasons. And there's loads and loads of different types of fiber and the different types of fiber are good for us for slightly different reasons.

27:16Really simply put, we've got soluble fiber and that's great for us because it impacts things like cholesterol absorption, as well as other factors related to how quickly we metabolize food, et cetera. Then you've got insoluble fiber, which is the kind of fiber that, for example, are in those nuts because fiber in those nuts is actually the cell wall. So most cell walls are plants are just fiber. That's great for us because it's food for a microbiome. It helps bulk out our store. So it reduces our transit time, how quickly the, our poo basically passes to our colon, reduce the risk of colon cancer and so forth.

27:51But largely because it is the food upon which our microbiomes have their party, produce all of these wonderful molecules that we know impact so much related to our health. But we don't get enough of them. And we don't get enough of it because we're not eating the right types of food that we have in high amounts. So having any kind of fiber is going to improve our health. Having fiber that's added artificially back into food is going to be better than having no fibers. So the kind of bars that you're talking about that say are added fiber. Great. Having fiber though from the whole food is always going to be better.

28:25And so with nuts, fiber is essentially the cell walls of the nuts. So it's having that role in reducing that bi accessibility that we talk about at slowing those nuts down. So that's always going to be better having that fiber in the whole food, in its original structure, in the way nature intended. But having any kind of fibers better than having none in a nation or, you know, many nations where we're not having enough. If we can get some in our diet, even if it is processed fiber, it's better than no fiber, in my opinion. One of the big revelations in my household has been just getting some of these bad snacks just out the house and replacing it with healthier whole snacks.

29:11And I say that because the very definition, the very like sort of use case where we snack is when we typically don't have a lot of time where hunger kind of crept up on us in between a meal. And so we make fast decisions. It's not very, very considered decision. And I was reading that there's been some studies done where they took sort of two groups and gave them typical snacks versus healthy snacks. And they found a pretty significant reduction in cardiovascular disease. So this is one of my studies. And we looked at how changing people's snacks can impact their health. And the reason we're interested in this is because we're a nation of snackers in the UK, I say many countries.

29:51So we know that about 25 % of our energy comes from snacks. That's phenomenal. And so what we wanted to do is look at if we do a really simple snack swap, can we improve people's health? And so we asked people to change 20 % of their energy from either having typical UK snacks or having 20 % of their energy from all men nuts for six weeks. And then we looked at various health outcomes at the beginning of that six weeks and then at the end of that six weeks. We said, keep everything else the same. We provided all of these snacks to them. We provided the typical UK snacks. We spent a lot of time designing these.

30:34So we did lots of research where we looked in the UK and it's the very similar in the US. What are the typical snacks? So basically we designed these muffins that ultimately were having a bit of a potato chip or crisp, a bit of a chocolate biscuit, a bit of a cake, just like imagine all put in one muffin. I mean, we didn't go and get those and just stick them in one muffin. But we worked out what's the nutrient profile in the UK in the US that comes from snacks. And then we designed a snack product that was quite highly processed that reflected that nutrient profiles. It's quite high in saturated fat, high in sugar, high in refined carbohydrate, low in fiber.

31:09People had to eat 20 % of their energy from these muffins, which my kids loved. Or 20 % from the almond nuts. At the end of that, we measured lots of health outcomes, one of which was a particular measure that we do to look at people's basketball function. So their blood vessel function is a measure called flow mediator dilation. It tells us in really simple terms kind of how healthy the blood vessels are. And what we found was the improvement in blood vessel function following having almond nuts versus having typical UK snacks equated to a 30 % reduction in cardiovascular disease. That's crazy.

31:46And what period of time? Six weeks. In six weeks. And do you know what I think is really interesting about this is it's one simple single dietary strategy. And snacks are under our own control typically. What I have as a snack is determined by my fuzzy kids. What I have as a snack quite often isn't determined where I am at that point in time because I can bring my snacks with me. It's a really simple single dietary strategy that can have a big size of it. And I think that that's real important. It is real important, though, Steven at this point, that I do say that I have actually had funding for the alma board of California.

32:23And they did fund that study, although the way we conduct our RCTs, the funders have no impact over the study design or they don't get to see the raw data or all the paper before we're publishing it. But I just think it's always important to declare conflicts of interest. We've seen this, though, play out in other studies with other nuts or other snacks substitutes. So it's not unique just to almonds. It's a great illustrator of how changing our snacks can improve our health. And we really are a nation of snackers. You highlighted one of the stats there that in the UK and in the US, about 25 % of our energy comes from snacks.

33:0075 % of the energy that's coming from those snacks is coming from unhealthy snacks is taken from the so you're podcast. In meditation, in Mediterranean countries, only 14 % of energy comes from snacks, which is half of the UK. And 85 % of British people report snacking compared to 10 % in France. And in the UK, we have 2 .5 to 3 snacks per day, which translates to 6 or 7 eating events a day. And this has massive impacts on our glucose spikes and drops throughout the day causing metabolic chaos. And that's part of what I was thinking as I was thinking about this is, if I'm eating that muffin that you made, which are resembles this sort of typical British composition of a snack, it's not necessarily just that that snack is going to impact me.

33:47It's that my next food choice because I ate that snack is going to be different because I'm on that. I might be on a glucose rollercoaster here. So I might end up making a worse food choice thereafter, which then my impact might be my sleep because I've got a little bit of sugar in me when I'm settling down to get a sleep. And is there the sort of not downstream domino effect because of that one snack choice? So I wouldn't say that you've made about one bad snack choice and that's it. Your day's over, dammit, you know, your stuff. I think that you highlight an important point, note that what we choose as a meal does have knock on effects on what might happen later in the day.

34:27So for example, if you have a really refined carbohydrate breakfast or snack, then you're more likely to have a blood sugar dip, which we know from our research is more likely to make you more hungry, eat more calories, have low mood, have low energy and be less alert. But I think, you know, snacking can be used to our advantage. Snacking can be used to our advantage because we know accounts for such a huge proportion of our energy intake. Because we know on average that, you know, 70, 75 % of the snacks that we do company in the UK and the US are not helpful snacks. And because we know that actually just transitioning from those to healthy snacks can have a big impact.

35:08But I think it's really important to be thinking about not just the type of snacks you're having, but the time of day that you're having the snacks. And we published them research recently where we looked in a thousand individuals at people snacking habits because it's not actually been looked at much. I mean, you think everyone's snacks. You think there'd be loads of science out there about snacking. There's lots of science out there about the different, you know, foods that we might snack on, but not really much looking at snacking habits. And there's a lot of controversy out there about whether we should be grazers and we are a nation of grazers.

35:43You know, we, well, I certainly graze, but many people we know that you said, you know, 80 to 90 % of people do have multiple eating events throughout the day. Are you taking these away from you for self -control? I am a little bit, yeah, I think the smell of the chocolate and the cookies is testing me. And in January, I'm not trying to be tested. There we go. And what we have never really fully understood is it's snacking per se bad, are you having multiple eating events? So eating six times a day, which we nearly do in the UK and the US. Or is it about the type of food we're snacking on? So should we revert back to having the three main meals, the breakfast, the lunch, the dinner?

36:25Or is it okay to have multiple meals as long as it's healthy food? So we looked at this in our cohort of a thousand individuals where we take lots of measures related to what they're eating, when they're eating, how they're eating it, as well as lots of different health outcomes. And what we found was that the frequency of eating within reason was not a problem. So if people were grazing having multiple eating events, as long as they were eating healthy foods, it didn't matter having multiple eating events. So snacking per se wasn't a problem as long as they were healthy foods. Okay, because there's been a long, I guess, raging debate about how many meals you should have a day.

37:00Yes. Some people just eat one meal a day, some people probably five or six meals a day. And you're saying it doesn't necessarily matter as long as what your eating is healthy. Yeah, I mean, I will always, of course, you're scientists, caveat it within reason. But our research showed people having six eating events a day, I, you know, six different occasions at their eating food or three eating events. As long as they were eating or snacking on healthy foods, it did not impact their health outcomes. And this is, I guess, controlled for extreme cases where someone's maybe eating at 1 a .m. in the morning or 2 a .m.

37:32in the morning. Yeah, so we also looked at timing, because I think that's something that we haven't given enough attention to in nutrition sites. And it's a really exciting new area of research that we're starting to understand the timing of when we eat is really important. And what we found was interestingly 30 % to people were snacking after nine at night. And we found that if you snap late at night, I feel attacked. And this is a lot in line with, you know, other published research from their tightly controlled clinical trials. We found that if you snap late at night, that that was associated with unfavorable health outcomes.

38:08So worse adiposity, so worse kind of fat around your belly, for example, higher levels of inflammation, worse levels of blood lipid, so, you know, cholesterol, that sort of thing. And we found that this was even if you were snacking on healthy snacks. Really? And this isn't especially surprising because there's this whole new area in nutrition called crono nutrition, which is all about the timing of eating. And we now are really starting to understand that every cell in our body has its little body clock, every cell has a clock. And that clock is shaped by when we eat as well as the light day cycle.

38:45And if we're eating out of sync with those clocks, those millions and trillions of clocks in our body, we know that we process the food slightly differently. We metabolise it slightly differently. It may have a different impact on our health. And that's what our research showed as well. So eating after nine o 'clock isn't great for your health. Just a double down on that. I have had a long -standing hypothesis that when I eat later at night, it is making, it is basically increasing my belly fat. Now, I don't have any science to support this, but there's an also, the way that I feel when I wake up is radically different.

39:21If I've eaten close to my sleep time, so I had this weird hypothesis that I'm basically putting food into the machine, and then I'm like turning the machine off while it's processing. So it's kind of like not processed it properly. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a simple terms, what's sort of happening. You know, our body needs to rest overnight, just like our mind does. Our cells, our metabolism needs to rest overnight. And if you're not giving your body, your cells, your metabolism, your microbiome, etc., that time to rest, things get disturbed a little bit. And what's really interesting is you said that you'll feel different the next day, if you eat later at night.

40:00There's some really fascinating research that came out about one or two years ago, where they looked at giving exactly the same calories and foods over the day within the same time period, but in one group of individuals having most of the calories earlier, and in another group having most of them later in the day. Now, those that were having them later in the day, woke up feeling more hungry, which is kind of like counterintuitive, isn't it? But it fits in with what you just said, yet those people who were eating the calories earlier in the day, woke up feeling less hungry. And this is why as well, the evidence shows early time restricted eating.

40:42So time restricted eating, where you're eating within a particular time window, those people who were practicing earlier in the day tend to do better in terms of the health outcomes, whether it's weight, inflammation, cholesterol, than those practicing later time restricted eating, when they have their last eating event later in the day. And that's because they're eating in time with their body clocks, with these millions and billions of little cell clocks. I have them, I had a weird observation, which is sometimes sort of quite rare these days, I have to wake up super early to get on a flight.

41:18And it means that I'm disrupting my sleep, maybe getting up at four or five in the morning. And for some bizarre reason, if I wake up at, say four in the morning to go and get a flight, I am starving. But if I woke up at nine, that same day, I would probably not get hungry till about 2pm. And I've never managed to sort of really figure out why disrupting my sleep causes me to be ridiculously hungry, whereas typically I don't honestly eat breakfast, I typically about midday or 2pm. So I think there's probably a lot going on there, it's getting a little bit outside my expertise, but I can certainly comment from work that we've done and that I'm familiar with.

41:58So what we know is that sleep duration, sleep efficiency, what we also call sleep midpoint, so the midpoint, which you sleep impacts your hunger levels. We know that your hunger and your fullness hormones change as you sleep. So we know that short sleepers, people who are getting up too early, so when you're getting up for your flight, then your hunger and fullness hormones might be perturbed. And we know that short sleepers, or if you've had a poor night's sleep, you tend to wake up more hungry than if you've had a good night's sleep. This isn't from my own research, I always have to caveat that, but this is what some of the research is showing.

42:40But also if you've had a poor night's sleep, you reach for less healthy food. And there's a study that was conducted at King's College, London, by my colleagues called the slumber study. And this really nicely illustrates how just changing how much you sleep can change your diet choices. And in the slumber study, they asked people who were short sleepers to practice sleep hygiene. They gave them no diet or advice. They just said, practice good sleep hygiene. I, you know, no screens later night, no physical activity, caffeine, alcohol, etc., late at night, dark and room. And then they just monitored lots of different things in these individuals.

43:18And what they found was that those who were able to extend their sleep, actually made healthier choices, such that they reduced without being told to. They're intake of free sugar by about 10 grams. Oh, really? Without being given any advice. So they slept better, they ate less sugar. They made the decision to eat less sugar. Without being told to. That correlates. It's been such a revelation, I think, in my, my life, over the last two to three years is realizing the downstream impact of sleep. And a bad night sleep because it was one of the things that I think growing up, especially as an entrepreneur when you're like consuming a lot of like hustle, prenat culture in it's all like sacrifice to sleep works seven days that you assume is take it or leave it like it, like you assume it's often the first thing you think that you can sacrifice in the pursuit of productivity.

44:14Yeah. But this is what I thought growing up and then in the last few years or I think all 20, 30, you know, we'll think that. Yeah. Do you not think? Yeah. And anyone that's like has, I think, probably an involuntary amount of, I say involuntary, but I mean, just because of the decisions they've made, amount of professional pressure or like, shift workers or anybody or even parents, I guess.

44:42They probably see sleep a second due to some other kind of priority in their life. And when I shifted that and I made adjustments to my calendar and my schedule to try and prioritize sleep, the downstream impact of it has been profound in a way that I could never measure or articulate fully, but just everything seems to be better. So like my relationships with my partner, my ability to think straight, my motivation to go to the gym that day. The work that I do everything. So it's, there's been this big sort of radical adjustment where I now see sleep as actually the starting point for all these other choices that I make good or bad.

45:20And that's kind of what your work is highlighting. Yeah, I think it's that we have to think of these four pillars together of health. We can't look at diet on its own, can't look at sleep on its own, can't look at stress on its own, we can't look at physical activity on its own. So if we want to improve our health through diet, I think we must be looking at our sleep habits, which we can to a certain extent control, not always. I know some people have to work shifts, some people don't have a choice, they're woken up by their kids, etc. We need to look at our stress. I know that's one of the hardest things to change.

45:54We need to look at physical activity and our diet and they are also interconnected. And the predict studies that were done at Zoe found that sleep affected metabolic responses as much as the macronutrient content of the meal. What is that, what is that saying? So this is some research that we published where we looked at people when they had had a good night's sleep and we looked at people when they had a bad night's sleep. And we looked at their post meal, post -prandial glucose response. So that basically means after having your breakfast that's got some carbohydrates in it, how much does your blood glucose increase?

46:33We call this the post -prandial glucose response because post -prandial is Greek for post meal and so it's a term we use a lot in the science. And we looked at individuals post meal glucose response when they had a good night's sleep and when they had a bad night's sleep. And what we found was within the same individual if they had a bad night's sleep, their post meal glucose response. So after breakfast was a lot higher than if they had a good night's sleep. So what this shows I think quite nicely if we think back to what you said about how you wake up more hungry when you've not had enough sleep.

47:09We know that people make poor dietary choices, for example from the slumber study and then we know that the metabolic responses to those are worse. It just shows how you're kind of creating this perfect storm and how you can't think of it in isolation. Because firstly you're waking up and like, bloody hell I'm hungry. Secondly it's like, I'm not having that healthy breakfast. I want that panoshockler or whatever that's giving you that quick fix. And then you have it and you're going to have this massive blood sugar peak compared to if you'd had a good night's sleep and made a healthy choice for less hungry, etc.

47:42So it's like creating this perfect storm and it's all started with your sleep. And that's why I don't think we can look at things in isolation more, which is how I have spent the previous 20 years of my research looking at things in isolation. But that's because I've not been had the luxury of being able to collect the kind of data that we're now collecting. I get a lot of messages from parents. So because I'm not one yet, I don't fully understand what it is to be a parent and the demands of parenthood. So I'm going to defer to you on this because the parents didn't have a slit. They never slept.

48:16They did obviously, but oh my lord. How did you survive that as a parent? Was there any strategies or tactics you put in place to defend against exactly what you just described the downstream consequences of sleep deprivation? No, because the first four years of my children's lives, I was also, I lost my father when my daughter, a few weeks after my daughter was born, my sister and I became full -time carers for my mother who lived around the corner. I took a career break, looked after my mum with my sister, had two young children, they weren't sleeping. I had to show up, I had to show up to help my sister look after my mum.

48:54It was about survival. I didn't think about what I ate when I ate. That was irrelevant. It was about survival to be there for my mum, to be there for my kids. And whether it was because a sleep deprivation was also so bad that it was just like driving bad choices I don't know. But there's points in time in anyone's life that we go through that are about survival, aren't there? And I think everything goes out of the window. And I'm not saying it should, but I think that when you're in the depths of whether it's sleep deprivation because your children keeping your wake or what I was going through, you know, my mother had a degenerative neurological condition and seeing someone daily deteriorate like that.

49:42What you're doing physical activity wise, well, I didn't have time to do that. What you're eating quite often doesn't become a priority. Now it's probably a time it should be even more of a priority because we know that what you eat impacts your mental health. You know, there's great research now showing how important it is. But when you're in that fog of whether it's that you're depressed or you're dealing with trauma or whatever, I think food is one of the last things that you think about making a priority. And I think it's okay. You know, when we talk about the health situation in the US and the UK with obesity on the rise and things like that, people are now pointing at things like a Zempeca as the cure for that.

50:23But when you speak about the role there that stress and our lifestyles are having on us. And I was thinking about some of the stats that have emerged around anxiety and young people. Then being more in depression rates globally. Maybe there's something else that we should be thinking about which is like the mental health mindfulness piece of how that overlays with food choices. Because you know, even the food, the ultra processed unhealthy foods that are being attacked a lot these days. I mean, to some degree they are a consequence also of demand. Absolutely. Right, so they wouldn't be making these things if people didn't want them and didn't buy them.

51:02So maybe if we focused more on some of the mindfulness mental health challenges we have in society, people would have more of a greater ability to make better choices themselves as well. Because I certainly know in my life that if I'm highly stressed or if things are difficult, then my ability to make better food choices is significantly impaired. Yeah, absolutely. Again, this is what the research shows, the sleep, the stress, it impacts your ability to make choices about lots of things, but equally your food choices. You know, what you're talking about I think is so complex. It's where, where's the responsibility for the government, where's the responsibility for the food industry, where's the responsibility for us as individuals, where's the responsibility for schools, for example, for us as parents educating our children.

51:49We need to take into account all of those different areas in order to improve the foods that we're eating. There is a problem that these three dishes, so the chocolate, the biscuits, the crisps, they are more tasty or rather our taste buds, our brains are tricking us into thinking they're more palatable. And that's the problem. Do we say to our children you can never, ever have them. Now I've certainly never taken that approach. I think it's all about balance and enabling people to make the choices that they make. But I recognize if I'm sitting there in the evening, I'm a bit stressed, I've got a work deadline.

52:28I don't want to eat nants. I want to eat those biscuits or those crisps that I want a glass of wine with there. I know that's not the right decision. I know it's 10 o 'clock at night, but in the moment, that's the choice I probably will make. Do you get frustrated with yourself because you know more about nutrition than most people on planet Earth? Yeah, you still find yourself making at times suboptimal nutritional choices. No, I don't, because I think that it's really quite simple when we think about the food that we eat. I think we're making it so complicated. And I think that, do you know what, if we eat a good amount of foods, vegetables, pulses, if we try not to eat too much heavily processed foods, if we try and get a bit of diversity in our diet, we're doing okay.

53:21So what if I go and have, you know, a bar of chocolate, so long as I'm not doing it all day every day? And I think this kind of health optimization around diet, I think it's taking away the pleasure of food. And you know, I often say for food is too healthy to be enjoyed, it's just not healthy at all. Food is there to bring us joy, it's to bring us pleasure, it's part of our emotions, it's part of our culture, it's part of, you know, our social connections. And I worry that now there's a certain proportion of society so hyper focused on that 1 % gain in terms of the food that they're eating, that they forget all of that pleasure.

54:05So I think I have quite a balanced approach because I know that ultimately if you get the foundations right, the rest will follow, but that makes up 95 % of what makes a food or a diet. And that's how we need to think about what we're healthy. What do you think of diets? Because there's so many bloody diets, isn't there? I think that there's so much neutral bollocks out there. Neutral bollocks. There is so much misinformation out there. What you see on social media versus what the evidence shows is like night and day. I mean, seriously. And so when I think about diets, my view on diets, I mean, there are some that there's some good evidence, you know, eat planty, eat 30 plants, and we, yeah, that's great.

55:00Go on a low calorie diet to lose weight, great, but how are you going to maintain that weight? That's a whole other question, great for losing, not for maintenance. Then you've got the alkaline diet. I mean, I don't understand that. Eat alkaline foods, but your stomach is acidic, so you've got no idea how that works. The blood type diet. I don't actually know what half of these diets do because I do not understand the physiological theory behind them. And so you do not know what's those, Stephen. I think if it works for you as an individual, fine, do it. But if it works for you at the expense of the pleasure of food, at the expense of enjoying life to the fullness, that's what I think is a shame.

55:46Like time is stricter eating, I think there's great evidence around time is stricter eating. Now, much of it comes from very tightly metabolically controlled studies, you know, that are done in clinic where people, you know, eat within a five or six hour window, so they have the first meal at 10, their last meal at 4 in the evening, reduces inflammation, reduces body weight, improves blood cholesterol, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't want to only eat six hours at a, I want to have dinner with my family, I want to have dinner with my friends, I want to go to the pub in the evening, not every evening.

56:19I want to live life. So what can we do that takes that principle of that diet, but we still benefit from it? And this is what's great again about the research that we're doing at Zoe. We've done this study called the Big If Study, the Big Intimate and Fasting Study. We had 150 ,000 people sign up and we said, look, we want to see if what we find in tightly controlled clinical studies plays out in the real world. Because we always have to think, how does all of this evidence play out in the real world? Does it matter? And we said, just limit your eating window, so the time for your first meal to 10 hours.

56:56So that means if you're having your first meal at 10, you're having, in the morning, you're having your last meal at 8 in the evening. That's correct, isn't it? Sure. My parents are afraid, cannot do maths. That's quite doable for most people. I can have my breakfast at 10. I can finish my last meal at 8. I mean, yeah, I do like munching on my chocolate late at night. I could probably still live for happy enough life doing that. And we found people could do it. We found as well that people who practised it within two weeks, they felt better. They had better energy, better mood. You know, they were feeling a lot better.

57:34They also lost weight. Many people wanted to do this because they wanted to lose weight. And we actually see from evidence that people practising time -stricted eating, even if they're told not to change their calorie intake, just by limiting their eating window on average, reduce their energy intake by about 300 calories on average. There's been a big debate around this conversation around fasting and calorie restriction. And some people say that it's basically the same thing. And you're kind of moving that to some degree. So we know that in most instances, if you practise time -stricted eating, you unintentionally reduce your energy intake.

58:10And the data shows that on average, from the studies that publishes about 300 calories, obviously depends on the duration. The reduction in body weight, also we know, is dependent on the eating window. So the smaller, the eating window, the greater the reduction in body weight. But there have been some studies that actually control the amount of calories that people eat. But some people are having an bigger eating window, some in a smaller eating window. And what these studies have shown, that if you have the same amount of calories, but you change the period in time in which you're eating off food, there is an additional benefit or metabolic health.

58:48There is a benefit in terms of blood lipids and terms of inflammation. Independent of calories. OK, so time -restricted eating has some benefit independent of calories consumption. Yes, but the bulk of the benefit is due to reduction in calories. So there's some benefit independent to calories, which in but the bulk of the benefit that we see is due to a subconscious or unintentional reduction in calories. And I think this is when we're thinking about diets. I think we need to think about how easy is it to implement? Is there any evidence behind it? And 99 % there isn't. For the ones that there is evidence, like time -restricted eating, can we do it in a way that still enables us to live our life that's sustainable?

59:36And the sustainable point, I think, is really important, because there's now some new evidence emerging around consistency. And the importance of consistent eating patterns. And I think this is fascinating. So there's research showing that if one day you're having three meals, and then the next day you're having nine meals, and the next day you're having six meals, and the next day you're having four meals, that troubles your body. It's like, wow, hold on, I'm used to having, you know, four eating events a day. And this is important to bear in mind when we think about snacking. If you're typically a snacker, then fine carry on snacking, as long as it's unhealthy food, and as long as you have your lost snack before nine at night.

1:00:16If you're not a snacker, having me just vouch for the great benefits of snacking, don't start snacking, because you don't want to be inconsistent. And this new evidence emerging around the consistency of eating. And there's some research done actually quite some time ago that started this idea. I think it's really fascinating. So try and have a consistent eating pattern. Same place as sleep. Try and go to bed at the same time, get up at the same time. We've done some work around social jet lag. Then if you've heard of that term. I think I've heard of it. What does it mean? So social jet lag is where you have an inconsistent sleeping pattern throughout the week.

1:00:52So for example, for many, maybe 20 -year -olds or students, they might go to bed at a sensible time in the week, and go parting and crazy at the weekend. Or for someone like myself. I go to bed late at night, because I'm late night working, parenting, etc. And then at the weekend, I catch up. So if you have more than about a one and a half hour increase or decrease in sleep between your work days or weekend days, etc. That's called social jet lag. So it's a bit like jet lag going from one country to the other. And what we know is, and we've published on this from our own Zoe Predict Research, people who experience social jet lag, so have this inconsistent sleeping pattern make poor dietary choices.

1:01:36They have more inflammation. They have a different gut microbiome composition. Now it might be because of the dietary choices. But again, it just plays into this whole idea that we're talking about that we can't just think about the food and isolation. We need to think about how we're eating our lifestyle, etc. What else is on your Nutri -Bolex list? What things spring to mind that a lot of people believe. I mean, there's a big debate raging at the moment about seed oils, because we had an incoming American, I guess he's a politician. RFK, Jr. say recently, seed oils are one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods.

1:02:13And the reason they're in foods is because they're heavily subsidized. They're very cheap, but they are associated with all kinds of very serious illnesses, including body -wide information, which affects all of our health. It's one of the worst things you can eat, and it's almost impossible to avoid. If you eat any processed foods... Sorry, I'm not having to laugh. This is like Nutri -Bolex, beyond Nutri -Bolex, but please... That's basically... He said, if you eat any processed foods, you're going to be eating seed oils, and it advocates for replacing seed oils with beef tallow, which is in the UK, is referred to as tripping, which is pure beef fat and is a saturated fat.

1:02:50And he's actually selling t -shirts, RFK, Jr. At the moment, that's a make -frying oil tallow again. So, so seed oils... What is this weird debate that I've seen raging on on my Instagram about seed oils? I've managed to avoid it. I've just not paid attention to it, but I see the way seed oils are all of a sudden everywhere. Okay, so seed oils, I think, is at the top of the Nutri -Bolex list. It blows my mind what you've just read to me. It's seriously better than I've done lots of research on seed oils, so I can talk from my own research, as well as all the evidence spaces out there. There is absolutely no evidence that is credible evidence when interpreted in the correct way to show seed oils are harmful.

1:03:37What is a seed oil? So, a seed oil is an oil from a seed. So, the most common seed oils in the UK is rapeseed oil, which is also known as canola oil in the US, and many other countries, followed by some flour oil. The most common seed oils in the US are soy bean oil, followed by rapeseed oil, canola oil, followed by some flour, seed oil. And there's about two or four arguments that people use to say that seed oils are bad for us. And if you go onto social media, I mean, this is a perfect example of night and day between scientific evidence and what's on social media. If you go on social media, seed oils are toxic.

1:04:17Seed oils are going to give you a house. I'm as seed oils are going to give you cancer. Seed oils are going to kill you. You look at the evidence. It's totally the reverse. Now, you can have sensible, boring scientists like me say seed oils are really good for you. You could put that as one of your assets or whatever you call it, or adverse for this. So, we could say seed oils are really good for you, Stephen. Or, I could tell you, seed oils are toxic. They're going to kill you. Everyone's trying to kill us with seed oils. What's going to get more clicks? Probably the toxic seed oil. Exactly. And so, the sensible science, there's no silver bullet.

1:04:58There's no, like, you know, crazy inflammatory argument. The sensible science isn't going to get the clicks. So, unfortunately, the voices of reason, and often it comes from boring academics, like myself, not saying other academics, boring, but sensible academics, like myself, that give the, you know, the balance. We don't get a voice. We're not being heard. Which is one of the reasons that, you know, I wanted to come on this show because of the misinformation. And we have to get the voice of reason out there. We have to get the voice of reason. So, things like that to do with seed oils are not what's dominating the headlines.

1:05:32So, what people say in terms of seed oils is, firstly, are intake of seed oils has increased 100 fold the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And with that increase in seed oil intake, so has cancer increase, so has cardiovascular disease increase, so has obesity increase, so has Alzheimer's, et cetera, et cetera. So, I'll speak to you through the seed oils. Well, what else has changed in that 50 years? We're more sedentary. We load of these other, these heavily processed foods that got all of these other ingredients in, you know, the sugar, the this, the that, so much else has changed. You know, you can't put it all down to the fact that at that point in time, seed oils were also changing.

1:06:16We also know that about 60 % of the seed oil that we eat is actually in these heavily processed unhealthy foods. So, it's the first argument that they've said, and you see these beautiful figures that they put out, where you see on one axis, the intake of seed oil, you see on the other axis, you know, over time, you'll see, for example, like rates of cancer, and you see rates of cancer, rates of cardiovascular disease going up linearly with the intake of seed oil. But we have to think what else has changed in that time. The other arguments that they use are theoretical arguments based on biochemical pathways.

1:06:52And I spend an hour teaching this time to graduate, and I'm not going to bore you with that biochemical thought. But they talk about the ratio of a particular fatty acid, which is omega -6, which is found in high levels of seed oils, and omega -3, which is another fatty acid. And they talk about how having lots of seed oils changes this ratio, makes this pro -inflammatory state, because it increases a particular downstream chemicals, et cetera, et cetera. What we know from kind of theoretical biochemical pathways and enzymes, et cetera, doesn't actually play out in humans. We're so clever. We have all of these mechanisms in place to control inflammation, to control oxidative stress, to control downstream impacts of foods.

1:07:45And so this argument that is also used to say that omega -6 fatty acids, so the main fat that's found in many of these seed oils is pro -inflammatory, is not supported by any evidence. It's not supported by tightly controlled clinical trials. If anything, it's shown to be anti -inflammatory, that levels of inflammatory circulating molecules actually reduce. And yet they use this kind of theoretical argument, or what they've seen in a petri dish, for example, or in a test tube. So where is this narrative come from? Where did it originate from that seed oils, where toxic? Was it just one of those things that just snowboard?

1:08:27I think it's one of those things that snowboard. And I think it does fit in with the whole argument that people are using against or to process food. It does fit in with other narratives that are going on. I think some people can be very clever and cherry -picking research. So there's a study called the Sydney Heart Study. And in this study, this was done in the 70s. And this is a study that's used often to advocate for the toxic effects of seed oils. And in this study, males that had heart event or a heart attack of sorts were randomly allocated to either increase their omega -6. So this particular type of fatty acid that we is in seed oils in their diet by having lots of seed oil, or they were asked to just follow their normal diet, which is quite high in saturated fat.

1:09:28And what they found is those that increase their seed oil intake went on to have worst health outcomes. Now, the problem with that is that in those days, the majority of seed oils underwent an industrial process called partial hydrogenation, and partial hydrogenation produces a very harmful fat called trans fats. You might have heard of trans fats. And so they were eating this seed oil in the form of a margarine or fat spread that had undergone partial hydrogenation and therefore was full of trans fats. Trans fats increase cholesterol, trans fats increase inflammation, trans fats are bad. That's why they are not in our food supply anymore.

1:10:09And so of course that seed oil is going to cause worst health outcomes. But it's not how seed oil is consumed now. And so it's that clever cherry picking of evidence that often supports a lot of the neutral bolux that's out there. Yeah, and people, you know, with all these studies out there, and with some studies having less rigor and studies that aren't, don't have sort of the randomized control element or what's the other term for a study where they do, they look at like 50 studies at once. So they're mesh analysis. So we do randomized control trials. So these will be trials where there's always a control arm.

1:10:49We'll randomly allocate some people to an intervention like seed oils and some people to a control. Could be saturated fat. Could be beef tally. That's been done. And then we look at different health outcomes. We follow them over a period of time, or it could be the IOSQ for a month. Have seed oils in their next month have beef tally for example. And then we'll look at different health outcomes, compare how you respond to one versus the other. And then what we do a scientist is if there's enough of these clinical trials, these randomized control trials, we put them all together into what's called a meta -analysis.

1:11:21And we look, what does the meta -analysis show? So for example, for seed oils, there's meta -analysis, for example, of about 42 randomized control trials, where they can play seed oils to other fats, showing consistently that there is no harmful benefit. Then actually there's a reduction in cardiovascular disease because the particular fat that's in seed oil has a really potent cholesterol lowering effect. So it's actually beneficial for our health. Yet beef tally is full of saturated fat, is full of paramedic acid, which is a particular type of saturated fat that we know is bad for us. There has been studies, and these studies were done many years ago when beef tally was actually used, comparing seed oils with beef tally.

1:12:05Seed oil was always well. It came out better. Seed oil was always reduced cholesterol compared to beef tally, reduced inflammation, et cetera, reduced cardiovascular risk factors. You're very passionate about this. I am, because I've researched, as a research active scientist, where I've run randomized control trials, and I tell you what you sweat blood and tears, I love my research, but it's flim in hard work doing a clinical trial, you know, getting ethical approval, recruiting people, changing people's diet, running dietary studies is really hard, because it's not a case of giving them a pill.

1:12:39If I'm going to give you seed oil, I've got to think, well, how am I going to do that? What am I, instead of what, what am I taking out of your diet to give you that? How am I going to make sure the rest of your diet is controlled? So once you've run studies yourself, and you sweat that blood and tears, and then you see this neutral bulwits, this misinformation out there, it's really bloody frustrating. It's a good thing that people like yourself are leaning into the mediums now of podcasting, because it's worth saying that as it relates to the sort of transfer of information, it's typically people who have either a platform or who are great public speakers or great salespeople that ultimately are going to resonate the most, reach the furthest with their information, irrespective of whether that information is credible.

1:13:27So it's good to see more and more people that are in the research now stepping away from their research laboratory and coming into environments where they can provide counteractly information. And as someone that's on my own journey to figure to sort of weave through all of this information to find out what's right for me, it's difficult. And for a lot of people, it's super difficult. I mean, the way that I kind of, my own framework for this is I listen to things, and then I don't necessarily trust one source to be true. But I almost like weight the authority experience and the rigor behind how they've arrived at that information.

1:14:07And then I guess I perform my own meta -analysis across lots of different people that I speak to and guess an information that I get to find the sweet spots where the sweet spot for me is, many people have said it that I think have a lot of sort of rigor and authority and experience in that subject matter. So then I accept it to be true. Whereas I'm not going to go on Instagram and see a real pop -up and it says that, I don't know, she should put in sugar in your eyeballs is good. And I'm not going to crack on with it just because the person's got charisma. And I think in the world we live in where there is now this decentralization of information which has its upsides and its downsides, we all need to have our own decision framework to decide what is true.

1:14:51But I think yours is more rigorous than most. So many people get their information from one source, many people trust one source. And you're right, the ASS academics, we're rarely given a platform. And this is what I valued most actually about what I've done at Zoe while being able to do the kind of trials that we're doing. But being able to have a platform, not just for me, but for us to invite other credible scientists onto the Zoe podcast or for me to come onto this kind of podcast, we're not trained as academics how to communicate. We're trained how to, you know, wrong good studies in my case, you know, wrong clinical trials interpret the evidence, evaluate the evidence, critique the evidence.

1:15:34And, you know, I'm self -taught to present the evidence to other academics. But we're not taught to communicate it to the general public. So for me, it's been a journey working at Zoe of trying to communicate really complex stuff. Like I would have loved to have spent an hour telling you about the biochemical pathway of why seed oils don't impact inflammation. I know that really you're not interested, the listeners aren't interested, but, you know, I'm hoping that by informing them that I've done these studies and that these are the results, there's trust that actually what we found is true. But we're the smallest voice out there.

1:16:13The research -active scientists, partly because of time, you know, I'm still in, you know, running trials, running, you know, different interventions. But also, I think many of the big platforms aren't giving us the opportunity, necessarily, because we haven't got the most exciting things to say. Because at the end of the day, you know, we'll present the evidence, we'll present it with caveats, we'll present it with caution. And, you know, I will always say on, as I were to students I'm teaching, what I'm telling you now is based on what the evidence shows now. In 10 years' time, I might be totally wrong.

1:16:57All of these trials showing seed oils are fine. I might be wrong in 10 years' time. I doubt it. I doubt it. Because there's enough research. But as scientists, that's something else, you know, we always caveat with. And I think sometimes that's difficult for the general public, maybe. I mean, I might be doing a disservice, I don't know, that you have the non -active, or non -active influences, science influences, I didn't know what you call the speak with such certainty. Now, I will if it's my study. So, I'll talk with certainty over the seed oil study because I've done them. I've been there in the lab analysing it.

1:17:32Or I'll speak with certainty over snacking data because I've, you know, sweatable and tears over, you know, running the stats, etc. But I won't talk with certainty about anything else that I haven't done myself. And yet, you have other people talk with such certainty. And I think that's what instills confidence in maybe listeners. And that's why they get more viewers. If you've been thinking of starting your own business, I want to take a moment to nudge you into action. This is the month to begin. And my show sponsor, Shopify, has made it easy enough to turn that business idea into reality. So, if you've got the idea, Shopify has the tools.

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1:18:46There's a lot of neutral bollocks around there, right? Yep. I think the prevailing neutral bollocks is that dairy is bad for you. Yep. So there's not lots of neutral bollocks around dairy, and it's related to the neutral bollocks also around saturated fat. So as a whole, we know saturated fat is bad for us. Dairy contributes to most of the saturated fat intake in the UK. So therefore, we could say all dairy is bad for us. But no, dairy is a diverse food group. You've got cheese, you've got yogurt, you've got butter, you've got milk. And how they impact our health is vastly different depending on whether it's a liquid, a solid, it's fermented, it's non -fermented, etc., etc.

1:19:31And grouping them all together is as ridiculous as grouping all these snacks together in terms of the health effects. And what we now know is that some dairy is actually good for us. So some dairy like cheese, like yogurt, and I don't mean this really kind of heavily sweetened sugary yogurt. I mean like yogurt, yogurt, sugar, fears, those sorts of things, your plain yoghours. They've undergone a process called fermentation, and that changes the food matrix. So again, we're coming back to that whole importance of the structure of the food. And by changing the food matrix, changes how our body handles it, how our bodies, how the health effect of that cheese.

1:20:13We don't fully understand how. There's some great research being undertaken at Reading University, really diving into this. But what we know is if you have cheese within reason, if you have yogurt within reason, it does not increase your cholesterol despite being high in saturated fat. Now, I have the caution that I'm not saying people should go and have 300 grams of cheese every day. But within normal kind of intakes of a few portions a day, it does not increase people's cholesterol, having cheese or having a good yogurt. Butter, on the other hand, we do know doesn't increase your cholesterol.

1:20:51Now, if you're having at the kind of level that you would maybe just putting it on a bit of toast, I wouldn't worry so much. But we do know that if you go at a compared cheese versus butter, which has almost the same fat composition. And this has been showing a randomized control trials. The butter will increase your cholesterol, but the cheese will not. And nuts, a lot of people say that nuts cause weight gain. No, the evidence does not support that. So we know that people who consume nuts based on the totality of the evidence do not gain weight. We know this from epidemiological data, i .e. people who consume more nuts tend to quite often have a lower beer.

1:21:36Now, that could be confounded by the fact that not consumers, and any about 10 % in the UK, and even less about 7 % in the US even consume nuts, not consumers tend to have a healthier overall diet. So there is that confining, but clinical trials show that if you add nuts to your eyes, ours included, you do not gain weight. Now, that might be partly because of the mechanisms that we've talked about to do with the food matrix that 20 % to 30 % of the calories are being excreted to the back of pack labeling shows that proportion of nuts is 170 calories. But actually on average, you only absorb 130 calories.

1:22:10So lots of it's coming out. It might be because they're feeding the microbiome that's helping reduce an opacity. It's also nuts are satiating, so they make you feel more full. They also blunt your blood sugar response. And they have so many other benefits that counterbalance any potential for weight gain. And is there anything else on the NutriBolex list that is worth highlighting? I would say that I think there's still lots of confusion around saturated fat and around cholesterol. So cholesterol, I went into the blood test and the doctor said to me that one of my cholesterol was a little bit on the higher side.

1:22:48This was last year. So, and it was the HDL cholesterol. I don't know. The way that I experienced it was there's this good cholesterol and this bad cholesterol. And like, my bad one was like a little bit, you know, behave like it's getting a little bit into the region where he might have more of a stand talk with me. That was last year, I think I've done better this year. But what is cholesterol? And my simplified explanation of it is that, is that flawed in some way? A good bad. No, it's always a little bit more nuanced, a little bit more complex. But there are two ways that we can look at cholesterol.

1:23:25We can look at cholesterol in terms of the cholesterol that we eat. And that's where I think there's a lot of misinformation. And we can look at cholesterol in terms of the cholesterol that our body produces. So our liver is constantly churning out cholesterol. When the liver churns out cholesterol, it packages cholesterol into two different kinds of packages or two different types of parcels. And the labeling, so to say, on these parcels determines the health effects of that cholesterol. So you've got your HDL cholesterol, which we call our good cholesterol. You've got your LDL cholesterol, which we call your bad cholesterol.

1:24:00It's L is bad. H is good. They're actually the same in terms of the cholesterol, but it's the label that's on the parcel, the label in terms of which is directing where they go, which is different. So in really simple terms, LDL is directed, posted to your peripheral tissues, to your blood vessels where it can be taken up and in the right environment where there's inflammation, stress, etc. can result in atroscarosis, which is that kind of fering of the arteries, which over time can build up and can lead to heart attack, etc. HDL and very simple terms has a label on it that actually enables the reverse cholesterol transport.

1:24:45So actually almost kind of cleans up some of the cholesterol. This is kind of in very simple terms. So if any lipidologists are listening, they might be a bit frustrated. But in very simple terms, it kind of brings it back to the liver for disposal. So that's why it's considered good. What we know is that the amount of LDL cholesterol that's circulating is really important in terms of cardiovascular disease risk. There are some kind of cholesterol deniers, and I know you've had on your show a cholesterol denier. I don't believe in the evidence he presents. I think that the totality of the evidence is very, very clear that as your LDL cholesterol increases, your risk of cardiovascular disease, your risk of all -cortality increases.

1:25:26Where there is misinformation is around dietary cholesterol, that there was this perception years ago that if you have foods high in dietary cholesterol like eggs, that it will increase your circulating cholesterol and therefore increase your risk of heart disease. And therefore there was a limit years ago put on how many eggs we should eat, how much cholesterol we should consume. We now know within certain limits, so within the limits that we typically eat, our food containing cholesterol, that dietary cholesterol does not impact our circulating cholesterol. Obviously it extremes it does, but if you're having one to two eggs a day, that's an intake of cholesterol that's not going to negatively for most people impact your circulating levels of this LDL bad cholesterol.

1:26:15If you're having 10 eggs a day, then I would be worried. Okay. Okay. But yeah, cholesterol is another area of neutral polyester. And then on this whole area of cholesterol, heart disease, I think a really frustrating area of neutral polyester is saturated fat. So we'll talk about saturated fat. Just so I'm super clear on the cholesterol point, what foods have really high levels of cholesterol, LDL circulating cholesterol in them? Okay, so you've got dietary cholesterol, which is just the cholesterol that's in the food. Yeah. And that has very little impact on circulating cholesterol. Okay. Then you have cholesterol that the liver produces.

1:26:57And the liver produces that from scratch. And it's how diet impacts the liver production that determines how diet impacts our circulating cholesterol. So saturated fat increases the production of cholesterol by our liver and reduces the removal of cholesterol by our liver. Highly refined carbohydrates can also increase the production of cholesterol by our liver. So when we're thinking about how diet impacts our cholesterol, particularly our LDL's our bad cholesterol, we don't need to worry so much about dietary cholesterol. So I have much cholesterol in a food because unless it's extreme, it will have a minimal impact.

1:27:39We need to think about how much saturated fat, for example, we're having because that's one of the main dietary determines of our cholesterol level. Okay. And what is a saturated fat? So versus like a normal fat, like is there good and bad fats? Yes. Okay. All of the fats that we eat, or 98 % of the fat that we comes in the form of a molecule called triglyceride. And a triglyceride has within it three fatty acids. And it's the mix of these fatty acids that determine the health properties of that triglyceride, the melt profile of that triglyceride, etc. And there's lots of different types of fatty acids.

1:28:23So you're probably familiar with amino acids, which are types of protein. And in the way that amino acids are what make up protein, fatty acids are what make up a fat and the quality of that fat. And we typically separate them into three main classes, saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. And you might have heard of those terms. Yeah, loosely. Yeah. And saturated fatty acids differ in terms of their biochemistry, and I won't bore you with that. Two monouns, polyunsaturated fatty acids, they also differ in terms of their melt profiles. So like how hard they are or liquid they are, most tend to be hard, hence why most hard fats like butter, you know, most animal fats, which are hard, at room temperature tend to be high in saturated fats.

1:29:16Monounsaturated fatty acids differ from saturated fatty acids in terms of their biochemistry, in terms of their melt profile, they tend to be liquid. And polyunsaturated fatty acids are a very special type of fatty acid because they're actually essential for us, our body can't make them. And so they're essential fatty acids, and one of those is omega -6, which is the fatty acid found in seedles, which is what people say is Y seedles about for us, which hopefully we debunked that. And saturated fat as a whole, we know is linked to increased cardiovascular disease, increased risk of all cause mortality.

1:29:54But there's lots of people that say, you know, we've got it wrong as nutritional scientists, we don't know what we're talking about it, because actually there's this metronalysis that showed that actually saturated fat isn't bad for us. And that's because when we think about the health effects of food, we have to always think of that instead of what. So there was some work that was carried out looking at hundreds and hundreds of different clinical trials where they've replaced saturated fat in the diet with carbohydrates or trans fats or polyunsaturated fats or my own saturated fats. And what this research showed is that if you replace saturated fats with whole grain carbohydrates, you have an improvement in health.

1:30:37If you replace saturated fats with poly or my own saturated fats, you have an improvement in health. If you replace saturated fats with refined carbohydrates, there's no difference. So you could take that study and you could say, and this is a hundreds of different studies and say saturated fats are really bad for us because we know that if you replace them with whole grain or poly or money on saturated fats, you have a beneficial effect. Or I could take the same analysis and say, oh, saturated fats are fine, nutrition has got it all wrong because actually there's no detrimental effect if you compare it with refined carbohydrates.

1:31:16And this is exactly what happened when this meta analysis came out about probably about 15 years ago. I remember looking at the headlines of two different papers. I won't say what the papers are, but one I would say is a little bit more evidence based and one is a good example of clickbait headlines. They had totally different headlines. One said nutrition scientists have got it all wrong. We've been lied to saturated fats are fine. The other said research again consistently shows saturated fats are detrimental to our health. Obviously that one's right. I'm not talking about the same study. Talking about the same study because it's there instead of what and that's really important when we think about the health effects.

1:32:00The other thing that does complicate things a little bit with saturated fats is there's lots of different types of saturated fats. We know that the type of saturated fat matters, but we know the food matrix that it is in that matters and the dairy is a great example. So you have cheese and butter exactly the same or almost identical fat composition to entirely different effects on our cholesterol. So it is a little bit more nuanced than saying all saturated fats are bad. It depends on the type and the food it's in. And what types of food have saturated fats that have less than healthy food matrix?

1:32:33So I would say the type of saturated fats that we want to avoid are the saturated fats that are found in most animal products except for mentored dairy except cheese except jogger. So beef tally I would say the evidence consistently shows it's not favorable for our health. Butter and large amounts. And then the fact that's intrinsic to the meat takes a lot of you can see the fat in there take steak for example cut off the visible bits of the fat. It's okay in small amounts. I'm not saying we should avoid it in totally. But if you have the option of cutting off trimming the fat then I would. And then there are some tropical oils that are very high in saturated fat.

1:33:21Parm oil for example coconut oil, although the juries out on the health effects of coconut oil. But parm oil for example is very high in saturated fat. We know it increases our cholesterol. If you had to give me some principles for eating based on everything we've talked about today just like. And I had to force you to just give me five principles for eating. What would those five principles be? Five. Okay. I would say first and foremost find food or dietary pattern that you enjoy that brings you pleasure. Cookies. Okay. But we are not these aren't exclusive to each other Stephen. Okay. That brings me pleasure.

1:34:09Okay. That's really important. These are not exclusive. Okay. So a dietary pattern that brings you pleasure. Because. Because food is there to be enjoyed and it will be a sustainable dietary pattern. And because we know that consistency and sustainability is really important in how you eat. Okay. Second I would say think about how you eat. Think about how fast you're eating. Slow down. Two more. Two more. Don't eat late at night. Try and eat within a 10 or 12 hour eating window. And just on this two more point you were before we started recording you were saying that you wouldn't mind if I chewed some nuts and spat them out so you could look at them.

1:35:00And why does chewing more have an impact again just so I can clear. So chewing can impact how you rate the food down. Yeah. Obviously. But we also know chewing impacts your hunger and your fullness signals. So there's some evidence to show if you chew your food 40 times versus 15 times. It can result in a difference in how full that food makes you feel. Okay. So the chewing effect to sending some kind of signal. Yeah. Yeah. To my brain. Yeah. Again, this isn't an area that I have expertise in but that's what the evidence is showing. So as well as your gut sending signals to your brain receptors on your gut saying whether you're full.

1:35:45There's something going on when you're chewing your food as well as important. Okay. And chewing your food also changes their rate therefore at which you're eating. So changes your eating speed. Okay. So on that second point, I've got slow down chew more. Don't eat late at night and eat within a 10 to 12 hour eating window. 10 to 12 hour eating window. Then the third would be go back to basics. Yeah. Have a good amount of fiber. Have a good amount of healthy oils. That's your olive oils and your olive oil. There I say it's seed oils but olive oil I would say is the king of queen of the oils.

1:36:29And you know, have that balance plate rather than obsessing over a single food. Okay. Number four. Don't think of food in isolation. Okay. Think about your diet in relation to what alongside your sleep, your stress, your physical activity. And number five. Can you remind me of what I've done? Yes. So I'm 48. I mean the depths of menopause. It's okay. I'm one of those like 90 % of people that have brain fog and memory loss. So number one was food that brings you pleasure which is sustainable and allows you to be consistent. Number two is really thinking about how you eat. So slowing down chewing more.

1:37:12Not eating late at night and trying to have a shorter eating window of 10 to 12 hours. Number three was go back to basics which is high fiber, whole grains, fruits, healthy oils and overall just a balanced plate. And number four is don't think of your nutrition in isolation. So think of it in the context of your exercise, your sleep in all of these other lifestyle factors. And number five. Don't deny yourself anything. Think about what you can add in rather than what you take away. Don't deny yourself anything. So cookies are still on the menu. Occasionally yes. You mentioned to their. Perry menopause you said you're in Perry menopause currently.

1:37:58How does that factor into everything we've talked about today and what is the cause of what this graph here. I found about the menopause transition which talks about how different sort of things are happening inside the body. You've probably seen this quite a few times before which I'll put on the screen and below for anybody. But what is the relationship between my diet and my menopause journey? Is there anything to be aware of? There is. I mean, you know, the menopause has a huge impact on how it was one to food. It has a huge impact generally on all of these pillars of health that we've talked about.

1:38:32I sleep, I stress, physical activity, you know, and diet. And I think it's something we're talking about a lot more now. And we should be talking about it a lot more now in a 50 % population at some point are going to go through the menopause. And it's a transitional period of great disturbance, great disruption and of great burden to many women. And we've conducted lots of research at Zoe on the menopause. And what we know is that prior to the menopause, which is basically the point one year after your last menstrual cycle, you have this perimenopausal transition period where your estrogen and other hormones are fluctuating day to day.

1:39:17So it's like this rollercoaster, which I think your graph shows really nicely. You've got this rollercoaster of hormones. And so what's happening is, is your estrogen isn't just slowly declining as you reach perimenopause. So that transitional period before your menopause, but you're on this rollercoaster. And it becomes more regulated after the menopause. But you're still in that point where you're having less estrogen, so less of the hormone that we know has such wide reaching effects. And the reason that the perimenopause transition as well as postmenopause period in a woman's life is so important is because estrogen, the hormone that fluctuates during the perimenopause and then reduces and declines in postmenopause, has effects all over our body.

1:40:08Nearly every cell in our body has estrogen receptors. So our brain, our blood vessels, nearly everywhere. So this rollercoaster of estrogen, during the perimenopausal phase, and also the reduction postmenopausal has far reaching health effects. So for example, postmenopausally, women are five times greater risk of having a heart attack. Now some of that's due to age, but it's also due to the loss in estrogen. Women are five times more likely to have abdominal obesity, which is fat around the tummy. And that's because of estrogen's role in fat tissue deposition, so where fat tissue is deposited.

1:40:46We see in our own so -predic research, premenopause, women are doing well compared to men in terms of many of these, what we call intermediary risk factors, cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, insulin, etc. As soon as they hit the menopause, suddenly they catch up with men, and it gets worse. And so suddenly their blood pressure is higher than men, or their cholesterol is the same level as men. So we see this as well in our so -predic research, that postmenopausally, and parimenopausally, people's cholesterol, and their bad cholesterol, their LDL cholesterol, increases by 25%.

1:41:19And this is all related to the wide -reaching role that estrogen has in our body. We also see the estrogen impacts, and therefore the parimenopause and postmenopause, how we metabolize food. So we see bigger excursions in post -milk glucose and post -milk fat after the menopause. Again, it's all linked to the role that estrogen plays in our metabolism. And then I think what's most important to be aware of regarding the parimenopause and postmenopause phase is the symptoms that women experience. And we've done some research in 70 ,000 individuals where we've looked at how prevalent these symptoms are.

1:42:05We see that 99 % of parimenopause or women experience at least one menopause or symptom. We see that 66 % of parimenopause women have 12 symptoms or more. And this has a huge burden. We know from other surveys 10 % of women leave the workforce during the parimenopause and postmenopause or phase because of the burden that these symptoms have on their quality of life. And what age does this typically occur the parimenopausal symptoms? So typically people become menopausal. As in postmenopausal stop their menstrual cycles at 51, the menopausal transition period can be anything from two to 10 years.

1:42:46Typically people would say maybe around the ages of 47, many women start to experience parimenopausal symptoms. And these include symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, memory loss, irritability, low libido, changing metabolism. And now I'm in that parimenopause and I've forgotten all of the others but there's about 50 symptoms that are recognised. And we see in our own research that the amount of women experiencing symptoms is really high. So we see that 85 % of women are saying they have brain fog, they have anxiety, they have memory loss. It's really high the amount of women experiencing these symptoms.

1:43:31And what's really interesting is we know, yes, HRT, so hormone replacement therapy or MHT can help reduce many of these symptoms. But we also know that diet can help as well. And I think actually seeing one of the most interesting things from our research looking at menopause and symptoms is that typically when we think of menopausal symptoms we think about hot flushes. And if I was to ask you, actually I wish I'd have asked you before I said that, but if I was to ask you if you were to think of a menopause symptom what would come to your mind first? I would say hot flushes because that seems to be the only time that people talk about hot flushes is when they're talking about menopause in my world.

1:44:14And then I'd say brain fog. And what's really interesting is hot flushes are one of the least common symptoms about 40 % of women in our research have hot flushes. 85 % have brain fog, 85 % have all of the other brain related symptoms. And yet typically we always think about hot flushes. And this is because it just hasn't been loads of research on menopause. And so I think what's really exciting is there is now a lot more research on menopause. So I think the future is really exciting. But I think what comes with this is yet more neutral products. And that's because I think there's this whole area of what we call menowushing.

1:44:56I don't know if you heard of menopause. No, we're having. Stick menopause for menopause. In front of any product you can charge ten times a smudge. I could call this a menopause tea. It's actually Yorkshire tea and it's a very good cup of tea. I could call this a menoty and charge ten times a smudge for that tea bag without any evidence. Because women are desperate, 45 % of women say their symptoms are so burdensome. They'll try anything. Tencently leaving the workforce because of their symptoms. And so we have to be really careful that we are only selling evidence -based supplements for which there isn't much evidence.

1:45:35And I think that the evidence that an overall healthier dietary pattern can reduce symptoms is the best way forward for now. Alongside for those who choose to hormone replacement therapy. A recent survey showed that 30 % of menopause women are trying herbal remedies. 30 % are trying vitamins and 51 % are trying any kind of dietary therapy as an alternative to HRT. That was in I news, which kind of supports what you're saying. There's lots of people searching for. Because I think from the experiences that I've had with people talking to me about menopause, it seems to be an incredibly confusing period of life where you can't make sense of what's happening.

1:46:15And all the old rules of just hit the gym and eat a bit healthier seem to go out the window. Because there's something deeper at play in your body. So it's not that you're not eating right or it's not that you're not sleeping right. It's a deeper hormonal fluctuation that you've actually never experienced before. So of course you're going to be really confused and quite easily gaslit as well, I imagine. Because I've had someone say to me that they felt like they were going crazy and then people started thinking they were just going crazy a little bit. Yeah, I think fortunately I think it's changing.

1:46:49But historically we didn't talk about it. I vaguely remember my mum saying, I'm having hot flush. But we didn't talk about menopause, we didn't talk about periods. We just didn't talk about it when I was growing up. And unfortunately my mother's no longer alive, so I don't really know what she did go through. And I want to talk about it. People are talking about it. We have people at Divina McCall who are amazing because they're getting women talking about it. So we're no longer ashamed. So I think the tide is really turning. But menopause is this perfect storm because you have these burdensome symptoms.

1:47:29And then you have alongside it, which I don't think we talk about enough, is these health effects that I talked about. So women going through the menopause aren't sleeping. I mean my sleep is all over the place. Honestly, when I get a good night's sleep, Stephen, I feel like superwoman. It reminds me of the state I'm in at the moment, is like how I was when I had kids. Where I'm getting four, five hours sleep, then I wake up. If I'm lucky, I might get back to sleep. So you've got women, they're not getting enough sleep. You've got women who often are feeling a bit depressed or anxious or losing their confidence because of their brain fog, because of their memory loss, because of their anxiety.

1:48:09You've got the hormones changing, your body composition. Suddenly you're eating and doing everything the same. But all the fat's being directed to your tummy. Your hunger signals are marked up. Your desire to eat different food changes. And we see this again in our own research that postmenopause women tend to eat a lot more sugary foods than premenopause women. So you've got this perfect storm of things going on. And then in amongst that, do you really want to do some physical activity? Are you really motivated to start eating healthier? And when your exhaustedness goes back again to that importance of sleep and that interaction of sleep with our food choices and how we respond to food, there's so many things to think about.

1:48:53And I think it's really tough in that peri -imposed menopause of phase. When your body's changing, when you're tired, when you're feeling a bit rubbish to also take control of your diet. But it's the most important time because it's when your cholesterol increases. It's when your blood pressure increases. It's when all of this fat tissue around your belly is releasing harmful inflammatory chemicals, etc. So it's when, unfortunately, we really do need to take stock of our physical activity of what we're eating on our stress levels. But it's probably one of the most challenging times to do it as well.

1:49:26You must be incredibly stressed through that period. But also just thinking about your relationships. If you're in a relationship in a heterosexual marriage with a husband who isn't going through that at that period of their life. And you said there was a libido issue that's symptomatic of menopause as well to navigate all of that. And for the people around you to understand what's going on in your head, must be incredibly stressful. I'm incredibly stressful.

1:50:01I feel very, I don't know what the right words are here, but I feel very sympathetic. Because I can't imagine, I don't think there's a point in the man's life where we go through such a profound change in our hormones in such a confusing way. All of a sudden. So it's like. But I think, Stephen, if we raise awareness, so that men are aware and they can support their partners. And you know, libido, for, you know, as an example, we see in our own research, whilst it might not be the most common, women rate it as the most burdensome. Really? So we monitor not just the prevalence, so how common the symptoms are.

1:50:42We also ask people how much impacts their quality of life. And the pairing postmenopause or women rate that as their symptom that has the most burden on their life. Because if I'm not slept and I'm not feeling sexy, I'm not going to, I'm independent of whether there's like a chemical impact on my hormone levels that causes my low level of libido. I'm not trying to have sex. If I'm going to sleep. And we're going to sleep. Yeah, exactly. So even if, you know, and especially I don't feel good, I don't feel sexy. My mood might be altered. Yeah, your tummy suddenly grow. Yeah, it's not going to be.

1:51:20So what advice do you give to those women going through that? You said that you're on hormone replacement therapy yourself, obviously. And that's had a guess a positive impact on your menopause journey. Yes, I still sleep really badly. Yeah. I don't think HRT is the answer for everyone. And some people can't take it if they're contrainticated with certain risk related to cancer. And some people choose not to take it. And it certainly doesn't solve everything. I do think the evidence is very compelling for reduction in many symptoms. I think the evidence is compelling. Or increasing and building for the beneficial effects that also has on some of these health effects that happen.

1:52:03Drawing menopause like blood pressure, cholesterol, tummy fat. So I've chosen to take it for both health and for symptoms. But there's reasonable evidence now showing that diet can help reduce symptoms. There isn't a one -size -fits -all, there isn't a silver bullet. But an overall healthier dietary pattern, I believe, can reduce menopause symptoms. This comes from other published research, as well as our own research that we've done at ZOE, where we've looked in a subgroup of individuals over 12 to 18 week period and looked at those who transitioned to a healthier diet. They're actually following the ZOE program, but the underlying principles are the same for all individuals to follow a healthy diet.

1:52:49So increased plant diversity, increased fiber, a very kind of Mediterranean style diet. And what we see in those people who are improving their diet, they have 35 % reduction in symptoms. Now that's huge. I do have to caveat that to say that there wasn't a control arm. So it's not a clinical, an RCTS we call it. It's a study where we followed people at one point in time and collected data, another point in time. What we now need to do is repeat this with a control arm to see if we see the same size effect. But there are other studies that have in a randomized control trial, asked people to follow the meta -trained diet or control diet, and they see a similar magnitude of around 30 % reduction in symptoms, which is huge and promising, I think.

1:53:37But I think where we have to be really careful with menopause, because we are desperate, because we're struggling, I think we're really susceptible to marketing, to this menopause, and I think there were so many supplements there being sold as the silver bullet. And I see it on social media. And I think firstly, OK, if it works for you, great. If you can afford it, great. But what worries me is people who are spending a lot of money that they could be using for a healthy dietary pattern, or a gym membership or whatever, on a supplement that there is no evidence to support. And the evidence is very, very weak.

1:54:17Except for a supplement called soy -eyes of flavones, there is very weak evidence that any other supplements will work consistently. They might work for some people, but consistently. Soy -eyes of flavones. Yeah. So soy -eyes of flavones are a particular chemical that are found in some foods. It's a chemical that has a structure very similar to estrogen, so actually binds to the estrogen receptors in the body, which is why it has a beneficial effects on many symptoms. Now soy -eyes of flavones are consumed in quite small amounts in the UK and the US. We consume probably about 1 milligram a day on average.

1:54:54In the Far East, like China, they consume about 70 milligrams a day as part of the natural diet. So in those kind of countries, they actually have a really low prevalence of menopause symptoms compared to us. They still have menopause symptoms, but it's a bit lower than us. What we know is that if you supplement people with soy -eyes of flavones for the vast majority of people, but not everyone, it will reduce symptoms a little bit, not totally, but it can reduce symptoms. And is your underlying health a predictive factor of the amount of symptoms you'll experience? So if I'm obese and then I go into perimenopause, am I symptoms going to be more significant?

1:55:34That's a good question. We've looked at how living with obesity can impact your symptoms. And we do see that if you're living with obesity, you have a higher number of symptoms. We see that if you have an unhealthy diet to start with, you have a higher number of symptoms. We see that if you have low physical activity, you smoke, etc. Yes, it's associated with higher symptoms. This is all association data, though. It doesn't show causality, and it's really important to say that. For quite a while, I ignored my gut. I ignored the role it plays when it comes to my overall health. And it wasn't until the team from Zoe came onto my podcast that I realized I couldn't ignore it anymore.

1:56:13I was so impressed by Professor Tim Spectrum, Professor Sarah Berry, that I ended up investing in Zoe. And then our sponsor of this podcast, they helped me to view my gut as the gateway to better health. That when in balance, my microbiome could strengthen my immunity, elevate my mood, and fight off disease, which I now know to be true. I trust Zoe because they have one of the largest microbiome databases in the world. And when you sign up, you'll get one of the most scientifically advanced at -home test kits on the planet, and a personalized nutrition program to help you make smarter food choices.

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1:57:59I think we've covered an awful lot. And I think the thing that I would emphasize when people are thinking about the hells thinking about their diet is firstly find what works for you. Find something you enjoy. But I think I would say be really, really careful of the misinformation that's out there. Really careful. And I would say also, if you're going to make a change, make sure it has a big enough size impact to warrant the change you're making. Because there's a lot of advocates for this health optimization. Make this change, we'll have this impact. Well, if you're making a change that disrupts your life significantly but only has a 1 % impact on whatever health outcomes, your interests and whether it's your cholesterol, your overall energy or whatever.

1:58:53Is it really worth disrupting your life that much for that small change? And I think that's really important. I hear so many times when I'm talking to other mums at the school gate of that sort of thing, oh my gosh, I've read this and I'm going to do this. And it's going to be really hard, but they've said it will help with this. And it's like, oh, you're taking away pleasure. And actually, what is the gain? If the world is to move forward in a way that is positive in your estimation, how does the world change and improve as it relates to all the subjects we've talked about today? What is that change you wish to see in the world in which you operate?

1:59:37I would love to see a world where scientists, food industry and policymakers work together. I'd love to see a world where we encourage evidence -based science, but scientists aren't scared of working with food industry, for example. A lot of people think that food industry is bad, like it's this sort of evil guy who sat in this boardroom who's just counting money and just pushing whatever these little innocent children will put in their mouths and to make them addicted and give them neurodivergence and some other issues potentially. A lot of people feel that the food industry has become this sort of singular entity people think about in the sort of conspiracy theory internet.

2:00:23And you kind of imagine it is like a guy in a boardroom who's just like cackling and laughing and stuff like that. I think that I can't comment on their motivations for profit. I don't think I'm informed enough to comment on that, but I do believe that the food industry needs to work with academia in order to solve the problem of the kind of foods that are out there. We need impact from government though, as well. We need impact from policymakers. We need to go back to grassroots. We need to be educating our children how to cook. We need to be giving healthy school meals. We need to be educating them in schools.

2:01:02What is a healthy meal? What isn't a healthy meal? What is a healthy food? But I think that something that's so important is this current state of fear, I think we're in a perilous state at the moment of there are some people who are in the same state. People are making a lot of noise in the media about scientists working with industry. How any research funded by industry is therefore biased. It's corrupt, can't be trusted. That's certainly not my experience. It's not what I have ever seen from any other colleagues taking money from food industry in order to do studies. We, as nutrition scientists, need to do studies.

2:01:41We need to run clinical trials in order to look at how we can improve their food to make it healthier. The amount of funding we get from independent government bodies is tiny. To get funding, the amount of time we have to spend the academics writing grants to be rejected and rejected because the government invests so little in nutrition research. We need to be able to get funding to be able to run studies to answer important questions. The money and the experience I've had from those around me when we receive funding from research, from when we receive funding from industry, there is very limited involvement that they are allowed to have with what we do and the university ensure that we conduct the research.

2:02:31We do the analysis, we publish the paper. The industry funders cannot get involved in that process. So I still see it as independent. Now, there is discussion about, are they setting the agenda of that research? There's something we could talk about for days and days. But I think this narrative that's out there that just because a study is being funded by the food industry is biased, is wrong. And I think it's unhelpful. And it's putting these exposés that certain media personalities are putting forward that if an academic has taken money from a food industry, that therefore they cannot be advising us on food, they cannot be trusted for their research.

2:03:14I think that that's a real problem for us as a nutrition scientist because it's creating a time of fear. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, so when you explain it through how these how these studies get funded, then it makes a turn of sense. And actually part of what I was thinking is the government should be doing a little bit more to fund these kinds of studies because I can't, I don't really believe that you're going to get the food industry to work together. Because again, thinking about incentives, if there's one serial company here and the other here and they say there's 10 of them. Yeah, how can you get all of them to agree to take the two that don't win?

2:03:50And then they keep their jobs, their companies are successful, they get a pass in the back. So when we think about health interventions that the government have made over the years that've been super effective, they've come from like policy smoking as a good example, though, we think about like the change in smoking in our society because they made they banned smoking indoors and things on the packaging and just change the sort of social narrative and all smoking companies. Tobacco companies had to sort of comply at once. So that's why I think all three have to work together. Government need to take big responsibility.

2:04:23Yeah. And but I think that there has to be an acceptance that academics, scientists can work with food industry and it doesn't mean that you're correct or you're correct or you're wrong. Or I was also bias in any way. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is what is something that you believe that smart people you care about disagree with? Do you know, I believe I believe that life can be simple. That actually all that matters is that you have good relationships that you're finding joy in life.

2:05:07And that we shouldn't over complicate things. And if on my gravestone I have written Sarah was a nice person. I would be very happy with that. But a lot of the clever people I interactive I think wouldn't agree that that's necessarily a good achievement in life. But I see that as so great achievement. What do you think they might want written on their gravestone instead? You're smacking nervously. Is it too obsessed with like impact and ego and those kinds of things? That's what you say. I don't know because the people I care about I don't think are we getistical. I think we live in a society certainly in a society where we're mixing with successful people where there is a lot of ambition where there is a lot of emphasis put on your achievements where there's a lot of striving for the next goal striving for the next achievement.

2:06:21And maybe it's having had four years where I took a career break where I was care for my mum. And together with the rest of my family we looked after my mum we kept her at home through a degenerative and neurological condition and seeing someone change seeing someone lose the power to talk, lose the power to eat, lose the power to interact, lose the power to do everything that we take for granted. I think has enabled me to not sweat the small stuff. It's enabled me to find joy in most things, pleasure in most things and not strive for things that maybe in the past I would have. Perspective. I think it's given me a perspective.

2:07:13Now don't get me wrong. I was nervous before coming on here so I sweated about that and I'm not saying that I'm always horizontally laid back by any means. But I think it's given me a perspective on what matters to me. Yeah. And what matters to me and I think the greatest achievement in my whole life has been actually not becoming professor which I'm incredibly proud of. I'm from a working -class family. You know, I was the first person I'll family to ever go to university. My mum and dad didn't have the privilege of staying at school beyond 14. And I mean it saddens me that they haven't seen this success.

2:07:53Saddens me very much. And whilst the pride I felt yesterday at the ceremony was phenomenal. Actually what I'm most proud of is the four years that I cared for my mum. And to me that's what matters. And so that's why when I'm with lots of smart people and I think they're doing amazing things. I don't have the same perspective sometimes. I probably don't care a smudge. It's almost time having fun and you know what? And I think I said this at the beginning. I'm so privileged I get to do my hobby every day. I love what I do. I'm not doing this necessarily because I'm such a selfless person that I want to improve everyone's health.

2:08:38Yes, if that's a byproduct grade, but I get up and I love what I do. I'm so excited by the science that we do. And what drives me to do it is having been through that situation of realising how delicate life is. So just see the moment. Enjoy what you're doing at point in time. Thank you so much. Professor, congratulations on the professor. I think it was the ceremony yesterday. That's an incredible achievement. I know that we're not prioritising the achievements as much anymore. It's incredible. It's incredible. Yeah, it's an incredible thing. And it's a credit to the work that you've done and how you've done it over the last 25 years.

2:09:21And the broader impact I think you've had on so many millions of people's lives now through now the content you produce, but also all of the research that you've done firsthand. So thank you so much for doing the work that you thank you for illuminating so many of these subjects to me today. I actually said a message to my team before saying that I've had lots of conversations about nutrition and stuff, but the primary research you've done and the research you're continuing to do is so much of it's completely new to me. And that's quite hard when I sit here doing this every day. So it's been an absolute joy speaking to you and also not just from the information standpoint, but from the broader philosophical idea of how one should approach their life and how one can approach their life has been incredibly inspiring.

2:10:02So thank you. Thank you. It's been real pleasure to talk about so many things I'm passionate about. We shall do it again sometime. Thank you.

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