Dr. Federica Amati: Navigating Food Choices For Fat Loss & Living Longer (E299)

0:00Watch it early on the High Performance App. Available now, Roman Kemp, the broadcaster, opens up a powerful conversation on success and mental health. I think what's key here is as well, a lot of it is aimed at living longer, living healthier, but actually it's also about feeling better today. We see this in the UK with soaring rates of dental decay. We're the country that has the highest number of children put under general anaesthetic to remove rotting teeth under the age of seven. Changing your diet at any age improves your health and your longevity. That's the voice of nutritionist and medical scientist, Dr.

0:41Fede Amati, who joins us on today's show. I'm Jay Comfrey. And like so many people, I'm just trying to get the most I can out of life, which I guess is why I'm using the years I've spent in broadcasting to pick the brains of some of the most incredible people in the world. And in today's episode, learn about the things that you can do and change fundamentally around your diet to get you closer to high performance. And I'm Damien Hughes. I've spent my life immersed in the world of high performance, seeking to understand it. I've been lucky enough to work with professional sports teams all over the world, including the Scotland Mugby Union, as well as the England National Football Team, and leading business people to help them understand how they can create cultures that get the best out of themselves and others.

1:25So let's tell you a bit about Fede then. She's head nutritionist and head of science communications at Zoe, which is a company focused on personalized nutrition based on scientific evidence. She's also the author of two bestselling books on nutrition, regularly contributes to newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian and The FT. And my real passion when it comes to Fede is that as a doctor, she's not just looking to get famous by talking about the latest hacks or the latest fads, Damien. Her advice for us is rooted in science, which is important. but it's also adoptable, which I think for both of us really kind of works, doesn't it?

2:02100 % Jake. I think you can often tell an expert because they can take complex topics and make them understandable, accessible and practical. And FedAid does exactly that. I mean, I was fascinated by the description she offered about how the first thousand days are so important for a child's development. But like you say, most of all, I love the practical advice about how we can all eat better today with a view to setting ourselves up for a better tomorrow. Absolutely. Look, expect to come away from this episode feeling armed and prepared to make small changes to your diet that will have fundamental changes to your health as we welcome Dr Federica Amati to High Performance.

2:47Well, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. It's nice to have you with us. your new book, Everybody Should Know This, is brilliant. I read the whole thing on a journey yesterday and I loved it. But there's so much information in there. So it's called Everybody Should Know This. Where should we start with what the thing is that you feel everybody should know? So I think, I guess the core message is that food is our biggest ally if we want to look after our health. And what I try to do in the book is unpick how that relationship with food and what food is made up of and how it interacts with our bodies, how the journey through life as we age, as we grow, as we change, means that there are some, you know, slight nuances to the importance of food and what kind of behaviors we need to foster and grow around food and how we feed ourselves depending on what life stage we're at.

3:43So hopefully, the point of the book is that you come away feeling that actually food can be a really helpful tool because there's so much fear around food now. It's, you know, most people are a bit scared of eating. They're not really sure what they should eat or who to listen to for advice. Or, you know, we don't even get to the point of helping people understand why it's important. So that's what my real goal with this book was to try and, it was quite ambitious to get like the whole life course in one book. And so it feels like a lot. But it's let's get the foundation, like let's get the basics out, understand changing physiology, understand growth, understand how food impacts our metabolism, what is our metabolism, all these things.

4:26And then with that bit of understanding, that bit of knowledge, hopefully it becomes a lot clearer why food plays such an important role. And why if we embrace that, we actually have this incredibly powerful tool to help ourselves thrive. And I think what's key here is as well, a lot of it is aimed at living longer, living healthier. But actually, it's also about feeling better today. So having a better time with your energy levels and your mood, and feeling better physically, day by day as well.

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5:44You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it? And that's where Opera Air comes in. It's a lightweight, fast, secure browser built not just for productivity, but for your well-being.

6:23With Opera Air, mindfulness is built right in. You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations, and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax and even spark creativity while you browse. Well, the good news is that if you're whatever age you are enjoying this episode, we will be bringing in the food that Dr. Fede recommends that you go for all the way from when you are trying to conceive to what was described in the book as sniper alley. and we will go through, I know it wasn't your phrase, but we will go through why later in life, that period of your life is known as sniper rally, the risks that lie there and also, crucially, the food that you can be eating to try and change the way you're living and the way you're feeling at that point.

7:13But before we move on, can I just talk very quickly about overwhelm and the sort of confusion around all this? Because I was thinking yesterday, what are the things that I think about when I think about trying to eat properly? I think about the macros because everyone tells me I should. I count calories, I try and go high protein, I try and go low calorie, then I try intermittent fasting, then I try to go carbohydrate free. So how do we start this conversation talking about the fundamentals of food so that we can kind of cut through the confusion that is out there at the moment? How do we do that for people?

7:42Yeah, really good question. And I think the key there is that everything you've just described, I would say to you, what was your goal in making those changes like what was the actual purpose why did you decide to go low carb why do you decide to really hyper focus on macros we don't eat macros we eat food right so why do we talk about that a lot why do every time i see a personal trainer or a fitness expert they talk about yeah get your macros right at the risk of sounding like a really cynical person at the end of the day some of these are just tools to market a specific thing that they're selling my primary endpoint is nutritional education.

8:18That is like my absolute why. And the reason why macros and calorie counting and carbohydrate reduction and high protein have all garnered so much interest and have, you know, cult-like following, to be honest, is because they are promised to be silver bullets. It's like, if you do this, you will get this. And sometimes the goal they're setting you is not even really your goal. So like, I ask you, what was your purpose for going high protein? What were you doing there? Well, my stuff is always the same. More muscle, less fat, more energy, better health, longevity. Yeah. So all those things. And I bet almost everyone listening or watching this conversation is thinking those are the things I want.

9:00And so like, when you think of those as your goals, protein is not the thing that's going to deliver all of those, right? So I think Sometimes when it's a very simple, very restrictive thing, it's a red flag. When someone says to you, like, as long as you add coconut oil to your coffee, you're going to feel like you're a new person. It's like, well, that's just not true. And it can't be true. But I believe that if we actually help people to understand the why, how our bodies work, and explain that the body of evidence that we have on nutrition is extremely strong. So often people who aren't in the nutrition research space will say, yeah, but you know, the science is just, it's a bit wishy-washy, isn't it?

9:42A bit hazy. It's like, it really isn't. There are thousands of studies looking at nutrition, intervention studies, long-term studies, looking at decades and hundreds of thousands of people, lots of ways of chopping the data up. And the evidence is super clear and it's kind of not confusing. So sometimes, actually, my detractors on this book are really funny. You know, when you look at the negative reviews, It's like, I should just keep spanging on about the Mediterranean diet. I'm like, because the evidence we have, which is really strong and very, very unlikely to do a 180 anytime soon, points towards a Mediterranean dietary pattern.

10:17So my background is in medical science and public health. I came to nutrition last. So it was a very long journey in that first I was interested in pharmacology, endocrinology, so hormones, and then segued to public health. and medical science, so research. And I was like, well, clearly from all the work I'd done across those spheres, nutrition is the best tool we have to actually deliver change and to improve health. From where I'm standing, after the pandemic, there was a massive renewed interest in taking care of ourselves, understanding how to make sure we don't get sick, which is a great thing, by the way.

10:55Of course, it's great to see that. But it opened a space for people to jump in and sell you a product, sell you a service to help you answer that quest for better health, right? And so it's become so noisy and people who have never trained in nutrition in any way, shape or form have jumped in. So it's one of those things where like, I know because I eat and this worked for me. And this N of 1 is like the worst possible way to approach health because we're all different. We're at different stages of life. We have different backgrounds. we have different contexts right so when n of one tells you this really works for me and has millions of followers you should try the same it's so dangerous but that's where we are right now so like cutting through the noise with social media with evidence always referencing really good data really good studies for those who want to read more is a way of doing it um but really with the book what i wanted to do was deliver some of that core foundational knowledge of physiology of like how our body works, what happens when something does go wrong, so that you can take it away and think to yourself, does this make sense in the context of what I know about the body?

12:06Because then you can start to unpick some of these highly restrictive diets. And if you know a little bit about homeostasis now, and how our body likes to maintain a balance, you'll know that severely restricting your calories is not going to work for very long, because your body is going to fight you to make you eat more again because you're in a calorie deficit. So then you start to think, okay, so it's not going to be sustainable in the long term. Now, diet culture means that a lot of people want to do fast fixes for like three months and then go back to what they were doing. And listen, it doesn't work in the long term.

12:39We know that people who have yo-yo dieting habits tend to have poorer health and actually tend to be heavier at the end of their lives compared to those who just have a constant dietary pattern. but if you're going into something for that short-term goal and you're not actually interested in the long-term fact that's your choice right everyone has their own choice why calorie restriction for example would give you poorer health because everything tells me that the thinner i am the healthier i am gosh yeah yes i think when we were we are moving away from that now i think the narrative is changing to actually the more metabolically strong you are the better So it's not even just about being super strong, like built.

13:20So our metabolism is what keeps our energy balanced, essentially. So it's how we use energy, but it's also how we store energy and nutrients, not just like sugar and glucose and energy. It's also proteins, it's nutrients, it's fats, right? All of these things form part of how we build our bodies, how our bodies react to when you need to run away or when you need to sleep or when you're tired. So our metabolism is like the central engine that keeps everything going. And to keep that metabolism healthy and happy, the parts of the body need to work for it. So if you have very low muscle mass, and this can be low muscle mass and low body mass.

14:04So there's this body shape that is called the skinny fat, where you're actually fairly slim, and you have low muscle mass and you have relatively low fat mass compared to like everyone else, but actually on your body, the majority of your mass comes from fat mass, not muscle mass, and you're still slim. Metabolically, you're very unhealthy, but you might look super slim on the outside, right? And there's a whole subsection of the population globally that has this phenotype, this type of outcome, like physical appearance, and very high risk of type 2 diabetes because your metabolic health is what keeps the balance for your blood sugar, your blood fats.

14:44And when we think about what does metabolic disease look like, we think of type 2 diabetes, we think of obesity, and now more and more cancer is considered a metabolic disease. They're all the biggest killers. Heart disease is a metabolic disease. And it's because when our body is not able to balance blood sugar appropriately, blood fats appropriately, these things hang around our blood vessels and that has a negative impact on our health. So going back to the engine, if your engine has, you know, rusty parts and the cogs at the farther end aren't really working and there's no, I'm not very good at cars, but there's no like, my husband loves cars, and there's no, the right parts to like store the fuel and the oil and the engine are not working properly, very quickly, you're not going to go very far in this car, right?

15:37It's very similar. So when we think about metabolic health, we think about someone who is metabolically flexible, which basically means that if you go out and you have an ice cream sundae with marshmallows on top, and so you get this flood of sugar and fat into your body, your metabolism is flexible, it very quickly deals with the sugar and the fat, stores it away, removes it from your bloodstream, and actually, you're fine. It doesn't make you feel bad. It doesn't have an impact on your function, your concentration, etc. That is like what most children are like, right? Their metabolic health is good.

16:12If you're metabolically flexible, you can go for like a day where you don't really have a proper meal because you're really busy, but you don't like collapse on the floor. So you don't suddenly pass out or go into hypoglycemia or find yourself really struggling to function. So it goes both ways. And when we think about us as evolved beings, you can imagine that when we were foragers, this metabolic flexibility was super important because we'd be hunting or foraging for hours on end with no access to any food. And then when we did get the food, the berries, the honey, whatever we were having, and it was primarily berries, honey, and roots, it was not primarily animals, to be clear on that, we would eat that in quantity.

16:56And our bodies were very quick at storing it for later so that we would be able to then use that storage, that stored energy and the fats, which then also convert into energy as quickly as possible when we're then foraging again. So it makes sense from that perspective and that metabolic flexibility is what we want to maintain. And to do that, we need to have the body that can store things effectively. And I think what's become very clear now is that we don't just store energy as fat, right? Like there's lots of ways that insulin, which is the hormone that's released when we have these meals, it's released into the blood to basically package up, tell the liver to like package these things up and then store them away into the right tissues.

17:39But it's not just fat. We store a lot of our energy in our muscle mass. So our muscle tissues are like cupboards. and when there's an excess of energy where we're like maybe you know i've eaten something just before i came here and actually i'm now sitting down so my body's like right we're not actually using that much right now let's store it in her muscles because it's much quicker to unlock that cupboard when i then walk out of the studio and take myself to my next meeting it's much easier to unlock the muscles the muscle like cupboard let the sugar out to help me move as opposed to the fat storage is like a longer term.

18:16So fat storage is more long term. But you can imagine if you're somebody who doesn't have much muscle mass, which is what happens with age as well, you don't have much of the muscle cupboards to do that with. And so you either store more as fat, but as we age, insulin starts to be less effective as the key to open these storage cupboards. And so what ends up happening is that actually your blood sugar just stays a bit too high, and slowly you start to see that go up. And actually what happens is that when you do need energy released because you haven't eaten recently, you don't have as much available to you as effectively.

18:52And so that you can feel quite weak when you don't eat. In simple terms, metabolic health means that we can function very well at a steady level without too much need to constantly control our food, essentially. But it's really this energy system that we have. And we need to look after it. So, you know like the old saying that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Yeah. What's the first step that anyone listening to or watching this can take to get that better metabolic health? So for better metabolic health, I think the simplest thing we can do is to go back to eating whole foods, primarily whole foods.

19:35Even if we just take a very simplistic view of like evolutionarily we have evolved to eat whole foods, our bodies just aren't equipped to be consuming very high density foods very quickly. That's just not what our bodies are for. So if you even look at the physiology of how our gut is structured, it's designed to solely absorb nutrients from a small intestine and then carry on to the gut, to the large intestine, where we have such a massive surface area in our intestine compared to other animals because we literally co-evolved with our gut microbiome to give them the space to do what they do in there.

20:13So that's the simplest thing. It's like open your cupboards, open your fridge, or just take a look at what you're eating in the week and notice how many of the foods that you're eating are actually whole foods. So like as they would grow, or even for animal foods, right? Is that chicken breast as you would see it if you cut a chicken open? Or are you eating food products? Would you mind giving us some examples of some foods where people are making pretty common mistakes, thinking that they're doing the right thing, but actually this is dense food rather than whole food that they're eating at this point.

20:46I mean, breakfast cereals are like the classic example of, they're nowhere near a whole food, they don't look like food, breakfast cereals. And I'm not actually demonising breakfast cereals. I think that they can be part of a breakfast. But if your entire breakfast relies on just breakfast cereal, you haven't had any whole food there. like you've just had a food product, which is very often high in sugar, especially if they're children's cereals, and isn't going to be helping you reach that metabolic health goal, basically. So that's like a classic example. There's this really beautiful study that was done, I think, just over a year ago.

21:21And they collated data from 195 countries. I mean, I don't know how long it took them to do this, by the way, because it's wild. And they looked at all the dietary patterns in these countries and health outcomes. And they managed to actually break down and identify the food groups that were contributing to the most death and disease globally. By the way, poor diet is the number one risk factor for ill health now. It's overtaken smoking. So it's the thing we need to really look at. What they found was actually that it was a diet low in foods that was contributing to more death and disease than a diet high in certain foods.

21:58So if you look at this table, right at the bottom, you see diet high in processed meat kind of contributes to death diet high in red meat contributes to death but it's this big compared to the top of the funnel diet low in whole grains right so we need to start thinking about what foods are we missing yeah so what are we not eating it's not about cutting out it's about adding exactly so it's like what are we not eating that's keeping us that would keep us alive what are we not eating that would keep us alive and the things that we're not eating are whole grains. So would you tell us then, what are these whole grains?

22:32So it's things like buckwheat, spelt, palled barley, quinoa. Quinoa's got the best PR, so we all know that one. Steel-cut oats are another good example. And then there's some slightly rarer ones like frike, for example, that are found in East Africa. So there's whole grains all over the world. You have different access, but these are the main ones. And we can access these whole grains in the supermarket. but they're just not advertised and they're not marketed. So you have to kind of find your way to the middle aisle and have a proper look at the lower shelves because they aren't being sold to us in the same way that, you know, ready meals or crisps or sweets or biscuits.

23:15I mean, the biscuit aisle, I'm always shocked when I go into supermarkets at just how many types of biscuit we can be sold. Can I ask why these whole grains are at the top of this chart then for longevity? Yes. I mean, so whole grains have a host of beneficial effects. They are high in fiber, and fiber is the most underrated part of our food. So 95 % of UK and US adults are deficient in fiber. So they don't get to the minimum or the dietary recommendation of 30 grams a day. And what does that give us fiber? So fiber is important for two main things. The first one is, well, three. The first one is, is that it basically slows that transit time.

23:56So we were talking about the physiology of how we eat. So when you eat a high fiber meal, your stomach takes a bit longer to empty because fibers are, you know, they get a bit thick and gloopy and you can't, it doesn't just swish through. Like the stomach needs to turn it up a bit and get it through and then it will come slowly into the small intestine. And when you get to the small intestine, that's where the majority of glucose is absorbed. So sugars and fats are absorbed in the small intestine and protein. but with fiber it all goes just a bit slower it gives it a bit more time and essentially that helps the metabolism to get those nutrients at good pace not too fast and to send them to the liver does its job liver is amazing a central metabolic organ like unbelievable that what it does it's it's like a mini alien inside us right so it takes these nutrients packages them up into the right box and sends them out like a central post office to the right tissues with the right label for what we need.

24:49And it just allows that whole process to happen at a nice pace where it can be done properly. And when you're eating foods high in fiber, some of the fats, some of the sugar never do get absorbed. So it reduces the amount of fat and sugar that you actually get from your food, which for the majority of the UK population is a good thing because we are all tending towards being overweight or having obesity. So that continues down. And then when it gets to the gut, and also some constituents of the fibers, it's important to say, they have a direct impact on cholesterol levels. So a high fiber diet is directly related to good heart health, reduces your cholesterol levels and your blood pressure.

25:37We go further down into the gut. So as I said earlier, like massive surface area, loads of veli, like finger-like projections all over the gut surface. It's like, you know, there's lots of these estimations. If you stretched it all out, it would be like bigger than a football pitch, all this stuff. I actually don't know if it's even bigger than that. So got this huge surface area covered, completely covered in trillions of microorganisms, tiny, tiny microbes. And it's not just bacteria, it's viruses, It's parasites. It's all sorts of stuff. Fungi just thriving, having a party in there. And that is literally its own ecosystem.

26:19So the microbes that live in your gut create an environment in your gut that affects all sorts of stuff. So fiber is the primary fuel for these microbes. Now, when I say fiber is the primary fuel for the microbes we evolved with to survive. So the good guys that keep us alive, that then communicate with our immune system. So you may have heard this stat where 70 to 80 % of our immune system is just outside our gut. You might have heard that before. What that refers to is that because this huge surface area of the gut actually comes into direct contact with external sources, so food, but also like even the air we breathe and then swallow, that all goes down to the gut.

27:04And the excretion products from when we don't need hormones anymore, when we've eaten something, we've done what we need with it, it goes back into the gut. So all of this stuff is in the gut. And the immune system, of course, is primed and ready right outside the gut wall to catch anything that shouldn't be coming through. So that is why the reason, like the immune system is really all over. We have it on our skin. Like in the immune system, there's not one central organ. It's found all over the body. but 70 to 80 % of the cells accumulate around the gut at any one time because they're just waiting to see what comes through.

27:41Is it good? Is it bad? Am I worried? And if we don't keep that gut microbiome happy and we don't feed the good guys with the fiber, it's not just that nothing happens, right? Other microbes that do thrive off of a high-fat diet, or carnitine, which is one of the proteins found in red meat, If that's the majority of your diet, then the fiber-loving guys who want lentils are going to die because you haven't fed them. And the guys who absolutely love a bit of carnitine and a bit of fat will thrive. So you change that ecosystem completely. Oh, my goodness. And that ecosystem then not only communicates with your immune system, it also affects this gut-brain connection.

28:24So you have the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system, which is the second brain, that directly communicates with the gut microbiome all the time. So you can, it's like, you know, it's like when we say the rainforest is being depleted and it's going to affect the entire world's climate. That is the gut. So when you touch the gut or when you completely change that ecosystem and disrupt it, it doesn't just impact the localized area. You don't just get constipation, which, by the way, is crab. And oh, gosh, no, can't do that. It isn't crab, that's the problem. You don't just get constipation, which is, by the way, really a horrible thing to live with.

29:01And nobody wants that. It's not just that. It's much wider. It affects the entire body. And so what is fiber? Fiber is the primary source for these good guys to thrive. And it's the thing we're most deficient in, in our diet. So you mentioned earlier the protein thing. High protein, high protein. Nobody's protein deficient. Like protein deficiency in the UK is almost unheard of. You know, unless you're chronically undernourished or you have a condition which means you can't absorb nutrients. So these are medical conditions. And of course, they require separate sort of medical intervention. There is no protein deficiency in the UK.

29:43And we're all here like, I've worked with people who come to me in clinic and they say, yes, it might. And there's some really good personal trainers out there, so it's just one example. But my personal trainer told me, I need to get 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. I was like, why? And this poor guy, he was very overweight. And that's what he was really struggling with. And so for him to get 2.2 grams of kilograms of body weight of protein, he was having to eat an enormous amount. He couldn't get it through food because it was like, by the way, you have to get this much protein, but you're also on a calorie deficit because you need to lose weight.

30:22So then it comes down to shakes. So then he was having shakes and bars and he was feeling awful. And I just, like, people, come on. Like, we need to think, right? We need to use our brains. So that's what fiber does. And whole grains also give us that. We can't really eat whole grains for breakfast though, right? Yeah. Still cut oats, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking of like lentils and pulses at breakfast. That's pulses, yeah. That's a different food group. So if we want to really get some fibre in and we want to make it easy for people, like tomorrow, what could be the breakfast, lunch and dinner that they go for?

30:58For fibre? Okay, so high fibre. So breakfast could be steel-cut oats. Not rolled oats? Listen, rolled oats are still high in fibre. They're just, if I'm being ideal here, steel-cut oats are the whole grain. They have more fibre. They have more of the healthy poly and monounsaturated fatty acids. They have more of the plant protein, which for longevity, if you're looking to get the best quality protein, plant proteins are clearly the best choice. Again, unequivocally. Longest living populations, high plant protein, not a high animal protein intake. And so, yeah. But rolled oats are much easier to find, and they're also quicker to cook.

31:38So if that's what you're going for, fine. What would you have with them? Yeah, and I just wanted to caveat that with not the flavoured quick cook oats, then we've come off a bit off wagon. They're actually fairly low in fibre and have lots of added stuff. So try to stick to the unflavoured jumbo rolled, right? And cook those up. So get some mixed seeds from your supermarket. Sprinkle those on top. And then if you want to, you can chop some fruit up. So whether you have berries, berries are amazing. They can be expensive. Frozen berries are great. There's no need to buy like the delicious but seven pound punnet of like M &S blueberries.

32:15What are berries doing for us? So berries are very high in fiber, especially raspberries, blackberries. They're really good. And they have very high concentration of something called polyphenols, which are a colorful chemical that plants make that give them the vibrant colors, which in our bodies do two things. They reduce inflammation. So the antioxidants is the old word. And they also feed our gut microbes in a different way to the fiber. So polyphenols have a different effect on our gut microbiome compared to fiber. So if you have a high fiber, high polyphenol food, your gut microbes are like, hey, having a party.

32:50And they're really happy. So that's why berries are such a good option. And frozen berries, the polyphenols are actually often kept fresher for longer in that context, in the frozen. So good to have. What about that fear that I've had sometimes, and I see it again chucked around on social media and other places, that, oh, don't eat too much fruit. loads of sugar yeah don't need too many berries you'll have a sugar spike then you'll have a crash and you'll be tired like yeah that's a that's a way that a lot of people think and i've been it is and it's it's a current thing like there's a lot of fruit demonization i've even seen you know modern fruits are not real fruit so all of our food we have farmed it to look what it does like what it does now the the apples and the bananas and everything but that's not a problem It's just farming practice to improve our access to food.

33:40So fruit itself, we go back to that list of foods that impact diet low in fruits is directly underneath diet low in whole grains, right? So not eating fruit for cause of death and disease. So not eating fruit is negatively impacting health globally. So this idea that like fruit is going to spike your blood sugar and you shouldn't have too much. First of all, fruit does have sugar in it. It's great for energy. So, you know, if you want the ideal pre-workout, have some fruit. Like, have a piece of fruit, and you're going to have available energy straight away and fiber for your gut microbes and polyphenols to help aid your recovery.

34:21So it's a perfect package, right? This fear of, like, sugar spiking from whole fruit is especially berries. Berries are some of the lowest glycemic index, So the lowest sugar-containing fruits. Why are we worried? We shouldn't even be worried about this at all. I think where the confusion arises is that when we think about fruit, some people, and food marketing hasn't helped with this, will reach for a fruit juice. Fruit juice does not have the fiber that you would have in a whole fruit. Even smoothies, so like the shop-bought smoothies, often don't have because they're super, super blended. and a lot of the larger fiber is removed to give that consistency to the smoothie when you drink it.

35:06And when you look at what's in a smoothie, often it's like a banana, an apple, like a handful of strawberries. Try to sit down and eat those whole in the same time that you can drink a smoothie. You're not going to be able to do it. Because we're going back to this idea of like, we've evolved to absorb these foods at a certain pace. We should not be drinking them because that directly influences how your metabolism is going to respond and not in a helpful way. So when we're thinking about fruit, whole fruit eaten whole or like chopped into a fruit salad. Now, I don't want to scare people from their like at-home made fruit smoothies.

35:44It's not that you can never have one again, but it's always preferable to have the whole fruit. And I will caveat that again for children and older people. So children, smoothies are often an amazing way to get a lot of nutrients packed into one thing for them. And if it's a homemade smoothie and you've put nuts in there, unless they're allergic. What do nuts do? Because we do a smoothie for our kids in the morning. And it is a banana, some strawberries or raspberries, and then some apple juice to kind of bring a bit of the liquid. Yeah. I'm imagining the apple juice is a problem. Yeah, it's added sugar.

36:18So, yes and no. Like, I don't want to, you know, with children, as I said, often they're way more active than we are. they have a higher energy requirement. But I would challenge you and say, instead of the apple juice, put kefir in. Right. So kefir is a fermented milk. It's like a yogurt, but it's more liquid. And it's got way more helpful probiotics. So these friendly bugs that will go into our gut microbiome and join the party in a good way. And you're actually just giving them one of the best probiotics we have in the world is like fermented foods. So there's just ways of tweaking the recipe to make it more nutritious.

37:01Added sugar in a diet is a huge problem. And I would say especially for children. So our children have so much added sugar in their diet. And we see this in the UK with soaring rates of dental decay. We're the country that has the highest number of children put under general anaesthetic to remove rotting teeth under the age of seven. Get away? Really? That's disgusting. It's really bad, right? Now, the government's talking about doing tooth brushing in schools to help kids make sure they're brushing properly. And of course, that will help. But the primary driver of the decay is the sugar in the food.

37:39So the tooth brushing is supposed to prevent that. But we have to change this as well. So, you know, obviously, the DASI report came out yesterday and there's lots of things about what needs to happen for the NHS. The DASI report, it was commissioned to basically look at what's wrong with the NHS at the moment. And it was published yesterday, and it had a long laundry list of issues that the NHS is facing, and how can we help to put things in place to avoid the NHS collapsing, essentially. And the government's announced today that they're going to bring in a ban on all junk food adverts on TV before 9 o 'clock, which is like a step, right?

38:18But when we think about the way that the food environment is now, food companies are not held to any account for adding sugar to children's food. So children's yogurts are some of the highest sugar foods that we have on the entire market. Children's cereals are very high in sugar. You know, all these foods that are directly marketed at children, flapjacks. I mean, some brands that really market themselves as being healthy or organic or have enormous amounts of added sugar. I hate this especially because it's really duplicitous because they're marketing it to kids, so your kids go, please, please, I really want that.

38:55Yeah. They're making us feel as parents that it's healthy by putting various words on there. Exactly, yeah. And it's like, it's the perfect storm. And so therefore you can't criticize anyone who's been buying their kid a yogurt thinking my kids had a yogurt before school without realising the teaspoons of refined sugar that's in there. And you've just hit the nail on the head because if we rewind the clock 10 years and you went to the children's food aisle, there was none. There was not really much choice. There was maybe some of the old school pots and maybe some baby rice. You go there now and there's a laundry list of these pouches, snacky things, like puffy things, all these things.

39:35And they are directly marketed at parents' fears. ideal for weaning, great for finger food. Helps to teach self-feeding, right? These are all marketing claims. There's no evidence to support this for this food. There's like a word you use there that I think is really significant, that this is fearful. You know, we've sat down with this fancy weekend and it's scary. And I think what I would like this conversation to pivot now from that point is to go, we don't want anyone listening to this to be frightened. No, exactly. We want to be hopeful. Yes. And as I think they said to Princess Leia on Star Wars, you are our only hope, so make this a hopeful conversation for us.

40:17So I think being aware, just as long as you realise this, as long as you realise that front of pack marketing on all foods that you see that are packaged, it's marketing to make you buy something. So when we realise that the food industry is a business, it's not public health, it's not trying to look after our health, It's selling us products to make money. So there's no point saying, oh my God, they're so bad. It's like, well, no, they're just a business. They're just trying to make money, like everyone else, right? So when we realize that, actually, we can say, okay, let me just take a step back.

40:53Why am I drawn to this product? Is it because the front of pack is basically telling me to buy it? Do I need it? And suddenly you start having more agency over the choices that you make, right? Now, the really great news is that there's beautiful evidence to show that changing your diet at any age improves your health and your longevity. So one of the most influential studies on this was from Professor John Mather's group, where they did this really great analysis. And they sort of looked at if the average UK adult aged 40 went from like the standard Western diet in the UK, which is not great.

41:32a lot of ready meals, a lot of ultra-pracest foods and convenience meals, right? And pivoted to just the Eat Well plate, which is not, we've all seen the Eat Well plate. It's not like super inspiring. It's not that great. But it's to start, you add life years, but like straight away. So age 40. I was going to ask you, in what sort of time scale? So the way that it's done is essentially saying, because it's a long-term outcome, so it's a modeling study, right? So they're basically saying, if you go from this diet to this diet aged 40, then you're expected to live this many more years. So it's assuming that you make that change at that age and maintain it.

42:13Yeah, sorry, I was clumsy on my question. What I meant was how fast does the effect take hold of changing it? So when we look at different types of studies that are intervention studies, so where you change the diet and you measure outcome, depending on the outcome, you see change, for example, in gut microbiome within 48 hours. Okay, so that's quick. It's like a quick intervention. With studies in, there's a really beautiful study that was in older people over the age of 70 in nursing homes. They gave them a Mediterranean dietary intervention. And then three months was the timeline. Within three months, they reduced all their markers of frailty and improved their cognitive ability.

42:51Now, frailty is an umbrella term for what happens as we age, when we lose that metabolic flexibility, our immune system flexibility. So when people start getting a bit more ill overall, they become more frail. And the problem with frailty is that a simple cold can make you very sick, and then you might not recover your independence. And functional independence is really the outcome we're looking for with frailty. It's like we want people to be able to do the things they love for as long as possible. So that study, within three months, all markers of frailty improved, and cognitive ability, so how they could recall and memory tests, all this sort of thing.

43:29with just dietary intervention. There's hundreds of studies where they've done an intervention, pregnant women. What happens if you change their diet and then you follow them up? The women who have a dietary intervention that improves the dietary quality have better health outcomes for the pregnancy, so reduction in risk in things like gestational diabetes or preeclampsia, which can be very life-threatening, and the child's health outcome. So long-term, one of the reviews I published was looking at infant body composition and long-term health outcomes. And the majority of the factors that influenced infant body composition are maternal diet.

44:06So it's like, you can make a huge difference to your own health, depending on what you're measuring in a couple of days. So our own, at Zoe, we did our own randomized clinical trial. 16 weeks, right? We gave half the people Zoe, gave kit, membership, the full thing, with no extra special treatment, just that. And then the second group got like standard advice that you would get from your GP and a video by Professor Sarah Berry explaining that advice. So a bit more than you get from your GP. And after 16 weeks, which is again, a relatively short time period, right? The group that received Zoe had better outcomes across the board in terms of waist circumference, weight loss, that all the participants were overweight.

44:50So it was helpful for them to lose weight. Their blood markers, their microbiome, so the gut microbiome shifted. All these things happened. And what I love, crucially, is that we also measured how people felt, which is quite unusual in science. We normally look at sort of the bloods and the measurements. We don't actually ask people, by the way, how was that for you? And we do with all our trials. And all of the participants that did Zoe had better mood, better energy, better sleep. I was like, that's amazing. So, and less hunger. So we're putting you on, like, what's a dietary intervention? We're asking you to completely transform your diet.

45:33And then we're asking you, by the way, do you feel good? And they're saying, yeah, I'm less hungry. I've got more energy. My mood's better and I sleep better. Name like one other dietary intervention that is in the mainstream. So like a diet that will do that. Amazing. It's just not a thing, right? So you can have this quick effect. Now, you asked me a question, which is about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So we've done breakfast. Yeah, I'd love to get through, yeah. So for people that think I don't really like oats, is there anything else that we should just try and add to our mornings that would just, maybe something easy and quick?

46:04Because one of my issues, right, like today's a good example, busy day. So I know I didn't have time to get anything ready. So I know if I bought something at the station, it would be crap. Therefore, I've actually had nothing because I feel that's maybe better. So what are the things I could have done? What could I have grabbed out of the cupboard? So you could have made overnight oats in a little jar and brought it with you. Yeah, I know. I am aware of that. But there's a couple of things. What I do when that happens to me is I'll put a couple of eggs to boil. I'll grab a handful of nuts and an apple.

46:33It's not necessarily a cohesive meal, right? Two eggs, a handful of almonds or walnuts and an apple. But in that, it's carryable, it's easy, and it has fibre, it has protein, It has polyphenols. It has vitamins. It has essential nutrients. Easy. That's probably the easiest. Then the other things that we can look at are, actually, if you have a little bit of time at home and you can make something quickly, baked beans, right? They're technically on ultra-processed food. They have added sugar. All these things are true. One of the examples that when we have UPF arguments, everyone's like, what about baked beans?

47:13It's like, well, if we lived in a world where baked beans was our highest consumption of ultra-processed foods, we wouldn't be having a problem because there's beans in there. They are high in fiber. They are high in protein. They're very good for us. They're satiating. So if the fastest way for you to get a healthy breakfast is to have some baked beans on some granary toast with an egg on top with maybe some chopped tomato, whatever, grab that and go, that's actually a good option. And then you can start to expand that out to different beans. Maybe you try chickpeas. Maybe you like avocado on toast.

47:46Maybe, you know, the British spin on avocado on toast, which I actually really enjoy, is peas. Peas are the humble pea, right? Yeah. Frozen peas. High in protein, high in fiber. Yeah. Cook them up. Squish them onto your toast. Extra virgin olive oil. Bit of salt. Bit of feta. Bit of feta. Bit of mint. Oh, Damien. Yeah, so good. I've not had crushed peas and feta before. It doesn't have to be... Not part of your metropolitan elite, you know? What about fruit, yogurt and granola? Yeah, well, so I would say that another really good one is to create a yogurt bowl. Great opportunity for your kids as well.

48:23Natural yogurt, just bog standard natural yogurt, BioLive. None of this like flavored or high protein, low sugar, low fat. No, just get yogurt, just normal yogurt. It's got live strains in there. So the probiotic strains we talked about. Add a splash of kefir. You've just put way more strains in there. and you've upped other nutrients that are in there. Put some nuts in there, some berries, some chopped apple, whatever's in season. And then I would put some whole nuts. Shop bought granolas. Unfortunately, usually are pretty high in sugar, depending on your ratio. So like some people say, I have granola and yogurt and they've got basically a granola bowl and a splash of yogurt that they smish out.

49:04It's really about the amount. Or make your own granola, which is also super simple. I personally just don't. I just have the nuts, the seeds, the fruit. And then if I'm feeling a bit fancy, I'll stir in a spoon of almond butter because I just love it. And then you've got a high protein, high fiber, high polyphenol and tasty breakfast that will keep you full and actually feeling pretty good. Brilliant. Yeah. Lunch. Lunch. This is invaluable, by the way. It is invaluable, really good. Yeah, lunch depends on the time of year, right? So for lunch, depending on the season, So in the summer, I love a peach, tomato, mozzarella and basil salad.

49:44One of my favorite things to eat. Peaches taste great. Basil's really happy and tomatoes are in season. 10 out of 10. But when we come into winter, I go straight to stews. I love ribollita, which is a very traditional Italian meal, which is basically like a winter stew, let's say. And so I use pearl barley. You can use spelt in it. beans, tomato, soffritto, which is the base that we use for everything, which is basically onions, carrots, celery. And then you can add garlic if you want to. You can have other rosemary goes really well in ribollita. So ribollita is amazing because you can make a big pot of it and essentially put it away and then use it lots of times.

50:27It's so tastes so good. And it's so nourishing, something like that. Or I also find that I'm not I love cooking, but I'm not a long cooker. So like I don't like spending hours on a dish, right? And I am quite time poor in the sense that I always make time to have lunch but it's often not more than 20 minutes, right? So what can I like throw together in under 10 so I can then spend 10 minutes eating it? And for me, it's having those ingredients in your cupboard and your fridge that can help you pull that meal together with very little effort. It's what I refer to as being your own health architect.

51:05So getting to a place where your food environment at home, because that's the one we can control the most, is at home, maybe at your desk, if you have like an office with a kitchen. You can create that environment that you want to see yourself choose from. So for me, it's like I always have lentils and beans in jars or tins ready to go. I always have mixed nuts, mixed seeds. These things are either in the cupboard or they are dry goods or they're in the freezer. In the freezer, I have peas, I have frozen spinach. I have like lots of mixed beans, like edamame and stuff, frozen greens in there. And I always have tinned fish.

51:45So anchovies, mackerel, sprats, underrated. They're really good. See, I wouldn't know what to do with all these beans though, like for lunch. I would just look at a load of tins of beans and go, oh, so you literally, so you can open one up. It's a starting point. And then you can post that. Even if you don't even get a pot out, put it in a bowl, like literally put it in a bowl, add in maybe some greens. Now, if they're frozen, you will need to warm them. But let's say that you've got some greens in your fridge. Chop them up, add them in, right? Then nowadays, you see more of the whole grains in those microwavable pouches.

52:23So you can actually buy svelte ready to microwave, which has been basically parboiled. great actually a really good option if you're not used to cooking grains i tend to have batch cooked barley or spelt in the fridge take a couple of spoons put it into my bowl so i've got some beans i've got some greens i've got some barley or spelt then depending some days i feel like having fish some days i don't put that in the microwave warm it up add the fish if you want or maybe i put like a boiled egg or maybe just none of those things depends how hungry i am what about chicken or do So I don't eat meat.

52:58Right. Personally, my children, my husband, they do. But we are very selective with meat. So I buy high-quality meat once a week. And to buy the high-quality meat, so higher welfare standards for the animals themselves, tastes better, all the above, means that the frequency of buying it goes down because I have to go to the butcher and buy it. And it's also much more expensive, right? Yeah. but it's like a highlight almost of like having this like beautiful chicken or this really gorgeous steak or sometimes it'll be like a really great mince and we'll make meatballs for the kids. So the frequency is because we don't really need to eat more than that.

53:38So that frequency of meat will give my kids enough iron, B12, high quality protein, zinc. Those are kind of the nutrients that are special to meat, if you will. It'll keep, you know, my husband loves, he's British, born and raised, meat and two veg, so he's happy. And then the rest of the time, we tend to have fish or vegetables, mushrooms, beans, like name it, something else, basically. So it's about health, it's about the environment, animal welfare, and actually not making meat the priority of every meal. So it's literally just throwing things together. And the flavors come from the foods. A little bit of seasoning in the sense that not even, I don't use a lot of salt in my cooking.

54:24I use herbs. I use extra virgin olive oil is flavorful. I use lemon juice. I use, sometimes I use apple cider vinegar, because these flavor profiles are more interesting to me than something just being salty or sweet, right? And they are better for us as well. So it tastes good. Like, it tastes delicious. I eat it. I ham happy. Sometimes it's a beautiful pasta dish with broccoli, like pasta, broccoli and anchovies is an absolute combo. And what pasta would you go for? So I go for like a durum wheat Italian pasta. I'm Italian and the quality of pasta for me. So I will spend more money on quality pasta as a priority for where I distribute.

55:06And it just makes such a difference. Actually, nutritionally, they're different too. So when we break down the composition of pastas, a very good quality, slow-dried, durum wheat, bronze-extruded pasta has a very different glycemic index. So how much of that will turn to simple starches and be absorbed as sugar? It has a different protein amount. It's just like a different food. So your quick cook, own brand pasta for zilli that you get from the supermarket for 56p, in terms of what it delivers nutritionally, is very different to a bronze-extruded, it slow dried during wheat pasta. So when we go to the supermarket for things like that, that to me automatically is almost a barrier of entry because it's like, I don't know what I'm looking at.

55:51You've got that heritage, that knowledge, that background. So how could you help somebody like me going to a supermarket and going, all this pasta is overwhelming in choice? Yeah, so I think that's one of my passions. But if you're like, actually, I'm not that bothered by that at this point. I just want to find something that will feed my family. What's more important than the pasta quality is what you're having that with. So I think the way we eat pasta here is often it'll literally be a plate of pasta with nothing else. And pasta is not created to be a lone ingredient. It's created to be an ingredient in a dish.

56:33So, you know, later you can get really into your pasta types. But at first, it's just changing the way we look at it. Yes, it's quick. Yes, it's filling. Yes, it's delicious. But it's a vehicle for vegetables. It's a vehicle for oily fish. It's a vehicle for delicious sauces that pack nutrients. Then we can move to like, okay, actually, I'm going to look. Usually when you see like an Italian brand. So Italy have different rules. This is terrible when I think about it. Italy have different rules for the pasta they produce for Italians compared to the pasta they produce for export. Go on, that's enormous.

57:11How dare they? They keep the good stuff themselves. Pretty much. So the final meal we could talk about is what someone could do for, let's say a busy parent listening to this, a couple of kids, lots going on. What would a great evening meal look like that the whole family can tuck into and the kids can enjoy? Okay, what's a favourite in my household is to have salmon. So we'll get a nice piece of salmon and there's been a lot of fear-mongering about salmon online and it is true that different quality salmon will be different. So let's get a piece of salmon, bake it in the oven alongside some potatoes maybe, some like just chopped skin on potatoes, maybe some sweet potatoes and some leafy greens.

57:50So my kids luckily, I think through multiple exposure actually, through repeated, repeated exposure, both really love kale and cavallonero, just simply steamed and then sauteed, Like, nothing too complex. They just love it. So they'll eat that. We'll eat the same. And I'll add, like, maybe some chopped vegetables as well. It's the classic thing when kids are hungry and they're waiting. It's a really good opportunity to actually put vegetables in front of them. So get the cucumbers, the carrots, the celery, the tomatoes. Get them out. Put them out. Maybe some hummus. You've got your kids eating veg before dinner.

58:24Before dinner because they're hungry. That's a great shout. Because that's when mine starts scrapping around for dinner. And they're like, mummy, I'm hungry. A bag of crisps before dinner. Not now, it's dinner. But the great thing about that is if there's leftover salmon, put it in a Tupperware, put it in the fridge, lunch is sorted the next day. If there's leftover kale, cavallonero, any grains, put it. It's good for tomorrow. So it's like you've got all the elements, and sometimes one of my kids will have loads of salmon that night, and they won't top the potatoes. And then other nights they'll have a teeny, teeny, teeny little bit of salmon and loads of pasta.

58:56And I think what we have to remember about children is if we're offering them a variety of healthy foods, that's our job as parents. We're creating that health architecture for them. Here's your choice. We have to trust them to know what their body needs to eat at that time. So, like, my kids are amazing in that when they're about to come down with something, I know because they'll be like, Mommy, I really want another orange. They ask me for more fruit. And I'm like, oh, no, you're going to get a cold, aren't you? So it's like children, especially young, so I'm talking about children under the age of seven, they naturally respond to their body's cues to eat something or stop eating they will not you try force feed a toddler not a good idea toddlers not hungry they're not eating right or if the toddler is full at the end of a meal they will stop it's actually parental pressure not not ill meaning but just the way we've been raised finish your plate yeah regardless of whether you're full or not, finish what's on your plate.

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1:02:12We're now going to talk about specific foods for specific ages, because I think that is one of the most fascinating parts of your book. You go through from trying to conceive right the way towards being in your 70s and 80s. That's Sniper's Alley. That is Sniper's Alley, and we will get on to Sniper's Alley in a second. The Twilight Zone. I call it the Twilight Zone. Just a bit softer, but yeah, Sniper's Alley, yeah, is how it's been termed. That's more in the 60s, right? So it's when we see this sudden increase in death rates across the population. So typically under that age, it's accidents. It's not really chronic disease that kills people.

1:02:48And then you get to sort of 60, 65, and it starts to go up. And it's called Sniper's Alley because I don't know who made that term up. But it's essentially when somebody will die from a sudden heart attack, or they will develop cancer early. And so it seems out of nowhere. So they seemed healthy, happy, thriving, and then boom. And it's really a symptom of unhealthy habits. So we talked about the compound interest for health, but it's the same with if you have a lifetime of withdrawing from your health account, at some point you're going to hit zero. And so it's called that because of that. I call it the twilight zone because for me it is somewhere where people do tend to die early.

1:03:36And my dad's one of those people. He died at 63. but it's also an opportunity where a lot of people will have their first health scare and they could really pivot to change their lives and change the way that they approach their health. So I think Twilight Zone has more of those both edges, both sides of the coin whereas Sniper's Alley is like definitely just one way. All right, well let's get the food out and we'll go through it. So for people who are watching this on YouTube or elsewhere, they will see we suddenly have an array of food in front of us. For those of you listening, you'll have to imagine all of these gorgeous foodstuffs that have been recommended to us by Dr.

1:04:08Fede. But before we talk about the foods, I'd love to talk about what you describe in your book as the first thousand days. You call it the golden window of opportunity. And you say, I would love us all to think about this time of life differently. So please explain to us the power of the first thousand days. So this is one of my favorite topics. The first thousand days. So when we think about life course nutrition generally, which is the theme of the book and what I've tried to introduce is this idea that actually we evolve through life, we change, we're not stagnant beings. And one of the first steps to being kinder to ourselves is to understand that we are not supposed to react to food in the same way that we did 10 years ago, because we've grown into different people.

1:04:47Now, when we look at it this way, we think, okay, well, then there's different windows where when we change our diet, we can have a big impact on how we feel and our future selves. In the life trajectory, there's a few key windows. But the one that has the biggest long-term impact in terms of, well, in terms of everything, in terms of all aspects, is the first 1 ,000 days. So the first 1 ,000 days relates to the time period between conception and roughly second birthday. And the reason why it's called the golden window of opportunity, and there's theories based on this time window. So the developmental origins of health and disease, Doha theory, is all based on this time.

1:05:30And there's a bit of like flexibility around the length because preconception care, so what actually happens before you're even conceived, influences the quality of the sperm, the quality of the egg, which then in turn influences health of the pregnancy and beyond. But also past the second birthday, actually up to around age three, is when we see that the brain is still forming, like a lot of brain activity, and the gut microbiome in infants starts to stabilize to like an adult type signature by age three. So let's just say three months preconception to like third birthday-ish golden window. So there's this time when I tell you why it's important, it'll be really obvious because it's literally when every cell of your body is laid down, it's built.

1:06:19Every structure in your body, so like, you know, how your gut is formed, your heart, your liver, your bones, everything is the foundations are there in the first 1000 days. So why is nutrition so important in this time? Well, the foundations are laid with the materials we provide. And the blueprint is sort of set by genetics and by the health of the egg and the sperm. But then how we start building that foundation into a person depends on what's available to build with. Now, I don't want this to sound scary because actually, when a woman is pregnant, the body is incredibly efficient at taking what it needs from the mother.

1:07:05So you see this in women who are unfortunately undernourished or can't access food, like the body will literally take calcium from their teeth and use that for the baby's bones. Like it's extremely efficient. So, you know, some women are very worried about morning sickness and not being able to get enough food in. But actually, the general rule is if you're able to look after your nutrition status when you're trying to conceive or when you think you might get pregnant, even if it's by mistake, Like, if you're having sex with a partner and it's unprotected or you're not being, like, super careful, consider yourself in this bracket, basically.

1:07:42If you have good nutritional status, most of the time, around this time, you're setting yourself up for success, even if it's unplanned. And so in this first thousand days in the womb, so our bodies build an entire new organ, the placenta, which doesn't exist apart from a pregnancy. So that requires quite a lot of energy and building blocks. And then, of course, the baby itself is all built cell by cell in the womb with maternal nutrition. And that's why it's so critical in the pregnancy phase. And also pregnancy, so we talked about metabolic health. Pregnancy is the biggest metabolic challenge a woman will ever go through.

1:08:19It is wild, right? So, so many things happen to help sustain the health of the baby. We become more insulin resistant, which, if you remember, that's actually not a good thing in aging. But in pregnancy, we do that to make sure enough blood glucose stays in circulation to get to the baby. So we don't want to take the glucose and the amino acids and the fats and store them. We want to make sure they get to the baby for growth. So we become a bit insulin resistant. And our blood pressure changes. So many things change. All to help this life come to fruition and become a healthy baby, basically. and we also so when we're thinking about pregnancy nutrition it's not just the baby's health it's the maternal health too we have to support women to not only grow this whole new person or sometimes people if you have multiples but also to maintain their own health because it is a huge challenge it's a really big deal physiologically yeah um and then and mentally actually so then we move into like the baby's born and how baby's born is is an important topic we'll skim through that quickly, but essentially delivery, mode of delivery has an impact on microbiome composition.

1:09:31And the reason we kind of, science got to this is because there was a pattern. You could see that babies who are born by cesarean section were at higher risk of developing things like eczema and asthma, so allergic diseases, or that involved the inflammatory response, essentially, and the immune system. And women and babies who are born through the vagina, so like natural birth, sometimes called natural birth. I prefer vaginal delivery because all birth is natural at the end of the day. Essentially, I have a lower risk of these things. They also have like a slightly lower risk of obesity. And why?

1:10:06Like, they've been born the same way, right? But when a baby is born vaginally, the vaginal microbiome in the last few weeks of pregnancy completely remodels itself. During pregnancy, the vaginal microbiome acts as like a shield. it's very very good at keeping out any bacteria because you don't want any infection to reach the cervix or to reach the canal and affect the pregnancy in fact dysbiosis so when the vaginal microbiome is unhappy is one of the first red flags for preterm delivery so if that environment is breached and it's not able to protect the cervix and therefore the womb and the baby, it can be a big problem, right?

1:10:52So the vaginal microbiome remodels itself to be more similar to the maternal gut microbiome, so the gut microbes, so that when the baby comes out, it gets this blueprint of the maternal gut microbiome to populate its own gut. Because when babies are born, they've been in a sack of water, well not water, amniotic fluid, but they're not born with a gut microbiome. So it's a white canvas. And so if you're born vaginally, if anyone's witnessed this, they'll know, like, essentially, you have to go through all of these microbes, and you inhale them, and you swallow them, the baby does. And so there you go, it's been seeded.

1:11:30So the gut microbiome of that baby is now taking the initial, the first bacteria that are going to get in there, and the first microbes comes from that. If you're born through cesarean section, the first microbes you come into contact with are the surgeon, like the doctor's skin microbes, the microbes floating around the air that are in the operating theater, maybe mom's skin microbes, maybe the cotton. It's completely different, completely different blueprint. So where we spoke about the gut microbiome, the gut microbiome is what informs our immune system. In babies, newborns, they have a very primordial immune system that can't do much.

1:12:12And that's why it's so important to vaccinate your children and to make sure they're kept away from situations where they're likely to be exposed to certain types of viruses and bacteria. The initial weeks and months, the immune system has to work quickly to start to learn what it needs to do to keep this baby alive from infection. And the gut microbiome plays a pivotal role. So the gut microbiome trains the immune system to know what's dangerous and what's not, and to make antibodies and to react, including allergies. So when you have a gut microbiome that's modeled on your maternal gut microbiome, it takes a lot of information from that gut microbiome.

1:12:51Okay, you've got, that's good, that's bad, that's fine, we don't need to worry. When your gut microbiome has less exposure to a healthy gut microbiome, essentially, you have a much higher risk of things like eczema, of asthma, and of allergies. Now that just to, I have one, by the way, like handily, one of my kids was born by vaginal delivery and the other one was born by c-section. So I've been there for both. And it's not about scaring people. The differences in gut microbiome between these children and their health risks narrows massively depending on what happens next. So how we feed our babies is critical.

1:13:26We are the country with the lowest breastfeeding rate to six months in the world. No one's worse than us. So we can't do any worse, right? Now, breastfeeding is the best way to ensure that our children, babies especially, get a variety of immune system cells that help protect them, of fibers that help their microbiome to thrive in the right way with the right guys, and to get the balance of nutrients that changes throughout their life. So every breastfeed is different in the sense that every time you feed your baby, the composition of the breast milk changes according to how hungry the baby is, how old they are, whether they have been exposed to viruses.

1:14:04So if I'm a breastfeeding mother and I come into contact with a virus in a lift, within three hours, I have antibodies to that virus to give my baby and my breast milk, right? It is literally the most fascinating machine of defense and feeding and everything. Breastfeeding is hard. I had real trouble with my first. Like, the thing we need to do more of is support women who want to breastfeed and make it possible for them. It will take you eight hours a day to breastfeed in the first few weeks. It's a full-time job. Let that be your full-time job. Like, if you're going to do it, knowledge is power.

1:14:42And we do not have enough education to support women. There's a lot of pressure, you know. Breast is best. Do this. A lot of pressure, but not much education for breastfeeding. There's a ton of education for formula feeding because the formula feeding companies do a very good job of advertising it. And so we're in this place now And of course, if you need to formula feed, you do it. But it's a lot easier to do that. You get a lot more support, right? And actually, we should be in a place where if you can't breastfeed, why don't we have human donor breast milk instead of formula milk? Does that happen anywhere?

1:15:16Yes, of course. Brazil is a really good example. They have an amazing network. So this is really important. There's lots to say about this. There's amazing companies that are creating probiotics that mimic human breast milk. and soon we'll be able to have formula milks that are actually more similar to human breast milk. So I think it's going to move forward. It's going to be great. But I would love for anyone listening to this to come away and think, if your partner, sister, child, someone in your life is wanting to breastfeed their baby, how can you support them? What can you do to help them?

1:15:53Because it takes a village to actually make that happen. And again, like our food culture, we now live in a world where our aunties and grandmas and mums aren't around to actually help us figure out breastfeeding. So these new mums are sitting there trying to figure it out by themselves, right? And then we've got weaning. So weaning is super important. We're still building this human being. The blueprint's down. The bones are formed. The structures are down. But now they're growing at a super rapid pace. The speed of growth in the first few years is insane, right? You've seen it. The rate of growth is like...

1:16:24so what they're eating directly informs how their bodies then grow and change and how their immune system adapts and how their brains evolve and all of these things come into play with nutrition as their real support so weaning is super important we've touched on the variety of ultra processed foods available for weaning now taking it back making sure that you're you're essentially sharing food with your child creating a food environment with them teaching them how to eat. So many parents now, like they follow books or something that tell them that their child must eat at like 11am. So then they're then on this high chair by themselves in no social context for eating.

1:17:05And you put food in front of them, you're like, go on. And they're like, who am I learning from? Like, who am I learning to eat from? Eating is a learnt behaviour. So if you're not eating with your baby, and literally going, like showing them, they don't know what they're doing. You've just put and then they squish it. Really interesting. So yeah, weaning, really important. And then, you know, first few years of life, just get your kids interacting with whole foods, giving them a variety of flavors, introducing them to probiotic foods, natural yogurts, and try to avoid too much added sugar. Let's move on then to a slightly older stage, which is where we've both got children at, which is this kind of like pre-teen, teen stage when there's suddenly a load of pressure to go out and to buy chocolate bars and all these other things.

1:17:49I would love to know what the ultra-processed food is doing to the young people, to our teenagers, to our young kids who just have just a quick bag of crisps a couple of times a week and a few chocolate bars and maybe an energy drink. Yeah, I think the evidence we have is that teenagers and young kids are actually getting about 70 % of their calories from ultra-processed foods. So it's not the odd crisp, the odd bar. It's a regular, everyday majority of their food consumption. That's the problem there. So it's a sliding scale. No one is suggesting that you can have an ultra-processed food-free diet, in our day and age.

1:18:22It's about getting it down to levels that are more similar to, say, Italy, Spain, where it's like 14 % instead of 70%. So it's reduction. What are these ultra-processed foods doing? The evidence that we have is mostly from observational data, so where you can see associations, but there are some good intervention studies that have shown what happens to your brain, what happens to your weight, what happens to your inflammation. So the observational studies clearly show a link. One of the strongest links is between ultra-processed food consumption the more you have, the more likely you are to suffer with mental health disorders.

1:18:53Now, anyone who has preteens or teens, it's a weird time to have that age right now because there's pressure from social media, there's exam pressure, adapting back from online learning to all these things that are coming together. The last thing you need is for the food to be contributing to worse mental health. So for me, that's the biggest red flag. And the second big red flag is that adolescence in general sees another growth spurt. and it also sees things like the beginning of periods for girls, which is a nutritional tax. You lose a lot of iron every cycle. If you have a heavy menstrual breed, it's a lot of iron every cycle.

1:19:28And this is where we start to see a big increase in iron deficiencies or iron insufficiency. And that's really important because it contributes, apart from healthy growth, which is obviously really important, concentration, energy levels, ability to actually function and perform at a time when there's so many exams. If you have low iron status, you're not going to be at your best. And in the UK, 40 to 50 % of females don't have enough iron. So when you're having the majority of your calories from ultra processed foods, you will not be getting the nutrients you need to grow healthily, to improve your mental health support.

1:20:05So it's, yeah, reducing and creating that food environment at home, where at least at home, they have access to the healthy foods and helping them to understand why. So I think often, you know, with adolescents, it's like, you won't be having that drink, that energy drink in my house because I said so. It's like, we'll actually just explain to them what it could do in the long term and why you're trying to help them not have that thing. And saying, yeah, I know that you'll probably have it outside the home, but at least here, I'm not going to let you have it to try and reduce how much you're having.

1:20:37So I think younger people are much more interested in health nowadays. There's less smoking, less drinking. So if we can just engage that conversation and actually say, this advertising is not here to help you, unfortunately, it's a real problem. 15 billion adverts of junk food are made to our young people in the UK every year. We have to equip adolescents with the knowledge to know that this is not going to be helpful. And like, what can they do for themselves, while still understanding that they don't want to, they want to be part of the group, the peer group they're in. So how can they be part of that group, not feel like they're an outcast because their parent will never let them step a foot into a fast food joint, but also making sure that the majority of their food is really supporting their health.

1:21:22Pretty good. Right, time to talk about some food specifics. We've asked you the best food for people in their 20s. What have you come up with? So I think in your 20s, it's just off the back of this adolescence conversation, actually. So adolescents and early 20s, your brain is undergoing a massive restructuring. And it's when you see the last huge shift in brain structure and function. Omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish are really important at this time. They also offer, omega-3 fatty acids are also antioxidant and our gut microbes love them. So when we're thinking about both the gut-brain connection and helping with mood and lowering the risk of things like depression, really helpful.

1:22:06But also just generally having a good quality protein source from tinned fish is cheap too, right? So easy to eat and supporting that transition in brain structure and health and mood. So that's why I chose that. So then 30s, we're talking about a lot of people at this age are independently living and they're starting to form healthy habits for like their future selves. And sometimes trying to conceive, right? Trying to conceive. This humble avocado is high in fiber. So it starts to set that pattern of including high fiber foods in your diet to help you not be fiber deficient. And contains lots of folate, which is folic acid, great for fertility and pregnancy.

1:22:49So just a really nice simple addition to your diet and an example of what other things you should be including. Here we have lentils. So lentils are a legume. and this is when people start to worry about things like decreasing muscle mass because up until the age of 30, it's fairly easy to build muscle mass and then after the age of 30, it starts to get more difficult rather. So why did I pick lentils? They are so high in fiber, so continuing the fiber trend, but they're also really high in protein. So just half a cup of lentils will give you about 17 or 18 grams of protein, which is a really good contribution.

1:23:23Cheap, delicious to make, easy, and will support your health in lots of ways. then here we have a whole grain. This is the humble buckwheat. So this is for in your 50s. Did we go with this one? Yeah, we went for that in your 50s. So in your 50s, we're talking about, you know, trying to reduce the risk of sniper alley here already. Yeah. And so whole grains will help to provide the fibres that are really good for our heart health, but they'll still be really helpful for your gut microbiome, supporting you in feeling full and energised without any, without like too much, there's very little in terms of freely available starch in whole grains.

1:24:00It takes time to absorb the sugars. It's a nice way to, and just so good for you in so many ways. So for, yeah, heart health, metabolic health, and satiety. Are you 49 yet? You're in between the two here. Yeah, I'm just in between the two. So you're having some whole grains and lentils together. Yes, definitely. That's a good combo. That's exactly what I'm doing. And super cheap, super easy to cook. Yeah. Like 10 minutes, literally. Okay. So then we've got some lovely fruit here. And when we're thinking about how to look after our brain, cognitive function, our heart health, again, like heart still is the biggest killer in the world.

1:24:35So we really have to be more aware of how to look after our heart. And high polyphenol fruits, high fiber, looks after our cardiovascular health and reduces the risk of a lot of Alzheimer's is actually due to cardiovascular issues. So the vessels that go to your brain, essentially. So these kinds of colourful fruits are really good to include. And of course, they taste delicious. They're also a good source of fibre. And these are from your older years. You think for people in their 60s, I mean, obviously everyone should eat fruit, but this becomes really important here. So yeah, and actually 60s are still relatively young.

1:25:08But as we start to like 60s, 70s and beyond, the key things that happen is that we start eating less fibre-rich foods for several reasons. One of the things people hardly ever talk about is teeth. Like we tend to lose our teeth. We can't eat hard food. So you start to veer towards like soft biscuits, ready-made meals, and they are low in fiber and low in water. Now, generally speaking, we don't need to worry about water intake simply because we have a very well-attuned system to keep us hydrated. When you're thirsty, you drink. Great. If you're doing lots and lots of sports, then maybe hydration salts can help.

1:25:44But like you have to be sweating quite a lot to need that level. As we get older, when you're dehydrated and you have a low-fibre diet, the first thing that will happen is constipation. When you have a low-fibre diet and you're dehydrated and you don't move as much because you're not as mobile, that constipation can actually become a massive health issue. It causes so many problems, like A &E visits by elderly people for compacted constipation, which sometimes requires surgical intervention, is a huge problem. Fruit is high in water. Put it all to come, bro. Now you can prevent it all now. It's high in water and high in fibre.

1:26:19So you're really giving the gift of not running into that problem. And then we spoke about some of the other stuff about getting a good night's sleep as being a great predictor of your health. Yes. What are the best food sources for that? So the key thing to remember is actually for a good night's sleep is try not to eat too close to your bedtime. So if you can finish your food by 9pm latest, the research we've done at Zoe points to like 9pm being a threshold point. So try and eat earlier if you can. And then if you feel like you really want to up your night's sleep success, tryptophan high food.

1:26:53So tryptophan is fine in bananas. It's fine in dark chocolates. Finish your meal with a bit of that. It's also found in cheese. It's found in fish. Essentially, that will help to make sure that you have a good amount of tryptophan, which is an amino acid that's needed to help with melatonin and all the wonderful chemicals involved in sleep. but try not to eat too close to bedtime. Okay, that's important. And then nobody's making eye contact for this next topic. Sexual health. Improving your sexual health. Often eye contact is the thing that makes it happen in the first place, I think. So this one is very simple, very simple.

1:27:25Extra virgin olive oil or olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil, the prices have gone a bit mental. So I just want to be really clear that olive oil or virgin olive oil, even if it's not extra, is still a really high source of polyphenols, right? So the reason I've got these is because polyphenols help with our vascular health. And actually, sex drive and sexual function are a really good indicator of our vascular health. Because if the blood can't flow effectively to the areas involved... Because I have heard that being impotent or having a low sex drive is often an indicator of other health issues.

1:27:59It absolutely is. So when we think about Viagra, it was designed to be a drug to help with heart conditions. Was it? Yes, that's what it was actually designed for. Then during the trials, this amazing side effect, they were like, money to be made, let's go. But the actual purpose of it was to improve vascular health. And it did with this outcome. And this is true for men and women. Women also need good blood flow to the area for sex to be pleasurable. So high polyphenol foods are really important to maintain that vascular health. And then belly fat, a term that I absolutely detest. But when we're looking to help...

1:28:35Why do you detest that? Because it's like our belly shape shouldn't be something we're trying to fight. And actually, the storage of belly fat in a lot of people can be a result of their life stage. So when we think about menopausal women, storing fat around our midriff is our body's way to try and create more fat cells that can create estrogen for us to support our estrogen levels. So it's actually a very clever physiological adaptation to try and solve for a problem in our estrogen levels. and it's one of the things that women find really hard to deal with. But when you really look at it, it's like, but why is that hard to deal with?

1:29:10And this is because we have this idealised body shape that we should be able to maintain forever. I call it a mum tum, don't they, and criticise it, but it's actually there for a reason. It's there for a reason. I'm not saying that you shouldn't, you know, look. When we think about things that aren't really important for metabolic health, it's actually things like the waist circumference, so at your belly button. So that's a really good indicator of cardiovascular risk because fat stored around your organs is dangerous for your health. And so when we look at that as a measurement, the simplest way to do it is if you get a piece of string and you make the piece of string as tall as you are, cut that, halve it, halve the string, it should fit around your waist at your belly button.

1:29:49If it fits around your waist or is a bit loose, then that's great. So you're below the cutoff for risk. But when we talk about this belly fat, so that's how I like to think about it for the metabolic health aspect and we've talked about this a lot today high fiber foods that are high in volume high in fiber low in fat content low in any additional energy content are a really good way to like just regulate that metabolism and help people to feel full with meals but without having too much fat too much sugar and feeding your gut microbes, we've shown in our research that gut microbiome composition actually correlates to metabolic health markers.

1:30:30So we know, and we did this actually, so the menopause study, the Zoe menopause study showed how the gut microbiome mediates some of the changes in metabolic health in women. So we know that we need to support our microbes when we think about this. So that's why we've got spinach now. Leafy greens? That's amazing. Yeah. What a fascinating conversation as we sort of fly through the years and fly through the things that are important to us. I suppose before we end, I would just like to know what we've spoken so much about what we should be doing. Yeah. If I said to you, what's the one thing you'd love us all to cut out of our diets today?

1:31:04Where would you point us? Honestly, I think the one thing that I'm fairly inflexible on is sodas. Like they just do nothing for us. So sugar sweetened beverages add nothing to us, to our health. Even diet drinks? I just wouldn't. Yeah, I just wouldn't. The diet drinks is more because you're training your palate to have very, very sweet things. And also, again, there's no benefit to it. Like, someone said to me the other day, what about like Haribo? Like, what about sweets then? And for me, it's like, even a sweet, even a good old fashioned, like boiled, like the jelly sweets, at least you eat them.

1:31:45And you eat them one at a time. And sometimes there's gelatin in them, which at least is something, right? With a cola, with a soda, there is no benefit. So it's mad to me to have something which directly causes harm. So let's be clear, sodas are the one thing the government has actually taxed. And the government's not very good at doing anything. But the evidence for cola being detrimental to health is so strong that they did the sugar tax, right? So it's detrimental to health, zero benefits, no need to have it. It doesn't fit into any particular anything. Why? I would remove that. They're not in our home at all.

1:32:25So I'm very strict on that. And finally, we normally do quick fire questions. We're going to do quick food questions. So Benny, you're going to pass them to me and we're going to go through them. So this is nice and speedy. I show you the food and you tell me the joy of it. So this is, is that purple sprouting broccoli? It is purple sprouting broccoli. A brassica family, delicious, so high in fibre, high in micronutrients, just brilliant to have all year round, great for immune system function and brain health as well. Mixed nuts. Mixed nuts, perfect. So mixed nuts are on that list. A diet low in nuts and seeds is actually up the top, near the top.

1:33:01So nuts are amazing. They are very high in micronutrients. So they offer different micronutrients and minerals for each nut. So a lot of people are worried about nuts because they're like, oh, they're so high in calories. But we don't absorb a lot of the energy because we never break the cells down. So really great food to have for so many reasons. Lots of clinical trials where they've given nuts for specific health outcomes and seen an improvement. So walnuts and heart health, almonds and cognitive function. For me, the best snack to carry with you is mixed nuts. If you're allergic, mixed seeds are really good as well.

1:33:36Next one. Grefen seeds a few times. Yes. Eggs are nature's micronutrient. literally. They are amazing. They contain every single essential vitamin apart from vitamin C that we need. So they're a really good part of a healthy diet. They're obviously high in protein. They also contain iron. So we talked about the importance of iron, especially for girls as they menstruate. My only caveat with eggs is that they're a great part of a healthy diet. We don't need to be eating six to eight of them a day. So I think a couple of eggs, maybe three or four times a week is a good place to be. But don't take the yolk out.

1:34:09The yolk is where all the good fat soluble vitamins are. So no egg white omelets, please. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut. Okay, so we talked a little bit about fermented foods. Kefir and natural yogurt are the ones that people are most familiar with. Sauerkraut is wonderful. You can buy it at your local store, but you can also make it really easily. Just chop some cabbage up, give it a rinse, bit of salt, squish, squish, squish, make it really soft, put it in a jar, pop a lid after three or four days. Make sure it's submerged in its own juicy liquid water. and then after three or four days you have it.

1:34:42It's so rich in probiotic strains, high in fiber, the bacteria in there actually break that fiber down and create postbiotics, like chemicals, that you then have and they're good for you. So the difference between just a chopped up cabbage and a sauerkraut is huge in terms of nutrition composition. Amazing. And a really great study out of Stanford has shown that having probiotic foods, like fermented foods like this in your diet, impact your immune system in a different way to just high fiber foods. So if you can get high-fibre diet and have fermented foods in it, you're going to help to dampen unnecessary inflammation, which is what we want.

1:35:17Milled flaxseed. Yeah, so milled flaxseed. So a lot of people don't eat oily fish or they find it tricky to incorporate. Now, flaxseed is the best source of an omega-3 that's found in plants. So our body converts the omega-3 ALA in this to the DHA, which is what we want to use in our bodies. So if you are someone who doesn't eat oily fish so much, milled flax seeds and walnuts are a really good way to get some of the plant-based omega-3s. And the final thing that we'll talk about on this episode is the humble cannellini bean, but this is here to represent all beans. All beans. All beans and legumes.

1:35:50Oh no, we've got some lentils here. So yeah, beans are just, listen, beans are wonderful. All the longest living populations in the world, no matter where you go, eat beans every day. So if you're nowhere near that, that's okay. Start small. My only recommendation when you start introducing beans and lentils to your diet is to start small. Because if you go from zero to having a three bean stew, you will be windy. So give your gut microbiome time to adjust. All the gut microbes that are dying of salvation because they've never had beans, they need a bit of time to populate and regrow and be ready to receive.

1:36:24So I recommend having one spoonful per day. So once you feel comfortable one spoonful and you don't feel gassy, add another spoonful. This is the Daily 30 you mentioned earlier. What's in this? So I made this because our members wanted a way of adding fiber to their meals and a variety of different plants. Such a fun thing to make. The biggest thing with this product is that it's designed to make food taste delicious. So it's a savory product. And you know, we're talking about how do you eat beans? Like people sometimes don't know how to make whole grains or lentils or beans taste great. This, just add it on and it just tastes really great.

1:37:03But crucially, it's high in fiber. So one scoop has five grams of fiber. And we really worked hard to achieve that number in one scoop because all the data shows us that even if you have a very low intake, if you can just add five grams, you're reducing the risk of a lot of outcomes by a measurable amount. So one example is that if you add five grams of fiber daily, you reduce your cardiovascular disease risk by 14%. So each five gram incremental increase essentially sees this drop up to about 30 grams. So what we want to do is, this was really simple. It tastes great. We did a randomized control trial to actually see whether it did the thing.

1:37:38And luckily it did. So that's really cool. Yeah, 30 plants, herbs, spices, nuts and seeds, mushrooms. It has a lot of the foods that we've spoken about that are in that top, like diet low in contributes to ill health. we've put in this, obviously in small amounts, but just to help people engage with this idea of like, okay, I need to add more whole grains. I need to add more legumes. I need to add more herbs and spices, more nuts and seeds to my diet. So how would you define high performance? So for me, high performance is when we have supported our biology and fed ourselves in a way and looked after ourselves in a way that we can go through life really enjoying everything we do and feeling our best selves, essentially, And to be able to do this, we have to have a knowledge of our own bodies, how it works, and what works for us as an individual, because we are all different.

1:38:30And the people I work with who are often very high sort of stress jobs and they run big companies, it boils down to prioritizing, taking that time out to look after yourself. And for me, of course, food is the ultimate way to do that. It gives you the time and the space to actually build a meal that will nourish you, to sit down and eat that and enjoy it and creates an opportunity to actually have more social connection with someone you can share that meal with. So food is the best tool, in my view, to achieve high performance and a healthy and happy life. Amazing. Look, Fede, thank you so much for taking us around this pit stop of food for all the life advice from the early years to the latter years and the incredible conversation that we started off with about where we're at and where we can get to if we really prioritise our health and our food.

1:39:19Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

1:39:25Damien, Jake, what stood out to you from that conversation? Well, I thought it was a conversation filled with hope. I think we all know that we're being poisoned in many ways by food companies that are putting profits over our own interests. But I think the bit halfway through where the doctors started to talk to us around what we can do with this, and there's two things that stood out. You can change this at any stage. We're never too old to change. And secondly, the impact of being willing to do something different can be seen quite quickly. This isn't something that we have to wait for the long term for.

1:39:57She said within 48 hours, your gut starts to respond to you being willing to feed it and look after it. What stood out for you? I think for me it was those small changes that can make a big difference, like putting fruit and veg out for the kids to nibble on before dinner. We are great ones for saying you have to clear your plate. Trust your children. that if some nights want to eat loads of protein, loads of salmon or steak or whatever, fine. If other nights they eat loads of pasta, let it go. Like they can sort of eat what their body feels they need. I think the addition of loads of, you know, lots of pulses, lots of grains, lots of whole wheat.

1:40:33And when I thought about it, I thought that eating whole wheat pasta was enough. But that's whole wheat pasta. That's not a whole wheat, right? And the actual grains, I need to get more of those into my life. And I think just this idea of being a little bit more mindful, really. It isn't free to just have your chocolate bar on the train. It isn't free to have a bag of crisps on the way home. It isn't free to neck a can of soda when it's 8 o 'clock at night. You can do all that, but it is going to cost you in some way, at some point, at some time. And as she said, the single biggest thing we can do for our health, to change our health, is to change what we eat.

1:41:12So why wouldn't we look at every single thing that goes in our body and say, is that going to get me closer to the grave or is that going to get me closer to health? What a simple question to ask yourself every time. Well, again, there's echoes there. When we spoke to Eddie Jones and he said, nothing you do is neutral. Everything either enhances or erodes the environment you're in. And I think, yeah, the same thing. Nothing we eat is neutral. We're either extending our life or giving ourselves a chance to do that or we're just keeping ourselves trapped in a cycle of binge eating, sugar spikes and all the other elements of the ultra-process diets that many of us find ourselves caught in.

1:41:52Yeah. I think that if we're talking about high performance, which is what this show is about, if we're lucky enough we eat three times a day, it's probably the single biggest factor that we can change in our lives to get ourselves closer to what we believe high performance to be. And I hope it was helpful for lots of people. I found it very helpful. Yeah, you know, do you remember when we spoke to Dr. Salid Mahmood Ahmed, who spoke to us around, think of it like what you feed your children is like a hug on a plate. It's about how you feel about them. It's what you give them. And I think what Dr.

1:42:23Fede has shared with us there is how we can all learn to give better hugs on plates. Thanks, mate. Thank you. That's it for today. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. We appreciate you giving us your time. Fede, we appreciate you as well. And we've actually created a nutrition masterclass right now on the High Performance app. You can head there, scroll through all of the actions that you could take right now that could change your health forever. Plus subscribers can even save their favorite moments to a playlist, which helps you remember what you've learned and embrace new healthy habits.

1:42:56So check it out. And we're back with another conversation on high performance very soon.

1:43:09Thank you.

1:43:36you'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program plus career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals a different future is closer than you think with capella university learn more at capella.edu