Dr. Giles Yeo: Why Calorie Counting Doesn't Work & The Real Danger of Processed Food

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid, and what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello, sir. Good morning. I'm the Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their staff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

0:38Now, you actually knew Princess Diana. I think one of the ways she acquired power was through that relationship with the present. But before that interview, no-one had really spoken and been so open. Was that a game-changer? So join us every week wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube and on Saturdays on 5 as we catch up with the royals.

1:03Today, we're joined by Giles Yeo, a University of Cambridge professor that has spent over 25 years studying the link between obesity and how our brain works with what we eat. And this one is really interesting. He's a PhD. He's an MBE. He knows this subject better than anyone else. And he's on a mission to change the way we think about obesity, change the food we put in our body, and make everyone healthier. This one is a must listen. I love the conversation. Now let's start it. Welcome to the podcast Giles. I'm very excited to have this unprocessed truthful conversation with you about health, calories, weight loss, you name it.

1:48We're going to get stuck into the detail of this very controversial topic that everybody has an opinion about. It's going to be a fascinating one. But before we dive in, can you give people a little bit of your background, your credentials, what you've done in your career, the books you've written, so that they get where you're coming from. Because you're probably the smartest person I've ever spoken to by your credentials. That is terrible. Oh my God, I've got to leave now. So I am a geneticist, so I came into LiveLooks, so I look at genes. And I've always been interested in why people are different.

2:21But what I ended up doing was going into body weight. On one end of the spectrum happens to be obesity. And so I started my career. So I did my PhD in Cambridge. And then after that, we moved from severe childhood obesity to body weight in general. So small, medium, large. And we within the field now know that the genetics of body weight is how our brain, the genetics of how our brain influences our feeding behavior. So now I'm an accidental neuroscientist and I study how the brain controls our feeding behavior. So ultimately that is very rapidly my career trajectory and why, perhaps why we're actually having this conversation now.

3:02I try and study food intake and how our genes influence food intake in health and in disease. Fascinating. So you talked a lot about genetics there. Everyone always talks about how genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. What's your view on that statement? I prefer the hand of cards in poker thing. where you can play any kind of card game. You can have good hands, you can have bad hands and like your genes, the only people you can blame are your parents because that's where they've come from. But even with a tough hand in poker, depending on how you play the hand, you can still win.

3:41It's more difficult, it's more difficult but you're not done until you're done. And so that I think is more than a point. You are given a set of cards in life and yeah, I'm more privileged than others you know so other people are less privileged than me but then we then take the cards we have and go i love that because there's a personal responsibility within that right it's your hand so it's up to you how you use it so it is up to you how you play your hand but clearly it does depend the analogy is you you're not playing poker by yourself right so you're playing poker amongst the analogy is well how good is everyone else's hand what is what is everyone else doing what is the rest of the table doing?

4:23And if you take that analogy as the environment, so now you're playing your hand. What is the rest of the environment doing? If you're playing it in a good environment, where it's easier for you to win, gold. But if things are just more difficult, it is always going to be more difficult. So I think the personal responsibility comes from not being fatalistic, saying that, look, this is what life gave me, so this is the end of the story. But by saying, okay, well, what can I do about it with this, with this, with what I have? What can I do about it? So it's not, it's personal responsibility for sure.

4:58But if the environment is rigged against you, that personal responsibility is always going to be more difficult to apply. Well, yeah, I mean, and the environment is rigged against us, right? The food environment we live in and the world we live in today isn't created for our optimal health in any shape or form. but you wrote the book on calories don't count yeah so I want to get into the question which all gym bros are going to love us for oh absolutely absolutely I get a lot of hate about this I'm an advocate for you know just eating healthy whole foods not necessarily counting calories I think it's over complicated and hard for most people to do but why did you write the book on calories don't count the why was and and and the whole calories don't counting is more my outward facing about how we actually talk about things yeah um but what people did care about the the was actionable information like like okay that's fine you can do this you can map this you can you know do the stuff what does that got to do with me and so it was at that point that i even though i studied the biology of it okay so the hand of cards then i begin to realize yeah and i can do this as a job but we also need to deal with the outside otherwise this is just one part of the story and that is when when I begin to explore more the environmental stuff um I'm still a geneticist and I still do this but I think the interaction between the environment and the genes matters so much and that is what ended up getting me to think about our food our diets the sort of food environment we live in and it got me to calories because I think we obsess too much about calories these days but every app every fitness influencer every government guideline still every pack of food in the country still has calories on it and they put it as the holy grail why is that but first of all in order to prevent the gym bros from totally hating us I'm not anti physics like I understand that 200 calories of chips is twice the amount of chips as 100 calories of chips clearly clearly right I mean I mean like the basic the calories are used because they are a number and it's a singular number and the powers that be um sort of thought that they needed to be simple we need to simplify for the people in order to get them to eat healthier the problem is they've taken to my mind they've taken the wrong number to try and simplify down to and anyway one number is not enough they've taken the wrong number and what calories are is one-dimensional that's all they do is they tell you this is twice the amount of chips as this hmm and that's pretty much it it and that's only within the class of food that are chips right it doesn't take into account anything it doesn't talk about fat sugar salt fiber protein nothing it is nutrient blind that's my problem with the calorie it only tells you one dimensional thing nutrient blind so if you're counting calories what what what calories are you counting are you coming sugar are you eating celery are you eating a burger donut and vegetarian vegan whatever you know that's my that that is my problem but it works so if I'm consistently in a 500 calorie deficit I will lose weight you will that is true I think there are different ways of doing it I think here's the new ones imagine if you had a relatively healthy diet okay and you decided i need to lose weight i need to reach a 500 calorie deficit and what i'm going to do is take my entire diet that i do now and cut everything by x percent 20 something like that exactly okay that works of course that works because it's physics but that's not how we function this is the this is the problem i mean like if you're making a meal and i say i'm going to do two-thirds of this how do you do how do you do two-thirds of an egg you're going well you know and so life then becomes more complicated in which you then begin to simplify that the matter I was in a and you can hear these conversations I was in a supermarket place you know buying a sandwich for lunch and then and then you overhear these conversations oh my diet says I need to be on 400 calories oh look this sandwich says this this thing he says this is 400 calories this is good and you walk out and it's this singular dimension that it so yes it does work but in the real world people obsess about the calories and hence will add it up and says okay I was 400 calories for lunch today we're all good good yeah so what's the right thing to look at I mean I don't know if I have the answer I have an answer and clearly it is the best thing in the world if all of us eat minimally processed foods from scratch okay and I think the reality is if you're able to do that, then I don't think you really need to worry about calories at all.

9:52You can think about how much they're food, but that's not the world we live in currently. Okay, so if that's the case, then I think a good shorthand to the quality of the food is going to be two things. I mean there's probably more, but but this is the two things I would focus on. The amount of protein in the food and the amount of fiber in the food. Those two things. Now protein is important because I'm not talking about eating as much as possible. I'm talking about eating the right amount of protein okay uh for what fiber as much as possible like literally right and fiber only comes from food and vegetables so ultimately if you have to buy a package food or a sandwich or thingy because life demands it then i would look at the protein and the fiber and ignore the calories and say well look compared to this compared to that does this have higher protein higher fiber than this and then that's the way that I would actually look at it and I think the front of pack labeling in which we're putting I don't mind front pack labeling protein on everything protein fiber which is not there at the moment it does calories yeah fine I think salt and fat and what have you that has its place but I do believe it's a little bit further down the line I think the red green um amber should be on protein and fiber and then maybe free sugars and that other line.

11:13And I think that's a good shorthand. It's not perfect for what we should be looking at rather than calories. Really interesting. So why is protein so important? Because there's a lot of debate going on about, well, there's protein packages of everything. You can get protein cereal, you can get protein chocolate bars, whatever. It's kind of probably an overused term in a lot of instances. So why is it so important? Foods that take longer to digest will travel further down the gut. and because of hormones that are released will make you feel fuller okay so if you take just that that thing in mind first then if you look at that then actually protein is chemically the most complex compared to fat and carbs and so hence it takes longer to digest it travels further than the gut it's more satiating so a calorie of protein even though they don't count but a calorie of protein using them no I know exactly a calorie of protein makes you feel fuller than a calorie of fat than a calorie of carb in that order for sure and the The reason behind that is twofold.

12:10First, it takes longer to digest. So that's the first thing. Now we know that these macronutrients, you know, carbs are turned to sugar, fat is turned to fatty acids, and protein is turned to amino acids, okay? This is the digestion phase. Then what happens is it crosses the gut wall, it gets transported to your organs, it's metabolized for energy. That's the second thing. Now what happens, the other thing with protein, is that we don't have any inert store of protein in our body. We clearly can store carbs as glycogen and we store fat as fat. All the protein in our body is active. So it's either there for building or repair.

12:47So that's why you need to eat enough protein. We don't have a store of it. But if you eat too much protein, the proteins convert it into fat. I don't know if people know this, but that's what happens. Fat and carbs are only made of three atoms, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. So it's very easy to actually move these things around. This is true about protein, but it also contains a lot of nitrogen. So in order to then, if you're not using it, convert it to fat, you need to take out the nitrogen, which we pull out as urea and we weed out, right? And then it goes into the storage or burning scenario.

13:18That takes a lot of words to say, and I'm sorry about that, but it also takes a lot of energy. So for every 100 calories of protein, pure protein that you eat, you're only ever able to use 70 calories, 7-0. 30 calories of every hundred calories of protein you eat is given off as heat to sort protein out to move it around your body and none of this is on the side of the pack incidentally it is none of this is reflected on the side of the pack so that's the other reason why protein makes you feel fuller so if you take those two things it takes a lot more energy so your body has to work harder to sort of use protein and store protein and remember protein so and it takes longer to digest those two things make you feel fuller and so if you eat something that's higher in protein not too high because it will get converted to fat otherwise then you're maintaining growth you're maintaining this and in totem it makes you feel fuller so you snack less on exactly whatever exactly you can overdo it i mean clearly if you're an olympic athlete then you need more protein if you're a someone who's just undergone cancer treatment if you're an old person in the itu if you're a small child you need more protein but you me we're living our normal lives we need to write have the right amount of protein let's get into a bit about weight loss then yeah because people you know people are rightly concerned about their weight the uk is now 63 percent overweight or obese on the latest numbers i see so what can people do if they're not going to calorie count what can they do they need to do something there's a national health crisis here that we need to address?

14:54So I think when you say what can people do or what do people need to do, I think we need to sort of ask two different questions. I think there is what you can do for yourself and I think for the individual I think we've got to control the environment we can control and that tends to be your household. Okay, what do you bring in through the gates of your of your house? And there you need to, if you're trying to lose weight, then you, to my mind you have to to be honest about what makes you eat because we know that the huge amount of obesity is driven largely by eating as opposed to differences in metabolism.

15:31We can get to that in a second. There are differences but largely driven by eating. So if we take that as read, then what you got to do is ask what makes you eat more? And it's a complex question. Some people eat it because they're more hungry, others because they're less full, others because they can't ignore the yellow M's on the out of the motorway things like that and so if you know why you eat say if say for example you know you eat when you're stressed and your go-to stress food for example is chocolate and you know this then maybe don't have as much chocolate in your house and that's i think is the way to personalize it to you if you prefer fatty foods me i can take or leave chocolate i don't not like it but if you put a bar there we could have this whole conversation i wouldn't touch it i prefer fattier foods and it's just i know me right and so if there was a bag of crisp or something you know i would think you'd be all over it so then i won't have that in my house so that that's the thing so if you want to lose weight you have to be honest about why you eat and what you eat and and and control what you can control which is your household second problem however is we don't live only in our house we're not in jail right the broader world however that requires there's societal fixing, largely governments, because they control the rules in which things happen.

16:48And then why I do this, for example, why I go out and speak is to then broadcast towards the people who have more societal power in which to actually change the environment we live in. Then obviously there's society in general, that's a broader, more philosophical question. But those are the two things I would do about. For the person looking to lose weight, try and be honest with why you eat and to do your best ability control your in-house environment and then on the outside world I think we all as society need to have conversations vote you know be opinionated towards the policymakers well let's get opinionated then go on the environment specifically what's driving the obesity epidemic so I think three things we'll start with the first two and then we'll end with the one we want to talk about.

17:40There's changes in behavior. I don't like the word lifestyle because lifestyle implies choice on the individual and there are some choices. I like behavior because we can change behavior. So behavior, what I mean by that is the jobs we do, we're not coal miners anymore, we have washing machines, dishwashers, we drive everywhere. So there's that. The built environment plays a big role. So is it safe to walk to school? Will you increase your risk of dying if you're crossing this free lane motorway? Things like that. And those two things have an effect. The big thing, however, is the food environment.

18:14And that has changed beyond recognition since actually very recently, probably 40 years. I'll give you an example. When I first moved to this country, which was 30 years ago, so early 90s, there were no grocery stores open on a Sunday. So imagine if I wanted a bowl of cereal on a Sunday night, but I didn't have cereal and I didn't have milk. Tough. I'd have to wait till Monday and sort it myself out in order to do it. Today, someone will deliver it to your house. So I think that is one big example, the ease of which we can now access pretty much anything you want. Anytime. Anytime. So all of us have the same drive.

18:58Our genes haven't changed, and I studied the genes, right? Some people will have a greater drive to eat, other people not. But if it's so easy for me to get that bowl of cereal or whatever you want to eat on a Sunday night, when 30 years ago it would have been impossible for me to do that, that is one of the things. And I think that's first. So we're more susceptible to our impulses. We are able to access the desires that we want a lot easier. And this is part of market forces that drive because we know we want what we want. and we want things that are convenient. This is not necessarily a bad thing until it becomes a bad thing.

19:34So that's the first thing, ease of access. Then the second is the type of foods that we get today are also so different. Those are the two big reasons for me. Ease of access, and actually they're relatively cheap. Calories have never been cheaper. We can get, in this country, a thousand calories for less than a pound, but what the hell kind of calories are we talking about? Less than a pound. Less than a pound, but they're all chips, typically. Yeah, but I mean it's a really important point the price right because everyone's going through cost-of-living crisis Everyone's seeing food inflation on their weekly shop.

20:07It's incredibly painful and I even notice it I'm like wow, this has got really expensive all of a sudden But actually if you look back in history the Portion of money of our income that we spend on food is actually lower than it's ever been correct Right, and that's the thing most people don't realize we used to spend most of our wages on housing and food now we've created this environment which then allows us to spend much less on food and then go on holidays and buy TVs and buy that's not a bad thing that's not a bad thing because ultimately the incentives of what we buy we don't we rarely now shop within a you know sort of farmers market that system yeah there's some portion you know very middle upper-class people that do that but the vast majority of population we we are beholden to the supermarkets we are this is this is just way it is and so what we buy food companies and i don't i don't want to demonize food companies because they make our food but ultimately food companies have some of the smartest people in the world working for them to find out what people want to eat and direct our direct our so-called choices and when you walk into a supermarket everything is designed okay for us the smell of the bread the smell of the coffee which they kind of spurts right and then and i got a colleague of mine, Dame Theresa Marteau, you know, she runs the Human Behavioral Unit in Cambridge.

21:31And a few years ago, she, and she has a fake supermarket, you know, it's one of these things, it's an academic thing, like a supermarket, in which she can control where things are. She also had another situation in which she worked with some big supermarket chain and what have you, and put sort of barcodes, well two things, GPS and some kind of barcoding machine in the supermarket trolleys so she then did a lot of work in trying to understand where people will buy stuff depending on where it is in the supermarket and here the isles and she she did this and people really knew this she was she was reverse engineering the system that is set up for us okay is that all the sale she was reverse engineering the system which the food companies the food retailers already know sale items always at the end of the aisles of course the most expensive foods in the middle and the reason is because this is the this is part of the journey and then people slow down as they come to middle of the aisles so in order to get them to stop at the end of the aisles they put all the sale items there this is true in every single supermarket just walk in yeah and then the most expensive foods right in the middle of the aisle at eye level okay so that is what this is what you do so with that basic premise you can now set up the only way I'm gonna get people to stop there is if I put buy one get one free if I put the stuff that that that's on sale etc etc then I can put all my expensive stuff in the middle at aisle level because we don't have to discount it we don't have to do the things and so it's our choices are not real choices at all that then we're not isolated yeah we're not I mean this is one place where you got give the government some credit they have brought in as of last week i think that they've now banned buy one get one freeze they have so they're too long i want to point out but they did do it eventually it did take too long uh again about the argument of affording food right that's why it took so long and it was a hotly contested bait when it shouldn't be but also the end aisles as well now you're not allowed the h f s s high fat sugar salt items on the end they've had to move in aisle but i see now all the supermarkets have made beautiful displays in the middle of the aisle with all the same junk on it right so it hasn't I don't know how much that fixes it whether it's on the end or in the middle but it's still there um but they are trying so do you think that's a key way to get people healthier in the UK then change the shopping profile and layout in the supermarket yes because that is a way of that is a way of making changes without annoying the populace I'm not because ultimately I think You know, public health is an interesting thing, to my mind.

24:16There's always a tension between loss of certain personal liberties for the greater good of the population, okay? Now, you know, we drive on the side of the road, we stop when the light is red. We can't do what the hell we want, okay? So we haven't got to this point yet in terms of talking about nutrition and food in all its guises because people get hysterical when they talk about food. And this tension needs to be accepted by the population, otherwise you get riots, right? And so, but the government needs to play a role in setting the discussion, rather than us, setting the discussion and the key points to find this point in which we understand that for the greater good, I can't just eat Mars bars all my life or whatever other chocolate bars are available, you know, for doing all kinds of things.

25:01Or if we wish to do this, we have to go to a specific place to get it. And this is going to differ from culture to culture, country to country, of course, but we haven't got that point yet. And so I do think that a way of doing that is to legislate, okay, with a small L. But you need to make some rules, but the rules have to be the same for all food manufacturers and food sellers. And then it's up to them to innovate within those rules to do that. I think the rules need to be tighter. I think the government needs to have a bit more cajones, shall we say, in order to do it. They're not doing it at the moment.

25:39Voluntary. don't do anything voluntary it's the stupidest thing you can do yeah i mean it doesn't happen does it and i think you're totally right like i'm actually someone who's a bit against legislating our way to solve the problem because i think often legislation gets it wrong and disproportionately affects poor people that's always the two things yeah but at the same time we're in a situation in the uk uniquely where you know 63 of overweight in the uk is costing the taxpayer 6.5 billion a year in direct costs to the NHS so 30 billion indirect I want to point out 30 billion indirect right so huge amounts of money that is costing our economy which isn't in the best shape at all whatsoever at the same time everyone absolutely loves the fact the NHS is free healthcare to all and it's totally accessible to everyone which god you know I've lived in America for a couple of years if you break your leg you don't want a 10 grand bill to go with that day like your day already sucks you don't need another 10 grand bill with that so i love the nhs i think the premise of it is super important and we should save it but to save it we need to maybe do some more legislation right so what would you legislate i i guess it's how how long do i have no i i think i think so no someone's actually asked me this right if i were p.m yeah uh for the day what would i do and you know what i would do i would make and i think this would solve a lot not all problems i I would make health, I would subsidize healthier food.

27:05I would make healthier food cheaper. Now, I don't just mean carrots. They're relatively cheap anyway. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying for every class of food that we might be eating, sometimes we're eating whole foods. We should be doing more, but sometimes we're eating whole foods. Sometimes you need a chocolate bar, energy bar, something, some treaty thing. Sometimes you do need some frozen food in the house, okay? Within each class of type of food, I think Whole Foods are going to be fine, but I think they should maybe put broccoli on sale more, for example. Within each class of food, there's always a healthier option versus not.

27:39Mrs. Smith, who has a tenor to feed her kids, she's got two minimum wage jobs. She walks into a supermarket. At the moment, the cheapest thing she can feed her kids with are three frozen pizzas, which no one would think here is the healthy way to go. But who am I to judge her if that's the only way she's going to feed her kids? that's the food system problem at the moment. If, however, Mrs. Smith, who has limited agency because of the tenor she actually has and the kids she's got to feed, if the default food she buys, whatever it is, is healthier, then that's the way we've got to do it. Then there's the problems of you and me, right?

28:14Then we've got to think about it slightly because we can buy cramped food. But I think we start with the people who need it the most because at the moment, there is a steep, tragic, socioeconomic gradient with diet related illnesses so if you look at the bottom quint the bottom 20 socioeconomically compared to the people listening to your podcast now the top 20 socioeconomically more particularly in kids more than twice as likely to have obesity and all the related illnesses than us that's a tragedy i mean it is a tragedy and we're now believe it or not the world leader in ultra-processed food consumption in kids, 61%.

28:57We've overtaken America, which is wild. And what's worse is if you look at low-income households, that number's actually around 80 % for ultra-processed food consumption. Because it's cheaper, if you don't have a fridge, then you can buy stuff or don't want to pay for a big fridge, then that's stuff that has longer shelf lives. the industrial processing of a highly processed food makes it cheaper to manufacture from from so and these are just the wrong incentives you know because I think processing clearly has kept us alive we have eight billion people in the world we need to feed this this is all true right and so I don't think we can get away from processing because we won't be able to preserve enough food and and that's where it started from right we we had a harvest we had too many vegetables what do you do with it you pickle them jam them whatever it's processing yes yes cure it dry it whatever you do.

29:48So, I mean, I have an issue with the term ultra process because I think it covers too many foods. However, what is undoubtedly the truth is that within that ultra process, to my mind, too big an umbrella are foods that we should eat a hell of a lot less of, okay? And I think we need to identify those foods. And I don't want to remove them from the diet because, look, everyone, you got your kids birthday parties you got this you got that every we just we shouldn't be eating cake every day I mean ultimately that that that's the issue right it's not the cake that's the problem it's it's the food the dose makes the poison this as someone said once it's it is absolutely it's absolutely the frequency I think all of us should have the ability to enjoy going to you know meet mates at a pub children's birthday party um why should you know Christmas yeah we shouldn't be eating Christmas every day And the problem is, like you say, the cheapest food is the ultra-processed food that's low-nutrient.

30:49Like, my problem with ultra-processed food is, sure, there are additives, but actually, fundamentally, all ultra-processed food is low-nutrition. And crucially, lower in protein and lower in fiber. Those are the two things. You look and that's it. So that is where the protein and fiber comes back into, where that is, to my mind, a fundamental issue. Yes, there's short sugar, fat, da-da-da-da-da. Low protein, low fiber. So here's my idea, which I haven't told anyone yet, but I'm going to tell you first. Okay. Because, I mean, maybe someone in the government might listen to this one day, and you never know.

31:23But because they want, you know, Rachel Reeves has got a tough job and she needs another 20 billion. She's not about to cut taxes. But I believe, and I haven't done the maths on this yet, so I'm making probably some out-of-pound of claims but if we started to take ownership and responsibility as a government that we need to make a difference to food and accessibility of affordable food yes usually to the lower income households how we can do that potentially is through the vat system because you could it would take a lot of work and a lot of time but you could in theory put move vat onto all the unhealthy foods and move, take VAT off all the healthy foods.

32:04So VAT, there's no VAT on whole foods anyway. There's not, but there is on biscuits, but there isn't on cakes. Okay, that's true. Right, so there's a lot of random... Yeah, yeah, they're still moving, they're still moving. Vitamins, VAT. All two, three pounds more expensive because of tax on top of it when someone's trying to make a healthy choice for their body. Right, so I don't know how it would work, But my theory is you could mix that system. And like, you know, you put VAT on Coca-Cola. It's one of the biggest selling things. You're going to make a lot of money, right? So there's ways to make more money out of it.

32:39And then at the same time, provide access and make all of a sudden vitamins become cheaper. You know, healthier foods become cheaper. That's my theory. I don't know if it's true, but I'd love someone's. This is it, right? How do we make the health? So because what we've got to do, this is it. Don't tell me choice. because as we discussed, actually there's limited choice, even if we have money. I think what we've got to do is to make the healthier choice the cheaper, more convenient, equally tasty choice. That's what you've got to do. And don't tell me it's impossible. The brightest minds in terms of moving them, it's possible.

33:15It's just will and incentives. That's what we have. If you do those three things, and yes, we can still have the stuff that we like to have every so often, But by default when we're tired when we you know, I don't have the mental space to make the decision I don't want to know what I'm gonna have for dinner tonight And if I then have this shortcut that it is automatically gonna be healthier for me That is the way to do it 100 % I mean, you know that meal occasion of I can't be bothered to cook Let me just grab a pizza and stick it in the oven right because it's cheap And I mean mind you pizzas aren't even that cheap some of them are like a fiver now Yeah, yeah, yeah.

33:48But, you know, actually, you can also buy the ready-made soup pots, which are super cheap, have no additives, no junk in them, and it's primarily meat and vegetables and some water, right? And you could have that. It's just as easy to make. You pour it in a pan, heat it up, you're done in two minutes, right? So easy. But it's the fact that the pizza's that bit more psychologically tempting. We love the crunchiness of the crust and the melty cheese and all of that stuff. And it's just the same price, roughly. So if you flip that... You need to flip it. You need to flip it. You need to flip it. That's the only way.

34:22You cannot rely... We have primitive brains. We still have chimp brains from way back when. Our brains and what we're evolved to do, from a genetics perspective, is to survive in a time of feast and famine. Sometimes we had the antelope, sometimes you didn't have the antelope. So this is what we're set up to do. Our problem is we now live in a feast environment. 100 % of the time. So you've got to now take that and say, okay, within this feast environment, we need to change the incentives. Because if we allow our chimp brains to take over, we're always going to go, not even executively, we're just going to end up picking something which is going to be less healthy for us.

35:06You talk about the chimp brain. Why do we do that then on a biological level or a genetic level? We just crave sugar. Everyone loves the sweet taste. So this I can tell you. So we are all mammals, and all mammals, you know, we kind of drink milk. Yes. So what is the job of a baby mammal as it comes out? All mammals, including humans. Okay. It is to grow as quickly as possible to stop becoming tiger food, ultimately. Right? That's the goal. And so what you do is you latch on to the first food source available, the boob. Okay. And what is in the boob? Milk, obviously. And milk is one of the only foods, naturally, only foods that are high in fat and carbs together.

35:50And the carbs is in lactose. So it's the sugar, right? So the reason we love sugar is because it's the first food that we get onto. We need to clamp onto it and grow quickly. And then what that happens, obviously, as we know, is that if any of you have kids, some of the kids can eat stuff that is so sweet that your pancreas dissolves. You go, oh my God, what the hell is that? but then your quote-unquote palate matures you hit depends what the age is right 12 15 whatever it is where suddenly most people don't grow up liking beer for example but then now we I look here and then so now you like the bitterness and foods and that is because our desire for super sweet stuff naturally drops as you get older and then your your more complex taste buds take over this is now clearly the slope can differ depending on who you are genetically but for all humans this is true we need to save kids from themselves in terms this is why I study childhood obesity because if you let children make their own decisions they will downshift into the blissful face of sugar they will so we need to control the access to the kids and then hopefully drive them to the more mature palate sooner but none of us have a mature palate we still eat sweet stuff all the time i don't see people just pushing away from it sure less than when we were kids but fundamentally we're all eating too much sugar right we are fundamentally eating eating too much sugar and there's and you know why so i don't know if this is the full answer another colleague of mine you can shut me up by the way if you don't know so another colleague of mine she was at yale university at the time dana small and she did a study that had a couple of different steps and she was brain imaging okay and so what she did was she This was a two-fold thing.