The Foods I Ate in 2025 That Changed Everything

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 Anne. 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.

1:01Welcome back to the Unprocessed Truth. If you're tired of scrolling through perfectly packaged advice and unproven diet claims, well, you've come to the right place. We're officially done with the noise. We're cutting through the marketing myths, the health halos, and the wellness scams to talk about what actually works for real life. We're going to be inviting on experts, scientists, and leading professionals in their field to get deep on the subjects you care about most so that we can discuss the nuance and really understand what you need to know to make an impact on your life. Welcome back to The Unprocessed Truth and this is it.

1:46This is 2025 wrapped. Healthy eating doesn't have to be complicated. It's all about finding those simple nourishing options that fit into your routine. Here are some of my favorite health finds that I've found this year to make it easy, healthy and delicious for you. So we're going to break it down by category and give you my top health finds of 2025. So let's start with dairy. You know dairy is one of my favorite aisles. I love my Greek yogurt, granola and berries in the morning. But on this list, you won't actually find my typical Greek yogurt because, hey, I've talked about it enough, and I think it was in last year's, but this year we have Biotiful Kefir Protein Yogurt because I think it's just such a great snack on the go.

2:3630 grams of protein in one little tub. You can buy it in most supermarkets, and that should be a healthy snack for workers at their desk, at their office. Anyone can get a spoon anywhere and just eat that super healthy, no artificial sweeteners like all the protein ones. So that is fantastic. Then we've got bio and me kefir as well, normal kefir yogurt, not protein yogurt. Why? Because this year I've started to add a couple of teaspoons of kefir yogurt into my Greek yogurt just to support my gut health with a broader range of good bacteria to help populate my microbiome in the right way. Now, one of the best innovations I've also seen in the supermarket in the last 18 months is Super Nutrio in the milk aisle.

3:25You'll find it in your normal milk. It comes in a liter container, pack, whatever you want to call it. But the key to Super Nutrio is they've double filtered the milk to make it higher protein content milk. So it's not ultra processed. It's just one ingredient milk, but it has far more protein in and is cheaper than most protein shakes without any of the additives. So if you're someone who's buying those milky protein shakes from any supermarket, just walk to the normal milk section, get Super Nutrio, you'll save money and you will save your health and avoid all those artificial sweeteners. Now, normal milk, also important.

4:05Graham's dairy, organic, unhomogenized milk. Absolutely love it. Well done for them for making milk how it should be. and we've just had it on good authority from Waitrose that unhomogenized milk is up 56 % year on year, which is amazing, which is showing that more of you are listening, more of you are buying real, healthy, unprocessed foods for your health, which is fantastic to see. Because the more we do that, the more the producers and the farmers will invest in machinery to produce those foods. So in the Waitrose report, they even say that they're now buying new milk fats purely for unhomogenized milk, which is a great thing.

4:45Production and capacity is going to go up about 20 % next year, which could make unhomogenized milk cheaper for us all, which would be fantastic. Another big win, Tesco soft cheese, plain full fat cream cheese, essentially. Cream cheese, soft cheese, whatever you want to call it. really simple cheaper and healthier than the standard brand in that category i think you all know their name in dairy you can't go anywhere without talking about butter i love what all things butter are doing with the butter category organic salted or unsalted or they have flavored butters as well those guys are advancing how we use butter which is great for us all so shout out to all things butter.

5:29And last but not least in dairy, we've got Pots & Co, which is the little 70 % dark chocolate ganache that you can find in good retailers. And that is less than two teaspoons of sugar per dessert. If you compare that to a goo pudding or something like that, you're more than cutting the sugar in half, which is amazing. And you can still enjoy a little sweet treat. So now let's get into snacks. In snacks, the biggest thing I've seen this year that has to get a big, big shout out is number one, Waitrose extra virgin olive oil hummus. Hummus is such a healthy superfood. We know beans are good for us, high in fiber, high in protein, really filling.

6:11Carrots and hummus are a great snack. Hummus on the side of any salad or main meal is fantastic. It tastes delicious. But most of the supermarket hummuses have rapeseed and other oils in them, which I don't like. Waitrose number one is extra virgin olive oil only and that stuff is amazing. Now another big innovation this time from M &S the M &S Turkish style egg pot. Simple egg pot on the go in any M &S and you're just getting eggs and some tomato sauce and some beans in there. They have a Mexican one as well and you're just getting eggs and vegetables and beans a really really good on the go breakfast option rather than buying all the ultra processed food crap now it does have a bit of rapeseed oil in but this in this instance this is where context matters if you're out and about on the go i wouldn't worry about it too much that is going to be a healthy breakfast option for you now if you really don't have time to eat and i'm not a big fan of this in my life i don't eat it all the time but if you've really got no option bowl have launched a chocolate power shake now these power shakes are way lower in sugar have nothing artificial added in them and they're a good protein shake as it were for that category they have advanced the game and made a much healthier plant-based option which is better for our health than the huels and the other things that are on the market so that is a great shout Now M &S again have also launched a massive innovation in snacking.

7:47Now this isn't the healthiest snacking, but they have their extra virgin olive oil crisps, which means you're getting all those good polyphenols from the olive oil in your crisps if you are going to eat crisps. They're a little bit pricey, but worth the investment if you're going to treat yourself to some crisps now and again. But the classics are always the best and cheesies is one of my favorite snacks. It's still just one ingredient, milk, and it's air-baked cheese that's crunchy, can replace crisps, and is super healthy with all the good fats and proteins. So moving on from snacks into bakery, there's been so much innovation in bakery over the last three, four years that I absolutely love it.

8:28Because bread has been eaten for over 14 ,000 years. It's not that we can't eat bread, and it shouldn't be demonized totally. It's just we've made an ultra processed Frankenstein version, which isn't good for our health. So we're seeing the bread aisle come back to health, which is fantastic. So the winner in the bread aisle has to be Waitrose number one sourdough bread, because this sourdough bread is actually the only sourdough bread in the supermarket sliced, packaged, ready to go. That doesn't contain fermented wheat flour, which means there's less propionic acid in it. Now, I'm not saying Jason's sourdough aren't good.

9:10They're still on this list and still included in here because they've done so much for the health of the bread category. But they do use fermented wheat flour. And the Real Bread campaign suggests that that's not a good thing because they use fermented wheat flour as a preservative. Now, I haven't seen any convincing data that would suggest that it's a bad thing to have a bit more propionic acid in there. But waitress have one that isn't. And I'm always a fan of people going back to basics as much as possible into how bread was originally created. So this is good. Another thing, pita breads. Find them in every single supermarket.

9:44They're the cheapest bread out there, but they haven't been messed with primarily because it's simple, easy bread. It's cheap and affordable. So they usually don't have the additives and you can pick up a pack for 50p sometimes. So get pita breads in your diet. And then the other two that make up the top five, I've got to mention wild farmed who now make seeded loaves, they make sourdoughs, they make crumpets. But these guys are all about regenerative farming. And this is so important for our soil health, which has a knock on impact on our health because there'll be more nutrients in the soil.

10:19Today, our wild farming wheat and other normal farming crop by doing crop rotation as it used to happen, which regenerated the soil and provided more nutrients to the soil. So this is a much better farming approach than standard monoculture farming. So well done, wild farm, and you complete that top five. So on to kids, super important area. Kids' health is really, really tricky. They want all the sweets. They want all the junk. They're incredibly good at manipulating us and screaming and having a tantrum if they don't get their way. so this is where we've got to give them those little treats that they want but just do it in smarter ways so my top five on kids best thing I've seen this year 100 % has to be suckies suckies do a yogurt pouch that is just plain no added fruit purees no added sugar no added gums no added sweeteners it's just plain yogurt in a pouch and whilst my son does try and pick the red one, he always gets the plain one, and he enjoys it just as much.

11:28Kids adapt to what you give them, so that is amazing, because those pouches are cheaper than baby food. These are pure yogurt, good fats, and good protein, so really good innovation. Then cheesies feature twice in this list, because they are also a perfect snack for my kids. Even Bodhi, my youngest, who's just 18 months he eats them and loves them so cheesies got to go in there twice because of how good of an innovation they are a new thing i've come across this year which you can't find in all supermarkets yet but is a game changer for kids health is there's a new brand called ninju which is a kid's juice essentially but with 50 less sugar than normal apple juice cartons now you think oh it's just apple juice not a problem but it is because the fiber's been stripped out of all the fruit so you're getting a sugar bomb in a carton one typical apple juice carton contains a kid's daily intake of sugars so it's too much i get it when you're out and about you go to a cafe you're having a coffee your kid wants a juice carton and i can't avoid him from having that i'm not going to have that battle every weekend and i think it's only right that he gets to enjoy something while I'm enjoying a coffee.

12:44So what I try and do is get Ninju, which is that 50 % less sugar. They've just cut it with water. They've added some veg in there as well. And it's a much lower sugar, much healthier option that you can find in some good places out and about. So that is fantastic. I wanna see more of that going into next year as well. And then Urban Fruit, get a good shout out because they have their coconut chips in that fruit aisle where the bear yo-yos, the fruit winders and all that nonsense is just concentrated dried fruit, which is concentrated sugar, essentially with limited fiber because of the way they process it.

13:19And they have done coconut chips, which are about half the sugar of the fruit option. So that is another good option. And last but not least, I'm not going to mention the kids section without just quickly saying about our Tonic Health Kids Calm gummies, which are first of their kind, world's first gummy with no sugar no sweetener made out of chicory root fiber magnesium ashwagandha and lemon balm to help your kids relax and unwind and create a good bedtime routine so that is super helpful because the quicker we get the kids to bed the quicker we get some me time back really important now the final category which i know gets a lot of conversation is protein everyone wants more protein and i don't think it's a bad thing protein isn't an overhyped trend we should all probably being a bit more protein anywhere up to sort of two grams of protein per kilo of body weight so for someone like me 80 kilos we're talking about 160 grams of protein in a day and if i eat three meals which are maybe 30 grams of protein i'm only at 90 so i need to get some more protein through some supplements and through some other ways now the og and the simplest way to get more protein is a protein shake.

14:36So big shout out to the Organic Protein Co for making this list because they make organic whey protein, which is a very bioavailable form with a great amino acid profile. And it's just organic protein with a little bit of natural flavors added like vanilla or chocolate with real cacao powder, whatever you want. Really simple protein, decent prices, and no overpriced fancy nonsense which I love then my favorite meat for protein is a classic this year venison is now cheaper than beef and venison is incredibly lean healthy protein for people so get your venison in that's made the list as the meat big big shout out to cottage cheese cottage cheese is having its moment is up anywhere between 38 40 percent year on year in terms of the amount of cottage cheese we are eating because it's incredibly affordable.

15:30You can find it everywhere. It's high protein, low sugar and lactose. It's an amazing cheese. You can put it on your jacket potato. You can mix it in your scrambled eggs. You can do anything with it. You can literally just spread it on toast with some olive oil and some fresh tomatoes. And it tastes amazing with a bit of salt and pepper. So simple, so versatile, so good to add real protein back into your diet. where you need it. Then we have the bone broth category. We've got Freya chicken bone broth on here. Now it's expensive, but the prices will come down the more we buy it. But bone broth is incredibly dense in collagen, incredibly dense in protein.

16:14And the beauty of it is it's like using a stock. So you can add it to any meal, your spag bol to your casserole to your slow cooked meal whatever you're doing just pour some in it adds loads of flavor but it's adding all important collagen and protein to any meal and last but not least my favorite on the go protein which I have when I'm traveling to and from London is probably just a biotiful dairy natural kefir 500 ml I think you've got about 18 grams of protein in that bottle it's available everywhere it's one ingredient it's really simple it's good for your gut add protein the natural ways is the key trend not the ultra processed ways and that will make you healthier so last but not least my top three brands of 2025 these are the guys that i think are innovating the most against ultra processed food which is huge for our health creating a healthier food environment is going to be what changes our health right it's not just your fault because you didn't run enough or you didn't count calories it's all about creating a healthier food environment and top of the list has to go m &s because as a big retailer they've made a concerted effort to launch their just range which is just four ingredients just five ingredients they've done it in bread they've done it in cereal they've done it all over their supermarket so they're starting to one by one clean up categories in their own label, which is amazing to see because they can do it at scale and at volume.

17:49And if you've got an M &S nearby you, you can access that, which is phenomenal. So M &S get a huge shout out for what they're doing as a massive retailer, making a big difference to the health and raising awareness of ultra processed foods. In at number two, I've got Cheezys. Whilst they didn't just launch this year, they've been around for a few years, they're getting more and more distribution. And I want more and more of you to buy them because they are just the best thing. better than crisps, so healthy, air-baked cheese, one ingredient, gotta love it. And then number three, we've got Boll.

18:22They're trying to make plant-based nutrition healthier. They've launched their one-pot meals, which are phenomenal, simple meals, and they're more and more trying to make them healthier, more and more trying to replace the cedars with olive oil. They're making a difference by investing and innovating in simple, healthy meals that have lots of veg, high protein, and are doing fantastic things. So lastly, what has my year looked like? In review, have I been that healthy, actually, or truly, or have I cut corners in too many places? Now, I think the best way to look at health is actually probably long term over the course of a year, rather than a one to three month diet plan or program you did, because the 12 months, the 365 days, that is what makes an impact on your health not the bikini body or six-pack abs you were trying to get just before your summer holiday so it's consistency and those small daily choices that are the key to this and if I look back over the year in my health obviously this is the year I wrote the book the good the bad and the healthy which comes out first of January shameless plug but the point is I actually had to make some serious choices around my day and my health.

19:41And my choice was, I wanted to write the book for you guys. And that meant that I actually compromised the gym. The gym was the one thing to go. I couldn't compromise family. I've got two young kids, and I don't want to miss out on those formative years. I've got Tonic Health, the business to run, which I couldn't just stop and give up. So I found myself writing the book from 5 to 7am, which put pressure on my sleep because I really couldn't have a lion if I needed one and it also meant I sacrificed the gym and I feel it in my body like I don't feel super fit in all honesty at the moment but now the book's written I will get back to the gym and exercise next year which I'm really looking forward to but on self-reflection you know the littlest simplest change I've probably made is be more proactive in actually just eating at home.

20:37Cooking a 10-minute dinner isn't a problem. The takeaway used to be an easy option and I just bugger it, let's get a takeaway. I can't be bothered to cook but more this year I've gone, no, do you know what? It's really simple to just cut some veg with some chicken thighs or whatever and roast it in the oven or even just make some homemade burgers and some pickled veg on the side. Dinner doesn't have to be fancy it just has to be simple and healthy and something that you can do consistently so I think those are the types of things that have made a big difference to me this year along with probably the only other little hack is putting that kefir yogurt in my greek yogurt to help my microbiome with more cultures and a diverse bacteria set but other than that you know it's those little things those simple changes that are what make the difference so if you're looking back on your health this year.

21:27You're going, do you know what? I haven't been as healthy as I could. That's okay. It's done now. Let's look at what you can do differently going forward next year and just pick one or two things. It could be as simple as putting some kefir in your yogurt every morning to get better gut health. And that's all you have to do, but just do it consistently next year. And this time next year, you'll be a healthier human. So that isn't even the full guide. There There are more things on this list, but I didn't want to bore you with a 50-minute podcast on the top food and drink items out there. So if you want the full guide, go to the Instagram page.

22:02You'll see the videos about it. We'll stick a link in our bio so you can get the full guide and our full cheat sheet to the best healthy things of 2025. So that is 2025 wrapped. And we've made huge strides in the health of the nation, in the health of our supermarket, and the foods that are on that shelf. So I, for one, am massively excited about what's to come in 2026. And remember, if we keep voting with our wallet, buying more of the healthiest stuff, more of the unprocessed stuff, the more the supermarket will shift and adapt and create new production, new capacity, and put more healthier things on the shelf for you so that we can change the food environment overnight.

22:46So let's keep going in 2026. and thank you for listening