Intermittent Fasting, Secrets to Gut Health and Biggest Nutrition Myths

0:00Professor Sarah Berry:Get in the game with the college-branded Venmo Debit Card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance. Just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo Debit Card at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Select schools available. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month. So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60 % off.

0:37Professor Sarah Berry:Stock up and save on Rag & Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites.

0:42The Wellness Scoop Hosts:How did I not know Rack has Adidas?

0:44Professor Sarah Berry:Why do we rack? For the hottest deals. There's so many good brands. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

1:03Professor Sarah Berry:Welcome to The Wellness Scoop, your weekly dose of health and wellness inspiration. And as always, we are both here as your hosts. I'm Ella Mills. And I'm Rhiannon Lambert. And today we get to delve into some fantastic myth busting questions from you all. It's January that time of year, and we're joined by a guest to help us. Oh my gosh, it is that time of year where like, every headline is something contradictory about health and there are so many myths and as I said nothing seems to correlate to the other and it's also incredibly overwhelming and a bit insane. So we thought do you know what you guys have sent in so many kind of nutrition myth questions over the last few months let's bring them all together and then we're going to be joined later by Professor Sarah Berry who's a leading nutritional scientist at King's College London where she began her research career almost 25 years ago and she's the chief scientist at Zoe as well so she's got more than 20 years experience banning everything from metabolic health, the gut microbiome, personalised nutrition, fat metabolism, cardiometabolic health, menopause.

2:05Professor Sarah Berry:I mean, we could talk to you about so many things, but we're going to do myth-busting nutrition today, guys. And fun fact, Ella, Sarah taught me fats when I was studying. Love that. She did. Yeah. So I still message her about it. Rhi, how are you though? I'm good, Ella. It's good to be back. Me too. Have you got any recs for us before we get into the episode? Yes. Do you know what? I do. And I think it's just a really basic reminder that this time of year, I know I've said it quite a few times on previous episodes, but I find it really hard. I really do feel how long January is as a month in total.

2:37Professor Sarah Berry:So I've kind of set myself my own little challenge this year. And it's just to acknowledge that I'm drinking more fluids. I'm doing things that are right by me. And it's OK to be down, but I want to focus more on being happy in the moment. I love that. Well, you did say that's your goal for the year. can I recommend pots of ginger tea? So whenever I'm like in the evening or working at home just get just a little bag of ginger it's about 150 grams normally in a bag chop it up into I mean really it doesn't need to be precise. I buy the root and then I'm like chopping up the root. Chop it up as I said does not need to be precise but little chunks I don't know half an inch or so.

3:14Professor Sarah Berry:And you keep the skin on. Keep the skin on pop it in just a small saucepan worth of water bring it to the boil turn it down to a simmer and simmer it for maybe half an hour. And then I will squeeze in a lemon. I normally do a whole lemon, but maybe start with half, see if you like it. And a tablespoon of honey for the whole pot. Oh my gosh, so delicious. And then I'll just re-boil that ginger a couple more times that day. Keeps you very fluid full. And it's so yummy and just love it this time of year. I also have an addiction with this. And I have a fun fact for honey drinkers. Honey drinkers?

3:48Professor Sarah Berry:People that like to add honey. Add honey to warm drinks. If you are buying that MGO on the packet, so methylglyoxal, like the component on the packet that has a number, you know, on the side of manuka honey, it's really expensive if that's the honey you're buying, because there is a difference in quality of honey. And we should flag that. That's why I use maple syrup for the majority of cooking. And for those drinks, I will use manuka honey. but you don't want to add manuka honey to boiling water because you destroy the beneficial bacteria that the research that we have on it basically is that there's beneficial antimicrobial effects of manuka honey so it's good to have when you feel the onset of a cold coming so this ginger pot is perfect and what you could do is have a teaspoon of the honey from the jar and add the second teaspoon once it's cooled down a bit and then mix it together exactly i always pour the ginger tea into the pot leave it to brew three five minutes or whatever then add the lemon and honey so good also someone recommended this to me before christmas it's such a good one it's a tea infuser called teasy t-e-a-s-y and their original one because you put your ginger and your lemon in at the top and it infuses all day so there you go some delicious warm drinks for you guys this january is going to be good now we're back together exactly okay we're back together and we're also going to be joined now by Sarah.

5:07Professor Sarah Berry:Hello, Sarah. Hi, Rhiannon. Hi, Ella. Thanks for having me on the show today. So we have so many listener questions for you and I feel like it's that time of year where everybody's trying to cipher out what is actually good for me and what should I be doing. And our first question is from Lola and she said, are all ultra-processed foods bad for you? I'm finding it hard to navigate which ones are good and which ones are bad

5:30The Wellness Scoop Hosts:and if not, how can you distinguish if they are or they aren't? So hi Lola, great question and a really difficult question to answer in terms of giving you guidance of how to distinguish the good, the bad and the ugly. I think what's really important to say is absolutely not all ultra-processed foods are bad for you. It's a very broad classification system and it captures some that yes we know are bad but it also captures a lot of food that's been processed in a way that could either be good for us or have a neutral impact on our health. And we've recently carried out some research at ZOE where we've tried to classify processed foods according to their predicted health effects rather than just how processed they are.

6:15The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And what we see is when we classify them according to the different features that we know processing effects that is related to our health. So factors like the structure of the food, which we call the food matrix, the hyper palatability. So the kind of magic mixture of nutrients that encourages you to over consume the food, as well as the different additives and emulsifiers graded according to whether there are bad for you or not bad for you. When we've done that, what we find is actually it's only about 25 % of the calories that we're consuming are from what I would call the baddies in terms of the food that's been processed.

6:50The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And I think this is really encouraging because we see all of these scary headlines saying 60 % of the calories you consume come from ultra processed foods. They're going to give you cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, name the disease they're responsible according to the headlines. So that's the first thing I'd say is that absolutely not all are bad for you. Our research shows it's probably 20, 25 % of energy that we're consuming comes from these baddies. How can we identify the good, the bad and the ugly? It's so, so, so hard. I think the kind of tips that I would give you is really to think about the whole food and the different features that we know impacts how healthy a food is.

7:34The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And I know it sounds quite basic, but I think a lot of people get fixated on the numbers of additives and the number of emulsifiers. So does the food resemble the food that it originally came from? And the reason I say this is because I've done a lot of work looking at food structure, food matrix, and how processing changes the structure. And by changing the structure, you change lots of features of the food, like how fast you eat the food, how many calories you extract from the food, where you absorb the different nutrients. And so if the food has been processed in such a way that the structure has been totally destroyed, then we know that it's more likely to have a negative impact on your health.

8:11The Wellness Scoop Hosts:Yes, you can look at what additives and emulsifiers are in there, but often they're given E numbers. Sometimes they're given the actually additive number. There are some additives that we know might even be good for us. There's some that we know are definitely really unhealthy for us. A lot of the research though around additives and emulsifiers is still emerging. It's not an exact science yet. So a general rule of thumb is look, if it's got loads and loads of additives and emulsifiers, the chances are there might be some in there that we know are harmful for our health. So that's the other thing you can have a look at as well.

8:46The Wellness Scoop Hosts:That is so helpful.

8:48Professor Sarah Berry:And I think also, as you said, Sarah, it's really reassuring actually, because, you know, we love a kind of dogmatic panic moment, I think, when it comes to health and wellness. And whilst it's really important, obviously, that we're talking about ultra processed foods and kind of creating an awareness about our diets and what we eat and maybe a way that lots of us weren't really aware of it does all as you say start to become a bit scary so i think that's really reassuring and i think it's very similar topic and i know it's something that you were kind of coined the most hated woman in america for um for this video but we've got a question for emma and she said i'd love to hear you myth bust seed oils i know read this is also like a passion project for you because it's just I'm sure you'd agree like across 2025 it felt like the nutrition enemy number one and seed oils were also going to give us every

9:37The Wellness Scoop Hosts:disease under the sun well great question Emma something I'm passionate uh talking about and Ella I'd love to have a whole hour to talk about this but I know I'm going to try and give you my kind of top line view on this so my top line view is the totality of the evidence very clearly shows that CEDAWS themselves are not harmful to health. There are so many myths out there, and I'll try and really, really quickly break down those myths, because I think if we understand the counter argument to the myths, then it really becomes quite clear, firstly, why there are so many myths generally out there about nutrition, but also regarding how CEDAWS have been unfairly demonized.

10:14The Wellness Scoop Hosts:So the first myth is, is there are these beautiful figures that you often see on social media showing that as the intake of CEDAWL has increased over the last 50 years, so has our rates of all of these chronic diseases, whether it's diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers. Absolutely, our intake of CEDAWLs has increased. Absolutely, rates of some of these diseases has increased. But what else has changed over the last 50 years? Our food landscape is unrecognisable. We also need to remember that about 60 % of the CEDAWLs that we eat actually are in these heavily processed unhealthy foods or ultra processed foods.

10:49The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And there's all of these other nasties that are in those foods. They also tend to be very high in salt and sugar, etc. And so that's the first thing I'd say, just because you see this lovely figure showing that association, think what else is going on at that time. There's also this perspective that cedars are unnatural because they've been processed. They've gone through all of these scary processing like bleaching, deodorization, and yet you have this very natural butter where you've got the cows being milked in this beautiful meadow. And of course, that's going to be better for you. Just because something's processed doesn't mean it's bad for you.

11:26The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And the way that seed oils are processed now, generally, particularly the ones in the UK, in the US and many countries, they're processed in such a way that they don't have any of these nasties left in them after. And actually, nearly all of the clinical trials showing the beneficial effects of seed oils in humans have been conducted on seed oils that have been processed. And then the third myth is inflammation, that seed oils are pro-inflammatory because they contain a fatty acid called linoleic acid, which is a particular type of omega-6 fatty acid. There have been more than 40 randomized controlled trials feeding people either linoleic acid or seed oils, and they have consistently shown that either they have no effect on inflammation or they have an anti-inflammatory effect.

12:13The Wellness Scoop Hosts:This myth that's permeated around this inflammatory effect of seed oils stems from a theoretical biochemical pathway that this particular omega-6 can be converted into another omega-6 called arachidonic acid, which upon certain stimuli can release certain chemicals that are pro-inflammatory. Yes, that happens in a petri dish. Yes, that can happen in super physiological amounts in a mouse. Does it happen in humans? No. And studies have consistently shown, even if you feed people nine times the amount of normal intakes of this omega-6, the linoleic acid from CEDAWs, you do not have an increase in this other omega-6 fatty acid, the arachidonic acid.

12:55The Wellness Scoop Hosts:our bodies are so so clever at maintaining a kind of set point in terms of these different fatty acids they're circulating and so what we see from a theoretical biochemical pathway or in a petri just doesn't play out in humans then there's the argument over oxidative stress again yes in a petri dish under certain stimuli you can increase the propensity for ldl which is bad cholesterol to be oxidized in the presence of this particular fatty acid and seed oil, but actually in human studies, that doesn't happen. And so I could go on and on kind of breaking down all of these myths, but I think the key thing is, is that a lot of influencers are grasping onto more theoretical data or Petri dish or, you know, test tube data, but it simply doesn't play out in humans.

13:49The Wellness Scoop Hosts:Sarah this is exactly why we needed you on this podcast also just to go into the fat conversation because how many years have you been researching fats for now gosh 25 years I think it was when I yeah probably 25 years ago I ran my first randomized control trial looking at fat that had undergone a particular process used by the food industry called interest verification which is used as an alternative to partial hydrogenation to create hard fats. And that was my first randomized control trial 25 years ago. And I've since run many, many, many in the area of fats. But Rhiannon, you know what, often I'm accused of either being an industry shill because I dare to speak out about the narrative.

14:32The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And for the record, I've never taken a penny from the seed oil industry. Or quite often, I'm told by Joe Bloggs sitting in his armchair in Kansas or Texas, what on earth do I know you know I've only run 30 randomized control trials and died with that

14:47Professor Sarah Berry:I mean Sarah also as a human being on a perspective I know we've both discussed this before but it's hard to speak out and tell the truth sometimes and not everybody wants to hear it and it leads me on nicely to a question we've actually got from Kim for you which I know you and I can relate to a lot and Ella and it's the fact that she said I'd love to hear about quick fixes you know for example tiny fixes with a big impact i really like this question because i think actually what kim means is positive ones here i think she's thinking about like the quick wins you know the things that you could add in like little things so quick fixes instead of it negatively meaning like oh let's just do a quick fix she actually means small things tiny fixes with big impact so i think we're talking about small things well that go a long way that's quite

15:34The Wellness Scoop Hosts:nice Kim what do you think Sarah so I love this question and I love this question because I think we're so preoccupied particularly in kind of the wellness world for all of this health optimization and biohacking which I think can be quite soul-destroying I think it can take away the joy of food the pleasure of food and often only have a really really small impact so something that I'm really passionate about is what small changes can we make that are going to have the biggest impact. We often talk in science about the size effect and that size effect, that the size of the impact is so important relative to the change and the burden of the change that you're going to make because we don't want to take away that pleasure of food.

16:16The Wellness Scoop Hosts:Now, there is no single quick fix. That's the reality. If there was, I'd be floating on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean now. I wouldn't be sitting in my South London office looking at the rain. I think there's lots of things that we can do and I think it's finding what works for you as an individual so one area that I think is fantastic for small changes that I think can cumulatively actually have a big impact is thinking about how you eat and I think Rhiannon we've talked about this before on your podcast previously but factors like how fast you eat your food so if you are trying to calorie count or reduce weight something that we know is really effective is just slowing down how fast you eat your food.

16:58The Wellness Scoop Hosts:If you reduce the speed at which you eat your food by about 20%, subconsciously, without even thinking about it, the evidence shows that you'll reduce your energy intake by 15%. And also, we know late night snacking, if you're eating after about nine o 'clock at night, even if it's on healthy food, that can impact factors like your hunger levels the next day can actually be higher by eating later at night. You might go on to eat more food the next day. we know that it negatively impacts your metabolic health so again these are two quite small things that just don't go for that late night snack if it's just become a habit just slow down the rate at which you literally just put your knife and fork down between each mouthful so i think thinking about how you eat can help i think if i was have to choose one single strategy to improve health it would be snacking.

17:50The Wellness Scoop Hosts:And what we know is that about 25 % of our energy in the UK and the US and many countries comes from snacks. That's 25 % of our calories comes from snacks. We know that many, many people focus on the healthfulness of their main meal. So their breakfast or their lunch or their dinner, but then can snack quite mindlessly. And I ran a randomized control trial at King's some years ago where we asked people just to change their snacks. We said, keep everything else the same. Half of you are going to consume snacks that are representative of the typical snacks in the UK. What would that be, Sarah? What's a typical representation?

18:26The Wellness Scoop Hosts:Oh gosh. So we're talking about, imagine a bit of Walker's crisps, a bit of a Kit Kat, a bit of a cake. And we actually designed these muffins that had the nutrient profile to match the average snack intake in the UK. But it was a bit like that, you know, a bit of Snickers bar, these sorts of things. And so people either had 20 % of the energy from these snacks, or they were randomly allocated to have 20 % of the energy from nuts. But we told them just come on doing everything else the same. The improvements we saw in factors like their cholesterol levels in their blood vessel function, etc, after just six weeks, was equivalent to a predicted 30 % reduction in cardiovascular disease, just from changing snacks.

19:11The Wellness Scoop Hosts:So I do think if you are a snacker, change from unhealthy snacks to healthy snacks. I am not, by the way, Ella and Rhiannon advocating that people should start snacking. It's just if you are, and the majority of people in the UK are snackers. That's one really simple single dietary strategy that I think can have a massive impact on your health.

19:30Professor Sarah Berry:I love these kind of easy wins for a big impact because I think it feels so much more manageable. And I think when we think about this sort of beginning part of the year, often changing our health doesn't feel very manageable because it all feels really overwhelming. And that is so incredibly helpful. And I guess still talking about, you know, you mentioned timing of meals. We had so many questions on intermittent fasting, particularly actually looking at midlife women and how much contradictory advice there is. That was from Elisa. Samantha says, what does the latest science say on it? But there were just So many questions of whether or not intermittent fasting is a good strategy when it comes to health.

20:10The Wellness Scoop Hosts:So I think it depends. It depends on whether it's something that can fit with your lifestyle, your pleasure, food. I think that the evidence is quite consistent that reducing your eating window, so the period within which you're eating over a 24 hour period, can improve your health. So studies have shown that if you reduce your eating window to have a longer fast period overnight, you can improve your body weight. And that's because we know on average people practicing time-restricted eating, again, this is subconsciously, on average, they reduce their calorie intake by about 200 to 500 calories a day.

20:49The Wellness Scoop Hosts:We also see that there's an improvement in lots of factors related to cardiovascular health. So an improvement in blood pressure, an improvement in cholesterol, an improvement in inflammation, an improvement in glucose control. These are all factors that change for us midlife, particularly for women during the peri and postmenopausal phase. So absolutely, if time-restricted eating is changing these factors that we know are going to suddenly change as a peri or postmenopausal woman or as a man in midlife, I think it's a great strategy. the one thing I would really emphasize though is you don't need to go to extreme many of the trials out there show these benefits in for example a six-hour eating window meaning that you might have your breakfast at 10 o 'clock and then your last meal of the day at four o 'clock in the afternoon so you're just eating in that six hour period and then you're having an 18 hour fast period if that works for you fine do it but I know that there's no way I could live a joyful or happy life eating in just a six hour window and not having my glass of wine in the evening or, you know, my evening dinner with my family and friends.

21:57The Wellness Scoop Hosts:Where I think it gets really interesting is the research that we've done and some other more recent research as well that's been coming out showing that actually you only need to reduce your eating window to about 10 hours to see a benefit. And we conducted this trial called the Big Intermittent Fasting Study where we asked people to reduce their eating window to 10 hours. We said, do everything else as you normally would. And so that meant that they were maybe having their breakfast at, let's say, nine o 'clock and their last meal of the day at seven o 'clock. And we found that people felt better.

22:27The Wellness Scoop Hosts:They had better energy, better mood. They felt more alert. They felt less hungry. And they also lost weight during the study. So I would say that, yes, the evidence shows that it benefits many of the factors that we know change unfavorably midlife. We know that also you feel better. but I would say you don't need to go to extremes. Still enjoy your evening meal with your family, still enjoy the pleasures that you would at the time that you normally would. Just going to a 10-hour eating window should benefit you. We do see a huge variance in some people get more benefit than other people. So it's something I would say, try, see if it works for you.

23:08The Wellness Scoop Hosts:See first if it fits with your lifestyle, see if you feel a benefit. And most people feel a benefit after about two weeks. If after two weeks, you're feeling no benefit, then maybe you're someone that isn't as responsive as another individual is to this kind of technique.

23:22Professor Sarah Berry:It is interesting. And I would add a little caution, if you're somebody that's prone to disordered eating or it just definitely doesn't fit in your lifestyle. I mean, I wish we could all just eat at four, but most of us are still commuting home, aren't we? So at five or six, Like you said, that 10 hour window might be a more achievable thing to trial with trial and error for most people out there.

23:44The Wellness Scoop Hosts:So thank you, Sarah. It's so interesting. Can I just add something else as well? To the whole area of intermittent fasting, there is different types of intermittent fasting. One is the time restricted eating where you're eating within a specific window. The other is this idea of 5-2 where you might have five days where you're eating quite a restrictive number of calories and two days where you can go kind of wild. there is some evidence to show that that can improve your body weight so people can lose weight with that kind of approach but i would caution a little bit against that kind of intermittent fasting because there's some new emerging evidence around the consistency of eating that i think is really really interesting and what this evidence shows is that it is really important to be consistent in the pattern that you eat so for example if you typically have three main meals a day, but then the next day you're having one meal just because you're like, okay, I'm going to be really restrictive and reduce my calorie intake.