Most replayed moment: Carbs: the good, the bad, and the misunderstood | Tim Spector

0:00Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're talking about carbohydrates. Pasta, potatoes, fruit and beans. Carbs crop up everywhere. However, few topics in nutrition causes much confusion. Are they essential fuel or the enemy of weight loss? Should we cut them down or just choose our carbs more carefully? I'm joined by Professor Tim Spector to help untangle the truth and answer your biggest carbohydrate questions. Stick around to find out if freezing your bread makes it healthier.

0:45So what is a carb and what is it that can make it unhealthy? Well, a carb is a macronutrient. So in the old school world that we used to know, everything was divided into these three groups of proteins, fats, and carbs. And most of the things we eat are mixtures of those rather than one thing. You don't actually eat a carb. You eat a plant. And that plant will have different amounts of proteins, fats, and carbs in it. And within the carbs, it's going to have different types of carbs in it. And some of the foods we eat which you say, oh, that's a carby food, like say bread, is also going to have some protein in it and a little bit of fat in it.

1:30So we tend to massively oversimplify, but that's what we've done in the past, mainly through ignorance. And the food companies have liked it that way because it's made it very easy to sell products to us. Now, I think we need to break down carbs into what they are, which they are essentially sugars that are either very simple, sort of moderately simple and really complex and long and hard to break down. So the simple sugars like sucrose, your table sugar, is a very simple carbohydrate. It's a very simple sugar. It means it only has a few bonds easily broken down and used by your body as energy.

2:15Then you've got the starches, which are slightly more complex storage forms of sugar, which are joined together by bonds, which can be broken down by other enzymes in your body. and every plant has these starches and we're designed to do them. So they break it down into simple sugars, which are then released, just takes a little bit longer. And then you've got the really complicated long sugars all joined together with lots of tight bonds that are called fibers. And these are sometimes really impossible to break down in the body and only by the gut microbes sometimes rather than ourselves, and they pass through the body.

2:56So you've got this complexity all the way from simple to very long and complex with very different effects on the body. So most people think of carbs as only the sort of sugary end ones. They forget that a lot of the healthy carbs are these complicated fibers at the other end. So they throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, I'm not having any carbs. It's all rubbish. They're all deadly. Well, that's not true so many questions i just want to pick this one out first because it seems like directly relevant which is tim what are the good carbs that you eat well i eat as much as i can find so so basically you name it i'm trying to eat it but you know i i make my own sourdough bread and i make sure it's got plenty of rye in it and if i find some nice german rye bread And that to me is a good carb because it's very hard to digest.

3:52So it's very slow to break down that rye. I'll have pasta rather than rice. So I still occasionally have traditional wheat pasta, but increasingly switching to whole grain, whole wheat pastas, which are better for me. And then you've got all these range of grains. So things like lentils, quinoa, bulgur wheat, pearl barley instead of rice. So they're sort of little ones that people don't often think about. I certainly didn't think about those 10 years ago. So increasingly, I'm making these swaps as I'm trying to move away from the traditional staples. And whole grains and beans, I've heard you mention these are sort of the go-to things replacing the rice and the potatoes and the bread.

4:40Yes. So we haven't mentioned legumes and beans, but absolutely, they're a source of fats as well. So again, what's a carb source? It gives you the energy, you break down the sugars slowly, but it's also got protein, it's also got fiber. So legumes are, yeah, I can't get enough of those beans and lentils in every dish I'm finding, as well as the classical ones. We haven't talked about the spinach and the kales and the whatever. So there goes without saying they're in there. But I think it's about the little swaps people can make to move away from the too easy to digest ones, the ones that give you those sugar spikes.

5:20I have to say the thing that I found easiest is swapping regular pasta for whole grain pasta. And I know it's really easy because my daughter had a play date yesterday and I gave them pasta. We have whole grain pasta now. in-house, gave it to her friend who's never had whole grain pasta before, I think. And she just ate it because it has cheese and whatever else. And she's like, delicious. So that one is so easy to make the change. And I remember being like, really, oh, that's a disgusting idea. And I think within a week, I was like, oh, it's completely normal. So I found that very easy. Whereas I think other things are obviously harder, right?

5:59To re-engineer, to eat less bread, for example, we have to really rethink the sorts of food because you can't just get us you know if you're just always eating a sandwich then that doesn't really work as much and so some things are harder and some things are easier tim to change definitely yes i mean so you've touched on on some of them and and some of these areas are new so the foods are evolving so you might have tried you know whole wheat pasta five years ago but the new ones are actually tasting better similarly with the chickpea pastas or the lentil pastas. They're getting better all the time.

6:33They don't fall apart like they used to. Another question we had so much, when is the best time of day to eat carbs? Great question. The literature tells us that it's the mornings that are the best time that we metabolize better. So eating an identical carb meal, we have seemed to have better control over it will bring those sugar levels down quicker, digest it faster than in the evening. Now, the only caveat is those studies were generally done on young people, 20-year-olds. And when we looked at the ZOE data, we found that really this time difference pretty much disappeared after the age of 50.

7:19So the advantages for young people may be less relevant because young people really, apart from possibly mood changes, aren't really going to suffer many metabolic changes from having these spikes. Whereas as you get older, where it's more important, there seems to be more individual differences. So some people might be early, better in the morning, some people might in the evening. So I don't think there's a rule and I think you should follow whatever practice suits you and is likely to be sustainable. And so that's why I still have most of my carbs in the evening because I know it doesn't affect me more than the morning and it's when I'm hungrier.

8:03So my natural body tells me to do that. So listen to your body, I think, is the rule here. And just because some studies have shown in young people, it is better. If you can eat in the morning, that's fine, but don't get obsessed with it. And you mentioned the ZOE data here. Is this a big data set that helps to inform what you're saying? We've looked at thousands of people's data with ZOE who've done glucose monitors and clearly this age effect and time of day is very different in young and old people. Next question. Does eating carbs with other foods at the same time affect blood sugar spikes?

8:42Absolutely, yes. So what we're doing, if you eat it with other foods, you're essentially wrapping the sugars in other foods that are harder to digest. So whether they're fibers that their body can't break down or it's encased in fats is really important. So that's why the importance of thinking about food in combination, thinking about what's on your plate rather than any one ingredient is really important here. So mindful eating, realizing that if you are going to have, for example, some bread, you've got no healthy bread, but you're starving, well, just have it with some cheese or try and balance these things up or take it with a handful of nuts to give you some extra fiber.

9:29These have been shown quite clearly to change the height of the sugar spikes, which will then reduce the consequences. So it's not an absolute cure-all for everything, but it will mitigate, in a way, that sugar spike. So you can start to balance it. And do you need to sort of soak the food in that fat? So, you know, I'm thinking, because I sometimes feel like, oh, I've got that pasta, but as long as I pour loads of olive oil over it, like maybe it's going to be like slower to break down. Does it need to be like soaked in it? Or can I just have the two, like one mouthful and one of the other, but clearly it's hitting my stomach.

10:07It's not actually sort of encased. I think as long as it gets into your stomach, the stomach is like a washing machine where it churns it all up. So I'm not a big fan of people saying, well, I'm going to have my fats 10 minutes before I have my carbs in order to get this response. I believe that generally our stomach is able to sort these things out. So if we're eating them at the same time, this should solve our problem. So I'm a bit against this obsessional eating that you have to divide your meal into 10 minute intervals, having your cheese before you have your salad and then your potatoes.

10:48I think that's going a bit too far because for most purposes, your stomach will treat it all the same. And does eating like a sort of refined carb with some other food, does that suddenly make it as good as eating a sort of whole grain or unrefined carb in the first place? No, you can't put sprinkle on a turd. It's still going to be a sugar. And it's always going to be better to have those whole grains because you've got the original nutrients of the carbohydrate, you know, the bran, the germ, all these things on the casing that big food takes away, in those foods we were talking about, the good carbs, then they will still have them.

11:35And you can't replace that just with a few tablets or just a bit of cheese. I have to say my own personal experience when I was doing the first Surrey studies with you, Tim, was that I was wearing this blood sugar sensor and I ate a big pizza. And obviously pizza's got lots of cheese on it, right? So there's lots of fat as well as this, you know, sort of bread underneath, right, which is carb. And I think I had the biggest blood sugar spike in the entire two weeks from this big pizza. It went off the roof, stayed high for so long, then finally collapsed later. And I know that I don't have very good blood sugar control, but it did definitely make me feel that I wasn't going to just be able to put a bit of cheese on like a piece of bread and magically not have any blood sugar spike.

12:16Is that very unusual response that I had? Well, everyone's different, but there's plenty of people like you. And we all respond differently to fats and sugars, as we know. But I think it's a mistake to think that you can have unhealthy carbs like a massive pizza base and just smother it with all kinds of unhealthy fats and which might mask that sugar spike. but remember the fats this is another podcast but you know at six hours your your body's still trying to get rid of those fats in your body it can cause more problems than the sugar so let's not uh swap one problem for another you know pizzas are fine have them every now and again enjoy it as a as a treat you know maybe have your salad as your starter um which does help prime your blood sugar, but don't go too crazy on the extra fats.

13:11I think one of the things that this has done is just change my mind. Think about a lot of these things more like treats than as just sort of the, oh, you must eat this because this is your source of energy and you need to, you know, if you're not eating lots of bread before you go out in the morning, then, you know, how could you possibly function in the day? But another question that came out surprisingly often, does freezing your bread make it healthier? Great question. And this is this whole question of what's called resistant starch. So bread is a good example, but the question could also be for pasta, could also be for rice.

13:49and it comes from these studies that showed that if you cook these products and then the next day you put them in the fridge, then you reheat them, that they could be healthier because in some way the starch, the sugars, have become more resistant to digestion. That's why they're called resistant starches. And so they actually became more like fiber. About 10 years ago when I first looked at it, this was more theoretical. than real. But the last few years, there've been a number of studies now showing quite consistently that you get a benefit on the amount of sugar that comes out of that food and the sugar spikes if you do this for rice, for wheat, for pastas.

14:37And I was very skeptical, but now I think actually it's quite reasonable. I'm not sure that I'd always want to be cooking everything two days in advance and leave it in the fridge. But it's an extra reason to have those leftovers and do batch cooking for many people because it will slightly improve how much goes down to your gut and how much less is released. So, yeah, whether long-term it's a technique, I don't know. But it's quite a fun thing to think about. As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day.

15:34If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high-quality, hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber. Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion, and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives. Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life. Becoming a daily healthy habit you'll always have time for.

16:12By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains four grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants. So, order yours today at zoe.com slash daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

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