The Food Doctor: Extra Protein Is Making You Fatter!? 6 Food Lies Everyone Still Believes!

I brought everything I could find at the grocery store that said it was good for me and I want you to take a look to see if Tim Specter is definitely healthy or not. Avoid that terrible, complete rubbish that's not as bad as the other one, but let's unravel all these secrets the return of the world's leading gut health expert, Professor Tim Specter, is an award-winning scientist, bestselling author and co-founder of the Zoe company, the home kit for personalized nutrition, everything I am. everywhere there is a whole industry of people behind this, the first is

protein

supplements,

protein

is hugely advertised, most people have almost twice as much protein in their diets as they need and most of it will be converted in sugars and fat, coffee, it is definitely a healthy

food

and you will live longer mouthwash you are more prone to infections and your breath actually smells worse in the long term really yes there is no concrete data that you should drink eight glasses of water a day 10 minutes in the sun will give you all the vitamin D benefits you need and there is some real data that shows that if you have too much excess fat on your body, exercise alone is a terrible way to deal with it, you need something radical.

You and many others like you are victims of marketing, but we are in a fiber crisis, we believe that only one in 20 people is getting enough fiber for good health as a dramatic effect on cancer prevention, mental health and longevity , so you brought this, yeah, that's the magic potion for a handful of people that you reduce your risk of death. 14 15% two handfuls of 30% and it's incredibly easy to make, Tim, what's the benefit to me if I change the way I eat and start thinking through the lens of my gut microbiome and start following the advice that talk to me in your books about what the benefit is to both me and society in terms of statistical results, like why it is important because we are suffering from an epidemic of common chronic diseases, so we are getting increases in cancer, diseases heart disease, diabetes, obesity.

You know, the majority of the population is overweight or obese, which has enormous consequences on our economic production as well. It costs the country and taxpayers almost £60 billion a year. As a country, we don't want someone like you to become unhealthy and so on. that it is difficult for you to work, you are not functioning properly, so the state has to provide you with additional health, etc., there is that individual level, but we also do not want you to suffer from mental health illnesses, depression, anxiety, all these things that we know. They are also related to poor diet, as well as an increase in cancers and other elements, so it is a combination of medical, mental, social and economic.

All of these things are related to having good nutrition and I think we're taking it for granted. It's true that it doesn't really matter what we eat, it's all about weight and stuff, but that's maybe just a small part of it. I think there's a lot more to it than someone like me, you know, I'm 30 years old and I like to think I'm in good shape. I workout every day. I'm very active so sometimes I think I can fall into the trap of thinking that because there are no obvious signs of illness in me, I can eat what I want because I'm exercising and then I sat here with a

doctor

a couple of months ago and he told me a phrase that sounded something like we can see diseases growing in you decades from now that really made me change the way I think about health because whether it's like a seed of health or a seed of disease that is growing in me regardless of my current physical abilities and if, you know, I think I'm in good shape, it's like the disease is invisibly aggravating inside me, for better or worse, and that means that even someone like me can stop the disease of Steve, 50, now in his 30s, pushing my health in a slightly different direction in terms of nutrition, is an accurate assessment because there will be people who are listening to that. they're so healthy apparently healthy on the outside because they can run fast or because they don't have any problems with their bones or back, yeah, well, when I was your Ed, I didn't think about my nutrition at all, actually, um, you know, though he was a trained

doctor

, etc.

I said I don't want too much fat, I want this and you know, I'll try to get a nice steak instead of the cheapest one, um, but I didn't think that way that I wanted to look like. After my health in 20 years, it's a difficult concept for people who know that they do so many other things and

still

feel good, that they

still

get out of bed fresh in the morning, with energy and without really feeling the effects of the aging, so I think. It's true, but it's a pretty difficult concept to sell to the entire population, especially people in their 20s and 30s, about the future and that's why I think focusing on things like mental health resonates perhaps more than saying " Think about what you're going to do." to be like when you're 50 for most people.

I have definitely spent the last 10 years of my life believing that to build big muscles, which has been a goal throughout my life, I need to take protein supplements, what do you think? about that i still have protein supplements in my house protein powder i come home from the gym big scoop of protein drink it what do you think that protein is hugely promoted? There are very few people who are protein deficient in this country and need supplements. Some, but I would say less than 5% of the population don't get enough protein to do their normal activities or build muscle because it's so inherent to our normal diet that we evolved, you know, to be omnivores and get enough.

Protein and our ancestors didn't fall apart because we didn't get protein shakes and I think the fact that we focus on protein is that you and many others like you are victims of the marketing you see everywhere you look. at the time protein is what sells products if it has protein on the package you know it's Ring oh I need

extra

protein and protein has this ring of just well there's nothing wrong with protein it's like made me big and strong and I don't worry about calories or getting fat, you know, use it or lose it and that's fine and completely wrong, all the evidence is that most people consume almost twice as much protein in their diets. as they need a normal balance of protein and the only people who really need to worry are if you are old and don't eat much, so young people will usually get enough

food

as a percentage of all that food. is going to contain protein, there are very few foods that do not contain protein.

People don't think about it, but every time you eat pasta or cereal, you eat protein. It doesn't have to be meat or eggs. but older people, if you're not eating, you've stopped eating, you're sick, you know, you're on some medication, you might need some additional protein sources or focus on it, or if you're a strict vegetarian or vegan in that position in the one you don't eat much or you are sick or you are old, then those people do need something now, if you are a bodybuilder and again you are trying to lose weight at the same time, then you might need some protein supplements, but if you are on a normal diet, there is no evidence that the vast majority of people need

extra

protein, they can get it from regular foods, and in my opinion, regular foods are a much better way to get it because that's what it is. how our bodies have evolved instead of consuming it in a drink, supplement or powder where it is often mixed with other chemicals, it is not in its natural form, we are not sure that it is all used and the excess protein that you have does not it's free Protein is broken down and eliminated in the body or stored as fat as it is converted to sugars and then fats so people think protein is in the muscle and if it doesn't go to my muscle , I just peed on it.

It doesn't matter, it's not the case if you have a lot of protein that you can't use in your muscles because you already have so much on board that you can't store it anywhere, some of it is removed, but most of it will be converted into sugars and fats, this goes against everything I was told because I thought you could consume as much protein as you wanted, your body can't store it so I must feel like I'm pooping or something. I don't know, I can't store it as protein, okay, but it is converted, broken down into small pieces and stored in your body for the future, so how much protein can I process in a day, how many grams of protein, how? many kilos approximately us, but oh 90 we say 91 because there are people listening, it's all muscle, although um, approximately that amount of protein um uh, because it goes with the weight, the higher your weight, the more protein you need to repair your muscles and keep you So the official amount is normally about 0.8 uh grams per kilogram, okay, but if we think you know we want to be on the safe side so that most people are 95% of people, that is the safe level, but most people in this country consume about 1.4 grams per kilogram, so that would be over 100 grams of protein for you and basically, if you don't do anything extra, you could do a little bit of exercise that might increase it a little. a little bit, maybe 10%, so you could use 10% there if you lift weights a lot, etc., but not in large quantities, so if you take 300 grams of protein, most of it will be for you. you would get rid of it by excreting it somehow or it would turn into sugars and fats.

I found here that the average daily protein intake in the UK is 76g per day for adults aged 19-64 and 67. gram per day for adults age 65 and older, so that's the average amount people consume in their normal diets. Yes, it depends approximately on the size of the people, it is just over a gram per kilo and they get it without protein. most of them without protein powders only from their normal diets. I mean, as an example, you know, my normal breakfast gives me. I worked out, you know, over 30 grams of protein, um, which is what you want to start your day. getting the muscles to repair things, but if I took, you know, an extra protein powder, give me an extra 100 grams that wouldn't really have any effect other than slightly increasing my weight.

What about fiber? I have two questions here. What does fiber contain? the simplest terms and why is it important? Do we consume enough fiber in our natural diets in the UK? Unlike protein, where 95% of people are absolutely fine and not protein deficient, 95% of people are fiber deficient, we believe. Only one in 20 people get enough fiber for good health, so this is the imbalance among marketing people, they simply don't make money on fiber like they do with protein, so all the trade goes to to

everyone

's protein deficiency. have protein protein protein protein you know who supports spinach or fiber, hardly anyone, we have a massive deficiency in it, it's the carbohydrate bits, so carbohydrates are made up of sugar, starches and fibers, so fibers They are the parts of Carbohydrates that are not broken down are absorbed early in the system, so they go into the deeper parts of the intestine, feed the microbes and have to be digested much slower, much lower in your system and are food for gut microbes and there could be solubles, there were insolubles, they're just different degrees of how hard it is to break them down and we used to think it was ruffage, it used to be called ruffage when I was a medical student and junior doctor. eat this stuff and it was like cleaning out the toxins, it was like you have this stuff, it scrapes your pipes and it cleans them and that's all it was ever intended to do, but now we know that it's absolutely crucial to the health of the average person. in the UK there's about 20 grams of fibre, so if you just increase that by a quarter, not much five grams, that's, you know, a handful of nuts or seeds or something like that a day, you'll either increase or reduce your risk of death by 14 15% and if you ate two handfuls of nuts 30% each one increases so it has a dramatic effect on your longevity and it's also important for avoiding cancer and mental health and pretty much everything we've looked at , so it's really the forgotten element of our diet that I think right now we're in a fiber crisis, we're certainly not in a protein crisis and yet

everyone

's talking about protein, it's really a fascinating interplay between You know what the real problems are and what the marketing and commerce of this whole field is, so we need to improve everyone's fiber amounts.

All the healthy countries in the world are eating a lot more fiber and it's also diverse fiber, there's a lot of different things that it's not just about having. kale when you came on the podcast last time you said something that I thought was pretty daunting, which was the idea of ​​trying to include 30 plants inmy diet for the week. Today you brought some food for me that you say may help. Me with this Jack, could you have the food that Tim brought with him today? So you brought this jar of what looks like a bunch of nuts and seeds.

Yes, that's the magic potion. Magic potion. Tell me more. So this is what I call my diversity jar. I have a bite, but there are basically about 10 different types of nuts and seeds in there and every time I see a package of mixed nuts or find something new in a store, I add it to that jar and keep it mixed whole. around and that's what I put yogurt and cfir in the morning or I put salad at lunch and that's basically a trick that instantly gives me 10 plants for my week, so you're saying how hard it is to get to 30 plants. by doing that, you only have 20 left to say, look, you're a third of the way there just with some tricks like that which, by the way, also give you your protein, so instead of your protein shakes and your any handful of that one you have, you know significant amounts of protein, but the important thing for this is the 30 plants, people forget that a plant doesn't have to be it doesn't look like spinach or kale, it can be a nut and a seed that are so rich in Nutrients and so useful that they will keep entire colonies of hundreds or thousands of different microbes happy in your intestine chewing on the different chemicals that they contain and they are very rich in fiber and very rich in protein.

I was going to say about fiber, this is a way to get fiber too, absolutely yes, so they're high in fiber and protein and that's why they're so nutritious and why if you're eating this kind of stuff that you don't really need, uh, chemical supplements, and that's just one of several tricks on how you can add them to your foods very easily and, as you know, mentally I just think I want to try and find adding different things. to my food I don't want to have the same food every day people get stuck going to your local sandwich shop and saying I'm just going to eat that shrimp salad shrimp salad shrimp salad you know, think every day see something different and if people start thinking differently about food not only does it excite the taste buds a little more and get you out of your routine but it's also going to generate a lot more microbes so you know if you're going to win me over you need to get more diversity there to grow more species so that you can, you know, keep them all happy and they live, you know, live off of diversity and variety just like we humans do when I got Zoe's results back. from the PDF shows all the bugs in my stomach is that as you call them bugs I have more technical bugs or microphone microbes let's call them microbes so uh just because it makes me sound smarter so all the microbes in my in my belly and now I had a group very reduced microbes.

If you're telling me that if I expand that collection of microbes, my overall health will be better, I'll process my food better, my mental health will be better, is there anything I can do? m I'm getting lost on that list, your immune health would be better, so okay, immunity would be better, so you would have fewer food allergies. You would have um uh, infection resistance would be better, so how do I handle it? I know this sounds like a super stupid question, but I looked at that list and thought it was cool, so I almost thought of it as little pets living inside me.

Where do these come from? Where do I get new pets, like new animals, to put inside my body? I was thinking my girlfriend has a lot of them. I'll just kiss her. Yeah, well, you could kiss your girlfriend, and by the way, there's quite a bit of exchange between partners in microbes, so you're not wrong, MH, but unless they had. something to eat, they die, okay, so what you're doing is, you know, we're continually surrounded by a lot of these microbes, we're exchanging microbes with all of our close friends and family all the time, but unless you have the fertilizer available.

You, they're not going to survive and fertilizer is food diversity, yeah, and you might have done it, and you know you've kissed your girlfriend. You've got some of her microbes and they're sitting there waiting to be fed. They may be in a very dormant state, many of these microbes can form spores and remain there for years doing nothing in small quantities. They only wake up when you know Peanut hits them on the head or something and says, "Oh, you know, Steven, give me something." food you finally know this I can eat this I couldn't eat the other I can't eat nandos I'm going for this so that's the concept that you want to give them this rich land so they can flourish and you can get microbes by going to other countries you know , eating a variety of foods and there are microbes that live in a lot of fresh produce that you can get, you get them from dogs, animals, just having a pet in the house or going to In the countryside you can have more microbes on you, but it's just that many Some of them are actually inside us waiting and places like our appendix can be sources of small amounts of these microbes that are simply waiting for the right signal to wake up.

I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back of our YouTube channel and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you who watch it frequently haven't hit the Subscribe button yet, so I have to ask you a favor if you have. I once watched this channel and enjoyed the content. If you're enjoying this episode right now, could I ask you a small favor? Press the Subscribe button. Help this channel more than I can explain and I promise that if you do, we will return the favor. make the show better and better and better and better and better that's the promise I'm willing to make if you hit that subscribe button, do we have a deal?

After our last conversation I was always going to the supermarket trying to figure out what is fermented. and what is not, how do I know what is fermented? What does fermented mean? um and you brought this variety of things with you to show me how easy it is to ferment things in your own home. I guess so, I think people are afraid of fermentation and it's important to know what it is and what it isn't. So fermentation is a word with many different meanings, but it is when microbes modify food to produce something that tastes different, tastes better and is also healthy for you and in a way, it is a Probiotic Foods because what we are What you do is take basic whole foods and add something like salt or sugar and that then allows the natural microbes in those plants to flourish and change the composition of that food so that it becomes acidic.

They get rid of all the bad bugs and turn it into something super healthy and all the microbes grow just like they would in your gut if you fed them, so it's like a mini version of your gut, is what we're looking at here. and it's incredibly easy to do, which is why I brought this so we can demonstrate not only how to get additional plants in your 30 a week, but also if those plants are fermented, they have many times more nutrients and The fact that those insects have been working on them means that they have been digested in some way before reaching your intestine and all these studies show that they are super good for all aspects of your health and if you can eat several servings of these days you will really notice the difference, so for people who only listen to the audio and can't see what we have in front of you here, we have a jar like a liter jar of that is full of chopped vegetables from the bottom of my refrigerator, we would all have refrigerators like this where there are leftovers and The idea is that instead of throwing them away, you can just cut them up and ferment them.

I place it and put it in a jar. I can see cabbage. I can see a radish there. It's like the waste vegetables that most people would probably throw in the trash, so a few years ago I just threw this in the trash. I wouldn't have thought to do it, so you throw it away. People have heard of sakra, which is basically fermented cabbage, and you may have heard of kimchi, which is the Korean version that has a few more things like chili peppers and ginger and spices, uh, and this is kind of a mix. of all of them, but it's just to illustrate the fact that you can ferment virtually all plants and avoid waste, and that's what our ancestors did before refrigerators, because all you have to do is put them in a jar, crush them and add 2% salt and a little bit of water to cover it, that's all you do and I can demonstrate it to you now if you want, so we have all this here. and the idea is that you add a little bit of salt, so we're adding 2% salt.

It's very important to measure it, so the only really complicated thing is to make sure you have 2% salt and that's what you pour in there and mix it. Normally I put it in a big bowl and do it, but you get the idea, you put the salt in, you mix it up and you mash it really hard so I know it really gets rid of any space for air. Microbes don't like air. The ones that ferment, they call them Anor robic, they don't like oxygen, so they grow very well when their oxygen is cut off and they can just live.

Start eating the sugars in these plants and the salt gives them a competitive advantage against nasty microbes. Well, that means they can compete with each other because suddenly it's a different environment and that's what we're doing. Bring it down and um, I'm going to add a little bit of water here, sometimes you don't need to add almost any water and if you add more than a little bit, just add a little bit of salt to that water, just enough to cut it. Because microbes are naturally in all of these plants, people don't realize they think they must be sterile.

I bought it in a nice supermarket in a plastic wrapper. It's full of microbes and that's normal and we know that even in garlic. for example, even when you cut it there are PS uh 10 20 different types of microbes that live in that garlic and once they feel the water and the salt they will suddenly say ah, it's good to come out. I can compete. I can grow. Can. Start chewing the sugar and then to pack it in you can use some stones, some clean stones. What I like to do is use up some leftover scraps, so I take some outer cabbage leaves or something else from a plant and just put them on.

I crush it and so you can see it's now below the MH water line and I close the lid and that's basically it and I would leave it for a minimum of three days somewhere at room temperature out of the sun and you can start to see it they form bubbles and that's CO2 that the microbes are producing, that they're fermenting it, that's it, suddenly you have your own probiotic fermented food made from your scraps instead of throwing it away and that's a great example of what you can do . um to really improve your health for something that doesn't cost anything other than the price of salt and that's one that you made before yeah this one is prettier it's one that I made before and I'm just going to see you can see a some bubbles in there uh it's starting to work and you can open it up every day to give it a whiff and see what's going on

making

sure it's packed so it's all below the water line once I did it once it fermented after a week.

You can put it in the refrigerator for months. Oh, actually, you can put it in the refrigerator for a month. Yes, once it fermented it became acidic and the pH dropped below 4.5. No. other microbes can live there, only the ones that you want that you have personally selected, these are your probiotic microbes that we know are good for your health and the difference between this and your probiotic capsule is that you will probably get 30 different microbes in here, While you take your capsule, you might get two or three, which is why I think fermented foods are a real answer to many of our problems.

You know, the fact that we have a pretty Western private microbiome, these could really help people like you. to increase your G you have microbiome and you simply introduce these fermented foods into your regular diet and this is what Koreans do for example the Japanese use fermented soybeans in almost all of their foods so the healthiest populations have large amounts of fermented foods in their When we look at the diets of Japanese and Koreans, do they have better gut microbiomes than people in the UK and US? Yes, they have them, but the most important thing is that they live much longer and suffer much less of our chronic diseases, or delay those problems by at least 10 years, so I think we need to learn from the populations that are doing well and this is something really easy to do and I think it's a great EX exercise in teaching because if you think about what's going on, it's This reflects what's going on inside your gut.

If you had that rich diversity of plants there, you can make a lot of microbes proliferate and once you start to see the bubbles that form and the amazing change in flavor and texture, you have to remember that this is the difference between a grape and a amazing vintage red wine. It's just the effect of those microbes on the fact that you know the skin of the grape changes over time, increases that complexity and produceschemicals. It's basically a chemistry lesson. When I'm in the grocery store there are a lot of things that now have labels that say they're great for gut health or that they're low in sugar or low in fat.

I brought everything I found. I was able to find something at the grocery store that claimed to be good for me and I want you to check it out. These are some of the most popular things that people buy at the supermarket that make these claims that they are good for me. low sugar, low fat, low protein, great for gut health, so the first one I have here is acol which says it has vitamin D B6, great for immune support, zero added sugars, 0% fat , rich in vitamin D, which is definitely Tim Specter. healthy or not, um yeah, these these claims, uh, some of these claims that they're allowed to put on the package are very restricted, what they can actually say in terms of health, what they can do goes back 30 years and already They are not really valid, but they have to do it. do it because they are not allowed to even mention the word probiotic on a package in an interesting way, so they are trying to attract you with things that would resonate with the consumer, so they do these massive surveys to say what is going to resonate with you, Steve, when you come into this and say, oh, what's going to make me buy this instead of one of the others?

So vitamin D, we've been whipping vitamin D for forever, you know, 10 minutes in the sun. It gives you all the vitamin D you need and it's in most foods anyway, you don't really need it, plus in this stuff the % added sugar and % added fat mean it's highly processed so that the combination of Health is what we call Health Halos. um to say it's super healthy with rich in this vitamin without sugar or fat um it's a very old fashioned science. Nobody

believes

that zero fat is good for you anymore and there is some real data that shows that low fat foods actually make you overeat, really yes, what does it do?

The data says it when they compared identical meals to people in lab conditions, those who eat low-fat, high-carb foods, but highly processed foods like this will actually overeat substantially over the next day or so. , so you're actually doing You overeat, uh, pretty significantly, and there's no advantage to your body in terms of heart health to having this because to get zero fat and for it to taste good, it has to have a lot of sugars and additional starches, otherwise you simply couldn't. Eating fat is naturally very important for you to enjoy food, so it takes a lot of careful chemistry to mimic that fat, so I would always avoid anything that said, you know, zero sugar, zero fat, rich in vitamins, even though this probably has some good probiotics in it, so you're getting good probiotics, um, it's just a lactobacillus, but that counteracts Ed with all these negative things, all these chemicals that we know are bad for your gut microbiome, so they won't be good for you. or it's not going to be good for me either, so I would avoid that.

I always go for any yogurt that really has minimal content, just milk and microbes, that's all you need. Can you bring me the container? This goes into the bin. I just drop it. in the bin i also scanned it into the zoe app and my ratio to it was about 35 which is not a healthy food what's up with this this is definitely healthy Dr. Tim Specter Activia deliciously good for your gut health okay so I know this one is going to be good. What else does it say? We believe that a happy gut is a happy you.

When you love your gut, it loves you. It looks like you wrote it. What else? What other claims do they make? He has us ferment our unique blend of five active strains for up to eight hours, so each little pot is filled with billions of planet-loving, gut-loving live cultures. Activia is great for gut health. Well, until now you know, everything is seen, everything is seen. well right, but let's take a look and say what extra things they've added to it, which is always hard to find in packages and you often need a microscope to see them, so to make it good. you just need microbes and milk and that makes yogurt you just change the temperature that's what you get so here we have a lot we have a lot of ingredients we have flavorings we have concentrates we have some carrot for some reason we have lemon juice we have stabilizers uh we have tapioca starch we have sugars and it claims to have strawberries although I'm not really sure when they were last picked from the ground Well, it's not as bad as the other one, but basically we're looking at a highly processed product that has a lot of chemicals that you really don't want in your gut because they will counteract the good effect of gut microbes a little better than the other one but I still wouldn't eat it myself okay and does the fact that it's processed just make it a bad food or is it because the processing process causes a loss of the good things and the addition of a There are a lot of bad things when we say Pro because this word processed foods has become a general term so in my brain I think if it is processed it has to be bad, but is it that accurate?

Well, we must separate practically all the foods we eat. and since it is also processed, yes, but we have to separate it from the ultra-processed, so natural yogurt does not add anything, nothing that you know has changed is processed because you are mixing a basic ingredient, milk with microbes, you are actually creating something that is is processing, but it is when you take it to the next stage and make the same product from, for example, powdered milk, and then add various starches and stabilizers, emulsions, concentrates, artificial sweeteners, flavorings, that same yogurt becomes ultra-processed and that extra step is the main problem.

There's nothing wrong with processed foods, you know, cheese is processed, there's nothing wrong with most of the foods we eat or some having salt or oil added or anything like that, but it's when It deals with chemical chemicals that are not found in the kitchen. it's added to foods that have been stripped of all their goodness so that they don't just use cow's milk, it would be you know cassin dry extract or um, you wouldn't take wheat, it would be the internal part removed from that. wheat and then it's temperature treated to melt it and change its composition and to put these things back together you need all these glues like these emulsifiers uh you need stabilizers you need um uh sweeteners flavoring coloring all these extra things to make it look like food Again, I don't think we should To call ultra-processed foods, that's a misnomer, we should call them, you know, edible foods, like substances that are manufactured industrially and if we start realizing the difference between them, we can start

making

smart food choices.

We now know that a lot of research has been done on many of these ingredients since we last spoke. The first things like esparto came to light, which is an artificial sweetener, has been linked to many health problems, including an increased risk of cancer and heart disease. We have emulsifiers that have recently appeared in a number of studies that show that they affect mental health and they also affect heart disease, even when you fit the entire diet and take just that component of the food, so we know that they are ultra-processed. . Food is probably the worst thing we do in our diet and then in the UK the average person says around 60% of all their food is ultra-processed, unbeknownst to us we eat four times as much as healthy European countries.

They are often poorer than us, so it's not just a question of money, it has become a battle between us poor consumers against these big companies with billions of pounds to spend on marketing to us. They have said that this is healthy thanks to these false Health Halos. vitamins, you know, sugar-free, no, er, fat-free, confusing the consumer and all the while giving us foods that not only make us sick, but more importantly, make us overeat, so we choose those things, it doesn't matter, he says only when, even if it's low. Fat or has a lot of other chemicals makes you eat a quarter too much, so you will be hungrier after eating that than if you had an all-natural yogurt without any of those extra chemicals.

Okay, so I have three. different drink like Food here I have my Oasis Citrus punch um on this one it says natural flavorings and real fruit so it must be healthy real fruit if it says real fruit you have to be very suspicious okay that's the first thing you should do. to see it uh and natural flavors that don't really mean anything and this is uh natural is a big word that doesn't mean anything uh medically scientifically, but it's been a buzzword for me, getting people to buy things, so basically this it's a mixed mix of citrus fruits which means that mixes of all kinds of different fruit extracts that are combined with sugar and artificial sweeteners are again highly processed fruits, they're not fresh fruits and you have a mix of those, you have citric acid, you have sugar, orange flavorings, uh, es has stabilizers polyphosphates glycerol esters uh has um looks like wood resins um acidity regulators uh preservatives has some potassium sorbate potassium benzoate has sweeteners aspartame and uh an es spot is what you're talking about, right, yeah, that's the one they just put on their warning list, so yeah, it's full of things you wouldn't expect if you just squeezed out some juice and thought it was healthy, so this is a good example of a totally fake ultra-processed. food that makes it look like real fruit and it will be healthy for you and it's just a mixture of chemicals that will just ruin your gut microbes and make you hungrier but this one from Philly says light so it says 100% The Taste but 40% less fat, so Philadelphia light is probably good, well, it has cheese, it often has this.

We did some testing on this a while ago. It has microbes if it is low in fat. I've usually added something else to increase the mouthfeel, and in fact, we see here that it has stabilizers, it has emulsifiers, all of these things that we know have effects on your gut microbes, make you hungrier, and can also affect your heart. , so yes, I would. avoid that, what do we have to do? I have a few last things for you. What should we take into account when packaging these products? Because interestingly enough, the one in your hand, the bar there, the snack bar in the back admit it's a little bit processed actually there's a sentence on the back I'll read read it says um I was reading it like you said it says well um Well clearly it would be wrong for us to claim that everything in this bar is 100% natural and simply grows on trees, obviously some ingredients need to be cleaned, dried and roasted as well and therefore processed to some extent, it's just that we believe that The less we modify it, the better it tastes. why we never add artificial flavors or colors or preservatives, yes, natural bar and the ingredients you know, it is good to say that it is quite difficult to produce some of these bars without having elements to bind them or gums, glucose syrup, soy protein, crunchies . isolate tapioca starch salt dates almonds salt salted caramel moso sugar whey powder natural flavors cream powder milk rice flour carb flour and salt yeah, it's not like that when you read it like that it doesn't sound as natural as the label suggests uh It's because you just got all these ingredients that, again, you know half of them you wouldn't find in your kitchen, um, and part of it is because you know they're full of protein, um, you know, if it were, if you just need the nuts and the seeds, you wouldn't have to add all of this, uh, other soy things and other beans and things that are ultra-processed, they're just taking that part by combining them, so some of these are better than others, um , but um, again. this is ultra-processed and interestingly all these snacks are usually the bane in places like the US and UK where we eat so many that our energy comes from these snacks which wasn't the case 20 years ago so , at that point, snacking is good or bad and what impact does that have on an individual's overall nutritional profile because a lot of people are good eaters, almost everyone is a snacker.

I think that's right, more than 90% of people. snacking, so it's become normal to snack in this country in the US, it's the norm, it's not the norm in other countries, so you see a lot less snacking habits in southern Europe than here and much less in many Asian countries. Well, a Zoe study found that 95% of people were snacking, yes, and 25% of people are undoing the benefits of healthy foods by consuming unhealthy snacks.Yes, 95% of the people we found in that Zoe study snack and most of them are unhealthy. Just by snacking, unless you're very careful, you're not only going to have extra calories, but you're also going to have unhealthy calories that are going to undo a lot of the good things that you're eating, so we found in Zoe's survey that people would really focus on their main meal saying that this is a really healthy meal.

I'm eating a lot of plants and vegetables, but hey, I have to eat my snack, so they would be undoing all the good stuff by eating something that would then, a couple of hours later, really mess with their metabolism and make them hungrier, so it would ruin the idea and make them hungrier so in the UK and US about a quarter of our calories come from snacks if we could even reduce that a bit or just swap that snack for a healthy one or Ideally, moving the snack time to the meal itself, most of these would be much less harmful if you took them at the end of the meal, when your body already knows it's starting.

Doing all this work breaking down food is preparing you for this high activity. Pretty much all the late-night snacks people eat are bad for you, and that's because you're experiencing a sugar spike right before bed and your body isn't ready. Because of this, your gut microbes are not prepared, they are not given a rest and therefore you end up hungrier the next day, so we are starting to realize that it is not just about the food and we have seen that most These snacks are very unhealthy and will make you hungrier, but the timing of your snack also disrupts your cadian rhythms, so you don't recover and the next day you will feel hungrier than if you didn't snack, so it's counterintuitive. , you think, oh, if I eat something before I go to bed, tomorrow I won't be as hungry and this is what a lot of people make, this common mistake is AK, so we need to start changing the way people eat. .

Attitude, uh, in this snacking epidemic about snacking and saying, you know you don't need them, um and if you have them healthy and you know that nuts and seeds and fruits are perfectly healthy and we showed that in our study that you recently published. that people who eat those healthy snacks actually have almost no additional risk of health problems compared to people who don't snack as long as it's not late at night, so if you eat within that kind of window of normal eating and You know, some people are natural eaters. I don't know if I don't, but I know a lot of my Zoe colleagues can't go two or three hours without eating, they find it really difficult and just thinking about it more. snack and I say well, I'm going to eat, I know I have this tendency, I'm going to eat something that's healthy like nuts or something, yeah, just a handful of mixed nuts, an apple, a pear, something that's not too sugary or very greasy but the most important thing is that it is not ultra-processed, it is not something that has this health halo that says eat me.

I am high in protein. I'm going to, you know, eat me and you'll get bigger muscles. No, eat me and you will get fat. Health halos, then what are they? So we have summarized them. Low fat is a Halo of health. You were saying there is no sugar. Royal fruit. Trying to remember all the extra vitamins. Vitamin labels on products. Natural flavors. I think he said yes. Of the products, those are the main ones, I've missed some, I think we've covered that, yeah, so claims about low fat, low sugar, nothing artificial, high protein, I guess natural, right, High protein, some would be gut friendly, they generally warn. signs this food should be avoided find something that doesn't need that health claim you will never see a real food complete with a health claim they don't need it you have an apple it doesn't need a claim you know it contains vitamins uh fiber real foods don't they need health labels I've had a confusing relationship with bread I look at bread all bread I think that's bad this is tricking my microbiome the truth is that bread is bad most bread is bad most supermarket bread en Ultra-processed sugar and contains many other chemicals that you really don't want makes you hungrier and the general public perception is that it is a healthy food.

I found it myself when I started measuring my glucose levels, even whole grain breads were everywhere. There are some breads that I can eat in small quantities and that are still healthy, like rye bread, and if it's sourdough it makes it better too, but I think overall we're eating too much bread for most people, There may be some people who can support you and that is why it is good to test your glucose responses. But most bread has too much sugar, not enough fiber, too many chemicals and we should look to other things for our nutrition.

Have it as a rare gift. right when you go to a restaurant or whatever, but for most people you know that's a real red flag for me, the other red flag that surprised me was my relationship with white rice because I grew up eating white rice and I thought white rice was kind of cool after going to the gym with some chicken so I used to do it every time I saw white rice and I thought it was cool and then I looked at Zoe and I had a 15 out of 100 relationship with rice. white and I think my girlfriend had a five out of 100 ratio with white rice, so I don't have white rice anymore.

I changed it to uh. I think quinoa is usually what we have at home. Now almost any grain is better than proper white rice. It has more fiber, it has more protein, it has more nutrients and rice is the most overrated food. I think even more than bread because yeah, people think it's healthier than you think, having potatoes or pasta, they associate it with healthy things because Often, sometimes the rest of the food is pretty good MH and you know , vegetable cures or whatever, it's often quite healthy, but rice itself is just sugar and you can't take it as a rare treat, but you can eat many other grains. instead of quinoa, barley, oats, um, you know, or even put lentils or legumes, you know, beans instead of that.

Rice makes it much healthier. I quickly discovered a product that has changed my life called Eight Sleep, this Eight Sleep product, who are sponsors. from this podcast has been a revelation in my life because the eight sleeping capsule cover, which is basically a fitted sheet that covers the mattress, controls the temperature of the bed throughout the night and follows the natural rhythm of nature; It starts to cool down and gets colder as you enter. different phases of sleep and then warms slightly when you wake up in the morning, effectively guiding you to have a deeper and more restful sleep.

Check out 8sleep.com, which is EIG ght sleep.com Steven, and if you do, you'll save $150 on the Pod case on my bed that I'm talking about, grab your Pod case, send me a DM and let me know how it goes when you talk about your habits being so important when you eat and what you're eating and making sure you have time to eat because I told you before, I think before I start recording I'm in a pattern when I eat my first meal of the day. like 400 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. because if I'm recording a podcast or I'm doing something in the media or on television that I didn't like to eat before, then what is an example of good eating habits?

I want to know what your eating habits are in a perfect state. day, let's say you know that this was your 10th day out of 10, when would you eat? How many meals would you have and at what times would you eat and not eat well? I think we need to realize that you have to try this kind of 8020 ideal. You know you're trying to stick to something 80% of the time knowing that the 20% is out of your control, don't worry and if you do that, you can do it sustainably for decades, right, it's the people who got obsessed and said I shouldn't break it and if one day you break it, okay, end of my brilliant experiment, that's DFT, so if I'm at home for example . working at home I am in control of things I will not eat anything before 11:00 I will have a black coffee because I know that wakes me up and I like it and it is also good for me but I would have anything else until 11:00 I will go down and get ready my bowl of full fat yogurt and I'll put my jar of diversity sprinkled in there and see what else is in the fridge so I can have some berries if There are a lot of berries in season right now, maybe I'll pull them out of the freezer if we're in the middle , you know, it's March or something.

There are no fresh berries, or you could just cut up an apple and put it in. there I'm getting my protein, I'm gaining weight, you know, I'm not hungry, and I have an energy crash in the middle of the day that I probably would have if I hadn't eaten anything, you said coffee. I drink my coffee because I know it's good for me last time we talked you were a little hesitant about coffee you two were thinking if it's good for us or not now you're saying you think it's good for us yeah well. I must have given you the wrong impression, but coffee is definitely a healthy food, interesting, well there are some people who don't tolerate it very well, they don't tolerate caffeine in a small percentage of people, but even if you drink coffee you are deaf.

It is of decent quality because there are different ways to eliminate caffeine. All studies now consistently show that you will have less heart disease and live longer if you drink coffee and have between one and four cups of coffee. coffee a day that seems to be the sweet spot a little bit more than that you probably have some problem you know coffee is actually a fermented plant so people don't see it that way they think oh it just comes in a jar, you know you don't You don't have to worry about that, but actually you know it comes from a tree, you get this pod, this bean, you take it off, you break it up and then it ferments in the soil, usually, you know, in anywhere in Africa or Asia, where where it is and it's humid, the microbes are working to break it down, then you dry it and you roast it and that ends up being the coffee that we have, so the microphones play a role in that they also It is a source of fiber.

Three cups of coffee gives you around five grams of fibre, which is about a quarter of the average amount in the UK or the US, so you know it's not the main source of fibre, but it helps and in the US It is usually the main source of fiber. uh that you get as many polyphenols as fiber, um also for many people, it wakes them up and alerts them, it has the effect of stopping the fitness, so if you're careful with it, you won't overdose and you'll know that it doesn't give your fluctuations. Heart health benefits will be really beneficial for you in the long run, so this is a great example of a food that we've totally changed our minds about over the years.

My first research paper I wrote was that coffee causes cancer. When I was a medical student and I was very proud of my work and this was great and it was based on very poor studies done in the 1980s and it was complete rubbish so I'm very happy to go and correct that mistake and tell the people who know it's much better to drink coffee than say orange juice, and orange juice tends to be in the health section and coffee definitely in the recreational section and they really should be switched in most cases. The orange juice we have is ultra-processed, high in sugar, very bad for most people.

Coffee is good for the vast majority of people. What else have you done wrong? What else have you changed your mind about in recent years due to the research you've done? Now, do you know the data you now have access to in the research you've done well? I went K to avoid fats for a long time. I cut back on cheese because I thought it is high in saturated fat which can't be good. for you, I would have bought low fat products before, so most doctors were indoctrinated with that and a lot of doctors still have that mentality that fat is bad and you know carbs and starch are good, drinking a lot of water was good for you and me.

Now that I've researched it for the book, I know there's no hard data that you should drink eight glasses of water, for example, a day, which is what most government recommended sites and obviously the health industry tell you. The beverage industry is very willing to support that because you know, the big companies, the Pepsi company, have gotten into the water business and are trying to sell everyone plastic bottled water, which is terrible for the planet, the idea. that we are all deprived of hydration and have all kinds of problems. with this is really made up, there is no hard evidence at all and if you look at doctors who work in marathons you will see that many more people die or have health problems from over hydrating in the marathon race and then from dehydrating, sothe human body really good at some things, you know, you think about our ancestors, they knew when you were thirsty, right, it's like this waits, you know, and the idea that, oh, we have no idea if we're thirsty or not, um, we.

I need to be eating, you know, have a timer that tells us to drink every hour on the hour, obviously it doesn't make sense when you think about it, that's so true, um, for my birthday, someone brought me this huge like, what's the way to describe it? barrel of water bottle and it has like eight liters marked on the side and they told me when they gave it to me, you need to drink that every day, so the idea was I put it on my desk as a reminder that I need to drink that whole barrel before to finish the job no, I mean, just think about it, you know we've been involved for millions of years and you know you can't live long without water, so clearly we have a pretty good mechanism.

I've inherited telling us when we need to drink water and when we don't, and I, I just think that's, again, marketing, concept, all the soft drinks, you know, all this rehydration, these electrolytes, all these things, it's very much nonsense and it's just You know, the idea of ​​protein marketing is that we're very susceptible to it because we like a quick fix or and there will be some people who will say, I feel better when I drink a lot of water. I'm sure you know this, but the idea that we are so out of control that you know someone needs to bring us water every hour.

It's crazy and it exists, you know this variation doesn't exist. We got up at your lunch, so we made your breakfast. It sounded good. Lunch, what time do you usually have lunch and what do you usually have for lunch on a day 10 out of 10 when everything goes according to plan? I mean, everything varies and you know, I guess I don't want to give the idea that I always have. same lunch because I try to vary it um but if I'm alone working I'm not with friends or whatever um it would be a pretty quick affair and it would probably be a salad um and I would get a lettuce or um, some shredded cabbage.

I would throw everything I have in the fridge in there and add some protein to it, so I would add some beans. I always have cans of beans on hand, they cost nothing, they are a great source of fiber and protein. Tip: The ones in them could be lentils, they could be chickpeas, they could be standard mixed beans and, um, I would put them in if I had a little bit of cheese, I could cut it up, I could put some in. of mozzarella in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, um, that's it, and if I had had some sauerkraut or something, I could have it on the side, a little bit of ferment and more and more since my I've been making more. researching this, I could make my salad dressing with a little bit of fermented milk, a little bit of kefia and just mix the oil with vinegar and at the last minute add your ferment, so you're actually adding probiotics to that, that , if I'm alone and I'm rushing, that's probably what's reasonable, but it would vary depending on what I was having, what fruits, what vegetables, and yes, I would have fruit afterwards.

What type of fruit do you like? I noticed on my Zoe, bananas rank incredibly low for me. I think my rating on a banana out of 100 is 50. Now I've been eating bananas like a monkey. I always thought bananas were just fantastic, so I thought unlimited bananas were a great idea until I saw the Zoe app and it said my score is 50 out of 100. Now I've used up the bananas and am eating a lot more berries because They go very well with red berries, in particular, in fact, in the order in which I take Zoya. it had fruits in raspberries, cherries number one, strawberries number two, third, then pears, then peaches, then apples, then kiwis, then blueberries, then grapes and then bananas, they were like tenth, 50 out of 100, well, I gave it a score worse than you, you would be glad.

To wit, I used to eat a lot of bananas and it was something you just put in your backpack. It comes in its own packaging. You know, you can have it whenever you want. I thought this is super healthy because I've seen it. Do you know Roger Federer? um, he eats a lot of bananas, you know, he seemed pretty fit, and that's how we associate it with marketing, oh, a lot of potassium, you know, it must be good for us, really a lot of sugar, and they're not, they're not good for us. my score was about 30 or something so I still have them from time to time because you know I enjoy them from time to time but I don't have them every day like before so now I change them in pairs we have some cool pairs. in this country and they're always good, uh, apples and again, I'll have my berries if I have them, so um and uh, kiwis.

I also had to give up grapes. I used to eat a lot. Grapes and I loved them, but I get a lot of sugar. Spike with the grapes, which I know would make me hungrier for the rest of the day, so I take them as a treat, you know, I might eat some grapes once a month. Okay, so I guess we should never say I'll never eat them again. It's like what's your staple food. MH, what do you have most of the time? Should you swap it for something equally tasty or enjoyable or a combination of things? but get out of that routine just because someone told you that you know that banana has potassium and makes you play better tennis.

You know it's that kind of mindset that we really need to change and I guess it depends on what. there is more on the plate. I remember Fredrico, who is Zoe's head of nutrition. I've heard people tell me that the dish itself has its overall score, so if I'd known, maybe something that wouldn't be so good in isolation, but with a couple of other things. that rank really high in terms of microbiome health, then the overall score comes out and it's really the average of the whole plate, yeah, it's exactly, I don't know, the idea is we don't want to demonize one little thing, so You might be obsessed with mayonnaise, for example, you know, and I say, well, you can have a small amount of mayonnaise if it's going to make you eat a salad and if that salad is high in fiber and nutritious, there's a lot of good stuff in it, herbs and etc, etc, or you know a little bit of ketchup or whatever you know, I would still be saying yes, you can try something else instead of that, but don't get hung up on it and I think it's absolutely true that you know that the nutrition has I've gotten into this idea of ​​this this is wrong this gives you cancer this is this is bad and meat is a great example of that debate you know people ask me do you know if you're for meat are you against the meat?

Has changed. I changed this because the evidence has changed. I am definitely against processed meats. Ultra-processed meats that are low-quality products that are combined into prepared meals. Etc. You know it would be much better to eat just mushrooms or beans instead of mixed together. It's a vegetarian version, but there's nothing wrong with very high-quality meat in small quantities, as long as you have enough room on the rest of the plate to make up for it. What about the carnivore diet? Well, I'm still getting probably like you. You know, people come and say You know, I heard you talk about um, you know, not eating plants is so bad, but I've been living for two years in the Carnival.

I feel very good, you know? And I say well, there may be one in 10,000 people. that can exist with zero fiber and zero plants and you know, there you know, near the North Pole, etc., there are people who exist on diets high in fat and protein, they evolved for it, but the vast majority of people will suffer greatly from Having a naked gut microbiome and simply eating meat is not what our ancestors did anyway. I've lived with the Hadza tribe for a week and they eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts and seeds, and still meat is a and three months a year they don't have meat because it's hard to catch, but they have all these other things, like this that the idea that it's natural that that's what we did is really wrong and some people may briefly feel better.

You know there's a difference between how people respond to fats, particularly carbohydrates, so you might lose a little bit of weight, a lot of that is actually. They have done some studies showing that people on high-protein, high-fat ketogenic diets would lose weight faster, but a lot. it's water, okay, so they're drying out and in a way, sometimes bodybuilders do that to make themselves look more toned, but in reality, in the long run they don't lose it and it comes back and the main problem is they get gutted. The microbes are really crying out for food, so you are starving your gut microbes if you only eat a meat diet, so there is no evidence that that is healthy and there is a lot of evidence that a lack of fiber is really bad for you, so remember that statistic.

We're back to just a five gram change in fiber, so if these people know, if the average is 20 grams a day and the person on the carnivore diet consumes five or less, then we're talking about a 50% increase. in heart diseases. and reduced longevity, so you know people do what they want, but the data doesn't support it at all. Another thing I have every day is chewing gum and it was in the car because it's in the center console of the car that I'm driving in car D, we call it, and there's like seven different types of gum.

Now when I eat this gum, there is a burst of sweetness in the first few bites and I was thinking the other day. As I was driving home I was thinking I think I'm getting a little compulsive like I don't need CH gum for any other reason so I think there's this, it's doing something to my brain, I grab it, I put one on. I throw it to the B I take another one I put it I throw it in the trash and I think I only do it for that reason Sugar burst my question is generally about gum, but are these artificial sweeteners that exist in the gum that I am? probably eating worse than just regular sugar are better for your teeth, okay, so you'll have fewer cavities.

Yes, by consuming artificial sweeteners, but most of them will cause problems for your gut microbes, okay, and not the microbes in your mouth too, so whatever. with what you put in your mouth and saliva, things like mouthwashes and these artificial ones, they've all been shown to reduce natural gut microbes and actually cause more problems, so you're more prone to infections and actually , more prone to excessive growth. of bad microbes that give you bad breath so you know you get this initial hit that you know often mouthwashes are similar in some ways to that kind of instant gratification of gum because it feels cool and spicy in your mouth, but A We often kill the good ones that protect your mouth and what worries me is that this sweetness sensitizes you to wanting more sweet foods, so it will probably make you hungrier for more carbohydrate foods later in the day.

MH, so I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with chewing gum per se, other than people chew it a lot, it's sugary, you know it'll give you more tooth decay, but the artificial sweetness is probably worse because it has a negative effect. effect on the intestinal microbe on all microbes from the mouth to the intestinal mouthwash. I am a prolific mouthwash user. Oh my gosh, I know and they've done real studies on this to show that, you know, yeah, consumers like it, you know? So you probably like that feeling of being fresh and doing something and having a taste in your mouth, a little bit like you know a spicy gum and also a mint or you know there's something nice in the brain that says this is good, but If you do it too much you start to destroy your natural defense mechanism and the microbes on your tongue and your saliva are there to fight other bugs and you are more likely to have an overgrowth of the wrong ones and you know that in fact you may end up having worse breath in the long term than if you were not using these chemicals.

The topics that I am going to explain to you are very complicated and you are very good at simplifying things, so everything I am going to explain. It usually has a whole industry of people behind it who have over-complicated it and are selling courses on it and different tricks, tips and tricks. If I could, I would ask you to give me a simple solution to the things I'm doing. The first is weight loss. There is no simple solution. You have to do something that is sustainable for long periods of time, so forget the idea that it's really important to lose weight in a few weeks.

You want something that can maintain your weight. weight at a good level for decades and if you have a problem with excess weight you are extremely obese, morbidly obese, you need something radical, the darts are not going to achieve it, you need one of these new medications, the gp1, these injections, the asmic , the wig or you need bariatric surgery to get down to that level. Something dramatic for most people, what do you think of those new drugs, asmic? And I think they're really amazing for people who really need them. not for you not for you well I have a lot of friends who are apparently in good shape and who are taking these new weight loss drugs zix and all that, well they are angry why there are a lot of side effects that are not worth the benefits, notbenefits, if you have any minor weight issues, the benefits outweigh the risks, if you are so obese that you know your 50/50 chance of having heart disease, a heart attack in the next, or a stroke in the next. five years so morbidly obese people have a worse prognosis than people with cancer so you know like if I have cancer what do I do I will take a medication I will accept that it has some side effects but you know I want to live and they work for most people for people that just have minor levels of obesity, just you know, some love handles or whatever to cut off all the appetite signals in your brain, we don't know what that does for a long time. long term and we don't know that it can affect your pancreas, it can cause some rare cancers, it can do other things to your digestive system that we are still very far from knowing, so it is a medicine for extreme cases.

Obesity problems that we have created through our ultrapress foods and people with terrible diabetes. Etc., it's not something for the general population, so for those people, first improving the quality of your diet is number one, so go down from an average of 60% ultra-processed foods to just under 20% find a consistent way to achieve it, that's the first thing you should do and then the next thing is to change the way you think about things, don't obsess over calories, start thinking about eating your 30 plants. a week because that will naturally give you all the fiber and also change your appetite signals.

The fitness community was pretty unhappy last time, probably upset again when you said what you said about calories because a lot of people rely on calories on calories. weight loss system, yeah well OBD experts don't so it may be okay in gyms to talk about it, that's old science. We now know that this calorie model, from a practical point of view, is completely broken because we haven't been talking. about the quality of food, the structure of food, all these different effects, these interindividual effects that we are talking about, which means that counting calories is for the vast majority of people impossible or meaningless, so it is the marketing and the companies who are selling posters. us these low calorie products this idea is really simple all you have to do is x and y Zed you will lose weight that's what we're fighting here and they may have influenced the gyms with their special drinks and programs and their people. you want the crash course come here you will lose all this you will gain muscle you will lose weight you know it's easy the evidence is very clear that if you restrict calories you will lose weight but 80% of people gain it back quite quickly and in fact they will go to the other extreme if They haven't changed their diet in terms of quality and taking care of what they eat, and there is good evidence that people who follow a program where they don't focus on calories but on the quality of the food, they watch their sugar spikes, they watch their fat levels, they look at their gut microbes, they look at the time of day.

When they eat, they're looking at how to eat carefully and not talk about fat levels, and you know, by avoiding all these foods that we've been talking about, they're going to constantly lose small amounts of weight, not large amounts, but constant small amounts that don't do. You don't make them hungrier and the key is to do things that don't make you hungrier. The reason calorie restriction doesn't work is that our Evolution tells us to increase our appetite. The sign of hunger is obvious. You know it's the same if you do it. Exercise makes you hungrier, we have this built-in mechanism, that's why the only medications that work are these medications like AIC Wigo that act on appetite, act on the brain, simply from the intestine they send a signal to the brain.

Turns off. the appetite signal, otherwise you just reduce calories or increase exercise, that appetite signal just increases and you can continue to resist it for a while. Most people have tried it, they know it, and it gets harder and harder every week and then all of a sudden. you break down and then you say oh, I've given up now I'm, I'm back and you often swing over it yo-yoing yeah and that and that yo-yoing is probably the worst thing you can do because it just lets you know that you don't have coherence at that point in the exercise.

There was a lot of controversy the last time we talked about exercise because a lot of people go out and do cardio, run on a treadmill to try to lose weight, but you and many other people I've talked to have said that's not the case. a great strategy to lose weight. Yes, many studies have been done and they say that people are trying to lose weight conventionally by conventional means. We're not talking about the Zoe method, but we're talking about the old ways of calorie restriction or you know, switching to ketogenic diets or whatever, and if those people exercise or don't exercise at the same time, does it help them and generally , No?

Okay, so, and if you exercise alone, then there's no evidence that many people gain weight or lose weight with exercise, so you think, why is that? If you think about it through exercise, it's a and I'm not noex. I workout every day. I love it, it's great for my brain, my heart and everything else and it reduces a lot of diseases, but people have to separate that from weight loss if we want to make any progress here and if you have too much, you know that's excess fat . Exercising your body alone is a terrible way to deal with it because you're like, I'm not going to deal with my diet, I'm just going to work out at the gym and I'm going to keep taking my supplements and I'm going to do everything else and What happens to the Most people's metabolism slows down the increased hunger signals after exercise and psychologically people think, "Well, I've done some exercise, I've burned those calories, you know, I can eat that donut or whatever, and so unconsciously, Maybe we're also eating a little more than normal and that's why it doesn't work for most people now I know people were upset last year, but it does work for some people and there are probably. a different answer that not all of us respond to, exercising with appetite cues exactly the same way, but for a lot of people it worked, there are people that actually made them gain weight, you know what I mean?

That's why studies don't show any differences, so you always find someone who writes to you, says Steven. this guy is an idiot because you know I did this and I lost uh you know 10 kilos but you know this exactly someone else will say that I did this and I gained 10 kilos and I thought I was doing the right thing so the point is you I can't trust it and is that when there is something obviously modifiable like your diet, it is so easy that now we have many options and what to eat, we are not forced to eat ultra-processed foods or low-fat foods, this or whatever.

I can make those decisions that we should make, not try to say, I'm lucky, I'm that small percentage of people who can do this just by working out more at the gym, the supplements that you mentioned there, that's the next thing I wanted to ask you about supplements. . vitamins, my house used to be full of supplements and then after our last conversation, I look at most of them like they lied to me, like I was a victim of some kind of marketing and I had every damn supplement I have your omega- 3 vitamin D electrolytes calcium whatever it is still in my house mhm what is your opinion on these supplements in general?

My opinion hasn't changed at all that the vast majority of supplements are completely useless, but there are There are some that are helpful for some people sometimes, like um, there are some people who are vitamin D deficient who are black people. um, yeah, some black people, dark skinned people who live in places with very low levels, you know if they live. in Scotland, uh, and they may have poor diets, they don't contain much vitamin D, those people could probably do with some supplements during the winter because they produce less vitamin D than people with lighter skin.

Yes, lighter skin evolved as a mutation. Humans came out of Africa to survive in areas with little sunlight, so naturally, lighter-skinned people have less protection from the sun, but they have a better vitamin D production system, so generally skin Darker has more problems, so I. I used to see a lot of patients, and they often don't go out in the sun either because they naturally, you know, cover themselves up and that's a problem, so there are definitely people who can benefit from taking some of these vitamin I. I'm not saying that in Absolutely, but the idea that everyone should take them is just crazy.

There is no evidence in my field of osteoporosis that taking vitamin D and calcium actually prevents osteoporosis or bone disease, although for years and years and years we thought. It did, but all the big studies now show that's not true if you take calcium. All studies suggest that not only does it have no benefit in terms of bone or muscle health, but it can negatively affect your heart, because calcium. you get it in capsules or supplements, you're taking a big chunk at a time instead of getting it in your green vegetables, which are slowly broken down and absorbed in your gut so your body can deal with it.

Receiving this is like someone injecting it into your vein, it is very different than having it administered slowly over 24 hours as nature intended. What supplements might we benefit from taking if you have a good diet that you won't need? any supplement, but most of us don't have a good diet, so what do you do? Do you promote supplements and say not to worry about your diet, which is what the marketing competition wants and the vitamin companies want us to forget? the diet keeps it ultra-processed foods, keep it all guys this junk food no real whole foods no plants no fruits that's fine you're going to need some vitamins and that can be true for people with very poor diets who They know they just eat. beige food maybe they need some supplements but I think there is no evidence, however there is very little evidence that people who take supplements are healthier than people who don't take them, so you couldn't say that people says oh, it's like an insurance policy, I'm taking it, this insurance policy, therefore it's a very good reason to take multivitamins, etc., and I've heard even some epidemiologists and doctors say that, but in my opinion, it's just as likely to hurt you as it's doing you any good and it's definitely affecting your wallet?

What about omega-3? I guess trials have also shown that it doesn't work to reduce heart disease or any other major disease, unless you just had a heart attack alcohol I just gave up alcohol, I didn't really tell anyone this, but about two ago months ago I decided I couldn't see anything positive in my life, there wasn't any kind of social lubricant that people sometimes say is the reason for drinking alcohol, so I quit completely and it's been a really interesting experiment in quitting alcohol. . I was one of the people who sat on the fence, he didn't think I had a bad relationship with him, um, no.

I have a great reason to drink it, I didn't drink it that often anyway and then I decided that one day I would do the experiment of just putting it down and seeing what it's like and there have been multiple situations where the bartenders that are out and about are such once a little poorly trained, they have literally tried to force me to drink alcohol, as if one particular bartender was saying, keep going, this is not alcohol, this is art. I'm going to leave the bottle here, right in front of you, if you change your mind. one bartender in particular, um, and then all the other social contexts where you're just supposed to drink, what's your stance on alcohol?

Well, you certainly don't need it, okay? So, most studies are pretty consistent, they say that the more alcohol you drink, the higher your chances of suffering from all kinds of diseases and problems. There are some exceptions to that, which often comes down to the Mediterranean effect. People who drink a glass or two of red wine seem to have less heart disease, but they will. Not being protected from other conditions, so they won't be protected from, you know, cancer or, um, some strokes, etc., and life expectancy is not clear in that particular group, so generally speaking , alcohol is bad for you, no doubt, but if you don't.

Don't drink, I don't think I would say Stephen, you are wrong, you have to start drinking red wine, but for those people who drink or occasionally drink small amounts, well, I would say that there are some drinks that are healthier than others and red wine It's been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease by about 30% in most studies and it's not entirely clear, but if you drink too much it actually messes you up again, so it's really aPretty small window, and there could be other drinks in the future that could be healthy and this goes back to plants, because when you drink wine, you drink fermented grapes, so alcohol is bad, fermented grapes are good. in the future I would like to see us getting non alcoholic LLY wines and they are coming and I tried some from Canada etc where you can get like a wine with 1% which by the way you can't with 1% it's what's in kombuchas . you can't metabolize, you don't notice it and if they have all those benefits they could be that new era of really healthy alcohols and there could be some ciders too because they have the skin of the apple, but virally all the other alcohols have no real health benefits .

What about sleep and the gut microbiome? I've wondered if there was a connection between how well I sleep. Sleep has become this obsession in my life. I feel like I have a competitive dream. Now I really enjoy the process. I've seen the variation between a good night's sleep and a bad night's sleep in my mood, how I perform, how I am, how my brain works, what the research says about the role sleep plays. In our gut microbiome and in our nutrition, they are all interconnected, so a bad night's sleep means that the next day you will have a bigger sugar spike in the same Bagel or breakfast you ate.

Sorry, sorry if I'm having a bad time. during the night the same food will give me a bigger sugar spike yeah so it messes up your whole metabolism so like you were saying I feel better after a good night's sleep your body's metabolism is different too , so a disrupted night's sleep means your body will overreact to sugar, be more likely to take a sugar bath afterwards and feel tired, and feel hungrier and crave more carbs after a bad night, and I think most people listening will think about that, so yeah, if I really sleep badly at night, you have to get up and your body craves something to help you get through this, you know, and it's all out of the sink and People who sleep poorly will have less healthy gut microbes than those who don't.

We don't know yet what path that relationship takes, whether sleep drives the microbiome or whether the microbiome affects sleep, but we know that they are interrelated, so the other thing we've shown is that, in general, how we find our body. You like a consistent pattern of activity and rest, so sleeping at the same time, waking up at the same time is really good for the body. You feel better and nourished now, if people say it changes a couple of hours, an hour and a half, two. hours on the weekends they sleep later and wake up later, this also affects their sugar responses and their gut microbes, so we know that this consistency in approach is really important for everything in your body, now it doesn't mean you don't want telling people they should never go out or have fun because you know social media is fun, but keep that in mind, especially if it's under your control and you know that watching another Netflix movie you know because it's the weekend may not be the most intelligent.

What you can do if you want to feel really good in the long term is that this consistency is coming back. Tying in this idea of ​​nutrition, how we respond to food, but also involving our gut microbes. Yes, sleep is incredibly important, it's all part of the circadian rhythm alone more than a lot of other things we do. I used to think that light was what had the biggest influence on my circadian rhythm, like my body's internal clock, what time my body thinks. It is, but food has a big impact on that Cadian rhythm, so absolutely yes, all the studies point to that, so I used to think like you, yeah, you know when I was going to go to the US or what Outside, the most important thing was to get out. there and get the sunlight and whatever and not worry about my meals and just eat because when I'm jetlagged I was always hungry anyway, but now you know, really focus on fasting and try to eat at the time of time zone you are in.

We're trying to fit it is much more important than sunlight, so yes, meal times are becoming more important in science and I think this is one of the really new and exciting areas and it all fits into this idea of that you know how to get your rest periods. He really worked out his active periods well, he didn't mess them up, he didn't eat when he was supposed to be resting and, uh, he didn't do things out of sync, so people who deal with jet lag and jet lag in Generally, they often fast. Planes now don't eat all the food offered to them and think about how they want to start their new clock when they arrive at their destination, so this idea I had of asking my assistant to schedule the time I exercise everyone the days and at what time I eat every day is a good idea, yes, yes, as long as it doesn't become obsessive, I would say because some people are not at risk of that happening with me, so you know, people listen to me .

I think these are usually good ideas, but again, if you go over the 8020 rule because you can become obsessed with anything, whether it's exercise, training, sleeping, and then you get anxious if you don't do it every day, so realize That it's important, but realize that some things are more important than your schedule, okay? and things like friends and having fun and you know you know absolutely crucial and this is all part of our you know, the philosophy that we've been trying to build with Zoe is about food, it's about enjoyment and we shouldn't break it down into mathematical formulas everything. time I have to realize that life is important to do everything uh and you know we can all have a day off my last question I think maybe it's one that no one has asked you before, I'm sure a lot of people have probably asked you. asked You, um, I'm a dog owner and I have a little French Bulldog who is now 8 years old and his name is Pablo.

When he was serving his food today, I realized that his food is very processed. Do you have any advice on what we should do? feed our pets, our dogs, our cats, before we start Zoe. I thought about making a gut microbiome for dogs. U map my pet project, uh, and I looked into this, but I'm not up to date on it, but there's a lot of evidence that The food, the pellets that I used to give our dogs, which I thought were great, are the equivalent of the ultra-processed foods, like you said, and dogs fed Whole Foods live longer and have less diabetes, gain less weight, and are much healthier. so I think the same thing that app

lies

to humans app

lies

to dogs: the canned stuff that smelled terrible is that they still use it, but we were told that the pellets were healthier because they contained all these extra vitamins and it was this concentrated source which was perfect for them and if you look at it, it's exactly the same as ultra-processed food and that's probably why our pets are becoming as obese as we are, they have diabetes, they have chronic illnesses, they have arthritis and I think there is some evidence, no I'm sure how cool it is that if you make them whole food diets, whole meats just eat the same thing we do, we could eat it or eat our leftovers, they'll do better so maybe you should try it.

Yes Yes. I was thinking this when I saw the numbers. I heard that Zoe now has over 100,000 members and I thought that by looking at the data of 100,000 people, I'm not saying to look at the data, but just have access. to the patterns and ideas you get from such a large number of people, many of whom tens of thousands enter food into journals every day, you must have had so many Eureka moments or amazing ideas from that bird's eye view you like there . There must be some things that are just you that you have grown in conviction and passion for because of that perspective.

Well, we're seeing things we've never seen before. We have discovered 4,000 new species of microbes in recent months. uh, each of these could be totally novel or useful for Therapeutics or Diagnostics uh, we found things like this, this parasite, the blastocyst, um, we're finding links to new foods that we could start giving people advice on what foods to eat . to improve which microbe and you know, as we go into the future, maybe we'll be able to predict combinations of microbes that look like they could prevent cancer and heart disease or interact with your medications to make antidepressants more effective or hormonal.

The replacement is more effective, so I think it all happened very quickly and it's just amazing the response we've had. Zoe and people are contributing their data to this community. I know that very soon we are going to be a million people and it is a very exciting time for scientists like me knowing that we are going to unravel all these secrets and who knows where it will take us last time I asked you a question because when we share so much advice about feeding. I think it's good to close with a general principle. A good general philosophy so that everyone can learn from this conversation and everything that we have discussed, what in their words with that principle or general philosophy is towards our health and our nutrition.

In our diets, you can't go wrong if you do things that are going to be good for your gut microbes, so you think about half of your gut microbes or your pets, as you call them, think about what they would want to eat, how they would want you to eat it. behave and if you do that you're going to eat all the right things and avoid all the bad things and everything else usually follows. I think that's the simplest device I can and you know if and you realize that when you eat food know that you're not alone, you have these trillions of microbes waiting for your every move and your choice.

The final tradition on this podcast is that the last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who they will leave. and I love this because it changes the direction a little bit. The question you are left with is: what is a modern positive view of masculinity? Did you save that one especially for me? Do you have any children? I have a son. Yes. So I have to think that he has a positive and modern view of masculinity about him. He's probably someone who is prepared to do 50/50 on all household chores right now. I think that's masculinity. is going through a tough time right now and I think I realize there's a revolution going on so I think it's definitely about being flexible MH and losing a lot of those stereotypes and going with a flow, that's what I I would recommend.

It came too late for me, but it's kind of confusing, that's what the guest was talking about, how young men are very confused in their masculinity, what it means, what it is to be a man, what it's not to be a man these days and really I'm trying to He was that assumption, I was really trying to give men an answer to that question of like young, you know, masculinity because the data shows that young men are suffering tremendously if you look at the suicide rates or if you look at the , you know, employment rates. or education rates or, uh, dating all those in those areas, so as you say, there is a revolution going on in masculinity and what it means to be a man, yes, don't be ashamed of being a man, but be flexible and try to adapt to the changing world I think that's it Tim, thank you very much, thank you for your wisdom, you have definitely changed my life and I know from all the comments I received in our last conversation that you have changed the lives of many, many. people through her work, but also more generally through what Zoe does.

I can only speak for myself, obviously I have a relationship with zo. I'm an investor in the company and they sponsor the podcast, but in my life the key is what's meaningful. The changes I have seen due to insight and the fact that Zoe has turned the lights on in my nutrition has been that for almost my entire life I had gut issues and I didn't really know why and I just accepted it. I had always been bloated, had stomach pains and I thought it was normal. You know, I thought like a lot of people probably think.

I thought I was broken in some way and that's how my body was born and then. By doing this podcast I have realized that I should not accept this idea that I was born broken in any area of ​​my life and to look a little more into how there can be a mismatch between what my body wants and what the modern world wants. is giving it and through Zoe I was able to completely eliminate that decade long gut pain by focusing on foods that had a good relationship with me, so I thank Zoe for that and I thank you for that and the work that you did. do when spreading the message because a lot of the things that you say you know ruffle feathers and they and I think that when things are positively disruptive it is inevitable that they ruffle feathers because there is an incumbent who has experienced cognitive dissonance, there is aheadline that feels threatened or challenged in such a way, but I think that's how innovation and positive change happens, so thank you, pleasure, I hope it works, let's talk about Zoe, who you may know because she is a sponsor of this podcast and I am an investor in the company that you know, health is my number one priority.

Zoe's growth story has been absolutely incredible so far, they are doing science on a scale I have never seen before thanks to their members and the recent advances in research they are now able to continue to offer. The most scientifically advanced gut health test on the market. Previously, the test allowed them to analyze 30 types of bacteria in the intestine, but now, thanks to new science, they have identified 100 types of bacteria. This is a huge step forward and there is nothing else available even close. available on the market, so to learn more and start your Zoe Journey, visit zoe.com. stepen you can use my exclusive code ce10 to get 10% off don't tell anyone ok just for you guys oh.