Instant Genius - Anthony Warner: Are we really too fat?

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

In this week's Science Focus Podcast chef and author of the book The Truth About Fat: Why Obesity is Not that Simple (£9.99, Oneworld), Anthony Warner chews the fat about, well, fat. Pretty much all of us have been tempted at some point in our lives to shed some weight around our midriff, especially when we see our BMI creeping over 25, but what does this actually mean, and is it really a reliable measure of general health? He speaks to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about why the body needs fat, what influences our body shape, and why there is so much stigma about being obese. Read the full transcription Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Samantha Alger: What can we do to save the bees? Randall Munroe: How do you find the worst solution to any problem? Bill Bryson: What should we know about how our bodies work? Phillippa Diedrichs: Is body positivity the answer to body image issues? Professor Catharina Svanborg: Is the cure for cancer hiding in human breast milk? Giles Yeo: Eating for your genes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit nameadio.com to learn more. obviously, our body wants to be a certain weight. And there are certain sort of situations where you can be pushed sort of above and beyond that sort of genetically determined set point. But our body wants to be, you know, thinks this is a good weight for me to be. And that's pretty much, in most cases, genetically determined, you know, that I'm, and it might sort of increase slightly as you get a bit older, as many people discover. Essentially, your body sort of thinks, here's a good amount of fat for me to have in storage

in order to maximise my chance of survival. And I'm going to sort of get that amount of fat. I'm going to try and keep myself there during the course of my lifetime. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's bestselling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello, I'm Alexander McNamara, and this week, Chef and author of the book of The Truth About Fat,

Anthony Warner, choose the fat about, well, fat. Pretty much all of us have been tempted at some point in our lives to shed some weight around our midriff, especially when we see our BMI creeping over 25. But what does this actually mean, and is it really a reliable measure of general health? He speaks to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about why the body needs fat, what influences our body shape and why there is so much stigma about being obese. The truth about fat, that's your new book. Can you tell me about it and tell me what inspired you to write it?

Okay. I mean, you know, my writing generally derives from a blog that I started a few years ago, which is called The Angry Chef, which is about, you know, sort of misinformation and lies. and sort of assumptions and pretensions in the world of food. And the reasons why we get so much stuff wrong when it comes to food science and food generally. So there's so many false beliefs and misinterpretations of scientific evidence and that sort of thing within the world of food. And this stuff started to frustrate me. And when I first started writing the blog, I sort of identified three areas which I found were the most prevalent sources of misinformation.

One was about sort of fad diets and, you know, false beliefs about food and health. You know, this sort of a overinterpretation of, you know, this food is medicine sort of narrative, which is very popular these days. And I felt so much of that was sort of, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of reasons why, but there's a lot of misinformation about detox diets and that sort of thing. And then the second area was really the obesity epidemic, which I feel is obviously, sort of a massive part of public discussion and public consciousness. It's incredibly prevalent when anyone's talking about food in the food environment. But I also feel there's an enormous amount that we get wrong.

And actually, as I started to look into it, when I was writing the blog, first of all, I realized that even I was getting an enormous amount of this stuff wrong, not really understanding the science, sort of falling back on folk beliefs and just things that felt right, which didn't actually sort of match up with what the science was telling us and what sort of leading scientists were telling us. and you know I started to realize what a massive area this was and how there was you know there was just there was very much a book in this in how we're getting stuff wrong and the damage that those mistakes and false beliefs are causing to people and you know I felt that was

something that should be written about because there's so much written about a beastie and the obesity epidemic and and the problems that causes but so much of it is being used to sell his stuff and to kind of make us feel guilty and to sell political visions as well. So, you know, I felt that it was good to sort of

strip all that back and look at the science behind, you know, weight gain and why people are different weights and really look at, you know, investigate all the, because basically there are lots of very, very simple explanations that people,

people give for obesity. And the reality is it's a very, very complex problem. And it was kind of explaining that what is not simple, and when people are trying to oversimplify it, they usually, in fact, they're almost always trying to sell you something. And so that was, that was really the drive. But I suppose the real drive, the real sort of passion behind it, is that when we are getting this stuff wrong,

It's not benign. It is extremely harmful for large numbers of people. It does cause people a lot of hurts and it causes people a lot of illness and it causes people a lot of distress and makes people's lives a lot of people's lives fairly miserable. And I felt that was something that really needed to, you know, we're not talking about enough because, you know, because something must be done sort of thing. You've mentioned the obesity epidemic. I wonder if you could just sort of talk now, like how fat actually are we as a population? Okay, so it depends what you mean.

I mean, what is, I think you have to sort of strip it back. And with all of this, you just have to sort of strip it back because you see this data and this information. And I can't remember the exact statistics, but let's say, let's say, one in, I think that's right, one in, three people roughly are considered obese in the UK, probably slightly more in the US. I think probably over 50%, probably around 60% are considered overweight, which seems quite extraordinary.

And I guess it's quite extraordinary, but then you have to sort of strip that back and say, what does I actually mean? And what does that mean is that, you know, what is obesity? Obesity is when people have a BMI of over 30 and overweight is. people have a BMI of over 25. And, you know, why are those, why those numbers? You know, well, the reason for those, there are those numbers is because, you know, nice round numbers, which are easy to remember.

You know, and the consequences of crossing from, you know, BMI of 24.9 to a BMI of 25.1, which is a very tiny amount of weight gain, the same amount of weight you probably gain during a single day. You sort of cross over into having a illness, I suppose. A lot of people would like to sort of classify it as that, which is sort of strange. And that's not to say that, you know, there aren't health consequences of carrying around some excess weight. But, you know, the actual definitions that we're using to sort of statistically analyze populations are problematic in many ways. and, you know, because they are pretty arbitrary, you know, it's just this sort of single crossover, rather than looking at an individual and saying, you know, are they, do they have a lot of excess,

weight, they have a lot of excess. Because so there's plenty of people can be that BMI of, you know, 30 or 25 or whatever, and be perfectly healthy. And, you know, it's, there are correlations. There's no denying that there are correlations between having a high BMI and certain medical conditions, you know, things like type of diabetes, heart disease, you know, certain types of cancer. There's no doubt that correlations there. In some of those things that might be the actual carrying around that excess weight might actually be, you know, causing causing. causing that thing. But that data is not particularly sound for many of those things. So, you know,

there is a correlation there, but, you know, one of the things that obviously runs through all my writing is, you know, sometimes correlation is not always causation. You know, you're not always, you know, just because someone, you know, populations of people who have a high BMI, have associations with certain illnesses, doesn't always mean that the one thing causes the other. There might be confounding factors, you know, and actually there might be, you know, even the direction of causality might be, might be the other way, which people sort of think is a slightly odd thing to say, but, you know, there's plenty of evidence that our societal attitudes to people with higher weight actually are caused a lot of the problems, you know, because people are living in a,

in what is essentially a marginalized body. And they're subject to an enormous amount of stress and, you know, have lower life chances and all these things. And so, you know, that might end up causing a lot of the problems associated, like stress and cardiovascular disease and these sort of things, might actually be caused. So I think we have to be very careful in interpreting. There is evidence that we have, you know, a lot of people who are carrying around what is considered to be an excess well.

based on this sort of arbitrary classification system. But there's not an awful lot of evidence that that has such a direct relationship as we always assume with their health. For instance, in terms of mortality, being overweight, certainly as you get older, being overweight is generally associated with a lower chance of dying. and actually the ideal, you know, certainly as you age, as you get 50, 60, the best way, the best BMI to have to avoid mortality is kind of to be sort of slightly increasing every year. And probably in some cases, between 25 and 30, you know, that gives you the lowest sort of mortality. And that data has been there for quite a long time. But we have this idea that there's a certain aesthetic that people should be achieving.

and a really inherent belief that people achieving that sort of aesthetic, which is a societally defined aesthetic, but from, you know, most people from models and Hollywood movie stars probably, the ways people should look and the BMI that they should be in order to look that way. And we kind of automatically assume that that's the healthiest someone's going to be, if they're that BMI. And there's no good reason for that. There was some good reason for association, but, but, you know, the reality is, you know, for many people, this obsession that that BMI is of sole marker of health is not actually that helpful. because it can be some strange ways of losing weight and people can end up taking you know weight loss drugs andphetamines basically you know or end up on ridiculous extreme diets or end up you know starving

themselves and lots of behaviours which aren't healthy in order to get to the to the to the m i because that's considered the sole thing that defines how healthy you are so is bMI ever a useful measure or should we kind of scrap that and look at something else I think it has some use in looking at populations. And when it was the guy who derived it, the way of measuring people said that it should never be used as an individual measure. It's just really useful for studying populations. And there's some association between BMI and the amount of weight.

So if you want to know how much excess fat a population is carrying around generally, if you look at BMI, it can give you a pretty good indication. that, you know, of, um, of, um, of where you are, but from an individual, it's so variable depending on, on, on individual's build and depending on, you know, ethnic group and depending on, you know, all sorts of really important factors, which, which can affect the relationship between health and, and BMI and body fat, you know, in the classic example is, you know, England front, England rugby forwards, probably all, um, considered obese, um, in terms of their BMI, but you know, you probably wouldn't say they're, you know, you know,

all need to lose load of weight. And so it's not a useful, there's some association, but it's not useful as an individual marker of health. And I think it is problematic to look at people, individuals and say, measure their BMI and tell them something, a thing that tells you something about their health. You need to look at that individual. There are some better markers, you know, the weights, waste, to height ratios, you know, is used by some medical professionals is a more, more use for measure.

And actually, just, you know, physical observation and spending a bit of time with an individual and looking at them and sort of seeing how healthy they are is far better. but obviously, you know, it's easier to get sort of measurements of BMI. That's the problem with it. That's why it's so popular is because it's very easy to do. You know, you can weigh people and measure their height. And even with patients who can't stand, you can measure their sort of arm, you know, their, I can't remember what it's called, you know, stretch their arms out.

That's roughly a height if you measure that and you can compare that. And so you can weigh them sat down. So, you know, even on infirm patients who have trouble, standing, it's ready to get a BMI measurement, but some sort of, you know, height to waist circumference ratios and, you know, more involved physical examinations might be a little bit, a little bit more difficult. But what you get is these ridiculous, you know, ridiculous situations where people are, you know, people's BMI as measured, especially, there's been a lot of, I mean, there's even more troubling problems with children's measurement of childhood,

BMI because that's not even that that's a more complex way of measuring based on sort of of historical data usually and so population averages because you know children grow at different rates and and aren't you wouldn't expect to you know children to have equivalent is not the adult and childhood BMI is not equivalent because children have not you know the different shape essentially and so you sort of work on population averages from, you know, a certain point in history and whether someone, you know, so basically you're sort of saying is someone in the top, would someone, if you take a child child's BMI and you look at their age group from 1992, I think it is, would they have been in the top

5% in 1992? And if they are, then they're considered to be sort of very weight or obese. And it's a very strange way of doing it, but it's the only way, sort of sensible way of doing it, but basically, it ends up with a lot of false diagnosis of obesity and overweight in very young children. And there's a measurement, you know, measurement programs in the UK where children are weighed and measured. And then they get letters sent home perfect, you know, children who you just one look at and say, well, they're not overweight.

And the letter will be sent home saying your child is overweight or obese and, you know, you give you some health advice. That's incredibly stigmatizing. and upsetting for some people. And there's, you know, any sort of cursory medical examination of that child would say it's completely false, but because it's done, you know, impersonally with data, it's, you know, and these sort of things become extremely problematic. But also, you know, it can be extremely harmful.

And I think, you know, we don't, you know, and what you get is, you know, practitioners or campaign are saying your parents don't even know their children. are obese. In many cases, the reality is that those children aren't obese. It's just the way we have of measuring it, which is problematic. And why is there such a stigma around being overweight, being fat, being obese? Why is it so vilified? I mean, that is a huge question. And there's certainly no doubt that it is vilified. And there's no doubt there is enormous amount of stigma. enormous amount of prejudice, just as harmful as, you know, the most sort of disgusting prejudices in our society as it is, you know, people are, you know, less like to get jobs, they're less like they're going to be paid less throughout their lifetime, they're, you know, they are

sort of abused and attacked and subject to enormous amounts of stress. And, you know, the reasons why, I mean, they are very complex, but they are societal. You know, they are, they are not, you know, it's, it's just something inherent within our, within our sort of society that we, we have this sort of, um, need to vilify people based on a certain aesthetic. And I think it's a lot to do with misunderstanding. Um, the one thing that, you know, hopefully I get across in my book more than anything, is that when someone is overweight or obese,

it's not because of a lack of willpower. It's not because of a lack of, you know, not because they're sort of a less ability to control themselves. In a world where we have almost entirely free access to food, your body weight is one of the most genetically heretical, heritable characteristics there is. You know, it has a,

you can measure heritability on twin studies and it's about 70%. Your height is 80%. You know, many other factors which we consider to be sort of inherent are far lower

than body rate. And that's been studied from twin studies. It's pretty good data around that. And yet, yet we have this belief that,

that it's entirely, not entirely logical belief, but belief that if someone is overweight, it's a failure of willpower. It's entirely within their own, their own sort of, to sort of be the weight they want to be. And so it's sort of become this thing,

which is an outward physical characteristic, which is, it is acceptable to look at and, you know, make judgments about someone's personality and, you know, ability to control themselves. And we live in this sort of neo-liberable society where, you know, people are, people are judged on, you know, everything is pushed back towards the individual. The blame is pushed back towards the individual, in order to absolve, you know, corporations and governments from blame. And that runs through every fac-step society.

But this idea that people who are overweight or obese are morally failing and failing to have enough willpower is kind of cast them as the ultimate failures in a neoliberal society. And so they get blamed for the NHS being on its knees and they get blamed for a collapse of morality in society. you know, get blamed for an enormous amount of things, especially women, who are blamed for, you know, being poor mothers and terrible examples and all these sort of awful things that we do. And, yeah, it's, I think it's one of the last allowable prejudices of our age, just because there is this belief, which is kind of a folk belief, that it is the individual's fault, even though, you know, if it never, I know, I know, people who are if you if you honestly think that everybody who's oh weight or carries around some access weight is someone who has less willpower than than you then then that's ridiculous now i'm i'm i'm not i'm probably getting towards bm i 25 but i but i'm not and that's not

because i have this sort of iron willpower i'm just because i'm i'm lucky and i have genetically determine sort of set weight, which we kind of all tend to have. But, you know, we don't we don't accept that sort of variability in body size as we do with other sort of variability of other physical characteristics. And if you look at someone, if we were sort of taken an average person who was overweight or class as obese, what kind of barriers do they face when, you know, losing that weight? You know, you've said, you've mentioned already that, you know, beans play a huge part. What other barriers are there?

I mean, from a biological terms, there are a lot. Essentially, our body wants to be a certain weight. And there are certain situations where you can be pushed beyond that sort of genetically determined set point. But our body wants to be, you know, thinks this is a good weight for me to be. And that's pretty much, in most cases, genetically. determined, you know, that I'm, and it might sort of increase slightly as you get a bit older, as many people discover. Essentially, you know, your body sort of thinks, here's a good amount of fat for me to have in storage

in order to, you know, to maximize my chance of survival. And I'm going to sort of get that amount of fat, and I'm going to try and keep myself there during the course of course of my lifetime. and that's that's kind of how how it works in very simplistic terms and there's an enormous amount of hormones and and various control mechanisms which which keep it there you know mostly controlled by quite primal sort of parts of the brain that the part of the brain which which controls your breathing for instance and your your drinking and you know the very sort of primal sort of things about keeping alive um and so you know you're you're you're doing it's a very sort of primal sort of things about

keeping alive. And so, you know, essentially your body knows how much fat it has stored in its fat cells. We all have some, you know, and different, in a variable across an entire population, you know, people will will have different amounts. And there's reasonably, you know, you can make sort of, you can, you can sort of imagine how that would be useful in, in different environments. in terms of survival. You know, if you're on a desert island,

we're very few predators around, but lots of chance, and do you spend your population evolves there for a period of time, then you can imagine that it would be useful during times of plenty to store some excess weight, because then when there's a time of little food, then you're more like to survive the harsh winter or whatever. But if you're on somewhere,

are more open with lots of fast-running predators or you have to do a lot of hunting of things that can run away from you, then it would make sense to kind of store a bit less, a bit less fat. So it's all, yeah, it's all controlled genetically. And there are some very, very strong hormonal control mechanisms which keep you at the weight that you are, keeps the same amount of fat stored. And as soon as that amount of fat starts to drop in your body, so whatever that amount might be, As soon as you start to drop below that, your body sort of thinks, oh God, we're in a bit of trouble here. You know, we're starving and we're going to put in mechanisms in order to, you know, make sure that we don't starve.

So what it does is obviously makes you extremely hungry, gives you this sort of incredible drive and desire for food over, you know, also short term, but also over a long term, you know, sort of makes you very very driven and food focused. shuts down all other sort of priorities and focuses your mind on food entirely the whole time. And then it starts to, in order to save energy, because, you know, there's not enough food around, or so it thinks, even if you're on a diet, your body, your body doesn't know you're on a diet, it doesn't know what diet you're following. It's, it's not a matter of willpower. These things happen, you know, by sort of, you know, hormonal controls out of your conscious brain. And so, you know, it starts to shut down your metabolism. It starts to, you know, make you sort of slow you down, slow down your metabolic rate.

It starts to do things like shut down and you start to shut down your immune system. So, you know, people, a lot of people who dieted will tell you they come very susceptible to illness. It doesn't make you feel pretty, pretty miserable all around, liable to getting ill. and can have a sort of profound effect on brain function. Look at starvation studies over the years and people with eating disorders and just people generally on extreme diets and they start to encounter enormous psychological problems caused by lack of food. So your body really pushes you into eating more food and shuts down any excess energy expenditure because it thinks it's starving.

Even though you might not outwardly look as if you're starving, because your body's fat reserves are dropping below where it wants to be, it pushes you into this thing. And the best explanation I can sort of give of how profound that is is, what I said before was it was controlled by the same parts of the brain which controlled breathing. So you can imagine with breathing, it is, yeah, it's voluntary. you know, you have control over when you breathe, just like you have control over when you eat.

And so when people say, oh, it's all about willpower, you know, you just need to stop eating. Yes, you can stop eating for a period of time. But the only difference between breathing and eating is that eating happens over a much longer time scale than breathing. So you can control your breathing. But, you know, if air is there, eventually you're going to breathe. And just the same with food, just over weeks rather than rather than, rather than, rather, of minutes. You know, if food is there and you are hungry, eventually you will eat. You can stop yourself eating for a period of time. You can lose weight, but, you know, it becomes incredibly

difficult. Without a sort of real profound chain, it becomes incredibly difficult. And that's just the physical things. So societal things are a whole, another layer on top of that. Yeah. So, you know, there's things that if you're in a certain community, you know, or if you're a certain socioeconomic extent that's going to affect your diet and thus affect your weight right yeah yeah to an extent certainly and there are many reasons why and it's where it becomes you know really really quite complex because you know what i just said then was it's pretty much determined by genetics um and you know i think it's 70% heritability of of body weight um you know from from twin studies which is when you look at sort of sets of identical twins and non-identical twins,

identical twins share all their genes and their environment, non-identical twins share half their genes and the whole of their environment. So you can see how heritable body weight is and the identical twins are far more like to be the same weight. So that's how you sort of work that out. And yes, there's two things here. one is if you know obviously to an extent

if people are starving if people don't have enough food yes they're unlikely to be to be overweight because you know that there are sort of physical things that that stop people so you know in countries where

lots of people are struggling for food then you won't get the same proportion of people who are overweight but when a an entire population has enough food, then you have a variable body weight, which becomes far more heritable. It becomes far more determined, dependent on genetics. As soon as you start feeding people adequately. And yeah, one of the most remarkable things about the modern food system is we now, in countries like ours, almost everybody has enough food to eat. It might not be

the best quality diet, but they have, they're very rarely struggling to eat enough calories every day. I know there are people who are, you know, no, no, you know, I write extensively about about food poverty, but, but, you know, very few people don't have enough food. Very few people don't have enough calories to eat over a really long period of time. And so, you know, generally then, you, your body rate becomes far more sort of expressed genetically. But there are, there are, you know, I said it's quite heritable, but it's not entirely heritable. there is other stuff on top of that. And the socioeconomic argument is, it is, it is strong, but it is not quite as simple as people make out. You know, people on low incomes do that there are, there is a sort of an uplift in terms of people on low incomes and obesity.

The reasons for that are far more complex than we might imagine. For a start, it's a relationship which only really, only to a large extent, happens with women, which is perhaps quite surprising. Men in higher and lower socioeconomic groups, there's not that much difference in terms of their sort of BMIs and the number of the percentage of which are overweight or obese. So it's far more prevalent in women, which is, I think, is perhaps unusual. you know, does that mean that men are eating men in lower socioeconomic groups are eating a better diet than women? I really doubt it, you know, I think probably the opposite is probably true.

And so in my mind, it is far more about, you know, rather than the food environment of diet, it's far more about the lived experience of poverty and which tends to be much harder for women. You know, women tend to be far more stigmatized. They tend to be the carers for children. they tend to, you know, just have a harder time living in, in, on low incomes and in poverty and tend to be far more stigmatized and you just look at the way and it's probably slightly better now, but not, not good at all. The way that single mothers are stigmatized within, you know, working class, single mothers are stigmatized by reality TV programs and then just by newspapers and society in general. So, you know, the lived experience of poverty is probably considerably harder for women. So how does that affect their body weight? Well, there are a number of ways in which it can.

You know, stress is, you know, living under extreme stress is likely to cause people to have sort of aberrant eating patterns, to be pushed into sort of disordered eating patterns of some sort, you know, overeating, using food as a comfort in order to cope with that stress. It's often one of the very few things that, you know, people, very few pleasures that people can afford. You know, when you can't afford to go on a nice holiday this year, you know, who are we to say, tell people, you know, just having some nice bit of food that someone enjoys is perhaps a coping mechanism, is a coping strategy, for a difficult, difficult life. So I think there are sort of aberrant eating

things caused by this sort of level of stress that people are living under, which is obviously it's much harder, especially in a society that we have, where, you know, so much is focused upon, you know, self-determinism. You're expected to lift yourself out of poverty. And that, you know, that society we have, which, without wishing to be, get political, but, you know,

socialism used to be about about rising up with your class you know that's a traditional tenet of socialism you know sort of coming together with the people around you and rising up the whole of your society now it's very much we're very much more individualistic and I think that's very stressful for people living in in on low incomes or you know in those sort of environments and then it's that sort of level of stress I think which is the hardest thing because you look at the local economies in in in most work class places in part of the UK. A lot of that economy is based around relieving that stress in some way, often in ways that are not ideal for people's health. So I think, so there

is this relationship between obesity and poverty. I said it's stronger for women, but I think far more important and far more significant is the relationship between ill health and and poverty. You know, you look at the population in the UK, you know, the richest part of the UK, I think, Westminster, I think, and the poorest parts of the UK, you know, poorest parts of, say, say somewhere, some parts of Glasgow, the difference in life expectancy is about 10 years and the difference in healthy life expectancy is about 25 years. And that might have, you know, the obesity might be having an influence on that. But, you know, it doesn't explain anything like that sort of difference, the small amounts of differences in body weight, which are mostly just from women. It doesn't explain that at all, you know, and the biggest things we should be talking about

is the health inequalities rather than focusing on people's weight because obviously people's health is far more important than their weight and their BMI. You know, there may be a relationship between them, but let's try and make people healthier rather than focusing too much on on making them feel bad for not being the right weight, I think. And people always seem to be thinking about their weight, the diets, their health.

What do you say to people who are planning on going on a diet? Yeah, it's never for me to tell people what they shouldn't do. If someone wants to lose weight, that's fine. I think there's lots of us could do with, you know, eating a better diet. I think that's a really positive thing to aim for. To try and, you know, most of us don't eat enough foods and vegetables.

You know, most of us, if you eat fish, you know, it's nice to eat oily fish sort of once a week. Generally, that's pretty good health advice. Nice to eat lots of whole grain carbohydrates. It's a good idea to eat lots of beans and pulses. Those are the sort of good things that almost any, anyone who talks about food and health, you know, eat more fruits and vegetables, eat a variety of different things, stuff like that.

So stuff like that is great. You know, I think people could do with improve. their diet sometimes. I always worry about any diet where someone says, don't eat this, don't do that, don't, you know, cut this thing out. I would always try to get built to avoid that sort of behavior unless it's for very definite medical reasons, you know, like your celiac or something like that, then I would always worry if anyone's saying I'm going to cut, cut this out or cut that out, you know,

because I just think that's an unhealthy way to think. about food. The best way to think about improving your diet is saying, do lots, get lots of good stuff into your diet and eat lots of nice things and eat more variety and eat lots, you know, so I'd really recommend doing that. I mean, and there will be people out there who will want to lose weight. And it's not for me to tell people what weight they should want to be. But what I would say is, you know, always, when people are doing that, just analyze what it is they want to, the reasons why you want to lose weight. Because if it's about improving your health, that's fine.

That's understandable. But all the evidence says you'd be far better. If your worry is your health, you'd be far better, you know, ensuring you do some exercise and eating a very interesting diet along the lines I just described, actually. And, you know, not smoking and not drinking to excess and doing all those things. Those are the best things you can do for improving your health. there's a huge amount of evidence. All those things will do a lot,

a lot for your to improve your health. But I think the problem is when people decide they're going to do those things in order to lose weight, because sometimes doing that stuff might not, certainly over the short term, might not mean you lose weight, but you might not.

But it doesn't matter because you'll still be improving your health. So if your worry is about improving your health, make sure you're focusing on doing that rather than thinking, I'm going to lose weight in order to improve my health. Because there's lots you can do to improve your health. health. There's lots of unhealthy ways to lose weight as well. So you shouldn't think about the two as being so sort of tied in together. There might be aesthetic reasons why people want to

lose weight too and that's fine. But I would be, I would also think about what else, you know, what the issue really is. Because often people are looking at losing weight as being the solution to all their problems, rather than thinking about what those problems are and thinking about a broader ways to address them. We kind of use weight as a proxy for almost everything, and people put their lives on hold before they've reached, you know, because they want to reach a certain weight. And that's enormously problematic. You should be looking at doing behaviors to improve your life rather than, rather than behaviors to change your weight because you think that when your weights change, your life will improve. I just recommend that sort of approach.

rather than saying this, this diet will help you lose X number of pounds and then you will be happy because you've lost that many pounds. And I wonder how much of what you do now and what you write about comes from the fact that you did science degree. Is that right? Yeah, I think it does. I think I think that helps. I think it helps to have that sort of background and understand and be interested in science.

I think that's more important than, you know, that I remember. details of the crept cycle. But, because I don't, don't test me on it. But I, I, I think probably more important is the fact that I'm, I'm a chef and I love food and I love eating. And I love the things that food can do for, for us as individuals and as groups of people and, you know, the way it can bring us together and the way it can sort of be really important in our celebrations. and the value that it has, and the way it creates memories and the way it actually stimulates your memories.

I absolutely love food and I love cooking. I think that's probably more significant because, you know, what I try to do is strip away the sort of, I worry that so many people, for so many people, you know, food has become this sort of battleground, this thing they really worry about

and they have huge anxiety about. And that's just stripped away, you know, that's stripped away so much of the pleasure and enjoyment, and important things that food can do for us as groups of people and can do for our health. And when I say what food can do for our health, I mean, you know, in bringing us together with family and friends and people we love and, you know, sort of enhancing our celebrations and that sort of thing, and that's really important things that food can do.

I think when you, when your people get so, you know, obsessed with, you know, sort of guilt and and shame and feel like they're doing stuff wrong, you get away from me. that. So really it's the fact that food is something I love very much is probably a bigger thing. And the science and the understanding of science and the lots of sort of scientific context that I have as well is the thing that enables me to strip away that guilt and make food a place where people can find pleasure in again. I really want to know. What's your favourite meal? I'm British, so it's fully roached dinner. fairly simple. I think, I think, you know, I think there are, my, my view about food is that food is

important, but it, you know, more important is the context in which you eat it and, you know, Roastino is sort of family and it's togetherness and, you know, sort of warm, warm memories of that sort of thing. And that's always going to be, those sort of meals are always going to be the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, that you, that you really love. and that, you know, things that have sort of an emotional resonance for you. So, yeah, I mean, very, very simple roast dinner, I think, would be sort of the best thing because it's kind of one of the most moments for me. It's sort of this moment of togetherness and continuity in the week. That was Anthony Warner, whose book The Truth About Fat, Why Obesity is Not That Simple, is out now.

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