Should I Delete That? - Busting diet myths with Dr Joshua Wolrich

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Have you ever felt bombarded by the information on the internet about heath and wellness? Today on the podcast - we’re speaking to a man who can clear everything up for us. Dr Joshua Wolrich is an NHS doctor, nutritionist and the Sunday Times bestselling author of “Food Isn’t Medicine”. When we started our body image series - we knew we had to speak to him to understand his take on the “wellness” rebrand of the 2010s - when diet culture shifted to a focus on “health”. You can go back to Monday’s episode to hear more of our exploration of the wellness era - but in this episode, you’ll hear our chat with Dr Joshua in full to as he debunks the health myths that defined the wellness era - and beyond. Follow @drjoshuawolrich on Instagram Read more about Dr Joshua’s work here: https://drwolrich.com/ You can buy your copy of Food Isn’t Medicine here!If you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [e-mail] us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Dex RoyStudio Manager: Dex RoyTrailers: Sophie RichardsonVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty Fraser Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Should I Delete That? When we started this series, we knew that we needed to speak to the man that you're going to hear from in today's episode. Dr Joshua Woolrich is an NHS doctor and nutritionist and the Sunday Times best-selling author of Food Isn't Medicine. We spoke to him as part of our exploration of the 2010s when diet culture transformed itself into wellness. From cauliflower pizza to intermittent fasting, in this conversation, Dr. Joshua clears up some of the most pervasive myths of the wellness era and lifts the lid on why diet culture had to undergo such a radical rebrand. We also spoke to influencer Alice Living in this episode and it was such a good and important interview that we knew we had to share

hers in her entirety too. So please look out for that when we publish it at the end of February. But for now, here's Dr Joshua. Enjoy. Hi Josh. Welcome back to the podcast. A second timer Was I? You've done this before? Yeah. Was this in my front room though?

Are we so forgettable? No, not that. It was on Zoom. No, it was over Zoom. Oh yes, that would be why. Yes. The Zoom ones were complicated. Yes, it was, you were one of our first podcast guest actually.

A few years ago. Yeah. We also did a podcast in my front room with your first podcast or something at some point. Yes, yeah. You brought your bikes with you. Throwback. I don't like it when we talk about your podcast before me. I'm sorry.

It's like an ex. don't it doesn't make me feel very comfortable it's all right you're better now yeah well obviously but still hurts sorry we wanted to go straight in because we need to pick your brains and we've got a lot to ask you um we knew when we were playing the series that we wanted your input um and we wanted your voice as an authority because as you probably realized we are not trained nor qualified in much in this area so jumping right in you coined the term

Nutubolics I stole it but I think I've made it a bit more popular in people of my age I will rephrase you made the term Nutrivolics very popular I'll take it

There you go Can you tell us how it came How that came to be Where did neutralobics come from As a term Yeah Or as a concept As one that you use

Yes I was coming across so much crap when I first started using social media Which was? Or as in timing wise 2016 Probably that kind of time And I just found myself

Kind of wondering whether any of this stuff was true And started getting a little sucked into some of it Because I was 26 and a bit gullible And looking for solutions to what I thought Was my weight problem And it was just seeing all of this stuff that promised everything was like oh great didn't teach me about this in medical school this seems reasonable uh most if not all of it wasn't um and as i was going through it

and realizing that actually this was actually quite easily believable and i didn't really know how to sift through it it just it was just bollocks bollocks was the the kind of british term that i had in my head of just complete nonsense um and at the beginning my focus was quite kind of food and nutrition aimed and so kind of nutrition bollocks or nutry bollocks made sense and then I realised there was another guy on

what was Twitter at that point who was using it as a poll every week and I was like this is great and I reached out to me like I love this word it was like I agree it's kind of since morphed I don't actually tend to use the word as much anymore only because it doesn't cover the expanse of nonsense that is there anymore

and it's now kind of turned into a lot of wellness bollocks and health bollocks and just things further out from the nutrition sphere like infrared lights for the morning and saunas that will cure everything and ice baths, they don't really fall under the bracket of nutrition anymore, but they're used in tandem with also telling you to avoid gluten and don't eat too much and all this stuff that comes around all the time. Wellness bollocks feels like a good time to encompass all of all of it, right? Wellie bolley. Yeah, a little bit different, difficult to truncate. I like it. Wellie bollocks. It's definitely something else. I don't know what that is. What are your thoughts on the sort of wellness

boom of the 2010s? Is it as simple to say that you think it's just diet culture rebranded? I think so. I also think there's an element where it was always going to happen. It's just a question as to kind of when. And I think the more that we have access to knowledge through things, and I think the internet has played a massive role in a lot of that, because I'm not to try and sound like, oh, I'm so old because I'm not, but I remember the times of actually having to look through encyclopedias

for to do homework and stuff like that to find out information, the ability to just Google something was minimal. You used to put a CD-ROM into the computer to boot up the encyclopedia and stuff like that after the books. And now that we have the ability to just Google insulin or Google gluten and then Google milk and come across something that they're like, oh, well, it's case. So morphine, oh, I agree.

That must mean that milk is addictive. And because people have the ability to just read this stuff, but with a minimal amount of understanding, and that's not a dig, that's just genuine. Like, this stuff is complicated. We're not meant to understand all of this stuff. But because we have this minimal amount of, well, I know what the word morphine means,

and I've now read a substance that's in milk that has the word morphine in it. So therefore, when someone tells me milk is addictive and I should stop eating it, I believe him, right? And so I think the influence of the internet has definitely played a big role in this becoming more widespread because it's easier to believe when you can give a little bit of information

alongside the claim that you're making. If you went out into the street, you know, 20 years ago and some guy was just like, milk is addictive, you'd be like, this is weird, I want to see what's going on. But now you've got someone making an Instagram video saying, milk is addictive because it's got casomorphine in it and people go, oh, he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

And I think that's a bit of, I think that's probably quite a big aspect too. and I'm sure you've seen elements of that where it seems like people are giving a little bit of where you're like, oh, is that true then? I don't know. But the overriding sentiment seems like nonsense. So it's probably not true, but also this is now a little confusing.

So that's probably one of the biggest factors in the most kind of recent time period. It feels like overt diet culture, like in your face diet culture kind of gave way to the wellness, morphed into... A bit rebranded. Yeah, the wellness. era and it obviously took off and well-being was this huge thing i remember there being a magazine

that was given out for free in london called balance yep i don't know if you remember it why do you think this took off and why do you think we were so keen we were so invested in this wellness era i think i think the rebrand was quite was was important in that um because i think people were starting to become skeptical of this just being yelled at that you had to be thin all of the time and there was a there was a time when that was well received by people not obviously in general it was still stigma and it was still very harmful but people seemed to think that was the go-to that was what we should be doing um when that started to shift a little bit people whose entire careers and existence revolved around that kind of stuff like well we need to kind of

rephrase how we're saying this and started to use kind of what we now think of as wellness but kind of wellness language and things around this are like you will be healthier your gut will be better you'll have more energy rather than just promising thinness but the kind of advice was pretty much the same but it started to be you terms like balance started to be used right rather than thin. A lot of the advice was the same. It hasn't really changed a huge amount, but it needed to be adapted because people were actually starting to reject, for good reason, but starting to reject this mantra that who you are is wrong and you have to change. And now it's just, well, no, you're doing to change, but we should be focusing on some sort of health. And so

this is what you should. You should eat less carbs for your health. Right? Not you should eat less carbs to be thin, but the advice was still the same. And actually the people behind the advice are still, still have the agenda of weight loss. It's something I often say to clients when I kind of work with them is, look, you don't have to worry that I'm secretly trying to get you to lose weight and just not telling you. Because that's kind of a common theme where people are like, I don't know if I can trust the advice that this healthcare professional is telling me or this person is telling me because I don't know whether actually they're just. telling me that advice because they think I should be thin but they're just not really being honest about what's coming behind it and I think that I mean wellness culture at the moment it's just diet culture without the word diet yeah it's clever it's a clever rebrand yeah you know

with a skepticism like threatening diet diet industry that is extremely profitable they're gonna lose their money otherwise weren't they right if they're gonna keep being able to sell their products and sell their plans and make money and have careers then it needed to be rebranded and it's they've just they've had to hasn't been hasn't been kind of them it's just yeah necessity yeah looking back at our experiences with diet culture wellness whatever with all of this i found this period to be the most toxic for me it was such a damaging time for like my relationship with myself with with food with exercise with all of it and i wonder whether where you land do you think it was, or do you think it's hard to quantify, whether or not this was more harmful

than the overt diet stuff? Because they were kind of capitalizing on the vulnerability and going from a health angle, did that make it more damaging than the overt diet narrative? Well, I'm not entirely sure was is necessarily the right phrase, because I'm not sure we're out the other side of it just yet. It is. But yeah, I think that's going to be a bit of an individual question. right um but i would say that it i think it's harder to reject some of this stuff in general as a kind of over you know high level answer to that of kind of going well the the the the weight conversations and the body size conversations they are very difficult to challenge but they're quite um they're quite kind of unilateral in terms of there's there's a singular focus um whereas the health stuff making your

health a personal responsibility rather than just your weight. And yes, the weight stuff was often linked to health. It was often told you would die, you would get diabetes, you would this, you would that. But there was also just a lot of you don't look right. And so that was kind of a lot of the focus when people were being honest about instance, what they were trying to sell. Whereas the wellness stuff is very like, well, but don't you want to be healthier? Don't you want to live longer for your children? Don't you want to do this? And so I feel like there's more, it's more multifactorial in terms of having to try and challenge and there's it's harder to reject some of the stuff that's thrown at you because you can reject aspects of it but then you're going yes but i do want

to live longer right and it's like well so how do i then reject all of that and find a real definition of what health looks like for me moving forward because part of your brain is going but they're not talking about weight anymore so surely this must be useful to follow um so yeah i I would say it's harder, probably. It's the insidious thing, isn't it? It's like it's hard to disentangle diet culture from health. Yeah. Especially as well, to throw another Spanish of the works,

when you have people who have been trustworthy voices at challenging what was your most stereotypical diet culture than starting being some of the purveyors of wellness culture, which I'm not going to name names. Old Josh would have named names, But I've seen quite a bit of that in the sense of, and I think, and the reason I'm not going to name names is because there would then be a judgment about this. And this isn't, and I don't have this judgment of specific people.

But I think there might be an overlying theme in some of this where the dual-natured kind of battle of, I want to look different, but I don't want to give in to the diet culture, lies about you know fat is bad and and this kind of stuff when you then have the option of doing it a wellness route then like that seems like an out and that seems like a way of doing the weight loss stuff but without actually doing the weight loss stuff and feeling morally happy with what you then do and people are allowed to make their indecisions but when you're there in a public figure that then starts to lose a bunch of weight but actually just say it's wellness stuff like it's about health this time guys but actually the stuff they're doing is exactly the same as

what they were challenging beforehand and they've brought a bunch of people who trusted them alongside like it gets really murky and I think some of that is also really complex because you've got people you trust right who have been kind of safe spaces for you and people are allowed to change like people's body sizes do change but it's it's the disingenuousness of some of that that feels uncomfortable to me. And I guess then, no matter what way you cut it, ultimately the message is that thinner equals healthier. Like I worked on my health and now I am thinner.

Yeah, it's a visual representation, right? You're not, you know, their social media platforms are visual. It's not like they only did audio from the neck up, do you know what I mean? Like they are visual platforms. And so this is where it gets hard because, again, people are allowed to change and people do change and you never know what's going on in their life

from what's going on in the background and what the reason, the rationale behind it is. And that's what I'm saying. I'm not going to say specifics because I don't know exactly who falls under that, that my thoughts around that at the moment. But there is an element there where you just go, I'm so much healthier guys.

And it's like, so what is the visual difference that you're also kind of implying here? Like it's, it's, yeah, it's difficult. Can we go back quickly to 2016 when you started on social media and you're seeing a lot of these, a lot of this neutral bollocks? What do you think the role of influencers was in this period?

It felt like a very unregulated time. I don't know. It was the time before stories. It was only posts. Wow. I don't remember that time. And stories were like, nobody's going to want those. Nobody's going to use those.

That was when I started as well, was it? Yeah. Yeah, what was the role of influencers? I mean, it feels like it's a lot more regulated now in terms of what influencers To say, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps I am very wrong. From a brand perspective, maybe, but from just general stuff, people can say whatever they like. Right.

You've got someone that said whatever they like in the White House. It doesn't really change anything. That's a very good point. You think they're going to regulate randomers on social media when they can't regulate the leader of the free world? I guess more like self-regulation. It feels like people are a lot better at fact-checking and deferring to experts and am I wrong. I don't know. I don't know.

I'm not convinced. And then it felt like there was like pre-tees were nutritionists. I think we're even worse post-COVID than we were pre because we've had that. And again, the same, I'll bring up the orange perfume too much. But we've got the rejection of expertise, very front and center of people going, we're tired of experts, basically just going, we're tired of not being able to do what we like. And COVID was a big driver to some of that because COVID was shit. And there were things that we needed to do from a health perspective and a safety perspective

that we didn't want to do and there was a lot of misinformation being thrown around about what that meant and it's led to a lot of distrust and people have used it to fuel distrust around some of these things so actually i i'm not convinced that we are better regulated now that we were back then if anything i think back then was a little bit more straightforward because again no stories it was just posts there weren't lots of videos right so it wasn't just people rammed it wasn't every guy under the sun with a microphone rambling, hi. But, you know, being able to spout whatever bigoted or, you know, self-belief nonsense that they had that they could just put out, right?

Andrew Tate wasn't a thing when you just had pictures on Instagram. That wasn't a medium that would have worked for him, right? So actually, I think back then a lot of the time, like I just saw a lot of food photos, right? And it was just, it was the visual. And I got into the social media wanting to lose weight myself. So it was, that was what the algorithm showed me. It wasn't quite as clever back then, but that was what it showed me. It was just pictures of food.

It was pictures of people's cats and nature was mostly what Instagram was at that point. And I think as stories came about, people started elaborating more about why they didn't have any carbs on their plate ever when they posted a picture of their food, right? Or no longer just posting transformation photos, but then they, were explaining what they were doing day to day with the transformation photos. So I think it started, I would say, probably getting worse compared to then. And that might just be because actually your knowledge around this has got, you know, has allowed you to reject more of it as time's gone on. So for you, it's felt easier, which is good, right? But I think actually for someone

coming in new, I think it would be a lot more overwhelming for me coming in now to this kind of space. it would have been in 2016. I think we did stop for a bit. I think what we're kind of alluding to with that question is we did stop for a bit doing the like, what I eat in the day and like as sort of body positivity and more brands kind of accepted and celebrated more, quote unquote,

real women in their campaigns, they did feel like a bit of a rejection. And it again might be our very small circle, but of the like, what I eat in a day videos of like, people would like I'll say like self-regulate to an extent and they'd be like oh it's a bit problematic for me to share that so I won't and like there was a little bit more of that which is coming back but yeah I think so I see what you mean I think during the period of it

changing from more diet culture to wellness culture but again I don't think this was I think this was a necessity a capitalistic necessity to regulate because people were realizing that they needed to continue getting the views and the, not everyone, but, you know, in terms of getting the engagement that they used to get on their what eat, I eat and a day posts, they weren't working anymore. So they had to adapt them. I'm not overly convinced that there were some people that of course were like, actually, maybe this is a bit problematic. But at the same time, I think a lot of brands were using more diversity because it was good for their bottom line. And, you know, we've seen that time and time again where it's been it's been nominal or you know token diversity

rather than actually being a genuine um change or a genuine um adaption to their MO it's more just been well there's a subsection of people who are no longer buying from us so we should probably include them in our campaigns but only a little bit don't include too many because then we might get some of the backlash that Nike got when they put the mannequin in the store. So maybe we should just be careful with how much diversity we include, right, even though the Nike mannequin wasn't actually that diverse. Do you know what I mean? Like it's whole, I'm a little skeptical of it.

And I think, and I mentioned this before, I think some of that skepticalness, skepticism, skepticism, good word. Went to bed at 2M. Some of that skepticism is fueled by the fact that I've had, in quotes, but TV companies coming up to me and kind of going, we want to make this diverse, you know, body positive, like non-stigmatizing, anti-stigma, if anything, show, we want you to do it.

I mean, at one point there were people that would contact me all the time for that kind of stuff, not as a brag, but just like there was a time when that was all, that was like people were wanting to do lots. None of them ever went to anything. But this one, they were like, we've got this idea. We want you to run this clinic for people who have been stigmatized. in the past who haven't been able to access appropriate medical care and we want you to be

able to provide medical care for them with a team right but without the stigma that they've included they've they've been exposed to I was like that sounds good I was like yeah okay well tell me more right because there are there are a hell of a lot of people who can't access appropriate medical care because they've been stigmatized for their weight and so they don't feel comfortable going I was like, that sounds good. Like, how are we going to do this? So I talked through the whole thing towards the end of that. They're like, oh, yeah, so we're going to have a bariatric surgeon.

I was like, why? They're like, well, we want a surgeon because surgery does well and CV. I was like, okay, cool. Sure. So like things like, you know, having people's gallbladder removed because they might have just been told where you just have to lose weight and then come back and always going to take it out. That makes sense.

They were like, well, this barric surgeon is used to operating on algebraes. I was like, that's good logic, however, need to be careful that the, because, you know, he's going to be talking on this show, like what the angle is going to be, all got a little bit murking. I was like, well, we can make that work, but we need to be really careful about the logic. And then it was like, we need to offer weight loss injections. And I was like, hang on, what? I was like, you've said one thing very clearly at the beginning of all of this. And now you're going right at the beginning of a Zen pic becoming popular, right? So this was about two years ago, is.

it's been a while and I was like hang on what would you mean what is the logic here I'm like well in casting when we've put out adverts it's very clear that people want to lose weight I went well yes and no of course they do I was like what does the what did the casting say how did you advertise this I was like because you've told me one thing and now you've brought a bunch of people who all want to lose weight and they're like so ethically we have to give them the option I was like sure not with me though yeah I'm like that's not the show that we talked talked about. I was like, that's a show where you're now going, oh, this drugs come along and oh, this would make money. And so they will say one thing, right? And then I found the casting

call thing online. And I was like, that would be why had nothing to do with what they were actually talking about. They were just like, have you, you know, have you approached your doctor about wanting to lose weight in the past? You know, come on the show and not be stigmatized. It's like, okay, this is very different. You're basically going, this is a weight loss show. We just won't stigmatize you this time. That's not what I signed up for. So anyway, we were about to start shooting the following week. And I said, you can. I the skepticism I think is well placed in the sense that it as long as it makes money as long as it attracts the right people they will do what they think makes sense but as soon as there's a

little like oh there's this weight log jug that's come along and oh bariatric surgery does well on TV and then they'll completely disregard the initial sales pitch and that's not just TV that's the influencers online and that's this and that's that and it's like well now I can sell this to these people. Now I can sell these wellness courses rather than these weight loss courses and now I've got this big demographic that always, that never paid any attention to me. And if I just stopped talking about weight loss, I've now got more followers, but actually what I'm doing is the same thing. Speaking of TV, supersized versus super skinny. In our, in our episode about TV and the role it played in our body image, our collective body image,

and individual we talked a lot about super size super skinny because it feels like it was a very big it feels like it was a big show and it was quite a pivotal show for a lot of us especially people struggling with eating with eating or body image what are your thoughts big question what are your thoughts on the show i it was incredibly problematic it um it massively trivialized any sort of disordered eating and took the piss out of it and made it a clown show essentially. Like, I remember those big tubes that they would be like, fill up your week's worth of food. It was like it wasn't, there was no interest in helping these people at all. And the only help that they thought they were giving was just like we could shock you

into changing your behavior. When has that ever worked? Like ever. It's essentially just stigma on display on TV, right? It's just, and, you know, nowadays, one would hope that there is, there's more of a focus on making sure that from a mental health perspective, there are a psychiatrist with shows that there wouldn't have, I mean, they're bullshit if they're saying there was that on those. They are saying, they are saying, bullshit.

They were extensively psyched. Complete nonsense. Because there were people on there that, and I remember some of these episodes, and I've seen clips of them more recently as well, ironically, or coincidentally, there were. were people on these shows who categorically had eating disorders and to say that there were psychiatrists that had vetted them etc complete bullshit there's no way that happened because they should not have been on these shows they it was incredibly problematic um this stuff and of course they will say that they had stuff vetted because it was on what was it iTV or channel four or something

so you know it's a it's a prime network or whatever we call it in the UK channel and so they would have had to tick the boxes but their definition of appropriately vetting people is very different to now right you'd never have super nanny going on nowadays you'd never have

whatever that idiot was that went around fat families right that was absolutely unhinged exactly like these these shows were clown shows to adjust as entertainment right and we're close to it with embarrassing bodies, maybe a controversial statement.

But, you know, I think embarrassing bodies is the equivalent nowadays, but not quite as, you know, but it's meant to be nicer. But, you know, there's no way that those things were appropriately, appropriately vetted. Absolutely not. What are some of the most common myths around diet to have come out of the wellness era? Yeah, I think there's a difference between, the stuff that came out of the kind of diet culture era and then the more kind of recent wellness we rebrand I think the diet culture stuff was a lot of like carbs are bad don't

eat gluten this will cause your your thyroid problems and I think the wellness stuff is more like intermittent fasting and to be fair that's the big one and also just everything needing to be about your microbiome thanks specter um So I think there's a whole obsession with kind of giving your gut a break because they're linked too, right? The whole logic behind them. So there's a lot of people who will just eat in very, very short windows and that's been sold and is still being sold to people as a cure for lots of lots of things. There's a doctor, a menopause doctor in the US or self-branded menopause doctor who loves harping on about intermittent fasting and how it's the best thing for women ever in their hormones. and, you know, selling it down a route that people want help for, right?

It's rather than it just being like, well, it's good because you eat less, so therefore make you lose weight. It's now a complete wellness rebrand of like, it's good for your hormone levels. And so it will help you with your PCOS or with your periods or this or that. And it's like there's a lack of, there's a lack of help in that area of medicine. And so it's like people are just stepping in and going, ah, intermittent fasting. and I think we talked about that last time when we did this podcast around kind of why this stuff attacks women so much more because of the lack of appropriate medical care around a lot of conditions like that

so I think the wellness culture stuff is really kind of harping into to the best of your knowledge and the science that you've read or the science that exists around intermittent fasting do all science science around intermittent fasting can you explain it to us does it have these purported benefits no no does it have any benefits does it have any benefits you sleep every day or you should do you fast every day when you sleep or you should do be a bit weird if you're waking up at 4 am to eat something unless of course this is because of your pregnancy and that's perfectly valid do do what need to do to get through these next few months, or less.

But if you're in normal circumstance, you sleep and you fast overnight every night. So you do a fast every day. That's fine. Your gut has a rest. Your brain has a rest. Everything shuts down and repairs and renews and that's good. You don't need to do it again during the day. There is no evidence at all categorically that there is a positive impact on anything

specific by doing that again during the day. God, it's just crazy when you hear it like that, isn't it, given... But it's also so obvious. It's so obvious, yeah. There are some very specific claims that we make around renewing cells, right? And so it's like autophagy or autophagy is the word that gets thrown around a lot. And they're like, if you don't eat, your cells renew. And so it helps your body to renew the cells that need renewing.

No, what's actually happening? By the way, firstly, those studies in mice. So we see it in mice. But what actually happens is fasting. your body goes, oh shit, don't have the nutrients I need to do my normal daily activities right now because I'm not sleeping. I'm awake. So it goes, okay, we need to kill some of the cells over there to get the nutrients that are stored in those cells and move them to the body where they're needed right now. That's not a positive. That's just your body doing something to survive because

you've refused to give it nutrients. Like it's a mechanism that your body does, but it's not something to promote as like a, if we just stop eating and we force our body to redistribute nutrients, you'll be healthier. How about you just leave the nutrients stored where they are so you could use them for other things later and eat food? Like, that's fine. So there's just, you know, there's nuances around if you're eating super late before you go to bed, that might not be overall the best thing for you.

But that's not intermittent fasting. That's just going, well, you know, your overnight window might be. benefit from being a little bit longer in the evening but you wake up have some food like you don't need to wait until 2 p.m because some idiot on the internet said it was going to cure something like it's just have some breakfast if you enjoy eating breakfast have some breakfast it's probably quite good for you superfoods what the hell was that it was a way to sell it was a way to sell goji berries wasn't it that's all that was and and what was the thing that looked like frogs born Cheer seeds

Cheers seeds I actually I like Chia seed pudding What's wrong with rice pudding It's so much better When I go on my long runs Before I'm pregnant

Sometimes I put Cheersees on my porridge On purpose So that I know That I can pick them out From my teeth While I'm running Because it's disgusting

Have you Have you talked something about this I'm telling you I'm telling a doctor right now I'm not qualified to deal with that problem Yeah I don't know what these were It was just a marketing Well, look, celery became a superfood at one point.

Did it? Do you remember the medical medium, that idiot? Yes. That blocked me in an instant because I said he was being a tool. Celery juice became this cure-all for everything, and celery prices went up in the supermarket. Like, it was absolutely mad. Like, there is no such thing as a superfood.

There are foods that are slightly more nutritious and slightly have more variety or more amount of nutrition packed into a smaller thing. But we eat meals, not foods. We don't eat individual foods, or we shouldn't. I shouldn't just wake up in the morning and go, I wonder what we're having for breakfast. Just potato. It's like, well, sure, you can do that if you want, but usually we have a combination.

Because our gut's good at dealing with combinations of foods. And our food matrix is a thing, fancy term, it sounds fun. But our food matrix is multiple foods together. And that gives us our nutrition. And, you know, anyone that's ever needed to take iron supplements would have been told, that taking it alongside vitamin C helps you absorb the iron better. Like there are things that combine in our body that is good. We don't need to overthink it unless we're specifically supplementing for a good, for a reason.

But we eat foods together. We don't eat individual nutrients. And so this whole like, this food is super because it's got all these nutrients. Well, your body's just going to be like I didn't need all of this. Just, you know, a bit like taking vitamin C tablets. You're just going to pee it out. Your body's not stupid. It's not going to be like we'll store specific.

nutrients forever will just go, well, one example of this. Your microbiome adapt depending on what you need. So if you are lacking in certain nutrients, particular minerals or whatever, your microbiome will adapt to be better to absorbing those minerals. So you're wondering what it's doing. You can't trick it by just having goji berries every morning. It tastes horrible as well. Thinking back to that time, it was kind of wild in the nutrition. I guess this is big nutribolics. energy. We were making like corgette pizzas. No, colifoyce spaghetti spaghetti. How, and it is a big question, but what effect do you think these healthy swaps was having on our relationship with food? Oh, just fear. Just increasing fear. Because people like to brand it's like, well,

it's good because you're getting more veg, but actually it's just, it's bad because you're becoming more fearful of the thing you've replaced. Nobody's replacing spaghetti with corsette because they were worried there wasn't enough corset in their life. It's not happening. People were replacing it. I feel very called out by that. Sorry. I eat a lot of colchetti and I don't even like it. There we go. Resernol was doing it because they were like, you know what, Corchette's a superfood and I want more of it. They were doing it because they were like, I have a problem with pasta and I eat too much of it and it's bad for me and it's making me fat, so I should stop eating it. But I really like Bolognese. So how do I continue to have

the joy in my life from food? I'll replace the spaghetti with courgette, not realizing that that sucked most of the joy out as well, because again, the joy is not just the name of the dish, but actually the way the dish is made. So yeah, I think it's just, it was one of those things that just can, by giving an alternative, actually, I'd argue it was probably worse than just avoiding the food altogether because at least in that sense you've realized that you're missing it and you're like actually maybe I do want bolognese in my life

proper bolognese, maybe I do want pizza in my life. Whereas people were being convinced that they weren't missing out because they were making chicken crust pizzas or cauliflower crust pizzas or whatever the choice was on that day they were like oh no well I'm not being restricted

at least by avoiding the food altogether they were at least being honest with themselves so it was a bit of a it was a it was a tricky switch um it still happens but i don't think as much i think it's a lot harder to i think that they are sold for for good reason now for things like you have celiac disease but you don't like the gluten-free dose so would you like a cauliflower crust or people are okay right so like they exist now for that but i think there's a lot less of it going around except for the carnival diet stuff that's come around again and so we're just yes i've seen

Chicken crust pizzas now because protein. Big uptick in that. Is it not just the same as keto? It doesn't make any, it's just, well, pay, I don't, I guess. So someone eating lump in pork fight yesterday. It's basically keto rebranded to, um, to bring in the toxic masculinity crowd. That's kind of what it feels, yeah, that's all of this high protein stuff. Yeah, yeah.

That stuff always gets rebranded atkins, Dukan, Keto. Palaeo. Paleo. Did I miss that? What's that? Ducan diet. Do, like the Tucan diet? What was a weird?

You can do use K-A-N. It was basically all you can eat in like chicken, eggs and cottage cheese and a little bit of cheese. Oh. Disgusting. Never been sicker. Sounds carnivore. Yeah. Horrendous.

Do you think that period, I guess the period, that period isn't necessarily over the wellness period. Absolutely not. It's still very much in it. Do you know what? Yeah. You know what the current. So, MAGA, do you know what the alternative to MAGA that's currently going around? Go on.

Maha, make America healthy again. Oh, my God. That's currently being promoted. Is it about blood sugar? Well, it's, I mean, it's just all about wellness crap, right? It's all about removing all of the processed foods from your diet and the American diet is terrible. But there are people trying to get positions in the White House by posting, because it's become a reality. TV game now, right? So there are people literally posting being like, vote for me for

Maha and it's like it's only going to get worse. Because again, the current bro podcast that currently talk about, you know, women, women's roles in the home and how they should be traditional nonsense like that, they're going to start switching to talking about food soon. And talking of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talking about how, you know, you can you can be strong men if you get the right nutrition in and you know these weak it's going to go back to the soy boy nonsense that was going on at one point like it's it's it's it's going to it's not going to it's going to it's going to go up before it goes down all of this diet culture wellness culture what in your opinion is that the crux of it is it thinness is

a desire to be thin is it money is it both are they intrinsically linked what do you think is the, is it like a chicken and egg thing? Look, without, you could go high level and just say capitalism, but without, without either, they wouldn't exist, right? So without, without the money, people wouldn't be capitalizing on people's desire for thinness and people's body image concerns and things like that. Without the, without the body image and the overfocus on weight and the prevalence of weight stigma, there wouldn't be the money to be made from it. But it is driven by that. It's driven by our obsession within us, the way that we see health,

the fact that we still practice medicine in a really weight-centric manner, where we see weight as kind of the be-all and end-all, kind of that overrides lots of other things when it comes to health. Only this week I had a conversation with a colleague in the hospital and just challenged about, you know, the link between body size and cardiovascular disease and like what that means and like basically challenging his language around it, going well look what if we and you know it's not going to it's the way that we teach this stuff and we talk about this stuff is not it's not ready to change yet and because of that you've got a lot

of people who just worry about what their body is and some of it is body image some of it is health focused but there's always going to be people there to capitalize it on and sell a fake or sell the promise of a solution to it. Even the stuff that's about like building muscle is still, still comes from a place of wanting there to be muscle rather than fat. Like it's all, it's all tied up in this. And you've got some crazy people like the guy that's spent millions of pounds

to try and reduce his biological age and looks like a, looks like some sort of slimy alien. You've got people like that who actually, I don't think his primary driver is thinness. I think he genuinely just has this obsession. with his DNA and specific health markers. So, you know, sure, but they're actually relatively few and far between. The majority of this wouldn't, these conversations wouldn't take place

if there wasn't body diversity. We would just get on with it and find something else to obsess about. But this is it. Can you tell us, as a medical professional, why the BMI scale is ineffective as a to measure health? So health is really complicated and health is really multifaceted. The things, as a perfect example,

the things that are affecting your health right now are very different to what would have been affecting your health a year ago, right? And so to use exactly the same marker to measure how you're feeling and how you're doing right now compared to a year ago, just wouldn't make sense in general.

Now, a marker like or a scale like BMI is a really high-level population marker And at a population level, it's quite good at seeing an average distribution of body sizes. And we can sometimes use it to have an idea as to where health risk may lie depending on that average. Because when you average bunches of people out, you lose the nuance, right? And so you have this general, like, if you are larger, you may have this. And some of the statistics work in that sense. at an individual level it's shocking because population level statistics aren't designed to function at an individual level

and there is so much nuance around people's individual health that when you take people's height and weight and do some math to combine them and then get a number out the other end to be able to use that and go you are healthy or you are not healthy just doesn't work people know it doesn't work doctors know it doesn't doesn't work. And when you press them on it, it's like, oh, yes, but if you have this number, I'm like, okay, so we're using the extremes to justify the scale. It's not a good way of justifying a scale. We wouldn't use that for anything else. Right. I'm like, okay, so why is 24 healthy and 25 not? Right. What, like, how does that make sense? Why did we change the number? We didn't change the number because we learned more. We just changed the number because

it was helpful for insurance companies, right? Like, genuinely. So it's like, well, it's not a, it's not a good measure of health. It shouldn't ever be used as a measure of health. I don't really think apart from population level research, it should ever really be used in anything particularly helpful because it doesn't actually indicate much. All it gives you is a relationship between your height and your relationship with gravity. Like it's, what does that mean? Like, the medical world try to say that your BMI is a good representation of your body fat percentage and your health complications as a result. But there's so many flaws between all of those links. So if to briefly, your relationship between your BMI and your body fat percentage isn't straightforward because

your weight is not entirely body fat. Your weight is muscle. Your weight is bone. Your weight is lots of things my brain math obviously takes it but no it's obviously a joke I don't think I'm that smart and I cringe every time I say expert because I'm not it's just we just need to talk about this stuff like it's not

it's not actually that complicated you don't need much expertise to question this right you're questioning it right like and it's okay now I know now I say I'm just insulting you but like we all questioning it we're all cut them out don't include that

No, you're not wrong. We are all questioning it, right? And we don't, you know, people without medical degrees, without specific science backgrounds are questioning it, right? You don't need that science expertise, that's what I meant, to question these kind of things. So, you know, it's not even a good relationship with your body of a percentage. It doesn't give you any idea as to where your fat is held on your body, and that matters

a lot because your genetics play a big role in where you store excess energy, right? If that's normal, it's excess energy, it's there for a purpose, but it also has the ability to be metabolically active and produce hormones and affect things like that. And that's its purpose. It's meant to do that. If we, like anything in life, if we have too much of one thing, producing too much of one thing, that can cause a problem. So if we have lots of fat in certain areas of our body that produce lots of hormones,

that can sometimes have an impact on our health. The BMI doesn't give you any measure of any of that. We don't need it. I don't have any need for BMI when I'm assessing a patient and talking to a patient. and being our any question that patient asks me, I don't need BMI for any answer that I give, ever. With that in mind, do you think it would ever be scrapped? Do you think we're at a point in the UK where we'd scrap it?

Because we need ways of allocating healthcare resources, I think it will be a while before it's scrapped because it's an easy cop-out. And it's an easy way to create cut-offs for people. there's a lot of healthcare resource allocation that doesn't have easy cutoffs because it's not so straightforward right and so when people need certain drugs and we've only got a certain amount of them or they need operations and we've only got so many slots in the day and so who do you put first etc etc like it's really hard to create hard and fast cutoffs or some of that so you have to you just have to figure it out as you go

the BMI is useful for top level cutoffs that it's not good that it's used for that, but it is. And so I don't think it's going to go anywhere anytime soon because if they can create a cutoff level to stop people having a knee operation and therefore that removes a bunch of people from the waiting list,

that's beneficial. That's fucking impressive. That's very bleak. Of course. But so I don't think it's going, because we also like numbers, right? As a society, we like, we like numbers to hit. We like, we don't like uncertainty as humans,

not just as a society. humans we don't like uncertainty we like something reliable we like to know that if we do this we get this right we'd like to know that and health isn't that it never has been it never will be um there are certain things within health that a little bit more predictive but even so everything in health is a risk like there isn't even a level of cholesterol where you are definitely going have art attack that doesn't mean it's okay to just let it go super sky high don't don't listen to the crazy people who tell your butter's fine and you can just eat all of it you want. But even in those circumstances, it's a risk, right? It's like it increases your risk. It doesn't

definitely give you. We all know people who've smoked for decades who never got lung cancer. Doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean it hasn't massively increased their risk. But medicine is not black and white. It never has been and ever will be. And BMI sells itself as black and why right it sells it as you're fine you're not and we like that as humans our brain likes the ability to be able to go oh well now it's here okay I'm good now yeah but it's not how it works this has been amazing amazing thank you so much thank you should I delete that is part of the ACAS creator network