The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 178: They're Lying To About Low Fat Foods, THIS Is What They're Doing!: Tim Spector

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In this moment, world renowned gut heath expert, Tim Spector discusses how to navigate the modern food landscape and overcome the brainwashing of the food industry. It turns out that answering the seemingly simple question of, ‘what is quality food?’ is a lot more difficult that it first appears. Too often foods packaged as ‘healthy’, ‘low calorie’ or ‘low fat’ are in fact the opposite. Instead, Tim believes we need to go back to eating foods in their simplest, unpackaged original form as nature intended. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//38if1OxLDMb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//fXv5HxALDMb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Tim: https://tim-spector.co.uk/ ZOE: exclusive 10% discount on their first order of Daily30+ with the code PODCAST10 when you order from zoe.com/daily30

I want to share something with you that I found to be quite game-changing. If you're like me and always looking for new ways to add more plants to your meals, then you'll want to keep listening for the next 30 seconds, because I've got breaking news specifically for you from Zoe, who sponsored this podcast. Introducing Zoe's Daily 30, which is creating a supplement revolution made from 30 plants. It's designed to be added to your meal of choice

every day. No ultra-processed pills, no shakes, just real food. I just scoop and sprinkle it onto my breakfast every day, which is usually eggs and avocado. It's easy, seamless, and it's a great way to fuel my day. And the best part is, it tastes great. And because it's Zoe, you know there's rigorous science backing it too, which I love. For my listeners, Zoe is offering an exclusive 10% discount on your first order of Daily 30 Plus with the code PODCAST10. Just go to zoe.com slash daily30 to get started. It's already sold out twice since launching in July. Join me and let me know what you think. Quality food. What is quality food in your definition of the phrase?

It's the opposite of ultra-processed food, which is whole food, which is made from the original ingredients of plants, mainly plant-based, but it's not exclusively, that contains all the nutrients that those plants produce without it being stripped away or boiled up or highly pressurised, deformed, and so they have to add in back those nutrients. So, you know, it's things in their pure form. So it's nuts, it's seeds, it's grains that haven't been ground up super finely.

It's all the amazing plants and fruits and vegetables that we've got. They're healthy foods, but it's not straightforward. Yes, I've got this list of 10 superfoods. It's understanding that many foods that are healthy for us, most of them are in their in their original form berries nuts um virtually every vegetable is healthy for us if it's in that original form it's only because we've we had to learn to preserve things we had to do trickery to make you know margarines and things with chemistry that we've moved away from that but you know going back you know olive oil for example is

a great example of something that be vilified often because it has lots of fats in it and you know certainly i was told oh the mediterranranean they have they have olive oil and everything it's horrible it's all fatty turns out that's that's a perfect you know it comes from the olive the good stuff extra virgin olive oil has very little done to it and that is a good healthy quality food but it can be refined you can take that and you can keep refining it um you can take corn on the cob as an example and then you you know and then you've got i don't know uh tortilla chips or something down the other end is which bears or corn flakes which bears no resemblance to the original and they're all versions on the spectrum god it's so confusing you know because what you've said to me is you know based on research and studies but then when i go to a supermarket

labeling even i was just thinking in cornflakes i think i grew up thinking cornflakes were healthy because it says corn in the title you know what i mean and it's and when you're trying to navigate i was just thinking if i'm going down an aisle now hearing what you've said, that that quality food is food that is not ultra-processed and kind of resembles its original form. When you walk down the aisle in the supermarket, everything is trying to pretend that it's good. So how do I know what is good? I mean, I can go to the vegetable aisle and I can say, okay, that looks like a cabbage. It looks like no one's messed with that. There's been no study done on that. It hasn't been through a laboratory. But how do I, like, if I'm in an aisle tomorrow, how do i know what food is good and what is not well you've said the first thing if it's not in a package um you're pretty sure it's good okay so

if it's concealed in some package that's got you know happy children and signals of vitamins in it that should be a warning sign uh you know the more they have to advertise the food and say what its additives are and everything the more you should be wary about it the number of ingredients is another pretty good sign so once you get over 10 particularly if there's lots you've never heard of you wouldn't find in your kitchen you should also be wary that that is ultra processed food anything that says low calorie that says means they've had to add in lots of artificial sweeteners or protein extracts or something else is also a big danger sign low in fat means they've replaced the natural fat with something else that's cheaper. And these are all warning signs, you know. And, you know, you take breakfast cereals.

I mean, I used to eat lots of breakfast cereals. I was brought up on them, highly sugary stuff. And then I thought I was being healthy when I moved to mueslis and posher stuff. But actually, when you still, you know, that appearance of healthiness, it's still got lots of additives in it. It's still got lots of sugar in it. It's just, and those cereal packets

have added vitamins in it, but they're often in a very poor form. I did the experiment once where I took some corn cornflakes or special care i can't remember that says added iron and if you mix it up you can put a magnet on it you can get off the iron filings they're so cheap that they're just added to tick a box saying it has iron but they don't get into your body or do anything so anything that's got these things added with this in it low in this is a sign that they're obscuring the quality of the product so it's you know but there's a lot of brain you know we've been brainwashed for years and decades in this and you know i was as well as a doctor, you know, I should know better. And yet, I've completely

changed my, two of my meals completely. So I've gone from having muesli with low fat milk, and an orange juice and a cup of tea. Because I did, you know, I started doing these tests for Zoe, I found out that gave me a massive sugar spike. And it was a terrible way to start the day. And I got these dips at 11 o'clock to a high full fat yogurt, nuts, seeds, a few berries, and never have orange juice. That's on my that's a really unhealthy drink for everybody. And I have lots of black coffee, which I now know is good for me. So that's totally different. I changed my lunch for at least 10, 15 years.

I was having a hospital lunch, which used to be in the canteen. Then it was Marks and Spencer's. Got a healthy-looking sandwich with brown bread, sweet corn, and tuna, and a smoothie in a little bottle and that gave me a massive sugar spike and i wouldn't have known that and i was told that should have been a healthy thing to eat so you know there's there's general rules but also there are specific rules and this whole idea of individuality is coming in so it could be that you could you might be fine on that don't know um i was very annoyed because when i started we were starting doing this testing for zoe i had all these spare kits and i gave my wife one as well and we sit down and she's french belgian

and loves croissants and so we'd have croissant each mine would shoot up she had no change at all in her her her sugar which is really annoying yeah so but it also brings brings home the fact that you know everyone loves simplistic rules but you can only get so far with them you have to start experimenting yourself and see what works for you and not just take everything for granted and that's really the that's the whole essence of really you know setting up this personalized nutrition research and zoe and everything else but on top of this general advice about changing a whole idea of food i think because i think they do go hand in hand that if you realize there are these individual differences you realize it's not as simple as you've been told it's not that fats

are evil it's not that calories are bad you know it's it's much more nuanced