The Food Medic - S2 E2 - Bonus episode from The Future of Food Conference

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

In this bonus episode Hazel sits down with 4 experts from The Future of Food conference Ryan Andrews; Dr Rupy Aujla, Prof Gareth Leng, and Dr Sandro Demaio.Make sure to get involved in our challenge of the week with the #TheFoodMedicChallenge.Hear more from The Food Medic over on www.thefoodmedic.co.uk or on social media @thefoodmedic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to season two of the Food Medic podcast. My name is Dr. Hazel Wallace, and I'm founder of the Food Medic. I'm a medical doctor, a health influencer, and bestselling author of the books, The Food Medic and The Food Medic for Life. So in this episode, we're going to hear live from the Future of Food Conference. And if you missed last week's episode, the Future of Food Conference. And if you missed last week's episode, the Future of Food Conference was hosted by the Food Medic. It was our first ever conference where we brought together experts in the field of nutrition and medicine and talked about everything to do with food and its impact on human health and health of the planet. So in this episode, I've given you guys

four mini interviews with four top experts, and I think you're really going to enjoy it. So first up, we have Brian Andrews, who has flown all the way over from New York, and he's a dietitian with a special interest in sustainability and the impact of our diet on the planet. And then we have Dr. Rupi Ojula, who is a medical doctor and a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle change as medicine. And then we have Professor Gareth Lange, who is a professor in experimental physiology and researches the neuroscience behind our food choices. And finally, we have Dr. Sandro DiMeo, who we have had on here in the first season of this podcast. Sandro is CEO of EAT, the science-based global platform for food systems transformation, amongst many other job roles.

So guys, it's a jam-packed episode, but it's got some of my favorite people in this space, and I'm just really excited to share it with you. But make sure to keep listening to the end of the podcast where I will share this week's challenge with you. And don't forget to keep using the hashtag the food medic challenge. Okay, so I'm now joined by Ryan Andrews, who has flown in all the way from the States to be here with us today. So for the people who don't know who you are, can you share a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I have been in

the world of nutrition since my teens. My gateway into the world of nutrition was more of performance, fitness, sports nutrition. And over the years, it's really evolved into thinking about how our food choices influence everything else and really the planet. I initially during graduate school when I was studying nutrition, my initial thought of our food choices influence something beyond our own body composition and health was kind of related to animal welfare. But then beyond that, it's just continued to zoom out. And I've tried to consider everything, whether it's farm worker welfare and soil health and pollution to the air and really everything, just environmental sustainability. So that's the ultra short version. So I've really dedicated my life to learning more about

our food choices influence our health, but the environment as well. Yeah, which is perfect for the topic of this conference. So I've asked you to come all this way to talk about how we can eat to essentially save the planet, or as you say, prevent the apocalypse. For those of you who missed your talks, can you give us a brief overview as to how our global food system is impacting the planet? Yeah, well, the modern food system is a major driver of a lot of the environmental problems that we're seeing in the planet. I mean, I always summarize it that we're in what's known as an ecological overshoot right now. Basically what that means is we're creating an amount of pollution and waste

that the planet can't absorb and we're using resources faster than they can be replenished. That's really like the ultra concise way of saying that the planet's in rough shape and how we produce food plays a role in that. If I had to boil down my message to a few big points, I would say one, it's related to livestock production. So if everybody can find their minimal effective dose of animal foods that they need to consume, that's a good idea. And I like to say minimal effective dose instead of resorting into any lines in the sand of it has to be vegan or it has to be vegetarian, it has to be this. Because, I mean, as you know, there's a high level of individuality with food choices and some people feel better when they're eating maybe a small amount of animal products in their diet.

So number one, find your minimal effective dose of animal products. Number two, try to minimize your food waste. Food waste is a major problem because when you throw away a food, you're throwing away all the resources that went into producing that food. Plus when you send a food to the landfill, it breaks down and releases greenhouse gases. That contributes to overall emissions. So minimizing food waste is another big one. And the third big one is trying to source your food from the most sustainable farms. So if you can afford organic, great. Try to do that. If you can afford something from a local farmer's market that has more of that sustainable angle, great.

Do that. If you can't do it all the time, that's fine. Do it once a month. Do it whenever you can. Those are the three biggies. Minimize animal food consumption, minimize wasted food, and try to source from sustainable farms whenever possible. Yeah, I think that's a really good message. And here at the moment, there's a lot of pressure for people to go completely vegan with the idea that that's the only way that we can

save the planet. Do you think that's absolutely essential for everyone to do? Anybody, you can't see me right now, I'm smiling. So, I mean, I have a strong connection to the vegan world for a lot of reasons, because I really, I respect anybody who's trying to minimize pain and suffering to animals. So I think that's a wonderful mission. When you're looking at environmental eating, so like specifically through an environmental lens, there are a lot of tradeoffs to vegan eating that might not necessarily be the best for the planet. Now, when you're looking at where the majority of animal products come from in developed countries, which would be the CAFO style model. So I say CAFO, that's concentrated animal feeding operation. That's the model of intensification where you have a lot of animals in a small space and they're trucking

in feed crops from all over the world that were not grown sustainably. And a lot of water is going into that and emissions are coming out of that and there's waste products. That's across the board, a pretty bad idea for the planet. Now, if somebody can switch to sourcing animal products from a more integrative, holistic kind of crop livestock farm where they have some animals and some crops, that can bring about benefits to the planet. It's really the CAFO style model that's the most problematic for the environment. So I don't think somebody needs to adopt a vegan diet to benefit the planet. And some of the vegan ways to go about getting your calories and nutrients, because let's face it, like it or not, animal products are a dense source of calories and nutrients. So if you're not eating them, you have to get those from somewhere else, some sort of a crop, some sort

of a plant. Some plants have a fairly high environmental cost. Not all plants, a lot of plants don't. Legumes, whole grains, roots and tubers, seeds, those are all wonderfully sustainable crops to eat. However, things like tree nuts present a little bit of a debate, especially if they're grown conventionally. They require a lot of water, a lot of chemical inputs. So one scenario that I can leave you with to kind of just get your mind working with this a little bit is let's say somebody can source local pasture raised dairy from down the street and the farm is like the ultimate of sustainability. The cows are eating forage and grasses on lands that maybe we can't grow crops on. And you compare that to

the lowest quality conventional tree nut milk or something, where it's transported across the world, not grown sustainably, that could be a scenario where maybe the locally pasture-raised dairy might be better overall for the environment. Yeah. At some rate, there's no simple solution. It's not just black and white, go vegan and you'll save the planet, or don't go vegan and you're going to cause the apocalypse. It's a lot more complicated than that. And I think for those who haven't been here with us today, what would be the biggest takeaways that you'd like people to go home with from what you spoke about today? Yeah, I mean, it's really related to the big three I talked about earlier.

And less meat, better meat. So find your minimal effective dose of animal products, whatever that looks like for you. That's a huge one. Because we often talk, to go back a little bit to the vegan thing, we often talk about this black and white, like vegan or not. But there is so much room for improvement, especially in the United States where we're consuming hundreds of pounds of meat. So it's like trending towards that, the vegan-ish end of the spectrum is probably a good idea. So number one, minimal effective dose

of animal products. Number two, minimize your food waste and then trying to source from the most sustainable farms. If you're shopping at kind of a traditional supermarket, then maybe looking for some sort of organic option there. Also two honorable mentions, try to support local food whenever you can and try to eat a wide variety of foods. That's actually really good just for overall biodiversity and pollinators and soil and things like that. Yeah, wonderful. And then food aside, what is the biggest lifestyle change we can make to help the planet? I'd probably just say going into your choices eyes wide open. If more people can simply make choices eyes wide open, knowing that the choice they make has a ripple effect on the planet, I think that can be really empowering. So going

into your choices, eyes wide open. I love that. So I'm going to leave it on that note, but thank you so much for joining us today. And for people who want to hear more about you and find out more about what you do, where can we find you? Yeah, check out ryandandrews.com. And I have an e-book and you can also check out links to Instagram and Twitter and stuff like that on my website. Cool. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thanks. So I'm now here with my good friend, Dr. Rupi, founder of The Doctor's Kitchen. Thank you so much for joining us today of course and the reason I want to speak to you is about culinary medicine because we haven't talked about that on the podcast yet so those who are listening who are unfamiliar with the term can you explain a little bit about what it is sure so culinary medicine is an innovative approach of teaching medical students and doctors the foundations of clinical nutrition and how to cook as well it's something that actually started in america about seven or eight years ago now where they taught their students initially in new orleans tulane medical school alongside culinary

students in a fit for purpose culinary school and they teach them using a the same workflow model so they get to read some clinical papers before the class then they get taken into class and they teach them using the same workflow model. So they get to read some clinical papers before the class. Then they get taken into class and they're taught some recipes in front of a dietician who leads the class alongside a doctor and a chef. And then they have a discussion about a patient sort of case, like a case vignette that we have in medical school. So Mr. X comes in, he's got high blood pressure. This is his diet. diet this is social history how do we optimize his lifestyle to potentially improve his health outcomes so i approached elaine about a year and a half ago and i said look we need this in the uk we have really poor nutrition training in medical schools in 32 medicals that we have in the uk how do we

get this over here so i got it accredited by the Royal College of GPs about a year and a half ago. We started doing our pilots about seven months ago with Westminster Kingsways, a culinary school in the UK, in London. And we have done our first pilot at Bristol Medical School as a specialty choice module. And they're the first cohort of medical students to do the entire four weeks. So all eight modules of culinary medicine. What we are really trying to gear this up towards is being the turnkey solution to poor nutrition training in medical curriculum. Wow. And have you any feedback or kind of research or evidence from your first pilot as to whether this has benefited the medical students or they found it useful or and they've been able to use those as real life practical skills in in practice yeah yeah so we uh did a survey before and afterwards and we looked at things

like culinary confidence their confidence of talking to patients about nutrition and we actually during this course as a specialty choice module, we paired them up with patient families and they actually went to visit them. So the feedback so far from the small cohort has been incredible. We are essentially using this small amount of research to spearhead future medical schools

taking on board culinary medicine. And we're looking at sort of trying to anticipate research that we can do and try and get this movement going that's amazing and you think that the answer to improving i guess medical students and also future doctors knowledge on nutrition the way forward is culinary medicine as opposed to just your bog standard module in nutrition yeah yeah it's a really good question because i i think what's so innovative about culinary medicine is that we're actually getting people in the kitchen medical students in the kitchen and we're changing the

conversation away from just macronutrients and how to eat prescriptively toward how do we focus on food how we make this relatable to a patient. A patient doesn't want to know about polyunsaturated fats or certain proportions of your greens and that kind of stuff. They want to know, okay, what food do I need to eat? What should I start experimenting with? It's not so much to say that we want doctors to literally teach patients how to cook, but certainly being food literate to the point where they can have realistic conversations in in consultation rooms is where we want to get to it's kind of like

saying you can either teach anatomy by just reading Grey's Anatomy or just looking at lectures or doing all the other stuff that you can do in textbooks versus doing the textbook stuff alongside going and doing the cadaver going and looking at a body look doing the pro sections and the dissections in laboratories that we do in medical school culinary medicine is essentially anatomy in that respect so we teach them not only the basics of nutrition the textbooks and the papers and get them to to read all that kind of stuff but also getting them to have actionable skills that will actually help medical students as well yeah because I think that's fundamental as well you want the medical students and also like the doctor is to feel inspired and also really

live and breathe this as well and understand and fall in love with food also because there's that huge disconnect between us and food now it's it's more of a to-do thing than something we have a relationship with so I think it's really fascinating and wonderful one of the things actually that I think not people a lot of people realize is that the diets of health professionals not just doctors but nurses allied health professionals it's generally pretty poor I mean we already have quite stressful jobs we work late shifts we have higher rates of things like depression suicide we're more obese than the general population one in two versus one in three um there are lots of scary statistics around our

own health and i think before we start focusing on the general public we actually look at need to look after ourselves and culinary medicine again has another sort of by positive byproduct in that we are teaching survival skills and general life skill that unfortunately has been forgotten out of our primary education system as well yeah what's difficult though when it comes to health care professionals is that when typically in secondary care within hospitals the food environment is not always satisfactory. And I know this is something that I've been pushing back against and you have also, in that we don't always have 24-7 access, especially at night shifts, to warm, healthy meals. It's very much a vending machine diet. And so it's difficult to make changes from kind of a top-down approach and you have to almost work

from a grassroots level up and I think we also have to take some of the responsibility on ourselves and start making our own meals and bringing them with us and I know a lot of people argue that hey I don't have time for that but you have to make time for your health yeah because we can't look after people if we're not looking after ourselves totally yeah and you know it kind of it makes my heart sink every time i see like dominoes having to be delivered in because there's just no other food options like you're saying particularly on night shifts wonderful and finally to just wrap it up i'd love if you could give our listeners your three i guess top takeaways that they could take on board to help improve their diet and lifestyle yeah yeah there's so many different options i think um the first one is plant focused i think that they could take on board to help improve their diet and lifestyle? Yeah, yeah.

There's so many different options, I think. The first one is plant-focused. I think if we can focus our plates around lots of colorful vegetables, the better. And I think we have too much of a sort of focus on meat having to be at every mealtime, which I certainly had when I was at medical school. And we need to look at different sort of plant-based proteins, of which there are many different types. The other is fiber. Our fiber intake in this country is particularly low. The standard is set fairly low, to be honest, at 30 grams, and we don't even meet that. So having different sorts of fibers, nuts, seeds,

flax is a great source, but also pulses, legumes, beans, that kind of stuff, fantastic. And I think the other thing is looking at ways in which we can reduce the amount of like processed convenience foods we have by essentially limiting the time of when we generally eat. And I find that in practice, if I tell patients, look, just eat in a general 12-hour window. Obviously, on a Friday night, you want to have a dinner, it might be late, whatever, that's absolutely fine. But generally, try and keep to a 12-hour window and that will actually stop your late night snacking, which is quite a common theme that I find in patients that I see in general practice. So if you eat between 7 and 7 p.m., you're less likely to have the ice cream or the chocolate snacks when you're watching TV late at night. And generally, that just puts a little bit more of an emphasis on eating proper meals rather than snacking throughout the whole day wonderful

and finally let's talk really quickly about your new book okay so the the new book is out it's going to be called eat to beat illness it's out uh on the 4th of april and i'm super excited because it's basically a deep dive into nutrition and lifestyle and how that intersects with lots of different medical specialties and parts of the body. So brain health, skin health. The big sort of like spoiler is that it's pretty much the same. And I talk about principles of living, principles of eating that essentially intersect with all those different things. It's really about eating to improve our internal ecosystem and living the healthiest life possible. And where can people find you?

People can find me at thedoctorskitchen.com, on social media, and I'm usually posing with you in a gym class. Like cooking or eating with you. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us and we'll speak to you very soon. Cheers. you very soon. Okay, so I'm now joined by Garth Lange, who is Professor of Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh. First of all, welcome, Garth. Oh, it's a pleasure. Can you explain to the listeners what your area of research and expertise entails? Okay, well, I'm a neuroscientist, an experimental neuroscientist, and I'm a particular breed of neuroscientist called a neuroendocrinologist.

And neuroendocrinology is really about how the brain controls the secretion of hormones and how those hormones act back on the brain. And so I've been a neuroendocrinologist now for 40 years. Now, currently, I'm also the coordinator of a large multinational project called Nudget, which is about the determinants of food choice and food behavior. And my role in that is to do with how this link between the brain and hormones is implicated in our food choice. Amazing. Food choice is such a complex area and is governed by many factors. But what are the main things that influence our food choice?

You can put it down to a number of things. You can put it down to early environmental exposure, of course. And this is very important. It's what habits are established in early life, and how parents impose those habits or encourage those developments of habits in children. That's something to focus on for us, because actually it's very difficult to change the behavior of adults.

And if we do want to change the behavior and food intake behavior, then probably the best chance of doing so is actually to look at early life experience and look at how habits and choices are established in children. Wow, that's really interesting. Do you think food policies to remove unhealthy snacks from checkouts will reduce the consumption of these types of foods? Well, it would be interesting to see whether it does. I'm sceptical, to be honest, of things like this.

It would be great if it does. Often policies like this have kind of unintended consequences. One of the things that happens is that people take snacks during the day, often because they feel hungry, they're deficient. And if they don't eat more at that time, well, they eat more at another time, more later. So there are other effects on behavior. Certainly if people are hungry and they're deprived of food,

then they can become more irritable and other things can happen. And these are things that are in my class as unintended consequences consequences so i think you've got to kind of watch an experiment like that it should be seen as an experiment yeah and you should just see what happens in our experience of interventions like that is okay and what are your thoughts on the sugar tax again these things should be seen as as an experiment i think it's very kind of important not to say that well we know it's going work, and so we'll just do it anyway. I mean, ideally, I'd rather that it be carried out in just part of the country so that we could see how it worked there

and compared it with another part of this country. Because there's a danger that once we're committed to this, then we'll all stick to it, and it'll be very difficult to change. Now, we know that this has worked well in Mexico, and it's really on the basis of the Mexico experience that it's been introduced here. But you've got to remember, Mexico is really very, very different. The average expenditure of a family on food as a proportion of their earnings is much, much higher in Mexico.

So increasing the cost of food is going to change behavior there in a way that won't necessarily change here. If you're successful, as you may well be, in reducing the intake of sugar-rich drinks, all you've got to look at is what are they going to do instead? Because it would be naive to think that they will just drop those from the diet and otherwise leave their behavior unaffected. And, you know, we have to remember, we know that we can change food intake behavior through public policy and public events. But our history of doing so, to be honest, isn't great.

If you think back to the diet in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s and how it's different then from now, well, probably the most conspicuous difference arose from what's been called the kind of demonization of dairy. You know, when I was a child, all milk was full-fat milk, and often that milk, the most prized milk, was the heavy-fat milk. And in that period, of course, the fats in dairy fats were thought to be detrimental to health, and so we've changed to drinking semi-skimmed or skimmed milk. We've reduced our butter intake, and we started eating margarine and in fact the health messages back then were certainly completely misguided yeah and although we subtracted a lot of calories from the diet so it hasn't had any impact at all on our kind of

you know those changes have actually coincided with increasing obesity rates here so i think you know with interventions like this, we have to be very careful. We have to see them as experiments and watch what happens and look at the totality of what happens. Yeah. And the whole thing about emotional eating, the whole concept of kind of comfort eating or not being able to eat when you're anxious or nervous. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, we know that both these phenomena are very strong, and we can see them in the laboratory,

and see both of these phenomena very strongly in experimental animals. So we know that the level of stress that an experimental animal is exposed to will determine its food intake patterns, how much it eats, and what it chooses to eat. And so we can see what we could call comfort eating in a rat that's exposed to mild stress and we know that if they're exposed to more severe stress then you'll tend to get a reduction in body weight so certainly we know that the levels of perceived stress very much affect both how much we eat and how we use the energy now so that raises a kind of important unanswered question really as to what as to how much other things in our environment affect our body weight and especially is our environment stressful in a way that affects our energy intake and expenditure.

And these are very difficult things to get at. Certainly it's been suggested that we know that the problems of obesity and the problems of unhealthy eating are greatest of the poorest families in this country, the most deprived families. And in part, that's thought to be due to food insecurity. If you're uncertain about whether you've got enough money to buy enough food next week and you've got access to cheap food now, you'll eat as much as you can now, and that will tend to lead to overeating. But it's also the case that those poorest families, most deprived families, live extremely stressful lives.

And it is what we might call the perceived inequality of their lives. We constantly compare ourselves with others. It's not a level of absolute poverty, but it is the perceived poverty. That puts us under stress, that perceived inequality. Yeah. And for those who weren't able to hear your talk today what would be the biggest takeaways that you would like people at home to i guess think about i think the well two things really firstly is how good our bodies are normally at maintaining a very

constant body weight over a very prolonged period Normally we don't have to think about that. And I gave the example of myself over 40 years, you know, I've put on half a pound a year on average over that 40 years. Think about it, that's an incredible constancy of body weight and despite environmental changes, about changes in diet, changes in lifestyle, all of these things. And that's typical of people. People generally, their body weight is very stable and it's stable because our bodies are very good at regulating the balance between what we take in and what we spend in energy so if we eat more we'll normally spend more energy and and if we eat less then we will tend to conserve energy so our bodies are very good at keeping that balance once that balance is disturbed severely then it can be very very difficult to reverse because in a sense we teach our bodies that a higher body weight is the normal body weight and our bodies

then try and protect that so i think for me in a sense there is there is a danger to what you might call controlled eating yeah over attention to actually how much you take in because the danger to me is that in trying to control how much your calories and control your eating, you're teaching yourself to ignore the signals that come from your body itself. Yeah. And if you do that, you're in a potentially dangerous situation. Do you think that's why diets don't work in the long term?

It's one of the reasons why diets don't work in the long term. I think that's absolutely right. Essentially the signals that normally regulate our intake energy expenditure have been downregulated, desensitized. We have learned to ignore them. Interesting. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. For anyone who wants to hear more about your research, and also you've got a book. I have got a book out. It's called The Heart of the Brain, and it came out in September. Wonderful. And where can we find you?

Where's the best place? Are you on Twitter? Are you on social media? At the moment, I'm not on Twitter or social media. And if you really want to talk to me, contact me through my university email address. I'm happy to respond. I always do respond to people who come to me with queries. Great.

Well, thanks for joining us, and I'm sure we'll hear more from you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, so I'm now joined with Sandro, who has been on the podcast before. Welcome, Sandro. Thank you. Back again. What have you been talking about today? What was your talk on? So I was talking about global health and how the big challenges facing the global population, but also the planet, so linked to the food that we eat and how we produce it.

And so the purpose of the conference is to raise awareness, not just about how food can impact our health, but also the planet's health. And that's super topical right now. What advice would you give to people at home or what would be the biggest takeaways from your talk that people should take on board do you think it's very easy to read the newspaper watch the news and feel paralyzed by the scale of the challenges facing our planet today you know climate change the loss of biodiversity the scale of health challenges facing the planet, even the risk of, you know, superbugs and antimicrobial resistance. And I think the important message is that all of

those things might seem out of our reach and overwhelming, but actually there's something that we all do at least three times a day, many of us, sometimes more, that is connected to all of those challenges and gives us a stake in solving them. And that's eating, that's food. You know, every time we buy food, every time we cook food, every time we share food, every time we waste food, we're actually, in a way, making a statement. We're choosing a destiny, not only for our own health, we're actually choosing the future that we want or don't, you know, don't want for those around us, for some of the most marginalized populations on the planet who are worst affected by the big challenges I just outlined, and also for the planet itself and the future of the planet. So I think the message is that food is both, you know, it's something we love, it's

something that connects us all, but it's also an incredible tool for connecting us to those big challenges, giving us a sense of agency, a sense of empowerment. We all have a piece of the global food system on our plate three times a day, a global food system that currently leaves half the planet behind and comes at the cost of the very planet we live on. But the reverse can also be true. We can use that food to build a better future, not only for ourselves and our kids and future generations, but for the very planet that we inhabit. Yeah, that's such a powerful message.

And I think with that knowledge, how do you think we can empower our medical students and future doctors to put food at the top of their agenda when they're speaking and treating patients? Look, I think the first thing to understand is that it's not an easy task and acknowledge that it's not that easy. You know, often we don't have a lot of education of nutrition in medical school. Our patients expect, you know, a pill, not a plate of different food, you know, and the challenges actually addressing global malnutrition or even improving obesity in the UK, child obesity in the UK is not as simple as telling a parent to feed their kids better food. It's actually about,

you know, reducing marketing of junk kids better food. It's actually about reducing marketing of junk food to kids. It's about protecting kids from aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes. It's about giving mothers the opportunity to breastfeed at work so that they can actually make that active choice to give their kids the best nutrients that they can provide. It's about making sure people can afford the right food, access the right food. But there is still a really important role of doctors because at the end of the day, the leading risk for early deaths and the leading risk factor for disease here in the UK, across the world, and in many parts of the world is the food we do or don't eat. So ensuring that we understand the research, we understand the facts from the

myths when it comes to a healthy diet, that we have maybe a few tools from the toolkit that you have so incredibly developed and Rupi and others, you know, these are really easy, fully digested, excuse the pun, um, ways of communicating and empowering our patients. And so I think engaging, understanding the facts, being able to communicate simply, and then work with our patients, you know, acknowledge that it's actually not that easy to change what we eat, to stick to a healthy diet, to afford a healthy diet, and that we will work with them to achieve that and through that better health for them and their family. And it's something that will, you know,

we'll take time and there'll be setbacks and we'll be learning ourselves as we journey on, on that path with our patients, but upskilling, communicating, empowering our patients and seeing food and nutrition as a core responsibility in conjunction with our colleagues from the nutrition and dietetics community, who are the experts in this to see it as a core responsibility and a core tool for improving the health of our patients. Yeah and it's not just about sick care and looking after patients it's also about health gain when it comes to food so for people who are listening at home and maybe are not suffering from a diet related disease what three principles do you think would be something

that they could adopt themselves to help improve their diet? So if we're really looking at how we can eat in a way that is going to drive a future for us and for other generations in front of us and for the planet around us, the evidence suggests three really important things that we can do. The first is to vote with our note. So every time we buy a product or buy food,

we're making a decision and we're deciding in a small way which way our food system moves. So if we can afford to buy food that is free from slavery, if we can afford to buy food that is certified sustainable, seafood that's certified sustainable, if we can afford to buy coffee that we know hasn't resulted in further rainforests being cut down, if we can buy products that are free from palm oil, these sorts of things, although they're small, they do incentivize changes in the wider food system, in the companies that produce our food.

They show that consumers are actually willing to pay slightly more if they can afford it to get a product that is going to move us in the direction that we want to move as a global community. The second is to really look at how we can reduce waste in our own home. One third of global food is wasted and with that comes enormous costs to the environment that is needless and also to economies and to wellbeing. And one thing I love to do is once a week, and I think I learned this from you actually, Hazel, once a week, try and use, you know, just cook dinner from what I have in the house and once a month, do it for a whole week and just focus my food around actually what I have be reactive to what

I already have in my pantry and my home and use that up rather than simply buying more products and throwing out a huge amount in the process and the last is to see our diet within the bigger food system globally so we know that you know in our part of the world a big thing is the amount of meat we consume and the environmental and health impacts that come with that we also know that you know in our part of the world a big thing is the amount of meat we consume and the environmental and health impacts that come with that we also know that most of us don't eat enough fruit and vegetables so eating more fruit and veg and reducing our meat consumption eating the best quality we can afford whatever income that is and wasting none and then trying to increase you know whole foods the diversity of of those foods, eating the rainbow as we've heard so many times.

Yeah. You know, that will naturally move us, you know, a long way in the direction of the sort of diet that we need to achieve that will allow us to feed a whole planet. But it will also that we know is best for our bodies. So vote with our note so that we can move the food system in the right direction. Make sure we reduce the amount of waste in our house and in our home and in our lives. And think about the diet that we're eating. Try and be whole food, mostly plant-based. But if we do eat meat, cherish it for what it is.

It's a privilege. Enjoy it by the best quality that we can afford and waste none. Wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to finish it on that note. But before you go, I know that you've already been on the podcast, but please tell everyone where to find you and more of your brilliant information. Thanks, Hayley. Of course, yeah. So you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Sandro De Meo, one word. And I'm also now on Netflix on a show called Ask the Doctor. So if you want to find out more, join me on Netflix worldwide.

I love that. Okay, thank you so much for joining us today. And yeah, we'll speak to you very soon, I'm sure. Thanks, Hazel. Today's been truly amazing. Okay, guys, so I hope you enjoyed hearing from the experts at the Future of Food panel. I know I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot. So they left us with a lot of

takeaways. One of the things that really resonated with me is what Sandro said at the end. So he left us with three takeaways and they were to reduce our meat and to eat less of it, but to eat better and to vote with our nose. He also mentioned to reduce waste and to eat what we have in the house. And also when it comes to thinking about our diet, to eat whole foods and mostly plant-based foods. So I think they're really easy steps that we can all take on board. And it's a little bit of food for thought. And on that note, last week, I introduced to you guys the Food Medic Challenge. I'm always asked for help in how to live a healthier, more sustainable life. And I know it can be quite

intimidating and there's lots of things that we should or we're told we should be changing. So at the end of each podcast, I'm going to set you a challenge to do, something we can all do together. And in that way, it will make it a little bit easier and we'll all be in the same boat helping each other out. Now, last week, you all did incredibly well and I loved seeing all the photos that you're sharing on social media and everyone's using the hashtag the food medic challenge which is fun. So this week in the spirit of sustainability and sustainable diets I'm challenging you to have one meat-free day a week. Now I know for some people this might be easy but for others it could be

really hard but I'm here to help you out so make sure you check out all of the recipes on my website we've got loads of plant-based recipes over there last week I put up one which was a sweet potato curry and it's absolutely delicious so make sure you check that one out and guys don't forget if you are getting involved and I hope you are use the hashtag the food medic challenge on Instagram or Twitter and make sure to send me your photos because I love seeing them and it's giving me so much inspiration. So that's all we have time for today and thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review and a five-star rating if you're loving what we're giving you. You can hear more from me over on social media at thefoodmedic as always and on my website, thefoodmedic.co.uk. We'll see you again next time when I have two very special guests,

one of them which you will probably know from a very famous program, Love Island. So have a great couple of weeks, and I'll speak to you very soon.