The Food Medic - S3 E4 - Body Image with Nadia Craddock

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

This week Dr. Hazel chats to Nadia Craddock who is a body image researcher and PhD candidate at the Centre for Appearance Research, based at the University of the West of England in Bristol.Nadia's research is centred around whether big business can foster positive body image through the lens of corporate social responsibility. Her wider interests span eating disorder prevention, colourism, weight stigma, and developing evidence-based body image and self-esteem curriculum. Nadia also produces and co-hosts the Centre for Appearance Research’s podcast, Appearance Matters: The Podcast with fellow PhD candidate Jade Parnell. Topics covered on this episode include: what body image is and who it affects, protecting your body image and mental health online, the recent stir-up of the plus sized NIKE mannequin, and body positivity. This weeks question is “Is green tea good for burning fat?”. So if you’re interested to find out the answer stay tuned to the very end of the episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and a very big welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host, as always, Dr. Hazel Wallace. I'm an NHS doctor and founder of The Food Medic, which is an educational platform discussing nutrition and other aspects of lifestyle. If you're new to the podcast and have never heard of myself or The Food Medic before, then make sure to follow me on social media at The Food Medic on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And make sure to follow me on social media at The Food Medic on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And make sure to have a browse of the website, thefoodmedic.co.uk. Alrighty, before we jump into today's podcast, each week I take one listener question and answer it at the end of the podcast. You can tweet, Facebook or Instagram message me your question with the hashtag thefoodmedicpodcast. And this week's

question is, is green tea good for burning fat? Now this topic of fat burning foods or foods which boost your metabolism comes up a lot on my Instagram. And green tea is just one of several foods which are often claimed to have fat burning properties. So if you're interested to find out the answer, stay tuned to the very end of the episode where I will share all. Now back to this week's show. On this episode, I'll be speaking to Nadia Craddock, who is a body image researcher and PhD candidate at the Centre for Appearance Research based in Bristol. Nadia's research is centred around whether big business can foster

a positive body image through the lens of corporate social responsibility. Her wider interests span eating disorder prevention, colourism, weight stigma and developing evidence-based body image and self-esteem curriculum. Nadia also produces and co-hosts the Centre for Appearance Research's podcast Appearance Research's podcast Appearance Matters with fellow PhD candidate Jade Parnell. Nadia, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me Hazel. It's really good to have you here. So first of all, I know lots about you,

but I'm sure there's some people listening who may not know who you are or what you do. Can you just kind of give us a bit of a background? Yes of course. I am a body image researcher and PhD student at the Centre for Appearance Research which is a world-leading centre for body image and appearance psychology research based at the University of the West of England in Bristol. So I guess my main goal is helping people feel good in their bodies I guess. That's such an interesting and niche area of research. So I'm excited to kind of unpick that a little bit more in this episode. Now, your research is focused on the role of business

and whether industries like fashion, beauty, advertisement, fitness have a responsibility to foster positive body image. Can you tell us a little bit about what that entails and what your findings have been so far? Yeah, I'd love to. So you've kind of like summarized it really well. I'm really seeing if we can harness the power of business for social change on the topic of body image. And I think the reason I think that's so important is that traditionally we position businesses like fashion advertising and beauty as creating and promoting these like toxic ideals that make people feel badly about their bodies the messaging that we're getting from from fashion advertising and beauty etc that we have to look a

certain way to be valuable and accepted in the world and be seen as beautiful and desirable etc but we're at this position where we're kind of putting all the responsibility on the individual level so I was really interested to see how can we engage business rather than just being like okay we need to just ignore them like how can we engage business rather than just being like, okay, we need to just ignore them. Like, how can we engage for social change? And I think we see this kind of model in other social issues. So sustainability and the climate is a good example, I think. And I think we can learn a lot from what's gone on before.

So using this kind of idea of corporate social responsibility or social purpose or being a corporate citizen. So what I started off by doing is speaking to people in fashion, advertising and beauty who have made some effort to create change. And I was really interested in finding out what the motivations are to do something that was maybe like against the grain, kind of doing something that was different. And then finding out what the opportunities were and the barriers were for them to do that, what makes it difficult, what might make it easier in the future that kind of thing so I spoke to 45 people across fashion advertising beauty predominantly in the UK's US and I just think absolutely number one like it was a personal issue for people to really think that this is what they're going to do something different on

whether the example would be to have more diversity in their advertising or have different size models on their website and I think it was just for the people who are trying to do something different in industry I think it felt very personal either either whether it kind of aligned with their like identity their like feminist identity or whether it aligned to maybe their own personal experiences because I think it's quite easy to forget that there are lots of people who work in fashion advertising and beauty and and how they felt about their bodies and do they want to be like kind of complicit with something that maybe has harmed them in the past actually they want to do something different in that way so I thought that was really interesting and it kind of made sense and then when we're talking about the opportunities

and barriers I think it's it is increasingly recognized that this could be a business opportunity so I think obviously the bottom line that this could be a business opportunity. So I think obviously the bottom line, they're all businesses at the end of the day, profit is essential. And I think even when we kind of, if we zoom out and look at this whole idea in general, there's a lot of work within corporate social responsibility on the business case. So what's the business case for a business to do social good in the world? And that is always about profit. So you've got evidence to say that oh by like contributing to some social good you're engaging consumers and then consumers then that will lead

to like purchase attention or it will engage employees so you get better talent coming in which again kind of then can have repercussions on profit because you've got this kind of like stakeholder loyalty and trust and and warmth So there are arguments for this business case of corporate social responsibility on any level. So that was kind of seen as an opportunity. And then barriers, I think it's difficult. I think change is really difficult, right? Like for all of us, doing anything,

like moving away from having Apple products is difficult. Like anything that's kind of like outside of what makes your life easy. And if you're kind of working in business and body image will not be your number one priority right because you've got you know if you're a creative director like you're it's not your job title it's not permeating in your day-to-day so you're doing your day-to-day so it's like how do you infiltrate change in your day-to-day and that's that's hard work but having these conversations I think we can as consumers we can see it there

has been a change over the last couple of years on how brands are including different bodies in different ways I think there is potential for that to be just a co-option just a token gesture so I think that's what I need to be really careful with my work and and how like just in terms of how we even thinking about these issues of brands kind of engaging in social purpose work. It's not just a token change. No, it's not a tick box. No, no. And I guess this is a good segue into the Nike mannequin that caused such a stir up on social media.

Most of it was positive, but some of it was quite negative. I think, firstly,ike are simply demonstrating the range of body types that they cater for and the fact that this is considered um headline news is pretty problematic in itself because our bodies come in all different shapes and sizes and it's just important that we yeah that we demonstrate that what are your views on this and you think like that was a smart move from nike do you think that they were simply like that was not the angle they were going for and we're just interpreting it a different way or okay so I think it was a good move by Nike I think I think there was um statistics that came from a dove study that 70% of women don't feel represented in in advertising but also I mean I think that

permeates in terms of other ways that businesses communicate to us so I think having some representation in some forms is useful I think that's always going to be useful the fact that it got so much attention is boring but I think it's important right because I think when you're creating any kind of change I think things do need to be big and loud for them to become normal because ideally you just want it to be like a normal thing you don't need it to be like a big high profile PR stunt it needs to be something that this is just like oh it's like an everyday thing that we include different types of body shapes in how we communicate with consumers whether that's through mannequins through advertising etc but I read something really interesting the other day in terms of representation that I think was really powerful. It's from a collection of essays by Muslim women writers

created by Miriam Khan, I think her name is. The book's called It's Not About the Burqa. And they're talking about the representation of Muslim women in fashion, in advertising. And there was a really important point made within one of the essays in the fact that it's great to have representation but that's not the end goal when we're talking about some of these issues so just that the fact that there's a larger mannequin in our nike stores we've not eradicated weight stigma

which is like very clear from the response that we got um yes it's great to have representation but it's just one piece of a of a much much puzzle. And what else do we need to get the true equality that we're fighting for? Yeah. When it comes to feelings of acceptance with different types of bodies. Yeah, absolutely. And this year's theme of Mental Health Awareness Week was body image, which is obviously a perfect topic for the show and for the guest. But what exactly is body image?

How do you define it yeah it's a good question and i think it's worth coming back to so body image fully defined is how people think and feel about the way their body looks and feels so it's about perception and self-evaluation on how you look but it's also deeper and more nuanced than that it's about a sense of connection to your body um a very simplistic view of positive body image is just thinking that you like the way that you look now that could be like a component of it but there's so much more nuance around it so positive body images yeah sure like you're happy about how you look regardless of how it lines up to any ideal it's easier if you're if you look a certain way to you know like the way you look

but positive body image it's also about acceptance of your body appreciation of your body not only for what it looks like but for what it can do and what it can give you so it's not just about what it can do in terms of like a i can run a marathon you don't need to do anything as as huge as that it might just be the sensations and that you have that you can enjoy from your body, whether that's like an arousal or seeing. And then just that feeling of connection with your body, the embodiment piece, is about positive body image. And then what comes along with that, the kind of self-care, the respect and value of your body. When you think about your body, you're not just thinking about what it looks like. So that's when we're talking about positive

body image. Then on the flip side, side with negative body image it's normally operationalized as body dissatisfaction so not liking the way you look it's normally a behavioral component that goes along with that in terms of like trying to change your body in some way there's like the over investment piece so when you're so kind of focused on like on your body and how important what you look like is in your like overall concept of yourself and that's a very how you look at the very fragile sense of self right yeah because no one is going to look the same at any given point in time so that's i can yeah another component of negative body image i think yeah and how prevalent are body image issues and i mean who do they affect

it's not just your typical young teenage girl anymore going through puberty I think it's far more prevalent and widespread than that and given the definition that you've just provided I mean I'm sure everyone at some point in their life has experienced body image issues well that's exactly it I think so body image concerns are really really prevalent and I think body image also is not a static construct right it's something that can like ebb and flow so there might be times in your life when you feel better and worse in your body so it could be like in adolescence you might feel worse when you've had a baby you might feel worse when you're you know there are points where maybe when you're going through transition you might feel worse about your body or better about your body also

it can it can work both ways but also there's that idea of you can feel better and worse about your body in the workings of the day right like if you've like gone in and tried something on and it doesn't fit and then you like go into this like body loathing bit like that again you have that bit so I guess the point is that body image is really flexible yeah but in terms of like when we're thinking about it as a public health problem it's something that like when we're looking at prevalence rates prevalence rates are really high again as you're kind of saying like it's not just about you know like teenagers it's not just there like we don't simply like get to 18 and then like body image concerns like poof they've gone so they're really

prevalent and feeling unhappy about the way you look has so many adverse health and life consequences yeah and that's something that we don't really talk about because i think And feeling unhappy about the way you look has so many adverse health and life consequences. Yeah. And that's something that we don't really talk about. Because I think when people talk about body image, it's seen as like a superficial thing that you just maybe don't like. Spotty skin or that you've got hair on your body or that you are a certain size. So what are the negative effects of poor body image? I mean, what are the kind of the downstream effects then after that?

They're wide reaching. So I mean, it's very well established in the literature now that negative body image predicts depression, anxiety, disordered eating is a huge one. It's probably the clearest link that we have. Low self-esteem is another. We also know that people with negative body image are less likely to engage in health behaviours, which is really important because I think sometimes we think about body image, yes, like either a superficial thing or just about a mental health thing, but actually it does have knock-on effects on physical health too because we're not engaging in these health behaviours, like going for our smear tests, like going for any kind of cancer screening type thing

where it involves touch of the body. We've seen associations between poor body image and like not using sunscreen risky sexual behaviors is another thing um not enjoying sex as much as well so i think there's it's not just about the health behaviors but just in terms of the life satisfaction quality of life yeah and the implications there and then something that really hits with me every time that we see the people with poor body image perform less well at school participate less well at school engage less at work and it kind of makes sense like if you're really feeling uncomfortable in your body unhappy with the way you look are you going to be the person that's like putting your hand out it's like stepping

forward in the meeting like really kind of drawing more attention to yourself and then what are the repercussions of like keeping yourself small and hidden and kind of in the in to yourself? And then what are the repercussions of keeping yourself small and hidden and kind of in the shadows? It's huge. It's so interesting when you kind of position it like that. And it's almost there's an opportunity for a public health campaign there. I don't know how it would look and feel. And I definitely think some of the campaigns 100% miss the mark

when it comes to this and may even contribute in some ways to poor body image. That's a topic for another day. But one of the things I'd like to chat to you about is what role social media has to play. I mean, anecdotally, I'm going to just say like, I imagine it's not going to be very good for your body image because as a user myself and someone with a platform platform I know that I've had to really prune my social media to make sure that I'm seeing things that don't trigger poor body image in myself and one of the things that you know like I advised my my younger nieces and things like that is to to make sure that you create an environment that's that's positive for you

is there any research on this or is it too early? Yeah, no, there's tons. And I think social media and body image, the relationship between the two is absolutely fascinating. It's super, super complex. And I think it's something that we don't fully understand. Because I think when we're thinking about social media, social media is changing at such a quick rate, right?

If we kind of think even like five years ago, the platforms we're using, the features we're using are different. And obviously there's huge variation in terms of how we use social media so you and I for example use social media in different ways we probably follow different people there's probably an overlap at some point but there are different people so then how does that influence how we respond to social media so I think where we are with social media, and just to qualify that, this is not my actual area of expertise, and I can signpost to lots of different people who really special in and hone in on this.

Amy Slater at our research centre is one. But I think where we're at at the moment with body image and social media is that, I would say a couple of years ago, we were definitely at a point where we had this correlation between more time spent on social media associated with what you feel about the way you look and that was kind of like yep okay got it yeah kind of makes sense but people have been really picking that apart to

really understand okay but why and what and how and i think what they're kind of finding now is that it really depends how you're using social media so if you're just following like puppy memes like are you going to be feeling worse about how you look so it's really the kind of appearance-based use of social media so if you're kind of making the upward comparison so kind of following lots of influencers who look a certain way that you deem to be beautiful and idealized and then you're kind of comparing yourself in that way, then that's not helpful. And then I think there's also the objectification pieces in social media.

So you're kind of, when you're posting pictures of yourself, you're almost like putting yourself out to show for people to look at you and make judgements on you. If you put, I don't know, your bikini picture on and you don't get any likes or whatever, then that can like unsettle you right like and it can you know make you feel worse I think what I'd say though I think social media is not inherently bad for body image I don't think I think it is what you follow

I just think there's a lot of cause for concern with social media and body image because there are all of these idolized images I'm deeply concerned about people like selling or promoting skinny tees or plastic surgery or whatever on social media. You know, there's all the pro-ana stuff. And all of that is terrifying. So I think social media can be horrific if you're in a mindset that's not ready to filter out some of these messages and you're kind of almost looking for that messaging. Yeah, I 100% agree. but i think something that you said made me think that sometimes it's not always obvious when it comes to the accounts that you're following you may be following an account for a different reason that's unrelated to appearance but the way that they present the information

is presented in a way that makes you reflect on your body image so it could be even i am a blogger and i have a large social media platform so when i talk about this it's not that i'm like dissing anyone but i think there's some people who are leading the way i don't even think they should be leading the way but leading the way in the body positivity movement are women who are white able-bodied are considered socially acceptable in terms of their appearance they may be focusing on things like cellulite and stretch marks and things that a lot of people get but in terms of their bodies they probably have never been marginalized because of their bodies and this is kind of like a conundrum i come up against

should they be the ones speaking about it should we be creating more space for other bodies that we're not seeing? I was just interested to hear your opinion on that. Do you think the loudest voices are the right voices? Yeah, I think this is a huge point of tension within these spaces for the reasons you're saying exactly. so if we think the body positivity movement was born out of fat acceptance and finding a space for people in more marginalized bodies to feel accepted within their body so i think it's kind of come from that place and then i think there is definitely a sentiment that it feels like it's being co-opted by people who have more power and privilege in their bodies and then have created more power and privilege because of the platforms that they have been able to create

as a kind of a repercussion of that. And then it kind of feels like the whole message of body positivity has been diluted. I think then what has happened as a consequence to that is that people are not really even using the language of body positivity anymore and kind of going to just acceptance or their kind of aim and focus. Obviously, we talk about positive body image all the time from my team.

Everyone's got a psychology background. So we're talking about that internal feeling of positive body image or feeling at home in your body in all the ways that I described earlier. So there's almost a bit of an overlap in language and they kind of are referring to two things. So when we have the influencers kind of saying, like, embrace your cellulite or your skin roles and stuff like those kind of things are valid concerns for people you know feeling like they're not good enough or their body is

not good enough in in some ways i think there is an argument for having some of that but i think they're almost two separate things the kind of internal process but then there's of how you feel in your body and you'd want everyone to feel really good in their body regardless if they're thin or bigger or white or not you want everyone to feel good and not be really struggling and battling with eating disorders or just real concern about how they look so you want everyone to feel kind of at home in that way but then when we're having this language about body positivity which is that social justice movement that's where I think yes there should be like an allowance to make space for people who are really fighting and it's and it's an activist movement so it's fighting for acceptance of fat bodies acceptance of black and brown bodies acceptance of trans

bodies and I think and all these other kind of disabled bodies all these other kinds of bodies that are not treated as well in society today and I think again it kind of comes back to that conversation we're having earlier about the Nike mannequin because it's like oh but we've got not treated as well in society today and i think again it kind of comes back to that conversation we're having earlier about the nike mannequin because it's like oh but we've got representation here like we've done it that's not the end goal like the end goal is to like how does everyone feel okay in their bodies and the way we do is by fighting all of these other big systematic things like waste stigma like racism like transphobia like homophobia all of these things that play out that influence how people feel about their

bodies because it's how society is treating these people in their bodies and if you're being treated by institutions by society in different ways in different forms the chances are you it's harder right and it's more it's a more of a radical act to then be like no actually i do like my body i am going to feel good in it and that's that's it so I think there definitely should be space for that and I think that is the point where we need to like step back because I think it's looking at what the message actually is and then pulling back from that yeah absolutely and one of the things I wanted to speak about is how it's not just the media who can often contribute to negative body image sometimes it can be our friends and

our family it's not like it's intentional but it's just engaging in different like body talk to to almost fit in and the best way I can explain this is a scene from Mean Girls when they're like do you know when they're standing in front of the mirror and they're all like pointing out things that they don't like about themselves and then it gets to Lindsay Lohan who is playing the main character and she's like, I've got really bad breath in the morning. And they kind of look at her like her, the way that she talks about her body

isn't that negative, or it doesn't really make sense. But it was very new to her. Like that experience was new to her. She wasn't used to kind of talking down about herself. Is this like a phenomenon that's like well known? And like, how can we almost stop ourselves from, you know,

bashing one another, not one another, but even bashing ourselves in front of like our other girlfriends to fit in? Yeah, well, it's so difficult. It's such a social embedded norm that you like, you have to almost really fight against it. So I think something like being aware that that is not helpful is useful to then to kind of like check yourself and not say something. And I think

we've also found within the research that sometimes the positive sounding comments can also have a toxic effect so if I'm like oh you're so beautiful because you're so thin or like oh gosh you've lost weight you're again you're reinforcing those like weight stigma messages and to be beautiful you need to be thin or actually you know you being beautiful is the first thing that I have to say about you and therefore the thing that i think is valuable or whatever so you're kind of reinforcing negative messages there and again the research kind of shows that that maybe not be very helpful for body image um more broadly so then how can you kind of reframe how you give compliments and can you make sure you give compliments on other things and other values that you see with within your

friends and and if you want to say something about appearance like sometimes it's what i find useful make sure you give compliments on other things and other values that you see within your friends. And if you want to say something about appearance, sometimes what I find useful is to say something about something that a person has chosen within that day or you've got a great sense of style or I love your top or your outfit. I think because you're complimenting choice and decision and stuff that you have agency. We don't really have that much agency on what our body actually physically forms i like how you phrase that because this is something that i've kind of i'm way more aware of lately and something that i've spoken to laura thomas about on this podcast

as well as like when it comes to you do want to offer people compliments and you know like sometimes one of your best friends is dressed really well and you want to say hey look great but also you don't want to reinforce that that's the most important thing about them because they've got so many other attributes that are important. And like you said, they don't have the agency over how they look, but you can complement without reinforcing that the way they look or the body is what's important

when it's really not. And just kind of moving on to ways that we can harness positive body image and you talk about the role of exercise and improving body image and i know like um you've shared some of the research around yoga and body image i'd love to chat about this and how we can use exercise to actually promote positive body image? Yeah, so I think what we see is exercise is generally, we kind of see it as a kind of a feel-good thing to do, right? So I think then that has repercussions on body image. And we were speaking about the embodiment idea earlier,

so feeling really at home in your body and some forms of exercise can really promote that. So yoga is a good one in terms of really having that mind-body connection. But also like dancing, so kind of like feeling your body to the music is a nice way to, again, kind of like getting out of your head and into your body is a way exercise can be really helpful. The relationship between exercise and body image obviously is complicated in terms of people use exercise as a form of trying to manipulate their weight and shape.

And I think when exercise becomes something that you're doing for like an appearance motive it becomes not fun and then it's not helpful but if you can find an exercise that you really enjoy and kind of takes you out of your head and out of the kind of like how does my body look in this and just how do I feel in my body I think there's definitely benefit around that and then moving kind of on to just wrap this episode up it's a big question but how can we protect our body image to our like our best ability because we are battling in this world of social media of comparison of of all of this conversation But what would your advice be to people listening? Yeah, so as you say, we're kind of being bombarded with messages all the time to kind of almost like not feel good in our body.

So it's hard work. So I think there's something about being really compassionate to yourself if you don't feel great in your body all the time, because I think that can feel a big pressure too. You feel like, oh yeah, I feel great. And you're like, no, I really don't. So I think that you have to kind of

always come from a place of self-compassion. Being able to critique those messages that, you know, you have to look a certain way to be seen as being valued or beautiful or desirable. In some ways, I think it's a really powerful tool. And then understanding and learning about things like white stigma, like racism, like, you know, all of these things that impact how, like our worldview on how we look is is again like a powerful tool so yeah I kind of think they're like the the main things and kind of find people who are on the same page as you with with that that are kind of on the

same page of like let's not be all about like how we're gonna be in a certain dress size or whatever and and that you're surrounding yourself with people both online and in real and that you're surrounding yourself with people, both online and in real life, that you're going to come away feeling better about yourself with. And I think that's really powerful. I think it's like building your communities and being around people who kind of make you feel good. And then going back to social media, make sure that you create your feed and you're following people

that people or accounts, you don't actually need to follow people if you don't want to. If you're really into puppies, just follow like whatever like do whatever you want um but think just that critique piece is really important self-compassion piece is really important and then yeah the community piece too absolutely i think the last one community can almost be the most difficult because it's easier on social media because you can just unfollow or mute people. But what I find most difficult is with people like who are very close to me. And if they talk about, you know,

just because it's not that they're doing it intentionally, but it's just because we're conditioned to talk that way. It's essentially like the body talk thing. It's like, how do you approach that? Do you just say, do you just bring up the subject? Do you just say, hey, I don't want to use use that language anymore or do you have any advice on navigating that yeah that that is really hard and i think many many people can relate to that i think it's not like you just like dump everyone and like i really don't like that we're not friends

anymore we're not family all the time it's disconnected but i think i think you can you can have boundaries around these kind of things you can say like look this is not a conversation i want to have i don't find it helpful or i know from my work that this is not useful for anyone around us and and can we talk about something else or like or just like redirect the subject yeah just redirect yeah or like give an example i think storytelling is always really powerful so i think if you can like tell a little story of of like oh i you know this person found this really harmful or actually did something rather than focusing on the negative being like oh they're having like these really positive conversations about feminism and about

intersectionality and about all of these other things and oh you know this sounds really great let's talk about this, this is really interesting so you don't even need to be like, can you stop saying that please? Can you stop doing that? Be like, can we talk about this? Because I've just been learning about this or I have come across this great new account or I've read this book or I've

listened to this podcast and the ideas in it are so powerful and wait, can we talk about it? So you don't have to focus on the negative, you can bring it in a different way and then maybe then people can kind of come to their own conclusions that way yeah wow okay i feel like i've got so many other questions i want to ask you but i will keep you here until midnight if i keep going so i'm gonna wrap it up there but it was such a joy to have you on the podcast. It was a joy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, guys, that was Nadia.

And I imagine just like me, it's left you thinking about a lot of things. Now, before I let you go, I want to share this week's listener question and answer. So the question was, is green tea good for burning fat? Now, green tea is often marketed for its fat burning effects, which is believed to be due to an active compound, which has a very long name,

but I'm going to abbreviate it to EGCG. The evidence suggests that it appears to have a very, very small effect on fat oxidation and weight loss. But in order to achieve a significant effect doses are estimated to be approximately 300 to 500 milligrams of EGCG which is about 6 to 10 cups of green tea. Of course you can take it in a concentrated supplement form but be warned as very high doses over 800 milligrams can be toxic to the liver. The thing is when you eat any food your metabolism increases slightly just to simply digest the food and use your food's calories for various functions. This is called the thermic effect of food. It happens to all of us and it happens with any food some slightly more than others. However regardless of the foods that you eat food intake has such a

small effect on metabolism. So essentially what I'm saying is, yes, there is some evidence to say that green tea has fat burning effects, but you have to drink a lot of it and overall it's not going to produce significant effects. So just focus on having a healthy balanced diet and that's my best advice to you. Okay guys, hopefully that's cleared up some confusion and don't forget if you do have a question to please send it in and just use the hashtag thefoodmedicpodcast. That's all from me and I'll see you again next time.