The Wellness Scoop - Intermittent Fasting, Secrets to Gut Health and Biggest Nutrition Myths

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

This week we’re answering your biggest nutrition questions with Professor Sarah Berry, one of the UK’s leading nutritional scientists. Together we break down how to really understand UPFs, what the science says about seed oils and how to spot the healthier options, and the simple everyday principles that genuinely support how you feel. We dive into gut health and why diet diversity matters, the myths surrounding glucose, whether intermittent fasting is useful, and the truth about everything from plant points to low-fat foods. It’s a clear, practical, myth-busting conversation designed to cut through the confusion and help you feel confident in your everyday choices. Recommendations:  Teasy Tea Infuser ⁠Order your copy of Ella's new book: ⁠⁠⁠Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking for Busy Lives⁠⁠⁠ Pre-order your copy of Rhi's upcoming book: ⁠⁠⁠The Fibre Formula⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ready to take on Canada's worst invasive plant? The call for proposals for the invasive Fragmites Control Fund is open. These funds support collaborative projects led by municipalities, conservation authorities, indigenous communities, and nonprofits that focus on Fragmites mapping, monitoring, planning, control, and innovation. Applications must be submitted electronically by January 23, 2026, at 1159 p.m. For more information, and to apply, visit our website. At MedCan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health.

from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being

and book an assessment today. Medcan, live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Welcome to the Wellness Scoop, your weekly dose of health and wellness inspiration and as always we are both here as your host i'm lmels and i'm reanna lambert and today we get to delve into some fantastic myth-busting questions from you all it's january that time of year and we're joined by a guest to help us oh my gosh it is that time of year where like every headline is something contradictory about health and there are so many

myths and as i said nothing seems to correlate to the other and it's also incredibly overwhelming and a bit insane. So we thought, do you know what? You guys have sent in so many kind of nutrition myth questions over the last few months. Let's bring them all together. And then we're going to be joined later by Professor Sarah Berry, who's a leading nutritional scientist at King's College, London, where she began her research career almost 25 years ago. And she's the chief scientist at Zoe as well. So she's got more than 20 years experience spanning everything from metabolic health, the gut microbiome, personalized nutrition, fat metabolism, cardiometabolic health, menopause. I mean, we could talk to you about so many things, but we're going to do myth-busting nutrition today, guys.

And fun fact, Ella, Sarah taught me fats when I was studying. Love that. She did. Yeah, so I still message her about it. Rhee, how are you, though? I'm good, Ella. It's good to be back. Me too.

Have you got any wrecks for us before we get into the episode? Yes. Do you know what I do? And I think it's just a really basic reminder that this time of year, I know I've said it quite a few times on previous episodes, but I find it really hard. I really do feel how long January is as a month in total. So I've kind of set myself my own little challenge this year. And it's just to acknowledge that I'm drinking more fluids. I'm doing things that are right by me.

And it's okay to be down. But I want to focus more on being happy in the moment. I love that. Well, you did say that's your goal for the year. Can I recommend pots of ginger tea? Yes. So whenever I'm like in the evening or working at home, just get just a little bag of ginger.

It's about 150 grams normally in a bag. Chop it up into, I mean, really does need to be precise. Do you get it pre-chop? Because I buy the root and then I'm like chopping up the root. Yeah, I buy the root. Exactly. Chop it up, as I said, does not need to be precise. But little chunks, I don't know, half an inch or so. And you keep the skin on.

Keep the skin on. Pop it in just a small saucepan worth of water. Bring it to the boil, turn it down to a simmer and simmer it for maybe half an hour. And then I will squeeze in a lemon. I normally do a whole lemon, but maybe start with half, see if you like it. And a tablespoon of honey for the whole pot. Oh my gosh. So delicious.

And then I'll just re-boil that ginger a couple more times that day. Keeps you very fluid full. And it's so yummy and just love it this time of you. I also have an addiction with this. And I have a fun fact for honey drinkers. Honey drinkers. People that like to add honey. Add honey to warm drinks.

If you are buying that MGO on the packet, so methyl glyoxyl like the component on the packet that has a number, you know on the side of manuga honey, it's really expensive if that's the honey you're buying because there is a difference in quality of honey and we should flag that. That's why I use maple syrup for the majority of cooking and for those drinks I will use manuka honey. But you don't want to add manuka honey to boiling water because you destroy the beneficial bacteria

that the research that we have on it basically is that there's beneficial antimicrobial effects of manuka honey so it's good to have when you feel the onset of a cold coming. So this ginger pot is perfect and what you could do is have a teaspoon of the honey from the jar and add the second teaspoon once it's cooled down a bit and then mix it together. Exactly.

I always pour the ginger tea into the pot, leave it to brew, three, five minutes or whatever. Then add the lemon and honey. So good. Also, someone recommended this to me before Christmas, and it's such a good one. It's a tea infuser called T-Z,

T-E-A-S-Y, and their original one, because you put your ginger and your lemon in at the top and it infuses all day. Amazing. There you go. Some delicious warm drinks for you guys. This January is going to be good. Now we're back together.

Exactly. Okay, we're back together, and we're also going to be joined now by Sarah. Hello, Sarah. Hi, Rianne and hi Ella. Thanks for having me on the show today. So we have so many listener questions for you. And I feel like it's that time of year

where everybody's trying to cipher out what is actually good for me and what should they be doing. And our first question is from Lola. And she said, are all ultra-processed foods bad for you? I'm finding it hard to navigate which ones are good and which ones are bad.

And if not, how can you distinguish if they are or they aren't? So hi Lola, great question. And a really difficult question to answer in terms of giving you guidance of how to distinguish, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly. I think what's really important to say is absolutely not all all processed foods are bad for you. It's a very broad classification system and it captures some that, yes, we know are bad. But it also captures a lot of food that's been processed in a way that could either be good for us or have a neutral impact on our health. And we've recently carried out some research at Zeri where we've tried to classify

processed foods according to their predicted health effects rather than just how process they are. And what we see is when we classify them according to the different features that we know processing effects that is related to our health, so factors like the structure of the food, which we call the food matrix, the hyper palatibility. So the kind of magic mixture of nutrients that encourages you to over consume the food, as well as the different additives and emulsifiers graded according to whether there are bad for you or not bad for you. When we've done that, what we find is actually it's only about 25% of the calories that we're consuming are from what I would call the bad ease in terms of the food that's been processed. And I think this is really encouraging because we see all of these scary headlines saying 60% of the calories you consume come from all to processed foods. They're going to give you cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's type due diabetes.

Name the disease they're responsible according to the headlines. So that's the first thing I'd say is that absolutely not all are bad for you. Our research shows it's probably 20, 25% of energy that we're consuming comes from these baddies. How can we identify the good, the bad, and the ugly? It's so, so, so hard. I think the kind of tips that I would give you is really to think about the whole food. and the different features that we know impacts how healthy a food is. And I know it sounds quite basic,

but I think a lot of people get fixated on the numbers of additives and the number of emulsifiers. So does the food resemble the food that it originally came from? And the reason I say this is because I've done a lot of work looking at food structure, food matrix, and how processing changes the structure. And by changing the structure, you change lots of features of the food, like how fast you eat the food, how many calories you extract from the food, where you absorb the different nutrients.

And so if the food has been processed in such a way that the structure has been totally destroyed, then we know that it's more likely to have a negative impact on your health. Yes, you can look at what additives and emulsifiers are in there, but often they're given e-number. Sometimes they're given the actually additive number. There are some additives that we know might even be good for us. There's some that we know are definitely really unhealthy for us. A lot of the research, though, around additives and emulsifiers is still emerging.

It's not an exact science yet. So a general rule of thumb is, look, if it's got loads and loads of additives and amulsifiers, the chances are there might be some in there that we know are harmful for our health. So that's the other thing you can have a look at as well. That is so helpful. And I think also, as you said, Sarah, it's really reassuring actually because, you know, We love a kind of dogmatic panic moment, I think, when it comes to health and wellness. And whilst it's really important, obviously, that we're talking about ultra-process foods

and kind of creating an awareness about our diets and what we eat and maybe a way that lots of us weren't really aware of, it does all, as you say, it starts to become a bit scary. So I think that's really reassuring. And I think it's very similar topic. And I know it's something that you were kind of coined the most hated woman in America for this video. But we've got a question for Emma. and she said, I'd love to hear you myth-bust seed oils. I know, really, this is also like a passion project for you because it's just, I'm sure you'd agree.

Like across 2025, it felt like the nutrition enemy number one and seed oils were also going to give us every disease under the sun. Well, great question, Emma, something I'm passionate talking about. And Ella, I'd love to have a whole hour to talk about this, but I know I'm going to try and give you my kind of top line view on this. So my top line view is the totality of the evidence very clearly. shows that seedaws themselves are not harmful to health. There are so many myths out there. And I'll try and really, really quickly break down those myths. Because I think if we understand the counterargument to the myths,

then it really becomes quite clear, firstly, why there are so many myths generally out there about nutrition, but also regarding how seedalls have been unfairly demonised. So the first myth is there are these beautiful figures that you often see on social media showing that as the intake of seed oil has increased over the last 50 years, so has our rates of all of these chronic diseases, whether it's diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers. Absolutely, our intake of seedles has increased. Absolutely, rates of some of these diseases has increased.

But what else has changed over the last 50 years? Our food landscape is unrecognizable. We also need to remember that about 60% of the seed oils that we eat actually are in these heavily processed unhealthy foods or ultra-processed foods. And there's all of these other nasties that are in those foods. They also tend to be very high in salt and sugar, etc. And so that's the first thing I'd say, just because you see this lovely figure showing that association, think what else is going on at that time. There's also this perspective that seedles are unnatural because they've been processed.

They've gone to all of these scary processing like, you know, bleaching, deodorization. And yet you have this, you know, very natural butter where you've got the cows being milked in this. beautiful meadow and of course that's going to be better for you. Just because something's process doesn't mean it's bad for you and the way that seed oils are processed now, generally, particularly the ones in the UK, in the US and many countries, they're processed in such a way that they don't have any of these nasties left in them after. And actually, nearly all of the clinical trials showing the beneficial effects of seed oils in humans have been conducted on seed oils that have been processed. And then the third myth is,

inflammation. That seed oils are pro-inflammatory because they contain a fatty acid called linoleic acid, which is a particular type of omega-6 fatty acid. There have been more than 40 randomized controlled trials feeding people either linaic acid or seedles, and they have consistently shown that either they have no effect on inflammation or they have an anti-inflammatory effect. This myth that's permeated around this inflammatory effect of seedles stems, from a theoretical biochemical pathway that this particular omega-6 can be converted into another omega-6 called arachidonic acid, which upon certain stimuli can release certain chemicals that are pro-inflammatory. Yes, that happens in a petri dish. Yes, that can happen in superphysi

amounts in a mouse. Does it happen in humans? No. And studies have consistently shown, even if you feed people nine times the amount of normal intakes of this omega-6, the linaeic acid from seedles, you do not have an increase in this other omega-6 fatty acid, the arachidonic acid. Our bodies are so, so clever maintaining a kind of set point in terms of these different fatty acids that are circulating. And so what we see from a theoretical bichemical pathway or in a petri dish just doesn't play out in humans. Then there's the argument over oxidative stress.

Again, yes, in a petri dish, under certain stimuli, you can increase. the propensity for LDL, which is bad cholesterol, to be oxidized in the presence of this particular fatty acid in seed oil, but actually in human studies, that doesn't happen. And so I could go on and on kind of breaking down all of these myths. But I think the key thing is, is that a lot of influencers are grasping onto more theoretical data or Petri dish or, you know, test tube data. but it simply doesn't play out in humans. Sarah, this is exactly why we needed you on this podcast.

Also, just to go into the fat conversation, because how many years have you been researching fats for now? Gosh, 25 years. I think it was when I, yeah, probably 25 years ago, I ran my first randomized control trial looking at fat that had undergone a particular process used by the food industry called interesterification, which is used as an alternative to partial hydrogenation

to create hard fats. And that was my first randomized control trial 25 years ago. And I've since run many, many, many in the area of fats. But Rihanna, you know what? Often I'm accused of either being an industry shill because I dare to speak out about the narrative. And for the record, I've never taken a penny from the seed oil industry. Or quite often, I'm told by Joe Bloggs sitting in his armchair in Kansas or Texas,

what on earth do I know? You know, I've only run 30 randomized controlled trials on diet. I mean, Sarah, also, as a human being on a perspective, I know we've both discussed this before, but it's hard to speak out and tell the truth sometimes and not everybody wants to hear it. And it leads me on nicely to a question. We've actually got from Kim for you, which I know you and I can relate to a lot. And Ella, and it's the fact that she said I'd love to hear about quick fixes. You know, for example, tiny fixes with a big impact.

I really like this question because I think actually what Kim means is positive ones here. I think she's thinking about like the quick wins, you know, the things that you could add in, like little things. So quick fixes instead of it negatively meaning like, oh, let's just do a quick fix. She actually means small things. Tiny fixes with big impact. So I think we're talking about small things that go a long way. That's quite nice, Kim. What do you think, Sarah?

So I love this question and I love this question because I think we're so preoccupied, particularly in kind of the wellness world for all of this health optimization and bio-harmes. hacking, which I think can be quite soul-destroying. I think it can take away the joy of food, the pleasure of food, and often only have a really, really small impact. So something that I'm really passionate about is what small changes can we make that are going to have the biggest impact? You know, we often talk in science about the size effect. And that size effect, that the size of the impact is so important relative to the change and the burden of the change that you're going to make

because we don't want to take away that pleasure of food. Now, there is no single quick fix. That's the reality. If there was, I'd be floating on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean now. I wouldn't be sitting in my South London office looking at the rain. I think there's lots of things that we can do. And I think it's finding what works for US and individuals. So one area that I think is fantastic for small changes

that I think can cumulatively actually have a big impact is thinking about how you eat. And I think, Rian, and we've talked about this before on your podcast previously, but factors like how fast you eat your food. So if you are trying to calorie count or reduce weight, something that we know is really effective is just slowing down how fast you eat your food. If you reduce the speed at which you eat your food by about 20%, subconsciously, without even thinking about it, the evidence shows that you'll reduce your energy intake by 15%. And also, we know late night snacking. If you're eating after about 9 o'clock at night, even if it's on healthy food, that can impact factors like your hunger levels the next day

can actually be higher by eating later at night. You might go on to eat more food the next day. We know that it negatively impacts your metabolic health. So again, these are two quite small things that just don't go for that late night snack if it's just become a habit. Just slow down the rate of which you eat. Literally just put your knife and fork down between each mouthful.

So I think thinking about how you eat can help, I think if I was had to choose one single strategy to improve health, it would be snacking. And what we know is that about 25% of our energy in the UK and the US and many countries comes from snacks. That's 25% of our calories comes from snacks. We know that many, many people focus on the healthfulness of their main meal. So their breakfast or their lunch or their dinner, but then can snack quite mindlessly. And I ran a randomized control trial at King some years ago.

where we ask people just to change their snacks. We said, keep everything else the same. Half of you are going to consume snacks are representative of the typical snacks in the UK. What would that be, Sarah? What's a typical representation? Oh, gosh. So we're talking about, imagine a bit of Walker's Crisps,

a bit of a kick cat, a bit of a cake. And we actually designed these muffins that had the nutrient profile to match the average snack intake in the UK. But it was a bit like that, you know, a bit of Snickers bar, these sorts of things. And so people either had 20% of their energy from these snacks or they were randomly allocated to have 20% of the energy from nuts. But we told them just kind of I'm doing everything else the same. The improvements we saw in factors like their cholesterol levels in their blood vessel function, etc.

After just six weeks was equivalent to a predictor 30% reduction in cardiovascular disease just from changing snacks. So I do think if you are a snacker, change from unhealthy snacks to healthy snacks. I am not, by the way, Ella and Rihanna advocating that people should start snacking. It's just if you are and the majority of people in the UK are snackers, that's one really simple, single dietary strategy that I think can have a massive impact on your health. I love these kind of easy wins for a big impact because I think it feels so much more manageable. And I think when we think about this sort of beginning part of the year, it often changes. changing our health doesn't feel very manageable because it all feels really overwhelming. And that is so

incredibly helpful. And I guess still talking about, you know, you mentioned timing of meals. We had so many questions on intermittent fasting, particularly actually looking at midlife women and how much contradictory advice there is that was from Elisa. Samantha says, what does the latest science say on it? But there were just so many questions of whether or not intermittent fasting is a good strategy when it comes to health? So I think it depends. It depends on whether it's something that can fit with your lifestyle, your pleasure, food. I think that the evidence is quite consistent that reducing your eating window, so the period within which you're eating over 24-hour period can improve your health. So studies have shown that if you reduce your eating windows to have a longer

fast period overnight, you can improve your body weight. And that's because we know on average people practicing time restricted eating. Again, this is subconsciously, on average, they reduce their calorie intake by about two to 500 calories a day. We also see that there's an improvement in lots of factors related to cardiovascular health. So an improvement in blood pressure, an improvement in cholesterol, an improvement in inflammation, an improvement in glucose control. These are all factors that change for us midlife, particularly for women during the period. in postmenopausal phase. So absolutely, if time restricted eating is changing these factors that we know are going to suddenly change as a peri or postmenopausal women or as a man in midlife, I think it's a great strategy. The one thing I would really emphasize, though, is you don't need to go to extreme. Many of the trials out there show these benefits in, for example, a six-hour eating window,

meaning that you might have your breakfast at 10 o'clock and then your last meal at the day at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. you're just eating in that six-hour period and then you're having an 18-hour fast period. If that works for you, fine, do it. But I know that there's no way I could live a joyful, happy life eating in just a six-hour window and not having my glass of wine in the evening or, you know, my evening dinner with my family and friends. Where I think it gets really interesting is the research that we've done and some other more recent research as well that's been coming out showing that actually you only need to reduce your eating window. to about 10 hours to see a benefit.

And we conducted this trial called the big intermittent fasting study where we asked people to reduce their eating window to 10 hours. We said, do everything else as she normally would. And so that meant that they were maybe having their breakfast at, let's say, 9 o'clock and their last meal of the day at 7 o'clock.

And we found that people felt better. They had better energy, better mood, they felt more alert. They felt less hungry. And they also lost weight during the study. So I would say that yes, the evidence shows that it benefits many of the factors that we know change unfavourably midlife. We know that also you feel better. But I would say you don't need to go to extremes.

Still enjoy your evening meal with your family. Still enjoy the pleasures that you would at the time that you normally would. Just going to a 10-hour eating window should benefit you. We do see a huge variance in some people get more benefit than other people. So it's something I would say, try, see if it works for you, see first if it fits with your lifestyle, see if you feel a benefit. And most people feel a benefit after about two weeks. If after two weeks you're feeling no benefit, then maybe you're someone that isn't as responsive as another individual is to this kind of technique. It is interesting. And I would add a little

course, you know, if you're somebody that's prone to disordered eating or, you know, it definitely doesn't fit in your lifestyle. I mean, I wish we could all just eat at four, but most of us are still commuting home, aren't we? So at five or six, like you said, that 10-hour window might be a more achievable thing to trial with trial and error for most people out there. So thank you, Sarah. It's so interesting. Can I just add something else as well, I think, to the whole area of intermittent fasting. There is different types of intermittent fasting. One is the time restricted eating where you're eating within a specific window. The other is this idea of 5-2 where you know, you might have five days where you're eating quite a restrictive number of calories and two days where you can go kind of

wild. There is some evidence to show that that can improve your body weight, so people can lose weight with that kind of approach. But I would caution a little bit against that kind of intermittent fasting because there's some new emerging evidence around the consistency of eating that I think is really, really interesting. And what this evidence shows is that it is really important to be consistent in the pattern that you eat. So for example, if you typically have three main meals a day, but then the next day

you're having one meal just because you're like, okay, I'm going to be really restrictive and reduce my calorie intake. And then the next day you might even snack as well and have five, you know, eating events. What's some of the evidence, and it is new emerging evidence. So I do need to caution that it's only emerging evidence. But this emerging evidence shows that our body thrives on consistency in terms of the timing of the meals and the frequency of the meals. So if I was to practice any kind of intermittent fasting, I would practice the time restricted eating. I wouldn't practice that five to because I don't think it's probably the best way of eating that inconsistent manner day to day. That's really, really important. I'm so glad you brought that up and how

exciting with the emerging research because we're starting to realize, you know, not everyone is the same, which you flag all the time, Sarah, but it does raise a question from Ella, which is basically what is the healthiest diet in the world? That's a question for you. Oh my God. This is a hard one. I think it is because what people, I imagine this is referring to, is that, you know, we're always reading like ketogenic's best, Atkins is best, Mediterranean is best, Green Mediterranean is best, Asian is best, Asian is best, Nordic, exactly, like the Atlantic diet. Every month there's a sort of new name diet.

And I think one of the things I often think it's quite funny is that so many of them are essentially the same. You know, it's very plant rich, you know, when you're talking about Mediterranean or green Mediterranean. or Nordic or Atlantic. But I think that creates quite a lot of confusion because then other ones like ketogenic versus plant base are so wildly different. How are you meant to know what to do? Yeah, absolutely.

Honestly, I see these different diet names out there, the alkaline diet, the kind of diets that you're talking about. And I don't actually even bother reading up on them anymore because they're so wacky. And I just think, like, seriously, what is it now? What buzzword and, you know, praying on people's desires? to improve their health. So what do I think is a perfect diet?

I don't think there is any such thing as the perfect diet that's perfect for everyone. I think the best diet is a diet that you enjoy, a diet that you can follow, and a diet that brings you joy first and foremost, because if you can't get joy from your diet, you're not going to actually follow that dietary pattern. I think what constitutes the best diet is actually quite boring because there is no silver bullet. It's the basic healthy eating principles. I know nobody wants to hear. Get lots of fiber, get lots of variety of whole plant-based foods. Make sure you're getting healthy fats in there. Make sure you're getting healthy proteins in there. Make sure you're getting the rainbows. You're

getting lots of these polyphenols and so forth. Yes, that's what underpins many healthy diets, whether it's the Mediterranean diet or the Nordic diet, for example. And I don't think it's rocket science either. I think that we try and overcomplicate what constitutes a healthy diet. And ultimately, if we could just make sure that we consumed us many whole plant-based foods with a variety of colour, then I think we'd be doing really well. Obviously, we need to make sure we're getting heart-healthy oils like our omega-3s, for example. Yes, we need to make sure we're getting some ferment, ideally. So, for example, yogurt, kaffir, that kind of thing as well. But yeah, I think we're over-complicating things.

I think that will be so reassuring for people to hear. I'm so excited to tell you about my brand-new cookbook, Quick Wins, Healthy Cooking for Busy Lives. I wrote this one to make healthy cooking just simple when life is busy. So you'll find fridge-raid suppers, one-pound wonders, and batch cooks that you can turn into two easy meals. Plus, we have eight weeks of delicious meal plans to complete with shopping lists, so all the thinking's been done for you. Every recipe also gives you plant points to help you eat more plants. You can get your 30 plants a week. It'll all help you feel great and just make healthy cooking feel effortless again.

So Quick Wins is out now wherever you get your books. I guess on that same thing, we've had lots of questions on things like eating 30 plants a week. And one questioner whose name we don't have is whether or not if you either get 30 plants but eat the same 30 plants each week, does that still count as feeding your bugs with a diverse range? If you're 30, you get 30, but it's always the same 30. So great question. First, I'd say if you managed to get 30 different plants a week, well done, because that's blimming hard. There actually hasn't been that much research around this.

So I think something that we really need to be researching as nutrition scientists is what's the importance of the diversity versus the quantity versus the amount of fibre. So, for example, yes, we know that the diversity of diversity of diversity. different plants is really important because it means you get different types of fibres. You get different types of bioactive. So the chemicals like polyphenols that we know act on inflammatory pathways in a favourable way, etc. But actually what we don't know is how important is that versus just getting loads of fibre

versus getting lots and lots of, you know, maybe two or three fruits and vegetables. It's something I think we need to do a lot more work on. What we do know from some published research out there is that there is an improvement in gut microbiome composition as you go from let's say 10 different plants to 30 different plants. After that, it seems to plateau out. So then going up to 50 different plants, yes, there's still some improvement. And especially if you're increasing your fibre, then that's going to benefit your health and your microbiome. But it seems to be, you know, getting up to that 30, you have the biggest gain of all. I'm not aware of any studies that have looked at the changing

from one week to another week, you know, 30 from one from certain types to 30. from other types. I would say the more diverse, the better, because we now know that food is so much more complicated than the simplest of nutrients that we used to think, you know, fiber, fat, protein, carbohydrate. We know on average food contains about 54,000 chemicals and they're going to differ from every food. So if you can mix it up a bit, absolutely that's great because you're going to get slightly

more of those 54,000 chemicals from one day to the next than if you stuck to that same 30. But I've just taken actually Rianna and Nella a very long-wintered way of saying, look, if you're getting 30, great. If you can mix it up from week to week, great. Is there clinical trials to show that it benefits? Not directly. But based on my years of expertise work in this area, I would imagine that it would add some added benefit. But look, only do it if it's something you can do and fit within the foods that you enjoy. I think there's just so many overwhelming targets. But like you said, we've got to enjoy. food, you can get some diversity in your diet. Let's just try and add in a different fruit each week or something basic and try and focus on what we can add in rather than worrying now about what to take out because Chloe's question coming up next for you, Sarah, is very much based off of that whole fat-free. She's named it the fat-free epidemic that we had before. So Chloe said, the fat-free epidemic, especially when it comes to things like Greek yogurt and low-sugar, low-calorie items over higher-calorie, whole food.

it really hurts my head. So she is really confused by what the diet industry and nutrition industry perhaps have pushed into the media, what we know they have over the past 20, 30, 40 years. Yeah, so good question, Chloe. I think that the demonisation of fat probably 20 years ago when I was first actually teaching about fat at King's College London was huge. And I used to start all my lectures saying, look, we've got to stop demonizing fat. They are not the devil of the food.

But the problem is because fat has nine calories per gram compared to protein or carbohydrate. There's four calories per gram. And historically, we've been very calorie focused, thinking about the healthfulness of a food often in terms of the macronutrients, but more so in terms of the calories. And so that's why we saw an explosion 20 years or so ago of all of these low fat, fat-free products. And I think it's been really damaging. There are undoubtedly some fats, so saturated fat. particularly from animal-based products, so red meats and some dairy but not all dairy. That's a really important caveat.

So, for example, from butter that, yes, we know they're bad for you. But what you've got to think is when you see these low fat, fat-free products, when they take the fat out, what are they putting back in? Because at the end of the day, fat is there to not only provide calories, but it's there to give that beautiful, creamy mouth feel. Fat has a very special structure. the fat globules is what gives the yogurt, the creaminess, the cheese, that lovely texture, the meat, the taste that it has.

And so if fat has been taken out, often other chemicals and often artificial chemicals have been put back in that we're now starting to understand probably unfavourably impact our health, perhaps due to impacts on the microbiome. And I don't think we should be scared of fat. Fat keeps us full. So if you have for breakfast a fat-free style of breakfast, and we've actually, done some trials on this where we gave people on one occasion a bagel with a low fat spread. And then the next day we asked them to add either nut butter, which we know contains a lot of

fat, or to have on the side Greek yogurt, which we know contains lots of protein as well as fat. And what we found was that on the days that they had the fat-free breakfast, so the low-fat spread and the bagel, they had very big peaks in circulating glucose, followed by very big dips. so they were on this kind of roller coaster of glucose. But more importantly, what it meant was that they were very hungry, very soon, trying to fix this roller coaster of glucose. And those people actually went on to consume more food, but also felt less energetic, more hungry and had lower mood than compared to the people

who we actually added extra calories in, but through fat or protein at breakfast, showing that we've got to stop fearing fat. and actually by adding fat in and making a rounded, balanced breakfast or whether it's lunch or dinner would be the same, you're actually improving your balance over the day, your mood energy hunger and your energy intake. And so I would say be cautious if it says low fat, no fat. And I think there are some caveats, though, I'd like to make. You mentioned Rihanna and that Chloe talked about yogurt in particular. I think many of the low-fat yogurts that are also sweetened, so they might be strawberry-flavored, low-fat yogurt, they tend to, I think, be unhealthy for us because they tend to be sweetened with lots of artificial sweeteners.

But there is one exception that I do think low-fat Greek yogurt is just as healthy as full-fat Greek yogurt. And that's because it's still natural. All that's happened is the fat is skimmed off. So you end up with a yogurt that's very high in protein. It's still got all the same vitamins and minerals as the full fat. And you will still stay full because you're getting all the protein in that yogurt. So if you are someone that wants to have their yogurt but wants to have something that's not quite as high calorie, then yes, you could go for low fat Greek yogurt.

And you're simply saying, Sarah, as well, you don't need to go out and buy a load of fat powders or all these things that are marketed at us. You know, we see all sorts of trends, don't we? But MCT oils and things in powders that we should be having every morning, you're just talking about whole foods like Ella's favorite walnuts or olive oil give me some more out of what do we have a avocado what are your avocados exactly and things like that oh absolutely nuts i mean just nuts are a powerhouse of nutrition with you know the fiber the proteins the minerals the vitamins etc and they're high fat now interestingly our research shows that a high proportion about

30% of the fat is actually excreted because they're in the form of it's in the form of a whole food and the structure of the food impacts how many calories you absorb from that food. But nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive, or avocado, these are great healthy sources of heart healthy oils that are really going to balance out how you feel over the day. So I'd absolutely go for this. Apart from omega-3 supplements, if you don't eat oily fish, I think that any of these are the fat supplements, you know, are a waste of time. You know, you see omega-9 sold.

I don't know if you've ever seen that, Ella or Rian. And for those that don't know, omega-9 is simply a mono-unsaturated fat. It's a monosaturated fat that we have in excess or certainly more than we need. We can also make it. Our liver makes it. And, I mean, that's one of the biggest scams. I saw that on one of my friend's shelves a couple of years ago. And I was like, holy, that's like selling ice to an Eskimo.

Sarah, as our final question, what do you think is the biggest nutrition myth you've seen recently? or the one thing you wish you could clear up for everybody. Okay, so I would say seed oils is the biggest myth out there, the one that I'm most passionate about mythbusting, but I know that we've already talked about that. So I would say probably another myth is around glucose and around hafting to flatline your glucose. Yeah, we had quite a lot of questions on this as well.

I think there's a lot out there about hacks that you can do to flatline your glucose, meaning try and make sure that over the day you're not having fluctuations in circulating glucose, so in levels of glucose in your blood. So for anyone new to this, when you have a meal containing carbohydrate, your body processes it in such a way that it causes in the short term an increase in blood levels of glucose, which peaks about 15 to 30 minutes after having a meal returns to baseline around two hours after.

That is a normal physiological response to consuming a mixed meal, to consuming carbohydrates. Yes, there's some evidence to show if it's in excess, repeated day and day out, that it can over a long period of time increase our risk of certain diseases. But for most people, the increases that you have in it, if you're following a generally healthy diet, are just normal physiological responses to consuming carbohydrate. However, there is this myth out there that if we can flatline this response, so you have almost no increase you're going to be healthier.

Well, I could eat lard all day and have a flat response. I can assure you that is not going to make me healthier. The only thing I would say is there is some truth in the importance of maintaining reasonable balance to your glucose. And something that I think gets overlooked in this quest to flatline my glucose is the importance of the glucose dip. And this is something we've done some really interesting research at Zori about. And I don't think it's talked about enough is that if you have quite a refined carbohydrate on its own,

so we're talking here, that bagel without the fatty spread or white bread or white rice or white pasta with very little protein or fat added to it, lots of people tend to have a glucose dip two to four hours after consuming that. And what we know from our research is if you have that dip, particularly if you have it, breakfast, you tend to feel less alert, have lower mood, feel more hungry and less energetic for the rest of the day. But importantly, those people that have that kind of breakfast that causes them to have a dip tend to consume about 300 calories more over the day compared to those that don't have a dip. Now, over time, that's going to be far worse for us in terms of consuming excess calories, potentially putting on weight and all the downsides of that,

than us worrying about this small optimization of how much you can flatline your glucose. I mean, Sarah, it's what we've been saying in the nutrition industry. I mean, you for far longer than I, that, you know, we just need to eat a balanced plate. And I do feel like a lot of the stems from social media marketing, I think a lot of the fear. Well, people started to be scared of porridge because, you know, you'd have a gentle increase. And it's like we can't now differentiate between the difference in blood sugar of eating a bag of Harryboe or eating a porridge, you know, which is, you know, which is, you know, it's quite a different situation. Absolutely.

I mean, we've actually done a study at King's that I ran a few years ago where we gave people large porridge oats and then we gave people ground porridge. And what we found was that if you were having the large porridge... Your jumbo oats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had, yes, an increase in circulating glucose, but it was fine.

It was just a normal physiological response. You had a nice return to baseline. What we did find, however, though, for those that were finally ground, because you were changing that structure, you made it into like a fast food. So you had a big peak, but more important than that was the dip that we then saw, that people then had this crash, as we call it. So this big dip in circulating glucose after about two hours, which meant then those people

felt a lot more hungry. They went on to consume more at the next meal. So porridge in itself, absolutely, it's not unhealthy. Just think again about the type of porridge you're having. And this applies to all foods. really takes us full circle to what we started on, the processing. Try and eat those foods in the least processed way because although porridge is high in carbohydrates, if you're eating it in the least processed way, so those jumbo star loads. Or in a pot on the go, the ones you don't want to eat,

you know, we added golden syrup. Exactly. They've got all the added sugar. The entire structure is destroyed. You're going to have these like rollercoaster of glucose throughout the day that's just going to leave you feeling pretty rubbish based on, you know, what our research shows. But if you've got jumbo o's with some banana and some almonds, you're winning. Nut butter every morning. God, my kids love porridge of nut butter. Oh, I wish my kids did. That is such a healthy breakfast.

Sarah, I love it. Do you know what, though? It's so realistic because to so many of people listening, you can also get a healthy breakfast with whole grain toast, can't you, compared to the instant porridge pots. That's a better choice. Yeah, I mean, this is actually talking about myths. I think this is another one that really kind of rears its ugly head every now

and then is this demonisation of all bread. And I think this is actually quite damaging to population health that I think people have become scared of any kind of bread because of, oh my God, it's going to spike my glucose. Whole grain bread is such an important source of fiber. It's such an important source of lots of minerals, for example, iron and zinc as well. And so many people are now say with such pride to me, oh, I don't eat bread anymore. I know it spiked my glucose. goes, well, what are you eating instead? And whole grains, I think, is something that we're so deficient in ascination and actually play such an important role in our diet because they're part of just everyday eating. And, you know, we know, for example, if you reduce your whole grain

intake, you increase your risk, for example, of early onset colorectal cancer as well as heart disease. So, yeah, I love that you mentioned whole grains. It gave me a chance to sneak in another myth. I've been cheeky. I've done three myths. And you asked for one. Well, no, we wanted as many as you'd give us, Sarah, and we're so appreciative of your time today. I think this was such a nice grounding episode. You know, I think it's that constant reminder that, yes, what we eat is important. Our nutrition is important. But it also, to your exact point, Sarah, needs to fit into our lives and feel joyful and delicious

and something we look forward to and it doesn't need to be extreme to get those little wins in. Absolutely. And, Ella, you know, something I always say is if a few people, is too healthy to be enjoyed, it's just not healthy at all. I love that. That to me is the image of that salad with nothing in it. The stereotypical image of, oh, I always get it. And I'm sure you do too, Sarah.

I'm a nutritionist. In fact, Ellie, you've probably been tarnished with this brush. Oh, yeah, like you're a bunny rabbit. You just see it's like a bowl of plain crudite. Yeah. And that's it. But Sarah, thank you for sharing all the amazing research or just a snippet. Touch the surface of all the wonderful research.

that you've done for us for everybody in the population. Pleasure. Thank you. And thank you for letting me get on my soapbox on seed oils for a moment as well. It was much needed. Thank you so much, Sarah. Pleasure. I loved that. It was just so sensible.

And I think people often assume that everyone who works on wellness must be so extreme because that's what the algorithm serves you. But it's not true. I would say the most qualified people are the least extreme. Can I just say that Sarah's sharing with me that porridge is not her children's favorite breakfast just made me feel like, oh yeah, there is something realistic there that it's not going to be everyone's breakfast, and she just shares the truth.

And I feel a bit sad that she's been trolled so much for seed oils, because I know how that feels. So Sarah, thank you for having the courage. Loved it, guys. As always, we'll be back on Monday. We love listening to you. Please share it. Please press follow.

Leave us a comment. We love hearing from you, and you can always send your questions to me directly, if that's easier, Ella at Deliciousiella.com. Otherwise, have a lovely, lovely day. And we'll see you on Monday. See you Monday. Bye.