The Wellness Scoop - Nutrition 101: Calories, Carbs, Fat, Salt & Sugar

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

Should we count calories? Are all calories created equal? Will an avocado and a chocolate bar have the same impact if they have the same number of calories? What about fat, and carbs, sugar and salt? Should we be guided by traffic light systems on packaging? Nutrition is incredibly confusing and in this episode we’re breaking down the myths and confusion that surround calories, fat, carbohydrates, sugar, salt, the glycaemic index, cholesterol and trends like ketogenic and low carb diets with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills, and my husband, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So today we're doing a little bit of a nutrition 101. And we're going to kind of, I guess, go back to basics. I think there's a lot of questions we all have.

Like, are all calories created equal? What even is a calorie? Should I be looking at calories? We hear good carbs and bad carbs, good fat and bad fat. There's salt, there's sugar. And it's basically this just massive minefield that I think we all kind of slightly struggled to navigate. So we thought, you know what, today we're going to strip it right back. And I asked our readers for questions and there was a really interesting

answer that someone gave, which I think is a really nice way to kind of frame where we're coming from with this. So I said, you know, ask me all your questions about calories, fat, salt, sugar, et cetera. And we're going to focus on those today. And someone said, oh my god, I actually need to know everything. Diet culture has messed up my thoughts so much, I don't even know where to begin. And I think it's so true. There's a lot of really complex language in this space, like the good fat versus bad fat, good carbs versus bad carbs. And how do we break that down and actually understand how to look after ourselves physically, but also mentally. So we've got the most brilliant guest here with us Rhiannon Lambert who we had on season two our first ever repeat guest yeah

so Rhiannon came on at the beginning of season two which was the start of January to basically do a kind of diet myths debunked if you haven't had a chance to listen to that one yet please do because it's absolutely brilliant and we love talking to her so much that we thought she is the perfect person for today so I guess we want to start at the top and you know obviously like when you go into any supermarket or you pick up any snack or you even read lots of menu boards now or just in the press the media you know we we hear the word calorie all the time and I think it's actually incredibly confusing some people are very obsessed with counting calories other people feel like that's a really bad measure of things but can we start literally

at point one what is a calorie? I think that's a really really good question and you're right you see it absolutely everywhere so a calorie is effectively a unit of energy but this is a very scientific guesstimation tool i would say it's a rough estimate and to create a calorie it's how much energy does it take to heat one gram of water okay so if you think about it a thousand calories is a kilogram of water that's how much it's taken to heat it so that's all we're doing here is we're looking at how do you create energy in food water that's how much it's taken to heat it so that's all we're doing here is we're looking at how do you create energy in food so it's how much energy you're eating every single day and for most people they'd look at a calorie balance so how much do you need to

take in versus how much do you give out but that's very difficult and it's far too simplistic in my eyes because I think calories have created a whole platform of confusion. But I think that's why people like calories because they look at an amount per day and they think that's good or bad and they can see either either side of it in that way and I think with diet a lot of times people it is so confusing and I think it's one number that kind of comes to reference for people even if it does seem like a bit of a weird and arbitrary way to measure food as good or bad if there is such a thing well that's just it i think perhaps it's disconnected us from knowing why we eat the foods we eat instead we're going on a number system and

in fact the body is a very complex biochemical system where i mean a calorie isn't just a calorie it can't be as simple as that when we're looking at how things are absorbed in the body. And I think I'll delve in by explaining to you guys and your listeners why this perhaps may not be the case. So a good example would be if you take something like sweet corn. This is a really good analogy because when you eat sweet corn, you pretty much see it the next day in your poop. Just going to go there. And let's say if you're eating 100 calories of sweet corn, you definitely haven't absorbed 100 calories because you can see it left over the day after. Whereas if you ground that corn down into flour, you are absorbing all of those calories because of the way your biochemical system absorbs it. So actually, we don't eat all the calories on the

pack. It's not 100% accurate. And another example would be an almond or something that's very high in fibre. Let's say a pack of almonds, again, 100 calories. You actually only absorb 70 calories because of the amount of fibre that isn't broken down. And the casing around the almond means you don't absorb all the fat inside the almond either. So food is far more complex than just a simple number system. That's So interesting. And then one question that was coming up time and time again, and I think kind of really leading on from what you're saying about the fact that calories are actually pretty arbitrary

and potentially not necessarily incredibly helpful in terms of an indicator of something, is also are all calories created equal? Is an avocado and a Mars bar the same just because they've got roughly the same amount of calories or is that absolutely not true yeah no it's absolutely not true this is where i have a real problem with calorie counting and in fact it has a place it's good to know a rough estimate and like i said let's use it as an estimation tool as to how much energy you take in versus take out but there's also different thermogenics of food. Now, this is where it gets a little bit complicated. I'm going to try and break it down. So if you eat different types of food

groups, let's say fat, maybe two to 3% of those calories you eat will be used as energy in itself just to break down fat. Whereas if you're eating protein rich foods, that's much higher at 25 to 30%, because that's how much it takes the body to break down different types of food groups. So if you take an avocado versus a chocolate bar, like you said just then, they're both going to be broken down very differently. And you'll probably absorb all the calories in the chocolate bar because of the way the makeup of the chocolate bar is compared to the avocado, which would probably be richer in fiber as well. So you are looking at very big differences. And then of course, there's different types of energy. So

you've got fructose and glucose. That's fruit sugars versus sugars and carbohydrates. Now, the sugars in fruit get digested by the liver and then the sugars in glucose get digested by every cell in your body. So there's a very big difference there to where the food goes inside your body. Food doesn't just go to the same place. And in every single one of us, because we're unique, it's completely different. That's very difficult to calculate the amount that's perfect for everyone. And if we go by the fact that the brain alone burns 300 calories just at rest, just doing its job every day, does anyone really think about that? That's so interesting and i guess you then also have the fact that say like an avocado or you know almonds or whatever it is

maybe a higher calorie food also then has all these really beneficial compounds within it that we need so again just looking at it on a calorie basis like i remember and i've noticed that a lot people being quite nervous you know obviously we are really celebratory of kind of whole foods and plant-based and we're not scared of fat calories and all the rest of it we're like eat what tastes good and what's good for your body and what feels good but a lot of that is you know kind of peanuts and peanut butter and almonds and avocados and things like this and I've noticed a lot readers very nervous of this yeah because of the calorie content but then as a result not looking at the fact that it then contains you know vitamin e or as you said fiber all these

brilliant fats and you know as we know like you need that in your body for your brain function and etc etc yeah something something i think may help your listeners is thinking about perhaps nutrients as well as numbers yeah so you want to think how can i maximize the incredible food i'm eating every day to benefit me it can be really daunting for lots of people and of course there will be people listening that will want to lose weight just as much as people that will not want to hear the word weight. We've got to cater for everyone and realize that for some people, you do need to know how much energy, but it doesn't always mean it's 100% accurate.

And I think a good example would be the government's campaign on 100 calorie snacks for children. Now, this was really controversial when it came around because it was a guide for parents to obviously prevent the fact that one in three children are obese now. The child obesity is on the rise. And the government were like government were like oh well if you all just look at the pack of the packs and you just stick to under 100 calories but that straight away knocks a banana and nut butter out the window when you're comparing it to a pack of crisps that's under 100 calories

now i'm sure everyone listening would much rather their child have a more nutritious snack than a low calorie energy bar or something not very nutritiously valuable so do try and think of nutrients and a lot of the time the more energy dense foods are the whole foods the pulses and the fats especially fat fat is a very nutrient dense macronutrient so there's nine calories per gram in fat whereas in carbs you've got four calories per gram again in protein four calories per gram and you've got to look at that as well actually fat isn't bad for me fat can be very very good we're all made of cholesterol which is again another fear word that people fear is so much but actually cholesterol is really important for us so you're right think nutrients it feels like

we need we need another scale for nutrients you know if we have a counter in in calories as a unit of energy we need something we need a unit monitor for for nutrients oh my goodness i'd love that please say there's a scientist listening that wants to contact the government and create a nutrient scale yeah it's so true because i remember we were talking to someone once a dietician and they were saying you know if you went around the supermarket and you're solely using the traffic light system to make your purchase decisions then sugar-free green jelly would be the kind of quote-unquote healthiest thing you could get because it would be green on everything but it's completely void of nutrition and it would probably fall into the ultra process group which as we've read in different

studies isn't that healthy for us and so again it whereas an almond or something like that you know banana would flash up red because you know the banana has sugar the almonds have fat etc and it's it's fascinating when you start looking at it like it really is and i think to put foods into the traffic light system now you know it hasn't done what it's been set out to do you know we're still not getting five a day we're now aware that gut health which I know you guys have discussed on this podcast before as well and we've touched on is incredibly important and the more nutrient-dense foods with higher calorie content often support gut health too. We've talked about fat quite a lot in this section so I feel like fat should be our next area that we digress into. I guess fat's another word that we're quite scared

of it has really negative connotations both in the way that's almost used as an insult on a kind of personal level and then you've got the good fat bad fat you've had like all your Atkins diets and Dukin diets and kind of ketogenic diets that where fats kind of plays quite a big role so I think it's become quite complicated in the kind of diet culture space but also just about I think it's become quite confusing for everybody to digest so kind of stripping it right back how does it affect the body why do we need it and then also could you why do we not need it as well yeah and also what's like you know trans fats versus saturated fats versus unsaturated fats yeah yeah yeah and why shouldn't

we have lots of fat okay right let's again start at the beginning so for everyone listening fat is another form of energy in the body now it's also a good carrier of certain vitamins and minerals your fat solubles a d e and k and it can provide cushioning for your organs and it's also a good carrier of certain vitamins and minerals your fat solubles A, D, E and K and it can provide cushioning for your organs and it's also part of the building blocks of your hormones so fat can play a crucial role so a lot of your brain around 60% is made of fat so this is where we know we need it but yet we've come to fear it and that's simply because of the fact that the balance of our diets perhaps we haven't still got quite right we know we're not eating enough of the vegetables and the fruit and we're still getting a little bit too much let's say refined sugars and a bit too much saturated fat

potentially which is when I'm going to break it down for you guys so the different types of fat so let's start with saturated fat which is linked to a raised blood cholesterol. And the NHS says that you shouldn't really have more than 11% of your overall daily intake as saturated fat. So you find saturated fat mainly in animal produce, predominantly things like dairy, meat and items like bacon, sausages. That's where you find a lot of it but also in coconut which is why we have to also be very careful of portion sizes even of things that are considered sometimes good foods then you've got your mono unsaturated fatty acids and this is where it gets a little bit confusing and your polyunsaturated fatty acids so first of all the key is in the word unsaturated so you've got saturated which you don't want too

much of a bit harder to break down because the actual bond is completely saturated inside the body it's very hard to break it down but then you've got unsaturated which is lots of different structures which is more easy to pick away at inside the body so now would those constitute again quote unquote the good fats yeah okay because when people talk so when you read good fats in the media this is what people are referring to it's the mono and poly unsaturated fats yeah and try remember mono means one poly means lots lots of things so an avocado is a good example of a monounsaturated fatty acid and you guys don't even need to remember the name monounsaturated just remember you want to eat more nuts, seeds, avocados, all those types of things.

And then your polyunsaturated fatty acids. Now, this is when we're talking about those omega-3s. And this is amazing because the body can't actually make enough of these. And you can, of course, find these types of polyunsaturated fatty acids in things like oily fish, some eggs, milk, yogurts, but they're broken down into different parts. So you've got ALA, which is the vegetarian type of omega-3 yogurt, alpha-linoleic acid. You've got EPA and DHA. Now DHA is the important part that helps the brain. DHA is the really, really crucial part that can

help protect your brain against neurodegenerative disorders. Also, those long chain fatty acids combined EPA and DHA, they make up omega three singly, and they help your heart. So they help your heart function and stay healthy for longer. And there's now a lot of research that actually links an intake of having these omega threes to reduce risk of things like Alzheimer's and dementia and heart attacks and And not enough people are getting their oily fish or their plant-based alternatives in their diet. So that's a healthy fat you definitely want to get. Nice.

Brilliant. So cholesterol is a fat that's basically vital for the body. It's important to know that it's made by the liver. It's found in some foods as well. And it's actually carried around the blood in the blood by a protein and we call these lipoproteins so the word lipo comes from the word lipid which means fat so just remember fat lipid lipo okay obviously there's liposuction which i think most people probably get that kind of association from but these lipoproteins come in two different categories and this is where your blood cholesterol test if if anyone listening has been to the GP, and you've looked at your blood cholesterol breakdown, this is where it gets important.

So you've got your high density lipoproteins, which carry protein around, which you want a lot of, and your low density lipoproteins, which you don't want as much of those. The reason being that HDL carries things to the liver to be metabolized which is good. LDL carries it to the cells and if there's too much of this in your blood it will also start to accumulate in your artery walls and that's where you start to potentially get an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. Some people notice symptoms, maybe they have symptoms like angina when they've got blocked up arteries, chest pain. These are the things we need to be very careful of. So you want more of the kind of good fats that increase the ratio of HDL and less of the LDL, which comes from the saturated fats. So those are the kind of breakdown of you've got saturated fats, you've got cholesterol,

which comes in two forms, you've got your HDL and your LDL transporters, and that's what helps work cholesterol inside the body. Then we move on to trans fats. Are you with me so far? And now trans fats are the ones that when again, you read in the kind of media, they are the quote unquote, bad fats that have the kind of bad rep is that correct yeah um and you find low levels of this in meat you can find it in dairy produce but in a lot of vegetable oils as well that have been hardened in fact predominantly guys it's in ultra processed foods in fact today it's actually better i think a lot of supermarkets make a point now of not including trans fats or they make an effort to cut these down.

There was a time where they were rife in ready meals. But this was a good maybe five, ten years ago. And I think we're much better now at looking at those types of things. I wouldn't worry too much about trans fats anymore. It's definitely going over on your saturated fat. If you're a classic animal produce eater and it's the wrong ratio let's say of the different types of fats like the bacon and the sausages you may want to go go easy on those okay but then not to then to feel kind of completely brilliant about having lots of nuts and seeds and olive oils and

things like that they're the things and this is when we come back to calories in a way because they're the items that contain tons of energy but they're really good for you and it's just getting the portion control right because you can have too much of a good thing but it doesn't mean you don't include them in your diet and this is where if you have a calorie target of let's say someone set you 1500 calories a day but you really fancy a portion of nuts and you haven't had any healthy fats that day well i'd still rather someone eat those nuts than worry about those extra 50 or 100 calories that's going to go over their target for the day yeah it's brilliant hearing that because I think there is a lot of fear around fat and I think it's brilliant understanding that actually as you said like it's important for our hormones our brain function

actually all these really really key things that we want to be working brilliantly within our body there's a lot at the moment in the media about a ketogenic diet which is very very high in fat but then equally you've had a lot of very very low fat diets and i would just be really interested and i know again it was a question we have from quite a lot of readers because it's quite a buzzword at the moment like we were in the us at a big trade show out there at the end of last year and like literally every single product was ketogenic really yeah everything was there's even something that i mean when mum first got ill that people were recommending to her as a good diet as something that can that can help tackle cancer

as well so i mean it's like it's it's this kind of mad buzzword yeah but particularly in the u.s so it'd be interesting just to get your thoughts it's important first of all to state that the only research we have supports people with epilepsy for the use of ketogenic diets effectively so it's not something that the general public should be really advised to do especially anybody suffering with conditions like cancer it can be very risky because you can become devoid in lots of key vitamins and minerals and fiber. That being said, if anybody is out there who isn't very well, I would really advise you to seek a registered dietitian or nutritionist before following any trends that you hear. But a ketogenic diet is when you keep carbohydrates below 50 grams throughout the entire day.

Now, give us an example of what you could have um off the top of my head that would probably allow your bowl of berries maybe a few sticks of broccoli and maybe a tiny tiny portion of rice like i mean minuscule maybe like one spoon that really is off the top of my head i'm sure you could have maybe another handful of vegetables instead but it's not a lot and it's nowhere near your five a day technically your five a day is 80 grams of a fruit or vegetable yeah so you're not even reaching that okay because fruit or vegetables are actually mostly carbohydrates yeah keeping your carbs very low first of all is going to feel intense for your body your brain survives and thrives off glucose. Without it, you're going to feel headachy, flu-y, tired, lethargic, inability to concentrate thoroughly. And this is what people

describe as keto flu when people make these drastic changes. And then they go out the other side and they claim to feel euphoric. This can be explained by the fact that first of all you might notice drastic weight loss as well because you're losing water carbohydrates attract water molecules so when you're suddenly not eating carbohydrates you will feel leaner you will feel slimmer and you may notice a big dip on the scales if you are someone who weighs yourself that doesn't mean you've lost any body fat it's simply your cells letting go of energy and water and stored nutrition which which isn't great that's why i said that doesn't sound like a particularly good thing to me no you'll be going to the toilet a lot more and people that do embark upon these diets have they take a dipstick

to measure their urine to see if they've reached something called ketosis so the body is very very clever when you don't get enough glucose it can create something called ketones, which can also act as a source of energy for the body. But it's not your body's preferred source of fuel. So ketones actually can create really awful side effects, bad breath being the most commonly noted one. But for some people, it can severely, severely damage their body because it's not used to or meant to function in this way.

And long-term use of ketogenic diets we don't have enough data on yet but we know that digestion is severely affected so the gut microbiome of course if your bacteria in the gut suddenly isn't being fed any prebiotic foods or things that it likes to eat and it's just being fed essentially your diet is just animal produce on a keto diet or a very very well-planned vegetarian diet but it's just being fed. Essentially, your diet is just animal produce on a keto diet or a very, very well planned vegetarian diet. But it's very difficult to do as a vegan or vegetarian. You pretty much just eat meat all day, which I don't advocate for anyone listening. Yeah, well, every single episode we've done, basically, the key take home is a a balanced varied diet is the best thing you

could possibly have for your well-being whether that's for your gut your brain you know your energy levels your skin health etc etc and so when you start looking at this and you're literally stripping everything but that one spoonful of rice i know it doesn't seem to make sense i mean the argument is that meat contains a lot of vitamins and minerals that are essential as well so it can contain some omega-3s it can contain iron it contains zinc it can contain a lot of nutrition but not nearly enough that we know having researched as evidence-based nutrition that you get from fruit and vegetables it is nuts so i think with carbohydrates it's a kind of perfect moment to bring up another kind of food group that again has had this like crazy demonization of people being so scared of carbohydrate and like the number of times i've heard people saying like i'm gonna quit carbs

and i'm like so you're never gonna eat broccoli again people are like wait what like because you don't like i think there's this association of what a carbohydrate is instead of the fact that actually as we're saying like fruit and vegetables are all made out so much of carbohydrates yep and there's so many important things in there like fiber and people have this just a massive massive massive massive massive fear of this group and again it's where this really i think like quite toxic terminology is used where you have good carbs and bad carbs. So what's going on? Okay, well, 50% of our diets were advised by the NHS should be made of carbohydrates.

And as Ella's quite rightly said, and I saw Matt nodding along, is that basically that does contain fruit and vegetables too. It is not just bread and pizza. It's not 50% pizza. I think looking at the quality and the quantity of the diet is very very important here and there is no one size fits all so even as we're recording this podcast everyone's when i say 50 that's an nhs recommended amount for some people that number may be lower for others it may be higher it's important to note our individual differences and requirements because a lot of carbohydrate-based foods if we're looking at starchy foods can For others, it may be higher. It's important to note our individual differences and requirements.

Because a lot of carbohydrate-based foods, if we're looking at starchy foods, can contain a lot of energy as well. And where we've gone wrong, and the reason they're demonized, I think is that we've gone too far down the poor quality carbohydrates in our diets. And I'm talking more refined carbs. They have a place, but not every single day. Pastries, biscuits and lovely, tasty, delicious processed foods that everybody enjoys, that I enjoy as a nutritionist. But we definitely have taken them to extreme and we're not getting the whole grains anymore. The whole grain brown rices, the nice bulgur wheat, quinoa, pulled barley, sweet potatoes, normal potatoes. Those standard nice grains and starchy vegetables seem to have been pushed aside for convenience foods. That's where carbs have technically got a bad name, but also because you store water. So if you eat a carbohydrate based meal and you step on the scales, you will weigh more. It's not that you've put on weight.

It's the water with the carbs that you need to even break it down. So interesting. so just to understand what you're saying there so if we're thinking about kind of yeah potatoes and pearl barley and rye and all these more complex carbohydrates why are those better for us to be focusing on for that 50 as opposed to the more refined carbohydrates. Okay so this brings us into a topic I know that you're quite keen to discuss of glycemic index as well. Oh yeah. So GI foods or glycemic index foods is basically the speed at which it takes a food to raise your blood sugar levels. Now this isn't a bulletproof way to identify if a food is going to be healthy or not

and I'll break down the reasons in a bit as to why not. But some good examples of high GI foods are what we've just discussed, which create a rapid increase in blood glucose levels. Those are white bread, potatoes that are hot, not cold, because when they're cold, they have more resistant starch, which slows down the release of the sugar, which I'll explain in a bit. But hot potatoes go very fast into the system. I think that's quite an interesting one. It's fast moving. more resistant starch which slows down the release of the sugar which i'll explain in a bit but hot potatoes go very fast into the system i think that's quite an interesting one yeah and of course sugary drinks uh the standard i think we all know a bit of chocolate occasionally can be high gi but then the low medium kind of foods that you want to focus on are like ella said you know fruit veg pulses whole grains but it is misleading sometimes the speed in which things

affect your blood sugar levels. The classic examples I've got are a watermelon and parsnips are considered high GI foods because they release into your blood system very very quickly and actually they're very healthy foods so just because a food is a high GI food doesn't mean it's unhealthy a lot of the time. Yeah yeah but we do want more of those complex carbs because of the fiber they contain and is that why they release slower into your blood a hundred percent they release slowly into the bloodstream they also keep us fuller for longer and they like our gut bacteria so the gut bacteria likes these kind of fiber rich foods and that's obviously now linked to maintaining a healthy weight a healthy healthy cardiovascular system, looking at links to the gut brain axis with the brain and

things like dementia. So there's actually a full 360 degree circle when it comes to glycemic index food. But the reason GI isn't as accurate led to the discovery of creating a glycemic load. So you've got something called GL. And that does look at the quantity and quality of the food. And that measures the amount of time, like how long the blood sugar stays high for, just as much as how quickly it goes in. So that's a slightly better measure for people looking at the GL. But to be honest with you, for anyone listening,

you don't really need to worry too much. And if you think about a cake, I think a cake is a really good example. We all love cake, but cake contains a bit of fat. It contains a lot of sugar, but the amount of fat in the cake slows the release of the sugar. So a chocolate cake sometimes can have a lower GI than a carrot, simply because it's got fat in it. so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthier a GI system now does that come back to I guess how boring is this a balanced play um but again about showing that why we need to have all these foods together and why actually when you're thinking about your lunch or your breakfast or your dinner or your snack whatever it is it's a good idea to think about having fats carbs protein all together because they all support each other about when they go into your body yeah i mean for most people

a balanced plate is probably the best bet in terms of getting all the nutrients you need and affecting your blood sugar levels in a safe manner it's only if you're diabetic and you need to be aware of how foods affect your blood sugar levels that you should really be even more aware of these GI systems but yeah the balance plate carbs proteins bit of healthy fat and a good portion of protein and you can't really go wrong because that will slow the release of any rapid sugar and it's important to be aware as well that fruit isn't something that should be feared here as well so fruit may be sugar but it's fructose and like i said earlier it goes to the liver to be metabolized it's a very different pathway to items like potatoes and bread and pasta so that there's another myth that

sugar's bad i think we touched on that before now sugar was the topic that we had the most readers questions really so can you give us the sugar basics so sugar again the topic that we had the most readers questions on. So can you give us the sugar basics? So sugar, again, is something that I don't think we should be completely fearful of in our diets. It's actually been around for years and years. If you look back, we actually used to intake more sugar in the industrial kind of revolution, Victorian times than we do now. Really? Yeah, people would have up to maybe six teaspoons of sugar in their tea a day. And we didn't take it in different ways. However, that we didn't have what came with the sugar, which is the processed foods that you find it within. So it's how our

overall diets have changed. But that in itself has led to a problem. Because we're having more what I call free sugars without realising it. So the government are now classifying labels on sugar as a difference between what is free. And when I say free, I mean added sugars. So looking at things like sucrose, looking at honey, syrups and fruit juice instead of eating the actual fruit itself because you're having a big concentrated source. And you're not having the fibre.

Exactly. And in fact, a portion of fruit juice a day is 150 mils, one of those, and that's not very much. 150 mils is not a portion. If you actually weighed that out, an adult is not having 150 mils. Oh yeah, no, definitely. They're probably easily having 350 a pot,

which is a problem in itself because of the speed those sugars do hit your bloodstream. And straight away we're looking at different measures so for most people out there at home it's important to be aware that free sugars should apparently be no more than five percent of your overall diets that's not very much at all and if you think about it it's probably in your ketchup if you look at your tins in your cupboard it might be in baked beans lots of things you're eating even veggie sausages some have sugar added pastries you just look everywhere look at the

labels i'm sure you will see it it was so interesting when we were developing our product so like with our frozen meals for example is we were really passionate about the fact that we didn't want to just obviously for us as a as a business like our focus is on natural and trying to keep everything really really simple now in one or two of them we've used a kind of a splash of maple something like that because it's been important for balancing out the flavors but it it was so interesting because we couldn't for example find a stock cube that didn't have sugar so we didn't we haven't used a stock cube in the end but there was so many ingredients out there and like trying to source tinned tomatoes effectively sort of

chopped tomatoes that don't have sugar added was i mean it took us months and months and months doesn't it didn't it yeah it was it was a big challenge it's an incredible transition even hearing the process of how food manufacturers now have to reformulate their products so you're starting a product which i think is actually the better way around now without actually hitting those going over on the sugar targets you're very conscious of it a lot of people now are having to bring their products back to the factories strip them down and reformulate them i mean sugar is the same maple syrup is still sugar as is honey which people should be aware of but to give you a rough amount and a guide so a four to six year old should apparently be having 19 grams maximum a day that's five sugar cubes and it goes but now that is not including fruit no that is extra additional

free sugars they can still eat fruit but of course i actually think that's quite high it seems high yeah and then if you go to the age of 11 it will be 30 grams maximum which is seven cubes okay so it is it is still quite high and a high amount is considered more than 22.5 grams of sugar per 100 grams in a pack yeah which is high if you think we've just said for an 11 year old the whole day should be no more than 30 grams and per 100 gram servings some people may be getting that in one serving of food and low is less than five grams per 100 grams so really have a look at your packs at home like if we could all challenge you to something perhaps pull something out the cupboard look per 100 grams on the back of the pack see how many sugars there are

perhaps there are more than five grams and already you're going into the low medium yeah of free sugars of added sugars yeah because that's always the challenge again because like when we're making our breakfast cereal so for example our birch and muesli our fruit and nut muesli there's absolutely no sweetener at all in there but we we do have raisins and apple and raspberry. Yeah. And so technically it's not green in sugar because it includes raisins, includes a fruit. So it's again, it's being aware of where the sugars are coming from as well, because I think we found that whole process really, really interesting as well. But it's apple, you know.

But this is just it people we should be encouraging people to enjoy the natural sugars that you get in your food it's just limiting the amount of extras and we all love chocolate and we all love muffins and cakes and things but we just have to have things in moderation we're not saying never have them it's just sometimes we're having excess and they're hidden do you know one of my biggest beliefs as well is that i don't think we enjoy them enough either i think it's been really interesting and i think again a lot of it comes from this kind of kind of quite complicated relationship that a lot of people have with food and definitely you know growing up where there's a lot of media conversation around diets and

dieting and calorie counting and weight and etc etc and that becoming such a big part of everyone's lives and you know i always say to people it's my worst question but i get it in every interview is like what's your guilty pleasure I'm like that's an oxymoron you can't have a pleasure if it makes you feel guilty it literally doesn't make sense it then wouldn't be a pleasure would it and I think that's why we're going wrong is instead of every now and again you know once a week twice a week or whatever it is sitting down maybe you bake a lovely cake for your family and on Saturday afternoon you sit down you have a piece of chocolate together and you just really enjoy it and it's lovely or you meet up with a girlfriend who you haven't seen in a while and you have a you know glass of wine and a pudding or you meet for a coffee and a cake or whatever it is yeah and you you go somewhere where you love

that cake or you bake something you really want and you really enjoy it and you savor every mouth on you're like this is so delicious and it completely feeds your soul as well and gives you that sense of balance instead we're like oh it's so naughty it's so naughty and you kind of almost like inhale it without appreciating it because you're like oh i shouldn't be having this because you've got this complex feeling about it and then i feel like as a result we don't even eat things we enjoy you just eat what's there and you don't have appreciation of it because you've got these negative connotations. So I feel like it is, as you said, it's focusing on all these brilliant things that we need, but then also finding that sense of balance in your life where you feed your soul as well. But enjoy that. Don't bring that negativity and kind of complexity in with it.

Yeah, it's difficult for people. It's very psychological food. It's related to emotions. It's very emotive and it can do with childhood and pathways throughout life, what we experience with the food. Yeah, it's very difficult to snap our fingers and snap out of it. But Ella's right. We we need to look at that aspect of it just as much as the education underneath it. So why do people get afternoon sugar cravings then? Well, I think everybody when we say sugar cravings, I tend to call it the afternoon slump. So we may feel tired and therefore we want sugar because we want to pick me up. Or it's an association with that point in the day where a lot of people are, oh, I just want it to be bedtime now. I need something positive.

And a lot of the time it's sugar. Scientifically speaking, going down to a biochemical thing, your blood sugar levels may be a little bit low that time of afternoon, depending on what you've had for lunch, how good was the quality of your lunch as well to keep your blood sugar levels steady rather than spiking. But if you've had a really balanced, great lunch, would you still expect to get that kind of drop mid-afternoon? It can be so many things as well.

That drop and those sugar cravings may not be blood sugar balance for some people I think a lot of people it is but for others it could be fatigue or the fact they're dehydrated as well you haven't had a good night's sleep your cortisol levels also naturally decline throughout the day to get you ready for sleeping in the evening that's your stress hormone so you do kind of get a sharp kind of drop at that time in the day that's way more noticeable than obviously mid-morning afternoon you're just you're getting ready to end the day so instead of going for sugar my advice would be think of food as energy again and go for maybe a

piece of fruit that tastes just as good and does give you a good bout of energy that's not going to be a sharp spike in blood sugar levels or a coffee okay the last kind of group that we've got to talk about is salt yes because i think salt's another thing that's had a lot of confusion and there's been a i think especially i think when we were growing up there was a lot of negative conversation around salt and a fear of salt and I guess why has salt got such a bad rap? So with salts we're really looking at the fact that a lot of people used to have way too much salt. It used to be a classic on your grandparents table where you'd have a salt shaker and I think you'd see them putting it on everything or that generation and we only really need to be getting

around six grams of salt a day. Now, salt is something that really does impact our blood pressure. So a lot of people that are having too much, it then affects your kidneys, how much water is retained, also looking at the impact on blood pressure and you can actually increase that drastically and it's not great for cardiovascular health, especially alongside other conditions in the diet perhaps carrying a little bit too much weight around the abdominal area and then you're having too much salt in your diet as well but it's also important to differentiate between things like sodium and

salt as well and the quality of the salt that we have so each one gram of sodium equates to 2.5 grams of salt so it's how it's written down on labels and most people in the uk write salt but in some places in other countries actually it's written as sodium so it's important to be aware that that is salt that that is salt as well but sodium is kind of you're getting double the amount yes you want to be having less about three grams of sodium and six grams of salt a day if you're home cooking and you're making things mostly from scratch is there a genuine danger with salt or is it more that it's added to a lot of processed foods and so it's very easy to suddenly eat a lot without

having kind of totally realized yeah i think um it's very easy to have more than you think especially if you are having processed foods out and about and on the go I don't think anyone really looks at how much salt is in their food anymore and there is a target actually to reduce that level I spoke about earlier to three grams of salt not six by 2025 so we're still looking at reducing it further in terms of the government and the health campaign they have but if you're cooking from scratch that's probably the best way don't be scared of adding salt. I see two sides in my clinic. I see a lot of people coming to me that don't have enough

because they're so terrified of adding salt to their diet. They actually have low blood pressure because they're not having a little bit of salt. And salt really helps with flavour as well. Oh, it's so good. You know, food's got to taste good. Mm, 100%. And it also helps the cooking process.

So the salt breaks down the cellular wall of the of the vegetables as well which helps you cook it at a quicker rate which is always useful. So Rhiannon after all that incredible information if our listeners are going to take home five kind of key points from today's session what are your five? First one would be carbs fuel your brain they're good for you and they also create happy hormones the carbs are very good for you so don't fear them the second one would be if anyone is preaching my way or the highway they're probably not the best person to go to for advice so as we discussed with the keto diets and things like that everyone is unique

and the third would be take nuggets from everything you hear. So use the advice that we've given you today, but lot of positive relationships of food as well to move away from the numbers and the final one I think would be to see food as a positive aspect of life enjoyment think of the sociable sides and if you are struggling just go back to that balanced plate brilliant thank you Rhiannon so much for coming to share so much unbelievable wisdom. I think Nutrition 101 is something that we all need every now and again, even just as a refresher. So if anyone has enjoyed this, then please do share it with some friends. Hopefully it will be helpful for other people. And if you can rate it and review it, we would so appreciate that. And we will be back next week. Next week, we're talking about something completely different.

Actually, we're talking about kind of using yoga as a tool for internal transformation and the power of practices like meditation and the kind of ancient philosophies around it for creating a bit more calm, a bit more balance in your life. Thank you. or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.