Well with Arielle Lorre - 226: The Truth About Calories, Exercise and the Gut-Brain Connection with Tim Spector, MD FRCP OBE

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Tim Spector is a medical doctor, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, nutrition scientist, microbiome expert and best selling author. He is also the cofounder of Zoe, a health science and personalized nutrition company running the largest in-depth nutrition study in the world. He joins the show to discuss what we’ve gotten wrong about nutrition, the most prevalent diet myths out there right now, the truth about calories, the gut-brain axis, how to eat to support gut and overall health, why gut issues are so common today and more.   Right now, Sakara is offering our listeners 20% off their first order when they go to Sakara.com/Blondeor enter code BLONDE at checkout.   Go to VEGAMOUR.com/blonde and use code blonde to save twenty percent on your first order!   Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/BLONDE and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.     Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome to the Blond Files I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. And boy, do I have a good show for you today. I was so honored to get to speak to my guest today, Tim Specter. I think this episode is really going to change the way

you think about your health and wellness and your practices. And it might even change your approach to all of that. So I'm speaking to, like I said, Tim Spector. He is an award-winning scientist and author. He has over a thousand original articles published in some of the world's top scientific journals placing him in the top 1% most cited scientists on the the planet. As a professor in genetic epidemiology at King's College, London, and the leader of the world's largest identical twin study, Twins UK, Tim wrote his bestselling book identically different, which makes understanding genetic traits and how our environment impacts our genes easy for anyone to grasp. Then he had another book called The Diet Myth, which was the first introduction

on the importance of the gut microbiome for human health for a wide non-scientific audience. It became an international bestseller and remains a brilliant insight to the unique way each of us interacts with food through our microbes. More recently, Spoonfed offers the latest evidence on food science and personalized nutrition, the impact of our food environment, and how profits and policy impact our dinner tables with a pragmatic real-life approach. And then his most recent book, Food for Life, is his most extensive yet taking an in-depth look at all of the latest scientific evidence on what we eat, how we eat it and why, and how we can use this knowledge to improve our own personal nutrition. Tim is also the co-founder of Zoe, which is a

personalized nutrition platform. His talent in translating scientific evidence for everyone to understand and use for their own decision making led him to present his work on the unexplained missing link between genetics and disease, the human microbiome, two worldwide audiences. And it was during one of his presentations on his groundbreaking microbiome research that he met his Zoe co-founders who shared his vision of helping individuals understand their unique biology to improve their own well-being in an accessible way. So in today's episode, we are talking about all of this. We discuss some of the most prevalent nutrition myths out there right now. We talk about why calorie counting is not a good strategy for weight management.

and he has some surprising insight into exercise and weight management as well. We talk about why and how calories aren't created equal. When exercise can actually be counterproductive. We talk a lot about the gut brain connection, the gut brain axis, and why restricting foods and food groups can be detrimental for gut health. We talk about why gut issues are so prevalent today, what health foods to be wary of, what to focus on when planning your meals and sitting down to eat and so much more.

This episode is so value-packed. And like I said, I think it really is going to shift your perspective and your approach to not only nutrition, but wellness as a whole. So please enjoy Tim Specter. Welcome, Tim. I'm really excited to have you here. Great to be here. I have been listening to so many of your interviews.

I've been following you for a while, and I think your research and your content and your books and everything are so incredible. And I was thinking about how I wanted to approach this interview. So maybe to start, we could just talk about what are the most prevalent, maybe egregious myths that you see out there in nutrition right now. Okay. There's quite a few. I think the ones, to highlight really that calorie counting is a useful way of controlling weight, that all calories are equal, that basically rapid crash dieting is, you know, is actually beneficial, that fats are usually bad for you is still quite common, that eating small amounts regularly and

often is a good way rather than sort of feasting and fasting. I think that ultra-processed food can be good for you if it's low calorie, low-fat, and it's got extra vitamins and other additives to it. And most people believe that most supplements, whether vitamins or other chemicals, are likely to be beneficial. The other one is, I guess, is exercise helps you lose weight. Interesting. They're probably my top ones.

There's probably more that will come to me out of the blue, but it's pretty enough to get on with. Yeah. And everyone's the same. Yeah. That everyone, like all women, you know, have this 2,000 calorie sort of target to go for. And that we'll respond the same to the same diets or regimes. Well, when I started my kind of wellness journey, I really thought that health meant looking a certain way. And in order to do that, I had my macros calculated. This was really big here. I don't know if it was big where you are six or seven years ago. And somebody would calculate basically your BMR based on your height, your weight, your activity level, and then give you a certain amount of calories and macros to eat a certain day. And you track that.

And obviously this led to really disordered eating. And I did get myself into the shape that I wanted, I guess, but I felt horrible. I had no energy. And it was kind of this idea of telling my body what it needed instead of my body telling me what it needed. And during that time, everyone kind of just said, yeah, thermodynamics. Like it's what you put in and how much energy you expend. So can you expand on on that a little bit? Calories are not equal. So when you see a pack in a supermarket, it says these calories on it, they're done in a universal way that's been the same for about 100 years. You burn it in a calorimeter and you see how much heat it gives off. But in your body has a very different effect. And so there are big differences, depending on the structure

of the food itself. So if you, for example, take ground almonds, like an almond flour or something, highly refined, though you'll extract all the calories out of those almonds and all the fats

and all the sugars, etc. And if you eat whole almonds, we know that we extract about 30% less from eating the whole product. And also, the fats will be absorbed lower in your intestine and have a very different effect on your body. And that's why ultra-processed foods of the same calorie count will have a very different effect

on your body to whole foods of the same calorie count. And so there's many examples where the structure of the food is very different, highly refined, ground up, very absorbable, gets rapidly into your metabolism, has a very different impact on your body, usually negative, to a whole food, which takes longer to get in there, make you full up, you know, in a different way as well. And in our, the other experiment we also did is in the Zoe study, we looked at, we've given this nutrition company that I helped co-found about five years ago, we've now given 50,000 people, customers, identical meals at the same identical time of day, and they report what happens to their blood sugar. And

About one in four people, about one in three women get a sugar dip three hours after eating a carb meal. And for those people, they actually go on and eat much more during that day. They're tired. They're hungry. And they overeat. And so this really tells us that they were identical calories. So, you know, the idea that a calorie has the same effect across everybody is, now been completely disproven for the reasons of structure, but also the individuality of us

as humans that we respond very differently to the food. So you sort of put all this together with the fact that it's pretty impossible to calorie count. And it's also impossible to really measure your metabolism out the other in, as you know, you were trying to do six or seven years ago, you know, the accuracy that is, you know, plus or minus 50%. Everyone is so different and so complex. And they're interrelated. So, you know, and that that's the reason that calories are a bit of a nonsense if you're trying to use them as a way to work out what to eat until we know much more about them.

And the way it's done at the moment, they're just a big disguise for poor quality food, you know? Low cow, just generally that means probably avoid it because it's been manipulated in that way and is not going to be healthy for you than something might be whole food and with more calories. That's that's the sort of the calorie question. Did you want to get on to tackle the one, the exercise one, which upsets a lot of people? I don't know about you, but I feel like for years I have been cycling through shampoo and conditioner and I just can't find one that I really love. I feel like they're always either too heavy or they

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And the code is blonde to save 20%. Again, it's vagamore.com slash blonde. Hi, guys, it's Jordan from the balanced blonde Solon fire podcast. On my show, we go deep on all things, astrology, awakening, motherhood, channeling, healing, and so much more. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, and the healing journey I embarked on at that time set me on the path to radical awakening. Let's just say I had no choice but to change my energy and that opened me up to the most beautiful healing of my life. On my show, you can expect to

feel like you're sitting in my living room chatting with old friends. Tune in every Wednesday to connect and hang on the balanced bond, so on fire. I think there was a twin study, right? One was on a diet and one was not and you followed their weight gain or their weight lost progress. Can you talk about that a little bit and then we'll go into the exercise piece? Yeah, that was a study we did about 12, 13 years ago, because I've been studying twins for 30 years in the UK. We have 15,000 twins. And if you take identical twins that are clones, you know, you can learn a lot about why they differ. And so from this large group, we found twins where one of them has weighted, fluctuated over the years quite a lot. We've been following for about 20 years. And they tend to be the ones on diets.

And so we followed those up and found that although they started a, aged 18 the same weight, they were, you know, when you got to 50 or 60, the one on the diet was nearly always heavier than the one who just stayed the same weight. So this just means that this up and down cycling is changing our sort of body's thermostats and probably just nudging it upwards all the time as we tend to come out and the body rebounds after calorie restriction. and we sort of know this whole idea of, you know, the more you restrict calories, it's fine for a few weeks, but then your body just starts getting these hunger signals just build up, your metabolism slows even more, even more lethargic, and it sort of gets you right back so you get this incredible hunger,

and then you tend to overshoot a few months later where you were. So like a compensatory response. Yeah, exactly. So, and most of the world of, I went to a conference recently, all the obesity experts in the US and the UK and Europe were there. And everyone was agreeing that, you know, this idea of purely calorie restriction as a way of sustained weight loss really is no longer supported by the science. There's not just a wacky theory. I think, you know, it's yet there's this, you know, $100 billion industry. trying to maintain the myth that there is science behind it.

Because it's sort of the old style science, this old reductionism that foods just macros and calories, and it's so easy. You just got to have a little tool that measures your calories and some magic instrument that, you know, it was going to cut up your metabolic rate and bingo, you know, we can help you. And yeah, it usually works for a few weeks.

And then it definitely doesn't work. And, you know, you may have only lost a few pounds, but you say you lost a lot of dollars. Exactly. Well, let's get into the exercise piece because I have not heard this. So there have been quite a few studies now, I'd say about 20 studies of exercise, either against a control group or against calorie restriction or with calorie restriction. And it shows that, again, initially, if you exercise, you will lose some weight for a few weeks. but then your body compensates.

And so it makes you hungrier and it actually probably slows down your metabolism so that you tend to regain that weight. And, you know, we all know that that sort of mental idea. I've just been to the gym for an hour and a half. You know, I can have a smoothie now and a donut, you know, and you undo it all. So there's also that psychological effect, which is being, you know, promoted by your body. But the science really shows that these long-term studies of people exercising and trying to lose weight doesn't succeed. So it's only really change of diet or magic drugs or, you know, major surgery that makes you lose weight permanently.

And that's a real shock to people. There's some evidence that once you've lost weight, doing some exercise can help you maintain it. but really that's fairly trivial and most of the experts now agree that this is not the main benefit of exercise but I'm a big eye exercise and I know it's really important for my physical and mental health and it's good for my heart preventing cancer all kinds of other anti-aging properties as well so let's not throw it all out just because it is not a quick fix you know, as weight loss. And we should be moving away from this idea of everyone trying to get rapid weight loss, you know, in January after the holiday season and really start thinking about

what are we going to do sustainably rather than these so-called quick fixes that are promoted by everybody and gym memberships and all this kind of stuff and just go for something much more long-term and realistic. You've talked about how interconnected mental and physical health are now, and that you really can't separate the two. And a big part of that interaction, I would imagine, is the gut. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yes, it's so-called gut-brain axis. And we've all experienced, you know, stress from wherever it is,

you know, an exam or whatever, where our guts start misbehaving. And, you know, we know there's a real obvious connection there. But we didn't really know how sophisticated it was until recently through understanding about the gut microbes, these community of trillions of these bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites that live in our, their intestine, that are essentially like mini-pharmacies. They are producing thousands of chemicals every hour in order for our body to function properly, if they're fed right. And some of the chemicals they produce are neurochemicals,

neurotransmitters, for example, like serotonin, which many people might know about as a sort of happiness, contentness chemical that affects the brain, and that's how antidepressants work. So most of the serotonin we get is produced by bugs in our gut, which is a bit of a shock to many people. And so they produce this chemical, which then goes to the brain. And there's many other chemicals that are constantly going back and forth,

as well as the microbes influencing the immune system, which also goes into the brain. So that explains why there have been lots of studies now showing that antidepressants only work in a minority of people, actually. There's quite a few people that they don't work very well for, and others they do. and we now know the gut microbes you have individually, which all vary, we vary enormously, depending on which type you've got, they will or won't work because you need them to make them work. And this is all linked to this serotonin idea. Plus there's a number of studies now showing that probiotics, these live microbes given as capsules or drinks that are known to promote beneficial health, have been shown to have in placebo studies,

good effects on depression and anxiety, as good as antidepressants in some of these studies. And a big Australian study did a three-month study for people with anxiety and depression show that a gut-friendly diet, like a Mediterranean high-fiber diet, was actually more effective than antidepressants for this. So I think we're really understanding that mental health is really linked to our gut. And there's lots of other small studies in things like autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia and various other mental conditions disorders that are linked. And it's cause and effect as well.

You know, we all know when depressed, we're less interested in food. We're going to have less variety. And so our diet gets worse. But what these studies have also shown is it's very much causal because you can actually make mice depressed or anxious by transferring microbes in the poo from an anxious mouse to a sort of normal mouse and make it anxious. So it is infectious. So it's always important to sit next to an optimistic person rather than a depressed person. I don't know how it is in the UK, but where I am in Los Angeles, there is this very

restrictive attitude towards food, I think, kind of in the pursuit of health and wellness, where everything is gluten-free, everything is dairy-free, everything. Everything is refined sugar-free. Everything is soy-free. And I'm curious if that has a detrimental effect, because I would imagine that, you know, your gut really thrives. That bacteria thrives off diversity, right? So what happens when we are limiting the food that we're giving it?

Yeah, no, it's a great point. And, you know, I think gluten, the gluten scare probably reached its peak about five years ago. and we know there's 10 to 15 times more people who think they have gluten problems than really do when you test them. And, you know, I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's very exaggerated. It's often other things in the food that's upsetting people. And just the idea that you cut out, it's sort of, it's what I hate about the old way of thinking about nutrition.

It's this reductionist idea that you have these complex foods. Most foods have hundreds or thousands of chemicals in them. And we talk about one in one food. And you think that's the cause of all my problems. And it is so naive to think that. So whether it's this lectin idea that there's this bit of the plant wall that irritates you, or it's gluten or it's monosodium glutamate or it's some bit of a grain. I think it's very misguided.

And because there are always some examples of these, but they're extremely rare. And everyone just says, oh, I'm just like them. You know, I've got similar symptoms. It must be the same. They start cutting out all the healthy things out of their diet. Like people who go gluten-free, they tend to cut out so many good things, so many good grains, so much fibre that they find it really hard to get of a whole variety of whole plants, fibers, and they suffer and they have ultra-processed food replacing it, which they think they're

happy with because they can read on the packet exactly what the chemical contents are. So that whole mentality of reductionism, it's a bit like people have gluten intolerance, they temporarily help their problem, but long term they cause themselves problems because we know that a healthy gut depends on a diversity. of plants in the diet. And we showed the American gut and the British gut study, which we put together about seven or eight years ago that the sweet spot is this 30 plants a week.

And the people who have these obsessions about food can never get to that level easily. And so that's a real problem. How should we be eating then? What should we be focusing on when we sit down to a meal? diversity of plants. Is it nutrient content? I mean, I know that we talked about that a little bit and hit on that, but what should the listeners do when they're sitting down to have a meal to eat for their health? Well, I think the first thing to do is to change the mindset that, you know,

you don't, I don't care about calories. And, you know, we've shown in the Zoe program now that we don't discuss calories, but people have more energy. you know, many people lose weight, even sort of ignoring that whole category. We don't really talk about macros either. We do talk about taste and enjoyment. So let's not forget that. You've got to enjoy what you're eating. It's part of life's real pleasures.

And it'd be very sad if it becomes this, you know, military exercise that you've got to do. You've got to stuff that's tasty and fun and diverse. You've got to think of it. So what do my gut microbes want to eat? Okay. And if you can keep them happy, generally the rest of your body will be happy as well. And so this is where we, you know, I've come up with sort of four or five rules that are breakable rules and, you know, more like general guidelines. So one is have 30 different plants a week, okay?

Big diversity. And that way you don't worry about any individual one because you've got so many different ones. Even if one has got some lectin in it, it doesn't really matter because you've got this diversity. It's, you know, and that includes nuts and seeds and herbs and spices, which many people don't think about. And then try and pick foods that have high polyphenol counts. This is eating the rainbow, these defense chemicals in these bright, the colored, slightly bitter tasting fruits and vegetables. We're talking berries. We're talking, again, the nuts and the seeds.

We're talking brightly colored peppers, you know, cauliflower, picking a lettuce that, isn't a boring iceberg lettuce, picking a nice one with purple red leaves. These have whole of polyphenols. Also, other strange things, coffee is a health drink and it's associated with reduced heart disease and increased mortality because it's a plant. It's a fermented bean. And we forget what real food is. Coffee is a real food and it's a health drink. It's probably one of the healthiest things you can drink. If you have three cups a day, the average American is probably going to have, that's a third of their fiber content. Wow. How about macha? Well, the whole, you know, matcha and green tea have their role, but they're not as powerful as actually coffee in the studies.

So, you know, I think, and black tea is also, it's slightly beneficial, but nothing like getting close to coffee. Decaf is is pretty nearly as good as caffeinated coffee. Interesting. I think that they, you know, and people still think of orange juice as healthy. And I, you know, that's, to me, that should have a health warning on it because of its impact on your sugar and it's an ultra-processed food for most people. The other point is fermented foods and having small amounts regularly is really important. So whether it's yogurt, whether it's kifur, whether it's kombuchas, kimchi, crouts, or, you know, the Japanese misos and the fermented soybeans, it doesn't matter. You know, a small amount regularly is really helpful.

Reducing the amount of ultra-processed foods because they have negative effects on your gut. And finally, having a long overnight fast is another way to help your gut microbes rest and help your metabolism. So they're the very general rules that I think everyone can relate to, even before we get into this whole question of personalization and individual differences between us. If you are looking to elevate your space and your mood in 2023, I have got you. Well, actually, I don't. Article, furniture has got you. Article has everything you need with their stunning range of living and dining room furniture and decor. And it's truly the easiest way to make your space look beautiful. They combine the curation of

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complain of gut issues kind of this blanket term i've certainly had issues with my digestion over the years and i think that that's another way that we back ourselves into a corner when it comes to diet because we get this restrictive mindset of okay i can't eat that i can't eat this is that valid or do you think that is the result of eating these ultra-processed foods and maybe eating quote-unquote healthy foods that are actually more processed and I don't know, environmental. Like, why do you think that seems so prevalent now? Well, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome really hardly existed 50 years ago. And, you know, when I was a medical student, junior doctor, I hardly saw it.

It was a rare occurrence. So it's a recent phenomenon on the American Western diet. And I think, and perhaps our lifestyle as well. So definitely I think it's the way we've, we've not only the food we eat, but also possibly how we eat. The idea that we're snacking all the time, we're not giving our gut a rest, I think is important, not getting enough general fiber in there to have regular bowel movements. that keeps our gut microbes healthy. And interestingly, the Zoe Health Study is, it's also got a free app.

And in the UK, we've got a, like a citizen science project where 140,000 people have signed up to do some intermittent fasting experiments. And the first results are showing that quite a lot of people had irritable bowel syndrome at the beginning, lots of bloating and constipation and pain. 30% of them got better.

when they had an overnight fast of 14 hours. Wow. So that's quite a big improvement for that. So again, this concept of how you eat, not only what you eat, but how you eat. So I think there isn't one magic solution, which everyone's looking for the magic bullet, but it's this slow shift towards this healthier way of eating.

Real foods, not all these ultra-processed foods with these chemicals like sweetness, and emulsifiers that interact with our gut microbes and make them do things, you know, unhealthy chemicals they produce. So it's moving people in the right direction and realizing it's not a quick fix. It's a slow progression as you slowly build up your plants. Someone with IBS finds it very difficult to suddenly treble their fiber intake. You know, you've got to realize that this takes months and months.

And, you know, to reverse probably, you know, 10 years of problems. I think that's really helpful to hear because I think it can be discouraging when you hear something like what we're talking about. Okay, I need to incorporate more diversity into my diet and then you go for those 30 grams of fiber, whatever, the next day and your stomach is upset. And then you just feel like, okay, well, then I must have a different issue because this doesn't work for me. So I think it's really helpful to hear that it's gradual. You know, and getting some advice for people who've got these problems, how to do it really slowly. And, you know, just don't go crazy. People just, they want to do something new and so they overreact and it often cause a bad reaction.

You know, you just overload the microbes. You know, they don't know what to do. And you get fermenting everywhere and all kinds of gas and stuff. But you've got to get back to where really we were 50 years ago and all our ancestors were. You know, we've got to get back to that position and realize we're all in this rather diseased state. We've lost about half of our beneficial microbes in the last hundred years. Wow. You mentioned orange juice. I don't want to instill fear in anybody, but are there other foods that the listeners should be wary of? I've heard you talk about these sort of healthified

breads. Could you talk about that? And is there anything else that we should be aware of? Yeah, I mean, I think most people know if they have a candy bar or a Coke or a Pepsi that's not particularly good for them, right? So I've got no real beef about that. It's pretty obvious, right? It's the sneaky ones that claim to be healthy and say, no added sugar, no calories, no this, extra vitamins. They're the ones you need to be worried about. And some good examples, as you said, a lot of breads are, you know, they use all kinds of. of wording on the label to confuse you. And ultimately, there's only two figures you need to look at

is the fibre content and the carb content. And it's got to have a ratio that is, you know, around five to one of carbs to fiber. And if it, most of the breads we eat have about 20 to one. So that's the real thing is how much fiber is actually in it. And yes, it might have a few seeds and things to make it look good. It might be dyed brown to make it look like it's whole grain, whole wheat, but all kinds of extra sugar in there. So that's the main problem. And they've got lots of additives.

So the list of chemical, if you look at it, you have a list of 20 or so. For me, I found when I did my personalized nutrition test for Zoe, that most breads, even if they were brown and looked great, gave me a huge sugar spike and a dip afterwards. And I've more or less cut them out apart from things with lots of rye in it. So pomponicle style, German breads are pretty good. They've got lots of fiber. Sourdough is generally good, but there's, again, a lot of trickery going on, people adding sprinkling bit of sourdough flour to make it smell like sourdough, but it's still made the old-fashioned way. So it's about getting to know your breads.

breakfast cereals is another one, I think. People tend to think, you know, a granola or a mousley is naturally healthy because he's got lots of bits in it, but often there's so much hidden sugar and salt in there and other added chemicals. And once you get a glucose margar on, you see these changes. But I forgot. Porridge oats, that's another one. A lot of people think that's healthy.

I thought that before I tested myself. Did you? I love oats. I do like an overnight oats with a lot of chia seeds and nuts and berries and things like that. I don't know if that makes a difference. It does. Yeah. So I tested the difference between three types, you know, the sort of instant Quaker oats.

And then you've got the jumbo oats, rolled ones, and then the steel cut, we call it. And, you know, you can tell by the cooking time, you know, one sort of instant in a microwave, the other one might take. sort of five minutes and then the other the other one is it's overnight or hours and it's the longer cooking one is you know has half the sugar peak of the instant which you know it just is refined it just popped straight out it's real just sugar and yet it's been billed as a cholesterol busting health food so yeah there are a couple of good examples there's you know many others mean all the obviously we talked a bit about diet diet drinks a lot of people have you know switch to diet drinks or some, you know, sweeteners in foods or biscuits and things like this and cookies.

And all the evidence is now showing that they have negative effects. A couple of them actually can spike your blood sugar, even though they're supposed to be inert. And all of them have an effect on your gut microbes. So, and in kids, they particularly change your threshold for sweetness. So that if you give kids lots of these artificially sweetened drinks, they'll always be for more sweet foods and won't be able to handle sour or bitter foods. So, you know, you can change the brain sort of semi-permanally if we overdo the sweetness. And so they should come with health warning.

It may not be quite as bad as sugar, but in my view, nearly as bad and worse because people think they're healthy. To that point, is a sugar, a sugar, a sugar, a sugar? I mean, is coconut sugar the same as brown sugar, the same as brown sugar, the same? same as raw sugar, you know, maple syrup, honey. I make a lot of desserts and I usually tend to use honey or maple syrup or something like that. But at the end of the day, it's still sugar, right?

Yeah. When I researched this for the new book, I was, I thought there'd be some difference between them. I wanted there to be some difference. Me too. But I really couldn't find any that in the end, your body treats it the same. There might be other ingredients in it. that have some other effects, but essentially it's the same chemical it gets broken down to.

You know, slight differences between the sucrose fructose, but any difference is pretty minor on the body. There was a big debate raging for the last 10 years, really, about high fructose corn syrup and whether that was worse for you than a standard table sugar. And I think the jury is still out on that. They work in different ways. but I don't think we can say that one is better or worse than another. And, you know, I love honey. And the only difference I could find is that if you have honey rather than sugar,

it's going to help your cough if you've got a virus or a cold, whereas normal sugar won't. So it has other properties in it. But its effect on your blood sugar is going to be unfortunately the same. So that's why the industry have about 50 different names for sugar. And beware of all of them. Well, I know that at the core of being a scientist, being a researcher, is humility and knowing that things changed, right? They're dynamic.

But did you have any kind of fundamental ideas that have changed over the years or have you discovered or researched anything in the past few years that you just went, wow? I thought I knew this and I realized that I didn't. know at all. Lots of those. Yeah. So I, like most, you know, an MD, I, you know, I used to be a rheumatologist seeing patients all the time, often overweight with arthritis, with, with nutrition issues. And I was just giving everyone the wrong, the wrong advice all the time. It was just eat less, move more. Doesn't really matter what you eat. You know, if you cut it down, you'll lose weight. And, you know, it was appalling advice. And, you know, We were trained to say that, you know, you should avoid fatty foods.

You should be having starchy carbary foods. And this is good for your heart. He's got that all wrong. And then, you know, even the last six years since writing food for life, the latest book, I've changed my mind on things like, things, you know, like fish. I used to think fish was super healthy. There's no reason not to have lots of fish. I now realize that that data is exaggerated.

and, you know, it's not harmful fish to eat, but certainly there's no evidence it's really that beneficial for you. And it's really a disaster for the planet to eating all these fish, which mainly come from fish farms and, you know, under dreadful environmental damage that we're causing if we make everyone eat fish. It doesn't make you brainy, doesn't really protect you from heart attacks, etc. So, you know, there's many things in the new book that I've changed my mind on. I'm trying to think of other ones that I got completely wrong. I used to think bread was pretty okay because it had grains and fiber in it. I changed my mind on meat and I experimented with being vegan for a while. And then, you know, we do agree that eating lots of processed meat is bad

for you. Bad gives you reduce your life, heart disease, cancer, etc. But there's no real evidence eating a small amount of good quality meat is bad for you. As long as you got a lot of, you got enough vegetables in your plate. So I've sort of reversed my my views on that. And I think generally it realized that as I've done my individual testing, you know, you can't have one rule that applies to everyone. So for me, having fatty meals is actually very good for me. And having starchy carb meals, which, you know, I thought as a doctor everyone should have turns out to be actually bad for me. So yeah, I didn't imagine that fasting would be good for me either. So yeah, I'm quite happy to say I've made lots of mistakes and I'm still probably, you know,

going to change my mind in the next few years about some other foods and things as we learn more. I think it's really important that we don't stick dogmatically. And that's one reason that I don't really want people to think of food as a religion. You've got to be in one group or another. I think we all need to be flexitarians to some extent. And, you know, the choices we make every day in food are probably the most important things we can do for our own health and probably also the most important we can do for the planet. Amazing. Well, everybody should follow you because you share so much valuable content and your books are incredible and they can listen to you on other podcasts and Zoe has a podcast as well. And I want to be respectful of your time. But I do like

ask all of my guests, one thing we should stop doing today and one thing we should start doing. Well, am I allowed to, well, if I can repeat myself, you know, stop counting calories and try and look at the real quality of the food you're eating. I think that's, and next time you eat, think that you're not eating just for yourself, but with your hundreds of trillions of gut microbes. Like you say, you never dine alone, right? Exactly. And I think changing our whole mentality about the way we think about food. And it's there to be enjoyed, but it's also, you know, realize that we're a body made up of lots of different organisms and we, you know, lots of people to look after. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. My pleasure. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate review and subscribe.

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