Dr. Tim Spector: The Truth About Diet, Gut Health, and Why Calories Fail | Health & Wellness | E410

After decades of human health research, Dr. Tim Spector believed our genes largely determined why people got sick, gained weight, or aged the way they did. But 30 years of studying identical twins revealed something unexpected: people with the same DNA could respond to the same foods in completely different ways. That breakthrough led him to uncover the powerful role of the gut microbiome and co-found ZOE, a company focused on personalized nutrition and gut health. In this episode, Dr. Tim exposes the biggest diet myths and shares simple habits to improve gut health, boost energy and productivity, and support long-term health, without obsessing over calories. In this episode, Hala and Dr. Tim will discuss: Here are the updated timestamps matching the provided section titles: (00:00) Introduction (01:30) What Twin Studies Reveal About Food (04:11) How the Gut Microbiome Works (09:17) Building a Healthier Gut Microbiome (16:26) Processed vs. Ultra-Processed Foods (26:59) Does Calorie Counting Work? (31:48) The Food Matrix and Food Structure (34:44) Dr. Tim’s Health Wake-Up Call (43:12) Grocery Store Label Lies Exposed (56:56) Fermented Foods for Energy and Focus (1:03:52) Gut Health Tips for Entrepreneurs Dr. Tim Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and director of the TwinsUK registry, one of the world’s largest twin studies. He is the scientific co-founder of ZOE, a nutrition science company built on gut microbiome research, and has published more than 900 research papers, placing him among the top 100 most-cited scientists in the world. He is the bestselling author of several books on nutrition and gut health, including The Diet Myth, Spoon-Fed, Food for Life, and Ferment. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod ElevenLabs - ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs helps businesses deliver better customer experiences. Start with a demo at ElevenLabs.io/profiting Quo - Bring your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting. Resources Mentioned: Dr. Tim’s Company, ZOE: zoe.com Dr. Tim’s Book, The Diet Myth: bit.ly/DietMyth Dr. Tim’s Book, Ferment: bit.ly/-Ferment Dr. Tim’s Instagram: instagram.com/tim.spector Dr. Tim’s Podcast, ZOE Science and Nutrition: bit.ly/ZOE-applepodcasts YAP E406 with Naveen Jain: youngandprofiting.co/NJ-E406 Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Biohacking, Motivation, Manifestation,, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Calorie counting just doesn't work. We've been brainwashed for the last 40 years into thinking that calories were the thing. When you look at the actual data of all the studies done, 80 or 90% have returned to their baseline weight, and then they tend to overshoot.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Dr. Tim Spector is the founder of the UK's largest twin study and the co-founder of Zoe, a personalized nutrition company. This episode deep dives on how gut microbiome determines our individual response to food and why shifting focus from calorie counting to food quality is the real key to long-term health.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  70 to 80% of people believe that if they see high protein in a product, it's healthy. Only 10% of people need more protein, whereas 95% of people need more fiber.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  If something is labeled "organic," is that something that we should take seriously or is that just hype?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  The certification of organic in the US is pretty poor, and you might be end up paying twice as much for something that says "organic." There are lots of exceptions, but food companies deliberately make food softer and faster to eat. They want you to absorb it without noticing in front of the TV. We all know that feeling where it's a big bag of Doritos, or Pringles, or whatever it is, they've got exactly that formula.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  We're reading the back of a package and looking at the ingredients. It's like, what are some red flags to show? Okay, this is ultra-processed.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  If you had to look at one thing on there, even if it says "low fat" on the front, that's a pretty good red flag because...

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Tim, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Great to be here.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  I am very excited for this interview. I can't wait to learn all about gut health and the types of foods we should be eating. And when I was studying you, one of the things that I found really interesting is that you've done an extensive amount of studies on twins. You actually started something called Twins UK. And based on that, you realized that genetics aren't the major factor when it comes to what we eat and how it impacts us, and that different foods can actually impact people with the same genetics differently, which I just thought was so mind-blowing. Can you explain to us some of the studies and research that you've uncovered via twins that helped you understand how food really impacts our bodies?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  It's taken me 30 years to get to this point, so it wasn't overnight. And I was a very keen geneticist, thinking that everything was genetic, and so a big proponent of that. And it took really one experiment to change my mind, which was looking at identical twins who were raised together and really lived together until they were in their twenties, and looking at their gut microbes and seeing that when you looked in detail and you sequenced their gut microbes, the species they had were really very different. They only shared a small fraction of all those species and even less of the subspecies.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And that was the first time in about 20-odd years that I'd seen anything really different in identical twins. Generally, they matched because they either had the same environment or they had the same genes. There wasn't this rather randomness of finding these microbes. So for me, that was a big turning point in my career as a researcher and got me moving away from genetics, which I thought was the magic bullet for everything, into this new field, this is about 15 years ago, of the microbiome and gut health. Because for me, it was perhaps this missing link between, you know, what we've misunderstood about food, thinking that everyone who eats the same food reacts the same way.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  And suddenly you realize, well, if identical twins have different microbes, then they, in a way, react with food differently, that could explain why they die of different conditions, why one gets ill and the other one doesn't, et cetera, et cetera. So that really fascinated me, is this extra bit of individuality we've all got that you can see clearly in these identical twins that's quite difficult to see in the general population.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  I don't think our listeners truly understand what microbiome means. Like, this is a really trendy word that we're hearing. I just had Naveen Jain on the show, and he was talking about gut health and microbiome. And I'm curious to understand, like, what is the job of the microbiome? Like, what does it actually do? I know it transforms simple food into more complex food, and I don't think people quite understand, like, what is the job of a microbiome?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  But we use them as chemical factories. They're like a whole grouping of communities of mini pharmacies that are converting the components of the food we eat into amazingly helpful chemicals for our body. And so I think that's the best way of thinking of them, is this really rich, diverse community of, you know, maybe everyone has maybe a thousand different species and subspecies inside them, all of which are producing different chemicals. And they do that, depending on what you... If you feed them right, you get the biggest diversity of chemicals. And those chemicals go on and help us in three key ways.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  They help our metabolism to stop us maybe overeating and putting on too much fat and sorting out our heat and the general mechanics. They also are important for our nervous system. So things travel up from our gut to our brain, and they will determine things like our mood and influence whether inflammation in your gut is going to cause depression, things like this. And they're also really important for our immune system. And this, we're realizing more and more how important the immune system is for every aspect of our health, because it stops us aging, it stops us getting cancer, it stops

• 7:13Speaker 01

  us getting allergies, you know, you name it, the immune system now is involved. So that's what they're there for. As far as we're concerned, they're just trying to survive. But we're, in a way, we give them a nice home in our gut and a place to live. We feed them every day, and in return, with evolution has worked out, they provide us with a lot of these chemicals. Some of them are things like vitamins and all the B vitamins, for example, they produce, as well as lots of gut hormones for breaking down food. So it's a really close relationship we've got with them that, you know, we've evolved over millions of years really to have.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Can you give us a concrete example, like, what happens when we eat, like, a piece of fruit versus when we eat something ultra-processed in terms of how our microbiome utilizes that food?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a piece of fruit, that won't be absorbed in the upper part of the gut. It goes right down to the lower part, the lower intestine, so it takes longer to get there. And the skin particularly will have lots of fiber in it and also have these polyphenols, which are the defense chemicals you find in natural fruits that protect the plant, but also our microbes extract from that fruit. So they're extracting the fibers, they break it down in our lower gut, they use the fibers for energy and to produce other chemicals. They're like the building blocks of these chemicals we're talking about.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And the polyphenols, these defense chemicals that give the color to the fruit or the bitterness, say in olive oil, they're used by the microbes as fuel. So they're an extra source of fuel, again, to make them grow better and produce more goodness. Now, that's what should happen, and that's what happened to our ancestors when we have ultra-processed food, UPFs. What happens is that most of that, it's eaten very fast, it gets mostly absorbed in the upper part of our intestine, so our microbes generally don't get to see it. And it has very little fiber in it, so they're basically being starved of food.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And the sugars and the fats are getting absorbed quite quickly with any modest interaction with our gut microbes. There's also none of these natural defense chemicals, these polyphenols. And then you've got these unnatural chemicals like artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, preservatives, et cetera, which, some of them are absorbed, but others do go into the gut where they can cause problems for our gut microbes, make them stick together, make them produce chemicals that might lead to diabetes, and have various different effects that we hadn't really thought about 10 years ago.

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• 11:24Speaker 00

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• 12:08Speaker 00

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• 12:22Speaker 00

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• 13:19Speaker 01

  ...to work out what they want to eat. We've come up with a few basic principles of what microbes really want. And we did this in conjunction with the company I co-founded, Zoe. And these principles, which we're trying to sort of educate everyone with, are that microbes like diversity of plants. So eating the same kale salad every day isn't going to work, isn't going to work because each plant has different fibers and therefore it has a very different chemical composition and our microbes are fussy. And that's why we've come up with eating 30 different plants a week as a goal to try

• 14:03Speaker 01

  to hit that target and exceed it. And if you do that, that's the best way to get a diverse growth of all these microbes because the more you have, the healthier you'll be. Second would be to eat the rainbow so that you're getting these defense chemicals, these polyphenols. So you pick brightly colored plants, also bitter ones. So things like dark chocolate, olive oil, coffee, even red wine have some benefits because of the polyphenols. Then you've got eating fermented foods. So studies have shown that if you have at least three portions of fermented food, you can really, really enhance your immune system and get your gut going in ways that are different

• 14:47Speaker 01

  to the diversity. So in a way, that's a complementary system. And fermented foods are contain live microbes in food. So they're like probiotic tablets, but actually living and they're in food. And they're much more diverse. And then you've got other, other little tricks such as trying to eat more legumes as a source of protein rather than just raw, you know, big chunks of meat. Giving your gut a rest after, so time restricted eating. We know that your gut microbiome and the gut lining improve when you have at least 12 hours overnight when you're not eating. So cutting out late night snacking.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Then you've got, a crucial one is to cut out ultra-processed foods as much as possible. We can talk about which ones because they're not all the same. And they're not all bad. And then finally, I think the key is to think of food in terms of quality, not calories. Because the food companies want us to think about food solely in terms of macronutrients and calories. And that helps them, but it doesn't help your gut microbes. They want quality, they want real food. And we should be thinking about the quality of the food we're eating and ignore calories

• 16:11Speaker 01

  because calorie counting just doesn't work in its, nobody, nobody in my field in nutrition now believes in them.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, this gives us so much to kind of dig on. So first, with the 30 different plants in a week. That can sound really overwhelming, but that also includes things like spices, correct?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  A teaspoon of spices counts as a plant. You're talking about every different type of nut and seed. And there's many of those. You can put them in a, in a jar, which I, you know, I do every morning. So herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, even different colored vegetables. You know, you can get carrots, you can get like Persian carrots, which are purple, different to orange ones. They have different chemical compositions. So as far as the microbes are concerned, it's a different treat for them. And yeah, it's really important.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  I think this goes against like what is viral on social media because everything is about meal prepping and, and making one meal and then eating it all week. Like that is like a big thing that a lot of health conscious people do. They're trying to eat healthy. So they're meal prepping the same meal, then eating it every day. So to your point, if you're eating like different nuts or like other ways to kind of get different food into your system, if you're meal prepping, like that's ideal.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, nothing wrong with meal prepping. If it's a healthy meal and you wouldn't otherwise be having healthy food. But I think finding ways to enhance the plant count and vary it a little bit is really important. That's, so, you know, this whole concept is really important because it, people have got used, they get into a rut. You know, you go and you say, what's my average lunch? And you always have the same salad in the same place. And it seems healthy, but for your gut microbes, you know, they get bored and only those guys will survive. You know, we know from some of our studies that there's a microbe inside you that only eats coffee.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  And so if you never drink coffee, this guy's never going to grow. And so there might well be one for avocados or blueberries or baobab, you know? And so being more adventurous is part of this. And, and the fact that some people find it hard, they say, oh, it's too hard, I can't do that. So we did actually come up at Zoe with a solution, a prebiotic mix of 34 plants, most of them freeze dried, that people could add to their, their food. So if they were meal prepping, you just add these 30 odd extra, you know, dried plants. And that gives you the diversity. We did a study on it. It's called Daily 30.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And it actually had more effect on your gut microbes than say a standard probiotic. I think it's a different mindset of, of what you need to do to, to eat well. It's to really be adventurous in what you're adding and just think, what haven't I had, what haven't I had this week?

• 19:11Speaker 00

  And I know we want to discuss the difference between ultra-processed food and just processed food because a lot of guidance out there is like, don't eat anything in a box, don't eat anything in a can. But that's not necessarily true and that's also not practical for a lot of people.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Cans are generally pretty healthy. So lots, I eat lots of stuff out of cans and often they're minimally processed and very nutritious. So you buy a can of beans and if there's not too much of a sweet sauce on it or no sauce, it is ideal. And there's, you can get 20 different types of bean just about in the United States. Very cheap, very nutritious, good source of protein, but also importantly, lots of different interesting fibers. And then you've got, you know, you can buy cans of tomatoes. They're actually better in a, in a can often than buying them from a store.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  They've actually have, they've done tests on it and some of their nutrients like lycopene, which is preventive for some cancers like prostate cancer. There's more of it in the, in the, in the can variety than not.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  So cans are great. Frozen, the frozen aisle is also really good, interestingly. So if you buy the pure stuff, I'm not talking about, you know, the ready meals, but if you're buying just some chopped vegetables, beans, peas, or frozen berries, actually they're often at least as nutritious as the fresh ones. So, and they're something you can always keep in your freezer and pull out when you need it. It doesn't have to be seasonal and they're very cheap. So I think the idea that cheap means processed isn't always correct. And I think that's, it's a big misconception.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  And I also think people get confused, like, like yogurt is technically processed, right? Sour dough is technically processed. So these are actually pretty healthy foods if you're getting, you know, if you, if it has like pure ingredients and doesn't have like any funny ingredients in it. Those are technically processed foods, but still very good for you, right?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Virtually everything is processed to some degree. Yeah, as you said, yogurt, cheese, all the dairy products. And we know that, you know, things like yogurt have been shown to be healthy for us. So I think we need to stop worrying about that and start thinking more sensibly. Has that processing led to something unhealthy about it? And the current definitions of UPF are really far too broad because the current definition is not a, it's not a health score. It's a processing score. So it's saying how much, according to these Brazilian researchers, this food has been processed in very broad categories.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  There are only like four categories of them and something could have... Very minimal amounts of processing that aren't harmful for your health. And yet it's included in the the top category. So I think they were fine for research at population level, the sort of stuff I do epidemiology, but not for an individual. And that that's why we've come up with a new way of scoring this, that instead of sixty percent of all your food being UPF, you have to avoid, we've cut it down to about twenty five percent of the real ones. And it's not just processing score, it's actually accounting for all the things in ultra-processed food that are bad for you, which is quite interesting, really,

• 22:43Speaker 01

  because up until recently, we had no clue what they were. We thought it was just the additives, you know, and people focused on these diet, these red dyes or something else. But that's just one part of the story. So we took really separate categories. So what we did at Zoe was we looked at those additives, but we only included additives we worried about that were had been associated with some health problem. Because some some additives are like vitamin C, right? So you're not going to say, I'm not going to eat that because it's got vitamin C in it, or iron, or something else like that. So that was one category. The second was something called hyperpalatability, whether it's, has it been

• 23:28Speaker 01

  designed by the food companies to make you keep eating it and never get full, right? This is this so-called bliss point in the brain that the scientists in these companies are really brilliant at. And, you know, we all know that feeling where it's big bag of Doritos, or Pringles, or whatever it is, they've got that exactly that formula that is that combination of the sugar, the salt, the fat, that just makes you keep eating and overrides those signals. So you just stuff your face, you're not really getting the normal signals that you should be. So hyperpalatability is the second thing that we measure.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  And about seventy percent of these foods have that particular quality. And it's it's good to have that warning about it. Then you've got things like the texture of the food. So we know that food companies deliberately make food softer and faster to eat. And so there's been some recent studies showing, giving people two identical diets, and one was textured really softly, the other one, the original texture. So one was processed, same basic ingredients, calories, etc. And those people ate about nearly four hundred calories more a day, just because the food was softer. And we know now that generally,

• 24:52Speaker 01

  when you're having these these particular high-risk foods, you will overeat by about five hundred calories a day, which, you know, is over, you know, twenty percent of your in your intake, without knowing it. And you can have the identical food made from scratch, the identical food made there. But now we're starting to understand the mechanisms. And so this is why we've come up with an app that gives you this this new ultra-processed risk score. So you can scan stuff in a store and work it out. Because it's not easy in your head to work out all these different combinations. And this is what the manufacturers really rely on, that it's so hard to tell, because they've all got health claims on

• 25:35Speaker 01

  the front, and they all look fantastic. And, you know, lots of healthy farmers and happy people and pictures of vitamins dancing around. So it's understanding the basic science of what they're trying to do allows us to then combat it and realize, okay, this is the antidote. These are the ones you have to avoid.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  That's really fascinating. So is the app, is it like the Zoe app? And is it available in the US as well?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yes. So and it's currently free to download. So it's, if anyone's listening, you know, it's it's a fantastic way, an aid to understand this whole thing. And you just use as AIs, you snap a food, or you're going to a store and snap the barcode, and you can learn a lot from it. So yeah, download it while it's still free.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  So what is some quick ways, like for reading the back of a of a package and looking at the ingredients, like what are some red flags to show? Okay, this is ultra-processed. And then secondly, like, what are some examples of some foods that they're making softer that we should be aware of?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Assume you don't have the app, you're in a hurry, you're looking at the back. Generally, as a broad rule, the number of ingredients, things you don't understand, if there's several that, you know, you you can't, you don't know what that means, that's a sign that there's lots of processing in there. If you've got lots of emulsifiers in there, which are these things, these glues that stick the food together, that's generally a red flag. And of course, the more they've tried to color it or add taste flavors to it, it's a sign the more they've distorted the actual original structure of the of that food and are making it in the way that you shouldn't. It also generally they're low

• 27:23Speaker 01

  in fiber. So trying to look at the fiber count, if you had to look at one thing on there, generally, and it might say low fat on the front, that's a that's a pretty good red flag, because they generally, it's cheaper for them to add in other texture products like starches that are slightly sweet, and remove the fat, which saves them money. And so you end up having more sugar and less fat, and helping their profits. So yeah, generally, look at the back.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast, and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling, because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious. So I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show, and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to ten times more than traditional

• 28:37Speaker 00

  marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled. So if you've got products to sell, and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download it, and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store. Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch

• 29:18Speaker 00

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• 30:44Speaker 00

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• 30:53Speaker 01

  And it becomes unbearable. All you're thinking about is food. And that's how we've evolved as humans. So that's why, you know, this isn't true. And as I was saying, these experiments, which we did with ultra-processed food, were using identical meals in terms of calories. So if you think about it, if you're only talking about calories, you could be out by five hundred calories a day, because you're eating the junk food with low calorie, rather than the real low calorie made from scratch. And you'll be having twenty percent more food in that day, just because you're picking the junk. And you're counting, you

• 31:35Speaker 01

  can be counting calories. So clearly, you know, something's wrong with this equation. It isn't a one size fits all, that everybody's the same, you know. And why, you know, why should you only have two thousand calories? How, you know, how's that worked out? We've all got different exercise levels, but it all comes this, there's a, there's a big industry around calories, diet foods, you know, short-term goals. People love a single number. We, you know, humans are suckers for the quick solution. And, oh, wow, I just need this. This is a fantastic low-calorie thing. I can take it. It's like the magic pill. But it doesn't work like that. It's all about the hunger levels. And that's

• 32:19Speaker 01

  why Zoe, you know, we're trying to, we say, you know, don't mention the C word, right? It's like. We it's really important. You've got to stop thinking about it and have more to add more to your plate, you know, which means more, you know, in bringing enjoyment back into food, but going back to those whole foods that have lots of fiber in it, lots of diversity, lots of plants. Um, but you know, still having your, your meat, if you like it, it, it, it, nothing's off the table, even the occasional donut, it doesn't matter as long as you've got a long-term goal that eighty percent of the time you're doing the right thing. And that's, that's really our, our idea is to really make people think about food in

• 33:02Speaker 01

  a different way because it's not about a few weeks and I can lose a few pounds. It's, you know, how do I shift uh everything about my body and my gut microbes in that right direction that's going to last me for decades and help my immune system and everything else. And once you start to feel better, then it becomes obvious. And our studies have also shown that if you do this and you disregard calories, you will lose weight and you actually get less hunger. So all of the trials we do, whether it's with our pre-bartic, our fermented food, or, you know, following the app, uh, hunger signals go down. And this is because when you're eating things like plants and improving your gut microbes, it's

• 33:47Speaker 01

  sending different signals to your brain than if you're just having uh low calorie junk food. And I think that's really important that, you know, we've got to get back to quality of, of food, uh, and not, not about calories and quantity.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Speaking of quality of food, you talk about something called the food matrix. Can you help us understand like what the food matrix is? Uh, when I heard of it, I thought of like the food pyramid, but I'm not sure that's the way that I should be thinking about it.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  No, the food matrix is, is really another way to talk about food structure. So, um, and it's another example of how, um, you know, calorie counting is, is way off because it, it will treat a bag of our whole almonds, the same as um, a bag of almond flour. And yet, we know from careful experiments that if you give people almond flour, they'll be getting like twenty percent more calories from that than the raw almonds. Uh, and the energy, because if you break it down as the, as the, you know, in industrial food places

• 34:53Speaker 01

  do into its tiniest components, you're breaking apart the cells of the plant. And when you do that, you're releasing uh sugars or fats that are stored inside there. Whereas if you have the whole nuts, for example, a lot of this, that there's uh fats and, and sugars in those are not going to be absorbed until really low down, or they might actually pass out in the toilet. So that's what we're talking about women's structure. And there's lots of examples, whether it's nuts or chickpeas is another one. You know, if you have whole chickpeas rather than uh you mush it up as hummus, there's a slight, there's a slight difference in that, in how you absorb it and, and its effect on the body. So all comes

• 35:34Speaker 01

  back to the quality and, and the more whole foods you're eating, uh, the better it is for your body and your metabolism. It sort of makes sense from an evolutionary point of view because it also takes more time to eat, gives your body time to react normally in the way we were evolved to do, and also makes, fills you up as it, as it's supposed to do. Whereas everything about the industrial process is to speed it up. And if it can get you that food down, say, you know, you finished your meal in fifteen minutes or ten minutes or whatever, then your hunger centers won't have uh kicked in in your brain as well. So it's, it's, it's all part of the same idea. So structure is very important. Again, it goes with texture and softness and all these things.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  I want to spend a moment on your story. So I found out that your father actually passed away quite young, around fifty years old, of a heart condition. And uh, it was kind of unexpected and it was a turning point for you, uh, maybe not immediately, but at some point, uh, when you had your own health scare. Talk to us about the things that have happened in your life that made you realize that things really need to be different and that even though you thought you were operating in a healthy way, you needed to change your own health.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's nothing quite like, you know, personal experience or tragedy to wake you up. And, you know, for much of my thirties and forties, uh, you know, I was an arrogant, cocky M D, uh, you know, who are particularly arrogant, you know, confident because that's what we're trained to do. Um, thinking that I had the answers and that, you know, uh, we didn't learn much about uh food or nutrition at medical school, but no one, no one did. But um, I still had the answers because, you know, the pills were the answer and everything else. And I, you think you're in fairly invincible and

• 37:35Speaker 01

  you don't worry about long-term health. When I was um, uh, fifty-four, I had a, uh, this mini stroke as I was, I was on a top of a mountain in, in Italy and um, had some high blood pressure. I got better in three months, but it was a bit of a shock to the system uh, because I suddenly realized I was so close to when my father had died. And it sort of got rid of that complacency in me. So I.

• 38:05Speaker 00

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• 40:00Speaker 01

  We had a bit of a reality check and said, gosh, am I, you know, this twenty pounds I put on in the last twenty years, maybe it's not all muscle, you know? A lot of, a lot of men just say, hey, I'm bulking up. This is great, you know? Because I didn't, I didn't look fat. Um, but there was, it was certainly been slowly accumulating. And I suddenly realized my diet was pretty terrible. Uh, you know, once I started researching this, and I, I was writing a book on the microbiome at the time called The Diet Myth. And I really started breaking it all apart, but and, and suddenly realizing that, you know, my, my breakfast was wrong, my uh lunch in the hospital of a sandwich and orange

• 40:40Speaker 01

  juice and a bag of chips was wrong. Uh, you know, me just having uh lots of low-fat foods and lots of pasta and bread really wasn't very good for me. And so, yeah, I suddenly realized that I had to change if I was going to avoid the fate of my, my father. And uh, you know, it, it really drove me not only to look after myself, but also, you know, to, to rewrite a lot of these nutritional guides because a lot of those, the nutritional guidelines haven't caught up with the latest science and they're, you know, always lagging at least ten years behind. So that was really important to me. But it was, it was, it was a bit of a journey.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and you actually basically pivoted your career at that point. And you started uh putting yourself in conversations. And, and was it hard to gain that credibility initially with other thought leaders? Because they're like, who's this guy? Came out of, came out of nowhere.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, no, it was. And uh, yeah, you get treated like shit. They say, who is this guy? He hasn't, he hasn't done ten, twenty years in the field like we have. But I was sort of used to it because I've changed careers a few times. Um, I started as a rheumatologist. I was, you know, like a board certified rheumatologist. Um, and then I got into epidemiology. So I went back to school, um, did my thesis on that. And then I got, I had to teach myself genetics. So, um,

• 42:14Speaker 01

  I I got a few, you know, cold shoulders doing that as well, um, as you can imagine. So by this time, I I got over that initial thing. And it's it's probably the reason most doctors don't change specialty is doctors don't like change. And they feel like I've done, I've spent the hard yards doing all this. You know, um, you know, all my certificates on the wall, you know, why am I gonna listen to this new guy? But I think it's it's been great, really, because it gives you much broader view of everything. And medicine really needs a holistic view nowadays, uh, rather than these minute, you know, these people who have these tiny specialties that miss the point. And I think this is what I'm realizing more and more.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  Totally, and I'm sure your work with genetics really helped you understand nutrition even more and in a different way than everybody else did.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's right. And we realized we only cracked genetics when we got really big numbers. So for ten years, I was writing lots of papers, you know, I've written nearly a thousand papers. It's crazy, but a lot of them were rubbish, you know, they were just, uh, in the early days, you thought this was a, this gene was associated with this, and this is, we found the obesity gene, we found the, you know, depression gene, it was all nonsense until we got really big numbers. We're talking, you know, ten, hundred thousand people, then we started to see some real answers. And the same has been true in nutrition, and that's driven me both, you know, nutrition and gut health. That's why we're doing studies now with three hundred thousand people, which, uh, you know,

• 43:49Speaker 01

  through all these members of Zoe now, that we can really separate, uh, the wood from the trees in ways that we couldn't do before. And and that's been a huge lesson for me, which, you know, the nutrition field was quite happy to look at twenty people, um, at a time, generally, you know, uh, US students, um, usually male, usually, you know, under twenty five, so not very generalizable. So, um, I think it is, yeah, experience in other fields is really important. And I I think more people should definitely do it and take the, take the plunge. Although, you know, the first time you do it is not easy.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  I think more people should get involved in this food revolution that's going on because it is so needed, like, it's, it's absolutely mind blowing to me when I have these conversations with scientists and doctors like you, when we just realize that so much of what we're eating is basically food that is not really food, but just edible and and kind of mimics what food should be. And that these scientists that work at these food companies are modifying food in a way that makes us eat more, that makes us like hungry all the time, that's not actually giving us nutrition, that's ruining our microbiome, like, it just seems so immoral.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Well, it is when you, it is when you put it that way, but it's like, we haven't been educated. We don't get taught in school about nutrition. Um, we've had very little way of fighting back. And, you know, as I said, we're, we're susceptible to the the easy solution, aren't we? You know, we, we like, we're proposed something, oh, this is the cure, you just have to take these pills. You can tap the crappy diet, but as long as you got these supplements, um, which make huge amounts of money for those companies, you'll be fine. And then you get these influencers are paid by the supplement companies to tell you exactly that. And again, people want a simple, black and white solution. And of course, it's very complex, you know, nutrition is, is moved from being the most boring

• 45:50Speaker 01

  science subject to probably the most complex and interesting, uh, in in my view. So, you know, no, no doctors went into nutrition because it was too dull. Uh, that's, that's the honest, that's why there are no real M D nutrition, um, experts, or very few of them. Uh, it was, it was incredibly dull because, you know, after the Second World War, it was all about vitamin deficiency, uh, not about, um, you know, dealing with, uh, modern food and the food industry. So it's sort of understandable why we're in this, but I think, given that we have incredible power over what food choices we make, at least most of us do, not everybody, you know,

• 46:30Speaker 01

  but those with, with any sort of income, you know, we're making hundreds of food choices a week. And it's not like exercise where you have to give up, you know, several hours of every day. It's just a simple choice. You can say, I can put this in my mouth, or I can, I know, I can pick, pick something else. And that's what we're not, we're not realizing, that we've got this incredible power to change ourselves and to change our, our destinies and live another, you know, ten years of healthy life just by making better food choices, not, not by, you know, spending lots more time in the gym.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  Well, this is such a great segue because, like you just said, we have agency, but we need to understand how to kind of understand the marketing that's getting pushed at us and what is real versus what is BS. So I thought we could play a little bit of a game where we talk about the grocery store label lies. So what do these labels actually mean? And what do we need to look out for? Okay, so the first one is when we're in the grocery store and we see something that says low calorie. A lot of people will pick that up, think that's healthy for us. Why is low calorie not necessarily healthy?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Well, I'd stick that in the trash because it means that they've reduced the sugar in some way. Uh, generally, it's the sugar they they go for, and they've replaced it with something else. Um, and that could be low quality fats like palm oil, or they've added artificial sweeteners and a mix of those. So, um, or they've just given you a very small portion size. That's the other way around it, so, you know, ba- baby portions. But generally, for me, it's a red flag, but, um, I would never buy anything that says, uh, low calorie on it. Because, you know, unless maybe, you know, you wanted to switch from regular Coke to, uh, Diet Coke,

• 48:28Speaker 01

  which is probably slightly better for you, uh, you know, if you've got diabetes or something, yes, in those instances, might be worth it, but, uh, generally, it's a red flag.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  To me, soda in general, like, don't put it in your grocery cart, right? Like, just avoid at all costs.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yes, there's, it's, it's a, the whole area is a massive red flag. And, uh, if you're not having lots of sugar, you're having lots of, uh, chemical sweetness. And, uh, we still don't know the long term effects of those.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Okay, if something is labeled organic, is that something that we should take seriously? Or is, does organic not really matter? Is that just hype?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it sort of depends on what product you're looking at. Um, in general, uh, the certification of organic in the US is is pretty poor. So there's lots of misclassification and misselling. Um, and you might be end up paying twice as much for something that says organic. Um, if it's a product, for example, that has high, um, pesticide or herbicide use,

• 49:34Speaker 01

  buying an organic one is likely to give you less of that chemical. So a good example might be if you have oats for breakfast every day. Um, then, uh, you'll be getting, you know, only twenty percent of the, the spray chemical on it, the glyphosate or on your oats, if you chose the organic one and it was true. Um, but for many products, it's, it's probably not worth it. And I'd rather people spend their money buying, you know, better quality, uh, fruit and veg than only getting organic. I mean, in general, though, we, you know, we should support farmers that try and do things organic because it means they are taking more care, um, over those products.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  And so there are lots of exceptions, but, um, some things it's not worth, you know, um, if you're worried about the spraying of chemicals and you're buying an orange, well, you just peel the orange, you know, it's got a thick skin, so you're not gonna get it anyway.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Things you're having a lot of, then, then you might want to reduce your, those, uh, particular risks, like berries and strawberries get sprayed a lot. So, uh, again, if you're having those regularly, might be worth it. But as a general rule, I think it's slightly overhyped. There's no big evidence of people shifting makes a massive difference. If you've got the money, go for it. If you haven't, don't worry about it.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  Now, this is a really popular one. Now, everything says the amount of protein on the front, high protein, high protein. Is that becoming like the new low calorie, low fat?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, for a year or two now, the, there's been protein mania. And food companies love it because it's, there's lots of cheap protein out there. They can add in powders to anything.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Uh, I've seen surveys in the US showing that seventy to eighty percent of people believe that if they see high protein in a product, it's healthy, and they don't look beyond the protein. So it's definitely gonna replace the low calorie. And, you know, you see this turning up in all kinds of terrible snack bars that, uh, look incre- are incredibly unhealthy. And they've just added a bit of soy protein or milk protein on the top, and it's.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Like protein bars that we all get, yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  They're generally absolutely terrible. So, yeah, I think that's a real red flag. Uh, you know, if you want protein, get the high quality stuff, uh, you know, uh, if you want, you know, dairy and, uh, red, red, you know, lean meat and, uh, things like this, uh, and legumes. Um, don't buy it in a chemical form because the average American is already getting, uh, more than enough protein. There are, you know, a few people who are protein deficient, but the vast majority of people, uh, unless they're sick, elderly, or, you know, uh, bodybuilding are not, are not really gonna be needing any extra. There's getting plenty.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, you say there's a fiber crisis, not a protein crisis, like, we've got it backwards.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, you know, only ten percent of people need more protein, whereas, uh, ninety five percent of people, uh, need more fiber. Um, it's, it's, we're really deficient, um, uh, in the Western world on, on fiber. And, yeah, the USA is probably leading the world on that.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's something we don't wanna be number one for, for sure. Uh, what about the word natural?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Uh, pretty meaningless. Um, you know, opium is natural, isn't it? And, uh, you know, it's sort of necessarily good for you. Um, so, yeah, lots of natural things. Yeah, it's a meaningless term. It doesn't have a, a clear definition. It's used on marketing, uh, again. Uh, it doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, but it, it's just a sign that someone's got to.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  They're trying a bit hard to market this at you um by using a meaningless term. Um that's full of natural goodness. And of course, you know, natural, there's this definitionally natural and synthetic. So people are using um flavorings and colorings, which I might say are natural in those products, really, whereas in the past, they didn't worry about that. So they realized the consumer doesn't want artificial dyes, but they would happy if there's something called a natural dye made from carrots or beetroot. You know, they feel a bit happier with that. But in in general, yeah, it's it's a pretty meaningless term.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  When something says made with real fruit, what do you think they're typically hiding?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Uh either there's virtually none in it, or um they're using uh some pulp of the of the fruit, and they're mixing it with other things. Um so a lot of yogurts and breakfast cereals have said made with real fruit. Uh it they don't have to say how much, what percentage is is actually real fruit. And generally, you know, you shouldn't have to tell a consumer it's got real fruit. You should be able to see it, right? And generally, you can't. And certainly, uh things like children's yogurts and breakfast cereals have these reconstituted flavored, you know, berry flavored um bits of

• 54:58Speaker 01

  starch and crumbs that they they pass off as fruit. And they might have added some puree um at some point so they can claim it. It's somewhere in that product is some real fruit. But um uh generally, yeah, that's that's another red flag.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Is there anything we didn't talk about that we should be aware of when we're grocery shopping?

• 55:20Speaker 01

  There are some really difficult items when you're shopping. Um I find bread really tough. Getting getting a good bread because they all claim to be the same.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  And it's often the ratio of the how much sugar there is in that bread compared to the amount of fibers in that bread. And that's quite a hard calculation to do in your head. Um so again, re- look really carefully, uh think because people have a lot of bread, you know, they have it regularly. So it's it's so the items that you buy all the time are really important to to scrutinize and trying to get the best one. So you should be looking at the highest fiber content and the relatively lower um sugar sugar amount. And you don't want a big list of chemicals as well. So um that's one I find difficult.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Yogurt could be like really good or really bad too, right?

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's really hard in some parts of the US, I've found, to to get a yogurt that has nothing in it at all, apart from the milk and the microbes. Um you know, the vanilla's added to standard, um you get uh sweeteners in there, you get uh bits of fruit and whatever. So you just got to try and get the least amount of ingredients, the simplest it is, uh that you know it's gonna be good. And particularly children's yogurt is even worse if you've got kids uh or you know, then really important that you you don't get them those brightly colored ones, which probably have got no live microbes in them at all. And uh they'll neutralize any any of the goodness in

• 56:55Speaker 01

  that in that yogurt as well. So I think, yes, the two aisles where I think, you know, things like the children's aisle, the yogurt aisle, um the bread aisle, that's really where you should become an expert.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  But some of these ones, you know, it may be obvious, you can work it out if they're so full of uh cartoons and messages, it's obvious. Other ones, you you may have to, you know, barcode, scan it, you know, uh with an app like Zoe's, it it can be really tough. But I think work out what you're having regularly and then always get the better version of it, I think, is is what we should be aiming at.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  I learned that you had a high microplastic count in your blood at some point. How do you feel about food packaging? Like, do do you are you concerned with that? I know you were talking about canned foods being okay, but I think there's aluminum in canned foods and and that could be really bad for us as well.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  So I looked into this and um I'm fairly relaxed about canned foods. You know, they've done lots of studies, they've been around for, you know, hundreds of years. Um but I'm more concerned now about having too much plastic. And obviously, clear dangers of buying, uh say, bottled water in plastic, you leave them in your car, it gets a bit hot, all those chemicals leak out into the water. And then if you, you know, that that's part of your regular drink, that's not good. So um I'm trying to cut down on my plastic containers um as much as I can. And making sure also when you you might microwave or heat something up, you take it out of the original

• 58:33Speaker 01

  plastic container and put it in some uh glass or ceramic. Uh I think we just, we've got a bit complacent around plastic. Um it's very cheap, it's, you know, a byproduct of the petrol industry. Um it's, you know, it's virtually forced on us, it's very hard to avoid it. And yeah, nobody wants to be think that's, you know, their brains are slowly filling up with microplastics. Um even if we even if we don't know exactly what they do. Again, if there's a simple choice, going back to my idea of, you know, we're constantly making these little food choices, you know, am I going to bother putting it into another bowl? Yes. You know, do I want my water bottle to be plastic? Or I want it to be metal or made of something else? These are very easy choices for us to make.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Without, you know, ruining your life and getting super stressed about it because you can't avoid plastic. And I think we don't want to be so plastic phobic that um we go the other way, which would make uh would probably have negative effects on your mental health.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like for me, one of the biggest health changes I could make is to start to just avoid plastic more often and avoid plastic water bottles. Like, how do you drink your water? Like, what do you use for your water at home?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  After my scare, I went and got uh water filters um installed. And so my water tastes better and it's you get the any of those microplastics filtered out. Um so I'm quite happy to have my my filtered water. Or if I do buy specialty waters, you know, I like a nice Italian or um Spanish uh mineral water, I'll buy in a glass bottle. Um and so that that works for me. And yeah, and I I I carry a metal um water bottle with me. So, yeah, I could do more, but I reckon

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  that, you know, there's a sort of very easy, easy way of doing this. Um and no one really knows, you know, I had above average microplastic levels, but nobody knows what's what's critical, you know. Hopefully, hopefully, I'll die before, you know, I have any problems due to them. But um, you know, it's it's very early science. I think there's probably many other things in our food that are worse for us than those, although they they sound scary. But, you know, we're surrounded by a lot of these, you just starving our microbes, I think, is a is is a worse crime than having a little bit of plastic every time we have a drink.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  So I want to close out today's interviews talking about fermented foods. Uh you just mentioned starving our microbes. And I know fermented foods is something our microbes really like. You actually changed your mind on this. You thought fermented foods was for like hippies. And then uh you changed your mind. So what made you change your mind about fermented foods? And what should we know about them?

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  So what really changed my mind was understanding a mechanism of how they might work. Because the field, as a sort of nutritionist, it's not well funded, the studies are small, you know, some of them are funded by dairy companies and et cetera, um which, you know, can be biased. So I thought, well, they might have some advantages, but the evidence isn't very strong. And there's no evidence that these microbes, when you drink them, say in a yogurt or a kef milk kefir, they stay in your gut and they take over, you know. So that was always a bit odd. So how do they work if they're not hanging around very long? You've got to keep drinking them and they have this effect. And how are they working? Because they'd be really outnumbered in your gut, you know, because

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  there are billions of them when you drink them, but there's trillions, hundreds of trillions of of the other guys, right? So it's a bit like you going in into a football stadium and uh and and, you know, waving your hands around, hoping everyone's going to notice, you know, it's like that that scale. So it was a study about three or four years ago by a colleague of mine, Christopher Gardner, and uh and Justin Sonnberg in Stanford, where they gave twenty eight volunteers um really large amounts of fermented food, five portions a day. They took blood every day on these guys. And they noticed that after two weeks, they'd reduced the inflammation levels in their blood

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  by about twenty five percent. And that was the first time anyone had really shown in a proper, really high level experiment, that microbes have this effect. And they would think that we didn't didn't expect, I didn't anyway, that it would be directly on the immune system, not by just inhabiting our gut microbes. They're tickling something in our gut that is sending signals to the rest of the body to say, calm down, relax. It's like having low dose of steroids, really. And to me, that was a game changer. I said, wow, suddenly, we've got a mechanism here. We know how it works. And then I went and I did a because it was only twenty eight people, usually, you

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  know, young males, uh as as always in these studies. So we did a real life study with Zoe. We got um uh we asked nine thousand Zoe members to do a citizen science study and take um fermented foods. They weren't fermented food people, and we asked them to take three portions a day for two weeks. And six and a half thousand of them did it. A thousand more dropped out, they didn't like it. But uh those that did go to the end and take it, over fifty percent of them felt better in terms of mood, energy, and hunger. And

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  they can all be related to inflammation and brain effects. And to me, those those two studies, plus, you know, all this old literature that have been around there, convinced me that these have a really important effect on our immune system via our gut microbes. And we should be having much more of it in our in our diets. And, you know, they're not And until recently, you know, they haven't been recommended, although the latest US guidelines, they've now put them back in really as a uh, and the gut microbiome is for the first time this year, suddenly I got a place.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  What, what are some examples? So there's like kombucha, yogurt, kefir, um, any other big ones that you think we should be aware of?

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  I remember by the four K's. So I get um kombucha, kefir or kefir, which is fermented milk. Uh, you've got kimchi, which uh, the national dish of Korea, which is one of the best ones, uh, cause it's got so many microbes in it. Uh, and then you've got crouts. So that's things like sauerkraut, but also could be beetroot kraut or any vegetable you can make into a kraut. Um, then you've got um, all the Japanese dishes. So anything based on soy, fermented soybeans. So that includes um, miso, um, miso

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  soup, miso paste, um, which I now use instead of a stock cube. Um, make my own miso and you know, suddenly it's in everything and it tastes amazing. And then you've got other things called, there's a something called tibicus or water kefir, which I think is going to get more attention. Um, it again, it's a bit like kombucha, but you add fruits to it and it's, it's really exciting. And you know, every country has got its own fermented food, you know, apart from um, the English speaking countries, which seem to have got rid of them uh, pretty quickly. If you travel around, you'll get, go to Africa, you get various porridges and um, uh, other

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  ferments. You go to India, they've got uh, lots of ferments there and lassies and things like this that um, are made, made with ferment. So uh, there are hundreds, hundreds, if not thousands of different ferments around the world. And uh, yeah, you can either buy them in a store, make them yourself. You know, that's why I wrote my book, Ferment, which is really to understand the science of this and uh, trying to get more people uh, having ferments. Cause I think the goal should be to get trying at three ferments a day. And if you also think that some of the things you don't think of as fermented, you've got cheese, of course, and just got to make sure it's real cheese. It doesn't come in a plastic wrapper that la,

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  and I've, I've had a cheese on my shelf that's from that famous uh, brand craft that's lasted five years. Um, it's still nice and orange and shiny. Uh, there's not many microbes there. But interestingly, we, I did do an experiment on Philadelphia cream cheese, one of America's favorite. That's got some live microbes in it. So that probably means it's also good for you. So there's lots of stuff out there. Um, you just got to, again, think about food in a different way. You know, what can I add? And, and you can add these things to your meals. You can, you know, start using yogurt or kefir instead of cream. Um, you can um, put all these, these

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  mixes, you can put, add your crouts to soups or curries. Um, lots, lots of things you can, you can do to get ferments in your diet and start slowly. You don't have to go uh, hardcore. That's the other thing.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Now for the listener who's an entrepreneur and they're obsessed with hustling, working hard, productivity, performance, thinking clearly, and maybe their motivation for eating right isn't necessarily like longevity, but it's more about how do I like decrease my brain fog, have a better mood and be more productive? What do you want to say to them?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  All the experiments we've done at Zoe have shown that the first effects of improving your diet from a gut point of view are in the brain. And if you value your brain, um, and you want to improve your mood and your energy, your tiredness, then uh, a gut friendly diet is the way to go. And it doesn't matter whether you're just shifting yourself a little bit towards more fiber and more diversity, give yourself fermented foods, or you're actually taking, you know, our prebiotic supplement on top of your food. They all work. And you

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  know, my mood has really improved since I started doing this. And, and it, it's something people don't associate with food. Um, I think that's the other important thing that um, we're never told, you know, oh, what you had for breakfast could influence how you feel three hours later, but it does. And it, and you only notice it when you start to record it. And that's what we're trying to do is to get people to make this link between the food they choose or what they ate last night, you know, how much gap they left overnight. But, you know, by me, if I went back to my old way of having breakfast, which was, you know,

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  um, you know, granola, uh, an orange juice, a bit of low fat milk and tea, or maybe a, a bagel or a croissant, you know, compared to what I have now, which is, you know, a yogurt, a kefir, nuts, seeds, my daily 30 and some berries. It's night and day, three hours later, you know, I don't need, you know, a, a double coffee and a chocolate biscuit, uh, or a snack at 11 o'clock in the morning. I just, you know, I'm full and I'm mentally focused. So I'd say to anyone listening, give it a go and you'll, you'll notice the difference in two weeks. If you think about, you know, if you're recording what your energy and mood

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  levels are before and after, and you're focused on it. And hopefully in the app, we haven't got it there yet, but we, we're going to start having a way of people can track their mood and energy, which I think uh, will be a real step forward in this because doctors never ask it. It's just not something that we don't talk about really. You know, we always assume it's other factors. It's the fact that I've got a busy life, I don't sleep well. We don't actually make that link with food, but it is, I've learned it's really crucial.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  So to recap, 30 different plants a week, three different fermented foods a day. Any other big ones that you want to call out?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots of um, bright color on your plate. So you're eating the rainbow. Um, you've got leave a gap. So no late night snacking. So you're getting at least 12 hours overnight. Switch, you know, protein source, get lots of legumes in there, beans, lentils, chickpeas, all those things are really good for you. Uh, cut out your UPFs as much as you can. Um, maybe, you know, use our app if that, you know, if that's helpful for you. Um, and forget about calories. And I think um, do all those things and uh, you'll be a new person.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Amazing. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Where can everybody learn about what you do and where can they find you?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  You can follow me on Instagram and uh, all the things I've been talking about. Uh, there's research studies at Zoe, uh, at Zoe.com. Uh, our website there has got all our research papers. We've got over 70 research papers from the team there as well as uh, the products that uh, are available. And uh, yeah, so, and we also have a podcast. So we, the Zoe Nutrition and Science Podcast is also another free uh, to listen to for anyone who's out that wants to know, dive deeper into this area.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  The Zoe Podcast and YouTube channel is actually like huge. So we'll stick all those links in the show notes. I found it really entertaining and educational. So Dr. Tim, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  It's been a pleasure.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, fam, this conversation with Tim challenged one of the biggest assumptions we've been taught about nutrition, that if we eat healthy foods, we all get the same healthy results. Tim's research showed that even identical twins with identical genetics can have dramatically different gut microbiomes. That helps explain why some meals can leave one person energized while the other person feels depleted and hungry. It's a great lesson to stop chasing generic advice from social media and start paying attention to your own body signals. When it comes to nutrition, personalized data will always be trendy, one size fits all solutions. And that's really the future of healthcare and nutrition. Tim also encouraged us to stop obsessing over calorie counting and start focusing on food

• 1:13:18Speaker 00

  quality. As he said, think of foods in terms of quality, not calories. Calories don't tell you how a food impacts your microbiome, your hunger, your immune system, or what long-term health benefits they have. Instead, focus on feeding the trillions of microbes that help power your body. Aim for roughly 30 different plant foods each week. This can seem overwhelming, but it also includes herbs, spices, nuts and seeds. Add fermented foods like kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, or yogurt into your routine. And rather than avoiding all processed foods, which some processed foods, like frozen foods and canned beans are actually good for you, learn to recognize and limit ultra-processed foods that are engineered

• 1:13:59Speaker 00

  to keep you eating more and hungry. For entrepreneurs, this isn't just a health conversation, it's a performance conversation. Your focus, energy, resilience and decision-making all depend on the fuel that you give yourself. As Tim told us, we make hundreds of food choices every week. Those choices add up. So the next time you're standing in the grocery store, don't just ask, how many calories are in this? Ask yourself, what is this doing for the person I'm trying to become? And is this healthy for my microbiome? Thank you for joining me on this episode of Young and Profiting. Every week, you're investing in your growth, your future and the impact you want to make in the world. So if this episode changed the way that you think about what's on your plate, share it with a friend, family

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  member, or anyone who needs a more freeing way to think about food. Until next time, it's your host, Halataha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.