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Everything They Tell You About Diet Is Wrong · UK Column Radio

0:38
What is your background? What is my background?
0:42
Crikey, most interesting background in terms of food, I
0:46
guess, is that my brother developed type 1 diabetes when
0:49
he was 15 and I was 13, and that acutely made me aware of things
0:54
like insulin, carbohydrate, sugar from a very young age.
1:00
Then went to Cambridge University and at about that
1:03
time we started getting some low fat diet guidelines.
1:08
Let's say that was probably around the 1990s, low fat new
1:12
dietary guidelines started coming over from the US and so
1:15
suddenly you'd go home and realise your mum had put
1:17
margarine in the fridge instead of butter.
1:19
So sort of lived through some weird changes.
1:23
Had a proper job as my mum would say.
1:25
I graduated from Cambridge, did management consultancy, went to
1:30
work for Mars Confectionery, left Mars and went to work for
1:35
Black so Smith, Kline so went from big food to big pharma.
1:38
So I've seen both of them from the inside.
1:41
Then met a Welsh guy, moved to Wales, got some jobs in Wales
1:45
which were very interesting and outside food and pharma.
1:48
And then since about 2010, I've been following my passion, which
1:53
is diet and health. So I've since done a PhD in
1:56
public health nutrition, particularly in the dietary
1:58
guidelines that I was observing. And what I do now, I guess I
2:02
read, write and talk about diet and health.
2:07
Why are we talking about diet in the year 2025?
2:11
Because everything we're told about diet is wrong.
2:14
Just everything. I mean, I, I just cannot think
2:17
of a public health message on diet or in fact a public health
2:21
message generally that is right. And that's how we connect it
2:26
because we connected through the COVID world and those of us who
2:30
are already in the real food world, the nutrition world, that
2:33
being told to eat carbohydrates and avoid fat and red meat is
2:36
going to kill you. But cereal is somehow great.
2:39
Just everything was upside down South COVID came along and it
2:43
was kind of, they're wrong on everything.
2:45
They're not going to be right on this one.
2:47
So it has actually helped some of us in the real food world,
2:50
but essentially everything from sun cream to sunbathing,
2:54
alcohol, coffee, diet, exercise, it's just all wrong.
2:59
And I started looking into how wrong it was.
3:02
And I do that every week, as you say with my Monday note.
3:06
I remember meeting Tim Noakes, who, you know, back in around
3:11
2012. We were sitting on a train
3:14
opposite each other just coincidentally.
3:16
And we started chatting and I, I spoke to him about some issues
3:20
that I've got with, with heartburn and, and, and acid
3:24
reflux and so on. And the first thing he asked me
3:26
is what do you eat for breakfast?
3:27
And I said, well, I, I eat oats. And he said, well, stop that
3:31
right now. Stop the oats all together.
3:32
Change. Change it to bacon and eggs.
3:34
And therein began a whole new lifestyle for me.
3:40
But over the years, I've constantly heard it's a fad.
3:44
Low carb I fad. It's a fad.
3:48
Tim went through, yeah, yeah, Tim went through the same
3:51
journey, which is what's is so interesting.
3:53
So most of the people that I speak with at conferences around
3:56
the world, and I've spoken at conferences in South Africa,
3:59
Saudi Arabia, Israel, America, Scotland, Norway, I mean,
4:03
literally just all over the place.
4:05
And I'd say the vast majority of people who speak at those
4:08
conferences who've written some of the Seminole publications,
4:12
academic publications or books did believe the narrative to
4:17
start with. And Tim is one of those people.
4:19
So Tim was researching in sports medicine and he was trying to
4:24
show that Gatorade was actually better for sports performance
4:27
than water. And of course, there's no way
4:30
that it is. And at some point you suddenly
4:33
realise that you've been duped by the propaganda and you you
4:37
need to sort of get back on track and, and realise what's
4:40
going on. And then of course, people say,
4:43
oh, you're the crazy ones and, and we're not the crazy ones
4:47
because if you look back over history, so if you look back to,
4:49
I don't know, 350,000 years ago when Ostropolacious Lucy first
4:54
walked upright, and that is believed to be our heritage in
4:57
terms of of being a Homo sapien. What we've been eating
5:01
throughout all of that time is basically animals.
5:04
That's when we really moved from being Neanderthals to literally
5:09
rocket scientists. So the biggest progression was
5:12
during the Ice Age, which I think it was about 10,000 years
5:15
ago. It ended.
5:16
I think it lasted about 30,000 years, if I'm remembering those
5:19
numbers correctly. And that was the time we could
5:23
not get vegetation. We, we didn't have any plants.
5:26
We were literally catching animals.
5:28
Whatever we could catch, we would eat and that would sustain
5:31
us. So that is our heritage diet.
5:34
And if you look back to what your grandmother would have
5:36
eaten, I look back to what my grandfather prepared for me and
5:41
it was eggs for breakfast and it was liver and onions once a week
5:44
and it was sardines. It was fish on Fridays because
5:47
that was literally when the boat came in.
5:50
We had all of these means. We had the Sunday roast.
5:53
The carbohydrate intake in our diet was absolutely minimal and
5:58
then suddenly we developed to having a lot more carbohydrate.
6:01
The agricultural revolution almost certainly changed that
6:04
around the 1700s leading into the 1800s.
6:07
Up until that point, our population, our lifestyle was
6:12
constrained by what we could tend that was local to us.
6:16
So we could argue that the agricultural revolution freed us
6:19
up to become poets and artists and musicians and rocket
6:22
scientists. We could also argue that that
6:25
was the time that the world population changed and that was
6:28
the time that we moved away from what made us healthy and happy,
6:32
which was working on the land and preparing our own
6:35
sustainability. So what should we be eating?
6:41
What should we eat? Real food.
6:43
We shouldn't need to call it real food.
6:45
They should have to call theirs fake food.
6:46
And then we could reclaim the word real food.
6:50
So first principle, number one, eat real food.
6:53
Second principle, there are certain things that we need to
6:56
get. The reason we eat is not just
6:58
because it's enjoyable and it's sociable, but because we die if
7:01
we don't get certain things. And if, if, if, if they're not
7:04
fatal to us, then they can be very, very harmful to us.
7:08
So we have things that we call big nutrients, macro nutrients,
7:13
and things that we call small nutrients, micronutrients.
7:16
And we know the big nutrients as carbohydrate, fat and protein.
7:20
We know the small nutrients as vitamins and minerals.
7:23
Now some of those we need some of those.
7:26
The term in nutrition is essential.
7:28
It means the what the word essential normally means, but it
7:31
means something that we must get from our diet.
7:34
The body can't make it. So in terms of the big
7:36
nutrients, two of those have essential components to them,
7:40
and those are fat and protein. There is no essential
7:44
carbohydrate. We have no requirement for
7:46
carbohydrate in our diet whatsoever.
7:48
The body will actually make any glucose that we need.
7:52
We could always come back to that, but there are essential
7:54
proteins, amino acids, There are essential fats.
7:58
We know those as omega-3 and Omega 6.
8:00
So there are certain things that we need to consume and the
8:03
vitamins and minerals, you know, if you don't consume vitamin A,
8:06
for example, you get eye disease.
8:08
If you don't consume vitamin D, you can get all sorts of stuff
8:11
from any illness up to the serious ones like heart disease
8:15
and cancer. If you don't get iron, you get
8:17
anaemia. If you don't get B12, you can go
8:20
completely loopy. There are things that we just
8:23
must consume and people just seem to have forgotten that that
8:26
is why we eat. And they just think, oh, if I
8:29
eat a variety of things, I'll get what I need.
8:32
Well, no, you won't. You need to eat some very
8:34
specific things to get what you need.
8:37
And predominantly, and I hate to say this because I was a
8:39
vegetarian for a very long period of time, we need to eat
8:42
animal foods, the stuff that we need and in the form that we
8:45
need, it is found in animal foods.
8:47
So if we eat meat, fish, eggs and dairy, we'll be fine.
8:51
If you want to add some other things on top like red wine,
8:54
dark chocolate and coffee, if you like super Greek salads and
8:57
that kind of thing, that's great.
8:59
But you've got to make sure that you get the basics.
9:02
So at this point of the conversation, we've now lost all
9:04
the vegans. Well, I understand vegans
9:08
because I was a vegetarian for 20 years and I became vegan
9:13
during that period. Some people move from
9:15
vegetarianism to veganism quite consciously.
9:18
It's very deliberate decision. They get to the point where they
9:21
think, oh, I'm not even sure about cow milking.
9:24
It doesn't sort of feel right to me.
9:26
With me, it was more of a bit of a lapse.
9:28
I'm not. I don't love cooking, I love
9:31
eating. So I've tended to have partners
9:34
that are good cooks, so my hubby, who you know, Andy, is a
9:38
great cook and he just put stuff in front of me several times a
9:42
day or three times a day and it's just fabulous.
9:45
I was dating someone in my 20s who was vegan and I hadn't quite
9:50
realised it. So I was coming home in the
9:52
evening and I was getting veggie burgers, which were actually
9:56
vegan burgers and buns, which are vegan, and brown rice, which
10:01
is vegan. And I developed a really serious
10:04
eye condition and I turned up at Moorefield's Eye Hospital and
10:07
what they should have said, and I've contacted people at the
10:09
hospital since to say you must ask people what they eat,
10:13
particularly when they're coming in with a newly acquired
10:16
condition, particularly when they're young, particularly when
10:18
they're female, particularly when they might be vegan or
10:20
vegetarian. Just ask them.
10:22
Because if somebody had said to me, what are you eating at the
10:25
moment? Are you eating any oily fish?
10:27
Are you eating any liver? Are you having any eggs?
10:30
Are you having any meat, any dairy?
10:31
It'd have been like, no, I'm not actually now you mention it and
10:35
they would have realised that I'm not getting retinol, which
10:38
is what you need for eye health. And some vegans will say, well,
10:42
you can get carotene from plants, which provides vitamin
10:46
A. You can, but the body wants
10:47
retinol and not everybody can convert from carotene to
10:51
retinol. So it's complex.
10:53
It's not just I'm going to be vegan.
10:56
It's better for the animals, which actually isn't because
10:59
there are a lot of animals killed in the production of
11:01
cereals and and so called vegan food.
11:05
That's also a myth that I was deluded by.
11:08
But you think it's better for the animals and you don't want
11:10
to eat any of them and it's not better for you.
11:13
It's not better for your health at one of the best books that's
11:17
ever been written in this field is The Vegetarian Myth by Leah
11:21
Keith. And she went through the vegan
11:22
period and she has had the most chronic health since that
11:28
period. So she's got spinal defamation.
11:31
She was never able to have children, chronic long term,
11:35
lifelong health problems as a result of thinking it was the
11:38
right thing to be vegetarian, stroke vegan when she was much
11:43
younger. So she kind of wrote the book
11:44
saying, let me tell you the problems that you can have so
11:48
that you don't have to experience those.
11:50
But people are still doing it right now.
11:52
I know vegans. I've got a close family member,
11:55
very young, who's vegan and I chatted to her last week and she
11:59
said hey, if my health suffers, so long as I don't go near
12:04
anything that's that's once been an animal or involved an animal,
12:08
then so be it. How long that can last, I don't
12:12
know. She's already experiencing
12:14
health troubles that have taken her to some of the most advanced
12:17
hospitals in the UK. But that is a belief system.
12:22
The thing though, about veganism is that I understand one of the
12:30
arguments is that they don't like the idea of animals being
12:32
killed. And that's, that's a personal
12:35
thing. And I, I get that.
12:36
And you can't really argue that. I mean, I go hunting and I
12:39
don't, I don't enjoy shooting an animal, right, which is why I
12:44
try and do it as cleanly and as quick as possible because I
12:48
know, I know what the results going to be.
12:50
There's going to be food and it's fairly healthy food.
12:52
Zoe. So I I, I get the I don't like
12:55
getting animals angle, but the reality is, is that if you make
12:58
the argument that eating meat is unhealthy, that's not a good
13:04
argument. Yeah, I've, I've looked at this
13:08
a great deal and I've actually done a presentation on Should We
13:11
Be Vegan? And because I've been in that
13:14
situation for a long period of my life and I've given it a
13:17
great deal of thought. And when you stop being
13:19
vegetarian or vegan, you really have to wrestle with some of the
13:22
arguments. So and, and Leah Keith presents
13:25
these brilliantly as well. She came across the same 3
13:27
arguments. There are three arguments for
13:29
going this route. One is the one that you've
13:31
mentioned. They don't want animals to
13:35
suffer or die for any food that they eat. 2 is this belief that
13:40
it's healthier, and three, is this a fairly newfound belief
13:44
that it's actually better for the planet?
13:45
And all three of those arguments are wrong.
13:48
The one on it's better for the animals.
13:52
You can actually have one person live entirely off 1 cow for a
13:57
whole year. SO1 animal could die for one
14:01
person to be fed for the whole year.
14:03
The idea that because you don't eat animals or anything that
14:06
comes from animals like eggs or milk, no animal has died in the
14:11
production of your food is an absolute myth.
14:15
And it's one that that you want to believe as a vegetarian or
14:18
vegan because you don't want to think of the alternative.
14:21
But the reality is if you look at combine harvesters now, if
14:24
you put a search engine in and look for images of farm
14:28
equipment used at the moment, you've got combine harvesters
14:31
that that can sweep the size of a, the length of a tennis court,
14:35
if not a football pitch. So they are ploughing down the
14:38
fields at the moment, preparing the cereals as the alternative
14:41
for eggs for people to eat for breakfast.
14:43
They are hoovering up animals galore.
14:47
There's a brilliant paper on field deaths in plant
14:50
agriculture and I think it estimated a few billion animals
14:54
that killed each Earth. I mean, just think about the
14:56
combine harvester. It's hoovering up mice and foals
14:58
and birds and rabbits and snails and worms and insects.
15:03
If you're unlucky and living near a residential area, it can
15:06
also Hoover up a a domestic pet. So you actually end up killing
15:12
far fewer animals by choosing the animal that you eat more
15:16
carefully than you do, imagining that your cereal doesn't have
15:19
remnants of animals in and I'm sorry, but A, it might and B
15:23
animals did die in the production of your food.
15:26
Even for you to eat a lettuce, you've got to have killed some
15:29
snails or some slugs to protect that lettuce so that you could
15:33
actually eat it. The notion that it's healthier,
15:36
which is touching on the point that you made, the vegetarian is
15:39
healthier because the meat is less healthy.
15:43
That is a complete and utter myth.
15:45
That's probably the easiest myth to slave because you just go
15:48
back to why do we eat, What nutrients do we need, and where
15:52
do we find those nutrients? And they are found in the form
15:55
that we need them in animal foods.
15:56
There is no debate over that is that is not an opinion.
15:59
That is a nutritional fact. So they start making up all this
16:03
stuff about animal foods because there is a strong plant based
16:07
agenda because it's just much more lucrative to produce the
16:10
plant foods. There's not much margin on a
16:14
piece of meat or on an egg. There's a lot of margin in a
16:17
cereal that can go in a box and you can put toys in it and you
16:22
can run advertising campaigns. There's much more margin in fake
16:26
food than there is in real food. So there has been a big food,
16:29
big pharma demonisation of real food and this whole, oh, red
16:35
meat is bad for you, eggs are bad for you.
16:37
That's all part of this narrative that is just nonsense.
16:41
And then the one that has come about probably in the last two
16:44
or three decades and increasingly is being used in
16:47
the academic literature is, oh, This is why we mustn't eat red
16:50
meat anymore, is that it's better for the planet that we're
16:53
eating these cereals. And you'll see some great posts
16:56
on X where somebody shows a field of grazing cattle and then
17:00
a factory pumping out pollution. And it's like, seriously, how
17:05
dull do you have to be to believe that the cows and the
17:09
sheep grazing in the fields are the problem for the environment
17:12
and not the factory pumping out margarine and cereals and
17:16
plastic toys and boxes and transporting this stuff all
17:20
around, all around the world. Let alone the fact that
17:23
certainly where I live and where you live, the animals in the
17:25
fields are the local food. So what is indigenous to the UK?
17:30
Cows and sheep? They are out in the fields where
17:34
we graze potatoes, root vegetables, legumes, which is
17:39
what they want us eat. And they say, oh, we eat all of
17:41
these whole grains and legumes. We don't grow legumes in the UK.
17:45
They've got to be shipped over from Morocco or somewhere else
17:49
in the world. We don't have berries apart from
17:51
in sort of June, July kind of thing.
17:52
So everything is upside down. And of course, the other key
17:58
point about taking animals out of the food chain, which they
18:00
would dearly love, there are people who say, oh, we need to
18:04
create viruses or something that can put people off eating red
18:08
meat. I mean, there's some really
18:09
extreme narratives coming out at the moment trying to put people
18:13
off red meat. If you take the red meat away
18:16
from the land, so you stop the ruminants, those are the animals
18:19
with the fantastic stomach systems that graze.
18:22
So it's cows, sheep, goats, deer.
18:24
Take those off the land. You end up with desertification
18:28
because it's those ruminants that are hosting the microflora
18:31
in the grasses and regurgitating it and eating it and pooping it
18:36
out and weeing it. And just this incredible cycle
18:39
goes on where they're giving back to the land, which then
18:42
makes that field OK for us to be able to put some crops in the
18:46
year after. If you go entirely arable in a
18:49
field, you will lose the soil in that field with within probably
18:53
about 20 harvests. So we absolutely must maintain
18:57
the red meat in our diets to be able to protect the rest of the
18:59
food that we want to grow it. Occurred to me that if we were
19:03
to all be vegans, right? And that includes not drinking
19:07
cow's milk. I think we'd have no cows,
19:10
because what would be the purpose of cows?
19:13
Who's going to keep a cow? Who's going to keep a chicken if
19:16
they don't eat eggs or chickens? So they'll become extinct most
19:19
likely. Yeah, yeah.
19:22
And that's pretty serious because if then a generation
19:24
said, actually, we got this wrong and the nutrients that we
19:28
need to eat are found in animals, you've suddenly
19:30
eradicated the ruminants who protect the topsoil and the
19:34
ruminants who provide the meat and the milk and the dairy.
19:37
You've eradicated those. And if you get rid of the
19:39
chickens as well, which I'm sure they'd love to, I'm sure that's
19:42
part of what all of this bird flu nonsense is about.
19:45
Every now and again and again, you see funny memes on eggs that
19:49
say, how come, you know, the sparrows that wake me up in the
19:51
morning and the blackbirds or whatever, How how come they're
19:54
not being slaughtered? But the ones that need to be
19:56
slaughtered are the ones that provide the eggs and the and the
19:59
food. Whatever.
20:01
Yeah, if we, if we went vegan for a couple of generations and
20:04
managed to lose all of those animals, they're extinct,
20:06
they're gone. We don't then have the means of
20:09
feeding the population in a healthy way.
20:12
But though we all know that eating meat increases
20:16
cholesterol and cancer. How?
20:20
I mean, it makes no sense. It just makes no sense
20:23
whatsoever. I think it was Surgeon General
20:25
Peter Cleve or something who once said for a modern food to
20:29
be sorry. For an ancient food to be
20:31
responsible for a modern disease is quite the most ludicrous
20:35
thing I've ever heard. So the idea that our most
20:38
ancient food, meat, is somehow responsible for these modern
20:42
diseases. We didn't have heart disease in
20:45
the terminology for death classifications until just after
20:48
the Second World War. I think it was around 1948.
20:52
Cancer. I didn't hear of anyone, you
20:54
know, my parents weren't running around saying, oh, John's got
20:57
cancer and Barbaras got cancer. I didn't hear the word cancer
21:01
even just in my childhood. And now it's one in two or one
21:05
in three people who've got cancer.
21:07
So you look back at cave paintings, they weren't eating
21:10
cereals and seed oils and sugar and Twinkie bars and McDonald's
21:15
and whatever. You know, the, the, The Cave
21:18
paintings are of people carrying Spears and chasing animals
21:22
because that was the food that we consumed.
21:25
So the ancient foods are not responsible for modern disease.
21:29
Far more likely it's the dangerous trilogy of the seed
21:33
oils, the sugars and the flowers and starches that are from a
21:37
dietary respective responsible for modern illness.
21:41
It's not just diet. There are many, many things in
21:45
our modern lifestyles that are not helpful in terms of the new
21:49
modern chronic diseases, diabetes, heart disease, cancer.
21:53
There are many, many things that we're doing that are unhealthy.
21:55
But you wanted to talk to me particularly today about diet.
21:58
So that's the one that we're focusing on.
22:01
Yeah, But, you know, cholesterol is the big thing.
22:04
I remember when I was a kid, you can't have more than one egg per
22:07
week or something like that. And we got to keep our
22:10
cholesterol down. And everybody that I knew was
22:13
was taking this thing called a statin.
22:16
Yeah, OK. Where do we start on
22:18
cholesterol? So the guy that first looked, or
22:20
most comprehensively looked at cholesterol was an American
22:23
doctor called Doctor Ansel Keys. And he was also the person who
22:27
did the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was a
22:29
brilliant experiment that was published around 1950.
22:32
And then he started looking into heart disease in men, because it
22:36
really was only men that was suffering heart disease.
22:38
When he started looking at this around the 1950s.
22:42
And he first of all hypothesised because of some research that
22:45
he'd come across from some Russian pathologists around the
22:48
turn of the last century, there was a hypothesis that
22:51
cholesterol caused heart disease.
22:55
And that remains actually a hypothesis.
22:57
I mean, there are so many black Swans stuff that hypothesis,
22:59
it's not true. So he started saying, well,
23:02
okay, what might raise cholesterol?
23:05
And his first hypothesis was not unreasonably that cholesterol in
23:09
food might raise your blood cholesterol level.
23:12
And he investigated that throughout the 1950s.
23:16
And there'll be a quote on my website from his.
23:18
I mean, it's in my PhD thesis, in the review of the literature.
23:22
He made a really definitive statement in 1954 saying we've
23:27
looked at observational studies, we've looked at randomised
23:30
controlled trials, we've looked at it every which way.
23:33
We can categorically conclude that cholesterol in food does
23:36
not impact cholesterol in the blood.
23:38
Full stop. Now, there are still people who
23:41
think if you eat 600 eggs a week it will impact your cholesterol
23:44
levels. And a guy called Doctor Nick
23:47
Norwich did exactly this recently.
23:49
And we found the fact that had been established over 70 years
23:54
ago that no, it's going to make no difference whatsoever.
23:57
Now, here's a really interesting food fact because I love food
24:00
facts. Things that you should get
24:01
taught about in school, but you don't get taught in school.
24:04
And then you come across them one day.
24:05
And then I'll look at it and say, is that actually a rule?
24:08
Is that kind of a law? And there is an absolute rule
24:11
here, which is really, really interesting.
24:13
So dietary cholesterol is only found in animal foods.
24:18
So there's no dietary cholesterol in things that
24:21
vegans eat. You'll only get dietary
24:23
cholesterol in animal foods. So to do all of those tests
24:28
where Ansel Keys literally gave subjects dietary cholesterol,
24:32
which is basically giving them animal foods, he concluded that
24:36
giving them those animal foods had no impact on blood
24:39
cholesterol levels whatsoever. So he's also exonerated animal
24:43
foods at the same time because that's what he had to give
24:46
people to test his cholesterol hypothesis.
24:49
And people don't realise this. You know, again, it was the sort
24:52
of finding during my PhD. And it's like, Oh my goodness,
24:54
that is a categorical dietary rule.
24:57
He has exonerated animal foods in that research when it comes
25:01
to cholesterol. So eating animal foods has no
25:04
impact on your cholesterol levels whatsoever.
25:07
And on another paper that I did for my PhD that was published,
25:11
people think if you eat plant foods it will lower your
25:15
cholesterol. And there is a mechanism by
25:17
which that can happen, but it's got nothing to do with animal
25:20
foods. If you eat fewer animal foods
25:23
and more plant foods, you will lower your cholesterol levels.
25:27
But it was nothing to do with the animal foods.
25:29
It was entirely to do with the plant foods, because plant foods
25:33
and a number of them, many of them contain something called
25:36
plant sterols, which is kind of like the word cholesterol.
25:39
It's kind of like plant cholesterol when you consume
25:42
plant sterols. And they're particularly high in
25:44
things like seed oils. When you consume those, it
25:48
competes with your human cholesterol in your body to an
25:52
extent and replaces it to an extent.
25:54
So you will end up lowering your cholesterol level.
25:57
You could do it by taking a plant sterile tablet.
26:00
You will end up lowering your cholesterol level a little bit.
26:02
But it had nothing to do with animal foods.
26:04
It had everything to do with the plant steriles.
26:07
Now, obviously, the next important research question is,
26:10
is that a good thing to do or a bad thing to do?
26:12
And the paper that I did on that in 2014 published with my PhD
26:17
supervisor, Professor Julian. Oh my God, this is so
26:21
embarrassing. You just know him as Julian,
26:23
don't you? For about 3 at work.
26:25
I'll put that in the show notes anyway.
26:27
But Julian and I basically published this paper saying, no,
26:32
when you increase the plant sterols in the diet, it makes
26:35
it, it's, it's actually harmful. It will harm your overall health
26:40
outcomes in terms of heart disease and also in terms of
26:43
cancer. So the end outcome is not good.
26:45
So you do not want to be ingesting plant sterols or
26:48
taking plant sterol tablets or taking plant sterols in seed
26:53
oils because ultimately it's going to do more harm than good.
26:55
Hey, guess what? We're designed to eat animals.
27:00
Excuse me, I I chatted to an Australian doctor maybe two
27:06
years ago and I I've also forgotten his name.
27:09
Baker. I've just remembered Julian
27:11
Baker. Oh, bacon.
27:13
No, no, no. See if you remember you were on
27:16
now. He was making a very interesting
27:20
argument that most plants actually should not be eaten by
27:24
humans. And, and, and he, he, he adds to
27:28
that saying that they are toxic. They're just precisely why they
27:31
have a very bitter taste. That's a defence mechanism not
27:35
to be eaten. And I, I've never thought about
27:38
that. And it was very interesting to
27:41
me because there are certain plants that seem to trigger bad
27:47
reactions when I, when I eat them and, and I find that if I,
27:51
for example, if I just eat bacon and eggs and basically almost
27:56
like a carnivore diet or keto diet, I tend to feel better.
28:02
Why is that? Yeah, plants contain things
28:05
like, well, the phytosterols that we've just talked about,
28:09
phytates, oxalates, they, they contain a number of things.
28:13
And I have come across that argument that they, it's their
28:17
defence mechanism. They don't want to be eaten.
28:20
I haven't looked into this to the extent that other people
28:23
have. If it's such a big field in, in
28:26
the world of diet and health, if someone else who I trust has
28:29
done a good job in a particular area.
28:31
So my go TOS on this are Doctor Georgia Eid, who is pretty much
28:36
carnivore herself and just found that her entire mental health
28:40
and that of many of her patients has dramatically improved by
28:43
avoiding a lot of plants. Obviously the carnivore in
28:47
Australia, Doctor Anthony Chaffee, has also.
28:50
That's it. Yeah, Anthony Chaffee, yeah, has
28:54
looked at this as well. So where I've ended up on this,
28:57
yes, I think it's a thing. We definitely know that there
29:00
are substances in plants where they put up a defence mechanism
29:03
and they don't want to be eaten. I think a lot of people can can
29:10
consume a lot of plants with no problem and some people can only
29:15
consume some plants with no problem.
29:18
And you've got at extremes some people who seem to get away with
29:22
eating any plants and at George's and Anthony's extremes,
29:26
some people who just feel so much better when they're not
29:29
eating any plants. So it's on a spectrum and I
29:33
think your experience is interesting.
29:36
And I think a lot of people realise that there are certain
29:39
plants that don't agree with them and they either just then
29:42
naturally avoid them or they go through a sort of food diary
29:47
exclusion exercise to try to, you know, somebody's got
29:50
bloating or irritable bowel syndrome or brain fog.
29:54
And if they came to me, for example, and said what, what
29:57
should I do? I would say keep a food diary.
29:59
Within two weeks you will identify the things causing your
30:01
problems. So write down every single thing
30:04
that you eat exactly the time that you eat it.
30:06
Write down your common lum of symptoms.
30:09
And there are some things that happen quite quickly.
30:12
So you might have wheat and you might bloat very quickly or it
30:16
might be a sort of 24 hour thing.
30:18
So watch out for both the immediate and the quite short
30:21
term kind of pattern. My husband, for example, if he
30:25
has wheat, he might get away with it.
30:27
More likely than not, he's on the toilet the next morning and
30:31
his body is just getting rid of all the stuff that he that he,
30:34
he probably would have been best advised not to.
30:38
Fodmaps is a whole area of research, again, that I've not
30:43
looked into, but I am aware of where they document particular
30:47
plants, particular vegetables that are more likely to cause
30:51
problems. So somebody says, look, I've got
30:53
some issues. A doctor, an enlightened Dr
30:56
might say to them, look, start with the FODMAP list, eliminate
31:00
those, see how you feel. If you improve dramatically, you
31:05
know it was something on that list.
31:06
And then start adding in those foods back one at a time.
31:10
And then if you add cauliflower back in, cauliflower is such a
31:13
strong FODMAP food. If you add that back in and you
31:17
find you get your bloating and tummy pain and Constipation or
31:21
diarrhoea, then you know it was that.
31:23
So just take that one out. But it's always the plants.
31:28
In all the times that I've been running a forum where it's
31:32
trying to help people eat real food and people raise issues, I
31:36
can never recall anyone who's come to me saying, oh, I have a
31:39
problem with meat or fish or eggs.
31:43
The one animal food that they might have a problem with is
31:46
dairy. And we do know quite a bit about
31:50
dairy intolerance. It's quite ethnically based.
31:54
So if someone in one of the forums that I'm in says, oh, I
31:58
think I've got a problem with dairy and I can see on their
32:00
profile picture they look like a Northern European white person,
32:05
I'm going to think your chance of having dairy intolerance is
32:08
actually quite low. It's probably around 5%.
32:11
If the person is of Asian origin.
32:14
It's the opposite. It's really high.
32:15
It's like 95%. So if I see an Asian doctor, for
32:19
example, saying, oh, I think dairy might be a problem, I
32:22
would go back and say, I think it might because here's the
32:25
research, the academic literature where I can show you
32:28
that it's supportive of the fact that you're far more likely to
32:31
have a problem with dairy than I am.
32:33
And my view on food is if you're OK with things, so long as you
32:37
get in the basics, the animal foods, if you're OK with other
32:41
things and you like them and you're the right way and it's
32:44
not causing you any problems, then have them in your diet.
32:48
You know, I'm not a, oh, you must be a carnivore.
32:51
Otherwise, you know, you're not a perfect eater.
32:54
If if you like Curry, vegetable Curry or whatever, or vegetarian
32:58
chilli or brown rice or whatever and it's not causing you a
33:02
problem, then have it. But watch out for the foods that
33:05
are causing you problems because they will come from the plant
33:07
world. Speaking of foods that don't
33:12
want to be consumed, I I find, I don't know if if if you have the
33:16
same experience, but I find that if I open a bottle of wine, it
33:19
doesn't want to be consumed because the more of it I have,
33:24
the more I feel I'm intoxicated. So it's clearly trying to poison
33:27
me. Yeah, alcohol is different.
33:35
Alcohol has other things going on.
33:38
I mean, yeah, alcohol is a toxin to the body.
33:41
The body doesn't. It will process it as quickly as
33:45
it can. It will process it in preference
33:46
to other things. People say, oh, you know, I need
33:49
to watch the calories in alcohol.
33:51
It's like, well, no, because your body can't store alcohol.
33:54
Your body doesn't just just doesn't store it.
33:57
There's there's no other way of saying that.
33:58
It's not like if you eat at McDonald's, the body is going to
34:02
find a way of using it or storing it.
34:04
The body can't do that with alcohol.
34:06
It can't sort of, you know, store alcohol calories.
34:09
It will preferentially burn them because it needs to get rid of
34:12
the alcohol. That's where your liver gets
34:13
really busy and stops doing other things that might keep
34:17
your blood glucose levels normal and all the rest of it.
34:20
But of course, you know, alcohol and ethanol or whatever, it has
34:23
other impacts on the body that are going to make you feel
34:26
increasingly intoxicated, less able to drive, less able to have
34:31
rational debate and and make good decisions and all the rest
34:35
of it. So yeah, but.
34:36
The problem, the problem, Zoe, is you sort of also want to
34:41
choose your battles. There are some things in life
34:45
that you're OK with having, having that as a vice.
34:48
Otherwise, you're going to live the world's most boring life and
34:51
nobody's going to invite you over and you're just going to
34:54
sit at home sucking your thumb, you know, trying to be healthy.
34:57
I I do enjoy a glass of wine and I do enjoy a whiskey or whatever
35:01
and I know that it's toxic, but it's one of those things where
35:06
I'm like, OK, I'm, I'm all right with that one, but I'll, I'll
35:08
make up food and other things. I.
35:11
Think that's really healthy and I think it is about balance.
35:13
So I look at the carnivals and I've, I've been to carnival
35:16
conferences recently. So I was at one last October
35:19
where Anthony Chaffee was there, a guy from Wales, Keto Rich was
35:23
there, a brilliant psychiatrist from Edinburgh was there.
35:27
And at the the speaker dinner the night before, Andy and I
35:30
were the exceptions in the, you know, they bought some lovely
35:34
lovely buttered broccoli and sort of green vegetables, some
35:38
lovely sort of salads with healthy non seed oil Caesar
35:43
dressing on and all the rest of it.
35:44
And we were the only ones consuming any plants and a lot
35:48
was left on the table. So we kind of felt a bit left
35:50
out. But I don't want to eat in that
35:53
way, persuasive as they are, and they do say they just feel
35:57
amazing. They regret the years where they
36:00
actually consume plants because they feel so great at the
36:02
moment. They could have felt even better
36:04
during those years. I don't want to go that route
36:07
because I love dinner parties. I love flexibility.
36:11
I love, as you said, choosing your vices.
36:15
If I'm in France or something, I'm going to have a croissant
36:17
because their croissant are just amazing.
36:20
If I'm in Italy, I'm going to have some ice cream because
36:23
their ice cream is just amazing. I eat, I eat what I eat dark
36:28
chocolate everyday. I make chocolate mousse with
36:30
dark chocolate. It's got a tablespoon of of
36:33
sugar in to stiffen the egg whites.
36:35
You know, I don't want to live like a month a month.
36:37
Most of what I do is really healthy and I find how I live
36:42
really non stressful. So it's just become how I live.
36:47
If I go, we're going out for dinner tonight.
36:50
There's probably going to be a Pavlova for pudding.
36:53
There's going to be a chilli. It will have whatever in Andy
36:57
will be drinking beer or wine. I want to be able to do that.
37:01
I want to be able to go to anybody's house.
37:02
And if they don't really know how I eat or they don't follow
37:06
that themselves and they want to cook me a lasagna or something
37:10
like that, I want to be able to enjoy it because that's, that's
37:13
such a nice thing that somebody has done for you.
37:15
They've made a dish, they've gone to a great deal of trouble
37:18
to home make a dish. I think if somebody's done that,
37:21
unless you're going to die or something or, or seriously be
37:25
harmed over the next few days, just eat it, Enjoy it, celebrate
37:29
it, enjoy the social occasion that you're you're a part of.
37:33
I think people can get too obsessive over food and that's
37:36
not healthy either. A lot of your work focuses on
37:40
carbohydrates, but you've also spoken about all sorts of other
37:43
things like processed foods or whatever that means, or sugars,
37:49
etcetera. And we'll come to fruit also in
37:51
a moment, but there seems to be a lot more fat people today than
37:58
when my parents were little. What?
38:00
Why is this? I think because we changed our
38:05
dietary guidelines, that's my hypothesis.
38:08
So the standard hypothesis, because the people who think
38:12
there's only one way that you can get overweight and that's to
38:15
eat more and or do less than you need, I don't subscribe to that
38:20
view at all. So that's a whole other podcast.
38:23
If we want to get into the calorie theory and why people
38:27
have misinterpreted the laws of thermodynamics, they've miss
38:29
applied them to the human body. Basically what they're saying
38:33
that the human body can be viewed as a cash machine and if
38:36
you put too much food in and, or you don't get enough exercise
38:40
out, the body just expands and the body can adapt in about a
38:44
million ways. And the body does adapt.
38:46
So if you eat less, the first thing that the body tries to do
38:50
is try to get you to eat more because it will get you, it'll
38:52
make you hungry. And if you do more, the body
38:55
tries to get you to eat more. So the minute you start trying
38:58
to go down this eat less, do more route, the body starts
39:00
working against you rather than with you.
39:03
So it isn't that I have looked at that.
39:06
I wrote an obesity book which was published in 2009.
39:09
I really looked very, very carefully at is it that we've
39:13
eaten too much and or done too little and it just isn't.
39:16
And Gary Taubes did the same thing in The Diet Delusion,
39:20
which was also published as good calories, bad calories and found
39:23
exactly the same thing. It just isn't that.
39:25
So you have to park that for another day.
39:28
The the one that coincides with when things take off.
39:33
So if you look at there's a great N Haynes chart, AUS chart
39:36
where it looks at obesity levels and overweight levels in the US.
39:40
And that was the country that read the less led the rest of
39:43
the world in the dietary guidelines.
39:45
And you see this chart and it just takes off like an aeroplane
39:48
at about 1976 to 1980. So if you're a detective, you
39:54
would say what happened then? And one thing that happened then
39:58
is that America changed it's dietary guidelines.
40:01
And that was the entire subject of my PhD.
40:04
Why did we change the dietary guidelines and did we do the
40:07
right thing? And the conclusion of that PhD
40:09
was no, we changed them in the name of heart disease.
40:12
They didn't improve heart disease, and they've made a
40:14
whole. Host of other things, much
40:16
worse. And the dietary guidelines that
40:19
were introduced were what we've been talking about.
40:22
So you should eat low fat, you should eat high carbohydrate,
40:26
you should not eat red meat. You should have legumes and
40:29
whole grains instead. You should be having cereals for
40:31
breakfast, not eggs. You should be having pasta and
40:34
pizza and beige things for all your meals.
40:37
You know, base your meals on starchy foods was the message
40:40
that came out in the UK. That was the UK way of
40:43
interpreting the dietary guidelines.
40:45
Now, since then, obesity has probably gone up about tenfold.
40:49
Last time I looked in the UK, it went up tenfold in the last
40:52
three decades of the last century.
40:55
And until somebody puts in front of me a better hypothesis,
40:58
that's the one that I'm sticking with.
41:00
I think it's when we told people to eat less fat, less real food,
41:05
more processed food, more carbohydrate.
41:08
That's when we got fatter. And then of course, people try
41:12
to eat less and do more and that just makes them hungrier.
41:15
They lose a bit of weight, they start then regaining that
41:17
weight. This is all going to happen with
41:19
these GLP ones as well. We know already that people who
41:23
lose weight on those regain it and even more rapidly than the
41:28
the rate at which they lost it. So we got this whole what it is
41:32
to be overweight and what causes overweight.
41:34
We just got it completely and utterly wrong and we're paying a
41:37
massive price for it. The funny thing though, and this
41:42
is not really related to diet, but it's part of the culture
41:44
wars I guess, and the politicisation of, of weight.
41:48
Now fat is beautiful and it gets celebrated.
41:51
Have you seen all, I mean, now you have ramp models who are
41:55
completely obese and they it's almost as though they're trying
41:58
to stigmatise healthy being healthy.
42:04
I have seen it and and it has deeply troubled me because this
42:08
isn't about embracing everyone. I mean, yes, you want people to
42:11
be included. And because I've been in forums
42:15
for a very long period of time helping people to eat real food,
42:19
I wrote a book called Stop Counting Calories and Start
42:21
Losing Weight. So it's trying to say to people,
42:22
don't count calories, make your calories count.
42:25
Make your calories much more nutritious than the ones that
42:28
you're eating at the moment. But I am very, very aware of how
42:32
awful people feel when they are obese.
42:34
So absolutely don't be mean to people who are obese.
42:40
I mean, that's just basic bad manners, you know?
42:43
Like, don't be mean to someone who's got red hair.
42:45
Don't be mean to someone who looks different to you.
42:47
But I mean, yeah, nobody likes a ginger.
42:50
Nobody likes a ginger. Behave.
42:52
Behave. But it's like don't.
42:54
Don't be nasty. But no, we should not be
42:57
celebrating. I don't think it's a disease.
43:00
I don't want obesity classified as a disease because then it's
43:04
it's obligatory to treat it. So the drug industry want
43:09
obesity classified as a disease because then they're compelled
43:12
to treat it. And we're kind of there already
43:14
because they're already saying obesity is a disease.
43:17
We've got all these GLP ones that will sort it out.
43:19
I don't think obesity is a disease.
43:21
I think it's a natural reaction to an unnatural diet.
43:25
And if we had carried on eating in the way that we grew up
43:27
eating and evolved to eat, we would be OK.
43:29
We wouldn't have an obesity epidemic, let alone an obesity
43:33
problem. But I don't think we should be
43:35
glorifying it, and I don't think we should be celebrating that
43:39
it's become the norm, which it has.
43:42
I mean, it used to be that people felt quite conspicuous at
43:46
social gatherings. There was 1 overweight boy in my
43:49
class. I talked to my peer group.
43:51
They all remember 1 overweight child in their class.
43:55
The situation now is that more than half the class is
43:57
overweight. So people don't worry about
43:59
being overweight. So it's much more OK to be
44:02
overweight, but it's not OK. It's OK to be overweight, but
44:05
it's not OK to be obese when it comes to our health.
44:08
Because almost certainly at the point we've got obesity, we've
44:11
got insulin resistance, which is the precursor to type 2
44:14
diabetes, which will shorten our lives and comes with a whole
44:19
host of other, other problems. So it's not OK and we shouldn't
44:22
celebrate it. When you and I had last chatted,
44:26
Zoe, I had the most bizarre feedback I think that I've ever
44:33
experienced. And and that was that was after
44:37
you were telling me about fruit. So you got to go there again,
44:41
haven't you? You want the same reactions.
44:44
Because I, I cannot understand how speaking about fruit can
44:49
elicit such an emotional response.
44:53
It and I remember when I was growing up, I was told eat
44:57
fruits very healthy for you. It doesn't matter what the fruit
44:59
is, it's fruit. Fruit is fruit and it's healthy
45:01
for you and, and, and and it's good for you and, and you must
45:04
eat lots of it. But that is not true, is it?
45:08
It's not. And, and it was really bizarre.
45:10
I remember when you got in touch with me.
45:12
OK, so in my experience, if I want to annoy people on X on a
45:17
particular date and I don't do that, that's not me.
45:19
I don't go out there to annoy annoy people.
45:22
But if I happen to make a comment about one of two things,
45:26
X will go ballistic and it's fruit and fibre.
45:31
Yes, Fibre, I want to ask you about.
45:33
That too. And they're really related and
45:36
people will not accept that fruit is just not all that fruit
45:42
is essentially water and sugar and it's got a couple of
45:46
vitamins or whatever and minerals really, well,
45:49
potassium, just really not that many.
45:53
And this is not an opinion. This is not something for people
45:57
to sort of write in. Oh, you know, your, your viewer,
45:59
you know, had this opinion and it's all this is just
46:02
nutritional facts. And if you don't believe me,
46:05
then go to a nutrition database. There used to be a great one
46:07
called nutritiondata.com. I think it's gone, but put in
46:11
nutritional information for an apple and then put in
46:15
nutritional information for liver or oily fish or red meat
46:20
or eggs or whole dairy or something.
46:23
And just do a little spreadsheet.
46:24
Look at the things that we need. So look for the essential fats
46:28
in the form that we need them, omega-3 and Omega six.
46:31
Look at complete protein in the form that we need them.
46:33
Look at the vitamins and look at the minerals in the form that we
46:36
need them. And do your little spreadsheet.
46:38
I've done it and put in all these foods across the top.
46:42
You can compare them by 100 grammes and you should do it by
46:45
raw weights because when you start cooking things, things
46:49
change. So do a raw carrot, not a cooked
46:51
carrot, a piece of steak before you cook it and then do it by
46:55
100 calories. So you can do it in two
46:56
different ways and you will not find fruit good at all.
47:02
You just won't. It's got no complete protein.
47:04
It's got no essential fats in the form that we need them.
47:06
It's got no fat soluble vitamins in the form that we need them.
47:11
It's just not all that for the B vitamins.
47:12
It's just not all that. It is gorgeous.
47:15
I love it. If I ever had a binge food, it
47:18
would be fruit dates. Dates have more sugar than
47:21
toffee. I could eat dates all day long,
47:25
dried medial dates. I mean, I'm just salivating
47:27
thinking about it. It it, it tastes like toffee.
47:30
They're chewy, like toffee. It's just sugar with really not
47:35
as much else as you think that it's got in it.
47:37
So yeah, there are worse things that you could eat.
47:41
You know, having an apple is is better than having a bag of
47:44
crisps or better than having a a chocolate bar or something, but
47:47
it's just nowhere near as good as having something that
47:50
actually is nutritious. Yeah, so part of the feedback
47:56
that I was getting was well, if you if you just, well, I'm, I'm
47:59
a vegan and I'm healthy and all that sort of thing.
48:02
And so I, I, I responded to a couple of them saying, we'll
48:04
tell you what, why don't you eat only watermelon for six months
48:09
and I eat only meat for six months.
48:11
What do you think will will be the result?
48:14
And I suspect that person will end up getting very sick.
48:16
Yeah, plus if you look at vegan profiles, and I have done, they
48:21
tend to be very young and they do tend to be female and they do
48:26
tend to be short lived. So one of the biggest dramas you
48:29
can have in the vegan world is where there's been an Instagram
48:32
influencer where you've got a beautiful person, it's either
48:35
male or female and they just look amazing.
48:39
Absolutely. Role model beauty.
48:41
And then a couple of years on, they'll put on their Instagram
48:44
account and guys, I'm so sorry. I'm not vegan anymore.
48:48
You know, I needed to start eating fish and eggs or whatever
48:50
and there's just uproar. But most people will get to the
48:55
point that they are having health problems of some kind
48:59
within a couple of years. People who have been vegan for a
49:03
long period of time and feel healthy, whether their markers
49:07
are actually healthy or not, I don't know.
49:10
But those who feel healthy are almost certainly supplementing
49:13
well and are also almost certainly good converters of the
49:19
plant form of nutrients into the animal form of nutrients.
49:23
So things like an essential fat, the plant world provides Ala,
49:27
and the animal world, particularly oily fish, provides
49:31
EPA and DHA. The body wants EPA and DHA, but
49:34
some people can convert from Ala.
49:37
Now you can't be a healthy vegan if you can't convert essential
49:41
fat. So if you can't convert carotene
49:43
into retinol, if you can't convert some of the other fat
49:46
soluble nutrients. So some people are more
49:50
fortunate than others in that they will be able to continue
49:53
with their vegan diet, or maybe less fortunate because maybe a
49:58
health problem is the body's way of saying to the person, hey,
50:00
this isn't actually how I was designed to fuel my body.
50:05
So please can you go back to having some of those animal
50:09
foods? And I'm going to give you an
50:10
appointment at the More Fields Eye Hospital just to remind you
50:14
that that's how things need to play out.
50:17
But what about the different sugars you get fructose and
50:19
sucrose and some people say, well, the sugar that in fruit
50:22
that that's in fruit is, is better than the the sugar that's
50:24
on your table. OK, so carbohydrates 101 because
50:29
carbohydrates are just sugars. So there are three, what we call
50:34
monosaccharides, which are single sugars and they are
50:37
glucose, fructose and galactose. We then have what we call
50:42
disaccharides, 2 sugars. Now immediately you should be
50:46
thinking every time I'm hearing carbohydrates, I'm hearing the
50:49
word saccharide, which means sugar.
50:50
Yeah, think carbohydrate, think sugar.
50:52
Carbohydrate is just sugar. So your disaccharides, one that
50:55
you've just mentioned would be sucrose, which is a
50:58
disaccharide, which is 1 molecule of fructose and one
51:01
molecule of glucose. So fruit.
51:04
And again, you can look this up on a nutrition database.
51:07
So look up different fruits because it's a very interesting
51:10
exercise to do. And the ones that breakdown the
51:13
sugars, they'll say, OK, in the apple, let's say it's got this
51:18
much cucrosse in it. And of the cicrosse, this much
51:22
is glucose and this much is fructose.
51:24
So some fruits will have more glucose than fructose.
51:26
They're, they're mostly around 5050 because it is shucrose
51:31
that's in the fruit in the form of glucose and fructose.
51:35
From memory, I think apples, bananas certainly have more
51:38
glucose than fructose. And then there'll be some other
51:40
fruits that have slightly more fructose than glucose, but
51:43
they're basically playing around with those two single sugars.
51:48
So glucose is going to go into the way the body metabolises
51:51
glucose is it puts it into the bloodstream.
51:54
Now the body wants, we're getting into diabetes interest
51:58
here. The body wants about four
52:01
grammes of glucose in the bloodstream at any one time,
52:05
which is why if you have your blood glucose reading, you'll
52:07
come back with a reading of, of ideally around 4:00 to 5:00 MMOL
52:11
per litre in terms of your, your blood glucose levels.
52:14
So you want 4 grammes at any one time.
52:17
Now let's say you eat an apple and the apple has 20 grammes of
52:21
sugar and that sugar, let's just say for the sake of argument, it
52:26
is 5050 glucose and fructose. So about 10 grammes of glucose
52:30
are going into the bloodstream. The body had four grammes of
52:34
glucose in the bloodstream and it was perfectly happy at that
52:37
level. It has a couple of hormones,
52:39
insulin and Glucagon, that are going to keep it at that perfect
52:42
level, provided you're not diabetic, and keep it at that
52:45
level 247365 days a year, providing you don't muck it up.
52:50
You've just put in 10 grammes of glucose that the body didn't
52:53
want. So the body is going to get that
52:55
10 grammes of glucose out of the bloodstream.
52:58
And it does it by calling upon the pancreas to get insulin to
53:01
go into the bloodstream, to attach itself to the glucose,
53:04
take it out of the bloodstream, go and store it away in the body
53:07
in the stored form of glucose, which is glycogen.
53:10
If we use that up later in the day, because we go for a walk or
53:14
something, all well and good. If we don't use it up, it gets
53:17
stored as fat, which is related to something we talked about
53:20
earlier. Why?
53:21
The more carbohydrate you eat, the more you'll put stuff into
53:24
your storage system that can be turned to fat.
53:27
You're far more able to use up fat and protein than you are
53:30
carbohydrate. All right.
53:32
Meanwhile, the 10 grammes of fructose goes to the liver
53:36
because that's where we process fructose in the body.
53:39
So when people say to me, oh, which is better glucose or
53:42
fructose, I say, so which do you want, type 2 diabetes or non
53:45
alcoholic fatty liver disease? And you know, if, if I'm lucky,
53:49
they'll laugh. If I'm not lucky, they'll look a
53:52
bit annoyed. And it's like, well, I'm sorry
53:54
to be the one that pointed out to you the body didn't want 20
53:58
grammes of glucose. Now, yeah, you're metabolically
54:02
healthy, you're young, you're fit, and all the rest of it.
54:03
Yeah, you can get away with an apple, an apple a day, no
54:06
problem. But don't go and put in 400
54:09
grammes of carbohydrate, which is what your dear government is
54:12
telling you to consume on a daily basis.
54:14
Don't have 5 apples a day if you're following this fictitious
54:20
5A day or whatever, or seven a day or 10A day.
54:22
They make it all up in different countries.
54:24
Don't start doing that kind of thing and thinking you're going
54:27
to get away with it long term because your body has to get rid
54:30
of all the sugar that you put into the body because it doesn't
54:33
want it in there. Something Tim Knox said a while
54:38
back is that fruit today is also being so heavily modified that
54:43
it's no longer like fruit 1000 years ago.
54:46
Fruit today is way sweeter, and that's on purpose, and it's not
54:50
supposed to look beautiful either.
54:52
Yeah, yeah. So I'm really lucky.
54:54
Where I live in Wales, we don't have a huge garden, but we have
54:57
fruit. We have blackberries, we have
55:00
wild raspberries, wild strawberries.
55:02
We have the most amazing fig tree, which at the height of the
55:05
season can produce 30 to 50 figs a day.
55:08
We have different types of apples, cooking apples, a few
55:11
different types of eating apples.
55:12
We have two different types of pears.
55:15
And I can tell you they don't look pretty.
55:18
They are completely irregular and they taste really sharp when
55:23
you bite into them. And I'm saying really sharp,
55:25
like screw your face up sharp. And then I go to the
55:29
supermarket, particularly in America, and you look at the
55:32
apples in America, the Red Delicious, and they are so shiny
55:35
and they look so beautiful. And I look at them and I just
55:38
think I want one of those. And I do want one of those.
55:40
And I have one of those. And they are as sweet and as
55:43
juicy and as delicious. They are Red Delicious.
55:46
They are, as the name suggests, they are absolutely amazing.
55:50
But I don't kid myself that they're healthy and they have
55:53
been engineered to be that regular and that red and that
55:57
shiny and that beautiful. And goodness knows what
56:00
pesticides and modifications have been involved in making
56:04
that perfect apple look completely amazing when they're
56:07
all stacked up and makes me want to buy ten of them, not just one
56:10
of them. But yeah, then they're not
56:12
natural. That's not the plants that we've
56:14
evolved to eat. It's not the carrots and not the
56:17
root vegetables that I get from my garden.
56:20
They're regular again. They're sweeter.
56:23
They're they're juicier, they're tastier.
56:26
They're not sort of the quite dense, almost woody, sometimes
56:30
starchy carbohydrates that we get naturally from the ground.
56:37
What about coffee? Well, I'm biassed I have to
56:40
declare use a bias here. I love coffee.
56:43
I also do but the coffee seems to be so mysterious it it seems
56:48
to be this extremely popular beverage that has very polarised
56:54
positions on it. Some sports you aren't allowed
56:57
to take it because it's a stimulant and and I'm not sure
57:01
what effect it has on your on your health.
57:04
It is a stimulant, there is absolutely no doubt about that.
57:07
There are other things in our diet that are stimulants.
57:10
Tea is a stimulant, green tea is a stimulant, dark chocolate is a
57:13
stimulant. There are a number of substances
57:17
in our diets that have caffeine and therefore our stimulants.
57:23
I think we're back to sort of where we were on the plants,
57:25
which is different people have different effects.
57:27
So coffee came up at the conference last October, the
57:30
Keto conference, and Keto Rich was saying I don't drink coffee,
57:34
it's not good for me. Anthony Chaffee, don't drink
57:36
coffee. Rachel, don't drink coffee.
57:39
I was there. Ivor Cummings was there.
57:41
And we're like, we're not giving up coffee.
57:43
We don't care what study comes out.
57:46
And I have looked at the academic literature for coffee
57:50
and there's as much evidence saying it's good for you as
57:53
there is saying it's not great for you.
57:56
I think it will be down to individuals.
57:57
I think it be don't overdo it. If you're consuming too much
58:01
coffee to the point that you're getting hyper and jittery and
58:04
it's impacting your sleep, it's not good.
58:07
Most people will say don't consume coffee after 11 because
58:10
it's very likely to impact your sleep.
58:13
I have one big latte with farm milk in the morning.
58:17
It's kind of like a milk delivery mechanism.
58:19
I absolutely love it. I don't want anymore.
58:22
It's not like I've become addicted to caffeine.
58:25
It kick starts my day. I'm not giving it up.
58:29
Everyone to their own. If you enjoy it, don't abuse it,
58:32
but carry on enjoying it. I tend to indulge a little bit
58:37
though with coffee. So I I I don't drink instant
58:40
coffee. I I have ground beans and I add
58:45
cream to it. I don't add milk, no sugar.
58:50
Perfect. And it's fantastic and.
58:56
We've got to have stuff in our lives that's enjoyable.
58:58
You know, we can't, we can't be disciplined in ourselves all the
59:01
time. That is stressful and stress is
59:03
harmful. So you've got to find a
59:05
lifestyle. You know, the good things that
59:07
we should do in life. Eat well, move.
59:11
Don't be sedentary. It's far more important not to
59:13
be sedentary than it is to run marathons.
59:15
In fact, and Tim may have touched on this, running
59:17
marathons probably really isn't that good for us.
59:21
Don't abuse alcohol. The the evidence on alcohol
59:25
shows that people who don't drink are not the healthiest.
59:28
It's the the people who drink, enjoy it, drink sociably and
59:32
don't abuse it. They tend to be the healthiest
59:34
bit. Sorry, sorry, I'm I'm
59:35
interrupting. But there's also a psychological
59:39
element here. I don't know where I'm going
59:42
with this so this is just me spit balling, but when you said
59:46
that those who do drink alcohol a small amount tend to be better
59:52
off and I'm just wondering if it's more than just biological.
59:56
I wonder if it's the interaction with those around you that
1:00:00
increases the happy, the happy hormones, etcetera.
1:00:03
Yeah, totally. I mean, you look at, you know,
1:00:06
one of the biggest country drinkers in the world are the
1:00:09
Mediterranean. So you look at the French.
1:00:12
My husband lived in France for three years.
1:00:14
Having a glass of wine with dinner is like having a glass of
1:00:17
water. It's just what you do.
1:00:20
Same probably in Italy and Spain and Portugal and many of the
1:00:23
other Mediterranean countries. It's sociable.
1:00:27
It's relaxing. You know, if you say to somebody
1:00:29
who's come back home after a hard day at work, OK, get
1:00:33
yourself a glass of wine and just you know, wind down, chill,
1:00:36
put your feet up, get 15 minutes of me time.
1:00:39
Forget the stresses of the day is fantastically helpful,
1:00:44
enjoyable de stressing. It's a really important part of
1:00:48
that person's day. If you then said to them, right,
1:00:51
I want you to do dry January and you're going to give up that
1:00:54
aspect of your day. I think it's more harm than
1:00:56
good. Now don't let the one glass
1:00:59
become two glasses, 3 glasses 1 bottle before you've even had
1:01:03
dinner. Then you're in problem
1:01:04
territory. But if you are the kind of
1:01:07
person that can manage your vices rather than have them
1:01:10
manage you, yeah, there is a huge, huge element to to being
1:01:15
sociable, enjoying a drink with people, not being not living
1:01:20
like a monk. You know a monk is a is a is a
1:01:23
recognised discipline for a reason, not always a great.
1:01:27
Reason I'm looking, I'm looking at the time.
1:01:30
I just want to ask you quickly one last question.
1:01:32
If if what if if if we're talking about low carbohydrate
1:01:39
diet being good for you. Is there a starting point?
1:01:44
Like in other words, does it start from from babies already?
1:01:48
Oh, yeah, I don't. I, I, I, I mean, right.
1:01:52
There are rules about what we need to eat, So what we need
1:01:56
doesn't change throughout our lives.
1:01:58
The quantities might change and the balance might change.
1:02:01
You need more iron when you're pregnant.
1:02:03
You may need more iron in menstruating women and young
1:02:07
girls particularly suddenly have a massive demand on their iron.
1:02:10
You know, there's some things that change in terms of the
1:02:12
amounts, but the basic, what do we need?
1:02:15
The essential fats, complete protein, vitamins and minerals.
1:02:17
That doesn't change. So with babies, for example,
1:02:20
hey, incredibly, breast milk tends to provide everything.
1:02:24
It does provide everything that the baby needs and then at the
1:02:29
point you you need to supplement with something or want to
1:02:32
supplement with something, you know, the longer you can
1:02:34
breastfeed obviously the better. But if at some point babies now
1:02:38
look OK, I need more food, then it's the same principles.
1:02:41
You're going to find what you need in animal foods.
1:02:45
So get baby on to quality meat, fish or ideally oily fish, red
1:02:49
meat, eggs, particularly the oats, dairy, particularly whole
1:02:53
dairy. This idea that, I mean, you
1:02:56
know, the stuff that's in formula is just beyond horrific.
1:03:00
The idea that babies should be going on to those little
1:03:04
processed bottles where they've sort of made it more plant
1:03:06
based. Because the dietary guidelines
1:03:09
are the dietary guidelines. They just say that they're what
1:03:11
everybody needs. So they'll be making sure that
1:03:14
baby food mirrors those dietary guidelines in terms of being at
1:03:18
least 55% carbohydrate, maximum of 30% fat and maximum of 15%
1:03:23
protein. They'll be mandating those in
1:03:26
prisons, in schools, in baby food, in food for elders, in
1:03:30
food for hospitals when people are trying to recover.
1:03:32
It's just what they think we should be eating and it's just
1:03:35
the absolute opposite of what we should be eating.
1:03:40
You've covered a lot of ground in this conversation, so for my
1:03:43
UK column audience, would you mind summarising what you've
1:03:49
spoken about here? Everything the government tells
1:03:53
you in public health is wrong. And if you can find any
1:03:56
exceptions, please let me know. I mean, smoking, maybe smoking
1:04:01
is the exception, but do you know what?
1:04:02
You look at studies that say nicotine has some benefits and
1:04:08
then you think, is it something else that's in cigarettes that's
1:04:12
maybe not good for us? Smoking might be the exception,
1:04:15
but on everything else, particularly on diet and alcohol
1:04:20
and coffee and sunbathing and sun cream and COVID and viruses
1:04:24
and social distancing and masks and injections masquerading as
1:04:31
as gene therapy or the other way around, on all of that is wrong.
1:04:35
So your starting point should be I don't trust it and then go and
1:04:40
do your own research. An interesting thought
1:04:46
experiment about smoking is you suggested there that they could
1:04:51
be something else in the cigarettes that that that
1:04:54
triggers illness. People have been smoking for
1:04:57
thousands of years and cancer seems to be a relatively new
1:05:01
phenomenon. So I do think that you you turn
1:05:04
onto something that that perhaps it's something else that's now
1:05:08
in the in the mass produced cigarettes, but I don't know.
1:05:12
I'm just, I'm just speculating. Yeah.
1:05:15
And, and maybe the smoke that we're exposed to today,
1:05:18
particularly if people are frying with vegetable oils, the
1:05:21
smoke is going to be horrific, would be very different to the
1:05:24
smoke that was inhaled around a campfire where there's no
1:05:28
treatment on the wood on the tree, there's no pesticides
1:05:31
around you. It is just fire that has been
1:05:34
started in the open, outdoors, everything we used to do very,
1:05:39
very differently throughout evolution and the and the closer
1:05:41
we can get back to that without being a bit monk like, I think
1:05:45
generally the better. How can I follow your work, Zoe?
1:05:51
Just my name. I think I've just got Zoe on my
1:05:54
name on the screen here is Zoe Harcombe HARCO MB E on X.
1:05:59
I'm at Zoe Harcombe. I've got a website
1:06:02
calledzoeharcam.com which is where I do my Monday notes,
1:06:06
which you receive because you've, because we've interacted
1:06:10
before. So you get those and I, I'm on
1:06:14
notes 740. I think I've been doing this
1:06:18
since about sort of 2009. I take an academic paper, it
1:06:22
might be red meat causes cancer, and I dissect it to show that
1:06:27
it's wrong. And I haven't found one yet
1:06:30
making a health claim that is robust.
1:06:33
So they're all there for the taking and.
1:06:36
Then, just to be clear, you are funded very well by the meat
1:06:40
industry. I have no funding whatsoever.
1:06:43
I refuse it. I have spoken at conferences for
1:06:47
farmers, particularly in Wales because I live in Wales, and I
1:06:50
have been approached by farmers saying please can you come and
1:06:54
talk to farmers. So I actually developed a
1:06:56
presentation that was called FACT.
1:06:58
This is hard to say facts about food to help farmers fight back,
1:07:05
and I will. Not be paid Wait wait wait, say
1:07:07
that Wait wait wait say. That again, facts.
1:07:10
About food that help farmers fight back.
1:07:12
Wow, that alliteration is impressive.
1:07:14
I know. So it's facts about red meat,
1:07:17
facts about cholesterol, the kind of stuff that we've been
1:07:19
through because they, they, they've heard, oh, if you eat
1:07:21
meat, it's going to raise your cholesterol.
1:07:23
I'm like, how so I will go and do a presentation and then I'll
1:07:27
take questions afterwards. And some of those presentations
1:07:29
are openly viewable on my website.
1:07:31
If you go on zoeharkham.com, go to the types of content, click
1:07:35
on videos, you'll see some of those.
1:07:37
I will not accept payment from any of those.
1:07:40
I won't even accept expenses. I go because I want to help them
1:07:46
because without farmers, we have no food.
1:07:47
We have no food chain, which is why I'm also very supportive of
1:07:51
the No farms, No Food campaigns that have been going on,
1:07:55
particularly in the UK recently and other concerns about farmers
1:07:59
around Europe. Because they're trying to
1:08:00
replace farmland with solar panels, they're trying to
1:08:03
replace farmers, they're trying to put farmers out of business,
1:08:07
they're trying to stop the inheritance so they can't pass
1:08:09
it on. And that's before we even get
1:08:11
into the issues with farmers in South Africa.
1:08:13
So I support farmers. I receive no company funding
1:08:17
whatsoever. Never have, never will.
1:08:20
I have been approached by a cereal company.
1:08:22
I just said you clearly don't know who I am.
1:08:24
Go away. My income model is if people
1:08:28
like what I do, they can sign up.
1:08:30
I think it's a pound a week or something, or a dollar a week,
1:08:34
and they get my newsletter and they can cancel at any time and
1:08:39
that's it. That's where I get my money
1:08:40
from. Zoe Alcombe, thank you for
1:08:43
joining me in the trenches. Thank you for having me.
1:08:45
It's been real fun. Thank you.