Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. Hope you're all doing good. As it's January, I thought we'd do an episode on food because, you know, everyone's coming out the gates at the start of a new year now, trying to get their health and fitness in order, signing up to the gym, checking out their nutrition, you know, cutting back on the booze. And the problem is, is that there's so much misinformation out there, so much noise about what is the right thing to do. I've had quite an active interest in nutrition and health and fitness for many years now. In fact, it wasn't so long ago that I would say that I was actually obsessed with it. You know, I was working out several times a day at a personal trainer. I had all sorts of like calorie macro counting apps on my phone to, you know, to check every morsel that passed my lips. I was in peak shape. I was eating rice, chicken and broccoli every day and I was depressed as fuck. Never been unhappier in my life. And as it subsequently turns out, I was completely doing a lot of the wrong things. Fast forward a few years, and I don't have the six pack anymore. And yes, I'm back on the booze. But you know what? I'm much happier mentally and I feel much better physically, to be honest, because I feel like I have a much healthier, realistic human relationship with food. I've realized that health and well-being is not all about macro counting and eating broccoli and rice and nothing else. It's not about having a six pack. It's about how you feel inside. It's about giving your body the things it needs to do its job, man, to keep you fit and healthy and to keep you living that long life, because everybody worries about dying. But you know what's worse than that? Worse than dying is living till you're 100 and the last 50 years of your life sucking, having a long ass 50 or 40 years of your life where you can't enjoy yourself or do anything because you've got bad health and you're wheezy and you can't walk and you can't bend over and life just one long, boring, painful pain in the ass. That's worse than checking out early. All for the sake of a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of time and a little bit of time and a little bit of time. For the common sense and for just getting your shit together a little bit in younger life. It's not difficult, man. I mean, if you're in your 20s or your teens, do it, man. Go for gold. Get it out of your system now. But as soon as you get to your 30s, you need to start wising up a little bit because believe me, man, I've seen it and it catches up with you fast and it is brutal and it is oftentimes irreversible. And so as someone who tends to fluctuate between the extreme ends of things, if I'm partying, I'm doing it every night for like 10 years, hammered every single night, which I did. And then I just said, oh, I need to get a little bit of health and fitness into my life. So then I bounced to the extreme other end of the spectrum and I cut out all booze. I cut out all the good stuff. I'm exercising every day and I get absolutely shredded. And I do that thing. I get obsessed about that. And that's not healthy either for your mind or your body. So I've quite thoroughly explored both ends of that spectrum. And I've realized that the sweet spot, unfortunately, like as it is with most things, is in the middle. You know, with, of course, frequent visits to the extreme end of the spectrum, I've realized that the sweet spot, unfortunately, like as it is with the extreme end of the dark side, of course, you know, never trust a person without vices. You know, life is for living, man. But as I said, you're going to live it for a lot longer if you calm the fuck down with the burgers. So I figured it'd be cool to do a whole episode on food and get to the bottom of the truth on this issue and to cut through the noise and actually get the real info from someone that actually knows what they're talking about, who can tell us for definite what's good for us, what's bad for us, why and where do we start. And because I'm so good to you guys, I didn't want to go small fry on this. I don't want to go small fry on this. I don't want to go I wanted to go right to the top. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and everything in between, we are privileged to be joined today by Professor, wait for it, Tim Spector. Oh yes, the Tim Spector. You know the one I'm talking about. Tim is an epidemiologist, a leading scientist in understanding the gut microbiome, a best-selling author and food writer, co-founder of the brilliant Zoe Project and one of the top 100 most cited scientists on the planet. We are more than humbled to be able to speak with him today. So Professor Tim Spector, thanks so much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. How are you doing, sir?
Speaker 2I'm marvellous. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1Well, thank you for coming. And I'm glad you're well. I'm assuming it's all that healthy food you've been eating.
Speaker 2Must be something to do with it. Yeah. Still alive. That's the main thing.
Speaker 1Well, I suppose that helps, especially for a podcast. So I think because we are on borrowed time today, we don't have you for long. And I want to make use of every second of this conversation. Would it be cool if we could start with an explanation of something which I think is an essential underpinning to everything that's going to follow on later in the conversation, which is an explanation of what exactly is the gut microbiome? What is it? Why is it important? And what does it mean for our health and general physical and mental well-being?
Speaker 2That microbiome is the community of all the gut microbes, microscopic organisms that live in our bodies. Mainly we're talking about the ones that live in our lower intestine, the colon. And there are, around 100 trillion of these guys, and they weigh the same. If you put them all together, they weigh about the same as our brain. Wow. So they're a substantial group of collection of microbes and their genes. And they're essentially like chemical factories, that they consist of bacteria, archaea, fungi, yeast, parasites, and viruses. But we mainly know about the bacteria. That's what we can study best. And by thinking of them as, rather than this disparate group of things, we think of them as an organ. That is the way to think about them now. And it's only really come to prominence in the last 10 years, I'd say, that we've realized quite what an impact they have on our bodies. We can't live without them, because we need all the chemicals they produce. And they produce vitamins, they produce brain hormones, they produce chemicals that are important for our appetite and weight control. And above all else, they are absolutely crucial for our immune system to work properly. So they produce these chemicals that fine-tune our immune system to not attack us too much and give us allergies and autoimmune diseases, and at the same time protect us from infections and protect us from cancers and from rapid aging. So really, they do everything. And they're as important to us as having a liver. And if we took it away, we really wouldn't last very long at all. So that's where we are now in our current understanding, which has only grown really, as I said, in the last few years. And really, we realize that everyone is completely unique in their microbiome. So unlike our genes that we share about 99.5% of with each other, we're very similar genetically to each other. You and I are like fifth cousins on average. Our microbes, we only share about 25% with each other. So we've got 75% of really pretty unique, and we've all got a few species that are unique, even if we counted 10 or 20,000 of us. So it's a whole new world of microbiome that explains many things, but how we react to our environment, particularly how we react to our diet, is highly personalized. And how we react to every medicine we take, whether it's a paracetamol, or it's an antidepressant, or it's a cancer drug, has a very different effect on us because our microbes treat these drugs just like food, and they will make it into different chemicals and have different effects. So it's hugely important.
Speaker 1That's incredible, man. So does that explain then why different people respond to different foods and different diets and different treatments differently to each other? So when you get these fad diets that come along and they say, "Hey, just do these handful of things and eat these handful of foods, and you're all going to get these results," does your understanding of the gut microbiome prove that to be incorrect?
Speaker 2Absolutely, yes. So we've known that people don't respond to drugs the same way. Everything from recreational drugs to pharmaceuticals, there's always a proportion that don't respond. And we now know that one of the biggest factors of that is not the genes in our cells, but although that has some effect, it's actually the gut microbes because they either inactivate the drug or they're needed to switch it on. And the same is true, once you make that analogy, you realize drugs are chemicals, but also food, essentially, are chemicals. And this is another big insight that we've only got recently. We realized that the food we eat contains over 30,000 different chemicals. And all the time, our body senses these chemicals. It doesn't see a carrot as something with a bit of vitamin A or retinol in it and orange pigment. It sees there's 800 different chemicals that it has to break down. And so clearly, we're going to react differently to that carrot, depending on what our existing gut microbes are, and produce different chemicals from it. And the same is true of a burger or anything else like that. So we have worked out with the company Zoe that I founded that people react very differently to the same foods. And in this big experiment we did called the Zoe Big Study, we took 1000 people, many twins, gave them identical foods at identical times of the day, And there was about a 10 to 20-fold difference in how same normal people without diseases responded in terms of their blood sugars, their blood fats, and their metabolism. So we've just suddenly for the first time realized that the foundations of what we were teaching people about a healthy diet and this is the way to eat and this is the way to lose weight really don't apply to most of us. And we have to really start reinventing the whole process.
Speaker 1That's fascinating stuff, man. So essentially what you're saying is the gut microbiome is the center of all of this. So an understanding of your gut microbiome and how you can look after it is the central thing that people need to understand in order to set themselves up for good nutritional well-being and good health.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the way to look after your gut microbiome is to make the best food choices. Right. And I think that is the number one message here. The most important thing everyone out there can do for their health is to pick the right foods every day. And that far exceeds all these other decisions we make in life. And we're making hundreds of minor food decisions every day. We don't think of any of it. We've always just said, I'll do what the government tells me. I'll do what I see on the supermarket label. I'll do what my neighbor told me or my sister said worked for her. And I think we've got to suddenly break all that, really think, actually, all this stuff is very old science. It's now been surpassed. That's really in the last century. We need to forget everything we've heard about calories. We need to forget about macronutrients, about fat being bad for you. You know, sugar. Sugar has always been bad for everybody. And start to think of ourselves as much more complex machines than the very simple model of a human as a sort of moving furnace. Right. You just feed one in, it boils off heat and then poos out the other end. And, you know, that is just not how we work.
Speaker 1Are there general principles that people can apply then when it comes to their food? So if we can scratch away all of the old noise, which I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Because it is noisy, especially nowadays. There's so much contradictory information you can get on the Internet about what's good and what's bad for you. Are there general principles that people can apply to start making better decisions that are going to benefit their gut microbiome?
Speaker 2Yes. I mean, with the caveat that there is personalization. Of course. You know, at the moment, you've got to pay some money to have a personalized nutrition test. And not everyone can afford that. So there's still a lot you can do. Just by understanding more about what benefits your gut microbes. So there are some general rules. And you've got to realize that to be healthy, we want you to have as much diversity in your species as possible. So we think in the West, we've lost about half of our microbial species in the last hundred years. Wow. Compared to our ancestors. Through mismanagement, really, of our guts and our diet. And our lifestyle through antibiotics, processed foods, sterile living, et cetera. So we want to get that diversity back. The more diverse, the more greater the range of chemicals your body can produce to help your immune system, et cetera. So I've got like five pretty key rules that everyone can follow. First is 30 plants a week is what you should be trying to aim at. And many people fall off their chair when they think that because they say, well, you know, I didn't know there were 30 plants. You know, apart from peas and carrots, what can I possibly eat? But it's not as hard as it sounds because a nut is a, every nut and every seed and every herb is a plant in effect.
Speaker 1Of course, yeah.
Speaker 2And, you know, as well as the standard fruits and vegetables, different colored. Fruits and vegetables have different chemicals, so therefore count will be nourishing different microbes. So it's having a different concept of what plants mean. So we talk about nuts, seeds, herbs, adding a spice mix to a tablespoon of a spice mix to your meals will increase your gut microbe diversity and health. Because there's so many different specialties. And so, you know, if you're a naturalist microbes that just love a bit of turmeric or love a bit of cardamom, they'll use that and use that as a source of energy. And that's really important to understand. So this diversity, so rather than five a day and having the same five a day, which are often unhealthy fruits that are too sugary or orange juices, etc. The idea that it's spread over a week and you get this diversity in is where we need to go. Second point is about eating the rainbow, eating brightly colored fruits and vegetables, because we now know that they can be more brightly colored. They contain chemicals which are natural defense chemicals for plants called polyphenols. Yeah. These are chemicals that stop insects eating the plants. They protect them from the sun and the wind and the cold. But we're. And they're often slightly bitter, tannic ones like you find on grape skins or coffee grounds, for example, which is a plant, a coffee. We can get onto that. Amen. The health food. So high polyphenols, brightly colored, bitter plants where you need. And that, again, includes high polyphenol foods. You get dark chocolate, olive oil. Coffee, red wine, things you wouldn't necessarily regard as healthy. But we now know are.
Speaker 1That's good to know.
Speaker 2And the third one is fermented foods. Everyone's already tried and tasted yogurt. We don't realize that at least artisan cheese contains microbes and is a fermented food. But we need to be trying more powerful ones. We need to be trying more powerful ones. We need to be trying more powerful products.
Speaker 1because, you know, I'm a massive lover the good stuff you know whiskey cake pizza chocolate biscuits you know what i'm saying i mean is there a space for them in this i
Speaker 2think there's a space for all food in my in my idea because i think what my philosophy is and that of zoe the nutrition company is that we're trying to change people's habits for life not not just for a few weeks yeah 100 and if you take people you never ever have cake again uh or you can't have pizza again they're not going to accept it for very long yeah so uh you know i eat cake and pizza uh but i don't have them every day and i think that's what we need to try and work out yes it can be part of your diet and if you follow those other rules and you are having plenty of plants your body is much better adapted to occasionally splurge out on some fast food or a bit of dodgy cake for a birthday or a celebration so i think we still want to maintain um the idea that food is all about happiness it's about social sharing it's about fun it's not about restriction it's not about obsession it's not about uh you know depriving yourself right and my idea is that we're just trying to get people to add more to their plate think of new different foods they can eat every day uh expand from the rather beige bland horizon yeah to you know all the amazing foods that are out there so yeah uh i think it's it's just a question of putting in context right you know bit of cake once a week uh as a treat uh sit down because your mom wants to you know give you some cake uh when you come around to visit um or you know you have a friday night pizza that's absolutely fine just make sure you you know you're going to compensate the next day and make sure you got all those plants in there to keep the microbes happy that might have taken a small hit during that uh the overdose of frozen pizza or whatever it was
Speaker 1well that's music to my ears man um and what is the truth then about the mediterranean diet is that just another popular myth i think the
Speaker 2mediterranean diet is probably one that survived uh scientific scrutiny the most of all these uh these diets because actually it includes a lot of the parameters i've been talking about that's what i'm thinking yeah it's quite diverse it's it it includes a fair bit of plants in it uh it still allows you to eat meat um and fish it has dairy and fermented foods in it and of course a lot of its nuts and seeds are a big part of it as well but extra virgin olive oil is crucial so with it and putting it on your salads also helps so generally most of the studies are still supporting um the general principles of uh a mediterranean diet suit most people so i've not found anything to say that doesn't work people have a different idea of what a mediterranean diet is um some people say well that means i can eat as much pasta as i like um that's not really what it was more like what is the traditional mediterranean diet rather than what do you see people eating um who have some italian blood but i feel like the
Speaker 1greeks have got it pretty right i mean i have a greek breakfast every morning which is you know yogurt which you've already mentioned as being great for your gut microbiome um honey uh fruit and something like walnuts on top as well with a black coffee that's my breakfast uh very traditional greek breakfast plus you know you've got things like the greek salad then as well which is a wide variety of colors on your plate and cheese and olive oil all the things you've mentioned so i feel like there's a lot about the if we're talking about mediterranean diet so there's a lot about greece i think that are on the
Speaker 2money do you think absolutely but you remember that's not necessarily the modern greek diet because they have quite a lot of child obesity they've taken to um lots of takeaway pizzas and past as well so okay you know you've got to be you've got to make sure that you realize it's not full of stodge it is actually full of fruits and vegetables and the original the original concept uh but it was it was quite a high fat diet as well as with the yogurts and the goat's cheese and the meats and but it does have that diversity and it is pleasant to eat for most people so yeah i'm i'm definitely you know if you want to know roughly what to base it on um if you follow my five rules and you sort of have in your head a mediterranean old-fashioned mediterranean type diet then that can work
Speaker 1i'm so glad to hear that man because the food is amazing as well and another thing which i've heard as well is that uh again speaking about the mediterranean diet is the uh the popular inclusion of a glass of red wine or two uh which apparently is also really good for you is that true a glass
Speaker 2yeah we did a study showing that um one or two glasses of red wine um you know about uh six times a week so you know uh did give you a greater diversity of gut microbes compared to people who didn't drink at all or to people who drank uh three or more glasses of wine so um alcohol in general is not good for your gut microbes but there seem to be a few exceptions and the reason that red wine is an exception is because of the grape skin and the red wine is an exception and the red wine is an exception in giving you these polyphenols i talked about these antioxidants in very high numbers so we think in a way if you could do without the alcohol just have that fermented grape skin that would be an amazing uh right health um artisan cider is the other one that's probably probably nearly as good but there's less
Speaker 1work on that i'm guessing whiskey is a no-go then sorry damn it
Speaker 2haha never mind my brain's bitter doesn't work either but
Speaker 1i was gonna say yeah i was hoping that you were gonna tell me that a few shorts of whiskey was probably better than seven pints of lager but i'm guessing neither are good for me so
Speaker 2no there's no there's nothing good for the microbes there too much alcohol just kills them off unfortunately damn it
Speaker 1okay well at least like i get to keep red wine that's something um so whilst we're like sort of busting popular misconceptions here um what is the deal with meat because there are so many contradictory narratives around meat including you know you need it for your protein or no it's really bad for you and then you need it for your protein it clogs up your arteries and of course you know there are the ethical and environmental concerns as well um what are your thoughts and what does the science say
Speaker 2well i researched this quite a lot for the book and um the conclusion was that processed meats um i could find nothing really good about them for health so we're talking about uh cheap salamis cheap hams uh frozen meats and lasagnas and ready meats uh cheap sausages uh bacon all associated with increased risk of uh increased mortality and cancer but if you take high quality meats um uh on their own that i haven't been through this processing uh where you know they've been radically changed and add chemicals out of them the data shows that in moderation there's no really real increased risk uh if if they're taking it if you can eat enough vegetables with them so um you know i think most people um in this country overeat meat yeah uh to a large extent which means they don't have enough room on their plate for vegetables right and they don't think about vegetables because the plate is dominated by that plate of meat yeah which although it may not be harming them because they're not eating enough vegetables they're not eating enough meat because they're not having space for the good stuff it is um my view is that we can still have a healthy diet that includes you know a couple of pieces of meat a week uh if we avoid highly processed meat which is the majority of it right so um but the main reason to reduce meat uh intake apart from increasing your plants is that it's probably the single bet single most important thing we can do to uh help climate
Speaker 1change 100 that
Speaker 2uh red meats particularly uh beef and lamb are horrendous in terms of the carbon footprint and we should be you know having less of them picking higher quality ones paying right for it and not be subsidizing as we are uh all this this cheap meat economy um which is basically killing our planet as well
Speaker 1yeah 100 great point well made um and that's closely related to the next myth that i want to bust which is the one of milk um what's the deal with that because again you hear a lot of very contradictory uh so-called facts about milk what's the deal with milk and do we need it
Speaker 2um i don't think adults need milk um it's um it's fairly neutral for health i would say in moderation okay i don't think it's particularly bad or particularly good um some some moments in children it's a very good source of um nutrients for children and adolescents to some extent does contain natural things like iodine that can stop some thyroid diseases. But it is not good, again, not good for the planet for the same reasons we talked about is it uses a lot of land because you've got lots of dairy herds producing this, you know, and it is just culturally, you know, in Northern Europe, you know, we were brought up to have other animals' breast milk, which when you start calling, you know, well, why are we still eating breast milk as adults, which has grown up by now. And so if you can switch to an alternative, gets people off dairy milk, which again is massively subsidized to be cheap, but farmers don't make much money on it, we'd be better off. So we could dramatically cut our milk, consumption without affecting our health at all. I mean, we would improve the planet. If we switch to plant milks, soy is an alternative, but it is quite highly processed and it's better for the environment. It's not perfect, but relatively is better. But I worry about all that processing. Then you've got oat milks, which are less processed, but some of them contain. Lots of pesticides from the oats, and they're basically replacing a lot of fats and protein with sugars. And many people like myself will get a sugar spike when they have a glass of oat milk. And so doing that regularly is probably going to be bad for your health. So I don't think there's a clear answer. It depends whether you've got ethics, environment, health in that picture. But, you know, let's let's have less of all of them. And, you know, if you are going to have dairy, ferment it, because then there is clear benefit of health on your health. And, you know, yogurts, cheese, kefir are all fantastic examples of preserving these milks in a way that's really beneficial for your health. So, you know, if you if we are going to cause some environmental damage, at least it should be healthy for us.
Speaker 1Great point. Yeah. Well, the final myth that I want to discuss is around coffee, because I love me some coffee. And I've been told that it's actually pretty good for you. What's the deal? And I hope this is good news.
Speaker 2That's right. We've changed our mind over the last 20 years and absolutely unequivocal evidence that up to five cups of coffee actually reduces your mortality and reduces your risk of heart attacks. Wow. And may or may reduce cancers again, because it's, it's full of polyphenols, right? And it's that's why it's got that astringency to it on your tongue. It's quite bitter and it all comes from a fermented bean. And it's also contains reasonable amounts of fiber so that if you're having like three cups a day, that can be like five grams of fiber in your diet, which is about a third of the average UK fiber intake. So it is a health drink. So, you know, I'd much rather people drank coffee rather than orange juice. Which is something that is should be have a health warning on that really just gives you a piece of diabetes. Yes, because the sugar just a sugar. Yeah, right. It's pretty horrendous. So gives you the same sugar spike as a can of Coca-Cola. And if you do that every day, you're just going to be putting on weight and adding to your metabolic problems.
Speaker 1Wow. I never would have thought that about orange juice, but it makes a lot of sense. Now you mentioned it. Yeah. Well, I suppose there's a lot of good news. And what you're saying, because, you know, yeah, I got to cut down on the whiskey, but I still got to keep the red wine, the chocolate and the coffee. So, you know, every cloud. Exactly. I still hear occasional bit of cake. Thank God, man. You know, what would life be without cake? Well, I wanted to switch gears a little bit now and ask you about the amazing Zoe company and the Zoe app. Can you tell people who don't know what that's all about?
Speaker 2Okay. Well, Zoe is a company that's a personalized nutrition company started six years ago and. People know it in two forms because during covid we created the Zoe covid study and we had about four million people downloaded it and were recording their symptoms during covid and we got the first real readouts in this country about what was going on, particularly in Wales. Interestingly, where, you know, some of those initially a lot of those big outbreaks were happening in South Wales. We were recording. It telling people what was going on, you know, a week or two before the government. So that was a fantastic success. That's a free app and that is now blended into the Zoe health study, which people can download for free. And we're doing this a way of tracking health habits. So I talked about time-restricted eating about eating 30 plants. There's a couple of things that people can go on and use the app to help them improve their habits. Now, that's totally free, totally educational. The other side of the company is the commercial product, which is basically a program. So it's not a diet. It's a way of eating for your personal self. It's understanding your own body. So you buy a kit online. From again, join Zoe.com. And we've had 70,000 people already bought them. Wow. We had a waiting list of 300,000 people. Jesus, we're getting through. So it's been hugely popular. People get in the post glucose monitor, which allows them to see their blood sugar in real time for two weeks on their phone. Wow. It's just like getting a continuous. Readout. So you can see what effect orange juice or cake has on you. It's amazing. You also get a test to see how your fat levels have changed after eating. See how long fat is hanging around in your body, which is another thing. We're trying to pin down and varies a lot between people about how you process fats. And the third thing is a gut health test where we test your microbiome using the very latest genetic technology. And we put all those things together to give you a personalized score for your health for those three domains. And that once you've got the results, you can score any food that you see in a restaurant in a supermarket or you make yourself and it will score it for you from a naught to hundred to say how good or bad it is for you personally.
Speaker 1That is amazing.
Speaker 2Depending on whether you are, you know, good at processing sugars fats. And we'll find out whether your Greek breakfast is actually good for you because or you might have problems processing all that fat several hours later. It's very hard to tell yourself until you actually test it. And as I said, there's about a tenfold difference between people in how they respond to these foods. So the idea is that you get a scores for all your foods that really suit you as an individual. Awesome. You follow that for three months. It's with the help of a nutritionist who's guiding you through it. So that instinctively you start to know what foods suit you, right? You want a sandwich what to add to it to improve your score what to take away, you know, these things just to help you whilst continue all these general principles by your gut health. So that's the that's the basic plan and we found that most be about 80% of people report if they've done it over three months. They generally report having much more energy and feeling less hungry and a proportion also lose weight, but it's not a weight loss diet. No, this is something we want people to carry on for years. We believe over years. They will lose weight, right? But they're also enjoying more food. They've got more energy. We're sort of trying to improve people from the inside out. And maybe we'll think about food in a different way that they appreciate the quality of what they're eating and they're moving away from these ultra processed foods into these whole foods that have all these amazing chemicals that feed your gut microbes. So so it's yeah, it's it's a really a different way of thinking about food is what we're trying to do both through the through the commercial product, but also educating people through the free app as well.
Speaker 1Absolutely incredible. One awesome thing that is and as you say in once people have done it for a few months, they will become they'll become more educated as to what works for their personal physiology, which is priceless priceless insight that people will have for the rest of their lives, you know to benefit from.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's empowering is so you're no longer, you know, waiting for someone to tell you this is good. You can check yourself. Yeah, and you and you. You believe your own scores and you know, we've got no vested interest in any of these products. it's pretty unbiased advice that you're getting. As you say, it's educating people for the rest of their lives. It's not a six-week miracle diet that we know fails in 90% of people.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, what a thing to have, a gift to have given us all. I mean, I'll put the link in at the end, and I'll put it in the description of the podcast as well, so people can click and go straight through to check it out. Just before we leave, I also want to give a little plug to your latest book, Food for Life, The New Science of Eating Well, which came out just last October, I think. So it's hot off the shelves. What can people expect to find in this one? Is all this stuff that we talked about today, can they expect to get some background in there?
Speaker 2Everything I've discussed is in here. It's a huge, it's a tome. It's basically an A to Z of food. Okay. It's like a practical eating guide of food. So you've got the theory in the first part, which describes the gut microbes, the latest science on that, your metabolism. Your metabolism, personalized health. And then it goes through the foods. You know, you've got the salad section, the fruit section, the vegetables, berries, nuts, seeds, meats, et cetera. As a guide, as if you were going through a supermarket and saying, well, you know, I've got this amazing choice here. Most supermarkets have about 20,000 different items. How do I decide which ones are good for me or not? And it's designed with that thing in mind. So the next time you go and look, say, for a salad, you're thinking differently to the way you were before you read the book or heard this podcast. So you'll be saying, well, you know, they're all the same, aren't they? I always take the iceberg lettuce because that lasts longest in the fridge. You know, lasts longer than the average British prime minister. That's true. But, you know, and I used to eat a lot of iceberg lettuce until I did my research. But I don't know. Now I would go for the other end of the aisle where they've got those loose leaf ones with purple leaves, Rosso Lolo type ones. Right. Much more interesting looking. And there's a thousandfold difference in the polyphenol chemicals and nutrients between them. So iceberg lettuce has nothing apart from water in it. Right. And these really rich, more tasty, slightly bitter-leaved lettuces are so much, more nutritious. And that's, I do, I sort of do this throughout the book, these sort of useful swaps and hints. Understanding a bit at the same time about fiber, polyphenols, artificial chemicals, pesticides, all these things that we need to learn much more about. And the idea is to empower people. You give people the knowledge, they can then go on and make sensible choices for themselves and their family.
Speaker 1That is awesome. Awesome. If everybody wants to rush out now and check out Tim's new book, it's called Food for Life, The New Science of Eating Well. That sounds like invaluable, priceless information to me. You know, because it is a minefield out there, you know, and people are busy and they haven't got a lot of time and it's easy to get bamboozled and confused and end up, you know, falling back on old habits. So to have that book, that amazing resource is, yeah, priceless.
Speaker 2Yeah. We've got to realize it is complicated and, you know, no one will ever know it all. And that's why we need, the summary is like this, but we also need to embrace the technology of apps and articles of intelligence to guide us through it. Right. To do that, we've got to break the mold of the past, realize that calories are irrelevant as far as good nutrition is concerned. It's all about the quality of the ingredients, getting back to basics. And going also back, as I said, you know, I want people to enjoy food, enjoy their diversity, try new things. And that's very much what's in this book. There'll be many new ideas. And things for people to try. And, you know, eat well, sustainably, you know, for the next 20 years.
Speaker 1Amen. Tim, thank you so much for doing this. I know I've got to let you go now as much as I don't want to, but I really, really appreciate you stopping by today and giving us all of this incredible and amazing and hard-earned insight that you've accumulated over the past many decades of hard work. This is invaluable information for helping people to live longer, healthier, happier lives. So, you know, on behalf of all of us, I thank you, Tim, for, like I say, stopping by today and for everything you're doing in this field as well. The Zoe program that Tim mentioned earlier can be found at www.joinzoe.com. Tim's personal website is tim-spector.co.uk. Tim is on Instagram at tim.spector and he's on Twitter at timspector. His awesome new book, Food for Life, The New Science of Eating Well, is out now and can be bought in all good bookstores. Tim, this has been a real pleasure and a real treat. Thank you so much for stopping by. Best wishes with everything coming up and we hope to speak to you again soon.
Speaker 2My pleasure. Bye.
Speaker 1Tim Spector, ladies and gentlemen. How awesome was that? Let me just remind you of some of the biog of that guy. Epidemiologist, a leading scientist in understanding the gut microbiome, best-selling author and food writer, founder of the brilliant Zoe Company and one of the top 100 most cited scientists on the planet. You need be confused no more. If you want to know the truth about food, and nutrition and diet, we just gave it to you. Brilliantly summarized and condensed into those five amazing points, which just make the whole thing a lot easier to navigate. I'm going to try and remind you of them if I can off the top of my head. The first point, and off the top of my head, I'm lying actually. I do take notes during these things. I'm not completely just like passive and just nodding and saying awesome every two seconds. This is a highly professional situation. I've got notes on the screen. I'm making notes as we go, okay? So I say off the top of my head so that I sound cool and intelligent. And intellectual up against these giants that I have on the podcast here. But really, I'm reading most of this shit. So the five points that Tim made were the general principles that you should try and abide by if you want to have awesome nutritional health is number one, aim for eating 30 plants a week rather than five a day. And as Tim said, the good news is that coffee and red wine as a plant and also putting herbs and seasoning and nuts in your food also counts as well as one of those 30. Number one was eat the rainbow. So you're going for like a lot of variety. You're looking for a lot of color on your plate and to keep it varied as well. So each of the things you eat is giving different bits of goodies to your gut bacteria. And the gut bacteria, as unglamorous as it sounds and as it is, is the main deal. That's where it all happens in maintaining your body's health and energy and longevity and immunity. So give it as much varied goodies as you can. The third point was, include fermented foods. So that's things like, like I said, I have yogurt with my breakfast every morning. That's a good one. You know, tasty as well. He also mentioned kefir, kimchi, kombucha and something else beginning with K that I didn't scribble down. All the K stuff. I think they're quite expensive though, I think. So just stick with yogurt, you know, perhaps. The fourth one was stop eating, man. Jesus Christ, take a break. Give your system a chance to digest last night's food before you immediately start piling on some more shit. Tim said to leave about 12 to 14 hours between your last night's meal and tomorrow's breakfast. That makes a lot of sense. I can see the logic behind that one. And the fifth point was cut out processed food. Well, duh. You know what I mean? That's like a fucking no brainer. I mean, if you're over 18, what are you doing eating at McDonald's anyway? Jeez, have a word with yourself for Christ's sake. I'm joking, of course, because, you know, by processed foods, we're not just talking about the evil clown there. We're talking about fucking most things these days. Certainly the stuff you get from the supermarkets, you know, like microwave meals and, you know, those frozen pizzas and, you know, even the biscuits that I love so much. You know, it's all filled with crap, really, isn't it? That bears no resemblance to food. And that's the shit, as much as I hate to say it, that we got to start cutting down on, man. Start getting some actual food that contains actual plants that come from the earth in it rather than something that's made in a factory and filled with all sorts of chemicals and shit. It's not natural, man. And we are, you know, we're animals and creatures of nature. As much as we like to think we're above that shit, we're not. And pumping all that highly processed, pesticide-ridden bullshit into our system is, you know, taking years off our life, man. Like Tim said, you know, our gut bacteria is, like, significantly lower than it was 100 years ago. And it's got to be because of the arrival of processed fast foods and all of the crap that comes with it. And, you know, the plastics and the fucking shit that we pump into the air that we breathe, you know, we've gone mental these past 100 years, haven't we? So it's no surprise to see that, you know, that is taking a testable toll on our physiology. So that was the five main points. I thought that was really handy to have that condensed down to those five principles that you can just start to try and think about, you know, when you're shopping and making food. And it's just a ton of other well-interested stuff that, you know, Tim mentioned just in that brief chat that we had. But I would definitely recommend everybody to check out the Zoe app. Like Tim said, you know, there is a free element to it. And there's also then, for those of you that can afford it and really want to take a deep dive, you know, there is the full paid package, which does sound amazing, I've got to be honest. I would wholeheartedly recommend Tim's new book, as well as his previous books as well, which are pretty much all bestsellers, by the way. The Tim's new book, which is only a few months old, is called Food for Life, The New Science of Eating Well. So that, like I said, only came out four months ago. That is going to be bang up to date with the most modern science from Tim's work in this field. So go and get it. I hope you found that interesting and informative and something a little bit different for the podcast. I know I did. And if you thought I was done with the self, sell sell and that you'd luckily avoided me nagging you to subscribe to the podcast this week you're out of luck have you subscribed to the james kennedy podcast have you have you told your friends to do it have you told your parents have you told the guy on the train to do it come on man help me out you're part of this if you're listening to this shit for free and i give it to you for free then you know you are my unofficial and unpaid promo army spread the word man come on it's some good shit on this podcast and there's loads more coming as well jesus christ am i excited about some of the episodes we've got coming up i can't tell you what they are but it's pretty fucking crazy so hit that subscribe button hit the follow button hit me a star rating so i can get the ratings up which means the podcast will get pumped out to more people through the algorithm leave some comments get involved dude don't be just a passive freeloading jackass spread the love let other people get in on the action and together we'll form one ever-growing army of well-informed well-healthy unstoppable juggernauts that nobody can fuck with and on that note i bid you farewell and good night and i will see you next week adios
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