And you might not realize it, but you actually have collagen all over your body.

So collagen's in your skin, it's your hair, it's your nails, it's your muscles, it's in your bones and tendons.

When you get a cut or a wound and it's gotta heal, but you're walking around and moving all the time, how on earth can a cut actually heal up? It's because it gets filled up with collagen.

Here's how Professor Clare Collins put it.

If you eat collagen, it doesn't automatically mean you will make more collagen.

It'll build your muscles.

It'll make, um, enzymes that are needed in every single chemical reaction of your body.

It'll help replace the new cells you need in your kidneys, and your lungs, and your eyes.

And you might not realize it, but you actually have collagen all over your body.

So collagen's in your skin, it's your hair, it's your nails, it's your muscles, it's in your bones and tendons.

When you get a cut or a wound and it's got to heal, but you're walking around and moving all the time, how on earth can a cut actually heal up? It's because it gets filled up with collagen.

Here's how Professor Clare Collins put it.

If you eat collagen, it doesn't automatically mean you will make more collagen.

It'll build your muscles.

It'll make, um, enzymes that are needed in every single chemical reaction of your body.

It'll help replace the new cells you need in your kidneys, and your lungs, and your eyes.

Yeah.

Because it really put the spotlight, to me, on something that's being missed.

Now, most people have probably heard of Ozempic, and it's a type of drug, the board category, everyone's calling them GLP-1s.

And, and they, they can be now prescribed for type 2 diabetes.

Uh, other versions of them can be prescribed for when your health is being affected just by your body weight.

So I was really pleased that he told the world that he'd lost his appetite.

He wasn't eating much, and then he developed scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency, which you get...

... "I've gotta make sure I'm eating g- good nutrition." Is that kind of what you're saying?

Mm.

So when you're drinking coffee, you're slightly better at doing that compared to if you don't drink any coffee.

So this comes down to now, well, what does the research say then about long-term effects? So I did find there was a systematic review that had looked at all the cohort studies, and there were...

They amassed, they had more than 300,000 people.

And there's good news, Carl.

The good news in that was that in the long term, people who drink more coffee, so up to, like, three or four cups a day, they did not have a higher risk of high blood pressure.

... that, that's dangerously high.

What was interesting in that, there was no excess risk for people, even if their blood pressure, even if they had hypertension, like 140 on 90.

You gotta have the medical grade honey because there could be some botulinum in there.

For healing wounds, you need to have the medical grade honey.

But for, as part of eating honey generally, you will get a mix of these bioactives depending on the flowers and the bees.

So when you put honey on your toast, it still has these anti-inflammatory compounds and antioxidant compounds.

Now, some of those are vitamins and minerals, and depending on the honey, can have vitamin A, vitamin C, maybe even a bit of vitamin B, vitamin E, a super powerful antioxidant, and even some minerals like selenium.

And what they're really good at, they're really good at nuking things called free radicals.

So when you have inflammation, I always talk about inflammation as being like, um, and the production of these free radicals, as being like a tennis ball machine.

What was the harm it was causing? Was it neurological?

But Claire, I'd love to talk to you about the fact that, um, it's not just a question of like just buy healthy food for many Australians, this sense that cost, health, uh, understanding what, um, what nutritional panels are saying, it's not an even playing field for all Australians.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, many Australians still experience food insecurity.

In the latest National Nutrition Survey, the 2023 data, which was only released at the end of last year, that showed that in our country we've got 1.3 million households- Who in the previous month had experienced some type of, you know, insecurity in food.

So that's, that's really tragic.

I mean, in a small way we're trying to support people who are trying to save money with our University of Newcastle website, No Money No Time, where we cost out the recipes.

We make them easy to, easy to prepare.

[laughs] If it comes in a wrapper, only have a little bit.'" Clare, what other rules of thumb can people be taking with them when they're trying to make good choices in this really muddy food scan- landscape that we live in?

Where should we start? Take it away.

Yes.

Perhaps, Dr. Carl, I can tell you why I got interested in this topic.

Oh, yeah.

So one of the challenges is at the moment everybody's talking about ultra-processed foods.

And I think when you talk about those, you can envision bright colors, things in packets, almost like monster foods.

But not all ultra-processed foods are equal.

Is it fair to say that if you drink juice rather than chew on the fruit, you're not doing that chewing thing so you don't get as much goodness out of it? Yeah, that's

Does it help with blood sugar? If it does, how should I eat them? Raw, how much, how often, that kind of thing.

Yeah, so all of those vegetables like the brassica family you mentioned, like Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, they're relatively low in carbohydrate compared to all the dietary fibres and the nutrients that are packed in there with them.

So you can have a pretty generous serve, you know, like you could have a great big cooked cup of them and then still not really get that much carbohydrate, like maybe about the same amount as one slice of bread.

So that means that your blood sugar won't rise as much compared to if you had, and I'm being dramatic here, like if you had a cup of sugar the same weight.

So that's the primary effect is that you'll get a slower rise.

They take a little bit longer to digest because of the fiber that's packed in with them.

But interestingly, there is actually some research on some particularly bitter plants like bitter melon, and that's more of a Southeast Asian plant, where it seems to have some extra bioactives that help your insulin work better or that can help stimulate some of the gut hormones that make you feel satisfied.

How does the health effects of your highly processed meats, ham, bacon, et cetera, compare to, say, smoking a cigarette? If you ate several pieces of ham or bacon every day, it's going to have some detrimental health effects.

And I'm just wondering if you could shed any light perhaps on the myth, tablets better than powders, injectables, the best, anything at all that you've got.

Yeah, I've actually written an article on this for The Conversation if you want to Google that.

And the key thing about collagen is it's promoted by a lot of celebrities.

I dived in and looked at the quality of all the research and most of the trials are actually sponsored by companies who are making the products.

Wow.

And they're mostly low-quality products.

There did across the studies seem to be some evidence for improvement in like water retention and elasticity, but it's not consistent across those studies.

I was just wondering, does apple cider vinegar, like what benefits it has for your indigestion and gut health?