Tim Spector

But today, I'm joined by two of those researchers telling their own story of how they've radically rethought nutrition science.

Tim Spector, Professor of Epidemiology at King's College London and scientific co-founder at ZOE, and Sarah Berry, Professor of Nutrition at King's College London and Chief Scientist at ZOE.

Together, they explain in simple terms the four breakthrough studies that transformed how they think about ultra-processed foods, our new understanding of why it is that ultra-processed foods are making us sick, and the brand-new insight that only a small portion of these foods are really harmful.

We'll wrap up with brand-new research that helps to identify the specific ultra-processed foods that are making us sick and those which we don't really need to worry about.

And so today I'm really excited.

We're gonna try and do something completely new on the podcast.

I am joined by two of the world's leading nutritional scientists, my co-founder at ZOE, Professor Tim Spector, and our chief scientist, Professor Sarah Berry.

And they are going to explain to us why they've changed their minds about ultra-processed food by talking us through four critical science papers that have really been the cause of this revolution in nutrition science and this revolution about ultra-processed food.

Right? So this brings us back to the concept of diversity.

Tim Spector has been on your show a number of times.

Hmm.

Tim and I, we, we discussed the same topic of 30 plants a week.

interesting for you watching the...

I've recently had Professor Tim Spector on, who's obviously quite a renowned voice in and around gut health.

Has it been funny watching that transition? It has been in the last 15, 20 years.

When I first became qualified in and around fitness, we weren't talking about these things.

You will have in general.

a lower ovarian reserve and you will have lower quality events.

But however, you know, we're doing all of this regenerative medicine and this whole thing of cellular age, you know, and chronological age versus biological age, which I'm sure probably Tim Spector was talking about, right? We talked a little

bit about that.

It's, there's some interesting studies.

I did a workshop with Tim Spector recently and, and in his book, he talks about, you know, the potassium in kimchi, for instance, balances out any sort of negative impact that you would get from the salt.

In Korea, they have really low cases of high blood pressure.

So there are some, you know, if you're having fermented vegetables with salt, and also you're using good salt, it's not, you have to use a really good natural, pure salt that doesn't have lots of additives to it.

Whereas, you know, a lot of things people buy regularly without thinking twice of because it.

says it's safe and it's had all these, you know, stamps of approval on it actually aren't, you know, as safe.

And Tim Spector in his book on fermentation, I love this line, but he says you're more likely to get food poisoning if you're eating out in a restaurant.

He says, particularly in America, using statistics, but then making your own fermented foods.

So you look at two or three pieces a day, varying your fruit.

We know from all the Tim Spector stuff about... variation from a gut health perspective, it is nice to vary it up a bit.

So get one different piece of fruit a week in the food shop.

Brilliant.

And I'm going to tell you what it's about so you can decide if you'd like to watch.

Now, I've been allowed to take part in Tim Spector's new Zoe study, which is about nutrition, blood sugar levels, the microbiome and the way that what you eat interacts with your microbiome.

in the way that that leads to protecting us against disease or causing disease or all the multi various things that the microbiome and nutrition can do as they interact to influence our health.

Now, this is one of the main things that we can learn to do to improve our metabolic health.

This is a big research project.

We believe that tens of thousands of people are going to join in.

That's going to give us huge amounts of data that Tim Spector and his team can crunch and give us real meaningful information on what nutrients are healthy and what nutrients are not healthy.

So we're looking forward to that and that's going to transpose into lots of authoritative papers.

[gentle music] Hello, and welcome to ZOE Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Professor Tim Spector often refers to the microbes in our guts as mini pharmacies.

This is because they provide us with powerful chemicals that help support our health.

But not all gut microbes are on our side.

In fact, there's an ongoing battle in our digestive system between the beneficial bugs and those that wish to do us harm.

I'm joined by Tim Spector and microbiome researcher Nicola Agata to explore this microscopic war and explain how simple changes to your diet could help tip the balance towards the good guys.

Gut bacteria are trillions of single microorganisms present in our gut, thousands of species more or less in each of us, and they are part of an ecosystem that, uh, are an interface between the food we eat, our environment, and our health.

So the diet, the, the food we eat is broken down by gut bacteria, that they are in turn producing molecules, small molecules, that are then arriving in, in our blood and in our system.