# Simon Hill - Eating Imperfectly vs Perfectly Eating

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 20 Apr 2025, 1 h 34 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/z2sctxpjowh9lt49pm895frh.mp3

Chasing the ‘perfect’ diet is a trap; which is really great news for our brand. Simon Hill, nutritionist, physiotherapist, and host of The Proof podcast, joins us in the Academy of Imperfection to break down whether the latest dietary trends on social media actually match up with nutrition science. In this episode, Simon unpacks the role of both genetics and lifestyle choices in shaping our health, and specifically our risk of disease. Acknowledging the pressure, and sometimes shame, that comes with chasing the ‘perfect’ diet, Hugh, Ryan, and Josh discuss how to encourage kids to build positive relationships with food, and the incredible significance of ‘joy’ and ‘human connection’, that occurs when we get together to eat. And then, of course, we play Simon Says and bust some food-myths about supplements, plant protein, and whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Simon, thank you for all that you says. To watch this full episode on YouTube, follow this link: https://bit.ly/4jyH2NL 🫖 Other Imperfects episodes mentioned in this episode: • Felice Jacka - Food For Thought - https://apple.co/4ciWgn5 • Professor Tim Spector - Food Fight - https://apple.co/3OjRlXR • Maria Ruberto - Sleep Your Way to Your Top - https://bit.ly/3E3flgi 📖 Things to read: • The Proof is in the Plants - Simon Hill - https://bit.ly/4lbj7VC • The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe - Steven Novella - https://bit.ly/3QUPYjI 🎧Things to listen to: • The Proof with Simon Hill - https://bit.ly/3XCCDjS • The Proof - Menopause masterclass (Part 1) - https://bit.ly/42aAoXC • The Proof - Your menopause questions answered (Part 2) - https://apple.co/4cx0MhW 💻Things to research: • Approx. 50% of cardiac deaths are sudden cardiac deaths 50% - https://bit.ly/4juCffP • 30 different plants a week study - https://bit.ly/3XIXORj • To know more about ApoB, and it’s link to cholesterol - https://bit.ly/42mRL6b & https://bit.ly/426dVLe • The Mind Diet - https://bit.ly/42p3zFd • Mediterranean Diet - https://bit.ly/4cPqBKp • To know more about the Carnivore diet - https://bit.ly/3RcMZmR & https://bit.ly/426xvqT • Creatine and cognition - https://bit.ly/4j8sd4e • Impact of creatine on depression and CBT - https://bit.ly/3G401AL • Impact of creatine on bone health for menopausal women - https://bit.ly/4cuahym & https://bit.ly/424KxoD • Impact of creatine on sleep deprivation - https://go.nature.com/4cvR0wC • Simon’s Prebiotics - 38TERA - https://bit.ly/4caa96Q 🦋If this conversation has raised some uncomfortable feelings for you around eating and food, these are some great resources to find support: • Eating Disorders Families Australia - https://bit.ly/3TLU7J5 • The Butterfly Foundation - https://bit.ly/48YCSZe 🩷If you want A Little More Imperfects, join our Patreon to get just that - www.patreon.com/theimperfects 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - https://bit.ly/3Cx4tGP 🩷To subscribe to the Vulnerabilitea-mail weekly newsletter, join through our website - www.theimperfects.com.au The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14.

## Transcript

[0:01] You're better to adopt a diet imperfectly over decades than to do the perfect diet occasionally.
[0:10] Chasing the perfect, quote-unquote perfect diet is a trap.
[0:14] Hello and welcome to the Academy of Imperfection, where experts in their field share their wisdom on the subject of imperfection.
[0:27] Today's lecturer is physiotherapist and nutrition scientist Simon Hill, with a pint load of research-backed practical tips on how we can live the healthiest life possible.
[0:41] So fetch your quill and join students Hugh, Ryan and Josh as Simon says this is the Academy of Imperfection.
[0:54] Well, Simon Hill, finally.
[0:59] We all say.
[1:01] God, this is exciting.
[1:03] We've done a few episodes throughout our days sort of focused on nutrition and food, but I feel like today is going to be different than the ones we've done in the past.
[1:14] But...
[1:16] maybe the best who knows possibly no pressure it's a it's a topic that when we do cover there is just an extraordinary amount of interest and so it's really great to have you today so thank you well thank you guys I think this is my first podcast as a guest in my hometown oh really and it's my first kind of four-way four-way podcast
[1:42] Definitely say podcast.
[1:43] Definitely.
[1:44] Four-way podcast.
[1:47] Yeah, it's my first podcast after doing a four-way.
[1:52] That's a first too.
[1:54] Needless to say, I'm happy to be here.
[1:56] We're stoked.
[1:58] I'm going to read a bio for Simon.
[2:01] For those of you who don't know his background, Simon is a nutritionist, physiotherapist and podcast host who has dedicated his career to making information regarding health, diet and nutrition accessible to the public.
[2:11] Simon grew up surrounded by scientific papers.
[2:13] Simon's dad is a professor of physiology and installed in Simon an appreciation for understanding what is happening in your body.
[2:20] As a physiotherapist, Simon started off working in Melbourne in sporting environments where protein was king.
[2:26] It wasn't until Simon's vegetarian brother came to stay with him that Simon began to understand the power of plants and how mainstream information perhaps wasn't up to date with scientific understanding of nutrition.
[2:37] Simon was inspired to complete his master's in nutrition science and in 2018, he began his podcast, The Proof, which now has over 40 million listeners.
[2:47] Oh, yeah.
[2:49] Between his personal and podcast Instagram.
[2:50] Things are going okay.
[2:51] Simon has a Q fight at 1.2.
[2:53] Listens, not listeners.
[2:55] Okay, listens.
[2:55] Let's clarify that for the record.
[2:57] That's a good one.
[2:58] I kind of wish it was 40 million listeners.
[3:00] Oh, no, we know the clarification.
[3:02] We often get confused between the two.
[3:05] Oh, my God.
[3:06] Oh, yeah.
[3:06] No.
[3:07] Just listens.
[3:09] In 2021, Simon released his book, The Proof is in the Plants, which became a number one non-fictional bestseller in Australia.
[3:18] Officially, welcome to the Academy of Imperfection, Simon.
[3:21] Thank you.
[3:22] That was a great bio.
[3:23] I'm not sure who wrote that.
[3:24] It was much better than any bio I've ever written.
[3:26] Oh.
[3:27] Yeah.
[3:27] Well done, Bella.
[3:28] Great to be here.
[3:28] Well done, Bella.
[3:30] She writes a great bio.
[3:31] You can have it.
[3:32] Very smooth.
[3:33] I might take that.
[3:34] It's literally yours.
[3:35] It's quite a little.
[3:36] Just give us like 30 bucks or whatever.
[3:39] No big deal.
[3:40] Like 30, whatever you got on you.
[3:43] I reckon the most important, well, not the most important thing, but something I'd love to know is why this is a topic or an area that you have focused or you've put your life work into.
[3:53] I mean, why does this mean so much to you?
[3:56] I think there are a few reasons.
[3:59] One is that there's so much confusion on this topic and I feel like just in my conversations with people who don't have a scientific background,
[4:08] There's frustration, a lack of agency, and people really just not feeling confident about what can you go and eat on a daily basis without poisoning yourself.
[4:22] And so I'm very motivated to try and help empower people and clear up some of that confusion that they're exposed to online and reducing anxiety around food.
[4:33] Yeah.
[4:35] And my initial on-ramp, though, was experiencing for the first time someone close to me losing their health in a very acute manner.
[4:45] I saw my dad.
[4:47] I grew up in Melbourne.
[4:48] And one of the things that we loved doing, my parents were divorced when I was 10 years old.
[4:54] And so I would...
[4:55] only really see my dad every second weekend, pretty common kind of arrangement.
[5:00] And my brother and I would go and spend the weekend with him.
[5:02] And this was just like a really great time to kind of get father-son bonding and get to know each other.
[5:08] And one of the things that we would do is drive out to the Yarra Valley.
[5:13] And there was one weekend where it was just my dad and I, and we were out kind of hopping from winery to winery.
[5:19] I was like 15 years old.
[5:22] And we did that on this Sunday afternoon and we were driving back to his house, which was in King Lake.
[5:29] And on the way back, he started to get some chest pain.
[5:33] And I could tell he was uncomfortable as he was driving and he said he had some chest pain and some pain in his shoulder.
[5:41] And he thought it was, you know, probably just something that would go away and kind of, you know, denied what was happening a little bit.
[5:47] And as you said at the beginning, my dad's a professor of physiology and researches cardiovascular disease.
[5:54] Yeah, kind of bench science level.
[5:56] So a lot of mechanistic stuff.
[5:58] And we proceeded to go home and we were cooking dinner and checked in and he thought he was okay.
[6:04] And I went off to bed and a couple hours later, I could hear a lot of noise in the kitchen.
[6:08] And I woke up, went out to see if he was okay.
[6:13] And I could see like by this stage...
[6:15] He could no longer deny what was happening.
[6:17] He was having a full-blown heart attack and he was kind of on his knees and had the phone in his hands.
[6:24] He was out of breath.
[6:25] Oh, my God.
[6:26] Sorry, how old were you at the time?
[6:28] I'm 15.
[6:28] 15.
[6:28] Yeah, he was 41.
[6:29] 41.
[6:31] Oh, wow.
[6:31] So very young.
[6:32] So 41, like back then, you know, when you were a kid, you think 41's old.
[6:36] Yeah.
[6:38] Now I'm like, holy shit.
[6:40] Like I'm nearly 41.
[6:41] Yeah.
[6:44] And he was also like...
[6:47] People sometimes ask me, like, what was your dad's health like at that time?
[6:51] And I would say he was representative of a young Australian dad.
[6:54] So he wasn't, you know, significantly overweight.
[6:58] He would work out a couple times a week.
[6:59] He was playing squash, which was his kind of sport of choice.
[7:03] He was definitely stressed working, like, a lot of hours trying to make ends meet.
[7:09] Um, obviously been through a divorce, didn't smoke, he drank some alcohol, but he was kind of living the typical Australian lifestyle and diet and had his entire life.
[7:20] And.
[7:22] He'd called triple zero.
[7:25] I took over on the phone and was explaining to them what he was experiencing.
[7:30] And because we were in King Lake and what I was relaying to them, they decided they would send a helicopter.
[7:37] So fortunately, there was my dad had this like little mud brick house on quite a bit of land and they were able to land the helicopter in the backyard and
[7:46] And came into the house, put him onto a stretcher, hooked him up to all these machines.
[7:50] And before I knew it, he was flying out.
[7:54] Wow.
[7:54] And you just, you left there?
[7:55] I was left there.
[7:56] Oh.
[7:57] And so my mom and brother were in Eltham, where my mom lived.
[8:01] And...
[8:02] I then hopped in the ambulance because they brought one in an ambulance as well.
[8:07] And I trailed by car.
[8:10] And so we were obviously like pretty, you know, privileged in that we could act.
[8:14] We lived in Australia, my dad had healthcare and whatnot.
[8:17] So we trailed and then went to the hospital and then they came out and fortunately they said, your dad's had a severe heart attack, we've saved his life.
[8:28] And that was all we were concerned with.
[8:30] Wow.
[8:31] And then the next day they do like a kind of family meeting debrief.
[8:35] Like what's the prognosis here?
[8:36] Yeah.
[8:37] Oh, so like as in like what caused it?
[8:40] what caused it but more so like what does his health look like from here and then also some kind of words of advice to my brother and i given that we would have similar genetics to my dad reading some of his genes uh things for us to kind of look out for as we become adults and
[9:04] The take-home message from my brother and I from that was that we probably have pretty lousy genes and we're going to need to keep an eye on this.
[9:11] You know, your dad's had a heart attack at 41.
[9:13] That's pretty rare.
[9:16] But fortunately, they were able to save his life, which a crazy statistic is that 50%, almost 50% of first-time cardiac events are sudden cardiac death.
[9:29] Really?
[9:29] Yes.
[9:30] 50%.
[9:31] Almost 50%.
[9:32] That numbers coming down slightly due to better access to healthcare quicker and responding quicker.
[9:37] But that's a huge statistic.
[9:39] Yeah.
[9:39] Shocking.
[9:40] Right.
[9:40] Terrifying.
[9:41] What does make you feel so grateful that your dad wasn't one of them?
[9:44] Hugely.
[9:45] You know, I think about, it makes me feel grateful and then it makes me feel for all the people where it went the other way.
[9:53] Mm-hmm.
[9:54] You know, and I got, I've got to have another dad's nearly 70 now, I guess.
[10:00] Yeah.
[10:00] So I've got to have, you know, another 30 years already with him.
[10:04] But the aftermath of that and walking away from that conversation was really that cardiovascular disease has a strong genetic component, runs in families.
[10:15] You guys are going to need to be screened as you get older.
[10:17] And the conversation kind of ended there.
[10:19] And sometimes I wish the conversation was longer, but you know.
[10:25] I don't know.
[10:26] I can't remember like how much time we had with the cardiologist and it's hard to know everything that was discussed.
[10:33] But I did leave with quite a limiting belief that these are just like the cards you've been dealt.
[10:40] And to see someone who you see as like fit and strong and go through that health experience at such a young age –
[10:47] Um, you know, it's a little bit disempowering and it wasn't until I was a bit older and in university and had begun looking at science and researching chronic diseases.
[11:01] And this comes back to, to kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing now is that I did, I was able to, to better understand.
[11:09] the effect that genetics have on the chronic diseases that most people in our communities are being affected by.
[11:15] So cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, various types of cancer, dementia, these diseases that...
[11:26] So much of us experience either firsthand, or someone in our family, or definitely friends of friends, there can be a genetic component that kind of predisposes people to one of these diseases over the other.
[11:38] But it's the lifestyle choices we make and the environment that we kind of create that,
[11:48] determines to what extent those genes are expressed or not.
[11:52] Yeah.
[11:52] And this has kind of been quantified in twin studies where they take twins with the exact same, so identical twins, the exact same genes and try and decipher like how, how much do genes determine your fate when it comes to these chronic diseases versus lifestyle.
[12:07] And it's about 20% genetically determined and 80% is lifestyle.
[12:11] Wow.
[12:12] Okay.
[12:13] So there's many levers you can pull.
[12:14] Right.
[12:15] And then, so that flips the script from being like a young kid who was feeling a little bit disempowered to then all of a sudden feeling a lot more agency and in control.
[12:27] And then the next question is, well, okay, well, what are those choices?
[12:32] And then now you're introduced to the world of social media and it's like, holy shit, I don't know where to start.
[12:39] So when you were talking about like studying and like how early on in your kind of like mission journey in understanding nature versus nurture, did the food element take over?
[12:54] Didn't take over until my mid to late 20s.
[12:57] Right.
[12:58] So up until mid 20s, I was focused on physiotherapy.
[13:04] I was working with the Richmond Football Club and Coburg Football Club, who was like their feeder VFL team.
[13:09] I'm not sure if that's the case anymore.
[13:10] It might be.
[13:11] And I was like their junior physiotherapist, given all the great jobs.
[13:16] And...
[13:17] And I was focused on like biomechanics, recovery, rehabilitation, anatomy, all that side of things.
[13:25] Yeah.
[13:26] And in my mid-20s was when I started to develop an interest in nutrition.
[13:33] So my brother had made changes to his diet.
[13:35] And various people along the way had told me to perhaps consider the foods I was eating, who were aware of my dad's health history.
[13:44] And I was coming through this kind of football environment.
[13:47] I was playing football myself.
[13:48] Then I was working within the football environment.
[13:50] And my diet then was super meat heavy.
[13:53] It was tons of red meat, tons of poultry.
[13:57] If there were vegetables, it was lucky to be a little bit of broccoli and sweet potato and maybe some white rice, which is a common kind of fitness bodybuilder diet still to this day.
[14:09] And I always felt very challenged when someone would,
[14:13] say to me that that might not be the healthiest way to eat for your cardiovascular health.
[14:18] If you're trying to avoid having a heart attack.
[14:21] Um, but that, that way of eating that sort of meat heavy diet, were you eating like that because you were working out a lot and you thought, oh, that's going to be the good thing to sort of balance or work in tandem with the working out?
[14:36] Yeah, truth be told, I'd never really examined the research that deeply.
[14:41] I think I was just conditioned by the environment I was in.
[14:45] So being in sporting environments, reading fitness magazines, it was just the way that people did it.
[14:52] Which is the common experience.
[14:54] Like no one's delving into research.
[14:56] Right.
[14:56] Yeah.
[14:57] And
[14:59] It wasn't until I got to 25, 26, 27 that I then became a little bit more interested in whether there was any truth to this idea that there was a better way to eat to improve the health of my arteries and my heart and reduce my risk of having a heart attack or a stroke.
[15:18] And that was kind of my on-ramp.
[15:20] And when I first started looking at the research, it was so confusing.
[15:25] Yeah.
[15:26] I was finding a study that would say one thing and a study that said another thing.
[15:30] I would find an expert that said one thing, an expert that said another thing.
[15:33] And I realized I didn't have the skills to actually to to make sense of any of that.
[15:39] And that's why I went back.
[15:40] I did a master's in.
[15:41] um, human nutrition science at Deakin.
[15:43] I think you guys had Felice Jagger on the show.
[15:45] Yeah, we did.
[15:47] Um, who's done some wonderful research, including the smiles trial that people may be familiar with.
[15:53] And I went back and did that.
[15:55] And my, my rationale to go back was to actually develop some skills to be able to read this literature.
[16:02] Mm hmm.
[16:03] And it makes sense of it because, and you see it today, someone on the internet will make one claim and they'll say study show and then someone else will say study show.
[16:12] And it just seems like the science all over the place, but it's not necessarily that the science is all over the place.
[16:18] It's that key context is being left out.
[16:21] And often what seems to be contradictory findings, they're not contradictory.
[16:25] They're completely explainable when you understand what type of study it was, the method, get into some of that nuance.
[16:31] But that tends to get lost when there's kind of 30-second soundbites.
[16:36] Yeah.
[16:37] Yeah.
[16:37] Or it's like, you know, a bit of research is sort of, yeah, compressed down to a sound bite and that sound bite is compressed into a meme and that meme is read by an Instagrammer who then explains it in, you know, in a different way.
[16:49] And all of a sudden it's like so, so, so separated, disconnected.
[16:53] And then it, and then it enters the dinner table.
[16:57] Yeah.
[16:57] And if that information is something that confirms a bias that you already have and you're kind of listening to that information.
[17:05] this is just part of human limitations, we will naturally accept a lot of information very quickly that confirms a bias.
[17:14] Yeah.
[17:15] We're not likely to challenge it.
[17:17] Yeah, all of a sudden I'm like swearing that like, no, it's actually really good to have two full blocks of chocolate a day.
[17:23] I actually heard that from someone.
[17:25] I'm not sure where I heard it, but definitely heard that.
[17:29] It sounds convincing.
[17:30] Okay.
[17:31] Well, Ryan said he heard it somewhere.
[17:33] Study shows.
[17:34] Yeah.
[17:34] He read a study.
[17:35] He heard a person who read a study.
[17:37] Saw a picture of a person who read a study.
[17:38] One of the things I do, like it's quite congruent with our show, is that we can have it imperfect.
[17:46] You know, food isn't going to be perfect every single time and that's okay.
[17:51] Can you speak to that a bit?
[17:52] Because I feel like a lot of people feel.
[17:54] Like a pressure.
[17:56] There's overwhelming pressure to just like analyze everything on the plate and this has to be the right size and this has to be not too much and then I can't have that.
[18:03] And also shame when you get it wrong.
[18:05] I feel a lot of shame about my.
[18:06] That's a big one.
[18:07] My life and diet.
[18:08] That's a big one.
[18:09] Yeah.
[18:09] And I get that too myself.
[18:11] Yeah.
[18:12] And I think we all do to some extent.
[18:14] It's very easy to fall into these kind of orthorexic eating behaviors, which I think are affecting so many people today more than we realize, which is orthorexic is kind of like where you're just thinking about food all day.
[18:29] You're overthinking it, over-optimizing it.
[18:33] you're constantly trying to make it more pure, more clean, better.
[18:36] It's never good enough.
[18:38] And that can cause shame and anxiety.
[18:42] And I think that's the trap.
[18:44] The trap is trying to chase perfection.
[18:46] Mm-hmm.
[18:47] You're better to adopt a diet imperfectly over decades than to do the perfect diet occasionally.
[18:55] Oh, yeah.
[18:57] Yeah.
[18:58] And so when you can really adopt that mindset, you can release some of that shame.
[19:04] You can stop putting so much pressure on yourself.
[19:07] And really that's what it's about.
[19:09] We're talking about your overall dietary pattern, what that looks like, which is not a single food or a single snack you have in a day, but what does it look like over weeks and months and decades, right?
[19:21] That's what's going to dictate your risk of chronic disease.
[19:25] Mm-hmm.
[19:26] So I agree with you.
[19:27] I think chasing the perfect, quote-unquote perfect diet, it's a trap.
[19:33] And there really is no such thing as that.
[19:35] There's a theme of healthy eating.
[19:38] Certainly the research has borne out a theme, and we can discuss what that is.
[19:42] That looks like.
[19:44] But within that theme, there's a lot of room to manipulate it depending on who you are, what your goals are, where you live, what's your cultural background, what type of foods do you enjoy from a cultural aspect of your performance goals.
[20:00] So income, two degrees.
[20:02] Income.
[20:02] Yeah.
[20:03] Income and also cooking skills is another big one.
[20:08] Yeah.
[20:09] You know, people often feel ashamed buying frozen vegetables.
[20:12] Shouldn't feel ashamed for buying frozen vegetables.
[20:14] They're often cheaper.
[20:17] The shelf life of them is going to be better.
[20:20] Less of them are going to perish in your fridge and they're easier to cook with.
[20:26] And they, in many cases, actually have more nutrients than the fresh ones.
[20:30] Really?
[20:31] Yeah, because they're flash frozen, frozen just after harvest.
[20:34] Right.
[20:35] So there's this, there's this kind of idea out there and often shaming that, you know, buying frozen vegetables for your kids is, you know, it's not going to be fresh as best, but they actually are fresh and often a lot cheaper.
[20:47] Yeah, okay.
[20:48] I remember when I found those pre-compressed spinach cubes, like the frozen spinach cubes for when I was making smoothies.
[20:57] Oh, that was a game changer.
[20:59] I've done that too.
[20:59] Oh, I love them.
[21:01] You've just changed my game.
[21:02] Yeah.
[21:03] Wow.
[21:03] Yeah, I change games.
[21:06] I sometimes change games.
[21:11] Cool, man.
[21:12] So how would you summarise the overall state of play here in Australia as far as there's so much, depending on your algorithm, it feels like everyone's eating, you know, incredibly well, but then you'll drive past seven fast food outlets on the way to pick up the kids from school.
[21:27] So how would you summarise the state of play in Australia right now?
[21:31] Or is that too much of a generalist question to ask?
[21:35] I think it's a great question.
[21:36] You should try living in LA for a little bit and see how much fast food there is.
[21:40] I come here and it's like there's hardly any fast food.
[21:42] Really?
[21:45] So I think there's a few kind of parts to the response to this question.
[21:51] One is we can often find ourselves in a bit of a bubble looking on social media and thinking that's representative of the nation when it's not.
[22:00] The latest studies suggest that the average Australian diet
[22:05] About 50% of calories are ultra processed foods.
[22:09] We can discuss what that means.
[22:11] We'll put a link in the show notes to our episodes with Felice Jaka and Tim Spector, who talked a lot about that.
[22:18] the average person is getting about 12 to 15 grams of fiber a day when in reality probably should be more around 30 grams.
[22:27] It's not that more fiber is better, but it's a kind of nonlinear association.
[22:33] But as you go from 12 grams a day to 30 grams, you see significant reductions in risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, various cancers like colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease.
[22:45] Sorry to stop you there, but what's the best way to just increase?
[22:49] What should we be eating more of?
[22:51] And this is like the one tip when people say just like, what's the one thing that people could focus on to really improve diet quality and lower risk of disease?
[22:59] It would be getting fiber up towards 30 grams a day and just providing more food for the microbiome in general.
[23:08] And so fiber, it's only found in plants.
[23:11] This is one of the biggest reasons that eating a plant-rich diet is beneficial.
[23:16] So you'll find fiber in fruits, in all vegetables, whole grains, legumes.
[23:22] Okay.
[23:23] And adding a half a cup of legumes a day, adding some whole grains.
[23:31] So having whole grain bread instead of...
[23:33] White bread, if you can.
[23:35] Nuts and seeds also creates a source of fiber.
[23:39] So just finding ways to get more plant diversity in, and you naturally will increase your fiber intake.
[23:46] This is so similar to what, I mean, when we had Tim Spector on the podcast a couple of years ago, and he was talking about a very similar thing.
[23:53] He was talking about, I think there's like 30 different types of plants.
[23:58] Yeah.
[23:59] He said a week or something.
[24:01] Something like that.
[24:02] Yeah.
[24:02] I thought it was a day.
[24:03] It's a week.
[24:04] I thought it was an hour.
[24:04] It's an hour?
[24:05] Yeah.
[24:07] Let's make it really impossible for people.
[24:11] 30 unique plants every minute.
[24:13] I think he says, at least for a month a year, live inside a tree.
[24:16] I think he says as well.
[24:18] I think that's part of his thing.
[24:20] No, that was the human gut microbiome project and they found that people who had...
[24:27] 30 or more unique plants a week compared to 10 or fewer has significantly more diverse microbiome, which is associated with lower risk of all those diseases that I mentioned.
[24:37] It's associated with better mental health, less risk of depression and anxiety.
[24:42] And the way to do that is to increase your fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes.
[24:48] And the reason it's thought to believe that 30 unique is important is that...
[24:56] Now, fiber is kind of like an umbrella term.
[24:59] Fiber is not one thing.
[25:01] There's all sorts of different types of food for the microbiome.
[25:05] And if you were actually to break it down a little bit without getting too nerdy...
[25:09] There's three components.
[25:10] There's prebiotic fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols.
[25:14] These are all different classes of compounds in food that feed the microbiome.
[25:21] And different plant foods like zucchini or carrot or spinach or kale,
[25:28] pistachios, they all contain different types of prebiotic fiber, different types of resistant starch, different types of polyphenols, which feed different bacteria.
[25:37] So if the goal is to increase diversity within the microbiome, you want to be feeding more of these species as possible.
[25:45] So you can kind of think of all these different plant foods as like fertilizer, but
[25:49] Going into the small intestine, they don't get digested there like how macronutrients, protein, fats do.
[25:56] They go down into the large intestine and they just fertilize the bacteria.
[26:00] And the reason that's important is that 38 trillion microbiome community, it's kind of like your own little pharmacy.
[26:10] Yeah.
[26:11] So when you feed it, it's dispensing these compounds, like drug-like compounds, which affect your physiology.
[26:17] They affect your blood glucose control, your cholesterol, so your cardiometabolic health.
[26:22] They affect inflammation, which affects everything from...
[26:27] risk of depression to risk of various cancers, neurodegenerative disease, and so forth.
[26:34] So you can either have a microbiome that is kind of starving because you're not feeding it, and it's not really working for you, or you can nourish it and get it working for you.
[26:46] So this is all so fascinating and I am so interested as we all are.
[26:52] But the thing that I find, and I guess this seems obvious to say, but I didn't really, it didn't clock with me for a long time, is that what is good for one person is not good for another person in terms of like food advice.
[27:06] And I found that really like annoying because I was just sort of hoping that I was like, I just want to read a book.
[27:13] And I want the answers.
[27:15] But of course, like that what works for me does not work for someone else.
[27:20] How do we know what is right for our body?
[27:25] And also you could make a change that makes you feel good for a week that is not going to, you're not going to feel great in six months or is going to increase your risk of disease in the long term.
[27:34] Gotcha.
[27:34] Like for example, Monash Uni have a low FODMAP diet, which is for people who have certain types of gut intolerances.
[27:42] I'm not sure if anyone on the show has spoken about this.
[27:44] No, but some people in my life are FODMAP people.
[27:49] And that diet has FODMAP people.
[27:51] And that diet has been designed as like a short-term elimination diet.
[27:55] And so the research is quite clear that for certain people, you can adopt that type of diet and you'll get symptom relief.
[28:02] But it's also well established that you don't want to adopt that way of eating long-term because you'll starve the microbiome and end up with blood.
[28:08] further problems later on.
[28:10] Gotcha.
[28:10] Yeah.
[28:11] So I think we have to just be careful to assume that if we adopt, if we change our diet and it makes us feel better tomorrow, that that's necessarily the best diet long-term.
[28:21] Interesting.
[28:22] That's so good to know.
[28:23] Yeah.
[28:23] And I would say the other thing I think we need to clarify here is because I agree there is some bio-individuality.
[28:30] We all have different genetics, slightly different gene that will affect what is the sort of quote-unquote best diet for us.
[28:40] But I don't think it's as extreme as saying for one person it's all meat and the other person it's all plants.
[28:47] Mm-hmm.
[28:48] I think that there is an established theme.
[28:51] So that theme of eating is a diet that is low in saturated fat, has a good amount of unsaturated fats.
[28:58] I'll bring this back to food in a moment.
[29:01] It's rich in fiber, can contain animal and plant protein, but has more plant protein than current average diets and is low in ultra processed foods.
[29:10] And that's that theme I was mentioning before.
[29:13] You can cut that a number of ways.
[29:14] It could be low carb, it could be high carb,
[29:17] It could be Mediterranean.
[29:18] It could be pescatarian.
[29:20] People don't like that answer because it's not absolute.
[29:23] We all want the definitive, absolute answer.
[29:27] And this is one of the reasons why...
[29:31] Unfortunately, on social media, a lot of the information that gets a lot of traction is not representative of the science because it's the absolute kind of deep conviction style messaging that works best.
[29:45] Yeah.
[29:46] When you put that nuance in…
[29:48] and give give like a little bit more context.
[29:51] It's not as sexy.
[29:53] Yeah.
[29:53] Yeah.
[29:54] There's a little more uncertainty.
[29:55] Yeah.
[29:56] And to the lay person who might might hear me say that and think sounds a little wishy-washy doesn't sound doesn't sound that confident as opposed to someone saying I've got, you know, this is the single best way.
[30:09] But really like good science communication is about
[30:16] establishing the uncertainty and speaking with some nuance.
[30:21] And I think that's a good kind of green flag for people to be aware of on social media.
[30:24] Don't conflate someone saying...
[30:27] who's speaking with nuance as not having confidence.
[30:31] They're speaking responsibly.
[30:32] They're speaking more responsibly and they're actually, you know, more accurately relaying what we're seeing within the research.
[30:41] And what I love about that theme is that it's not one way.
[30:45] It gives people option.
[30:47] So my answer to your question would be, okay, what I've just described there is that diet is low saturated fat, rich and unsaturated fat, it's high in fiber, right?
[30:56] has more plant protein than the average diet and it's low in ultra processed foods.
[31:00] There's a number of different ways of cutting, cutting that.
[31:03] Hmm.
[31:05] Find a way within that theme that leaves you feeling good now, but then also go and do blood work and look at established blood biomarkers that we know determine risk of disease.
[31:18] How do you do that?
[31:18] All right.
[31:19] So you can go and look at your basic cardiometabolic biomarkers, like your cholesterol levels.
[31:26] We can dig into that if you want.
[31:28] You can look at your fasting blood glucose, HbA1c, which look at your body's ability to utilize and regulate glucose.
[31:38] So maintain glucose homeostasis, which affects your risk of developing diabetes.
[31:43] All this information is coming from a simple blood test?
[31:46] Yeah.
[31:46] Right.
[31:47] Yeah.
[31:48] So what...
[31:49] I guess if I was just to kind of wrap that up, it's okay, there's a theme that we know is associated with lower risk of disease.
[31:57] Find the way within that that feels best for you.
[32:01] Maybe it's a low-carb Mediterranean diet.
[32:04] Maybe it's a high-carb plant-based pescatarian diet.
[32:08] And you know what's right for you from the trial and error.
[32:11] Yes.
[32:11] So you're going to feel right, but then you're also going to go and get some objective markers.
[32:15] Gotcha.
[32:15] So you go and do your blood work and are things coming back and they're all over the place?
[32:21] Well, if they are, then you might want to change various things in your diet.
[32:24] It might be that you get your test back and ApoB or LDL cholesterol is sky high and then you may want to reduce the set, look at the foods in your diet that have a lot of saturated fat and make some swaps.
[32:38] Yeah.
[32:38] Mm-hmm.
[32:40] Is it?
[32:40] Because I hear this and think, yes, that's something I'd love to do, but I feel like I would get lost in all the terms and the phrases.
[32:47] And is this something you can do with a nutritionist?
[32:49] Like can you have their guidance to look at the bloods and have them help you with that?
[32:56] Yeah, you can.
[32:57] If you go and get a blood test done and things are out,
[33:04] then certainly you can sit down with a good nutritionist who will understand like to be able to firstly look at, okay, what are you eating now?
[33:12] And then be able to make some recommendations as to good swaps that should shift some of those biomarkers in a favorable direction.
[33:19] Like a simple one is if you get ApoB tested or LDL cholesterol, which are essentially the same thing, and it was high, is a really good predictor of your risk of developing atherosclerosis, which is like plaque laying down in the artery.
[33:36] Just to give – rather than saying if, that's me.
[33:39] I have high markers in that.
[33:41] Yeah, so we understand that the biggest dietary lever that you can change is the type of fat you're consuming.
[33:50] Right.
[33:50] So saturated fats, they downregulate the liver's ability to clear LDL cholesterol.
[33:56] Yeah.
[33:57] Right?
[33:57] So they affect a receptor which stops the liver from being able to pull LDL cholesterol back into the liver out of circulation.
[34:03] So LDL cholesterol goes up.
[34:06] Unsaturated fats, particularly polyunsaturated fats, which are found in fatty fish or nuts and seeds, they do the opposite.
[34:15] They upregulate that receptor and help pull LDL cholesterol back into the liver, which drives LDL cholesterol down in circulation.
[34:22] And when you have less LDL cholesterol circulating, there's less chance of these lipoproteins entering the artery wall and getting stuck.
[34:32] Okay.
[34:32] That's the mechanism.
[34:34] So from a food perspective though, because that can sound like a little mumbo jumbo.
[34:38] Yeah.
[34:38] For you, like for the average person in Australia, that would look like eating less fatty cuts of red meat and instead having fatty fish like salmon or...
[34:49] mackerel or anchovies.
[34:51] And in doing that, you're going to change the type of fat that you're consuming in that meal.
[34:57] It would look like having less butter and more olive oil.
[35:00] Okay.
[35:01] Swaps like that.
[35:03] Yeah.
[35:03] Yeah, swaps like that.
[35:04] It would look like having nuts and seeds as a snack, which have a lot of good unsaturated fats in them.
[35:11] Where do pastry goods sit on there?
[35:13] It sounds like my diet is no good.
[35:18] ApoB is, it's like, I guess, like cholesterol.
[35:22] Is that what we're... We're opening a can of worms here.
[35:24] This is good.
[35:26] I love this stuff.
[35:27] Go there.
[35:27] I love this stuff.
[35:28] I love this stuff.
[35:29] Okay.
[35:30] So glucose can travel through our blood.
[35:34] can just freely dissolve into blood.
[35:36] It's water soluble.
[35:38] Glucose is like an energy.
[35:39] Glucose.
[35:40] So like if we eat carbohydrates, it gets broken down in our intestine, gets absorbed in as a glucose molecule.
[35:46] That can just freely float around circulation.
[35:49] It can dissolve into water because our blood is essentially an aqueous water solution and can be taken to tissues and used to produce ATP, to produce energy.
[36:01] Yeah.
[36:01] But fat, we can't do that.
[36:04] It's not water-soluble.
[36:05] So fat, which is like the fats that we eat, or cholesterol, these are both lipid substances.
[36:11] This is like fats as in saturated or unsaturated?
[36:13] Yeah, it doesn't matter, whatever it is.
[36:16] It cannot dissolve into blood, into circulation.
[36:20] So the body, through evolution, had to come up with a lipid transport system.
[36:25] And what it came up with was we can attach those lipids to a protein.
[36:30] You may have heard of a lipoprotein before.
[36:34] So a lipoprotein, lipo is lipid and protein together.
[36:37] We could get a lipoprotein.
[36:40] The protein is like chaperoning the fats through circulation.
[36:44] It allows the fats to kind of dissolve in.
[36:47] Imagine like a beach ball is the protein and you shove the fats in the middle and push it into circulation.
[36:54] I was picturing a horse carrying something on its back, but that's probably better.
[37:00] Got me a fat here.
[37:01] Shoot, desperate for an analogy.
[37:05] A horse?
[37:06] No, don't do that.
[37:08] Okay.
[37:09] There is a different analogy that sometimes I use, and that's like a cargo ship.
[37:15] So, you know, we send things around the world on cargo ships.
[37:19] This is working.
[37:20] This is better than a horse.
[37:21] All the horses, like, traveling past each other going, hey, I've got a little...
[37:26] Let's go back to Simon.
[37:28] There could be horses on the cargo ship.
[37:31] That's confusing.
[37:34] Simon talking.
[37:34] Okay, so the cargo ship, we can't just push the containers into the ocean and expect the current to take them from Australia to America.
[37:43] The cargo ship has to carry them.
[37:44] So the cargo ship is a protein.
[37:46] On top, those containers are cholesterol and fats.
[37:49] So in our circulation, we have all of these lipoproteins that are essentially carrying fats to tissues that can use them as an energy source, just like glucose.
[38:02] Some of these lipoproteins contain what's called apolipoprotein B.
[38:09] In short, it's ApoB.
[38:11] And there's one of those proteins per cargo ship.
[38:17] Mm-hmm.
[38:19] LDL, so we mentioned before low-density lipoproteins or LDL cholesterol.
[38:25] When you measure LDL cholesterol, what you're doing is you're looking at the amount of cholesterol within all of the low-density lipoproteins.
[38:33] Okay.
[38:34] Okay?
[38:34] And just to clarify, when you say LDL cholesterol, is that when people say I've got high cholesterol, low cholesterol, is that what you're referring to?
[38:41] Usually they're referring to LDL cholesterol, which is measuring the cholesterol content of low-density lipoproteins.
[38:49] So it's measuring the amount of those cholesterol containers on top of the lipoproteins.
[38:56] Over time, what we've been able to...
[39:00] elucidating the research is that it's actually not the cholesterol content which dictates risk.
[39:05] It's the number of these cargo ships that have an ApoB protein on them.
[39:12] And each cargo ship has one ApoB.
[39:15] So now you can order a test that just tells you the ApoB concentration in your circulation.
[39:23] I think I'm about to do this.
[39:24] And what that's doing is it's giving you the total sum, so low-density lipoproteins, intermediate-density lipoproteins, very low-density lipoproteins.
[39:34] All of them contain ApoB, and each one of them contains one ApoB.
[39:39] So when you order that, you get the total summation of all atherogenic lipoproteins, which means any lipoprotein that has the potential to enter the artery wall and get stuck.
[39:51] And we know there are cutoff points.
[39:52] So we know that like the average person's ApoB in this country, probably around 110 milligrams per deciliter.
[40:02] Should be giving this in Australian units.
[40:04] Perhaps we can do it in the show notes.
[40:06] And at that level.
[40:08] I'll take care of that.
[40:09] You do the conversion?
[40:11] Yeah, thanks.
[40:11] I'll send you guys a conversion.
[40:13] I think that's better.
[40:14] My Australian listeners hate it when I use American units, but in the literature it's American units.
[40:22] The average Australian is probably around 110 milligrams per deciliter.
[40:26] And at that level, we know that you are laying down plaque.
[40:30] Okay.
[40:31] Like atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, everyone is being affected by this.
[40:35] Some people will die of it.
[40:36] Some people will die with it.
[40:38] They'll die of something else, but everyone has it pretty much because of the way we're living.
[40:43] if you can get that down south of about 80 milligrams per deciliter, now you're getting into a territory where you're either laying down very little plaque or no plaque at all.
[40:54] And so this is out of all of the chronic diseases, the disease that we know the most about that really people should not be suffering from is atherosclerosis.
[41:04] If you get that APOB down to an optimal level, you can stop it in its tracks and not have a heart attack or stroke.
[41:13] And so there are the dietary levers like we just discussed.
[41:17] And for some people, that's enough.
[41:19] They'll be able to get their APOB down.
[41:21] But for some people, based on their genetic makeup, they may need medication as well.
[41:26] So it's not a one-size-fits-all as to what works.
[41:28] Yeah.
[41:30] Yeah, right.
[41:30] That's a path I'm looking down at the moment.
[41:33] I've got the test for that second one that I've got to do.
[41:37] And the doctor is like, if this test comes back, we need to discuss medication.
[41:41] But I don't think I'm thinking about diet enough.
[41:43] Let me just add one more thing.
[41:45] This is science over the last 10 years that's become clear, but it takes time for a laboratory to update an insurance update.
[41:52] So sometimes it can be a little bit expensive.
[41:54] Yeah.
[41:55] There's a test that is on a standard blood panel, so usually covered by insurance, you don't have to pay extra, called non-HDL.
[42:04] Okay.
[42:05] And that is almost as good as ApoB.
[42:09] So if you go in an ApoB and they want to charge you a lot of money, just get non-HDL.
[42:15] For the purposes of understanding your risk, that's going to be good enough.
[42:19] And what does HDL stand for?
[42:21] Non-HDL?
[42:22] Non-HDL cholesterol is essentially, just before I mentioned that you have low-density lipoproteins, intermediate-density lipoproteins, and very low-density lipoproteins.
[42:33] And then you have another class of lipoproteins called high-density lipoproteins.
[42:39] these do not have an ApoB protein on them.
[42:41] They're not atherogenic.
[42:42] So when you measure non-HDL, so non-HDL cholesterol, you measure all the cholesterol in those atherogenic lipoproteins, not the ones that are not atherogenic.
[42:54] So it's a very good proxy for ApoB while not being exactly the same.
[42:58] I'm just mentioning it.
[42:59] in case someone goes and finds out ordering ApoB is inaccessible or it's super expensive.
[43:05] Yeah.
[43:05] Right.
[43:06] Awesome.
[43:07] I went to Deakin University as well.
[43:09] I studied primary school teaching and I feel like our lectures were a little bit different.
[43:15] Like what I was like, after lunch, do show and tell.
[43:18] Yep, got it, cool.
[43:19] And you're doing that stuff.
[43:21] I feel stressed about sitting in your lecture trying to remember everything.
[43:23] But anyway.
[43:25] I also thought because we've just started a Patreon and we're asking whether they had any questions they wanted to ask you, Simon.
[43:32] And we got a few responses.
[43:33] So we thought maybe we should ask a few of them.
[43:36] Yeah, and if you want to join our blossoming community on Patreon, it's patreon.com forward slash The Imperfects.
[43:44] Okay, so Rosie wanted to ask you, Simon, how do you help children form positive relationships with food?
[43:54] Ooh.
[43:56] Hey, Rosie.
[43:57] Thank you for that question.
[43:58] She's not on the phone.
[44:05] I think, I mean, kids love play and fun.
[44:07] So that has to be, that's got to be central to it, making it fun.
[44:13] I also think the thing with children is,
[44:16] is you have to keep presenting them food.
[44:18] So I don't have kids myself, but I have nephews.
[44:22] And I've witnessed firsthand the challenges that come with trying to get them to eat certain foods.
[44:29] And, you know, often they leave a lot of food on their plate.
[44:34] But there is research suggesting that you want to keep presenting them with food
[44:38] those foods and eventually over time they might decide to try them when they kind of make up their own mind to do so.
[44:47] Uh, I think there's research showing that kids tend to prefer their food separated rather than being blended, not to say all kids, not to say all kids, but, but many, many kids.
[44:59] Um, wonder why that is.
[45:01] Hmm.
[45:02] I don't know the answer to that.
[45:03] Would you guys have any thought?
[45:05] Is that true for you?
[45:06] Do you mean separate?
[45:07] Having them in separate compartments.
[45:09] Separate little compartments.
[45:11] I think it probably makes it fun.
[45:12] And also I think we take for granted how complicated multiple flavours together is.
[45:20] And they're like new palates that haven't experienced much flavour.
[45:22] So I think learning what the flavours are individually would be beneficial.
[45:27] And then getting them involved as well.
[45:30] So, you know, wherever you're buying the food or taking them to the markets and I think showing kids how food's grown and sort of how it gets to the plate is also another way to make it a little bit more fun.
[45:43] Showing them the kind of end-to-end process and getting them involved in cooking and making them feel like they're playing a big role in that even if they're not.
[45:50] Yeah.
[45:51] So the next one is from Emily, Patreon member Emily.
[45:58] So she wants to know basically what foods should women be eating like during perimenopause or menopause?
[46:08] Should they change how they eat or is there something specific?
[46:12] Great question.
[46:13] I had Susan Davis on, actually.
[46:16] She's from Melbourne.
[46:17] You guys should have her on the show at some point in time.
[46:20] So I would say just like two things.
[46:22] So one is that as a woman goes through perimenopause and reaches menopause, her risk of disease changes.
[46:30] A lot of this is driven by changes in hormones.
[46:33] But risk of cardiovascular disease goes up quite a bit and risk of osteoporosis.
[46:38] So all of the things we've spoken about today around dietary pattern, optimizing cholesterol become even more important, optimizing protein intake, calcium for bone health,
[46:50] become more important as does resistance training to make sure that you're actually providing the stimulus for the bone to respond to, to, to grow stronger.
[46:59] And then if I was to drill in and say specific food for specific symptoms, the only real research that I've seen where there's been a significant effect is soy foods.
[47:08] There's been quite a few trials now where the addition of soy foods has helped reduce vasomotor symptoms, which are symptoms that a woman will experience usually during,
[47:18] perimenopause, which is when it's kind of described as hormone chaos.
[47:21] Things are going all over the place.
[47:23] And a woman might experience hot flashes, for example.
[47:27] And the addition of soy foods in that period can be very helpful.
[47:32] Wow.
[47:33] So Matt wants to ask, he asks, what are the benefits slash consequences of a carnivore diet?
[47:40] So benefits, firstly, it really is a strict elimination diet, not too dissimilar from low FODMAP diet.
[47:48] So you're removing a lot of plant...
[47:51] material that contains prebiotics, contains other compounds that can cause gut GI symptoms, inflammatory symptoms in people that have intolerances.
[48:03] And so the removal of those for people can be an immediate kind of reduction in symptoms, improved digestion, um,
[48:13] But long-term effect of that dietary pattern, what's happening?
[48:17] Well, typically you're getting an inferior cardiometabolic profile.
[48:21] So you're raising your risk of cardiometabolic disease long-term.
[48:25] Probably raising your risk of various cancers, depending on the intake level exposure of red meat.
[48:30] It's not that red meat is cancer-causing at any level and can't be in a diet, but we know that there are certain levels where it does increase your risk of colorectal cancer, for example.
[48:40] Mm-hmm.
[48:41] And then you're probably increasing your risk of these diseases, not just because of the high exposure of red meat and animal foods, but the opportunity cost.
[48:52] So all the fiber that you're not getting in polyphenols and prebiotics that would have a risk reduction effect.
[49:00] So, I mean, and that's the case in nutrition.
[49:02] When we're looking at the outcome, it's always, it's not just the food you're eating, but what's it displacing.
[49:07] So I would say benefits in the short term can be an alleviation of symptoms and improvement in gut health.
[49:14] Some people with autoimmune conditions can certainly, at least anecdotally, see improvements.
[49:20] And I want to underscore that.
[49:22] Most of this is anecdotal.
[49:23] There's very little research on the carnivore diet right now.
[49:27] That's surprising.
[49:28] A couple.
[49:29] There's a survey study, which was a self-selected survey study of people in a carnivore Facebook group, which is going to be subject to enormous bias because the people that perhaps did poorly on the carnivore diet aren't in that group anymore.
[49:44] So it's very hard to kind of read much into that.
[49:46] And then there was a clinical trial done.
[49:49] comparing a not carnivore but animal-based diet to a plant-based diet, looking at the short-term changes in the microbiome by Lawrence and David.
[49:59] This was published in Nature, which is one of the best journals in the world.
[50:02] And in that study, you do see deleterious changes to the microbiome.
[50:05] So those on the animal-based diet...
[50:08] In a very short period of time, the microbiome rapidly changed.
[50:11] They had an increase in inflammatory bacteria that is associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
[50:18] This is a short-term study looking at like a week.
[50:20] So we don't have data going beyond that.
[50:24] I'm guessing that that style of eating is not conducive to good long-term health because we have no evidence at a population level that it would be.
[50:32] There's not really any randomized controlled trial evidence.
[50:36] But at the same time, there are a lot of anecdotes online of people feeling better in the short term.
[50:40] And it's probably from gut intolerances and also weight loss.
[50:44] So when you remove 50% of calories coming from ultra-processed foods, and either way you shift to a plant-based or you shift to carnivore, you lower the energy density of the diet.
[50:56] And we know that energy density, so how many calories per bite, has a significant effect on the total calories you eat in a day.
[51:05] And so with either direction you kind of go to, whether it's plant-based or carnivore, you often the commonality is weight loss and weight loss resolves a lot of symptoms in the short term.
[51:18] Can I ask a question from myself because I'm in Patreon?
[51:21] Yeah.
[51:22] Yes, would have preferred you to submit it through Patreon, but yeah, go on.
[51:26] It just occurred to me then.
[51:28] So this comes from Josh in our Patreon group.
[51:32] You mentioned then... Josh would start paying for it, but yeah, go on.
[51:40] You mentioned autoimmune diseases.
[51:44] I have eczema and it gets really bad from time to time and I've often wondered and never gotten an answer whether there are dietary links to eczema or not.
[51:56] There are.
[51:58] It seems to be quite variable from person to person, but it's something that you can go and you can do some tests with and you can do an elimination style diet with a dietitian.
[52:06] Yeah.
[52:06] And go through how an elimination diet should work is you sit down with a dietitian, nutritionist, you strip the diet right back, and then you have to go through a challenge phase.
[52:18] The challenge phase is just slowly and incrementally bringing foods back.
[52:23] So week one, you eat everything, and then the following week, you remove one thing in the world.
[52:32] That is a challenge.
[52:33] It's huge.
[52:34] You're saying the opposite, aren't you?
[52:35] The opposite, and you're monitoring your symptoms over time.
[52:39] Okay, cool.
[52:40] Great.
[52:41] Okay, well, let's go one more from Patreon.
[52:44] Jeremy wanted to know, why are some people...
[52:48] This is a really good question.
[52:49] Why are some...
[52:50] The other one's right as well.
[52:51] Why are some people more susceptible to sugar cravings?
[52:54] I think some of this is explained by the microbiome, certainly.
[52:57] So when we're eating a lot of high...
[53:01] refined sugar foods our microbiome changes and there is some evidence to suggest that that can affect our appetite and hunger sort of signals um some of it is just i think building habits as well like so if you're someone who's
[53:19] constantly eating dinner and then after that you're having ice cream, it becomes habitual.
[53:25] So some of it's explained by, I think, behavioral, some of it's physiological.
[53:29] If you feel like you have a lot of sugar cravings, it's likely you have dysregulated hunger.
[53:35] And there is evidence to suggest that a lot of that is traced back to the microbiome.
[53:41] We know, like right now, GLP-1,
[53:44] like Ozempic is very popular, right?
[53:47] And GLP-1 agonists.
[53:49] GLP-1 is a hormone that we produce and you produce it in your gut.
[53:55] And we also produce other hormones like PYY and these hormones affect appetite, affect sugar cravings.
[54:03] And one of the kind of best ways to improve satiety is to get these hormones working for you rather than against you.
[54:15] And two of the kind of strategies for doing that are increasing protein in your diet.
[54:22] Protein will increase GLP-1, naturally produced, and increasing fiber.
[54:27] And so if your diet is lacking either in protein or fiber in these prebiotics, you're likely to not feel as full on the same calories as the next person who has much more protein and fiber in their diet.
[54:41] So I haven't seen this borne out in a study specifically, but my guess is that as you increase protein and fiber in your diet, your cravings for sugar will go down.
[54:52] Wow.
[54:54] I think that checks out for me in that I've been experimenting for a while with fasting in the morning a couple of years.
[55:02] And I found that I had weight loss, which is what I was after in the first year, if I'm being frank.
[55:09] I'd been to a doctor.
[55:10] I needed to lose some weight for a few different health reasons.
[55:14] But I did find that my sugar intake in the afternoon increased, I think, because I was hungry.
[55:21] And I felt like I would have a big meal at lunch or something, but it still hadn't like settled in yet.
[55:26] And I wasn't like, I was still hungry.
[55:28] So then I got started eating more sugar.
[55:30] and then I think I've gotten more hooked on sugar, and I've put on the weight again.
[55:35] So I think it worked for me for a period of time, but I don't think it's working for me.
[55:39] And was the sugar usually in the form of snacks?
[55:42] Oh, terrible stuff.
[55:43] Between meals?
[55:43] Like lollies and things like that.
[55:45] And I think this gets a lot of people.
[55:46] It comes back to making sure your breakfast is big enough and your lunch is big enough.
[55:50] It's when those meals are, we shrink those meals down, way too small, not enough calories, when our body's not adequately nourished, we're wanting to graze and snack all day.
[56:00] um ryan you've prepared something for today well i i have and um i mean you got you're aware of what a gear shift is when when when when an environment changes quite dramatically quite quickly um just considering the the tone of the conversation so far has been incredible so intellectual and um
[56:22] Yeah, I just prepared something and just didn't quite think about how it would slot into the actual episode.
[56:26] But we're here now, so let's do it.
[56:30] This is a small little...
[56:32] It's sort of a game show, which I'll soon regret.
[56:36] Which it's called...
[56:38] It's called Simon Says.
[56:44] Good evening, Australia, and welcome to Simon Says, a brand-new game show that isn't actually a game show but just me saying food and nutrition myths to Simon, who says whether they're true or not.
[56:57] Yes, that's right.
[56:59] It's not really a game or even a show.
[57:02] You know the children's game where you have to do what someone says but only if they say Simon Says?
[57:08] Well, it's nothing like that.
[57:10] No, it's just an accessible way to bang through a bunch of myths that will be super relatable to lots of people.
[57:18] Now here's your host, Rye Bread Shellfish.
[57:23] Thank you very much.
[57:24] It's so good to be here.
[57:26] Simon, thank you so much for playing Simon Says.
[57:30] I did not expect the music.
[57:32] You heard the rules.
[57:34] I say a myth.
[57:36] And you says if it's true or not.
[57:39] Did Josh and I do anything?
[57:41] No.
[57:42] I can participate in discussion if it happens after the myth.
[57:46] But I think we've got some thinking music for you.
[57:49] I'll call on them if I need some help.
[57:50] Okay.
[57:52] Get ready, boys.
[57:54] Myth number one.
[57:56] Supplements are a waste of money.
[58:02] That's a myth.
[58:02] It's a myth.
[58:03] I think, I mean, there's some context and nuance.
[58:06] You did not need thinking music.
[58:08] Can I extend?
[58:09] Please.
[58:12] So I think there are, I did a video on this, I think there are kind of four or five good supplements for people to kind of consider broadly.
[58:20] Please tell me what they are.
[58:22] Top of that list would be creatine.
[58:24] Oh, yes.
[58:25] Thank you very much.
[58:26] Sorry, that's my wife's thing right now.
[58:28] I'm just saying that for her.
[58:30] I can see the biceps over there.
[58:33] I do have my creatine everywhere.
[58:35] And the funny thing about creatine is I think people assume it's just for muscles.
[58:41] That's what I thought.
[58:42] I thought that was too.
[58:45] I mean, it certainly is helpful for building strength, which is important as we age, for longevity.
[58:51] But it's also there's emerging research showing it's beneficial for cognition.
[58:58] There was a pilot study that just came out a couple of months ago, so pretty hot off the press, where they took adults with depression and randomized them to cognitive behavioral therapy, which we know can be effective, and then cognitive behavioral therapy plus five grams of creatine per day.
[59:18] Both groups had significant benefits, but the group with the added creatine had significant benefits compared to just the cognitive behavioral therapy.
[59:26] That was only an eight-week study, so we'd like to see it go longer, but there was 100 participants, and it kind of builds on some other evidence in that space.
[59:34] Mechanism not fully understood.
[59:37] There's also some evidence showing creatine supplementation at about 10 grams a day can be beneficial for bone health in postmenopausal women.
[59:48] And risk of osteoporosis, osteopenia osteoporosis and fractures becomes heightened after the age of about 60 for women.
[59:56] So that's another kind of good indication to use creatine.
[1:00:01] And then one that I thought was very helpful, certainly for me as I travel, these researchers looked at sleep deprivation and they somehow convinced people to come in and in their lab, keep them up all night.
[1:00:18] And this was a randomized crossover trial and they would...
[1:00:23] measure throughout the night different cognitive tasks when they're either taking a placebo or creatine, and it was high-dose creatine.
[1:00:31] This was about 30 grams of creatine, which is a very high dose.
[1:00:35] And cognition was significantly improved after sleep deprivation.
[1:00:40] when you are supplementing with creatine.
[1:00:43] Wow.
[1:00:43] And the explanation for that is that at a high dose, essentially creatine initially, as you're starting creatine, it saturates muscle cells.
[1:00:53] And then over time, as you increase the dose, it'll take it for longer.
[1:00:56] There's enough creatine left to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain.
[1:01:00] And it can affect your sort of brain metabolism.
[1:01:04] Wow.
[1:01:05] So I imagine it would be very good for people who are struggling to get proper sleep and need to operate on a daily basis.
[1:01:13] And this was an acute study.
[1:01:14] So they were looking at sleep-depriving people and then measuring cognition through the night and the next day.
[1:01:21] So I don't know whether it's something you would want to be doing, 30 grams every day, all the time.
[1:01:26] That evidence certainly doesn't speak to that.
[1:01:29] But the one thing, and why creatines at the top of my list, is not only...
[1:01:32] are these very consistent kind of benefits born out in the evidence, but the safety profile is really good.
[1:01:38] So at worst, people may experience some kind of GI nausea in the 15, 20 minutes after having creatine.
[1:01:47] And one way around that is splitting the dose.
[1:01:50] So if you are,
[1:01:51] doing a high dose like a 10 grams or 20 grams over a day instead of just having that all at once you could split that morning and night and have it with food and the great thing is that you get them as like delicious gummies now either apple or raspberry i didn't those are a problem i just yeah a problem in in you want to have more they're just okay yeah they're just too good i actually have some i mean i have some in my bag now you've got to be careful about which gummies you bring into it
[1:02:17] I get my creatine gum is just the corner of Smith Street from a guy called Warren.
[1:02:22] But that's creatine.
[1:02:24] Then I just quickly... Is anyone else just like praying that their supplements are on this list?
[1:02:29] I don't take it.
[1:02:30] I take zero supplements.
[1:02:32] Uh, I'm confident.
[1:02:33] Okay.
[1:02:33] Okay.
[1:02:33] So Omega three DHA EPA, which can be found in a fish oil or an algae oil that really for someone who's not eating fatty fish two or three times a week, which the average Australian is not.
[1:02:45] But if you are, then you probably don't need to go out and buy that supplement.
[1:02:49] But if, if you're not eating fatty fish two or three times a week, then you'll likely benefit from that.
[1:02:55] Would that classify under a vegan diet, if someone's vegan?
[1:02:58] A vegan diet would not...
[1:03:00] They wouldn't be eating the fish, so they could supplement with the algae oil.
[1:03:03] Oh, algae oil.
[1:03:04] Yeah.
[1:03:04] So fish get the DHA and EPA omega-3s either by eating a fish that...
[1:03:11] Essentially, the EPA and DHA passes up the food chain from algae.
[1:03:14] Gotcha.
[1:03:15] So they can either eat it directly from the algae or from another fish.
[1:03:18] Okay, gotcha.
[1:03:19] There's that.
[1:03:20] There's that.
[1:03:20] So again, I would say a multivitamin depends.
[1:03:27] This is dependent on the person.
[1:03:31] One of the things, like as you move to a more plant-rich kind of high-fiber, less animal protein diet,
[1:03:42] You know, all diets come with their limitations.
[1:03:44] The pros of that, or I've explained before, is that your cardiometabolic health and risk factors for type 2 diabetes, et cetera, shifts in a favorable direction.
[1:03:53] One of the downsides is that there are nutrients of focus and there is a potential to have inadequate intake of certain micronutrients.
[1:04:01] So if you're someone that is eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, I certainly recommend a multivitamin.
[1:04:08] And which vitamins would be in that multi?
[1:04:10] So the key ones within that dietary pattern are going to be B12, iron,
[1:04:21] We're going to have, they're already taking their omega-3 fish oil, selenium and zinc.
[1:04:26] Right.
[1:04:27] The big kind of five.
[1:04:29] Right.
[1:04:29] Okay.
[1:04:30] So multivitamin.
[1:04:33] And then I would say like a prebiotic.
[1:04:36] So I formulated a prebiotic called DMN, Daily Microbiome Nutrition.
[1:04:42] So I can flag that, that I'm involved with this brand.
[1:04:45] I'm not saying everyone needs it.
[1:04:47] It's by a company called 38 Terra.
[1:04:49] And that has been formulated essentially as a multivitamin but for your microbiome.
[1:04:56] Before I mentioned there's three classes of prebiotics.
[1:05:01] So you've got prebiotic fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols.
[1:05:04] Yeah.
[1:05:05] And so that product, Daily Microbiome Nutrition, contains those.
[1:05:09] using ingredients that have been clinically studied in randomized controlled trials in the right dose to feed various species of bacteria that we know are beneficial.
[1:05:18] So to improve bowel movements, to improve the gut lining, which kind of lowers permeability and inflammation.
[1:05:29] Those are at the top of my list.
[1:05:31] Now, none of those, I would say, are absolutely essential for people.
[1:05:36] The essential...
[1:05:38] The essential ones would be where someone's not getting a micronutrient in their diet, like a vegan diet, and you don't have DHA and EPA, the omega-3s, or you don't have B12.
[1:05:50] A lot of those other ones are more around optimizing and nice to have.
[1:05:55] Magnesium?
[1:05:56] Magnesium, is that one?
[1:05:58] I thought that was going to be in the top five, but no.
[1:06:01] It's not in my top five, but it's certainly, if someone's under-consuming magnesium, it can be helpful.
[1:06:08] In a plant-rich diet, if you're eating a very plant-rich diet, you're getting a lot of magnesium.
[1:06:11] It's one of the benefits of it.
[1:06:13] Can I ask a supplementary game show question?
[1:06:16] Supplementary supplement question?
[1:06:17] Yeah.
[1:06:18] So, yeah.
[1:06:19] That's good.
[1:06:22] The myth that I should be getting that stuff in food as opposed to a pill, is that because obviously if you're vegan or you're having a restricted eating for whatever reason, you're not going to get them.
[1:06:36] But am I better to try and get it in food than in a pill?
[1:06:42] Let's take something like creatine.
[1:06:43] Yeah.
[1:06:44] So creatine is found in certain foods.
[1:06:47] It's found in your body makes about one gram of creatine a day.
[1:06:50] And then the average omnivore gets about one gram of creatine through like red meat, some in eggs, a few different animal foods, a little bit in dairy.
[1:07:01] The problem is to get five to 10 grams of creatine a day out of animal foods, you'd have to be consuming copious amounts of that.
[1:07:09] Yeah.
[1:07:09] And then what you're doing is you're getting increased exposure to saturated fat, heme iron, which we know is associated with cardiovascular disease.
[1:07:17] Yeah.
[1:07:18] So it's possible to get it through the diet, but it might not be optimal from a longevity point of view.
[1:07:24] Okay.
[1:07:32] Yeah, I think if you can get it through diet and it fits within your dietary approach.
[1:07:36] I guess something that you can implement over a long course of time.
[1:07:39] Like if someone's eating an omnivorous diet, they don't need to worry about supplementing with B12.
[1:07:43] B12 is really for that person who's eating a vegetarian or vegan diet.
[1:07:47] Maybe they've gone that way for planetary health or ethical reasons.
[1:07:50] Yeah.
[1:07:51] We don't want that person to develop a B12 deficiency.
[1:07:54] Yeah.
[1:07:54] Because that can have a number of negative consequences.
[1:07:57] And it's easy for them to add it to their kind of daily regime in a form that we know is bioavailable.
[1:08:04] It will help them maintain healthy B12 status.
[1:08:07] Right.
[1:08:07] The other one that I didn't mention, the multi, was iodine.
[1:08:10] Yeah.
[1:08:10] Okay.
[1:08:10] Yeah.
[1:08:11] Um, just the, a little like alarm bell goes off in my head when you, when you say like, okay, well the body only creates with creatine, the body only creates one milligram a day.
[1:08:21] And, uh, through eating the foods that we would naturally eat, we can only do another.
[1:08:26] So I kind of go, well, does the body need that much creatine or why does the body need that much creatine?
[1:08:32] If it, if it's never been something that we've had got before.
[1:08:37] I guess this brings us back to evolution and kind of the biology that we have in our genes are really shaped through evolution, which is determined by what has helped us survive.
[1:08:51] So evolution is all about getting to an age to procreate.
[1:08:54] it's not necessarily the best genes for avoiding osteoporosis or cancer or living a long life, right?
[1:09:01] Because evolution essentially doesn't care about you too much once you've already had children.
[1:09:07] So there's been no selection pressure on our genetic makeup to give us these genes that help us live to 100.
[1:09:15] Gotcha.
[1:09:15] Our body and like the physiology, our body's physiology and the nutrients that we're synthesizing,
[1:09:22] and that we're not all of that has been shaped over hundreds of thousands of years to get us to a point where we can have children it hasn't been shaped to get us to 70 80 90 in good health yeah sure okay does that make sense yeah yeah so so so essentially what our body is just doing naturally there is no reason to believe that is best also for for long-term health that's that's a
[1:09:48] It's logical.
[1:09:48] It makes sense.
[1:09:49] Like I understand your point.
[1:09:50] It's called the naturalistic fallacy.
[1:09:54] But it just comes back to understanding what evolution is and then appreciating that we can use science to go back and test some of those things.
[1:10:05] And in this case, we're seeing pretty consistent across the board benefits to supplementing with creatine above a level that your body would naturally produce every day.
[1:10:18] Thinking music ready?
[1:10:18] Yep.
[1:10:19] Myth number two.
[1:10:21] Soy and soy products like tofu give men man boobs and or can increase the risk of breast cancer in women.
[1:10:33] No and no.
[1:10:35] Not true, not true.
[1:10:37] With a little bit of context, so you'll find a case study where a man drank three liters of soy milk a day and developed gynecomastia.
[1:10:46] It was a case study, so there's no controls.
[1:10:49] What's gynecomastia?
[1:10:50] It was like enlargement of breast tissue.
[1:10:52] Okay, sure.
[1:10:53] The scientific word for it.
[1:10:54] Yeah, and so that has been blogged and written about a lot.
[1:10:59] I would suggest probably three litres of a lot of foods a day is probably not a good idea.
[1:11:06] Also, that myth comes from that...
[1:11:09] That is a heavily cited case study.
[1:11:11] So it just means that this guy presented into his doctor's clinic.
[1:11:15] His doctor's clinic sort of said what he'd been doing.
[1:11:18] And one of the parts of his history taking was that he'd been drinking three liters of soy milk.
[1:11:25] But again, it's not a control.
[1:11:26] So you don't know what else this guy was doing.
[1:11:28] Did he already have that?
[1:11:30] Anyway, it's interesting.
[1:11:31] It's hypothesis generating.
[1:11:33] So it was written up.
[1:11:34] But since then, there's a big meta-analysis from I think two or three years ago now where they took 41 clinical trials where they are randomizing men to consuming soy or not in varying amounts and they're measuring levels of estrogen and levels of testosterone-free and total sex hormone binding globulin.
[1:11:58] All these hormones that indicate whether you're kind of, I guess, quote-unquote feminizing.
[1:12:05] Because that's the issue.
[1:12:07] The hypothesis is that soy foods lead to feminization of men.
[1:12:13] And it's consistent across the board that they're not increasing estrogen.
[1:12:18] They're not decreasing testosterone.
[1:12:20] Right.
[1:12:20] At least at levels like three or four servings a day where these studies kind of that was the high end of testing.
[1:12:26] No issue.
[1:12:27] Right.
[1:12:29] Or you could say it's a pity because it would be nice to feminize a lot of men around the world right now.
[1:12:34] Lovely.
[1:12:35] That's true.
[1:12:36] Depends on you.
[1:12:38] What a pity.
[1:12:40] And then the women is an interesting area of research.
[1:12:47] I would say that like in the cancer guidelines, they're definitely not saying to restrict soy foods for people with breast cancer firstly, and that's having reviewed all of the literature as a committee.
[1:12:59] And then I would add to that, that Japanese women have one of the lowest incidences of breast cancer in the world and the highest consumption of soy foods.
[1:13:08] Now that doesn't, that's not a direct cause and effect, it's a correlation, it's interesting,
[1:13:13] I haven't seen any definitive research yet to suggest that women with breast cancer shouldn't have soy, although I should add I don't think they should take isoflavone supplements.
[1:13:23] So there are these supplements out there where you kind of extract polyphenols from soy foods and then give them to people in a very high dose.
[1:13:34] There's not enough clinical evidence to really support that as being safe for women with cancer.
[1:13:39] So you'll find all sorts of things online recommending that.
[1:13:43] but the guidelines certainly are not recommending that.
[1:13:45] Great.
[1:13:46] Myth number three, microwaving food destroys nutrients.
[1:13:55] Sorry, I haven't been doing the format.
[1:13:57] Simon says.
[1:13:58] It's an important part of it.
[1:14:05] Overall, I'm going to say mostly a myth and mostly there's more fear generated around microwaves than there needs to be.
[1:14:15] And because the food's not heated for that long, actually some nutrients are preserved more than, say,
[1:14:22] When you boil food and a lot of the nutrients end up in the water.
[1:14:26] So I'm certainly not against microwaving.
[1:14:29] You might get a little bit of reduction in certain things.
[1:14:31] Some nutrients become more bioavailable.
[1:14:35] It's quick.
[1:14:36] Yeah.
[1:14:36] Can I add to this a technique for microwaving?
[1:14:39] Yeah, supplementary expert.
[1:14:40] Supplementary.
[1:14:43] Jay Kenji Old, who's an American chef and scientist, I think, has a method where you put two layers of wet paper towel on top of veggies in the microwave and it does an incredible job of cooking them really deliciously.
[1:14:59] Really?
[1:14:59] And yeah, and he was saying the same thing.
[1:15:01] You don't leach out the nutrients into water.
[1:15:03] They stay in the food.
[1:15:06] Thank you, Josh.
[1:15:07] I can add to contribute something here.
[1:15:10] We'll get the horse thing from before.
[1:15:11] But it's funny though.
[1:15:12] LAUGHTER
[1:15:13] I have a microwave at home and when my friends come over, because people assume that I just have like the perfect diet and perfect, I can tell you I'm a very much normal person.
[1:15:22] But they see the microwave and they're like.
[1:15:24] How could you?
[1:15:25] How could you?
[1:15:25] Yeah, traitor.
[1:15:27] I'm like, well, the research suggests that they're actually pretty good.
[1:15:32] Bloody research.
[1:15:34] Okay, myth number four.
[1:15:38] A glass of red wine a day is healthy for you.
[1:15:45] And Simon says...
[1:15:46] I think it's a myth.
[1:15:50] But you have to weigh up the environment and possibly the way it's consumed.
[1:15:56] And if it's bringing people together and they're connecting in the social element, I'm open to that being a kind of net positive for mental health.
[1:16:03] But the actual alcohol itself being healthy, I would say myth.
[1:16:08] Myth.
[1:16:09] Interesting.
[1:16:11] Myth number five...
[1:16:14] Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
[1:16:18] Mmm.
[1:16:19] Simon says...
[1:16:20] So it's a myth.
[1:16:25] Ooh.
[1:16:28] Why is that?
[1:16:29] I think they're all pretty important.
[1:16:31] Okay.
[1:16:32] And when you say all, do you mean like the three?
[1:16:33] There's a lot of pressure.
[1:16:35] Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like the three meals a day?
[1:16:38] Yeah, I think they're all important.
[1:16:40] I mean, my experience with working with people is they're often kind of not eating a big enough breakfast and a big enough lunch, and then they feel like they need to snack all day.
[1:16:53] and I'd like to see people eat a bit more of a substantial kind of breakfast and lunch to get the day going.
[1:17:00] And then in terms of like kind of metabolic health, if I was going to extend this, there's obviously like a big trend around fasting and skipping breakfast became really popular, like the kind of eight hour window.
[1:17:12] I think the research there is starting to shift a little bit where,
[1:17:16] If you were to kind of compress your eating window, you would want to eat more of your food earlier in the day when our metabolism is kind of better set up to absorb and utilize nutrients as opposed to the kind of 12 midday to 8 p.m. eating window.
[1:17:36] So in that respect, I would say breakfast is probably advantageous.
[1:17:40] Right.
[1:17:40] Problem with doing an eight hour eating window that starts early in the day is dinner tends to be the most social meal.
[1:17:47] So if you're skipping dinner, then you have the effect of what does that have on your social life and, you know, dinner time with the family kind of thing.
[1:17:55] I love that.
[1:17:56] That's such a good kind of holistic take on it.
[1:17:59] It's like it's bringing in the social aspect of nutrition as well.
[1:18:02] Yeah.
[1:18:03] I've never really had anyone talk like that before.
[1:18:04] That's so true.
[1:18:05] Yeah.
[1:18:06] Well, you can get bogged down in the study and how something affects metabolism, but then you have to zoom out and think, like, what does this look like in real life?
[1:18:13] That's so interesting because we had Maria Roberto, who's a psychologist.
[1:18:17] She was on it earlier in the year and she talked about sleep and the importance of sleep.
[1:18:21] And of course, like as always happens when we have anyone brilliant on like yourself for the days afterwards, I am like so like focused on doing everything right.
[1:18:31] But the thing that I found with the sleep is that if you to get the to get to bed at the right time and wake up, if you're too strict on it, of course, you know, you're missing out on seeing people and doing fun things and living your actual life.
[1:18:44] So, yeah, it's good to keep that in mind.
[1:18:46] Myth number six, egg yolks are unhealthy and raise cholesterol.
[1:18:55] And Simon says...
[1:18:59] Egg yolks are not unhealthy by definition.
[1:19:01] Yes.
[1:19:02] I mean, they're very nutrient dense.
[1:19:05] And for most people, they have a very minimal effect on cholesterol.
[1:19:09] So we spoke about earlier cholesterol, what were the levers?
[1:19:12] The main lever is reducing saturated fat and increasing unsaturated fats.
[1:19:16] Dietary cholesterol, and this is something that's been born out of 50, 60 years of research.
[1:19:21] Initially, it was thought that it really affects your cholesterol.
[1:19:24] Those studies early on were in rabbits.
[1:19:26] Rabbits have a different lipid metabolism.
[1:19:30] by the time they got to humans, they realized that it has a little bit of an effect, but then it doesn't just keep going up like that.
[1:19:36] It sort of goes up and then it flattens off.
[1:19:39] And even the effect that it has is very small.
[1:19:41] There's a subset in the population, about 15% of people, which is not a small number, who are called hyper absorbers.
[1:19:48] And for them, eggs will significantly increase their cholesterol.
[1:19:52] This comes back to individualization.
[1:19:54] So if your cholesterol is really high and you are smashing eggs, you're eating...
[1:19:59] 20, 25 eggs a week, then you might want to, as one of your dietary manipulations, change that, go and go back and get a blood test and did it make much difference.
[1:20:09] Yeah.
[1:20:10] But for most people, egg yolks are not the kind of quote unquote culprit for raising their cholesterol.
[1:20:17] Myth number seven, the final myth.
[1:20:20] Are you ready, Simon?
[1:20:22] Are you ready to says?
[1:20:23] I'm ready.
[1:20:27] They've done it so well.
[1:20:29] They've all been right so far.
[1:20:31] Myth number seven.
[1:20:33] The protein in plants is incomplete.
[1:20:36] Therefore vegetarians don't eat enough protein.
[1:20:43] It's really stumped him this one.
[1:20:45] But we are going to need an answer, Simon.
[1:20:49] Simon says... Can I define incomplete?
[1:20:52] Please.
[1:20:53] I think we need to start there.
[1:20:54] Yeah, let's... Well, do you want to define it?
[1:20:56] No, I'm happy for Simon to take this one.
[1:20:58] Well, I think there's some misunderstanding as to what incomplete means.
[1:21:02] Kind of sounds like there's just like something missing.
[1:21:05] It's not there.
[1:21:06] So proteins are made up of amino acids.
[1:21:09] And within the 21 amino acids that exist, your body can make, say, 11 of them.
[1:21:17] the other 9 slash 10 are considered essential, which means they have to come from food, right?
[1:21:23] In order for your body to have all the building blocks to build proteins in the body, to make hormones, collagen, all this stuff.
[1:21:30] And,
[1:21:32] An incomplete protein does not mean that that food is missing any of those essential amino acids.
[1:21:39] It just means that some of them might be in insufficient quantities if you were to eat only that food for all of your calories for the day.
[1:21:51] Okay.
[1:21:52] So this is the definition, which becomes really relevant in third world countries where they might be getting 2,000 calories, 2,500 calories from rice and flour a day.
[1:22:01] Yeah.
[1:22:01] There's no diversity.
[1:22:03] Yeah.
[1:22:04] It's not an issue when you are eating a diet that has diversity because, you know, a legume that might be a little bit lower in methionine, which is one of the amino acids, was made up for when you're eating this other food that's high in that.
[1:22:19] And so in Western countries, providing you're eating enough calories and total protein,
[1:22:24] Not an issue at all.
[1:22:26] Born out in the data, we know studies looking at outcomes like muscle and strength that you can get your protein from plants.
[1:22:35] As long as you're eating enough total protein, you're getting all of those amino acids.
[1:22:40] But the second part of your question is that are vegetarians getting enough?
[1:22:45] I would say across the populations, vegetarians are actually under-consuming protein.
[1:22:52] And I, relative to some doctors that are, I guess, kind of well-known in the space of plant-based dietary patterns where they're often telling people to limit protein intake, I'm of the other view that you should actually be protein aware and particularly if you're on a vegetarian or vegan diet and making sure you're getting enough total protein intake throughout the day.
[1:23:14] And if someone was going to track it, not that I would recommend tracking all the time, it just is kind of...
[1:23:20] one-off or weekly exercise, you want about 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day is where you should be landing.
[1:23:29] Gotcha.
[1:23:30] As a kind of good minimum threshold.
[1:23:31] And that's going to be a level that is going to help people as they age, maintain muscle mass, keep good bone density, avoid sarcopenia, which places people at risk of falls and fractures.
[1:23:45] I'm guessing just, I mean, I think I know the answer, but I'm guessing you're not, you wouldn't recommend someone to be, if they can avoid it, to be fully vegan or vegetarian.
[1:23:57] If they can avoid it?
[1:23:59] Well, like if it's not an ethical, if they're just choosing to not eat meat because they don't want to for some reason?
[1:24:06] Yeah, I think to me the science on nutrition...
[1:24:12] alone is not a case to adopt a vegetarian or a vegan diet.
[1:24:16] The nutrition science is clear that plant-rich dietary patterns like a Mediterranean-style diet done well, and vegetarian and vegan diets, if they're done well, can lead to really good long-term health outcomes.
[1:24:29] But as you go further along that spectrum towards vegetarian and vegan, there are more things to think about.
[1:24:36] Yeah.
[1:24:36] Yes, it's harder.
[1:24:38] Because there are more nutrients of focus.
[1:24:41] Now, if someone's prepared to kind of invest the time because the environmental concerns or animal welfare are things that are important to them and they want to invest the time to understand what are those potential pitfalls and limitations, then they can do it.
[1:24:55] And it's very much learn it and then set and forget.
[1:24:58] But if you're someone who's like, I just want to eat a healthy diet.
[1:25:02] I don't have a lot of time.
[1:25:04] It's really hard for me to advocate against a Mediterranean-style diet because it ticks all the boxes of a healthy dietary pattern and there's less risk of sort of having a kind of nutrient inadequacy.
[1:25:18] What does a Mediterranean diet look like?
[1:25:20] Yeah, just pizza and pasta.
[1:25:23] Hawaiian pizza, spaghetti bolognese.
[1:25:26] And we can just douse it in olive oil and red wine.
[1:25:29] Did you call it Mediterranean?
[1:25:32] I think you said Mediterranean accidentally, but that's a pretty good term.
[1:25:36] Mediterranean.
[1:25:38] You were joking about the pachyron pasta, I'm assuming.
[1:25:40] Yeah, it's a, I mean, and people often push back and say, well, Mediterranean is such a broad area and Spain is different to Italy and blah, blah, blah, which is...
[1:25:51] Valid point.
[1:25:52] But in the research, a Mediterranean diet that's been shown to lead to good health outcomes is defined.
[1:25:58] So they actually define what it looks like.
[1:26:00] So it's a diet that if you were to kind of look at the pyramid of the Mediterranean diet, you have fruits and vegetables kind of down the bottom.
[1:26:09] So you can think about lots of dark leafy greens and salads.
[1:26:15] There's legumes and whole grains.
[1:26:16] So you can imagine in those salads –
[1:26:19] like chickpeas or white beans and avocado nuts and seeds.
[1:26:23] And then as you're going up,
[1:26:25] The main protein sources in addition to those legumes is like fatty fish.
[1:26:30] There's room for white meat and red meat, but it's much less of a focus than an Australian diet or an American diet and put olive oil on everything.
[1:26:42] But that's essentially what a Mediterranean diet looks like and that's very similar to research that was conducted by Martha Morris at Rush University.
[1:26:54] which I think is fascinating, looking at what's called the MIND diet.
[1:26:57] And that's what I would tell people.
[1:26:59] If they want to just get a good visual of what this looks like, Google the MIND diet.
[1:27:03] And that's a dietary pattern that's been shown to significantly reduce the risk of Alzheimer's dementia.
[1:27:10] And essentially it's a variation of the Mediterranean diet, but there's some really good visuals online that people can look up.
[1:27:17] All right.
[1:27:18] I wanted to bring something up that's sort of been in my mind throughout this.
[1:27:23] And I think it's sort of implicit when we're talking about diet and food.
[1:27:28] And it's come up in a couple of ways.
[1:27:29] One, it was such a beautiful point about the social aspect of food.
[1:27:33] We had in our family someone with an eating disorder when we were young and I remember Dad making a point that I thought was, I've always thought was quite profound and one of the sadnesses of it was that this person was withdrawn from the, missed the dinner table for years and how sad that was to miss that social interaction and,
[1:27:59] And then it came up again for me talking then about when we start to delve into diet and what you should be eating.
[1:28:07] How do you – I don't know exactly what the question is.
[1:28:12] There's partly acknowledgement, but how do you talk to people who when there's so much advice out there, it's easy to hyperfixate and develop into really unhealthy eating disorders and patterns of eating disorders?
[1:28:25] Um, how do you address that sort of part of the subset of population who listened to advice on this stuff?
[1:28:33] It's a great question.
[1:28:35] And I think it's something that we need to take more seriously.
[1:28:41] as educators and it's so easy to forget the people that are consuming this information and the anxiety that it can be creating on a daily basis what i would say to that person is firstly identify you know if you're someone that's feeling overly fixated on food you get anxious about food you're flip-flopping a lot from from diet to diet i would
[1:29:12] I would come back to the environment that you're placing yourself in.
[1:29:16] So particularly social media, because I think a lot of this is born through social media.
[1:29:21] If you're finding that you're just getting all of this avalanche of contradictory advice and it's causing stress, do an audit.
[1:29:29] Who are the people that you're following?
[1:29:31] Because you're exposing yourself to this kind of...
[1:29:36] junk food information that is you're you're putting yourself under unnecessary pressure to to kind of be perfect with the way that you're eating and i think a lot of this also comes back to where we've begun that there is no perfect diet you know
[1:29:55] The last thing that we want someone to think here is that every single day they need to tick off all of these things perfectly every single day in order to have good long-term health.
[1:30:07] That's not the case.
[1:30:09] If you look at some of the longest living populations around the world, they're not even having these conversations.
[1:30:14] Yeah.
[1:30:16] Right?
[1:30:17] Yeah.
[1:30:20] And so I think awareness is probably the start of this.
[1:30:24] Self-awareness.
[1:30:25] How much are you fixating on it?
[1:30:28] And finding ways to really just not beat ourselves up so much.
[1:30:33] Yeah.
[1:30:34] about life in general, but also about the foods we're eating and take some of that pressure off, right?
[1:30:42] Because although we've just dedicated two hours to speaking about this, I think sometimes we are a little bit too serious about our nutrition and our food and we lose sight of...
[1:30:53] the joy that we should be getting from eating meals with people.
[1:30:57] We're sort of hyper-fixated on how our food is affecting our physiology, and that can take the joy and the fun out of it.
[1:31:08] Such a good point.
[1:31:09] It's a link here to social.
[1:31:10] I've never heard of it.
[1:31:11] I've never thought of it like that.
[1:31:12] But.
[1:31:14] And I'm sure there are people out there who are experts who might say this is wrong.
[1:31:16] But in the moment, it feels like if your relationship with food is pulling you away from social eating, that's a warning sign.
[1:31:25] There's something going on there that you need to pay attention to.
[1:31:29] Not to say that paying attention fixes it.
[1:31:31] But it's, as you said, awareness is probably the start.
[1:31:35] And pulling you away from the people that.
[1:31:38] Because sometimes you need to change your friends and friendship groups, like depending on their influence on you.
[1:31:44] But I think the key metric there for me would be, is it pulling me away from spending time with people in my life that I can really be myself around?
[1:31:57] Yeah, it's great.
[1:31:58] Great caveat.
[1:31:59] Yeah.
[1:31:59] Because, you know, I mean, for me, that's the indicator of, like, who are my true friends and people that I love most is the people that I can sit at a table with and, like, not wear a mask.
[1:32:12] Yeah.
[1:32:13] Yeah, yeah.
[1:32:15] And when you lose that, you're losing like, and speaking of those longevity zones again, like relationships are key to that.
[1:32:23] We might be overemphasizing the importance of nutrition and underemphasizing the social aspect.
[1:32:29] Yeah.
[1:32:29] Where, you know, these people have these beautiful relationships where they are able to talk openly and trust the people differently.
[1:32:36] around them.
[1:32:37] And so I think, yeah, any, anything in our life that's pulling us away from that, that's a huge opportunity cost.
[1:32:43] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:32:45] Well said.
[1:32:46] Thanks for that.
[1:32:47] That's a really beautiful answer.
[1:32:49] And I think just acknowledging anyone out there who feels like potentially their eating or their diet is headed in a dark direction or maybe you love someone who you're concerned about, someone like there's a group, EDFA, Eating Disorders Families Australia, who do incredible work in this area.
[1:33:07] So we can put a link in the show notes to them.
[1:33:11] fascinating, brilliant and hopefully this is all of a sudden like a book cover quote fascinating, brilliant and potentially life changing Hugh Van Carlenburg Hugh thank you so much, that was so enjoyable and so fascinating and yeah, you're really brilliant feelings mutual guys so nice to meet you, thanks for coming on thanks for the laughs appreciate it
[1:33:37] Enjoyed this week's episode but want a little more?
[1:33:41] Then you might want to know that we have a brand new show called A Little More Imperfects over on Patreon.
[1:33:47] For a little bit of money, you'll get access to bonus episodes with the three of us every fortnight, early access to live events, plus other things that we haven't thought of yet, but when we do think of them, you'll get them.
[1:34:00] Visit patreon.com forward slash the imperfects.

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