60 Minutes of Nutrition Advice Every Woman Should Know | Nutrition Expert

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:00)
96% of Britons don't achieve the minimum dietary recommendation for fiber.

**Unknown Host** (0:04)
96! Dr Faye is the head nutritionist at ZOE, but today she is telling you her favorite quick nutritious meals and snacks and why she never drinks soda.

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:17)
This protein obsession has transformed the way people think about their food. They're so obsessed with getting enough protein, they're ignoring the actual deficiencies in f***ing s***. The fact that they eat 30 plants a week seems to hit the sweet spot for diversity of fibers. What happens if you don't have that diversity is not just that nothing happens. If you're in the supermarket and the packaging has a front of pack claim, buying protein, only 99 calories, low in sugar, it's there to make you spend your money and make profit for them.

**Unknown Host** (0:47)
But before we get into the conversation, please make sure that you're subscribed or you have left a five-star review. Please, it really, really helps us keep bringing new guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:01)
Hi, I'm Dr Faye. Welcome to Her Discussions podcast.

**Unknown Host** (1:05)
Dr Faye, so many of our community sent in questions all about nutrition, snacks, cravings. But first, I wanted to ask you, how did you end up in this world and what drives you?

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:20)
It's a great question. I often get asked this, right? Because I've got a bit of a weird background. I'm not your traditional nutritionist, the dietitian who kind of went straight for it. I started off, wanted to be a doctor, medical doctor. My mom is a medical doctor. I did loads of placements in all the hospitals. I loved it, lived it, volunteered at hospital every weekend for four years.

**Unknown Host** (1:41)
Wow.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:41)
And I just really thought that's what I wanted to do. And then I had a place to study medicine at Imperial College. All great.

**Unknown Host** (1:50)
Oh, wow.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:51)
So I was really going for it. Then the day before, my chemistry, A-level paper, organic chemistry. You remember that one? Oh, I wish I didn't.
My grandmother, who lived with us and had been living with us for about four years at that point, passed away quite suddenly in the night, sort of ambulance, all that. And I just turned up to the paper the next day, but I was in absolute hit. I was just crying. And my teachers at the school was at said, you know, just sit the paper, write your name and just don't fill anything out, because then we'll let them know. We'll let the examiners know that it was a extenuating circumstance. You're predicted an A on this paper. Don't worry. So fast forward, Imperial were like, yeah, yeah, it's all good. Like, it's a, you know, it's a one-off. We'll just forget about it. But then just before we were supposed to move into our halls a week before, they said, actually, we're really sorry, but we can't make this exception because it's a chemistry paper. And of course, chemistry is so fundamental to medicine. And I was like, I don't have a plan B. So they said, just if you could just reset that paper and then come next year. I was like, no, that's a whole year. You know, when you're 18 or whatever, that's not, that's not a small amount of time.

**Unknown Host** (3:10)
And all your friends are going off to uni.

**Dr Faye Bate** (3:12)
And I just, I was never a gap year kid. Like, it was never on my radar. I had no idea, like, there was no intention there. I'm Italian. We don't do that, actually. So she's not in my thing. And so I went to my school counselor, a person who looked after six formers, and I said, what should I do? And she said, well, why do you want to do medicine? I said, well, I love people, and I'm really interested in, like, how the body works. I'm fascinated. I want to know everything. And so she said, well, why don't you do biomedical sciences? And then you can always do postgraduate. And I was like, didn't even know there was a thing. I said, okay, well, where should I do biomed? And she said, well, the number one university at that time is Edinburgh. Not really London, is it? But I was like, okay. So and this is a few years ago. So I called them and I said, hey, like this has happened. Here's my UCAS number. And they were like, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Oh yeah, you can come. So that's it. I left school going in for a meeting and coming out and moving to Scotland. Oh, wow. And my poor mom, she was like, I never been there, never been to Edinburgh. But a few of my friends were going and I was just really interested in doing a degree at this point. So I went off and it was the best pivot, the best like surprise moment. Because I absolutely loved it. I loved the degree. I ended up doing endocrine pharmacology as a massive, like a few to my chemistry A level, as my honors. So I did bio-ed and then I did my honors in pharmacology. And I was one of the seven crazy people who decided to go to endocrine pharmacology and had the time of my life. And during that time, I became more aware of like how public health worked and how hospital systems worked. And I had done another work placement at a university hospital in Rome. And I was like, well, this is different. It works very differently there. Patient experience is very different. And also how the doctors work is very different. So when I then came to the decision of, okay, I can either apply to postgraduate medicine now or something else. Suddenly my sort of ideas had changed. All my friends who had gone to medicine were like, don't do it, don't do it, please save yourself. You know, it was, it was, I was suddenly had a choice. I was like, yeah, I could go back to the original path or I could not.