The Food Doctor: "Extra Protein Is Making You Fatter!" The 6 Food Lies Everyone Still Believes! (Brand NEW Food Science) - Tim Spector

**Steven Bartlett** (0:00)
I brought everything that I could find in the supermarket that was making a claim that it was good for me, and I want you to take a look at it. That, Tim Spector, is definitely healthy.

**Tim Spector** (0:10)
Or not. Avoid that one. Terrible. Complete rubbish. Not as bad as the other one, but then...
We can unravel all these secrets.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:19)
The return of the world's biggest...

**Tim Spector** (0:23)
He's an award-winning scientist.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:24)
Best-selling author.

**Tim Spector** (0:25)
And he's co-founder of the company Zoe, the home kid of Personalised Nutrition.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:29)
Everything I'm about to throw at you has a whole industry of people behind it. The first one is protein supplements.

**Tim Spector** (0:37)
Protein is massively hyped. Most people are having nearly twice as much protein in their diets as they need, and most of it will be converted to sugars and fat.
It's definitely a health food, and you'll live longer.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:47)
Mouthwash.

**Tim Spector** (0:48)
You're more prone to infection and actually worse smelling breath long-term.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:52)
Really?

**Tim Spector** (0:52)
Yes. No hard data that you should be drinking eight glasses of water a day. Ten minutes in the sun will get you all the vitamin D you need. And there's some actual data showing that if you've got too much excess fat on your body, exercise alone is a terrible way to deal with it. You need something radical. You and many others like you are a victim of marketing. But we are in a fiber crisis. We think only about one in 20 people are getting enough fiber for good health. It has a dramatic effect on avoiding cancers, mental health, and your longevity.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:20)
So you bought this?

**Tim Spector** (1:21)
Yep. That's the magic potion. If you take a handful of that, you reduce your risk of death by 14-15%. Two handfuls of 30%. And it's incredibly easy to do. So.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:40)
Tim, what is the benefit to me if I change the way that I'm eating and start thinking through the lens of my gut microbiome and start taking the advice that you talk about in your books? What is the benefit to both me and society in terms of statistical outcomes?
Why does it matter?

**Tim Spector** (2:01)
It matters because we are suffering an epidemic of common chronic diseases. So we're getting increases in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity.
We, you know, majority of the population are overweight or obese. That has enormous consequences. Also on our economic output, it costs the country and the taxpayer nearly 60 billion pounds a year.
As a country, we don't want someone like you to become unhealthy. And so that it's difficult for you to work, you're not functioning properly. The state then has to provide for you extra health care, et cetera. There's that individual level, but also we don't want you to get mental health diseases, depression, anxiety, all these things that we know are also linked to poor diet, as well as increased cancers and other elements of it. So it's a combination of the medical, the mental, the social, the economic. All these things are related to having good nutrition. And I think we've taken it for granted that it doesn't really matter what we eat. It's all about weight and these things, but that's maybe only the small side of it. I think there's much more to it than that.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:17)
Someone like me, I'm 30-ish years old and I like to think that I'm in good shape. I exercise every day, very active. So sometimes I think I can fall into the trap of thinking because there's no obvious sign of disease in me that I can eat what I want because I'm working out. And then I sat here with a doctor a couple of months ago and he said a sentence to me that sounded something like, we can see disease growing in you decades out. That really made me change my thinking on health because if it is like a seed of health or a seed of disease that's growing in me, irrespective of my current physical abilities and my, you know, think I'm in good shape, it's kind of like compounding invisibly inside of me disease for better or for worse. And that means that even someone like me, I can stop 50 year old Steve's disease now at 30 by nudging my health in a slightly different direction in terms of nutrition.
Is that an accurate assessment of, because there'll be people that are listening that are so healthy, apparently healthy on the outside because they can run fast or because they haven't got any problems with their bones or back.