Speaker 1: If you're not putting yourself in the position where you're
Speaker 1: a beginner and you feel that challenge and the butterflies,
Speaker 1: then you're limiting your growth. But actually, what I love
Speaker 1: is being a life learner and realizing how much more
Speaker 1: I have to learn and also just how amazing we
Speaker 1: all are. We can all learn so much more than
Speaker 1: we think.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy
Speaker 2: are not the same thing. We too rarely question what
Speaker 2: makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but
Speaker 2: rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than
Speaker 2: one way. So this is a platform to hear and
Speaker 2: explore the stories of those who found lives They adore
Speaker 2: the good, bad and ugly. The best and worst day
Speaker 2: will bear all the facets of seizing your ya. I'm
Speaker 2: Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned
Speaker 2: fu entrepreneur whos walped the suits and heels to co
Speaker 2: found matcha Maiden and Matcham Milk Bark CZA is a
Speaker 2: series of conversations on finding a life you love and
Speaker 2: exploring the self out challenge, joy and fulfillment along the way.
Speaker 2: Lovely Neighborhood, I hope you all had a wonderful double
Speaker 2: long weekend and getting back into the swing of things.
Speaker 2: It does take the brain a little while to kick
Speaker 2: back into gear. I had some very much needed downtime
Speaker 2: in the countryside over easter with lots of wholesome analog
Speaker 2: playta We did crosswords and puzzles and read books, and
Speaker 2: my goodness, it does wonders for the soul. So often
Speaker 2: you don't realize how fast you've been going, or how
Speaker 2: hard you've been pushing yourself until you stop, and then
Speaker 2: it all catches up on you. And I talk about
Speaker 2: the relentlessness of our modern pace of life so much
Speaker 2: on this show, and yet even with all that knowledge
Speaker 2: in my brain, I still constantly fall victim to it myself.
Speaker 2: It's just crazy how we can get stuck in these cycles.
Speaker 2: So I am very grateful not only for our guest today,
Speaker 2: but for the timing of his appearance, as he just
Speaker 2: happens to be a world renowned expert in optimizing our health,
Speaker 2: our wellbeing, and our longevity and is exactly the person
Speaker 2: whose brains that I needed to pick this week. Nick
Speaker 2: and I are lucky to have been friends with Simon
Speaker 2: Hill for many years now connecting through multiple shared chapters
Speaker 2: in the wellness industry, including launching product businesses. This was
Speaker 2: back in the Matchmaden days for us opening our plant
Speaker 2: based restaurants at similar times and sharing in that experience,
Speaker 2: writing books, hanging with the hemswords, and then of course
Speaker 2: entering the wild world of podcasting. One of us has
Speaker 2: a number one best selling book and a podcast with
Speaker 2: forty million downloads and counting. And I'll let you, guys
Speaker 2: guess which one of us that is. You may already
Speaker 2: know Simon as the brain's behind the multi platform plant Proof,
Speaker 2: recently rebranded to The Proof, exploring the health and longevity
Speaker 2: benefits that come with mastering physical exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, recovery, sleep,
Speaker 2: and alignment. Simon is a physiotherapist and nutrition scientist with
Speaker 2: such a unique ability to distill and translate often bluted,
Speaker 2: nuanced scientific information into snippets that are digestible pun intended
Speaker 2: by everyday audiences, so that we are equipped to block
Speaker 2: out the noise and misinformation of the social media age
Speaker 2: and better our lives. I mean, who doesn't want to
Speaker 2: live longer and better and be given tips on how
Speaker 2: to do that in a digestible, easy to access way.
Speaker 2: You can see why Simon's is a brain that I'm
Speaker 2: thrilled to have picked this week and why millions tune
Speaker 2: into his content. This one is full of zingers, and
Speaker 2: I hope you guys enjoy as much as I did.
Speaker 2: Simon Hill, Welcome to Ceza Sarah.
Speaker 3: Great to be here with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we were just discussing before we started
Speaker 2: recording that it's been many, many years, like maybe even
Speaker 2: almost a decade since I saw you in the flesh,
Speaker 2: back in the homeland of Australia, which is not where
Speaker 2: you are currently. But it's lovely to see you, my course.
Speaker 2: I think the big problem with having guests that you've
Speaker 2: followed for a really long time and sort of lived
Speaker 2: parallel lives that have intersected at very points is wanting
Speaker 2: to distill that entire person and all their knowledge into
Speaker 2: a single episode to just showcase everything that's incredible about you.
Speaker 2: But with like three hundred and sixty episodes of your
Speaker 2: own podcast, a book endless knowledge in so many areas,
Speaker 2: multiple businesses, I've actually struggled a lot to decide where
Speaker 2: to start with this one, because there's so many places
Speaker 2: we could, but in most episodes I like to start
Speaker 2: back at childhood because I think that as we get
Speaker 2: further and further into our lives, we get clouded by
Speaker 2: success and the rat races we're just talking about, and
Speaker 2: sort of taking it back to the very beginning who
Speaker 2: you are, when you're a blank slate, and then chasing
Speaker 2: through all the chapters that formed you into who you are.
Speaker 2: It always is a nice place to begin someone's journey.
Speaker 2: So take us back to young Simon and Melbourne boy,
Speaker 2: what were your first part time jobs? What did you
Speaker 2: think you'd be?
Speaker 1: My first part time job was actually selling footy records
Speaker 1: at the MCG no.
Speaker 3: Record, get your record?
Speaker 2: I probably bought enough for you, how I con.
Speaker 1: It you might have? Yeah, Yeah, I was really big
Speaker 1: into skateboarding actually when I was a teenager. So I
Speaker 1: worked out that I could work at the football self
Speaker 1: footy records, make some money, and then I could go
Speaker 1: to the swyards. I'm not sure if you remember the
Speaker 1: there was a skate park that it's gone now, used
Speaker 1: to be in the middle of Melbourne and it's right
Speaker 1: near Melbourne Central. So I would get off the train
Speaker 1: with my friends at Melbourne Central and we'd head over
Speaker 1: to the sour yards and spend all the money that
Speaker 1: we'd made, like buying new skateboards.
Speaker 3: Or new wheels and buy food, and we thought it
Speaker 3: was so cool.
Speaker 2: It's a simple time.
Speaker 3: So it was such a simple time.
Speaker 1: But I have so many fond memories, like with the
Speaker 1: friends that I was working with and being able to
Speaker 1: sneak into the games and sneak into the Grand Final
Speaker 1: because I had a footy record uniform and I felt
Speaker 1: so cool at the time. But that's where I kind
Speaker 1: of cut my teeth with my first job and started
Speaker 1: to understand money and the importance of money and the
Speaker 1: fact that you could you could trade your time and
Speaker 1: labor and in return get some money and then go
Speaker 1: out into the world and spend it. But as a kid, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's different to getting money from your parents and
Speaker 1: spending their money. So he gave me a taste for
Speaker 1: what was to come as an adult. But as a kid,
Speaker 1: I was a pretty curious kid. I was like the
Speaker 1: kid that would always want to know how things worked,
Speaker 1: and probably annoyingly so, so I would ask my dad
Speaker 1: and my cousins and my uncle, you know, everything and
Speaker 1: anything if there was you know, some new piece of
Speaker 1: technology in front of us, or a car or a bike.
Speaker 1: I wanted to dismantle it. I wanted to understand how
Speaker 1: it worked. And my dad was really encouraging. He kind
Speaker 1: of really helped encourage that curiosity. He's a scientist himself,
Speaker 1: a professor now and now has been a professor for
Speaker 1: forty years of physiology, and so I think I got
Speaker 1: that from him. You know, he's obviously very cure, wries
Speaker 1: about how the body works and biology and physiology, and
Speaker 1: so kind of followed him down that path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think he was very closely linked into
Speaker 2: another sort of big pivotal moment in your younger years
Speaker 2: that kind of shaped you on the pathway that you're
Speaker 2: on now. I just listened to your episode of The
Speaker 2: Imperfect that just came out two days ago, so I'd
Speaker 2: been sort of doing my research and then was like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, this is so handy for me. I get
Speaker 2: like a refresher of Simon Hill and you talk about
Speaker 2: your I think you called it your on ramp to wellness,
Speaker 2: and there's sort of been several in your life and
Speaker 2: that aligns really closely with what I love in this
Speaker 2: part of each episode, which is tracing through people's earlier
Speaker 2: years to sort of look at all the dots that
Speaker 2: connect and how we think there's this linear pathway to
Speaker 2: get to where we are, but really it's this mish
Speaker 2: mash of events and slide indoors moments, and you know,
Speaker 2: most people don't figure it out going forwards. It only
Speaker 2: makes sense kind of looking backwards. But can you maybe
Speaker 2: take us to that event at fifteen where this passion
Speaker 2: for wellness kind of really was sparked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think up until the age of fifteen,
Speaker 1: I sort of just thought health was a given. I
Speaker 1: hadn't been around anyone. My grandparents were still alive, and
Speaker 1: I hadn't had a family member or pass away or
Speaker 1: had any real serious health issue. And when I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: on this particular day, we were living in Melbourne or
Speaker 1: outside of Melbourne, and on the weekends, my dad and
Speaker 1: myself and my brother would often go out to the
Speaker 1: Yarra Valley, a wine region, and on this Sunday it
Speaker 1: was just my dad and I and we were having
Speaker 1: a great day driving around in his MGB, which is
Speaker 1: this convertible British sports car, and visiting wineries and being curious.
Speaker 1: I remember we used to ask the wine makers so
Speaker 1: many questions. I really got to appreciate how wine was made.
Speaker 1: And it was also not the first time. But memories
Speaker 1: of the wine makers and this I digress here, but
Speaker 1: wine makers like their face lighting up when people were
Speaker 1: really inquiring about what it is they do.
Speaker 3: So I think back.
Speaker 1: About that now and I'm like, yeah, gosh, you know,
Speaker 1: those people probably felt really seen because we would often
Speaker 1: go to these little tiny wineries, not the bee ones,
Speaker 1: and spend like my dad would just we'd sit there
Speaker 1: for like hours. And on this day, we were driving
Speaker 1: back home to Kinglake where my dad lived, and he
Speaker 1: started to get some chest pain and I could tell
Speaker 1: that he was uncomfortable. Asked him if he was okay,
Speaker 1: and he said that he has chest pain, but he
Speaker 1: kind of played it down, and we proceeded to go
Speaker 1: home and cooked dinner.
Speaker 3: He seemed fine. I went to.
Speaker 1: Bed, and in the early hours of the following morning,
Speaker 1: I woke up to noise in the kitchen and thought
Speaker 1: I'd better go out and see what was happening. And
Speaker 1: by the time I got out to the kitchen, my
Speaker 1: dad was there with the phone. He was on his knees,
Speaker 1: he was out of breath. I can remember this vividly,
Speaker 1: and he had called triple zero, and by that time
Speaker 1: he could no longer deny what was happening. He was
Speaker 1: having a heart attack. My dad studies cardiovascular risk factors.
Speaker 1: They knew exactly what was happening.
Speaker 2: The strength of denial.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty common among men to kind of
Speaker 1: wait until the last minute to go and see a doctor,
Speaker 1: and this was like really waiting until the last minute.
Speaker 3: And so he pushed it to write to the limits.
Speaker 1: And I ended up speaking with the paramedic and just
Speaker 1: explaining like what his state was. And we were in
Speaker 1: King Lake, and this was a while back. So now
Speaker 1: I imagine it's quite developed out between Bundur and King Lake,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't actually much back then. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of paddocks and country farms, and the nearest hospital
Speaker 1: was a little while away. So they said, we're going
Speaker 1: to send a helicopter, and before I knew it, there
Speaker 1: was a helicopter. There was paramedics inside the house, putting
Speaker 1: him up on the stretcher and attaching all sorts of
Speaker 1: different cords and cables and measuring vitals and all these
Speaker 1: sorts of things, and then they whisked him away and
Speaker 1: took him in the helicopter. That wasn't room for me,
Speaker 1: so I trailed in the ambulance by car, and my
Speaker 1: mom and my brother.
Speaker 3: They were in Alpham.
Speaker 1: Because my parents were divorced, so I called them and
Speaker 1: explained what was happening, and so they then met started
Speaker 1: driving and met me at the hospital.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you were fifteen by yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was just that was just me kind
Speaker 1: of dealing with all of that, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I really realized until like maybe fifteen years down the
Speaker 1: track that that was like quite a traumatic experience to
Speaker 1: sort of see a loved one, you know, my dad,
Speaker 1: my hero, who all of a sudden his health is
Speaker 1: crumbling and you don't know if he's going to live.
Speaker 1: And we waited at the hospital and the doctor came
Speaker 1: out and let us know that my dad had had
Speaker 1: a very severe heart attack. He was forty one, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't on any prescription medications and had no diagnosed conditions,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of out of the blue, very unexpected,
Speaker 1: and they had managed to save his life, which was
Speaker 1: like obviously the most important thing that we cared about
Speaker 1: at that point. In time, and then he walked us
Speaker 1: through my dad's prognosis and said that he would likely
Speaker 1: be on certain medications for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: and that my brother and I, being young men essentially
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, my brother about eighteen, would really need
Speaker 1: to keep you an eye on this because cardiovascular disease
Speaker 1: runs in families, and that we kind of walked away
Speaker 1: from that event for many, many years, sort of holding
Speaker 1: this limiting belief that we'd been dealt this dodgy card
Speaker 1: essentially your cards, and so we had these genes that
Speaker 1: you know, led to our father who seemed healthy. He
Speaker 1: wasn't from the outside. He wasn't someone that was going
Speaker 1: and eating McDonald's and hungry Jackson. He wasn't OBEs. My
Speaker 1: dad was representative of a typical Australian father. He was
Speaker 1: someone who was probably a little stressed from work and
Speaker 1: trying to earn enough money. But he exercised, you know,
Speaker 1: three or four days a week. He tried to eat
Speaker 1: whole foods. He wasn't eating a whole lot of junk food.
Speaker 1: And he didn't smoke, and he drank you know, I
Speaker 1: guess I'd say like the average amount of alcohol for
Speaker 1: an Australian, which is probably too much.
Speaker 2: I was going to say relative globally, probably a little
Speaker 2: bit side the average.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just say it's a little high, but still
Speaker 1: unexpected at forty one. Right at forty one, you are
Speaker 1: still very much, you know, middle aged young. You're not
Speaker 1: expecting to have a heart attack or a stroke or
Speaker 1: any type of significant cardiac event.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until many, many years later.
Speaker 1: When I had gone to university and started understanding science,
Speaker 1: that I was able to better understand the role of
Speaker 1: genetics and lifestyle our environment. And so while I probably
Speaker 1: do have some genes that are kind of stacking the
Speaker 1: deck against me from a cardiovascular disease point of view,
Speaker 1: the main reason that cardiovascid disease actually runs in families
Speaker 1: is not genetic. It's that families typically adopt the same lifestyles.
Speaker 1: When you double click and deal a little deeper into
Speaker 1: the research, sure, genes probably count for about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of your health fate and risk of chronic disease, but
Speaker 1: the other eighty percent is influenced by the choices that
Speaker 1: you do or don't make. And discovering that kind of
Speaker 1: flipped the I guess the narrative. And I haven't really
Speaker 1: ever thought about this, but I probably had a bit
Speaker 1: of a victim narrative. You know, I was probably not
Speaker 1: in a very empowered position, and then when I had
Speaker 1: that information, it changed to me saying, Okay, I have
Speaker 1: these genes, but I kind of can accept a lot
Speaker 1: of responsibility here and understand that I have a lot
Speaker 1: of power. And that was, you know, a very empowering
Speaker 1: moment for me, and it led to everything I'm pursuing
Speaker 1: now and kind of provides a purpose for why I
Speaker 1: have the conversations I have, so that the everyday person
Speaker 1: out there can also feel that empowerment and understand that
Speaker 1: they you know, they may have genes that are predisposing
Speaker 1: them to breast cancer or to prostate cancer or if
Speaker 1: you're like me, having a heart attack, but there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot you can do to stop those genes being
Speaker 1: expressed and really reduce your risk of having those diseases
Speaker 1: affect your life.
Speaker 2: I loved that. I mean, I've heard you sort of
Speaker 2: speak to that statistic quite a lot, that eighty twenty split,
Speaker 2: and it fascinates me in quite a unique way because
Speaker 2: I think you probably already know that I'm adopted, and
Speaker 2: so I've never had the full picture of our genetics.
Speaker 2: Nick's mother is also adopted, so we both have like
Speaker 2: a bit of a mystery in our genetic makeup. And
Speaker 2: often when I'm asked, have you ever gone to find
Speaker 2: your birth parents and medical history? You know, have you
Speaker 2: wanted that picture? I've actually often. I mean there's lots
Speaker 2: of sort of social and emotional parts of that conversation,
Speaker 2: but in the health area alone, when I did twenty
Speaker 2: three in me the DNA testing, I wanted to know
Speaker 2: my ethnic makeup, but I didn't want to know if
Speaker 2: I had a predisposition to anything because of that exact reason.
Speaker 2: I thought, if it's bad, it's not guaranteed, but it's
Speaker 2: going to make me think I've been dealt these cards,
Speaker 2: and I'll focus on it rather than knowing that that
Speaker 2: eighty percent I'm empowered to change within that sphere of influence,
Speaker 2: it's massive, and I didn't want to know that, you know,
Speaker 2: have this like, yeah, this opportunity to become a VG
Speaker 2: them to the cards I've dealt. And I think that
Speaker 2: the message that you have in health is also really
Speaker 2: well extrapolated to life, is it? Sometimes you think you've
Speaker 2: had this bad luck because of your circumstances, but you
Speaker 2: can change so much more of it than you think.
Speaker 2: You think. I'm shy, I can't public speak, I'm short,
Speaker 2: I can't be a model. You know, there's all these
Speaker 2: things that we think silo our choices in life. But
Speaker 2: maybe that's twenty percent of the picture. But that eighty
Speaker 2: percent you can work with with your lifestyle, with your choices,
Speaker 2: with the mindset that you take. And when you said
Speaker 2: that in the Imperfect episode, I just was like writing
Speaker 2: down furiously. I'm like, oh my god, eighty twenty people
Speaker 2: need to know this.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. We can really limit ourselves and
Speaker 1: put ourselves in a box. We can become defined by
Speaker 1: something like those things that you just mentioned there. I
Speaker 1: will say, in speaking to many people about this idea
Speaker 1: of doing genetic testing, it's funny because I think personality
Speaker 1: I play a role.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: There are some people who at least the feedback that
Speaker 1: they've given me is that going out and doing a
Speaker 1: genetic test and they found out they had like two
Speaker 1: copies of APO E four, which it means that you
Speaker 1: have significantly higher risk of dementia.
Speaker 3: And I'm not.
Speaker 1: Sure if you watched Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, but that
Speaker 1: was one of the key for like a focal point
Speaker 1: of that that documentary was his work with doctor Peter Attia.
Speaker 1: They did genetic testing discovered he had two of those copies,
Speaker 1: And I think it can go both ways. So I
Speaker 1: agree with that. I think there's certain people that do
Speaker 1: not do well with that information, and so you have
Speaker 1: to know yourself. And if you think that that is
Speaker 1: going to limit you and perhaps lead to a kind
Speaker 1: of more of a victim mindset than genetic testing, is
Speaker 1: probably not for you. But then there is the person
Speaker 1: out there who just wants to know all of the
Speaker 1: information and he wants to prove people wrong, and so
Speaker 1: finding out they have two copies of Apoe four provides
Speaker 1: all the motivation they need. And that type of person
Speaker 1: is also the type of person you know. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 3: But one of the.
Speaker 1: Ways that I've at least seen that helps people is
Speaker 1: either they go through a very serious have a very
Speaker 1: serious event themselves, or they see someone directly like I did.
Speaker 3: And if you don't, then your why may.
Speaker 1: Not be strong enough for you to sustain the changes
Speaker 1: that you make. So for someone who hasn't had a
Speaker 1: severe health event themselves or hasn't seen a close to
Speaker 1: a loved one, it might be the generating testing that
Speaker 1: does provide the motivating piece for them. But I totally
Speaker 1: agree with you that you know, I know people in
Speaker 1: my life that it would just be too much information
Speaker 1: for some people.
Speaker 2: So funny that you said that, And my reason for
Speaker 2: my reaction just then was because I had scrapped whatever
Speaker 2: my next question was and typed just as we're writing
Speaker 2: before that idea of I think you and I have
Speaker 2: been in the wellness industry for it, and had our
Speaker 2: podcast for a similar amount of time. We've kind of
Speaker 2: navigated through the big changes that have happened in the space,
Speaker 2: and one of the things I've often found that we
Speaker 2: all share in common is some big pivotal event, which
Speaker 2: is often a crisis. It's very rarely a big positive event.
Speaker 2: It's always some kind of physical breakdown of ourselves or
Speaker 2: someone else, and then a passion to share enough information
Speaker 2: with others so they don't need that kind of crisis
Speaker 2: to make a change that they can preempt it and
Speaker 2: learn by not by doing, but by seeing, so that
Speaker 2: they don't have to have a breakdown like all of us.
Speaker 2: I think there was a stage in the wellness industry
Speaker 2: where every single person's book was like such a similar
Speaker 2: format because we all were speaking to this I had
Speaker 2: this aha moment, and I hope that you know, we
Speaker 2: don't all need to have that to sort of but
Speaker 2: I do take your point that for some people you
Speaker 2: don't take it seriously until you know you're at risk,
Speaker 2: and so that information can be really empowering. So I absolutely,
Speaker 2: in no way, anyone listening I'm encouraging you not to
Speaker 2: get a DNA test to get more information if that
Speaker 2: is the path it's all about. And the same with
Speaker 2: anything in life. It's all about knowing your own incentivization
Speaker 2: and motivations and hacking the way you do your life
Speaker 2: around yourself, not around other people's, which is I've always
Speaker 2: found really fascinating.
Speaker 1: I often think back to, like if my dad hadn't
Speaker 1: have had that experience, Let's say I was twenty five
Speaker 1: and someone sat me down and said, these are all
Speaker 1: of the principles of a healthy lifestyle and ways that
Speaker 1: you can reduce your risk of chronic disease A, because
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have gone through that first hand experience with
Speaker 1: my dad. I'm not sure how engaged I would have
Speaker 1: been in that conversation and then be how much discipline
Speaker 1: and motivation or intention would I actually have to go
Speaker 1: away and make those changes and see them through. And
Speaker 1: I say intention because it requires intention. We live in
Speaker 1: an environment that makes it very easy to be unhealthy,
Speaker 1: and you know, versus some of the longest living populations
Speaker 1: in the world, it's not that these people just have,
Speaker 1: you know, magically more willpower. They just live in an
Speaker 1: environment where the healthy decision is usually the affordable and
Speaker 1: also the easy decision. But we live in like a maze,
Speaker 1: and so like there's all of these indulgent things trying
Speaker 1: to pull us off track away from.
Speaker 2: Health, all the shiny things, right, all.
Speaker 1: The shiny objects, and all this temptation. And so you
Speaker 1: need to have some intention. And when there is a
Speaker 1: strong why underneath that intention, because you've had this health
Speaker 1: experience yourself or a family member has, then I think
Speaker 1: you're more likely to kind of have that intention sort
Speaker 1: of front of mind as you're navigating your way through
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: And one thing I think you said in the Imperfect
Speaker 2: podcast is that you know when you are twenty five
Speaker 2: and you hear that someone had a heart attack at
Speaker 2: forty one, You're like, well, forty one's ancient, And now
Speaker 2: we're all closer to forty one than we are to five,
Speaker 2: And suddenly it's all like Jesus, when did we get here?
Speaker 2: But you know, one thing that I think is so
Speaker 2: powerful about you is the way that you deliver scientific
Speaker 2: information that is incredibly powerful. It is sometimes delivered in
Speaker 2: a way that removes so much of the power of
Speaker 2: it in its message because it's there's so much noise,
Speaker 2: it's all conflicting, there's no context, it's not distilled, and
Speaker 2: it's also not reframed to suit the short attention span
Speaker 2: of the generation it's meant to target. Whereas you have
Speaker 2: cut through and been able to like one of your
Speaker 2: last episode, the one of the last episodes, the title
Speaker 2: is this food swap could cut your risk of early
Speaker 2: death by seventeen percent. Who is not going to click
Speaker 2: on that. You don't have to be forty one to think, Jeesus,
Speaker 2: I could be doing something that risks an early death
Speaker 2: and I could reduce that, Like your your capacity for
Speaker 2: deliveries is so incredible. But before we get to that,
Speaker 2: and some of the messages that I'd love our listeners
Speaker 2: to walk away with some kind of spark. What I
Speaker 2: think is even more interesting about what you said about
Speaker 2: twenty five is that it wasn't until twenty five, twenty
Speaker 2: six to twenty seven for you that I mean, you'd
Speaker 2: been a physiotherapist. You hadn't actually done your nutrition studies
Speaker 2: until your twenties, and at the time that probably felt late.
Speaker 2: That probably felt like you were behind. You know, you'd
Speaker 2: not been in this industry when other people had started
Speaker 2: their first degree in nutrition. What was it like to
Speaker 2: start again? You know, we have this fear of going
Speaker 2: backwards and self doubt to be a beginner, and I
Speaker 2: think people don't think they can begin something like later.
Speaker 2: You know, if you didn't do it is your first degree,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, I'm too late. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: ever too late. But what went through your head when
Speaker 2: you did go back to the beginning and start as
Speaker 2: a sort of newbie because your wellness had been more
Speaker 2: biomechanical until then.
Speaker 3: You're too old, it's too late, being silly. The critic
Speaker 3: was pretty loud.
Speaker 1: And then I had the same voice again when I
Speaker 1: started the podcast and I said, you know, earlier we
Speaker 1: were talking offair, like we started in twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: at the time I was I thought it's too late.
Speaker 1: And in the last year I've picked the guitar back
Speaker 1: up and I want to start singing as well with
Speaker 1: that and so same voice again, way too old.
Speaker 3: You're nearly forty, Like, what are you doing kind of.
Speaker 2: Thing over the heill mate over the hill.
Speaker 1: If you're not putting yourself in the position where you're
Speaker 1: a beginner and you feel that challenge and the butterflies,
Speaker 1: then you're limiting your growth. And I've certainly had periods
Speaker 1: in my life where I'm uber comfortable, you know, and
Speaker 1: everything just feels super comfy and good, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: But I think every now and then you need to
Speaker 1: do a bit of an audit, and you know, where
Speaker 1: are you holding back? And I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: better understand nutrition. I knew that it was a gap
Speaker 1: in my knowledge of understanding the human body, and it
Speaker 1: just required me to get over those nerves, to get
Speaker 1: over the fact that I was going to be a
Speaker 1: little older going back to university, and to kind of
Speaker 1: swallow my price, so to speak, and throw myself back
Speaker 1: into it, and to be honest, looking back now, it's
Speaker 1: like what I went and did a master's in nutrition science,
Speaker 1: and I was in my mid to late twenties.
Speaker 3: It's not that old.
Speaker 2: Oh it's so young.
Speaker 1: I've even considered maybe going back and doing a PhD.
Speaker 1: So I think certainly have had the inn a critic
Speaker 1: to answer your question, and a lot of doubt and
Speaker 1: whether it was a good idea or not.
Speaker 3: But the more.
Speaker 1: I've thrown myself back into these positions where I'm learning
Speaker 1: something from scratch and I'm a beginner, I realized that
Speaker 1: it's what actually what I love is being a life
Speaker 1: learner and realizing how much more I have to learn,
Speaker 1: and also just how amazing we all are. We can
Speaker 1: all learn so much more than we think, and I
Speaker 1: think that's really really cool. You know, twelve months ago,
Speaker 1: I couldn't play the guitar at all. Now I can
Speaker 1: play and it's pretty crappy.
Speaker 2: But in a year you'll be headlining Coachella.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's semi decent and I could be at Coachella.
Speaker 1: I joke around my friend, you could sell out Madison Square.
Speaker 2: Got it a hundred percent, one hundred percent, so you
Speaker 2: could maybe be the intersection of like music and stats
Speaker 2: about health, Like maybe there could be some kind of
Speaker 2: like I talk about effiicient delivery. Maybe it's through music,
Speaker 2: like who even knows?
Speaker 3: Could be Yeah, yeah, whatever gets people listening it. I'm gay.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I went back to our dms before
Speaker 2: we started recording, and I think the first one was
Speaker 2: like maybe back in twenty eighteen when we did first
Speaker 2: start our podcast. Maybe a little bit before that, but
Speaker 2: I think through my husband Nick, I think you'd known
Speaker 2: him for quite a while before that as well. So
Speaker 2: we've kind of crossed paths many many times. And one
Speaker 2: of our biggest chapters in parallel was having plant based
Speaker 2: venues in a landscape where that wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 2: I think we've actually been, you know, thinking about you
Speaker 2: thought you started late in twenty eighteen. It was so
Speaker 2: early that compared to now, that was so early in
Speaker 2: the health and wellness industry. It was such a time.
Speaker 2: Looking back, we had Matromaiden and Matrimilk Bar and you
Speaker 2: had Eden, and I just looking back at that time
Speaker 2: and how far we've come, and I have so many
Speaker 2: questions for you. But first I want to go back
Speaker 2: to the fact that we both really focused our plant
Speaker 2: based messaging, as you mentioned before, about these ancient civilizations
Speaker 2: around the blue zones and longevity, and took the animal
Speaker 2: rights ethics based the heat of those arguments away to
Speaker 2: kind of hitch to people who weren't eating plants, because
Speaker 2: it creates more change to serve a plant based meal
Speaker 2: to a non vegan than it does to a vegan.
Speaker 2: And I loved that we were doing that in parallel
Speaker 2: with each other. When you did first sort of start
Speaker 2: eating more plants, you were a very heavy meat eater
Speaker 2: who had been in a very sporty, protein heavy lifestyle beforehand.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to us about some of the heaviest
Speaker 2: eye opening statistics or facts that you learned that spark
Speaker 2: that change for you, and that now you wish you
Speaker 2: know more people knew, because I still think people. I
Speaker 2: can't believe how many customers would come in and just
Speaker 2: have no idea why they needed to be They just
Speaker 2: didn't understand why we needed to be eating more plants.
Speaker 2: They did it because we had a cool looking latte.
Speaker 2: But like that behavior change, what changed it for you?
Speaker 1: I think when you look at the totality of evidence,
Speaker 1: and when I say totality of evidence, I mean essentially
Speaker 1: bench top science, so being at the sort of bottom
Speaker 1: of the evidence hierarchy, which is scientists working with peagery
Speaker 1: dishes and sort of sell cultures, and then animal studies,
Speaker 1: and then you go up or wrong and you're with
Speaker 1: large scale human observational studies. So it could be populations
Speaker 1: in America or in Japan or in parts of Europe
Speaker 1: where there's one hundred thousands of people followed over decades.
Speaker 1: And then above that you go to randomized controlled trials
Speaker 1: where they're often conducted you know, over weeks to months.
Speaker 1: It's a bit expensive to conduct them for longer than that.
Speaker 1: When you look at all of that evidence related to nutrition,
Speaker 1: while there's not one absolute diet that's clearly the best
Speaker 1: for everyone, there is a very clear theme or sort
Speaker 1: of big over overview picture of what a healthy dietary
Speaker 1: pattern looks like. And it's a diet that is low
Speaker 1: and saturated fat. It's rich in these unsaturated fats, it's
Speaker 1: high in fiber, it has more plant protein than animal
Speaker 1: protein compared to the average diet today, and it's lower
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods. And what that looks like in terms
Speaker 1: of diets that people might be familiar with, is anything
Speaker 1: from a Mediterranean diet done well. People might have heard
Speaker 1: of the Dash diet, which was this very plant based
Speaker 1: diet that has been used in research for lowering blood
Speaker 1: pressure and risk of cuttivascular disease. It could be a
Speaker 1: pescatarian diet, or it could be a whole food plant
Speaker 1: based diet. All of the those diets that I just
Speaker 1: listed there, well, some of them are omnivorous and have
Speaker 1: animal foods, and certainly there is room for animal foods
Speaker 1: and healthy diet. It goes all the way to a
Speaker 1: whole food plant based diet that's plants exclusive. The commonality
Speaker 1: is the theme that I mentioned at the beginning, which
Speaker 1: is low saturated fat, rich and unsaturated fats, high fiber,
Speaker 1: a good amount of plant protein, and low and ultra
Speaker 1: processed foods. And what all of those diets achieve through
Speaker 1: that theme is optimization of blood pressure, blood glucose control, cholesterol, inflammation,
Speaker 1: insolent sensitivity, all of these risk factors that we know
Speaker 1: are driving the cardiometabolic diseases and cancer, so cancers, fatty
Speaker 1: livid disease, type two diabetes, cardiabascar disease, dementia, all of
Speaker 1: the big chronic diseases that are robbing people of healthy
Speaker 1: years of life are influenced by those risk factors. And
Speaker 1: when you eat in this manner, particularly over decades, you're
Speaker 1: optimizing those risk factors and dramatically lowering your risk. And
Speaker 1: so for me, as a heavy meat eater, it was
Speaker 1: kind of impossible to ignore that because meat is pulling
Speaker 1: you in the opposite direction, and dose is important. Like
Speaker 1: I said, you can have some meat in a plant
Speaker 1: rich diet and you're still optimizing all those factors that
Speaker 1: I mentioned. But when meat is the star of the plate,
Speaker 1: particularly at every meat at every meal, particularly fatty cuts
Speaker 1: of meat like I was eating, and you're eating a
Speaker 1: lot of butter and high fat dairy, then you're increasing
Speaker 1: your cholesterol, you're reducing your impairing blood glucose control, you
Speaker 1: can increase inflammation. You see less diversity of the microbiome,
Speaker 1: which affects a myriad of risk factors as well. And
Speaker 1: so it was just learning that and understanding what a
Speaker 1: healthy dietary pattern looks like. That provided a lot of
Speaker 1: food for thought for me, and I had to reflect
Speaker 1: on it, and I was very resistant. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to change at the beginning, and I think that if
Speaker 1: I hadn't had that experience with my dad, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would have made the changes in my twenties.
Speaker 1: But I had a very strong reason to make changes
Speaker 1: and to improve these risk factors because I knew that
Speaker 1: my genes were probably stacked against me, and so I
Speaker 1: needed to do whatever I could to make sure that
Speaker 1: they weren't being expressed in a way where I was
Speaker 1: going to have a heart attack.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, coming back to that idea that not
Speaker 2: everyone does have that kind of why in built into
Speaker 2: their story. That does you know, create behavior change in
Speaker 2: a society where it's very difficult, Like if you live
Speaker 2: in one of the blue zones, it's not hard to
Speaker 2: eat that way because everyone's eating that way, and that's
Speaker 2: what's available to you. If you had the ear of
Speaker 2: someone for sort of three key things that you could
Speaker 2: tell them about the way they're eating, that might shock
Speaker 2: some change into people's you know, coming back to that
Speaker 2: episode the food swap that could cut your risk of
Speaker 2: early death by seventeen percent? Firstly, what is that? And secondly,
Speaker 2: you know what a couple of other big changes you
Speaker 2: could begin with even that you know could have a
Speaker 2: dramatic improvement on your health.
Speaker 1: So in terms of disease and chronic disease, the first
Speaker 1: thing I would make clear to people is it's not
Speaker 1: like these diseases just occur overnight. They are bubbling away
Speaker 1: under the surface for decades. You're in your twenties now,
Speaker 1: if you're eating a diet that's very high and saturated
Speaker 1: fat like I was, low in fiber, low and unsitrated fats,
Speaker 1: you are more than likely laying down plak fatty pluk
Speaker 1: in your arteries right, which is not just going to
Speaker 1: affect your heart, that's affecting blood flow to all organs
Speaker 1: in your body, including your brain. And so the earlier
Speaker 1: you make changes, the healthier your arteries are going to be.
Speaker 1: So that's how I would just keep it very very simple.
Speaker 1: For someone it's not just someone who has genes like
Speaker 1: me that has a predisposition to cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease
Speaker 1: is the number one cause of death in Australia for
Speaker 1: men and women. So everyone is predisposed to it, and
Speaker 1: everyone dies with atherosclerosis, which is the build up of
Speaker 1: plaque in their arteri, but not everyone.
Speaker 3: Dies because of it.
Speaker 1: So let me say that again, everyone dies with it,
Speaker 1: but not everyone dies because of it. There is a
Speaker 1: natural progression of authorosclerosis as humans age, but you can
Speaker 1: limit the rate of that progression and how much plark
Speaker 1: is being laid down. You don't want to be walking
Speaker 1: around and going to bed every night and having significant
Speaker 1: amount of inflammation in the arteri wall and plaque building up.
Speaker 1: That's predisposing you to having a heart attack or perhaps
Speaker 1: even worse a stroke from a physical impairment point of view.
Speaker 1: And so the biggest food swaps that someone can make,
Speaker 1: let's say the Australian diet, like what are the biggest
Speaker 1: leavers that people can focus on to look after their
Speaker 1: vascular health, but also would say is eat more fiber.
Speaker 1: And the average Australian is eating about twelve to fifteen
Speaker 1: grams of fiber per day, but that really should be
Speaker 1: at thirty grams or higher. Now, fiber is found in
Speaker 1: all plant foods, and we are going into too much detail.
Speaker 1: It affects many of those risk factors that I reeled
Speaker 1: off before. But the really important thing to understand about
Speaker 1: about fiber and prebiotics in particular, probiotics is just a
Speaker 1: fancy way of saying compounds in your meals that you
Speaker 1: eat that are not absorbed in the small intestine, they
Speaker 1: pass through to the large intestine and they feed the
Speaker 1: microbes the thirty eight trillion bactery in your gut. Those
Speaker 1: prebiotics vary from plant food to plant food to plant food,
Speaker 1: So the probiotics that are in broccoli are different to
Speaker 1: those in artochokes, are different again to those in potato,
Speaker 1: are different again to those that are in carrot. And
Speaker 1: one of the best predictors of gut health, which directly
Speaker 1: affects things like inforammation in cholesterol, is having a diversity
Speaker 1: of plants in the diet. And there was a very
Speaker 1: big study called the Gut Health Microbiome Project a few
Speaker 1: years back that looked at the diversity of the microbiome
Speaker 1: in ten thousand plus subjects who sent in poop samples
Speaker 1: and also cataloged how they ate. It's a lot of poop, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of poop, and also cataloged how these
Speaker 1: people were eating. The best predictor of a diverse microbiome
Speaker 1: was not whether someone was vegan, pescatarian, whatever. The dietary
Speaker 1: label didn't matter. The best predictor was whether someone ate
Speaker 1: thirty unique plants a week or not. And so my
Speaker 1: number one piece of advice for this young person is
Speaker 1: increase your plant diversity. Forget about removing things right now,
Speaker 1: because by the time you increase your plant diversity and
Speaker 1: get up to thirty unique plants a week. And I
Speaker 1: encourage people to grab their journal or no pad and
Speaker 1: just see where you land next week, probably landing about
Speaker 1: ten to twelve, I bet most people. And that's because
Speaker 1: we tend to eat the same plants every day.
Speaker 2: I absolutely do that, right.
Speaker 1: So you find and this is an order I have
Speaker 1: to do myself. I have to keep coming back to
Speaker 1: it because I go back to eating the same plant foods.
Speaker 1: But remember these plant foods. Although we like to simplify
Speaker 1: fiber as one thing, it's not like. There are many
Speaker 1: different types of prebiotics and they're feeding different type species
Speaker 1: of bacteria, all of which have different and very important
Speaker 1: roles in our gut. So you can do an order,
Speaker 1: see how many unique plants you have, and then try
Speaker 1: and increase over time. You can do this over weeks
Speaker 1: and months, try and get up to eating thirty unique
Speaker 1: plants a week, and that's going to do wonders for
Speaker 1: your microbiome. Fire has other effects beyond the microbiome that
Speaker 1: are going to be beneficial, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: I bet by adding all of those in, you end
Speaker 1: up eating a little bit less animal foods, and so
Speaker 1: saturated fat comes down, and the type of plant foods
Speaker 1: I'm talking about are whole or minimally processed, so fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes,
Speaker 1: whole grains, and by version of that, you eat a little.
Speaker 3: Less ultra processed foods.
Speaker 1: So just focusing on that one thing can really straighten
Speaker 1: up the diet and optimize a number of these really
Speaker 1: important risk factors without having to think about too much.
Speaker 2: I love that it kind of has flow and effects
Speaker 2: without you actually having to focus on three different goals.
Speaker 2: It's like, do this and by nature of try to
Speaker 2: introduce that many things, you'll kind of you end up
Speaker 2: with all these other benefits. What about some and this
Speaker 2: must be particularly as someone with as much sort of
Speaker 2: depth of research, with deep qualifications, but also really a
Speaker 2: long long history of working with experts and engaging deeply
Speaker 2: with the science. What are some of the biggest and
Speaker 2: most frustrating misconceptions that you see in the landscape at
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned at the outset that there there's
Speaker 1: a lot of conflicting information on social media, and you
Speaker 1: also use the word context, and those are two really
Speaker 1: important words. So what frustrates me is that I believe
Speaker 1: many people, thanks to social media and the type of
Speaker 1: information that is on social media about nutrition, I kind
Speaker 1: of left in this position where they think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of conflicting information in nutrition science and it's
Speaker 1: sort of all over the place, and scientists just haven't
Speaker 1: worked this out, and so I end up just kind
Speaker 1: of throwing their hands up in the air and thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing because
Speaker 1: everyone's arguing, right, and I actually understand and empathize with them,
Speaker 1: and I don't blame you, like if you're in that position,
Speaker 1: I get it. That's why I went back and did
Speaker 1: my masters, because I was in that position. Even with
Speaker 1: an undergraduate degree that involves science learning how to read
Speaker 1: peer reviewed literature, I didn't have the specific skills to
Speaker 1: make sense of nutrition science. And so the one thing
Speaker 1: that I would say to that person is that while
Speaker 1: it seems like all the information is conflicting, it only
Speaker 1: seems that way because the context is missing, and so
Speaker 1: it's very easy for me to go and find a
Speaker 1: study and say study show And that's why you see
Speaker 1: everyone saying study show, study show, study show, study show
Speaker 1: about all these these things that people are saying are
Speaker 1: completely contradictory. How can studies show things that are the
Speaker 1: exact opposite, right? And the reason is because the context
Speaker 1: is missing. Who are we talking about? Are we talking
Speaker 1: about a twenty five year old athlete? Are we talking
Speaker 1: about a postmenopausal woman? What food are we talking about?
Speaker 1: Are we talking about red meat? What type of red
Speaker 1: meat are we talking about? What dose are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Because like red meat, what does that actually mean? Are
Speaker 1: you talking about someone that's eating thirty grams a day
Speaker 1: or we're talking about someone that's eating eighty grams a
Speaker 1: day or one hundred and fifty grams a day. And
Speaker 1: also nutrition is a little different other areas of science,
Speaker 1: particularly from a place Ebo perspective. When you are trying
Speaker 1: to determine the effect of a food, let's say red meat,
Speaker 1: you have to compare it to something so compared to
Speaker 1: what are you comparing red meat to ultra processed foods?
Speaker 1: Are you comparing red meat to whole grains. Are you
Speaker 1: comparing red meat to legumes? And now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: and there's way more than that. I hope the listener understands, like,
Speaker 1: there's really important context. And when you understand that context,
Speaker 1: these studies that seem contradictory, they're not actually contradictory. It's
Speaker 1: actually quite easily explained. So I think that's the most
Speaker 1: frustrating thing that I would say is just that social media.
Speaker 1: You alluded to it earlier. It's all about the clickbait.
Speaker 1: How much emotion can you kind of generate in a
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty second clip, And often that doesn't lend
Speaker 1: itself well to a more nuanced position that contains the context,
Speaker 1: and it leads to the absolute or sensational kind of
Speaker 1: position is what gets shared and amplified. And this is
Speaker 1: like an extension of what frustrates me is that I
Speaker 1: think as a society we're losing track of what science
Speaker 1: is and what it means to communicate science objectively and effectively.
Speaker 1: And so when I'm looking for someone who is a
Speaker 1: science communicator that I'm going to trust, it's not the
Speaker 1: person who is using absolute language. I want to hear
Speaker 1: the person who understands their limits, what we do know,
Speaker 1: what we don't know. I want to hear a little
Speaker 1: bit of hesitation. I want to hear them say I
Speaker 1: don't know. Words I think need to be repopularized, right
Speaker 1: because science fundamentally requires a ton of humility, and so
Speaker 1: it's frustrating for me to see sort of deep convictions,
Speaker 1: often from people who are not directly in the science field,
Speaker 1: and I think the public conflates that conviction with credibility,
Speaker 1: whereas for me, credibility is.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, is a little bit you know.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for that person who says words like perhaps
Speaker 1: or maybe or but we need to consider this context
Speaker 1: and adding caveats, And that's not as sexy and probably
Speaker 1: isn't going to go as viral in the podcast world
Speaker 1: or in the reels, but it's actually it's just more responsible.
Speaker 3: That's how science should be.
Speaker 2: And that leads really nicely into my next question, which
Speaker 2: is also kind of more relevant in the social media age,
Speaker 2: where people want absolutes and they want clickbaiting sentences without
Speaker 2: context that are sexy, and part of that is an
Speaker 2: immense pressure, I think to never change your mind like
Speaker 2: you've been on social media as long as I've been
Speaker 2: on social media, and not only have we changed and
Speaker 2: the world's changed, the nature of science is that it changes.
Speaker 2: Like yes, it operates in absolutes in the moment, but
Speaker 2: I mean our unders standing of life over the course
Speaker 2: of all of science has gone from whole opposite conclusions
Speaker 2: because our technology advances, because the way we understand. You know,
Speaker 2: there's so many reasons why things change. Have you felt
Speaker 2: pressure in a world where you have a million followers?
Speaker 2: That is an enormous amount of people who are listening
Speaker 2: very closely to everything you do. Have you ever felt
Speaker 2: pressure to not change your mind on something to be
Speaker 2: the same person over the history of your lifetime on
Speaker 2: social media? And has there been anything that you've changed
Speaker 2: your mind on or that science has changed its mind
Speaker 2: on that you've had to kind of learn to deliver
Speaker 2: that too to your audience.
Speaker 3: I've definitely changed my mind on quite a few things.
Speaker 3: We can get into that. But I agree with you again,
Speaker 3: I think that changing your mind for some people that
Speaker 3: might be seen as this person is foot flopping or
Speaker 3: doesn't know their stuff right, and it could be seen
Speaker 3: as as like a weakness rather than being a strength
Speaker 3: for someone. But I think it's it is a strength.
Speaker 1: Now, you don't want to see someone flip flopping day
Speaker 1: to day because the science in the sensus is not
Speaker 1: changing day to day and our consensus and sort of
Speaker 1: understanding of science. But in this case nutrition science, there
Speaker 1: is course corrections, but it's shaped over years and decades.
Speaker 1: So it is very rare that all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you wake up and everything's slipped on its head, and
Speaker 1: you know, we learn tomorrow that the best diet is
Speaker 1: just eating salami.
Speaker 3: That's a little bit of a red flag. Now.
Speaker 1: Sure, there are things like over the last ten years
Speaker 1: where I've changed my mind, and some of it's been
Speaker 1: a slow progression where a study comes out.
Speaker 3: And you're like, huh, that's actually interesting, it's.
Speaker 1: Making me think about this in another way, And then
Speaker 1: another study comes in, another study, and I'd say dairy
Speaker 1: is one of those, because over the last five years
Speaker 1: there's been quite a few publications suggesting that at least
Speaker 1: when you remove butter from that, because you've got to remember,
Speaker 1: dairy is such a diverse range of foods, Like what
Speaker 1: does that actually mean? Because it's everything from butter to
Speaker 1: ice ice cream with lots of refined sugars to Greek yogurt,
Speaker 1: to fermented types of dairy which have probiotics, live cultures,
Speaker 1: you know, very different. Again, and when researchers have got
Speaker 1: a little bit more granular and instead of just analyzing
Speaker 1: dairy as a kind of big umbrella group, you see
Speaker 1: that certainly well, butter, at least compared to oils like
Speaker 1: olive oil, increases risk CUTI of ascular disease. So I
Speaker 1: think that's another swap that people could make as simple
Speaker 1: one is eat a little less butter a little more
Speaker 1: Olive oil particularly have high cholesterol. What we've been able
Speaker 1: to see is that yogurt and cheese, particularly fermented cheese,
Speaker 1: actually associates with improvements in cardiovascular health. So a little
Speaker 1: bit of nuance that I guess I've added over the
Speaker 1: years is that not all dairy is the same, and
Speaker 1: even the saturated fats that exist in dairy do not
Speaker 1: behave the same as saturated fats in red meat. And
Speaker 1: so I just sort of simplified it earlier saying we
Speaker 1: want to eat less saturated fat, and if we wanted
Speaker 1: to double click on that, I'm conscious of time, but
Speaker 1: saturated fat is actually not one thing, just like fiber.
Speaker 1: It's saturated fats. There are different types and they have
Speaker 1: different effects on physiology, and the real saturated fats that
Speaker 1: you want to reduce are the ones in red meat
Speaker 1: or in butter. And you might be thinking, well, how
Speaker 1: can the saturated fats in butter be different to yoga
Speaker 1: and cheese. It's very simple. When you refine the dairy down,
Speaker 1: you bust open what's called a milk fat globule, and
Speaker 1: that milk fat globule sort of liberates the saturated fats
Speaker 1: in dairy, and so they have this much more amplified
Speaker 1: effect on cholesterol, whereas in yogurt and in cheese, where
Speaker 1: they're not as refined, the milk fat globule remains intact
Speaker 1: and it limits the effect that saturated fat has on cholesterol.
Speaker 1: So while you know, ten years ago, a lot of
Speaker 1: people just looking at the nutritional profile of yogurt and
Speaker 1: cheese would have a hypothesis that this is going to
Speaker 1: really jack up cholesterol, doesn't actually seem to play out
Speaker 1: like that, And in large population studies, those two types
Speaker 1: of dairy seem to be either neutral or positive for
Speaker 1: cardiovascular health. That's something where I've changed my view over
Speaker 1: the years. And that's not saying that you have to
Speaker 1: consume dairy. Someone might be like to its intolerant or
Speaker 1: just choose not to consume dairy for ethical or environmental reasons,
Speaker 1: which are are valid. But you then would want to
Speaker 1: really focus on what are you consuming instead, And so
Speaker 1: dairy it's a great source of protein, it's a really
Speaker 1: good source of calcium, and probably the effects on cardiovascular
Speaker 1: health are because of calcium. So if you're someone who
Speaker 1: is a avoiding yogurt, is avoiding cheese, you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that the replacement foods you're consuming have a
Speaker 1: similar amount of calcium, or else you're getting enough calcium
Speaker 1: somewhere else in the diet. You wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: not consuming dairy and then under consuming your daily amount
Speaker 1: of calcium, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So the replacement, the replacement matters somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I've changed my mind a little bit is ultra processed
Speaker 1: foods and the way in which they are affecting disease.
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of research over the last
Speaker 1: kind of decade, but particularly in the last five years,
Speaker 1: and I've had some of these scientists on my show
Speaker 1: trying to really unravel like what is it about ultra
Speaker 1: processed foods that is driving obesity? Because we know that
Speaker 1: people who eat more ultra processed foods tend to be
Speaker 1: overweight or obese, or have a higher risk of being
Speaker 1: overweight or obese. And there's been all these different kind
Speaker 1: of hypotheses out there looking at this, and you know,
Speaker 1: people have speculated maybe it's like the amount of sugar
Speaker 1: or fat or sodium in these foods. And there was
Speaker 1: some really interesting work done by Kevin Hole about five
Speaker 1: years ago now where he compared in metabolic ward bringing
Speaker 1: people into a you know, essentially like a prison but
Speaker 1: a hospital setting, whether you feed people food and you
Speaker 1: know everything they eat and you can do all the
Speaker 1: measurements there, whereas you know, when you conduct these studies
Speaker 1: at home and they're free living, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: hard relying on people doing exactly what you say.
Speaker 2: And reporting it correctly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like a very controlled study. You know
Speaker 1: exactly what people are eating. And he had he had
Speaker 1: two diets, this ultra processed diet and this unprocessed diet,
Speaker 1: but they were matched for all of those things that
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, like protein and fiber and salt and sugar, okay,
Speaker 1: so only difference that some of these foods were ultra
Speaker 1: processed and the others were unprocessed. And for about two
Speaker 1: weeks they had every participant eat the unprocessed foods and
Speaker 1: then have a little bit of a break and then
Speaker 1: eat the ultra processed foods or in the opposite order,
Speaker 1: so every participant got to do both diets, and the
Speaker 1: instructions were just to eat until you're full. And what
Speaker 1: they found was despite matching all of those macronutrients and
Speaker 1: sodium and fiber, people ate about five hundred calories.
Speaker 3: More per day on the ultra processed diet.
Speaker 1: So then that kind of leaves you wondering, well, what's
Speaker 1: driving this, and so the hypothesis from that was that
Speaker 1: it's probably calorie density, so the amount of calories per bite,
Speaker 1: which affects your eating rate, how fast you can eat something.
Speaker 1: And this was like building on other research done by
Speaker 1: Barbara Rolls, who has been in this space for ten
Speaker 1: or twenty years, so I need to make because of
Speaker 1: her work kind of really paved the way for this,
Speaker 1: but there's been subsequence studies now that have again kind
Speaker 1: of really confirmed that probably ultra processed foods are driving
Speaker 1: excessive calorie consumption. Certainly by hyperpalatability, we know that they
Speaker 1: kind of hijack the reward centers of the brain because
Speaker 1: they're just overly delicious, but also by calorie density and
Speaker 1: eating rate. And there's this interesting sort of thing where
Speaker 1: we all tend to eat the same amount of food
Speaker 1: by volume per day, right, but a kilogram of food
Speaker 1: can be vastly different amount of calories depending on how
Speaker 1: energy dense that food is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so the volume is what's consistent, but the
Speaker 2: calorie density is what varies.
Speaker 1: Yes, And this has been borne out in many studies now,
Speaker 1: so we can use this again. It doesn't really change
Speaker 1: any of the advice set that we're giving here, because
Speaker 1: it's why those dietary patterns. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: that I reeled off before Mediterranean dash, pescatarian, whole food,
Speaker 1: plant based. It's one of the reasons why time and
Speaker 1: time again you see people eating that way are healthy,
Speaker 1: body healthier body weight, because when you eat more of
Speaker 1: those high fiber, high water plant foods, those are low
Speaker 1: calorie density foods, it lowers the total calorie density of
Speaker 1: your overall dietary pattern. So when you eat a kilogram
Speaker 1: of food, it contains less calories than if you're eating
Speaker 1: a kilogram of food that was animal foods and ultra processed.
Speaker 2: Right. So it's also like a satiation kind of measurement,
Speaker 2: like what satisfies your hunger? Hunger?
Speaker 3: Right, it's absolutely satiety related.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the one satiation. Society is a better word.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're right, though, you're absolutely right. So there are
Speaker 1: stretch receptors in your gut. So when you eat food
Speaker 1: that is less calorie dense, if I give you five
Speaker 1: hundred calories of food that's less calorie dense than say
Speaker 1: five hundred calories superclori dense, that's going to be a
Speaker 1: larger volume of food. It's going to stretch your stomach more,
Speaker 1: and it activates these stretch receptors which send a signal
Speaker 1: to your brain saying, hey, we're pretty good down here.
Speaker 1: You don't need to bring in any more calories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, minor a bit diluted. They're a bit de lulu
Speaker 2: mine down there.
Speaker 1: And can I just add one little thing here because
Speaker 1: I think it's a neat tip, and it's from Barbaraoll's work.
Speaker 1: She was really interested in this idea of energy density,
Speaker 1: and she was the researcher responsible for what's called the
Speaker 1: preload strategy. So if someone's wanting to lose weight to
Speaker 1: lower their risk of chronic disease or for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it is a really helpful strategy is before you eat
Speaker 1: your main meal, to eat a water based sort of
Speaker 1: broth based soup or a large salad, providing that salad
Speaker 1: doesn't have a whole lot of energy dense salad dressing
Speaker 1: on it. And in her studies, when they preloaded people
Speaker 1: with either the soup or the salad, they ended up
Speaker 1: eating fifteen to twenty percent less calories over that entire
Speaker 1: meal sitting, so including the preload. And it's likely because
Speaker 1: it's activating those stretch receptors earlier in the meal.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's such a good tip. I've actually heard that before.
Speaker 2: And also it's partly related to the timing, is that right, Like,
Speaker 2: it takes twenty minutes for the messages of those stretch
Speaker 2: receptors to get back to your brain. So it's like
Speaker 2: if you gobble like I do and eat so quickly,
Speaker 2: that's why you overeat because you don't give yourself time
Speaker 2: to realize the volume that's actually already in your stomach. Like,
Speaker 2: give it a minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one dredsent true. And I mean that's why
Speaker 1: ultra process foods are you super energy dense? You know
Speaker 1: we've all done it before. You can quickly take down
Speaker 1: you know, five hundred and seven hundred calories without even
Speaker 1: knowing it. And also why if you're sitting in front
Speaker 1: of the TV, you know, before you know it, you've
Speaker 1: scoffed down so much food. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of researchers looking at exactly that and looking at mindful
Speaker 1: eating and slowing down and chewing slowly, and it is
Speaker 1: likely to lead to better appetite regulation.
Speaker 2: For sure, I knew I would get to this point
Speaker 2: in the episode. I even began with knowing that my
Speaker 2: biggest challenge today was distilling all of your wisdom and
Speaker 2: everything I wanted to ask you. I feel like I've
Speaker 2: covered like, not even one percent of all the things
Speaker 2: in our brain. So it's lucky that our listeners can
Speaker 2: go to your own podcast and get three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty more episodes of wisdom from you and your incredible guests.
Speaker 2: But if you did have to distill say three swaps
Speaker 2: or practical tips that people could start with, now, what
Speaker 2: would you leave us with on top of what you've
Speaker 2: already so generously given us, but in like a SoundBite.
Speaker 1: Okay, before I give you the SoundBite, because I know
Speaker 1: that sometimes these conversations can be a little anxiety provoking
Speaker 1: for people focusing on food so much. I just want
Speaker 1: to make it clear. This is about doing it in
Speaker 1: perfectly over decades, so the things that I say, it's
Speaker 1: not about getting it perfect every single day. And if
Speaker 1: you do fall off the bandwagon on a day, no worries,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Just do your best in the next
Speaker 1: food decision that you have the next day, and you're
Speaker 1: going to be fine. So I would say Number one
Speaker 1: is focus on the thirty unique plants? Can you get there?
Speaker 1: How many unique plants? So are you currently eating? Do
Speaker 1: a bit of an order and see if you can
Speaker 1: work your way up towards thirty unique plants. And I
Speaker 1: didn't mention this before, but herbs and spices count oh nice.
Speaker 1: So it can seem a little daunting at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but that makes it a little bit easier. Number two,
Speaker 1: for a swap, as I mentioned, would be swapping out
Speaker 1: cooking oils, cooking fats that are really rich and saturated fats,
Speaker 1: particularly butter or ghee, even coconut oil and palm oil,
Speaker 1: and instead cooking with olive oil or avocado oil or
Speaker 1: god forbid, seed oles, which I know are much maligned.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's another episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have an episode on that. Actually I've saved
Speaker 2: it for later.
Speaker 1: I have an episode on that, so people can go
Speaker 1: and check that out. But if we want to just
Speaker 1: avoid arguments, swap those saturated fat rich googn oils for
Speaker 1: olive oil, which is almost universally accepted as a healthy
Speaker 1: cooking oil, or avocado oil. So that would be the
Speaker 1: first two and the third would just be about being
Speaker 1: conscious of ultra processed foods. So there is room for
Speaker 1: ultra processed foods in the diet. The main mechanism by
Speaker 1: which ultra processed foods are causing disease, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: is through driving excess calorie consumption. So really, if someone's
Speaker 1: overweight or obese, then these are things that you might
Speaker 1: want to pay a little more attention to. But if
Speaker 1: you're metabolically healthy, you don't have chronic disease, you're active,
Speaker 1: and ninety five percent of the time you're eating whole
Speaker 1: minimally processed foods.
Speaker 3: You know, a little bit of these ultra processed foods,
Speaker 3: having some ice cream here and there and whatnot, it's
Speaker 3: not going to kill you. And so yeah, overall, sixty
Speaker 3: percent of Austrain's calories coming from ultra processed foods, so
Speaker 3: across the board we can benefit massively by reducing them.
Speaker 3: But they're not toxic at any dose. So I just
Speaker 3: want people to know.
Speaker 2: That when you fall off, and I'm hoping that your
Speaker 2: answer is that you do occasionally, what are your guilty
Speaker 2: pleasures everything, Well, that's good to know. That's very humanizing.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: I certainly do fall off, and I've gone through periods,
Speaker 1: to be completely honest with you, where I've probably do
Speaker 1: well in a little bit of regret or shame or
Speaker 1: guilt and being too focused on having the perfect diet.
Speaker 1: And it's not worth the anxiety that comes along with that.
Speaker 1: I think, I think chasing perfection is just impossible when
Speaker 1: it comes to our diet, and so it sort of
Speaker 1: sets us up for failure. And the problem with that
Speaker 1: is when perfection is a goal and you don't meet it,
Speaker 1: that's when people just stop altogether and give up. So
Speaker 1: having this approach of just doing it imperfectly. It allows
Speaker 1: you to be human. It allows you to be human. Right,
Speaker 1: So for me, cookies, cakes, you know Brownie's ice cream cakes?
Speaker 3: Love those?
Speaker 2: Well, you're a sweet too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything sweet. You know, chocolate and you know a
Speaker 1: little bit of chocolate's completely fine. But I can easily
Speaker 1: house way too much chocolate.
Speaker 2: House you can house so much stretch factor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just like everyone listening.
Speaker 1: I have my vices, and you know, I don't get
Speaker 1: it perfect every day, but you know, the foundations of
Speaker 1: my dieta there, and I'm not bashing myself up so
Speaker 1: much these days.
Speaker 2: Oh that's good tonight. Oh my god, I couple of
Speaker 2: if I've left out so much. I don't even talk.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about Center. We haven't talked. Maybe we
Speaker 2: have to do a follow up episode. But just the
Speaker 2: last question anytime you're in La, I love that. The
Speaker 2: occasional word. I'm like, oh, he's been there a long time.
Speaker 2: There's an American Twain coming through. Just a few words.
Speaker 2: What's next? Like do you come home? Are you going
Speaker 2: to come home? Or is home La? What's next for
Speaker 2: the proof you're going to be based there? Yeah, what's up?
Speaker 2: What's happening.
Speaker 1: What's next is probably Madison Square Garden and I'll be
Speaker 1: there sewing that out home and this will sound corny.
Speaker 3: Is where my partner is.
Speaker 1: She's Californian, so it's true, and that's probably why I've
Speaker 1: picked up some American twain from spending so much time
Speaker 1: with her.
Speaker 2: Do you hear it or is it just us?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I'm aware. I'm aware.
Speaker 1: Like even when I say I'm aware, you aware. The
Speaker 1: hours on water are like getting stronger and stronger. And
Speaker 1: my dad has lived now in America, so in my
Speaker 1: defense and I know over time, But in my defense, I.
Speaker 3: Lived in America from two till ten.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so first accent I had. Yeah, so we've
Speaker 1: left Melbourne. My dad did his post doc in Texas
Speaker 1: and then Virginia. He was an assistant professor in Virginia,
Speaker 1: so I learned to speak in Texas. So, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. Oh, I had a Southern American accent from
Speaker 1: two till ten that I came back to Australia.
Speaker 3: I lost it because I wanted to fit in and.
Speaker 2: You wanted to sell records. I mean obviously, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now things are creeping back in, but I am trying
Speaker 1: to maintain my Australian Accent podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm at three hundred and sixty episodes.
Speaker 1: For me, it's aboutntinuing to find the academics in particular
Speaker 1: that don't have a platform, that are kind of hidden
Speaker 1: away at these conferences talking about fatty liver disease and diabetes,
Speaker 1: and it's really arms length from you and from eye,
Speaker 1: and I love sitting down and often for the first time,
Speaker 1: and like their family members will send me emails or
Speaker 1: messages because they didn't really understand what their dad or
Speaker 1: mum did for the past thirty or forty years. So
Speaker 1: it's a nice way to act as a bit of
Speaker 1: a tribute to them and their family, but also take
Speaker 1: the incredible amount of information they have and share it
Speaker 1: with people and just continue, I guess, to try and
Speaker 1: be a quality scientific voice in this space, you know, online,
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion that I think needs clearing up, just to help
Speaker 1: people feel a little more confident with all of these
Speaker 1: decisions they're making.
Speaker 2: Absolutely doing that, I mean, forty million downloads and counting
Speaker 2: is extraordinary and as I said a couple of times,
Speaker 2: you are uniquely able to package up information that is
Speaker 2: not accessible to the average young, instagratuitous mind and make
Speaker 2: it powerful and impactful. So you're doing wonderful, wonderful things
Speaker 2: and will continue to follow along keenly. But just to
Speaker 2: finish up, do you have a favorite quote?
Speaker 3: Oh? Favorite quote?
Speaker 1: I love Ritual's quote at the moment, which is very
Speaker 1: simple and that is mood follows action.
Speaker 3: Ooh, mood follows action.
Speaker 2: That's deep.
Speaker 3: I love rich I love him too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I will also include a link to your episode on
Speaker 2: his podcast. When was that?
Speaker 1: I've been on his show a few times, so twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, I think, and then twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: All right, what an amazing way to finish, Simon, Thank
Speaker 2: you so much. I'll include links to everything in the
Speaker 2: show notes for our listeners. If you don't already know Simon,
Speaker 2: but I think most of you probably will, you can
Speaker 2: go there to find out more. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Sarah, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: You guys know, I love speaking to people about things
Speaker 2: that they love, and I could just feel how excited
Speaker 2: Simon gets about the science of living well and wanting
Speaker 2: to convey that to us all, and he truly does
Speaker 2: so in such an impactful and accessible way, even when
Speaker 2: the science behind what he's saying is complicated or voluminous,
Speaker 2: or as he said, sometimes it can appear conflicting. He's
Speaker 2: just got such a talent for making it accessible to
Speaker 2: the everyday person. And I'll include links to all his platforms,
Speaker 2: his book, his master classes in the show notes in
Speaker 2: case you haven't already devoured everything that he's created. I'm
Speaker 2: guessing that some of you already have, but hopefully you
Speaker 2: learn something new in this episode. If you did enjoy,
Speaker 2: took something away, or even have further questions for him,
Speaker 2: please share and tag Simon It's at Simon Hill to
Speaker 2: thank him for his time. It truly means so much
Speaker 2: to help growing our show and yighborhood as far and
Speaker 2: wide as possible, even seven or eight years in which
Speaker 2: is absolutely wild. It was nice to reflect with Simon
Speaker 2: on how long we've both been doing this and that
Speaker 2: we still get to be here having these wonderful conversations.
Speaker 2: So thank you to you guys all as well for
Speaker 2: following along. In the meantime, I hope you're having a
Speaker 2: wonderful week and are seizing your yay