Simon Hill - Eating Imperfectly vs Perfectly Eating | The Imperfects

This episode discusses food nutrition and diet.

If you have a history of just eating you may find it challenging so please skip if you need to.

But we do encourage you to come back when you're ready.

My name's Hugh. I'm a cohost on The Imperfects.

I'm the son of Sri Lankan and English immigrants and I call Australia home.

We at The Imperfects acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded and we extend our respects to the elders past and present.

I've spent much of the last decade travelling around this country sharing stories.

In doing so, I acknowledge and pay homage to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rich history of storytelling.

I also acknowledge that whenever I talk about or practice resilience, there is no greater example than the one set by the world's oldest living culture.

It's better to adopt a diet imperfectly over decades than to do the perfect diet occasionally.

Oh. Yeah. Chasing the perfect, quote -unquote perfect diet is, it's a trap.

healthiest life possible.

So fetch your quill and join students Hugh, Ryan and Josh, as Simon says this is the Academy of imperfection.

Well Simon Hill, finally we all say God this is this is exciting we've done a episodes throughout our days focused on nutrition and food, but I feel like today is gonna be different than the ones we've done in the past. But maybe the best, who knows.

We'll see. No pressure.

Hate to rank, but yeah.

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 here 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 podcast. Definitely say podcast definitely.

Yeah, definitely four way podcast. Yeah, it's my first podcast after doing a four way, so that's a first too.

Needless to say, I'm happy to be here.

We're stoked. I'm going to read a bio for Simon, for those of you who don't know his background, Simon Simon is a nutritionist, physiotherapist and podcast host, who's dedicated his career to making information regarding health, diet and nutrition accessible to the public.

Simon grew up surrounded by a scientific papers.

Simon's dad is a professor of physiology and installed in Simon and appreciation for understanding what is happening in your body.

As a physiotherapist, Simon started off working in Melbourne in sporting environments where protein was king.

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 the scientific understanding of nutrition." Simon was inspired to complete his Masters in Nutrition Science and in 2018, he began his podcast, The Proof, which now has over 40 million listeners.

Oh, yeah. Between his personal and podcast instagram.

Things are going OK.

Simon has a Q &A with 1 .2.

listen's not listeners.

Yeah, yeah, let's clarify that for the record. Kind of wish it was 40 million listeners.

No, we know the clarification.

We often get this, we get confused between the two.

Oh my God. Ah, yep.

Now, listen. In 2021, Simon released his book, The Proof is in the Plants, which became a number one non -fictional bestseller in Australia.

Officially welcome to the Academy of Inf imperfection, Simon. Thank you.

That was a great bio.

I'm not sure who wrote that.

It was much better than any bio I've ever written, but yeah.

Well done, Bella. Well done, Bella.

She writes a great bio.

You can have it. Very sweet.

I might take that. It's literally yours.

It's quite literally...

It's just like $30 or whatever.

A big deal. Like, yeah, whatever you got on you.

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 put your life into.

I mean, why does this mean so much to you?

I think there are a few reasons.

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, 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, 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.

And my initial on -ramp though was experiencing for the first time, someone close to me, losing their health in a very acute manner, I saw my dad, I grew up in Melbourne, And one of the things that we love doing, my parents were divorced when I was 10 years old and so I would only really see my dad every second weekend, pretty common kind of arrangement.

And my brother and I would go and spend the weekend with him and this was just like a really great time to kind of get father -son bonding and get to know each other.

And one of the things that we would do is drive out to the Yarra Valley.

And there was one, there was one weekend where it was just my dad and I, and we were out kind of hopping from winery to winery.

I was like 15 years old.

And we did that on this Sunday afternoon and we were driving back to his house, which was in King Lake, and on the way back, he started to get some chest pain 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.

And he thought it was, you know, probably just something that would go away and kind of, you denied what was happening a little bit.

And as you said at the beginning, my dad's a professor of physiology and research is cardiovascular disease at the kind of bench science level.

So a lot of mechanistic stuff.

And we proceeded to go home and we were cooking dinner and checked in and he thought he was okay.

And I went off to bed and, and a couple hours later, I could hear a lot of noise in the kitchen.

And I woke up, went out to see if he was okay.

And I could see like it by this stage, he could no longer deny what was happening.

He was having a full blown heart attack and he was kind of on his knees and had the phone in his hands.

He was out of breath and was like, how old are you at the time?

I'm 15. He was 41. Oh, wow.

So 41. Like back then, you know, when you're a kid, you think 41 is old.

Now I'm like, holy shit, like I'm nearly 41.

And he was also like, people sometimes ask me like, what was your dad's health like at that time?

And I would say he was representative of a young Australian dad.

So he wasn't, you know, significantly overweight.

He would work out a couple of times a week.

He was playing squash, which was his kind of sport of choice.

He was definitely stressed working like a lot of hours, trying to make ends meet.

he'd 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.

And he'd called triple zero.

I took over on the phone and was explaining to them what he was experiencing.

And because we were in King Lake and what I was relaying to them, they decided they would send a helicopter.

So fortunately, 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 came into the house, put him onto a stretcher, hooked him up to all these machines.

And before I knew it, he was flying out.

Wow. And you just, you were left there.

I was left there. So my mom and brother were in Altham where my mom lived.

And I then hopped in the ambulance.

Cause they brought my own ambulance as well.

And I trailed by car and so we were obviously like pretty privileged and we could act.

We lived in Australia, my dad had health care and whatnot.

So we trailed and then went to the hospital and then they came out and fortunately they said, you know, your dad's had a severe heart attack.

We've saved his life.

And that was all we were concerned with.

And then the next day they do like a kind of family meeting debrief, like what's the prognosis here?

Yeah. Oh so like, as in what caused it?

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, getting some of his genes.

Things for us to kind of look out for as we become adults and and the take home message for my brother and I from that was that we probably have pretty lousy genes and we're gonna need to keep an eye on this.

You know, your dad's had a heart attack at 41, that's pretty rare.

But fortunately they were able to save his life.

Which a crazy statistic is that almost 50 % of first time cardiac events are sudden cardiac death.

Really? Yes. 50 %? Almost 50%.

And that was coming down slightly due to better access to healthcare quicker and responding quicker.

But that's a huge statistic.

That's shocking. Terrifying.

What makes you feel so grateful that your dad wasn't one of them.

Hugely. You know, I think about… It makes me feel grateful then it makes me feel for all the people where it went the other way.

And I've got to have another, dad's nearly 70 now I guess.

So I've got to have another 30 years already with him.

But the aftermath of that, and walking away from that conversation was really that cardiovascular disease has a strong genetic component, runs in families.

You guys are going to need to be screened as you get older, and the conversation kind of ended there.

And at some times, I wish the conversation was longer, but I don't I can't remember how much time we had with the cardiologist. And it's hard to know everything that was discussed.

But I did leave with quite a limiting belief that these are just the cards you've been dealt.

And to see someone who you see as fit and strong and go through that health experience at such a young age, it's a little bit disempowering.

And it wasn't until I was a bit older in university and had begun looking at science and researching chronic diseases, and this comes back to kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing now, is that I was able to better understand the effect that genetics have on the chronic diseases that most people in our communities are being affected by.

So cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, various types of cancer, dementia.

are these diseases that 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, but it's the lifestyle choices we make and the environment that we kind of create that determines to what extent those genes are expressed or not.

and this has been quantified in twin studies, where they take twins with the exact same, so identical twins, exact same genes and try and decipher how much do genes determine your fate when it comes to these chronic diseases versus lifestyle, and it's about 20 % genetically determined and 80 % is lifestyle.

Wow. Okay. So there are many levers you can pull.

Right. 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 and then the next question is well, okay, well what are those choices?

Now you're introduced to the world of social media and it's like, holy shit, I don't know where to start.

So that, so when you're talking about like studying and like how early on in your kind like, mission, journey in understanding nature versus nurture, did the food element take over?

Didn't take over until my mid to late 20s.

Right. So up until mid 20s, I was focused on physiotherapy.

I was working with the Richmond Football Club and Coburg Football Club, who was like their feeder VFL team.

I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, it might be.

And I was like their junior physiotherapist, given all the great jobs and I was focused on biomechanics, recovery, rehabilitation, anatomy, all that side of things.

And in my mid -twenties was when I started to develop an interest in nutrition.

My brother had made changes to his diet and various people along the way had told me to perhaps consider the foods I was eating who are aware of my dad's health history.

And I was coming through this kind of football environment.

I was playing football myself, then I was working within the football environment.

And my diet then was super meat heavy.

It was tons of red meat, tons of poultry.

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, almost like fitness bodybuilder diet still, still to this day.

And I always felt very challenged when someone would say to me that, that might not be the healthiest way to eat for your cardiovascular health if you're trying to avoid having a heart attack.

But with 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?

Yeah, truth be told, I'd never really examined the research that deeply.

I think I was just conditioned by the environment I was in.

So being in sporting environments, reading fitness magazines, was just the way that people did it.

Which is the common experience, no one's delving into research. And it wasn't until I got to, you know, 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.

And that was kind of my on ramp.

And when I first started looking at the research, it was so confusing.

I was finding a study that would say one thing, and a study that said another thing.

I'd find an expert that said one thing, an expert that said another thing, and I realized I didn't have the skills to make sense of any of that.

And that's why I went back, I did a masters in human nutrition science at Deakin.

I think you guys had Felice Jacobs on the show.

Yes, we did. Who's done some wonderful research, including the SMILES trial that people may be familiar with.

And I went back and did that.

And my rationale to go back was to actually develop some skills to be able to read this literature and make sense of it.

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.

And it just seems like the science all over the place, but it's not necessarily that the science is all over the place.

It's that key context is being left out.

And often what seems to be contradictory findings, they're not contradictory, they're completely explainable when you understand what type of study it was, the method, get into some of that nuance, but that tends to get lost when there's 30 seconds soundbites.

Yeah. then explains it, you know, in a different way and all of a sudden it's like, so separated, disconnected.

And then it enters the dinner table.

Yeah. And if that information is something that confirms a bias that you already have, and you're kind of listening to that information, this is just part of human limitations.

We will naturally accept a lot of information very quickly that confirms a bias.

Yeah. We won't we're not likely to challenge it.

Oh, yeah, all of a sudden, I'm like swaring that like, no, it's actually really good to have two full blocks of chocolate a day.

I actually heard that from someone.

Yeah, I'm not sure where I heard about it, but definitely heard that.

It sounds convincing, okay, well, Ryan said he heard it somewhere.

A study show. Yeah, he read it.

He read a person, he heard a person who read a study.

Saw a picture of a person who read a study.

One of the things I do is like congruent with our show is that we can have imperfect, you know, food isn't going to be perfect every single time.

And that's, and that's OK.

Can you speak to that a bit?

Because I feel like a lot of people feel, like a pressure, this overwhelming pressure to just like analyse 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.

And also shame when you get it wrong.

I feel a lot of shame about my, it's a big one, my life and diet.

and I get that too, myself, you know?

And I think we all do to some extent.

It's very easy to fall into these kind of orthorexic eating behaviours.

Which I think are affecting so many people today, more than we realise, which is...

Orthorexic is kind of like where you're...

You're just thinking about food all day.

You're overthinking it, overoptimising it.

You're constantly trying to make it more pure, more clean, better.

It's never good enough.

Right? And that can cause shame and anxiety.

And I think that's the trap.

The trap is trying to chase perfection.

It better to adopt a diet imperfectly over decades than to do the perfect diet occasionally.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, and when you, when you can really adopt that mindset, you can release some of that shame, you can stop putting so much pressure on yourself and really that's what it's about.

We're talking about the your overall dietary pattern, what that looks like, which is not you know 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.

That's what's going to dictate your risk of chronic disease.

So I agree with you, I think chasing the the perfect quote unquote perfect diet, it's a trap and there really is no There's a theme of healthy eating.

Certainly the research has borne out a theme and we can discuss what that looks like.

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 with your cultural background, what type of foods do you enjoy from a cultural aspect of net performance goals.

Income to a degree.

Income and also cooking skills is another big one.

People often feel ashamed buying frozen vegetables.

You shouldn't feel shame for buying frozen vegetables.

They're often cheaper.

The shelf life of them is going to be better.

Less of them are going to perish in your fridge and they're easier to cook with.

And they, in many cases, actually have more nutrients than the fresh ones.

Really? Yeah, because they're flash frozen.

Frozen just after harvest. So there's this kind of idea out there, and often shaming that buying frozen vegetables for your kids is not going to be fresh as best. But they actually are fresh, and often a lot cheaper.

Yeah, okay. Totally.

I remember when I found when I found those pre -compressed spinach cubes like the frozen spinach cubes from when I was making smoothies.

Oh, that was a game changer.

I'm glad you've just changed my game.

Yeah, well, yeah, I change games, sometimes change games.

So, so what's, 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 will drive past seven fast food outlets on the way to pick up the kids from So, how would you summarise the state of play in Australia right now?

Or is it, or is that a too much of a generalist question to ask?

I think it's a great question.

You should try living in LA for a little bit and seeing how much fast food there is.

I come here and it's like, there's hardly any fast food, but so I think there's a few, few kind of parts to the response to this question.

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.

The latest studies suggest that the average Australian diet it's about 50 % of calories are ultra -processed foods.

We can discuss what that means.

We'll put a link in the show notes or episodes with Felice Jaccardt and Tim Spector who talked a lot about that.

The average person is getting about 12 to 15 grams of fiber a day in reality probably should be more around 30 grams. It's not that more fiber is better, but it's a kind of non -linear association.

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.

Sorry to stop you there, but what's the best way to just increase your fiber?

What should we be eating more of?

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?

It would be getting fiber up towards 30 grams a day and just providing more food for the microbiome in general.

And so fiber is only found in plants.

This is one of the biggest reasons that eating a plant -rich diet is beneficial.

So you'll find fiber in fruits, you know, vegetables, whole grains, legumes.

And adding half a cup of legumes a day, adding some whole grains, so we're having whole grain bread instead of white bread if you can.

Nuts and seeds also create source of fiber.

So just finding ways to get more plant diversity in and naturally will increase your fiber intake.

This is so similar to what I mean when we had Tim Spector on the Yeah.

Yeah. A week or something?

Something like that.

I thought it was a day.

It's a week. I thought it was an hour.

It's like an hour? Let's make it really impossible for people.

30 unique plants every minute.

Yeah and you think, I think he says, at least for a month a year you'll live inside a tree.

I think that's part of his thing, yeah.

No, that is part of his.

That was the Human Gut Microbiome Project, and they found that people who had 30 or more unique plans a week compared to 10 or fewer had significantly more diverse microbiome, which is associated with lower risk of all those diseases that I mentioned.

It's associated with better mental health, less risk of depression, anxiety.

And the way to do that is to increase your fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes.

and the reason it's thought to believe that 30 unique is important is that fiber is kind of like an umbrella term.

Fiber is not one thing, there's all sorts of different types of food for the microbiome.

And if you were actually to break it down a little bit without getting too nerdy, there's three components as prebiotic fiber, resistant starch and polyphenols.

These are all different classes of compounds in food that feed the microbiome, and different plant foods like zucchini or carrot or spinach, kale, pistachios, they all contain different types of prebiotic fiber, different types of resistant starch, different types of polyphenols which feed different bacteria.

So if the goal is to increase diversity within the microbiome, you want to be feeding more of these species as possible.

So you can kind of think of all these different plant foods as like fertilizer.

Going in to the small intestine, they don't get digested there, like how macronutrients, protein, fats do, they go down into the large intestine and they just fertilize the bacteria.

And the reason that's important is that 38 trillion microbiome community, it's kind of like your own little pharmacy.

So when you feed it, it's dispensing these compounds like drug -like compounds, which affect your physiology, they affect your blood glucose control, your cholesterol, so your cardiometabolic health, they affect inflammation, which affects everything from risk of depression to risk of various cancers, neurodegenerative disease and so forth.

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.

So, this is all so fascinating, and I am so interested as we all are.

But the thing that I find, and I guess this seemed 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 food advice.

And I found that really annoying, because I was just sort of hoping that, I was like I just want to read a book and I want the answers.

But of course like what works for me does not work for someone else.

How do we know what is right for our body?

And also you could make a change that makes you feel good for a week, that you're not going to feel great in six months or is going to increase your risk of disease in the long term.

Gotcha. Like for example, Monash Uni have a low FODMAP diet, which is for people who have certain types of gut intolerances.

I'm not sure if anyone on the show has spoken about this.

No, but I know some people in my life are FODMAP people.

And that diet has FODMAP people.

And that diet has been designed as a short -term elimination diet.

So the research is quite clear that for certain people, you can adopt that diet and you'll get symptom relief.

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 further problems later on.

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's necessarily the best diet long -term.

Interesting, that's so good to know, yeah.

And I would say the other thing I think we need to clarify here is cause I agree there is some bio individuality.

We all have different genetics, slightly different gene, that will affect what is this sort of quote -unquote best diet for us.

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.

I think that there is an established theme.

So that theme of eating is a diet that is low in saturated fat, has a good amount of unsaturated fats.

I'll bring this back to food in a moment.

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.

And that's that theme I was mentioning before.

You can cut that a number of ways.

It could be low -carb.

It could be high -carb.

It could be Mediterranean.

It could be pescatarian.

People don't like that answer because it's not absolute.

We all want like the definitive, absolute answer.

And this is one of the reasons why unfortunately on social media, a lot of the information that gets a lot of traction is not representative of the science because it's, it's the absolute kind of deep conviction style messaging that works best, when you put that nuance in and give, give like a little bit more context.

It's not as sexy. Yeah, yeah.

There's a little more uncertainty.

Yeah. And to the lay person who might, might hear me say that and think, it sounds a little wishy -washy.

It doesn't sound that confident, as opposed to someone saying, I've got.

This is the single best way.

But really, like, good science communication is about establishing the uncertainty and speaking with some nuance.

And I think that's a good kind of green flag for people to be aware of on social media.

Don't conflate someone saying, who's speaking with nuance as not having confidence.

They're speaking responsibly.

They're speaking more responsibly and they're actually more accurately relaying what we're seeing within the research. And what I love about that theme is that it's not one way, it gives people option.

So my answer to your question would be, okay, what I've just described there is a diet that's low saturated fat, rich in unsaturated fats, it's high in fiber, has more plant protein than the average diet, and it's low in ultra -processed foods.

There's a number of different ways of cutting that.

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.

How do you do that?

Right, so you can go and look at your basic cardiometabolic biomarkers, like your cholesterol levels.

We can dig into that if you want.

You can look at your fasting blood glucose, HbA1c, which look at your body's ability to utilize and regulate glucose.

So maintain glucose homeostasis, which affects your risk of developing diabetes.

All this information is coming from a simple blood test?

Right. So what 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.

Find the way within that that feels best for you.

Maybe it's a low -carb Mediterranean diet.

Maybe it's a high -carb plant -based pescetarian diet.

And you know what's right for you from the trial and error.

Yes. So you're going to feel right but then you're also going to go and get some objective markers.

You go and do your blood work, and things coming back and they're all over the place.

Well, if they are, then you might want to change various things in your diet.

It might be that you get your test back and APOB or LDL cholesterol sky high, and then you may want to reduce the...

look at the foods in your diet that have a lot of saturated fat and make some swaps.

Is it... I hear this and I 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.

And is something you can do with a nutritionist like, can you, can you have their guidance to look at the bloods and have them help you with that?

Yeah, you can, you can, if you go back, if you go and get a blood test done and things are out, 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?

and then be able to make some recommendations as to good swaps that should shift some of those biomarkers in a favorable direction.

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.

I just to give, rather than saying if, that's me, I have higher markers in that.

Yeah, so we understand that the biggest dietary lever that you can change is the type of fat you're consuming.

So saturated fats they downregulate the liver's ability to clear LDL cholesterol.

Yeah. So they affect the receptor which stops the liver from being able to pull LDL cholesterol back into the liver out of circulation, so LDL cholesterol goes up.

Unsaturated fats, particularly polyunsaturated fats, which are found in fatty fish, or nuts and seeds, they do the opposite.

They upregulate that receptor and help pull LDL cholesterol back into the liver which drives LDL cholesterol down in circulation.

And when you have less LDL cholesterol circulating, there's less chance of these lipoproteins entering the artery wall and getting stuck.

Okay. That's the mechanism.

So from a food perspective though, because that can sound like a lot of mumbo -jumbo.

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 acrole or anchovies.

And in doing that, you're gonna change the type of fat that you're consuming in that meal.

It would look like having less butter and more olive oil.

Okay, lovable. Swaps like that.

Yeah. Yeah, swaps like that.

It would look like having nuts and seeds as a snack.

Which have a lot of good unsaturated fats in them.

Where do pastry goods sit on this?

Sounds like my diet is new or good, come on!

ApoB is – it's like, I guess, like cholesterol?

Is that what we're… Oh, we're opening a can of worms here, guys.

This is good. Let's go there.

I love this stuff. I love this stuff, okay.

So glucose can travel through our blood.

Can just freely dissolve into blood.

It's water soluble, right?

We don't have glucose.

Glucose is like an energy.

Glucose. So like if we eat carbohydrates, it gets broken down in our intestine, gets absorbed in as a glucose molecule.

That can just freely float around circulation.

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.

But fat, we can't do that, it's not water soluble.

So fat, which is like the fats that we eat, or cholesterol, these are both lipid substances.

This is like fats, saturated or unsaturated.

Yeah it doesn't matter, whatever it is.

It cannot dissolve into blood, into circulation.

So the body, through evolution, had to come up with a lipid transport system, And what it came up with was, we can attach those lipids to a protein.

You may have heard of a lipoprotein before, right?

So a lipoprotein, and lipo is a lipid and protein together, we could get a lipoprotein.

The protein is like chaperoning the fats through circulation.

It allows the fats to kind of dissolve in.

Imagine like a beach ball is the protein, and you shove the fats in the middle and push it into circulation.

I was pictureing a horse with something on its back but that's probably better.

Got me a fatty. Desperate for an analogy.

A horse? No, don't go.

Okay. There's a different analogy that sometimes I use and that's like a cargo ship.

So we send things around the world on cargo ships.

And this is working.

This is better than a horse.

Because all the horses traveling past each other going, hey, I've got a little...

Let's go back to Simon. There could be horses on the cargo ship.

That's confusing. If that makes you feel better too.

No, just Simon talking.

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.

The cargo ship has to carry them.

So cargo ship is a protein, on top, those containers are cholesterol and fats, okay.

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.

Some of these lipoproteins contain what's called apolipoprotein B.

In short, it's apoB, and there's one of those proteins per cargo ship, right?

LDL, so we mentioned before low density lipoproteins or LDL cholesterol.

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.

Okay, yeah. And just to clarify, when you say LDL cholesterol, is that when people say, ''I've got high cholesterol, low cholesterol.'' Is that what?

Usually they're referring to LDL cholesterol which is measuring the cholesterol content low -density lipoproteins.

So it's measuring the amount of those cholesterol containers on top of the lipoproteins.

Over time, what we've been able to elucidate in the research is that it's actually not the cholesterol content which dictates risk.

It's the number of these cargo ships that have an ApoB protein on them.

And each cargo ship has one ApoB.

So now you can order a test, that just tells you the ApoB concentration in your circulation.

I think I'm about to do this.

And what that's doing is, it's giving you the total sum.

So low density lipoproteins, intermediate density lipoproteins, very low density lipoproteins.

All of them contain ApoB.

And each one of them contains 1 ApoB.

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.

And we know there are cutoff points.

So we know that the average person's ApoB in this country, probably around 110 milligrams per deciliter, should be given this in Australian units, perhaps we can do it in the show notes.

And at that level - I'll take care of that.

You'll do the conversion?

Yeah, but thanks you.

I'll send you guys a conversion.

I think that's better.

My Australian listeners hate it when I use American units, but in the literature, it's American units.

The average Australian's probably around 110 milligrams per deciliter.

And at that level, we know that you are laying down plaque.

Like atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, everyone is being affected by this.

Some people will die of it.

Some people will die with it.

They'll die of something else but everyone has it pretty much because of the way we're living.

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.

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.

if you get that APOB down to an optimal level, you can stop your, you can stop it in its tracks and not have a heart attack or stroke.

And, and so there are the dietary levers like we just discussed.

And for some people, that's enough.

They'll be able to get their APOB down.

But for some people based on their genetic makeup, they may need medication as well, right?

So it's not a one size fits all as to what works.

Yeah right. That's a path I'm looking down at the moment on the test for that second one that I've got to do and the doctor is like, if this test comes back, we need to discuss medication, but I don't think I'm thinking about diet enough.

Let me just add one more thing.

This is science over the last 10 years that's become clear, but it takes time for a laboratory update and insurance updates.

So sometimes it can be a little bit expensive.

There was a test that is on a standard blood panel, so usually covered by insurance, you don't have to pay extra, called Non -HDL, and that is almost as good as APOB, so if you go in an APOB and they want to charge you a lot of money, just get non -HDL, all right?

For the purposes of understanding your risk, that's going to be good enough.

And what does HDL stand for, non -HDL?

Non -HDL cholesterol is essentially just before I mentioned that you have low -density lipoproteins, intermediate -density lipoproteins and very -low -density lipoproteins.

And then you have another class of lipoproteins called high -density lipoproteins.

These do not have an ApoB protein on them.

They're not atherogenic.

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 arthrogenic.

So it's a very good proxy for APOB while not being exactly the same.

I'm just mentioning it in case someone goes and finds out ordering APOB is inaccessible or it's super expensive.

Awesome. I went to Deakin University as well.

I studied primary school teaching and I feel like our lectures were a little bit different.

Like what I was, I was like, after lunch, do show and tell.

Yep, got it, cool. And you're doing that stuff.

I feel stressed about sitting in your lecture trying to remember everything.

Anyway. I also thought because weíve just started a Patreon and weíre asking whether they had any questions they wanted to ask you, Simon, and we got a few responses.

So we thought maybe we should ask a few of them andÖ Yeah.

And if you want to join our blossoming community on Patrons, Patreon .com forward slash The Imperfects.

Okay. So Rosie wanted to ask you, Simon, how do you help children form positive relationships with food?

Hey, Rosie. Thank you for that question.

She's not on the phone.

I think, I mean kids love playing fun, so that has to be, that's gotta be central to it, make making it fun.

I also think the thing with children is you have to keep presenting them food.

So I don't have kids myself, but I have nephews and I've witnessed firsthand the challenges that come with trying to get them to eat certain foods and often they'd leave a lot of food on their plate.

But there is research suggesting that you want to keep presenting them with those foods and eventually over time, they might decide to try them when they kind of make up their own mind.

To do so. 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 many kids. I wonder why that is?

I don't know the answer to that.

Would you guys have any thought?

Does that true for your kids?

Do you mean having them in separate compartments?

– I think it probably makes it fun and also I think we take for granted how complicated multiple flavours together is and they're like new palettes that haven't experienced much flavour.

So I think learning what their flavours are individually would be beneficial.

– And then getting them involved as well, so you know, whether you're buying the food or taking them to the markets, and I think showing kids how food's grown and how it gets to the plate is also another way to make it a little bit more fun.

Showing them the 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.

So, the next one is from Emily.

Patreon member, Emily.

So, she wants to know basically what foods should women be eating while like during perimenopause or menopause?

Like should they change how they eat, or is there something specific?

Great question. I had Susan Davis on actually.

She's from Melbourne, you guys should have her on the show at some point in time.

So I would say just like two things.

So one is that as a woman goes through perimenopause and reaches menopause, her risk of disease changes.

A lot of this is driven by changes in hormones, but risk of cardiovascular disease goes up quite a bit, and risk of osteoporosis.

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 become more important, as does resistance training to make sure you're actually providing the stimulus for the bone to respond to, to grow stronger.

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 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 perimenopause which is when it's kind of described as hormone chaos things are going all over the place and a woman might experience hot flashes for example.

And the addition of soy foods in that period can be very helpful.

Wow. Right. So, Matt wants to ask, he asks, what are the benefits slash consequences of a carnivore diet?

So benefits firstly it's it really is a strict elimination diet, not too dissimilar from low FODMAP diet.

So you're removing a lot of plant material that contains prebiotics, contains other compounds that can cause gut GI symptoms, inflammatory symptoms in people that have intolerances, and so the removal of those for people can be an immediate reduction in symptoms, improved digestion, but long -term effect of that dietary pattern.

What's happening, well, typically you're getting an inferior cardiometabolic profile, So you're raising your risk of cardio metabolic disease long term.

Probably raising your risk of various cancers, depending on the intake level exposure of red meat.

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 increasing, it does increase your risk of colorectal cancer, for example.

And then you're probably increasing your risk of these diseases, not just because of the high exposure of red meat in animal foods, but the opportunity cost, so all the fibre that you're not getting in polyphenols and prebiotics that would have a risk reduction effect.

And that's the case in nutrition when we're looking at the outcome, it's always, it's not just the food you're eating, but what's it displacing.

So I would say, benefits in the short term can be an alleviation of symptoms and improvement in gut health.

Some people with autoimmune conditions can certainly, at least anecdotally see improvements And I want to underscore that, most of this is anecdotal, there's very little research on the carnivore diet right now.

That's surprising. You know a couple.

There's a survey study, which was a self -selected survey study of people in a carnivore Facebook group, which is gonna be subject to enormous bias because the people that perhaps did poorly on the carnivore diet aren't in that group anymore.

So it's very hard to kind of read much into that.

And then there was a clinical trial done comparing a not carnival but animal -based diet to a plant -based diet looking at the short -term changes in the microbiome by Lawrence and David.

This was published in Nature, which is one of the best journals in the world, and in that study you do see deleterious changes to the microbiome, so those on the animal -based diet in a very short period of time, the microbiome rapidly changed.

They had an increase in inflammatory bacteria that is associated with inflammatory bowel disease.

There's a short term study looking at like a week.

And so we don't have data going beyond that.

I'm guessing that that style of eating is not conducive to good longterm health because we have no evidence at a population level that it would be, there's not really any randomized controlled trial evidence, but at the same time, there are a lot of anecdotes online of people feeling better in the short term.

And it's probably from gut intolerances and also weight loss.

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.

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.

And so, either direction you kind of go to, whether it's plant -based or carnivore, the the commonality is weight loss and weight loss resolves a lot of symptoms in the short term.

Can I ask a question from myself?

Because I'm in Patreon?

Yes, I would have preferred you to submit it through Patreon, but yeah go on.

It just occurred to me then.

So, this comes from Josh in our Patreon group.

You mentioned then, I wish Josh would start paying for it but you go on.

I, uh, you mentioned autoimmune diseases.

Um, I have eczema and it gets really bad from time to time, uh, and I've often wondered and never gotten an answer whether there are dietary links to eczema or not.

Mm. There are, um, 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 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.

The challenge phase is just slowly and incrementally bringing foods back.

So week one, you eat everything, and then the following week, you remove one thing in the world.

That is a challenge.

You're saying the opposite, aren't you?

The opposite. And you're monitoring your symptoms over time.

OK, cool. OK, well let's go one more from Patreon.

Jeremy wanted to know why are some people...

this is a really good question...

why are some people more susceptible to sugar cravings?

I think some of this is explained by the microbiome.

So, when we're eating a lot of high refined sugar foods our microbiome changes and there is some evidence to suggest that can affect our appetite and hunger signals.

Some of it is just building habits as well.

If you're someone who's constantly eating dinner and then after that you're having ice cream, it becomes habitual.

So some of it's explained by, I think, behavioural, some of it's physiological.

If you feel like you have a lot of sugar cravings, it's likely you have dysregulated hunger.

And there is evidence to suggest that a lot of that is traced back to the microbiome.

We know right now, JLP -1, like ozone is very popular, right?

And GLPA1 agonists...

GLPA1 is a hormone that we produce and you produce it in your gut.

And we also produce other hormones like PYY and these hormones affect appetite, affect sugar cravings.

And one of the, kind of, best ways to improve satiety is to get these hormones working for you rather than against you.

and two of the strategies for doing that are increasing protein in your diet, protein will increase GLP1, naturally produced, and increasing fiber.

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.

So I haven't seen this borne out in a study specifically, but my guess is that as you increase protein, fiber in your diet, your cravings for sugar will go down.

Wow. I think that checks out for me and that I've been experimenting for a while with fasting in the morning, a couple of years, and I found that I had weight loss, which is what I was after in the first year, if I'm being frank.

I'd been to a doctor.

I was — I needed to lose some weight for a few different health reasons.

But I did find that my sugar intake in the afternoon increased I think because I was hungry.

And I felt like I would have a big meal at lunch or something but it still hadn't like settled in yet and I wasn't.

Like I was still hungry so then I started eating more sugar and then I think I've gotten more hooked on sugar and I've put on the weight again.

So I think it worked for me for a period of time but I don't it's working.

And was the sugar usually in a form of snacks?

Ah, terrible stuff.

Like between meals?

Like lollies and things like that.

And I think this gets a lot of people comes back to making sure your breakfast is big enough and your lunch is big enough.

It's when those meals are, we shrink those meals down way too small, not enough calories, when our bodies not adequately nourished we're wanting to graze and snack all day.

Ryan you've prepared something for today.

Well I have and I mean you got, you're aware of what a gear shift is when an environment changes quite dramatically quite quickly.

Just considering the tone of the conversation so far, it's been incredible.

So intellectual. And yeah, I just prepared something and just didn't quite think about how it would slot into the actual episode, but we're here now so let's do it.

This is a small little, it's It's sort of a game show, which I'll soon regret.

Which it's called, it's called Simon Says.

That was amazing. Good evening Australia and welcome to Simon Says, that 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.

Yes, that's right. It's not really a game or even a show.

You know the children's game where you have to do what someone says, but only if they say Simon says well It's nothing like that No It's just an accessible way to bang through a bunch of myths that will be super relatable to lots of people Here's your host Rye bread shellfish Thank you very much. It's so good to be here Simon. Thank you so much for playing Simon Says I didn't expect the music You heard the rules.

I say a myth and you says, if it's true or not.

Do Josh and I do anything?

Nope. He can participate in discussion if it happens after the myth, but I think we've got some thinking music for you.

I'll call on them if I need some help.

Okay, let's get ready boys.

Myth number one, supplements are a waste of money.

That's a myth. It's a myth.

I think, I mean there's some context and nuance.

You did not need thinking music.

Can I can extend? 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.

Please tell me. Top of that list would be creatine.

Oh yes thank you very much. Sorry that's sorry.

That's my wife sitting right now.

I'm just saying that for her.

I can see the biceps over there.

I do, you have my cretin.

The funny thing about creatine is, I think people assume it's just for muscles.

That's what I thought.

There's some, I mean, it certainly is helpful for building strength, which is important as we age for longevity, but it's also, there's emerging research showing it's beneficial for cognition.

There was a pilot study that just came out a couple 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.

Both groups had significant benefits, but the group with the added creatine had significant benefits compared to just the cognitive behavioral therapy.

That was only an eight week study, So I would like to see it go longer, but there was 100 participants.

And it kind of builds on some other evidence in that space.

Mechanism not fully understood.

There's also some evidence showing creatine supplementation at about 10 grams a day can be beneficial for bone health in post -menopausal women.

And risk of osteoporosis, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and fractures becomes heightened after the age of about 60 for women.

So that's another kind of good indication to use creatine.

And then one that I thought was very helpful, certainly for me as I travel, is researchers looked at sleep deprivation.

And they somehow convinced people to come in and in their lab keep them up all night.

And this was a randomized crossover trial.

And they would measure throughout the night different cognitive tasks when they're either taking a placebo or creatine, and it was high -dose creatine.

This was about 30 grams of creatine, which is a very high dose.

And cognition was significantly improved after sleep deprivation when you were supplementing with creatine.

And the explanation for that is at a high dose, essentially, creatine initially, as you're starting creatine, it saturates muscle cells.

And then over time, as you increase the dose or take it for longer, there's enough creatine left across the blood -brain barrier and enter the brain.

It can affect brain metabolism.

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.

And this was an acute study so they were looking at sleep -depriving people and then measuring cognition through the night and the next day.

So I don't know whether it's something you would want to be doing 30 grams every day, all the time.

But that evidence certainly doesn't speak to that.

But the one thing — and why creatine is at the top of my list — is not only are these very consistent kind of benefits borne out in the evidence, but the safety profile is really good.

So at worst, people may experience some kind of GI nausea in the 15, 20 minutes after having creatine.

And one way around that is splitting the dose.

So, if you are doing a high dose, like a 10g or 20g 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.

Those are a problem.

Theyíre a problem and you want to have more.

Theyíre just too good.

I have some in my bag now.

You got to be careful about which gummies you bring into.

I get my creatine gum, it's just the corner of Smith Street from a guy called Warren.

But that's creatine, then I just quickly - Is anyone else just like praying that their supplements are on this list?

I don't take it. I take zero supplements, so.

I'm confident, go. Okay so, Omega 3 -DHA -EPA which can be found in a fish oil or an algae oil, that really Especially for someone who's not eating fatty fish two or three times a week.

Which the average Australian's not, but if you are, then you probably don't need to go out and buy that supplement, but if you're not eating fatty fish two or three times a week then you'll likely benefit from that.

Would that classify under a vegan diet if someone's vegan?

A vegan diet would not, they wouldn't be eating the fish, so they could supplement with the algae oil.

Algae oil. So the fish get the DHA and EPA omega -3's either by eating a fish that essentially the EPA and DHA passes up the food chain from algae.

Gotcha. So they cannot eat it directly from the algae or from another fish.

Right, gotcha. Is that a second?

So second, I would say a multi vitamin depends on, this is dependent on the person.

One of the things, as you move to a more plant rich kind of high fiber, less animal protein diet, you know, all diets come with their limitations.

The pros of that are I've explained before is that your cardio metabolic health and risk factors for type two diabetes, et cetera shifts in a favorable direction.

One of the downsides is that there are nutrients of focus and there is a potential to have inadequate intake of certain micronutrients.

So if you're someone that is eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, I certainly recommend multivitamin.

And which vitamins would be in that multi?

So the key ones within that dietary pattern are going to be B12.

Iron, we're going to have, they're already taking their omega -3 fish oil.

Um, selenium and zinc, the big kind of five.

Great. Okay. Um, so multivitamin.

And then I would say like a prebiotic.

So I, I've formulated a prebiotic called DMN, Daily Microbiome Nutrition.

Um, so I can like that, that I'm involved with this brand.

I'm not saying everyone needs it.

Um, it's by a company called 38 Terra.

And that has been formulated essentially as a multivitamin, but for your microbiome, before I mentioned there's three classes of prebiotics.

So you've got prebiotic fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols.

And so that product, Daily Microbiome Nutrition, contains those using ingredients that have been clinically studied in randomized controlled trials and the right dose to feed various species of bacteria that we know are beneficial.

So to improve bowel movements, to improve the gut lining, which kind of lowers permeability and inflammation, those are those are at the top of my list. None of those, I would say, are absolutely essential for people.

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 3, or you don't have B12.

A lot of those other ones are more around optimising and nice to haves.

Yeah, okay. Magnesium?

Magnesium, is that one?

I thought that was going to be in the top five, but no. It's not in my top five, but it's certainly, if someone's under -consuming magnesium, it can be helpful.

In a plant -rich diet, if you're eating a very plant -rich diet, you're getting a lot of magnesium.

It's one of the benefits of it.

Can I ask a supplementary game show question?

A supplementary supplement question?

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.

But am I better to try and get it in food than in a pill?

let's say something like creatine.

So, creatine is found in certain foods, it's found in, your body makes about one gram of creatine a day.

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.

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.

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.

So it's possible to get it through the diet, but it might not be optimal from a longevity point of view.

And then certain micronutrients like B12.

Yeah. I think if you can get it through a diet and it fits within your dietary approach. And I guess something that you can implement over a long course of time.

Like if someone's eating an omnivorous diet, they don't need to worry about supplementing the B12.

B12 is really for that person who's eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, maybe they've gone that way for planetary health or ethical reasons.

We don't want that person to develop a B12 deficiency because that can have a number of negative consequences and it's easy for them to add it to their kind of daily regime in a form that we know is bioavailable.

It will help them maintain healthy B12 status.

The other one that I didn't mention in the multi was iodine.

OK. The little alarm bell goes off in my head when you say, OK, well, with creatine, the body only creates one milligram a day and through eating the foods that we would naturally eat, we can only do another four.

So I'm going to go, well, does the body need that much creatine or why does the body need that much creatine, if it's never been something that we've had got before.

I guess this brings us back to evolution and the biology that we have in our genes are really shaped through evolution, which is determined by what has helped us survive.

So evolution is all about getting to an age to procreate.

It's not necessarily the best genes for avoiding osteoporosis, cancer, or living a Because evolution essentially doesn't care about you too much once you've already had children.

So there's been no selection pressure on our genetic makeup to give us these genes that help us live to a hundred.

Our body and like our body's physiology and the nutrients that we're synthesizing 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 and good health.

Does that make sense?

So essentially, what our body is just doing naturally, there is no reason to believe that is best also for long -term health.

It's logical and it makes sense, I understand your point, it's called the naturalistic fallacy, 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.

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.

Thinking music ready?

Myth number two. Soy and soy products like tofu give men man boobs and or can increase the risk of breast cancer in women.

No and no. Not true, not true.

With a little bit of context you'll find a case study where a man drank 3 litres of soy milk a day.

and developed gynecomastia.

It's a case study so there's no controls.

What's gynecomastia?

It was like enlargement of breast tissue.

Okay, sure. A scientific word for it.

Yeah and so that has been blogged and written about a lot.

I would suggest probably three liters of a lot of foods a day is probably not a good idea.

Gotcha, yeah. Also that myth comes from that.

That is a heavily cited case study.

So it just means that this guy presented into his doctor's clinic, and his doctor's clinic sort of said what he'd been doing.

And one of the parts of his history taking was that he'd been drinking three liters of soy milk.

But again, it's not a control.

So you don't know what else this guy was doing.

Did he already have that?

Anyway, it's interesting.

It's hypothesis generating, so it was written up.

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.

All these hormones that indicate whether you're, I guess, quote unquote, feminizing.

Because that's the issue.

The hypothesis is that soy foods lead to feminization of men.

And it's a consistent across the board that they're not having in they're not increasing estrogen and not decreasing testosterone.

At least at levels, like three or four servings a day where these studies kind of that was the high end of testing.

No issue. So right.

Or you could say it's a pity because it would be nice to feminise men around the world.

It depends on me. And then the women is an interesting area of research. 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.

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.

Now that doesn't...

It's not a direct cause and effect, it's correlation, it's interesting.

But 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.

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.

There's not enough clinical evidence to really support that as being safe for women with cancer.

So you'll find all sorts of things online recommending that.

But the guidelines certainly are not recommending that.

Myth number three. Okay, microwaving food destroys nutrients.

Sorry, I haven't been doing the format.

Simon says... That's an important part of it.

Overall I'm going to say mostly a myth, and mostly there's more fear generated around microwaves than there needs to be.

And because the food's not heated for that long, actually some nutrients are preserved more than say when you boil food and a lot of the nutrients end up in the water.

So I'm certainly not against microwaving.

You might get a little bit of a reduction in certain things, if some nutrients become more bioavailable it's quick.

Can I add to this, a technique for microwaving.

Yeah, supplementary expert.

Here we go. Jake Engy Alt, 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.

And yeah, and he was saying the same thing.

You don't leach out the nutrients into water.

They stay in the food.

Thank you, Josh. I can contribute something here.

I always took with the horse thing from...

I know, I have a microwave at home and when my friends come over, people assume that I just have like the perfect diet and perfect, I can tell you I'm very much a normal person.

But they see the microwave and they're like, how could you?

How could you, yeah, traitor.

I'm like, well the research suggested they're actually pretty good.

Bloody research. Okay, myth number four, a glass of red wine a day is healthy for you.

Tip six. And Simon says...

I think it's a it's a myth.

But you have to weigh up the environment and possibly the way it's consumed and if it's bringing people together and they're connecting to the social element I'm open to that being a kind of net positive for mental health but the actual alcohol itself being healthy I would say myth.

Myth. Interesting. Myth number five.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Simon says. So it's a myth.

Oh. Why is that? I think they're all pretty important.

Okay. And when you say all, do you mean like three?

I think it's a lot of pressure.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Like three meals a day?

Yeah, I think they're all important.

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.

And I'd like to see people eat a bit more of a substantial kind of breakfast and lunch to get the day going.

And then in terms of like kind of metabolic health, if I was gonna extend this, there's obviously like a big trend around fasting and skipping breakfast became really popular, like the kind of eight hour window.

I think the research there is starting to shift a little bit where if you were to kind of compress your eating window, you would wanna 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 PM eating window.

So in that respect I would say breakfast is probably advantageous.

The problem with doing an eight hour eating window that starts early in the day is dinner tends to be the most social meal.

So if you're skipping dinner, then you have the effect of what does that have on your social life and dinner time with the family kind of thing.

So, I love that. That's such a good kind of holistic take on it.

It's like it's bringing in the social aspect of nutrition as well.

Yeah. I've never really had anyone talk like that before.

That's so true. You know, when you 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?

That's so interesting because we had, we had a Maria Roberto, who's a psychologist, she was on it earlier in the year and she talked about sleep and the importance of sleep.

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.

But the thing that I found with the sleep is that if you 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.

So yeah, it's good to keep that in mind.

Myth number six, egg yolks are unhealthy and raise cholesterol.

And Simon says... Egg yolks are not unhealthy by definition or...

I mean, they're very nutrient dense.

And for most people, they have a very minimal effect on cholesterol.

So we spoke about it earlier, cholesterol, what with the levers.

The main lever is reducing saturated fat and increasing unsaturated fats.

Dietary cholesterol, and this is something that's been borne out over 50, 60 years of research. Initially it was thought that it really affects your cholesterol.

Those studies, early on, were in rabbits.

Rabbits have a different lipid metabolism.

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.

It sort of goes up and then it flattens off.

And even the effect that it has is very small.

There's a subset in the population, about 15 % of people, which is not a small number, who are called hyperabsorbers, and for them, eggs will significantly increase their cholesterol.

This comes back to individualization.

So if your cholesterol is really high and you are smashing eggs, you're eating 20, 25 eggs a week, then you might want to, as one of your dietary manipulations, change that, and go back and get a blood test and it didn't make much difference.

But for most people, egg yolks are not the kind of, quote unquote, culprit for raising their cholesterol.

Myth number seven, the final myth.

Are you ready Simon?

Are you ready to says?

I'm ready. I was born for this.

You're doing so well.

They've all been right so far.

Myth number seven, the protein in plants is incomplete therefore vegetarians don't eat enough protein.

Hmmm, let's really stump them, this one.

But we are going to need an answer.

Simon, Simon says. Can I define incomplete?

Please. I think we need to start there.

Yeah, lets, let's...

Well do you want to define it?

Is it a question? No, I'm happy for Simon to take this one.

Well, I think there's some misunderstanding as to what incomplete means.

It kind of sounds like there's just like something missing, it's not there.

So protein is made up of amino acids, and within the 21 amino acids that exist, your body can make say 11 of them.

The other 9 slash 10 are considered essential, which means they have to come from food, right?

In order for your body to have all the building blocks to build proteins in the body, to make hormones, collagen, all this stuff.

And an incomplete protein does not mean that food is missing any of those essential amino acids.

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.

Okay. 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.

Yeah. There's no diversity.

Yeah. It's not an issue when you are eating a diet that has diversity because a legume that might be a little bit lower in methionine, which is one of the amino acids, well, it's made up for when you're eating this other food that's high in that.

And so in Western countries, providing you're eating enough calories and total protein, not an issue at all.

Born out in the data, we know studies looking at outcomes like muscle strength, that you can get your protein from plants, as long as you're eating enough total protein, you're getting all of those amino acids.

But the second part of your question is that, are vegetarians getting enough?

I would say across the populations, vegetarians are actually under consuming protein.

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.

And if someone was going to track it, not that I would recommend tracking all the time, but just as a kind of one off or weekly exercise, you want about 1 .2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day is where you should be landing, as a kind of good minimum threshold.

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.

So I'm guessing just, I mean, I think I know the answer, but I'm guessing you wouldn't recommend someone to be, if they can avoid it, to be fully vegan or vegetarian.

If they can avoid it?

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.

Yeah, I think, to me, the science on nutrition alone is not a case to adopt a vegetarian or a vegan diet.

The nutrition science is clear that plant rich dietary patterns like a dyes if they're done well, can lead to really good long -term health outcomes.

But as you go further along that spectrum towards vegetarian and vegan, there are more things to think about because there are more nutrients of focus.

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, and it's very much learn it, and then set and forget.

But if you're someone who's like, I just want to eat a healthy diet, I don't have a lot of time.

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.

What does a Mediterranean look like?

Yeah, just pizza and pasta.

A wine, pizza, spaghetti bolognese.

And we could just douse it in olive oil.

And then red wine. Did you call it a medittarian?

I think you said a mediterranean accidentally, but that's a good term.

Medittarian. You were joking about the pizza and pasta.

Yeah. It's a, I mean.

And people often push back and say, well Mediterranean is such a broad, you know, area and Spain's different, Italy and blah, blah.

It's just a valid point, but in the research a Mediterranean diet that's been shown to lead to good health outcomes is defined.

So they actually define what it looks like.

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 so you can think about lots of dark leafy greens and salads, there's legumes and whole grains so you can imagine in those salads like chickpeas or white beans and avocado, nuts, and seeds.

And then as you're going up, the main protein sources, in addition to those legumes is like fatty fish.

There's room for white meat and red meat, but it's much less of a focus than a Australian diet or an American diet.

And I put olive oil on everything.

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.

Which I think is fascinating, looking at what's called the MIND Diet.

And that's what I would tell people.

If they want to just get a good visual of what this looks like, google the MIND diet.

And that's a dietary pattern that's been shown to significantly reduce the risk of Alzheimer's dementia.

And essentially it's a variation of the Mediterranean diet but there's some really good visuals online that people can look up.

I wanted to bring something up that's sort of been in my mind throughout this and I think it's sort of implicit when we're talking about diet and food.

And it's come up in a couple of ways.

One is such a beautiful point about the social aspect of food.

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 that 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 then it came up again for me talking then about when we start to delve into diet and what you should be eating.

How do you...? I don't know exactly what the question is.

There's partly acknowledgement but how do you talk to people who, when there's so much advice out there, it's easy to hyper fixate and develop into really unhealthy eating disorders and patterns of eating.

How do you address that sort of part of the subset of population who listened to advice on this stuff?

It's a great question.

And I think it's something that we need to take more seriously 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 if you're someone that's feeling overly fixated on food, you get anxious about food, you're flip flopping a lot from diet to diet, I would come back to the environment that you're placing yourself in, so particularly social media, because I think a lot of this gets born through social media.

If you're finding that you're just getting all of this avalanche of contradictory advice, and it's causing stress, do an audit.

Who are the people that you're following?

Because you're exposing yourself to this kind of junk food information that is you're putting yourself under unnecessary pressure 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.

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.

That's not the case.

If you look at some of the longest living populations around the world, they're not even having these conversations.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think awareness is probably the start of this is how much I have. How much are you fixating on it?

And finding ways to really just not beat ourselves up so much about life in general, but also about the foods we're eating and take some of that pressure off, right?

Because although we've just dedicated two hours speaking about this, I think sometimes we are a little bit too serious about our nutrition and our food and we lose sight of the joy that we should be getting from eating meals with people and 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.

Such a good point and linking it to social, I've never heard of it, I've never thought of it like that.

And I'm sure there are people out there who are experts who might say this is wrong but in the moment it feels like if your relationship with food is pulling you away from social eating, that's a warning sign, there's something going on there that you need to pay attention to.

Not to say that paying attention fixes it but it's as you said awareness is probably the start.

And pulling you away from the people, because sometimes you need to change your friends and friendship crew, depending on their influence on you.

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?

Yeah. That's a great caveat.

I mean, for me, that's the indicator of who are my true friends and people that I love is the people that I can sit at a table with and like not wear a mask.

Mm. Yeah, yeah. And when you lose that, you're losing, like, and speaking of those longevity zones, again, like, relationships are key to that.

We might be overemphasizing the importance of nutrition and underemphasizing the social aspect.

Yeah. Where, you know, these people have these beautiful relationships where they are able to talk openly and trust the people around them and so I think, yeah, anything in our life that's pulling us away from that, that's a huge opportunity cost. Yeah, absolutely.

Well said. Thanks for that.

That's a really beautiful answer 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 and disorders families, Australia, who do incredible work in this area.

So we can put a link in the show notes to them.

Fascinating, brilliant, and hopefully this all of a sudden like a book cover quote.

Fascinating, brilliant, and potentially life -changing.

Hugh Vancylumberg, Hugh.

Thank you so much. That was so enjoyable and so fascinating.

And yeah, you're really brilliant.

Feelings are mutual, guys.

Awesome. So nice to meet you.

Thanks for coming on Starlink.

Thanks for all the laughs.

Appreciate it. Enjoyed this week's episode, but want a little more?

Then you might want to know that we have a brand new show called A Little More Imperfects over on Patreon.

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.

visit patreon .com forward slash the imperfects the imperfects is hosted and produced by Hugh van Kuylenberg Ryan Shelton and Josh van Kuylenberg our executive producer is Bridget northeast assistant producer Bella Northeast this episode is edited by George Martin 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 nature but if If you're struggling please see a health care professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

[The Imperfect Guide to Nutrition: Debunking Myths and Finding Balance]-[Simon Hill - Eating Imperfectly vs Perfectly Eating]

📋 Summary

Redefining Nutritional Perfection

The Genetic-Lifestyle Dynamic

The Power of the Microbiome and Fiber

Navigating Blood Biomarkers and Lipid Health

Debunking Common Nutrition Myths

The Social Aspect of Health

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript