Tim Spector – epidemiologist, researcher & writer on the microbiome, nutrition & genomics and whose Zoe symptom tracking app is providing vital information about the Covid-19 virus.
Tim is also well known for his approach to personalised nutrition. In his latest book - Spoon-Fed, why almost everything we've been told about food is wrong - Tim tackles some pretty controversial topics including calorie counting, the allergy epidemic, gluten-free, why coffee can save your life, and nutrition for mental health. Today we're going to chat about two of these topics – caffeine, and the role of the microbiome in mental health
So the 1st myth is "drinking coffee is bad for your health"
- What does the evidence suggest is the safe upper limit to number of cups of coffee per day?
- Is it OK to drink mostly coffee/tea and nothing else each day?
"food only impacts the health of your body, not your mind"
- I've heard you on other podcasts discussing wild salmon as a good source of omega-3. If we are limited to supermarket shopping how can we best support our health with omega-3 i.e. is it tinned wild salmon?
- What natural probiotics in the form of fermented foods do you regularly add to your diet, and what are the easily accessible and affordable forms for general public?
- A good place to start for improved mental health is variety – eating 30 different plant species per week. Do you have a link to examples of these types of foods – perhaps you've used an infographic on social media we might include in the show notes or could you give us some examples?
- If you were in charge of public health & nutrition which 3 major changes would you make to improve diets and health of the nation?
About Tim
In the course of research, Tim Spector has been shocked to discover how little scientific evidence there is for many of our most deep-rooted ideas about food. much of the current advice about food and nutrition is dangerously inaccurate, misleading and often downright wrong
In twenty-two short, myth-busting chapters, his latest book Spoon-Fed reveals why almost everything we've been told about food is wrong. Tim pays special attention to the scandalous lack of good science behind many medical and government food recommendations, and how the food industry holds sway over these policies and our choices.
Spoon-Fed forces us to question every diet plan, official recommendation, miracle cure or food label we encounter, and encourages us to rethink our whole relationship with food.
As a scientist, within the last few years, Tim focused all his energies in researching the microbiome, the large community of microbes that live in our gut, skin and body. Although the research is new and ongoing, we already know that these beings play a highly important role in our health and the current epidemics of obesity, diabetes, allergy and even depression.
A small trail over the internet will expose you to thousands of theories on what to eat and what to exclude to be thinner, healthier, and happier. Following three years of exhaustive research, his book The Diet Myth was born, dispelling many nutritional myths and asking how our diets can improve the health of our gut microbes.
Tim believes that Diversity, both in the food we eat and the microbes we feed is the key. The trillions of microbes in our gut play an important role in digesting food and producing a number of chemicals vital for a strong immune system. We know that the greater the number of different types of microbe the healthier we can be. This microbial diversity is achieved by eating a wide array of real and fermented foods, not excluding them.
Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at Kings College, London and has recently been elected to the prestigious Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He trained originally in rheumatology and epidemiology. In 1992 he moved into genetic epidemiology and founded the UK Twins Registry, of 13,000 twins, which is the richest collection of genotypic and phenotypic information worldwide. He is past President of the International Society of Twin Studies, directs the European Twin Registry Consortium (Discotwin) and collaborates with over 120 centres worldwide. He has demonstrated the genetic basis of a wide range of common complex traits, many previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. Through genetic association studies (GWAS), his group have found over 500 novel gene loci in over 50 disease areas. He has published over 800 research articles and is ranked as being in the top 1% of the world's most cited scientists by Thomson-Reuters. He held a prestigious European Research Council senior investigator award in epigenetics and is a NIHR Senior Investigator. His current work focuses on omics and the microbiome and directs the crowdfunded British Gut microbiome project. Together with an international team of leading scientists including researchers from King's College London, Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts University, Stanford University and nutritional science company ZOE he is conducting the largest scientific nutrition research project, showing that individual responses to the same foods are unique, even between identical twins. You can find more on https://joinzoe.com/
Follow Tim on the following social media channels:
Website: tim-spector.co.uk and www.joinzoe.com
Instagram: @tim.spector
Twitter: @timspector
