How to Eat In 2025: 7 Science-Backed Tips

Forget crash diets this January. Instead, learn simple, effective ways to eat well and truly enjoy food from two of the world’s top scientists.

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Transcript

Jonathan Wolf: Sarah and Tim, thank you very much for joining me on New Year’s Day. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Very excited to be here, Jonathan. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Happy New Year, Jonathan.

Jonathan Wolf: Happy New Year, and I think you promised this year you’d make sure you weren’t too hungover. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: I was very sensible last night. I got an early night. I only had about 10 tequilas.

Tim, how many did you have? 

Prof. Tim Spector: Less than you. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: You’re such a good boy, Tim. 

Jonathan Wolf: All right. Well, I’m glad to hear that there are no hangovers this morning. So look, this special episode is focused on our mission here at ZOE, which is improving the health of millions by helping everyone to be able to make smarter food choices based on the latest science.

So I think it’s fantastic to have both of you here. And I think a lot of people will be listening to this, feeling really motivated to make a change. It’s a really classic thing to do at the start of January. And I know that the two of you have been working away on seven science-backed tips that can really make a difference.

Before we go into those, I’d love to just discuss why this is so important and why if someone’s listening to this, actually, they should be thinking about what they eat as the change that they might make, versus something else. 

Maybe, Tim, could you just describe what’s the reality of the food that’s out there for anyone who’s listening and deciding to go to the supermarket today?

Prof. Tim Spector: The food choices we make are the most important decisions we can make for our health today, and I think that’s the really key message here. So everyone has the ability to really change their health, don’t depend on anyone else. Just by making the right food choices, you can dramatically add years to your life and your health span.

We’re surrounded by an environment that’s trying to do the opposite. It’s trying to make us make the wrong food choices. In the U.S. and the U.K., around 60% of all the food that adults eat is ultra-processed food designed to trick us and trick our brains into eating it. And it’s close to 70% in our kids. In some deprived parts of the country, it’s much higher than that and you cannot get healthy whole foods. 

These companies are making billions, so they can afford endless amounts of marketing, endless amounts of influencing experts to give you different views on what’s really happening. 

So these foods are slowly killing us. They’ve made us into the sick nations. We are overwhelmed with obesity, diabetes, cancers, heart disease, all these things that we never used to see 40, 50 years ago, particularly in young people, which is totally new. 

So we have to combat this. And the way to combat it is to, and this is really what the start of the year should be a bit of a reset to say, gosh, what am I eating? What’s gone wrong here? What can I do about it? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And I think Jonathan, it’s a really important time to be really mindful of what we’re putting on our plates. But also I would caveat with what Tim said to say that our food landscape is pitted against us and so we do need to acknowledge it’s quite hard.

It’s hard to change what we’re eating if we’re not really mindful about what we’re eating. But I think what should motivate people to really try to change despite the broken food landscape around us is the incredible benefits it’s going to have to our health, to our lifespan, to our health span, how long we’re going to feel healthy for.

There’s some great research showing that if you go from the kind of diet that many of us currently eat, not obviously Tim, that if we change from that diet, even at the age of 40, will add 10 extra years to our life.

Even at the age of 70, if we change from an unhealthy, typical U.K. diet to a healthy diet, the kind of diet we’re going to talk about today, you can add five or more years. And this is new research that came out just over a year ago showing this. 

Prof. Tim Spector: And it’s healthy years, not just extending a sick lifespan. It’s actually saying you can actually put off those illnesses and problems. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And I think this should be a real motivator for the new year to say do you know it really is going to make an impact it really is going to make a change to how healthy I feel here and now. 

Because we know changing your diet can make you feel different, your mood, your energy, and hunger here and now but also in the long term. It’s never too late and I think that’s really key.

Jonathan Wolf: And as you say that, I immediately think of my dad saying yeah but you’re going to make me eat rabbit food for the rest of my life and it’s not worth the extra years for the misery of that. What would you say to that Sarah? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Jonathan, I always say to people, if a food is too healthy to be enjoyed, it’s just not healthy at all.

It’s so important that we choose food that we also enjoy. Food is there to bring us pleasure, it’s part of our culture, our social interactions. It’s part of how we feel. And there are wonderful, healthy foods that can still bring us pleasure. 

Prof. Tim Spector: I think this common misconception that if you reduce your meat and you move to more healthy foods, you’re just going to be eating lentils all the time.

Absolutely not true. You can see this full range of foods that you can get that are really appetizing both in taste and on the eye and super healthy as well. So people need to get into it, get a good cookbook. Start thinking about new ideas. It’s not just about sticking more lentils on your plate and taking away meat 

Jonathan Wolf: So I think a lot of people will be listening to this and saying that all sounds too good to be true. Surely, if I really want to change my health it can’t be as simple as just the food that I eat. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So I think we need to think about health as four key pillars of health. That’s diet, that’s sleep, that’s stress, and that’s physical activity.

But they’re all really, really interlinked. We know how you sleep impacts your food choices. We know your food choices impact how you sleep. We know your stress impacts how you respond to a food. So yes, that’s a lot to think about, but because they’re all interlinked, if we can at least start with diet, then the rest can follow.

Prof. Tim Spector: And for most people, it’s perhaps the one thing that they’re more in control of. Some people find it harder to do exercise, or they might have some health problems or have young kids and sleep is a problem. But the one thing that you can sort of cross all ages really get to grips with is to improve your diet.

And that I think is a really important message. So we’re not saying the others aren’t important, but I think this is why we focus on this at ZOE and in our podcast because it is so achievable for everybody of all ages. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Diet’s a great starting point as well, Jonathan because we know in a matter of weeks, you can feel better, you can have more energy, you can have better mood.

I think that’s what’s really exciting, that changing your diet isn’t just about the long-term benefits that happen in 5, 10, 15 years. It’s the benefits that you see straight away that I think are really important. And that’s something we’re starting to see more and more through our own ZOE research as well.

I’ve run over 30 clinical trials. I never asked people such a woo-woo question as How do you feel? You know, what’s your energy? What’s your mood? And so it’s fascinating, like Tim said, this was just a last-minute add-on for all of our ZOE research. And it’s fantastic that you’re seeing these huge improvements.

Jonathan Wolf: If you love the ZOE Science Nutrition podcast and plan to keep listening in 2025, you could do us a huge favor and become part of the 30.7% of the viewers on this channel that have already hit the subscribe button. Why am I asking this? Because it helps us tremendously in our mission to improve the health of millions.

The more people who subscribe, the more who will hear these episodes for the first time and get access to the sort of health advice we’re trying to give away for free to as many people as possible. All you have to do is just hit that subscribe button. Thank you. We’re about to go and deliver your seven tips.

If someone’s listening and saying so, what can I expect to get if I follow all seven of these tips, Sarah? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: I think it does depend on where your starting point is. So it depends on where your baseline diet is. But what I would hope is if you follow these tips, you’ll start to feel better. Very quickly, within a week or two in terms of your mood, in terms of your energy.

But what I do believe, based on all of the evidence around these tips, is that your long-term health will improve. Your risk of many chronic diseases that are underpinned by poor diet, like cardiovascular disease, like type 2 diabetes, like living with obesity, and even some cancers, the risk of those should reduce as well.

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, we’ve managed to make 10 minutes into an interview and you haven’t talked about my gut bugs at all. I was going to interrupt you, but I thought I’d wait. So how do they play into this? Because I know that you’ve explained to me a lot about how important that is now coming through in the science.

Prof. Tim Spector: These seven tips all feed into the gut microbiome in some way. And it always ends up, the center of the universe does tend to be your gut. Indian and Chinese doctors have known this for thousands of years. We’re just discovering it. And what we’ve shown in our ZOE studies is within a few weeks, you can demonstrate changes to your microbiome.

If you’re starting from a very poor point, you get rapid increases in your microbes. That means they’re then changing the chemicals they’re producing and those chemicals are probably the key ones going to your brain to make, give you that extra energy and that mood-enhancing effects rather than the food.

It’s acting via the gut microbes. They are little chemical factories, they produce these incredible ones that go to the brain, light up the brain, change that mood and you’re getting rid of the suppressing chemical effects of the ultra-processed foods, which are dampening your mood and giving you those cravings.

So we’re really changing the chemistry of the brain and the immune system when we change our gut microbes. 

Jonathan Wolf: Amazing. Well, I think it’s time to get into our tips. So I would like to start with tip number one, reduce ultra-processed food. So I think you introduced this shocking statistic that 60% of our diet now comes from ultra-processed foods in countries like the U.S. and the U.K And that number is even higher for my kids and many other kids. 

Sarah, what are ultra-processed foods and why should we avoid them? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So, ultra-processed foods, like you said, make up a huge amount of our diet. And these are groups of foods that are now found throughout the world, the food environment that we live in in the U.K and the U.S.

And these are typically pre-packaged foods. These are foods that contain lots of additives, lots of emulsifiers. These are foods that don’t retain the original structure. They don’t even resemble the original food that they came from. And so these are the kind of foods that you wouldn’t be able to typically make in your own kitchen.

It’s quite difficult to identify what an ultra-processed food is. But as a kind of rule of thumb, you can look at the backpack labelling if it’s got lots of ingredients that you don’t recognise, lots of additives, again, that you don’t recognise. But really importantly, if the food as well doesn’t resemble anything of where it’s come from, I think that’s a really key way to be able to identify if the food’s ultra-processed.

Jonathan Wolf: And Sarah, could you give us a few examples of what an ultra-processed food is to make this sort of real in our minds? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Chocolate spreads, for example, lots of cookies, biscuits, cakes, all of those kind of foods.

Prof. Tim Spector:  Most snack foods, many snack bars, most ready meals. Crisps, frozen pizzas, ice cream, also the fast foods, of course that you would get in take out restaurants. 

Jonathan Wolf: So it could be an ultra-processed food when I buy it from a restaurant. It’s not just something that I would be buying from a supermarket. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Correct. Yes, exactly. So most fast food is defined as ultra-processed. It’s made centrally in large factories and then distributed and either frozen and then defrosted, or it’s produced in a very industrial way that you couldn’t do in an individual kitchen.

Jonathan Wolf: Why do we care? So it can’t be made in our kitchen, but so what? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: there’s more and more evidence coming out each year, and this year is another example of hundreds and hundreds of new studies analyzing the data to show that these ultra-processed foods are associated with poor health, associated with increased risk of a whole host of diet related diseases, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, poor mental health, etc.

Every day we see a new analysis come out, we call these meta analyses, where people look at all sorts of data related to people’s food intake and their health outcomes, showing that an increase in these kinds of foods is associated with poor health. Our knowledge is just continuing to build. 

Jonathan Wolf: I feel like my grandmother always told me, you shouldn’t eat too much cake, right? And that lots of these things you’re describing have lots of sugar and fat and things in them. So is it just that they’re treats and people are eating too many treats? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: I think it’s important to understand what it is about these foods that are harmful for our health, and it isn’t just that they have unhealthy nutrients.

So yes, we know that ultra-processed foods tend to have more sugar, more saturated fat, and more salt, which we know are bad for health. They also tend to have less of healthy nutrients. They tend to be very low in fiber, they tend to be low in healthy proteins and healthy fats. 

They also tend to have lots of things put into them that we don’t really yet know how they impact our health. So they have lots of additives, emulsifiers, and sweeteners, that we’re starting to understand might negatively impact our health, particularly through the gut microbiome. 

There’s new studies again coming out every week looking at the health effects of these different additives. But another area that we know is really important in relation to these ultra-processed foods is the texture and the structure of food. So that’s quite different than just what’s actually in the food, but also it’s about the format of the food. 

Many of the processes that are used industrially, not the kind of process we’d use at home, change that food matrix that I often talk about on our podcast Jonathan. So they’re changing the structure of the food by grinding it or using processes like extrusion, etc.

It changes the texture from the original structure of the food and changes it to quite a soft texture. And what that does, it causes us often to overeat the food. We eat a softer food, an ultra-processed food 50% more quickly than an unprocessed equivalent. 

Jonathan Wolf: 50% more quickly. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: 50% more quickly. And what we know is the faster you eat your food, the more you eat. So every time a 20% increase in the speed in which you eat your food results in a 15% increase in the amount of calories you eat. 

Prof. Tim Spector: And that’s interesting because this whole idea of speed of eating and the fact that these companies are feeding as baby food, essentially, that’s the other way to think about these foods.

And some people in the U.S. and U.K. are, if they’re not breastfed, they’re given ultra-processed baby food all their lives. You know, it’s just pap and that doesn’t allow the brain to have time to send the messages and the gut to work to say I’m full. So it’s bypassing the normal ways of doing this.

There are very few randomized controlled studies of giving people ultra-processed food versus the exact equivalent. There was one we talked about a lot, the Kevin Hall study, which is now, you know, several years old. 

In September, there was a Japanese study from Tokyo where they really studied nine Japanese subjects really closely for a week, again, two weeks washout then gave them another week, alternating between ultra-processed and real food. And what they found was that their chewing times were totally different. 

They actually videoed them, seeing how long they were actually chewing for. And it was exactly, as you said, massively different between them. So they really didn’t chew and they were overeating calorie wise by about 800 calories, although they were starting the same.

So it was even more extreme than in the American study and this is really nice confirmation that this is a key mechanism. The fact that the food just doesn’t have any real texture doesn’t then trigger those evolutionary ideas of what real food should do to the brain and doesn’t fill you up.

And again, coming back to this idea, I’ll probably touch on later about how these appetite signals and when your fullness signals are perhaps the key to a lot of our current problems. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So I think that’s really interesting, Tim. And I think this is what we’re going to see a lot about next year in the world of science and nutrition, about texture and the importance of texture and the importance of manipulating texture in order to actually prevent overconsumption.

One of my colleagues often uses the expression of put the crunch back into your lunch. So having food that has a hard texture, the original texture from which the food comes from, I think is a really key thing for people to think about in 2025 as well. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Mastication is the word for 2025. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Chewing for those who aren’t scientists. Chew your food lots, but buy food that needs chewing. 

Jonathan Wolf: And I was going to say, Tim, are there any other strategies for avoiding the worst UPFs [ultra-processed food]? If you’ve been listening to this and say, I’d really like to reduce it, but I didn’t even realize that I was eating any before now. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Yeah, most things in a packet that have a health claim on it are ultra-processed foods. So that’s one of the biggest warnings is if it says it’s got added vitamins and it’s low in fat, high in protein, chances are that that’s going to be an ultra processed food. 

Jonathan Wolf: So don’t eat it?

Prof. Tim Spector: Well, be wary of it. I mean, if you reduce your ultra-processed food intake just by half, which is still above Mediterranean levels, then you will reduce your mortality by about 12.5%.

I don’t think it’s easy to stop it completely, but just to get it down to the levels of healthier countries in Europe should be everyone’s aim. And that means cutting it to four times less than we’re currently eating and just start looking at all your food to see, is this likely to be ultra-processed?

Look in your fridge. The real food doesn’t come with a health claim or a label, interestingly. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And Jonathan, I think it’s important to say people don’t need to totally eliminate this heavily processed food. It’s very difficult in our current food landscape, but like Tim said, making even a small reduction is going to have a significant impact.

Prof. Tim Spector: Exactly. And you may very rapidly see a change in your mood and energy, and that will be the first thing you see once you cut down these foods. 

Jonathan Wolf: Brilliant. Well, I think it’s time for tip number two. Give yourself an eating window. 

Sarah? What’s an eating window? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Well, it’s not the window that I glare out of in the morning as I wave my kids off to school.

So when we talk about an eating window, we’re talking about a period in time in which we’re eating food, i.e. when we have our first meal of the day to when we have our last meal of the day. 

So in the U.S., for example, the average eating window is around 16 hours. So that means if you’re having your breakfast at 7 in the morning, you’re having your last meal of the day, or last eating event, as we call it at 11 in the evening.

We know that’s not great for us and there is more and more evidence coming out every year and particularly the last year. More and more evidence to show that if you can eat within a smaller eating window it benefits your health. 

Now, up until last year, most of the evidence was showing from tightly controlled metabolic kind of clinic studies, where people were eating within a really small window of six hours, they were showing this benefited your health.

For example, levels of inflammation, blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, improving insulin sensitivity, reducing weight, reducing your risk of chronic diseases. 

But that’s actually really hard to do. So I don’t know about you two, but I certainly could not start eating at 10am and then finish eating at 4pm because I’d be hungry. But more importantly, it would be really unsociable and I’d be really miserable in the evenings. 

But what’s really interesting is over the last year, there’s more research emerging, including our own research from our big intermittent fasting study in 120,000 people. This research is emerging showing actually you don’t need to limit it down to a really tiny eating window.

Just reducing down to a 10 hour eating window can significantly benefit your health. It can improve your energy levels, it can improve your mood. Really interestingly, it can improve your hunger, as in you feel less hungry by limiting to a 10 hour eating window. But it can also help you reduce weight. 

Now a lot of this weight reduction is because, unintentionally, without even thinking about it, you reduce your calorie intake because you’re not mindlessly just eating. Many of us pick on food late in the evening out of habit and boredom rather than out of need.

So the sum of the evidence shows that on average people reduce their energy intake if they practice time restricted eating, even if it’s not extreme, small eating windows by about 300 calories. 

So it’s a good way to control your weight. It’s a good way also to reduce your risk of many chronic diseases. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Can I mention the gut microbes? It does help them as well. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yes, you can. It’s Christmas after all, Tim. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Yes. So gut microbes get a real kick out of having a rest overnight. And they need time to recover and repair. 

So, when you’re not eating, a different team comes out, it’s like an offense-defense team, and a new team comes out and they’re the ones that will tidy up your gut lining.

They actually nibble away at the little bits of sugar on the mucus lining of your gut, and that improves the barrier keeping your microbes from your blood and your immune system is in tip-top shape. 

So, that’s another really important reason that we’ve evolved, if you think about our ancestors, we weren’t eating all the time. We never really ate before 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning and we stopped eating when the fire went out, you know, about 9p m. probably. 

So that’s really important that that part of our immune system also depends on it. So lots of little things depend on having a decent eating habit and stopping this particularly late-night snacking, which I think you’ve pointed out is really the most dangerous part of this.

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah. Because it’s mainly people eating out of habit, eating out of boredom, not being mindful about, am I hungry? And do I need to be eating now? 

And Jonathan, just like we need to sleep, our body, our metabolism, our gut, all the cells in our body that are working away at metabolizing our food, they need to sleep overnight.

So not only do the cleaners need to come in, like Tim said, in our gut and clean up, we also need to give all of the different cells involved in the process of metabolizing our food a rest. And I think that that’s really important. And that the message, just to reiterate, isn’t that you need to do it to the extreme, just reducing to a 10-hour eating window.

So that’s like having your breakfast, say at 9am, having your last meal at 7pm is sufficient to firstly make you feel better. And we’ve shown this from our own ZOE Big If study. So you’ve got better energy, better mood, better hunger, but also to improve your overall health.  

Prof. Tim Spector: But I think even a 12-hour window can help people.

And I think what our Big IF ZOE study showed is that actually some people find it really easy. And some people, like you two find it harder than me, right? 

So I think we’ve got to realize there is this personalization element to it. People do differ. But if you can’t manage 10 hours, if you’re doing 12 hours, all the evidence suggests that is of some benefit as well.

So don’t beat yourself up. If you can’t be as super on the ball as some of these influencers and whatever trying to make us do extreme things. 

Jonathan Wolf: Do you need to be perfect at it? So if you manage it five days a week, but two days a week, you’re not managing your window. Does that mean you’ve ruined everything and you should just give it all up?

Prof. Tim Spector: No, I think, well, certainly what I do is I’m not that strict. And so if there’s a social occasion, it’s much more important that you can have the odd laps, but you don’t give up the whole plan so that you would carry on there for this idea for life, knowing that you’re entitled for a couple of days, you’re on your vacation then different rules can apply.

Because the important thing is that you keep this going for years and it’s not just a fad that you’re just doing for the beginning, you know the beginning of January. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, I think as well, there’s some really interesting new research, actually, Jonathan, that’s come out about the consistency of eating. And this is fascinating, this is something quite novel. And this is really relevant to intermittent fasting.

There’s two different types of intermittent fasting. There’s the time-restricted eating type that we’re talking about, where you eat within a particular window. And then there’s the intermittent fasting where you might go on a diet such as the 5-2 diet where for five days you have a really restricted calorie intake and then for two days, you have an unrestricted calorie intake.

What we’re now starting to understand is that it’s really important to be consistent in how you eat. And so that’s why something like time-restricted eating where you’re eating consistently within an acceptable window for how you live your life is better for you than something like the other type of intermittent fasting where you’re going from one extreme to the other.

Our bodies are primed to be able to predict a typical pattern for you. So if, like me, I’m a snacker, I graze throughout the day. I try to have a 12-hour window because that’s just what works for me. That’s fine. 

Yet for Tim, who has a smaller eating and a longer fast period, and he doesn’t tend to graze, he wouldn’t respond very well to then flipping to my diet because his body isn’t primed to do that.

Prof. Tim Spector: And it’s similar as well to sleep, you know, so this idea of consistency in all these lifestyle habits makes sense for our bodies. 

Jonathan Wolf: And I feel like this time last year you were describing this as very contentious and it feels as though you’re sounding sort of more convinced than a year ago. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, there’s been more and more studies coming out this year showing that there’s benefits. Even for sceptical old me, Jonathan, that I think there’s enough evidence that I certainly will be looking to try and reduce my eating window to about ten hours. 

Jonathan Wolf: Oh, that’s a big thing from you, Sarah. We had a question from a listener that was apparently an American Heart Association article, which was suggesting that there were negative impacts of reducing your eating window.

Do you have a view on that? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: That was interesting because that was actually an abstract that was presented at a conference. So this is before it’s even been published as a full paper.

Prof. Tim Spector: So most people thought that was complete rubbish. It was called observational epidemiology, which is the sort of lowest grade of evidence. And the newspapers never say, well, actually, there’s 20 other studies showing the opposite, they just present that one. So I think it hasn’t yet appeared in any paper so we can judge it, but tell them not to worry.

Jonathan Wolf: I’m going to move us on. Tip number three, calorie counting is dead, but GLP-1 still requires healthy food choices. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Tim. So, for those people who haven’t heard it before, calorie counting has been shown to be a complete waste of time and not effective for the vast majority of people who practice it.

You might be listening to this and say I’m mad because you know people that, you know, have gone on calorie-restricted diets and lost weight. Absolutely, most people will lose weight initially when they go on a calorie-restricted diet.

But the body has ways of altering not only our metabolism, so we burn less energy, so we compensate.

So you need to keep reducing even more of your intake to stay the same, but also it ramps up our appetite signals in the brain so that it gets increasingly difficult to keep losing weight. And then you get to a point where your appetite is ramped up and you’ll get hungry and hungrier. 

Your metabolism’s really low, so it’s hard to burn off even the reduced calories you’re having. And so virtually everybody returns to where they started or goes above it. 

So really this over-exaggeration of what, you know, the calorie is key and it’s just all about choosing low-calorie foods and, you’ll lose weight and keep it off. Complete nonsense. And it’s changed our concept.

The thing that we haven’t focused on was the brain we’d focused on metabolism and calories. And what’s really totally changed this whole field is these new drugs, these GLP-1 agonist drugs, the Ozempic type drugs, which are focused purely on receptors in the brain, the difference between hunger and your appetite level, so knowing when you’re full. 

We call these satiety centers. And there’s this tiny little bit of the brain that is very sensitive to these chemicals that are always there regulating when you feel full. Normally 20 minutes after a meal, you feel full and people vary in this. 

So what these studies have shown, which have revolutionized the weight loss business so that all these companies that were doing calorie-restricted diets and special packs and et cetera, have gone out of business or completely switched to just giving these drugs which are given by injection, which basically stimulate this gut hormone which affects the brain and that basically makes you fuller quicker. 

So it’s changing that threshold and tiny amounts of this drug have massive effects on your appetite. And that’s why these drugs have revolutionized weight maintenance, weight control, diabetes, and all those other diseases with relatively small amounts of side effects.

And nothing has ever come close to this apart from surgery, so-called bariatric surgery. And this has really changed our whole view of how important all these different things were on weight gain to focus just on this bit about appetite, which is so crucial. 

One in six Americans have now apparently tried one of these types of drugs. And we don’t have data in the U.K., nobody’s logging it. Very few people have got it on the NHS in the U.K., but there’s pretty much open access privately for it, but no one’s recording it. 

It’s really important, I think, that people understand the mechanisms because it tells us so much about food and normal food and how we’re supposed to have mechanisms that fill us up and, and switch off that appetite center.

These drugs are doing it for us and liberating potentially millions of people from this sort of slavery to having really strong appetite, hunger signals all the time that’s been fueled by the food industry, giving them foods that tickle their brain, tickle these appetite centers all the time, making it worse.

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, could you explain what’s different today versus 50 years ago? 

Prof. Tim Spector: The difference today is between a quarter and a third of the population in the United States and the U.K. are living with obesity. These rates have basically tripled in the last few decades and also our children are also living with obesity and we’re just surrounded by this problem, which is causing mental health problems, cancer problems, heart disease problems, diabetes problems, and causing many people not to be able to work.

So a huge financial cost we think running in, in, just in the U.K. estimates are over 200 billion pounds a year more than the whole budget of the U.K. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And that’s Jonathan because we have not evolved to live in the food landscape that we live in. We don’t walk often to work, most people don’t walk to work like we did 50, 60 years ago.

Prof. Tim Spector: And these are foods designed by brilliant chemists to have this bliss point in our brain where the exact amounts of sugar, fats, and salt to titillate our receptors in the brain to sort of bypass these normal fullness signals, satiety signals. 

So in a way this drug is counteracting that, so people who go on the drug very rapidly lose their drive for these ultra-processed foods. They don’t want to snack anymore and they are able for the first time in their lives to lose weight regularly. And I think there are risks of taking it. It’s not without risks, but it’s also a huge opportunity for many people to rethink their diets. 

Jonathan Wolf: Are you basically saying that everybody should end up taking this GLP-1? Because you’re talking about calorie counting is dead? 

Prof. Tim Spector: No, because all the evidence suggests that if you are living with obesity, so you have a BMI of over 30, or you have at least mild diabetes, then the benefit far outweighs the risks of the drug for you. 

And there are risks of it. One in five people have nausea and vomiting. One in a thousand will get pancreatitis. There are some potential effects on the brain long-term because you remove some of the addictive… You might even change your personality slightly.

But you are going to double your risk of living longer. You got half your risk of cancer. You’re getting massive reductions in things like dementia. Inflammation is reduced.We’re just discovering all these things that can benefit people who are overweight. 

But if you’re just slightly overweight, it looks like the risks at the moment are outweighing the benefits. So I don’t think people should recreationally or playing with it just for fun because it is a strong medication, a strong pharmaceutical, but who knows in the future as these drugs progress and get safer.

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, the second half of your tip you said was GLP-1 still requires healthy food choices?

Prof. Tim Spector: Absolutely. At the moment, no one’s giving advice to people on these drugs about what to eat. They just said you take care of it yourself. But once you take away that amazing hunger drive, it’s a huge opportunity for people to start eating better.

Reduce ultra-processed foods to a minimum. Start having less food, but healthier food, so that they do get the nutrients back. And there are many cases of people taking these drugs, getting nutritional deficiencies, because they’re just not interested in the food. They’re having less of it, so therefore they’re not getting the right vitamins, etc.

So, I think this is a perfect opportunity for people when, in a way, the pressure’s off. It’s just to relearn how to eat real food, have a mainly plant-based diet, switch from unhealthy processed meats onto plant-based programs, and start feeding their gut microbiome. 

This could help them reduce side effects. It could help them get onto lower doses. And I think that’s it. Make them healthy in many other ways, particularly for their mental health. So I think there’s a huge opportunity here that hasn’t been grasped. And so rather than demonizing these these medications, we should be pragmatic and say, well, they’re here to stay. Let’s try and make people taking them, you know, healthier and more better educated about what they can do themselves. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, I think, Jonathan, it’s important to think you can’t out inject a bad diet. And it’s really important when you’re reducing your food intake to make sure that the food that you’re having is supplying you with adequate nutrients, adequate amounts of your multivitamins, your minerals, your fiber, for example. 

And I think lots of people just assume, Oh, it’s all about stopping eating the bad food. No, it’s that window of opportunity to make sure you’re eating the right food and getting enough of the right food and enough of the right nutrients. So it’s a really important time actually to focus on diet, even if you are taking the GLP agonists.

Jonathan Wolf: So if you add healthier food choices on top of these GLP ones, you could actually Have many more healthy years in the way you were talking about at the beginning, Sarah. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, absolutely. So what the GLP-1 agonists will do, they’ll curb your appetite, like Tim said. 

So you’ll reduce your energy intake. You will therefore reduce your body weight. But we need food and nutrients, not just for energy and calories. We all know we need the food and we need the nutrients, all of the wonderful health benefits they give us for the polyphenols, for the fiber feeding Tim’s lovely bugs that he hasn’t jumped in to talk about yet.

The healthy fats and healthy oils for our cardiovascular health, the vitamins and multivitamins, the minerals, et cetera, that are so important. 

So it’s so important that we still. eat a healthy diet regardless of whether we’re on a GLP agonist. And that isn’t being talked about enough for people who are being put on these drugs.

Jonathan Wolf: Wonderful. Thank you, Sarah. I think that’s very clear. I’d like to move to tip four, which is mindful drinking. Sarah. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So I think drinking is a fascinating area, Jonathan, and I don’t think it’s something we’ve even talked about on the ZOE podcast yet. And the reason it’s fascinating is because people, I don’t think, realize how much drinks contribute towards our calorie intake. 

Jonathan Wolf: And to be clear, we’re not just talking about drinking alcohol, Sarah? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Absolutely not. We’re talking about being mindful of all of the drinks that we consume. In the U.S., drinks account for 18% of our energy intake, 18% of our calories. 

Jonathan Wolf: 18%? That’s a lot.

Prof. Sarah Berry: Coming just from drinks. And so what I think is good about that is that actually that is a really simple dietary strategy that we can modify to improve our health. 

At the moment we know in the U.S. for example, and it’s quite similar in the U.K., that 54% of our added sugar in our diet, which we know we’re eating far too much of, is coming from drinks.

So if we can just change the drinks that we’re having, we can significantly reduce the added sugar that we know is a real problem for us at the moment in terms of we’re eating far too much of it. 

Jonathan Wolf: I feel like a lot of people were saying, well, you know, I gave up full calorie Coca-Cola a long time ago and now I’ve swapped and I go to Starbucks and I get this big coffee. So this doesn’t really apply to me, does it? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So it depends on the type of coffee and what else is in the coffee.

So a bog standard coffee would be like an Americano style coffee. So just a very simple coffee that’s not got all of these extra sugars and fats and creams in it. And what the evidence again consistently shows, and again there’s more and more evidence coming out on this, is that three to four coffees a day can significantly reduce your risk of all-cause mortality. So as you like to say, death, Jonathan, and reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, some cancers, et cetera, by around 18 to 20%. 

And we see similar data for teas. It’s stronger for green tea. But we see for black tea as well that there’s a significant improvement in many health outcomes and also in all-cause mortality or death.

Jonathan Wolf: And what about if I am in fact going to Starbucks, and I mention them, but it could be any coffee chain, and I’m having their standard super latte, which I notice on the thing actually has 500 calories in it. So if I have three of those a day, do I reduce my risk of death by 18%?

Prof. Sarah Berry: So I don’t think there’s been any studies actually looking at that versus the standard coffee without all of the added cream, sugar, calories. But based on my years of knowledge research in this area, I would say no. 

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, the ZOE team has done some really exciting research about coffee. What did you find?

Prof. Tim Spector: Well, we published this amazing paper showing that you can tell if someone’s a coffee drinker or not just from their gut microbes. And there’s this one microbe that is so fussy it only eats coffee, and it’s called Lawsonibacter. So you don’t drink coffee, but it’s waiting there in tiny amounts just for you to have that one cup of coffee, then it’s gonna go and explode.

It’s incredibly exciting, and this is the first time anyone’s really linked a single microbe to a single food type. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And Jonathan, this shows how the microbiome is one of the ways in which coffee and as well tea is so healthy for us because it’s feeding our microbes. In the case of coffee, this particular one loves it.

Prof. Tim Spector: And it also tells us every single different food you eat is going to have an effect on each of these individual microbes. So it starts to imagine this whole world in there that is just being fueled by the diversity that you feed it. 

And also the idea that people still think milk is a health drink and increasing the epidemiology is showing that’s not the case and it doesn’t really have those benefits that have been promoted for so long. So keep it to an absolute minimum, I think is the key. 

Jonathan Wolf: And if I swap it for oat milk, then suddenly, is that a health drink? 

Prof. Tim Spector: All the evidence suggests that it’s not a healthy swap. It may be better for the planet slightly, but in terms of sugar spikes, we’ve shown with our ZOE studies that oat milk will give you a sugar spike, does for me, compared to normal milk.

So if you’re sugar-sensitive, then it’s not a good swap. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: But Jonathan, the amount of milk that most people add to a tea or coffee that they make at home is quite small. It’s not going to be a problem at all. 

Jonathan Wolf: So this is when I’m in the store.

Prof. Sarah Berry: This is when you’re in those coffee shops that are all singing and dancing what they add in, that it’s the equivalent of eating a donut.

Prof. Tim Spector: Yeah. So there’s a whole range increasingly of these fermented drinks that you can get. So, people know kombucha. In the U.S. it comes in alcoholic and non-alcoholic forms, hard and soft kombuchas.

The soft kombuchas are the ones we’re mainly talking about here. Lots of evidence they are good for your gut microbes. Just check there isn’t too much sugar in them. 

Water kefir is another new category, called tibicos in some places. They’re less sour than kombucha and worth a try. The other one is called milk kefir. 

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, why are you saying any of these drinks are things people should be adding to their diet in 2025?

Prof. Tim Spector: Because they’re alternatives to unhealthy drinks. So, it’s making intelligent, mindful choices. So they’re much more natural choices, and they also tend to be good for your gut microbes. 

They are fermented foods, and you should be trying to get at least two or three different fermented foods into your diet every day for your gut microbes, so try them.

Prof. Sarah Berry: And this is one of the reasons that coffee and tea are so good for us is because we know they contain certain chemicals called polyphenols that we know our microbes love feeding on, that give us many of these benefits. 

So if I could summarize back, I’m going to do a Jonathan here and summarize back. I think what we need to be really mindful about when we’re choosing our drinks is all of the hidden sugars and fats that can be in many drinks. 

We need to be mindful of artificial sweeteners as there’s more and more evidence emerging to show that actually they have a negative impact on our health, probably mediated in part through the microbiome. 

And we need to see drinks as a great opportunity to actually add benefits to our diet by drinking on either water, obviously, coffee, tea, and also some of these fermented drinks that Tim’s mentioned, such as kombucha and kefir.

Jonathan Wolf: Amazing. So Tim, tip five, eat more plants and you can still eat meat. 

Prof. Tim Spector: At ZOE we’ve been promoting eating more plants for your general health and we’re trying to get people to eat 30 different plants a week. And this is diverse plants, we’re talking about fruits, vegetables. But remembering a plant is also a nut, it’s a seed, it’s an herb, it’s a spice and it’s not that hard when you start thinking about it.

And many people think this is a choice. I’ve got to give up meat if I do that. And this puts people off. 

Because meat eating has been shown in epidemiological studies, if you eat too much meat, it is associated with extra heart disease and extra cancers. If you eat processed meats, even in small amounts have been associated with cancers and heart disease.

But if you eat small amounts of meat, there’s no evidence of good quality meat that isn’t highly processed, there’s no evidence it’s harmful. 

So there is perhaps a middle ground here for people who want to be healthier in 2025. They don’t want to give up meat, they can just reduce the amount they’re having, which will have massive benefits for the planet and also their health because it allows them to put more plants on that plate.  

Because in nutrition, we often get obsessed about, is this good or is this bad? But the question you should be asking is instead of what, what else can you put on your plate? And this is again, coming back to this mindful eating business, looking at a whole plate of food and saying, how does this balance up? 

If you’ve got a huge steak, there’s no room for your plate. So I would like people to reduce the amount of meat. And we’ve just had a study just come out with our colleagues in Trento on 23,000 people dividing people into vegetarian, vegan, and omnivore, omnivore is people who eat meat and everything. 

And the differences between them are quite marked. So, in general, the vegans have the healthier-looking gut microbes, better ratios of good to bad microbes, but they don’t have the best diversity.

Actually, the ones with the most diversity are meat eaters, because if you have meat and dairy, you’re getting different microbes eating those.

So it’s a complex picture, much more complex than we thought. But I think the lesson here is that if you can eat a small amount of meat and lots of plants, you’re going to get the best possible picture in terms of not only a good diversity of microbes across the board, but you’ll get a good ratio of the good guys to the bad guys.

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, for people who’ve never heard this idea that you should eat 30 plants a week, what’s the science behind that? Why should they be doing that? 

Prof. Tim Spector: The 30 plants a week concept came from research we did with the British Gut Project combined with the American Gut Project, which was a sort of charitable research project about seven or so years ago, where we asked people how many different plants they ate every week and compared that to their gut health.

And it turned out the sweet spot was around 30 plants. Now we’re still working at ZOE to try and get even better data on this but at the moment that seems to be the consensus from the field that this is a good target to aim for.

Jonathan Wolf: Why do plants matter for your gut health? 

Prof. Tim Spector: Plants are the main source of food for your gut microbes and the more different sources of food, there are the more different microbes you get, the more different chemicals you produce, the healthier your gut is, your gut community is and your rest of your body.

So it gives you the best possible pharmacy in your gut that can supply the rest of your body. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And plants contain the most precious of all nutrients that we think of as nutrition scientists; fiber. And there’s so many different types of fiber. When we think about fiber, we normally just think, oh, it’s one nutrient, but actually fibers are really, really diverse and they feed lots of different microbes and they have lots of different health effects in our body.

So having that diversity of plants enables not just our microbes, but all the other cells in our body that need fiber to have a diversity of different types of fiber to really thrive. 

Prof. Tim Spector: So we’ve changed from five a day, which was a the standard across the world concept that it didn’t really matter what plants you had, as long as you were getting some fiber in, it could be the same fiber every day, it didn’t matter.

We’ve really switched in the last few years to this idea of diverse fibers from diverse plants is the real healthy way to go. 

Jonathan Wolf: So Tim and Sarah, that’s a very powerful explanation for why we need to be eating a lot more plants and these 30 plants. You said in this tip, however, you can still eat meat.

So do I need to give up meat in order to get healthy or do I have to eat meat? What’s the situation? 

Prof. Tim Spector: No, I think you have the choice. Now we’ve seen very clearly that if you’re a vegan or a vegetarian, you can have a perfectly healthy diet and it has no health consequences. But at the same time, we’ve seen that if you.

As someone who’s really mindful about what you’re eating, you can reduce your meat considerably and still be healthy and still enjoy good cuts of meat. And this could be several times a week. 

Having meat can still be compatible with a very healthy lifestyle and nutrition. In a way I still eat meat once or twice a month and I have a healthy gut microbiome and many other people are in this situation.

So the idea that we can be still omnivores, which is how a lot of people think we evolved but just by changing the proportions we’re eating, we can get the maximum health benefit from our food. 

Jonathan Wolf: But if I’m eating meat three times a day? 

Prof. Tim Spector: If you’re eating meat three times a day, I would say that’s not good and that you’re not leaving enough space on your plate for plants.

So again, it’s what’s that meat replacing in your diet as well as Are you having too much excess meat? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, I think Jonathan there’s been a real hyper-focus on plant-based approaches, on cutting meat out of your diet. And I think that it’s going back to a little bit of balance here, that yes, we need to focus on getting plenty of plants, plenty of different types of plants, plenty of different types of fibers therefore on our plate. 

But actually a little bit of meat here and there is certainly not going to be bad for us, putting aside animal welfare and environmental considerations, and that it can be actually a very healthy part of the diet. But it’s about balance and not having meat to excess.

One thing that is really clear in relation to meat is the processed red meat undoubtedly is isn’t healthy for us. So by this I mean the salamis, the hams, for example. 

Prof. Tim Spector: The ready meals, the mince meats in packaged foods, all these ones which are sort of unnecessary. And once you learn how to cook the alternatives, you don’t even notice you’ve given them up.

Jonathan Wolf: Okay. Tip six, stop worrying about getting enough protein. 

Prof. Tim Spector: Currently, there’s huge marketing saying that we’re deficient in protein and that we can’t be healthy without extra protein snack bars, protein added to nearly all kinds of ultra-processed foods and that we’re in a protein crisis. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The average American is being told they need from all our scientific studies, about 50 grams a day. If they weigh about 130 pounds, it’s about 60 kilos and they’re eating double that. So we’re similar in the U.K. eating about double the recommended levels of protein already. 

So it’s a complete myth that there’s a massive gap between supply and demand and that we need to change our diets.

This is all driven by the big food companies, by people making money out of this, where in fact, we’re in a fiber deficiency where 95% of us aren’t getting enough fiber. And the average American is only eating enough fiber that we recommend for a four year old. 

And so there is this real imbalance in this advice that’s totally been driven by the industry. So I think there are some caveats and people should be aware of where there might be some deficiencies, but just putting that context that nine out of 10 people don’t have to worry at all. 

The people that do have to worry if you’re sick and not eating, or there’s some reason that you’re not getting normal food in your diet and you’re elderly or frail, then you need to focus on making sure you’re on protein rich foods.

If you’re a semi-professional bodybuilder and that’s all you’re doing or professional athletes possibly, or you’re someone who’s perhaps a vegan and you’re trying to lose weight and you’re really reducing your calories. 

I think the key message here is protein is not our problem, fiber is our problem, and you can get all the good proteins you need from plants. If you’re mindful about how you’re eating and you have a diversity of plants, they will give you the right balance. 

So people who are say cutting back on their meat and want to maintain their protein really increased the amount of beans and legumes, which contain fantastic amounts of protein.

And people can realize that normal food contains protein. Things like pasta, whole grains, bulgur wheats, really high protein levels in many foods. So if you’re generally having plenty of food, it’s really hard to avoid protein. And it’s also very hard to get your protein levels really high.

Prof. Sarah Berry: And I think Jonathan to add to that is, I don’t think for the majority of us, we need to ever consider having protein shakes, protein powders, protein bars. 

Jonathan Wolf: Our final tip, tip number seven; snack smarter. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Jonathan, I love a snack. So I think snacking is an incredible opportunity for us to improve the healthiness of the diet.

The reason for this is because the reality is 95% of us snack, 25%, so that’s a quarter of our energy in the U.K. and the U.S. comes from snacks. But what we know is that actually a huge amount of us are having really healthy meals. But then having very poor quality snacks. 

So what that means is we’re almost undoing all the great stuff that we’re doing with our main meals by having poor-quality snacks. And we’ve done some great research at ZOE showing that people who snack on healthy snacks, so by this I mean nuts, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, that sort of stuff. That’s associated with really favorable health outcomes. It’s associated with a favorable gut microbiome composition. It’s associated with lower blood pressure, lower cardiovascular disease risk, lower blood cholesterol, better insulin sensitivity.

So it’s a really simple single dietary strategy to improve our health. And one of the reasons I think as well, it’s really great, just like drinks, it’s under our own self-control. So what we typically have for lunch or for dinner might be dictated by where we’re working that day. Or if you’ve got kids, you know what your fussy kids might choose to eat for dinner, but snacks tend to be under our own control.

I’ve conducted a randomized control trial where I had people either eat the U.K., U.S. typical snacks, or eat nuts, which I consider to be a very healthy snack. And what we found was that in as little as six weeks, there was such a big improvement in health outcomes that it actually equated to a predicted 30% reduction in cardiovascular disease.

Jonathan Wolf: Wow. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And so that’s a real motivator just for changing your snacks. 

Jonathan Wolf: And Sarah, I feel like I was often told when I was growing up that just snacks are bad and snacking is bad and the healthiest thing would be to eat three proper meals and nothing in between. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So I think what’s key here is thinking about the timing of the snacking rather than the frequency of how often you’re eating.

We are a nation of snackers in the U.K. We’re a nation of snackers in the U.S. On average, in the U.K. and the U.S. we have what we call six eating events. So we have typically breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which is three eating events. And then we typically have two to three snacks a day. 

Now, if you’re not a snacker, I wouldn’t suggest you go and start snacking. But if you are a snacker, and that’s how you like to eat, our research shows that the snacking itself isn’t the problem, it’s what you’re snacking on. 

So changing from unhealthy snacks to healthy snacks is important. But also the timing of snacking is really important. We see that in the U.K. and the U.S., 30% of people are snacking after 9 o’clock at night. And what we see is that if you’re snacking late, even if it is healthy snacks, that is associated with unfavorable health outcomes. 

So the key here is to switch unhealthy snacks to healthy snacks and to stop snacking earlier in the evening. And the other thing, Jonathan, that we know is that 20% of people say they snack out of boredom or habit.

So the other thing I would say is to be a little bit mindful when you’re going to have a snack. Are you actually hungry? Or are you just snacking because it’s the habit of going to that cupboard because you’ve got a minute between your meetings, for example? 

Jonathan Wolf: So this is back once again to sort of this mindful eating, being aware about what you’re eating and why, because sometimes you’re just doing it and I do this, you just don’t even really realize you’re eating because you’re just watching TV and suddenly it’s all just disappeared.

Prof. Sarah Berry: Yeah, and so there’s little strategies you can do, don’t have by your desk or in front of the TV, don’t have the snacks just sitting there, make it something that is a conscious effort for you to go to the cupboard and actually select out that snack. 

Prof. Tim Spector: And it links to what we were talking about earlier about the time windows and things, so in a way you’ve got a bit of a snack curfew that just makes you think twice about grabbing those extra cookies, yeah.

Prof. Sarah Berry: So to snack smartly, I would avoid snacking after eight or nine in the evening. I would stick with your typical snacking patterns. If you don’t snack, don’t start snacking. If you do snack, choose healthy snack alternatives. 

Jonathan Wolf: Brilliant. Well, Tim and Sarah, thank you for sharing those amazing expert tips.

As if that wasn’t enough brilliant actionable advice, I think we have a bonus today for anyone who is willing to listen through to this point. We have seven healthy foods that our listeners can add to their plates this year. I hope you’ve been thinking hard about this last night. 

Tim, can you share three foods you’ll be adding to your plate this year?

Prof. Tim Spector: My three, which I think we’re going to see an explosion of in this year, are mushrooms, which are an incredible food and have all kinds of links with helping people fight cancer and things. 

I’m going for kimchi, which is a Korean sauerkraut, which you can mix in with all your foods and fantastic fermented food. And rye bread, which is probably the healthiest bread you can have and suits me and my particular blood sugar profile.

Jonathan Wolf: And so Sarah, what are your three? 

Prof. Sarah Berry: So my first is nuts. They are a powerhouse of nutrition. They’re packed full of heart-healthy oils, loads of fiber, loads of polyphenols. They keep us full for long, they reduce our risk of so many different diseases. They’re a great snack. 

My second is extra virgin olive oil. I know this is one of Tim’s favorites as well. It’s packed full of heart-healthy oils. It’s packed full of polyphenols. And there is just exploding evidence all the time about how healthy it is for us, and we are not scared of fat here at ZOE. We love adding healthy fats to our food. 

The third thing is a little bit of what you enjoy. And so that’s up to the audience. And it’s about the fact that there are so many healthy foods that can still be really, really pleasurable for us. So dark chocolate is a great example. If it’s a good quality dark chocolate, it can actually be quite healthy for us and yummy. 

Jonathan Wolf: Amazing. And the seventh that I would add is Daily 30, which is ZOE’s plant-based supplement.  I eat it every day and my wife eats it, my mom now eats it. In fact, the whole extended family does. 

And the reason why I do it, especially because it tastes really nice, that I know that I’m adding all of this additional plant diversity in my diet, which just gives me that confidence. I always have it with my breakfast.

But the other part is that I know that the two of you spent a really long time working on the science behind it and figuring out how to take all of the science from ourselves and others and wrap this up. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: And we’ve actually shown it works through a randomized clinical trial which is really exciting.

Jonathan Wolf: Tim, Sarah, thank you so much for dragging yourself out of bed this morning and sharing with us how to eat in 2025.

Just going to quickly summarize what we went through. So we had seven tips. The first is reduce ultra-processed food, and if you reduced it by 50%, you could actually reduce your risk of death by over 12%, which is amazing. 

Give yourself an eating window. Even 12 hours could actually improve your energy, your mood, your hunger.

Calorie counting is dead. So don’t set off right now and say I’m going to have this really restrictive number of calories for the rest of the month, because at the end of the month you are going to be, as Tim described, hungry, miserable, and just starting to put all of this back on. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Hangry. 

Jonathan Wolf: GLP-1 still requires healthy food choices. So if that’s something that you’re on or that you may be going on to, it’s actually the perfect timing to make these changes in your health and actually they can really transform how you feel very rapidly and also improve how many healthy you are. 

Mindful drinking. So I was really shocked to hear that half of all the hidden added sugar in our diet is actually coming through our drinks and quite possibly hidden in the coffee that we were thinking is really good for us. 

On the other hand, three coffees a day could reduce your risk of death by up to 18%. So that’s pretty amazing. 

Eat more plants, and you can still eat meat. So 30 plants a week is the ideal target. That supports our gut microbiome. Most of us probably should be eating less meat than we are, because you need to do that in order to get the benefits of all of these plants. But you don’t have to give up meat if it’s something that you really like. 

Stop worrying about getting enough protein. Amazingly, the average American is getting double the recommended level of protein. So this idea that we’re all in this massive protein shortage isn’t true. It’s being pushed on us by big food manufacturers to sell ultra-processed food. And that’s really very similar across the rest of the world. 

And finally, snack smarter. And the good news, if you’re a snacker like me or Sarah, you don’t need to give up snacking. That’s what the latest science says. It’s not that snacking is necessarily unhealthy, but you need to swap the unhealthy snack for a healthier snack. But don’t snack into the evening. 

So the thing I’m most guilty of, which I think is going to have to be my New Year’s resolution, is to try and cut down the dark chocolate at 10pm in front of the TV because none of you have ever managed to come up with a reason why that’s good for me.

Prof. Tim Spector: Sadly, that’s true. We’re working on it. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Spot on. What a lovely way to spend my New Year’s Day with you two. 

Jonathan Wolf: Well, it’s a huge pleasure to spend New Year’s Day with both of you as it is a huge pleasure to spend many years now working with you and I’m incredibly excited to see where the science goes this year and what we will be sharing both on this podcast through the rest of the year.

I have no doubt that there will be this time next year, a whole bunch of new discoveries that none of us are really aware of today. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Jonathan, I’ve just realized we’ve been working together now at ZOE, the three of us for seven years. So that is one top tip for every year we’ve been together.

Jonathan Wolf: Beautiful. And you’re not totally sick of me yet. I feel lucky. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Just sick of Tim. 

Prof. Tim Spector: No comment.

Jonathan Wolf: Alright. Well, everybody go and enjoy the rest of New Year’s Day and I hope you found that useful. Thank you Tim and Sarah. 

Prof. Sarah Berry: Thank you.