Podcasts – Zoë Harcombe: Recent Episodes

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BioGuy Ben Zvi was born and raised in Israel. After high school, he joined the Air Force Flight Academy where he was a combat helicopter pilot and flight instructor for six years. In 1987, Guy switched careers and became the Director of R&D and Technology at Palram Plastics, a large chemicals and polymer company, a position he held for over 12 years. Not long after receiving his Executive MBA from the top-ranked Kellogg Northwestern in 2002, Guy started the very successful laser company Pixer Technology where he worked until retiring in 2013. Retirement did not stop the hi-tech entrepreneur, in 2013 Guy founded the company Omega 3 Galil. At the company building in northern Israel, Guy has a food lab where he can test fats, what happens when they are heated and how products react to being heated in different fats.

Show NotesIn this (just over an) hour, we covered the following:

• How do you know so much about fatty acids?

• What has fat got to do with cells? Cell membranes?

• What are essential fats? Why are they essential? Where do we get them from?

• What should our fatty acid profile be?

• What makes a healthy vegetarian/vegan?

• What are seed oils?

• How are oils extracted from seeds? What’s the refinement process?

• What’s the difference between cold pressed oils and refined oils?

• What’s the problem with these oils?

• Why is olive oil green and in a dark bottle?

• Why are seed oils yellow and in clear bottles?

• What’s the issue with heating, cooking and frying with highly unsaturated fats?

• What’s the difference between eating a nut/seed and consuming the oil from the nut/seed?

• What about vitamin E during this process? And the vitamin E content of seed oils?

• What about inflammation?

• What contribution to chronic disease do you think seed oils make? What accounts for the rest of 100%?

• Why would anyone say seed oils are not a problem, or even that they’re healthy?

• Should we ever consume seed oils?

• What should we cook with?

• Can damage from seed oils and oxidation be reversed?

• Should we supplement with vitamin E?

Time markersFor those of you who like to jump to the bits you’re interested in, here are some time markers (these are accurate on the video – they will be out by 20-30 seconds on the audio file, as this has an introduction):

00:00 Introduction to Fatty Acids Expertise
01:38 Understanding Essential Fats
04:30 The Importance of Fatty Acids in Health
07:24 The Role of Omega-3 and Omega-6
09:26 The Nature of Seed Oils
13:28 Extraction and Refinement of Oils
17:27 Oxidation and Its Effects on Oils
22:19 The Dangers of Polyunsaturated Fats
27:34 The Health Implications of Seed Oils
31:31 Nuts, Seeds, and Their Nutritional Value
36:51 The Seed Oil Debate
39:14 Oxidation and Inflammation: The Real Issues
43:36 Chronic Diseases and Dietary Solutions
45:51 Politics of Food: The Seed Oil Controversy
47:47 Cooking Oils: What to Use and Avoid
50:07 Understanding MCT Oil and Its Benefits
55:34 Animal Fats: A Return to Tradition
57:55 Reversing Damage from Seed Oils
59:39 Vitamin E: A Key to Recovery

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BioNina Teicholz PhD is a science journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (2014). She’s been a pioneer in challenging the conventional wisdom on saturated fats, vegetable (seed) oils, the health halo around the Mediterranean diet, and the reliability of the U.S. national dietary guidelines.

Her work has been favorably reviewed by top medical journals, including the Lancet, and her own writing has been published in academic journals such as the BMJ, Nutrients and a journal of the National Academy of Sciences as well as media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and Economist. Nina has also appeared on most major TV networks and many podcasts, from NPR to Joe Rogan.

She is a graduate of Stanford and Oxford Universities, and in 2024, she received a PhD in nutrition focused on evidence-based nutrition policy. For years, she ran a non-profit called the Nutrition Coalition aimed at updating the US dietary guidelines with the current science. Her work can now be found in a column on Substack called “Unsettled Science” (Ref 8).

Nina has no commercial ties and has never received support from any industry for her work.

Show notesAs a summary of the podcast with Nina…

Nina and I are great friends and we have done most of our academic work in the same area – dietary guidelines, especially dietary fat. This was a cracking hour discussing our shared areas of interest but focusing especially on plant/seed oils.

We covered how Nina, as a journalist, got into this whole dietary fat area – it started with an article she was commissioned to do on trans fats. Interviewing industrial chemists about stuff that was ending up in the food supply, she realised that there was a bigger story. Nina pursued it and the Big Fat Surprise was written after nine years of research. We rattled through:

• What are trans fats? What is hydrogenation?

• How did these fats get into our diets?

• When and how the American Heart Association had a big impact. What evidence existed to support this impact at the time.

• What did we use when trans fats were banned?

• The randomised controlled trials that have been done in this area and what they found (or didn’t find).

• Why the guidelines don’t change when the evidence is so overwhelming that they should.

• Seed oils and oxidisation/inflammation – what’s the story here?

• How bad are plant/seed oils?

• What should we cook with?

• Some people in our field claim they’re responsible for everything – even diabetes and obesity – is there evidence for this?

We hope you enjoy this hour on this much asked about topic.

Show linksA few links were promised during the show. Here they are:

• Link to Nutrition Coalition website (mentioned just after 1 min) (Ref 10).

• Link to EAT Lancet Diet (mentioned just after 26 mins) (Ref 11).

• Link to my plant sterols paper (mentioned at 31 mins) (Ref 12).

• Link to Csallany's work (mentioned around 39 mins) (Ref 13).

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BioPETER BRUKNER OAM, MBBS, D Sc(honoris causa), FACSEP, FASMF, FACSM, FFSEM

Peter Brukner OAM is a specialist sports and exercise physician who is the founding partner of Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre in Melbourne and Professor of Sports Medicine at LaTrobe University. A founding Executive Member of the Australasian College of Sports Physicians, he served two terms as President and played a key role in establishing sports medicine as a medical specialty in Australia.

Peter is the co-author of the widely used text book Clinical Sports Medicine, now in its 6th edition, and has been team physician for professional football clubs as well as national athletics, swimming, soccer and men’s hockey teams including Olympic and Commonwealth Games. Peter was the Socceroos Team Doctor at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and subsequently became Head of Sports Medicine and Sports Science at Liverpool Football Club. He then served as Australian cricket team doctor from 2012-17, and as a consultant to the Melbourne Football Club during their premiership year in 2021.

Peter is the co-founder of the public health campaign SugarByHalf and is committed to the challenge of improving the nation’s health with improved diet and increased physical activity. His best selling book A Fat Lot of Good was published in 2018. Peter is also the Founder and Chair of Defeat Diabetes, an app- and web-based program, aimed at improving diabetes control through diet. His latest book The Diabetes Plan was published in March 2023.

In 2022 Peter was awarded a Doctor of Science honoris causa by La Trobe University and delivered the inaugural Peter Brukner Distinguished Lecture. He was recently awarded the 2023 Outstanding Contribution to Victorian Sport Award.

Show notesPeter and I first met for lunch in April 2016 – with Dr Karim Khan – his co-author for Clinical Sports Medicine, which is the ‘bible’ for sports medicine. We then met at the Public Health Collaboration (PHC) conferences in 2017 (Manchester), 2018 (London) and 2019 (London again) and then Covid halted such events. We’ve met at conferences further afield too – notably Denver.

Peter came to stay with us in Wales in July 2019 (Dr Nina Teicholz was with us at the same time, so we had a multi-continent low carb gathering). He then super kindly gave my cricket-mad brother tickets to the England vs Australia world cup cricket match on July 11th, 2019, at Edgbaston. England won by 8 wickets, so he was probably better off not going anyway!

I opened by asking how, when and why Peter got into the diet and health field and I had the best reply to that question ever – a complete chronology starting 12 years ago when Peter thought his health was OK, but it wasn’t. A mutual friend of ours, Professor Tim Noakes, had just started saying low fat high carb is all wrong – it should be the other way round. Peter thought Tim was mad but took his own bloods, tried low carb high fat for himself and the podcast details his astounding results.

Peter shared a few anecdotes of other conditions that have been alleviated with a Keto diet – in national team level athletes and lay people. As a doctor, he considers the LCHF diet to be the most powerful weapon he has in his toolkit.

Peter explained how SugarByHalf started and also Defeat Diabetes. He had some very positive news to share about recent developments with Diabetes Australia and how this has helped to give credibility to the low carb option for diabetes in his country.

We explored the obstacles that we have both faced during our years of working in this field and how frustrating it is that we have these battles when the solution to diabetes (a condition of carbohydrate intolerance) is so obvious.

Australia has hosted a parliamentary inquiry into diet and diabetes recently. Peter gave evidence to the committee and met with the members during the process. The report has been disappointing to say the least. As for the future, we both think that individuals will continue to take control of their own heath, but this is frustratingly slow when top down changes to dietary guidelines could transform health, weight and diabetes so much more effectively. If only…

TranscriptNote: This transcript was automatically generated by an advanced AI tool. It may contain errors, so please do not use any part as actual quotations. There is also an ‘in-play’ transcript in the video player, just click the appropriate button to switch view.

Zoë Harcombe (00:00)
So I’m absolutely delighted this morning to be speaking to Dr. Peter Brukner. And I always like to open these podcasts by explaining how I know the person, if I know the person, and I know you. I’m thrilled to call you a friend, not just someone we’re chatting to this morning. I had a look back, we actually first connected back in April, 2016, and you emailed me, you were over in London because you were working on your clinical sports medicine Bible.

Peter Brukner (00:01)
Right.

Zoë Harcombe (00:29)
which you’re updating again at the moment to make the sixth edition. And you emailed me and you said you were over in London working on it with your co-author, Professor Dr. Karim Khan, and would I like lunch? And I remember sort of running downstairs to my husband going, my goodness, you’re never going to guess who’s just got in touch. Because to me, you’re a legend in this world. You’ve managed the Australian cricket team, you’ve managed, you’ve been the physician doctor for professional.

sports teams at sort of premiership as well as national level. You’ve worked with Olympians, you’re author of number of books. I don’t know how many presentations you’ve done. You can tell us that in a minute. But you really are a legend in this world. So I was so excited at meeting you. And since then, we’ve met at the Public Health Collaboration Conference in 2017 in Manchester, in 2018 in London, in 2019 in London, and then of course COVID hit.

Peter Brukner (01:04)
you

Zoë Harcombe (01:26)
We’ve also bumped into each other at conferences further afield. So we’re very much in this space together. So delighted to be talking this morning. The first and obvious question is why, when and how did you get into this whole diet and health arena?

Peter Brukner (01:43)
Well, firstly, thank you very much for those kind words and thank you for having me, Zoë. It’s a real pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while. Look, I mean, as you said, my life’s been sports medicine. I mean, if you told me 12 years ago that I’d be sitting here talking to you about nutrition and diabetes, I’d have just laughed at you, really. I had zero interest in that area other than…

nutrition from a sports performance point of view, but really had no particular interest. But I guess everything changed 12 years ago. I was living in Liverpool, looking after the Liverpool Football Club, looking after 25 extraordinary, highly paid pampered footballers and having a great time. I loved Liverpool. And probably, look, if you’d asked me then, you’d say, how are you? How’s your health? How are you going?

said, yeah, I’m pretty good. I just turned 60. I felt fine. I thought I was eating a good diet, good low fat diet, following the guidelines. And I exercised regularly. My blood sugar was fine. Yeah, thanks for asking, but I’m good. The reality was I probably wasn’t quite as good as I thought I was. For a start, I had a family history of type 2 diabetes.

Zoë Harcombe (03:08)
Okay.

Peter Brukner (03:08)
My father developed diabetes at the same age I was, at 60. And I’d seen what happened to him and I didn’t want to go down that track. It wasn’t pretty. Secondly, I was quite overweight, obese. I’d, you know, like many middle-aged men and I considered 60 middle-aged, I used to think it was old, but now I think it’s middle-aged. I, you know, I’d probably put on a pound a year, half a kilogram a year for 30 years.

You know, just slowly getting thicker and thicker around the waist and my kids are sort of, you know, starting to poke me in the belly and saying, you know, come on, dad. And I’d shrug my shoulders and say, well, you know, I’m, you know, I’m eating the right diet and I’m exercising, you know, it’s not my fault. So I was, you know, I was obese. And I had some metabolic issues as well. I had a high insulin level, I had a high triglyceride levels. My cholesterol was okay, but my triglycerides were quite high. And I’d had a fatty liver.

Zoë Harcombe (03:37)
Okay.

Thank

Peter Brukner (04:06)
for 10 years at least. mean, you know, get your regular blood tests every couple of years, comes back, you know, consistent with fatty liver. I didn’t really understand, you know, what a fatty liver was. I figured I was on a low fat diet, you know, like a typical doctor, I just ignored it and figured it’d go away. it didn’t. And every time I had a blood test, it came back the same. you know, I mean, in retrospect, I was clearly pre-diabetic, but I didn’t realize it at the time. So around that time,

Zoë Harcombe (04:31)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Brukner (04:35)
I, our mutual friend, Tim Noakes most of your listeners would, would know about, I’m sure. So Tim and I are actually old friends. we go back a long way because we’ve both been in the sports medicine, sports science world. yeah, Tim and I used to be the sort of, you know, guest speakers at these, you know, American conferences. And we’d, you know, we’d sit in the corner and talk about cricket and rugby while they talked about all those other silly sports and so on. So we’re, we’re good mates from that, from a long way back.

Zoë Harcombe (04:39)
Mm-hmm.

I’m

Peter Brukner (05:03)
And he’s someone whose brain I had admired enormously. He’s such a smart guy. And he’d a few of the basic tenets of sports science in the past and always been proven right. So when he came out in 2012 and started to say, hey, I think we’ve got this wrong. I think it might be sugar and carbohydrates that are problem, not fats.

I, my initial response was, come on, Tim, now you’ve really lost the plot this time. I mean, this is a step too far. You know, we couldn’t possibly have had this wrong for the last, you know, 50 years and so on. But then I remembered, well, hang on, he’s been right before, you know, I better look into this. So I thought I need to do a bit of a bit of reading. So I bought Gary Taubes book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and, and

That book just blew me away. To this day, I still remember vividly reading it. It wasn’t so much the fats versus carbs argument, which was very interesting, but the politics, the history and the politics and how the low fat movement had won out over the low carb movement back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, which I’d always assumed was due to science and evidence. But of course, as we know, was due to…

money and power and politics, and we shouldn’t be surprised. And yeah, that really just blew me away. And I remember, still remember one night sitting on the edge of my bed, I had this lovely apartment in Liverpool overlooking the Mersey River and looking out over the river and thinking, I think you might be right. I think we might’ve had this diet then. No, no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. We couldn’t have had it wrong for 50 years. The whole of Western society has basically been on this low-fat diet.

Zoë Harcombe (06:24)
Thanks

Peter Brukner (06:51)
And here it is saying that there’s actually no evidence to support it. In fact, there’s a fair bit of evidence against it. And I found it quite disturbing. I really felt quite agitated by it all. so being a bit OCD, as we probably both are, I dived into every book and article I could possibly find over the next couple of months and just got totally into it.

Zoë Harcombe (07:06)
by

Peter Brukner (07:15)
So then I thought, and the more I read, the more, you know, I thought, yeah, I really sort of started to believe in this. And I thought, well, now I’m a scientist, so I need to some research. But also as a scientist, I know that a research with an N equals one is a waste of time, except when the one is you. So, you know, then it becomes important. I decided it was time for an N equals one experiment on myself. on day one, I got all my bloods done, weighed myself.

Zoë Harcombe (07:32)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (07:44)
And then I went on to a low carb, healthy fat diet. So I stopped eating anything with sugar, all processed foods really, all starches, rice, pasta, grain, bread, cereal, potato, all those, which had been pretty much a staple of my diet. So stopped eating all of that, fruit juice, anything in a packet really. And then I went back to eating, probably the way that my…

parents and grandparents that eat just real food, meat and fish and non-starchy vegetables, eggs and all that cholesterol. my God, cholesterol and cream and butter. my God, such a fat, all those things that have been told not to eat for 30 years and so on. And some nuts and the only fruit I had was berries. So I embarked on that, I decided I’d do it for three months.

Zoë Harcombe (08:23)
and

Peter Brukner (08:42)
Three month trial, blood’s at the start, blood’s at the end, see what happened. So what happened? Well, the first thing that happened was I stopped being hungry. So instead of having my cereal at eight o’clock in the morning and then getting to 10.30 and looking, my God, is it lunchtime yet? I’d have my bacon and eggs and avocado or whatever for breakfast and I wouldn’t be hungry again all day. So I went from eating three meals and three snacks a day to eating two meals a day, which is what I do to this day, two meals a day.

Zoë Harcombe (08:50)
Hmm.

Peter Brukner (09:11)
And then I started to lose weight and you think, yeah, the first week it’s just fluid or it’s just, you know, that’s a bit easy and kept on losing weight. But a whole lot of other things started happening. You know, I started to feel more energetic. I felt my was concentrating better. My exercise capacity improved, my sleep improved, my snoring decreased. You know, that was a popular move, happy wife, happy life. And, you know, I just felt a whole lot better. And then the weight just kept coming off.

Zoë Harcombe (09:38)
Hmm.

Peter Brukner (09:40)
And the more fat I ate, the more fat I lost. It was just totally counterintuitive. So at end of the 13 weeks, I’d lost 13 kilograms in 13 weeks. I’d eaten as much as I wanted to eat. I was never hungry. And I couldn’t believe it. I remember sort of almost feeling guilty. think, it’s supposed to be really hard to These people are really struggling to lose weight. And I’ve had a great time losing weight.

Zoë Harcombe (09:50)
Wow, wow.

Peter Brukner (10:09)
because I was eating really well. was just eating really healthy food and so on. And so that was great. And so then I got my bloods done and basically everything went back to normal. My insulin went back to normal. My fatty liver that I’d had for 10 years completely disappeared. So every blood test I’d had for 10 years was abnormal. And all of a sudden it was low normal, absolutely normal. I couldn’t believe it. mean, in three months.

It might’ve been less than three months. I only did the blood test after three months. The interesting thing was that when I get my bloods done at the end of three months, my triglycerides hadn’t come down and I was devastated. Everything I’d read, thought, know, that cholesterol, that triglycerides were a serious risk factor and that, you know, that they would come down. And I remember thinking, no, you know what? Couldn’t understand it. Anyway, the more I read, I thought, maybe I’m just mobilizing, you know, lots of fat and so on.

Zoë Harcombe (11:01)
Thank

Thank

Peter Brukner (11:07)
I repeated it three months later and my triglycerides had come right down, which was quite interesting. They were back to normal, then basically halved. They had gone from two to one. Really, as a result of my three months of pretty strict low carb, probably ketogenic, but didn’t measure it, but I would have been pretty low carb, I lost 13 kilograms. I’d resolved all my metabolic issues. I felt great.

Zoë Harcombe (11:25)
Thank

Peter Brukner (11:37)
There was one drawback though. I needed a new wardrobe. So all my clothes were ridiculously out there. But I figured that was a small price to pay for that. I guess, you know, when that happens, you know, it’s sort of a life changing experience, really. And the more I read about it, the more I realized that I was clearly pre-diabetic, know, fatty liver and high triglycerides and high insulin. Classic, you know, classic pre-diabetes really.

Zoë Harcombe (11:39)
I’m sorry.

Peter Brukner (12:03)
I felt as I dodged a bullet for a start, I had no doubt I would have been diabetic within a couple of years probably. But I just felt really good and I felt great and energetic and I felt my brain was functioning better and so on. So guess you have one of two choices. You can either sort of go into your little hole and just keep quiet, be happy and healthy and so on. Or you can get out and start talking about it.

Zoë Harcombe (12:29)
Mm.

Peter Brukner (12:30)
And to be honest, didn’t have much choice because people had come up to you and said, my God, what have you done? You look different and you look so much better. I didn’t realize I looked that bad, to be honest. anyway, apparently I did. yeah, so I started to talk about it a bit and write about it. then I came back to Australia and I found there was a little community of low carb people here and low carb down under and so on.

Zoë Harcombe (12:33)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (12:58)
I got involved with that and continued to sort of read and talk to people about it and talk to friends and colleagues and convince them to try it and so on. So it was very exciting. And at that stage I was looking after the Australian cricket team, which sort of happened just around the time I started, I lost all my weight. And I had another sort of, you know,

guess a light bulb moment with the cricket team. So we were touring in India and one of our players had had a lot of problems in the previous two years with his knee and to the point we’d had to stop playing and it had really severe knee pain that no one could work out what was wrong. He had scans, he’d had arthroscopies, all that sort of stuff. But eventually he saw a rheumatologist who told him he had

a what’s called a seronegative arthritis, which is a type of rheumatoid arthritis, a very inflammatory arthritis. Put him on some pretty powerful drugs, they helped a little bit, put him on an even more powerful, very expensive drug. And so when I met him, he was injecting himself with this drug every fortnight, and he was able to sort of train and play, but not to full capacity, he wasn’t able to train fully. The coaches thought he was a bit lazy, but he just, know, his knee couldn’t cope with it.

Zoë Harcombe (14:14)
of

Peter Brukner (14:24)
He was in the squad, he hadn’t got back into the team. And so we were on tour. So he came to me and said that he’d like to lose a little bit of weight. And it’s amazing how many elite sports people are actually a little bit overweight. And I never really understood that. And I sort of started to understand it when I realized that they were just having massive amounts of carbohydrates and so on.

Zoë Harcombe (14:40)
Yeah.

Carb loading

Peter Brukner (14:50)
Anyway, he said he wanted to lose a little bit of weight because he’d seen what I’d done and I happy to help. So he went pretty strictly low carb. Now, India is not the easiest place to go low carb. But no rice, no naan, all those other things. The good thing about athletes is they’re very disciplined. Anyway, he went strict low carb. Anyway, he grabbed me three weeks later and he said, I forgot to have my injection last week.

Zoë Harcombe (15:07)
Mm.

Peter Brukner (15:20)
You know, I said, what do you mean? said, well, I haven’t had any knee pain, you know, so I didn’t get that reminder. And I’ve just realized now it’s three weeks. You know, what do think I should do? Do think I should have my injection? And I pretended, well, I that’s exactly what I expected, you know, of course, having no idea. know, I thought, no, no, you know, I sort of, why don’t you wait and see, see what happens. Anyway, to cut a long story short, no more injections, no more, no more tablets. He’s

Now that’s 12 years ago. He’s been low carb ever since. He’s been off all his medication. And this is 12 years later. Last year, he was the world test cricketer of the year. And it’s made a massive difference to him. And I guess that was a real light bulb moment for me because it made me realize the impact of nutrition on inflammation. And I had no idea.

Zoë Harcombe (16:03)
Wow.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (16:18)
talked about that, I’d never read anything, never heard anything. And it just blew me away. mean, when you see something like that, my God, you know, he was spending like $10,000 a year on this medication, you know, and still not, you know, 100%. So, so they got me very interested in the whole, in a role of nutrition in chronic disease, be it arthritis or be it, you know, neurological diseases, diabetes, cardiac, cardiovascular disease, and so on. you know, I just, I just kept finding out interesting things.

you know, hearing amazing things. You know, I remember I was in the coffee line at university one day. I have a university position here. And a lady came up to me said, Dr. Brukner I said, yeah, yeah. And she said, I enjoyed your lecture the other day. said, thank you. It’s nice, you know. And she said, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. I thought, God, you know, what do I do? What am I saying? I said something in the lecture or, know, anyway. She said,

Zoë Harcombe (17:14)
I’m sorry.

Peter Brukner (17:18)
My husband and I are massive cricket fans and because of you, we changed our diet. said, that’s great. And she said, and, my husband’s been bipolar all his life and I just, just want to say he’s now off all his medication and you’ve changed our life. And I just want to say, thank you. And I thought, Whoa, you know, here’s another light bulb moment, know, bipolar disease, nutrition, you know, hang on. I’ve never heard anything about that. And again, you know, I think this, as you would know, there’s,

been quite a lot of interest the last few years now in nutritional psychiatry and the role of… So that was another thing that sort of just got me going and got me interested and so on. So all these sort of things were happening that making me just realize and dive into certain areas. And so I thought, well, what can I do? What can I do to really have an impact? So the first thing we did was we started a charity called Sugar by Half. And I figured, well,

Zoë Harcombe (17:49)
Thank

Thank

Peter Brukner (18:18)
Let’s start with the

simple things. Everyone agrees on sugar. Even the dietitians agree on sugar. Let’s keep it safe there. We started a charity and with the aim, as it says, of reducing the amount of added sugar by a half. The average Australian is probably the same in Britain. It probably has 16, 18 teaspoons of added sugar a day. That’s sugar in addition to

Zoë Harcombe (18:32)
Thank

Wow.

Peter Brukner (18:47)
the sugar that’s in fruit and dairy and so on. And the World Health Organization suggests that six is probably, below six is ideal. So my maths was never that strong, but that’s about half. I figured, because I think it’s always nice to have a catchy title and an aim, rather than say, reduce sugar. Well, let’s go sugar by half. Let’s try and cut it by half. So we started that charity about six or seven years ago, probably.

Zoë Harcombe (18:53)
Thank

I’m to

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (19:16)
And look, it’s been, you know, it’s been puddling along pretty, pretty nicely. And one area that we’ve got into that’s been the main area is we’ve teamed up with a group in Australia that produce school lessons. they, they make, that they, to be delivered online and, or delivered in the classroom by a, by a teacher, you know, who, who delivers this lesson. And, and these people are very clever. They, they initially started doing, doing it for climate change.

and they’ve added sort of sugar into that as well, nutrition into it as well. And, you know, it’s not just about sugar, you know, it’s math lessons or English lessons or that brings in, you know, some sort of form of that. And, you know, they’ve been really popular and I think they’ve had an impact and, know, we’ve certainly had some good feedback from teachers and from kids and it’s very interesting, you know.

Zoë Harcombe (19:44)
Hmm.

Thank you.

Peter Brukner (20:08)
Kids come home and they can actually convince their families to change the way they eat. It’s very interesting. you know, I caught up with one of the teachers, contacted me and said, look out, you know, our school captain, you know, says that he’s gone home and changed the whole way his family eat. you know, so I caught up with him and had a chat and yeah, sure enough he had. So that’s been active for a few years now. Then I got approached to write a book. You know, we all have to write books, don’t we?

Zoë Harcombe (20:12)
Yeah.

I’m sorry.

Peter Brukner (20:38)
But to be honest, my initial reaction was, look, really, the last thing the World needs is another diet book. But they convinced me that there weren’t many by doctors and none by Australian doctors. So I said, okay. And it was very interesting. wrote the whole book, it’s called A Fat Lot of Good, and it’s been really successful. But I wrote it in three weeks. So obviously, I had it all in my brain, what I wanted to say.

Zoë Harcombe (20:58)
That looked good, yeah.

Wow.

Peter Brukner (21:06)
blurted it all out and wrote it really quickly and so on. that was great. That was on the bestseller list for three months and it’s still selling quite well now. It’s been good. And a lot of people say that they found it useful. then all this time, I guess I was writing stuff and doing blogs and speaking at conferences and as you said, the Public Health Collaboration Conference in London and conferences in the States and different places.

but the elephant in the room has always been type two diabetes, really, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s the most underrated, you know, medical condition in the world, I think, you know, I think it’s a bigger single health issue, certainly in this country and, and probably in yours, you know, and, and it never gets much airplay, know, people, you know, don’t, seem to pay a huge amount of attention to type two diabetes. my theory is it’s cause people don’t die of type two diabetes. sounds very

Zoë Harcombe (21:54)
Thank

Peter Brukner (22:06)
for his and what doesn’t admit. People die of all the complications of type 2 diabetes. As we know, type 2 diabetes is the most common cause of blindness, the most common cause of amputations, of kidney disease, of dialysis, of kidney transplants, of cardiovascular disease, of dementia, Alzheimer’s, all these sorts of things, which are the things people die of. They don’t die of the type 2 diabetes. So it sort of gets forgotten a bit and everyone focuses on those things.

Zoë Harcombe (22:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Peter Brukner (22:36)
I was aware that there were some very good programs. Diabetes.co.uk is a terrific program and obviously the VIRTA program in the US. And I sort of kept waiting for someone to produce a program here in Australia and eventually gave up and realized I’d probably have to do it myself. So that was my COVID project. so I got together with Paul Mason, who again, many of your listeners would have seen his videos and so on.

Zoë Harcombe (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Peter Brukner (23:05)
and a dietician, Nicole Moore, and we put together this program. It’s not that dissimilar to diabetes.co.uk. It’s just a whole bunch of sort of lessons and videos and articles and meal plans and recipes and a very active Facebook group and all those sort of issues. And you pay an annual subscription. So that’s been really, we can talk a bit more about that later, but that’s been good. And I put out a book.

in relation to that called the diabetes plan, which was a similar, not that dissimilar to the fat lot of good, but just focused particularly on diabetes. that’s really where I’m at now. I guess I’ve sort of pivoted that wonderful COVID word pivoted away out of sports medicine to a large extent and into nutrition more. still do some sports medicine, but I

finished working with professional teams a couple of years ago. I finished with the Australian cricket team in 2017, just before they had their little sandpaper gate problem. Clearly that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there. And then I did a little bit of work with professional football here in Australia. But now I just largely look after an amateur team that I’ve been involved with for years. And just that’s my hobby.

Zoë Harcombe (24:14)
In the World Cup.

Peter Brukner (24:28)
But, and so I don’t see a lot of sports medicine patients, but I have a university position as a professional sports medicine. And what I’ve done at the university is try and mix my two interests, my sports medicine and my nutrition. So we have one PhD student at the moment doing a study on the effect of an anti-inflammatory diet or a carb diet on a knee osteoarthritis, for instance. We have a research interest in that area. So a few things like that. I’m trying to…

get the sports medicine world interested in nutrition and vice versa and so on. So, then a lot of my time now is spent in public health and promoting diet and trying to promote defeat diabetes. yeah, so that was a very long-winded answer, wasn’t it? I’m sorry about that, but that’s my story.

Zoë Harcombe (25:05)
Okay.

That was brilliant. That was brilliant. I was going to ask

you and you kind of got into it when you gave the story about the arthritis and the knee. When you discovered all of this, did you find you just couldn’t resist any team that you were working with? Like, right, everyone, you’ve got to go keto, your stamina is going to get better, your weight is going to get better. Or did you sort of hold back and…

Peter Brukner (25:30)
Well, it was a bit tricky because

I often have a dietitian, know, and didn’t usually agree with what I said. So I sort of kept it pretty low key, but the guys would come to me largely, you know, and ask me about diet. And a lot of the cricketers followed it and benefited from it and so on. yeah, it was a…

Zoë Harcombe (25:39)
yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (26:00)
I didn’t push it too hard, but I didn’t hold back when they asked me and so on. yeah, look, I think when you know something works and when you see how well it works and so on, it’s very hard not to, I try not to ram it down people’s throats. Whenever I go out to dinner, my wife says, now we’re not talking about nutrition. said, no, no, no, within five minutes somebody’s asked me about it and she just rolls her eyes. mean, here we go again. But I do find myself talking about it a lot too.

Zoë Harcombe (26:20)
You

haha

Peter Brukner (26:30)
to my patients, my athletes, just to people who want to talk about it. Last night I gave a talk at one of the very exclusive men’s club in Melbourne that I’m not a member of, I will never be a member of, they asked me to, and there was so much interest. mean, they were just, yeah, it was a panel of three people and I think I got every question bar one. I felt a bit embarrassed the other people didn’t get the questions.

Zoë Harcombe (26:34)
Yeah.

You

Peter Brukner (26:59)
There’s just a lot of interest in it. when you tell your story, it resonates with people and they want to know about it, I think. yeah, I try not ram it down people’s throat, but there’s nothing worse than that. if somebody asks me, well, I’m not going to hold back.

Zoë Harcombe (27:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, they’re going to do

it. I’ve got to share a little story actually, because we used your, I love the little saying sugar by half. I just thought that’s really clever. So Andy’s dad was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and he’s got a really sweet tooth. And Andy just said to him, okay, so we know this guy in Australia and you’re big rugby as well as football and cricket and all the rest of it. So that kind of got dad hooked in. And Andy said, just half all the sugar that you’re having, you know, you’re having a few cups of coffee a day. You’re having a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Just go for one.

and you have a couple of biscuits in the morning, just go for one. And he just found that so easy to do. And then it was like, well, maybe half it again. And he’s now at the point, he’s not having a biscuit in the morning and he’s not having sugar in his drinks anymore. He’s lost over a stone. He’s no longer in any kind of diabetes, pre-diabetes range. And he doesn’t feel he’s had some sort of terrible thing that he’s had to follow.

He’s just found it unbelievably easy. And what it’s done is it’s made him think, why do I even have one biscuit? Do I need a biscuit? It’s just kind of changed his mindset of, that’s just what I do, should that be just what I do? Or should I just halve it or stop it or do something else? And he will then find he has yogurt and berries for dessert rather than something he’s picked up at the supermarket, which quite frankly is full of a lot of other nasties as well. It’s not just the sugar. So I mean, he’s…

It was just so simple in an older person just to say, no, you don’t have to count anything. It’s just really, really easy. So I thought I’d share that with you. So when we used to see each other, particularly at the Public Health Collaboration Conference, you did one of the most popular presentations, which was sort of state of the union, state of the universe, state of anything. And you did a sort of hours roundup of, OK, here’s where we’re at. Are we making any progress?

Peter Brukner (28:41)
Yeah.

Right, well, it’s great to hear,

you

Zoë Harcombe (29:06)
Is the world still completely wedded to the low fat, high carb, any glimmers of sort of optimism? And I know you won’t have done this scientifically because you really used to put a lot of effort into making that presentation. But do you have a sort of feel at the moment for maybe where things are in Australia or maybe where things are in the sports world or a bit wider? Where do you think things are at at the moment?

Peter Brukner (29:32)
Yeah, look, it’s an interesting question, because there are certainly days and times when I think, you know, I’m just bashing my head against a brick wall here and getting nowhere. And then, you know, then you get an email from someone saying, you I just want to say thank you, you’ve changed my life. You know, okay, well, I’ll keep going for another week and another week.

Zoë Harcombe (29:39)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (29:53)
I mean, it’s a little bit hard to gauge because, we’re in the sort of the low carb world and, we talk to colleagues and, you know, we think everyone’s, you know, into low carb, but the reality is obviously they’re not. Look, I think, you know, we’re making progress. I mean, I think, you know, there’s certainly compared to when we, you know, we first sort of met, I think, you know, a lot more people are aware of it. I think a lot of younger people in particular are eating better.

Zoë Harcombe (29:57)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (30:22)
but, there’s an awfully long way to go and there are, there are some huge roadblocks and sadly, I have to say that one of the major roadblocks is my profession is the medical profession. You know, they just, very best way to describe it. I guess they’re very conservative. They’re very wedded to what they’re taught in medical school. And then, you know, they believe that for the rest of their life. And, and they also are not very knowledgeable about nutrition.

Zoë Harcombe (30:34)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (30:51)
I mean, as a medical student, I didn’t get a single lecture that I can remember. Maybe through it, but I think I could. I had a single lecture on nutrition. so doctors know nothing about nutrition. So they tend to sort of to hand over, know, I’ll just go and see the dietician. I’ll just follow the guidelines. The guidelines are a huge impediment. We can come back to that in a minute. so there are lots. so doctors and dieticians, dieticians are the same.

Zoë Harcombe (30:52)
Yeah.

No, you didn’t.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (31:20)
And look, I get it. I understand if you’ve been spruiking one particular sort of school of thought for your whole career, low fat, low fat, low fat, it’s very hard to of suddenly, this Waco sports medicine guy comes along and says, you’re wrong. What would he know? Fair comment. So they’re very reluctant to change and to embrace that. Again, some of the younger ones, the students and the younger ones are, they’re

You’re too scared to say anything because the big bosses are a wedded to it And we still have, in hospitals, we have horrendous diet, food served up in hospitals. And it’s all recommended by the dieticians and so on. So they’re a major impediment as well. Obviously the food industry is incredibly powerful, very clever.

Zoë Harcombe (31:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (32:17)
brilliant at marketing, have a lot of money to spend. And, you know, they don’t want things to change. They’re very happy the way things are, thank you very much. And, they pay lip service to being concerned about health, but with due respect to them, I mean, they have zero interest in health. They’re just interested in profit. And, you know, they’ve worked out that putting cheap, sugary foods together.

Zoë Harcombe (32:38)
Yeah, yep, it’s not their job.

Peter Brukner (32:46)
highly processed and honestly, we shouldn’t even call them food. It’s sort of chemical concoctions dressed up to look and smell and taste like food. And they can do it very cheaply. They market it brilliantly and it’s very easy to cook, easy to heat up and so on. So they’re a huge impediment. And then obviously the pharmaceutical industry as well, who’ve basically the medical.

Zoë Harcombe (32:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (33:15)
professionals being captured really by the pharmaceutical industry. mean, they’re so clever that the medical profession hasn’t even worked it out yet that they’re being captured. really, mean, all the research is funded by them, all education, all that. All our knowledge comes through that pharmaceutical industry. And they obviously know they’re not interested in diet. So it’s very hard to get any research funding for diet because the pharmaceutical industry is the main funder of research.

Zoë Harcombe (33:18)
sketch.

Yep.

Peter Brukner (33:43)
The second one is government. Well, you know, either fund something that’s against the dietary guidelines. So almost impossible to get good research funding. So there are a lot of barriers. So that’s all the negatives. Despite that, you know, I think there is some positives out there. Certainly there is more awareness. I think, you know, there’s a real awareness now that ultra processed food is not

Zoë Harcombe (33:47)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (34:12)
not a good idea that people want to get back to real food and so on. So in Australia, one example that I can give you is we have our overall organization is called Diabetes Australia, which is a sort of semi-government body that runs public health issues and funds a lot of the diabetes programs and things. And when I started on that,

Zoë Harcombe (34:28)
Thank

Peter Brukner (34:42)
to defeat diabetes, I thought, well, I should go and talk to them and tell them what I’m doing and I’m sure they’ll love to hear what I’m doing and so on. So their previous CEO was an ex-pharmacist and he was very negative about diet and we sort of came to blows really verbally anyway. It’s fair to say our two meetings did not end well. so I sort of shrugged my shoulders and thought, well.

they’re not gonna be any use to us. And then about 18 months ago, I got a phone call from the new CEO. And she said, look, I’m coming to Melbourne, I’d love to catch up, can we meet for breakfast? And I thought, well, that’s interesting. So we met for breakfast and she ordered bacon and eggs and I thought, well, that’s a good start.

Zoë Harcombe (35:33)
Whoa, okay.

Peter Brukner (35:37)
And their opening line was, you know, what can we

do to help you? Well, you know, when I got myself up off the floor, you know, you know, so she clearly had been given a mandate to sort of bring, you know, bring diabetes Australia into the, you know, into the 21st century and so on. And, and so we started discussions with them. Interestingly, she said that the thing they get asked about most is diet and they don’t have anything to offer.

Zoë Harcombe (35:41)
Wow.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (36:05)
And I thought, well, we can fix that. so to cut a long story short, we’ve now just recently announced a partnership with Diabetes Australia and Defeat Diabetes, which is quite unheard of really. you know, they’re not saying that everyone should be on a low carb diet, but what they’re saying is that, you know, a low carb diet is an acceptable way to manage diabetes.

Zoë Harcombe (36:07)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (36:33)
your chances of putting diabetes into remission and so on. that’s really big step forward. And it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a really big step forward. And interestingly, it’s been quite interesting because we’ve got more subscriptions out of it and all that sort of stuff, which is nice, but it’s sort of opened doors. It’s sort of given us credibility all of a sudden that, you’re endorsed by Diabetes Australia. okay then. Well, you must be okay. so…

Different organizations have started talking to us and, you know, private health funds and area, GP areas and things like that. So that’s been a really important turning point, we believe. So, you know, that was great. On the other hand, you know, we had a parliamentary inquiry into diabetes recently and we all made submissions. I made a submission and I actually went round and met with most of the parliamentarians on the committee.

was a committee of 10 of which five were doctors, the only five doctors in the house of reps in Australia. And I met with them, they were all really positive about diet and the role of they all got it, you And then they invited me to appear in front of them at a hearing, which I did, and I got a really good reception. And then the report came out a couple of months ago and it was really disappointing. It just didn’t really address the issues. And I thought,

What a missed opportunity. They talked very vaguely about dietary guidelines being updated, but didn’t make any recommendations or anything like that. So that was really frustrating. So it just shows you how difficult it is to get change. And there’s a review going on at the moment of the Australian dietary guidelines. It’s been going for a couple of years. It’s going to go for another couple of years. They didn’t…

Zoë Harcombe (38:00)
Mm.

Thank

Okay.

Peter Brukner (38:26)
put anyone on the committee that was at all interested in low carb or anything like that, despite one of our people being promised a gig. And I’m not that optimistic about what’s going to come from it. What we’re trying to point out to them is that the current Australian dietary guidelines, and I think this is the case elsewhere as well, are not designed for people with chronic disease. They’re designed for the healthy Australian. Now, there are very few healthy Australians.

Zoë Harcombe (38:42)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brukner (38:56)
And, you know, they don’t, they deliberately, you know, they proudly say, no, you know, these are not for, you know, for people with chronic disease and so on. Well, where are the guidelines for people with chronic disease? I mean, we know they should be the same, whether you have chronic disease or you haven’t. But so I’m not that optimistic that they’re really going to tackle the hard issues. And it’s dominated by dietitians and yeah, we’ll see.

Zoë Harcombe (39:10)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Peter Brukner (39:23)
We’ll keep at it and we’ll keep making submissions to them and so on. it’s just a real battle. It’s just harder than it should be. You know, it’s something that’s so obvious to most of us. And, know, I just feel that improving diet, you know, is a single biggest thing we can do to improve health. I we all want to eat, you know, be healthier, have a healthier nation. mean, Australia is,

Zoë Harcombe (39:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (39:51)
We should be one of the healthiest nations in the world. We’ve got a great climate. We’re a wealthy country. We’ve got lots of fresh food. I mean, we can exercise and we’re one of the fattest countries in the world. And it’s just wrong. yeah, state of the nation, 50-50, good and bad. Could try harder. Exactly. exactly. Well, we’re trying hard, but we’re just not getting as…

Zoë Harcombe (39:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Could try harder, it sounds like on that school report, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Peter Brukner (40:21)
I guess we were all a bit naive. We all thought, well, you know, it’s so obvious that it’ll all happen. It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. you know, just, yeah, it’s bizarre how, you you talk to doctors and diabetes educators and dieticians and you say, well, what’s diabetes? know, diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate intolerance. So what diet are you recommending? High carbohydrate. Why?

Zoë Harcombe (40:25)
It’s so obvious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brukner (40:51)
Well, you know, can just take more medication, you know, you just take more insulin, take more, I mean, if they just don’t get it, you know, it’s just so obvious. And yet there’s just this cognitive dissonance that they, you know, just refuse. They just don’t want to believe it. And, and that’s enormously frustrating. So I’m sure you can gather my sense of frustration and so on, as I said, small victories, we’re making progress. we’ll get there in the end, you know, it took

Zoë Harcombe (40:55)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (41:20)
took 30 years to convince the world that the tobacco was bad and the tobacco industry was preventing understanding of what was really going on. It’ll probably take 30 years to overcome the influence of the food industry and that’ll just have to become so obvious that no one can deny it. But yeah, we’ll keep bashing away.

Zoë Harcombe (41:38)
Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, that’s very much shared and we share this when we meet at conferences because we’ll have Mariella from Israel and Nina from the US and Tim Noakes from South Africa and you and Gary and Paul and Belinda from Aussie and me and Malcolm and Aseem from the UK and you’ve beautifully listed the obstacles to progress, which is of course the big food industry that doesn’t want anything to change the pharmaceutical industry who’s quite happy if the cricketer takes his steroids and

doesn’t change his diet. And then also this profession that just doesn’t seem to want to come out and say, do you know what, we got it wrong. And it takes real character to say, like you did and like Tim did and like I did and Nina did, Nina and I were vegetarian for 20 years. It takes real character to come out and say, do you know what, I believe that, but I actually now look at the evidence and I think I was wrong. And I don’t know, I mean, those powerful vested interests are not going to…

give up their hold on this. I wonder if it’s going to be legislation. I wonder if, like the tobacco industry, it got to the point where people were saying, do you know what, you knew that smoking caused lung cancer and you carried on promoting it as a healthy thing. And here’s the line in the sand where I can show that you knew. And from that point on, you’re culpable. And I wonder if it is going to be a massive lawsuit that

You, the setters of the dietary guidelines and the promoters of the low-fat diet and you, the Australian Dietetic Association carried on promoting this when you knew it was going to stimulate obesity and diabetes rather than walk me away from diabetes. I can’t see what else is gonna change these big powers. think it’s gotta be the law at some level.

Peter Brukner (43:23)
Yeah, I think you’re right. heard someone make a good comment. said there’s two elements to it, educate and legislate. And they’re both important. But I think you’re right. think legislation is, it’s interesting just the controversy about the sugar taxes around the world. I mean, know you have one in the UK and I think it hasn’t solved all the problems and so on, but it’s had an impact.

Zoë Harcombe (43:31)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (43:51)
But we can’t get to the space with it in Australia. The sugar industry is too powerful. The food industry is too powerful. It’s very hard to overcome them because they’ve got so much money and so much influence over politicians and so on. We’ve got to get smarter. We’ve got to spend more time lobbying and talking to politicians and so on. But who pays us when we do that? We’ve got to do it in our spare time.

Zoë Harcombe (44:02)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, Yeah.

Peter Brukner (44:18)
I said, I went around the country speaking to all these people on the parliamentary inquiry because I thought, well, I could really have an influence here. Well, I clearly didn’t. I wasted my time and money, but it’s hard. We have very powerful enemies. You don’t want to make it sound like a war, but it sort of is in a way. It’s just so frustrating.

Zoë Harcombe (44:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brukner (44:46)
I’m an idealist, I guess. You like to think that everyone actually wants what’s best for people and what’s best for people’s health and so on. But that’s not the case, unfortunately. Money comes before everything. Yeah, it’s tough. What we really need, I reckon, is a prime minister or someone who develops type 2 diabetes and gets cured, puts it into remission with a low-carb diet, and suddenly the light bulb goes on and things happen.

Zoë Harcombe (44:56)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Peter Brukner (45:15)
We sadly, mean, this you know, shouldn’t be the case, but we need high profile people, celebrities, know, influencers, you know, that horrible words, you know, I mean, that’s the way the world works these days, you know, and we, you know, it’s no point us writing letters to the newspaper or, know, doing all, you know, fashion, things like that. You know, I mean, you’ve got to get out there and, and play the game and, and we need, you know, we need people who are prepared to sort of, you know, get out in public and speak about it and talk about their own experiences.

Zoë Harcombe (45:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (45:45)
and talk about and convince others. So I think it’s got to be a ground up, a ground swell up sort of from below. that ground swell is getting bigger and bigger, certainly. And eventually, you’d hope that we’ll have enough influence. So if every person who benefits from a low carb sort of approach, get someone else and they get someone else and eventually we get there, but it’s a slow, way to go.

Zoë Harcombe (45:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve spoken about that at conferences as well, actually. You’ve got this sort of pyramid and at the top you’ve got the dietary guidelines and if only they would change those. Everything then just happens below. And then at the bottom you’ve got this bottom-up revolution of, Peter, you’re looking fantastic. What did you do? And then you tell them and then they tell someone else and then they try it. I mean, the obvious, I was thinking then about the prime ministers, the obvious one who was just so obviously diabetic or pre-diabetic. was obviously Boris Johnson.

Peter Brukner (46:25)
Yeah.

us.

Zoë Harcombe (46:41)
And then of course during Covid

we found that people who had metabolic illness were having a worse outcome than those who didn’t. And of course he didn’t have a great time of it. But I mean he just was so unhealthy as a Prime Minister. But he turned out to be a bit of a disaster in all respects. So we should probably move on from him.

Peter Brukner (46:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, little aspects. Yeah, yeah.

Zoë Harcombe (47:03)
So your programming,

Peter Brukner (47:04)
Yeah.

Zoë Harcombe (47:04)
obviously the defeat diabetes and the fact that you’ve got this recognition now from this marvelous new CEO who’s more open-minded. How’s that now working in Aussie? Can somebody go into their doctor in Australia and be prescribed your program or do they sign up to it online? Okay.

Peter Brukner (47:18)
Yeah.

They can? Yeah,

all of the above. Yeah. Yeah. So they can sign up online, just defeatdiabetes.com.au. You can get a 14 day free trial and then you can sign up and you get access to everything. So the majority of our subscribers have come that way. They’ve heard about it and we’ve had various publicity and things like that. What’s happening now more and more is that we’re getting GPs in particular.

Zoë Harcombe (47:49)
in.

Peter Brukner (47:49)
but

also diabetes educators and others as health coaches and so on who are recommending it or describing it or saying to people, you go and do this thing. Because really for the average GP, A, they don’t have the knowledge, B, they don’t have the time to talk to someone about that diet. So they need a tool if you like, and this is a tool for

them and they say, know, go away, have a read of this, come back with any questions or, you know, we’ll check your bloods in three months and all that sort of stuff. that’s more and more that’s happening. we’ve just done a research study looking at the efficacy of a hundred patients who were put on this program by their GP and then followed up by their GP. And we’re about to publish that in the next, or submitted it for publication. And when that comes out, hopefully we’ll get some good publicity for that.

Zoë Harcombe (48:35)
Lovely.

Peter Brukner (48:41)
and promote the program even more. But it’s very hard to promote these programs. Social media now has become so restrictive in what you’re allowed to say. Facebook said, you can’t say defeat diabetes because you can’t defeat diabetes. Well, hang on a minute. How do you Facebook know so much about it? so on. So it’s become really difficult. So we get increasing numbers every week. But then whenever we get

Zoë Harcombe (48:51)
Yep. Yep.

wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brukner (49:11)
some media, know, there’ll be something come out and there’ll be an article in a newspaper or whatever. And we get a massive spike in subscriptions and it goes back to sort of, know, trickle, trickle, trickle. then, you know, we’re hoping when this research study comes out that, you know, the results are so impressive that they’ll, you know, it’ll get quite a lot of publicity and so on. So we’re hopeful that will give us a bit of a boost. yeah, so it’s…

Zoë Harcombe (49:31)
Thank you.

Peter Brukner (49:38)
look, it’s pretty cheap and I think I worked out it’s basically it’s a cappuccino or fortnight as far as cost. you know, it’s not too expensive and people get great results. we have, you know, over half the people on the program put their diabetes into a non-diabetic sort of state, you know, so they will start off with their bloods over a certain level of the diabetic level and then within three months they’re below that level.

Zoë Harcombe (49:59)
Wow.

Peter Brukner (50:05)
It’s very, very effective. as is the diabetes.co.uk program and the VIRTA programs. we know these things work. mean, every country has shown that if you reduce carbohydrate intake and reduce processed foods and so on, you have enormous health benefits. mean, it’s so obvious, captain obvious as they say. But yeah, so we’re battling away and we’ll get there. We’ll get there.

Zoë Harcombe (50:13)
Yeah.

Yep.

Hey, but, brilliant.

I was going to say, of course, you know, in the UK, the trials that we do over here come from Newcastle University and Professor Roy Taylor, and Roy Taylor is determined to put people on a maximum of 800 calories a day, coming in the form of liquid.

soups and shakes that are provided by a company that he or at least some other people working on the program have got some conflicts with and that’s the thing that gets pushed in the UK so it’s just relentless the soups and shakes diet for putting diabetes into remission they’re starving

Peter Brukner (50:45)
Shake Sam.

and I’ll…

That’s crazy. mean, yes, it’s effective.

I mean, it’s effective, sure. Great. A, it shakes. It’s 800 calories a day. I really, I defy anyone to stay on that for too long. eventually, you want to eat. I I like eating. I don’t know about you, but I actually want to eat. I want to enjoy my eating. so, yeah, I could go on an 800 calorie a day diet, but I mean, I’d be

Zoë Harcombe (51:11)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I do as well, yeah.

Peter Brukner (51:28)
I’d be hungry and angry and it’s just not sustainable. I think that’s why the low carbohydrate approach is so successful because you’re not hungry because carbs are the things that make you hungry and fats and proteins feed you up. It’s got that massive advantage. Yes, low calorie diet will do it. Low fat, low calorie, you’ll lose weight, but it’s just not sustainable and you’re miserable.

Zoë Harcombe (51:29)
Yeah, hangry, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (51:58)
Yeah, I mean, my idea of dinner is not having a shake. know, my idea is going out and having a nice steak with some, you know, some nice green veg and, yeah, I’m just thinking about it. Anyway.

Zoë Harcombe (52:02)
you

Thanks.

Andy’s…

Andy’s lamb on the patio in rare good weather in Wales because you did come to stay with us once.

Peter Brukner (52:17)
Indeed,

indeed. Yes, I was fortunate enough to spend a few days with Zoë and Andy and I don’t think I’ve eaten that well for her for long time. was wonderful.

Zoë Harcombe (52:27)
Well, we had Nina as well, I remember. don’t know why it just sort of both of you said, let’s stay and it’s like, right, let’s have a party. Let’s just, just stay at the same time. Just, just touching back on one of the things when you said that somebody approached you about the bipolar and you said, obviously, you know, lot more of that has come out recently, particularly with the work that Dr. Georgia Ede has done. Did you then go and look into that any further or was it just kind of, this diet helps with everything?

Peter Brukner (52:29)
I did, I did. Yeah.

Yep.

Well, you know, it’s interesting. mean, more and more things that you read about, you talk to people. It sounds sort of bizarre to say it works for everything. It’s magic. it does work for most chronic disease. I’ve put people with Parkinson’s on it. I’ve put Alzheimer’s people on it, bipolar, depressed people, bowel issues, lot of irritable bowel issues, liver issues.

Zoë Harcombe (53:04)
Yeah.

does.

Peter Brukner (53:22)
I have to sort stop myself sometimes because really every chronic disease, if we look at chronic diseases, they’re basically due to some combination of insulin resistance, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and abnormal microbiome. What’s the one thing that improves all four of those components? It’s a low carbohydrate, healthy fat diet.

Zoë Harcombe (53:45)
Yeah.

Peter Brukner (53:51)
quite remarkable. And look, it doesn’t help absolutely everyone. I’ve certainly had people with, know, chronic disease, probably hasn’t made a huge difference to you, by gosh, it’s, it’s certainly the most effective thing as a doctor. It’s certainly the most effective thing that I’ve had, you know, weapon that I’ve had in my hands to help people with chronic disease, you know, all the drugs, all the prescription pads, you know, I mean, none of them, they just keep things at bay, you know, they,

Zoë Harcombe (54:08)
was fun.

Yeah.

Peter Brukner (54:19)
they sort of reduce the symptoms, but they don’t solve the problem. Whereas, you know, the dietary approach actually gets to the heart of the problem and improves it. but if only, you know, only we could convince enough people of that.

Zoë Harcombe (54:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, do you ever go off piste Do you ever get tempted and fancy a croissant or a few beers or something or just?

Peter Brukner (54:38)
yeah, well, you know, one of my boys has been living in Paris and you know, I have a croissant. It’s that French paradox, isn’t it? know, somehow when you eat a croissant in Paris, it doesn’t seem to be too bad. no, well, the French have the lowest rate of heart disease in Europe. And it’s known as the French paradox. And I think, you know, it’s probably because they have all that nice butter and, you know, cream and things like that. yeah, no, look, I’m not, you know, I’m not a sort of a…

Zoë Harcombe (54:50)
doesn’t count. I like that. Absolutely.

Peter Brukner (55:09)
absolutely, know, warrior that, you know, if I go out to dinner, you know, and I go to someone’s house for dinner and I refuse to eat, you know, I I eat what I’m given and, know, but, you know, 95 % of the time when I’m at home and then, you know, I have a choice. I’m pretty, pretty good with my diet. I like, know, the odd, you know, the odd creme brulee or, you know, something like that, you know, once in a blue moon. It’s fun, you know, so now I’m not.

Zoë Harcombe (55:36)
right.

Peter Brukner (55:37)
I’m not too nasty, but you know, can enjoy and I enjoy my food. You know, I really enjoy eating, you know, and, and, know, that’s unfortunate. One of the people had this perception that, if you’re on a diet, you you, you know, you’ve got to eat lettuce leaves a day. That’s, that’s about all. But you know, we can, the great advantage of this way of eating is that you can eat really well and still, and still be healthy. That’s, that’s a bonus to me.

Zoë Harcombe (55:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brilliant. So it’s evening your time, it’s very early over here. I’m very conscious of getting you back to your lovely family. Is there anything we haven’t covered? Anything you wanted to say that I haven’t given you the chance to say?

Peter Brukner (56:08)
This is Srot.

Nah, nah, that’s fine.

gosh,

no, no, no, just to keep up the good work. I I’d love getting your newsletter every Monday and it pops into my mailbox about 10 o’clock at night, you know, and I shouldn’t do this, but I sort of lie in bed and read it on my phone. They say you shouldn’t do that. That’s not good for your sleep. But anyway, I still sleep. yeah, that’s my Monday night activity.

Zoë Harcombe (56:32)
Ha

Peter Brukner (56:40)
So keep that, keep that going. That’s a, it’s a wonderful, you know, contribution that, that you make. And yeah, thank you for having me. It’s been, it’s been a pleasure. can’t believe it’s been an hour. I’ve got to stop talking so much, but anyway, it’s I’m sorry.

Zoë Harcombe (56:51)
It’s been brilliant. I knew on this one I wasn’t going to need to ask too many questions. There’s ones I did. No, no, no, those

brilliant. The ones I did recently on the Myers-Briggs and personality type. So you know when you’ve got someone with a preference for introversion, it’s sort of like ask a question. It’s like, I’ve done that now. And then ask another question. I just knew with you. Just point the microphone and off we go. So it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Peter Brukner (57:04)
yes, yeah.

You

Yeah, dude.

Zoë Harcombe (57:18)
Lucky you heading into spring as we’re heading into autumn. It’s freezing and horrible already. So yeah, enjoy

Peter Brukner (57:19)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, dear. I’m sorry.

Zoë Harcombe (57:26)
the spring as some and hopefully see you at conference real soon.

Peter Brukner (57:30)
Look forward to it. Thanks, Zoë

Zoë Harcombe (57:31)
Brilliant, thanks so much.

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BioNorman Fenton is Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London (retired as Full Professor Dec 2022) and a Director of Agena, a company that specialises in artificial intelligence and Bayesian probabilistic reasoning. A mathematician by training now focusing on quantifying risk and uncertainty using causal, probabilistic models that combine data and knowledge (Bayesian networks). He has published 7 books and over 400 peer reviewed articles. His work covers multiple domains including especially law and forensics (he has been an expert witness in major criminal and civil cases), and health. Since 2020 he has been active in analysing data related to Covid risk.

Show notesI opened the podcast by saying how much I enjoyed Norman and Martin’s book – although it did give me a bit of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), as it took us through the Covid years chronologically and remembering some of what went on was still unfathomable.

The book narrative started on the 13th, March 2020 – when the Arsenal football manager was declared to have Covid and suddenly the UK premiership was under threat of closure. It covered the key issues from that date up to May 2024 – when the authors explored the gain of function theory. Some of the content was jaw dropping. The NFL (US National Football League) protocol should be stuck on a fridge somewhere to remind us that segregation has not been consigned to history.

I shared in the opening to the podcast that even though Norman (and Martin) are top mathematicians and there was some clever maths (which was very well explained) much of the ‘maths’ was common sense and pointing out stuff that should have been obvious.

E.g.1, People who thought they had Covid were mostly the ones being tested – that skewed the impression of the number of cases.

E.g.2, Notwithstanding the inaccuracy of the PCR test, the number of positive tests should have been divided by the number of people tested, to establish the infection rate. That error led to Christmas 2020 being cancelled.

E.g.3, Wales (my country, so of extra interest to me) was counting suspected cases. Other UK countries were counting confirmed cases. Wales had extraordinary hospitalisation figures. Whereas in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, on average, around 4% of Covid-19 cases were admitted to hospital, for Wales the figure was 61%.

The book shared Norman and Martin’s calculations of the Infection Fatality Rate (a critical measure) from May 2020. They were far more accurate than public authorities. They cover Sweden vs UK – different lockdown approaches, little outcome difference. They share their submissions to parliament, their assessment of the Bangladesh mask study, did one in three people really have Covid with no symptoms? And more…

These were the questions I asked Norman.

• Tell us a bit about your co-author, Professor Martin Neil – how do you know each other?

• Why this book? Why now?

• We had SARS-CoV-1 – why was SARS-CoV-2 called Covid-19? (I had a question about PCR tests, but we covered PCR testing in this bit).

• We (Norman and I) were two rare beings who had major concerns about lockdowns from the start. Why were you concerned?

• When did you start looking at the vaccines? What did you discover? (I had a question about the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) data, which was used worldwide, but we covered it in this bit).

• What do you think was going on during this era? Why were vaccines, for example, being pushed so hard on the whole population, right down to children, when it is known that products take years to be fully tested for safety and efficacy?

• Where did flu go? (Norman and Martin have different views on this issue).

• Was Covid novel and deadly?

• We were told that Covid was the greatest threat since WWII – why were all viewpoints not welcome? Why were data experts like you and Martin being censored?

• Do you think this will happen again? One of the most fascinating aspects of the podcast for me was Norman’s insights into academia – from the (Neil Fergson) model that achieved the March 2020 lockdown to the academic profession’s delight in authoritarian control. That was my single biggest takeaway from an open and informative 70 minute discussion.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Goliath-Exposing-statistics-COVID-19/dp/1068749830
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Goliath-Exposing-statistics-COVID-19/dp/1068749830

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BioMarc Girardot is a visionary author, researcher, and strategic thought leader, known for his contributions to the fields of health, technology, and innovation. Born in San Francisco in 1966, Marc’s background includes an MBA from INSEAD, one of the world’s leading business schools, and extensive experience across a range of industries, including healthcare, automotive, and high technology. Marc’s unique perspective draws from his work with top firms such as Cisco, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and Air Liquide, where he spearheaded transformational initiatives that bridged industry boundaries and leveraged cutting-edge digital innovations.

In recent years, Marc’s research and writing have focused on vaccine safety, immunity, and the intricate relationship between injection practices and health outcomes. His seminal work, The Needle’s Secret: Unraveling the Mystery of Vaccine Harm and the Bolus Theory Revolution, has become a bestseller and has attracted significant attention for its exploration of modern health challenges. The book presents the “Bolus Theory,” a groundbreaking analysis that posits how improperly administered vaccines and other injectables can lead to systemic harm through intravascular injections. This work has garnered a dedicated following, including more than 24,000 subscribers to Marc’s “Bolus Theory” series on Substack, with over 1.5 million views. Through rigorous analysis and a meticulous scientific approach, Marc uncovers the probable roots of numerous modern diseases – autism, autoimmune disorders, neurodegeneration, cancer and more…– through the lens of vaccine-induced vascular and genetic damage.

Marc’s journey into health research was a natural progression from his earlier work, which included roles as a strategy advisor in biotech. During the COVID period, he was a scientific advisor at the think tank PANDA, and authored over 75 articles on natural immunity and vaccines. His contributions have been recognized internationally, including the BizNews “Best of 2021” award for his widely read article on natural immunity versus vaccine-induced immunity.

A polyglot and world traveller, Marc speaks fluent French, English, and Spanish. His diverse professional experiences are complemented by his dedication to exploring and communicating complex scientific truths. Marc currently resides in Paris, where he continues to advance his work in health advocacy, pushing the boundaries of traditional medicine with his relentless pursuit of knowledge and truth.

The Needle’s Secret on Amazon.com, on Amazon.co.uk, and on Amazon.fr

https://covidmythbuster.substack.com

https://thebolustheory.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcgirardot/

Show notesThis was one of the most interesting podcasts I have done. I connected with Marc on twitter. I posted about an interesting book I had read and he suggested I read his book “The Bolus Theory”, so I did and then invited Marc on to talk about it. This is what we covered:

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BioJon Furniss has used a real food, very low carb diet since 2019 to normalise his blood glucose whilst living with T1 diabetes. This is against a backdrop of 87% of type 1s in England who do not manage to achieve the (quite unambitious) NICE target while following conventional dietary guidelines. He is a passionate Public Health Collaboration charity ambassador, and trained health coach – providing metabolic information and coaching to support others living with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes who wish to normalise their blood glucose.

Jon has an engineering PhD and takes a root cause analysis approach to problem solving including the management of health problems. He is also a life-long competitive cyclist, having raced the national 24hr time trial championships, and ridden John O’Groats to Lands’ End in 7 days. Until 2019 he was ‘conventionally’ fuelled with large amounts of carbohydrates – and suffered as a consequence. Now fuelled by fat, Jon continues as a keen club level cyclist and delivers regular type 1 education events alongside Dr Ian Lake where Jon focusses on managing exercise with type 1. (The venue for these is Combe Grove Metabolic Health Centre, Bath, England).

Jon is keen to point out that in the metabolic health improvement and low carb world, many of us maintain that insulin is front and centre of the obesity and chronic disease epidemics but almost nobody in the population is actually measuring insulin. Except type 1 diabetics. As such, Jon's belief is that type 1s are very useful lab rats and there is a lot can be learned from observing them. Jon is a keen citizen scientist and has contributed to research and other studies, including the ZeroFive100 project.

On X: @furniss_jon

Show notesJon first approached me in September 2019 through a contact form on my site. He was (and still is) a subscriber to the Monday note. Jon thanked me for the information I had sent out on many topics and he shared that it had helped to transform his life with type 1 diabetes. At that time he was three months into a keto diet and was already seeing improvements (even given previous reasonable glucose control).

Since then, we have kept in touch and met at Public Health Collaboration conferences. Jon took part in the ZeroFive100 project that was discussed in my podcast with Dr Ian Lake – also a type 1 diabetic. Jon, Ian, a keto-dietician, a child psychologist, an Olympian and a couple of others ran 100 miles in 5 days completely fasted. They measured glucose and ketones throughout, as well as mood and hunger levels. The weight loss results were the least interesting part of the trial. This has been written up as a peer-reviewed paper in a Diabetes journal (Ref 1).

The hour’s podcast focuses on Jon and type 1 diabetes, but blood glucose levels and insulin are core to the health of every individual and thus type 1s can teach all of us much about glucose regulation.

• We started off with Jon’s type 1 diagnosis – when was he diagnosed and what happened next?

• We moved on to how quickly Jon realised that carbs were the issue and how he worked out for himself what he needed to do (real food, very low carb).

• I recently read Ben Bikman’s book “Why we get Sick”. Jon also referenced this as we discussed insulin being the driver for chronic disease (Ref 2). We touched on stress, exercise, insulin and weight in this section.

• Then we went into the ZeroFive100 project – why? What happened? What happened to the two type 1s in the group vs the non type 1s?

• This led interestingly into ketosis vs ketoacidosis. Jon gave a great explanation of the difference and why T1s deliberately going low carb, low glucose, low insulin and into nutritional ketosis is a world away from what happens with ketoacidosis.

• Lifestyle factors dominated the second part of the discussion. Exercise – how much? How intense? What time of day? Alcohol – OK or not OK? Different for diabetics vs non-diabetics? Coffee? Caffeine? Number of meals a day? Sleep… stress…

• We closed with what might cause T1D when it occurs beyond childhood, the gut, viral infections and a couple of resource recommendations. I learned new things – even having had a T1D brother since teenage years. There are many transferable insights for metabolic health for everyone. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Ref 1: Ian Lake. Nutritional ketosis is well-tolerated, even in type 1 diabetes: the ZeroFive100 Project; a proof-of-concept study. Curr Opin Endocrinol Diabetes Obes. 2021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34334612/

Ref 2: https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2024/10/ben-bikman-insulin-resistance/

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BioHannah is the Founder of three specialist food companies that create food for the Ketogenic Diet based on whole foods. She founded Ketocarefoods that supplies food to the NHS for children with drug resistant epilepsy and FATT, which is a range of ultra clean and simple snacks for the ketogenic or low carb diet. None of her products have any sweeteners and are free from fillers or other processed ingredients. She also founded Natural Ketosis which delivers the complete ketogenic diet to the home.

Hannah was originally a partner in a large global law firm specializing in corporate finance but left to start making food for the ketogenic diet in 2004 having been inspired by several clinical studies showing the extraordinary results when you radically reduce your carbohydrate intake. She has been an advocate of low carb whole food diets for over 20 years. Her business has been a supporter of the charities Matthew’s Friends, Daisy Garland and Food for the Brain.

Hannah also wrote a book called Big Fat Lies (published 2010), which highlighted the many conflicts of interest in the UK Scientific Advisary Commission on Nutrition (SACN) and other government agencies which recommend our daily diet.

Her hope is that over time we will see a move away from a dependance of drugs for many modern chronic conditions and a greater engagement by the medical profession in the use of specific clinically proven diets to reverse and or manage multiple conditions.

www.ketocarefoods.com Hannah’s foods for the NHS.

www.naturalketosis.co.uk The home delivered keto diet.

www.livefatt.com The snack bar low carb company.

Show notesI met Hannah through the nutrition world, but she’s become a fabulous friend. She stayed over recently, and we decided we should do a podcast on keto diets. This was like two friends having a chat about keto diets for an hour.

We started with – why did Hannah give up a high powered and lucrative legal career to set up a business in the keto world? Then we motored through:

• How Hannah moved from HCLF (high carb low fat) to keto to low carb and how keto became her vocation and passion.

• When did ketogenic diets first get used and why?

• What treatments were first considered for epilepsy – from fasting to the classical keto diet.

• How an approach from an epilepsy charity led to Hannah developing keto bars and then keto meals.

• Where Atkins came in (moving from epilepsy to weight loss).

• What other ketogenic diets are there? What’s the modified Atkins diet? What’s the modified ketogenic diet? Where does Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT) oil fit in?

• Where are you on carbs vs net carbs? (This led to an interesting explanation of US food labels vs Europe’s.)

• Where are you on exogenous ketones?

• What would the clinical pathway be for a child diagnosed with epilepsy today? What can this teach us about an approach for type 2 diabetes that might be more successful?

• What should a keto diet for weight loss be? (The fat error that people make.)

• What do you think of the carnivore diet?

• How do you/people feel when in ketosis?

• What happened when you did a lot of cycling and carb fuelling recently?

• What research would you like to see happen in this field? - What do you think about Ozempic and the new weight loss drugs?

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BioBenjamin Bikman earned his Ph.D. in Bioenergetics and was a postdoctoral fellow with the Duke-National University of Singapore in metabolic disorders. Currently, his professional focus as a scientist and professor (Brigham Young University) is to better understand the role of elevated insulin and nutrient metabolism in regulating obesity, diabetes, and dementia. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Bikman is the author of Why we get sick and How not to get sick.

Show notesBen and I first met at the Breckenridge low-carb conference in 2019. He was an immediate superstar on the presenting circuit. Ben explained that he’s a professor and lecturer, as well as a scientist, and the need to keep several 20 year olds entertained and educated has resulted in his engaging presentation style.

I think you’ll love this hour. We started off talking about Ben and his daughters seeing Taylor Swift in Amsterdam and ended up talking about how to balance positive messages on healthy eating without encouraging eating disorders. This is a minefield that parents of girls especially have to navigate.

I could talk to Ben about so many things – protein, exercise physiology, insulin resistance etc, but I wanted to talk to him today about the weight loss drugs that have exploded onto the market. Ben agreed that explosion was the right word. He has never before seen such a reaction to, and claims for, a drug.

We went through the science in a really understandable way:

– What did gastric bypass surgery teach us about incretins (gut hormones)?

• What happens to type 2 diabetes (T2D) within days of gastric surgery? Even before weight has been lost.

• What is GLP-1? What does it do? If it supresses glucagon and glucagon helps with breaking down fat, how does it achieve the weight loss that we are seeing?

• The primary drug being administered is semaglutide (brand names being Ozempic and Wegovy). How do they achieve weight loss? How did a drug for T2D become a drug for obesity? (At a higher dose – Ben mentioned the dose several times; it clearly concerns him.)

• What are the effects of semaglutide? i) Gastric emptying is slowed – what are the implications of this (some fatal). ii) Fat breakdown (lipolysis) in fat cells. (But also an increase in the number of fat cells).

• 70% of people stop these drugs within 2 years. What are the implications for weight regain? For loss of lean tissue and regain of fat mass? For having an increased number of fat cells, now crying out to be fed?

• In what circumstances could the drugs be used to great effect? (Spoiler alert – to help adapt to a keto way of eating, which could then have sustained benefits long term).

• Many claims are being made for these drugs beyond T2D and obesity (heart disease, cancer, brain health ) – are they fair?

This elicited an interesting answer and led to a discussion about insulin resistance (IR), the prevalence thereof, Ben’s book writing, different signs of infertility with IR in men and women and how different ethnicities develop obesity and diabetes differently. This really was a very informative and engaging hour -we hope you enjoy it.

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BioDoc Malik is the host of the Doc Malik podcast.

After a successful 25-year surgical career, Ahmad stopped practising as an orthopaedic consultant (foot and ankle specialist).

Ahmad has discovered that much of what he was taught in medical school, and his higher education was false and not conducive to good health.

Having reversed his type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity and low testosterone, Ahmad is keen to promote real health and optimal living.

Ahmad is also passionate about medical ethics and calling out Big Pharma corruption.

You can find details of his podcast and Substack writings via his website www.docmalik.com

Show notesThis was another one of those podcasts where I had some questions prepared and barely asked any of them. It’s always good to go where the guest goes.

In just over an hour, Ahmad and I covered the following:

• How did a boy growing up in Glasgow become a surgeon? Why medicine? Why surgery?

• Why does he now drink coffee?

• What impact have UK National guidelines had on how doctors work? (Including the impact of conflicts of interest).

• How does doctor training work? When do you end up as an actual doctor seeing your own patients?

• The UK National Health Service (NHS) as a system – what’s good, what’s bad, where have things gone wrong?

• Why Ahmad stopped working in the NHS and how private practice was different, but not necessarily better.

• Why he no longer works as a surgeon in the NHS or private practice.

• Why you should trust your instincts if you think something is wrong with your health.

• How to take charge of your own health.

This was a personal, informative and insightful discussion. We hope you enjoy it.

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Bio
James Goolnik is a dentist with a Master’s degree in Conservative dentistry. James was previously President of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is a judge for both the Dental Industry Awards and the Private Dentistry Awards and he lectures internationally on the mouth body connection. He is chairman of the British Dental Bleaching Society. A member of The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology. Twice listed in Private Dentistry’s poll of the top 20 Elite Dentists in the UK, James has also been voted the most influential person in dentistry in the UK in 2011 and 2012 by the trade magazine, Dentistry.

His first book ‘Brush’ about marketing in Dentistry with all the profits going to the charity, Dentaid. His second book was a cookbook called ‘Kick Sugar’ helping people to reduce the sugar in their diets.

James is also the Founder of the Bow Lane Dental Group in London. Having worked in the same practice for over 21 years, he has witnessed first-hand how sugar damages teeth on a daily basis.

He is studying a nutrition diploma with the Institute of Optimal Nutrition.

He is married with three children. His mission is to help the UK get healthier starting with their mouths.

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/james-goolnik
https://www.instagram.com/jamesgoolnik/
www.jamesgoolnik.com

Show notes
I met James at a Public Health Collaboration conference in 2019. This is the first time I’ve interviewed a dentist and boy did we pack everything in. In this ‘everything about teeth’ hour we cover…
- Why a dentist would write a recipe book.
- Are bleeding gums OK? What’s saliva testing?
- How does the dentist know you haven’t got oral cancer when you go for your check up? What else can the mouth tell your dentist?
- When it’s obvious that diet is an issue, how do you start the conversation with patients and how is it received?
- What’s mouth breathing? Why is it bad and what happens when you wear a mask?
- Do James’s children ever have junk?
- Oral hygiene – how, why and when to tongue brush, as well as teeth brush. Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Chewing gum? Xylitol? What’s good and what’s bad?
- Fluoride. Vitamin D3 and K2 and what vitamin C can help with.
- Where are you on fruit? What are fizzy drinks doing? Energy drinks especially?
- How can we stop children growing up thinking junk is a reward? What’s an alternative to sweet rewards?
- Is vaping impacting oral health? If so, how? Where candida fits in.
- Teeth whitening – good? Bad? How to do it?
- Who has contacted James to explore the 3 out of 36 oral issues related to Alzheimer’s Disease?
- Mercury fillings – to remove or not to remove and how and by whom if so.
- The best and worst thing about being a dentist.

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Bio

Nick Thompson is a vet. He has been fighting for responsible, species-appropriate raw food feeding for pets for over 25 years. His tireless drive for healthy pets from birth to graceful old age brought him to raw feeding in the mid-1990s.

Nick is Founding President of the international Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (www.rfvs.info) and has co-authored a pioneering worldwide survey of 79 vets and their experiences feeding raw food.

He has co-organised international raw food conferences for the RFVS since 2014.

In 1999, Nick established his specialist practice, Holisticvet (www.holisticvet.co.uk). Now based near Bath, he offers homeopathy, natural nutrition and herbal medicine and a lot of good old-fashioned common sense for dogs and horses.

His pet topics are gastroenterology and the microbiome and the misuse of pharmaceuticals in medicine. He loves researching all aspects of human and animal nutrition. Nick is a regular contributor to

YouTube discussions on raw feeding and blogs to forward the raw feeding cause.

Nick also shares his passion for raw feeding with a nutritional consultancy service to the premier raw pet food companies in the UK and Europe. He has lectured and consulted in Raw Food, Nutrition and Medicine throughout the UK, Eire, Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium, New Zealand, UAE and the Netherlands.

Nick embraces Social Media to spread his message: Facebook: Holisticvet Ltd; FB Public Figure: Dr Nick Thompson; Instagram: holisticvetuk. He has recently produced a beginners guide to raw feeding: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/rawfeedingthebasics and another on Bones and How to Feed Them: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bonesandhowtofeedthem

Nick is a founding member of Raw Pet Medics with Dr Conor Brady and Dr Brendan Clarke. They produce weekly FaceBook and YouTube programmes and podcasts on all things raw and nutrition for dogs. (https://www.facebook.com/rawpetmedics).

Nick is married to Elly and has two children, Arthur and Ophelia, and lives in Wiltshire, UK with six chickens, five peacocks, a Snowshoe cat called Ziggy and Whippet-Italian Greyhound crosses called Bluebell and Mouse. Jet, a 5 month old Lurcher rescue is a recent addition to the household, as are two kittens.

Show notes

Nick and I had never spoken, let alone met. You wouldn’t know it, as we struggled to keep this to an hour covering so much of interest to animal lovers and pet owners – as well as anyone interested in diet and health…
- Nick’s training as a vet and why he got into alternative medicine early on.
- A bit on the history of dogs and how they didn’t evolve to eat kibble!
- From being a farming vet, to being a family pet vet, to being a raw food vet, and now a dog vet (and the animal he would most like to be a vet for).
- The brand names in pet food and the companies behind them (spoiler alert – you’ll recognise them all).
- The four fears about raw food, how they came about and why they soon disappear.
- The reality of raw food. Which conditions it might help. Which meds are still useful.
- The good news about poo!
- How to ‘go raw.’ How to learn more about raw food.
- The low down on bones – what to give and when and what never to give.
- The tools that a holistic vet has: nutrition; acupuncture; and herbal medicine (including what dogs think of acupuncture!)
- We finish with some stories and the low down on Nick’s own animal family.

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Bio
Gary Taubes is an investigative science and health journalist and co-founder of the non-profit Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI.org). He is the author of Rethinking Diabetes (2024), The Case Against Sugar (2016), Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It (2011) and Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), published as The Diet Delusion in the UK.

Taubes is the recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research and has won numerous other awards for his journalism. These include the International Health Reporting Award from the Pan American Health Organization and the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award, which he won in 1996, 1999 and 2001. (He is the first print journalist to win this award three times.)

Taubes graduated from Harvard College in 1977 with an S.B. degree in applied physics and received an M.S. degree in engineering from Stanford University (1978) and in journalism from Columbia University (1981).

Questions
In this really varied podcast (a bit over an hour), Gary and I cover topics from bad science to sugar. I had many questions ready, but the first question took us in a really interesting direction, so I stayed with it. This led to us covering the following:
- What inspired Gary to go into journalism with a science and engineering background?
- What took him to Geneva and the Nobel prize world?
- How his seven books came about.
- Which does he think is his best book?
- How did he get from physics to nutrition?
- When did he change how he eats and why?
- How did he upset the researchers behind the DASH diet? (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension)?
- How could he write 512 pages about diabetes (when the issue could be summed up in one sentence!)?
- Garys latest book “Rethinking Diabetes” explains that we were handling the condition with diet and then we went off track – how? What happened?
- When did thinking on obesity go astray? (The medical history pathways generally when we could have taken the right path but didn’t).
- Gary’s obsession with good science and bad science.
- What is stopping (dietary advice) change when it seems so blindingly obvious?
- What will be Gary’s next book?

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Bio

Dr. Georgia Ede is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in nutrition science, brain metabolism, and mental health. Her two decades of clinical experience includes 12 years at Smith College and Harvard University Health Services, where she was the first to offer nutrition-based therapies as an alternative to psychiatric medications.

Georgia speaks internationally about dietary approaches to psychiatric disorders, nutrition science, and nutrition policy reform. She is also the creator and director of the first medically accredited course in ketogenic diets for mental health practitioners. In 2022, she co-authored the first inpatient study of the ketogenic diet for serious mental illnesses and was honoured to be named a recipient of the Baszucki Brain Research Fund’s first annual Metabolic Mind Award.

Georgia’s passion is empowering people with psychiatric conditions to reduce or eliminate the need for medications by changing how they eat. People wonder which changes are worth making, and why? Answering that question is what Georgia’s work is all about.

Georgia has a book coming out on January 30th 2024 called “Change your diet. Change your mind.”

Questions

For an hour, in this wonderful meeting of minds, Georgia and I talk about why the dietary guidelines are just about the opposite of what we should be advised to eat.

We discuss how we both got into the world of diet and health and why we now think as we do. Georgia shares when and how she personally realised that many plants were ‘not her friends’ and how she resolved this.

We cover animal foods vs plant foods, nutrients, anti-nutrients and what we need to base meals on.

We talk about Georgia’s forthcoming book Change your diet, change your mind and the three different diet plans within. We also talk about the challenges of writing the book, not least capturing the individual way in which Georgia works and applying this to general principles that can help more people.

Georgia explains how her psychiatry practice changed from meds and therapy to food and nutrition and the results that can be achieved.

We also cover – not only are plants ‘not all that’, but they defend themselves against being eaten and some can be quite problematic for different people. Georgia explains the signs that might indicate that some plants are causing us problems, which ones particularly and what we can do about it.

You may never think of broccoli in the same way again!

More here: https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/change-your-diet-change-your-mind

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Bio

Gareth Wyn Jones is a heritage hill farmer and a modern social media communicator. He was born in the beautiful Carneddau mountains in North Wales, where he still lives and works. His family have been farming at Ty’n Llwyfan for over 370 years and he hopes to pass on the tradition to his next generation. The farm hosts 3,500 sheep and 300 cattle in a regenerative farming environment.

Gareth is an active campaigner to protect the Carneddau Mountain Ponies – a rare and beautiful native breed that have been roaming his local hills since Celtic times.

Gareth features regularly on mainstream television and is often interviewed for media topics on food and farming. Notably he appeared on the BBC Programme “The Family Farm.” He is the author of a bestselling book, “The Hill Farmer.” He also became known as “the tweeting farmer”, although now, more accurately, he might be called “the youtube farmer.” He has 1.5 million youtube followers and his video on “Quick & easy sheep and lamb sorting” has nearly 600 million views.

In his social media activity, Gareth is constantly trying to educate the public about sustainable / seasonal food, farming, its heritage, time honoured traditions and its challenges.

Gareth is also a father of three and husband to Rhian.

Questions

In a lively hour, Gareth and I discuss all things farming from BAFTA nominations, supermarket power, fair prices for produce, diversification, the weather, the ‘Beast from the East’, to Brian May, badgers and, of course, Clarkson’s Farm.

We end with thoughts about what we listeners and consumers can do to help farmers because, without them, we don’t get to eat anything. More people need to remember that more of the time!

More here: https://tynllwyfan.com/

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Show Notes:Rufus Greenbaum retired from a career in electronics in 2006, having worked for Intel and Motorola.
Aged 65, his health was not good and he started to take an interest in "How to Live Longer", with the goal of living to 100 with both his body and his mind fully functional and active.

In 2008/2009 Rufus realised that UK government advice about vitamin D was not just poor, but "wrong." He researched extensively on the topic finding experts in the field. This research included attending meetings of government expert committees, such as the Food Standards Agency and the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition ( SACN ).

Rufus has been active in trying to influence public policy. In 2009, he wrote a nine-page letter to the chairman of SACN asking them to review their advice about Vitamin D (letter available at www.VitaminDuk.com). In 2010 and 2011, he organised four medical conferences about Vitamin D at the Wellcome Trust, which are available on YouTube (http://www.vitamindassociation.org/events/). In 2020, he wrote to many of the government experts and advisors and also Members of Parliament, about how to increase our “natural immunity” to COVID-19.

In 2015, Rufus started an online business selling Vitamins (https://greenvits.co.uk/), which he sold in 2022.

He has now retired a second time and considers himself a Citizen Scientist, still actively learning and educating and evangelising by publishing a blog entitled www.VitaminDuk.com

What we cover
In this hour’s chat, we explore the following:
Who are you? How did you get into this? Why vitamin D?
What does vitamin D do?
What conditions does it help with?
What were you thinking when Covid was announced? What part could vit D have played? (In this part we discuss the sad fact that outcomes for people with Covid were measurably worse for people with darker skin and lower vitamin D levels and that those facts combined tell us something).
What are the three things that we should be doing to live longer/optimise our healthy years? (This adds essential fatty acids into the discussion, and we mention Patrick Holford’s work).
What should our vitamin D levels be? How can we test our levels?
How bad are levels in the general population?
How much should people take? Should my husband (13 stone/6 foot) take the same as me (7.7 stone, 5'2")?
You've got two key facts about vit D – what are they?
How can we find out more? Get ourselves tested?

Websites promised in show notes:
https://vitamindwiki.com/ – the evidence and information web site (Rufus suggested look up “shadow rule”).
http://www.vitamindassociation.org/events/ – the conferences that Rufus organised.
https://fatsoflife.com/ – the discussion we had on omega-3 and omega-6.
https://foodforthebrain.org/ – Patrick Holford’s work.
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/ – GrassrootsHealth is a charity dedicated to promoting optimal health worldwide through research, education, and advocacy, with a primary focus on the role of vitamin D.
https://bant.org.uk/ – to find a therapist who can help you.
https://greenvits.co.uk/ – the business that Rufus sold.
https://www.ted.com/talks/nina_jablonski_skin_color_is_an_illusion?language=en – Dr Nina Jablonski Ted talk on climate and skin colour.
https://functionaldx.com/ – the testing company Rufus mentioned (there will be others).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-Ray-Kurzweil/dp/1605292079 – book “Transcend” by Ray Kurzweil & Terry Grossman.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/10-Secrets-Healthy-Ageing-younger/dp/0749956542 – book by Patrick Holford & Jerome Burne.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239252 – Kaufman et al. SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates associated with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. PloS One. Sept 2020. The study of 190,000 people mentioned by Rufus.
https://drtalks.com/videos/reversing-heart-disease-with-precision-cardiology-the-kahn-center-method/ - reversing heart disease – Joel Kahn.

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Show Notes:Dr Ian Lake is a UK GP and person with Type 1 diabetes. He has been a medical doctor for 37 years and works as a GP in Gloucestershire, UK. He has a degree in Medical Cell Biology and Biochemistry from Liverpool University awarded in 1981 and qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in 1985 from Southampton University.

Ian was diagnosed with LADA (Late Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults) Type 1 Diabetes, at age 36. He managed it with a DAFNE (Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating) style approach for the first 20 years and changed to a very low carb approximately 9 years ago. The results were so dramatic results that Ian decided to dedicate his time to getting information about low carbohydrate lifestyles to other people with Type 1.

Ian is a founder member of The Public Health Collaboration www.phcuk.org.uk, which is a charity dedicated to promoting a real food lifestyle for health. He has spoken about the low-carbohydrate management of Type 1 diabetes at various conferences.
What we cover

Ian and I start this podcast talking about how Ian diagnosed his own Type 1 Diabetes. What dietary advice was he given at the time and how did that work out. We then move on to how he discovered the ketogenic diet and what happened next.

We move on to fasting – how often does Ian eat? How much does he eat? When did he first realise that he could do prolonged exercise without eating? (He runs marathons, climbs hills, cycles and paraglides!)

We then discuss a fascinating experiment that Ian did with another Type 1, a dietician, a child psychologist and an Olympian. They ran 100 miles in 5 days completely fasted. They measured glucose and ketones throughout, as well as mood and hunger levels. The weight loss results were the least interesting part of the trial. This has been written up as a peer-reviewed paper in a Diabetes journal.

We close by discussing where the conventional world is with diabetes generally, what progress is being made and why people with diabetes are ‘doing it for themselves’.

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Show Notes:Jason completed medical school at the University of Toronto and a fellowship in nephrology in Los Angeles. He continues to practice nephrology in Toronto, where he is also the co-founder of The Fasting Method, a program that helps patients to lose weight and reverse their type 2 diabetes (T2D) naturally.

Jason and I first met in 2015 at the first and best low carb conference – in Cape Town, south Africa. Jason wowed us all at that event as a quite brilliant presenter.

In this 50 minute chat, we explore the following:

• How did a nephrologist end up a global expert in diabetes? Jason covers how he worked out what the T2D issue was and what needed to be done to address it. He also shares what people are taught in med school (that T2D is chronic and progressive), and how this has obstructed progress in understanding and alleviating the condition.

• Fasting – what does it mean? What should be eaten? How long do people fast for?

• Jason’s view on low carb, low calorie and fasting as tools for putting T2D into remission. This part of the talk included the metabolic challenge with low calorie diets and why fasting avoids this. Jason sorts out thermodynamics along the way!

• What’s this personal fat threshold that the low calorie proponents talk about?

• What do you eat? And how often?

• Where do you think this field is going?

I’ll leave these notes with one of my favourite Jason sayings: “You can’t use drugs to cure a dietary disease.” We therefore need to put less sugar in; and burn off remaining sugar.

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Part 1Show Notes:Ben Rubin was born in East Anglia in 1981. He graduated from the University of Leeds.

Ben has had a very successful career in the consulting industry, where he has spent 18 years helping leaders of complex organisations to effect change. During this time, Ben realised that much of the Western system is fundamentally corrupt and needs to be replaced.

Ben is also a trustee of the Public Health Collaboration – an organisation that we both know well and have worked with over time.

I heard Ben on the Delingpole podcast in April 2023 and was struck by this comment “The NHS is the most complicated organisation on earth and I've looked at many. By some distance." Ben did note “there are pockets of excellence.”

This was the first time a Diet & Health Today podcast has been two hours long! There was so much that Ben and I wanted to talk about.

The first hour explored the NHS, Ben’s personal connections with the NHS, why it’s so complex, the costs, how the NHS should be designed (human centred) and how it is designed (layer upon layer of tech projects and upgrades). We discussed the impact of Covid on the NHS and the medic ‘contract’ (Ben has a very interesting view of what the legacy of this might be). We also explored preventing sickness, creeping privatisation, politicisation of healthcare and how the church showed pockets of leadership during recent times. In the second hour, we explore world systems in general, the ‘big thinker’ connections that Ben makes, unelected organisations and the roles that they are trying to play in our lives.

You can read more of Ben's work over at Substack

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Show Notes:Dr Malcolm Kendrick graduated from medical school in Aberdeen and trained as a General Practitioner in Scotland. After ten years he split his time between General Practice and education. On the doctor side, Malcolm currently lives and works in Cheshire in General Practice, Intermediate Care and Out of Hours. On the education side, Malcolm set up the on- line educational system for the European Society of Cardiology, working with the European Commission and also set up the first website for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK.

Malcolm is an early member of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) in Oxford and of The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics (THINCS). The latter comprises a group of scientists, doctors and researchers who share the belief that cholesterol does not cause cardiovascular disease.

This is the field of medicine for which Malcolm is best known. His long-term interest in the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease has resulted in many publications in journals such as the BMJ, Medical Hypotheses, Pulse and PharmacoEconomics. His breadth and depth of expertise in this area led to his election to Who’s Who in 2009.

The Great Cholesterol Con was the book that firmly placed Malcolm on the world stage of the ‘diet-cholesterol-heart’ hypothesis and his army of followers are eagerly awaiting his next bout of wit and wisdom. Malcolm blogs at drmalcolmkendrick.org and lectures by invitation. Married with two children and two cats, Malcolm would like more people to challenge the status quo, and never just accept the party line. He likes to ski, golf, sail, play squash, walk in the hills and drink... not necessarily in that order.

In this 40 minute podcast we cover the following:

How Malcolm made a breakthrough from thinking about many factors to one unifying theory – process.

What doesn't cause heart disease – why the LDL-Cholesterol/diet heart hypothesis just doesn't work.

How it doesn't matter what size LDL is – it still can't get into or through the endothelial wall.

What does cause heart disease. How the explanation can cover wood fires to Lupus to ageing to diabetes...

Which people previously have worked out this process and how the cholesterol hypothesis got in the way.

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I’m quite partial to a conspiracy theory and there were a couple emanating from America last week – one far